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October 2004

Parish History Episode 42

Black Death

In the Autumn of 1347, while clerics in Durham and Avignon who had been trying to put the money together, to pay for a college of ten priests for the parish of Houghton-le-Spring, were giving up on the scheme, and abandoning Houghton to the sole ministry of William Dalton, plague broke out on the island of Sicily. It had apparently been brought by Genoese ships from the Crimea and other areas around the Black Sea, and it seems to have reached the Crimea from much further East, perhaps from the region of Kirghizstan.

It erupted suddenly as a plague new to Europe (though there appears to have been a similar outbreak in the Sixth Century, eight centuries before) - a plague which seems to have spread very rapidly from person to person, and which, in a matter of days, caused the death of a huge proportion of those who became infected. It was to be known as “the Black Death”. Almost certainly, it was the affliction now known as Bubonic Plague.
It spread rapidly. By the end of 1347 it had established itself in most of the maritime cities of Italy, brought there perhaps by ships arriving from the East. During the course of 1348 it spread throughout the rest of Italy, and the Alpine countries, together with most of the Balkans, Castille and Aragon, and then moved Northwards across France. Much of that country had already been devastated by the opening campaigns of the Hundred Years’ War, and the Plague, which usually struck army camps much more severely than civilian towns, soon caused a cessation of hostilities. Some garrisons were stood down, and soldiers returning from France to England brought the Plague into our country before the end of 1348.

There were not many things which could stop a war as effectively as the Black Death did. By the time that that pestilence had run its course, it would seem that one third of the population of Europe lay dead. A few places seemed strangely immune: the Kingdom of Bohemia, even though it was on many major trade routes; much of Silesia, Brandenburg and Poland, to the North of Bohemia; the Basque country in the Western Pyrenees; and the city of Milan (which had saved itself by closing the city gates to all travellers, by attempting to dig up every patch of vacant ground within the walls, and planting such areas with food crops, and, apparently, by the brutal methods now used to control diseases in cattle - slaughtering any person who became infected, and all other people within that person’s household).

But elsewhere, a third of the people died - perhaps twenty million souls. A few villages escaped entirely, but in others nine people out of ten died, and there were many villages which were totally wiped out. The poor seem to have suffered worse than the rich (they were already malnourished?), women more than men (they enjoyed less fresh air?), but all ranks of society suffered terribly. Pope Clement VI kept to his chambers, surrounded by braziers burning aromatic herbs on coals, and he survived, but the problems concerning the proposed College at Houghton seem to have been entirely forgotten. More than a third of the cardinals at Avignon did, however, die. The King of Castille was the only reigning monarch to die of the Plague; but the King of Aragon lost his queen and his daughter, the King of France lost daughters and daughters-in-law, the King of England one daughter, and the Byzantine Emperor his son-and-heir.

Physicians and clergy, both of whom attended the sick and the dying, suffered more than most men of their class. Three successive Archbishops of Canterbury died in the summer months of 1349, and in many dioceses of England over half the parochial clergy died. The fate of monks and nuns in enclosed orders seemed cruellest of all. Often, when one member of the community became stricken, every inmate of the house died.

In the Summer of 1349, the North of England, together with Scotland, still lay unscathed. Bishop Hatfield, returned from Crécy, had even started out on campaign against the Scots, presuming that, with their king a prisoner in England (since the Battle of Neville’s Cross), success should be easy. But he returned to Durham on hearing news that the Black Death had swept into Yorkshire, and that York, Hull and other towns were suffering severely. But Durham still seemed immune, and life went on as normal. However, as a precaution, litanies were chanted in Durham Cathedral, on Sunday, the Twelfth of July, as a precaution against any further advance of the Plague.
But they had been chanted too late. At any rate, that very Sunday, a homeward-bound wool ship, which had been delivering fleeces to the looms of Flanders, arrived in the port of Sunderland, with half its crew dead or dying. There was also news that day that the Scots, relieved to discover that Hatfield and his men had returned to Durham, were mustering for another invasion.

But it was still business as usual. On the following day - Monday the Thirteenth - the Bishop’s Seneschal (the senior judge in the Palatinate’s system of justice) rode out from Durham City, to proceed on circuit round the County. His duties were to administer justice, to punish criminals, to settle law-suits, and to muster men to repel the expected invasion from Scotland. The records of these Assizes still survive, and they are the only evidence that I know of, from any part of Europe, of the panic felt at the approach of the Plague.

The Seneschal and his men lodged that night at Chester-le-Street, and on Tuesday morning they opened the first Assize of that Session in the Halmote Court in Chester, but they did very little business as both plaintiffs and defendants were unwilling to leave their homes because of rumours of the advancing Plague. That night they rode on to Houghton-le-Spring.

Here they probably lodged in the Rectory, Rector Dalton being at home, as he had abandoned his post as Controller of the King’s Household, and come back to Houghton, presumably because London was in the grip of the Black Death (his flight might well have helped the spread of the Plague!). Houghton Halmote Court seems to have been adjacent to the Rectory, at the top of Dairy Lane - possibly on the site, in Rectory Park, where a rose garden is now laid out (more recently, this site was a church school). The Halmote Court was thus almost next door to the present Magistrates’ Court.

On Wednesday morning the Session opened, but the Seneschal did even less business here than he had done at Chester. No men reported for military service, plaintiffs stayed at home, and a criminal case had to be abandoned for lack of witnesses.

The criminal case had arisen at Sunderland, then, it would seem, regarded as a dependency of Houghton; and in Sunderland the Plague had been raging now for three whole days. A party of bold constables had however been despatched to arrest the members of a family who kept an alehouse by the waterfront in Sunderland, and had apparently been brewing ale without possessing the necessary licence to brew or sell the liquid (such cases still occupy much of the time of both constables and magistrates). On this occasion the constables discovered that four of the five members of the family named on their warrant had died, but that the matriarch, by the name of Agnes, was still alive, and selling illegal ale, with the bodies of her husband and three sons, and several customers, stacked behind the bar, because there was no-one to bury them. In the opinion of the constables, Agnes herself was in the early stages of the illness, and they could see black growths or tumours on her skin.

The Seneschal asked the Constables if they had arrested Agnes, and brought her to the Court, but he was probably relieved when they confessed that they had not dared to lay hands on her for fear of the Plague. He decided to suspend the Session. The Cursitor (the Clerk of the Court) wrote, “There was none who would appear, to pay fines, or rents, or to give service against the Scots".

The Court moved on in haste to Easington, but they found that things there were no better, but rather worse: the Black Death had already arrived. They didn’t even open Thursday’s session there, but rode on immediately to Bishop Middleham, where nerves were steadier, and for a while they conducted some normal business there. But as reports came in of the spread of the Black Death to more and more communities, the Seneschal decided to suspend all Sessions throughout the Palatinate Bishopric, and he returned to Durham. Here he and the other citizens awaited the arrival both of the Plague and the Scots. They did not know which would arrive first.

Well, it was the Plague that won. By the end of July, the people of Durham and of neighbouring areas were dying in their thousands.

The Scots regarded the disasters afflicting England with equanimity. It served the English right, they believed, for having seized King David on the field of Neville’s Cross, and for carrying him off captive to London. Men were summoned to the army, and a strong force was gathered at Selkirk for an invasion of England.

It did occur to some of the Scottish leaders that there was danger in invading a plague-stricken country. Priests accompanying the army taught the soldiers a simple prayer - “God and Sen Mungo, Sen Ninian and Seynt Andrew scheld us this day and ilka day fro Goddis Grace and the foule deth that Ynglessh men dyene upon” - - which it was hoped would prove effiicacious against the Plague.

In the Autumn of 1349 the army struck camp and crossed the Border. It seemed to be entering an accurséd countryside. The Black Death had by now reached Northumberland and Cumberland, and the Scots passed through villages where almost everyone seemed to be dead or dying.

The inevitable happened. The Scottish soldiers began to fall sick of the Plague themselves. Alarmed, the commanders decided to call off the campaign. They disbanded the army, and told the men to go home. The consequences were obvious. Plague-stricken men returning to their villages spread the Plague to their own people. In 1350, Scotland suffered the fate that England (as also Wales and Ireland) had suffered during the preceding year.