In the Canterbury portion of the county of Kent there were some 280 benefices, which number may form the basis for a calculation of the death roll. The condition to which this portion of England was reduced may be estimated from one or two examples. In 1352 the prioress and nuns of the house of St. James' outside Canterbury were allowed to be free from the tax of a fifteenth granted to the King, because they were reduced to such destitution that they had nothing beyond what was necessary to support them.[330] Even the Cathedral priory of Christchurch itself had to plead poverty. About 1350 the monks addressed petitions to the Bishop of Rochester asking him to give them the church of Westerham "to help them to maintain their traditional hospitality." They say that "by the great pestilence affecting man and beast," they are unable to do this, and as arguments to induce the Bishop to allow this impropriation, they state that they have lost 257 oxen, 511 cows, and 4,585 sheep, worth together £792 12s. 6d. Further they state that "1,212 acres of land, formerly profitable, are inundated by the sea," apparently from want of labourers to maintain the sea walls.[331] [p180] The neighbouring county of Sussex, at the time of the appearance of the disease, counted some 320 benefices. From the Patent Rolls it appears that in 1349 the King presented to as many as 26 livings in the county; amongst these no less than five were at Hastings, at All Saints', St. Clement's, St. Leonards, and two at the Free Chapel.[332] In Hampshire, including the Isle of Wight, the average annual number of appointments to benefices for three years previous to the pestilence was 21; in 1349 no fewer than 228 institutions are registered, so that it may fairly be said that over 200 beneficed clergy were carried off by the sickness. In the county of Surrey the total number of institutions in 1349 was as high as 92, against a previous average of a little over nine yearly, so that here, as in Hants, the number of vacancies of livings was this year increased tenfold. It may fairly be argued that of the number 92, some 80, at least, of the vacancies were caused by the epidemic. Several examples have already been given of the havoc wrought by the epidemic in religious houses in which it had effected an entrance. Where the head of a community was carried off, it is practically certain many of the members also would have perished, and it can be doubted by no one who examines the facts that the pestilence was not only terrible at the time, but had a lasting and permanent effect upon the state of the monastic houses. This point may be illustrated by some of the monasteries of the diocese of Winchester.