The Black Death and its effects

In the Middle Ages, natural calamities like storm, famine, or disease tended to make life hazardous for all classes, but the plague which broke out in England in the middle of the 14th century was catastrophic and had permanent effects on the agricultural and the manorial life of the country. 

This outbreak was the notorious bubonic plague, a pestilence that had become pandemic, ravaging Europe and killing between one third and a half of the population. Although there were outbreaks in 1361-62 and 1369, the worst visitation was in 1348. It was probably a form of oriental plague that began in China and reached the coast towns of Italy through Constantinople [Istanbul] and thence spread all over Europe.

Lincolnshire was not spared this evil and its devastating results were noted by writers like the author of the Louth Park Abbey Chronicle who wrote that "the hand of the only Omnipotent God struck the human race with a deadly blow . . . this scourge in many places left less than a fifth part of the population remaining . . . it struck terror into the hearts of the world, so great a pestilence before this time had never been seen, or heard of, or written of". 

Whole villages were wiped out and nowhere were there sufficient hands to cultivate the soil. Crops were ungathered, cattle roamed at will. The pestilence lasted through the whole of 1349, after which, though occasionally recurring, it died away.

The bishop's register of appointments of new priests to parishes in Lincolnshire shows that the plague in 1348 must have been at its worst from about the end of June to October. In the four months beginning with July, no less than 261 clergymen died in the archdeaconries of Lincoln and Stow. Of the towns, Stamford suffered most, losing six incumbents by death in the course of a year, so we can assume that Bourne would also be seriously affected. Indeed, it seems that Lindsey and Kesteven suffered more than the parts of Holland. 

There is also a tradition in Bourne that the building of the second tower of the Abbey church was curtailed because of the absence of skilled workers who had died of the plaque and there is evidence of similar problems at Gedney, near Spalding. Here, the history of the Black Death is distinctly written on the church tower for you can plainly see where the 14th century builders ceased work and how, above the present clock, the work was recommenced by different hands, with altered design and other materials.

The Black Death had far reaching results. Its main social effect in the countryside was to create a great shortage of labour, which in turn produced significant changes in the manorial system. Up to now, lords of manors had had little difficulty in finding workers but in the future they had to pay vastly increased wages or see their crops rotting in the fields. The peasants had, of course, been greatly afflicted by the plague, but those who survived now had a unique opportunity to gain reduced rents and an increase in wages. So well did they profit from this turn of fortune, that by the 15th century, their average wage in Lincolnshire was 3d. a day, as compared with 1d. before the Black Death.

To contain the consequences of the shortage of labour, goods and services, that ensued, a wages and prices policy was developed and the justices of the peace were entrusted with its enforcement at the quarter sessions but this resulted in an increase in crime and other violations of the law.

Villeins struggled, with considerable success in the end, to free themselves from the old manorial customs, including work services rendered to the lord. There was a general tendency for these to be commuted into money payments. For instance, the weekly labour services on the manors of Spalding Priory at Spalding, Weston and Moulton, had been thus commuted by 1424. The villein's status was therefore changing. He was now paying a fixed customary rent instead of the previous feudal dues and work services, and, obtaining his copy of the deed which symbolised his new relationship to his lord, he had become a "copy-holder". Eventually some copy-holders prospered so much that they became yeomen and even gentlemen.

The freeholders who existed at the time of the Black Death also suffered heavily from the plague and as time went on, their number was further reduced by other factors. One of these was that the wealthier landlords were busy buying land, so were the smaller gentry and wealthier yeomen, and it was the poorer freeholders who lost their lands most often in these transactions. As for the lords of the manors themselves, the Black Death
caused them undoubted losses. Sometimes they altered their system of estate management to meet the changed conditions, but even so their income was less than in the 13th century.

It was, then, the agricultural labourer who had perhaps the greatest cause for rejoicing at the turn that events had taken. In the 15th century, with wages at 3d. a day and corn at 4s. 0d. a quarter (for the Lincolnshire labourer did not exist on wheat only), he could buy a quarter in three weeks. As the usual allowance was a quarter for nine weeks or more, he would have a fair amount to spare for other necessities. But his general living conditions were still extremely primitive. He lived in a hovel without a chimney, a fire being lit in the middle of the floor with the smoke going out of a hole in the roof. In winter he had to go to bed almost at sunset, for it took two thirds of a day's wage to buy a pound of candles, and firewood could be expensive. He had plenty of food, including beef and mutton, but he had no green vegetables and so scurvy was very common and even diseases like leprosy still existed. Ignorance of sanitation and general lack of cleanliness would assist the spreading of disease.

The Black Death was over but the problems of poverty and ignorance remained and would do so for the centuries ahead.

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