[38] Leechdoms, Wort-cunning and Starcraft of Early England. Edited by Cockayne for the Rolls Series, 3 vols. 1864-66.
[39] It is illustrative of the confusion which arises from careless copying by later compilers of history that Roger of Wendover, in his Flores Historiarum (Eng. Hist. Society’s edition I. 159), takes Beda’s Sussex reference to famine and makes it do duty, under the year 665, for the great general plague of 664, having apparently overlooked Beda’s entirely distinct account of the latter.
[40] Hist. Eccles. § 290:—“Siquidem tribus annis ante adventum ejus in provinciam, nulla illis in locis pluvia ceciderat, unde et fames acerbissima plebem invadens inopia nece prostravit. Denique ferunt quia saepe quadraginta simul aut quinquaginta homines inedia macerati procederent ad praecipitium aliquod sive ripam maris, et junctis misere manibus pariter omnes aut ruina perituri, aut fluctibus absorbendi deciderent. Verum ipso die, quo baptisma fidei gens suscepit illa, descendit pluvia serena sed copiosa, refloruit terra, rediit viridantibus arvis annus laetus et frugifer.”
[41] Green Short History of the English People, p. 39: “The very fields lay waste, and the land was scourged by famine and plague.” I have missed this reference to plague in the original authorities. A passage in Higden’s Polychronicon (V. 258) may relate to that period, although it is referred to the mythical time of Vortigern.
[42] Stow, in enumerating the instances of public charity in his Survey of London, ascribes the melting of the church plate to Ethelwald, bishop of Winchester in the reign of King Edgar, about the year 963.
[43] The murrain was a flux, anglicé “scitha” (Roger of Howden) or “schitta” (Bromton).
[44] Simeon of Durham, in Rolls series, II. 188. As to fugitives, see Chr. Evesham, p. 91.
[45] Gesta Pontif. Angl. p. 208.
[46] Simeon of Durham, “On the Miracles of St Cuthbert,” Works, II. 338-40.
[47] Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Malmesbury adds “a mortality of men.”