sevenTeenTh-CenTury environmenTs: farmland^55in the numbers of payments for fox heads in the churchwardens’ accounts
might not, therefore, necessarily reflect any reduction in the actual numbers
of foxes: indeed, the inverse might be the case. Poaching, moreover, was a
major issue, and where a parish was dominated by a powerful squire, he
might well have been uneasy about parish officers encouraging people to
trap the local wildlife, something which might provide excellent cover for
other activities, as Lovegrove notes. In short, the numbers of animals and
birds of different species recorded in particular churchwardens accounts
must be the consequence of a wide range of factors, rather than being a
direct reflection of the character of the local environment.
Lovegrove explained much of the variation in the proportion of parishes
making payments, in the level of these payments, and in the kinds of
species targeted as a reflection of the dichotomy between ‘woodland’ and
champion districts. The paucity of parishes making payment in Essex, East
Anglia and Lincolnshire, and in the east Midland counties lying to the north
of the Thames, and the limited range of species targeted – overwhelmingly
house sparrows – he attributed to the fact that ‘open field systems,
apparently poor in wildlife diversity’, dominated the landscape.^79 But in
fact south and east Norfolk, most of Suffolk, and virtually all of Essex,
Hertfordshire and Middlesex were ‘woodland’ landscapes, characterized
by often dense meshes of hedgerows and by an abundance of woodland.
In reality, a lack of interest in paying for the control of animals like the
polecat, and an emphasis on the house sparrow, across this extensive
district probably reflects in part the fact that their economies were based
on grain production rather than on livestock rearing. It is true that in some
of the ‘woodland’ districts, in Suffolk and Norfolk especially, cattle formed
a major element in the economy. But many were actually reared elsewhere,
in the north and west of the country, and only fattened here; while in many
of the champion areas of East Anglia the sheep flocks – with their lambs
vulnerable to attack by corvids, foxes and mustelids – were the property of
manorial lords and great sheep masters, exploiting the ancient privileges of
the fold-course system. The peasant grain-producers who constituted and
elected the vestry would have little interest in paying for their protection.
Conversely, it was mainly in the west of the country – in Devon, Cornwall,
and Somerset, the Marcher Counties – and in the north, that much higher
proportions of parishes paid bounties, and for a wider range of animals,
especially foxes and mustelids – and conversely, displayed less interest
in persecuting sparrows.^80 These were communities of small farmers, a
substantial proportion of whom were primarily involved in livestock
husbandry, and especially in the rearing of sheep and cattle. Lambs, and
to a much lesser extent young calves, were vulnerable to carnivores. While
to some extent the appearance of particular animals recorded in the
churchwardens’ accounts may reflect their frequency in the environment,
it was also thus a function of human decision-making, contingent upon a
complex range of social and agrarian factors.