That outbreak of the Plague reduced the population of these islands to half or perhaps a third of what it was before; and one may speculate about what might have happened, if the outbreak had been more severe and swept the population off without a remnant. In the absence of statistics one may estimate the death-rate from the number of new appointments to livings in the diocese of Exeter, as set down in bishop Grandisson’s register of Institutions. During February 1349 there were institutions to five parishes in the next valley to this: Chudleigh, Trusham, Ashton, Doddiscombsleigh, Dunsford. Those parishes are all on the left bank of the Teign; and there are no institutions to parishes on the right bank until June. If rats could swim the Volga, they could swim the Teign, but probably would not take the trouble if they were happy where they were; so I presume the river checked them, and they came up here another way. During March and April there were institutions to Lustleigh, Bovey, North Bovey, Manaton, Ilsington, Widdicombe: six parishes forming a solid block of sixty-four square miles. In the first six months of 1349 there were altogether 269 institutions, and 394 in the whole year. Even in 1348 there had been only 52, and the average number was 37 in the seven previous years, 1341 to 1347. There were not priests enough to fill up all the vacancies in 1349; and on 20 September bishop Grandisson obtained two Faculties from the Pope, one for ordaining a hundred young men who had not yet attained the age of twenty-three, and the other for ordaining fifty men who were born out of wedlock and therefore were ineligible without a Dispensation.
This kind of evidence needs more careful handling than Cardinal Gasquet has given it in his book on _The Black Death of 1348 and 1349_. Amongst other things he says there, page 102, “An examination of the institutions of the diocese, in relation to the time when the plague visited the various parts of it, appears to show that it commenced almost simultaneously in north and south. In North Devon it is found at both Northam and Alverdiscott on the 7th of November, at Fremington in the same district on the 8th, and at Barnstaple on December 23rd.... The early outbreak in the coast villages at the mouth of the estuary leading to Barnstaple points to the conclusion that the infection was brought by a ship passing up the Bristol Channel.” He assumes here that the Plague will be ‘found’ at a place on the very day on which a new incumbent has been instituted; and this assumption is quite unfounded unless he also assumes that the previous incumbent must have died of Plague there. But in two of these four places the previous incumbents could not possibly have died of Plague, as they had not died of anything at all: the register says distinctly that these vacancies were caused by resignation, not by death.