18 THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS II 



did not suffice for the dead, but new places outside the cities 

 and towns were at that time dedicated to that use. And 

 the said mortality was so infectious in England that hardly 

 'one remained alive in any house it entered. Hence flight 

 was regarded as the hope of safety by most, although such 

 fugitives for the most part did not escape death, though 

 they obtained some delay in the sentence. Rectors and 

 priests and friars also, in confessing the sick, by the hear- 

 ing of the confessions were so infected by the contagious 

 disease that they died more quickly even than their penitents, 

 and parents in many places refused intercourse with their 

 children, and husband with wife/ 



The actual loss of the population has generally been 

 estimated at from one-third to one-half, and the latest 

 investigations seem to confirm the higher estimate, though 

 children appear to have been spared, 1 and such a sudden 

 decline in the population of a country, at that time not 

 over-populated, must, there can be no dispute, have been 

 accompanied by serious consequences. 2 Nevertheless it 

 would appear that the results were rather of a temporary 

 than a permanent nature, and may be compared rather 

 to those of a deluge, whereby the landmarks are for 

 a time obliterated, to reappear as soon as the flood has 

 subsided. 



To appreciate the real significance of the plague in 

 altering the tenure of land in England we must try and 

 reconstruct for ourselves the condition of the rural economy 

 just before the dreadful visitation. This, however, is no 

 easy matter, in spite of much evidence which has been of late 

 collected, and in spite of or, as some cynic has put it, partly 



1 Transactions Royal Hist. Soc. xiv. 126. 



8 The population at Domesday was probably about two millions. It 

 had by 1348 probably increased to about four or five millions. In the 

 Great Plague two and a half millions probably died. The population 

 in 1377, as we learn from the Subsidy Rolls, was some 2,350,000, and 

 did not recover till the end of Elizabeth's reign. 



