The Black Death (28 page)

How many others must have ‘come by night in the Pestilence’, to profit by the concomitant chaos, to rob the survivors or loot the houses of the dead.

But in Wales as in England, though law and order was badly shaken, substantially it survived. Burglary and banditry were anyhow far from uncommon in medieval England and self-defence the only satisfactory answer to the would-be aggressor. Things certainly got worse at the time of the Black Death but not sensationally so. The main highways were little less safe than in the past; the streets in the cities and big towns, anyhow never to be recommended during the hours of darkness, do not seem to have become conspicuously more perilous. In some cases, where the authorities lost their grip, the more prosperous citizens formed vigilance committees and took their protection into their own hands. A great many Aylmars were fated to lose, not only their wife but their pitcher and their old iron, value fourpence, as well. But the situation never became intolerable. Certainly the greater lawlessness was an inconsiderable extra burden compared with the overwhelming weight of the plague itself.

Mr Rees records that the effects of the Black Death in Wales seem to have been very similar, at least so far as the Englishry was concerned, to the effects in England itself. The decay of the manor and the manorial system was the immediate and the
permanent
consequence of the plague. The garden of the manor, with no one to tend it, was more and more often let out as
pasture.
The dovecot and fish stew were allowed to fall into disuse and often never reactivated. The lords of the manor renounced the fanning of the manorial demesne and began to let it out at the best rent they could get. The principle of bondage thenceforward played a far less significant part in the social structure of the manor. The system, in short, broke down because of the
shortage
of labour and the improved bargaining position of the villein.

All these phenomena were recorded in England too. But in the latter country so many qualifications have to be made to allow for the history of the previous decades, for regional variations and for eccentric and inexplicable movements against the trend that any generalization is open to destructive criticism. In Wales the scope for generalization is greater. Partly the reason for this is geographical: the area was smaller and more homogeneous; variations therefore were less. But the nature of the manorial
system
in Wales ensured that it would bear the imprint of the plague in a way much more clear-cut and decisive than its English
counterpart.
On the one hand the seeds of decay, which were already beginning to corrupt the English system long before
Pasteurella
pestis
added its contribution, had by 1349 hardly affected Wales. Any change which did take place at this period can therefore be attributed with greater confidence to the plague. On the other hand, since the manorial system in Wales was younger and more fragile, it succumbed more rapidly to the blows which it received in 1349. In Wales the Black Death accomplished in a year or two a revolution which in England was worked out over the whole of the fourteenth century.

In part this statement depends for its validity upon a
comfortable
foundation of ignorance. Very little is known about the Black Death in Wales and far less work has been done upon the evolution of the manorial system there than is the case with its English parent. No doubt a greater knowledge of the facts would suggest the need for important qualifications. But it is unlikely that the central proposition would be overthrown. The
generalization
so often made and so often disputed in the case of England – that the Black Death was directly responsible for the ending of the manorial system – can with greater confidence be applied to Wales.

But even here one is on shaky ground. For before the effects of the Black Death had fully worked themselves out, a cataclysm in some ways still more violent had fallen on Wales. The wars of independence of Owen Glendower, however noble or
well-justified
, set back the economic and social development of Wales by two hundred years. Through the thick clouds of hatred and bloodshed, through the appalling destruction and loss of life, it
is difficult to see clearly what lay before and impossible to deduce how things would have developed but for the obliterating
catastrophe.
That the Black Death altered Wales is certain but the
dimensions
of the change can be no more than speculation.

John Clyn added two words to his peroration:
magna
karistia
– ‘great dearth’, then he joined his fellows; another hand briefly added at some later date, ‘Here it seems that the author died.’

Even if no other evidence survived from Ireland, John Clyn’s cry would show how painfully the country must have suffered. He was a lonely, frightened man, who had already witnessed the death-agonies of almost all the other members of his house and now sought to record their end for posterity before the oblivion of death swept over all Kilkenny and all the country – even all the world. Whether anyone would live to read his words he did not know, hardly dared even wonder, but that instinct which leads men to seek to communicate with their unknown
successors,
whoever they might be and whatever they might be doing, now drove him on to write his chronicle, a memorial to the terror and grief of those who were still alive.

There is still much that is obscure about the course of the Black Death in Ireland.
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We cannot even be sure from whence it came. The most likely source is Bristol which was then the main centre of Anglo-Irish trade, but it could well have come direct from Gascony or one of the ports of Brittany. More important and considerably more mysterious is the period of the epidemic.
John Clyn was categoric. Referring to 1348 he said:

There is no more reason to take Clyn’s statistics seriously than those of any other chronicler but, equally, there is no reason to expect him to be seriously wrong over dates. On this basis,
therefore
, Ireland must have been infected within a month or two of England. On the whole a rather longer delay was to be expected but there is nothing wildly improbable in such a conclusion.

Yet in August 1349 Richard Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh, told the Pope during a visit to Avignon that the plague had
destroyed
two thirds of the English nation but had not yet done any conspicuous harm to the Irish or the Scots.

Such minor outbreaks as there had been were confined to the coastal areas. Fitzralph may have been a few weeks behind the times with his information but he went directly from Ireland to Avignon and would anyhow have kept closely in touch with affairs in his diocese. It took a minimum of fifteen or sixteen days to get from London to Avignon and an allowance of four weeks was not considered over-generous. From Dublin it would
probably
have taken a few days longer. But on any calculation the Archbishop must have been aware of any major calamity in Ireland which happened before the end of June. Even allowing for hyperbole on the part of John Clyn, it is incredible that the Archbishop should have dismissed as of minor importance an epidemic which could be described as having ‘almost entirely destroyed and emptied of inhabitants’ Howth, Drogheda and Dublin.

Other information supports Richard Fitzralph. The Archbishop
of Dublin died on 14 July 1349, and the Bishop of Meath in the same month. If Fitzralph had left Ireland about the middle of July it is not at all surprising that he should not have had this news by the time of his audience with the Pope. But it is more surprising that both deaths should have occurred almost a year after John Clyn’s plague had ravaged Ireland. Further evidence from the Annals of Connacht for 1349 lead to the same
conclusion
. ‘A great plague in Moylurg’ these record ‘and all Ireland this year. Matha, son of Cathal O’Ruairc died of the plague. The Earl’s grandson died. Risdered O’Raigillig, King of East Brefne died.’
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Clyn may have expressed himself badly and meant that, though the first cases of the plague were recorded in 1348, the epidemic did not become serious until 1349, in particular the summer and autumn. For the want of a better explanation this will have to suffice. Certainly John Clyn can be excused a certain stylistic looseness given the circumstances in which he wrote.

Whatever the dates of the epidemic there is ample evidence of its disastrous impact. Even while Fitzralph was making his way to Avignon it was spreading out from the Pale on the east coast to the midlands and the west. John Clyn records that, of his own Friars Minor, twenty-five died in their house at Drogheda and twenty-three at Dublin. In July 1350 the Mayor and Bailiffs of Cork filed a petition pleading for the revision of certain taxes. Clonmel and New Ross also petitioned successfully for relief. The citizens of Dublin begged for a special allowance of a thousand quarters of corn. As late as 1354 the tenants of certain royal farms around the capital were claiming that they had been
reduced
to pauperdom by the ‘plague lately existing in the said country’, and because of ‘the excessive price of provisions’ which was exacted by certain royal officials. Geoffrey the Baker states that the Anglo-Irish were almost wiped out but the pure blooded Irish in the mountains remained inviolate till 1357.
17
This cannot be accepted but it is possible that comparatively little damage was done among the indigenous Irish and that these suffered more severely in another epidemic eight years later – perhaps of some quite different disease.

But to see the sufferings of Ireland in their proper perspective it is necessary to remember that, in appealing for relief, reference
was usually made not only to the plague but also to the ‘other many misfortunes which had happened there’ – ‘the
destruction
and wasting of lands, houses and possessions by our Irish enemies’. An inquisition of the lands of Roger de Mortimer found ‘a great and flourishing manor, full of free tenants,
farmers
and burgesses, waste’. The manor of Geashil, belonging to the Earl of Kildare, was ‘worth nothing’. The demesne lands in County Longford ‘lay waste for lack of tenants’. All these statements of sad fact sound familiar enough and could have been culled from the records of any county of England which was recovering from the plague. But in Ireland they stem from the 1320s and 1330s; fruit not of the plague but of the perpetual, ruinous civil war which ravaged the country in the fourteenth as in almost every other century. The Black Death was no less painful to the Irish because they were accustomed to live in a state of even bloodier disorder than their neighbours across the Irish Sea but it should not be forgotten that a high proportion of their misfortunes would have arisen even though there had been no plague to help them forward.

*

It would be proper to conclude this tour of the Black Death in Britain with some account of its spread to Scotland.
Unfortunately,
little detail is recorded. According to Knighton
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the Scots were delighted when they heard of the fate which had overtaken their hated neighbours in England. They regarded it as a proper retribution for past offences and, as the plague swirled over
Cumberland
and Durham, massed their forces in the forest of Selkirk, ‘laughing at their enemies’ and awaiting the best moment to invade. It was their last laugh for, as they were on the point of moving into action, ‘the fearful mortality fell upon them and the Scots were scattered by sudden and savage death so that, within a short period, some five thousand died’. The panicstricken soldiers dispersed throughout Scotland, dying by the side of the road or carrying the infection with them to their homes.

‘God and Sen Mungo, Sen Ninian and Seynt Andrew scheld us this day and ilka day fro Goddis grace and the foule deth that Ynglessh men dyene upon.’
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Such was the prayer that the Scottish
soldier was trained to say as he watched the sufferings of the English on the other side of the frontier. It is certain that his prayers went for little but so little attention is paid to the Black Death by historians of Scotland that one is tempted to believe that St Mungo, St Ninian and St Andrew must have spared their admirers some part at least of the tribulations of other less well protected Europeans. One of the few people living at the time of the plague whose account survives is John of Fordun.
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