Fake News 1662-Style

Found and copied - word for word - from CO 5/1380: Acts passed by the Virginia Legislature 1662-1715

23 March 1662: [Act] XCI

Divulgers of False News

Whereas many idle and busy-headed people do forge and divulge false rumours and reports, to the great disturbance of the peace of His Majesty’s liege people in this colony [Virginia]: be it enacted, that what person or persons soever shall forge or divulge any such false reports, tending to the trouble of the country, he shall be, by the next Justice of the Peace, sent for, and bound over to the next County Court; where, if he produce not his author, he shall be fined two thousand pounds of tobacco, or less, (if the Court think fit to lessen it) and besides, give bond for his behaviour, if it appear to the Court, that he did maliciously publish, or invent it.

I would not have believed this had I not read it, and would have dismissed it as fake news about fake news...

Medical woes, but then again maybe not

Things medical have been uppermost in everyone's mind for most of 2020, and it will doubtless continue this way for many months to come. It has been a grim period, but I've got off lightly and whenever I get to moping about how I haven't been able to go to the pub or a gig (shame about the Las Kellies show at the Shacklewell Arms on 26 March being cancelled, but there we are) I force myself to read again the following document, which I happened across at TNA shortly before lockdown.

SP 78/100/102 f. 331

Viscount Scudamore to Sir John Coke, Paris, 18/28 April 1636

Sir Francis Crane was cutt this morning. Within an hour after, the stone was brought to mee. It is almost as big as an ordinarie hen-egg; & of that shape; & rough well neere all over. Hee went to it cheerfully, & so endured it. They were not in the operation longer than you may judge I have been writing thus farre. Some 7 hours after I sent to congratulate wth him. And then he spake heartie, & said hee had lived now so many houres, meaning that his freedom from his former payne made him think his present being different as life & that wch is not life or worse. But when the urine passeth through the wound his payne is great. In a word, Mr Davison thinks him as well as could bee expected hee should bee now.

Enough to make you shudder; the modern world may be a cesspool and getting worse, but at least we - or at least some of us - have medicine (for the time being).

(Poor Sir Francis's ordeal was all in vain - he died from gangrene on 26 June.)