ABSTRACT
The years immediately following the Black Death saw despair, anger, and upheaval on the bishopric estate; although there are no fourteenth-century halmote court rolls from the Priory from before 1358 and no evidence of any feudal reaction, it is no stretch to imagine that these years had been difficult there as well. The following decades saw continued adjustments in manorial economy and village society on both estates. Unfortunately, for most of this period little survives for the bishopric estate, while for the Priory, the halmote court series is almost complete from 1364 on and may be supplemented by incredible amounts of accounting material, with the Bursars Rolls being among the most important for present purposes. This evidence reveals important changes on the Priory estate, both in the administration of the estate and in the bursars’ dealings with the tenantry. Based on later evidence, there was strong continuity in policy on the bishopric estate as well. While the full history is irrecoverable, an examination of what happened from 1358 to 1362 will provide a strong sense of what likely was going on in subsequent years as well as demonstrate the increasingly different seigniorial policies of bishops and bursars.
