The Production of Rabbits in Wiltshire during the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

Warrens provided a profitable use for the light soils and steep hillsides of the chalk downlands of England, and during the seventeenth century many thousands of rabbits were produced annually. The paper considers the documentary evidence for Wiltshire warrens, the complex and profitable leases granted by landowners, the large-scale traffic in rabbits and the damage that they caused to neighbouring farms and woodland. The complaints of farmers, coupled with increasing prices for corn, cattle and sheep, led gradually to the decline of the formerly lucrative trade in rabbits as cultivation and improved pasture were extended on the high downland.