Black-death synonyms

Following on this came the Black Death with its terrible consequences in Germany; even in Poland, where the Jews had previously enjoyed considerable rights, extensive massacres took place.

The country was also visited by a succession of famines and floods, and in 1348 the Black Death swept over Europe like a terrible scourge.

The discontent of the rural labourers and of the poorer class of craftsmen in the towns, caused by the economic distress that followed the Black Death and the enactment of the Statute of Labourers in 1351, was brought to a head by the imposition of a poll tax in 1379 and again in 1381, and at the end of May in the latter year riots broke out at Brentwood in Essex; on the 4th of June similar violence occurred at Dartford; and on the 6th a mob several thousands strong seized the castle of Rochester and marched up the Medway to Maidstone.

Dr Creighton points out that the number given by certain chroniclers of the deaths from the early pestilences in London are incredible; such for instance as the statement that forty or fifty thousand bodies were buried in Charterhouse churchyard at the time of the Black Death in 1348-1349.

In the same year the Black Death first appeared in England, and raged until 1349.