A.D. 1355, a peculiar kind of madness was epidemic in England; those affected fled into the woods, and wandered about the fields. (Hecker.) Three years after, epidemic pestilence ravaged England, Africa, Cyprus, and also Italy and Florence, which last city, says Petrarch, lost 100,000 citizens. The same kind of pestilence also afflicted Gaul, Ireland, and Scotland. Stow, in his Chronicle, gives a very graphic description of the foregoing pestilential period from 1348 up to 1357. The pestilence he describes as a new disease. He says: “There began amongst the East Indians and Tartarians a certain pestilence, which at length waxed so general, infecting the middle regions of the air so greatly, that it destroyed the Saracens, Turks, Syrians, Palestinians, and the Grecians with a wonderful or rather incredible death; insomuch that those people being exceedingly dismayed with the terror thereof, consulted among themselves, and thought it good to receive the Christian faith and sacraments; for they had intelligence that the Christians which dwelt on this side of the Greek Sea were not so greatly troubled with sickness and mortality more than common.” “At length this terrible slaughter passed over into those countries which are on this side the Alps, and thence to the parts of France which are called Hesperia, and so on, by order, along into Germany and Dutchland; and the seventh year after it began, it came into England, and first began in the towns and ports joining on the sea-coasts, Dorsetshire, where, even as in other countries, it made the country quite void of inhabitants, so that there were almost none left alive. Thence it passed into Devonshire and Somersetshire, and even into Bristol, and raged in such sort that the Gloucestershire men would not suffer persons from Bristol to have any access unto them or into their country by any means; but at length it came to Gloucester, yea, and to Oxford and London, and finally it spread over all England, and so wasted and spoiled the people, that scarce the tenth person of all sorts was left alive; churchyards were not sufficient and large enough to bury their dead in: they chose certain fields appointed for the purpose, amongst which was the piece of ground denominated the Churchyard of the Holy Trinity, near East Smithfield, opened by one John Cory. One Walter Manny also purchased a piece of ground called Spital Croft, containing thirteen acres, in which were interred during the next year 50,000 bodies; in Norwich, no less than 37,104 persons, besides Mendicants and Dominicans, and in Yarmouth 7502; so that the living which was previously worth 700 marks was reduced to £40 per year.” “What time this pestilence had wasted all England, the Scots, greatly rejoicing, mocked and swore ofttimes, ‘By the vile death of the Englishmen;’ but the sword of God’s wrath slew and consumed the Scots in no less numbers than it did the other. It also wasted the Welshmen,