“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).