From the ministers' accounts for the County Palatine of Chester, at this period, some facts can be gleaned as to the general state of desolation to which the great sickness reduced it. Thus, in the manor of Frodsham, the bailiff returns the receipt of only twenty shillings rent for the lands of the manor farm, "received for 66 animals feeding on them." He adds, "and not more this year, because he could get no tenants by reason of the pestilence." Further he notes the general prices as being low, and names a mill and a bakehouse that cannot be let. As an instance of the decay of rent it is noted that in the town of Netherton, more than a year after the plague had ceased, eleven houses and a great quantity of land, which fell into the hands of the lord in the last year through the pestilence, remain yet in his hands;" the same also is remarked of other townships, and in one place the miller had been allowed a reduction in his rent on account of the way his business had fallen off since the disease.[267] In the same way on another manor, that of Bucklow, at Michaelmas 1350, it is stated that 215 acres of arable land [p146] are lying waste, "for which no tenants can be found through the pestilence, which had visited the place the previous year. Further, those who had held a portion of the manor land during the last year had given their holdings up at the feast of St. Michael at the beginning of the account (_i.e._, 1349). On the same estate the rent of a garden was put down at only 12d., because there was no one to buy the produce. One of the largest receipts was 3s. 6d., paid by one Margery del Holes, "for the turf of divers tenants of the manor who had died in the time of the pestilence." On the whole of the estate there is represented to be a decrease of £20 9s. 2-3/4d. in the rent of this year, and a good part of the deficit is accounted for by the fact that 34 tenants owe various sums, but cannot pay as they have nothing but their crops, and that 46 of the tenants had been carried off by the epidemic. On the estate, moreover, it is not uninteresting to note that a portion—no less, indeed, than a third part—of the rent was remitted at this time. The remission, however, hardly appears to have been made willingly, but in consequence of a threat on the part of the holders of the manor lands that unless it was granted they would leave. This is noted upon the roll: "In money remitted to the tenants of Rudheath (some four miles from Northwich) by the Justices of Chester and others, by the advice of the lord, for the third part of their rent by reason of the plague which had been raging, because the tenants there wished to depart and leave the holdings on the lord's hands, unless they obtained this remission until the world do come better again, and the holdings possess a greater value . . . £10 13s. 11-3/4d."[268]