The history of the great pestilence in the diocese of Norwich which includes the two eastern counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, has been graphically described by Dr. Jessopp.[229] The results at which he has arrived by a careful study of the episcopal registers of the diocese and the court rolls of sundry manors may be very briefly summarised here. The epidemic was at its height in the East of England in the summer months of 1349,[230] and the deaths in the ranks of the clergy were very alarming. The average number of institutions in the diocese yearly for five years before the sickness was seventy-seven. In this single year 800 parishes lost their incumbents, 83 of them twice, and ten three times, in a few months; and by the close of the year two-thirds of the benefices in the diocese had become vacant. Of the seven convents of women in this district, five lost their superiors, and in at least twelve of the religious houses of men, including the abbey of St. Benet's Hulme, the head died. How many of the subjects in these 19 monastic establishments were carried off by the sickness [p129] can never be known; but bearing in mind what was remarked at the time, that the disease hardly ever entered a house without claiming many victims, and what we know of other places of which there is definite information, the suspicion may be allowed that the roll of the dead in the religious houses of East Anglia was very large. At Heveringland the prior and canons died to a man, and at Hickling only one survived; neither house ever recovered. In the college of St. Mary-in-the-Fields, at Norwich, five out of the seven prebendaries were carried off, whilst the Friars of our Lady, in the same city, are all said to have died. Altogether, Dr. Jessopp calculates that some 2,000 clergy in the diocese must have been carried off by the disease in a few months. From the court rolls the same evidence is adduced for the terrible mortality among the people. Dr. Jessopp had collected many striking proofs of this, from which one or two examples may be quoted. On a manor called Cornard Parva there were about 50 tenants. On 31st March three men and six women are registered as having died in two months. During the next month 15 men and women, seven without heirs, were carried off, and by 3rd November there are 36 more deaths recorded, and of these 13 have left no relations. Thus during the incidence of the plague some 21 families on this one manor had disappeared. The priest of the place had died in September.[231] To take another example. At Hunstanton on the 16th of October, 1349, it was found that in two months 63 men and 15 women had been carried off. In 31 instances only women and children had been left to succeed, and in nine there were no known heirs. In this small parish, and in only eight months, 172 persons who were tenants of the manor had died. Of these, 74 had left no heirs male, and 19 no blood relations at all.[232]