The Black Death in London (14 page)

Another immediate consequence of the fading of the plague’s virulence was the increase in the number of guardianships of orphaned children being ratified in the mayor’s court. Goldsmith Richard de Basyngstoke had died of plague in early May. At the end of July his son, aged just 1 ½ years, was committed to the care of John de Depleye and his wife Johanna, described as the child’s mother: Johanna, having lost her husband, had evidently remarried within two months,
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a situation that may well have been repeated frequently throughout the city. The effect of this coping strategy on the social network in the city must have been profound.

Trade networks also played a significant part in redistributing the responsibilities of care for orphans of wealthier citizens. Roger Syward, a pewterer, made a will on 30 October 1348 (enrolled on 20 July 1349) which mentioned a wife and six children. Roger, his wife and three of the children were dead by August, when guardianship of the surviving offspring – William, 6, Mary, 5, and Thomas, aged 1½ years – was committed to John Syward, also a pewterer. The necessary sureties to underpin the commitment were offered by three other pewterers, undoubtedly members of the craft guild.
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Such mechanisms for social care of the wealthier families serve also to remind us how very vulnerable the surviving poor of the city must have been – there is no written evidence for the strategies they employed, but it has to be assumed that the weakest members of society, those children, disabled and elderly who had lost their principal supporting family, must have been in very dire straits.

The guardianship strategy itself did not always work well; economic exigencies and human greed combined to tempt at least some guardians into keeping for themselves goods and estates that had been entrusted to children of plague victims. In September such cases began to come before the mayor and aldermen. On 7 September Robert de Wodham, executor of the original executor of one John le Parmenter, was summoned to answer a complaint from le Parmenter’s close friends, William Spershore and his wife Joan. Spershore claimed that Wodham was withholding goods meant for the children of le Parmenter. In court he agreed he was holding ‘£30, a signet ring and other goods and chattels’ for them. He was made to pay 27
s
2
d
for the goods and the £30 in gold nobles to the city chamberlain, who in turn paid it to Spershore for Elena, the sole surviving child. This transfer of guardianship to the friends of the family was formalised in a later court in December.
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Goods and money were also at risk of theft until a formal handover could take place. On 26 August 1349 friends of a dead draper, John de Sellyng, came to plead at court that John de Cantebrigge, a chaplain, was withholding from Sellyng’s daughters, Margery and Juliana, £10 left to them by their father. The money had been passed to Sellyng’s executor, Henry de Asshebourn, and on his death into the hands of his executor, de Cantebrigge. The latter pleaded that he had duly administered de Asshebourn’s estate and only 5 marks were left. However, the jury found that he still had in his possession sufficient goods belonging to the testator to pay the £10 due to the children, and judgement was given that he pay up. On 2 September, Chaplain John de Pampesworth and Amy de Rokesbourgh came to court. They were further executors of Henry de Asshebourn and accused two men, Robert de Hyngeston and Simon de Chikesond, of stealing ‘a sack of wool, 13 silver spoons, and silver rings, buckles and cups, belonging to the children of the said John de Sellyng’. The jury found for the plaintiffs and the defendants were imprisoned. Two weeks later the court received the £10 from John de Cantebrigge.
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It was not just the goods and money that were at risk in this turbulent time – the orphans themselves might be abducted. The will of John de Leche, ironmonger, left his daughter Alice in the guardianship of his wife Matilda. It also made provision for a chantry in St Michael Cornhill, and for pious uses for the souls of his family and of a friend, Thomas de Northerne, who had died in January 1349. De Leche died before 2 March, the date of probate. However, over seven years later, in May 1356, a case was brought before the mayor and aldermen by the rector of St Michael’s, reporting that de Leche’s wife had died in mid-Lent 1349 (less than three weeks after her husband), and Stephen de Northerne, Thomas’ brother, had assumed guardianship of Alice, de Leche’s now-orphaned daughter. The rector alleged that Stephen ‘had seized and wasted the property of the said Alice, to the prejudice of certain chantries, and had eloigned the said Alice, aged eight years, out of the City’.
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The transfer of goods and bequests could be highly complex, even when no guardians were involved, due simply to the rate of death among beneficiaries. In March 1349 Peter Nayere, an armourer, bequeathed to Nicholas Blake, his son, £88 6
s
8
d
for the support of Blake’s four sisters. Blake, who died before 31 October 1349, in turn left the money in trust to John de Gildeforde. De Gildeforde also died before the end of November, leaving the money to his own executors, who in turn presented the money to the chamberlain of the city in trust. On 1 December three surviving Blake sisters claimed the money from the chamberlain.
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It is difficult to estimate how many Londoners actually died in August and September, for these were closed months as far as the Husting was concerned, allowing for the management of harvest and attendance at fairs; no wills for this period were therefore enrolled. However, some key individuals certainly did perish in the city, and probably of the plague. Most notable was the Archbishop-elect of Canterbury, Thomas Bradwardine. Following his election to replace John de Offord in July 1349, he ‘hurried to London, but died [on 26 August 1349] in the hostel of the Bishop of Rochester at La Place [near Lambeth] where he had lain sick for four days’.
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He was replaced immediately by Simon Islip, who was consecrated unusually at St Paul’s not Canterbury, much to the discontent of the monks at the latter seat. One month later, on 30 September, John Shenche, the keeper of Westminster Palace and the Fleet prison, also died.
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The fear of further mortality at Westminster Abbey must surely be the reason why no fewer than seven senior monks there, including the abbot, infirmarer, precentor and cellarer, nearly one-third of the surviving convent, all sought, and on 11 August received, papal dispensation to seek their own confessors.
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So the plague lurked throughout the summer, but there appears to be no basis for the assertion made by some that the period between June and September was the most virulent.
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The fact that the plague had not yet died out may also explain a remarkable event reported by the eye-witness Robert of Avesbury. Around Michaelmas, he reported:

more than 120 men, for the most part from Zeeland or Holland, arrived in London from Flanders. They went barefoot in procession twice a day in the sight of the people, sometimes in St Paul’s church, sometimes elsewhere in the city, their bodies naked except for a linen cloth from loins to ankle. Each wore a hood painted with a red cross at front and back and carried in his right hand a whip with three thongs.
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These were the Flagellants, religious zealots who scourged themselves in reparation for the sins of the world, and who had appeared as a movement nearly a century before. They had emerged as early as 1348 in response to the arrival of pestilence in mainland Europe, and had again attracted the disfavour of the Pope who saw in them a threat to the stability of the Church. Evidently, the perceived threat from these religious fanatics continued to manifest itself at least until the end of the year, for in October and again in December, the Pope felt compelled to write to the king: ‘on the superstitious and vain society [of Flagellants] in Almain and elsewhere, against whom a papal constitution has been sent to all prelates, a copy of which is enclosed, and requesting the king, should any of them enter his kingdom, to drive them out of it’.
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The Plague Withers

Naturally, a backlog of will enrolments was created by the two-month hiatus in the Husting court of August and September,
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and we must jump to the months of October and November to see the level of mortality occurring among the richer classes across later summer and autumn. In total, eighteen wills were enrolled in October, increasing to twenty-seven in November. Taking all four months into account, there was clearly a downward trend, averaging out at about ten enrolments per month – a very considerable drop from the July figure. Furthermore, in October four of the eighteen wills related to those wishing burial away from London.

Nonetheless, mortality was still elevated, each month accounting for half of a normal year’s enrolment. Several wills of note appear in the rolls. That of the great merchant and financier, and four times mayor of the city, John de Pulteney (d. 6 June 1349), was proved on 19 October; he wished to be buried in St Paul’s Cathedral and left among his great estate his mansion called Coldharbour, valued at £1000. Family tragedies continued to strike, with the wills of William Haunsard made in August, and of his son, also called William, dated in October, both being enrolled on the same day, 9 November.

Families also made attempts to be rejoined in death: Richard de Monoye, a cook, wished burial in a tomb in the church of St Thomas Acon beside the bones of his son; Johanna Werlyngworth near those of her husband in the churchyard of St Paul’s; William Passefeld near his wife in the same cemetery; and William de Bernes at the head of his father’s tomb in St Peter-the-Less. De Bernes, a fishmonger whose will was enrolled on 26 October, left his three children in the guardianship of another fishmonger, William de Hedrisham. However, he too was dead within two weeks and the children found themselves transferred into the care of the chaplain of St Peter-the-Less.
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This strongly suggests the continuing menace of the plague.

Other, less spiritual matters were in the minds of some testators. Gilbert le Palmer’s will left, among other things, money to repair the principal highways within 20 miles of the city, and it would appear that they were in some need of attention, since on 4 December the king issued a commission to determine who should repair ‘many bridges on the highways between the city of London and Croydon and Kyngeston, and other places’ described as ‘broken down and dangerous’.
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Whether this was as a result of neglect during the plague, or a more general campaign to restore the communication and transport infrastructure, is unclear.

Infrastructure of a different sort was being addressed within the guilds. The plague had carried off many elected representatives and attempts are visible to restore order and management. In November 1349 an election was held to replace the nine wardens of the cutlers’ guild named in 1344. It is noteworthy that only six new wardens are named – either the need for, or the availability of, suitable candidates had diminished by one-third.
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The impact of the mortality on Husting court business can be gauged by a report from sheriffs that twelve out of sixteen witnesses to one particular deed had died in the pestilence.
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The hearing of Possessory Assizes began again on 7 November, and began to deal with cases arising from property disputes during the plague.
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One case gives us a taste of the dislocation created by the disaster at first hand. William de Newenham had complained that in April 1347 he had been dispossessed of a shop in the parish of St Gregory, near the cathedral, by three men – a tailor, a baker and a plasterer. The case was suspended first in July 1347 since no jury could be assembled, and then three more times during the summer of 1348 at the agreement of both parties. The case was reviewed in November 1349 and a fine issued to de Newenham for not prosecuting his case; but the unfortunate plaintiff was beyond caring – he had perished of the plague at least six months earlier.
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December 1349 saw deaths and will-making both at a level that was almost normal for pre-plague years. Just seven wills were enrolled, including those of the wives of two bell-founders (termed ‘potters’ in the documents). Agnes de Romeneye was the wife of bell-founder John, who had died in April 1349.
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Matilda was the wife of Peter de Weston and mother of Thomas, both of whom were significant bell-founders. Peter had died before the plague in 1347; Thomas succumbed in April 1349. Remarkably, several of their bells still ring across the English countryside, cast by Peter at Tattenhoe in Buckinghamshire (
c
. 1330); Bethersden in Kent (
c
. 1335); Whitwell on the Isle of Wight; Kingsbury in Middlesex (
c
. 1347); and Thomas at Chalk in Kent. The inscription on this bell reads
‘xpe:pie: flos: marie’,
urging the Blessed Virgin’s mercy to flow from its ringing. It is noteworthy that the annals of Dunstable priory record that in the year of the plague the townspeople made themselves a bell and called it Maria.
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While many bells were doubtless given this name, the Virgin’s intercessory powers against God’s wrath carried great weight and it might well be one example of a spiritual response to the plague.