Bishop Trilleck’s neighbouring diocese fared no better. In Hereford the Bishop forbade the acting of ‘theatrical plays and interludes’ in the city churches, a belated attempt to avert the wrath of the Almighty which seems to have met with little success. In the end, it is claimed, the epidemic was checked ‘by carrying the shrine of St Thomas of Cantilupe in procession’. In 1352 a joint petition was lodged by the patrons of the two churches of Great Colington and Little Colington:{384}
the sore calamity of pestilence of men lately passed, which ravaged the whole world in every part, has so reduced the number of the people of the said churches and for that said reason there followed, and still exists, such a paucity of labourers and other inhabitants, such manifest sterility of the lands, and such notorious poverty in the said parishes, that the parishioners and receipts of both churches scarcely suffice to support one priest.
The Bishop saw the justice of the complaint and the two parishes were duly amalgamated.
The county historians illustrate the impact of the plague by quoting the inquisition post-mortem on the family of John le Strange of Whitchurch.{385} John died on 20 August, when the plague had already done its worst over most of the county. He left three sons: Fulk, Humphrey and John the younger, of whom Fulk, as eldest, was naturally the heir. By the time the inquiry was held on 30 August, Fulk had already been dead two days. Before an inquisition could be held on Fulk’s estate, Humphrey too was dead. John, the third brother, survived but inherited a shattered estate. Even before his father died the three water mills ‘which used to be worth twenty marks’ had been reassessed at only half the value, ‘by reason of the want of those grinding, on account of the pestilence’. In another of his manors, ‘two carucates of land which used to be worth yearly sixty shillings’ were held to be worth nothing ‘because the domestic servants and labourers are dead and no one is willing to hire the land’.
Cheshire, to the north, was thinly populated in the fourteenth century but there is plenty of evidence to show that the losses were still severe. The heads of three of the largest religious houses – the abbot of St Werburgh’s, the prioress of St Mary’s, Chester and the prior of Norton – all died within a few weeks of each other. It was impossible to find anyone able and willing to hold the eyre of the forest, the bridge over the Dee remained out of repair for several months, the income gained from tolls at the passage of Lawton dropped away to little more than half its former value. The increased bargaining power which the Black Death put into the hands of the surviving tenants is well illustrated by the case of the manor of Rudheath, between Northwich and Macclesfield. A note on the Court Roll reads:{386}
In money remitted to the tenants… by the Justices of Chester and others, by the advice of the Lord, for the third part of their rent, by reason of the plague which had been raging, because the tenants there wished to depart and leave the holdings on the Lord’s hands unless they obtained this remission until the world do come better again, and the holdings possess a greater value…
It would be interesting to know more about the status of the tenants. The Government was shortly to pass legislation seeking to prevent the migration even of free tenants but it would not be surprising if the tenants of Rudheath in fact enjoyed no legal right to quit their tenements and were blackmailing their landlord with a threat to commit an unlawful act. Certainly such a case would not have been unique. The knowledge that the law was on his side was small comfort to a lord whose tenants had escaped and were now working on some neighbouring estate, enjoying more favourable terms and sheltered by their new master who, however he might deplore their breach of the feudal laws, was still primarily interested in ensuring that his own houses were lived in and his own lands were tilled.
