[437] Mackay, The English Poor. London, 1890, p. 40.
[438] W. Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce. 2nd ed. Camb. 1890, p. 105. He reproduces Denton’s statement that “there was chronic typhoid in the towns.” Denton professes to have found this in Hecker, who had certainly no knowledge of English towns in the 15th century, and is, in general, more entertaining as a philosophe than trustworthy for erudition.
[439] In 1741, during a prevalence of fever all over England, we hear of bread made of horse-beans, pease, and coarse unsound barley as the chief food of the poor. (Gent. Magaz. letters of 27 Nov. 1741 and 11 Jan. 1742). Thorold Rogers (Agric. and Prices, v. Preface) thinks that the staple food of the English labourer, wheaten bread, had first been changed, especially in the North, to rye, barley and oat bread, in the 17th century during the Civil Wars.
[440] Paston Letters. Ed. Gairdner, 1872, II. 254: John Wymondham of Fellbrigg to John Paston, 10th Nov. “And forasmuch as there was a child dead at Asteleys, and one other like to be dead in the same place, what time I rode out about my little livelihood, my lady and I both thought pity on my mistress your wife to see her abide there, and desired her to come to my poor house, unto such time as you should be otherwise avised.”
[441] Histor. MSS. Commission, IX. 127 b.
[442] Calendar of State Papers. Venetian, vol. I. § 236.
[443] Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council. Ed. Nicolas, III. p. xlv.
[444] Rot. Parl. IV. 420 b.
[445] Arnold’s Chronicle, p. xxxii.
[446] Proc. and Ord. Privy Council, IV. p. lxxx. Sir Harris Nicolas, in this connexion, remarks that Fabyan and all other chroniclers (he had overlooked Arnold) omit to mention pestilence, while they mention much less important things; but he is hardly warranted in his inference that plagues were so common-place as to be left unrecorded. A low level of plague would not be noticed, but a great epidemic certainly would.