Famine, Pestilence, and War: Re-evaluating crisis mortality in north-east England, c. 1580 to 1700

This thesis applies a mixed methods approach to re-evaluate crisis mortality in north-east England across the long seventeenth century, utilising evidence from parish registers alongside a substantial body of administrative sources from across the region. These include court deposition books, churchwardens’ account books, wills and inventories, petitions and correspondence. Addressing the impact of harvest failures, warfare, and epidemic disease upon early modern northeast England solely through parish register data drastically under-estimates the disproportionate impact these events had upon the most vulnerable groups within communities. Death rates were often particularly high amongst children and those with only a short period of pre-crisis settlement in the parish. Additionally, and particularly in areas of high migration, parish-level mortality rates cannot in isolation account for the disruption experienced within social networks which crossed both parish and town-level boundaries. For the most vulnerable, living through a period of crisis could have life-long negative repercussions. By the end of the seventeenth century, the risks posed by plague and famine were greatly diminished but anxieties regarding these threats did not diminish at the same rate. Viewing the period through a search for a crisis has an interpretative cost as it emphasises episodic disturbances above longer-term systemic issues such as malnutrition and hardening attitudes towards the poor. Our interpretations of what constituted a crisis for early modern communities may be subtly reshaped by the nature of surviving administrative records, their inconsistent levels of survival and their incomplete coverage of marginalised groups. This thesis aims to address this methodological challenge, via a case study of north-east England.