History & Causes

Life in 14th century England was difficult at best. The New York Times, in a recent article on research into the DNA of bubonic plague, noted that

"Harsh as the economic stresses assailing Europe today may be, they are a breeze compared with problems in the mid-14th century. The climate was cooling, heavy rains rotted out crops and caused frequent famines, and the Hundred Years’ War began in 1337. People were probably already suffering from malnutrition and other diseases when the plague arrived like the fourth horseman of the apocalypse." (NYT)

Map of the first major plague epidemic (New York State Department of Education)

The area of Russia known as the steppes was home to a well-traveled trade route between the Far East and Europe. In medieval times it was also home to the bacterium that causes bubonic plague, and even today local residents have been known to come down with the disease. The Italians from Genoa struck an agreement with the ruling Mongols to develop the city of Caffa as a major port, but by the early 1340s the Mongols had grown tired of the "vainglorius, supercilious, and deeply duplicitious" Genoese and held the city in a state of siege (Kelly).


For several years prior to this siege, plague had been affecting the Mongol territory to the east, and rumors of its virulence had traveled to Caffa and other port cities on the Caspian Sea. The plague struck the siege troops in 1346, and the Genoese residents believed it was divine retribution saving them. They were very, very wrong (Kelly).

One Genoa resident, Gabriele de'Mussi, documented stories that the dying Mongols used catapults to eject the infected bodies of their dead into Caffa and piled them up in the sea as a sort of medieval biological warfare (Wheelis). Other authors argue that these stories may have been exaggerated (Benedictow, article), but the plague still found its way into the town, probably through the fleas living on rats.


The horror of plague infection spread as more and more townspeople became sick and died. Society broke down, social conventions fell by the wayside, and those who still felt well enough to travel fled the city as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, the disease went with them, and eventually the horrific scenes in Caffa were repeated throughout southern Europe (Kelly).
According to the Greyfriars Chronicle, the plague entered England sometime in late June, 1348.

"In this year 1348 in Melcombe, in the county of Dorset, a little before the feast of St. John the Baptist, two ships, one of them from Bristol came alongside. One of the sailors had brought with him from Gascony the seeds of the terrible pestilence and through him the men of that town of Melcombe were the first in England to be infected." (Benedictow, book)

After this first attack of the deadly disease, it rapidly spread throughout England, first striking port towns as ships docked and discharged infected sailors along with numerous rats carrying infected fleas. (Benedictow, book). Cramped living conditions, lack of proper sanitation, lack of medical knowledge, and superstition all played a part as well (Kelly).

Plaque at the port of Weymouth in England.The plague actually arrived on a shop docked at Melcombe Regis, a nearby small town that was eventually consolidated with Weymouth. (Weymouth & Portland website)