Plague

Summary.  Several plague epidemics have killed residents of Lichfield; including St Chad. Two-thirds of the population probably died from the Black Death, 1349. It returned in 1553, 1564 and 1593–4. On the last occasion upwards of eleven hundred inhabitants died.

 Facts on plague.

·        Caused by the bacterium          Yersinia pestis which circulates in rodents such as rats, mice, marmots, gerbils, ground-squirrels and even cats. It was passed by rodent fleas and itch mites. These were easily transmitted with hand-me-down clothes and sleeping on a bed with others. Multiple occupancy of dwellings often meant several generations died together.

·        It enters lymph nodes in the groin, armpit and neck causing painful swellings called buboes, which can blacken. If the buboes suppurate, the stench of pus is great.

·        After two days there is a fever, chills, headaches, body-aches, fatigue, vomiting. 70% of victims survive this stage.

·        If it enters the blood, it causes septicaemia and this can darken the skin. If it enters the lungs, it causes pneumonia. Few survive this stage. These victims can pass on the disease in respiratory droplets.

·        Antibiotics can cure if given within 24 hours of symptoms appearing. It is a re-emerging disease with variants resistant to antibiotics and most of the outbreaks are the lethal pneumonic form.[1]

 

Before the sixth century there must have been major Bubonic pandemics, but they have not been attested. Since then, there have been three major pandemics and many smaller ones.

Old Testament Plague of boils, probably smallpox, in the Toggenburg, Switzerland, Bible, 1411. Public Domain, Wikimedia.

 

First Pandemic was first recorded in Britain c. 549.[2] It came from Egypt via the Middle East and Europe, lasted for more than 200 years, and came to an end c. 750. This pandemic was also called the Justinian plague after the emperor who ascended the papal throne when the plague started. It killed seven known leaders in Ireland, some kings in Wales, Wigheard archbishop-elect of Canterbury, several bishops including St Cedd bishop of the East Saxons, and St Chad of Mercia. Various settlements ceased to exist in a comparatively short time and the plague has been implicated. One notable example is the Roman town of Viroconium (Wroxeter) which was thought to have had several thousand inhabitants spread over 195 acres before the plague and within two decades had shrunk to around 25 acres. A population reduction of sixty percent in south-west Britain has been estimated. Bede described the pandemic in 664,[3] “In the same year a sudden pestilence first depopulated the southern parts of Britain and afterwards attacked the kingdom of Northumbria, raging far and wide with cruel devastation and laying low a vast number of people. The plague did equal destruction in Ireland”.  

A plague outbreak in 686 killed all the monks in the monastery at Jarrow except Ceolfrith and a young lad in his care that may have been Bede. 

          In 672, it was probably plague that killed Chad in Lichfield (Licitfelda). Bede described his dying in the following way,[4] Chad urged Owine and seven brothers to meet him in the church. He urged them all to live in love and peace with each other and then announced the day of his death was close at hand. “For the beloved guest who has been in the habit of visiting our brothers has deigned to come today to me also.” Owine later heard angels singing and Chad explained they were angel spirits coming for him. For seven days his body became weaker before he died on March 2. He was buried in the cemetery field near St Mary’s church and archaeology, 2003, showed a site now under the nave platform.

 

Second Pandemic, known as The Black Death, was a variant of bubonic plague, and appeared to have started in the late 1330s at two cemeteries near Lake Issyk-Kul in the north of modern-day Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia. It passed with the Mongols giving siege to a Crimean trading post and then quickly passed through Europe between 1346 and 1353. A recent suggestion has been a volcanic eruption in 1345 caused extreme drops in temperature and led to poor harvests. To avert famine, populous Italian city states were forced to import grain from areas around the Black Sea bringing plague-carrying fleas that carried the disease. It caused a great loss of population; 50 million has been mentioned. Proportionally it was more destructive than the First World War with a third of the population killed and in some places as much as two-thirds. It struck England c.1348-50, and is thought to have entered through the Dorset seaport of Melcombe Regis, now Weymouth, during May or June of 1348; the ports of Bristol and Southampton[5] have also been cited. Possibly half the population was killed in the two years. The population around 1300 could have been 4 million and by the Poll Tax in 1377 there were 2.5 to 3 million people. Recurring bouts in 1361-2, 1369 and 1375 probably killed another 10-15%. That means 60% of the population died within 30 years.[6] 

 

Black Death in London. Wikimedia. Public Domain

 

A plague mortality figure of 40% of priests within the Lichfield diocese has been calculated, though strangely, there is no record of any death of cathedral clergy.[7] Clergy probably unwittingly helped to spread the disease. Thirteen of the 17 dioceses kept registers of their mortality and Lichfield’s stands out as the most complete. Bishop Roger Northburgh, 1322–58, recorded 459 livings in the diocese and 188 suddenly became vacant and is assumed to be the result of plague-deaths, but this assumption has been challenged.[8] It is likely some parishes were wiped out and the priest was forced to move away. It has also been stated the plague started in Lichfield in April 1349 and was virtually over by the end of October; this seems unusual. The same writer described how the bishop continued his work during the worst time of July without panic or confusion. To ordinary people the disease was baffling, its origin was said to come from supernatural causes and death was to be expected. It was seen as a pestilence of biblical proportions.

 

The disease was a threat to life over a long period of time.[9] England endured thirty-one plague outbreaks between 1348 and 1485, a pattern mirrored on the continent, where Perugia was struck nineteen times and Hamburg, Cologne, and Nuremburg at least ten times each in the fifteenth century. Venice endured twenty-one outbreaks to 1630. In 1553, Lichfield with an estimated population of around 2000, was again gripped by the plague; and again in 1564 and 1593–4.  On this last occasion it has been written that upwards of eleven hundred inhabitants died.[10] During the Civil War, 1645–6, the city was again afflicted and 821 deaths were reported in one year.[11] Then the Great Plague, 1665-6, struck in London, killing 75,000 and later affecting other parts of England. It is known the plague occurred in Lichfield in September 1665 and was blamed on a family giving lodging to travellers from London.[12] There is no evidence it became endemic in Lichfield, which is surprising because this was at a time of the great rebuilding of the cathedral. The last outbreak was in Malta in 1813.

 

The Mortality Paradox. Mortality numbers for the 14th-century are 19th-century estimations. Pollen records in England do not show a slow-up of agriculture, yet 90% of the population was rural. Archaeology has not revealed increased mass burials. There was no disruption of issue of coins. It is now considered the high levels of death have yet to be substantiated.

 

          The Third Pandemic started in the Yunnan province of China in 1772, reached Hong Kong in 1894 and then killed an estimated 20 million people in the world. Its rate of spread was slow and mortality was around 1%, compared with fast infection and up to 50% mortality in the second pandemic. It petered out in the 1940s, but sporadic outbreaks of plague have occurred since, such as in California and Madagascar.

 

Consequences 

·       The Black Death must have interfered with building of the cathedral. The protracted period of poor weather and poor harvests before the epidemic would also have affected work and labour supply. 

·       It is known the plague increased bigotry. God’s anger was interpreted as being caused by sinful people and blame fell on Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars and even pilgrims. Folklore took over and infused with prejudice. 

·       The change of name from Licetfelda to Lychfield was reinforced with preoccupation of death in a field.[13] There was a widespread construction of shrines for the survivors to express gratitude and perhaps guilt.[14] There was a resurgence in appealing to the Virgin Mary for salvation. 

·       New men of a younger generation filled the shoes of those who died. They would have had a different outlook, worked in different ways and were less beholden to feudal lords. Patrons were often new men and the epidemic must have had a huge effect on the way they organised themselves in work. 

·       Recruitment was needed for the church and often laymen joined the clergy. Pluralism in which members of the church held many offices and gained much remuneration became common. Inevitably it reduced standards.

·       The population of Lichfield returned to its pre-epidemic levels within twenty years; by 1664 it was estimated to be 2,500.[15] This was unusual, England did not recover to its pre-plague population level until 1600.

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[1] Covid-19 killed just 1% before vaccination was given. Plague still kills 10%. A Plague variant could be the next epidemic. See G. Lawton, ‘Return of the Plague’, New Scientist. 28 May 2022, 48–51.

[2] D. Keys, Catastrophe. An investigation into the origins of the Modern World. (London: 1999). 114.

[3] HE Book 3, Chapter 27. J. McClure and R. Collins, Bede. The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. (Oxford: 2008), 161.

[4] Ibid. Book 4, Chapter 3, McClure and Collins (2008), 176.

[5] Henry Knighton, c. 1337-96, an Augustinian Canon suggested it entered England through Southampton and reached London via trade routes through Winchester.

[6] S. Thurley, ‘How the Middle Ages were built: exuberance to crisis, 1300–1408’. Gresham Lecture 2011.

[7] J. Lunn, The Black Death in the Bishop’s Registers. Unpub. thesis University of Cambridge (1930) now lost.

[8] J. F. D. Shrewsbury, A history of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles. (Cambridge: 1970).

[9] A plague cemetery in East Smithfield, London, revealed skeletons with a peak age of death of between 26 and 45, with a preponderance being male.

[10] T. Harwood, The history and antiquities of the church and city of Lichfield. (London: 1806), 304. The incumbent of Alrewas wrote, “This yeare in the Summertime,1593, there was a great plague in England in Divers Cities and Townes . . . and in Lichfield their died to the number of ten hundred and odde and as at this time of wryting not cleane ceassed being the 28 of November. This number is anecdotally supported by the St. Michael's parish register which recorded an increase in burials in May and June with very high figures in July and August.

[11] Ibid, 306. Elias Ashmole wrote a note listing deaths by streets for the year 1645 and recorded 821. Plague continued until 1647 and is thought to have killed one third of the population of Lichfield.

[12] S. Porter, The Great Plague, (Stroud: 2009), 63.

[13] See the post ‘Lichfield changed its name’.

[14] D. MacCulloch, A history of Christianity. (London: 2010), 553.

[15] C. J. Harrison, ‘Lichfield from the Reformation to the Civil War’, Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society Transactions, (1980), 22, 122.