Public interest Quote by Hans Zinsser

““In 1577 there was committed to prison at Oxford a certain Rowland Jencks, a Catholic bookbinder who was accused of speaking evil of ‘that government now settled,’ of profaning God’s Word, abusing the ministers, and staying away from church. Considering the times, he appears to have been a fellow of spirit and conviction. Just before his trial started a number of inmates of the prison at Oxford died in their chains. The trial, at which Jencks was condemned to have his ears cut off, took place in a court usually crowded because of the lively public interest aroused by the Jencks case. Soon after the trial typhus began to appear among those who had been present. MacArthur tells us that Sir Robert Bell, the Lord Chief Baron, and Sir Nicholas Barham both died, as did the sheriff, the undersheriff, and all of the members of the Grand Jury except one or two. The total deaths were over five hundred, of which one hundred were members of the University. The occurrence created considerable excitement, and even Sir Francis Bacon took the trouble to investigate, attributing the disease to the stinks that 'have some similitude with man’s body and so insinuate themselves.’ The theories of the day attributed most of these mysterious infections to vitiated air, a not unnatural assumption under the circumstances. In this particular case papistical evil magic was suspected in the form of winds compounded in Catholic Louvain and secretly let loose at Oxford, diabolicis et papisticis flatibus. Jencks himself, MacArthur says, though deprived of his ears, escaped the infection, settled in Douai, where he obtained employment as a baker in the English College of Seculars, and lived thirty-three years after the disastrous Assizes.””

— Hans Zinsser