October one writes, “I have not seen London so destitute of people as it was when I came there.” On 2nd November the death is assuaged and there is good rule kept, for Sir Hugh Vaughan takes pains in his office like an honest gentleman. On the 9th November the plague is abated. There the correspondence ends, the Court having returned from France. But we may here bring in a certain weekly bill of mortality which has come down among the waifs of paper from that period[563]. It is for the week from the 16th to the 23rd of November, the year not being stated; the experts of the national collection of manuscripts were at one time inclined to assign it to “circa 1512;” but the first that we hear of the mayor being called upon to furnish a bill of plague-deaths is the order by the lords of the Council on or about the 20th October 1532, the first bill having shown 99 deaths in the city from plague and 27 deaths (in the week) from other causes. The extant bill for the week 16th to 23rd November is clearly one of a series; there are no good grounds for assigning it to an earlier date than the year 1532, while there are reasons for not placing it later. There are two other plague-bills extant, for August, 1535, written out in a more clerkly fashion, and bearing the marks of greater experience. The bill for the week in November is more primitive in appearance; and we may fairly take it as one of the series first ordered by the Council in 1532: for that was the most considerable year of the plague immediately preceding the outburst of 1535, to which the more finished bills certainly belong. The week in November, for which it gives the deaths from plague and other causes in the city parishes is later than the dates of the 2nd and 9th, when the plague was “suaged” and “abated;” the bill therefore stands for plague on the decline, or near extinction for the season, its total of plague deaths being 33, and of other deaths 32, as against 99 and 27 respectively in the corresponding week of October. As this, the earliest of a great historical series of London bills of mortality, has a peculiar interest, I transcribe it in full, retaining the original spelling. Syns the XVIth day of November unto the XXIII day of the same moneth ys dead within the cite and freedom yong and old these many folowyng of the plage and other dyseases.