A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



bishop's letters and illtreat their bearers. 108 Also, when the bishop desired to 

 visit his cathedral they assaulted him while he was in the suburbs, and shut the 

 gates of the city and church against him. 109 The dispute was settled by appeal 

 to the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop's brother, who decided that the 

 jurisdiction of the city and suburbs belonged of right to the dean except during 

 the period of an episcopal visitation, when it was temporarily transferred to 

 the bishop. 



It was during Robert de Stratford's episcopate that the terrible scourge 

 of the Great Pestilence, or Black Death, devastated the whole country. 

 Travelling across Europe from the East the plague reached England in the 

 autumn of 1348 and rapidly filled the land with death. The bishop's 

 registers for this period being lost it is difficult to estimate, with any certainty, 

 the losses amongst the Sussex clergy, but there is no reason to believe that the 

 ravages of the pestilence were less felt here than elsewhere, and various in- 

 cidental notices bear out what we know of the extent of the disaster. Thus, 

 in 1349, the king presented to no less than twenty-six livings in the county ; 

 the abbots of Battle and Boxgrove and the prior, sub-prior, and third prior of 

 Lewes were all dead ; 110 to these may probably be added the heads of the 

 monasteries of Hastings, Michelham, Rusper, Bayham, and Arundel ; and the 

 number of brethren in the priory of Michelham in 1353 was on ty ^ ve 

 instead of thirteen. 111 The results of the Black Death were manifold ; 

 both the temporal and spiritual efficiency of the clergy were lowered. On 

 the one hand the servants and labourers being killed off, the monastic 

 estates could with difficulty be cultivated and their harvests gathered ; on 

 the other hand the necessity of filling up vacancies in the ranks alike 

 of regulars and seculars inevitably led to the acceptance of many candi- 

 dates who would otherwise have been rejected as unfit. Of each of these 

 aspects some traces will be found in the history of the religious houses, in their 

 petitions for the augmentation of their endowment and in the unfavourable 

 notice made of many of their inmates. The check dealt to church building 

 is also occasionally noticeable, especially in the case of the noble unfinished 

 church of Winchelsea, while the subsequent foundation of chantries, in grati- 

 tude for preservation, or for the good of the souls of those who had died 

 during this terrible visitation, is also observable, though not to so great an 

 extent in Sussex as in some other counties. 



Of the ecclesiastical history of Sussex during the last half of the four- 

 teenth century there is little to be said. Bishop William Reade, who held the 

 see from 1369 to 1385, was a man of profound learning with a special bent 

 for astronomy, and probably of an antiquarian tone of mind, as he desired to 

 be buried in the parish church of Selsey as the original seat of the see. His 

 successor Thomas Rushook, the king's confessor, was one of the ' evil coun- 

 sellors ' of Richard II, and as such was banished to Ireland in 1388, his 

 temporalities being seized and devoted to the payment of the debts of the 

 king's household. 118 



About the beginning of the fifteenth century the whole English Church 

 was shaken by the preaching of Wycliffe and his disciples, the Lollards ; and 



108 Pat. 17 Edw. Ill, pt. i, m. 39^. IM Ibid. 



110 Gasquct, The Great Pestilence, 115. "' Assize R. 941, m. 1 1. 



" Pat. 2 Ric. II, pt. ii, m. 8. 



