Before the close of the year 1348 the pestilence had spread itself far and wide in the western counties of England. The diocese of Bath and Wells, and that of Exeter, the former conterminous with the county of Somerset, and the latter comprising those of Devon and Cornwall, were infected in the late autumn of that year, and all over the west, as the old chronicle relates, the sickness "most pitifully destroyed people innumerable."
Indeed, so terrible had been the effect of the scourge among the clergy of Somerset that, as early as January 17th, 1349, the Bishop of Bath and Wells felt himself constrained to address a letter of advice to his flock. The document is of such interest, both as evidence of the straits to which at that early date the diocese had been reduced by the excessive mortality, and for the advice that it contains, that it is here quoted at considerable length, since it proves the depth of degradation to which the whole religious life was reduced by the terror inspired by the disease. Every bond was loosed, and every ordinary ecclesiastical regulation and provision set aside, because none could now be enforced, or, indeed, observed. "The contagious nature of the present pestilence, which is ever spreading itself far and wide," writes the Bishop, "has left many parish churches and other cures, and consequently the people of our diocese, destitute of curates135 and priests. And inasmuch as priests cannot be found who are willing out of zeal, devotion, or for a stipend to undertake the care of the foresaid places, and to visit the sick and administer to them the Sacraments of the Church (perchance for dread of the infection and contagion), many, as we understand, are dying without the Sacrament of Penance. These, too, are ignorant of what ought to be done in such necessity, and believe that no confession of their sins, even in a case of such need, is useful or meritorious, unless made to a priest having the keys of the Church. Therefore, desiring, as we are bound to do, the salvation of souls, and ever watching to bring back the wandering from the crooked paths of error, we, on the obedience you have sworn to us, urgently enjoin upon you and command you – rectors, vicars, and parish priests – in all your churches, and you deans, in such places of your deaneries as are destitute of the consolation of priests, that you at once and publicly instruct and induce, yourselves or by some other, all who are sick of the present malady, or who shall happen to be taken ill, that in articulo mortis, if they are not able to obtain any priest, they should make confession of their sins (according to the teaching of the apostle) even to a layman, and, if a man is not at hand, then to a woman. We exhort you, by the present letters, in the bowels of Jesus Christ, to do this, and to proclaim publicly in the aforesaid places that such confession made to a layman in the presumed case can be most salutary and profitable to them for the remission of their sins, according to the teaching and the sacred canons of the Church. And for fear any, imagining that these lay confessors may make known confessions so made to them, shall hesitate thus to confess in case of necessity, we make known to all in general, and to those in particular who have already heard these confessions, or who may in future hear them, that they are bound by the precepts of the Church to conceal and keep them secret; and that, by a decree of the sacred canons, they are forbidden to betray such confession by word, sign, and by any other means whatever, unless those confessing so desire. And (further) should they do otherwise, let such betrayers know that they sin most gravely, and incur the indignation of Almighty God and of the whole Church." And further to stir up the zeal of both clergy and laity to this work the Bishop grants ample indulgences to such as follow the advice here given them.
"And since late repentance," he says "(when, for example, sickness compels and the fear of punishment terrifies) often deceives many, we grant to all our subjects, who in the time of the pestilence shall come to confession to priests having the keys of the Church and power to bind and to loose, before they are taken sick, and who do not delay till the day of necessity, forty days of indulgence. To every priest also who shall induce people to do this, and hear the confessions of those thus brought to confess whilst in health, we grant the same by the mercy of God Almighty, and trusting to the merits and prayers of his glorious Mother, of the Blessed Peter, Paul, and Andrew the Apostles, our patrons, and of all the Saints."
"You shall further declare," he adds, "to all thus confessing to lay people in case of necessity, that if they recover they are bound to confess the same sins again to their own parish priest. The Sacrament of the Eucharist, when no priest can be obtained, may be administered by a deacon. If, however, there be no priest to administer the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, faith must, as in other matters, suffice for the Sacrament."136
These large derogations from the usual ecclesiastical practice, though consonant alike with Christian charity and the teaching of the Church, are resorted to only in cases of the direst need, and the circular letter of the Bishop of Bath and Wells witnesses to the extreme gravity of the situation throughout the diocese, as early as the month of January, 1349. Already, as is certain from the Bishop's words, the dearth of clergy had made itself felt, and people were dying in the county of Somerset without the possibility of obtaining spiritual aid in their last hours, and no priests could be found to take the places of those who had already fallen victims to the disease. The list of institutions given in the register of Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury shows that the mortality in that county was considerable as early as the November of the previous year, 1348.
Taking the institutions of the diocese as a guide to the time when the plague was most violent, and bearing in mind that the death would have occurred some little time before the institution, and that according to the Bishop's letter some delay had been inevitable in the filling up of benefices, the months when the pestilence was at its height in the county of Somerset would appear to be December, 1348, and January and February, 1349, although the number of institutions each month remains high until June. The mortality was apparently highest about Christmastide, 1348.137
The Bishop of Bath and Wells remained at his manor of Wiveliscombe till the worst was past in May of 1349. Thither came the long procession of priests to receive their letters of institution to vacant benefices. Day after day for nearly six months the work went on with hardly any cessation. Singly, or in twos and threes, often four and five, once, at least, ten together, the clergy came to be instituted to cures which the disease had left without a priest.
How the epidemic entered into the county, and the course it pursued, it would be now impossible, even if it were profitable, to discover. In December it would seem to have gained a foothold in most parts of the county. It was at Evercreech about November 19th, and about a fortnight later at Castlecary and Almsford, in the same neighbourhood. The fact that Bridgwater, Clevedon, Weston-super-mare, Portishead, and Bristol were amongst the earliest places in the county to be attacked would almost make it appear that the contagion was carried to these coast towns by a boat passing up the Bristol Channel. This supposition, moreover, is somewhat confirmed, as will be seen subsequently, by the fact that the towns of North Devon were attacked by the disease almost simultaneously with those on the south coast, and very much about the same time as those of North Somerset.
Bath suffered under the scourge in the early part of January, 1349. On the 9th and 10th of that month several institutions to livings, either in the city or the neighbourhood, being recorded. In the same month it had spread to the abbey of Keynsham, on the road between Bath and Bristol, and its path can almost be traced along the line of communication between Bath and Wells. Thus the villages of Freshford, Twerton, Hardington, Holcombe, Cloford, Kilmersdon, Babington, Compton, and Doulting, as well as several benefices in Wells itself, all fell vacant at this time.
It may be said with considerable certainty that fully half the number of beneficed clergy fell victims to the disease in this diocese. Many livings were rendered vacant two and three times during its course; whilst a not inconsiderable number had four changes of incumbents within these few months. Bathampton, for example, had four parsons appointed in this period. At Hardington, not far from Frome, from January, 1349, to the middle of March, there were certainly three and perhaps four changes due to the disease; and at Yeovil, from the 15th December, 1348, to the 4th February, 1349, three priests held the living, one after the other.
Little or no information is forthcoming as to the religious houses of the county at this time. Both Athelney and Muchelney lost their abbots, and probably also many of their members. The fact that the great abbey of Glastonbury, which previously contained within its walls a community of some 80 monks, is found in A.D. 1377 to have 44, seems to indicate that it must have suffered very severe losses through the epidemic.
At Bath, in 1344, only five years before the outbreak of the disease, the community at the Priory consisted of thirty professed monks under Prior John de Ford.138 A list on the roll of the Somerset clergy, on whom a clerical subsidy was levied at the close of Edward the Third's reign, in 1377, shows that the number had been reduced to sixteen,139 and at this number it apparently remained to the time of the final dissolution of the house in the sixteenth century.140
It is not difficult to understand that the plague must have raged with great virulence in the larger cities, where in those days the most elementary notions of sanitation were almost unknown. In the west, Bristol, of course, suffered severely. "There," says the sub-contemporary writer, Knighton, "died, suddenly overwhelmed by death, almost the whole strength of the town, for few were sick more than three days, or two days, or even half a day." Nor need this be a subject of wonder when, according to the description of a modern writer, speaking of the city at this very period, the streets were very narrow; in the busier parts the ground was honeycombed with cellars for storing wine, salt, and other merchandise, whilst refuse streamed down the centre ditch. So small was the distance between the houses that no vehicle was allowed to be used in the streets, and all goods were carried on pack-horses or porters, a custom which even in the 17th century excited the wonder of Samuel Pepys.141
"Here in Bristol," says the local historian Seyer, quoting an old calendar of the town, "in 1348 the plague raged to such a degree that the living were scarce able to bury the dead. The Gloucestershire men would not suffer the Bristol men to have access to them. At last it reached Gloucester, Oxford, and London; scarce the tenth person was left alive, male or female. At this period the grass grew several inches high in High Street and Broad Street; it raged at first chiefly in the centre of the city. This pestilence came from abroad, and the people near the sea-coast in Dorsetshire and Devonshire were first affected."142 By the wholesale destruction of the population of this western port the same authority accounts for the reduction of the King's taxation of the city from £245 to £158.
Lastly, in Bristol, as indeed without doubt in most places, the cemeteries did not long suffice for the multitude of the dead. Of this there is an example upon the Patent Rolls. The parson of Holy Cross de la Temple soon found the necessity of enlarging his graveyard. For this purpose he obtained half-an-acre adjoining the old cemetery, and so great and pressing was the need of this fresh accommodation that it was done without the required royal license, for which subsequently a pardon had to be sued from the King.143
The diocese of Exeter, comprising the two counties of Devon and Cornwall, was stricken by the disease apparently about the same time as the county of Somerset.144 For eight years before 1348 the average number of livings annually rendered vacant in the diocese was thirty-six,145 whilst in the single month of January 1349, the Bishop instituted to some thirty livings, which shows that death had already been busy among the clergy.
The number of institutions in each month of the year points to the conclusion that the disease lingered somewhat longer in these counties than elsewhere. It is not till the close of September that any great decrease in the number of vacancies is seen, and although probably beginning in December, the height of the plague was not reached till March, April, and May.146
Prebendary Hingeston-Randolph thus describes the state of the Exeter episcopal registers at this period: – "There is very little direct information about the Black Death in Bishop Grandisson's register; but there is a great deal of indirect information. The Registrum Commune, which is wonderfully full before and after the fatal year, records scarcely anything during the year itself. The ordinary work of the diocese seems to have been all suspended, with a single exception. The register of institutions – a separate volume – is a record of incessant and most distressing work. Its very outward aspect for this period tells a tale of woe. The entries are made hurriedly and roughly, in striking contrast with the neatness and regularity of the rest of the Register. They are no longer grouped, as before, in years, but in months, and the changes in each month exceed the changes of a whole ordinary year, when there was no pestilence. The scribe leaves off the customary 'vacant per mortem,' as if he dreaded to write the fatal word. The clergy must have fallen by wholesale; evidently they were faithful, and, for their flocks' sake, faced the foe without flinching. And, as each of them fell, another was ready at his Bishop's call fearlessly to fill the vacant place. Some incumbencies lasted but a few weeks. And, when all was over, the survivors were, comparatively, so few that there was no small difficulty in filling many a subsequent vacant benefice; this result of the sickness is to be traced for some time after the mortality had ceased.
"The Bishop never left his diocese, and the continuous presence of so strong, so earnest, and devoted a prelate must have been an unspeakable consolation and help to his grievously afflicted flock."
An examination of the institutions of the diocese, in relation to the time when the plague visited the various parts of it, appears to show that it commenced almost simultaneously in both north and south. In North Devon it is found at both Northam and Alverdiscott on the 7th of November, at Fremington in the same district on the 8th, and at Barnstaple on December the 23rd. It is found in November at villages on the Exe, and had possibly also reached Exeter before the close of the month. In the South, the fact of the close proximity of the part first infected to Dorsetshire explains the course of the epidemic; but the early outbreak in the coast villages at the mouth of the estuary leading to Barnstaple points to the conclusion that the infection was brought by a ship passing up the Bristol Channel, which subsequently infected other towns further up on the Somerset shore of the passage.
It is of interest also to note how greatly the coast towns generally appear to have suffered, as the contagion was very probably carried from one place to another by the fishing boats. Up some of the estuaries it would seem as if the passage of the disease could be traced by the dates of the institutions. Thus, to take one example, in March, 1349, there is an institution to a living at the mouth of the Fowey in Cornwall; a week later there is another at St. Winnow's Vicarage higher up, and on March 22nd the sickness had reached Bodmin, at no great distance from the river, and a place with which, in all probability, the passage up the estuary of the Fowey would be an ordinary and usual means of communication.
As to the result of the sickness in the religious houses of the diocese some few details are known. At St. Nicholas', Exeter, the Prior died in March, 1349; his successor, John de Wye, was admitted on the 26th of that month, but died almost immediately. The next Prior was not installed until June 7th, and the house was found to be in a deplorable state.147 So also at Pilton Priory two superiors died within a few weeks one of the other. At the alien priory of Minster, Cornwall, William de Huma, the Prior, was carried off by the sickness on 26th of April, 1349, and the house was so impoverished by the death of tenants and labourers that it could not support both its members, and the chaplain they were bound to find to do the parish work, as neither the prior nor his brethren spoke English, "or rather Cornish."148
At the Cistercian abbey of Newenham the register records that "in the time of this mortality or pestilence there died in this house twenty monks and three lay-brothers, whose names are entered in other books. And Walter, the abbot, and two monks were left alive there after the sickness."149
At the Augustinian abbey of Hartland, Roger de Raleghe, the abbot, died, and the proclamation of the election of his successor is dated 18th March, 1349. At Benedictine Tavistock also the abbot died, and his successor, Richard de Esse, was taken ill after his confirmation, and, "detained by so grave a sickness," could not go to the King, who, on October 17th, commissioned Bishop Grandisson to receive his fealty.150
At Bodmin, according to a note taken by William of Worcester from a register in the Church of the Friars Minor there, it was estimated that 1,500 persons died of this sickness.151 Amongst these was the Vicar, whose successor was appointed on April 8th, 1349. The Augustinian priory in the town was almost depopulated. The prior, John de Kilkhampton, and all his brethren but two were carried off by the sickness. The two survivors, on March 17th, wrote to the Bishop saying that they "were left like orphans," and begging that he would provide a superior for their house at once. The next day, March the 18th, 1349, an inquisition was held under a writ of the Prince of Wales. The jury found that the priory was free, and that the last prior had died "on Friday, next after the feast of St. Peter in Cathedra then last past" (February 27th).152
On March 19th Bishop Grandisson wrote to the prior of Launceston setting forth the facts, and appointing a member of that house to the office. Three days later the mandate for his induction was issued, in the hopes that "by his careful watchfulness the said priory may recover from the calamity."153
The plight to which the Augustinians of Bodmin were reduced by the disease is, after all, typical of that of many religious houses throughout the country. Meantime, however, the epidemic had not confined its ravages to the western counties, but continued to spread the same desolation in every direction, as the wave of pestilence rolled onward over the length and breadth of the land.
CHAPTER VI.
PROGRESS OF THE DISEASE IN LONDON AND THE SOUTH
For a time the people of Gloucester strove, but in vain, to protect their city by prohibiting all intercourse with plague-stricken Bristol. The contagion passed from one district to another, from town to town, and village to village, soon involving the entire land in one common misfortune. "There was no city, nor town, nor hamlet, nor even, save in rare instances, any house," writes an English contemporary, "in which this plague did not carry off the whole, or the greater portion, of the inhabitants." And so great was the destruction of life "that the living scarcely sufficed to tend the sick and bury the dead.".. In some places, on account of the deficiency of cemeteries, the Bishop consecrated new burial grounds.
"In that time there was sold a quarter of wheat for 12d., a quarter of barley for 9d., a quarter of beans for 8d., a quarter of oats for 6d., a large ox for 40d., a good horse for six shillings, which formerly was worth 40 shillings, a good cow for two shillings, and even for eighteen-pence. And even at this price buyers were only rarely to be found. And this pestilence lasted for two years and more before England was freed from it."
"When, by God's mercy it ceased, there was such a scarcity of labourers that none could be had for agricultural purposes. On account of this scarcity, women, and even small children, were to be seen with the plough and leading the waggons."154
The rapidity with which the contagion spread from place to place makes it now impossible to follow its course with any certainty; the more so because it seems likely that many towns on the southern and western coasts became fresh starting points for the disease. London, in constant communication with other ports, is said by one contemporary to have been attacked as early as September 29th, 1348,155 whilst other authorities fix, at latest, All Saints' day – November 1st – as the date when the epidemic declared itself in London. It lasted in the city and its neighbourhood till about the feast of Pentecost next following, and according to the contemporary Robert of Avesbury, it was most severe in the two months from February 2nd to Easter. During the time, he says, "almost every day there were buried in the new cemetery, then made at Smithfield, more than 200 bodies of the dead, over and above those buried in other cemeteries of the city."156
Parliament, which was to have assembled at Westminster in January, 1349, was at the beginning of the month prorogued, because, as the King says, "the plague of deadly pestilence had suddenly broken out in the said place and the neighbourhood, and daily increased in severity so that grave fears were entertained for the safety of those coming there at that time."157 The churchyards of the city were quickly found to be insufficient, and two, if not three, cemeteries were opened. Of the one in Smithfield referred to in the quotation already given from Robert of Avesbury, the historian Stowe gives the following account: – "In the year 1348 (23 Edward III.) the first great pestilence in his time began, and increased so sore that from want of room in churchyards to bury the dead of the city and of the suburbs, one John Corey, clerk, procured of Nicholas, prior of the Holy Trinity within Aldgate, one toft of ground near unto East Smithfield for the burial of them that died, with condition that it might be called 'the churchyard of the Holy Trinity;' which ground he caused, by the aid of divers devout citizens, to be enclosed with a wall of stone. Robert Elsing, son of William Elsing, gave five pounds thereunto; and the same was dedicated by Ralph Stratford, Bishop of London, where innumerable bodies of the dead were afterwards buried, and a chapel built in the same place, to the honour of God." Subsequently Edward III. founded there a monastery of Cistercian monks dedicated to our Lady of Graces.158
The same author also relates the establishment of the better-known new cemetery, where subsequently the Charterhouse was founded. "The churchyards," he writes of this time, "were not sufficient to receive the dead, but men were forced to choose out certain fields for burials. Whereupon Ralph Stratford, Bishop of London, in the year 1348, bought a piece of ground, called 'No man's land,' which he enclosed with a wall of brick and dedicated for the burial of the dead, building thereupon a proper chapel, which is now (i. e., 1598) enlarged and made a dwelling-house; and this burying plot is become a fair garden, retaining the old name of 'Pardon Churchyard.'
"After this, in the year 1349, the said Sir Walter Manny, in respect of the danger that might befal in this time of so great a plague and infection, purchased thirteen acres and a rood of ground, adjoining to the said 'No man's land,' and lying in a place called 'Spittle Croft,' because it belonged to St. Bartholomew's Hospital (since that called 'New Church Haw'), and caused it to be consecrated by the said Bishop of London to the use of burials.
"In this plot of ground there were (in that year) more than 50,000 persons buried, as I have read in the Charters of Edward the Third.
"Also I have seen and read an inscription, fixed on a stone cross sometime standing in the same churchyard, and having these words: Anno Domini 1349. Regnante, &c. That is in English, 'A great plague raging in the year of our Lord 1349, this churchyard was consecrated; wherein, and within the bounds of the present monastery, were buried more than 50,000 bodies of the dead, besides many others from thence to the present time, whose souls God have mercy upon. Amen."159
Whilst it is perfectly possible, and even probable, that the number 50,000, named by Stowe as buried in one churchyard, is an exaggerated estimate, it is on the other hand more than likely that the pestilence found the sanitary condition of the London of that period very favourable for its rapid development. The narrow and ill-cleansed streets, the low, unventilated and undrained houses, and the general condition of living at the time would all favour the growth of so contagious a disease as that which visited the city in the middle of the fourteenth century. One slight glimpse of the state of the streets about this time is afforded in a document issued by the King to the Mayor and Sheriffs, when in 1361 a second visitation threatened to become as destructive to human life as that of 1349. "Because," says the royal letter, "by the killing of great beasts, from whose putrid blood running down the streets and the bowels cast into the Thames, the air in the city is very much corrupted and infected, whence abominable and most filthy stench proceeds, sickness and many other evils have happened to such as have abode in the said city, or have resorted to it; and great dangers are feared to fall out for the time to come, unless remedy be presently made against it; we, willing to prevent such dangers, ordain, by consent of the present Parliament, that all 'bulls, oxen, hogs, and other gross creatures' be killed at either Stratford or Knightsbridge."160
There are indeed many indications that the number of those who died in the city was very great.161 The extraordinary increase in the number of wills proved in the "Court of Hustings" affords some indication of this. During the three previous years the average number in that Court was twenty-two. In 1349 they reached the number of 222; and the wills themselves afford further evidence of the rapidity with which members of the same family followed each other to the grave. In one instance a son, who was appointed executor to his father's will, died before probate could be obtained, and his own will was passed through the Court together with that of his father.162 The number of probates granted in each month is some indication of the time when the mortality was highest. May, with a total of 121, and July, with 51, are the largest numbers, whilst it is curious to observe that the large number in May is accounted for by the fact that none were proved in April.163 It may be surmised that this was brought about by the complete paralysis of all business about the month of April in consequence of the sickness; this view being strengthened by the fact that no Easter sittings of the Courts of Justices were held.
Westminster was grievously visited by the sickness. On March 10th, 1349, in proroguing the Parliament for the second time, the King declared that the plague had increased in Westminster and London more seriously than ever.164 Some weeks later the great monastery was attacked; early in May abbot Bircheston died, and at the same time 27 of his monks were committed to a common grave in the southern walk of the cloister. To relieve the urgent necessities of the house and those about it jewels and other ornaments to the value of £315 13s. 8d. – a large sum in those days – were sold during the visitation out of the monastic treasury.165
At Westminster, too, the Hospital of St. James was left without inmates. "The then guardian and all the other brethren and sisters, except one," had died; and in May, 1349, William de Weston, the survivor, was appointed guardian. Charged with dilapidation, he was deposed in 1351, but in 1353 the house still remained without inmates.166
What happened at St. Albans has been recorded by Walsingham in the Gesta Abbatum. Speaking of abbot Michael Mentmore, he writes: "The pestilence, which carried off well-nigh half of all mankind, coming to St. Albans he was struck by a premature death, being touched by the common misery amongst the first of his monks, who were carried off by the deadly disease. And although on Maundy Thursday (i. e., Thursday in Holy Week) he felt the beginning of the ailment, still out of devotion to the feast, and in memory of our Lord's humility, he celebrated solemnly the High Mass, and after that, before dinner, humbly and reverently washed the feet of the poor. Then, after partaking of food, he washed and kissed the feet of all the brethren. And all the offices of that day he performed alone and without assistance.
"On the morrow, the sickness increasing, he betook himself to bed, and like a true catholic, having made, with contrite heart, a sincere confession, he received the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. And so in sorrow and sadness he lasted till noon of Easter-Day.
"And because the plague was then raging, and the air was corrupt, and the monks were dying day by day," he was buried as quickly as possible. "And there died at that time, forty-seven monks" over and above those who were carried off in great numbers, in (the monasteries which are) the cells (of St. Albans)."167