Rabbits were a medieval royal luxury in England – until the Black Death made them commonplace

Source: The Conversation – UK

The European rabbit is a common sight in the British countryside today. Yet it was not always so. They are not native to the British Isles and are one of the most devastating invasive species.

The early history of rabbits in the British Isles tells the captivating story of social change in medieval England. From a rare luxury gifted by kings and the Norman aristocracy, rabbits became more commonplace after the living standards of the poor improved in the years after the Black Death (1346 to 1353).

The satirical depictions of rabbits found in medieval books reveal a gallows humour for social inversion that would not feel out of place today.

Gifts of kings

Once thought to have been introduced by the Normans, archaeologists have since uncovered a rabbit bone from Roman Britain. However, documentary evidence of rabbits in the British Isles has only been found from the Norman period onwards.

One of the earliest references survives from the Scilly Isles in the form of a tithe, which was a tenth of produce given to the church as an offering. In 1176, the landowner Richard de Wyka admitted that he had withheld paying tithes on his rabbits because he had believed that “tithes were not payable on things of this kind”. His confusion suggests that rabbits were a novelty.

Rabbits continued to be sufficiently rare to warrant the king’s care and attention in the 1200s. In 1235, Henry III gave a gift of ten live rabbits to Geoffrey Despenser, the English landowner and Lord of Martley in Worcestershire, out of his park at Guildford.

A few years later, the king sent men to catch 30 or 40 rabbits in his Guildford park. They were told only to collect them if the warren was well stocked, indicating that the king didn’t want the colony to be depleted.

At the time, rabbits were kept for their meat and fur. Henry III sent out orders for the supply of venison, boars, fish, swans, peacocks, hens, eggs, and hares for various feasts in the early 13th century. It had not been until his Christmas feast of 1240 that he added rabbits to his requisition list.

Rabbits were an expensive delicacy, costing four or five times as much as chickens. Their owners guarded their warrens against poaching and predators to the point that watchtowers and stone lodges were built to protect them.

Social change

Yet rabbits did not remain the preserve of the aristocracy. The Black Death (1346 to 1353), which killed between a third and two-thirds of the European population, led to improving living standards for the survivors. Land became more freely available. Labourers could also charge more for their work. And many adopted the lifestyles of those higher up the social ladder.

Legislation was introduced in 1363 to restrict what people could wear according to their social status. Its introduction was explained because of “the excess of dress of people beyond their estate, to the very great destruction and impoverishment of the land.”

Rabbits reflected this social change. They became more commonplace during the 14th and 15th centuries as their meat was eaten by wealthier peasants and their furs worn by aspiring craftsmen.

The fur of the common grey rabbit was used for warmth, but some warrens specialised in rarer silver-grey or black rabbits. Rabbits were still fit for a king and Henry VII had night attire tailored with black rabbit fur.

As rabbit numbers increased through breeding, so too did the number of complaints about the destruction caused by them. Manorial accounts included repeated protests about the loss of crops and damage to land caused by the lord’s rabbits.

At the same time, hunting rabbits and other game was seen as potentially subversive. In 1390, following the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, parliament introduced legislation against poaching and hunting by labourers and artisans. It was feared that, under the guise of hunting, such people would “make plots and conspiracies of rebellion” against the king.

The king consented to the legislation, extending the ban to the use of “hounds and ferrets, hays, nets, hair-pipes, cords and all other devices to take or destroy beasts of the forest, hares or rabbits, or other sport of gentlefolk”.

Satirical imagery

Rabbits and hares also reveal the satirical humour of medieval society. The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, the fictional and deceptively deadly rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), is but a modern adaptation of this ironic imagery associated with medieval rabbits.

Rabbits adorn the margins of medieval manuscripts. Playful portrayals of rabbits jousting on the backs of snails point to a gentle self-mockery that pervades medieval culture – in this case of chivalric ideals. More in line with the killer rabbit myth, some went even further, depicting rabbits as violently attacking people and seeking retribution.

The Smithfield Decretals, a manuscript illuminated in London in the 1340s, contains one of the most elaborate of such examples. In it, rabbits are portrayed as turning the tables on their hunters, capturing them, holding them trial, and then executing their human and greyhound hunters.

Such examples fit well within the medieval culture of inverting society – the world turned upside down – for comedic relief. Similar examples include the practice of electing a boy as the bishop for the day in Durham or electing a “lord of misrule” during May Day games.

By 1555 the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner could write that “there are few countries wherein coneys (rabbits) do not breed, but the most plenty of all is in England”.

Alex Brown is currently the Principal Investigator of a Leverhulme Trust funded project on ‘Modelling the Black Death’.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/16/rabbits-were-a-medieval-royal-luxury-in-england-until-the-black-death-made-them-commonplace/