The great and good bishop Morton was preferred to the rectory of Long
Marston, near York, four years before what is called the great plague
began in that city, 1602. During this visitation, "he carried himself with
so much heroical charity," says his biographer, "as will make the reader
wonder to hear it." For the poorer sort being removed to the pest-house,
he made it his frequent exercise to visit them with food, both for their
bodies and souls. His chief errand was to instruct and comfort them, and
pray for them and with them; and, to make his coming the more acceptable,
he carried usually a sack of provision with him for those that wanted it.
And because he would have no man to run any hazard thereby but himself, he
seldom suffered any of his servants to come near him, but saddled and
unsaddled his own horse, and had a private door made on purpose into his
house and chamber. It was probably during this plague that the village of
Simonside (in the chapelry of South Shields) was, according to tradition,
so entirely depopulated, that the nearest townships divided the deserted
lands. There is another tradition worthy of notice, that when the plague
raged with great violence at Shields, the persons who were employed about
the salt works entirely escaped the infection.
When the London mob was excited, by the movers of rebellion, against the
bishop, this excellent prelate, on his way to the House of Lords, was
almost torn to pieces. "Pull him out of his coach!" cried some; others,
"nay he is a good man;" others, "but for all that he is a bishop!"--"I have
often," says his biographer, heard him say, he believed he should not
have escaped alive if a leading man among that rabble had not cried out,
"Let him go and hang himself," which he was wont to compare to the words of
the angel uttered by Balaam's ass. At that time he was seventy-six years
of age, and, on that account, when the protesting prelates were, for this
act of duty, committed to the Tower, he was remitted to the custody of the
usher; and then, so little had he regarded the mammon of unrighteousness,
that he had scarcely wherewith to defray the fees and charges of his
confinement.
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