M . Ct . Xpenta . miseranda . ferox . violenta . M.CCC.L. Supest . plebs . pessima . testis . in . fineque . vents . Validus . oc . anno . maurus . in . orbe . tonat. M.CCC.LXI. The opening words stand for the date: Ct = Cter = CCC, and Xpenta = XXXXX = 50 The interpretation therefore is: 1350! Miserable, wild, distracted, 1350! The dregs of the people alone survive to witness. And in the end a wind Full mighty. This year St Maur thunders in the world. 1361. The year 1349 marked the most fatal stage of the Black Death in these parts. In that year, to judge by the Diocesan records, no less than eighty-five per cent. of the beneficed clergy were swept away, which implies a corresponding mortality amongst other classes. By 1350 the worst was over, but the full wretchedness of the situation was now developing itself. The plague lingered on, constantly growing milder, till 1361, when the great storm was supposed to have cleared the fair of the last remnants of infection. A like popular distich about this later visitation is quoted by Adam of Murimuth: C ter erant mille decies sex unus, et ille, Luce tua Maure, vehemens fuit impetus aurae. Ecce flat hoc anno Maurus in orbe tonans. That is, in English: There were 300 + 1000 + 60 + 1 and that Mighty blast of wind was on thy day, Maurus. Lo! in this year bloweth Maurus thundering in the world. [Illustration: _Ashwell Church from the N.W._] St. Maur was a Gallican saint of the sixth century who was the first to introduce monasticism into France. There are several other interesting _graffiti_ on the same wall as the above, one of them representing old St. Paul's with its lofty steeple, the highest in the world (510 feet), and the famous Rose Window of the transept which Chaucer mentions in his Canterbury Tales.