An Interesting Find

During my recent participation in the Folger Institute's Teaching Paleography course at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., I found my understanding of Dr. Burges' Plague Water expanding through access to sources discovered in the Library's holdings. One of these was a manuscript attributed to Mary Lyford (1636-), which has not yet been digitised, call number V.a.675.

Given the extent to which the texts I study so frequently comment upon one another, it is always interesting to find a new source that highlights these intersections in plague texts and discourse. In Lyford's book, print and manuscript plague texts come together in a receipt book, attributed to a female writer.

Two features of the manuscript stood out to me given the subject of my current research - a page summarising plague deaths, with statistics from the London bills of mortality, as well as the inclusion of another example of Dr. Burges' Plague water.

Find below images from the manuscript.