The next section will refer to miscellaneous matters connected with THE INTERNAL HISTORY OF THE TOWN. And first we will notice some of the calamities with which it has been visited; these have been principally of four kinds: Plague, Fires, Civil dissentions, and Storms. The _Plague_ was felt in this town very severely at several times: probably in 1349, and certainly in 1547. In 1579, twice as many people died in Lowestoft as in 1578; and in 1579 the Plague raged at Yarmouth; the inference is pretty clear, this unwonted mortality was occasioned by the Plague. In 1603, 280 persons were buried in five months; and in 1635, the number of deaths during the year was considerably above the average, amounting to 170. Several severe _Fires_ have happened in the town. In 1606 the vicarage was destroyed, and with it, the town records. In March, 1644–45, property was consumed by fire to the value of £10,300; several fires of less magnitude have also done considerable damage. The town could not engage in the various skirmishes with Yarmouth, Cromwell, and others, without suffering some of the natural evil consequences of _War_; but as we have already directed the attention of our readers to the engagements themselves, and to the nature of the contests in which the townsmen have striven, it may, perhaps, not be presuming too much, to leave it to their own imagination to realise the injury done to life and limb, and to public and private interests, by this greatest scourge of all, with which a town or kingdom can be visited. It remains then for us to present a few memorials of the havoc committed by that element, the contiguity of which to our town, gives it the greatest charm in the eye of the visiter. That mighty ocean which, for the most part, rolls so harmlessly on the beach, is sometimes excited and whipt into a fury, and then scenes of awful majesty, and sometimes of terror, are witnessed. These _Storms_ are not so seldom experienced, as absolutely to necessitate the constant repetition of the same story to illustrate their fearful consequences; but there is _one_ which,—though it has been several times printed—as it has been related by an eye-witness, with all that vividness with which an eye-witness alone could relate it, we think it most suitable to present. Our highly respected townsman, the late Robert Reeve, Esq., describing the storm of December 1770, says:—