Major setbacks occurred at the end of the thirteenth century and continued into the fourteenth, when population expansion and declining crop yields coincided with a devastating and widespread plague, the Black Death (1348–1349). This had a major impact on population numbers—which dramatically declined—and on both society and economy. Immediately following an economic crisis, a period of crop failure, and an intensification of criminal activity (which may, perhaps, have been linked to fluctuations in food prices), the plague was devastating in its effects, and forms a turning point in the history of medieval England. Nor was the Black Death an isolated event; further pestilence struck in the 1360s, accentuating the problems.
K Epps on 08 Sep 14"Lindisfarne is intimately connected with the history of Christianity in Britain. In 635 the Northumbrian king, Oswald (r.634-42), summoned an Irish monk named Aidan from Iona - the island-monastery off the south-west coast of what is now Scotland - to be bishop of his kingdom. Oswald granted Aidan and his companions the small tidal island of Lindisfarne on which to found a monastery."
