Ten years after the Black
Death the Archbishop expresses his deep sorrow at the neglect of
Sunday, the desertion of the churches and the decline in religious
observances. Yet we must be cautious how we attribute this break-up
in the old habits of the people to the plague exclusively, or even
mainly. Some of the evils complained of had already begun to be felt
before the plague came, and may fairly be attributed, not to the
falling short of the numbers of the clergy, but exactly the reverse.
Already a strong reaction had set in against the friars, their
influence and their teaching had begun to be regarded as menacing to
the stability of existing creeds and existing institutions. Langland
hated them. Chaucer held them up to scorn. Wickliffe denounced them
with a righteous wrath. Fitz-Ralph, Archbishop of Armagh, carried on
open war against them. All these leaders of the chosen bands that
fight the battles of God had arrived at man's estate when the Black
Death came, and all survived it. They certainly were not the product
of the great visitation; they were the spokesmen and representatives
of a generation that had begun to look at the world with larger,
other eyes than their fathers. That which was coming would have come
if there had been no plague at all, and so far from its being certain
that that calamity was in any great degree the cause of the upheaval
that ensued, it is at least as probable that the sudden decrease in
the population served to retard the action of forces already working
mightily in the direction of revolution--revolution it might be for
the better, or it might be for the worse.
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