Dearth and the English revolution: the harvest crisis of 1647–50

Abstract

Dearth and the English revolution:The harvest crisis of 1647-50 'The price of food [is] excessive', wrote the Leveller John Wildman from London in 1648, 'and Trading [is] decayed'. 1 It would, he thought, 'rend any pitifull heart to heare and see the cryes and teares of the poore, who professe they are almost ready to famish'. 'While our divisions continue, and there be no settlement of the principles of freedom and justice', he insisted:trading will but more decay every day: Rumours and feares of Warre, and the Army coming now into the City, makes Merchants unwilling to trust their goods in the City, and exchange beyond sea falles, and there will be no importing of goods, and then there will be no exporting and so the staple commodities of the kingdom which maintains the constant trade, will not tend to the advantage of the labourers, and then most of the poore in the kingdom which live by spinning, carding, &c will be ready to perish by famine.Wildman had heard some Wiltshire clothiers, gathered at the Saracen's Head in Friday Street, protesting that trading was so dead, that some of them, who set at work formerly a 100 did not now set at work above a dozen or the like, and that the poor did gather together in troops of 10, 20, 30 in the Roades, and seized upon Corne as it was carrying to market, and devided it among themselves before the owners faces, telling them they could not starve.Wildman was accordingly convinced that 'a suddain confusion would follow if a speedie settlement were not procured'.

Famines in medieval and early modern Europe—Connecting climate and society

“…However, it is known that famine mortality varied regionally (Krämer, 2015) and even locally (Huhtamaa et al, 2022). The following examples illustrate the usage of different estimates of famine mortality, as found in the literature, demonstrating the difficulty to compare the demographic impacts between studies of different famines and regions: Kelly et al (2013) reported that perhaps around 1% of the population died during the crisis of 1594−1597 in England, while Hindle (2008) estimated the English excess mortality to about 170,000 during the 1727–1729 crisis. D'Arrigo et al (2020) stated that Scotland lost almost 20% of its population during the 1690s, while Huhtamaa et al (2022) reported that the Finnish famine of 1695–1697 resulted in the death of between 25% and 33% of the population.…”

Everyone Poops: Consumer Virtues and Excretory Anxieties in Locke’s Theory of Property

“…It is easy to see why eating comes first on Locke’s list of proper uses: food is a sine qua non for life to grow and multiply (raiment being, if anything, somewhat reproductively inconvenient). Reflecting broader cultural anxieties about famine mortality (Hindle 2008; Parker 2012, 324–95) and falling birthrates (Weil 1999, 28–31; Wright 2007, 229), Locke’s retelling of Genesis casts the consumption of nonhuman bodies and the propagation of human ones as entwined moral imperatives. 6 For Locke, the right to subdue “every living thing that moveth” is inextricable from a responsibility to eat and replicate.…”

THE DEVELOPMENT OF POOR RELIEF IN LANCASHIRE, c. 1598–1680

“…89 In 1647, a group of twenty-five 'inhabitants ' of Croston complained that, although the parish had many poor, ' wee have no overseers nor collectors nor collections for them, by reason whereof they all goe a begging daly among us and abroad in the country ; and most of them are in a most miserable condicion and ready to perish for want of necessary mayntenance'. 95 It is also clear, however, that a significant role was played by petitioning by -or on behalf of -the poor themselves. 91 In 1648, justices sent the complete text of the 1601 statute to the overseers of Bolton, urging them to make special provision for the impotent poor, and a similar order was made to the officers of Eccles the following year, suggesting that Quarter Sessions were having to intervene to ensure full compliance with the law.…”