Within the bounds of this fairly comfortable provision, monastic discipline was apparently quite good. In 1323-4 Bishop Roger Northburgh, recently appointed and at war with much of the ecclesiastical establishment in his diocese, instigated a series of canonical visitations that took in all of the abbeys and smaller houses around Shrewsbury. While criticisms were, in many cases, severe, Shrewsbury's shortcomings were fairly minor or very general: too many monks were missing meals in the refectory, novices were allowed out before they had properly learnt the Rule, and the accounts of the obedientiaries, the abbot's under-managers, were inadequate – this last a complaint made of nearly all religious houses in the diocese. Thirty years later, in the wake of the Black Death, Northburgh found buildings on many manors were in poor repair, but this was a sign of the times, not the fault of the monks.