The pestilence of 1375 would appear to have been considered as one of the greater sort. The author of the _Eulogium_ reckons it the _pestis tertia_ (passing over that of 1368-69). The season was one of great heat, there was “grandis pestilentia” both in England and other countries, an infinity of both sexes died, the mortality being so swift that the pope, “at the instance of the cardinal of England” granted plenary remission to all dying contrite and confessing their sins[410]. That looks like an epidemic of true bubo-plague,--probably the _pestis quarta_ correctly so-called[411].
In 1379 there was a great plague in the Northern parts, which were stripped of their best men; the Scots made a raid, with the following prayer on their lips: “God and Sen Mungo, Sen Ninian and Seynt Andrew scheld us this day and ilka day fro Goddis grace, and the foule deth that Ynglessh men dyene upon”--foul death being the name given to plague also in 1349[412]. The northern counties send a petition to the parliament of 1379-80, that the king would “consider the very great hurt and damage which they have suffered, and are still suffering, both by pestilence and by the continual devastations of the Scots enemy[413].”
In the parliament of 1381-82 there is a petition from the convent of Salisbury as to want of money to repair the losses caused by the pestilence, of which the tenants are nearly all dead, and by the murrain of cattle. This is more than thirty years from the Black Death, and can hardly refer, as some earlier petitions may have done, to the enduring effects of that calamity. The sixth parliament of Richard II. (1382), has two of the stereotyped petitions deprecating a heavy subsidy on the ground of “the great poverty and disease” of the commons, through pestilence of people, murrain of cattle, failure of crops, great floods, etc.[414] This was the year after the Peasant Revolt, which had coincided with troubles of various kinds. A Norwich chronicle, perhaps of contemporary authority, enters, under the year 1382, a very pestilential fever in many places of the country, and very extraordinary inundations of the fens[415]. In London the epidemic of 1382 is said to have been “chiefly among boys and girls[416].” A primitive English poem of the time has for its subject the earthquake of 1382, and with that portent it associates not only the Peasant’s Rebellion but also “the pestilens[417].”