transferred for a short session to Hertford on 21 Oct. (Procl. 852, 855, 856). There appear to be no statistics of deaths; those ordinarily given belong to 1593 (vide infra). Suitors were still excluded from court on 13 Dec. (Dasent, xxiii. 365), but thereafter there was some recovery, and the records in Henslowe, i. 15, show that plays were permitted from 29 Dec. to 1 Feb. 1593, although no formal order is extant.
1593. This was a year of continuous plague (Creighton, i. 352). The Privy Council warned the Lord Mayor on 21 Jan. that the increase of deaths after some weeks of diminution required care (Dasent, xxiv. 21), and the Register shows preoccupation with the subject up to August, when the record fails (ibid., 31, 163, 209, 212, 252, 265, 284, 342, 343, 347, 373, 400, 405, 413, 442, 443, 448, 472). Plays were restrained on 28 Jan. Trinity term was deferred on 28 May and Michaelmas term transferred for a short session to St. Albans on 24 Sept. (Procl. 860, 865, 866). Bartholomew Fair (24 Aug.) was strictly limited (Procl. 863). Access to court at Nonsuch was restrained on 18 June and at Windsor on 15 Sept. (Procl. 861, 864). The statistics of deaths are puzzling. Stowe, Annales, 766, gives for the period from 29 Dec. 1592 (Friday) to 20 Dec. 1593 (Thursday) 8,598 in all and 5,390 from plague within the walls, and 9,295 in all and 5,385 from plague in the liberties, totalling 17,893 in all and 10,775 from plague. Camden (tr.), 423, gives a corresponding total of 17,890. A marginal note to the printed bill of 1603 gives for weeks ending 20 Dec. 1592 (Wednesday) to 23 Dec. 1593 (Sunday) 25,886 in all and 15,003 from plague. Here are two divergent computations for the same period, one of which deserts the Thursdays, to which we know that earlier and later weekly bills related. Both are more or less contemporary records. On the other hand, a series of broadsheets (cited in Hull, ii. 426), followed by a table appended to Graunt's Observations (ibid.), give nearly the same figures (25,886 and, not 15,003, but 11,503) as the totals of weekly figures for the period from 17 March (Friday) to 22 Dec. (Friday), not of 1593, but of 1592, and Graunt adopts these figures for March to Dec. 1592 in the text of his Observations (Hull, ii. 363), while he adopts 17,844 and 10,662, which are approximately Stowe's figures, for 1593. As a matter of fact, the weekly figures given do not add up exactly to 25,886 and 11,503; I make them (as does Hull, ii. 427) 26,407 and 11,106; Creighton, i. 354, makes the larger figure 25,817. Finally, the anonymous Reflections on the Bills of Mortality (1665) give 25,886 and 11,503 as the totals for 13 March (Tuesday) to 18 Dec. (Tuesday), not of 1592, but of 1593 again. The authority of these Reflections is not great, and there is a discrepancy between the period they take and that taken in the 1603 bill. But I do not see how the detailed weekly figures of the broadsheets can belong to 1592. The plague deaths are 3 on 17 March and 31 on 24 March. For the rest of the year they only fall below 30 on 31 March, 7 April, 5 May, and finally on 22 Dec. They reach 41 on 28 April, 58 on 26 May, and climb to 118 on 30 June. There is a big jump to 927 on 7 July; they get to a maximum of 983 on
