… but also on wildlife:
The Preservation of Grain Act, passed in 1532 by Henry VIII and strengthened by Elizabeth I in 1566, made it compulsory for every man, woman and child to kill as many creatures as possible that appeared on an official list of ‘vermin’. ‘Paradoxically, many of these creatures are today highly valued and given the full protection of the law,’ said Lovegrove.
The act was drawn up to counter food shortages and spread of disease caused by a series of bad harvests and a sharp rise in population. Henry VIII put a bounty on each creature, ranging from a penny for the head of a kite or a raven to 12 pence for a badger or a fox. These were considerable sums when the average agricultural wage was around four pence a day.
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