The impact of drought in early fourteenth‐centuryEngland

Abstract

Climatic change is currently viewed as one of the main causes of the so-called crisis of the early fourteenth century. It is well established that England saw increased storminess and heavy rainfall in this period, but this article suggests that the impact of drought-which became a common feature of the English climate during the 1320s and early 1330s-has been overlooked. Based primarily on a detailed analysis of account rolls for over 60 of the best-documented manors in this period, the article establishes that drought brought devastating harvest failure and caused severe outbreaks of a number of diseases, plausibly including enteric infections, malaria, and winter and spring fevers. As a result, mortality surged and population levels fell in communities in affected regions, which were mainly confined to the southern and eastern counties of England. The article concludes that such regional variation significantly affects our understanding of demographic, agricultural, and even fiscal trends in this period. Although we should not disregard the human factors influencing the impact of environmental shocks, England was plainly struck with indubitable force by extreme weather in this pivotal phase of the medieval economy.M ired by plunging living standards and scarred by 'dire famine and mortality', 2 the early fourteenth century has long been regarded as the pivotal phase of the middle ages, when several centuries of demographic and commercial growth finally gave way to decline. As Postan first sketched out, 'the population [of England] had begun to decline a whole generation before the Black Death, and certainly after the great famines [of 1315-17]'. 3 Few doubt the horrific nature of these famines, which seemingly reduced the English population by 10-15 per cent, 4 yet debate continues about the cause and ultimate influence of the crisis. In particular, the period has attracted competing theories about endogenous constraints on pre-industrial economic development. 5 Postan prioritized the changing balance between population and resources and argued that a progressive shortage of land rendered many increasingly sensitive to harvest failure. 6 Other historians 1 I am grateful to John Hatcher, Mark Bailey, participants at seminars at Cambridge and Oxford, and three anonymous referees for their comments on earlier versions of this article. I am also grateful to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster for permission to work on the account rolls for Westminster Abbey and to the staff of the Muniments Room there and at Cambridge University Library; Merton College, Oxford; Norwich Record Office; Canterbury Cathedral Archives; the National Archives; the British Library; London Metropolitan Archives; and the Hampshire Record Office for their assistance with this research. I also thank Richard Smith for lending me his microfilm of the Hinderclay accounts, which are housed at the University of Chicago Library. As a part-time historian but full-time dad, this research would not have been possible without the generosity and forbear...

Droughts in medieval and early modern England, part 1: The evidence

“…The heat and drought in that year extended to Ireland, where ‘in winter there was little rain, in spring, summer and autumn as good as none, and such was the drought and heat that that streams and great rivers (which always emitted copious water) dried up over long stretches’ (Clyn, ). As the Annales Paulini stated, the fruit and vine harvest that year were both good; the grain price also remained low, even though the barley harvest, a crop more vulnerable to drought than wheat and eaten by the lower strata of society, was poor at least in northern East Anglia (Hallam, ), and harvest success on sample manors throughout southern and eastern England was highly varied, including some very disappointing harvests (Stone, ).…”

A survey of the impacts of summer droughts in England, 1200–1700

“…CC BY 4.0 License. (Anon., 1882;Aungier, 1844;Clyn, 1849;Pribyl, 2017;Pribyl and Cornes, 2019a;Stone, 2014;Titow, 1960). In the post-Black Death environment fewer narrative sources are available for England, but in 1361 John of Reading and the Pipe Roll of the Bishopric of Winchester describe an exceptional drought affecting the country (Titow, 1970; see Table S1).…”

“…However, drought poses a risk for the spring crops barley and oats and to legumes, and Merle was well aware that these need humidity after sowing and are vulnerable to prolonged dry weather. When he was writing in the late 1330s he must have been aware of the impact of drought in the mid-1320s and early 1330s, which was geographically very varied -sometimes even from village to village, but significant (Stone, 2014). It is the effect that a lack of rainfall has in particular on barley, a grain that also served as a bread corn in the Middle Ages, that chroniclers and reeves refer too, when they mention that the corn did not germinate or was of stunted growth.…”

“…Lee (1981) could not detect a significant influence of rainfall on mortality levels, but he had only access to annual rainfall totals, starting in 1727, and not only is early rainfall data problematic, but annual rainfall totals are not representative of summer precipitation. Other data help to identify periods of drought and heat that were marked by high mortality: records of heriot payments show a raised death rate amongst adults for areas mostly in eastern England from the mid-1320s to the early 1330s (Pribyl, 2017;Stone, 2014). Postan and Titow (1959) in their study of heriots on the Winchester manors between 1245 (advanced to 1209 by Titow (1960)) and 1350 found a number of years, when mortality was high amongst villagers without an obvious connection to raised grain prices, and suspected drought induced epidemic disease due to poor sanitation, lack of and poor quality drinking water as a cause.…”

“…In recent years drought impacts have moved more into the focus of research of historians and meteorologists alike. Cole and Marsh (2006) included impacts in their survey over droughts in England and Wales after 1800, Stone (2014) investigated the subject in England for the 1320s and 1330s; Pribyl (2017) considered droughts and their impacts from the late thirteenth to the end of the fifteenth century, Pribyl and Cornes (2019b) gave a general overview over drought impacts in medieval and early modern England, and Murphy (2017) focused on Irish nineteenth-century droughts. Trenberth et al (2014) found that under the conditions of global warming, some studies point to an increase of droughts over Europe, whereas other studies indicated a decrease.…”