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 same leaders and knights, again took the field.