"It took men generally in the head and stomach, appearing first in the groin," says Villani, "or under the armpits, by little knobs or swellings called kernels, boils, blains, blisters, pimples, or plague-sores; being generally attended with devouring fever, with occasional spitting and vomiting of blood, whence, for the most part, they died presently or in half a day, or within a day or two at the most."
Less precise and minute is the description of the great surgeon, Guido de Chauliac, who nobly stayed at Avignon for the six months during which the visitation was at its worst; but he too mentions the carbuncular swellings in the axillae and the groin, the purple spots, and the violent inflammation of the lungs, attended by fatal expectoration of blood.
As for the Emperor John Cantacuzene, his description is so flagrantly a mere adaptation of the history of the plague at Athens by Thucydides that it must be received with caution. It is only in what it omits and in what it adds to the older narrative that it possesses any great historic value. It agrees with the accounts quoted above in making mention of the swellings, the blood-spitting, and the awful rapidity with which the disease ran its course. It omits all mention of the eruption on the surface of the skin, the flushed eyes, and, above all, the swollen and inflamed condition of the larynx, the cough, the sneezing, and the hiccough, which Dr. Collier found so significant.
Comparing, then, the several accounts which have come down to us, meagre though they are, it ought to be possible to arrive at some conclusions regarding the nature of the plague of the fourteenth century which, for the pathologist, would amount to certainties. The wonder is that such men as Dr. Hecker and his learned translator should have shown so much reserve--not to say timidity--in pronouncing judgment upon the question.
A layman runs a risk of incurring withering scorn at his presumption, and ridicule at his ignorance who ventures to express an opinion--or to have one--on any subject which the medical profession claims as within its own domain; and I should not dare to speak otherwise than as a very humble inquirer when the learned are silent. There are, however, some conclusions which may be accepted without hesitation and which will be admitted by all.
I. The Black Death was _not_ scarlatina maligna, as the plague at Athens undoubtedly was. [Footnote: "The History of the Plague of Athens," translated from Thucydides by C. Collier, M.D., London, 1857.]
II. It was _not_ small-pox.
III. It was _not_ cholera.
IV. It probably _was_ a variety of the Oriental plague, which has reappeared in Europe in more modern times, and regarding which they who wish to know more must seek their information where it is to be found.
The next question usually asked is, Where did the new plague come from? And here the answer is even more uncertain than that to the other question--What the great plague was.
In fact, a careful comparison of such testimony as comes to hand leaves the inquirer in a very perplexed condition, and inclines him rather to accept than reject the old-fashioned theory of a "general corruption of the atmosphere" as the only working hypothesis whereby to account for the startling spontaneity of the outbreak and its appearance at so many and such distant points at the same time.
The Imperial author, who appears to have done his best to gather information, evidently found himself quite baffled in his attempt to follow the march of the plague. It had originated among the Hyperborean Scythians; it had passed through Pontus, and Libya, and Syria, and the furthest East, and "in a manner all the world round about." Other writers are just as much in the dark as Cantacuzene, and it seems mere waste of time to endeavour to arrive at any conclusion from data so defective and statements so void of historical basis as have come down to us. This only seems established, that during the year 1347 there was great atmospheric disturbance extending over a large area of Southern Europe, and resulting in extensive failure of the harvest, and consequent distress and famine; and that in January, 1348, one of the most violent earthquakes in history wrought immense havoc in Italy, the shocks being felt in the islands of the Mediterranean, and even north of the Alps.
It is at least curious that the date of the earthquake coincides very closely with the date which has been given by Guido de Chauliac for the first appearance of the plague at Avignon. He tells us expressly that it broke out in that city in January, 1348, and I think it would be difficult to produce trustworthy evidence of any earlier outbreak than this, at any rate, in Europe. [Footnote: One of our monastic chroniclers states expressly that it began about St. James's Day in 1347. I _feel_ certain that the date is wrong, and that it could be proved to be wrong without much difficulty by reference to documentary evidence which might be consulted.] "It appeared at Florence," says Villani, "at the beginning of April, and at Cesena, on the other side of the Apennines, on the 1st of June." It is asserted that it reached England at the beginning of August, is said to have lingered for some months in the west, and to have devastated Bristol with awful severity.
There can be no doubt that in the towns of Italy and France there was a dreadful mortality; but when we are told that 100,000 died in Venice, and 60,000 in Florence, and 70,000 in Siena, it is impossible to accept such round numbers as anything better than ignorant guesses. Whether the great cities of the Low Countries were visited by the pestilence with any severity, or how far the towns of Germany were affected, I am unable to say, nor am I much concerned at present with such an inquiry; that I leave to others to throw light upon. But as to the progress, the incidence, and the effect of the Black Death in England--when it came and where it showed itself, how long it lasted, and what effects followed--on these questions the time has come for pointing out that we have a body of evidence such as perhaps exists in no other country--evidence, too, which hitherto has hardly received any attention, its very existence entirely overlooked, forgotten, nay! not even suspected.
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Let us understand where we are, and look about us for a little while.
When King Edward III. entered London in triumph on the 14th of October, 1347, he was the foremost man in Europe, and England had reached a height of power and glory such as she had never attained before. At the battle of Creçi France had received a crushing blow, and by the loss of Calais, after an eleven months' siege, she had been reduced well-nigh to the lowest point of humiliation. David II., King of Scotland, was now lying a prisoner in the Tower of London. Louis of Bavaria had just been killed by a fall from his horse, the Imperial throne was vacant, and the electors in eager haste proclaimed that they had chosen the King of England to succeed. To their discomfiture the King of England declined the proffered crown. He "had other views." Intoxicated by the splendour of their sovereign and his martial renown, and the Success which seemed to attend him wherever he showed himself, the English people had gone mad with exultation--all except the merchant princes, the monied men, who are not often given to lose their heads. They took a much more sober view of the outlook than the populace did--they had an eye to their own interests and the interests of the trade and commerce in which they were engaged. They were very much in earnest in asserting their rights and protesting against their wrongs, and they presented their petitions to the King after the fashion of the time--petitions which must have seemed rather startling protests in the fourteenth century, betraying, as they did, some advanced opinions for which the world at large was hardly then prepared.
Students of the manual, compendium, and popular handbook style of literature may possibly be hardly aware that the war of protection _versus_ free trade, and the other war concerned with the incidence of taxation upon property, real and personal, had already begun. Even my distinguished friend, Mr. Cadaverous, who never made a mistake in his life, and whose memory for facts is portentous--even Mr. Cadaverous assures me that he has never met with any mention of the above fact in all his study of history.
History! What is history but the science which teaches us to see the throbbing life of the present in the throbbing life of the past?
Note that these "gentlemen of the House of Commons," who made themselves somewhat disagreeable in the Parliament of 1348, were not the warriors who had gone out to fight the King's battles, but the burghers who stayed at home, heaped up money, and grumbled. It was otherwise with the roistering swash-bucklers who came back in that glorious autumn. They are said to have returned laden with the spoils of France, the plunder of Calais, and so on and so on. Calais must have been rather a queer little place to afford much _plunder_ after all that it had gone through. The swash-bucklers doubtless brought prize-money home, but it did not all come from France--that is pretty certain. Villani, our Florentine friend, tells us of an unexampled commercial crisis at Florence about this time--brought about, observe, by the English conqueror of France not paying his debts. So the Bardi and the Peruzzi actually stopped payment; for the King owed them a million and a half of gold florins, and there was lamentation and distress of mind, and the level of the Arno rose by reason of the flood of tears that fell "from tired eyelids upon tired eyes." All that made no difference to the swash-bucklers, and up and down England there was wild extravagance, and money seemed to burn in people's pockets. Feasting and merriment, and all that appertains thereto, were the order of the day, and all went merry as a marriage bell.
The King got all he could get out of the Parliament, but he did not get, he could not get, all he wished. What was to be done next? The Pope said, "Make peace!" and his Holiness did his little best to bring about the desired end. The summer of 1348 had come, and it seems that at Avignon the plague had by this time spent itself, people were no longer afraid to go there now, and the Pope would peradventure come out of his seclusion and receive an embassy. So on the 28th of July Edward III. wrote a letter to Pope Clement, and announced his intention of sending his ambassadors to Avignon to treat about terms. The negotiations fell through, and on the 8th of October the King announced by proclamation that he was once more going to make an inroad upon France with an armed force. He did not keep his word. In November a truce was patched up somehow; and on the first of the next month we find the King once more at Westminster, and there he seems to have remained over Christmas. If the dates are correctly given, the news from the west of England about this time was not likely to have provoked much merriment.
Are the dates correct? Gentlemen of an antiquarian turn of mind, out in the west there, might do worse than spend some weeks in looking into this matter.
Meanwhile, it is at this point that we get our first direct, unquestionable proof, that the plague had reached our shores. On the 1st of January, 1349, the King wrote to the Bishop of Winchester, informing him that although the Parliament had been summoned to meet on the 19th of the month, yet because a _sudden visitation of deadly pestilence had broken out at Westminster and the neighbourhood,_ which was increasing daily, and occasioning much apprehension for the safety of any great concourse of people, should it assemble in that place at the time appointed; therefore it had been determined to prorogue the Parliament to Monday, the 27th of April.
I gather from the wording of this document that the Government did not look upon the outbreak with any very grave apprehension, that they did not regard it as anything more than an epidemic which would be confined to narrow limits, and one likely to pass off after a little time as the spring advanced; and that they can hardly as yet have received any very disturbing intelligence of its ravages, such as must have soon come in from all points of the compass. Two months passed, and the situation had seriously changed. On the 10th of March the King issued another letter, in which, after referring to the previous proclamation, he further prorogued the meeting of Parliament _sine die._ The reason for this step is explained to be "because the deadly pestilence in Westminster, _and in the City of London,_ and in other places thereabouts, was increasing with extraordinary severity" _(gravius solito invalescit)._
It is to be observed that, in the first notice of prorogation, no mention is made of the City of London, only of Westminster and its neighbourhood. In the second, we hear that the plague had already extended over a wider area, and was showing no signs of abating. Nay, by this time the King and his advisers had taken alarm--there was no knowing where the mortality would stop.
Two days after this (12th of March, 1349) William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich, received his letters of protection as ambassador for the King in France. His safe conduct--for himself and his suite--was to extend till Whitsuntide next ensuing (31st of May, 1349). The suite consisted of eight persons, all Norfolk men; two were wealthy laymen, two were distinguished ecclesiastics, three were country parsons, of one I know nothing. I believe they all got back safely, but the three country parsons returned to their several cures only to be smitten by the plague. The Bishop had not shown himself again in his diocese many weeks before they were all three dead. In making this last statement, I am a little anticipating the course of events, but only a little. The Angel of Death moves at no laggard pace when once he begins his march with his sword drawn in his hand.
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Thus far I have been quoting from, or referring to, authorities which are accessible to any one with an adequate command of books at his elbow--the chroniclers and the historians named, the Foedera, the Rolls of Parliament, and such authorities as whoever chooses may consult for himself. These printed authorities, which have all been consulted and looked into again and again, have told us very little, but they have given us certain notes of time--furnished us, in fact, with a _terminus a quo_. We have learnt this, at any rate, that about Christmas, 1348, the plague appeared at Westminster and its vicinity, and that it had increased alarmingly in London and elsewhere by the beginning of March, 1349.
We have next to deal with that other evidence to which I have alluded--the unprinted documentary evidence ready to our hands--I mean the Institution Books in the various Diocesan Registries and the Rolls of the Manor Courts, which still exist in very great abundance, though they are rapidly disappearing from the face of the earth. It is necessary that I should trespass upon my reader's attention while I endeavour to explain the nature and the value of these two classes of documents before proceeding to deal with their testimony.
I. Students of English history know that few aggressions of the Pope of Rome during the thirteenth century caused more deep discontent among the laity than those which threatened interference with their right of patronage to ecclesiastical benefices, and actually did interfere with those rights. The disgraceful recklessness with which Italians, ignorant of our language, were forced into English livings, and the best preferment was claimed for Papal nominees, produced an amount of irritation and revolt against Roman interference which had never been known before. The feeling of the laity became more and more outspoken, and at last Innocent IV. gave way, and the rights of private patronage were assured to the great lords--assured, at any rate, in word--though the Papal rescript "paltered with them in a double sense" and the quibbles and reservations, which could always be resorted to under colour of the _non obstante_ clause, constantly afforded excuse for fresh encroachments and evasions when the opportunity occurred. The jealousy of Roman interference continued to increase, and the legislation of the first half of the fourteenth century was largely taken up with enactments to guard the rights of English patrons, from the King downwards. But there was always a feeling of insecurity on the part of those who had any benefices in their gift, and a corresponding feeling on the part of those who were candidates for preferment. This led to a vicious system, whereby appointments were made with almost indecent haste to every vacant cure; institution was granted to an applicant for a benefice with the least possible delay after a vacancy had once been made known; the patron was willing to exercise his right in favour of any one, rather than not exercise it at all; the candidate for the living knew that it was a case of now or never; the Bishop had nothing to gain, and something to fear, from asking too many questions; and there is some reason to think that the parishioners had more voice in the matter than they have now. That followed which was likely to follow, namely, that the institutions to vacant benefices were made as a rule within a very few weeks, or even days, after the death of an incumbent. A man who had got his nomination lost no time in presenting himself to the Bishop. There was no widow or family of his predecessor to consider; and for every reason, the sooner the new man got into the parsonage the better for all parties concerned. Moreover, to guard against all chances of a disputed claim, the Bishops' Registers of Institution were kept with the most scrupulous care, and while enormous masses of ecclesiastical records in every diocese in England have perished, the Institution Books have been preserved with extraordinary fidelity, have survived all the troubles and wars and spoliation that have gone on, and, speaking within certain limits, have been preserved for five hundred years from one end of England to the other. It is no exaggeration to say that there are hundreds of parishes in England of whose incumbents for centuries not only a complete list may be made out, but the very day and place be set down where those incumbents received institution into the benefice either at the hands of the Diocesan or his official. This is certainly the case in the great East Anglian diocese of Norwich, which comprehended, in the fourteenth century, the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk and a portion of Cambridgeshire. We may safely say that we are able to tell approximately--within a few weeks or days--when any living fell vacant during the period under review, who succeeded, and who the patron was who presented to the cure. Nor is this true only of the secular or parochial clergy. Jealous as the religious houses were of their rights and privileges, the heads of monasteries, as a rule, were compelled to receive institution too at the hands of the Bishops of the see in which they were situated. They too presented themselves to their Diocesan that their elections might be formally recognized; and thus the Institution Books contain not only the records of the various changes in the incumbency of the secular clergy, but also of such as were occasioned by the death of all abbots, or priors or abbesses as presided over that large number of religious houses as were not exempt from Episcopal jurisdiction. It is obvious that these Records constitute an invaluable body of evidence, from which important information may be drawn regarding our parochial and ecclesiastical history. The Institution Books, as might be expected, contain a great deal of curious matter besides the mere records of admission to benefices, but with this I am at present not concerned.
II. I come now to the Court Rolls, which throw much more light upon our parochial history than any other documents that have come down to us; their information is concerned exclusively with the civil, domestic, sometimes with the political life of our forefathers; about their religious life, or their contentions with ecclesiastics, they have rarely a word to say.
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All who have at any time owned or purchased what is known as copyhold land might be supposed to know something of the nature of the title on which such land is held. If they do not it is not for want of being reminded from time to time, in a very vexatious way, that they are in theory and in fact not so much owners of their several holdings as _tenants_ of the Lord of the Manor to which such holdings appertain. But inasmuch as a great deal of ignorance prevails as to the nature of this tenure, and as it is impossible to estimate the value and importance of the evidence which the Rolls of the Manor Courts supply in the inquiry on which we are engaged, I feel it necessary to introduce at this point a few paragraphs introductory to and explanatory of what follows.
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In the thirteenth century it may be said that _in theory_ the land of England belonged to the sovereign. The sovereign had indeed assigned large tracts of territory to A or B or C; but under certain circumstances, of no very unfrequent occurrence, these tracts of territory came back into the hands of the sovereign, and were re-granted by him at his will to whom he chose. In return for such grants, A or B or C were bound to perform certain _services_ in recognition of the fact that they were _tenants_ of the king; and by virtue of such _services_-the equivalents of what we now understand by _rent_-they were called _tenants in chief_, or tenants _in capite_.
The tracts of territory held by A or B or C were in almost every case made up of lands scattered about over all parts of the kingdom. The tenant in chief had his castle or capital mansion, [Footnote: Experts will object to the use of this term and other terms as strictly inaccurate. I am not writing for experts.]which was supposed to be his abode; but as far as the larger portion--immensely the larger portion--of his possessions, he was necessarily a non-resident landlord, getting what he could out of them either by farming them through the agency of a bailiff, or letting out his estates to be held under himself in precisely the same way as he held his _fief_, or original grant, from the King.
_In theory_, the tenant in chief could not sell his land; he could sublet it to a _mesne tenant_, who stood to himself precisely in the same relation as he--the tenant _in capite_--stood to the sovereign, the mesne tenant in his turn being bound to render certain _services_ to his over lord, and liable to forfeit his _lease_--for in theory it was that--if certain contingencies happened. It was inevitable that, as time went by, the mesne tenant should regard his estate as his own, and that the same necessities which compelled the tenant _in capite_ to relax his hold over an outlying landed estate would compel the mesne tenant to follow his example. The process went on till it was becoming a serious difficulty to discover how the King was to get his _services_ from the tenant _in capite_, who had practically got rid of two-thirds of his _fief_, and how he again was to get _his services_ from the mesne tenant, who had parted with two-thirds of _his_ estate to half a dozen under tenants. Obviously, when the King's _scutage_ had to be levied, there was no telling who was liable for it, or how it should be apportioned.
It was to meet this difficulty, and to check the prevailing sub-division of land--_sub-infeudation_ men called it then--that the statute of _Quia Emptores_ was passed in the eighteenth year of King Edward I. [A.D. 1290]. The result of all the sub-division that been going on had been that the number of what we now call _landed estates_ had largely increased, each of them administered on the model of the larger _fiefs_ originally granted to the tenants _in capite_. There was a capital mansion in which the _lord_ resided, or was supposed to reside, and sub-tenants holding their land under the lord, and paying to him periodically certain small money rents and rendering him certain _services_. The _estate_ comprehended the capital mansion with its appurtenances and the domain lands in the lord's occupation, the common lands over which the tenants had certain common rights, and the lands in the occupation of the tenants, which they farmed with more or less freedom for their own behoof,--the whole constituting a manor whose owner was the lord. At certain intervals the tenants were bound to appear before their lord and give account of themselves; bound, that is, to show cause why they had not performed their _services_; bound to pay their quit rents, whether in money or kind; bound to go through a great deal of queer business; but above all, as far as our present purpose is concerned, _to do fealty_ to the lord of the manor in every case where the small patches of land had changed hands, and pay a fine for entering upon land acquired by the various forms of alienation or by inheritance. In some manors, if a tenant died the lord laid claim to some of his live stock as a _heriot_, which was forthwith seized by the bailiff of the manor; and in all manors, if a man died without heirs, his land _escheated_ to the lord of the manor; that is, it came back to the lord who _in theory_ was the owner of the soil.
These periodical meetings at which all this business and a great deal else was transacted were called the _Courts_ of the Manor, and the Records of these Courts were kept with exceeding and most jealous scrupulousness; they were invariably drawn up in Latin, according to a strictly legal form, and were inscribed on long _rolls_ of parchment, and are known as Manor Court Rolls. This is not the time to say much more about the Court Rolls. They are not very easy reading--they require a somewhat long apprenticeship before they can be readily deciphered; but when one has once become familiar with them, they afford the student some very curious and unexpected information from time to time, though it must be allowed that you have to do a good deal of digging for every nugget that you find.
Observe, however, this--that it is not far from the truth to say that in East Anglia--for I will not travel out of my own province--every tiller of the soil who occupied a plot of land, however small, was sure to be a tenant under some lord of the manor; when he died _a record of his death was entered upon the_ _Court Rolls of the Manor_; the name of his successor was inscribed; the amount of fine set down which his heir paid for entering upon his inheritance; and if he died _without heirs_ the fact was noticed, the lands which he had held being forfeited, or _escheating_, as it was called, to the lord.
Thus the Court Rolls of a manor of the fourteenth century--for before the statute _Quia Emptores_ I suspect that they were kept with much less regularity and much less care than they were afterwards--are practically the _registers of the deaths_ of all occupiers of land within the manor; and, as every householder was an occupier of land, the death of every householder may be said to be inscribed upon the Rolls.
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Taken together, then, we have in the Diocesan Institution Books, on the one hand, and in the Court Rolls, on the other, two sources of information which--as far as they go--furnish us with a mass of evidence absolutely irrefragable with regard to the mortality of clergy and laity at any period during the fourteenth century. I say "as far as they go," for it might happen that a country benefice--and still more frequently that a town benefice--had been so cruelly pillaged by a religious house, that little or nothing remained to support the wretched parson, and that no one could be found who would accept the cure. Then the cure would remain vacant for years. Where this happened the death of the previous incumbent would not appear on the Records for years after it had occurred, nor would any notice be taken of the long vacancy when the next parson was instituted. In a period of dreadful mortality, if the parsons died off in large numbers, it would be inevitable that the impoverished livings would "go a begging." It might be difficult to get the most valuable pieces of preferment filled--it would be impossible to fill such as could not offer a bare maintenance. Hence the Institution Books can only be accepted as giving a part of the evidence with regard to the clerical mortality. However startling the number of deaths of clergy within a certain area during a given period may appear to be, they certainly will not represent the whole number--only the number of such incumbents as were forthwith replaced by their successors; and, taking one year with another, it is fair to say that within any diocese the _larger the number of institutions_ recorded in a given time, the _more incomplete_ will be the record of the deaths among the clergy during that time. When there are more men than places the places are soon filled. When there are more places than men there must needs be vacancies--square holes and round ones.
So much for the Institution Books. With regard to the Court Rolls, there the evidence is even much less exhaustive; for here we have the registers of the deaths of the landholders within the manor, great and small--_i.e._, of the heads of families; but, except in rare instances, we have no notice of any other member of the household, or of what happened to them. A man's whole household may have been swept off--young and old, babe and suckling, sister and brother, and aged mother, and wife, and children, and servant, and friend--every soul of them involved in one hideous, horrible calamity. The steward of the manor was not concerned with any but the head of the house--the tenant of the manor. Was he missing? Then, who was his heir? Any sons? Dead of the plague! Brothers? Dead of the plague! Wife? Dead of the plague! Children? Kinsfolk? All gone! Their blackening carcases huddled in sweltering masses of putrefaction in the wretched hovels, while the pitiless July sun blazed overhead, "Calmer than clock-work, and not caring!"
The steward made his entry of one fact only. Thus:--
"The Jurors do present that Simon Must died seized of a Messuage and 4 acres of land in Stradset, and that he has no heir. Therefore it is fitting that the aforesaid land be taken into the hands of the lord."
Also that Matilda Stile... was she married or single, widow or mother or maid? What cared the precise man of business on that 24th of July, 1349, as his pen moved over the parchment?...--"Matilda Stile died seized of one acre and one rood of land held in Villenage. Therefore it is fitting that the aforesaid land be taken into the hands of the lord until such time as the heir may appear in court."
He never did appear! Next year her little estate was handed over to another. She was the last of her line.
Such entries as these swarm in the Court Rolls of this year 1349. They tell their own tale. But it is obvious that their tale is incomplete, and that we must form our own conclusions from the number of the deaths recorded as to the probable number of those whose names have been quite passed over, sometimes, too, these Rolls are eloquent in their silence. When country parsons were dying by scores and hundreds, and the tillers of the soil by thousands and tens of thousands, it could not but be that the lords of manors and their stewards died also. Yes! they, too, were struck down. In one instance that I have met with the first half of the entries of the business carried on at one of these courts in the summer of this year is written in the ordinary court hand of the time, and the rest is rudely scrawled by some one whose hand is _not yet formed;_ it looks like the writing of a lad apprenticed to the scrivener's business. Was the steward of the manor actually smitten by the plague as he was holding the court--a subordinate taking his place and awkwardly finishing the work which his master's glazed eye perhaps never rested on? Again and again I have found that a series of Court Rolls of an important Norfolk manor is perfect for the first twenty-two years of Edward III. and no record remains for the next year or two. Then they begin once more, and have been preserved with unbroken regularity. At Raynham, in a parish of 1,400 acres, there were three small manors. The courts of one of them were held three times in the year 1348. _Upon the same parchment,_ and immediately following the records of the previous year, come some scarcely legible notes of a court held in 1349, the precise day of the month omitted, the entries scrawled informally by a scribe who not only did not know the forms of the court, but who was evidently not a professional writer. He bungled so that he seems actually to have given up his task. The next court of the manor was not held till three years had gone by. At Hellhoughton, a manor now belonging to the Marquis of Townshend, where two courts were held annually, the series of rolls for the first twenty-two years of Edward III. is complete. Then comes one which scarcely deserves to be called a Court Roll, so entirely informal is it, and so evidently drawn up by some one who did not know his business, and who did not pretend to know it. It is little more than a collection of rough memoranda of deaths. Twelve of the _suitors_ of the court had died without heirs; seven others had come to do fealty to the lord as successors to those whose heirs they presumably were. Nothing else is recorded. At another manor of Lord Townshend's, Raynham Parva, between the years 1347 and 1350 no court seems to have been held, though the lord of the manor, Thomas de Ingaldesthorp, had died in the interval. The scourge of the plague had been so awful in its incidence that when the next court was held on the 24th July, 1350, fourteen men and four women (holders of land, be it remembered) are named as having died off, not one of whom had left a living representative behind them. In all cases their little holdings had escheated to the lord. Amongst them was one "John Taleour, clericus." Was he the clerk who, up to this time, had kept the Rolls so neatly, and who could not be easily replaced after he fell a victim to the plague?
Indeed, the inquirer who is desirous of pursuing researches in this field must be prepared for frequent disappointment just at the moment when he thinks he has made a "find." The Court Rolls for this particular year are comparatively scarce, and this is true not only for East Anglia, but for the whole of England, as any one may see who will only cast his eye down those pages of the Deputy-Keeper's Forty-third Annual Report, which are concerned with the Records of the Duchy of Lancaster. These _registers of deaths_ are, as I have before said, only _complete as far as they go._
* * * * * * *
Let us now return to the point at which the King's letter of prorogation left us on the 10th March, 1349. At that time it is certain that the pestilence was raging fiercely in London and Westminster, and almost as certain that it had abated in Avignon and other towns in France. Two or three days after this date the Bishop of Norwich crossed the Channel, leaving his diocese in the hands of his officials. Had the plague broken out with any severity in East Anglia? I think it almost demonstrable that it had not. A day or two before the Bishop left London he instituted his friend Stephen de Cressingham to the Deanery of Cranwich--in the west of Norfolk--which had fallen vacant, but there is nothing to show that the vacancy was due to anything out of the common. During the year ending 25th of March, 1349, there were 80 institutions in the diocese of Norwich, as against 92 in the year 1347 and 59 in the year 1346. The average number of institutions for the five years ending 25th of March, 1349, was 77. Between this date and the end of the month there were four institutions only--that is, there was nothing abnormal in the condition of the diocese.
East Anglia had not long to wait. In the valley of the Stour, a mile or two from Sudbury, where the stream serves as the boundary between Suffolk and Essex, the ancestors of Lord Walsingham had two manors in the township of Little Cornard--the one was called Caxtons, the other was the Manor of Cornard Parva. At this latter manor a court was held on the 31st of March--the number of tenants of the manor can at no time have exceeded fifty--yet at this court six women and three men are registered as having died since the last court was held, two months before.
This is the earliest instance I have yet met with of the appearance of the plague among us, and as it is the earliest, so does it appear to have been one of the most frightful visitations from which any town or village in Suffolk or Norfolk suffered during the time the pestilence lasted. On the 1st of May another court was held, fifteen more deaths are recorded--thirteen men and two women. _Seven of them without heirs._ On the 3rd of November, apparently when the panic abated, again the court met. In the six months that had passed thirty-six more deaths had occurred, and _thirteen more households_ had been left without a living soul to represent them. In this little community, in six months' time, twenty-one families had been absolutely obliterated--men, women and children--and of the rest it is difficult to see how there can have been a single house in which there was not one dead. Meanwhile, some time in September, the parson of the parish had fallen a victim to the scourge, and on the 2nd of October another was instituted in his room. Who reaped the harvest? The tithe sheaf too--how was it garnered in the barn? And the poor kine at milking time? Hush! Let us pass on.
* * * * * * *
Little Cornard lies almost at the extreme south of the county of Suffolk. At the extreme north of Norfolk, occupying the elbow of the coast, having the Wash on the west and the German Ocean on the north, lies the deanery of Heacham, a district in which the Le Stranges have for at least seven centuries exercised their beneficent influence. Heacham itself is a large township extending over some 4,900 acres. The manorial rights appear to have extended over the whole parish. The series of Court Rolls is almost unbroken for the reign of Edward III. During the years 1346, 1347, and 1348, ten, six, and nine deaths are registered respectively. The courts were held every two months. In December, 1348, there is no death recorded; in February, 1349, again there is none. On the 28th of April a dispute was set down for hearing to be adjudicated upon by the steward and a jury of the homage. It was a dispute between a husband and wife on a question of dower. The man's name was Reginald Goscelin, his wife's name was Emma. The dispute was never settled. Before the day of hearing came on, _every one_ of Emma Goscelin's witnesses was dead, and her husband was dead too. Four other landowners had died. One of these latter had a son and heir to succeed, but two months later the boy had gone, and the sole representative of the family was a little girl, who became straightway the ward of the lord of the manor.
Contiguous to the township of Heacham lies Hunstanton--not the pleasant little watering-place which the million will persist in calling by that name, though scarcely forty years ago the maker and builder of the modern town, the man who marked out its streets and planned its roads, and foresaw its future before a brick of the place was laid, gave it the name of St. Edmunds--Hunstanton, I say, in the fourteenth century was a parish less than half the size of Heacham, and probably much further from the sea than it is now. When, on the 20th of March, 1349, the steward of the manor of Hunstanton held his court there he entered the name of only one old woman who had died within the last month--that is, up to the 20th of March the plague had not yet appeared. Five weeks after this, on the 23rd of April, the next court was held. Five petty disputes had been entered for hearing. Sixteen men were engaged in them as principals or witnesses. When the day came eleven of the sixteen were dead. On the 22nd of May again there was a court, and again three suits for debt were set down. The defendant in one case, the plaintiff in a second, both plaintiff and defendant in the third, died before the court day arrived. In June no court was held--was there a panic? Except in this month and in September the meetings were carried on as regularly as if it had all been done by machinery. In September things got to their worst, and in this month the parson died, and was speedily succeeded by another. When the court of the 16th of October sat, it was found that in two months sixty-three men and fifteen women had been carried off. In thirty-one instances there were only women or children to succeed; in nine cases there were no heirs, and the little estates had escheated to the lord. Incredible though it may sound the fact is demonstrable, that in this one parish of Hunstanton, which a man may walk round in two or three hours, and the whole population of which might have assembled in the church then recently built, one hundred and seventy-two persons, tenants of the manor, died off in eight months; seventy-four of them left no heirs male, and nineteen others had no blood relation in the world to claim the inheritance of the dead.
I have no intention of laying before my readers a detailed statement of the documentary evidence which has passed under my notice. The time has not come yet for an elaborate report on the case, nor can I pretend to have done more than break ground upon what must be regarded still as virgin soil; but this I may safely say, that I have not found one single roll of any Norfolk manor during this dreadful 23rd year of Edward, dating after April or May, which did not contain only too abundant proof of the ravages of the pestilence--evidence which forces upon me the conviction that hardly a town or village in East Anglia escaped the scourge; and which in its cumulative force makes it impossible to doubt that the mortality in Norfolk and Suffolk must have exceeded the largest estimate which has yet been given by conjecture.
When I find in a stray roll of an insignificant little manor at Croxton, near Thetford, held on the 24th of July, that seventeen tenants had died since the last court, eight of them without heirs; that at another court held the _same day_ at Raynham, at the other end of the county, eighteen tenements had fallen into the lord's hands, eight of them certainly escheated, and the rest retained until the appearance of the heir; that in the manor of Hadeston, a hamlet of Bunwell, twelve miles from Norwich, which could not possibly have had four hundred inhabitants, fifty-four men and fourteen women were carried off by the pestilence in six months, twenty-four of them without a living soul to inherit their property; that in manor after manor the lord was carried off as well as the tenants and the steward; that in a single year _upwards of eight hundred parishes lost their parsons,_ eighty-three of them twice, and ten of them three times in a few months; and that it is quite certain these large numbers represent only a portion of the mortality among the clergy and the religious orders--when, I say, I consider all this and a great deal more that might be dwelt on, I see no other conclusion to arrive at but one, namely, that during the year ending March, 1350, more than half the population of East Anglia was swept away by the Black Death. If any one should suggest that _many more_ than half died, I should not be disposed to quarrel with him.
It must be remembered that nothing has been here said of the mortality in the towns. I believe we have no means of getting at any evidence on this part of the subject which can be trusted. In no part of England did the towns occupy a more important position relatively to the rest of the population. In no part of England did three such important towns as Lynn, Yarmouth, and Norwich, lie within so short a distance of one another, not to mention others which were then rising in the number and consideration of their inhabitants. But the statements made of the mortality in the towns will not bear examination--they represent mere guesses, nothing more. This, however, may be assumed as certain--that the death-rate in the towns at such a time as this cannot have been less than the death-rate in the villages, and that the scourge which so cruelly devastated the huts and cabins of the countrymen was not likely to fall less heavily upon the filthy dens and hovels of the men of the streets. Town life in the fourteenth century was a very dreadful life for the masses.
How did the great bulk of the people comport themselves under the pressure of this unparalleled calamity? How did their faith stand the strain that was put upon it? How did their moral instincts support them? Was there any confusion and despair? What effects--social, political, economical--followed from a catastrophe so terrible? How did the clergy behave during the tremendous ordeal through which they had to pass? What glimpses do we get of the horrors or the sorrows of that time--of the romantic, of the pathetic side of life?
When Bishop Bateman started on his journey upon the King's business, in March 1349, he can scarcely have turned his back upon his diocese without some misgivings as to what might happen during his absence. In some parts of Norfolk a very grievous murrain had prevailed during the previous year among the live stock in the farms, and though this had almost disappeared, there was ample room for anxiety in the outlook. If the plague had not yet been felt to any extent in East Anglia, it might burst forth any day. London had been stricken already, and there was no saying where it would next appear in its most malignant form. It was hoped that the Bishop's mission would be accomplished in a couple of months, and during his absence the charge of the diocese was committed as usual to his officials, to one of whom the palace at Norwich was assigned as a temporary residence.
The good ship, with the Bishop and his suite, had hardly got out of the channel, when a storm other than that which sailors care for burst upon town and village in East Anglia. The Bishop's official found his hands full of work. In April he was called upon to institute twenty-three parsons to livings that had fallen vacant. This was bad enough as a beginning, but it was child's play to what followed. By the end of May _seventy-four_ more cures had lost their incumbents and been supplied with successors. That is, in a single month, the number of institutions throughout the diocese had almost equalled the _annual_ average of the last five years. All these stricken parishes were country villages, and the larger number of them lay to the north and east of the county of Norfolk. We take note of this that we call a fact, and straightway the temptation presents itself to construct a theory upon it. Who knows not that in the trying spring-time, the "colic of puff'd Aquilon" makes life hard for man and beast in Norfolk, and that across our fields the cruel gusts burst upon us with a bitter petulance, unsparing, pitiless, hateful, till our vitality seems to be steadily waning? It was in the month of March that the great plague smote us first:--did it not come to us on the wings of the wind that swept across the sea the germs of pestilence, say from Norway, or some neighbour land in which, peradventure, the Black Death had already spent itself in hideous havoc? A tempting theory! If I confess that such a view once presented itself to my own mind I am compelled to acknowledge that I abandoned it with reluctance. It was hard, but it had to be done. How we all do hanker after a theory! What! live all your life without a theory? It's as dreary a prospect as living all your life without a baby, and yet some few great men have managed to pass through life placidly without the one or the other, and have not died forgotten or lived forlorn.
The plague had apparently fallen with the greatest virulence upon the coast and along the watercourses, but already in the spring had reached the neighbourhood of Norwich, and was showing an unsparing impartiality in its visitation. At Earlham and Wytton and Horsford, at Taverham and Bramerton, all of them villages within five miles of the cathedral, the parsons had already died. Round the great city, then the second city in England, village was being linked to village closer and closer every day in one ghastly chain of death. What a ring-fence of horror and contagion for all comers and goers to overpass!
For two months Thomas de Methwold, the official, stayed where he had been bidden to stay, in the thick of it all, at the palace. On the 29th of May he could bear it no longer. Do you ask was he afraid? Not so! We shall see that he was no craven; but the bravest men are not reckless, and least of all are they the men who are careless about the lives or the feelings of others. The great cemetery of the city of Norwich was at this time actually within the cathedral Close. The whole of the large space enclosed between the nave of the cathedral on the south and the bishop's palace on the east, and stretching as far as the Erpingham gate on the west, was one huge graveyard. When the country parsons came to present themselves for institution at the palace, they had to pass straight across this cemetery. The tiny churchyards of the city, demonstrably very little if at all larger than they are now, were soon choked, the soil rising higher and higher above the level of the street, which even to this day is in some cases five or six feet below the soppy sod piled up within the old enclosures. To the great cemetery within the Close the people brought their dead, the tumbrels discharging their load of corpses all day long, tilting them into the huge pits made ready to receive them; the stench of putrefaction palpitating through the air, and borne by the gusts of the western breeze through the windows of the palace, where the Bishop's official sat, as the candidates knelt before him and received institution with the usual formalities. It was hard upon him, it was doubly so upon those who had travelled a long day's journey through the pestilential villages; and on the 30th of May the official removed from Norwich to Terlyng, in Essex, where the Bishop had a residence; there he remained for the next ten days, during which time he instituted thirty-nine more parsons to their several benefices. By this time other towns in the diocese had felt the force of the visitation. Ipswich had been smitten, and Stowmarket, and East Dereham--how many more we cannot tell. Then the news came that the Bishop had returned; Thomas de Methwold was at once ordered back to Norwich--come what might, that was his post; there he should stay, whether to live or die.
The Bishop seems to have landed at Yarmouth about the both of June; he did not at once push on to report himself to the King; urgent private affairs detained him in his native county. Seventeen or eighteen miles to the south-west of Yarmouth lies the village of Gillingham, where the Bishop's brother, Sir Bartholomew Bateman, a man of great wealth and consideration, had been the lord of the manor. The parish contains about 2,000 acres, and at this time had at least three churches, only one of which now remains. Besides these Sir Bartholomew had a private chapel in his house. Here he kept up much state, as befitted a personage who had more than once represented Norfolk and Suffolk in Parliament. The plague came, and the worthy knight was struck down; the parson too fell a victim; and the Lady Petronilla, Sir Bartholomew's widow, presented to the living a certain Hugh Atte Mill, who was instituted on the 7th of June. The first news that the Bishop heard when he landed was that his brother was dead. He started off at once to Gillingham. Death had been busy all around, and the plague had broken out in the Benedictine Nunnery of Bungay and carried off the prioress among others. Straightway the few nuns that were left chose another prioress; on the morning of the 13th she came for institution, and received it at the Bishop's hands. Hurrying on to Norwich, the Bishop stayed but a single day, leaving his official at the palace. He himself had to present himself before the King to give account of his mission; on the 19th he was in London; on the 4th of July he was back again in his diocese. During the twenty days that had passed since he had left Gillingham, exactly _one hundred_ clergymen had been admitted to vacant cures, all of them crossing the horrible cemetery where the callous gravediggers were at work night and day, the sultry air charged with suffocating stench, poisoning the breath of heaven. Yet there the Bishop's vicar-general had to stay, eat, drink, and sleep--if he could--and there he did stay till the Bishop came back and relieved him of the dreadful work.
Meanwhile the gentry too had been dying. It is clear that in the upper ranks the men died more frequently than the women, explain it how you will. During June and July no fewer than fifteen patrons of livings were widows, while in thirteen other benefices the patronage was in the hands of the executors or trustees of gentlemen who had died. During the month of July in scarcely a village within five miles of Norwich had the parson escaped the mortality, yet in Norwich the intrepid Bishop remained in the very thick of it all, as if he would defy the angel of death, or at least show an example of the loftiest courage. Only towards the end of July did he yield, perhaps, to the persuasion or entreaty of others, and moved away to the southern part of his diocese, taking up his residence at Hoxne, in Suffolk, where he stayed till October, when he once more returned to his house at Thorpe by Norwich. The palace had become at last absolutely uninhabitable.
To Hoxne accordingly the newly-appointed clergy came in troops, and during the first seven weeks after the Bishop's arrival he admitted no less than eighty-two parsons, a larger number than had been the average of a whole year heretofore. Did they all betake themselves to their several parishes and brave the peril and set themselves to the grim work before them? They could not help themselves. Where the benefice was a vicarage an oath to reside upon his cure was in every case rigorously imposed upon the newly-appointed; and though the law did not sanction this in the case of rectors, yet not a single instance of a licence of non-residence occurs; the difficulty of finding substitutes was becoming daily more and more insuperable, and the penalty of deserting a parish without licence was a great deal too serious to be disregarded. In the months of June, July, and August things were at their worst, as might have been expected. In July alone there were two hundred and nine institutions. During the year ending March, 1350, considerably more than two-thirds of the benefices of the diocese had become vacant.
In the religious houses the plague wrought, if possible, worse havoc still. There were seven nunneries in Norfolk and Suffolk. Five of them lost their prioresses. How many poor nuns were taken who can guess? In the College of St. Mary-in-the-fields, at Norwich, five of the seven prebendaries died. In September the abbot of St. Benet's Hulm was carried off. Again we ask and receive no answer--what must have been the mortality among the monks and the servants of the convent? And yet sometimes we do get an answer to that question. In the house of Augustinian Canons at Heveringland prior and canons died to a man. At Hickling, which a century before had been a flourishing house and been doing good work, only one canon survived. Neither of these houses ever recovered from the effects of the visitation; they were eventually absorbed in other monastic establishments.
It is one of the consequences of the peculiar privileges granted to the Friars that no notice of them occurs in the episcopal records. They were free lances with whom the bishops had little to do. It is only by the accident of every one of the Friars of our Lady who had a house in Norwich having been carried off, and the fact that their house was left tenantless, that we know anything of their fate. Wadding, the great annalist of the Franciscans, while deploring the notorious decadence in the _morale_ of the mendicant orders during the fourteenth century--a decadence which he does not attempt to deny--attributes it wholly to the action of the Black Death, and is glad to find in that calamity a sufficient cause for accounting for the loss of the old prestige which in little more than a century after St. Francis's death had set in so decidedly. "It was from this cause," he writes, "that the monastic bodies, and especially the mendicant orders, which up to this time had been flourishing in virtue and learning, began to decline, and discipline to become slack; as well from the loss of eminent men as from the relaxation of the rules, in consequence of the pitiable calamities of the time; and it was vain to look for reform among the young men and the promiscuous multitude who were received without the necessary discrimination, for they thought more of filling the empty houses than of restoring the old strictness that had passed away." How could it be otherwise? In the two counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, at least _nineteen_ religious houses were left without prior or abbot. We may be quite sure that where the chief ruler dropped oft the brethren of the house and the army of servants and hangers-on did not escape. What happened at the great Abbey of St. Edmund's we know not yet, and until we get more light it is idle to conjecture but, as a man stands in that vast graveyard at Bury, and looks around him, he can hardly help trying--trying, but failing--to imagine what the place must have looked like when the plague was raging. What a Valley of Hinnom it must have been! Those three mighty churches, all within a stone's throw of one another, and one of them just one hundred feet longer than the cathedral at Norwich, sumptuous with costly offerings, and miracles of splendour within--and outside ghastly heaps of corruption, and piles of corpses waiting their turn to be covered up with an inch or two of earth. Who can adequately realize the horrors of that awful summer? In the desolate swamps through which the sluggish Bure crawls reluctantly to mingle its waters with the Yare; by the banks of the Waveney where the little Bungay nunnery had been a refuge for the widow, the forsaken, or the devout for centuries; in the valley of the Nar--the Norfolk Holy Land--where seven monasteries of one sort or another clustered, each distant from the other but a few short miles--among the ooze and sedge and chill loneliness of the Broads, where the tall reeds wave and whisper, and all else is silent--the glorious buildings with their sumptuous churches were little better than centres of contagion. From the stricken towns people fled to the monasteries, lying away there in their seclusion, safely, favoured of God. If there was hope anywhere it must be there. As frightened widows and orphans flocked to these havens of refuge, they carried the Black Death with them, and when they dropped death-stricken at the doors, they left the contagion behind them as their only legacy. Guilty wretches with a load of crime upon their consciences--desperate as far as this world was concerned, and ready for any act of wickedness should the occasion arrive--shuddered lest they should go down to burning flame for ever now that there was none to shrive them or to give the _viaticum_ to any late penitent in his agony. In the tall towers by the wayside the bells hung mute; no hands to ring them or none to answer to their call Meanwhile, across the lonely fields, toiling dismally, and ofttimes missing the track--for who should guide them or show the path?--parson and monk and trembling nun made the best of their way to Norwich; their errand to seek admission to the vacant preferment. Think of them, after miles of dreary travelling, reaching the city gates at last, and shudderingly threading the filthy alleys which then served as streets, stepping back into doorways to give the dead carts passage, and jostled by lepers and outcasts, the touch of whose garments was itself a horror. Think of them staggering across the great cemetery and stumbling over the rotting carcases not yet committed to the earth, breathing all the while the tainted breath of corruption--sickening, loathsome! Think of them returning as they came, going over the same ground as before, and compelled to gaze again at
Sights that haunt the soul for ever,Poisoning life till life is done.
Think of them foot-sore, half-famished, hardly daring to buy bread and meat for their hunger, or to beg a cup of cold water for Christ's sake, or entreat shelter for the night in their faintness and weariness, lest men should cry out at them--"Look! the Black Death has clutched another of the doomed!"
* * * * * * *
I have said that upwards of 800 of the beneficed clergy perished in East Anglia during this memorable year. Besides these we must make allowance for the non-beneficed among the regulars; the _chaplains,_ who were in the position of curates among ourselves; the vicars of parishes whose endowments were insufficient to maintain a resident parson under ordinary circumstances, and the members of the monastic and mendicant orders. Putting all these together, it seems to me that we cannot estimate the number of deaths among regular and secular clergy in East Anglia during the year 1349 at less than _two_ _thousand._ [Footnote: In the diocese of Ely, where the mortality was less severe than in Norfolk and Suffolk, 57 parsons died in the three months ending the 1st of October, 1349. When an ordination was held by the Bishop of Ely's suffragan at the priory of Barnwell on the 19th of September, the newly-ordained were fewer by 35 than those who had died at their posts since the last ordination.] This may appear an enormous number at first hearing, but it is no incredible number. Unfortunately the earliest record of any ordinations in the diocese of Norwich dates nearly seventy years after the plague year, but there is every reason for believing that there were at least _as many,_ and probably many more, candidates at ordinations in the fourteenth century as presented themselves in the fifteenth. During the year ending January, 1415, Bishop Courtenay's suffragan ordained 382 persons, and assuming that in Bishop Bateman's days an equal number were admitted to the clerical profession, the losses by death in the plague year would have absorbed all the clergy who had been ordained during the six previous years, but no more. Even so this constituted a tremendous strain upon the reserve force of clergy unbeneficed and more or less unemployed, and it was inevitable that with such a strain, there would be a deterioration in the character and fitness of the newly-appointed incumbents. Yet nothing has surprised me more than the exceeding rareness of evidence damaging to the reputation of the new men. That these men were less educated than their predecessors we know; but that they were mere worthless hypocrites there is nothing to show, and much to disprove. Nay! the strong impression which has been left upon my mind, and which gathers strength as I study the subject, is that the parochial clergy of the fourteenth century, before _and after_ the plague, were decidedly a better set than the clergy of the thirteenth. The friars had done some of their best work in "provoking to jealousy" the country clergy and stimulating them to increased faithfulness; they had, in fact, made them more _respectable_; just as the Wesleyan revival acted upon the country parsons and others four centuries later. Until the episcopal _visitations_ of the monasteries during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are made public--they exist in far larger numbers than is usually supposed--it will be impossible to estimate the effect of the plague upon the religious houses; but I am inclined to think that the monasteries suffered very greatly indeed from the terrible visitation, and that the violent disturbance of the old traditions and the utter breakdown in the old observances acted as disastrously upon these institutions as the first stroke of paralysis does upon men who have passed their prime--they never were again what they had been.
It must be remembered that in the great majority of the smaller monasteries, and indeed in any religious house where there were chaplains to do the routine work in the church, there was nothing to prevent an absolutely illiterate man or woman from becoming monk or nun. It was, however, impossible for a man to discharge the duties of his calling as a parish priest without some education and without at least a knowledge of Latin. I will not stop to argue that point; they who dispute the assumption have much to learn. Moreover it is only what we should expect, that while some were hardened and brutalized by the scenes through which they had passed, some were softened and humbled. The prodigious activity in church building--church _restoration_ is perhaps the truer term-during the latter part of the fourteenth century in East Anglia is one of many indications that the religious life of the people at large had received a mighty stimulus. Here, again, the evidence near at hand requires to be carefully looked into. In historical no less than in physical researches, the microscope requires to be used. As yet it has scarcely been used at all. History is in the empirical stage. Meanwhile, such hints as that of Knighton's are significant when he tells us that, as the parsons died, a vast multitude of laymen whose wives had perished in the pestilence presented themselves for holy orders. _Many,_ he says--not all--were illiterate, save that they knew how to read their missals and go through the services though unintelligently, they hardly understood what they read. Were they, therefore, the worst of the new parsons? Men bowed down by a great sorrow, bewildered by a bereavement for which there is none but a make-shift remedy, men whose "life is read all backwards and the charm of life undone," are not they whose sorrow usually makes them void of sympathy for the distressed. Nay! their own sadness makes them responsive to the cry of the needy, the lonely, and the fallen. Experience proves to us every day that among such men you may find, not the worst parish priests, but the best.
* * * * * * *
I wonder whether John Bonington, steward of the manor of Waltham, was one of those whom Knighton alludes to.
Sometime during the year 1343 there had been a disastrous fire in the house of one Roger Andrew; the dwelling, with all that it contained, was burnt to the ground. Poor Roger lost all his household stuff and furniture and much else besides; worse than all, he lost all his title deeds, the evidences and charters whereby he held his little estate. As for Roger himself, he either perished in the flames or his heart broke and he died very shortly afterwards. He left a son behind him, young Richard Andrew, who must have found himself in sorry plight when he came to take up his patrimony and enter upon his inheritance. Those were not the days when the weak man and the beaten man excited much pity in England. No! they were _not,_ whatever sentimental people may say who maunder about the ages of faith and refresh themselves with other such lackadaisical phrases. So, poor Richard being down in his luck, John Bonington, acting for Henry, Earl of Lancaster, [Footnote: His son and heir, Henry, Earl of Derby, was created _Duke_ of Lancaster in 1351.] the lord of the manor, put the screw on, and boldly claimed a heriot from the young man as the right of the lord. Richard disputed the right, and protested that his land was not _heriotable._ Bonington pleaded his _might_ in a very effectual way, and took his heriot--to wit, the best horse which Richard had in his stable, the best and probably the only one. Then Richard appealed to the homage. The homagers were afraid to give a verdict against the steward, and timidly objected that all Richard's evidences had been burnt in the fire. Bonington trotted off triumphant, leaving Richard to his bitter wrath. Six years went by, and the plague came. It fell upon the district round with terrific fury, and the people died in that dreadful April, 1349, as the locusts die when the hurricane drives them seaward, and they rot in piles upon the shore. The Roll of the Manor Court is a horrible record of the suddenness and the force with which the Black Death smote the wretched Essex people. When the steward's day's work was done, and the long, long list of the dead had been written down, he added a note wherein he gives us the facts which have come down to us; and then he adds that, inasmuch as he, John Bonington, had come to see that the aforesaid horse had been unrighteously taken from Richard Andrew six years before, and that the conviction of his own iniquity had been brought home to his contrite heart, _as well by the dreadful mortality and horrible pestilence at that time raging as by the stirring of religious emotion within his soul,_ therefore the full value of the horse was to be restored to the injured Richard, and never again was heriot to be levied on his land. After six years' hard riding and scant feeding, peradventure Richard Andrew would rather have had the hard cash than the poor brute, which by this time, probably, had died and gone to the dogs! A shudder of penitence and remorse had thrilled through John Bonington when the plague was stalking grimly up and down the land; and this is what we learn about him--this and no more.
Had John Bonington lost _his_ wife; and was he meditating a life of usefulness and penitence and prayer?
Infert se sæptus nebula (mirabile dictu)Per medics miscetque viris, neque cernitur ulli,
A shadowy form looming out from the mists that have gathered over the ages past, we see him for a moment, and he is gone.
Fill up the gaps and tell all the tale, poet with the dreamy eyes, eyes that can pierce the gloom--poet with the mobile lips, lips that can speak with rhythmic utterance the revelations of the future or the past.
All the lonely ones, and all the childless ones, did not turn parsons we may be sure; yet it is good for us to believe that John Bonington's was not a solitary instance of a man coming out of the furnace of affliction softened, not hardened; purified, not merely blistered, by the fire.
Was Thomas Porter at Little Cornard somewhat past his prime when the plague came? It spared him and his old wife, it seems; but for his sons and daughters, the hope of his eld and the pride of his manhood, where were they? He and the good wife, cowering over the turf fire, did they dare to talk with quivering lips and clouded eyes about the days when the little ones had clambered up to the strong father's knee, or tiny arms were held out to the rough yeoman as he reached his home? "Oh! the desolation and the loneliness. No fault of thine dear wife--nor mine. It is the Lord, let Him do what seemeth Him good!"
Thomas Porter had a neighbour, one John Stone, a man of small substance: he owned a couple of acres under the lord; poor land it was, hardly paying for the tillage, and I suppose the cottage upon it was his own, so far as any man's copyhold dwelling was his own in those days. The Black Death came to that cottage among the rest, and John Stone and wife and children, all were swept away. Nay! not all: little Margery Stone was spared; but she had not a kinsman upon earth. Poor little maid, she was barely nine years old and absolutely alone! Who cared? Thomas Porter and his weeping wife cared, and they took little Margery to their home, and they comforted themselves for all that they had lost, and the little maid became unto them as a daughter. Henceforth life was less dreary for the old couple. But five years passed, and Margery had grown up to be a sturdy damsel and very near the marriageable age.
Oh, ho! friend Porter, what is it we have heard men tell? That when the Black Death came upon us, your house was left unto you desolate and there remained neither chick nor child. Who is this? Then some one told the steward, or told the lord, and thereupon ensued inquiry. What right had Thomas Porter to adopt the child? She belonged to the lord, and he had the right of guardianship. Aye! and the right of disposing of her in marriage too. Thomas Porter, with a heavy heart, was summoned before the homage. He pleaded that the marriage of the girl did not belong to the lord by right, and that on some ground or other, which is not set down, she was not his property at all. That might have been very true or it might not, but one thing was certain, Thomas Porter had no right to her, and so the invariable result followed--he had to pay a fine. What else ensued we shall never know.
The glimpses we get of the ways and doings of the old stewards of manors are not pleasing; I am afraid that as a class they were hard as nails. Perhaps they could not help themselves, but they certainly very rarely erred on the side of mercy and forbearance. Is not that phrase "making allowances for," a comparatively modern phrase? At any rate the _thing_ is not often to be met with in the fourteenth century. Yet in the plague year every now and then one is pleased to find instances actually of consideration for the distress and penury of the homagers at this place and that. Thus at Lessingham, when the worst was over and a court was held on the 15th of January, 1350, the steward writes down that only thirty shillings was to be levied from the customary tenants by way of tallage, "Because the greater part of those tenants who were wont to render tallage had died in the previous year by reason of the deadly pestilence."
Here and there, too, we come upon heriots remitted because the heir was so very poor, and here and there fines and fees are cancelled _causa miseriæ propter pestilentiam._ Surely it is better to assume that this kind of thing was done, as our friend Bonington puts it, _mero motu pietatis suæ_ than because there was no money to be had. Better give a man the benefit of the doubt, even though he has been dead five hundred years, than kick him because he will never tell any more tales.
If it happened sometimes that the plague brought out the good in a man, sometimes changed his life from one of covetous indifference or grasping selfishness into a life of earnestness and devout philanthropy, it happened at other times--and I fear it must be confessed more frequently--that coarse natures, hard and cruel ones, were made more brutal and callous by the demoralizing influences of that frightful summer.
I am sure it will be very gratifying to some enlightened and chivalrous people to learn that I have at least one bad story against a parson.
Here it is!
The rolls of the manor of Waltham show that the plague lingered about there till late in the spring of 1350. As elsewhere, there must needs have been much change in the benefices of the neighbourhood. Of course some of the new parsons were scamps, the laity who survived being, equally of course, models of all that was lovely and estimable. One of these clerical impostors had got a cure somewhere in the neighbourhood--where is not stated, but, inasmuch as his clerical income had not come up to his expectations or his necessities, or his own estimate of his deserts, he found it necessary to supplement that income by somewhat unprofessional conduct. In fact, the Rev. William--that was his name--seems actually to have thrown up his clerical avocations and by his flagrant irregularities had got to himself the notorious sobriquet of William the One-day priest. I should not be surprised to find out that this worthy was captain of a band of robbers who infested Epping Forest. In the end of January, 1351. Matilda, wife of John Clement de Godychester, was quietly riding homewards when, as she passed by the sheepfold of Plesset, out came the Rev. William and bade the lady stand and deliver. Her attendants, it is to be presumed, took to their heels, and the lady, being unable to help herself, delivered up her purse--the account says the Rev. William cut it off--and moreover surrendered a ring of some value, after which she continued her journey. She raised the hue and cry to some purpose, and the clerical king of the road was taken and... there is no more. No! It is a story without an end.