[149] B. Mus., Arund. MS. 17, fol. 55b. Oliver (Monasticon Dioecesis Exoniensis, p. 359) adds: "And no fewer than 88 persons living within the Abbey gates." In Noakes' History of the Monastery and Cathedral of Worcester, p. 94, it is said that the virulence of the plague of 1349 may be judged "from the fact that in the Abbey of Newenham, in the West of England, out of a hundred and eleven inmates, only the Abbot and two monks survived." No authority is cited by these writers.
[150] Reg. Grandisson, i, 26b.
[151] Itinerarum, ed. J. Nasmith, p. 112.
[152] Sir J. Maclean, Deanery of Trigg Minor, i, p. 128.
[153] Reg. Grandisson, i, 26b.
[TOC] [p092]
CHAPTER VI. PROGRESS OF THE DISEASE IN LONDON AND THE SOUTH.
For a time the people of Gloucester strove, but in vain, to protect their city by prohibiting all intercourse with plague-stricken Bristol. The contagion passed from one district to another, from town to town, and village to village, soon involving the entire land in one common misfortune. "There was no city, nor town, nor hamlet, nor even, save in rare instances, any house," writes an English contemporary, "in which this plague did not carry off the whole, or the greater portion, of the inhabitants." And so great was the destruction of life "that the living scarcely sufficed to tend the sick and bury the dead." . . . In some places, on account of the deficiency of cemeteries, the Bishop consecrated new burial grounds.
"In that time there was sold a quarter of wheat for 12d., a quarter of barley for 9d., a quarter of beans for 8d., a quarter of oats for 6d., a large ox for 40d., a good horse for six shillings, which formerly was worth 40 shillings, a good cow for two shillings, and even for eighteen-pence. And even at this price buyers were only rarely to be found. And this pestilence lasted for two years and more before England was freed from it."
"When, by God's mercy it ceased, there was such a scarcity of labourers that none could be had for agricultural purposes. On account of this scarcity, women, and even small children, were to be seen with the plough and leading the waggons."[154]