In a letter to the duchess (August 15) we find Elizabeth and her sister Sarah banished from home to Canterbury on account of a woman and three children who lived in a farmhouse near the gate of Mount Morris having the smallpox. That fell disease ever inspired Elizabeth with great dread. Later in life at three different times she was inoculated,[57] each time unsuccessfully, for this disease, then a universal scourge. I should like the foolish fathers and mothers of the present day who petition for non-vaccination to read the accounts given in letters I possess of the unbridled ravages then made by smallpox, and to consider that a usually temporary inconvenience to the child’s health is a very trifling infliction compared with a loathsome disease, which many people fled from nursing, and which even if it did not kill the sufferers, probably disfigured them for life. The sisters first stayed with Mrs. Scott,[58] and then with Mrs. Tennison, “wife to a prebend in this church; there is very little company here, except Deans, Prebends and Minor Canons, etc., etc.; nothing but messages and visits from Prebends, Deacons, and the Church militant upon earth.” Later on, speaking of her brother Matthew’s refusal to leave home on account of the smallpox, she says, “I have seven brothers, and would not part with one for a kingdom; and if I had but one, I should be distracted about him; sure nobody has so many or so good brothers.” [57] Lady Mary Wortley Montagu introduced inoculation into England in 1721. [58] Of Scott’s Hall. [Page heading: INFLUENZA] [Page heading: THE SMALLPOX] Meanwhile the duchess had a return of fever, and was for some days in great danger. On August 28 Lady Wallingford writes to say she was out of danger. Influenza was rife then, and Lady Wallingford states that she had not a single lackey fit to attend her from her house to Whitehall, but had walked there by herself, though still suffering from its effects. It was not then called influenza, but from the description must have been that disease. Eight out of the nine in the farm at Mount Morris caught the smallpox, and the duke, writing to Elizabeth on September 15, a bulletin about his wife, adds-- “Both she and j[59] join in entreating you not to venture yourself, and that pretty face of yours, to come within the walls of your paternal mansion, and were j in your situation, nothing but absolute commands should make me venture myself.” [59] The “j” for “I,” characteristic of the duke’s writing. After her visit to Canterbury, Elizabeth spent a month at Mersham Hatch with the Knatchbulls. She now became seriously indisposed; her health was always frail, and she appears to have suffered much from headaches at this period. In a letter to the duchess she complains--