The Black Death in London (12 page)

That medicines continued to be used within the infirmary at Westminster Abbey seems certain. Thomas de Walden, a city apothecary and sometime Chamberlain of the Guildhall, was successful in chasing debts incurred by the abbey infirmarer for prescription before September 1349 and again in 1350. Indeed, the infirmarer who received these payments was none other than John of Reading, the chronicler of the plague itself. The infirmarers’ accounts for the years 1348–50 sadly do not survive, so we do not know what kinds of medicines were brought to bear on the plague.
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London citizens did not, however, found any hospices or hospitals specifically to cater for the plague victims, as did some in European cities. For example, in June 1348, when the plague entered Sansepolcro, in Tuscany, Italy, the lay fraternity of Santa Maria della Misericordia founded a hospital for the victims just beyond the city walls.
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Other notable wills made at this time included that of Geoffrey Wychingham, a former mayor of the city and current alderman of the Aldersgate ward. He made his will on 30 April and was dead before 8 June; the register of the Franciscan friary records that his wife’s tomb lay in the friary church, but not where he was himself buried.
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Thomas de Herlawe, an armourer, made his will on 19 May specifying his ‘body to be buried in the new burial ground outside Aldersgate in London’, and leaving 40d to prepare his burial, along with 13
s
4
d
to the fraternity of the chapel of the church there. He was dead within six days.
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The will confirms that de Mauny’s original aim to establish a college of chaplains within a church in the burial ground had come to fruition, and in a quite extraordinarily short period of four months.

In Stepney, no courts met between 22 April and 6 July, so the measure of mortality can only be inferred from the number of new deaths reported at the latter date. From this, the monthly toll was probably in the region of nineteen deaths, less than half what it had been the previous month, although still significantly high.
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It was not just the diminishing rate of both will-making and will enrolment that gave the city a sense that perhaps the worst had passed; a small number of documents refer again to construction work. Following a formal inquisition by John Lovekyn, Mayor of London, and the required payment of 10s, the king on 6 May licensed John de Hurleye, Walter de Tyffeld and Matthew le Barbour to assign to Nicholas de Rothewell, parson of All Hallows Bread Street, a plot of land 12ft by 27ft valued at £40 yearly, for the enlargement of the church chancel. Similarly, but on a grander scale, the Carmelite friars of London were licensed to enclose Croker’s Lane, running down the entire western side of the friary, from Fleet Street to the river. The plot, measuring 660ft by 12ft, and described as ‘of no value’, was for the enlargement of their precinct. The licence included permission to sink a well for those living on the lane.
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Construction of new houses possibly during, but probably immediately following, the plague is also exemplified by the vivid case brought to court by a tenant of one such house which backed onto a forge and metalworker’s workshop. In answer to the tenant’s complaints over the height of the forge chimney (12ft lower than customary), the blows of the great hammer (which threatened to shake party walls and buildings down), and the stench of the smoke from seacoal used to fire the furnaces (which penetrated halls and chambers alike), the forge owners sought to dismiss the action, ‘because their messuage was built as recently as 1349 [thus later than the original workshop], is much higher than the house it replaced, and has windows facing the forge, which its predecessors had not’.
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Another indicator in support of a gradual amelioration of the crisis may be the evidence of those coming forward to reclaim debts. On 5 May the king’s steward, Philip de Weston, ordered the sheriffs of London to seize the assets of the late Henry Wymond, a plague victim, who was in debt to the Crown. The unfortunate Wymond, a woolmonger, had made his will just a week earlier, on 28 April, and had died on the same day as the steward’s notice. While he was beyond worry, the mayor and commons of London were perhaps not; by this order, they were cheated of Wymond’s bequest to them of a new house in Tower Street, not yet fully completed, near the mansion of Sir John de Cobham.
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They were, however, also chasing debts themselves, and on 22 May they issued their own order to their serjeant, William de Greyngham, to summon John Anketel, woolman, over a debt of 100 marks due to John Oweyn. Oweyn had died in the plague, but his executors were now wishing to settle matters.

John Anketel could not reply to the summons, having also perished, so his heirs and tenants were called upon to assist in the case. They, in their turn, failed to appear (perhaps as a result of their deaths too), so the court granted execution of the debt and an inquisition was made of the Anketel property. The jurors found that he possessed houses, a brewhouse and shops in the parish of St Mildred Poultry, as well as shops, a brewhouse, solars and warehouses in the parishes of All Hallows Bread Street and St Mary Magdalene Milk Street, the latter occupied by his widow Agnes.
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Both cases indicate the level of administrative confusion that must have mired most, if not all, claims for justice and rulings over property ownership and debts during, and immediately following, the plague.

Perhaps more significantly, the Assize of Nuisance, suspended since September 1348, was revived on 28 May and the first case heard is reassuringly domestic in nature. One John de Hardyngham, resident of the parish of St Mary Axe, complained that a couple, Henry and Joan atte Wode, and Alice Powel, the widow of a bell-founder, were refusing to rebuild a ruinous earthen wall, 80ft long and running along their garden northward to Hardyngham’s. Summonsed by the court, Henry and Joan did not appear, but Alice explained that the late Ralph de Blithe, the previous owner of the tenement on which the wall stood (and former husband of Joan atte Wood), leased it in 1332 for twenty years to Alice Powel and her bell-founder husband, John. The condition was that the lessor should repair the wall when necessary, or, if he failed to do so, should deduct from the Powels’ rent their reasonable expenses to sort the repairs. The court agreed that this was appropriate, and gave Alice forty days to repair the wall, recovering the costs from her rent to Henry and Joan.
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Both the fact that the court met at all and the nature of the dispute would seem to suggest that people now believed that the world might indeed go on. Meetings of some of the London guilds were also resumed at this time. The mercers’ guild certainly met in June and July, perhaps for the first time that year.
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The resumption of more normal business can be detected in evidence from early June of the rearrangement of matters of private debt. One example was that of Simon Rote, a London skinner, who had in 1348 borrowed £200 from the wealthy money-lender David Wollore (Wooller), adding to a prior debt of £100. Rote died at some point in 1349, probably of the plague, but between 10 and 16 June 1349 his widow Isabel, and son Arnold (with his wife), bound themselves for this debt, thus taking on the dead man’s obligations.
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A final piece of evidence that matters were improving can be seen in the accounts of payments for construction work at the Tower of London and Westminster Palace in the year between September 1348 and 1349.
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The Cradle Tower foundation stones were delivered on 8 September 1348, so the period covers a specific new building (see Fig. 5). Construction wages were sustained at an average level of £17 per month until late November, when the figure dips sharply during the height of the plague to around £I 12s per month across March, April and May 1349. It rises again in June and July to an average of £15 until December of that year. While this could represent simple variations in the work level required, the timing looks very significant.

If all this evidence points to a lessening of the plague, it was not a cessation, and dark days were set to continue for some time yet. The king’s own surgeon, Roger de Heyton, perished on 13 May, a date preserved as a result of an inquisition following dispute over ownership of his house by the gate of the Palace of Westminster.
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By 18 May, Thomas le Boter, surveyor of the king’s works at Windsor and the royal palace at Kennington (near Lambeth), had died, being replaced by John le Peyntour, and by 20 May, John de Sancto Albano, the king’s falconer, had also died and been replaced.
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Late in May, John de Offord, Chancellor of England and Archbishop-elect of Canterbury, was stricken by plague at Tottenham Court. He had been confirmed as archbishop by the Pope, had taken the oaths necessary to serve his king, and was on the cusp of obtaining the additional extensive power and wealth that would flow following his official consecration, despite his age and infirmity. A memorandum to the king recorded his death: ‘Be it recorded that Master John de Offord, elect and confirmed to the see of Canterbury, king’s chancellor, on 20th May, namely the vigil of the Ascension in this present year, after sunset, departed this life at Totenhall next to London.’
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While the Assize of Nuisance had resumed, hearings of Possessory Assizes by the Husting court did not, and would have to wait until 7 November. One of the very first cases to be dealt with referred to events during this period of the plague. One Philip de Herlawe complained that on 25 May four men (Robert de Hatfeld, burreler; Nicholas Hotot, woolman; Roger Hotot and Solomon Faunt) dispossessed him of two messuages in St Mary Woolnoth and St Swithin London Stone. The men denied the charge, Roger and Solomon being represented by an appellant, Alan de Horwode.
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The date of this is significant, since Philip may well be the son and beneficiary of Thomas de Herlawe, the armourer buried in de Mauny’s cemetery in West Smithfield, whose will was proved on the same day as the alleged dispossession.

Of those accused, we do know that Robert de Hatfeld left in his own will in October 1356 a messuage in St Swithin, and that a Nicholas Hotot, woolman, willed to be buried in the church of St Swithin in 1361 during the second pestilence.
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When the case came to court, it is clear that the confusion lay in the fact that intermediary heirs had also died, and that subsequent holders had potentially disposed of the properties illegally.

June 1349

So began the summer. Will-making in June dropped to levels not seen since the very beginning of the plague: just nine people drew up wills for enrolment in Husting. A dip is also evident in the number enrolled, thirty-one, in the Husting court, but this is due simply to the fact that for one month, from 17 June to 17 July, the court was suspended to permit citizens to attend the Boston fair
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and, as will be seen, the July figures reflect this.

Of the nine drawn up, the most interesting is that of William de Thorneye. He was a very wealthy pepperer who had held the position of sheriff of London in 1339 and was an alderman in 1342; he was also a half-brother to Geoffrey Chaucer’s father, John. He wrote a will and testament, both on 20 June.
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The will established the disposal of his lands and properties, leaving his young son, John, a shop and tenements in St Mary Aldermary parish, with the remainder going to the nunnery of St Helen’s Bishopsgate. The nuns he bound with a complex agreement to establish a chantry for the souls of himself, his family and his kith and kin, requiring them to give security that his bequest would not be used for anything else before both the mayor and aldermen of London, and the justiciar of the King’s Bench, Common Pleas or similar. This will was enrolled on 27 July.

The testament set out his wish to be buried in the nunnery church of St Helen’s Bishopsgate, near to the tomb of his wife Joanna, and then established the distribution of his moveable goods. He left further money to support perpetual chantries in his parish church, and for a remarkable 10,000 masses to be sung for his soul in various religious houses across the city. Money was also set aside to support the chantries of family and friends in the nunnery church, and to go to numerous religious houses. Among those mentioned in London were: St Helen’s Bishopsgate, whose church, dormitory, cloister and other buildings were evidently in need of repair; St Paul’s Cathedral; Holy Trinity priory, Aldgate; St Bartholomew Smithfield; St Mary Clerkenwell; and the various hospitals and leper houses around the city.

The will also clearly indicates the level of wealth William was disbursing. No less than £400 in land and tenements was set aside to maintain the chantries, a very considerable sum at the time. Away from London, he left money to the Augustinian houses of Tanridge and Newark in Surrey, and to Thorney Abbey, near his family home in Lincolnshire. At Thorney Abbey he left money to the paupers called ‘bedesmen’, who dwelled within the monastery, and also to the poor and maim living on the waste ground around its walls. This latter is suggestive of the situation many rural monasteries may have found themselves in as peasants deserted their plague-ridden villages.