f [1] (22 October) (Golden Cross, the Strand)
...there are very fewe Inhabitantes in the Suburbes but such as are of poore and desperate fortunes And lastly I haue obserued a generall disobedience, not one of y<.>or Orders made by your Honours for preuentinge the increase or continuance of the plague beinge persued or obserued the multitude of such as issue out of infected places carryinge about vnholsome Comodities and with them venting the sicknes are ‸⸢not⸣ according to a late order supprest in the Suburbes although all men know the fitness thereof, people flock to Christnings & Burialles in as great number as ever, I will giue it your honour in breife ye dissobediance of the Comon people is soe vniuersall as nothinge that hath bine by your Honours commanded to be done is obserued, nothinge prohibited but it is practiced in soe much as vpon the 18th of this moneth the very Bearyardes of Paris garden drewe manie thousandes ouer to the Banckside where the plague most raignes to a publick Bull beatinge...
...
Record title: Letter from John Eliot to Sir John Coke, Secretary of
State
Repository:
TNA
Shelfmark: SP 16/334
Repository location: Kew
The writer of the letter, John Eliot (1612–85), whose family seat was at Port Eliot, Cornwall, was MP for St Germans in the House of Commons in 1640 and from 1660 to 1685; see further HPO. The recipient, Sir John Coke, was secretary of state (1625–39/40) under Charles I and not to be confused with John Cook, regicide and first solicitor general of the English Commonwealth; see F.M. Powicke, The Handbook of British Chronology, 3rd ed (Oxford, 1986), 117.
For rising plague figures in 1636 and related plague orders that year, see Privy Council Orders regarding Plague.
22 October 1636; English; paper; bifolium; 360mm x 240mm; no original foliation, catchword f [1]; no decoration; remains of green seal, f [2v]; addressed: 'To the right Honorable Sir | Iohn Cooke Principall | Secritary of State to his | most Excellent Maiestie and | one of his most honorable Princes | Councell | humbly these.' Numbered 28, folded once, mounted on a binding strip and bound in with other State Papers Domestic; foliated 76–7, replacing several earlier pencil numbering systems (71 cancelled, centre top; 73–4 centre bottom).