Lesson video

Hi everyone, and welcome back to lesson two of the enquiry how far did the Black Death change the Mediaeval World? Now, we already know from the last lesson that this disease was vast with how it killed so many people within the world.

We know in Europe that was 30 to 50% of people lost their lives, and this would've had a huge effect in every single town and village.

Now, for us historians it's actually really difficult for us to understand the exact effect that this had and the changes that happened just through the lack of records.

There's still court records at this time, but a lot of them focus on the crimes that were being committed.

Or maybe a cow had wandered off from someone's field.

And they don't go into detail as to how people changed their lives by treating the Black Death or what happened to the survivors.

However, I have a secret weapon for this and it's this book, "The Black Death: The Intimate Story of a Village in Crisis, 1345-1350" written by John Hatcher.

Now, don't worry, I'm not going to force you to read this book yourself.

I've done it for you, and it's really good because it gives a really good intimate history of those peasants and how their lives changed.

This is really, really difficult as peasants at this time were illiterate, and historians don't have access to any diaries or letters because these peasants, the majority of the population, couldn't read or write.

But in here we have a really, really good snapshot as to what happened within this one village, it was called Walsham le Willows in England, and we're going to investigate in detail what happened to these people, how they dealt with this really scary and devastating disease.

So, before we get stuck in what I want you to do is make sure you've got everything you need.

I need you to have a pen or pencil to write with and a piece of paper.

If you don't have that then just pause me, and then we will begin.

Okay, first things first, I would like you to write down the date in the top right hand corner of your piece of paper and the title, which is Treating the Black Death.

And please make sure both of those are underlined.

Just pause the screen here as you get that done.

Okay, so we already know from studying the last lesson that the Black Death travelled from the East over to the West.

And in winter of 1347 the Black Death hit the Mediterranean as traders travelled from the East selling their products along the Silk Road.

And then from there the Black Death travelled off in lots of different directions, more noticeably in France and Spain in January, 1348.

At this point people in England were feeling one of two ways.

You had the group that were thinking do you know what? The Black Death, look, it's not going to get into England.

We're an island, we're completely surrounded by water.

There's no way this disease is going to be able to infect our country.

And the other group, and I think probably the more intelligent group, turned to these people and said, "You're absolutely mad.

This disease has travelled from across the whole globe through water as traders have been trying to sell their wares, and that's how they've been spreading this disease as they travelled along the seas.

There's no way that England will stay safe." And indeed by the end of 1348 the disease entered England.

Now, the village that we're going to be looking at in detail over the next few lessons is called Walsham le Willows, and you can see it there with that yellow star.

And they're very much a village in crisis.

They were the group that was panicking massively about the Black Death hitting them as they heard lots and lots of stories of it entering into London and all of the people that were dying from this.

It was like a horror story to them.

So, the reason why panic was mounting so massively is because at this time in the Mediaeval Period there wasn't no real scientific knowledge of how diseases spread.

They hadn't discovered germs yet, they didn't know what that was.

And so, it was really widely accepted that if you caught the Black Death you were probably going to be dead in a few days.

Indeed, only a fifth of people that developed those buboes that we spoke about survived the Black Death.

And so, a lot of people, instead of trying to focus on finding a cure for this disease instead focused on how they could prevent the disease from entering Walsham le Willows in the first place.

Now, many people then turned to the church for guidance on this.

As you'll remember, the church was incredibly important at this time and one of the most influential organisations.

Okay, so what I'd like you to do just first of all we've got a pause point here.

If you think, how did the villagers of Walsham feel about the Black Death in 1348? You got four options there.

Option one, calm, people knew how to stop the Black Death from spreading.

Option two, worried, people had little knowledge of how to treat the Black Death.

Option three, worried and confident, some people were sure that England would stay safe whilst others worried about death rates.

And option four, very panicked, people immediately started trying to run away from Walsham and escape the Black Death.

So, just pause the screen here and write down your answer to this question.

Okay, really well done for doing that.

I think it's always really useful for us living in 2020 to put ourselves in the shoes of those living in the Mediaeval Times just so we can really start to get out of our modern ways of thinking and put ourselves in the belief system of those in the Mediaeval Times.

So, we'll go through these options then.

Option one, calm, people knew how to stop the Black Death from spreading.

Now, hopefully none of you put that as we said a lot of people decided that once you showed signs of the Black Death you're probably going to die.

So, almost definitely no one was calm at this point.

Option two, worried, people had little knowledge of how to treat the Black Death.

Now, I think that this would be the most correct answer, so if you put option two very well done.

People had little knowledge of how to treat the Black Death, again, as we know with the germs they didn't know, they hadn't been discovered at this point.

Option three, worried and confident, some people were sure that England would stay safe whilst others worried about death rates.

Now, some of you might have put this, but, as we know, by the end of 1348 the Black Death had definitely gone onto England's shores and stories of that would have gone around the whole country.

So, those that may have been confident in the past that they would stay safe would now definitely have fallen into the worried category.

And option four, very panicked, and the reason for this is that people immediately started trying to run away from Walsham and escape the Black Death.

Now, if you put this you'd be partially correct because yeah, some people wouldn't just be worried they would indeed be very panicked.

However, you should remember from our first lesson that a lot of people did not want to run away from Walsham and escape the Black Death because they wanted to remain isolated from everyone else.

Remember we looked at that term of being quarantined.

The majority of people felt safer staying in a village that they knew hadn't caught the Black Death yet rather than running off to a village that might indeed have it and people haven't yet realised.

Okay, very well done let's move on.

Okay, so Walsham had a three-point plan as to how they were going to prevent the Black Death.

The first point was to turn towards the church.

Now, the church was responsible for the education of the majority of the village of Walsham, and they were taught that any big event that happened to them would be down to God's wishes.

Now, before now a lot of that came down to harvest and the amount of food that they could get each year.

If they had a really good harvest then villagers would believe that God was shining down upon them, and he'd be really happy with all of their efforts in the past year.

Similarly, if they had a really bad harvest and some people found food really hard to come by, maybe people starved, then they believed that was because the villagers had been sinful in that year and God was punishing them.

Now, the Black Death definitely qualified as a big event, and many people believed that the Black Death had been sent as a punishment from God.

That actually people had been so sinful they deserved this disease to infect them.

So, as a way to try and prevent this Black Death from arriving in Walsham many people decided to confess all of their sins to the church and ask for God's forgiveness so that they could be spared.

So, everyday life had changed within Walsham as prayer time, visits to the church, and donations to the church all increased in an attempt to try and stop this disease from infecting Walsham.

Now, the second idea was slightly different, and I wonder if we can work it out.

Looking at this source here you can see two victims of the Black Death.

You can see around their skin they've got those large swellings that we know as buboes.

And if you look in the background you can see someone carrying what seems to be an array of flowers and herbs in the room.

Now, the reason for this is that people believed that poisonous air was a main cause of spreading the Black Death, and that if you inhaled this poisonous air which more often smelled quite bad then actually that would be you getting the Black Death.

You'd be breathing it in through your nose and mouth, and therefore it would enter into your body and therefore you'd become infected.

So, what people decided to do at this time was to try and create sweet air that would act as a barrier to the poisonous air that had been infecting people.

So, people would use strong smelling flowers, they might walk around and hold them to their nose, and burn incense within their rooms to try and stop the poisonous air from entering into their body.

And the third way that people decided to prevent the Black Death is through quarantine.

Now, we've looked at this before, and if you see this image you can see a victim of the Black Death, family and friends around that bed, and then you can see this skeleton, deathly figure and that is meant to represent the Black Death basically poisoning everyone within that room.

So, what the villagers began to do is to quarantine themselves, they began to isolate themselves vastly within their own village.

So, any visitors that came from an infected area would be immediately sent away.

And if they just, if those villagers thought that that visitor was trying to put up a stance and that they didn't want to leave the villagers of Walsham felt no remorse in getting stones and rocks and throwing it at that visitor until they fled their village.

But soon enough people decided to just isolate themselves within their own families, and they didn't want to visit anyone for fear that death would strike them if they entered the same room as a victim.

And eventually fewer amounts of people attended funerals or even visited the sick.

So, if you fell victim to the Black Death a lot of people would be left on their own as people felt that if they visited them the risk of catching it was far too high.

Okay, another pause point, I want you to think which methods did Walsham villagers use to prevent the Black Death? Now, I have given you six different methods, and I want you to write down in your piece of paper all of the ones that you know to be correct, okay? So, you can write down the question as a little subheading on your piece of paper and write down underneath all the methods Walsham villagers used to prevent the Black Death.

So, just pause the screen here and then I'll go through the answers.

Okay, really well done.

I'm going to go through these now, and we'll see how well we've done.

Okay, good, so hopefully all of you managed to get this one.

It is indeed correct that villagers decided to confess all sins to God in hope of forgiveness.

Remember, they thought the Black Death had been sent as a punishment by God himself.

The second one, people would visit one another regularly to check on how they were doing is false.

Remember, they wanted to isolate themselves, they wanted to stay in quarantine.

So, definitely not, people would not be visiting one another during this time.

Holding flowers to your nose and breathing incense was thought to stop the poisonous air from infecting you, again, really well done if you had wrote that down.

Remember, they wanted to try and surround themselves with sweet air so that that poisonous air couldn't be inhaled through their nose and mouth and infect them with the Black Death.

Another one, new visitors were sent away and families isolated from each other, really well done.

This is about, again, isolation, quarantine.

If you visit someone with the Black Death then you will definitely be able to then get yourselves infected, so isolation was key at this point.

Villagers would attend the church but refused to make any donations, now the first half of this was correct.

Absolutely, villagers would attend the church.

However, of course they would be making those donations because they want to seem to God like they're doing everything they can, that they're really devoted to him.

And one of the ways they could show that is by giving their money to the church.

And lastly, many people decided to go and get a vaccine to prevent the Black Death, of course this can't be true.

Remember, they don't have that scientific knowledge yet to create any vaccine, so that easy method would not be available to Mediaeval people at this time.

Really well done though.

Okay, now we're going to move on to the main task then as we move on to the comprehension questions.

What I would like you to do after you've read through these questions is close this and open up the worksheet.

And from there I would like you to read through all the information about how people treated the Black Death.

There's lots of really interesting little stories as to how individuals dealt with it themselves.

And then I would like you to answer the following questions in full sentences, okay? Good, so I'm just going to pause the video here.

Read the slides on the next page and answer the comprehension questions.

Okay, welcome back.

Really well done for completing all of those comprehension questions, and I really hope you enjoyed reading the worksheet on how people of Walsham treated the Black Death.

In particular, the method used by Sir Edmund, I found that very interesting to read if not quite funny also.

So, we're going to go through these answers now then.

Question number one, what did people believe was the main cause of the Black Death? An acceptable answer would be punishment from God.

However, we know a lot of things during this period was believed to be a punishment from God.

We mentioned earlier how a bad harvest was seen to be a punishment from God as villagers must have sinned to deserve it.

So, for a good answer we want to try and make it a bit more specific to the question.

We need to make it relating to the Black Death.

So, good answer, people mainly believed that the Black Death was sent by God as a punishment for people's sins.

Good.

So, what I'd like you to do if you've got that correct give it a big tick, if you feel like you could add more to your answer to make it that bit more specific then just pause it here and add to your answer.

And remember that you can do this when we go through any of these questions over the next few slides.

Okay, so question two, how would people try to stop poisonous air from infecting them with the disease? An acceptable answer, by smelling flowers or incense.

Again, we want to try and make that a little bit more specific.

So, a good answer would be to stop the spread of the Black Death people would hold flowers to their nose or burn incense to prevent smelling the poisonous air that could infect them with the disease.

And again, that is much more specific.

Number three, what happened to people visiting Walsham that came from infected areas? An acceptable answer, they were sent away.

Sometimes villagers would throw stones at them.

Now, I think a good answer would give a bit more explanation as to why these villagers would treat those visitors so harshly.

So, I've said Walsham wanted to stay isolated from the Black Death so any visitor who was found to be from an infected area were treated very harshly.

They would be sent away, sometimes using violence as stones were thrown at them.

So, you've got that explanation there for that better answer.

Question four, how did the villagers of Walsham prove their religious devotion to try and escape the Black Death? An acceptable answer, by praying, giving donations to the church, and going on pilgrimages.

So, you've got those three different reasons.

For a good answer, again, we've got more explanation.

To escape the Black Death people tried to prove to God they were a good Christian that did not need punishing.

They would pray for forgiveness, give money to the church, and go on pilgrimages to holy sites.

So, again, we're explaining why they are completing all of those actions, and it's all about asking for God's forgiveness.

And question five, why could villagers not go and visit friends or family that were ill? Acceptable answer, because they could get infected.

But an even better one, villagers did not visit the sick because they believed they could catch the disease if the victim looked, touched, or breathed on them.

Many villagers isolated themselves to try and prevent the disease spreading further.

Okay, really well done there.

If you feel like you need to just add to any of your answers feel free to pause me now and before we move on to our enquiry question.

Okay, so we've completed this lesson, and now I want to return to the enquiry question just so we can check in and see whether things have changed for the Mediaeval World even more or maybe a bit less.

So, a reminder of that enquiry question, how far did the Black Death change the Mediaeval World? So, what I would like you to do now then, we've learned about how Walsham treated the Black Death, we need to think has their life changed any further? Remember, last lesson the three main changes we had was that death rates had increased, people started to use the method of quarantine to stop the Black Death from spreading, and there was new warfare tactics.

You'll remember corpses that died from the Black Death being launched over those castles.

So, what I would like you to do is just write down in your books how did life change in Walsham as they tried to prevent the Black Death from reaching them, and you've got some sentence starters here.

When villagers started to try and prevent the Black Death from spreading their life changed because, now that's where you're going to add all the information that you've learned from this lesson.

And I've added pictures on the right hand side just to refresh your memory and help you write down what those changes were.

So, just pause the screen here as you do that.

Okay, really well done for completing that.

A reminder of the changes from the last lesson, increased death rate, quarantine, new warfare tactics.

And some of you might have been writing what I'm about to put as your changes.

Now, I might have put different reasons for change than you have.

That's absolutely fine if we've got different answers, but these are the three that I think are the most important changes.

So, changes that we've looked at this lesson changed people's everyday lives.

Number one, increased engagement with the church, you remember they were very important as people turned to them for guidance as to how to get rid of this horrific disease.

And they did this by confessing their sins, also known as confession, providing donations to the church, and going on pilgrimages, which was those journey to religious sites.

Another change for everyday life, their homes started to begin to be filled with strong smells.

Flowers and incense being given as an example to, remember, to try and act as a barrier to that poisonous air people believed carried the Black Death.

And lastly, I spoke about quarantine.

Now, you remember we did this last lesson, but quarantine now has become a lot stricter.

Now, within Walsham we've got no outside visitors and less interaction between families, so you can see there that everyday life for those villagers has changed quite a lot.

Really well done for completing that, fantastic work for getting to the end of the lesson.

If you would like to you have the option to share your work with Oak National.

So, if you'd like to please ask your parent or carer to show your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and use the hashtag LearnwithOak.

It'd be great for me to be able to see your work.

Really well done for getting to the end of this lesson, and I'm really looking forward to doing next lesson which looks at the survivors of the Black Death and land ownership.

So, I look forward to seeing you there.