An indication of the same difficulties which beset the people of Cumberland at this time is found in the case of the prior of Hagham, an alien house, to farm which, during the time it was in the King's hands on account of his French war, the prior had been appointed, on condition of his paying the sum of threepence a day in rent to be paid to the Bishop of Carlisle. At this time he could not get even this out of the land, and could not live, by reason of the great dearness of provisions.[296]
The city of Carlisle also in 1352 was relieved of taxation to a great extent, because "it is rendered void, and more than usual is depressed, by the mortal pestilence lately raging in those parts."
The two remaining counties of England, Durham and Northumberland, were no exceptions to the general mortality. In the former there were some 93 beneficed clergy and in the latter about 72, figures from which, on the usual calculation, may be deduced the numbers of the beneficed clergy who died at this time.
In the Durham Cursitor records of this time a glimpse is [p159] afforded of the state of these northern counties. The Halmote courts were similar to the manor courts, and were held by commissioners appointed under the great seal of the Palatinate of Durham, by the Bishop's certificate, to receive surrender of copyhold lands, to settle fines, contentions, and generally to transact the business of the estates. At one of these Halmote courts, held at Houghton on the 14th of July, 1349, it is recorded: "that there is no one who will pay the fine for any land, which is in the lord's hands through fear of the plague. And so all are in the same way of being proclaimed as defaulters until God shall bring some remedy." At another court "all refused their fines on account of the pestilence." In another, after stating the receipts, the record adds: "And not more on account of the poverty and pestilence;" and one tenant "was unwilling to take the land in any other way, since even if he survived the plague, he absolutely refused to pay a fine." There are many similar instances in the records at this period, and in one case it is noted that "a man and his whole family had fled before the dreaded disease."[297]
In Northumberland the case of the people was so desperate that in 1353 more than £600, which was owing to the King for taxes for five and twenty parishes named, was allowed to stand over for some months since it was hopeless to press for payment.[298]
Of Newcastle the same story is told. "It has been shown us," writes the King, "in a serious complaint by the men of Newcastle-on-Tyne, that, since very many merchants and other rich people who were wont to pay the greater part of the tenth, fifteenth, and other burdens of the town, have died in the deadly pestilence lately raging in the town, and since the population remaining alive, who were wont to live by their trading, are by the said pestilence and other adverse causes in this time of war, [p160] so impoverished that they hardly possess sufficient to live upon,"[299] they cannot now pay what is due.
At Alnwick, still further north, the plague may be traced into the spring of the following year, 1350; at least, the chronicle of the abbey there states that "in the year 1350 (which for them began March 25th) John, abbot of Alnwick, died in the common mortality."[300] Lastly, it is related by two contemporary authors that the Scotch carried the disease over the borders into their own country. "The Scots," writes Knighton, "hearing of the cruel pestilence among the English, thought this had happened to them as a judgment at the hand of God. They laughed at their enemies, and took as an oath the expression, 'Be the foul deth of Engelond,' and so thinking that the terrible judgment of God had overwhelmed the English, they assembled in the forest of Selkirk with the intention of invading England. The terrible mortality, however, came upon them, and the Scotch were scattered by the sudden and cruel death, and there died in a short time about five thousand."[301]
An account of the visitation given in the continuation of a chronicle, probably written at the time, and possibly by a monk at Tynemouth, may fitly conclude this review of the course of the epidemic in England; telling, though it does, ever the same story, and reading like an echo of the plaint first raised in Europe on the shores of the Bosphorus and in the islands of the Mediterranean. "In the year of our Lord 1348, and in the month of August," writes this chronicler, "there began the deadly pestilence in England which three years previously had commenced in India, and then had spread through all Asia and Africa, and coming into Europe had depopulated Greece, Italy, Provence, [p161] Burgundy, Spain, Aquitaine, Ireland, France, with its subject provinces, and at length England and Wales, so far, at least, as to the general mass of citizens and rustic folk and poor, but not princes and nobles.
"So much so that very many country towns and quarters of innumerable cities are left altogether without inhabitants. The churches or cemeteries before consecrated did not suffice for the dead; but new places outside the cities and towns were at that time dedicated to that use by people and bishops. And the said mortality was so infectious in England that hardly one remained alive in any house it entered. Hence flight was regarded as the hope of safety by most, although such fugitives, for the most part, did not escape death in the mortality, although they obtained some delay in the sentence. Rectors and priests, and friars also, confessing the sick, by the hearing of the confessions, were so infected by that contagious disease that they died more quickly even than their penitents; and parents in many places refused intercourse with their children, and husband with wife."[302]