At Christchurch only four of the community died at the time, and this comparative immunity has been ascribed to the excellent water supply obtained a century before for the monastery from the hills.[181] Later on in the summer, however, when the new abbot of St. Albans rested at Canterbury, on his way to the Pope at Avignon, one of the two companions whom he had with him died of the sickness there.[182] In the city, also, two masters were appointed to the Hospital of Eastbridge, one quickly after the other. The prioress of St. Sepulchre's and the prior of St. Gregory's both died; but we can only suspect what happened in the communities at this anxious time, and among the people at large. At Sandwich, in the June of 1349, the plague was still raging. The old cemetery was full to overflowing, and the suffragan bishop was commissioned to proceed thither and consecrate a new piece of ground, given for the purpose by the Earl of Huntingdon.[183] One example may be given here of the rapidity with which during the great sickness members of a family [p104] followed one another to the grave. Sir Thomas Dene, of Ospring, about three miles from Faversham, in the northern part of the diocese of Rochester, died on May the 18th, 1349. At the time of his death he had four daughters—Benedicta, five years old, Margaret, four years, and Martha and Joan, younger still. By July the 8th Martha, the wife of Sir Thomas, had also died, and from the inquisition, taken on Monday, the 3rd of August, 1349, it appears that of the children the two youngest were now also dead. Thus, out of a family of six, the father, mother, and two children had been carried off by the disease.[184] In this second half of the county of Kent, which forms the diocese of Rochester, the sickness was felt as severely as in the Canterbury diocese. What happened here is told in the account of William Dene, a monk of Rochester, and a contemporary of the events he describes. "A plague such as never before had been heard of," he writes, "ravaged England in this year. The Bishop of Rochester out of his small household lost four priests, five gentlemen, ten serving men, seven young clerks, and six pages, so that not a soul remained who might serve him in any office. At Malling (a Benedictine nunnery) he blessed two abbesses, and both quickly died, and there were left there only four professed nuns and four novices. To one of these the Bishop committed the charge of the temporals, to another that of the spirituals, because no proper person for abbess could be found."