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Unprecedented rains lashed northern Europe between 1314 and 1315 causing widespreadflooding and chaos across the mainly agrarian landscape. As a result, the harvests failedspectacularly between 1315 and 1317, leading to famine across swathes of the continent untilthe bountiful harvest of 1318 relieved the situation.1This event has become known to historyas the Great Famine of 1315-1317. It has been suggested that up to 15% of Europe’s population died as a result of this famine which was accompanied by a sheep murrain in 1316 and a moresignificant bovine panzootic between 1319-1321, that severely reduced livestock numbers,compounding the social and economic consequences of the famine. Surviving contemporary records relating to the famine are particularly abundant in England and so the country has naturally been the subject of numerous studies by historians, though mainly in the form of a national-level macro approach. My dissertation, however, will take an alternative viewpoint and examine the consequences of famine at the micro-level upon a single manor belonging tothe Bishop of Winchester situated in Downton in Wiltshire, southern England……