In estimating the mortality among the clergy it has been already noted that we have, in many instances, more certain data to work upon than in the case of the population at large. In each county the number of institutions to benefices during the plague has already been noticed, and in those cases where the actual figure cannot be ascertained from documentary evidence, half the total number of benefices has, in accordance with the general result where such evidence is available, been taken to represent the livings rendered vacant during that year. From this it would appear that in round figures some 5,000 beneficed clergy fell victims to their duty. As [p204] already pointed out this number in reality represents only a portion of the clerical body; and in any estimate of the whole allowance must be made for chaplains, chantry priests, religious, and others.
It is, of course, possible to come to any conclusion as to the proportion of the beneficed to the unbeneficed clergy only by very round numbers. Turning to the Winchester registers, for example, we find that the average number of priests ordained in the three years previous to 1349 was 111.[378] The average number of institutions to benefices annually during the same period was only twenty-one, so that these figures taken by themselves seem to show that the proportion of beneficed to unbeneficed clergy was about one to four. On this basis, and assuming the deaths of beneficed clergy to have been about 5,000, the total death roll in the clerical order would be some 25,000.
This number, although very large, can hardly be considered as excessive, when it is remembered that the peculiar nature of their priestly duties rendered them specially liable to infection; whilst in the case of the religious, the mere fact of their living together in community made the spread of the deadly contagion in their ranks a certainty. The Bishops were strangely spared; although it is certain that they did not shrink from their duty, but according to positive evidence remained at their posts. To their case are applicable the lines of the poet upon the like wonderful escape of the Bishop during the plague in the last century at Marseilles:—
"Why drew Marseilles' good Bishop purer breath
When nature sickened, and each gale was death?"[379] [p205]
On the supposition that five-and-twenty thousand of the clerical body fell victims to the epidemic, and estimating that of the entire population of the country one in every hundred belonged to the clergy, and further that the death rate was about equal in both estates, the total mortality in the country would be some 2,500,000. This total is curiously the same as that estimated from the basis of population returns made at the close of the memorable reign of Edward III., evidencing, namely, a total population, before the outbreak of the epidemic, of some five millions.[380]
It remains now to briefly point out some of the undoubted effects, which followed from this great disaster, upon the Church. It is obvious that the sudden removal of so large a proportion of the clerical body must have caused a breach in the continuity of the best traditions of ecclesiastical usage and teaching. Absolute necessity, moreover, compelled the Bishops to institute young and inexperienced, if not entirely uneducated clerics, to the vacant livings, and this cannot but have had its effect upon succeeding generations. The Archbishop of York sought and obtained permission from the Pope to ordain at any time, and to dispense with the usual intervals between the sacred orders;—Bishop Bateman, of Norwich, was allowed by Clement VI to dispense with sixty clerks, who were but twenty-one years of age, "though only shavelings," and to allow them to hold rectories, as otherwise the divine offices of the Church would cease altogether in many places of his diocese.
"At that time," writes Knighton, the sub-contemporary canon of Leicester, "there was everywhere such a dearth of priests that many churches were left without the divine offices, mass, matins, vespers, sacraments, and sacramentals. One could hardly get a chaplain to serve a [p206] church for less than £10, or 10 marks. And whereas before the pestilence, when there were plenty of priests, anyone could get a chaplain for 5 or even 4 marks, or for 2 marks and his board,[381] at this time there was hardly a soul who would accept a vicarage for £20, or 20 marks. In a short time after, however, a large number of those whose wives had died in the pestilence came up to receive orders. Of these many were illiterate and mere laics, except in so far as they knew in a way how to read, although they did not understand" what they read.[382]
One instance of the rapidity of promotion, so that benefices might not too long remain unfilled, may be given. In the diocese of Winchester the registers record at this period very numerous appointments of clerics, not in sacred orders, to benefices. For example, in 1349 no fewer than 19 incumbents already appointed to churches in the city of Winchester came up for ordination, and eight in the following year. Of these 27 every one took his various orders of sub-deacon, deacon, and priest at successive ordinations without the normal interval between each step in the sacred ministry.[383]
Two examples of the straits to which the Bishops were reduced for priests are to be found in the registers of the [p207] diocese of Bath and Wells. The one is the admission of a man to the first step to Orders, in the lifetime of his wife, she giving her consent, and promising to keep chaste, but not, as was usually required under such circumstances, being compelled to enter the cloister, "because she was aged, and could without suspicion remain in the world."[384] The second instance in the same register of a difficulty experienced in filling up vacancies is the case of a permission given to Adam, the rector of Hinton Bluet, to say mass on Sundays and feast days in the chapel of William de Sutton, even although he had before celebrated the solemnities of the mass in his church of Hinton.[385]