The bishop speaks with unmistakable friendship for his brother-in-law; but what he says and what he does not say of the miserables of the Burgh-moor, tends much to confirm Dr Skeyne’s remarks on the absence of Christian kindness among the upper classes towards the afflicted poor on this occasion. This pestilence, lasting till February, is said to have carried off 2500 persons in Edinburgh, which could not be much less than a tenth of the population. From the double cause of the pest and the absence of the Regent in England, there were ‘nae diets of Justiciary halden frae the hinderend of August to the second day of March.’[62] Such of the inhabitants of the Canongate as were affected had to go out and live in huts on the Hill (by which is probably meant Salisbury Crags), and there stay till they were ‘clengit.’ A collection of money was made among the other inhabitants for their support.[63] [Sidenote: 1568.] The distresses of pestilence were preceded and attended by those of a famine, which suffered a great and sudden abatement in the month of August 1569, perhaps in consequence of favourable appearances in the crop then about to be gathered. At least, we are informed by the _Diurnal of Occurrents_, that on that day, in the forenoon, ‘the boll of ait meal was sauld for 3_l._ 12_s._, the boll of wheat for 4_l._ 10_s._, and the boll of beare for 3_l._; but ere twa afternoon upon the same day, the boll of ait meal was sauld for 40_s._, 38_s._, and 36_s._, the boll of wheat for 50_s._, and the beare for 33_s._‘--_D. O._[64]