Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Maps
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures and Tables
- Preface to the First Edition
- Author’s Note on the New and Revised Edition
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Part I What Was the Black Death?
- Part II The Origin of Bubonic Plague and the History of Plague before the Black Death
- Part III The Outbreak and Spread of the Black Death
- Part IV Mortality in the Black Death
- Part V A Turning Point in History?
- Bibliography
- Index
- Subject Index
- Index of Geographical Names and People
- Name Index
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Maps
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures and Tables
- Preface to the First Edition
- Author’s Note on the New and Revised Edition
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Part I What Was the Black Death?
- Part II The Origin of Bubonic Plague and the History of Plague before the Black Death
- Part III The Outbreak and Spread of the Black Death
- Part IV Mortality in the Black Death
- Part V A Turning Point in History?
- Bibliography
- Index
- Subject Index
- Index of Geographical Names and People
- Name Index
Summary
Introduction
Data on the mortality caused by the Black Death in the British Isles are only available for England. In England, as in other countries, the huge majority of the population lived in the countryside, 85% or perhaps nearly 90% gaining their livelihood from agriculture. Only a disease with exceptional powers of spread in the medieval countryside could cause such extreme mortality and tremendous diminution of the population of momentous historical significance. This was indeed the case, as stated by Ziegler: ‘the story of the Black Death in England is above all the story of its impact on the village community’. It is also the story of its impact on the village clergy, the beneficed parish priests with cure of souls.
In contrast to the plague mortality data from south-western Europe, English mortality data relate almost entirely to the countryside, to mortality among manorial populations and the rural clergy.
In his pioneering book of 1948 on English medieval demography, J.C. Russell made an estimate of the mortality in the Black Death among the tenants-in-chief, the class of noblemen that held land directly from the king. He used documents reflecting transfer of such feudal land following the possessor’s death in the epidemic. However, this material is too unrepresentative both with respect to social class and age structure to be of any use in this context. Russell’s claim that the mortality of the noble class was representative of general population mortality must be dismissed out of hand. This has been done emphatically by a number of scholars.
Source-critical problems affecting estimates of the mortality in the Black Death among parish priests
Studies on the mortality among the beneficed parish clergy are of great interest because they include thousands of persons living all over England in relatively well-known circumstances and, thus, constitute a social category suitable for meaningful statistical analysis and discussion of mortality. Their territorial distribution would by and large correspond to the distribution of England’s population and must be considered satisfactorily representative in this important respect. Nonetheless, there are many problems associated with this source material and with the studies.
First, the beneficed parish clergy are a special social category with a specific behavioural pattern, living in social and economic circumstances that generally were much better than those of the general population.
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- The Complete History of the Black Death , pp. 791 - 868Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021