The Black Death in England: Journal of the Plague Years in the Fourteenth Century by Kathryn Warner

 

Summary (from the publisher): We have all heard of the Black Death and how it scythed its way through England and the rest of Europe in the late 1340s, and we hear that a third or perhaps even half of the entire English population died in this terrible pandemic. However, the numbers are so vast that the victims become little more than statistics. They blur into a kind of unreality, a mute testimony to a catastrophe beyond imagination or comprehension.

The Black Death in England aims to rectify this by giving names to some of the people who died in the fourteenth-century epidemics of the Plague Years and recognizes those who lived through it, recreating something of their lives and what they went through.

Review: A huge thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this non-fiction in exchange for an honest review!

England in the fourteenth century was characterized by catastrophic loss of life due to the plague. Due to the time period and the sheer scale of the deaths, there is little account of the individuals, and the families impacted. However, while the publisher's description leads the reader to believe this will be a social history of plague victims, it is instead a reference text. The bulk of the book is composed of paragraph after paragraph of detailed birth and death dates and family connections of those that likely died due to the plague. This would be a great reference text for someone writing a history or even a novel of the plague, but it was not particularly enjoyable to read as a history, nor do I think it was necessarily intended to be sat and read straight through. 

There were some interesting details gleaned from this book. I was fascinated by the range of names, many of which I had never heard before! These included last names like Cokheved, Merflet, and Stodeye but also first names like Avice, Pernel, Urry, and Gonnora. And others were, as the author says, "gloriously named" all around like Amflesia Mareschall. 

It was also nice to see that pains were taken to look out for the many children left orphaned due to the plague: "the London authorities took swift and decisive action against people who tried to take advantage of vulnerable orphans, even before the terrible first pandemic was over." The courts worked to make sure orphans were placed in the custody of guardians and "orphans were never placed in the custody of complete strangers." The staggering level of loss is evident though in how tenuous some of the connections between child and guardian was. For example, one child named Agnes Stokwell lost her entire family, including "her parents, her four siblings, her and her uncle in 1349" and was placed with her late father's apprentice, someone who at least who have been known to her, but who was clearly not a relative. 

The author's final notes do include some contemplation of how history would have been different had certain individuals not survived the plague. For instance, multiple relatives of Geoffrey Chaucer died but he was spared. How different the literary world would be had he not survived to write The Canterbury Tales! Similarly, if a young boy named Philip Dispenser had succumbed like multiple members of his family, his descendent Jane Seymour, the future mother of King Edward VI would never been born and the history of England would likely look very different. Of course, conversely, it also makes you wonder "how many great writers, thinkers, scholars and potential world-changers - or ancestors of world-changers - we perhaps lost to the Black Death."

It is difficult for me to rate this book. It is clearly well researched and technically sound. I do find the publisher's description misleading as I likely would not have picked this up had I known it was essentially a reference text/catalog of plague victims. However, I did learn a good deal and it was interesting to be given some insight into the ordinary people who suffered from this great loss of life rather than just prominent or royal individuals affected. 

Stars: 4