the lands and tenements of the Prioress and Convent notoriously suffer so great ruin that few tenants can be found willing to occupy the lands in these days, and the said lands, ever falling into a worse state, are so poor that they cannot supply the religious women with sufficient support for themselves or for the repair of their ruinous buildings.[556]
The worst of these natural disasters was not the actual damage done by each outbreak, but the fact that famine, murrain and pestilence followed upon pestilence, murrain and famine with such rapidity, that the poorer houses had no chance of recovery from the initial blow dealt them by the Black Death. The nuns of Thetford, for instance, were excused from the taxation of religious houses under Henry VI, on the ground that their revenues in Norfolk and in Suffolk were much decreased by the recent mortality and had so continued since 1349[557]. Even the well-endowed houses found recovery difficult, and the history of the great abbey of Shaftesbury illustrates the situation very clearly. In 1365, shortly after the _pestis secunda_, the nuns received a grant of the custody of their temporalities on the next voidance, and losses by pestilence were mentioned as one reason for the decline in their fortunes. In 1380 their lands were flooded and they suffered heavy losses in sheep and cattle. In 1382 (the year of the fifth plague) they were obliged to petition once again for help, representing that although their house was well-endowed,
toutes voies voz dites oratrices sont einsi arreriz a jour de huy, quoy par les pestilences en queles lours tenantz sont trez toutz a poy mortz, et par murryne de lour bestaille a grant nombre et value, _nemye tant seulement a une place et a une foitz, einz a diverses foitz en toutes leurs places_, quoy par autres grandes charges quelles lour convient a fine force de jour en autre porter et sustenir, q'eles ne purront, sinoun qe a moelt grant peine, sanz lour endangerer al diverses bones gentz lours Creditours, mesner l'an a bon fyn[558].
Again towards the middle of the fifteenth century Bishop Ayscough sanctioned the appropriation of a church to the abbey, which had pleaded its great impoverishment through pestilence, failure of crops, want of labourers, and through the excessive demands of such labourers as could be obtained[559]. If Shaftesbury found recovery so difficult, it may easily be imagined what was the effect of the natural disasters of the fourteenth century upon smaller and less wealthy houses.