One such period of extraordinary scarcity all over England fell in the years 1438-39. The chronicle of Croyland says that there were three wet harvests in succession, that famine had been almost constant for two years, and that the people were reduced to eating dried herbs and roots[435]. That would have been a famine of the old kind, like those of 1258 and 1315, wheat having touched 20_s._ But it should not lead us to suppose that the disastrous period of the end of Edward III.’s reign and of the reign of Richard II. was continued throughout the fifteenth century. It is true that the records of that century are scantier than for earlier periods; the monastic chronicles have all ceased, except those of St Albans and Croyland, and the citizens’ diaries, which took their place, have hardly begun. It is possible that a fuller record would have shown a greater prevalence of distress throughout the country. It is probably owing to the scantiness of the history that the views of the fifteenth century range from the extreme of optimism to the extreme of pessimism. Where little is known, much may be imagined. Thus, a recent writer on _England in the Fifteenth Century_[436], says that “all attempts to specify the years of scarcity would only mislead”; and again: “There is hardly any period of five years during that time [15th century] without these ghastly records.” Another recent writer[437] remarks upon the fifteenth century being called a time of rude plenty, and sets against that “the famines, the plagues, the skin-diseases, the miserable quality of the food, the insecurity of life and property, the hovels in which the people lived, and the tyranny and oppression of a time of unsettled government.” It is needless to controvert the merely subjective impression in an author’s mind. But, in order to clear our ideas, let us take these things one by one. What were firstly the famines? There is no great one but that of 1438-39, which was due to a succession of wet harvests, and was equally severe in Scotland and in France, having in them caused famine-sickness as well as plague. Of the plagues, which were certainly no worse than in the Elizabethan and Stuart times, I shall speak in detail almost at once. Of the skin-diseases, there is nowhere a word said: another writer[438] specifies leprosy as afflicting England “all over the country” in the fifteenth century, whereas it can be shown that the prevalence of that disease, such as it had ever been in England, had almost ceased, and its sentimental vogue passed, in the reign of Edward III. The miserable quality of the food and the wretched hovels have certainly no special relevancy to the period[439]; on the contrary, the picture that we get of the manor of Castle Combe in the fifteenth century is that of a prosperous community, although not a highly moral one. As to insecurity of life and property, and oppression of government, there seems