The Black Death: the Effects on England 1348- 1918. by Garry
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1 The Black Death: The Effects on England 1348- 1918. by Garry Victor Hill 2 The Black Death: The Effects on England 1348-1918. by Garry Victor Hill Frisky Press Armidale Australia 2019 3 Dedication To Doctor Thomas Fudge Lecturer UNE 4 Copyright: © Illustrations: Creators or possessors of illustrations are acknowledged in captions. Many of the pictures are from Wikipedia/Wikimedia and/or Creative Commons. Others are in the Public Domain. All illustrations included here have also been put through the Internet’s requested permission steps. Nothing that failed that process has been used. Illustrations are also allowable under Australian law as teachers are also allowed to use images for study and to use websites. The author is a qualified, registered Australian teacher and an earlier version of this e-book has been used in two schools. Under American law “Fair Usage”also covers this work as this term specifies non-commercial use, educational purposes, and an expectation of accreditiation. Even bearing in mind their current allowability, readers and researchers should not lift pictures from this work. Find the original attribution and credit it. Attribution of images can found by holding the cursor arrow over an image. Freqently further links can be made by holding shift and a left click simultaneously. Despite legal allowability, if any illustration used here appears against the owner’s wishes the owner can either request acknowledgement under the caption in words of their choosing or request removal. Text: © The text is copyright. Fair dealings for study or criticism is allowed. For the whole book storage in electronic systems or bound printed out copies for library research is also allowed. Communication on this would be appreciated. Selling copies becomes another matter and is not allowed without permission. Written without prejudice. 5 Contents A Note on the Text. Plagarism and Revisions page 6 Introduction page 7 Chapter 1 The Origins and Spread of the Black Death page 10 Chapter 2 England before the Plague page 54 Chapter 3 The Plague Comes to England page 77 Chapter 4 Could Edward III have prevented the Plague Reaching England? page 115 Chapter 5 The Aftermath 1350-1664 page 135 Chapter 6 The Later English Plagues page 196 Chapter7 The Last Great English Plague page 220 Chapter 8 1666: The Aftermath page 240 Chapter 9 The Third Pandemic page 248 Appendices page 269 Bibliography page 287 6 A Note on the Text. Yes I know about the academic language of abreviationese. Ed. for editor, trans for tramslator, UP for University Press and so on. Abreviationese annoys, is frequently unclear and puzzling and always changing. As this book began as a 32 page information booklet for senior high school students there was no need for abreviationese. If this work becomes a source, students should check with their supervisor about which documentation system currently applies. During April and July 2021 this book got another proofing. Over fifty pages of text was added, so were new footnotes, more illustrations and appendices. I corrected much of the syntax, typos and grammar. With passive voice sentences I corrected most, but as it is not always clear who did what or what did what, the passive voice form sometimes remains. Media articles are cited without correcting grammar, capitalisation, diverse colours (in the text) spelling or syntax. I corrected and standardised in the Bibliography. Plagarism Over seven hundred source notes in less than 260 pages of text and a twenty pages of bibliography should be enough to stop any allegation. However, some facts do not have a source note because I used them in another of those seven hundred plus source notes. Others are in the realm of public knowledge. Revisions A rereading and newly found information showed the need for another proofing. Faced with the invidious choice of ether taking this book off the website to improve it or leave it on half-changed, I chose to leave the latter because readers are still using it. Most of the new information concerns developments between 1350 and 1666 and adds depth and human interest to the picture rather than changing it. 7 Introduction Much has been written about the Black Death in England, so why write more? Most of these works focus on the great epidemic of 1347-1350; writings like this one which cover all the outbreaks, going up to the last in England, that of 1918, are certainly much rarer. There are several other reasons, the most timely and obvious reason has been suddenly included and is mentioned last. In the twenty-first century science has cleared up many mysteries and controversies concerning this topic, disproving much that has been considered and verifying other theories. Archaeologists have excavated recently found plague pits and they reveal much. Publishers have printed in book form three new and valuable collections of primary source material; those edited by Hallam, Nardo and Furtado. Other primary source documents have gone into e-book form in the Welcome and Gutenberg collections. Concepts in older histories can be evaluated and reused when accurate and therefore hopefully brought to the attention of younger readers. Readers and researchers can now also discard mistakes, fallacies and dubious theories, all so common with writings on the plague. because of this new knowledge. Each generation writes history influenced by its own concerns, so before the developments concerning climate change gained public attention, few wrote about climate’s effects; now we can see these effects more clearly. The English experience of the Black Death has gone into culture and some basic histories: both carry many fallacies. Some are wrong because they are carried over from the continental experience and applied to England although they never really happening there. Some base their writings on apparently exceptional events and then apply them universally. Some writers or commentators exaggerate, or present the worst or the most bizarre as typical, while others ignore some evidence or do not know of it. Many of us make assumptions. This writer did before beginning research. I assumed that cholera existed in Medieval 8 England; it arrived in the early nineteenth century. Throughout this work such fallacies and popular concepts are dealt with. When the plague hit, ignorant, foolish and passive responses were common, but it becomes simplistic to convey an impression that this was all that happened. Several people assessed the contagion’s effects by observation or reports, ignored the fanciful and superstitious and realised they were fighting a contagion. From there they resisted being its victims by taking practical steps, or seemingly practical steps. Some efforts were correct, even if they did not quite know why. While I refer to fallacies and errors, I usually deliberately withhold the modern sources for them. Litigation, academic bunfights and humiliating others writing on the topic are all best avoided. No historian denies the Black Death’s important effects. Nobody denies it was one of the most important events in European history. While rarely agreeing on nearlyanything else connected with this great catastrophe, they do agree on that basic point. Now once more we have a virus crossing species to infect humans. Once more ships carrying those infected spread the disease. Once more exhausted medical staff battle to save lives, while the numbers of dead and dying rapidly increase. Once more, the rich flee to their estates or hideaways while the poor stay in the city, once again suffering high casualty rates. Once more the infected become reliant on overworked medical carers who frequently die from the disease they fight. This time the rich are not luxuriating in castles or manor houses, but beachside apartments and homes.1 The similarities end there though. 2020-2021 is not 1348-1350. Now we know the importance of vaccines, hygiene, distancing, separation and quarantines. Scientists have already developed vaccines extremely fast and so have reduced the spread of panic and despair. Knowledge is much more advanced and more widely given and given with more speed, accuracy and detail. We also know now that pandemics do not end the world. The third plague pandemic of the 1890s to the 1920s and the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918- 1921 show what knowledge, effort and science can do. They can combine to give us victory over an enemy worse than any human force. 1 ABC News (Australia) News at Noon. 22nd April 2020. 9 * 10 Chapter 1 The Origins and Spread of the Black Death Before focusing on the effects of plague in England, the English experience will be considered as part of a global response which includes how, when, why and where the epidemic originated, who or what may have spread it, how it spread and what it was – and what it was believed to be, for hundreds of years. Until recently a leading point of dispute amongst scholars and scientists concerned with the topic has been what the great epidemic of 1346-1353 and its subsequent reoccurring outbreaks actually was. Writers do agree that the pandemic that swept across much of Asia, North Africa and most of Europe in the middle of the fourteenth century was exceptionally virulent. They also agree on several dates for its arrival in different locales, the territory it infected and the dates for its passing. One major point they used to disagree about was on which disease actually devastated the fourteenth century world from eastern China’s coast to Iceland. New evidence proves that the fourteenth century outbreak was not then a new disease as many believed at the time and others have suspected or stated since; it had hit Europe eight centuries earlier. It may even have been in ancient Egypt.