under an almost intolerable burden of gratitude. I acknowledge with pleasure and admiration my debt to all those whose publications I have made use of in this book. Two names, above all, I would like to single out: Professor Hamilton Thompson, whose pioneer work in this field has exercised so great an influence on the labours of all subsequent historians, and Dr Elizabeth Carpentier, whose wit and scholarship illuminated the subject in later years.
Philip Ziegler
London, 1998
13
THE PLAGUE IN A MEDIEVAL VILLAGE
S TATISTICS alone cannot provide an adequate picture of the Black Death. That 48.6 per cent of the beneficed clergy in a given diocese died between April and September 1349 is an imposing but somewhat flavourless concept which, in itself, gives no very vivid impression of the sufferings of the people. That a quarter, a third or even half the population died as well is more striking, but the figures still convey no proper idea of what so brutal a depopulation meant to those who survived. In every country the great majority of those who lived and those who died were village dwellers, dependent on agriculture for their existence.
The academic historian rightly distrusts, even if he does not despise, the work of imaginative reconstruction produced by the historical novelist. A fortiori, there must be excellent reason to justify the introduction into a book of this kind of any detail which lacks some sort of documentary evidence. But if the effect of the Black Death is really to be understood then it must be studied at work in a small village community and some attempt be made to evoke the atmosphere which it created and which it left behind it. Not enough is known about any one village to make this possible, but, by piecing together scraps of authenticated material, it is possible to construct a coherent picture which, in essence, is plausible and valid. Only by such an exercise can one hope to put flesh on the dry statistical bones provided by the records of the period.
The village of Blakwater, then, is imaginary; that is to say it is not to be found on any map and was unknown to the compilers of the Domesday Survey. But in its organization and its composition it is not in the least a work of imagination; on the contrary it is very ordinary, and every feature could be duplicated in many hundreds of similar villages scattered over the face of England. It is perhaps a little richer and better run than mostand it has for this reason been endowed with a poorer neighbour, Preston Stautney, which is decidedly worse off than the average village of the county. Together these two villages present a reasonably accurate picture of a rural community of the open or ‘champion’ country in the south of England around the middle of the fourteenth century.
Blakwater, then, was a medium sized village of some thirty families and a total population of about a hundred and fifty. Four of these families belonged to freemen paying rent to the lord of the manor but owing him no feudal service, other villagers were still all bound to the lord and had to do various works on his land in exchange for their cottages and strips of field. It did not seem likely that this would change rapidly since the landlord was William Edendon, Bishop of Winchester, and the Bishop, like most of his colleagues, was decidedly conservative in his attitude towards his tenants. He accepted that the commutation of labour services for money had already gone a long way in the English countryside and that – a point which caused him some distress – it was even to be found on his own estates. But he deplored the process, for social more than economic reasons, and it was well-known that his villeins would be unusually privileged if they were ever allowed to change their status.
The village lay about eight miles south-west of the King’s road between London and Winchester; a broad river of mud in winter and of choking dust in summer. The traffic along this
Philip Ziegler
London, 1998
13
THE PLAGUE IN A MEDIEVAL VILLAGE
S TATISTICS alone cannot provide an adequate picture of the Black Death. That 48.6 per cent of the beneficed clergy in a given diocese died between April and September 1349 is an imposing but somewhat flavourless concept which, in itself, gives no very vivid impression of the sufferings of the people. That a quarter, a third or even half the population died as well is more striking, but the figures still convey no proper idea of what so brutal a depopulation meant to those who survived. In every country the great majority of those who lived and those who died were village dwellers, dependent on agriculture for their existence.
The academic historian rightly distrusts, even if he does not despise, the work of imaginative reconstruction produced by the historical novelist. A fortiori, there must be excellent reason to justify the introduction into a book of this kind of any detail which lacks some sort of documentary evidence. But if the effect of the Black Death is really to be understood then it must be studied at work in a small village community and some attempt be made to evoke the atmosphere which it created and which it left behind it. Not enough is known about any one village to make this possible, but, by piecing together scraps of authenticated material, it is possible to construct a coherent picture which, in essence, is plausible and valid. Only by such an exercise can one hope to put flesh on the dry statistical bones provided by the records of the period.
The village of Blakwater, then, is imaginary; that is to say it is not to be found on any map and was unknown to the compilers of the Domesday Survey. But in its organization and its composition it is not in the least a work of imagination; on the contrary it is very ordinary, and every feature could be duplicated in many hundreds of similar villages scattered over the face of England. It is perhaps a little richer and better run than mostand it has for this reason been endowed with a poorer neighbour, Preston Stautney, which is decidedly worse off than the average village of the county. Together these two villages present a reasonably accurate picture of a rural community of the open or ‘champion’ country in the south of England around the middle of the fourteenth century.
Blakwater, then, was a medium sized village of some thirty families and a total population of about a hundred and fifty. Four of these families belonged to freemen paying rent to the lord of the manor but owing him no feudal service, other villagers were still all bound to the lord and had to do various works on his land in exchange for their cottages and strips of field. It did not seem likely that this would change rapidly since the landlord was William Edendon, Bishop of Winchester, and the Bishop, like most of his colleagues, was decidedly conservative in his attitude towards his tenants. He accepted that the commutation of labour services for money had already gone a long way in the English countryside and that – a point which caused him some distress – it was even to be found on his own estates. But he deplored the process, for social more than economic reasons, and it was well-known that his villeins would be unusually privileged if they were ever allowed to change their status.
The village lay about eight miles south-west of the King’s road between London and Winchester; a broad river of mud in winter and of choking dust in summer. The traffic along this
Similar Books
