"All That Glisters Is Not Gold": A Devaluation of the Elizabethan Age, II.

The article informs that enclosures were an important cause for poverty and vagabondage. But discharged soldiers, poor servants swelled the ranks. These with wild rogues, or men born in the profession, and young shifting gentlemen, formed the backbone of the ragged army. They were feared by gentry and common people alike. Again dissolution of the monasteries brought additional recruits. Decayed clerics and monastic retainers, valets, bakers, brewers, butlers, laundry workers, cellarers, gardeners, and the rest of the army that waited on the monks, thronged the roads and turned to a calling of deceit. There were 43,154 deaths, of which 35,104 were from the plague. The population of London and its outskirts was about 250,000, so that one-sixth of the population perished in one year." The plague lost its virulence with the approach of cold weather. By December the rich runaways were returning and within one year christenings regained their customary number. The plague was a poor man's disease and flourished in unsanitary alleys and in the swarming rat-ridden tenements. amongst the ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-housed. It was exceptional to find a victim of mark and memory.