The City of London, the year ensuing viz. 1604, was cleared of all infection, and the other cities of this kingdom, most villages, and towns corporate, more extremely visited, and some by proclamation prohibited from coming to London: and it was Christianly observed in the year 1604, in the which it pleased Almighty God to visit the whole land with pestilence (London only excepted) that all those places were least, or not at all visited, which the year before had relieved the distressed. There died in London, and the liberties thereof, from the 23rd of December 1602, unto the 22nd of December 1603, of all diseases, 38,244, whereof of the plague, 30,578: the next March following, against the time the King should ride in triumph through London, to behold the state and beauty thereof besides the Clergy, Nobility, and chief gentry, of every country, and great numbers of strangers from beyond seas, there repaired thither such great multitudes of people from all places, as the like in London was never seen until that day, all which notwithstanding, there died that year of all diseases within London, and the liberties of London but 4,263. LONDON SCHOOLS (1598). During the Middle Ages there was little provision for education; the monasteries and the Universities kept alive such learning as existed, and it was not until the sixteenth century that the revival of learning affected England and brought about a widespread interest in education and the pursuit of knowledge. It is well known that Wolsey and Henry VIII. at first proposed to divert some of the wealth of the monasteries to educational purposes, such as the endowment of schools and colleges in the Universities; and although this intention was not fully carried out, the cause of education in London was advanced by some of the City Companies and by private benefactions. The following passage from Stow gives an entertaining description of the educational methods of his day. =Source.=—Stow's _Survey_, p. 74.