A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 1 (of 2) by Charles Creighton
Book II. p. 36.
7420 words | Chapter 104
[1122] Hakluyt, _The Principal Navigations_, &c. 3 vols. London, 1599,
III. 225-6.
[1123] Pericarditis scorbutica--a condition which has been observed mostly
in Russia in recent times. The whiteness of the heart would have been due
to the fibrinous layer of lymph on its surface, from the pericarditis.
[1124] Hakluyt, III. 241.
[1125] Hakluyt, II. Part II., pp. 22, 36, 48.
[1126] Hakluyt, III. 501.
[1127] Sir James Stephen’s _Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography_, pop. ed.
p. 125.
[1128] Hakluyt, II. pt. 2, p. 99.
[1129] The famous figure in _Paradise Lost_ (IV. 159) is taken from the
route to India passing within Madagascar--a poetic colouring of dreary and
painful realities:--
As when to them who sail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambik, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabean odours from the spicy shore
Of Araby the blest; with such delay
Well pleas’d they slack their course, and many a league
Cheer’d with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles:
[1130] _The World Encompassed_ &c., Hakluyt Society, ed. Vaux, p. 149, and
Hakluyt, III. 740.
[1131] _A summarie and true discourse of Sir Francis Drake’s West Indian
voyage begun in the year 1585._ Published by M. Thomas Cates. Shortened in
Hakluyt, III. 542. The earlier part of the narrative is by Captain Bigges,
and, after his death in the West Indies, by his lieutenant, Croftes.
[1132] Mr Froude (_History_, XII. 150) must be pronounced somewhat happy
in his bold guess of “yellow fever.” At the same time the enthymeme by
which he had reached his conclusion is altogether wrong: first, in
assuming that the infection “broke out” after the capture of Cartagena,
ignoring the fact of its disastrous prevalence in mid-ocean two or three
months before, shortly after leaving the Cape de Verde islands; and
secondly in assuming that the yellow fever for which Cartagena and other
harbours of the Spanish Main became notorious in later times had existed
as an infection there in the 16th century.
[1133] Sir Richard Hawkins, who commanded the galliot ‘Duck’ in Drake’s
expedition of 1585, thus refers to the Cape de Verde islands, on the
occasion of touching there in his own expedition to the Pacific in 1593
(Purchas, IV. 1368):
These islands are “one of the most unhealthiest climates in the world. In
two times that I have been in them, either cost us the one half of our
people, with fevers and fluxes of sundry kinds, some shaking, some
burning, some partaking of both; some possesst with frensie, others with
slouth; and in one of them it cost me six months’ sickness, with no small
hazard of life.” He then gives a reason for the great risk to health: the
north-east breeze about four in the afternoon seldom faileth, “coming cold
and fresh, and finding the pores of the body open and for the most part
naked, penetrateth the very bones, and so causeth sudden distemperature,
and sundry manners of sickness, as the subjects are divers whereupon they
work. Departing out of the calmes of the Islands, and coming into the
fresh breeze, it causeth the like; and I have seen within two days after
that we have partaked of the fresh air, of two thousand men above an
hundred and fifty have been crazed in their health.” This seems to refer
to the epidemic in Drake’s fleet, as given in the text; but it is clearly
an imperfect account of the facts, and in theory altogether improbable, as
a trade wind within the tropic cannot be credited with such effects, even
if the forms of sickness were conceivably due at all to chill.
Darwin (_Naturalist’s Voyage in the Beagle_, p. 366) says: “The island of
St Jago, at the Cape de Verde, offers another strongly-marked instance of
a country, which anyone would have expected to find most healthy, being
very much the contrary. I have described the bare and open plains as
supporting, during a few weeks after the rainy season, a thin vegetation,
which directly withers away and dries up; at this period the air appears
to become quite poisonous; both natives and foreigners often being
affected with violent fevers. On the other hand, the Galapagos
Archipelago, in the Pacific, with a similar soil, and periodically subject
to the same process of vegetation, is perfectly healthy.” But the
Galapagos have been uninhabited, except in recent times by two or three
hundred people banished from Ecuador. On the other hand the Cape de Verde
islands are believed to have been at one time well wooded and not
unfertile; and the Portuguese settlements in them, to say nothing of the
native negro villages, had a fair population. It is not easy to understand
the pernicious character of their fevers without assuming that spots of
soil had become pestilential by human occupancy; but it is at the same
time clear that a degree of befouling of the soil which would be innocuous
in ordinary, would there engender deadly miasmata owing to the remarkable
alternations of drought and wetness under a tropical sun.
[1134] Hakluyt, III. 286.
[1135] Mr Hubert Hall, of the Record Office, in _Society in the
Elizabethan Age_. London, 1886, p. 120.
[1136] Hakluyt, III. 583.
[1137] Hakluyt, III. 804, 820; and other details in the 1st ed. (1589) pp.
809, 810.
[1138] Hakluyt, III. 842-52.
[1139] Purchas, IV. Bk. 7, Chap. 5, (reprinted from Hawkins’s own
narrative of the voyage, published a few months after the author’s death
in 1622).
[1140] Mr J. K. Laughton (_Dict. of National Biography._ Art. “Hawkins,
Sir Richard”) points out that Hawkins’s narrative of the ‘Daintie’s’
voyage had not always been authenticated by reference to notes or
documents. It seems probable also, from his remarks on the epidemic in
Drake’s fleet after leaving the Cape de Verde islands in 1585, that he
trusted his memory too much. But that objection of writing from memory has
no force as against his general observations and reflections on scurvy.
[1141] Purchas, part IV. p. 1877.
[1142] _Ibid._ p. 1623.
[1143] Woodall defends the use of biscuit in his _Surgeon’s Mate_,
published in 1617.
[1144] Purchas, III. 847.
[1145] _The Voyages of Sir James Lancaster, Knight, to the East Indies._
Hakluyt Society, ed. Clements Markham, 1878; and in Hakluyt’s _Principal
Navigations_, II. pt. 2, p. 102.
[1146] The slowness of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope in old
times was due less to the build or rig of the ships than to the course
shaped: instead of steering southwest from Madeira across the Atlantic
almost to the coast of Brazil at Cape San Roque, so as to get the
north-east trade wind, and thence on another tack in a wide sweep round to
the Cape with the south-east trade wind, the earlier navigators sailed
past the Cape de Verde islands and along the Guinea coast, keeping within
meridians 20 degrees to the eastward of the modern track, and so falling
into the tropical calms at one part, and at another part of the voyage
into the baffling south-east trades, varying in force according to the
season.
[1147] Purchas, I. 147.
[1148] _Calendar of State Papers._ East Indies (under the respective
dates).
[1149] It seems to have passed into common usage, as “to lie in cold
obstruction and to rot” (_Meas. for Meas._ III. 1), and to have been kept
up therein after the faculty had dropped it--if indeed Byron’s line,
“Where cold Obstruction’s apathy” be a survival of medical terminology.
There is an instance of the same kind of survival in the use of
“scorbutic;” at one time land-scurvy was detected (under the influence of
theory) in many forms, and we find in the _Pickwick Papers_ a late
reminiscence of that singular dogma in the “young gentleman with the
scorbutic countenance.”
[1150] The three earlier instances from Purchas, I. 248, 466, the later
from the _Cal. State Papers_, East Indies.
[1151] _Cal. S. P._ Colonial. East Indies. Dec. 24, 1628.
[1152] _Ibid._ Feb. 6, 1626, p. 146.
[1153] _William Hedges’ Diary._ Hakluyt Society, 1887, I. 24, 54.
[1154] _A Letter of M. Gabriel Archar_, in Purchas, pt. IV. p. 1733;
Smith’s _Virginia_, in Pinkerton, XIII. 99; W. Strachey, in Purchas, pt.
IV. p. 1753.
[1155] Theobald makes this the storm and shipwreck which Shakespeare
brings into the _Tempest_.
[1156] Purchas, IV. p. 1762.
[1157] _Cal. S. P._ America and West Indies.
[1158] Dermer, in Purchas, IV. p. 1778: Belknap’s _American Biography_
(“Life of Gorges”), I. 355.
[1159] John Winthrop’s _Journal_, p. 11.
[1160] Winthrop, I. pp. 119, 123.
[1161] _Ibid._ II. 310.
[1162] Refs. in Noah Webster’s _Hist. of Epid. and Pestil. Diseases_.
Hartford, 1799, I. 189, 191, 193.
[1163] Letter of Norris, in _Hist. of S. Carolina_, I. 142.
[1164] Saco, _History of African Slavery in the New World_ (Spanish).
Barcelona, 1879.
[1165] Oviedo, in Purchas, III. 996:--“Extract of Gonzalo Ferdinando de
Oviedo:--‘I had acquaintance with divers which went in the first and
second voyages of Columbus; of which was Peter Margarite, commendator in
the second voyage, of most respect with the king and queen, who complained
of those paines. [Syphilis was prevalent in Barcelona and Valencia
previous to 1494. See Chapter VIII.] Soon after, in the year 1496, began
the disease to arrest some courtiers; but in those beginnings it was only
amongst baser persons of small authority; and it was thought that they got
it by having to do with common women. But afterwards it extended to
principal persons, and the physicians could not tell what to think of it,
so that many died.’... But indeed it came from Hispaniola, where it is
ordinary, and the remedy also [guaiacum]. _Our author_ (_l. c._ civ.), and
Ramusio in his preface to his third Tome, say that the souldiers of
Pamfilo de Nuney, having the small pocks, infected the Indians which never
before heard of that disease; in so much that of 1,600,000 soules in that
island there are so few left, as by and by you shall hear.... The
covetousnesse of the mine-workers, neglect of diet, change of gouvernours
growing worse and worse, caused them to poison, kill and hang themselves,
besides those which were consumed by infectious or pestilentiall pocks
(those before mentioned out of Ramusio) and other diseases.”
[1166] _Calendar of State Papers._ Amer. & W. I., I. 57.
[1167] _Ibid._
[1168] _Cal. S. P._ Amer. & W. I., under the respective dates.
[1169] The account that follows is taken from Father Dutertre’s _Histoire
generale des Antilles habitées par les François_, 4 vols., Paris,
1667-1671, which superseded his earlier work of 1654.
[1170] _Cal. S. P._ Amer. & W. I., II. 529.
[1171] Ligon, _Hist. of Barbadoes_. London, 1657.
[1172] Winthrop’s _Journal_, II. 312.
[1173] Dutertre, _Hist. gen. des Antilles habitées par les François_. 4
vols. Paris, 1667-1671.
[1174] _Cal. State Papers_, Amer. and W. I., I. 301.
[1175] The chronology of yellow-fever epidemics in Hirsch (I. 318) is made
to begin with Guadeloupe, 1635 and 1640, on the authority of Dutertre (as
above), the epidemic of 1647 at Bridgetown being the third in order.
[1176] Benjamin Moseley, M.D., _Treatise on Tropical Diseases, and on the
Climate of the West Indies_, 3rd ed. (1803), p. 476.
[1177] Hughes, _The Natural History of Barbados_. London, 1750, p. 37.
[1178] _Cal. S. P._ Amer. and W. I., under the dates.
[1179] In Sir John Hawkins’ second voyage as a slaver (1565), he was
allowed to trade on the Spanish Main only for his “lean negroes,” which
were within the purchasing means of the poorer Spaniards. The voyage had
been tedious, and the supply of water short “for so great a company of
negroes.... Many never thought to have reached to the Indies without great
death of negroes and of themselves; but the Almighty God, who never
suffereth His Elect to perish,” etc. Hakluyt, III. 501.
[1180] Clarkson, _History of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade_.
New ed., Lond. 1839, pp. 307, 352. He showed his prepared document to
Pitt:--
“Mr Pitt turned over leaf after leaf, in which the copies of the
muster-rolls were contained, with great patience; and when he had looked
over about a hundred pages accurately, and found the name of every seaman
inserted, his former abode or service, the time of his entry, and what had
become of him, either by death, discharge, or desertion, he expressed his
surprise at the great pains which had been taken in this branch of the
inquiry; and confessed, with some emotion, that his doubts were wholly
removed with respect to the destructive nature of this employ.” (p. 273.)
[1181] T. Aubrey, M.D., _The Sea-Surgeon, or the Guinea Man’s Vade Mecum_.
London, 1729, p. 107.
[1182] Gillespie, _Obs. on the Diseases in H. M.’s Squadron on the Leeward
Island Station in 1794-6_. Lond. 1800.
[1183] For example, Mr R. L. Stevenson in a striking passage of _Treasure
Island_.
[1184] Thurloe’s _State Papers_, III. IV. and V.; _Harl. Miscell._ III.
513; Long’s _History of Jamaica_, 3 vols. London, 1774; _Cal. S. P._,
Amer. and W. I.
[1185] _Harl. Miscel._ _l. c._
[1186] Sir Anthony Shirley touched at Jamaica in 1596, and reported, “we
have not found in the Indies a more pleasant and wholesome place.”
Hakluyt, III. 601. Long (_History of Jamaica_, 1774, II. 221) states the
case very fairly with reference to the unfortunate expedition of Venables
in 1655: “The climate of the island has unjustly been accused by many
writers on the subject, the one copying from the other, and represented as
almost pestilential, without an examination into the real sources of this
mortality, which being fairly stated, it will appear that the same men
carrying the like thoughtless conduct and vices into any other uninhabited
quarter of the globe, must infallibly have involved themselves in the like
calamitous situation.”
[1187] _MS. State Papers_, _Colonial_ (Record Office), Vol. XIV. No. 57
(1660).
[1188] Thomas Trapham, M.D., _Discourse of the State of Health in
Jamaica_. Lond. 1679.
[1189] Moseley, _op. cit._ p. 421, without reasons given; followed by
Hirsch. _Geog. and Hist. Pathol._ (English transl.), I. 318.
[1190] _Hist. of Jamaica_, III. 615.
[1191] _Cal. S. P._ Amer. and W. I.
[1192] _Cal. S. P._ Amer. and W. I. 1669-74, § 144.
[1193] _Ibid._ § 264, III.
[1194] With a preface by the Printer to the Reader, beginning “The
reprinting of these sad sheets.” Printed and are to be sold by E. Cotes,
living in Aldersgate Street, printer to the said Company.
[1195] The advertisement is cited in Brayley’s edition of Defoe’s _Journal
of the Plague Year_.
[1196] Sloane MS. no. 349. Λοιμογραφια, _or, An experimental Relation of
the Plague, of what happened remarkable in the last Plague in the City of
London_, etc. By William Boghurst, Apothecary in St Giles’ in the Fields.
London, 1666.
[1197] Reprinted in _A Collection of very Valuable and Scarce Pieces
relating to the last Plague in the year 1665_. London, 1721.
[1198] Λοιμολογια. London, 1671. Translation by Quincy, 1720.
[1199] Λοιμοτομια, _or, the Pest Anatomized_. By George Thomson, M.D.
London, 1666.
[1200] London, 1667.
[1201] Among the crop of books brought up by the Plague of Marseilles, in
1720 (the immediate cause of Defoe’s book also) was one by Richard
Bradley, F.R.S., a writer upon botany, on _The Plague of Marseilles. Also
Observations taken from an original Manuscript of a graduate physician,
who resided in London during the whole time of the late plague, anno
1665._ London 1721 (and two more editions the same year). The title-page
of this astute gentleman is of the catch-penny order. All that is said of
the original manuscript occupies about the same number of lines in the
text as in the title, and might have been extracted in the course of five
minutes’ research; it consists merely of a list of a few things supposed
to be distinctive signs of plague--extraordinary inward heat, difficulty
of breathing, pain and heaviness in the head, inclination to sleep,
frequent vomiting, immoderate thirst, dryness of the tongue and palate,
and then the risings, swellings, or buboes. Boghurst’s third chapter is
occupied with twenty-one such signs, and his fourth chapter with a hundred
more signs and circumstances, in numbered paragraphs. It is possible that
his was the manuscript out of which the botanist made capital in his
title-page; but his meagre list of signs might have been got from almost
any work on almost any febrile disorder, and is not sufficient to identify
Boghurst by, although a word or phrase here and there is the same.
However, Defoe would have seen Bradley’s title-page, and might have
inquired after the Sloane MS.
[1202] Of the six plague-deaths in 1664, three were in Whitechapel parish,
and one each in Aldgate, Cripplegate and St Giles’s-in-the-Fields.
[1203] _Reliquiae Baxterianae._ London, 1696, I. 448. This entry in his
journal is dated September 28, 1665, at Hampden, Bucks.
[1204] _Ed. cit._ Chap. XIV. p. 131:--“Diseases which seem to be nearest
like its (plague’s) nature; which chiefly are fevers, called pestilent and
malignant; for ’tis commonly noted that fevers sometimes reign popularly,
which for the vehemency of symptoms, the great slaughter of the sick, and
the great force of contagion, scarce give place to the pestilence; which,
however, because they imitate the type of putrid fevers, and do not so
certainly kill the sick as the plague, or so certainly infect others, they
deserve the name, not of the plague, but by a more minute appellation of a
pestilential fever.”
[1205] In a letter from London, 9 May, 1637 (Gawdy MSS. at Norwich, _Hist.
MSS. Commis._ X. pt. 2. p. 163) it is said: “There is a strange opinion
here amongst the poorer sort of people, who hold it a matter of conscience
to visit their neighbours in any sickness, yea though they know it to be
the infection.”
[1206] Evans, in preface to 1721 edition of Vincent’s book.
[1207] _Cal. State Papers._
[1208] _Ibid._
[1209] Evans, _l. c._
[1210] _Reliquiae Baxterianae._ London, 1696, II. 1. 2.
[1211] Milton, with his wife and daughters, spent the summer and autumn in
the same quiet neighbourhood, at Chalfont St Giles, in a cottage which
Ellwood had secured for him, still remaining with its low ceilings and
diamond window-panes. He there showed Ellwood the manuscript of _Paradise
Lost_, which was published in 1667. The poem contains no reference to the
plague, unless, indeed, the flight to the country had given point to the
lines in the 9th book:
“As one who long in populous city pent,
Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,
Forth issuing on a summer’s morn, to breathe
Among the pleasant villages and farms,”--
An opportunity arises in the 12th book, where the Plagues of Egypt come
into the prophetic vision of events after the Fall; but the movement is
too rapid to allow of delay, and we have no more than--
“Botches and blains must all his flesh emboss,
And all his people.”
Gibbon thought that the comet of 1664 (which was generally remarked upon
as a portent of the plague that followed) might have suggested the lines,
II. 708-11
“and like a comet burn’d,
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge
In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war.”
Gibbon seems to make a slip in taking these as “the famous lines which
startled the licenser;” those are usually taken to have been I. 598-9, the
figure of the sun’s eclipse, which
“with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs.”
[1212] _Brit. Mus. Addit. MS._ 4376 (8). “Abstract of several orders
relating to the Plague,” from 35 Hen. VIII. to 1665.
[1213] In excavating the foundations of the Broad Street terminus of the
North London Railway, the workmen came upon a stratum four feet below the
surface and descending eight or ten feet lower, which was full of
uncoffined skeletons. Some hundreds of them were collected and
re-interred. (_Notes and Queries_, 3rd Ser. IV. 85.) The ground was part
of the old enclosure of Bethlem Hospital (St Mary’s Spital outside
Bishopsgate), and was acquired for a cemetery, to the extent of an acre,
by Sir Thomas Roe, in 1569. Probably there were plague-pits dug in it
during more than one of the great epidemics, from 1593 to 1665.
[1214] _Cal. State Papers_, Domestic, 1665, p. 579.
[1215] _Reliquiae Hearnianae._ Ed. Bliss, 1869, II. 117 (under the date of
Jan. 21, 1721).
[1216] _The City Remembrancer._ London, 1769 (professing to be Gideon
Harvey’s notes).
[1217] Procopius (_De Bello Persico_, II. cap. 23, Latin Translation) says
the same of the great Justinian plague in A.D. 543 at Byzantium: “ut vere
quis possit dicere, pestem illam, seu casu aliquo seu providentia, quasi
delectu diligenter habito, sceleratissimos quosque reliquisse. Sed haec
postea clarius patuerunt.” On this Gibbon remarks: “Philosophy must
disdain the observation of Procopius, that the lives of such men were
guarded by the peculiar favour of fortune or Providence;” and most men
will agree with Gibbon. But, if we could be sure of the fact of immunity
(and Boghurst’s testimony is a little weakened by his deference to
Diemerbroek, who knew the classical traditions of plague), it might be
possible to explain it on merely pathological grounds.
[1218] John Tillison to Dr Sancroft, September 14, 1665. Harl. MSS. cited
by Heberden, _Increase and Decrease of Diseases_. London, 1801. Woodall,
writing in 1639, and basing on his experience of London plague in 1603,
1625, and 1636, is in like manner emphatic that the symptoms varied much
in individuals and in seasons.
[1219] _Cal. State Papers._ _Hist. MSS. Com._ IX. 321.
[1220] _Cal. State Papers._ _Cal. Le Fleming MSS._ p. 37 (also for
Cockermouth).
[1221] _Ibid._
[1222] Mead seems to have known that there were plague-cases at Battle in
1665.
[1223] _Cal. S. P._
[1224] _Hist. MSS. Com._ II. 115.
[1225] _The History and Antiquities of Eyam, with a full and particular
account of the Great Plague which desolated that village A.D. 1666._ By
William Wood, London, 1842. This small volume, which owes its interest
solely to the plague-incident, has gone through at least five editions.
Among those who have written, in prose or verse, upon the same theme, Wood
mentions Dr Mead, Miss Seward, Allan Cunningham, E. Rhodes, S. T. Hall,
William and Mary Howitt, S. Roberts, and J. Holland. The story is also in
the _Book of Golden Deeds_.
[1226] Bacon (_Sylva Sylvarum_, Cent. X. § 912. Spedding II. 643) says:
“The plague is many times taken without a manifest sense, as hath been
said. And they report that, where it is found, it hath a scent of the
smell of a mellow apple; and (as some say) of May-flowers; and it is also
received that smells of flowers that are mellow and luscious are ill for
the plague: as white lilies, cowslips and hyacinths.”
[1227] Sir Thomas Elyot, in _The Castle of Health_ (1541), says that
“infected stuff lying in a coffer fast shut for two years, then opened,
has infected those that stood nigh it, who soon after died.” (Cited by
Brasbridge, _Poor Man’s Jewel_, 1578, Chapter VIII.)
[1228] Milner’s _Hist. of Winchester_.
[1229] _The City Remembrancer_, Lond. 1769, vol. I.--an account of the
plague, fire, storm of 1703, etc., said to have been “collected from
curious and authentic papers originally compiled by the late learned Dr
[Gideon] Harvey.” But the section on the plague is almost purely Defoe and
Vincent, with a few things from Mead.
[1230] These figures, with the two oaths, had been copied by the antiquary
Morant for his _History of Essex_, and are preserved in No. 87. ff. 55 and
56, of the Stowe MSS. in the British Museum, where Mr J. A. Herbert, of
the Manuscript Department, pointed them out to me. In his printed
_History_ Morant has summarized the plague-deaths in monthly periods.
The Bearers’ Oath, fol. 57:--
“Ye shall swear, that ye shall bear to the ground and bury the bodys of
all such persons as, during these infectious times, shall dye of the
pestilence within this Towne or the Liberties thereof, or so many of them
as ye shall have notice of, and may be permitted to bury, carrying them to
burials always in the night time, unless it be otherwise ordered by the
Mayor of this Towne; And ye shall be always in readiness for that purpose
at your abode, where you shall be appointed, keeping apart from your
families together with the searchers, and not to be absent from thence
more than your office of Bearers requires. Ye shall always in your walk,
as much as may be, avoid the society of people, keeping as far distant
from them as may bee, and carrying openly in your hands a white wand, by
which people may know you, and shun and avoid you. And shall do all other
things belonging to the office of Bearers, and therein shall demean
yourselves honestly and faithfully, discharging a good conscience; So etc.
_August 1665._
JAMES BARTON and JOHN COOKE:--sworn, who are to have for their pains
10 sh. a week a piece; and 2d for every one to be buried, taking the
2d out of the estate of the deceased. If there be not wherewithal, the
parish to bear it.
Oath 6. p. 44.
The Oath for the Searchers of the Plague, 1665.
“Yee and either of You shall sweare, that ye shall diligently view and
search the corps of all such persons, as during these infectious times,
shall dye within this Towne or the Liberties thereof, or so many of them
as you shall or may have access unto, or have notice of; And shall
according to the best of your skill, determine of what disease every such
dead corps came to its death. And shall immediately give your judgment
thereof to the Constables of the parish where such corps shall be found,
and to the Bearers appointed for the burial of such infected corps. You
shall not make report of the cause of any one’s death better or worse than
the nature of the disease shall deserve. Yee shall live together where you
shall be appointed, and not walk abroad more than necessity requires, and
that only in the execution of your office of Searchers. Ye shall decline
and absent yourselves from your families, and always avoid the society of
people. And in your walk shall keep as far distant from men as may be,
always carrying in your hands a white wand, by which the people may know
you, and shun and avoid you. And ye shall well and truly do all other
things belonging to the office of Searchers, according to the best of your
skill, wisdom, knowledge, and power, in all things dealing faithfully,
honestly, unfeignedly and impartially. So help” etc.
[1231] Morant, _Hist. of Essex_, I. 74.
[1232] Deering, _Nottingham_, vetus et nova, 1751, pp. 82-83. Copied in
Thoresby’s edition of Thoroton’s _History of Nottingham_, II. 60.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
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