282 Chippenham. Notes of its History. 



were set to look after " Nicholas Eaton and his wife," and keep 

 them out of the town, as they were known to be amono^ persons 

 infected with the plague. However, in spite of Nicholas Eaton 

 and his wife, it did break out in the borough, at Whitsuntide, in 

 1611, and continued for five months, causing much misery and 

 distress : many died : and the justices ordered subscriptions to be 

 made for the poor. It broke out again in 1636. No person then 

 was allowed to take lodgers, and everybody was commanded to set 

 water at their doors. 



The Small Pox. 



In 1711 the town was severely visited by the small pox. In a 

 printed sermon preached by Thomas Frampton (afterwards Yicar 

 of Shrewton, near Lavington), in Chippenham Church, on Sunday, 

 18th November, 1711, upon the occasion of the removal of the 

 disease, the melancholy circumstances they had been in all the 

 summer are described. " The last thing we usually heard at night 

 was a Funeral knell, and the first thing that was commonly told us 

 in the morning was the death of some neighbour or friend. We 

 could hardly walk the streets without being, some of us, a terror 

 to our neighbours, nor could many of our neighbours do the same, 

 without being a terror to us. The country about us would neither 

 store our markets, nor frequent our shops : our expenses every day 

 increased, our gain diminished : we got little and spent much." 

 In token of gratitude for their deliverance, the preacher then 

 properly laid before them certain amendments, which it was a good 

 and becoming opportunity to carry into efiect. One of these was 

 that the parish should meet together, and make some orders for 

 the better observation of the Lord's Day, and see those orders duly 

 executed. The Church also appears to have been not then in such 

 good order as it might have been. He therefore proposed that 

 they should agree to the adorning of the House of God. " This 

 would be," he says, " a brave act of piety, and would shew the 

 Parish thoroughly affected with the mercy received, and heartily 

 inclined to make a suitable requital." Another suggestion made 

 by him seems to imply that in those days there was no school iu 



