In the Knight's Tale Egeus’ reflections on the inevitability of death culminate in an image with particular resonance for the Canterbury pilgrims listening to the Knight:

In the late Middle Ages experience continually brought the truth that Egeus enunciates to mind, but since the end of the Second World War people in the West have not had their mortal nature drawn to their attention quite so forcefully or frequently as in earlier periods. As Jupp and Walter remark,

Death came to no larger a proportion of the population in Chaucer's day than it does now, of course, but it came to one's family, friends and neighbours sooner, on average, and much more visibly.

Death in the Late Middle Ages

After centuries of steadily increasing population the fourteenth century saw a significant decline. A series of cold wet summers near the beginning of the century led to poor harvests in 1315–17 and a famine that killed between ten and fifteen per cent of the population of England. Then the plague, known in modern times as the Black Death, reached the south coast of England in the summer of 1348 and killed between a third and a half of the English population (at least) in the following eighteen months.