> This Elizabethan convenience food, however, was not available to all. “Dovecotes for the time were a badge of the elite,” says John Verburg, a dovecote devotee and self-styled “Jane Goodall of pigeons.” During the reign of Elizabeth I, a pigeon tower was a privilege reserved only for feudal lords. And this law was enforced: Cooke wrote of a case in England in 1577 in which a “tenant who had erected a dovecote on a royal manor was ordered by the Court of Exchequer to demolish it.”
This is actually how a lot of manorial/serf institutions worked. You weren't allowed to build anything unapproved that might compete with the services "offered" by the local lord. In many places, building an oven was illegal as it would undercut the dues the lord would be paid for using his.
Most pigeons were probably sold to the local peasants, and the rules were about enforcing state monopoly.
Similar monopolies are in place in many countries today — healthcare, education, telecommunications and public utilities like water and electricity are sometime regulated to the extend that you literally have no choice but to use the services offered by the state.
Everything is a little like this. You don’t have choice really. Couple cereal companies thats it. Couple car companies. Couple CPU companies. A couple political parties. Billions of people on earth and only a couple of choices on the marketplace for many goods and services. Cartels are both strong and invisible.
Sure, but the article quotes a 1577 ruling to justify the case that pigeons were only eaten by the elite.
By the 17th century the private dovecote might have hung around as a status symbol, but there's no reason to believe that in certain places and circumstances and fashions during this whole period common folk were not eating pigeons if they could afford it.
This is actually how a lot of manorial/serf institutions worked. You weren't allowed to build anything unapproved that might compete with the services "offered" by the local lord. In many places, building an oven was illegal as it would undercut the dues the lord would be paid for using his.
Most pigeons were probably sold to the local peasants, and the rules were about enforcing state monopoly.