Customer Reviews
Interesting but not gripping .... - By: Stewart Murray McRorie, 20 Jul 2008 
The Black Death "remains the greatest natural disaster to befalll humanity." Well, perhaps but we are spoilt for choice. Professor Hatcher's book is a hybrid, mostly a social & economic history, partly fictional based on a real Suffolk village in 1340s. What he has done is to apply intellect & industry (using the records that have survived) adding his imagination to make a story. As a Cambridge historian, he is qualified to add narrative flesh to the factual skeleton. The book chronicles the fourteenth century rural world with much detail - plus some reasonable extrapolation - providing a picture of religious belief, agricultural practice & social structure.
Essentiallly this is a book about terror. The suffering caused by the plague is dealt with comparatively briefly; it arrives on page 127 & is over in eight weeks. It was random, the godly fell as easily as the sinners. Its gruesome symptoms are described; individual lives sketched in their final hours. There is not much more to say about boils & the stench, "bring out your dead" & paint the crosses on the doors. Hatcher invents characters to propel the story. The book has the subtitle "A Intimate History" & I suppose this was it.
What I did not fully appreciate was that they knew what was coming a long time before it arrived. Reports of the epidemic travelled well ahead of the actual infection; by 1346, it was known to be on the Caspian then its progress charted city by city. Death, horrible & agonising, was coming ever nearer; it was only a matter of time. It arrived in Weymouth, Dorset, in 1348. In the Suffolk village it came in the Spring 1349. How would our society react knowing that half of us would be dead in two or three years?
What they did was turn to religion. In a world of intense superstition & pervasive Christian dogma, the clergy controlled lives. Unimaginable suffering awaited those who did not die in the hands of a priest. Death without confession, & the correct rituals, ensured entry to hell & a putrid eternity of suffering. Terror of the spiritual was as great as the fear of physical suffering. Half the population of the village died, peaking at 50 people per day most without confession or a proper funeral to pave their way toward heaven. Some had prepared as best they could, elaborate rituals, visits to shrines, holy water & candles. The church made a lot of money, priests made more as did the charlatans & quacks.
Hatcher then goes to some length to show how society changed after the infection had passed. There were considerable spoils for the survivors; land was available, food was cheap, higher wages for less work, & a new social freedom for the poor with less deference & obedience to their masters. And yes the priests (those that survived, God was not sparing of his own) made more money.
I was a little weary by the end of the book; it is an interesting story but not a gripping one. The characters are not developed but illustrative. This is certainly not "an intimate history" rather a skilled case study of a place & time. As Professor Hatcher suggested, it is an invitation to go & learn more. This is a tidy book, a good social & economic commentary of the rural - as opposed to the better documented urban - experience.
