7
The pattern of plague dissemination is difficult for historians to unravel and must have appeared mysterious and unpredictable to contemporaries. Certainly information about its spread did not always flow smoothly. For example, the letter known as “ Terribilis,” urging the power of prayer against the invasion of plague, which Edward III wished to be circulated in the southern dioceses, took a long time to reach its recipients. The king had originally asked John Stratford, the archbishop of Canterbury, to write it, but Stratford died on August 23 and the task was devolved to the prior of Christchurch, Canterbury. A copy of his letter written to the bishop of London survives that is dated September 28. Nor did bishops always reside within their dioceses. When the bishop of Winchester wrote a letter on October 24, in which he expressed “anguish . . . that this cruel plague has now begun a . . . savage attack on the coastal areas of England,” it was from what he thought was the safety of Southwark, a suburb of London. But the plague was fast approaching there as well.
Knowledge of the plague in London is frustratingly thin for such an important city, which had a population of around 100,000. The diocesan registers have been lost, and there are no equivalents of manorial court rolls. Being such a large settlement, the capital experienced a duration and pattern of the epidemic differing from that seen elsewhere. From analysis of surviving wills, the disease appears to have persisted for at least six months as it spread across the city, which is considerably longer than it lasted in smaller settlements. It is also possible that the death rate experienced considerable fluctuations, plunging for a time after the initial flare-up in late autumn 1348, only to soar to fresh peaks in the opening months of the new year. This is indicated by the announcement in early January of the prorogation of the forthcoming parliament at Westminster, because “the plague of deadly pestilence has suddenly broken out . . . and daily increases in severity.” Twenty-five of the monks of the abbey of Westminster, out of a usual complement of around fifty, died in 1348-1349.
There was a great deal of magic in fourteenth-century orthodox religion, and a great many survivals of pagan beliefs besides. Such beliefs and practices were naturally resorted to with mounting fervor under the threat of the approaching pestilence. In addition to the powers attributed to saints and holy relics, in the minds of theologians as well as simple folk, God was called on to bless the holy bread that was given away on Sundays in place of the Eucharist, “so that all who consume it shall receive health of body as well as of soul,” and thus was regarded as providing medicine for the sick as well as protection against plague. It was commonly thought appropriate for the faithful to sprinkle holy water to drive away evil spirits or pestilential vapors, as well as to drink it as a cure for disease or a protection against it. The wearing of wax amulets, originally made out of Easter candles blessed by the pope, was extremely popular for the benefits they bestowed on the wearer.
Priests alone had the power to administer the seven sacraments, of which penance assumed particular significance at the time of the Black Death. Three conditions were necessary for the forgiveness of mortal sins, which were more serious than venial sins: penitents had to be truly contrite, confess their sins to a priest, and perform the penance they were given, which was appropriate to the sin that had been committed. Those who died with sins that were unconfessed and unrepented could, or would, go to Hell. But a dilemma arose if, through no fault of their own, the dying were denied the ministrations of a priest, and for this reason sudden death was especially feared throughout the Middle Ages. In early January 1349, at the height of the plague in the diocese of Bath and Wells, the bishop, acknowledging that “priests cannot be found for love or money,” ordered his clergy to “make it known speedily and publicly . . . to everybody, but particularly to those that have fallen sick, that if when on the point of death they cannot secure the services of a properly ordained priest, they should make confession of their sins . . . to any lay person, even to a woman if a man is not available.” He further urged them “to let it be known at the same time that confession made in this way can be wholesome and of great benefit to them for the remission of their sins.”
A mid the gathering fear and despair, two young people in Walsham—Robert, son of William Cranmer, and Alice, daughter of John and Amice Terwald—decided to marry. The match met with the warm approval of their families. Robert’s father and grandfather, being generous and relatively wealthy by Walsham standards, set about providing the couple with the resources needed to support themselves in their independent life together. Robert had two older sisters, Olivia and Hilary, who had already been set up in married life, and an unmarried brother, William. His father and grandfather decided to treat both of the brothers equally, and soon after the announcement of Robert’s betrothal, William Sr. purchased a piece of land in Brookfield from William Wither to give to his sons, and added to it an acre of his own land in Hulkescroft. The relatively comfortable independence of the young married couple was assured when their grandfather generously gave a further three acres to the two brothers, together with a house where Robert and Alice might set up home.
Though some aspects of life in Walsham in the autumn and early winter of 1348 might have appeared on the surface to be proceeding very much as usual, residents noted some disconcerting signs of change. For example, a trickle of people had always drifted off the manor never to return, but of late there had been a sharp increase in the numbers of departures. What is more, the migrants were no longer drawn merely from the landless, rootless, poor laboring folk who had little to give up. Now significant landholders were to be found among those deserting Walsham, including a few from long-established families who were selling their lands and stock in return for ready cash. A disconcerting unease lay just under the surface, which strained social relations and made formerly calm people act in excitable and unpredictable ways. This was certainly the case with the eleven tenants who refused to turn up when summoned by the reeve to harvest crops for Sir Hugh de Saxham and Lady Rose. When they were challenged to fulfill their obligations, the rebels openly boasted that if the end of the world was coming they were not going to spend their last days working for nothing for grasping lords. The manor had never seen such large-scale defiance, but, surprisingly, the lord and lady decided to respond in a cautious manner and simply warned the defaulters that they would be dealt with at the next meeting of the manor court, where they were eventually fined a few pence.
Try as the villagers might to push aside the horrifying threat they faced in the near future in order to deal with the prosaic routines of the present, their efforts were consistently undermined. The terror engendered by the fiery preacher had barely subsided when word spread quickly through Walsham that Master John had received another official message to deliver from the pulpit. This time it had been sent on the orders of the king himself.
“I have a message which comes from our most excellent prince and lord, Edward, by the grace of God the illustrious king of England and France. Your valiant king, ever mindful of the welfare of his subjects, tells us that he has given serious consideration to how Almighty God, of his infinite mercy, might save and protect his realm of England from these plagues and from death. To bring this about, on his orders, the bishop of London has written to all churches urging devout prayers and Masses, so that God, pacified by prayers, might yet snatch the people of England from these tribulations, and of his grace show help to them and, of his ineffable pity, preserve human frailty from these plagues and mortality.
“Terrible is God toward the sons of men, and by his command all things are subdued to the rule of his will. Those whom he loves he censures and chastises; he punishes their shameful deeds in various ways during this mortal life so that they might not be condemned eternally. He often allows plagues, miserable famines, and other forms of suffering to arise, and uses them to terrify and torment men and so drive out their sins. And thus, indeed, the realm of England, because of the growing pride and corruption of its subjects, and their numberless sins, has on many occasions stood desolate and afflicted by the burdens of the wars which are exhausting and devouring the wealth of the kingdom, and by many other miseries.” The priest stopped speaking for a second or two, and then added with special emphasis, holding the letter up so that all could see: “The king, through his spokesman the lord bishop, tells us, ‘It is now to be feared that the kingdom of England is to be oppressed by the pestilence and wretched mortalities of men which have flared up in other regions.’ But the arrival of this letter has been long delayed, and in the time it has taken to reach me it has been overtaken by even more somber news. What the king and the bishop of London feared is now a reality.”
There was turmoil among the tightly packed congregation, as their trusted shepherd, on the authority of the king himself, confirmed their worst fears. Master John paused, but he waited in vain for silence to return. So he continued above the hubbub in a loud, deep voice that he unsuccessfully tried to keep from shaking: “It is with great sorrow, and I am myself struck with terror, that I must tell you that people are at this moment dying in great numbers from a new and mysterious disease in towns and villages in the south and west of the realm, and in the great city of Bristol in the far west near Wales. I cannot confirm rumors that the pestilence may already be in London, but it is likely to be far closer to us than we know.”
The priest continued, trying to make a message of hope heard above the din of lamentation that rose from his distressed parishioners: “So, we must redouble our efforts to appease God’s anger, both by refraining from sin and by begging for his mercy. In accordance with the wishes of the king, I will organize more Masses and special sermons, as well as put the greatest efforts into our regular penitential processions on Wednesdays and Fridays. I have been asked to announce that the bishop, with the blessing of the archbishop of Canterbury, will grant generous indulgences to remit pains and sufferings in the afterlife to all who perform these things. Faith and hope must rest with these actions.”
Many wept, pleading for God’s mercy, while others questioned whether prayers and processions were any use, and whether the instructions of bishops and even the king would have any effect at all on God’s anger. To the despair of the prudent, pragmatic, and sensible villagers, who with commendable self-control for the past few weeks and months had remained calm, and had given reassurance to their neighbors of the mercy of God and the unreliability of rumor mongers, it was the fantasists, the pessimists, and the hysterics who were shown to have grasped the truth more firmly.
Though inwardly aware that he was scarcely hanging onto coherent speech, Master John doggedly explained to his flock what they all must do. He urged them not to lose faith, but to throw themselves willingly into yet greater depths of devotion and contrition, and he made a bold show of ordering the clerics around him to organize new encompassing acts of worship.
“As we have been directed, every Wednesday and Sunday all the clergy of this parish will assemble in our churchyard, or in the church if it is wet, and humbly and devoutly recite the seven penitential psalms and the fifteen psalms of degrees on our knees (see figure 19). And every Wednesday and Friday all the people of the parish, regardless of the weather, will go solemnly in procession. They will sing these psalms and the great litany that the fathers of the church have instituted against the pestilence, and also perform many other acts of devotion. At various stations along the route, myself and my assistants will conduct readings or give short sermons. You will all abandon your worldly tasks and accompany these processions with bowed heads and bare feet, fasting. With a pious heart and lamenting your sins, you will set aside all idle chatter. And as you go devoutly, you will say as many times as possible, the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary. And when the procession returns to this church you will remain in earnest prayer until the end of the Mass, which I will celebrate immediately after each procession.
“And we will believe in our hearts that if we persevere in our devotions with faith, rectitude, and firm trust in the omnipotence and mercy of the Savior, we will soon receive a remedy and timely help from Heaven. And you will each be granted an indulgence by our bishop of forty days for taking part in the procession and Mass and for praying there for the safety of the king and his subjects, and all Christians, and for the end of the plague. And if you cannot join us for the best of reasons but say these prayers elsewhere, you shall receive an indulgence of thirty days.”
Again a torrent of voices arose from the congregation, but the priest felt helpless to hush or answer them. Not wishing to sow doubt where faith should prevail, he turned toward the altar, saying that he had to pray for forgiveness and guidance, and he suggested that they all do the same. The gathering fell silent and, as if in one movement, all fell to their knees, except those who threw themselves prostrate on the floor. A few beat their heads on the flagstones until the blood ran.
The time now being devoted to prayers and processions cut deep into the working week of almost all residents, but the steward of Lady Rose and Sir Hugh de Saxham was at pains to make it clear that all of his lord’s and lady’s unfree tenants were required as usual to attend their court, which was scheduled for Friday, October 24. He saw no reason why conjectures about the pestilence should deflect him from carrying on as normal, especially as there was a particularly heavy load of business to conduct and some substantial fines to collect. During the proceedings, which lasted a good part of the day, an exceptionally large number of transfers of land were registered, including the gifts to young Robert and William Cranmer by their father and grandfather, and the formal passing of dead Mansur Shucford’s half a cottage and six acres to his son John, on payment to the lord of a cow in calf as heriot. As usual, small fines were levied on those who had broken bylaws by grazing animals on the common fields without right, and the steward took special delight in ordering that the goods of Roger, the prior of Ixworth, should be attached because his sheep had been grazing unlawfully, although, of course, he had no intention of taking any such action. Various manorial officers presented evidence of a spate of minor but worrying thefts, reporting the servants of eight tenants for stealing small quantities of the lord’s straw, for which they were each fined about a day’s pay. Another seven persons were fined twice as much for helping themselves to small quantities of the lord’s corn while it was growing in the field just before harvest time. Then the court found Peter Gilbert guilty of the more serious theft of half a bushel of unwinnowed wheat from the lord’s barn, for which he was fined a hefty 6s 8d, more than ten times what it was worth. And the lord’s officers also pursued, in a time-honored fashion, the trespasses of villagers who had carelessly damaged their master’s and mistress’s crops by failing to keep under adequate control a variety of animals, ranging from cows and foals to geese. Equally mundane, but no less pressing for the litigants, was the continued refusal of John Rob-hood and Thomas Fuller to settle a dispute over where the precise boundary between their lands should lie, Richard Qualm’s obstruction of a watercourse, and Thomas Julle’s pursuit of John Man for the repayment of an overdue debt.
However, when the steward moved on to deal with tenants who had sold pieces of land without license, those present at the court immediately realized that this particular misdemeanor had grown into a matter of considerable consequence. Many times in recent weeks they had witnessed long-standing residents, people of some substance, offering their land for sale, but the number of cases now being presented to the late October court was even higher than expected. More unusually still, they were told that the heirs to three tenements had not come to Walsham to take up their inheritances. In order to preserve the veneer of normality, the steward had been advised by his master and mistress to pass quickly over the conspiracy of the eleven tenants who had refused to work on the demesne farm, and reluctantly he fined them each only the 3d which his bailiff had to pay to hire substitutes. But no such concession was allowed to newly-weds Alice Terwald and Robert Cranmer. They were charged a hefty fine of 20s for having their marriage approved because they both came from wealthy families who could afford to pay.
Soon after the court session ended, one of the missing heirs, Richard Man, turned up to claim the acre and rood of land that his sister had left him on her death. He gave the steward the convincing excuse that he had been forced to make very careful inquiries before setting out to travel to Walsham to ensure that the village and its environs were free of plague.
While there were no signs of plague in the region around Walsham, news came almost daily of pestilential deaths spreading across the far south of England. In early November a monk from Ixworth reported that his prior had received a letter informing him that twenty-three of the twenty-six monks in the Cistercian abbey of Newenham in Devon had died, and a few weeks later the dreadful news reached Walsham from many sources that multitudes were dying in London from a new disease. Then a Walsham carter who had set out on a journey to London hurried back in panic to the village. He had turned around before reaching Chelmsford because he encountered so many travelers with tales of strange deaths occurring in towns and villages farther along the route into the capital.
Wayfaring preachers, however, were not deterred by the spread of the pestilence but were inspired to wander the country with ever greater frequency. When they visited Walsham, which they did in ever increasing numbers, Master John frequently expressed his disapproval because they were unlicensed and displayed little knowledge of the Scriptures. But his condemnation did little to prevent these itinerants attracting large audiences and collecting many pennies, as they declared, with fevered relish and redoubled confidence, that the villagers faced the same terrible fate as that being inflicted on London and other fine places in the south. One claimed he was hot-foot from Hampshire and had the bishop of Winchester’s own writ to proclaim what was happening to town and country there: “These cities, castles, towns, and villages, which until now have rejoiced in their illustrious residents, their wisdom in counsel, their splendid riches, their great strength, and the beauty of their womenfolk, have been suddenly and woefully stripped of their inhabitants by this most savage pestilence. Until recently crowds of people have flocked from far and wide for succor, pleasure, and comfort to these fine places, and they have rung with the abundance of joy. But now no one dares to enter these places anymore. Instead all flee from them, as if from the caves of wild animals, so that all joy ceases, all sweetness is dammed up, and the sound of mirth silenced. And they have become places of horror and desolate wastelands.”
London, the finest and largest city in the realm, with the most splendid riches and most illustrious residents of all, lay a little more than eighty miles to the south of Walsham. It was an easy four-day journey on foot and could be comfortably reached in less than half that time on horseback. It was a place of wonder, by far the leading port and trading market in England as well as the center of court and government. Although few Walsham residents had ever ventured to the capital, they had frequent contact with people who had. Direct travel between Bury and London was commonplace for traders. A wide range of goods were brought up from London to Bury and thence to nearby towns and markets on an almost daily basis. Fine cloth, wines, fruits, spices, as well as mundane haberdashery and hardware, all made their way on carts and packhorses from London to the stalls and shops in Bury’s market places. In return, Bury acted as a collecting center for the wool, corn, and livestock of the region, which together with some of the cloth produced along the Stour valley in Lavenham and Clare, went southward to the capital for redistribution within England and export overseas.
It was in mid-December that a man and a pregnant woman arrived in Walsham, carrying a few packs of possessions on a small horse. They quietly moved in with relatives in a cottage tucked away toward Alwood and kept to themselves. The man was a journeyman pewterer who specialized in making chalices, and with his wife he had lived happily in a garret over his master’s pewter workshop near Cheapside. That was until his master died suddenly, coughing up blood. They had helped bury him the next day but, with signs that the sickness was spreading in the crowded streets round about them, they then fled in terror from the city. The day after they arrived in Walsham, inquisitive neighbors were told that they were visiting close relatives for a short period over the coming holy days. Though villagers had their suspicions, the newcomers were allowed to stay, it being Christmastide and the uncomfortable resemblance they bore to Mary and Joseph seeking shelter in Bethlehem.
Soon after Christmas a distracted stranger was found sleeping in the church. When questioned by the village beadle, he said he was searching for his wife’s brother who he believed lived near Newmarket. He was sure he would give him shelter, but in a week or two’s wandering he had not been able to locate him. He asked whether his brother-in-law lived in Walsham but was told he did not. On being pressed further, the stranger admitted fleeing from London and, without further prompting, unfolded, in short breathless bursts, his personal experiences of the pestilence there: “The great city is in the grip of a terrible and most powerful disease that keeps growing in ferocity. When you catch it, you suffer unbearable pains and cough and spit up cupfuls of blood, and then you die within a couple of days, without fail. I know what I am talking about, for I nursed my sick wife and my three young sons for two days until they had all died in agony, without a priest or even a neighbor to comfort them or help me.”
Thinking that his sufferings would arouse the spirit of charity in those confronting him, the stranger went on. “Then I carried them to the cemetery on my shoulders at dead of night, when nobody else was about, and laid them side by side in a narrow, shallow grave which I dug with my own hands in the corner of the churchyard. As I left their graveside just after dawn, I caught sight of a score or more of bodies being unloaded from carts and hastily piled into four open graves, with only a single priest to say brief obsequies.” Asked what he did next, he recalled returning to his lodgings and spending a couple of days in his room praying for the souls of his wife and sons. But soon others in the house and in properties up and down the street were also struck with the pestilence, and so he had fled the city hoping to escape from its clutches.
By now an excited group of parishioners were quizzing the stranger, for he was the first person they had met who admitted to seeing the effects of the pestilence with their own eyes. Eager to please, he willingly responded to their questions and told them how he had seen victims without number stricken with fever, prostrate with pain, spitting and coughing up blood, and also heard that a few were afflicted by great boils. Others had dropped dead without warning or any outward signs of illness, though he admitted that he had only heard about such sudden deaths and had not himself seen this happen. But he had seen many bodies lying in the streets, both alive and dead, abandoned by their families and friends.
The villagers demanded to know whether the pestilence had taken hold in any of the villages and towns that he had passed on his way up from London. Sensing their growing hostility, he assured them that he had seen no trace of it anywhere and that he would surely be dead by now if he had been infected in London. Then he coughed loudly and spat on the ground to show that there was no blood in his sputum. But they chased him from the church and then from the village, and threw stones at him until he was running in fear of his life. At a meeting that evening the villagers decided to split into groups and take turns in guarding the roads to see that he did not return. Those who had met the Londoner and felt his breath on their faces as they interrogated him spent the next days waiting in terror lest they had caught the pestilence from him. But they had not.
Nor in the following weeks did the pestilence appear to draw any nearer to Walsham and its region. In fact, during a particularly frosty spell in mid-January encouraging rumors began to circulate that the plague was waning in London. But these hopes were soon disappointed when the Bury burgesses who had been summoned to attend a Parliament in Westminster in late January received notice that the king had abandoned it because “the plague of deadly pestilence had suddenly broken out, and was daily increasing in severity.” The grave fears for the safety of the nobles, knights, burgesses, and bishops if they were forced to travel to Westminster were also shared by the common folk, who were well aware that nothing seemed so certain to lead to infection than to go into places where the pestilence was raging and mix with people afflicted by it.
The terror raging less than a hundred miles from the doors of Walsham’s residents combined with their beliefs and the teachings of their priests to feed an almost obsessive concern with sin. Many of those remarkable people, who through feats of self-control or indifference, had managed until now to continue to lead normal lives, finally succumbed to the pervading spirit of heated anxiety, and a few who had formerly appeared unmoved swung to the opposite extreme of scarcely controlled hysteria.
Everyone now knew that the sinful would be punished, but they hoped God might still avert his anger for those who deserved mercy. It was not for man to know the mind of God, but deliverance from death might follow from the speedy confession of those sins and misdemeanors that had been unwittingly committed, if accompanied by the expression of sincere contrition, the dutiful fulfillment of penance, and the avoidance of new transgressions. So the clergy of the parish redoubled their fervent exhortations to all those who might have committed sin to perform acts of public and private abasement, and they repeatedly pronounced that none should believe themselves exempt. Time and again parishioners were urged from the pulpit to “beseech all the saints in heaven to pray for you to Christ, that he will have mercy and pity on you as he bought you on the cross.” This the faithful did with great fervor and stamina, having been taught that “confession cleanses one’s heart, enlightens one’s senses, sanctifies one’s soul, and prepares one to receive Christ.” The flock was repeatedly warned by its shepherds, and by each other, of the evils which awaited those who delayed confession or, after confessing, returned to their sin “as a dog returns to its vomit” and by so doing “crucified the Son of God a second time.”
At the end of a particularly emotional Sunday Mass, during which everyone in attendance prostrated themselves on the stone floor of the church publicly confessing their sins and begging forgiveness, Master John stood in the porch of the church and told a story. It was about a very devout woman who had always confessed every sin she had committed since childhood, except one, which she held back for shame. “That night, as she was in a deep sleep, Jesus Christ appeared to her with his wounds wide open and showed her his heart, which was laid bare, bleeding and pierced. He spoke to her asking, ‘Why are you ashamed of showing me your heart when I am not ashamed of showing you mine?’ And he took her hand and put it in his side, saying, ‘Take and touch my heart.’ She woke up with great remorse and showed her bloodstained hands to all she met, and then she confessed that sin. For this confession, as a sign that her sin was forgiven, her hands became as they had been before.”
Not wanting to add to the alarm that had already gripped most of his parishioners, Master John preferred to encourage rather than frighten, and he refrained from telling what awful fates befell unconfessed sinners. But his assistants, and a succession of wandering preachers and mystics, were not so reticent. His flock also used their fevered imaginations to conjure up their own terrifying visions of the Hell that awaited them if they were unfortunate enough to die a sudden death or a lonely one, or rendered insensible by the disease which struck them down.
Regular attendance and animated participation at Mass became a daily or even more frequent endeavor. To cater for the needs of many in their flock who desired to see the Host at least once every day, the clergy combined together with tireless commitment to offer a succession of Low Masses throughout the day. And, as if these ceaseless devotions were insufficient in number, groups of parishioners took to contributing money to common purses, from which they periodically drew to hire priests to perform additional Masses in private. Yet more comfort was available when needed from wayfaring friars, who found their reassuring words, easy confessions, and light penances in far greater demand than ever before, even though the clamor for their services encouraged them to increase greatly the fees they charged.
Frequent attendance at Mass was essential for collective as well as personal salvation, and neighbors and friends cajoled the recalcitrant and assisted the old and infirm to make their way to St. Mary’s. Those who lived far from the church, in High Hall, Alwood Green, and Hartshall, expended much time and experienced considerable discomfort on their journeys in the cold, dark days of January and February, but were succored by the thought that the greater their sacrifices the more likely they were to be noted by God and to earn special dispensation from him. With Master John’s encouragement, much time was devoted to learning the Creed, the Paternoster, and the Ave Maria, and to identifying the sacraments, the seven deadly sins, the works of charity, acts of mercy, and seven virtues. After much thought, Master John introduced additional Communions, where the most assiduous and knowledgeable were permitted to partake more frequently of the Body of Christ in the form of the Communion wafer. For the others, who hungered no less fervently after health of body as well as of soul, there was the comfort of a piece of consecrated bread, which was dispensed each Sunday from a large mound on a trestle table in the porch. The size of the mound grew larger by the week, until an additional table had to be provided to hold the quantities of bread that were demanded by the lengthening queues.
Less seemly were the struggles that had begun to take place among parishioners to grab the stumps of the candles that had been used at High Mass. Those who were successful rolled them into wax cakes, impressed them with the fingers of the right hand of the large wooden statue of the Madonna kept in the church, and wore them on a leather band around their necks. Much as the clergy strove, they had little success in controlling the trade in such charms, and the wax amulets were sold in the village for a day’s wage. In the hysteria which bubbled just under the surface of everyday life, the demand for the protection offered by holy water also soared. Troops of villagers filed daily to the church with containers of all shapes and sizes, and the supply was supplemented by carriers who fetched more from the well of Our Lady in the nearby village of Woolpit. Holy water was drunk, sprinkled over food, loved ones, and animals, thrown over paths and fields, and used to moisten almost every doorway in Walsham by constant dousings.
Anyone with skill as a wood carver was able to earn extra money meeting the desire for carvings of the Madonna and of the saints, and those who could paint adorned them with colored vestments, raven and flaxen hair, and ruby lips and cheeks. The pewterer who had recently arrived from London found himself employed for long hours casting tiny bracelets and necklaces of brightly polished tin to adorn the images which stood in the shrines of most cottages and all houses. Master John had always loved a well-decorated church, and fervently believed that statues and pictures of the saints, and especially of the crucified Christ, were the books of lay folk. Just as the clergy got closer to God through reading his words, so those who were ignorant of letters should at least be able to see with their eyes what they were not able to read in books. But of late he had become concerned by the heightened emotional veneration of the mere images of saints, and he was troubled by the constant prayers and oblations offered to saints by name for the procuring of personal protection and benefits. He chided the most fervent of the worshipers to remember that the figures they treasured were only wood and stone and nothing else. “When you kneel before the images, you should utter your prayers not to these but to God and his saints.” He also warned many times in church, “If we give offerings and worship to these images of wood and stone that should only be given to God, we not only offend God, breaking his behest, but also we offend all the holy saints of Heaven. For, as St. Austin witnesses, they hate if such things be done to themselves, for they do not wish to usurp to themselves such things that belong only to God.”
Master John, however, was delighted to receive a collection from the parish amounting to 40s for the making of a large stone statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary to stand beside the high altar. He swiftly commissioned a mason from Bury to begin work immediately, and then set about finding the best painter to decorate it when the mason had finished.
Master John hoped fervently that the devotions of his parishioners would succeed in placating God, but he also took special note of everything he heard which might enable him to care better for his flock should the plague come. It was some time since he had first learned of the chaos in Italy, Avignon, and other distant places caused by the sheer multitude of sick and dying, with many left to face death without the opportunity of confessing to a priest. But he could not condone what he saw as the irresponsible actions of bishops and other church leaders in these stricken places, when they felt compelled to bestow the ability to hear confession, perhaps even to absolve sins, on the lowliest of clergy, including those who had scarcely begun their training for holy orders.
So he was deeply troubled to learn from the treasurer of Ixworth priory on one of his regular visits to collect money from John’s parish, that the ravages of plague in the diocese of Bath and Wells had caused the bishop to go even further in diluting the sacred offices of the priest. “Apparently,” he told John, “the huge numbers dying unconfessed in this western diocese because priests could not be found has panicked the bishop and his advisers into proclaiming that confession might be made to a layperson, even to a woman if a man were not available!” The treasurer looked at John to see the effect of his words, and was gratified to see John’s face frozen in shock. “The bishop excuses himself in perpetrating this error, perhaps even heresy, by saying that he was forced to act because so many were dying without the sacraments, and here I use his own words, ‘since priests cannot be found who are willing out of zeal, devotion, or for any stipend to visit the sick and administer to them the sacraments of the Church.’ Can you believe what I am saying?” John remained shocked and silent. “And, as if this were not enough,” the treasurer complained, “in the bishop’s palace in Norwich, at this very moment, similar errors are being contemplated, and by the bishop of Ely too.” When John recovered enough composure to question him further, the treasurer told him that the senior officers of the bishop of Norwich, left in charge of affairs while their lord was in France on the king’s business negotiating a truce, had become so alarmed by a recent spate of untimely deaths in their city that they were urgently discussing the matter among themselves. Rumor also had it that the supporters of such a dispensation were gaining the upper hand by maintaining that the pope himself had already approved it and that they had found it was allowable according to the teaching of the apostles.
In truth, this news, far more than the daily tales of carnage in southern England and London, shook Master John’s faith in his Church. He had always considered ministering to the sick and the dying to be among the most important of all his duties. What could be more vital than to wash the soul of sin and guard it with the prayers, rites, and litany of the Church and all its saints as life ebbed from the body? He accepted the customary practice that someone faced with sudden death might confess to whoever happened to be with him or her, but such desperate remedies should only be used in rare and extreme circumstances. A general rule should never be made that allowed the role of the learned, skilled, and holy priest to be cast aside. Inward contrition could be strengthened by confession to a layperson, but contrition could not slay mortal sin; it could only beat it down. Confession to a priest, who had the power of the keys and was in a state of grace, was the only way of slaying the most deadly sin. A priest alone could take out the root and destroy it, heal the wound, wipe out the pain, and make it as if it never had been.
Master John pondered the confusion and hysteria that such extreme and ill-founded responses from the leaders of the Church would provoke. When the world emerged from the pestilence, surely the standing of the clergy was bound to be irreparably damaged. What everlasting comfort could confession to a neighbor really bring? How could God listen as intently when confession was made to a woman? The bishops might hope that all lay confessors were bound by Church precepts to conceal and keep secret all they heard, forbidden by a decree of the sacred canons to betray such confessions, but John knew in his heart that only the clergy could be trusted not to reveal the secrets of the confessional. Moreover, those who thought themselves close to death did not always die, and confession to a layperson would leave the penitent open to blackmail, public shame, and derision.
Yet, despite his misgivings, from that moment on Master John began to turn over in his mind who among his parishioners might be capable of shouldering a few of the burdens and duties of the priest in the midst of a death-dealing pestilence. His flock included an abundance of willing and capable helpers, and, without informing them why, he began to instruct a chosen few on what should be said and done at the bedside of someone in their hour of their death, if they feared a priest might not arrive in time. He spent a long time without success pondering how to harness the energies and boundless devotion of Margery Wodebite for the good of the parish.
In early February an earnest young clerk scarcely out of his teens, with carefully tonsured thick brown hair, arrived at St. Mary’s from Ely. Shortly after, another novice, dressed somewhat extravagantly for such a junior cleric, arrived from Norwich. They presented themselves to Master John for employment as chaplains, bearing letters from their bishops confirming that they had recently been ordained into the priesthood. Their arrival confirmed what John had heard from many sources, that inordinately young men were being hurried through their orders in an unseemly fashion to bolster the ranks of the army of God in its battle against the inevitable onslaught of plague. The two young priests stressed to Master John that they were eager to assist in the cure of souls and gather small fees for their services wherever they might. They professed themselves ready, under his direction, to work tirelessly ministering to the parishioners of Walsham and, if necessary, to die in the service of God. When Master John tested their ability to recite Mass, matins, and hours, he found that they gabbled their words and skipped over parts of the text, and that their Latin needed considerable improvement. For these failings he told them he would refer to them as deacons until they showed satisfactory improvement. He also made a special point of reproving the young man from Norwich for the fashionable peaked shoes he wore, telling him they were a sign of vanity and gave out a signal that he cared too much for the worthless things of this world.
In former and more settled times, Master John might well have sent both of them away, deeming them to be boys in need of further education. But now, though professing an outward show of reluctance, he was inwardly grateful for their abundant youthful energy. Moreover, so great were his fears for the future that he continued with the meticulous training of his chosen lay helpers.