[796] The author of the misadventure. He succeeded in getting home to Crediton, where he died on the 12th April, four weeks after the Assizes began.
[797] Sir George Nicholls, in his History of the English Poor Law, 1854, I. 113, threw out the suggestion that the decay was in the old walled towns, and that it was compensated by the rise of populations on less hampered sites. This theory has been adopted by some later writers.
[798] Calendar of State Papers. Domestic, Hen. VIII.
[799] Becon’s Works, 3 vols. II. fol. 15-16.
[800] Continuation of Fabyan’s Chronicle.
[801] Greyfriars Chronicle, Camden Soc. LIII., 1852. Preface by J. G. Nichols, xxiv.
[802] Strype’s ed. of Stow’s Survey of London.
[803] In the Rolls of the Middlesex Sessions (Middlesex Record Society), there occur numerous entries of inquests on deaths in the gaol of Newgate from the 25th year of Elizabeth: a few of these are from plague; but by far the larger number are from “the pining sickness,” a malady which sometimes cut off several prisoners in the same few days and after a brief illness. In one of these epidemics (Dec. 1586-Feb. 1587), a single case is called “pestilent fever,” the other seven being “pining sickness.” Next year, June 19, there is a case of bloody flux, and, on June 24, a case of “pining sickness.” The other periods when the disease so named was epidemic in Newgate were Feb.-May, 1595, June and July, 1597, March, 1598, and March-April, 1602. The pining sickness was probably a generic term, and may have included chronic disease; there is a solitary case entered as ailing for as long a period as eight months, the usual duration of the sickness being one, two, or three days up to three or four weeks.
This place will serve to notice the strange teaching about “parish infection” which has received currency among the writers of good repute as authorities. Guy (Public Health, Lectures, 1870, I. 23) says the gaol distemper was an old offender known as the sickness of the house: “I think I recognize it in the London Bills from 1606 to 1665 as the Parish Infection.” The column of figures in the London Bills which has been taken to show the weekly prevalence of a disease, otherwise unheard of, “parish infection,” really shows the number of “parishes infected.” The earlier bills showed, in the corresponding column, the number of parishes clear (“parish.clere” or “paroch.clere”). By adding up the number of parishes infected in each of the 52 weeks of a bad plague-year, a total of some thousands is got, and that total has been taken to be the annual mortality from “parish infection”—a pure myth. The original author of this singular mistake appears to have been Marshall, in his Mortality of the Metropolis, London, 1832, p. 67. Of the “parish infection,” he says: “The disease below is specified by Mr Bell in his Remembrancer [1665]; it is probably the same as exhibited under the name of spotted fever.” What Bell “specifies” is not another disease, but the number of parishes in the City and suburbs infected with the plague in each week of the year.
[804] Annales Monastici, Rolls series, No. 19. Chronicle by an unknown author (St Albans) temp. Hen. VI., 1422-31:—“Quaedam infirmitas reumigata invasit totum populum, quae mure dicitur: et sic senes cum junioribus inficiebat quod magnum numerum ad funus letale deducebat.”