Additional Remarks, by Tho. Birch, D. D. Secret. R. S.
CAmden, in his Annals of Queen Elizabeth[140], observes, that almost all, except women and children, who were present at the assizes at Oxford, at the tryal of Rowland Jenkes, a Bookseller there, for seditious words, died, to the number of about three hundred. Mr. John Stow, in his Chronicle of England[141], enlarges this number, and affirms, that there died in Oxford three hundred persons, and in other places two hundred and odd, from the 6th of July to the 12th of August; after which died not any of that sickness; for one of them infected not another: And this historian agrees with Camden, that not any one woman or child died thereof. Dr. George Ethryg, a physician, who practised at that time at Oxford[142], in the 2d book of his Hypomnemata quædam in aliquot Libros Pauli Æginetæ, seu Observationis Medicamentorum, quæ hâc ætate in usu sunt, printed at London in 1588, in 8vo, mentions, that on the first night of the appearance of the dissease about six hundred fell sick of it; and that the next night an hundred more were seized in the villages near Oxford. Lord Bacon, in his Natural History, evidently refers to this, and one or two more instances of the same kind, in the following passage, Century X. Nº. 914. “The most pernicious infection next the plague is the smell of the goal, where prisoners have been long and close and nastily kept; whereof we have had in our time experience twice or thrice, when both the judges, that sat upon the goal, and numbers of those, that attended the business, or were present, sickened upon it, and died. Therefore it were good wisdom, that in such cases the goal were aired before they be brought forth.” We have likewise an account in Mr. Anthony Wood[143], that at the quarter-session at Cambridge, in Lent in the year 1522, and the 13th of the reign of Henry VIII. the justices, gentlemen, and bailiffs, with most of the persons present, were seized with a disease, which proved mortal to a considerable number of them; those, who escaped, having been very dangerously sick. With regard to the unhappy instance of the same kind of contagion, which happened at the session in the Old Baily in May 1750, see Dr. Pringle’s excellent work, intitled, Observations on the Diseases of the Army in Camp and in Garison[144].
XCVI. A Description of the Plan of Peking, the Capital of China; sent to the Royal Society by Father Gaubil, è Societate Jesu. Translated from the French.
King che. The Court.
Read June 1, 1758.
IN this plan are the inclosures of walls, which form as it were three cities.
Kong tching, Tse kin.
The first is the imperial palace, or imperial city. It is called Kong tching or Tse kin. The numbers 11, 17, 21, 24, mark the great gates of this inclosure.
Hoang tching.
The second inclosure is Hoang tching. The numbers 3, 18, 30, 86, mark four great gates of this inclosure.