Rookley Rockley

"Agriculture on the Island", and came across the
following paragraph..............Rabbits seem inevitably to attract
poachers. At midnight on the 23rd November 1384 two warreners on
Geoffrey Roucle's land at Brooke, surprised a poaching party which
would not have been out of place five hundred years later. Three men
were caught laying out nets and using ferrets in the warren. They
were armed with bows and arrows and opened fire on the warreners, who
returned it, wounding Thomas Smythe in the forehead. It was his
subsequent death that ensured that this episode was
recorded................