On Recent Additions to Our Knowledge of Epidemics in England during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
نویسنده
چکیده
The object of this paper was to direct attention to the numerous references to plague and other epidemic disorders, scattered through the pages of the series of Calendars of State Papers in course of publication by the Kecord Office. A study of these calendars, and of the papers catalogued in them, would probably throw much additional light upon the prevalence of plague and other epidemics at the periods to which the)' refer. Mr. Radcliffe, to show the value of the new source of information on the chronology of English epidemic, made accessible by the publication of the Calendars, quoted numerous references to plague from the Calendar (Domestic Series) for the years 1664-1665. The year 1665 was the period of the last and greatest outbreak of plague in London. The frightful ravages of this pestilence in the metropolis, at that time, have occupied attention, almost to the exclusion of its prevalence and devastations elsewhere in the kingdom. An accurate knowledge of the extent to which plague prevailed in England during 1665, can only be obtained from local records. Our knowledge of the spread of the pestilence in that year is almost limited to the statements made by Defoe in his journal of The Plague Year. He says, " Either by our people of London, or by the commerce, which made their conversings with all sorts of people in every country, and of every considerable town necessary, I say by this means the plague was first or last spread all over the kingdom as well as in London, as in all the cities and great towns, especially in the trading and manufacturing towns and seaports ; so that, first or last, all the considerable places in England were visited, more or less, and the Kingdom of Ireland in some places, but not so universally; how
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