Thus the Court Rolls of a manor of the fourteenth century--for before
the statute _Quia Emptores_ I suspect that they were kept with
much less regularity and much less care than they were afterwards--
are practically the _registers of the deaths_ of all occupiers
of land within the manor; and, as every householder was an occupier
of land, the death of every householder may be said to be inscribed
upon the Rolls.
* * * * * * *
Taken together, then, we have in the Diocesan Institution Books, on
the one hand, and in the Court Rolls, on the other, two sources of
information which--as far as they go--furnish us with a mass of
evidence absolutely irrefragable with regard to the mortality of
clergy and laity at any period during the fourteenth century. I say
"as far as they go," for it might happen that a country benefice--and
still more frequently that a town benefice--had been so cruelly
pillaged by a religious house, that little or nothing remained to
support the wretched parson, and that no one could be found who would
accept the cure. Then the cure would remain vacant for years. Where
this happened the death of the previous incumbent would not appear on
the Records for years after it had occurred, nor would any notice be
taken of the long vacancy when the next parson was instituted.
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