Droughts pose a climatic hazard that had profound impacts on
past societies. Using documentary sources, this paper studies the
occurrence and impacts of spring–summer droughts in pre-industrial
England from 1200 to 1700. The types of records, source availability
and changes in record keeping over time are described, and an
overview of droughts in those 500 years is provided. The focus lies
on a structural survey over the drought impacts most relevant to
human livelihood. This includes the agricultural and pastoral
sectors of agrarian production, health, the fire risk to settlements, and the drop in water levels or dwindling of water supplies. Due to
the specific characteristics of wheat cultivation in medieval and
early modern England, the grain production was comparatively
resilient to drought, whereas livestock farming was under threat
when rainfall fell noticeably below average. Nonetheless, the most
important problem in warm and dry summers was the risk to health.
Partly steeply raised mortality levels were associated with these
conditions during the study period because malaria,
gastrointestinal disease and plague showed an affinity to heat and
drought. Adaptation strategies to reduce the stress posed by summer
droughts are included in the study.
Introduction
The occurrence of drought across the British Isles has attracted the
attention of meteorologists since the nineteenth century. George James Symons'
work on hydrometeorology is well known (1887). He was not only
studying the rainfall patterns of his own time by establishing an
extensive rain gauge network across the British Isles (Jones et al.,
1997), but also investigated the occurrences of droughts over the past
on the occasion of the 1887 drought (Symons, 1887). Brooks and
Glasspoole (1928) based their work on past droughts on the catalogue
of Symons. After them, most research has focused on the instrumental
period, as by Jones et al. (1997), Briffa et al. (2009), Cole and
Marsh (2006), Marsh et al. (2007), Todd et al. (2013), and Spraggs et al. (2015). Recently, Ireland's drought history was investigated by
Wilby et al. (2016), Murphy et al. (2017) and Noone et al. (2017).
Some of these works also include documentary data which are used for an
evaluation of the drought conditions and impact research (Cole and
Marsh, 2006; Murphy et al., 2017; Noone et al., 2017).
Drought in the pre-industrial period has received comparatively little
attention. Using information in the form of direct weather references
or proxy data in documentary sources, drought occurrence was included in the studies for England by Jones et al. (1984), Ogilvie and Farmer
(1997), Pribyl (2017), and Pribyl and Cornes (2020a), and for Ireland by Dooge (1985). In recent decades, a new source for the study of
droughts in the British Isles extending back to antiquity has become
available, namely precipitation reconstructions based on tree-ring
data (Cooper et al., 2012; Rinne et al., 2013; Wilson et al., 2013).
These data have been integrated with data from continental Europe to
produce gridded spatial fields in the Old World Drought Atlas (OWDA)
by Cook et al. (2015) covering the last 2 millennia. However,
uncertainty connected with tree-ring-based reconstructions of
precipitation as indicated by Bothe et al. (2019) highlights the value
of using documentary sources to verify the occurrence of historic
droughts; this has been completed for several regions of Europe
(Brázdil et al., 2018).
Drought has rarely been the focus of studies by economic or
agricultural historians, since across the British Isles severe harvest
failures are mostly linked to excess rainfall. Hence, from Hoskins
(1964, 1968) to Campbell (2009, 2016), research attention was
concentrated on the impacts of wet extremes on agricultural output. In
pre-industrial times such precipitation-induced harvest failures were
the most common cause of subsistence crises. In their study of drought
hazards in Ireland, Murphy et al. (2017) could even go so far as to
state that the words “Irish drought” may be perceived as an oxymoron,
even though drought does indeed pose a risk to modern-day Irish
agriculture. In recent years, both historians and meteorologists have
placed more emphasis on drought impacts in their research: Cole and
Marsh (2006) included impacts in their survey of 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 (2020b) gave a general overview over drought impacts
in medieval and early modern England; and Murphy et al. (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 in droughts over Europe,
whereas other studies indicated a decrease. Hence, more research into
past droughts is required. Briffa et al. (2009) found an increase in
droughts in Europe, especially over central Europe; this increase was
mainly due to higher temperatures in the years around 2000. In
Ireland, fewer droughts were recorded over recent decades (Murphy et
al., 2017), and even though droughts have affected England over this
time, in popular memory they are still overshadowed by the drought of
1976; in general no increase in droughts in England could be noted
before the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century
(Cole and Marsh, 2006).
This paper studies summer drought occurrence and impacts in the period
1200 to 1700 in pre-industrial England. It gives a short overview and
examples of past droughts but does not constitute a catalogue. It
rather attempts a structural survey of drought impacts on the most
important fields of human life: the food supply – i.e. the
agricultural and pastoral sectors – and health, which could be under
threat by the outbreak of diseases or the decreased access to clean
drinking water. The energy supply for flour or industrial mills, the
availability of river transport, and the fire risk as well as
adaptation strategies are also considered.
The documentary sources
The documentary sources used in this study come mainly from southern
and eastern England (Fig. 1). Not only are these regions more
vulnerable to drought than northern or western England (Cole and
Marsh, 2006), but for most of the study period they dominate the
historical record. Before 1200, weather information exists going as
far back as the Early Middle Ages, but it is at the beginning of the
thirteenth century that the frequency and nature of the information
permit a quantitative analysis (Ogilvie and Farmer, 1997). This paper
focuses on droughts occurring in the summer half-year; droughts at
this time of the year interfered with growing crops and herbage.
Whereas severe droughts also caught the attention of townspeople,
summer seasons with merely dry periods were more likely to be recorded
in a rural setting by people involved in agriculture. The definition
of seasons shifted over time in England. Medieval astronomers were
already familiar with the division of the year based on the sun, but
in general, in the Middle Ages – and in particular for people in the
countryside – summer began when the growing season got under way, i.e.
at a variable date in April or May. It lasted until the harvest
season, autumn, which occurred in August and September. The end of the
harvest season was marked by Michaelmas, 29 September, but winter was
considered to start with the onset of wintry weather. Spring was
perceived as an event rather than a season (Ogilvie and Farmer, 1997;
Titow, 1960).
Map showing regions and cities in England described in the text.
Counties indicate modern-day administrative boundaries.
The documentary sources used in this paper are mainly of narrative
nature, which means they primarily record extreme weather and its
impacts; a sample of drought descriptions is provided in Table 1 (see Supplement). For
the centuries up to 1600 the narrative sources are mostly chronicles,
initially written by monks and later by lay persons from an urban
background. For the sixteenth and seventeenth century, parish records
and the Venetian State Papers provide information, and after c. 1620
the keeping of personal and farming diaries became popular.
Administrative sources, such as manorial or municipal accounts, also
provide direct and indirect information on past droughts; indirect
information also reflects normal conditions. For the Middle Ages many
manorial accounts survive; these supply data for agricultural and
pastoral farming and often mention weather conditions interfering with
these activities (Brandon, 1971; Pribyl, 2017; Stern, 2000; Titow,
1960, 1970). Using the narrative sources and the direct weather
references from manorial accounts, Ogilvie and Farmer (1997)
constructed monthly indices for temperature and precipitation for the
period 1200 to 1430.
Manorial accounts also often give information on the harvest length
which is an indicator of the rainfall frequency and totals shortly
before and during the harvest; for East Anglia this information has
been collated into a precipitation index for the months July–September
from 1256 to the mid-fifteenth century (Pribyl, 2017). After c. 1290
the data are almost continuous, and they help to identify extremes;
they are particularly suitable for quantifying the interannual
variation in precipitation. Averaged over 11 years the precipitation
index follows the trends of tree-ring-based precipitation
reconstructions from Norfolk and Hampshire – even though the temporal
overlap of the precipitation index (July–September) and the tree
growing season (March/May–July) is limited (Fig. 2) (Brassley et al.,
1988; Cooper et al., 2012; Jones and Baker, 1964; Pribyl, 2017; Wilson
et al., 2013). The pivotal importance of rainfall conditions for the
grain harvest is demonstrated by John Crakanthorp, who counted the
rain days per harvest in his harvest diary 1682–89 (Brassley et al.,
1988); essentially wet weather at harvest prolongs the drying time of
the grain crop and wet grain is liable to spoil and to lose
nutritional value.
Time series of the tree-ring-based precipitation reconstructions
by Wilson et al. (2013) for south-east England and by Cooper et al. (2012) for East Anglia, alongside the precipitation index for East
Anglia by Pribyl (2017). Series are normalized over the period 1200 to
1700.
Characteristics of drought in England
Jones et al. (1997) classified English droughts into short droughts of
up to 9 months in length and ending in autumn or multi-annual
droughts of 15–18 months duration containing in general two summers
and one winter and having their greatest impact on the south-eastern
part of Britain. Indeed dry years frequently cluster between 1800 and
2006 according to Marsh et al. (2007). The following section on
droughts throughout the centuries demonstrates that this pattern also
applies to medieval and early modern droughts. For the formation of
multi-annual droughts, dry winters are also important and will
therefore be briefly considered for the pre-industrial period.
Marsh et al. (2007) and Todd et al. (2013) also identify long
droughts, i.e. decades or even longer, when repeated periods of severe
rainfall deficiency occur. In the documentary sources before 1700 the
focus lies on intensive drought periods; hence it is mostly
single-year droughts and short clusters that are described, whereas
long droughts do not appear as such, probably also due to a certain
level of acclimatization by the people. Nonetheless, on occasions the
occurrence of long droughts can be deduced from the historical record.
The 1240s and early 1250s, the first decade of the 1300s, 1325 to c.
1340, the second half of the 1380s, the 1410s, the 1470s, the 1610s,
the 1630s, and parts of the 1660s, 1670s and 1680s seem to fit this
pattern.
An overview of droughts 1200–1700
In the thirteenth century there is evidence in the documentary sources
for prolonged dry conditions in spring and summer 1222, 1232 and in
the mid-1230s (especially 1236, see Table 1). Drought also reigned
during most of the 1240s, in the first half of the 1250s, in the early
1260s, in 1272 and the second half of the 1270s, from the mid-1280s to
1291, and in the last years of the century.
Probably the best-described drought of the thirteenth century came in
1252. Matthew Paris, a monk at St Albans, dedicated three paragraphs
to this event (see Table 1). Between March and July it was dry and
from April onwards also very warm. The lack of moisture impacted on
the sown grain crops, and as the drought drew on, the landscape became
parched, pasture was lacking, the cattle was wasting, the foliage was
withered and the fruit and nut harvests lost, the soil cracked open, and even the birds suffered although there was a multitude of flies.
Later in the summer a cattle murrain broke out and the people fell
victim to disease. The problems encountered on the manors of the
Bishopric of Winchester, which were situated in southern England
centring on Hampshire, clearly fit this pattern: the ploughs broke on
the hard soil, pea crops were lost, water levels dropped in the wells
and pasture fell short; on one manor spring ploughing was impossible
for 6 weeks (Titow, 1960). The drought and heat stretched across the
Irish Sea to Ireland, where again water levels were low, trees burnt
up in the sun and the grain harvest was very early (Hennessy, 1871).
At harvest time rain arrived. The manorial accounts from the Bishopric
of Winchester indicate that summer 1251 had already seen a dry period,
and in 1253 another dry spring and early summer followed, a situation
repeated in 1255 (Luard, 1880; Titow, 1960). Indeed this pattern was
only broken with the year 1256 when the weather turned in mid-August
and the very wet conditions, which were to dominate most of the second
half of the 1250s, began.
During the fourteenth century England experienced drought conditions
in the middle of the first decade, in the mid-1320s, the early and
later 1330s, the early 1350s, the early 1360s, the mid-1370s, the mid-
and later 1380s, and the early 1390s. The drought in the mid-1320s and
early 1330s is well documented (Anonymous, 1882; Aungier, 1844; Clyn, 1849; Titow, 1960) and its impact on farming has recently been studied in detail (Pribyl, 2017; Pribyl and Cornes, 2020a; Stone, 2014). 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 1). Grass and hay
production suffered in particular; the drought was then followed by a
“second spring” in October. The Winchester accounts also explicitly
refer to heat, which is unusual for medieval sources. Indeed the
spring–summer 1361 had the highest temperature in a reconstruction
based on grain harvest dates for the period 1256–1431 (Pribyl et al.,
2012; Pribyl, 2017). Grain prices rose in the aftermath of the harvest of 1361, and grain exports except to Ireland were forbidden, but the real
calamity hitting the country in this year was the Second Pestilence,
which killed c. 10 % of the English population (Kerling, 1954; Pribyl,
2017).
The number of available written records dealing with weather dwindles
further in the fifteenth century, probably reflecting the persistent
negative demographic trend and the tensions of the War of the Roses.
Nonetheless it is clear that the 1410s and the early 1430s were mostly
dry. Drought and heat affected the country in 1464 and returned in
the early and late 1470s. In 1473 the conditions were extreme and
extended over wide parts of Europe (see Table 1). The drought of 1464
(see Table 1) coincided with a shortage of currency and the combined
effect of these two factors led to low prices for foodstuffs; another
plague wave took hold in the country. Again it was very hot and the
spring grains, grass and hay suffered. In the marshland around Ely
insects attacked cattle and people, and the death rate rose.
In the sixteenth century the number of available sources increases,
particularly so for the second half of the century when climatic
variations are recorded in greater detail. In the period to c. 1550
repeated warm and dry periods took hold, as in the later 1530s. After
1550 their frequency declined, but droughts still occurred as in 1556
or in the early 1590s. In 1540 an exceptional drought affected large
parts of Europe, including southern England (see Pribyl and Cornes, 2020a). This summer half-year was so extreme that it constitutes
a low-probability high-impact event (Glaser, 2013; Pfister, 2018;
Wetter and Pfister, 2013).The London chronicles (see Table 1) all
describe a sharp rise in mortality across the country due to agues,
digestive disease and some plague occurrence. Cattle also died for
lack of water, and water courses ran dry; even the Thames was so low
as to allow salt water upriver from Old London Bridge. According to
Charles Wriothesley it did not rain between June and late September
(Old Style). The situation was so severe that Henry VIII as the head
of the Church of England ordered the bishops to encourage prayer and
processions; in London weekly processions began in mid-September (Old Style) (see Table 1). The continuator of Robert Fabyan mentions the
drought and the ensuing diseases; he also describes the subsequent
cold winter 1540–41 (see Table 1).
It should be noted, that
most of the references to 1540 in English weather compilations such
as Lowe's Natural phenomena and chronology of the seasons (1870),
actually stem from Swiss sources and the English information has
been erroneously dated to 1541 (Pribyl and Cornes, 2020a).
Over the course of the seventeenth century the information on weather
increases vastly even before the onset of instrumental measurements in
the middle of the century: personal and farming diaries, newspapers, and notes in parish registers can all contain weather references. In
this century droughts are noted in the 1610s, in the mid-1630s, in the
early and late 1650s, during the second half of the 1660s and 1670s,
in the mid-1680s, and then around 1690. The drought in the mid-1630s is
already well covered by written records. Winter 1633–34 had – at
least in the south-west of the country – been wet, but the following
spring was very dry, and until midwinter there was such a rainfall
deficit that springs and brooks failed and cattle needed to be driven
over long distances to water (see Table 1). The drought affected the
rest of southern England and East Anglia (Jones et al., 1984). The
following winter was cold and long across the country (Blomefield,
1806; Whiteway, 1991). The summer season 1635 was dry again (Hinds,
1921), but the drought and heat then culminated in spring–summer 1636.
Plague was present and the Venetian ambassador – used to a southern
climate – expected a great scarcity of victuals after a summer drought
so severe that even the trees lost their leaves (see Table 1). In
Essex then rain came on in August, damaging the harvest and causing a
“michlemasse spring” of fresh growth in autumn (Webster and Shipps,
2004). Spring 1637, however, saw dry conditions again.
Dry winters are particularly important for the development of
hydrological droughts because the groundwater storage is recharged
between late autumn and early spring (Marsh et al., 2007). A
convergence of cold, dry winters and warm, dry summers indicates an
atmospheric blocking action over England; the historical records
indicate that such a weather pattern was not infrequent in the past
even though it has been rare over recent decades. Dry winters are rarely
described in the written record, especially before the late sixteenth
century. Records do mention dry and cold winters for 1224–25, 1233–34,
1325–26, 1516–17 and 1590–91; at least 1325–26 and 1590–91 were
associated with drought conditions in the previous and following
summers (Anonymous, 1865; Fabyan, 1811; Goring and Wake, 1975; Hamilton,
1875; Hewlett, 1889; Jones et al., 1984; Stow and Howes, 1631; Titow,
1960). The winter season 1613–14 also saw below-average rainfall and
occurred in a decade of frequent dry summers. Winter 1664–65 was
followed by a dry spring (Jones et al., 1984). For the last decades of
the seventeenth century Anthony Wood, an antiquarian in Oxford,
provides a record of dry cold winters: 1669–70 after the dry summer
1669, 1675–76, lying between two drought summers, and 1678–79, which occurred between two spring seasons which saw dry periods (Clark,
1892). This pattern was maintained for 1684–85, a severe winter on the
whole, when hardly any precipitation fell throughout February and most
of March as Wood and Robert Boyle noted (Clark, 1894; Cornes,
2020). The dry year 1684 had already been preceded by a dry cold winter in
1683–84 (Dobson, 1906; Gill and Guilford, 1910; Jones et al., 1984).
Dry winters are, however, normally cold winters, and cold winters are
more frequently mentioned in the written records than dry winters,
also before the late sixteenth century. Clustering of cold winters and
dry summers during the study period was not untypical. Examples are
the following cold winters, which were framed by two dry summers:
1247–48, 1253–54, 1304–05, 1305–06, 1332–33, 1338–39, 1339–40, 1413–14
and 1634–35 (Hewlett, 1889; Luard, 1876, 1880; Pribyl, 2017; Titow,
1960, 1970; Whiteway, 1991). Severe winters before dry summers are
recorded for 1224–25, 1267–68, 1327–28, 1422–3 (Anonymous, 1865; Pribyl,
2017; Titow, 1960, 1970). The hard winter 1434–35 was most likely
preceded by an extremely dry summer as indicated by the OWDA (but the
stream of documentary sources diminishes substantially during the
decades of the mid-fifteenth century and hence no reference to the
drought of 1434 survives) and summer 1435 was probably also dry (Anonymous,
1880b; Gregory, 1876; Harris, 1827; Langdon, 2004; Titow, 1970).
The mill at Birdbrook, Essex, stopped working due to a lack
of water at some point between October 1435 and September 1436
(Langdon, 2004). The year 1436 is generally known to have been wet
over Europe (Alexandre, 1987); thus autumn 1435 is more likely for
the mill to have stopped working.
Hard winters after summer
droughts include 1225–26, 1268–69, 1288–89, 1291–92, 1309–10, 1329–30,
1358–59, 1407–08, 1416–17, 1464–65 and 1540–41 (Anonymous, 1866a, 1880a,
b; Fabyan, 1811; Haydon, 1863; Herryson, 1840; Pribyl, 2017; Riley,
1864; Titow, 1960, 1970). In general during the dry decade of the
1410s, the cold and partly long winters 1409–10, 1412–13, 1413–14,
1416–17 and 1418–19 were preceded or followed by dry summer half-years
(Pribyl, 2017; Titow, 1970). Many of the hard winters between 1209 and
c. 1450 are known from the Pipe Rolls of the Bishopric of Winchester
and the vast majority of these winters were associated with dry summer
seasons, a few with unexceptional summers and none with wet summers
(Titow, 1960, 1970).
Drought impactsAgriculture
Even when considering only this small sample of drought descriptions
and the references in Table 1, the most important concerns of a
pre-industrial society facing drought already become clear:
agricultural and pastoral productivity, health, and falling water levels
and their implications. In 1636 the Venetian ambassador expected
scarcity to manifest itself in the foreseeable future, and grain crops
of stunted growth or even non-germinating seed corn appear in sources
for 1236, 1252 and 1361 (Luard, 1880; Tait, 1914; Titow, 1960, 1970);
in the latter year grain exports except to Ireland were stopped
(Kerling, 1954). However, references to drought-related famines are
conspicuously absent from the historical record. On occasion even a
great abundance of grain is mentioned for harvests in dry summers as
for 1287 and 1288 (Anonymous, 1866a; Ellis, 1859; Rishanger, 1865; Titow,
1960). In 1333 Ireland also enjoyed a plentiful harvest (Grace of Kilkenny, 1842; Titow, 1960) and in 1464 “[...] whete was worthe iiij d. a
busshell, and all maner of vetaille grete chepe [...]” (see Table 1),
although this was also connected to a currency shortage at that time,
and the same occurred after the harvest of 1667 (Macfarlane, 1976).
The narrative and administrative sources reporting weather conditions,
but also works on agriculture in England, confirm that indeed “Drought
never bred dearth in England” (Heywood, 1909). This idiom originates
in the first half of the sixteenth century but probably reflects an
even older attitude, and it remained common knowledge until at least
the late nineteenth century (Inwards, 1994). Even though the optimum
growing conditions vary from one cereal to another – wheat, rye,
barley and oats – as does their sensitivity to excess wetness or
dryness, harvest success in the maritime climate of England is
primarily threatened by excess rainfall, and subsistence crises are
linked to wet growing and harvest seasons. None of the corn crops
thrive in a wet summer, even though barley and oats bear such
conditions better than wheat (Bowden, 1985). In particular, wheat in
England during the study period was approaching the limits of its
cultivation, and it would require more summer warmth and dryness than
is generally provided in the region (Whitley, 1850; Simpson, 1850).
Hence wheat suffered greatly in wet and cool summers, but essentially
it was hardly ever too warm and dry for this crop in England (Bowden,
1985; Jones and Baker, 1964; Simpson, 1850; Whitley, 1850). In fact
yield data from the extensive estates of the Bishopric of Winchester
in southern England between 1209 and 1350 show that almost all
outstandingly good harvests (15 % above average) occurred under dry
conditions: a very dry previous summer and autumn, followed often by a
hard winter and then again by a very dry spring–summer (Titow, 1960).
Until around the middle of the seventeenth century wheat was also
mostly grown in the English vales, often on undrained clay soils,
which increased the resilience of the grain crops to drought and
exacerbated the impact of wet weather; the integration of higher
ground into cereal cultivation helped to offset the effect of excess
rainfall on the valleys (Jones and Baker, 1964). However, the
comparative resilience of wheat to drought applies even to the
conditions of modern agriculture in recent decades; in 1976 the wheat
crop fell below average, but it did not fail (Carter, 1978; Martin,
2010). With progressing climate change and increasingly warm and dry
conditions over England and Wales until 2050, wheat may actually be
less vulnerable to summer drought than at present because the crop
would mature earlier and hence avoid the peak of the dry summer
weather (Semenov, 2009).
The notion that “Drought never bred dearth in England” can be traced
beyond the sixteenth century. Around 1340 William Merle, a fellow at
Merton College, Oxford, and rector of Digby in Lincolnshire, wrote his
“Tractatus de pronosticacione aeris”,
Bodleian Library,
Oxford, MS Digby 147, fols. 125–138.
an unusual work on weather
forecasting, as it did not focus on using astrometeorological means,
as was common at universities and courts in this era, but highlighted
the observation of the “vulgar” signs of nature, such as the flight of
birds, for short-term predictions. However, the “Tractatus” is also
uncommonly practical in purpose, since it studies the influence of
various weather types on agricultural production, particularly on the
grain crops in an English context. Merle is most likely the first to
state that dry weather was good for wheat cultivation and that under
drought conditions there could be no famine. This is not only borne
out by contemporary yield and weather information by Titow (1960) for
southern England, but also by the English wheat price (Munro, 2008).
Considering the price in the context of growing season temperature and
harvest season precipitation from 1264 to 1431 demonstrates that in
general warm dry years were associated with low prices and the
majority of harvests following on from these meteorological conditions
lowered the price further. Warm and dry years also often lowered the
wheat price after famines as in 1318 or later in 1651 and 1652.
Sometimes drought was severe enough to be linked to a moderate
increase in prices, but the occasions when the grain price rose
substantially are rare; some of these rises can also be attributed to
other (weather) factors and in no case was a subsistence crisis caused
by a warm and dry summer alone (Jones et al., 1984; Munro, 2008;
Pribyl, 2017).
Drought does, however, pose a risk for the spring crops barley and
oats and for legumes, and Merle stated that these need humidity after
sowing and are vulnerable to prolonged dry weather. In the late 1330s,
when he was writing his treatise, he must have been aware of the
impact of drought in the mid-1320s and early 1330s. This impact was
geographically very varied – sometimes even from village to village – but significant (Stone, 2014). In particular, it is the effect that a
lack of rainfall has on barley, a grain that also served as a bread
corn in the Middle Ages, that chroniclers and reeves refer to when
they mention that the corn did not germinate or was of stunted growth.
Lost crops of legumes are also commonly described in the manorial
accounts; peas and beans are drought sensitive (Pribyl, 2017; Pribyl
and Cornes, 2020b; Stern, 2000; Titow, 1960, 1970). This form of
scarcity is also observed by the Venetian ambassador in early summer
1636, which followed on the dry year 1635, and based on his Italian
background he anticipated a worsening of the scarcity due to the
continuation of drought throughout summer 1636; however, he
projected his Italian experiences on to England and this expected
dearth did not manifest itself, grain prices remained stable after the
harvest of 1636, and only the price for peas had been rising substantially
since 1635 (Munro, 2008). As Merle had pointed out, as long as one
grain was sufficiently plentiful, and in drought this was wheat, there
would be no famine. Merle's analysis was ahead of its time; the
agricultural revolution in seventeenth-century England allowed this
mechanism of replacing one grain with others to be employed also after
harvest failures linked to wet and cold summers and hence helped to
end famine in the country. With this substitution the demographic
effects of the subsistence crisis were minimized (Appleby, 1979).
A possible exception to the rule that “Drought never bred dearth in
England” must be considered: the year 1556. Not much is known about
the weather in spring and summer 1556, but the year played a role in
massive rises in grain prices, the outbreak of disease and a
consequent extreme rise in mortality. Some compilations such as Lowe
(1870) or Short (1749) mark it as a year of drought, but it is not
clear, if they based their judgement on English or continental
sources. On the continent the conditions in 1556 were indeed extremely
warm and dry; e.g. in the vine harvest date series of the Vienna
hospital, 1556 was warmer than even 1540 (Buisman, 1998; Glaser, 2013;
Kiss, 2018). Sources relating to the drought over the continent
abound, but the spatial extension of the phenomenon to include England
cannot be deduced from them. In a year when religious tensions ran
high in England and the country's political and religious future was
unsettled, few sources focus on the weather. Hence it is not
surprising that some economic and social historians such as Hoskins
(1964) assume that the very wet conditions occurred, as are classical in the
development of dearth in England, while others stated a spring
drought, though without giving the original evidence.
Jones et al. (1984) identify the summer season as dry based on Francis
Blomefield's An essay towards a topographical history of the County of Norfolk (1806). Blomefield describes a dry summer during which, in several
places, the turf caught fire and burnt for up to 2 weeks. Even though
this publication is not a contemporary source for the mid-sixteenth century,
Blomefield was using a manuscript of that time from the Norwich archives.
Interestingly field and turf fires were also common across the North
Sea in the Low Countries (Buisman, 1998). The last rainfall that can
be traced for England in spring 1556 occurred on 21 March (Old Style)
in Oxford at Cranmer's execution (Strype, 1694). Not much
precipitation can have fallen after that because on 16 June (Old Style) the Venetian ambassador to England expected a “risk of great
sickness and yet greater famine than the last, owing to the heat and
extraordinary drought of the season, as, contrary to the wont of this
climate, and to the need of the soil, 4 months and upwards have
passed without any rain to do good” (Brown, 1877). The situation did
not improve and by 7 July (Old Style) “intense heat” had joined the
drought and “processions are made continually” to relieve the
situation (Brown, 1877). By mid-August another complaint about the
heat, which now affected Queen Mary, was added (Brown, 1877). The
drought of 1556 probably even stretched far north up to Scotland, where
the authorities in Edinburgh commissioned a new well and the deepening
of three existing wells in July (Marwick, 1871). Even though the
drought was under-referenced in the official sources of the time, it
comes up in Protestant propaganda at the beginning of the reign of
Elizabeth I, when a previous drought and dearth – undoubtedly in terms
of the drought a description of 1556 and in terms of the dearth the
years following the harvests 1555 and 1556 – were laid at the feet of
the godlessness of Mary's reign, even though the author had spent
those years in exile on the continent, where the drought haunted
Catholic and Protestant lands alike (Scholefield, 1842). In Kent, it
seems as if in the summer heat, the harvest was early and the spring
corn, mostly barley, was too thin and of stunted growth in 1556, so it
could not be mown with short scythes. There were also possibly field
fires in the county (see Table 1). In any case the harvest was poor
and the grain prices rose to extreme heights afterwards (Munro, 2008).
However, as the Venetian ambassador indicated, famine already reigned
before the harvest of 1556 (Brown, 1877), and prices had indeed been on a
trajectory to famine levels since the harvest of 1554 and reached them
with the wet harvest of 1555. Then in autumn 1555, at sowing time of the
winter corn, heavy rainfall and flooding set in and must have damaged
the seed or delayed sowing (Bowden, 1985; Grafton, 1809; Holinshed,
1808; Hamilton, 1877). Hence when scarcity was already bad, the
drought-withered spring corn could not be substituted with wheat or
rye and full famine ensued. This pattern was also identified by Titow
(1960) for the Middle Ages: a wet autumn followed by a dry spring
could cause scarcity, although a run of wet conditions from autumn
into spring or summer was more commonly linked to dearth and more severe
harvest losses. In summer 1556 a multi-annual phase of high
levels of disease and mortality began, which probably interrupted the
harvesting, transporting and marketing of the grain further and could
have contributed to raised grain prices.
Pastoral farming
In pastoral farming the impact of drought was more immediate that in
agriculture: even a short drought, only lasting through spring and
early summer, could wreak havoc. During the study period, livestock
mainly depended on grass and hay and in some regions on green fodder
crops like vetches, so spring and summer rainfall were essential.
Turnips which have a different growing season, only appeared towards
the very end of the study period (Overton, 1989). The growth of hay
and herbage is limited or even ceases under drought stress. In early
modern times, between 1640 and 1740, wheat and hay prices have been
found to be generally inverted; that means years good for wheat (dry
years) were bad for hay (Bowden, 1985). In the severe drought of 1976
the grass growth in spring was still adequate and potentially even
higher in nutrition than normal, but then regrowth after mid-June to
July was disappointing (Carter, 1978). The constraints on feed led to a
collapse of milk production in dairy cattle herds in July and August,
which took months to recover, even with the return of rain (Carter,
1978). Medieval manorial accounts mirror such conditions (Stern, 2000;
Titow, 1960, 1970). Matthew Paris describes for 1252 how grass rubbed
between the hands turned to dust (see Table 1). In the Middle Ages
sheep's milk was also frequently used for cheese making in England,
and sheep fare better in prolonged dry weather than cattle (Carter,
1978). In the drought of 1976 cattle remained lean at the end of summer, and both calves and lambs were underweight by September even with
supplementary feed; for calves this was sometimes a drastic difference
in weight compared to a normal year (Carter, 1978). Drought stress
appears to have had an effect on the fertility of cows in the Middle
Ages, which are often reported in manorial accounts to have been
barren during and shortly after drought periods (Pribyl, 2017). The
capacity of lean livestock to survive winter is obviously limited, but
a lack of pasture and hay are even bigger factors in lowering winter
survival rates (Bowden, 1985); hence livestock needs to be sold before
winter (Jones and Baker, 1964). Acute desperation took hold when
livestock was sold after winter (Jones and Baker, 1964), as observed
by Josselin for cattle in early 1652 during the drought of 1651–53
(Macfarlane, 1976), indicating a delayed onset of grass growth. A
short-term glut of livestock on the market for low prices would be
followed by a longer period of high prices for the animals.
For the period 1200 to 1700 even more severe impacts are related to
extreme droughts. Actual water shortage became a danger for cattle. In
particular, cows with calves are in need of high amounts of water to
maintain milk production (Carter, 1978), and Thomas Tusser (1812)
states in the second half of the sixteenth century that cattle needed
to be watered daily in summer. When water levels fell too much at
pastures, cattle needed to be led to water; in the droughts of 1326, 1540
and 1634 this was sometimes over distances of 3–12 miles (Anonymous, 1882;
Hamilton, 1875; Whiteway, 1991). For the summers of 1384 and 1540 it is
reported that many cattle died due to a shortage of water (Hector and
Harvey, 1982; Hamilton, 1877), although poisonous weeds, which might
have been consumed by the animals when no grass was left (Carter,
1978), and heat stress might also have played a role in this raised
cattle mortality. Heat stress, or potentially sun stroke, is attested
to having killed people in England in 1473, when “in feld in harvist tyme men
fylle downe sodanly” (see Table 1). In the worst case, the
drought stress weakened the cattle so much that murrain could spread
more easily, as in 1252 and 1662 (Dobson, 1997; Luard, 1880). Drought
before 1700 thus had a high potential to disrupt pastoral farming, and
the shortfall in livestock could cause a scarcity of dairy products
and meat, which would negatively impact the diet of the poor in
particular by reducing their access to protein and fat. Additionally,
a cattle murrain could lower the number of draught animals, which in
the medieval period were still often oxen not horses, and hence could
have severe repercussions for transport and agriculture.
Health: malaria, gastrointestinal disease and plague
The most immediate and severe risk of drought to life in England
between 1200 and 1700 did, however, not operate through the food
supply but was a direct threat to health. In England, crisis
mortality in pre-industrial times was primarily connected to either
subsistence crises caused by extreme rainfall levels or to epidemics,
but summer warmth exerted an influence over the death rate also in
non-crisis years. For the period 1665 to 1834 – the post-plague period
in early modern England – for which robust statistical data on mortality
are available (beginning with the start of the parish registers in 1539), monthly
death rates have been compared to food prices and monthly temperature
averages from the Central England Temperature series by Lee (1981).
The analysis reveals that food prices exerted a greater influence upon
mortality than temperature, even though this was the age when famine
was disappearing from England and the influence of prices on the death
rate was waning over time. However, cold winters and warm summers also
increased mortality and the impact of summer heat was stronger than
that of the winter cold. Lee calculated that a warming of 1 ∘C in
summer would raise the annual death rate by c. 4 %. Most of the
additional deaths would fall in late summer and autumn, since the
impact of summer heat on mortality was delayed by 1–2 months.
Lee (1981) could not detect a significant influence of rainfall on
mortality levels, but he only had access to annual rainfall totals,
starting in 1727, and not only are early rainfall data problematic,
but annual rainfall totals are not necessarily representative of
summer precipitation. Other data help to identify periods of drought
and heat that were marked by high mortality throughout history: records of heriot
payments, which were essentially a death duty, 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. Postan and Titow (1959)
suspected drought-induced epidemic disease due to poor sanitation as
well as a lack of or poor-quality drinking water as a cause for this
increase in the death rate. Mortality was indeed raised in the months
following the dry and hot summer 1288,
Mistyped as 1287 in
Titow (1960).
which is also described in the Annals of Dunstable
(Anonymous, 1866a; Postan and Titow, 1959; Titow, 1960). Drought was also
present during the mortality peaks in 1236, 1300 and 1328 (Luard, 1876;
Pribyl, 2017; Titow, 1960). It seems to have played a role in the
raised death rate of 1248 and in late 1272, although these years were
also times of dearth (Anonymous, 1885; Postan and Titow, 1959; Titow,
1960).
For the other years of raised mortality, 1216, 1233,
1308, 1311 and 1342, there is either no documentary evidence on
weather available (1215–16) or the evidence does not show drought
periods as a potential primary driver of the mortality (Titow, 1960;
Symons, 1891; Stern, 2000).
Once the parish registers start, they
immediately document the sharp rise in mortality during the drought
summer of 1540, when hot agues, dysentery and plague were afflicting the
English (Wrigley and Schofield, 1981, see Table 1). Awareness of the
dangers of hot dry summers existed in early modern times (Appleby,
1980; Bacon, 1670; Dobson, 1997), and these hot and dry seasons did
not increase the death rates by impacting farming or food prices (Lee,
1981) but by directly contributing to the development of disease, as
the case of 1540 demonstrates – often digestive disease and malaria.
Medieval and early modern narrative sources also frequently mention
higher death rates and unidentified diseases in conjunction with heat
and drought. These are partly reported as “fevers” or “agues” – terms
which also include, but are not limited to, malaria – as in 1222,
1242, 1252, 1285, 1288 and 1305 (Anonymous, 1866a; Coggeshall, 1875;
Hewlett, 1889; Luard, 1877, 1880; Rishanger, 1865; Postan and Titow,
1959). The period from the mid-fourteenth century to the mid-fifteenth century is dominated by a focus on plague
epidemics, but after that non-plague disease is again reported for the summer droughts of 1464,
1473, 1540, 1612, 1616, 1653, 1657–58, 1669–70 and 1679–80 (Anonymous,
1880a; Dobson, 1997; Fabyan, 1811; Halliwell, 1839; Hamilton, 1875;
Pribyl, 2017). Occasionally “quartan agues” or “fevers” are described
in the records, i.e. fevers at 3 d intervals, which raises the
chances of these references indeed being reports of malaria: in 1222
the source comes from eastern Essex, in 1242 from the well-informed
Matthew Paris at St Albans, and in 1557–58 “quartan fevers” seem to have
been part of the mixture of disease haunting the English during and
after the famine (caused by the bad harvests of 1555 and 1556), although
influenza was likely the main culprit of the enormous death rates
(Appleby, 1980; Creighton, 1891; Fabyan, 1811; Hamilton, 1877;
Holinshed, 1808; Stow and Howes, 1631). For 1252 Matthew Paris writes
how the heat lasted throughout the nights, and flies, fleas and other
insects made life miserable for men and beasts (see Table 1). This
description possibly also refers to the activity of the nocturnal
Anopheles mosquito, which acts as a transmission vector for malaria. In
1464, near Ely “great poisonous and horned flies” killed their victims
quickly (see Table 1); whereas this seems to refer to horseflies, the amount of stagnant waters of that region – which were increased by the falling water levels
during the drought – must have also been a breeding ground for other
insects. Due to the geographical restrictions of the Anopheles
mosquito, malaria was much more likely to occur in low-lying – and, in
the study period, still largely undrained – wetlands. Examples of such
wetlands are the marshlands around the Isle of Ely, those on the eastern and
southern coasts, and those in the Thames estuary. Indeed many of the
references to disease in drought summers mentioned above come from
individuals that were in close geographical proximity to marshes, e.
g. for 1222 by Ralph de Coggeshall (eastern Essex), or from well-informed observers who also showed a repeated interest in marshland, as
for 1242 by Matthew Paris (Hertfordshire).
In the early modern period hot summers caused a sharp increase in
mortality in south-eastern England; this summer–autumn mortality
occurred in uplands as well as wetlands, but it was much more
pronounced in the latter (Dobson, 1997). Furthermore, in this regional
setting the variability in summer–autumn mortality was more strongly
connected to weather, in this case temperature, than mortality at
other times of the year (Dobson, 1997). From 1661 to 1800 the
correlation between July–August temperature and the burials in the following year was high in the marshlands; cool summers suppressed the
death rate in the subsequent months (Dobson, 1997). Malaria was
endemic in the marshes; by the nineteenth century infection resulted in illness rather than death for local adults, but children had more
intense attacks and were at higher risk. In the early modern period
the mean death rate, however, was 30 %–50 % higher in marshlands than
elsewhere in south-eastern England (Dobson, 1997).
Gastrointestinal disease was another cause for increased mortality
levels in and after drought summers; it particularly affected young
children after weaning. The various forms of transmission, via
contaminated water and food or via flies, were all enhanced during
dry and warm summers, when water levels were low and, as described for
1252 and 1464, insect populations increased dramatically, especially in
areas of standing water. Water could be made unsafe to drink by
bacteria or algae; in 1409, for example, “blood is seen to gush forward from
wells in diverse parts of England, and in consequence many died of
dysentery” (Haydon, 1863, p. 415, translation by the current author). The
“bloody flux” or “laskes” [dysentery] were part of the diseases in
1473 and 1540. Gastric problems were also present in 1612, 1624,
1669–71, 1678–80, and possibly in 1616 and 1657–58 (Dobson, 1997).
Again, the marshes were overly affected because in these regions and
in the towns the access to clean drinking water was particularly
difficult (Dobson, 1997) and flies found plenty of breeding grounds.
The relationship between hot and dry conditions and increased
(childhood) mortality due to digestive disease persisted well into the
nineteenth century (Dobson, 1997).
As serious a threat as the various fevers like malaria and gastric
infections may have posed, the disease that really raised alarm amongst the
populace was plague. In the First Pestilence in the mid-fourteenth
century more than a third of the English died; another 10 % fell victim to the Second Pestilence 1361–62. Large-scale (in terms
of geographical coverage and death toll) plague outbreaks marked the
remaining fourteenth century; in the fifteenth century the outbreaks
assumed a more regional and partly urban character and appear somewhat
more scattered, although severe outbreaks returned in the second half
of the century. Plague waves occurred every 5–12 years. In around
1500, Scotland and England began to implement measures intended to
hinder the development and spread of the plague, such as quarantining,
isolation, notification and travel bans. Up to about 1560 there seems
to have been only a comparatively small number of severe outbreaks affecting
the country, a picture that turned during the last decades of the
century. Plague remained a serious threat until the last wave in
1665–66, and in England major plague waves caused higher death rates
than famine in the sixteenth and seventeenth century (Appleby, 1980).
Throughout the period plague was often present in London for long
periods, although death rates due to plague during these phases
remained generally low, apart from crisis years that sometimes
overlapped with outbreaks in other parts of England.
When considering the relationship of the disease to meteorological
factors, it is useful to focus on large-scale outbreaks. The Central
England Temperature series starts in 1659 and hence hardly overlaps
with the era of plague, and no yearly or seasonally resolved reliable
temperature or precipitation index is available for England before
1659, so that the van Engelen (2001) temperature index from the Low
Countries needs to be employed for the analysis; it can be supported
by evidence from England. During the Middle Ages a specific weather
pattern was associated with major plague outbreaks. Years of high
plague mortality were generally marked by warm and dry summers; in any
case these summers were warmer and drier than the previous summers, which were on the cooler or wetter side but never extremely cold or
wet. The winter preceding the high plague mortality was not a hard
winter; it could be of mild conditions or medium severity. Extremely
cold winters were detrimental to plague: not only did they not precede
severe plague years, they could also mark the end of a plague wave.
Only a minority of plague outbreaks can be associated with cool and
wet summer years, failed harvests and dearth, the most important
examples being the First Pestilence in 1348–49, the Third Pestilence in
1369 and the plague wave just after the failed harvests in the second
half of the 1430s (Pribyl, 2017). In fact, up to the end of the Middle
Ages the relationship between warm and dry summers, which were at
least noticeably warmer and drier than previous summers and did not
follow on a cold winter or an extremely cold and wet summer, and major
plague outbreaks was strong if 5–12 years since the last outbreak had
passed. Such meteorological conditions without a plague wave only
appear towards the end of the fifteenth century (Pribyl, 2017). In the
subsequent centuries this relationship weakened, but the more
substantial outbreaks of 1513, 1532, 1536, 1563, 1575, 1578, 1592–93
and 1590–91 (south-west) and almost all those the seventeenth century (1603, 1609, 1635–36 and 1665–66) again coincided with the
aforementioned weather pattern; early modern outbreaks can sometimes
be traced back to the infection taking root in a port town. The plague
outbreak of 1624–25 started under the standard conditions, but 1625
itself was cool and wet. However, in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries other years offered the meteorological conditions for plague
outbreaks and came after a 5–12 year interval since the last major
outbreak but saw no major plague wave. It is outside the scope of
this paper to speculate on the reasons behind this weakening of the
relationship, i.e. whether this was due to human intervention, a change in
the epidemiology of plague or increasing immunity. Again the high
mortality due to plague in hot and dry years was not due to dearth —
in London there was no link between plague mortality and bread prices
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Appleby, 1975), nor were
most major plague outbreaks in the Middle Ages linked to high food
prices (Pribyl, 2017). The link between hot and dry summers and plague
was known to contemporaries (Pribyl, 2017), and in his posthumously
published work Sylva Sylvarum (1626/7) Francis Bacon stated, that “In
England [...], many times, there have been great Plagues in dry years”
(Bacon, 1670, p. 84).
Fire risk
A further risk in times of persistent dry weather was the increased
chance of fires, particularly during multi-annual droughts. As London
fell victim to the flames in the dry summer of 1666, so other town
fires occurred during droughts, as in 1288 and 1303 in Boston and in
1326, when Royston, Wandsworth and the abbey of Croxden were consumed
by fire (Anonymous, 1996; Aungier, 1844; Ellis, 1859, Rishanger, 1865). In
1389 and 1393 fires following on from thunderstorms destroyed villages
in Kent; in spring 1394 fires were widespread in eastern England
(Hector and Harvey, 1982; Anonymous, 1866b). When summers were extremely
dry and hot, turf, fen or fields could also catch fire, as in 1556 in
Norfolk (Blomefield, 1806) and possibly also in Kent (Beale, 1998).
Norfolk also saw a sharp rise in field fires in the dry and warm
summer of 2018.
Water supply
As mentioned above, low water levels threatened the health of people
and livestock; they raised the risks of contamination of water sources
or a lack of drinking water, particularly in marshland and in towns.
The Thames remained a source of drinking water in London for a long
time, and when the fresh water supply in the river dwindled, salt
water would intrude towards the west of London Bridge further than
normally. In 1326 Londoners had to content themselves with salty ale
(Aungier, 1844). The Thames was also low in 1540 and 1592 (Stow and
Howes, 1631). When the Thames dropped too low, then the barges between
Oxford and London could not operate as in 1634, 1675–76 and 1685
(Clark, 1892, 1894; Jones et al., 1984). Water transport elsewhere was
also hindered, as 1326 around the Isle of Ely (Anonymous, 1882). Springs
drying up was common as is indicated in 1236, 1241, 1252, 1326, 1384,
1540 and 1619 (Anonymous, 1882; Aungier, 1844; Clyn, 1849; Grafton, 1809;
Hamilton, 1875; Hall, 1809; Hector and Harvey, 1982; Holinshed, 1808;
Jones et al., 1984; Luard 1877, 1880; Stow and Howes, 1631; Titow,
1960). The marshland itself also tended to be subject to falling
water levels as is stated for 1236, 1241 and 1352 (Luard, 1876,
1877; Lumby, 1895). Falling river levels also reduced the availability
of water power and affected industrial and flour mills. Explicit
evidence for mills stopping working is given by Matthew Paris
(Luard, 1876, 1877, 1880) for 1236, 1241 and 1253; the Pipe Rolls of
the Bishopric of Winchester mention mills standing idle for a lack of
water for 1248, 1268, 1327, 1336, 1337 and 1340 (Titow, 1960), and a
mill also lacked water in 1435–36 (probably 1435) and 1619 (Jones et al.,
1984; Langdon, 2004). When the mills could not grind the corn, a flour
shortage would ensue, even if the harvest had been good and grain prices
were not raised. In 1540 “people woulde haue giue one bushel [of
grain] for the grindyng of another” (see Table 1), so the price for
grinding was very high. Unsurprisingly disputes about water courses,
their blockage or diversion, and mills often flared up in dry years.
Flash flooding
Paradoxically, droughts were also associated with flooding: once
rainfall returned, the dried-up, hardened soil could often not absorb
the water at sufficient speed and flash flooding was the consequence.
This has been described for 1253 and 1393 (Anonymous, 1866b; Luard, 1880;
Lumby, 1882; Riley, 1864).
Adaptation measures: water supply, marshland drainage and
fodder crops
Since the severity of drought impacts was evident, it was not only
individuals but also communities and institutions that adapted to the risk.
Most pressing was the lack of water for people, industry and fire
fighting, and hence improvements in water infrastructure, which might
have been considered and planned for years before, are then actually
carried out in a drought year. In 1240 the Countess of Devon brought
water over 5 miles to her manor of Tiverton (Brooks and Glasspoole,
1928). In King's Lynn a cistern fed by pipes was installed in 1386
after at least two dry summers, and in 1474 the authorities in Norwich
intended to construct two new wells after the extremely warm and dry
summer of 1473 (Rawcliffe, 2013; Pribyl, 2017; Halliwell, 1839). The
drought of 1556 seems to have stretched up to Scotland, where Edinburgh
deepened three of its existing wells and undertook the construction of
a new one (Marwick, 1871). The first water from springs outside
Edinburgh arrived in the city in the drought summer of 1676. After
recognizing the need for a public water supply for more than a decade,
Plymouth built Drake's Leat, which brought water from Dartmoor, in the
multi-annual drought of 1590–91 (Brooks and Glasspoole, 1928) and Norwich
replaced its well on the market with a pump in 1685, the second dry
summer half-year in a sequence (Blomefield, 1806). In London, the
first water conduit is recorded for a drought year, 1236, and the New
River, which was planned in 1602, was then begun in 1609, a year
marked by a dry spring and summer. In the severely dry year of 1612,
which followed on the drought in summer 1611, the king became directly
involved in helping to counter difficulties of the project. The New River
was completed in 1613. In the drought year of 1616, which again followed
another severely dry summer half-year, the New River Company was
formed (Stow and Howes, 1631; Tomory, 2017). The number of customers
of the New River water doubled during the drought summer of 1615 and
increased by another third in the dry year of 1616, but then growth slowed and
stagnation and recession marked the 1620s; in the dry summers between
1630 and 1638 the number of customers doubled again (Tomory, 2017).
Attempts were also made to offset the lack of water power by
harnessing other sources of power, even though this is difficult to
trace in the written record: in 1325–26, a multi-annual drought, a
windmill was erected in East Knoyle, Wiltshire, and in 1408–09, when
the latter year was dry, a horse mill was established in Ivinghoe,
Buckinghamshire (Langdon, 2004; Pribyl, 2017).
There is evidence that droughts had the advantage of facilitating the
drainage of the marshland; drained marshland would increase the
available agricultural land. Already in the Middle Ages the draining
of fenland occurred in times drier than average (Hallam, 1965). The
obvious advantage of low water levels for drainage projects was also
utilized when the seventeenth-century large-scale drainage was
undertaken. In 1605 the Commissioner of Sewers for Norfolk noted that
the long-lasting dry summer weather offered a good opportunity to act
upon the royal wishes for draining the fenland (Morgan et al., 2010).
The decision to drain the Great Fen in Cambridgeshire and Norfolk was
taken in 1630, a dry summer half-year, and then carried out during the
generally dry 1630s. A second phase occurred in the dry 1650s (Albright
Knittl, 2007). As with the installation of an improved public water
supply in growing towns, the wish to drain the marshland was
long-standing, but then dry conditions either forced the authorities
into action or offered an easy opportunity for a realization of plans.
The seventeenth century saw the beginning of the Agricultural
Revolution. Not only was the sown acreage expanded and so grain output
raised, but farming methods and productivity also improved. The
cultivation of turnips in the second half of the seventeenth century
was part of that change. Turnips served largely as animal feed and
allowed higher levels of animal husbandry in areas, where pasture or
hay were in short supply. However, considering the high frequency of
drought summers in the 1660s, 1670s and 1680s – the period when
turnips were introduced – the root vegetable also made it possible to offset
the effects of drought on pasture and hay. Tubers are sown as late as
August, when the negative effects of dry weather on grass and the hay
crop were obvious, and turnips could hence supply extra winter feed in
such years (Overton, 1989). Another way to ensure a supply of grass –
although not in defiance of a summer drought, but as a way to ensure
an early fodder supply in spring – was the irrigation of meadow grass
in the form of catchwork meadows or floated meadows; the latter system
was elaborate and first described in 1610 but had come into operation
in the years before 1600, whereas the first method is even older (Jones and
Baker, 1964).
As the drainage of the fenland raised the supply of arable land and
pasture, contemporaries also considered the drainage efforts as a
measure to improve public health. The vapours and smells of marshland
were perceived as miasma, which was thought to be the cause of
disease. However, the drainage of the marshes did indeed reduce the
breeding grounds for the Anopheles mosquito and hence contributed to
improved health, although the value of seventeenth-century drainage in
this respect remains doubtful (Dobson, 1997). Elsewhere efforts for a
better water supply and for sanitation and hygiene, such as improved
street cleaning, must also have helped to reduce the effects of dry
hot weather particularly on the occurrence of enteric fevers and maybe
even plague.
Conclusions
Spring–summer droughts have been a feature of the climate in southern
and eastern England over the centuries. Often the years marked by dry
conditions clustered together. Severe droughts are known to have occurred in
1252, 1325–26, 1361, 1464, 1540, 1590–91, 1636, 1676 and 1685. In
medieval and early modern times, agricultural drought was rarely
involved in the development of famines because the wheat crop was
resilient to warm and dry conditions. The pastoral sector, however,
came under immediate and potentially severe threat during
spring–summer droughts. The hydrological aspects of drought impacted
the water supply of people and livestock and also limited river
transport and the energy supply of industrial and flour mills. Before the widespread use of stone in buildings, towns had a raised risk of
fires spreading through the settlement in dry years. Drought – often
going hand in hand with warmth in spring and summer – could severely
affect health: outbreaks of malaria, gastrointestinal disease and
plague often occurred in drought years.
Data availability
The tree ring data from Cook et al. (2015), Cooper et al. (2012) and Wilson et al. (2013) are available from the NOAA/NCEP paleoclimatology archive (https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatology-data, NOAA, 2020).
The East Anglian July–September precipitation index from 1256 to 1448 is available in Appendix 5 of Pribyl (2017).
All cited information from primary sources used in this article is referenced in the text.
The supplement related to this article is available online at: https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-1027-2020-supplement.
Competing interests
The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
Special issue statement
This article is part of the special issue “Droughts over centuries: what can documentary evidence tell us about drought variability, severity and human responses?”. It is not associated with a conference.
Review statement
This paper was edited by Stefan Grab and reviewed by Neil Macdonald and Alexander Hall.
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