Before Christmas time the sickness was already in the diocese, although it was only beginning. On the 19th of [p110] January, 1349, Bishop Edyndon wrote to his official that he had good tidings to announce—tidings which he had received with joy—that "the most holy father in Christ, our lord the Supreme Pontiff, had in response to the petition of himself and his subjects, on account of the imminent great mortality, granted to all the people of the diocese, religious and secular, ecclesiastic and lay, who should confess their sins with sincere repentance to any priest they might choose—a plenary indulgence at the hour of death if they departed in the true faith, in unity with the holy Roman Church, and obedience and devotion to our lord the Supreme Pontiff and his successors the Roman Bishops." The Bishop consequently ordered that this privilege should be made known to all as quickly as possible.[193] At Winchester, as at this time in other places, difficulties about the burial of the dead who were carried off by the pestilence soon arose. By January many benefices in the city had been rendered vacant, and without doubt the daily death-roll was becoming alarming. The clergy for many reasons were desirous of restricting burials to the consecrated cemeteries, but a party of the citizens had clearly made up their minds that in such an emergency as the present the ordinary rules and laws should be, and must be, set aside. In order, apparently, the better to enforce their views they set upon and seriously wounded a monk of St. Swithun's, who was conducting a funeral in the usual burial place. The Bishop took a serious view of the offence. On January the 21st, 1349, he addressed an order to the prior of Winchester and the abbot of Hyde ordering sermons to be preached on the Catholic doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh, and excommunication to be denounced against [p111] those who had laid violent hands upon brother Ralph de Staunton, monk of Winchester. "The Catholic Church spread over the world," he says, "believes in the resurrection of the bodies of the dead. These have been sanctified by the reception of the Sacraments, and are hence buried, not in profane places, but in specially enclosed and consecrated cemeteries, or churches, where with due reverence they are kept, like the relics of the Saints, till the day of the resurrection." Winchester, he continues, should set an example to the whole diocese, and above other places ought to reflect the brightness of the Catholic Faith. Some people there, however, not, he thanks God, citizens, or even those born in the city (who are wont to be conspicuous in their upright lives and in their devotion to the Faith), but low class strangers and degenerate sons of the Church, lately attacked brother Ralph de Staunton whilst burying in the appointed place, and when by his habit and tonsure they knew him to be a monk, beat him and prevented him from continuing to bury the