The foresight of the Bishop was not unnecessary. From [p133] the month of April vacancies followed quickly one upon another. For three years previous to 1349 the average number of institutions recorded in the episcopal registers was nine, and in 1348 it was only seven. In this year of the great sickness 97 appointments to livings in the diocese were made by the Bishop's Vicars, and in July alone there were 25.[241] The prior of Barnwell died early in the course of the sickness, probably even before he could have received the Bishop's commission to act for him in the matter of vacant benefices. In June there are evidences of the mortality in the Cathedral priory of Ely. On the 23rd of the month John de Co, Chancellor of the diocese, acting as the Bishop's representative, according to the commission, appointed a new sub-prior to the monastery, and again on July the 2nd a cellarer and camerarius. A week later, on the 9th of July, 1349, "brother Philip Dallyng, late sacrist of Ely, being dead, and the said brother Paulinus (the camerarius) being likewise dead and both of them buried, he appointed to both offices, namely, brother Adam de Lynsted as sacrist, and brother John of St. Ives as camerarius."[242] At the same time also two chantries in the Cathedral became vacant; one, called "the green chantry," twice in two months. The number of clergy carried away by the sickness in this diocese may be estimated from the number of vacant benefices. Deducting the average number of yearly [p134] institutions, it is fair to consider that 89 priests holding benefices died at this time.[243] The proportion of non-beneficed clergy to those beneficed was then probably about the same as it was in the second year of King Richard II. The clerical subsidy for that time shows 140 beneficed clergy against 508 non-beneficed, including the various religious.[244] On this basis at least 350 of the clerical order must have perished in the diocese of Ely. The University town of Cambridge did not escape. On May 24th, 1349, the church of St. Sepulchre's fell vacant, and already in July several of the churches were without incumbents. Towards the end of April the Master of the hospital of St. John died, and one Robert de Spronston was appointed to succeed. Then he died a short time after, and one Roger de Broom was instituted on May 24th; but in his turn Roger died, and another took his place. Cambridge, too, had probably its common plague pit. "Some years ago," writes the late Professor Thorold Rogers, "being at Cambridge while the foundations of the new Divinity School were being laid, I saw that the ground was full of skeletons, thrown in without any attempt at order, and I divined that this must have been a Cambridge plague pit."[245]