At this latter manor a court was held
on the 31st of March--the number of tenants of the manor can at no
time have exceeded fifty--yet at this court six women and three men
are registered as having died since the last court was held, two
months before.
This is the earliest instance I have yet met with of the appearance
of the plague among us, and as it is the earliest, so does it appear
to have been one of the most frightful visitations from which any
town or village in Suffolk or Norfolk suffered during the time the
pestilence lasted. On the 1st of May another court was held, fifteen
more deaths are recorded--thirteen men and two women. _Seven of
them without heirs._ On the 3rd of November, apparently when the
panic abated, again the court met. In the six months that had passed
thirty-six more deaths had occurred, and _thirteen more
households_ had been left without a living soul to represent them.
In this little community, in six months' time, twenty-one families
had been absolutely obliterated--men, women and children--and of the
rest it is difficult to see how there can have been a single house in
which there was not one dead. Meanwhile, some time in September, the
parson of the parish had fallen a victim to the scourge, and on the
2nd of October another was instituted in his room. Who reaped the
harvest? The tithe sheaf too--how was it garnered in the barn? And
the poor kine at milking time? Hush! Let us pass on.
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