and purified, after a fortnight, with "frankincense and sweet
perfumes, and herbs."

Sometimes people died wholesale of pestilence, and the Longborough
register mentions a fresh way of death, "the swat called New
Acquaintance, alias Stoupe Knave, and know thy master." Another
malady was 'the posting swet, that posted from towne to towne
through England.' The plague of 1591 was imported in bales of cloth
from the Levant, just as British commerce still patriotically tries
to introduce cholera in cargoes of Egyptian rags. The register of
Malpas, in Cheshire (Aug. 24, 1625), has this strange story of the
plague:-

"Richard Dawson being sicke of the plague, and perceiving he must
die at yt time, arose out of his bed, and made his grave, and caused
his nefew, John Dawson, to cast strawe into the grave which was not
farre from the house, and went and lay'd him down in the say'd
grave, and caused clothes to be lay'd uppon and so dep'ted out of
this world; this he did because he was a strong man, and heavier
than his said nefew and another wench were able to bury."

And John Dawson died, and Rose Smyth, the "wench" already spoken of,
died, the last of the household.

Old customs survive in the parish registers. Scolding wives were
ducked, and in Kingston-on-Thames, 1572, the register tells how the
sexton's wife "was sett on a new cukking-stoole, and brought to
Temes brydge, and there had three duckings over head and eres,
because she was a common scold and fighter." The cucking-stool, a
very elaborate engine of the law, cost 1L. 3S. 4D. Men were ducked