FEARFUL FAMINES OF THE PAST 



81 



were closed and many other measures 

 were taken looking toward a healthier 

 and a cleaner Cairo. 



FAMINES IN ENGLAND 



The story of famines in England has 

 "been a gloomy one from earliest times. 

 At the beginning of the eighth century 

 a dearth, which extended to Ireland, 

 drove men to cannibalism. It was not 

 until the reign of Aethelred the Unready, 

 however, that "such a famine prevailed 

 as no man can remember," from 1005 to 

 1016. 



Those chroniclers who were wont to 

 see bad conditions at their worst declared 

 that half the population of the larger 

 island perished. But it must be remem- 

 bered that much of the mortality of this 

 period was occasioned by the wars be- 

 tween Aethelred and Sweyn the Dane, 

 the latter being forced by the famine to 

 retire from England for a time. 



Naturally, the era following the advent 

 of William the Conqueror was one of 

 wide-spread starvation and pestilence 

 among the English peasantry. During 

 the last thirty years of the eleventh cen- 

 tury, nine were years of dire distress. 



So great was the dearth in 1069 that 

 the peasants of the north, unable longer 

 to secure dogs and horses to appease 

 their hunger, sold themselves into slavery 

 in order to be fed by their masters. All 

 the land between Durham and York lay 

 waste, without inhabitants or people to 

 till the soil for nine years, says Beverly, 

 and another writer accuses the destitute 

 of cannibalism. 



There were many sections of England 

 which were unaffected by this famine, 

 however, and had there been better means 

 of communication and conveyance of 

 supplies the suffering would have been 

 greatly mitigated. A factor which con- 

 tributed to the seriousness of the situa- 

 tion was the burden of taxes exacted by 

 the conquerors. Peasants became dis- 

 couraged, realizing that the fruits of their 

 labor were taken from them as fast as 

 earned. 



There were sporadic periods of suffer- 

 ing during the succeeding reigns of Wil- 

 liam Rufus and Henry I, in the civil wars 

 of Stephen's times, and under Henry II. 



But the next dearth which especially 

 quickens the sympathy was that which 

 befell the people in the days of Richard 

 Cceur de Lion, the Crusader. There is a 

 brief reference to the famine of this 

 period in "Ivanhoe." 



Starvation was followed by a pestilen- 

 tial fever which sprang "as if from the 

 corpses of the famished." Ceremonial 

 burial was omitted except in the cases of 

 the very rich, and in populous places the 

 victims were interred in shallow trenches, 

 a practice followed at a later period when 

 the Black Death killed its millions. 



While backward seasons were contrib- 

 uting factors, the responsibility for the 

 two great famines of Henry Ill's reign 

 is to be laid at the door of the govern- 

 ment itself. In the first of these (1235) 

 20,000 persons are said to have died in 

 London alone. The suffering in 1257-" 

 1259 was even worse, for the whole king- 

 dom had been drained of its coinage by 

 the taxes which the king had levied to pay 

 German troops and to buy electoral votes 

 for his brother, the Earl of Cornwall, 

 who was a candidate for the imperial 

 crown of the Holy Roman Empire. 



FIRST CURB ON THE MIDDLEMAN 



It was during this famine that England 

 for the. first time imported from Ger- 

 many and Holland grain to alleviate the 

 suffering of her poorer classes. The Earl 

 of Cornwall himself sent sixty shiploads 

 of food, which was sold for his account 

 to the starving. More grain was brought 

 into the country than had been produced 

 the previous season in three counties. 

 The following year (1258) there was a 

 bountiful harvest, but destructive rains 

 caused the heavy crops to rot in the fields, 

 and even the grain which was gathered 

 became mouldy. 



The first ordinance in English history 

 designed to curb the greed of the middle- 

 man was passed during this time of 

 shortage in food supplies. 



Few English kings have lived through 

 greater periods of distress than Edward 

 II, who was scarcely able to secure food 

 for his own immediate household when 

 the heavy rains of 13 14 spoiled the har- 

 vests. Misery was wide-spread and in- 

 tense ; the dead lined the roadsides ; 



