It may be said with considerable certainty that fully half the number of beneficed clergy fell victims to the disease in this diocese. Many livings were rendered vacant two and three times during its course; whilst a not inconsiderable number had four changes of incumbents within these few months. Bathampton, for example, had four parsons appointed in this period. At Hardington, not far from Frome, from January, 1349, to the middle of March, there were certainly three and perhaps four changes due to the disease; and at Yeovil, from the 15th December, 1348, to the 4th February, 1349, three priests held the living, one after the other.
Little or no information is forthcoming as to the religious houses of the county at this time. Both Athelney and Muchelney lost their abbots, and probably also many of their members. The fact that the great abbey of Glastonbury, which previously contained within its walls a community of some 80 monks, is found in A.D. 1377 to have 44, seems to indicate that it must have suffered very severe losses through the epidemic.
At Bath, in 1344, only five years before the outbreak of the disease, the community at the Priory consisted of thirty professed monks under Prior John de Ford.[138] A list on the roll of the Somerset clergy, on whom a clerical subsidy was levied at the close of Edward the Third's reign, in 1377, shows that the number had been reduced to sixteen,[139] [p086] and at this number it apparently remained to the time of the final dissolution of the house in the sixteenth century.[140]
It is not difficult to understand that the plague must have raged with great virulence in the larger cities, where in those days the most elementary notions of sanitation were almost unknown. In the west, Bristol, of course, suffered severely. "There," says the sub-contemporary writer, Knighton, "died, suddenly overwhelmed by death, almost the whole strength of the town, for few were sick more than three days, or two days, or even half a day." Nor need this be a subject of wonder when, according to the description of a modern writer, speaking of the city at this very period, the streets were very narrow; in the busier parts the ground was honeycombed with cellars for storing wine, salt, and other merchandise, whilst refuse streamed down the centre ditch. So small was the distance between the houses that no vehicle was allowed to be used in the streets, and all goods were carried on pack-horses or porters, a custom which even in the 17th century excited the wonder of Samuel Pepys.[141]
"Here in Bristol," says the local historian Seyer, quoting an old calendar of the town, "in 1348 the plague raged to such a degree that the living were scarce able to bury the dead. The Gloucestershire men would not suffer the Bristol men to have access to them. At last it reached Gloucester, Oxford, and London; scarce the tenth person was left alive, male or female. At this period the grass grew several inches high in High Street and Broad Street; it raged at first chiefly in the centre of the city. This pestilence came from abroad, and the people near the sea-coast in Dorsetshire and Devonshire were first affected."[142] By the wholesale destruction of the population of this western port the same authority accounts for the reduction of the King's taxation of the city from £245 to £158. [p087]
Lastly, in Bristol, as indeed without doubt in most places, the cemeteries did not long suffice for the multitude of the dead. Of this there is an example upon the Patent Rolls. The parson of Holy Cross de la Temple soon found the necessity of enlarging his graveyard. For this purpose he obtained half-an-acre adjoining the old cemetery, and so great and pressing was the need of this fresh accommodation that it was done without the required royal license, for which subsequently a pardon had to be sued from the King.[143]
The diocese of Exeter, comprising the two counties of Devon and Cornwall, was stricken by the disease apparently about the same time as the county of Somerset.[144] For eight years before 1348 the average number of livings annually rendered vacant in the diocese was thirty-six,[145] whilst in the single month of January 1349, the Bishop instituted to some thirty livings, which shows that death had already been busy among the clergy.
The number of institutions in each month of the year points to the conclusion that the disease lingered somewhat longer in these counties than elsewhere. It is not till the close of September that any great decrease in the number of vacancies is seen, and although probably beginning in December, the height of the plague was not reached till March, April, and May.[146] [p088]
Prebendary Hingeston-Randolph thus describes the state of the Exeter episcopal registers at this period:—"There is very little direct information about the Black Death in Bishop Grandisson's register; but there is a great deal of indirect information. The Registrum Commune, which is wonderfully full before and after the fatal year, records scarcely anything during the year itself. The ordinary work of the diocese seems to have been all suspended, with a single exception. The register of institutions—a separate volume—is a record of incessant and most distressing work. Its very outward aspect for this period tells a tale of woe. The entries are made hurriedly and roughly, in striking contrast with the neatness and regularity of the rest of the Register. They are no longer grouped, as before, in years, but in months, and the changes in each month exceed the changes of a whole ordinary year, when there was no pestilence. The scribe leaves off the customary 'vacant per mortem,' as if he dreaded to write the fatal word. The clergy must have fallen by wholesale; evidently they were faithful, and, for their flocks' sake, faced the foe without flinching. And, as each of them fell, another was ready at his Bishop's call fearlessly to fill the vacant place. Some incumbencies lasted but a few weeks. And, when all was over, the survivors were, comparatively, so few that there was no small difficulty in filling many a subsequent vacant benefice; this result of the sickness is to be traced for some time after the mortality had ceased.
"The Bishop never left his diocese, and the continuous presence of so strong, so earnest, and devoted a prelate must have been an unspeakable consolation and help to his grievously afflicted flock."