The Black Death in London (15 page)

The Ordinance of Labourers continued to cause trouble among London workers, and on 21 November, and again on 8 December, the king felt compelled to issue another writ to the mayor and sheriffs to forbid ‘artificers and others’ demanding higher wages than before the pestilence, on pain of imprisonment.
²⁶⁵
Examples are frequent in the Pleas and Memoranda rolls of continued attempts to subvert this hugely unpopular edict over the second half of 1349. In September, two bakers in St Botolph’s Lane pleaded guilty to the charge of paying their men part of their wages during the quarter (rather than at the end), contrary to the ordinance. In October, butchers were sworn to see that their colleagues did not charge more for meat than was customary before the plague; a considerable number of wine-sellers were thrown temporarily into Newgate gaol for charging double the appropriate sums for their wares; and leather-sellers and shoemakers were prosecuted for overpricing their goods. In November, William Amery, mason, was imprisoned for refusing to do work valued at 12
d
at St Christopher’s church for less than 5
s
, and a ‘conspiracy’ of over sixty cordwainers’ servants to fix wage levels was unmasked – an early experiment at unionisation perhaps.
²⁶⁶

The economic upheaval created by the plague appears to have led to much wider population movements. On 1 December the king issued a writ to the mayor and sheriffs of London that they proclaim none should leave the kingdom ‘except well-known merchants, inasmuch as the country had become so much depopulated by the pestilence and the Treasury exhausted’.
²⁶⁷
The city itself appears to have become a magnet for migrants, ‘a great concourse of aliens and denizens’, many armed and seemingly oblivious of any curfew. City authorities were already making arrests when, on 29 December, Edward placed full royal support behind those attempting to keep the king’s peace, demanding punishment of all transgressors, ‘now that the pestilence is stayed’.
²⁶⁸
What part the Ordinance of Labourers might have played in any civil unrest at this time is unclear, but it cannot have helped matters as surviving families and businesses tried to return to something like a normal footing. Confirmation that the plague had run its course, at least in the south of the country, came from a letter written by Simon Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, on 28 December to the Bishop of London. In it, urging public expressions of gratitude to God, he recalled ‘the amazing pestilence which lately attacked these parts and which took from us by far the best and worthiest men’.
²⁶⁹

Just three wills were drawn up and four wills enrolled in Husting during January 1350, apparently confirming the conclusion of the pestilence. However, there is circumstantial evidence that either late in that month, or in February, the city was visited with either a fresh outbreak or an entirely different disease, something which lasted through March and into April or even May. The evidence shows up in the Husting wills for spring: while there was no change in the number of wills drawn up (zero in February, three in March and two in April), a spike of seventeen were enrolled in February, falling to eight in March and six in April. Of the wills enrolled in February, those of John Miles of Hosier Lane in West Smithfield, and his wife Matilda, were both enrolled on the same day;
²⁷⁰
while the will of Alice de Hakeneye, wife of Richard, a former alderman, was proved on the same day that her son Richard was confirmed legal guardian of his little sister, Isabella.
²⁷¹
Both examples provide plausible indicators of sudden death.

The increase in rates of enrolment appears to coincide with a curious hiatus in the account rolls for construction work at the Tower of London.
²⁷²
Between February and May 1350 almost no wages were paid out to the crews who were working right through the plague months, and who, from June onwards, resumed work at very nearly pre-plague levels (over £14 per month until September). The roll on which these blank months show up is complete, and work certainly was not finished. It is conceivable that the workers were moved to a different royal construction project, though there is no evidence for this; it may therefore be more likely that the labourers, along with a number of other Londoners, were affected by disease.

Matters were clearly also worrying the city authorities at this time, since before February they attempted to ensure that blanket absolution for the city was available. One Nicholas de Hethe (then a canon of St Paul’s, Salisbury and Hereford
²⁷³
), recommended by John Worthin, a Dominican friar in London, having exceptional influence with the Pope, had taken more than £40 from former mayor Andrew Aubrey with which to procure bulls of absolution for the whole city. De Hethe had subsequently confirmed that the bulls had been purchased, but by 6 February there was no sign of them. The mayor thus wrote, stating plainly that unless the bulls appeared, de Hethe would be prosecuted and the Pope made fully aware of his deception.
²⁷⁴
It is clear that de Hethe could not produce the bulls, for on 2 April 1350 the mayor petitioned the Pope directly to request that the friar, John Worthin, be given the power of absolution that the bulls were intended to furnish. In rich language, the letter explained that:

a dreadful mortality has so cut off our merchants, that our citizens who … are no longer able in person to visit your most Holy See, even though they should be involved in cases which are reserved for your Court, without a ruinous expense, while the present wars are going on. With one accord therefore, with weeping does your congregation here entreat the most exalted highness of your Holiness, that the same your Holiness will deign graciously to grant unto the venerable and religious man, Brother John de Worthyn, your Chaplain, a man of honour, of approved life, manners, and learning, sprung from the high blood of our realm, who alone, of all others, strengthens us with the word of Christ … that he, and he only within our city, may be able to absolve our people, being penitent; and to enjoin salutary penances upon them according to the nature of their fault.

The letter further requested that in the event of Worthin’s death, another Dominican friar might be appointed in his place.
²⁷⁵

The development of the East Smithfield emergency cemetery took a fresh turn in March 1350. John Cory, the clerk who had been acquiring lands around the site of the cemetery since before the plague, granted to the king ‘all his messuages at Tourhulle adjoining the new churchyard of Holy Trinity by the Tower of London’. This was no small land transaction: its witnesses included the Chancellor of England, the treasurer, the king’s chamberlain and two knights. Two days later, on 20 March, Edward granted the land on to the ‘president and monks of the house of the Cistercian order, to be called the royal free chapel of St Mary Graces’, which he had decided to found and endow ‘in the new graveyard of the Holy Trinity by the Tower of London’.
²⁷⁶
A new Cistercian abbey was in the making in the shadow of the Tower, and its proposed site was the plague cemetery. Edward’s motivation for founding an abbey was complex, but the establishment of a permanent memorial to his late confessor, Thomas Bradwardine, the Archbishop of Canterbury who had died in Lambeth of the pestilence, may have been one catalyst and may have influenced his choice of location.
²⁷⁷
Within a year, Walter de Mauny would consider an enlargement of the college of priests in the West Smithfield plague cemetery. Just how wise the monks and priests thought these plans were is not recorded, but the founding of two new religious houses in immediate proximity to the plague dead marks a clear reconciliation process: the emergency was over and the spiritual reconfiguration of the mass burial sites was under way.

By April 1350, therefore, the immediate events connected with the first, greatest outbreak of the pestilence had concluded. The core of the epidemic had lasted in the city for nine months from November through to the end of July, with an intermittently spiking level of mortality from then until March 1350. The survivors and the newcomers faced a very different city to that of eighteen months earlier.

Three

THE GREAT MORTALITY

L
ONDON SUFFERED the plague for nine months, from the beginning of November 1348 to the end of July 1349, with some less convincing evidence of spikes of mortality through to March 1350. The evidence presented provides a monthly snapshot of the developing plague, but an overview of the anatomy of the disaster is also to some extent possible. This chapter examines the speed of spread, the impact on administration, the evidence for dealing with the dead, the final death toll, and some immediate impacts on the survivors.

Coping with the Pestilence

The way in which the city and its residents were able to cope, as a body rather than individually, was dependent on the speed and scale of the disaster. Fig. 6 shows the rate at which Husting wills were drawn up compared with the rate of their subsequent enrolment. It includes the monthly averages of reported deaths from the adjacent manor of Stepney.

The early November start date is confirmed by an increase in mortality and will-making at precisely this time. Monthly death rates indicated by the Stepney evidence track the will-making curve very closely, suggesting that the latter may accurately represent the mortality curve for the city. The known dates for the founding of the three emergency cemeteries – December for Stratford’s Pardon churchyard, January for Walter de Mauny’s

Newchirchehaw, and probably February for the Cemetery of the Holy Trinity near the Tower – fit this accelerating death curve perfectly. The speed with which the plague spread and infected the citizens was undoubtedly greater than is implied by the evidence of the will enrolments, the curve of which lags considerably behind both of the others. This can be tested using a sample of cases where additional evidence for the date of death is available from supplementary sources.

For eighteen wills made during the plague months, the date of death can be narrowed down to a
terminus ante quem,
lying between the date the will was drawn up and that of its enrolment (see
Table 1
). In several instances the exact day of death is known. The sources which provide us with this information most frequently are the subsequent wills of family members drawn up after the deaths of the individual concerned, but before enrolment; but others include chance references to obits or court cases regarding estates brought by survivors.

The sample (4.6 per cent) is small, but it suggests that the period between will-making and probate was just under one-quarter (23.7 per cent) of the period between will-making and enrolment.
²⁷⁸
If true, of the 392 wills made in the plague months, 60 per cent of the will-makers would have died within twenty-one days of making their wills, and 20 per cent within five days. This suggests that death took place much closer to the date that the will was drawn up than the Husting enrolments imply. Using only the seven (1.8 per cent) individuals whose exact death dates are known, these figures would be even higher, at 33.7 per cent of will-makers dead within five days, and 68.1 per cent within three weeks. The chroniclers’ tales of few surviving beyond five days appears to be supported. Using this crude model of likely death date for all 392 wills, the mortality rate for the city reached its peak in early April, probably around Easter time (which fell on the 12th that year), and about six weeks later than the Stepney manor vills. The plague had come to the city at the beginning of winter and had peaked by early spring.