John Cornwall’s innovation was more fundamental than is suggested in Trevisa’s chronicle. For the growth of a literature in the vernacular was bound, in the end, to mean the disappearance of Latin as a medium of communication. It took an unconscionably long time a-dying; vestigial relics are, indeed, still said to linger on in England today in certain of the more antique seats of learning. But its monopoly was broken. English arose; the symbol of a new nationalism, to take its place in the law courts as the instrument for the transaction of business and for the conduct of relationships even in the most polite society. It was nationalism that dictated the use of English rather than the use of English which created nationalism, but the two fostered each other and grew side by side. Neither the growth of a national language nor of a national spirit can be said to be a uniquely English phenomenon. The sort of generalization with which we are dealing here could be applied,
‘We must not think’, wrote Dr Pantin,{483} ‘that “nationalism” was something invented at the Renaissance or even in the later middle ages… since the eleventh century there had been highly organized “national” states and deep political and racial divisions and rivalries and antipathies…’ One must not give the Black Death too much prominence in an evolution which has edged forward fitfully over many centuries, yet it would be quite as foolish to ignore its role and it is surely permissible, too, to see its by-products in the field of learning as one of the more decisive catalytic factors. In England too, it was more immediately apparent that the weakening of the international language was a blow to the universal Church. It would be a grotesque over-statement to claim that, if the English had continued to speak French and write Latin, there would have been no Reformation, but, like most over-statements, it would contain some elements of truth.
In the long run the English Universities had no cause to regret the temporary havoc which the plague caused in their workings. The shortage of clergy and lay clerks was so conspicuous that the provision of replacements became an urgent need. At Cambridge the reaction was swift. Trinity Hall, Gonville Hall and Corpus Christi were all founded as a consequence, Corpus Christi, at least, as a direct consequence of the Black Death. In the deed of 6 February 1350 by which Bishop Bateman established Trinity Hall it was specifically laid down that the purpose of the new college was to make good the appalling losses which the clergy in England and, in particular, East Anglia had suffered. The motives for founding Corpus Christi were slightly less altruistic. The members of the trade guilds found that, with the shortage of clergy after the plague, it cost them too much to have masses said for their departed members. By establishing a college they calculated that they would acquire a plentiful supply of cheap labour among the students. So deep a scar did the plague leave that even in 1441, at the foundation of King’s, the statutes, though in general terms, reiterated a reference to the need to repair the ravages of a century before.{484}
Oxford was somewhat slower off the mark. It took ten years and a second attack of the plague to induce Simon Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, to follow Bishop Bateman’s lead. ‘…I, Simon… in view of the fact that in particular those who are truly learned and accomplished in every kind of learning have been largely exterminated in the epidemics, and that, because of the lack of opportunity, very few are coming forward at present to carry on such studies…’ heartily support a gift of money made to my ‘new college of Canterbury at Oxford.’{485}
Similarly, a few years later, William of Wykeham, wishing to cure ‘the general disease of the clerical army, which we have observed to be grievously wounded owing to the small number of the clergy, as a result of pestilences, wars and other miseries of the world’{486} founded New College to repair the deficiency. But New College owed more to the Black Death than the inspiration for its creation. According to tradition, backed by Thorold Rogers,{487} New College garden was the site of Oxford’s largest plague pit, an area formerly covered by houses but depopulated by the epidemic and converted to its grisly purpose. The ill wind also blew good to Merton College since the sharp drop in population allowed it to buy, at a bargain price, almost all the land between the City Wall and St Frideswides; an investment whose increasing value must have done much to solace future generations for the tribulations of their ancestors.
