FOURTEENTH CENTURY LIFE IN BRIDPORT. 103 



A word on the subject of the keeping of accounts in those 

 days. The merchant muddled his head with no voluminous 

 ledgers and day books ; he worked on the cash system as far as 

 possible, and when credit was allowed his invoice was presented 

 not on a neatly ruled sheet of paper but on one half of a notched 

 stick which had been cleft down the middle. This was called 

 a tally a word still used as a verb in our language to-day the 

 corresponding half of which stick the merchant himself retained. 

 (It will be remembered that this same primitive method of 

 account-keeping was adopted by the scorer in the early days of 

 the game of cricket, each run being notched on a stick with a 

 knife.) Here are some examples how people in their wills 

 bequeathed debts, &c. : To Hugh, son of William de Anne, 

 twenty shillings out of a debt of forty shillings, which by his 

 tallies is to be received by me. " Item to my son Bartholomew 

 Stikelane all my debts by tallies or otherwise." 



I mentioned just now that the rope trade flourished in Brid- 

 port in the Early Fourteenth Century, and I said this with 

 guarded intention, for in the year 1348 the town received at one 

 fell swoop a blow from which it hardly recovered during the 

 next fifty years. It was the year of the terrible plague called the 

 Black Death, which, starting in Asia, swept across Europe, 

 devastated the Channel Islands, and thence was carried in a 

 trading vessel to the Dorset coast. The Chronicler records this 

 in these words : " In the year of our Lord 1348, about the feast 

 of the Translation of St. Thomas of Canterbury (July yth), the 

 cruel pestilence terrible to all future ages came from parts over 

 sea to the South Coast of England into a port called Melcombe 

 in Dorsetshire." Bridport suffered severely : both the bailiffs died 

 of the pestilence, and the population of the borough was 

 decimated, and trade was paralysed for years afterwards. These 

 old wills reflect the state of affairs, for, after an average, during 

 the century, of one will recorded every two years, no less than 

 fifteen are preserved for this fateful twelvemonth and most of 

 them have the appearance of being hurriedly made with the 

 hand of death stealing a hold on the testator. It may be also 



