The Black Death полностью

If Melcombe Regis was indeed the first port to receive the Black Death it may have been brought from Calais. Melcombe was at this time a town of some importance contributing almost as many ships to the siege of Calais as Bristol or even London. It could well have been one of these ships returning from France which brought in the plague. Prima facie the suggestion of the Grey Friars’ Chronicle that the plague was imported from Gascony is less likely since Melcombe is not known to have received many boats coming from that region. But it is by no means impossible; one of the ships was said by the Chronicle to have had its home in Bristol and this could well have been on the return journey from some Gascon port. Another, and perhaps still more probable source of infection, is the Channel Islands: Jersey and Guernsey were suffering badly from the Black Death at this time, so much so that Edward III wrote to the Governor of Jersey:^{232}

The letter is undated and it is not known by how far or, indeed, if the Black Death in the Channel Islands preceded the outbreak on the English mainland. But if, as seems probable, the islands were affected first, it is to Melcombe Regis more than to any other English port that they are likely to have spread the disease.

But whether by way of Southampton or by Melcombe Regis; whether in June, July or August; it was inevitable that the Black Death would sooner or later spread to the British Isles. It is tempting to think of Britain isolated behind her sea defences, remote from Europe and, with a bit of luck, immune from the misfortunes of her continental neighbours. But the truth, then as now, is that England was part of the continent of Europe and that the Channel as much linked England and France as divided them. Indeed, it was a great deal easier for men and merchandise to arrive by sea in England than to make the perilous crossings of the Alps or venture along the other land routes of continental Europe. ‘The south-east of England’, wrote Professor Kosminsky,^{233} ‘lay at a great cross-roads where the trade routes from Scandinavia, the Baltic, the North Sea, the Atlantic coast and the Mediterranean all met, as well as the great river-ways of the Rhine, the Meuse, the Scheldt and the Seine.’ Along the trade routes, without possibility of check, moved the Black Death.

From Melcombe Regis the plague struck inland across the West Country. It is not difficult to get an approximate idea of its course. England is badly endowed with the impressionistic reporting of such chroniclers as Michael of Piazza or Agnolo di Tura. There is even less in the way of dispassionate medical records; English physicians contributed virtually nothing to the ample if somewhat profitless literature of the plague tractators. But the richness of our national archives – the archives of a nation wedded to legalism and the virtues of precedent and, still more important, of a nation which has had the good fortune never to suffer subsequent foreign invasion – offers a fuller picture of the progress of the Black Death than those which any other country can provide.

Professor Stengers, the Belgian historian, referred wistfully to the riches of the English archives as being the envy of every continental medievalist.^{234} Envy certainly; and yet it would be surprising if the continental historian did not sometimes feel a certain relief and the proud possessor of this treasure-house occasionally view his national glory with apprehension as well as pride. The knowledge that untapped reservoirs of knowledge exist, ready to confound the over-confident and ensnare the unwary, is sobering even to the expert and downright intimidating to the amateur.