Lawyers Who Continued as Attorneys after the Black Death: 264
Of the 779 pre-Black Death attorneys, 264 continued to appear after the Black Death. They constituted 34% of all attorneys in that pre-Black Death cohort. That percentage is, as would be expected given the possibilities of promotion and patronage right after the Black Death, somewhat lower than the surviving proportion of the total population. Given those additional opportunities (as well as natural retirements and people who would not otherwise have reappeared anyway), it is quite plausible that attorney lawyers survived the Black Death somewhat more successfully than the population as a whole. If that is the case, one might hypothesize that it was the result not of a more virtuous life, but rather that many were at Westminster when the plague arrived in England, were more naturally mobile, and might have simply remained with the court when it migrated to avoid the plague.
The percentage of that re-appearing group who had appeared but infrequently was about the same as in the non-re-appearing group. Among the non-re-appearing, 46% had appeared five times or less; among the re-appearing, 45% were similarly infrequent (43 who had appeared only once; a further 76 who had appeared 2 to 5 times).
The real difference between the non-re-appearing attorneys and re-appearing attorneys comes in the more active group: a group of 145 lawyers. In that group 38 (14% of all re-appearing attorneys) had been modestly active, with 6-10 appointments. Thirteen continuing attorneys had been appointed between 30 and 39 times; 9 others had been appointed 46 times or more [46 times (2), 47 (1), 52 (2), 64 (1), 70 (1), 109 (1)]. The remaining 85 continuing attorneys had been solidly active.
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