麻豆约拍

History Hub聽 permalink

The Black Death of 1345 - 50.

• Message 1.聽

  Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Wednesday, 7th December 2011

  I am reading The Black Death - The Intimate Story of a Village in
  Crisis, 1345 - 1350, bBy Cambridge Economics and History professor
  John Hatcher. He wanted to personify the event and has taken the
  village of Walsham in Suffolk, which has great records documented, and
  fleshed this out with the stories of the inhabitants who crop up in
  the records. He has as a central figure a good parish priest (this is
  a complete fiction, as the priest of the time is not even named in any
  record). The author has explained what he tried to do and said in the
  end he came down more on the side of history than fiction, though
  there is dialogue and made-up details. (It is in the non-fiction
  section of our library.)
  
  I have so far read about 90 pages and the plague hasn't reached the
  village yet, but the priest is getting very worried about its progress
  and is trying to ensure everyone is praying and taking their religious
  obligations seriously. The rumours of the spread of the disease are
  getting stronger and more reliable and some of the people of Walsham
  take a pilgrimage to nearby Walshingham for the milk of St Mary which
  could be bought and was hoped to provide protection against the
  disease. (The people have been described as suffering badly from poor harvests and bad weather and being at starvation point, so I am not sure how they could afford this trip, which must have cost something, even if they did all walk, sometimes barefooted.)
  
  I have so far enjoyed the story, very briefly told, of the very
  independent Idonea Isabel "a determined young single woman, who had been waging a remarkably feisty struggle against her lord, Nicholas de
  Walsham and his wife Margery." Idonea had made a fuss a year earlier,
  publicly refusing to turn up at harvest time to reap his land as part
  of her tenancy obligations, and had gone elsewhere for higher wages.
  She was fined 3d and her father had to pledge her good behaviour.
  Didn't seem to work - she then got pregnant and refused to weave a
  cloth for Lady Margery, saying she was a cheat who hadn't paid
  Idonea's mother 6 years ago. She refused again to reap the land, but
  had just given birth. She was fined another 3d for failing to reap,
  2s 8d for producing a bastard, and 3d for not making the cloth.
  
  In court she said she had no intention of paying the fines or working
  for them for nothing. This is all he writes about Idonea so I presume
  the records ended there. It鈥檚 a little unsatisfactory.
  
  There is a report from one visiting cleric on there being three different "types of pestilence, each new and terrible. The first visitation was an infection of the lungs, in which victims suffered continuous fever and the coughing of blood". Highly contagious and everyone dying within three days. Also "another form struck. This also caused fever but this time great boils as well, which erupted suddenly in the armpits. Then yet another form appeared, in which victims of both sexes were attacked by boils and carbuncles in the groin."
  
  I don't think I knew this before (though I have read other books about the plague so must have). Does this mean there were different variants of the same disease or different diseases striking at the same time or what?
  
  This book has quite detailed source notes but I am sometimes unsure if the character with words like those above originally said them or if the author is using someone else's words in his (real life) character's speech. In the source notes he says, "Sir Robert Godington's account of the plague in Avignon is based on the contents of the letter written by Louis Leyligen", but does that mean the real Sir Robert is known to have spoken them, or is this poetic licence?
  
  The book doesn't have an index.

  Link to this forum: The Black Death of 1345 - 50.

  Report message1

• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Wednesday, 7th December 2011

  There is a report from one visiting cleric on there being three different "types of pestilence, each new and terrible. The first visitation was an infection of the lungs, in which victims suffered continuous fever and the coughing of blood". Highly contagious and everyone dying within three days. Also "another form struck. This also caused fever but this time great boils as well, which erupted suddenly in the armpits. Then yet another form appeared, in which victims of both sexes were attacked by boils and carbuncles in the groin."聽
  
  They are all plague, I think from memory, Caro.
  
  The Bubonic plague was the lesser of the three evils. It is the variety with fever, boils or buboes, and in the groin and armpit areas. This was survivable and wasn't contagious by spreading from person to person. The people with bubonic plague had been directly bitten by the flea.
  
  But the Bubonic plague could also develope into Pnuemonic plague, in other words when the disease entered the lungs. This was highly contagious, with the disease spreading from person to person via moisture droplets in the air (rather like the spreading of a cold or flu). The Pnuemonic plague had a 100% death rate, with no chance of survival if contracted.
  
  Then there is Septicemic plague, which was the rarest of the three plagues that struck Europe in the 1300s. Septicemic plague caused blood coagulation, could be either caught from another human or by being bitten by an infected flea. It was also highly contagious with a 100% death rate.
  
  But TP will know for sure and will be able to fill you in a bit more.

  Link to this forum: The Black Death of 1345 - 50.

  Report message2

• Message 3

  , in reply to message 2.

  Posted by Meles meles (U14993979) on Wednesday, 7th December 2011

  Philip Ziegler鈥檚 鈥淭he Black Death鈥� 1991, to my mind gives a good overview of the whole subject as well as discussing the various social and economic effects. He too has a chapter which is entirely fictional, to try and impart some sort of vivid impression of the effect the plague would have had on a 鈥渢ypical鈥� English village.
  
  Meles

  Link to this forum: The Black Death of 1345 - 50.

  Report message3

• Message 4

  , in reply to message 2.

  Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Wednesday, 7th December 2011

  Sorry, I was in a rush this morning.
  
  I should have added that all three varieties of plague are diseases caused by the Yersinia Pestis bacteria which is carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas.
  
  There is more here Caro
  
  

  Link to this forum: The Black Death of 1345 - 50.

  Report message4

• Message 5

  , in reply to message 4.

  Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Thursday, 8th December 2011

  Thanks for that, ID and Meles. Explains it well. Weren't there times, though, when only the bubonic plague was around? Or have I got that wrong?

  Link to this forum: The Black Death of 1345 - 50.

  Report message5

• Message 6

  , in reply to message 5.

  Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Friday, 9th December 2011

  Is it just me or do the '40s' (of whatever century) tend to be a time of hardship and/or strife? This seems to be particularly the case with reference to English and British history:
  
  1940s - Second World War followed by austerity
  1840s - Great Irish Famine and hunger elsewhere
  1740s - War of the Austrian Succession (including the Jacobite '45)
  1640s - English Civil War
  1540s - England at war with Scotland and France, Prayer Book Rebellion
  1440s - Hundred Years War tide turns as Paris and Rouen taken by French
  1340s - Black Death
  
  A co-incidence?

  Link to this forum: The Black Death of 1345 - 50.

  Report message6

• Message 7

  , in reply to message 6.

  Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Sunday, 11th December 2011

  That's interesting, Vizzer. If I were Paul Ryckier I would have checked the other decades to see if this is just perhaps normal, but I won't, and don't have the historical knowledge to be able to check in my head.
  
  1910s - WWI, 1810s - Napoleonic Wars, 1710s - ?, 1610s - don't think there was much upheaval in James I's reign, 1510 - beginning of Reformation.
  
  (Have just realised I have out the library a lovely big books called World History - An Illustrated Timeline. And not just of European history either. I could check other decades from this. Later maybe.)
  
  Anyway it is either coincident, godly intervention or some sort of cyclic pattern.
  
  Cheers, Caro.

  Link to this forum: The Black Death of 1345 - 50.

  Report message7

• Message 8

  , in reply to message 7.

  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 11th December 2011

  Vizzer
  
  At the end of my "Towards Project" I reflected on some similarities of this kind in the beginning of signficant time periods. nb. centuries and even more Millennia.. For it does seem that these "milestones" do seem to create certain patterns within societies that live by the same calendar of Common Era.
  
  The end of the Nineteenth Century was Oscar Wilde's "decadent" period- the last decade of a century in order to do things, and there are signs that by the late 80's of a decade people begin to feel that problems or discontents should not be put up with into the new century/millennium. So that from 89 to 00 there seems to be a momentum of change.
  
  Once the new time has arrived it often seems that the era is so propitious for change that individual or small group assassinations or strikes surgically targetted are capable of creating major change of the kind favoured by the extremist group. This complicates the first decade and leads to an increasing feeling of discontent and instability by the end of the first decade- which has often disappointed the early hopes.
  
  This results in a much more pessimistic drive using existing power sources in order to try to "crack the problems" that are proving more insoluble. This also seems to be linked to a generational phenomenon. For some the 89-90 peak is an inspiring one, and twenty years later this is the generation that comes to power feeling that its inheritance is one of a destiny to bring about great change. George Osborne's first speech as Chancellor of the Exchequer highlighted the fact that the Coalition policians are the "generation of the Fall of the Berlin Wall".
  
  The drives and powerful dynamics of the 10-11 period may well bring conflict and dangerous division and a risk of more serious conflict within a few years..
  
  Just thoughts- but as we approach Christmas and the New Year the closure of the History MB is a reminder of the way that we use time units to structure our lives.
  
  Cass
  
  

  Link to this forum: The Black Death of 1345 - 50.

  Report message8

• Message 9

  , in reply to message 7.

  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 11th December 2011

  Caro
  
  Not much upheaval in James I's reign? Of course the death of Elizabeth in 1603 and the accession of the King of Scotland was quite an upheaval for the English. Great expectations for English RC's for what the son of Mary Queen of Scots might do for them, and from Puritans from his Presbyterian education and upbringing. Hampton Court Conference - Gunpowder Plot- the small group of conspirators who might have done a 9/II. James severe problems with Puritans in Parliament over lavish lifestyle, favourites and the Overbury Murder case- plus the Puritan separatists being "Harried out of the Land" to "Holland"- prior to heading off to start "America"
  
  1500 - 1510 -well after the Wars of the Roses and the Richard III affair there was a hunger for stability. I think that the two imposters Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck were either side of 1500, but the times were pretty dramatic for Henry VII's steps to weaken the barony. The historian Previte Orton includes Henry VII among the despotic rulers of that despotic age of European history- perhaps drama in its own right, with the break-through of the commoner into the affairs of State.
  
  But further to my previous post- I am not suggesting that "history repeats itself"- but I dare say that your household like ours is falling back on largely what we usually do for Christmas only slightly modified. Part of the human advantage over other species seems to be the extent to which we can learn from experience and apply/live by what we learn, and that means historical experience as well that we can partly live vicariously. Having never been this age before I am currently feeling quite challenged (not for the first time) about knowing just how to "act my age".
  
  Cass
  
  Cass

  Link to this forum: The Black Death of 1345 - 50.

  Report message9

• Message 10

  , in reply to message 9.

  Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Sunday, 11th December 2011

  A bit more from my book. Not time to reply to your post, sorry, Cass.
  
  By 1348 the plague has reached London, but surprisingly little is known about its arrival or spread. It had a population at the time of about 100,000 and was certainly England鈥檚 main city, but the diocesan records have been lost and there are no equivalents of manorial court rolls. It seems it lasted longer in London than other places, probably because it flared up in different areas at different times. (I was a little surprised to hear that its timeframe was 6 months in London which is considerably longer than in smaller places; that doesn鈥檛 seem long for such a devastating disease.)
  
  People did a great deal of praying and pilgrimages but it doesn鈥檛 seem to have been very effective as a preventative: 25 out of 50 monks died in the abbey at Westminster and in the Newenham abbey in Devon 23 of 25 monks died. I read somewhere recently (in this book?) that this plague brought in a lot of less qualified religious men and that was one of the reasons there was so much corruption and selling of pardons at a later time. Buts needs must. Priests 鈥渁lone had the power to administer the seven sacraments, of which penance assumed particularly significance鈥�. Unconfessed people could or would go to hell. This was a dilemma with sudden deaths or with people who could access a priest at the right time. In 1349 the bishop of Bath and Wells, ordered his clergy to 鈥榤ake it known speedily and publicly鈥hat is when on the point of death they cannot secure the services of a properly ordained priest, they should make confession of their sins鈥�.to any lay person, even to a woman if a man is not available鈥et it be known at the same time that confession made in this way can be wholesome and of great benefit to them for the remission of their sins.鈥� I found the reference to women very interesting.
  
  By this stage in Walsham people were getting terrified. 鈥淭o the despair of the prudent, pragmatic and sensible villagers, who鈥ad remained calm, it was the fantasists, the pessimists and the hysterics who were shown to grasped the truth more firmly.鈥� People were moving out of the town (though it is not made clear where they thought they could go more safely).
  
  There were some people, however, who decided that if the worst was to happen, they might as well make the most of things and enjoy themselves and certainly not work their little butts off for greedy landlords.
  
  After 150 pages plague still hasn鈥檛 reached Walsham but some people have been hounded from the town after arriving from places where it was rife, and people were not taking up the inheritances they were entitled to and workers were becoming harder to find.
  

  Link to this forum: The Black Death of 1345 - 50.

  Report message10

• Message 11

  , in reply to message 7.

  Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Monday, 12th December 2011

  Difficult to tell whether it is co-incidental or cyclical.
  
  The previous famine in Ireland to the Great Famine of the 1840s, for example, was the Irish Famine of the 1740s.

  Link to this forum: The Black Death of 1345 - 50.

  Report message11

• Message 12

  , in reply to message 11.

  Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Monday, 12th December 2011

  You don't go for godly intervention, then, Vizzer?
  
  Cass, I was thinking of war upheaval mostly, rather than just new expectations and the like. I did have a quick flick through my timelline book last night and noted various religious changes in various decades.
  
  But all decades have something to write about. And the book I had sometimes had a quiet Europe while South America was the subject of absolute disaster, or England was quiet while there were wars between the Dutch and the French or whoever. Must do a more thorough check of the 90s decades to see if there are actual disorder of the sort you mention on a regular basis.
  
  Can't follow a NZ decade like that - aren't enough, even if you go back to Maori landing.
  
  Cheers, Caro.

  Link to this forum: The Black Death of 1345 - 50.

  Report message12

• Message 13

  , in reply to message 11.

  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 12th December 2011

  Vizzer
  
  In those two centuries you have the pattern of a major European War from the 02-03 year to the 13-14 years- with an invasion campaign in the 15 year.
  
  The economic pattern involved in major war became much clearer in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.. But surely the War of the Spanish Succession and the great campaigns of Marlborough would also have produced conditions of war economy- and over-spending based upon the National Debt, which was a significant factor in that war for the first time.
  
  Only after 1945 had statesmen come to accept that State action has to be taken in order to counter the impact of the inevitable post-war depression, and the economic depression after the War of Spanish Succession contributed to the naivety that went into the South Sea Bubble- and the financial crash of 1719, moreover whatever the attitude of Irish Catholics to "The Fifteen"- those condemned to be mere "hewers of wood and drawers of water" were never going to be given any favours economically. It was a time when the Protestant ascendancy tended to regard the Roman Catholics as tantamount to "vermin".
  
  Of course in the 1740's there was another invasion/uprising- the Forty Five. And a book that I have about 1764 has an entry for October in which Chesterfield, who had been Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1745- "and had managed to keep the country calm"- was quoted a writing to the Bishop of Waterford noting that he had heard that the military had killed an number of Whiteboys. He went on "but I believe that if the military force had killed half as many landlords it would have contributed more effectually to restore order. The poor people of Ireland are used worse than negroes by their Lords and Masters, and their Deputies of Deputies of Deputies."
  
  The post-war depression after 1815 lasted till about 1821-2 after which there was an economic revival. But the war boom years had favoured Irish immigration into Lancashire and patterns of migrant labour, both of which helped many Irish families to get by. But the brief boom was followed by a bust in 1836 with huge riots in Stockport Cheshire as workless people demanded their rights to poor relief- which had often included paying for Irish people to go back to Ireland. In the subsequent years many Irish families lost all those earnings from the British mainland and were forced into an even more extreme dependence upon the monocultivation of their potato plots, the most favourable conditions for the potato blight to install itself and spread.

  Link to this forum: The Black Death of 1345 - 50.

  Report message13

• Message 14

  , in reply to message 2.

  Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Tuesday, 13th December 2011

  Then there is Septicemic plague, which was the rarest of the three plagues that struck Europe in the 1300s. Septicemic plague caused blood coagulation, could be either caught from another human or by being bitten by an infected flea. It was also highly contagious with a 100% death rate.聽
  Sound like the Ebola virus of its day.
  

  Link to this forum: The Black Death of 1345 - 50.

  Report message14

Back to top