_
* * * * * * *
Let us now return to the point at which the King's letter of
prorogation left us on the 10th March, 1349. At that time it is
certain that the pestilence was raging fiercely in London and
Westminster, and almost as certain that it had abated in Avignon and
other towns in France. Two or three days after this date the Bishop
of Norwich crossed the Channel, leaving his diocese in the hands of
his officials. Had the plague broken out with any severity in East
Anglia? I think it almost demonstrable that it had not. A day or two
before the Bishop left London he instituted his friend Stephen de
Cressingham to the Deanery of Cranwich--in the west of Norfolk--which
had fallen vacant, but there is nothing to show that the vacancy was
due to anything out of the common. During the year ending 25th of
March, 1349, there were 80 institutions in the diocese of Norwich, as
against 92 in the year 1347 and 59 in the year 1346. The average
number of institutions for the five years ending 25th of March, 1349,
was 77. Between this date and the end of the month there were four
institutions only--that is, there was nothing abnormal in the
condition of the diocese.
East Anglia had not long to wait. In the valley of the Stour, a mile
or two from Sudbury, where the stream serves as the boundary between
Suffolk and Essex, the ancestors of Lord Walsingham had two manors in
the township of Little Cornard--the one was called Caxtons, the other
was the Manor of Cornard Parva.
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