Today I found the diary of my great-great-great-grandfather, Edward Smith. He lived in England and died in 1563, which was during the Elizabethan Era. After reading the diary, I count my blessings for having been born in the 19th century. It was horrible back then. Nothing was clean. People would throw their dirty water out of their windows, and sewage would flow down the sides of the streets. People rarely bathed. Some terrible disease was upon the country. Now we call that outbreak the Bubonic Plague, but I don't know if they called it that when it actually occurred. .
Edward's father abandoned him and his mother when he was only four. His mother died from the plague when he was 23. Her limbs became very swollen and she would cough up black, dead blood. Edward went to the closest monastery to enlist the help of a priest to read from the Bible to pray for his deceased mother's soul. However, he was surprised to learn that the priest was unable to read, and could only recite certain passages from memory. However, under Queen Elizabeth's Poor Laws, Edward was given shelter and food at the church, although he never could pray for his mother until the queen required priests to be educated and pass a test to enter the service of the church.
One of Edward's acquaintances had his thumb cut off for begging on the street, as mandated by the Poor Laws. It is ironic that the same laws that helped my great-great-grandfather were detrimental to one of his friends. Edward's friend was begging due to the Great Inflation. Because of the sagging economy, poverty, starvation, and disease were much more abundant than they had been previously. The population had doubled, but several consecutive harvests had failed, dooming many people to hunger.
Edward died in 1563, which was the year of the worst outbreak of the disease. The queen then ordered many doctors and physicians to create a cure or preventive form of medicine for the plague; they were successful.
