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like a Christian pastor to warn them of its near
approach, to remind them of God's sore judgments
upon the sins of men, and to order that in every church
and religious house throughout his diocese, processions,
litanies, and prayers should be made that it
might please God to avert the pestilence and succour
his people. It fell with terrible severity, in the
country districts as well as in the crowded towTis.
The existing churchyards were insufficient, and the
Archbishop of Damascus, who was acting as suffragan,
was sent in all haste to consecrate new cemeteries.
Pope Clement VI. wrote to the Archbishop of York
and gave permission to every person to choose his
own confessor, the strictness of parochial order being
abrogated for the time. He also allowed him to
hold supplementary ordinations to fill the gaps
which the pestilence had made in the ranks of the
clergy, for they had fallen like the leaves in autumn,
and there were not priests enough remaining in the
parishes within the northern province to administer
the sacraments of the Church. The serious social
results of this terrible visitation, the utter disorganisation
it created in the labouring class, the
scarcity which resulted from large tracts of land
being thrown out of cultivation, and the strife that
followed between capital and labour, are matters of
history, but it is beyond our province to enter into
their details.
In the year that witnessed the arrival of this
pestilence in England occurred the death of one
whose religious writings were singularly popular for a
long series of years—Richard Rolle, better known as