One feature of the time was the paying out of vermin bounties, decreed by Henry VIII in the Preservation of Grain Act, set up in response to an increasing population and several very poor harvests during years of bad weather.

Churchwardens were instructed to pay the people for physical evidence of killing creatures which were supposed to threaten food supplies in some way, although the list of “vermin” included creatures which were actually not harmful at all. Hedgehogs, for instance, were thought to drink from cows’ udders at night when they slept. Others, like the polecat, although they did take poultry, were few in numbers but suffered greatly from the persecution of these bounties.

In Cosgrove, bounties are recorded for hedgehogs, polecats, foxes and “Sparos”, these last being caught mainly by groups of boys in the village for pocket money. Adults, mostly men, brought in the first three, earning around 4d per kill. In those days an average day’s work in Cosgrove paid around 1/4d.

Records show that Cosgrove had an abundance of sparrows and polecats compared to other place in Britain. People did not seem overly concerned by any environmental factors.

It was thought that the practice of rewarding vermin killings ceased around the mid eighteenth century, but in the last accounts in the Cosgrove books some bounties were still being recorded in 1835.

An excellent study of the vermin bounties is found in “Silent Fields” by Roger Lovegrove (2007 OUP), from which these facts are taken.