That the first half of the fourteenth century was a period of ecological and economic shocks is truism requires no argumentation. In England, as elsewhere in Northern Europe, the local population was hit by a series of harsh crises, the three most devastating of which were the Great Famine of 1314/5-22, the Great Cattle Plague of c.1315-21 and the Black Death of 1348-51. While the latter has be...