The Black Death, Part II
Philip Ziegler describes how the devastating Plague reached South-west England in the summer of 1348.
The Black Death arrived in England in June 1348 by way of Melcombe Regis, now part of the town of Weymouth in Dorset. To make so confident an assertion is, of course, foolhardy. Bristol, Southampton and ‘the north cuntre’ vie for the doubtful honour of being the first places to receive the plague, while the outbreak of the epidemic is ascribed by contemporary chroniclers to a variety of dates in June, July, August and September. Though the weight of the evidence points to June and to Melcombe, no certainty is possible, nor ever will be.
This lack of precision matters little; its importance lies only in the illustration it provides of the shortage of hard fact in the history of the times. If the chroniclers are unable to agree within three or four months on the date on which the first case of plague was recorded, how much more complete the confusion will be when such complex problems as the total mortality or the effect of the plague on rents and wage-rates comes to be considered.
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