The Black Death полностью

This seems particularly true when material about the effects of the Black Death is in question. The most complete source, though by no means the most comprehensive, is the ecclesiastical records. Cardinal Gasquet relied almost exclusively on these for his study of the Black Death. The principal series which he used were the Books of Institutions, showing dates of appointment to the various livings, together with the Patent Rolls which listed, inter alia, ‘royal grants, licences and presentations made by the Sovereign to such vacant ecclesiastical livings as were at the time in the royal gift’.^{235} The value of such records is obvious but, as will be seen later, so also are their limitations. For the moment it suffices to say that, as a rough guide to the date that the Black Death was raging in any particular area and to the relative damage which it did in one place or another, better evidence is rarely to be found.

Among the lay documents, those which are of immediate relevance for a study of the Black Death are the manorial Court Rolls. From these, in ideal circumstances, it is possible to establish how many householders died in any given period and whether there were relations left to inherit or the holding escheated to the Lord. Though once again such lists pose problems when it comes to deducing from them a comprehensive total of plague victims they are of the utmost value in that they show the incidence of the Black Death in each manor. Read in conjunction with the Account Rolls they provide an amazingly detailed picture of life on the medieval manor. But many fewer of them are left than is the case with the ecclesiastical documents and, as a general rule, they also tend to be less well kept and less accessible. A series is necessary to enable valuable deductions to be drawn – yet too often the series is interrupted and only isolated numbers survive.

With the help of the ecclesiastical records, it can be established that the plague was rife in many parts of Dorset by October 1348, reached a peak in December and January and was on the wane by the end of February. New vicars had to be appointed at Shaftesbury on 29 November, 10 December, 6 January and 12 May and Wareham lost the head of its Priory in October and had two new vicars instituted in December, one in May and another in June.

Exactly 100 institutions to Dorset benefices caused by the death of the previous incumbent were made during the seven months from October 1348 to April 1349. The numbers did not return to normal until the autumn of 1349.^{236} From other sources one learns that Poole was particularly badly affected and that a tongue of land projecting into the sea and known as ‘The Baiter’ was bought by the town-councillors and set aside as a burial place for the victims. At Bridport, though the plague was not so bad as to interfere with the supply of cordage to the royal navy,^{237} two additional bailiffs had to be appointed to cope with the extra work.

In January 1349 Ralph of Shrewsbury, Bishop of Bath and Wells, circulated a letter to all the priests in his diocese which shows up vividly the demoralization in the infected areas:^{238}