Rare records from a medieval English village are offering new evidence about people who became ill during the Black Death but survived. The documents suggest that most needed three or four weeks before they were able to return to work.
The Black Death killed up to half of Europe’s population between 1347 and 1353, but historians know surprisingly little about the experiences of those who contracted plague and recovered. A new study, appearing in the journal Historical Research identified 22 tenants from the village of Warboys in eastern England who were unable to perform their labour services during the summer of 1349 because of illness.
Although the Warboys records do not identify the illness affecting these tenants, the researchers argue that plague is by far the most likely explanation. The absences coincided with the arrival of the Black Death in the surrounding region, while their scale and timing differ dramatically from the normal pattern of illness recorded at the manor.
Twenty-two people fall ill
Sign at the village of Warboys – photo by Uksignpix / Wikimedia Commons
Warboys belonged to Ramsey Abbey, a wealthy Benedictine monastery with extensive estates in eastern England. Its manorial accounts document occasions when customary tenants were excused from performing the labour services they owed on the abbey’s lands.
Between 1336 and 1408, the Warboys accounts record 107 incidences of tenants receiving relief from work because of illness. Normally, only a small number of people were absent in any given year. During the accounting year of 1348–49, however, 26 people fell ill, including 22 during a thirteen-week period in the summer.
No more than three summer illnesses were recorded in any comparable year during the decade before or after the Black Death. The extraordinary concentration of sickness in 1349 points to a contagious disease moving rapidly through the community.
Evidence from nearby churches supports this chronology. A series of clerical vacancies occurred in settlements within ten kilometres of Warboys between late May and early August 1349. Even the abbot of Ramsey Abbey also died in the middle of June. Although these individual deaths cannot be conclusively attributed to plague, their concentration suggests that the Black Death was devastating the area at precisely the time the Warboys tenants became ill.
The surviving account includes a separate piece of parchment listing the affected tenants, the number of labour services they missed and how long each person remained absent. The list names 19 men and three women, but this is probably because men were more likely to hold land and owe labour services, not because they were more likely to contract plague.
Recovering from the Black Death
The records suggest that recovery was normally measured in weeks rather than days. Seven tenants were absent for three weeks and six for four weeks. Four returned within one or two weeks, while five required between six and nine weeks. Together, the 22 tenants accumulated 91 weeks of absence and missed 193 individual labour services.
Returning to work does not necessarily mean that they had completely recovered. Some may still have been weak or experiencing lingering effects when they resumed their responsibilities. Nevertheless, their reappearance in the labour accounts indicates that they had regained enough strength to participate once again in the manorial economy.
This timeframe differs from the picture usually provided by medieval chroniclers, who often described plague victims as dying or escaping death within the first few days after symptoms appeared. Those accounts focused on surviving the disease’s most dangerous stage, rather than the longer process of regaining enough strength to return to ordinary life. The Warboys records suggest that while a person might escape death within days, recovering sufficiently to resume work generally took three or four weeks.
The researchers also considered whether the list might include people who remained ill for several weeks before dying. This appears unlikely because the Warboys accounts sometimes explicitly note when an illness ended in death. None of the 22 people is recorded as dying from the illness, and at least 14 can be positively identified in later surviving records. Gaps in the manorial documents mean that this is a minimum figure, and it is possible that nearly all of them survived.
One was John Flemyng, who was a young man when he missed three weeks of work in 1349. He continued to appear in the records for decades afterwards, had at least two children and three grandchildren in the village, and did not disappear from the surviving documentation until 1392.
Ambrose Raftis and the Warboys records
The importance of these records was first recognised through the pioneering work of University of Toronto historian James Ambrose Raftis. His 1974 book, Warboys: Two Hundred Years in the Life of an English Mediaeval Village, reconstructed the lives of individual tenants by linking their appearances across generations of manorial documents. This method, associated with what became known as the “Toronto School” of medieval social history, allowed Raftis to examine a village community at the level of named individuals and families.
Raftis compiled a table of absences caused by illness, but he did not analyse the dramatic increase during the summer of 1349 or connect it with the Black Death. A team of three historians, A. T. Brown and Grace Owen from Durham University, along with independent scholar Barney Sloane, returned to his work alongside the original documents held by the British Library. By recognising the timing and exceptional scale of the illnesses, they have uncovered evidence that had been available for decades but whose importance for understanding plague recovery had gone largely unnoticed.
The documents themselves are equally unusual. On many medieval English manors, tenants who became ill received only two weeks to a month of relief from their labour obligations, if they received any allowance at all. Some were expected to arrange for relatives or hired substitutes to work in their place.
Ramsey Abbey’s tenants enjoyed a much more generous provision. At Warboys, those who became ill could be excused from their labour services for as long as a year and a day. The abbey’s officials consequently kept unusually detailed records of who was absent and for how long, creating a rare source for studying illness among ordinary medieval villagers.
Did wealth improve the chances of survival?
Mary Magdalene Church in Warboys, which dates back to the 13th century – photo: Chris Stafford / St Mary Magdalene Warboys / CC BY-SA 2.0
The list may also offer tentative evidence about the relationship between economic status and survival. Tenants possessing larger holdings are over-represented among those who became ill and recovered, while people with the smallest holdings appear comparatively infrequently.
There are several possible explanations. Larger landholders owed more labour services, and abbey officials may therefore have monitored their absences more carefully. Wealthier tenants may also have lived closer to livestock, potentially increasing their exposure to infected fleas.
Another possibility is that people with larger holdings had better diets and living conditions, giving them a greater chance of surviving plague and the complications that followed it. Poorer neighbours may have contracted the disease but died before an absence needed to be recorded. The number of small tenements owing labour services fell more sharply after the outbreak than the number of larger holdings.
The researchers stress that the sample is too small to establish a direct relationship between wealth and survival. The records cover only tenants who owed labour services rather than the entire population of Warboys, making it impossible to calculate a reliable infection or survival rate for the village.
Illness added to the labour crisis
The findings also add another dimension to the economic consequences of the Black Death. Historians have naturally concentrated on the enormous loss of life and the resulting shortage of workers. The Warboys records show that communities also had to cope with the temporary disappearance of people who survived but remained unable to work for weeks.
During the thirteen-week summer period of 1349, illness accounted for the loss of approximately 10 per cent of the labour services owed at Warboys. This disruption occurred during a critical period in the agricultural calendar, when workers were needed in the fields.
Overall, the authors conclude:
This article has gone some way in redressing this imbalance by writing the history of sickness and recovery back into the Black Death, demonstrating that recovery was possible even in the face of one of the worst pandemics in recorded human history. The Warboys evidence enables us to recover the stories of individuals such as John Flemyng, who contracted the plague in the summer of 1349, who perhaps lay languishing on his sickbed, exhibiting buboes, vomiting blood and wracked by fevers, and fearing the worst, and who not only survived but returned to work in a mere three weeks.
The article, “Surviving the Black Death in medieval England: recovering from illness at Warboys, Huntingdonshire,” by A. T. Brown, Grace Owen and Barney Sloane, is published in Historical Research. Click here to read it.
Rare records from a medieval English village are offering new evidence about people who became ill during the Black Death but survived. The documents suggest that most needed three or four weeks before they were able to return to work.
The Black Death killed up to half of Europe’s population between 1347 and 1353, but historians know surprisingly little about the experiences of those who contracted plague and recovered. A new study, appearing in the journal Historical Research identified 22 tenants from the village of Warboys in eastern England who were unable to perform their labour services during the summer of 1349 because of illness.
Although the Warboys records do not identify the illness affecting these tenants, the researchers argue that plague is by far the most likely explanation. The absences coincided with the arrival of the Black Death in the surrounding region, while their scale and timing differ dramatically from the normal pattern of illness recorded at the manor.
Twenty-two people fall ill
Warboys belonged to Ramsey Abbey, a wealthy Benedictine monastery with extensive estates in eastern England. Its manorial accounts document occasions when customary tenants were excused from performing the labour services they owed on the abbey’s lands.
Between 1336 and 1408, the Warboys accounts record 107 incidences of tenants receiving relief from work because of illness. Normally, only a small number of people were absent in any given year. During the accounting year of 1348–49, however, 26 people fell ill, including 22 during a thirteen-week period in the summer.
No more than three summer illnesses were recorded in any comparable year during the decade before or after the Black Death. The extraordinary concentration of sickness in 1349 points to a contagious disease moving rapidly through the community.
Evidence from nearby churches supports this chronology. A series of clerical vacancies occurred in settlements within ten kilometres of Warboys between late May and early August 1349. Even the abbot of Ramsey Abbey also died in the middle of June. Although these individual deaths cannot be conclusively attributed to plague, their concentration suggests that the Black Death was devastating the area at precisely the time the Warboys tenants became ill.
The surviving account includes a separate piece of parchment listing the affected tenants, the number of labour services they missed and how long each person remained absent. The list names 19 men and three women, but this is probably because men were more likely to hold land and owe labour services, not because they were more likely to contract plague.
Recovering from the Black Death
The records suggest that recovery was normally measured in weeks rather than days. Seven tenants were absent for three weeks and six for four weeks. Four returned within one or two weeks, while five required between six and nine weeks. Together, the 22 tenants accumulated 91 weeks of absence and missed 193 individual labour services.
Returning to work does not necessarily mean that they had completely recovered. Some may still have been weak or experiencing lingering effects when they resumed their responsibilities. Nevertheless, their reappearance in the labour accounts indicates that they had regained enough strength to participate once again in the manorial economy.
This timeframe differs from the picture usually provided by medieval chroniclers, who often described plague victims as dying or escaping death within the first few days after symptoms appeared. Those accounts focused on surviving the disease’s most dangerous stage, rather than the longer process of regaining enough strength to return to ordinary life. The Warboys records suggest that while a person might escape death within days, recovering sufficiently to resume work generally took three or four weeks.
The researchers also considered whether the list might include people who remained ill for several weeks before dying. This appears unlikely because the Warboys accounts sometimes explicitly note when an illness ended in death. None of the 22 people is recorded as dying from the illness, and at least 14 can be positively identified in later surviving records. Gaps in the manorial documents mean that this is a minimum figure, and it is possible that nearly all of them survived.
One was John Flemyng, who was a young man when he missed three weeks of work in 1349. He continued to appear in the records for decades afterwards, had at least two children and three grandchildren in the village, and did not disappear from the surviving documentation until 1392.
Ambrose Raftis and the Warboys records
The importance of these records was first recognised through the pioneering work of University of Toronto historian James Ambrose Raftis. His 1974 book, Warboys: Two Hundred Years in the Life of an English Mediaeval Village, reconstructed the lives of individual tenants by linking their appearances across generations of manorial documents. This method, associated with what became known as the “Toronto School” of medieval social history, allowed Raftis to examine a village community at the level of named individuals and families.
Raftis compiled a table of absences caused by illness, but he did not analyse the dramatic increase during the summer of 1349 or connect it with the Black Death. A team of three historians, A. T. Brown and Grace Owen from Durham University, along with independent scholar Barney Sloane, returned to his work alongside the original documents held by the British Library. By recognising the timing and exceptional scale of the illnesses, they have uncovered evidence that had been available for decades but whose importance for understanding plague recovery had gone largely unnoticed.
The documents themselves are equally unusual. On many medieval English manors, tenants who became ill received only two weeks to a month of relief from their labour obligations, if they received any allowance at all. Some were expected to arrange for relatives or hired substitutes to work in their place.
Ramsey Abbey’s tenants enjoyed a much more generous provision. At Warboys, those who became ill could be excused from their labour services for as long as a year and a day. The abbey’s officials consequently kept unusually detailed records of who was absent and for how long, creating a rare source for studying illness among ordinary medieval villagers.
Did wealth improve the chances of survival?
The list may also offer tentative evidence about the relationship between economic status and survival. Tenants possessing larger holdings are over-represented among those who became ill and recovered, while people with the smallest holdings appear comparatively infrequently.
There are several possible explanations. Larger landholders owed more labour services, and abbey officials may therefore have monitored their absences more carefully. Wealthier tenants may also have lived closer to livestock, potentially increasing their exposure to infected fleas.
Another possibility is that people with larger holdings had better diets and living conditions, giving them a greater chance of surviving plague and the complications that followed it. Poorer neighbours may have contracted the disease but died before an absence needed to be recorded. The number of small tenements owing labour services fell more sharply after the outbreak than the number of larger holdings.
The researchers stress that the sample is too small to establish a direct relationship between wealth and survival. The records cover only tenants who owed labour services rather than the entire population of Warboys, making it impossible to calculate a reliable infection or survival rate for the village.
Illness added to the labour crisis
The findings also add another dimension to the economic consequences of the Black Death. Historians have naturally concentrated on the enormous loss of life and the resulting shortage of workers. The Warboys records show that communities also had to cope with the temporary disappearance of people who survived but remained unable to work for weeks.
During the thirteen-week summer period of 1349, illness accounted for the loss of approximately 10 per cent of the labour services owed at Warboys. This disruption occurred during a critical period in the agricultural calendar, when workers were needed in the fields.
Overall, the authors conclude:
This article has gone some way in redressing this imbalance by writing the history of sickness and recovery back into the Black Death, demonstrating that recovery was possible even in the face of one of the worst pandemics in recorded human history. The Warboys evidence enables us to recover the stories of individuals such as John Flemyng, who contracted the plague in the summer of 1349, who perhaps lay languishing on his sickbed, exhibiting buboes, vomiting blood and wracked by fevers, and fearing the worst, and who not only survived but returned to work in a mere three weeks.
The article, “Surviving the Black Death in medieval England: recovering from illness at Warboys, Huntingdonshire,” by A. T. Brown, Grace Owen and Barney Sloane, is published in Historical Research. Click here to read it.
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