London:_A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 1 (of 2) From A.D. 664 to the Extinction of Plague

fever in 962, 26,

in 1258, 44-45,

according to the bills, 504, 532, 576

Fitzstephen’s account of, 34

French pox in, 424, 428, 432 _note_

lepers expelled, 103,

stopped at the Gates, 104

leper-hospitals of 88, 97-8

nuisances in, 323-6

overcrowding of, in 1580, 346,

in 1602 et seq., 539-540

Parish Clerks of, 320-322

plagues in:

the Black Death, 117,

mortality of ditto, 126-9,

the plague of 1361, 203,

of 1368-9, 215-16,

of 1407, 220,

of 1426, 227,

of 1434, 227-8,

of 1437, 228,

of 1454, 229,

of 1466, 230,

of 1474, 231,

of 1478-9, 231-2,

of 1487, 287,

of 1499-1500, 287,

of 1504, 288,

of 1511-12, 288,

of 1513, 288-9,

of 1514-16, 289-90,

of 1517-18, 290, 292,

of 1521, 292,

of 1529-31, 292-3,

of 1532, 293-6,

of 1535, 297-300,

of 1536, 301-2,

of 1543, 302,

of 1547-8, 303,

of 1563, 304-7,

of 1568-9, 338,

of 1573-4, 339,

of 1577-83, 341-5, 347,

of 1592-93, 351-4, 356,

of 1594, 356,

of 1603, 474-92,

of 1604-1610, 493-4,

of 1625, 507-520,

of 1630, 527

of 1636 529-32,

of 1637-48, 532, 546 (table 533),

of 1665, 644-679

plague-orders, 312-322, 355, 481, 488

population,

end of 12th cent., 34,

in 1258, 44,

in 1349, 128-9,

in 1377, 201,

in 1535, 299,

in 1580, 345,

in 1593, 354,

in 1603 and before and after, 471-4,

in 1665, 660

Richard of Devizes, on wickedness of, 34

sanitary ordinances in 1369 and 1371, 216, 324,

in 1388, 324,

in 1415, 325,

in 1488-9, 325,

in 1543, 314, 315,

in 1568, 319,

in 1582, 330

theatres closed in plague-time, 494-6

Loughborough, sweating sickness at, 259,

plague at, 304, 404, 500, 560

Louth, plague in 1587, 349 (_Notitiae Ludae_),

in 1631, 527

Lowe, Peter, on “Spanish Sickness”, 427

Lowry, Dr J. H., on Pakhoi plague, 169

Lyndsay, Sir D., “grandgore”, 418

Lynn, a physician of, 51,

leper-houses at, 93, 98,

plague at, in 1635-6, 528,

in 1665, 681

Macclesfield, plague, 498

Macgowan, Dr D. J., on rats poisoned by the soil, 169

Magellan, scurvy in his ship, 579

Mahé, on cadaveric theory of plague, 173 _note_

Maidenhead, scene at, 578

Maillet, De, on preservation of corpses in Egypt, 161

Malpas, plague in 1625, 526 _note_

Manardus, origin of syphilis, 434

Manchester, plague in 1608, 499,

in 1631, 527

Mansfeld, his English troops, 522

Margate, sick sailors at after Armada, 350

Marshall, John, on “parish infection”, 396 _note_

Martin, on the illness of Charles VIII., 437

Matilda, Queen, and the lepers 82;

her hospital, 88

Mayerne, Sir Th., on the fevers of 1624, 540

=Measles=, Gaddesden on, 448,

derivation of name, 451,

joined with smallpox, 458-9, 462, 465-6

_Measure for Measure_, reference to “the sweat”, 413 _note_,

the stews suppressed, 420,

doctrine of “obstruction” in, 605 _note_

Meaux, abbey of, Black Death in, 118, 131

Meddus, Rev. Dr, in London during plague of 1625, 514

=Medicine, profession of=, little in evidence, 51, 258, 402

Melcombe, Black Death lands at, 116

Merdjé, modern plague at, 170

Merston Trussell, plague, 498

Milton, John, at Chalfont, in 1665, 665 _note_

=Moles= in plague-time, 173, 364

Molineux on universal fevers and universal colds, 409

=Monasteries=, pestilence in, 5-7, 9-10,

Stubbs on, 50,

found hospitals, 95,

Black Death in, 131

Monkleigh, plague, 499

Monmouthshire, fever and plague in 1638, 541

Montgomeryshire, plague in 1638, 542

Montpellier, case of _lepra_ at, 72,

practice in the plague at, 210

Moorfields, common latrine in, 325

More, Sir Thomas, on relapses, 248,

his plague-orders at Oxford, 291,

as “a parish clerk”, 321,

describes London as the capital of Utopia, 329,

on pauperism and vagrancy, 389

=Morphaea=, a case of, 76

Morton, Richard, on the fever of 1658, 574

“=Mure=,” old name of influenza, 389.

(“Tussis et le Murra.” Canterbury MS. in _Hist. MSS. Com._ IX., pt.

I. p. 127).

=Murrains=, 46 _note_

Mussis, De, on origin of Black Death at Caffa, 144

Namasse, modern plague, 166

Nanking, death of rats at, 169

Nantwich, plague, 498

=Naples sickness of= 419, 430

“=New Acquaintance=”, 260

“=New Disease=”, 401, 403, 404, 534, 536, 541, 543-4, 570, 577

Newark, plague after siege, 560

Newcastle, plague in 1420, 222 _note_,

in 1478, 232,

in 1544, 303,

in 1589, 350,

in 1597, 358,

in 1603, 498,

in 1609, 500,

in 1625, 526,

in 1636, 529,

in 1642 and 1645, 557,

in 1666, 681

New England, voyages to, 612,

epidemics in, 613

Niebuhr, on demoralisation after pestilence, 186

Nöldeke, Th., on legend of smallpox, 442

Normandy, Henry VII.’s troops raised in, 271, 275,

endemic sweat of, 271, 273

Northampton, old hospital at, 90,

plague, 304,

fever and plague in 1638, 542

Northwych, plague, 340, 498

Norwich, hospitals at, 93, 95,

leper-houses at the gates, 98,

the Black Death in, 129,

decline of after ditto, 193-5,

fever in 1382, 218,

plague in 1465, 230 _note_,

in 1479, 232,

in 1578, 348,

in 1603, 498,

in 1609, 500,

in 1625, 525,

in 1630-31, 527,

in 1636 fever or plague, 542,

plague in 1665-6, 681, 688

Nottingham, deaths at in 1518, 291,

plague at in 1593, 357,

in 1604, 499,

in 1667, 691

=Nuisances=, at Castle Combe, 198, 328,

in London, 216, 323-6,

at Stratford-on-Avon, 327,

at Ipswich, 327,

alleged by Erasmus, 329,

in London suburbs, 337,

at Evesham, 501,

at Kilkenny, 502

Odoric, friar, his vision of unburied dead in China, 155

Okehampton, plague at, in 1626, 524

Osiander, on Christian duty in the plague, 310

Ottery St Mary, camp sickness at in 1645, 555, 561

Oundle, plague in 1665, 681

Oxford, leper-hospital, 93,

Black Death at, 125,

law students at after ditto, 189,

sweat of 1485, 243,

sweat (?) of 1508, 245,

sweat of 1517, 247, 248,

sweat of 1551, 260,

plague in the 15th cent., 282-3,

in the 16th cent., 283-4,

houses shut up at in 1518, 291,

plague in 1571, 338,

in 1575, 340,

in 1603-5, 496-7,

in 1625, 525,

in 1645, 559,

gaol-fever in 1577, 376-382,

war-typhus in 1643, 549-51,

fellow expelled for French pox, 421,

unwholesomeness of in 15th cent., 285 _note_,

proposal to remove the university from, 283

Pakhoi, modern plague, 168

Paré, Ambroise, holds cadaveric theory of plague, 156, 162, 658,

on likeness of smallpox to great pox, 468

Paris, “lepers” banished from in 1488, 104, 437

Pariset, Etienne, his theory of plague, 156-161

=Parish Clerks=, company of, 320-322

“=Parish infection=,” a myth, 396 _note_

=Pauperism=, 39, 41, 387-395

Pauw, De, Cornelius, on plague in Egypt, 157,

on sanitary practice in ditto, 158

Paynel, translates book on French pox, 416

Peebles, plague at in 1499, 361

=Pellagra=, akin to leprosy, 108, 110,

causes of, 109

Penrith, plague at in 1598, 359-60

Perth, plague at in 1548, 363,

in 1580, 367,

in 1584-5, 368,

in 1608-9, 503-4,

in 1645, 563

_Pestilentia volatilis_ in Scotland, 398

Peterborough, burials at in 1175, 35,

plague in 1574, 339,

in 1606, 449,

in 1665, 681

Petrarch, on effects of Black Death, 177

Phaer, Th., or Phayre, or Thayre, writer on plague, 210, 489,

on smallpox and measles, 458

=Picardy Sweat=, 271-3

‘Piers the Ploughman,’ quoted on surfeit and want, 65-67,

on moral effects of Black Death, 187-190,

on continuance of pestilence, 205-207,

on London famine of 1371, 215,

on burials by friars, 332,

use of “meseles”, 450,

of “pokkes”, 452-3

Pinctor, Peter, relates cases of French pox in the Vatican, 416

=Plague=, symptoms or characters of, in the Black Death, 120-122,

in medieval manuscripts, 208, 212-214,

in Skene’s treatise, 364-5,

in the plague of 1665 (Boghurst), 674;

cadaveric theory of, 156 _et seq._,

relation of to typhus, 170.

General epidemics of:

Black Death, 116-141,

_pestis secunda_ (1361), 203,

_tertia_ (1368-9), 215,

_quarta_ (1375), 217,

_quinta_ (1382), 218,

of 1390-91, 219,

of 1407, 220,

of 1438-9, 225, 228,

of 1465, 230,

of 1471, 230.

Epidemics of in the Northern Marches, in 1379, 218,

in 1399, 220,

in 1421, 221.

See also POX, THE FRENCH

Talifoo, modern plague, 168

Tana, 144, 147

Taylor, John, “water-poet”, 512

=Texas fever=, 274

Thame, war-fever at, 548-9

Thayre, Th., see Phaer

Thomson, Dr G., dissection of plague-body, 677

_Timon of Athens_, the pox described (Act IV. sc. 3), 428

Tittenhanger, Henry VIII. at, 254

Tiverton, plague at in 1591, 351,

sickness in 1597, 411,

war-typhus (“sweating sickness”) at in 1644, 552-5

=Tobacco= in plague-time, 674, 682

Torella, on origin of French pox, 434

Totness, plague at in 1590, 351,

in 1647, 561

Tottenham, in plague of 1625, 518, 520

Tregony, plague at in 1595, 357

Tripe, Andrew, his poem on the pox, 432 _note_

Trumpington, plague in 1625, 525

Truro, decayed, 221,

plague in 1578, 347

Tuke, Brian, on the sweat of 1528, 255

Turner, Mrs Anne, 487 _note_

Turner, Dr P., arsenic in plague, 487

Turner, of Boulogne, preaches against burials in the city, 336

Twyford, plague in 1603, 493

Tynemouth, plague during siege, 557

Uffculme, sweat at in 1551, 262

Valencia, cases of French pox at, 434-5

Vasco da Gama, scurvy in his ships, 579

Vatican, the French pox in the, 416

Vetlianka, modern plague at, 172

Vincent, Rev. Thomas, his experiences of the Great Plague, 648, 664, 670

Virgil, Polydore, on the sweat, 237, 240,

on treatment of ditto, 242

Virginia, voyages to, 590, 609-612

Wales, pestilence in the marches of in 1234, 12,

Giraldus on, 21,

famine in 1189, 35,

leper-law of, 106,

Black Death in, 118,

plague and fever in 1638, 541

Wallingford, after Black Death, 195,

small pox, measles and plague, 291,

plague at, 559

“=Wame-ill=,” Scots famine-sickness in 1438-9, 235

=Wands= carried in plague time, 314-5

Wells, Black Death in diocese of, 117,

plague at in 1575, 340

West Indies, colonization of, 617 _et seq._

Whickham, plague, 501

White, Gilbert, on causes of leprosy, 110

Whitmore, H., on fever in 1651, 566,

on fever and influenza in 1658-9, 572-4

=Whooping-cough=, or the kink, 459

Willan, Dr, 4, 440

William of Newburgh, story of plague at Annan, 11,

famine-fever of 1196, 35,

Durham leper-hospital, 94

Willis, Dr T., on the war typhus of 1643, 547, 549,

on plague at Oxford &c., 559,

on the fevers and (or) influenzas of 1657-8, 568-572

=Wills=, in Black Death, in London, 117-18, 186,

in Lancashire, 138 _note_,

in Colchester, 186;

in London in 1361, 203,

in 1368, 216

Wilton, sweat at 252

Winchester, plague at in 1603, 489,

in 1625, 521 _note_,

in 1666, 687, 691

Winslow, manor of, 136

Wisbech, plague at in 1586, 349

Wither, George, on plague of 1625, 512

Woburn, sweat at, 252

Wolsey, the sweat in his household, 247, 252, 253,

letter from Anne Boleyn to, 255,

charged with the great pox, 422

Woodall, John, describes the plague-bubo, 122,

on scurvy, 603-6

Woodstock, sickness near, 291,

plague, 292

Wool trade after Black Death, 179, 193

Wyclif, on decrease of population, 201

Yarmouth, Black Death in, 130,

decline of, 195, 221;

plague in 1579, 348,

in 1625, 525,

in 1635-6, 528,

in 1664-5, 680

=Yellow Fever=, epidemic of at Bridgetown in 1647, 620,

in St Christopher, 621,

case of described, 623,

characters of, 624,

in “Regalia” and “La Pique”, 629,

theory of in slave-ports, 630-31,

as a soil-poison, 632-3,

question of, in Drake’s fleet, 518-9

York, wasting of, 27,

hospital at, 87,

Black Death at, 118, 131,

ditto in diocese of, 134,

size of after ditto, 201,

plague in 1391, 220,

in 1485, 282,

plague or sweat in 1551, 261,

plague in 1604, 489

Yun-nan, modern plague, 168

Yusufzai, bubonic typhus in, 171

CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The references to the Justinian plague by contemporary and later

historians have been collected, together with partly irrelevant matter

about portents and earthquakes, by Val. Seibel, _Die grosse Pest zur Zeit

Justinian’s I._ Dillingen, 1857. The author, a layman, throws no light

upon its origin.

[2] Beda, _Hist. Eccles._ Eng. Hist. Society’s ed. p. 243: “qui ubi Romam

pervenit, cujus sedi apostolicae tempore illo Vitalianus praeerat,

postquam itineris sui causam praefato papae apostolico patefecit, non

multo post et ipse et omnes pene, qui cum eo advenerant, socii,

pestilentia superveniente, deleti sunt.”

[3] _Flores Histor._ by Roger of Wendover. Eng. Hist. Society’s ed. I.

180.

[4] _Ibid._ I. 228.

[5] _Miscellaneous Works of the late Robert Willan, M.D., F.R.S., F.A.S._

Edited by Ashby Smith, M.D. London, 1831. ‘An Enquiry into the Antiquity

of the Smallpox etc.’ p. 108.

[6] _Annals of the Four Masters_, ed. O’Donovan, Dublin, 1851, I. 183.

“A.D. 543. There was an extraordinary universal plague through the world,

which swept away the noblest third part of the human race.”

p. 187. “A.D. 548. Of the mortality which was called Cron Chonaill--and

that was the first Buide Chonaill [_flava ictericia_],--these saints

died,” several names following. The entries of that plague are under

different years in the various original Annals.

[7] “Eodem anno dominicae incarnationis sexcentesimo sexagesimo quarto,

facta erat eclipsis solis die tertio mensis Maii, hora circiter decima

diei; quo etiam anno subita pestilentiae lues, depopulatis prius

australibus Brittaniae plagis, Nordanhymbrorum quoque provinciam

corripiens, atque acerba clade diutius longe lateque desaeviens, magnam

hominum multitudinem stravit. Qua plaga praefatus Domini sacerdos Tuda

raptus est de mundo, et in monasterio, quod dicitur Paegnalaech,

honorifice sepultus. Haec autem plaga Hiberniam quoque insulam pari clade

premebat. Erant ibidem eo tempore multi nobilium simul et mediocrium de

gente Anglorum, qui tempore Finani et Colmani episcoporum, relicta insula

patria, vel divinae lectionis, vel continentioris vitae gratia, illo

secesserant.... Erant inter hos duo juvenes magnae indolis, de nobilibus

Anglorum, Aedilhun et Ecgberct,” etc. Beda’s _Hist. Eccles._ ed.

Stevenson. Engl. Hist. Soc. I. p. 231.

[8] _Ibid._ p. 240.

[9] _Annals of the Four Masters_, I. 275.

[10] Thorpe, in his edition of Florence of Worcester, for the Eng. Hist.

Society, I. 25.

[11] The first of Beda’s incidents of the Barking monastery relates to a

miraculous sign in the heavens showing where the cemetery was to be. It

begins: “Cum tempestas saepe dictae cladis, late cuncta depopulans, etiam

partem monasterii hujus illam qua viri tenebantur, invasisset, et passim

quotidie raperentur ad Dominum.”

[12] “Erat in eodem monasterio [Barking] puer trium circiter, non amplius

annorum, Æsica nomine, qui propter infantilem adhuc aetatem in virginum

Deo dedicatarum solebat cella nutriri, ibique medicari. Hic praefata

pestilentia tactus ubi ad extrema pervenit clamavit tertio unam de

consecratis Christo virginibus, proprio eam nomine quasi praesentem

alloquens ‘Eadgyd, Eadgyd, Eadgyd’; et sic terminans temporalem vitam

intravit aeternam. At virgo illa, quam moriens vocabat, ipso quo vocata

est die de hac luce subtracta, et ilium qui se vocavit ad regnum coeleste

secuta est.” Beda, p. 265. Then follows the story of a nun dying of the

pestilence in the same monastery.

[13] Beda, Lib. IV. cap. 14. In addition to the instances in the text,

which I have collected from Beda’s _Ecclesiastical History_, I find two

mentioned by Willan in his “Inquiry into the Antiquity of the Smallpox,”

(_Miscell. Works_, London, 1821, pp. 109, 110): “About the year 672, St

Cedda, Bishop of the East Saxons, being on a visitation to the monastery

of Lestingham, was infected with a contagious distemper, and died on the

seventh day. Thirty monks, who came to visit the tomb of their bishop,

were likewise infected, and most of them died” (_Vita S. Ceddae_, VII.

Jan. p. 375. Cf. Beda, IV. 3). Again: “In the course of the year 685, the

disease re-appeared at Lindisfarne, (Holy Island), St Cuthbert’s abbacy,

and in 686 spread through the adjoining district, where it particularly

affected children” (_Vita S. Cuthberti_, cap. 33). Willan’s erudition has

been used in support of a most improbable hypothesis, that the pestilence

of those years, in monasteries and elsewhere, was smallpox.

[14] _Historia Abbatum Gyrvensium, auctore anonymo_, §§ 13 and 14. (App.

to vol. II. of Beda’s works. Eng. Hist. Society’s edition, p. 323.)

§ 13. Qui dum transmarinis moraretur in locis [Benedict] ecce subita

pestilentiae procella Brittaniam corripiens lata nece vastavit, in qua

plurimi de utroque ejus monasterio, et ipse venerabilis ac Deo dilectus

abbas Eosterwini raptus est ad Dominum, quarto ex quo abbas esse coeperat

anno.

§ 14. Porro in monasterio cui Ceolfridus praeerat omnes qui legere, vel

praedicare, vel antiphonas ac responsoria dicere possent ablati sunt

excepto ipso abbate et uno puerulo, qui ab ipso nutritus et eruditus.

In the Article “Baeda,” _Dict. Nat. Biog._, the Rev. W. Hunt points out

that the boy referred to in the above passage would have been Beda

himself.

[15] The history of the name _pestis flava ictericia_ is given by

O’Donovan in a note to the passage in the _Annals of the Four Masters_, I.

275: “Icteritia vel aurigo, id est abundantia flavae bilis, per corpus

effusae, hominemque pallidum reddentis,” is the explanation of P. O’S.

Beare. The earliest mention of “yellow plague” appears to have been in an

ancient life of St Gerald of Mayo, in Colgan’s _Acta Sanctorum_, at the

calendar date of 13th March.

[16] _Polychronicon_, Rolls edition, V. 250.

[17] _The Story of England_, Rolls series, ed. Furnivall, II. 569.

[18] Rolls series, ed. Thorpe, I. 136, 137 (Transl. II. 60). Also in

Gervase of Canterbury, Rolls series, ed. Stubbs, II. 348.

[19] _Chronicon Abbatiae Ramesiensis_, Rolls ed. 1886, p. 397.

[20] According to an inquisition of 2 Edward III., the abbey of Croyland

contained in 1328, forty-one monks, besides fifteen “corrodiarii” and

thirty-six servitors. _Chronicle of Croyland_ in Gale, I. 482.

[21] _Epistolae Cantuarienses_, Rolls series, No. 38, ed. Stubbs, Epist.

CCLXXII. p. 254, and Introduction, p. lxvii.

[22] William of Newburgh, Rolls ed. p. 481.

[23] Ralph of Coggeshall, Rolls series, No. 66, p. 112.

[24] Roger of Wendover, III. 72.

[25] In the Life of St Hugh of Lincoln, who died in 1200, or eight years

before the Papal Interdict, there is a clear reference to difficulties

thrown by the priests in the way of burial, especially for the poor, and

perhaps in a time of epidemic sickness such as the years 1194-6. See _Vita

S. Hugonis Lincolnensis_, Rolls series, No. 37, pp. 228-233.

[26] Eadmer, _l. c._

[27] _Polychronicon_, Rolls ed. VII. 90.

[28] _Gesta Pontificum_, Rolls ed. p. 171. Another narrator of the story

of St Elphege and the Danes is Henry of Huntingdon (Rolls ed. p. 179); he

says nothing of the pestilence, but describes the sack of Canterbury.

Eadmer also (_Historia Novorum in Anglia_, Rolls ser. 81, p. 4) omits the

pestilence.

[29] Quoted by Higden, _Polychronicon_, Rolls ed. II. 18. This may have

been one of Henry of Huntingdon’s poems which were extant in Leland’s

time, but are now lost.

[30] _Polychronicon_, II. 166.

[31] Marchand, _Étude sur quelques épidémies et endémies du moyen âge_

(Thèse), Paris, 1873, p. 49, with a reference to Fuchs, “Das heilige Feuer

im Mittelalter” in Hecker’s _Annalen_, vol. 28, p. 1, which journal I have

been unable to consult.

[32] Giraldus Cambrensis, _Topographia Hiberniae_, in Rolls edition of his

works, No. 21, vol. V.

[33] “Itinerarium Walliae” and “Descriptio Kambriae,” _Opera_, vol. VI.

[34] _Polychronicon_, I. 410.

[35] William of Newburgh, _sub anno_ 1157, I. 107.

[36] _Europe during the Middle Ages_, chap. IX.

[37] I have used for this purpose Merewether and Stephens’ _History of

Boroughs_, 3 vols. 1835.

[38] _Leechdoms, Wort-cunning and Starcraft of Early England._ Edited by

Cockayne for the Rolls Series, 3 vols. 1864-66.

[39] It is illustrative of the confusion which arises from careless

copying by later compilers of history that Roger of Wendover, in his

_Flores Historiarum_ (Eng. Hist. Society’s edition I. 159), takes Beda’s

Sussex reference to famine and makes it do duty, under the year 665, for

the great general plague of 664, having apparently overlooked Beda’s

entirely distinct account of the latter.

[40] _Hist. Eccles._ § 290:--“Siquidem tribus annis ante adventum ejus in

provinciam, nulla illis in locis pluvia ceciderat, unde et fames

acerbissima plebem invadens inopia nece prostravit. Denique ferunt quia

saepe quadraginta simul aut quinquaginta homines inedia macerati

procederent ad praecipitium aliquod sive ripam maris, et junctis misere

manibus pariter omnes aut ruina perituri, aut fluctibus absorbendi

deciderent. Verum ipso die, quo baptisma fidei gens suscepit illa,

descendit pluvia serena sed copiosa, refloruit terra, rediit viridantibus

arvis annus laetus et frugifer.”

[41] Green _Short History of the English People_, p. 39: “The very fields

lay waste, and the land was scourged by famine and plague.” I have missed

this reference to plague in the original authorities. A passage in

Higden’s _Polychronicon_ (V. 258) may relate to that period, although it

is referred to the mythical time of Vortigern.

[42] Stow, in enumerating the instances of public charity in his _Survey

of London_, ascribes the melting of the church plate to Ethelwald, bishop

of Winchester in the reign of King Edgar, about the year 963.

[43] The murrain was a flux, _anglicé_ “scitha” (Roger of Howden) or

“schitta” (Bromton).

[44] Simeon of Durham, in Rolls series, II. 188. As to fugitives, see Chr.

Evesham, p. 91.

[45] _Gesta Pontif. Angl._ p. 208.

[46] Simeon of Durham, “On the Miracles of St Cuthbert,” _Works_, II.

338-40.

[47] Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Malmesbury adds “a mortality of men.”

[48] William of Malmesbury, _Gest. Reg._ Eng. Hist. Soc. II. 452.

[49] Malmesbury’s construction is repeated by Henry of Huntingdon, Rolls

ed. p. 209. Florence of Worcester merely says: “primo febribus, deinde

fame.”

[50] Henry of Huntingdon, p. 232.

[51] Annals of Winchester, _sub anno_ 1096.

[52] “Septimo anno propter tributa quae rex in Normannia positus edixerat,

agricultura defecit; qua fatiscente fames e vestigio; ea quoque

invalescente mortalitas hominum subsecuta, adeo crebra ut deesset

morituris cura, mortuis sepultura.” _Gest. Reg._ II. 506. Copied in the

Annals of Margan, Rolls ed. II. 506.

[53] _Râs Mâlâ_, by A. Kinloch Forbes, 2nd ed. p. 543.

[54] _Ibid._

[55] Thomas Whyte, “Report on the disease which prevailed in Kattywar in

1819-20.” _Trans. Med. Phys. Soc. Bombay_, I. (1838), p. 169. See also

Gilder, _ibid._ p. 192; Frederick Forbes _ibid._ II. 1, and Thesis on

Plague, Edin. 1840.

[56] In 1110 the tax was for the dower of the king’s daughter on her

marriage. That also was parallel with a feudal right in Gujerat: “When a

chief has to portion a daughter, or to incur other similar necessary

expense, he has the right of imposing a levy upon the cultivators to meet

it.” A. Kinloch Forbes, _Râs Mâlâ_, 2nd ed. p. 546. Refusal to plough,

_temp._ Henry I. is stated by Pearson, I. 442.

[57] Malmesbury, _Gest. Pont._ p. 442; H. of Huntingdon; Annals of Margan;

Roger of Howden.

[58] Also in the Annals of Osney: “Mortalitas maxima hominum in Anglia.”

[59] “Attenuata est Anglia, ut ex regno florentissimo infelicissimum

videretur.” William of Newburgh, Rolls ed. p. 39.

[60] Henry of Huntingdon, _sub anno_ 1138.

[61] _Gesta Stephani_, Rolls series, No. 82, vol. III. p. 99. The author

is conjectured to have been a foreigner in the service of the bishop of

Winchester, brother of the king.

[62]

“Affluit ergo fames; consumpta carne gementes

Exhalant animas ossa cutisque vagas.

Quis tantos sepelire queat coetus morientium?

Ecce Stigis facies, consimilisque lues.”

[63] William of Newburgh, _sub anno_ 1149.

[64] Stow’s _Survey of London_, Popular ed. (1890) p. 116.

[65] “Recentium esus carnium et haustus aquae, tam insolitus quam

incognitus, plures de regis exercitu panis inedia laborantes, fluxu

ventris afflixit in Hybernia.” Radulphus de Diceto, _Imagines Historiar._

I. 350.

[66] Benedict of Peterborough, I. 104, and, in identical terms, in Roger

of Howden.

[67] The speaker is represented as a Jew in France. It is significant that

the massacre of the Jews at Lynn in 1190 is stated by William of Newburgh

to have been instigated by the _foreign_ traders.

[68] Ricardus Divisiensis. Eng. Hist. Society’s ed. p. 60.

[69] Description of London, prefixed to Fitzstephen’s Life of Becket.

Reproduced in Stow’s _Survey of London_.

[70] _Petri Blesensis omnia opera_, ed. Giles, Epist. CLI. The number of

churches may seem large for the population; but it should be kept in mind

that these city parish churches were mere chapels or oratories, like the

side-chapels of a great church. Indeed, at Yarmouth, they were actually

built along the sides of the single great parish church; whereas, at

Norwich, there were sixty of them standing each in its own small parish

area, the Cathedral, as well as the other conventual churches, being the

greater places of worship. Lincoln is said to have had 49 of these small

churches, and York 40. An example of them remains in St Peter’s at

Cambridge.

[71] William of Newburgh, p. 431.

[72] _Ibid._

[73] “His quoque nostris diebus, ingruente famis inedia, et maxima

pauperum turba quotidie ad januam jacente, de communi patrum consilio, ad

caritatis explendae sufficientiam, propter bladum in Angliam navis

Bristollum missa est.” _Itiner. Walliae_, Rolls ed. VI. 68. The itinerary

of Bishop Baldwin, which the author follows, was in 1188; but the “his

quoque nostris diebus” clearly refers to a later date, which may have been

the year after, or may have been the more severe famine of 1195-7 or of

1203.

[74] _Histor. Rer. Angl._, Rolls series, No. 82, vol. I. pp. 460, 484.

[75] Ralph of Coggeshall, _sub anno_.

[76] “Variis infirmitatibus homines per Angliam vexantur et quamplures

moriuntur,” Annals of Margan, Rolls series, No. 36.

[77] Roger of Wendover, _Fl. Hist._ Rolls ed.

[78] Matthew Paris, _Chronica Majora_, Rolls series, No. 57, ed. Luard,

vol. V.

[79] Rishanger in _Chron. Monast. S. Albani_, Rolls series, No. 28.

[80] John Trokelowe, _ibid._

[81] Wendover, II. 162, 171, 190, 205.

[82] Wendover, III. 95, 98.

[83] “Qui ex avaritia inopiam semper habent suspectam.”

[84] Alboldslea, or Abbotsley, was the parish of which the famous

Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, was rector (perhaps non-resident) down to

1231, or to within three years of the date of the above anecdote. The

existing church is of great age, and may well have been the actual edifice

in which the scene was enacted.

[85] Wendover, III. 96.

[86] _Ibid._ III. 19, 27.

[87] Wendover, III. 381.

[88] William of Newburgh, _sub anno_ 1196.

[89] On the other hand John Stow seems to have acquired, from some

unstated source, an extraordinary prejudice against him.

[90] Matthew Paris, _Chron. Maj._ ed. Luard, V. 663, 675.

[91] Annals of Tewkesbury in _Annales Monastici_, Rolls series, No. 36.

[92] _Chronica Majora_, IV. 647; Stow, _Survey of London_.

[93] _Chron. Maj._ IV. 654.

[94] _Chr. Maj._ V. 660. Other details occur here and there to the end of

the chronicle.

[95] This is the number given by Matthew Paris. It suggests a larger

population in the capital than we might have been disposed to credit. The

same writer says that London was so full of people when the parliament was

sitting the year before (1257) that the city could hardly hold them all in

her ample bosom. The Annals of Tewkesbury put the whole mortality from

famine and fever in London in 1258 at 20,000. But the whole population did

not probably exceed 40,000.

[96] The year 1274 was the beginning of so exceptional a murrain of sheep

that it deserves mention here, although murrains do not come within the

scope of the work. It is recorded by more than one contemporary. Rishanger

(p. 84) says: “In that year a disastrous plague of sheep seized upon

England, so that the sheep-folds were everywhere emptied through the

spreading of it. It lasted for twenty-eight years following, so that no

farm of the whole kingdom was without the infliction of that misery. Many

attributed the cause of this disease, which the inhabitants had not been

acquainted with before, to a certain rich man of the Frankish nation, who

settled in Northumberland, having brought with him a certain sheep of

Spanish breed, the size of a small two year old ox, which was ailing and

contaminated all the flocks of England by handing on its disease to them.”

Under the year following, 1275, he enters it again, using the term

“scabies.” Thorold Rogers (_Hist. of Agric. and Prices_, I. 31) has found

“scab” of sheep often mentioned in the bailiffs’ accounts from about 1288;

it is assumed to have become permanent from the item of tar occurring

regularly in the accounts; but tar was used ordinarily for marking. It may

have been sheep-pox, which Fitzherbert, in his _Book of Husbandry_

(edition of 1598), describes under the name of “the Poxe,” giving a clear

account of the way to deal with it by isolation. For murrains in general,

the reader may consult Fleming’s _Animal Plagues_, 2 vols. 1871--1884, a

work which is mostly compiled (with meagre acknowledgment for

“bibliography” only) from the truly learned work of Heusinger, _Recherches

de Pathologie Comparée_, Cassel, 1844. Fleming has used only the “pièces

justificatives,” and has not carried the history beyond the point where

Heusinger left it.

[97] Continuation of Wm. of Newburgh, Rolls series No. 82, vol. II. p.

560: “Facta est magna fames per universam Angliam et maxime partibus

occidentalibus. In Hibernia vero tres pestes invaluerunt, sc. mortalitas,

fames, et gladius: per guerram mortalem praevalentibus Hybernicis et

Anglicis succumbentibus. Qui vero gladium et famem evadere potuerunt,

peste mortalitatis praeventi sunt, ita ut vivi mortuis sepeliendis vix

sufficere valerent.”

[98] See also the continuation of the chronicle of Florence of Worcester,

Bohn’s series, p. 405.

[99] Rishanger’s annals, 1259-1305, and Trokelowe’s, 1307-1323, are

printed in the volumes of _Chronica Monast. S. Albani_, No. 28 of the

Rolls series.

[100] Furnivall’s ed. Rolls series, No. 87, vol. II. 569, 573.

[101] Chronicle of William Gregory, Camden Society, ed. Gairdner, 1876.

[102] _Annales Londonienses_, Rolls series, No. 76, ed. Stubbs.

Introduction, p. lxxvi.

[103] _Ibid._ (_Annales Paulini_), p. 238.

[104] _Ibid._ p. 304.

[105] _Epistolae Cantuarienses_, Rolls series, No. 38, II. Introduction by

Stubbs, p. xxxii.

[106] _Epistolae Cantuarienses_, Rolls series, No. 38, II. Introduction by

Stubbs, p. cxix.

[107] Ralph of Coggeshall, Rolls series, No. 66, p. 156.

[108] He might have been, and probably was, the prototype of the physician

Nathan Ben Israel, in the 35th Chapter of _Ivanhoe_.

[109] Adam de Marisco to Grosseteste, _Mon. Francisc._ ed. Brewer, I. 113.

[110] I have not succeeded in finding this in the author’s writings, and

quote it at second hand.

[111] Quoted, without date, by Marchand, _Étude historique et

nosographique sur quelques épidémies et endémies du moyen âge_. Paris,

1873.

[112] I give this account of the obvious characters of spurred rye from a

recent observation of a growing crop of it.

[113] One of the greatest epidemics was in Westphalia and the Cologne

district in 1596 and 1597. It fell to be described by two learned writers,

Sennert and Horst, of whose accounts a summary is given by Short, _Air,

weather, seasons, etc._ I. 275-285.

[114] Translated into the _Philosophical Transactions_, No. 130, vol. XII.

p. 758 (14 Dec. 1676) from the _Journal des Sçavans_.

[115] _Studien über den Ergotismus_, Marburg, 1856.

[116] Simeon of Durham and Roger of Howden have the following, under the

year 1048: “Mortalitas hominum et animalium multas occupavit Angliae

provincias, et ignis aereus, vulgo dictus sylvaticus, in Deorbensi

provincia et quibusdam aliis provinciis, villas et segetes multas

ustulavit.”

[117] “Je crois qu’ils ont voulu indiquer l’ignis sacer ou de St Antoine,

qui dans ces années et surtout 1044 sévit en France.” _Recherches de

Pathologie Comparée_, vol. II. p. cxlviii.

[118] On the other hand, Short, in his _General Chronological History of

the Air, Weather, Seasons, Meteors etc._ (2 vols. London, 1749) says that

the epidemic of 1110 consisted of “especially an epidemic erysipelas,

whereof many died, the parts being black and shrivelled up;” and that in

1128, “St Anthony’s fire was fatal to many in England.” He gives no

authority in either case. But the one error is run to earth in a French

entry of 1109, “membris instar carbonum nigrescentibus” (Sig. Gembl.

auctar. p. 274, Migne); the other, most likely, in the _ignis_ around

Chartres, 1128 (Stephen of Caen, Bouquet, xii. 780).

Perhaps this is the best place to express a general opinion on the work by

Short, which is the only book of the kind in English previous to my own.

It is everywhere uncritical and credulous, and often grossly inaccurate in

dates, sometimes repeating the same epidemic under different years. It

appears to have been compiled, for the earlier part, at least, from

foreign sources, such as a Chronicle of Magdeburg, and to a large extent

from a work by Colle de Belluno (fl. 1631). Many of the facts about

English epidemics are given almost as in the original chronicles, but

without reference to them. English experience of sickness is lost in the

general chronology of epidemics for all Europe, and is dealt with in a

purely verbalist manner. So far as this volume extends (1667) I have found

Short’s book of no use, except now and then in calling my attention to

something that I had overlooked. His other work, _New Observations on

City, Town and County Bills of Mortality_ (London, 1750) shows the author

to much greater advantage, and I have used his statistical tables for the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

[119] The facts were communicated to the Royal Society by Charlton

Wollaston, M.D., F.R.S., then resident in Suffolk, and by the Rev. James

Bones. They were referred by Dr G. Baker to Tissot of Lausanne, who

replied that they corresponded to typical gangrenous ergotism. See _Phil.

Trans._ vol. LII. pt. 2 (1762) p. 523, p. 526, p. 529; and vol. LX. (1768)

p. 106.

[120] An erroneous statement as to an epidemic of gangrenous ergotism, or

of Kriebelkrankheit, in England in 1676, has somehow come to be current in

German books. It has a place in the latest chronological table of ergotism

epidemics, that of Hirsch in his _Handbuch der historisch-geographischen

Pathologie_, vol. II. 1883 (Engl. Transl. II. p. 206), the reference being

to Birch, _Philos. Transact._ This reference to ergotism in England in

1676 is given also in Th. O. Heusinger’s table (1856), where it appears in

the form of “Schnurrer, nach Birch.” On turning to Schnurrer’s _Chronik

der Seuchen_ (II. 210), the reference is found to be, “Birch, _Phil.

Trans._ vols. XI. and XII.”; and coming at length to the _Philosophical

Transactions_, it appears that vols. X., XI. and XII. are bound up

together, that vol. XII. (1676) p. 758, contains an extract from the

_Journal des Sçavans_ about ergot of rye in certain parts of France, and

that there is nothing about ergotism in England in either vol. XI. or vol.

XII. So far as concerns Dr Birch, he was secretary to the Royal Society in

the next century.

[121] Knighton, _De Eventibus Angliae_ in Twysden, col. 2580: “In aestate

scilicet anno Gratiae 1340 accidit quaedam execrabilis et enormis

infirmitas in Anglia quasi communis, et praecipue in comitatu Leicestriae

adeo quod durante passione homines emiserunt vocem latrabilem ac si esset

latratus canum; et fuit quasi intolerabilis poena durante passione: ex

inde fuit magna pestilentia hominum.”

[122] _Phil. Trans._ XXIII. p. 1174 (June 26, 1702).

[123] _Op. cit._ I. pt. 2, p. 366.

[124] _Phil. Trans._ XXII. (1700-1701), p. 799, a Letter in Latin from

Joh. Freind dated Christ Church, Oxford, 31 March.

[125] The earliest religious hysterias of Sweden fall in the years 1668 to

1673, which do not correspond to years of ergotism in that country,

although there was ergotism in France in 1670 and in Westphalia in 1672.

The later Swedish psychopathies have been in 1841-2, 1854, 1858, and

1866-68, some of which years do correspond closely to periods of ergotism

in Sweden.

[126] “Moriebantur etiam plures morbo litargiae, multis infortunia

prophetantes; mulieres insuper decessere multae per fluxum, et erat

communis pestis bestiarum.” Walsingham, _Hist. Angl._, _sub anno_; and in

identical terms in the _Chronicon Angliae_ a Monacho Sancti Albani.

[127] “Magna et formidabilis pestilentia extemplo subsecuta est

Cantabrigiae, qua homines subito, prout dicebatur, sospites, invasi mentis

phrenesi moriebantur, sine viatico sive sensu.” Walsingham, _Hist. Angl._

II. 186. Under the same year, 1389, the continuator of Higden’s

_Polychronicon_ (IX. 216) says that the king being in the south and

“seeing some of his prostrated by sudden death, hastened to Windsor.”

[128] For example in the Sloane MS. 2420 (the treatise by Constantinus

Africanus of Salerno), there are chapters “De Litargia,” “De Stupore

Mentis,” and “De Phrenesi.”

[129] Th. O. Heusinger, _Studien über den Ergotismus_, Marburg, 1856, p.

35: “Es werden freilich in den Beschreibungen einiger früheren Epidemieen

öfter typhöse Erscheinungen erwähnt; die Beschreiber behaupten aber auch

dann meist die Contagiosität der Krankheit, und es liegt die Vermuthung

nahe, dass die Krankheit dann eigentlich ein Typhus war, bei dem die

Erscheinungen des Ergotismus ebenso constant vorkommen, wie sie sonst in

vereinzelteren Fällen dem Typhus sich beigesellen” (cf. ‘Dorf Gossfelden,’

in Appendix).

[130] _History of Agriculture and Prices_, I. 27.

[131] “Sed in fructibus arborum suspicio multa fuit, eo quod per nebulas

foetentes, exhalationes, aerisque varias corruptiones, ipsi fructus, puta

poma, pyra, et hujusmodi sunt infecta; quorum esu multi mortales hoc anno

[1383] vel pestem letalem vel graves morbos et infirmitates incurrerunt.”

Walsingham, _Hist. Angl._ II. 109. The continuator of Higden records under

the same year, in one place a “great pestilence in Kent which destroyed

many, and spared no age or sex” (IX. 27), and on another page (IX. 21) a

great epidemic in Norfolk, which attacked only the youth of either sex

between the ages of seven and twenty-two!

[132] Walsingham, II. 203; Stow’s _Survey of London_, p. 133.

[133] The spelling, and a few whole words, have been altered from Skeat’s

text, so as to make the meaning clear.

[134] Simpson, _Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ._ 1842, vol. LVII. p. 136.

[135] Ralph of Coggeshall (Rolls ed. p. 156) describes the death of Hubert

on 13 July, 1205, but does not mention the name of his physician.

[136] Gilberti Anglici _Compendium Medicinae_, ed. Michael de Capella.

Lugduni, 1512, Lib. VII. cap. “De Lepra,” pp. 337-345.

[137] Bernardi Gordonii _Lilium Medicinae_. Lugd. 1551, p. 88.

[138] _Compend. Med._ _Ed. cit._ p. 344.

[139] _Lilium Medicinae._ Lugd. 1551, p. 89.

[140] _Ibid._ p. 89.

[141] For fuller reference, see p. 103.

[142] _Philos. Trans. of Royal Society_, XXXI. 58: “Now in a true leprosy

we never meet with the mention of any disorder in those parts, which, if

there be not, must absolutely secure the person from having that disease

communicated to him by coition with leprous women; but it proves there was

a disease among them which was not the leprosy, although it went by that

name; and that this could be no other than venereal because it was

infectious.”

He then quotes from Trevisa’s translation of Bartholomew Glanvile, _De

proprietatibus rerum_, passages which he thinks relate to syphilis,

although they are obviously the distinctive signs of lepra taken almost

verbatim from Gilbertus Anglicus. He implies that the later so-called

leper-houses of London were really founded for syphilis when it became

epidemic. In the will of Ralph Holland, merchant taylor, mention is made

of three leper-houses, the Loke, Hackenay and St Giles beyond Holborn

Bars, as if these were all that existed in the year 1452. But in the reign

of Henry VIII. there were six of them besides St Giles’s,--Knightsbridge,

Hammersmith, Highgate, Kingsland, the Lock, and Mile End; and these, says

Beckett, were used for the treatment of the French pox, which became

exceedingly common after 1494-6.

[143] Martin, _Histoire de France_, VII. 283.

[144] One of Gascoigne’s references was copied by Beckett (_Phil. Trans._

XXXI. 47), beginning: “Novi enim ego, Magister Thomas Gascoigne, licet

indignus, sacrae theologiae doctor, qui haec scripsi et collegi, diversos

viros, qui mortui fuerunt ex putrefactione membrorum suorum et corporis

sui, quae corruptio et putrefactio causata fuit, ut ipsi dixerunt, per

exercitium copulae carnalis cum mulieribus. Magnus enim dux in Anglia,

scil. J. de Gaunt, mortuus est ex tali putrefactione membrorum genitalium

et corporis sui, causata per frequentationem mulierum. Magnus enim

fornicator fuit, ut in toto regno Angliae divulgabatur,” etc. In the _Loci

e Libro Veritatum_, printed by Thorold Rogers (Oxford, 1881), the

following consequences are mentioned: “Plures viri per actum libidinosum

luxuriae habuerunt membra sua corrupta et penitus destructa, non solum

virgam sed genitalia: et alii habuerunt membra sua per luxuriam corrupta

ita quod cogebantur, propter poenam, caput virgae abscindere. Item homo

Oxoniae scholaris, Morland nomine, mortuus fuit Oxoniae ex corruptione

causata per actum luxuriae.” p. 136.

[145] _A most excellent and compendious method of curing woundes in the

head and in other partes of the body; translated into English by John

Read, Chirurgeon; with the exact cure of the Caruncle, treatise of the

Fistulae in the fundament, out of Joh. Ardern, etc._ London, 1588.

[146] MS. Harl. 2378:--No. 86 is: “Take lynsed or lynyn clothe and brēne

it & do ye pouder in a clout, and bynd it to ye sore pintel.” Also, “Take

linsed and stamp it and a lytel oyle of olyf and a lytl milk of a cow of a

color, and fry them togeder in a panne, and ley it about ye pyntel in a

clout.” No. 87 is “for bolnyng of pyntel.” No. 88 is “For ye kank’ on a

mānys pyntel.” On p. 103 is another “For ye bolnyng of a mānys yerde....

Bind it alle abouten ye yerde, and it salle suage.” On folio 19: “For ye

nebbe yt semeth leprous ... iii dayes it shall be hole.” “For ye kanker”

might have meant cancer or chancre. The prescriptions in Moulton’s _This

is the Myrour or Glasse of Helth_ (? 1540) correspond closely with these

in the above Harleian MS. The printed book gives one (cap. 63), “For a man

that is Lepre, and it lake in his legges and go upwarde.” There is also a

prescription for “morphewe.”

[147] Nicolas Massa, in Luisini.

[148] Freeman, _The Reign of William Rufus_. App. vol. II. p. 499.

[149] _L. c._ V. 679, “Episcopus Herefordensis polipo

percutitur.--Episcopus Herefordensis turpissimo morbo videlicet morphea,

Deo percutiente, merito deformatur, qui totum regnum Angliae proditiose

dampnificavit;” and again V. 622.

[150] _Compend. Med._ _Ed. cit._ p. 170.

[151] _Lilium Med._ _Ed. cit._ p. 108.

[152] Brassac, Art. “Elephantiasis” (p. 465) in _Dict. Encycl. des

Sciences Médicales_.

[153] _Rosa Anglica._ Papiae, 1492.

[154] That Baldwin IV.’s disease excited interest in him is clear from the

reference of William of Newburgh, who calls him (p. 242) “princeps

Christianus lepram corporis animi virtute exornans.”

[155] Chronicon de Lanercost (Bannatyne Club, p. 259): “Dominus autem

Robertus de Brus, quia factus fuerat leprosus, illa vice [anno 1327] cum

eis Angliam non intravit.” The rubric on folio 228 of the MS. has

“leprosus moritur.”

[156] The original account is by Gascoigne, _Loci etc._ ed. Rogers, Oxon.

p. 228.

[157] “Item matrimonium inter dominum regem et quandam nobilem mulierem

nequiter impedivit, dum clanculo significavit eidem mulieri et suo generi,

quod rex strabo et fatuus nequamque fuerat, et speciem leprae habere,

fallaxque fuerat et perjurus, imbellis plusquam mulier, in suos tantum

sacvientem, et prorsus inutilem complexibus alicujus ingenuae mulieris

asserendo.” Matthew Paris, _Chron. Maj._, Rolls ed., III. 618-19.

[158] _Chronicon Angliae_ in Twysden, col. 2600.

[159] _Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker_, edited by E. Maunde Thompson.

Oxford, 1889, p. 100.

[160] Professor Robertson Smith has kindly written for me the following

note: “The later Jews were given to shorten proper names; and in the

Talmud we find the shortening _La‘zar_ (with a guttural, which the Greeks

could not pronounce, between the _a_ and the _z_), for Eliezer or Eleazar.

Λάζαρος is simply _La‘zar_ with a Greek ending, and occurs, as a man’s

name, not only in the New Testament but in Josephus (_B. Jud._ V. 13, 7).

This was quite understood by early readers of the Gospels; the Syriac New

Testament, translated from the Greek, restores the lost guttural, and uses

the Syriac form, as employed in _1 Macc._ viii. 17 to render the Greek

’Ελάζαρος. Moreover the Latin and Greek _onomastica_ explain Lazarus as

meaning ‘adjutus,’ which shows that they took it from (Hebrew) ‘to

help’--the second element in the compound Eliezer. The etymology ‘adjutus’

(or the like) ‘helped by God,’ would no doubt powerfully assist in the

choice of the designation lazars (for lepers). Suicer, in his _Thesaurus_,

quotes a sermon of Theophanes, where it is suggested that every poor man

who needs help from those who have means might be called a Lazarus.”

Hirsch (_Geog. and Hist. Path._ II. 3) says that the Arabic word for the

falling sickness comes from the same root (meaning “thrown to the ground”)

as the Hebrew word “sâraat,” which is the term translated “leprosy” in

Leviticus xiii. and xiv. In Isaiah liii. 4, the Vulgate has “et nos

putavimus eum quasi leprosum,” where the English Bible has “yet we did

esteem him stricken.”

[161] Roger of Howden. Edited by Stubbs. Rolls series, No. 51, vol. I. p.

110. Aelred, the chief collector of the miraculous cures by Edward the

Confessor, appears to have omitted this one.

[162] Ailredi Abbatis Rievallensis _Genealogia Regum Anglorum_. In

Twysden’s _Decem Scriptores_, col. 368. “Cum, inquit [David], adolescens

in curia regia [Anglica] servirem, nocte quadam in hospicio meo cum sociis

meis nescio quid agens, ad thalamum reginae ab ipsa vocatus accessi. Et

ecce domus plena leprosis, et regina in medio stans, deposito pallio,

lintheo se precinxit, et posita in pelvi aqua, coepit lavare pedes eorum,

et extergere, extersosque utrisque constringere manibus et devotissime

osculari. Cui ego: ‘Quid agis,’ inquam, ‘O domina mea? Certe si rex sciret

ista, nunquam dignaretur os tuum, leprosorum pedum tabe pollutum, suis

labiis osculari.’ Et illa surridens ait: ‘Pedes,’ inquit, ‘Regis aeterni

quis nescit labiis regis morituri esse praeferendos? Ecce, ego idcirco

vocavi te, frater carissime, ut exemplo mei talia discas operari. Sumpta

proinde pelvi, fac quod me facere intueris.’ Ad hanc vocem vehementer

expavi, et nullo modo id me pati posse respondi. Necdum enim sciebam

Dominum, nec revelatus fuerat mihi Spiritus ejus. Illa igitur coeptis

insistente, ego--mea culpa--ridens ad socios remeavi.”

[163] _Vita S. Hugonis Lincolnensis._ Rolls series, 39, p. 163-4.

[164] The bishop left by his will 100 marks to be distributed “per domos

leprosorum” in his diocese and a like sum “per domos hospitales,” and

three marks each to the leper-houses at Selwood and outside Bath and

Ilchester. _Hist. MSS. Commiss._ X. pt. 3, p. 186.

[165] _Monumenta Franciscana._ Rolls series, No. 4. Introd. by Brewer, p.

xxiv.

[166] William of Malmesbury, _Gesta pontificum_, Rolls ed., p. 72.

[167] In 1574 it was found providing indoor relief for fifteen brethren

and fifteen sisters, and outdoor relief for as many more.

[168] Roger of Wendover. Rolls ed. II. 265.

[169] In the MS. of Matthew Paris’s _Chronica Majora_ in the library of

Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, No. 26 in the Parker Collection, p.

220. The late Rev. S. S. Lewis, fellow and librarian of the College, who

most liberally had a fac-simile of the drawing made for me, would date it

a little before 1250. (Rolls edition, by Luard, II. 144.)

[170] _Rotuli Chartarum_, 1199-1216. Charter of confirmation, 1204 (5

Joh.) p. 117 b.

[171] In the _Valor Ecclesiasticus_ of Henry VIII. its revenue is put at

£100.

[172] The commanderies of the Knights of St Lazarus were numerous in every

province of France. For an enumeration of them see _Les Lepreux et les

Chevaliers de Saint Lazare de Jerusalem et de Notre Dame et de Mont

Carmel_. Par Eugene Vignat, Orleans, 1884, pp. 315-364.

[173] _Joannis Sarisburiensis Opera omnia_, ed. Giles 1, 141 (letter to

Josselin, bishop of Salisbury).

[174] “Vix seu raro inveniuntur tot leprosi volentes vitam ducere

observantiis obligatam ad dictum hospitale concurrentes.” Walsingham,

_Gesta Abbatum_, Rolls ed. II. 484.

[175] Matthew Paris, _Chron. Maj._ V. 452.

[176] Walsingham, _Gesta Abbatum_, II. 401.

[177] “The sisters of St James’s were bound by no vows, and at this period

[1344] were not all, or even any of them, lepers; and in consequence a

place in the hospital was much sought after by needy dependents of the

Court.” Report on MSS. of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury, in _Hist.

MSS. Commission Reports_, IX. p. 87.

[178] Dugdale’s _History of Warwickshire_, p. 197.

[179] On Nov. 24, 1200, king John signed at Lincoln letters of simple

protection to the _leprosi_ of St Bartholomew’s, Oxford (_Rot. Chart.

1199-1216_, p. 99).

[180] _Rotuli Hundredorum_, II. 359-60. The famous Stourbridge Fair

originally grew out of a right of market-toll granted in aid of the

leper-hospital.

[181] The decrees of the Third Lateran Council are given by several

historians of the time, among others by William of Newburgh, pp. 206-223.

[182] Roger of Howden, Rolls edition, II. 265.

[183] William of Newburgh, Rolls edition, p. 437.

[184] See the various charters and memorials in Surtees’ _History of

Durham_.

[185] Two of the larger houses for lepers not mentioned in the text were

St Nicholas’s at Carlisle and the hospital at Bolton in Northumberland,

each with thirteen beds.

[186] By collecting every reference to lepers or lazar-houses in Tanner’s

_Notitia Monastica_ or in Dugdale’s _Monasticon_ Sir J. Y. Simpson has

made out a table of some hundred leper-houses in Britain (_Edin. Med. and

Surg. Journ._ 1841 and 1842). Simpson’s table has been added to by Miss

Lambert in the _Nineteenth Century_, Aug.-Sept. 1884, by the Rev. H. P.

Wright (_Leprosy_ etc. 1885), who says at the end of his long list: “There

were hundreds more,” and by Mr R. C. Hope (_The Leper in England_,

Scarborough, 1891), whose list runs to 172.

Perhaps the most remarkable development of that verbalist handling of the

matter has been reserved for a recent medical writer, who has constructed,

from the conventional list of leper-hospitals, a map of the _geographical

distribution of leprosy_ in medieval Britain. (_British Medical Journal_,

March 1, 1890, p. 466.)

[187] The Lock was doubtless the house of the “Leprosi apud Bermondsey”

who are designated in the Royal Charter of 1 Hen. IV. (1399) as

recipients, along with the _leprosi_ of Westminster (St James’s), of “five

or six thousand pounds.” (_Rotuli Chartarum_, 1 Hen. IV.)

[188] Beckett, _Phil. Trans._, vol. 31, p. 60.

[189] Stow, _Survey of London_, ed. of 1890, p. 437.

[190] Beckett, _l. c._ The Knightsbridge house was earlier. See next note.

[191] _Survey of London_, pop. ed. p. 436. Bequests to lepers occur in

various wills of London citizens, in Dr Sharpe’s _Calendar of Wills_, vol.

II. Lond. 1890. In a will dated 21 April, 1349, the bequest is to “the

poor lazars without Southwerkebarre and at Hakeney” (p. 3). On 1 July,

1371, another bequeaths money to “the three colleges of lepers near

London, viz. at _le loke_, at St Giles de Holbourne, and at Hakeney” (p.

147). On 7 April, 1396, bequests are made to “the lepers at le loke near

Seynt Georges barre, of St Giles without Holbournebarre, and le meselcotes

de Haconey” (p. 341). The “lazar house at Knyghtbrigge” appears, for the

first time, in a will dated 21 Feb. 1485, along with “the sick people in

the lazercotes next about London” (p. 589).

[192] _Accounts of the Lord High-Treasurer of Scotland._ Rolls series I.

1473-1498, pp. 337, 356, 361, 378, 386.

[193] These are all the so-called “medieval leper-hospitals” collected by

Belcher (_Dubl. Quart. Journ. of Med. Sc._ 1868, August, p. 36) chiefly

from Archdall’s _Monasticon Hibernicum_. He points out that the very early

references to leprosy in the _Annals of the Four Masters_ included various

kinds of cutaneous maladies.

[194] _Chronicon Abbatiae Rameseiensis._ Rolls series, 1886, p. 157. The

chronicler has nothing farther to say as to the cause of the leprosy, than

the opinion of “a certain philosopher,” that whatever turns us from health

to the vices of disease acts by the weight of too much blood, by

superfluous heat, by humours exuding in excess, or by the spirits flowing

with unwonted laxity through silent passages.

[195] Eadmer, _Vita S. Anselmi_, Rolls edit., p. 355.

[196] Walsingham, _Gesta Abbatum_, Rolls edit. II. Appendix C. p. 503.

[197] Brassac, Art. “Éléphantiasis,” in _Dict. Encycl. des Sc. Méd._ p.

475, says: “Il y avait aussi des vagabonds et des paresseux qui, sans

nulle crainte de la contagion, et désireux de vivre sans rien faire,

simulaient la lèpre pour être admis aux léproseries. On y trouvait encore

des personnes qui s’imposaient une réclusion perpétuelle pour vivre avec

les lépreux et faire leur salut par une vie de soumission aux règles de

l’Église.”

[198] The ordinance is translated in full from the City archives by H. T.

Riley, _London in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries_, pp.

230-231. The following is the preamble of it:--

“Edward, by the grace of God, etc. Forasmuch as we have been given to

understand that many persons, as well of the city aforesaid as others

coming to the said city, being smitten with the blemish of leprosy, do

publicly dwell among the other citizens and sound persons, and there

continually abide and do not hesitate to communicate with them, as well in

public places as in private; and that some of them, endeavouring to

contaminate others with that abominable blemish (that so, to their own

wretched solace, they may have the more fellows in suffering,) as well in

the way of mutual communications, and by the contagion of their polluted

breath, as by carnal intercourse with women in stews and other secret

places, detestably frequenting the same, do so taint persons who are

sound, both male and female, to the great injury of the people dwelling in

the city aforesaid, and the manifest peril of other persons to the same

city resorting:--We” etc.

[199] Riley, p. 384.

[200] _Dialogue of the Fever Pestilence._ Early Eng. Text Soc.

[201] Riley, p. 365.

[202] Rymer’s _Foedera_, v. pt. 2, p. 166.

[203] Wharton’s _Anglia Sacra_, 11. Praef. p. 32.

[204] The expression “leprosa Sodomorum” occurs in a Latin poem from a

medieval MS. found in Switzerland. The verses are printed in full by

Hensler, _Geschichte der Lustseuche_, p. 307.

[205] These and other particulars relating to lepers in Scotland are given

in Simpson’s _Antiquarian Notices of Leprosy in Scotland and England_

(_Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ._ Oct. 1841, Jan. and April 1842), a series

of excellent papers which have been for many years the source of most that

has been written of medieval leprosy in this country.

[206] Letter to Barrington, 8 January, 1778.

[207] These numbers seem to stand for the contents of the larders in all

the various manors of De Spenser.

[208] Mr Jonathan Hutchinson has been adding, year after year, to the

evidence that semi-putrid fish, eaten in that state by preference or of

necessity, is the chief cause of modern leprosy, and he has successfully

met many of the apparent exceptions. Norway has had leprosy in some

provinces for centuries; and it is significant that William of Malmesbury,

referring to those who went on the first Crusade, says: “Scotus

familiaritatem pulicum reliquit, Noricus cruditatem piscium.” (_Gesta

Regum_, Eng. Hist. Soc. II. 533.)

[209] In his section _De preservatione a lepra_ (p. 345) Gilbert advises

to avoid, among other things, all salted fish and meat, and dried bacon.

[210] Acts of Robert III. in the _Regiam Majestatem_, p. 414 (quoted by

Simpson, _Ed. Med. and Surg. Journ._ vol. 57, p. 416).

[211] Dr Gilbert Skene, of Aberdeen, and afterwards of Edinburgh, in his

book on the plague (1568), has an incidental remark about “evil and

corrupt meats” which may be taken in a literal sense: “As we see dailie

the pure man subject to sic calamitie nor the potent, quha are constrynit

be povertie to eit evill and corrupte meittis, and diseis is contractit,

heir of us callit pandemiall.” (Bannatyne Club edition, p. 6.)

[212] Higden’s _Polychronicon_. Edited for the Rolls series by Babington

and Lumby, vol. VIII.

[213] _The Annals of Ireland._ By Friar John Clyn, of the Convent of

Friars Minor, Kilkenny, and Thady Dowling, Chancellor of Leighlin. Edited

from the MSS. etc. by R. Butler, Dean of Clonmacnois. Dublin, 1849 (Irish

Archæological Society). The last entry by Clyn himself appears to be the

words “magna karistia” etc., under 1349. There is added “Videtur quod

author hic obiit;” and then two entries of pestilence made in 1375 in

another hand.

[214] Henricus de Knighton, _Chronicon Angliae_, in Twysden’s _Decem

Script. Angl._ col. 2598 _et seq._ An edition of Knighton’s _Chronicle_,

by Lumby, is in progress for the Rolls series.

[215] _Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker._ Edited by E. Maunde Thompson,

Oxford, 1889.

[216] Robertus de Avesbury, _Historia de Mirabilibus Gestis Regis Ed.

III._, Oxon. 1720. Also in the Rolls series. Edited by E. Maunde Thompson.

[217] _Eulogium Historiarum._ Rolls series, No. 9. Edited by Haydon, III.

213.

[218] _Itineraria Symonis Simeonis et Willelmi de Worcestre._ Edited by

Nasmith from the MSS. in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

Cantab. 1778, p. 113: “parum ante nativitatem Domini intravit villam

Bodminiae, ubi mortui fuerunt circa mille quingentos per estimacionem.”

[219] Histor. MSS. Commission, vi. 475.

[220] Wilkins, _Concilia_ II. 745: “Contagium pestilentiae moderni

temporis undique se dilatans etc.”

[221] Rymer’s _Foedera_, V. 655:--“Quia tamen subita plaga Pestilentiae

Mortalis in loco praedicto et aliis partibus circumvicinis adeo indies

invalescit, quod de securo accessu Hominum ad locum illum formidatur

admodum hiis diebus.”

[222] _Ibid._--“Et quia dicta Pestilentia Mortalis in dicto loco

Westmonasteriensi ac in civitate Londoniae, ac alis locis circumvicinis,

gravius solito invalescit (quod dolenter referimus) per quod accessus

Magnatum et aliorum nostrorum Fidelium ad dictum locum nimis periculosus

foret,” &c. This second prorogation was _sine die_.

[223] _Calendar of Wills_ (Husting Court, London), ed. Sharpe, Lond. 1889,

I. 506-624.

[224] Clyn. But his account for Kilkenny, where he lived, makes the

epidemic either earlier or later there than at Dublin: “Ista pestilencia

apud Kilkenniam in XL{a} invaluit; nam VIto die Marcii viii fratres

predicatores infra diem Natalem obierunt,” the Lent referred to being

either that of 1349 or of 1350. The difficulty about assigning the landing

of the infection near Dublin in the beginning of August to the year 1348

is that the English importation had only then taken place. But of course

Ireland may have got it direct from abroad.

[225] _Op. cit._ p. 98: “Torserunt illos apostemata e diversis partibus

corporis subito irrumpencia, tam dura et sicca quod ab illis decisis vix

liquor emanavit; a quibus multi per incisionem aut per longam pacienciam

evaserunt. Alii habuerunt pustulos parvos nigros per totam corporis cutem

conspersos, a quibus paucissimi, immo vix aliquis, vitæ et sanitati

resilierunt.”

[226] “Nam multi ex anthrace et ex apostematibus, et pustulis quae

creverunt in tibiis et sub asellis, alii ex passione capitis, et quasi in

frenesim versi, alii spuendo sanguinem, moriebantur,” p. 36.

[227] _A Treatise faithfully and plainely declaring the way of preventing,

preserving from and curing that most fearfull I and contagious disease

called the Plague. With the Pestilential Feaver and other the fearful

symptomes and accidents incident thereto._ By John Woodall, surgeon to St

Bartholomew’s Hospital, &c. London, 1639.

[228] Robertus de Avesbury, Rolls ed., p. 177.

[229] _Eulogium Historiarum._ Rolls ser. No. 9, III. 213.

[230] Rymer’s _Foedera_, V. 668.

[231] “Pro quorum defectu [referring to the fugitive villeins] mulieres et

parvuli invise missi sunt ad carucas et ad plaustra fuganda.” _Eulogium._

Rolls ed. III. 214.

[232] Nichols, _History Of Leicestershire_, I. 534.

[233] Nichols, _l. c._

[234] For a series of years the burials in the St Martin’s register are as

follow:

1610 82

1611 128

1612 39

1613 25

1614 34

1615 60

1616 41

1617 31

1618 37

1619 28

1620 25

1621 43

1622 27

1623 37

1624 24.

[235] _History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford._ Ed. Gutch I.

449. He says also: “The school doors were shut, colleges and halls

relinquished, and none scarce left to keep possession or make up a

competent number to bury the dead.” The rest of his account of the Black

Death is copied from Le Baker’s Chronicle of Osney.

[236] _Itinerarium_, _l. c._

[237] Stow’s _Survey_. “Portsoken Ward.”

[238] “Lying without the walls on the north part of the city between the

land of the abbot of Westminster and the prior of St John of Jerusalem.”

French Chronicle of London (p. 56), as quoted by Stubbs, in preface (p.

lxxxi) to _Annales Londonienses_, Rolls series, No. 76.

[239] Robertus de Avesbury, _Historia Edwardi III._ Rolls ed. p. 407.

“Quotidie multos vita privavit, et in tantum excrevit quod a festo

Purificationis usque post Pascha, in novo tunc facto cimiterio juxta

Smithfeld plus quam cc corpora defunctorum, praeter corpora quae in aliis

cimiteriis civitatis ejusdem sepeliebantur, quasi diebus singulis sepulta

fuerunt.... In festo Pentecostes cessavit Londoniis.”

[240] Stow’s _Memoranda_. Camden Soc., 1880.

[241] Camden’s _Britannia_, ed. Gough, II. 9.

[242] Rickman, _Abstract of the Population Returns of 1831_. London, 1832.

Introduction, p. 11.

[243] Stow’s _Survey_, p. 392.

[244] The population of London is stated on good authority, that of its

archdeacon, in a letter to Pope Innocent III. (_Petri Blessensis Opera

omnia_, ed. Giles, vol. II. p. 85), to have been 40,000 about the years

1190-1200, a period of great expansion or activity. By the usual reckoning

of the poll-tax in 1377 the population would have been 44,770; and in the

year 1349 it was probably not far from those numbers. This matter comes up

again in the next chapter.

[245] _Memorials of London in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries_, edited

from the Archives of the City, A.D. 1246-1419, by H. T. Riley. Lond. 1868,

p. 219.

[246] _Ibid._, pp. 239-40.

[247] Blomefield, _History of Norfolk_, III. 93.

[248] Peter of Blois, who as archdeacon of London was in a position to

know, gives in his letter to the pope the number of parish churches in the

City at 120.

[249] Popham, “Subsidy Roll of 51 Edward III.,” in _Archæologia_, VII.

(1785) p. 337.

[250] _Itineraria, et cet._ ed. Nasmith, Cantab. 1778, p. 344. See also

Weever, _Funeral Monuments_, p. 862, according to whom the record of the

great mortality was on a chronological table hanging up in the church.

[251] Walsingham, _Gesta Abbatum_. Rolls ed. II. 370. Abbot Michael, he

says, “tactus est communi incommodo inter primos de suis monachis qui illo

letali morbo percussi sunt.”

[252] Th. Stubbs’ _Chronicle of York_ in Twysden, col. 1732.

[253] _Chronicon Monasterii de Melsa_, Rolls ed. III. 36.

[254] Rymer’s _Foedera_.

[255] Lowth, _Life of William of Wykeham_, p. 93, with a ref. to Regist.

Edyngdon, pt. 1. fol. 49.

[256] Bentham, _Hist. of Ely_.

[257] Clyn.

[258] Jessopp, “The Black Death in East Anglia” in _Nineteenth Century_,

April 1885, p. 602. The sources of these interesting particulars are not

given.

[259] Peck’s _Antiquarian Annals of Stamford_, Bk. XI. p. 47.

[260] _Hist. MSS. Commission’s Reports_, IX. p. 127: “Hi quatuor tantum

moriebantur de pestilencia.” The reporter on the MSS. of the Dean and

Chapter conjectures that the monastery may have owed its comparative

immunity to the fact that it was supplied with water brought by closed

pipes from the hills on the north-east of the city.

[261] Walsingham, _Gesta Abbatum_.

[262] Knighton.

[263] _History of Norfolk_, III. 94.

[264] Owen and Blakeway, _History of Shrewsbury_, I. 166:--“The average

number of institutions to benefices on vacancies by death in the

archdeaconry of Salop, for ten years before 1349, and ten years after, is

one and a half per annum, or fifteen in the whole; in that year alone the

number of institutions on vacancies by death is twenty-nine, besides other

institutions the cause of whose vacancies is not specified and therefore

may also have been the same.”

[265] F. Seebohm, “The Black Death and its Place in English History,”

_Fortnightly Review_, Sept. 1 and 15, 1865:--“In the library of the Dean

and Chapter, at York Minster, are voluminous MSS., known by the name of

_Torr’s MSS._, which contain the clergy list of every parish in the

diocese of York, and which, in by far the greater number of instances,

state not only the date of each vacancy, but whether it was caused by

death, resignation or otherwise of the incumbent.” _L. c._ p. 150.

[266] Jessopp, “The Black Death in East Anglia,” _Nineteenth Century_,

April 1885, pp. 600-602. This author remarks that the evidence from manor

court rolls and from the Institution Books of the clergy “has hardly

received any attention hitherto, its very existence being entirely

overlooked, nay, not even suspected.”

[267] G. Poulett Scrope, M.P., F.R.S., _The Manor and Barony of Castle

Combe_. London, 1852, p. 168.

[268] The court rolls of the Manor of Snitterton, Norfolk, in the British

Museum. Professor Maitland has lately edited some of the earliest rolls of

manor courts for the Selden Society.

[269] G. Poulett Scrope, _op. cit._ pp. 151-2.

[270] F. Seebohm, _The English Village Community_, London, 1882. The Manor

Court Rolls of Winslow, upon which Mr Seebohm bases his work, are in the

library of the University of Cambridge.

[271] Rev. Augustus Jessopp, D.D. “The Black Death in East Anglia,”

_Nineteenth Century_, Dec. 1884.

[272] Under the heading “The Black Death in Lancashire,” Mr A. G. Little

has printed, with remarks, in the _English Historical Review_, July, 1890,

p. 524, the data submitted to a jury of eighteen who had been empannelled

to settle a dispute between the archdeacon of Richmond and Adam de

Kirkham, dean of Amounderness, touching the account rendered by the dean,

as proctor for the archdeacon, of fees received for instituting to vacant

livings, for probates of wills, and for administration of the goods of

intestates. The dean’s account to the archdeacon is said to run “from the

Feast of the Nativity of our Lady [8 September] in the year of our Lord

1349 unto the eleventh day of January next following;” but it may not

imply, and almost certainly does not, that the vacancies in benefices, the

probates and the letters of administration, or the corresponding deaths of

individuals, fell between those dates. The archdeacon alleges what fees

Adam de Kirkham had received, but had not accounted for, and the jury find

what Adam did actually receive. Nine benefices of one kind or another are

mentioned as vacant, three of them twice. The numbers said to have died in

the several parishes, with the number of wills and of intestate estates, I

have extracted from the data and tabulated as follows:

+--------------------------------------------------------------+

|------------|-------------|-----------------|-----------------|

| Preston | 3000 | 300 | 200 |

| Kirkham | 3000 | -- | 100 |

| Pulton | 800 | -- | 40 |

| Lancaster | 3000 | 400 | 80 |

| Garestang | 2000 | 400 | 140 |

| Cokram | 1000 | 300 | 60 |

| Ribchestre | [illegible] | 70 | 40 |

| Lytham | 140 | 80 | 80 |

| St Michel | 80 | 50 | 40 |

| Pulton | 60 | 40 | 20 |

+--------------------------------------------------------------+

Of the alleged 300 who died in Preston parish, leaving wills, five married

couples are named, the probate fees being respectively ½ marc, 6 sh., 40

d., 4 sh., and 40 d. The archdeacon’s whole claim for the 300 was 20

marcs, which the jury reduced to 10 pounds. Of the alleged 200 intestates

in the same parish, two married couples, one woman, and “Jakke o þe hil”

are named. In the parish of Garstang, the executors of 6 deceased are

named, whose probate fees in all amounted to 16 sh. 10 d., the whole claim

of the archdeacon for 400 deceased leaving wills being £10, and the award

of the jury 40 sh. In the parish of Kirkham, on a claim of 20 marcs for

probate fees not accounted for, “the jury say that he received £4;” on a

claim of £10 for quittance, the jury say 20 sh. This was a parish in which

3000 are said to have died, the number of wills being not stated. The

numbers had obviously been put in for a forensic purpose, and are, of

course, not even approximately correct for the actual mortality, or the

actual number of wills proved, or of letters of administration granted.

The awards of the jury amounted in all to £48. 10_s._ See also _Eng. Hist.

Review_, Jan. 1891.

[273] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, I. 296-7.

[274] Cussan’s _Hertfordshire_, vol. I. Hundred of Odsey, p. 37.

[275] _Sat. Rev._ 16 Jan. 1886, p. 82.

[276] Jessopp, _l. c._ April 1885, p. 611-12.

[277] The priory of Christ Church, Canterbury, lost the following live

stock in the murrain of 1349: oxen, 757, cows and calves, 511, sheep,

4585. (_Hist. MSS. Commission_, V. 444.)

[278] The author of the _Eulogium_, who wrote not later than 1367, and is

for his own period an authority like Knighton, gives the following prices:

wheat, 12 pence a quarter, barley 9 pence, beans 8 pence; a good horse 16

shillings (used to be 40 sh.), a large ox 40 pence, a good cow 2 sh. or 18

pence. Of the scarcity of servants he says: “Pro quorum defectu mulieres

et parvuli invise missi sunt ad carucas et ad plaustra fuganda.”

[279] “The English Manor;” two articles in the _Saturday Review_, 9th and

16th Jan. 1886, p. 82 [by Professor Sir Frederick Pollock], the sources of

information being as yet unpublished. He says: “The prospect of better

terms brought in new tenants.”

[280] Stubbs, _Constitutional History of England_, 1875, II. 434. Höniger,

dealing with the German evidence of the Black Death, concludes that the

great mortality was almost without significance for the political course

of affairs; that the great loss of life was unable to check the revival of

trade and industry which had already begun or to retard the splendid

development of the German free towns; that the low state of morals

belonged to the period and was no worse after the epidemic than before;

that no new impulse was given or point of view brought out, unless,

perhaps, the idea of sanitary regulation; and that the scarcity of labour

was merely an incident to be taken advantage of in the struggle against

the existing order which was already going on. (_Der schwarze Tod in

Deutschland._ Berlin, 1882, p. 133.)

[281] Richter, _Geschichte der Medicin in Russland_, I. 215.

[282] _Histoire des Huns_, V. 223-4.

[283] _Ib._ p. 226, note.

[284] _Der schwarze Tod im vierzehnten Jahrhundert_, Berlin, 1832. Engl.

Transl. by Babington, Lond. 1833. This well-known work presents the more

picturesque aspects of the Black Death in various countries, without

thoroughness for any. England has a large space in the book; but the

author has not gone for his information farther than the chapter on the

Black Death in Barnes’s _Life of Edward III._

[285] Printed in Häser’s _Archiv für die gesammte Medicin_, 1842, II. pp.

26-59; and reprinted in his _Geschichte der Med. u. epid. Krankheiten_,

III. 157, 3d ed., Jena, 1882.

[286] _Geschichte der Medicin_, Bd. III. “Epidemische Krankheiten.” Jena,

1882, p. 139. He gives point to this phrase by an account of the local

plagues of recent times in Gujerat and Kumaon.

[287] His essay is one of the Escurial MSS., and has been printed, with a

German translation, by M. H. Müller, in the _Sitzungsberichte der

Münchener Akad. der Wissensch_. 1863.

[288] _Voyages d’Ibn Batoutah_ in 4 vols., for the Société Asiatique,

Paris, 1853, I. 227-9, and IV. 309.

[289] See Sir Henry Yule’s _Cathay and the Way Thither_ (2 vols. Hakluyt

Society) and his edition of _The Book of Marco Polo_, for numerous

particulars of the overland trade to China by the northern parallels, in

the 14th century.

[290] The stages, distances, expenses, &c. from Tana to Peking are given

in Pegolotti’s mercantile handbook (written about 1340), in Yule’s _Cathay

and the Way Thither_, vol. II.

[291] C. A. Gordon, M.D. in _Reports of Med. Officers to the Imperial

Maritime Customs of China_, London, 1884.

[292] Gaubil, _Histoire de Gentchiscan_, Paris, 1739.

[293] _The Famine in China_, London, 1878--a translation of a Chinese

appeal for charity, with illustrations.

[294] Parliamentary Papers, 1878, China, No. 4.

[295] In Yule’s _Cathay and the Way Thither_ (Hakluyt Society), I. 156.

[296] Etienne Pariset, _Causes de la Peste_. Paris, 1837.

[297] Volney, _Voyages en Syrie et en Egypte_. Paris, 1792.

[298] Cornelius de Pauw, _Philosophical Reflections on the Egyptians and

Chinese_, Engl. Transl. Lond. 1795, 2 vols.

[299] It is noteworthy that Herodotus represents the question of disposal

of the dead as having been raised by the Egyptians: they decided in favour

of embalming and rock entombment, as against cremation or burial, the

reason given for the preference being that fire was “a savage beast,” in

the one case, while in the other case, the devouring beast was the worm.

Bk. III. § 16.

[300] Curiously enough it was among the Christians of Egypt that the

controversy as to the _corruptibles_ and the _incorruptibles_ raged most

furiously. See Gibbon.

[301] Clot Bey, _Peste en Egypte_. Paris, 1840.

[302] Benoit de Maillet, _Description de l’Egypte_. Paris, 1735, p. 281.

See also Wilkinson, _Ancient Egyptians_, III. 456, 465.

[303] Justus Doolittle, _Social Life of the Chinese_, 2 vols. New York,

1867, I. 33, 198, 213.

[304] T. T. Cooper, _Travels of a Pioneer of Commerce_, Lond. 1871, p. 23,

33.

[305] This is one of the remarks in Dr Gilbert Skene’s treatise on the

Plague, Edinburgh, 1568 (reprinted for the Bannatyne Club, 1840):--Among

the causes are “deid cariounis unbureit, in speciale of mankynd, quhilkis

be similitude of nature is maist nocent to man, as everie brutall is maist

infectand and pestilentiall to thair awin kynd,” p. 6.

[306] A. von Kremer, “Ueber die grossen Seuchen des Orients nach

arabischen Quellen.” _Sitzungsber. der Wien. Akad._, Philos.-histor.

Classe, Bd. 96 (1880), p. 69.

[307] Ch. M. Doughty, _Travels in Arabia Deserta_, 2 vols. Cambridge,

1888.

[308] Communicated to Herr von Kremer (_l. c._) by Nury Effendi, who

visited Assir, and wrote a report preserved in MS. in the Archives at

Constantinople.

[309] “Report regarding Mahamurree in Kumaon and Garhwal in 1851-52.” By

F. Pearson and Mookerjee. Agra, 1852 (Extracts in _Ind. Annals of Med.

Sc._, I. 358). Also extracts (_Ib._) from Renny’s Report, 1851.

[310] Planck, _Ninth Report of the Sanitary Commissioner, N. W. Prov._

Allahabad, 1877, pp. 40-95. (Extracts, p. 39, of _Papers relating to the

Plague, Parl. Papers_, 1879.)

[311] Baber, in _Parliamentary Papers_, 1878, “China.” No. 6. Rocher

(_Province Chinoise de Yun-nan_) quoted, without the reference, in _Med.

Reports of Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs_, No. 15, 1878, Shanghai, p.

25.

[312] J. H. Lowry, _Med. Rep. Chinese Mar. Customs_, No. 24, 1882, p. 27.

[313] D. J. Macgowan, _Ib._ 1882. Report for Wenchow.

[314] Thomas Whyte, “Report on the Disease which prevailed in Kattywar,

etc. in 1819-20.” _Trans. Med. Phys. Soc. Bombay_, I. 155. Bombay, 1838.

[315] I have curtailed the evidence from Gujerat; it will be found at

large in the following writers: Gilder, _Bombay Med. Trans._ I. 193;

McAdam, _ib._ 183; F. Forbes, _ib._ II. |I, and Thesis on Plague, Edin.

1840; Glen, _Quart. Journ. Cal. Med. Soc._ I. 433; Ranken, _Report on Pali

Plague_, Calcutta, 1838; and Whyte, as above.

[316] L. Arnaud, _Peste de Benghazi_, Constantinople, 1875; _Essai sur la

Peste_, Paris, 1888; _Une Mission pour la Peste_, Paris, 1888.

[317] T. Farquhar, M.D., “Typhus Fever in the Eusofzai,” _Ind. Annals of

Med. Sc._ II. 504; R. Lyell, M.D., “Fever of the Yusufzai Valley,” _Ib._

II. p. 16.

[318] Surgeon-General J. Murray, M.D., at Epidemiological Society, 11 May,

1878. _Med. Times and Gaz._ I. 1878, p. 597.

[319] Alex. Rittmann, _Chronik der Pest._ Brünn, 1879.

[320] Thomas Lodge, _Treatise of the Plague_, Lond. 1603, chap. III.

Skene, in his Edinburgh essay on plague in 1568, gives as a sign of

impending plague the moles and “serpents” leaving their holes: “As when

the moudewart and serpent leavis the eird, beand molestit be the vapore

contenit within the bowells of the samin.” He adds what agrees still

farther with modern experience in Yun-nan: “If the domesticall fowls

become pestilential, it is ane signe of maist dangerous pest to follow.”

(Bannatyne Club ed. p. 9).

[321] The writer of the article “Peste” in the _Dict. Encycl. des Sc.

Med._, Dr Mahé, inclines on the whole to the view that the poison of

plague is somehow related to cadaveric products: “Parmi ces accusations

d’insalubrité publique, il en est une qui repose sur un objectif plus

positif en apparance” viz. the “miasme des cadavres.”

[322] Sir Tobie Matthews’ _Letters_. Lond. 1660, p. 110.

[323] _Epist. de rebus familiar._ Lib. viii. epist. 7. The citation of

these contemporary illustrations of the Black Death was begun in the last

century by Sprengel (_Beiträge_, &c., p. 37).

[324] _Foedera_, III. 184; it was renewed on 30th June for a year longer.

[325] Avesbury.

[326] _Foedera_, III. 192.

[327] _Ib._ 193.

[328] _Ib._ 200, 201.

[329] Le Baker’s _Chronicle of Osney_. Avesbury.

[330] _Foedera_, III. 221.

[331] Avesbury, Rolls ed. 425.

[332] Blomefield (_Hist. of Norfolk_, III.) says that the writ to Norwich

in 1355 was for 120 men-at-arms to be sent to Portsmouth by Sunday in

mid-Lent.

[333] Avesbury, pp. 427-8.

[334] _Ib._ p. 425.

[335] _Ib._ p. 461.

[336] Avesbury, p. 431.

[337] Thorold Rogers, _Hist. of Agric. and Prices_, I. 367, “according to

an account quoted by Misselden in his _Circle of Commerce_.” The sack of

wool contained 52 cloves of 7 lbs. each, or 364 lbs. It appears from a

statute of 5 Ric. II. that 240 wool-fells were equivalent, for duty, to

one sack of wool. In Rogers’ tables, the wool-fell is usually priced at

about the value of 1½ lbs. of wool, which was at the same time about the

average clip of a sheep. The present average clip would be at least four

times as much. The colonial bale of wool is of the same weight as the

medieval sack, but would represent 40 to 60 fleeces, instead of about 240.

At the smallest of the estimates in the text, the wool of 7,680,000 sheep

would have been exported in a year. Avesbury’s estimate would mean an

annual export to foreign countries of the clip of about 24,000,000 sheep.

The average price of a sack of wool just before the Black Death was about

£4 in money of the time; the period immediately following the plague was

one of low prices; but from 1364 to 1380, the price was uniformly high.

[338] _Foedera_, III. 186.

[339] _Ib._ III. 191.

[340] Jessopp (_l. c._) giving a general reference to the _Foedera_, and

probably having the Sandwich letter in view, says there was “mad,

unreasoning, insensate panic among well-to-do classes--the trader and the

moneyed man, the _bourgeoisie_ of the towns,” and “a stampede,”

(presumably to foreign parts). But the mortality was all over by 1st

December, 1349; and the exodus, whatever motive it may have had, was

almost certainly deliberate.

[341] _Foedera_, III. 198.

[342] The last clause of the ordinance implies that not only the labourers

but also the employers of labour were taking the natural advantage of the

situation. There appears to be some particular evidence of this for

Bristol (Rev. W. Hunt, _Bristol_, p. 77): the masters in various crafts

and trades were so reduced in numbers that the survivors could charge what

they pleased. Thus, the attempt to coerce labourers and skilled workmen

was a one-sided affair; although, in practice, it related mostly to

farm-labour, where the one-sidedness did not appear.

[343] _Foedera_, III. 210.

[344] _Rot. Parl._ II. 225.

[345] This was the first parliamentary Statute of Labourers (25 Ed. III.

cap 2). The king’s ordinance of 18th June, 1350 (re-issued for Suffolk and

Lindsey on 18th Nov.), is usually reckoned the first Statute of Labourers,

and is invariably assigned to the 23rd year of Edward III., being so

entered in the _Statutes of the Realm_. It is clear, however, from the

text of the ordinance in the _Foedera_ that it belongs to the 24th of

Edward III., its exact date being 18th June, 1350. Longman, in his

_History of the Life and Times of Edward III._, correctly states in one

place (I. 309) that the ordinance of 18th June, 1350, was “the first

step,” but on the very next page, after stating that the ordinance failed,

he proceeds, according to the usual chronology of 23 Ed. III. and 25 Ed.

III., to say that “therefore, two years afterwards,” the statute of 25 Ed.

III. was made in Parliament. The interval was only some eight months.

[346] _Rot. Parl._ II. 234.

[347] Knighton, in Twysden’s _Decem Scriptores_, _l. c._

[348] Seebohm, _The English Village Community_. Chapter I.

[349] The Statute of Labourers was re-enacted with increased stringency

six years after (31 Ed. III.), and again in 1360 and 1368. All the labour

statutes were confirmed in the 12th year of Richard II. (cap. 34).

Legislative attempts of the same kind continued to be made as late as the

5th of Elizabeth (1562-3), with particular reference to sturdy beggars.

See copious extracts from the Statutes in Sir George Nicholls’s _History

of the English Poor Law_, vol. I. Lond. 1854. “An Act for regulating

Journeymen Tailors” was made in 7 Geo. I. (cap. 13).

[350] “There is no trace of the villenage described in Glanville and

Bracton, among the tenants of a manor 500 years ago. All customary

services were commutable for money payments; all villein tenants were

secure in the possession of their lands; and the only distinction between

socage and villein occupation lay in the liberation of the former from

certain degrading incidents which affected the latter.” Thorold Rogers,

“Effects of the Black Death, &c.” _Fort. Rev._ III. (1865) p. 196.

[351] Seebohm, _The English Village Community_. Lond. 1882. Chapter I.

[352] Seebohm, p. 31. Such attempts by landowners, to go back to personal

service from their villein tenants, appear to have become more systematic

in the generation following, and to have been a cause of the Peasants’

Rebellion in 1381. See v. Oschenkowski, _England’s wirthschaftliche

Entwickelung_, Jena, 1879, confirming the opinion of Thorold Rogers.

[353] Smith, _Lives of the Berkeleys_, p. 128: “in 24 Edward III.” (Cited

by Denton, _England in the 15th Century_.)

[354] Morant, _Hist. of Essex_.

[355] Niebuhr, _Lectures on Ancient History_. Engl. transl. London, 1852,

II., p. 53.

[356] _Eulogium Historiarum._ Rolls ed. III. 230.

[357] _Loci e Libro Veritatum_, ed. Rogers. Oxon. 1880, p. 202; and, from

Gascoigne’s MS., in Anthony Wood, _Hist. and Antiq. Univ. Oxford_, Ed.

Gutch, I. 451: “What I shall farther observe is that before it began there

were but few complaints among the people, and few pleas; as also few

Legists in England, and very few at Oxford.”

[358] _Manor and Barony of Castle Combe_, sub anno 1361.

[359] Owen and Blakeway, _op. cit._ I. 165.

[360] Clarkson’s _History of Richmond_. Richmond, 1821 (authority not

quoted).

[361] Hailstone, _History of Bottisham and the Priory of Anglesey_. Camb.

1873. (Transact. Camb. Antiq. Soc. 8vo. series, vol. XIV.)

[362] Cited by Jessopp, _l. c._

[363] See p. 141.

[364] Clutterbuck, _History of Hertfordshire_.

[365] Seebohm, for the Manor of Winslow, _op. cit._, p. 34.

[366] Thorold Rogers, _Fort. Rev._ III. (1865), p. 196. In his _History of

Agriculture and Prices_, IV., the same learned and sagacious student of

English developments thus sums up the agrarian consequences of the Black

Death:--“The indirect effects of this great event were even more

remarkable. The great landowner ceases to carry on agriculture with his

own capital, and farmers’ rents of a fixed and almost invariable amount

take the place of the lord’s cultivation by bailiffs. Attempts were made

for varying periods of time to continue the old system, especially by

corporations. It is possible that the system of stock and land leasing,

which became very general after the change commenced, may have been

suggested by the hope that the old state of things might be restored....

In the end all the great landowners conformed to the inevitable change,

and let their land on short leases, and as a rule at low and almost fixed

rents, to capitalist farmers.”

[367] Thorold Rogers, _op. cit._, I. 376.

[368] _Rot. Parl._, II. 260. a.

[369] Seebohm, _l. c._ _Fort. Rev._, II. (1865), p. 157.

[370] Blomefield, III. _sub anno_.

[371] Blomefield, III. _sub anno_.

[372] Camden’s _Britannia_. Gough’s ed. II. 9.

[373] _Hist. MSS. Commission_, VI. 299. Register of Ely Priory, in Lord

Leconfield’s MSS.

[374] Seebohm, “The Black Death and its Place in English History.” _Fort.

Rev._ II. (1865), p. 278.

[375] These and other labour-statutes are collected in _A History of the

English Poor Law_, by Sir George Nicholls, 2 vols. London, 1854, I. 37-77.

[376] G. Poulett Scrope, _op. cit._

[377] From 1416 to 1424, three different persons were fined at the manor

court for keeping a common brothel in their houses. Forestalling of

butter, cheese and eggs, on the way to market, came before the court in

1418.

[378] At the manor court in 1417, Thomas Selwin, a butcher, was convicted

of throwing offal and other offensive matters into the common street and

of making his dung-heap there, to the common hurt; also the said Thomas

Selwin “tarde et de novo erexit unam latrinam foetidam in shopa sua ad

commune nocumentum. Ideo ipse in misericordia.” The next entry of

nuisances, so far as extracts are given, is as late as 1590--various

offences in the street and churchyard, and the glover washing his skins in

the stream or otherwise befouling the water running by his house.

[379] Cited in Owen and Blakeway’s _History of Shrewsbury_, II. 524: “per

advenas qui in dicta villa post ultimam pestilenciam de novo sunt

inhabitati ... at regimen dictae ville ad se attrahere ... machinantes.”

By the “ultima pestilencia” could hardly have been meant the pestis

secunda of 1361, the year of the patent, as the learned antiquaries

suppose.

[380] _Rotul. Parl._ IV. 60. 7. The petition of Chesterton, near

Cambridge: “And also they seiden that there was made gret waste in the

same Manor of Chesterton of Housing, that is to say of Halles and of

Chambers, and of other houses of office, that were necessary in the same

Manor, and none housinge left standing therein, but gif it were a Shepcote

or a Berne or a Swynsty and a few houses byside to putte in bestes.”

[381] “After the cessation of the Black Plague a greater fecundity in

women was everywhere remarkable--a grand phenomenon which, from its

occurrence after every destructive pestilence, proves to conviction, if

any occurrence can do so, the prevalence of a higher power in the

direction of general organic life. Marriages were almost without exception

prolific,” etc.

[382] _Eulogium Historiarum_, III. 213.

[383] _Fasciculi Zizan._ Rolls series, No. 5, ed. Shirley, p. 263:

“Dimitto alias rationes palpabiles: quod exhinc regnum nostrum

sensibiliter depauperetur pecunia; quod, praetextu subtractionis hujus

thesauri, qui expenderetur in Anglia, decrescit populus;” etc.

[384] _Political Songs and Poems, Ed. II.-Ric. II._ Rolls series, No. 14,

ed. T. Wright, I. 2. 53.

[385] The only monograph that I know is Peinlich’s _Pest in Steiermark_, 2

Bde. Graz, 1877-78. From 1349 to 1716, seventy years are marked in the

annals of Styria as plague-years. Corradi gives the plague-years in Italy

in his _Annali_.

[386] Guy de Chauliac for Avignon, in Häser, III. 176. Other foreign

references in the same work.

[387] _Political Songs and Poems. Ed. II.-Ric. II._ Rolls series, No. 14,

ed. T. Wright, I. 173, 190, &c.

[388] _Ibid._ I. 229, from a MS. in the library of Cambridge University.

[389] The spelling has been modernized, a few old words changed, and the

division into verses omitted.

[390] _Chronicon Angliae_, by a monk of St Albans. Rolls ed.

[391] Harleian MS. No. 1568, “Chronicle of England to A.D. 1419.” (Printed

with additions at the St Albans press about 1484.)

[392] Skeat, whose great edition of ‘The Vision of Piers the Ploughman,’

has been brought out by the Early English Text Society, thinks that the

ironical reference (Passus XIII. 248) to the pope sending a salve for the

pestilence applies particularly to the “Fourth Pestilence” of 1375 and

1376, which was the _pestis tertia_ of some chronicles.

[393] Flux and fever from famine are alone mentioned in the poems of John

of Bridlington, which cover the period from the Black Death to the reign

of Richard II.

[394] Egerton MS. No. 2572, Sloane MS. 443 (“xiv. cent.”), as well as

several copies of the 15th century.

[395] Lansdowne MS. 285, fol. 220.

[396] Mr Warner identifies him with the person who invented “Sir John

Mandeville” and the travels of Sir John. See an article in the _Quarterly

Review_, April, 1891.

[397] Sloane MS. (British Museum) No. 2276, fol. 191-199.

[398] ‘A passing gode lityll boke necessarye and behouefull azenst the

Pestilence.’ British Museum, case 31, e. 13, 4to, twelve leaves. The MS.

begins as follows: “Here begynneth a lytell boke necessary and behouefull

azens the pestylence.”

[399] Dibdin (_Antiq. Typogr._ II. 19) assigns the printing to Machlinia,

and reproduces a page as a sample of his common type. Bliss (_Reliquiae

Hearnianae_, II. 117) says that this sample page does not correspond with

that of the British Museum copy. He adds that there is a fragment of the

printed book in the library of St Peter’s College, Cambridge, “pasted

within the wooden covers of the binding of an edition (1499) of _Discipuli

Sermones_.”

[400] In the earliest printed Latin texts of this work (Antwerp, 1485?

Leipzig, 1495? and versified in Albertus Magnus, ‘De Virtute Herbarum,’

1500?) he is named Kamitus, bishop of Arusia, a city in the realm of

Denmark. In the copy of the English version in the British Museum, someone

has called him Ramicius, having written on a leaf, “Ramicius Episcopus

Arusiensis civitatis Daciae Regimen contra pestem,” with the date 1698.

The name of Kamitus, being judged improbable on the face of it, has been

changed in the catalogue of the British Museum library into Canutus. But

there was no Canutus among the bishops of Aarhus, nor a Kamitus, nor a

Ramicius. The two bishops that appear to suit best are Olaus, or Olaf, who

was bishop from 1371 to 1388, and Ulricus or Udalricus, or Olric Stycka,

who succeeded in 1425 and held the see until 1449. Curiously enough, the

latter, when he went to Rome in 1425 to represent Eric, king of Pomerania

in a suit with the dukes of Sleswig, figures throughout the records of the

suit as “Olaus, episcopus Arosiensis,” although Olaus, bishop of Arusia,

belonged to a former generation. It is, of course, the merest guessing;

but I am inclined to think that the author of the essay on plague was

either bishop Olaus, of 1371-1388, or bishop Udalricus, of 1425-1449, a

man of character and ability, who also went by the name of Olaus; and that

in any case the manuscript version of the essay in the English tongue is

more likely to have been of the early part of the fifteenth century than

of the fourteenth. The above facts are collected from various parts of

Langbeck’s _Script. Rer. Dan._: the “Series Episcoporum Arhusiorum” is in

vol. VII. p. 212. Nothing is there said of any bishop of Aarhus having

written a book, or having been a physician at Montpellier.

[401] These words (“the impressions”) are contracted in the printed book,

exactly as in the manuscript. I have modernised the spelling for the most

part.

[402] “When a man feeleth himself infect, as soon as he may, let him be

let blood plenteously till he swoon: then stop the vein. For a little

letting of blood moveth or stirreth venom.... Let him blood on the side of

the body where the swelling appeareth. Therefore if a swelling appear

under the right arm, let blood in the middle of the same arm, in the vein

called _mediana_. If it appear under the left arm, let him blood in midst

of the same, or in the vein of the liver which is about the little finger.

And if it be about the share, let him blood about the heel upon the same

side. If the swelling be in the neck, let him blood in the vein called

_cephalica_, about the thumb in the hand of the same side; or in the vein

the which is called _mediana_ of the same arm, or in the hand of the same

side about the little finger. And, overmore, if the swelling appear about

the ear, let him blood in the vein called _cephalica_ of the same side, or

in the vein which is between the long finger and the thumb, lest many

venomous things go into the brain.” If the swelling is in the shoulders,

bleed from the _mediana_: if on the back from _pedica magna_, and so on.

[403] Walsingham, _Hist. Angl._ I. 309. Adam of Murimuth, Engl. Hist. Soc.

[404] The Stratford bread-carts are explained in Stow’s _Survey of London_

(“Lime Street Ward”). In the famines of 1512 and 1527, they were besieged

on the way by hungry citizens and had to be guarded. The same phrase of

bread being “gesen” or scarce, occurs in a letter of 4 September, 1535,

from Thomas Broke to Cromwell, secretary of State: “never knew good bread

so geason in London at this time of the year; it is so musty, and of so

evil wheat, that it is rather poisonous than nourishing; what was sold for

a halfpenny, when you were here, is now a penny.” (_Cal. State Papers_,

Henry VIII. vol. IX. § 274.)

[405] Thorold Rogers. _A Short English Chronicle_, Camden Soc. 1880:--“45

Edward III. This yere was called the grete dere yere, and that same yere

was a quarter of whete at iiii nobles.”

[406] Wilkins, _Concilia_, III. 74: “De orando pro cessatione

pestilentiae,” dated Slyndon, 10 Cal. Aug. A.D. MCCCLXVIII.

[407] Sharpe, _Cal. of Wills_, vol. II.

[408] Otterbourne (ed. Hearne, p. 133) says that the _pestis tertia_ was

in 1368, and that it lasted two years. Nicolas (_Chronol. of History_, p.

389) gives from a Lansdowne MS. (no. 863, fol. 107) of the time of Charles

I., the duration of the _pestis tertia_ as 2 July--29 Sept., 1369, which

should probably read “2 July, 1368--29 Sept. 1369.”

[409] _Memorials of London_, etc. from the Council Records. Edited by H.

T. Riley. Lond. 1867, p. 339 and p. 356.

[410] Walsingham, _Hist. Angl._ I. 319; Adam of Murimuth.

[411] The chroniclers are not agreed as to the chronology of the various

14th century plagues from the first (the Black Death) to the fifth. Some

of the enumerations are clearly erroneous. Thus in _A Short English

Chronicle_ from the Lambeth MS. (ed. Gairdner for the Camden Society,

1880), the plague of 1361 is erroneously called “the threde pestilence,”

while the fourth is assigned to 1369 and the fifth to 1377 (for 1375).

Otterbourne places the _quarta_ in 1374 (for 1375), and the _quinta_ (as

others do) in 1391; but in the _Life of Richard II._, by a monk of

Evesham, the pestilence of 1382 is more correctly reckoned the fifth from

the Black Death.

[412] Walsingham, _Hist. Angl._ I. 409. _Chronicon Angliae_, p. 239.

[413] _Rot. Parl._ IV. 806.

[414] _Ibid._ III. pp. 139 a, 147 a.

[415] Blomefield’s _History of Norfolk_, III. p. 111.

[416] Continuator of Higden, IX. 14.

[417] _Political Songs and Poems._ Rolls series, No. 14, I. p. 252:--

“The rysyng of the comuynes in londe,

The pestilens, and the eorthe-quake--

Theose three thinges I understonde.”

[418] Walsingham, _Hist. Angl._ II. 109.

[419] Continuator of Higden, IX. 21, 27.

[420] _Eulogium Historiarum_, III. 369. Otterbourne, ed. Hearne: “From the

nativity of St John Baptist to the feast of St Luke,” 1391.

[421] Continuator of Higden, IX. 216.

[422] _Ibid._ 237.

[423] Walsingham, _Hist. Angl._ II. 186.

[424] Blomefield’s _History of Norfolk_, III. 113:--“1390. A great

mortality increased in Norfolk and in many other counties in England, and

it seemed not unlike the season of the great pestilence: it was occasioned

by a great want of victuals, that forced many people to eat unwholesome

food, and so brought distempers upon them. This dearth began under the

sickle, and lasted to the following harvest [1391], but was not so much

for want of corn, as money to purchase it, occasioned by the law made in

relation to wool, by which wool became dog-cheap; for a stone of chosen

and picked wool of the best sort was sold for 3 sh. and some for 22 pence

or 2 sh., so that in these times the woollen manufacture was the great

support of the nation.” According to Thorold Rogers, these high prices of

wool obtained from 1364 to 1380.

[425] Walsingham, II. 203. The Continuator of Higden (IX. 259) says

12,000. These estimates are, of course, the merest guesses, and extreme

exaggerations. The whole population of York would have been under 15,000.

[426] Higden, _ibid._

[427] Walsingham, II. 213; St Albans Annals of Ric. II. and Hen. IV.

[428] Walsingham, II. 276. The Chronicle of William Gregory (Camden

Society, ed. Gairdner) enters under the year 1407, a great frost, for

twenty-five weeks. It would be of real scientific interest to know the

chronology exactly, whether the plague followed or preceded the long cold

drought; but the year of the plague is disputable, if any heed be paid to

the date of 1406, given by later compilers.

[429] Walsingham, II. 297. Otterbourne, under 1411, says plague in

Gascony.

[430] Annals of Bermondsey, in _Annales Monast._ Rolls ed. III. 485.

[431] _Rot. Parl._ IV. 143 a. It is probably under 1420 that the “great

plague” at Newcastle, given in so many words in Brand’s _History_ under

1410, should be placed.

[432] _Ibid._ 148 b.

[433] _Histor. Collec. of a Citizen of London, 15th cent._ Camden Soc. ed.

Gairdner, 1876:

“They dyde faster every day

Thenn men myght them in erthe lay.”

[434] _History of Agriculture and Prices in England_, IV. 105.

[435] Chronicle of Croyland, in Gale, I. 518; Rogers, IV. 233.

[436] Denton. London, 1886, p. 92.

[437] Mackay, _The English Poor_. London, 1890, p. 40.

[438] W. Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_. 2nd ed.

Camb. 1890, p. 105. He reproduces Denton’s statement that “there was

chronic typhoid in the towns.” Denton professes to have found this in

Hecker, who had certainly no knowledge of English towns in the 15th

century, and is, in general, more entertaining as a _philosophe_ than

trustworthy for erudition.

[439] In 1741, during a prevalence of fever all over England, we hear of

bread made of horse-beans, pease, and coarse unsound barley as the chief

food of the poor. (_Gent. Magaz._ letters of 27 Nov. 1741 and 11 Jan.

1742). Thorold Rogers (_Agric. and Prices_, v. Preface) thinks that the

staple food of the English labourer, wheaten bread, had first been

changed, especially in the North, to rye, barley and oat bread, in the

17th century during the Civil Wars.

[440] _Paston Letters._ Ed. Gairdner, 1872, II. 254: John Wymondham of

Fellbrigg to John Paston, 10th Nov. “And forasmuch as there was a child

dead at Asteleys, and one other like to be dead in the same place, what

time I rode out about my little livelihood, my lady and I both thought

pity on my mistress your wife to see her abide there, and desired her to

come to my poor house, unto such time as you should be otherwise avised.”

[441] _Histor. MSS. Commission_, IX. 127 b.

[442] _Calendar of State Papers._ Venetian, vol. I. § 236.

[443] _Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council._ Ed. Nicolas, III.

p. xlv.

[444] _Rot. Parl._ IV. 420 b.

[445] _Arnold’s Chronicle_, p. xxxii.

A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 1 (of 2) From A.D. 664 to the Extinction of Plague · 第 18 / 19 章