In the course of the next half century, Leicester, like the other trading towns of England, increased in wealth and population. The tallage rolls show an average of more than 450 taxpayers, and that for the year 1342 contains as many as 550 names. Before the visitation of the Black Death in 1348 — 1349, there must have been more than 3000 persons within the town. The community had become so numerous, and the civic life of Leicester had been so firmly established, when that calamity fell, that its effects were not so disastrous as they were in poorer and less advanced towns. The only contemporary account of the plague which devastated Leicester in 1348–1349 is that of Henry of Knighton, a canon of Leicester Abbey, who thus describes the ravages which it made throughout the county. "The terrible death rolled on into all parts, according to the course of the sun, and at Leicester, in the little parish of St. Leonard, there died more than 380, in the parish of Holy Cross" (St. Martin's) "more than 400, in that of St. Margaret, Leicester, more than 700; and so in every parish great numbers."
It has been said that this epidemic destroyed more than one-third of the population of the town — a calculation based, presumably, on a statement of Thompson's, that "two thousand deaths, at the lowest computation, must have taken place at Leicester, and that, too, in a population probably not exceeding 6000." But there is reason to conclude that at that time the population was really under 3500.
If we relied solely upon the Records of the Borough we should hardly be aware that any such catastrophe had occurred, still less that it had been as serious and far-reaching as the canon of Leicester Abbey asserts. On turning to a tallage roll of the year 1336, one finds there the names of some 460 taxpayers of Leicester, and a tallage roll made eighteen years later in 1354, six years after the first and most severe visitation of the plague, contains very nearly the same number. Moreover, the amount contributed in 1354 is only thirty shillings less than in 1336. The town thus appears, on the surface at any rate, to have been hardly less populous and wealthy after 1348 than it was before. What is the explanation of this? That Henry of Knighton's figures are untrustworthy, may, of course, be taken for granted;
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