| Florence | lost | 60,000 | inhabitants | |
| Venice | " | 10,000 | " | |
| Marseilles | " | in one month | 56,000 | " |
| Paris | " | " | 50,000 | " |
| Avignon | " | " | 60,000 | " |
| Strasburg | " | " | 16,000 | " |
| Basle | " | " | 14,000 | " |
| Erfurth | " | " | 16,000 | " |
| London | " | " | 100,000 | " |
| Norwich | " | " | 50,000 | " |
Hecker states that this pestilence was preceded by great commotion in the interior of the globe. About 1333, several earthquakes and volcanic eruptions did considerable injury in upper Asia, while in the same year, Greece, Italy, France, and Germany suffered under similar disasters. The harvests were swept away by inundations, and clouds of locusts destroyed all that floods had spared, while dense masses of offensive insects strewed the land.
As in the recent invasion of cholera, the populace attributed this scourge to poison and to the Jews, and these hapless beings were persecuted and destroyed wherever they could be found. In Mayence, after vainly attempting to defend themselves, they shut themselves up in their quarters, where 1,200 of them burnt to death. The only asylum found by them was Lithuania, where Casimir afforded them protection; and it is, perhaps, owing to this circumstance that so many Jewish families are still to be found in Poland.
THE DUCHESS OF LAUDERDALE.
Few mansions are more pleasantly situated than Ham House, the dwelling of the Tollemaches, Earls of Dysart. It stands on the south bank of the Thames, distant about twelve miles from London, and immediately opposite to the pretty village of Twickenham. It was erected early in the seventeenth century; the date 1610 still stands on the door of the principal entrance. Its builder was Sir Thomas Vavasour, and it subsequently came into the possession of Katherine, daughter of the Earl of Dysart, who married first Sir Lionel Tollemache, and for her second husband Earl, afterwards Duke, of Lauderdale.
The Duchess of Lauderdale was one of the "busiest" women of the busy age in which she lived. Burnet insinuates that, during the life time of her first husband, "she had been in a correspondence with Lord Lauderdale that had given occasion for censure." She succeeded in persuading him that he was indebted for his escape after "Worcester fight" to "her intrigues with Cromwell. She was a woman," continues the historian, "of great beauty, but of far greater parts. She had a wonderful quickness of apprehension, and an amazing vivacity in conversation. She had studied, not only divinity and history, but mathematics and philosophy. She was violent in everything she set about,—a violent friend, but a much more violent enemy. She had a restless ambition, lived at a vast expense, and was ravenously covetous, and would have stuck at nothing by which she might compass her ends." Upon the accession of her husband to political power after the Restoration, "all applications were made to her. She took upon her to determine everything; she sold all places; and was wanting in no method that could bring her money, which she lavished out in a most profuse vanity."
This Duchess of Lauderdale—famous during the reigns of four monarchs—the First and Second James, and the First and Second Charles, and through the Protectorship of Cromwell—refurnished the house at Ham, where she continued to reside until her death at a very advanced age.
Among other untouched relics of gone-by days, is a small ante-chamber, where, it is said, she not only condescended to receive the second Charles, but, if tradition is to be credited, where she "cajoled" Oliver Cromwell. There still remains the chair in which she used to sit, her small walking cane, and a variety of objects she was wont to value and cherish as memorials of her active life, and the successful issue of a hundred political intrigues.