About this time, too, the cathedral must have been finished; now, too, was the terrible visitation of the black death, that most deadly of all plagues, which is said to have cut off one half of the whole population of the realm. Whether the fear of it, or the occasion of the completion of the cathedral, caused the chapter to set their house in order, certain it is that we have, in the discovery of the sacrist's roll of 1346, a kind of inventory of the valuables of the cathedral at this time; these are set out in the part devoted to the cathedral. Thomas of Chesterfield, the early historian of the diocese, whose work is printed in Wharton's _Anglia Sacra_, and on whom all later writers on the subject have had largely to rely, lived at this time, and brought down his "chronicle" to 1348, one of the years of the black death.
=Roger de Stretton= (1360-1386), an absolutely uneducated man, succeeded Langton; then came =Walter Skirlaw= (1386) and =Richard Scrope= (1386-1396), but the former, between his consecration and his enthronement, was translated to Bath and Wells, from whence he went to Durham, and the latter, though distinguished in English history, is more noted as Archbishop of York. Next came Bishop =John Burghill= (1398-1414), a barefooted Black Friar, who gained a reputation for asceticism, and left his worldly goods to the church. Richard II. was present at the enthronement of these two last bishops. They were followed by =John Catterick= (1415-1419).
In 1419, =William Heyworth= (1419-1447), the abbot of St. Albans, became bishop. An important question was settled in his time--viz. the bishop's position in the cathedral. At his suggestion, it was arranged that he should give notice to the dean when he intended a visitation: the chapter should be summoned, and they should conduct him to the high altar and there leave him to stand or kneel alone in prayer. Afterwards they were to conduct him to the chapter-house, where he might inquire into the title and conduct of the canons; the other cathedral clergy were to be entirely subject to the dean and chapter. His rule saw also the beginnings of the collegiate church of Manchester, which so long after was to become the cathedral of the new diocese to be carved out of our see.