The Black Death brought a much worse crisis. Repeated outbreaks of the plague reduced the labour force so that in 1354 Bishop Northburgh blamed the scarcity of labour for the disrepair of many buildings, although he warned the abbey to look after its investment in Lythwood.<ref>Owen and Blakeway, p. 120.</ref> The next abbot, Henry of Alston, died after a short period of office and soon there were not even enough priests. In 1365 Abbot Nicholas Stevens and the prior of Coventry were each granted a faculty by the Pope to ordain ten to make up the numbers.<ref>Calendar of Papal Registers, Volume 4. "Regesta 254: 1364-1365, 16 Kal. Feb.</ref> Stevens seems to have been a fairly effective leader in consolidating the abbey's position. During the 14th century considerable rebuilding took place at the west end of the Abbey. A sketch of the great west window made in 1658 by Francis Sandford shows a selection of coats of arms that seem to suggest it was glazed around 1388,<ref>Owen and Blakeway, p. 78.</ref> in the time of Stevens, who may also have been responsible for some of the other 14th century alterations. He was on good terms with the king, Richard II, who attributed his grant of a charter in 1389 not only to his own devotion to St Winifred, but also "the sincere affection we bear and have to Nicholas the abbot, and for his merits."<ref name=ob121>Owen and Blakeway, p. 121.</ref>  This may help account for the abbey's relative impunity under Stevens, who sought, through a protracted series of manoeuvres, to annex Sandwell Priory, near West Bromwich in Staffordshire, to Shrewsbury Abbey. In so doing he got away with near-murder. Initially he encouraged one Richard Tudenham to contest the position of the elected prior, John de Kyngeston.<ref></ref> In 1370 Kyngeston took legal action against Stevens after suffering an arrow wound in the arm during an attack by five men. In 1379 Stevens, together with two monks and a secular cleric, abducted Kyngeston and held him at a house in Sleap, north of Shrewsbury, until he signed a resignation. Bishop Robert de Stretton installed as prior of Sandwell one of the Shrewsbury monks involved in the abduction, Brother Richard Westbury.