Black Death Rakes

Here are some accounts of the Black Death found in the book The Black Death by Rosemay Horrox.

A Rake from London
The, which first began in the land of the Saracens, grew so strong that, sparing no lordship, it every stead in all the kingdoms stretching from that land northwards, up to and  Scotland, striking down the greater  of the  with the blows of swift death. It began in England in the shire of Dorset, the  of Hallow Peter in Fetters, and forthwith went on without warning from stead to stead. It killed a great many healthy folk, taking them from  in the span of a morning. Those marked for death were seldomly to live longer than three or four days. It showed to no one, but a small few of the wealthy. On the same day twenty, forty, or sixty bodies, and often many more, might be laid down for burying together in the same pit.

The came to London at about the  of All Hallows' and daily  many of life. It grew so strong that, between Candlemas and Easter, more than two hundred were buried almost every day in the new grave ground made next to Smithfield, and this was in  to the bodies buried in other churchyards in the borough. It stopped in London with the coming of the of the Holy Ghost, that is to say at, going forth unhindered towards the north, where it also stopped nigh Michaelmas in 1349.

A Rake from Bristol
In 1348, the feast of Hallow Peter in Fetters, the first  came to England at Bristol, born by  and sailers, and it lasted in the south lands  Bristol throughout  and all winter. And in the following year, that is to say in 1349, the began in the other shires of England and lasted for a whole year with the outcome being that the living could hardly bury the dead.

A Rake from York
In 1348, Michaelmas, there began a dying of men in England. After, on the 31st of Ereyule, the Ouse flooded and burst its banks at the bridge towards Micklegate, a befalling which lasted until Lent. And after this, at, the dying began in the borough of York and  until the feast of Hallow James.

Thomas Walsingham's Rake
This year there was a great which lasted from midsummer to the following, and it was speedily followed by a great dying in the east among the Saracens and other unbelievers. It was so great that hardly a tenth of the Saracens were left alive, and they, thinking that the had been sent to them for their unbelief,  to the Christly. But when they found that the same  among Christians they went back to their unbelief like dogs to their spew.

In 1349, that is in the 23rd year of the of King Edward III, a great killing went forth throughout the world, beginning in the southern and northern lands. Its was so great that hardly half mankind was left alive. Towns once brimming with folk were emptied of their dwellers, and the spread so thickly that the living could hardly bury the dead. It was reckoned by a handful of men that barely a tenth of mankind alive. A great dying of followed on the heels of this. dwindled and land was left untilled for want of who were nowhere to be found. And so much wretchedness followed these ills that afterwards the world could never go back to its former.

Meanwhile, as the  in England, Pope Clement, forthat the great sickness, full  for  to all those throughout the kingdom who died truly sorry after their.

A Rake from Scotland
in 1350 there was a great and dying of men in the kingdom of Scotland, and this  also  for many years before and after this in sundry spots of the world, indeed, throughout the whole. So great a has never been heard of from the beginning of the world to the  day, or been written down in books. For this blew its illwill so thoroughly that fully a third of mankind was killed. At God's bidding, moreover, the was done by an  and new shape of death. Those who fell sick of a kind of gross swelling of the flesh lasted for barely two days. This sickness befell everywhere, but  the middling and lower ilks, seldomly the great. It such  that childer did not dare to  their dying, or  their childer, but fled for fear of  as if from leprosy or a.