It is almost by chance that any information is afforded as to the effect of the visitation in the religious houses. All contemporary authorities, both abroad and in England, agree in stating that the disease was always most virulent and spread most rapidly where numbers were gathered together, and that, when once it seized upon any house, it usually claimed many victims. Consequently when it appears that early in November, 1348, the abbot of Abbotsbury died, and that about Christmas Day of that year John de Henton, the abbot of the great monastery of Sherborne, also died, it is more than probable that many of the brethren of those monasteries were also carried off by the scourge. In the county of Wilts the average number of episcopal institutions, for three years before and three years after the mortality, was only 26. In the year 1348 there are 73 institutions recorded in the registers, and in 1349 no less a number than 103,[304] so that of the 176 vacancies filled in the two years the deaths of only some 52 incumbents were probably due to normal causes, and the rest, or some 125 priests holding benefices in the county, may be said to have died from the plague. A chance entry upon the Patent roll reveals the state of one monastery in this county. The prior of Ederos, or Ivychurch, a house of Augustinian canons, died on February 2nd, 1349.[305] On February the 25th the King was informed that death had carried off the entire community with one single exception. "Know ye," runs the King's letter, dated March 16th, "that since the Venerable Father Robert, Bishop of Salisbury, cannot hold the usual election of prior in the Monastery of Ederos in his diocese, vacant by the death of the last prior of the same, since all the other canons of the same house, in which hitherto there [p164] has been a community of thirteen canons regular, have died, except only one canon, brother James de Grundwell, we appoint him custodian of the possessions, the Bishop testifying that he is a fit and proper person for the office.[306] The general state of the county of Wilts after the epidemic had passed is well illustrated from some Wiltshire _Inquisitiones post mortem_. Sir Henry Husee, for instance, had died on the 21st of June, 1349. He owned a small property in the county. Some 300 acres of pasture were returned upon oath, by a jury of the neighbourhood, as "of no value because all the tenants are dead."[307] Again John Lestraunge, of Whitchurch, a Shropshire gentleman, had half the manor of Broughton, in the county of Wilts. He died on July the 20th, 1349, and the inquisition was held on August the 30th. At that time it is declared that only seven shillings had been received as rent from a single tenant, "and not more this year, because all the other tenants, as well as the natives, are dead, and their land is all in the hand of the lord."[308]