Within a period of seventy years, London had been visited by it five separate times; 145,000 having died from its collective attacks. As the visitation had been governed by no known system, as it came without any apparent cause and disappeared quite as capriciously, the Londoners never felt safe from its re-appearance. It seemed always hovering over them; and as the intervals between its departure and return were sometimes only eleven years, and had never exceeded twenty-nine, its harassing impressions were constantly on the minds of the citizens. Its visits did not allow time even to soften or subdue the painful remembrances connected with it; and were it necessary, a reference to the letters, diaries, and chronicles of the day, would show that the name of the plague turned men pale, and predisposed their constitutions for its reception; that the very thought made the merchant regardless of ’Change and of counting-house; and that the tradesman shuddered at the memory of a disease which slew his children, depopulated London, and destroyed his business. The reports of the approach of the plague were, then, a positive and practical evil; and in 1592, when 30,561 died of the disease, the rumours of its horrors, appalling as these were in reality, were enormously exaggerated. An attempt to quiet public feeling by correctly indicating its progress was, therefore, made in the Bills of Mortality; and though they were not at first maintained consecutively, they were afterwards found so useful as to be continued from 29th December, 1603, to the present time.[4] The mode of their production was simple. When any one died it was indicated either by tolling or ringing a bell, or by bespeaking a grave of the sexton. The sexton informed the searchers, who hereupon “repair to the place where the dead corpse is, and by view of the same and by other inquiries they examine by what disease or casualty the corpse died. Hereupon they make their report to the parish-clerk; and he, every Tuesday night, carries in an account of all the burials and christenings happening that week, to the parish-clerks’ hall. On Wednesday, the general account is made up and printed; and on Thursday, published and disposed of to the several families who will pay 4_s._ per annum for them.” In 1629, two editions of the weekly bills were printed, one with the casualties and diseases, and the other without. For a long time these papers were made but little use of by the public. A writer of the day says they were examined at the foot, to see whether the burials increased or decreased; they were glanced at for the casualties, as a matter of gossiping interest; and in the plague time, the progress of the pest was closely watched by the courtiers and the nobles, that they might escape its ravages; and by the citizens, with that morbid feeling which is as much attached to extraordinary calamities as to great crimes. But though this might