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It was the feast of John the Baptist - 24th June 1348.
The busy little port of Melcombe Regis sits on the north side of Weymouth Harbour in Dorset.
It had only received its charter 80 years before hand but in that time it had established itself as a busy port in this part of the south west of England.
That day boats were arriving from France, bringing back soldiers who had been engaged in King Edward III’s Hundred Years War.
Some of these men were possibly veterans who had stood and fought alongside the king at his incredible victory over the French at Crecy, two years before.
Other ships were arriving from the Mediterranean, having crossed the stormy Bay of Biscay. On board they had imports from Italy and exotic spices from further afield - the moorish cities of Spain and north Africa and far away Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire and largest city in Christendom.
Through the hubbub of noise, men shouting, cursing and laughing in many tongues, the panting & puffing as cargos were unloaded and the raucous noise from a nearby tavern you can imagine a priest pushing his way past people toward the church, whose bell was tolling on this religious feast day.
As he nears the stone church, he sees a man laying on the ground, shaking, maybe he has spent his wages on local ale.
As it is a feast day and the priest is a kindly man, he kneels down to assist the stranger.
The man has vomit down his clothes and his skin burns when the priest touches him.
Taking a strip of cloth he soaks it in some water from a nearby barrel and then the priest dabs the sailor’s forehead. Mopping his face, he pulls back the mans tunic and sees a large black lump on his neck and another under his armpit. He pulls back in horror…
The Black Death had arrived in England.
The Black Death was a name that later historians gave to the bubonic plague that swept through Europe in the middle of the 14th century.
At the time was actually referred to as The Great Pestilence.
The symptoms were initially fever, convulsions and vomiting but quickly the lymph glands (in the neck, the armpits or groin) swelled up into black lumps or “Buboes” - hence the term Bubonic plague.
Highly contagious and highly deadly, it is estimated that 70% of people who caught it died.
Originating in the far east (possibly China or Mongolia) , it had traveled along the silk roads to Europe, carried by black rats. Flees feeding on the infected rates transferred the plague to humans.
Just over a year before it had been recorded in the Crimea and since then had swept across western Europe, carried by sailors returning from the trading ports at the end of the Silk Roads
And now, 24th June 1348 it had arrived in England.
By the 15th August it was in Bristol.
Panic struck townsfolk fleeing infection unwittingly transported the plague with them into the midlands and eastwards towards London.
On the 1st November it finally reached the capital.
By the 21st May the following year (1349) it had reached the northern city of York and swiftly crossed the border into Scotland.
The plague knew no boundaries (it had arrived in Ireland just weeks after it had first appeared in England) and knew no class boundaries.
The nobility were just as likely as serfs to be beaten by an infected flea.
Three successive Archbishops of Canterbury died from the bubonic plague.
Records indicate that 40% of priests died during the Black Death.