The Black Death in London (11 page)

Though no will survives, we know that the prior of Westminster Abbey, one Simon de Harmondesham, also perished at the beginning of April. A hitherto-unknown monk called Simon de Langham was swiftly elected in his place, but was to spend less than seven weeks in office before being elevated to the position of abbot – such were the opportunities that accompanied this extraordinary death rate.
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Similar events were occurring in St Paul’s Cathedral as canons succumbed and were replaced. On 7 May John Cok was granted the prebendary of Finsbury on account of the death of Thomas de Asteley, notwithstanding Cok’s existing position of treasurer of the cathedral.
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While so many wills were being drawn up in April, none were enrolled in the Husting as the court did not sit in this month. Ecclesiastical probates were being heard, however. John de Warefeld, a corn-dealer, made his will on 13 March. On it appears a memorandum showing that it was proved on 17 April before the Archdeacon of London.
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Similarly, the will of William of Elsing, the hospital founder already mentioned (mislabelled Thomas
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), has a note indicating probate by William Bordesleye, the Bishop of London’s commissary-general, on 3 April 1349; both enrolments had also to wait until 4 May for enrolment in Husting.

Many wills made during the plague were, of course, not presented to the court of Husting. Only a few of these survive, such as that of Walter Cobbe, a citizen and butcher, dated probably 5 December 1348 and proved at the Commissary Court on 6 April 1349, requesting burial in the churchyard of St Botolph Aldgate.
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Incidental references confirm the former existence of others. On 24 August 1350, during a guardianship hearing for William, son of William Bendebowe, an extract was presented of the father’s will dated 21 April 1349 and proved in the court of the Archdeacon of London on 18 May.
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To gauge how many people were dying at this appalling height of the disaster, we must look forward to those wills that were enrolled in May, once this backlog had been cleared. The total, 121, was the highest at any time during the 1349 plague. Examining the distribution curve of enrolments through the duration of the plague, we may reasonably presume that a majority of those wills, perhaps seventy, were of April’s victims alone. This figure represented over forty times the average monthly death rate recorded by enrolments across the decade before 1348. If extended to all inhabitants of a city of 60,000 souls, this would produce a mortality rate very much in line with the claims made by Robert of Avesbury of over 200 burials daily between February and April in the West Smithfield cemetery alone.

Outside the city walls, in the manor of Stepney, the number of deaths was now diminishing, albeit slowly. On 22 April deaths recorded in the court rolls numbered sixty since 19 March,
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with a resulting estimated toll of forty-five for the whole of April, among whom were four members of the Hemmyngs family.

The dead and their resting places had already achieved prominence in the minds of the living, references to the new cemeteries near Aldersgate and on Tower Hill appearing in wills as often as most parish churches. However, the scale of the mortality continued to impact on Londoners, and a new name was coined for part of the cemetery at St Paul’s Cathedral. William de Blithe, a saddler, willed on 16 April to be buried in the ‘Pardonchurchehawe’ (or Pardon churchyard) above the ‘tumulus’ of Ralph, his father.
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Later wills stipulating the same graveyard make it entirely clear that this was directly north of the cathedral church and not a confusion with the new Pardon churchyard in Clerkenwell. The great cathedral cemetery had been used for the burial of Londoners for centuries, but had never before been so referred, and so a link to the pestilence seems certain. How it had gained this new name is not clear, but it may be that the pardons offered to citizens as reward for their involvement in the weekly processions instigated at the start of the plague provided the basis for it. Elsewhere in villages near to London, some parish cemeteries were enlarged, no doubt to accommodate the dead of these rural hinterland settlements; one of these was Chiswick (about 9 miles to the west of the city), where on 22 April the king licensed John de Bray, a Chiswick resident, to provide half an acre of land to the dean and chapter of St Paul’s in their capacity as parsons.
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Such a death rate cannot but have impacted on daily life in the city. It comes as little surprise, therefore, that on 8 April the king wrote to John Lovekyn, Mayor of London, about the state of the streets, in unequivocal language. He ordered that ‘human faeces and other filth lying in the streets and lanes of that city and its suburbs should be removed with all speed to places far distant’, and that the mayor should ‘cause the city and suburbs to be cleaned from all odour and to be kept clean as it used to be in the time of preceding mayors, so that no greater cause of mortality may arise from such smells’. The city and suburbs, ‘under the mayor’s care and rule, are so foul by the filth thrown out of the houses by day and night into the streets and lanes … that the air is infected, and the city is poisoned’ – a situation which in the king’s eyes clearly aggravated the ‘mortality by the contagious sickness which increases daily’.
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Carters and rakers, those whose job it was to clean rubbish and ordure off the streets, did not make enough money to claim an enrolment of their wills in the Husting; there is therefore no indication of the numbers killed off by the plague. But it is clear from the complaint that the service they provided was one which plague had swept aside.

Sanitation remained important to the citizens themselves, even at this dire time. The will of goldsmith John de Walpol, drawn up just a few days before the king’s commandment, left his daughter Margery a fine house in the parish of All Hallows Bread Street, but specified that when the latrine situated between the house and a neighbour’s dwelling became full, the soil should be carried to the Thames for disposal.
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Not only were the carters decimated, but the court roll from Stepney manor indicates that by Easter 1349, the ale-tasters (effectively responsible for the quality control of ale sold in the city) in Stratford, Aldgate Street and Holywell Street were reported to be dead,
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and we can readily imagine the impact on other trades, crafts and services vital to the basic functioning of the city. April was to prove difficult for city administration in other ways, too. Thomas Maryns, the long-serving chamberlain of London, became a victim of the plague. He made his will on 22 April, then on the 23rd, and with the assent of the mayor and city recorder, took care of outstanding business while he still could; certainly farming out the office of bailiff of Southwark to Harlewyn de Honyngtone for a term of two years at an annual payment to the city of £10 10s. His death was recorded two days later.
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A new serjeant of the chamber at the Guildhall, Antony de Grenewych, was admitted on 20 April, indicating that the previous incumbent had lasted less than a month.
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The royal infrastructure sustained losses, too: Thomas de Clopton, keeper of the Great Wardrobe, was certainly alive in March 1349, and equally certainly dead by June.
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He was an elderly man, but plague was the probable cause.

The Onslaught Weakens, May 1349

During May there were a number of indications that the potency of the plague had begun to diminish. Firstly, the number of wills being drawn up dropped considerably to fifty-six, still a very high rate but just over half the previous month’s tally and the beginning of a downward trend which was to continue through into the following year. Secondly, it seems that the number of enrolments was also dropping. While May actually saw the greatest number of enrolments (121), this, as has been stated, covered both April and May deaths: the actual figure for May itself was probably in the region of fifty. This diminution of the plague’s effects may have been apparent to eyewitnesses and chroniclers of the time. Certainly Robert of Avesbury considered that the ‘plague ceased in London with the coming of the grace of the Holy Spirit [31 May]’,
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and while a complete cessation cannot be substantiated through analysis of the evidence from wills for subsequent months, a clear change in language in reference to the plague can be detected from mid-June onwards.

The plague’s impact on the churches and religious houses of London was becoming quite clear by this time, both through records of the houses themselves and through the numerous presentations made to churches to fill vacancies left by deaths. Of the monasteries in the London region, Westminster Abbey was particularly sorely affected. Between March and May 1349, Abbot Simon Bircheston, probably the infirmarer John de Ryngestede, and as many as twenty-six other monks were killed. Bircheston, who died in the abbey’s manor house at Hampstead on 15 May, was buried in the cloister near the chapter house door with the epitaph:

Simon of Bercheston, venerable abbot,
His merits forever proclaiming his name:
Now supported by the prayers of his brethren,

May this blessed father now flourish with the kind Fathers in the presence of God.
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A large black slab in the cloister walk is reputed to cover the remains of the other plague victims, though neither memorial can now be identified on the ground. The religious were, of course, not the only victims. William Isyldon made his will on 24 April in his ‘hostel within the close of St Bartholomew the Great’, so presumably he was a corrodian or guest; he perished by the beginning of June.
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The secular clergy were perhaps even more at risk. Westminster Abbey (along with other religious houses) had a right to present rectors and vicars to a number of churches in the city and surrounding area, but since Abbot Langham’s election was not to be confirmed by the Pope until July, this responsibility fell instead to the king. Thus, at St James Garlickhythe, Rector John de Carshalton’s will was enrolled on 4 May, and a week later the king presented William de Appleton to the church as his replacement. He further presented John de Methelwold at St Clement Eastcheap on 8 May, and Peter Grevet at St Bride Fleet Street a day later.
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Another great Benedictine house which had rights of presentation to London churches, St Albans, had suffered losses on a similar scale to those of Westminster, its abbot having died on 12 April. The king was obliged to present on the abbey’s behalf John de Colston to the city church of St Michael Wood Street on 11 May, and William de Kelm to St Peter Westcheap on 1 June.
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Other parish losses are indicated by the king’s presentation on 13 May of John Jevcok to the vicarage of St Alphege, Greenwich, just down the Thames, and the will of John Sonday, rector of St Mary Woolchurch, enrolled on 4 May.
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St Paul’s Cathedral was also hit, as shown by the Pope’s appointment of at least two replacement canons: on 13 April Roger Holm replaced Henry Iddesworth as a prebendary (though of which prebend is not clear); and on 7 May, at Edward’s request, John Cok, the treasurer of London, replaced Thomas de Astelle.
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Andrew de Offord was also granted papal confirmation of his role as the new Archdeacon of Middlesex replacing Iddesworth.
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All of London’s hospitals are likely to have been badly affected by the plague, given their particular responsibilities towards the poor and the sick of the city. Certainly at St Thomas, Southwark, so many brethren had been killed by the end of May that William Edington, Bishop of Winchester, appealed to the Pope for his permit for the house to elect Walter de Marlow as prior, despite the fact that the latter was illegitimate. The permission was granted on 14 June.
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At the leper house of St James Westminster, the warden and all the brothers and sisters were killed except for William de Weston, who was made master in May and his position ratified by the king in July.
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Bequests in wills to hospitals, though common prior to the arrival of the pestilence, must have taken on an increased importance during its visitation, as a result of the combination of high mortality among the staff and hugely increased loading of the destitute, displaced and sick, and are numerous in the Husting will rolls for the months of the crisis. Examples include William de Rothyng (will dated 1 May), who left money for keeping lamps burning before the sick at St Thomas, Southwark; a substantial tenement in the parish of St Martin Vintry, left by John Foxton (will of 8 May), to provide support for the weak and infirm lying in St Mary Spital; and intriguingly, the will of Joanna Youn (dated 11 May), leaving property in the parish of St Botolph Billingsgate to the priory of Holy Trinity Aldgate specifically for medicines.
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This is the only specific reference to medicinal care during the plague so far located, underscoring the reliance on spiritual protection that prevailed at the time.