Page:Comic History of England.djvu/150

146 a plague that came from Asia and bade fail to depopulate the country. London lost fifty thousand people, and at times there were hardly enough people left to bury the dead or till the fields. This contagion occurred in 1349, and even attacked the domestic animals.



John having succeeded Philip in France, in 1350 Edward made another effort to recover the French throne; but no monarch of spirit cares to have his throne pulled from beneath him just as he is about to occupy it, and so, when the Black Prince began to burn and plunder southern France, his father made a similar excursion from Calais, in 1355.