A.D. 1029 and 1031, epidemic pestilence again pervaded Europe, especially England and Gaul, after tempestuous seasons, devastations of locusts, meteors, eruptions of volcanoes, comets, intolerable vicissitudes of the weather, and famine had caused great havoc.
A.D. 1033, a pestilence infested England; and two years afterwards, 1035, in the month of June, so intense was the cold that all the corn and fruits were destroyed. There was another eruption of Vesuvius the year following. A.D. 1042, it snowed heavily during harvest-time; it rained excessively throughout the year in many parts of Europe; the sea overwhelmed Flanders, and a terrible commotion of the elements was the precursor of famine and pestilence in England, Gaul, Germany, &c.; cattle and men were equally destroyed. The following year, 1043, there was another eruption of Vesuvius, and also one in A.D. 1048. A.D. 1063 the river Thames was frozen over for fourteen weeks. Pestilential diseases, such as fluxes, pleurisies, fevers, &c., carried off many hundred thousands of Saracens marching to invade Rome in the year 1064: this pestilential epidemic continued until 1066. A.D. 1067, leprosy being on the increase in Spain, lazar-houses for the lepers were first established at Valencia by Ruy Diaz de Villar, which were called ‘Cid Cunpandor.’ About this period an awful plague swept away a great part of the inhabitants of Egypt and Arabia. The following year, 1068, a great pestilence raged in York and Durham (in England), and a terrible plague devastated Constantinople. A.D. 1075, so intense was the cold this year that the Thames was frozen over from the month of November until April the following year, 1076; with the exception of a very few days, there was scarcely any thaw during all this period. A.D. 1077, London was nearly destroyed by fire. About this period, and two years after, famine, pestilence, and locusts made great havoc in Italy, Russia, Flanders, and in England.
In the years 1087–88 and 1089, very rainy, cold summers and extreme winters were experienced in England, Gaul, and Germany, when pestilence and famine did much mischief in those countries. There were also famine and epidemic disease in Italy. In the latter year, 1089, erysipelas prevailed epidemically in France, causing great mortality. A.D. 1090, a terrible earthquake was felt throughout England, which was followed by a great scarcity of fruit and a late, unproductive harvest. The year following, a severe storm was felt in several parts of England; the wind was at south-west, especially at Winchelscomb, Gloucestershire, where the steeple of the church was thrown down; there was much thunder and lightning; the crucifix with the image of the Virgin was broken in pieces. On the 5th of October, during the storm a thick mist for several hours darkened the sky. A few days after, on the 17th, a thunder-storm from the south-west destroyed upwards of 500 houses in London: it unroofed Bow church; and at Old Sarum the steeple was struck down, with many dwelling-houses.
A.D. 1093, a tremendous inundation occurred in Syria, by which prodigious numbers of the inhabitants and cattle, such as oxen and horses, were destroyed. A.D. 1096–97, 1100, 1103–4, and 1105, pestilence and famine happened from unhealthy seasons; there occurred excessive rains, terrible inundations, severe winters, inclement summers, variable autumns, multitudes of worms (papiliones), and violent hurricanes in England, Palestine, and Holland, in which latter place 100,000 persons were drowned by the inroads of the sea. It was during this period, A.D. 1100, that the lands of Godwin, earl of Kent, to this day called the ‘Goodwin Sands,’ were inundated. 1104, a comet was seen. The disease which prevailed in England was an erysipelatous epidemic fever, in which the limbs of the sick were discovered to be thickly beset with black and livid spots, like carbuncles in the plague. Two years after, fevers, fluxes, &c., were rife, and pestilence continued to prevail in various parts of Europe in the years 1108–9, 1110–11. There appeared a comet in the years 1107 and 1110. A.D. 1113, the water of the Medway failed so greatly, that the smallest boats could not float in its channel. The Thames about the same period was so low between the Tower and London Bridge that women and children waded over. Owing to so great an ebb of the ocean, the sands were laid bare for a whole day for several miles from the shore: pestilence ravaged Judea. A.D. 1116, severe earthquakes were experienced in the month of December in various parts of England, especially in Shropshire. Two years previously, 1114, several bridges, being built of wood, were broken down in England by the ice, when it thawed after the severe frost.
From the year 1120, a pestilential period equal in intensity and destructiveness to that between the years 740 and 1000 (a period of 260 years), preceded by famine, murrain, &c., commenced, and continued to ravage various parts of the globe until 1392 (272 years), a brief notice of which, taken from the chronicles, will show its extent and fatality.
From A.D. 1120 unto 1125, erysipelas raged epidemically with great mortality in England, and it has been computed that, by it, a third of the population perished in those years. A.D. 1126–27 and 1128 a destructive pestilence again prevailed in England. A.D. 1130, a severe earthquake was felt in Shropshire in the month of September. A.D. 1133, the Po was frozen over from Cremona to the sea, and the year after, 1134, an earthquake occurred, just as King Henry was about to embark for Normandy, when flames of fire burst out of certain rifts of the earth with great violence. On the 2nd of August there was an eruption of Vesuvius, A.D. 1136, and the year following, a severe earthquake swallowed up the city of Catania, with more than 15,000 of the inhabitants. Dismal pestilence occurred again in England, lasting twelve years, from 1133 unto 1146; famine also added to the miseries of the inhabitants, and much cattle were destroyed by murrain, and for want of provender.
From the year 1150 to 1169 severe winters and dry summers were experienced; there were frequent inundations and earthquakes; and famine and pestilence swept the world, especially Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Gaul, Sicily, Judea, Asia, and Africa. A.D. 1164, there was a great inundation in Friesland, which covered nearly the whole country, and destroyed vast numbers of the inhabitants. A.D. 1167, Henry II.’s palace in Dublin, at which he spent his Christmas, was built of wattles, with a straw roof, and the sides formed of clay. A.D. 1172, great mortality from dysentery was experienced in England; and two years after, small-pox, measles, epidemic catarrh, scarlet fever, quinsies, and pleurisies were greatly prevalent: similar maladies were rife in various other parts of the world from 1175 to 1193. A.D. 1179, about Christmas, at a place called Oxen-hall, near Darlington, in the bishopric of Durham, the earth raised itself up like a lofty tower, and thus remained for several hours, when on a sudden it sunk down again with a horrid noise, and formed a deep pit, which continues until this day: it is supposed that the wells that are now called Hell-kettles were formed by this convulsion of nature. A.D. 1183 and following years, a severe pestilence scourged England, and the plague raged at Rome. A.D. 1185, an earthquake overthrew the church at Lincoln; at the same time other places in the neighbourhood suffered from the shock. Castile, and principally the city of Leon, suffered from a most cruel plague which spared neither sex nor grade, visiting palaces as well as the hovels of the poor. Many of the bishops were carried off.
A.D. 1190. The old chronicler Geoffrey de Vinsauf describes a terrible famine and pestilence that happened in 1190, “in the army of the Crusaders at the siege of Acre, owing to the villany of the Marquis of Montferrat, the governor of Tyre, who not only refused to supply the soldiers with food, but would not either allow of the townsfolk to send them provisions.” So great was the famine and the scarcity, that “a moderate measure of wheat which a man could carry under his arm was sold for 100 aurei, a chicken for twelve sols, and an egg for six deniers. The men were reduced to feed on their horses, which they were compelled to kill, not even the entrails being rejected. Men of high rank and the sons of great men fed upon grass even; and herbs such as they once despised and believed not fit for human use, the greatness of the famine made now most sweet to the starving. The public ovens were constantly occupied by men fighting for the bread, and noblemen, suffering from the pangs of hunger, became thieves and stole the loaves from the bakers’ shops.” To add to their misery, heavy rains fell, and pestilence broke out amongst them, so that a thousand deaths happened daily. De Vinsauf says, “The unusual showers, by their constant and continuous fall, had such an injurious effect upon the soldiers, that, with the excess of the affliction, their limbs becoming swollen, the whole body was affected as with the dropsy, and from the violence of the disease the teeth of some of them were loosened and fell out.” But few of those attacked recovered. Every section of this old work, descriptive of this pestilence, ends with a fierce imprecation on the Marquis for his desertion and perfidy.
A.D. 1193 and 1194, there was a famine in Italy, and pestilence swept England, continuing till 1196. “The common people perished in every quarter for lack of food, and the fiercest pestilence followed, in the form of acute fever, which destroyed such numbers that scarcely any were left to minister unto the sick; the customary funeral service ceased, and in many places large ditches were made, into which the dead were thrown.”—(Chron. W. Humford, vol. ii. p. 546–7.) There was, A.D. 1196, a great famine and plague in the principality of Catalonia, and 1199, pestilential fever raged at Cordova, in which the celebrated physician Averrhoes observed that every patient who was bled before purging invariably died.
England again suffered severely from epidemic pestilence in the year 1200, and also in the following year. A.D. 1205, a severe frost was experienced in England from the 14th of January unto the 22nd of March.