Coming to the particular case of the Bishop's temporalities, he claims that of £140 supposed to be due, on the calculation of normal years, so much as £84 was never received. For in that year, 1349, the autumn works of all kinds were not performed. "On the divers manors of the said bishoprick they did not, and could not, obtain more than they allowed, on account of the dearth of tenants, who were wont to pay rent, and of customary tenants, who used to perform the said works, but who had all died in the deadly pestilence, which raged in the lands of the said bishoprick, during and before the date of the said account." In the inquiry, the Escheator produced a letter from the [p124] King,[219] saying that he had no wish that his official should be charged more than he received. As a consequence of this, two commissions were sent into the country to try, with a jury, the matter at issue. The Escheator put in lists of tenants from whom alone he had received anything, and in the end the jury came to the conclusion that his statement was correct. The particulars disclose some matters of considerable interest in the present inquiry. For example, on the manor of Hartlebury there had been thirty-eight tenants called _virgates_, because each had farmed a virgate of land; thirteen called nokelonds, twenty-one called arkmen and four cottars, who rendered certain services, valued at 106 shillings and 11-1/2d. a year, including a custom called "yardsilver." Nothing could be got of these services, "because all the tenants had died in the mortal sickness, before the date of this account," and in the return of the jury there are said to be only four tenants on the land paying 2s. 10d.[220] That this was not a mere passing difficulty appears certain when, some years later, in 1354, the same Escheator asks for relief of £57 15s. 5-1/4d., which he could not then obtain on the same estates, once again in his hands, by the translation of the Bishop to another See. Speaking of the work of the customary tenants, he says: "That he has not obtained, and could not obtain any of these, because the remnant of the said tenants had changed them into other services, and after the plague, they were no longer bound to perform services of this kind."[221] The results in the neighbouring county of Warwick are naturally similar. With the counties of Gloucester and Worcester it formed the ancient see of Worcester. The institutions of clergy in the county, given in Dugdale's _History of Warwickshire_, show that before April and after October only seven of such institutions [p125] were made, so that the pestilence was rife in the county in the summer months of 1349, the institutions in the two months of June and July being the highest.[222]