The Great Pestilence (A.D. 1348-9)

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

In another place the same writer adds: "By God's permission came the pestilence which swept away such numbers. Amongst the abbots was Dom Michael of pious memory, abbot of St. Albans. At that same time the prior of the monastery, Nicholas, and the sub-prior of the place also died. By the advice, therefore, of those learned in the law the convent chose Dom Thomas de Risburgh, professor of Holy Scripture, as prior of the Monastery."168

From the date of the death of the abbot of St. Albans, on April the 12th, 1349, it would appear that the epidemic was then at its height in that part of Hertfordshire. The institutions for the portion of the county in the diocese of Lincoln, however, show that it must have lingered on, at any rate in the northern part, till the late summer.169

"In Hertfordshire Manors," writes Mr. Thorold Rogers, "where it (i. e., the great plague of 1349) was specially destructive, it was the practice, for thirty years, to head the schedule of expenditure with an enumeration of the lives which were lost and the tenancies which were vacated after 1348."170

The neighbouring counties of Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Berkshire suffered in the same way. Although the chronicles make no special mention of the ravages of the epidemic in them, it would, indeed, from other sources of information, appear that during the first half of 1349 the mortality in this district was as great as in most other parts of the country. Thus, the general state of the country after the plague had passed may be illustrated from a class of documents known as Inquisitiones post mortem. Theoretically, at least, the whole country belonged to the Sovereign; the actual possessors holding as tenants of the Crown, just as the smaller farmers and peasants held from the tenant in capite. On the death of landowners, therefore, the Crown exercised certain rights and claimed certain dues, which it levied on the estates, the King's officers holding them until the rights of the Sovereign over the in-coming heir were satisfied. To secure these in each county, an official was appointed known as the Escheator, whose duty it was on the death of any landowner, in response to the King's writ, to summon a jury bound by oath to inquire into, and testify to, the extent and value of the land held by the deceased person. The record of their sworn verdict is known as the Inquisitio post mortem.

These returns made into the King's Court of Chancery, even as they now exist – many of them having been lost, or having otherwise disappeared – show a great increase in number in the year 1349. The average number of these inquisitions for the two years 1346 and 1347 is less than 120; in 1348 there are 130, whilst in 1349 there still exist 311 such records. That the number was very considerably more than this appears from the entry of the writs to the various Escheators upon the "Originalia Roll" for 1349. From this source it may be gathered that the number of writs issued by the King upon information of the death of landed proprietors was 619. Sometimes several such writs are addressed at one time to the Escheator to inquire into many deaths in the same place.171

These records afford evidence of the numbers of landowners swept off by the scourge, but their special value lies in the testimony they afford to the state of various manors and holdings examined in regard to their value after the plague had abated. The smaller tenants paying rent or performing land services were, of course, the chief element in the value of an estate, and especially where the land was in common, as was generally the case, empty farmsteads and cottages meant a proportional decrease in the yearly value.

Thus, to take some examples of the evidence of the epidemic in this district. Of the manor of Sladen in Buckinghamshire, not far from Berkhampstead, a jury, about the beginning of August, 1349, declared upon oath that the mill was of no value, since the miller was dead and there were no tenants left to want any corn ground, "because of the mortality." The rents derived hitherto from the free tenants, natives of the soil and cottagers, had been £12 a year, now it is declared that there are no tenants at all, and that the land is lying untilled and useless. On the whole manor one little cottage, with a strip of land, held by one John Robyns on a service rent worth seven shillings a year, was apparently all that was considered to be worth anything. At another place on the same estate all the tenants and cottars except one were dead, and at a third not one had survived.172

In Bedfordshire, by the end of May, 1349, the same tale is told. A cloth mill on the manor of Storington is said to be idle and worthless, and the reason assigned is that "it stands empty through the mortality of the plague, and there is no one who wishes to use it or rent it for the same reason." Land, too, is described as lying uncultivated, and woods cannot be sold because there is no one to buy.173

In Berkshire, in July, 1349, on a manor belonging to the Husee family the rents and services of the natives of the soil, "now dead," which were formerly worth thirty-two shillings a year, are declared to be without any value at all, because, as the Inquisition says, "there is no one willing to buy or to hire the land of the said dead tenants," and since the land lay all in common it could not be cultivated, and was thus useless.174 In the same way, on the manor of Crokham, which had belonged to Catherine, wife of the Earl of Salisbury, even as early as April 23rd of this year the free tenants and other holders, who had paid yearly £13, were all dead, and no tenants could be got to take up their lands.175 In other places there are no Court fees, no services performed, and no mills used, because all on the land are dead; houses and tenements also are in hand, and rents everywhere are either reduced or are nothing at all, because some or all of those who held the lands and cottages have been swept away.176

The institutions for the county of Buckingham show that in the year 1349177 there were eighty-three appointments made to vacant livings. This is slightly less than half the total number of benefices in the county, which appears to have been 180. From the appointments that are dated it appears probable that the sickness was at its worst in the county in the months from May till September, 1349.178

On the other side of London, the dioceses of Canterbury and Rochester divide between them the county of Kent. The Archbishop had jurisdiction over the south-eastern portion with its long line of coast stretching from the Medway to the boundaries of Sussex. The diocese of Rochester included the western portion of Kent, which lies on the southern bank of the Thames from London to Sheerness. The diocese of Canterbury was in many respects peculiarly exposed to the chances of contagion. In it were situated both Dover and Sandwich, the two chief points of communication with the ports of France, and through the city of Canterbury passed the main line of road between the coast and London.

Thrice, within a few months, the Archiepiscopal See was deprived by death of its ruler; and one, at least, of these, and very probably two, died of the prevailing sickness. The register of the prior and convent of Christchurch, Canterbury, during the vacancy, shows that institutions to livings in the diocese followed one another in rapid succession, and that deaths must have occurred in a large proportion of the benefices of this part of England.179 "In the year of our Lord, 1348, immediately after the close of the Nativity," writes Stephen Birchington, in his history of the Archbishops of Canterbury, "arrived the common death of all people; and it lasted continuously till the end of the month of May, in the year 1349. By this pestilence barely a third part of mankind were left alive. Then, also, there was such a scarcity and dearth of priests that the parish churches remained almost unserved, and beneficed persons, through fear of death, left the care of the benefices, not knowing where to go."180

At Canterbury itself there is some evidence of the epidemic. The abbot of St. Augustine's had died of the disease at Avignon; but no information has been preserved of what took place at the monastery itself, although the fact that abbot Thomas asked for and obtained from Pope Clement VI dispensations, "on account of defect of birth," for six monks, whom he desired to have ordained at this time, makes it more than probable that the pestilence had carried off many members of the community, whose places it was necessary to fill.

At Christchurch only four of the community died at the time, and this comparative immunity has been ascribed to the excellent water supply obtained a century before for the monastery from the hills.181 Later on in the summer, however, when the new abbot of St. Albans rested at Canterbury, on his way to the Pope at Avignon, one of the two companions whom he had with him died of the sickness there.182 In the city, also, two masters were appointed to the Hospital of Eastbridge, one quickly after the other. The prioress of St. Sepulchre's and the prior of St. Gregory's both died; but we can only suspect what happened in the communities at this anxious time, and among the people at large. At Sandwich, in the June of 1349, the plague was still raging. The old cemetery was full to overflowing, and the suffragan bishop was commissioned to proceed thither and consecrate a new piece of ground, given for the purpose by the Earl of Huntingdon.183

One example may be given here of the rapidity with which during the great sickness members of a family followed one another to the grave. Sir Thomas Dene, of Ospring, about three miles from Faversham, in the northern part of the diocese of Rochester, died on May the 18th, 1349. At the time of his death he had four daughters – Benedicta, five years old, Margaret, four years, and Martha and Joan, younger still. By July the 8th Martha, the wife of Sir Thomas, had also died, and from the inquisition, taken on Monday, the 3rd of August, 1349, it appears that of the children the two youngest were now also dead. Thus, out of a family of six, the father, mother, and two children had been carried off by the disease.184

In this second half of the county of Kent, which forms the diocese of Rochester, the sickness was felt as severely as in the Canterbury diocese. What happened here is told in the account of William Dene, a monk of Rochester, and a contemporary of the events he describes. "A plague such as never before had been heard of," he writes, "ravaged England in this year. The Bishop of Rochester out of his small household lost four priests, five gentlemen, ten serving men, seven young clerks, and six pages, so that not a soul remained who might serve him in any office. At Malling (a Benedictine nunnery) he blessed two abbesses, and both quickly died, and there were left there only four professed nuns and four novices. To one of these the Bishop committed the charge of the temporals, to another that of the spirituals, because no proper person for abbess could be found."

"The whole of this time," says the writer in another place, "the Bishop of Rochester remained at Halling185 and Trotterscliff,186 and he conferred orders in both places at certain intervals. Alas, for our sorrow! this mortality swept away so vast a multitude of both sexes that none could be found to carry the corpses to the grave. Men and women bore their own offspring on their shoulders to the church and cast them into a common pit. From these there proceeded so great a stench that hardly anyone dared to cross the cemeteries."

The chronicler calls attention, in the most distinct terms, to a fact mentioned by Birchington of Canterbury, and touched on by the Bishop of Bath and Wells (p. 81), namely, that dread of the contagion interfered even with the exercise of priestly functions. These are, perhaps, the only cases in England which recall the terrible and uncontrollable fear which in Italy issued in an abandonment of all principle.

Again, he says: "In this pestilence many chaplains and paid clerics refused to serve, except at excessive salaries. The Bishop of Rochester, by a mandate addressed to the archdeacon of Rochester, on the 27th of June, 1349, orders all these, on pain of suspension, to serve such cures;"187 "and some priests and clerics refuse livings, now vacant in law and fact," writes the Bishop, "because they are slenderly provided for; and some, having poor livings, which they had long ago obtained, are now unwilling to keep them, because their stipend, on account of the death of their parishioners, is so notoriously diminished that they cannot get a living and bear the burden of their cure. It has accordingly happened that parishes have remained unserved for a long time, and the cure attached to them has been abandoned to the great danger of souls. We, desiring to remedy this as soon as possible, by the present letters permit and grant special leave to all rectors and vicars of our city and diocese instituted, or hereafter to be instituted, to such slender benefices as do not produce a true revenue of ten marks sterling a year, to receive during their poverty an anniversary mass, or such a number of masses as may bring their stipends to this annual sum."188

Then after noting that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Bradwardine, had died in the Bishop of Rochester's palace in London, William Dene continues: "So great was the deficiency of labourers and workmen of every kind in those days that more than a third of the land over the whole kingdom remained uncultivated. The labourers and skilled workmen were imbued with such a spirit of rebellion that neither king, law, nor justice could curb them. The whole people for the greater part ever became more depraved, more prone to every vice, and more inclined than before to evil and wickedness, not thinking of death, nor of the past plague, nor of their own salvation… And priests, little weighing the sacrifice of a contrite spirit, betook themselves to places where they could get larger stipends than in their own benefices. On which account many benefices remained unserved, whose holders would not be stayed by the rule of their Ordinary. Thus, day by day, the dangers to soul both in clergy and in people multiplied."

"Throughout the whole of that winter and spring the Bishop of Rochester, an old and decrepid man, remained at Trotterscliff, saddened and grieving over the sudden change of the age. And in every manor of the Bishopric buildings and walls fell to ruins, and that year there was hardly a manor which returned a hundred pounds. In the monastery of Rochester, also, there was such a scarcity of provisions that the community were troubled with great want of food; so much so that the monks were obliged to grind their own bread." The prior, however, adds the writer, always lived well. William Dene also relates much that will come under consideration when the results of the great pestilence are dealt with. Here, however, it may be noted that he speaks of "the Bishop visiting the abbey of Malling and the monastery of Lesnes," when he found them so poor "that, as is thought, from the present age to the Day of Judgment they can never recover." Moreover, he notes that Simon Islep, on the day of his enthronisation as Archbishop of Canterbury, did not keep the feast, as was usual, with great display, but to avoid all expense kept it simply with the monks in their refectory at Christchurch.189

To this account of the state of the diocese of Rochester, written at the time, it is only necessary to add that the number of benefices in this portion of Kent was some 230, which will serve as some indication of the number of clergy carried off by the prevailing sickness.

The diocese of Winchester includes the two counties of Surrey and Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. On the 24th of October, 1348, Bishop Edyndon, the occupant of the see, addressed a letter to his clergy ordering prayers.190 It bears upon it the stamp of the horror which had seized upon the minds of all by reason of the reports now coming to hand of what had taken place in other countries. "William, by Divine providence, Bishop," he writes, "to the prior and chapter of our Church of Winchester, health, grace, and benediction. A voice in Rama has been heard; much weeping and crying has sounded throughout the various countries of the globe. Nations, deprived of their children in the abyss of an unheard plague, refuse to be consoled because, as is terrible to hear of, cities, towns, castles, and villages, adorned with noble and handsome buildings, and wont up to the present to rejoice in an illustrious people, in their wisdom and counsel, in their strength, and in the beauty of their matrons and virgins; wherein, too, every joy abounded, and whither multitudes of people flocked from afar for relief; all these have already been stripped of their population by the calamity of the said pestilence, more cruel than any two-edged sword. And into these said places now none dare enter, but fly far from them as from the dens of wild beasts. Every joy has ceased in them; pleasant sounds are hushed, and every note of gladness is banished. They have become abodes of horror and a very wilderness; fruitful country places, without the tillers, thus carried off, are deserts and abandoned to barrenness. And, news most grave which we report with the deepest anxiety, this cruel plague, as we have heard, has already begun to singularly afflict the various coasts of the realm of England. We are struck with the greatest fear lest, which God forbid, the fell disease ravage any part of our city and diocese. And although God, to prove our patience, and justly to punish our sins, often afflicts us, it is not in man's power to judge the Divine counsels. Still, it is much to be feared that man's sensuality, which, propagated by the tendency of the old sin of Adam, from youth inclines all to evil, has now fallen into deeper malice and justly provoked the Divine wrath by a multitude of sins to this chastisement.