Qualla: 1382 Dover Straits Earthquake

1382 Dover Straits Earthquake: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. At three o'clock on the afternoon of 21 May 1382, the bishops gathered at Blackfriars in London to debate the heretical writings of John Wycliffe felt the floor move under them. The walls of the friary swayed; the men around the long table sat very still. The shaking was strong enough that the Earl of Northumberland later said he had been thrown half out of his chair. The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Courtenay, took the tremor as a divine sign. The synod he had convened to condemn Wycliffe's translations of the Bible became known forever afterwards as the Earthquake Synod, although which way God was voting was never quite agreed.

Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0

1382 Dover Straits Earthquake: Six Minutes Under the Strait

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alexrk2, CC BY-SA 3.0. Modern seismologists estimate the magnitude at around 6.0, with a maximum felt intensity of VII to VIII on the Mercalli scale. The epicentre was somewhere beneath the Strait of Dover, the narrow stretch of sea between Calais and the white cliffs where the English Channel meets th...

Image: Alexrk2 | CC BY-SA 3.0

1382 Dover Straits Earthquake: The Cathedral Shaken

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. Canterbury Cathedral was the spiritual heart of medieval England, the seat of Thomas Becket's shrine, the destination of the pilgrims Chaucer would describe just a few years later. On 21 May 1382 it took serious damage. The campanile, the bell-tower beside the south transept, par...

Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0

1382 Dover Straits Earthquake: The Earthquake Synod

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. Courtenay had called the Blackfriars synod to examine twenty-four propositions drawn from the writings of John Wycliffe, the Oxford theologian who argued the Bible should be available in English and questioned papal authority. Wycliffe had powerful protectors at court, but his id...

Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0

1382 Dover Straits Earthquake: Reading the Tremor

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. Medieval chroniclers treated the earthquake as a portent and competed to interpret it. The monk Henry Knighton wrote that the shaking was a sign of God's anger at Wycliffe's heresies. The Lollards turned the same evidence the other way, arguing the earthquake was the earth itself...

Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0

1382 Dover Straits Earthquake: An Unstable Sea Floor

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. England is not a seismically active country by world standards, but the Dover Strait is one of its noisier corners. The London-Brabant Massif has produced earthquakes for thousands of years; the 1382 event sits among a small group of significant historical shocks felt across the ...

Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0