Fishing for gold: how eels powered the medieval economy

[Judi Lynn]

In early medieval England, people paid their rents with all manner of things. One particularly bizarre item was prized by landlords: eels. John Wyatt Greenlee considers why the fish was the perfect form of payment



December 8, 2020 at 5:25 pm

In 1194, the monks of Ramsey Abbey in Huntingdonshire needed a way across a local fen, and landowner Ralph Tuberville had a road that he was willing to lease. In return for the use of his elevated causeway, the Ramsey monks agreed to pay Tuberville a yearly in-kind rent of 1,000 eels, two pounds each of pepper and ginger, and a pair of scarlet trousers. The abbey later renegotiated the deal with Ralph’s widow, who did not want any more trousers, instead demanding half a mark in coins and 60 cartloads of firewood. And 1,000 eels.

The idea of accepting eels as rental payment may strike modern readers as unusual. But in early medieval England (1000–1300), eel-rents were commonplace. During the period, before there was enough available coinage, landlords often accepted in-kind rents such as eggs, ale, grain, and, especially, eels. The fish were remarkably plentiful, accounting for 25 to 50 per cent of fish in England’s rivers. Fishermen caught them using spears, nets and wicker traps, with huge numbers of eels being captured at mill dams.

And lords all across England wanted their share of this abundance. The 1086 Domesday survey has more records for rents of eels than of corn, and some of them were for quite impressive quantities of fish. The single largest Domesday rent came from the village of Harmston, in Lincolnshire, whose residents owed the Earl Hugh of Chester 75,000 eels annually. At the end of the 11th century there were more than 540,000 eels being paid as rent in England every year.

Landlords collected eels to eat, but they also used them to pay their own debts. The Ramsey monks were due more than 70,000 eels each year from their tenants, and some of those fish were used to pay for things that the monastery needed. As we have seen, the monks sent 1,000 eels to Ralph Tuberville and his widow. And in the mid-11th century the Abbot of Ramsey agreed to pay 4,000 eels each spring to Peterborough Abbey for the right to take building stone from a quarry at Barnack. In early medieval England, eels could be both a meal and a de facto currency.

More:
https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/eels-medieval-life-eel-rent-economy/