90 Proceedings of the Newport Natural History Society. 
ponds and their use was continued by the Anglo-Saxons. 
These ponds are mentioned by the Venerable Bede, who 
died in 735, as having been stocked with eels alone: but 
it is certain that in the time of Alfred the Great (871-901) 
many other fish, as salmon, turbot, sturgeon, haddock, lam¬ 
preys, herring, plaice, etc. as well as the oyster, were well 
known in England, and some of these, at least, must have 
found a place in the ponds, though eels are said to have 
been the staple fish of the Saxons. In the year 966 King 
Ethelred II. forbade the sale of young fish, and during the 
whole of the Saxon period the inland fisheries were regu¬ 
lated by stringent laws which served as a foundation for 
those of Norman, Plantagenet and Tudor times. The use 
of fish-ponds steadily increased among all classes in Eng¬ 
land up to the time of the Conquest in 1066 and beyond. 
Their number is recorded in Domesday Book in 1083, and 
at that time those of the richer classes, at least, contained 
much better fish than eels. Such a pond in those days 
was seldom over four acres in extent, and usually brought 
in a revenue of from five to twelve shillings yearly, then a 
very large sum and fourteen times as much, it is said, 
as was yielded by the same area of tilled land. Great pro¬ 
gress was made during the reign of Henry II. (1154-1189), 
who spent large sums upon his castles and palaces and 
never omitted ponds for them. Penalties for poaching were 
fixed by Edward I. in 1275. 
Most of the great Abbeys and Priories had their fish¬ 
ponds as a necessary adjunct. Those of Croyland Abbey 
were bestowed by Ethelbald, King of Mercia, in 715 and 
were of great value, yielding a revenue equivalent to 
£5000 a year in modern money. Abbey ponds were often 
sacked and destroyed by mobs, those of St. Edmondsbury 
in 1327, of Evesham in 1377, of Croyland in 1432. At the 
Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII. in 1539-40, 
though the religious houses themselves were often destroyed, 
the monks perhaps murdered, and all their possessions con¬ 
fiscated, their ponds were scrupulously preserved and cared 
for and some of them are still in existence. 
