Again the destitution and poverty produced by the pestilence is evidenced in the case of some lands in the county, given by Sir Thomas Chedworth to Anglesey priory in Cambridgeshire. It had been agreed, shortly before the scourge had fallen upon England, that the monastery should for this benefaction endow a chantry of two secular priests. In 1351, however, the state of Anglesey priory, consequent on the fall in rents, made this impossible, and the obligation was, through the Bishop, readjusted, and the [p178] new document recites:—"Carefully considering the great and ruinous miseries which have occurred on account of the vast mortality of men in these days, to wit, that lands lie uncultivated in innumerable places, not a few tenements daily decay and are pulled down, rents and services cannot be levied, nor the advantage thereof, generally had, can be received, but a much smaller profit is obliged to be taken than heretofore," the community shall now be bound to find one priest only, whose stipend shall be five marks yearly instead of six as appointed, the value of the property being thus estimated at less than half what it had been before.[328] In Buckinghamshire there were at the time between 180 and 200 benefices, in the county of Bedford some 120 and in Berkshire 162. From these a calculation of the probable number of incumbents carried off in 1349 by the sickness may be made. As some indication of the state to which these counties were reduced by the scourge, a petition of the sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, made to the King in 1353, may be here mentioned. He declared that it was impossible then to pay into the Exchequer the old sums for the farming of the hundreds, which had been usual "before the late pestilence." Coming before the King in February, 1353, he not only urged his petition, but claimed to have £66 returned to him, which he had paid over and above his receipts. For the years 1351 and 1352 he had paid £132 for these rents, as had been usual since 1342; but he claimed that "from the time of the pestilence the bailiffs of the hundreds had been unwilling to take them on such terms." An inquiry by a jury was held in both counties, and it was declared "that since 1351 the bailiffs of the hundreds had been able to obtain nothing for certain—except what they could get by extortion—from the county. Further, that the inhabitants of the said county were now [p179] so diminished and impoverished that the bailiffs were able to get nothing for the farms in that year, 1351." In the same way also John Chastiloun, the sheriff, had received nothing whatever for his office. In the end the sum claimed was allowed.[329]