No final answer to this conundrum will ever be forthcoming. But it would be reasonable to state as a general rule that the proportion of beneficed clergy who died in any given diocese could not possibly have been much smaller than the corresponding figure for the laity and is unlikely to have been very much bigger. Arbitrary limits of 10 per cent less and 25 per cent more seem to provide a reasonable bracket within which the correct figure must be encompassed.
Dr Lunn has calculated that 47.6 per cent of the beneficed clergy in the diocese of the Bishop of Bath and Wells died of the Black Death. It can therefore be said, with reasonable confidence, that it is unlikely that more than 52 per cent or less than 35 per cent of the total population met a similar fate. A safer, because looser way of expressing the same proposition would be to say that, taking a conservative view, between a third and half the people must have died.
The figures for the mortality among beneficed clergy can be used with much greater confidence when it comes to establishing a ratio between different areas. If twice as many clergy died in Yorkshire as in Northamptonshire, then it is reasonable to assume that more or less twice as many laymen died as well. It would be tempting to apply the same mathematics to cities and towns as well as larger areas, but, obviously, the narrower the statistical base, the more risk there is of serious distortions being introduced. It is permissible to compare dioceses on this basis, possibly even archdeaconries, but where deaneries or smaller units are concerned then the comparative figures are no more than a valuable but uncertain pointer towards the relative sufferings of the areas.
In December 1349, when things were almost back to normal, Bishop Ralph ventured as far as Yeovil. As part of his visitation he held a special service of thanksgiving. To his dismay certain ‘sons of perdition’ armed with ‘bows, arrows, iron bars and other kinds of arms’ attacked the church, injured many of his attendants and kept the Bishop and his congregation bottled up until nightfall. The siege was then transferred to the rectory where it lasted till the following day. At this point the sons of perdition either got bored and went home or, as the official story had it, a party of ‘devout sons of the church’ came to the rescue.{244} Sixty of those concerned were later ordered to do public penance.
It is tempting to read a perhaps impermissible amount into this story. It showed, after all, extreme audacity on the part of the inhabitants of Yeovil to attack a magnate as powerful, both spiritually and temporally, as the Bishop of Bath and Wells. Though the mild revenge which he exacted suggests that the assault was not particularly serious, there must still have been good reason, in the minds of the rioters at least, to indulge in such an escapade. Some particular grievance may have inspired it but the action of the crowd may surely reflect considerable anger against the Bishop and all the ruling classes, a by-product of the intense fear and misery in which they had lived for the previous twelve months. Pressures of that kind must generate intense emotions and such emotions require an outlet.
To appreciate the full impact of so fearful a calamity on an ignorant and credulous people calls for an intense effort of historical imagination. Some glimmering of what it was like might be gleaned from the reactions of the people of London and Coventry or, still more, of Dresden and Berlin in the face of prolonged and devastating air-attack. In these cases a pattern of crowd behaviour has been established. There was an initial reaction of anger directed against the enemy, exhilarating, almost euphoric, with vows of vengeance and pride in the courage and solidarity which the victims of the bombing displayed. Then there might be panic, a brief breakdown of morale and the capacity to produce discipline or rational responses to external stimuli. And finally came apathy and indifference; a grudging though often successful adaptation of life to the needs of the new situation.
But with apathy came rancour and suspicion; doubts about the other members of society with whom, so recently, they had felt united in suffering. Suspicions of the rich: the more prosperous parts of town, said the poor, were mysteriously spared by the raiding bomber – this proved that some sinister understanding existed between them and the enemy. Suspicions of the rulers: they only kept the war going so as to grow fat on arms sales or for some other selfish end. Suspicions of the doctors: they saved their drugs for themselves or their privileged friends. Suspicions of the shop-keepers: they hoarded their precious goods to sell at a profit to the undeserving who could afford to pay. Class looked askance at class; neighbourhood at neighbourhood. Loyalties retracted: to the street; to the family; ultimately to oneself.
The analogy between twentieth-century air-raid and medieval pestilence obviously breaks down at many points. Baehrel has suggested that the Revolutionary Terror in France produced the same defence reactions in those who endured it as were to be found in the plague-struck Europeans of 1348 or, for that matter, the victims of the cholera epidemic of 1884.{245} The conclusions which he draws are strikingly similar to those derived from a study of the blitz. A belief in plots; a conviction that someone has to be made the scapegoat for everything; were almost always the chosen outlet for surplus passions. Whether aristocratic emigré or Jewish poisoner, bourgeois tool of a reactionary clique or incompetent doctor,
…the suspect came to the fore; a suspect who was not the same for all. For the well-fed the suspect was the poor man because he was dedicated to the plague; for the lower classes the suspects were the rich, in whom they were quick to identify the propagators of the disease. For some the leading suspect was the surgeon… for others, the beggar…
And yet neither the blitz nor the Revolutionary Terror yield an adequate impression of the psychological shock which medieval man endured. For where there is a common, identifiable enemy then there must be a sense of camaraderie; it matters little who the foe may be, to hate him will provide relief and bulk larger in the mind than the pettier grudges that divide one from one’s neighbours. The first fine flower of anger against the emigre aristocrat or the marauding bomber might, in time, lose its capacity to excite or inspire but it survived as an element lending cohesion to the attacked. Medieval men had no one to hate. They might work off their resentment in campaigns against the lepers or the Jews but few of those who sacked the ghettoes can have believed that, by their deed, they were doing more than tinker with the instrument of their destruction while leaving the root cause untouched. The Black Death was the work of God, and against God they could not fight.
The only defence against the plague in which the doctors had the slighest faith was flight from the afflicted area. This the poor knew, and yet they knew too that it was a defence to which they could have no recourse. As the poor of Genoa, Florence, Paris or London saw the rich and privileged bundle up their most precious possessions and flee the cities it would have been astonishing if they had felt no resentment, no sense that they were being deserted and betrayed. With such a mood abroad it was inevitable that the processions of the Flagellants would quickly take on a revolutionary tinge, that the houses of the magnates would be sacked and the clergy abused, derided or even assaulted.