When Eels Were Used as Money
It is hard to get a hold of an eel, because eels are notoriously slippery. That difficulty in getting a hold of them might explain why they were sometimes used as currency in the medieval period. Nowadays, eels may not be a popular dish in the West. However, they were once such a common staple in medieval England that they were used as currency. For example, the Domesday Book lists hundreds of English watermills whose rent was paid in eels, bundled in “sticks” of 25. One proprietor who was paid rent in eels was “Giles brother of Ansculf”, who got 1000 sticks from his watermill in Bottisham, Cambridgshire, and 2000 sticks from his watermill in Datchet, Buckinghamshire.
How much were eels worth, though? In 1273, King Edward I issued price controls for the sale of certain foods in London, and a stick of 25 eels was listed as 2 pence, or the equivalent of about $10 in 2023 US dollars. Edward’s price controls were issued almost two centuries after the Domesday Book, but inflation was nowhere near as great in those days as it is nowadays. Thus, if we assume that 2 pence had roughly the same purchasing value in both Domesday Book and Edward I days, Giles brother of Ansculf got about $10,000 in rent for his Bottisham watermill, and $20,000 for the one in Bottisham.
