CHAPTER VI
.
PLAGUE IN THE TUDOR PERIOD.
When the town council of York met on the 16th of August, 1485, to take measures on account of Henry Tudor’s landing in Wales, their first resolution was to despatch the sergeant to the mace to Richard III. at Nottingham, with an offer of men (they promised 400 for his army at Bosworth), and their second resolution was to send at once for all such aldermen and others of the council as were sojourning without the city on account of “the plague that reigneth[543].” These leading citizens of York had gone into the country to avoid the infectious exhalations within the walls in the summer heats; the plague that reigned in York was the old bubo-plague, which would show itself in a house here or there in any ordinary season, and on special occasions would rise to the height of an epidemic, driving away all who could afford to remove from the pestilent air of the town to the comparatively wholesome country, and taking its victims mostly among the poorer class who could not afford a “change of air.” In the three centuries following the Black Death, change of air meant a good deal more than it means now. The infection of the air, or the “intemperies” of the air, at Westminster occasioned (along with other reasons) the prorogation or adjournment to country towns of many parliaments; the infection of the air in and around Fleet Street caused the breaking up of many law terms; and the infection of the air in Oxford colleges was so constant an interruption to the studies of the place in the 15th century that Anthony Wood traces to that cause more than to any other the total decline of learning, the rudeness of manners and the prevalence of “several sorts of vice, which in time appeared so notorious that it was consulted by great personages of annulling the University or else translating it to another place[544].” From the old college registers, chiefly that of his own college of Merton, he has counted some thirty pestilences at Oxford, great and small, during the fifteenth century. The reason why the Oxford annals of plague are so complete is that each outbreak, even if only one or two deaths had occurred[545], meant a dispersion of the scholars and tutors of one or more halls and colleges, their removal in a body to some country house, alteration of the dates of terms, and postponement of the public Acts for degrees in the schools. Experience had taught the necessity of such prompt measures. Thus the first sweat, that of 1485, came so suddenly that it killed many of the scholars before they could disperse, “albeit it lasted but a month or six weeks.” Hardly had the halls and colleges begun to fill again after the dispersion by the sweat of 1485, when “another pestilential disease,” that is to say, the bubo-plague itself, broke forth at the end of August, 1486, in Magdalen parish, and daily increased so much that the scholars were obliged to flee again. In 1491 there was another dispersion; and in 1493 so severe an outbreak of plague from April to Midsummer that many were swept away, both cleric and laic: Magdalen College removed to Brackley in Northamptonshire, Oriel to St Bartholomew’s hospital near Oxford, and Merton to Islip, “instead of Cuxham their usual place of retirement.” The disastrous fifteenth century closes with a specially severe plague in 1499-1500, in which perished “divers of this university accounted worthy in these times;” an accompanying scarcity of grain and consequent failure of scholarships or exhibitions led many students to betake themselves to mechanical occupations. In August, 1503, the plague broke out again in St Alban’s Hall; the principal with all but a few of the students went to Islip, where the pestilence overtook them (three weeks having been spent first in mirth and jollity), so that several died and were buried, some at Islip, others at Ellesfield and one at Noke; in October it broke out in Merton College and drove some of the fellows and bachelors to the lodge in Stow Wood, others to Wotton near Cumner, where they remained until the 17th December. These interruptions had been so frequent that of fifty-five halls, only thirty-three were now inhabited, and they “but slenderly, as may be seen in our registers.” The town of Oxford shared in the decline; streets and lanes formerly populous were now desolate and forsaken. An epidemic in 1508, which may have been the second sweat, caused another dispersion; then the old bubo-plague again in 1510, 1511, 1512 and 1513, filling up the interval until the summer of 1517, when a “sudor tabificus,” the third sweat, “dispersed and swept away most, if not all, of the students.” The bubo-plague followed in the winter and spring, especially in St Mary Hall and Canterbury College. Meanwhile cardinal Wolsey had founded Cardinal College (afterwards Christ Church), bringing to it an infusion of new learning from Cambridge and elsewhere; but in 1525, “while this selected society was busy in preaching, reading, disputing and performing their scholastic Acts, a vehement plague brake forth, which dispersed most of them, so that they returned not all the year following or two years after,” and Cardinal College “thus settled, was soon after left as ’twere desolate.” The same outbreak affected specially the halls or colleges of St Alban, Jesus, St Edmund and Queen’s[546].
Oxford was not altogether singular in this experience of plague from year to year or at intervals of three or four years. What Sir Thomas More says of the cities of Utopia was true of the towns of England or of any medieval country in Christendom: “As for their cities, whoso knoweth one of them, knoweth them all; they be all so like one to another, as far forth as the nature of the place permitteth.” The limitation as to the nature of the place is not without importance for the frequency and severity of plague; the quantity of standing water around Oxford would certainly appear to have made the epidemics there a more regular product of the soil[547]. But we hear of plague also on the soil of Cambridge,
## particularly in 1511, when Erasmus was there: on the 28th November he
writes from Queens’ College to Ammonio in London: “Here is great solitude; most are away for fear of the pestilence,” adding rather unkindly, “although there is also solitude when everyone is in residence.” It is from such chance references in letters of the time that we can infer the existence of plague throughout England. These references become much more numerous as the sixteenth century runs on, not perhaps because plague was more frequent, but because all kinds of documents are better preserved. The remarkable difference between the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. in regard to the quantity of extant materials for the construction of history is as keenly felt by the student of epidemics as by the student of high politics. The local records of towns, London included, are still almost valueless for our purpose: even the skilled antiquaries employed by the Historical Manuscripts Commission have hitherto extracted nothing concerning pre-Elizabethan epidemics from the archives of civic council-chambers, and only a little from muniment-rooms such as that of Canterbury Abbey.
The few details that we possess, such as those for the plague at Hull from 1472 to 1478, had been extracted from local records by the authors of town and county histories. Before the end of the sixteenth century the evidence of plague epidemic all over England, as well in provincial towns and in the country as in London, becomes abundant. There may have been really a great increase, but it is much more probable that the increase is for the most part only apparent. It is of some consequence to determine the probability as exactly as possible; and I shall therefore examine with more minuteness than would otherwise have been necessary the evidence as to the existence and amount of plague in London and elsewhere year after year from the accession of the Tudor dynasty in 1485, using chiefly the Calendars of State Papers for my purpose. As in the case of the sweat, we happen to hear of plague in London and elsewhere because the Court was kept away by it; the king’s secretaries are informed week after week of the state of health in London, and foreign ambassadors, especially the Venetian envoys, have frequently occasion to mention the hindrance to public business caused by the plague. But for these State papers the historian of epidemics would have little beyond an occasional parish register to build upon. The medical profession in England were not concerned to write or print anything thereon; while there are numerous foreign printed books on the plague (e.g. Forrestier’s at Rouen in 1490) there is not one original English treatise until that of Skene of Edinburgh in 1568. That the physicians were well employed by those who could engage their services, and that they did sustain the credit of their profession by the liberal scale of their fees, we have every reason to believe; thus the Venetian envoy writes on 3rd June, 1535, that he had been ill, and that he had expended seven hundred ducats during his illness, “and for so many physicians,” so that he had only one ducat remaining. But these thriving practitioners did not write books like their brethren abroad. One of their number, Linacre, who was also a prebendary of Westminster, busied himself with editions of certain writings of Galen. Erasmus mentions him in a letter as one of the Oxford scholars in whose society he found pleasure; but there is in the _Praise of Folly_ a reference to a certain grammatical pedant whom Hecker identifies with Linacre. The other physicians and surgeons of the period whose names are known, Butts, Chambre, Borde and the rest of the group in Holbein’s picture of Henry VIII. handing the surgeons their charter, have left nothing in print which illustrates the epidemic diseases of the time, and little of any kind of writing except some formulæ of medicines: Borde, who was patronised by Cromwell, is known only as a humorist or satirist. Thus the inquiry must proceed without any of those aids from the faculty which make the history of epidemics on the Continent comparatively easy.
After the disastrous prevalence of plague in England in the reign of Edward IV., culminating in the great epidemic of 1479 in London and elsewhere, we do not hear of the disease again in London until 1487, two years after the first sweat; in that year, on the 14th April, a king’s writ from Norwich postponed the business of the Common Pleas and King’s Bench until Trinity term, on account of the pestilence in London, Westminster and neighbouring places[548]. The next reference is to the great epidemic of 1499-1500, in London and apparently also in the country. Fabyan, who was then an alderman and likely to know, puts the deaths in London at twenty thousand[549]; Polydore Virgil says thirty thousand[550]; and others say thirty thousand deaths from plague and other diseases together[551]. The smaller total is the more likely to be nearest the mark. There is reason to think that the population of London a generation later was little over 60,000; and it will appear in the sequel that a fourth or a fifth part of the inhabitants was as much as the severest plagues cut off, although it is entirely credible that the Black Death itself had cut off one half.
The enormous mortality in 1499-1500 has left few traces in the records of the City or of the State. Five great prelates died during the plague-year, some of them certainly from it: Morton of Canterbury (a very old man), Langton of Winchester (before he could be transferred to Canterbury), Rotheram of York, Alcock of Ely and Jane of Norwich[552]. Like some of the later plagues in London it lasted through the winter. It was at Oxford in the same years, and casual references in two of the Plumpton letters lead one to infer that it may have been in remote parts of the country also[553].
The infection was still active as late as October, 1501, at Gravesend, and it made some difference to the reception of the young princess Catharine of Arragon, who had come over for her marriage with Prince Arthur, and became famous in history as the wife of his brother Henry VIII. The following are Henry VII.’s instructions, dated October, 1501:--
“My lord Steward shall shew or cause to be shewed to the said Princess, that the King’s Grace, tenderly considering her great and long pain and travel upon the sea, would full gladly that she landed and lodged for the night at Gravesend; but forasmuch as the plague was there of late, and that is not yet clean purged thereof, the King would not that she should be put in any such adventure or danger, and therefore his Grace hath commanded the bark to be prepared and arrayed for her lodging[554].”
In 1503 there was plague at Oxford, as we have seen, and at Exeter, where two mayors died of it in quick succession, and two bailiffs[555]. The infection was certainly in London in 1504 or 1505 (perhaps in both, and possibly at its low endemic level in the other years from 1501): for Bernard André mentions casually that he had been absent from the City on account of it[556].
In 1509, the first year of Henry VIII., there was a severe outbreak of plague in the garrison of Calais, as well as “great plague” in divers parts of England[557]. In 1511, Erasmus writes from Cambridge on 17th August, 5th October and 16th October, making reference to the plague in London; and on the 27th October, 8th November, and 28th November, Ammonio answers him that the plague has not entirely disappeared, and again that it is abated, but a famine is feared, and lastly that the plague is entirely gone. On the 26th of July the Venetian ambassador had written that the queen-widow (mother of Edward V.) had died of plague and that the king, Henry VIII., was anxious.
On the 1st November, 1512, Erasmus, on a visit to London, was so afraid of the plague that he did not enter his own lodging, and missed a meeting with Colet. The next year, 1513, was a severe plague-year according to many testimonies. In the diary of the Venetian envoy from August to 3rd September it is stated that deaths from plague are occurring constantly; two of his servants sickened on the 22nd August, but did not recognize the disease; on the 25th they rose from bed, went to a tavern to drink a certain beverage called “ale,” and died the same day: their bed, sheets and other effects were thrown into the sea (? Thames). On the 17th September he writes to Venice that it is perilous to remain in London; the deaths were said to be 200 in a day, there was no business doing, all the Venetian merchants in London had taken houses in the country; the plague is also in the English fleet. In October the deaths are reported by the envoy at 300 to 400 a day; he has gone into the country. On the 6th November and 6th December he writes that plague was still doing much damage. On the 3rd December the rumour of a great prevalence of plague in England had reached Rome. On the 28th November Erasmus writes from Cambridge that he does not intend to come to London before Christmas on account of plague and robbers; and on the 21st December he writes again: “I am shut up in the midst of pestilence and hemmed in with robbers.”
One year is very like another, but it will be desirable to continue the narrative a little longer so as to remove any suspicion of constructing history beyond the facts. In February, 1514, Erasmus writes that he had been disgusted with London, deeming it unsafe to stay there owing to plague. In going in procession to St Paul’s on the 21st May the king preferred to be on horseback, for one reason “to avoid contact with the crowd by reason of the plague;” he had lately recovered from some vaguely reported “fever” at Richmond. On the 1st July Convocation was adjourned on account of the epidemic and the heat.
Next year, 1515, Erasmus writes from London on the 20th April that he is in much trouble; the plague had broken out and it looked as if it would rage everywhere. On the 23rd April Wolsey sends advice to the earl of Shrewsbury in the country (? Wingfield) to “get him into clean air and divide his household,” owing to contagious plague among his servants; on the 28th the earl received from London one pound of manus Christi,--the same remedy that Henry VIII. sent to Wolsey for the sweat--with coral, and half-a-pound of powder preservative. On the same date “they begin to die in London in divers places suddenly of fearful sickness.” One of the incidents of the plague of 1515 which has fixed the attention of chroniclers was the death of twenty-seven of the nuns in a convent at the Minories outside Aldgate[558]. Next year, on 14th May (1516), the sickness was so extreme in Lord Shrewsbury’s house at Wingfield that he has put away all his horse-keepers and turned his horses out to grass. In London, on the 21st May, the Venetian ambassador removed to Putney owing to a case of plague in his house, and he would not be allowed to see Wolsey until the 30th June, when forty days would have passed since the plague in his house.
The next summer, 1517, was the season of the third sweat. It was hardly over when plague began in London in September. On the 21st the Venetian envoy speaks of having had to avoid “the plague _and_ the sweating sickness;” on the 26th he writes that the plague is making some progress and he has left London to avoid it. On the 15th October the king was at Windsor “in fear of the great plague.” One writes on 25 Oct., “As far as I can hear, there is no parish in London free[559].” On the 16th November the envoy begs the seignory of Venice to send someone to replace him as he thinks it high time to escape from “sedition, sweat and plague.” On the 3rd December the king and the cardinal were still absent from London on account of the plague; on the 22nd their absence was causing general discontent, the plague being somewhat abated. It was not until March, 1518, that the court approached London; on the 15th the Venetian envoy rode out to Richmond to see the king, and found him in some trouble, as three of his pages had died “of the plague.” The court withdrew again to Berkshire, and on the 6th April it was decided by the king’s privy council at Abingdon that London was still infected and must be avoided, the queen (Catharine of Arragon) having declared the day before that she had perfect knowledge of the sickness being in London, and that she feared for the king, although she was no prophet. On the 7th April the report of four or five deaths at Nottingham (“as appears by a bill enclosed”) was made the ground of postponing a projected visit of the king to the north. The spring was unusually warm, which made the risk of sickness to be judged greater. It is clear that public business was suffering by the prolonged absence of the court from London, and that the existence of infection was being denied. On the 28th April Master More certified from Oxford to the king at Woodstock that three children were dead of the sickness, but none others; he had accordingly charged the mayor and the commissary in the king’s name “that the inhabitants of those houses that be and shall be infected, shall keep in, put out wispes and bear white rods, according as your grace devised for Londoners;” this was approved by the king’s council, and the question was discussed whether the fair in the Austin Friars of Oxford a fortnight later should not be prohibited, as the resort of people “may make Oxford as dangerous as London, next term” (the law courts sat at Oxford in Trinity term). However, the interests of traders had to be kept in view also. On 28th June, 1518, Pace writes from the court at Woodstock to Wolsey that “all are free from sickness here, but many die of it within four or five miles, as Mr Controller is informed.” On the 11th July he writes again from Woodstock that two persons are dead of the sickness, and more infected, one of them a servant to a yeoman of the king’s guard; to-morrow the king and queen lodge at Ewelme, and stop not by the way, as the place appointed for their lodging is infected. On the 14th July he writes to Wolsey from Wallingford that the king moves to-morrow to Bisham “as it is time: for they do die in these parts in every place, not only of the small pokkes and mezils, but also of the great sickness.” The uncertainty as to what these diseases may have been will appear from the next letter, on the 18th July, from Sir Thomas More: “We have daily advertisements here, other of some sweating or the great sickness from places very near unto us; and as for surfeits and drunkenness we have enough at home.” The king had also heard that one of my lady Princess’s servants was sick of “a hot ague” at Enfield. On the 22nd July, the Venetian ambassador writes from Lambeth asking to be recalled: two of his servants had died of the plague, and he himself had the sweating sickness twice in one week. The pope’s legate, Campeggio, made a state entry into London about the first of August, but the king and Wolsey were not there to receive him, ostensibly for fear of infection. The king was now at Greenwich, and we hear no more of the fear of infection for a time. In the end of March, 1519, deaths from plague occurred on board one of the Venetian galleys at Southampton. On the 4th August, 1520, the king (at Windsor) has heard that the great sickness is still prevalent at Abingdon and other villages towards Woodstock, and has changed his route (“gystes”) accordingly; on 8th August, sickness is reported at Woodstock. The same year some kind of sickness was very disastrous in Ireland.
In the winter of 1521 (2nd November), the sickness continues in London: “it is not much feared, though it is universal in every parish.” According to a vague entry in Hall’s chronicle the year 1522 was in like manner, “not without pestilence nor death,” which may refer to the gaol fever at Cambridge.
Thus from 1511 to 1521 there is not a single year without some reference to the prevalence of plague, the autumn and winter of 1513 having been probably the time of greatest mortality in London. After 1521 or 1522 there comes a break of four or five years in the plague-references, except for a vague mention of plague followed by famine at Shrewsbury in 1525[560]. They begin again in 1526 (from Guildford) and go on until 1532 every year much as in the former period, the year 1528 being mostly occupied with the fourth epidemic of the sweating sickness. On the 4th June, 1529, the legate Campeggio writes from London: “Here we are still wearing our winter clothing, and use fires as if it were January: never did I witness more inconstant weather. The plague begins to rage vigorously, and there is some fear of the sweating sickness.” On the 31st August the Venetian ambassador has a person sick of the plague in his house; on the 9th September he has gone to a village near London on account of the plague. On the 18th September the French ambassador in London (Bishop Du Bellay) has plague in his household, and in spite of repeated changes of lodging his principal servants are dead; he has been unable to refuse leave to the others to go home, and is now quite alone, but the danger from the plague is much diminished.
In 1530 the plague is heard of as early as March 23, previous to which date two of the Venetian ambassador’s servants had died of it; three more of them died afterwards, and the envoy was forbidden the Court for forty days. Parliament was prorogued on April 26 to June 22, on account of the plague in London and the suburbs, and farther, for the same reason, until October 1. The king was at Greenwich, but even there was not beyond the infection; in the Privy Purse book, there is an entry of £18. 8_s._ paid “to Rede, the marshall of the king’s hall for to dispose of the king’s charge to such poor folk as were expelled the town of the Greenwiche in the tyme of the plague.” Similar payments are entered on January 13, 1531, April 10, April 26 and November 8[561].
On November 23, 1531, the king was obliged to leave Greenwich on account of the plague, removing to Hampton Court (now a royal palace since Wolsey’s fall). In London it had somewhat abated, but, according to a letter of the Venetian ambassador, had been up to 300 or 400 deaths in a week. In mid-winter, the 15th of January, 1532, Parliament was prorogued on account of the insalubrity of the air in London and Westminster. The infection may be assumed to have gone on, according to the analogy of known years, all through the spring and summer, rising to a greater height in the autumn. We next hear of it on the 18th September, 1532, when the Venetian envoy writes from London that the king’s journey to Gravesend and Dover would be by water, “as there is much plague in those parts, and there is no lack of it in London. Yesterday at the king’s court the master of the kitchen died of it, having waited on his majesty the day before.” On the 24th September, “the plague increases daily in London and well nigh throughout the country.”
On the 14th October, “the plague increases daily, and makes everybody uneasy.” On the same date the Privy Council write to the king, who had crossed to Calais accompanied by Mr Secretary Cromwell, for a meeting with the French king, that there is a rumour of the plague increasing, especially at the Inns of Court. On the 18th October Hales, one of the justices, writes to Cromwell that “the plague of sickness is so sore here that I never saw so thin a Michaelmas term.” On the 20th, Audeley the Lord Chancellor writes that many die of the plague, the sergeants in Fleet Street have left in consequence, the Inner Temple has broken commons, the lawyers being in great fear. “_The Council have commanded the mayor to certify how many have died of the plague._” That is the first known reference to the London bills of mortality, and was probably the very first occasion of them[562]. By that time the plague had been active in London for more than a month, and had clearly begun to alarm the residents. The result of the Privy Council’s order to the mayor of London was a bill on or before the 21st October, showing that 99 persons had died of the plague in the city, and 27 from other causes, the number of deaths from other causes suggesting that this was the bill for a week. On the 23rd the Secretary of State is informed that the sickness is fervent and many die; those who are not citizens are much afeard. On the 25th Sir John Aleyn has assurances for Cromwell (at Calais) from all parts of the country that the whole realm is quiet, but the plague has been more severe than in London. Cromwell’s French gardener was alive and well on Saturday afternoon, the 12th, and he was dead of the plague and buried on Monday morning the 14th. On the 27th the death “is quite abated” in London and Westminster, according to one; but according to the Lord Chancellor, on the 28th, the plague increases, especially about Fleet Street. On the 31st October one writes, “I have not seen London so destitute of people as it was when I came there.” On 2nd November the death is assuaged and there is good rule kept, for Sir Hugh Vaughan takes pains in his office like an honest gentleman. On the 9th November the plague is abated. There the correspondence ends, the Court having returned from France. But we may here bring in a certain weekly bill of mortality which has come down among the waifs of paper from that period[563]. It is for the week from the 16th to the 23rd of November, the year not being stated; the experts of the national collection of manuscripts were at one time inclined to assign it to “circa 1512;” but the first that we hear of the mayor being called upon to furnish a bill of plague-deaths is the order by the lords of the Council on or about the 20th October 1532, the first bill having shown 99 deaths in the city from plague and 27 deaths (in the week) from other causes. The extant bill for the week 16th to 23rd November is clearly one of a series; there are no good grounds for assigning it to an earlier date than the year 1532, while there are reasons for not placing it later. There are two other plague-bills extant, for August, 1535, written out in a more clerkly fashion, and bearing the marks of greater experience. The bill for the week in November is more primitive in appearance; and we may fairly take it as one of the series first ordered by the Council in 1532: for that was the most considerable year of the plague immediately preceding the outburst of 1535, to which the more finished bills certainly belong. The week in November, for which it gives the deaths from plague and other causes in the city parishes is later than the dates of the 2nd and 9th, when the plague was “suaged” and “abated;” the bill therefore stands for plague on the decline, or near extinction for the season, its total of plague deaths being 33, and of other deaths 32, as against 99 and 27 respectively in the corresponding week of October. As this, the earliest of a great historical series of London bills of mortality, has a peculiar interest, I transcribe it in full, retaining the original spelling.
Syns the XVIth day of November unto the XXIII day of the same moneth ys dead within the cite and freedom yong and old these many folowyng of the plage and other dyseases.
Inprimys benetts gracechurch i of the plage S Buttolls in front of Bysshops gate i corse S Nycholas flesshammls i of the plage S Peturs in Cornhill i of the plage Mary Woolnerth i corse All Halowes Barkyng ii corses Kateryn Colman i of the plage Mary Aldermanbury i corse Michaels in Cornhill iii one of the plage All halows the Moor ii i of the plage S Gyliz iiii corses iii of the plage S Dunstons in the West iiii of the plage Stevens in Colman Strete i corse All halowys Lumbert Strete i corse Martins Owut Whiche i corse Margett Moyses i of the plage Kateryn Creechurch ii of the plage Martyns in the Vintre ii corses Buttolls in front Algate iiii corses S Olavs in Hart Strete ii corses S Andros in Holborn ii of the plage S Peters at Powls Wharff ii of the plage S Fayths i corse of the plage S Alphes i corse of the plage S Mathows in Fryday Strete i of the plage Aldermary ii corses S Pulcres iii corses i of the plage S Thomas Appostells ii of the plage S Leonerds Foster Lane i of the plage Michaels in the Ryall ii corses S Albornes i corse of the plage Swytthyns ii corses of the plage Mary Somersette i corse S Bryde v corses i of the plage S Benetts Powls Wharff i of the plage All halows in the Wall i of the plage Mary Hyll i corse.
Sum of the plage xxxiiii persons Sum of other seknes xxxii persons
The holl sum xx/iii & vi.
And there is this weke clere xxx/iii and iii paryshes as by this bille doth appere.
The exec{n} of corses buryed of the plage within the cite of London syns &c.
There does not appear to have been any occasion for a continuance of plague-bills beyond the date of the one just given until nearly three years after: we hear, indeed, of a severe epidemic of plague at Oxford in 1533, but nothing of it in London until 1535[564]. It so happens that a pair of London bills of mortality is extant from the month of August in that year. Thus, by a singular coincidence, the only original bills of mortality that have come down (so far as is known) from the sixteenth century, are one from the end of the series in the first year of their execution (1532), and another the very first of the series in the second year of their execution (1535), or in the series ordered on account of the epidemic of plague next following. Of that epidemic also it may be permitted to give somewhat full details, for it is only rarely that we have the chance of realizing the facts in so concrete a way.
In the summer and autumn of 1535 Henry VIII., with the queen (Anne Boleyn), was mostly at his manor of Thornbury in Gloucestershire, Cromwell the principal Secretary of State being either with the king or in his immediate neighbourhood. The absence of the Court occasions numerous letters to be sent from and to London, in which we hear of the plague among other things. Cromwell had four houses in or near London at this time,--at the Rolls in Chancery Lane, at Austin Friars in the City, at the fashionable suburb of Stepney, and at Highbury: besides these he had a fine villa building at Hackney. From his steward or other servants at one or more of these he was in receipt of letters constantly during his absence. A letter from the Rolls on the 30th July informs him that twelve heron-shaws had been sent to him from Kent, and had been received at the Rolls “as the city of London is sorely infected with the plague.” Next day another writes that the City is infected but Fleet Street is clean. On the 5th August “the common sickness waxeth very busy in London.” On the 7th Lord Chancellor Audeley writes from “my house at Christchurch” (Creechurch, near Aldgate) that he had been expecting Cromwell in London, but hears that he will not return for nine or ten days; will therefore go to his house at Colchester meanwhile, as they are dying of the plague in divers parishes in London. Cromwell was naturally desirous to know accurately the state of health in the city, so as to regulate his own movements and perhaps the king’s also; he accordingly makes inquiries of his various correspondents. Another letter from London on the 7th August informs him that there is no death at Court, but only in certain places in the city: “I fear these great humidities will engender pestilence at the end of the year, rather after Bartholomew tide than before. If you be near London you must avoid conference of people.” On receipt of this Cromwell would appear to have written to the mayor of London, for on the 13th August his clerk at the Rolls replies to him that he had delivered the letter to the lord mayor. On the 16th another of the household at the Rolls writes that the plague rages in every parish in London, but not so bad as in many places abroad: “I will send the number of the dead. The mayor keeps his chamber. Some say he is sick of an ague; others that he was cut about the brows for the megrims, which vexeth him sore. Few men come at him, but women.” The bill of mortality which Cromwell had asked for previous to 13th August is extant[565]. It is in two parts: one showing 31 deaths from plague and 31 deaths from other causes in thirty-seven out of one hundred parishes from the 5th to the 12th August, with a list of parishes clear; and the other, headed “14th August” and probably meant to include the former, showing a much heavier mortality and a much shorter list of parishes clear, the whole being endorsed by the mayor, Sir John Champneys, as follows: “So appeareth there be dead within the city of London of the plague and otherwise from the 6th day of this month of August to the 14th day, which be eight days complete, the full number of 152 persons [105 of them from plague]. And this day se’night your mastership [Mr Secretary Cromwell] shall be certified of the number that shall chance to depart in the meantime. Yours as I am bound, John Champeneys.” This double bill for certain days in August, 1535, is rather more elaborate than, but otherwise not unlike, the above bill, for a week in November, most likely of the year 1532. It will be noticed that the deaths in all the city parishes from other causes than plague are 47 in the bill for eight (or nine) days; 31 in the bill, partly the same, for seven days, and 32 in the earlier bill for seven days, while they are known to have been 27 in another bill of October, 1532, probably also for seven days. These figures, the best to be had, are important for calculating the population of London at the time; they represent quite an ordinary weekly mortality, the deaths from plague being found to be always extra deaths, where we can compare the mortality year after year, as in the London bills of later times.
The weekly bills of mortality called for in the plague of 1535 were sent regularly to the Secretary of State until the end of September--on the 22nd and 30th August, and on the 4th, (and 5th), 11th and 27th September. The one sent on Monday the 30th August showed 157 deaths during the preceding week, of which 140 were put down to plague, leaving only 17 deaths in the week from ordinary causes,--a small number owing perhaps to so many residents having gone to the country. No figures remain from the other bills, but we know from letters that the plague increased considerably in September (e.g. 11th Sept. “By the Lord Mayor’s certificate which I send you will see that the plague increases”) both in London and in the country, justifying the prediction that it would be worse after Bartholomew-tide; it is not until the 28th October that we hear of the deaths being “well stopped” in London. Some few particulars of this epidemic, and of its revival in 1536, remain to be added before we come to speak of the London bills of mortality in general, of the extent of the City and liberties at this period, of its sanitary condition, and of the public health from year to year.
On the 18th August, 1535, one writes to Cromwell from the Temple that the plague “has visited my house near Stepney where my wife lives.” On the 20th August a resident in Lincoln’s Inn was seized with plague and conveyed thence by night to a poor man’s house right against the chamber of one of Cromwell’s household at the Rolls, where he died. “Such as lodge in your gate seldom go out, and will have less occasion if, before great time pass, you will appoint from Endevill, or elsewhere within your rule, some venison for the household, that men may be the better contented with their fare.” On the same date Cromwell is informed by his steward at Austin Friars that “the Frenchman next your house that was in St Peter’s parish [Cornhill] has buried two, but no more.” The plague looked threatening enough to raise the question whether Bartholomew fair should be held at Smithfield this year. Meanwhile the king and court were at Thornbury in Gloucestershire, having arrived there on the 18th August. The town of Bristol was avoided “because the plague of pestilence then reigned within the said town;” but a deputation of three persons was sent to the king to present him with ten fat oxen and forty sheep, and to present the queen, Anne Boleyn, with a gold cup full of gold pieces, an offering known as “queen gold[566].” On the 25th of August the French ambassador proceeded to Gloucestershire to inform Henry VIII. “of the interview of the two queens,” but he stopped six miles short of the court, owing to a “French merchant” who followed him having died of plague on the road. On the 4th September the plague in London is aggravated by a scarcity of bread; “what was sold for ½_d._ when you were here is now 1_d._,” and it is so musty that it is rather poisonous than nourishing. On the 6th the season has been unfavourable and there is great probability of famine. On the 13th the Lord Chancellor will stay at his house at Old Ford beside Stratford, on account of the plague in London increasing; he will have to go to Westminster on the 3rd November, with the Speaker and others, to prorogue Parliament, and advises the prorogation to be until the 4th of February, and of the law courts until the eve of All Souls, by which time, by coldness of the weather, the plague should cease. Wheat and rye were at a mark and 16/- the quarter. A letter from Exeter on the 17th September shows the danger of famine to have been great there also[567]. On the 23rd September one of the masons working at Cromwell’s house in Austen Friars is sick of the plague: three corses were buried at Hackney [of men employed at the new house?] last St Matthew’s day. In October the king is on his way back from Gloucestershire, but changes his route owing to a death at Shalford and four deaths at Farnham. On the 24th October the bishop of Winchester, on his way to Paris, lost his servant at Calais by the great sickness “wherewith he was infected at his late being in London longer than I would he should:” travelling is cumbrous in the “strange watery weather” in France. In November the pope has heard that England is troubled with famine and pestilence. The curate of Much Malvern writes in November (but perhaps of 1536): “I have buried four persons of pestilence since Saturday, and I have one more to bury to-day. Yesterday I was in a house where the plague is very sore.”
The sickness appears to have shown itself again in London as early as April, 1536. On the 2nd of May two gentlemen of the Inner Temple had died of the sickness; on the 15th the abbot of York writes to be excused from attending Parliament “because of the plague which has visited my house near Powles [St Paul’s].” In the same summer the election of knights to serve in Parliament for Shropshire could not be held at Shrewsbury because the plague was in the town. In September one of the king’s visitors of the abbeys, previous to their suppression, found hardly any place clear of the plague in Somerset, and was much impeded in his work. On the 27th September one of the numerous coronations of new queens in Henry VIII.’s reign (this time Jane Seymour in succession to Anne Boleyn, beheaded in May) was like to be postponed “seeing how the plague reigned in Westminster, even in the Abbey.” On the 9th October plague was at Dieppe, thought to have been brought over from Rye. In Yorkshire also, the duke of Norfolk, sent to put down the rebellion in November, 1536, came into close contact with plague; many were dying of it at Doncaster: “Where I and my son lay, at a friar’s, ten or twelve houses were infected within a butt’s length. On Friday night the mayor’s wife and two daughters and a servant all died in one house.” Nine soldiers also were dead. At Oxford the plague was active, and the scholars had gone into the country. In London on the 27th November it was dangerous to tarry at Lincoln’s Inn “for they die daily in the City.” In September, 1536, the small essay on plague by the 14th century bishop of Aarhus, which had circulated in manuscript in the medieval period and was first printed in 1480, was reprinted at London, the regimen, as the title declares, having been “of late practised and proved in mani places within the City of London, and by the same many folke have been recovered and cured[568].” In 1537 there appear to have been a few cases of plague at Shrewsbury, on account of which the town council paid certain moneys[569].
Beyond the year 1538 the domestic records of State are not as yet calendared in such fulness as to bring to light any references to plague in them. It may be, therefore, that the clear interval from 1537 to 1542 is in appearance only. From such sources as are available we can continue the history of plague down to the great London plague of 1563; but it is a history meagre and disappointing after the numerous concrete glimpses and details of the earlier period.
The summer of 1540 was a sickly one throughout England[570]; it introduces us to a different and perhaps new type of disease, “hot agues,” with “laskes” or dysenteries, of which a good deal remains to be said in another chapter.
It was in 1539 that Parish Registers of the births, marriages and deaths began to be kept--very irregularly for the most part but in some few parishes continuously from that year. By their means we can henceforth trace the existence of epidemic disease in the country, which might not have been suspected or thought probable. Thus, at Watford from July to September, 1540, there were 47 burials, of which 40 were from “plague.” Next year, in the month of October, the burials were 14, a number greatly in excess of the average[571]. In 1543 there was “a great death” in London, which lasted so far into the winter that the Michaelmas law term had to be kept at St Albans[572]. Another civic chronicle adds that there had been a great death the summer before; and from an ordinance of the Privy Council it appears that the plague was in London as early as May 21, 1543[573]. The next definite proof of plague in the capital is under 1547 and 1548. On the 15th November in the former year blue crosses were ordered to be affixed to the door-posts of houses visited by the plague. In 1548, says Stow, there was “great pestilence” in London, and a commission was issued to curates that there should be no burials between the hours of six in the evening and six in the morning, and that the bell should be tolled for three-quarters of an hour[574]. A letter of July 19 says that they had been visited by plague in the Temple, and that it still continued[575]. On August 28, the Common Council adjourned for a fortnight by reason of the violence of the plague[576].
These are the London informations for 1547 and 1548, but it would be unsafe to conclude that the other years from 1543 were free from plague. In 1544 it was raging at Newcastle[577], at Canterbury[578] and at Oxford[579], at which last it continued most of the next year, and was considered to be “the dregs of that which happened _anno_ 1542.” It had been prevalent in Edinburgh previous to June 24, 1545[580]. In April, 1546, there was a severe mortality on board a Venetian ship at Portsmouth, which may have been the plague, as in a similar case at Southampton[581]. In the autumn or early winter of the same year the plague was raging so fervently in Devonshire that the Commissioners for the Musters were obliged to put off their work till it ceased[582]. Within the town of Haddington, which was held by an English garrison against a large besieging force of French and others, plague broke out in 1547[583]. In 1549 the disease is reported from Lincoln[584]. A letter of November 23, 1550, states that the Princess Mary was driven from Wanstead by one dying of the plague there[585].
The reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, full of trouble as they were in other ways, furnish hardly a single record of plague. The sweating sickness of 1551 we hear of sufficiently; and the pestilent fevers, or influenzas, in 1557-58 are not altogether without record; but of plague down to the 5th year of Elizabeth (1563) there is very little said, and that little not free from ambiguity. Sometime in that interval, or still earlier, must have fallen the pestilence at Northampton, severe enough to require the new cemetery which cardinal Pole, in a deed of March 9, 1557, ordered to be henceforth kept enclosed[586]. Only two of the many centres of sickness in England in 1558 are said to have had the infection of the type, not of fever, but of plague,--Loughborough and Chester. In the Leicestershire town the burials were numerous enough for true plague, and the cause of mortality is so named[587]. In Chester also the sickness is called the plague, and it is added that many fled the town, although the deaths were few[588]. A State paper of February 25, 1559, speaks of the county of Cheshire as “weakened by the prevalence of plague[589].”
The London Plague of 1563.
The activity of the plague in London in 1563 made up for its dormancy in the years preceding. The epidemic of that summer and autumn was one of the most severe in the history of the city, the mortality in proportion to the population having been tremendous. This is the first London plague for which we have the authentic weekly deaths. How they were obtained is not stated, but it was probably by the same means that furnished the plague-bills of 1532 and 1535. John Stow must have had before him a complete set of weekly bills from the beginning of June, 1563, to the 26th of July, 1566, of which series not one is known to be extant; but the totals of the weekly deaths from plague for the whole of that period are among Stow’s manuscript memoranda in the Lambeth Library[590]. After the week ending the 31st December, 1563, the weekly deaths are few, many of the weeks of 1564, 1565 and 1566 having only one death from plague, and some of them none. The following are the weekly mortalities during the severe period of the epidemic:
Week ending Plague-deaths 1563. 12 June 17 19 " 25 26 " 23 3 July 44 10 " 64 17 " 131 23 " 174 30 " 289 6 August 299 13 " 542 20 " 608 27 " 976 3 September 963 10 " 1454 17 " 1626 24 " 1372 1 October 1828 8 " 1262 15 " 829 22 " 1000 29 " 905 5 November 380 12 " 283 19 " 506 26 " 281 3 December 178 10 " 249 17 " 239 24 " 134 31 " 121 1564. 7 January 45 14 " 26 21 " 13
Stow’s summary of this epidemic in his _Annales_ is as follows: “In the same whole year, i.e. from the 1st January, 1562 [old style] till the last of December, 1563, there died in the city and liberties thereof, containing 108 parishes, of all diseases 20,372, and of the plague, being part of the number aforesaid, 17,404; and in out parishes adjoining to the same city, being 11 parishes, died of all diseases in the whole year 3288, and of them of the plague 2732.” The weekly totals from June 12 to December 31 which are for the City and liberties, and exclusive of the out parishes, add up to very nearly Stow’s total for the whole year, or to 16,802 as against 17,404. Where the discrepancy arises does not appear; it is hardly likely that some 600 plague-deaths would have occurred previous to the second week in June, at which time the weekly mortality had reached only 17. We are able to check one of the weekly totals from an independent source. In an extant letter of the time the following figures for the week from 23rd to 30th July are given, having been taken evidently from the published or posted weekly bill: “Died and were buried in London and suburbs, 399, most young people and youths, of which number of the common plague 320 persons. Number of children born and christened in the same week, 52[591].” “London and suburbs” would mean the 108 parishes of the City and liberties together with the 11 out parishes, so that the difference between Stow’s 289 and the above 320 would give the number of plague-deaths in the out parishes for the particular week.
The state of matters in the City is thus referred to in Bullein’s _Dialogue_ published in 1564:--
_Civis._--“Good wife, the daily jangling and ringing of the bells, the coming in of the minister to every house in ministering the communion, the reading of the homily of death, the digging up of graves, the sparring of windows, and the blazing forth of the blue crosses do make my heart tremble and quake.” A beggar, in the same _Dialogue_, who had arrived from the country, says:
“I met with wagones, cartes and horses full loden with yong barnes, for fear of the blacke Pestilence, with them boxes of medicens and sweete perfumes. O God! how fast did they run by hundredes, and were afraied of eche other for feare of smityng.”
We get one or two glimpses of this great plague from the medical point of view in Dr John Jones’s _Dyall of Agues_[592]. The worst locality, he says, was “S. Poulkar’s parish [St Sepulchre’s] by reason of many fruiterers, poor people, and stinking lanes, as Turnagain-lane [so called because it led down the slope to Fleet Ditch and ended there], Seacoal-lane, and such other places, there died most in London, and were soonest infected, and longest continued, as twice since I have known London I have marked to be true.” Jones believed in contagion: “I myself was infected by reason that unawares I lodged with one that had it running from him.” His other observation is interesting as proving the possibility of repeated attacks of the buboes in the same person, an observation abundantly confirmed, as we shall see, in the London plagues of 1603 and 1665:
“Here now, gentel readers, I think good to admonish all such as have had the plague, that they flie the trust of ignoraunt persons, who use to saye that he who hath once had the plague shal not nede to feare the havinge of it anye more: the whych by this example whyche foloweth (that chaunced to a certayne Bakers wife without Tempel barre in London, Anno Do. 1563) you shall find to be worthelye to be repeated: this sayde wyfe had the plage at Midsommer and at Bartholomewtide, and at Michaelmas, and the first time it brake, the seconde time it brake, but ran littell, the thirde time it appeared and brake not: but she died, notwythstanding she was twyce afore healed.”
Two London physicians of some note died of the plague in 1563. One was Dr Geynes, who had brought trouble upon himself by impugning the authority of Galen, perhaps without sufficient reason. Having been cited before the College of Physicians, to whose discipline he was subject, he preferred to recant his heresy rather than undergo imprisonment. He died of plague on 23 July, 1563. Another was Dr John Fryer who had suffered twice for religious heresy, having been imprisoned by queen Mary as a Lutheran, and by queen Elizabeth as a papist. He regained his liberty in August, 1563, but only to die of plague on 21 October, his wife and several of his children having been also victims of the epidemic[593].
Stow ascribes the infection of the city of London by plague in the summer of 1563 to the return of the English troops from Havre, which town queen Elizabeth had boldly attempted to hold, and did actually hold for ten months, from September, 1562, as an English fortress in French territory. Havre was not surrendered until the last days of July, 1563, and no returning troops could have reached London until August, by which time the plague had been raging there for two months. There was no doubt frequent communication between Havre and English ports while the siege lasted; but the sickness in each place can have been no more than coincident. Thus, while there were 17 plague-deaths in London in the week from the 5th to the 12th of June, the 7th of June is the first date on which report was made of sickness in Havre, although there had been cases of illness before. On that date the Earl of Warwick wrote to the Privy Council[594]: “For the want of money the works are hindered and the men discouraged. A strange disease has come amongst them, whereof nine died this morning (and many before) very suddenly.” On the same day (7th June, 1563), one writes from Havre to Cecil: “Many of our men have been hurt in these skirmishes, but more by drinking of their wine, which hath cast down a great number, of hot burning diseases and impostumations, not unlike the plague.” By the 9th June the deaths were from 20 to 30 a day. On the 12th June, 442 were sick out of a total force (including labourers and seamen) of 7143. On June 16, Warwick points out to the Privy Council that the sickness was aggravated by the want of fresh meat and the soldiers’ usual beverages: “therefore their continual drinking of wine, contrary to their custom, has bred these disorders and diseases.” On the 28th June the daily mortality was 77; from that date it increased somewhat, and was so serious as to hasten the surrender of the place to the French besieging force in the end of July. On July 27 there was plague in the castle of Jersey, and on August 6 it was very sore in Jersey, especially in the Castle[595].
It would have seemed the more probable to the people of London that the plague of 1563 had been imported across the Channel by reason of the unusually long immunity of the English capital in respect of that infection. A clear interval of a dozen years without an epidemic, or a severe epidemic, was enough to make men forget the long tradition of plague domesticated upon English soil; while there was no scientific doctrine of epidemics then worked out, from which they might have known that the seeds of a disease may lie dormant for years, and that their periodic effectiveness depends upon a concurrence of favouring things, most of all upon extremes of dryness or wetness of the seasons as affecting a soil full of corrupting animal matters.
The plague of 1563 in the capital was accompanied or followed by several provincial outbreaks, of which few details are known. It is mentioned at Derby[596] in 1563, at Leicester[597] in 1563 and 1564 (a shut-up house in 1563, the first plague-burial in St Martin’s parish on May 11, 1564), at Stratford-on-Avon, at Lichfield[598] and Canterbury[599] in 1564. But it is little more than mentioned at all those places. In the parish register of Hensley, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, a later incumbent, basing upon “an old writing of 1569,” says that the explanation of the year 1563 being a blank in the register was “because in that year the visitation of plague was most hot and fearful, so that many died and fled, and the town of Hensley, by reason of the sickness, was unfrequented for a long season[600].”
Preventive Practice in Plague-time under the Tudors.
Having now traced the history of plague in London and in the provinces down to the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, and having found it steady from year to year for many years in London, with an occasional terrific outburst, we are naturally led to ask whether the causes of it, or its favouring things, were understood, and whether any steps were taken to deal with it. This will be in effect a review of the earliest preventive practice.
That which was most clearly perceived by all was that the plague began to reign in certain years as the summer heats drew on, that the air of London or Westminster became “intemperate,” or unwholesome, or infectious, and that it was desirable to get out of such air. Accordingly the one great rule, admitted by all and acted upon by as many as could, was to escape from the tainted locality, or as Wolsey expressed it to the earl of Shrewsbury in 1516, to get them “into clean air.” There was no other sovereign prescription but that, and it remained the one great prescription until the last of plague in 1665-6.
Difficult points of casuistry arose out of that steady perception of an indisputable rule. Could flight from a plague-stricken place be reconciled with duty to one’s neighbour? How ought a Christian man to demean himself in the plague? The Christian conscience may or may not have been tender on that ground in the medieval period; there is little to show one way or the other, except the occasional hints that we get, as in the Danish bishop’s treatise, of an unwillingness to go near the victims of plague. But about the Reformation time those points of casuistry were debated; and one elaborate handling of them, in the form of a sermon by a German ecclesiastic, Osiander, was translated into English in 1537 by Miles Coverdale[601]. It followed, accordingly, that period of plague in London which has occupied the first part of this chapter. The translator remarks that they had been negligent of charity one to another, and he prints this discourse “to the intent that the ignorant may be taught, the weake strengthened, and everyone counselled after his callynge to serve his neighbor.”
Osiander’s perplexed Christian is in much the same case as Launcelot Gobbo in the play: “‘Budge,’ says the fiend; ‘Budge not,’ says my conscience. ‘Conscience,’ say I, ‘you counsel well;’ ‘Fiend,’ say I, ‘you counsel well.’” The situation was a naturally complex one, and this is how the good preacher comes out of it:
“It is not my meaning to forbid or inhibit any man to fly, or to use physick, or to avoid dangerous and sick places in these fearful airs--so far as a man doth not therein against the belief, nor God’s commandment, nor against his calling, nor against the love of his neighbour.” And yet, shortly after: “Out of such fond childish fear it cometh that not only some sick folk be suffered to die away without all keeping, help, and comfort; but the women also, great with child, be forsaken in their need, or else cometh there utterly no man unto them. Yet a man may hear also that the children forsake their fathers and mothers, and one household body keepeth himself away from another, and sheweth no love unto him. Which nevertheless he would be glad to see shewed unto himself if he lay in like necessity.” He then exhorts the Christian man to remain at the post of duty, by the examples of the clergy and of “the higher powers of the world, who also abide in jeopardy”--certainly not the English experience. “Let him not axe his own reason, how he shall do, but believe, and follow the word of God, which teacheth him not to fly evil air and infect places (which he may well do: nevertheless he remaineth yet uncertain whether it helpeth or no).” The Christian man’s perplexities can hardly have been resolved when all was said; and the following sentence puts the case for quitting the infected place as strongly as it can be put: “For if it were in meat or drink, it might be eschewed; if it were an evil taste, it might be expelled with a sweet savour; if it were an evil wind, the chamber might with diligence be made close therefore; if it were a cloud or mist, it might be seen and avoided; if it were a rain, a man might cover himself for it. But now it is a secret misfortune that creepeth in privily, so that it can neither be seen nor heard, neither smelled nor tasted, till it have done the harm.”
In practice the rule was ‘Save who can;’ so that whenever the infection promised to become “hot,” as the phrase was, there was an adjournment of Parliament and of the Law Courts, a flight of all who could afford it to the country, and an interruption of business, diplomatic and other, which sometimes lasted for months. It was only occasionally, however, that the infection became really hot; in ordinary years a certain risk was run. Thus, in 1426, the plague had been severe enough to cut off the Scots hostages; but it was not until after their death that the king’s council left the city. Again, in 1467, Parliament did not adjourn (on 1st July) until several members of the House of Commons had died of the plague.
Although flight was the sovereign preventive in a great plague-season, it was impracticable in ordinary years when the infection was at its steadier or more endemic level. The endemic level was tolerated up to a certain point. In a long despatch to his government, the Venetian ambassador in London wrote of the plague as follows in 1554[602]:
“They have some little plague in England well nigh every year, for which they are not accustomed to make sanitary provisions, as it does not usually make great progress; the cases for the most part occur amongst the lower classes, as if their dissolute mode of life impaired their constitutions.”
Whenever the plague showed signs of overstepping these limits, strenuous efforts were made to keep it in check. It may be questioned whether all that was done in that way made any difference; the great outbursts came at intervals, rose to their height, subsided in a few months, and left the city more or less free of plague until some concurrence of things, or the lapse of time, brought about another epidemic of the first degree. None the less, certain measures were taken to restrain the infection, and these were put in force with mechanical regularity whenever the Privy Council informed the Lord Mayor that the occasion required it. A brief account of them, of their beginnings and their development, will now be given.
The first that we hear of attempts at isolation and notification is in 1518. In April of that year, the Court being in Berkshire or Oxfordshire, Sir Thomas More charged the mayor of Oxford, and the commissary, in the king’s name “that the inhabitants of those houses that be, and shall be infected, shall keep in, put out wispes, and bear white rods, as your Grace devised for Londoners[603].” By his Grace is to be understood the king himself; and these measures devised by him--the keeping in, the putting out of wisps on the houses, and the carrying of white rods,--might have been tried as early as the epidemic of 1513, which was a severe one. When two of the Venetian ambassador’s servants died of the plague in 1513, their bed, sheets and other effects were thrown into the river. On the 21st of May, 1516, the ambassador removed to Putney owing to a case of plague in his house, and he was not allowed to see cardinal Wolsey until the 30th of June, i.e. until forty days had elapsed. This is perhaps the first mention of the quarantine which the Court rigorously put in practice against those who had business with it. On the 22nd July, 1518, the same ambassador wrote to Venice from Lambeth that two of his servants had lately died of the plague; and, on the 11th August, again from Lambeth, that the king and Wolsey would not see him because of the plague; “but on the expiration of forty days, which had nearly come to an end, he would not fail to do his duty as heretofore.”
On the 25th August, 1535, Chapuys, in a letter to Charles V., gives an amusing account of an attempt made by the French ambassador to see Henry VIII. and Cromwell on diplomatic business. The Court was residing in Gloucestershire owing to plague in and near London (it was at Bristol also), and the ambassador journeyed thither to carry his business through. However he went no nearer than six miles, because a “French merchant” who followed him died upon the road of the plague, as it was feared. The king asked him to put his charge in writing, but the ambassador replied that he had orders to tell it in person, and that he could wait. At length he lay in wait for Secretary Cromwell in the fields where he went to hunt with the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, and delivered his charge despite the manifest unwillingness of Cromwell, who came away from the improvised diplomatic interview in no good humour.
The first plague-order of which the full text is extant was issued in the 35th of Henry VIII. (1543). As it contains the germs of all subsequent preventive practice, I transcribe it in full[604].
“35 Hen. VIII. A precept issued to the aldermen:--That they should cause their beadles to set the sign of the cross on every house which should be afflicted with the plague, and there continue for forty days:
“That no person who was able to live by himself, and should be afflicted with the plague, should go abroad or into any company for one month after his sickness, and that all others who could not live without their daily labour should as much as in them lay refrain from going abroad, and should for forty days after [illegible] and continually carry a white rod in their hand, two foot long:
“That every person whose house had been infected should, after a visitation, carry all the straw and [illegible] in the night privately into the fields and burn; they should also carry clothes of the infected in the fields to be cured:
“That no housekeeper should put any person diseased out of his house into the street or other place unless they provided housing for them in some other house:
“That all persons having any dogs in their houses other than hounds, spaniels or mastiffs, necessary for the custody or safe keeping of their houses, should forthwith convey them out of the city, or cause them to be killed and carried out of the city and buried at the common laystall:
“That such as kept hounds, spaniels, or mastiffs should not suffer them to go abroad, but closely confine them:
“That the churchwardens of every parish should employ somebody to keep out all common beggars out of churches on holy days, and to cause them to remain without doors:
“That all the streets, lanes, etc. within the wards should be cleansed:
“That the aldermen should cause this precept to be read in the churches.”
Here we see a development of the measures which had been devised for London by Henry VIII. or his minister previous to 1518, and probably in the plague of 1513. The wisps put out on the infected houses are replaced by crosses, which, in the order of 1543, are simply called “the sign of the cross.” They are next heard of during the plague of 1547, in a Guildhall record of 15 November[605]:
“Item, for as moche as my Lord Mayer reported that my Lorde Chauncelar declared unto hym that my Lorde Protectour’s Grace’s pleasure ys, and other of the Lordes of the Counseyll, that certain open tokens and sygnes shulde be made and sett furth in all such places of the Cytie as haue of late been vysyted with the plage”--be it therefore ordained that a certain cross of St Anthony devised for that purpose be affixed to the uttermost post of the street door, there to remain forty days after the setting up thereof.
The cross of St Anthony was a headless cross, and the crutch is supposed to have been painted (in blue) on canvas or board and fixed to the post of the street door. The legend under or over the cross was, “Lord have mercy upon us.” Before the plague of 1603, the colour had been changed to red.
The white rods, which had been devised along with the wisps previous to 1518, are mentioned in the order of 1543 as two foot long; they were to be carried for forty days by those who must needs go abroad from plague-stricken houses. We hear of them again, both in France and in England in 1580 and 1581. On the 20th November, 1580, the Venetian ambassador to France writes from the neighbourhood of Paris: “This city, I hear, is in a very fair sanitary condition, notwithstanding that as I entered a city gate, which is close to where I reside, I met a man and a woman bearing the white plague wands in their hands and asking alms; but some believe that this was merely an artifice on their part to gain money[606].” In the regulations for plague added in 1581 by the mayor of London to the earlier code, the third is: “That no persons dwelling in a house infected be suffered to go abroad unless they carry with them a white wand of a yard long; any so offending to be committed to the Cage.” In the seventeenth-century plagues of London and provincial towns, the white wand was retained as the peculiar badge of the searchers of infected houses and of the bearers of the dead. The white rod or wand carried by inmates of infected houses, had become a red rod in the plague of 1603, just as the blue cross had been changed to red.
The other directions in the order of 1543 are heard of from time to time in the subsequent history of plague--such as the burning of straw, and the cleansing of the streets. The Guildhall record of 15 November, 1547, after directing the blue crosses to be affixed to houses, proceeds:
“And also to cause all the welles and pumpes within their seid wardes to be drawen iii times euerye weke, that is to say, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And to cast down into the canelles at euerye such drawyng xii bucketts full of water at the least, to clense the stretes wythall.”
Under Elizabeth, the orders as to scavenging become much more stringent, as we shall see. In the plague of 1563, on 29 September, the Common Council appointed “two poor men to burn and bury such straw, clothes, and bedding as they shall find in the fields near the city or within the city, whereon any person in the plague hath lyen or dyed[607].”
The curious order as to dogs was based upon the belief that they carried the infection in their hair, just as cats are now believed by some to carry infection in their fur. Brasbridge, in his _Poor Man’s Jewel_ (1578), gives a case of a glover at Oxford, into whose house a disastrous plague-infection was supposed to have been brought by means of a dog’s skin bought in London[608]. The plague-regulations contained the clause against dogs to the last; in the great plagues of 1603, 1625, and 1665, thousands of them were killed, many of them having been doubtless left behind in the exodus of the well-to-do classes. In the corporation records of Winchester[609], there is a minute, undated, but probably belonging to the end of the 16th century, that dogs shall be kept indoors “if any house within the city shall happen to be infected with the plague.” A proclamation during the London plague of 1563 is directed against cats as well as dogs, “for the avoidance of the plague:” officers were appointed to kill and bury all such as they found at large[610].
The great London plague of 1563 had revived the old practices and given rise to some new ones. Curates and churchwardens were directed to warn the inmates of houses where plague had occurred not to come to church for a certain space thereafter[611]. The blue crosses were again in great request, being ordered by hundreds at a time in readiness to affix to infected houses[612]. Also it was ordered by the Mayor and Council that the “filthie dunghill lying in the highway near unto Fynnesburye Courte be removed and carried away; and not to suffer any such donge or fylthe from hensforthe there to be leyde[613].” On the 9th of July, 1563, plague having been already at work for several weeks, a commission was issued by the queen in Council, that every householder in London should, at seven in the evening, lay out wood and make bonfires in the streets and lanes, to the intent that they should thereby consume the corrupt airs, the fires to be made on three days of the week[614]. On 30th September, 1563, it was ordered that all such houses as were infected should have their doors and windows shut up, and the inmates not to stir out nor suffer any to come to them for forty days. At the same time, a collection was ordered to be made in the churches for the relief of the poor afflicted with the plague, and thus shut up. Another order was that new mould should be laid on the graves of such as die of the plague. Still another, the first of a long series, was to prohibit all interludes and plays during the infection[615]. On the 2nd December, when the deaths had fallen to 178 in the week, an order was issued by the Common Council that houses in which the plague had been were not to be let. On the 20th January, 1564, there was an order for a general airing and cleansing of houses, bedding and the like. By that time the deaths had fallen to 13 in the week.
The most rigorous measures in this plague were those which queen Elizabeth took for her own safety at Windsor in September. Stow says that “a gallows was set up in the market-place of Windsor to hang all such as should come there from London. No wares to be brought to, or through, or by Windsor; nor any one on the river by Windsor to carry wood or other stuff to or from London, upon pain of hanging without any judgment; and such people as received any wares out of London into Windsor were turned out of their houses, and their houses shut up[616].”
In 1568 a more complete set of instructions to the aldermen of the several wards was drawn up by the Lord Mayor, and a corresponding order for the city of Westminster by Sir William Cecil, Secretary of State, and by the Chancellor of the Duchy. In 1581 some additional orders were issued by the Lord Mayor. The whole of these are here given from a state paper in a later handwriting, probably of the time of James I. or Charles I[617].
A collection of such papers as are found in the office of his Majesties papers and records for business of state for the preventing and decreasing of the plague in and about London.
A. (City of London, 1568.)
1. First a ’tre from the Mayor of London to every alderman of each warde to charge their Deputys counstables and officers to make search of all houses infected within each parish.
2. To cause all infected houses to bee shutt up and noe person to come forth in twenty dayes after the infection.
3. That some honest discreete person be appoynted to attend each such infected house to provide them of all necessaries at the cost of the M{r} of the house if he be able.
4. For the poorer houses infected that the Alderman or his deputy doe cause to make collection for the supply of all necessaries to be charged upon the wealthyer sorte of the same warde or parish.
5. That such as shall refuse to pay what they are assest shall be committed to warde untill they pay it.
6. That all bedding and cloathes and other thinges apt to take infection which were about infected persons bee burnt or such order taken that infection may not be increased by them.
7. Lastly that a bill with ‘Lord have mercy upon us’ in greate ’tres bee sett over the dore of euery infected house and that the counstables and Beadles have a care to see that the same be not taken downe.
These orders were sett downe by the Mayior of London in the yeere 1568, whereupon queene Elizabeth writeth a letter to S{r} William Cycill then secretary and S{r} Ambrous Cave, chauncellor of the Duchy to take the like order or any other that they should thinke fitt in the citie of Westminster.
B. (City of Westminster, 1568.)
Orders sett down by S{r} William Cycill, Secretary, as High Steward of Westminster and S{r} Ambrous Cave, chauncellor of the Dutchy to the Bayleiffes, Hedburroughs, Counstables and other officers of the sayde Citty.
1. That they should follow the good example of the orders devised and observed by the Mayior and Aldermen of London, and further that all that haue any houses shops or loggings that hath had any infection in them by the space of twenty dayes before the making of these orders shall shutt up all their doares and windoares towards the streetes and common passages for forty dayes next and not suffer after the tyme of the sicknes any person to goe forth nor any uninfected to come in upon payne that euery offender shall sitt seven dayes in the stocks and after that be committed to the common Goale there to remayne forty dayes from the first day of his being in the stocks.
2. That the officers aforesayde with the curate of euery parish and churchwardens doe make such collection of the rest of the parishioners as shall be necessary for the sustenance of such as bee poore infected and shutt up.
3. To discharge all inmates out of all houses that there be noe more persons in one house then be of one family except they be lodgers for a small time.
4. To cause the streetes lanes and passages and all the shewers sinkes (?) and gutters thereof dayly to be made sweete and cleane.
C. (London, 1581.)
There were added by the Mayior of London to the former articles these following in the year 1581.
1. That speciall noatis be taken of such houses infected as sell cloth, silke and other wares and make garments and aparrell for men and women.
2. That euery counstable within his precinct haue at all tymes in readines two honest and discreete women to attend any house infected.
3. That noe person dwelling in a house infected bee suffered to goe abroade unless they carry with them a white wand of a yarde long. Any soe offending to bee committed to the Cage there to remayne untill order shallbe taken by the Mayior or his bretheren.
4. That they suffer not any deade corps dying of the plague to be buryed in tyme of divine service or sermon.
5. To appoynt two honest and discreete matrons within euery parish who shall bee sworne truely to search the body of euery such person as shall happen to dye within the same parish, to the ende that they make true reporte to the clerke of the parish church of all such as shall dye of the plague, that the same clerke may make the like reporte and certificate to the wardens of the parish clerkes thereof according to the order in that behalfe heretofore provided.
If the viewers through favour or corruption shall giue wrong certificate, or shall refuse to serue being thereto appointed, then to punish them by imprisonment in such sorte as may serue for the terror of others.
6. That order be taken for killing of dogs that run from house to house dispersing the plague, and that noe swine be suffered or kept within the citty[618].
Several of these plague-regulations had been in force, as we have seen, from near the beginning of the century. Others, not hitherto mentioned, were also of earlier date. Thus the collections for the poor are mentioned in the diary of a London citizen in 1538 and 1539, but not specially in connexion with plague. They are heard of often after the plague of 1563, along with other provisions for the poor which mark the reign of Elizabeth. If we may trust Bullein’s _Dialogue_ of 1564, a systematic provision became necessary because private charity was no longer to be depended on. In many country towns and parishes, as we shall see, the contributions or compensations to the inmates of shut-up houses in the Elizabethan plagues were paid out of the municipal funds, either those of the affected place or of some “unvisited” neighbouring town. The Act of Parliament which most directly provided for “the charitable relief of persons infected with the plague” was the 1st James I. (1603-4), cap. 31.
A most essential part of the means for controlling plague was the institution of searchers[619]. In the orders of 1543, the aldermen of the wards are directed to send their beadles to affix the sign of the cross to affected houses. But in due course these duties of inspection, notification, isolation and registration passed in London into the hands of the Company of Parish Clerks. The original business of the Parish Clerks was with church music. In the thirteenth century they received a charter of incorporation as the Clerks of St Nicholas, and became associated with that love of choral singing which has always distinguished the English people. Legacies and endowments fell to them for the performance of specific services, or for their encouragement in general. From time to time the Company would appear in a particular parish church to sing a mass. It was the singular history of a Company which gained its greatest name as the Registrars of Births and Deaths in London down to the Registration Act of 1837, to have been not only the first Choral Society but also the first company of stage players. In 1391, says Stow, a play was given by the parish clerks of London at the Skinners’ Well beside Smithfield, which continued three days together, the king, queen and nobles of the realm being present. Another play, in the year 1409, lasted eight days, “and was of matter from the creation of the world, whereat was present most of the nobility and gentry of England[620].”
In the time of Sir Thomas More, a parish clerk meant one who sang in the church choir. When More was lord chancellor, the duke of Norfolk came one day to dine with him at his house at Chelsea, and not finding him at home, went in search of him. He found him, where posterity will long delight to picture him,--in the church “singing in the choir with a surplice on his back.” As they walked home arm in arm the duke said to Sir Thomas More: “A parish clerk! a parish clerk! God body, my lord chancellor, you dishonour the king and his office;” whereon the chancellor answered as if he did not take the duke altogether seriously.
The whole strength of the Company of Parish Clerks in those times would attend the funeral of some rich person, as we may read in the sixteenth-century diary of Machyn the undertaker (sometimes the Company chosen to follow the body to the grave was that of the Tallow Chandlers, as in the case of John Stow’s mother). It was no great step from their old duties to their new. There were, as we have seen, bills of mortality compiled weekly for all the parishes in the city and liberties as early as 1532 and 1535. It is not said that the Parish Clerks were the collectors of the information, but they were as likely to have been so as any other persons whom the mayor would employ. Bills were also drawn up for a few weeks during the sweating sickness of 1551, and again for an unbroken series of some two hundred weeks from the beginning of the plague of 1563. The figures are preserved from a single weekly bill, 22-28 October, 1574, which must have been one of a series[621]. The next bills known are a series for five years, 1578-83, a plague-period of which more will have to be said in its proper place in the chronology.
The orders of 1581, already given, make mention of the two discreet matrons within every parish who shall be sworn truly to search the body of every such person as shall happen to die within the same parish, of their reporting to the clerk of the parish, and of the clerk making report and certificate to the wardens of the Parish Clerks, who would send the weekly certificate for all the parishes to the mayor, and he to the minister of State. That was said to be “according to the order in that behalf heretofore provided.” It is probable, therefore, that the searchers became an institution as early as the plague of 1563, or, at all events, at the beginning of the plague-period of 1578-83.
The clerk of the Company in 1665 describes how the discreet matrons were chosen as searchers or viewers of the dead in each parish, and how they were sworn to discharge their duties faithfully[622]. The swearing in took place before the Dean of the Arches, that is to say, in St Mary le Bow church (“St Mary of the Arch”) in Cheapside. The motive to bribe them for a wrong report on the cause of death was to avoid the shutting up and all other troubles of a household pronounced infected by the plague. In later times their diagnostic duties became, as we shall see, much more complex; but down to 1604, when they first brought to the Parish Clerks’ Hall “an account of the diseases and casualties” (which classification and nomenclature did not begin to be printed until 1629), they had merely to say whether a death had been from plague or from other cause.
Sanitation in Plantagenet and Tudor times.
Along with all those means, having the object of stopping the spread of infection, the Elizabethan policy did not neglect what we should now consider the more radical means of sanitation. It is usual to bring a sweeping charge of neglect of public hygiene against all old times; there was so much plague in those times, and so high an average death-rate, that it is commonly assumed that our ancestors must have been wanting in the rudimentary instincts of cleanliness. But, in the first place, one might expect to find that all old periods were not alike; and more generally it is worth inquiring how far nuisances injurious to the public health were tolerated. This inquiry will have to be as brief as possible; but it will take us back to the period of plague covered by a former chapter.
Nuisances certainly existed in medieval London, but it is equally certain that they were not tolerated without limit. I have collected in a note the instances reported in a visitation of 17 Edward III. (1343), and in a perambulation of the ground outside the walls in 26 Edward III. (1352). The former related only to the alleys leading down to the river, which were likely enough places for nuisance, then as now[623].
There are several orders of Edward III. relating to the removal of laystalls and to keeping the town ditch clean, which show, of course, that there was neglect, but at the same time the disposition to correct it. It is farther obvious that the connexion between nuisances and the public health was clearly apprehended. The sanitary doctrines of modern times were undreamt of; nor did the circumstances altogether call for them. The sewers of those days were banked-up water courses, or “shores” as the word was pronounced, which ran uncovered down the various declivities of the city, to the town ditch and to the Thames. They would have sufficed to carry off the refuse of a population of some forty or sixty thousand; they were, at all events, freely open to the greatest of all purifying agents, the oxygen of the air; and they poisoned neither the water of the town ditch (which abounded in excellent fish within John Stow’s memory) nor the waters of Thames. In course of time all the brooks of London were covered in, even the Fleet dyke itself, which used to float barges as far as Holborn bridge; but who shall say that they were more wholesome thereafter, although they were underground? Perhaps the poet of the _Earthly Paradise_ has as true an intuition as any when, in reference to the city in Chaucer’s time, he bids us
“Dream of London, small, and white, and clean; The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green.”
The nuisance that gave most trouble in the medieval and Tudor periods was the blood and offal of the shambles. Several ordinances of Edward III. are directed against it, in one of which (1371) the connexion between putrefying blood soaked into the ground and infectious disease is clearly stated. It is also the principal subject of the first sanitary Act that appears in the Statutes of the Realm, made by the Parliament of Cambridge in the 17th of Richard II. (1388), of which I give the preamble and provisions:
“Item, For that so much Dung and Filth of the Garbage and Intrails as well of Beasts killed as of other Corruptions be cast and put in Ditches, Rivers and other Waters, and also within many other Places within about and nigh unto divers Cities, Boroughs and Towns of the Realm, and the Suburbs of them, that the Air there is greatly corrupt and infect, and many Maladies and other intolerable Diseases do daily happen,” both to the residents and to visitors:--therefore proclamation is to be made in the City of London, as in other cities, boroughs and towns “that all they which do cast and lay all such Annoyances, Dung, Garbages, Intrails and other Ordure in Ditches, Rivers, Waters and other places shall cause them to be removed, avoided and carried away betwixt this and the feast of St Michael next following,” under a penalty of twenty pounds, mayors and bailiffs to compel obedience. Such offences were not to be repeated, and if any did offend he was liable to be called by writ before the Chancellor “at his suit that will complain[624].”
Despite this statute, the shambles in the parish of St Nicholas within Newgate (adjoining the ground now occupied by Christ’s Hospital, and formerly by the Grey Friars) became an established institution of the city. They were a subject of petition to Parliament in 1488-9, and they were still there to give occasion in 1603 to severe remarks by Thomas Lodge, poet and physician, who practised in Warwick Lane, in their immediate neighbourhood. The Act of 1388, it will be observed, was to be set in motion “at his suit that will complain;” so that there was little more in it than the immemorial remedy from a nuisance at common law.
The reign of Henry V. appears to have been marked by care for the public health, perhaps not greater than in Edward III.’s time, but exceptional, in the records at least, under the later Plantagenets and until the accession of the Tudor dynasty. Among other evidences (some of which may be gathered from Stow’s _Survey_) is the ordinance of 1415 (3 Hen. V.) against a nuisance in the Moor, beyond the wall and the ditch on the Finsbury side. The Moor was, in Fitzstephen’s words, “a great fen, which watereth the walls on the north side.” In 1415 there was a “common latrine” in it, and “sicknesses arose from the horrible, corrupt, and infected atmosphere,” issuing therefrom[625]. Its removal was ordered, and in the same year (1415) chaussées were built across the fen, one to Hoxton and another to Islington. The ditch all the way round from the Tower to Blackfriars had been cleansed the year before (1414).
Another statute, 3 Henry VII. (1488-9) cap. 3, may be quoted to show that the slaughter-houses were the chief nuisance, that their effects on health were perceived (as in Edward III.’s time), and that it was necessary to appeal to the king’s personal interest in the matter as a motive for redress.
Petition to the King from the parishioners of St Faiths and St Gregories in London, near St Pauls.
“That it was soo that grete concourse of peple, as well of his Roial persone as of other grete Lordes and astates wyth other hys true subgettes often tymes was had unto the said Cathedrall Chirche, and for the moost part through oute the parisshe aforesaide, the whiche often tymes ben gretly ennoyed and invenemed by corrupt eires, engendered in the said parisshes by occasion of bloode and other fowler thynges, by occasion of the slaughter of bestes and scaldyng of swyne had and doon in the bocherie of Seynt Nicholas Flesshamls, whos corrupcion by violence of unclene and putrified waters is borne down thrugh the said parishes and compasseth two partes of the Palays where the Kynges most Roiall persone is wonte to abide when he cometh to the Cathedrall Chirche for ony acte there to be doon, to the Jubardouse [jeopardous] abydyng of his most noble persone and to ouer grete ennoysaunce of the parisshens there, and of other the Kyngis subgettes and straungers that passe by the same;
Compleynte whereof at dyverse and many seasons almost by the space of xvi yeres contynuelly, as well by the Chanons and petty Chanons of the said Cathedrall Chirche, londlordes there ... made to Mayor and aldermen of the city; and noo remedie had ne founden.
... Considering that in few noble cities or towns or none within Christendom, where as travellyng men have labored, that the comen slaughter hous of bestys sholde be kept in ony speciall parte within the walle of the same lest it myght engender Siknesse to the destruccion of the peple.”
The King etc. “ordeyned and stablished that no Bocher shall sley within the said house called the Scaldinghouse or within the walls of London.”
And the same “in eny citte, Burghe and Towne walled within the Realm of Englonde and in the Towne of Cambridge, the Townes of Berwyk and Carlile only except and forprised.”
The popular knowledge of and belief in a high doctrine of contagion are curiously shown by the terms of the Act touching Upholsterers in 1495 (II Hen. VII. cap. 19).
The Act was intended to prevent beds, feather-beds, bolsters and pillows from being sold in market outside London, “beyond control of the Craft of Upholders.” Outside the craft an inferior article was apt to be offered, which was at once a lowering of a good and worthy standard and a danger to health. There were two kinds of corrupt bed-stuffs “contagious for mannys body to lye on,” firstly, scalded feathers and dry pulled feathers together; and secondly, flocks and feathers together. Besides these, quilts, mattresses and cushions stuffed with horse hair, fen down, neat’s hair, deer’s hair and goat’s hair, “which is wrought in lyme fattes,” give out by the heat of man’s body, a savour and taste so abominable and contagious that many of the King’s subjects thereby have been destroyed. These corrupt and unlawful stuffs and wares might indeed be made by any person or persons for their own proper use in their houses, so they be not offered for sale in fairs or markets.
The reign of Henry VIII. is not marked by any ordinances or Acts for the restraint of plague or the like sickness by other than quarantine measures. The common ditch between Aldgate and the postern of the Tower was cleansed in 1519 at the charges of the city; in 1540 the Moor ditch was cleansed: and, not long before, the ditch from the Tower to Aldgate. In 1549 the ditch was again cleansed at the charges of the City Companies[626]. In April, 1552, John Shakespeare, the poet’s father, a citizen of Stratford-on-Avon in good circumstances and afterwards mayor of the town, was fined twelve pence (eight to ten shillings present value) for not removing the heap of household dirt and refuse that had accumulated in front of his own door[627]. In the records of the borough of Ipswich[628], scavengers are mentioned in the 32nd of Henry VIII. (1540): they were elected in every parish, and the gatherings of refuse ordered to be carried and laid at four places, namely: Warwick Pitts, College Yard, behind the Ditches next John Herne, and the Dikes in the Marsh. When queen Elizabeth visited Ipswich (in 1561, 1565 and 1577), she rated not only the clergy on the laxity of their behaviour, but also the civic authorities upon the filthy condition of the streets. “A marked improvement,” says the borough historian, “certainly took place in Ipswich at this period, as is incontestably shown by the constant exhortations and promulgations of laws for the preservation of cleanliness.”
In the _Description and Account of the City of Exeter_, written by John Vowell, or Hoker, chamberlain of the city and member of Parliament for it in the reign of Elizabeth[629], we find the following about the offices and duties of scavengers “as of old.”
They are “necessary officers who cannot be wanting in any well-governed city or town, because by them and their service all things noisome to the health of man, and hurtful to the state of the body of the commonwealth, are advertised unto the magistrate, and so they be the means of the redress thereof. And therefore they be called Scavengers, as who saith Shewers or Advertisers, for so the word soundeth.” Among other duties they had the oversight of pavements, that they were swept weekly, of slaughter-houses, dunghills and the like, of dangerous buildings and of encroachments upon the streets, of chimneys, and of precautions against fires (tubs of water to be in readiness at the doors to quench fires and cleanse the streets); and on Sundays they had to attend the mayor of Exeter to the church of St Peter’s.
These officers of the municipality discharged their duties, says the Elizabethan writer, “as of old;” from which we may conclude that some such regulation had existed from quite early times. The scavengers are mentioned by Stow at the end of his account of each City ward along with other officers. We have already seen, from the court rolls of the manor of Castle Combe under the year 1427, that villagers were fined or admonished for creating nuisances. A sudden revival of zeal in that way at Castle Combe in the year 1590 may have been due to the vigorous sanitary policy of Elizabeth’s government:
“And that the inhabitants of the West Strete doe remove the donge or fylth at John Davis house ende before the feaste of Seynct Andrew th’apostell next, and that they lay no more there within x foote of the wey, sub poena iii s iiii d.
“And that none shall lay any duste or any other fylth in the wey or pitte belowe Cristopher Besas house, sub poena pro quolibet tempore xii d.
“And that none shall soyle in the church yerde nor in any of our stretes, for every defaulte to lose xii d.
“And that the glover shall not washe any skynes, nor cast any other fylth or soyle in the water runnynge by his house, sub poena x s[630].”
There is an interval of a century and a half between the two instances of sanitary vigour adduced from the Castle Combe manor court; but there is no reason to believe that the tradition of common cleanliness ever lapsed altogether, in that or in any other village or town of the country.
Some part of the rather unfair opinion as to the foulness of English life in former times may be traced to a well-known letter by Erasmus to the physician of cardinal Wolsey. There are grounds for believing that Erasmus must have judged from somewhat unfavourable instances.
“We read of a city,” says Erasmus, “which was freed from continual pestilence by changes made in its buildings on the advice of a philosopher. Unless I am mistaken, England may be freed in like manner.” He then proceeds to go over the defects of English houses, and to suggest improvements. The houses were built with too little regard to the aspect of their doors and windows towards the sun. Again, they have a great part of their walls filled with panes of glass, admitting light in such wise as to keep out the wind, and yet letting in at chinks of the windows the air as if strained or percolated, and so much the more pestilential by being long stagnant. These defects he would remedy by having two or three sides of a house exposed to the sky, and all glazed windows so made that they should open wholly or shut wholly, and so shut that there might be no access of noxious winds through gaping seams; for if it be sometimes wholesome to admit the air, it is sometimes wholesome to keep it out. Inside the houses Erasmus professes to have seen a shocking state of things--the floors covered with rushes piled, the new upon the old, for twenty years without a clearance, befouled with all manner of filth, with spillings of beer and the remains of fish, with expectoration and vomit, with excrement and urine[631]. Here we have clearly to do with the intelligent foreigner. On the other hand, as far back as the reign of Richard I., Englishmen would appear to have contrasted their own personal habits with those of other nations, much as the summer tourist does now. English youths, it has been said, go through Europe with one phrase on their lips: “Foreigners don’t wash.” Richard of Devizes implies somewhat the same. A Frankish youth is being advised where to settle in England, Winchester being chosen by excluding the other towns one by one. Bristol, for example, was wholly given over to soap-boilers: everyone in Bristol was either a soap-boiler or a retired soap-boiler; “and the Franks love soap as much as they love scavengers[632].” We may cry quits, then, with Erasmus over the rush-strewn floors. It is clear, also, that the glazed fronts of English houses, which he took exception to, are the very feature of them that Sir Thomas More prided himself upon; in that as in other external things the London of his day seemed to him to leave little to be desired as the capital of Utopia, his chief subjects of remark being the shambles and the want of hospitals for the sick[633].
Thus, when we attempt to clear the sense of our rather mixed notions on the unwholesome life of former times, we must feel constrained to withdraw a great part of the accusation as to nuisances tolerated or scavenging neglected. Most of all was the government of Elizabeth marked by vigour in its attempts to restrain plague, not only by quarantine measures, but also by radical sanitation.
Queen Elizabeth and her Council were baffled by the persistence of plague in London in 1581-82-83; the infection pursued its own course despite all efforts to “stamp it out,” so that the letters from the lords of the Council to the mayor begin to assume a somewhat querulous and impatient tone[634]. To a letter of remonstrance, 21st September, 1581, the mayor replied next day that every precaution had been taken. On the 22nd March, 1582, the mayor retorted upon the Court that an artificer in leather, dwelling near Fleet Bridge, had the plague in his house, that his house had been shut up, and he restrained from going out; nevertheless he had access to the Court in the things of his art, both for the queen and her household. On the 1st September, 1582, the plague having greatly increased as appeared by certificate of the number of the dead during the last week, the Privy Council informed the mayor that this was in part “by negligence in not keeping the streets and other places about the city clean, and
## partly through not shutting up of the houses where the sickness had been
found, and setting marks upon the doors; but principally through not observing orders for prevention of the infection heretofore sent to them by the Council.” The mayor sent answer the same day that every care had been taken: the streets had been cleansed every other day; the parish clerks had been appointed to see to the shutting up of infected houses, and putting papers upon the doors; he had also appointed some of his own officers to go up and down the city to view and inform him whether these things had been done.
So much did the Council believe, or affect to believe, that the mayor could control the plague if he carried out their orders, that they used the adjournment of the law courts as a threat to the city. On the 15th October, the Term was announced to be held at Hertford, and all persons from infected London houses were forbidden to repair thither with merchandise, victual, &c.[635]. Then follow in January, 1583, letters touching an impracticable attempt of the Privy Council to have a list printed of all inns and taverns that had been infected within the last two months. The mayor made a catalogue which was pronounced too long. On 21st April, 1583, the infection had much increased, and the lords of the Council again urged upon the mayor to have infected houses shut up, and provision made for feeding and maintaining the inmates thereof. They desired to express her majesty’s surprise that no house or hospital had been built without the city, in some remote place, to which the infected people might be removed, although other cities of less antiquity, fame, wealth, and reputation had provided themselves with such places, whereby the lives of the inhabitants had been in all times of infection chiefly preserved. The mayor, on 3rd May, wrote that the Court of Aldermen had published orders for the stay of the plague; but that they were comparatively powerless so long as crowds of the worst sort of people resorted to see plays, bear-baiting, fencers, and profane spectacles at the theatre, and Curtain, and other the like places.
The plague pursued its own course, wholly unaffected, so far as one can see, by everything that was tried. One thing that was not touched by the sanitary policy, was probably more relevant than all else to the continuance of plague--the disposal of the dead. The theoretical importance attached to that as an original cause of plague has been avowed in the chapter on the Black Death. We have here to see how the theory of it as a favouring thing for the continuance of the infection squares with the facts in such a city as London under the Plantagenets and Tudors.
The Disposal of the Dead.
Intramural interment was one of the most cherished practices of Christendom so long as the word “intramural” had a literal meaning. Hence the correctness of the imagery used of the Spiritual City:
“To work and watch, until we lie At rest within thy wall.”
Probably each of the one hundred and twenty small parish churches of London in the medieval period stood in its small churchyard. In an exceptional time like the Black Death, these proved insufficient for the daily burials: three new cemeteries were enclosed and consecrated outside the walls--two of them in Smithfield and the other at Aldgate. These all soon passed into the hands of friars, and became the grounds of monasteries. The churches or churchyards of monasteries were in great request for burial, but not for common burials, or for burials in a time of epidemic. The ‘Vision of Piers the Ploughman’ is clear enough that the friars took no large view of their duties; they affected the care of the dead, but only if they were well paid:
“For I said I nold | be buried at their house but at my parish church. | For I heard once how conscience it told | that where a man was christened by kynde [nature] he should be buried, | or where he were parishen, right there he should be graven. | And for I said this to friar, a fool they me held | and loved me the less for my lele speech | ... I have much marveil of you and so hath many another | why your convent coveteth to confess and to bury | rather than to baptise bairns that ben catechumens.”
The reason why the friars paid so much attention to burials was that these rites were the most profitable:
“And how that freris [friars] folowed folke that was riche | and folke that was pore at litel price they sette, | and no corps in their kirk-yerde ne in their kyrke was buried | but quick he bequeath them aught or should help quit their debts.”
The friars in the towns would appear, then, to have been as much in request for the disposal of the dead within their precincts as the monks were in the country, both alike taking a certain part of that duty out of the hands of the regular parish clergy. Hence we may assign a good many burials, perhaps mostly of the richer class, as in Stow’s long lists of conventual burials, to the various precincts of Whitefriars, Blackfriars, Greyfriars (within Newgate) or Friars Minor (Minories), Carthusians, or other settlements of the religious orders in the city and liberties of London. It is not unlikely that the narrow spaces for burial in and around the old churches in the streets and lanes of the city were already getting crowded, and that the friars naturally acquired a large share of the business of burial because their consecrated houses and enclosed grounds were situated where there was most room, namely in the skirt of the Liberties, or in waste spaces within the walls.
The parish churchyards within the walls became insufficient, not merely because of the generations of the dead, but because they were encroached upon. In 1465 the churchyard of St Mary le Bow in Cheapside was so encroached upon by building of houses that John Rotham or Rodham, citizen and tailor, by his will gave to the parson and churchwardens a certain garden in Hosier-lane to be a churchyard; which, says Stow, so continued near a hundred years, but now is built on and is a private man’s house[636]. In like manner there was a colony of Brabant weavers settled in the churchyard of St Mary Somerset, and the great house of the earl of Oxford stood in St Swithin’s churchyard, near London Stone. John Stow’s grandfather directed that his body should be buried “in the little green churchyard of the parish church of St Michael in Cornhill, between the cross and the church wall, as nigh the wall as may be.” For some years previous to 1582, as many as 23 of the city parishes were using St Paul’s churchyard for their dead, having parted with their own burial grounds. But in that year (letter of 3 April, 1582[637]) the number of parishes privileged to use St Paul’s churchyard was reduced to 13, the ten restrained parishes being provided for in the cemetery gifted to the city in 1569 by Sir Thomas Roe, outside Bishopsgate, “for the ease of such parishes in London as wanted ground convenient within the parishes.” The state of St Paul’s churchyard may be imagined from the words of a remonstrance made two years after, in 1584: “The burials are so many, and by reason of former burials so shallow, that scarcely any grave could be made without corpses being laid open[638].” Twenty years before, in 1564, or the year after the last great plague which we have dealt with, Medicus, one of the speakers in Bullein’s _Dialogue of the Fever Pestilence_ brings in “the multitude of graves in every churchyard, and great heaps of rotten bones, whom we know not of what degree they were, rich or poor, in their lives.”
St Paul’s churchyard would appear to have received the dead of various parishes from an early date. There was a large charnel house for the bones of the dead on the north side, with a chapel over it, dedicated to the Virgin and endowed in 1282. Stow says that the chapel was pulled down in 1549, and that “the bones of the dead, couched up in a charnel under the chapel, were conveyed from thence into Finsbury field, by report of him who paid for the carriage, amounting to more than one thousand cart-loads, and there laid on a moorish ground, in short space after raised, by soilage of the city upon them, to bear three windmills. The chapel and charnel were converted into dwelling-houses, warehouses, and sheds before them, for stationers, in place of the tombs.” Elsewhere he names Reyne Wolfe, stationer, as the person who paid for the carriage of the bones and “who told me of some thousands of carry-loads, and more to be conveyed.” From this we may infer that the graves were systematically emptied as each new corpse came to be buried, according to the principle of a “short tenancy of the soil” which is being re-advocated at the end of the 19th century by the Church of England Burial Reform Association.
The spaces reserved for burial around the newer parish churches in the liberties, such as St Sepulchre’s and St Giles’s, Cripplegate, were gradually pared down and let out for buildings by the parish. Stow, in his _Survey_ of 1598, says that St Sepulchre’s church stands “in a fair churchyard, although not so large as of old time, for the same is letten out for buildings and a garden plot.” The records of St Giles’s, Cripplegate, show that rents were received by the parish for detached portions of the churchyard in 1648[639].
To take an instance of new city graveyards still remaining: The old fifteenth-century parishes of St Ewin and St Nicholas in the Flesh Shambles became united in the parish of Christ Church within Newgate, which, under that name, buried many, as we may read in Stow’s _Survey_. At length its burial ground was full, and it acquired a not very large plot next to the churchyard of St Botolph’s outside Aldersgate. Its neighbour parish within the walls, St Leonard’s in Foster Lane, acquired the next conterminous plot for its new burial-ground. All three graveyards are now thrown into one strip of public garden by the removal of the two cross walls which originally kept the ground of each parish separate.
While the graveyards were thus curtailed, and dwelling-houses built close up to them, the mode of burial was none of the safest. To take the instance of the great Cripplegate parish again: some few, like John Milton, would be buried within the church in leaden coffins; others would be laid in the ground of the churchyard in the same way, full burial dues being paid; but many more, for whom the dues were remitted, would be buried in a sheet, with no coffin at all, in the part of the churchyard reserved for the poor[640]. For the parish of St Saviour’s, Southwark, the scale of burial dues was as follows: “In any churchyard next the church, with a coffin, 2_s._ 8_d._; without a coffin, 20_d._; for a child with a coffin, 8_d._; without a coffin, 4_d._ The colledge churchyard, with a coffin, 12_d._; without a coffin, 8_d._” One of their broadsheets, dated 1580, has a picture of a body ready for burial in a cerecloth, a close fitting covering tied at the head and feet, and neatly finished[641].
It is not to be supposed that no voices were raised against the overcrowding of the old city churchyards. Intramural burial is one of the many practical topics in Latimer’s sermons: in 1552 he denounced the state of St Paul’s churchyard as an occasion of “much sickness and disease,” appealing to its notorious smells; the citizens of Nain, he said, “had a good and laudable custom to bury their corses without the city, which ensample we may follow[642].” Preaching at Paul’s Cross on the 8th of August, 1563, when the plague was already destroying at the rate of five hundred in a week, Turner, commonly called Turner of Boulogne, made two solemn petitions to my lord mayor of London: the one was that the dead of the city should be buried out of the city in the field; the other was that no bell should be tolled for them when they lay at the mercy of God departing out of this present life, “for that the tolling of the bell did the party departing no good, neither afore their death nor after[643].” In the writings on plague, putrefying animal matters, such as carrion or offal, are always mentioned among the causes; but it is only rarely that the ordinary burial of the dead is referred to. In the seventeenth century, the filling of the soil with products of cadaveric decomposition played a greater part in the theory of plague, especially in the writings of Prosper Alpinus, physician to the Venetian consulate at Cairo. Among English books, the treatise on Plague by Dr Gilbert Skene, of Edinburgh (1568), is the only one that is at all clear upon the point. In his fourth chapter, on the places which be most pestilential, he includes the localities “where many dead are buried,” the ground there becoming “fat and vaporative;” and in his first chapter, on causes in general, he instances “dead carrions unburied, in special of mankind, which, by similitude of nature, is most nocent to man, as every brutal is most infectant and pestilential to their own kind.” But even if these truths had been generally apprehended, religious prescription and usage would have been too strong to allow of radical measures being adopted. The grand provocative of plague was no obvious nuisance above ground, but the loading of the soil, generation after generation, with an immense quantity of cadaveric matters, which were diffused in the pores of the ground under the feet of the living, to rise in emanations, more deadly in one season than in another, according as the level of the ground-water and the heat of the earth determined the degree of oxidation, or the formation of the more dangerous half-way products of decomposition.
So little is known of the great plagues of London in 1406-7, 1464, 1479, 1500, and 1513, that we can only conjecture how the dead, to the number perhaps of one hundred in a day at the height of the epidemic, were disposed of--probably in trenches in the fields of Whitechapel, Smithfield and Finsbury, or in such parishes as St Sepulchre’s. The skirts of the city were used also to deposit the soil upon. Thus it happened that the ground outside the walls, which came in time to be the densely populated liberties and out-parishes, and the chief seat of all later plagues, had for generations before received the refuse of the city and a large proportion of the bodies of the dead. An instance mentioned by Stow, in 1598, may be taken as standing for many more: “On the right hand, beyond Shoreditch Church toward Hackney, are some late-built houses upon the common soil; for it was a lay-stall.”
What remains to be said of localities and circumstances of plague in London will come in with the history of successive epidemics, which we may now resume and carry to the end of the Tudor period.
Chronology of Plague, 1564-1592.
The amount of plague in London for the two or three years next following the great epidemic in the autumn of 1563 is accurately known from Stow’s abstracts of the weekly bills of mortality. It was exceedingly little, the deaths being but one or two or three in a week, and often none. The figures come to an end with July, 1566, and it is probable that the bills may not have been made for a time after that. The proposal made by Sir Roger Martyn in a letter of 20th October, 1568, to the earl of Northumberland, that all strangers arriving from over sea should be quarantined at Gravesend, would have been instigated by the known prevalence of plague and other malignant types of sickness in Scotland and at various parts of the continent of Europe. It was just in those years, before and after the founding of the Royal Exchange in 1566, that the concourse of merchants to London, especially from the war-troubled Low Countries and France, was greatest.
The revival of plague in London, after the great epidemic of 1563, was probably in 1568. In the city records there are orders relating to searchers, shutting up of houses, and collections for infected households, dated 12 October, 1568 (10 Elizabeth), 27 March and 19 October, 1569. But in 1568 the regulations, like the proposal for quarantine of shipping, may have been made more against the importation of cases from outside than on account of cases actually in London. It is in 1569 that we definitely hear of plague in the capital:--
“The plague of pestilence somewhat raging in the city of London, Michaelmas Term was first adjourned unto the 3rd of November, and after unto Hillary Term next following[644].” This outbreak of the autumn and winter of 1569 must have been considerable: for we find the earl of Essex writing from York on the 30th October to Cecil to say that he would have come to London before “had not the plague stayed him[645];” and Thomas Bishop, giving account of his movements to the Council, says that he remained in London until the 10th October, “when the plague increasing, I departed[646].”
The year 1570 was one of the more disastrous plague-years on the Continent, that now recur somewhat frequently down to the end of the century. “There was general disease of pestilence,” says Stow, “throughout all Europe, in such sort that many died of God’s tokens, chiefly amongst the Venetians, of whom there died of that cruel sickness about threescore thousand.” In London, on 2nd August, a death in the Tower was put down to plague; but there is no other evidence of its prevalence in the capital[647]. In the beginning of next winter, 1571, there was plague at Cambridge (letter of 18th November)[648]; and at Oxford in the same year it left such misery, says Anthony Wood, that divers scholars were forced to beg[649]. In 1573 it reappeared in London, at its usual season, the end of the year: it raged so violently “that the Queen ordered the new Lord Mayor not to keep the usual feast upon his inauguration[650].” The register of St Andrew’s parish, at Hertford, bears witness to the flight of Londoners to that favourite refuge; there were numerous burials of the plague in 1573, and in subsequent years, many of them being of London citizens[651]. It was in London again in 1574: a letter of 15 November, to the sheriff and justices of Surrey, orders that they should not allow the people to resort to plays and shows [in Southwark] “at that time of contagion[652],” while the figures from a weekly bill of mortality, which have been preserved, show that the outbreak had been one of the more considerable degree--for the week 22-28 October, in the city and liberties (108 parishes), buried of all diseases, 166, whereof of the plague, 65[653].
The known provincial centres in 1574 were Stamford, Peterborough and Chester. The Stamford visitation was one of a good many that the town suffered from first to last, and must have been a severe one; in one month, from 8 August to 7 September, 40 had been buried of the plague, “and the town is so rudely governed, they have so mixed themselves, that there is none that is in any hope of being clear. It is in seventeen houses, and the town is in great poverty; but that the good people of the country send in victuals, there would many die of famine. St Martin’s parish is clear[654].” The corporation records also bear witness to the confusion caused, the new bailiffs having been sworn in before the Recorder in a field outside, instead of in the usual place[655]. Peterborough, which was not far off, is known to have had a visitation, from an entry in the parish register, “1574, January. Here began the plague[656].” At Chester, “plague began, but was stayed with the death of some few in the crofts[657].”
The year 1575 is somewhat singular for an epidemic of plague in Westminster, but none in the city of London: the deaths for one week in the former are known[658]; and, as regards the immunity of London, Cecil had removed previous to 16 September, from Westminster to Sir Thomas Gresham’s house in the City to avoid the infection[659]. It had been at Cambridge in the winter of 1574-5, and was “sore” in Oxford down to November, 1575.
The same year, 1575, was a season of severe plague in Bristol and other places of the west of England. Some 2000 are said (in the Mayor’s Calendar) to have died in Bristol between St James’s tide (July 25) when the infection “began to be very hot,” and Paul’s tide (January 25)[660]. As early as the 11th July, the corporation of Wells had ordered measures against the plague in Bristol; but Wells also appears to have had a visitation, if the 200 persons buried, according to tradition, in the “plague-pit” near the north-eastern end of the Cathedral (besides many more buried in the fields) had been victims of the disease in 1575[661]. At Shrewsbury in that year the fairs were removed on account of plague[662]. From a claim of damages which came before the Court of Requests in 1592, it appears that plague had been in Cheshire in 1576; at Northwich the house of one Phil. Antrobus was infected and most of the family died; on which some linens in the house, worth not more than 13_sh._ 4_d._ were put in the river lest they should be used; the son, who was a tailor, claimed compensation, through the earl of Derby, sixteen years after[663].
At Hull, in 1576, there was an outbreak, small compared with some other visitations there, in the Blackfriars Gate, the deaths being about one hundred[664]. It is somewhat remarkable to find the borough of Kirkcudbright making regulations in the month of January, 1577, a most unlikely season, to prevent the introduction of the plague then raging on the Borders[665]. In September, 1577, there were issued orders to be put in execution throughout the realm in towns and villages infected with the plague. More definitely it is heard of on 21 October at Rye and Dover, and on 3 November, 1577, in London.
We now come to a series of years, 1578 to 1583, for which we have full
## particulars of the burials in London, from plague and other causes, and of
the christenings. These valuable statistics, the earliest known, are preserved among the papers of Lord Burghley, who procured them from the lord mayor of London[666], and are here given in full, having been copied from the MS. in the library of Hatfield House[667].
_Abstracts of Burials and Baptisms in London, 1578-1583_
1578
Week Of Of other ending Dead plague diseases Christened
Jan. 2 62 7 55 66 9 90 12 78 52 16 63 14 49 59 23 95 33 62 59 30 82 25 57 65 Feb. 6 88 24 64 51 13 102 25 77 59 20 100 26 74 77 27 84 12 72 84 Mar. 6 79 10 69 58 13 66 9 57 53 20 75 5 70 57 27 63 12 51 60 Apr. 3 96 19 77 64 10 89 25 64 67 17 102 31 71 66 24 91 37 54 62 May 1 109 25 84 44 8 116 33 83 37 15 141 43 98 48 22 109 36 73 66 29 119 34 85 43 June 5 99 38 61 51 12 91 35 56 41 19 76 34 42 54 26 75 18 57 48 July 3 92 34 58 52 10 99 35 64 48 17 98 39 59 52 24 129 63 66 49 31 100 41 59 59 Aug. 7 132 73 59 76 14 152 78 74 72 21 232 134 98 63 28 205 113 92 58 Sept. 4 257 162 95 84 11 297 183 114 64 18 308 189 119 68 25 330 189 141 72 Oct. 2 370 230 140 76 9 388 234 154 62 16 361 234 127 73 23 281 175 106 58 30 258 130 128 68 Nov. 6 278 127 151 60 13 230 116 114 64 20 172 77 95 66 27 155 84 71 68 Dec. 4 160 77 83 60 11 161 65 96 69 18 129 44 85 62 25 94 20 74 68 ---- ---- ---- ---- 7830 3568 4262 3150
1579
Week Of Of other ending Dead plague diseases Christened
Jan. 1 100 27 73 54 8 67 13 54 68 15 75 16 59 74 22 63 9 54 81 29 79 19 60 75 Feb. 5 84 23 61 46 12 81 16 65 63 19 69 15 54 61 26 70 10 60 77 Mar. 5 51 6 45 71 12 61 16 45 72 19 66 10 56 65 26 75 13 62 68 Apr. 2 81 19 62 53 9 82 27 55 79 16 77 22 55 53 23 58 10 48 44 30 71 10 61 57 May 7 64 12 52 51 14 68 14 54 42 21 75 12 63 54 28 78 13 65 47 June 4 66 7 59 56 11 49 7 42 46 18 74 14 60 60 25 65 13 52 45 July 2 57 11 46 50 9 62 9 53 66 16 73 19 54 52 23 72 12 60 63 30 72 13 59 67 Aug. 6 66 12 54 61 13 70 18 52 67 20 68 12 56 61 27 63 10 53 58 Sept. 3 66 14 52 65 10 85 25 60 55 17 66 11 55 80 24 44 8 36 63 Oct. 1 60 9 51 42 8 56 8 48 75 15 68 14 54 70 22 49 6 43 71 29 52 10 42 76 Nov. 5 47 8 39 66 12 37 2 35 69 19 60 2 58 84 26 44 6 38 69 Dec. 3 43 3 40 78 10 55 4 51 80 17 49 4 45 70 24 51 3 48 78 31 42 3 39 72 ---- ---- ---- ---- 3406 629 2777 3370
1580
Week Of Of other ending Dead plague diseases Baptised
Jan. 7 49 1 48 78 14 58 4 54 58 21 50 5 45 63 28 28 2 26 74 Feb. 4 54 5 49 81 11 49 2 47 91 18 47 3 44 81 25 48 3 45 68 Mar. 3 52 0 52 77 10 48 2 46 74 17 48 1 47 75 24 52 3 49 68 31 48 2 46 59 Apr. 7 48 1 47 77 14 53 1 52 78 21 40 1 39 74 28 43 1 42 75 May 5 58 1 57 72 12 54 0 54 69 19 40 2 38 75 26 44 0 44 72 June 2 36 1 35 59 9 41 0 41 54 16 46 2 44 60 23 55 2 53 59 30 47 4 43 57 July 7 77 4 73 65 14 133 4 129 66 21 146 3 143 61 28 96 5 91 64 Aug. 4 78 5 73 71 11 51 4 47 53 18 49 1 48 72 25 63 3 60 62 Sept. 1 48 0 48 71 8 35 2 33 69 13 52 1 51 69 22 52 1 51 95 29 65 2 63 55 Oct. 6 35 1 34 63 13 44 2 42 56 20 45 2 43 56 27 40 3 37 80 Nov. 3 60 7 53 75 10 59 5 54 67 17 57 3 54 75 24 45 2 43 70 Dec. 1 54 3 51 83 8 58 1 57 56 15 53 8 45 59 22 53 4 49 61 29 89 3 86 66 ---- ---- ---- ---- 2873 128 2745 3568
1581
Week Of Of other ending Dead plague diseases Baptised
Jan. 5 42 5 37 63 12 53 4 49 65 19 50 1 49 65 26 46 1 45 59 Feb. 2 49 2 47 56 9 38 0 38 63 16 48 0 48 87 23 56 5 51 52 Mar. 2 56 0 56 62 9 60 2 58 74 16 52 2 50 80 23 41 1 40 89 30 44 3 41 74 Apr. 6 42 2 40 39 13 47 1 46 53 20 37 1 36 41 27 37 2 35 60 May 4 47 0 47 52 11 40 1 39 50 18 46 1 45 59 25 64 13 51 62 June 1 48 4 44 60 8 57 2 55 56 15 65 7 58 62 22 57 6 51 73 29 56 7 49 52 July 6 72 9 63 62 13 69 9 60 64 20 94 19 75 70 27 95 24 71 89 Aug. 3 87 23 64 58 10 130 30 100 75 17 148 47 101 72 24 143 43 100 55 31 169 74 95 72 Sept. 7 186 85 101 54 14 180 76 114 59 21 203 86 117 55 28 218 60 158 88 Oct. 5 205 107 98 74 12 193 74 119 83 19 128 42 86 77 26 125 35 90 88 Nov. 2 115 45 70 85 9 93 26 67 61 16 23 30 [The figures in part Dec. 7 wanting, and in part 14 defaced.] 21 28 ---- ---- ---- ---- 3931 987 2954 2949 (45 weeks)
1582
(74 Parishes clear, week ending Jan. 4.)
Week Of Of other ending Dead plague diseases Baptised
Jan. 4 63 11 52 57 11 75 13 62 76 18 79 13 66 73 25 58 13 45 90 Feb. 1 73 5 68 66 8 71 12 59 77 15 76 16 60 88 22 82 10 72 74 Mar. 1 69 11 58 81 8 85 13 72 81 15 77 11 66 71 22 62 11 51 65 29 73 16 57 85 Apr. 5 90 13 77 74 12 78 19 59 63 19 88 22 66 56 26 82 20 62 69 May 3 95 23 72 55 10 68 12 56 62 17 62 11 51 59 24 61 10 51 61 31 57 15 42 65 June 7 67 15 52 49 14 48 11 37 52 21 72 11 61 63 28 57 9 48 62 July 5 60 20 40 54 12 88 25 63 66 19 80 30 50 61 26 99 31 68 65 Aug. 2 101 45 56 68 9 116 42 74 77 16 142 70 72 64 23 148 85 63 67 30 205 111 94 70 Sept. 6 229 139 90 74 13 277 189 88 79 20 246 151 95 76 27 267 145 122 63 Oct. 4 318 213 105 87 11 238 139 99 63 18 289 164 125 74 25 340 216 124 54 Nov. 1 290 131 159 66 8 248 149 99 77 15 202 98 104 70 22 227 119 108 74 29 263 124 139 63 Dec. 6 144 58 86 59 13 155 68 87 -- 20 -- -- -- -- 27 142 68 74 91 ---- ---- ---- ---- 6762 2976 3786 3433 (51 weeks)
1583
Week Of Of other ending Dead plague diseases Baptised
Jan. 3 137 50 87 69 10 140 57 83 53 17 160 72 88 67 24 162 59 103 59 31 144 40 104 73
These tables were compiled from weekly bills furnished to the Court, and doubtless drawn up like the bills of 1532 and 1535 to show the deaths from plague and from other causes in each of the several parishes in the City, Liberties and suburbs. It is clear that the results were known from week to week, for a letter of January 29, 1578, says that the plague is increased from 7 to 37 (? 33) deaths in three weeks. But that was not the beginning of the epidemic in London; it was rather a lull in a plague-mortality which is known to have been severe in the end of 1577, and had led to the prohibition of stage-plays in November[668].
In that series of five plague-years in London, only two, 1578 and 1582, had a large total of plague-deaths. The year 1580 was almost clear (128 deaths from plague), and may be taken as showing the ordinary proportion of deaths to births in London when plague did not arise to disturb it. The baptisms, it will be observed, are considerably in excess of the burials; and as every child was christened in church under Elizabeth, we may take it that we have the births fully recorded (with the doubtful exception of still-births and “chrisoms”). But while the one favourable year shows an excess of some 24 per cent. of baptisms over burials, the whole period of five years shows a shortcoming in the baptisms of 33 per cent. Thus we may see how seriously a succession of plague-years, at the endemic level of the disease, kept down the population; and, at the same time, how the numbers in the capital would increase rapidly from within, in the absence of plague. There is reason to think that plague was almost or altogether absent from London for the next nine years (1583 to 1592); and it is not surprising to find that the population, as estimated from the births, had increased from some 120,000 to 150,000. The increase of London population under Elizabeth was proceeding so fast, plague or no plague, that measures were taken in 1580 to check it. The increase of London has never depended solely upon its own excess of births over deaths; indeed, until the present century, there were probably few periods when such excess occurred over a series of years. Influx from the country and from abroad always kept London up to its old level of inhabitants, whatever the death-rate; and from the early part of the Tudor period caused it to grow rapidly. I shall review briefly in another chapter the stages in the growth of London, as it may be reckoned from bills of mortality and of baptisms. But as the proclamation of 1580, against new buildings, the first of a long series down to the Commonwealth, has special reference to the plague in the Liberties, and to the unwholesome condition of those poor skirts of the walled city, this is the proper place for it:
“The Queen’s Majesty perceiving the state of the city of London and the suburbs and confines thereof to encrease daily by access of people to inhabit in the same, in such ample sort as thereby many inconveniences are seen already, but many greater of necessity like to follow ... and [having regard] to the preservation of her people in health, which may seem impossible to continue, though presently by God’s goodness the same is perceived to be in better estate universally than hath been in man’s memory: yet there are such great multitudes of people brought to inhabit in small rooms, whereof a great part are seen very poor; yea, such must live of begging, or of worse means; and they heaped up together, and in a sort smothered with many families of children and servants in one house or small tenement; it must needs follow, if any plague or popular sickness should by God’s permission enter among those multitudes, that the same should not only spread itself and invade the whole city and confines, as great mortality should ensue the same, where her Majesty’s personal presence is many times required; besides the great confluence of people from all places of the realm by reason of the ordinary Terms for justice there holden; but would be also dispersed through all other parts of the realm to the manifest danger of the whole body thereof, out of which neither her Majesty’s own person can be (but by God’s special ordinance) exempted, nor any other, whatsoever they be.
For remedy whereof, as time may now serve until by some further good order, to be had in Parliament or otherwise, the same may be remedied, Her Majesty by good and deliberate advice of her Council, and being thereto much moved by the considerate opinions of the Mayor, Aldermen and other the grave, wise men in and about the city, doth charge and straitly command all persons of what quality soever they be to desist and forbear from any new buildings of any new house or tenement within three miles of any of the gates of the said city, to serve for habitation or lodging for any person, where no former house hath been known to have been in memory of such as are now living. And also to forbear from letting or setting, or suffering any more families than one only to be placed or to inhabit from henceforth in any house that heretofore hath been inhabited, etc.... Given at Nonesuch, the 7th of July, 1580[669].”
Among the more special suggestions of the mayor, on the causes and prevention of plague, previous to this proclamation were[670]:
1. The avoiding of inmates in places pretending exemption.
2. The restraining of the building of small tenements and turning great houses into small habitations by foreigners.
3. The increase of buildings in places exempt.
4. The increase of buildings about the Charterhouse, Mile End Fields; also at St Katherine’s along the water side.
5. The pestering of exempt places with strangers and foreign artificers.
6. The number of strangers in and about London of no church.
7. The haunting of plays out of the Liberties.
8. The killing of cattle within or near the city.
The best glimpses that we get of the plague in London in 1578 are in letters to Lord Burghley[671]. On October 22, the Recorder of London, Sir W. Fleetwood, writes to him that he “has been in Bucks since Michaelmas, because he was troubled every day with such as came to him having plague sores about them; and being sent by the Lords to search for lewd persons in sundry places, he found dead corses under the table, which surely did greatly annoy him.” It will be seen by the statistics that the deaths from all causes had risen to more than three hundred in a week before Michaelmas--a small mortality compared with that of 1563, or of any other London epidemic of the first degree. From other letters, relating to plague at St Albans, Ware and other places near London, it may be concluded that the citizens had escaped from London to their usual country resorts in plague-time. On August 30 there were said to be sixty cases of plague at St Albans, and on October 13 Ware is said to have been “of late” infected. Plague-deaths are entered also in the Hertford parish registers in 1577 and 1578[672]. On 14 September the infection was in the “Bull” at Hoddesdon (Herts), but the landlord refused to close his house against travellers on their way to the Court. On Oct. 13, 1578, two deaths are reported from Queens’ College, Cambridge, “the infection being taken by the company of a Londoner in Stourbridge Fair;” these two deaths had “moved many to depart” from the University[673]. In the same month it was at Bury St Edmunds. Earlier in the year, a letter from Truro (11 April) says that the plague was prevalent in Cornwall.
The epidemic of 1578 at Norwich was relatively a far more serious one than that of the capital, and was traced to the visit of the queen: “the trains of her Majesty’s carriage, being many of them infected, left the plague behind, which afterwards increased so and continued as it raged above one and three-quarter years after.” From August 20, 1578, to February 19, 1579, the deaths were 4817, of which 2335 were of English and 2482 of “alyan strangers,” ten aldermen being among the victims[674]. At Yarmouth, in 1579, two thousand are said to have died of the plague between May-day and Michaelmas[675]. Colchester had plague from December, 1578 to August, 1579[676]. It was at Ipswich and at Plymouth in 1579; the epidemic at the latter must have been severe, if the estimate of 600 deaths, given in the annals of the town, is to be trusted[677]. It was again at Stamford in 1580, as appears from an order of the corporation, September 7, prohibiting people from leaving the town[678]. Other centres of plague in 1580 were at Rye, which was cut off from intercourse with London[679], at Leicester, where an assessment for the visited was appointed by the common hall of the citizens[680], at Gloucester, from Easter to Michaelmas, and at Hereford and Wellington, the musters in October having been hindered by “the great infection of the plague[681].”
On February 4, 1582, six houses were shut up at Dover, and on September 12 there was plague in Windsor and Eton[682]. In the parish register of Cranbrooke (Kent), 18 burials are specially marked (as from plague) in 1581, 41 in 1582, and 22 in 1583[683]. It was much dispersed in the Isle of Sheppey, the year after (1584) from Michaelmas into the winter.
Although the years from the spring of 1583 to the autumn of 1592 appear to have been unmarked by plague in London, they witnessed a good many epidemics along the east coast, and in a few places elsewhere, of which the particulars are for the most part meagre.
A casual mention is made of plague at Yarmouth in 1584[684]. The town of Boston appears to have had plague continuously for four years from 1585 to 1588. In 1585 houses were shut up[685]; in 1586 a case at Southwell was supposed to have been imported from Boston[686]; in the parish register the burials from plague and other causes in 1587 reach the high figure of 372, and in 1588 they are 200, the average for eight years before being 122, and for twelve years after, only 84. In 1588 one Williams, of Holm, in Huntingdonshire, was sent for to cleanse infected houses in St John’s Row, which had been used as pest-houses[687]. Within ten miles round Boston the plague prevailed; at Leake there were 104 burials from November, 1587, to November, 1588, the annual average being 24; at Frampton there were 130 burials in 1586-87, the average being 30; at Kirton there were 57 burials in 1589, and 102 in 1590[688].
Another centre on the east coast was Wisbech. In 1585 it appeared in the hamlet of Guyhirne. In 1586 it entered Wisbech itself, caused the usual shutting up of houses, and so increased in 1587 that there were 42 burials in September and 62 in October[689], being three or four times more than average. It is mentioned also at Ipswich in 1585, and at Norwich in 1588[690]. At Derby, in 1586, there was plague in St Peter’s parish[691]. At Chesterfield in November, 1586, there were plague-deaths, and again in May 1587[692]. At Leominster, in 1587, there was an excessive mortality (209 burials)[693].
The other great centre on the east coast in those years was in Durham and Northumberland[694]. In 1587 the infection began to show at Hartlepool, and in the parishes of Stranton and Hart; at the latter village 89 were buried of the plague, one of them an unknown young woman who died in the street. In 1589 the plague entered Newcastle and raged severely; of 340 deaths in the whole year in St John’s parish, 103 occurred in September; the total mortality of the epidemic to the 1st January, 1590, was 1727. Durham also had a visitation in 1589, plague-huts having been erected on Elvet Moor. Those were years of scarcity, the year 1586 having been one of famine-prices.
The great event of the time was the defeat of the Spanish Armada off the French coast from Calais to Gravelines in the last days of July, 1588. A southerly gale sprang up, which drove the magnificent Spanish fleet past the Thames as far as the Orkneys. It was perhaps well for England that the winds parted the two fleets. The English ships, which had come to anchor in Margate Roads to guard the mouth of the Thames, were in two or three weeks utterly crippled by sickness. The disease must have been a very rapid and deadly infection. Lord Admiral Howard writes to the queen: “those that come in fresh are soonest infected; they sicken one day and die the next.” In a previous letter to Burghley he writes: “It is a most pitiful sight to see the men die in the streets of Margate. The Elizabeth Jonas has lost half her crew. Of all the men brought out by Sir Richard Townsend, he has but one left alive.” The ships were so weak that they could not venture to come through the Downs from Margate to Dover[695]. It is doubtful whether any part of this sickness and mortality was due to plague, which was not active anywhere in the south of England in that year. Want of food and want of clothes, and in the last resort the hardness and parsimony of Elizabeth, appear to have been the causes. Lord Howard begs for £1000 worth of new clothing, as the men were in great want, and Lord H. Seymour writes that “the men fell sick with cold.” Dysentery and typhus were doubtless the infections which had been bred, and became communicable to the fresh drafts of men. But in the Spanish ships, beating about on the high seas and unable to land their men or even to help each other, the sickness grew into true plague, so that the broken remnants of the Armada which reached Corunna were like so many floating pest-houses.
In 1590 and 1591, at a clear interval from the Armada year, there was much plague in Devonshire. The evidence of its having been in Plymouth comes solely from the corporation accounts; at various times in 1590 and 1591 there were paid, “ten shillings to one that all his stuff was burned for avoiding the sickness,” a sum of £5. 19_s._ for houses shut, and a like sum to persons kept in, and sixteen shillings to four men “to watch the townes end for to stay the people of the infected places[696].” The chief epidemics, however, appear to have been at Totness in 1590 and at Tiverton in 1591. The parish register of Totness enters the “first of the plague, Margary, the daughter of Mr Wyche of Dartmouth, June 22, 1590,” from which it may be inferred that plague was first at Dartmouth, nine miles down the river, and had ascended to Totness. The following monthly mortalities will show how severe the infection became at Totness in the summer and autumn immediately following[697]:
July 42 (36 of plague, 6 not), August 81 (80 of plague, 1 not), September 39 (all of plague), October 37 (all of plague), November 25 (24 of plague, 1 not), December 19 (all of plague), January, 1591, 10 of plague, February 1 of plague.
This heavy mortality from plague (246 deaths) was hardly over, when the infection began in March, 1591, at Tiverton. It is said to have been introduced by one William Waulker “a waulking man or traveller.” From 1st March, 1591, to 1st March, 1592, the deaths from plague and other causes were 551, or about one in nine of the population[698].
The London Plague of 1592-1593.
The epidemic of plague, which reached its height in the year 1593, began to be felt in London in the autumn of 1592[699], and is said to have caused 2000 deaths before the end of the year. On the 7th September, soldiers from the north on their way to Southampton to embark for foreign parts had to pass round London “to avoid the infection which is much spread abroad” in the city. On the 16th September, the spoil of a great Spanish carrack at Dartmouth could be brought no farther than Greenwich, on account of the contagion in London; no one to go from London to Dartmouth to buy the goods. It was an ominous sign that the infection lasted through the winter; even in mid winter people were leaving London: “the plague is so sore that none of worth stay about these places[700].” On the 6th April, 1593, one William Cecil who had been kept in the Fleet prison by the queen’s command, writes that “the place where he lies is a congregation of the unwholesome smells of the town, and the season contagious, so many have died of the plague[701].” From a memorial of 1595, it appears that the neighbourhood of Fleet Ditch had been the most infected part of the whole city and liberties in 1593; “in the last great plague more died about there than in three parishes besides[702].” The epidemic does not appear to have reached its height until summer; on 12th June, a letter states that “the plague is very hot in London and other places of the realm, so that a great mortality is expected this summer.” On 3 July the Court “is in out places, and a great part of the household cut off [? dispensed with].” The infection is mentioned in letters down to November, after which date its public interest, at least, appears to have ceased.
Of that London epidemic a weekly record was kept by the Company of Parish Clerks, and published by them, beginning with the weekly bill of 21st December, 1592. The clerk of the Company of Parish Clerks, writing in 1665, had the annual bill for 1593 before him, with the plague-deaths and other deaths in each of 109 parishes in alphabetical order, and the christenings as well[703]. For the next two years, 1594 and 1595, he appears to have had before him not only the annual bills but also a complete set of the weekly bills of burials and christenings according to parishes. The same documents were used by Graunt in 1662, and had doubtless been used by John Stow at the time when they were published. The originals are all lost, and only a few totals extracted from them remain on record. To begin with Stow’s. The mortality of 17,844 from all causes in 1593 is given as for the City and Liberties only. But there was already a considerable population in the parishes immediately beyond the Bars of the Liberties, which were known as the nine out-parishes, namely those of St Clement Danes, St Giles in the Fields, St James, Clerkenwell, St Katharine at the Tower, St Leonard, Shoreditch, St Martin in the Fields, St Mary, Whitechapel, St Magdalen, Bermondsey, and the Savoy. Besides these there were important parishes still farther out--the Westminster parishes, Lambeth, Newington, Stepney, Hackney and Islington. Of these, Whitechapel, Stepney, Shoreditch, Clerkenwell and some of the western parishes contributed largely to the plague-bills of the epidemics next following, in 1603 and 1625, and it is known from the parish registers of some of them that they contributed to the mortality of 1593. It is probably to these parishes that we should ascribe the difference between the above total of 17,844 (for City and Liberties) and the much larger total of deaths “in and about London,” given on the margin of a broadside of 1603: “And in the last visitation from the 20th of December, 1592 to the 23rd of the same month in the year 1593, died in all 25,886--of the plague in and about London 15,003.” The addition for the parishes beyond the Bars would thus be 8,042 deaths from all causes, and from plague alone 4,541--numbers which will seem not inadmissible if they be compared with the figures for the corresponding parishes ten years after, in 1603, Stepney alone having had 2,257 deaths in that plague-year[704].
For the two years next following 1593, Graunt’s book of 1662 has preserved the totals of deaths from all causes and from plague in the 97 old parishes within the walls and in 16 parishes of the Liberties and suburbs; he has omitted the christenings, although he had the figures before him. Taking these along with the figures already given for 1593, we get the following table for three consecutive years:
---------------------------------------------- | Plague | Other | Total | Year | deaths | deaths | deaths | Christenings -----|--------|--------|--------|------------- 1593 | 10,662 | 7,182 | 17,844 | 4,021 1594 | 421 | 3,508 | 3,929 | -- 1595 | 29 | 3,478 | 3,507 | -- ----------------------------------------------
The proportion of mortality in 1593 that fell to the old area within the walls is known, from Stow’s abstract of the figures, to have been about the same as in the space of the Liberties (8598 in the one, 9295 in the other), the deaths from other causes than plague having been rather more in the latter than within the walls. Probably the population in the Liberties was about equal to that in the City proper, the acreage being rather less in the former, but the crowding, doubtless, greater.
The London plague of 1592-93 called forth two known publications, an anonymous ‘Good Councell against the Plague, showing sundry preservatives ... to avoyde the infection lately begun in some places of this Cittie’ (London, 1592), and the ‘Defensative’ of Simon Kellwaye (April, 1593). The dates of these two books show that the alarm had really begun in the end of 1592 and early months of 1593. Kellwaye’s book is mostly an echo of foreign writings, the only part of it with direct interest for English practice being the 11th chapter, which “teacheth what orders magistrates and rulers of Citties and townes shoulde cause to be observed.” As that chapter sums up the various Elizabethan and other orders, and constitutes a short epitome of sanitary practice, I append it in full:
“Teacheth what orders magistrates and rulers of Citties and townes shoulde cause to be observed.
1. First to command that no stinking doonghills be suffered neere the Cittie.
2. Every evening and morning in the hot weather to cause colde water to be cast in the streetes, especially where the infection is, and every day to cause the streets to be kept cleane and sweete, and clensed from all filthie thinges which lye in the same.
3. And whereas the infection is entred, there to cause fires to be made in the streetes every morning and evening, and if some frankincense, pitch or some other sweet thing be burnt therein it will be much the better.
4. Suffer not any dogs, cattes, or pigs to run about the streets, for they are very dangerous, and apt to carry the infection from place to place.
5. Command that the excrements and filthy things which are voided from the infected places be not cast into the streets, or rivers which are daily in use to make drink or dress meat.
6. That no Chirurgions, or barbers, which use to let blood, do cast the same into the streets or rivers.
7. That no vautes or previes be then emptied, for it is a most dangerous thing.
8. That all Inholders do every day make clean their stables, and cause the doong and filth therein to be carryed away out of the Cittie; for, by suffering it in their houses, as some do use to do, a whole week or fortnight, it doth so putrifie that when it is removed, there is such a stinking savour and unwholesome smell, as is able to infect the whole street where it is.
9. To command that no hemp or flax be kept in water neere the Cittie or towne, for that will cause a very dangerous and infectious savour.
10. To have a speciall care that good and wholesome victuals and corne be solde in the markets, and so to provide that no want thereof be in the Cittie, and for such as have not wherewithall to buy necessary food, that there to extend their charitable and goodly devotion; for there is nothing that will more encrease the plague than want and scarcity of necessary food.
11. To command that all those which do visit and attend the sick, as also all those which have the sickness on them, and do walk abroad: that they do carry something in their hands, thereby to be known from other people.
Lastly, if the infection be in but few places, there to keep all the people in their houses, all necessaries being brought to them. When the plague is staid, then to cause all the clothes, bedding, and other such things as were used about the sick to be burned, although at the charge of the rest of the inhabitants you buy them all new.”
The letters of the time give us a glimpse of this plague in London. On November 3, 1593, Richard Stapes writes to Dr Cæsar, judge of the Admiralty Court, residing at St Albans (doubtless to escape the infection): “My next door neighbour and tenant on Sunday last buried his servant of the plague, and since, on the other side of me, my son-in-law has buried his servant; but I cannot say his was the sickness because the visitors reported that the tokens did not appear on him as on the other[705].”
The epidemic of 1592-93 continued in London at a low level into the year 1594, when 421 persons died of the plague in the City and Liberties. Next year the plague-deaths had fallen to 29. Watford and Hertford, two of the most usual resorts of Londoners in a sickly season, were infected by plague from 1592 to 1594, many of the deaths being of refugees from the capital. At Watford there were 124 burials in the first eight months of 1594, a number much above the average, and many of them marked in the register as plague-deaths[706]. At Hertford plague-deaths appear in the registers of All Saints and St Andrew’s parishes in 1592 and 1594. But the greatest mortality at Hertford was in 1596; in St Andrew’s parish there were 13 burials in March, the average being one or two in the month; the mortality declined until July, in which month there were buried, among others, between the 12th and 26th, five children of one of the chief burgesses (mayor in 1603)[707]. These may or may not have been plague-deaths, the year 1596 having been unhealthy, as we shall see, with other types of sickness.
Meanwhile, in several provincial towns at a greater distance from the capital than the summer resorts in Hertfordshire, there was plague in the end of 1592, at the same time as in London, and in the following years. At Derby, “the great plague and mortality” began in All Saints parish and in St Alkmund’s, at Martinmas, 1592, and ended at Martinmas, 1593, stopping suddenly, “past all expectation of man, what time it was dispersed in every corner of this whole parish, not two houses together being free from it[708].” At Lichfield in 1593 and 1594 upwards of 1100 are said to have died of the plague[709]. At Leicester, on the 21st September, 1593, a contribution was levied for the plague-stricken[710]. At Shrewsbury in 1592-3 there was either plague itself or alarms of it[711]; in the parish of Bishop’s Castle there was the enormous mortality of 135 in July and August, 1593, and 182 burials for the year, the average being 25[712]. In the same years the infection was in Canterbury, as appears from entries of payments “to Goodman Ledes watchying at Anthony Howes dore ... when his house was first infected with the plague,” and, the year after, “to those ii pore folkes which were appointed to carry such to burial as died of the plague; and also to the woman that was appointed to sock them[713].” There are also various references to houses visited and to poor persons relieved. Nottingham and Lincoln are also mentioned as having been notoriously afflicted with plague in 1593[714].
A solitary record of plague comes from Cornwall in 1595. On 3rd May a letter from the justices at Tregony to the Privy Council states that the inhabitants, having been charged by the justices at the General Sessions to restrain divers infected houses within the borough, were molested in executing these commands, and had made complaint thereof[715].
All that remains to be said of plague in England until the end of the Tudor period (1603) relates exclusively to the provinces; unless the records are defective, London was clear of plague for nine years following 1592-94, just as it was clear for nine years preceding. The year 1597 was one of great scarcity in more than one region of England. At Bristol wheat is quoted at the incredible figure of twenty shillings the bushel; a civic ordinance was made that every person of ability should keep in his house as many poor persons as his income would allow[716]. But it is from the North of England in 1597 that we have more particular accounts of famine and of plague in its train. Writing in January, 1597, the dean of Durham says[717]:
“Want and waste have crept into Northumberland, Westmoreland and Cumberland; many have come 60 miles from Carlisle to Durham to buy bread, and sometimes for 20 miles there will be no inhabitant. In the bishopric of Durham, 500 ploughs have decayed in a few years, and corn has to be fetched from Newcastle, whereby the plague is spread in the northern counties: tenants cannot pay their rents; then whole families are turned out, and poor boroughs are pestered with four or five families under one roof.”
On the 16th of January, 1597, he wrote again: “In Northumberland great villages are depeopled, and there is no way to stop the enemy’s attempt; the people are driven to the poor port towns.” On the 26th of May, the dean again complains that there is great dearth in Durham; some days 500 horses are at Newcastle for foreign corn, although that town and Gateshead are dangerously infected. On the 17th September, Lord Burghley, minister of State, is informed that the plague increases at Newcastle, so that the Commissioners cannot yet come thither (the Assizes were not held at all on account of plague about Newcastle and Durham): foreign traders were selling corn at a high price, until some members of the town council produced a stock of corn for sale at a shilling a bushel less[718]. There are no figures extant of the plague-mortality at Newcastle in 1597; but at Darlington the deaths up to October 17 were 340; and in Durham, up to October 27, more than 400 in Elvet, 100 in St Nicholas, 200 in St Margaret’s, 60 in St Giles’s, 60 in St Mary’s, North Bailey, and 24 in the gaol. The whole mortality in St Nicholas parish from July 11 to November 27 was 215. Many of the burials were on the moor. The infection broke out again at Darlington and Durham in September, 1598[719].
Coincident with this severe plague on the eastern side, there was an equally disastrous plague in the North Riding of Yorkshire and in Cumberland and Westmoreland. The plague began at Richmond in the autumn of 1597. In August there were 23 deaths, and in September 42 deaths. The epidemic appears to have reached its height in the summer of 1598, the deaths in May having been 93, in June 99, in July 182 and in August 194. These figures indicate a grievous calamity in so small a place as Richmond. The outbreak which began on the 17th August, 1597, was over in December, 1598. The stress of the epidemic is shown by the fact that the churchyard was insufficient for the burials, many of the dead having been buried in the Castle Yard and in Clarke’s Green[720]. Of this severe plague in Cumberland and Westmoreland there are few exact particulars. According to an inscription at Penrith Church, “on the north outside of the vestry, in the wall, in rude characters[721],” the deaths in 1598 were:--
At Penrith 2260, " Kendal 2500, " Richmond 2200, " Carlisle 1196.
We are able to measure the accuracy of these round totals by the monthly burials for Richmond given above; the months of July and August, 1598, with 182 and 194 deaths respectively, were the most deadly season; and it is hardly conceivable that there had been as many as 1800 deaths at Richmond in the months when the epidemic was rising to a height and declining therefrom according to its usual curve of intensity.
Again, the parish register of Penrith gives only 583 deaths from the infection, the inscription on the church wall making them 2260. Perhaps the discrepancy is to be explained by including the mortality in the various parishes of which Richmond, Penrith, Kendal and Carlisle were respectively the centres and market-towns. Thus at Kirkoswald there were buried, according to the parish register, 42 of the pestilence in 1597, and no fewer than 583 in 1598[722],--a number which, if correct, means a death-rate comparable to that of the Black Death itself. Again, in the small parish of Edenhall, 42 were buried of the pestilence in 1598[723]. Appleby, also, is known to have had a severe visitation[724], and so had probably many other parishes.
The Tudor period of plague closes with a severe epidemic at Stamford, which began in the end of 1602. On December 2 the corporation resolved to build a cabin for the plague-stricken, and in January following they levied a fourth part of a fifteenth for the relief and maintenance of people visited with the plague. This epidemic is said to have carried off nearly 600; the parish registers of St George’s and St Michael’s contain entries of persons “buried at the cabbin of the White Fryers[725].”
Plague in Scotland, 1495-1603.
The history of plague in Scotland subsequent to the medieval period is of interest chiefly as affording early illustrations of the practice of quarantine. We last saw the disease prevailing in or near Edinburgh in 1475, the island of Inchkeith, in the Firth of Forth, being used as a quarantine station. It was doubtless the possession of convenient islands near the capital--Inch Colm and Inch Garvie were both used for the same purpose afterwards--that led the Scots government to follow the example of Venice and other foreign cities at no long interval of time. When we next hear of plague in Scotland it is again in connexion with infected persons on the island of Inchkeith and in the town of Leith, some time between 13th August, 1495, and 4th July, 1496[726].
But these quarantine practices were not confined to the Firth of Forth. On the 17th May, 1498, the town of Aberdeen was warned by proclamation of the bell of certain measures to be taken so as to preserve the town from the pestilence “and strange sickness abefore,” the principal precaution being a guard of citizens at each of the four gates during the day, and that the gates be “lockit with lokis and keis” at night. The “strange sickness abefore” is doubtless the other invasion (of syphilis) which the aldermen tried to check by an order of April, 1497; but “the pestilence” in the order of May 1498 must have been the plague itself[727]. Nothing more is heard of it at Aberdeen or elsewhere in Scotland in that year. It appears to have been somewhat general in Scotland in 1499 and 1500. The audit of burgh accounts, mostly held in June, 1499, was postponed to January 1500 in some cases, the bailie of North Berwick explaining that he was prevented by the plague from coming to the Exchequer[728]. An extra allowance is made to the comptroller, Sir Patrick Hume, in March 1500, “for his great labour in collecting fermes in different parts of the kingdom in time of the infection of the plague.” At Peebles, hides and woolfells were destroyed during the plague of 1499. There was a renewal of it in 1500, the audit being again delayed until November. The custumar of Aberdeen brings his account of the great customs of that burgh down only to the 3rd July, 1500, “because after that date the accountant, from dread of the plague, did not enter the burgh of Aberdeen[729].”
It is from the same northern city that our information on plague in Scotland comes exclusively for the next forty-five years, not, of course, because its experience was singular, but because its borough records are known[730].
On the 24th April, 1514, various orders were made at Aberdeen against a disease that seems to have been the plague: “for keeping of the town from strange sickness, and specially this contagious pestilence ringand in all parts about this burgh;” and, again, watching the gates (as in 1498) against persons “coming forth of suspect places where this violent and contagious pestilence reigns.” Lodges were erected on the Links and Gallow-hill, where the infected or suspected were to remain for forty days. In the following year (1515), sixteen persons were banished from the town for a year and a day for disobeying the orders “anent the plague.” On the 27th July, 1530, these orders are renewed “for evading this contagious pestilence reigning in the country.” On September 15, 1539 (the year after a plague in the North of England), the plague is called in the municipal orders by a distinctive name: the orders are for avoiding the “contagius infeckand pest callit the boiche, quilk ryngis in diverse partis of the same [realm] now instantly”--the botch being a name given to plague in England also as late as the Elizabethan and Stuart periods.
The years 1545 and 1546 were also plague-years in Scotland. At a council held at Stirling on the 14th June, 1545, the session of the law courts was transferred to Linlithgow “because of the fear of the pest that is lately reigning in the town of Edinburgh[731].” On 10th September, of the same year, the town council of Aberdeen issued orders for evading the pest. On September 18 the plague was in the English army at Warkeshaugh, and it is reported from Newcastle, on 5 October, to be raging on the borders[732]. On March 21, 1546, a house in Aberdeen was shut up for the pest; and there are evidences of its continuance in August, October and December both in that town and “in certain parts of the realm:” on the 11th October the St Nicholas “braid silver” was given for the sustentation of the sick folk of the pest; on the 17th December an Aberdonian named David Spilzelaucht was ordered to be “brint on the left hand with ane het irne” for not showing the bailies “the seiknes of his barne, quilk was seik in the pest[733].” In November, 1548, the plague is at St Johnstone (Perth), and the Rhinegrave, with troops there, sick of it and like to die[734].
In 1564 the Scots Privy Council ordered quarantine for arrivals from Denmark, in the manner that was practised on merchandise for nearly three centuries after. As these early practices in the Forth are curiously like those that used to be practised in the Medway in the eighteenth century, I shall quote a part of the order of the Scots Privy Council, dated, Edinburgh, September 23, 1564[735]:
“That is to say, becaus maist danger apperis to be amangis the lynt, that the samyn be loissit, and houssit in Sanct Colm’s Inche, oppynout, handillet and castin forth to the wynd every uther fair day, quhill the feist of Martimes nixt to cum, be sic visitouris and clengearis as sal be appointit and deput thairto be the Provest, Baillies and Counsall of the burgh of Edinburgh upoun the expensis of the marchantis, ownaris of the saidis gudis. And as concerning the uther gudis, pik, tar, irine, tymmer, that the samyn be clengeit be owir flowing of the sey, at one or twa tydis, the barrellis of asse to be singit with huddir set on fyre, and that the schippis be borit and the sey wattir to haif interes into thame, to the owir loft, and all the partis within to be weschin and clengeit; and siclike that the marinaris and utheris that sall loase and handill the gudis above written, be clengeit and kepit apart be thameselffis for ane tyme, at the discretioun of the saidis visitouris, and licenses to be requirit had and obtenit of the saidis Provest, Baillies and Counsall before they presume to resort opinlie or quietlie amangis oure Soverane Ladeis fre liegis.”
The same autumn another foul ship from the Baltic arrived and entered the port of Leith in evasion of quarantine; the master and others are to be apprehended and kept in prison until justice be done upon them for the offence[736].
A severe outbreak of plague in Scotland in the year 1568 gave occasion to the first native treatise upon the disease in the English tongue, the essay by Dr Gilbert Skene, at one time lecturer on medicine at King’s College, Aberdeen, but probably removed before 1568 to Edinburgh, where he became physician to James VI.[737] The author says that the plague has “lately entered” the country, and he is led to write upon it in the vulgar tongue for the benefit of those who could not afford to pay for skilled advice, or could not get it on any terms: “Medecineirs are mair studious of their awine helthe nor of the common weilthe.” The panic caused by the plague must have been considerable: “Specialie at this time whan ane abhorris ane other in sic maneir as gif nothing of humanitie was restand but all consumit, euery ane abydand diffaent of ane other.”
Although Skene’s treatise bears numerous traces of the influence of foreign writers on plague, the same being freely acknowledged in the section of prescriptions and regimen, yet the book is much better than a mere compilation. Thus, under the causes of plague, he gives the stock recital of blazing stars, south-winds, corrupt standing waters, and the like; but in mentioning, as others do, dead carrion unburied, he adds that the corrupting human body is most dangerous of all “by similitude of nature.”
A season favourable to plague is marked by continual wet in the last part of Spring or beginning of Summer, without wind, and with great heat and turbid musty air.
Anticipating a remark by Thomas Lodge in 1603, and a common experience as regards rats in the recent plagues of various parts of India and China, he points out that the mole (moudewart) and serpent leave the earth, being molested by the vapour contained within the bowels of the same. “If the domesticall fowlis become pestilential, it is ane sign of maist dangerous pest to follow.” Among the spots that are most pestilential are those near standing water, or where many dead are buried, the ground being fat and vaporative. Of the duration of infection: “na pest continuallie induris mair than three yeris,” according to the principle of “rosten ance can not be made raw againe.”
The diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment are given fully and in systematic scholarly order. I give the following long extract on the signs and symptoms of plague, as being the first native account of the disease in this country:
_Quhairby corrupt be pest may be knawin._
Thair is mony notis quhilkis schawis ane man infectit be pest. First gif the exteriour partis of the bodie be caulde, and the interiour
## partis of the bodie vehement hait. As gif the hoill bodie be heavie
with oft scharpe punctiounis, stinkand sweiting, tyritnes of bodie, ganting of mowthe, detestable brathe with greit difficultie, at sumtyme vehement fever rather on nycht nor day. Greit doloure of heid with heavynes, solicitude and sadnes of mynd: greit displesour with sowning, quhairefter followis haistelie deth. As greit appetit and propensnes to sleip albeit on day, raving and walking occupeis the last. Cruell inspectioun of the ene, quhilkis apperis of sindre colouris maist variant, dolour of the stomak, inlak of appetite, vehement doloure of heart, with greit attractioun of Air; intolerable thirst, frequent vomitting of divers colouris or greit appetit by daylie accustum to vomit without effecte: Bitternes of mowth and toung with blaiknit colour thairof and greit drouth: frequent puls small and profund, quhais urine for the maist part is turbide thik and stinkand, or first waterie, colourit thairefter of bilious colour, last confusit and turbide, or at the beginning is zallow inclyning to greine (callit citrine collour) and confusit, thairefter becummis reid without contentis. Albeit sum of thir properteis may be sene in haile mennis water, quhairby mony are deceavit abydand Helth of the patient, quhan sic water is maist manifest sing of deth, because the haill venome and cause conjunit thar with, leavand the naturall partis occupeis the hart and nobillest interioure partis of the body. Last of all and maiste certane, gif with constant fever, by the earis, under the oxstaris, or by the secrete membres maist frequentlie apperis apostumis callit Bubones, without ony other manifest cause, or gif the charbunkil apperis hastelie in ony other part, quhilk gif it dois, in the begining, testifies strenthe of nature helth, and the laitter sic thingis appeir, and apperand, it is the mair deidlie. At sumtym in ane criticall day mony accidentis apperis--principalie vomiteing, spitting of blude, with sweit, flux of womb, bylis, scabe, with dyvers others symptomis maist heavie and detestable.”
The signs of death in pestilential persons are as follow:
“Sowning, cold sweats, vomiting; excrements corrupt, teuch; urine black, or colour of lead. Cramp, convulsion of limbs, imperfection of speech and stinking breath, colic, swelling of the body as in dropsy, visage of divers colours, red spots quickly discovering and covering themselves.”
The great plague which was the occasion of Skene’s writing, probably the most severe that Edinburgh experienced, entered that city on the 8th September, 1568, having been brought, it was said, by “ane called James Dalgliesh, merchant[738].” A letter of 21st September, from the bishop of Orkney, then in Edinburgh, to his brother-in-law Sir Archibald Napier of Merchiston, whose house was near the plague-huts erected on the Muir, refers to the infection as then active:
“By the number of sick folk that gaes out of the town, the muir is liable to be overspread; and it cannot be but, through the nearness of your place and the indigence of them that are put out, they sall continually repair about your room, and through their conversation infect some of your servants.” He advises him to withdraw to a house on the north side. “And close up your houses, your granges, your barns and all, and suffer nae man come therein while it please God to put ane stay to this great plague[739].”
The following account of Edinburgh practices in plague-times is given by Chambers[740]:
“According to custom in Edinburgh the families which proved to be infected were compelled to remove, with all their goods and furniture, out to the Burgh-moor, where they lodged in wretched huts hastily erected for their accommodation. They were allowed to be visited by their friends, in company with an officer, after eleven in the forenoon; anyone going earlier was liable to be punished with death--as were those who concealed the pest in their houses. Their clothes were meanwhile purified by boiling in a large caldron erected in the open air, and their houses were clensed by the proper officers. All these regulations were under the care of two citizens selected for the purpose, and called _Bailies of the Muir_; for each of whom, as for the cleansers and bearers of the dead, a gown of gray was made, with a white St Andrew’s Cross before and behind. Another arrangement of the day was ‘that there be made twa close biers, with four feet, coloured over with black, and [ane] white cross with ane bell, to be hung upon the side of the said bere, which sall mak warning to the people.’”
The same writer says that the plague lasted in Edinburgh until February, 1569, and that it was reported to have carried off 2500 of the inhabitants. The plague-stricken in the Canongate were sent to huts “on the hill” and money was collected for their support[741].
The plague of 1574 was again chiefly along the shores of the Firth of Forth. It came to Leith on October 14th, it was said by a passenger from England, and several died in that town before its existence was known at large. On October 24th it entered Edinburgh, “brought in by ane dochter of Malvis Curll out of Kirkcaldy[742].” On the 29th October the town council of Glasgow ordered that no one should be allowed to enter from Leith, Kirkcaldy, Dysart, Burntisland and Edinburgh (in respect of Bellis Wynd only), and that no one in Glasgow was to repair to Edinburgh without a pass[743]. Two days after (October 31st) the Scots Privy Council, at Dalkeith, issued an order to check the spreading of the plague landwards “through the departure of sick folk and foul persons:” no one to conceal the existence of plague, and the infected “to cloise thame selffis in[744].” On November 14th the sittings of the Court of Session were suspended owing to pest within some parts of Edinburgh, in Leith, and some towns and parts of the north coast of Fife[745]. In December the Kirk session of Edinburgh appointed an eight days’ fast for the plague threatening the whole realm.
In January, 1577, plague is reported to be raging on the English border, causing alarm in Kirkcudbright[746]. On the 19th October, 1579, the king and council are credibly informed that “the infectioun and plague of the pistolence” is not only in divers towns and parts of the coast of England frequented by Scots shipping but also in Berwick and sundry other bounds of the East and Middle Marches of England; the markets at Duns and Kelso are therefore forbidden, and traders not to repair to infected places or to break bulk of their wares[747]. Next year, 1580, on September 10th, a ship laden with lint and hemp from “Danske,” with forty persons on board, including seven Edinburgh merchants, arrived in the Forth, and was quarantined for many weeks at Inchcolm; the master and several others died of plague, and the survivors were transferred in November, some to Inchkeith and some to Inchgarvie, the ship being still at Inchcolm in a leaky state. On November 22 a vessel which had come down the Tay with plague-stricken inhabitants of Perth, some of whom were dead, and with their goods and gear, was ordered to the Isle of May[748].
One of the most serious epidemics of plague in Scotland was from 1584 to 1588. It was said to have been brought to Wester Wemyss, in Fife, by a certain “creare;” but it was in some other places at the same time, and was probably a revival of old seeds of the disease. On July 28th the Privy Council issued orders that beggars and tramps should be kept from wandering about[749]. On the 24th September, 27th October, 4th November, and the 11th December, the Privy Council issued order after order to stop all traffic, unless by licence, from Fife, Perth, and other places north of the Forth; sails were to be taken out of the ferry-boats at all ferries except Burntisland and Aberdour, and eventually at these also, Leith and Pettycur being left free[750]. For Perth we have some particulars of this great outbreak. From the 24th September, 1584, to August, 1585, there died 1437 persons, young and old[751]. It was also in Dysart and other parts of Fife through the winter of 1584-85[752].
The infection appeared at Edinburgh about the 1st of May, 1585, in the Flesh Mercat Close by the infection of a woman who had been in St Johnstone (Perth) where the plague was[753]. On the 18th May orders were issued to Edinburgh to remove all filth, filthy beasts and carrion forth of the highways, and the same to be cleansed and kept clean. On the 23rd June the coining-house was removed to Dundee, and the Court of Session transferred to Stirling[754]. The plague next broke out in Dundee, whence the mint was removed to Perth. At St Andrews it appeared in August, 1585, and became a severe epidemic, causing the dispersion of the students, and continuing so long that the miserable state and poverty of the town are in part ascribed, in a petition of March 24, 1593, to the plague[755]. Upwards of four hundred are said to have died of it there[756]. The state of sickness was much aggravated by wet harvest weather. In Edinburgh it continued through the winter until January, 1586, sometimes carrying off twenty-four in a single night: “the haill people, whilk was able to flee, fled out of the town; nevertheless there died of people which were not able to flee, fourteen hundred and some odd” (Birell). James Melville, riding in November from Berwick to Linlithgow, entered Edinburgh by the Water-Gate of the Abbey at eleven o’clock in the forenoon and rode up “through the Canongate, and in at the Nether Bow through the great street of Edinburgh to the West Port, in all whilk way we saw not three persons, sae that I miskenned Edinburgh, and almost forgot that I had ever seen sic a town[757].” The same year it was unusually severe at Duns[758]. In the winter of 1586-7, “the pest abated and began to be strangely and remarkably withdrawn by the merciful hand of God, so that Edinburgh was frequented again that winter, and at the entry of the spring all the towns, almost desolate before, repeopled, and St Andrews among the rest[759].”
In the harvest of 1587 “the pest brake up in Leith, by opening up of some old kists,” and in Edinburgh about the 4th November. It continued in those two towns till Candlemas, 1588[760]. On April 26, 1588, the infection is reported anew from Edinburgh, threatening the law session[761]. In October, 1588, it was at Paisley, causing alarm in Glasgow[762].
On the 8th August, 1593, a ship from an English port, with persons and goods suspected of the plague, was quarantined at Inchcolm[763]. Four years after, on the 6th August, 1597, “the pest began in Leith[764].” Twelve days after, August 18, the Privy Council declared that divers inhabitants of sundry towns near Edinburgh were infected, and that the disease was suspected to be in the capital itself[765]. Many fled from Edinburgh, but the epidemic was over by the end of harvest[766].
In the winter of 1598, the plague which was in Cumberland extended to Dumfries, and caused great decay of trade, and even scarcity of food[767]. On the 12th October, 1600, a petition from Dundee declares that the plague of the pest had “entered and broken up within the town of Findorne[768].” Findhorn had been only one of several places infected in that locality; for in December, the Kirk session of Aberdeen ordered a fast “in respect of the fearful infection of the plague spread abroad in divers parts of Moray[769].”
On the 24th November, 1601, the parishes of Eglishawe, Eastwood, and Pollok, in Renfrewshire, and the town of Crail in Fife are declared infected, and ordered to be shut up. On the 28th of the same month it was in the barony of Calderwood, and on the 21st December, in Glasgow. It increased daily in Crail in January, 1602, and suspects were put out on the muir, so that they wandered to sundry parts of Fife. It still continued in Glasgow, and had appeared at Edinburgh before the 4th of February: the town council built shielings and lodgings for the sick of the plague in the lands of Schenis (Sciennes) belonging to Napier, of Merchiston, without his leave, having ploughed up the old plague-muir, and let it for their profit: against the plague-shelters Napier protested on the 11th March. By the 1st of May it had ceased in Edinburgh, and a solemn thanksgiving was held on the 20th (Birell). A ship owned in Crail arrived in the Forth on 30th July, 1602, from “Danske,” with three or four dead of the plague, and was quarantined at Inchkeith. In April, 1603, James VI. left for England, to assume the English[770] crown, with which event we resume in another chapter the eventful history of Plague under the Stuarts.
Meanwhile, in the foregoing records of plague in Scotland, the absolute immunity of Aberdeen in the latter half of the sixteenth century is remarkable. It does not depend on any imperfection of the records; for, under the year 1603, the borough register contains this entry[771]: “It has pleasit the guidness of God of his infinite mercy to withhauld the said plague frae this burgh this fifty-five years bygane”--that is to say, since the winter of 1546-47, when David Spilzelaucht was burned on the left hand with a hot iron for concealing a case of plague in one of his children. The northern city may have owed its immunity to various causes; but there can be no question of the Draconian rigour of its decrees against the plague. Following the example of queen Elizabeth at Windsor in 1563, the magistrates in May, 1585, when Perth, Edinburgh and many other places in Scotland were suffering severely from plague, erected three gibbets, “ane at the mercat cross, ane other at the brig of Dee, and the third at the haven mouth, that in case ony infectit person arrive or repair by sea or land to this burgh, or in case ony indweller of this burgh receive, house, or harbour, or give meat or drink to the infectit person or persons, the man be hangit and the woman drownit.”
Plague in Ireland in the Tudor period.
The accounts of plague in Ireland in the Tudor period are not many, but some of them are of interest. The province of Munster is said to have had a pestilence raging in it in 1504, evidently not a famine-fever, for the dearth, and mortality therefrom, came in 1505[772]. There is no doubt as to the reality of the next plague in Ireland, in 1520.
The earl of Surrey writes from Dublin to Wolsey, on the 3rd August, 1520: “There is a marvellous death in all this country, which is so sore that all the people be fled out of their houses into the fields and woods, where they in likewise die wonderfully; so that their bodies be dead like swine unburied.” On the 23rd July he had already written that there was sickness in the English pale; and on the 6th September he wrote again that the death continued in the English pale[773]. It is perhaps the same epidemic, or an extension of it, that is referred to as the plague raging in Munster in 1522[774]. On the same authority, “a most violent plague” is said to have been in the city of Cork in 1535, and “a great plague” in the same in 1547. The earlier of those dates corresponds probably to a season of ill-health in Ireland generally: “1536. This year was a sickly, unhealthy year, in which numerous diseases, viz. a general plague, and smallpox [i.e. a disease with an Irish name supposed to be smallpox], and a flux plague, and the bed-distemper prevailed exceedingly[775].” In a State letter from Ireland September 10, 1535, the prevalence of “plague” is mentioned[776].
In the winter of 1566-7, a remarkable outbreak of plague occurred among the English troops quartered around the old monastery of the Derry, at the head of Loch Foyle, where Londonderry was afterwards built. The men were landed there in October, and by November “the flux was reigning among them wonderfully.” On December 18 and January 13, many of the soldiers are dead, the rest are discontented, and provisions are short. On February 16, the sickness continues, “in this miserable place,” and on March 26, the death at the Derry is said to be by cold and infection: the survivors to be removed to Strangford Haven[777]. Only 300 men were fit for service out of 1100, and several officers of rank were dead. The men’s quarters had been built over the graveyard of the ancient abbey, and the infection of plague was ascribed at the time to the emanations from the soil[778]. The scarcity was general in Ireland that winter, and was attended by great mortality. Sir Philip Sydney, the lord deputy, writes to the queen on April 20, 1567: “Yea the view of the bones and skulls of your dead subjects who, partly by murder, partly by famine, have died in the fields is such that hardly any Christian with dry eye could behold[779].”
In 1575 there was a severe and wide-spread outbreak of plague, the localities specially named being Wexford, Dublin, Naas, Athy, Carlow, and Leighlin. The city of Dublin was as if deserted of people, so that grass grew in the streets and at the doors of churches; no term was held after Trinity, and prayers were appointed by the archbishop throughout the whole province[780]. The extremity of the plague in Ireland was such that the English troops sent by way of Chester and Holyhead had difficulty in finding a safe place to land[781]. Whether that outbreak had been connected with the military operations (as afterwards in Cromwell’s time), the information does not enable us to judge; but Chester and other places near, in direct communication with Ireland, had been visited with plague the year before (1574).
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