If any one should suggest that _many
more_ than half died, I should not be disposed to quarrel with
him.
It must be remembered that nothing has been here said of the
mortality in the towns. I believe we have no means of getting at any
evidence on this part of the subject which can be trusted. In no part
of England did the towns occupy a more important position relatively
to the rest of the population. In no part of England did three such
important towns as Lynn, Yarmouth, and Norwich, lie within so short a
distance of one another, not to mention others which were then rising
in the number and consideration of their inhabitants. But the
statements made of the mortality in the towns will not bear
examination--they represent mere guesses, nothing more. This,
however, may be assumed as certain--that the death-rate in the towns
at such a time as this cannot have been less than the death-rate in
the villages, and that the scourge which so cruelly devastated the
huts and cabins of the countrymen was not likely to fall less heavily
upon the filthy dens and hovels of the men of the streets. Town life
in the fourteenth century was a very dreadful life for the masses.
How did the great bulk of the people comport themselves under the
pressure of this unparalleled calamity? How did their faith stand the
strain that was put upon it? How did their moral instincts support
them? Was there any confusion and despair? What effects--social,
political, economical--followed from a catastrophe so terrible? How
did the clergy behave during the tremendous ordeal through which they
had to pass? What glimpses do we get of the horrors or the sorrows of
that time--of the romantic, of the pathetic side of life?
V.
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