[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.