A journal of the Plague Year, or, Memorials of the great pestilence in London, in 1665 / By Daniel De Foe.

  • Daniel Defoe
Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A journal of the Plague Year, or, Memorials of the great pestilence in London, in 1665 / By Daniel De Foe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    seven parishes buried but fifty-four *, and we began to hope, that as it was chiefly among the people at the other end of the town, it might go no farther ; and the rather, because the next week, which was from the 9th of May to the 16th, there died but three, of which not one within the whole City or liberties, and St. Andrew’s buried but fifteen, which was very low. It is true, St. Giles’s buried two-and-thirty, but still as there was but one of the Plague, people began to be easy ; the whole Bill also was very low, for the week before the bill was but 347, and the week * The Parish Registers in England were commenced in 1538, in consequence of one of the seventeen injunctions set forth in that year in the name of the King [Hen. VIII.] by the Lord Thomas Cromwell, his vicegerent in ecclesiastical matters, which injunction appointed that the Parson, Vicar, or Curate, of every parish should keep a true and exact Register of all Weddings, Christenings, and Burials ; and the weekly Bills of Mortality, containing an account of Christenings as well as Burials, taken by the Company of Parish . Clerks of London, had their rise the 21st of December, 1592. In 1594, the particular or weekly account of both Christenings and Burials was first made public, as also was the general or yearly account, until the 18th of December, 1595, when it was discon- tinued upon the ceasing of the Plague. tis here to be remarked that the Bill of Mortality, now in its infancy, consisted of but 109 parishes; which were then only alpha- betically -set down, without making any distinction of the out- parishes from those within the walls; whereas afterwards, in 1665, when Mr. John Bell, clerk of the Company of Parish Clerks, pub- lished at London, in 4to, his “ London’s Remembrancer, or a True Account of every particular Week’s Christenings and Mor- tality in all the years of Pestilence within the Bills of Mortality,” the said Bills comprehended 130 parishes; and distinguished the parishes by the four divisions of the Ninety-seven parishes within the walls, the Sixteen parishes without the walls, the Twelve out- parishes in Middlesex and Surrey, and the five parishes in the City and Liberties of Westminster. See MSS. in the British Museum, Ayscough’s Catalogue, No, 4213.