Yorkshire Almanac Henry Best and several other well-off citizens of Elmswell (Driffield) are taxed to help relieve plague-stricken Hull

16 July 1638: Henry Best and several other well-off citizens of Elmswell (Driffield) are taxed to help relieve plague-stricken Hull

Henry Best. 1857. Rural Economy in Yorkshire, in 1641. Ed. Charles Best Robinson. Durham: Surtees Society. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

THE MANNER OR FORME OF A DISTRINGAS OR LEVY.

East Riding: Com: Eborum. These are in his Majesty’s name to commaund you to levy upon the severall goods of the hereunder written the severall summes hereunder written and sette upon theire heads, beinge assessed and rated upon them towards the releife of the poore infeckted people in Hull, beinge in arreare and to bee disposed on for and towards the releife of the poore of divers townes infeckted with the plague within this ridinge; by way of distresse and saile of theire said goods, rendringe unto the owners the overplus that shall remaine upon your said saile; and if any of the said persons have not sufficient goods whearby the sayd summes may bee levyed by way of distres, that then you bringe such person or persons before some of his Majesty’s Justices of Peace of this Ridinge to bee by them ordered accordinge to lawe, hereof faile yee not att your perills; given under our handes and seales the 16th day of July 1638. Mar. Langdayll. Phyl. Stapylton. Of Henry Best 12s. Of William Whitehead 5s. 4d. Of William Pinder 3s. 4d. Of Edward Lynsley 3s. 4d. To the Constable of Elmswell.
J.B.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Andrew Marvell’s family were in Hull at the time. Stewart Mottram:

Marvell survived some of the most severe epidemics of plague in the seventeenth century, in Cambridge (1636) and London (1665), and his family had direct experience of Hull’s great plague of 1637–38 and were shut up on ‘suspicion of the infeccion’ in autumn 1637.5 Marvell’s father, the Reverend Andrew Marvell (c.1584–1641), wrote several surviving plague sermons in Hull in 1637–38, and plague also shapes the metaphors of Marvell’s own poetry, notably in Marvell’s Latin commendatory poem to the Hull physician, Robert Witty’s translation of James Primerose’s Popular Errours (1651). In his poem, Dignissimo suo Amico Doctori Wittie, Marvell alludes to Primerose’s commentary in Popular Errours on the ‘errour’ that tobacco was a preservative against the plague, with Marvell instead proposing smoking as a remedy for the ‘base plague [improba scribendi pestis]’ of writing, because the paper of printed books provided convenient spills for lighting pipes.6 (Mottram 2022)

The poem (th link page bottom is not to a translation, but to another poem by Marvell):

Nempe sic innumero succrescunt agmine libri,
Saepia vix toto ut jam natet una mari.
Fortius assidui surgunt a vulnere proeli:
Quoque magis pressa est, auctior Hydra redit.
Heu quibus Anticyris, quibus est sanabilis herbis
Improba scribendi pestis, avarus amor!
India sola tenet tanti medicamina morbi,
Dicitur et nostris ingemuisse malis.
Utile Tabacci dedit illa miserta venenum,
Acri1 veratro quod meliora potest.
Jamque vides olidas libris fumare popinas:
Naribus O doctis quam pretiosus odor!
Hâc ego praecipua credo herbam dote placere,
Hinc tuus has nebulas Doctor in astra vehit.
Ah mea quid tandem facies timidissima charta?
Exequias Siticen jam parat usque tuas.
Hunc subeas librum Sancti ceu limen asyli,
Quem neque delebit flamma, nec ira Jovis.

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Comment

Andrew Marvell’s family were in Hull at the time. Stewart Mottram:

Marvell survived some of the most severe epidemics of plague in the seventeenth century, in Cambridge (1636) and London (1665), and his family had direct experience of Hull’s great plague of 1637–38 and were shut up on ‘suspicion of the infeccion’ in autumn 1637.5 Marvell’s father, the Reverend Andrew Marvell (c.1584–1641), wrote several surviving plague sermons in Hull in 1637–38, and plague also shapes the metaphors of Marvell’s own poetry, notably in Marvell’s Latin commendatory poem to the Hull physician, Robert Witty’s translation of James Primerose’s Popular Errours (1651). In his poem, Dignissimo suo Amico Doctori Wittie, Marvell alludes to Primerose’s commentary in Popular Errours on the ‘errour’ that tobacco was a preservative against the plague, with Marvell instead proposing smoking as a remedy for the ‘base plague [improba scribendi pestis]’ of writing, because the paper of printed books provided convenient spills for lighting pipes.6 (Mottram 2022)

The poem (th link page bottom is not to a translation, but to another poem by Marvell):

Nempe sic innumero succrescunt agmine libri,
Saepia vix toto ut jam natet una mari.
Fortius assidui surgunt a vulnere proeli:
Quoque magis pressa est, auctior Hydra redit.
Heu quibus Anticyris, quibus est sanabilis herbis
Improba scribendi pestis, avarus amor!
India sola tenet tanti medicamina morbi,
Dicitur et nostris ingemuisse malis.
Utile Tabacci dedit illa miserta venenum,
Acri1 veratro quod meliora potest.
Jamque vides olidas libris fumare popinas:
Naribus O doctis quam pretiosus odor!
Hâc ego praecipua credo herbam dote placere,
Hinc tuus has nebulas Doctor in astra vehit.
Ah mea quid tandem facies timidissima charta?
Exequias Siticen jam parat usque tuas.
Hunc subeas librum Sancti ceu limen asyli,
Quem neque delebit flamma, nec ira Jovis.