In a letter of 30 October 1348 bishop Grandisson cites a letter from the prior of Christchurch, Canterbury, written after the Archbishop’s death, and giving his instructions for processions and other rites to stay the Plague. According to the Prior’s letter (28 September) England was exhausted and impoverished by the War, “guerrarum discriminibus, que ipsius regni diviciarum substanciam exhaurunt et consumunt ... regnum Anglie desolatum extitit et afflictum.” That was the opinion of a man living at the time: yet there are books on history assuring us that England had never been so prosperous before, the country being then enriched with all the spoils of France.
In that letter of 30 October bishop Grandisson ordered solemn public processions in his diocese every Wednesday and Friday up to Christmas. He was living at Chudleigh Manor all the time, about six miles from here; so I imagine that there were processions all around. He also ordered masses, psalms and prayers. These were then the proper weapons for combatting the Plague: nobody smelled Rats. So also at Rhodes in October 1498 the Grand Master of the Knights ordered fasting and prayer, and the people all sang Alleluia. Columbus had brought a new disease from the New World, and it had just reached Rhodes; but these good people had not yet found out how it was propagated. The local poet, Emmanuel Georgillas, wrote a poem on it in medieval Greek, _Thanaticon tês Rhodou_. He says that the disease claimed victims from amongst them all, old men and matrons, boys and unwedded girls, the Knights themselves, and even the Archbishop. At last John Baptist triumphed over Charon--that is what the poet says--but the Grand Master of the Knights had not relied exclusively upon their patron saint: he had locked the ladies up.
Providence helps those who help themselves, and leaves whole generations to their fate unless they take the trouble to find out how diseases come and how they can be kept away. Plague is carried by rats’ fleas, just as typhus is carried by lice and malaria by mosquitos; the rats themselves are victims. Trichinosis is caused by pigs, and leprosy by fish; but the rats invade us of their own free will, and it is no fault of the pigs or fish that people sometimes eat them ‘cured,’ not cooked.