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London by the first of November. It appeared in Norwich 

 on the first of January, and thence spread northwards. Later 

 in the year a Scotch army invaded England, and were free 

 from the disease only long enough to enable the soldiers to 

 invent an oath, cc By the foul death of the English," for on 

 their retreat they were attacked by the pestilence in the forest 

 of Selkirk, and the northern part of the island suffered as 

 severely as the more populous south. 



The mortality was enormous. Perhaps from one-third to 

 one-half of the population fell victims to the -disease. Panic, 

 however, is sure to exaggerate numbers. Adam of Monmouth 

 says that only a tenth of the population survived. Similar 

 amplifications are found in all the chroniclers. We are told 

 that sixty thousand persons perished in Norwich between 

 January and July 1349. No doubt Norwich was at that time 

 the second city in the kingdom, but the number is impossible. 

 Joshua Barnes, the author of a voluminous Life of Edward the 

 Third, professes to give exact information as to the numbers 

 which perished in some of the principal English cities. The 

 amounts however, I am persuaded, are untrustworthy. Perhaps 

 Knyghton, who was a canon of Leicester, and lived a short 

 time after the events, is more to be relied on. He says that 

 the deaths in three Leicester parishes, i. e. St. Leonard's, 

 amounted to 380, in St. Cross to 400, in St. Margaret's to 700. 

 The London dead were buried in a plot of land purchased 

 for this purpose by Sir Walter Manny, and now the site of the 

 Charterhouse. Hecker calculates the loss to Europe as amount- 

 ing to twenty-five millions, a large but not an impossible 

 estimate. 



It is stated, that in England the weight of the calamity fell 

 on the poor, and that the higher classes were less severely 

 affected. But Edward's daughter Joan fell a victim to it, and 

 three archbishops of Canterbury perished in the same year. 

 No doubt the ravages of the disease were intensified by the 

 prevalent uncleanliness of the peasantry, the indifference which 

 they shewed to the simplest sanitary precautions, and the 



