0305A

In 1258 a parliament held at Oxford - the first to include two representatives per county - imposed the so-called Provisions of Oxford on Henry III (r.1216-72) to curb his royal power. The same year, in Wales, Llywelyn ap Gruffyd (r.1246-82) assumed the title of Prince of Wales and began to consolidate his power base in Gwynedd. Across the Irish Sea, Brian O Neill of Tyrone was engaged in a similar enterprise: at C�eluisce near Belleek in northern Ireland, he was given the 'kingship of the Gaels of Ireland' by Fedlimid O Conchobair and Tadg O Briain. Their confederation was the first co-ordinated Gaelic resistance to Anglo-Norman expansion. In Scotland, however, the young Alexander III (r.1249-86) would have to wait another three years before he assumed personal rule in 1262, whereupon one of his first and greatest achievements would be to negotiate the treaty of Perth with Magnus VI, king of Norway, thereby securing the Western Isles to Scotland.
Meanwhile, early in 1258, somewhere in the tropics, a major volcanic eruption occurred. Particles from the eruption were ejected high into the stratosphere, shrouding earth in a 'dry fog'. In Britain the ensuing cool, wet summer followed a year of �excessive and long rains� and produced one of the worst harvests of the 13th century. Record wheat prices were accompanied by dearth and famine. Atmospheric circulation remained disturbed for several years, resulting in 1262 in a summer that was exceptionally dry and hot. In Ireland drought-induced famine fanned the spread of disease. It could have been even worse. In 1258 and 1259 bubonic plague had spread west from central Asia, where it was endemic, into southern Turkey. On that occasion the deadly pandemic got no further, and in Britain and Ireland the environmental disturbance of 1258-62 caused only a momentary faltering in the established demographic and economic expansion. It was, however, a harbinger of things to come.
From the late 13th century the climate became cooler and more prone to extremes, heightened storm surges in the North Sea threatened reclaimed coastal marshlands, and pestilences of animals and humans became rife. In 1300 Britain stood on the threshold of what environmentally was to be its most apocalyptic half-century.
A range of archaeological indicators identify the years between 1315 and 1353 as a time of pronounced environmental hiatus on a global scale. The historical record confirms this period as exceptionally hazardous and unhealthy for both humans and domesticated animals. All of northern Europe suffered famine during the terrible years 1315-17 and in Britain there were further serious harvest failures in 1331, 1346 and 1351. As if this were not enough, in 1319-20 cattle herds were ravaged by disease - probably rinderpest - and over the next thirty years recurrent outbreaks of infectious murrain and scab ensured high levels of mortality in sheep. These biological catastrophes can hardly have been unconnected with the disturbed environmental conditions that prevailed. The same is probably true of plague, a disease of rodents transferred by fleas to humans, which - as in 1258 - began its terrible spread across Europe at precisely the point of greatest environmental stress.
It now seems likely that the extreme weather conditions that caused harvest failure and famine and the various pestilences of animals and humans were all part of a single prolonged episode of environmental disturbance. Viewed in this light, these events assume far greater magnitude than historians have been inclined to ascribe to them. No socio-economic system exposed for so long to such a variety of severe shocks could have withstood them unscathed, let alone one at Europe's stage of development in the early 14th century. Agricultural producers, in particular, had to contend with a series of environmental hazards outside their control and far beyond their comprehension. In England, historians have represented the 14th-century crisis as 'population outstripping resources', 'feudal over-exploitation of the production system', and 'the price paid for burgeoning warfare'. Yet when nemesis in the form of plague eventually came, it was essentially noneconomic in origin.
The resources upon which the population depended for food, drink, fuel, raw materials and export earnings were essentially organic: the product of plants and animals. Lead, tin and iron were the only significant exceptions. Likewise, technology was mainly reliant upon human and animal muscle power augmented by the renewable power sources of wind and water applied to mills, boats, and ships. In this sense, Britain was still a green and pleasant land. Yet, as Alfred Crosby has pointed out, the mills present in practically every settlement bestowed upon Britain, in common with much of the rest of northern Europe, �'a greater proportion of individuals who understood wheels, levers, and gears than any other region on earth'. Machines needed to be maintained, soil fertility renewed, and flocks and herds restocked. Sustaining output was an enduring challenge. In areas of common-field agriculture local communities enacted by-laws and appointed officials reeves, messors and haywards - to ensure that resources were managed effectively in the collective interest. In coastal areas there was also intra- and inter-community co-operation in the maintenance of sea defences and drainage dykes. Everywhere the effort to prevent the degradation of resources was a struggle, even when the climate was clement.
By 1300 tillage had been extended almost to its physical limits: only common pastures and the private parks and royal forests set aside as the nobility proved immune to the advance of the plough. Royal forest was subject to forest law and this was deeply resented, hence the popularity of tales that told of outlaws who poached the king's deer. These forests, too, were at their medieval maximum. In areas of woodland, upland and marsh there had also been much reclamation to accommodate an expanding livestock population. Around 1300, 8 to 10 million sheep supplied wool for the export trade alone. There were also more horses than ever before, both for riding and for draught. Hay was a vital commodity, and carefully managed, artificial hay meadows were the most highly valued of all possible land uses. The key to producing more from the land now lay in fuller participation in international markets, greater specialisation, more intensive use of labour and capital, and the development of more sophisticated agro-systems, in which arable and pastoral husbandry agro-systems, in which arable and pastoral husbandry were closely integrated. Already farmers in eastern Norfolk and eastern Kent - agriculturally the two most advanced regions were employing methods akin to those whose wider adoption was to constitute the agricultural revolution of the 18th century. Elsewhere farming methods were far less advanced and husbandmen worked hard often for disappointing returns.
Farmers worked both with and against nature. Organic waste was recycled almost everywhere, either by feeding it to pigs or spreading it on the land - cities like Norwich sold 'night-soil' and other biodegradable refuse to farmers within a five-mile radius. Natural predators were dealt with by hawking, hunting and hiring boys to scare off birds. The rabbit, which had been introduced for its meat and fur in the 12th century, was beginning to become sufficiently acclimatised and numerous to pose a serious nuisance to cereal farmers. Everywhere fields were infested with weeds which threatened to throttle the grain and competed with it for scarce soil nitrogen. At best farmers could contain the weed problem: against recurrent outbreaks of rust and other parasitic infestations of grain crops they were effectively defenceless. Bread incorporating seeds from weeds could have hallucinatory effects. Cases of ergotism - poisoning produced by a fungus affecting rye and other cereals - were frequent.
More in Part B....