_ [Footnote: In the diocese of
Ely, where the mortality was less severe than in Norfolk and Suffolk,
57 parsons died in the three months ending the 1st of October, 1349.
When an ordination was held by the Bishop of Ely's suffragan at the
priory of Barnwell on the 19th of September, the newly-ordained were
fewer by 35 than those who had died at their posts since the last
ordination.] This may appear an enormous number at first hearing, but
it is no incredible number. Unfortunately the earliest record of any
ordinations in the diocese of Norwich dates nearly seventy years
after the plague year, but there is every reason for believing that
there were at least _as many,_ and probably many more, candidates
at ordinations in the fourteenth century as presented themselves
in the fifteenth. During the year ending January, 1415, Bishop
Courtenay's suffragan ordained 382 persons, and assuming that
in Bishop Bateman's days an equal number were admitted to the
clerical profession, the losses by death in the plague year would
have absorbed all the clergy who had been ordained during the six
previous years, but no more. Even so this constituted a tremendous
strain upon the reserve force of clergy unbeneficed and more or less
unemployed, and it was inevitable that with such a strain, there
would be a deterioration in the character and fitness of the newly-
appointed incumbents.
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