Living conditions in such villages as Langham were basic and sanitation almost non-existent. Most of the people lived in what today we would regard as squalor, in gloomy, thatched houses, often cheek-by-jowl with hens, pigs or goats. The only plumbing, if one can call it that, might have been found in the solar, the private accommodation for the lord and his family within the manorial hall – sometimes the lord’s own chamber was equipped with a wooden chute which directed excrement from the first floor to ground level, where it was disposed of by a servant.
Nonetheless, the feudal economy was relatively efficient at producing food. By 1348 Langham had seen a growth, perhaps even a doubling or more, in population; in 1086 there had been only about fifty people here.
The 14th century was a time of expanding trade as well as population. A network of trade routes was developing from the east to serve markets in Europe. And arising somewhere in the east was the parasitic bacterium Yersinia pestis. In that it exploits two hosts, one of them also a parasite, it is termed a ‘hyperparasite’. The first host is the Oriental Rat Flea, Xenopsylla cheopis.
Warning: what follows is the stuff of nightmares!
The biology of the relationship between parasites and their hosts is often extremely complicated, having evolved and been refined over vast periods of time. The relationship between Yersinia, fleas and their warm-blooded hosts is no exception.
In health, fleas suck blood until satiated. When infected with Yersinia, however, the rat flea’s foregut is made to fill with a mass of clotted blood and replicating bacteria. Thus it is unable to take a full meal. Instead, while vainly trying to feed, it takes in small quantities of fresh blood and regurgitates them, together with the bacteria, into the wound it has made.
A rat flea infested with Yersinia
The disease resulting from this infection is the plague, of which there are three types: bubonic, septicaemic, and pneumonic, depending on the route of infection. Bubonic and septicaemic plague are spread via flea-bites and can also result from exposure to the bodily fluids of victims; pneumonic plague is spread by the inhalation of airborne droplets from a victim.
The preferred hosts of Xenopsylla cheopis are various species of rodent. It may have evolved as a parasite of marmots, but is equally at home on rats, particularly the Black Rat, Rattus rattus, also known as the Ship Rat for its habit of running up hawsers and infesting the holds of cargo ships. The Black Rat is believed to have evolved in India and was spread by trade throughout the Roman Empire; the Plague of Justinian in 541-9 AD is the first confirmed outbreak of plague in history.
The Black Rat, from an etching by Samuel Howitt, 1808
Yersinia is capable of infecting a wide variety of mammalian hosts besides rodents, including cats, dogs, pigs, camels, and of course people. It can even infect chickens, but in medieval times it was rats that proved to be its most deadly vector.
An outbreak of plague first reported from the Gobi Desert in 1321 had spread to China by 1331 and eastern Russia in 1338. India succumbed in 1342. By 1346 it had reached the Volga and the Black Sea regions. A single strain of the bacterium was involved and the same one then made its way throughout Europe.
In June 1348 a ship docked at Weymouth in Dorset, carrying goods from Gascony in south-west France. One of crew was suffering from the bubonic form of plague. In this, the bacteria proliferate in the lymphatic system. Lymph nodes, particularly in the groin, thighs, armpits and neck, become painfully enlarged to form swellings called buboes. Extensive bruising turns the skin black. There may also be gangrene of the hands, feet, and limbs generally, also serving to blacken the skin. For at least 60% of those infected, death supervenes after two or three days of unimaginable suffering.
Necrosis of the hand caused by plague
Given the unsanitary conditions prevailing in 14th-century Britain, it is no surprise that the plague spread here as rapidly as it had across mainland Europe, where some 50% of the population died.
Bubonic plague arrived in Norwich in January 1349. From an approximate population of 25,000, as few as 6,000 people survived. Two thirds of the clergy perished; the dead were buried in huge mass graves. Half the population of Lynn succumbed, as did two-thirds of the people in the Rows at Yarmouth.
The plague reached north Norfolk in April 1349. Binham is known to have been devastated, and we may be sure that Langham did not escape.
By the time the Black Death had finished with these villages in 1351, at least half their inhabitants were dead.
Plague is an indiscriminate killer. The lord of the manor was just as likely to have died as the humblest cottar. A number of settlements were abandoned altogether: Norfolk is famous for its ‘ghost villages’.
What made the plague doubly terrifying was complete ignorance of its cause and mode of spread. It was ascribed variously to divine retribution, ‘miasma’, and sundry other nonsense. Herbal remedies, vinegar and even spells were invoked to ward it off. To no avail. It was common for someone to be perfectly healthy one morning and dead from pneumonic plague by the next.
This was also a time of bad weather and crop failure. Between 1348 and 1350 it is estimated that the gross domestic product of England fell by 30%, a crash that the feudal system could not survive. Yersinia emancipated those serfs it did not kill, for they suddenly found their labour in great demand. The social structure had collapsed along with the economy.
In its place another arose. Working people were no longer bound to the lord or his manor and could move freely from place to place and sell their services to the highest bidder.
This system, though much blunted and compromised over the centuries, remains in place today. Even the lowliest sweeper of factory floors regards himself as a free man. When he goes home at night he is the castellan of his own abode, however modest. Even horror and destruction, then, can have their compensations – for the survivors.
Another excellent and erudite essay on Langham’s history Thank you.
ReplyDeleteRichard Gozney.