ate the cause of death.
They had no medical knowledge, and therefore their diagnosis could only
have been very conjectural. This they reported to the parish clerk. The
clerk made out his bill for the week, took it to the Hall of the
company, and deposited it in a box on the staircase. All the returns
were then tabulated, arranged, and printed, and when copies had been
sent to the authorities, others were placed in the hands of the
clerks for sale.

The system was all very excellent and satisfactory, but its carrying out
was defective. Negligent clerks did not send their returns in spite of
admonition, caution, fine, or brotherly persuasion. The searchers'
information was usually unreliable. Complications arose on account of
the Act of the Commonwealth Parliament requiring the registration of
births instead of baptisms, of civil marriages, and banns published in
the market place; also on account of the vast mortality caused by the
Great Plague, the burials in the large common pits and public burial
grounds, and the opposition of the Quakers to inspection and
registration. All these causes contributed to the issuing of unreliable
returns. The company did their best to grapple with all these
difficulties. They did not escape censure, and were blamed on account of
the faults of individual clerks. The contest went on for years, and was
only finally settled in 1859, when the last bills of mortality were
issued, and the Public Registration Act rendered the work of the clerks,
which they had carried on for three centuries to the best of their skill
and ability, unnecessary. In the Guildhall Library are preserved a large
number of the volumes of these bills which the industry of the clerks of
London had issued with so much perseverance and energy under difficult
circumstances, and they form a valuable and interesting collection of
documents illustrative of the old life of the City.

One happy result of the duty laid upon the clerks of issuing bills of
mortality in the City of London was that they were allowed to set up a
printing press in the Hall of their company. The licence for this press
was obtained in 1625, and in the following year it was duly established
with the consent of the authorities. It was no easy task in the early
Stuart times to obtain leave to have a printing press, and severe were
the restrictions laid down, and the penalties for any violation of any
of them. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Lo