After the birth-tide of our Lord Jesus Christ one thousand and seven and eighty winters, in the one and twentieth year that William ruled and governed England, as God permitted him, there befel a most heavy and most pestilent year in this land. Such a sickness came on men that wellnigh every other man was in the worst evil, that is with the fever, and that so sorely that many men died of the evil. Afterwards there came, through the great tempests which befel, as we told before, a very great famine over all England, so that many hundred men woefully met their death through that famine. Ah! how woeful and how rueful a time was then, when the wretched men lay driven full nigh to death, and thereafter came the sharp hunger and destroyed them withal. Whom can such times not touch? and who is so hard of heart that he cannot weep for such misfortune? But such things befal for a folk’s sins, because they will not love God and righteousness; so it was in those days that little righteousness was in this land with any man, but with the monks only, where they fared well. The king and the chief men loved much and overmuch the getting of gold and of silver, and cared not how sinfully it were gotten, if only it came to them. The king granted his land for as dear a rent as he could; then came some other and offered more than the other gave before, and the king let it to the man who offered him more; then came a third and offered yet more, and the king let it to the man who offered him most of all; and he cared not how sinfully the reeves got it from poor men, nor how many unlawful things they did, but the more men spake of right laws, the more unlawful things they did. They gathered unjust tolls, and many other unjust things they did, which are hard to number.