VOL. III.

ROTHELAN.

PART VI.

5-7-47 MFP

PART VI.

CHAPTER I.

THE PLAGUE.

There was father and mother, and children fiv

One grave got them all,-
-a grave in the sn
And the blast blew still, and the drift did driv
DEATH HIS GAR

AFTER the account of the manner in
the great plague, in Edward the Third
was introduced into England, the Chr
suspends his narrative, both of the
transactions and of the story of Rothe

describe the ravages of that extraordinary pestilence.

129q

"In its malignancy," he says, “it engrossed the ill of all other maladies, and made doctors despicable. Of a potency equal to death, it possessed itself of all his armouries, and was itself the death of every other mortal distemper. The touch, yea, the very sight of the infected, was deadly; and its signs were so sudden, that families seated in happiness at their meals have seen the plague-spot begin to redden, and have wildly scattered themselves for ever. The cement of society was dissolved by it. Mothers, when they saw the sign of the infection on the babes at their bosom, cast them from them with abhorrence. Wild places were sought for shelter;-some went into ships, and anchored themselves afar off on the waters. But the angel that was pouring the vial had a foot on the sea as well as on the dry land. -No place was so wild that the plague did not