A HISTORY OF YORKSHIRE 



for its welfare on its export trade in that commodity. There is not much direct evidence of land 

 thrown out of cultivation, though the high rate of mortality among the tenants (nearly all those 

 holding land from the monastery of Meaux were dead) must have had a disastrous eflFect. But the 

 case often cited of Richmond rests on the unsupported evidence of an early 19th-century writer.** 

 It is said that ' a plague and epidemic disease consumed about 2,000 of the inhabitants, so that 

 Wittcliff pasture became a waste, overnm with briers, nettles, and other noxious weeds '. 



Plague swept over the north of England again in 1391 ; York suffered severely, though as 

 neither Freemen's Roll nor Municipal Records allude to the visitation, the assertion that 

 11,000, that is almost four-fifths of the inhabitants, died in the city may be dismissed as an exag- 

 geration.'' According to the Rolls of Parliament, in 1379*^ and again in 1420, the North was 

 almost decimated by the pestilence. In the last case it had raged for ' three years past and still 

 reigns.'*' In 1 441, according to an inquisition taken at Richmond, 'many burgesses, artificers, 

 victuallers, workmen, and other inhabitants have been consumed by pestilence and plague.'*' Three 

 outbreaks of plague in Hull in 1472, 1476, and 1478 destroyed for the time the prosperity of the 

 port. The attack in 1478 was undoubtedly severe, more than 1,500 people are said to have died, 

 including the mayor and his family, churches were closed, streets were deserted, the people having 

 fled from the town." But there is one marked difference between these attacks of plague of the 

 second half of the century and the Black Death. They were localized in the towns, escape by 

 flight was possible to the wealthy, but in 1349 death was in the soil, town and country suffered 

 alike, the fortunes of wealthy and poor were equalized.*" 



The inroads of the Scots during the first half of the 14th century tended to disorganize and 

 retard the economic development of Yorkshire. It was not until the second decade of the century 

 that they reached so far south as Yorkshire. Fountains Abbey suffered severely from these raids, 

 the monks could no longer pay taxation, in fact the Scots had not left them sufficient to keep them- 

 selves." Ripon preferred paying to being plundered ; they bought off the Scots for ;^i,ooo." 

 Tadcaster Church was destroyed, Pannal damaged ; Bolton was in worse plight than Fountains, for 

 even its own canons were in destitution. The smaller monasteries and nunneries, which could 

 offer neither bribes nor resistance, were deserted, their inmates portioned out among the houses 

 which had not suffered. It is difficult to realize in what a state of terror the inhabitants of the 

 scattered farm-houses and homesteads must have lived, or to over-emphasize the retrogressive effect 

 of these raids on the economic and industrial life of Yorkshire. But the enthusiasm evoked by the 

 defeat of the Scots at Neville's Cross in 1346, the blow which freed the county from the yoke 

 under which she had groaned helpless for more than fifty years, bears witness to what had been 

 endured. The presence of the archbishop William de la Zouch in the thickest of the fight 

 testifies to the resentment of the Church against the persecutors. 



The connexion between the various insurrections in Yorkshire during the year 1380-1 and 

 the so-called Peasants' Revolt '*" is somewhat obscure. It is improbable that the rioters in Yorkshire 

 would be unaffected by the course of events in the southern and eastern counties ; still, it is important 

 to remember that in the three cases, Beverley, Scarborough, and York, about which authentic 

 information is extant, there is no evidence to show that excessive national taxation or special agrarian 

 grievances were at the root of the discontent ; on the contrary, there is abundant documentary proof 

 that the extortions complained of were local, that ecclesiastical jealousies and class prejudices were 

 involved and that, although the movements were to a certain degree simultaneous, this synchronism 

 seems to have been in the Beverley riots entirely accidental. The whole country was in the throes 

 of an insurrection caused by the misgovernment during the latter part of the reign of Edward III, and 

 as far as Yorkshire is concerned, the years 1380-1 were rather a crisis in a chronic complaint than 

 any new and startling development. Still the story of the Beverley riots is interesting, as reflecting 

 life in a mediaeval Yorkshire city. Beverley was, in the 13th and 14th centuries, one of the leading 

 English boroughs, with considerable powers of self-government. Nominally the government was in 

 the hands of twelve keepers, elected annually by the community from eighteen candidates, who were 

 nominated by the retiring committee ; obviously it was a fairly close oligarchy, though openings 

 were presented through which innovations could filter. '^ 



"Clarkson, Hist, of Richmond (18 14), 1 14. 



" F. Drake, Ebor. 106. The annalists however refer to the severity of this northern visitation. Cf. 

 C. Creighton, Hisl. of Epidemics in Brit. 220. 



^R. Pari, iv, 806. " Ibid. 143J. 



^ Pat. 19 Hen. VI, pt. ii, m. 26, 25 (17 Feb. 1441). 



"^ J. Tickell, Hist, of Kingston-upon-Hull, 132. "C. Creighton, op. cit. 233. 



"J. Raine, op. cit. 282. " Ibid. 274. 



"^ For the rising in South Yorkshire in 1392 see Peasant^ Rising and the Lollards (ed. E. Powell and 

 G. M. Trevelyan), 19, 20. 



"^ Miss Mary Bateson, ' Beverley Town Documents,' Engl. Hut. Rev. xvi, 562 ; M^S. of Corporation of 

 Beverley (Hist. MSS. Com. 1900), 14. 



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