Middle English Literature

Pestilence
The pestilence (not called the Black Death until the sixteenth century)
arrived on England’s southwestern shores in the summer of 1348 and
quickly spread so that by the following summer it had reached London
and beyond. It recurred in 1361–2, 1368–9, and 1375, then at irregular
intervals thereafter, but the first outbreak was the most severe. Between
one third and one half of England’s population died as a result of what was
probably a combination of bubonic, pulmonary, and septicemic plagues, a
figure slightly higher than most of Europe, where the diseases first appeared
in 1347. More of the young and the old, and more clergy, died, but similar
numbers of men and women, and urban and rural people of all classes
succumbed to the pestilence’s devastating effects. The reduction in the
population began seriously to affect the nation’s economy in the 1370s,
with prices for goods and land dropping while wages remained high; direct
governmental intervention soon became ineffective in the face of labor
shortages (see “Ordinance and Statute of Laborers,” p. 163).
6
Respectively, March 25, July 20, September 29, and December 6.
Pestilence
169

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170
Labor and Capital
Henry Knighton (d. ca. 1396) was an Augustinian canon at St. Mary of
the Meadows in Leicester. His Chronicle of English history begins in the
tenth century and ends in 1396, his principal source for the early years up
to 1337 being Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon (see “The English and Eng-
land,” p. 50). Knighton’s Chronicle is especially valuable for his descriptions
of local Wycliffite activities of late fourteenth-century Lancastrians (who
were the patrons of St. Mary’s abbey) and of the revolt of 1381 (see “The
Revolt,” p. 175). His depiction of the pestilence is the most comprehensive
in English historical narratives, the best continental description appearing in
Boccaccio’s preface to his Decameron.
Further reading
Biraben, J.-N. (1975–6) Les Hommes et la peste en France et dans les pays européens et
méditerranéens, 2 vols. Paris: Mouton.
Hatcher, J. (1977) Plague, Population, and the English Economy, 1348–1530. Lon-
don: Macmillan.
Platt, C. (1996) King Death: The Black Death and Its Aftermath in Late-medieval
England. London: University College of London Press.
Ziegler, P. (1971) The Black Death. New York: Harper.
Henry Knighton. British Library MS Cotton Tiberius C.vii, fols. 155v–157r. In G. H. Martin
(ed. and trans.) (1995) Knighton’s Chronicle, 1337–1396. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
94–105.
Language: Latin
Manuscript date: ca. 1396
A universal mortality. In this year and the next there was a general plague
upon mankind throughout the world. It began in India, then spread to
Tartary, and then to the Saracens, and finally to the Christians and the Jews,
so that in the space of a single year, from one Easter to the next as the
report ran in the papal court, some eight thousand legions of people died
suddenly in those distant parts, besides Christians.
The king of Tartary proposes to turn Christian. The king of Tartary,
1
seeing the sudden and unparalleled slaughter of his subjects, made his way
with a great number of his nobles towards Avignon, proposing to turn
Christian and be baptized by the pope
2
as he thought that God’s judgement
1
I.e., central Asia and eastward to the Caspian Sea.
2
Clement VI (pope 1342–52).

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had been visited upon his people for their unbelief. Therefore, when he had
travelled for twenty days and heard that the plague was as fatal to Christians
as to other people, he shrewdly turned about, abandoned his journey, and
hastened to his own country, but the Christians pursued him and slew some
two thousand of his people.
There died at Avignon in one day, according to a reckoning made before the
pope, 1,312, and on another day four hundred and more. Of the Domin-
icans in Provence 358 died during Lent,
3
and of 140 friars at Montpellier
4
only seven survived. At Magdelaine
5
only seven friars remained out of eight
score (which was enough). At Marseilles of seven score and ten Minorites,
truly, only one remained to tell the tale (and just as well). Of the Carmelites
sixty-six perished at Avignon before the citizens knew what was happening,
for they were believed to have slain one another. Not one of the Augustinian
friars, nor yet their order, survived in Avignon. At the same time the pestil-
ence raged in England, beginning at several places in the autumn and running
through the country to end at the same time the next year.