The Black Death in London (10 page)

Evidence of the need to replace royal officials (though not categorically due to plague losses) can be seen in the king’s grant for life to Richard de Hame of the position of surveyor of the Thames between the city and Staines,
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and the appointment of a new clerk of works and a new controller of works at Westminster and the Tower.
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The work of the mint did not cease during the crisis; indeed work on Edward’s new coin types remained an important priority. On 24 March, the day before the commonalty of London were to go barefoot to de Mauny’s new chapel site, Edward issued an indenture to three Italians – John Donati, Philip John de Neir of Florence and Benedict Isbare of Lucca – to make three types of gold coin in the Tower of London. The largest was the gold noble, then worth 6s 8
d
and calculated at 42 pieces to each pound weight of gold; there was also a half and a quarter gold piece, and a range of silver coins.
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The indenture agreement was witnessed by several London merchants, who clearly had a direct interest in the issue of this new coin, including John de Colewell, a wealthy mercer, and Robert de Shordich, a goldsmith.

The mayor and sheriffs, who had not met to consider pleas since September 1348, met once in March, showing that the business of justice continued at least in some form in the city despite the severity of the crisis. One John Shonke of Lesnes in Kent had been confined in Newgate prison in connection with an unpaid debt to Robert Cros, a fishmonger’s son (and presumably a relative of the Cros family involved in the land transfers for the East Smithfield cemetery). Claiming that he had already paid off the debt, Shonke sought justice in the court. Cros denied that payment had been made but a jury found for the plaintiff, who received 100s damages, while his creditor replaced him in gaol.
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The civic authorities, like the king, found need to replace lost officers, and on 20 March Thomas de Neuport was admitted serjeant of the chamber of the Guildhall by the mayor, aldermen and commonalty. He was dead within a month.
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The trade guilds, too, must have been very badly hit; certainly of three bailiffs of the Weavers’ Company elected in November 1348, Richard Horewode was dead by 4 March, and John de Whitefeld’s will, dated 19 March, was proved just a few weeks later.
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April 1349

In the city, the plague undoubtedly reached its height in April, some six weeks after it peaked in the nearby manor of Stepney. No fewer than 104 wills were drawn up during this one month, seven on Easter Sunday alone (12 April), suggesting that many, if not most, wealthy Londoners were now convinced that they could no longer expect to survive and thus had to make preparations for their death; it also implies that perhaps spoken (or nuncupative) wills were now considered of little use since those to whom they were addressed had just as much chance of perishing. Insights into the development of contingency tactics can be gained from these wills. Many citizens were now not only worried about their own survival, but also that of those who they may appoint to look after their offspring should the worst happen.

David de Kyngestone, in his will of 3 April, bequeathed his properties in the parish of St Margaret Lothbury to his children, Simon and Johanna. He appointed as guardians two men, John Lucas for his son and John de Herlawe for his daughter. Colewell (also known as Coterel), the mercer who witnessed the indenture of the Italian coiners, made his will on the same date, and in it appointed two other mercers as guardians of his children, Adam Fraunceys to Thomas and Hugh de Wychyngham for his daughter Johanna, leaving his wife as guardian of his second son John. Isabella Godchep, in her will drawn up on Easter Sunday, appointed multiple guardians for her grandson.
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By such tactics, the chances of at least one child retaining an adult carer of the parents’ choice must have been greatly enhanced.

Such care was not necessarily confined to immediate family. John de Mymmes, an image-maker
(ymaginour),
in his will on 19 March 1349, left properties in St Mildred Poultry to his wife Matilda and two daughters, Alice and Isabella, and appointed Roger Osekyn, a pepperer of Bread Street, to guard Isabella (presumably the younger of the two) should his wife die before the girl reached maturity. John was dead by 10 April, when Matilda drew up her own will, but neither Matilda’s will nor that of Osekyn (dated 13 April) makes any mention of the daughters. Isabella certainly was alive (and survived to full age
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), but Matilda chose instead to leave a bequest to one William, her apprentice image-maker. He was to receive the best third of the tools and copies for picture-making, and was to be sent to work under Brother Thomas de Alsham at Bermondsey Abbey near Southwark for three years,
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presumably to further his skills. We do not know how William fared, although it would be satisfying to discover that the convent at Bermondsey had delighted in some of his images; Matilda herself followed her husband, probably one daughter and Osekyn to the grave in May.

Forced to take account of an extraordinary, rapidly evolving situation, some of these wealthier families looked to a central system of security to act as a safety net should their best-laid plans falter. Adam Aspal was a wealthy skinner with properties in Bread Street, Cornhill and Billingsgate. He left these to his wife Auncillia in his will dated 15 April, with some additional estate to his sons John and Richard and his daughter Juliana, probably knowing he was dying. The will contained the prescient clause that Auncillia’s property should be sold after her death to pay Adam’s debts: Auncillia wrote her own will just six days later, and she too was dead days after making it. The key fact in her will is that she had previously agreed to act as guardian for the children of a fishmonger, John de Neuport, but wished now to pass money received for this purpose (presumably from Neuport) into the care of the Chamberlain of the Guildhall, at this time one Thomas de Maryns, until the children came of age.
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Such wards of the city could then be passed on to suitable guardians chosen by the mayor and aldermen, and an example of this is to be found in the City Letter Books. On 22 April the mayor and aldermen committed to one William Oyldebeof of Colmworth, Bedfordshire, the guardianship of three sons of Londoner Hugh le Plasterer. Possibly this meant that the young boys, Robert aged 12, John aged 9 and Thomas aged 6, started a new life away from the city.
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Some who had appointed guardians returned to wills drawn up earlier to make amendments in the light of the disaster, and one in particular provides a sense of pessimism about the likely outcome. William Hanhampsted, a pepperer in the parish of St Antonin, had drawn up his will in January 1349, appointing his wife and eldest son as guardians over the other five children. On 28 April, however, he added a codicil to the will stating that should his wife and children all die within one year of his own death, the Church was to inherit his entire estate for pious uses.
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His pessimism was only partly realised: we learn from the City Letter Books that the plague claimed him, his wife and one daughter, but all three sons and two other daughters survived at least as far as 1353. His wife, Agnes, provides evidence of wills made and proved before an ecclesiastical court, but not subsequently enrolled in Husting. Her will was dated 29 May (by which time William was already dead) and endorsed before Roger de Kempele, commissary-general of Ralph, Bishop of London. Her pessimism is also apparent, as she bequeaths a sum to Alice, her servant, ‘or whoever else shall nurse her son John until he is weaned’.
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Even unborn children were remembered within bequests, such as that of Thomas atte Vyne, who left ‘to John, Thomas, Geoffrey, and Andrew his sons, and to his child
en ventre sa mere,
bequests of money, silver cups and brass pots … [and] … the reversion of all rents within and without the gate where his aforementioned mother resides’.
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This was not an exclusive feature of the pestilence, but of a total of fifty-five examples from all Husting wills between 1259 and 1688, five fell within the months of November 1348 through to April 1349 (see Fig. 15 on p. 163).

Guardians might be used to attempt to safeguard establishments as well as people. In 1329 the very wealthy mercer William of Elsing had founded near Cripplegate a new hospital of St Mary for 100 blind men, and the project was still in development when the plague struck, since Augustinian canons had yet to be installed to run it. Elsing made his will on 23 March 1349 and in it extended the remit to include the ‘poor, blind and indigent of both sexes’, quite probably recognising a de facto change to the intended foundation situation. For their support he left to the hospital considerable properties in at least eight parishes. Both the hospital and these properties were placed under the guardianship of Elsing’s executors until such time as a prior and canons could be elected to take charge.
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An increasingly popular form of defence against the effects of plague that comes to light in the wills drawn up in April was that of membership of a religious fraternity. Fraternities were essentially religious societies, more often than not associated with a single trade or craft, and usually focused on a specific church. Their members were drawn from the same middle and upper strata of the city as the Husting will-makers. Membership ensured, among other things, that upon death the affairs of the deceased would be discharged and a suitable funeral would be held with mourners drawn from the fraternity itself. Although a small number existed before 1348, the attractiveness of membership of such bodies at this time of crisis was clear.
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Thus John de Shenefeld, a tanner, left in his will of 1 April a tenement to the fraternity of the Light of St Mary in the church of St Sepulchre Newgate; William de Flete, a mercer, on 5 April, and Nicholas de Rothe, a salter, on 12 April, left property to the fraternity of Corpus Christi in All Hallows Bread Street. Also on 12 April, Andrew Cros, the fishmonger who willed burial in the new plague cemetery on Tower Hill, left money to the fraternity of St Magnus on Bridge Street. Some bequests were more specific in their aims to support the fraternity’s activities. The wealthy goldsmith Simon de Berkyng made his will in January 1349, leaving a mansion to help provide income for the almonry of the fraternity of St Dunstan in the Goldsmithery, presumably a safety net for the fraternity members and their families.
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Other notable wills drawn up in April include that of Matilda atte Vigne (dated the 22nd), the widow who had blocked out the light of the queen’s tailor the previous September. Matilda had separately applied for papal permission to choose her own confessor in April, or perhaps a little earlier, possibly with her eye on Sir Thomas, chaplain of her own chantry chapel in St Edmund Lombard Street which she had founded over twenty years earlier,
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to whom she bequeathed 100s and a substantial £20 for him to purchase a ‘convenient house’. The remainder of her estate was to go to kinsmen and friends, and especially to her executors Matilda Ram, her niece, and John Charteney. Her plans for departing this life appear to have been compromised by the plague in both the short and the longer term. She was dead by 4 May (when the will was proved), just days before papal permission for a confessor arrived on the 7th.
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Her will remained unexecuted for at least three years, since Charteney was, in his own will of August 1352, forced to admit that he had not discharged his duty as executor, passing the entire burden of administration over to Matilda Ram.
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Geoffrey Chaucer’s family, living in a tenement in Thames Street, was also caught up in the plague in April. Chaucer himself would have been about 9 when the plague struck and, while he survived, Thomas Hayron, half-brother to Geoffrey’s father John, made his will on 7 April and was dead before 4 May. John was Hayron’s executor, so the two must have been close. Richard Chaucer, his step-grandfather, wrote his will on 12 April, and died in July 1349.
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Finally, William de Thorneye, John Chaucer’s other halfbrother, was also dead before the end of July 1349 (see below). It is therefore unsurprising that the plague had a significant impact on the youngster and would resurface in his writing: it is in
The Pardoner’s Tale
that Death is characterised as a ‘secretive thief, a pestilence who hath a thousand slayn’.

In a rare exception to the norm, one set of wills indicates where a victim died. John Dallyngge was a mercer living in the parish of St Michael Bassishawe. He made his will on 6 April, leaving his tenement to his son, also called John. The father died before 20 May, the date that the son made his own will. In the latter, John requested that the tenement ‘in which his father died’ be sold to pay his debts and for pious purposes. Neither will was proved in Husting until November, again illustrating the lag between death and enrolment.
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