The year 1348 brought an event of far greater importance than the
creation of a new order of chivalry. This was the terrible plague, known as the
Black Death, which reached almost every part of Britain during 1348-9. Probably
more than one-third of the entire population of Britain died, and fewer than one
person in ten who caught the plague managed to survive it.' Whole villages
disappeared, and some towns were almost completely deserted until the plague
itself died out.
The Black Death was neither the first natural disaster of the fourteenth
century, nor the last. Plagues had killed sheep and other animals earlier in
the century. An agricultural crisis resulted from the growth in population and
the need to produce more food. Land was no longer allowed to rest one year in
three, which meant that it was over-used, resulting in years of famine when the
harvest failed. This process had already begun to slow down population growth
by 1300.
After the Black Death there were other plagues during the rest of the
century which killed mostly the young and healthy. In 1300 the population of
Britain had probably been over four million. By the end of the century it was
probably hardly half that figure, and it only began to grow again in the second
half of the fifteenth century. Even so, it took until the seventeenth century
before the population reached four million again.
