I have not been able to find out any other fact of any particular interest respecting Bridgnorth, during the reign of Edward III, except that the Burgesses of the town petitioned him, that they might have the use of his chapel, within the Castle, as a parish church. Hitherto this chapel of Saint Mary Magdalene had been exclusively allotted to the Castle, and perhaps was used solely by the garrison, and Saint Leonard’s was the only parochial church belonging to the town; but now, the Burgesses wishing for larger church accommodation, on account perhaps of the increase of population, or for some other cause which made it desirable, laid their petition before the King, that he would grant them the use of his royal chapel. Whether or not they succeeded in their object does not appear.[36]
[36] Dukes’ Antiquities of Shropshire, Appendix XXXVI.
About twenty years after this, in the same reign, the population was fearfully diminished by a pestilence, which twice swept over England, as well as the rest of Europe, and which was so destructive in its ravages, that it is computed that a third part of the inhabitants of every county was taken off by it. Shropshire suffered very severely. We have no record of its progress in Bridgnorth; if we had, it would doubtless afford us as many narratives of an interesting, though painful, character, as the visitation of the cholera did a few years since. This fact the historian Walsingham relates, that eighteen out of every twenty in the Friaries and Abbeys fell victims to the disease.[37] This may be in part accounted for by so many living together in the same house, among whom a contagious disease would be likely to spread with fatal rapidity. Others attribute the remarkable amount of mortality among the ecclesiastics at this time[38] to their frequent visitations of the sick—their constant intercourse with the diseased and dying. If this be a true account of the matter we may infer that the members of the religious houses in Bridgnorth—who, like their brethren elsewhere, perished in numbers—were thus charitably employed during this visitation, and sacrificed their lives to this ministry of mercy, imparting as far as they were able to do so, the consolations of the Gospel of Christ to the sufferers around them.