THE BLACK DEATH STORY

William Brewer woke up the next morning to get the milk from the cow, but this old man was crawling on the floor because he had rashes all over his body and a lump on his groin and under his arms, so he went to get a Herbalist to see what he could for the man but he couldn't do anything. So they had a meeting about it and said keep everybody in their houses but nearly everyone got it. Then they had to stay with the people and somebody said that they went through five stages. He said the first one was that they started to get boils on the groin and under the arms.  The second stage was that they couldn't stop  vomiting all day long.  The third stage was that they were getting blood blotches all over the body under the skin.  The fourth stage was that they had pains and spasms all over the place.  The fifth stage was that the lump under the arm or on the groin could pop and they could live or if they didn't pop, you would have died anyway. 

In the meeting they talked about the three things that might have caused it and one of them was sent by God, one of them was the bad air and the last one was person to person, but the people who won were those who thought it was sent by God, because nearly all the people were religious.  When one person caught it nearly everyone caught it in the village, so they went round looking for some frogs but they had to be careful because some of them were poisonous.  When they found the right frog they put it on the boil so they could suck all of the poison and live but the frog would have died but it would be better than the frog dying than the person dying.  But people thought it was god trying to punish them.  So they started to hit each other with whips and some went to holy places to pray. The cure was to put 10 frogs on the boil and let them suck all of the poison out of it.

THE RESULTS: The good thing about the plague were the food prices went down and the people  got more wages and land. The bad things were that lots and lots of people died from the village.         

By Andrew Hunt