7 
some were removed from Peter-lane to tire lodge on Hob Moor, 
and the wardens were required to watch them. A city officer 
was ordered to go through the streets, and give warning to all 
the inhabitants to kill their dogs, bitches, mastiffs, hounds, 
and greyhounds, or else keep them in their houses ; and like¬ 
wise to kill all their cats, or else he would kill them. To 
encourage his vigilance in destroying the poor inoffensive cats, 
he was to be rewarded with 2d. for each cat he killed, and the 
skin. 
The members of Parliament for the city, who were then in 
London, wrote to the Lord Mayor on the 24th of May. After 
giving an account of their proceedings in matters of business 
concerning the city, they add : It is not a little sorrow to us 
here that God his wrathful hand hath stroken our city with 
infection : the Lord of his mercy withdraw it from you, and 
defend us being here.” The Lord Mayor, in his answer, dated 
the 5th of June, says: There is a street, called Jilligate, 
wherein there was three or four houses infected, which street is 
payled up, but there hath none died in the street these twenty 
days last. There was a dyer’s house in Jeobergate, and all in 
that house died, and there is a painter’s house adjoining to that, 
forth of which there died a child, and the rest that were in the 
house were removed to the lodge on the Hob Moor,* which 
* The following passage occurs in the biography of Dr. Thomas Morton, 
afterwards Bishop of Durham, who was a native of York, and whose first 
preferment in the church was the rectory of Long Marston in the Ainsty, about 
six miles distant from Hob-moor. “ In the year 1603, fell that great and 
funebrious sickness of the plague at York, whereof some thousands dyed ; but 
the poorer sort of the infected were turned out of the city, and had booths 
erected for them on Hobmoore, near unto the city: for whose comfort and 
reliefe in that fatal extremity, Mr. Morton often repaired unto them from 
Marston, to preach unto them the word of God, and to minister consolation to 
their languishing soules ; having withall provisions of meat carried with him in 
sacks, to relieve the poorest sort withall. But, as often as he went thither, he 
suffered not any servant to attend him, but himselfe sadled and unsadled his 
horse, and had a private door-stead made through the wall of his study (being 
the utmost part of the house) for prevention, lest he might bring the contagion 
with him, and endanger his w^hole family. This was one of his works of mercy 
and'charity.” The life of Dr. Thomas Morton, late Bishop of Duresme, 12mo. 
York, 1669, p. 15. The ‘private door-stead’ still remains, and is shown to 
visitors with great pride, by the successors of the Bishop at Long Marston. 
