The _pestis secunda_ is only one of a series of pestilences in the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II., which the chroniclers number in succession to the _pestis quinta_ in 1391. The entries in the annals are for the most part so meagre and colourless that they give us no help in realizing the share that a continuous infection in the soil, from the Black Death onwards, may have had in bringing about the disastrous state of the country in the latter half of the fourteenth century. Edward III. was ruined in reputation by his French wars, and ended his long reign in dishonour. His grandson Richard II. found the task of government too much for him, and was deposed. The history of this period is not complete without some account of the health of the country; a single line or sentence in a chronicle, to mark the date of a _pestis tertia_ or _quarta_ or _quinta_, hardly does justice to the place of national sickness among the events with which historians fill their pages. The graphic picture of the times is ‘The Vision of Piers the Ploughman,’ some passages of which may help us to realize what the bare enumeration of second, third, fourth and fifth pestilences meant. Some Latin poems of the time may be cited in support; and for more particular evidence of the type of pestilence which remained in England after the Black Death, we shall have to refer to certain extant manuscript treatises, from the latter part of the fourteenth century, which had been written in English to meet the wants of the people. The Latin poems of the time of Edward III. and Richard II. need only be referred to so as to bring out by contrast the immense superiority of the ‘Vision of Piers the Ploughman.’ The poems of John of Bridlington, which are the most considerable of the Latin series of verses, contain numerous references to the epidemics of the time, both at home and abroad. Curiously, he dwells more upon the effects of famine--flux and fever--than upon the plague proper, which he nowhere distinguishes. Thus, of France about the time of the Black Death: “Destructis granis, deerit mox copia panis; Poena fames panis, venter fluxu fit inanis.” Or again, with specific reference to the _pestis secunda_ of 1361, which we know to have been bubo-plague: “... fluxus nocet, undique febris Extirpat fluxus pollutos crimine luxus.” Another reference, in the form of a prophecy, which from the context is clearly to the pestilence of 1368-69, again dwells exclusively upon famine: “In mensis justi pandetur copia crusti: Fundis falsorum premet arcta fames famulorum.” followed by a note in Latin: “from which it appears that the poor in those days were ill off for want of food[387].” One Latin poem of the end of the fourteenth century is expressly “On the Pestilence,” in the following manner: “Ecce dolet Anglia luctibus imbuta, Gens tremit tristitia sordibus polluta, Necat pestilentia viros atque bruta. Cur? Quia flagitia regnant resoluta[388].”