hey gathered
together an army in Ettrick forest with the object of invading the
plague-stricken border shires. But the pestilence fell upon the host
assembled for the foray, and all war was stopped while Scotland was
devastated from end to end. Ireland began to suffer in August, 1349, the
disease being at first confined to the Englishry of the towns, though,
after a time, it made its way also to the pure Irish.[3]

[1] A. Jessopp, _The Black Death in East Anglia_, in _The
Coming of the Friars and Other Essays_(1889). For general
details see F. Seebohm, _The Black Death_, in _Fortnightly
Review (1865 and 1866)_; J.E.T. Rogers, _England before and
after the Black Death_, in _Fortnightly Review (1866)_; F.A.
Gasquet's _Great Pestilence_ (1893); and C. Creighton, _History
of Epidemics in Britain_, i., 114-207(1891).

[2] A.G. Little, _The Black Death in Lancashire_, in _Engl.
Hist. Review_, v. (1890), 524-30

[3] See for Ireland, however, the vivid details in J. Clyn of
Kilkenny, _Annales Hibevnia: ad annum 1349_, ed. R. Butler,
_Irish Archaological Soc._ (1849).

The wild exaggerations of the chroniclers reflect the horror and
desolation wrought by the epidemic. There died so many, we are told,
that the survivors scarcely sufficed to bury the victims, and not one
man in ten remained alive. The more moderate estimate of Froissart sets
down the proportion dead of the plague as one in three throughout all
Christendom, and some modern inquirers have rashly reckoned the
mortality in England as amounting to a half or a third of the
population. In truth, complete statistics are necessarily wanting, and
if the records of the admissions of the clergy attest that, in certain
dioceses, half the livings changed hands during the years of
pestilence, it is not permissible to infer from that circumstance that
there was a similar rate of mortality from the plague over the whole of
the population. The sudden and overwhelming character of the disorder
increased the universal terror. One day a man was healthy: within a few
hours of the appearance of the fatal swelling, or of the dark livid
marks which gave the plague its popular name, he was a corpse. The
pestilence seemed to single out the young and robust as its prey, and
to spare the aged and sick. The churchyards were soon overflowing, and
special plague pits had to be dug where the dead were heaped up by the
hundred. Comparatively few