…My wife and I papered up about l40 papers of tobacco… This day there happened a very melancholy affair; viz., one James Elless, a native of Chiddingly, but [who] now kept a public house at Eastbourne, who, going to London on Sunday or Monday last, was there on Tuesday morning seized with violent fits (though what he had sometime been accustomed to). Smith’s team putting up at the same inn where he was, and coming from the same place, they took him into their wagon, and about half a mile before they came to our street, he was again taken with a fresh fit. So he continued till they got him into John Jones’s, where he expired in a few minutes. He was a young man of about 35 years of age, just a-going to be married. Oh! what a lesson is here, for mankind to prepare for death, when we have a scene now before our eyes of one cut off just in his full strength and almost, as it were, suddenly. This day read one of the nights in The Complaint to Mr [Francis] Elless and in the evening, Thomas Davy being at our house, I read one of Tillotson’s sermons to him.
A very melancholy time–corn and all other provisions being prodigious dear; viz., wheat 10/- a bushel, barley 5/- do., oats 3/- do., pale malt 5/3 do., beef 2/- a stone, mutton 3 ¼ d a pound, veal 3 ½ do., cheese 4d do. Mr William Francis, Messrs Barlow and Wigginton’s rider, called on me, and I gave him my 1/16 part of 2 lottery tickets.