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.

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,........

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