The figures given of the mortality at Yarmouth, 7052, are those inscribed upon a document or a brass that once stood in the parish church; it was seen there in the fifteenth century by William of Worcester, a squire of the Fastolf family connected with Yarmouth, who gives the numbers as 7000, giving also the exact dimensions of the great church itself[250]. They are adduced by the burgesses of Yarmouth in a petition of 17 Henry VII. (1502), as follows: “Buried in the parish church and churchyard of the said town 7052 men.” Yarmouth, like Norwich, suffered unusually from the Black Death; in 1377, by the poll-tax reckoning, its population was about 3639. It may be assumed to have lost more than half its people; but it recovered quickly, was made a seat of the wool-staple, and threatened to rival Norwich.
Clyn’s statement that 14,000 died in Dublin from the beginning of August until Christmas may also be taken merely as illustrating the inability of early writers to count correctly up to large numbers.
The most trustworthy figures of mortality in the Black Death which were recorded at the time are those given for the inmates of particular monasteries; and these are such as to give colour to the remark interpolated in Higden’s _Polychronicon_ that “in some houses of religion, of twenty there were left but twain.”
At St Albans, the abbot Michael died of the common plague at Easter, 1349, one of the first victims in the monastery. The mortality in the house increased daily, until forty-seven monks, “eminent for religion,” and including the prior and sub-prior, were dead, besides those who died in large numbers in the various cells or dependencies of the great religious house[251]. At the Yorkshire abbey of Meaux, in Holdernesse, the visitation was in August, although the epidemic in the city of York was already over by the end of July[252]. The abbot Hugh died at Meaux on the 12th of August, and five other monks were lying unburied the same day. Before the end of August twenty-two monks and six lay-brethren had died, and when the epidemic was over there were only ten monks and lay-brethren left alive out of a total of forty-three monks (including the abbot) and seven lay-brethren. The chronicler adds that the greater part of the tenants on the abbey lands died also[253]. In the Lincolnshire monastery of Croxton, all the monks died save the abbot and prior[254]. In the hospital of Sandon, Surrey, the master and brethren all died[255].