Look around your classroom. Now imagine that in eighteen months, half of the people you know — friends, family, neighbours — are gone. That is what happened in England in 1348–1349. The disease we call the Black Death killed roughly one person in every two. But before we can ask what that catastrophe changed, we have to know what England was like the day before it arrived. Today we meet that society — the people, the towns, the work — so we can measure what the plague was about to do to it.
England in 1347: a society already under strain
England in 1347 was not a backwater. It was a kingdom of perhaps four
to six million people — busy, prosperous in many places, and tightly
organised. London was one of the biggest cities in Europe. The
countryside was fully farmed. There was money in circulation. There
were lawyers and doctors and university students. There was a
Parliament that met regularly. There were people who could read.
But England in 1347 was also a society that had recently been tested.
Just thirty years earlier, between 1315 and 1317, England had lived
through what historians call the Great Famine — two years when the
rain did not stop, when the wheat would not grow, when one person
in ten died of hunger. The people who watched their neighbours die
in 1349 had grown up hearing about the famine from their parents.
They knew that catastrophe was possible.
The question for today is NOT "did the Black Death change England?"
Of course it did. The question is: how do we MEASURE change? What
counts as "remade" and what counts as "still standing"? That is
what you start to figure out in this lesson — by reading three
pieces of evidence, naming the patterns they show, and ranking
those patterns on a scale of social disruption.
Today we'll be talking a lot — sharing ideas, comparing them, and working out which ones the evidence really backs up. To do that well, we agree three ground rules before we start.
Read the three rules with your partner. Can you each agree to them for today? What other rules could we add?
Below are eight English cities from c.1300 — about fifty years before the plague. Predict which were the biggest and which were the smallest. Write your guess at the top three and the bottom three first; then reveal the populations in the table below and note what surprised you. You have two minutes, in silence. No talking yet.
| City | Population (c.1300) |
|---|---|
| Lincoln | — |
| London | — |
| Newcastle | — |
| York | — |
| Salisbury | — |
| Bristol | — |
| Norwich | — |
| Coventry | — |
Now talk to your partner. Compare your predictions against the populations. Use the questions and talk stems below to put your thinking into words — the populations are shown on the right for reference.
| City | Population |
|---|---|
| Lincoln | 8,000 |
| London | 80,000–100,000 |
| Newcastle | 5,000 |
| York | 20,000 |
| Salisbury | 7,000 |
| Bristol | 17,000 |
| Norwich | 25,000 |
| Coventry | 10,000 |
Let's capture your thoughts and ideas so far as a collective. As each pair shares, we record the surprise and the hypothesis behind it on the board below.
|
Whole-class capture
What do these eight city sizes tell us about pre-plague English society?
Capture each pair's surprise + their hypothesis.
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You've ranked eight cities and surfaced your first impressions about pre-plague England. In the Main, three more data tables will deepen the picture — population, famine, wages — and you'll build the criteria that turn impressions into a defensible verdict.
Did the size of London surprise you? Most pupils expect medieval cities to be much smaller. Why might we underestimate the medieval world?
We will now sort the evidence into dimensions of medieval life and rank those dimensions by which is the strongest measure of social disruption. Today the work is in the talking and the sorting — defending your ranking out loud to your partner. What we build here is the foundation for answering our unit question "how far did the plague remake England?".
Three pieces of evidence about pre-plague England are waiting in the cards below. Read each card with your partner. For each one, agree what the numbers tell you about English society — and which DIMENSION of medieval life (population / food supply / labour and wages) each card speaks to most strongly. Don't sort the evidence yet — that's Stage 2. For now, just talk through each card and agree what it shows.
Click any card to open it. Use the "Reveal next" button inside each card to step through the numbers with your partner — one at a time. Then talk about what each one means before moving on.
Three respected historians have studied the same medieval records — tax rolls, church surveys, manor accounts — and come up with different answers about how many people lived in England in 1300. Notice the gap between their highest and lowest estimates as you read.
Just thirty years before the Black Death, England lived through a different catastrophe. The rain did not stop for two summers, the wheat would not ripen, and grain prices climbed faster than most people could earn. The people who watched their neighbours die in 1349 had grown up hearing about this famine from their parents.
Wakefield Manor in Yorkshire kept careful written records of everything paid to its labourers — what they were paid for reaping wheat, mowing meadow, and other seasonal work. The 1350 records also include a complaint from the bailiff (the lord's land-manager). Read the entries closely — the years 1342 and 1350 are just eight years apart.
Stop. Sixty seconds. With the pair next to you — which ONE number across the three cards has surprised you most so far? Say it out loud; name the card; say why. Then, in one more sentence each, name TWO reasons — using evidence from the cards — why rural life in 1347 was already uncertain even before the plague arrived.
"Such a mortality of men in England and Scotland was never heard of in our times. People ate the flesh of dogs and horses, and even, it was rumoured, of children. The poor died in the fields and on the highways." — Trokelowe on the 1315 Great Famine. Hatcher (*Plague, Population and the English Economy*, 1977) argued the pre-plague population was c. 3.7 million; Campbell (*English Seigniorial Agriculture*, 2000) argued c. 4.5 million. The disagreement matters because the SAME mortality figure (e.g. 45%) produces very different absolute death counts depending on which baseline you start from — and the historians are arguing about the baseline, not the percentage.
— John of Trokelowe, *Annales*, entry for 1315 (St Albans Abbey chronicle), in H.T. Riley (ed.) *Johannis de Trokelowe, Annales* (Rolls Series 28, 1866); secondary discussion from Hatcher (1977) and Campbell (2000). [VERIFY at Stage 5 archive]
Step back for a moment — metatalk. Before we move to Stage 2, pause. Of the four moves we'll meet in Stage 2 (testable, scale-aware, dimension-aware, counter-argument-friendly), which one feels HARDEST to imagine right now? Tell your partner one sentence about your own thinking — not about the evidence, about HOW you're going to think. Notice the move you're worried about, then carry on.
Below are eight pieces of evidence drawn from the three cards in Stage 1. Drag each tile into the dimension it speaks to most strongly. If a tile fits more than one dimension, choose the BEST fit and be ready to explain your choice.
Now rank the three dimensions of medieval life by which is the MOST USEFUL measure of how disrupted English society was in 1347. Drag the items to reorder them — put the strongest measure at the top. There is no single right order, but the evidence pushes harder in some directions than others. You must be able to defend your ranking.
Then meet the objective: for your top-ranked dimension, explain what its evidence tells us about a strength or a weakness of English society before 1348. That sentence is your answer to today's learning objective.
How to weigh each dimension. A strong measure of "social disruption" usually scores well on three tests — use them to decide your own order:
What each dimension gives you to test:
Apply the three tests to each one, then decide your ranking. Be ready to say which test mattered most in your decision.
At the Starter you ranked eight cities and committed (often quietly) to a picture of pre-plague England. Now you've read three more data tables, named the analytical dimensions, sorted the evidence, and ranked the dimensions on a social-disruption scale. Look back at the Class Thinking Board from the Starter.
Question for the class: Does that Starter-line still hold? Add one sentence to the capture: "I would now add _____" or "I would change _____ to _____ because _____." And — using one word — what dimension of medieval life turned out to be the most useful MEASURE of how disrupted English society was?
With your partner: which dimension are you most confident placing where you placed it — and which tile was hardest to sort? What evidence settled it?
Today's learning objective asked you to identify evidence about pre-plague England and explain what it tells us about the society's strengths or weaknesses before 1348. Name the most convincing evidence from today and say what it tells us about a strength or a weakness of English society before 1348.
Now, knowing what you know about pre-plague England, predict what would happen if a sudden disease killed roughly half of the population in eighteen months. Choose ONE prediction:
Pick ONE option (A, B, C, D, or E) and say it to your partner with one reason. You'll find out at L2 and beyond which prediction the evidence actually supports — and whether more than one of them turns out to be right.
Sentence stems:
Pre-plague England was a society that ran on its peasant labour. Many modern societies run on essential workers — people who deliver our food, treat our sick, drive our buses, build our homes. Imagine that overnight, half of a country's essential workers stopped being able to work. Would your three DIMENSIONS for "what counts as social disruption" apply? Which of YOUR three dimensions would still work? Which would need to be replaced?
Stretch question: A 21st-century country loses half of its essential workers in eighteen months. Using ONE of your three dimensions from Stage 2 (population / food supply / labour and wages, or "what the records don't say"), say what evidence you would look for first to test whether that society had been "remade" or had absorbed the shock. Be specific about what number or record you'd want to see.
Next lesson you meet the disease itself — how it travelled across England in 1348–1349, how fast it killed, and what people at the time thought was causing it. You'll test your prediction (A / B / C / D / E) against the first batch of eyewitness evidence from Henry Knighton at Leicester and Geoffrey le Baker in Oxfordshire. Bring your Stage 2 ranking with you — L2 is where the social- disruption dimensions you built today start to earn their keep.