When a town was infected with the plague, business was suspended, and the inhabitants isolated from the neighbouring places. If a person desired to travel at large, he made application to the Mayor or Chief Magistrate, and obtained a certificate to the effect that he was not suspected of the plague. In many towns, great wisdom was displayed by erecting huts on breezy moors and other places away from the busy haunts of men, for the reception of the plague-stricken persons, and to which they were removed. The inmates of a house were not suffered to leave the homes from whence the patients had been removed. An order passed in London, in 1570, states: "Howses, having some sicke, though none die, or from whence some sicke have been removed, are infected houses, and such are to be shutt upp for a moneth. The whole family to tarrie xxviii daies." Round the houses, watch and ward were constantly kept to prevent egress. Certain boundaries were defined, and these could not be passed. The watchers provided the inmates of the houses with food, etc., and took messages to their friends. In the churchwardens' accounts of St. Mary, Woolchurch, Haw, is an entry:-- "1607-8. Paid a warder for warding Mr. Clarke's house, being infected, ordered by the Mayor 4 0." On the door of the infected house was the sign of a cross, in a flaming red colour, with the pathetic prayer, "Lord, have mercy on us." In old churchwardens' accounts, many items like the following, drawn from the accounts of St. Mary, Woolnoth, London, might be quoted: "1593-4. Item for setting a crosse upon one Allen's doore in the sicknesse time ijd. Item paid for setting two red crosses upon Anthony Sound his dore iiijd." These crosses were about a foot in length. More than one student of the past has suggested that the practice of marking the doors of infected houses with red crosses arose from the injunction given to Moses at the institution of the passover. The crosses served the important purpose for which they were intended, namely, to caution folk against going to infected houses. Queen Elizabeth, in 1563, commanded that the inmates of a house which had been visited by the plague should not go to church for a month.