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

by Francis Aidan Gasquet

The same author has called attention to some obituary notes in the calendar prefixed to the Chartulary of Derley abbey.

"A glance at this obituary," he says, "is sufficient to draw the attention of the reader to the remarkable number of deaths in the year 1349. . . . Of the character of the plague we can form some idea when we consider the extent of its ravages in a single household—a household the most wealthy of the neighbourhood, and situated in as [p148] healthy and uncrowded a spot as any that could be found on all the fair hillsides of Derbyshire. Within three months Sir William de Wakebridge lost his father, his wife, three brothers, two sisters, and a sister-in-law. Sir William, on succeeding to the Wakebridge estate, through this sad list of fatalities, appears to have abandoned the profession of arms and to have devoted a very large share of his wealth to the service of God in his own neighbourhood. The great plague had the effect of thoroughly unstringing the consciences of many of the survivors, and a lamentable outbreak of profligacy was the result."

The accounts for the Lordship of Drakelow, some four miles from Burton-on-Trent, may be taken as a sample of what must have been the case elsewhere. There is noted a loss, to begin with, "upon turf sold from the waste of the manor to tenants who had died in the time of the pestilence." The decrease of rent is very considerable. From "the customs of the manor there is nothing, because all these tenants died in the time of the plague." Then follow the names of seventy-four tenants, from all of whom only 13s. 9–3/4d. had been received in the period covered by the account, and practically from the entire manor there had been no receipt except for grass. Then, instead of the harvest being gathered in, as before it had been, by means of the services of the tenants, this year paid-labour had to be employed at a cost of £22 18s. 10d. On the receipt side of the account appear the values of the cows, oxen, and horses of tenants who had died, and whose goods and animals passed into the possession of the lord of the manor.[270]

In Nottinghamshire the proportion of deaths among the beneficed clergy is found, as in other cases, to be fully one-half the total number. Out of 126 benefices in the county the incumbent died in sixty-five.[271]

Eastwards, again, the county of Lincoln lies between [p149] Nottinghamshire and the sea. At an early period Pope Clement VI. granted to the priests and people of the city and diocese of Lincoln great indulgences at the hour of death, "since on their behalf a petition had been made to him which declared that the deadly pestilence had commenced in the said city and diocese."[272] The extent of the county is large, and its endowed livings numerous. In all, not including its forty-nine monasteries, the beneficed clergy of the county numbered some 700, and from this some estimate may be formed of the probable number of clerics who died in Lincolnshire in the year 1349.

The chronicle of Louth Park, a Cistercian abbey in the county, contains a brief note upon the epidemic. "This plague," it says, "laid low equally Jew, Christian, and Saracen; together it carried off confessor and penitent. In many places it did not leave even a fifth-part of the people alive. It struck the whole world with terror. Such a plague has not been seen, or heard of, or recorded before this time, for it is thought so great a multitude of people were not overwhelmed by the waters of the deluge, which happened in the day of Noah. In this year many monks of Louth Park died; amongst them was Dom Walter de Luda, the Abbot, on July 12th, who was much persecuted because of the manor of Cockrington, and he was buried before the high altar by the side of Sir Henry Vavasour, Knight. To him Dom Richard de Lincoln succeeded the same day, canonically elected according to the institutes of Our Lord and the Order."[273]

From a document relating to the Chapter of Lincoln it would appear that the Courts of Law did not sit every term, during the universal visitation. The dean and chapter complain that, whereas "from time beyond all memory" they had received 6s. 8–1/2d. for some 66 acres of arable and four acres of meadow at Navenby, this year they had not done so. Still they were called upon to pay the King's [p150] dues. They appealed; but there was no cause tried at Trinity anno 23º (1349) "because of the absence of our judges assigned to hold the common pleas, by reason of the plague then raging."[274]

The audit of the Escheator's accounts for the county of Lincoln proves that the distress was very real. Saier de Rocheford, who held the office for Rutland and Lincoln in 1351, sought to be relieved of £20 18s. 1d., which he was charged to pay for money he should have received, on the ground that he had got nothing, "because of the mortality."[275] Three years later, moreover, he again pleads that he is unable to raise more, "because of the deadly pestilence of men and of tenants of the land, who died in the year 1349, and on account of the dearth of tenants" since.

The people, he adds, were so impoverished that they could pay nothing for "Wapentakes."[276]

Archbishop Zouche of York was apparently one of the first of the English prelates to recognise the gravity of the epidemic, which in 1348 was devastating Southern Europe, and ever creeping northwards towards England. Before the end of July, 1348, he wrote to his official at York, ordering prayers. "Since man's life on earth is a warfare," he writes, "those fighting amidst the miseries of this world are troubled by the uncertainty of a future, now propitious, now adverse. For the Lord Almighty sometimes permits those whom he loves to be chastised, since strength, by the infusion of spiritual grace, is made perfect in infirmity. It is known to all what a mortal pestilence and infection of the atmosphere is hanging over various parts of the world, and especially England, in these days. This, indeed, is caused by the sins of men who, made callous by prosperity, neglect to remember the benefits of the Supreme Giver." He goes on to say that it is only by prayer that the scourge can be turned away, and he, therefore, orders that in all parish churches, on every Wednesday and Friday, there [p151] shall be processions and litanies, "and in all masses there be said the special prayer for the stay of pestilence and infection of this kind."[277]