een so great as to
necessitate the adjournment of parliament to Oxford.(297) The colder
weather, as winter approached, appears to have made but little difference.
Dr. Donne, the Dean of St. Paul's, estimated that in November there died a
thousand a day in the city of London and within the circuit of a mile.
"The citizens fled away as out of a house on fire," he writes,(298) they
"stuffed their pockets with their best ware and threw themselves into the
highways, and were not received so much as into barns, and perished so,
some of them with more money about them than would have bought the village
where they died." Donne himself removed to Chelsea, but the infection even
there became so great that "it was no good manners to go to any other
place," and Donne therefore did not go to court. As early as September the
want and misery in the city was described as being the greatest that ever
any man living knew: "No trading at all, the rich all gone, house-keepers
and apprentices of manual trades begging in the streets, and that in such
a lamentable manner as will make the strongest heart to yearn."(299)

(M118)

The new year brought relief, and Sunday, the 29th Jan. (1626) was
appointed a solemn day of thanksgiving to Almighty God for his mercy in
"stayinge his hand."(300) The civic authorities, however, were scarcely
rid of one trouble before they found others springing up. Towards the
close of the last year a committee had been appointed by the Court of
Aldermen to devise measures for relieving the City from the burden of
supplying military arms and "other like services" such as they had
recently been called upon to perform.(301) The committee had not been long
appointed before the City was called upon to look to its stock of
gunpowder, prepare the trained bands,(302) and furnish the king with five
ships towards protecting the river. This last demand was made on the
ground that they had furnished vessels for the same purpose in the reign
of Elizabeth.(303) The Court of Aldermen objected. Times were changed
since Elizabeth's day, the lords of the council were informed in reply;
the galleys then furnished by the City were only wanted for a short time
and when the country was threatened with an invasion; but even then
considerable difficulty was experienced before the Common Council passed
an Act for supplying the vessels. At the present time, when the City was
in a far worse condition than then, there was little or no hope of