IjO A CONTRIBUTION TO THE HISTORY OF DORCHESTER. 



Again the plague certainly visited Dorchester fifty years later, 

 in 1645. An entry in the burial register of All Saints' Church 

 made in that year states : " Mr. Stephen Thorington, buried 

 October 13, at which time the plague of pestilence was here, and 

 in twelve months there died 52 people whose names are not 

 inserted, the old clerk being dead who had the notes." But this 

 entry does not afford ground for the supposition that even in that 

 year the plague made such havoc in Dorchester that the living 

 were not sufficient to bury the dead, for the Rev. John White, 

 Puritan Rector of St. Peter's during the Commonwealth, in 

 " Directions for the . profitable reading of the Scriptures," 

 published in 1 647, speaking of this very visitation, said that last 

 year, the " Pestilence, which brake in upon you several times 

 and by several ways, gleaned only a few among you here and 

 there, at that time when some other towns were almost laid waste 

 by the stroke of God's hand." 



But of the visitation of the plague in 1595 we have not only no 

 circumstantial evidence, but direct and decided evidence to the 

 contrary. This is contained in the old registers of Holy Trinity 

 Church. Fortunately the ancient registers of Holy Trinity 

 Church commence at an earlier date than 1595, and they have 

 been very regularly and very carefully kept. Under the date 



1594 there are entered 6 marriages, 19 baptisms, and 13 burials. 

 From a rapid survey of the registers these numbers appear to 

 represent the normal condition of the parish as regards 

 baptisms, marriages, and burials. Now in a year when the 

 plague appeared in a town there was a general exodus of all 

 persons who were in a position to leave ; there would, therefore, 

 be fewer marriages as well as more burials, but in the next year, 

 the one in question, 1595, the entries are eight burials, many 

 fewer than in ordinary years, and five marriages, only one fewer 

 than in ordinary years, and in 1596 there were fewer again 

 namely, only six burials. It is, therefore, clear that in the years 



1595 and 1596, though there was a good deal of sickness in the 

 country at large, through unseasonable weather, the health of 

 Dorchester was in a particularly satisfactory state. 



