The Black Death in London (20 page)

Some later reports managed to exaggerate the impact quite wonderfully. An Icelandic annal of
c
. 1430 claimed that only fourteen persons survived in London after the Great Pestilence of 1349.
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Written, perhaps, for narrative impact, it is also conceivable that the annal confused general mortality with that among the city’s ‘ruling’ body of the mayor and aldermen of whom there were normally twenty-four. Eight aldermen definitely or probably died during the pestilence, and eighteen were in office at some point during 1349.
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The overlap caused by new aldermen replacing plague victims is not clear, but the numbers would be about right. The indication is around 40 per cent mortality.

Drawing on the grounds of the wills, documentary evidence and pro-sopographical evidence, this analysis makes a solid case that over 50 per cent, and possibly more than 60 per cent, of the will-makers and tax-payers of the citizenry perished. Such figures seem extraordinary, but similarly catastrophic levels are suggested both within other English urban centres, in rural localities, and in Continental towns and cities. In Oxford, an average of 1.6 wills per annum was enrolled between 1320 and 1348, a figure which jumped to fifty-seven (thus thirty-six times greater) in 1349; in Colchester, 110 wills were enrolled during 1348–9, almost twenty-five times the annual average for the previous twenty years; and in Lincoln, 105 wills enrolled in 1349 represented a figure of thirty times the average for fifty-three other years between 1315 and 1376. In York and Norwich in 1349, over three times more entries to the freedom of each city were recorded than the average number for previous decades which, while not providing a ratio, certainly indicates the opportunities and needs presented by severe mortality.
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At Canterbury, about two-thirds of the taxable population included in returns for 1346–9 disappeared from the records by 1351–2.
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In rural localities previous syntheses have identified mortality rates of over 50 per cent on twenty-eight Durham priory manors with a range of 30–78 per cent;
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40–46 per cent on Halesowen manor, Worcestershire; 50–60 per cent in Coltishall, Norfolk; 49 per cent on Cottenham manor, Cambridgeshire; 45 per cent in mid-Essex communities; and 45–55 per cent in Walsham-le-Willows, Suffolk.
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Manorial tenants of the Bishop of Worcester in the West Midlands suffered losses ranging from 19 to 80 per cent. Analyses of eleven of the Bishop of Winchester’s manors in Hampshire show a loss of tenants ranging from 59 to 100 per cent, with an average of 76 per cent. An innovative study of landless men working seventeen manors of the Abbot of Glastonbury in the West Country found an average mortality rate of 57 per cent.
³²³
Contemporary manorial assessments made as part of inquisitions post mortem of major landholders include eight survivors of fourteen cottars (43 per cent mortality) at Kidlington (Oxon); four of eight bond tenants (50 per cent) at Titchmarsh (Northants); six of thirteen villeins (54 per cent) at Stanton Harcourt (Oxon); six of twenty-four bondsmen (75 per cent) at Ashby David (Northants); and 100 per cent losses at East Morden (Dorset), Basildon (Berks), Ampthill (Beds) and Todworth (Wilts).
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Further afield, some Continental examples offer similar evidence. In France, the town of Givry has a superb set of burial registers which run through the plague (July to October 1348). Annual burial rates pre-plague were twenty-three per annum on average. At 3.5 per cent male deaths per annum, this would have yielded a population of around 650–700 adults, so a population of perhaps 1,100 including children. In the four months of the plague, a total of 626 burials were made in the town’s cemetery, or about 57 per cent of the population. The lay confraternity of San Francesco in Orvieto, Italy, also has an excellent burial register backed up by a matriculation list of entries. From this it has been calculated that nearly two-thirds of the community, dwelling in all parts of the city, perished. In Siena, Italy, perhaps just a little smaller than London’s population (
c
. 50,000 in the city itself), the death rate was probably as much as 50 per cent; while the much smaller town of San Gimignano probably saw 58.7 per cent. Perpignan suffered between 58 and 68 per cent mortality based on the analysis of the deaths of notaries in that town.
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While the value of these assessments is limited by the nature of the evidence, the range of approaches, the variety of the sources and the general consistency of the outcomes all appear to indicate that a mortality rate of 55 or even 60 per cent or more in London seems quite defensible. However, such a death rate begs basic questions: how could the city regain its feet so quickly and carry on functioning if nearly two in three residents were dead? What, therefore, needs consideration is the immediate impact that the 1348–9 disaster had on the city and survivors.

Some Immediate Impacts: 1350–60

The 1348–9 pestilence was the greatest of a succession of outbreaks of disease that rocked the city during Edward III’s reign and contributed to an extended and very significant reduction in the population. Studies elsewhere have tended to consider the broader impact of events across this period, especially on the national economy and London’s place within it, but there were other impacts that might be viewed as a specific legacy of this first catastrophe. Medieval Londoners (indeed people across Europe) had never suffered a cataclysm even remotely on this scale before, and certainly not one whose origin was placed by their own church leaders in the hands of their God and in response to their sins. Under the circumstances, we should be able to detect some kind of communal reaction, in public and private life, in social spheres and in people’s attitudes, to religion and death. An in-depth review of all the available evidence for the decade lies beyond the reach of this volume, but we can identify some key impacts.

The impact with the greatest publicity was the effect of the huge death toll on the nation’s economic fortunes. At the first Parliament held since the outbreak of the plague, in February 1351, the king himself acknowledged the visible signs of this impact:

he is informed that the peace of the land is not well kept, and that there are very many other crimes and faults which need to be redressed and amended, as shown by maintenance of parties and complaints in the localities, and also … servants and labourers who are not willing to work and labour as they are accustomed.
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The commons were more forthright still. In their petition, they noted:

how his commonalty is greatly ruined and destroyed by this pestilence, because of which cities, boroughs and other vills and hamlets throughout the land have decayed … and many which used to pay the tax of the tenth and fifteenth and other charges granted to him in aid of his war are completely depopulated. And now, because of their deaths, this new conditional tax, which is assessed at the same sum on those who have survived, destroys and ruins them to such an extent that they can scarcely stay alive.
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There were other, more subtle issues triggered by the plague, national in scope, but certainly of interest to the city’s survivors. One such was the matter of the legal status of children born overseas, and it is surely no coincidence that this was again on the parliamentary agenda. It no doubt reflects the high level of mobility and migration that ensued as survivors of the epidemic began to assert their rights to estates, or to take advantage of new opportunities. Edward himself was sensitive to the potential impact, and sought to close loopholes:

some people were in doubt whether the children born in overseas parts outside the allegiance of England should be able to demand inheritance within the same allegiance or not, on account of which a petition was formerly put in the parliament held at Westminster in the seventeenth year of our lord the king [1343–4] and was not at such time completely agreed, our said lord the king, wishing that all doubts and uncertainties were removed and the law in this case declared and clarified.
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That London experienced a considerable influx of people immediately following the plague is in little doubt – we have already seen the king’s empowerment in late December 1349 of the city sheriffs to keep the peace amid the ‘great concourse of aliens and denizens to the city and suburbs, now that the pestilence is stayed’. Despite this inward migration, however, many of its buildings – as many as one-third – remained empty for several years, as claimed in the parliamentary petition for tax relief in 1357. The opportunity for survivors and migrants to improve, or obtain for the first time, landholding and especially trading sites by entering such empty properties may have proved too great a temptation for some. Examination of the Possessory Assizes, the court that dealt with disputes over property ownership, between the years 1340 and 1348, shows an average of about eight cases per year. Fifteen cases were held in the three months alone following the resumption of the court in November 1349 and (following a further break between February 1350 and October 1351) a further thirty-three were held in the nine months to July 1352. Clearly the legal complexities of establishing true title led to considerable argument and arbitration.

The shortage of labour in the city had already led to the Ordinance of Labourers being issued in 1349; this was repeated in 1350 as a result of ‘the damages and grievances which the good folks of the City, rich and poor, have suffered and received within the past year, by reason of masons, carpenters, tilers and all manner of labourers, who take immeasurably more than they have been wont to take’.
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In 1351 the wages pressure remained sufficiently high for the commons to take their grievance to the king:

since the pestilence labourers are unwilling to work, to the great misfortune of the people, and to take for their labour what was agreed by our lord the king and his council, and they have no regard for fines or redemptions, but go day to day from bad to worse. May it please our lord the king that corporal punishment with redemptions shall be imposed on them when they shall be attainted in due manner.
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The ordinance was enshrined in law, becoming the Statute of Labourers. However, London was, for the king at least, far from efficient in enforcing the statute. Following further complaints to Parliament about prices in London in 1354, suggestions for administrative remedies omitted mention of those supposedly appointed to enforce the statute, the justices of labourers. A year later, enquiry by the Exchequer revealed that no one in London knew whether or not there were any such justices. Pressure forced the mayor to act and by 1357 the Letter Book provides significant details of those being prosecuted under the statute. Between 1 August 1357 and 29 September 1359, the City Letter Books record that seventy-four men, almost all apparently in the construction industry (carpenters, tilers, masons etc.), were fined an average of nearly 1
s
6
d
each for a total of £5 7
s
4
d
.
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There are numerous examples of the extreme pressure exerted on the artificial wages ceiling. Among the swiftest and more extreme changes in wages were the costs of the harvest. The manorial accounts survive for the Westminster Abbey manors of Knightsbridge, Hyde (now covered by Hyde Park) and Ebury (modern Mayfair, Belgravia and Pimlico), and from these, the costs of managing the harvest have been calculated.
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Reaping and binding 1 acre was charged at 8.39 pence on average across the three London manors before the plague; immediately afterwards, this figure had rocketed to 14.28 pence, an increase of 70 per cent. Threshing and winnowing one-quarter each of wheat, barley and oats before the plague cost 7.41 pence; immediately afterwards this had risen to 13.02 pence, a 75 per cent rise. Day-wages on the three manors also increased in the ten years up to 1359. Notwithstanding the Statute of Labourers, skilled craftsmen such as carpenters, thatchers and tilers saw their wages rise between 26 and 38 per cent, while general labourers enjoyed a 97 per cent rise.
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The four servants of the church receiving board-wages at Westminster Abbey (wages in lieu of food and board) collected 8
d
per week before the plague and for four years afterwards, but their wage rose to 1
s
in 1354, up 50 per cent, while the annual stipend paid to the chandler for transporting candle wax and sconces from London to the abbey rose from
6s 8d
to 10
s
.
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It has been suggested that London may have been exceptional in its response to the statute in comparison to the rest of the kingdom, possibly as a result of a generally higher cost of living, and that the civic authorities effectively ignored both ordinance and statute.
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