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1348-1350Primary source · 2 sourcesWell documented

The Black Death Reaches England

Two ships land at a Dorset port and within two years a plague kills a third to a half of the population

On the timeline · around 1348-1350 · Medieval EnglandMedieval EnglandTudor and Stuart EnglandThe Black Death Reaches England12501300135014001450

Quick facts

First English cases
Melcombe, Dorset, Midsummer 1348
Nationwide by
Summer 1349
Estimated mortality
40-60% of the population
Legal response
Statute of Labourers, 1351

What happened

The National Archives records that the second plague pandemic, generally known as the Black Death, first arrived in Britain in 1348. The Dorset History Centre holds a contemporary chronicle account, the Chronicle of the Franciscan Friars at King's Lynn, describing how two ships landed at Melcombe in Dorset a little before Midsummer 1348, carrying sailors infected with what the chronicle calls an unheard of epidemic illness, and that those sailors infected the men of Melcombe, who were the first people infected in England. By autumn the disease had reached London, and by the summer of 1349 it covered the whole country before subsiding that December. Mortality estimates have been revised upward over time by historians studying the period, and the National Archives notes the plague went on to have a devastating effect on Britain for the next three centuries, in repeated later outbreaks.

Why it matters

The sudden loss of a large share of England's labor force upended the medieval economy, driving up wages and weakening the manorial system that had bound peasants to their lords' land, and prompted the government to pass the Statute of Labourers in 1351 to try to force wages back down. That failed attempt to hold down wages by law fed directly into the resentment that exploded in the Peasants' Revolt three decades later.

How we know

The plague's arrival at Melcombe is documented in the contemporary Chronicle of the Franciscan Friars at King's Lynn, held by the Dorset History Centre, and its subsequent spread across England is tracked through church and manorial records recording clergy deaths and property transfers from the same period.

Sources

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The Black Death Reaches England · History of England · SourcedStory