corpses, arranged in layers, in large pits. It is said that in
the whole country scarcely a tenth part remained alive; but this
estimate is evidently too high. Smaller losses were sufficient to
cause those convulsions, whose consequences were felt for some
centuries, in a false impulse given to civil life, and whose
indirect influence, unknown to the English, has perhaps extended
even to modern times.

Morals were deteriorated everywhere, and the service of God was in
a great measure laid aside; for, in many places, the churches were
deserted, being bereft of their priests. The instruction of the
people was impeded; covetousness became general; and when
tranquillity was restored, the great increase of lawyers was
astonishing, to whom the endless disputes regarding inheritances
offered a rich harvest. The want of priests too, throughout the
country, operated very detrimentally upon the people (the lower
classes being most exposed to the ravages of the plague, whilst
the houses of the nobility were, in proportion, much more spared),
and it was no compensation that whole bands of ignorant laymen,
who had lost their wives during the pestilence, crowded into the
monastic orders, that they might participate in the respectability
of the priesthood, and in the rich heritages which fell in to the
Church from all quarters. The sittings of Parliament, of the
King's Bench, and of most of the other courts, were suspended as
long as the malady raged. The laws of peace availed not during
the dominion of death. Pope Clement took advantage of this state
of disorder to adjust the bloody quarrel between Edward III and
Philip VI; yet he only succeeded during the period that the plague
commanded peace. Philip's death (1350) annulled all treaties; and
it is related that Edward, with other troops indeed, but with the