of Aquitaine, and the town of Calais; and it was agreed that he was no longer to be a vassal under the King of France for these French possessions, as he and his fathers had always been before, but to be an independent sovereign over them. The Black Prince took up his abode in Bordeaux, to rule over these French provinces. 5. Everybody is very much interested about the battles of Crecy and Poitiers, but very few histories tell us much about what happened in the ten years which came between them; just as if the history of England was the history of kings, princes, and soldiers, and not of any other people. But it was during that time that the first of those terrible pestilences came, which were in reality far more important than either of those famous fights. A few thousand men were killed in the battles; but without any fighting at all there were killed by this awful disease more than 2,000,000 people in England alone. The Black Death. If 6. Though we know very little about it, we can imagine a great deal a great deal of the terror, and misery, and pain, and the long sorrow afterwards. The sickness was so virulent that few who were attacked by it lived more than three days; it was called by the dreadful name of the Black Death. It is so awful that we can hardly realize it. Let us try to think what it would be if in every house only one person died; what wailing and woe there would arise. But it was worse than that. there were six people in a family, three of those would have died. If there were 200 people living in a village, 100 of them would have died. Of course it was not literally that half the people in every house died; it is more likely that in one house none might die, and in another all; but, taking all together, there seems hardly any doubt that half the people of England died of this frightful plague; in some places more, and in some less. 7. More than two thirds of the clergymen in Norfolk and in Yorkshire died, so that it was almost impossible to get any one to read the service; and the bishops were obliged to make quite young boys rectors of parishes, or the churches must have been shut up. In the town of Yarmouth, which was a flourishing fishing-town then, as it is now, more than 7000 people were buried in one year, so that most of the houses were left empty and desolate, and gradually fell into decay. Nearly 200 years afterwards there were still gardens and bare spaces where there had formerly been houses full of happy people. 8. At the other side of England it was just as bad. In Bristol so many people died that there were hardly enough left alive to bury them. The principal streets were so forlorn and deserted that the grass grew several inches high in them. In smaller places, villages and hamlets, sometimes every house was left empty, all those who dwelt in them being dead. 9. It was most terrible of all in London. One of the knights whom Froissart tells us about, Sir Walter Manny, gave a large piece of land near to Smithfield on purpose to bury those who died, and in one year 50,000 people were buried there. But this new cemetery was not used till all the other churchyards were overflowing, and most likely more than 100,000 people died of this plague in London, small as it was then compared with what it is now. That cemetery of Sir Walter Manny's, with the chapel that stood in it, was afterwards given by him as a place for the monks of the Charterhouse, and it is there that the school and college (or alms-house) of the Charterhouse now stand. 10. The Black Death was perhaps the most fearful plague that ever came to England, or to Europe, for it raged in Italy, Germany, and France quite as fiercely as it did here; but there have been other very terrible ones since, of which we shall have to hear. How is it that we never hear of such plagues now? for even the worst visitations of cholera which have come in modern times have been nothing at all like this. A plague which carried off half the people of a country is now quite unheard of. In those days people knew nothing at all about the laws of health. Their towns were dirty, crowded, and undrained. They did not know how to prevent infection from coming, nor how to check it when it came. They cared little or nothing for pure air or pure water. The windows were small, the houses dark, and the streets narrow. The doctors would often try to cure their patients by consulting the stars, or by making magical images. The clergy thought that the pestilence was sent as a judgment for sins, and led the miserable people about singing woeful litanies, and barefooted, "Pressing the stones with feet unused and soft, And bearing images of saints aloft," in hopes of winning pardon from an angry God. It was not until quite lately that people began to find out that care and cleanliness-clean houses, clean water, clean streets, clean air, and clean bodies--are the means for keeping off these awful scourges. When every body knows and believes that, then, most likely, many other diseases, as fevers and cholera, will die away, and we, or rather those who come after us, will know no more about them than we know about the plague. The labourers. 11. After the pestilence had passed away there was, of course, a great difference in the state of the country, and above all in the condition of the labouring men. A change had indeed been going on for some time, and a change which, in a certain way, was much for the better. This was, that a good many of the lowest class, the villeins and the serfs, had been gradually rising into freemen. Though it had long ceased to be a common practice for a rich man to sell his serfs, still most of the poor up till about this time were looked on as part of the estate, and were obliged to live and work always on the land where they were born; they could not wander about and change their masters and occupations as they chose. Magna Charta, which had done so much for all the other people of the land, had been of very little help to these poor labourers. The landlords even strongly objected to their serfs putting their children to school. If they did that, and a little serf boy proved to be clever, and got on with his learning, he might in time become a clergyman, and then he would be free. That was almost the only chance he would have of getting on in the world, and some, perhaps many, did really rise in this way. 12. But all this was changing now. More and more of the serfs were buying their liberty and being set free. Edward III. and his lords and knights wanted a good deal of money for their wars, and some of it they got in this way. Now, too, it was gradually becoming customary, instead of a landlord giving a poor man a piece of land and a cottage, on condition of his doing work for him, for the peasant to pay rent in money for his house and land, and the master to hire labourers to work on his own home-farm. This is how owners of land do now, and it gives more liberty and is much pleasanter for both parties. Cloth 13. Moreover, there was a new sort of work now to be done in which these poor workmen could be very useful, and which was a great help to them in gaining their liberty. This was the manufacture of cloth. England had long been noted for its fine wool, but it used to be all exported out of the country, principally to the Netherlands, because the English, as Fuller tells us, "knew no more what to weaving. do with their wool than the sheep that wear it, as to any artificial and curious drapery." In Edward III.'s time this was altered. He invited a great many of the clever Flemish weavers to come over to England, and teach the English to make fine and beautiful cloth. This trade was very welcome to the English, and enriched them very much. "Happy the yeoman's house into which one of these Dutchmen did enter, bringing industry and wealth along with them. Such who came in strangers among them soon after went out bridegrooms, and returned son-in-laws, having married the daughters of their landlords. Yea, those yeomen, in whose houses they dwelt, soon proceeded gentlemen, gaining great estates." This has ever since been one of the great trades of England. 14. When the Flemish weavers set up their looms and taught the English to weave cloth, of course they wanted workmen, Many serfs escaped from their masters and came to Norwich and other towns and learnt to weave; and if they could manage to stay there a year and a day without being caught they were free, and the masters could never make them go back again. Thus there were not nearly as many serfs as there used to be, and the masters had often to hire free labourers for money, to plough and sow for them. Statutes of labourers. 15. But after the Black Death there were very few labourers left, and then the same thing happened which always will happen when work is plentiful and men are scarce. The men asked for higher wages, but the masters did not want to pay them. The king's council interfered, and made a law that all the labourers were to work for their masters for the very same wages that they used to have before the plague. Masters were also forbidden to pay any higher wages than they used to pay then. If the men disobeyed they were to be put in prison. Not long afterwards a still more cruel punishment was ordered. If any of the labourers went away, and the master could catch them, he was to burn the letter F, for fugitive, into their foreheads with a hot iron. 16. But all would not avail; the people had begun to learn their value and their power; they joined together, and stood by each other, refusing to take the low wages; and those who had the means helping those who had not. Rulers know now that it is no use to make laws saying what wages men are to take or masters are to give; they must settle that between themselves; and all the law does is to hinder either party from violence or injury to the other. But in those days rulers had not yet dis covered this; they had to learn it by experience, and by very hard experience. Fresh and fresh laws were made to bind down the labourers; but they were determined to be free. We shall see the end of this great dispute farther on. The Black Prince in the south. 17. After the Battle of Poitiers, and when the Prince of Wales was established at Bordeaux, it is sad and disappointing to find that things went on very ill. Perhaps his great success had turned his head. Instead of being modest and courteous, as he was before, he became proud and arrogant, and so did the English who were with him. He ruled Aquitaine very badly. Froissart says that he himself "witnessed the great haughtiness of the English, who are affable to no other nation than their own;" they said of the gentleman of Gascony and Aquitaine "that they were neither on a level with them nor worthy of their society, which made the Gascons very indignant." We may fancy how the Gascons liked it, remembering how vain and boastful they were by nature. 18. The Black Prince also went to Spain, and fought for a very cruel king there. He lost his health; he lost his popularity. He even became, for a time, very cruel himself. He 1307. besieged and took the town of Limoges in France, and treated it even more harshly than his father would have liked to treat Calais. He permitted, and even encouraged, a most barbarous massacre of the inhabitants; so barbarous that Froissart says "there was not that day in the city of Limoges any heart so hardened, or that had any sense of religion, who did not deeply bewail the unfortunate events passing before their eyes; for upwards of 3000 men, women, and children were put to death that day. God have mercy on their souls! for they were veritable martyrs." 19. Almost all the people of Aquitaine and Gascony rebelled against him, and went over to the King of France. He came back to England very ill indeed, and for four years hardly anything was heard of him. This seems a sad and disastrous ending to a life that began so brilliantly; but just before he died he came forth once more to help his countrymen, and to win back their and our love and admiration. 20. The government of England had been going on very badly of late. Edward III. was growing old, and the dear, good Queen Philippa was dead. Edward took up with another lady, named Alice Perrers, who became his great favourite, and did many things which offended Discontent in England. |