1665 was significant for Joseph Bennet for several reasons. A particularly savage outbreak of plague came to England. Brightling was badly hit and Joseph Lord, his successor as rector, fled to escape the infection. Bennet took a more fatalistic view, remaining in the little town and ministering to the townsfolk who "died in great numbers". Meanwhile, church ministers such as Joseph Bennet who had refused to accept the 1662 Act of Uniformity were being officially stigmatised as nonconformists.