6
As the pestilence drew ever closer to England in the summer of 1348, the Church naturally took the lead in giving advice on how to ameliorate God’s anger. Many bishops wrote letters to be read out in English, in words that all could understand, in all parish churches in their dioceses, urging confession and ordering penitential processions and Masses. The earliest of these letters were written by the archbishop of York and the bishop of Lincoln in the last days of July, and in mid-August Edward III asked the archbishop of Canterbury to arrange for prayers, Masses, sermons, and processions throughout the province of Canterbury “to protect the realm of England from these plagues and mortality.” Since it was believed that all significant events took place at God ’s behest, these responses were highly appropriate. They were also the traditional reactions to times of distress, such as war or famine, and had been used seven hundred years before during the great plagues of the sixth century. Significantly, the episcopal letters often explicitly state that the progress of the plague across Europe, as well as its imminent threat to England, was common knowledge, and the archbishop of Canterbury goes as far as to say that “there can be no one who does not know.”
Understandably, Church leaders struggled to formulate a coherent and convincing message in the face of the sheer scale and horror of the impending disaster, and there was often only a thin veil of confidence behind their public statements. The pestilence was described as “savage” and “cruel,” and the letter written by the prior of Christchurch in Canterbury begins, “ Terrible is God towards the sons of men.” Leading ecclesiastics sometimes admitted that even the most learned of them only had an imperfect knowledge of God ’s will, and the bishop of Worcester wrote, “it is not within the power of man to understand the divine plan.” In the proliferating discussions of the meaning of the Black Death and its later outbreaks, it could not be denied that God was inflicting pestilence as a response to the sinfulness of mankind, and parallels with biblical plagues were frequently drawn. But the most insightful thinkers framed the scourge not as an act of revenge or even a just punishment inflicted by an angry God, but as a merciful means of turning people from their sinful ways so that they might eventually be saved.
The profound dilemma faced by those who sought to explain why such a deadly pestilence was being inflicted on mankind recurs constantly in contemporary writings. Boccaccio, the author of The Decameron, who lived through the plague in Florence, wrote, “Some say that it descended upon the human race through the influence of the heavenly bodies, others that it was a punishment signifying God ’s righteous anger at our iniquitous way of life.” Giles li Muisis, abbot of the monastery of St. Giles in Tournai, drew attention in his chronicle of the plague years to the temptation he felt “to put more trust in the sayings and prognostications of astrologers and mathematicians than faith allows.” But as a chronicler based in Neuberg, southern Austria, wrote, “When prayers failed to prevent it, when indeed the misery increased daily to a pitch never before recorded in the history of the world, and when the efforts of physicians proved unable to cure or avert it, then all they could do was to commit everything to God.”
There is a broad consensus among chroniclers that the Black Death made its first appearance in England in Weymouth, a seaport in Dorset on the southern coast, although the date given varies from the feast of St. John the Baptist (June 24) to early August. A number of sources claim that the pestilence was brought to the Dorset town on ships sailing from Gascony, at least one of which was said to have been a Bristol vessel. The wine port of Bordeaux seems the likeliest place of origin, and according to Geoffrey le Baker’s chronicle, on August 15 the pestilence erupted in Bristol, England ’s second city. The place and date of the earliest outbreaks in England is important, but without detailed records of actual deaths it is not possible to be certain whether the dates given by chroniclers are for the day when the ships identified as plague carriers docked, the first appearance of plague victims in the location, or the dates by which the plague had taken firm hold. This is an important matter, since the range between the first and the last of these events would have amounted to a number of weeks and may well account for some of the confusing differences in dating.
The early infection of ports in the south and west of England is in keeping with the presence of plague in the second half of 1348 in many places their traders visited along the Atlantic coast of Spain and France. It was not until much later in 1349 that plague reached northern France, the Low Countries, and Scandinavia, which were the main trading areas for the ports of eastern England. However, because London was the focal point for inland as well as overseas trade and communications, the capital was struck by November 1, if not before.
“Almighty God uses thunder, lightning, and other blows which issue from his throne to scourge the sons whom he wishes to redeem. Accordingly, since a catastrophic pestilence from the East has arrived in a neighboring kingdom, it is very much to be feared that, unless we pray devoutly and incessantly, a similar pestilence will stretch its poisonous branches into this realm, and strike down and consume the inhabitants. Therefore we must all come before the presence of the Lord in confession, reciting psalms.” (See figure 15.)
It was a hot summer’s day in St. Mary’s church, Walsham, and the parishioners who packed the great building listened in silence to their priest reading a letter from the bishop that he had sent to all parishes in his diocese. The prior of Ixworth, who had received the letter on behalf of his priest, immediately forwarded it to Master John, anxious to lose no time in following the bishop’s strict instructions that his message, which he had written in Latin, should be read aloud to all parishioners in English, in words they could understand, and that its content should be carefully and fully explained to them.
When Master John hesitated for a moment to compose himself before delivering the rest of the letter, his assistant clergy, unprompted, broke out in unison chanting passages from the Psalms. With sonorous voices which resonated around the lofty stone building, they sang spontaneously but with an uncanny coordination, hot with emotion yet precise in their diction:
O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongeth, show thyself.
O God, to whom vengeance belongeth, show thyself.
Let us come before his presence in confession.
For the Lord is a great God, and a great king above all gods.
In his hand are the deep places of the earth; the strength of the hills is his also.
The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.
O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our maker.
For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of
his hand.
As the chanting subsided, the sound of low groaning from the congregation made itself heard. Master John swiftly continued reading the bishop’s letter. “Since it is now public knowledge, there can be no one who does not know how great a mortality, pestilence, and infection of the air are at this moment threatening various parts of the world, and especially England. Unless the holy clemency of the Savior is shown to his people from on high, the inevitable human fate—pitiless death, which spares no one—now threatens us. The only hope is to hurry back to him alone, whose mercy outweighs justice and who, most generous in forgiving, rejoices heartily in the conversion of sinners. Therefore, we should all humbly urge him with orisons and prayers that he, the kind and merciful Almighty God, should turn away his anger and remove the pestilence and drive away the infection from the people he redeemed with his precious blood.”
Struggling to make himself heard above the whimpering and lamentations of the congregation, Master John proclaimed, “Do not despair. All is not yet lost. Remember the ruin which was justifiably prophesied to the people of Nineveh—but who were then mercifully rescued from the extermination threatened by God’s judgment after they had performed penance. For they, like you, said, ‘Who can tell if God will turn and forgive and will turn away from his fierce anger, and we shall not perish?’ But as the Bible tells us, ‘God did see their works, and that they were turned from their evil way, and God had mercy on them.’
“And therefore the most kindly Lord mercifully and wholesomely translated his anger into mildness, and destruction into construction, for the sake of a penitent people. But he has done the opposite for obstinate men and hard-hearted people unwilling to repent, as is proved by the stories of Pharaoh, of the five cities of Sodom, and of others who, impenitent to the end, perished eternally.
“To secure God’s forgiveness, we shall say a special prayer every day in Mass for the allaying of plague and pestilence. And, as our lord bishop, trusting in the mercy of Almighty God and the merits and prayers of his mother, the glorious Virgin Mary, and of the blessed apostles and all of the saints, urges all of us, clergy and parishioners, we will gather for devout processions every Friday. We must abase ourselves humbly before the eyes of divine mercy, be contrite and penitent for our sins, and expatiate our guilt with devout prayers, so that God, for his kindness sake, turn away this pestilence from his people.”
Then turning to the crucifix which hung behind the pulpit, Master John begged, “Remember not our former iniquities. Let thy mercies speedily succor us for we are becoming exceeding poor.”
Having finished reading the bishop’s letter, Master John went through it again slowly picking out the main points and explaining them to his parishioners. Then he stated baldly, “If the latest rumors are true, then the plague has already arrived in the far south and west of England.”
Thus on that sunny August morning everyone who lived in Walsham learned that the pestilence was no longer confined to far-off places but was raging close by; they all faced an awful and imminent threat that it would soon be among them. The impact of the news, which had been predicted for some time, was all the greater because it came from Master John, who from the beginning had assiduously fostered a healthy skepticism of the wilder tales of pestilence in far-off lands, and had persistently counseled his flock to concentrate on living their lives from day to day. At once a vision began to form in the minds of the common folk of Walsham of imminent chaos, cruelty, despair, and death in their own village and the lands about, penetrating their own lives, entering their own houses, and destroying their own families.
The silence that was maintained as the priest spoke suddenly gave way to an urgent rumble of agitated sound, as neighbor spoke to neighbor and as questions were shouted at Master John and his assistants:
“Why has God sent this terrible pestilence?”
“Where is the pestilence now?”
“What has caused this pestilence?”
“Can penitence and prayers stop it coming here?”
The priest told them that he had no final answers, and that the wisest and most pious men in the Church were seeking to explain why God had called down this scourge. “All things are subdued to God’s will, and it may not lie within the power of man to understand God’s divine plan.” Speaking rapidly, Master John went on to present them with the sentiments he had carefully prepared over the previous two days since he had received the bishop’s letter: “However, we must believe that the pestilence is a sign of God’s righteous anger at our iniquitous way of life, for the Bible teaches us that God has in the past often visited many plagues on sinful people. But you must also believe in your hearts that he is not doing this out of cruelty but out of kindness. He is using the pestilence to scourge those he wishes to redeem. He is punishing us in this mortal life so that we may be turned from sin and not condemned eternally.”
As Master John tried to continue with his carefully prepared exposition, a voice from the congregation interrupted him: “I have heard that one of the monks at Bury, an astrologer who knows much about the planets and the stars, has said that the cause lies up there, as with most things that happen in the world. It was the conjunction of ill-fated stars and planets that corrupted the air and generated the sickness. It must be true, because it is written in ancient books that conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter cause great pestilences in the air, and we know that just such a conjunction happened a few years ago. And we all know that Mars is a malevolent planet breeding anger and wars, and that it has recently been in the sign of Leo.”
The priest interrupted this surprisingly learned discourse from an illiterate peasant. “My son, while what you say may be true, it is even more true that God controls the planets. They do not move of their own will.”
Then Master John was interrupted by a female voice, shouting and trembling with emotion. “If that is so, and if everything that happens in the world happens because God wills it, why is he moving the planets so as to cause such a terrible poisonous plague to punish his people? Why is God so angry? What have we done to deserve such cruelty?”
The priest looked perplexed, and repeated that it was not for him to interpret God’s will. “But,” he added, “as far as we are able to judge, God must be sending the pestilences to chastise his people for their grievous sins. But not simply to inflict pain and suffering upon us. He is scourging us in order to redeem us.”
From the back of the church a thin, tremulous, yet piercing female voice called out. Master John recognized it as belonging to an elderly healer and midwife of great skill, who had often accompanied him on visits to the sick and dying: “Our damnation is foretold not only by the stars but by the death of the two-headed child monster in Hull a short time ago. Last winter you all heard the sailor from Ipswich tell us about this creature. You heard him say how he had seen with his own eyes that it was joined in the lower part but divided from the navel upward, and was both male and female. He told us that when one part ate, drank, or slept or spoke, the other could do something else if it wished, and how very sweetly they used to sing together. This creature lived for almost twenty years. But I was told at Botesdale market that a short time ago one half died, and that the other half held it in its arms for three days, and then died itself. This has to be an awful omen.”
Master John waved his hand impatiently and went to speak dismissively, but Margery Wodebite called out, repeating speculation heard on the pilgrimage: “It is said in Avignon that God is scourging the world with these evils as a punishment for the death of King Andrew of Hungary, who was butchered by his wife. Despite her grievous sins, the city of Avignon took her in when she fled there, and she was forgiven by the pope and permitted to marry again. It was for this that Avignon was deservedly devastated.”
Before Master John could answer, another voice called out, “But the sins of the pope in Avignon should not mean that we who are innocent should also be killed? This is not justice and mercy!”
At this a stern carpenter and a woodworker named Robert stood up. He was a prosperous artisan, one of a few in the village who gained his living almost entirely from the skill of his hands rather than from farming or laboring, and a man well-known for his ability to read and write a little, as well as his austere way of life and condemnation of frivolity. “No, you are mistaken,” he pronounced with absolute conviction. “The pestilence that threatens us is a punishment for the scandalous behavior of ladies, matrons, and gentlewomen with their outrageous and immodest manner of dress. At tournaments, which are now being held all over our realm, these shameless women attend without their husbands and fornicate with strangers. They dress themselves in extraordinary clothing, some attired like men, as if in a play. They ride to tournaments on chargers with elaborate trappings, wearing belts thickly studded with gold and silver, and daggers in pouches. They are the most beautiful of women but the least virtuous, for they abuse their bodies in wantonness and scurrilous licentiousness.”
His friend, a tailor called John, then added, “And God has also been offended by the extravagant and unseemly dress of the courtiers and the nobility, which began when the Hainaulters and their grotesque fashions came to England with Queen Philippa, when she married our king. They now have new outlandish fashions that they change yearly, and these have supplanted the old decent style of long, full garments which covered the body. Instead, courtiers are wearing short, tight clothes, which are laced, buttoned, or strapped, making them look like torturers and demons. Even more shameful, women sometimes wear gowns so tight that they have to put a fox’s tail inside the back of their skirts to hide their arses!”
A burst of ribald laughter momentarily lifted the tension. Then William Warde, who had a reputation as a troublemaker, called out, “Why should we humble poor folk be punished so cruelly for the sins of the rich and the immoral actions of the nobility in others parts of the realm and world?”
For once Master John had no answer to give this rebellious villein. Affecting a commanding voice and drawing himself to his full height in the elaborately carved oak lectern high above his congregation, he strove to bring order: “We all have sin, and to avert God’s just judgment we must present ourselves before God and make full and proper confession of our sins, and make due satisfaction through the performance of penance. We must make humble procession as we are bid, and then God, being benign and merciful, long-suffering and above malice, may avert this affliction and turn it from us.”
Once again John Tailor interrupted from the congregation. “Processions did not halt the pestilence in Avignon. Despite the pope himself joining them, and despite those who processed beating themselves till the blood ran. Still the great plague continues to come toward us. The solution lies inside our hearts and not in fanciful parades and shows of shallow emotion.”
“Yes, but the pope in Avignon is French and he matters little, since Jesus has now become English!”
This last remark was uttered by a laborer who had served with King Edward and his chivalrous son on successful campaigns in France and regularly claimed in the alehouses of the village that he had faced far worse dangers on these campaigns than any pestilence could pose. “When I was in France,” he went on, “we pasted up notices after our victories telling the French that Jesus was English, because he was on our side.” He drew a momentary nervous titter, but soon frightened voices began shouting again, demanding firm answers to impossible questions. Master John was also frightened, but of losing control of the congregation in his own church, and he called for silence and discipline. He shouted above the chatter, gesturing toward the set of glass windows to his left, lit brilliantly by the sunlight, which portrayed the seven acts of mercy. “We must give alms for our sins. We must feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the sick, relieve the prisoner, house the stranger, and bury the dead. We must also gather for a procession this coming Wednesday, when the great bell will be rung to summon you all. My three clerks and I will hear confessions now, beginning with those who have the most to confess. And we shall continue until we have heard you all. And you shall all fully confess, and with the greatest contrition, and willingly perform the penances you are given. And God may protect us.”
With that Master John turned and climbed down from the lectern. Some people began to leave the church, but the majority wished to make their confessions at once, and loud voices were heard as the assistant priests attempted to turn most of them away to return another day.
Outside, a huddle of the more prosperous and sober villagers gathered together in the churchyard, a little apart from the press of anxious people. They discussed in urgent whispers how best to save their bodies and their souls, and resolved to meet together soon to take steps to provide themselves with the spiritual assistance they craved. When a score or so of these men and women met a couple of days later, they immediately discovered deep concerns they had in common. All were greatly perturbed by stories they had heard about the chaos that reigned while the pestilence raged in foreign Christian lands. It filled them with dread that the dying had been abandoned by friends and family, bereft of a priest and the sacred rites that only he could bestow. Instead of solemn funeral processions led by clergy carrying candles, crosses, and banners, bodies had been collected and piled on carts by wretches who neither knew nor cared to observe any of the essential ceremonies. These pious and prudent villagers, visibly anguished, repeated stories of corpses carted to patches of unconsecrated ground and cast into common pits, sometimes without a single priest being present and never with more than a cursory mumbling of the funeral rites. They resolved then and there to act collectively in a similar fashion to a guild and fraternity, of which a number of them had knowledge from their dealings with towns. Acting together in a community with rules and a common purse, they would do all they could, in both personal actions and gifts of money, to ensure that each and every one of their number who might die should have a good death, from the onset of their illness to their demise. In addition to pledging that they would each visit every brother or sister who fell sick, regardless of the perils, they eagerly agreed that every member who died would have a fitting funeral procession and burial in consecrated land, attended by priests and mourners, with candles and the full rites. They also agreed to provide for Masses to be said thereafter for the benefit of all departed souls.
To these ends they swore a solemn oath and collectively resolved to contribute generously to a common fund in order to supply a sufficient number of wax candles for the funeral processions and to burn in the church afterward, and to pay for a priest to give the last rites, conduct the funeral, and say a weekly Mass for the souls of any of their number who should die. In witness of their oath each of their names was carefully inscribed on a roll of parchment. Then they all freely handed over money to be held by their treasurer in a common purse, each paying such as was appropriate to their wealth and status. In addition one member pledged an image of the Blessed Virgin, another a fine cloth, another a pewter chalice; the richest member dedicated the finest room in his house for meetings. They all agreed that they would hold an annual feast to celebrate the founding of their fraternity. The only note of dissension arose when some members objected to the admission of Margery Wodebite, on the grounds that her swoonings, loud lamentations, and ecstatic visions would be too much to bear. But her brother-in-law, John, won them over with assurances that he would keep her under control, as well as make a gift of a fine large latten candlestick.
Soon afterward one of the older members, Catherine, the widow of a prominent free tenant, Peter Pynfoul, pointed out that the day when they had first thought of forming themselves into a society was very close to the feast of Corpus Christi. This caused much excitement, for Corpus Christi was a new and exhilarating feast that was already being celebrated in many places, although not yet in Walsham. Encouraged, she spoke enthusiastically of a fraternity in the town of Cambridge which had recently adopted the name and emblems of this feast of the Eucharist, and this led another member to report that there were plans to endow another such society in the great port of Lynn.
The celebration of Christ’s Passion was most fitting at that time of glowering menace, and its contemplation brought comfort, as did the cleansing of their sins by the shedding of his blood. Without delay the fraternity started a fund to pay for a stained glass window to be made of a pelican in its piety, pecking its breast to feed its young with droplets of its own blood, just as the guild in Cambridge was said to have done (see figure 16). A short time after, Catherine Pynfoul commissioned a carving of a pelican and its young at the end of one of the pews in St. Mary’s church where members of the fraternity might sit (see figure 16).
Pious Pelican, Lord Jesus
Cleanse me the impure, in your blood
Of which one drop can save
The whole world of all sin
The reading of the bishop’s letter in church by Master John had a desolating impact on the villagers, not simply because it brought fresh and shocking news of the progress of the pestilence, but because it confirmed some of the wildest rumors that had been circulating in Walsham and its environs for the last year or more. In the days which followed there was always a stream of parishioners queuing in St. Mary’s for confession and trooping into the church or to the prior of Ixworth’s barn to donate cash or produce for tithes forgotten or evaded in past years. The volume of prayers, recited aloud and in silence, multiplied in church and in homes, and the poor, the old, and the sick, and many who were neither, received unprecedented charity in the form of doles of money and food and personal assistance of every sort. Few could remember a time when holy days had been more scrupulously observed as times of rest and worship. Everyone longed to perform good works, but they were forced to choose carefully from among the seven acts of mercy, which included such perilous exhortations as visiting the sick, sheltering strangers, and burying the dead. Protection against the advancing plague and forgiveness for past transgressions were avidly sought from saints and holy relics, and groups of villagers continued to go on pious pilgrimages to local shrines or venture as far as Walsingham, though the risks of contracting plague by traveling to distant places and mingling with crowds of strangers were now more cautiously weighed against the spiritual rewards that such journeys might bring.
So assiduously did the clergy encourage parishioners to examine their consciences, that folk of a naturally hotter disposition were driven to express their fear of imminent death or, as they would have it, their devotion to Christ’s mercy, by a constant feverish striving for spiritual cleansing and religious experience. Even worldly and pragmatic souls were moved to engage in inward reflection. Attempting to meet such urgent demands all but exhausted the ministrations of a parish clergy already stretched by the heightened duties demanded of it.
Nonetheless, despite all the abasements and alms, the pilgrimages and prayers, and the holding of solemn processions on Wednesdays as well as Fridays, assiduously attended by most of the villagers in a state of true devotion, Master John searched in vain for a sign that either the power or the advance of the pestilence had been halted or even slowed. On the contrary, stories that the pestilence had crossed the sea and had taken hold in the southwest of the realm became ever more credible. While some folk rejected these stories, preferring to believe that the sea lying between England and France was a barrier the plague could not cross, there were others who cited what had happened elsewhere in Europe and the East, and feared that no physical barrier could resist the infection because it was carried in a cloud blown hither and thither by the wind. They cried that only God could offer protection, and why should he save Walsham when he was destroying the rest of the world?
To combat pessimism and despair, Master John from the pulpit of his packed church constantly taught his parishioners the lesson from Ezekiel that the Lord God was a merciful and not a cruel God, and that he was striking in order to reform mankind and not to destroy it: “As I live, saith the Lord God, I desire not the death of the wicked, but that the wicked may turn from this way and live.”
Much as the dread of what was to happen in the future pressed on the present, ordinary life did not cease in Walsham. Most villagers had neither the leisure nor the inclination to dwell perpetually on the heightened imminence of the pestilence. Of course, some became extremely distracted, and some devoted themselves to hours of prayer each day, and to fasting and to mortifying their flesh by wearing sackcloth, lying on stone and earth floors instead of mattresses and straw, and going barefoot in all weather. But the majority of the residents could not allow such regimes to dominate their daily existence, for the simple reason that they had to fend for themselves and look after the needs of their families. Animals had to be fed and tended, fields weeded, money earned, and goods bought. Except for extra time spent on devotions, the bulk of their days continued to be taken up with a mixture of work and welcome relaxation. Nor did the trade of the village alehouses and alewives fall off, because for every Christian soul who forswore drink as a penance, there was another who saw it as a means of blotting out his fears.
At the same time, though villagers had little choice but to continue about the everyday business of their lives, the veneer of normality was fragile. Any fresh news of sickness or death in Walsham or a neighboring village caused waves of panic to roll through the community. Notably fewer friends and neighbors came to offer support and comfort at the sickbed, and funeral processions and burials were markedly less well attended. In order to secure a measure of calm and to encourage reluctant mourners to pay respects, the priests who gave the last rites were repeatedly forced to confirm publicly that the deceased had died from old age, accident, or some familiar ailment, with no sign of a strange pestilence anywhere on their bodies. Yet these assurances often failed to work because simple folk chose to be safe rather than sorry. When Mansur Shucford died suddenly of old age around harvest time, a rumor spread that the pestilence had arrived, and only a handful of people paid their last respects at the cottage he shared. In order to quell fears, Mansur’s body was inspected by the hayward and shown to be free of any strange marks. At Mass, Master John urged both private prayers and public shows of mourning for a venerable and well-respected villager. Yet shamefully few dared attend his funeral, and scarcely any more turned up at the free dinner that followed it.
When news of the pestilence across the seas had first reached Walsham, the cowardly and heartless actions of foreigners who had left the sick to die alone and the dead to be buried without funeral rites and ceremonies were scorned. Such behavior was un-Christian, unforgivable, and a risk to the eternal peace of the soul. From what they had heard, once this new scourge had arrived in a place it seemed to spread everywhere like a fire in a wood stack, and death followed surely and painfully in its wake. There was nobody who had not listened with horror at descriptions of victims lying prostrate with pain in their heads and chests, coughing up great quantities of blood, or afflicted with huge black growths in their groins and on their necks, or simply dropping dead without warning. But even so, as they trembled on the brink of imminent danger, the villagers continued to believe that, if the pestilence should come to Suffolk, they would act with selfless compassion and charity.
But in the meantime, there was general agreement that it was only common sense to keep a distance from the sick and the dead. The lesson that the sick could transmit the deadly new pestilence by sight alone, or by touch or breath, had been quickly learned, and so too had an awareness that even the houses and clothes of the victims could kill. This all made good sense, for throughout their lives they had seen that many common sicknesses, such as coughs and colds, spread easily from person to person, just as scab did from sheep to sheep. No sensible person was going to take unnecessary risks, and it was only prudent to avoid all who might have the pestilence or be capable of passing it on.
Harvest time meant long hours of hard labor for almost every member of the community, but also a welcome source of additional income. While the weather held fine, the normal routines of craftsmen, traders, and even the clergy were abandoned for more pressing work in the fields. Despite the heavy rain that had fallen in midsummer, the yields of corn turned out to be pleasingly good when the fields were reaped and the sheaves bound during early autumn, and prices tumbled by a third or more, making bread, pottage, and ale far more affordable than they had been for many years. As was customary, those working at the harvest had been fed plentiful food and ale to encourage greater efforts. Now that the harvest had been gathered in and the barns were full, the villagers turned to celebrating their good fortune and the end of their intense labors. With coins jingling in their pockets from their bonus earnings, leisure followed on from labor in a succession of feasts and celebrations.
It was a week or so after Michaelmas, September 29, when most tenants had managed without too much difficulty to pay the rents due on that quarter day, that an extremely tall, gray-bearded, and wild-haired preacher came to Walsham. The arrival of a wandering preacher was not an uncommon event, for the number of strangers traveling the countryside ranting about the coming of the Apocalypse had grown in concert with the threat of pestilence. But even the most skeptical villagers were transfixed by this stranger’s extraordinary appearance and burning black eyes. Word quickly spread that the preacher was a true prophet, a most holy man, who had lived alone for many years in the wilderness, with only a cave for shelter. So the stories went, that he had lived off berries, roots, and fruits, and occasionally animals he trapped and killed with his bare hands. Only in the harshest months of winter had he occasionally been brought small bundles of the most basic foods—barley bread and beans—by the servants of a nearby community of devout Carthusian monks.
With a thunderous voice that shook the air and a great black cloak that billowed around his shoulders, the prophet gathered a large crowd around him in St. Mary’s churchyard after the first Sunday Mass. He had with him a band of devoted disciples who accompanied his sonorous words with the rhythmic banging of drums, clanging of cymbals, and wailing of tormented souls. Fired with unchallengeable conviction, he announced that the death-dealing pestilence, which the pitiful sinners gathered before him believed was still overseas, was in fact slaughtering Englishmen, women, and children in their thousands: “As I speak, Death is scything his way through the decadent coastal cities of the south of England. The inhabitants of these cities, that only yesterday were thronged with ships loaded with trifles, delicacies, and pleasures, all shamelessly brought from the godless lands of the infidels in the East to indulge the gluttony and vice of the rich, are now lying in narrow pits in the earth rather than in scented baths, and providing feasts for worms. At this very moment, the poisonous fingers of pestilence are stretching swiftly and irresistibly toward London. This city has for too long been offending God. It will be utterly destroyed. The Bible tells us that an angry God destroyed those sinful cities of Sodom and Gomorrah which had offended him long ago, and in like fashion he will now destroy London and with it Cambridge, Thetford, Bury St. Edmunds and its sinful abbey, Walsham, and all the rest of the world which is sullied with sin.”
Drawing himself to his full height, he bellowed, “I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, ‘How long O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?’ ”
As he declaimed these terrible words, every few sentences he stopped and repeated alternately, “And I looked, and beheld a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him,” and then, “For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?”
As his audience stood transfixed in the presence of this awesome man, and as the drumbeats accentuated his horrific message, he began to recite from the book of Revelation: “This was prophesied, and this has come to pass.” (See figure 17.)
And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.
And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets.
The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth; and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all the green grass burnt up.
And the second angel sounded, and a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea; and the third part of the sea became blood, and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.
And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon a third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of the waters; and many men died of the waters because they were made bitter.
And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars.
And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth; and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit as the smoke of a great furnace; and there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth and in those days shall men seek death and shall not find it.
And the sixth angel sounded, and the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand, and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone. By these was a third part of men killed.
But the rest of the men who were not killed by these plagues, yet repented not of the works of their hands. Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.
The preacher halted for a moment and slowly scanned his shocked audience, catching the eye of many with his fierce gaze. “A third part, a third part!” he scoffed. “The Bible tells us this, yet I tell you that sinfulness in our times is so great that God is killing with this present plague not the third part but the second part of man, and sometimes even six men out of every seven. Nor yet do we repent of our sins, and so the seventh angel shall not sound his trumpet that can open up the gates of Heaven, and they shall be forever barred to us.”
“For God has said, ‘At my command, let the planets poison the air and corrupt the whole earth; let there be universal grief and lamentation. Let the sharp arrows of sudden death have dominion throughout the world. Let no one be spared, either for their sex or their age; let the innocent perish with the guilty and no one escape.’”
Then, when the hearts of his audience were collectively gripped with anguish and horror, he launched into a description of the Hell they would all be facing in a matter of weeks, when the pestilence came to their village and the time came for them to die.
“You have heard that those sick with the pestilence die agonizing deaths, but your death agonies shall be but nothing compared with what awaits you when your miserable life finally expires. You might be forgotten on earth after you die, but you will be remembered by the devil. For those that shall be damned in Hell shall have divers pains and tormenting, some with small devils, some with great devils, and so shall be in sorrow and care without end. And some in Hell shall burn in the great flame of fire, which is nine times hotter than is any fire in this world. Yes! And some shall be hanged by the neck, and devils without number shall draw their limbs asunder, and smite their bodies through with fiery brands. And some shall be hanged by the tongue, and some shall be hauled into the fire, and their bowels drawn out (see figure 18).
“I will show you what pain is ordained for your sins in Hell by this example. If there were here a barrel that was hammered full of long and sharp nails, with the points inward and the nails fiery hot, I trust there is nobody here before me that would be willing to be rolled a mile in this barrel for all the realm of England. And yet this were but a mile. Ah good Lord! How great pain there be eternally in every part of man’s five wits, not only a mile’s way but all the while God is God in Heaven.”
As if this were not enough, his followers, as a chorus, began to chant a well-known verse on the agonies of death, and many in his audience, knowing the words, joined in:
When the head quaketh
And the lips blacketh
And the nose sharpens
And the sinews stiffen
And the breast panteth
And the breath wanteth
And the teeth clatter
And the throat rattles
And the soul has left
And the body is nothing but a clout
Then will the body be thrown in a hole
And no one will remember your soul
Anguished folk in the crowd cried out to the preacher and his followers to sell them pardons for their sins. And they begged for a sight of holy relics that he must have carried with him to Walsham. They proffered pennies to buy from him pottery and bone charms against the plague. But he laughed scornfully and said he had none of these, and that salvation was not for sale. He tossed their money aside, mocking them for their belated groveling and telling them that God’s mind was already made up. It was now far too late to buy exemption from his dreadful will.
“In Hell a man shall weep more than all the water in the earth—alms, Masses, and prayers shall not avail him. Heaven is for those who serve God.”
With that he turned his back and walked away out of the village on the road toward Bury, followed not only by the band of disciples and musicians he had arrived with, but by several villagers beating their breasts and crying pitifully.
The next day before a huge spellbound crowd in the Great Market of Bury St. Edmunds, the prophet pointed contemptuously to the soaring Guildhall and the rows of fine houses surrounding it, asserting that there was nothing the city leaders and the rich could do to save their city or themselves. The crowd visibly wilted as he swept his long arm across the skyline to encompass the towering churches of St. Mary and St. James, and beyond them the magnificent abbey of St. Edmund. Outside that very abbey while the monks looked on in horror, he proclaimed that the church with all its wealth, earthly authority, and majesty was powerless to protect its flock, or even its own clergy, from God’s awful punishment.
This preacher made as profound an impression on the sophisticated citizenry of bustling Bury as he did on the simple folk. But it was not his oratory alone that had so shaken his audience. For among the crowd were some who had hotter news than even the prophet. The day before two carters from London had arrived with packs of groceries, and they had chatted freely about the terrible pestilence from France that was raging in the ports and towns in the south and west of the realm. And later in the evening, when they had been plied with drink, they confessed to having been told rumors of strange deaths in parts of London just before they departed on their northward journey to Bury.