Little wonder that in mediæval towns were bred foul diseases that broke out at intervals and sometimes carried off half the population in the course of a few months. In 1349—the year of the ‘Black Death’—1361, 1369, and 1451 the _Plague_ visited the East Riding, and there are to be seen in the chancel floor of Holy Trinity Church, Hull, the tombstone and brasses of a merchant named Richard Byll, who was one of its victims in the last-mentioned year. * * * * * Five centuries ago one of the privileges of a free borough was the holding of a market for the sale of goods by people who were not burgesses of the town. Every free borough had its market-place, which usually lay under the shadow of the parish church, as it does to-day at Beverley, Driffield, Hedon, Howden and Hull. The markets were held on certain fixed days of the week, and Tuesdays and Fridays have been the market-days at Hull since the granting of King Edward I.’s charter in the year 1299. While the position of the market, and probably also its general appearance, have not altered during all these centuries, certain of its adornments have entirely disappeared. Beverley is the only town in the East Riding that has preserved its market cross. From all the towns of the East Riding have disappeared the stocks, the pillory, and the ducking-stool. [Illustration: PARISH STOCKS PRESERVED IN BEVERLEY MINSTER.] To the stocks and the pillory went in former times such men and women as ‘John Fleshewer, butcher,’ of Hedon, who in 1420 was brought before the town bailiffs on the charge that he ‘did sell flesh not useable, old, useless, and worthless,’ and ‘Agnes, wife of John Piese, schipman,’ also of Hedon, who ‘did sell two penny wheat loaves of bread, not useable and fusty.’ In the ducking-stool went to the town moat or the river the scolding woman whose temper and tongue were equally beyond their owner’s control. So the stocks, pillory, and ducking-stool proved themselves to be not only ornamental but also very useful. The daily work of wage-earners five hundred years ago was very different from what it is to-day. There were then no such things as our huge factories in which thousands of ‘hands’ are employed day after day at the same monotonous toil. Work was more varied and the conditions were much freer. But hours were longer and pay was considerably less. The legal hours of the day labourer from March to September were 5 a.m. to 7 p.m., with two hours allowed for breakfast and dinner. On the other hand, ‘Bank Holidays’—or Holy-Days, as they were then called—were far more numerous. _Holy-days_, in fact, reduced the working-days of the year to only 264 in number.