Strangers not welcome

National events often impacted on the local crime scene in Portsmouth. For example, a number of cases in the court papers for1655-6 concern the plague that was spreading across the country. The Town’s reaction to the threat of disease was to close its gates to prevent potentially infected strangers from visiting. A surviving example of a court record shows that a William White was bound over for entertaining a Londoner without the appropriate permission who subsequently died at White’s house. Sadly such tactics were not successful and the outbreak claimed many local lives. Indeed a rather ominous marginal note states that William did not appear to answer before the court.