of the Seventeenth Century. 



77 



take care that a convenient place be had for the burying of the dead, 

 it being- alledged unto this Cort that the Churchyard is alwayes 

 filled and also that watch and ward be duly kept for securing the 

 neighbouring inhabitants and country round about them," &c. 



In the previous September, in London, ten thousand people were 

 said to have died in one week. 



In the following year (1667) there was no Spring Assize for 

 Hants, but on the 1st March and July 20th I find an order at 

 Salisbury Assize relating to the collecting of the rate for the relief of 

 the poor infected persons in that city in the time of the late plague there. 



At the Summer Assize, August, 1672, there is bitter complaint 

 against one John Thorpe, Gaoler of Fisherton Anger, by the prisoners 

 for debt, for " preventing the use of the great courtyard of the prison 

 in daytime ; charging excessive rates for lodging in the common 

 room, and not allowing their friends to relieve them, contrary to 

 His Majesty's late gracious Act of Parliament ; had exacted 2s. a week 

 from those who sleep on the boards in the said greate roome ; kept 

 messengers with provisions waiting two and three hours at one time 

 at the gate; stopped up a window whereby provisions have heretore 

 been conveyed to your petitioners with much ease ; destroyed the 

 hearth of the prison rooms whereby no fire may be made ; and by 

 many other practices contrived subtily to distresse ye poore pe- 

 titioners whose estates are consumed and health impaired so that 

 for want of ayer and necessaries they must perish unlesse relieved 

 by yr. Lordships." They desire the above matters to be put to 

 rights. Thomas Mompesson, Esq., Sir Richard How, Knight, 

 William Swanston, and Alexander Thistlethwayte, Justices of peace 

 of this County, or any two of them, have it referred to them to 

 examine and to certify. 



The next extract is one of interest. It tells of the abduction of 

 an heiress named Johanna Mortimore. At present I have not been 

 able to identify her or connect her family name with Compton 

 Cumberwell, which is a property in the parish of Compton Bassett, 

 near Calne. 1 



1 See Aubrey and Jackson's Wiltshire Collections, p. 42, and Rev. A. C. Smith's 

 Wiltshire Antiquities, p. 49. 



