The Black Death
A ship docked at a Dorset port in 1348 and within two years perhaps half of England was dead. The survivors, oddly, ended up with better wages.
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Quick Facts
- What it was
- A pandemic of plague caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis
- Arrival in Britain
- Summer 1348, traditionally at Melcombe Regis (now part of Weymouth), Dorset
- Peak in England
- 1348–1349, reaching London by autumn 1348
- Reached Scotland and Wales
- 1349
- Death toll
- Perhaps a third to a half of the population of England
- Famous aftermath
- The Statute of Labourers (1351) and the Peasants' Revolt (1381)
- Later outbreaks
- Returned in 1361 and repeatedly afterwards, often hitting children hardest
- Still visible
- Plague graffiti at Ashwell, Hertfordshire, and burial grounds around Charterhouse Square, London
The Scots who went to invade and caught the plague instead
The Black Death was a plague pandemic that reached Britain in 1348, killed perhaps up to half the population, and rewrote the rules of medieval life. One of the best stories comes from the chronicler Henry Knighton. He says that when plague tore through England, the Scots took it as a judgement from God and gathered an army in Selkirk Forest to invade the weakened south. Then the sickness struck the army. Thousands reportedly died, and the survivors headed home, carrying the disease with them. Whatever the exact numbers, plague did cross the border in 1349. By then it had already swept through Wales, and Ireland had been hit in 1348, with the Franciscan friar John Clyn of Kilkenny writing a harrowing account of it before he too died.
A Dorset harbour, then the whole country
The disease had travelled across Europe from the Black Sea, reaching Sicily in 1347. By the summer of 1348 it came ashore in Dorset, traditionally at Melcombe Regis, now part of Weymouth. From there it spread along roads and rivers. It reached Bristol and then London in the autumn, and by 1349 it was in nearly every part of the country. No one was safe. Edward III's daughter Joan died of it in Bordeaux in 1348 on her way to marry Pedro of Castile. Three successive archbishops or archbishops-elect of Canterbury died in 1348–49: John Stratford in August 1348, John de Ufford in May 1349 before he could be consecrated, and Thomas Bradwardine in August 1349, shortly after his consecration.
Why a labour shortage changed England
With so many dead, there were suddenly far fewer workers. Landlords found fields unploughed and harvests rotting, while surviving labourers realised they could ask for more money. The Crown tried to freeze wages at pre-plague levels with the Ordinance of Labourers in 1349 and the Statute of Labourers in 1351. It did not work. People moved, bargained and broke the law. The resentment that built up, along with the hated poll taxes of the 1370s and 1380s, fed into the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Historians still argue about how much the plague changed England, but few doubt that serfdom weakened afterwards.
Rats, fleas and a ring of roses: myths versus reality
Myth one: the plague doctor's beaked mask. That costume belongs to the 17th century, not 1348. Myth two: "Ring a Ring o' Roses" is about the plague. The rhyme is not recorded until the 19th century, and the link is a later guess. Myth three: Eyam's famous self-quarantine was the Black Death. It happened in 1665–66, during a later outbreak of plague. Even the old rat-and-flea story is debated, since human fleas and lice may have spread the disease too. What is firmly established is the cause: in 2011 scientists recovered Yersinia pestis DNA from skeletons buried in London's East Smithfield plague cemetery, settling a long argument.
What you can still see today
In the tower of St Mary's church at Ashwell, Hertfordshire, someone scratched Latin graffiti into the wall. It describes 1350 as a "miserable, wild, distracted" year, and records a violent storm in 1361 as well. In London, the plague burial grounds of 1348–49 lay around what is now Charterhouse Square and East Smithfield. Excavations around Charterhouse Square in 2013 uncovered skeletons laid out in orderly rows, a reminder that people tried to bury the dead with some dignity even at the height of the panic. Across the country, the aftermath survives in the buildings. Many parish churches have rebuilt or unfinished work from the years when masons and money were suddenly short.
Why it still matters
The Black Death was not a one-off. The plague returned in 1361 and many times after, shaping life in Britain for centuries, until the Great Plague of London of 1665 and the Great Fire that followed it. It also set a pattern we still recognise: quarantine, burial rules, scapegoating and arguments over who should pay when workers are scarce. On the continent, Jewish communities were murdered by panicked mobs, a dark reminder that disease can also bring out the worst in people. And for the survivors, the world was strangely better in one way: land was cheaper, wages were higher, and ordinary people had more bargaining power than at any time before.
Notable people
- Edward III
- Thomas Bradwardine
- John Stratford
- John Clyn
- Henry Knighton
- Joan of England
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