These records are interesting in themselves, and are important episodes in our national history. I have quoted them for the purpose of showing the magnitude and importance of Yarmouth at this time. A town which could fit out 43 ships for the King’s Navy and man them with 1075 sailors at their own cost, (for the King only paid for the maintenance of the sailors while in his service), must have been both wealthy and populous. She had acquired her wealth and naval power almost entirely from the herring fishery, and from the large extent to which her own population was engaged in it. But the trade carried on by her merchants during the autumn season with the fish catchers and fish buyers from other towns at home and abroad contributed largely to the wealth of the town. It appears from a return which has been preserved of the amount taken for the murage tax, (a small charge on ships and merchandise added to the harbour dues towards the expense of building the town wall) that the amount received in the year 1343 during the weeks comprising the herring season was £54 6s. out of a total sum of £66 7s. 11d. collected during the twelve months. The entries show the large number of foreign vessels coming to the Autumn Fair. In five days in September in this year, 60 foreign ships entered the harbour, of which 10 were from Lombardy. {32} THE BLACK PLAGUE AT YARMOUTH. It was when Yarmouth was in the height of her prosperity, and the herring trade becoming more and more valuable owing to the superstitious importance attached to the rules as to fasting, that she was destined to suffer a ruinous collapse from which she did not recover for several centuries, and which deprived her for ever of the position of eminence as a naval town which she had held during the first half of the 14th century. The main cause of her fall was the loss within the space of a few months of more than half her population from the terrible epidemic known as the Black Plague. Great as was the destruction of life from this fell disease in other towns and parishes in the country, there could have been no town where the destruction of life was greater and the consequent impoverishment more felt. Probably no town in England was more favourably conditioned for the work of the destroyer. A large population of poor fishermen and sailors were crowded together in small hovels, closely packed within the walls, in double rows, separated by narrow alleys of six feet or less in breadth. This arrangement had evidently been adopted by the first occupants of the storm-swept sandbank for convenience and warmth. But it was an arrangement terribly conducive to the rapid spread of any infectious disease which had once gained a footing in the town.