It has been already remarked that one obvious result of the great mortality, so far as the Church is concerned, was the extraordinary decrease in the number of candidates for sacred orders. In the Winchester diocese, for example, the average number of priests ordained in each of the three years preceding 1349 was 111; whilst in the 15 subsequent years, up to 1365, when Bishop Edyndon died, the yearly average was barely 20; and in the thirty-four years, from 1367 to 1400, even with so zealous a prelate as William of Wykeham presiding over the diocese, the annual average number of ordinations to the sacred priesthood was only 27; a number which was further decreased during the progress of the 15th century.[389] The same striking result of the plague, which cannot but have had a very serious effect upon the Church at large, is manifested elsewhere. The Ely registers, for example, show that the average number of all those ordained, for the seven years before 1349, was 101-1/2; whilst for the seven years after that date it was but 40-1/2. In 1349 no ordinations whatever apparently were held, and [p209] the average number of priests ordained yearly, from 1374 to 1394, was only 14. In fact the total number ordained in that period was only 282, whilst of these many entered the priesthood for other dioceses, and more than half, namely 161, were members of the various religious orders; so that the ranks of the diocesan clergy of Ely appear to have received but few recruits during the whole of this time. In the diocese of Hereford, to take another example, previously to 1349, there were some very large ordinations. Thus, in 1346, on the 11th of March, 438 people were ordained to various grades in the sacred ministry. Of these some 89 received the priesthood, 49 of them being ordained for the diocese of Hereford. Again, on the 10th of June in the same year, Bishop Trileck conferred orders, in the parish church of Ledbury, upon 451 candidates, of whom 148 were made priests; 56 being intended for his own diocese. Altogether, in that year, some 319 priests were ordained by the Bishop; half of the number being his own clergy.[390] About the same numbers were ordained in the year of the plague itself, 1349, and 371 in the following year. In fact, till 1353 the number remains large, but the greater portion of those ordained were intended for other dioceses. The subjects of the Bishop of Hereford at once show a falling off similar to that noticed in Winchester and Ely. Thus, from 1345 to 1349, the average number of subjects ordained by the Bishop for his own diocese was 72. In the next five years it was only 34, whilst in no subsequent year during Bishop Trileck's pontificate did it rise above 23.