The Black Death in Britain

The town, the monastery and the ship

A medieval English town in 1340 was a place where a river served as water supply and sewer at once. Butchers threw offal into the street, tanners soaked hides in the stream above the point where the brewers drew water, cesspits leaked into wells, and gongfermors, the men paid to empty the pits at night, could not keep up. London had a handful of public latrines for tens of thousands of people and an Assize of Nuisance that heard complaints about neighbours whose privies overflowed. Everyone knew that dirt and disease went together, because the smell was where the sickness was; what nobody knew was why. The monasteries showed what could be done. Christ Church, Canterbury, had piped fresh water from a spring through lead pipes since the 1160s, with a plan of the system that still survives; the monks washed in a lavatorium before meals, used a reredorter built over running water that carried the waste away, had an infirmary with a herb garden and a separate kitchen, and ate better than almost anyone in England. The Benedictine rule required cleanliness and order, the monks had the land and the money to build for it, and their houses were the healthiest places in the country. In June 1348 a ship from Gascony put into Melcombe Regis in Dorset carrying the plague that had crossed Asia and Europe since 1346. It reached Bristol by August and London by the autumn, and by the end of 1350 somewhere between a third and a half of the population was dead; most historians now put the figure nearer the half. It returned in 1361, 1369 and 1375. AQA asks what people believed had caused it, how they treated and tried to prevent it, and what it changed, and the grade-9 point is that every response was a reasonable answer to something that could be observed. This module gives you the towns, the plague, the responses, and the shapes.

Five terms with their dates

Each definition carries the date and the detail that make it usable as evidence, because a bare definition earns nothing in a usefulness or significance answer.

The plague in order

Put these six events in the order they happened.

• Monks at Canterbury pipe fresh water into the priory through lead pipes
• A ship carries the plague into a Dorset harbour
• The medical faculty of Paris reports that a conjunction of planets caused the pestilence
• The king writes to the Mayor of London ordering the streets cleaned
• Parliament fixes wages at their level before the plague
• A statute bans the dumping of filth into rivers and ditches

Why did the responses make sense?

People in 1348 prayed, carried herbs, cleaned streets, bled the sick and blamed the planets, and none of it stopped the plague. Which explanation best accounts for why those responses were reasonable at the time?

• Each response answered something that could actually be observed: the disease struck whole towns in a season, which only a cause acting on everyone at once, God or the stars, could then explain; it was worst where the smell was worst, by the rivers and the shambles, which made bad air the obvious carrier and street cleaning the obvious cure; the buboes looked like a poison the body was trying to expel, which made bleeding and lancing fit the theory of the humours; and since a minority in every town survived, every measure appeared to have worked for someone. Without any idea of contagion by fleas, rats or breath, the medieval mind reasoned correctly from the evidence it had.
• People panicked and did the first thing that came into their heads.
• The Church forbade any response except prayer.
• People secretly knew rats were to blame but could not catch them.

Belief, response, and what it explained

AQA asks for beliefs about cause, treatment and prevention. The grade-9 habit is to pair each with the observation it answered, which turns a list into an explanation. Read across.

Question 1: how useful is the source?

Source A: a description of a letter sent by King Edward III to the Mayor of London in 1349, during the plague. The king complains that the streets and lanes of the city are foul with human and animal filth, that the air is infected and poisoned by it to the great danger of the people passing through, and that the pestilence is made worse by it. He orders the Mayor to have the streets cleaned of all filth and to keep them clean, and to punish those who dump waste. AQA Question 1 asks: How useful is Source A to a historian studying responses to the Black Death in England? Tap the TWO details that make it most useful for that enquiry.

• The king states that the filth infects and poisons the air and makes the pestilence worse, which shows that the miasma theory was held at the highest level of government and was the reason for the order
• The letter was sent to London.
• The king orders the streets cleaned and offenders punished, which shows that a response in 1349 could be practical and secular rather than only prayer, and that it depended on royal pressure on town authorities
• It was written by the king.
• It was written in 1349.

Towns, monasteries and consequences

Select the THREE statements that are accurate about public health before the plague and what the plague changed.

• Monasteries were the healthiest places in medieval England because the rule required cleanliness, the houses had the land and money to build for it, and Christ Church Canterbury had piped spring water, a washing place before meals and a latrine block flushed by a running stream from the 1160s.
• Towns had the will but not the means: London had an Assize of Nuisance to hear complaints about overflowing privies, paid gongfermors to empty cesspits, and fined butchers for dumping offal, but the river was both water supply and sewer and there was no authority or money to change that.
• The plague changed the economy more than it changed medicine: with a third to a half of workers dead, survivors demanded higher wages, the Statute of Labourers of 1351 tried to fix pay at 1346 levels, resentment fed the revolt of 1381, and a statute of 1388 became the first national law against dumping filth in rivers and ditches, while ideas about cause stayed as they were.
• After 1350 physicians realised that the plague was spread by rats and fleas and advised towns to kill rats.
• Monasteries were as dirty as towns because monks believed washing was sinful.
• The plague never returned to England after 1350.

Question 1: the usefulness method

AQA Question 1 on Paper 2 gives one source and asks how useful it is to a historian studying a stated enquiry, for 8 marks. The marks come from three things used together: content, what the source shows about the enquiry; provenance, who made it, when, for whom and why, and what that does to its value; and own knowledge, used to test what the source shows against what else is known. For the letter in Source A, the content shows a belief, that poisoned air spread the pestilence, and a response, cleaning ordered from above with punishment for offenders. The provenance is its strength: a royal command written in 1349 while the plague was in London, addressed to the man responsible for the city, so it shows what the government actually did rather than what a chronicler later thought. Its limit is that it shows an order and not its result; the historian cannot tell from it whether the streets were cleaned, and own knowledge suggests that the same complaints were made again in 1357 and 1361, which shows that they were not. Own knowledge also tests the belief: the miasma theory was the standard medical explanation, the Paris faculty had said the same in 1348, and the order was consistent with it. This meant that the source is very useful for beliefs and intentions at the top of government and less useful for what happened in the streets or for what ordinary people believed and did, and a top-level answer says both and uses the provenance to explain why.

In a town in 1348

You are a member of the town council of Bristol in August 1348. The plague has arrived from the coast. Four decisions, each of which was a reasonable choice for the knowledge of the time. Choose what such a council actually did.

• The friars say the plague is a judgement on the sins of the town, the physician says the air has been corrupted by the planets and the filth, and the merchants say it came in on the ships. Which do you act on?
• A weaver has fallen sick with swellings under the arms. His family can afford a physician. What does the physician do?
• By October the churchyards are full and the priests are dying faster than anyone, because they attend the sick. What do you do?
• Spring 1350. The plague has passed and perhaps half the town is dead. The surviving labourers are asking three times the old wage and the landowners are furious. What happens?

From observation to response

Because the pestilence struck the good and the wicked alike and whole towns in one season, only a judgement of God or a conjunction of the _____ seemed large enough to explain it, and prayer and processions followed. Because it was worst where the smell was worst, the physicians blamed poisoned _____, people carried posies, and the king ordered the streets of London cleaned in 1349. Because the swellings looked like poison trying to leave the body, physicians _____ patients and lanced the buboes under the theory of the humours. Because the _____ had piped water, running latrines and the money to build them, they stayed the healthiest places in England. And because between a third and a half of the workers were dead, the survivors demanded higher pay, and Parliament answered in 1351 with a statute fixing _____ at their level before the plague.

A disease that came back

The Black Death reached England in 1348. The second great outbreak, which chroniclers called the mortality of children because it killed so many born since the first, came in 1361. How many years separated the two?

Question 3: two similarities, marked

AQA Question 3 asks you to compare across periods, for 8 marks: Explain two ways in which responses to the Black Death of 1348 and to the Great Plague of London in 1665 were similar. Which answer reaches the top level?

• One similarity is that both relied on the belief that plague spread through corrupted air: in 1349 Edward III ordered the streets of London cleaned because the filth poisoned the air, and in 1665 the Lord Mayor ordered fires lit in the streets and the killing of dogs and cats, while people in both years carried herbs and posies, because nobody in either century had any idea of contagion by fleas or rats. A second similarity is that religion shaped the public response in both: in 1348 bishops ordered processions and fasting and the plague was preached as a punishment for sin, and in 1665 the king proclaimed a monthly fast day and the clergy preached the same, because an epidemic that struck a whole city still had no natural explanation that satisfied people. The difference is in organisation, since 1665 had searchers, shut-up houses and weekly bills of mortality, but the beliefs behind the measures had barely moved in three centuries.
• Both times people thought the plague was caused by bad air.
• In 1348 nobody was quarantined, but in 1665 infected houses were shut up for forty days.
• Both had prayer, herbs, bleeding, fires, fleeing, cleaning and fasting.

Question 2: significance, marked

Question 2: Explain the significance of the Black Death for the development of public health in Britain. At the time, the Black Death was significant because it forced the first public health orders from the crown: with the plague in London in 1349, Edward III wrote to the Mayor that the filth in the streets was poisoning the air and worsening the pestilence and ordered the city cleaned, towns such as Gloucester tried to keep out travellers from infected places, and new cemeteries had to be consecrated at East Smithfield and Winchester. This meant that for the first time disease was treated as a problem for government as well as for the priest and the physician, even though the theory behind the orders, bad air, was wrong. In the longer term the significance was larger and mostly indirect: the death of between a third and a half of the population raised wages, produced the Statute of Labourers in 1351 and fed the revolt of 1381, the repeated returns of the plague in 1361, 1369 and 1375 kept the fear alive, and in 1388 Parliament passed the first national statute against dumping filth into rivers and ditches, the ancestor of every sanitary law that followed. The limit of that significance is that ideas did not change: the humours, the planets and divine punishment were the explanations in 1348 and still in 1665, no one connected the disease to rats or fleas until 1894, and the cleaning orders were repeated because they were not obeyed. The Black Death matters most for what it did to society and to the habits of government, not for what it taught medicine, which was nothing. What earned the marks: significance at the time with a dated example; significance in the longer term, distinguished from the first and traced through law and society; the limit stated plainly; and a closing judgement on what it matters most for. That three-part shape, at the time, longer term, limit, is what the 8-mark significance question rewards.

Question 4: the factor judgement

Has government been the main factor in the development of public health in Britain? Explain your answer with reference to government and other factors.

• Make the case for government in the medieval period with evidence: the royal letter of 1349, the Assize of Nuisance, the statute of 1388, and their limits in money and enforcement
• Set other factors against it: the Church and the monasteries, which built the healthiest places in England for religious reasons, the lack of science and technology, and chance in the arrival and return of the plague

Question 4: the judgement, tested

A student has argued that government was the main factor in medieval public health because the king ordered London cleaned in 1349, towns fined butchers and Parliament banned river dumping in 1388. Which is the strongest point to set AGAINST that judgement, in the way the top level of Question 4 requires?

• Government wrote the orders but could not make them work: the 1349 letter had to be repeated in 1357 and 1361, the towns had no money to build water supplies or sewers and no knowledge of what would help, and the 1388 statute was widely ignored; the one medieval institution that actually built for health was the Church, whose monasteries piped clean water and flushed their latrines from the 1160s because the rule required it and the houses had the land and wealth to pay, so that in this period religion did through building what government only did through decree, and a judgement should weigh what was achieved rather than what was ordered.
• The king was in charge of everything, so government must have been the main factor.
• Nothing improved public health in the Middle Ages, so no factor mattered.
• Chance was the main factor because the plague arrived by accident.