[418] Walsingham, Hist. Angl. II. 109.
[419] Continuator of Higden, IX. 21, 27.
[420] Eulogium Historiarum, III. 369. Otterbourne, ed. Hearne: “From the nativity of St John Baptist to the feast of St Luke,” 1391.
[421] Continuator of Higden, IX. 216.
[422] Ibid. 237.
[423] Walsingham, Hist. Angl. II. 186.
[424] Blomefield’s History of Norfolk, III. 113:—“1390. A great mortality increased in Norfolk and in many other counties in England, and it seemed not unlike the season of the great pestilence: it was occasioned by a great want of victuals, that forced many people to eat unwholesome food, and so brought distempers upon them. This dearth began under the sickle, and lasted to the following harvest [1391], but was not so much for want of corn, as money to purchase it, occasioned by the law made in relation to wool, by which wool became dog-cheap; for a stone of chosen and picked wool of the best sort was sold for 3 sh. and some for 22 pence or 2 sh., so that in these times the woollen manufacture was the great support of the nation.” According to Thorold Rogers, these high prices of wool obtained from 1364 to 1380.
[425] Walsingham, II. 203. The Continuator of Higden (IX. 259) says 12,000. These estimates are, of course, the merest guesses, and extreme exaggerations. The whole population of York would have been under 15,000.
[426] Higden, ibid.
[427] Walsingham, II. 213; St Albans Annals of Ric. II. and Hen. IV.