phantom with the deadly breath has shown strange caprice in his coming and going; but when he has been suspected to be nigh at hand, wild-eyed Panic has shown herself as of old. It is sad and discouraging to find that, in spite of all our boasted progress all that science has taught us, and all that we are supposed to have learnt the behavior of the multitude when certain dangers threaten appears to be as it was, and that we still hear of shuddering wretches trying to fight a dreaded enemy by letting off old muskets and drenching portmanteaus with Condy's fluid. Such things have been before. Must they recur again? Philosophers comfort us with the assurance that our brains are larger than those of our forefathers, nay, that the convolutions of the said brains are more complex. How about the moral fibre? Are we never to have stouter hearts? In the face of the same circumstances, will men forever show themselves the same? Or is it that all these stories of mad stampedes and of chaotic anarchy breaking loose here and there-anarchy gibbering, blind, profligate, and senselessly cruel- are true only of exceptional communities, as yet unaffected by the great lift which optimists confidently believe in, and which they unhesitatingly assure us is steadily going on? The cholera has abated, we are told; as we were told it would. Thus far we in England have escaped its ravages. Experts and experts are the people whose vocation it is to speak without doubt or hesitation whenever they speak - experts assure us that London was never more free from cholera than during this present summer. Other experts - they too speak ing with authority-confidently affirm that our time is coming, that a severe visitation is impending; that all we have heard hitherto of the ravages of the epidemic elsewhere, will prove but child's play in comparison with that which we shall hear of by-and-by. "And then, sir, you'll see!" That is a comforting assurance at any rate; some of us will survive. But what do we know of the march of any mysterious form of death that has ever appeared in bygone ages, suddenly starting up and striding over the earth"the land as a garden of Eden before him, and behind him a desolate wilderness"? We have most of us read of such frightful visitations in Thucydides, in Ovid, in Virgil, in Lucretius, not to mention the moderns; but if any of us were to write down the sum and substance of his knowledge, and attempt to discover from any trustworthy evidence the nature, the course, and the intensity of any great plague that has ever proved a real scourge to any large section of the human race, what would his summing up amount to? How long would it take to write? or rather, when it was written, how long would it take to read? This island of Great Britain has more than once been visited by pestilence. De Foe has left us an inimitable romance, which he calls the "History of the Plague in London in 1665." How much or how little of sober fact there may be in those thrilling incidents, worked up so marvellously by the great novelist, it is impossible to say. That there is at least as much fiction as fact in the book none can doubt. The author was a child when the plague was raging—a child of two years old, toddling about the butcher's shop. The plague of 1665 did not travel far; out of London its incidence was comparatively trifling. The cholera has visited us again and again, but never on a scale to demoralize the people at large. Only once in our history has the destroyer passed over England, leaving probably no shire unvisited by his awful presence, and no parish in which there was not one dead. It is never fair to draw inferences from the silence of historians; but it is at least significant that among all contemporary writers who have made mention of the black death as it has been agreed to call it the black death in the reign of Edward the Third - there is little mention of any panic, few ugly tales of desertion of the dying, no flagrant instances of miserable creatures crying that the wells were poisoned. On the contrary, we have proof that as a rule men died at their posts during all that trying time, that those in authority never lost their heads, and that though there must, of course, have been isolated cases of abject fear, expressing itself in maddest extravagances of despair, yet we have to look long and look far and wide to find such cases - if, indeed, we find them at all. As yet the history of the black death can hardly be said to have been seriously investigated; and until specialists can be prevailed upon to examine the evidence ready at hand, we shall continue to be put off with vague generalities when we ask for more light upon the most stupendous calamity that ever befell this island. We have all heard of Boccaccio's “Decameron"-only naughty people have read it- and how it was written when the great plague was raging at Florence, the great plague that carried off Petrarch's Laura, and those other thousands of whom the world knew nothing then and knows nothing now. Some, too, have heard that the plague swept over Europe - desolating, devastating-the spectre with the swinging scythe mowing down broad swathes of men. Some, when they hear of it, picture to themselves Pope Clement the Sixth at Avignon, sitting in that vast palace that overlooks the Rhone, the stench of corpses mastered for him by the fragrant smoke of aromatic logs burning in huge pyres round about him night and day. Some have heard of Giovanni Villani, the historian of Florence, who wrote feebly about that same pestilence in his native city, and who doubtless would have written more, and more plainly and more strongly, but that in the midst of his writing Azrael touched him too, and his pen fell from his hand. Some few, again, have a faint recollection of that emperor of the West, John Cantacuzene -was he the fifth or the sixth? - who ruled at Constantinople when the plague was, and who wrote about it. Didn't he? Nay! Hadn't he a son, Andronicus, who died of it? And some think of Rome and of Rienzi, and how it was about that time that he was potent or was he in hiding there among the Fraticelli? And isn't there something too about the plague visiting Greenland, and putting back the clock that was moving on steadily, but which suddenly stopped? How vague we are! What was this plague? How did strike men down? it "It showed itself," says Boccaccio, "in a sad and wonderful manner; and differ ent from what it had been in the East, where bleeding from the nose is the fatal prognostic, here [at Florence] there appeared certain tumors in the groin or under the armpits, some as big as an apple, others as big as an egg; and afterwards purple spots in most parts of the body: in some cases large and but few in number, in others less and more numerous, both kinds the usual messengers of death. ... They generally died," he adds, "the third day from the first appearance of the symptoms, without a fever or other bad circumstance attending." "It took men generally in the head and stomach, appearing first in the groin," says Villani, "or under the armpits, by little knobs or swellings called kernels, boils, blains, blisters, pimples, or plaguesores; being generally attended with devouring fever, with occasional spitting and vomiting of blood, whence, for the most part, they died presently or in half a day, or within a day or two at the most." Only less precise and minute is the description of the great surgeon, Guido de Chauliac, who nobly stayed at Avignon for the six months during which the vis itation was at its worst; but he too mentions the carbuncular swellings in the axillæ and the groin, the purple spots, and the violent inflammation of the lungs, attended by fatal expectoration of blood. As for the emperor John Cantacuzene, his description is so flagrantly a mere adaptation of the history of the plague at Athens by Thucydides that it must be received with caution. It is only in what it omits and in what it adds to the older narrative that it possesses any great historic value. It agrees with the accounts quoted above in making mention of the swellings, the blood-spitting, and the awful rapidity with which the disease ran its course. It omits all mention of the eruption on the surface of the skin, the flushed eyes, and, above all, the swollen and inflamed condition of the larynx, the cough, the sneezing, and the hiccough, which Dr. Collier found so significant. Comparing, then, the several accounts which have come down to us, meagre though they are, it ought to be possible to arrive at some conclusions regarding the nature of the plague of the fourteenth century which, for the pathologist, would amount to certainties. The wonder is that such men as Dr. Hecker and his learned translator should have shown so much reserve not to say timidity — in pronouncing judgment upon the question. 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. 1. The black death was not scarlatina maligna, as the plague at Athens undoubt. edly was.* 2. It was not small-pox. "The History of the Plague of Athens," translated from Thucydides by C. Collier, M.D. London, 1857. 3. It was not cholera. 4. 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. ence," says Villani, "at the beginning of April, and at Cesena, on the other side of the Apennines, on the 1st of June." It is asserted 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 one hundred thousand died in Venice, and sixty thousand in Florence, and seventy thousand in Siena, it is impossible to ac cept such round numbers as anything better than ignorant guesses. Whether the great cities of the Low Countries were visited by the pestilence with any sever 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. 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-fashioned theory of a "general corruption of the atmosphere" as the only working hypothesis whereby to acity, or how far the towns of Germany were count 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 passed 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 endeavor 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.* "It appeared at Flor • 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 documentary evidence which might be consulted. Let us understand where we are, and look about us for a little while. When King Edward the Third 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 Créci France had received a crushing blow, and by the loss of Calais, after an eleven months' siege, she had been well-nigh reduced to the lowest point of humiliation. David the Second, king of Scotland, was 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 splendor of their sovereign and his martial renown, and the suc cess 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, 66 who are not often given to lose their | down England there was wild extravaheads. They took a much more sober gance, and money seemed to burn in peoview of the outlook than the populace did ple's pockets. Feasting and revelry, and they had an eye to their own interests all that appertains thereto, were the order and the interests of the trade and com- of the day, and all went merry as a marmerce in which they were engaged. They riage bell. were very much in earnest in asserting their rights and protesting against their wrongs, and they presented their petitions to the king after the fashion of the time petitions 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 portentouseven Mr. Cadaverous assures 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 them selves somewhat disagreeable in the Parliaments 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 doubt less 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 differ ence to the swash-bucklers, and up and 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 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, and the pope would peradventure come out of his seclusion and receive an embassy. So on the 28th of July Edward the Third wrote a letter to Pope Clement, and announced his intention of sending his ambassadors 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. Gentlemen of Are the dates correct? 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 shores. 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 neighborhood, which was increasing daily, and occasioning much apprehension for the safety of any great concourse of people, should it assemble 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 document 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 pass off after a little time as a terminus a quo. We have learnt this, the spring advanced; and that they can at any rate, that about Christmas, 1348, the hardly as yet have received any very dis- plague appeared at Westminster and its turbing intelligence of its ravages, such vicinity, and that it had increased alarmas must have soon come in from all quaringly in London and elsewhere by the beters of the compass. Two months passed, ginning of March, 1349. 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 neighborhood. 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. We have next to deal with that other evidence to which I have alluded — the unprinted documentary evidence ready to our hands I mean the institution 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 trespass upon my reader's attention while I endeavor to explain the nature and the value of these two classes of documents 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 Two days after this (12th of March, those rights. The disgraceful reckless1349) William Bateman, Bishop of Nor-ness with which Italians, ignorant of our wich, received his letters of protection as language, were forced into English liv. ambassador for the king in France. His ings, and the best preferment claimed for safe-conduct for himself and his suite papal nominees, produced an amount of - was to extend till Whitsuntide next en-irritation and revolt against Roman intersuing (31st of May, 1349). The suite con- ference which had never been known besisted of eight persons, all Norfolk men; fore. The feeling of the laity became two were wealthy laymen, two were dis- more and more outspoken, and at last tinguished ecclesiastics, three were coun- Innocent IV. gave way, and the rights of try parsons, of one I know nothing. I private patronage were assured to the believe they all got back safely, but the great lords — assured, at any rate, in word 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 anticipating 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. though the papal rescript "paltered with them in a double sense," and the quibbles and reservations, which could always be resorted to under color 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 feel Thus far I have been quoting from, or referring to, authorities which are accessible to any one with an adequate coming of insecurity on the part of those who mand of books at his elbow - the chroni clers and the historians named, the Fœdera, 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 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; institution was granted to an applicant for a benefice with the least possible delay after a vacancy had once been made known; the |