MAMMALIA 41 



head, £00, 01s. 00. Paid Tho. Hick for 2 Brock heads, £00, 

 02s. 00d.' These deaths appear to have thinned out the 

 Badgers of Sleddale, Grayrigg, and Underbarrow. Only five 

 appear to be accounted for in the expenditure of the year dating 

 from Easter 1671 : Paid Christopher Airey of Sleddall for a 

 brock head, £00, 01s. OOd. Paid Tho. Lickbarrow of Sleddall 

 for 2 Brock heads, £00, 02s. OOd. Paid Tho. Audlin of Hutton 

 for a Brock head, and Wm. Harrison for another, £00, 02s. 00d.' 

 But a good season recruited the number of the Brocks, and lis. 

 were expended in remunerating the dalesmen for killing that 

 number of Badgers between April 1672 and the ensuing Easter : 

 ' Paide to Kobert Sympson of Selside for 3 Brock heads, £00, 

 03s. OOd. Paid to Tho. Lickbarrow of Sleddall for 2 Brock 

 heads, £00, 02s. OOd. Paid Tho. Kilchin and John Wilson for 

 6 Brock heads, £00, 06s. 00d.' There were other Badgers killed 

 this year, because a supplementary entry accounts for 9 s. as 

 expended ' for ffox heads and Brock heads.' From the last 

 settlement to Easter 1674, the dale people contrived to kill 

 eighteen badgers : ' Paide Tho. Gregson for 5 Brock heads, and 

 Rich. Bulfell for 2, £00, 07s. OOd. Paid for 7 Brock heads 

 before Chmas., £00, 07s. OOd. Paid Eic Bulfel of Natland for 

 4 Brock heads, £00, 04s. 00d.' The only two entries for the 

 next year are these : " Paide Anthony Borwick of Grayrigg for 



2 Brock heads, £00, 02s. OOd. Paid John Todd of Sleddall 

 for 18 ffox heads and Brock heads, £00, 18s. 00d.' There 

 is only one entry in the year commencing Easter 1676 : 'Paid 

 to Lawrence Edmonson for 4 brockheads at 6d. apiece, £00, 

 02s. OOd. This last entry proves that the price set on the 

 Badger's head had dropped from a shilling to sixpence. The 

 dalesmen were not a whit discouraged, but continued their 

 guerilla warfare against the Brocks. Between 1700 and Easter 

 1701 fifteen Brocks perished: 'P d to James Warriner for 

 6 Brock heads, £0, 3s. Od. Pd. to Dan Best for Tow Brock- 

 heads, £0, Is. Od. Pd. to ye churchwarden of Natland for one 

 Brock head, £0, 0s. 6d. Pd. to Henry Hudgson for Three Brock 

 Heads, £0, Is. 6d. Pd. to ye churchwarden of Whinfell for 



3 Brock heads, £0, Is. 6d.' The Badgers had evidently been 

 thinned out by the beginning of the eighteenth century, and the 



