Melcombe Regis, or Weymouth, was at that time a port of considerable importance. In 1347-8, for example, it furnished Edward III., for his siege of Calais, with 20 ships and 264 mariners; whilst Bristol sent only 22 ships and 608 sailors, and even London but 25 boats and 662 men.[126] [p073] This fact is of interest, not merely as showing the importance of Melcombe Regis as a port on the southern coast, but as evidence actually connecting the place at this very period with Calais, and, doubtless, with other coast towns of France. It is not at all improbable that by the return of some of the Melcombe boats from Calais, the epidemic may have been conveyed into the town. No evidence is known to exist as to the mortality in the port itself; but an item of information as to the effect of the disease in the neighbourhood is afforded at a subsequent period. Three years after the plague had passed the King, by his letters patent, forbade any of the inhabitants of the island of Portland to leave their homes there, or, indeed, to sell any of their crops out of the district, "because," he says, "as we have learnt, the island of Portland, in the county of Dorset, has been so depopulated in the time of the late pestilence that the inhabitants remaining are not sufficiently numerous to protect it against our foreign enemies."[127] The actual date when the pestilence first showed itself in Dorsetshire has been considered somewhat doubtful. The earliest day suggested is that assigned by the monk of Malmesbury in his _Eulogium Historiarum_, who names July 7th (1348) as the time when it commenced at Melcombe Regis. The latest date is that given by Knighton, the sub-contemporary canon of Leicester, who mentions generally that it began in the autumn of the year 1348. One chronicle gives July 25th, and two others August 1st, whilst another merely names August as the month. Under these circumstances, and in view of the fact that its arrival in England was apparently unknown to the Bishop of Bath and Wells, who was then in his diocese, in the middle of August, it seems more than likely that the terrible scourge did not make itself felt in the West of England until after the middle of that month and not later than its end. [p074] The early commencement of the disease is borne out by a document in the archives of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury. Archbishop Strafford died on St. Bartholomew's Eve, August 23rd, 1348, and before the end of September the Prior of Canterbury, acting with archiepiscopal power during the vacancy, addressed a mandate to the Bishop of London, as the Dean of the College of Bishops, to issue directions to the suffragans of Canterbury to hold public processions in their respective dioceses to pray God's aid against "the mortality" which was already assuming alarming proportions.[128]