Shortly after the first campaign in France, a frightful pestilence
broke out in London, which swept over the country, destroying upwards
of half the population. The disease, which was known as the Black
Death, had already traversed Europe, where it had proved equally
fatal.
"How many amiable young persons," said a noted writer of that period,
"breakfasted with their friends in the morning, who, when evening
came, supped with their ancestors!" In Bristol and some other English
cities, the mortality was so great that the living were hardly able to
bury the dead; so that all business, and for a time even war, came to
a standstill.