What happened at Hockham must have happened in hundreds of other
parishes; there must have been large tracts of country during the
latter half of the reign of Edward the Third where a resident
landlord was the exception to that which aforetime had been the rule.
* * * * * * *
3. In the present condition of our knowledge, any estimate of the
actual numbers who perished in the plague must be the merest
guesswork. It may be that two millions were carried off; it may be
there were three. It is undeniable that a very large proportion of
the inhabitants of this island died in a few months--employers and
employed. We must, however, remember that England in the fourteenth
century was incomparably more self-supporting than it is in the
nineteenth century; that there were no great centres of industry
then; that the rural population was largely in excess of the urban
population; that we exported the wool which the Flemings manufactured
into cloth; and that if there were fewer hands to till the soil,
there were fewer mouths to feed. No one can doubt that the labour
market must have been seriously disturbed, but it is very easy to
exaggerate this disturbance; and whether it were less or more than
has been asserted, we shall certainly err by attributing the rise in
wages, which undoubtedly took place after the Black Death, to it, and
to it alone--_post hoc ergo propter hoc_ is not a safe conclusion.
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