The Great Pestilence (A.D. 1348-9), Now Commonly Known as the Black Death

by Francis Aidan Gasquet

What happened at St. Albans has been recorded by Walsingham in the Gesta Abbatum. Speaking of abbot Michael Mentmore, he writes: "The pestilence, which carried off well-nigh half of all mankind, coming to St. Albans he was struck by a premature death, being touched by the common misery amongst the first of his monks, who were carried off by the deadly disease. And although on Maundy Thursday (i.e., Thursday in Holy Week) he felt the beginning of the ailment, still out of devotion to the feast, and in memory of our Lord's humility, he celebrated solemnly the High Mass, and after that, before dinner, humbly and reverently washed the feet of the poor. Then, after partaking of food, he washed and kissed the [p098] feet of all the brethren. And all the offices of that day he performed alone and without assistance.

"On the morrow, the sickness increasing, he betook himself to bed, and like a true catholic, having made, with contrite heart, a sincere confession, he received the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. And so in sorrow and sadness he lasted till noon of Easter-Day.

"And because the plague was then raging, and the air was corrupt, and the monks were dying day by day," he was buried as quickly as possible. "And there died at that time, forty-seven monks" over and above those who were carried off in great numbers, in (the monasteries which are) the cells (of St. Albans)."[167]

In another place the same writer adds: "By God's permission came the pestilence which swept away such numbers. Amongst the abbots was Dom Michael of pious memory, abbot of St. Albans. At that same time the prior of the monastery, Nicholas, and the sub-prior of the place also died. By the advice, therefore, of those learned in the law the convent chose Dom Thomas de Risburgh, professor of Holy Scripture, as prior of the Monastery."[168]

From the date of the death of the abbot of St. Albans, on April the 12th, 1349, it would appear that the epidemic was then at its height in that part of Hertfordshire. The institutions for the portion of the county in the diocese of Lincoln, however, show that it must have lingered on, at any rate in the northern part, till the late summer.[169]

"In Hertfordshire Manors," writes Mr. Thorold Rogers, "where it (i.e., the great plague of 1349) was specially [p099] destructive, it was the practice, for thirty years, to head the schedule of expenditure with an enumeration of the lives which were lost and the tenancies which were vacated after 1348."[170]

The neighbouring counties of Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Berkshire suffered in the same way. Although the chronicles make no special mention of the ravages of the epidemic in them, it would, indeed, from other sources of information, appear that during the first half of 1349 the mortality in this district was as great as in most other parts of the country. Thus, the general state of the country after the plague had passed may be illustrated from a class of documents known as Inquisitiones post mortem. Theoretically, at least, the whole country belonged to the Sovereign; the actual possessors holding as tenants of the Crown, just as the smaller farmers and peasants held from the tenant in capite. On the death of landowners, therefore, the Crown exercised certain rights and claimed certain dues, which it levied on the estates, the King's officers holding them until the rights of the Sovereign over the in-coming heir were satisfied. To secure these in each county, an official was appointed known as the Escheator, whose duty it was on the death of any landowner, in response to the King's writ, to summon a jury bound by oath to inquire into, and testify to, the extent and value of the land held by the deceased person. The record of their sworn verdict is known as the Inquisitio post mortem.

These returns made into the King's Court of Chancery, even as they now exist—many of them having been lost, or having otherwise disappeared—show a great increase in number in the year 1349. The average number of these inquisitions for the two years 1346 and 1347 is less than 120; in 1348 there are 130, whilst in 1349 there still exist 311 such records. That the number was very considerably [p100] more than this appears from the entry of the writs to the various Escheators upon the "Originalia Roll" for 1349. From this source it may be gathered that the number of writs issued by the King upon information of the death of landed proprietors was 619. Sometimes several such writs are addressed at one time to the Escheator to inquire into many deaths in the same place.[171]

These records afford evidence of the numbers of landowners swept off by the scourge, but their special value lies in the testimony they afford to the state of various manors and holdings examined in regard to their value after the plague had abated. The smaller tenants paying rent or performing land services were, of course, the chief element in the value of an estate, and especially where the land was in common, as was generally the case, empty farmsteads and cottages meant a proportional decrease in the yearly value.

Thus, to take some examples of the evidence of the epidemic in this district. Of the manor of Sladen in Buckinghamshire, not far from Berkhampstead, a jury, about the beginning of August, 1349, declared upon oath that the mill was of no value, since the miller was dead and there were no tenants left to want any corn ground, "because of the mortality." The rents derived hitherto from the free tenants, natives of the soil and cottagers, had been £12 a year, now it is declared that there are no tenants at all, and that the land is lying untilled and useless. On the whole manor one little cottage, with a strip of land, held by one John Robyns on a service rent worth seven shillings a year, was apparently all that was considered to be worth anything. At another place on the same estate all the tenants and cottars except one were dead, and at a third not one had survived.[172]