Henry Knighton

The effect of the Black Death on prices and wages was wellchronicled by the English author Henry Knighton, a canon of the abbey of St. Mary of the Meadows in the county of Leicester. Knighton witnessed the plague and writes in great detail of its effect on the people and the cities of England, as well as the effect of a sudden shortage of clergymen to provide the sacraments. In his 1348 chronicle, Knighton reveals that not even the decrees of the king of England could persuade the surviving members of the laboring class from giving up their new advantages in a drastically changed world.

A universal mortality. In this year [1348] and the next there was a general plague upon mankind throughout the world. It began in India, then spread to Tartary [Tartar lands in Russia...