In the manor of Dodinton, proceeds the record of the inquiry, "there are two carucates of land which used to be [p144] worth yearly sixty shillings, and now the said jurors know not how to value the said land, because the domestic and labouring servants (_famuli et servientes_) are dead, and no one is willing to hire the land." The water-mill has sunk in value from thirty shillings to six-and-eightpence, because the tenants are dead; the pond was valueless since the fish had been taken out, and it had not been stocked again.[263] This John le Strange, of Whitchurch, died on August 20th, 1349, and the inquisition held upon his estates names three sons—Fulk, the eldest, who was married; Humphrey, the second; and John, who was 17 years of age; and it notes that if Fulk were to die then Humphrey his brother was the heir. The inquiry was held upon August 30th, ten days after the death of John, and at this very time when Fulk was thus declared to be the heir he had himself been dead two days. Apparently also Humphrey was carried off by the sickness as well; because in the inquisition subsequently held upon the estate of Fulk, John, the third brother, is named as the heir. In this inquiry the jury bear out the declarations of that which had testified to the condition of the estates upon the death of the father. On one manor it is stated that the rent of assize, which used to be £20, is now only forty shillings, and the court fees have fallen from forty to five shillings, "because the tenants there are dead." And in another Shropshire hamlet the rent of assize, formerly £4, was now "from the said cause" only eight shillings.[264] North of a line drawn from the Wash to the Dee, the four counties of Chester, Derby, Nottingham, and Lincoln stretch across England from west and east. A brief record of the pestilence in each of these counties is all that need be here given. In its main lines, and, indeed, almost in its every detail, the story of one county is that of every [p145] other, and it is only by chance that the account of definite incidents has been preserved. The benefices in the county of Chester numbered some 70. In the four months June, July, August, and September thirty institutions are entered in the registers of Coventry and Lichfield for the archdeaconry of Chester alone. The most numerous are in the month of September.[265] The non-beneficed clergy are, of course, not included in this number; and in the city alone, at the end of Edward the Third's reign, there were at least fifty or sixty of this class. In one parish, for example, that of St. John by the Riverside, there were nine non-beneficed vicars and six chaplains.[266] In August a new prioress was installed at St. Mary's, Chester, and a new prior at Norton.