The tiny
churchyards of the city, demonstrably very little if at all larger
than they are now, were soon choked, the soil rising higher and
higher above the level of the street, which even to this day is in
some cases five or six feet below the soppy sod piled up within the
old enclosures. To the great cemetery within the Close the people
brought their dead, the tumbrels discharging their load of corpses
all day long, tilting them into the huge pits made ready to receive
them; the stench of putrefaction palpitating through the air, and
borne by the gusts of the western breeze through the windows of the
palace, where the Bishop's official sat, as the candidates knelt
before him and received institution with the usual formalities. It
was hard upon him, it was doubly so upon those who had travelled a
long day's journey through the pestilential villages; and on the 30th
of May the official removed from Norwich to Terlyng, in Essex, where
the Bishop had a residence; there he remained for the next ten days,
during which time he instituted thirty-nine more parsons to their
several benefices. By this time other towns in the diocese had felt
the force of the visitation. Ipswich had been smitten, and
Stowmarket, and East Dereham--how many more we cannot tell. Then the
news came that the Bishop had returned; Thomas de Methwold was at
once ordered back to Norwich--come what might, that was his post;
there he should stay, whether to live or die.
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