Eel Currency: Or, How England Paid Its Bills With Fish
In early medieval England, there was not always enough coin to go around. So people paid their debts with what they had. Grain. Eggs. Ale. And, in extraordinary quantities, eels.
By 1086, when the Domesday survey was completed, more than 540,000 eels were being paid as rent across England every single year. The Domesday Book contains more records of eel rents than corn rents. Eels were not a curiosity. They were currency.
Why eels?
Eels were everywhere. They accounted for between 25 and 50 per cent of all fish in England's rivers, caught in vast numbers at mill dams using nets, spears and wicker traps. They were easy to preserve — salted, smoked or dried — which meant they could be stored, transported and stockpiled. A landlord could collect them in autumn and hold them until they were needed.
They were also extremely useful during Lent. The medieval church prohibited eating meat during Lent, believing that flesh excited carnal desires. Fish, however, was permitted. And eels were considered especially suitable because medieval Europeans — following Aristotle — believed that eels reproduced asexually, spontaneously generating themselves from mud. An eel, therefore, had no carnality to speak of.
It was basically a vegetable with fins.
Aristotle had looked for eel reproductive organs and found nothing. He was not alone. It was not until 1777 that an Italian named Carlo Mondini located eel ovaries. The search for their testes frustrated researchers for a further 120 years — including, at one point, Sigmund Freud. Freud looked for eel anatomy and also failed.
Medieval people were in good company.
The stories
In 1194, the monks of Ramsey Abbey in Huntingdonshire needed access to a causeway across a local fen. The landowner, Ralph Tuberville, agreed to lease it. In return, the monks paid 1,000 eels, two pounds each of pepper and ginger, and a pair of scarlet trousers.
When Ralph died, his widow renegotiated. She did not want any more trousers. She did still want the 1,000 eels.
The single largest Domesday eel rent came from the village of Harmston in Lincolnshire, whose residents owed the Earl of Chester 75,000 eels every year.
Harmston is just down the road from where I live.
I have checked.
There are not 75,000 eels.
How it ended
Most in-kind rents had disappeared by the 13th century. Eel rents held on longer, partly because of their usefulness during Lent. But the Black Death changed everything.
After 1349, empty farmland turned to pasture and red meat became more widely available. The population had shrunk, which meant more coins per person.
Demand for eels collapsed. By 1500 eel rents had largely disappeared.
A few stubborn examples held on.
In the 1680s a mill in Norfolk still rented for £30 and 60 eels. The landlords had frequent trouble collecting the eel portion. The miller, it seems, felt that particular tradition belonged firmly in the past.
He was probably right.