CHAPTER XL
THE BLACK DEATH
Mention being made in the last chapter of the Black Death, the disastrous effects of which were so visible in the tower of Gedney, it will be not inappropriate to give some short account of it here.
Edward the Third had been twenty years on the throne when a great change came over the country. The introduction of leases of lands and houses by the lord of the manor had created a class of “farmers”—the word was a new one—by which the old feudal system of land-tenure was disturbed, the old tie of personal dependence of the serf on his lord being broken, and the lord of the manor reduced to the position of a modern landlord. And not only was an independent class of tenants coming into existence who were able to rise to a position of apparent equality with their former masters, but among the labourers, too, a greater freedom was growing, which was gradually loosing them from their local bondage to the soil, and giving them power to choose what place of employment and what master they pleased. This rise of the free labourer following naturally on the enfranchisement of the serf had made it necessary for the landlord to rely on hired labour, and just when it was most essential for them to have an abundant supply of hands seeking employment, all at once the supply absolutely and entirely failed.
The cause of this was the Black Death, which, starting in Asia, swept over the whole of Europe and speedily reached these shores in the autumn of 1348. No such swift and universally devastating plague had ever been known. One half of the population of every European country perished, and in England more than half. In one London burying-place above 50,000 corpses were interred.
THE BLACK DEATH
In Norwich, then the chief east-coast port north of the Thames, we hear of 60,000 deaths. We hear, too, of whole villages being wiped out, and nowhere were sufficient hands left to cultivate the soil.
Crops were ungathered, cattle roamed at will. The pestilence lasted through the whole of 1349, after which, though occasionally recurring, it died away.
In Lincolnshire it was very bad, and some knowledge of it can be gathered from the memoranda of the Bishop of Lincoln, John Gynewell, who held office from September 23, 1347, to August 5, 1362; the appalling frequency of the institutions to the various benefices in his diocese give some measure of the severity of this dreadful visitation.