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

by Francis Aidan Gasquet

Such examples as these will enable the reader to understand the terrible mortality produced by this visitation, and in some measure to appreciate the social difficulties and changes produced by the sudden removal of so large a number of the population from every part of the country.

To pass on to the neighbouring county of Somerset. The institutions given in the episcopal registers of the diocese of Bath and Wells show that the mortality had already commenced in the county as early as November, 1348. The average number of inductions to livings in the county in each month of 1348, previous to November, was less than three; in November it was nine, and in the following month thirty-two. During the next year, 1349, the total number of clergy instituted to the vacant livings of the diocese by the Bishop was 232, against an average in a normal year of 35. For the two years, 1348 and 1349, consequently, out of the 297 benefices to which institutions were made, some 227 may be said, with fair certainty, to have been rendered vacant by the great mortality which then raged in this and other counties of England.

It must be borne in mind that the death of every priest implied the deaths of very many of his flock, so [p166] that, if no other information were attainable, some idea of the extent of the sickness among the laity may be obtained. It cannot but be believed that the people generally suffered as greatly as the clergy, and that, proportionally, as many of them fell victims to the scourge. If the proportion of priests to lay folk was then (as some writers have suggested) about one to fifty—an estimate, however, which would seem to be considerably above the actual relation of laymen to those in sacred orders at that time—the reader can easily form some notion of the terrible mortality among the people of Somersetshire in the first half of 1349.

Some slight information, however, is afforded as to the actual state of the county in one or two instances. In each manor throughout the country there was held periodically what was known as the Court of the manor. At this assembly the business of the estate, so far as the tenants were concerned, was transacted before a chosen and sworn jury. Holders of land under the lord of the manor came before the court to claim their tenements and land as the rightful heirs of tenants deceased, to pay their heriots or fines due to the lord on every entry of a new holder. At this assembly, too, matters of police, the infringement of local customs, and often disputes between the tenants themselves, were disposed of by the officials of the manor. The record of the business of such courts is known as the Court roll, and these documents give some information about the extent of the mortality among the manorial tenants. Here, however, just as in the case of the institutions of clergy, where the actual incumbent only is registered and no account is taken of the larger body of non-beneficed clergy, so on the Court roll only the actual holder of the land is entered, and no notice is taken of the members of his family, or of others in the district, such as labourers and servants, etc., who were not actual tenants of the manor.

Unfortunately the Court rolls for this period are often, if not generally, found to be missing. They are either lost, or the disorganised state of the country consequent upon the [p167] great mortality did not permit of the court being held. There are, however, quite sufficient of these records to afford a tolerably good idea of what must have happened pretty generally throughout the country. Dr. Jessopp has been able by the use of the Norfolk Court rolls to present his readers with a vivid picture of the havoc made by the plague in East Anglia. As an illustration of the same, some notes from a few Court rolls of West of England manors may here be given.

The records of the royal manor of Gillingham, in the county of Dorset, show that at a court, held on "Wednesday next after the feast of St. Lucy (13 December), 1348," heriots were paid on the deaths of some twenty-eight tenants, and the total receipts on this account, which at ordinary courts amounted to but a few shillings, were £28 15s. 8d. Further, at the same sittings, the bailiff notes that he has in hand the lands and tenements of about thirty tenants, who had apparently left no heir to succeed to their holdings. In numbers of cases it is declared that no heriot has been paid, and this although the receipts on this score at the sitting of the court, and on many subsequent sittings, are unusually large. At another court, held early in the following year (1349) the names of two-and-twenty tenants of the manor are recorded as having died, and two large slips of parchment, belonging to the court held on May 6th, give the lists of dead tenants. Thus in the tything of Gillingham alone forty-five deaths are recorded, and in the neighbouring tything of Bourton seventeen.[313]

The next example may be taken from the rolls of a Wiltshire manor, and ought, perhaps, to have been given in the account of the plague in that county. On June the 11th, 1349, a court was held at Stockton, some seven miles from Warminster, consequently only a short distance from [p168] the boundaries of Somerset. The manor, be it remarked, was evidently only a very small one. On the parchment record it is stated that since the previous Martinmas (November 11th, 1348) no court had been held, and from the entries upon the roll it appears that out of a small body of tenants on this estate fourteen had died. How many had been carried off in each household does not, of course, appear, but in the majority of instances it looks very much as if the dead tenant had left no heir behind him.[314]

A third instance is taken from the Court roll of the manor of Chedzoy, near Bridgwater. The plague had made its appearance at Bridgwater, as before related, some time previous to November 21, 1348. It was to be expected, therefore, that the rolls of a manor only three miles off would show some sign of the mortality among the tenants about the same period. As a matter of fact a glance through the parchment record of a court held on St. Katherine's day, November 25, 1348, shows that it had made its appearance some time between September 29th and November 25th. On this latter day some few of the tenants of the manor are noted as dead, and three or four fairly large holdings have also fallen into the hands of the lord of the manor, no heirs being forthcoming. Amongst others, one William Hammond, who had rented and worked a water-mill, at a place called le Slap, had been carried off by the sickness. The house, it is noted, had since, up to the date of the court, stood vacant. The mill wheel no longer spun round at its work, for William Hammond, the miller, had left no one to succeed him in his occupation.

But this was only a beginning. The next court was held on Thursday after the Epiphany, January 8th, 1349. What a terrible Christmas time it must have been for those Somerset villagers on the low-lying ground about Bridgwater, flooded and sodden by the long months of incessant rain! At least twenty more tenants are marked off upon [p169] the roll as dead, and as in this case the actual days of their deaths are given, it is clear the plague claimed many victims in this neighbourhood about the close of December, 1348.

Between this and March 23, 1349, the sickness was at its worst in this manor of Chedzoy. The record of the proceedings at the court, held on "Monday after the feast of St. Benedict," 1349, occupies two long skins of parchment closely written on both sides. Some 50 or 60 fines are paid by new tenants on their taking possession of the lands and houses, which had belonged to others now dead and gone. Again, who can tell how many had perished in each house? One thing is absolutely clear. In this single Somerset village many homes had been left vacant without a solitary inhabitant; many were taken over by new tenants not connected with the old occupier; and in more than one instance people came forward to act as guardians to young children who had apparently been left alone in the world by the death of every near relative. Take an instance. At this court one John Cran, who, by the way, took up the house and lands formerly held by his father, who is said to have died, also agreed with the officer of the court to take charge of William, the son of Nicholas atte Slope, for the said Nicholas, and apparently every other near relative of the boy William had perished in the sickness.