WILD LIFE 93
Further food supplies were at times and in places available,
but are very much more difficult to assess. At the edge of every
manor, where great woods or waste or fen began, the wild animal
life was abundant—more abundant, perhaps, than we have any
means of estimating. Certainly the vast extent of cover provided
by these wild uncultivated stretches gave shelter to almost endless
numbers of wild beasts and birds. The great stretches of thorn,
for example, housed myriads of small birds, and the wily villager
had little difficulty in trapping these by means of small nets,
much in the same way as the bird-snarer worked within living
memory on unwatched heaths and open places. These birds
could be caught in great numbers and sold, or used as welcome
additions to the housewife's pot. Such action may or may not
have been tolerated by custom (depending to some extent on the
local lord's rights); but, undoubtedly, much hunting and snaring
went on that could by no means be thought of as lawful. Indeed,
poaching seems to have been one of the most common of the
pastimes of the peasant, and every manorial record is likely to
bear evidence of the arrest or of the depredations of the village
poacher.
All seem to have been implicated—the parson as well as the
peasant, and it is clear that few men could resist the temptation
offered to them by the sight of this " God's plentyJJ1 which was
all about them, and which (to be fair to them) fed on their corn
and constituted a formidable nuisance at their very doors. Take
rabbits for example. We learn that in certain parts of the country
they were little short of a pest. The men of Ovingdean (Sussex)
say that there are 100 acres of arable, lying annihilated by the
destruction of the rabbits of the lord Earl Warenne, valued at
£1. 5$. od. ;2 or, as another inquisition tells us, the holding "is of
small value because the rabbits are beginning to burrow in that
place ".3 In another part of England altogether, on the manor of
Higham Ferrars, we are told that they abounded, and special
enclosures were made by the lord for their protection.4
Another nuisance to the peasant was the dove or pigeon. The
lord's dove-house was one of the most familiar of medieval
1 Durham Halmote Rolls, 91, 131, 178, 185; Davenport, op. cit. 75;
Wakefield Rolls.
2 Sussex Arch. Soc. Coll. i, 62. * C. PuJlein, Rotherfield, 70.
* AJL.S.R. xxxin, 135.