Judging from a reply of the Pope to a petition of the Archbishop, it would be necessary to conclude that the plague had reached York as early as February, 1349. It is, however, more probable that the petition was sent in the expectation that the scourge would certainly come sooner or later, and it was best to be prepared. From the dates of the institutions to vacant benefices, moreover, it would seem that the province of York suffered chiefly in the summer and autumn of the year 1349. Pope Clement VI., by letters to Archbishop Zouche, dated from Avignon as early as March 23rd, 1349, bestowed the faculties and indulgences already mentioned as having been granted to other Bishops. This he did, as the letter says, "in response to a petition declaring that the deadly pestilence has commenced to afflict the city, diocese, and province of York."278
The county of York contained at this date some 470 benefices; or, counting monastic houses and hospitals, some 550. It has been pointed out that out of 141 livings in the West Riding, in which the incumbent changed in 1349, ninety-six vacancies are registered as being caused by death, and in the East Riding 65 incumbents died against 61 who apparently survived.279 In the deanery of Doncaster,280 out of fifty-six lists of incumbents, printed in the local history, a change is recorded in thirty. It may be concluded with certainty, from an examination of the printed lists of institutions for Yorkshire, that one-half at least of the clergy, generally, were carried off by the sickness. So serious did the mortality among the cathedral officials become that steps were taken to prevent the total cessation of business. In July, 1349, for instance, "it was ordained on account of the existing mortality of the pestilence that one canon, with the auditor and chapter clerk, might, in the absence of his fellows, grant vicarages and transact other matters of business as if the other canons were present, notwithstanding the statutes."281
The Archbishop too sought and obtained from Pope Clement VI. faculties to dispense with the usual ecclesiastical laws as to ordinations taking place only in the Ember weeks. "For fear the Divine worship may be diminished through want of ministers, or the cure and ruling of souls be neglected," writes the Pope, we grant leave to hold four extra ordinations during the year, since you say "that on account of the mortal pestilence, which at present rages in your province," you fear that "priests may not be sufficient for the care and guidance of souls."282 With this the Archbishop gives a specimen of the testimonial letters to be granted to such as were ordained under this faculty, reciting that it was given "because of the want of ecclesiastical ministers carried off by the pestilence lately existing in our Province."
There is little doubt that the religious houses of the diocese suffered in a similar way. The abbots of Jervaux and Rievaulx, Welbeck and Roche, the priors of Thurgarton, and Shelford, of Monkbretton, of Marton, of Haltemprice and Ferriby, are only some few of the superiors of religious houses who died at this time.
For one of the monasteries of the county, Meaux, there exists a special account in the chronicles of the house. Abbot Hugh, it says, "besides himself had in the convent 42 monks and seven lay brethren; and the said abbot Hugh, after having ruled the monastery nine years, eleven months and eleven days, died in the great plague which was in the year 1349, and 32 monks and lay brethren also died.
"This pestilence so prevailed in our said monastery, as in other places, that in the month of August the abbot himself, 22 monks and six lay brethren died; of these, the abbot and five monks were lying unburied in one day, and the others died, so that when the plague ceased, out of the said 50 monks and lay brethren, only ten monks with no lay brethren were left.
"And from this the rents and possessions of the monastery began to diminish, particularly as a greater part of our tenants in various places died, and the abbot, prior, cellarer, bursar, and other men of years, and officials dying left those, who remained alive after them, unacquainted with the property, possessions, and common goods of the monastery. The abbot died on 12th August, A.D. 1349."283
In the Deanery of Holderness, in which Meaux Abbey was situated, there is evidence of great mortality. It is striking to observe how frequently the bailiffs and collectors of royal rents and taxes are changed. It is by no means uncommon to find an account rendered by the executors of executors to the original official.284 This evidence as to the great extent of the mortality here as in other places of England, and as to the consequent distress, is borne out by the Inquisitiones post mortem for the period. In one case, where the owner of the property had died on 28th July, 1349, it is said that 114 acres of pasture were let at 12d. a year, "and not more this year because of the mortality and dearth of men." At Cliffe, on the same estate, the rents of customary tenants and tenants at will are stated to have been usually worth £10 5s. a year; but in this special year they had produced only two shillings.285
The chronicler of Meaux has described the disastrous consequences of the sickness in his own monastery. That this condition was not soon mended appears certain from the fact that in 1354 it was found necessary to hand over the abbey, "on account of its miserable condition," to a royal commission.286
The account of the King's Escheator in Yorkshire for the year, from October, 1349, to October, 1350, states that he could in no way obtain the sum of £4 12s. 2d., "due on certain lands and tenements from which he had levied and could levy nothing during the said time because of the mortality amongst men in those parts, and owing to the dearth of tenants, willing to take up the said land and tenements." Then follows a list of houses standing vacant.287
As another instance may be quoted a case related in the history of the deanery of Doncaster. "John FitzWilliam, the heir of Sir William, had a short enjoyment of the family estates. He died in the great plague of 1349. I transcribe, to show public feeling at the time, from a chronicle: 'And in these daies was burying withoute sorrowe and wedding without frendschippe and fleying without refute of socoure; for many fled from place to place because of the pestilence; but yet they were effecte and myghte not skape the dethe.'
"In another part of the deanery we find a person willing that his goods shall be divided among such of his children as shall remain alive. In the FitzWilliams' MS. is a contemporary memorandum that John FitzWilliam, the father, gave in the time of the pestilence before his death all his goods and chattels, movable and immovable, to dame Joan, his wife, John, his son, and Alleyn, late parson of Crosby, amounting to the sum of £288 3s. 8–1/2d."288
An incident recorded by the same writer will serve to show how uncertain people, at this time, regarded the tenure of life, a feeling hardly to be wondered at when so many were dying all round them. Thomas Allott, of Wombwell, in the deanery of Doncaster, in his will, proved 14th September, 1349, after desiring to be buried at Darfield, says: "Item I leave, etc., to my sons and daughters living after this present mortal pestilence."289
These notes upon the evidence for the plague in Yorkshire may be concluded by a brief account of the state of Hull in consequence of the mortality and other causes. In 1353 the King, "considering the waste and destruction which our town of Kingston-on-Hull has suffered, both through the overflow of the waters of the Humber and other causes, and that a great part of the people of the said town have died in the last deadly pestilence which raged in these parts, and that the remnant left in the town are so desolate and poverty-stricken in money," grants them permission to apply the fines ordered to be imposed on labourers and servants demanding higher wages than before, to the payment of the fifteenth they owe the royal exchequer.290
Westward of Yorkshire the extensive but then sparsely populated county of Lancashire stretches between it and the Irish sea. Of this county there is practically little to be recorded. The number of benefices which existed in the county was about 65, whilst the number of chaplains and non-beneficed clergy generally must have greatly exceeded that number. In the deanery of Blackburn alone there were at the close of the reign of Edward III at least 55 capellani without benefices.291 One document, of its kind unique, relating to Lancashire and to this great plague, is preserved in the Record Office. It was long ago referred to by the late Professor Thorold Rogers, and is now printed in the English Historical Review. It is a statement of the supposed number of deaths during the incidence of the great pestilence in the deanery of Amounderness. Unfortunately, as perhaps might be expected in such a mortality, when death came so suddenly and men followed one another so rapidly to the grave that vast numbers had to be cast as quickly as possible into the same plague pit, the figures are clearly only approximate, being in every instance round numbers. Still, as they were adduced at a legal investigation and before a jury, when the facts of the visitation of Providence must have been fresh in the minds of those who heard the evidence, it is difficult to suppose that they are mere gross exaggerations, and may at least be taken as proof that the mortality in this district of Lancashire was very considerable.
The paper in question is the record of a claim for the profits received, or supposed to have been received, by the dean of Amounderness, acting as procurator for the Archdeacon of Richmond, for proof of wills, administration of intestate estates, and other matters, during the course of the plague of 1349. Ten parishes are named in the claim, including Preston, Lancaster, and Garstang. In those ten parishes it supposes that some 13,180 souls had died between September 8th, 1349, and January 11th, 1350. In both Preston and Lancaster 3,000 are said to have been carried off, and in Garstang 2,000. Nine benefices are declared to have been vacant, three of them twice, whilst the chapel of St. Mary Magdalene, at Preston, is stated to have been unserved for seven weeks. The Priory of Lytham is also noted as having been rendered vacant by the sickness, whilst 80 people of the village were said to have died at the same time.292
From the Patent rolls it would appear that Cartmel Priory, also, about this time lost its superior, as upon September 20th, 1349, the King's licence was granted to the community to proceed to a new election.293
The counties of Westmoreland, to the north of Lancashire, with Cumberland, still further to the north again, carry the western part of England to the borders of Scotland. In the former there were some 57 beneficed clergy, and in the latter about 85. From these figures the approximate number of beneficed priests who died in the pestilence in the two counties may be guessed at about 72.
The state of this borderland county of Cumberland was, even before the arrival of the plague in the district, deplorable. The Memoranda rolls of the period contain ample evidence that the Scottish invasions had rendered the land desolate and almost uninhabitable. Still the mortality added to the misery of the people. The few Inquisitiones post mortem afford little knowledge, beyond the fact that here also the dearth of tenants was severely felt.294 The audit of the accounts of Richard de Denton, late Vice-Sheriff of the County, is more precise in its information. He declares, in excuse for the smallness of his returns, that "the great part of the manor lands, attached to the King's Castle at Carlisle," has remained until the year of his account, 1354, waste and uncultivated, "by reason of the mortal pestilence lately raging in those parts." Moreover, for one and a half years after the plague had passed the entire lands remained "uncultivated for lack of labourers and divers tenants. Mills, fishing, pastures, and meadow lands could not be let during that time for want of tenants willing to take the farms of those who died in the said plague."
Richard de Denton then produced a schedule of particulars, which may now be seen stitched on to the roll. This gives the items of decrease in rents; for instance, there are houses, cottages, and lands to let, which used to bring in £5, and now but £1; "the farm of a garden belonging to the King, called King's Mead, is rented now at 13 shillings and fourpence less than it used to be," and so on. The jury, who were called to consider these statements, concluded that Richard de Denton had proved them, and they enter a verdict to that effect, giving a list of the tenants, and adding "the said Richard says that all the last-mentioned tenants died in the said plague, and all the tenements have stood since empty through a dearth of tenants."295
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 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, 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, 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
CHAPTER IX.
THE DESOLATION OF THE COUNTRY
So far the course of the epidemic in England has been followed from south to north. It is now necessary to consider some statistics and immediate results of the plague.
The diocese of Salisbury comprised the three counties of Dorset, Wilts, and Berkshire. The total number of appointments made by the Bishop, in his entire diocese, is said to have been 202 in the period from March 25th, 1348, to March 25th, 1349; and 243 during the same time in the year following.303 Of this total number of 445 it is safe to say that two-thirds were institutions to vacancies due to the plague. Roughly speaking, therefore, in these three counties, comprised in the diocese of Sarum, some 300 beneficed clergy, at least, fell victims to the scourge.
The county of Dorset may first be taken. The list of institutions taken from the Salisbury episcopal registers, given in Hutchins' history of that county, numbers 211. During the incidence of the plague ninety of these record a change of incumbent, so that, roughly, about half the benefices were rendered vacant. In several cases, moreover, during the progress of the epidemic changes are recorded twice or three times, so that the total number of institutions made to Dorsetshire livings at this time was 110. As regards the non-beneficed clergy, secular and regular, their proportion to those holding benefices will be considered in the concluding chapter. Here it is sufficient to observe that the proportion commonly suggested is far too low.
It is almost by chance that any information is afforded as to the effect of the visitation in the religious houses. All contemporary authorities, both abroad and in England, agree in stating that the disease was always most virulent and spread most rapidly where numbers were gathered together, and that, when once it seized upon any house, it usually claimed many victims. Consequently when it appears that early in November, 1348, the abbot of Abbotsbury died, and that about Christmas Day of that year John de Henton, the abbot of the great monastery of Sherborne, also died, it is more than probable that many of the brethren of those monasteries were also carried off by the scourge.
In the county of Wilts the average number of episcopal institutions, for three years before and three years after the mortality, was only 26. In the year 1348 there are 73 institutions recorded in the registers, and in 1349 no less a number than 103,304 so that of the 176 vacancies filled in the two years the deaths of only some 52 incumbents were probably due to normal causes, and the rest, or some 125 priests holding benefices in the county, may be said to have died from the plague.
A chance entry upon the Patent roll reveals the state of one monastery in this county. The prior of Ederos, or Ivychurch, a house of Augustinian canons, died on February 2nd, 1349.305 On February the 25th the King was informed that death had carried off the entire community with one single exception. "Know ye," runs the King's letter, dated March 16th, "that since the Venerable Father Robert, Bishop of Salisbury, cannot hold the usual election of prior in the Monastery of Ederos in his diocese, vacant by the death of the last prior of the same, since all the other canons of the same house, in which hitherto there has been a community of thirteen canons regular, have died, except only one canon, brother James de Grundwell, we appoint him custodian of the possessions, the Bishop testifying that he is a fit and proper person for the office.306
The general state of the county of Wilts after the epidemic had passed is well illustrated from some Wiltshire Inquisitiones post mortem. Sir Henry Husee, for instance, had died on the 21st of June, 1349. He owned a small property in the county. Some 300 acres of pasture were returned upon oath, by a jury of the neighbourhood, as "of no value because all the tenants are dead."307 Again John Lestraunge, of Whitchurch, a Shropshire gentleman, had half the manor of Broughton, in the county of Wilts. He died on July the 20th, 1349, and the inquisition was held on August the 30th. At that time it is declared that only seven shillings had been received as rent from a single tenant, "and not more this year, because all the other tenants, as well as the natives, are dead, and their land is all in the hand of the lord."308
So, too, on the manor of Caleston, belonging to Henry de Wilington, who died on May the 23rd, 1349, it is said that water-mills are destroyed and worthless; of the six native tenants two have died, and their lands are in hand; and of the ten cottars, each of whom paid 12d. for his holding, four have been carried off with all their family.309 In other places of the same county woods are declared to be valueless, "for want of buyers, on account of the pestilence amongst the population;"310 from tenants who used to pay £4 a year there is now obtained only 6s., because all but three free tenants have been swept away;311 140 acres of land and twelve cottages, formerly in the occupation of natives of a manor, are all now in hand, "as all are dead."312 So, too, at East Grinstead, seven miles from Salisbury, on the death of Mary, wife of Stephen de Tumby, in the August of 1349, it is found that only three tenants are left on the estate, "and not more because John Wadebrok and Walter Wadebrok, Stephen and Thomas and John Kerde, Richard le Frer, Ralph Bodde, and Thomas the Tanner, tenants in bondage," who held certain tenements and lands, are all dead, and their holdings are left in the hands of the lord of the manor. Also, on the same estate, William le Hanaker, John Pompe, Edmund Saleman, John Whermeter, and John Gerde, jun., have also been swept away by the all-prevailing pestilence.
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 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 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 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