According to the records, two kings of Erin summoned the principal clergy and laity to a council at Temora, in consequence of a general dearth, the land not being sufficient to support the increasing population. The chiefs (majores populi) decreed that a fast should be observed both by clergy and laity, so that they might with one accord _solicit God in prayer to remove by some species of pestilence the burthensome multitudes of the inferior people_, and thus enable the residue to subsist more commodiously. “Omnes majores petebant ut nimia multitudo vulgi per infirmitatem aliquam tolleretur, quia numerositas populi erat occasio famis.” St. Gerald and his associates suggested that it would be more conformable to the Divine Nature, and not more difficult, to multiply the fruits of the earth, than to destroy its inhabitants. An amendment was accordingly moved, “to supplicate the Almighty not to reduce the number of the men till it answered the quantity of corn usually produced, but to increase the produce of the land, so that it might satisfy the wants of the people.” However, the nobles and clergy, headed by St. Fechin, bore down the opposition, and called for a pestilence on the lower orders of the people. According to the records, God’s judgment immediately fell upon the wicked authors of the petition. The two kings who had summoned the convention with St. Fechin, the kings of Ulster and Munster, and a third of the nobles concerned, were cut off by the pestilence--‘Budhe connail,’ which was by some called ‘pestis flava,’ by others ‘infirmitas icteritia.’ A.D. 685, there happened an eruption of Vesuvius. In the year of our Lord 690, rains deluged Italy: six years after, 696, pestilence prevailed in Constantinople, and during the years 703 and 713, Scotland also suffered from epidemic pestilence. Small-pox caused great mortality in Spain, A.D. 714. A.D. 717, 30,000 persons were carried off at Constantinople by pestilence: it again appeared in the years 724 and 729. In the year 732 great numbers perished from pestilential disease at Norwich in England, and also in Syria.