Lesson Y7-U05-L04

Y7-U05-L04 The Black Death, 1348 Quiz: KS3 History, Unit 5

20 questions

Written by Revision Ninja · Last reviewed 11 October 2026

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Lesson Y7-U05-L04, The Black Death, 1348: 20 multiple choice questions for the KS3 History (National Curriculum), Unit 5: Year 7: Medieval Lives, written with Revision Ninja.

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The 20 questions

  1. In what year did the Black Death reach England?

    • 1348
    • 1215
    • 1381
    • 1066

  2. Where did the Black Death probably first land in England?

    • York in the north of England
    • Hastings on the south coast
    • London on the River Thames
    • Melcombe, near Weymouth in Dorset

  3. What was the Black Death also called at the time?

    • The Great Heathen Army
    • The Great Fire
    • The Great Pestilence
    • The Great Charter

  4. Roughly what share of England's people died in the Black Death?

    • Between a third and a half
    • Between one in a hundred and one in fifty
    • Between one in ten and one in twenty
    • Almost all of them, with no survivors

  5. What were the black swellings in the armpit, neck and groin called?

    • Buboes
    • Fleas
    • Ulcers of the Church
    • Blotches

  6. What happened to most people who caught the plague?

    • They lived for several years with the disease
    • They recovered after a few weeks in bed
    • They were cured by the doctors of the Church
    • They were dead within three to five days

  7. Which symptom came first in the Black Death?

    • Death within a single hour
    • A fever, headache, chills and aching limbs
    • Black blotches spread over the skin
    • Painful buboes in the armpit

  8. What did people in medieval England not know about the Black Death?

    • That it had reached Europe at all
    • That it was carried by ships from abroad
    • What caused it and how it spread
    • That it killed the old and the young

  9. Which animals carried the fleas that spread the plague?

    • Horses
    • Dogs
    • Sheep
    • Black rats

  10. How did the plague spread in the lungs?

    • Through eating meat from infected cattle
    • Through clean drinking water from the river
    • Person to person, through coughs and sneezes
    • Through the touch of a lord's hand in church

  11. How did the plague travel from town to town?

    • Trade ships and travellers carried infected rats and people
    • Birds flew from town to town carrying the disease
    • The Church sent priests to spread the disease across England
    • Peasants walked across the country to escape the lords

  12. Why did people fear the plague so much?

    • It only killed people over the age of sixty each year
    • It only killed the rich and left the poor untouched
    • Its symptoms were painful and it killed within days, with no cure
    • It made people live longer and healthier than before

  13. What did many people believe caused the Black Death?

    • An angry God punishing sin
    • Bad drinking water from the village wells
    • Eating too much rich food from the manor
    • Too much sunlight in the summer months

  14. Which of these shows the Black Death was a huge demographic shock?

    • It killed a third to a half of the population within about two years
    • It killed only a few hundred people in the north of England
    • It killed only the lords and left the peasants unaffected
    • It killed mostly animals and left the people unharmed

  15. What did the plague's spread teach about how diseases move?

    • Diseases can spread through animals, fleas, trade and coughing
    • Diseases only spread through the air from the sea breeze
    • Diseases only spread through the touch of holy objects
    • Diseases only spread from the lords to the peasants on the manors

  16. Why did it take over 500 years to discover how the plague spread?

    • The Church forbade all medical study in England until the middle of the 1800s
    • The true cause was unknown in the Middle Ages and was only discovered much later
    • Historians had no access to any surviving records of medieval England at all
    • The plague stopped spreading in England by the 1400s and so nobody studied it again

  17. What might happen to a village if a third of its people died suddenly?

    • The village would become richer as wages fell for everyone
    • The village would have more knights to defend it from the Vikings
    • Fewer workers would farm the fields, so crops could be left to rot
    • The village would double in size as new families moved in

  18. Which fact records when and where the Black Death reached England?

    • October 1349 at York in Yorkshire
    • May 1351 at Norwich in Norfolk
    • June 1348 at Melcombe in Dorset
    • March 1347 at Bristol in Gloucestershire

  19. What was the fever-and-aches stage of the plague followed by?

    • Painful buboes and dark blotches on the skin
    • A long recovery in a monastery with rest
    • A period of happy health with no symptoms
    • A sudden cure from the local doctors

  20. What was the link between the plague and rats?

    • Rats were kept by the lords as pets in their manor houses
    • Rats ate the wheat harvest and so caused a famine
    • Rats carried infected fleas that bit people
    • Rats were sold at the market as food for the poor

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