The account of the King's Escheator in Yorkshire for the year, from October, 1349, to October, 1350, states that he could in no way obtain the sum of £4 12s. 2d., "due on certain lands and tenements from which he had levied and could levy nothing during the said time because of the mortality amongst men in those parts, and owing to the dearth of tenants, willing to take up the said land and tenements." Then follows a list of houses standing vacant.[287] As another instance may be quoted a case related in the history of the deanery of Doncaster. "John FitzWilliam, the heir of Sir William, had a short enjoyment of the family estates. He died in the great plague of 1349. I transcribe, to show public feeling at the time, from a chronicle: 'And in these daies was burying withoute sorrowe and wedding without frendschippe and fleying without refute of socoure; for many fled from place to place because of the pestilence; but yet they were effecte and myghte not skape the dethe.' "In another part of the deanery we find a person willing that his goods shall be divided among such of his children as shall remain alive. In the FitzWilliams' MS. is a contemporary memorandum that John FitzWilliam, the father, gave in the time of the pestilence before his death all his [p155] goods and chattels, movable and immovable, to dame Joan, his wife, John, his son, and Alleyn, late parson of Crosby, amounting to the sum of £288 3s. 8-1/2d."[288] An incident recorded by the same writer will serve to show how uncertain people, at this time, regarded the tenure of life, a feeling hardly to be wondered at when so many were dying all round them. Thomas Allott, of Wombwell, in the deanery of Doncaster, in his will, proved 14th September, 1349, after desiring to be buried at Darfield, says: "Item I leave, etc., to my sons and daughters living after this present mortal pestilence."[289] These notes upon the evidence for the plague in Yorkshire may be concluded by a brief account of the state of Hull in consequence of the mortality and other causes. In 1353 the King, "considering the waste and destruction which our town of Kingston-on-Hull has suffered, both through the overflow of the waters of the Humber and other causes, and that a great part of the people of the said town have died in the last deadly pestilence which raged in these parts, and that the remnant left in the town are so desolate and poverty-stricken in money," grants them permission to apply the fines ordered to be imposed on labourers and servants demanding higher wages than before, to the payment of the fifteenth they owe the royal exchequer.[290]