A Plague on Both Your Houses by Susanna Gregory

He went to the Abbey School in Peterborough, and then studied at the University at Oxford. It was thus a time of religious and social upheaval, and there was always that niggling question: would the pestilence come back to wreak havoc a second time?īartholomew was raised by his sister Edith. Labourers were in short supply, so they began to demand higher wages, which was one of the factors leading to the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Why should people listen to the Church when the Almighty had ignored the prayers of His priests? Some settlements dealt with the question by rededicating their churches to the Virgin Mary, on the grounds that she might be more open to petitions, while others turned to more ancient religions or witchcraft.Ĭountless villages lay deserted, and the entire population of All Saints’-next-the-Castle in Cambridge died, so there were many empty properties and abandoned farms. People thought God and His saints had deserted them in their darkest hour, and it did not go unnoticed that the mortality rates were high in some of the religious foundations: the Cambridge Dominicans were wiped out to a man. The rest of the series is post-plague – which was an equally terrifying time.

A Plague on Both Your Houses takes place in that devastating time of fear and uncertainty. Like all medici of his age, Bartholomew is concerned that his remedies may not be effective, and dreads the onslaught that is about to come. The series begins with the imminent arrival of the plague (the ‘Black Death’, although this wasn’t a term that was used at the time). He is a master at the College of Michaelhouse at the University of Cambridge, where he teaches medicine. Matthew Bartholomew is a fictional physician living in fourteenth-century Cambridge. Matthew Bartholomew Who is Matthew Bartholomew? Susanna Gregory Interviewed by Charlotte Betts.

Carmarthen in the 1190s: a Snapshot in Time.Michaelhouse: A Lost Cambridge College 1324–1540.

Mertz & I … : The Antarctic Diary of Belgrave Edward Sutton Ninnis.The Royal Geographical Society Polar Exploration.The Titanic Experience: the Legend of the Unsinkable Ship.The Royal Geographical Society Exploration Experience.Scott Polar Research Institute Profiles.

A Plague on Both Your Houses by Susanna Gregory