ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



of the pestilence up to the suppression their numbers never rose above 

 twenty-five. 



The friars, who lived in the main on the alms of the faithful, were 

 materially affected by this staggering blow, and nowhere more so than 

 in Hampshire. Between September, 1 346, and June, 1 348, the Austin 

 friars of Winchester had presented four of their number for ordination 

 to the priesthood ; from that date until Bishop Edendon's death in 1366 

 only two more were ordained, both of them in 1358. For the two 

 Franciscan houses of Winchester and Southampton three priests were 

 ordained in 1347 and 1348, but only two more received orders during 

 Edendon's episcopate, both of those in 1359. It was the same with 

 both the other orders of friars. The Dominican house at Winchester 

 could only find a single subject to present to the bishop for ordination 

 in the ten years following the plague. The Carmelites of the same city 

 presented eleven of their number to Bishop Edendon from 1346 to 1348, 

 but there were only three more Carmelites ordained during the remainder 

 of his episcopate. 



Bishop Edendon in January, 1353, appointed commissioners to 

 inquire into the condition of things in the monastery of St. Swithun 

 and the priory of Christchurch, both houses having become involved in 

 debt and lax in fulfilment of their obligations as the result of the 

 grievous pestilence. 1 



Although in Hampshire, as elsewhere, the majority of the clergy, 

 both secular and religious, doubtless distinguished themselves by devotion 

 to their duties, as seems proved by the special severity of their death- 

 rate, still there were those who, in their alarm for their own persons, 

 fled from their cures. In April, 1350, when the scourge had abated, 

 the bishop issued a general admonition to his clergy as to residence in 

 their parishes. Reports, he says, had reached him of some priests shame- 

 fully absenting themselves from their cures to the danger of many souls, 

 so that even the holy sacrifice for which the churches had been built 

 and adorned had not been celebrated. He complained further that in 

 some cases the churches had been left to birds and beasts and were 

 becoming ruinous, and ordered all absentees to return within a month. 2 



In July of the same year the bishop issued a joint letter of the 

 archbishop and bishops of the southern province ordering priests to serve 

 the churches at their previous stipends, and that no parish church must 

 have more than one chaplain so long as any remain unserved. 3 



The Close and Patent Rolls afford abundant and painful testimony 

 to the exceptional extent of the suffering through the Black Death in 

 Hampshire among other than clerical communities, especially round 



1 Winton. Epis. Reg., Edingdon, ii. ff. 27, 28. * Ibid. ii. f. 22b. 



3 Ibid. f. 236. The numerous plague entries in Bishop Edendon's registers are quoted fully and 

 after a most interesting fashion in Abbot Gasquet's The Great Pestilence (1898). Though the original 

 registers have been consulted, we desire to express our great indebtedness to that work. In the tables of 

 institutions in the notes to pp. 112, 113 ' Hants ' has been substituted for ' Surrey,' and vice versa. 

 Edendon set a good example to his clergy during those fearsome times. He held his ordinations during 

 the period of the visitation up and down the diocese, two of them (Waltham and Highclere) being in 

 Hampshire. 



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