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Having lost thousands of people to the famine of 1315, in 1348 a new threat arrived: the Black Death also known as the plague. It had been in Europe and the first case in England was recorded at Melcombe Regis in Dorset on the 7 July. Over the next 3 years the population of England went down from 5 million to 2 and a half million. The plague recurred regularly, if less severely, through the second half of the 14th century and into the 15th century. By the way we sometimes refer to a hundred years of history as a century. Rather confusingly, the century is always one more than the years. In other words this year, 2018 if you are reading this when it was first uploaded, is in the 21st century; 1845 was in the 19th century and 1348, when the plague started, was in the middle of the 14th century.
The Black Death was a terrible illness. It started with sneezing, then a cough. 
Next spots the size of apples would appear on the body and these spots formed dark patches on the skin, hence the Black Death. Within four days the person would be dead. There was no cure. Once it came to a village it was likely that most people would get it. People knew that if they looked after someone with the Black Death they might get it too. But they had to do it.
To avoid it spreading, villages would be shut off. Nobody could leave and nobody come in. Food would be left outside the village and someone from the
village would come and collect it. Once it was thought that the illness was carried into England by rats aboard a ship. However it now seems likely that
it was the fleas that were carried on the rats fur which spread the disease very quickly.
The Great Plague affected many countries in Europe and may have killed over 100 million people. It meant that there were far less people to work the land and workers began to move around more as landowners needed replacements for those who had died.
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