“These unheard-of manifold judgments continued seven years, not always alike, but the seasons, summer and winter, so cold and barren, and the wonted heat of the sun so much withholden, that it was discernible upon the cattle, flying fowls and insects decaying, that seldom a fly or gleg was to be seen. Our harvests not in the ordinary months, many shearing in November and December, yea some in January and February; the names of the places I can instruct. Many contracting their deaths, and losing the use of their feet and hands, shearing and working amongst it in frost and snow; and after all some of it standing still, and rotting upon the ground, and much of it for little use either to man or beast, and which had no taste or colour of meal. Meal became so scarce that it was at two shillings a peck, and many could not get it. “Through the long continuance of these manifold judgments deaths and burials were so many and common that the living were wearied with burying of the dead. I have seen corpses drawn in sleds. Many got neither coffins nor winding-sheet. “I was one of four who carried the corpse of a young woman a mile of way; and when we came to the grave, an honest poor man came and said, ‘You must go and help me to bury my son, he is lien dead this two days; otherwise I will be obliged to bury him in my own yard.’ We went, and there were eight of us had two miles to carry the corpse of that young man, many neighbours looking on us, but none to help us. I was credibly informed, that in the North, two sisters on a Monday’s morning were found carrying the corpse of their brother on a barrow with bearing-ropes, resting themselves many times, and none offering to help them. “I have seen some walking about at sunsetting, and next day at six o’clock in the summer morning found dead in their houses, without making any stir at their death, their head lying upon their hand, with as great a smell as if they had been four days dead; the mice or rats having eaten a great part of their hands and arms. “The nearer and sorer these plagues seized, the sadder were their effects, that took away all natural and relative affections, so that husbands had no sympathy with their wives, nor wives with their husbands, parents with their children, nor children with their parents. These and other things have made me to doubt if ever any of Adam’s race were in a more deplorable condition, their bodies and spirits more low, than many were in these years.” In the parish of West Calder, 300 out of 900 “examinable” persons wasted away.