Each tenant, therefore, was likely to have a larger holding than before and, in the fluid conditions which prevailed after the plague, these could be organized into more coherent and viable blocks than had been possible under the old pattern of cultivation. The tendency was reinforced where the landlord alienated his demesne. Once a tenant was established in possession of a coherent parcel of land, then it was inevitable that he would seek to demarcate it more clearly and organize his different activities on a more workable basis. It would be wrong to speak of any dramatic and sudden switch; it took generations to transform the face of the countryside. But the hedged fields of England can plausibly be argued to have had their genesis in the aftermath of the Black Death and though such changes would, in the long run, have been inevitable, their evolution might otherwise have followed a distinct and far more protracted path.
Textbooks have often nurtured the tradition that another consequence of the Black Death was a wide-spread switch from arable to sheep-farming. The logic of such a development is clear. As a result of the plague, labour was scarce and dear – what more natural than to switch from labour-intensive crops to sheep which called for a minimum of skilled attention? But because something could reasonably be expected to have happened, it does not follow that it did. In fact there is little evidence to show that there was any movement to pasture farming, none to show that the movement was general throughout the country. The acreage under plough certainly dropped but this was no more than a symptom of the retreat from the less profitable marginal lands which was already marked before the plague. There is no corresponding increase in wool production to set against this trend: on the contrary, the third quarter of the fourteenth century is one of diminished demand for wool and of stagnation or even decline in English sheep-farming.{488} The great swing to sheep, with its concomitants of vastly increased national prosperity and the harsh social policy of enclosure, was checked rather than advanced by the Black Death.
Another field in which the significance of the Black Death seems more significant in legend than in reality is that of architecture. The skilled masons capable of executing the fine traceries and, still more, the figure sculpture of the Decorated period were, it is contended, almost wiped out by the plague. Those who were left were too much in demand, too pressed for time, to be able to use their talents to the full. The new generation of masons, artisans rather than artists, were affected by the new mobility of labour which was so marked a feature of the post-plague period. Forced to work in a variety of stones, most of them unfamiliar, it was inevitable that the workmen should opt for less complicated and ambitious techniques.{489} The result was a sharp fall in standards. Prior and Gardner write with disdain of the ‘same stereotyped monotony, the same continuous decline in the skill of execution, the same obvious diminution of interest in the craft of the artificer’ which were to be found in the detailed work of the period.{490}
There is, of course, something in this argument. Without doubt many skilled craftsmen died during the plague and were never replaced. With them died one of the glories of English religious architecture. There can be no absolute standard of beauty but most people would probably agree that York Minster would be more perfect a building if work had begun ten or twenty years before it did. As it was, work came to a sudden stop on the almost completed west front and nave. The choir had not yet been begun and no further progress was made till 1361. For its construction the old plans were scrapped and the Decorated style replaced by the formal stiffness of the Perpendicular. One reason at least for this must have been the technical impossibility of continuing to build a Decorated church when so many of the more experienced masons were dead.{491}
But can a trend which led directly to the towers of Worcester, the west front of Beverley Minster or the nave of Canterbury, possibly be cited as evidence of inferior artistry? To suggest that the Perpendicular style was no more than a degenerate variant on the traditional Decorated would show a derisory misunderstanding of one of the noblest schools of English architecture. Nor should the significance of the Black Death be over-stated in an artistic revolution which had started twenty years before and which the calamities of the mid-fourteenth century checked but could not extinguish. The transept and choir of Gloucester, the cradle of Perpendicular, were completed in 1332 and, though the Black Death introduced economic and social factors which diffused the new fashion more widely, it would be misleading to suggest that those were of prime importance. ‘Perpendicular’, wrote Mr Harvey, ‘was not the outcome of poverty and failure, but of riches and success. Only to a comparatively slight extent was its course changed by the coming of the Black Death, which did but accelerate a movement already in being.’{492} Many architectural historians would today put its significance more emphatically, but no bald statement of cause and effect can do justice to the complexity of the subject.
17. THE EFFECTS ON THE CHURCH AND MAN’S MIND
The plague not only depopulates and kills, it gnaws the moral stamina and frequently destroys it entirely; thus the sudden demoralisation of Roman society from the period of Mark Antony may be explained by the Oriental plague… In such epidemics the best were invariably carried off and the survivors deteriorated morally.
Times of plague are always those in which the bestial and diabolical side of human nature gains the upper hand. Nor is it necessary to be superstitious or even pious to look upon great plagues as a conflict of the terrestrial forces with the development of mankind…
It may reasonably be felt that Niebuhr was pitching it a little high. It is, to say the least, extravagant to describe as ‘bestial and diabolical’, the selfish manoeuvres of the frightened and the hysterical. It is also patently unfair to the many thousands who met the Black Death with courage and charity. But though Niebuhr’s words may seem fantastical he still had a valid and important point. Any history of the Black Death which ignored its impact on the minds of its victims would be notably incomplete. It was an impact whose effects endured. The resilience of mankind is perpetually astonishing and within only a few years the horrors of the plague had been thrust from the forefront of their minds. But no one can live through a catastrophe so devastating and so inexplicable without retaining for ever the scars of his experience.
It is a truism to say that, in the Middle Ages, a man’s mental health and the public and private morality to which he deferred was inextricably involved with his relationship with the Church. His faith was unquestioning and his psychological dependence upon its institutions complete. Any blow suffered by the Church was a direct blow to his own morale. Any discussion of his state of mind after the Black Death must start by considering how far the condition of the Church had been modified by the events of the preceding years. There can be little doubt that it had changed, and changed almost exclusively for the worse.