Daily Junction.mobi portal<p>The large number of deaths in medieval England overwhelmed <a href="https://medievalmurdermap.co.uk/blog/the-coroner-and-his-rolls/">coroners</a>. Coroners were supposed to hold an inquest to establish the causes of a person’s death. Yet, there were so many paupers “dying of starvation” that officials could not attend to them all. <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=ufl.31262054227649&seq=226">King Henry III</a> sent word in April to suspend them where no foul play was suspected.</p>
<p>The contemporary <a href="https://archive.org/details/annalesmonastici01luar/page/440/mode/2up">Annals of Burton</a> similarly recorded a high number of vagrants who died “of hunger and starvation” because of the “dearth of the times”. Many were drawn to towns and cities in hope of charitable alms. London drew in many such desperate paupers, exacerbating the situation there. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/london-mayors-sheriffs/1188-1274/pp31-42">Chronicles of the Mayors and Sheriffs</a> of London, for example, recorded that: “In this year, there was a failure of the crops; upon which failure, a famine ensued, to such a degree that the people from the villages resorted to the City for food; and there, upon the famine waxing still greater, many thousand persons perished; many thousands more too would have died of hunger, had not corn just then arrived from Germany.”</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/617856204EB1A093DA9453955D999D82/9781139168823c2_p43-180_CBO.pdf/annales_de_theokesberia.pdf">Tewkesbury Annals</a>, a contemporary chronicle written by the monks of Tewkesbury Abbey, placed the number of dead from the famine at 20,000. </p>
<h2>Death and mass burials</h2>
<p>Such was the scale of mortality that <a href="https://archive.org/details/matthiparisien05pari/page/690/mode/2up">Paris</a> reported “when several corpses were found, large and spacious holes were dug in cemeteries, and a great many bodies were laid in them together”. </p>
<p>These “large and spacious holes” have since been found at the hospital of St Mary Spital in London. <a href="https://the-past.com/feature/spitalfields-cemetery-and-the-famine-of-1258/">The Spitalfields</a> site contains some 2,300 skeletons from the 1250s, connected to both the <a href="https://doi.org/10.64628/AB.3atpuvd4f">drought of 1252</a> and the famine of AD1257-58. </p>
<p>Volcanic eruptions have global consequences, shaping lives far beyond their immediate vicinity.</p>
<p>Volcanoes, even on the other side of the world, had the power to plunge medieval Europe into darkness, destroying crops and lives in the process, and that should not be ignored today.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/289250/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p>
<p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/alex-brown-2408390">Alex Brown</a>, Associate Professor of Medieval History, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/durham-university-867">Durham University</a></em></span></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-sun-was-dark-and-its-darkness-lasted-for-18-months-what-we-can-learn-from-worst-volcanic-eruptions-in-history-289250">original article</a>.</p> </div>