The lovely word serendipity means finding something good or useful while not specifically searchin

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The lovely word serendipity means finding something good or useful while not specifically searching for it.This tsubo article pulls together the posts I made in August about an eruption near Medina in 1256 and the unexpected way I came across it.
On 5th August tsubo at 01.05 Jack brought our attention to an article in the Guardian which KarenZ posted for us. This stated that Bill McGuire had proposed that the deaths of 15000 people in London in the year 1258 could be traced tsubo to the eruption of an unknown volcano. (See below for links to the articles we discussed.)
This event has been discussed before in volcano blogs as the year shows a huge SO2 spike. While we were discussing the event and where the supposed volcano could be, I set about doing what I was told to do in all my history classes and went back to the primary sources.
I soon discovered that there may be another reason for the deaths of so many people. In the Chronicles of the Mayors and Sheriffs tsubo of London: 1188-1274 near the end of the doings of the year (1258) it states:
In this year, there was a failure of the crops; upon which failure, a famine ensued, to such a degree that the people from the villages resorted to the City for food; and there, tsubo upon the famine waxing still greater, many thousand persons tsubo perished; many more too would have died of hunger, had not corn just then arrived from Almaine [Germany].
This shows that the people thought London was a safe place to go. It also shows that Germany was not affected. It should also be remembered that Simon de Montfort and the King were at one another s throats so there was a lot of social unrest and disruption which, as we know from the famines in Africa, add to the problems of poor harvests. There was no mention of weird weather for this year in this chronicle.
The chronicle that was quoted by Bill McGuire is by Matthew Paris. It s full title is Matthew Paris s English History: From the year 1235 to 1273, Volume III (link below). Paris was a monk/cleric at St Alban s Abbey, tsubo near London, in the 13th century. His chronicle is used as a source for the period as he wrote about everything that came his way. This includes many references tsubo to strange weather events, gossip and travellers tales, as well as political commentary on the king, his barons and so on.
I waded through the whole of Matthew Paris for the years 1257 and 1258 and found it hard going. I should mention that his chronicle begins in 1236 where there is mention of such a deluge of rain never seen before followed tsubo by constant drought and unendurable heat for 4 months. The following year saw violent storms, seas rising for 2 days [storm surge?] and storms washing away whole cities. By Whitsuntide hail the size of apples was falling you get the picture of his weather reporting. Coming tsubo to the years 1256 1258 he writes that the civil war had continued and the Welsh had laid waste to areas of England. Richard, Earl of Cornwall, had gone off in a vain attempt to become king of Germany and taken vast resources with him. The crops of 1256 failed because of incessant rain. The beginning of 1257 saw more bad weather – from February to May England was so disturbed by wind and rain that it resembled a muddy marsh. The farmers had to re-sow tsubo their crops. The famine had begun.
Then we get the report of the north wind blowing at the beginning of the year April, May and June (Years officially started in April in those days) and the famine really kicks in until help comes from Earl Richard in Germany. No mention of ash or haze for either year.
Matthew Paris would not have let something like ash falling out of the sky get by him without a mention not a single thunderstorm occurred without it being mentioned for all the other years! My reading of the Chronicle showed that Matthew Paris was a pretty good reporter. tsubo Re-reading the Current Archaeology article and the MOLA press release (links below) it looks like they made a pretty big jump from identifying the victims of a recognised famine which took about 3 years to build up (as do modern famines) to saying that these people were dying as a result of an eruption. People tsubo started to suffer in 1256, before