The diocese of Winchester includes the two counties of Surrey and Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. On the 24th of October, 1348, Bishop Edyndon, the occupant of the see, addressed a letter to his clergy ordering prayers.[190] It bears upon it the stamp of the horror which had seized upon the minds of all by reason of the reports now coming to hand of what had taken place in other countries. "William, by Divine providence, Bishop," he writes, "to the prior and chapter of our Church of Winchester, health, grace, and benediction. A voice in Rama has been heard; much weeping and crying has sounded throughout the various countries of the globe. Nations, deprived of their children in the abyss of an unheard plague, refuse to be consoled because, as is terrible to hear of, cities, towns, castles, and villages, adorned with noble and handsome buildings, and wont up to the present to rejoice in an illustrious people, in their wisdom and counsel, in their strength, and in the beauty of their matrons and virgins; wherein, too, every joy abounded, and whither multitudes of people flocked from afar for relief; all these have already been stripped of their population by the calamity of the said pestilence, more cruel than any two-edged sword. And into these said places now none dare enter, but fly far from them as from the dens of wild beasts. Every joy has ceased in them; pleasant [p108] sounds are hushed, and every note of gladness is banished. They have become abodes of horror and a very wilderness; fruitful country places, without the tillers, thus carried off, are deserts and abandoned to barrenness. And, news most grave which we report with the deepest anxiety, this cruel plague, as we have heard, has already begun to singularly afflict the various coasts of the realm of England. We are struck with the greatest fear lest, which God forbid, the fell disease ravage any part of our city and diocese. And although God, to prove our patience, and justly to punish our sins, often afflicts us, it is not in man's power to judge the Divine counsels. Still, it is much to be feared that man's sensuality, which, propagated by the tendency of the old sin of Adam, from youth inclines all to evil, has now fallen into deeper malice and justly provoked the Divine wrath by a multitude of sins to this chastisement.