42 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



Its story is too well known for repetition, and it suffices to say 

 that it was like the bubonic plague in the East of to-day : it 

 raged in 1348-9, and killed from one-third to one-half of the 

 people.^ It is said to have effected more important economic 

 results than any other event in English history. It is probable 

 that the prices of labour were rising before this terrible 

 calamity; the dreadful famine of 1315-6,^ followed by pesti- 

 lence, when wheat went up to 26s. a quarter, and according to 

 the contemporary chroniclers, in some cases much higher, de- 

 stroyed a large number of the population, and other plagues 

 had done their share to make labour scarce, but after the 

 Black Death the advance was strongly marked. It also 

 accelerated the break-up of the manorial system. A large 

 number of the free labourers were swept away, and their 

 labour lost to the lord of the manor ; the services of the 

 villeins were largely diminished from the same cause ; many of 

 the tenants, both free and unfree, were dead, and the land 

 thrown on the lord's hands. Flocks and herds were wandering 

 about over the country because there was no one to tend them. 

 In short, most manors were in a state of anarchy, and their 

 lords on the verge of ruin. It is not to be wondered at, there- 

 fore, that they immediately adopted strong measures to save 

 themselves and their property and, no doubt they thought, the 

 whole country. Englishmen had by this time learnt to turn 

 to Parliament to remedy their ills, but as the plague was still 

 raging a proclamation was issued of which the preamble states 



^ 1348 seems also to have been an excessively rainy year. The wet 

 season was very disastrous to live stock ; according to the accounts of the 

 manors of Christ Church, Canterbury, about this time {Historical MS S. 

 Cotnmission, ^th Report, 444) there died of the murrain on their estates 

 257 oxen, 511 cows, 4,585 sheep. Murrain was the name given to all 

 diseases of stock in the Middle Ages, and is of constant occurrence in 

 old records. 



"^ The cause of this as usual was incessant rain during the greater part of 

 the summer ; the chroniclers of the time say that not only were the crops 

 very short but those that did grow were diseased and yielded no nourish- 

 ment. The ' murrain ' was so deadly to oxen and sheep that, according 

 to Walsingham, dogs and ravens eating them dropped down dead. 



