At Alnwick, still further north, the plague may be traced into the spring of the following year, 1350; at least, the chronicle of the abbey there states that "in the year 1350 (which for them began March 25th) John, abbot of Alnwick, died in the common mortality."[300] Lastly, it is related by two contemporary authors that the Scotch carried the disease over the borders into their own country. "The Scots," writes Knighton, "hearing of the cruel pestilence among the English, thought this had happened to them as a judgment at the hand of God. They laughed at their enemies, and took as an oath the expression, 'Be the foul deth of Engelond,' and so thinking that the terrible judgment of God had overwhelmed the English, they assembled in the forest of Selkirk with the intention of invading England. The terrible mortality, however, came upon them, and the Scotch were scattered by the sudden and cruel death, and there died in a short time about five thousand."[301] An account of the visitation given in the continuation of a chronicle, probably written at the time, and possibly by a monk at Tynemouth, may fitly conclude this review of the course of the epidemic in England; telling, though it does, ever the same story, and reading like an echo of the plaint first raised in Europe on the shores of the Bosphorus and in the islands of the Mediterranean. "In the year of our Lord 1348, and in the month of August," writes this chronicler, "there began the deadly pestilence in England which three years previously had commenced in India, and then had spread through all Asia and Africa, and coming into Europe had depopulated Greece, Italy, Provence, [p161] Burgundy, Spain, Aquitaine, Ireland, France, with its subject provinces, and at length England and Wales, so far, at least, as to the general mass of citizens and rustic folk and poor, but not princes and nobles. "So much so that very many country towns and quarters of innumerable cities are left altogether without inhabitants. The churches or cemeteries before consecrated did not suffice for the dead; but new places outside the cities and towns were at that time dedicated to that use by people and bishops. And the said mortality was so infectious in England that hardly one remained alive in any house it entered. Hence flight was regarded as the hope of safety by most, although such fugitives, for the most part, did not escape death in the mortality, although they obtained some delay in the sentence. Rectors and priests, and friars also, confessing the sick, by the hearing of the confessions, were so infected by that contagious disease that they died more quickly even than their penitents; and parents in many places refused intercourse with their children, and husband with wife."[302] FOOTNOTES: [229] _The Coming of the Friars_, pp. 166-261. [230] The following is a table of the Institutions during four months:—