The Black Death entered Dorsetshire in August 1348, moving on to Bristol, Gloucester and Oxford. From Oxford the infection marched to London, which city it reached at Michaelmas or November. It soon swept over the whole country. Dr. Creighton writes: 'The Black Death may be said to have extended over three seasons in the British islands--a partial season in the south of England in 1348; a great season all over England, in Ireland, and in the south of Scotland, in 1349; and a late extension in Scotland generally in 1350. The experience of all Europe was similar, the Mediterranean provinces receiving the infection as early as 1347, and the northern countries, on the Baltic and North Seas, as late as 1350.'[166] This plague had the most momentous effect upon the history of England, on account of the fearful mortality that it caused. It paralysed industry, and permanently altered the position of the labourer. Ineffectual attempts were made to neutralise these effects by the Statute of Labourers and by enactments 'that every workman and labourer shall do his work just as he used before the pestilence'; 'that the servants of substantial people shall take no more than they used to take'; and 'that labourers and workmen who will not work shall be arrested and imprisoned.'[167] The effects of the pestilence on the Church and on morals is seen in the writings of Wiclif and Langland. Wiclif, who was an Oxford student, in 1348 predicted in his book, _The Last Age of the Church_, the end of the world in 1400 at latest. The effects upon architecture has been dwelt upon by the antiquaries; upon the growth of the country, by political economists; and upon the general health of the country, by doctors; so that it is not necessary here to enter into further explanations. The statistics of the writers of the Middle Ages are of little value, and the estimates of those who died are very various, but the statement that half the population of England died from the plague is probably not far from the truth. In East Anglia, which suffered most severely, upwards of 800 parishes lost their parsons, eighty-three of them twice, and ten of them three times, in a few months. In Norfolk and Suffolk nineteen religious houses were left without abbot or prior.[168]