The plague of 664 is the only epidemic in early British annals that can be regarded as a plague of the same nature, and on the same great scale, as the devastation of the continent of Europe more than a century earlier, whether it be taken to be a late offshoot of that or not. The English pestilence of 664 is the same that was fabled long after in prose and verse as the great plague “of Cadwallader’s time.” It left a mark on the traditions of England, which may be taken as an index of its reality and its severity; and with it the history of epidemics in Britain may be said to begin. It was still sufficiently recent to have been narrated by eyewitnesses to Beda, whose _Ecclesiastical History_ is the one authentic source, besides the entry in the Irish annals, of our information concerning it. The pestilence broke out suddenly in the year 664, and after “depopulating” the southern parts of England, seized upon the province of Northumbria, where it raged for a long time far and wide, destroying an immense multitude of people[7]. In another passage Beda says that the same mortality occurred also among the East Saxons, and he appears to connect therewith their lapse to paganism[8]. The epidemic is said to have entered Ireland at the beginning of August, but whether in 664 or 665 is not clear. According to one of those vague estimates which we shall find again in connexion with the Black Death, the mortality in Ireland was so vast that only a third part of the people were left alive. The Irish annals do, however, contain a long list of notables who died in the pestilence[9]. Beda follows his general reference to the plague by a story of the monastery of Rathmelsigi, identified with Melfont in Meath, which he heard many years after from the chief actor in it. Egbert, an English youth of noble birth, had gone to Ireland to lead the monastic life, like many more of his countrymen of the same rank or of the middle class. The plague in his monastery had been so severe that all the monks either were dead of it or had fled before it, save himself and another, who were both lying sick of the disease. Egbert’s companion died; and he himself, having vowed to lead a life of austerity if he were spared, survived to give effect to his vow and died in the year 729 with a great name for sanctity at the age of ninety.