The Coming of the Friars Part 6

A layman runs a risk of incurring withering scorn at his presumption, and ridicule at his ignorance who ventures to express an opinion--or to have one--on any subject which the medical profession claims as within its own domain; and I should not dare to speak otherwise than as a very humble inquirer when the learned are silent. There are, however, some conclusions which may be accepted without hesitation and which will be admitted by all.

I. The Black Death was _not_ scarlatina maligna, as the plague at Athens undoubtedly was. [Footnote: "The History of the Plague of Athens," translated from Thucydides by C. Collier, M.D., London, 1857.]

II. It was _not_ small-pox.

III. It was _not_ cholera.

IV. It probably _was_ a variety of the Oriental plague, which has reappeared in Europe in more modern times, and regarding which they who wish to know more must seek their information where it is to be found.

The next question usually asked is, Where did the new plague come from? And here the answer is even more uncertain than that to the other question--What the great plague was.

In fact, a careful comparison of such testimony as comes to hand leaves the inquirer in a very perplexed condition, and inclines him rather to accept than reject the old-fas.h.i.+oned theory of a "general corruption of the atmosphere" as the only working hypothesis whereby to account for the startling spontaneity of the outbreak and its appearance at so many and such distant points at the same time.

The Imperial author, who appears to have done his best to gather information, evidently found himself quite baffled in his attempt to follow the march of the plague. It had originated among the Hyperborean Scythians; it had pa.s.sed through Pontus, and Libya, and Syria, and the furthest East, and "in a manner all the world round about." Other writers are just as much in the dark as Cantacuzene, and it seems mere waste of time to endeavour to arrive at any conclusion from data so defective and statements so void of historical basis as have come down to us. This only seems established, that during the year 1347 there was great atmospheric disturbance extending over a large area of Southern Europe, and resulting in extensive failure of the harvest, and consequent distress and famine; and that in January, 1348, one of the most violent earthquakes in history wrought immense havoc in Italy, the shocks being felt in the islands of the Mediterranean, and even north of the Alps.

It is at least curious that the date of the earthquake coincides very closely with the date which has been given by Guido de Chauliac for the first appearance of the plague at Avignon. He tells us expressly that it broke out in that city in January, 1348, and I think it would be difficult to produce trustworthy evidence of any earlier outbreak than this, at any rate, in Europe. [Footnote: One of our monastic chroniclers states expressly that it began about St. James's Day in 1347. I _feel_ certain that the date is wrong, and that it could be proved to be wrong without much difficulty by reference to doc.u.mentary evidence which might be consulted.] "It appeared at Florence," says Villani, "at the beginning of April, and at Cesena, on the other side of the Apennines, on the 1st of June." It is a.s.serted that it reached England at the beginning of August, is said to have lingered for some months in the west, and to have devastated Bristol with awful severity.

There can be no doubt that in the towns of Italy and France there was a dreadful mortality; but when we are told that 100,000 died in Venice, and 60,000 in Florence, and 70,000 in Siena, it is impossible to accept such round numbers as anything better than ignorant guesses. Whether the great cities of the Low Countries were visited by the pestilence with any severity, or how far the towns of Germany were affected, I am unable to say, nor am I much concerned at present with such an inquiry; that I leave to others to throw light upon. But as to the progress, the incidence, and the effect of the Black Death in England--when it came and where it showed itself, how long it lasted, and what effects followed--on these questions the time has come for pointing out that we have a body of evidence such as perhaps exists in no other country--evidence, too, which hitherto has hardly received any attention, its very existence entirely overlooked, forgotten, nay! not even suspected.

Let us understand where we are, and look about us for a little while.

When King Edward III. entered London in triumph on the 14th of October, 1347, he was the foremost man in Europe, and England had reached a height of power and glory such as she had never attained before. At the battle of Creci France had received a crus.h.i.+ng blow, and by the loss of Calais, after an eleven months' siege, she had been reduced well-nigh to the lowest point of humiliation. David II., King of Scotland, was now lying a prisoner in the Tower of London.

Louis of Bavaria had just been killed by a fall from his horse, the Imperial throne was vacant, and the electors in eager haste proclaimed that they had chosen the King of England to succeed. To their discomfiture the King of England declined the proffered crown.

He "had other views." Intoxicated by the splendour of their sovereign and his martial renown, and the Success which seemed to attend him wherever he showed himself, the English people had gone mad with exultation--all except the merchant princes, the monied men, who are not often given to lose their heads. They took a much more sober view of the outlook than the populace did--they had an eye to their own interests and the interests of the trade and commerce in which they were engaged. They were very much in earnest in a.s.serting their rights and protesting against their wrongs, and they presented their pet.i.tions to the King after the fas.h.i.+on of the time--pet.i.tions which must have seemed rather startling protests in the fourteenth century, betraying, as they did, some advanced opinions for which the world at large was hardly then prepared.

Students of the manual, compendium, and popular handbook style of literature may possibly be hardly aware that the war of protection _versus_ free trade, and the other war concerned with the incidence of taxation upon property, real and personal, had already begun. Even my distinguished friend, Mr. Cadaverous, who never made a mistake in his life, and whose memory for facts is portentous--even Mr. Cadaverous a.s.sures me that he has never met with any mention of the above fact in all his study of history.

History! What is history but the science which teaches us to see the throbbing life of the present in the throbbing life of the past?

Note that these "gentlemen of the House of Commons," who made themselves somewhat disagreeable in the Parliament of 1348, were not the warriors who had gone out to fight the King's battles, but the burghers who stayed at home, heaped up money, and grumbled. It was otherwise with the roistering swash-bucklers who came back in that glorious autumn. They are said to have returned laden with the spoils of France, the plunder of Calais, and so on and so on. Calais must have been rather a queer little place to afford much _plunder_ after all that it had gone through. The swash-bucklers doubtless brought prize-money home, but it did not all come from France--that is pretty certain. Villani, our Florentine friend, tells us of an unexampled commercial crisis at Florence about this time--brought about, observe, by the English conqueror of France not paying his debts. So the Bardi and the Peruzzi actually stopped payment; for the King owed them a million and a half of gold florins, and there was lamentation and distress of mind, and the level of the Arno rose by reason of the flood of tears that fell "from tired eyelids upon tired eyes." All that made no difference to the swash-bucklers, and up and down England there was wild extravagance, and money seemed to burn in people's pockets. Feasting and merriment, and all that appertains thereto, were the order of the day, and all went merry as a marriage bell.

The King got all he could get out of the Parliament, but he did not get, he could not get, all he wished. What was to be done next? The Pope said, "Make peace!" and his Holiness did his little best to bring about the desired end. The summer of 1348 had come, and it seems that at Avignon the plague had by this time spent itself, people were no longer afraid to go there now, and the Pope would peradventure come out of his seclusion and receive an emba.s.sy. So on the 28th of July Edward III. wrote a letter to Pope Clement, and announced his intention of sending his amba.s.sadors to Avignon to treat about terms. The negotiations fell through, and on the 8th of October the King announced by proclamation that he was once more going to make an inroad upon France with an armed force. He did not keep his word. In November a truce was patched up somehow; and on the first of the next month we find the King once more at Westminster, and there he seems to have remained over Christmas. If the dates are correctly given, the news from the west of England about this time was not likely to have provoked much merriment.

Are the dates correct? Gentlemen of an antiquarian turn of mind, out in the west there, might do worse than spend some weeks in looking into this matter.

Meanwhile, it is at this point that we get our first direct, unquestionable proof, that the plague had reached our sh.o.r.es. On the 1st of January, 1349, the King wrote to the Bishop of Winchester, informing him that although the Parliament had been summoned to meet on the 19th of the month, yet because a _sudden visitation of deadly pestilence had broken out at Westminster and the neighbourhood,_ which was increasing daily, and occasioning much apprehension for the safety of any great concourse of people, should it a.s.semble in that place at the time appointed; therefore it had been determined to prorogue the Parliament to Monday, the 27th of April.

I gather from the wording of this doc.u.ment that the Government did not look upon the outbreak with any very grave apprehension, that they did not regard it as anything more than an epidemic which would be confined to narrow limits, and one likely to pa.s.s off after a little time as the spring advanced; and that they can hardly as yet have received any very disturbing intelligence of its ravages, such as must have soon come in from all points of the compa.s.s. Two months pa.s.sed, and the situation had seriously changed. On the 10th of March the King issued another letter, in which, after referring to the previous proclamation, he further prorogued the meeting of Parliament _sine die._ The reason for this step is explained to be "because the deadly pestilence in Westminster, _and in the City of London,_ and in other places thereabouts, was increasing with extraordinary severity" _(gravius solito invalescit)._

It is to be observed that, in the first notice of prorogation, no mention is made of the City of London, only of Westminster and its neighbourhood. In the second, we hear that the plague had already extended over a wider area, and was showing no signs of abating. Nay, by this time the King and his advisers had taken alarm--there was no knowing where the mortality would stop.

Two days after this (12th of March, 1349) William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich, received his letters of protection as amba.s.sador for the King in France. His safe conduct--for himself and his suite--was to extend till Whitsuntide next ensuing (31st of May, 1349). The suite consisted of eight persons, all Norfolk men; two were wealthy laymen, two were distinguished ecclesiastics, three were country parsons, of one I know nothing. I believe they all got back safely, but the three country parsons returned to their several cures only to be smitten by the plague. The Bishop had not shown himself again in his diocese many weeks before they were all three dead. In making this last statement, I am a little antic.i.p.ating the course of events, but only a little. The Angel of Death moves at no laggard pace when once he begins his march with his sword drawn in his hand.

Thus far I have been quoting from, or referring to, authorities which are accessible to any one with an adequate command of books at his elbow--the chroniclers and the historians named, the Foedera, the Rolls of Parliament, and such authorities as whoever chooses may consult for himself. These printed authorities, which have all been consulted and looked into again and again, have told us very little, but they have given us certain notes of time--furnished us, in fact, with a _terminus a quo_. We have learnt this, at any rate, that about Christmas, 1348, the plague appeared at Westminster and its vicinity, and that it had increased alarmingly in London and elsewhere by the beginning of March, 1349.

We have next to deal with that other evidence to which I have alluded--the unprinted doc.u.mentary evidence ready to our hands--I mean the Inst.i.tution Books in the various Diocesan Registries and the Rolls of the Manor Courts, which still exist in very great abundance, though they are rapidly disappearing from the face of the earth. It is necessary that I should trespa.s.s upon my reader's attention while I endeavour to explain the nature and the value of these two cla.s.ses of doc.u.ments before proceeding to deal with their testimony.

I. Students of English history know that few aggressions of the Pope of Rome during the thirteenth century caused more deep discontent among the laity than those which threatened interference with their right of patronage to ecclesiastical benefices, and actually did interfere with those rights. The disgraceful recklessness with which Italians, ignorant of our language, were forced into English livings, and the best preferment was claimed for Papal nominees, produced an amount of irritation and revolt against Roman interference which had never been known before. The feeling of the laity became more and more outspoken, and at last Innocent IV. gave way, and the rights of private patronage were a.s.sured to the great lords--a.s.sured, at any rate, in word--though the Papal rescript "paltered with them in a double sense" and the quibbles and reservations, which could always be resorted to under colour of the _non obstante_ clause, constantly afforded excuse for fresh encroachments and evasions when the opportunity occurred. The jealousy of Roman interference continued to increase, and the legislation of the first half of the fourteenth century was largely taken up with enactments to guard the rights of English patrons, from the King downwards. But there was always a feeling of insecurity on the part of those who had any benefices in their gift, and a corresponding feeling on the part of those who were candidates for preferment. This led to a vicious system, whereby appointments were made with almost indecent haste to every vacant cure; inst.i.tution was granted to an applicant for a benefice with the least possible delay after a vacancy had once been made known; the patron was willing to exercise his right in favour of any one, rather than not exercise it at all; the candidate for the living knew that it was a case of now or never; the Bishop had nothing to gain, and something to fear, from asking too many questions; and there is some reason to think that the paris.h.i.+oners had more voice in the matter than they have now. That followed which was likely to follow, namely, that the inst.i.tutions to vacant benefices were made as a rule within a very few weeks, or even days, after the death of an inc.u.mbent. A man who had got his nomination lost no time in presenting himself to the Bishop. There was no widow or family of his predecessor to consider; and for every reason, the sooner the new man got into the parsonage the better for all parties concerned. Moreover, to guard against all chances of a disputed claim, the Bishops' Registers of Inst.i.tution were kept with the most scrupulous care, and while enormous ma.s.ses of ecclesiastical records in every diocese in England have perished, the Inst.i.tution Books have been preserved with extraordinary fidelity, have survived all the troubles and wars and spoliation that have gone on, and, speaking within certain limits, have been preserved for five hundred years from one end of England to the other. It is no exaggeration to say that there are hundreds of parishes in England of whose inc.u.mbents for centuries not only a complete list may be made out, but the very day and place be set down where those inc.u.mbents received inst.i.tution into the benefice either at the hands of the Diocesan or his official. This is certainly the case in the great East Anglian diocese of Norwich, which comprehended, in the fourteenth century, the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk and a portion of Cambridges.h.i.+re.

We may safely say that we are able to tell approximately--within a few weeks or days--when any living fell vacant during the period under review, who succeeded, and who the patron was who presented to the cure. Nor is this true only of the secular or parochial clergy.

Jealous as the religious houses were of their rights and privileges, the heads of monasteries, as a rule, were compelled to receive inst.i.tution too at the hands of the Bishops of the see in which they were situated. They too presented themselves to their Diocesan that their elections might be formally recognized; and thus the Inst.i.tution Books contain not only the records of the various changes in the inc.u.mbency of the secular clergy, but also of such as were occasioned by the death of all abbots, or priors or abbesses as presided over that large number of religious houses as were not exempt from Episcopal jurisdiction. It is obvious that these Records const.i.tute an invaluable body of evidence, from which important information may be drawn regarding our parochial and ecclesiastical history. The Inst.i.tution Books, as might be expected, contain a great deal of curious matter besides the mere records of admission to benefices, but with this I am at present not concerned.

II. I come now to the Court Rolls, which throw much more light upon our parochial history than any other doc.u.ments that have come down to us; their information is concerned exclusively with the civil, domestic, sometimes with the political life of our forefathers; about their religious life, or their contentions with ecclesiastics, they have rarely a word to say.

All who have at any time owned or purchased what is known as copyhold land might be supposed to know something of the nature of the t.i.tle on which such land is held. If they do not it is not for want of being reminded from time to time, in a very vexatious way, that they are in theory and in fact not so much owners of their several holdings as _tenants_ of the Lord of the Manor to which such holdings appertain. But inasmuch as a great deal of ignorance prevails as to the nature of this tenure, and as it is impossible to estimate the value and importance of the evidence which the Rolls of the Manor Courts supply in the inquiry on which we are engaged, I feel it necessary to introduce at this point a few paragraphs introductory to and explanatory of what follows.

In the thirteenth century it may be said that _in theory_ the land of England belonged to the sovereign. The sovereign had indeed a.s.signed large tracts of territory to A or B or C; but under certain circ.u.mstances, of no very unfrequent occurrence, these tracts of territory came back into the hands of the sovereign, and were re- granted by him at his will to whom he chose. In return for such grants, A or B or C were bound to perform certain _services_ in recognition of the fact that they were _tenants_ of the king; and by virtue of such _services_-the equivalents of what we now understand by _rent_-they were called _tenants in chief_, or tenants _in capite_.

The tracts of territory held by A or B or C were in almost every case made up of lands scattered about over all parts of the kingdom. The tenant in chief had his castle or capital mansion, [Footnote: Experts will object to the use of this term and other terms as strictly inaccurate. I am not writing for experts.]which was supposed to be his abode; but as far as the larger portion--immensely the larger portion--of his possessions, he was necessarily a non-resident landlord, getting what he could out of them either by farming them through the agency of a bailiff, or letting out his estates to be held under himself in precisely the same way as he held his _fief_, or original grant, from the King.

_In theory_, the tenant in chief could not sell his land; he could sublet it to a _mesne tenant_, who stood to himself precisely in the same relation as he--the tenant _in capite_-- stood to the sovereign, the mesne tenant in his turn being bound to render certain _services_ to his over lord, and liable to forfeit his _lease_--for in theory it was that--if certain contingencies happened. It was inevitable that, as time went by, the mesne tenant should regard his estate as his own, and that the same necessities which compelled the tenant _in capite_ to relax his hold over an outlying landed estate would compel the mesne tenant to follow his example. The process went on till it was becoming a serious difficulty to discover how the King was to get his _services_ from the tenant _in capite_, who had practically got rid of two-thirds of his _fief_, and how he again was to get _his services_ from the mesne tenant, who had parted with two- thirds of _his_ estate to half a dozen under tenants. Obviously, when the King's _scutage_ had to be levied, there was no telling who was liable for it, or how it should be apportioned.

It was to meet this difficulty, and to check the prevailing sub- division of land--_sub-infeudation_ men called it then--that the statute of _Quia Emptores_ was pa.s.sed in the eighteenth year of King Edward I. [A.D. 1290]. The result of all the sub-division that been going on had been that the number of what we now call _landed estates_ had largely increased, each of them administered on the model of the larger _fiefs_ originally granted to the tenants _in capite_. There was a capital mansion in which the _lord_ resided, or was supposed to reside, and sub-tenants holding their land under the lord, and paying to him periodically certain small money rents and rendering him certain _services_. The _estate_ comprehended the capital mansion with its appurtenances and the domain lands in the lord's occupation, the common lands over which the tenants had certain common rights, and the lands in the occupation of the tenants, which they farmed with more or less freedom for their own behoof,--the whole const.i.tuting a manor whose owner was the lord. At certain intervals the tenants were bound to appear before their lord and give account of themselves; bound, that is, to show cause why they had not performed their _services_; bound to pay their quit rents, whether in money or kind; bound to go through a great deal of queer business; but above all, as far as our present purpose is concerned, _to do fealty_ to the lord of the manor in every case where the small patches of land had changed hands, and pay a fine for entering upon land acquired by the various forms of alienation or by inheritance. In some manors, if a tenant died the lord laid claim to some of his live stock as a _heriot_, which was forthwith seized by the bailiff of the manor; and in all manors, if a man died without heirs, his land _escheated_ to the lord of the manor; that is, it came back to the lord who _in theory_ was the owner of the soil.

These periodical meetings at which all this business and a great deal else was transacted were called the _Courts_ of the Manor, and the Records of these Courts were kept with exceeding and most jealous scrupulousness; they were invariably drawn up in Latin, according to a strictly legal form, and were inscribed on long _rolls_ of parchment, and are known as Manor Court Rolls. This is not the time to say much more about the Court Rolls. They are not very easy reading--they require a somewhat long apprentices.h.i.+p before they can be readily deciphered; but when one has once become familiar with them, they afford the student some very curious and unexpected information from time to time, though it must be allowed that you have to do a good deal of digging for every nugget that you find.

Observe, however, this--that it is not far from the truth to say that in East Anglia--for I will not travel out of my own province--every tiller of the soil who occupied a plot of land, however small, was sure to be a tenant under some lord of the manor; when he died _a record of his death was entered upon the_ _Court Rolls of the Manor_; the name of his successor was inscribed; the amount of fine set down which his heir paid for entering upon his inheritance; and if he died _without heirs_ the fact was noticed, the lands which he had held being forfeited, or _escheating_, as it was called, to the lord.

Thus the Court Rolls of a manor of the fourteenth century--for before the statute _Quia Emptores_ I suspect that they were kept with much less regularity and much less care than they were afterwards-- are practically the _registers of the deaths_ of all occupiers of land within the manor; and, as every householder was an occupier of land, the death of every householder may be said to be inscribed upon the Rolls.

Taken together, then, we have in the Diocesan Inst.i.tution Books, on the one hand, and in the Court Rolls, on the other, two sources of information which--as far as they go--furnish us with a ma.s.s of evidence absolutely irrefragable with regard to the mortality of clergy and laity at any period during the fourteenth century. I say "as far as they go," for it might happen that a country benefice--and still more frequently that a town benefice--had been so cruelly pillaged by a religious house, that little or nothing remained to support the wretched parson, and that no one could be found who would accept the cure. Then the cure would remain vacant for years. Where this happened the death of the previous inc.u.mbent would not appear on the Records for years after it had occurred, nor would any notice be taken of the long vacancy when the next parson was inst.i.tuted. In a period of dreadful mortality, if the parsons died off in large numbers, it would be inevitable that the impoverished livings would "go a begging." It might be difficult to get the most valuable pieces of preferment filled--it would be impossible to fill such as could not offer a bare maintenance. Hence the Inst.i.tution Books can only be accepted as giving a part of the evidence with regard to the clerical mortality. However startling the number of deaths of clergy within a certain area during a given period may appear to be, they certainly will not represent the whole number--only the number of such inc.u.mbents as were forthwith replaced by their successors; and, taking one year with another, it is fair to say that within any diocese the _larger the number of inst.i.tutions_ recorded in a given time, the _more incomplete_ will be the record of the deaths among the clergy during that time. When there are more men than places the places are soon filled. When there are more places than men there must needs be vacancies--square holes and round ones.

So much for the Inst.i.tution Books. With regard to the Court Rolls, there the evidence is even much less exhaustive; for here we have the registers of the deaths of the landholders within the manor, great and small--_i.e._, of the heads of families; but, except in rare instances, we have no notice of any other member of the household, or of what happened to them. A man's whole household may have been swept off--young and old, babe and suckling, sister and brother, and aged mother, and wife, and children, and servant, and friend--every soul of them involved in one hideous, horrible calamity. The steward of the manor was not concerned with any but the head of the house--the tenant of the manor. Was he missing? Then, who was his heir? Any sons? Dead of the plague! Brothers? Dead of the plague! Wife? Dead of the plague! Children? Kinsfolk? All gone! Their blackening carcases huddled in sweltering ma.s.ses of putrefaction in the wretched hovels, while the pitiless July sun blazed overhead, "Calmer than clock-work, and not caring!"

The steward made his entry of one fact only. Thus:--

"The Jurors do present that Simon Must died seized of a Messuage and 4 acres of land in Stradset, and that he has no heir. Therefore it is fitting that the aforesaid land be taken into the hands of the lord."

Also that Matilda Stile... was she married or single, widow or mother or maid? What cared the precise man of business on that 24th of July, 1349, as his pen moved over the parchment?...--"Matilda Stile died seized of one acre and one rood of land held in Villenage. Therefore it is fitting that the aforesaid land be taken into the hands of the lord until such time as the heir may appear in court."

He never did appear! Next year her little estate was handed over to another. She was the last of her line.

Such entries as these swarm in the Court Rolls of this year 1349.

They tell their own tale. But it is obvious that their tale is incomplete, and that we must form our own conclusions from the number of the deaths recorded as to the probable number of those whose names have been quite pa.s.sed over, sometimes, too, these Rolls are eloquent in their silence. When country parsons were dying by scores and hundreds, and the tillers of the soil by thousands and tens of thousands, it could not but be that the lords of manors and their stewards died also. Yes! they, too, were struck down. In one instance that I have met with the first half of the entries of the business carried on at one of these courts in the summer of this year is written in the ordinary court hand of the time, and the rest is rudely scrawled by some one whose hand is _not yet formed;_ it looks like the writing of a lad apprenticed to the scrivener's business. Was the steward of the manor actually smitten by the plague as he was holding the court--a subordinate taking his place and awkwardly finis.h.i.+ng the work which his master's glazed eye perhaps never rested on? Again and again I have found that a series of Court Rolls of an important Norfolk manor is perfect for the first twenty- two years of Edward III. and no record remains for the next year or two. Then they begin once more, and have been preserved with unbroken regularity. At Raynham, in a parish of 1,400 acres, there were three small manors. The courts of one of them were held three times in the year 1348. _Upon the same parchment,_ and immediately following the records of the previous year, come some scarcely legible notes of a court held in 1349, the precise day of the month omitted, the entries scrawled informally by a scribe who not only did not know the forms of the court, but who was evidently not a professional writer.

He bungled so that he seems actually to have given up his task. The next court of the manor was not held till three years had gone by. At h.e.l.lhoughton, a manor now belonging to the Marquis of Townshend, where two courts were held annually, the series of rolls for the first twenty-two years of Edward III. is complete. Then comes one which scarcely deserves to be called a Court Roll, so entirely informal is it, and so evidently drawn up by some one who did not know his business, and who did not pretend to know it. It is little more than a collection of rough memoranda of deaths. Twelve of the _suitors_ of the court had died without heirs; seven others had come to do fealty to the lord as successors to those whose heirs they presumably were. Nothing else is recorded. At another manor of Lord Townshend's, Raynham Parva, between the years 1347 and 1350 no court seems to have been held, though the lord of the manor, Thomas de Ingaldesthorp, had died in the interval. The scourge of the plague had been so awful in its incidence that when the next court was held on the 24th July, 1350, fourteen men and four women (holders of land, be it remembered) are named as having died off, not one of whom had left a living representative behind them. In all cases their little holdings had escheated to the lord. Amongst them was one "John Taleour, clericus." Was he the clerk who, up to this time, had kept the Rolls so neatly, and who could not be easily replaced after he fell a victim to the plague?

Indeed, the inquirer who is desirous of pursuing researches in this field must be prepared for frequent disappointment just at the moment when he thinks he has made a "find." The Court Rolls for this particular year are comparatively scarce, and this is true not only for East Anglia, but for the whole of England, as any one may see who will only cast his eye down those pages of the Deputy-Keeper's Forty- third Annual Report, which are concerned with the Records of the Duchy of Lancaster. These _registers of deaths_ are, as I have before said, only _complete as far as they go._