It may be said with considerable certainty that fully half the number of beneficed clergy fell victims to the disease in this diocese. Many livings were rendered vacant two and three times during its course; whilst a not inconsiderable number had four changes of incumbents within these few months. Bathampton, for example, had four parsons appointed in this period. At Hardington, not far from Frome, from January, 1349, to the middle of March, there were certainly three and perhaps four changes due to the disease; and at Yeovil, from the 15th December, 1348, to the 4th February, 1349, three priests held the living, one after the other. Little or no information is forthcoming as to the religious houses of the county at this time. Both Athelney and Muchelney lost their abbots, and probably also many of their members. The fact that the great abbey of Glastonbury, which previously contained within its walls a community of some 80 monks, is found in A.D. 1377 to have 44, seems to indicate that it must have suffered very severe losses through the epidemic. At Bath, in 1344, only five years before the outbreak of the disease, the community at the Priory consisted of thirty professed monks under Prior John de Ford.[138] A list on the roll of the Somerset clergy, on whom a clerical subsidy was levied at the close of Edward the Third's reign, in 1377, shows that the number had been reduced to sixteen,[139] [p086] and at this number it apparently remained to the time of the final dissolution of the house in the sixteenth century.[140] It is not difficult to understand that the plague must have raged with great virulence in the larger cities, where in those days the most elementary notions of sanitation were almost unknown. In the west, Bristol, of course, suffered severely. "There," says the sub-contemporary writer, Knighton, "died, suddenly overwhelmed by death, almost the whole strength of the town, for few were sick more than three days, or two days, or even half a day." Nor need this be a subject of wonder when, according to the description of a modern writer, speaking of the city at this very period, the streets were very narrow; in the busier parts the ground was honeycombed with cellars for storing wine, salt, and other merchandise, whilst refuse streamed down the centre ditch. So small was the distance between the houses that no vehicle was allowed to be used in the streets, and all goods were carried on pack-horses or porters, a custom which even in the 17th century excited the wonder of Samuel Pepys.[141]