We ought really to be grateful to the browns for killing off the blacks, as the blacks were much worse than the browns for carrying the Plague about. We have not heard much of the Plague in Western Europe since the brown rats arrived--the last great outbreak was in 1720 at Marseilles. The first outbreak in England began with the arrival of some ships at Weymouth in July or August 1348, and it very soon reached Devon and then spread over the whole country, killing more than half the population. So far as we know now, the Plague began in the Crimea. The black rats must have come down there in hordes, like the hordes of brown rats that were seen swimming across the Volga in 1727. It was brought by ships from the Crimea to Constantinople, and thence to Messina and Genoa; and a Genoese ship brought it to Marseilles about Christmas 1347. It spread all over France up to the Channel coast; but if it had come here that way, it would probably have reached Dover first, as Calais was then an English town with much traffic across the Straits: so I imagine that the ships at Weymouth had come up from the Mediterranean, and brought black rats with the pestiferous fleas. That outbreak of the Plague reduced the population of these islands to half or perhaps a third of what it was before; and one may speculate about what might have happened, if the outbreak had been more severe and swept the population off without a remnant. In the absence of statistics one may estimate the death-rate from the number of new appointments to livings in the diocese of Exeter, as set down in bishop Grandisson’s register of Institutions. During February 1349 there were institutions to five parishes in the next valley to this: Chudleigh, Trusham, Ashton, Doddiscombsleigh, Dunsford. Those parishes are all on the left bank of the Teign; and there are no institutions to parishes on the right bank until June. If rats could swim the Volga, they could swim the Teign, but probably would not take the trouble if they were happy where they were; so I presume the river checked them, and they came up here another way. During March and April there were institutions to Lustleigh, Bovey, North Bovey, Manaton, Ilsington, Widdicombe: six parishes forming a solid block of sixty-four square miles. In the first six months of 1349 there were altogether 269 institutions, and 394 in the whole year. Even in 1348 there had been only 52, and the average number was 37 in the seven previous years, 1341 to 1347. There were not priests enough to fill up all the vacancies in 1349; and on 20 September bishop Grandisson obtained two Faculties from the Pope, one for ordaining a hundred young men who had not yet attained the age of twenty-three, and the other for ordaining fifty men who were born out of wedlock and therefore were ineligible without a Dispensation.