SCEMS | EMDG | Alex Hibberts, University of Durham

Sheffield Centre for Early Modern Studies

Everyday Climate Change: Experiencing Historic Climatic Variability from the Bottom-Up, c.1400-1550

<p>Late medieval Europe saw the demise of the Medieval Warm Period and the beginning of the Little Ice Age bringing climatic disruption and contributing to disconcerting socio-economic change. Much has been written about the effects that historic climatic variability has had on past polities and states. But how were ordinary people impacted? How did farmers, fishermen, and cheesemongers adapt the regular rhythms of their existence to the challenges of marine transgression and coastal erosion? Taking four communities of English Augustinian canons - institutions arguably deeply embedded in the lives of those lower down the social scale - this paper will suggest pathways to reconstructing a common experience.  </p><p>Augustinian canons ran hospitals for lepers, managed vast marshland estates with hundreds of tenants, and served as pastors in parish churches. Their role as coastal landlords ensured their vulnerability to violent sea storms demanding leadership of drainage projects, construction of flood defences, and the shifting of land-use towards activity more resilience to a changing climate. After the dissolution, secular owners took over many of the activities of their monastic predecessors, including estate administration and patronage of parish churches. Substantive medieval records, including cartularies, charters, and rent rolls, were used for legal reference into the seventeenth-century, becoming objects of antiquarian fascination afterwards. Thus, whilst ordinary voices may not have survived, whispers may still be heard allowing us to write a more diverse, bottom-up story of past climatic change. </p>

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SCEMS | EMDG | Alex Hibberts, University of Durham

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