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be about right. The indication is around 40 per cent mortality.
    Drawing on the grounds of the wills, documentary evidence and pro-sopographical evidence, this analysis makes a solid case that over 50 per cent, and possibly more than 60 per cent, of the will-makers and tax-payers of the citizenry perished. Such figures seem extraordinary, but similarly catastrophic levels are suggested both within other English urban centres, in rural localities, and in Continental towns and cities. In Oxford, an average of 1.6 wills per annum was enrolled between 1320 and 1348, a figure which jumped to fifty-seven (thus thirty-six times greater) in 1349; in Colchester, 110 wills were enrolled during 1348–9, almost twenty-five times the annual average for the previous twenty years; and in Lincoln, 105 wills enrolled in 1349 represented a figure of thirty times the average for fifty-three other years between 1315 and 1376. In York and Norwich in 1349, over three times more entries to the freedom of each city were recorded than the average number for previous decades which, while not providing a ratio, certainly indicates the opportunities and needs presented by severe mortality. 319 At Canterbury, about two-thirds of the taxable population included in returns for 1346–9 disappeared from the records by 1351–2. 320
    In rural localities previous syntheses have identified mortality rates of over 50 per cent on twenty-eight Durham priory manors with a range of 30–78 per cent; 321 40–46 per cent on Halesowen manor, Worcestershire; 50–60 per cent in Coltishall, Norfolk; 49 per cent on Cottenham manor, Cambridgeshire; 45 per cent in mid-Essex communities; and 45–55 per cent in Walsham-le-Willows, Suffolk. 322 Manorial tenants of the Bishop of Worcester in the West Midlands suffered losses ranging from 19 to 80 per cent. Analyses of eleven of the Bishop of Winchester’s manors in Hampshire show a loss of tenants ranging from 59 to 100 per cent, with an average of 76 per cent. An innovative study of landless men working seventeen manors of the Abbot of Glastonbury in the West Country found an average mortality rate of 57 per cent. 323 Contemporary manorial assessments made as part of inquisitions post mortem of major landholders include eight survivors of fourteen cottars (43 per cent mortality) at Kidlington (Oxon); four of eight bond tenants (50 per cent) at Titchmarsh (Northants); six of thirteen villeins (54 per cent) at Stanton Harcourt (Oxon); six of twenty-four bondsmen (75 per cent) at Ashby David (Northants); and 100 per cent losses at East Morden (Dorset), Basildon (Berks), Ampthill (Beds) and Todworth (Wilts). 324
    Further afield, some Continental examples offer similar evidence. In France, the town of Givry has a superb set of burial registers which run through the plague (July to October 1348). Annual burial rates pre-plague were twenty-three per annum on average. At 3.5 per cent male deaths per annum, this would have yielded a population of around 650–700 adults, so a population of perhaps 1,100 including children. In the four months of the plague, a total of 626 burials were made in the town’s cemetery, or about 57 per cent of the population. The lay confraternity of San Francesco in Orvieto, Italy, also has an excellent burial register backed up by a matriculation list of entries. From this it has been calculated that nearly two-thirds of the community, dwelling in all parts of the city, perished. In Siena, Italy, perhaps just a little smaller than London’s population ( c . 50,000 in the city itself), the death rate was probably as much as 50 per cent; while the much smaller town of San Gimignano probably saw 58.7 per cent. Perpignan suffered between 58 and 68 per cent mortality based on the analysis of the deaths of notaries in that town. 325
    While the value of these assessments is limited by the nature of the evidence, the range of approaches, the variety of the sources and the general consistency of the outcomes