Return of the Black Death in 1374–75 in the same epidemic that had hastened Coucy’s departure from Lombardy thinned more hearths and reduced the tax yield.
“Return of the Black Death in 1374–75 in the same epidemic that had hastened Coucy’s departure from Lombardy thinned more hearths and reduced the tax yield. The recurring outbreaks were beginning to have a cumulative effect on population decline as they did on the deepening gloom of the century. In the poll tax of 1379 four villages of Gloucestershire were recorded as making no returns; in Norfolk six centuries later, five small churches within a day’s visit of each other still stood in deserted silence on the sites of villages abandoned in the 14th century. As before, however, mortality was erratic and there was no lack of land-hungry younger sons, poor relations, and landless tenants ready to take over ownerless property and keep land in cultivation.”
