Black Death Journal - The Lord of the Manor - Lucy W PDF

Black Death Journal- The Lord of the Manor–Lucy W I looked outside my manor; the bodies of the serfs who had once farmed my land that I owned were scattered everywhere. As the lord of my manor, I was a privileged noble who lived a fine life and upheld the feudal system that benefited me greatly....

Black Death Journal- The Lord of the Manor–Lucy W I looked outside my manor; the bodies of the serfs who had once farmed my land that I owned were scattered everywhere. As the lord of my manor, I was a privileged noble who lived a fine life and upheld the feudal system that benefited me greatly. I lived a wealthy life better than most, but now, all of that has changed. I am nearly bankrupt, and the inhabitants of my manor are ill and dying. This is my story of how the ravaging illness affected me and my English manor. It all began when it was reported to me and my lady by the bailiff that several serfs were feeling unwell with high fevers. He looked at me grimly and then said, “My lord, several of the serfs that tend your farming fields are ill with a horrible sickness and are now dead. They came down with dark patches on their skin and lumps on their bodies. Days later, they were vomiting blood everywhere and even collapsed dead in their homes. According to the manor’s inhabitants, masses of decaying bodies are now piling up, covered in the blood they regurgitated just days ago when they were still alive. More serfs and villagers are falling ill, and some even went mad, seeing things that were never even there before perishing. The farms yield much fewer crops in their absence, and now the surviving villagers struggle to feed themselves. They are starving, and in addition, I was told that the a few of the survivors had fled the manor.” “Take me outside at once. Has anyone created a cure yet?”, I asked bluntly. The bailiff had a somber expression on his face as he said, "The priests and nuns in the manor church tried their best; nothing worked. They tried several ailments by burning sulphur and had the ill serfs smell garlic, but when all failed, they tried to drain the lumps found on their bodies, but with no avail. However, my lord, several priests and nuns are now dead as of a result of their attempts to cure the serfs.” The bailiff and I quickly rushed outside my manor house only to see the pitiful state of my manor. I gasped instantly. Even from this distance, the rotting piles of corpses that my bailiff described to me were still visible. I was shocked; time seemed to slow down. How could’ve this have happened? I had nearly a hundred and ninety, perhaps even two hundred serfs living on my manor, but in this fleeting period of time, just like that, I could see, thirty, maybe even forty that had succumbed to the illness, their limp bodies covering the farming strips where the plants once grew. Dreadful questions that I had to face swarmed my head. What will I do now? How will I sustain the labour needed to run the farms when the farm workers are dead and buried? How will we feed ourselves now? I reluctantly paid costly wages to hire workers to run my manor. People that I had never met before came flocking to my estate, requesting that they work my manor for payment. What choice did I have? Knowing that labour shortage and the demand for the workers caused wages went up, I had to replace the serfs with the outside workers. I dare say that I was losing rapidly losing income to pay them, and my estate was in shambles. That’s when I thought for certain that the feudal system was beginning to collapse. The conditions of the manor village did not improve either. Each day, my wealth was drained just as fast as the reports of dying serfs and villagers, and things got worse when sickness spread to servants living in my house. Now, my lady and I had to witness the fatalities, as servants started to grow the dreaded lumps on their bodies, then go mad, and die just days later. Weeks went by, and my lady and I glanced at the manor floor that was covered in bloodstains and looked in horror at the lifeless servants sprawled all over the manor house. I survived, but my manor did not, and that was when I knew that this was surely a punishment from God. We suffered so much, so what else could it have been?