When I find in a stray roll of an insignificant little manor at
Croxton, near Thetford, held on the 24th of July, that seventeen
tenants had died since the last court, eight of them without heirs;
that at another court held the _same day_ at Raynham, at the
other end of the county, eighteen tenements had fallen into the
lord's hands, eight of them certainly escheated, and the rest
retained until the appearance of the heir; that in the manor of
Hadeston, a hamlet of Bunwell, twelve miles from Norwich, which could
not possibly have had four hundred inhabitants, fifty-four men and
fourteen women were carried off by the pestilence in six months,
twenty-four of them without a living soul to inherit their property;
that in manor after manor the lord was carried off as well as the
tenants and the steward; that in a single year _upwards of eight
hundred parishes lost their parsons,_ eighty-three of them twice,
and ten of them three times in a few months; and that it is quite
certain these large numbers represent only a portion of the mortality
among the clergy and the religious orders--when, I say, I consider
all this and a great deal more that might be dwelt on, I see no other
conclusion to arrive at but one, namely, that during the year ending
March, 1350, more than half the population of East Anglia was swept
away by the Black Death.
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