A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



accompanied by earthquakes and atmospheric disturbances, while it moved 

 forward from the stricken east in the form of a dark and foetid mist. 



By January, 1349, the plague had reached Norwich, and during the 

 spring and early summer it crept up towards the Palatinate along the North 

 Road. The Durham peasants who lived along the Salters' track, that passes 

 from Stockton to Sunderland, caught the alarm first. 1 The steward of the 

 lord bishop opened the summer halmote at Chester le Street on Tuesday, 

 1 4 July, and business was transacted as usual,* but the next day, on his arrival 

 at Houghton le Spring, he found the peasants in a state of panic. For the 

 first time for many years there was no one willing to take up the vacant hold- 

 ings that were in the hands of the lord. Argument was useless, for seeing 

 certain death approaching, men cared nothing for future needs. The steward 

 had to content himself with issuing a general proclamation apparently 

 promising remission of fines and rents ' until God should send a cure for the 

 pestilence.' s At Easington, on the Thursday, a similar scene occurred. It 

 was quite impossible to obtain fresh tenants. At the best of times the 

 peasants at Easington were not very prosperous, and at the approach of the 

 plague they lost heart entirely. The steward was glad enough to let three 

 holdings at ridiculously low rents to men who had apparently bargained for 

 them at the previous court, for, as he naively puts it, ' the lord would gain 

 more by the payment of this firm than by allowing the lands to remain 

 unfilled.' He had indeed no other option, ' because no man would take the 

 land on any other terms.' He offered to make the payment of rent con- 

 tingent upon their surviving the pestilence, he called attention to his 

 proclamation, and expressed himself willing to consider any conditions that 

 might be proposed, but ' they utterly refused to fine.' 4 



On Friday, 17 July, he held a court at Middleham, 6 which lies off the 

 main road somewhat. Here men had not yet begun to show alarm. It is 

 probable that the plague had not yet crossed the Tees, although there may 

 have been isolated cases at Sunderland or Hartlepool. At any rate, the 

 ordinary business of the court was dispatched at Stockton on 18 July, and 

 meetings of the halmote were held at Sadberge and Darlington on the Monday 

 following. 8 Here again, as at Wolsingham 7 and Lanchester, 8 he found the 

 old willingness to take up holdings, but after the Lanchester halmote on 

 Thursday, 23 July, there is an ominous silence in the MS. which is not 

 broken till the court sat again at Wolsingham on 7 April, 1350.' A blank 

 space appears in the MS., presumably for the entries belonging to the winter 

 halmote, which, however, probably never met. For information as to what 

 happened in Durham during that awful autumn of 1 349, we are dependent 

 upon scattered notices of a later date. The bishop's Halmote Rolls are 

 unusually full for the remainder of Hatfield's episcopate, but the prior's rolls 

 for the years 134856 are lost. However, in their stead we have three 

 interesting manuscripts. Two of them 10 give us the 'names of the prior's 



1 It is possible that there had been cases of the plague at Sunderland before the middle of July, for we 

 find that four of the bishop's tenants at Wearmouth, who had broken the Assize of Ale, were dead ; Dur. 

 Curs. No. 1 2, fol. 2 d. 



' Dur. Curs. No. 12, fol. 2. ' Ibid. fol. a d. 



4 Ibid. fols. 3, 3 d. " Ibid. fol. 4. 



6 Ibid. fol. 5 ' Ibid. fol. S d. * Ibid. fol. 6. ' Ibid. fol. 80. 



10 Loc. 4, Nos. 146-7, in the Treasury at Durham ; No. 147 really consists of two rolls. 



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