The Third Horseman

by William Rosen

“England would have prospered well” (Locke 1919)

  “and other improper occupations” (Phillips 2010)

  “With a rumbelow” (Locke 1919)

  “Scots, wha hae . . .” (Burns 1994)

  “Successful Expeditions and Shortened Wars” (Aberth 2010)

  how to poison wells; and so on (Stathakopoulos 2004)

  Chapter Six: “The Floodgates of the Heavens” • 1315–1316

  “or store it safely in the barn” (Childs 2005)

  records their start in the middle of April (Lucas 1930) Friar Guillaume actually died in 1300, but his chronicle was continued until 1368.

  it rained for 155 days in a row (Jordan 2010)

  the four worst winters in four centuries (Alexandre 1901), quoted in (Jordan 1996)

  “the whole world was troubled” (Jordan 1996)

  were washed away (Aberth 2010) and (Field 2012)

  the loess can be hundreds of feet deep (Brown 2001)

  from forests, swamps, and pasture (Findlay 2006)

  virtually all production on Europe’s manors (Bois 2009)

  even had vassals of their own (Jordan 1996), citing Arnold, German Knighthood. This “caste” of German knights, which Arnold anglicized as “ministerials” were high status, but not legally free, even to wed, or inherit. Ministerialis major had vassals; ministerialis minor did not.

  higher status in most villages than a poorer freeman (Gies 1990)

  nearly ten inches (Brown 2001), citing Boardman and Mortlock, “Climate Change and Soil Erosion”

  or dictate to a defeated one (Bingham 1973) From the Vita: “The earls said that the Ordinances had not been observed and therefore events had turned out badly for the king . . . The King granted their execution; he denied the earls nothing.”

  a successful revalidation of the Ordinances (Aberth 2010)

  a parliament meeting in Westminster in the spring of 1315 (Bingham 1973)

  on the increase in England since 1305 (Mate 1991)

  another price increase in sheep, and therefore wool (Jordan 1996)

  costing nearly £8,000 a year (Phillips 2010), citing (Maddicott 1975)

  “floodgates of the heavens” Genesis 7:11, NIV

  “in pride, in craft, and in perjury” (Childs 2005)

  the relatively untouched farms of the Mediterranean (Brown 2001) Tree-ring data from lower latitudes (450 N, 100 E; Italy’s Po Valley) actually shows the decade of weather beginning in 1310, which brought such distress to Britain, France, Flanders, Poland, and Germany, was by any measure, mild.

  “like wild oxen” (Ó Gráda 2009)

  “a countless multitude entered the city” (Ó Gráda 2009)

  “the flesh of a son was preferred to his love” (Brown 2001)

  “eight of Shantung’s twelve rivers” (Ó Gráda 2009), citing MacFarquhar The Origins of the Cultural Revolution

  maxima, permaxima, and even intollerabilis (Jordan 1996)

  the eruption of the Vanuatuan volcano Kuwae in 1452 (Ó Gráda 2009)

  corresponding droughts in Brazil and southern Africa (Ó Gráda 2009)

  “the most costly natural disaster in the history of the western hemisphere” (Ó Gráda 2009), citing Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts

  fewer of them in antiquity (Braudel 1981) Almost everyone. Fernand Braudel, the single most important historian of medieval peasant life, found ten famines in tenth-century France, twenty-six in the twelfth, thirteen in the sixteenth, eleven in the seventeenth, and sixteen more in the eighteenth.

  The excess mortality during the seven years of the Great Famine (Ó Gráda 2009)

  turns a modest problem into a cascade (Arnold 1991)

  even six times the normal rainfall (Aberth 2010) Dendrochronology (the calculation of climate by the measurement of the size and nature of tree rings) bears this out: Ireland’s oaks—a tree whose growth is very sensitive to rainfall—grew 7 percent more than normal in 1315 and 10 percent more in 1316, and 8 percent more in 1318.

  a once-every-two-hundred-years event (Ó Gráda 2011)

  starvation for at least some people (Fischer 1996)

  at least three times normal (Aberth 2010)

  lawlessness, already rife in medieval Europe Crime during later famines is even better documented. In Ireland during the famines of the 1840s, incidents of burglary and robbery increased fivefold . . . while rapes plummeted, probably due to a loss of interest in sex because of hunger, which has been documented in famines for centuries. Also, prisoners convicted of crimes committed during nineteenth-century famines tended to be taller, better educated, and younger than those convicted of crimes committed during non-famine years, which suggests that crimes were being committed by a better class of people, those who hadn’t been criminals before. Tellingly, though, crime increased mostly during the early stages of famine. Once true starvation starts to occur, energy levels dropped so low that even crime declined, as with Ireland in 1840 compared with 1848. (Ó Gráda 2009)

  a third of all thefts (Kershaw 1973)

  blackmailed a parson for a ransom of £40 (Waugh 1977)

  to sell them for food (Russell 2005), citing Key Ray Chong, Cannibalism in China

  the mothers were fed the children (Lucas 1930)

  “women ate their children out of hunger” (Aberth 2010)

  “jailed thieves . . . devoured themselves” (Aberth 2010)

  “pauperes enim pueros” (Marvin 1998)

  hanging from gibbets (Aberth 2010)

  this phenomenon replicates itself in long-term climate change (Bodri 1994). Bodri found fractal dimensions in temperature over time scales as small as ten years, and as large as a million.

  ice caps in Arctic Canada and Iceland (Miller 2012)

  “many thousands perished” (Riley 1863)

  things reverted to normal (Campbell 2000)

  dogs could hunt rabbits (Fagan 2000)

  largely confined to Europe (Brown 2001)

  variations in solar radiation (Brown 2001) Analysis of an isotope of Beryllium (Be-10, which is cosmogenic—that is, produced by solar radiation) in core samples taken at the South Pole shows it peaking in 1075, dropping by more than a third by 1130, and peaking again in 1450, suggesting low solar activity, and therefore higher cosmic rays. The Wolf Sunspot Minimum, occurring between 1280 and 1330, parallels this.

  a minimum not seen since the third century BCE (Thompson 2010)

  a heavy, and unprofitable, discount (Lucas 1930)

  “there is nothing to be had” (Aberth 2010)

  returning with enormous herds of cattle (Lomas 1996)

  “The Black Douglas/Shall not get ye” (Davis 1974)

  “deserted by men and wild and domestic beasts” (Aberth 2010)

  “the houses where they had been able to take refuge” (Aberth 2010), quoting The Lanercost Chronicle

  The value of a typical fishery (Jordan 1996)

  “it could neither be mown or gathered” (Childs 2005)

  “that made men more agaste” (Jordan 1996)

  “unsurpassed in the last 2,000 years” (Bailey 1981)

  eight villages in Sussex alone were submerged (Bailey 1981)

  by the newly unstable sea (Bailey 1981)

  “an unheard-of barrenness” (Jordan 1996)

  “hitherto unheard-of in the realm” (Jordan 1996)

  Chapter Seven: “A Dearness of Wheat” • 1316–1317

  “scarcely any bread could even be bought” (Lucas 1930) In the original, “unde terra tanta penuria premebatur . . . vix poterat panis venalis pro suae specialis familiae sustentatione, inveniri.”

  huge quantities of protein (Woolgar 2010)

  whether the earl’s family was in residence or not (Tannahill 1988)

  a miraculous knack (Fernandez-Armesto 2002)

 
; heavy consumption of rye (Fernandez-Armesto 2002)

  strong preference for six-rowed barley (Pearson 1997)

  an eighth of the protein consumed in the modern world (Fernandez-Armesto 2002)

  “kneader of the dough” (Tannahill 1988)

  “Wheat’s unpardonable fault” (Braudel 1981)

  “join together to do mischief” (Henley 1890)

  struggling to feed 5 million (Fagan 2008) These estimates should be taken with at least a tablespoon of salt. Gregory Clark, in “Interpreting English Economic History,” calculates that the acreage under cultivation in 1300 was even greater: 14.6 million acres. Others put the number at 12 million acres, with another 2 million for pasture and meadow, leaving perhaps 20 million unimproved common pasture. Bruce Campbell, in English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250–1450 calculated that the maximum population that could be fed by England’s agricultural output in 1300 was 4.25 million; other estimates get as high as 6.5 million. Clark’s own estimate is about 5.7–5.9 million.

  the amount needed to support a family (Gies 1990)

  “and a sixteenth of a rood” (Gies 1990) They mistranslate the rood as a rod, which is a length measure.

  to define the borders of the village (Gies 1990)

  the single biggest driver of growth in landlord income (Bois 2009)

  “till that building be thrown down” (Fischer 1996)

  “war of wind and water against human muscle” (Bloch 1985)

  surveyed in the Domesday Book of 1086 (Williams 2006)

  still only nine bushels an acre of wheat (Mate 1991)

  seed corn for the next harvest (Fagan 2008)

  for at least another five years (Slavin 2010)

  the priory closed (Aberth 2010)

  in 1316 it had quadrupled (Kershaw 1973)

  promoted the eating of all sorts of fish (Fagan 2008)

  brokered into ports on the North Sea (Fagan 2008)

  fish prices were the highest in a century (Jordan 1996), citing Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England

  “and devoid of charity” (Aberth 2010)

  “no wine in the whole kingdom of France” (Jordan 1996)

  “a trifling quantity” (Fagan 2000)

  yields dropped as much as 80 percent by 1317 (Jordan 1996)

  a Benedictine nunnery in Essex (Woolgar 2010)

  flans and cheese tarts on Rogation (Woolgar 2010)

  more prosperous peasants (Dyer 1998) This evidence is extracted from agreements in manorial court rolls that allowed peasants to draw something like a pension once they had grown too old to work. Even when they didn’t own it outright, the most valuable asset for most peasants was the right to work a particular piece of land—a right that could be sold, bequeathed, and inherited. In one case, a five-acre holding was transferred from one peasant to another, in return for access to a “curtilage” (or kitchen garden) plus two bushels of wheat and two of rye, four bushels of barley, and four bushels of peas annually (each distributed at harvest times, or holidays like Michaelmas or Christmas).

  and possibly some fish (Dyer 1998)

  Ale was also very cheap (Gies 1990)

  twice as much grain as a typical peasant brew (Bennett 1996)

  the monks at St. Paul’s in London (Rimas 2010)

  an average of around four thousand calories (Singman 1999)

  more than nine thousand calories a day (Pearson 1997)

  Rouche’s stratospheric number (Pearson 1997)

  doubling the amount of land under cultivation throughout Europe (Pearson 1997) Grain yields, on a per-hectare basis, range from 400 to 666 kilograms of edible grain per hectare; legumes about the same. Five hundred grams of whole-grain bread demands 390 grams of flour, while “white bread” needs 487.5 grams. Beer requires around 72 grams of grain per liter; pottage or gruel is made in a ratio of around 5:1.

  a gallon of milk to produce a pound of cheese (Pearson 1997) More precisely, 4.18 liters of milk for 500 grams of cheese, and between 18.9 and 35 liters of milk for a kilogram of butter.

  to a single boar and six sows (Jordan 1996) For the same reason, virtually all the flocks of domesticated fowl in Europe—especially geese, which, while slower to reproduce than chickens, are much easier to feed, scratching for insects and the like, even able to actually survive temporarily in the wild—were decimated as replacement food. As, indeed, were Europe’s great pigeon flocks; in Burgundy, almost every farmhouse had a dovecote, and some northern French manors had cells for as many as 4,500 birds.

  8 to 10 million wool-producing sheep (Campbell 2000)

  neither of which were raised for food (Allen 2005)

  required to perform substantial manual labor (Pearson 1997), citing Jan Peter Pals, “Observations on the Economy of the Settlement,” in Farm Life in a Carolingian Village. Pals is far more precise in his actual calculations, coming up with an estimate of between 1,986 and 2,138 calories daily.

  the fungi that contaminate stored grain (Pearson 1997)

  minerals like calcium, magnesium, and zinc (Mollat 1986)

  “poor and beggars were starving” (Phillips 2010)

  “that men could hardly bury them” (Kershaw 1973)

  “grazed like cows on the growing grasses of the field” (Jordan 1996), quoting Curschmann, Hungersnöte

  “so much dearth and famine to have prevailed in the past” (Russell 1966)

  a simple rhinovirus . . . can become a killer (Rivers 1981)

  not all infections are affected by malnutrition (Livi-Bacci 1983)

  to keep it away from a pathogen (Carmichael 1983)

  virtually independent of nutrition (Livi-Bacci 1983)

  neither was likely at birth (Livi-Bacci 1983), citing Hollingsworth, “Mortality in the British Peerage Families since 1600,” and Wrigley, The Population History of England, 1541–1871

  nine years ignoring the treaty’s terms (Lucas 1930)

  “from day to day the price increased” (Jordan 1996)

  more than 300 percent in five months (Lucas 1930)

  “because they had no more” (Jordan 1996), quoting Curschmann, Hungersnöte

  “great complaint, swollen with hunger” (Jordan 1996)

  “fetid with the stench” (Jordan 1996)

  two new cemeteries were created (Jordan 1996)

  The thirty-week total was nearly 3,000 (Lucas 1930) Note that the weekly total is missing five weeks out of the total and that the total is for those buried at town expense—that is, those who had no family, church, or guild to bury them.

  to create a “parc à gibier” (Jordan 1996) The original law was specific for the creation of parks for the cultivation of wild rabbits.

  “avaricious cupidity” (Jordan 1996)

  Chapter Eight: “She-Wolf of France” • 1313–1320

  he would support Gaveston’s enemies (Weir 2005)

  To manage the household stable’s (Weir 2005)

  so lavish that it cost the treasury £140,000 (Weir 2005) This is pretty clearly nonsense; the cost of five hundred pears purchased at Rochester while en route was only 18 pence, and the offering made at the shrine of Saint Thomas—a gold nugget—cost less than £5.

  Thirty-six died under torture (Tuchman 1978)

  to the thirteenth generation (Weir 2005) This particular story didn’t appear anywhere before the king and pope actually did die, which suggests that it was a later embellishment, though one that was widely believed true.

  displayed for all to see (Weir 2005)

  or sometimes all three (Maddicott 1975)

  the population least able to cope with them (Pollington et al. 2011)

  the pound lost more than half its value (Kershaw 1973)

  “daily dying from famine and starvation” (Aberth 2010)

  “having grain and refusing to sell it
” (Jordan 1996)

  “of taxes and tribulation” (Jordan 1996), quoting the fifteenth-century chronicle of the historian and theologian Ericus Olai who is better known for popularizing the theory that the Goths originated in Sweden.

  England’s only likely sources of grain (Jordan 1996) For decades, historians have debated the source of imported grain into northern Europe, and seem unlikely to resolve it anytime soon. As with France, the best guess is that the grain Edward imported may have arrived on Italian ships but was grown in southern France and northern Spain, from which England certainly imported other, less mundane, food items like figs and walnuts.

  the smuggling and piracy that fueled their economies (Heebøll-Holm 2011)

  “a cruel pirate” (Barrow 2005)

  a kind of legal self-help (Heebøll-Holm 2011)

  not the pirate himself (Heebøll-Holm 2011)

  ships burned, and warehouses ransacked (Jordan 1996)

  “coming to this realm with victuals” (Lucas 1930)

  an unsubtle public-relations stunt (Smith 1993)

  “outside the circle of his sycophants and clients” (Jordan 1996)

  prevented by the ever-prudent earl of Pembroke (Phillips 2010)

  “his chief counselor against the earls and barons” (Bingham 1973)

  one of the strongest fortresses in Britain (Phillips 2010)

  “would obtain the whole earldom” (Childs 2005)

  “by every possible means” (Childs 2005)

  “they plundered for themselves” (Aberth 2010), quoting Walsingham, Historia Anglicana

  they were destroyed as a fighting force (Phillips 2010) In January 1316, they declined a battle at Ardscull that would almost certainly have been not just a victory (they significantly outnumbered their opponents) but a decisive one, since it would have left Dublin unprotected.

  “many of them died of hunger” (Aberth 2010)

  “men ate each other in Ireland” (Aberth 2010)

  Bolton Priory counted three thousand sheep in its herd in 1316 (Kershaw 1973)

  even the cities of the eastern Baltic (Jordan 1996), citing Bain, Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland

  within sight of the Scottish coast (Jordan 1996)

  English soldiers were forced to eat their own horses (Phillips 2010)

  welcomed Bruce’s soldiers into their town (Davis 1974)