1268 Probably murrain only. Chronicon de Lanercost (“Lungessouth”) 1271 Great famine and pestilence Continuator of William of in England and Ireland Newburgh ii. 560 [doubtful] [1274 Beginning of a great imported Rishanger (also _sub anno_ murrain among 1275). Contin. Fl. of sheep Worcester _sub anno_ 1276] 1285 Deaths from heat and Rishanger drought 1294 Great scarcity; epidemics Rishanger. Continuator of of flux Florence of Worcester p. 405. Trivet 1315} General famine in England; Trokelowe. Walsingham, _Hist. 1316} great mortality from fever, Angl._ i. 146. Contin. flux &c.; murrain Trivet, pp. 18, 27. Rogers, _Hist. of Agric. and Prices_ 1322 Famine and mortality in Higden. Annales Londinenses Edward II.’s army in Scotland; scarcity in London The period covered by this long list is itself a long one; and the intervals between successive famine-pestilences are sometimes more than a generation. A history of epidemics is necessarily a morbid history. In this chapter of it, we search out the lean years, saying nothing of the fat years; and by exclusively dwelling upon the dark side we may form an entirely wrong opinion of the comforts or hardships, prosperity or adversity, of these remote times. English writers of the earliest period, when they use generalities, are loud in praise of the advantages of their own island; until we come to the fourteenth century poem of ‘The Vision of Piers the Ploughman’ we should hardly suspect, from their usual strain, that England was other than an earthly paradise, and every village an Auburn, “where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain.” There is a poem preserved in Higden’s _Polychronicon_ by one Henricus, who is almost certainly Henry archdeacon of Huntingdon in the time of Henry I., although the poem is not included among the archdeacon’s extant verse. The subject is ‘De Praerogativis Angliae,’ and the period, be it remarked, is one of the early Norman reigns, when the heel of the conquering race is supposed to have been upon the neck of the English. Yet this poem contains the famous boast of ‘Merry England,’ and much else that is the reverse of unhappy:--