Page:Bills of Mortality.pdf/8

 The next Bill of Mortality appears to have been for the year 1562, and the occasion of its preparation is thus given in Maitland's "History of London," 1754:

"In the year 1562 a grievous Pestilence raged in this City; therefore, in order to know the Increase or Decrease of the same 'twas judg'd necessary to take an Account of the Number of Burials; which being the First of the Kind that was ever taken in London, it commene'd on the ﬁrst of January Anno 1562, and ended the last of December 1563, Whereby it appears that the Number Total buried within the City and Suburbs in that Year amounted to 23,630, whereof of the Plague 20,136."

This Bill is quoted by Stow, but I have not been able to ﬁnd any instance of the original.

In the Hall of the Parish Clerks, Wood Street, City, is a well-preserved Bill of Mortality for the year 1582. This is probably the oldest Bill now extant. Walford (Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1878) mentions it, but no other writer on the subject seems to have been aware of its existence. It runs as follows:

"The nvmber of all thoc that hath dyed in the Citie of London and the liberties of the same from the 28 of Dcecmber 1581 vnto the 27 of December 1582, with the Christenings. And alo the number of thoe haue dyed of the plague of euery parih particulerly.

"Reuela, 14 chap.—Bleed are the deade that die in the Lorde euen o ayth the pirite for they ret from their labours.

"Here followeth the parihes with their numbers that hath buried of the Plague.…"

Bills of Mortality were not again kept until the plague years,