(From the Eulogium Historium) In the year of our Lord MCCCXLVIII around the festival of St Thomas the Martyr, a cruel pestilence that would be the loathing of the entire world, coming from the south it came ashore in England at the port of Melcombe Bay (modern day Weymouth)in Dorset. From the south the plague wandered all through Dorset, Devon and Somerset and innumerable people died miserably. Then it came to Bristol where very few were left alive. Travelling towards northern parts through cities and towns advancing still so that it was rare that a house was left behind where for the most part everyone had been killed, so that one fifth of men, women and infants in all England were handed over to the grave.

(From the Greyfriars Chronicle) In this year, 1348, in Melcombe in the county of Dorset, a little before the feast of St John the Baptist, two ships, one of them from Bristol, came alongside. One of the sailors had brought with him from Gascony the seeds of the terrible pestilence, and through him the men of that town of Melcombe were the first in England to be infected

(Chronicle of Henry Knighton) Then the dreadful pestilence made its way along the coast by Southampton and reached Bristol, where almost the whole strength of the town perished, as it was surprised by sudden death; for few kept their beds more than two or three days, or even half a day.

(Chronicle of John Capgreave) In the twenty third year (of Edward III's reign) was the Great pestilence of people. First it began in the north country, then in the south and so forth throughout the realm. After this pestilence followed such a morrain of beasts the like of which had never been seen. For as it was supposed there was left in England not a tenth part of the people. Then ceased Lord's rents and preist's tythes. Because there were so few tillmen the earth lay untilled. So much misery was in the land that the prosperity which there was before never recurred again.

(Robert of Avesbury the Deeds of Edward III) The pestilence started in the lands that the saracens had captured first, growing much stronger, no dominion would it spare, and in all places and kingdoms of the lands that stretched to the north as far as Scotland, death visited suddenly like a whiplash and the major part of the population perished. In England it started in fact in Dorset around the feast of St Peter who is known as "the chained" in 1348. Upon reaching a place unexpectedly, men that were healthy in the morning were taken in death before the noon, anyone who death wanted was allowed to live for barely 3 or 4 days, without choice of character, neither rich nor poor excepted. The same day, 20, 40 or 60 corpses and often many times more bodies of the deceased were delivered for The Church to bury in the same pit. Around the feast of All Saints it came to London, every day many lives were taken and it grew greatly so that at the feast of the Purification after Easter, in the newly made cemetary next to Smithfield 200 bodies were buried, besides the bodies buried in all the other cemetaries in the city, in a single day. Eventually with true thanks to the Holy Spirit, by the feast of Pentecost it ceased in London and continued to proceed Northwards. In those parts it ceased only towards the Feast of St Michael 1349