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

by Francis Aidan Gasquet

Another curious case, which we may suspect really came from the same cause, is noted at an ordination held in December, 1352, at Ely. Of the four then receiving the priesthood two were monks, and from the other two an oath of obedience to the Bishop and his successors was enacted, together with a promise "that they would serve any parish church to which they might be called."[386]

Many instances could be given of the ignorance consequent upon the ordinations being hurried on, and upon laymen, otherwise unfitted for the sacred mission, being too hastily admitted to the vacant cures. To take but two instances, from Winchester, which may serve to illustrate this and at the same time to show the zeal with which the mediæval Bishops endeavoured to guard against the evil. On 24th June, 1385, the illustrious William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, caused Sir Roger Dene, Rector of the church of St. Michael, in Jewry Street, Winchester, to swear upon the Holy Gospels that he would learn within twelve months the articles of faith, the cases reserved to the Bishop, the Ten Commandments, the seven works of mercy, the seven mortal sins, the Sacraments of the Church, and the form of administering and [p208] conferring them, and also the form of baptizing, etc., as contained in the Constitutions of Archbishop Peckham.[387] The same year, on July 2nd, the Bishop exacted from John Corbet, who on the 2nd of June previous had been instituted to the rectory of Bradley, in Hampshire, a similar obligation to learn the same, before the feast of St. Michael then next ensuing. In the former case Roger Dene had been rector of Ryston, in Norfolk, and had been instituted to his living at Winchester by the Bishop of Norwich only on 21st June, 1358, three days before Bishop William of Wykeham required him to enter into the obligation detailed above.[388]

It has been already remarked that one obvious result of the great mortality, so far as the Church is concerned, was the extraordinary decrease in the number of candidates for sacred orders. In the Winchester diocese, for example, the average number of priests ordained in each of the three years preceding 1349 was 111; whilst in the 15 subsequent years, up to 1365, when Bishop Edyndon died, the yearly average was barely 20; and in the thirty-four years, from 1367 to 1400, even with so zealous a prelate as William of Wykeham presiding over the diocese, the annual average number of ordinations to the sacred priesthood was only 27; a number which was further decreased during the progress of the 15th century.[389]

The same striking result of the plague, which cannot but have had a very serious effect upon the Church at large, is manifested elsewhere. The Ely registers, for example, show that the average number of all those ordained, for the seven years before 1349, was 101–1/2; whilst for the seven years after that date it was but 40–1/2. In 1349 no ordinations whatever apparently were held, and [p209] the average number of priests ordained yearly, from 1374 to 1394, was only 14. In fact the total number ordained in that period was only 282, whilst of these many entered the priesthood for other dioceses, and more than half, namely 161, were members of the various religious orders; so that the ranks of the diocesan clergy of Ely appear to have received but few recruits during the whole of this time.

In the diocese of Hereford, to take another example, previously to 1349, there were some very large ordinations. Thus, in 1346, on the 11th of March, 438 people were ordained to various grades in the sacred ministry. Of these some 89 received the priesthood, 49 of them being ordained for the diocese of Hereford. Again, on the 10th of June in the same year, Bishop Trileck conferred orders, in the parish church of Ledbury, upon 451 candidates, of whom 148 were made priests; 56 being intended for his own diocese. Altogether, in that year, some 319 priests were ordained by the Bishop; half of the number being his own clergy.[390] About the same numbers were ordained in the year of the plague itself, 1349, and 371 in the following year. In fact, till 1353 the number remains large, but the greater portion of those ordained were intended for other dioceses. The subjects of the Bishop of Hereford at once show a falling off similar to that noticed in Winchester and Ely. Thus, from 1345 to 1349, the average number of subjects ordained by the Bishop for his own diocese was 72. In the next five years it was only 34, whilst in no subsequent year during Bishop Trileck's pontificate did it rise above 23.

The above three examples will be sufficient to show how seriously the great pestilence affected the supply of clergy. The reason is not difficult to divine. The great dearth of population created a proportionate demand upon the services of the survivors to carry on the business of the nation, and the greater pressure of business thus brought [p210] about, and the higher wages to be, in fact, obtained, in spite of royal prohibitions, were not favourable to the development of vocations to the clerical life. The void thus caused by the overwhelming misfortunes of the great mortality was enlarged by the exigencies of the English war with France, whilst popular disturbances, and the subsequent Wars of the Roses, maintained the same causes in operation till far into the reigns of the Tudor sovereigns.

To some extent, the dearth of students at Oxford and Cambridge, which has already been referred to, was brought about by the same causes, and it certainly followed immediately upon the fatal year of 1349. At Oxford, no doubt, the serious disturbances, which took place at this time between the students and townsfolk, contributed to aggravate the evil. So serious, indeed, had the state of the great centre of clerical education in England become, in less than six years after the pestilence, that the King was compelled to address the Bishops on the subject. He begs them to help in the task of renewing the University; "knowing," he says, "how the Catholic faith is chiefly supported by the learning of the clergy, and the State governed by their prudence, we earnestly desire that, particularly in our kingdom of England, the clerical order may be increased in number, morals, and knowledge." But, "in the city of Oxford, in which the fount and source of clerical knowledge" has long existed, owing to the disturbances, students have forsaken the place, and Oxford, once so renowned, has become "like a worthless fig-tree without fruit."[391] It has already been pointed out how, nearly half a century later, the University had not recovered from the great blow it had received at this period.[392] [p211]

There seems, indeed, a prevalent misunderstanding in regard to the relation, or proportionate numbers, of secular and regular clergy at this period, and as to the decline in popularity of the regulars, as presumed to be evidenced in the number of those who joined them after the middle of the fourteenth century. It is assumed that up to that period the regular clergy were, both in numbers and influence, the chief factors in the ecclesiastical system of England, and that after that date they greatly declined in importance, public estimation, and numbers. As evidence, not only is an actual diminution in mere numbers adduced, but also the fact that, after this time, the new religious institutions took the form of colleges, not of monasteries. The misconception lies first of all in this—that there never was a period of the middle ages in England, nor for the matter of that abroad, when the regular clergy was the great mainstay of the Church, so far, at least, as numbers, external work, and the cure of souls are concerned. Writers have allowed their imaginations to be influenced by the magnitude of the great monastic houses, or by the prominent part taken in the government of the Church by individuals of eminence, belonging to the ranks of the regular clergy; and have not remembered how comparatively few in fact were these great monastic centres, and how small a proportion their inmates bore to the great body of clergy at large.

It is necessary to refer, perhaps, to figures to bring this home to those who have not devoted special attention to the mediæval period, or who, having studied it, still somehow fail to realise facts as distinct from theories, and to rid themselves of the imaginative prepossessions with which they entered upon their investigations. Thus, even after the institution of the mendicant orders, and in the flow of their popularity, the ordinations for the diocese of York, in the year 1344–45, show that, whilst the number of priests ordained was 271, only 44 were regulars. In the same way, the register of Bishop Stapeldon gives the ordinations [p212] in the diocese of Exeter from 1301 to 1321. During this period 703 seculars were made priests, against 114 regulars. In both these instances, therefore, more than six seculars were ordained for every regular.

This has its importance in estimating the change in the direction given to religious foundations noticed above. During the course of the thirteenth century, when so strong a current of intellectual activity and speculation had set in, the importance of education to the working clergy—at least to a considerable proportion of them—forced itself upon those who were the responsible rulers of the Church. The religious houses were in existence, and, either great or small, were spread all over the land; indeed, after the pestilence of 1349, greatly more than sufficed for the number of vocations in the reduced population. Further, by their foundation they were not calculated to furnish the means of meeting the new want that was pressing, aggravated as it was by the sudden diminution of the pastoral clergy in the sickness. The formation of collegiate institutions, whether of the University type or of country colleges for secular priests, such as Stoke-Clare, Arundel, and the very many others which arose in the century and a half from 1350 to 1500, is explained by the very circumstances of the case; and there is no need to have recourse to a supposition as to the wane in popularity of the religious orders, and the prevalent sense that their work was over, to explain the diminution in their numbers, and the absence of new monastic foundations. If the relative proportion between the numbers of secular and regular clergy ordained before and after the middle of the fourteenth century be taken as a test of the truth of this supposition, the statistics available do not bear it out. Thus the ordinations to the priesthood, registered in the registers of the diocese of Bath and Wells, for the 80 years, 1443 to 1523, number 901; of these 679 were those of seculars and 222 those of regulars. In this instance, consequently, the ordination of seculars to regulars was [p213] in the proportion of 8·5 to 2·7, or rather more than three to one.[393]