Professor Russell, who found the figures for clerical mortality difficult to reconcile with his own very low estimate for deaths among the whole population, tried to overcome his difficulty not, as might have been expected, by assuming the existence of a larger differential between the two categories but by suggesting that the former figures were incorrect. ‘With some reluctance’,{420} he reached the conclusion that Professor Hamilton Thompson, that ‘careful scholar who knows ecclesiastical practice so well’, had nevertheless been guilty of some fairly elementary blunders. But since the blunders whose presence he suspected were specifically those which Hamilton Thompson had set out to eliminate from the earlier calculations of Cardinal Gasquet, since Lunn has subsequently confirmed Hamilton Thompson’s conclusions and since neither Russell nor anyone else has yet done any work which yields substantially different results, it would seem premature to discard the fruits of their researches. It would be reasonable to say that, if no evidence existed except that of the Ecclesiastical Register, an overall mortality rate among the people of England of at least a third might be expected.
But there is other evidence, and Professor Russell has summarized it faithfully. There is, for instance, the possibility of arriving at an answer through figures for the payment of frankpledge dues. The value of the calculation is limited since it rests on a narrow statistical base of eighty-four case-histories in Essex, but it is worth noting that it gives an overall mortality of 43 per cent. Court Rolls also provide some evidence, though the principal lesson to be learned from them is the wide variation between different areas. In the Farnham manors the loss between 29 September 1348 and September 1350 seems to have been more than 28 per cent but less than 38 per cent, depending on the index figure taken for the ratio between tenants and dependents.{421} A study of the manor of Cuxham in Oxfordshire indicates a death roll of something over two thirds.{422} Similar figures for three manors belonging to Crowland Abbey suggest a rate of 56 per cent.{423} On the other hand, in her analysis based on the Winchester Pipe Roll of eleven widely scattered manors belonging to the Bishop of Winchester, Dr Levett, while venturing no exact figure, could find no evidence to suggest a death rate high enough to disrupt the working of the manors and, in the case of one very large manor, felt that the figure of a third must be over-pessimistic. ‘The general impression gained from an attempt to make any such calculations,’ she concluded dryly, ‘is that they are singularly useless.’{424}
Finally there are the figures derived from inquisitions post-mortem, to which Professor Russell attaches particular importance. Based upon some five hundred such inquisitions he assumes that some 27.3 per cent of the population died during the plague; a figure which would be reduced to 23.6 per cent if allowance were made for the higher mortality among the older people. While admitting the limitations to this approach he concludes ‘Nevertheless, it presents the best evidence available as yet upon the effects of the plague.’{425} 23.6 per cent is far lower than any percentage which can be deduced from the other methods of calculation already mentioned. It might, therefore, be expected that it would be the lowest point in the range of possible death rates. But in his final summing up, Russell puts forward a still lower figure of 20 per cent, ‘The reduction of the… loss to 20 per cent’, he comments, ‘proceeds from better calculation of plague losses, which could take into account age specific mortality… discounting of ordinary mortality of the three years…’{426} Since the 23.6 per cent figure derived from Russell’s favoured inquisitions post-mortem is itself loaded to take account of age specific mortality this further reduction is hard to accept.
