The Black Death in London by Barney Sloane

Author:Barney Sloane
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780752496399
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2013-04-11T16:00:00+00:00

Four

PESTILENCE IN LATER

FOURTEENTH-CENTURY

LONDON

Pestis Secunda, 1361

Secunda mortalitas. Eodem anno mortalitas generalis oppressit populum que dicebatur Pestis Secunda. Et moriebantur tam maiores quam minores, et maxime iuvenes et infantes.

The second mortality. That same year a widespread mortality, known as the Second Plague, overwhelmed the people. And the great were killed along with the masses, and especially infants and the young.362

Anno xxxv (Edward III): And that same yere men, bestys, treys, and howsys were smyght fervently with lytthenyge, and sodenly i-peryschyde. And they fonde in mennys lyckenys splatt men goyng in the waye.

The 35th year (Edward III): And in that same year, men, beasts, trees and houses were smitten violently with lightning and suddenly perished. And fiends in the likeness of men accosted men as they went their way.363

Mesme celle ane fuist la secunde pestilence parmy Engleterre la quel fuist appelle la mortalites des enfauntz.

That same year was the second pestilence in the country of England which was called the mortality of the infants.364

Such are the chronicles of the events in 1361, but there is a short foreword to this second disaster in which London may have been visited by some kind of outbreak as early as the autumn of 1360. The Chronicle of the Greyfriars of King’s Lynn notes: ‘In that year [1360] began a plague among Londoners at about the feast of St Michael, where at first infants died in huge numbers.’365 This lone reference has, perhaps, the feel of a scribal error about it, and might best be conflated with the main outbreak of 1361, but we cannot actually tell. Apart from the fact that a disease initially affecting the young would be unlikely to be well represented in evidence from wills, the wills themselves do not survive for this specific time: roll 88 of the Husting court, dating to between January 1360 and February 1361, is missing.366 Of the wills drawn up in 1360, we have just ten which happened to be proved in March 1361 or later when the sequence resumes, and none of these offer any clue about such an outbreak. Additionally, among charters from Colchester, Essex, is one from 1410 which notes a will from 34 Edward III (so January 1360 to January 1361) at the time of the secunda pestilencia.367 It remains possible, therefore, that a plague, one which affected the young, did strike the city in the last months of 1360.

There is, however, no doubt about the events of the following spring. The greyfriars of Lynn may be quoted again:

and after the next Easter following [April 1361], men and women died in great multitudes … In that year the plague raged in the southern parts of England with great mortality among children, youths and the wealthy. This plague was however much less serious than that which had befallen thirteen years before.368

This report is backed up by most other contemporary chroniclers. As well as Henry Knighton (above), the Anonimalle Chronicle called it the mortality of children, and states that several people of high birth and a great number of children died.

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