u 
 
A 
 
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A HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 EPIDEMICS IN BRITAIN 
 
 k 
 
aonlion: C. J. CLAY and SONS, 
 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, 
 
 AXU 
 
 H. K. LEWIS, 
 136, GOWER STREET, W.C. 
 
 CamfanUnc: DEIGHTON, BELL AND CO. 
 
 Etipjifl: F. A. BROCKHAUS. 
 
 iftcto gork: MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
A HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 EPIDEMICS IN BRITAIN 
 
 from A.D. 664 to the Extinction of Plague 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES CREIGHTON, M.A., M.D., 
 
 FORMERLY DEMONSTRATOR OF ANATOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
 1891 
 
(fTambritigE : 
 
 PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 

 PREFACE. 
 
 *" I ^HE title and contents-table of this volume will show 
 
 -■- sufficiently its scope, and a glance at the references in the 
 
 several chapters will show its sources. But it may be convenient 
 
 to premise a few general remarks under each of those heads, 
 
 ? The date 664 A.D. has been chosen as a starting-point, for the 
 
 ^ reason that it is the year of the first pestilence in Britain recorded 
 
 on contemporary or almost contemporary authority, that of 
 
 ■^ Beda's 'Ecclesiastical History.' The other limit of the volume, 
 
 , the extinction of plague in 1665-66, marks the end of a long era 
 
 of epidemic sickness, which differed much in character from the 
 
 era next following. At or near the Restoration we come, as it 
 
 were, to the opening of a new seal or the outpouring of another 
 
 vial. The history proceeds thenceforth on other lines and comes 
 
 largely from sources of another kind ; allowing for a little 
 
 r overlapping about the middle of the seventeenth century, it 
 
 ^ might be continued from 1666 almost without reference to what 
 
 ^ had gone before. The history is confined to Great Britain and 
 
 Ireland, except in Chapter XI. which is occupied with the first 
 
 Colonies and the early voyages, excepting also certain sections 
 
 of other chapters, where the history has to trace the antecedents 
 
 of some great epidemic sickness on a foreign soil. 
 
 C. d 
 
 r 
 
vi Preface. 
 
 The sources of the work have been the ordinary first-hand 
 sources of EngHsh history in general. In the medieval period 
 these include the monastic histories, chronicles, lives, or the like 
 (partly in the editions of Gale, Savile, Twysden, and Hearne, and 
 of the English Historical Society, but chiefly in the great series 
 edited for the Master of the Rolls), the older printed collections 
 of State documents, and, for the Black Death, the recently 
 published researches upon the rolls of manor courts and upon 
 other records. From near the beginning of the Tudor period, 
 the Calendars of State Papers (Domestic, Foreign, and Colonial), 
 become an invaluable source of information for the epidemiologist 
 just as for other historians. Also the Reports of the Historical 
 Manuscripts Commission, together with its Calendars of private 
 collections of papers, have yielded a good many facts. Many 
 exact data, relating more particularly to local outbreaks of 
 plague, have been found in the county, borough, and parish 
 histories, which are of very unequal value for the purpose and 
 are often sadly to seek in the matter of an index. The 
 miscellaneous sources drawn upon have been very numerous, 
 perhaps more numerous, from the nature of the subject, than in 
 most other branches of history. 
 
 Medical books proper are hardly available for a history of 
 English epidemics until the Elizabethan period, and they do not 
 begin to be really important for the purpose until shortly before 
 the date at which the present history ends. These have been 
 carefully sought for, most of the known books having been met 
 with and examined closely for illustrative facts. In the latter 
 part of the seventeenth century the best English writers on 
 medicine occupied themselves largely with the epidemics of their 
 own time, and the British school of epidemiology, which took a 
 distinguished start with Willis, Sydenham and Morton, was 
 worthily continued by many writers throughout the eighteenth 
 century; so that the history subsequent to the period here 
 
Preface. vii 
 
 treated of becomes more and more dependent upon medical 
 sources, and of more special interest to the profession itself. 
 
 Reference has been made not unfrequently to manuscripts ; 
 of which the more important that have been used (for the first 
 time) are a treatise on the Sweating Sickness of 1485 by a 
 contemporary physician in London, two original London plague- 
 bills of the reign of Henry VIII., and a valuable set of tables of 
 the weekly burials and christenings in London for five years 
 (almost complete) from 1578 to 1583, among the Cecil papers — 
 these last by kind permission of the Marquis of Salisbury. 
 
 Collecting materials for a British epidemiology from these 
 various sources is not an easy task ; had it been so, it would 
 hardly have been left to be done, or, so far as one knows, 
 even attempted, for the first time at so late a period. Where 
 the sources of information are so dispersed and casual it is 
 inevitable that some things should have been overlooked : be 
 the omissions few or many, they would certainly have been 
 more but for suggestions and assistance kindly given from time 
 to time by various friends. 
 
 The materials being collected, it remained to consider how 
 best to use them. The existing national epidemiologies, such as 
 that of Italy by Professor Corradi or the older ' Epidemiologia 
 Espafiola' of Villalba, are in the form of Annals. But it 
 seemed practicable, without sacrificing a single item of the 
 chronology, to construct from the greater events of sickness in 
 the national annals a systematic history that should touch and 
 connect with the general history at many points and make a 
 volume supplementary to the same. Such has been the attempt; 
 and in estimating the measure of its success it may be kept in 
 mind that it is the first of the kind, British or foreign, in its own 
 department. The author can hardly hope to have altogether 
 escaped errors in touching upon the general history of the 
 country over so long a period ; but he has endeavoured to go as 
 
viii Preface. 
 
 little as possible outside his proper province and to avoid 
 making gratuitous reflections upon historical characters and 
 events. The greater epidemic diseases have, however, been 
 discussed freely — from the scientific side or from the point of 
 view of their theory. 
 
 It remains to acknowledge the liberality of the Syndics of 
 the Cambridge University Press in the matter of publication, 
 and the friendly interest taken in the work by their Chairman, 
 the Master of Peterhouse. 
 
 November, 1891. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PESTILENCES PREVIOUS TO THE BLACK DEATH, CHIEFLY 
 FROM FAMINES. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The plague of 664-684 described by Beda, and its probable relation 
 
 to the plague of Justinian's reign, 542- ..... 4 
 
 Other medieval epidemics not from famine ..... 9 
 
 Chronology of Famine Sicknesses, with full accounts of those of 
 
 1 194-7, 1257-9, and 1315-16 15 
 
 Few traces of epidemics of Ergotism ; reason of England's immunity 
 
 from ignis sacer 52 
 
 Generalities on medieval famines in England 65 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 LEPROSY IN MEDIEVAL BRITAIN. 
 
 Medieval meanings of /i?/r« 6g 
 
 Biblical associations of Leprosy ........ 79 
 
 Medieval religious sentiment towards lepers . . . . . 81 
 
 Leprosy-prevalence judged by the leper-houses, — their number in 
 
 England, special destination, and duration ..... 86 
 
 Leper-houses in Scotland and Ireland 99 
 
 The prejudice against lepers 100 
 
 Laws against lepers 106 
 
 Things favouring Leprosy in the manner of life — Modern analogy of 
 
 Pellagra 107 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 THE BLACK DEATH OF 1 348-9. 
 
 Arrival of the Black Death, and progress through Britain, with 
 
 contemporary English and Irish notices of the symptoms . . 114 
 
 Inquiry into the extent of the mortality 123 
 
 Antecedents of the Black Death in the East— Overland China 
 
 trade — Favouring conditions in China 142 
 
 The Theory of Bubo-Plague 156 
 
 Illustrations from modern times 163 
 
 Summary of causes, and of European favouring conditions . . 1 73 
 
Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ENGLAND AFTER THE BLACK DEATH, WITH THE EPIDEMICS 
 TO 1485. 
 
 Efforts to renew the war with France ..... 
 Direct social and economic consequences in town and country 
 More lasting effects on farming, industries and population 
 Epidemics following the Black Death . 
 Medieval English MSS. on Plague 
 The 14th century chronology continued 
 The public health in the 15th century 
 Chronology of Plagues, 15th century . 
 Plague &c. in Scotland and Ireland, 1349-1475 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE SWEATING SICKNESS, 1485-1551 
 
 The First invasion of the Sweat in 1485 
 
 The Second outbreak in 1508 
 
 The Third Sweat in 15 17 
 
 The Fourth Sweat in 1528 . 
 
 Extension of the Fourth Sweat to the Continent in 1529 
 
 The Fifth Sweat in 155 1 
 
 Antecedents of the English Sweat 
 
 Endemic Sweat of Normandy 
 
 Theory of the English Sweat 
 
 Extinction of the Sweat in England 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PLAGUE IN THE TUDOR PERIOD. 
 
 Chronology of the outbreaks of Plague in London, provincial towns 
 
 and the country generally, from 1485 to 1556 
 The London Plague of 1563 .... 
 Preventive practice in Plague-time under the Tudors 
 Sanitation in Plantagenet and Tudor times 
 
 The disposal of the dead 
 
 Chronology of Plague 1 564-1 592 — Vital statistics of London 1578 
 
 1583 
 
 The London Plague of 1 592-1 593 
 
 Plague in the Provinces, 1 592-1 598 . 
 
 Plague in Scotland, 1495-1603— Skene on the Plague (1568) 
 
 Plague in Ireland in the Tudor period .... 
 
375 
 376 
 383 
 387 
 397 
 
 Contents. xi 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 GAOL FEVERS, INFLUENZAS, AND OTHER FEVERS IN 
 THE TUDOR PERIOD. 
 
 The Black Assizes of Cambridge, 1522 .... 
 
 Oxford Black Assizes, 1577 
 
 Exeter Black Assizes, 1586 ....... 
 
 Increase of Pauperism, Vagrancy, &c. in the Tudor period 
 Influenzas and other "strange fevers" and fluxes, 1540- 1597 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE FRENCH POX. 
 
 Meagreness of English records 414 
 
 Evidence of its invasion of Scotland and England, in 1497 and sub- 
 sequent years . . . . . . . . . . 417 
 
 English writings on the Pox in the Elizabethan period, with some 
 
 notices for the Stuart period ........ 423 
 
 The circumstances of the great European outbreak in 1494 — 
 
 Invasion of Italy by Charles VIII 429 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SMALLPOX AND MEASLES. 
 
 First accbunts of Smallpox in Arabic writings — Nature of the disease 439 
 
 European Smallpox in the Middle Ages 445 
 
 Measles in medieval writings — Origin of the names "measles" and 
 
 "pocks" 448 
 
 First English notices of Smallpox in the Tudor period . . . 456 
 
 Great increase of Smallpox in the Stuart period .... 463 
 
 Smallpox in Continental writings of the i6th century . . . . 467 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 PLAGUE, FEVER AND INFLUENZA FROM THE ACCESSION 
 OF JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION. 
 
 Growth of London in the Tudor and Stuart periods . . . . 471 
 
 The London Plague of 1603 474 
 
 Annual Plague in London after 1603 ....... 493 
 
 Plague in the Provinces, Ireland and Scotland, in 1603 and following 
 
 years 496 
 
 Malignant Fever preceding the Plague of 1625 ..... 504 
 
Xll 
 
 Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The London Plague of 1625 507 
 
 Plague in the Provinces in 1625 and following years .... 520 
 
 The London Plague of 1636 529 
 
 Fever in London and in England generally to 1643 .... 532 
 
 War Typhus in Oxfordshire «&;c. and at Tiverton, 1643-44 . . 547 
 
 Plague in the Provinces, Scotland and Ireland during the Civil Wars 555 
 
 Fever in England 1651-52 ......... 566 
 
 The Influenzas or Fevers of 1657-59 ....... 568 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 SICKNESSES OF EARLY VOYAGES AND COLONIES. 
 
 Scurvy in the early voyages, north and south . . . . . 579 
 The remarkable epidemic of Fever in Drake's expedition of 1585-6 
 
 to the Spanish Main 585 
 
 Other instances of ship-fevers, flux, scurvy, &c. ..... 590 
 
 Scurvy &c. in the East India Company's ships : the treatment . . 599 
 
 Sickness of Virginian and New England voyages and colonies . . 609 
 Early West Indian epidemics, including the first of Yellow Fever — 
 
 The Slave Trade . . . . . . . . . . 613 
 
 The epidemic of 1655-6 at the first planting of Jamaica . . . 634 
 
 CHAPTER XH. 
 
 THE GREAT PLAGUE OF LONDON, AND THE LAST OF PLAGUE 
 IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Literature of the Great Plague 646 
 
 Antecedents, beginnings and progress of the London Plague of 1665 651 
 Mortality and incidents of the Great Plague — Characters of the 
 
 disease 660 
 
 Plague near London and in the Provinces, 1665-66 .... 679 
 
 The Plague at Eyam 1665-66 ........ 682 
 
 The Plague at Colchester, 1665-66, and the last of Plague in England 688 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 At p. 28 line ■\-,for " for " read " at." At p. 126 line ^ for " 1351 " read " 1350;" 
 same change at p. 130, lines 6 and 9. At p. 185 note i read " Ochenkowski." 
 At p. 264 line 18, and at p. 554 line. 1 1 from bottom, read "■ pathogitomoniciiin." 
 At p. 401, note I for "■ \(ii'i'" read "1558." At p. 420, line v~t, for "Henry IV.," 
 read " Henry V." At p. 474, line ^, for "more" read "less." At p. 649 line 22 
 omit " I lancock." 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 PESTILENCES PREVIOUS TO THE BLACK DEATH, CHIEFLY 
 FROM FAMINES. 
 
 The Middle Age of European history has no naturally fixed 
 beginning or ending. The period of Antiquity may be taken as 
 concluded by the fourth Christian century, or by the fifth or by 
 the sixth ; the Modern period may be made to commence in 
 the fourteenth, or in the fifteenth or in the sixteenth. The 
 historian Hallam includes a thousand years in the medieval 
 period, from the invasion of France by Clovis to the invasion of 
 Italy by Charles VIII. in 1494. We begin, he says, in darkness 
 and calamity, and we break off as the morning breathes upon us 
 and the twilight reddens into the lustre of day. To the epide- 
 miologist the medieval period is rounded more definitely. At 
 the one end comes the great plague in the reign of Justinian, 
 and at the other end the Black Death. Those are the two greatest 
 pestilences in recorded history ; each has no parallel except in 
 the other. They were in the march of events, and should not 
 be fixed upon as doing more than their share in shaping the 
 course of history. But no single thing stands out more clearly 
 as the stroke of fate in bringing the ancient civilization to an 
 end than the vast depopulation and solitude made by the plague 
 which came with the corn-ships from Egypt to Byzantium in 
 the year 543 ; and nothing marks so definitely the emergence 
 of Europe from the middle period of stagnation as the other 
 depopulation and social upheaval made by the plague which 
 came in the overland track of Genoese and Venetian traders 
 
2 The great plagiie of Justiniaiis reign, a.d. 543. 
 
 from China in the year 1347. While many other influences 
 were in the air to determine the oncoming and the oflgoing of 
 the middle darkness, those two world-wide pestilences were 
 singular in their respective effects : of the one, we may say that 
 it turned the key of the medieval prison-house ; and of the other, 
 that it unlocked the door after eight hundred years. 
 
 The Black Death and its after-effects will occupy a large 
 part of this work, so that what has just been said of it will 
 not stand as a bare assertion. But the plague in the reign of 
 Justinian hardly touches British history, and must be left with a 
 brief reference. Gibbon was not insensible of the part that it 
 played in the great drama of his history. " There was," he says, 
 " a visible decrease of the human species, which has never been 
 repaired in some of the fairest countries of the globe." After 
 vainly trying to construe the arithmetic of Procopius, who was a 
 witness of the calamity at Byzantium, he agrees to strike off one 
 or more ciphers, and adopts as an estimate " not wholly in- 
 admissible," a mortality of one hundred millions. The effects of 
 that depopulation, in part due to war, are not followed in the 
 history. So far as Gibbon's method could go, the plague came 
 for him into the same group of phenomena as comets and earth- 
 quakes ; it was part of the stage scenery amidst which the drama 
 of emperors, pontiffs, generals, eunuchs, Theodoras, and adven- 
 turers proceeded. Even of the comets and earthquakes, he 
 remarks that they were subject to physical laws ; and it was 
 from no want of scientific spirit that he omitted to show how 
 a plague of such magnitude had a place in the physical order, 
 and not less in the moral order. 
 
 A new science of epidemiology has sprung up since the time 
 of Gibbon, who had to depend on the writings of Mead, a busy 
 and not very profound Court physician. More particularly the 
 Egyptian origin of the plague of the sixth century, and its 
 significance, have been elucidated by the brilliant theory of 
 Pariset, of which some account will be given at the end of the 
 chapter on the Black Death. For the present, we are concerned 
 with it only in so far as it may have a bearing upon the pestilences 
 of Britain. The plague of the sixth century made the greatest 
 impression, naturall)', upon the oldest civilized countries of 
 
Continuance of plague in Europe. 3 
 
 Europe ; but it extended also to the outlying provinces of the 
 empire, and to the countries of the barbarians. It was the same 
 disease as the Black Death of the fourteenth century, the bubo- 
 plague ; and it spread from country to country, and lasted from 
 generation to generation, as that more familiar infection is 
 known to have done\ 
 
 Renewals of it are heard of in one part of Europe or another 
 until the end of the sixth century, when its continuity is lost. 
 But it is clear that the seeds of pestilence were not wanting in 
 Rome and elsewhere in the centuries following. Thus, about 
 the year 668, the English archbishop-elect, Vighard, having gone 
 to Rome to get his election confirmed by the Pope Vitalianus, 
 was shortly after his arrival cut off by pestilence, with almost all 
 who had gone with hi ml Twelve years after, in 680, there was 
 another severe pestilence in the months of July, August and 
 September, causing a great mortality at Rome, and such panic 
 at Pavia that the inhabitants fled to the mountainsl In 746 a 
 pestilence is said to have advanced from Sicily and Calabria, 
 and to have made such devastation in Rome that there were 
 houses without a single inhabitant left*. The common name 
 for all such epidemics \?> pestis ox pestilentia or magna viorialitas, 
 so that it is open to contend that some other type than bubo- 
 plague, such as fever or flux, may have been at least a part 
 of them ; but no type of infection has ever been so mortal 
 as the bubo-plague, and a mortality that is distinguished by a 
 chronicler as causing panic and devastation was presumably 
 of that type. 
 
 1 The references to the Justinian plague by contemporary and later historians have 
 been collected, together with partly irrelevant matter about portents and earthquakes, 
 by Val. Seibel, Die grosse Pest zur Zeit Jttstinian's I. Dillingcn, 1S57. The 
 author, a layman, throws no light upon its origin. 
 
 2 Beda, Hist. Eccles. Eng. Hist. Society's ed. p. -243 : " qui ubi Romam pervenit, 
 cujus sedi apostolicae tempore illo Vitalianus praeerat, postquam ilincris sui causam 
 praefato papae apostolico patefecit, non nndto post et ipse et omnes pcnc, qui cum eo 
 advenerant, socii, pestilentia superveniente, deleti sunt." 
 
 3 Flores Histor. by Roger of Wendover. Eng. Hist. Society's ed. i. 180. 
 
 4 Ibid. I. 228. 
 
4 Probable extoision to Britain, A.D. 664. 
 
 Pestilence in England and Ireland in the Seventh Century. 
 
 It is more than a century after the first great wave of 
 pestilence had passed over Europe in the reign of Justinian, 
 before we hear of a great plague in England and Ireland. Dr 
 Willan, the one English writer on medicine who has turned 
 his erudition to that period, conjectures that the infection 
 must have come to this country from the continent at an earlier 
 date. From the year 597, he says, the progress of conversion 
 to the Christian religion " led to such frequent intercourse with 
 Italy, France and Belgium, that the epidemical and contagious 
 disease prevailing on the continent at the close of the sixth 
 century must necessarily be communicated from time to time 
 through the Heptarchy \" Until we come to the Ecclesiastical 
 History of Beda, the only authorities are the Irish annals ; and 
 in them, the first undoubted entry of a great plague corresponds 
 in date with that of Beda's history, the year 664. It is true, 
 indeed, that the Irish annals, or the later recensions of them, 
 carry the name that was given to the plague of 664 {pestis ictericia 
 or binde connaill) back to an alleged mortality in 543, or 548, 
 and make the latter the " first btiide connailV ; but the obituary 
 of saints on that occasion is merely what might have occurred 
 in the ordinary way, and it is probable, from the form of entry, 
 that it was really the rumour of the great plague at Byzantium 
 and elsewhere in 543 and subsequent years that had reached the 
 Irish annalist ^ 
 
 The plague of 664 is the only epidemic in early British 
 annals that can be regarded as a plague of the same nature, and 
 on the same great scale, as the devastation of the continent of 
 
 1 Miscellaneous Works of the late Robert Willan, M.D., F.R.S., F.A.S. 
 Edited by Ashby Smith, M.D. London, 1821. 'An Enquiiy into the Antiquity of 
 the Smallpox etc' p. 108. 
 
 - Annals of the Four Masters, ed. O'Donovan, Dublin, 1851, I. 183. "a.d. 
 543. There was an extraordinary universal plague through the world, which swept 
 away the noblest third part of the human race." 
 
 p. 1S7. "A.D. 548, Of the mortality which was called Cron Chonaill — and 
 that was the first Buide Chonaill \flava ictericia'], — these saints died," several names 
 following. The entries of that [ilague are under different years in the various original 
 Annals. 
 
Bedas accoiDit of the general plague of 664. 5 
 
 Europe more than a century earlier, whether it be taken to be 
 a late offshoot of that or not. The English pestilence of 664 
 is the same that was fabled long after in prose and verse as 
 the great plague "of Cadwallader's time." It left a mark on 
 the traditions of England, which may be taken as an index of 
 its reality and its severity ; and with it the history of epidemics 
 in Britain may be said to begin. It was still sufficiently recent 
 to have been narrated by eyewitnesses to Beda, whose Eccle- 
 siastical History is the one authentic source, besides the entry 
 in the Irish annals, of our information concerning it. 
 
 The pestilence broke out suddenly in the year 664, and 
 after " depopulating" the southern parts of England, seized 
 upon the province of Northumbria, where it raged for a long 
 time far and wide, destroying an immense multitude of people*. 
 In another passage Beda says that the same mortality occurred 
 also among the East Saxons, and he appears to connect there- 
 with their lapse to paganism ^ 
 
 The epidemic is said to have entered Ireland at the be- 
 ginning of August, but whether in 664 or 665 is not clear. 
 According to one of those vague estimates which we shall find 
 again in connexion with the Black Death, the mortality in 
 Ireland was so vast that only a third part of the people were 
 left alive. The Irish annals do, however, contain a long list of 
 notables who died in the pestilence''. 
 
 Beda follows his general reference to the plague by a story 
 of the monastery of Rathmelsigi, identified with Melfont in 
 
 1 " Eodem anno dominicae incarnationis sexcentesimo sexagesimo quarto, facta 
 erat eclipsis solis die tertio mensis Mali, hora circiter decima diei ; quo etiam anno 
 subita pestilentiae lues, depopulatis prius australibus Brittaniae plagis, Nordanhyin- 
 brorum quoque provinciam corripiens, atque acerba clade diutius longe lateque 
 desaeviens, magnam hominum multitudinem stravit. Qua plaga piaefatus Domini 
 sacerdos Tuda raptus est de mundo, et in monasterio, quod dicitur Taegnalaech, 
 honorifice sepultus. Haec autem plaga Hiberniam quoque insulani pari clade pre- 
 mebat. Erant ibidem eo tempore multl nobilium simul et mediocrium de gente 
 Anglorum, qui tempore Finani et Colmani episcoporum, relicta insula patria, vel 
 
 divinae lectionis, vel continentioris vitae gratia, illo secesserant Erant inter hos 
 
 duo juvenes magnae indolis, de nobilibus Anglorum, Aedilhun et Ecgberct," etc. 
 Beda's Z^/j/. Eccles. ed. Stevenson. Engl. Hist. Soc. I. p. 231. 
 
 - Ibid. p. 240. 
 
 * Annals of the Four Masters, i. 275. 
 
6 Reneived outbreaks in nwuasteries, 685. 
 
 Meath, which he heard many years after from the chief actor 
 in it. Egbert, an EngHsh youth of noble birth, had gone to 
 Ireland to lead the monastic life, like many more of his country- 
 men of the same rank or of the middle class. The plague in 
 his monastery had been so severe that all the monks either 
 were dead of it or had fled before it, save himself and another, 
 who were both lying sick of the disease. Egbert's companion 
 died ; and he himself, having vowed to lead a life of austerity 
 if he were spared, survived to give effect to his vow and died 
 in the year 729 with a great name for sanctity at the age of 
 ninety. 
 
 The plague of 664 is said, perhaps on constructive evidence \ 
 to have continued in England and Ireland for twenty years ; 
 and there are several stories told by Beda of incidents in 
 monasteries which show, at least, that outbreaks of a fatal 
 infection occurred here or there as late as 685. Several of 
 these relate to the new monastery of Barking in Essex, founded 
 for monks and nuns by a bishop of London in 6']6. First 
 we have a story relating to many deaths on the male side 
 of the house^ and then two stories in which a child of three 
 and certain nuns figure as dying of the pestilence ^ Another 
 story appears to relate to the plague in a monastery on the 
 Sussex coast, seemingly Selsea^ Still another, in which Beda 
 
 1 Thorpe, in his edition of Florence of Worcester, for the Eng. Hist. Society, 
 I. 25. 
 
 - The first of Beda's incidents of the Barking monastery relates to a miraculous 
 sign in the heavens showing where the cemetery was to be. It begins: "Cum 
 tempestas saepe dictae cladis, late cuncta depopulans, etiam partem monasterii hujus 
 illam qua viri tenebantur, invasisset, et passim quotidie raperentur ad Dominuni. " 
 
 "^ " Erat in eodem nionasterio [Barking] puer trium circiter, non amplius annorum, 
 yEsica nomine, qui propter infantilem adhuc aetatem in virginum Deo dedicatarum 
 solebat cella nutriri, ibique medicari. Hie praefata pestilentia tactus ubi ad extrema 
 pervenit clamavit tertio unam de consecratis Christo virginibus, proprio cam nomine 
 quasi pracscntem alloquens ' Eadgyd, Eadgyd, Eadgyd ' ; et sic terminans temporalem 
 vitam intravit aeternam. At virgo ilia, quam moriens vocabat, ipso quo vocata est 
 die dc hac luce subtracta, et ilium qui se vocavit ad regnum coeleste secuta est." 
 Beda, p. 265. Then follows the story of a nun dying of tlie pestilence in the same 
 monastery. 
 
 '' Beda, Lib. iv. cap. 14. In addition to the instances in the tex.1, which I have 
 collected frt)m Beda's Ecclesiastical History, I find two mentioned by Willan in 
 his " Inquiry into the Antiquity of the Smallpo.x," {Misccll. Works, London, 1821, 
 
Plague in the Nortlimnbrian moitasterics, 685. 7 
 
 himself is supposed to have played a part, is told of the monastery 
 of Jarrow, the date of it being deducible from the context as the 
 year 685. 
 
 Of the two Northumbrian monasteries founded by Benedict, 
 that of Wearmouth lost several of its monks by the plague, as 
 well as its abbot Easterwine, who is otherwise known to have 
 died in March, 685. The other monastery of Jarrow, of which 
 Ceolfrith was abbot, was even more reduced by the pestilence. 
 All who could read, or preach, or say the antiphonies and 
 responses were cut off, excepting the abbot and one little boy 
 whom Ceolfrith had brought up and taught. For a week the 
 abbot conducted the shortened services by himself, after which 
 he was joined by the voice of the boy ; and these two carried 
 on the work until others had been instructed. Beda, who is 
 known to have been a pupil of Ceolfrith's at Jarrow, would then 
 have been about twelve years old, and would correspond to the 
 boy in the story \ 
 
 The nature of these plagues, beginning with the great 
 invasion of 664, can only be guessed. They have the look of 
 having been due to some poison in the soil, running hither and 
 thither, as the Black Death did seven centuries after, and re- 
 pp. 109, no) : "About the year 672, St Cedda, Bisliop of the East Saxons, Ijcing on 
 a visitation to the monastery of Lestingham, was infected with a contagious distemper, 
 and died on the seventh day. Thirty monks, who came to visit the tomb of their 
 bishop, were likewise infected, and most of them died" (Vita S. Cecidae, \'ii. Jan. 
 P- 375- Cf. Beda, iv. 3). Again : "In the course of the year 685, the disease 
 re-appeared at Lindisfarne, (Holy Island), St Cuthbcrt's al)bacy, and in 686 spread 
 through the adjoining district, where it particularly affected children " ( Vita S. 
 CiUhberti, cap. 33). Willan's erudition has been used in support of a most improbable 
 hypothesis, that the pestilence of those years, in monasteries and elsewhere, was 
 smallpox. 
 
 1 Ilistoria Abbatum Gyrvensium, auctore anonymo, §§ 13 and 14. (App. to vol. 
 II. of Beda's works. Eng. Hist. Society's edition, p. 323.) 
 
 § 13. Qui dum transmarinis moraretur in locis [Benedict] ecce subita i>estilentiae 
 procella Brittaniam corripiens lata nece vastavit, in qua plurimi de utroque ejus 
 monasterio, et ipse venerabilis ac Deo dilectus abbas Eosterwini raptus est ad 
 Dominum, quarto ex quo abbas esse coeperat anno. 
 
 § 14. Porro in monasterio cui Ceolfridus praeerat omnesqui legere, vel praedicare, 
 vel antiphonas ac responsoria dicere possent ablati sunt excepto ipso abbate et uno 
 puerulo, qui ab ipso nutritus et eruditus. 
 
 In the Article "Baeda," Diet. Nat. Biog., the Rev. W. Hunt points out that the 
 boy referred to in the above passage would have been Beda himself. 
 
8 Nature of the seventh-century pestilence. 
 
 maining in the country to break out afresh, not universally 
 as at first, but here and there, as in monasteries. The hypothesis 
 of a late extension to England and Ireland of the great European 
 invasion of bubo-plague in 543, would suit the facts so far as we 
 know them. The one medical detail which has been preserved, 
 on doubtful authority, that the disease was a pestis ictericia, 
 marked by yellowness of the skin, and colloquially known in 
 the Irish language as buide connaill, is not incompatible with the 
 hypothesis of bubo-plague, and is otherwise unintelligible \ 
 
 For the next seven centuries, the pestilences of Britain are 
 mainly the results of famine and are therefore of indigenous origin. 
 So strongly is the type of famine-pestilence impressed upon the 
 epidemic history of medieval England that the chroniclers and 
 romancists are unable to dissociate famine from their ideas 
 of pestilence in general. Thus Higden, in his reference to the 
 outbreak of the Justinian plague at Constantinople, associates it 
 with famine alone ''^; and the metrical romancist, Robert of 
 Brunne, who had the great English famine of 13 15-16 fresh 
 in his memory, describes circumstantially the plague of 664 or 
 the plague of Cadwallader's time, as a famine-pestilence, his 
 details being taken in part from the account given by Simeon of 
 Durham of the harrying of Yorkshire by William the Conqueror, 
 and in part, doubtless, from his own recent experience of a great 
 English famine ^ But before we come to these typical famine- 
 pestilences of Britain, which fill the medieval interval between 
 the foreign invasion of plague in Beda's time and the foreign 
 invasion of 1348, it remains to dispose in this place of those 
 outbreaks on English soil which do not bear the marks of 
 famine-sickness, but, on the other hand, the marks of a virulent 
 infection arising at particular spots probably from a tainted 
 soil. These have to be collected from casual notices in the most 
 
 ^ Tlie liistory of llic wmwq peslis Jlava ictericia is given by O'Donovan in a note to 
 the passage in tlae Annals of th: Four Masters, I. 275 : " Icteritia vel aurigo, id est 
 abundantia llavae bilis, pjr corpus efifusae, hominenique pallidum reddentis," is the 
 explanation of P. O'S. Beare. The earliest mention of "yellow plague " appears to 
 have been in an ancient life of St Gerald of Mayo, in Colgan's Ada Sanctorum, at 
 the calendar date of 13th March. 
 
 - Polyclironicon, Rolls edition, v. 250. 
 
 ^ The Story of England, Rolls series, ed. Furnivall, 11. c,6y. 
 
Outbreaks at Canterbury, 829 and Cray land, 1304. 9 
 
 unlikely corners of monastic chronicles; but it is just the casual 
 nature of the references that makes them credible, and leads one 
 to suppose that the recorded instances are only samples of 
 epidemics not altogether rare in the medieval life of England. 
 
 Early Epidemics not connected with Famine. 
 
 The earliest of these is mentioned in the annals of the priory 
 of Christ Church, Canterbury. In the year 829, all the monks 
 save five are said to have died of pestilence, so that the 
 monastery was left almost desolate. The archbishop Ceolnoth, 
 who was also the abbot of the monastery, filled up the vacancies 
 with secular clerks, and he is said to have done so with the 
 consent of the five monks "that did outlive the plague." The 
 incident comes into the Canterbury MS. of the Anglo-Saxon 
 Chronicle ^ under the year 870, in connexion with the death of 
 Ceolnoth and the action of his successor in expelling the seculars 
 and completing the original number of regulars. So far as the 
 records inform us, that great mortality within the priory of 
 Christ Church two centuries after it was founded by Augustine, 
 was an isolated event ; the nearest general epidemic to it in the 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was a great mortality of man and beast 
 about the year 897 following the Danish invasion which Alfred 
 at length repelled. 
 
 That such deadly intramural epidemics in monasteries were 
 not impossible is conclusively proved by the authentic particulars 
 of a sudden and severe mortality among the rich monks of 
 Croyland at a much more recent date — between the years 1304 
 and 1315. In the appendix to the chronicle of Ramsey Abbey'' 
 there is printed a letter from Simon, abbot of Croyland, without 
 date but falling between the years above given, addressed to his 
 neighbours the abbots of Ramsey, Peterborough and Thorney, 
 and the prior of Spalding. The letter is to ask their prayers on 
 the occasion of the sudden death of thirteen of the monks of 
 Croyland and the sickness of others ; that large number of the 
 
 1 Rolls series, ed. Thoipe, i. 136, 137 (Tiaiisl. n. 60). Also in Gervasc of 
 Canterbury, Rolls series, ed. Stubbs, H. 348. 
 
 '^ Chronicon Abbatiac Raiiicsicnsis, Rolls ed. 1S86, p. 397. 
 
lO Similar instance among English at Rome, 1188. 
 
 brethren had been cut off within fifteen days — " potius violenter 
 rapti quam fataliter resoluti '." The letter is written from 
 Daddington, whither abbot Simon had doubtless gone to escape 
 the infection. 
 
 These are two instances of deadly epidemics within the walls 
 of English monasteries. In the plague-years 664 — 685, and 
 long after in the Black Death, the mortalities among the monks 
 were of the same degree, only there was an easy explanation of 
 them, in one if not in both cases, as being part of an imported 
 infection universally diffused in English soil. What the nature 
 of the occasional outbreaks in earlier times may have been, we 
 can only guess : something almost as deadly, we may say, as 
 the plague itself, and equally sudden. The experience was not 
 peculiar to England, An incident at Rome almost identical 
 with that of Vighard in 66% is related in a letter sent home in 
 1 1 88, by Honorius the prior of Canterbury, who had gone with 
 others of the abbey on a mission to Rome to obtain judgment in 
 a dispute between the archbishop and the abbey, that the whole 
 of his following was stricken with sickness and that five were 
 dead. John de Bremble, who being also abroad was ordered to 
 go to the help of the prior, wrote home to the abbey that when 
 he reached Rome only one of the brethren was alive, and he in 
 great danger, and that the first thing he had to do on his arrival 
 was to attend the cook's funeral "^ 
 
 There is no clue to the type of these fatal outbreaks of 
 sickness within monastic communities. One naturally thinks of 
 a soil-poison fermenting within and around the monastery walls, 
 and striking down the inmates by a common influence as if at 
 one blow. There are in the medieval history previous to the 
 Black Death a few instances of local pestilences among the 
 common people also, which differ from the ordinary famine- 
 sicknesses of the time. The most significant of these is a story 
 told by William of Newburgh at the end of his chronicle and 
 
 ' According to an imjuisition of 2 Edward III., ihe abbey of Croyland contained 
 in 1328, forty-one monks, besides fifteen " corrodiarii " and thirty-six servitors. 
 Chronicle of Croyland mQz^Q, I. 482. 
 
 * Epistolae Caiitiiarienscs, Rolls series, No. 38, ed. .Stubbs, Epist. CCL.WU. ]:>. 
 254, and Introduction, p. Ixvii. 
 
A village plague at Annan, 1 196. ii 
 
 probably dating from the corresponding period, about the year 
 ii96\ For several years there had been, as we shall sec, famine 
 and fever in England ; but the particular incident does not 
 relate to the famine, although it may join on to it. It is the 
 story of a ghost walking, and it comes from the village of Annan 
 on the Solway, having been related to the monk of Newburgh in 
 Yorkshire by one who had been an actor in it. A man who 
 had fled from Yorkshire and taken refuge in the village under 
 the castle of Annan, was killed in a quarrel about the woman 
 whom he had married, and was buried without the rites of the 
 church. His unquiet ghost walked, and his corpse tainted the 
 air of the village ; pestilence was in every house, so that the 
 place which had been populous looked as if deserted, those who 
 escaped the plague having fled. William of Ncwburgh's 
 informant had been in the midst of these calamities, and had 
 taken a lead in mitigating them ; he had gone to certain wise 
 men living "in sacra dominica quae Palmarum dicitur," and having 
 taken counsel with them, he addressed the people : " Let us dig 
 up that pestilence and let us burn it with ^xo." (effodiamus pesteni 
 illani et combnramus igni). Two young men were, accordingly, 
 induced to set about the task. They had not far to dig: 
 "repente cadaver non multa humo egesta nudaverunt, enormi 
 corpulentia distentum, facie rubenti turgentique supra modum." 
 
 The story, like others of the kind with a mixture of legend 
 in them, is more symbolical than real. The wise men of Annan 
 may have been in error in tracing the plague of their village to 
 a single corpse, but they were probably on the right lines of 
 causation. It is curious to observe in another chronicler of the 
 same period, Ralph of Coggeshall in Essex, and in a part of his 
 chronicle which relates to the last years of Richard I,, and first 
 years of John, a comment upon the action of Pope Innocent III. 
 (about 1200 A.D.) in interdicting all Christian rites save baptism 
 by the clergy in France: "O how horrible... to refuse the 
 Christian rite of burial to the bodies of the dead, so that they 
 infected the air by their foetor and struck horror into the souls 
 of the living by their ghastly looks^" The same pope's interdict 
 
 1 William of Newburgh, Rolls cd. p. 481. 
 
 - Ralph of Coggeshall, Rolls series, No. 66, p. 1 1 2. 
 
12 Pestilence in the Welsh Marches, 1234. 
 
 of decent burial and of other clerical rites extended to England 
 in 1208, the famous Interdict of the reign of John. It was the 
 papal method of checkmating the kingdoms of this world ; that 
 it was subversive of traditional decency and immemorial sanitary 
 precaution was a small matter beside the assertion of the autho- 
 rity of Peter. 
 
 Rightly or wrongly, taught by experience or misled by 
 fancy, the medieval world firmly believed that the formal and 
 elaborate disposal of the dead had a sanitary aspect as well as a 
 pious. The infection of the air, of which we shall hear much 
 more in connexion with the plague, was a current notion in 
 England for several centuries before the Black Death. Es- 
 pecially does the dread of it find expression where corpses were 
 unburied after a battle, massacre, or calamity of nature. The 
 exertions made in these circumstances to bury the dead, even 
 when all pious and domestic feeling was hardened to the barest 
 thought of self-preservation, are explained in set terms as insti- 
 gated by the fear of breeding a pestilence. The instinct is as 
 wide as human nature, and there is clear evidence in our own 
 early writers that its sanitary meaning was recognised. One 
 such instance may be quoted from the St Albans annalist of the 
 time of John and first years of Henry 1 11.^ In the year 1234, 
 an unusually savage raid was made by the Welsh as far as 
 Shrewsbury ; they laid waste the country by fire and sword ; 
 wayfarers were horrified at the sight of naked and unburied 
 corpses without number by the road sides, preyed on by ravenous 
 beasts and birds ; the foetor of so much corruption infected the 
 air on all sides, so that even the dead slew the living. The 
 chronicler's language, " quod etiam homines sanos mortui pere- 
 merunt," is marked by the perspicacity or correctness which 
 distinguishes him. When the bubo-plague came to be do- 
 mesticated in English soil more than a century later, the 
 disposal of the dead became a sanitary question of obvious 
 importance. But even in the centuries before the Black Death, 
 and most of all in the times when the traditional practices of 
 decent burial were interdicted by Popes or turned to mercenary 
 
 ' Roger of Weiulovcr, 111. 72. 
 
War pestilence rare in England. 13 
 
 purposes by clergy \ we shall perhaps not err in looking for one, 
 at least, of the causes of localised outbreaks of pestilence in the 
 tainting of the soil and the air by the corruption of corpses 
 insufficiently buried and coffined. 
 
 There still remains, before we come to famine-sickness 
 as the common type of pestilence in medieval England, to 
 discover from the records any evidence of pestilence due to war 
 and invasion. The domestic history from first to last is 
 singularly free from such calamities. The whole history of 
 Mohammedan conquest and occupation is a history of infection 
 following in the train of war ; and in Western Europe, at least 
 from the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII., when the medieval 
 period (according to Hallam) closes, the sieges, battles, and 
 campaigns are constantly associated with epidemic sickness 
 among the people as well as among the troops. There is only 
 one period in the history of England, that of the civil wars of 
 the Parliament and the Royalists, in which the people had a 
 real taste of the common continental experience. The civil 
 wars of York and Lancaster, as we shall see, touched the 
 common people little, and appear to have bred no epidemics. 
 
 Apart from civil war, there were invasions, by the Welsh 
 and Scots on the western and northern marches, and by the 
 Danes. One instance of pestilence following a Welsh raid in 
 the thirteenth century has been given from Roger of Wendover. 
 A single instance is recorded in the history of the Danish 
 invasions. It has been preserved by several independent 
 chroniclers, with some variation in details ; and it appears to 
 have been distinguished by so much notice for the reason that 
 it illustrates the magnanimity, sanctity, and miraculous power 
 of St Elphege, archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
 In the year loio (or ion according to some), the Danes 
 had stormed Canterbury, burnt the fair city, massacred the 
 inhabitants, or carried them captive to their ships at Sandwich. 
 
 ^ In the Life of St Hugh of Lincohi, who died in 1200, or eight years before the 
 Papal Interdict, there is a clear reference to difficulties thrown by the priests in the 
 way of burial, especially for the poor, and perhaps in a time of epidemic sickness such 
 as the years 11 94 — 6. See Vita S. Hiigoiiis Lincohicusis, Rolls series, No. 37, 
 pp. 228—233. 
 
14 Camp sickness in a Danish invasion^ loio. 
 
 The archbishop Elphege was put on board a small vessel and 
 taken (doubtless by the inland channel which was then open 
 from the Stour to the Thames) to Greenwich, where he was 
 imprisoned for seven months'. A council had assembled in 
 London for the purpose of raising forty thousand pounds to buy 
 off the invaders. According to the account used by Higden^ 
 Elphege refused to sanction the payment of a ransom of three 
 thousand pounds for his own person : he was accordingly taken 
 from prison, and on the 13th of the Calends of May, lOio, 
 was stoned to death by the Danes disappointed of his ransom. 
 Therefore a pestilence fell upon the invaders, a dolor visccrum, 
 which destroyed them by tens and twenties so that a large 
 number perished. The earlier narrative of William of Malmes- 
 bury^ is diversified by the introduction of a miracle, and is 
 otherwise more circumstantial. While the archbishop was held 
 in durance, a deadly sickness broke out among the Danes, 
 affecting them in troops {catervatini), and proving so rapid in 
 its effects that death ensued before they could feel pain. The 
 stench of their unburied bodies so infected the air as to bring a 
 plague upon those of them who had remained well. As the 
 survivors were thrown into a panic, " sine numero, sine modo," 
 Elphege appeared upon the scene, and having administered 
 to them the consecrated bread, restored them to health and 
 put an end to the plague. 
 
 Disregarding what is fabulous, we may take these narratives 
 to establish the fact that a swift and fatal pestilence did break 
 out among the Danes in Kent. It had consisted probably of the 
 same forms of camp sickness, including dysentery (as the name 
 dolor viscernm implies), which have occurred in later times. It 
 is the only instance of the kind recorded in the early history. 
 
 ^ Eadmer, I.e. 
 
 ' Polychronicon, Rolls ed. vii. 90. 
 
 * Gcsta Pontificum, Rolls ed. p. 171. Anothei' narrator of the story of St 
 Elphege and the Danes is Henry of Huntingdon (Rolls ed. p. 179) ; he says nothing 
 of the pestilence, but describes the sack of Canterbury. Eadmer also {^flistoria 
 NoTorum in Ani^lia, Rolls ser. 81, p. 4) omits the pestilence. 
 
CJironology of faviine-pestilences. 
 
 •5 
 
 Medieval Famine-pestilences. 
 
 The foregoing are all the instances of pestilence in early 
 English history, unconnected with famine, that have been col- 
 lected in a search through the most likely sources. The history 
 of English epidemics, previous to the Black Death, is almost 
 wholly a history of famine sicknesses ; and the list of such 
 famines with attendant sickness, without mentioning the years 
 of mere scarcity, is a considerable one. 
 
 TABLE OF FAMINE-PESTILENCES IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Year 
 679 
 
 793 
 897 
 
 962 
 976 
 
 986 
 987 
 
 1005 
 
 1036I 
 1039J 
 1044 
 1046 
 
 10481 
 1049J 
 
 Character 
 
 Three years' famine in Sus- 
 sex from droughts 
 
 General famine and severe 
 mortality 
 
 Mortality of men and cattle 
 for three years during and 
 after Danish invasion 
 
 Great mortality: "the great 
 fever in London " 
 
 Famine 
 
 Famine. Fever of men and 
 murrain of cattle 
 
 Desolation following expul- 
 sion of Danes 
 Famine 
 
 Famine 
 
 Very hard winter ; pesti- 
 lence and murrain 
 
 Great mortality of men and 
 cattle 
 
 Authority 
 Beda, Hist. Eccles. § 290 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s}{b aiifw. 
 
 Roger of Howden. Simeon of 
 
 Durham 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Florence 
 
 of Worcester. Annales Cambriae 
 
 {anno 896) 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Roger of 
 Howden 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Roger of 
 Howden. Simeon of Durham. 
 Malmesbury. Gcst. Pontif. .^Ini^/. 
 p. 171. Flor. of Worcester. Roger 
 of Wendover, Flor. Hist. Brom- 
 ton (in Twysden). Higdcn 
 
 Henry of Huntingdon 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Henry of 
 
 Huntingdon 
 Anglo-.Saxon Chronicle 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle {sub mnio 
 1049). Roger of Howden. Simeon 
 of Durham {si/b anno 1048) 
 
i6 
 
 Chronology of famine-pestilences. 
 
 Year 
 1069 
 
 1086I 
 10S7J 
 
 1091 
 
 Character 
 Wasting of Yorkshire 
 
 Great fever-pestilence. 
 Sharp famine 
 
 Siege of Durham by the 
 Scots 
 
 Floods ; hard winter ; se- 
 vere famines ; universal 
 sickness and mortality 
 
 General pestilence and mur- 
 rain 
 
 Authority 
 Simeon of Durham, ii. 188 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Malmes- 
 bury. Henry of Huntingdon, and 
 most annalists 
 
 Simeon of Durham, ii. 339 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Annals of 
 Winchester. William of Malmes- 
 bury. Henry of Huntingdon. An- 
 nals of Margan. Matthew Paris, 
 and others 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. 
 Wendover 
 
 Roger of 
 
 Famine 
 
 1 1 1 2 " Destructive pestilence '" 
 
 II 14 
 1125 
 
 [1130 
 
 1 1 371 
 1140J 
 
 Famine in Ireland ; flight 
 or death of people 
 
 Most dire famine in all 
 England ; pestilence and 
 
 Great murrain 
 
 Famine from civil war ; 
 mortality 
 
 1 143 Famine and mortality. 
 
 1 1 7 1 Famine in London in Spring 
 
 1 1 72 Dysentery among the troops 
 
 in Ireland 
 
 1 173 "Tussis quaedam mala ct 
 
 inaudita" 
 
 1 175 Pestilence; famine 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Roger of 
 Wendover 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Annals of 
 Osney. Annales Cambriae 
 
 Annals of Margan 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. William of 
 Malmesbury, Gest. Pont. p. 442. 
 Henry of Huntingdon. Annals of 
 Margan. Roger of Howden. 
 
 Annals of Margan. Anglo-Saxon 
 Chronicle [stib anno 1131)] 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Annals of 
 Winchester. Henry of Huntingdon 
 (1138) 
 
 Gesta Stephani, p. 98. William of 
 Newburgh. Henry of Huntingdon 
 
 Stow, Survey of London 
 
 Radulphus de Diceto, Imng. Hist. 
 
 i. 348 
 Chronica dc Mailros 
 
 Benedict of Peterborough. Roger of 
 Howden 
 
Chronology of faininc-pestilcnccs to 1322. 
 
 17 
 
 Year 
 
 Character 
 
 1 189 
 
 Famine and mortality 
 
 1 1 94 
 
 Effects of a five years' 
 
 119s 
 
 scarcity ; great mortality 
 
 1 196 
 
 over all England 
 
 1197^ 
 
 
 1201 
 
 Unprecedented plague of 
 
 
 people and murrain of 
 
 
 animals 
 
 1203 
 
 Great famine and mortality 
 
 1210 
 
 Sickly year throughout Eng- 
 
 
 land 
 
 1234 
 
 Third year of scarcity; sick- 
 
 
 ness 
 
 1247 
 
 Pestilence from September 
 
 
 to November; dearth and 
 
 
 famine 
 
 1257' 
 
 1258- 
 
 1259] 
 
 Bad harvests ; famine and 
 
 fever in London and the 
 
 country 
 
 1268 
 
 Probably murrain only. 
 
 
 (" Lungessouth ") 
 
 1 27 1 
 
 Great famine and pestilence 
 
 
 in England and Ireland 
 
 [1274 
 
 Beginning of a great im- 
 
 
 ported murrain among 
 
 
 sheep 
 
 1285 
 
 Deaths from heat and 
 
 
 drought 
 
 1294 
 
 Great scarcity ; epidemics 
 
 
 of flux 
 
 1315]. 
 
 General famine in England; 
 
 1316J 
 
 great mortality from fever, 
 
 
 flux &c. ; murrain 
 
 1322 
 
 Famine and mortality in 
 
 
 Edward II.'s army in 
 
 
 Scotland; scarcity in Lon- 
 
 
 don 
 
 Authority 
 
 Annals of Margan. Giraldus Cam- 
 brensis, ///;/. Walliac 
 
 Annals of Burton. William of New- 
 burgh. Roger of Howden iii. 290. 
 Rigord. Bromton (in Twysden 
 col. 1271). Radulphus dc Diceto 
 {stib anno 1 197) 
 
 Chronicon de Lancrcost (probably 
 relates to 1203) 
 
 Annals of Waverley. Annals of 
 Tewkesbury. Annals of Margan. 
 Ralph of Coggeshall(j-///' (?;/;/ (^ 1205) 
 
 Annals of Margan 
 
 Roger of Wendover. Annals of 
 
 Tewkesbury 
 Matthew Paris. Higden 
 Annales Cambriae {sitb anno 1248) 
 
 Matthew Paris. Annals of Tewkes- 
 bury. Continuator of M. Paris 
 (1259). Rishanger 
 
 Chronicon de Lanercost 
 
 Continuator of William of Newburgh 
 
 ii. 560 [doubtful] 
 Rishanger (also sub anno 1275). 
 
 Contin. Fl. of Worcester sub anno 
 
 1276] 
 Rishanger 
 
 Rishanger. Continuator of Florence 
 of Worcester p. 405. Trivet 
 
 Trokelowc. Walsingham, Hist. Angl. 
 i. 146. Contin. Trivet, pp. 18, 27. 
 Rogers, Hist, of Agric. and Prices 
 
 Higden. Annales Londinenses 
 
1 8 'Merry England' a land of plenty. 
 
 The period covered by this long list is itself a long one ; and 
 the intervals between successive famine-pestilences are some- 
 times more than a generation. A history of epidemics is 
 necessarily a morbid history. In this chapter of it, we search 
 out the lean years, saying nothing of the fat years ; and by 
 exclusively dwelling upon the dark side we may form an entirely 
 wrong opinion of the comforts or hardships, prosperity or 
 adversity, of these remote times. English writers of the earliest 
 period, when they use generalities, are loud in praise of the 
 advantages of their own island ; until we come to the fourteenth 
 century poem of ' The Vision of Piers the Ploughman ' we 
 should hardly suspect, from their usual strain, that England was 
 other than an earthly paradise, and every village an Auburn, 
 " where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain." There 
 is a poem preserved in Higden's PolycJironicon by one 
 Henricus, who is almost certainly Henry archdeacon of 
 Huntingdon in the time of Henry I., although the poem is not 
 included among the archdeacon's extant verse. The subject 
 is ' De Praerogativis Angliae,' and the period, be it remarked, 
 is one of the early Norman reigns, when the heel of the 
 conquering race is supposed to have been upon the neck of the 
 English. Yet this poem contains the famous boast of ' Merry 
 England,' and much else that is the reverse of unhappy : — 
 
 "Anglia terra ferax et fertilis an^julus orbis. 
 Anglia plena jocis, gens libera, digna jocari ; 
 Libera gens, cui libera mens et libera lingua : 
 Sed lingua melior liberiorque manus. 
 Anglia terrarum decus et flos finitimarum, 
 Est contenta sui fcrtilitate boni. 
 Externas gentcs consumptis rebus egentes, 
 Quando fames laedit, recreat et leficit. 
 Commoda terra satis mirandae fertilitatis 
 Prosperitate viget, cum bona pacis habet^" 
 
 Or, to take another distich, apparcntl)' by Alfred of Beverley, 
 
 "Insula praedives, quae toto non eget orbe, 
 Et cujus totus indiget orbis ope." 
 
 ' (j)iuitc(l Ijy IIJLjden, Polychronicon, Rolls ed. II. i8. Tliis may Iiave lieeii one 
 of Henry of Huntingdon's poems wliich were exlant in Lcland's time, but are 
 now lost. 
 
But notorious abroad for its famines. 19 
 
 Or, in Higden's own fourteenth century words, after quoting 
 these earlier estimates : " Prae ceteris gulae dedita, in victu et 
 vestitu multum sumptuosa'." 
 
 On the other hand there is a medieval proverbial saying 
 which places England in a light strangely at variance with 
 this native boast of fertility, plenty, and abundance over- 
 flowing to the famished peoples abroad : " Tres plagae tribus 
 regionibus appropriari solent, Anglorum fames, Gallorum ignis, 
 Normannorum lepra" — three afflictions proper to three countries, 
 famine to England, St Anthony's fire to France, leprosy to 
 Normandy^ Whatever the "lepra Normannorum" may refer to, 
 there is no doubt that St Anthony's fire, or ergotism 
 from the use of bread containing the grains of spurred 
 rye, was a frequent scourge of some parts of France ; and, in 
 common repute abroad, famine seems to have been equally 
 characteristic of England. Perhaps the explanation of Eng- 
 land's evil name for famines is that there were three great 
 English famines in the medieval history, before the Black 
 Death, separated by generations, no doubt, but yet of such 
 magnitude and attended by so disgraceful circumstances that 
 the rumour of them must have spread to foreign countries 
 and made England a by-word among the nations. These were 
 the famines of 1194-96, 1257-59, and 1315-16. Of the 
 first we have a tolerably full account by William of Newburgh, 
 who saw it in Yorkshire ; of the second we have many particulars 
 and generalities by Matthew Paris of St Albans, who died 
 towards the end of it; and of the third we have an account by 
 one of his successors as historiographer at St Albans, John 
 Trokelowe. All other references to famine in England are 
 meagre beside the narratives of these competent observers, 
 although there were probably two or three famines in the 
 Norman period equally worthy of the historian's pen. F"or the 
 comprehension of English famine-pestilences in general, we 
 ought to take the best recorded first ; but it will be on the whole 
 
 ^ Polychroiiicoiiy \\. 166. 
 
 - Marchand, E/mA' stir quelqiics c-pidemics d endemics dti tiioycu <\i^c' (Tliese), 
 Paris, 1873, p. 49, with a reference to Fuchs, " Das heilige Feuer im Mittelalter" in 
 Hecker's Aunakii, vol. 28, p. 1, which journal I have been unalile to consult. 
 
 2 — 2 
 
20 Generalities of MaltJius on apparent plenty. 
 
 more convenient to observe the chronological order, and to 
 introduce, as occasion ofifers, some generalities on the types 
 of disease which famine induced, the extent of the mortalities, 
 and the conditions of English agriculture and food-supply 
 which made possible occasional famines of such magnitude. 
 
 From the great plague " of Cadwallader's time," which corre- 
 sponds in history to the foreign invasion of pestilence in 664, 
 until nearly the end of the Anglo-Saxon rule, there is little 
 recorded of famines and consequent epidemic sickness. It does 
 not follow that the period was one of plenty and prosperity for 
 the people at large. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is at no period 
 detailed or circumstantial on the subject of famines and pesti- 
 lences ; and although the entries become more numerous in the 
 last hundred years before the Chronicle came to an end in 11 37, 
 their paucity in the earlier period probably means no more than 
 the imperfection of the record. Some of the generalities of 
 Malthus might be applied to help the imagination over a period 
 of history which we might otherwise be disposed to view as the 
 Golden Age. One of these, originally written for the South Sea 
 Islands, is applicable to all romantic pictures of " rude plenty," 
 such as the picture of the Anglo-Saxon household in Ivanhoe. 
 It has been remarked of Scott as a novelist that he always 
 feeds everyone well ; but the picture, grateful to the imagination 
 though it be, is probably an illusion. " In a state of society," 
 says Malthus, " where the lives of the inferior order of the people 
 seem to be considered by their superiors as of little or no value, 
 it is evident that we are very liable to be deceived with regard 
 to the appearances of abundance"; and again : "We may safely 
 pronounce that among the shepherds of the North of Europe, 
 war and famine were the principal checks that kept the popula- 
 tion down to the level of their scanty means of subsistence." 
 The history of English agriculture is known with some degree 
 of accuracy from the thirteenth century, and it is a history of 
 prices becoming steadier and crops more certain. It is not 
 to be supposed that tillage was more advanced before the 
 Conquest than after it. On the other hand the probabilities arc 
 that England had steadily emerged from a pastoral state. It 
 would be unfair to judge of the .state of rural England at any 
 
Ireland and Wales in the \2th Cent my. 2i 
 
 time by the state of Wales in the twelfth century, as it is 
 described by Giraldus Cainbrensis, or by the condition of Ireland 
 as described from the same traveller's observations. But in the 
 absence of any concrete view of primitive England itself, the 
 picture of the two neighbouring provinces may be introduced 
 here. 
 
 Ireland, says Giraldus, closely following Beda, is a fertile land 
 neglected ; it had no agriculture, industries or arts ; its in- 
 habitants were rude and inhospitable, leading a purely pastoral 
 life, and living more upon milk than upon meat. At the same 
 time there was little sickness ; the island had little need of 
 physicians ; you will hardly ever find people ill unless they 
 be at the extremity of death ; between continuous good health 
 and final dissolution there was no middle term. The excessive 
 number of children born blind, or deaf, or deformed, he ascribes 
 to incestuous unions and other sexual laxities^ 
 
 The picture of Wales is that of a not less primitive society ^ 
 The Welsh do not congregate in towns, or in villages, or in 
 fortified places, but live solitary in the woods ; they build no 
 sumptuous houses of stone and lime, but only ozier booths, 
 sufificient for the year, which they run up with little labour or 
 cost. They have neither orchards nor gardens, and little else 
 than pasture land. They partake of a sober meal in the evening, 
 and if there should be little or nothing to eat at the close of 
 day, they wait patiently until the next evening. They do not 
 use table-cloths nor towels ; they are more natural than neat 
 {naturae magis student quani nitori). They lie down to sleep in 
 their day clothes, all in one room, with a coarse covering drawn 
 over them, their feet to the fire, lying close to keep each other 
 warm, and when they are sore on one side from lying on the 
 hard floor, they turn over to the other. There are no beggars 
 among this nation. It is of interest, from the point of view of 
 the " positive checks " of Malthus, to note that Giraldus more 
 than hints at the practice of a grosser form of immorality than 
 he had charged the Irish with. Spinning and weaving were of 
 
 ^ Giraldus Cainbrensis, Topographia Hibcniiae, in Rolls edition of his works, 
 No. 21, vol. V. 
 
 - " Itinerarium Walliae " and " Descriptio Kanihriae," Opera, vol. vi. 
 
22 State of tillage at the Domesday Survey, 1086. 
 
 course not unknown, for the hard and rough blanket mentioned 
 above was a native product. By the time that Higden wrote 
 (about 1340), he has to record a considerable advance in the 
 civilization of Wales. Having used the description of Giraldus, 
 he adds : " They now acquire property, apply themselves to 
 agriculture, and live in towns ^" But in the reign of Henry H., 
 it was found easy to bring the rebellious Welsh to terms by 
 stopping the supplies of corn from England, upon which they 
 were largely dependent ^ 
 
 Of the condition of Scotland in the twelfth century we have 
 no such sketch as Giraldus has left for Wales and Ireland. 
 Uncivilized compared with England, the northern part of the 
 island must certainly have been, if we may trust the indignant 
 references by Simeon of Durham and Henry of Huntingdon to 
 the savage practices of the Scots who swarmed over the border, 
 with or without their king to lead them, or the remark by 
 William of Malmesbury concerning the Scots who went on the 
 Crusade leaving behind them the insects of their native country. 
 
 Giraldus intended to have written an itinerary or topography 
 of England also, but his purpose does not appear to have been 
 fulftlled. Higden, his immediate successor in that kind of 
 writing a century and a half later, is content, in his section on 
 England, to reproduce the generalities of earlier authors from 
 Pliny downwards. Of these, we have already quoted the 
 ' Prerogatives of England ' by Henry of Huntingdon, from 
 which one might infer that the British Isles, under the Norman 
 yoke, were the Islands of the Blest. On the other hand, the 
 impression made by the details of the Domesday survey upon a 
 historian of the soundest judgment, Hallam, is an impression 
 of poor cultivation and scanty sustenance. " There cannot be 
 a more striking proof," he says, "of the low condition of English 
 agriculture in the eleventh century than is exhibited in Domes- 
 day book. Though almost all England had been partially 
 cultivated, and wc find nearly the same manors, except in the 
 north, which exist at present, yet the value and extent of culti- 
 vated ground are inconceivably small. With every allowance 
 
 ^ J^olychronicon, I. 410. 
 
 - William of Newburgli, sub anno 1157, I. 107. 
 
She of Engl is Jl toivns at the Survey. 23 
 
 for the inaccuracies and partialities of those by whom that 
 famous survey was completed, we are lost in amazement at the 
 constant recurrence of two or three carucates in demesne, with 
 folkland occupied by ten or a dozen villeins, valued all together 
 at forty shillings, as the return of a manor which now would 
 yield a competent income to a gentleman \" 
 
 Whether the population at the Domesday survey were nearer two 
 milHons than one, the people were almost wholly on the land. Of the size 
 of the chief towns, as the Normans found them, we may form a not incorrect 
 estimate from the Domesday enumeration of houses held of the king or of 
 other superiors"^. London, Winchester and Bristol do not come at all into 
 the survey. Besides these, the towns of the first rank are Norwich, York, 
 Lincoln, Thetford, Colchester, Ipswich, Gloucester, Oxford, Cambridge, and 
 Exeter. 
 
 Norwich had 1320 burgesses in the time of Edward the Confessor ; 
 in the borough were 665 English burgesses rendering custom, and 480 
 bordarii rendering none on account of their poverty ; there were also more 
 than one hundred French households. Lincoln had 970 inhabited houses in 
 King Edward's time, of which 200 were waste at the survey. Thetford had 
 943 burgesses before the Conquest, and at the survey 720, with 224 houses 
 vacant. York was so desolated just before the survey that it is not easy to 
 estimate its ordinary population ; but it may be put at about 1200 houses. 
 Gloucester had 612 burgesses. Oxford seems to have had about 800 
 houses ; and for Cambridge we find an enumeration of the houses in nine of 
 the ten wards of the town in King Edward's time, the total being about 400. 
 Colchester appears to have had some 700 houses, Ipswich 538 burgesses, 
 with 328 houses " waste " so far as tax was concerned. Exeter had 300 
 king's houses, and an uncertain number more. Next in importance come 
 such places as Southampton, Wallingford, Northampton, Leicester, War- 
 wick, Shrewsbury, Nottingham, Coventry, Derby, Canterbury, Yarmouth, 
 Rochester, Dover, Sandwich (about 400 houses), and Sudbury. In a third 
 class may be placed towns like Dorchester, llchester, Bridport, Wareham, 
 Shaftesbury, Bath, Chichester, Lewes, Guildford, Hythe, Romney, Pcvcnsey, 
 Windsor, Bath, Chester, Worcester, Hereford, Huntingdon, Stamford, 
 Grantham, Hertford, St Albans, Torchesey, Maldon, each with from 100 to 
 200 burgesses. Dover and Sandwich each supplied twenty ships, with 
 crews of twenty-four men, for King Edward's service during fifteen days of 
 the year. In Hereford there were six smiths, each rendering one penny a 
 year for his forge, and making 120 nails of the king's iron. Many of these 
 houses were exceedingly small, with a frontage of seven feet ; the poorest 
 
 ^ Europe during the Middle Ages, chap. i.x. 
 
 2 I have used for this purpose Mere wether and Stephens' History of Boroughs, 
 3 vols. 1835. 
 
24 Ordiiiaiy maladies of the English, wth Century. 
 
 class were mere sheds, built in the ditch against the town wall, as at York 
 and Canterbury. 
 
 It would be within the mark to say that less than one-tenth 
 of the population of England was urban in any distinctive 
 sense of the term. After London, Norwich, York, and Lincoln, 
 there were probably no towns with five thousand inhabitants. 
 There were, of course, the simpler forms of industries, and there 
 was a certain amount of commerce from the Thames, the East 
 Coast, and the Channel ports. The fertile soil of England 
 doubtless sustained abundance of fruit trees and produced corn 
 to the measure of perhaps four or six times the seed. There 
 were flocks of sheep, yielding more wool than the country used, 
 herds of swine and of cattle. The exports of wool, hides, iron, 
 lead, and white metal gave occasion to the importation of 
 commodities and luxuries from Flanders, Normandy, and 
 Gascony. If there was "rude plenty" in England, it was for a 
 sparse population, and it was dependent upon the clemency of 
 the skies. A bad season brought scarcity and murrain, and two 
 bad seasons in succession brought famine and pestilence. 
 
 Of the general state of health we may form some idea from 
 the Anglo-Saxon leechdoms, or collections of remedies, charms 
 and divinations, supposed to date from the eleventh century *. 
 The maladies to which the English people were liable in these 
 early times correspond on the whole to the everyday diseases of 
 our own age. There were then, as now, cancers and consump- 
 tions, scrofula or " kernels," the gout and the stone, the falling 
 sickness and St Vitus' dance, apoplexies and palsies, jaundice, 
 dropsies and fluxes, quinsies and anginas, sore eyes and 
 putrid mouth, carbuncles, boils and wildfire, agues, rheums and 
 coughs. Maladies peculiar to women occupy a chief place, and 
 there is evidence that hysteria, the outcome of hardships, entered 
 largely into the forms of sickness, as it did in the time of 
 Sydenham. Among the curiosities of the nosology may be 
 mentioned wrist-drop, doubtless from working in lead. One 
 great chapter in disease, the sickness and mortality of infants 
 
 ' Leechdoms, Wort-cunning and Slarcrafl of Early Eiii^land. Edited by Cockayne 
 for the Rolls Scries, }, vols. 1864-66. 
 
A famine in Snsscx about 6yc). 25 
 
 and children, is almost a complete blank. It ought doubtless to 
 have been the greatest chapter of all. The population remained 
 small, for one reason among others, that the children would be 
 difficult to rear. There is no direct evidence ; but we may infer 
 from analogous circumstances, that the inexpansive population 
 meant an enormous infant mortality. The sounds which fell on 
 the ear of /Eneas as he crossed the threshold of the nether 
 world may be taken as prophetic, like so much else in Virgil, of 
 the experience of the Middle Ages : 
 
 " Continue auditae voces, vagitus et ingens 
 Infantumque animae flentes, in limine primo : 
 Ouos dulcis vitae exsortes, et ab ubere raptos, 
 Abstulit atra dies, et funere niersit acerbo." 
 
 We come, then, to the chronology of famine-pestilences, and 
 first in the Anglo-Saxon period. The years from 664 to 685 
 are occupied, as we have seen, by a great plague, probably the 
 bubo-plague, which returned in 1348 as the Black Death, 
 affecting, like the latter, the whole of England and Ireland on 
 its first appearance, and afterwards particular monasteries, such 
 as Barking and Jarrow. But it is clear that famine-sickness 
 was also an incident of the same years. The metrical romancist 
 of the fourteenth century, Robert of Brunne, was probably 
 mistaken in tracing the great plague of " Cadwaladre's time " to 
 famine in the first instance ; there is no such suggestion in the 
 authentic history of Beda. But that historian does make a clear 
 reference to famine in Sussex about the year 679 \ Describing 
 the conversion of Sussex to Christianity by Wilfrid, he says that 
 the province had been afflicted with famine owing to three 
 seasons of drought, that the people were dying of hunger, and 
 that often forty or fifty together, " inedia macerati," would 
 proceed to the edge of the Sussex cliffs, and, joining hands, 
 throw themselves into the sea. But on the very day when the 
 people accepted the Christian baptism, there fell a plenteous 
 
 ^ It is illustrative of the confusion which arises from careless copying by later 
 compilers of history that Roger of Wendover, in his Flares Historiarnin (Eng. Hist. 
 Society's edition I. 159), takes Beda's Sussex reference to famine and makes it do duty, 
 under the year 665, for the great general plague of 664, having apparently overlooked 
 Beda's entirely distinct account of the latter. 
 
2^ Fauiine-fcvcrs in the Anglo-Saxon period. 
 
 rain, the earth flourished anew, and a glad and fruitful season 
 ensued \ 
 
 The anarchy in Northumbria which followed the death of 
 Beda (in 735), with the decline of piety and learning in the 
 northern monasteries, is said to have led to famine and plagued 
 It is not until the year 793 that an entry of famine and mortality 
 occurs in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It is in keeping with the 
 disappointing nature of all these early records that Simeon of 
 Durham and Roger of Howden, the two compilers who had 
 access to lost records, are more particular in enumerating the 
 portents that preceded the calamity than in describing its 
 actual circumstances. Then a whole century elapses (but 
 for a vague entry under the year 822) until we come to the 
 three calamitous years, with 897 as the centre, which followed 
 Alfred's famous resistance to the Danes. In that mortality, 
 many of the chief thanes died, and there was a murrain of cattle, 
 with a scarcity of food in Ireland. Two generations pass before 
 the chronicle contains another entry of the kind : in 962 there 
 was a great mortality, and the "great fever" was in London. 
 At no long intervals there are two more famines, in 976 and 986. 
 That of 986 (or 987) would appear to have been severe ; the 
 church plate at Winchester was melted for the benefit of the 
 starving^, and there was "a fever of men and a murrain of 
 cattle ^" After the expulsion of the Danes in 1005, says Henry 
 of Huntingdon, there was such desolation of famine as no one 
 
 ' Hisl. Eccles. § 290 : — " Siquidem tribiis annis ante adventum ejus in provinciam, 
 nulla illis in locis pluvia cecideral, unde et fames acerbissima plebein invadens inopia 
 nece prostravit. Denique ferunt quia saepe quadraginta simul aut quinquaginta homines 
 inedia macerati procederent ad praecipitium aliquod sive ripam maris, et junctis 
 niisere manibus pariter omnes aut ruina peiituri, aut fluctibus absorbendi deciderent. 
 Veium ipso die, quo baptisma fidei gens suscepit ilia, descendit pluvia serena sed 
 copiosa, lelloruil terra, rediit viridantibus arvis annus laetus et frugifer." 
 
 - Green, Short History of the English People, p. 39 : " The very fields lay waste, 
 and the land was scourged by famine and plague." I have missed this reference to 
 ]ilague in the original authorities. A i)assage in Iligden's Polyehronieon (v. 258) may 
 relate to that period, although it is referred to the mythical time of Vortigern. 
 
 ^ Slow, in enumerating the instances of public charity in his Survey of London, 
 ascribes the melting of the church plate to Ethelwald, bishop of Winchester in the 
 reign of King Edgar, about the year 963. 
 
 ■• The murrain was a flux, angliee " scillia " (Roger of Howden) or "schitta" 
 (liromloii). 
 
The zoasting of Yorkshire, 1069. 27 
 
 remembered. Then in loio or lOii comes the incident of 
 St Elphege, already t^iven. From 1036 to 1049 we find mention 
 of four, or perhaps five, famines, those of the years 1046 and 1049 
 being marked by a great mortality of men and murrain of cattle. 
 
 Except in Yorkshire, the Norman Conquest had no imme- 
 diate effects upon the people of England in the way of famine 
 and pestilence. From the last great mortality of 1049, ^ period 
 of nearly forty years elapses until we come to the great 
 pestilence and sharp famine in the last year of the Conqueror's 
 reign (1086-7). The harrying of Yorkshire, however, is too 
 important a local incident to be passed over in this history. Of 
 these ruthless horrors in the autumn of 1069 we have some 
 particulars from the pen of Simeon of Durham, who has 
 contemporary authority. There was such hunger, he says, that 
 men ate the flesh of their own kind, of horses, of dogs, and of 
 cats. Others sold themselves into perpetual slavery in order 
 that they might be able to sustain their miserable lives on any 
 terms (like the Chinese in later times). Others setting out in 
 exile from their country perished before their journey was 
 ended. It was horrible to look into the houses and farm-yards, 
 or by the wayside, and see the human corpses dissolved in 
 corruption and crawling with worms. There was no one to 
 bury them, for all were gone, either in flight or dead by the 
 sword and famine. The country was one wide solitude, and 
 remained so for nine years. Between York and Durham no one 
 dwelt, and travellers went in great fear of wild beasts and of 
 robbers \ William of Malmesbury says that the city of York 
 was so wasted by fire that an old inhabitant would not have 
 recognized it; and that the country was still waste for si.xty 
 miles at the time of his writing (1125)"^ In the Domesday 
 survey we find that there were 540 houses so waste that they 
 paid nothing, 400 houses " not inhabited," of which the better 
 sort pay one penny and others less, and only 50 inhabited 
 houses paying full dues. 
 
 The same local chronicler who has left particulars of the 
 
 1 Simeon of Durham, in Rolls series, 11. 1S8. As to fugitives, see Chr. Evesham, 
 p. 91. 
 
 - Gcsta Pontif. Angl. p. 208. 
 
28 A medieval siege — Durham, 1091. 
 
 devastation of 1069 — 70, has given also a picture of the siege 
 of Durham by Malcolm Canmore in 1091, which may serve 
 to realize for us what a medieval siege was, and what the 
 Scots marches had to endure for intervals during several 
 centuries : — 
 
 Malcolm advancing drives the Northumbrians before him, some into the 
 woods and hills, others into the city of Durham ; for there have they always 
 a sure refuge. Thither they drive their whole flocks and herds and carry 
 their furniture, so that there is hardly room within the town for so great a 
 crowd. Malcolm arrives and invests the city. It was not easy for one to go 
 outside, and the sheep and cattle could not be driven to pasture : the 
 churchyard was filled with them, and the church itself was scarcely kept 
 clear of them. Mixed with the cattle, a crowd of women and children 
 surrounded the church, so that the voices of the choristers were drowned by 
 the clamour. The heat of summer adds to the miseries of famine. Every- 
 where throughout the town were the sounds of grief, ' et plurima mortis 
 imago,' as in the sack of Troy. The siege is raised by the miraculous 
 intervention of St Cuthbert^ 
 
 The wasting of Yorkshire by William and the five incursions 
 of the Scots into Northumberland and Durham in the reign of 
 Malcolm Canmore had the effect of reducing a large part of the 
 soil of England to a comparatively unproductive state. The 
 efifacement of farms (and churches) in Hampshire, for the plant- 
 ing of the New Forest, had the same effect in a minor degree. 
 The rigorous enforcement of the forest laws in the interests of 
 the Norman nobles must have served also to remove one con- 
 siderable source of the means of subsistence from the people. 
 Whether these things, together with the general oppression of 
 the poor, contributed much or little to what followed, it is the 
 fact that the long period from the last two years of William 
 to the welcomed advent of Henry H. to the throne in 1154, 
 is filled with a record of famines, pestilences, and other national 
 misfortunes such as no other period of English history shows. 
 
 The first general famine and pestilence under Norman rule 
 was in the years 1086 and 1087, the last of the Conqueror's reign. 
 It is probable from the entries in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 
 that the aggravation (for which we must always look in order 
 to explain a historical famine and pestilence) was clue to two 
 
 ' SiiiicDii of 1 )iuliam, "On tin.- Miracles of St Culhbert," Wor/cs, n. 3,^8-40. 
 
TJic great fever and famine of 1086-7. 29 
 
 bad harvests in succession. The year 1086 was " heavy, toilsome 
 and sorrowful," through failure of the corn and fruit crops owing 
 to an inclement season, and through murrain of cattle*. Some 
 form of sickness appears to have been prevalent between that 
 harvest and the next. Almost every other man, says the Anglo- 
 Saxon Chronicle, was stricken with fever, and that so sharply 
 that many died of it. " Alas ! how miserable and how rueful 
 a time was then ! when the wretched men lay driven almost to 
 death, and afterwards came the sharp famine and destroyed them 
 quite." It is probably a careless gloss upon that, by a historian 
 of the next generation", when he says that "a promiscuous fever 
 destroyed more than half the people," and that famine, coming 
 after, destroyed those whom the fever had spared I But there 
 can be no question that this was one of those great periodic 
 conjunctions of famine and fever {\t,fiov ofjbov koX Xoi/jlov), of 
 which we shall find fuller details in the chronicles of the twelfth, 
 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It is easy to understand 
 that England, with all her wealth of fruits and corn in a good 
 season, had no reserve for the poor at least, and sometimes 
 not even for the rich, to get through two or more bad seasons 
 with. How much the corn crop in those days depended on the 
 season is clear from the entry in the chronicle two years after 
 (1089), that reaping was still in progress at Martinmas (11 
 November) and even later. Fields cultivated to yield an average 
 of only four or six times the seed were, of course, more at the 
 mercy of the seasons than the highly cultivated corn-land of our 
 own time. 
 
 The next famine with pestilence in England, seven years 
 later, or in the seventh year of William Rufus, introduces us 
 to a new set of considerations. It was the time when the 
 exactions of tribute for the king's wars in Normandy, or for 
 the satisfaction of his greed and that of his court, were severely 
 felt both by the church and the people. England, says one^ was 
 
 1 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Malmesbury adds " a mortality of men." 
 - William of Malmesbury, Gcst. Meg. Eng. Hist. Sec. Ii. 452. 
 
 ^ Malmesbury's construction is repeated by Henry of Huntingdon, Rolls cd. p. 
 209. Florence of Worcester merely says : " primo feluilms, deinde fame." 
 * Henry of Huntingdon, p. 232. 
 
30 A feudal cause of famine and pestilence, 1094. 
 
 suffocated and unable to breathe. Both clergy and laity, says 
 another^ were in such misery that they were weary of life. 
 But the most remarkable phraseology is that of William of 
 Malmesbury, the chief historian of the period, who seldom 
 descends from the region of high political and ecclesiastical 
 affairs to take notice of such things as famine and pestilence. 
 In the 7th year of Rufus, he says, "agriculture failed" on 
 account of the tributes which the king had decreed from his 
 position in Normandy. The fields running to waste, a famine 
 followed, and that in turn was succeeded by a mortality so 
 general that the dying were left untended and the dead unburied^ 
 The phrase about the lack of cultivation is a significant and not 
 incredible statement, which places the England of Rufus in the 
 same light as certain belated feudal parts of India within recent 
 memory. 
 
 In the villa<]fes of Gujeiat, when the festival comes round early in May, 
 the chief of a village collects the cultivators and tells them that it is time for 
 them to commence work. They say : " No ! the assessment was too heavy 
 last year, you lay too many taxes upon us." However, after much higgling, 
 and presents made to the more important men, a day is fixed for cultivation 
 to begin, and the clearing and manuring of the fields proceeds as before^. 
 But while Gujerat was still possessed by hundreds of petty feudal chiefs 
 under the Mahratta rule, previous to the establishment of the British Agency 
 in 1821, the exactions of tribute by the Baroda government were so extreme, 
 and enforced by so violent means ', that cultivation was almost neglected ; 
 the towns and villages swarmed with idlers, who subsisted upon milk and 
 ghee from their cows, while indolence and inactivity affected the whole 
 community^ A dreadful famine had "raged with destructive fury" over 
 Gujerat and Kattiwar for more than one year about 181 2-1 3-14, which 
 was followed, not by a contagious fever, but by the true bubo-plague. 
 
 If the English historian's language, " agricultura defecit," with 
 
 ' Annals of Winchester, sjih amio 1096. 
 
 " " Scplimo mino propter trilnjta quae rex in Normannia positus eclixerat, agri- 
 cultura defecit ; qua fatisccntc fames e vestigio ; ea cpioque invalescenle mortalitas 
 hominum subsecuta, adeo crebra ut deesset morituris cura, mortuis sepuUura." Gest. 
 A'ci^. II. 506. Copied in the Annals of Margan, I-lolls cd. 11. 506. 
 
 ■' luh A/(1li1, by A. Kinloch Forbes, 2nd ed. p. 543. 
 
 ^ //>jd. 
 
 •'"' Tiionias Whyte, " Report on the disease which prevailed in KaUywar in 1819- 
 20." Trans. Med. Phys. Soc. Bombay, I. (1838), p. 169. See also Gilder, ibid. 
 \>. 192 ; Frederick F()il)es ibid. II. i, and Thesis on I'lague, Edin. 1S40. 
 
A.D. I 103 to I 130. 31 
 
 reference to the tribute exacted by Rufus, have that fitness which 
 we have reason to expect from him, — Higden varies it to " ita ut 
 agricultura cessaret et fames succederet," — then the famine and 
 mortahty about the years 1094-5 were due to no less remark- 
 able a cause than a refusal to cultivate the land. It is not to be 
 supposed that the incubus of excessive tribute passed away with 
 the accession of Henry I. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle repeats 
 the complaint of heavy taxation in connexion with bad harvests 
 and murrains in 1 103, 1 105 and 1 1 lo^ Severe winters, or autumn 
 floods, with murrains and scarcity, are recorded also for the years 
 1 1 1 1, 1 1 15, 1 1 16, 1 1 17, 1 124 and 1 125, the famine of 1 125 having 
 been attended with a mortality, and having been sufficiently 
 great and general to be mentioned by several chroniclersl In 
 the midst of these years of scarcity and its effects upon the 
 population, there occurs one singular entry of another kind 
 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, under the year 11T2: "This 
 was a very good year, and very abundant in wood and in field ; 
 but it was a very sad and sorrowful one, through a most de- 
 structive pestilence^" Under the year 11 30, the annalist of the 
 Welsh monastery of Margan, who is specially attentive to domes- 
 tic events, records a murrain of cattle all over England, which 
 lasted several years so that scarcely one township escaped the 
 pest, the pigsties becoming suddenly empty, and whole meadows 
 swept of their cattle. It is to the same murrain that the Anglo- 
 Saxon Chronicle refers under the year 1131 : in towns where 
 there had been ten or twelve ploughs going there was not one 
 left, and the man who had 200 or 300 swine had not one left ; 
 after that died the domestic fowls. 
 
 These things happened from time to time in the comparatively 
 prosperous reign of Henry I. But with the death of Henry in 
 1 135, there began a state of misery and lawlessness lasting 
 
 1 In mo the tax was for the dower of tlie king's daiiglitcr on her marriage. 
 That also was parallel with a feudal right in Gujerat : " When a chief has to portion 
 a daughter, or to incur other similar necessary expense, he has the right of imposing 
 a levy upon the cultivators to meet it." A. Kinloch Forbes, Rds MAIA, iw<\ ed. p. 
 546. Refusal to plough, temp. Henry I. is stated by Pearson, i. 442. 
 
 - Malmesbury, Gcst. Pont. p. 442; H. of Huntingdon ; Annals of Margan ; 
 Roger of Howden. 
 
 ^ Also in the Annals of Osney : " Mortalitas maxima honiinum in Anglia.'" 
 
32 Miseries of tJie English, 1143. 
 
 almost to the accession of Henry II. in 1154, beside which 
 the former state of England was spoken of as " most flourishing'." 
 Besides the barbarities of the Scots and the Welsh on the northern 
 and western marches-, there were the civil wars of the factions 
 of King Stephen and the Empress Maud, and the cruelties and 
 predations of the unruly nobles under the walls of a thousand 
 newly-built strongholds. A graphic account of the condition of 
 England remains to us from the pen of an eyewitness, the obser- 
 vant author of the Gesta StcpJiani'^. Under the year 1143 he 
 writes that there was most dire famine in all England ; the 
 people ate the flesh of dogs and horses or the raw garbage 
 of herbs and roots. The people in crowds pined and died, 
 or another part entered on a sorrowful exile with their whole 
 families. One might see houses of great name standing nearly 
 empty, the residents of either sex and of every age being dead. 
 As autumn drew near and the fields whitened for the harvest, 
 there was no one to reap them, for the cultivators were cut off by 
 the pestilent hunger which had come between. To these home 
 troubles was added the presence of a multitude of barbarous 
 adventurers, without bowels of pity and compassion, who 
 had flocked to the country for military service. The occasion 
 was one of those which cause the archdeacon of Huntingdon to 
 break out into his elegiac verse: 
 
 " Ecce Stygis facies, consimilisque lues *." 
 
 " And in those days," says another, " there was no king 
 
 in Israeli" The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which comes to an end 
 
 in this scene of universal gloom, describes how one might go a 
 
 day's journey and never find a man sitting in a town, or the land 
 
 1 " Attenuata est Anglia, ut ex regno florentissimo infelicissimuni videretur." 
 William of Ncvvburgh, Rolls ed. p. 39. 
 
 * Ilcniy of Huntingdon, sjib anno 1138. 
 
 ^ Gcsia S/i'/)/iani, Rolls series, No. 82, vol. HI. p. 99. The author is conjectured 
 to have been a foreigner in the service of the bishop of Winchester, brother of the 
 
 king. 
 
 ■* " Afiluit ergo fames; consumpta carnc gementes 
 
 Exhalant animas ossa cutisque vagas. 
 
 Quis tantos sepelire queat coetus morientium ? 
 
 Ecce Stigis facies, consimilisque lues." 
 
 ■'■• William of Newburgh, sub anno 1149- 
 
Burials iv. a day at PeterborongJi, in tJic epidemic of wj^. 'i,'^ 
 
 tilled, and how men who once were rich had to go begging 
 their bread, concluding with the words, " And they said openly 
 that Christ and His saints slept." 
 
 Among the penances of Henry H. after the murder of Recket, 
 there is recorded his charity in feeding during a dearth ten thou- 
 sand persons daily from the first of April, 1 171, until the harvest'. 
 Rut, apart from a reference to a flux among the troops in Ireland 
 in 1 172, from errors of diet^ the long reign of Henry H. is marked 
 by only one record of general pestilence. It is recorded by the 
 best contemporary writer, Renedict of Peterborough, and it is 
 the first instance in which the number of burials in a day 
 (perhaps at Peterborough) is given. In the year 1175, he 
 says, there was in England and the adjacent regions a pesti- 
 lential mortality of men, such that on many days seven or eight 
 corpses were carried out to be buried. And immediately upon 
 that pestilential mortality there followed a dire famine^ It is 
 to be observed that the famine is explicitly stated to have come 
 after the pestilence, just as in the great mortality of 1087 ; and, 
 as in the latter case, it may be that a hard winter, with scarcity 
 of food, brought a general sickness, and that the scarcity had 
 been raised to famine point by a second bad harvest. The entr}- 
 in the chronicle of Melrose for 1173 may refer to Scotland only: 
 a bad kind of cough, unheard of before, affected almo.st everj-one 
 far and wide, whereof, "or from which pest," many died. This is 
 perhaps the only special reference to "tussis" as epidemic until 
 the influenzas of the seventeenth century. 
 
 The comparative freedom of the long reign of Henry II. from 
 famines and national distress probably arose as much from good 
 government as from the clemency of the seasons. The country 
 was growing rich by foreign trade. In 1 190 the two leading Jews 
 of York, Joyce and Renedict, were occupying residences in the 
 heart of the town like royal palaces in size and in the sumptuous- 
 ne.ss of their furniture. The same historian, William of Newburgh, 
 
 ' i>io\\^?. Survey of London, Popular ed. (1890) p. 116. 
 
 " " Recentium esus carnium et haustus aquae, tarn insolitus quani incognilus, 
 plures de regis exercitu panis inedia laborantes, fluxu ventris afllixit in Ilyliernia." 
 Kadulphus de Diceto, Imagines Ilisforiar. I. 330. 
 
 ^ Benedict of Peterborough, I. 104, and, in identical terms, in Roger of Ilowden. 
 
 C. 3 
 
34 The size and wealth of London under Henry IT. 
 
 who records the king's protection of these envied capitalists, 
 mentions also his protection of " the poor, the widows and the 
 orphans," and his liberal charities. That the king's protection 
 of his poorer subjects was not unneeded, would be obvious if we 
 could trust the extraordinary account of the keen traders of 
 London which is put by Richard of Devizes into the mouth of 
 a hostile witness^ The peoples of all nations, it appears, flocked 
 to London, each nationality contributing to the morals of the 
 capital its proper vices and manners. There was no righteous 
 person in London, no, not one ; there were more thieves in 
 London than in all France'-, In the entirely different account, 
 of the same date, by an enthusiastic Londoner, the monk 
 Fitz-Stephen, the only " plagues " of London are said to be " the 
 immoderate drinking of fools and the frequency of fires." The 
 city and suburbs had one hundred and twenty-six small parish 
 churches, besides thirteen greater conventual churches ; and it 
 was a model to all the world for religious observances. "Nearly 
 all the bishops, abbots, and magnates of England are, as it were, 
 citizens and freemen of London ; having there their own splendid 
 houses, to which they resort, where they spend largely when 
 summoned to great councils by the king or by their metropolitan, 
 or drawn thither by their own private affairs-'." The archdeacon 
 of London, of the same date, Peter of Blois, in a letter to the pope, 
 Innocent III., concerning the extent of his duties and the small- 
 ness of his stipend, gives the parish churches in the city at one 
 hundred and twenty, and the population at forty thousand ^ 
 
 ' The speaker is represented as a Jew in France. It is significant that the massacre 
 of the Jews at Lynn in 1190 is stated hy William of Newburgh to have been insti- 
 gated by iheforeigJi traders. 
 
 ^ Ricardus Divisiensis. Eng. Hist. Society's ed. p. 60. 
 
 ** Description of London, prefixed to Fitzstephen's Life of Becket. Reproduced 
 in .Stow's Survey 0/ London. 
 
 '' Petri Blesensis omnia opera, ed. Giles, Epist. CLI. The number of churches may 
 seem large for the population ; but it should be kept in mind that these city parish 
 churches were mere chapels or oratories, like the side-chapcls of a great church. 
 Indeed, at Yarmouth, they were actually built along the sides of the single great 
 parish church ; whereas, at Norwich, there were sixty of them standing each in its 
 own small parish area, the Cathedral, as well as the other conventual churches, being 
 the greater places of worship. Lincoln is said to have had 49 of these small churches, 
 and Yf)rk 40. An example of iheiri remains in St I'eter's at Cambridge. 
 
Starving crowd at Margaii Dwnastcry, 1189. 35 
 
 The Germans who came in the train of Richard I. on his return 
 to England in 1194, after his release from the hands of the 
 emperor, were amazed at the display of wealth and finery which 
 the Londoners made to welcome back the king ; if the emperor 
 had known the riches of England, they said, he would have 
 demanded a heavier ransom \ The ransom, all the same, required 
 a second, or even a third levy before it was raised, owing, it was 
 said, to peculation ; and the ecclesiastics, who held a large part 
 of the soil, appear to have had so little in hand to pay their 
 share that they had to pledge the gold and silver vessels of 
 the altar^ 
 
 The year of Richard's accession, 1 189, is given by the annalist 
 of the Welsh monastery of Margan, as a year of severe famine 
 and of a mortality of men. Probably it was a local famine, and 
 it may well have been the same in which Giraldus Cambrensis 
 says that he himself saw crowds of poor people coming day after 
 day to the gates of the monastery of Margan, so that the bretliren 
 took counsel and sent a ship to Bristol for cornl The great and 
 general famine with pestilence in Richard's time was in the years 
 1 193, 1 194, 1 195, 1 196 and 1 197, and it appears to have been 
 felt in France, in the basin of the Danube, and over all Europe, 
 as well as in England. Of the pestilence which came with it 
 in England we have an exceptionally full account from the pen 
 of William of Newburgh. The monastery in which William 
 wrote his history was situated among woods by the side of a 
 stream under the Hambledon hills in Yorkshire, on the road 
 between York and the mouth of the Tees ; so that when he saj-s 
 of this famine and pestilence, " we speak what we do know, and 
 testify what we have seen," he may be taken as recording the 
 experience of a sufficientl)' typical region of rural England. 
 
 ' William of Newburgh, p. 431. 
 
 "- Ibid. 
 
 ^ "His quoque nostris dielms, ingiiiente faniis inedia, et maxima paupeium turba 
 quotidie ad janiiam jacente, de communi patrum consilio, ad caritatis explendae 
 sufficientiam, propter bladum in Angliam navis Bristolliim missa est." Ftiiier. 
 IValliae, Rolls ed. VI. 68. The itinerary of Bishop Baldwin, which the author 
 follows, was in ir88; but the "his qunquc nostris diebus " clearly refers to a later 
 date, which may have been the year after, or may have been the more severe famine 
 of 1 195-7 or of 1203. 
 
 3—2 
 
36 Details of pestilence in YorksJiirc, 11 96. 
 
 His narrative of the pestilence* is given under the year 1196, 
 which was the fourth year of the scarcity or famine : After the 
 crowds of poor had been dying on all sides of want, a most savage 
 plague ensued, as if from air corrupted by dead bodies of the 
 poor. This pestilence showed but little respect even for those 
 who had abundance of food ; and as to those who were in want, 
 it put an end to their long agony of hunger. The disease crept 
 about everywhere, always of one type, namely that of an acute 
 fever. Day after day it seized so many, and finished so many 
 more, so that there were scarcely to be found any to give heed 
 to the sick or to bury the dead. The usual rites of burial were 
 omitted, except in the case of some nobler or richer person ; at 
 whatever hour anyone died the body was forthwith committed to 
 the earth, and in many places great trenches were made if the 
 number of corpses was too great to afford time for burying them 
 one by one. And as so many were dying every day, even those 
 who were in health fell into low spirits, and went about with pale 
 faces, themselves the living picture of death. In the monasteries 
 alone was this pestilence comparatively unfelt. After it had 
 raged on all sides for five or six months, it subsided when the 
 winter cold came. 
 
 Those lean years were doubtless followed by seven fat years ; 
 for it is not until 1203, the fourth year of John, that we again meet 
 with the records of famine and pestilence. From various monas- 
 teries, from Waverley in Sussex, Tewkesbury in Gloucester and 
 Margan in Glamorgan, we have the same testimony — " fames 
 magna et mortalitas," " fames valida, et saeva mortalitas multitu- 
 dinem pauperum extinguit," " maxima fames." The monks of 
 Waverley had to leave their own house and disperse themselves 
 through various monasteries. Two years after, 1205, there came 
 so hard a season that the winter-sown seed was almost killed by 
 frost. The Thames was crossed on the ice, and there was no 
 ploughing for many weeks. An Essex annalist says there was 
 a famine, and quotes the famine prices : a quarter of wheat was 
 sold for a pound in many i)arts of England, although in Henry 
 n.'s time it was often as low as twelve pence; a quarter of beans 
 
 ^ Hislor. Rer. Angl., Rolls series, No. 82, vol. i. pp. 460, 484. 
 
Value of the St A /bans annals, 1 234-1 323. 'i,'/ 
 
 ten shillings; a quarter of oats forty pence, which used to be four 
 pence\ The annalist at Margan enters also the year 12 10 as a 
 sickly one throughout England'-. 
 
 We are now come to the period when we can read the 
 succession of these events in the domestic life of the people from 
 the more trustworthy records of the St Albans school of historians. 
 Of the scarcity and sickness among the poor in 1234 we have 
 some suggestive particulars by Roger of Wendovcr^, and for the 
 series of famines and epidemics from 1257 to 1259 we have a 
 comparatively full account by his famous successor in the office 
 of historiographer to the abbey, Matthew Paris ■*. The next 
 St Albans scriptorius, Rishanger^ notes the kind of harvest 
 every year from 1259 to 1305, and for only one of those years 
 after the scarcity of 1259 was past, namely the year 1294, 
 does he speak of the people dying of hunger. His successor, 
 John Trokelowe*', carries on the annals to 1323, and gives us some 
 particulars, not without diagnostic value, of the great famine- 
 sickness of 13 1 5-16, and of the succession of dear years of 
 which the epidemic was an incident. It is on these contemporary 
 accounts by the St Albans school, together with the record for 
 the year 1196 by William of Newburgh, that our knowledge of 
 the famine-pestilences of England must be based. 
 
 With the harvest of 1259 begins the tabulation of agricultural 
 prices from farm-bailiffs' accounts, by Professor Thorold Rogers, 
 a work of vast labour in which the economic history of the 
 English people is written in indubitable characters, and by means 
 of which we are enabled to check the more general and often 
 rhetorical statements of the contemporary historians. 
 
 Although the history of the last year or two of John and of 
 the earlier years of Henry HI. is full of turbulence and rapine, 
 yet we hear of no general distress among the cultivators of the 
 soil. The contemporary authority, Roger of Wendover, has no 
 
 ^ Ralph of Coggeshall, sub aituo. 
 
 ^ " Variis infirmitatibus homines per Angliam vexantur ct quamplures moriiintur, " 
 Annals of Margan, Rolls series, No. 36. 
 
 ^ Roger of Wendover, Fl. Hist. Rolls ed. 
 
 ^ Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, Rolls series. No. 57, ed. Luard, vol. V. 
 
 ^ Rishanger in Chron. Monast. S. Allxini, Rolls series. No. 28. 
 
 •^ John Trokelowe, ibid. 
 
 246766 
 
3^ The Barons luars produce no epidemics. 
 
 entry of the kind until 1234, excepting a single note under the 
 year 1222, that wheat rose to twelve shillings the quarter. We 
 hear of king John and his following as plundering the rich 
 churchmen and laymen all the way from St Albans to Notting- 
 ham, of William Longspee, earl of Salisbury, carrying on the same 
 practices in the counties of Essex, Middlesex, Hertford, Cam- 
 bridge and Huntingdon, of the spoliation of the Isle of Ely, and 
 of the occupation of towns and villages in Essex, Suffolk and 
 Norfolk by Louis, Dauphin of France, the king-elect, or broken 
 reed, on whom the Barons of Magna Charta thought for a time 
 to lean\ But the whole of that period, and of the years following 
 until 1234, is absolutely free from any record of wide-spread 
 distress among the lower class. We are reminded of the 
 observation by Philip de Comines, with the civil wars of York 
 and Lancaster in his mind, a saying which is doubtless true of 
 all the struggles in England for the settlement of the respective 
 claims of king and aristocracy: "England has this peculiar 
 grace," says the French statesman, " that neither the country, 
 nor the people, nor the houses are wasted or demolished ; but 
 the calamities and misfortunes of the war fall only upon the 
 soldiers and especially the nobility, of whom they are more than 
 ordinarily jealous : for nothing is perfect in this world." That 
 cannot apply of course to the barbarous incursions of the Scots 
 and the Welsh ; for the northern marches were often reduced to 
 desolation during a period of three hundred years after the 
 Conquest and were never more desolate than in the reign of 
 Richard H. ; while the marches of Wales were subject to not 
 less ruthless spoliations until the concessions to the Welsh 
 by Edward L Nor is the immunity of the peasantry from the 
 troubles of civil war to be taken as absolute ; for we find 
 under the year 1264, when Simon de Montfort was in the field 
 against the king, an explicit statement that the small peasantry 
 were plundered even to the poor furniture of their cottages. But 
 on the whole we may take it that the paralysing effect of civil 
 war seldom reached to the English lower classes in the medieval 
 period, that the tenour of their lives was seldom disturbed except 
 
 ' Wcndovcr, II. 162, 171, 190, 205. 
 
Iiicidoit in the chunk at Abbotsley, 1234. 39 
 
 by famine or plague, and that kings and nobles were left to fight 
 it out among themselves. 
 
 We become aware, however, from the time of the Great 
 Charter, and during the steady growth of the country's pros- 
 perity, of a widening chasm between the rich and the poor 
 within the ranks of the commons themselves, and that too, not 
 only in the centres of trade (as we shall see), but also in country 
 districts. The claims of feudal service did not prevent some 
 among the villagers from adding house to house, and field to 
 field, thereby marking in every parish the interval between the 
 thriving and comfortable and a residuum of paiipct'cs composed 
 of the less capable or the less fortunate. A curious story, told 
 by Roger of Wendover of the village of Abbotsley near 
 St Neots, will serve as an illustration of a fact which we might 
 be otherwise well assured of from first principles \ 
 
 The year 1234 was the third of a succession of lean years. 
 So sharp was the famine before the harvest of that year, that 
 crowds of the poor went to the fields in the month of July, and 
 plucked the unripe ears of corn, rubbing them in their hands 
 and eating the raw grain. The St Albans monk is full of 
 indignation against the prevailing spirit of avarice which reduced 
 some of the people to that sad necessity : Alms had everywhere 
 gone out of fashion ; the rich, abounding in all manner of 
 temporal goods, were so smitten with blind greed that they 
 suffered Christian men, made in the image of God, to die for 
 want of food. Some, indeed, were so impious as to say that 
 their wealth was due to their own industry, and not to the 
 gift of God. Of that mind seem to have been the more 
 prosperous cultivators of the village of Abbotsley " who looked 
 on the needy with an eye of suspicion ^" 
 
 The following story is told of them. Seeing the poor making free with 
 their corn in the ear, they assembled in the parish church on a Sunday in 
 August, and assailed the parson with their clamours, demanding that he 
 would forthwith pronounce the ban of the Church upon those who helped 
 themselves to the ears of corn. The parson, notwithstanding a well-known 
 precedent in the Gospels, was about to yield to their insistence, when a man 
 
 1 Wendover, HI. 95, 98. 
 
 * " Qui ex avaritia inopiam semper habent suspectam." 
 
40 Spirit of avarice general in all classes. 
 
 of religion and piety rose in the congregation and adjured the priest, in the 
 name of God and all His saints, to refrain from the sentence, adding that 
 those who were in need were welcome to help themselves to his own corn. 
 The others, however, insisted, and the parson was just beginning to ban the 
 pilferers, when a thunderstorm suddenly burst, with hail and torrents of rain. 
 When the storm had passed, the peasants went out to find their crops 
 destroyed, — all but that one simple and just man who found his corn 
 untouched. 
 
 We have only to recall the minute subdivisions of the 
 common field, or fields, of the parish into half-acre strips 
 separated by balks of turf, and the fact that no two half-acres 
 of the same cultivator lay together, to realize how nice must 
 have been the discrimination \ 
 
 But the moral of the story is obvious. It is an appeal 
 to the teaching and the sanction of the Gospels, against the 
 rooted belief of the natural man that he owes what he has to 
 his own industry and thrift, and that it is no business of his 
 to part with his goods for the sustenance of a helpless and 
 improvident class. 
 
 The spirit of avarice, according to Wendover, permeated 
 all classes at this period, from high ecclesiastics downwards. 
 Walter, archbishop of York, had his granaries full of corn 
 during the scarcity, some of it five years old. When the 
 peasants on his manors asked to be supplied from these stores 
 in the summer of 1234, the archbishop instructed his bailiffs 
 to give out the old corn on condition of getting new for it when 
 the harvest was over. It need not be told at length how the 
 archbishop's barns at Ripon were found on examination to be 
 infested with vermin, how the corn had turned mouldy and 
 rotten, and how the whole of it had to be destroyed by fire*. 
 Of the same import are the raids upon the barns of the alien or 
 Italian clergy in 1228, in the diocese of Winchester and else- 
 where, and the ostentatious distribution by the raiders of doles 
 to the poor I 
 
 ' Alboklslea, or Abbolsley, was tlie parish of which the famous Grosseteste, bishop 
 of Lincoln, was rector (perhaps non-resident) down to 1231, or to within three years 
 of the date of the above anecdote. The existing church is of great age, and may 
 well have Ijeen the actual edifice in which the scene was enacted. 
 
 - Wendover, iii. 96. 
 
 ^ Ibid. ni. 19, 27. 
 
The mission of the Friars, 13//; Century. 41 
 
 The somewhat parallel course of public morality in the 
 centres of trade, or, as Wendover would call it, the prevalence 
 of avarice, demands a brief notice for our purpose. 
 
 In every state of society, there will of course be rich and 
 poor. But a class of pauperes seems to emerge more dis- 
 tinctly in the life of England from about the beginning of the 
 thirteenth century. The period corresponds to the appearance 
 on the scene of St Francis and his friars. Doubtless St Francis 
 was inspired by a true sense of what the time needed, even if it 
 be open to contend that his ministrations of charity brought 
 out, consolidated, and kept alive a helpless class who would 
 have been less heard of if they had been left to the tender 
 mercies of economic principles. The mission of the friars was 
 not merely to the poor ; it was also to the rich, whether of the 
 church or of the world, " to soften the hardness of their hearts 
 by the oil of preaching\" It was one of these interpositions, 
 ever needed and never wanting, to reduce the inequalities of 
 the human lot, not by preaching down-right theoretical com- 
 munism, but, more by force of rhetoric than of logic, to extort 
 from the strong some concessions to the weak, to mitigate 
 the severity of the struggle for existence, and to bring the 
 respectable vices of greed and sharp practice to the bar of 
 conscience. 
 
 As early as 1 196 there is the significant incident, in the city 
 of London, of the rising of the poorer class and the middling 
 class, headed by Fitzosbert Longbcard, himself one of the 
 privileged citizens, against an assessment in which the class 
 represented by the mayor and aldermen were alleged to have 
 been very tender of their own interests ^ Longbeard was hailed 
 as "the friend of the poor," and, having lost his life in their 
 cause (whether in the street before Bow Church, or on a gallows 
 at Tyburn, or at the Smithfield elms, the narratives are not 
 agreed), he is celebrated by the sympathetic IMatthew Paris as 
 " the martyr of the poorl" That historian continues, after the 
 
 1 Wendover, HI. 381. 
 ^ William of Newburgli, sit/i anno i ry6. 
 
 ■' On the other hand John Stow seems to liavc ac(juired, from some unstated 
 source, an extraordinary prejudice against him. 
 
42 Effects of famine, 1234. — Epidemic in 1247. 
 
 manner of his predecessor Wendover, to speak of Londoners as 
 on the one hand the " mediocres, populares et plebei," and on 
 the other hand the "divites." In 1258 the latter class over- 
 reached themselves : they were caught in actual vulgar pecu- 
 lation of money raised by assessment for repairing the city 
 walls ; some of them were thrown into prison and only escaped 
 death through the royal clemency at the instance of the no- 
 torious pluralist John Mansel, and on making restitution of their 
 plunder ; but one of them, the mayor, never recovered the blow 
 to his respectability, and died soon after of grief \ Whether it 
 meant a wide-spread spirit of petty fraud, or some unadjusted 
 change in value, the young king in 1228, during a journey from 
 York to London, took occasion along his route to destroy the 
 " false measures " of corn, ale and wine, to substitute more 
 ample measures, and to increase the weight of the loaf. 
 
 The scarcity or famine of 1234, to which the Abbotsley 
 incident belongs, was accompanied, says the St Albans annalist, 
 by a mortality which raged cruelly everywhere. On the other 
 hand the annalist of Tewkesbury may be credited when he says 
 that, although the year was one of scarcity, corn being at eight 
 shillings, yet "by the grace of God the poor were better sustained 
 than in other years"''." 
 
 There was an epidemic in 1247, but it is not clear whether 
 it was due to famine. Although Higden, quoting from some 
 unknown record, says that there was dearth in England in that 
 year, wheat being at twelve shillings the quarter, yet he does 
 not mention sickness at all ; and Matthew Paris, who was then 
 living, is explicit that the harvest of 1247 was an abundant one, 
 and that the mortality did not begin until September of that 
 year. There does appear, however, to have been a sharp famine 
 in Wales ; and it is recorded that the bishop of Norwich, 
 "about the year 1245," in a time of great dearth, sold all his 
 plate and distributed it to the poor'. All that we know of 
 this epidemic is the statement of Matthew Paris, that it began 
 in September and lasted for three months ; and that as many 
 
 1 Matthew Paris, Cliron. Maj. cd. Luard, v. 663, 675. 
 
 * Annals of Tewkesl)ury in Aiinales Monastici, Rolls scries. No. 36. 
 
 •' Chronica Alajora, w. 647; Stow, Survey of London. 
 
Antecedents of the f amine of 12 57- 1259. 43 
 
 as nine or ten bodies were buried in one day in the single 
 churchyard of St Peter's at Saint Albans \ 
 
 Matthew Paris notes the quality of the harvest and the prices 
 of grain every year, and his successor Rishanger continues 
 the practice. The prices noted appear, from comparison with 
 those tabulated by Thorold Rogers from actual accounts, to 
 have been the lowest market rates of the year. The harvest 
 of 1248 was plentiful, and wheat sold at two shillings and 
 sixpence a quarter. In 1249 and 1250 it was at two shillings, 
 oats being at one shilling. But those years of exceptional 
 abundance were followed at no long interval by a series of years 
 of scarcity or famine, which brought pestilential sickness of the 
 severest kind. 
 
 The scarcity or famine in the years 1256-59 was all the 
 more acutely felt owing to the dearth of money in the country. 
 The burden of the history of Matthew Paris before he comes to 
 the famine is that England had been emptied of treasure by the 
 exactions of king and pope. Henry III. was under some not 
 quite intelligible obligation of money to his brother, the earl of 
 Cornwall. The English earl was a candidate for the Imperial 
 crown, and had got so far towards the dignity of emperor as to 
 have been made king of the Germans. It was English money 
 that went to pay his Gerrnan troops, and to further his cause 
 with the electoral princes ; but the circulating coin of P^ngland 
 does not appear to have sufficed for these and domestic purposes 
 also. The harvest of 1256 had been spoiled by wet, and the 
 weather of the spring of 1257 was wretched in the extreme. 
 All England was in a state of marsh and mud, and the roads 
 were impassable. Many sowed their fields over again ; but the 
 autumn proved as wet as the rest of the year. " Whatever had 
 been sown in winter, whatever had germinated in spring, what- 
 ever the summer had brought forward — all was drowned in the 
 floods of autumn." The want of coins in circulation caused 
 unheard-of poverty. At the end of the year the fields lay 
 untilled, and a multitude of people were dead of famine. At 
 Christmas wheat rose to ten shillings a quarter. But the year 
 1257 appears to have had " lethal fevers" before the loss of the 
 ' ChfOH. Maj. IV. 654. 
 
44 TJie dearth and sickness in London, 1258. 
 
 harvest of that year could be felt. Not to mention other places, 
 says the St Albans historian, there was at St Edmundsbury in 
 the dog-days so great a mortality that more than two thousand 
 bodies were buried in its spacious cemetery \ 
 
 The full effects of the famine were not felt until the spring 
 of 1258. So great was the pinch in London from the failure 
 of the crops and the want of money that fifteen thousand '"* are 
 said to have died of famine, and of a grievous and wide-spread 
 pestilence that broke out about the feast of the Trinity 
 (19 May). 
 
 The earl of Cornwall (and king of Germany) who had 
 relieved the country of a great part of its circulating coin, took 
 the opportunity to buy up corn in Germany and Holland for 
 the supply of the London market. Fifty great ships, says 
 Matthew Paris, arrived in the Thames laden with wheat, barley, 
 and other grain. Not three English counties had produced as 
 much as was imported. The corn was for such as could buy it ; 
 but the king interposed with an edict that, whereas greed was 
 to be discouraged, no one was to buy the foreign corn in order 
 to store it up and trade in it. Those who had no money, we 
 are expressly told, died of hunger, even after the arrival of the 
 ships ; and even men of good position went about with faces 
 pinched by hunger, and passed sleepless nights sighing for 
 bread. No one had seen such famine and misery, although 
 many would have remembered corn at higher prices. The price 
 quoted about this stage of the narrative, although not with 
 special reference to the foreign wheat, is nine shillings the 
 quarter. Elsewhere the price is said to have mounted up to 
 fifteen shillings, which may have been the rate before the 
 foreign supply came in. But such was the scarceness of money, 
 we are told, that if the price of the quarter of wheat had been 
 less, there would hardly have been found anyone to buy it. 
 
 ' Chr. Maj. v. 660. ( )lhcr cielails occur here and there to the end of the clironicle. 
 
 - This is tlie number j^iven by Matthew Paris. It suggests a larger popuhalion in 
 tiic capital than we might have been disposed to credit. The same writer says that 
 London was so full of people when the parliament was sitting the year before {1257) 
 that the city could hardly hold them all in her amjilc lx)som. The Annals of 
 Tewkesbury put the wlinlc mortality from famine and fever in Lond(jn in 1258 al 
 20,000. Hut the vvliole iioiiuialicjii did not probably exceed 40,000. 
 
Famine and pestilence eontinucd to 1259. 45 
 
 Even those who were wont to succour the miserable were now 
 reduced to perish along with them. It is difficult to believe 
 that the historian has not given way to the temptations of 
 rhetoric, and it is pleasing to be able to give the following 
 complement to his picture. After some 15,000 had died in 
 London, mostly of the poorer sort, one might hear a crier 
 making proclamation to the starving multitude to go to a 
 distribution of bread by this or that nobleman, at such and 
 such a place, mentioning the name of the benefactor and the 
 place of dole. 
 
 In other passages, which may be taken as picturing the state 
 of matters in the country, the historian says that the bodies 
 of the starved were found swollen and livid, lying five or six 
 together in pig-sties, or on dungheaps, or in the mud of farm- 
 yards. The dying were refused shelter and succour for fear 
 of contagion, and scarcely anj'one would go near the dead to 
 bury them. Where many corpses were found together, the)- 
 were buried in capacious trenches in the churchj-ards. 
 
 We come now to the harvest of 1258. After a bleak and 
 late spring the crops had come forward well under excessive 
 heat in summer, and the harvest was an unusually abundant, 
 although a late one. Rains set in before the corn could be cut, 
 and at the feast of All Saints (i November) the heavy crops 
 had rotted until the fields were like so many dungheaps. Only 
 in some places was any attempt made to carry the harvest 
 home, and then it was so spoiled as to be hardly worth the 
 trouble. Even the mouldy grain sold as high as sixteen 
 shillings a quarter. The famishing people resorted to various 
 .shifts, selling their cattle and reducing their households. Mow 
 the country got through the winter, we are not told. Matthew 
 Paris himself died early in 1259, and the annalist who added 
 a few pages to the CJironica Majora after his death, merel)- 
 mentions that the corn, the oil and the wine turned corrupt, and 
 that as the sun entered Cancer a pestilence and mortality of 
 men began unexpectedly, in which many died. Among others 
 Fulk, the bishop of London, died of pestilence in the spring of 
 
 1259; and, to say nothing of many other places, at Paris 
 
 thousand (the number is left blank) were buried. 
 
46 Prices of corn from 1259. — "Scab" of s/iccp tj/iported, 1274. 
 
 The vagueness of the last statement reminds us that we are 
 now deprived of the comparatively safe guidance of Matthew 
 Paris. His successor in the office of annalist at St Albans, 
 Rishanger, is much less trustworthy. He sums up the year 
 1259 in a paragraph which repeats exactly the facts of the 
 notorious year 1258, and probably applies to that alone; for the 
 year 1260 his summary is that it was more severe, more cruel 
 and more terrible to all living things than the year before, the 
 pestilence and famine being intolerable. There is, however, no 
 confirmation of that in the authentic prices of the year collected 
 by Thorold Rogers. Parcels of wheat of the harvest of 1259 
 were sold at about five and six shillings, and of the harvest 
 of 1260 at from three shillings and sixpence to six shillings. 
 For a number of years, corresponding to the Barons* war 
 and the war in Wales, the price is moderate or low, the 
 figures of extant bailiffs' accounts agreeing on the whole 
 with Rishanger's summary statements about the respective 
 harvests\ The years from 1271 to 1273 were dear years, and 
 for the first of the series we find a doubtful record by the 
 
 ^ The year 1274 was the beginning of so exceptional a murrain of sheep that it 
 deserves mention here, although murrains do not come within the scope of the 
 work. It is recorded by more than one contemporary. Rishanger (p. 84) says : 
 " In that year a disastrous plague of sheep seized upon England, so that the sheep-folds 
 were everywhere emptied through the spreading of it. It lasted for twenty-eight 
 years following, so that no farm of the whole kingdom was without the infliction of that 
 misery. Many attributed the cause of this disease, which the inhabitants had not 
 been acquainted with before, to a certain rich man of the Frankish nation, who 
 settled in Northumberland, having brought with him a certain sheep of Spanish breed, 
 the size of a small two year old ox, which was ailing and contaminated all the flocks 
 of England by handing on its disease to them." Under the year following, 1275, he 
 enters it again, using the term "scabies." Thorold Rogers [Hist, of Aip-ic. and 
 Prices, i. 31) has found " scab " of sheep often mentioned in the bailiffs' accounts from 
 about 1288 ; it is assumed to have become permanent from the item of tar occurring 
 regularly in the accounts ; but tar was used ordinarily for marking. It may have 
 been sheep-pox, which Fitzherbert, in his Book of Husbandry (edition of 1598), 
 describes under the name of " the Poxe," giving a clear account of the way to 
 deal with it by isolation. For murrains in general, the reader may consult 
 Fleming's Animal Plagues, 2 vols. 1871 — 1884, a work which is mostly compiled 
 (with meagre acknowledgment for "bibliography" only) from the truly learned work 
 of Ileusinger, Recherches de Pathologie Comparee, Cassel, 1844. Fleming has used 
 only the "pieces justificatives," and has not carried the history beyond the ]5oint 
 where Ileusinger left it. 
 
Epidemic of flux from famine, 1294. 47 
 
 Yorkshire continuator of William of Newburi^h that there was 
 " a great famine and pestilence in Enf^land and Ireland \" The 
 harvest of 1288 was so abundant that the price of wheat in the 
 bailiffs' accounts is mostly about two shillings, ranging from 
 sixteen pence to four and eightpence. Rishanger's prices for 
 the year are sufficiently near the mark : in some places wheat 
 sold at twenty pence the quarter, in others at sixteen pence, 
 and in others at twelve pence. From that extremely low point, 
 a rise begins which culminates in 1294. The chronicler's state- 
 ment for 1289, that in London the bushel of wheat rose from 
 threepence to two shillings, is not borne out by the bailiffs' 
 accounts, which show a range of from two shillings and eight- 
 pence to six shillings the quarter. But these accounts confirm 
 the statement that the years following were dear years, and 
 that 1294 was a year of famine prices, wheat having touched 
 fourteen shillings at Cambridge, in July. Rishanger's two notes 
 are that the poor perished of hunger, and that the poor died of 
 hunger on all sides, afflicted wnth a looseness {lienteria)^. The 
 two years following are also given as hard for the poor, but 
 not as years of famine or sickness ; the country was at the 
 same time heavily taxed for the expenses of the war which 
 Edward I. was waging against the Scots. Ordinary prosperit}' 
 attends the cultivators of the soil until the end of Rishanger's 
 chronicle in 1 305 ; and from the beginning of Trokelowe's in 
 1307, the year of Edward II. 's accession, there is nothing for 
 our purpose until we come to the great famine of 13151 
 
 It is clear, however, that prices were high in every year from 
 1309 until that famine, with the single exception of the harvest 
 of 1311. At the meeting of Parliament in London before 
 
 ^ Continuation of Wm. of Newhurgh, Rolls series No. 82, vol. ii. p. 5r)o : 
 " Facta est magna fames per universam Angliam et maxime partihus occidentalihiis. 
 In Ilibernia vero tres pestes invaluerunt, sc. morlalitas, fames, ct gladiiis : perguerram 
 mortalem praevalentibus Hybernicis et Anglicis succumbentibus. Qui vero gladium 
 et famem evadere potuerunt, peste mortalitatis praevenli sunt, ita ut vivi mortuis 
 sepeliendis vix sufficere valerent." 
 
 ^ See also the continuation of the chronicle of Florence of Worcester, Bohn's 
 series, p. 405. 
 
 ^ Rishanger's annals, i'259-i_^o5, and Trokelowe's, 1307-1323, are printed in the 
 volumes of Chronica Monast. S. Allxiiii, No. 28 of the Rolls series. 
 
48 Great fanuiic-pestilciicc in 1 3 1 5- 1 3 1 6. 
 
 Easter in 131 5, the dearth was a subject of deliberation, and a 
 King's writ was issued attempting to fix the prices at which 
 fat oxen, cows, sheep, pigs, geese, fowls, capons, chickens, 
 pigeons and eggs should be sold on demand, subject to con- 
 fiscation if the sale were refused. The statute was ineffective 
 (it was repealed the year after), and provisions became dearer 
 than ever. The quarter of wheat, beans and peas sold for 
 twenty shillings, of oats for ten shillings, and of salt for thirty- 
 five. When the king stopped at St Albans at the feast of St 
 Lawrence, says Trokelowe, it was hardly possible to buy bread 
 for the use of his household. The scarcity was most felt from 
 the month of May until the harvest. With the new crop, ruined 
 as it was by rains and floods, the scarcity lessened somewhat, 
 but not before many had felt the pinch of hunger, and others 
 were seen (as the St Albans annalist says he saw them) lying 
 squalid and dead in the villages and by the road-sides. At 
 Midsummer, 13 16, wheat rose to thirty shillings, and after that 
 as high as forty shillings (the highest price found by Thorold 
 Rogers is twenty-six shillings and eightpence at Leatherhead in 
 July). The various forms of famine-sickness are mentioned : — 
 dysentery from corrupt food, affecting nearly everyone, an acute 
 fever which killed many, or a putrid sore throat {pest is gnttn- 
 ruosa). To show the extremities to which England was reduced, 
 Trokelowe specially inserts the following: Ordinary flesh was 
 not to be had, but horse-flesh was eaten, fat dogs were stolen to 
 eat, and it was rumoured abroad that in many places both men 
 and women secretly ate the flesh of their own children, or of 
 the children of others. But the detail which Trokelowe justly 
 thinks posterity will be most horrified to read, is that prisoners 
 in gaols set upon the thieves newly brought in and devoured 
 them alive. 
 
 It is probably the same famine and pestilence that we find 
 worked into the metrical romance of Robert of Brunne (1338), 
 under the guise of the plague ' in Cadwaladre's time,' that is, 
 the pestilence recorded by Beda for the year 664. The Lincoln- 
 shire romancist must have seen the famine and pestilence of 
 1 31 5-16, for he was then in the prime of life, and probably he 
 transferred his own cxjieriences of famine and pestilence to the 
 
Faviinc-sickiicss in Edzuard II.'s army, 1322. 49 
 
 remote episode of the seventh century, to which he devotes 
 thirty-eight lines of his romance. In Cadwaladre's time the 
 corn fails and there is great hunger. A man may go for three 
 days before he can buy any food in burgh, or in city, or in 
 upland ; he may indeed catch wild creatures, or fishes, or gather 
 leaves and roots. Worse still, a plague comes, from rotten air 
 and wicked winds, so that hale men fall down suddenly and 
 die ; gentle and bondmen all go, hardly any are left to till the 
 land, the living cannot bury the dead, those who try fall dead 
 in the grave. Men leave house and land, and few are left in the 
 country. Eleven years does Britain lie waste with but few folk 
 to till the land'. 
 
 After the famine of 131 5-16, the third and last of the great 
 and, one may say, disgraceful famines which gave rise to the 
 by-word " Anglorum fames," prices continued at their ordinary 
 level for several years. But from 1320 to 1323 they again came 
 to a height. To that period probably belongs a mortality which 
 is entered, in a chronicle of the next century^, under the year 
 1325. On the contemporary authority of Higden we know that, 
 in 1322, the king went to Scotland about the feast of St Peter 
 ad Vincula, " and though he met not with resistance, lost many 
 of his own by famine and disease." After that period of scarcity 
 comes a long succession of cheap years, covering the interval to 
 the next great event in the annals of pestilence that concerns 
 us, the arrival of the Black Death in the autumn of 1348. 
 With that great event the history of English epidemics enters 
 upon a new chapter. There were, of course, years of dearth 
 and scarcity in the centuries following, but there were no great 
 famine-pestilences like those of 1 196, 1258 and 1315. 
 
 The period of the great famines ought not to be left without 
 another reference to the widening gulf between the rich and the 
 poor, and the keenness of traders which led them sometimes 
 to incur the restraints of government and the punishments of 
 justice. 
 
 On 26 March, 1269, was issued one of those ordinances 
 against forestalling, of which many more followed for several 
 
 ' Furnivall's ed. Rolls series, No. 87, vol. 11. 569, 573. 
 
 - Chronicle of William Gregory, Camden .Society, ed. Gairdner, 1876. 
 
50 Dishonest traders. — Luxurious monks. 
 
 centuries : no citizen to go outside the city of London, either 
 by road or river, to meet victuals coming to market. In the 
 7th year of Edward I., clipping or debasing the coinage was 
 carried on so systematically that nearly three hundred persons, 
 mostly of the Hebrew race, were drawn and hanged for it. In 
 the nth year of Edward I. (1283) a statute had been directed 
 against cheating by bakers and millers. Meanwhile the nobility 
 retaliated by plundering the traders and merchants at Boston 
 fair, and the king settled the account with these marauding 
 nobles by hanging them. A statute of 13 16, the second year of 
 the famine, to fix the price of ale, has an interest on account 
 of its motive — "ne frumentum ulterius per potum consumeretur." 
 The proportion of the corn of the country turned into malt, 
 or the amount diverted from bread to beer, may be guessed 
 from the fact that in London, for which the beer ordinance was 
 first made, there were in 1309, brewhouses to the number of 
 1334, and taverns to the number of 354^ In the very year of 
 great famine, 13 16, an ordinance was issued (in French, dated 
 from King's Langley) against extravagant housekeeping^ In 
 the year of great scarcity and mortality, 1322, there was such a 
 crowd for a funeral dole at Blackfriars (for the soul of Henry 
 Fingret) that fifty-five persons, children and adults, were crushed 
 to death in the scramble'. At the same time the prior of Christ 
 Church, Canterbury, was sitting down to dinners of seventeen 
 dishes, the cellarer had thirty-eight servants under him, the 
 chamberlain and sacrist had large numbers of people employed 
 as tailors, furriers, launderers and the like, and the servants and 
 equipages of the one hundred and forty brethren were numerous 
 and splendid ^ The monasteries, on which the relief of the 
 poor mostly depended, have been thus characterized : 
 
 " From the end of the twelfth century until the Reformation," says 
 Bishop Stubbs, "from the days of Hubert Walter to those of Wolsey, the 
 monasteries remained magnificent hostelries : their churches were splendid 
 chapels for noble patrons ; their inhabitants were bachelor country gentlemen, 
 more polished and charitable, but little more learned or more pure in life 
 
 ' Annales Londonicnscs, Rolls series, No. 76, ed. .Stubbs. Introduction, p. Ixxvi. 
 
 '■* Iliici. (Annales Panlhii), p. -238. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 304. 
 
 * Epistolae Canhtaricnsvs, Rolls series, No. 38, 11. Introduction by Stubbs, p. xxxii. 
 
TJic medical profession. — John of Gaddesden. 5 1 
 
 than their lay neighbours ; their estates were well managed, and enjoyed 
 great advantages and exemptions ; they were, in fact, an element of peace in 
 a nation that delighted in war. But, with a few noble exceptions, there was 
 nothing in the system that did spiritual serviced" 
 
 There is little to be said, at this period, of the profession 
 most directly concerned with sickness, epidemic or other, namely 
 the medical. We become aware of its existence on rare 
 occasions : as in the account of the death of William the 
 Conqueror at Rouen on 9 September, 1087, of the illness and 
 death of Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury, on 13 July, 1205, 
 at one of his manors on a journey to Rochester^, or in the 
 reference by William of Newburgh, to the noted Jewish 
 physician of King's Lynn, whose honourable repute among 
 the citizens for skill and modesty did not save him from the 
 murderous fanaticism against his race in 1190^ or in occasional 
 letters of the time\ There were doubtless benevolent men 
 among the practitioners of medicine, then as now ; but the 
 profession has never been one in which individuals could rise 
 conspicuously above the level of their age, and the moral 
 standard of those centuries was a poor one. It is not surprising, 
 then, that John of Salisbury, indulging a taste for epigram, 
 should have characterized the profession of medicine in the 
 twelfth century as follows : " They have only two maxims which 
 they never violate, ' Never mind the poor ; never refuse money 
 from the rich'V 
 
 The one English physician whose writings have come down 
 to us from the period that we are still engaged with, is John 
 of Gaddesden. There is every reason to think that he was 
 practising at the time of the famine and pestilence of 1315-16; 
 but it is not from his bulky treatise on medicine that we learn 
 the nosological types of the epidemic maladies of those years. 
 Some account of his Rosa Anglica will be found in the 
 
 1 Epistolae Cantiiarienses, Rolls series, No. 38, H. Introduction by Stubl^s, p. cxix. 
 
 ^ Ralph of Coggeshall, Rolls series. No. 66, p. 156. 
 
 ^ He might have been, and probably was, the prototype of the physician Natlian 
 Ben Israel, in the 35th Chapter of Ivanhoe. 
 
 * Adam de Marisco to Grosseteste, Mon. Francisc. ed. Brewer, i. 113. 
 
 ■'' I have not succeeded in finding this in the author's writings, and quote it at second 
 hand. 
 
 4—2 
 
52 Gaddcsdcn silent as to famine-sickness. 
 
 chapter on Smallpox ; it must suffice to say here that he was 
 a verbalist compiler from other books, themselves not altogether 
 original, and that, according to Dr Freind, he displays no great 
 knowledge of his profession. 
 
 It is nothing strange, therefore, that Gaddesden throws no 
 light upon the famine-pestilences of England, such as those of 
 131 5-1 6, which he lived through. Dysentery and lientery, he 
 treats of almost in the very words of Gilbertus Anglicus ; but 
 those maladies might have been among the dwellers in another 
 planet, so far as native experience comes in. He reproduces 
 whole chapters from his predecessors, on synochus and synocJia, 
 without a hint that England ever witnessed such scenes of 
 hunger-typhus as the St Albans chroniclers have recorded for 
 us from their own observation. The reference by Trokelowe to 
 the prevalence o{ pestis gntturuosa in 13 16, is one that a medical 
 writer of the time might well have amplified ; but Gaddesden 
 missed the opportunity of perhaps anticipating Fothergill's de- 
 scription of putrid sore-throat by more than four hundred years. 
 
 Epidemics of St Anthony's Fire, or Ergotism. 
 
 One form of epidemic malady, intimately connected with 
 bad harvests and a poor state of agriculture, namely Ergotism, 
 from the mixture of poisoned grains in the rye or other corn, is 
 conspicuously missed from English records of the medieval 
 period, although it plays a great part in the history of French 
 epidemics of the Middle Ages, under such names as ignis sacer, 
 ignis S. Antonii, or ignis infernalis. According to the pro- 
 verbial saying already quoted, France was as notorious for ignis 
 as England for famine, and Normandy for lepra: "Tres plagae 
 tribus regionibus appropriari solent, Anglorum fames, Gallorum 
 ignis, Normannorum lcpra\" The malady was of a nature to 
 attract notice and excite pity ; it is entered by chroniclers, and 
 is a frequent topic in French legends of the Saints. Its occur- 
 rence in epidemic form can be traced in France, with a degree 
 
 ^ Quoted, without date, by Marchand, ^iudc historique ct nosograpJiiqiie S7tr quel- 
 qiies cpidinnics li cmitDties Jii vioycn Age. Paris, 1873. 
 
Description of ergot in a field of rye. 53 
 
 of probability, as far back as 857 (perhaps to 590); six great 
 outbreaks are recorded in the tenth century, seven in the 
 eleventh, ten in the twelfth, and three in the thirteenth, the 
 medieval series ending with one in the year 1373. The 
 estimates of mortality in the several epidemics of ergotism 
 over a larger or smaller area of France, range as high as 40,000, 
 and 14,000, which numbers may be taken to be the roughest of 
 guesses ; but in later times upwards of 500 deaths from ergotism 
 have been accurately counted in a single outbreak within a 
 limited district. The epidemics have been observed in par- 
 ticular seasons, sometimes twenty years or more elapsing with- 
 out the disease being seen ; they have occurred also in particular 
 provinces — in the basin of the Loire, in Lorraine, and, since the 
 close of the medieval period, especially in the Sologne. The 
 disease has usually been traced to a spoiled rye crop ; but there 
 is undoubted evidence from the more recent period that a 
 poison with corresponding effects can be produced in some other 
 cereals, even in wheat itself. 
 
 In a field of rye, especially after a wet sowing or a wet 
 season of growth, a certain proportion of the heads bear long 
 brown or purple corns, one or more upon a head, projecting 
 in the shape of a cock's spur, whence the French name of ergot. 
 The spur appears to be, and probably is, an overgrown grain of 
 rye ; it is grooved like a rye-corn, occupies the place of the 
 corn between the two chaff-coverings, and contains an abundant 
 whitish meal. Microscopic research has detected in or upon 
 the spurred rye the filaments of a minute parasitic mould ; so 
 that it is to the invasion by a parasite that we may trace the 
 enormous overgrowth of one or more grains on an ear, and it is 
 probably to the ferment-action of the fungus that we should 
 ascribe the poisonous properties of the meal. The proportion 
 of all the stalks in a field so affected will vary considerably, as 
 well as the proportion of grains on each affected head of corn\ 
 Rye affected with ergot is apt to be a poor crop at any rate ; 
 one or more spurred corns on a head tend to keep the rest 
 of the grains small or unfilled ; and if there be many stalks 
 
 ^ I give this account of the obvious characters of spurred rye from a recent 
 observation of a growing crop of it. 
 
54 Symptoms of gangrenous Ergotism. 
 
 in the field so affected, the spurred grain will bulk considerably 
 in the whole yield. When the diseased grains are ground to 
 meal along with the healthy grains, the meal and the bread will 
 contain an appreciable quantity of the poison of ergot ; and 
 if rye-bread were the staple food, there would be a great risk, 
 after an unusually bad harvest, of an outbreak of the remarkable 
 constitutional effects of ergotism. Rye-bread with much ergot 
 in it may be rather blacker than usual ; but it is said to have no 
 peculiar taste. 
 
 It is almost exclusively among the peasantry that symptoms 
 of ergotism have been seen, and among children particularly. 
 The attack usually began with intense pains in the legs or feet, 
 causing the victims to writhe and scream. A fire seemed to 
 burn between the flesh and the bones, and, at a later stage, even 
 in the bowels, the surface of the body being all the while cold 
 as ice. Sometimes the skin of affected limbs became livid 
 or black ; now and then large blebs or blisters arose upon it, as 
 in bad kinds of erysipelas. Gangrene or sloughing of the 
 extremities followed ; a foot or a hand fell off, or the flesh of a 
 whole limb was destroyed down to the bones, by a process 
 which began in the deeper textures. The spontaneous sepa- 
 ration of a gangrenous hand or foot was on the whole a good 
 sign for the recovery of the patient. Such was the ignis saccr, 
 or ignis S. Antonii which figures prominently, I am told, in 
 the French legends of the Saints, and of which epidemics are 
 recorded in the French medieval chronicles. Corresponding 
 effects of ergotism may or may not have occurred during the 
 medieval period in other countries of Europe where rye was 
 grown. 
 
 The remarkable thing is, that when we do begin in 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to obtain evidence of 
 agrarian epidemics in Germany, Sweden and Russia, which 
 have eventually come to be identified, in the light of more 
 recent knowledge, with ergotism, the type of the disease is 
 different, not perhaps fundamentally or in the ultimate patho- 
 logical analysis, but at all events different as being a functional 
 disorder of the nervous system, instead of a disorder, on nervous 
 lines, affecting the nutrition of j^cU'ts and their structural in- 
 
Symptoms of commlsivc Ergotism. 55 
 
 tegrity. This newer form, distinctive of Germany and north- 
 eastern Europe, was known by the name of Kriebelkrankheit, 
 from the creeping or itching sensations in the limbs at the 
 beginning of it ; these heightened sensibiHties often amounted 
 to acute pain, as in the beginning of the gangrenous form also ; 
 but the affection of the sensory nerves, instead of leading to 
 a breakdown in the nutrition of the parts and to gangrene, was 
 followed by disorder of the motor nerves, — by spasms of the 
 hands and arms, feet and legs, very often passing into con- 
 tractures of the joints which no force could unbend, and in some 
 cases passing into periodic convulsive fits of the whole body like 
 epilepsy, whence the name of convulsive ergotism \ 
 
 Side by side with these German, Swedish and Russian 
 outbreaks of convulsive ergotism, or Kriebelkrankheit (called 
 by Linnaeus in Sweden by the Latin name rapJiania), there had 
 been a renewal or continuance of the medieval epidemics in 
 France, notably in the Sologne ; but the French ergotism has 
 retained its old type of ignis or gangrene. It was not until the 
 eighteenth century that the learned world became clear as to the 
 connexion between either of those forms of disease among the 
 peasantry and a damaged rye-crop, although the country people 
 themselves, and the observant medical practitioners of the 
 affected districts, had put this and that together long before. 
 Thus, as late as 1672-75, there were communications made to 
 the Paris Academy of Medicine'^ by observers in the Sologne 
 and especially around Montargis, in which ergot of rye is clearly 
 described, as well as the associated symptoms of gangrenous 
 disease in the peasantry ; but the connexion between the two 
 was still regarded as open to doubt, and as a question that 
 could only be settled by experiment ; while there is not a hint 
 given that these modern outbreaks were of the same nature as 
 the notorious medieval ignis sacer. According to Haser, it was 
 not until the French essay of Read (Strasbourg, 1771) that the 
 
 ^ One of the greatest epidemics was in Westphalia and tlie Cologne district in 
 1596 and 1597. It fell to be described by two learned writers, Sennert and Horst, of 
 whose accounts a summary is given by Short, Air, weather, seasons, etc. i. 275-285. 
 
 - Translated into the Philosophical Transactions, No. 130, vol. xii. p. 758 
 (14 Dec. 1676) from the Journal dcs Si^avans. 
 
56 Ergotism of France, and of North-eastern Europe. 
 
 identity of the old ignis with the modern gangrenous ergotism 
 was pointed out. 
 
 The result of the modern study of outbreaks of ergotism, 
 including the minute record of individual cases, has been to 
 show that there is no hard and fast line between the gangrenous 
 and convulsive forms, that the French epidemics, although on 
 the whole marked by the phenomena of gangrene, have not been 
 wanting in functional nervous symptoms, and that the German 
 or northern outbreaks have often been of a mixed type. Thus, 
 in the French accounts of 1676, "malign fevers accompanied 
 with drowsiness and raving," are mentioned along with " the 
 gangrene in the arms but mostly in the legs, which ordinarily 
 are corrupted first." 
 
 Again, the observations of Th. O. Heusinger^ on an outbreak 
 near Marburg in 1855-56, led him decidedly to conclude for 
 the essential sameness of ignis and Kriebelkrankheit,'and for the 
 existence of a middle type, although undoubtedly the sensory 
 and motor disorders, including hyperaesthesia, pain and anaes- 
 thesia on the one hand, and contractures of the joints, choreic 
 movements and convulsions on the other, were more distinctive 
 of the epidemics of ergotism on German or northern European 
 soil. 
 
 Thus far the foreign experience of ergotism, both medieval 
 and modern, and of its several types. We shall now be in a 
 position to examine the English records for indications of the 
 same effects of damaged grain. 
 
 In the English medieval chronicles an occasional reference 
 may be found to ignis or wild fire. The reference to wild fire in 
 Derbyshire in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the year 1049, 
 probably means some meteorological phenomenon, elsewhere 
 called ignis sylvaiieus: " Eac ~|5 wilde fyr on Deorbyscirc mice! 
 yfel dyde^." Whatever the ignis sylvaticus or igjiis aereus was, 
 which destroyed houses as well as crops, there appears to be no 
 
 ^ Studicn iiber den Ergotismus,^'axh\xx^, 1856. 
 
 - Simeon of Durham and Roger of Howden have the following, under the year 
 1048: " Mortalitas hominum et animalium multas occupavit Angliae provincias, et 
 ignis aereus, vulgo dictus sylvaticus, in Deorbensi provincia et quil:)usdam aliis 
 provineiis, villas et scgetes multas ustulavit." 
 
Ergotism in England. — Short's Chronology. 57 
 
 warrant for the conclusion of C. F. Heusingcr that it was the 
 same as the ignis sacer of the French peasantry*. An undoubted 
 reference to ignis infernalis as a human malady occurs in the 
 TopograpJiy of Ireland by Giraldus Cambrensis : a certain 
 archer who had ravished a woman at St Fechin's mill at Fore 
 was overtaken by swift vengeance, " igne infernali in membro 
 percussus, usque in ipsum corpus statim exarsit, et nocte eadem 
 exspiravit." Taking the incident as legendary, and the diagnosis 
 as valueless, we may still conclude that the name, at least, of 
 ignis infernalis was familiar to English writers. But in all the 
 accounts of English famines and wide-spread sicknesses in the 
 medieval period which have been extracted from the nearest 
 contemporary authorities, I have found no mention of any 
 disease that might correspond to ergotism ^ 
 
 The first undoubted instance of ergotism in England belongs 
 to the eighteenth century. On or about the loth of January, 
 1762, a peasant's family (father, mother, and six children) of 
 Wattisham in Suffolk, were attacked almost simultaneously with 
 
 1 " Je crois qu'ils ont voulu indiquer I'ignis sacer ou de St Antoine, qui dans ces 
 annees et surtout 1044 sevit en France." Rccherches dc Pathologic Comparce, vol. il. 
 p. cxlviii. 
 
 ■•^ On the other hand, Short, in his General Chronological History of the Air, 
 Weather, Seasons, Meteors etc. (2 vols. London, 1749) says that the epidemic of mo 
 consisted of " especially an epidemic erysipelas, whereof many died, the parts being 
 black and shrivelled up ; " and that in 1128, " St Anthony's fire was fatal to many in 
 England." He gives no authority in either case. But the one error is run to earth 
 in a French entry of 1109, " membris instar carbonum nigrescentibus" (Sig. Gembl. 
 auctar. p. 274, Migne) ; the other, most likely, in the ignis around Chartres, 1 1 28 
 (Stephen of Caen, Bouquet, xii. 780). 
 
 Perhaps this is the best place to express a general opinion on the work by Short, 
 which is the only book of the kind in English previous to my own. It is 
 everywhere uncritical and credulous, and often grossly inaccurate in dates, sometimes 
 repeating the same epidemic under different years. It appears to have been compiled, 
 for the earlier part, at least, from foreign sources, such as a Chronicle of Magdeburg, 
 and to a large extent from a work by Colle de Belluno (fl. 1631). Many of the facts 
 about English epidemics are given almost as in the original chronicles, but without 
 reference to them. English experience of sickness is lost in the general chronology of 
 epidemics for all Europe, and is dealt with in a purely verbalist manner. So far as 
 this volume extends (1667) I have found Short's book of no use, except now and 
 then in calling my attention to something that I had overlooked. I lis other work, 
 Ne'ii) Observations on City, To7on and Comity Bills of Mortality (London, 1750) shows 
 the author to much greater advantage, and I have used his statistical tables for the 
 sixtccnlli and seventeenth centuries. 
 
58 Genuine Ergotism in Suffolk, 1762, 
 
 the symptoms of gangrenous ergotism, several of them eventually 
 losing portions of their limbs. The disease began with intense 
 pain in the legs, and contractures of the hands and feet. It 
 was proved that they had not been using rye flour ; but their 
 bread for a short time before had been made exclusively from 
 damaged wheat, grown in the neighbourhood and kept apart 
 from the farmer's good corn so as not to spoil his sample. It 
 had been sent to the mill just before Christmas, and had been 
 used by some others besides the family who developed the 
 symptoms of ergotism'. 
 
 In that authentic instance of ergotism (although not from 
 rye), there was one symptom, the contractures of the hands and 
 feet, which is distinctive of the convulsive form ; so that the 
 English type may be said to have been a mixture of the French 
 form and of the form special to the north-eastern countries of 
 Europe. With that instance as a type, let us now inquire 
 whether any epidemics in England at earlier periods may not 
 be brought under the head of ergotism. It is to be kept in 
 mind that none of the medieval outbreaks were called by their 
 present name, or traced to their true source, until centuries after ; 
 so that our task is, not to search the records for the name of 
 ergotism, but to scrutinize any anomalous outbreak of disease, 
 or any outbreak distinguished in the chronicles by some unusual 
 mark, with a view to discovering whether it suits the hypothesis 
 of ergotism. I shall have to speak of three such outbreaks in 
 the fourteenth century, and of one in Lancashire and Cheshire 
 in 1702^ 
 
 1 The facts were communicated to the Royal Society by Chailton WoUaston, M.D., 
 F.R.S., then resident in Suffolk, and by the Rev. James Bones. They were referred 
 by Dr G. Baker to Tissot of Lausanne, who replied that they corresponded to ty[)ical 
 gangrenous ergotism. See Phil. Traits, vol. Lii. pt. 2 (1762) p. 523, p. 526, p. 529 ; 
 and vol. LX. (1768) p. 106. 
 
 - An erroneous statement as to an epidemic of gangrenous ergotism, or of Kriebel- 
 krankheit, in England in 1676, has somehow come to be current in German books. It 
 has a place in the latest chronological table of ergotism epidemics, that of Hirsch in his 
 llandbuch der Jiistorisch-gcographischcn PalJiologie, vol. II. 1883 (Engl. Transl. II. p. 
 206), the reference being to Birch, Philos. Transact. This reference to ergotism in 
 England in 1676 is given also in Th. O. lleusinger's table (1856), where it appears in 
 the form of " Schnurrer, nach Birch." On turning to Schnurrer's Chronik der 
 Scndiai (11. 210), the reference is found to be, "Birch, Phil. Trans, vols. XI. and 
 
Strai/gc epidemic in Leicestershire, 1340. 59 
 
 The first of these is given by Knighton for a period and a 
 locality that may have been within his own cognizance. In the 
 summer of 1340 there happened in England generally, but 
 especially in the county of Leicester, a certain deplorable and 
 enormous infirmity. It was marked by paroxysms or fits, 
 attended by intolerable suffering ; while the fit lasted, the 
 victims emitted a noise like the barking of dogs. A " great 
 pestilence," or perhaps a great mortality, is said to have ensued'. 
 In that record the salient points are, firstly the wide or epidemic 
 incidence of the malady, at all events in Leicestershire, which 
 was Knighton's own county; secondly the paroxysmal nature 
 of the attacks, and the strange noises emitted therewith ; thirdly 
 the intolerable suffering {poena) that attended each fit (passio). 
 Except for the clear indication of pain, one might think of the 
 strange hysterical outbreaks, extending, by a kind of psychical 
 contagion, to whole communities, which were observed about the 
 same period in some parts of the continent of Europe. But of 
 these medieval psychopathies, as they are called, there is hardly 
 any trace in England. The Flagellants came over from Zealand 
 to London in 1349, and gave exhibitions at St Paul's, but that 
 pseudo-religious mania does not appear to have taken hold among 
 the English. The epidemic recorded by Knighton had probably 
 a more material cause. To illustrate the somewhat meagre 
 reference by Knighton to the strange epidemic of 1340, I shall 
 proceed at once to the remarkable outbreak in Lancashire and 
 Cheshire in 1702, which was clearly not a psychopathy or 
 hysterical outbreak, and yet had a seemingly hysterical element 
 in it. An account of it was sent to the Royal Society by Dr 
 Charles Leigh " of Lancashire^." 
 
 XII."; and coming at length to the Philosophical Transactions, it appears that vols. 
 X., XI. and XII. are bound iip together, that vol. xii. (1676) p. 758, contains an 
 extract from \.\iQ Joitrnal des Sfavans about ergot of rye in certain parts of France, and 
 that there is nothing about ergotism in England in either vol. XI. or vol. Xll. So fiir 
 as concerns Ur Birch, he was secretary to the Royal Society in the next century. 
 
 ^ Knighton, De Eventibits Angliac in Twysden, col. 2580: "In aestate scilicet 
 anno Gratiae i34oaccidit quaedam execrabilis et enormis infirmitas in Anglia quasi 
 communis, ct praecipue in comitatu Leiccslriae adeo quod durante passione homines 
 emiserunt vocem latrabilem ac si essct latratus canuni ; et fuil quasi intolerabilis 
 poena durante passione: ex inde fuit magna pestilentia hominum. " 
 
 "^ Phil. Trans. XXIII. p. 1174 (June 26, 170:). 
 
6o Epidemic in Lancashire and ChcsJiirc, 1702. 
 
 "We have this year [1702] had an epidemical fever, attended with very 
 surprising symptoms. In the beginning, the patient was frequently attacked 
 with the colica ventriculi ; convulsions in various parts, sometimes violent 
 vomitings, and a dysentery ; the jaundice, and in many of them, a suppression 
 of urine ; and what urine was made was highly saturated with choler. 
 About the state of the distemper, large purple spots appeared, and on each 
 side of 'em two large blisters, which continued three or four days : these 
 blisters were so placed about the spots that they might in some measure be 
 term'd satellites or tenders : of t?iese there were in many four different 
 eruptions. But the most remarkable instance I saw in the fever was in a 
 poor boy of Lymm in Cheshire, one John Pownel, about 13 years of age, who 
 was affected with the following symptoms : — 
 
 " Upon the crisis or turn of the fever, he was seized with an aphonia, 
 and was speechless six weeks [.'' days], with the following convulsions : the 
 distemper infested the nerves of both arms and legs which produced the 
 Chorea Sancti Viti, or St Vitus's dance ; and the legs sometimes were both 
 so contracted that no person could reduce them to their natural position. 
 Besides these, he had most terrible symptoms, which began in the following 
 manner : [description of convulsions follows]... and then he barked in all the 
 usual notes of a dog, sometimes snarling, barking, and at the last howling 
 like an hound. After this the nerves of the mandibles were convulsed, and 
 then the jaws clashed together with that violence that several of his teeth 
 were beaten out, and then at several times there came a great foam from his 
 mouth... These symptoms were so amazing that several persons about him 
 believed he was possessed. I told them there was no ground for such 
 suppositions, but that the distemper was natural, and a species of an 
 epilepsy, and by the effects I convinced them of the truth of it ; for in a 
 week's time I recovered the boy his speech, his senses returned, his con- 
 vulsions vanished, and the boy is now very cheerful. There have been 
 other persons in this country much after the same manner." 
 
 This epidemic of 1702 in Lancashire and Cheshire was 
 recorded as something unusual. It had certain intestinal 
 symptoms such as colic, which may well have followed the 
 use of poisoned food and are indeed described among the 
 .symptoms of ergotism ; there were also convulsions, large 
 purple spots with blisters coming and going on the skin near 
 them, and, in the single case that is given with details, there 
 were contractures of the legs " so that no person could reduce 
 them to their natural position," and a continuance for several 
 days of painful epileptiform fits attended with noises like the 
 barking of a dog, or the hissing of a goose, " all which different 
 sounds (I take it) proceed from the different contractions of the 
 
Comparison of Oxfoj-dsJiire cases in 1700. 61 
 
 lungs variously forcing out the air." The remarkable case of the 
 boy, certified by several witnesses, is expressly given as one 
 belonging to the general epidemic of the locality, others having 
 been affected " much after the same manner." Whatever sug- 
 gestion there may be of ergotism in these particulars, nothing is 
 said of gangrene of the limbs, although the livid spots and 
 blisters are part of the symptoms of gangrenous ergotism, just 
 as the convulsions and contractures are of convulsive ergotism. 
 In the Suffolk cases of 1762 there were both contractures of the 
 limbs and gangrene. 
 
 Knighton's mention of the barking noises emitted b}' the 
 sufferers of 1340 has suggested to Nichols, the author of the 
 History of Leiccsters/tirc\ a comparison of them with the cases 
 investigated by Dr Freind in the year 1700, at the village of 
 Blackthorn in Oxfordshire. Having heard a great rumour in 
 the summer of that year that certain girls at that Oxfordshire 
 village were taken with frequent barkings like dogs, Dr Freind 
 made a journey to the place to investigate the cases^ 
 
 He found that this pcstis or plague had invaded two families in the 
 village, on terms of close intimacy with each other. Two or three girls in 
 each family are specially referred to : they were seized at intervals of a few 
 hours with spasms of the neck and mouth, attended by vociferous cries ; 
 the spasmodic movements increased to a climax, when the victims sank 
 exhausted. The fits had kept occurring for several weeks, and had appeared 
 in the second family at a considerable interval after the first. The symptoms, 
 said Freind, were those that had been described by Seidelius — distortion of 
 the mouth, indecorous working of the tongue, and noises emitted like 
 barking. He found nothing in the girls' symptoms that could not be referred 
 to a form of St Vitus' dance or to hysteria, in which maladies, laughter, 
 howling and beating of the breast are occasionally seen as well as the 
 spasmodic working of the neck and limbs. 
 
 The question remains whether the cases of 1700 in the 
 Oxfordshire village, assuming Dr Freind's reading of them to 
 be correct, were as illustrative of the outbreak of 1340 as the 
 cases of 1702 in Lancashire and Cheshire, which were probably 
 too numerous and too much complicated with symptoms of 
 
 1 op. cit. I. pt. 2, p. 366. 
 
 - Phil. Trans. XXII. (1700-1701), p. 799, a Letter in Latin from Joh. Freind 
 dated Christ Church, Oxford, 31 March. 
 
62 Convulsive Ergotism, or epidemic Hysteria? 
 
 material toxic disorder to be explained as hysterical. There is, 
 indeed, a larger question raised, whether the so-called psycho- 
 pathies of the medieval and more recent periods may not have 
 had a beginning, at least, in some toxic property of the staple 
 food. The imagination readily fixes upon such symptoms as 
 foaming at the mouth and barking noises, exalts these pheno- 
 mena over deeper symptoms that a physician might have de- 
 tected, and finds a simple explanation of the whole complex 
 seizure as demoniac possession or, in modern phrase, as a 
 psychopathy. Without questioning the subjective or imitative 
 nature of many outbreaks which have been set down to hysteria, 
 it may be well to use some discrimination before we exclude 
 altogether an element of material poisoning such as ergot in 
 the staple food, more especially in the case of the wide-spread 
 hysterical epidemics of Sweden, a country subject to ergotism 
 also'. 
 
 These eighteenth-century instances have been brought in to 
 illustrate Knighton's account of the epidemic of 1340. The next 
 strange outbreak of the fourteenth century is recorded by the 
 St Albans historian (" Walsingham") under a year between 1361 
 and 1365, probably the year 1362. Like so many more of the 
 medieval records of epidemic sickness, it is a meagre and 
 confused statement : " Numbers died of the disease of lethargy, 
 prophesying troubles to many ; many women also died by the 
 flux ; and there was a general murrain of cattle^" Along with 
 that enigmatical entry, we may take the last of the kind that 
 here concerns us. At Cambridge, in 1389, there occurred an 
 epidemic of "phrensy;" it is described as "a great and formid- 
 able pestilence, which arose suddenly, and in which men were 
 attacked all at once by the disease of phrensy of the mind, dying 
 
 ^ The earliest religious hysterias of Sweden fall in the years i66S to 1673, which 
 do not correspond to years of ergotism in that country, although there was ergotism in 
 France in 1670 and in Westphalia in 1672. The later Swedish psychopathies have 
 been in 1841-2, 1854, 1858, and 1866-68, some of which years do correspond 
 closely to periods of ergotism in Sweden. 
 
 - " Moriebantur ctiam plures morbo litargiac, multis infortunia prophetantes ; 
 mulieres insuper decessere multae per fluxum, ct crat communis jiestis bestiarum. " 
 Walsingham, Hist. Angl., sitli a>ifio\ and in identical terms in the Chrovicon Aiigliae 
 a Monacho Sancti Albani. 
 
Fatal epidemic of '^pJireusy'' at Cambridge, 1389. 63 
 
 without the viaticum, and in a state of unconsciousness*." The 
 names of phrensy and lethargy occur in the manuscript medical 
 treatises of the time in the chapters upon diseases of the brain and 
 nerves'*; strictly they are names of symptoms, and not of forms 
 or types of disease, and they may be used loosely of various 
 morbid states which have little in common. A lethargy would 
 in some cases be a name for coma in fever, or for a paralytic 
 stroke; a phrensy might be actual mania, or it might be the 
 delirium of plague or typhus fever. The " letharg)'" of 1362 is 
 alleged of a number of people as if in an epidemic, whatever the 
 singular phrase " prophetantes infortunia multis" may mean; 
 and the " phrensy of the mind " of which many died suddenly at 
 Cambridge in 1389, does not look as if it had been a symptom 
 of plague or pestilential fever. The judicious reader will make 
 what he can of these disappointingly meagre details. But for 
 his guidance it may be added that the French accounts of 
 ergotism in 1676 give one of the poisonous effects as being "to 
 cause sometimes malign fevers accompanied with drowsiness and 
 raving," which terms might stand for lethargy and phrensy ; also 
 that it has not always been easy, in an epidemic among the 
 peasantry after a bad harvest, to distinguish the cases of ergotism 
 from the cases of typhus, the contractures of the limbs, which 
 seem so special to ergotism, having been described also for 
 undoubted cases of typhus^ 
 
 Whether these anomalous epidemics in medieval England 
 
 ^ " Magna et formidabilis pestilentia extemplo subsecuta est Cantabrigiae, qua 
 homines subito, prout dicebatur, sospites, invasi mentis phrenesi moriebantur, sine 
 viatico sive sensu." Walsingham, Hist. A7tgl. n. 186. Under tlie same year, 1389, 
 the continuator of Higden's Polychronicoji (ix. ■216) says that the king being in the 
 south and "seeing some of his prostrated by sudden death, hastened to Windsor." 
 
 - For example in the Sloane MS. 2420 (the treatise by Constantinus Africanus 
 of Salerno), there are chapters " De Litargia," "De Stupore Mentis," and " De 
 Phrenesi." 
 
 ^ Th. O. Heusinger, Shtdicn iiber den Ergotismtis, Marburg, i8;,6, p. 35 : " Es 
 werden freilich in den Beschreibungen einiger friiheren Epidemieen cifter typhose 
 Erscheinungen erwahnt ; die Beschreiber behaupten aber auch dann meist die Con- 
 tagiositjit der Krankheit, und es liegt die Vermuthung nahe, dass die Krankheit dann 
 eigentlich ein Typhus war, bei dem die Erscheinungen des Ergotismus ebenso 
 constant vorkommen, wie sie sonst in vereinzelteren Fallen dem Typhus sich 
 beigesellen " (cf. ' Dorf Gossfelden,' in Appendix). 
 
64 Little rye in England. — Epidemics from frnit, 1383, 1391. 
 
 were instances of convulsive ergotism or not, the English records 
 are on the whole wanting in the evidence of such wide-spread 
 and frequent disasters from a poisoned harvest as distinguish 
 the French annals of the same period. One reason of our im- 
 munity may have been that the grain was better grown ; an- 
 other reason certainly is that rye was a comparatively rare crop 
 in England, wheaten bread being preferred, although bread 
 made from beans and barley was not uncommon. Thorold 
 Rogers says : " Rye was scantily cultivated. An occasional crop 
 on many estates, it is habitually sown in few. It is regularly 
 sown in Cambridgeshire and some other of the eastern counties. 
 As the period before us passes on [1259-1400], it becomes still 
 more rare, and as will be seen below, some of the later years of 
 this enquiry contain no entries of its purchase and sale\" But 
 it is clear from the entries in chronicles, more particularly about 
 the very period of the fourteenth century to which the three epi- 
 demics suggestive of ergotism belong, that the English peasantry 
 suffered from the poisonous effects of damaged food, even if they 
 suffered little from spurred rye. Thus, under the year 1383, in 
 the history known as Walsingham's, there is an unmistakeable 
 reference to many fatalities, as well as serious maladies, caused 
 by the eating of damaged fruitl Again, under 1391, it is stated 
 that this was " a hard and difficult year for the poor owing to a 
 dearth of fruits, which had now lasted two years ; whence it 
 happened that at the time of the nuts and apples, many of 
 the poor died of dysentery brought on by eating them ; and 
 the pestilence would have been worse had it not been for 
 the laudable diligence of the Mayor of London, who caused 
 corn to be brousrht to London from over sea^" 
 
 ^ History of Agriculture and Prices, i. 27. 
 
 2 " Seel in fructibus arborum suspicio niulta fuit, co quod per nebulas foetentes, 
 exhalationes, aerisque varias corruptiones, ipsi fructus, puta poma, pyra, et hujus- 
 mofli sunt infecta ; quorum esu multi mortales hoc anno [1383] vel pestem letalem vel 
 graves morbos et infirmitatcs incurrerunt." Walsingham, Hist. Angl. 11. 109. The 
 continuator of Iligden records under the same year, in one place a "great pestilence 
 in Kent which destroyed many, and spared no age or sex" (ix. 27), and on another 
 page (ix. 21) a great epidemic in Norfolk, which attacked only the youth of either 
 sex between tliaages of seven and twenty-two ! 
 
 ^ Walsingham, 11. 203 ; .Stovv's Sin~vey of London, p. 133. 
 
English extremes of surfeit and starvation. 65 
 
 Generalities on Medieval Famines in England. 
 
 Summing up the English famine-pestilences of the medieval 
 period, we find that they included the usual forms of such 
 sickness — spotted fever of the nature of typhus, dysentery, lien- 
 tery or looseness (such as has often subsequently accompanied 
 typhus or famine-fever in Ireland), and putrid sore-throat. That 
 some of these effects were due to spoiled grain and fruits, as well 
 as to absolute want, we may reasonably conclude ; for example 
 the harvest of 1258 rotted on the ground, and yet the mouldy 
 corn was sold at famine prices. With all those records of 
 famines and their attendant sicknesses in England, it is signi- 
 ficant that there is little indication of ergotism. The immunity 
 of England from ergotism, with such a record of famines as the 
 annals show, can only have been because little rye was grown 
 and little black bread eaten. The standard of living would 
 appear to have been higher among the English peasantry than 
 among the French. A bad harvest, still more two bad harvests 
 in succession, made them feel the pinch of famine more acutely, 
 perhaps, than if they had accommodated themselves to the 
 more sober level of rye bread. Hence the somewhat paradox- 
 ical but doubtless true saying of the Middle Ages — "Anglorum 
 fames, Francorum ignis." The saying really means, not that 
 England was a poor country, which would be an absurd repute 
 for foreigners to have fixed upon her ; but that the English 
 were subject to alternating periods of abundance and scarcity, of 
 surfeit and starvation. The earliest English work which deals 
 fully and concretely with the social condition of the country is 
 the fourteenth-century poem of " The Vision of Piers the 
 Ploughman." A few passages from that poem will be of use as 
 throwing light upon the famines of England, before wc finally 
 leave the period of which they are characteristic. 
 
 Langland's poem describes the social state of England in 
 peculiar circumstances, namely, after the upheaval and dislocation 
 of the Great Mortality of 1349; and in that respect it has an 
 interest for our subject which comes into a later chapter. But 
 in so far as it illustrates the alternating periods of abundance 
 
 c. 5 
 
66 Illustrations from ' Piers t/ic Ploughman! 
 
 and scarcity, the vision of medieval England concerns us here 
 before we quit the subject of famine-pestilences. The average 
 industrious ploughman, represented by Piers himself, fares but 
 soberly until Lammas comes round ^: — 
 
 " I have no penny, quod Piers, pullets for to buy, 
 Ne neither geese nor pigs, but two green cheeses, 
 A few cruddes and cream, and an haver-cake, 
 And two loaves of beans and bran ybake for my fauntis. 
 And yet I say, by my soul, I have no salt bacon. 
 Nor no cookeney, by Christ, collops for to maken. 
 And I have percil and porettes and many kole-plantes. 
 And eke a cow and a calf, and a cart-mare 
 To draw afield my dung the while the drought lasteth. 
 And by this lyflode me mot live till lammas time ; 
 And by that I hope to have harvest in my croft ; 
 And then may I digte thy dinner as me dear liketh." 
 
 Some are worse off than the ploughman in the slack time 
 before the harvest : 
 
 "All the poor people tho pesecoddes fetched. 
 Beans and baken apples they brought in their lappes, 
 Chibolles and chervelles and ripe cherries many. 
 And proferred Piers this present to plead with Hunger. 
 All Hunger ate in haste, and axed after more. 
 Then poor folk for fear fed Hunger eagerlie, 
 With green poret and pesen, to poison Hunger they thought. 
 By that it nighed near harvest, new corn came to chipping. 
 Then was folk fain, and fed Hunger with the best, 
 With good ale, as glutton taught, and gerte Hunger go sleep. 
 And though would waster not work but wandren about, 
 Ne no beggar eat bread that beans in were. 
 But of cocket or clerematyn or else of clean wheat : 
 Ne no halfpenny ale in none wise drink. 
 But of the best and of the brownest that in burgh is to sell. 
 Labourers that have no land to live on, but their hands, 
 Deigned nought to dine a-day night-old wortes. 
 May no penny ale them pay ne no piece of bacon, 
 But if it be fresh flesh other fish fried other bake." 
 
 The waster being now in his season of plenty falls to abusing 
 the Statute of Labourers : 
 
 ' The .spelling, and a few whole words, have been altered from Skeat's text, so as 
 to make the meaning clear. 
 
Illustrations from ' Piers tJic PlougJuiian! 6"] 
 
 "And then cursed he the king and all his council after, 
 Such laws to loke, labourers to grieve. 
 
 But whiles Hunger was their master there would none of them chide, 
 Nor strive against Ids statute, so sternly he looked. 
 And I warn you, workmen, wynneth while ye mowc, 
 For Hunger hitherward hasteth him fast. 
 He shall awake with water wasters to chasten. 
 Ere five year be fulfilled such famine shall arise 
 Through floods and through foul weathers fruits shall fail. 
 And so said Saturn, and sent you to warn.... 
 Then shall death withdraw and dearth be justice, 
 And Daw the dyker die for hunger, 
 But if God of his goodness grant us a truce." 
 
 He proposes to feed the lazy wasters on beans : 
 
 "And gif the groomes grudge, bid them go swynk, 
 And he shall sup the sweeter when he hath deserved." 
 
 The ploughman asks Hunger the reason why both himself 
 and his servants are unable to work : 
 
 " I wot well, quod Hunger, what sickness you aileth. 
 Ye have maunged over much, and that maketh you groan.... 
 Let not sir Surfeit sitten at thy board.... 
 And gif thy diet be thus, I dare lay mine ears 
 That Physic shall his furred hoods for his food sell, 
 And his cloak of calabre with all the knaps of gold, 
 And be fain, by my faith, his physic to let. 
 And learn to labour with land, for lyflode is sweet : 
 For murtherers are many leeches, Lord them amend ! 
 They do men kill through their drinks, or destiny it would. 
 By Saint Poul, quod Piers, these aren profitable words." 
 
 In another place, Hawkin the minstrel confesses to gluttony : 
 
 "And more meat ate and drank than nature might digest, 
 And caught sickness some time for my surfeits oft." 
 
 A liking for the best of food, and plenty of it, when it was to 
 be had, has clearly been an English trait from the earliest times. 
 Conversely thrift does not appear to have been a virtue or a 
 grace of the labouring class in England. Thus a bad harvest 
 brought wide-spread scarcity, and two bad harvests brought 
 famine and famine-pestilences. The contrasts were sharp be- 
 cause the standard of living was high. And although three, at 
 
 5—2 
 
68 Diet of the English superior. 
 
 least, of the English famines were disgraceful to so rich a 
 country, and were probably the occasion of the foreign reproach 
 of "An'glorum fames;" yet the significant fact remains that the 
 disease of the European peasantry, which is the truest index of 
 an inferior diet, namely ergotism, has little or no place in our 
 annals of sickness. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 LEPROSY IN MEDIEVAL BRITAIN. 
 
 The history of leprosy in Britain can hardly be the history 
 of leprosy alone, but of that disease along with others which 
 were either mistaken for it or conveniently and euphemistically 
 included under it. That there was leprosy in the country is 
 undoubted; but it is just as certain that there was hies venerea; 
 that the latter as a primary lesion led an anonymous existence 
 or was called lepra or morpJiaea if it were called anything; that 
 the remote effects of the lues were not known as such, being 
 taken for detached or original outcomes of the disordered 
 humours and therefore in the same general class as leprous 
 manifestations ; and that the popular and clerical notions of 
 leprosy were too superstitious and inexact, even if the diagnostic 
 intention had been more resolute than it was, to permit of any 
 clear separation of the leprous from the syphilitic, to say nothing 
 of their separation from the poor victims of lupus and cancer of 
 the face, of scrofulous running sores, or of neglected skin- 
 eruptions more repulsive to the eye than serious in their nature. 
 I shall give some proof of each of those assertions — as an 
 essential preliminary to any correct handling of the historical 
 records of British leprosy. 
 
 Leprosy in Medieval Medical Treatises. 
 
 The picture given of true leprosy in the medieval treatises 
 on medicine is unmistakeable. There are two systematic 
 
70 Gilbertus Angliciis and Bernard Gordonio. 
 
 writers about the year 1300 who have left a better account of 
 it than the Arabian authors from whom they mostly copied. 
 While the writers in question have transferred whole chapters 
 unaltered from Avicenna, Rhazes and Theodoric, they have 
 improved upon their models in the stock chapter * De Lepra.' 
 It so happens that those two writers, Bernard Gordonio and Gil- 
 bertus Anglicus, bear names which have been taken to indicate 
 British nationality, and the picture of leprosy by the latter has 
 actually been adduced as a contemporary account of the disease 
 observed in England \ Gordonio was a professor at Montpellier, 
 and his experience and scholarship are purely foreign. The 
 circumstances of Gilbert the Englishman are not so well known ; 
 but it is tolerably certain that he was not, as often assumed, the 
 Gilbert Langley, Gilbert de I'Aigle, or Gilbertus de Aquila, who 
 was physician to Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury ("f- 13 July, 
 I205)^ having been a pupil at Salerno in the time of Aegidius 
 of Corbeil (about 11 80). The treatise of Gilbertus Anglicus 
 bears internal evidence of a later century and school ; it is 
 distinguished by method and comprehensiveness, and is almost 
 exactly on the lines of the Lilium Medicinae by Gordonio, whose 
 date at Montpellier is known with some exactness to have been 
 from 1285 to about 1307. Future research may perhaps discover 
 where Gilbert taught or was taught ; meanwhile we may safely 
 assume that his scholarship and system were of a foreign colour. 
 The medical writer of that time in England was John of 
 Gaddesden, mentioned in the end of the foregoing chapter ; he 
 is the merest plagiary, and the one or two original remarks in 
 his chapter ' De Lepra ' would almost justify the epithet of 
 "fatuous" which Guy de Chauliac applied to him. 
 
 Although we cannot appeal to Gilbertus Anglicus for native 
 English experience any more than we can to his alter ego, 
 Gordonio, yet we may assume that the picture of leprosy which 
 they give might have been sketched in England as well as 
 in Italy or in Provence. The conditions were practically 
 
 ' Simpson, Edin. Med. and Surg. Jonni. 1S42, vol. i.vii. p. i_^r). 
 - Ralph of Coggcshall (Rolls cd. p. 156) describes the deatJi of Ilubcrt on 13 
 July, 1 20,T, lull docs not mention the nnnie of his physician. 
 
T^Jieir first-hand descriptions of Leprosy. 71 
 
 uniform throughout Christendom ; the true leprosy of any one 
 part of medieval Europe is the true leprosy of the whole. 
 
 Gilbert's picture^ as we have said, is unmistakeable, and the 
 same might be said of Bernard's '^ — the eyebrows falling bare and 
 getting knotted with uneven tuberosities, the nose and other 
 features becoming thick, coarse and lumpy, the face losing its 
 mobility or play of expression, the raucous voice, the loss of 
 sensibility in the hands, and the ultimate break-up or naufragium 
 of the leprous growths into foul running sores. The enumera- 
 tion of nervous symptoms, which are now recognised to be 
 fundamental in the pathology of leprosy, shows that Gilbert 
 went below the surface. Among the "signa leprae gcneralia" 
 he mentions such forms of hyperaesthesia as forviicatio (the 
 creeping of ants), and the feeling of " needles and pins ; " and, in 
 the way of anaesthesia, he speaks of the loss of sensibility from 
 the little finger to the elbow, as well as in the exposed parts 
 where the blanched spots or thickenings come — the forehead, 
 cheeks, eyebrows, to which he adds the tongue. Gilbert's whole 
 chapter ' De Lepra ' is an obvious improvement ujjon the cor- 
 responding one in Avicenna, who says that lepra is a cancer 
 of the whole body, cancer being the lepra of a single member, 
 and is probably confusing lupus with leprosy when he describes 
 the cartilages of the nose as corroded in the latter, and the 
 nostrils destroyed by the same kind of naufragium as the fingers 
 and toes. All students of the history or clinical characters of 
 leprosy, from Guy de Chauliac, who wrote about 1350, down 
 to Hensler and Sprengel, have recognised in Gilbert's and 
 Bernard's account of it the marks of first-hand observation ; so 
 that we may take it, without farther debate, that leprosy, as 
 correctly diagnosed, was a disease of Europe and of Britain in 
 the Middle Ages. 
 
 Having got so far, we come next to a region of almost 
 inextricable confusion, a region of secrecy and mystification, as 
 well as of real contemporary ignorance. We may best approach 
 it by one or two passages from Gilbert and Gordonio themselves. 
 
 ' Gilberti Anglici Compendium Medkiiiae, ed. Michael dc Capclla. Liij^duni, 1512, 
 Lib. VII. cap. "De Lepra," pp. 337-345- 
 
 ^ Bernardi Goidonii Liliiim Mcdiciiiac. Lugd. 1551, Ji. 8S. 
 
72 Gordonio records a case at Montpellier. 
 
 The systematic handling of lepra in their writings is one thing, 
 and their more concrete remarks on its conditions of origin, its 
 occasions, or circumstances are another. What are we to make 
 of this kind of leprosy ? — " In hoc genere, causa est accessus ad 
 muHerem ad quam accessit prius leprosus ; et corrumpit velocius 
 vir sanus quam mulier a leproso....Et penetrant [venena] in 
 nervos calidos et arterias et venas viriles, et inficiunt spiritus et 
 bubones, et hoc velocius si mulier," etc. Or to quote Gilbert 
 again : '* Ex accessu ad mulieres, diximus superius, lepram in 
 plerisque generari post coitus leprosos'." Or in Gordonio : " Et 
 provenit [lepra] etiam ex nimia confibulatione cum leprosis, et 
 ex coitu cum leprosa, et qui jacuit cum muliere cum qua jacuit 
 leprosus ^" That these circumstances of contracting lepra were 
 not mere verbal theorizings inspired by the pathology of the 
 day and capable of being now set aside, is obvious from a 
 Jiistoria or case which Gordonio introduces into his text. " I 
 shall tell what happened," he says ; and then proceeds to the 
 following relation -.^ 
 
 " Quaedam comtissa venit leprosa ad Montem Pessulanum 
 [Montpellier], et erat in fine in cura mea ; et quidam Baccalarius 
 in medicina ministrabat ei, et jacuit cum ea, et impregnavit eam, 
 et perfectissime leprosus factus est." Happy is he therefore, he 
 adds, who learns caution from the risks of others. 
 
 Here we have sufficient evidence, from the beginning of the 
 fourteenth century, of a disease being called lepra which does 
 not conform to the conditions of leprosy as we now understand 
 them. The same confusion between leprosy and the lues 
 venerea prevailed through the whole medieval period. Thus, 
 in the single known instance of a severe edict against lepers in 
 England, the order of Edward HI. to the mayor and sheriffs of 
 London in 1346*, the reasons for driving lepers out of the City 
 are given, — among others, because they communicate their 
 disease " by carnal intercourse with women in stews and other 
 secret places," and by their polluted breath. It was pointed 
 
 ' Compcnd. Med. Ed. cit, p. 344. 
 
 ^ Lilium Medic in ac. Lugd. 1551, p. 89. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 89. 
 
 ^ For fuller reference, see p. 10 j. 
 
Leprosy a generic }iaine inclusive of Syphilis. yi 
 
 out long ago by Beckett in his paper on the antiquity of the 
 lues venerea^, that the polluted breath was characteristic of the 
 latter, but not of leprosy. Of course the pollution of their 
 breath might have meant no more than the theoretical reasoning 
 of the books (as in Gilbert, where the breath of lepers, as well as 
 the mere sight of them, is said to give the disease, p. 337), but 
 the breath was probably obnoxious in a more real way, just as 
 we know, from Gordonio's case at Montpellier, that the other 
 alleged source of " leprous " contagion was no mere theoretical 
 deduction. As the medieval period came to an end the leper- 
 houses (in France) were found to contain a miscellaneous 
 gathering of cases generically called leprous ; and about the 
 same time, the year 1488, an edict of the same purport as 
 Edward III.'s London one of 1346, was issued by the provost of 
 Paris against les lepreiix of that city. The year 1488 is so near 
 the epidemic outburst of the morbus Gallicus during the French 
 campaigns on Italian soil in 1494-95, that the historian has not 
 hesitated to set down that sudden reappearance of leprous 
 contagion, in a proclamation of the State, to a real prevalence 
 already in Paris of the contagious malady which was to be 
 heard of to the farthest corners of Europe a few years after^ 
 
 There is no difficulty in producing evidence from medieval 
 English records of the prevalence of lues venerea, which was not 
 
 ^ Philos. Trans, of Royal Society, xxxi. 58: "Now in a true leprosy we never 
 meet with the mention of any disorder in those parts, which, if there be not, must 
 absohitely secure the person from having that disease communicated to him by coition 
 with leprous women ; but it proves there was a disease among them which was not 
 the leprosy, although it went by that name ; and that this could be no other than 
 venereal because it was infectious." 
 
 He then quotes from Trevisa's translation of Bartholomew Glanvile, De proprie- 
 tatibus rerum, passages which he thinks relate to syphilis, although they are ob- 
 viously the distinctive signs of lepra taken almost verbatim from Gilbertus Anglicus. 
 He implies that the later so-called leper-houses of London were really founded for 
 syphilis when it became epidemic. In the will of Ralph Holland, merchant taylor, 
 mention is made of three leper-houses, the Loke, Hackenay and St Giles beyond 
 Holborn Bars, as if these were all that existed in the year 1452. But in the reign 
 of Henry VHI. there were six of them besides St Giles's, — Knightsbridge, Hammer- 
 smith, Highgate, Kingsland, the Lock, and Mile End; and these, says Beckett, 
 were used for the treatment of the French pox, which became exceedingly common 
 after 1494-6. 
 
 - Martin, Histoirc dc France, vu. 283. 
 
74 Evidence of Syphilis in medieval England. 
 
 concealed under the euphemistic or mistaken diagnosis of 
 leprosy. Instances of a very bad kind, authenticated with the 
 names of the individuals, are given in Gascoigne's Liber 
 Veritatiini, under the date of 1433 \ 
 
 In the medieval text-books of Avicenna, Gilbert and others, 
 there are invariably paragraphs on pustulae et apostemata virgae. 
 In the only original English medical work of those times, by 
 John Ardern, who was practising at Newark from 1349 to 
 1370, and came afterwards to London, appearances are de- 
 scribed which can mean nothing else than condylomata'''. From 
 a manuscript prescription-book of the medieval period, in the 
 British Museum, I have collected some receipts (or their 
 headings) which relate, as an index of later date prefixed to 
 the MS. says, to "the pox of old^" 
 
 ^ One of Gascoigne's references was copied by Beckett {Phil. Trans, xxxi. 47), 
 beginning : " Novi enim ego, Magister Thomas Gascoigne, licet indignus, sacrae 
 theologiae doctor, qui haec scripsi et collegi, diversos viros, qui mortui fuerunt ex 
 putrefactione membrorum suorum et corporis sui, quae corruptio et putrefactio causata 
 fuit, ut ipsi dixerunt, per exercitium copulae carnalis cum mulieribus. Magnus enim 
 dux in Anglia, scil. J. de Gaunt, mortuus est ex tali putrefactione membrorum 
 genitalium et corporis sui, causata per frequentationem mulierum. Magnus enim 
 fornicator fuit, ut in toto regno Angliae divulgabatur," etc. In the Loci e Libra 
 Vcriiatuin, printed by Thorold Rogers (Oxford, 1881), the following consequences 
 are mentioned : " Plures viri per actum libidinosum luxuriae habuerunt membra sua 
 corrupta et penitus destructa, non solum virgam sed genitalia : et alii habuerunt 
 membra sua per luxuriam corrupta ita quod cogebantur, propter poenam, caput virgae 
 abscindere. Item homo Oxoniae scholaris, Morland nomine, mortuus fuit Oxoniae 
 ex corruptione causata per actum luxuriae." p. 136. 
 
 - A most excellent and compendious method of curing woundes in the head and 
 in other partes of the body; translated into English by fohn Read, Chirurgeon; with 
 the exact cure of the Caruncle, treatise of the Fistulae in the fundament, out of yah. 
 Ardern, etc. London, 1588. 
 
 ^ MS. Harl. 2378 : — No 86 is : " Take lynsed or lynyn clothe and brene it & do ye 
 pouder in a clout, and bynd it to ye sore pintel." Also. "Take linsed and stamp it 
 and a lytel oyle of olyf and a lytl milk of a cow of a color, and fry them togeder in a 
 panne, and ley it about ye pyntel in a clout." No. 87 is "for bolnyng of pyntel." 
 No. 88 is " For ye kank' on a manys pyntel." On p. 103 is another " For ye bolnyng 
 of a manys yerde....Bind it alle abouten ye yerde, and it salle suage." On folio 19: 
 "For ye nebbe yt semeth leprous... iii dayes it shall be hole." "For ye kanker" 
 might have meant cancer or chancre. The prescriptions in Moulton's This is 
 the Myrour or Glasse of Helth (? 1 540) correspond closely with these in the above 
 Harleian MS. The printed book gives one (cap. 63), "For a man that is Lepre, 
 and it take in his legges and go upwarde." There is also a prescription for "mor- 
 phcwe. " 
 
Relation of constitutional to local not then knozvn. 75 
 
 Some have refused to see in such cases any real corre- 
 spondence with the modern forms of syphilis because only local 
 effects are described and no constitutional consequences traced. 
 But no one in those times thought of a primary focus of 
 infection with its remoter effects at large, in the case of any 
 disease whatsoever. Even in the great epidemic of syphilis at 
 the end of the fifteenth century, the sequence of primary and 
 secondary (tertiaries were unheard of until long after), was not 
 at first understood ; the eruption of the skin, which was com- 
 pared to a bad kind of variola, the imposthumes of the head and 
 of the bones elsewhere, together with all other constitutional or 
 general symptoms, were traced, in good faith, to a disordered 
 liver, an organ which was chosen on theoretical grounds as the 
 niinera niorbi or laboratory of the disease\ The circumstances 
 of the great epidemic were, of course, special, but they were not 
 altogether new. No medieval miracle could have been more of 
 a suspension of the order of nature than that luxuria, ininiun- 
 ditia, and foeditas, with their attendant corrnptio vicnibronini, 
 should have been free from those consequences, in the individual 
 and in the community, which are more familiar in our own not 
 less clean-living days merely because the sequence of events is 
 better understood. That such vices abounded in the medieval 
 world we have sufficient evidence. They were notorious among 
 the Norman conquerors of England, especially notorious in the 
 reign of William Rufus^ ; hence, perhaps, the significance of the 
 phrase lepra Nonnanjiontni. That particular vice which amounts 
 to a felony was the subject of the sixth charge (unproved) in the 
 indictment of the order of the Templars before the Pope 
 Clement V. in 1307. Effects on the public health traceable to 
 such causes, for the most part snb rosa, have been often felt in the 
 history of nations, from the Biblical episode of Baal-peor down 
 to modern times. The evidence is written at large in the works 
 of Astruc, Hensler and Rosenbaum. We are here concerned 
 with a much smaller matter, namely, any evidence from England 
 which may throw light upon the classes of cases that were called 
 leprous if they were called by a name at all. 
 
 ^ Nicolas Massa, in Luisini. 
 
 "^ Freeman, The Reign of Will iam Riifiis. App. vol. it. ]i. .(99. 
 
76 A case of MorpJiaca, 1258. 
 
 Under the year 1258, Matthew Paris introduces a singular 
 paragraph, which is headed, " The Bishop of Hereford smitten 
 with polypus." The bishop, a Provencal, had made himself 
 obnoxious by his treacherous conduct as the agent of Henry 
 HI. at the Holy See in the matter of the English subsidies to 
 the pope. Accordingly it was by the justice of God that he 
 was deformed by a most disgraceful disease, to wit, morphea, or 
 again, "morphea polipo, vel quadam specie leprae\" According 
 to the medical teaching of the time, as we find it in Gilbertus 
 Anglicus, morphaea was an infection producing a change in 
 the natural colour of the skin ; it was confined to the skin, 
 whereas lepra was in the flesh also ; the former was curable, 
 the latter incurable ; mo)phaea might be white, red, or blackl 
 The account of morphaea by Gordonio is somewhat fuller. All 
 things, he says, that are causes of lepra are causes of morphaea ; 
 so that what is in the flesh lepra is morphaea in the skin. It 
 was a patchy discoloration of the skin, reddish, yellowish, 
 whitish, dusky, or black, producing terribilis aspectus ; curable if 
 recent, incurable if of long standing ; curable also if of moderate 
 extent, but difficult to cure if of great extent^ In this descrip- 
 tion by Gordonio a modern French writer on leprosy* discovers 
 the classical characters of the syphilis of our own day : " not one 
 sign is wanting." 
 
 No doubt the medical writers drew a distinction between 
 ■morphaea and lepra, as we have seen in quoting Gilbert and 
 Gordonio. Gaddesden, also, who mostly copies them, interpo- 
 lates here an original remark. No one should be adjudged 
 leprous, he says, and separated from his fellows, merely because 
 the "figure and form" (the stock phrase) of the face are cor- 
 rupted : the disease might be " scabies foeda," or if in the feet, it 
 might be " cancer." Nodosities or tubercles should not be taken 
 to mean leprosy, unless they are confirmed (inveterate) in the 
 
 ' L.c. V. 679, "Episcopus Herefoidensis polipo peicutitiir. — Episcopus Here- 
 forclcnsis turpissimo moibo videlicet morphea, Deo percutiente, merito deformatur, 
 qvii totum regnum Angliae proditiose dampnificavit;" and again v. 622. 
 
 '^ Compcnd. I\/ccL Ed. cit. p. 170. 
 
 * Lilium Med. Ed. cit. p. 108. 
 
 ^ Brassac, Art. "Elephantiasis" (p. 465) in Did. Eiiiycl. dcs Sciciucs McdicaUs. 
 
Uncertainties of the diagnosis. yy 
 
 face'. But how uncertain are these diagnostic indications, as 
 between lepra and nwrphaea, lepra and " scabies foeda," lepra 
 and "cancer in pedibus!" If there were any object in calling the 
 disease by one name rather than another, it is clear that the 
 same disease might be called by a euphemism in one case and 
 by a term meant to be opprobrious in another. Although 
 leprosy was not in general a disease that anyone might wish to 
 be credited with, yet there were circumstances when the diagnosis 
 of leprosy had its advantages. It was of use to a beggar or 
 tramp to be called a leper : he would excite more pity, he might 
 get admission to a hospital, and he might solicit alms, under 
 royal privilege, although begging in ordinary was punishable. 
 It is conceivable also that the diagnosis of leprosy was a con- 
 venient one for men in conspicuous positions in Church and 
 State. It is most improbable that the "lepra Normannorum" 
 was all leprosy ; it is absurd to suppose that leprosy became 
 common in Europe because returning Crusaders introduced it 
 from the East, as if leprosy could be " introduced" in any such 
 way ; and it is not easy to arrive at certitude, that all the cases 
 of leprosy in princes and other high-placed personages (Baldwin 
 IV. of Jerusalem who died at the age of twenty-five,'^ Robert the 
 Bruce of Scotland,^ and Henry IV. of England'') were cases 
 that would now be diagnosed leprous. 
 
 Instances may be quoted to show that the name of leper was 
 flung about somewhat at random. Thus, in an edict issued by 
 Henry II., during the absence of Becket abroad for the settle- 
 ment of his quarrel with the king, it was decreed that any- 
 one who brought into the country documents relating to the 
 threatened papal interdict should have his feet cut off if he 
 were a regular cleric, his eyes put out if a secular clerk, should 
 be hanged if a layman, and be burned if a leprosus — that is to 
 
 ^ Rosa Anglica. Papiae, 1492. 
 
 - That Baldwin IV. 's disease excited interest in him is clear from the reference of 
 William of Newburgh, who calls him (p. 242) "princeps Christianus Icpram corporis 
 animi virtute exornans." 
 
 ^ Chronicon de Lanercost (Bannatyne Club, p. 259) : "Dominus autem Robertus 
 de Brus, quia factus fuerat leprosus, ilia vice [anno 1327] cum eis Angliam non 
 intravit." The rubric on folio 228 of the MS. has "leprosus moritur." 
 
 ■* The original account is by Gascoigne, Loci etc. ed. Rogers, Oxon. p. 228. 
 
78 Instances of vague nsagc. 
 
 say, a beggar or common tramp. Again, in the charges brought 
 for Henry III. against the powerful minister Hubert de Burg in 
 1239, one item is that he had prevented the marriage of our lord 
 the king with a certain noble lady by representing to the latter 
 and to her guardian that the king was " a squinter, and a fool, 
 and a good-for-nothing, and that he had a kind of leprosy, 
 and was a deceiver, and a perjurer, and more of a craven than 
 any woman ^" etc. 
 
 There is also a curious instance of the term leprous being 
 applied to the Scots, evidently in the sense in which William of 
 Malmesbury, and many more after him, twitted that nation with 
 their cutaneous infirmities. When the Black Death of 1348-9 
 had reached the northern counties of England, the Scots took 
 advantage of their prostrate state to gather in the forest of 
 Selkirk for an invasion, exulting in the " foul death of England." 
 Knighton says that the plague reached them there, that five 
 thousand of them died, and that their rout was completed by 
 the English falling upon them^. But the other contemporary 
 chronicler of the Black Death, Geoffrey le Baker^, tells the story 
 with a curious difference. The Scots, he says, swearing by the 
 foul death of the English, passed from the extreme of exultation 
 to that of grief; the sword of God's wrath was lifted from the 
 English and fell in its fury upon the Scots, " et [Scotos] per 
 lepram, nee minus quam Anglicos per apostemata et pustulos, 
 mactavit." The apostemata 2ir\d pus tuli were indeed the buboes, 
 boils and carbuncles of the plague, correctly named ; but what 
 was the lepra of the Scots .-* It was probably a vague term of 
 abuse ; but, if the clerk of Osney attached any meaning to it, it 
 is clear that he saw nothing improbable in a disease called lepra 
 springing up suddenly and spreading among a body of men. 
 
 ^ "Item matrimonium inter dominum regem et quandam nobilem mulierem 
 nequiter impedivit, dum clanculo significavit eidem mulieri et suo generi, quod rex 
 strabo et fatuus nequamque fuerat, et speciem leprae habere, fallaxque fuerat et 
 perjurus, imbellis plusquam mulier, in suos tantum saevientem, et prorsus iniitilem 
 complexibus alicujus ingenuae mulieris asserendo." Matthew Paris, Chron. Ma}., 
 Rolls ed., in. 618-19. 
 
 2 Chronicon Angliac in Twysdcn, col. 2600. 
 
 •' Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker, edited by E. Maundc Thompson. Oxford, tSSq, 
 p. 100. 
 
Origin of the name Lazars for lepers. 79 
 
 We conclude, then, that lepra was a term used in a generic 
 sense because of a real uncertainty of diagnosis, or because there 
 was some advantage to be got from being called lepros?is, or 
 because it was flung about at random. But there is still another 
 reason for the inexact use of the terms lepra and hprosiis in the 
 medieval period, namely, the dominant influence of religious 
 tradition. The heritage or accretion of religious sentiment not 
 only perverted the correct use of the name, but led to regulations 
 and proscriptions which were out of place even for the real 
 disease. 
 
 The Biblical Associations of Leprosy. 
 
 Among the synonyms for leprosi we find the terms " pau- 
 peres Christi, videlicet Lazares," the name of " Christ's poor " 
 being given to lepers by Aelred in the twelfth century and by 
 Matthew Paris in the thirteenth. The association of ideas with 
 Lazarus is a good sample of the want of discrimination in all 
 that pertains to medieval leprosy. The Lazarus of St Luke's 
 Gospel, who was laid at the rich man's gate full of sores, is a 
 representative person, existing only in parable. On the other 
 hand, the Lazarus of St John's Gospel, Lazarus of Bethany, the 
 brother of Martha and Mary, the man of many friends, is both a 
 historical personage and a saint in the calendar. But there is 
 nothing to show that he was a leper. He had a remarkable 
 experience of restoration to the light of day, and it was probably 
 on account of an episode in his life that made so much talk that 
 he received posthumously the name of Lazarus, or " helped of 
 God\" The name of the man in the parable is also generic, just 
 
 ' Professor Robertson Smith has kindly written for me the following note : "The 
 later Jews were given to shorten proper names ; and in the Talmud we find the 
 shortening La^zar (with a guttural, which the Greeks could not pronounce, between 
 the a and the s), for EHezer or Eleazar. A-a^apos is simply La^zar with a Greek 
 ending, and occurs, as a man's name, not only in the New Testament but in 
 Josephus [B. yiid. v. 13, 7). This was quite understood by early readers of the 
 Gospels; the Syriac New Testament, translated from the Greek, restores the lost 
 guttural, and uses the Syriac form, as employed in i Mace. viii. 17 to render the 
 Greek 'EXedfapos. Moreover the Latin and Greek onomastica explain Lazarus as 
 meaning 'adjutus,' which shows that they took it from (Hebrew) 'to help' — the 
 second element in the compound Eliezer. The etymology 'adjutus' (or the like) 
 
8o The Levitical Leprosy. 
 
 as generic as that of his contrast Dives is ; but specifically there 
 was nothing in common between the one Lazarus and the other. 
 Yet St Lazarus specially named as the brother of Martha and 
 Mary (as in the charter of the leper-house at Sherburn) became 
 the patron of lepers. The ascription to Lazarus of Bethany of 
 the malady of Lazarus in the parable has done much for the 
 prestige of the latter's disease ; in the medieval world it brought 
 all persons full of sores within a nimbus of sanctity, as being in 
 a special sense " pauperes Christi," the successors at once of him 
 whom Jesus loved and of " Lazarus ulcerosus." Doubtless the 
 lepers deserved all the charity that they got ; but we shall not 
 easily understand the interest exceptionally taken in them, 
 amidst abounding suffering and wretchedness in other forms, 
 unless we keep in mind that they somehow came to be regarded 
 as Christ's poor. 
 
 Next to the image of Lazarus, or rather the composite image 
 of the two Lazaruses, the picture of leprosy that filled the 
 imagination was that of the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of 
 Leviticus. That picture is even more composite than the other, 
 and for leprosy in the strict sense it is absolutely misleading. 
 The word translated "leprosy" is a generic term for various 
 communicable maladies, most of which were curable within a 
 definite period, sometimes no longer than a week. It rested with 
 the skill of the priesthood to discriminate between the forms of 
 communicable disease, and to prescribe the appropriate cere- 
 monial treatment for each ; the people had one common name 
 for them all, and beyond that they were in the hands of their 
 priests, who knew quite well what they were about. The 
 Christian Church dealt with all those archaic institutions of an 
 Eastern people in a child-like spirit of verbal or literal interpre- 
 
 'helped by God,' would no doubt powerfully assist in the choice of the designation 
 lazars (for lepers). Suicer, in his Thesaurus, quotes a sermon of Theophanes, where 
 it is suggested that every poor man who needs help from those who have means 
 might be called a Lazarus." 
 
 Ilirsch (Gcog. and Hist. Path. ii. 3) says thai the Arabic word for the falling 
 sickness comes from the same root (meaning "thrown to the ground") as the 
 Ilc'lircw word "sriraat," which is the term translated "leprosy" in Leviticus xiii. and 
 xiv. In Isaiah liii. 4, the Vulgate has "et nos putavimus eum quasi leprosum," 
 where the English I'.ible has "yet we did esteem him stricken." 
 
Religions deference paid to lepers. 8i 
 
 tation, doubtless finding the greater part of them a meaningless 
 jargon. But some verses would touch the imagination and call 
 up a real and vivid picture, such verses, for example, as the 
 following : 
 
 "And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his 
 head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry. 
 Unclean, unclean. All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall 
 be defiled ; he is unclean ; he shall dwell alone ; without the camp shall his 
 habitation be." 
 
 Even in that comparatively plain direction, the obvious 
 suggestion that the unclean person would not always be unclean, 
 and that there was a term to his stay outside the camp, would 
 go for little in reading the scripture. The medieval religious 
 world took those parts of the Jewish teaching that appealed to 
 their apprehension, and applied them to the circumstances of 
 their own time with as much of zeal as the common sense of the 
 community would permit. We have clear evidence of the effect 
 of the Levitical teaching about "leprosy" upon English practice 
 in the ordinances of the St Albans leper hospital of St Julian, 
 which will be given in the sequel. 
 
 The Medieval Religious Sentiment towards Lepers. 
 
 Several incidents told of lepers by the chroniclers bring out 
 that exaggerated religious view of the disease. Roger of 
 Howden has preserved the following mythical story of Edward 
 the Confessor. Proceeding one day from his palace to the 
 Abbey Church in pomp and state, he passed with his train of 
 nobles and ecclesiastics through a street in which sat a leper full 
 of sores. The courtiers were about to drive the wretched man 
 out from the royal presence, when the king ordered them to let 
 him sit where he was. The leper, waxing bold after this con- 
 cession, addressed the king, " I adjure thee by the living God to 
 take me on thy shoulders and bring me into the church ; " 
 whereupon the king bowed his head and took the leper upon his 
 shoulders. And as the king went, he prayed that God would 
 give health to the leper ; and his prayer was heard, and the 
 c. 6 
 
82 Authentic leper-story, \2tJ1 cetitury. 
 
 leper was made whole from that very hour, praising and glorifying 
 God\ 
 
 It is not the miraculous ending of this incident that need 
 surprise us most ; for the Royal touch by which the Confessor 
 wrought his numerous cures of the blind and the halt and the 
 scrofulous, continued to be exercised, with unabated virtue, down 
 to the eighteenth century, and came at length to be supervised 
 by Court surgeons who were fellows of the Royal Society. It is 
 the humility of a crowned head in the presence of a leper that 
 marks an old-world kind of religious sentiment. The nearest 
 approach to it in our time is the feet-washing of the poor by the 
 empress at Vienna on Corpus Christi day. 
 
 A similar story, with a truer touch of nature in it, is told of 
 Matilda, queen of Henry I. ; and it happens to be related on so 
 good authority that we may believe every word of it. Matilda 
 was a Saxon princess, daughter of Margaret the Atheling, the 
 queen of Malcolm Canmore. The other actor in the story was 
 ner brother David, afterwards king of Scots and, like his mother, 
 honoured as a saint of the Church. The narrator is Aelred, 
 abbot of Rievaulx, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, celebrated 
 for his Latin style and his care for Saxon history. The abbot 
 was a friend of St David, whose virtues he celebrates at length ; 
 the incident of queen Matilda and the lepers was one that he 
 often heard from David's own lips (quod ex ore saepe Davidis 
 regis audivi). The princess Matilda, taking more after her 
 mother than her father, had been brought up in an English 
 convent under her aunt, the abbess of it. When it came to a 
 marriage between her and Henry I., an alliance which was 
 meant to reconcile the Saxons to Norman rule, the question 
 arose in the mind of Anselm whether the princess Matilda had 
 not actually taken the veil, and whether he could legally marry 
 her to the king. Questioned as to the fact, the princess made 
 answer that she had indeed worn the veil in public, but only as 
 a protection from the licentious insolence of the Norman nobles. 
 She had no liking for the great match arranged for her, and 
 
 1 Roger of Ilowdcn. Edited by Stubbs. Rolls series, No. 51, vol. i. p. no. 
 Aelred, the chief colleclor of the miraculous cures by Edward the Confessor, appears 
 to have omitted this one- 
 
Queen Matilda and the lepers. 83 
 
 consented unwillingly although the king was enamoured of her. 
 Such was her humility that Aclred designates her " the Esther of 
 our times." The marriage was on the 15th of November, iioo ; 
 and in the next year, according to the usual date given, the 
 young queen sought relief and effusion for her religious instincts 
 by founding the leper hospital of St Giles in the Fields, " with a 
 chapel and a sufficient edifice." Matthew Paris, a century and a 
 half after, saw it standing as queen Matilda had built it, and 
 made a sketch of it in colours on the margin of his page, still 
 remaining to us in a library at Cambridge, with the description, 
 " Memoriale Matild. Regine." 
 
 The story which her brother David told to the abbot of 
 Rievaulx is as follows : 
 
 When he was serving as a youth at the English Court, one evening he 
 was with his companions in his lodging, when the queen called him into her 
 chamber. He found the place full of lepers, and the queen standing in the 
 midst, with her robe laid aside and a towel girt round her. Having filled a 
 basin with water, she proceeded to wash the feet of the lepers and to wipe 
 them with the towel, and then taking them in both her hands, she kissed 
 them with devotion. To whom her brother : " What dost thou, my lady .-' 
 Certes if the king were to know this, never would he deign to kiss with his 
 lips that mouth of thine polluted with the soil of leprous feet." But she 
 answered with a smile : " Who does not know that the feet of an Eternal 
 King are to be preferred to the lips of a mortal king.? See, then, dearest 
 brother, wherefore I have called thee, that thou mayest learn by my example 
 to do so also. Take the basin, and do what thou hast seen me do." "At 
 this," said David, narrating to the abbot, " I was sore afraid, and answered 
 that I could on no account endure it. For as yet I did not know the Lord, 
 nor had His Spirit been revealed to me. And as she proceeded with her task, 
 I laughed — max culpa — and returned to my comrades ^" 
 
 ^ Ailrecli Abbatis Rievallensis Geiiealogia Regum Anglortiin. In Twysden's Decern 
 Scriptores, col. 368. "Cum, inquit [David], adolescens in curia regia [Anglica] 
 servirem, nocte quadam in hospicio meo cum sociis meis nescio quid agens, ad 
 thalamum reginae ab ipsa vocatus accessi. Et ecce domus plena leprosis, et regina 
 in medio stans, deposito pallio, lintheo se precinxit, et posita in pelvi aqua, coepit 
 lavare pedes eorum, et extergere, extersosque utrisque constringere manibus et 
 devotissime osculari. Cui ego: 'Quid agis,' inquam, 'O domina mca? Certe si rex 
 sciret ista, nunquam dignaretur os tuum, leprosorum pedum tabe pollutum, suis labiis 
 osculari.' Et ilia surridens ait : 'Pedes,' inquit, 'Regis aeterni quis nescit labiis regis 
 morituri esse praeferendos? Ecce, ego idcirco vocavi tc, frater carissime, ut exemplo 
 mei talia discas (iperari. Sinnpta proinde pelvi, fac c[uod me laccie iiUueris. ' Ad 
 
 6—2 
 
84 Si HitgJi and the LincolnsJiire lepers. 
 
 The example of his sister, however, was not lost upon him ; for 
 when he acquired the earldom and manor of Huntingdon, and so 
 became an opulent English noble, he founded a leper-hospital 
 there. Aelred sees him in Abraham's bosom with Lazarus. 
 
 The meaning of all this devotion to lepers is shown in the 
 name which Aelred applies to them — panpercs Christi. In 
 washing their feet the pious Matilda was in effect washing the 
 feet of an Eternal King ; and that, in her estimation, was better 
 than kissing the lips of a mortal king. 
 
 Again, in the Life of St Hugh of Lincoln we see the good 
 bishop moved to treat the leprous poor with a sort of attention 
 which they can hardly have needed or expected, merely because 
 they were, as his biographer says, the successors of Lazarus 
 nkerosus, and the special proteges of Jesus. Not a few, says 
 the biographer, were kept in seclusion owing to that disease, 
 both men and women. Bishop Hugh would take up his abode 
 among them and speak to them words of good cheer, promising 
 them the flowers of Paradise and an immortal crown. Having 
 sent the women lepers out of the way, he would go round among 
 the men to kiss them, and when he came to one who was 
 more atrociously marked by the disease than another, he would 
 hold him in a longer and more gracious embrace. It was too 
 much for the bishop's biographer : " Spare, good Jesus, the 
 unhappy soul of him who relates these things " — horrified, as he 
 says he was, at seeing the "swollen and livid faces, deformed 
 and sanious, with the eyelids everted, the eyeballs dug out, and 
 the lips wasted away, faces which it were impossible to touch 
 close or even to behold afar off^". But these horrible disfigure- 
 ments of the face are by no means the distinctive marks of 
 leprosy. The dragging down of the eyelids is an effect of 
 leprosy but as likely to happen in lupus or rodent ulcer. The 
 loss of the eyeball may be a leprous sign, or perhaps from tumour. 
 The wasting of the lips is a characteristic feature of lupus, after it 
 has scarred, or if there be an actual loss of substance, of epithelial 
 
 banc vocem vehementer expavi, et nullo modo id me pati posse respondi. Necdum 
 enim sciebam Dominum, ncc revelatus fuerat mihi Spiritus ejus. Ilia igitur coeptis 
 insistente, ego — mea culpa — vidcns ad socios remeavi." 
 
 ' Vitn S. Ifugonis Lituolncnsis. Rolls series, 39, jj. 163-4. 
 
St Francis and the lepers. 85 
 
 cancer ; in leprosy, on the other hand, the lips, as well as other 
 prominent folds of the face, undergo thickening, and will probably 
 remain thickened to the end. The sufferers who excited the 
 compassion of St Hugh must have merited it; only they were 
 not all lepers, nor probably the majority of them'. 
 
 Two leper-stories are told to the honour of St Francis of 
 Assisi. Seeing one day a friar of his order named James the 
 Simple, consorting on the way to church with a leper from 
 the hospital under his care, St Francis rebuked the friar for 
 allowing the leper to be at large. While he thus admonished 
 the friar, he thought that he observed the leper to blush, and 
 was stricken with a sudden remorse that he should have said 
 anything to hurt the wretched man's feelings. Having confessed 
 and taken counsel, he resolved, by way of penance, to sit beside 
 the leper at table and to eat with him out of the same dish, a 
 penance all the greater, says the biographer, that the leper was 
 covered all over with offensive sores and that the blood and 
 sanies trickled down his fingers as he dipped them in the dish. 
 The other story is a more pleasing one. There was a certain 
 leper among those cared for by the friars, who would appear 
 from the description of him to have been one of the class of 
 truculent impostors, made all the worse by the morbid considera- 
 tion with which his disease, or supposed disease, was regarded. 
 One of his complaints was that no one would wash him ; 
 whereupon St Francis, having ordered a friar to bring a basin 
 of perfumed water, proceeded to wash the leper with his own 
 handsl 
 
 These four tales, all of them told of saints except that of 
 Matilda — she somehow missed being canonised along with her 
 mother St Margaret and her brother St David — will serve to 
 show what a halo of morbid exaggeration surrounded the idea of 
 leprosy in the medieval religious mind. We live in a time of 
 saner and better-proportioned sentiment ; but the critical spirit, 
 
 ^ The bishop left by his will 100 marks to be distributed "per domes lepros- 
 orum" in his diocese and a like sum "per domos hospitales," and three marks each 
 to the leper-houses at Selwood and outside Bath and Ilchester. Hist. MSS. Coinmiss. 
 X. pt. 3, p. 186. 
 
 - Momiincnta Franciscana. Rolls series. No. 4. Introd. by Brewer, p. xxiv. 
 
86 Sources of iiiforniatiou as to Icper-Jionses. 
 
 which has set so much else in a sober light, has spared the 
 medieval tradition of leprosy. Not only so, but our more 
 graphic writers have put that disease into the medieval foreground 
 as if it had been the commonest affliction of the time. We are 
 taught to see the figures of lepers in their grey or russet gowns 
 flitting everywhere through the scene ; the air of those remote 
 times is as if filled with the dull creaking of St Lazarus's rattle. 
 Our business here is to apply to the question of leprosy in 
 medieval Britain the same kind of scrutiny which has been 
 applied to the question of famines and famine-fevers, and 
 remains to be applied next in order to the great question of 
 plague — the kind of scrutiny which no historian would be 
 excused from if his business were with politics, or campaigns, 
 or economics, or manners and customs. The best available 
 evidence for our purpose is the history of the leper-houses, 
 to which we shall now proceed. 
 
 The English Leper-houses. 
 
 The English charitable foundations, or hospitals of all kinds 
 previous to the dissolution of the monasteries, including alms- 
 houses, infirmaries, Maisons Dieu and lazar-houses, amount to 
 five hundred and nine in the index of Bishop Tanner's Notitia 
 Monastica. In the 1830 edition of the Monasticou Anglicanuni, 
 the latest recension of those immense volumes of antiquarian 
 research, there are one hundred and four such foundations given, 
 for which the original charters, or confirming charters, or 
 reports of inquisitions, are known ; and, besides these, there 
 are about three hundred and sixty given in the section on 
 "Additional Hospitals," the existence and circumstances of which 
 rest upon such evidence as casual mention in old documents, or 
 entries in monastery annals, or surviving names and traditions of 
 the locality. Our task is to discover, if we can, what share of 
 this charitable provision in medieval England, embracing at 
 least four hundred and sixty houses, was intended for the class 
 of Icprosl ; what indications there are of the sort of patients 
 reckoned Icprosi ; how many sick inmates the leper-houses had, 
 
TJu'cc near Canterbury, iil/i and i2lh centuries. 8/ 
 
 absolutely as well as in proportion to their clerical staff; and 
 how far those refuges were in request among the people, either 
 from a natural desire to find a refuge or from the social pressure 
 upon them to keep themselves out of the way. 
 
 It is clear that the endowed hospitals of medieval England 
 were in no exclusive sense leper-hospitals, but a general provision, 
 under religious discipline, for the infirm and sick poor, for infirm 
 and ailing monks and clergy, and here or there for decayed 
 gentlefolk. The earliest of them that is known, St Peter's dnd 
 St Leonard's hospital at York, founded in 936 by king Athelstane, 
 and enlarged more especially on its religious side by king 
 Stephen, was a great establishment for the relief of the poor, 
 with no reference to leprosy ; it provided for no fewer than 
 two hundred and six bedesmen, and was served by a master, 
 thirteen brethren, four seculars, eight sisters, thirty choristers 
 and six servitors. When Lanfranc, the first Norman archbishop 
 of Canterbury, set about organising the charitable relief of his 
 see in 1084, he endowed two hospitals, one for the sick and 
 infirm poor in general, and the other for leprosi^. The former, 
 St John Baptist's hospital, was at the north gate, a commodious 
 house of stone, for poor, infirm, lame or blind men and women. 
 The latter was the hospital of Herbaldown, an erection of timber, 
 in the woods of Blean about a mile from the west gate, for 
 persons regia valetudine Jluentibus (.-'), who are styled leprosi 
 in a confirming charter of Henry II."'' The charge of both these 
 houses was given to the new priory of St Gregory, over against 
 St John Baptist's hospital, endowed with tithes for secular 
 clergy. The leper-house at Herbaldown was divided between 
 men and women; but in a later reign (Henry II.) a hospital 
 entirely for women (twenty-five leprous sisters) was founded at 
 Tannington, outside Canterbury, with a master, prioress and 
 three priests. There was still a third hospital at Canterbury, 
 St Lawrence's, founded about 1137, for the relief of leprous 
 monks or for the poor parents and relations of the monks of 
 St Augustine's. 
 
 ^ William of Malinesbury, Gesla pontificiini., Rolls cd., p. 72. 
 
 '" In 1574 it was found providing indoor relief for fifteen bretlircn and fifteen 
 sisters, and outdoor relief for as many more. 
 
88 Tzvo leper- hospitals near London or Westminster. 
 
 London had two endowed leper-hospitals under ecclesiastical 
 government, as well as certain spitals or refuges of comparatively 
 late date. The hospital and chapel of St Giles in the Fields 
 was founded, as we have seen, by Matilda, queen of Henry I., in 
 iioi, and was commonly known for long after as Matilda's 
 hospital. It was built for forty leprosi, who may or may not all 
 have lived in it ; and it was supported in part by the voluntary 
 contributions of the citizens collected by a proctor. Its staff 
 was at first exceptionally small for the number of patients, — a 
 chaplain, a clerk and a messenger ; but as its endowments 
 increased several other clerics and some matrons were added. 
 By a king's charter of 1208 (loth John), it was to receive sixty 
 shillings annually. It is next heard of, in the Rolls of Parliament, 
 in connexion with a petition of 1 314-15 (8 Ed. II.), by the 
 terms of which, and of the reply to it, we can see that there 
 were then some lepers in the hospital but also patients of another 
 kind. It is mentioned by Wendover, under the year 1222, as 
 the scene of a trial of strength between the citizens and the 
 comprovinciales extra iirbeni positos^ : at that date it stood well 
 in the country, probably near to where the church of St Giles 
 now stands at the end of old High Holborn. The drawing of 
 the hospital on the margin of Matthew Paris's manuscript shows 
 it as a house of stone, with a tower at the east end and a 
 smaller one over the west porch, and with a chapel and a hall, 
 but probably no dormitories for forty lepers'-'. 
 
 The other endowed leper-house of the metropolis was the 
 hospital of St James, in the fields beyond Westminster. It was 
 of ancient date, and provided for fourteen female patients, who 
 came somehow to be called the leprosae pnellae^, although 
 youth is by no means specially associated with leprosy. This 
 
 1 Roger of Wendover. Rolls ed. il. 265. 
 
 - In the MS. of Matthew Paris's Chronica Majora in the library of Corpus Christi 
 College, Cambridge, No. 26 in the Parker Collection, p. 220. The late Rev. S. S. 
 Lewis, fellow and librarian of the College, who most liberally had a fac-simile of the 
 drawing made for me, would date it a little before 1250. (Rolls edition, by Luard, 
 n. 144.) 
 
 ■' RoluU Chai'tani/n, ii9()-i2i6. Charter of confirmation, 1204 (5 Joh.) 
 p. 117 b. 
 
llic Knights of St Lazarus in England. 89 
 
 house grew rich, and supported eight brethren for the rehgious 
 services of the sixteen patients \ 
 
 It is usual to enumerate five, and sometimes six, other leper- 
 hospitals, in the outskirts of London — at Kingsland or Hackney, 
 in Kent Street, Southwark (the Lock), at Highgate, at Mile 
 End, at Knightsbridge and at Hammersmith. But the earliest 
 of these were founded in the reign of Edward HL (about 1346) 
 at a time when the old ecclesiastical leper-houses were nearly- 
 empty of lepers. It would be misleading to include them among 
 the medieval leper-houses proper, and I shall refer to them in a 
 later part of this chapter. 
 
 The example of archbishop Lanfranc at Canterbury and of 
 queen Matilda in London was soon followed by other founders 
 and benefactors. The movement in favour of lepers — there was 
 probably too real an occasion for it to call it a craze — gained 
 much from the appearance on the scene of the Knights of the 
 Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem. Those knights were the most 
 sentimental of the orders of chivalry, and probably not more 
 reputable than the Templars or the main body of the Plospital- 
 lers from which they branched off. If we may judge of them by 
 modern instances, they wanted to do some great thing, and to 
 do it in the most theatrical way, with everybody looking on. 
 What real services they may have rendered to the sick poor, 
 leprous or other, there is little to show. The head-quarters of 
 the order were at Jerusalem, the Grand Master and the Knights 
 there being all Icprosi — doubtless in a liberal sense of the term. 
 We should be doing them no injustice if we take them to have 
 been Crusaders so badly hit by their vices or their misfortunes as 
 to be marked off into a separate order by a natural line. How- 
 ever, many others enlisted under the banner of St Lazarus who 
 were not /t^wj-/; these established themselves in various countries 
 of Europe, acquired many manors and built fine houses^ In 
 England their chief house was at Burton in Leicestershire ; it 
 
 ^ 111 the Valor Ecdesiastkiis of Henry VIII. its revenue is put at ;;^ioo. 
 
 ^ The commanderies of the Knights of St Lazarus were numerous in every province 
 of France. For an enumeration of them see Lcs Lcprcux et Ics Chevaliers de Saint 
 Lazare de Jerusalem et de Notre Dame et de Mont Carmel. Par Eugene Vignat, 
 Orleans, 1884, pp. 315-364. 
 
90 Burton Laaars. — St Juliaiis at St Albans. 
 
 was not by any means a great leper-hospital, but a Commandery 
 or Preceptory for eight whole knights, with some provision for 
 an uncertain number of poor brethren — the real Lazaruses who, 
 like their prototype, would receive the crumbs from the high 
 table. The house of Burton Lazars gradually swallowed up 
 the lands of leper-hospitals elsewhere, as these passed into de- 
 suetude, and at the valuation of Henry VIII. it headed the 
 list with an annual rental of ;^250. Their establishment in 
 England dates from the early part of the twelfth century, and 
 although the house at Burton appears to have been their only 
 considerable possession, they are said, on vague evidence, to 
 have enlisted many knights from England, and, curiously 
 enough, still more from Scotland. A letter is extant by the 
 celebrated schoolman, John of Salisbury, afterwards bishop of 
 Chartrcs, written in the reign of Henry II. to a bishop of 
 Salisbury, from which it would appear that the " Fratres Hospi- 
 tales" were regarded with jealousy and dislike by the clerical 
 profession; " rapiunt ut distribuant," says the writer, as if there 
 were something at once forced and forcible in their charities\ 
 
 Coincidently with the appearance in England of the Knights 
 of St Lazarus, we find the monasteries, and sometimes private 
 benefactors among the nobility, beginning to make provision for 
 lepers, either along with other deserving poor or in houses apart. 
 After the hospitals at Canterbury and London (as well as an 
 eleventh-century foundation at Northampton, which may or may 
 not have been originally destined (or Icprosi), come the two 
 leper-houses founded by the great abbey of St Albans. As these 
 were probably as good instances as can be found, their history is 
 worth following. 
 
 In the time of abbot Gregory (i 119 to 114.6), the hospital 
 and church of St Julian was built on the London road, for six 
 poor brethren {Lazares ox pmipercs CJiristi) governed by a master 
 and four chaplains. The mastership of St Julian's is twice 
 mentioned in the abbey chronicles as a valuable piece of prefer- 
 ment. In 1254 the lands of the hospital were so heavily taxed, 
 for the king and the pope, that the misdli, according to Matthew 
 
 ^ jfoaiinis Siwislmriensls Opera omnia, cd. (Jilcs 1,141 (IcUcr Lo Josselin, bishop 
 of Salisbury). 
 
Fate of woineiis Icpcr-honscs at St Albans, Canterbury, etc. 91 
 
 Paris, had barely the necessaries of life. But a century after, in 
 1350, the revenues were too large for its needs, and new statutes 
 were made ; the accommodation of its six beds was by no means 
 in request, the number of inmates being never more than three, 
 sometimes only two, and occasionally only one\ The fate of the 
 other leper-house of St Albans abbey, that of St Mary de Pratis 
 for women, is not less instructive. The date of its foundation is 
 not known, but in 1254 it had a church and a hospital occupied 
 by misellae"^. A century later we hear of the house being shared 
 between illiterate sisters and nuns. The former are not called 
 lepers, but simply poor sisters ; whatever they were, the nuns 
 and they did not get on comfortably together, and the abbot 
 restored harmony by turning the hospital into a nunnery pure 
 and simple^ Similar was the history of one of the richest 
 foundations of the kind, that of Mayden Bradley in Wiltshire. 
 It was originally endowed shortly before or shortly after the 
 accession of Henry II. (1135) by a noble family for an unstated 
 number of poor women, generally assumed to have been leprosae, 
 and for an unstated number of regular and secular clerics to 
 perform the religious offices and manage the property. It had 
 not existed long, however, when the bishop of Salisbury, in 1190, 
 got the charter altered so as to assign the revenues to eight 
 canons and — poor sisters, and so it continued until the valuation 
 of Henry VIII., when it was found to be of considerable wealth. 
 In like manner the hospital of St James, at Tannington near 
 Canterbury, founded in the reign of Henry II. for twenty-five 
 "leprous sisters," was found, in the reign of Edward III. (1344), 
 to contain no lepers, its "corrodies" being much sought after by 
 needy gentlewomen *. 
 
 Another foundation of Henry II.'s reign was the leper-hospital 
 
 ^ "Vix seu raro inveniuntur tot leprosi volentes vitam ducere observantiis obli- 
 gatam ad dictum hospitale concurrentes." Walsingham, Gesta Abbatuin, Rolls ed. 
 II. 484. 
 
 " Matthew Paris, Chron. Maj. V. 452. 
 
 ^ Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum, II. 401. 
 
 ^ "The sisters of St James's were bound by no vows, and at this period [1344] 
 were not all, or even any of them, lepers ; and in consequence a place in the hospital 
 was much sought after by needy dependents of tlie Court." Report on MSS. of the 
 Dean and Chapter of Canterbury, in Hist. MSS. Commission Reports, IX. p. 87. 
 
92 Covciiliy. — Lincoln. — Bnry St Ednuinds. 
 
 of St Mary Magdalen at Sponne, outside the walls of Coventry. 
 It was founded by an Earl of Chester, who, having a certain 
 leprous knight in his household, gave in pure alms for the health 
 of his soul and the souls of his ancestors his chapel at Sponne 
 with the site thereof, and half a carucate of land for the mainten- 
 ance of such lepers as should happen to be in the town of 
 Coventry. There was one priest to celebrate, and with him were 
 wont to be also certain brethren or sisters together with the 
 lepers, praying to God for the good estate of all their benefactors. 
 " But clear it is," says Dugdale, " that the monks shortly after 
 appropriated it to their own use." However, they were in time 
 dispossessed by the Crown, to which the hospital belonged until 
 the 14th of Edward IV\ 
 
 One of the most typical as well as earliest foundations was 
 the hospital of the Holy Innocents at Lincoln, endowed by 
 Henry I. We owe our knowledge of its charter to an inquisition 
 of Edward III. It was intended for ten leprosi, who were to be 
 of the outcasts {de ejectibns) of the city of Lincoln, the presen- 
 tation to be in the king's gift or in that of the mayor or other 
 good men of the city, and the administration of it by a master 
 or warden, two chaplains and one clerk. In the space of two 
 centuries from its foundation the character of its inmates had 
 gradually changed. Edward II I. 's commissioners found nine 
 poor brethren or sisters in it ; only one of them was leprosus, and 
 he had obtained admission by a golden key; also the seven poor 
 women had got in per viam peciiniam. In Henry VI. 's time 
 provision was made for the possibility of lepers still requiring its 
 shelter — quod absit, as the new charter said. 
 
 In the same reign (end of Henry I.) the hospital of St Peter 
 was founded at Bury St Edmunds by abbot Anselm, for priests 
 and others when they grew old and infirm, leprous or diseased. 
 The other hospital at Bury, St Saviour's, had no explicit refer- 
 ence to leprosy at all. It was founded by the famous abbot 
 Samson about 11 84, for a warden, twelve chaplain-priests, six 
 clerks, twelve poor gentlemen, and twelve poor women. About 
 a hundred years later the poor sisters had to go, in order 
 to make room for old and infirm priests. 
 
 ^ Viw'gA'^ii'-, Ilistoiy of IVanoicksJiirc, p. 197. 
 
Ripoii. — Lynn. — Oxford. — Stourbridge. 93 
 
 Sometime before his death in 1139, Thurstan, archbishop of 
 York, founded a hospital at Ripon for the relief of '' all the lepers 
 in Richmondshirc ;" the provision was for eighteen patients, a 
 chaplain and sisters. At an uncertain date afterwards the 
 house was found to contain a master, two or three chaplains and 
 some brethren, who are not styled Icprosi ; and from the inqui- 
 sition of Edward III. we learn that its original destination had 
 been for the relief as much of the poor as the leprous {tarn 
 pauperum qnain leprosormn), and that there was no leprous person 
 in it at the date of the inquisition. 
 
 The mixed character of hospitals commonly reckoned leper- 
 hospitals is shown by several other instances. St Mary Mag- 
 dalene's at Lynn (i 145) provided for a prior and twelve brethren 
 or sisters, nine of whom were to be whole and three leprous. 
 St Leonard's at Lancaster (time of king John) was endowed for 
 a master, a chaplain, and nine poor persons, three of them to be 
 leprous. St Bartholomew's at Oxford provided for a master, a 
 clerk, two whole brethren and six infirm or leprous brethren ; 
 but the infirm or leprous brethren had all been changed into 
 whole brethren by the time of Edward IW. So again the 
 Normans' spital at Norwich was found to be sheltering " seven 
 whole sisters and seven half-sisters." 
 
 The leper-hospital at Stourbridge, near Cambridge, was 
 founded for lepers by king John, the one king in English 
 history who cared greatly about his leprous subjects. It was 
 committed to the charge of the burgesses of Cambridge, but it 
 was shortly after seized by Hugo de Norwold, bishop of Ely, 
 and within little more than fifty years from its foundation 
 (7 Ed. I.) it was found that the bishop of Ely of that da}' was 
 using it for some purposes of his own, but " was keeping no 
 lepers in it, as he ought, and as the custom had been"." 
 
 The ostentatious patronage of lepers by king John, of which 
 something more might be said, was preceded by a more impor- 
 tant interposition on their behalf by the third Council of the 
 
 ^ On Nov. 24, 1 200, king John signed <it Lincoln letters of simple protection to 
 the /(?/;w/ of St Bartholomew's, Oxford {Kot. Chart, ii 99-1 21 6, p. 99). 
 
 2 RoiuH Hiiiidndorutn, 11. 359-60. The famous Stourbridge Fair originally grew 
 out of a right of market-loll granted in aiil of the lepcrdiospital. 
 
94 CJirisfs Hospital at SJicrburn, Durham. 
 
 Lateran in 1179 (Alexander III.). The position oi leprosi in the 
 community had clearly become anomalous, and one of the 
 decrees of the Council was directed to setting it right. Lepers, 
 who were " unable to live with sound persons, or to attend 
 church with them, or to get buried in the same churchyard, or to 
 have the ministrations of the proper priest," were enjoined to 
 have their own presbytery, church, and churchyard, and their 
 lands were to be exempt from tithe \ Within two or three years 
 of that decree, in or near 1181, we find a bishop of Durham, 
 Hugh de Puiset, endowing the greatest of all the English leper- 
 hospitals, at Sherburn, a mile or more outside the city of Durham. 
 The bishop was a noted instance of the worldly ecclesiastic of 
 his time. He was accused by the king of misappropriating 
 money left by the archbishop of York, and his defence was that 
 he had spent it on the blind, the deaf, the dumb, the leprous, 
 and such like deserving objects^ William of Newburgh has left 
 us his opinion of the bishop's charity : it was a noble hospital 
 lavishly provided for, " but with largess not quite honestly come 
 by" [scd tamen ex parte viinus Jioiicsta largitioiie^). The hospital 
 of bishop Hugh, dedicated to the Saviour, the Blessed Virgin, 
 St Lazarus, and his sisters Mary and Martha, still exists as 
 Christ's Hospital, a quadrangular building enclosing about an 
 acre in a sunny valley to the south of the city, with a fine 
 chapel, a great hall (of which the ancient raftered roof existed 
 into the present century), a master's lodge, and a low range of 
 buildings on the west side of the square for the poor brethren, 
 with their own modest hall in the middle of it. The original 
 foundation was certainly on a princely scale, as things then 
 went : it was for five "convents" of lepers, including in all sixty- 
 five persons of both sexes, with a steward or guardian to be their 
 own proper representative or protector, three priests, four atten- 
 dant clerks, and a prior and prioress. We hear nothing more of 
 the hospital for a century and a half, during which time it had 
 doubtless been filled by a succession of poor brethren, or sick 
 
 ^ The decrees of the Third Lateran Council are given by several historians of the 
 time, among others by William of Newburgh, pp. 206-223. 
 ^ Roger of Ilowden, Rolls edition, II. 265. 
 3 William of Newburgh, Rolls edition, p. 437. 
 
Hospitals for leprous monks. 95 
 
 poor brethren, but whether leprous brethren, or even mainly 
 leprous, may well be doubted after the recorded experiences 
 of Ripon, Lincoln and Stourbridge. Its charter was confirmed 
 by bishop Kellaw about 1311-1316; and in an ordinance of 
 1349 we still read, but not without a feeling of something forced 
 and unreal, of the hospital ministering to the hunger, the thirst, 
 the nakedness of the leprous, and to the other wants and miseries 
 by which they are incessantly afflicted. But within ninety years 
 of that time (1434) the real state of the case becomes apparent ; 
 the poor brethren had been neglected, and the estates so mis- 
 managed or alienated to other uses, that new statutes were made 
 reducing the number of inmates to thirteen poor brethren and 
 two lepers, the latter being thrown in, "if they can be found in 
 these parts, " in order to preserve the memory of the original 
 foundation \ 
 
 To these samples, which are also the chief instances of 
 English leper-hospitals, may be added two or three more to 
 bring out another side of the matter. In the cases already 
 given, it has been seen that the provision for the clerical staff 
 was either a very liberal one at first or became so in course of 
 time. The hospitals, whether leprous or other, were for the 
 most part dependencies of the abbeys, affording occupation and 
 residence to so many more monks, just as if they had been 
 " cells" of the abbey. The enormous disproportion of the clerical 
 staff to the inmates of hospitals (not, however, leprous) is seen 
 in the instances of St Giles's at Norwich, St Saviour's at Bury 
 and St Cross at Winchester. The provision was about six for 
 the poor and half-a-dozen for the monks. But even the purely 
 nosocomial part of these charities was in not a few instances 
 for the immediate relief of the monasteries themselves. St 
 Bartholomew's at Chatham, one of the earliest foundations usually 
 counted among the leper-hospitals, was for sick or infirm 
 monks. The hospital at Basingstoke, endowed by Mcrton 
 College, Oxford, was for incurably sick fellows and scholars 
 of Merton itself. The leper-hospital at Ilford in Essex was 
 founded about 11 80 by the rich abbey of Barking, for the 
 leprous tenants and servants of the abbey, the provision being 
 
 ' See the various cliarteis and mcmoiials in Suitces' History of Durham. 
 
96 Lazar-lioiise a generic name. 
 
 for a secular master, a leprous master, thirteen leprous brethren, 
 two chaplains and a clerk. St Lawrence's at Canterbury (1137) 
 was for leprous monks or for the poor parents and relations of 
 monks. St Peter's at Bury St Edmunds, founded by abbot 
 Anselm in the reign of Henry I., was for priests and others 
 when they grew old, infirm, leprous, or diseased. 
 
 The instances which have been detailed in the last few pages, 
 perhaps not without risk of tediousness, have not been chosen to 
 give a colour to the view of medieval leprosy ; they are a fair 
 sample of the whole, and they include nearly all those leper- 
 hospitals of which the charters or other authentic records are 
 known \ It is possible by using every verbal reference to 
 leprosy that may be found in connexion with all the five hundred 
 or more medieval English hospitals in Bishop Tanner's Notitia 
 Monastica or in Dugdale's Monasticon, to make out a list of 
 over a hundred leper-hospitals of one kind or another. But 
 there are probably not thirty of them for which the special 
 destination of the charity is known from charters or inquisitions ; 
 and even these, as we have seen, were not all purely for lepers 
 or even mainly for lepers. As to the rest of the list of one 
 hundred, the connexion with leprosy is of the vaguest kind. 
 Thus, four out of the five hospitals in Cornwall are called 
 lazar-houses or leper-hospitals, but they were so called merely 
 on the authority of antiquaries subsequent to the sixteenth 
 century. The same criticism applies almost equally to the eight 
 so-called leper-hospitals, out. of a total of fourteen medieval 
 hospitals of all kinds, in Devonshire. It is clear that " lazar- 
 house " became an even more widely generic term than the 
 terms lepra and leprosus themselves^ 
 
 1 Two of the larger houses for lepers not mentioned in the text were St Nicholas's 
 at Carlisle and the hospital at Bolton in Northumberland, each with thirteen beds. 
 
 2 By collecting every reference to lepers or lazar-houses in Tanner's Notitia 
 Monastica or in Dugdale's Monasticon Sir J. Y. Simpson has made out a table of 
 some hundred leper-houses in Britain [Editi. Med. and Sitrg. yotirn. 1841 and 1842). 
 Simpson's table has been added to by Miss Lambert in the Nineteenth Century, 
 Aug. — Sept. 1884, by the Rev. II. P. Wright {Leprosy etc. 1885), who says at the end 
 of his long list : "There were hundreds more," and by Mr R. C. lIopc(77/^ Leper in 
 England, Scarborough, 1891), whose list runs to 172. 
 
 Perhaps the most remarkable development of that verbalist handling of the 
 
Lar:ar-Ji07ises in the London suburbs. 97 
 
 Thus our doubts as to the amount of true leprosy that once 
 existed in England, and was provided for in the access of 
 chivalrous sentiment that came upon Christendom in the twelfth 
 and thirteenth centuries, tend to multiply in a compound ratio. 
 We doubt whether many of the so-called leper-houses or lazar- 
 houses in the list of one hundred, more or less, that may be 
 compiled from the Monasticon, were not ordinary refuges for the 
 sick and infirm poor, like the three or four hundred other 
 religious charities of the country. We know that, in some 
 instances of leper-hospitals with authentic charters, the provision 
 for the leprous was in the proportion of one to three or four of 
 non-leprous inmates. We know that as early as the end of the 
 thirteenth century the Icprosi were disappearing or getting 
 displaced even from hospitals where the intentions of the 
 founder were explicit. And lastly we doubt the homogeneity of 
 the disease called lepra and of the class called Icprosi. 
 
 As to the foundations of a later age they were no longer 
 under ecclesiastical management, and they seem to have been 
 mostly rude shelters on the outskirts of the larger towns. In 
 1 3 16 a burgess of Rochester, who had sat in Parliament, left a 
 house in Eastgate to be called St Katharine's Spital, " for poor 
 men of the city, leprous or otherwise diseased, impotent and 
 poor" — or, in other words, a common almshouse. The remark- 
 able ordinance of Edward III. in 1346, for the expulsion of 
 lepers from London, seems to have been the occasion of the 
 founding of two so-called lazar-houses, one in Kent Street, 
 Southwark, called " the Loke\" and the other at Hackney or 
 Kingsland. These are the only two mentioned in the subsequent 
 orders to the porters of the City Gates in 1375 ; and as late as 
 the reign of Henry VI. they are the only two, besides the 
 ancient Matilda's Hospital in St Giles's Fields, to which bequests 
 
 matter has been reserved for a recent medical writer, who has constructed, from the 
 conventional list of leper- hospitals, a map of the geographical distribution of leprosy 
 in medieval Britain. {British Medical J otirnal, March i, 1890, p. 466.) 
 
 ^ The Lock was doubtless the house of the " Leprosi apud Bermondsey'' who are 
 designated in the Royal Charter of i Hen. IV. (1399) as recipients, along with the 
 leprosi of Westminster (Si James's), of "five or six thousand pounds." (Rotiili 
 Chartai'um, i Hen. IV.) 
 
 c. 7 
 
98 Non-religious lepcr-houscs of London, Norwich and Lynn. 
 
 were made in the will of Ralph Holland, merchant taylor'. 
 Another of the suburban leper-spitals was founded at Highcrate 
 by a citizen in I468^ and it is not until the reign of Henry VIII. 
 that we hear of the spitals at Mile End, Knightsbridge and 
 Hammersmith^ By that time leprosy had ceased to be heard 
 of in England ; but another disease, syphilis, had become ex- 
 ceedingly common ; and it is known that those spitals, together 
 with the older leper-hospitals, were used for the poorer victims of 
 that disease. Stow is unable to give the exact date of any of 
 these foundations except that at Highgate. He assumes that 
 the others were all built on the occasion of the ordinance of 20 
 Edward III. ; but it is probable that only two of them, the Lock 
 and the Kingsland or Hackney spital were built at that time*. 
 
 An early instance of a leper-spital or refuge apparently 
 without ecclesiastical discipline is mentioned in a charter roll of 
 1207-8, in which king John grants to the leprosi of Bristol a 
 croft outside the Laffard gate, whereon to reside under the 
 king's protection and to beg with impunity. On the roads 
 leading to Norwich there were four such shelters, outside the 
 gates of St Mary Magdalene, St Bennet, St Giles and St Stephen 
 respectively ; these houses were each under a keeper, and were 
 supported by the alms of the townsfolk or of travellers ; only 
 one of the four is alleged to have had a chapel attached. The 
 date of these is unknown, but they were probably late. On the 
 roads leading from Lynn, there were three such erections, at 
 Cowgate, Letchhythe and West Lynn, which are first mentioned 
 in a will of 1432. These non-religious and unendowed leper- 
 
 ^ Beckett, Phil. Trans., vol. 31, p. 60. 
 
 ^ Stow, Survey of London, ed. of 1890, p. 437. 
 
 •^ Beckett, I.e. The Knightsbridge house was earlier. See next note. 
 
 ■* Survey of Londoti, pop. ed. p. 436. Bequests to lepers occur in various wills of 
 London citizens, in Dr Sharpe's Calendar of Wills, vol. Ii. Lond. 1890. In a will 
 dated 21 April, 1349, the bequest is to "the poor lazars without Southwerkebarre 
 and at Hakeney" (p. 3). On r July, 1371, another bequeaths money to "the three 
 colleges of lepers near London, viz. at le loke, at St Giles de Holbourne, and at 
 Hakeney" (p. 147). On 7 Api-il, 1396, bequests are made to "the lepers at le loke 
 near Seynt Georges barre, of St Giles without Holbournebarre, and le meselcotes de 
 Haconey " (p. 341). The " lazar house at Knyghtbrigge" appears, for the first time, 
 in a will dated 21 Feb. 148K, along with "the sick people in the lazercotes next 
 about London" (p. 589). 
 
Lepcr-honscs in Scotland. 99 
 
 spitals were probably rude erections on the outskirts of the 
 town, at the door of which, or on the roadside near, one or more 
 lepers would sit and beg. The liberty of soliciting alms was 
 one of their privileges, only they were not allowed to carry their 
 importunity too far; hence the ordinance of most countries that 
 the lepers were not to enter mills and bake-houses ; and hence 
 some ordinances of the Scots parliament limiting the excursions 
 of the leper folk. One of the most considerable privileges to 
 lepers was granted to the lepers of Shrewsbury in 1204 by king 
 John, who did not lose the chance of earning a cheap reputa- 
 tion for Christian charity by his ostentatious patronage of the 
 paupercs Christi : they were entitled to take a handful of corn 
 or flour from all sacks exposed in Shrewsbury market. 
 
 Leper-houses in Scotland and Ireland. 
 
 Most of the leper-spitals of Scotland would appear to have 
 been of the poorest kind, unendowed and unprovided with 
 priests. The richest foundation for lepers in Scotland was at 
 Kingcase, near Prestwick in Ayrshire, endowed with lands and 
 consisting of a hospital of eight beds. One or more leper- 
 hospitals were built by the rich abbeys on the Tweed (at 
 Aldcambus in Berwickshire and probably at another place). 
 Another great ecclesiastical centre in Scotland, Elgin, had a 
 leper-house at Rothfan, with accommodation for seven lepers, a 
 chaplain, and a servant. After these, the Scots leper-houses 
 may be taken to have been mere refuges, in which the lepers 
 supported themselves by begging. One such secular hospital 
 was in the Gorbals of Glasgow, founded in 1350. Liberton, 
 near Edinburgh, is supposed to mean Leper-town, and to have 
 been a resort of the sick on account of its medicinal spring. 
 The hospital at Greenside, then outside Edinburgh, was built in 
 1589. There was a leper-spital outside the Gallow-gate of 
 Aberdeen, on a road which still bears the name of the Spital. 
 Similar shelters may be inferred to have existed at Perth, 
 Stirling, Linlithgow and other places. James IV., in his 
 journeys, used to distribute small sums to the sick folk in 
 
 7—2 
 
lOO The Irish leper-houses. 
 
 the " grandgore " (syphilis), to the poor folk, and to the lipper- 
 folk, "at the town end\" 
 
 There were some leper-hospitals in Ireland, but it is not 
 easy to distinguish them in every case from general hospitals for 
 the sick poor. Thus the hospital built by the monks of Innis- 
 fallen in 869 is merely called nosocoviium, although it is usually 
 reckoned an early foundation for lepers in Ireland. A hospital 
 at Waterford was " confirmed to the poor " by the Benedictines in 
 1 185. St Stephen's in Dublin (1344) is specially named as the 
 residence of the "poor lepers of the city" in a deed of gift about 
 1360-70; a locality of the city called Leper-hill was perhaps the 
 site of another refuge. Lepers also may have been the occupants 
 of the hospitals at Kilbrixy in Westmeath (St Bridget's), of St 
 Mary Magdalene's at Wexford (previous to 1408), of the house 
 at "Hospital," Lismore (1467), at Downpatrick, at Kilclief in 
 county Down, at Cloyne, and of one or more of four old hospitals 
 in or near Cork. The hospital at Galway, built " for the poor of 
 the town " about 1543, was not a leper-house, nor is there reason 
 to take the old hospital at Dungarvan as a foundation specially 
 for lepers ^ 
 
 The Prejudice against Lepers. 
 
 It will have been inferred, from many particulars given, that 
 the segregation of lepers in the Middle Ages was far from 
 complete, and that many ministered to them without fear and 
 without risk. The same hospital received both Icprosi and 
 others, the hospitals were served by staffs of chaplains, clerks 
 and sometimes women attendants ; and yet nothing is anywhere 
 said of contagion being feared or of the disease spreading by 
 contagion. The experience of these medieval hospitals was 
 doubtless the same as in the West Indies and other parts 
 
 ^ Accotints of the Lord High-Treasurer of Scotland. Rolls series I. 1473-1498, pp. 
 
 3.37. .3.56, 361, 378, 386. 
 
 - These are all the so-called "medieval leper-hospitals" collected by Belcher 
 (Dubl. Quart. Jourii. of Med. Sc. 1868, August, p. 36) chiefly from Archdall's 
 Monasticon Ilihernicum. He points out that the very early references to leprosy in 
 the Annals of the Fonr Masters included various kinds of cutaneous maladies. 
 
Early instances of lepers secluded. loi 
 
 of the world in our own day. It is true that the medical 
 writers pronounce the disease to be contagious, nt docet Avi- 
 cenna ; but the public would seem to have been unaware of 
 that, and they certainly lost nothing by their ignorance of the 
 medical dogma, which, in the text-books, is merely the result of 
 a concatenation of v-erbalist arguments. At the same time it is 
 clear that there was a certain amount of segregation of the 
 leprous. The inmates of the hospital at Lincoln are significantly 
 described as "de ejectibus" of the city. The third Lateran Council 
 based one of its decrees upon what must have been a common 
 experience, namely, that lepers were unable to mix freely with 
 others, and that they were objected to in the same church, and 
 even as corpses in the same churchyard. There are some 
 particular indications of that feeling to be gathered from the 
 chroniclers. 
 
 One of the most remarkable histories is that of a high 
 ecclesiastic in the pre-Norman period. In the year 1044, 
 Aelfward, bishop of London, being stricken with leprosy {lepra 
 perfusiis) sought an asylum in the monastery of Evesham, of 
 which he was the prior. The monks may have had more than 
 one reason for not welcoming back their prior ; at all events 
 they declined to let him stay, so that he repaired to the abbey 
 of Ramsey, where he had passed his noviciate and been shorn a 
 monk. He carried off with him from Evesham certain valuables 
 and relics ; and his old comrades at Ramsey, undeterred by his 
 leprosy or counter-attracted by his treasures, took him in and 
 kept him until his death. The incident can hardly be legendary 
 for it is related in the annals of Ramsey Abbey by one who 
 wrote within a hundred years of the events 
 
 Another case, which may also be accepted as authentic, is 
 given by Eadmer in his Life of Anschn. Among the penitents 
 who sought counsel and consolation of Anselm while he was 
 still abbot of Bee in Normandy, with a great name for sanctity, 
 
 ^ Chronicon Abbatiae Rameseiensis. Rolls series, 1886, p. 157. The chronicler 
 has nothing farther to say as to the cause of the leprosy, than the opinion of "a 
 certain philosopher," that whatever turns us from health to the vices of disease acts 
 by the weight of too much blood, by superfluous heat, by humours exuding in excess, 
 or by the spirits flowing with unwonted laxity through silent passages. 
 
I02 The St Albans ordinances. 
 
 was a certain powerful noble from the marches of Flanders. He 
 had been stricken with leprosy in his body, and his grief was all 
 the greater that he saw himself despised beneath his hereditary 
 rank, and shunned by his peers /w obscenitate tanti maW^. 
 
 Besides such notable cases, we find more evidence in the 
 ordinances of the hospital of St Julian at St Albans, which 
 have been preserved more completely than those of any other 
 leper-house. Forasmuch as the disease of leprosy is of all 
 infirmities held the most in contempt, the unfortunate person 
 who is about to be received into the St Albans house is directed 
 to work himself up into a state of the most factitious melancholy; 
 he is reminded, not only of the passage in Leviticus about 
 " Unclean, unclean ! ", but also of the blessed Job, who was 
 himself a leper (in the 14th century his boils became identified 
 with the plague, and in the end of the 15th century the patriarch 
 was claimed as an early victim of the hies venerea) \ and further 
 of the verse in the 53rd of Isaiah: " Et nos putavimus eum 
 leprosum, percussum a Deo, et humiliatum'''," The St Albans 
 house, with its six beds, appears to have been carefully managed, 
 and its inmates well provided for ; but the unreal atmosphere of 
 the place had been too much for the leprous or other patients 
 of the district ; for we find it on record that they could hardly be 
 persuaded to don its russet uniform, and submit themselves for 
 the rest of their lives to its discipline. 
 
 There can be no question, then, that persons adjudged 
 leprous were shunned, driven out or ostracised by public 
 opinion, and even legislated against. The reality of these 
 practices should not be confounded with a real need for them. 
 Least of all should they be ascribed to a general belief in the 
 contagiousness of the disease. In practice no one heeded the 
 medical dogma of leprous contagion, because no one attached 
 any concrete meaning to it or had any real experience of it. 
 There was prejudice against lepers, partly on account of Biblical 
 tradition, and partly because the " terribilis aspectus " of a leper 
 was repulsive or uncanny. Further, in genuine leprosy, the 
 most wretched part of the victim's condition was not his appear- 
 
 ^ Eadmcr, Vila S. Anseliiii, Rolls edit., p. 355. 
 
 ^ WaJsiiigham, Gcsla Abbaluvi, Rolls edit. II. Appendix C. p. 503. 
 
Edict against lepers in London, 1346. 103 
 
 ance (which in a large proportion of cases may present Httle 
 that is noticeable to passidig observation), but his unfitness for 
 exertion, his listlessness, and depression of spirits, owing to the 
 profound disorganisation of his nerves. A leprous member of a 
 family would be a real burden to his relatives ; and in a hard 
 and cruel age he would be little better off than the stricken deer 
 of the herd or the winged bird of the flock. To become a 
 beggar was his natural fate ; and as a beggar he became privi- 
 leged, by royal patent or by prescription, while beggars in 
 ordinary were under a ban. 
 
 It is undoubted that the privilege of begging accorded to 
 lepers was abused, and was claimed by numbers who feigned to 
 be lepers \ The one severe edict against lepers in England was 
 the ordinance of Edward III. for the exclusion of lepers from 
 London in 1346; it is clear, however, from the text of the 
 ordinance that the occasion of it was not any fixed persuasion of 
 the need for isolating leprous subjects, but some intolerable 
 behaviour of lepers or of those who passed as such. The mayor 
 and sheriffs are ordered to procure that all lepers should avoid 
 the city within fifteen days, for the reason that persons of that 
 class, as well by the pollution of their breath, etc. " as by carnal 
 intercourse with women in stews and other secret places, detest- 
 ably frequenting the same, do so taint persons who are sound, 
 both male and female, to the great injury etc.'"^ " That is the 
 
 1 Brassac, Art. "Elephantiasis," in Diet. Encyd. des Sc. Med. p. 475, says: 
 "II y avait aussi des vagabonds et des paresseux qui, sans nuUe crainte dc la 
 contagion, et desireux de vivre sans rien faire, simulaient la lepre pour etre admis 
 aux leproseries. On y trouvait encore des personnes qui s'imposaient une rticlusion 
 perpetuelle pour vivre avec les lepreux et faire leur salut par mie vie de soumission 
 aux regies de I'Eglise." 
 
 - The ordinance is translated in full from the City archives by H. T. Riley, 
 London in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, pp. ■230-231. The 
 following is the preamble of it : — 
 
 "Edward, by the grace of God, etc. Forasmuch as we have been given to 
 understand that many persons, as well of the city aforesaid as others coming to the 
 said city, being smitten with the blemish of leprosy, do publicly dwell among the 
 other citizens and sound persons, and there continually abide and do not hesitate 
 to communicate with them, as well in public places as in private ; and that some of 
 them, endeavouring to contaminate others with that abominable blemish (that so, to 
 their own wretched solace, they may have the more fellows in suffering,) as well in 
 
104 Lepers objectionable for various reasons. 
 
 old confusion which we have already noticed in Bernard Gor- 
 donio and Gilbert ; it is an edict against lepra in its generic 
 sense, and against the same class that William Clowes charac- 
 terizes so forcibly in his book on the morbus Gallicus in 1579. 
 At a date intermediate between those two, in 1488, an order was 
 made by the provost of Paris, that " lepers " should leave the 
 city; but that is too late a date for leprosy, although not too early 
 for syphilis. On the 24th August, 1375, the porters of the City 
 Gates were sworn to prevent lepers from entering the city, or from 
 staying in the same, or in the suburbs thereof; and on the same 
 date, the foreman at 'Le Loke' (the Lock Hospital in South wark) 
 and the foreman at the leper-spital of Hackney took oath that 
 they will not bring lepers, or know of their being brought, into 
 the city, but that they will inform the said porters and prevent 
 the said lepers from entering, so far as they may \ 
 
 When all word of leprosy had long ceased in England the 
 porters of the City Gates had the same duties towards beggars in 
 general. Thus in BuUein's Dialogue of 1564, the action begins 
 with a whining beggar from Northumberland saying the Lord's 
 Prayer at the door of a citizen. The citizen asks him, " How 
 got you in at the gates .'' " whereupon it appears that the 
 Northumbrian had a friend at Court : "I have many countrymen 
 in the city," among the rest an influential personage, the Beadle 
 of the Beggars I 
 
 While it cannot be maintained that lepers were tolerated or 
 looked upon with indifference, yet it was for other reasons than 
 fear of contagion that they were objectionable. The prejudices 
 against them have been already illustrated from periods as early 
 as the eleventh century. They were, to say the least, undesirable 
 companions, and in certain occupations they must have been 
 peculiarly objectionable. Thus, on the nth June, 1372, in the 
 
 the way of mutual communications, and by the contagion of their polluted breath, as 
 by carnal intercourse with women in stews and other secret places, detestably 
 frequenting the same, do so taint persons who are sound, both male and female, to 
 the great injury of the people dwelling in the city aforesaid, and the manifest peril of 
 other persons to the same city resorting : — We " etc. 
 
 1 Riley, p. 384. 
 
 ^ JJialoi^ne of the Fever Pestilence. Early Eng. Text Soc. 
 
A leprous baker, 1372. — False charge of leprosy, 1468. 105 
 
 city of London, John IN'Iayn, baker, who had often times before 
 been commanded by the mayor and aldermen to depart from 
 the city, and provide for himself some dwelling without the 
 same, and avoid the common conversation of mankind, seeing 
 that he the same John was smitten with the blemish of leprosy 
 — was again ordered to depart \ It does not appear whether 
 the baker departed that time, nor is there any good diagnosis of 
 his leprosy; there was certainly a prejudice against him, but the 
 occasion of it may have been nothing more than the eczematous 
 crusts on the hands and arms, sometimes very inveterate, which 
 men of his trade are subject to. 
 
 It is clear also from a singular case in the Foedera, that a 
 false accusation of leprosy was sometimes brought against an 
 individual, perhaps out of enmity, like an accusation of witch- 
 craft. In 1468 a woman accused of leprosy appealed to Edward 
 IV., who issued a chancery warrant for her examination. 
 
 The writ of 3rd July, 1468, is to the king's physicians, "sworn to the 
 safe-keeping of our person," William Hatteclyff, Roger Marschall, and 
 Dominic de Serego, doctors of Arts and Medicine ; and the subject of 
 the inquisition is Johanna Nightyngale of Brentwood in Essex, who was 
 presumed by certain of her neighbours to be infected by the foul contagion 
 of lepra, and for whose removal from the common intercourse of men a 
 petition had been laid in Chancery, She had refused to remove herself 
 to a solitary place, ^r^/// nioris est; the physicians are accordingly ordered 
 to associate with themselves certain legal persons, to inquire whether the 
 woman was leprous, and, if so, to have her removed to a solitary place 
 honcstiori niodo quo potcris. On the ist of November, 1468, the court 
 of inquiry reported that they found the woman to be in no way leprous, 
 nor to have been. The woman had been brought before them : they had 
 passed in review twenty-five or more of the commonly reputed ^igns of lepra, 
 but they had not found that she could be convicted of leprosy from them, or 
 from a sufficient number of them ; again, passing in review each of the four 
 species of lepra {alopecia, tinia, leoiiina, and clephantia) and the forty or 
 more distinctive signs of the species of lepra, they found not that the woman 
 was marked by any of the species of lepra, but that she was altogether free 
 and immune from every species oi lepra'-. 
 
 1 Riley, p. 365. 
 
 * Rymer's Foedera, v. pt. 2, p. 166. 
 
io6 No English laios against lepers. — Scots laius. 
 
 Laws against Lepers. 
 
 The ordinance of 21 Edward III. (1346) against the har- 
 bouring of lepers in London is the only one of the kind (so far 
 as I know) in English history ; the Statutes of the realm 
 contain no reference to lepers or leprosy from first to last ; the 
 references in the Rolls of Parliament are to the taxing of their 
 houses and lands. The laws which deprived lepers of marital 
 rights and of heirship appear to have been wholly foreign ; in 
 England, leprosy as a bar to succession was made a plea in the 
 law courts. It appears, however, that a law against lepers was 
 made by a Welsh king in the tenth century \ It is not easy to 
 realize the state of Welsh society in the tenth century ; but we 
 know enough of it in the twelfth century, from the description 
 of Giraldus Cambrensis, to assert with some confidence that 
 " leprosy " might have meant anything — perhaps the " lepra 
 Normannorum '\" 
 
 In Scotland the laws and ordinances, civil and ecclesiastical, 
 against lepers have been more numerous. In 1242 and 1269, 
 canons of the Scots Church were made, ordering that lepers 
 should be separated from society in accordance with general 
 custom. In 1283-84, the statutes of the Society of Merchants, 
 or the Guildry, of Berwick provided that lepers should not enter 
 the borough, and that " some gude man sail gather alms for 
 them." In 1427 the Parliament of Perth authorised ministers 
 and others to search the parishes for lepers^. 
 
 We conclude, then, that little was made of leprosy by 
 English legislators (rather more by the Scots), just as we have 
 found that in the endowment of charities, the leprous had only 
 
 ^ Wharton's Anglia Sacra, 11. Praef. p. 32. 
 
 - The expression " leprosa Sodomorum" occurs in a Latin poem from a medieval 
 MS. found in Switzerland. The verses are printed in full by Ilensler, Geschichtc dcr 
 Luslsciiche, p. 307. 
 
 •' Tiiese and other particulars relating to lepers in Scotland are given in Simpson's 
 Antiquarian Notices of Leprosy in Scotland and England (Edin. Aled. and Surg, 
 y our n. Oci. 1841, Jan. and April 1842), a series of excellent papers which have been 
 for many years the source of most that has been written of medieval leprosy in this 
 country. 
 
Probable frequency of leprosy in England. 107 
 
 a small share, and that share a somewhat exaggerated one 
 owing to the morbid sentimentality of the chivalrous period. 
 The most liberal estimate of the amount of true leprosy at any 
 time in England would hardly place it so high as in the worst 
 provinces of India at the present day. In the province of 
 Burdwan, with a population of over two millions, which may be 
 taken to have been nearly the population of England in the 
 thirteenth century, there are enumerated 4604 lepers, or 2*26 in 
 every thousand inhabitants. But even with that excessive 
 prevalence of leprosy, and with no seclusion of the lepers, a 
 traveller may visit the province of Burdwan, and not be aware 
 that leprosy is " frightfully common " in it. In medieval 
 England the village leper may have been about as common as 
 the village fool ; while in the larger towns or cities, such as 
 London, Norwich, York, Bristol, and Lincoln, true lepers can 
 hardly have been so numerous as the friars themselves, who are 
 supposed to have found a large part of their occupation in 
 ministering to their wants. A rigorous scepticism might be 
 justified, by the absence of any good diagnostic evidence, in 
 going farther than this. But the convergence of probabilities 
 does point to a real prevalence of leprosy in medieval England ; 
 and those probabilities will be greatly strengthened by ciis- 
 covering in the then habits of English living a vera causa for 
 the disease. 
 
 Causes of Medieval Leprosy. 
 
 What was there in the medieval manner of life to give rise to 
 a certain number of cases of leprosy in all the countries of 
 Europe } Granting that not all who were called leprosi and 
 leprosae, were actually the subjects of lepra as correctly dia- 
 gnosed, and that the misnomer was not unlikely to have been 
 applied in the case of princes, nobles and great ecclesiastics, we 
 have still to reckon with the apparition of leprosy among the 
 people in medieval Europe and with its gradual extinction, an 
 extinction that became absolute in most parts of Europe before 
 the Modern period had begun. 
 
 Of the "importation" of leprosy into Britain from some 
 
io8 Pellagra a modern analogy ivith leprosy. 
 
 source outside there can be no serious thought ; the words are a 
 meaningless phrase, which no one with a real knowledge of the 
 conditions, nature and affinities of leprosy would care to resort 
 to. The varying types of diseases, or their existence at one time 
 and absence at another, are a reflex of the variations in the life 
 of the people — in food and drink, wages, domestic comfort, town 
 life or country life, and the like. No one doubts that the birth- 
 rate and the death-rate have had great variations from time to 
 time, depending on the greater or less abundance of the means of 
 subsistence, on overcrowding, or other things ; and the variation 
 in the birth-rate and death-rate is only the most obvious and 
 numerically precise of a whole series of variations in vital 
 phenomena, of which the successions, alternations, and novelties 
 in the types of disease are the least simple, and least within the 
 reach of mere notional apprehension or mere statistical manage- 
 ment. The apparition and vanishing of leprosy in medieval 
 Europe was one of those vital phenomena. It may be more 
 easily apprehended by placing beside it a simple example from 
 our own times. 
 
 The pellagra of the North Italian peasantry (and of Roumania, 
 Gascony and some other limited areas) is the nearest affinity to 
 leprosy among the species of disease. Strip leprosy of all its 
 superficial and sentimental characters, analyse its essential phe- 
 nomena, reduce its pathology to the most correct outlines, and 
 we shall find it a chronic constitutional malady not far removed 
 in type from pellagra. In both diseases there are the early 
 warnings in the excessive sensibility, excessive redness and 
 changes of colour, at certain spots of skin on or about the face 
 or on the hands and feet. In both diseases, permanent loss of 
 sensibility follows the previous exaggeration, blanching of the 
 skin will remain for good at the spots where redness and dis- 
 coloration were apt to come and go, and these affections of the 
 end-regions of nerves will settle, in less definite way, upon the 
 nervous system at large, — the cerebro-spinal nervous system, or 
 the organic nervous system, or both together. What makes 
 leprosy seem a disease in a different class from that, is the 
 formation of nodules, or lumps, in the regions of affected skin in 
 a certain proportion of the cases. If leprosy were all anaesthetic 
 
TJic parallelism with Pellagra. 109 
 
 leprosy, its affinities to pellagra would be more quickly perceived ; 
 it is because about one-half of it has more or less of the tuber- 
 culated character that a diversion is created towards another kind 
 of pathology. But the fact that some cases of leprosy develop 
 nodules along the disordered nerves does not remove the disease 
 as a whole from the class to which pellagra belongs. In both 
 diseases we are dealing essentiall)' with a profound disorder of 
 the nerves and nerve-centres, commencing in local skin-affections 
 which come and go and at length settle, proceeding to implicate 
 the nervous functions generally, impairing the efficiency of the 
 individual, and bringing him to a miserable end. The two 
 diseases diverge each along its own path, leprosy becoming 
 more a hopeless disorder of the nerves of tissue-nutrition, and so 
 taking on a structural character mainly but not exclusively, and 
 pellagra becoming more a hopeless disorder of the organic 
 nervous system (digestion, circulation, etc.) with implication of 
 the higher nervous functions, such as the senses, the intellect, and 
 the emotions, and so taking on a functional character mainly but 
 not exclusively. The correlation of structure and function is 
 one that goes all through pathology as well as biology ; and 
 here we find it giving character to each of two chronic disorders 
 of the nervous system, according as the structural side or the 
 functional side comes uppermost. 
 
 What, then, are the circumstances of pellagra, and do these 
 throw light upon the medieval prevalence of leprosy } Pellagra 
 has been proved with the highest attainable scientific certainty 
 to be due to a staple diet of bread or porridge made from 
 damaged or spoilt maize. It followed the introduction of maize 
 into Lombardy at an interval of tw^o or three generations, and its 
 distribution corresponds closely to the poorer kinds of maize on 
 colder soils, and to the class of the peasantry who get the worst 
 kind of corn or meal for their food. The cases of the disease 
 among the peasantry of Lombardy and some other maize- 
 growing provinces of Northern Italy, were about one hundred 
 thousand when last estimated ; the endowed charitable houses 
 and lunatic asylums are full of them. The connexion of the 
 disease with its causes is perfectly well understood ; but the eco- 
 nomic questions of starvation wages, of truck, of large farms with 
 
no Leprosy as due to errors of diet. 
 
 bailiffs, and of agricultural usage, have proved too much for the 
 chambers of commerce and the Government; so that there is as yet 
 little or no sign of the decline of pellagra in the richest provinces 
 of Italy. This disease is not mentioned in the Bible, therefore it 
 has no traditional vogue; it is not well suited to knight-errantry, 
 because it is a common evil of whole provinces ; its causes are 
 economic and social, therefore there is no ready favour to be 
 earned by systematic attempts to deal with them ; and there is 
 absolutely no opening for heroism and self-sacrifice of the more 
 ostentatious kind. These are among the reasons why this 
 great object-lesson of a chronic disorder of nutrition, proceeding 
 steadily before our eyes, has been so little perceived. It is in 
 pellagra, however, that we find the key to the ancient problem 
 of leprosy. The two diseases are closely allied in the insidious 
 approach of their symptoms, in their implicating the tissue- 
 nutrition through the nerves, or the nervous functions through the 
 nutrition, in their cumulating and incurable character, and in 
 their transmissibility by inheritance. Thus nosologically allied, 
 they may be reasonably suspected of having analogous causes ; 
 and as we know the cause of modern pellagra to be something 
 noxious in the habitual diet of the people, we may look for the 
 cause of medieval leprosy in something of the same kind. 
 
 The dietetic cause is not far to seek, and it cannot be stated 
 better than in the following well-known passage by the philo- 
 sophical Gilbert White in his Natural History of Selborne^ : — 
 
 " It must, therefore, in these days be, to a humane and thinking person, 
 a matter of equal wonder and satisfaction, when he contemplates how nearly 
 this pest is eradicated, and observes that a leper is now [1778] a rare sight. 
 He will, moreover, when engaged in such a train of thought, naturally 
 inquire for the reason. This happy change perhaps may have originated 
 and been continued from the much smaller quantity of salted meat and 
 fish now eaten in these kingdoms ; from the use of linen next the skin ; 
 from the plenty of bread ; and from the profusion of fruits, roots, legumes, 
 and greens, so common in every family. Three or four centuries ago, before 
 there were any enclosures, sown-grasses, field-turnips, or field-carrots, or 
 hay, all the cattle which had grown fat in summer, and were not killed for 
 winter use, were turned out soon after Michaelmas to shift as they could 
 through the dead months ; so that no fresh meat could be had in winter 
 
 ' Letter to IJarriugton, 8 January, 1778. 
 
Salted meats and fish in t/ie Middle Ajs^es. 1 1 1 
 
 or spring. Hence the marvellous account of vast stores of salted llesh found 
 in the larder of the eldest Spencer even so late in the spring as the 3rd of 
 May (600 bacons, 80 carcases of beef, and 600 muttons) ^ It was from 
 magazines like these that the turbulent barons supported in idleness their 
 riotous swarms of retainers, ready for any disorder or mischief. But 
 agriculture is now arrived at such pitch of perfection, that our best and 
 fattest meats are killed in the winter ; and no man needs eat salted flesh, 
 unless he prefers it, that has money to buy fresh. 
 
 "One cause of this distemper might be no doubt the quantity of wretched 
 fresh and salt fish consumed by the commonalty at all seasons as well as in 
 Lent, which our poor now would hardly be persuaded to touch... The plenty 
 of good wheaten bread that now is found among all ranks of people in the 
 south, instead of that miserable sort which used, in old days, to be made of 
 barley or beans, may contribute not a little to the sweetening their blood and 
 correcting their juices." 
 
 Let us add to this, that the meat diet of the poorer class, 
 whether serfs or freemen, would be apt to consist of the more 
 worthless portions, the semi-putrid pieces in the salted sides of 
 bacon, mutton or beef, and that badly-cured pork was in many 
 parts the usual kind of flesh-food ; and we shall have no difficulty 
 in findincr the noxious element in the diet of the Middle Asfes, 
 which the dietetic hypothesis of leprosy requires. Some who 
 have advocated that hypothesis for modern leprosy, have laid 
 themselves open, notwithstanding the ability and industry of 
 their research, to plausible objections which have no bearing if 
 the hypothesis be sufficiently safe-guarded. Leprosy, like every 
 other morbus miseriae, needs a number of things working together 
 to produce it, its more or less uniform specific character or 
 distinctive mark being determined by the presence of one factor 
 in particular. The special factor should be generalised as much 
 as possible, so as to cover the whole circumstances of leprosy : 
 it is not only half-cured or semi-putrid fish'^, but half-cured or 
 
 1 These numbers seem to stand for the contents of the l.irders in all the various 
 manors of De Spenser. 
 
 - Mr Jonathan Hutchinson has been adding, year after year, to the evidence that 
 semi- putrid fish, eaten in that state by preference or of necessity, is the chief cause of 
 modern leprosy, and he has successfully met many of the apparent exceptions. 
 Norway has had leprosy in some provinces for centuries ; and it is significant that 
 William of Malmesbury, referring to those who went on the first Crusade, says : 
 " Scotus familiaritatem pulicum reliquit, Noricus cniditatem piscium." {Cesta Regum, 
 Eng. Hist. Soc. II. 533.) 
 
112 Not occasional errors of diet, but habitual. 
 
 semi-putrid flesh of any kind. The most general expression for 
 leprosy is a semi-putrid or toxic character of animal food, just as 
 for the allied pellagra, it is a semi-putrid or toxic character of 
 the bread or porridge. Moreover it is that noxious or unnatural 
 thing in the food, not once and again, or as a bo7uie boiicJie, but 
 somewhat steadily from day to day as a chief part of the susten- 
 ance, and from year to year. As the rain-drops wear the stones, 
 so the poison in the daily diet tells upon the constitution. Once 
 more, such special causes may be present in a country generally, 
 among the poor of all the towns, villages and hamlets, and yet 
 only one person here and there may show specific effects that 
 arc recognisable as a disease to which we give a name. Unless 
 there be present the aiding and abetting things, the special factor 
 will hardly make itself felt ; and if there be not the special factor, 
 there may be some other morbus miseriae but there will not be 
 that one. These aiding things are for the most part the usual 
 concomitants of poverty and hardships, wearing out the nerves 
 far more than is commonly supposed and producing in ordinary 
 an excessive amount of nervous affections among the poor. 
 But among the poor themselves, as well as among the well-to-do, 
 there are special susceptibilities in individuals and in families. 
 One person may have the same unwholesome surroundings as 
 another and the same poisonous element in his diet, but he 
 may fall into no such train of symptoms as his leprous neigh- 
 bour because he is not formed in quite the same way, because he 
 has "no nerves," or is of a hardier stock, or because his unwhole- 
 some manner of life comes out in some other form of disease 
 (scrofula perhaps, less probably gout), or for some other reason 
 deeply hidden in his ancestry and his personal peculiarities. 
 The chances would be always largely against that particular 
 combination of factors needed to make leprosy. It was a morbus 
 miseriae of the Middle Ages, but on the whole not a very common 
 one ; and it was easily shaken off by the national life when the 
 conditions changed ever so little. It was all the more easily 
 shaken off by reason of the facilities for divorce, the prohibition 
 of marriage, and the monastic discipline. 
 
 The staple diet as a cause of leprosy was suspected in the 
 Middle Ages, and by writers as ancient as Galen. It is not with- 
 
Food assigned to lepers in Scotland. 1 1 3 
 
 out significance that the minute directions for the dieting of 
 the lepers in the rich hospital of Sherburn, near Durham, urge 
 special caution as to the freshness of the fish : when fresh fish 
 was not to be had, red herrings might be substituted, but only 
 if they were well cured, not putrid nor corrupt. Those directions 
 were in accordance with the best medical teaching of the time 
 on the dietetics of leprosy, or on how to prevent leprosy, as it is 
 given with considerable minuteness in Gordonio and Gilbert'. 
 
 On the other hand we find a singular ordinance of the Scots 
 Parliament at Scone in 1386, or some forty years after the date 
 of the Durham regulations : " Gif ony man brings to the market 
 corrupt swine or salmond to be sauld, they sail be taken by the 
 Bailie and incontinent without ony question sail be sent to the 
 lepper-folke ; and gif there be na lepper-folke, they sail be 
 destroyed alluterlie^" Nothing could be more significant for 
 the prevalence and persistence of leprosy in Scotland ^ Putrid 
 fish and pork did actually come to market ; the dangers of them 
 as regarded the production of leprosy were unsuspected ; and the 
 lepers (genuine or mistaken) were actually directed to be fed 
 with them. Such food for " lepers " could only have fed the 
 disease ; and if it be the case that genuine leprosy was met with 
 in Edinburgh and Glasgow more than two centuries after it ceased 
 to be heard of in England, we need be at no loss to assign the 
 reason why the disease was more inveterate in the one country 
 than in the other. 
 
 ^ In his section De preservationc a lepra (p. 345) Gilbert advises to avoid, among 
 other things, all salted fish and meat, and dried bacon. 
 
 " Acts of Robert III. in the Regiam Majcstatcin, p. 414 (quoted by Simpson, Kit. 
 Med. and Surg, yoiirn. vol. 57, p. 416). 
 
 ■' Dr Gilbert Skene, of Aberdeen, and afterwards of Edinburgh, in his book on 
 the plague (156S), has an incidental remark about "evil and corrupt meats" which 
 may be taken in a literal sense: "As we see dailie the pure man subject to sic 
 calamitie nor the potent, quha arc constrynit be povertie to eit evill and corrupte 
 meittis, and diseis is contractit, heir of us callit pandeniiall." (Hannatyne Club 
 edition, p. 6.) 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE BLACK DEATH. 
 
 The most likely of the fourteenth-century English annalists 
 to have given us a good account of the Black Death was the 
 historian Ranulphus Higdcn, author of the PolycJironicon, who 
 became a monk of St Werburgh's abbey at Chester about the 
 beginning of the century, and lived to see the disastrous year of 
 I349\ That part of his history which relates to his own period 
 he brings down year by year to 1348, with less fulness of detail in 
 the later years, as if old age were making him brief Under the 
 year 1348 he begins the subject of the great mortality, speaks of 
 the incessant rains of the second half of the year from Midsummer 
 to Christmas, refers to the ravages of the plague at Avignon, 
 the then ecclesiastical capital of Christendom, just mentions 
 England and Ireland, and then lets the pen fall from his hand. 
 Higden is believed to have resumed his annals after 1352 ; but 
 he was then a very old man, and the last entries are unimportant. 
 But the period from 1348 to 1352 is an absolute blank. He 
 comes to the edge of the great subject of that time, as if he had 
 intended to deal with it comi^rehensivcly, beginning with a 
 notice of the previous weather, which is by no means irrelevant, 
 and after two or three lines more he breaks off. Most of the 
 monastic chronicles arc interrupted at the same point ; if there 
 is an entry at all under the year 1349 it is for the most part 
 
 1 Higden's PolycJironicon. Edited for ilic Rolls scries by Fjahincjlon and Lumby, 
 vol. VIII. 
 
EnghsJi and h'isJi autJiorities on tJie Black Death. 1 1 5 
 
 merely the words magna mortalitas. The prevailing- sense of 
 desolation and despair comes out in the record made by a friar 
 of Kilkenny, who kept a chronicle of passing events, and escaped 
 the fate of his brethren in the convent only long enough to 
 record a few particulars of the great mortality* : 
 
 "And I, friar John Clyn, of the Order of Friars Minor, and of the 
 convent of Kilkenny, wrote in this book those notable things which happened 
 in my time, which I saw wTth my eyes, or which I learned from persons 
 worthy of credit. And lest things worthy of remembrance should perish 
 with time, and fall away from the memory of those who are to come after us, 
 I, seeing these many evils, and the whole world lying, as it were, in the 
 wicked one, among the dead waiting for death till it come — as I have truly 
 heard and examined, so have I reduced these things to writing ; and lest the 
 writing should perish with the writer, and the work fail together with the 
 workman, I leave parchment for continuing the work, if haply any man 
 survive, and any of the race of Adam escape this pestilence and continue the 
 work which I have commenced." 
 
 There is nothing in the English chronicles so directly 
 personal as that, but there are some facts recorded of the 
 mortality in four of them which have contemporary value, or 
 almost contemporary. The best of these accounts, as a piece of 
 history, is that of Henry Knighton, canon of Leicester^ who 
 acknowledges his indebtedness to Higden's PolycJironicon for the 
 events down to 1326, but after that date either writes from his 
 own observation or takes his facts from some unknown con- 
 temporary source. The next in importance is Geoffrey le 
 Baker^ a clerk of the abbey of Osney, near Oxford, whose 
 account of the arrival of the Black Death in England has 
 obtained wide currency as copied literally in the 1605 edition of 
 
 ' The Annals of Ireland. By Friar John Clyn, of the Convent of Friars Minor, 
 Kilkenny, and Thady Dowling, Chancellor of Leighlin. Edited from tlie MSS. etc. 
 by R. Butler, Dean of Clonmacnois. Dublin, 1849 (Irish Archreological Society). 
 The last entry by Clyn himself appears to be the words "magna karistia" etc., under 
 1349. There is added "Videtur quod author hie obiit;" and then two entries of 
 pestilence made in 1375 in another hand. 
 
 ■" Henricus de Knighton, Chronicon Angliae, in Twysden's Decern Script. Angl. 
 col. 2598 et seq. An edition of Knighton's Chronicle, by Lumby, is in progress for the 
 Rolls series. 
 
 * Chronicle of Geoffrey le Ba/cer. Edited by E. Maunde Thomiison, Oxford, 1889. 
 
 8—2 
 
Ii6 Black DeatJi enters Dorsetshire, August, 1348; 
 
 Stow's Anuals. The third is Robert de Avesbury\ whose 
 History of Edward III. serves as a chronicle for the city of 
 London more particularly. The fourth is the Malmesbury 
 monk who wrote, about 1367, the chronicle known as the 
 Eulogiuvi ^. 
 
 From the systematic paragraphs of those writers, and from 
 various other incidental notices, an outline of the progress of the 
 pestilence in England, Scotland and Ireland, may be traced. 
 It entered English soil at a port of Dorsetshire — said in the 
 Eulogiuvi to have been Melcombe (Weymouth) — in the beginning 
 of August, 1348. It is said to have spread rapidly through 
 Dorset, Devon and Somerset, almost stripping those counties of 
 their inhabitants, and to have reached Bristol by the 15th of 
 August. The people of Gloucester in vain tried to keep out the 
 infection by cutting off all intercourse with Bristol ; from 
 Gloucester it came to Oxford, and from Oxford to London, 
 reaching the capital at Michaelmas, according to one account, or 
 at All Saints (ist November) according to another. Although 
 the 15th of August is definitely given as the date of its arrival 
 at Bristol from the Dorset coast, it must not be assumed that 
 the infection covered the ground so quickly as that in the rest of 
 its progresses. We have a measure of the rate of its advance 
 south-westward through Devonshire to Cornwall, in a con- 
 temporary entry in the register of the Church of Friars Minor at 
 Bodmin^: confirming the independent statements that the 
 pestilence entered England at the beginning of August, the 
 register g-oes on to record that it reached the town of Bodmin 
 shortly before Christmas, and that there died in that town about 
 fifteen hundred persons, as estimated. 
 
 The corporation records of Bridport, a town near to the place 
 in Dorset where the infection landed, show that four bailiffs held 
 
 1 Robertus de Avesbury, Historia de Mirabilibus Gestis Regis Ed. III., Oxon. 
 1 720. Also in the Rolls series. Edited by E. Maunde Thompson. 
 
 ^ Eulogium Historiarum. Rolls series, No. 9. Edited by liaydon, ill. 213. 
 
 •* Ilmcraria Synionis Simeonis et Willelmi de Worcestre. Edited by Nasmith 
 from the MSS. in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Cantab. 1778, 
 p. I [3: "parum ante nativitatem Domini intravit villnni liodminiae, ubi mortui 
 fncrunt circa mille qiiingcntos per cstimacioncm." 
 
ravages the Soiith-zvcst, and reaches London, end of 1348. 117 
 
 office, instead of two, in the 23rd of Edward III., in tempore 
 pestilentiae ; the 23rd of Edward III. would begin 25 Jan. 1349, 
 but the municipal year would probably have extended from 
 September 1348, so that Bridport may have had the infection 
 before the end of that year'. It seems probable that the smaller 
 towns, and the villages, all over the South-west, had been 
 infected in the end of 1348, but somewhat later than Bristol and 
 Gloucester. The mandate of Ralph, bishop of Bath and Wells, 
 " On confessions in the time of the pestilence," is dated Wyn- 
 chelcomb, 4. id. Jan. M.CCC.XLVIII. (10 January, 1349) and it 
 speaks of the contagion spreading everywhere, and of many 
 parish churches and other cures in his diocese being left without 
 curate and priest to visit the sick and administer the sacra- 
 ments^. 
 
 The autumn of 1348 may be taken, then, as correct for the 
 South-west ; and there is no doubt that the infection had been 
 severe enough in London before the end of that year to move 
 the authorities to action. 
 
 " Owing to the increasing severity of the sudden plague day 
 by day at Westminster and places adjoining," Parliament was 
 prorogued on the ist of January, 1349^ There was a further 
 prorogation on the loth of March, for the reason given that "the 
 pestilence was continuing at Westminster, in the city of London, 
 and in other places, more severely than before" {gravins so/ito)*. 
 This agrees with Avesbury's statement that the epidemic in 
 London reached a height {in tantuni excrevit) after Candlemas, 
 1349, and that it was over about Pentecost. One of the best 
 proofs of the season and duration of the Black Death in London 
 is got from the number of wills enrolled in the Husting Court 
 
 ' Histor. MSS. Commission, vi. 475. 
 
 - Wilkins, Concilia U. T^^: "Contagium pestilentiae moderni temporis undique 
 se dilatans etc." 
 
 ^ Rymer's Foedera, v. 655: — "Quia tamen subita plaga Pestilentiae Mortalis in 
 loco praedicto et aliis partibus circumvicinis adeo indies invalescit, quod de secure 
 accessu Hominum ad locum ilium formidatur admodum hiis diebus." 
 
 ■* Ibiii. — "Et quia dicta Pestilentia Mortalis in dicto loco Westmonasteriensi ac in 
 civitate Londoniae, ac alls locis circumvicinis, gravius solito invalescit (quod dolenter 
 referimus) per quod accessus Magnatum et aliorum nostrorum Fidelium ad dictum 
 locum nimis periculosus foret," &c. This second prorogation was sine die. 
 
1 18 A^ a height in London, March, \ 349. — Spreads over England. 
 
 of the city in the successive months. Those who died of the 
 plague leaving wills were, of course, but a small fraction of the 
 whole mortality ; but the wills during some eight months of 
 1349 are ten or fifteen times more numerous than in any other 
 year before or after, excepting perhaps the year of the pestis 
 secunda, 1361. Starting from 3 in November, 1348 (none in 
 December), the probates rise to 18 in January, 1349, 42 in 
 February, 41 in March, none in April (owing to paralysis of 
 business, doubtless), but 121 in May, 31 in June, 51 in July, 
 none in August and September, 18 in October, 27 in November, 
 and then an ordinary average\ Thus it would have had a 
 duration of some seven or eight months in the capital, with a 
 curve of increase, maximum intensity, and decrease, just as the 
 great London epidemics of the same disease in the i6th and 
 17th centuries are known from the weekly bills to have had. 
 
 It does not appear to have been felt at all in Norwich and 
 other places in the Eastern Counties until the end of March, 1349, 
 its enormous ravages in that part of England falling mostly in 
 the summer. There is a definite statement that it began at York 
 about the feast of the Ascension, by which time it had almost 
 ceased in London, and that it lasted in the capital of the northern 
 province until the end of July. The infection almost emptied 
 the abbey of Meaux, in Holdernesse, of its monks, and the abbey 
 lands of their tenants ; and the date given in the abbey chronicle 
 is the month of August, 1349. The spring and summer of that 
 year appear to have been the seasons of the great mortality all 
 over England, excepting perhaps in the southern counties where 
 the outbreak began ; even at Oxford, which is one of the towns 
 mentioned as on the route of the pestilence from Dorsetshire to 
 London, the mortality is entered under the year 1349, which was 
 also the year of its enormous prevalence among the farmers and 
 peasants on the manor of Winslow, in the county of Bucks. 
 
 Its invasion of the mountainous country of Wales (by no 
 means exempt from plague in the 17th century) may have been 
 a season later — anno seqnenti, says Le Baker, which may mean 
 cither 1349 or 1 350. In the Irish annals, the first mention of 
 
 1 Caloidar oj Wills (Ilusting Court, London), c<l. Sharpe, Lond. iSSy, i. 306-624. 
 
Seasons of the Black Death in Irehind and Scotland. 119 
 
 the pestilence is under the year 1348 ; but it was probably only 
 the rumour of the mortality at Avignon and elsewhere abroad 
 that caused the alarm in Ireland among ecclesiastics and in 
 gatherings of the people. It was first seen on the shores of 
 Dublin Bay, at Howth and Dalkey, and a little farther north on 
 the coast at Drogheda ; it raged in Dublin "from the beginning 
 of August until the Nativity'," which may mean the year 1348, 
 although the year 1349 is the date given for the great mortality 
 in Ireland in later chronicles. 
 
 The experience of Scotland illustrates still farther the slow 
 progression of the plague, and its dependence to some extent 
 upon the season of the year. Two English chroniclers (Le 
 Baker and Knighton) mention that it got among the Scots 
 assembled in the forest of Selkirk for an invasion at the 
 time when the mortality was greatest in the northern counties, 
 the autumn of 1349. But the winter cold must have held it in 
 check as regards the rest of Scotland ; for it is clear from 
 Fordoun that its great season in that country generally was the 
 year 1350. Thus the Black Death may be said to have extended 
 over three seasons in the British Islands — a partial season in 
 the south of England in 1348, a great season all over England, 
 in Ireland and in the south of Scotland in 1349, and a late 
 extension to Scotland generally in 1350. The experience of all ^ 
 Europe was similar, the Mediterranean provinces receiving the 
 infection as early as 1347, and the northern countries, on the 
 Baltic and North Seas, as late as 1350. 
 
 Symptoms and Type of the Black Death. 
 
 This sweeping pestilence was part of a great wave of infection I 
 which pas.sed over Europe from the remote East, and of which 
 we shall trace the antecedents in the latter part of this chapter. 
 
 ^ Clyn. But his account for Kilkenny, where he lived, makes the epidemic either 
 earher or later there than at Dublin: "Ista pestilencia apud Kilkenniam in XL" 
 invaluit; nam vito die Marcii viii fratres predicatores infra diem Natalem obienmt," 
 the Lent referred to being either that of 1,^49 or of 1.350. The difficulty about 
 assigning the landing of the infection near Dublin in the beginning of August to the 
 year 1348 is that the English importation had only then taken place. But of course 
 Ireland may have got it direct from abroad. 
 
I20 Early medical xoritings on plague. 
 
 The type and symptoms of the disease are sufficiently well- 
 known from foreign descriptions — by Guy de Chauliac and 
 Raymond de Chalin, both of Avignon, by Boccaccio, and by the 
 Villani of Florence. It was the bubo-plague, a disease which is 
 known to have existed in Egypt in the time of the Ptolemies, 
 and made its first great incursion from that country into Europe 
 in the reign of Justinian in the year 543 (see Chapter I.). Its 
 second great invasion, but from a new direction, was the Black 
 Death of 1347-9; and from that time it remained domesticated 
 in the soil of Europe for more than three hundred years as " the 
 plague." The first medical descriptions of it by native British 
 writers are comparatively late. Manuscript treatises or " ordi- 
 nances " on the plague circulated in P2ngland from the reign of 
 Richard II., most of them being copies of a short work of no 
 great value by one John of Burgoyne or John of Bordeaux. 
 There is also extant an English translation in manuscript, 
 assigned to the 14th century (but belonging to the end of it, if not 
 to the 15th), of a really good work on the plague by the bishop 
 of Aarhus, in Denmark, of which I shall have more to say in the 
 next chapter. But none of these give English experience ; and 
 the earliest of our i6th century plague-books, by Phaer, is a 
 compilation mostly, if not entirely, from the Danish bishop's 
 treatise, the latter having been printed in its English form in or 
 near 1480. It is not until we come to the work of Dr Gilbert 
 Skene of Edinburgh, printed in 1568, that we find a treatise on 
 plague showing traces of first-hand observation and reflection. 
 Then follow the essay of Simon Kellwaye on the London 
 plague of 1593, ^^^ that of the well-known Elizabethan poet 
 and physician Thomas Lodge, on the plague of 1603. Thus the 
 reign of the plague in Britain was approaching an end before 
 the native medical profession began to write upon it. Its eventful 
 history from its arrival in 1348 down to a comparatively late 
 period has to be constructed from other materials than the 
 records or .systematic writings of the faculty. 
 
 The type of the Black Death in England is sufficiently 
 indicated by Le Baker, who was probably living at Osney, near 
 Oxford, when the infection began, and indubitably by friar Clyn 
 of Kilkenny. Le Baker mentions the apostemata or swellings in 
 
Descriptions of the 1 349 plague by Le Baker and Clyn. 1 2 1 
 
 diverse parts, their sudden eruption, and their extreme hardness 
 and dryness, so that hardly any fluid escaped when they were 
 lanced according to the usual method of treating them'. He 
 speaks also of a peculiarly fatal form, from which few or none 
 recovered ; it was characterised by " small black pustules " on the 
 skin, probably the livid spots or " tokens " which came to be 
 considered the peculiar mark of the plague, and were certainly 
 the index of a malignant type of it, just as the corresponding 
 haemorrhages are in pestilential fever (or typhus) and in yellovv 
 fever. The disease, he adds, was swift in doing its work : 
 one day people were in high health and the next day dead and 
 buried. Knighton also says, with special reference to Bristol, 
 that the attack was fatal sometimes within twelve hours, and 
 usually within three days at the most. The treatment, which 
 would have been, according to all subsequent experience, the 
 privilege only of those who could pay for it, would appear to 
 have consisted in lancing the risings or botches in the armpits, 
 neck, or groins ; these were the lymph-glands enlarged to the 
 size of a walnut or of a hen's tg^, and of a livid colour, — the 
 most striking and certain of all the plague-signs. 
 
 Clyn's account of the disease, as he saw it at Kilkenny in 
 1349, is important for including one remarkable symptom on 
 which great importance has been laid as distinctive of the Black 
 Death among the epidemics of bubo-plague, namely haemorrhage 
 from the lungs : " For many died from carbuncles, and boils, and 
 botches which grew on the legs and under the arms ; others 
 from passion of the head, as if thrown into a frenzy ; others by 
 vomiting blood I" It was so contagious, he says, that those who 
 touched the dead, or even the sick, were incontinently infected 
 that they died, and both penitent and confessor were borne 
 together to the same grave. Such was the fear and horror of it 
 
 ^ op. cit. p. 98: "Torserunt illos apostemata e diversis partibus corporis subito 
 irrumpencia, tarn dura et sicca quod ab illis decisis vix liquor emanavit ; a quibus 
 multi per incisionem aut per longam pacienciam evaserunt. AHi habuerunt pustulos 
 parvos nigros per totam corporis cutem conspersos, a quibus paucissimi, immo vix 
 aliquis, vitce et sanitati resilierunt. " 
 
 - "Nam multi ex anthrace et ex apostemalibus, et pustulis quae creverunt in tibiis 
 et sub asellis, alii ex passione capitis, et quasi in frenesim versi, alii spuendo san- 
 guinem, moriebantur," p. 36. 
 
122 Distinctive syinptoms described. 
 
 that men scarce dared exercise the offices of pity, namely, to visit 
 the sick and bury the dead. Clyn's list of symptoms includes 
 all the most prominent features of the plague as we shall find 
 them described for the great ej^idemics of the Stuart period — 
 the botches in the armpits or groins, the carbuncles, the boils 
 (or blains), and the frenzy or delirium, as well as the special 
 symptom of the great mortality — vomiting of blood. 
 
 Of the botch, which was the most striking sign of the plague, 
 the following description, by Woodall (1639), may be introduced 
 here, to supplement the more meagre accounts of the bubo- 
 plague on its first appearance. Woodall had himself suffered 
 from the bubo or botch on two occasions, in its comparatively 
 safe suppurating form ; his description relates to the hard, tense, 
 and dry botch, especially mentioned by Le Baker for 1349, and 
 always the index of great malignity : 
 
 " But the pestilential bubo or boyle commeth ever furiously on, and as 
 in a rage of a Feaver, and as being in haste ; sometimes it lighteth on 
 or near the inguen thwart, but more often lower upon the thigh, pointing 
 downward with one end, the upper end towards the belly being commonly 
 the biggest or the fullest part of the bubo, the whole thigh being also 
 inflamed ^" 
 
 Of this disease, says Le Baker, few of the first rank died, but 
 of the common people an incalculable number, and of the clergy 
 and the cleric class a multitude known to God only. It was 
 mostly the young and strong who were cut off, the aged and 
 weakly being commonly spared. No one dared come near the 
 sick, and the bodies of the dead were shunned. Both Le Baker 
 and Knighton speak of whole villages and hamlets left desolate, 
 and of numbers of houses, both great and small, left empty and 
 falling to ruin. It was not merely one in a house that died, says 
 friar Clyn of Kilkenny, but commonly husband, wife, children 
 and domestics all went the same way of death ; the friar himself 
 wrote as one inter niortuos inortcni expectans. Without naming 
 the locality, Avesbury says that in a single day, twenty, forty, 
 
 1 A 7'i'catise fait/ifiil/y a)id plaiiicly declaring the 7vay of prevcn/iiig, preserving 
 Jroiii and curing that most fearfull and contagions disease called the Plague. With the 
 Pestilential Feaver and other the fearful syinptonies and accidents incident thereto. 
 I'.y John Woodall, surgeon to St Barlliolomcw's Hospital, &c. London, iGyj. 
 
The nioi-tality in the Black Death. 123 
 
 sixty or more corpses were buried in the same trench'. The 
 stereotyped phrase in the monastic chronicles is that not more 
 than a tenth part of the people were left alive. However, the 
 author of the Euloginvi, a monk of Malmesbury who brought 
 his history down to 1366, gives a numerical estimate at the 
 other extreme. He says that the plague entered England at 
 Melcumbe, destroyed innumerable people in Dorset, Devon and 
 Somerset, and, having left few alive in Bristol, proceeded 
 northwards, leaving no city, nor town, nor hamlet, nor scarcely a 
 house, in which it did not cut off the greater part of the people, 
 or the whole of them ; but he adds, somewhat inconsequently, 
 " so that a fifth part of the men, women and children in all 
 England were consigned to the graved" These are the vague 
 contemporary estimates of the mortality — ranging from nine- 
 tenths to one-fifth of the whole population. It is possible, 
 however, to come much nearer to precision by the systematic use 
 of documents ; and in that exercise we shall now proceed, in an 
 order from the more general to the more particular. 
 
 Estimates of the Mortality. 
 
 There are two State documents the language of which 
 favours the more moderate kind of estimate. In a letter of the 
 king', dated i December, 1349, or after the epidemic was over, 
 to the mayor and bailiffs of Sandwich, ordering them to watch 
 all who took ship for foreign parts so as to arrest the exit of men 
 and money, the preamble or motive is : " Quia non modica pars 
 populi regni nostri Angliae praesenti Pestilentia est defuncta." 
 (Forasmuch as no mean part of the people of our kingdom of 
 England is dead of the present pestilence.) The Statute of 
 Labourers, 18 November, 1350, begins: "Quia magna pars 
 populi, et maxime operariorum et servientium jam in ultima 
 pestilentia est defuncta." (Forasmuch as a great part of the 
 people, principally of artisans and labourers, is dead in the late 
 
 ^ Robertus de Avesbuiy, Rolls etl., p. 177. 
 
 - Etdogiiini Historiaruin. Rolls ser. No. 9, hi. 213. 
 
 '^ Rymei's Focdera, v. 668. 
 
124 Deaths in parishes of Leicester, 1349. 
 
 pestilence.) The statute would have emphasized the loss of 
 artizans and labourers as these were its special subjects, but the 
 inaxiine operarioriun et servientiuui may be fairly taken in a literal 
 sense to mean that the adult and able-bodied of the working class 
 suffered most. One of the contemporary chronicles says that 
 the women and children were sent to take the places of the men 
 in field labour\ It is also significant that the "second plague" 
 of 1 36 1 is named by two independent chroniclers the pcstis 
 puerorum, or plague of the juveniles, as if it were now their 
 turn. The pestis secunda was also notable, both in England and 
 on the Continent, for the numbers of the nobility which it 
 carried oft", and in that respect it was contrasted with the Black 
 Death. 
 
 Next we come to certain numerical statements as to the 
 mortality of 1349, which have an air of precision. They relate 
 to Leicester, Oxford, Bodmin, Norwich, Yarmouth and London. 
 In Leicester, according to Knighton, who was a canon there at 
 the time or shortly after, the burials from the Black Death were 
 more than 700 in St Margaret's churchyard, more than 400 in 
 Holy Cross parish (afterwards St Martin's), more than 380 in 
 St Leonard's parish, which was a small one, and in the same 
 proportion in the other parishes, which were three or four in 
 number, and none of them so large as the two first named. 
 Knighton's round numbers for three parishes are not improbable, 
 considering that Leicester was a comparatively populous town 
 at the time of the poll-tax of 1377: the numbers who paid the 
 tax were 2101, which would give, by the usual way of reckoning, 
 a population of 3939. The population of the same three 
 parishes in 1558, or shortly after the period when English 
 towns were described in the statute of 32 Henry VIII. as 
 being much decayed, would have been about 820 in St Mar- 
 garet's, 800 in St Martin's (Holy Cross), and 160 in St Leonard's'"'. 
 In 17 1 2, when the hosiery industry had been flourishing for 
 thirty years, the population of St Margaret's was about 1900 and 
 of St Martin's about 1750, the estimated population of the whole 
 
 1 "I'ro quorum defectu [referring to the fugitive villeins] mulieres et parvuli 
 invise niissi sunt ad carucas et ad plaustra fuganda." Eulogiitin. Rolls ed. Ul. 214. 
 - Nichols, History of Li.ic,:skrslurc, I. 534. 
 
Figures of tJie Black Death for Oxford and Bodmin. 125 
 
 town having been 6450, or about one-half more than we maj' 
 assume it to have been in 1349. 
 
 In order to reah'se what the pestilence of 1349 meant to these 
 parishes of Leicester, let us take the actual burials from the 
 parish register of one of them, St Martin's, in the comparatively 
 mild plague years of 1610 and 161 1, a period when the population, 
 as calculated from the annual averages of births and deaths, 
 would have been from 3000 to 3500, probably less, therefore, by 
 some hundreds than it was in the years before the Black Death. 
 In 1 6 10 there were 82 burials in St Martin's parish, or about 
 twice the average of non-plague years; in 161 1 there were 128 
 burials, or three to four times the annual average\ Knighton's 
 400 deaths for the same parish in 1349 would mean that the 
 ordinary burials were multiplied about ten times; while his 
 figures for two other parishes would mean a still greater ratio of 
 increased 
 
 For Oxford the estimate is not less precise or more moderate. 
 " 'Tis reported," says Anthony Wood, under the year 1349, 
 " that no less than sixteen bodies in one day were carried to one 
 churchyard ^" 
 
 The information for Bodmin, in Cornwall, comes from 
 William of Worcester* who read it, about a century after the 
 event, in the register of the Franciscan church in that town. 
 The entry in the register was doubtless made at the time, and as 
 made by Franciscans familiar with burials it deserves some 
 credit for approximate accuracy. The deaths are put down in 
 round numbers at fifteen hundred, which may seem large for 
 Bodmin at that date. But the truth is that the Cornish borough 
 
 1 Nichols, /. c. 
 
 - For a series of years the burials in the St Martin's register are as follow : 
 1610 82 1611 128 1612 39 1613 25 1614 34 
 
 1615 60 1616 41 1617 3r 1618 37 1619 28 
 
 1620 25 1621 43 1622 27 1623 37 1624 24. 
 
 * History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford. Ed. Gutch I. 449. He 
 says also: "The school doors were shut, colleges and halls relinquished, and none 
 scarce left to keep possession or make up a competent number to bury the dead." 
 The rest of his account of the Black Death is copied from Le Baker's Chronicle of 
 Osney. 
 
 * IfincrariiDn ^ I. c. 
 
126 Progress of the Black Death in London, 1349. 
 
 was a place of relatively greater importance then than afterwards. 
 In the king's writ of 135 1, for men-at-arms, in which each town 
 was rated on the old basis before the Black Death, Eodmin 
 comes fourteenth in order, being rated at eight men, while such 
 towns as Gloucester, Hereford and Shrewsbury are rated at ten 
 each. It may well have had a population of three or four 
 thousand, of which the numbers said to have died in the great 
 mortality would be less than one-half 
 
 Perhaps the most satisfactory reckoning of the dead from 
 contemporary statements is that which can be made for London. 
 The disease, as we know, reached the capital at Michaelmas or 
 All Souls ( I st November), and its prevalence led to a prorogation 
 of Parliament on the ist of January, and again on the lOth of 
 March, the reason assigned for the farther prorogation being 
 that the pestilence was raging gravins solito — more severely 
 than usual. The winter mortality must have been considerable, 
 although doubtless the season of the year kept it in check, as in 
 all subsequent experience. But there is evidence that three more 
 burying-places became necessary early in the year 1349. One of 
 these, of no great extent, was on the east side of the City, in the 
 part that is now the Minories^ ; and two were on the north side, 
 not far apart. Of the latter, one formerly called Nomansland, 
 in West Smithfield, was also of small extent*^ ; but the other 
 was a field of thirteen acres and a rood, which became in the 
 course of years the property of the Carthusians and the site of the 
 Charterhouse (partly covered now by Merchant Taylors School). 
 The larger burial-ground, called Manny's cemetery after its donor 
 sir Walter Manny, the king's minister and high admiral, was 
 consecrated by the bishop of London and opened for use at 
 Candlemas, 1349. Now comes in the testimony of Avesbury, 
 the only chronicler of good authority for London in those years. 
 The mortality increased so much, he says {in taniJtm excrevit)^ 
 that there were buried in Manny's cemetery from the feast of the 
 
 ' .Stow's Survey. " Portsoken Ward." 
 
 - "Lying without the walls on the north part of the city between the land of the 
 abbot of Westminster and the prior of St John of Jerusalem." French Chronicle of 
 London (p. 56), as quoted by Stubbs, in preface (p. Ixxxi) to Ajtnales Londo^iioiscs, 
 
 Rolls scries. No. iG, 
 
Comparison ivitJi the London plague of 1563. 127 
 
 Purification (when it was opened) until Easter more than 200 in 
 a single day {qnasi dicbns snign/is), besides the burials in other 
 cemeteries*. The language of the chronicler implies that the 
 burials in the new cemetery rose to a maximum of 200 in a day. 
 The Black Death must have been like the great London plagues 
 of later times in this respect, at least, that it rose to a height, 
 remained at its highest level for some two, three or four weeks, 
 and gradually declined. A maximum of 200 in a day, in the 
 cemetery which would have at that stage received nearly all the 
 dead, would mean a plague-mortality from first to last, or an 
 epidemic curve, not unlike that of the London plague of 1563, 
 for which we have the exact weekly totals": the five successive 
 weeks at the height of that plague (Sept. 3 to Oct. 8) produced 
 mortalities of 1454, 1626, 1372, 1828 and 1262; and the epidemic 
 throughout its whole curve of intensity from June to December 
 caused a mortality of 17,404. If Avesbury's figures had been at 
 all near the mark, the Black Death in London would have been 
 a; twenty-thousand plague, or to make a most liberal allowance 
 forbufiats in other cemeteries than Manny's when the epidemic 
 v/as at its worst, it might have been a thirty-thousand plague. 
 Even at the smaller of those estimates it would have been a 
 much more severe visitation upon the London of Edward IIL 
 than the plague with 17,404 deaths was upon the London of the 
 5th of Elizabeth. 
 
 The mortality of London in the Black Death has been 
 usually estimated at a far higher figure than 20,000 or 30,000. 
 There was a brass fixed to a stone monument in the Charter- 
 house churchyard (Manny's cemetery), bearing an inscription 
 which was read there both by Stow and Camden. Stow gives 
 the Latin words, of which the following is a translation : " Anno 
 Domini 1349, while the great pestilence was reigning, this 
 cemetery was consecrated, wherein, and within the walls of the 
 
 1 Robertas de Avesbury, Historia Ed-wanii III. Rolls ccl. p. 407. "Quotidie 
 multos vita privavit, et in tantum excrevit quod a festo Purificationis usque post 
 Pascha, in novo tunc facto cimiterio juxta Smithfeld plus quam cc corpora defunctonim, 
 praeter corpora quae in aliis cimiteriis civitatis ejusdem sepeliebantur, quasi dielnis 
 singulis sepulta fuerunt In festo Pentecostes cessavit Londoniis." 
 
 - 'i^in\\\ RIcmoraitda. Camden Soc., iSSo. 
 
128 Tlie burials in the Charterhouse eeiuetery, 1349. 
 
 present monastery, were buried more than fifty thousand bodies 
 of the dead, besides many more from that time to the present, 
 on whose souls may God have mercy. Amen." Camden says 
 the number on the brass was forty thousand, but his memory 
 had probably misled him'. This has been accepted as if trust- 
 worthy, apparently because it was inscribed upon a monument in 
 the cemetery ; and it has been argued that if one cemetery 
 received 50,000 corpses in the plague, the other cemeteries and 
 parish churchyards of London would have together received as 
 many more, so that the whole mortality of London would have 
 been lOO-OOo'"*. 
 
 But that mode of reckoning disregards alike the scrutiny of 
 documents and the probabilities of the case. The inscription 
 bears upon it that it was written subsequent to the erection of 
 the Carthusian monastery, which was not begun until 1371'. 
 The round estimate of 50,000 is at least twenty-two years later 
 than the mortality to which it relates, and may easily have been 
 magnified by rumour in the course of transmission. Even if it 
 had contemporary value we should have to take it as the 
 roughest of guesses. The latter objection applies in a measure 
 to Avesbury's estimate of 200 burials in a day at the height of 
 the epidemic ; but clearly it is easier to count correctly up to 
 200 in a day than to 50,000 in the space of three or four months. 
 On the ground of probability, also, the number of 50,000 in one 
 cemetery (or 100,000 for all London) is wholly incredible. The 
 evidence to be given in the sequel shows that the mortality was 
 about one-half the population. Assuming one-half as the death- 
 rate, that would have brought the whole population of London 
 in the 23rd of Edward IH. up to about 200,000 — a number 
 hardly exceeded at the accession of James L, after a great 
 expansion which had proceeded visibly in the Elizabethan 
 period under the eyes of citizens like John Stow, had crowded 
 the half-occupied space between the City gates and the bars 
 of the Liberties, and had overflowed into the out-parishes to 
 
 > Camden's Britannia, ed. Gough, II. 9. 
 
 - Rickman, Abstract of the Population Returns of 1831. London, 183-2. Intro- 
 duction, p. 1 1. 
 
 ■' .Stow's Siir7'cy, p. 392. 
 
Mortality of I'ichcr citizens in London, 1349. 129 
 
 such an extent that proclamations from the year 1580 onwards 
 were thought necessary for its restraint\ 
 
 Hardly any details of the Black Death in London arc known, 
 but the few personal facts that we have are significant. Thus, 
 in the charter of incorporation of the Company of Cutlers, 
 granted in 1344, eight persons are named as wardens, and these 
 are stated in a note to have been all dead five years after, that is 
 to say, in the year of the Black Death, 1349, although their 
 deaths are not set down to the plague^ Again, in the articles 
 of the Hatters' Company, which were drawn up only a year 
 before the plague began (Dec. 13, 1347); six persons are named 
 as wardens, and these according to a note of the time were all 
 dead before the 7th of July, 1350^, the cause of mortality being 
 again unmentioned probably because it was familiar know- 
 ledge to those then living. It is known also that four wardens 
 of the Goldsmiths' Company died in the year of the Black 
 Death. These instances show that the plague, on its first arrival, 
 carried off many more of the richer class of citizens than it did 
 in the disastrous epidemics of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries. The same is shown by the number of wills, already 
 given. Perhaps the greatest of the victims of plague in London 
 was Bradwardine, " doctor profundus," the newly-appointed 
 archbishop of Canterbury, who died at Lambeth, with the fatal 
 botch in the armpits, on 26 Aug. 1349, just a week after landing 
 at Dover from Avignon. 
 
 The often-quoted figures for Norwich, 57,374 deaths in the 
 city from the pestilence of 1349, are wholly incredible. They 
 are derived from an entry in the borough records in the Gild- 
 hall*: "In yis yere was swiche a Dethe in Norwic that there 
 
 ^ The population of London is stated on good authority, that of its archdeacon, 
 in a letter to Pope Innocent III. {Petri Blesscnsis Opera omnia, ed. Giles, vol. ii. 
 p. 85), to have been 40,000 about the years 1 190-1200, a period of great expansion 
 or activity. By the usual reckoning of the poll-tax in 1377 the population would 
 have been 44,770; and in the year 1349 it was probably not far from tliosc numbers. 
 This matter conies up again in the next chapter. 
 
 ^ Memorials of London in the ij^th, i^th and ifjth centuries, edited from the 
 Archives of the City, A.D. 1246-14T9, l:>y II. T. Riley. Lond. 1868, p. 219. 
 
 * Ibid, pp. 239-40. 
 
 ■* Blnmefield, History 0/ N'oifotk, III. 93. 
 
 C. O 
 
130 . Norzvich and Yarmouth, 1349. 
 
 died of ye Pestilence LVII Mil III C LXXiiii besyd Relygius and 
 Beggars." We should probably come much nearer the truth by 
 reading " xvil Mil." for " LVII Mil." It does not appear at what 
 time the entry was made, nor by what computation the numbers 
 were got. Norwich was certainly smaller than London ; in the 
 king's writ of 1351 for men-at-arms, London's quota is 100, and 
 that of Norwich 60 ; the next in order being Bristol's, 20, and 
 Lynn's, 20. These were probably the old proportions, fixed 
 before the Black Death, and re-issued in 1351 without regard to 
 what had happened meanwhile, and they correspond on the 
 whole to the number of parishes in each city (about 120 in 
 London and 60 in Norwich'). Norwich may have had from 
 25,000 to 30,000 people before the pestilence, but almost cer- 
 tainly not more. The city must have suffered terribly in 1349, 
 for we find, by the returns in the Subsidy Roll showing the 
 amount raised by the poll-tax of 1377 and the numbers in each 
 county and town on whom it was levied, that only 3952 paid the 
 tax in Norwich, whereas 23,314 paid it in London^ That is a 
 very different proportion from the 60 to 100, as in the writ for 
 men-at-arms ; and the difference is the index of the decline of 
 Norwich down to the year 1377. In that year, the population, 
 by the usual reckoning from the poll-tax, would have been about 
 7410; and it is conceivable that at least twice that number had 
 died of the plague within the city during the spring and summer 
 of 1349. 
 
 The figures given of the mortality at Yarmouth, 7052, are 
 those inscribed upon a document or a brass that once stood in 
 the parish church ; it was seen there in the fifteenth century by 
 William of Worcester, a squire of the Fastolf family connected 
 with Yarmouth, who gives the numbers as 7000, giving also the 
 exact dimensions of the great church itself I They are adduced 
 by the burgesses of Yarmouth in a petition of 17 Henry VII. 
 
 ' Peter of Klois, who as archdeacon of London was in a jiosition to know, 
 gives in his letter to the pope the number of parish churches in the City at 120. 
 
 2 Popham, "Sulisidy Roll of 51 Edward III.," in Arcluvologia, vii. {1785) p. 337. 
 
 " Ithieraria, ct ret. ed. Nasmith, Cantab. 1778, p. 344. See also Weaver, 
 J'lifieral JMonuiiicuts, ]i. 862, according to whom the record of the great mortality 
 was on a chronological table liangiTig up in the church. 
 
The Black Death in the Monasteries. 131 
 
 (1502), as follows : "Buried in the parish church and churchyard 
 of the said town 7052 men." Yarmouth, like Norwich, suffered 
 unusually from the Black Death; in 1377, by the poll-tax 
 reckoning, its population was about 3639. It may be assumed 
 to have lost more than half its people ; but it recovered quickly, 
 was made a seat of the wool-staple, and threatened to rival 
 Norwich. 
 
 Clyn's statement that 14,000 died in Dublin from the begin- 
 ning of August until Christmas may also be taken merely as 
 illustrating the inability of early writers to count correctly up to 
 large numbers. 
 
 The most trustworthy figures of mortality in the Black Death 
 which were recorded at the time are those given for the inmates 
 of particular monasteries ; and these are such as to give colour 
 to the remark interpolated in Higden's Polyehrojiicon that " in 
 some houses of religion, of twenty there were left but twain." 
 
 At St Albans, the abbot Michael died of the common 
 plague at Easter, 1 349, one of the first victims in the monastery. 
 The mortality in the house increased daily, until forty-seven 
 monks, "eminent for religion," and including the prior and 
 sub-prior, were dead, besides those who died in large numbers 
 in the various cells or dependencies of the great religious 
 house\ At the Yorkshire abbey of Meaux, in Holdernesse, 
 the visitation was in August, although the epidemic in the city 
 of York was already over by the end of July'^. The abbot 
 Hugh died at Meaux on the 12th of August, and five other 
 monks were lying unburied the same day. Before the end of 
 August twenty-two monks and six lay-brethren had died, 
 and when the epidemic was over there were only ten monks 
 and lay-brethren left alive out of a total of forty-three monks 
 (including the abbot) and seven lay-brethren. The chronicler 
 adds that the greater part of the tenants on the abbey lands 
 died also^. In the Lincolnshire monastery of Croxton, all 
 
 ' Walsingham, Gcsta Abhatuin. Rolls ed. n. 370. Abbot Michael, he says, 
 "tactus est communi incommodo inter primes de siiis raonachis qui illo Ictali morbo 
 percussi sunt." 
 
 - Th. Stubbs' Chronicle of York in Tvvysden, col. ly.^'z. 
 
 ■' Chronicon Mottas/erji de Melsa, Rolls ed. ill. 36. 
 
132 TJic Black Death in the Monasteries. 
 
 the monks died save the abbot and prior\ In the hospital of 
 Sandon, Surrey, the master and brethren all died^ 
 
 At Ely 28 monks survived out of 43'. In the Irish monas- 
 teries the mortality had been equally severe : in the Franciscan 
 convent at Drogheda, 25 friars died ; in the corresponding 
 fraternity at Dublin, 23 ; and in that of Kilkenny 8 down to the 
 6th of March*, with probably others (Clyn himself) afterwards. 
 
 The following mortalities have been collected for East 
 Anglian religious houses : At Hickling, a religious house in 
 Norfolk, with a prior and nine or ten canons (' Monasticon'), 
 only one canon survived. At Heveringham in the same county 
 the prior and canons died to a man. At the College of St Mary 
 in the Fields, near Norwich, five of the seven prebendaries 
 died. Of seven nunneries in Norfolk and Suffolk, five lost 
 their prioress as well as an unknown number of nuns^ At 
 the nunnery of Great Winthorp on the Hill, near Stamford, all 
 the nuns save one either died of the plague or fled from it, so 
 that the house fell to ruin and the lands were annexed by a 
 convent near if. 
 
 The experience of Canterbury appears to have been alto- 
 gether different, and was perhaps exceptional. In a community 
 of some eighty monks only four died of the plague in 1349". 
 It is known, however, that when the new abbot of St Albans 
 halted at Canterbury on his way to Avignon after his election 
 at Easter, one of the two monks who accompanied him was 
 there seized with plague and died^ 
 
 ^ Rymer's Foedera. 
 
 2 Lowtli, Life of William of Wykeham, p. 93, with a vef. to Regist. Edyngdon, 
 pt. I. fol. 49. 
 
 •* Bentham, Hist, of Ely, 
 
 4 Clyn. 
 
 •' Jessopp, "The Black Death in East Anglia " in Nineteetith Century, April 1885, 
 p. 602. The sources of these interesting particulars are not given. 
 
 " Peck's Antiquarian Annals of Stamford, Bk. xi. p. 47. 
 
 ^ Hist. I\ISS. Commission's Reports, IX. p. 127: "fli quatuor lantum moricbantur 
 de pestilcncia." The reporter on the MSS. of the Dean and Chapter conjectures 
 that the monastery may have owed its comparative immunity to the fact that it was 
 supplied with water brought by closed pipes from the hills on the north-east of the 
 city. 
 
 ^ Walsingham, Gcsta Ahhatiim, 
 
Great mortality among the parish clergy. 133 
 
 These monastic experiences in England were the same as in 
 other parts of Europe. At Avignon, in 1348, sixty-six Carmelite 
 monks were found lying dead in one monastery, no one outside 
 the walls having heard that the plague was amongst them. In 
 the English College at Avignon the whole of the monks are 
 said to have died'. 
 
 What remains to be said of the death-rate in the great 
 mortality of 1349 is constructive or inferential, and that part of 
 the evidence, not the least valuable of the whole, has been 
 worked out only within a recent period. The enormous thin- 
 ning of the ranks of the clergy was recorded at the time, in 
 general terms, by Knighton, and the difficulty of supplying the 
 parishes with educated priests is brought to light by various 
 things, including the founding of colleges for their education at 
 Cambridge (Corpus Christi) and at Oxford (Durham College). 
 The first to examine closely the number of vacancies in cures 
 after the great mortality was Blomefield in the third volume of the 
 History of Norfolk published in 1741. The Institution Book of 
 the diocese of Norwich, he says (with a reference to No. IV. of 
 the Lib. Instil), shows 863 institutions to benefices in 1349," the 
 clergy dying so fast that they were obliged to admit numbers of 
 youths, that had only devoted themselves for clerks by being 
 shaven, to be rectors of parishes ^" A more precise use of 
 Institution Books, but more to show how zealous the clergy had 
 been in exposing themselves to infection than to ascertain the 
 death-rate, was made (1825) for the archdeaconry of Salop. It 
 was found that twenty-nine new presentations, after death- 
 vacancies, had been made in the single year of 1349, the average 
 number of death vacancies at the time having been three in two 
 yearsl The first systematic attempt to deduce the mortality of 
 1349 from the number of benefices vacant through death was 
 
 ^ Knighton. 
 
 " History of Norfolk, ill. 94. 
 
 •* Owen and Blakeway, History of Shrewsbury, i. 166: — "The average number of 
 institutions to benefices on vacancies by death in the archdeaconry of Salop, for ten 
 years before 1349, and ten years after, is one and a half per annum, or fifteen in the 
 whole ; in that year alone the number of institutions on vacancies by death is twenty- 
 nine, besides other institutions the cause of whose vacancies is not specified and 
 therefore may also have been the ^ame." 
 
134 Excessive death-rate of clergy hi the Black Death. 
 
 made in 1865 by Mr Seebohm, by original researches for the 
 diocese of York and by using Blomefield's collections for the 
 diocese of Norwich'. In the archdeaconry of the West Riding 
 there were 96 death vacancies in 1349, leaving only 45 parishes 
 in which the incumbent had survived. In the East Riding 60 
 incumbents died out of 95 parishes. In the archdeaconry of 
 Nottingham there were deaths of priests in 65 parishes, and 61 
 survivals. In the diocese of Norwich there were 527 vacancies 
 by death or transfer, while in 272 benefices there was no change. 
 Thus the statement made to the pope by the bishop of Norwich, 
 that two-thirds of the clergy had died in the great mortality is 
 almost exact for his own diocese as well as for the diocese of 
 York. These figures of mortality among the Norfolk clergy 
 were confirmed, with fuller details, by a later writer**: the 527 
 new institutions in the diocese of Norwich fall between the 
 months of March and October — 23 before the end of April ; 74 
 in May ; 39 from 30th May to loth June ; 100 from loth June to 
 4th July; 209 in July; and 82 more to October. According to 
 another enumeration of the same author for East Anglia, up- 
 wards of 800 parishes lost their parsons from March 1349 to 
 March 1350,83 parishes having been twice vacant, and 10 three 
 times. 
 
 There is no mistaking the significance of these facts as 
 regards the clergy : some two-thirds of a class composed of 
 adult males in moderate circumstances, and living mostly in 
 country villages, were cut off by the plague in Norfolk and 
 Suffolk, in Yorkshire and Shropshire, and probably all over 
 England. That alone would suffice to show that the virus of the 
 Black Death permeated the soil everywhere, country and town 
 
 ^ F. Seebohm, "The Black Death and its Place in English Whiory," Fort night ly 
 Revirw, Sept. i and 15, 1865: — "In the library of the Dean and Chapter, at York 
 Minster, are voluminous MSS., known by the name of Torr's MSS., which contain 
 the clergy list of every parish in the diocese of York, and which, in by far the greater 
 number of instances, state not only the date of each vacancy, but whether it was 
 caused by death, resignation or otherwise of the incumbent." L.c. p. 150. 
 
 2 Jessopp, "The Black Death in East Anglia," A^/wt-tow//; Century, April 1885, 
 pj). 600-602. This author remarks that the evidence from manor court rolls and 
 from the Institution Books of the clergy " has hardly received any attention hitherto, 
 its very existence being entirely overlooked, nay, not even suspected." 
 
\ 
 
 \ 
 
 Evidence from the Ala nor Court Rolls for 1349. 135 
 
 alike. It is this universality of incidence that chiefly dis- 
 tinguishes the Black Death from the later outbreaks of plague, 
 which were more often in towns than in villages or scattered 
 houses, and were seldom in many places in the same year. But 
 there remains to be mentioned, lastly, evidence inferential from 
 another source, which shows that the incidence in the country 
 districts was upon the people at large. That evidence is derived 
 from the rolls of the manor courts. 
 
 It was remarked in one of the earliest works (1852) upon the 
 history of an English manor and of its courts, that " the real life 
 or history of a nation is to be gathered from the humble and 
 seemingly trivial records of these petty local courts'," and so 
 the researches of the generation following have abundantly 
 proved. Much of this curious learning lies outside the present 
 subject and is unfamiliar to the writer, but some of it intimately 
 concerns us, and a few general remarks appear to be called for. 
 
 The manor was the unit of local government as the Normans 
 found it. The lord of the manor and the cultivators of the soil 
 had respectively their rights and duties, with a court to exact 
 them. There are no written records of manor courts extant 
 from a period before the reign of Edward I., when justice began 
 to be administered according to regular forms. But in the year 
 1279 we find written rolls of a manor court^ From the reign 
 of Edward III. these rolls begin to be fairly numerous; for 
 example, there is extant a complete series of them for the manor 
 of Chedzey in Somerset from 1329-30 to 141 3-14. The court 
 met twice, thrice, or four times in the year, and the business 
 transacted at each sitting was engrossed by the clerk upon a 
 long roll of parchment. The business related to fines and 
 heriots payable to the lord by the various orders of tenants on 
 various occasions, including changes in tenancy, successions by 
 heirship, death-duties, the marriages of daughters, the births of 
 illegitimate children, the commission of nuisances, poaching, and 
 
 1 G. Poulett Scrope, M.P., F.R.S., The Manor and Barony of Castle Comhe. 
 London, 1852, p. 168. 
 
 ■^ The court rolls of the Manor of Snitterton, Norfolk, in the British Museum. 
 Professor Maitland has lately edited some of the earliest rolls of manor courts for the 
 Selden Society. 
 
136 Effects of the Black Death in the Manor of IVi/is/ozu. 
 
 all matters of petty local government. The first court of the 
 year has usually the longest roll, the parchment being written 
 on one side, perhaps to the length of twenty or twenty-four 
 inches ; the margin bears the amount of fines opposite each 
 entry ; there are occasionally jury lists where causes had to be 
 tried. Of the community whose business was thus managed a 
 notion may be formed from the instance of the Castle Combe 
 manor^ : in 1340 it had two open fields, each of about 500 acres, 
 on its hill-slopes, cultivated by 10 freemen tenants, 15 villeins, 
 1 1 other bondsmen cultivating a half-acre each ; 8 tenants of 
 cottages with crofts, 12 tenants of cottages without crofts, as well 
 as 3 tenants of cottages in Malmesbury. 
 
 It will be readily understood that an unusual event such as 
 the great mortality of 1348-49 would leave its mark upon the 
 rolls of the manor courts ; the death-vacancies, with their fines 
 and heriots, and all entries relating to changes in tenancy, would 
 be unusually numerous. Accordingly we find in the rolls for 
 that year that there was much to record ; at the first glance the 
 parchments are seen to be written within and without, like the 
 roll in the prophet's vision ; and that is perhaps all that the 
 inspection will show unless the student be expert in one of the 
 most difficult of all kinds of ancient handwriting, — most difficult 
 because most full of contractions and conventional forms. But 
 by a few those palaeographic difficulties have been surmounted 
 (doubtless at some cost of expert labour), and the results as 
 regards the great mortality of 1349 have been disclosed. 
 
 The manor of Winslow, in Buckinghamshire, belonging to 
 the great abbey of St Albans, was a large and typical one I 
 Besides the principal village it had six hamlets. At the manor 
 courts held in 1348-9 no fewer than 153 holdings are entered 
 as changing hands from the deaths of previous holders, the 
 tenancies being either re-granted to the single heir of the 
 deceased or to reversioners, or, in default of such, retained by 
 the lord. Of the 153 deceased tenants, 28 were holders of 
 
 1 G. I'oulcll Scrope, oJ>. cit. pp. 15 1-2. 
 
 - F. Seebohm, The English Village Community, London, 1882. The Manor 
 Court Rolls of Winslow, upon which Mr Seebohm bcises his work, are in the library 
 of llic University of Cambriclgu. 
 
Dcpop/tlation of Norfolk parishes. 137 
 
 virgates and 14 of half-virgates ; or, in other words, there died 
 42 small farmers, cultivating from forty to fifteen acres each, in 
 half-acre strips scattered all over the common fields of the manor. 
 These 42 held twice as much land as all the remaining 1 1 1 
 together ; the latter more numerous class were the crofters, who 
 cultivated one or more half-acre strips : they would include the 
 various small traders, artisans and labourers of the village and its 
 hamlets ; while the former class represented " the highest grades 
 of tenants in villenage." 
 
 Of both classes together 153 had died in the great mortality. 
 What proportion that number bore to the whole body of tenants 
 on the manor may be inferred from the following : out of 43 
 jurymen belonging almost exclusively to the class of larger 
 holders, who had served upon the petty jury in 1346, 1347 and 
 1348, as many as 27 had died in 1349; so that we may reckon 
 three out of every five adult males to have died in the Winslow 
 district, although it would be erroneous to conclude that the 
 same proportion of adult women had died, or of aged persons, or 
 of infants and young children. 
 
 Another more varied body of evidence has been obtained 
 from researches in the rolls of manor courts in East Anglia'. 
 
 In the parish of Hunstanton, in the extreme north of 
 Norfolk, with an area of about 2000 to 2500 acres, 6^ men and 
 15 women had been carried off in two months : in 31 of these 
 instances there were only women and children to succeed, and in 
 9 of the cases there were no heirs at all ; the whole number of 
 tenants of the manor dead in eight months was 172, of whom 74 
 left no heirs male, and 19 others had no blood relations left to 
 claim the inheritance. The following is the record of the manor 
 court of Cornard Parva, a small parish in Suffolk: on 31st 
 March, 1349, 6 women and 3 men reported dead; on ist May, 
 13 men and 2 women, of whom 7 had no heirs; at the next 
 meeting on 3 November, 36 more deaths of tenants, of whom 
 13 left no heirs. At Hadeston, a hamlet of Bunvvell, twelve 
 miles from Norwich, which could not possibly have had 400 
 inhabitants, 54 men and 14 women were carried off in six 
 
 1 Rev. Augustus Jessopp, D.D. "The Elack Death in East Anglia," Nineteenth 
 Century, Dec. 1884. 
 
 -t y 
 
138 
 
 Wil/s in Lancashire parishes, 1 349. 
 
 months, 24 of them without anyone to inherit. At the manor 
 court of Croxton, near Thetford, on 24th July, 17 deaths are 
 reported since last court, 8 of these without heirs. At the 
 Raynham court, on the same day, 18 tenements had fallen into 
 the lord's hands, 8 of them absolutely escheated, and the rest 
 retained until the heir should appear. At other courts, the suits 
 set down for hearing could not be proceeded with owing to the 
 deaths of witnesses (e.g. 1 1 deaths among 16 witnesses) or 
 of principals. The manor court rolls of Lessingham have an 
 entry, 15th January, 1350, that only thirty shillings of tallage 
 was demanded, " because the greater part of those tenants who 
 were wont to render tallage had died in the previous year by 
 reason of the deadly pestilence\" 
 
 ^ Under the heading "The Black Death in Lancashire," Mr A. G. Little has 
 printed, with remarks, in the English Historical Review, July, 1890, p. 524, the data 
 submitted to a jury of eighteen who had been empannelled to settle a dispute between 
 the archdeacon of Richmond and Adam de Kirkham, dean of Amounderness, touching 
 the account rendered by the dean, as proctor for the archdeacon, of fees received for 
 instituting to vacant livings, for probates of wills, and for administration of the goods 
 of intestates. The dean's account to the archdeacon is said to run "from the Feast 
 of the Nativity of our Lady [8 September] in the year of our Lord 1349 unto the 
 eleventh day of January next following;" but it may not imply, and almost certainly 
 does not, that the vacancies in benefices, the probates and the letters of administration, 
 or the corresponding deaths of individuals, fell between those dates. The archdeacon 
 alleges what fees Adam de Kirkham had received, but had not accounted for, and the 
 jury find what Adam did actually receive. Nine benefices of one kind or another are 
 mentioned as vacant, three of them twice. The numbers said to have died in the 
 several parishes, with the number of wills and of intestate estates, I have extracted 
 from the data and tabulated as follows : 
 
 Parish 
 
 Men & Women 
 
 With wills 
 
 Intestate 
 
 dead 
 
 (above loo sh.) 
 
 (above loo sh.) 
 
 Preston 
 
 3000 
 
 300 
 
 200 
 
 Kirkham 
 
 3000 
 
 — 
 
 100 
 
 Pulton 
 
 800 
 
 
 
 40 
 
 Lancaster 
 
 3000 
 
 400 
 
 80 
 
 Garestang 
 
 2000 
 
 400 
 
 140 
 
 Cokram 
 
 1000 
 
 300 
 
 60 
 
 Ribchestre 
 
 [illegible] 
 
 70 
 
 40 
 
 Lytham 
 
 140 
 
 80 
 
 80 
 
 St Michel 
 
 80 
 
 50 
 
 40 
 
 Pulton 
 
 60 
 
 40 
 
 20 
 
 Of the alleged 300 who died in Preston parish, leaving wills, five married couples are 
 
The Black Death in other English counties. 139 
 
 Further research upon the records of the manor courts will 
 doubtless show that the experience of Buckinghamshire, Norfolk, 
 Suffolk and Lancashire was not singular. From the Castle 
 Combe rolls nothing has been extracted as to the mortality in 
 1348-9, except one entry (Nov. 13, 1357) that a certain tene- 
 ment was ruinous, having remained in the lord's hands since the 
 time of the pestilence for want of a purchaser ; but it would be 
 unsafe to conclude that this sequestered manor of Wiltshire 
 had not shared the common fate. The accounts of certain 
 manors in Hertfordshire were headed, for thirty years after the 
 Black Death, with a list of those who had vacated tenancies by 
 death in that pestilence \ A decayed inscription cut in the 
 stone of the parish church of Ashwell, in the same county, 
 records the great mortality of 1349 and the great tempest in 
 January, 1362^ The tenants of the abbey of Mcaux, in the 
 Holdernesse division of Yorkshire, were nearly all dead, as well 
 as the monks within the monastery walls. On the manor of 
 Ensham, near Oxford, "there remained hardly two tenants ^" 
 
 The immediate effects of the great mortality were not so 
 striking as might have been supposed. Although it fell upon 
 town and country in one terrific blow, yet some places had 
 recovered from it before others felt it ; it was over in Bristol (so 
 far as we know) before it came to a height in London, and nearly 
 over in London before it began in York, The dead were expe- 
 
 named, the probate fees being respectively ^ marc, 6 sh., 40 d., 4 sh., and 40 d. The 
 archdeacon's whole claim for the 300 was 20 marcs, which the jury reduced to 10 
 pounds. Of the alleged 200 intestates in the same parish, two married couples, one 
 woman, and "Jakke o \iQ hil" are named. In the parish of Garstang, the executors 
 of 6 deceased are named, whose probate fees in all amounted to 16 sh. 10 d., the 
 whole claim of the archdeacon for 400 deceased leaving wills being ;^io, and the 
 award of the jury 40 sh. In the parish of Kirkham, on a claim of 20 marcs for 
 probate fees not accounted for, "the jury say that he received £.{\" on a claim of 
 £10 for quittance, the jury say 20 sh. This was a parish in which 3000 are said to 
 have died, the number of wills being not stated. The numbers had obviously been 
 put in for a forensic purpose, and are, of course, not even approximately correct 
 for the actual mortality, or the actual number of wills proved, or of letters of 
 administration granted. The awards of the jury amounted in all to ^48. \os. See 
 also Eng. Hist. Review, Jan. 1891. 
 
 ^ Thorold Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, i. 296-7. 
 
 ^ Cussan's Hertfordshire, vol. i. Hundred of Odsey, p. 37. 
 
 * Sat, Rev. 16 Jan. 1886, p. 82. 
 
140 Immediate effects on prices and ivages. 
 
 ditiously buried in trenches ; vacancies among the clergy were 
 promptly filled ; the manor courts met and transacted business, 
 and had their records engrossed for the most part in the usual 
 clerkly style. So great a dislocation of society naturally gave 
 rise to some irregularities : stripping the dead is reported from 
 one district in Norfolk, fights and quarrels came into court more 
 often than ever in 1349 and 1350, and we read of two women 
 who each had three husbands in as many months \ Knighton 
 says that sheep and cattle were left to wander about untended, 
 and that they often perished in ditches by the wayside. A 
 murrain occurred the same year ; at one place five thousand 
 sheep died in the pasture and were left to putrefy'''. The price 
 of a horse fell from forty shillings to half a marc ; a fat ox could 
 be bought for four shillings, a cow for twelve pence, a heifer for 
 sixpence, a fat sheep for four pence, a stone of wool for nine 
 pcnce^ On the other hand, when the harvest of 1349 had to be 
 gathered, the price of labour rose enormously. According to 
 Knighton, a reaper got eightpence a day, with his food, and a 
 mower twelvepence. The extant accounts tabulated by Thorold 
 Rogers confirm the contemporary statement : the rates for 
 threshing the harvest of 1349 were those of panic and compulsion, 
 being unparalleled, whether before or after, in the Eastern, 
 Midland and Southern counties ; the immediate effect of the 
 scarcity of hands was to nearly double the wages of labour for 
 the time being. Many villeins or bondsmen took the ojapor- 
 tunity of escaping to the towns or to distant manors, where they 
 could make their own terms. Of the last kind of incident, 
 probably a very common one, we have an instance recorded*: 
 
 ^ Jessopp, I.e. April 1885, p. 611-12. 
 
 - The priory of Christ Church, Canterbury, lost the following live stock in the 
 murrain of 1349: oxen, 757, cows and calves, 511, sheep, 4585. {Ilist. Jl/SS. 
 Commission, v. 444.) 
 
 * The author of the Eulogiuiii, who wrote not later than i,',67, and is for his 
 own period an authority like Knighton, gives the following prices: wheat, 12 pence 
 a quarter, barley 9 pence, beans 8 pence; a good horse 16 shillings (used to be 40 sh.), 
 a large ox 40 pence, a good cow 2 sh. or 18 pence. Of the scarcity of servants he says : 
 "Pro quorum defectu niulieres et parvuli invise missi sunt ad carucas et ad plaustra 
 fuganda." 
 
 ■* "The English Manor;" two articles in the Salurday Kevicw., 9th and i6th 
 
After-effects of t/ie Black DeatJi. 141 
 
 At an inquest, some years after the Black Death, upon sundry- 
 manors near Oxford belonging to Christ Church, it was ascer- 
 tained that, " in the time of the mortality or pestilence, which 
 was in the year 1349, there remained hardly two tenants in the 
 said manor [Ensham], and these had wished to leave, had not 
 brother Nicholas de Upton, then abbot of the said manor, 
 compounded anew with them, as well as with other tenants who 
 came in." 
 
 So far as regards the immediate effects of the great mortality. 
 Its after-effects, felt within a year or two, upon the economics 
 and morals of the country, upon the powxr of the old governing 
 class, upon the dispersion of industries and the new life of 
 towns, upon the system of farming, upon the development of the 
 legal profession in London, and upon various other things, are a 
 much more intricate and disputable subject, some part of which 
 will be dealt with in the next chapter in connexion with the 
 subsequent history of plague or its domestication upon the soil 
 of England. Many things in England were noted as having 
 happened " sithen the Pestilence," to quote the stock phrase of 
 the * Vision of Piers the Ploughman,' and not the least of them 
 was the frequent recurrence of plague, or a prevalence of sickness 
 so steady that the poet compares it to the rain coming in through 
 a leaky roof. 
 
 Some historians have doubted whether after all the Black 
 Death made so very much difference to the course of affairs \ 
 It is perhaps inevitable that scholars, accustomed to deal only 
 with obvious human causation, should look with some distrust 
 
 Jan. 1886, p. 82 [by Professor Sir Frederick Pollock], the sources of information 
 being as yet unpublished. He says: "The prospect of better terms brought in new 
 tenants." 
 
 ^ Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, 1875, 11. 434. Iloniger, dealing 
 with the German evidence of the Black Death, concludes that the great mortality was 
 almost without significance for the political course of affairs ; that the great loss of 
 life was unable to check the revival of trade and industry which had already begun 
 or to retard the splendid development of the German free towns ; that the low state 
 of morals belonged to the period and was no worse after the epidemic than before; 
 that no new impulse was given or point of view brought out, unless, perhaps, the idea 
 of sanitary regulation ; and that the scarcity of labour was merely an incident to be 
 taken advantage of in the struggle against the existing order which was already going 
 on. (Di-r scJrd'arze Tod in Dctitschland. Berlin, 1882, p. 133.) 
 
142 Pestilence as sJiaping the course of history. 
 
 upon the large claims made, in the way of moral and social 
 consequences, for a phenomenon which has been apt to be 
 classed with comets and earthquakes. The sudden thinning of 
 the population may indeed become a subject for economists 
 without any regard to the causation, and irrespectively of the 
 means by which the numbers were reduced ; and that has been 
 the only historic interest of the great mortality hitherto. But 
 the operation of pestilence is peculiar ; the thinning of the 
 population is not effected as if in the due course of nature ; the 
 analogy is closer with a decimating or exterminating war. The 
 invasion of the Black Death was part of the great human drama, 
 just as if a swarming people or a barbarous conqueror had been 
 visibly present in it. If things were moving in the fourteenth 
 century towards a particular issue, as historians find in their 
 retrospect that they were, then the coming of a great plague was 
 part of that movement, organically bound up with the other 
 forces of it, and no more arbitrary than they. Thus it becomes 
 of interest to trace the antecedents of the Black Death before we 
 attempt to follow out its consequences ; and it is not the less of 
 interest to do so, that the train of events leads us as far east- 
 wards as the soil of China, and to the incidents that attended 
 the collapse of the greatest government of the Middle Ages, the 
 empire of the Great Khan. 
 
 The Antecedents of the Black Death. 
 
 When the Black Death in its progress westwards came to 
 Constantinople in 1347, the emperor-historian, John Cantacu- 
 zenes, was present in his capital to witness the arrival of the 
 pestilence ; in his history he wrote that it came among them 
 from the country of the hyperborean Scythians, that is to say, 
 the Tartars of the Crimea. The other contemporary Byzantine 
 historian, Nicephorus Gregoras, says that the pestilence began 
 among the Scythians in the Crimea and at the mouths of the 
 Don. The Russian annals, which are an independent source, 
 and likely enough to have a correct tradition, also say that the 
 plague was God's punishment on the people of the Don territory 
 and of several other localities with obsolete names, including the 
 
TJie Black DcatJi associated ivitJi the China Trade. 143 
 
 famous city of Sarai on the Volga'. The Chersonese, and the 
 country from the Don to the Volga, or from the Euxine to the 
 Caspian, are the regions thus clearly indicated as the scene of 
 the first outburst of the Black Death ; but there was no clue to its 
 unaccountable appearance there, or to the connexion between its 
 outburst on the confines of Europe and the distant home in the 
 East which the rumour of the day vaguely assigned to it. The 
 more definite association of the Black Death with China dates 
 from 1757, when the abbe Des Guignes, in his Histoire des Huns^, 
 took up the old tradition of the Arab historian, Aboel Mahasin, 
 that the plague began in Tartary, that the smell of corpses 
 spread on every side, that the infection passed from Cathay or 
 Tartary to the Tartars of the Kaptchac (Crimea), and from 
 them to Constantinople and Europe on the one hand, and to 
 Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt and North Africa on the other. He 
 pointed out also that the overland caravan trade was a ready 
 means of transport for the infection. That which specially 
 attracted his attention as the historian of the Mongol power was 
 the other statement of the Arab historian in the same context, 
 that China had been visited by floods so disastrous that men, 
 beasts, and even birds perished, and that the country was almost 
 depopulated. Upon that hint Des Guignes collected from the 
 Chinese annals of the first half of the fourteenth century a 
 considerable list^ of calamities, which had actually happened — 
 floods causing the loss of millions of lives, earthquakes, and the 
 like, appending the catalogue without comment as a note to the 
 text where he has occasion to mention the Black Death. Des 
 Guignes' note was reproduced verbatim by Hecker in his essay 
 on the Black Death in 1832, and the unwonted series of pheno- 
 mena in China was made the basis of certain mystical specula- 
 tions as to the effect of earthquakes in causing a " progressive 
 infection of the zones," a perturbation of "the earth's organism," 
 a " baneful commotion of the atmosphere," or the like. In that 
 nebulous and unsatisfactory state the old tradition of the Black 
 Death originating in China has remained to the present hour; 
 
 ^ Richter, Gescliichte der Median in Rnssland, i. 215. 
 
 - Histoire des Huns, V. 127,-^. 
 
 " //'. p. 226, note. ^y* 
 
144 Narrative of tJic ojttbiirst in the Crimea, 1346-7. 
 
 the intuition of the Peking Jesuit had merely been appropriated 
 and set forth in his own way by the German " Naturphilosoph\" 
 Meanwhile, in 1842 a clue to Des Guignes' conjecture of a 
 connexion between the importation of the Black Death and the 
 China land-route was found (but not followed up) in the dis- 
 covery by Henschel of a Latin manuscript in the Rhediger 
 Library at Breslau^ This was a narrative compiled by one 
 Gabriel de Mussis, a jurist of Piacenza, who had been practising 
 as a notary or advocate among the Genoese and Venetians 
 trading around the shores of the Euxine and Caspian, and had 
 been an eyewitness of the outbreak of the plague in that region. 
 De Mussis has no theory of the origin of the plague ; he merely 
 narrates the events as they unfolded themselves before his own 
 eyes ; so much was he in the midst of them that he was a 
 passenger on board the very ship which brought the first seeds 
 of the Black Death direct from the Crimea to Genoa as early as 
 the spring of 1347. 
 
 The substance of this story is that the Italian merchants, who were then 
 settled in considerable numbers at the various termini or entrepots of the 
 overland trade from China and Central Asia by the more northern route, 
 were harassed by the Tartar hordes ; that they had stood a siege in Tana, 
 on the Don, but had been driven out of it, and had sought refuge for 
 themselves and their merchandise within the walls of Caffa, a small fortified 
 post on the Crimean Straits (of Kertch), built by Genoese not long before ; 
 that Caffa was besieged in due course by the Tartar barbarians ; that the 
 investment lasted nearly three years ; that the merchants and others, 
 crowded into the narrow space within the walls, were put to great straits 
 and could hardly breathe, being only partially relieved by the arrival of 
 a ship with supplies ; that the plague broke out among the besieging 
 Tartar host and daily destroyed thousands ; that the Tartars threw the 
 pestilent dead bodies inside the walls by their engines of siege, so that 
 the infection took hold of those within the fort ; that the Tartars dispersed 
 in panic and spread the infection all over the shores of the Euxine, Caspian 
 
 ^ Der schiuarze Tod im vicrzchnten yahrhundert, Berlin, 1832. Engl. Transl. by 
 Bal)ington, Lond. 1833. This well-known work presents the more picturesque 
 aspects of the Black Death in various countries, without thoroughness for any. 
 England has a large space in the book ; but the author has not gone for his infor- 
 mation farther than the chapter on the Black Death in Barnes's Life of Edivard III. 
 
 ^ Printed in Il.aser's ArcJiiv fiir die gesamvitc Median., 1842, il. pp. 26-59; ^"'1 
 reprinted in his Ct'sritirhir dcr Med. u. cpid. Kraiik/irifn?, III. 157, 3d ed., J'^'na, 1882. 
 
Narrative of the Crimean outbreak, 1346-7. 145 
 
 and Levant ; that such of the ItaHan traders as were able, De jMussis 
 himself with them, escaped from Caffa in a ship ; and that the infection 
 appeared in Genoa in its most deadly form a day or two after the arrival 
 of the ship, although none of those on board were suffering from the 
 plague. 
 
 These are all the circumstances related by De Mussis of the 
 beginning of the outbreak as known to himself at first hand : the 
 rest of his narrative is occupied with various' incidents of the 
 plague in Europe, with pious reflections, and accounts of portents. 
 His single reference to China is as follows: "In the Orient, about 
 Cathay, where is the head of the world and the beginning of the 
 earth, horrible and fearful signs appeared ; for serpents and 
 frogs, descending in dense rains, entered the dwellings and 
 consumed countless numbers, wounding them by their venom 
 and corroding them with their teeth. In the meridian parts, 
 about the Indies, regions were overturned by earthquakes, and 
 cities wasted in ruin, tongues of flame being shot forth. Fiery 
 vapours burnt up many, and in places there were copious rains 
 of blood and murderous showers of stones." De Mussis has 
 certainly no scientific intention ; nor can it be said that any 
 scientific use has been made of his manuscript since its discovery. 
 For Haser, its editor, merely reproduces in his history the passage 
 from Hecker on the three overland routes between Europe and 
 the East, without remarking on the fact that De Mussis definitely 
 places the outbreak of the plague at the European terminus of 
 one of them : its remote origin is involved in " impenetrable 
 obscurity ; " all we can say is that it came from the East, " the 
 cradle of the human race\" 
 
 But the entirely credible narrative by De Mussis of the 
 outbreak of plague at the siege of Cafla is just the clue that was 
 wanting to unravel the meaning of the widespread rumour of 
 the time, that the plague came from China. Let us first 
 examine somewhat closely the source of that rumour. It finds 
 its most definite expression in an Arabic account of the Black 
 Death at Granada, by the famous Moorish statesman of that 
 
 1 Gesckichte dcr Medicin, Bd. III. " Epidemische Krankheiten." Jena, 1882, p. 
 139. He gives point to this phrase by an account of the local plagues of recent times 
 in Gujerat and Kumaon. 
 
 C. 10 
 
146 Travellers' gossip of an origin in China. 
 
 city, Ibn-ul-Khatib\ Besides giving the local circumstances for 
 Granada, he makes various remarks on the nature of the plague, 
 and on its mode of spreading, which are not exceeded in 
 shrewdness and insight by the more scientific doctrines of later 
 times. Its origin in China he repeats on the authority of several 
 trustworthy and far-travelled men, more particularly of his 
 celebrated countryman Ibn-Batuta, or " the Traveller," whose 
 story was that the plague arose in China from the corruption of 
 many corpses after a war, a famine, and a conflagration. 
 
 The mention of Ibn-Batuta, as the authority more particu- 
 larly, has a special interest. That traveller was actually in 
 China from 1342 to 1346. In his book of travels^ he tells us 
 how on his way back (he took the East-Indian sea-route to the 
 Persian Gulf) he came at length to Damascus, Aleppo and 
 Cairo in the summer of 1348, and was a witness of the Black 
 Death at each of those places, and of the mixed religious 
 processions at Damascus of Jews with their Hebrew Scriptures 
 and Christians with their Gospels. But he says not one word 
 anywhere as to the origin of the plague in China, whence he was 
 journeying homewards. He continued his journey to Tangier, 
 his birthplace, and crossed thence to Spain about the beginning 
 of 1350. At Granada he spent some days among his country- 
 men, of whom he mentions in his journal four by name ; but the 
 most famous of them, Ibn-ul-Khatib, he does not mention. 
 However, here was Ibn-Batuta at Granada, a year or two after 
 the Black Death, discoursing on all manner of topics with the 
 most eminent Moors of the place ; and here is one of them, 
 Ibn-ul-Khatib, in an account of the Black Death at Granada, 
 quoting the report of Ibn-Batuta that the pestilence arose in 
 China from the corruption of unburied corpses. None of the 
 other statements of an Eastern origin can compare with this in 
 precision or in credibility ; they all indeed confuse the backward 
 extension of the plague from the Euxine eastwards to Khiva, 
 
 ^ His essay is one of the Escurial MSS., and has been printed, with a Gennan 
 translation, by M. H. Miiller, in the Silzimgsbcrichte der Miinchoier Akad. der 
 Wissensch. 1863. 
 
 "^ Voyages d'Ibn Batoiitah in 4 vols., for the Societe Asiatique, Paris, 1853, i. 
 2 a 7-9, and I v. 309. 
 
Circmnstances of tlie siege of Caff a, 1344-6. 147 
 
 Bokhara and the like, with its original progress towards Europe 
 from a source still farther east. The authority of Ibn-Batuta 
 himself is not, of course, that of historian or observer ; although 
 he was in China during part, at least, of the national calamities 
 which the Chinese Annals record, he says nothing of them, and 
 probably witnessed nothing of them. But the traveller was a 
 likely person to have heard correctly the gossip of the East and 
 to have judged of its credibility ; so that there is a satisfaction 
 in tracing it through him. 
 
 The siege of Cafifa, and the general circumstances of it, we 
 may take as historical on the authority of the Italian notary 
 who was there ; but it may be doubted whether the plague 
 began, as he says, among the nomade hordes outside the fort. 
 In sieges it has been not unusual for both sides to suffer from 
 infective disease ; and although it is not always easy to say 
 where the disease may have begun, the presumption is that it 
 arose among those who were most crowded, most pressed by 
 want, and most desponding in spirit. It is, of course, not 
 altogether inconceivable that the Tartar besiegers of Caffa had 
 bred a pestilential disease in their camp ; the nomades of the 
 Cyrenaic plateau have bred bubo-plague itself more than once in 
 recent years in their wretched summer tents, and plague has 
 appeared from time to time in isolated or remote Bedouin 
 villages on the basaltic plateaus of Arabia. There is nothing in 
 the nomade manner of life adverse to pestilential products, least 
 of all in the life of nomades encamped for a season. But such 
 outbreaks of bubo-plague or of typhus fever have been local, 
 sporadic, or non-diffusive. On the other hand the plague which 
 arose at the siege of Cafifa was the Black Death, one of the two 
 greatest pestilences in the history of the world. Let us then see 
 whether there is any greater likelihood of finding inside the 
 walls of Caffa the lurking germs of so great a pestilence. 
 Within the walls of the Genoese trading fort were the Italian 
 merchants driven in from all around that region, with their 
 merchandise — as De Mussis says, fiigientes pro sitaritni tutiofte 
 personaruni et rerinn. Previous to their three years' siege in 
 Cafifa they, or some of them, had stood a siege in Tana, and had 
 retreated to the next post on the homeward route. Tana was 
 
 10 — 2 
 
148 The germs of Plague in merchandise from China. 
 
 at the eastward bend of the Don, whence the road across the 
 steppe is shortest to the westward bend of the Volga ; a Httle 
 above the bend of the Volga was the great city of Sarai — 
 whence the caravans started on their overland journey along 
 northern parallels, across mountain ranges and the desert of 
 Gobi, to enter China at its north-western angle, just within the 
 end of the Great Wall\ The merchandise of Sarai and Tana 
 was the return merchandise of China — the bales of silks and 
 fine cloths, spices and drugs, which had become the articles of a 
 great commerce between China and Europe since Marco Polo 
 first showed the way, and which continued to reach Europe by 
 the caravan routes until about 1360: then the route was closed 
 owing to the final overthrow of the authority of the Great Khan, 
 which had once secured a peaceful transit from the Yellow Sea 
 to the Black Sea — so completely closed that men forgot, two 
 hundred years after, that it had ever existed. 
 
 Did these bales of Chinese stuffs, carried into Cafifa for 
 protection, contain the seeds of the Black Death ? There is, at 
 least, nothing improbable in the seeds of plague lurking in bales 
 of goods ; that mode of transmission was afterwards recognized 
 as highly characteristic of the plague during its Levantine days. 
 Nor is there anything improbable in the seeds of an infection 
 being carried thousands of miles across the deserts of Central 
 Asia; cholera came in that way from India in 1827-8 by the 
 caravan-route to Cabul, Balkh, Bokhara, Khiva and the Kirghiz 
 Steppe to Orenburg, and again in 1847 to Astrakhan ; and the 
 slow land-borne viruses of those two great epidemics exceeded 
 in virulence the later importations of cholera by the sea route 
 from the East. Still farther, there is nothing improbable in the 
 germs of plague lying latent for a long time, or in the disease 
 existing as a potency although not manifested in a succession 
 of cases. The next stage of its progress, from Cafifa to Genoa, 
 illustrates that very point ; for we know that there were no cases 
 of plague on board ship, although the very atmosphere or smell 
 of the new arrival seemed sufficient to taint the whole air of 
 
 ^ See Sir Henry Yule's Cathay and the Way Thither {i vols. Ilakluyt Society) and 
 his edition of The Book of Marco Polo, for numerous particulars of the overland trade 
 to China by the northern parallels, in the 14th century. 
 
Was there Plague in China before the Black Death? 149 
 
 Genoa, and to carry death to every part of the city within a 
 couple of days. And lastly the long imprisonment of a virus 
 in bales of goods, the crowding of merchants and merchandise 
 into the narrow space of a walled seaport, amidst the almost 
 inevitable squalor and foetor of a three years' siege, were the 
 very circumstances needed to raise the potency of the assumed 
 virus to an unusual height, to give it a degree of virulence that 
 would make it effective, and a power of diffusion that would 
 spread and continue the liberated infection after the manner of 
 the greatest of pestilences. 
 
 Thus, if we have to choose between the origin of the plague- 
 virus among the Tartar hordes besieging the China merchants 
 within the walls of Caffa, and the pre-existence of that virus, for 
 a long time latent, among the goods or effects of the besieged, 
 the latter hypothesis must be accorded the advantage in pro- 
 bability. Accepting it, we follow the virus back to Tana on the 
 Don, from Tana to Sarai on the Volga, from Sarai by a well- 
 trodden route which need not be particularized \ for many weeks' 
 journey until we come to the soil of China. According to a 
 dominant school of epidemiologists it is always enough to have 
 traced a virus to a remote source, to the " roof of the world " or 
 to the back of the east wind, and there to leave it, in the full 
 assurance that there must have been circumstances to account 
 for its engendering there, perhaps in an equally remote past, if 
 only we knew them. If, however, we follow the trail back 
 definitely to China, it is our duty to connect it there with an 
 actual history or tradition, immemorial if need be, of Chinese 
 plague. But there is no such history or tradition to be found. 
 We know something of the China of Kublai Khan, fifty years 
 before, from the book of Marco Polo ; and the only possible 
 reference to plague there is an ambiguous statement about 
 " carbuncles " in a remote province, which was probably Yun- 
 nan. Not only so, but if we scrutinize the Chinese Annals 
 closely, we shall find that the thirty years preceding the Black 
 Death were indeed marked by many great calamities and loss of 
 
 ^ The stages, distances, expenses, &c. from Tana to Peking are given in Pegolotti's 
 mercantile handbook (written about 1340), in Yule's Cathay and the Way Thither, 
 vol. 11. 
 
150 The real antecedents in China. 
 
 life on a vast scale, by floods, droughts, earthquakes, famines 
 and famine-fevers, but not by pestilence unconnected with these ; 
 on the other hand, the thirty or forty years after the Black Death 
 had overrun Europe, beginning with the year 1352, are marked 
 in the Chinese Annals (as summarized in the Impej'ial Encyclo- 
 pcEdia of Peking, 1726) by a succession of "great plagues" in 
 various provinces of the Empire, which are not associated with 
 calamitous seasons, but stand alone as disease-calamities pure 
 and simple\ If the Black Death connects at all with events in 
 China, these events were natural calamities and their attendant 
 loss of life, and not outbreaks of plague itself; for the latter, 
 assuming them to have been bubo-plague, were subsequent in 
 China to the devastation of Europe by the plague. 
 
 We are left, then, to make what we can of the antecedent 
 calamities of China ; and we may now revert to the curious 
 rumour of the time that the relevant thing in China was the 
 corruption of many corpses left unburied after inundation, war 
 and conflagration. So far as war and conflagration are con- 
 cerned they are quite subordinate ; there was no war except an 
 occasional inefl"ective revolt in some remote western province, 
 and the conflagrations were minor afi"airs, noticed, indeed, in the 
 Annals, but lost among the greater calamities. The floods, 
 droughts and famines were events of almost annual recurrence 
 for many years before, so that no period in the Annals of China 
 presents such a continuous picture of national calamity, full as 
 Chinese history has at all times been of disasters of the same 
 kind. It was the decadence of the great Mongol empire, 
 founded by Genghiz and carried by Kublai to that marvellous 
 height of splendour and prosperity which we read of in the 
 book of Marco Polo. The warlike virtues of the earlier Mongol 
 rulers had degenerated in their successors into sensual vices 
 during the times of peace ; and the history of the country, 
 priest-ridden, tax-burdened, and ruled by women and eunuchs, 
 neglected in its thousand water-ways and in all the safeguards 
 against floods and famine which wiser rulers had set up, became 
 from year to year an illustration of the ancient Chinese maxim, 
 
 1 C. A. Gordon, M.D. in Reports of Med, Officers to (he Imperial Mariti/ne 
 Customs of China, London, 1884. 
 
Floods, droughts, famines and faviine-fevers. 151 
 
 that misgovernment in the palace is visited by the anger of 
 the sky. 
 
 The following epitome of the calamities in China is taken from De 
 Mailla's Histoire generate de la Chine. Paris, 1777, 9 vols. 4to., a translation 
 of the abridged official annals. 
 
 The year 1308 marks the beginning of the series of bad seasons. 
 Droughts in some places, floods in others, locusts and failure of the crops, 
 brought famine and pestilence. The people in Kiang-Hoai were reduced 
 to live on wild roots and the bark of trees. In Ho-nan and Chan-tong 
 the fathers ate the flesh of the children. The imperial granaries were 
 still able to supply grain, but not nearly enough for the people's wants. 
 The provinces of Kiang-si and Che-kiang were depopulated by the plague 
 or malignant fever which followed the famine. The ministers sent in their 
 resignations, which were not accepted. 
 
 In 1313 the same events recur, including the resignations of ministers. 
 An epidemic carried off many in the capital, and the whole empire was 
 desolated by drought. At a council of ministers to devise remedies and 
 avert further calamities it was proposed by some to copy the institutions 
 of ancient empires celebrated for their virtue, and by others to abolish 
 the Bhuddist priesthood of Foh as the cause of all misfortunes. The 
 throne is now occupied by Gin-tsong, an emperor of a serious and ascetic 
 disposition. In 13 14 he revived the old Chinese system of competitive 
 examinations and the distinctive dress among the grades of mandarins, 
 which the earlier Mongol rulers had been able to dispense with. Next 
 year there is a public distribution of grain, and a check to the exactions 
 of tax-gatherers in the distressed districts. In 13 17, it appears that the 
 provincial mandarins, in defiance of express orders, had neglected the laws 
 of Kublai with reference to the distribution of grain, although it was 
 dangerous to defer such public aid longer ; they had failed also to relax 
 their rigour in collecting the taxes. One day the emperor found at Peking 
 a soldier in rags from a distant garrison, and discovered that a system of 
 embezzlement in the army clothing department had been going on for five 
 years. Gin-tsong is reported to have said to his ministers, " My august 
 predecessors have left wise laws, which I have always had at heart to 
 follow closely ; but I see with pain that they are neglected, and that my 
 people are unhappy." 
 
 In 1318 we read of a great flood in one province, of multitudes drowned, 
 and of a public distribution of grain. In 1320, forty of the Censors of the 
 Empire remonstrated against the cruel exactions of " public leeches," and 
 against a practice of calumniating honest men so as to get them out of the 
 way. The emperor Gin-tsong died in that year, aged thirty-three, and with 
 his death the last serious attempt to check the flood of corruption came to 
 an end. In 1321 there is drought in Ho-nan, followed by famine. In 1324 
 we read of droughts, locusts, inundations and earthquakes. The emperor 
 
152 Succession of calamities in China to 1347. 
 
 demanded advice of the nobles, ministers and wise men, and received the 
 following answer : " While the palace of the prince is full of eunuchs, 
 astrologers, physicians, women, and other idle people, whose maintenance 
 costs the State an enormous sum, the people are plunged in extreme misery. 
 The empire is a family, and the emperor its father : let him listen to the 
 cries of the miserable." In 1325 famine follows the disasters of the year 
 before ; and we learn that the people were supplied from the full granaries 
 of the rich, who were paid, not out of the State treasury, but by places in the 
 mandarinate ! In 1326 the tyranny and licentiousness of the Bhuddist lamas 
 reaches a chmax, and an edict is issued against them. The year 1327 is 
 marked by a series of calamities and portents — drought, locusts, ruined 
 crops, earthquakes, inundations. In 1330, again floods and the harvest 
 destroyed, a cruel famine in Hou-Kouang, millions of acres of land ruined, 
 and 400,000 families reduced to beggary. In 1331 the harvest is worse than 
 in the year before — in Che-kiang there were more than 800,000 families who 
 did not gather a single grain of corn or rice, — and all the while enormous 
 taxes were ground out of universal poverty. 
 
 In 1333 begins the long and calamitous reign of Shun-ti, who came to 
 the throne a weak youth of thirteen. Next year the misfortunes of China 
 touch their highest point. Inundations ruined the crops in Chan-tong ; a 
 drought in Che-kiang brought famine and pestilence ; in the southern 
 provinces generally, famine and floods caused the deaths of 2,270,000 
 families, or of 13,000,000 individuals. In 1336 inundations in Chan-tong 
 ruined the harvest ; in Kiang-nan and Che-kiang the first harvest was a 
 failure from drought, multitudes perished of hunger, and a plague broke 
 out. The emperor, insensible to the misfortunes of his people, abandons 
 himself to his pleasures. Next year sees the first of those provincial revolts, 
 led by obscure Chinese peasants, which eventually overthrew the dynasty in 
 1368. Floods occurred in more than one river basin, by which multitudes of 
 men and beasts were drowned ; in the valley of the Kiang (a tributary of the 
 Hoang-ho) four millions perished. For several years we read of numerous 
 and repeated shocks of earthquakes, in 1341 of a great famine, in 1342 of a 
 famine so severe that human flesh was eaten, in 1343 of seven towns sub- 
 merged, in 1344 of a great tract of country inundated by the sea in con- 
 sequence of an earthquake, in 1345 of earthquakes in Pe-chili, in 1346 of 
 earthquakes for seven days in Chan-tong, and of a great famine in Chan-si. 
 In 1347 earthquakes in various provinces, and drought in Ho-tong, followed 
 by many deaths. The record of disasters in De Mailla's abridged annals, 
 and in Des Guignes, who had clearly access to fuller narrations, comes to 
 an end for a time at the year 1347. 
 
 It will be observed that in these records there is compa- 
 ratively little said of epidemic sickness. The references to 
 pestilence would in no case suggest more than the typhus fever 
 which has been the usual attendant upon Chinese famines, and 
 
Pestilence in the Chinese Annals, 1 352-1 369. 153 
 
 has never shown the independent vitality and diffusive properties 
 of plague. But the minor place occupied by actual pestilence in 
 China, in the years before the Black Death in Europe, is brought 
 out even more clearly on comparing that period with the section 
 of the Chinese annals for the generation following. In the 
 chronology of Chinese epidemics drawn up by Gordon (London, 
 1884) from the Peking Encyclopcedia of 1726, there are, from 
 1 308-1 347, just the same entries of pestilence as are given above 
 from De Mailla's and Des Guignes' French adaptation of the 
 Annals. (Gordon makes the obvious mistake of attributing to 
 pestilence the enormous loss of life which the Annals clearly 
 assigned to floods and famines, with their attendant sickness.) 
 But with the year 1352 wo. enter upon a great pestilential period, 
 as clearly marked in the history of China by the annual recur- 
 rence of vast epidemics as the decades before it were marked by 
 the unusual frequency of floods, famines and earthquakes. 
 Every year from 1352 to 1363, except 1355, has an entry of 
 "great pestilence" or "great plague" (yi-li), in one province or 
 another, although the old tale of floods and famines has come to 
 an end in the Annals. The last of the nearly continuous series 
 of great pestilences is in 1369, when there was a great pest in 
 Fukien, and " the dead lay in heaps on the ground." There is 
 then a break until 1380, and after that a longer break until 1403. 
 It would thus appear as if the great pestilential period of China 
 in the fourteenth century had not coincided with the succession 
 of disastrous seasons, but had followed the latter at a distinct 
 interval. Conversely the years of plague from 1352 to 1369 do 
 not appear to have been years of inundations and bad harvests ; 
 they stand out in the chronology, by comparison, as years of 
 plague-sickness pure and simple ; and although nothing is said 
 to indicate the type of bubo-plague, yet the disease can hardly 
 be assumed to have been the old famine fevers or other sickness 
 directly due to floods and scarcity, so long as not a word is said 
 of floods and famines in that context or in the Annals generally. 
 The suggestion is that the soil of China may not have felt the 
 full effects of the plague virus, originally engendered thereon, 
 until some few years after the same had been carried to Europe, 
 having produced there within a short space of time the stupen- 
 
154 Neglect of burial after floods or in famines. 
 
 dous phenomenon of the Black Death. If there be something 
 of a paradox in that view, it is the facts themselves that refuse 
 to fall into what might be thought the natural sequence. 
 
 The historian Gaubil thinks that the national Annals make 
 the most of these recurring calamities, having been written by 
 the official scribes of the next dynasty, who sought to discredit 
 the Mongol rule as much as possible^; but it is not suggested 
 that the compilers had invented the series of disasters, — now in 
 one province or river basin, now in another, at one time with 
 thirteen millions of lives lost, at another with four hundred 
 thousand families reduced to beggary, this time a drought, and 
 next time a flood, and in another series of years a succession of 
 destructive earthquakes. 
 
 We are here concerned with discovering any possible relation 
 that these disasters, coming one upon another almost without 
 time for recovery, can have had to the engendering of the 
 plague-virus. According to the rumours of the time, it was the 
 corruption of unburied corpses in China which caused the Black 
 Death ; and certainly the unburied corpses were there, a vera 
 causa, if that were all. Recent experiences in China make it 
 easy for us to construct in imagination the state of the shores of 
 rivers after those fatal inundations of the fourteenth century, or 
 of the roadsides after the recurring famines. Thus, of the famine 
 of 1878 it is said^ : "Coffins are not to be got for the corpses, 
 nor can graves be prepared for them. Their blood is a dis- 
 persed mass on the ground, their bones lie all about. . .Pestilence 
 [it is otherwise known to have been typhus fever] comes with 
 the famine, and who can think of medicine for the plague or 
 coffins for the multitude of the dead .■*" Or, again, according to 
 a memorial in the official Peking Gazette of 16 January, 1878, 
 " the roads are lined with corpses in such numbers as to distance 
 all effiDrts for their interment I" 
 
 There is much of sameness in the history of China from 
 century to century; what happened in 1878, and again on a 
 
 ^ Gaubil, Histoire de Gentchiscan, Paris, 1739. 
 
 ^ The Famine hi China, London, 1878 — a translation of a Chinese appeal for 
 charity, with illustrations. 
 
 ^ Parliamentary Papers, 1878, China, No. 4. 
 
Friar O dories Valley of Corpses. 155 
 
 lesser scale two or three years ago, must have happened on an 
 unparalleled scale year after year during the ill-starred period 
 which ended about 1342; there must have been no ordinary 
 break-down in the decencies and sanitary safeguards of inter- 
 ment in such years as 1334, when thirteen millions (two million, 
 two hundred and seventy thousand families) were swept away 
 by the floods of the Yang-tsi, or destroyed by hunger and 
 disease. But we are not left altogether to the exercise of the 
 imagination. A strangely vivid picture remains to us of a scene 
 in China in those years, which a returning missionary saw as in 
 a vision. The friar Odoric, of Pordenone, had spent six years in 
 Northern China previous to 1327 or 1328, when he returned to 
 Italy by one of the overland routes. The story of his travels^ 
 was afterwards taken down from his lips, and it is made to end 
 with one gruesome scene, which is brought in without naming 
 the time or the place. It is a vision of a valley of death, in- 
 vested with the same air of generality as in Bunyan's allegory 
 of the common lot. 
 
 "Another great and terrible thing I saw. For, as I went through a 
 certain valley which lieth by the River of Delights {flianen deliciarum) 
 I saw therein many dead corpses lying. And I heard also therein sundry 
 kinds of music, but chiefly nakers, which were marvellously played upon. 
 And so great was the noise thereof that very great fear came upon me. 
 Now, this valley is seven or eight miles long ; and if any unbeliever 
 enter therein, he quitteth it never again, but perisheth incontinently. Yet 
 I hesitated not to go in that I might see once for all what the matter 
 was. And when I had gone in I saw there, as I have said, such numbers 
 of corpses as no one without seeing it could deem credible. And at one 
 side of the valley, in the very rock, I beheld as it were the face of a 
 man very great and terrible, so very terrible indeed that for my exceeding 
 great fear my spirit seemed to die in me. Wherefore I made the sign of 
 the Cross, and began continually to repeat Verbum caro factum, but I 
 dared not at all come nigh that face, but kept at seven or eight paces 
 from it. And so I came at length to the other end of the valley, and 
 there I ascended a hill of sand and looked around me." 
 
 Narrated as it is of no specified place and of no one year of 
 his journey, it may stand, and perhaps it was meant to stand, for 
 a common experience of China in the period of Mongol de- 
 cadence. Whether he left the country by the gorges of the 
 
 ^ In Yule's Cathay and the Way 7y//Mt?r (Hakluyt Society), i. 156. 
 
156 Bnbo-plagne due to a cadaveric virus. 
 
 Yang-tsi and the Yun-nan route, or along the upper basin of the 
 Hoang-ho by the more usual northern route to the desert of 
 Gobi, his vision of a Valley of Corpses is equally significant. 
 
 The Theory of the Plague-Virus. 
 
 The question that remains is the connexion, in pathological 
 theory, between the bubo-plague and the corruption of the un- 
 buried dead or of the imperfectly buried dead. Some such 
 connexion was the rumour of the time, before any scientific 
 theory can well have existed. Also the factor in question was 
 undoubtedly there among the antecedents, if it were not even 
 the most conspicuous of the antecedents. But we might still be 
 following a wandering light if we were to trust the theory of the 
 Black Death to those empirical suggestions, striking and plaus- 
 ible though they be. It is not for the Black Death only, but 
 for the great plagues of the Mohammedan conquests, which 
 preceded the Black Death by many centuries and also followed 
 that great intercurrent wave until long after in their own strict 
 succession, for the circumscribed spots of plague in various parts 
 of Asia and Africa in our own day, and above all for the great 
 plague of Justinian's reign, — it is for them all that a theory of 
 bubo-plague is needed. A survey of the circumstances of all 
 these plagues will either weaken or strengthen, destroy or 
 establish, the theory that the virus of the Black Death had arisen 
 on the soil of China from the cadaveric poison present in some 
 peculiar potency, and had been carried to Europe in the course 
 of that overland trade at whose terminus we first hear of its 
 virulence being manifested. 
 
 The theory of the origin of the plague-virus from the corrup- 
 tion of the dead was a common one in the sixteenth century. 
 It was held by Ambroise Pare among others, and it was elabo- 
 rately worked out for the Egypt of his day by Prosper Alpinus, 
 physician to the Venetian Consulate at Cairo towards the end 
 of the same century. But the most brilliant exposition of it, 
 one of the finest exercises of diction and of reasoning that has 
 ever issued from the profession of medicine, was that given for 
 the origin in Egypt of the great plague of Justinian's reign 
 
P arise fs theory of Plague in Egypt. 157 
 
 by Etienne Pariset, secretary to the Academie de Medecine and 
 commissioner from France to study the plague in Syria and 
 Egypt in i829\ 
 
 In the plague-stricken Egypt of that time, overburdened 
 with population and still awaiting the beneficent rule of Mehemet 
 AH, Dr Pariset had his attention forcibly directed to the same 
 contrast between the modern and ancient manner of disposing of 
 the dead, and to the insuitability of the former to the Delta, 
 which had been remarked by Prosper Alpinus in 1591, and by De 
 Maillet, French consul at Cairo, in 1735, and had been specially 
 dwelt upon by pJiilosopJies of the eighteenth century, such as 
 Montesquieu, Volney and De Pauw. On the one hand he saw 
 under his eyes various revolting things in the Delta, — brick 
 tombs invaded by water, an occasional corpse floating at large, 
 canals choked with the putrefying bodies of bullocks dead of 
 a murrain, the courtyards of Coptic and Jewish houses, and the 
 floors of mosques, churches and monasteries filled with genera- 
 tions of the dead in their flooded vaults and catacombs. On the 
 other hand he saw, on the slopes of the Libyan range and on the 
 edge of the desert beyond the reach of the inundation, the 
 occasional openings of a vast and uncounted series of rock- 
 grottoes in which the Egyptians of the pre-Christian era had 
 carefully put away every dead body, whether of bird, or of beast, 
 or of human kind. He was persuaded of the truth of Volney's 
 remark, " In a crowded population, under a hot sun, and in a 
 soil filled deep with water during several months of every year, 
 the rapid putrefaction of bodies becomes a leaven of plague and 
 of other disease^" The remark of De Pauw, although it is not 
 adduced, was equally to the point : " Neither men nor beasts are 
 any longer embalmed in Egypt ; but the ancient Egyptians 
 seem to have done well in following that mode, and in keeping 
 the mummies in the deepest recesses of excavated rocks.... Were 
 we to note here all that those two nations [Arabs and Turks] 
 have left undone, and everything that they ought not to have 
 done, it would be easy to understand how a country formerly 
 not altogether unhealthy, is now become a hotbed of the 
 
 1 Etienne Pariset, Causes dc la Peste. Paris, 1837. 
 - Volney, Voyages en Syrie et en Egypte. Paris, 1792, 
 
158 Sanitary precautions in Ancient Egypt. 
 
 plague*." These eighteenth-century reflections, casual and dis- 
 cursive after the manner of the time, were amplified by Pariset 
 to scientific fulness and order, and set in permanent classical 
 form. Like De Pauw and Volney, he extolled the ancient 
 sanitary wisdom of Egypt, and excused the priestly mask of 
 superstition for the implicit obedience that it secured. De 
 Pauw had pointed out that the towns most remarkable for the 
 worship of crocodiles, — Coptos, Arsinoe (Crocodilopolis), and 
 Athribis, — were all situated on canals at some distance from the 
 Nile ; the crocodiles could never have got to them unless the 
 canals were kept clear ; according to Aelian and Eusebius the 
 crocodile was the symbol of water fit to drink ; so that the super- 
 stitious worship of the animal was in effect the motive for 
 keeping the canals of the Nile in repair. The priests of Egypt, 
 says Pariset, with their apparatus of fictions and emblems, 
 sought to veil from the profane eyes of the vulgar and of 
 strangers the secrets of a sublime philosophy^ They made 
 things sacred so as to make them binding, so as to constrain by 
 the force of religion, as Moses did, their disciple. They had to 
 reckon with the annual overflow of the Nile, with a hot sun, 
 and a crowded population. Suppose that all the dead animal 
 matter, human or other, were to be incorporated with the soil 
 under these rapid changes of saturation and drying, of diffusion 
 and emanation, what a mass of poison, what danger to the 
 living ! What foresight they showed in avoiding it, what 
 labour and effort, but what results ! Can anyone pretend that a 
 system so vast, so beautiful, so coherent in all its parts, had been 
 engendered and conserved merely by an ignorant fanaticism, or 
 that a people who had so much of Avisdom in their actions had 
 none in their thoughts .'' Looking around him at the Egypt of 
 the Christian and Mohammedan eras, he asks. What has become 
 of that hygiene, attentive, scrupulous and enlightened, of that 
 
 ^ Cornelius de Pauw, Philosophical Reflections on the Egyptians and Chinese, 
 Engl. Transl. Lond. 1795, 2 vols. 
 
 2 It is noteworthy that Herodotus represents the question of disposal of the dead 
 as having been raised by the Egyptians: they decided in favour of embalming and 
 rock entombment, as against cremation or burial, the reason given for the preference 
 being that fire was "a savage beast," in the one case, while in the other case, the 
 devouring beast was the worm. Bk. in. § 16. 
 
CJiristian burial in the Nile Delta. 159 
 
 marvellous police of sepulture, of that prodif^ious care to preserve 
 the soil from all admixture of putrescible matters ? The ancient 
 learning of Egypt, the wisdom taught by hard experience in 
 remote ages and perfected in prosperous times, had gradually 
 been overthrown, first by the Persian and Greek conquests which 
 weakened the national spirit, then by the Roman conquest which 
 broke it, then by the prevalence of the Christian doctrines, and 
 lastly by the Mohammedan domination, more hostile than all 
 the others to sanitary precaution. 
 
 Pariset's remaining argument was that ancient Egypt, by its 
 systematic care in providing for a slow mouldering of human 
 and animal bodies beyond the reach of the inundation, had been 
 saved from the plague ; in the historic period there had been 
 epidemics, but these had been of typhus or other sickness of 
 prisons, slavery, and famines. According to Herodotus, Egypt 
 and Libya were the two healthiest countries under the sun. But 
 when St Paul's vehement argument as to the natural and the 
 spiritual body began to make way, when men began to ask the 
 question, " How are the dead raised up, and with what body do 
 they come?" the ancient practice of Egypt was judged to be 
 out of harmony with Christian doctrine. Embalming was 
 denounced as sinful by St Anthony, the founder of Egyptian 
 monachism, in the third century ; and by the time that the 
 church of North Africa had reached its point of highest 
 influence under St Augustine, bishop of Hippo, the ancient 
 religious rites of Egypt had everywhere given place to Christian 
 burial \ Bubo-plague had already been prevalent in at least one 
 disastrous epidemic in Lower Egypt at the time of the great 
 massacres of Christians in the episcopate of Cyprian ; and in the 
 year 542 it broke out at Pelusium, one of the uncleannest spots 
 in the Delta, spread thence on the one hand along the North 
 African coast, and on the other hand by the corn ships to 
 Byzantium, and grew into the disastrous world-wide pestilence 
 which has ever since been associated with the reign of Justinian. 
 
 After the Mohammedan conquest things went from bad to 
 
 ^ Curiously enough it was among the Christians of Egypt that the controversy as 
 to the corruptibhs and the iticorruptibles raged most furiously. See Gibbon, 
 
i6o Objections to Parisets theory. 
 
 worse; and from the tenth century until the year 1846, plague 
 had been domesticated on the soil of Egypt. 
 
 The theory of Pariset was communicated by him to the 
 Academic de Medecine on 12 July, 1831, and finally published in 
 a carefully designed and highly finished essay in 1837. It was 
 received with much disfavour ; according to his colleague 
 Daremberg, the learned librarian of the Academy, nothing but 
 its brilliant style could have saved it from being forgotten in a 
 week. It was vigorously opposed by Clot Bey, on behalf of 
 Egyptian officialdom, because it fixed upon Egypt the stigma 
 of holding in the soil an inherent and abiding cause of the 
 plagued Besides the general objection that it was the theorizing 
 of a philosopJie, exception was taken to particular parts of the 
 argument. Thus Labat demonstrated by arithmetic that the 
 mummied carcases of all the generations of men and animals in 
 Egypt for three thousand years would have required a space as 
 large as the whole of Egypt, which should thus have become one 
 vast ossuary. And as to the fact, he added, embalming was the 
 privilege of the rich, and of some sacred species of animals. 
 Clot Bey asserted that the whole class of slaves were not 
 thought worthy of embalming. He found also, in the language 
 used by Herodotus, evidence that the people of Egypt felt 
 themselves to be under " the continual menace " of some great 
 epidemic scourge and took precautions accordingly — the very 
 ground on which Pariset based his theory. The objection which 
 weighed most with Daremberg was the fact that, just about the 
 time when Pariset had asserted the immunity of Egypt from 
 plague in her prosperous days, evidence had been found, in the 
 newly-discovered collections of Oribasius, that a bubonic disease 
 was recorded for Egypt and Libya by a Greek physician two 
 centuries before the Christian era, and by another Greek medical 
 writer about the beginning of our era. 
 
 It does not appear to have occurred to the opponents of 
 Parisct's theory that the two chief objections, first that embalming 
 was far from general, and second that cases of plague did occur 
 in ancient Egypt, answered each other. But, as matter of fact, 
 it can be shown that there were cheaper forms of embalming 
 
 ' Clot Bey, Pestc en Egyptc. Tails, 1 840. 
 
Chinese vwdes of preserving tJie dead. i6i 
 
 practised for the great mass of the people. Again, it was found 
 by De Maillet that bodies not embalmed at all, but laid in coarse 
 cloths upon beds of charcoal under six or eight feet of sand at 
 an elevation on the edge of the great plain of mummies at 
 Memphis, and beyond the reach of the water, were as perfectly 
 preserved from putrid decay as if they had been embalmed, the 
 dry air and the nitrous soil contributing to their slow and 
 inoffensive decomposition \ These facts tended to support the 
 notion that it was not ceremony which really determined the 
 national practice, but utility, into which neither art nor religion 
 necessarily entered. The existence also of bubonic disease in 
 the period of the Ptolemies proved that the risk assumed in 
 Pariset's theory was a real risk, the precautions having been not 
 always sufficient to meet it. 
 
 The plague which overran the known world in Justinian's 
 reign (542) was, according to this theory, the effect on a grand 
 scale of an equally grand cause, namely, the final overthrow of 
 a most ancient religion and national life, which had not been 
 built up for nothing and had a true principle concealed beneath 
 its superstitions. The parallelism between China and ancient 
 Egypt has been a favourite subject. In China whatever of 
 religion there is runs upon the Egyptian lines — reverence for the 
 dead or worship of ancestors. The Chinese do not indeed 
 embalm their dead, but they practise an equivalent art of 
 preservation which may be read in almost identical terms in the 
 book of Marco Polo and in modern works on the social life of 
 China^ To prevent the products of cadaveric decay from 
 passing into the soil may be said to be the object of their 
 practices. The pains taken to secure dry burial-places are 
 especially obvious in those parts of the country, such as the 
 " reed lands " of the Yang-tsi, which are subject to inundations, 
 annual or occasional^ Much of the national art of Feng-shui is 
 concerned, under the mask of divination, with these common- 
 sense aims. 
 
 ^ Benoit de Maillet, Description de PEgypie. Paris, 1735, p. ■281. See also 
 Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, iii. 456, 465. 
 
 ^ Justus Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese, 1 vols. New Vori-c, 1867, I. 33, 198, 
 213. 
 
 ^ T. T. Cooper, Travels of a Pioneer of Commerce, Lond. 187 1, p. -23, 33. 
 C. II 
 
 I 
 
1 62 special risks of tJic soil in Egypt and China. 
 
 Both Egypt and China are liable to have their river-basins 
 flooded at one time and parched to dust at another. These 
 extreme fluctuations of the ground water are now known to 
 scientific research to be the cause of pecuHar and unwholesome 
 products of putrefaction in the soil : given a soil charged with 
 animal matters, the risk to those living upon it is in proportion 
 to the range of fluctuation of the ground water. If it happen 
 as an annual thing that the pores of the ground are now full of 
 water, now full of air, or if these extreme alternations be a 
 common liability, then a soil with the products of animal 
 decomposition dispersed through it will be always unwholesome, 
 and unwholesome on a national scale. It is often held that even 
 vegetables rotting on the ground are pestiferous ; Ambroise 
 Pare believed that the rotting carcase of a stranded whale 
 caused an outbreak of bubo-plague at Genoa ; but human 
 decomposition is something special — at least for the living of the 
 same species\ Most special of all is it when its gross and crude 
 matters pass rapidly into the ground, getting carried hither and 
 thither by the movements of the ground water, and giving off 
 those half-products of oxidation which the extreme alternations 
 from air to water, or from water to air, in the pores of the 
 ground are known to favour. There may be nothing offensive 
 to the sense, but the emanations from such a soil will in all 
 probability be poisonous or pestilent. In particular circum- 
 stances of locality the permeation or leavening of the soil with 
 the products of organic decomposition produces Asiatic cholera; 
 in still more special circumstances the result is yellow fever ; in 
 circumstances familiar enough to ourselves the result is typhoid 
 fever, and probably also summer diarrhoea or British cholera. 
 These are all soil poisons. Bubo-plague also is a soil poison ; 
 and it is claimed as specially related to the products oi cadaveric 
 decomposition, diffused at large in such a soil as soil-poisons are 
 ordinarily engendered in. 
 
 ^ This is one of the remarks in Dr Clillicrt Skene's treatise on the Plague, Edin- 
 burgh, 1568 (reprinted for the Bannatync Club, 1S40): — Among the causes are "deid 
 cariounis unbureit, in spcciale of mankynd, quhilkis be similitude of nature is maist 
 nocent to man, as everie bnitall is maist infccland and peslilentiali to thair awin 
 kynd," p. (1. 
 
Causes of Plague in tJic countries of Islam. 163 
 
 It is possible to subject that theory of the plague to the test 
 of facts still further. Thus bubo-plague dogged the steps of 
 Mohammedan conquest from the first century after the Hegira, 
 now in Syria when Damascus was the capital, now in Irak when 
 Bagdad was the centre of Mohammedan rule, now in Egypt 
 when the seat of empire shifted to Grand Cairo ; and, over a 
 great part of the period, simultaneously in all the regions of 
 Islam. That long series of plague-epidemics has been recorded 
 in Arabic annals, and has lately been published in an abstract 
 accessible to all, with a summary of conclusions'. 
 
 What arc the conclusions of the learned commentator on the 
 Arabic annals, as to the general causes of the thousand years of 
 Mohammedan plague } — " War, with the wasting of whole nations, 
 in disregard of all established rights, with plundering of towns 
 and concentration of great masses of men ill provided for and 
 unregulated, who developed the seeds of communicable and 
 malignant diseases. Add to these things the negligent or 
 wholly neglected burial of those who had fallen in battle, the 
 straits and privations of the wounded, and the effects of a hot 
 climate, especially in flooded and swampy tracts of country, . . 
 The kind of burial, in very shallow and often badly covered 
 graves, which used to be practised in most Eastern towns, and 
 in part is still practised, may also have had disastrous conse- 
 quences not unfrequently." 
 
 The Theory tested by Modern Instances. 
 
 With that general statement for the long succession of 
 plague-epidemics in Islam during nine centuries from the Hegira, 
 beginning with a Syrian epidemic in A.D. 628 and ending with a 
 close succession of twelve epidemics in Egypt from 1410 to 1492, 
 we may pass to the more detailed accounts of the conditions 
 under which bubo-plague has been found in various localities, 
 often circumscribed spots far apart and out of the way, during 
 recent years. These spots are so varied, have so little apparently 
 in common, and are so capriciously chosen in the midst of their 
 
 ^ A. von Kremer, "Ueber die grossen Seuchen des Orients nach arabisclien 
 Quellen." Sitzungshcr, der Wien. Akad., Philos.-histor. Classe, Bd. 96 (iSSo), p. 6y. 
 
 II — 2 
 
164 Modem seats of Plague widely seattered. 
 
 several regions of the globe, that they do not readily fall into 
 any order or classification. What are we to make of a few spots 
 of plague among nomade Arabs of the Cyrenaic plateau ; of 
 plague in some stricken villages high up in the highlands of 
 Kurdistan, or in low-lying towns such as Resht, near the shore 
 of the Caspian, or amidst the black ooze of amphibious habita- 
 tions in the lower valley of Tigris and Euphrates ; of true 
 bubonic disease in some few Bedouin villages or small towns 
 on the summits of the basaltic plateaus that rise like gigantic 
 warts from the Arabian desert ; of bubo-plague in Yun-nan, 
 at or near the capital Talifoo, where the Mohammedan and 
 Chinese influences have been struggling for mastery, as well 
 as among the cabins in the rocky valleys of the Salwen ; of 
 some forty or fifty Himalayan hamlets picked out as plague- 
 spots among the six thousand villages of Kumaon ; and of the 
 now extinct but comparatively recent centres of the same 
 disease in the walled towns and walled villages of Kutch, 
 Kattiwar, and Marwar ? And lastly what are we to make of 
 those cases of typhus fever with buboes which have been ob- 
 served in villages of the Yusufzai valley, near Peshawur, in 
 1852; in the Chinese town of Pakhoi, on the gulf of Tonking, in 
 1886; occasionally among the fever-cases in Burdwan since the 
 health of that province underwent so disastrous a change about 
 the year 1870; and, on credible report, among the troops in the 
 Russo-Turkish war of 1879? It is surely unnecessary, at least, 
 to refute the sterile dogmatism that these are all the effects of 
 one pre-existing virus, carried, we know not how, from point to 
 point of the globe in an unbroken succession. It is a far cry 
 even on a small-scale map from Kumaon to Kutch, from Yun- 
 nan to the Gulf of Tonking, from Resht to the Armenian high- 
 lands, from the centre of Arabia to Tripoli, and from Mesopotamia 
 to North Yemen. And what is the use of assuming that there 
 has always been bubo-plague in the " cradle of the human 
 race," and concluding that the Black Death was one of its 
 excursions westwards, so long as the plagues of Islam were 
 going on from decade to decade, all through the Middle Ages, at 
 no great distance from Byzantium and from Western Europe } 
 Are not Damascus, Bagdad and Grand Cairo of more account 
 
Recent Plague-spots of Arabia. 165 
 
 as plague-foci than a few villacjes in the Himalaya or in Kattiwar, 
 even granting that the plague may have been in the latter at an 
 earlier date than we know ? It is not communication that 
 connects the several seats of plague, scattered widely in time 
 and place ; but it is community of conditions, or of the causes 
 and associated circumstances which breed the plague in each 
 separately. Let us take them in some sort of order. 
 
 Among the most remarkable habitats of modern bubo-plague 
 are the villages on the basalt plateaus of the Arabian desert. 
 We have information of these plague-spots from Doughty \ who 
 did not indeed visit Assir, the most notorious of them, but 
 several others more to the north and east. He describes the 
 ruined villages of Mogug, Gofar, Hayil and others, where the 
 people had died of plague some years before. A year of dearth 
 preceded the plague in some, if not in all of them. The author 
 is struck by the carelessness of burial, or the difficulties of it in 
 the baked soil, although he does not directly connect that with 
 the epidemics. Thus, in passing the graveyard of Hayil, one of 
 the plague-towns, he remarks : " Aheyd was a man of much 
 might and glory in his day ; he lies a yard under the squalid 
 gravel in his shirt." Of Kheybar, with vague traditions of 
 plague, he says : " We passed through a burial-ground of black 
 volcanic mould and salt-warp ; the squalid grave heaps are 
 marked with headstones of wild basalt. That funeral earth is 
 chapped and ghastly, bulging over her enwombed corses, like a 
 garden soil in spring-time which is pushed by the new spring 
 plants. All is horror at Kheybar ! " He is led to the following 
 general remarks : " The care of sepulture was beyond measure 
 in the religions of antiquity, which were without humility. 
 Under the new religion [of Arabia] the deceased is wound in a 
 shirt-cloth of calico, and his corse is laid in the shallow pit of 
 droughty earth." Again, of Bedouin burials in general : " The 
 deceased is buried the same day or on the morrow. They 
 scrape out painfully with a stick and their hands in the hard- 
 burned soil a shallow grave. I have seen their graves in the 
 desert ruined by foul hyenas, and their winding-sheets lay half 
 above ground." 
 
 ' Ch. M. Doughty, Travels in Arabia Dcserta, 2 vols. Cambridge, 188S. 
 
1 66 Plague in Assir to 1^79. — Plague in Kuniaon. 
 
 Of the best known of these Arabian plague-spots the 
 plateau of Assir, to the south-east of Mecca, vvc have the 
 following information relating to the years 1874-79^; the chief 
 plague-locality is Namasse, the principal town of Beny Sheir, 
 with five other villages. 
 
 The site is on a mountain ridge too high for camels, the dimate is cold 
 and moist, the soil fruitful, springs abundant, and no standing water. The 
 houses are built of stone, and stand close together. The ground-floor of 
 each house is used as the stable ; and as the winter in these mountains is 
 very severe, so that water freezes, the inhabitants live with their cattle in a 
 horrible state of filth. According to information from the district super- 
 intendent, there had been plague in a few villages every two or three 
 years for the previous thirty-five or forty years. It has seldom extended 
 further than five or six leagues. The region is a mountain canton, with no 
 trade ; it is cut off from the rest of the world. The disease is mostly 
 attended with buboes in the groins, armpits, and neck, but not always ; 
 sometimes petechial spots were spoken of ; in the sheikh Faik's own 
 household the disease began with rigors, and developed buboes, petechia;, 
 headache and burning thirst. Dr Nury counted up in six villages, with a 
 population of eight hundred, cases of plague to the number of 184 (68 men, 
 45 women, 50 boys and 21 girls), with 155 deaths and 29 recoveries. 
 
 Let us now place beside this the accounts of the plague in 
 the mountains village of Kumaonl 
 
 Of the plague-villages of Danpore and Munsharee, near the 
 snow, we read : 
 
 " Their houses are generally built of stone, one storey high. On 
 the ground-floor herd the cattle ; in this compartment the dung is allowed 
 to accumulate till such time as there is no room left for the cattle to 
 stand erect ; it is then removed and carefully packed close around all 
 sides, so that the house literally stands in the centre of a hot-bed.... In 
 many instances we have seen it accumulated above the level of the floor 
 of the upper story in which the family lives." In that compartment, four 
 feet high, with no window and a door of some three feet by eighteen 
 inches, ten or fifteen people live, lying huddled together with the door 
 shut. Their food is as poor as their lodging. When plague breaks out, 
 the family ties are rudely loosened : those who can, flee to the jungle, 
 leaving the stricken to their fate. 
 
 ^ Comniunicalcd lo Ilcrr von Krcmcr {I.e.) by Nitry Ellcndi, who visited Assir, 
 and wrote a report preserved in MS. in the Archives at Constantinople. 
 
 - "Report regarding Mahamurree in Kumaon and Garhwal in 1851-52." Ey Y. 
 Pearson and Mooi^erjee. Agra, 1852 (Extracts in hid. Annals of Med. Sc, i. 35S). 
 Also extracts {db.) from Renny's Report, 1851. 
 
Plague ill. Kniiiaoii, 1876-77. 167 
 
 The following is by Renny : " Fourteen died at a place in the forest half 
 a mile or more from Duddoli, respecting which I had the best description 
 yet given to me of the career of the sickness. Here were only two houses, 
 or long low huts, occupied by two separate families, the heads being two 
 brothers, sixteen souls in all. These two huts had to contain also thirty 
 head of cattle, large and small, at the worst season of the year. In these 
 two huts the Mahamurree [bubo-plague] commenced about ten or eleven 
 months ago, corresponding to the time it appeared in Duddoli. At this 
 place the sixteen residents kept together till fourteen died, and one adult 
 only, a man of about thirty years of age, with his female child of six years 
 old, survived. There was no particular disorder among the cattle, but 
 the outbreak of the plague was preceded and accompanied by a great 
 mortality among the rats in their houses." 
 
 Let us now take the accounts, twenty-five years later, of the 
 plague in the same district in I'^'jG-'j']^. 
 
 Confirming the earlier statements as to the extraordinary filth of the 
 houses — the cattle under the same roof and the baskets of damp and 
 unripe grain — he directs attention specially to the disposal of the dead. 
 The custom of the country is to burn the body beside the most convenient 
 mountain stream terminating in the Ganges. But from that good practice 
 the people have deviated in regard to bodies dead of any pestilence (small- 
 pox, cholera, plague), which are buried. Of all countries the Himalaya 
 is least suited to the burial of the dead. For, by reason of the rocky 
 subsoil, it is seldom possible to dig a grave more than two feet deep ; 
 and, as a rule, the pestilent dead are laid in shallow trenches in the 
 surface soil of the field nearest to the place of death, or of the terrace 
 facing the house, or even of the floor of the house itself. This bad 
 practice is begotten of fear to handle the body, and has been long 
 established. Such mismanagement of the dead is sufficient to account 
 for the continuous existence of the active principle of plague-disease, 
 sometimes dormant for want of opportunity, but ever ready to affect 
 persons suitably prepared by any cause producing a low or bad state 
 of health. In the houses of families about to suffer from an outbreak 
 of plague, rats are sometimes found dead on the floor. Planck had seen 
 them himself; all that he had seen appeared to have died suddenly, as 
 by suffocation, their bodies being in good condition, a piece of rag some- 
 times clenched in the teeth. He mentions nine villages, all of them 
 endemic seats of plague, in which the premonitory death of rats in the 
 infected houses was testified. The affected villages were not one in a 
 hundred of all the villages of Kumaon, and were widely scattered throughout 
 
 1 Planck, Ninth Report of the Sanitary Commissioner, A^. IV. Prov. Allahabad, 
 1877, pp. 40-95. (Extracts, p. 39, of Papers relating to the Plague, Pari. Papers, 
 1S79.) 
 
1 68 Recent Plague in Ynn-zian. 
 
 the northern half of the province. Even in each of those few viUayes, the 
 plague is confined to one house, or one terrace, or one portion of the 
 village. 
 
 Let us turn next to the small spots of bubo-plague in the 
 remote province of Yun-nan. Our information comes from 
 members of the British and French Consular services\ 
 
 The plague occurs in towns and villages and is the cause of much 
 mortality. After ravaging villages scattered about the plains, it frequently 
 ascends the mountains, and takes off many of the aborigines inhabiting 
 the high lands. What, in M. Rocher's opinion, aggravates the evil is 
 the practice of not burying the bodies of those who die of this disease. 
 Instead of being buried, the body is placed on a bier and exposed to 
 the sun. As a consequence of this practice the traveller passing the 
 outskirts of a village where the plague is raging is nearly choked with 
 the nauseous smell emanating from the exposed and rotting corpses. 
 Burial is the usual mode of disposal, although many of the villages are 
 on rocky mountain sides, as in Kumaon. The rats are first affected ; as 
 soon as they sicken, they leave their holes in troops, and after staggering 
 about and falling over each other, drop down dead. Mr Baber had the 
 same information from a French missionary in the upper valley of the 
 Salwen, a long, low valley about two miles broad, walled in by mimense 
 precipices, so hot in summer that the inhabitants go up the hill sides 
 to live. The approach of bubo-plague (the buboes may be as large as a 
 hen's or goose's egg) may often be known from the extraordinary behaviour 
 of the rats, who leave their holes and crevices and issue on to the floors 
 without a trace of their accustomed timidity, springing continually upwards 
 from their hind legs as if they were trying to jump out of something. The 
 rats fall dead, and then comes the turn of the poultry, pigs, goats, etc. The 
 good father had a theory of his own that the plague is really a pestilential 
 emanation slowly rising in an equable stratum from the ground, the smallest 
 creatures being first engulfed. The larger plague-centre at or near the 
 capital, Talifoo, appears to be related to Mohammedan warfare, and possibly 
 to the neglect to bury the dead, which is an admitted fact, although not 
 connected by the narrator with the prevalence of plague. 
 
 The other Chinese plague-spot is hundreds of miles away, 
 on the shores of the Gulf of Tonking. The best known centre 
 of plague is the port of Pakhoi, the native quarter of which is 
 described as peculiarly filthy. The houses arc little cleaner than 
 
 1 Baber, in Parliamentary Papers, 1878, "China." No. 6. Rocher {Province 
 Chinoise de Yiin-naft) quoted, without the reference, in Med. Reports of Chinese 
 Imperial Mari lime Customs, No. 15, 1878, Shanghai, \). 25. 
 
Typhns-likc Plague at Fakhui, 18S2. 169 
 
 the streets, the floors being saturated with excrement, and the 
 drains being either close to the surface or open altogether. An 
 outbreak of plague there in 1882 is minutely described by 
 Dr Lowry\ 
 
 It occurred in the hot weather of June (85° Fahr. day, 76° Fahr. night) ; 
 for fear of thieves the houses are carefully shut up even on the hottest night. 
 The epidemic caused about 400 to 500 deaths in a population of 25,000. 
 The disease does not spread. In nearly every house where the disease 
 broke out, the rats had been coming out of their holes and dying on the 
 floors : Dr Lowry dissected several of them, and found the lungs congested. 
 In the human subject, except for the buboes, the disease resembled typhus : 
 " anyone going to the bedside of a patient would certainly at first think it 
 was that disease he had to deal with." The same disease occurred at 
 Lien-chow, a city twelve miles off. Another English physician in the 
 service of the China Maritime Customs heard of a malady with the 
 symptoms of plague in certain districts of Southern Kiangsi in the 
 autumn of 1886 ; but no particulars were to be had. Typhus was 
 prevalent, and very fatal, every year in the towns, villages and hamlets 
 of Northern Kiangsi. 
 
 One curious piece of evidence as to the death of rats, not associated 
 with plague in men, comes from a more northern province of China. 
 In the autumn of 1881, on the opposite side of the Yang-tsi from Nanking 
 and in the western suburbs of the ancient capital, the rats emerged from 
 holes in dwellings, jumped up, turned round, and fell dead. Baskets and 
 boxes filled with their bodies were cast into the canal. "Here," says Dr 
 Macgowan, " was evidently a subsoil poison which affected the animals 
 precisely in the same way as the malaria of the Yun-nan pest. Happily 
 the subterranean miasm at Nanking did not affect animals that live above 
 ground 2." 
 
 The evidence from Kutch, Kattiwar, and Marvvar relates to 
 the years 1815-20, and 1838. In circumstances peculiar in some 
 respects, namely, of walled towns and stockaded villages, but the 
 same as those already given in the matter of filth from cattle 
 crowded into the human dwellings, we find bubo-plague breaking 
 out so long as the unwholesome state of things lasted under 
 Mahratta rule and until British rule had been fairly at work. 
 The causes of the bubo-plague, says Whyte, were the same as of 
 typhus — walled and crowded towns, cattle housed with human 
 beings, slow wasting diseases among the cattle, which were not 
 
 ^ J. H. Lowi-y, Med. Kcp. Chinese Mat- . Customs, No. 24, 1SS2, p. 27. 
 " D. J. Macgovvau, lb. 1SS2. Report for Wenchow. 
 
I/O Fever and Plague in Arab teiils, 1874. 
 
 killed for food but kept for milk and ghee. He questions 
 whether, in shutting out their enemies, they had not shut in one 
 far more powerful. Here also we have various independent 
 witnesses^ testifying to the premonitory death of the rats ; they 
 lay dead in all j^laces and directions — in the streets, houses, 
 and hiding-places of the walls. This happened in every town 
 that was affected in Marwar, so that the inhabitants of any 
 house instantly quitted it on seeing a dead rat. 
 
 Relation of Typhus to Bubo-plague. 
 
 The smallest and the most easily surveyed of all the recent 
 foci of bubo-plague, is that among the Bedouin of the Cyrenaic 
 plateau in North Africa (port of Benghazi), a desert region 
 corresponding to one of the most famous corn-lands of antiquity. 
 
 There was no difference of opinion that the small outbreak of plague in 
 1874 began simuUaneously in the tents of Orphas and the tents of Ferig- 
 el-Hanan, containing together about a hundred souls ^ These Arabs keep 
 cows, sheep and goats ; some of them also cultivate small patches of corn. 
 They are subject to periodic famines, and there had been much want among 
 them in 1869, 1S70, 1871, 1872 and 1873, attended by epidemics of typhus, 
 cholera and smallpox. In the winter they found employment among the 
 traders of Merdje, and at the end of March, 1873, ^^.d quitted that village 
 to place their animals in the neighbouring hill-pastures. The ground had 
 been saturated, after long drought, by the rains of the winter. Their tents 
 are pitched in hollows which may be filled by water in a few minutes. The 
 encampments, like those of the Bedouin in Arabia, are excessively filthy and 
 are often the scene of typhus fever. In April, 1874, the plague began, the 
 first case being in a child ; the buboes were in the groin, armpit or neck. 
 The other symptoms were bilious vomiting, black vomit, haematemesis, 
 petechiae, anthraceous boils, pains in the head, collapse, and delirium. A 
 few cases were mild, but the majority grave and fatal ; in several cases 
 there was a relapse with new buboes. The disease was brought from the 
 tents to the village of Merdje, in which 270 were attacked in a population of 
 
 ' Thomas Whyle, "Report on the Disease which prevailed in Kaltywar, etc. in 
 1819-20." Trans. Med. Phys. Soc. Bombay, I. 155. Bombay, 1838. 
 
 - 1 liave curtailed the evidence from Gujerat ; it will be found at large in the 
 following writers : Gilder, Bombay Med. Trans, i. 193; McAdam, ib. 183; F. Forbes, 
 ib. n. |i, and Thesis on Tlague, Edin. 1840; Glen, Quart. Journ. Cal. Med. Soc. i. 
 433; Ranl<en, Report on Pali Plague, Calcutta, 1838; and Whyte, as above. 
 
 3 L. Arnaud, Peste de Benghazi, Constantinople, 1875; Essai siir la Pes/e, Paris, 
 1888; Une Mission pour la Peste, Vs-ns, 1888. 
 
Bubonic coiiiplications of Typhus. i/i 
 
 310, with 100 deaths. The total known attacks from 5 April to 24 July were 
 533 in a population of 734, with 208 deaths and 325 recoveries, 201 resisting 
 the infection. The sanitary state of the village was as bad as that of the 
 tents : the houses, entered by a low door, had windows not to the sun, but to 
 the courtyard, which is a stable choked with filth ; the floors of the houses 
 are covered with filth. The graveyard is in the centre of the village, beside 
 a pool of standing water : the graves are shallow, and the corpses are 
 sometimes unearthed by jackals. Both in the village and in the encampments 
 a fall of rain was followed by a new series of attacks. The advice of the 
 sanitary commisioner was to make graves at least six feet deep, and to cover 
 them with lime. 
 
 These events in 1874 were an exact repetition of those of 
 1858. In both years heavy rains followed long drought, giving 
 promise of an abundant harvest after a period of famine. The 
 dry years, in both instances, were attended with sickness, typhus 
 and other ; the first wet season turned the sickness to plague, 
 that is to say, it added the complication of buboes and haemor- 
 rhagic symptoms to the characters of typhus. The meaning of 
 that seems to be that the saturation of the ground generated 
 a soil-poison where there had previously been the milder 
 aerial poison of typhus. This view of plague, as a typhus of 
 the soil, or a disease made so much more malignant than typhus 
 just because of underground fermentation of the putrescible 
 animal matters, is borne out by the facts already given for 
 China and for India. The latter country furnishes other illus- 
 trations of typhus fever becoming complicated with buboes, and 
 so becoming something like plague. Perhaps the best instance 
 is the fever observed in the Yusufzai valley, near Peshawur, in 
 i852\ 
 
 It arose mostly in the filthy Mohammedan houses, shared by cattle and 
 human beings ; but it invaded some of the cleaner Hindoo houses also. 
 The disease began in low, marshy situations, which were covered with 
 water after rain and heavy night dews. It was of the type of typhus, or 
 relapsing fever, with yellowness of the skin, bleeding from the gums, and 
 from the bowels, and often from the nose. One of the observers says: 
 " The only other concomitant affection worthy of note is swelling of the 
 lymphatic glands over various parts of the body; this, however, is only 
 met with in a very few instances." The other authority says : " Inflamma<i n 
 
 ^ T. Farquhar, JNI.D., "Typlius Fever in the Eusofzai," ///,/. Annah of Med. Sc, 
 II. 504; R. Lyell, Al.D., "Fever of the Yusufzai Valley," lb. n. p. 16. 
 
172 Recent Plagues not diffusive. 
 
 and suppuration of the glands in the groin, axilla, and neck occurred in 
 some that survived the first or second relapse." To this outbreak, which is 
 removed only in degree from the Benghazi plague, the Pakhoi plague, and 
 the Pali plague (Gujerat), may be added some others, about which the 
 information is more general. Thus, the fevers which have become notorious 
 in Burdwan since the health of that province changed so disastrously owing 
 to the damming of the ground-water, are said to have been attended now 
 and then with buboes. The typhus fever at Saugor in 1859 was occasionally 
 complicated with suppuration of the lymphatic glands: " In the Doab, as in 
 the subsequent gaol attack, the glands in the groin were very rarely affected ; 
 those in the neck were more frequently affected, but this was not a prominent 
 feature in the disease^." Again, General Loris Melikoff told the corre- 
 spondent of the Golos that twenty men died in a day in the Russo-Turkish 
 war in the winter of 1878. with glandular swellings ; everywhere there was 
 Schmutz, Schmutz ! And lastly, in the epidemic of 1878 at Vetlianka, on 
 the Volga, which is reckoned among the historic occurrences of bubo-plague 
 in Europe, the first ten cases in November, 1878, had suppurating glands in 
 the axilla, did not take to bed, and recovered ; there had been ordinary 
 typhus in the filthy fisher cottages in 1877, and there was typhus concurrent 
 with the disease which at length became, and was at length recognized as, 
 true bubo-plague in the winter of 1878 — 79'-^. 
 
 One thing which distinguishes these recent outbreaks of 
 plague from the great plague of Justinian's reign, in part from the 
 series of Mohammedan plagues, and from the Black Death, is 
 that they have for the most part shown no independent vitality 
 and no diffusive power. As in typhus fever itself (except on 
 great occasions), they have been almost confined to those who 
 lived in the filthy houses, and to those who came within the 
 influence of the pestilential emanations. The great plagues 
 of the 6th and 14th centuries had, on the other hand, a 
 diffusive power which carried them over the whole known 
 world. The buboes of Egypt and of China became familiar 
 as far as Norway and Greenland. 
 
 But, apart from diffusiveness, the conditions of recent local 
 plagues are not unlike those of the great historical epidemics. 
 The very same observation of the rats leaving their holes, which 
 is so abundantly confirmed from the recent plague-spots of 
 Southern China, of Yun-nan, of Kumaon, and of Gujerat, was 
 
 ' Surgeon-General J. Murray, M.D., al Epidemiologieal Society, 11 May, 187S. 
 Med. Times and Gaz. I. 1878, p. 597. 
 
 ^ Alex. RiUmann, Ckroiiik der Pesl. Uriinn, 1879. 
 
Degrees of virulence in the Plague-poison. 173 
 
 familiar in the plague-books of London and of Edinburgh in the 
 Elizabethan period. Of the great outbreak in 1603, Thomas 
 Lodge writes : " And when as rats, moules, and other creatures 
 (accustomed to live underground) forsake their holes and habita- 
 tions, it is a token of corruption in the same, by reason that such 
 sorts of creatures forsake their wonted places of aboade\" That 
 is only one of many proofs that the virus of plague has its habitat 
 in the soil, although it may be carried long distances clinging to 
 other things. In its most diffusive potency it is a soil-poison 
 generated, we may now say with some confidence, out of the 
 products of cadaveric decay^ ; in its less diffusive but hardly 
 less malignant potency, it is a soil-poison generated out of 
 the filth of cattle housed with human beings, or out of domestic 
 filth generally, and in nearly all the known instances of such 
 generation, associated with, but perhaps not absolutely de- 
 pendent upon, carelessness in the disposal of the dead after 
 famine or fever ; in the least malignant form, when plague is 
 only a small part of an epidemic of typhus and with the buboes 
 inclined to suppurate, it appears to be still a soil-poison, and to 
 differ from typhus itself, just because the pestilential product of 
 decomposing filth has been engendered in the pores of the 
 ground, rather than in the atmosphere of living-rooms. 
 
 The Black Death, which here concerns us immediately, is 
 one of the two great instances of a plague-virus with vast 
 diffusive power, enormous momentum, and centuries of en- 
 durance. So great effects may be said to postulate adequate 
 causes; and one must assume that the virus had been bred 
 from cadaveric decomposition in circumstances of peculiar 
 
 ^ Thomas Lodge, Treatise of the Plagiie, Loud. 1603, chap. HI. Skene, in his 
 Edinburgh essay on plague in 1568, gives as a sign of impending plague the moles 
 and "serpents" leaving their holes: "As when the moudewart and serpent leavis 
 the eird, beand molestit be the vapore contenit within the bowells of the samin." He 
 adds what agrees still farther with modern experience in Yun-nan : "If the domesti- 
 call fowls become pestilential, it is ane signe of maist dangerous pest to follow." 
 (Bannatyne Club ed. p. 9). 
 
 " The writer of the article "Peste" in the Diet. Encycl. des Sc. Med., Dr Mahe, 
 inclines on the whole to the view that the poison of plague is somehow related to 
 cadaveric products : " Parmi ces accusations d'insalubrite publique, il en est une qui 
 repose sur un objectif plus positif en apparancc" viz. the "miasme des cadavres." 
 
174 Plague as a discase-spccics, 
 
 aggravation and on some vast or national scale. The sequence 
 of events carries us to China ; and the annals of China do 
 furnish evidence that the assumed cause was there on a vast 
 scale through a long period of national disaster, while the 
 national customs of China for the disposal of the dead, like 
 those of ancient Egypt, point to the existence of a real risk 
 from allowing the soil to be permeated at large by the crude or 
 hasty products of cadaveric decomposition. 
 
 It is our duty to construct the best hypothesis we can, 
 sparing no labour. No one really dispenses with theory, what- 
 ever his protestations to the contrary; those who are the loudest 
 professors of suspended judgment are the most likely to fall 
 victims to some empty verbalism which hangs loose at both 
 ends, some ill-considered piece of argument which ignores the 
 historical antecedents and stops short of the concrete conclusions. 
 It has been so in the case of infective diseases, and of bubo- 
 plague in particular. The virus of the plague, we are told, is 
 specific ; it has existed from an unknown antiquity, and has 
 come down in an unbroken succession ; we can no more discover 
 how it arose, than we can tell how the first man arose, or the 
 first mollusc, or the first moss or lichen; its species is, indeed, of 
 the nature of the lowest vegetable organisms. 
 
 The objection to that hypothesis of plague is that it involves 
 a total disregard of facts. It is a mere formula, which saves all 
 trouble, dispenses with all historical inquiry, and appears to be 
 adapted equally to popular apprehension and to academic ease. 
 The bubo-plagues of history" have not, in fact, been all of the 
 same descent ; notably the Black Death was a wave of pestilence 
 which Mohammedan countries, accustomed as they had been to 
 native bubo-plagues for centuries before, recognized as an 
 invasion from a foreign source, as an interruption of the sequence 
 of their own plagues. Again, the attempt to link in one series 
 the various scattered and circumscribed spots of plague now or 
 lately existing must fail disastrously the moment it is seriously 
 attempted. The hypothesis of one single source of the plague, 
 of a species of disease arising we know not how, beginning we 
 know not when or where, but at all events reproduced by 
 ordinary generation in an unbroken series of cases, ab acvo, ah 
 
Europe in tJie i^th cent my ready for Plague. 175 
 
 ova, is the merest verbalism, wanting in reality or concretcness, 
 and dictated by the curious illusion that a species of disease, 
 because it reproduces itself after its kind, must resemble in other 
 respects a species of living things. 
 
 The diffusive power of the virus of the Black Death, which 
 has been equalled only by that of the plague in Justinian's 
 reign, may seem to have depended upon the favouring conditions 
 that it m.et with. But although favouring conditions count for 
 much, they are not all. The Black Death raged as furiously as 
 anywhere among the nomade Tartars who were its first victims ; 
 the virus, as soon as it was let loose, put forth a degree of 
 virulence which must have been native to it, or brought with it 
 from its place of engendering. None the less the incidence of 
 the Black Death in Europe had depended in part upon the 
 preparedness of the soil. It came to Europe in the age of 
 feudalism and of walled towns, with a cramped and unwholesome 
 manner of life, and inhabited spots of ground choked with the 
 waste matters of generations. But even amidst these generally 
 fostering conditions, there would have been more special things 
 that determined its election. It is a principle exemplified in all 
 importations of disease from remote sources, in smallpox among 
 the aerial contagions and in Asiatic cholera among the soil- 
 poisons, that the conditions which favour diffusion abroad are 
 approximately the same amidst which the infection had been 
 originally engendered. A soil-poison of foreign origin makes 
 straight for the most likely spots in the line of its travels ; it 
 may not, and often does not confine itself to these, but it gives 
 them a preference. Thus, if we conclude on the evidence that 
 the bubo-plague is a soil-poison having a special affinity to the 
 products of cadaveric decomposition, we shall understand why 
 the Black Death, when it came to England, found so congenial 
 a soil in the monasteries, and in the homes of the clergy. 
 Within the monastery walls, under the floor of the chapel or 
 cloisters, were buried not only generations of monks, but often 
 the bodies of princes, of notables of the surrounding country, 
 and of great ecclesiastics. In every parish the house of the 
 priest would have stood close to the church and the churchyard. 
 One has to figure the virus of the Black Death not so much as 
 
176 Favourite spots of tlic Black Death. 
 
 carried by individuals from place to place in their persons, or in 
 their clothes and effects, but rather as a leaven which had passed 
 into the ground, spreading hither and thither therein as if by 
 polarizing the adjacent particles of the soil, and that not 
 instantaneously like a physical force, but so gradually as to 
 occupy a whole twelvemonth between Dorset and Yorkshire. 
 Sooner or later it reached to every corner of the land, mani- 
 festing its presence wherever there were people resident. Such 
 universality in the soil of England, we have reason to think, it 
 had. But it appears to have put forth its greatest power in the 
 walled town, in the monastery, and in the neighbourhood of the 
 village churchyard. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ENGLAND AFTER THE BLACK DEATH, WITH THE EPIDEMICS 
 TO THE TUDOR PERIOD. 
 
 The great mortality came to an end everywhere in England 
 by Michaelmas, 1349. The pestilence had lasted some fourteen 
 months, from its first appearance on the Dorset coast at the 
 beginning of August, 1348, until its subsidence in the northern 
 counties in the autumn of 1349. It came to an end, as all 
 devastating epidemics do, through having spent its force, ex- 
 hausted its pabulum, run through all the susceptible subjects. 
 A letter-writer of Charles I.'s reign has put into colloquial 
 language the corresponding reason for a pause in the ravages of 
 the plague towards the end of its stay in London : " And I think 
 the only reason why the plague is somewhat slackened is because 
 the place is dead already, and no bodie left in it worth the 
 killing\" The exhausted state of the country, and of all Europe, 
 is not easy for us to realize. Petrarch, a witness of the Black 
 Death in Italy, foresaw the incredulity of after ages, or their 
 inability to image the state of things — the empty houses, the 
 abandoned towns, the squalid country, the fields crowded with the 
 dead, the vast and dreadful solitude over the whole world. If you 
 inquire of historians, he continues, they are silent ; if you consult 
 the physicians, they are at their wits' end ; if you question^ the 
 philosophers, they shrug their shoulders, wrinkle their brows, 
 and lay the finger on the lip. Is it possible that posterity can 
 
 ^ Sir Tobie Matthews' Z(r//irrj'. Lond. r66o, p. no. 
 C. 12 
 
178 Public affairs after the Black Death. 
 
 believe these things ? For we who have seen them can hardly 
 believe them\ 
 
 The blow fell upon every country of Europe within a period 
 of two or three years ; and it must have paralysed all trade and 
 industry, war and politics, for the time being. Edward III.'s 
 wars in France, which had resulted in the victory of Crecy in 
 1346 and the conquest of Calais in 1347, had been suspended by 
 a truce, which was renewed from time to time. Thus, in the 
 very midst of the pestilence, on the 2nd of May, 1349, the 
 envoys of the English and French kings, " in their tents between 
 Calais and Guines," agreed upon a form of treaty continuing the 
 truce until Pentecost, 1350^ In the last days of 1349, Edward 
 III. in person, with a small force, was able to repel an attack 
 upon his new possession of Calais^ It was in the year after the 
 Black Death (1350) according to both Stow and Selden, that 
 Edward III. held a great feast at Windsor, to which his heralds 
 invited knights from abroad, to celebrate the institution of the 
 Order of the Garter, the statutes of the Order having been 
 drawn up the year before. What is styled " the necessary 
 defence of the realm," was a chief subject of concern through- 
 out the year 1350. On the 12th February an order was 
 made to the sheriffs of counties for a supply of so many arrows 
 from each^ On the 20th March the mayors and bailiffs of 
 1 10 towns are ordered to provide their respective quotas of 
 men-at-arms — London 100, Norwich 60, Bristol 20, and so on — 
 and to send them to Sandwich " for the necessary defence of 
 our realm °." On the ist of Maya commission was issued to 
 engage mariners for certain ships, and on the 20th May, an 
 order for ships, pinnaces and barges. 
 
 On the 22nd July and loth August there are proclamations 
 relating to the piratical fleet of Spanish ships, intercepting the 
 English traders to Gascony, and threatening an invasion of 
 England® ; the Spaniards were routed, their ships taken, and 
 
 ^ •Rpist. di rebus fatiiiliar. Lib. viii. epist. 7. The citation of these contem- 
 porary illustrations of the Black Death was liegun in the last centiny by Sprengel 
 {Bcitriige, &c., p. 37). 
 
 " Foedera, ill. 184; it was renewed on 30th June for a year longer. 
 
 ■■^ Avcslniry. * Focdcra, in. 192. '' //'. 193, '' lb. 200, 201. 
 
 I 
 
War ivitJi France resumed, 1355. 179 
 
 the Channel cleared, in a famous engagement off Winchelsea, 
 on 29th August, 1350, which the king directed in person'. On 
 t5th June, three days before the first of the ordinances against 
 the Labourers, the king issued two orders to counties, to raise 
 men "for our passage against the parts over sea" — one to the 
 Welsh lords, and the other to the sheriffs of English counties, 
 the demands being in all for 4170 bowmen from England, and 
 for 1350 men from Wales ^ Whatever these edicts may have 
 resulted in, it was not until four years after that the king really 
 resumed his wars with France. On the 8th September, 1355, 
 the Black Prince sailed from Plymouth with a fleet of some 
 three hundred ships carrying an army of knights, men-at-arms, 
 English bowmen and Welshmen, to the Garonne, for his famous 
 raid across the south of France^. Later in the autumn the king 
 collected at Portsmouth^ and Sandwich, and at Calais, a force of 
 three thousand men-at-arms, two thousand mounted bowmen, 
 and an immense number of bowmen on foot, with which he took 
 the field on the 2nd November^ The same summer, a fleet of 
 forty great ships was fitted out at Rotherhithe, for a force of 
 foot under Henry, duke of Lancaster, to aid the king of Na- 
 varre; it sailed on the loth of July, but was unable to clear the 
 Channel, and for various reasons did not proceed*^; next year, 
 however, the duke of Lancaster crossed from Southampton to 
 Normandy with a force in forty-eight ships'. 
 
 Thus was the war with France resumed six years after the 
 great mortality. The means for equipping these expeditions 
 had been provided by loans raised on the security of the 
 enormous subsidy which the Parliament of 1353-54 was induced 
 to vote, in the form of an export duty of fifty shillings on every 
 sack of wool shipped to foreign countries during the next six 
 years. According to Avesbury's calculation, Edward had a 
 revenue, from that source, of a thousand marks a day ; it was 
 the common opinion, he says, that more than 100,000 sacks of 
 
 ^ Le Baker's Chronicle of Osmy. Avesbury. - Focdera, in. 221. 
 
 ■^ Avesbury, Rolls ed. 425. 
 
 ■* Blomefield {Hist, of N'orfolk, ni.) says that the writ to Norwich in 1355 was for 
 120 men-at-arms to be sent to Portsmouth by Sunday in mid-Lent. 
 ^ Avesliury, pp. 42 7-8. •" //'. p. 425. " /f>. p. 461. 
 
 12 — 2 
 
i8o King^s Proclamation, i Dec. 1349. 
 
 wool were exported in a year'. But another and perhaps better 
 authority gives the annual export of wool in the middle of the 
 fourteenth century at nearly 32,000 sacks^ 
 
 Direct effects of the Black Death. 
 
 Meanwhile internal affairs were demanding the king's atten- 
 tion, although they occupy less space in the extant State papers 
 than the warlike preparations. On the 23rd August, while the 
 mortality was raging in the north, a proclamation was issued 
 to the sheriff of Northumberland against the migration of people 
 to Scotland, with arms, victuals, goods and merchandise, the 
 pestilence not being mentioned I The first State paper which 
 relates to the recent great mortality is the king's proclamation 
 of 1st December, 1349, to the mayor and bailiffs of Sandwich, 
 and of forty-eight other English ports, including London ^ The 
 proclamation begins : 
 
 " Forasmuch as no mean part of the people of our reahn of England is 
 dead in the present pestilence, and the treasure of the said realm is mostly 
 exhausted, and (as we have learned) numbers of this our kingdom are daily 
 passing, or proposing to pass, to parts over sea with money which they were 
 able to have kept within the realm, Now we, taking heed that if passage 
 after this manner be tolerated, the kingdom will in a short time be stripped 
 both of men and of treasure, and so therefrom grave danger may easily arise 
 to us and to the said realm, unless a fitting remedy be speedily appointed 
 
 ^ Avesbury, p. 431. 
 
 ^ Thorold Rogers, Hist, of Agric. and Prices^ I. 367, "according to an account 
 quoted by Misselden in his Circle of Commerce.^' The sack of wool contained 52 
 cloves of 7 lbs. each, or 364 lbs. It appears from a statute of 5 Ric. II. that 240 
 wool-fells were equivalent, for duty, to one sack of wool. In Rogers' tables, the 
 wool-fell is usually priced at about the value of i^ lbs. of wool, which was at the 
 same time about the average clip of a sheep. The present average clip would be at 
 least four times as much. The colonial bale of wool is of the same weight as the 
 medieval sack, but would represent 40 to 60 fleeces, instead of about 240. At the 
 smallest of the estimates in the text, the wool of 7,680,000 sheep would have been 
 exported in a year. Avesbury's estimate would mean an annual export to foreign 
 countries of the clip of about 24,000,000 sheep. The average price of a sack of wool 
 just before the Black Death was about £^ in money of the time ; the period im- 
 mediately following the plague was one of low prices; but from 1364 to 1380, the 
 price was uniformly high. 
 
 ^ Foedera, 1 11. 186. ^ //». 111. lyr . 
 
Ordinance of Labourers, \Z June, 1350. 181 
 
 — do command the mayor and bailiffs of Sandwich (and of forty-eight other 
 ports) to stop the passage beyond sea of them that have no mandate, 
 especially if they be Englishmen, excepting merchants, notaries, or the 
 king's envoys." 
 
 The edict was probably directed more against the drain of 
 treasure than against the emigration of people ; but this not 
 uninteresting question really belongs to other historians, who do 
 not appear to have dealt with it\ 
 
 On the 1 8th of June, 1350, the first summer after the morta- 
 lity, there was issued the first proclamation, to the sheriffs of 
 counties, on the demands of the labourers and artificers for 
 higher wages, entitled " De magna parte populi in ultima 
 pestilentia defuncta, et de servientium salariis proinde mode- 
 randis'"'." The preamble or motive is one that cannot but seem 
 strange to modern ideas, although it must have been correct and 
 conventional according to feudal notions : " Forasmuch as some, 
 having regard to the necessities of lords and to the scarcity of 
 servants, are unwilling to serve unless they receive excessive 
 wages, while others prefer to beg in idleness, rather than to seek 
 their living by labour — be it therefore enacted that any man or 
 woman, bond or free, under the age of sixty, and not living by a 
 trade or handicraft, nor possessing private means, nor having 
 land to cultivate, shall be obliged, when required, to serve any 
 master who is willing to hire him or her at such wages as were 
 usually paid in the locality in the year 1346, or on the average 
 of five or six years preceding ; provided that the lords of villeins 
 or tenants shall have the preference of their labqur, so that they 
 retain no more than shall be necessary for them." \ It was strictly 
 forbidden either to offer or to demand wages abovt the old rate. 
 Another clause forbids the giving of alms to beggars. Handi- 
 craftsmen of various kinds are also ordered to be paid at the old 
 rate. Lastly, victuallers and other traders are directed to sell 
 
 1 Jessopp (/.(-.) giving a general reference to the FocJcra, and probably having the 
 Sandwich letter in view, says there was "mad, unreasoning, insensate panic among 
 well-to-do classes — the trader and the moneyed man, the bourgeoisie of the towns," and 
 "a stampede," (presumably to foreign parts). But the mortality was all over by ist 
 December, 1349 ; and the exodus, whatever motive it may have had, was almost 
 certainly deliberate. 
 
 - Focdera, iii. iq8. 
 
i82 Statute of Labourers, 9 Feb., 135 1. 
 
 their wares at reasonable prices'. The same ordinance, with 
 some added paragraphs, was reissued on the i8th November, 
 1350, to the county of Suffolk and to the district of Lindsey 
 (Lincolnshire), the latter being one of the chief sheep-grazing 
 parts of England ; in those two localities, it is stated in so many 
 words, the labourers had set at nought the ordinance of i8th 
 June^ When Parliament met — for the first time since the 
 mortality — on the 9th of February, 1351, it was acknowledged 
 that the commissions to sheriffs issued by the king and his 
 council had been ineffective, and that wages had been at twice 
 or thrice the old rate^. The Parliament, having legislated for a 
 number of technical matters in connexion with the enormous 
 number of wills and successions, proceeded next to the labour 
 question, and passed the famous Statute of Labourers, by which 
 the generalities of the ordinance of i8th June, 1350, are replaced 
 by an elaborate schedule of wages for harvest-time and other 
 times*. One clause of the Act is specially directed against the 
 migration of labourers to other counties. It was the ancient 
 manorial system that was threatened most of all by the de- 
 population. The surviving labourers sought work where they 
 could command the best wages, and at the same time could 
 escape from the few degrading bonds of servitude which still 
 
 ^ The last clause of the ordinance implies that not only the labourers but also the 
 employers of labour were taking the natural advantage of the situation. There appears 
 to be some particular evidence of this for Bristol (Rev. W. Hunt, Bristol, p. 77) : 
 the masters in various crafts and trades were so reduced in numbers that the survivors 
 could charge what they pleased. Thus, the attempt to coerce labourers and skilled 
 workmen was a one-sided affair ; although, in practice, it related mostly to farm- 
 labour, where the one-sidedness did not appear. 
 
 - Foedera, ill. 210. ^ Roi. Pari. 11. 225. 
 
 ^ This was the first parliamentary Statute of Labourers (25 Ed. III. cap 2). The 
 king's ordinance of i8th June, 1350 (re-issued for Suffolk and Lindsey on i8th Nov.), 
 is usually reckoned the first Statute of Labourers, and is invariably assigned to the 
 •23rd year of Edward IIL, being so entered in the Statutes of the Realm. It is clear, 
 however, from the text of the ordinance in the Foedera that it belongs to the 24th of 
 Edward III., its exact date being i8lh June, 1350. Longman, in \\\<, History of the 
 Life and Times of Edivard III., correctly states in one place (i. 309) tliat the ordinance 
 of i8tli June, 1350, was "the first step," but on the very next page, after stating that 
 the ordinance failed, he proceeds, according to the usual chronology of 23 Ed. III. and 
 25 Ed. III., to say that "therefore, two years afterwards," the statute of 25 Ed. III. 
 was made in Parliament. The interval was only some eight months. 
 
Villeins escaping from their JManors. 183 
 
 clung to the nativi or serfs of a manor. But the Manor Court 
 was still the unit of government, and the Act would have been 
 inoperative except on that basis. That fundamental intention 
 of the statute of the 9th February, 135 1, comes out, not only in 
 the explicit clause against migrations, but also by contrast, in 
 the special permission given to the labourers of the counties of 
 Stafford, Derby and Lancaster, to the people of Craven, and to 
 the dwellers in the Marches of Wales and Scotland, to go about 
 in search of work in harvest " as they were wont to do before 
 this time\" 
 
 The immediate effect of the depopulation had been to 
 mobilise, as it were, the labouring class. Many of them must 
 have taken the road at once; for, in the first ordinance of i8th 
 June, 1350, before the harvest of that year had begun, it is stated 
 that certain of the labourers preferred to live by begging instead 
 of by labour, and it is therefore forbidden to give alms to 
 beggars. According to Knighton, the effect of the ordinance 
 itself was to swell the ranks of the wandering poor ; when some 
 were arrested, imprisoned, or fined in terms of the commission 
 to the sheriffs, others fled to the woods and wastes (ad silvas et 
 boscosy. These escapes continued for years after ; the rolls of 
 the Manor Court of Winslow have entries of many such cases 
 long after the pestilence ^ Many of these fugitive villeins 
 formed the class of "wasters," often referred to in the Vision of 
 Piers the PlougJinian : " waster would not work, but wander 
 about," or he would work only in harvest, squander his earnings, 
 and for the rest of the year feel the pinch of hunger " until both 
 his eyen watered." But it is clear that others went to distant 
 manors, and settled down again to steady employment, freed 
 from their bonds as nativi ; and it cannot be doubted that some 
 went to the towns*. 
 
 ^ Rot. Pail. n. 234. 
 
 ^ Knighton, in Twysden's Decent Scriptores, I.e. 
 
 ^ Seebohm, The English Village Community. Chapter I. 
 
 ^ The Statute of Labourers was re-enacted with increased stringency six years 
 after (31 Ed. HI.), and again in 1360 and 1368. All the labour statutes were 
 confirmed in the 12th year of Richard II. (cap. 34). Legislative attempts of the same 
 kind continued to be made as late as the 5th of Elizabeth (1562-3), with particular 
 reference to sturdy beggars. See copious extracts from the Statutes in Sir (ieorge 
 
184 Lords of Manors dependent on lured labour. 
 
 In order to realize the causes and circumstances of the labour 
 difficulty after the enormous thinning of the population, it may 
 be well to recall the composition of the village communities. 
 In each manor the arable land was in two portions — on the 
 one hand the immense open fields (two or perhaps three) in 
 which the villagers had each so many half-acre strips, and on 
 the other hand the lord's demesne, or home-farm. Part of the 
 latter would often be let to free tenants, or even to villeins, who 
 would count for the occasion as free tenants. For the cultiva- 
 tion of his demesne the lord was dependent on his tenants in 
 villenage, who owed him, in form, so many days' work in the 
 year, but in reality were often able to commute their personal 
 services for a money payment and are said to have done so very 
 generally \ Thus the lord of the manor was no longer able to 
 call upon his serfs to plough or to sow or to reap ; he had to 
 hire them for his occasions. The free tenants would also be 
 dependent to some extent upon hired labour ; and as some even 
 of the villeins cultivated up to forty acres or more, in the open 
 fields of the manor, these would also have to hire unless their 
 families were old enough to help. All that labour for hire 
 would naturally be supphed by the poorer villagers, the cottars 
 and bordars, who would seldom cultivate more than a few half- 
 acres, and in some cases perhaps none I The lower order of 
 tenants in villenage formed accordingly the class of labourers ; 
 and it was their demands which gave occasion for the ordi- 
 nances of 1350 and the statute of 135 i. In each manor the lord 
 would have been affected more than all the rest by the scarcity 
 of labour, in respect of the extensive demesne or home-farm 
 managed by his bailiff. It is conjectured that he tried, in some 
 cases, to go back to his rights of customary service from his 
 
 NichoUs's History of the English Poor Law, vol. I. Lond. 1854. "An Act for 
 regulating Journeymen Tailors" was made in 7 Geo. I. (cap. 13). 
 
 1 "There is no trace of the villenage described in Glanville and Bracton, among 
 the tenants of a manor 500 years ago. All customary services were commutable for 
 money payments ; all villein tenants were secure in the possession of their lands ; and 
 the only distinction between socage and villein occupation lay in the liberation of 
 the former from certain degrading incidents which affected the latter." Thorold 
 Rogers, "Effects of the Black Death, &c." Fort. Rev. ni. (1865) p. 196. 
 
 ^ Seebohm, The English Village CoinDuinity. Lond. 1882. Chapter I. 
 
 N 
 
Permanent rise of ivages after the Blaek Death. 1.S5 
 
 villeins, which had gradually become commutable for rents paid 
 in money, and that the attempts to do so led to insubordination \ 
 He had to pay wages, notwithstanding all his rights of lordship. 
 The wages paid in the harvest of 1349 were, says Rogers, those 
 of panic. In the form of petition which brought the labour- 
 question before Parliament in February 1351, it is stated that 
 the wages demanded were at double or treble the old rate ; of 
 the year preceding (1350) it is recorded that the wages paid to 
 labourers for gathering the harvest on the manor of Ham, 
 belonging to the lord Berkeley, amounted to 1 144 days' work, 
 on the old scale of commutation'"'. 
 
 The labourers, although the lowest order on the manors, 
 were accordingly masters of the situation. Personal service to 
 the lord, measurable merely by days, and having no reference to 
 fluctuations in the rate of wages, had become obsolete ; nor do 
 the ordinance of 1350 and the statute of 1351 give any hint of 
 trying to revive it. If the men refused to be hired at the old 
 rate, they were to be arrested and imprisoned. 
 
 There were, of course, many things besides the statute, 
 tending to keep the majority of peasants on the manors where 
 they had been born ; so that the formal abolition of villenage 
 remained to be carried by rebellion in 1381, while many traces 
 of it in practice remained for long after. Those who stayed on 
 their old manors, or removed to another county or hundred to 
 become tenants under new lords, were able to get permanently 
 better wages ; the price of labour remained about forty per cent, 
 higher than it had been before the mortality ; so that the statute 
 was on the whole ineffective. But another large proportion of 
 the labouring class appears to have been driven to a wandering 
 life. It is not easy to explain on economical principles why the 
 class of " wasters," of whom we hear so much, should have been 
 called into existence. Hands were scarce, and wages were high;. 
 
 ^ Seebohm, p. 31. vSuch attempts by landowners, to go back to personal service 
 from their villein tenants, appear to have become more systematic in the generation 
 following, and to have been a cause of the Peasants' Rebellion in 13S1. See v. 
 Oschenkowski, Etigland's ivii-thschaftliche Enhvic/celung, Jena, 1879, confirming the 
 opinion of Thorold Rogers. 
 
 ^ Smith, Lives of ike Bertcclcys, p. 12S: "in 24 Edward III." (Cited by Denton, 
 England in the i^tk Century.) 
 
1 86 Demoralisation after the Black Death. 
 
 the conditions look on the surface to be entirely iidverse to the 
 creation of a class of sturdy beggars and idle tramps. But the 
 economic conditions were really complex; and when all has 
 been said on the head of economics, there will remain something 
 to be explained on the side of ethics. 
 
 Not only the labourers but also the employers of labour 
 were cut off in the mortality. A great part of the capital of the 
 country passed suddenly into new hands. Before the Parliament 
 of 135 1 legislated upon wages, it was occupied with a number of 
 technical difficulties about wills. Of the proving of wills and the 
 granting of letters of administration on a great scale we have had 
 an instance from an archdeaconry in Lancashire. In Colchester, 
 a town with some four hundred burgesses, one hundred and 
 eleven wills were proved \ In the Husting Court of London, 
 three hundred and sixty wills were enrolled and proved from 13th 
 January, 1349, to 13th January, 1350. An immense number of 
 persons came into money who could not all have had the inclina- 
 tion, even if they had the skill and aptitude, for employing it as 
 capital. If there were wasters among the labourers, there were 
 wasters also among the moneyed class. The mortality produced, 
 indeed, that demoralisation of the whole national life which has 
 been usually observed to follow in the like circumstances. 
 " Almost all great epochs of moral degradation are connected 
 with great epidemics," says Niebuhr, generalizing the evidence 
 which Thucydides gives specially for the plague of Athens '^ 
 The fourteenth century was by no means a period of high 
 morality before the Black Death ; but it was undoubtedly worse 
 after it. Langland's poem of the vision of Piers the Ploughman 
 is one long diatribe against the vices of the age, and some of the 
 worst of them he expressly dates " sith the pestilence time." It 
 will be convenient to take these ethical illustrations, before we 
 proceed with the effects of the mortality upon material prosperity 
 and population, and with the domestication of plague on the soil. 
 
 So far from the labouring class being the chief sinners, it is 
 in the humbler ranks that the root of goodness remains. 
 Langland's hero, the Ploughman, is obviously chosen to represent 
 
 ^ Moranl, Ilisl. of Ilsscx. 
 
 - Niebuhr, Lecttn-es on Ancient History. Engl, transl. London, 1852, U., p. 53. 
 
Luxury and Avarice. 187 
 
 "that ingenuous simplicity and native candour and integrity," 
 which, as Burke says, " formerly characterized the English 
 nation," and, one may add, have been at all times its saving 
 grace. It was in that class that the reforming movement, led by 
 Wyclif twenty years after, had its strength. Lollardy and the 
 Peasants' Rebellion were closely allied. The grievance of the 
 latter was that the gulf between the gentleman and the workman 
 had become wider than in nature it should be. An ultimate and 
 very indirect effect of the great mortality was to strengthen the 
 middle class by recruits from beneath ; it created the circum- 
 stances which produced the English yeoman of the fifteenth 
 century. But we are here engaged with the immediate effect ; 
 and that was to broaden the contrast between the rich and the 
 poor. 
 
 Luxury had already touched so high a point as to call for a 
 statute against extravagant living, the curious sumptuary law of 
 1336 which prohibited many courses at table. Nothing could be 
 more significant of its later developments in London than the 
 sarcastic description, which fills an unusual space in one of the 
 chroniclers, of the fantastic excesses of dress and ornament among 
 the male sex about the year 1362^ Some of the names of the 
 men's ornaments occur also in Langland's verses : 
 
 "Sir John and Sir Goffray hath a gerdel of silver, 
 A basellarde or a ballok-knyf with botones overgilt." 
 
 These efifeminate fashions actually led to a Statute of Dress 
 in 1363, in which also the lower class are forbidden to ape their 
 betters. It is perhaps to these hangers-on of wealth that 
 Langland refers in his bitter lines : 
 
 " Right so ! ye rich, ye robeth that be rich | and helpeth them that 
 helpeth you, and giveth where no need is. | As who so filled a tun of a fresh 
 river ] and went forth with that water to woke with Thames. | Right so ! ye 
 rich, ye robe and feed | them that have as ye have, them ye make at ease." 
 
 But, as for the poor, Avarice considers them fair game : 
 
 " I have as moche pite of pore men as pedlere hath of cattes, | that wolde 
 kill them if he cacche hem myghte, for covetisc of their skynnes." 
 
 ^ Eiiloginni Ilistorianim. Rolls ed. iii. 230. 
 
1 88 The CJiurcJi and the World after 1349. 
 
 In London the preaching clergy are accused ^f pandering to 
 the avarice of the rich : 
 
 "And were mercy in mean men no more than in rich | mendicants 
 meatless might go to bed. I God is much in the gorge of these great 
 masters, | but among mean men his mercy and his works. | Friars and 
 faitours have found such questions, | to plese with proud men sithen the 
 pestilence tyme, | and prechers at Saint Poules, for pure envye of clerkis, | 
 that folke is nought firmed in the feith ne fill of their goodes. | .,.Ne be 
 plentyous to the pore as pure charitye wolde, | but in gayness and in 
 glotonye forglotten her goode hem selve, | and breken noughte to the beggar 
 as the Boke techeth." 
 
 The friars had lost altogether the enthusiasm of their early- 
 days : 
 
 "And how that friars followed folk that was rich, | and folk that was 
 poor at little price they set ; I and no corpse in their kirk-yard nor in their 
 kirk was buried, | but quick he bequeath them aughte or should help quit 
 their debts." 
 
 As for the monks, the same might have been said of them 
 before ; but now more land had been thrown into their possession 
 by the mortality : 
 
 "Ac now is Religion a ryder, a rowmer bi streetes, 
 A leader of love-days, and a lond-buyer, 
 A pricker on a palfrey fro manere to manere. 
 An heap of houndes at his ers, as he a lord were. 
 And but if his knave kneel, that shall his cup bringe, 
 He lowreth on hym, and axeth hym who taught hym curtesye." 
 
 According to Langland's poem, the country clergy left their 
 livings and came up to London : — 
 
 " Parsons and parish priests plained them to the bishop | that their 
 parishes were poor sith the pestilence time ; | to have licence and leave at 
 London to dwell | and syngen there for simony, for silver is sweet. | Bishops 
 and bachelors, both masters and doctours, | that have cures under Christ 
 and crowning in token and sign, | that they should shrive their parishours, 
 preach and pray for them and the poor feed, | live in London in Lent and 
 all"— 
 
 some of them serving the king in the offices of Exchequer and 
 Chancery, and some acting as the stewards of lords. 
 
 It is undoubted that the business of the courts in London 
 received a great impetus after the mortality, as one can readily 
 
TJie Legal profession. — TJie loiver classes. 189 
 
 understand from the number of inheritances, successions, and 
 feudal claims that had to be settled. Several of the Inns of 
 Chancery date from about that time. Gascoigne, who was 
 "cancellarius " at Oxford about 1430, and had access to the rolls 
 of former " cancellarii," was struck by the increase of legists after 
 the commotion of 1349 : " Before the great pestilence there were 
 few disputes among the people, and few pleas ; and, accordingly, 
 there were few legists in the realm of England, and few legists 
 in Oxford, at a time when there were thirty thousand scholars 
 in Oxford, as I have seen in the rolls," etc.^ 
 
 The country clergy, such of them as remained in their cures 
 were a notoriously illiterate class ; according to Knighton, they 
 could read the Latin services without understanding what they 
 read. Langland makes a parson confess his poor qualifications 
 to be the spiritual guide of his flock ; on the other hand he was 
 not without skill in the sports of the field : " But I can fynde in 
 a felde or in a furlonge an hare." At one of the manor courts 
 in Wiltshire in 1361, a gang of the district clergy were convicted 
 of night poaching^ 
 
 Such being the state of matters among the upper and middle 
 classes, it is not surprising to find a lax morality among the 
 lower orders. The ploughman is as severe a satirist of his own 
 class as he is of the rich. In London we have a picture of the 
 interior of a tavern crowded with loafers of all sorts " early in 
 the morning." In the country also the contrast is drawn be- 
 tween the industrious and the idle class : 
 
 "And whoso helpeth me to erie [plough] or sowen here ere I wende | 
 shall have leve, bi oure Lorde to lese here in harvest, | and make him merry 
 there-mydde, maugre whoso begruccheth it : | save Jakke the jogeloure and 
 Jonet of the stewes, | and Danget the dys-playere, and Denot the bawd, | 
 and Frere the faytoure and folk of his order, | and Robyn the rybaudoure for 
 his rusty wordes." 
 
 To live out of wedlock was nothing unusual : 
 
 " Many of you ne wedde nought the wimmen that ye with delen, | but as 
 
 ' Loci e Libra Vci-itatuin, ed. Rogers. Oxon. i8So, p. 202 ; and, from Gascoigne's 
 MS., in Anthony Wood, Hist, and Antiq. Univ. Oxford, Ed. Gutch, i. 451 : "What 
 I shall farther observe is that before it began there \\ere but few complaints among 
 the people, and few pleas ; as also few Legists in England, and very few at Oxford." 
 
 - Manor and Barony of Castle Combe, sub anno 1361. 
 
190 State of morals after the Black Death. 
 
 wilde bestis with wehe vvorthen up and worchen, | and bryngeth forth 
 barnes that bastardes men calleth." 
 
 Ill-assorted marriages also appear to have been common : 
 
 " It is an oncomely couple, bi Cryst, as me-thinketh, | to gyven a yonge 
 wenche to an olde feble, | or wedden any vvidwe for welth of hir goodis, | 
 that never shall bairne bere but if it be in armes. | Many a paire sithen the 
 pestilence have plight hem togiders : | the fruit that thei brynge forth areii 
 foule wordes : | in jalousye joyeles and jangling in bedde | have thei no 
 children but cheste and choppyng hem betweene." 
 
 Chapmen did not chastise their children. Old traditions of 
 weather-lore, and of reckoning the yield of harvest, were for- 
 gotten. 
 
 As a set-off to the uniformly bad picture of the times given 
 by Langland, we may turn to the gay and good-humoured 
 scenes of the ' Canterbury Tales.' But Chaucer was emphati- 
 cally the poet of the cultured class, and it is proper to his muse 
 to keep within the limits of a well-bred cynicism. Again, 
 Langland's strictures on the avarice and other vices of the rich 
 may seem to be a mere echo of a very old cry, which finds 
 equally strong expression in Roger of Wendover, about the 
 year 1235, and in Robert of Brunne's ' Handlyng Synne' in the 
 year 1 303. But the Vision of the Ploughman is too consistent, 
 and too concrete, to be considered as a mere homily on the 
 wickedness of the times, such as might have been written of 
 almost any age or of any country in which the Seven Mortal 
 Sins were still called by their plain names. The words " sithen 
 the pestilence" recur so often, that this contemporary author 
 must be held as sharing the belief that the Black Death made a 
 marked difference to the morals of the nation throughout all 
 classes. 
 
 More lasting effects on Farming, Industries, and 
 Population. 
 
 Turning from things moral to things material, we shall find 
 that the Great Mortality left its mark on the cultivated area of 
 the country, on rents of land, on the kind of tenure and the 
 system of farming, on industry, trade and municipal govern- 
 
Land goes out of atltivation. 191 
 
 merit, on the population, and, on what chiefly concerns us, the 
 subsequent health of the country. 
 
 Corn-growing would appear to have met with at least a 
 temporary check. Three water-mills near Shrewsbury fell in 
 annual value by one half, owing to the scarcity of corn to grinds 
 Richmond, one of the chief corn-markets in Yorkshire, is said, 
 on rather uncertain evidence, to have been permanently reduced 
 for the same reason ; besides losing an enormous number by 
 the plague itself (vaguely stated at 2000), the town lost its corn- 
 trade through the land around falling out of cultivation, so that 
 some of the burgesses, being unable to pay rent, had to wander 
 abroad as mendicants^. 
 
 The general statements of Knighton, Le Baker and others 
 for England (not to mention numerous rhetorical passages of 
 foreign writers), to the effect that whole villages were left 
 desolate, are borne out by the petitions recurring in the Rolls of 
 Parliament for many years after. There are also some refer- 
 ences to the continuing desolateness of particular places, which 
 are probably fair samples of a larger number. 
 
 Thus a rich clergyman in Hertfordshire had given, just 
 before the Black Death, all his lands and tenements in Brag- 
 hinge, Herts, to the prior and convent of Anglesey, Cambridge- 
 shire, in consideration that they should find at their proper 
 expense a chantry of two priests for ever in the church of 
 Anglesey, to say masses for the souls of the benefactor and his 
 family. But on the loth of May, 135 1, he remitted the charge 
 and support of one of the two said priests, on the ground that, 
 " on account of the vast mortality, lands lie uncultivated in 
 many and innumerable places, not a few tenements daily and 
 suddenly decay and are pulled down, rents and services cannot 
 be levied, but a much smaller profit is obliged to be taken than 
 usuaP." An instance of a long-abiding effect is that of the manor 
 of Hockham belonging to the earl of Arundel, which was not 
 tenanted for thirty years*. 
 
 1 Owen and Blakeway, op. cit. i. 165. 
 
 - Q\7!ixV'iox\'-> History of RichiHOiid. Richmond, 1821 (authority not quoted). 
 
 ^ Hailstone, History of Bottisham and the Priory of Anglesey. Camb. 1873. 
 (Transact. Camb. Antiq. See. 8vo. series, vol. xiv.) 
 
 ■* Cited by Jessopp, I.e. 
 
192 Remits and the system of farming after 1349. 
 
 The history of rents is pecuHar. The immediate effect, as 
 we learn from Knighton, as well as from the rolls of particular 
 manor courts, was a remission of them by the lords, lest their 
 tenants in villenage should quit the lands. There was, indeed, 
 a competition among landlords for tenants to occupy their 
 manors, so that the cultivators could make their own terms. 
 Of that we have had an instance from the manor of Ensham, 
 belonging to Christ Church, Oxford \ But, after a few years, 
 rents appear to have come back to near their old level. The 
 following figures have been compiled from the Tower records of 
 assizes made for the purpose of taxation'"': 
 
 1268 
 
 gd. 
 
 1 27 1 
 
 I2d. 
 
 1336 
 
 I i\d. 
 
 1338 
 
 ii\d 
 
 1348-9 
 
 — 
 
 1359 
 
 9¥. 
 
 1368 
 
 I o^d. 
 
 1381 
 
 9ld. 
 
 I4I7 
 
 6d 
 
 1422 
 
 Ad. 
 
 1429 
 
 Ad 
 
 1432 
 
 6d 
 
 1446 
 
 2>d 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The great fall, it will be seen, was in the next century. 
 
 Perhaps the most striking effect upon agriculture of the 
 upheaval produced by the great mortality was, as Thorold 
 Rogers has shown, in changing the system of farming and in 
 creating the type of the English yeoman. The system of 
 farming the lord's demesne or home-farm by a bailiff, never very 
 profitable, became, says that historian, quite unproductive, owing 
 especially to the permanent rise in wages. The small men 
 who took the lord's land to farm — they had been doing so to 
 some extent before'' — had not sufficient of their own for .stock 
 and seed ; but they got advances from the lord, which were 
 repaid in due course. It was a kind of mctairie farming. It 
 prevailed for about fifty years, by which time the ordinary 
 system of farming on lease was becoming general. Finally, and 
 especially in the Civil Wars of the fifteenth century, much of 
 the land which had belonged in fee to the feudal lords, passed 
 away by purchase to the tenant farmers*. Thus arose the 
 
 1 .Seep. 141. ^ Clutterbuck, History of Hertfordshire. 
 
 ^ .Seebohm, for the Manor of Winslow, op. cit., p. 34. 
 
 * Thorold Rogers, Fort. Rev. in. (1865), p. 196. In his History of Agrictdtiire 
 and Prices, iv., the same learned and sagacious student of English developments 
 thus sums up the agrarian consequences of the Black Death : — "The indirect effects of 
 this great event were even more remarkable. The great landowner ceases to carry on 
 
Effects of tJic Black DeatJi on trade and industry. 193 
 
 famous breed of English yeomen — the " good yeomen whose 
 limbs were made in England." 
 
 The effect of the mortality upon trade and industry was, 
 momentarily, to paralyse them. Of the great wool-trade, Rogers, 
 the historian of English prices, says : " Nothing, I think, in the 
 whole history of these prices is more significant of the terror 
 and prostration induced by the plague than the sudden fall in 
 the price of wool at this time. It is a long time before a 
 recovery takes place\" But from 1364 to 1380, the price of 
 wool was uniformly above the average ; and, if there be any 
 accuracy in Avesbury's figures already given for the years 
 following 1355, the export of bales of wool to the Continent 
 (roo,ooo sacks in a year, he says, each sack being a bale of the 
 present colonial size, or weighing about three hundredweights) 
 meant a very considerable amount of labour, tonnage and 
 exchange. Among other articles of export, we hear specially 
 of iron, in a petition to Parliament of 28 Ed. III. (1354); the 
 price of iron had risen to four times what it was before the 
 plague, and it was desired to stop the export of it and to fix the 
 priced 
 
 The effect of the mortality upon the industries of the country 
 was shown most in Norwich. That city was the centre of the 
 Flemish cloth-weaving, which had been flourishing in Norfolk 
 for some twenty years, under the direct encouragement of 
 Edward III., and of a protective statute against foreign-made 
 cloth. Before the pestilence, Norwich was the second city in 
 the kingdom. In the king's warrant for men-at-arms, which 
 was indeed issued in 1350, but may be taken as drawn up on 
 the old lines and irrespective of the pestilence, the quota of 
 
 agriculture with his own capital, and farmers' rents of a fixed and almost invariable 
 amount take the place of the lord's cultivation by bailiffs. Attempts were made for 
 varying periods of time to continue the old system, especially by corporations. It is 
 possible that the system of stock and land leasing, which became very general after 
 the change commenced, may have been suggested by the hope that the old state of 
 things might be restored.... In the end all the great landowners conformed to the 
 inevitable change, and let their land on short leases, and as a rule at low and almost 
 fixed rents, to capitalist farmers." 
 
 ^ Thorold Rogers, op. cit., i. 376. 
 
 - Rot. Pari., II. 260. a. 
 
 C. 13 
 
194 Decline of NorwicJi after tJie Black Death. 
 
 Norwich is rated at 60, London's being 100, Bristol's and Lynn's 
 20 each, that of Coventry, Gloucester, Hereford, Shrewsbury, 
 Winchester, Sarum, Oxford, Canterbury and Bury St Edmund's 
 10 each, and of other towns from 8 to i each, York not being 
 mentioned. But in the Subsidy Roll of 1377, which shows how 
 many persons, above the age of fourteen, paid the poll-tax of a 
 groat in each county and in each principal town, Norwich comes 
 sixth in the list instead of second, being far surpassed in num- 
 bers by York and Bristol, and surpassed considerably by 
 Coventry and Plymouth, So far from being in a proportion to 
 London of 60 to 100, it is now in a proportion of 3952 to 
 23,314, its whole population, as estimated, being 7410 against 
 44,770 in the capital which at one time it bade fair to rival. It 
 had lost heavily in the Black Death, and so had the populous 
 district around it, where the Flemish industries and trade were 
 planted in numerous villages. By 1368, ten of the sixty very 
 small parishes of Norwich had disappeared, and fourteen more 
 disappeared by degrees, the ruins of twenty of them being still 
 visible\ 
 
 There is no mistaking the significance of these figures and 
 facts for the second city of the kingdom. At least one genera- 
 tion passed before Norwich recovered something of its old 
 prosperity. In the fifteenth century it was still the chief seat of 
 the woollen manufactures ; the county of Norfolk kept its old 
 pre-eminence, although rival centres of industry had grown up. 
 There were, however, causes at work which at length reduced 
 the capital of East Anglia to a comparatively poor state. One 
 of the intermediate glimpses that we get of it — they are not 
 many, even in Blomefield's history — is the statute of 1455, to 
 put down the enormous number of "pettifogging attorneys" in 
 the city and countyl Its real decline was in the early Tudor 
 reigns. When Henry VII. visited Norwich in 1497, ^^e mayor 
 in presenting the Queen's usual gold cup with a hundred pieces 
 in it, took occasion to tell the monarch " howbeit that they 
 are more poor, and not of such wealth as they have been afore 
 
 ' Scebolnii, /. c. Fort. Rev., II. (18^)5), p. 157. 
 ^ Blomeficld, ill. sii/> anno. 
 
OtJicr decay i?ig toivns. 195 
 
 these clays\" When the town suffered much from fires about 
 the year 1505, the city of London raised large sums in aid of its 
 rebuilding. To the same period belongs a municipal order that 
 no one should dig holes in the market-place to get sand, without 
 the mayor's licence. In 1525, there was a general decay of 
 work, the clothiers and farmers being unable to employ the 
 artisans and labourers, who began to rise in revolt against the 
 heavy taxes. An Act of 33 Hen. VIII. recites that the making 
 and weaving of worsteds is wholly decayed and taken away from 
 the city of Norwich and county of Norfolk — by the deceit and 
 crafty practices of the great multitude of regrators and buyers of 
 the said yarn. These evidences of decline in prosperity are 
 in part long after the Black Death ; but they seem to have been 
 continuous from that event. 
 
 So far as concerns the other large towns of England, they did 
 not all fare alike. The capital was more luxurious, and probably 
 not less populous, after the mortality than before it. The 
 chancery and exchequer business alone would have served to 
 draw numbers to it ; and we may be sure, from all subsequent 
 experience, that the gaps left by the plague were filled up by 
 influx from the provinces and from abroad in the course of two 
 or three years. Nor does it appear from the poll-tax that York 
 had suffered to anything like the same extent as Norwich ; while 
 Bristol and Coventry became towns of much greater consequence 
 than before the plague. On the other hand, Lincoln is described, 
 in a petition for relief in 1399 (i Hen. IV.) as being "in the 
 greater part empty and uninhabited." In the same year, 
 Yarmouth has its houses "vacant and void," although, in 1369, 
 it is said to have " gained so much upon Norwich " that it was 
 made a seat of the wool-staple. Other towns which figure in 
 petitions to Parliament as "impoverished and desolate of people," 
 are Ilchester (1407) and Truro (1410). Camden instances the 
 ancient borough of Wallingford, on the Thames, as having been 
 permanently reduced by the Black Death, although the in- 
 habitants, he says, traced the decay of the town to the diversion 
 of traffic over the new bridges at Abingdon and Dorchester^ 
 
 1 Blomefield, ill. siih nnito. 
 
 - Camden's Britannia. Cough's ed. ii. 9. 
 
 13—2 
 
196 Alleged increase of urban life after 1349. 
 
 Some parts of Cambridge would appear to have borne the traces 
 of the pestilence for a number of years after. A charter of the 
 bishop of Ely, dated 12 September, 1365, mentions that the 
 parishioners of All Saints (on the north-east side) are for the 
 most part dead by pestilence, and those that are alive are gone 
 to the parishes of other churches ; that the parishioners of St 
 Giles's (the adjoining parish, near the Castle) have died ; and 
 that the nave of All Saints is ruinous and the bones of dead 
 bodies are exposed to beasts ; therefore the bishop unites All 
 Saints and St Giles's\ At that time the churches of those 
 parishes would have been small, perhaps not much larger than 
 the little church of St Peter still standing on the high ground 
 opposite to the great modern church of St Giles. 
 
 These instances of the chequered history of English towns 
 subsequent to the great mortality are not altogether favourable 
 to the generality which has been put forward by an able 
 historian''^, that the great social revolution produced by that 
 event was to detach the people from the soil, to drive them into 
 the towns, to increase the urban population disproportionately to 
 the rural, to plant the germs of commerce aiid industry, and to 
 determine that expansion of England which became manifest in 
 the end of the Elizabethan period and under the Stuarts, the 
 British nation being " doomed by its economic conditions to take 
 the course which it has taken." Many things happened between 
 the Black Death and the expansion of England. The fifteenth 
 century intervened, which was in its middle period, at least, 
 distinguished as much by the rise of the yeoman class as by the 
 growth of trade guilds in the town. But that which mars the 
 generality most of all was the decline of industries and the decay 
 of towns (London and Bristol always excepted) in the reigns of 
 Henry VII. and Henry VIII.; the country had to recover from 
 that before the Elizabethan expansion, — before the nation began 
 " to increase rapidly in population until at length it should 
 overflow the limits of its island home." 
 
 ' Hist. A/SS. Comiitission, vi. 299. Register of Ely Priory, in Lord Leconfield's 
 MSS. 
 
 ^ .Secbolun, "The Black Death and its Place in English History." Fort. Rev. Ii. 
 (1865), p. 278- 
 
Legislation to keep hands on the farms. 197 
 
 At the same time, one eftect of the great mortahty was to 
 mobilise the class of agricultural labourers, and to drive a certain 
 number of them into the towns. Proof of that migration comes 
 from the statutes and the Rolls of Parliament. 
 
 An Act of 34 Edward III. (1360) imposes a fine often pounds to the king 
 on the mayor and bailiffs of any town refusing " to deliver up a labourer, 
 servant, or artificer" who had absented himself from his master's service, 
 with a farther fine of five pounds to the lord. In 1376 the "Good Parlia- 
 ment" makes complaint that servants and labourers quitted service on the 
 slightest cause, and then led an idle life in towns, or wandered in parties 
 about the country, "many becoming beggars, others staff-strikers, but the 
 greater number taking to robbing." More direct evidence of industries 
 diverting hands from farm labour is found in the various statutes about 
 apprentices. In the Act of 12 Ric. II. (1388) it is provided that "he or she 
 which use to labour at the plough and cart or other labour or service of 
 husbandry till they be of the age of twelve years, shall abide at that labour 
 without being put to any mystery or handicraft ; and if any covenant or 
 bond of apprentice be from henceforth made to the contrary, the same shall 
 be holden for none." A more definite provision of the same kind was made 
 in 7 Hen. IV. (1405-6): "Notwithstanding the good statutes aforemade, 
 infants whose fathers and mothers have no land, nor rent, nor other living, 
 but only their service or mystery, be put to serve and bound apprentices to 
 divers crafts within cities and boroughs, sometimes at the age of twelve 
 years, sometimes within the said age, and that for the pride of clothing and 
 other evil customs which servants do use in the same " etc. — the result being 
 that farm labourers were scarce ; therefore no one, not having land or rent 
 of twenty-shillings a year, to bind his son or daughter of whatsoever age to 
 serve as apprentice within any city or borough. In the 8th of Henry VI. 
 (1429) this statute was repealed so far as respected London, on account of 
 the hindrance which the said statute might occasion to the inhabitants of 
 that city^. 
 
 It may be doubted if, after the Black Death, the towns 
 underwent any marked industrial development, except in such 
 cases as Coventry and Bristol. On the other hand, the cloth- 
 weaving of East Anglia was dispersed over the country, more 
 particularly to the western and south-western counties, so that 
 the west of England gained an industrial character which it 
 retained until the comparatively modern rise of the cloth- 
 industries of Yorkshire and Lancashire. But it was in great part 
 
 1 These and other labour-statutes are collected in A History of the Eui^lisli Poor 
 Laiv, by Sir George Nicholls, 2 vols. London, 1854, I. yi-'t't- 
 
1^8 Grozvth of village industries. — Castle Combe. 
 
 a development of village industries upon the old manorial basis, 
 as well as a migration of labour to the towns. 
 
 We have an authentic instance, and probably a typical 
 instance, in the manor and barony of Castle Combe, of which the 
 social history has been pieced together from the rolls of its 
 manor court by one of the earliest students of that class of docu- 
 ments. Before the middle of the fifteenth century this village 
 situated among the Wiltshire hills, difficult of access and almost 
 secluded from the highways, had grown into a thriving com- 
 munity of weavers, fullers, dyers, glovers, and the like, with their 
 attendant tradings and marketings, all upon its old manorial 
 basis, and with its old agriculture going hand in hand with its 
 new industries. There were free or copyhold tenants occupying 
 their farms, while several clothiers and occupiers of fulling-mills 
 held farms also, " driving a double and evidently a very thriving 
 trade, accumulating considerable wealth and giving employment 
 to a large number of artizans who had been attracted to the 
 place for this purpose. Yet, strange to say, some of the 
 wealthiest and most prosperous of these tradesmen were still 
 subject to the odious bonds of serfship, adscript the soil\" It 
 is clear, however, that the jury of the manor court took care 
 that the lord should not have the best of it. The morals of 
 this industrial village were, as might have been expected, 
 somewhat lax^. At the same time the removal of nuisances 
 was insisted upon by this self-governing community as effec- 
 tively, perhaps, as if it had been under the Local Government 
 Acts I 
 
 Another kind of effect than the industrial, upon the state of 
 
 ' G. PouleU Scrope, op. cit. 
 
 - P'rom 1416 to 1424, three dillcrent persons were fined at the manor court ior 
 keeping a common brothel in their houses. ForestalUng of butler, cheese and eggs, 
 on the way to market, came before the court in 14 18. 
 
 "* At the manor court in I417, Thomas Selwin, a butclier, was convicted of 
 throwing offal and other offensive matters into the common street and of making his 
 dung-heap there, to the common hurt ; also the said Thomas Selwin " tarde et de 
 novo erexit unam latrinam foetidam in shopa sua ad commune nocumentum. Ideo 
 ipse in misericordia. " The next entry of nuisances, so far as extracts are given, is as 
 late as 1 590 — various offences in the street and churchyard, and the glover washing his 
 skins in the stream or otherwise befouling the water running by his house. 
 
Nezo municipal class at Shrcivsbiiry, 1361. 199 
 
 the towns, is exemplified in the case of Shrewsbury. The 
 dislocation of the old social order had somehow touched the 
 privileges and monopolies of municipal corporations and guilds, 
 and given power to a hitherto unenfranchised class. The general 
 question, besides being a somewhat new one, is foreign to this 
 subject ; but the reference to Shrewsbury is given, as the " late 
 pestilence " is expressly connected with the municipal changes. 
 A patent of the 35th of Edward III. (1361), relating to the town 
 of Shrewsbury, recites the grievous debates and dissensions 
 which had arisen therein, " through the strangers who had newly 
 come to reside in the said town after the late pestilence, and 
 were plotting to draw to themselves the government of the said 
 town\" 
 
 It has been conjectured that population in the country at 
 large speedily righted itself, according to the principle that popu- 
 lation always tends to come close to the limit of subsistence. 
 But there is reason to think that the means of subsistence were 
 themselves reduced. We read of corn-land running to waste, 
 although most of the references to desolation are perhaps to 
 be taken as true for only one or two harvests following the 
 plague. Again, it is undoubted that sheep-farming and the 
 pasturing of cattle at length took the place of much of the old 
 agriculture. It is not easy to make out when the change begins; 
 but there are instances of rural depopulation as early as \\\\\ and 
 the same had become a burning grievance in the time of 
 cardinal Morton and the early years of sir Thomas More. It 
 has been assumed, also, that the " positive checks" to population 
 
 ^ Cited in Owen and Blakeway's History of SlLrciushiiry, II. 524: "per adveiris 
 qui in dicta villa post ultimam pestilenciam de novo sunt inhabitati...at regimen 
 dictae ville ad se attrahere...machinantes." By the "ultima pestilencia" could hardly 
 have been meant the pestis secunda of i.-;6i, the year of the patent, as the learned 
 antiquaries suppose. 
 
 - Rotul. Pari. iv. 60. 7. The petition of Chesterton, near Cambridge : "And also 
 they seiden that there was made gret waste in the same Manor of Chesterton of 
 Housing, that is to say of Halles and of Chambers, and of other houses of office, that 
 were necessary in the same Manor, and none housinge left standing therein, but gif it 
 were a Shepcote or a Berne or a Swynsty and a few houses byside to jnitte in 
 bestes." 
 
200 No recovery of population after the Black Death. 
 
 had been taken off, when they ought in theory so to have been : 
 that is to say, after the inhabitants had been enormously thinned. 
 The statement of Hecker, that there was increased fecundity 
 after the pestilence, appears to be an instance of that author's 
 a priori habit of mind'. What we read in an English chronicle 
 of the time is just the opposite, namely, that "the v/omen who 
 survived remained for the most part barren during several 
 years^" The authority is not conclusive, but the statement 
 is in keeping with what we may gather from Langland's poem as 
 to ill-assorted and sterile marriages, and as to illicit unions, which, 
 as Malthus teaches, are comparatively unfruitful. The alleged 
 sterility is also in keeping with, although not strictly parallel to, 
 the experience of crowded Indian provinces, such as Orissa, 
 where a thinning of the population by famine and disease has 
 been statistically proved to be followed by a marked decrease of 
 fecundity. More direct evidence of a permanent loss of people 
 occurs a generation after the Black Death, at a time when the 
 circumstances of health were such as would explain it. 
 
 The poll-tax of 1377 was a means of estimating the popula- 
 tion. The tax was levied on every person, male or female, 
 above the age of fourteen. In estimating the population from 
 the poll-tax returns, it is usual to add one-fifth for taxable 
 subjects who had evaded it, and to reckon the taxable subjects 
 above fourteen years as two-thirds of the whole population. On 
 that basis of reckoning, the population of the whole of England, 
 except Cheshire and Durham, in the year 1377 would have been 
 2,580,828 (or 1,376,442 who actually paid their groat each). The 
 population of the principal towns is calculated, in the second 
 column of the Table, from the numbers in the first column who 
 actually paid the poll-tax, according to the Subsidy Roll of 
 51 Edward III. 
 
 ^ "After the cessation of the Black Plague a greater fecundity in women was 
 everywhere remarkable — a grand phenomenon which, from its occurrence after every 
 destructive pestilence, proves to conviction, if any occurrence can do so, the prevalence 
 of a higher power in the direction of general organic life. Marriages were almost 
 without exception prolific," etc. 
 
 ^ Eiilogiuin Ilistoriaruni, in. 213. 
 
Population of toions, by the Poll-tax of 12)77- 
 
 201 
 
 Laity assessed for the Poll-tax of 1377 in each of the following Towns, 
 being persons of either sex above the age of fourteen years. 
 
 
 Taxed 
 
 Estimated 
 Population 
 
 ; Taxed 
 
 1 
 
 Estimated 
 Population 
 
 London 
 
 23,314 
 
 44,770 
 
 Ely 
 
 1722 
 
 3230 
 
 York 
 
 7248 
 
 13,590 
 
 Exeter 
 
 1560 
 
 2925 
 
 Bristol 
 
 6345 
 
 11,904 
 
 Hull 
 
 1557 
 
 2920 
 
 Plymouth 
 
 4837 
 
 9069 
 
 Worcester 
 
 1557 
 
 2920 
 
 Coventry 
 
 4817 
 
 9032 
 
 Ipswich 
 
 1507 
 
 2825 
 
 Norwich 
 
 3952 
 
 7410 
 
 Nottingham 
 
 1447 
 
 2713 
 
 Lincoln 
 
 3412 
 
 6399 
 
 Northajnpton 
 
 1447 
 
 2713 
 
 Sarum 
 
 3226 
 
 6048 
 
 Winchester 
 
 1440 
 
 2700 
 
 Lynn 
 
 3127 
 
 5863 
 
 Stamford 
 
 1218 
 
 2284 
 
 Colchester 
 
 2955 
 
 5540 
 
 Newark 
 
 1178 
 
 2209 
 
 Beverley 
 
 2663 
 
 4993 
 
 Wells 
 
 1172 
 
 2198 
 
 Newcastle-on-Tyne 
 
 2647 
 
 4963 
 
 Ludlow 
 
 1172 
 
 2198 
 
 Canterbury 
 
 2574 
 
 4826 
 
 Southampton 
 
 1152 
 
 2160 
 
 Bury St Edmunds 
 
 2442 
 
 4580 
 
 Derby 
 
 1046 
 
 196 1 
 
 Oxford 
 
 2357 
 
 4420 
 
 Lichfield 
 
 1024 
 
 1920 
 
 Gloucester 
 
 2239 
 
 4198 
 
 Chichester 
 
 869 
 
 1630 
 
 Leicester 
 
 2IOI 
 
 3939 
 
 Boston 
 
 814 
 
 1526 
 
 Shrewsbury 
 
 2082 
 
 3904 
 
 Carlisle 
 
 678 
 
 I27I 
 
 Yarmouth 
 
 I94I 
 
 3640 
 
 Bath 
 
 570 
 
 1070 
 
 Hereford 
 
 1903 
 
 3568 
 
 Rochester 
 
 570 
 
 1070 
 
 Cambridge 
 
 1722 
 
 3230 
 
 Dartmouth 
 
 506 
 
 949 
 
 That this indirect census was taken on a declining population 
 may be inferred from the language of contemporaries. In the 
 year of the poll-tax (1377), Richard II. addressed certain 
 questions to Wyclif concerning the papal exactions of tribute ; 
 the reformer's reply gives as the second objection to the tribute 
 " that the people decreases by reason of {praetextii) the with- 
 drawal of this treasure, which should be spent in England'." 
 
 In the political poems of the time there are numerous 
 references to the pestilences and famines. One of these doggerel 
 productions, "On the Council of London," 1382, contains a clear 
 reference to a decrease of the people : 
 
 " In nos pestilentia saeva jam crescit, 
 Ouod virorum fortium jam populus decrescit." 
 
 1 Fasciculi Zizaii. Rolls series, No. 5, ed. Shirley, p. 263: " Dimilto alias ra- 
 liones palpabiles : quod exhinc regnum nostrum sensibiliter depauperctur pecunia ; 
 quod, praetextu subtractionis hujus thesauri, qui expendereUir in Anglia, decrescit 
 populus ; " etc. 
 
 ^ Political Songs and Poems, Ed. II. — Ric. II. Rolls series, No. 14, cd. 
 T. Wright, I. 2. 53. 
 
202 Plague steady in England after 1349. 
 
 These general expressions in writings of the time will appear 
 the more credible after we have carried the history of plague 
 and other forms of epidemic sickness down through a whole 
 generation from 1349. 
 
 The Epidemics following the Black Death. 
 
 Not the least of the effects of the Black Death upon England 
 was the domestication of the foreign pestilence on the soil. For 
 more than three centuries bubo-plague was never long absent 
 from one part of Britain or another. The whole country was 
 never again swamped by a vast wave of plague as in the fourteen 
 months of 1348-49. Nor does it appear that the succeeding 
 plagues of the fourteenth century, the pestis secnnda, tertia, 
 quarta and quinta were all of the same type as the first, or 
 otherwise comparable to it. Disastrous as many subsequent 
 English epidemics of bubo-plague were, they appear to have 
 been localised in the North, perhaps, or in Norfolk, or confined 
 to the young ; and, above all, the bubo-plague became, in its 
 later period, peculiarly a disease of the poor in the towns, 
 although it did not cease altogether in the villages and country 
 houses until it ceased absolutely in 1666. For three hundred 
 years plague was the grand " zymotic" disease of England — the 
 same type of plague that came from the East in 1347-49, 
 continuously reproduced in a succession of epidemics at one 
 place or another, which, by diligent search, can be made to fill 
 the annals with few gaps, and, if the records were better, 
 could probably be made to fill most years. Britain was not 
 peculiar among the countries of Europe in that respect, although 
 the chronology of plagues abroad has not been worked out 
 minutely, except for an occasional province in which some 
 zealous archaeologist had happened to take up the subject '. 
 
 From 1349 to 1361 there is no record of pestilence in 
 England. There was scarcity or famine in 1353, owing to an 
 unfavourable harvest, but nothing is said of an unusual amount 
 
 ^ The only monograph that I know is Peinlich's Pest in Slcicnnark^ 2 Bde. Giaz, 
 1877-78. From 1349 to 1716, seventy years are marked in the annals of Styria as 
 plaguc-ycars. Corradi gives the plague-years in Italy in his Aintd/i. 
 
TJic Second PlsIUcucc, 1361. 203 
 
 of sickness. In 1361 came the pestis secnnda, which would 
 hardly have been so called had it not presented the same type 
 as the great bubo-plague. There is little said of it in the 
 chroniclers ; but two of them mention that it was called the 
 pestis pHcroruni, or plague of the juveniles; and a third gives the 
 names of several great personages who died of it, including three 
 bishops and Henry, duke of Lancaster, at his castle of Leicester, 
 in Lent, 1362. This recrudescence, then, of the seeds of plague 
 in English soil, may be taken as having cut off the nobles and 
 the young : that is to say, the members of a class who had, by all 
 accounts, escaped the first plague, and the rising generation who 
 had either escaped the first plague as infants or had been born 
 subsequent to it. The same selection of victims was observed, 
 according to Guy de Chauliac, in the very same year at Avignon; 
 in contrast to the Black Death, the second plague there cut off 
 the upper and well-to-do classes, and an innumerable number of 
 children'; among the former, it is said, were five cardinals and 
 a hundred bishops. From Poland, also, it is reported that the 
 return of the plague, which happened in 1360, affected mostly, 
 although not exclusively, the uppi^r classes and children. It is 
 clear from the Continental evidence that the second pestilence 
 was markeci by the same buboes, carbuncles, and other signs as 
 the first. In some places, at least, it must have been as de- 
 structive as the Black Death itself; thus, in Florence, says 
 Petrarch (with obvious exaggeration) hardly ten in the thousand 
 remained alive in the city after the epidemic of 1359, while 
 Boccaccio estimates the mortality of the year at the equally 
 incredible figure of a hundred thousand. In London many more 
 wills than usual were enrolled in 1361, but not more than a third 
 of the number enrolled in 1349: viz. 4 in February, 2 in March, 
 8 in April, 8 in May, 12 in June, 39 in July, 28 in October, 15 in 
 November, 1 1 in December. 
 
 'Y'Wq pestis secnnda is only one of a series o{ pestilences in the 
 reigns of Edward III. and Richard II., which the chroniclers 
 number in succession to \.\\iz pestis qiiinta in 1391. The entries 
 in the annals are for the most part so meagre and colourless that 
 
 1 Guy dc Chauliac fur Aviyaoii, in llascr, \\\. 176. Oilier furciyn references in 
 the same work. 
 
204 Pestilence a coinmo/i theme, end of i^th ccntnry. 
 
 they give us no help in reahzing the share that a continuous 
 infection in the soil, from the Black Death onwards, may have 
 had in bringing about the disastrous state of the country in the 
 latter half of the fourteenth century. Edward III. was ruined in 
 reputation by his French wars, and ended his long reign in 
 dishonour. His grandson Richard II. found the task of govern- 
 ment too much for him, and was deposed. The history of this 
 period is not complete without some account of the health of 
 the country ; a single line or sentence in a chronicle, to mark the 
 date of a.pestis tcrtia or quarta or quinta, hardly does justice to 
 the place of national sickness among the events with which 
 historians fill their pages. The graphic picture of the times is 
 ' The Vision of Piers the Ploughman,' some passages of which 
 may help us to realize what the bare enumeration of second, 
 third, fourth and fifth pestilences meant. Some Latin poems of 
 the time may be cited in support ; and for more particular 
 evidence of the type of pestilence which remained in England 
 after the Black Death, we shall have to refer to certain extant 
 manuscript treatises, from the latter part of the fourteenth 
 century, which had been written in English to meet the wants 
 of the people. 
 
 The Latin poems of the time of Edward III. and Richard II. 
 need only be referred to so as to bring out by contrast the 
 immense superiority of the 'Vision of Piers the Ploughman.' 
 The poems of John of Bridlington, which are the most consider- 
 able of the Latin series of verses, contain numerous references to 
 the epidemics of the time, both at home and abroad. Curiously, 
 he dwells more upon the effects of famine — flux and fever — than 
 upon the plague proper, which he nowhere distinguishes. Thus, 
 of France about the time of the Black Death : 
 
 " Destructis granis, deerit mox copia panis ; 
 Poena fames panis, venter fluxu fit inanis." 
 
 Or again, with specific reference to the pcstis secnnda of 1361, 
 which we know to have been bubo-plague : 
 
 "...fluxus nocet, undique febris 
 Extirpat fluxus pollutes crimine luxus." 
 
 Another reference, in the form of a prophecy, which from the 
 
Plagues continuing, in ' Piers tJie Ploughman' 205 
 
 context is clearly to the pestilence of 1368-69, again dwells 
 exclusively upon famine: 
 
 " In mensis justi pandetur copia crusti : 
 Fundis falsorum premet arcta fames famulorum." 
 
 followed by a note in Latin : " from which it appears that the 
 poor in those days were ill off for want of food\" One Latin 
 poem of the end of the fourteenth century is expressly " On the 
 Pestilence," in the following manner: 
 
 " Ecce dolet Anglia luctibus imbuta, 
 Gens tremit tristitia sordibus poUuta, 
 Necat pestilentia viros atque bruta. 
 Cur? Quia flagitia regnant resoluta^.'' 
 
 Turning to the far more real or observant work of the same 
 date by Langland, we find among his general references to 
 sickness a most significant one in which he compares it to the 
 continual dropping of rain through a leaky roof: "The rain that 
 raineth where we rest should, be sicknesses and sorrows that we 
 suffer oft." Again, in the allegory of Conscience and Nature, 
 the former makes appeal to Nature to come forth as the scourge 
 of evil-living : 
 
 "Nature Conscience heard, and came out of the planets, and sent forth 
 his fore-goers, fevers and fluxes, coughs and cardiacles, cramps and tooth- 
 aches, rheums and radegoundes and roynous scalls, boils and botches and 
 burning agues, frenzies and foul evils — foragers of Nature had ypricked and 
 preyed polls of people that largely a legion lose their life soon. Eld the 
 hoary, he was in the vanguard, and bare the banner before Death, by right 
 he it claimed. Nature came after, v.'ith many keen sores, as pokkes and 
 pestilences, and much people shent. So Nature through corruptions killed 
 many. Death came driving after, and all to dust dashed kings and knights, 
 kaisers and popes, learned and lewd, he let no man stand that he hit even, 
 that ever stirred after. Many a lovely lady, and lemans of knights, swooned 
 and swelted for sorrow of Death's dints." 
 
 But " Conscience of his courtesy to Nature he besought, to cease and 
 suffer and see whether they would leave pride privily and be perfect Chris- 
 tens. And Nature ceased then, to see the people amend. Fortune gan 
 
 ^ Political Sono-s ami Poems. Ed. II.-Ric. II. Rolls series, No. 14, ed. T. 
 Wright, I. 173, 190, &c. 
 
 - Ibid. I. 229, from a MS. in ihe library of Cambriilgc University. 
 
206 TJic later Plagues in ' Piers the PlongJimanl 
 
 flatter those few that were alive, and promised them long life ; and Lechery he 
 sent among all manner men, wedded and unwedded, and gathered a great 
 host all against Conscience^." 
 
 Next came Avarice, Envy and other of the deadly sins, so 
 that the respite which Nature had given was of no real avail. 
 
 A clear reference to pestilence continuing in the country 
 comes in where the pope's exactions are mentioned. The pope 
 did nothing in return for his English tribute : 
 
 " Had I a clerk that could write, I would cast him a bill 
 That he send me under his seal a salve for the pestilence, 
 And that his blessing and his bulls botches might destroy. 
 For, sith he hath the power that Peter himself had, 
 He hath the pot with the salve, soothly as me ihinketh." 
 
 Among the other consequences " sithen the pestilence," was 
 this : " So is pride waxen, in religion and in all the realm among 
 rich and poor, that prayers have no power the pestilence to let ; 
 ...ne for dread of the death withdraw not their pride." 
 
 The pestis secunda of 1361, ox pestis puerorttvi, may perhaps 
 be pointed to in the passage where chapmen are blamed for 
 indulging their children, "ne for no pouste of pestilence correct 
 them overmuch." The ill-assorted marriages had doubtless 
 followed the great mortality itself; but the second pestilence, of 
 1 361, which affected the upper classes especially, and is said by 
 one chronicler to have cut off more men than women^ may have 
 been more specially pointed to in Langland's reference. Of 
 that pestilence a chronicle of the next century has preserved a 
 curious reminiscence : among its victims were men, doubtless of 
 the upper class, " whose wives, as women out of gouvernancc, 
 took as well strangers to their husbands and other lewd and 
 simple people, the which, forgetting their awe, worship and 
 birth, coupled and married them with them that were of low 
 degree and low reputations" 
 
 Although Langland, when he speaks of changes " sith the 
 
 ' The spelling lias been modernized, a few old words changed, and the division 
 into verses oniiUcd. 
 
 '^ Clironicon Angliac, liy a monk of Si All)ans. Rolls cd. 
 
 ^ TTarlcian MS. No. 1368, "Cluoniclc of England to A.n. 1419-" (IVinlcd with 
 addilioiis al tlie SI .Ml)ans press alioul 1484.) 
 
OtJicr sicknesses besides Plague proper. 207 
 
 pestilence time," means the great mortality of 1349, he means in 
 other places, the second, third, and perhaps also fourth pcsti- 
 lences\ The years of the pestilences down to the fifth are not the 
 same in all the chronicles ; there are indeed some nine outbreaks 
 that might have been enumerated after the Black Death to the 
 end of the century. Some of these are clearly associated with 
 scarcity, and may have been of the old type of famine-sickness ; 
 dysentery is, indeed, mentioned in connexion with the sickness 
 of 1391^ Again, an epidemic in London in 1382 is said by a 
 chronicler to have affected children (boys and girls), while the 
 same chronicler is explicit that the sickness in Norfolk the year 
 after was confined to the young of both sexes under a certain 
 age. Lastly, the epidemic of 1391 was so severe in the North as 
 to recall the great mortality itself; but under the same year is the 
 reference to sickness of the type of dysentery due to rotten fruit ; 
 and under the year before, 1 390, two chroniclers agree that the 
 epidemic was "mostly among children," or that it cut off "more 
 young than old." It would be unsafe, therefore, to conclude 
 that all the outbreaks oi pestis in England subsequent to the 
 Black Death, were of bubo-plague itself. The list of sicknesses 
 in Langland's poem gives, indeed, as much space to fevers and 
 fluxes, burning agues and frenzies, as to boils and botches, foul 
 evils, pokkes and pestilences — by which latter group of syn- 
 onyms the bubo-plague is meant. Pestis, it is well known, was 
 a generic name in the medieval period, just as pest and pestilence 
 are generic now. So generic was it that some may doubt 
 whether bubo-plague, of the type of 1349, was included at all 
 among "^io. pestes of the generations following. Positive evidence 
 of the continued existence of bubo-plague in England is, at least, 
 not superfluous, and this will be the best place to bring it in. 
 
 ^ Skeat, whose great edition of 'The Vision of Piers the Plouglnnan,' has been 
 brought out by the Early English Text Society, thinks that the ironical reference 
 (Passus XIII. 248) to the pope sending a salve for the pestilence ajiplies particularly 
 to the "Fourth Pestilence" of 1375 and T376, which was the pestis tertia of some 
 chronicles. 
 
 ^ Flux and fever from famine are alone mentioned in the poems of John of 
 Bridlington, which cover the period from the T51ack Death to the reign of Richard II. 
 
2o8 EnglisJi MSS. on Plagjtc, end of \^t/i ccntnry, 
 
 Medical Evidence of the Continuance of Plague. 
 
 The plague was called " the botch " down to the Elizabethan 
 and Stuart periods ; and the " botches" in Langland's poem, or, 
 as he writes it, " boches," were the familiar risings, under the 
 arms and elsewhere, which had given the disease its popular 
 name when it began to recur time after time. Apart from this 
 verbal or philological evidence, there is a clear proof of the 
 prevalence of true bubo-plague during the latter part of the 
 fourteenth century, in the manuscript ordinances or rules of 
 prevention and treatment which were in circulation. Most of 
 the extant copies bear the name of one John of Burgoyne, or 
 John of Bordeaux \ A fragment in comparatively late hand- 
 writing purports to be the ordinance of " a great Clark, Mr John 
 Cordewe, at the prayer of King Richard and other the Lords, 
 for pestilence''' " ; from which it may be concluded that this, the 
 commonly used ordinance, dates from the time of Richard II. 
 The names used in the text are " pestilence " and " pestilential 
 sores," and the handling of the subject is the conventional one 
 for the plague. The ordinance contains exceedingly little that 
 is of practical interest, and it is difficult to believe that it can 
 have been of real use to anyone. We are introduced to the 
 subject with a few empty common-places ; but whenever we 
 come to business, we are plainly told to go and consult those 
 who know — and this, be it observed, in a disease which was 
 remarkably uniform in its type and circumstances : 
 
 "Wherefore they that have not dronken of that swete drynke of 
 Astronomye may putte to these pestilentiall sores no fit remedies ; for, 
 because that they know not the cause and the quahty of the sickness, they 
 may not hele it, as sayeth the prince of physic Avicenna : ' How shouldest 
 thou hele a sore and yknowe not the cause ?' He that knoweth not the cause, 
 it is impossible that he hele the sickness." 
 
 If there were any doubt about the date of John of Burgoyne, 
 
 1 Egerlon MS. No. i.s;?, Sloane MS. 443 ("xiv. cent."), as well a,s several 
 copies of the 1 5tli century. 
 
 '^ Lansflowne MS. ?8^, fol. ^^o. 
 
Plague-ordinaiicc by JoJin of Bnrgoync. 209 
 
 or John of Bordeaux \ it ought to be set at rest by the discovery 
 that he corresponds in the closest way with the physician in the 
 Prologue of the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer's doctor of physic 
 stands for the well-grounded practitioner of the time — "grounded 
 in astronomic," it is true, but at all events academically grounded, 
 in contrast to the charlatans and pretenders who had not been 
 to Paris or Bologna, probably knew no Latin, to say nothing of 
 " astronomy," and therefore knew not how to let a patient die 
 (or recover) secujiduin artevi. The doctor of physic uses his 
 astrological knowledge so much in the manner of John of 
 Bordeaux, that one suspects Chaucer to have seen the passage 
 quoted above, and to have condensed it into the two following 
 lines : 
 
 " The cause yknowne, and of his harm the rote, 
 Anon he gave to the sick man his bote." 
 
 It was in the pestilence that this practitioner had made the 
 money which he kept so tightly. Richly clad he was ; 
 
 "And yet he was but easy of dispense ; 
 He kept that he wan in the pestilence. 
 For gold in physic is a cordial : 
 Therefore he loved gold in special." 
 
 This is John of Burgoyne all over ; it would have been an 
 anachronism in England by more than two hundred years to have 
 represented a physician as caring for any but paying patients, 
 or as regarding an epidemic sickness from any other point of 
 view than as a source of income. 
 
 Besides the " ordinance " of John of Burgoyne, which may be 
 assigned to the reign of Richard II., there was another essay on 
 the plague circulating in England in an English translation, of 
 which the copy among the Sloanc manuscripts is assigned to the 
 fourteenth century^ The importance attached to this manuscript 
 work is shown in the fact that it was chosen among the very 
 first to be printed at an English press, probably in the year 
 
 ' Mr Warner identifies him with the person who invented " Sir John Mandeville " 
 and the travels of Sir John. See an article in the Quarterly Review, April, iSSqi. 
 - Sloane MS. (British Museum) No. 2276, fol. 191-199. 
 
 c. 14 
 
2IO Essay on Plague by the Bishop of AarJins. 
 
 l48o\ It was reprinted in 1536, and the substance of it was 
 copied into nearly all the English books on plague (from one to 
 another) as late as the seventeenth century, much of its original 
 matter passing under the name of one Phaer, or Phayre or 
 Thayre, who was a compiler about the middle of the sixteenth 
 century. Writers on early English printing have made much of 
 the printed book of 1480 ; but they do not appear to have 
 known of the manuscript which was used as the printer's "copy'V 
 If one happens to use the latter first, and comes later to the 
 printed book, he will observe the identity not merely in the words 
 and spelling but even in the very form in which the type had 
 been cut. The authorship of a manuscript which is thus invested 
 with a various interest may deserve a few lines of inquiry. 
 
 The author of it describes himself in the (translated) intro- 
 duction as " I the bisshop of Arusiens, Doctour of phisike," that 
 is to say, bishop of Aarhus, in Denmark. In the text, he claims 
 to have practised physic at Montpellier : 
 
 " In the Mount of Pessulane I might not eschewe the company of people, 
 for I went from house to house, because of my poverty, to cure sick folk. 
 Therefore bread or a sponge sopped in vinegar I took with me, holding it to 
 my mouth and nose, because all aigre things stoppen the v.'ays of humours 
 and sufifereth no venomous thing to enter into a man's body ; and so I 
 escaped the pestilence, my fellows supposing that I should not live. These 
 foresaid things I have proved by myself''." 
 
 ^ 'A passing gode lityll boke necessarye and behouefull azenst the Pestilence.' 
 Uritish Museum, case 31, e. 13, 4to, twelve leaves. The MS. begins as follows: 
 "Here begynneth a lytell boke necessary and behouefull azens the pestylence. " 
 
 " Dibdin {Antiq. Typogr. II. 19) assigns the printing to Machlinia, and repro- 
 duces a page as a sample of his common type. Bliss {Reliquiae Heartiiatiae, li. 117) 
 says that this sample page does not correspond with that of the British Museum copy. 
 lie adds that there is a fragment of the printed book in the library of St Peter's 
 College, Cambridge, "pasted within the wooden covers of the binding of an edition 
 (1499) oi Discipidi Serniones.'" 
 
 ^ In the earliest printed Latin texts of this work (Antwerp, 1485? Leipzig, 1495? 
 and versified in Albertus Magnus, 'De Virtute Herbarum,' 1500?) he is named 
 Kamitus, bishop of Arusia, a city in the realm of Denmark. In the copy of the 
 English version in the British Museum, someone has called him Ramicius, having 
 written on a leaf, "Ramicius Episcopus Arusiensis civitatis Daciae Regimen contra 
 pestcm," with the date 1698. The name of Kamitus, being judged improbable on 
 the face of it, has been changed in the catalogue of the British Museum library into 
 Canutus. But there was no Canutus among the bishops of Aarhus, nor a Kamitus, 
 
TJic i^th century doctrines of Plague. 211 
 
 The fact that this medieval treatise, whatever its exact date, 
 was turned into English and circulated in manuscript, and that 
 it was chosen for printing almost as soon as English printing 
 began, in the reign of Edward IV., is sufficient evidence, if more 
 were needed, that the English had to reckon with bubo-plague 
 as one of their standing diseases throughout the latter part of 
 the medieval period. Before we come to the chronology of 
 English plagues in that period, from the Black Death to the 
 accession of the Tudor dynasty in 1485, it will be convenient to 
 consider here, with the help of the above treatise, how the 
 endemic plague was viewed in those days, — what it was ascribed 
 to in its origin, in its incidence upon houses and persons, and in 
 its propagation, what was advised for its avoidance or prevention, 
 and what was prescribed for its treatment. As the bishop's 
 essay was the source of most that was taught on these matters 
 in England for the next two or three hundred years, it will be an 
 economy to give a brief account of it here once for all. 
 
 The remote causes, or warnings of the approach of pestilence, 
 are given under seven heads, including the kind of weather, 
 swarms of flies, shooting stars, comets, thunder and lightning 
 out of the south, and winds out of the south ; this list was 
 reproduced, with little or no change, by the Elizabethan writers 
 of popular health-manuals. The second section of the essay is 
 on the " causes of pestilence." There are three causes : — 
 
 " Sometime it cometh from the root beneath ; other while from the root 
 above, so that we may feel sensibly howwith change of the air appeareth 
 
 nor a Ramicius. The two bishops that appear to suit best are Olaus, or Olaf, who was 
 bishop from 137 1 to 1388, and Ulricus or Udalricus, or Olric Stycka, who succeeded 
 in 1425 and held the see until 1449. Curiously enough, the latter, when he went to 
 Rome in 1425 to represent Eric, king of Pomerania in a suit with the dukes of 
 Sleswig, figures throughout the records of the suit as "Olaus, episcopus Arosiensis," 
 aUhough Olaus, bishop of Arusia, belonged to a former generation. It is, of course, 
 the merest guessing ; but I am inclined to think that the author of the essay on plague 
 was either bishop Olaus, of 1371-1388, or bishop Udalricus, of 1425-1449, a man of 
 character and ability, who also went by the name of Olaus; and that in any case 
 the manuscript version of the essay in the English tongue is more likely to have been 
 of the early part of the fifteenth century than of the fourteenth. The above facts are 
 collected from various parts of Langbeck's Script. Rcr. Dan.: the "Series Episco- 
 porum Arhusiorum" is in vol. vii. p. 212. Nothing is there said of any bishop of 
 Anrhus having written a book, or having been a physician at Montpellier. 
 
 14—2 
 
212 Doctrine of incidence and contctgionsncss. 
 
 unto us ; and sometime it cometh of both together, as well from the root 
 above as from the root beneath, as we see a siege or privy next to a chamber, 
 or of any other particular thing which corrupteth the air in his substance 
 and quality, which is a thing may happen every day. And thereof cometh 
 the ague of pestilence (and about the same many physicians be deceived, 
 not supposing this ague to be a pestilence). Sometimes it cometh of dead 
 carrion, or corruption of standing waters in ditches or sloughs and other 
 corrupt places. These things sometime be universal, sometime particular." 
 Then follow sentences on the " root above " which are somewhat tran- 
 scendental. When both "roots" work together, when, by "th' ynp'ffyons^" 
 above, the air is corrupt and by the putrefaction or rotten carrion of the 
 vile places beneath, — an infirmity is caused in man. "And such infirmity 
 sometimes is an ague, sometimes a posthume or a swelling, and that is in 
 many things. Also the air inspired sometimes is venomous and corrupt, 
 hurting the heart, that nature many ways is grieved, so that he perceiveth 
 not his harm 
 
 "These things written before are the causes of pestilence. Rut about 
 these things, two cjuestions be mooted. The first is, wherefore one dieth 
 and another dieth not, in a town where men be dead in one house and in 
 another house there dieth none. The second question is, whether pestilence 
 sores be contagious. 
 
 " To the first question, I say it may hap to be of two causes : that is to 
 say, of that thing that doth, and of that thing that suffereth. An ensample 
 of that thing that doth : The influence of the bodies above beholdeth that 
 place or that place, more than this place or this place. And one patient is 
 more disposed to die than another. Therefore it is to be noted that bodies 
 be more hot disposed, of open pores, than bodies infect having the pores 
 stopped with many humours. Where bodies be of resolution or opening, as 
 men which abusen them selfe with wymmen, or usen often times bathis ; or 
 men that be hot with labour or great anger — they have their bodies more 
 disposed to this great sickness. 
 
 " To the second c^uestion I say, that pestilence sores be contagious 
 by cause of infect humoures bodies, and the reek or smoke of such sores is 
 venomous and corrupteth the air. And therefore it is to flee from such 
 persons as be infect. In pestilence time nobody should stand in great press 
 of people, because some man of them may be infect. Therefore wise 
 physicians, in visiting sick folk, stand far from the patient, holding their 
 face toward the door or window. And so should the servants of sick folk 
 stand. Also it is good to a patient every day for to change his chamber, and 
 often times to have the windows open against the North and East, and to 
 spar the windows against the South. For the south wind hath two causes 
 of putrefaction. The first is, it maketh a man, being whole or sick, feeble in 
 
 ' Tlicsc words ("tlic impressions") are contracted in the printed book, exactly as 
 in the nianuscriiit. I liave modernised the spelling for llic most pari. 
 
Doctrine of prevention of Plague. 213 
 
 their bodies. The second cause is, as it is written in the Third of Apho- 
 risms, the south wind grieveth the hearing and hurteth the heart, because it 
 openeth the pores of man and entereth into the heart. Wherefore it is good 
 to an whole man in time of pestilence, when the wind is in the South, to 
 keep within the house all the day. And if it shall need a man to go out, yet 
 let him abide in his house till the sun be up in the East passing south- 
 ward." 
 
 These explanations of the incidence of plague are in part 
 repeated in the section of the essay where the author gives 
 directions for avoiding it. After enjoining penance, he proceeds : 
 
 "It is a good remedy to void and change the infect place. But some 
 may not profitably change their places. Therefore as much as to them is 
 possible, it is to be eschewed every cause of putrefaction and stinking, and 
 namely every fleshly lust with women is to be eschewed. Also the southern 
 wind, which wind is naturally infective : therefore spar the windows, etc. 
 Of the same cause, every foul stink is to be eschewed— of stable, stinking 
 fields, ways, or streets, and namely of stinking dead carrion ; and most of 
 stinking waters, where in many places water is kept two days or two nights, 
 or else there be gutters of water casten under the earth which caused great 
 stink and corruption. And of this cause some die in that house where such 
 things happen, and in another house die none, as it is said afore. Likewise 
 in that place where the worts and coles putrefied, it maketh noifull savour 
 and stinking. For in like wise as by the sweet odour of bawme the heart and 
 spirits have recreation, so of evil savours they be made feeble. Therefore 
 keep your house that an infect air enter not in. For an infect air most 
 causeth putrefaction in places and houses where folk sleep. Therefore let 
 your house be clean, and make clear fire of wood flaming : let your house be 
 made with fumigation of herbs, that is to say, with leaves of bay-tree, 
 juniper, yberiorgam — it is in the apothecary shops — wormwood etc.. ..For a 
 little crust corrupteth all the body. 
 
 "Also in the time of the pestilence it is better to abide within the house ; 
 for it is not wholesome to go into the city or town. Also let your house be 
 sprinkled, specially in summer, with vinegar and roses, and with the leaves 
 of vine tree. Also it is good to wash your hands ofttimes in the day with 
 water and vinegar, and wipe your face with your hands, and smell to them. 
 Also it is good always to savour aigre things." 
 
 Then follows his own Montpellier experience, already quoted. 
 
 The diagnostics come in casually along with the treatment : 
 
 " But some would understand how may a man feel when he is infect. I 
 say that a man which is infect, that day eateth not much meat for he is 
 replenished with evil humours ; and forthwith after dinner he hath lust to 
 
214 Vein opened according to position of the bnbo. 
 
 sleep, and feeleth great heat under cold. Also he hath great pain in the 
 forehead... He shall feel a swelling under the arm, or about the share, or 
 about the ears... When a man feeleth himself infect, as soon as he may, let 
 him be let blood plenteously till he swoon : then stop the vein. For a little 
 letting of blood moveth or stirreth venom." 
 
 Then follow directions for bleeding, according to the position 
 of the bubo — in the armpit, groin or neck, the direction " if on 
 the back " probably having reference to the carbuncle*. The 
 section on treatment, which is the last, ends with a prescription 
 for a medicine " that the sooner a swelling be made ripe." 
 
 These are sufficiently clear indications of the bubonic nature 
 of the disease called pestilence. At the same time the writer 
 includes an ague as also pestilential, due to similar causes and 
 arising on similar occasions. This is a use of the name ague 
 which should not be mistaken for its common application to 
 intermittent fever. Ague was simply (febris) acuta ; and pesti- 
 lential ague was a name for typhus fever in the sixteenth 
 century (as in Jones' Dyall of Agnes), as well as in Ireland until 
 a much later period. This early association of acute pestilential 
 fever with true bubo-plague means the same relationship of 
 typhus to plague which was systematically taught by Sydenham, 
 Willis, and Morton in the seventeenth century ; typhus in their 
 time was the frequent attendant of plague, — 3. pestis niitior ; and 
 it would appear to have been its attendant and congener in the 
 fourteenth century also. 
 
 1 "When a man feeleth himself infect, as soon as he may, let him be let blood 
 plenteously till he swoon: then stop the vein. For a little letting of blood moveth or 
 stirreth venom... Let him blood on the side of the body where the swelling appeareth. 
 Therefore if a swelling appear under the right arm, let blood in the middle of the 
 same arm, in the vein called medimia. If it appear under the left arm, let him blood 
 in midst of the same, or in the vein of the liver which is about the little finger. And 
 if it be about the share, let him blood about the heel upon the same side. If the 
 swelling be in the neck, let him blood in the vein called cephalica, about the 
 thumb in the hand of the same side; or in the vein the which is called mediana of 
 the same arm, or in the hand of the same side about the little finger. And, overmore, 
 if the swelling appear about the ear, let him blood in the vein called cephalica of the 
 same side, or in the vein which is between the long finger and the thumb, lest many 
 venomous tilings go into the lirain." If the swelling is in the shoulders, bleed from 
 ihc iiicdiaiia: if on the back hom pedica magna, and so on. 
 
The pcslllcnce of 1 368- 1 369. 2 1 5 
 
 The Fourteenth Century Chronology continued. 
 
 Two epidemics contend in the chronicles for being the/t'j-//^ 
 tertia — that of 1368-69, and that of 1375. The former is 
 described as a "great pestilence of men and the larger animals'," 
 and it appears to have been associated with unfavourable seasons 
 and with the beginning of that scarcity which Langland's poem 
 refers to the month of April, 1370 : 
 
 Atte Londoun, I leve, liketh wel my wafres 
 
 And louren whan thei lakken hem. — It is nought longe passed, 
 
 There was a careful comune whan no cart cam to towne 
 
 With bred fro Strethforth, tho gan beggeres wepe 
 
 And werkmen were agast a lite. This wole be thought longe 
 
 In the date of our Drighte in a drye Aprille, 
 
 A thousand and thre hondreth tweis thretty and ten 
 
 My wafres there were gesen whan Chichestre was Maire-. 
 
 The pestis of 1368 and 1369 may have been primarily a 
 famine-sickness ; but it does not follow that there was no bubo- 
 plague mixed therewith. On the contrary, seasons of scarcity 
 were often in after experience found to be the seasons of plague, 
 the lowered vitality probably offering the opportunity to the 
 plague-virus. Previous to the harvests of 1376 and 1377, which 
 were abundant, there had been an unbroken period of high 
 prices for many years, of which 1371 was remembered as "the 
 grete dere yere^" But the pestis tertia appears to have been 
 most severe in the summer of 1368 ; for, on 23 July of that year, 
 Simon, archbishop of Canterbury, ordered public prayers for the 
 
 1 Walsingham, Hist. Angl. I. 309. Adam of Murimuth, Engl. Hist. Soc. 
 
 - The Stratford bread-carts are explained in Stow's Survty of London ("Lime 
 Street Ward"). In tlie famines of 1512 and 1527, they were besieged on the way by 
 hungry citizens and had to be guarded. The same phrase of bread being "gesen" or 
 scarce, occurs in a letter of 4 September, 1 535, from Thomas Broke to Cromwell, 
 secretary of State : "never knew good bread so geason in London at this time of the 
 year ; it is so musty, and of so evil wheat, that it is rather poisonous than nourishing ; 
 what was sold for a halfpenny, when you were here, is now a penny." {Cal. State 
 Papers, Henry VIII. vol. ix. § 274.) 
 
 3 Thorold Rogers. A Short English Chronicle, Camden Soc. 1880 : — "45 Edward 
 III. This yere was called the grete dere ycre, and tliat same yere was a quarter of 
 whete at iiii nobles." 
 
2i6 iVuisauces causing infection in London, 1371. 
 
 cessation of the pestilence\ and it is under the same year that 
 the wills of deceased London citizens are enrolled in unusual 
 numbers, although not in such numbers as in the pestis secimda 
 of 1361". Public prayers for the cessation of pestilence (without 
 reference to famine) and an unusual mortality of the richer 
 citizens, point to the plague proper, which may or may not have 
 been the type of sickness in the country districts in 1369, the 
 second year of the epidemic^ 
 
 There is, furthermore, some indirect evidence that pesti- 
 lential disease, and probably bubo-plague, occurred in London 
 subsequent to the scarcity of the dry April, 1370, to which 
 Langland's verses relate. This evidence lies in the compari- 
 son of the wording of two ordinances of Edward III., one 
 of 1369 and the other of 1371, both relating to nuisances in 
 the city*. In an order of the king in Council (43 Edward III.) 
 for stopping the carrying of slaughter-house offal from the 
 shambles in St Nicholas parish, within Newgate, through the 
 streets, lanes, and other places to the banks of the water of 
 Thames near to Baynard's Castle, where there was a jetty for 
 throwing the refuse from into the river, the motive assigned is 
 that divers prelates, nobles, and other persons having houses in 
 the line of traffic, had complained grievously of these offences 
 to the sight and smell. But, in an amended order of 28th 
 October, 1371, against the same nuisance and with a definite 
 (but futile) relegation of all slaughtering to Stratford on the one 
 side and Knightsbridge on the other, the motive is differently 
 stated : "Whereas of late, from the putrefied blood of slaughtered 
 beasts running in the streets, and the entrails thereof thrown 
 into the water of Thames, the air in the same city has been 
 greatly corrupted and infected, and whereby the worst of 
 
 1 Wilkins, Concilia-, in. 74: " Ue oiando pro cessatioue pestilentiae," dated 
 Slyndon, 10 Cal. Aug. a.d. mccclxvhi. 
 
 - Sharpe, Cal. of Wills, vol. n. 
 
 •* Otterbourne (ed. Heaine, p. 133) says that \h.& pestis tertia was in 1368, and that 
 it lasted two years. Nicolas {C/ironol. of History, p. 389) gives from a Lansdowne 
 MS. (no. 863, fol. 107) of the time of Charles I., the duration of the pestis tertia as 2 
 July — 29 .Sept., 1369, which should probably read " 2 July, 1368 — 29 Sept. 1369." 
 
 ■* Memorials of London, etc. from the Council Records. Edited by II. T. Riley. 
 Lond. 1867, p. 339 and p. 356. 
 
The pestilence of I^JS- 217 
 
 abominations and stenches have been generated, and sicknesses 
 and many other maladies have befallen persons dwelling in the 
 same city and resorting thereto : — We, desiring to take precau- 
 tions against such perils, and to provide for the decency of the 
 said city, and the safety of the same our people" etc. 
 
 Up to this date, the Rolls of Parliament contain frequent 
 references to the wasting and impoverishment of the country by 
 pestilence. A petition of 1362 begs the king "to consider the 
 divers mischiefs that have come to his commons by divers 
 pestilences of wind and water, and mortality of men and 
 beasts " — the destructive wind being the tornado-like storm, on 
 the i6th January, 1362, "on Saturday at even," which was long 
 remembered, and is commemorated, along with the Black 
 Death itself, in an inscription in the church of Ashwell, Herts. 
 Next year, another petition states that " pestilences and great 
 winds have done divers mischiefs " — manors and tenements held 
 direct from the king having become desolate and ruinous. In 
 1369 a petition states that "the king's ferms [rents] in every 
 county of England are greatly abated by the great mortalities." 
 The parliament of 1376, the "good Parliament" so-called, is 
 able to point the moral of its petitions by frequent references to 
 the pestilences "that have been in the kingdom one after 
 another," the pestilences "of people and servants," the murrains 
 of cattle, and " the failure of their corn and other fruits of the 
 earth." The same language recurs in the second parliament of 
 Richard II. in 1378 (the year after the poll-tax), and from that 
 time until the end of his reign, it becomes stereotyped in the 
 petitions deprecating heavy subsidies or excusing the smallness 
 of the sums voted. 
 
 The pestilence of 1375 would appear to have been considered 
 as one of the greater sort. The author of the Eiilogiinn reckons 
 it the pcstis tertia (passing over that of 1 368-69). The season 
 was one of great heat, there was "grandis pestilentia" both in 
 England and other countries, an infinity of both sexes died, the 
 mortality being so swift that the pope, " at the instance of the 
 cardinal of England " granted plenary remission to all dying 
 contrite and confessing their sins\ That looks like an epidemic 
 
 1 Walsingham, Jlist. Aiigl. I. 319; Adam of Muiiiuutli. 
 
2i8 The ''foul death'' in the North of England, 1379. 
 
 of true bubo-plague, — probably the pestis quarta correctly so- 
 called \ 
 
 In 1379 there was a great plague in the Northern parts, 
 which were stripped of their best men ; the Scots made a raid, 
 with the following prayer on their lips: "God and Sen Mungo, 
 Sen Ninian and Seynt Andrew scheld us this day and ilka day 
 fro Goddis grace, and the foule deth that Ynglessh men dyene 
 upon " — foul death being the name given to plague also in 1349^ 
 The northern counties send a petition to the parliament of 
 1379-80, that the king would "consider the very great hurt and 
 damage which they have suffered, and are still suffering, both 
 by pestilence and by the continual devastations of the Scots 
 enemyl" 
 
 In the parliament of 1381-82 there is a petition from the 
 convent of Salisbury as to want of money to repair the losses 
 caused by the pestilence, of which the tenants are nearly all 
 dead, and by the murrain of cattle. This is more than thirty 
 years from the Black Death, and can hardly refer, as some 
 earlier petitions may have done, to the enduring effects of that 
 calamity. The sixth parliament of Richard 11. (1382), has two 
 of the stereotyped petitions deprecating a heavy subsidy on the 
 ground of " the great poverty and disease " of the commons, 
 through pestilence of people, murrain of cattle, failure of crops, 
 great floods, etc.* This was the year after the Peasant Revolt, 
 which had coincided with troubles of various kinds. A Norwich 
 chronicle, perhaps of contemporary authority, enters, under the 
 year 1382, a very pestilential fever in many places of the 
 country, and very extraordinary inundations of the fens^ In 
 
 ' The chroniclers are not agreed as to the chronology of the various 14th century 
 plagues from the first (the Black Death) to the fifth. Some of the enumerations are 
 clearly erroneous. Thus in A Short English Chronicle from the Lambeth MS. (ed. 
 Gairdner for the Camden Society, 1880), the plague of 1361 is erroneously called 
 "the threde pestilence," while the fourth is assigned to 1369 and the fifth to 1377 
 (for 1375). Otterbourne places the qtiarta in 1374 (for 1375), and the qitinta (as 
 others do) in 1391; but in the Life of Richard 11. , by a monk of Evesham, the 
 pestilence of 1382 is more correctly reckoned the fifth from the Black Death. 
 
 - Walsingham, Ilist. Angl. I. 409. Chronicon Angliae, p. 239. 
 
 ■' Kot. Pari. IV. 806. 
 
 ■* Ibid. \\\. pp. 139a, 147a. 
 
 " V,\o\\\<i!^\v\A'% History of Norfolk, ill. p. 111. 
 
Pestilences from 1382 to 1390. 219 
 
 London the epidemic of 1382 is said to have been "chiefly 
 among boys and girls'." A primitive English poem of the time 
 has for its subject the earthquake of 1382, and with that portent 
 it associates not only the Peasant's Rebellion but also " the 
 pestilens^" 
 
 The year 1383 was a bad one for the fruit, which was spoiled 
 by " foetid fogs, exhalations and various corruptions of the air " : 
 from eating of the spoiled fruits many died, or incurred serious 
 illness and infirmities^ By another account, a great pestilence 
 in Kent and other parts of England destroyed many, sparing no 
 age or sex. In Norfolk the sickness that year is said to have 
 been confined to young persons'*. This was only one of the 
 occasions which might have been referred to in ' Piers Ploughman,' 
 when the poor people thought to "poison Hunger" by bad food. 
 
 The next pestilence, that of 1390 and 1391, was so prolonged 
 and so serious as to be compared with the Great Mortality itself 
 It is called the pestis qiiinta by two annalists^ and is described 
 not without some detail by several. It is clear that the seeds of 
 disease were ready to burst forth at various parts of the country ; 
 for we read that in 1389, the king was in the south of England, 
 and seeing some of his men prostrated by sudden death, he 
 returned to Windsor**. Another outburst came the year after. 
 Intense heat began in June and lasted until September; great 
 mortality ensued, the epidemic continuing in diverse parts of 
 England, but not everywhere, until Michaelmas ; it cut off more 
 young than old, as well as several famous soldiers^ The St 
 Albans entry confirms this : " A great plague, especially of 
 youths and children, who died everywhere in towns and villages, 
 in incredible and excessive numbers^" After the epidemic 
 
 1 Continuator of Iligden, ix. 14. 
 
 ^ Political Songs and Poei/is. KcjIIs series, No. 14, I. j). 252: — 
 "The rysyng of the comuynes in loiide, 
 
 The pestilens, and the corthe-quake — 
 
 Theose thi^ee thinges I understonde." 
 '^ Walsingham, Hist. Angl. \\. 109. 
 •* Continuator of Higden, ix. 21, 27. 
 
 ^ Enlogiiiiu Uistorianiin, ill. 369. Otteibourne, ed. Ilearne: "From the nativity 
 of St John Baptist to the feast of St Luke," 1391. 
 
 •" Continuator of Iligden, ix. 216. ^ Ibid. 237. 
 
 ^ Walsingham, Hist. Angl. 11. 186. 
 
220 TJie Plague at York, 1391. — Various, 1 393-1399. 
 
 there was scarcity, of which we have special accounts from 
 Norfolk \ But the heaviest mortality fell in the year 1391. 
 There was first of all scarcity, now in its second year, and 
 aggravated by six weeks of continual gloom in July and August. 
 At the time of the nuts, apples and other fruits of the kind, 
 many poor people died of dysentery, and the sickness would 
 have been worse but for the laudable care of the mayor of London 
 who caused corn to be brought from over sea. In Norfolk 
 and many other counties the sickness was compared even to the 
 Great Mortality, and was probably a mixture of famine-pestilence 
 with bubo-plague. At York " eleven thousand " were said to 
 have been buried ^ Another account says that the North 
 suffered severely, and also the West, and that the sickness 
 lasted all summer^ Under the year 1393 one annalist states 
 that many died in Essex in September and October, "on 
 the pestilence setting in'*." The next evidence comes from the 
 Rolls of Parliament ; in the first parliament of Henry IV. (1399) 
 a petition is presented " that the king would graciously consider 
 the great pestilence which is in the northern parts," and send 
 sufficient men to defend the Scots marches. 
 
 The first great outburst of plague in the fifteenth century 
 falls somewhere between 1405 and 1407. "So great pestilence," 
 says the St Albans annalist, under the year 1407, " had not been 
 seen for many years." In London "thirty thousand men and 
 women " are reported to have died in a short space ; and " in 
 
 ^ Blomefield's History of Norfolk, iii. 113 : — " 1390. A great mortality increased 
 in Norfolk and in many other counties in England, and it seemed not milike the 
 season of the great pestilence : it was occasioned by a great want of victuals, that 
 forced many people to eat unwholesome food, and so brought distempers upon them. 
 This dearth began under the sickle, and lasted to the following harvest [1391], but 
 was not so much for want of corn, as money to purchase it, occasioned by the law 
 made in relation to wool, by which wool became dog-cheap ; for a stone of chosen 
 and picked wool of the best sort was sold for 3 sh. and some for 22 pence or 2 sh., so 
 that in these times the woollen manufacture was the great support of the nation." 
 According to Thorold Rogers, these high prices of wool obtained from 1364 to 1380. 
 
 2 Walsingham, II. 203. The Continuator of Higden (ix. 259) says 12,000. These 
 estimates are, of course, the merest guesses, and extreme exaggerations. The whole 
 pojiulation of York would have been under 15,000. 
 
 ■* Higden, ibid. 
 
 ^ Walsingham, n. 213; Si Ailjans Ann;iLs of Uic, II. aiul llcii. IV. 
 
A great pestilence, 1407. — Plague in tJie North, 1420-21. 221 
 
 country villages the sickness fell so heavily upon the wretched 
 peasants that many homes that had before been gladdened by a 
 numerous family were left almost empty\" But it is under the 
 7th of Henry IV. (1405) that Hall's chronicle narrates how the 
 king, to avoid the city on account of the plague, sailed from Queen- 
 borough to a port in Essex, and so to Plashey, " there to pass his 
 time till the plague were ceased" (p. 36). Another chronicle says 
 that the plague of 1407 was mostly in the West country. In 
 that year, the 9th of Henry IV., there is a petition from Ilchester 
 in Somerset for a remission of dues " because the town is so 
 impoverished and desolate of people that the burgesses are unable 
 to pay the said ferme," and for the cancelling of all arrears due 
 since the 43rd year of Edward III. (1369). In the i ith of Henry 
 IV. (1410-11), the burgesses of Truro represent "that the said 
 town is impoverished by pestilence and the death of men, and 
 by invasions and loss by the enemy by sea, and by the surcharge 
 of twelve lives, and by default of inhabitants in the said town " — 
 a petition apparently similar in terms to one that had been 
 submitted in the previous reign. In the ist of Henry IV. (1399), 
 petitions of the same kind had been presented from Lincoln 
 and Yarmouth ; the former was " in great part empty and 
 uninhabited," while the latter had " its houses vacant and void, 
 owing to pestilence and other things." 
 
 For the year 1413 there is a brief entry that "numbers of 
 Englishmen were struck by plague and ceased to live^" A 
 single chronicler mentions a pestilence in Norfolk in 1420^ ; but 
 the Rolls of Parliament bear undoubted witness to a very severe 
 prevalence of plague in the North about the same time : a 
 petition from the Marches in 142 1 speaks of "great numbers of 
 persons dead by the great mortalities and pestilences which have 
 raged for three years past and still reign ; where a hundred men 
 used to be there are not ten, and these of small account ; where 
 
 1 Walsingham, 11. 276. The Chronicle of William Gregory (Camden Society, cd. 
 Gairdner) enters under the year 1407, a great frost, for twenty-five weeks. It would 
 be of real scientific interest to know the chronology exactly, whether the plague 
 followed or preceded the long cold drought ; i)ut the year of the plague is dis- 
 putable, if any heed be paid to the date of 1406, given by later compilers. 
 
 - Walsingham, II. 297. Otterbourne, under 141 1, says plague in Gascony. 
 
 ■' Annals of Bermnndscy, in Annates Monast. Rolls ed. iir. 485. 
 
222 No %var-pcstilcnccs in England, \^th century. 
 
 people of position kept twenty men at arms they now keep only 
 themselves " ; the enemy were making raids and food was 
 scarce'. Another petition the same year (9 Henry V.) states 
 that " both by pestilence within the realm and wars without 
 there are not sufficient men of estate to hold the office of 
 sheriff"." That was shortly after Agincourt and the conquest of 
 France, when the fortunes of Henry V. were at their highest 
 point. The horrors of the siege of Rouen (141 9) were a favourite 
 subject with poets of the time^, but they were of a kind foreign 
 to English experience in that age, and, indeed, in all periods of 
 our history, save that of the Danish invasions. The Cromwellian 
 Civil Wars, as we shall see, do indeed furnish many instances of 
 plague, and some of typhus fever, in besieged or occupied towns ; 
 but, for the middle part of the fifteenth century, including 
 the period of the wars of York and Lancaster, there is no good 
 reason to suppose that fevers or other viorbi miseriae^ were rife 
 among the common people, least of all among the peasantry. 
 
 The Public Health in the Fifteenth Century. 
 
 Our safest indications are got from the prices of commodities 
 and the rates of wages, and these, according to the most competent 
 authority, Thorold Rogers, were more favourable to the working 
 class in the fifteenth century than at other periods : " As the 
 agriculturist throve in the fifteenth century, so the mechanic and 
 the artisan was also prosperous. This was the age in which 
 the property of the guilds was generally acquired." On 
 famines in particular, I shall quote one other passage, which 
 entirely confirms the view that I had independently stated in 
 the first chapter when speaking of Ergotism : 
 
 " Famine, in the strict sense of the word, has rarely occurred in England, 
 owing to the practice which the inhabitants of this island have persistently 
 
 ^ Rot. Pari. IV. 143 a. It is proljably under 1420 that the "great plague" at 
 Newcastle, given in so many words in I'raiid's History under 1410, should be placed. 
 '- Ihid. 148 b. 
 
 ■' llistor. Collcc. of a Citizen of London, \^th cent. Camden Soc. cd. Clairdner, 
 1876 : 
 
 "They dyde faster every day 
 Thenn men myght them in crtlie lay." 
 
TJic great famine of 1438-39. 223 
 
 maintained of living mainly on the clearest kind of corn. ..The people lived 
 abundantly, and, except when extraordinary scarcity occurred, regularly on 
 the best provision which could be procured^." 
 
 One such period of extraordinary .scarcity all over England 
 fell in the years 1438-39. The chronicle of Croyland says that 
 there were three wet harvests in succession, that famine had 
 been almost constant for two years, and that the people were 
 reduced to eating dried herbs and roots^ That would have been 
 a famine of the old kind, like those of 1258 and 1315, wheat 
 having touched 20J-. But it should not lead us to suppose that 
 the disastrous period of the end of Edward III.'s reign and of 
 the reign of Richard II. was continued throughout the fifteenth 
 century. It is true that the records of that century are scantier 
 than for earlier periods ; the monastic chronicles have all ceased, 
 except those of St Albans and Croyland, and the citizcn.s' 
 diaries, which took their place, have hardly begun. It is 
 possible that a fuller record would have shown a greater 
 prevalence of distress throughout the country. It is probably 
 owing to the scantiness of the history that the views of the 
 fifteenth century range from the extreme of optimism to the 
 extreme of pessimism. Where little is known, much may be 
 imagined. Thus, a recent writer on England in the FifteentJi 
 Century^, says that " all attempts to specify the years of scarcity 
 would only mislead " ; and again : " There is hardly any period 
 of five years during that time [15th century] without these 
 ghastly records." Another recent writer* remarks upon the 
 fifteenth century being called a time of rude plenty, and 
 sets against that " the famines, the plagues, the skin-diseases, 
 the miserable quality of the food, the insecurity of life and 
 property, the hovels in which the people lived, and the t)-ranny 
 and oppression of a time of unsettled government." It is 
 needless to controvert the merely subjective impression in an 
 author's mind. But, in order to clear our ideas, let us take these 
 things one by one. What were firstly the famines ? There is no 
 
 1 History of Agriculture and Prices in England, IV. 105. 
 
 2 Chronicle of Croyland, in Gale, I. 518 ; Rogers, iv. 233. 
 •^ Denton. London, 1886, p. 92. 
 
 ■• Mackay, Th,' Englisli Poor. Lmulon, iScjo, p- 40. 
 
^ 
 
 224 State of England in the \^th century. 
 
 great one but that of 1438-39, which was due to a succession of 
 wet harvests, and was equally severe in Scotland and in France, 
 having in them caused famine-sickness as well as plague. Of the 
 plagues, which were certainly no worse than in the Elizabethan 
 and Stuart times, I shall speak in detail almost at once. Of the 
 skin-diseases, there is nowhere a word said : another writer* 
 specifies leprosy as afflicting England " all over the country " in 
 the fifteenth century, whereas it can be shown that the prevalence 
 of that disease, such as it had ever been in England, had almost 
 ceased, and its sentimental vogue passed, in the reign of Edward 
 III. The miserable quality of the food and the wretched hovels 
 have certainly no special relevancy to the period^; on the 
 contrary, the picture that we get of the manor of Castle Combe 
 in the fifteenth century is that of a prosperous community, 
 although not a highly moral one. As to insecurity of life and 
 property, and oppression of government, there seems to be some 
 illusion because the time was that of the wars of York and 
 Lancaster. But we have the significant observation of Philip de 
 Comines, a contemporary French statesman who kept his eye 
 on the state of other countries ; writing of the effects of civil war, 
 he says : — 
 
 " England has this peculiar grace that neither the country, nor the people, 
 nor the houses are wasted or demolished ; but the calamities and mis- 
 fortunes of the war fall only upon the soldiers and especially the nobility, 
 of whom they are more than ordinarily jealous : for nothing is perfect in this 
 world." 
 
 The truth seems to be that the middle part of the fifteenth 
 century was really the time " ere England's woes began, when 
 
 1 W. Cunningham, Groxvth of English IndtLstry and Coinmerce. 2nd ed. Camb. 
 1890, p. ro5. He reproduces Denton's statement that "there was chronic typhoid in 
 the towns." Denton professes to have found this in Hecker, who had certainly no 
 knowledge of English towns in the 15th century, and is, in general, more entertaining 
 as ^ philosophe than trustworthy for erudition. 
 
 - In 1 741, during a prevalence of fever all over England, we hear of bread made 
 of horse-beans, pease, and coarse unsound barley as the chief food of the poor. {Gent. 
 Magaz. letters of 27 Nov. 1741 and 11 Jan. i74'2). Thorold Rogers {Agric. and 
 Prices, V. Preface) thinks that the staple food of the English labourer, whcalen bread, 
 had first been changed, especially in the North, to rye, barley and oat bread, in the 
 r7th century during the Civil Wars. 
 
Plague still a country disease in i^th century. 225 
 
 every rood of ground maintained its man," and that the Golden 
 Age came to an end as soon as the dynastic and aristocratic 
 quarrel was ended, and the nobles left free to turn their attention 
 to their lapsing feudal rights.^ It is then that we begin to hear of 
 enclosures, of adding house to house and field to field, of huge 
 sheep-farms with no labourers on the soil, and of deserted 
 villages. Goldsmith meant it of his own time ; but Auburn 
 flourishing belonged to the fifteenth century, and Auburn deserted 
 was a common English experience in the time of Henry VIII. 
 It is just because the fifteenth century is bounded on cither side 
 by periods of known distress among the commons, and is itself 
 without a history, that one thinks of it as happy ; and that view 
 of it is borne out by the economic history which has been 
 laboriously constructed for it. 
 
 So much being premised of the country's well-being at large, 
 we may now return to the particular records of epidemics of 
 plague. 
 
 Chronology of Plagues in the Fifteenth Century. 
 
 With the exception of an undoubted reference to influenza 
 epidemic all over England in 1427 (a year of its prevalence in 
 France also), which I shall postpone to a future chapter, the 
 history down to the arrival of the sweating sickness in 1485, is 
 concerned almost exclusively with notices of plague, and of 
 plague mostly in the towns. It cannot be maintained that rural 
 districts were exempt, or that some great epidemics of plague 
 did not fall on town and country alike. Thus, the St Albans 
 annalist, under the year 143 1, has an entry of "pestilence at 
 Codycote and divers places of this domain in this year." Again, 
 in 1439, the Rolls of Parliament contain a petition to the king 
 "how that a sickness called the Pestilence universally through 
 this your realm more commonly reigneth than hath been usual 
 before this time, the which is an infirmity most infective, and the 
 presence of such so infect must be eschewed, as by noble 
 Fisisseanes and wise Philosofors before this time plainly it hath 
 been determined, and as experience daily showeth " — therefore 
 to omit the ceremony of kissing the king in doing knightly 
 
 C. IS 
 
226 Plagnc-dcatJis among Canterbury monks. 
 
 service, " and the homage to be as though they kissed you." 
 That may have been a plague both of town and country during 
 famine, comparable to the epidemic of 1407, which, as "Walsing- 
 ham " expressly says, was severely felt in the homes of the 
 peasantry as well as in London. But plague henceforth is 
 seldom universal ; it becomes more and more a disease of the 
 towns, and when it does occur in the country, it is for the most 
 part at some few limited spots. A Paston letter of the years 
 between 1461 and 1466 gives us a glimpse of the sort of the 
 incidence of plague in country places, and of the avoidance of 
 such infected spots, which we shall find often mentioned in the 
 documents of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries \ There 
 is, of course, no means of estimating the frequency of plague in 
 these almost sporadic circumstances. The disease must have 
 had its seats of election in the country, but we may safely 
 conclude that these, after the Black Death and the recurrences 
 thereof down, say, to 1407, were much fewer than in the towns. 
 One significant piece of evidence comes from the great monastery 
 of Canterbury. Among its records is an obituary, on twenty 
 sheets, of all the monks from 1286 to 15 17. Out of a hundred 
 cases taken without selection from the record, there died, of 
 pestilence, 33; of phthisis, 10; of chronic diseases, 29. "Pesti- 
 lence " appears to mean specifically bubo-plague ; for we 
 find besides, among the sample hundred, two deaths from 
 flux, one of these corpses having been buried immediately 
 propter infexioneni. The inference, under correction from 
 further inquiry, would be that one-third of the deaths in the 
 monastery of Canterbury during the first half of the reign of 
 plague in England were from that disease. And that was in a 
 monastery which, in the Black Death itself, is reported, in the 
 same record, to have lost " only four " out of a membership of 
 about cightyl 
 
 ' Paston Letters. Ed. (lairdner, 1872, U. ■254: John Wymondham of Fellbrigg 
 to John Paston, loth Nov. "And forasmuch as there was a child dead at Asteleys, 
 and one other like to be dead in the same place, what time I rode out about my little 
 livelihood, my lady and I both thought pity on my mistress your wife to see her abide 
 there, and desired her to come to my poor house, unto such time as you should be 
 otherwise aviscd. " 
 
 - Ilisto). MSS. Co»i mission, l.\. 127 b. 
 
Plague in London, 1426. 227 
 
 It remains to enumerate briefly the known instances of 
 plague in London or other towns, from the last date given 
 (1420) down to the beginning of the Tudor period (1485). Its 
 prevalence " in England," but more probably in London only, in 
 1426, comes out in a letter from the Senate of Venice cautioning 
 the captain of the Flanders galleys and the vice-captain of the 
 London galleys\ We hear also of that plague in London owing 
 to the fact that certain Scotsmen of rank, hostages for the 
 ransom of the king of Scots, died of the plague in London. An 
 envoy who proceeded to Scotland on 12th March, 1427, was 
 instructed to ask that the dead hostages be replaced by others 
 of equal rank ; and if the king of Scots objected on the ground 
 that they had died because they had been kept in places where 
 the late pestilence raged, notwithstanding their request to be re- 
 moved, the envoy was to say that the hostages had been kept in 
 London, where the dukes of Bedford and Gloucester and all 
 other lords of the Council remained during the time; and that 
 the hostages were " neither pinned nor barred up " in any house, 
 but went at large in the city, and might have taken any measures 
 they pleased for their own preservation. It appears, however, 
 that the council removed from the city, and that the courts were 
 adjourned, at a stage of the epidemic subsequent to the deaths 
 of the Scots. The last plea of the envoy was that, supposing the 
 pestilence had prevailed throughout England, the king was not 
 therefore bound to send the hostages out of England ; from 
 which hypothetical construction, we may conclude that the 
 epidemic was special to London — one of a long series requiring 
 the king's Court, the Parliament, and the Law Courts to be 
 adjourned I 
 
 In 1433, the Parliament which met at Westminster on the 
 8th July, was prorogued on the 15th August, on account of 
 the gravis pestilentia which began to arise in London and the 
 suburbsl A London chronicler enters, under the 12th of 
 Henry VI. (1433) "a grete pestilence and a grete frost," a con- 
 junction that would be interesting if the hard winter had pre- 
 
 1 Calendar of State Papers. Venetian, vol. i. § 236. 
 
 - Proceedings and Ordinances of the Prii'y Council. Ed. Nicolas. ITI. p. xlv. 
 
 * Eot. Pari. IV. 420 b. 
 
 15—2 
 
228 Pestilence general in England, 1439. 
 
 ceded\ The plague revived in London in the following autumn ; 
 for, on the 27th October, 1434, the Privy Council ordered all 
 pleas then pending to be continued from the morrow of All 
 Souls to the octaves of St Hilary on account of the epidemic^ 
 After three years, in 1437, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas 
 paid a visit to St Albans Abbey and remained there some time, 
 " on account of the epidemic plague which was then reigning in 
 the city of London ^" Two years after, 1439, comes the entry 
 in the Rolls of Parliament, already quoted, with reference to 
 omitting the ceremony of kissing the king, because " a sickness 
 called the Pestilence universally through this your realm more 
 commonly reigneth than hath been usual before this time, the 
 which is an infirmity most infective^" Thus we have in the 
 decade from 1430 to 1440 no fewer than four distinct outbreaks 
 of plague, three of them confined to the city of I>ondon, and one 
 of them, that of 1439, general throughout the realm. The last 
 was " a sickness called the pestilence," which should mean the 
 bubo-plague. The year was one of great distress abroad, many 
 thousands having died in Paris. It was a year of famine in 
 Scotland, where the disease was undoubtedly dysentery in part ; 
 but the information from Scotland (given in the sequel) points 
 to the true plague supervening on the other. There was famine 
 in England at the time when it was in France and in Scotland, 
 so that the type of sickness may have been, in England also, 
 fever and dysentery first and plague afterwards. 
 
 In 1444, on the 5th of June, the Rolls contain the entry that 
 grave pestilence began to arise. A severe pestilence is reported 
 at Oxford in I448^ On the 30th May, 1449, Parliament is 
 
 1 Arnold's Chronicle, p. xxxii. 
 
 ^ Proc. and Ord. Privy Council, I v. p. Ixxx. Sir Harris Nicolas, in this con- 
 nexion, remarks that Fal:)yan and all other chroniclers (he had overlooked Arnold) 
 omit to mention pestilence, while they mention much less important things; but he is 
 hardly warranted in his inference that plagues were so common-place as to be left 
 unrecorded. A low level of plague would not be noticed, but a great epidemic 
 certainly would. 
 
 •' Johannes Amundesham (of St Albans), Ainialcs. Rolls e<l. 11. 127. 
 
 ■* J\ot. Pari. V. 31 b. 
 
 * This is the only plague in the first half of the fifteenth century that Anthony 
 Wood records; but he says, under the year 1500, that "no less than about thirty 
 
Various outbreaks of Plague, 1449-1454. 229 
 
 adjourned to Winchester to iivoid " the corrupt and infected 
 airs " of Westminster. On the 6th November of the same year 
 it adjourns to Ludgate, in the city of London, owing to the 
 infection of the air in Westminster. The infected state of 
 Westminster and other places around is again the subject of an 
 entry on the 4th December, with this addition : " it has been 
 sufficiently decreed as to avoiding and extinguishing the said 
 corrupt and infectious air." About three months later, on 30th 
 March, 1450, Parliament adjourns to Leicester on account of the 
 insalubrity of the air at Westminster. In 1452 it adjourns on 
 20th November to Reading for the same reason, but is soon 
 after adjourned to the iith February, owing to plague in 
 Reading itself: — " de magna mortalitate in dicta villa de 
 Redyng jam regnante." These years must have been a really 
 severe plague-period, for we find in 1454, a reference in the 
 Paston Letters to the alarm caused by the plague in London. 
 Wm. Paston writes to John Paston, 6 September : " Sergeant-at- 
 law Billing came to London this week. He sent for me and asked 
 me how I fared. I told him, here is pestilence, and said I fared 
 the better he was in good hele, for it was noised that he was 
 dead... Here is great pestilence. I purpose to flee into the 
 country*." 
 
 From 1454 (and the year following in Scotland) there is a 
 clear interval of ten years without mention of plague in the 
 not very complete records of the time. With the year 1464 
 there began a series of outbreaks of plague which appear to 
 have lasted in one part of the country or another with few 
 intermissions until 1478. This plague-period is said to have 
 been foretold in a remarkable prophecy. In the year 1462 a 
 boy at Cambridge, while walking in a lane between King's 
 College and the adjoining buildings of Clare and Trinity Halls, 
 met an old man with a long beard, who addressed him thus : 
 " Go now and tell to anyone that within these two years there 
 will be such pestilence, and famine, and slaughter of men, as no 
 one living has seen." Having said this he disappeared. Doubts 
 
 pests, both great and small, happened in this last century" — i.e. in the University of 
 Oxford. I shall speak of their general effects in another chapter. 
 ' Paston Letters. Ed. Gairdner, 1871, i. 302-3. 
 
230 Severe Plagues, 1464-65, a) id 1471. 
 
 however, were at once thrown on the reality of these words ; for 
 the boy, on being questioned by Master Myleton, doctor of 
 theology, and others, said that he neither saw the old man 
 walking on the ground nor heard him speaks 
 
 The authentic intelligence of plague in England in 1464 is 
 contained in a letter to the Seignory of Venice from Bruges, 
 dated 5 th October, 1464, to the effect that some Venetian 
 merchants have arrived from London, which they had quitted 
 on the 26th September. They say the plague is at work there 
 at the rate of two hundred [deaths] per diem, " and thus writes 
 [also] Carlo Ziglio." In April next year, 1465, we hear of it still 
 in London, through a casual reference in a letter written by one 
 of the Paston family^; and as prevailing all over England, 
 through a formal entry in the chronicle of Croyland, the last 
 of the monastic records which continued to be kept. There was 
 an infection of the air, we read, in the whole of England, so that 
 many thousands of people of every age came to their death 
 suddenly, like sheep slaughtered ^ 
 
 The very next year, 1466, Parliament is adjourned from 
 Westminster on account of the infection in London, to meet at 
 Reading. Next summer, ist July, 1467, there is another ad- 
 journment to Reading (6 November), because of the heat and 
 because the plague was beginning to reign, by which certain 
 members of the House of Commons had been cut off. After an 
 interval of four years we hear of plague, in a Paston letter, and 
 by a Southwell record. On 2 August, 1471, the residentiary 
 canons of Southwell Minster vote themselves leave of absence 
 for a month " quia regnat morbus pestiferus in villa Southwell, 
 et furit excessive morbus pestiferus^" On 13 September, 1471, 
 Sir John Paston writes from near Winchester : " I cannot hear by 
 
 ^ Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles. Ed. Gairdiier, for tlie Camden Society, 
 1880, from the Lambeth MSS., p. 163. 
 
 '^ Sir J. Paston to John Paston, 30 April, 1465. Another letter, of 18th August, 
 has: "For the pestilence is so fervent in Norvvych, that they dare no longer abyde 
 there, so God help!" {Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, 11. 226), which probably refers to 
 1465 also. It is not mentioned by Blomefield. 
 
 ^ Chronicle of Croyland, in Gale, i. 541. 
 
 ■* Communicated to me by the Rev. W. lluiU, Iroin a new volume of the Camden 
 Society, edited by A. F. Leach, Visitations and Memorials cf Soiilliwcll Minster, \>. 11. 
 
TJic Plague in Hull, 1472- 1478. 23 r 
 
 pilgrims that p:iss the countr)-, nor none other man tliat ridcth or 
 goeth any country, that any borougli town in England is free 
 from that sickness. God cease it when it please him ! " Apart from 
 London the English town which has the most disastrous record 
 for this period is Hull'. The plague was so severe there, in three 
 epidemics close together, as almost to ruin the place. It brc^ke 
 out in 1472, and had swept off a great number of the inhabitants 
 before the end of the year, including the mayor. In 1476 it 
 broke out afresh, causing a great mortality. In 1478 it was 
 more violent than ever, the number of its victims being given as 
 1580, including the mayor and all his family; the people fled 
 the town, the church was shut up, and the streets deserted and 
 grass-grown. The epidemic appears to have been, as usual, an 
 autumnal one, ceasing at the approach of winter. Meanwhile, in 
 1474, there is mention of a serious prevalence of plague in the 
 Royal household, as well as elsewhere in London. The weather 
 of the previous autumn, 1473, had been remarkable. Labourers 
 are said to have died in the harvest-field from the excessive 
 heat, and " fervues, axes, and the bloody flyx " (fevers, agues, 
 and dysentery) to have been universal in divers parts of England ; 
 but there was no dearth. The unusual character of that season, 
 or of the season preceding, was indicated by the bursting forth 
 of underground reservoirs of water^ 
 
 The great plague of this period in London should most 
 probably be placed under the years 1478-9. Merely to show the 
 difficulties of the chronology it may be worth while citing the 
 various accounts. The Greyfriars' Chronicle says, under the year 
 17 Edward IV., that the term was "deferred from Ester to 
 Michaelmas because of the grete pestylens''." The 17th of 
 Edward IV. was 1477. But Fabyan, who was now a citizen of 
 London (afterwards sheriff and alderman), enters it under the 
 civic year 1478-79, or the year which begins for him with the 
 new lord mayor taking office on 30 October. His words are: 
 " This year was great mortality and death in London and many 
 other parts of this realm, the which began in the latter end of 
 
 ' Tickell, History of Kingston upon Hull, 1798. 
 
 - Warkivortli's Chronicle. Camden Society, p. 2_\ (under the year 1^5 Ed. I\'.). 
 
 •' Chronicle 0/ the Greyfriars. Camden Society, No. 53, 1852, p. 22. 
 
232 Severe Plague in London, Norivieh, ete, 1478- 1479. 
 
 Senii [September] in the preceding year and continued in this 
 year till the beginning of November, in the which passed time 
 died innumerable people in the said city and many places 
 elsewhere'." Grafton says, under the year 1478, that the chief 
 mortality fell in four months of great heat, during which the 
 pestilence was so fierce and quick that fifteen years' war had not 
 consumed a third as many peoplel To reconcile these dates we 
 should have to take the year of the Greyfriars' Chronicle as 1478, 
 so that the adjournment of the term from Easter to Michaelmas, 
 might suit the four months in Grafton. At the same time, 
 Fabyan's statement that the plague " continued in this year till 
 November," is correct for 1479. Sir John Paston writes home 
 from London, 29 Oct. 1479, of his danger from the sickness; he 
 died there on 15th November; and his brother, who came up 
 from Norfolk to bury him, writes to his mother, who wished him 
 " to haste out of the air that he was in," that the sickness is 
 "well ceased" in December. 
 
 The year 1478, the first of two plague-seasons in London, was 
 also a year of plague at Hull, and at Newcastle and Southwell. 
 The account for Newcastle, in its annals under 1478, is merely 
 that great numbers died of the plague^ At Southwell, on 
 5 July, 1478, the canons residentiary again take leave of absence 
 for the summer, " because it may be probably estimated that the 
 dire pestilential affliction in the town of Southwell will continue, 
 and because the venerable men, with their domestics, have a 
 just fear of incurring the infection of the said pestiferous afflic- 
 tion V Next year, 1479, an " incredible number" died of plague 
 at Norwich^, and at villages like Swainsthorp, where " they have 
 died and been sick nigh in every housed" 
 
 Thus in two years, 1478-79, we hear of an epidemic of plague 
 of the first rank in London, an epidemic most severe for the 
 size of the place, at Hull, and epidemics at Southwell, New- 
 castle and Norwich. This is not unlike the plague-years that 
 we often find in the centuries following. Whether it be that we 
 
 ' Robert Fabyan's Chronicle of England, (editions in 1516 and 1533, and by Ellis, 
 iSoS), sul) a/ino. - GraJ'lons Chronicle, p. 742. 
 
 ^ V>xz.mW History of Newcastle. ^ Visitations and Memorials, ■^. \i. 
 
 ■' Blonielield. '' I'astuu, 6 Nov. 1479. 
 
Plague becoming more an infection of Toz^'us. 233 
 
 are merely coming to a time of better records, or that the 
 disease itself was getting worse in English towns, these later 
 years of Edward IV. are comparable to plague-periods under 
 the Tudors and the Stuarts. 
 
 The period from the Black Death of 1349 to the reign of 
 Edward IV. witnesses a considerable change in the habits, so to 
 speak, of plague in England. In the earlier part of that period, 
 the epidemics of "pestilence" — although they were not all of 
 plague or wholly of plague — are general throughout England, 
 like the great mortality itself but on a smaller scale. As late as 
 1407, or perhaps 1439, we still hear of "the disease called the 
 pestilence " being univ^ersal and in the homes of the peasantry. 
 The extent of the sickness in 1465, or even the type of it, is not 
 sufficiently known. From that time onwards town and country 
 are contrasted in the matter of plague ; it becomes usual to flee 
 to the country so as to escape the pestilential air in town in the 
 summer heats, and the unwholesomeness of the London air 
 becomes on numerous occasions a real reason, or a pretext, for 
 the adjournment of Parliament. All the while, the plague was the 
 lineal descendant of the Black Death, — a virus so potent on its 
 first entry into English soil as to overrun every parish of the land. 
 
 Plague and other pestilences in Scotland and Ireland, 
 
 1349-1475. 
 
 The materials for the history of plague in Scotland, including 
 the Black Death and subsequent outbreaks down to the end of 
 the medieval period, are much fewer than for England. From 
 the English chroniclers (Knighton and Le Baker) we learn that 
 the Black Death in the autumn of 1349 extended from the 
 northern counties to the Scots army in the Forest of Selkirk. 
 According to Fordoun, plague would have been general in 
 Scotland in 1350; but as he includes in his reference "several 
 years before and after " and " divers parts of the world," his 
 statement that nearly a third part of the human race paid the 
 debt of nature is perhaps a mere echo of the general estimate 
 and without reference specially to Scotland \ His next general 
 
 ^ Fordoun, Scotuhronitoii, ed. Ilearne, Oxon. 1722, p. lojy. 
 
234 Plagues in Scotland, 1 362-1402. 
 
 reference to pestilence is under the year 1362, when the same 
 kind of disease and the same extent of mortahty as in 1350 
 occurred throughout all Scotland \ But as he says elsewhere 
 that the visit of David, king of Scots, to Aberdeenshire in 1361, 
 when he took Kildrummy Castle from the earl of Mar, was 
 determined in the first instance by the prevalence of plague in 
 the southern part of his kingdom'^ it may be inferred that the 
 epidemic had begun late in that year in the south, coincident 
 with the pestis secnnda of England, and had been interrupted by 
 the coming on of winter, as in the first epidemic of 1349 and 
 1350. The next mortality recorded by Fordoun he names the 
 fourth {quarta niortalilas) and assigns to 1401^ The question 
 arises as to the third ; and it appears that there were indeed two 
 plague-years in Scotland between 1362 and 1401 — namely, 1380 
 and 1392, both of them corresponding nearly to great plagues in 
 the north of England. In the former year sir John Lyon, lord 
 of Glamis, was unable to hold his court as auditor of the 
 exchequer in certain places owing to the plague-*. In 1392, also, 
 the custumars of Haddington, Peebles, and Dumbarton did not 
 attend the " chamberlain ayres " on account of the pestilence^. 
 In 1402 (not in 1401, as Fordoun has it), the custumars of 
 Stirling were absent from the audit by reason of the plague"; 
 and in the same financial year (10 July, 1402, to 18 July, 1403), 
 only one bailie from Dundee attended the audit at Perth, the 
 others being dead in the pestilence ^ 
 
 For a whole generation there is no documentary evidence of 
 plague in Scotland. But Fordoun has two entries of a disease 
 which he calls pestilentia volatilis — it can hardly have been 
 plague and may have been influenza — the one in 1430, having 
 begun at Edinburgh in P^ebruary, and the other in 1432 at 
 Haddington*. 
 
 Under the year 1439, an old chronicle, Am Addicionn of 
 
 ^ Scotichronicon, p. 1056: "eadcm...sicul prius jubilco...in tolo regno Scoliae 
 miraliiliter saevichal." 
 
 ^ Exchei/iicr A'o/ls of Scotlatid. Introduction to vol. II. p. xlviii. 
 
 •' Scoikhnviicivi, \>. 1141. 
 
 ■* Exchequer A'o//s of Srotlaud, ill. 650. 
 
 -' Ibid. III. .',10. '■ Ibid. III. 553. 
 
 '' //'/(/. III. 579. 8 Scotichronicon, p. 12S7 ami p. 1298. 
 
Scats faiiiinc-sickjicss folloiocd by Plague^ 1439- -35 
 
 Scottis Coniicklis and Deidis records one of those seasons of 
 famine and dysentery or licntcry, with some more sudden sick- 
 ness, which have been described for England in a former chapter. 
 " The samen time there was in Scotland a great dearth, for the 
 boll of wheat was at 40J'., and the boll of ait meal 30^-. ; and 
 verily the dearth was sae great that there died a passing [number 
 of] people for hunger. And als the land-ill, the wame-ill, was so 
 violent, that there died mae that year than ever there died, 
 owther in pestilence, or yet in ony other sickness in Scotland. 
 And that samen year the pestilence came in Scotland, and 
 began at Dumfries, and it was callit the Pestilence but Mercy, 
 for there took it nane that ever recoverit, but they died with- 
 in twenty-four hours \" Here the "land-ill" or "wame-ill" 
 (dysentery or lientery) is contrasted within " the pestilence," 
 which latter is said to have supervened the same year, beginning 
 at Dumfries and proving peculiarly deadly. This was a year of 
 plague, said to be "universal," in England (where famine also was 
 severe), and of an enormous mortality in France. 
 
 The continuator of Fordoun records under the year 1455 
 (James II.) a great pestilential mortality of men through the 
 whole kingdom, an epidemic which would be again a year 
 behind the corresponding plague in England '\ We hear of it 
 next definitely in the year 1475, which falls within the scries of 
 plague-years at Hull, and elsewhere in the southern part of the 
 island. On account of an outbreak of pestilence the king of 
 Scots adjourned the meeting of the estates from September 
 1475 to the Epiphany following^ when the Parliament actually 
 met. The same year there was a plague-hospital on Inch- 
 keith, in the Firth of Forth, and not for the first time ; ten 
 marts from the Orkneys were landed there for the quarantined 
 patients*. 
 
 1 Cited by R. Chambers {Do ineslic Annals of Scotlan.l, i. 57) from the Chronicle 
 as printed by Thomas Thomson. 
 
 ^ Scotichronicon, p. 1565. Hearne's edition. 
 
 ^ Ferrerius, f. 393, cited in Excheq. Rolls of Scot. viii. p. Ix. 
 
 * Excheq. Rolls of Scot. viii. 364. Accounts of William, bishop of Orkney, from 
 5 Aug. 1475 to 3 Aug. 1476: "et decern martis liberatis, de tempore pestis, egro- 
 tantibus in Inclieskeith." Another item (^^.^o. 13^. 4</. ) is for forty-six marts destroyed 
 "propter longam morain" in the lairs at Lcith, "anno pestis, videlicet anno ultimo." 
 
236 Chronology of Plague in Ireland from 1349. 
 
 The references to plague in Scotland begin again about the 
 year 1498 ; but these, according to the division of our subject, 
 will come into another chapter. 
 
 The references to plagues in Ireland after the invasion of 
 1349 are extremely meagre; but they make it probable that 
 outbursts of bubo-plague recurred at intervals, as well as 
 occasional epidemics of flux and other diseases brought on by 
 scarcity or bad corn. The continuators of Clyn's Kilkenny 
 annals enumerate various pcstes — sccunda, tertia, qnarta and 
 quinta — ^just as the English annalists do. The sccunda falls in 
 1362, its season in Scotland also'. The tertia is given under 
 1373; but also under 1370I The qnarta is in 1382 (or 1385), 
 and the quinta in 1391. But there is little or no independent 
 evidence that this chronology, originally made for England, is 
 really good for Ireland also. The only other entry, until the 
 Tudor period, is "fames magna in Hibernia" in 1410^ 
 
 1 But MS. annals are cited for the date 1361, in The ancient and present State 
 oj the County and City of Cork. By Charles Smith, M.D. 1 vols. Dublin, 1774. 
 2nd ed. II. p. 23. 
 
 ^ Thady Dowling [Elizabethan] "1370- Pestilentia magna in Hibernia, adeo 
 quod propter immensitatem mortalitatis vocabatur ab antiquis tertia," p. 24. 
 
 3 Dowling, p. 27. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE SWEATING SICKNESS. 
 
 The strange disease which came to be known all over Europe 
 as sudor Angliais, or the English Sweat, was a new type or 
 species of infection first seen in the autumn of 1485. Polydore 
 Virgil, an Italian scholar and man of affairs, who arrived in 
 England in 1501, became, in effect, the court historian of 
 Henry VI I. 's reign, and of the events which led up to the 
 overthrow of Richard III. at Bosworth Field on the 22nd of 
 August 1485 ; his account of the movements of Henry Tudor, 
 from his landing at Milford Haven on Saturday the 6th of 
 August until his triumphal entry into London on Saturday 
 the 27th of the same month, is so minute that he must be 
 assumed to have had access to journals written at the time. 
 Polydore's account of the sweat begins with the statement that 
 it showed itself on the first descent of Henry upon the island 
 — sub prinmm descensuvi in insulain^. The last continuator of the 
 ancient chronicle of Croyland abbey, who was still making his 
 entries when Bosworth Field was fought, not far from Croyland, 
 and who closed his annals the year after, records an incident 
 which seems to show that the sweat had been prevalent before 
 the battle. Thomas, lord Stanley, lay at Atherstonc, not far 
 from Bosworth, with five thousand men nominally in the service 
 of Richard, and was summoned by the king to bring up his 
 force before the battle. He excused himself, says the Croyland 
 
 ' AtJgl. Hist. Basil. 1555, p. 567. * 
 
238 First epidemic of the Sivcatiug Sickness, 1485. 
 
 annalist, on the ground that he was suffering from the sweating 
 sickness*. I shall examine that evidence, and the general 
 statement of Polydore Virgil, in a later part of this chapter. 
 Meanwhile we may take it that the outbreak of the sweat was 
 somehow associated in popular rumour with the victorious 
 expedition of Henry Tudor. Writers on the English sweat 
 hitherto have had to depend on the somewhat meagre and not 
 always consistent statements of annalists for their knowledge 
 of its first authentic occurrence. I am now able to adduce 
 the testimony of a manuscript treatise on the new epidemic, 
 written by a physician while it was still prevalent in London, 
 and elaborately dedicated to Henry VH., if not composed by 
 his order^ The author is Thomas Forrestier, styled in the title 
 a Doctor of Medicine and a native of Normandy, tarrying in 
 London. Whatever his relation with the Tudor court may have 
 been, his name does not occur in the patents as one of the king's 
 physicians. It appears, indeed, that he had got into trouble in 
 London some two years after this date ; for, on the 28th of 
 January, 1488, the king granted to him a general pardon, "with 
 pardon for all escapes and evasions out of the Tower of London 
 or elsewhere, and remissions of forfeiture of all lands and goods I" 
 Probably he went back after this to his native Normandy : at 
 all events, he is next heard of in practice at Rouen, where he 
 published, in 1490, a Latin treatise on the plague, one of the 
 first productions of the printing-press of that city. 
 
 It is in the opening sentences of his printed book on the 
 plague\ and not in his manuscript on the sweat, that he fixes 
 the date when the latter began. The sweating sickness, he says, 
 
 ^ In Gale, Script. Angl. i. 573. 
 
 " British iMuseum Addit. MS., No. 27,582. 
 
 ^ Materials ilhistrative of the Reign of Henry VII. Rolls series. No. 60, s. d. 
 
 ■^ Traclatiis contra pcstilcntiani thenasmonem et dissinte.riani [Rouen, 1490]: — 
 "Causae pestilentiae ut alias scripsimus: in quodam opusculo quod composuimus de 
 quadam rabiosa febre pestilentiali, quae in duodecim horis patientes cum calore et 
 sudore continuo interficiebat. Cujus febris adventus incepit sua vexilla extendere in 
 Anglia in civitate Londoniarum decima nova die mensis Septembris 1485, in qua die 
 [planetary signs] posuerunt. I'^x qua febre pestilentiali plus quam quindecim millia 
 hominum ah hoc seculo morte repent ina, tancjuani ex pugnitione divina, recesserunt, 
 nudtique sine mora per vicos deambulantes al)sque confessione obierunt." 
 
TJic outbreak in Loudon, 19 September, 1485. 239 
 
 first unfurled its banners in England in the city of London, on 
 the 19th of September, 1485 ; and then follow in the text certain 
 astrological signs, representing the positions or conjunctions of 
 heavenly bodies on that date. The London chronicles of the 
 time assign dates for the beginning of the epidemic which differ 
 somewhat from Dr Forrestier's. One of them, a manuscript of 
 the Cotton collection, by an anonymous citizen of London, 
 records the entry of Henry VII. into the capital on the 27th of 
 August, and proceeds : " And the xxvii day of September began 
 the sweating syknes in London, whereof died Thomas Hyll 
 that yer mayor, for whom was chosen sir William Stokker, 
 knyght, which died within V days after of the same disease. 
 Then for him was chosen John Warde...And this yere died 
 of that sickness, besides ii mayors above rehersed, John Stokker, 
 Thomas Breten, Richard Pawson, Thomas Norland, aldermen, 
 and many worshipful commoners \" In the better known but 
 not always equally full chronicle of Fabyan, who was then a 
 citizen, and afterwards sheriff and alderman, the date of Henry's 
 reception by the mayor and citizens at Hornsey Park is given 
 as the 28th of August, the reference to the sweat being as 
 follows : " And upon the XI day of Octobre next following, than 
 beynge the swetynge sykeness of newe begun, dyed the same 
 Thomas Hylle, mayor, and for him was chosen sir William 
 Stokker, knyght and draper, which dyed also of the sayd 
 sickness shortly after." The only other particular date extant 
 for the sweat of 1485 comes from the country : Lambert Fosse- 
 dike, abbot of Croyland, died there of the sweating sickness, 
 after an illness of eighteen hours, on the 14th of October ^ 
 
 Apart from the hitherto unknown manuscript of Forrcstier, 
 these are the only contemporary references. Stow, who must 
 have had access to some journal of the time, says that the king 
 
 1 MSS. Cotton. VitelHus A. XVI. A Chronicle of Eiii^'Iaiid from \st Henry III. 
 to \st Hen. VIII. 
 
 • The Croyland Chronicle (in Gale's Script. Angl. i. 570 and 576) gives the 14th 
 November in one place and the 14th October in another. But it is clear that the 
 latter is the correct date, the letter from the prior of Croyland to Henry VII., an- 
 nouncing the death of the abbot and praying for a conge ilclire, being dated the 14th 
 of October. (^Materials illustrative of the Reigit of Henry f'/A vol. i. s.d. 21 Oct. 
 1485, Rolls series. No. 60) 
 
240 Few records of tJte First Sivcnt, 1485. 
 
 entered London on the 27th Aui^ust and that "the sweating 
 be(Tan the 21st September, and continued till the end of October, 
 of the which a wonderful number died," including the two 
 mayors and four other aldermen, as above. Hall's chronicle, 
 which has been the principal source used by Hecker and others, 
 reproduces the account of the sweat by Polydore Virgil almost 
 word for word ; and Polydore's account was certainly not begun 
 until after 1504 and was not published until 1531. Bernard 
 Andre, historiographer and poet laureate of Henry VH., was 
 present at the entry into London on the 27th August ; but he 
 gives no particulars of the sweat of that autumn, in his ' Life of 
 Henry VII.,' although it is probable that his 'Annals of Henry 
 VII.' would have furnished some information had they not been 
 lost for the year 1485, as it is to his extant annals for the year 
 1 508 that we owe almost all that is known of the second epidemic 
 of the sweat in that year. The state papers of the time do not 
 contain a single reference to the epidemic, although it was so 
 active in the city of London as to carry off two mayors and four 
 aldermen within a few days, and was besides, as Polydore Virgil 
 says, " a new kind of disease, from w^hich no former age had 
 suffered, as all agree." London was full of people, including 
 some who had stood by Henry Tudor in France, others who had 
 joined his standard in Wales, and still others who came to do 
 homage to the new dynasty; and there is evidence remaining 
 of hundreds of suitors, great and small, attending the court to 
 receive the reward of their services in patents and grants, as well 
 as evidence in the wardrobe accounts of the bustle of preparing 
 for the Coronation on the 30th of October. But in all the 
 extant state records of those busy weeks, there is not a scrap of 
 writing to show that such a thing as a pestilence was raging 
 within the narrow bounds of the city and under the walls of 
 the royal palace in the Tower. It remains, therefore, to make 
 what we can out of the medical essay which Dr Forrestier wrote 
 for the occasion. 
 
 In his later reference of 1490, he says that more than fifteen 
 thousand were cut off in sudden death, as if by the visitation of 
 God, many dying while walking in the streets, without warning 
 and without beincr confessed. That number of the dead need not 
 
London observations by Forrcsticr, 1485. 241 
 
 be taken as at all exact : nor does it appear whether it is meant 
 for London or for the whole country. But the dramatic sudden- u^ 
 ness of the attack is illustrated by particular cases in his original 
 treatise of 1485, although deaths so sudden are unheard of in 
 any infection : — 
 
 " We saw two prcstys standing togcdcr and speaking togedcr, and we 
 saw both of them dye sodenly. Also in die — proximi wc se the wyf of a 
 taylour taken and sodenly dyed. Another yonge man walking by the street 
 fell down sodenly. Also another gentylman ryding out of the cyte [date 
 given] dyed. Also many others the which were long to rehearse we have 
 known that have dyed sodenly." Gentlemen and gentlewomen, priests, 
 righteous men, merchants, rich and poor, were among the victims of this 
 sudden death. Of the symptoms he says : "And this sickness comcth with 
 a grete swctyng and stynkyng, with rednessc of the face and of all the body, 
 and a contynual thurst, with a grete hcte and hedache because of the fumes 
 and venoms." He mentions also " pricking the brains," and that " some 
 appear red and yellow, as we have seen many, and in two grete ladies that 
 we saw, the which were sick in all their bodies and they felt grete pricking 
 in their bodies. And some had black spots, as it appeared in our frere (?) 
 Alban, a noble leech on whose soul God have mercy ! " 
 
 Both in his pathology and in his copious appendix of 
 formulae he directs attention to the heart, as the organ that was 
 suddenly overpowered by the pestilential venoms. Many died, 
 he would have us believe, because they listened to the false 
 leeches, who professed to know the disease and to have treated 
 it before. A considerable part of his space is occupied with the 
 denunciation of these irregular practitioners, their greed and 
 their ignorance, — a theme which is a common one in the prefaces 
 of Elizabethan medical works also. It appears that the false 
 leeches wrote and put letters upon gates and church doors, or 
 upon poles, promising to help the people in their sickness. They 
 were also injudicious in the choice of their remedies — some 
 ordaining powders and medicines that are hot until the thirtieth 
 degree and over, others ale or wine, or hot spices, " and many 
 other medicines they have, the which, the best of them, is 
 nothing worth." These false leeches knew not the causes, — 
 their complexions, their ages, the regions, the times of the year, 
 the climate, — evidently the astrological lore which gave Chaucer's 
 physician, a century earlier, his academical standing or his 
 C. 16 
 
242 Regimen of the Szveat in 1485 and after. 
 
 superiority to the vulgar quacks of his day. Those who fell 
 into the hands of quacks, Forrestier implies, had an indifferent 
 chance. Many died for want of help and good guiding ; whereas 
 many a one was healed that had received a medicine in due 
 order, "and if he purge himself before." The clearly written 
 and fully detailed formulae at the end of his essay are so far 
 evidence that Forrestier did not traffic in secret remedies. The 
 first part of the essay is occupied with the doctrine of causes — 
 the nigh causes and the far. The far causes were astrological ; 
 but the nigh causes, although they are altogether inadequate to 
 account for sweating sickness as a special type, and are indeed 
 httle else than the stock list of nuisances quoted in earlier 
 treatises upon the plague, are suggestive enough of the con- 
 dition of London streets and houses at the time, and will be 
 referred to in a later part of the chapter. 
 
 The account of the treatment given by Polydore Virgil, and 
 from him copied into Hall's chronicle, is probably the experience 
 of later epidemics of the sweat, although it comes into the 
 history under the year 1485. The evil effects of throwing off 
 the bed-clothes, and of drinking great draughts of cold water, 
 and, on the other hand, the benefits of lying still with the hands 
 and feet well covered, are among the topics discussed in letters 
 during the epidemic of 15 17, one of those which came within the 
 historian's own experience in England. But it is clear from 
 Forrestier's essay of 1485 that there were great differences in the 
 regimen of patients in the sweat during its very first season, 
 some adopting the hot and cordial treatment, others, perhaps, 
 the cooling, just as in the smallpox long after. Bernard Andre 
 implies that there was a correct and an incorrect regimen also 
 in the second epidemic of 1508, and there is evidence of con- 
 flicting advice in the letters on the sweats of 1517 and 1528. If 
 there were any better regimen in the later epidemics than in the 
 earlier, as Polydore Virgil says there was, it was merely the 
 wisdom of avoiding extremes. Hence the misleading character 
 of his remark that, after an immense loss of life, " a remedy was 
 found, ready to hand for everyone." Bacon in his ' Reign of 
 Henry VH.' took from Polydore almost word for word all that 
 he says of the "remedy" of the sweat; and the unreal word- 
 
Extent of the epideniie in 1485. 243 
 
 spinning thus begun was carried to its full development by 
 bishop Sprat, the historian of the Royal Society (1667), who 
 mistakes the " remedy " for some arcanum or potent drug, gives 
 my lord Verulam the credit of preserving the prescription for 
 the use of posterity, and adduces it as an encouragement to the 
 Royal Society to seek among the secrets of nature for an equally 
 efficacious " antidote " to the plague. 
 
 The language of historians is that the sweat of 1485 spread 
 over the whole kingdom. We hear of it definitely at Oxford* 
 where it " lasted but a month or six weeks " and is said to have 
 cut off many of the scholars before they could disperse. It is 
 heard of also with equal definiteness at Croyland abbey. There 
 is also mention of it in a contemporary calendar of the mayor of 
 Bristol, but without any special reference to that city^ Beyond 
 these notices, there appears to be nothing to show that the sweat 
 went all through England in the late autumn or early winter of 
 1485. But we may take the following passage by Forrestier, in 
 the dedication of his tract to the king, as expressing the state 
 of matters, with perhaps some exaggeration : 
 
 " When that thy highness and thy great power is vexed and troubled 
 with divers sickness, and thy lordships and almost the middle part of thy 
 realm with the venomous fever of pestilence, and, by the reason of that, 
 young and old and of all manner of ages, with divers wailings and sadness 
 they are stricken : therefore, excellent and noble prince, we are moved with 
 every love and duty, and not for no lucre neither covetyse, to ordain a short 
 governing against this foresaid fever^." 
 
 The Second Sweat in 1508. 
 
 After the first outburst of the sweat in 1485 had subsided, 
 probably before winter was well begun, nothing more is heard of 
 it for twenty-three years. It reappeared in 1508, a third time 
 in 1 5 17, a fourth time in 1528, and for the last time in 155 1. 
 
 1 Anthony Wood, I. 462. 
 
 - The Maire of Bristoive is Kalendar (by Robert Ricart, town-clerk of Bristol, iS 
 Ed. IV.). Camden Society, 1872, p. 46. 
 
 ^ The Bristol calendar says: "This yere Ilary, Erie of Richmond landed at 
 Milford Haven... And sone after there was a sodeyn sikenes in all places of Englond 
 called the sweting syknes, whereof moche people dyed." 
 
 16 — 2 
 
244 Bernard Andre on tJie Second Sivcat, 1508, 
 
 With each successive outbreak, our information becomes less 
 meagre, while the epidemic of 155 1 actually called forth an 
 English printed book by Dr Caius, the epidemic of 1528 having 
 called forth a whole crop of foreign writings on its spreading 
 to the continent (for the first and only time) in the year following 
 (1529). As the nature, causes, and favouring circumstances of 
 the sweat cannot profitably be dealt with except on a review of 
 its whole history, it will be necessary to take up at once and 
 together the four subsequent epidemics of it in this country, 
 leaving the intercurrent and probably much more disastrous 
 epidemics of bubo-plague, during the same period, as well as the 
 great invasion of syphilis in 1494-6, to be chronicled apart. 
 
 Our knowledge of the second outbreak of the sweat, in i5o8\ 
 comes almost exclusively from Bernard Andre, whose Annals of 
 Henry VI I.'^ are fortunately preserved for that year (as they are 
 also for 1504-5). Under the date of July, 1508, he says that 
 some of the household of the Lord Treasurer were seized with 
 the sweat, and died of it, " and everywhere in this city there 
 die not a few." In August public prayers were made at St 
 Paul's on account of the plague of sweat. In the same month 
 the king's movements from place to place in the country round 
 London are described as determined by the prevalence of the 
 sweat. From Hatfield, whither he had gone to visit his mother 
 on the 9th August, he went to Wanstead, where certain of his 
 household " sweated ; " on that account the king moved to 
 Barking, and thence to other places about the 14th. He avoided 
 Greenwich and Eltham, in both which places the chief personages 
 of the royal palaces "had sweated," so much did the sickness 
 then rage in all places '{per omnia loco). Some of the king's 
 personal attendants appear to have caught the infection; nor did 
 it avail, says Andre, to run away or to follow the chase, quoniavi 
 mors omnia vincit. Other visits were paid down to the 17th 
 August, and a strict edict was issued that no one from London 
 
 ^ The date of 1506 in Ilecker is erroneous, having been taken from the very loose 
 entry in Hall's clironicle (copied l)y Grafton), which niit;ht equally well belong to the 
 year 1507. Bernard Andre's date of 1508 is unmistakeable ; his annals go on 
 continuously until the death of Henry VII. in April following. 
 
 * Bernard Andre's Works. Rolls series, No. lo, pp. \i(i-'6. 
 
Cases at Court, July and A?igHst, 1508. 245 
 
 was to come near the court, nor anyone to repair to the city, 
 under penalties specified. The only one near the king's person 
 who died of it was lord Graystock, a young Cumberland noble. 
 The Lord Privy Seal and the Lord Chamberlain were both 
 attacked but recovered ; doctor Symeon, the dean of the Chapel 
 Royal, died of it. There appears to have been a good deal of 
 the sickness in various places, but many recovered, says Andre, 
 with good tending. The king occupied himself with hunting the 
 stag in the forests at Stratford, Eltham and other places round 
 London. 
 
 From the provinces there is one item of information relating 
 to Chester^: in the summer of 1507, it is said, the sweating 
 sickness destroyed 91 in three days, of whom only four were 
 women. At Oxford in 1508, or the year before Henry VII. 's 
 death, there was a sore pestilence which caused the dispersion of 
 divers students ; but it is not called the sweat^. 
 
 The Third Sweat in 1517. 
 
 Except for a single reference to the sweat in 151 1, nothing is 
 heard of it between the autumn of 1508 and the summer of 15 17. 
 The reference in 15 11 occurs in a letter of Erasmus, from 
 Queens' College, Cambridge, dated 25th August, in which he 
 says that his health is still indifferent a sndorc illo. This may 
 possibly refer to the lingering effects of an attack in 1508, or 
 to the influenza of 1510; and as all the other references in 151 1 
 are to plague, and to alarms of plague, it may be doubted if the 
 sweating sickness had really been prevalent in England in that 
 year, or at any time between 1508 and 15 17. We begin to hear 
 of it definitely in the summer of the latter year. We have now 
 reached a period from which numerous letters, despatches and 
 other state papers have come down^ Among the most useful of 
 
 1 Y\.<ixa\\\gwi.y''~, History of Chester,!. 142. 
 
 - An.\.\\ony \NQOiy ^ History and Antiquities of the Univ. of Oxford, i. 665. 
 
 •' Calendared for the Rolls series by Brewer for the greater part of the reign of 
 Henry VIII. (1509-1530), and after him by Gairdner, at present as far as 1538. The 
 facts given in the next few pages may be taken as coming from the Calendar of State 
 Papers, under their respective dates, unless it is otherwise stated in the notes 
 
246 Third Siocat begins in London, J nly, 15 17. 
 
 these for our purpose are the despatches of the Venetian am- 
 bassador and the apostoHc nuncio from London, the letters of 
 Pace to VVolsey when Henry VIII, was in the country and the 
 cardinal not with him, the letters of Erasmus, sir Thomas More 
 and others. 
 
 The first that we hear of sickness in London in 15 17 is from 
 a letter of the 24th June, written by a cardinal of Arragon to 
 Wolsey, from Calais ; the cardinal, who was travelling like a 
 noble, with a train of forty horses, had intended to visit London, 
 but was waiting on the other side owing to a rumour that the 
 sickness was prevalent in London. It is probable that this 
 rumour had referred to the standing infection of English towns 
 in summer and autumn, the bubo-plague ; for it is not until five 
 weeks later that we hear of the sweating sickness under its 
 proper name. 
 
 On the 1st of August the nuncio writes from London to the 
 marquis of Mantua that a disease is broken out here causing 
 sudden death within six hours ; it is called the sweating sickness; 
 an immense number die of it. On the 6th of August he occupies 
 the greater part of a letter of three pages with an account of it. 
 To some it proved fatal in twelve hours, to others in six, and to 
 others in four ; it is an easy death. Most patients are seized 
 when lying down, but some when on foot, and even a very few 
 when riding out. The attack lasts about twenty-four hours, 
 more or less. It is fatal to take, during the fit, any cold drink, 
 or to allow a draught of air to reach the drenching skin ; the 
 covering should be rather more ample than usual, but there 
 was danger in heaping too many bed-clothes on the patient. A 
 moderate fire should be kept up in the sick chamber ; the arms 
 should be crossed on the patient's breast, and great care should 
 be taken that no cold air reached the armpits*. The disease 
 was on the increase, and was already spreading over England ; 
 
 ' This appears to li.ivc been a common direction. In a letter of 12 August, 1517, 
 dated from the Fleet Prison by Thomas Leeke to his brother sir John Leeke {Hist. 
 A/SS. Commission Reports, x. pt. 4, p. 447), the writer says he has been sore vexed 
 with the sweat and in danger of life : "If any of you have it, pray you to keep well 
 and close about your breasts and your heart for twenty-four hours and then with 
 God's grace there is no danger in it: there has l)een a marvellous great death for so 
 short a time." 
 
Letters on the Szueat, ist aiui 6th August, 15 17. 247 
 
 it was reported that more than four hundred students had died 
 of it at Oxford, which was a small place but for the university 
 there. Burials were occurring on every side ; there had been 
 many deaths in the king's household and in that of cardinal 
 VVolsey, who was in the country " sweating." Such is the 
 universal dread of the disease that there are very few who do 
 not fear for their lives, while some are so terrified that they 
 suffer more from fear than others do from the sweat itself. 
 
 On the same day (6th August), the Venetian ambassador, 
 Sebastian Giustinian, who was on friendly terms with the nuncio 
 and often indebted to him for information, writes to the Doge 
 giving much the same account of " the new malady." He 
 remarks upon the sudden onset, the rapidity of the issue when 
 it was to be fatal, and the cessation of the sweat within twenty- 
 four hours. His secretary had taken it, as well as many of his 
 domestics. Few strangers are dead, but an immense number of 
 Englishmen. On going to visit Wolsey, he found that he had 
 the sweat ; many of the cardinal's household had died of it, 
 including some of his chief attendants ; the bishop of Winchester 
 also had taken it. On the 12th of August, the Venetian envoy 
 writes that he himself and his son have had the sweat ; Wolsey 
 has had it three times in a few days, many of his people being 
 dead of it, especially his gentlemen'. In London " omnes 
 silent." 
 
 Wolsey's attack and relapses are confirmed by his own letter 
 to the king; about the end of August he went on a pilgrimage 
 to Walsingham, and remained there most of September, but 
 even after his return he was "vexed with fever." The relapses 
 of the sweat, which are mentioned by Forrestier in 1485, by 
 Andre in 1508, and now again in 15 17, may have been the 
 origin of the saying in the form of a proverb, which occurs in 
 
 1 In tlic letter of i : August from the Fleet Prison, already tiuoted [Hist. MSS. 
 Reports, I.e.), it is stated that fifteen are dead in the Cardinal's house, including Mr 
 Cowper, the steward, Talboys, lord of Kyme, young Wastness, and one Grenell. In 
 my lord of Durham's house, Dr Port and Dr Fysche are dead, with divers others. Of 
 the Court, my lord Clinton, Mr Morgan, steward to the Queen, and one Mat. Jones, 
 of the King's wardrobe, were buried at Richmond on Friday last, and divers more of 
 the Court are dead. 
 
248 Thii'-d Sxveat ends in September, 1517. 
 
 an essay of the time by sir Thomas More, — that the relapse is 
 worse than the original disease \ 
 
 The death of a well-known personage, Ammonio, the Latin 
 secretary of the king, is the subject of several letters, including 
 one of the 19th August from More to Erasmus ; he died at nine 
 on the morning of the 17th August, after an illness of twenty 
 hours: he had been congratulating himself on being safe by reason 
 of his temperate life. Mo're confirms the statement as to deaths 
 in the university of Oxford, and he adds also at Cambridge. In 
 London the sweat attacks whole families : " I assure you there is 
 less danger in the ranks of war than in this city." His own 
 family (.'' in Bucklersbury) are safe so far, and he has composed 
 his mind for any eventuality. He hears that the sweat is now at 
 Calais, On the 27th August, the Venetian envoy writes again 
 that the disease is now making great progress; the king keeps out 
 of the way at Windsor, with only three favourite gentlemen and 
 Dionysius Memo, who is described as his physician, but in other 
 letters as "the Reverend," and as a musician from Venice. On 
 the 2 1st September the envoy has gone to the country to avoid 
 " the plague and the sweating sickness." A few days later (26th 
 Sept.) he writes that " the plague " is making some progress, and 
 that the prolonged absence of the king, the cardinal and other 
 lords from London owing to the sweat, had encouraged the 
 citizens to a turbulent mood against the foreign traders and 
 residents ; the state of matters was so threatening that three 
 thousand citizens were under arms to preserve the peace. The 
 references after September, 15 17, are mostly to the "common 
 infection " or plague, which was an almost annual autumnal 
 event in London. There was probably some confusion, at the 
 time, between that infection and the sweat, not, of course as 
 regards symptoms, but in common report ; thus it is not clear 
 whether the fresh alarm in the king's court at or near Windsor 
 on the 15th October, owing to the deaths of young lord Grey de 
 Wilton and a German attendant of the king, refers to the sweat 
 or to the plague. As late as the 2nd November, a letter from the 
 
 ^ The P'Uiful Life of King Edxoani the Fifth: "Considuring lliere is, as physician s 
 say, and as we also find, double ihe peril in the relapse thai was in the first sickness," 
 p. 230. Camelot edition. 
 
TJie Sivcat of 1 5 1 7 in the provinces. 249 
 
 University of Oxford to Wolscy excuses delay in answering his 
 two letters on the ground of the sweating sickness. 
 
 The prevalence of "sudor tabificus" at Oxford in 15 17 is 
 known from other sources as well : it is said to have caused " the 
 dispersion and sweeping away of most, if not all, of the students';" 
 and the nuncio, writing from London on the 6th of August, 
 mentions the current but improbable statement that more than 
 four hundred students had died in less than a week. 
 
 Besides these from Oxford, there are hardly any notices of 
 the 15 17 sweat in the country remote from London. A record 
 at Chester mentions an outbreak of " plague," which is taken to 
 mean sweating sickness ; it is said also to have been " probably 
 more serious than in 1507;" many died, others fled; and the 
 grass grew a foot high at the Cross'. But these are the marks of 
 true plague, which we know to have broken out in London, and 
 in country districts as well, in the autumn and winter of 15 17, or 
 almost as soon as the short and sharp outburst of the sweat was 
 past. 
 
 Among the references to prevailing diseases on the continent 
 in 15 17, besides sir Thomas More's rumour of the sweat in 
 Calais, there is none which would lead us to suppose that the 
 distinctive English malady had invaded Europe in that year. 
 But there is a significant statement by Erasmus, hitherto over- 
 looked, which almost certainly points to an epidemic of influenza 
 on the other side of the North Sea the year after the sweat was 
 prevalent in England. It is known that there was a suddenly 
 fatal form of throat disease prevalent in the Netherlands that 
 spring, which has been taken to be diphtheria ; but the malady 
 to which Erasmus refers can hardly have been the same as that. 
 Writing from Louvain to Barbieri on the 1st June, 15 18, he 
 says that a new plague is raging in Germany, affecting people 
 with a cough, and pain in the head and stomach, he himself 
 having suffered from it. The significance of that epidemic, 
 assuming it to have been influenza, will be dealt with in the 
 sequel. 
 
 By means of the foregoing contemporary notices of the sweat 
 
 ^ Anthony Wood, Hist, and Antuj., stil> anno 15 17. 
 ' iiem\\\g\wviy''s History of Chester, i. 142. 
 
250 Fourth Siveat begins in London, June 1528. 
 
 in 1 5 17 we are able to judge of the general accuracy of the 
 summary of it in Hall's chronicle, which has been hitherto almost 
 the only source of information. The sweat killed, he says, in 
 three hours or two hours, which is something of an exaggeration 
 of the shortest duration mentioned by the nuncio and the Vene- 
 tian envoy in their letters of the ist and 6th August. Another 
 general statement may be suspected of even greater exaggera- 
 tion : " For in some one town half the people died, and in some 
 other town the third part, the sweat was so fervent and the 
 infection so great." The sweat lasted, he says, to the middle of 
 December. Stow, in his Annals, more correctly states that the 
 plague came in the end of the year, after the sweat. The plague 
 was much the more deadly infection of the two ; but even 
 plague and sweat together, and at their worst, would hardly have 
 destroyed one-half or one-third of the inhabitants of a town. 
 
 The Fourth Sweat in 1528. 
 
 As the despatches of the nuncio and the Venetian envoy in 
 London give the best accounts of the sweat of 15 17, it is in the 
 despatches of the French ambassador, Du Bellay, that we find 
 the most serviceable particulars of the sweat in 1528. Du 
 Bellay, bishop of Bayonne, and a witty diplomatist, was in 
 London through the whole of it, and during that time sent 
 letters to Paris, in three of which the sweat is a principal topic. 
 From many other state letters of the time various particulars 
 may be gathered, and in one letter by Brian Tuke, one of the 
 king's ministers, we find some theorizings about the disease. 
 The outbreak befell at the time when Henry VHL's passion for 
 Mistress Anne Boleyn, sister to one of the ladies of the Court, was 
 waxing strong ; it had the effect of parting the lovers for several 
 weeks, the distance between them having been bridged over by 
 an interchange of tender notes, of which those of the king 
 remain open to the prying eyes of posterity. 
 
 The sweat is heard of as early as the 5th of June, 1528, when 
 Brian Tuke writes to Tunstall, bishop of London, that he had 
 fled to Stepney " for fear of the infection," a servant being ill at 
 
Details from the FreiieJi ambassador. 25 1 
 
 his house. The sickness must have made little talk for some 
 ten days longer. On the i8th June, Du Bellay writes that it 
 had made its appearance "within these four days'." On the 
 1 6th, the king at Greenwich was alarmed by the intelligence 
 that a maid of Anne Boleyn's had been attacked by it^ He left 
 in great haste for Waltham, and sent the young lady to her 
 father's in Kent. " As yet," writes Du Bellay, " the love has not 
 abated. I know not, if absence and the difficulties of Rome 
 rnay effect anything." The king wrote to her at once : " There 
 came to me in the night the most afflicting news possible...! 
 fear to suffer yet longer that absence which has already given 
 me so much pain." He sends his second physician (Dr Butts) 
 to her. The alarm about her health seems to have been un- 
 called for just then, although both she and her father caught the 
 disease within a few days. By the iSth June, according to 
 the French envoy, some 2000 had caught the sickness in London. 
 It is, he says, a most perilous disease : " one has a little pain in 
 the head and heart ; suddenly a sweat begins ; and a physician 
 is useless, for whether you wrap yourself up much or little, in 
 four hours, sometimes in two or three, you are despatched 
 without languishing as in those troublesome fevers." The day 
 before, on going to swear the truce, he saw the people "as thick 
 as flies rushing from the streets or shops into their houses to 
 take the sweat whenever they felt ill... In London, I assure you, 
 the priests have a better time than the doctors, except that the 
 latter do not help to bury. If this thing goes on, corn will soon be 
 cheap. [The season was one of scarcity.] It is twelve [eleven] 
 years since there was such a visitation, when there died 10,000 
 persons in ten or twelve days ; but it was not so bad as this 
 has been." Writing again, twelve days after, on the 30th June, 
 he says that some 40,000 had been attacked in London, only 2000 
 
 ^ The letter bears the date of S June, which would make the first of the sweat the 
 same as in Tuke's letter ; but Brewer says the date should be the iSth June. 
 
 - Brewer {Cat. State Papers) reads the letter, " On Tuesday one of the ladies of 
 the chamber, Mile de Boulan, was infected with the sweat." But P. Friedmann 
 {Anne Boleyit, Lond. 1884, i. 72) says the correct reading is a fille-de-chambre of 
 Mile de Boulan ; and it is known that iVnnc Bolcyn did not take the sweat until 
 some days after. 
 
252 Fourth Szocat cuds in London and country, Aug. 1528. 
 
 of whom had died ; " but if a man only put his hand out of bed 
 during the twenty-four hours, it becomes as stiff as a pane of 
 glass " — that is to say, by keeping themselves carefully covered, 
 as we learn also from Polydore Virgil's history and letters on the 
 sweat of 1 5 17, they greatly increased the chance of recovery. 
 In his third despatch, 21st July, he says the danger begins 
 to diminish hereabout and to increase elsewhere ; in Kent it is 
 very great. Anne Boleyn and her father have sweated, but 
 have got over it. The notaries have had a fine time of it, 
 nearly everyone having made his will, as those who took 
 the disease in its fatal form "became quite foolish the moment 
 they fell ill." His estimate of 100,000 wills is, of course, 
 a humorous exaggeration. The sweat had been at its height 
 in London, according to its wont, for only a few weeks, mostly 
 in July. On the 21st of August one writes from London 
 that " the plague at this day is well assuaged, and little or 
 nothing heard thereof" From other parts of England there are 
 few particulars of the sweat of 1528. We hear of it at Woburn 
 on the 26th June, in a nunnery at Wilton on the i8th July, at 
 Beverley on the 22nd July — it is reported as very serious in York- 
 shire generally, — at Cambridge on the 27th July, and at several 
 places in Kent about the same date. The " infection " at Dover 
 as late as the 27th September may not have been the sweat, but 
 the ordinary bubo-plague. But it is probably to the sweat that 
 the deaths of four priests and two lay-brothers at Axholme, in 
 Lincolnshire, are to be referred, as well as the heavy mortality 
 in the Charterhouse, London \ 
 
 As in the previous sweat of 15 17, the letters of the time give 
 us many glimpses of the invasion of great households in and 
 around London, including the king's. 
 
 When the French ambassador was walking with Wolsey in 
 his garden at York Place (Whitehall) on a day in June, word 
 was brouGfht to the cardinal that five or six of his household had 
 
 ^ In the I/isloiy of Cork by C. Sniilh, M.D. (2iid cd., 1774) there is an entry 
 under 1528: "a malignant disorder called the sweating sickness in Cork," with a 
 reference to "MS. annals." It has been generally supposed that the sweat did not 
 enter Ireland or Scotland in any of its five outl)reaks. 
 
TJie prevalence of the Sii'eat in the great houses. 253 
 
 taken the sweat, and the diplomatic interview was brought to an 
 abrupt end. Du Bellay writes again in July that only four men 
 in Wolsey's great house remained well. Among those in his 
 household who died of it were a brother of lord Derby and a 
 nephew of the duke of Norfolk. The cardinal, who had suffered 
 from the sweat and its relapses in 15 17, fled from it to Hampton 
 Court on the 30th June, and shut himself up there with only a 
 few attendants, having previously adjourned the law courts and 
 stopped the assizes. On the 21st of July, Du Bellay writes that 
 it was almost impossible to get access to Wolsey, and suggests 
 that he might have to speak with him at Hampton Court 
 through a trumpet. In the same letter the French ambassador 
 refers to the circumstances of his own attack when he was 
 visiting the archbishop of Canterbury (Warham), probably at 
 Lambeth : " The day I sweated at my lord of Canterbury's, 
 there died eighteen persons in four hours, and hardly anyone 
 escaped but myself, who am not yet quite strong again." The 
 bishop of London, Tunstall, writes to Wolsey from Fulham on 
 the loth July, that thirteen of his servants were sick of the 
 sweat at once on St Thomas's day ; he had caused the public 
 processions and prayers to be made, which the king had wi.shed 
 for on the 5th July. The governor of Calais writes on the loth 
 July : '' The sweat has arrived and has attacked many." Only 
 two were dead, a Lancashire gentleman and a fisherman ; but in 
 a second letter of the same night, four more arc dead, of whom 
 two " were in good health yestereven when they went to their 
 beds." Various other letters about the same date make mention 
 of personal experiences of the sweat, or of domestics attacked, at 
 coimtry houses in the home counties. The most minute accounts 
 are those for the king's household. 
 
 On the 1 6th June the king had left Greenwich hurriedly for 
 Waltham. In a letter to Anne Boleyn, he writes that, when he 
 was at Waltham, two ushers, two valets-de-chambre, George 
 Boleyn and Mr Treasurer (Fitzwilliam) fell ill of the sweat, and 
 are now quite well. " The doubt I had of your health troubled 
 me extremely, and I should scarcely have had any quiet without 
 knowing the certainty; but since you have felt nothing, I hope it 
 is with you as with us." He had rcmox'cd to Ilunsdon (on 20th 
 
254 Szveat of 1528 in Henry VIII.' s Court. 
 
 or 2ist June) "where we are very well, without one sick person. 
 I think if you would retire from Surrey, as we did, you would 
 avoid all danger. Another thing may comfort you : few women 
 have this illness, and moreover none of our court, and few 
 elsewhere, have died of it." When Brian Tuke went to Hunsdon 
 on the 2ist June, the king spoke to him "of the advantages of 
 this house, and its wholesomeness at this time of sickness." 
 Two days after, Tuke having business with the king, found him 
 "in secret communication with his physician, Mr Chambre, in a 
 tower where he sometimes sups apart." The king conversed 
 with his minister about the latter's ill-health (seemingly stone), 
 and showed him remedies, " as any most cunning physician in 
 England could do." As to the infection, the king spoke of how 
 folk were taken, how little danger there was if good order be 
 observed, how few were dead, how Mistress Anne and my lord 
 Rochford (her father) both have had it, what jeopardy they 
 have been in by the turning in of the sweat before the time, of 
 the endeavours of Mr Butts who had been with them, and 
 finally of their perfect recovery. The king sends advice to 
 Wolsey to use "the pills of Rhazes" once a week, and, if it 
 come to it, to sweat moderately and to the full time, without 
 suffering it to run in. But the king's optimist views of the 
 malady were quickly disturbed. William Gary, married to Anne 
 Boleyn's sister, died of the sweat suddenly at Hunsdon, having 
 just arrived from Plashey, and two others of the Chamber, 
 Poyntz and Compton, died about the same time either there or 
 at Hertford, whither the king removed. On the evening of 
 the 26th June there fell sick at Hertford, the marquis and 
 marchioness of Dorset, sir Thomas Cheyney, Croke, Norris and 
 Wallop. The king hastily left for Hatfield, on the 28th June, 
 where still others appear to have taken the sickness. Du 
 Bellay, writing on the 30th, says all but one of the Chamber 
 have been attacked. From Hatfield the king went at once to 
 Tittenhanger, a country house which belonged to Wolsey as 
 abbot of St Albans, and there he elected to take his chance of 
 the sweat, keeping up immense fires to destroy the infection. 
 On the 7th July, Dr l^cU writes from Tittenhanger to Wolsey 
 that " none have had the sweat here these three days except 
 
A sceptical view of the Sweat, 1528. 255 
 
 Mr Butts." Two days later, however, the marchioness of Exeter 
 "sweated," and the king ordered all who were of the marquis's 
 company to depart, he himself removing as far as Ampthill, 
 whence he thought of removing on the 22nd July to Grafton, 
 but was prevented by the prevalence of the infection there. 
 Shortly after Anne Boleyn returned to the court. It is clearly to 
 the period of her return that an undated letter of hers to Wolsey 
 belongs ; after writing a few formal lines to make interest with 
 the cardinal, she took her letter to the king for him to add a 
 postscript, which was as follows : " lioth of us desire to see you, 
 and are glad to hear you have escaped the plague so well, 
 trusting the fury of it is abated, especially with those that keep 
 good diet as I trust you do." 
 
 Although the attacks mentioned in the correspondence of 
 the time are many, the deaths are few. A letter of Brian Tuke's 
 to Wolsey's secretary, on the 14th July, takes a somewhat 
 sceptical line about the whole matter. His wife has "passed 
 the sweat," but is very weak, and is broken out at the mouth 
 and other places. He himself "puts away the sweat" from 
 himself nightly (directly against the king's advice to him), 
 though other people think they would kill themselves thereby. 
 He had done that during the last sweat and this, feeling sure 
 that, as long as he is not first sick, the sweat is rather provoked 
 by disposition of the time, and by keeping men close, than by 
 any infection, although the infection was a reality. Thousands 
 have it from fear, who need not else sweat, especially if they 
 observe good diet. He believes that it proceeds much of men's 
 opinion. It has been brought from London to other parts by 
 report ; for when a whole man comes from London and talks of 
 the sweat, the same night all the town is full of it, and thus it 
 spreads as the fame runs. Children, again, lacking this opinion, 
 have it not, unless their mothers kill them by keeping them too 
 hot if they sweat a little. It does not go to Gravelines when 
 it is at Calais, although people go from the one place to the 
 other. 
 
256 TJie Szi'cat abroad in the folloiving summer. 
 
 The English Sweat on the Continent in 1529'. 
 
 Whether the sweat went at length to Gravelines or other 
 places in that direction does not appear; but there is abundant 
 evidence that it showed itself in the course of the following year 
 (1529) in many parts of the Continent, excepting France, and that 
 its outbreak was often attended with a heavy mortality. It was 
 observed in Calais, as we have seen, on the loth of July, 1528. 
 But it is not until the year after, on the 25th of July, 1529, that 
 we hear of it again, — at Hamburg, where a thousand persons are 
 said to have died of it within four or five weeks, most of them 
 within nine days. On the 31st July it was at Llibeck, and 
 about the same time at Bremen and the neighbouring ancient 
 town of Verden ; on 14th August in Mecklenburg; at Stettin 
 on the 27th August, and at Wismar, Demmin, Rostock, 
 Stralsund, and Greifswald about the same date ; in Danzig 
 on the 1st September; Konigsberg, on the 8th; and so east- 
 wards to Livonia in 1530, and to Lithuania, Poland and Russia, 
 the information for which countries is vague. Copenhagen also 
 suffered from it, and towns in the interior of East Prussia, such 
 as Thorn and Kulm. Meanwhile the sweat had proceeded by 
 way of Hanover and Gottingen, about the middle of August 
 afflicting also Brunswick, Liineburg, Waldeck, Hadeln, Einbeck, 
 Westphalia, the valley of the Weser, and East Friesland. It 
 reached Frankfurt on the nth September, Worms shortly after, 
 and Marburg at the end of the month, breaking up the con- 
 ference there between Luther and Zwingli, and their respective 
 adherents, on the doctrine of the Eucharist. Jtilich, Liege and 
 Cologne were reached about the middle of September, and 
 
 1 The German writers have assumed that the sweat was prevalent abroad really in 
 the same summer or autumn as in England, explaining the discrepant dates by the 
 difference in the English calendar. But it was only the months of January and 
 February, and March to the ■24th, that were counted in the old year in England ; the 
 months of June, July, August, etc. in which the sweat occurred, are the same in the 
 English and foreign calendar-years. In the English chronology of the sweat, those 
 months belong quite clearly to the year 1528; and, in the German, Swiss, and 
 Netherlands chronology of the sweat, just as clearly to Ihe year 1529. The sweat on 
 the Continent was a year later than in England. 
 
The English Siveat abroad, 1529. 257 
 
 Speyer about the 24th, Augsburg (where there was a most severe 
 and protracted epidemic) on the 6th, Strasburg on the 24th. 
 Freiburg in Breisgau, Muhlhausen and Gebweiler in Alsace, in 
 October. In November, the sickness overran Wurtemberg, 
 Baden, the Upper Rhine, the Palatinate, and the shores of the 
 Lake of Constance. Among the other German provinces visited 
 in due order were Franconia, Thuringia, Saxony, the Saxon 
 Metal Mountains, Meissen, Mannsfeld, Halberstadt, Magdeburg, 
 Wittenberg, Lusatia, the Mark of Brandenburg, and Silesia. In 
 Vienna the sweat prevailed during the siege by Sultan Soliman 
 from the 22nd September to the 14th October. At Berne it is 
 heard of in December, and at Basle in January 1530. The Low 
 Countries had not been affected so soon as their nearness to 
 England might have led one to expect : the sickness is said 
 to have approached them from the Rhine in the latter half 
 of September. They suffered severely, one of the heaviest 
 mortalities being reported for the town of Zierikzee, where 
 three thousand are said to have died subsequent to the 3rd of 
 October, 1529. 
 
 In this remarkable progress over the mainland of Europe, 
 France was conspicuously avoided. The sweat does not appear 
 to have entered Spain, nor to have crossed the Alps. But all 
 the rest of the Continent, from the Rhine to the Oder (if not 
 farther east) and from the Baltic to the Alps, was reached by the 
 English sweat in much the same way as if it had been an 
 influenza reversing the order of its usual direction. There need 
 be no hesitation as to the correctness of the diagnosis ; the 
 disease was described by several foreign writers from their own 
 observation, and their descriptions agree entirely with those of 
 Forrestier, in 1485, of Polydore Virgil, perhaps for the epidemics 
 of 1508 and 1517, and of the letter-writers who were describing 
 the epidemic of the year before (1528), as they saw it in and 
 around London. The striking thing in the accounts from the 
 continent is the enormous range of its fatality; in some towns the 
 proportion of deaths to cases was hardly more than in influenza, 
 while in others it was the death-rate of a peculiarly pestilential 
 or malignant typhus; and those differences cannot have de- 
 pended wholly upon the method of treatment. 
 
 C. • 17 
 
258 Foreign %vritings on the EnglisJi Szveat. 
 
 These full accounts of the English sweat on the continent 
 of Europe in 1529 are in striking contrast to the meagre records 
 of it at home. They were compiled first in 1805 from the 
 numerous contemporary chronicles, and printed pamphlets or 
 fly-sheets on the sweat, by Gruner, professor at Jena, in his 
 Iti7ierary of the English Szueat, and his Extant luriters on the 
 English Sweat, published in Latin\ In 1834 Hecker went over 
 the ground again in his well-known essay, improving somewhat 
 upon the positive erudition of Gruner, but at the same time 
 hazarding a number of doubtful interpretative statements, especi- 
 ally as to the sweat in England, for which the meagreness of the 
 English records then available may be his excuse. The erudi- 
 tion of Gruner, Hecker and Haser deserves every acknowledge- 
 ment ; but it is of value more especially for the extension of 
 the sweat to the continent of Europe in 1529, where it had 
 abundant materials at its service, in chronicles, printed essays, 
 and " regiments." There are extant no fewer than twenty-one 
 printed essays or sheets of directions on the English sweat, which 
 were issued from the German, Netherlands, or Swiss presses 
 between the month of October 1529 and the month of June 
 1531, two or three of them being in Latin and most of them 
 brief summaries in the native tongue for popular use. The 
 corresponding epidemic in England did not call forth a single 
 piece by any medical man, so far as is known. Nor does the 
 English treatment appear to have lost anything thereby ; for it 
 was based upon the profitable experience of previous epidemics 
 as embodied in oral tradition. Down to the fifth epidemic in 
 1 55 1, the only English writing on the sweat so far as is known 
 was the manuscript of 1485, by Forrestier. Almost all that we 
 know of the epidemics in England in 1508, 1517 and 1528 comes 
 from Bernard Andre's annals and Polydore Virgil's history, and 
 from the despatches of the apostolic nuncio, the Venetian 
 ambassador and the French ambassador. The fifth and last out- 
 
 ^ Gruner's Scriptores de sitdore Anglico snperstites was reprinted by Haser, with 
 additional citations and notes, in 1847. Hecker {Der Eitglische Sckweiss, 1834) refers 
 to the work by Gruner, Itinerarmjii sudoris Anglici ex actis designatiim, Jena, 1805, 
 which I have been unable to see. The account of the German invasion in the text is 
 accordingly at second-hand. 
 
Fifth outbreak of the Sweat in England, 1551. 259 
 
 break, in 155 i, called forth two native writings, one for popular 
 use in English in 1552, and another in Latin in 1555, both by 
 Dr Caius, physician to Henry VIII. and Edward VI.; these are 
 indeed better than nothing at all, but they are too much occupied 
 with pedantry and lugubrious rhetoric to be of much service 
 for historical purposes \ The information about the epidemic of 
 1 55 1 is so scanty as to suggest that the sickness in that year 
 can hardly have been so severe as in 1528; the state papers 
 contain hardly anything relating to it, and we owe nearly all 
 our knowledge of it to the diary of Machyn, a citizen of London, 
 to Edward VI. 's diary, and to Dr Caius. Bills of mortality 
 had been kept in London for two or three weeks when the 
 epidemic was at its height, from which some totals of deaths are 
 extant. 
 
 The Fifth Sweat in 1551. 
 
 It was not in London that the sweat of 155 1 began, but at 
 Shrewsbury — on the 22nd of March, according to the manuscript 
 chronicle of that town^ or on the 15th of April, according to 
 Caius^ No record remains of its prevalence at Shrewsbury; the 
 statement of Caius, that some 900 deaths had occurred in a 
 single city corresponds to the facts for London, and has no more 
 reference to Shrewsbury (where Caius never resided) than it has 
 to Norwich (as in Blomefield's county history). The strange 
 influence in the air or soil advanced from Salop, as we learn 
 from Caius, by way of Ludlow, Presteign, Westchester, Coventry 
 and Oxford, in only one of which places is anything known of it 
 except Caius's remark that it proceeded " with great mortality." 
 The best record of its prevalence on the way from Shrewsbury 
 to London occurs in the parish register of Loughborough, in 
 Leicestershire. Under the date of June, 1551, the register has an 
 
 ^ A hoke or cotinseill against the S'ucate, London, 1552. De Ephemera Britan- 
 nica, London, 1555. 
 
 ^ "This yere the swetinge sycknes raignyd in England, and began first in this 
 towne of Shrowsbery the xxii of Marche, and ran through the reahne, and began in 
 London the ixth of July." Quoted from MS. Chronicle, in Owen and Blakeway's 
 History of Shreivsbury, p. 345. 
 
 ^ Op. cit. 1552, fol. 10. In the Latin work the date at "Salopia" is " 17 Kal. 
 May." 
 
 17 — 2 
 
26o TJie Sweat at Loughborough and Oxford. 
 
 entry that "the swat called New Acquaintance, alias Stoupe ! 
 Knave and know thy Master, began on the 24th of this month." 
 Then follow the names of 12 persons who were buried in four 
 days, and, on the next page, under the heading of " The Sweat 
 or New Acquaintance," the names of 7 more, all buried in three 
 days — making a total of 19 in six days, presumably all dead 
 of the sweat and presumably also the whole mortality from it 
 in Loughborough, which had far heavier mortalities from the 
 common plague in after years \ 
 
 The date of its arrival at Oxford, on the way to London, is 
 not known ; but a physician then resident there, Dr Ethredge, 
 has left it on record that it attacked sixty in Oxford in one 
 night, and next day more than a hundred in the villages 
 around ; very few died of it at Oxford, which showed that the air 
 of that university was more salubrious than at Cambridge, where 
 the two sons of the duchess of Suffolk died I 
 
 The sweat appeared suddenly in London about the beginning 
 of July, and had a short but active career of some three weeks. 
 Deaths from it began to be mentioned on the 7th, and are 
 entered in the king's (Edward VL's) diary as having amounted 
 on the loth to the number of 120, in the London district, 
 including "one of my nobles and one of my chamberlains," so 
 that " I repaired to Hampton Court with only a small company." 
 The royal diarist says that the victims fell into a delirium and 
 died in that state^ On the i8th July, the king, in Council at 
 Hampton Court, issued an order to the bishops, that they should 
 " exhort the people to a diligent attendance at common prayer, 
 and so avert the displeasure of Almighty God, having visited 
 the realm with the extreme plague of sudden death*." 
 
 The diary of a London citizen says that " there died in 
 London many merchants and great rich men and women, and 
 young men and old, of the new sweat^" On the 12th died Sir 
 
 ^ Nichols, Leicestershire, III. 891. 
 
 ^ Edrichus, In libros aliquot Patdi ^ginetae, &c. London, 158S (not paged). 
 
 •^ "Diary of Edward VI." in Burnet's Hist, of Reformation. Stow {.Annates) says 
 it began on the 9th July and was most vehement on the 12th. 
 
 * Calendar of State Papers. Domestic (under the date). 
 
 ■'"' Machyn^s Diary. Camden Society, No. 42, edited by J. Gough Nichols, p. 7. 
 Machyn was an undertaker, and records deaths and funerals. 
 
Mortality in London, July, 155 1. 261 
 
 Thomas Spcke, . one of the king's council, at his house in 
 Chancery Lane ; next day died Sir John Wallop " an old knight 
 and gentle \" the same who had survived an attack of the sweat 
 in 1528 when at Hertford with Henry VHI. It is not clear 
 whether some other deaths of notables in the same few days were 
 due to the sweat. Three independent statements are extant of 
 the mortality in London which had all been taken, doubtless, from 
 the bills regularly compiled. One gives the deaths " from all 
 diseases" in London from the 8th to the 19th July as 872, "no 
 more in all, and so the Chancellor is certified^;" another gives 
 the deaths " by the sweating sickness " from the 7th to the 20th 
 July as 938^ ; and Caius gives the deaths from the 9th to the 
 1 6th July as 761, "besides those that died on the 7th and 8th 
 days, of whom no register was kept* ;" by the 30th of July, 142, 
 more had died, by which time it had practically ceased in 
 London^ Caius adds that it next prevailed in the eastern and 
 northern parts of England until the end of August, and ceased 
 everywhere before the end of September. The king, in a letter 
 of the 22nd August, written during his progress, says that the 
 most part of England at that time was clear of any dangerous or 
 infectious sickness". Records at York make mention of a great 
 plague in 155 1, but without describing it as the sweats The 
 event which excited most attention was the death by the sweat 
 of the two sons of the widowed duchess of Suffolk, the young 
 duke Henry and his brother lord Charles Brandon on the i6th 
 of July. They had been taken from Cambridge, for fear of the 
 sweat, to the bishop of Lincoln's palace at Bugden, in Hunting- 
 donshire, their mother accompanying them ; they fell ill 
 
 ^ Machyn. ^ Ibid. p. 8. 
 
 * Letter from London, in Harl. MS. No. 353, f. 107, cited by Nichols in notes to 
 Machyn. 
 
 ^ Caius, Boke or Coiinseill, 1552, ff. 10-11. 
 
 5 The Venetian ambassador {Cal. S. P. Venetian, v. 541) says that the sweat was 
 at an end in London in twenty days. He says, also, that children under ten years 
 were not subject "questo influsso." The excitement caused by the London epidemic 
 is shown in an entry of money in the corporation records of Canterbury: "1551. To 
 one of the King's servants that brought word how many were dede in the swett. " 
 {Hist. MSS. Comtiiiss. ix. 154 b.) 
 
 ® Edward VL to Fitzpatrick. '' Drake's Eboracuin, p. 128. 
 
262 TJie Szveat in Devonshire, August, 155 i. 
 
 immediately upon their arrival, the elder dying after an illness 
 of five hours and his brother half an hour after him\ 
 
 Besides the cases of the two noble youths and others at Cam- 
 bridge^, there are no particulars of its prevalence in " the eastern 
 and northern parts of England " (Caius). But we hear of it in the 
 register of a country parish in Devonshire, under the same name 
 of " Stup-gallant " as in the Loughborough register ; and it is 
 probable that those two casual notices indicate its diffusion all 
 over England in the manner of influenza. That conclusion may 
 find some support in the statement of one Hancocke, minister of 
 Poole, Dorset, that " God had plagued this realm most justly 
 with three notable plagues : (i) The Posting Sweat, that posted 
 from town to town thorow England and was named ' Stop- 
 gallant/ for it spared none. For there were some dancing in 
 the Court at nine o'clock that were dead at eleven ^" Its 
 occurrence in Devonshire is proved by entries in the parish 
 register of Uffculme : the whole burials in the year 1551 are 38 ; 
 and of these no fewer than 27 occur in the first eleven days of 
 August, and 16 of them in three days, the disease of which those 
 persons died being named, in the register, " the bote sickness or 
 stup-gallanf*." 
 
 Comparing these records of the sweat of 1551 with those of 
 the years 15 17 and 1528, we may conclude that the latest of 
 those three outbreaks was not more severe than the earlier, and 
 that, in the Court circle, it was probably milder. The gloomy 
 rhetoric of Caius had led Hecker to construct a picture of its 
 disastrous progress along the valley of the Severn, in which 
 there is not a single authentic detail. Caius says that he was a 
 witness of it, but that must have been in London ; and the 
 figures for London, although they indicate a very sharp epidemic 
 while it lasted, do not suggest a mortality greater at least than 
 that of 1528. The Venetian ambassador in writing a general 
 
 ^ Nichols, notes to Machyn, giving a reference to Gent. Magaz. 1825, il. 206. 
 
 '■^ Fuller (ed. Nichols, p. 183) says, under 1551 : "Many in Cambridge died of 
 this sweating sickness, patients mending or ending in twenty-four hours." The death 
 of the two young noblemen was made an occasion for copies of verses by members of 
 the University. 
 
 ^ Strype, Memorials, ni. chap. 7 (cited in notes to Macliyn). 
 
 •* Lysons, A/agua Britannia, vi. 539. 
 
Dr Cains on the Sivcat of 1 5 5 1 . 263 
 
 memoir on England four years after, says that all business was 
 suspended in London, the shops closed and nothing attended to 
 but the preservation of life ; but as he makes a gross exaggeration 
 in stating the deaths in London at 5000 "during the three first 
 days of its appearance," we may take it that his impressions 
 were vague or his recollections grown dim\ 
 
 Were it not for the isolated notices of the sweat in Leicester- 
 shire and Devonshire, we should hardly have been able to realize 
 that country towns and villages had been visited by an epidemic 
 which was appalling both by its suddenness and by its fatality 
 while it lasted. The name of " Stop-gallant," by which it is 
 called in these parish registers, shows the sort of impression 
 which it made ; but so far as the mortality is concerned, that 
 was often equalled, if not exceeded, in after years by forms of 
 epidemic fever which had nothing of the sweating type, although 
 they might also have been called " stop-gallant," and indeed were 
 so-called in France {tronsse-galante). 
 
 Apart from the notices in parish registers, we have the 
 generalities of Dr Caius, which amount to no more than a 
 funereal essay, in the scholastic manner, upon the theme of 
 sudden death. It may be doubted whether Caius really knew 
 the facts about the disease in the country. The 27 deaths 
 within a few days in a small Devonshire village and the 19 in 
 six days in a small Leicestershire town, are hardly to be 
 reconciled with the statement in his Latin treatise of 1555, that 
 " women and serving folk, the plebeian and humble classes, 
 even the middle class," did not feel it, but the " proceres " or 
 upper classes did : they fled from it, he says, to Belgium, France, 
 Ireland and Scotland. It was for these that he was chiefly 
 concerned ; and when he approaches his rhetorical task with the 
 remark that "nothing is more difficult than to find suitable words 
 for a great grief," we may take it that he was thinking rather of 
 such moving cases as that of the widowed duchess of Suffolk, 
 who had lost her two sons in one day, than of wide-spread 
 sickness and death throughout the homes of the people. 
 
 Nothing more is heard of the sweat in England after the 
 autumn of 1 551, at least not under that name, Francis Keene, 
 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers. Venetian, \. 541, under the date of 18 Aug. 1554. 
 
264 Siucating a symptom in other epidemics. 
 
 an "astronomer," prophesied in his almanack for 1575, that the 
 sweat would return, "wherein he erred not much," says Cogan', 
 " as there were many strange fevers and nervous sickness." 
 Some years before that, in 1558 (a year after influenza abroad), 
 there prevailed in summer " divers strange and new sicknesses," 
 among which was a " sweating sickness," so described by Dr 
 John Jones, who had it at Southampton. We are, indeed, 
 approaching the period of frequent and widespread epidemics of 
 fever and of influenza, in both which types of disease sweating 
 was occasionally a notable symptom, as in the influenza of 1580 
 abroad, in the fatal typhus of 1644 at Tiverton, in the widespread 
 English fevers of 1658, and in the London typhus as late as 1750. 
 How those other types of fever, due as if to a " corruption of the 
 air," are related generically to the English sweat is a question 
 upon which something remains to be said before this chapter is 
 concluded. But the history of the English sweat comes to a 
 definite end with the epidemic of 155 1. Sweating sickness of 
 the original sort was never again the sigmim patliognomiciivi of a 
 whole epidemic of fever. The English Sweat became an extinct 
 species, after a comparatively brief existence on the earth of 
 sixty-six years. Its successors among the forms of pestilential 
 disease may have occasionally put forth the sweating character, 
 as if in a sport of nature ; but the most of the travelling, or 
 posting, or universal fevers, and universal colds, are easily dis- 
 tinguished from the sweat — nova febrium tcrris incubuit cohors"^. 
 
 1 Thomas Cogan, ' The Haven of Health : chiefly made for the comfort of 
 students, and consequently for all those that have a care of their health, amplified 
 uppon fiue wordes of Hippocrates, written Epid. 6. Labour, Meate, Drinke, Sleepe, 
 Venus... Hereunto is added a Preseruation from the Pestilence: with a short Censure 
 of the late sicknesse at Oxford.' London, 1589. New ed. 1596, p. 272. 
 
 - There is a single reference to a sweat on the Continent in 1551, which may really 
 have been one of those epidemics of typhus (or influenza), with a sweating character, 
 that were observed in 1557-8 and 1580. Brassavolus, writing de iiiorho Gallico, and 
 illustrating the fact that epidemics were sometimes generated by drought (though 
 mostly by humidity), says that the sweat in England, in former years, came with 
 drought, and that at the time of his writing, the 15th September, i55r, that disease 
 was vexing Flanders, — the season being extremely dry, — and had attacked many 
 thousands. This was first noticed by Hiiser, Op. cit. ni. (1882), p. 332. The 
 reference to Brassavolus is Luisini's Script, de lue venerea. Lugd. Bat. 1728, f. 
 p. 671. 
 
Connexion of First Szveat with Henry VII.'s invasion. 265 
 
 Antecedents of the English Sweat. 
 
 The history of the English sweat presents to the student 
 of epidemics much that is paradoxical although not without 
 parallel, and much that his research can never rescue from 
 uncertainty. Where did this hitherto unheard of disease come 
 from? Where was it in the intervals from 1485 to 1508, from 
 1508 to 15 17, from 15 17 to 1528, and from 1528 to 155 i ? What 
 became of it after 155 1 ? Why did it fall mostly on the great 
 houses, — on the king's court, on the luxurious establishments of 
 prelates and nobles, on the richer citizens, on the lusty and well 
 fed, for the most part sparing the poor ? Why did it avoid France 
 when it overran the Continent in 1529? No theory of the sweat 
 can be held sufficient which does not afford some kind of answer 
 to each of those questions, and some harmonizing of them all. 
 
 The history of Polydore Virgil is so well informed on all that 
 relates to the arrival in England of Henry VII. that we may 
 accept as the common belief of the time his two statements 
 about the sweat, the first associating it in some vague way with 
 the descent of Henry upon Wales, and the second pronouncing 
 it a disease hitherto unheard of in England. Caius, who wrote 
 in 1552 and 1555, and can have had no other knowledge of the 
 events of 1485 than is open to a historical student of to-day, 
 said that the sweat " arose, so far as can be known, in the army 
 of Henry VII., part of which he had lately brought together in 
 France, and part of which had joined him in Wales." Heckcr, 
 the modern reconstructer of the history (1834), has passed from 
 the tradition of Polydore Virgil and of Caius, clean into the 
 region of conjecture in assuming that the sweat had arisen 
 among the French mercenaries on the voyage and on the 
 march to Bosworth. On the other hand, the one contemporary 
 medical writer in 1485, Forrestier, is explicit enough in his 
 statement that the sweat " first unfurled its banners in England 
 in the city of London, on the 19th of September," or some 
 three weeks after Henry's entry into the city. There is nowhere 
 a hint that it was prevalent among the troops, whether French, 
 Welsh or English, who won the battle of Bosworth on the 22nd 
 
266 Outbreak in London after Henry VII' s entry. 
 
 of August, the only pretext for asserting that it was prevalent 
 in the neighbourhood before the battle being the gossip of the 
 Croylancl chronicle concerning lord Stanley's excuse to Richard 
 III. for not bringing up his men, which gossip probably arose 
 soon after when the sweat became notorious. Croyland was 
 not very far from the camp of the Stanleys ; and yet we know 
 for certain (with the help of the state papers) that the death of 
 the abbot Lambert Fossedike from the sweat happened there 
 after an illness of eighteen hours on the 14th October, some seven 
 or eight weeks from the date of Bosworth Field, and some three 
 or four weeks after the outbreak of the disease in London. The 
 probabilities of the case are all in favour of Forrestier's view 
 that the first of the sweat in 1485 was its appearance in London; 
 and we shall accordingly take that as our point of departure. 
 
 Henry covered the distance between Leicester and London 
 in four days, having left the former, after a rest of two nights, on 
 the Wednesday, slept at St Albans on the Friday, and entered 
 London, very tired by his journey (says Bernard Andre), on 
 Saturday evening, 27th August, three weeks to a day from his 
 landing at Milford Haven. Whether his whole force travelled 
 from Leicester at the same pace, and entered the city with him, 
 does not appear ; but it can hardly be doubted that Henry's 
 following, French, Welsh and English, had found their way to 
 London without loss of time, to make personal suit for the 
 grants and patents that began to be issued under the royal seal 
 in immense numbers after the first or second week in September. 
 London must have been unusually full of people in the weeks 
 before the Coronation on the 30th October. But the pestilence 
 that broke out was not the " common infection " or plague, which 
 might intelligibly have been fanned into a flame by a great con- 
 course of people. It was the sweat, — a new disease, a stranger not 
 only to England but to all the world. We shall understand the 
 mysteriousness of the visitation and the inadequacy of all ordi- 
 nary explanations, by taking Forrestier's account of the causes 
 of it, drawn up in the year of its first occurrence. 
 
 Although this earliest writer on the sweat recognized its 
 distinctive type quite clearly, making no confusion between it 
 and the plague, yet he referred both diseases to the same set of 
 
Alleged causes of the Szvcat in 14S5. 267 
 
 causes ; and in his section on the causes of the sweat he merely 
 reproduces the conventional list of nuisances which occurs in 
 nearly all treatises on the plague before and after his time. 
 There was little variation from that list, as it is given in the last 
 chapter from a plague-book of the 14th century, down even 
 to the reign of Elizabeth ; thus it is reproduced almost word for 
 word in Bullein's Dialogue on the Fever Pestilence written in 
 1564 (the year after a great plague), and it is so uniform in 
 Elyot's Castle of Health, in Phaer's, and in all the other hygienic 
 manuals of the time, that it might almost have been stereotyped. 
 This was the causation which Forrestier transferred bodily to 
 the sweat in his manuscript of 1485 ; almost the same causation 
 had been given in the old essay of the bishop of Aarhus on the 
 plague, actually printed in London in 1480. 
 
 "The causes of this sickness," he says, " be far and nigh. The far causes 
 — they be the signs or the planets, whose operation is not known of leeches 
 and of phisitions ; but of astronomers they be known. ..The nigh causes 
 be the stynkynge of the erthe as it is in many places... For these be 
 great causes of putrefaction : and this corrupteth the air, and so our bodies 
 are infect of that corrupt air.... And it happeneth also, that specially where 
 the air is changed into great heat and moistness, they induceth putrefaction 
 of humours, and namely in the humours of the heart ; and so cometh this 
 pestilence, whose coming is unknown, as to them that die sodenley, &c." 
 
 Among the causes of the corruption he specially mentions 
 the following, which probably had a real existence in the London 
 of that time, although he is merely reproducing a stock para- 
 graph of foreign origin : 
 
 "And of stinking carrion cast into the water nigh to cities or towns, — as 
 the bellies of beasts and of fishes, and the corruption of privies — of this the 
 water is corrupt. And when as meat is boiled, and drink made of the water, 
 many sickness is gendered in man's body; and [so] also of the casting of 
 stinking waters and many other foul things in the streets, the air is corrupt ; 
 and of keeping of stinking matters in houses or in latrines long time ; and 
 then, in the night, of those things vapour is lift up into the air, the which 
 doth infect the substance of the air, by the which substance the air corrupts 
 and infects men to die suddenly, going by the streets or by the way. Of 
 the which thing let any man that loveth God and his neighbour amend." 
 
 He then mentions a more distant source of corrupt air, apt 
 to be carried on the wind — the corruption of unburicd bodies 
 
268 The Sivcat not a disease of the poor. 
 
 after a battle, which enters into all the plague-writings of the 
 time. 
 
 These things were, of course, insufficient to account for the 
 special type of the sweat, or for its sudden outbreak, for the first 
 time in history, in September, 1485. There may have been 
 such favouring conditions in London at the time ; something of 
 the kind is indeed implied in Henry VII.'s order against the 
 nuisance of the shambles a few years after ; but we require a 
 special factor, without which the unsavoury state of the streets, 
 lanes, yards, and ditches, or the crowded state of the houses, 
 would never have come to an issue in so remarkable an infection 
 as the sweating sickness. Common nuisances were the less 
 relevant to the sweat, for the reason that it touched the well-to- 
 do classes most, the classes who suffered least from the "common 
 infection," or " the poor's plague," and were presumably best 
 housed, or located amidst cleanest surroundings. Even within 
 the narrow limits of Old London there were preferences 
 of locality. If the special incidence of the sweat upon the 
 great households of prelates and nobles, and on the families of 
 wealthy citizens, had rested only on the testimony of Dr Caius, 
 who has a theory and a moral to work out, there might have 
 been some reason for the scepticism of Heberden, who questions 
 whether Caius was not probably in error in saying that the 
 sweat spared the poor and the wretched, because he knows of 
 no parallel instance among infective diseases\ But the fact is 
 abundantly illustrated in the details, already given, for each of 
 the five English epidemics ; and it is confirmed for the conti- 
 nental invasion of 1529, e.g. by Kock, a parish priest of Lubeck, 
 who says that " the poor people, and those living in cellars or 
 garrets were free from the sickness," and by Renner, of Bremen, 
 who says that it " went most among the rich peopled" It was, 
 indeed, owing to its being an affliction chiefly of the upper 
 classes that the sweat has been so much heard of. So far as 
 mere numbers went, all the five London epidemics together 
 could not have caused so great a mortality ixs the plague caused 
 
 ^ Increase and Decrease of Diseases, London, 1801, ji. 70. 
 ^ See the references in Gruner, pp. 444, 448. 
 
Coinpleincntary principle of infection. 269 
 
 in a single year of Henry VII., namely the year 1500, or in a 
 single year of Henry VIII., such as the year 1513. But these 
 great mortalities from plague, amounting to perhaps a fifth part 
 of the whole London population in a single season, fell mainly, 
 although not of course exclusively, upon the poorer class. The 
 bubo-plague, domesticated on English soil from 1348 to 1666, 
 was emphatically the " poor's plague," and, as such, it illustrated 
 the usual law of infective disease, namely that it specially 
 befell those who were the worst housed, the worst fed, the 
 hardest pressed in the struggle, and the least able to find the 
 means of escaping to the country when the infection in the 
 city gave warning of an outbreak on the approach of warm 
 weather. 
 
 But morbns panperuvi is not the only principle of infective 
 disease. There are pestilent infections which do not come 
 readily under the law of poor, uncleanly and negligent living, in 
 any ordinary sense of the words ; and there are some com- 
 municable diseases which directly contradict the principle that 
 infection falls upon those who engender it by their mode of life. 
 Unwholesome conditions of living may be trusted to engender 
 disease, but it does not follow that the infection so engendered 
 will fall upon those who lead the unwholesome lives ; sometimes 
 it falls upon the class who are farthest removed from them in 
 social circumstances or domestic habits, or who are widely 
 separated from them in racial characters. This principle I 
 believe to be not only a necessary complement to the more 
 obvious rule, but to be itself one of wide application. It has 
 been an original theme of my own in former writings, to which 
 I take leave to refer in a note^ ; and, I have now to try here 
 whether it may not suit the rather paradoxical and certainly 
 mysterious circumstances of the sweating sickness on its first 
 outbreak in the autumn of 1485. 
 
 If the insanitary state of London were insufificient to explain 
 the engendering of the disease, the next thing is to look for 
 
 1 "The Autonomous Life of the Specific Infections," in Brit. Med. Jottrn., 4 
 August, 1883; "The Origin of Yellow Fever," in North Atnerican Revie^o, Sept. 
 1884; Illustrations of UnconscioJis Memory in Disease, London, 1885, Chapter XIII. 
 " Vicarious Infection, " 
 
2/0 Henry Tudor s morcnaries. 
 
 a foreign source. Suspicion falls at once upon the foreign 
 mercenaries who landed with Henry Tudor at Milford Haven 
 on the 6th of August Who were these mercenaries ? Did 
 they suffer from any contagious disease ? Were they likely 
 to have engendered the sweat ? Can the infection be traced, 
 in matter of fact, to them ? In seeking an answer, it will be 
 necessary to enter somewhat fully into the history of the 
 expedition. 
 
 The earl of Richmond's successful expedition in 1485 was 
 his second attempt on the English crown. The first had been 
 made in 1483, when the duke of Gloucester was hardly seated 
 on the throne and the duke of Buckingham was in the field 
 against him. Richmond's army on that occasion had been 
 furnished by the duke of Brittany, and is roughly estimated at 
 5000 men in 15 ships^; the expedition sailed from St Malo in 
 October, encountered a storm in the Channel which scattered the 
 fleet, and drove some of the ships back to the harbours of 
 Brittany and Normandy, so that Richmond, having reached the 
 Dorset coast with only one or two ships, was unable to land in 
 force. He returned to a Norman port, and nothing more is 
 heard of his army of Bretons ; during the next two years he 
 appears to have been left with no other following than two or 
 three English nobles, among them the earl of Oxford, who 
 afterwards led a division of his army at Bosworth. After 
 repeated solicitation, he obtained in 1485 a small body-guard 
 {leve praesidiiivi) from the regents of Charles VHI. at Paris, a 
 few pieces of artillery, and money to help pay for the transport 
 of 3000 or 4000 men. With these resources he betook himself 
 to Rouen in the summer of 1485 and began to fit out his 
 expedition. It would appear that he found some difficulty in 
 making up his force to the intended full complement, and that 
 he was urged by the impatience of his followers and the chance 
 of a fair wind to leave the Seine with what force he had on the 
 31st of July. His force of Frenchmen, under his kinsman de 
 Shande (afterwards earl of Bath), consisted of only 2000 men, 
 crowded on board a few ships. It is a fair inference that the 
 
 ^ Polydore Virgil, p. 553. I'liilip de Comines says "three large ships and a con- 
 siderable body of land forces." (Chroniques du Roy Louis XI. Eng. transl. 11. 674.) 
 
Normans recruited around Roueii. 271 
 
 men had been recruited in and around Rouen ; we are told, 
 indeed, by Mezeray that Normandy was at that time infested 
 by bands o{ francs-archers who had been licensed by Louis XL, 
 and that the ministers of Charles VIII. gave them to Henry 
 Tudor, to the number of 3000, regarding the proposed expedi- 
 tion of the latter as a good opportunity of ridding the province 
 of Normandy of a lawless and disreputable soldicry\ 
 
 These, then, were the mercenaries who landed at Milford 
 Haven on the 6th of August, were at once marched through Wales 
 to Shrewsbury and Lichfield, and took a principal part in the 
 battle of Bosworth on the 22nd of August. They were Normans, 
 who had become so great a pest to their own province that 
 Charles VIII.'s ministers were induced to take up Henry Tudor's 
 cause partly with the intention of ridding French territory of 
 them. Their quality is plainly indicated in the speech just 
 before the battle by Richard III., which had been composed for 
 Hall's chronicle ; only they were not Bretons, as the speech 
 makes out ; they were Normans, recruited for the expedition in 
 Rouen and the surrounding country. 
 
 I have given so much emphasis to the nationality of these 
 mercenaries because the theory of the English sweat turns upon 
 ^t^ More than two centuries after Bosworth Field, about the 
 year 1717, when the English sweat had been long forgotten, an 
 almost identical type of disease began to show itself among the 
 villages and towns of that very region of France, the lower basin 
 of the Seine, where the mercenaries of 1485 had been recruited. 
 
 A form of Sweat afterwards endemic in Normandy. 
 
 The Picardy sweat, which was first noticed as a disease of 
 the soil about the year 17 17, and has continued off and on 
 
 ^ Mezeray, u. 762. He adds : "the Bretons boast of having also lent aid to this 
 prince." His first expedition was purely with Bretons, but the second was composed 
 mostly if not altogether of Normans. 
 
 ^ This point, which is essential to the theory, was originally stated in an article 
 on "Epidemics" in the Qtiarterly Review, Jan. 1887, and there claimed as original. 
 The writer on "Sweating Sickness" in the Encycl. Brit, has adopted it as a common- 
 place ; it is obvious enough when pointed out, but Hecker had not done so. 
 
2/2 A form of Sweat in Normandy and Picardy. 
 
 down to recent years, was indigenous to the departments in the 
 basin of the Seine, from the Pas de Calais to Calvados, with 
 Rouen as a centre. Why that strange form of sickness should 
 have sprung up there and continued, now in one town or village 
 now in another, with few blank years for a century and a half, 
 no one can venture to say. It was not the English sweat in all 
 its circumstances ; on the contrary it was only rarely epidemic 
 over a large population or a large tract of country at once. It 
 was ordinarily limited to one or two spots at a time, and in the 
 individuals affected it ran a longer course than the English 
 sweat had done. But whenever it did become widely prevalent 
 it also became a short and sharp infection like the English 
 sweat, causing in some years a very considerable number of 
 deaths. Distinctively the Picardy sweat was a somewhat mild 
 sickness of a week or more, seldom fatal, distinctively also of a 
 single town or village, or small group of villages. It was not 
 unknown in some other parts of France, such as the Vosges and 
 Languedoc, in Bavaria and in Northern Italy ; but in these 
 other localities it has been much more occasional or even rare. 
 Its distinctive habitat for a century and a half has been the 
 lower basin of the Seine ; and there it has been so steady at one 
 point or another from year to year throughout the whole of that 
 period that it may be said to be a disease of the soil, indigenous 
 or domesticated, and depending for its periodic manifestations 
 mostly upon vicissitudes of the seasons, as affecting probably 
 the rise and fall of the ground-water. It has been more a disease 
 of the well-to-do bourgeois class than of the very poor, and it has 
 often shown a preference for the cleaner villages. It has been 
 the subject of a very large number of French writings from the 
 year 1717 down almost to the present date. Strange as this 
 form of disease is, neither its circumstances nor its nosological 
 characters are left in any doubt ; it is at once mysterious and 
 perfectly familiar'. 
 
 ^ The above account is summavised from the chapter in Ilirsch, Gcog. and Histor. 
 Palh. Eng. transl. I. 88. 
 
Connexion between English and Pieardy Sweats. 273 
 
 Theory of the English Sweat. 
 
 I have been at some pains to show that Henry Tudor's 
 mercenaries were enlisted in and around Rouen, or, in other 
 words, they came from that very district of France in which 
 the sweat, in a somewhat modified form, began to make its 
 appearance as an endemic malady two hundred and thirty years 
 after. If the sweat had not become an endemic or standing 
 disease there, as if native to the soil, or if it had become equally 
 a disease of all other parts of Europe, as typhoid fever has, 
 the coincidence would have been less striking, and might have 
 been made to appear altogether irrelevant b}' the long interval of 
 more than two centuries between the one event and the other. 
 If it were a mere coincidence, we should conclude that the same 
 causes which established in Normandy in the i8th century a 
 steady prevalence of a sweating sickness, not unlike the more 
 familiar prevalence of typhoid, had been at work on English 
 soil more than two centuries earlier, not indeed to establish a 
 form of sweating sickness steadily prevalent from year to year in 
 one place or another, like the plague, but to induce five sharp epi- 
 demic outbursts, within a period of sixty-six years, four of which 
 outbursts began in London and extended probably over the whole 
 country, while one began in Shrewsbury, travelled by stages to 
 London, and spread all over England. And, as we are ignorant 
 of the things which determine the type of the endemic sweat of 
 Normandy or Pieardy down to the present day, we can neither 
 deny nor affirm that there may have been corresponding factors 
 of disease at work in the England of Henry VII. By such a 
 line of reasoning we are brought to a view of the English sweat 
 which precludes all farther inquiry and makes a permanent 
 blank or maze in our knowledge. Let us try, however, whether 
 the facts of the case do not better fall in with the view that the 
 English sweat had a real relation to the seats of the Norman 
 and Pieardy sweat, even at a time when that sweat had not come 
 into existence as a definite form of disease, and although the 
 French provinces appear to have been spared the invasion of the 
 epidemic when it overran the rest of Northern Europe in 1529. 
 C. 18 
 
274 T^Ji(^ more mysterions mode of infection. 
 
 The means of communication in i4<S5 was not wanting, 
 namely the Norman soldiery of Henry VII. The tradition of 
 their quality is preserved in the speech composed in Hall's 
 chronicle for Richard III. before the battle of Bosworth, and 
 versified somewhat closely by Shakespeare : 
 
 " A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and nm-aways, 
 A scum of Bietagnes, and base lackey peasants : 
 ...Let's whip these stragglers o'er the seas again ; 
 Lash hence these over-weening rags of France, 
 These famished beggars, weary of their lives." 
 
 There is nothing incredible in the supposition that these 
 men had brought a disease into London although they had not 
 themselves presented the symptoms of that disease. Such im- 
 portations are not unknown ; the mystery hanging over them 
 does not make them the less real. A well-known instance is 
 the St Kilda boat-cold, " the wonderful story," as Boswell says, 
 " that upon the approach of a stranger all the inhabitants catch 
 cold," a story which Mr Macaulay, the author of the Histoij of 
 St Kilda, had been advised to leave out of his book. " Sir," said 
 Dr Johnson, " to leave things out of a book merely because 
 people tell you they will not be believed, is meanness : Macaulay 
 acted with more magnanimity." The St Kilda influenza has 
 been amply corroborated since then by parallel instances from 
 the more remote islands of the Pacific, and by striking instances 
 in veterinary pathology. Among the latter may be quoted the 
 instance which has been heard of in Shropshire, of " sheep which 
 have been imported from vessels, although themselves in a 
 healthy condition, if placed in the same fold with others, 
 frequently producing sickness in the flock'." But there is an 
 instance on a vast scale from the United States, the instance of 
 Texas cattle-fever, which has recurred so often, and has been 
 so closely watched on account of the disastrous loss which it 
 causes, that there is no room left to doubt the reality of that 
 mysterious form of contagion. I shall have to speak very 
 shortly of the malignant fevers of the assizes, which spread from 
 prisoners who were not known to be ill of fever ; these incidents 
 
 ' Darwin, A^n/iiialis/'s ]\iyagc roKvd ihr ]]'orld, pp. 435-6. 
 
Norman mercenaries the source of tJtc Siveat. 275 
 
 are historical from the year 1522, when an epidemic of the kind 
 arose among the court and grand jury at the gaol delivery in the 
 Castle of Cambridge. Lastly the history of yellow fever, as 
 expounded in part in this volume, is an instance of a long- 
 enduring infection arising from the circumstances of the African 
 slave-trade, the negroes themselves having been racially exempt 
 from the fever although they had been the source of the virus. 
 
 In all such cases the sickness which ensued among the 
 healthy from contact with strangers had a more or less definite 
 type ; and that type in each case must have been determined 
 mainly by the antecedents of the strangers, their racial charac- 
 ters being reckoned among the antecedents as well as their 
 special hardships and their personal habits. In the case of the 
 singular visitation of England in 1485, the strangers were a 
 swarm of disreputable free-booters from Normandy, natives of a 
 soil which developed the sweat as an indigenous malady in the 
 long course of generations. If they themselves had shown the 
 symptoms of the sweat in 1485, one might have said that the 
 circumstances of their passage in crowded ships, of their ex- 
 hausting march from Wales to Leicestershire, and thence to 
 London, had brought to the definite issue of a specific disease 
 that which was otherwise no more than a habit of body, a 
 constitutional tendency, a disease in the making. But there is 
 no reason to suppose that they themselves incurred the symptoms 
 of the disease at all ; it was contact with them in England, par- 
 ticularly in London, that determined the peculiar type of disease 
 in others. Those others were of a different national stock, and for 
 the most part of another manner of life ; in their very differences 
 lay their liability, according to well-known analogies. Of course 
 there must have been something material, something more than 
 abstract contact, to cause the sweat in certain Englishmen ; and 
 although we cannot image the form of the virulent matter, we 
 are safe to pronounce, in this hypothesis, that it must hav^e come 
 from the persons of the foreign soldicr}\ 
 
 18—2 
 
276 TJie English Sweat a soil-poison. 
 
 The Habitat of the Virus. 
 
 We may go even farther in the way of specific probability, 
 and bring the virus definitely to a habitat in the soil. The 
 English sweat, like the Picardy sweat itself, had certain cha- 
 racters of a soil poison, like the poison of cholera, yellow fever 
 and typhoid fever ; only it was not endemic like the two last, 
 but periodic, as well as somewhat volatile in its manner of 
 travelling, like dengue, influenza, and others of the "posting" 
 fevers of former times. This brings us to the singular history 
 of the epidemics of sweat in England, — to the clear intervals of 
 many years and the sudden bursting forth anew. What became 
 of the specific virus from 1485 to 1508, to 15 17, to 1528, to 155 i, 
 and after } 
 
 A fresh importation in each of the epidemic years after 
 1485 is improbable ; certainly the circumstances of Henry VII. 's 
 expedition never occurred again, and the traffic between England 
 and her two French possessions of Calais and Guineshad nothing 
 in it at all analogous. Equally improbable is the continuance of 
 the sweat in isolated or sporadic cases from year to year through- 
 out the intervals between the epidemics ; the only facts that 
 give any countenance to such a continuous succession are the 
 occasionally mentioned "hot agues," as in 15 18, and, on a more 
 extensive scale, in 1539. The seeds or germs of the infection 
 which arose first in London in September, 1485, must have lain 
 dormant in the city until some favouring conditions came round 
 to call them into life. It is impossible to figure such dormancy 
 of the virus except on the hypothesis that it was a soil-poison, 
 having its habitat in the pores of the ground. The periodic 
 activity of all such poisons depends, as we can now say with a 
 good deal of certainty, upon the movements of the ground-water, 
 which in turn depend on the wetness or dryness of seasons. The 
 kind of weather preceding each of the epidemics of the English 
 sweat has been remarked on by writers, but somewhat loosely or 
 erroneously. The peculiarity of the year of the second sweat, 
 1508, (not 1506 as in Hccker, nor 1507 as in other writers) was a 
 " marvellous " forwardness of vegetation in the month of January, 
 
IVcat/icr preceding each epidemic. 277 
 
 unusual heat from the end of May to the 13th of June, much 
 prized rain on that date, on the i6th, and on the 3rd of July \ the 
 sweat being heard of first in the Lord Treasurer's household in 
 July. The third year of the sweat, 15 17, began with a great 
 frost from the 12th January, ,so that no boat could go from 
 London to Westminster all the term time'', while men crossed 
 with horse and cart from Westminster to Lambeth''. This great 
 frost would appear to have been without snow, the whole season 
 from September, 15 16, to May, 15 17, being chronicled as one of 
 unusual drought, "for there fell no rain to be accounted," so 
 that " in some places men were fain to drive their cattle three or 
 four miles to water." The kind of weather following the break- 
 up of the drought is not mentioned, but there is implied of course 
 a certain amount of rain. It was about the end of July or first 
 of August, 15 17, that the sweat began in London and the 
 suburbs. The fourth, and perhaps the most severe sweat, that 
 of 1528, followed upon two wet seasons, with one spoiled harvest 
 in 1527 and bad prospects for that of 1528. The winter of 
 1526-27 had been unusually wet from November until the end 
 of January ; then dry weather set in until April; after which the 
 rain began again and continued for eight weeks^ The harvest 
 before that seems to have been a partial failure, for early in 
 1527 corn began to run short in London, and for a week or 
 more there was acute general famine, so that the bread carts 
 coming in from Stratford had to be guarded by the sheriffs and 
 their men all the way from Mile End to their proper market. 
 The high price of corn continued into the summer of 1528. The 
 weather of that summer is not specially recorded for England ; 
 but we learn from a diplomatic letter dated, Paris, the 4th of 
 
 1 Bernard Awifivc^ A 11 iialcs Hciirici VII. Rolls series, No. 10, p. 120. Under a 
 date in January, 1508, he writes: "Quo (juidem die nuncius ab urbe incredilnlia 
 dictu, hoc est de primis verni fructibus Icmporis floridoque frumento visis, referebat." 
 Both Fabyan and the anonymous author of MS. Cotton, Vitellius, A. XVI. {Chronicle 
 of England from 1 Hen. III. to i Hen. VIII.) give the winter of 1506-7 as "a 
 wonderful [easy] and soft winter without storms or frost," but fail to remark on the 
 weather of 1507-8. 
 
 ^ Wriothesley's Chronicle. '^ Fabyan, Stow. 
 
 * Stow's Annals. Hecker, in error, makes out this exceptional season to have 
 been the one immediately preceding the sweat in the summer of 1528. 
 
2/8 Epidemics folloio rise or fall of grouiul-xoatcy. 
 
 July, that much rain had fallen and destroyed the corn and 
 vines, so that there were fears of universal decay and dearth 
 through all France*. On the 5th July, Henry VIII. requests 
 Wolscy to have general processions made through the realm " for 
 good weather and for the plague," the sweat having already been 
 raging for more than a month. The fifth and last sweat, in 
 155 1, also coincided with an unusually high price of corn, or, in 
 other words, followed one or more bad harvests. In 1550 wheat 
 was at 20 shillings the quarter; at Easter in 155 1 the price in 
 London was 26sh. Sd. ; ten or twelve ship loads of rye and wheat 
 from Holland and Brittany were sold under the mayor's direction 
 at a stated but very high price. Meanwhile the sweat was 
 advancing from Shrewsbury to London, where it broke out on 
 the 7th July. The statements of Dr Caius about stinking mists 
 carried from town to town are, like most of his statements, so 
 obviously the product of his uncritical rhetoric that it becomes 
 almost impossible to trust his narrative for matters of fact. 
 But we may go so far as to assume that the first half of 155 i 
 was a season of an unusually moist atmosphere. At all events 
 the fifth season of the sweat, and also the fourth (1528), stand 
 out in the annals as years of scarcity following bad harvests, 
 which had probably failed owing to continuous wet weather. 
 
 There is not, on the surface, much uniformity in the weather 
 preceding the epidemics of the sweat in 1508, 15 17, 1528 and 
 155 1. In the first of these the winter was mild and the early 
 summer excessively hot and dry ; in the second the winter and 
 spring were remarkable for drought, with several weeks of 
 intense black frost in the middle period ; in the remaining two 
 the antecedent appears to have been an excessive rainfall. But 
 in all the four we shall find that the law of the sub-soil water, as 
 formulated by the recent Munich school with reference to epi- 
 demic outbursts, was exemplified. According to that law, the 
 dangerous products of fermentation arise from the soil when the 
 pores of the ground are either getting filled with water after 
 having been long filled with air, or are getting filled with air 
 after having been long filled with water. It is the range of 
 fluctuation in the ground-water, either downwards or upwards, 
 
 ' CaL State Papers, under llic dale. 
 
Seasous of the Sweat not those of Plague. 279 
 
 that determines the risk to health ; and in two of the years of the 
 sweat, 1508 and 15 17, we find that there had been a rise from a 
 very low level of the wells, while in the other two, 1528 and 1551, 
 the wells had begun to fall after standing for a length of time 
 at an unusually high level. If this reading of the somewhat 
 imperfect data can be trusted, it is at one and the same time an 
 explanation of the outbreak of the sweat in the resj^ective 
 seasons, and a confirmation of the hypothesis that the virus of 
 the sweat had its habitat in the ground. That hypothesis is, 
 indeed, supported by so great a convergence of probabilities, both 
 for the English sweat and for the endemic sweat of France \ that 
 it may be used to explain the seasonal incidence without laying 
 the argument open to the charge of running in a vicious circle. 
 
 Whatever had been the kind of weather determining the 
 successive outbreaks of the sweat, it is clear that the favouring 
 circumstances were in general not the same as those of the bubo- 
 plague. The greater outbursts of j^lague, as we shall see, were in 
 1500, 1509, 1513, 1531, 1535, 1543, 1547, and other years not 
 sweat-years. It is only in the autumn of 15 17 that the plague 
 overlaps somewhat on the sweat, and even then it becomes 
 noticeable mostly in the winter following the decline of the sweat. 
 The two poisons had existed in English soil side by side, but 
 had not come out at the same seasons ; also the sweat had been 
 mostly a disease of the greater houses, and the plague mostly of 
 the poorer. 
 
 The Extinction of the Sweat in England. 
 
 The disappearance of the sweat from England after 155 1, 
 or its failure to come out again with the appropriate weather, 
 is one of those phenomena of epidemic disease which might be 
 made to appear less of a mystery by finding several more in 
 the like case. A history of all the extinct types of infective 
 disease would probably bring to light some reason why they 
 had each and all died out. But an epidemic disease leaves no 
 bones behind it in the strata ; nor has the astonishing progress 
 of science succeeded as yet in detecting pahuozoic bacteria, 
 
 ^ Summary in Hirsch, I.e. 
 
28o Epidemic fevers akin to the Szveat. 
 
 although that discovery cannot be delayed much longer. Mean- 
 while we have to make what we can of the ordinary records. 
 In our own time, so to speak, the sweat became extinct in 1551, 
 and the plague in 1666 ; perhaps someone before long may be 
 able to say that typhus died out (for a time) in Britain in such 
 and such a year, and smallpox (for good) in such and such 
 another. The surprising thing is that an infection which came 
 forth time after time should have one day been missed as if it 
 were dead. If the sweat had five seasons in England, why not 
 fifty .'' Perhaps its career was short because the circumstances of 
 its origin were transient and, as it were, accidental. But it may 
 have been also subject to the only law of extinct disease-species 
 which our scanty knowledge points to — the law of the succession, 
 or superseding, or supplanting of one epidemic type by another. 
 
 Other forms of epidemic fever, in the same pestilential class 
 as the sweat, were coming to the front in England as well as in 
 other parts of Europe. Thus, in 1539, a summer of great heat 
 and drought, " divers and many honest persons died of the hot 
 agues, and of a great laske through the realm." The hot agues 
 were febrile influenzas, and the great laske was dysentery. 
 Again, in the autumn of 1557, there died '" many of the wealthiest 
 men all England through by a strange fever," according to one 
 writer^ or, according to another^, there prevailed " divers strange 
 and new sicknesses, taking men and women in their heads, as 
 strange agues and fevers, whereof many died." Jones in his 
 Dy all of Agues, dQscnhQs his own attack near Southampton, in 
 1558, and calls it the sweating sickness. 
 
 That epidemic corresponded to a great prevalence of 
 " influenza " on the continent, which was probably as Protean 
 or composite as the fevers in England. It would not be correct 
 to say that these new fevers or influenzas, with more or less of 
 a sweating type, were the sweat somewhat modified. But they 
 seem to have come in succession to the sweat, if not to have 
 taken its place, or supplanted it. The prevalent types of disease 
 somehow reflect the social condition of the population ; they 
 change with the social state of the country or of a group of 
 countries ; they depend upon a great number of associated 
 
 ' ConliiiuaUn- uf Fabyaii. '^ Wriollicslcy, II. 139. 
 
The succession of disease-species. 281 
 
 circumstances which it would be hard to enumerate exhaus- 
 tively. As early as 1522 we have the gaol fever at Cambridge, 
 at a time when Henry VIII.'s attempts to repress crime were 
 come to the strange pass described in More's Utopia. These 
 things remain for more systematic handling in another chapter ; 
 but in concluding the career of the sweat in England we may 
 pass from it with the remark that it did not cease until other 
 forms of pestilential fever were ready to take its place. The 
 same explanation remains to be given of the total disappearance 
 of plague from England after 1666: it was superseded by 
 pestilential contagious fever, a disease which was its congener, 
 and had been establishing itself more and more steadily from 
 year to year as the conditions of living in the towns were passing 
 more and more from the medieval type to the modern. 
 Meanwhile we have to take up the thread of the plague-history 
 where we left it in the reign of Edward IV. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PLAGUE IN THE TUDOR PERIOD. 
 
 When the town council of York met on the i6th 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\" 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 West- 
 minster 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 
 
 ^ Drake's Eboracuiii, (fiuiii llic lowii council records). 
 
Plague in Oxford colleges, \^th century. 283 
 
 15th century that Anthony Wood traces to that cause more than 
 to any other the total decHne 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\" 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'', 
 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, i486, 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 
 
 ^ Hist, and Antiq. Univ. Oxford, I. 651. 
 
 ^ At Cambridge, in October, 1578, two deaths from plague in Queens' College 
 "moved many to depart." CaL Cecil J/SS. 11. under date i.^ October. 
 
284 Plague in Oxford colleges, \6th century. 
 
 pestilence overtook them (three weeks having been spent first in 
 mirth and jolHty), 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 
 Cumncr, 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 15 10, 151 1, 15 12 and 15 13, filling up the 
 interval until the summer of 15 17, 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 \ 
 
 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 
 
 ^ Antliuiiy Wood, under llie respective years. 
 
Increasing records of Plague in Henry VIIF.s reign. 285 
 
 product of the soiP. But we hear of plague also on the soil of 
 Cambridge, particularly in 151 1, 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 VH. and Henry VHI. 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 Ave 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, 
 
 1 With reference to a pestilence at Oxford in 1448, Wood says: "occasioned, as 
 'twas thought, by the overflowing of waters, and the want of a quiciv passage for them 
 from the ground. Also by the lying of many scholars in one room or dormitory in 
 almost eveiy Hall, which occasioned nasty air and smells, and consequently diseases." 
 Op. cit. I. 596. 
 
286 Medical faculty in England ivrites nothing. 
 
 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. 
 Rut 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 gram- 
 matical 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 VHI. 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 formuLne 
 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 ea.sy. 
 
 After the disastrous prevalence of plague in England in the 
 reign of Edward IV., culminating in the great epidemic of 1479 
 
Great Plague in Loudon, 1500. 287 
 
 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 T4th 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'. The next reference is to the great epi- 
 demic of 1499-15CXD, 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^; Polydore 
 Virgil says thirty thousand^; and others say thirty thousand 
 deaths from plague and other diseases together*. 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 ofif, 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^ 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". 
 
 The infection was still active as late as October, 1501, at 
 Gravesend, and it made some difference to the reception of the 
 
 ' Materials Illustrative of the Rci:^n of Henry I'll. Rolls scr. 60, il. p. 1,56. 
 
 '*' Chroniele of England, sub anno. 
 
 ^ Hist. Ajtgl., p. 609 (Basil, 1546). ■» Stow, Annales. 
 
 ■' In Rymer's Foedcra all these vacancies of bishoprics are entered under the 
 year 1501, beginning with the see of Canterbury (Morton's) on 9th January, 150T. 
 
 " Pln77ipton Corresponderice, Camden Soc. No. 4, p. 138 : Letter of ? 1499, R. 
 Leventhorpe, of Leventhorpe Hall, Yorkshire, to Sir R. Plumpton : "And sithe I 
 hard say that a servant of yours was decesed of the sicknes, which hath bene to your 
 disease, I am right sorry therefore;" he advises fasting, and trusts "ye sal be no 
 more vexed with that sicknes." In the next letter (cviii) to Sir R. Plumpton from 
 his son : — "Also, sir, I am very sorry that the death seaseth not at Plompton," 
 
288 l^arious Plagues 1 501-15 12. 
 
 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^." 
 
 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 I 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 Andre mentions casu- 
 ally that he had been absent from the City on account of it^ 
 
 In 1509, the first year of Henry VI 1 1,, there was a severe 
 outbreak of plague in the garrison of Calais, as well as "great 
 plague" in divers parts of England*. In 15 11, Erasmus writes 
 from Cambridge on 17th August, 5th October and i6th 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, 15 12, 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, 15 13, was a 
 .severe plague-year according to many testimonies. In the 
 diary of the Venetian envoy from August to 3rd September it is 
 
 ^ Hardwicke Papers, London, 1778, i. i (from Ilarl. MSS.). 
 - Freeman, Exeter, in "English Towns" series, j). 99. 
 •' Annales Henrici VII. Rolls series, p. 88. 
 
 ■* The information in the next few pages comes from the Calendar of Stale Papers, 
 Ihiiry I 'HI. , Domes/ic, unless otherwise referred to in the notes. 
 
Plague in London, 15 13-15 15. 289 
 
 stated that deaths from plague arc 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, 
 1 5 14, 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 ist July 
 Convocation was adjourned on account of the epidemic and the 
 heat. 
 
 Next year, 15 15, 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 {J. 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 
 C. 19 
 
290 Plague in London, 151 5-1 518. 
 
 for the sweat — with coral, and half-a-pound of powder preserva- 
 tive. 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 15 15 which has fixed the attention of chroniclers 
 was the death of twenty-seven of the nuns in a convent at the 
 Minories outside Aldgate\ 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, 15 17, was the season of the third sweat. 
 It was hardly over when plague began in London in September. 
 On the 2 1st the Venetian envoy speaks of having had to avoid 
 " the plague ««<T^ 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^" On the i6th 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, 15 18, 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 with- 
 drew 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 
 
 ^ Chronicle of the Grey Friars, Camden Society, No. liii. 1852, p. 29. Stow 
 puts the mortality imder the year 1513. 
 
 - Letter from the Fleet prison, assigned to 1517. Hist. /l/SS. Com. x. pt. 4. 
 p. 447. 
 
Plague in London and the conn fry, 1518. 291 
 
 of the sickness being in London, and that she feared for the kiniT, 
 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 busi- 
 ness 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, 1 5 18, 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 nth 
 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 ap- 
 pointed 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 i8th 
 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. 
 
 19 — 2 
 
292 Outbreaks of Plague, 15 18-1529. 
 
 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, 15 19, 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 re- 
 ported 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 151 1 to 1521 there is not a single year without 
 some reference to the prevalence of plague, the autumn and 
 winter of 15 13 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^ 
 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 
 
 ' V\\\\\\Yi'^, History of Shrc'iVd'ury, \i. 17. 
 
Outbreaks of Plague, 1 529-1 532. 293 
 
 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 pro- 
 rogued on April 26 to June 22, on account of the plague in 
 London and the suburbs, and farther, for the same reason, until 
 October i. The king was at Greenwich, but even there was not 
 beyond the infection ; in the Privy Purse book, there is an entry 
 of ;^i8. 8j-. 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\ 
 
 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 West- 
 minster. 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 
 
 1 Privy Purse of Henry VII/.,^. 79. 
 
294 Plague in London, 1532. 
 
 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 i8th 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. 
 " TJie Council have commanded the mayor to certify Jioiu 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\ 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 
 1 2th, 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 PI ugh Vaughan takes pains in his office 
 
 1 The reference on p. 290 (note 2) to "no parish in London free," under the date 
 of 25 October, 15 17, may imply that bills of mortality had been kept in that epidemic, 
 which was certainly an occasion when Ilcniy VIII. interposed in other ways to check 
 the projjress of plague. 
 
A ivcekly Bill of Mortality for London. 295 
 
 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 \ It is for the week from the i6th 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 15 12 ; " 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 1 6th 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 XXlil day of the same 
 moneth ys dead within the cite and freedom yong and old these many 
 folovvyng of the plage and other dyseases. 
 
 Inprimys benetts gracechurch i of the plage 
 S ButtoUs in front of Bysshops gate i corse 
 S Nycholas flesshammls i of the plage 
 
 ^ Lately purchased for the Egerton Collection. No. 2603, fol. 4. 
 
296 Deaths in London parishes for one zvcek. 
 
 S Peturs in Cornhill i of the plage 
 
 Mary Woolnerth i corse 
 
 All Halowes Barkyng ii corses 
 
 Kateryn Colmaii 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 
 
 ButtoUs 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 iii & vi. 
 
 XX 
 
 And there is this weke clcre iii and iii paryshes as by this bille doth 
 appere. 
 
 <-> t/i O J'^ r; . 
 
The Plague in 1535. 297 
 
 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'. 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 /tli Lord Chancellor 
 Audeley writes from "my house at Christchurch" (Crcechurch, 
 near Aldgate) that he had been expecting Cromwell in London, 
 
 ^ There was, however, an English translation of a small foreign essay on the 
 plague, of unacknowledged authorship, published at London in 1534 by Thomas 
 Paynel, canon of Merton, a literary hack of the time. 
 
298 Extant Bills of Mortality, August, 1535. 
 
 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 i6th 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*. 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 
 
 J 111 the Record Office. State Papers, Henry VIII., No. 4633. It has been 
 erioneously calendared by Brewer as a bill of mortality of the sweating sickness 
 in 1528. 
 
Weekly deaths in London, 1535. 299 
 
 I am bound, John Champcneys." This double bill for certain 
 days in August, 1535, is rather more elaborate than, but other- 
 wise 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), nth 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. nth 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 Bartholo- 
 mew-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 )-ear to year. 
 
 On the 1 8th 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 
 
300 Plague in London and country, 1535. 
 
 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 1 8th 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\" 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 \d. when you were here is now i <'/.," 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^ On the 23rd September one of the masons 
 
 ^ The Maire of Bristowe, his /Calendar, Camden Society, 1872, p. 53. 
 - The plague is said to have been in Exeter in 1535 (Freeman, Exdcr, in English 
 Towns Scries). 
 
Contimiance of Plague, 1536. 301 
 
 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 Parlia- 
 ment " 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 suppres- 
 sion, 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 
 
302 Fciv accounts of Plague, 1 537^1 543. 
 
 was active, and the scholars had gone into the country. In 
 London on the 27th November it was dangerous to tarry at 
 Lincohi'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 prac- 
 tised and proved in mani places within the City of London, 
 and by the same many folke have been recovered and cured \" 
 In 1537 there appear to have been a few cases of plague at 
 Shrewsbury, on account of which the town council paid certain 
 moneys ^ 
 
 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 1 563 ; 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^; 
 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 {q.\v 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^ In 1543 there was "a great 
 death" in London, which lasted so far into the winter that the 
 
 ' There is a copy in tlie Lambeth Library, No. ^yi. 
 
 2 Owen and Blakeway, i. 311. 
 
 •' Continuator of Fabyan. 
 
 ■• Cussan's History of Hertfordshire. 
 
Plague in London and country, 1 543-1 548. 303 
 
 Michaelmas law term had to be kept at St Albans\ 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^ 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'^. A letter of July 19 says that 
 they had been visited by plague in the Temple, and that it still 
 continued*. On August 28, the Common Council adjourned for 
 a fortnight by reason of the violence of the plagued 
 
 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®, at 
 Canterbury' and at Oxford*, 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 Edin- 
 burgh previous to June 24, 1545'*. 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^**. 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". Within the town of Haddington, which was 
 
 ^ A Londo7i Chroiiich' of Hen. VI I. and Hen. VIII. Camden Miscellany, 1859. 
 
 ^ Acts of the Privy Council. New series, 1542- 154 7, p. 136. 
 
 3 ^\.o\v'% Armales. < Cat. Cecil iMSS., i. 15. 
 
 •'' Guildhall Records (Extracts by Furnivall in Appendix to Vicary's Anatomy. 
 Early English Text Society). 
 
 * Brand's History of A^cwcastle. 
 
 ^ Hasted's History of Canterbury, p. 130 (from parish registers). 
 
 ^ Anthony Wood, op. cit. 11. 74. At Banbury probably about the same year. 
 Beesley's History of Banbury (from Brasbridge). 
 
 ** Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, i. 5. 
 
 ^^ Acts of the Privy Council. New series, i542-r547, iS April, 1546, p. 397. 
 " Ibid., Nov. 13, 1546, p. 552. 
 
304 Little Plague under Edward VI. and Mary. 
 
 held by an English garrison against a large besieging force of 
 French and others, plague broke out in I547^ In 1549 the 
 disease is reported from Lincoln*. A letter of November 23, 
 1550, states that the Princess Mary was driven from Wanstead 
 by one dying of the plague there^. 
 
 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*. 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 ^ In Chester also the sickness is called 
 the plague, and it is added that many fled the town, although 
 the deaths were few". A State paper of February 25, 1559, 
 speaks of the county of Cheshire as " weakened by the preva- 
 lence of plagued" 
 
 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 
 
 ^ Camden's Britannia, ed. Gougli, i. 262. - Ibid. 11. 265. 
 
 •^ Calendar of State Papers. Domestic series. Vol. x. 
 ■• Notes and Queries, 6th series, ni. 477. 
 
 •'■' Niciiols, Leicestershire, III. 891 (295 deaths from plague &c. i.^.'>5-.'?9.) 
 " Ormerod's Clieshire, I. under 1558, with a reference to "Ilarl. MSS." The 
 Ilarleian MSS. relating to Chester fill many pages of the catalogue. 
 " Calendar of State Papers, Eli/, i. p. 122. 
 
Weekly plague-deaths in London, 1563. 
 
 305 
 
 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'. After 
 the week ending the 31st December, 1563, the weekly deaths 
 are {q^n, 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 : 
 
 V'eek ending 
 
 Pbgue- 
 
 Week ending 
 
 Plague- 
 
 
 deaths 
 
 
 
 deaths 
 
 3. 12 June 
 
 17 
 
 1563- 
 
 I October 
 
 1828 
 
 19 „ 
 
 25 
 
 
 8 „ 
 
 1262 
 
 26 „ 
 
 23 
 
 
 15 
 
 829 
 
 3 July 
 
 44 
 
 
 22 
 
 1000 
 
 10 „ 
 
 64 
 
 
 29 
 
 905 
 
 17 „ 
 
 131 
 
 
 5 November 
 
 380 
 
 23 » 
 
 174 
 
 
 12 „ 
 
 283 
 
 30 „ 
 
 289 
 
 
 19 
 
 506 
 
 6 August 
 
 299 
 
 
 -'6 
 
 281 
 
 13 » 
 
 542 
 
 
 3 December 
 
 178 
 
 20 „ 
 
 608 
 
 
 10 
 
 249 
 
 27 „ 
 
 976 
 
 
 17 
 
 239 
 
 3 September 
 
 963 
 
 
 24 
 
 134 
 
 10 
 
 1454 
 
 
 31 
 
 121 
 
 17 
 
 1626 
 
 I 564. 
 
 7 January 
 
 45 
 
 24 
 
 1372 
 
 
 14 
 
 21 „ 
 
 26 
 13 
 
 Stow's summary of this epidemic in his Annales is as 
 follows: " In the same whole }-ear, i.e. from the ist 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, 
 
 ^ Three Fifteeuth Cen/iiiy Chronicles 
 123, 144. 
 
 C. 
 
 Camden Society, ed. Gairdner, 1880, pp. 
 
 20 
 
3o6 Extent of the Plagite in London, 1563. 
 
 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 discre- 
 pancy 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 arc 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^" "London and suburbs" 
 would mean the 108 parishes of the City and liberties together 
 with the 1 1 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 fcare of smityng." 
 
 We get one or two glimpses of this great plague from the 
 medical point of view in Dr John Jones's Dy all of Agues'^. The 
 worst locality, he says, was " S. Poulkar's parish [St Sepulchre's] 
 
 ' LcUer from Lonclon to the I'larl f>f Shrcwslnuy, Hist. ]MSS. Com. \\. 455, a. 
 * Without date, but prol:)n.bly 1564. Walt conjectures 155^), but the l)ook contains 
 references lo the fever-cpidcniic of 1558, and, as above, to the pl.ague of 1563. 
 
Medical details from the Plague of 1563. 307 
 
 by reason of many fruiterers, poor people, and stinkinc^ 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 flic the trust of ignoraunt persons, who use to saye 
 that he who hath once had the plague shal not nedc 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. 1 563) 
 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 Fr}'er 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\ 
 
 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, 
 
 1 Munk, Roll of the College of Physiaans, i. pp. 32, 63. 
 
 20 — 2 
 
308 Plague among the English in Havre, 1563. 
 
 1562, as an English fortress in French territory. Havre was 
 not surrendered until the last days of July, 1563, and no return- 
 ing 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 1 2th 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 : " 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 con- 
 tinual drinking of wine, contrary to their custom, has bred these 
 disorders and diseases." On the 28th June the daily mortality 
 was '^'] ; 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 Castled 
 
 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 
 Engli.sh capital in respect of that infection. A clear interval of 
 
 * This and other information immediately following arc from Cal. Slate Papers. 
 Foreign series. 
 
 '^ Calendar of Cecil MSS., under the dates. 
 
Plague in provincial tozons, 1 563-1 564. 309 
 
 a dozen years without an epidemic, or a severe epidemic, was 
 enouijh 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' in 1563, at Leicester'^ 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^ and Canterbury* 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 1 563 being a blank in the register w^as " 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®." 
 
 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. 
 
 ^ Glover's Hist, oj Derbyshire (21 plague deaths in St Michael's register. May — 
 Aug. 1563). 
 
 ^ Nichols; Kelly, in Trans. Hist. Soc. vi. 395. 
 
 ^ Harvvood's ZTw/. of Lichfield, p. 304. 
 
 * Hasted's Hist, of Canterbury, p. 130 (parish registers). 
 
 ^ Notes and Queries, 2nd series, XI. 69. 
 
3IO Flight the best preventive of Plague. 
 
 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 1 516, 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 percep- 
 tion 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\ It followed, accordingly, 
 that period of plague in London w^iich 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;' 
 ' Mend,' say I, 'you counsel well.'" The situation was a naturally 
 complex one, and this is how the good preacher comes out of it : 
 
 ' 'How and whether a Chii.sten man ought to flye the horrible plage of the Pesti- 
 lence. A sermon out of the Psalme "Qui habitat in adjulorio altissimi," by Andrewe 
 Osiantler. Translated out of Ilye Almayn into Englishe, 1537.' Copy in the British 
 Museum. The initials M.C. are taken to be those of Miles Covcrdale. 
 
Osiatuier on Christian duty in plague-tivie. 3 1 1 
 
 "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 ParHament 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 ist 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 
 
312 Early preventive measures, 1 5 1 3- 1 5 1 8. 
 
 his government, the Venetian ambassador in London wrote of 
 the plague as follows in 1554^ : 
 
 " 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 15 18. 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 London- 
 ersl" 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 15 13, which was a 
 severe one. When two of the Venetian ambassador's servants 
 died of the plague in 15 13, their bed, sheets and other effects 
 were thrown into the river. On the 21st of May, 15 16, 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 
 
 ' Soraiizo to the Senate of Venice. Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, v. 541 
 (18 Aug. 1554). 
 
 "^ Cal. State Papers, Wcwxy \'W\. Domestic. 
 
Plague regulations of 1543. 313 
 
 put in practice against those who had business with it. On the 
 22nd July, 15 18, the same ambassador wrote to Venice from 
 Lambeth that two of his servants had lately died of the plague ; 
 and, on the iith 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 VI IL 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 VHI. (1543). As it contains the 
 germs of all subsequent preventive practice, I transcribe it in 
 full\ 
 
 "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 clays : 
 
 " 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 visi- 
 
 1 From Abstract of se7)eral orders relating to the Plague. MS. Addit. (Brit. 
 Museum), No. 4376. Probably the originals of these abstracts are among the Guild- 
 hall records. I quote from the most accessible source. 
 
314 TJie Blue Cross on the houses, 1543-1547. 
 
 tation, 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 mca.sure.s which had 
 been devised for London by Henry VHI. or his minister 
 previous to 15 18, and probably in the plague of 15 13. 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 1 547, in a 
 Guildhall record of 15 November^: 
 
 " Item, for as moche as my Lord Mayer reported that my Lorde Chaun- 
 celar 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 15 18, are mentioned in the order of 1543 as two foot 
 
 ^ Extracls from the Guildhall Records, by l""urnivall, in Appendix to Vicary's 
 Analoiity oj Ihc Body of Man. Kaily Eni^lisli '1\-,\1 Society. 
 
The plague-ivands. 3 1 5 
 
 long ; they were to be ciirried 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\" 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 pro- 
 vincial 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 ail 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 dense the stietes 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^" 
 
 ^ Cal. State Papers, Venetian, vn. 649. 
 
 ''■ Abstract, &c. in Brit. Mus. MSS., as above. 
 
3i6 D<^^^ <^'i(i c<^t^ (^^ carriers of infection. 
 
 The curious order as to dogs was based upon the beHef 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 Alan'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 \ 
 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 corpora- 
 tion records of Winchester^ there is a minute, undated, but 
 probably belonging to the end of the i6th 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 1 563 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 largel 
 
 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'*. 
 The blue crosses were again in great request, being ordered by 
 hundreds at a time in readiness to affix to infected houses ^ 
 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'^." 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 
 
 1 The following is the case by which ho supports the recommendation to kill dogs 
 in plague-time: "Not many years since, I knew a glover in Oxford who with his 
 family, to the number of ten or eleven persons, died of the plague, which was said to 
 be brought into the house by a dogge skinne that his wife bought when the disease 
 was in the Citie" {Poor Man's Jewel, Chapter viii. London, 1578). 
 
 '■* Transcripts from the MS. Archives, ed. Bayley, 1856. 
 
 » News-letter to the Earl of Shrewsbury, Hist. MSS. Commis. vi. 455. 
 
 •* Machyn's Diary, ed. J. Gough Nichols. Camden See, No. 42, p. 310. 
 
 •' Ibid. p. 396 (note by Nichols); and Guildhall Records, in Furnivall, I.e. 
 
 " Abstract, &.c. as above. 
 
Various plagnc-ordcrs in 1563. 317 
 
 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'. 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 infec- 
 tion ^ 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^" 
 
 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 1 581 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.* 
 
 1 Stow's Alcmorauda (Lambeth MS.), Camden Soc, 18S0, p. 123. 
 
 * Alistracl, &c. as above. •* Stow, ibui. 
 
 * Record Office. State Papers, Elizabeth, vol. XLvni., No. 70. 
 
3i8 PlaguC'rcgulations in 1568. 
 
 A collection of such papers as are found in the office of his M.ijesties 
 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 discrcete person be appoynted to attend each such 
 infected house to provide them of all necessaries at the cost of the M' 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 com- 
 mitted 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 
 1 568, whereupon queene Elizabeth writeth a letter to S' William Cycill then 
 secretary and S' 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' William Cycill, Secretary, as High Steward of 
 Westminster and S' Ambrous Cave, chauncellor of the Dutchy to the Bay- 
 Iciffes, Hedburroughs, Counstables and other officers of the sayde Citty. 
 
 I. 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 
 connnon Goale there to rcmayne forty dayes from tlie first day of his being 
 in the stocks. 
 
Additional orders ?>/ i5<Si. 319 
 
 2. That the officers aforcsayde 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 shewcrs sinkes (?) 
 and gutters thereof dayly to be made sweete and clcane. 
 
 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^ 
 
 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 collcc- 
 
 ' Endorsed "An abstract of such orders as have been heretofore for the preventing 
 and decreasing of the plague in and about London." 
 
320 TJie Company of Parish Clerks. 
 
 tions 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 1 563, 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 ist James I. 
 (1603-4), cap. 31. 
 
 A most essential part of the means for controlling plague 
 was the institution of searchers\ 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 1 39 1, 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 
 
 ' The scarclieis .arc mentioned .it Slnewslmry as early as 1539 (Phillijis). 
 
The Parish Clerks and the Bills of Mortality. 321 
 
 days, "and was of matter from the creation of the world, whereat 
 was present most of the nobility and gentry of England \" 
 
 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 alto- 
 gether 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 wc 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 155 1, 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^ 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 
 
 ^ Siirvey of London, ed. cit. p. 119. 
 2 Holinshed, HI. p. 1260. 
 
 r. 21 
 
22 Duties of the SearcJiers. 
 
 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 \ 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 
 
 ' jdlm IJrll, l.oiulon''s RcDtciiihranccr. Loud. 1665. 
 
Nuisances in medieval London. 323 
 
 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\ 
 
 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 bankcd-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 
 
 ^ Lihc7- AUms Londincnsis. Rolls series, ed. Riley. The following inst.inces 
 occur in the report of the commissioners of 1343: P. 446: A water-gate "obturatur 
 ratione unius gutturi exeuntis de una latrina," etc. P. 449 : the Ebbegate obstructed 
 by certain persons named, "qui fecerunt in eadem venella latrinas supra dentes, 
 quarum putredo cadit supra capita hominum transeuntium." Same page : Wende- 
 goslane "obturatur per fimos et garderobas." Same page: Rethersgate obstructed 
 "per fimos et alia hujusmodi foetida." Same page: Dowgate. Two householders 
 named "in eisdem aedificiis diversas latrinas fecerunt, pendentes ultra vicum ejusdem 
 venellae ; quarum putredines cadunt supra homines per eandem vencllam transeuntes." 
 P. 450 : at Queenhithe a "communis latrina." P. 451 : at Saltwharf the way to the 
 river obstructed " pulvere et aliis putredinibus in eadem projiciendis." P. 452: 
 Lekynggeslane has two latrinae and is impassable owing to want of paving. Same 
 page : Another venel obsti-ucted by the Earl Marshall ; three latrinae in it. In a 
 perambulation of the ground outside the walls, 26 Ed. III. (1552), the following 
 encroachments are noted among others : Outside Ludgate, one has erected a shed 
 (camera) 16 ft. x i^f ft., and made there "unum profundum puteum et quadratum pro 
 latrina" — a deep well and a latrine-pit together. Also outside Ludgate, William of 
 Wircestre has a house there and two shelters for beasts, and a latrine, and part of the 
 said house is 14 ft. x 7^ ft. 
 
 21 — 2 
 
324 TJie SJimiihlcs the chief nuisanee. 
 
 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 
 complaint" 
 
 Despite this statute, the shambles in the parish of St Nicholas 
 within Newgate (adjoining the ground now occupied by Christ's 
 ' Statutes oj Ihc Rcalm^ 17 Ric. II. 
 
Vigorous sanitation under Henry V. 325 
 
 Hospital, and formerly by the Grey F'riars) became an estab- 
 lished 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 neighbour- 
 hood. 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 
 ni.'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 141 5 (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 \ Its removal was ordered, and in the same year 
 (141 5) chaussees 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 grcte 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 
 
 ^ Riley, op. ciL, p. 614. 
 
326 The Shambles in 1488. — Doctrine of contagion. 
 
 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 Nicho- 
 las Flesshamls, whos corrupcion by violence of unclene and putritied 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 acta there to be doon, to the Ju- 
 bardouse [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 Christen- 
 dom, 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 (11 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, llocks 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 
 
Scavengers at Ipsivich : their duties at Exeter. 327 
 
 than quarantine measures. The common ditch between Aldgate 
 and the postern of the Tower was cleansed in 15 19 at the 
 charges of the city ; in 1 540 the Moor ditch was cleansed : 
 and, not long before, the ditch from the Tower to Aldgatc. 
 In 1549 the ditch was again cleansed at the charges of the 
 City Companies\ 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 doorl In the records of the borough of Ipswich^ 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 Heme, and the 
 Dikes in the Marsh. When queen Elizabeth visited Ipswich 
 (in 156 1, 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*, 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 
 
 ^ Stow's Sun'cy. - Art. "Shakespeare," Encycl. Britan. 
 
 •* Wodderspoon's Mcnioiials 0/ Ips7i'ich, p. 285, p. 259. 
 ^ "Now first printed." Exeter, 1765, p. 181. 
 
328 Nuisances controlled by the Alanor Courts. 
 
 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 Ehzabethan 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 
 fyhh at John Davis house ende before the feaste of Seynct Andrew th'apos- 
 tell 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 Bcsas 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 xs^" 
 
 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 
 
 ' I'ouluU Sciupc, op. cit. p. 3,^},. 
 
Erasmus on English houses. 329 
 
 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 whole- 
 some 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 \ 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 docs 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 Prankish 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^" 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 
 
 ^ D. Eras/ni Epistolar. lib. XXX. London, 1642, Lib. xxii. Epist. 12 (without 
 date). 
 
 - Richard of Devizes. Eng. Hist. See. p. 60: " Apud Bristolliam nemo est qui 
 non sit vel fuerit saponarius ; et omnis Erancus saponarios amat ut stercorarios. " 
 
330 Repeated sanitary orders in London, 15S1-S3. 
 
 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\ 
 
 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'"*. 
 To a letter of remonstrance, 2ist 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 house- 
 hold. 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 
 
 ' William Harrison's Description of England (in Holinshed) gives proof enough 
 lluU the liltliy lloors described by Erasmus had no existence two generations later, 
 even among the ])oorer classes. 
 
 - 'I'hc correspondence is in Kcincinbrancia, under the head of "lUaguc." 
 
The City and the Privy Comic il. 331 
 
 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/. 
 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 2 1st 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 
 
 ^ From a memorandum of Lord Burghlcy's, dated Hertford Castle, 21 Nov. 1582, 
 it appears that a survey had shown 577 beds available for strangers in one parish of 
 Hertford, and 451 in another, "so that there are lying two a bed above 2000 people." 
 Cal. State Papers. Domestic series, Elizabeth 15S1-90, p. 75. 
 
332 Intraimiral burial. 
 
 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 re- 
 quest 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 i and loved me the less for my lele speech | I have much marveil ot 
 
 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] folowcd folkc that was richc | 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." 
 
Crowded cJnircJiyards in tJie City. 333 
 
 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\ 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^) 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 
 
 ^ Stow's Survey. - Renumhraiicia., p. 332. 
 
334 ^/^^ charncl of St Paul's clinrcJiyard. 
 
 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\" 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 tJie 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 
 charncl 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 P^ngland 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 
 
 ' Riiiuiiihraiic'ui. 
 
Burials luit/icvit coffins. 335 
 
 large as of old time, for the same is lettcn 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 i648\ 
 
 To take an instance of new city graveyards still re- 
 maining : 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^ 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, 2s. 8d. ; without a coffin, 20c/. ; for a 
 child with a coffin, 8<'/. ; without a coffin, 4^. The colledge 
 churchyard, with a coffin, i2d.; without a coffin, Sd." 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^. 
 
 1 Baddeley, Fnris/t of St Giles, Crip{>les;ate. Lond. 1888. 
 - Ibid., under date August, 1672, p. 193. 
 
 2 Broadsheets in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries. Cited by W. 
 Rendle, F.R.C.S., Old Soutlnvark and its People. London, 1878, p. 19S. Mr 
 Rendle, in one place, seems to imply disapproval of this mode of coflinless burial ; 
 but in another (p. 225, note) he says it was "a sort of forecast of Mr Seymour 
 Haden's wise proposals." His first thoughts appear to have been the best. 
 
336 Protests against intramural burial. 
 
 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 
 ensamplc we may follow\" Preaching at Paul's Cross on the 
 8th of August, 1563, when the plague was already dcstro)'ing 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 afterl" In the writings on plague, putrefying animal 
 matters, such as carrion or ofifal, 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 unburicd, in special of mankind, which, by similitude 
 of nature, is most nocent to man, as every brutal is most 
 infcctant and pestilential to their own kind." But even if 
 these truths had been generally apprehended, religious pre- 
 scription 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 
 
 • Sermon on Third Sunday in Advent, 1552. 
 
 - Stow's Mcinoramta. Camden .Society, N. S. xxviii., 1880, p. 125. 
 
Univholesoine soil of the City and o? it skirts. 337 
 
 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, I SCO, and 15 13, 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 popu- 
 lated 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 Gravcsend, would have been instigated by the 
 known pre\'alence of plague and other malignant types of sick- 
 C. 22 
 
338 Revival of Plague in London, 1568-9. 
 
 iiess 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'." This 
 outbreak of the autumn and winter of 1569 must have been con- 
 siderable : 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"; " and Thomas 
 Bishop, giving account of his movements to the Council, says that 
 he remained in London until the lOth October, " when the plague 
 increasing, I departed ^" 
 
 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. In the beginning of next winter, 1571, there was 
 plague at Cambridge (letter of i8th November)'^; and at Oxford 
 in the same year it left such misery, says Anthony Wood, that 
 
 1 Stow, Annates, p. 662. ^ Cal. State Papers. =* Cat. Cecil MSS. 
 
 * On July 15, 1570, the Duke of Norfolk craved iiis release from the Tower, on 
 account of the great risk to his l)oilily healtli and llic infection of the pestilence in 
 that part of the city. {Catendar of Ceeit MSS.) 
 
 5 Report l/ist. AISS. Coiiimis. 
 
London, 1573-4. — Stamford and Petei'horo\ 1574. 339 
 
 divers scholars were forced to bcg\ 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 I" 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^. 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 V' 
 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 'I 
 
 The known provincial centres in 1574 were Stamford, Peter- 
 borough 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 man}- die 
 of famine. St Martin's parish is clearl" 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 placed 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 plagued" At Chester, " plague 
 began, but was stayed with the death of some few in the crofts^" 
 
 ^ Anthony Wood, op. cit. ^ Reiiicmhrancia, v>. 38. 
 
 ^ Tumor's History of Hertford, pp. 236, 268. 
 
 ■* The Loseley Manuscripts, ed. Kempe. London, 1836, p. 280. 
 
 5 Holinshed, III. p. 1240. 
 
 fi Letter to Cecil, Cat. Cecil MSS., n. 106 (under the year 157-;). 
 
 ^ Corporation records, in Notes and Queries, fith series, 11. 524. 
 
 ^ Notes and Queries, 6th series, II. 390. 
 
 9 Ormerod's Hist, of Cheshire, I. Harl. MS. 2177 (adeath frt)m plague, 3 Nov. 1574). 
 
 22 — 2 
 
340 Plague in Westminster, Bristol, lVr//s—\S7S- 
 
 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'; 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'. 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)"'. As early as the nth 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*. At Shrewsbury in that year the fairs were 
 removed on account of plague''. 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 
 i^s/i. 4d. 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''. 
 
 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'. 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 
 
 ' Cut. Cecil MSS., ii. 107: — For the week ending 9 September, 1575, in St 
 Margaret's, 25 deaths (of plague 13), St Martin's 3 of plague, .Savoy, none, St 
 Clement's 3 (2 of plague). 
 
 - Cecil to Earl of Lincoln. //'///. 10 September, 1575. 
 
 " The Maire of Brisloivc, is Kalendar. Camden Soc. 1S72, p. 59. 
 
 ■» Wells corporation MSS., Hist. MSS. Com., i. 107. 
 
 " Owen and Blakevvay. 
 
 " Calendar of Statr Papers, Domestic, 1591-94, p. 269. 
 
 " Tickell's Hist, of k'iiii^sloii if on Hull, 1798. 
 
Weekly figures for London, 1578. 
 
 341 
 
 introduction of the plague then raging on the Borders^ 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 '^ 
 and are here given in full, having been copied from the MS. in 
 the library of Hatfield House ^ 
 
 Al 
 
 hstracts 
 
 of Burials and Baptisms in . 
 
 London 
 
 , 157S- 
 
 -1583- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1578 
 
 
 
 
 
 Week 
 
 
 Of 
 
 Of other 
 
 Christ- 
 
 Week 
 
 
 Of 
 
 Of other 
 
 Christ- 
 
 ending 
 
 Dead 
 
 plague 
 
 diseases 
 
 ened 
 
 ending 
 
 Dead 
 
 plague 
 
 diseases 
 
 ened 
 
 Jan. 2 
 
 62 
 
 7 
 
 55 
 
 66 
 
 July 3 
 
 92 
 
 34 
 
 58 
 
 52 
 
 9 
 
 90 
 
 12 
 
 78 
 
 52 
 
 10 
 
 99 
 
 35 
 
 64 
 
 48 
 
 16 
 
 63 
 
 14 
 
 49 
 
 59 j 
 
 17 
 
 98 
 
 39 
 
 59 
 
 52 
 
 23 
 
 95 
 
 30 
 
 62 
 
 59 1 
 
 24 
 
 129 
 
 63 
 
 66 
 
 49 
 
 30 
 
 82 
 
 25 
 
 57 
 
 65 ' 
 
 31 
 
 100 
 
 41 
 
 59 
 
 59 
 
 Feb. 6 
 
 88 
 
 24 
 
 64 
 
 51 1 
 
 Aug. 7 
 
 132 
 
 73 
 
 59 
 
 76 
 
 13 
 
 102 
 
 25 
 
 77 
 
 59 
 
 14 
 
 152 
 
 78 
 
 74 
 
 72 
 
 20 
 
 100 
 
 26 
 
 74 
 
 77 ' 
 
 21 
 
 232 
 
 134 
 
 98 
 
 63 
 
 27 
 
 84 
 
 12 
 
 72 
 
 84 
 
 28 
 
 205 
 
 113 
 
 92 
 
 58 
 
 Mar. 6 
 
 79 
 
 10 
 
 69 
 
 58 
 
 Sept. 4 
 
 257 
 
 162 
 
 95 
 
 84 
 
 13 
 
 66 
 
 9 
 
 57 
 
 53 
 
 II 
 
 297 
 
 1S3 
 
 114 
 
 64 
 
 20 
 
 75 
 
 5 
 
 70 
 
 57 
 
 18 
 
 308 
 
 189 
 
 119 
 
 68 
 
 27 
 
 63 
 
 12 
 
 51 
 
 60 
 
 25 
 
 330 
 
 189 
 
 141 
 
 72 
 
 Apr. 3 
 
 96 
 
 19 
 
 77 
 
 64 
 
 Oct. 2 
 
 370 
 
 230 
 
 140 
 
 76 
 
 10 
 
 89 
 
 25 
 
 64 
 
 67 ! 
 
 9 
 
 388 
 
 234 
 
 154 
 
 62 
 
 17 
 
 102 
 
 31 
 
 71 
 
 66 
 
 16 
 
 361 
 
 234 
 
 127 
 
 73 
 
 24 
 
 91 
 
 17 
 
 54 
 
 62 
 
 23 
 
 2SI 
 
 175 
 
 106 
 
 58 
 
 May I 
 
 109 
 
 25 
 
 84 
 
 44 
 
 30 
 
 258 
 
 130 
 
 128 
 
 68 
 
 8 
 
 116 
 
 33 
 
 S3 
 
 37 
 
 Nov. 6 
 
 278 
 
 127 
 
 151 
 
 60 
 
 IS 
 
 141 
 
 43 
 
 98 
 
 48 
 
 13 
 
 230 
 
 116 
 
 114 
 
 64 
 
 22 
 
 109 
 
 36 
 
 73 
 
 66 
 
 20 
 
 172 
 
 77 
 
 95 
 
 66 
 
 29 
 
 119 
 
 34 
 
 85 
 
 43 
 
 27 
 
 155 
 
 84 
 
 71 
 
 68 
 
 June 5 
 
 99 
 
 3« 
 
 61 
 
 51 
 
 Dec. 4 
 
 160 
 
 77 
 
 83 
 
 60 
 
 12 
 
 91 
 
 35 
 
 56 
 
 41 
 
 II 
 
 161 
 
 65 
 
 96 
 
 69 
 
 19 
 
 76 
 
 34 
 
 42 
 
 54 
 
 18 
 
 129 
 
 44 
 
 85 
 
 62 
 
 26 
 
 75 
 
 18 
 
 57 
 
 48 
 
 25 
 
 94 
 7830 
 
 20 
 3568 
 
 74 
 4262 
 
 68 
 
 3150 
 
 ^ Records of the Burgli of Kirkcuillniglit. Hist. MSS. Coiinniss., \\. 539. 
 - Rcinembrancia, p. 353 (27 Nov. and 6 Dec. 1582). 
 
 ^ By permission of the Marquis of SaHsbury. Tlie cunlents of tliis small volume 
 have not been included in the [jublished Calendar of llie Cecil MSS. 
 
342 
 
 Weekly figures for London, 1579-80. 
 
 1579 
 
 Week 
 
 
 Of 
 
 Of other 
 
 Christ- 
 
 Week 
 
 
 Of 
 
 Of other 
 
 Christ- 
 
 ending 
 
 Dead 
 
 plague 
 
 diseases 
 
 ened 
 
 ending 
 
 Dead 
 
 plague 
 
 diseases 
 
 ened 
 
 Jan. I 
 
 100 
 
 27 
 
 IZ 
 
 54 
 
 July 9 
 
 62 
 
 9 
 
 53 
 
 66 
 
 8 
 
 67 
 
 13 
 
 54 
 
 68 
 
 16 
 
 12> 
 
 19 
 
 54 
 
 52 
 
 •5 
 
 75 
 
 16 
 
 59 
 
 74 
 
 23 
 
 72 
 
 12 
 
 60 
 
 63 
 
 -tn 
 
 63 
 
 9 
 
 54 
 
 81 
 
 30 
 
 72 
 
 13 
 
 59 
 
 67 
 
 29 
 
 79 
 
 19 
 
 60 
 
 75 
 
 Aug. 6 
 
 66 
 
 12 
 
 54 
 
 61 
 
 Feb. 5 
 
 84 
 
 23 
 
 61 
 
 46 
 
 13 
 
 70 
 
 18 
 
 52 
 
 67 
 
 12 
 
 81 
 
 16 
 
 65 
 
 63 
 
 20 
 
 68 
 
 12 
 
 56 
 
 61 
 
 19 
 
 69 
 
 15 
 
 54 
 
 61 
 
 27 
 
 63 
 
 10 
 
 53 
 
 58 
 
 26 
 
 70 
 
 10 
 
 60 
 
 n 
 
 Sept. 3 
 
 66 
 
 14 
 
 52 
 
 65 
 
 Mar. 5 
 
 51 
 
 6 
 
 45 
 
 71 
 
 10 
 
 85 
 
 25 
 
 60 
 
 55 
 
 12 
 
 61 
 
 16 
 
 45 
 
 72 
 
 17 
 
 66 
 
 1 1 
 
 55 
 
 80 
 
 19 
 
 66 
 
 10 
 
 56 
 
 65 
 
 24 
 
 44 
 
 8 
 
 36 
 
 63 
 
 26 
 
 75 
 
 13 
 
 62 
 
 68 
 
 Oct. I 
 
 60 
 
 9 
 
 51 
 
 42 
 
 Apr. 2 
 
 81 
 
 19 
 
 62 
 
 53 
 
 8 
 
 56 
 
 8 
 
 48 
 
 75 
 
 9 
 
 82 
 
 27 
 
 55 
 
 79 
 
 15 
 
 68 
 
 14 
 
 54 
 
 70 
 
 16 
 
 77 
 
 02 
 
 55 
 
 53 
 
 22 
 
 49 
 
 6 
 
 43 
 
 71 
 
 23 
 
 58 
 
 10 
 
 48 
 
 44 
 
 29 
 
 52 
 
 10 
 
 42 
 
 76 
 
 30 
 
 71 
 
 10 
 
 61 
 
 57 
 
 Nov. 5 
 
 ■ 47 
 
 8 
 
 39 
 
 66 
 
 May 7 
 
 64 
 
 12 
 
 52 
 
 51 
 
 12 
 
 37 
 
 2 
 
 35 
 
 69 
 
 14 
 
 68 
 
 14 
 
 54 
 
 42 
 
 19 
 
 60 
 
 -> 
 
 58 
 
 84 
 
 21 
 
 75 
 
 12 
 
 63 
 
 54 
 
 26 
 
 44 
 
 6 
 
 38 
 
 69 
 
 28 
 
 78 
 
 13 
 
 65 
 
 47 
 
 Dec. 3 
 
 43 
 
 3 
 
 40 
 
 78 
 
 June 4 
 
 66 
 
 7 
 
 59 
 
 56 
 
 10 
 
 55 
 
 4 
 
 5' 
 
 80 
 
 1 1 
 
 49 
 
 7 
 
 42 
 
 46 
 
 17 
 
 49 
 
 4 
 
 45 
 
 70 
 
 18 
 
 74 
 
 14 
 
 60 
 
 60 
 
 24 
 
 51 
 
 3 
 
 48 
 
 78 
 
 25 
 
 65 
 
 13 
 
 52 
 
 45 
 
 31 
 
 42 
 
 3 
 
 39 
 
 72 
 
 July 2 
 
 57 
 
 1 1 
 
 46 
 
 50 
 
 
 3406 
 
 629 
 
 2777 
 
 3370 
 
 1580 
 
 Week 
 
 
 Of 
 
 Of other 
 
 Bap- 
 
 Week 
 
 
 Of 
 
 Of other 
 
 Bap- 
 
 ending 
 
 Dead 
 
 plague 
 
 diseases 
 
 tised 
 
 ending 
 
 Dead 
 
 plague 
 
 diseases 
 
 tised 
 
 an. 7 
 
 49 
 
 I 
 
 48 
 
 78 
 
 Apr. 21 
 
 40 
 
 1 
 
 39 
 
 74 
 
 14 
 
 58 
 
 4 
 
 54 
 
 58 
 
 28 
 
 43 
 
 I 
 
 42 
 
 75 
 
 21 
 
 50 
 
 5 
 
 45 
 
 63 
 
 May 5 
 
 58 
 
 I 
 
 57 
 
 72 
 
 28 
 
 28 
 
 
 
 26 
 
 74 
 
 12 
 
 54 
 
 
 
 54 
 
 69 
 
 \-b. 4 
 
 54 
 
 5 
 
 49 
 
 81 
 
 19 
 
 40 
 
 2 
 
 38 
 
 75 
 
 II 
 
 49 
 
 2 
 
 47 
 
 91 
 
 26 
 
 44 
 
 
 
 44 
 
 72 
 
 18 
 
 47 
 
 3 
 
 44 
 
 81 
 
 June 2 
 
 36 
 
 I 
 
 35 
 
 59 
 
 25 
 
 48 
 
 3 
 
 45 
 
 68 
 
 9 
 
 41 
 
 
 
 41 
 
 54 
 
 lar. 3 
 
 52 
 
 
 
 52 
 
 n 
 
 16 
 
 46 
 
 2 
 
 44 
 
 60 
 
 10 
 
 48 
 
 2 
 
 46 
 
 74 
 
 23 
 
 55 
 
 2 
 
 53 
 
 59 
 
 17 
 
 48 
 
 I 
 
 47 
 
 75 
 
 30 
 
 47 
 
 4 
 
 43 
 
 57 
 
 24 
 
 52 
 
 3 
 
 49 
 
 68 
 
 July 7 
 
 n 
 
 4 
 
 11> 
 
 65 
 
 31 
 
 48 
 
 
 46 
 
 59 
 
 H 
 
 133 
 
 4 
 
 129 
 
 66 
 
 \.\^x. 7 
 
 48 
 
 I 
 
 47 
 
 n 
 
 21 
 
 146 
 
 3 
 
 143 
 
 61 
 
 14 
 
 53 
 
 I 
 
 52 
 
 78 
 
 28 
 
 96 
 
 5 
 
 91 
 
 64 
 
Weekly figures for London, 15S0-81. 343 
 
 1580 {Coii/i/iiicd). 
 
 Week 
 
 
 Of 
 
 Of other 
 
 Bap- 
 
 Week 
 
 
 Of 
 
 Of other 
 
 Bap- 
 
 ending 
 
 Dead 
 
 plague 
 
 diseases 
 
 tised 
 
 ending 
 
 Dead 
 
 plague 
 
 dise.xses 
 
 tised 
 
 Aug. 4 
 
 78 
 
 5 
 
 73 
 
 71 
 
 Oct. 20 
 
 45 
 
 2 
 
 43 
 
 56 
 
 n 
 
 51 
 
 4 
 
 47 
 
 53 
 
 27 
 
 40 
 
 3 
 
 37 
 
 So 
 
 18 
 
 49 
 
 I 
 
 48 
 
 72 
 
 Nov. 3 
 
 60 
 
 7 
 
 53 
 
 75 
 
 25 
 
 63 
 
 3 
 
 60 
 
 62 
 
 10 
 
 59 
 
 5 
 
 54 
 
 67 
 
 Sept. I 
 
 48 
 
 
 
 48 
 
 7' 
 
 17 
 
 57 
 
 3 
 
 54 
 
 75 
 
 8 
 
 35 
 
 2 
 
 33 
 
 69 
 
 24 
 
 45 
 
 
 
 43 
 
 70 
 
 13 
 
 52 
 
 r 
 
 51 
 
 69 
 
 Dec. I 
 
 54 
 
 3 
 
 51 
 
 83 
 
 22 
 
 52 
 
 I 
 
 51 
 
 95 
 
 8 
 
 58 
 
 I 
 
 57 
 
 5f' 
 
 29 
 
 65 
 
 ^ 
 
 63 
 
 55 
 
 15 
 
 53 
 
 8 
 
 45 
 
 59 
 
 Oct. 6 
 
 35 
 
 I 
 
 34 
 
 63 
 
 'J 
 
 53 
 
 4 
 
 49 
 
 61 
 
 13 
 
 44 
 
 
 
 42 
 
 56 
 
 29 
 
 89 
 
 3 
 
 86 
 
 66 
 
 2873 128 2745 3568 
 
 I58I 
 
 Week 
 
 
 Of 
 
 Of other 
 
 Bap- 
 
 Wet 
 
 k 
 
 
 Of 
 
 Of other 
 
 Bap- 
 
 ending 
 
 Dead 
 
 plague 
 
 diseases 
 
 tised 
 
 ending 
 
 Dead 
 
 plague 
 
 diseases 
 
 tised 
 
 Jan. 5 
 
 42 
 
 5 
 
 37 
 
 63 
 
 July 
 
 6 
 
 72 
 
 9 
 
 63 
 
 62 
 
 12 
 
 53 
 
 4 
 
 49 
 
 65 
 
 
 13 
 
 69 
 
 9 
 
 60 
 
 64 
 
 19 
 
 50 
 
 I 
 
 49 
 
 65 
 
 
 20 
 
 94 
 
 19 
 
 75 
 
 70 
 
 26 
 
 46 
 
 I 
 
 45 
 
 59 
 
 
 27 
 
 95 
 
 24 
 
 71 
 
 89 
 
 Feb. 2 
 
 49 
 
 '-> 
 
 47 
 
 56 
 
 Aug. 
 
 3 
 
 87 
 
 23 
 
 64 
 
 58 
 
 9 
 
 38 
 
 
 
 38 
 
 63 
 
 
 10 
 
 130 
 
 30 
 
 100 
 
 75 
 
 16 
 
 48 
 
 
 
 48 
 
 87 
 
 
 17 
 
 148 
 
 47 
 
 lOI 
 
 72 
 
 23 
 
 56 
 
 5 
 
 51 
 
 52 
 
 
 24 
 
 143 
 
 43 
 
 100 
 
 55 
 
 Mar. 2 
 
 56 
 
 
 
 56 
 
 62 
 
 
 31 
 
 169 
 
 74 
 
 95 
 
 72 
 
 9 
 
 60 
 
 2 
 
 58 
 
 74 
 
 Sept 
 
 7 
 
 186 
 
 85 
 
 lOI 
 
 54 
 
 16 
 
 52 
 
 2 
 
 50 
 
 80 
 
 
 14 
 
 180 
 
 76 
 
 114 
 
 59 
 
 23 
 
 41 
 
 I 
 
 40 
 
 89 
 
 
 21 
 
 203 
 
 86 
 
 117 
 
 55 
 
 30 
 
 44 
 
 3 
 
 41 
 
 74 
 
 
 28 
 
 218 
 
 60 
 
 158 
 
 88 
 
 Apr. 6 
 
 42 
 
 -7 
 
 40 
 
 39 
 
 Oct. 
 
 5 
 
 205 
 
 107 
 
 98 
 
 74 
 
 13 
 
 47 
 
 I 
 
 46 
 
 53 
 
 
 12 
 
 193 
 
 74 
 
 119 
 
 83 
 
 20 
 
 37 
 
 I 
 
 36 
 
 41 
 
 
 19 
 
 128 
 
 42 
 
 86 
 
 77 
 
 27 
 
 V 
 
 ■~t 
 
 35 
 
 60 
 
 
 26 
 
 125 
 
 35 
 
 90 
 
 88 
 
 May 4 
 
 47 
 
 
 
 47 
 
 52 
 
 Nov 
 
 -> 
 
 "5 
 
 45 
 
 70 
 
 85 
 
 II 
 
 40 
 
 I 
 
 39 
 
 50 
 
 
 9 
 
 93 
 
 26 
 
 67 
 
 61 
 
 18 
 
 46 
 
 I 
 
 45 
 
 59 
 
 
 16 
 
 
 
 
 
 25 
 
 64 
 
 "3 
 
 51 
 
 62 
 
 
 23 
 
 
 
 
 
 June I 
 
 48 
 
 4 
 
 44 
 
 60 
 
 
 30 
 
 [The 
 
 figures in 
 
 part 
 
 8 
 
 57 
 
 2 
 
 55 
 
 56 
 
 Dec. 
 
 7 
 
 wanting, 
 
 md in 
 
 pan 
 
 15 
 
 65 
 
 7 
 
 58 
 
 62 
 
 
 14 
 
 defaced.] 
 
 
 
 ■T^ 
 
 57 
 
 6 
 
 51 
 
 73 
 
 
 21 
 
 
 
 
 
 29 
 
 •56 
 
 7 
 
 49 
 
 52 
 
 
 28 
 
 3931 
 
 987 
 
 2954 
 
 2949 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 (45 weeks) 
 
 
344 
 
 Weekly figures for Loudon, 1582-83. 
 
 1582 
 
 
 
 '74 Par 
 
 shes 
 
 clear, week ending Jan. 
 
 4-) 
 
 
 
 Week 
 
 
 Of Of othei 
 
 Bap- 
 
 Week 
 
 
 Of 
 
 Of other 
 
 Bap- 
 
 ending 
 
 Dead 
 
 plague ( 
 
 liseases 
 
 tised 
 
 ending 
 
 Dead 
 
 plague 
 
 diseases 
 
 tised 
 
 Jan. 4 
 
 63 
 
 II 
 
 52 
 
 57 
 
 July 
 
 5 
 
 60 
 
 20 
 
 40 
 
 54 
 
 II 
 
 75 
 
 13 
 
 62 
 
 1(> 
 
 
 12 
 
 88 
 
 25 
 
 63 
 
 66 
 
 18 
 
 79 
 
 13 
 
 66 
 
 73 
 
 
 19 
 
 80 
 
 30 
 
 50 
 
 61 
 
 25 
 
 58 
 
 13 
 
 45 
 
 90 
 
 
 26 
 
 99 
 
 31 
 
 68 
 
 65 
 
 Feb. I 
 
 73 
 
 5 
 
 68 
 
 66 
 
 Aug. 
 
 2 
 
 lOI 
 
 45 
 
 56 
 
 68 
 
 8 
 
 71 
 
 12 
 
 59 
 
 11 
 
 
 9 
 
 116 
 
 42 
 
 74 
 
 11 
 
 15 
 
 76 
 
 16 
 
 60 
 
 88 
 
 
 16 
 
 142 
 
 70 
 
 72 
 
 64 
 
 22 
 
 82 
 
 10 
 
 72 
 
 74 
 
 
 23 
 
 148 
 
 85 
 
 63 
 
 67 
 
 Mar. I 
 
 69 
 
 II 
 
 58 
 
 81 
 
 
 30 
 
 20s 
 
 II I 
 
 94 
 
 70 
 
 8 
 
 85 
 
 13 
 
 72 
 
 81 
 
 Sept 
 
 6 
 
 229 
 
 139 
 
 90 
 
 74 
 
 15 
 
 11 
 
 1 1 
 
 66 
 
 71 
 
 
 13 
 
 277 
 
 189 
 
 88 
 
 79 
 
 '>2 
 
 62 
 
 II 
 
 51 
 
 65 
 
 
 20 
 
 246 
 
 151 
 
 95 
 
 76 
 
 29 
 
 73 
 
 16 
 
 57 
 
 85 
 
 
 27 
 
 267 
 
 145 
 
 122 
 
 63 
 
 Apr. 5 
 
 90 
 
 13 
 
 11 
 
 74 
 
 Oct. 
 
 4 
 
 318 
 
 213 
 
 105 
 
 87 
 
 12 
 
 78 
 
 19 
 
 59 
 
 63 
 
 
 II 
 
 238 
 
 139 
 
 99 
 
 63 
 
 19 
 
 88 
 
 22 
 
 66 
 
 56 
 
 
 18 
 
 289 
 
 164 
 
 125 
 
 74 
 
 26 
 
 82 
 
 20 
 
 62 
 
 69 
 
 
 25 
 
 340 
 
 216 
 
 124 
 
 15 
 
 May 3 
 
 95 
 
 23 
 
 72 
 
 55 
 
 Nov 
 
 I 
 
 290 
 
 131 
 
 159 
 
 66 
 
 10 
 
 68 
 
 12 
 
 56 
 
 62 
 
 
 8 
 
 248 
 
 149 
 
 99 
 
 11 
 
 17 
 
 62 
 
 II 
 
 51 
 
 59 
 
 
 15 
 
 202 
 
 98 
 
 104 
 
 70 
 
 24 
 
 61 
 
 10 
 
 51 
 
 61 
 
 
 22 
 
 227 
 
 119 
 
 108 
 
 74 
 
 31 
 
 57 
 
 15 
 
 42 
 
 65 
 
 
 29 
 
 263 
 
 124 
 
 139 
 
 63 
 
 June 7 
 
 67 
 
 15 
 
 52 
 
 49 
 
 Dec. 
 
 6 
 
 144 
 
 58 
 
 86 
 
 59 
 
 14 
 
 48 
 
 1 1 
 
 1,1 
 
 52 
 
 
 13 
 
 155 
 
 68 
 
 87 
 
 — 
 
 21 
 
 72 
 
 II 
 
 61 
 
 63 
 
 
 20 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 28 
 
 57 
 
 9 
 
 48 
 
 62 
 
 
 27 
 
 142 
 6762 
 
 68 
 2976 
 
 74 
 3786 
 
 91 
 3433 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 (51 weeks) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 83 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Week 
 
 
 
 Of 
 
 Of 
 
 other 
 
 Bap- 
 
 
 
 
 
 ending 
 
 Dead 
 
 plague 
 
 diseases 
 
 tised 
 
 
 
 
 J 
 
 an. 3 
 10 
 
 17 
 
 24 
 
 31 
 
 
 137 
 140 
 160 
 162 
 
 144 
 
 50 
 
 57 
 72 
 
 59 
 40 
 
 
 87 
 83 
 
 88 
 103 
 104 
 
 69 
 67 
 
 59 
 11 
 
 
 
 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 plajTuc 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 
 
Excess of births in Loiuioii, barring Plague. 345 
 
 the beginning of the epidemic in London ; it was rather a kill 
 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^ 
 
 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 (15S3 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 inhabi- 
 tants, 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 
 
 ' 'A sermon preached at Powles Crosse on Sunday, Uie third of November, 1577, 
 in the time of the Plague' by T. \V. London, 1578 (February 20). 
 
346 OvcrgroivtJt of London snbitybs, 1580. 
 
 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, 1580I." 
 
 Among the more special suggestions of the mayor, on the 
 causes and prevention of plague, previous to this proclamation 
 were*'': 
 
 1 Slrypc'ij cd. of Stow's Survey, Bk. iv. p. 34. Nunsucli was near Epsom. 
 - Rcmcinbnincia of lite City 0/ Lomion, p. 331. 
 
Plague at St Albans, Ware, Hcytford, etc., 1577-78. 347 
 
 1. The avoidini,^ of inmates in places prettjndinL; 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 wc get of the plague in London in 
 1578 are in letters to Lord Burghley\ 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^ 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, Cam- 
 bridge, "the infection being taken by the company of a Londoner 
 in Stourbridge Fair ; " these two deaths had " moved many to 
 depart" from the University*. In the same month it was at 
 Bury St Edmunds. Earlier in the year, a letter from Truro ( 1 1 
 April) says that the plague was prevalent in Cornwall. 
 
 ^ Calendar of Cecil MSS., Part II. under the dates. 
 
 * Tumor's Hist, of Hertford, p. 236. ■* Cat. Cecil MSS, 
 
348 Norivich, Yarmouth, P/y mouth, etc., 1 578-1 584. 
 
 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 c]ueen : "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\ At Yarmouth, in 1579, two thousand are said 
 to have died of the plague between May-ciay and Michaelmasl 
 Colchester had plague from December, 1578 to August, I579^ 
 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*. It was 
 again at Stamford in 1580, as appears from an order of the 
 corporation, September 7, prohibiting people from leaving the 
 town^ Other centres of plague in 1580 were at Rye, which 
 was cut off from intercourse with London*', at Leicester, where 
 an assessment for the visited was appointed by the common 
 hall of the citizens^, 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^" 
 
 On February 4, 1582, six houses were shut up at Dover, and 
 on September 12 there was plague in Windsor and Eton". In 
 the parish register of Cranbrooke (Kent), 18 burials are specially 
 marked (as from plague) in 1581,41 in 1582, and 22 in 1583^", 
 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, 
 
 ' IJloineriekl, vol. III. ("Norwich," under the date). 
 
 - Jlii(t. "Yarmouth." * Moraiit's HisL of Essex, I. 50. 
 
 ■* Hist. MSS. Conunission, I. \. 277 1). 
 
 ^ Notes and Queries, 6th series, 11. 524. 
 
 " Cat. State Papers. '' Nichols, Ilist. of Leicestershire. 
 
 » Cal. .s. r. 
 
 •' Cal. State Papers. Eliz. 1581-90 (Lemon), pp. 45, 70. 
 
 '" (Jraunt's Reflcetiuns on Bills of Mortality. 3rd ed., Lond. 1665, 1'- 1.55' 
 
Boston, WisbccJi, co. DiirJiaui, etc., 1585-88. 349 
 
 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 i584\ 
 The town of Boston appears to have had plague continuously 
 for four years from 1585 to 1588. In 1585 houses were shut 
 up^; in 1586 a case at Southwell was supposed to have been 
 imported from Boston"''; 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^ 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''. 
 
 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", being three or four times more than average. 
 It is mentioned also at Ipswich in 1585, and at Norwich in 
 1588^. At Derby, in 1586, there was plague in St Peter's 
 parish^ At Chesterfield in November, 1586, there were plague- 
 deaths, and again in May 1587^ At Leominster, in 1587, there 
 was an excessive mortality (209 burials)'". 
 
 The other great centre on the east coast in those years was 
 in Durham and Northumberland". 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. 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. 2 Saunders, Hist, of Bos I on, p. 22S. 
 
 3 Duke of RuUand's MSS. Hist. MSS. Com., May 24, 1586. 
 
 * Saunders, I.e. '^ Notes and Queries, 2nd series, xi. 497. 
 
 « Blomefield's Norfolk. '^ Ibid, and Gawdy MSS. Hist. MSS. Com. 
 
 8 Glover's Hist, of Derby, p. 613. '■' Archaeotoi^ia, vi. 80. 
 
 1" Townsend's Hist, of Leominster, p. 59. 
 
 " S)'kes, Local Records of Nortlntiiibe}laitd and Pitrliaiii, p. So. 
 
350 Newcastle, 1589. — Sickness in tJie fleet, 1588. 
 
 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 ist 
 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\ 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, 
 ' Cdl. S. p.. Domestic, Eliz. erl. l,cmon. 
 
PlyuioutJi, Totncss, Tiverton, 1590-91. 351 
 
 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^-. 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'." 
 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 
 VVyche 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*: 
 
 July 42 (36 of plague, 6 not), 
 August 8 1 (80 of plague, i not), 
 September 39 (all of plague), 
 October 37 (all of plague), 
 November 25 (24 of plague, i not), 
 December 19 (all of plague), 
 January, 1591, 10 of plague, 
 February i 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 ist March, 1 591, to ist 
 March, 1592, the deaths from plague and other causes were 551, 
 or about one in nine of the population ^ 
 
 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*, and is 
 
 ^ Corporation MS.S. of Plymouth. Hist. A/SS. Com. x. pt. 4, p. 539. 
 - JVofes and Queries, 6th series, ill. 477. 
 ■^ Dunsford's Historical Memoirs of Tiverton, p. 38. 
 
 •* Bill of Mortality for the locek endinf; October 10, 1603. Broadside in Guildhall 
 Library, with summary, on margin, of the mortalities in 1563 and 1592-93. 
 
352 Plagite revives in London, antuinn of 1592. 
 
 said to have caused 2000 deaths before the end of the year. On 
 the 7th September, soldiers from the north on their way to South- 
 ampton to embark for foreign parts had to pass round London 
 "to avoid the infection which is much spread abroad" in the city. 
 On the 1 6th 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\" 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 plagued" 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 I" 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 men- 
 tioned 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 
 
 ^ Cal. State Papers, 1591-94, p. 312. - Ibid- p. 340. 
 
 ^ Ibid. i59.'i-97, p. 4.'i, May 26, 1595: 
 
 "Arguments in proof of the advantages to be derived by the City of London 
 from stopping up the town ditch : — It is the origin of infection, and the only noisome 
 place in the city. In the last great plague, more died about there than in three 
 parishes besides; these fields are the chiefest walks for recreation of the cifyzcns, and 
 though the ditch were cast every second year, yet tlie water coming from the kennel 
 and slaughter-houses will be very contagious. It is no malcrial defence for the city, 
 ami half the ditch has lieen slii|i|icd tliese many years." 
 
Deaths ill tlic Plague of 1593. — City and suluirbs. 353 
 
 for 1593 before him, with the plague-deaths and other deaths in 
 each of 109 parishes in alphabetical order, and the christenings 
 as well\ 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 con- 
 siderable 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, Clerkenwcll, St Katharine at the Tower, St 
 Leonard, Shoreditch, St Martin in the Fields, St Mary, White- 
 chapel, St Magdalen, Bermondsey, and the Savoy. Besides 
 these there were important parishes still farther out — the West- 
 minster parishes, Lambeth, Newington, Stepney, Hackney and 
 Islington. Of these, Whitechapel, Stepney, Shoreditch, Clerken- 
 wcll 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 1 5,003." The addition for the parishes beyond the Bars 
 would thus be 8,042 deaths from all causes, and from plague alone 
 
 ^ London'' s Rernembranccr, by John Bell, Clerk of the Company of Parish Clerks. 
 London, 1665. He says: "I shall begin with the year 1593, being the first year in 
 which any account of the christenings and burials was kept. I cannot find any record 
 of more antiquity than that of this year in the Company of Parish Clerks Hall." 
 However we can now point to original weekly bills of mortality of 1532 and 1535, to 
 abstracts of weekly plague-burials in 1563-66, to the figures from one weekly bill of 
 a series in 1574, and to abstracts of 1578-83. 
 
 c. 23 
 
354 
 
 Plague subsiding in London, 1594-5. 
 
 4,541 — numbers which will seem not inadmissible if they be com- 
 pared with the figures for the corresponding parishes ten years 
 after, in 1603, Stepney alone having had 2,257 deaths in that 
 plague-year\ 
 
 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 : 
 
 Year 
 
 Plague 
 deaths 
 
 Other Total 
 deaths deaths 
 
 Christenings 
 
 1593 
 1594 
 1595 
 
 10,662 
 
 421 
 29 
 
 7,182 1 17,844 
 3,508 ' 3,929 
 3,478 j 3,507 
 
 4,021 
 
 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 
 
 1 The lotn.1 of 25,886 was copied, probaljly from the broadside of 1603, into an 
 anonymous essay of 1665, called Kcjlcctions on the Bills of Mortality, the total of 
 plague alone being given as 11,503, evidently by a misprint for 15,003. At the same 
 time a table was given, professing to be of the weekly deaths from all causes, in one 
 column, and from plague in another, from March 13 to December 18, 1593. The 
 column of (ilague-dcaths sums up to ii,iro, but the total of 11,503 (which originated 
 in a misprint) is printed at the foot of the column as if that were the summation. The 
 column of deaths from all causes is made to sum up to 25,886, the actual sum being 
 25,817. But the weekly mortalities in it for those weeks that had little plague are 
 an absurdity for 1593. Whatever the source of this table, it is not genuine for 1593, 
 and was disclaimed by Tiell, the clerk of Parish Clerks' Hall, whose essay ^^■as wrilkn 
 in 1665 to correct that and oUui- errors about former plagues in London. 
 
Kelhvayds essay on Plague, 1593. 355 
 
 publications, an anonymous ' Good Counccll 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 iith chapter, 
 which " teachcth 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 consti- 
 tutes 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 necre 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 swcete, and clensed from all filthie 
 thinges which lye in the same. 
 
 3. And whereas the infection is cntrcd, 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 wherewithal! to buy necessary food, that 
 
 2 X 2 
 
35^ Plague in the HcrifordsJiire resorts, 1592-96. 
 
 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. 
 
 II. 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 ghmpse of this plague in 
 London. On November 3, 1593, Richard Stapes writes to 
 Dr Caesar, 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'." 
 
 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-deathsl 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)'. These may or 
 
 ' Cat. Slate Papers. Addenda. ]':iizal)e(h. 
 - Ciissan's Hist, of HcrlforJslii7-e. 
 '•'• Tumor's Hist, of Her I ford, p. 268. 
 
Derby, Liclificld, Shn"iusbiiry, etc., 1593. 357 
 
 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\" At Lichfield in 1593 and 1594 
 upwards of 1 100 are said to have died of the plague". At 
 Leicester, on the 21st September, 1593, a contribution was levied 
 for the plague-stricken^ At Shrewsbury in 1592-3 there was 
 either plague itself or alarms of if*; 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^ 
 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"." 
 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". 
 
 A solitary record of plague comes from Cornwall in 1595. 
 On 3rd May a letter from the justices at Trcgony to the Privy 
 Council states that the inhabitants, having been charged by the 
 
 ^ Glover's Hist, of Derby, p. 613. 
 
 - Harwood's Hist, of Lichfield, p. 304. 
 
 ^ Nichols, Leicestershire (Town records of Leicester) ; Kelly, in Trans. Roy. Hist. 
 Sac. VI. (1877), p. 391 (at least 20 houses shut up). 
 
 * Owen and Blakeway. 
 
 ^ Parish registers in Townsend's Leominster, p. 59. 
 
 ® Corporation MSS. Canterbury, in 9th Report of Hist. J/SS. Commission, pp. 
 159a, 160 a, b. "This platjue continued from the end of September to the month of 
 January." 
 
 " Parish Register of Penrith: "A sore plage was in London, Nottinghomc, 
 Derbie and Lincohie in the year 1593" (Jefferson's Cumberland, I. 19). 
 
358 Famine and Fiague, 1596-7. 
 
 justices at the General Sessions to restrain divers infected houses 
 within the borough, were molested in executing these commands, 
 and had made complaint thereof. 
 
 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^. 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^: 
 
 " 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 i6th of January, 1597, he wrote again : "In North- 
 umberland 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 Gates- 
 head are dangerously infected. On the 17th September, Lord 
 Burghley, minister of State, is informed that the plague in- 
 creases 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 
 
 1 CaL State Papers. Addenda. Elizabetli. 
 
 - 'SyQx\ Afeinorials of Bristol. The excessive mortality at Leominster (41 burials 
 in Septeml)er, 1597) may have been an eflfect of the famine. (Townsend's History^ 
 P- 59-) 
 
 ^ Cal. State Papers., Domestic, 1597, § 10, p. 347. 
 
Darlington, Dnr/iani, Richmond, etc., 1597-8. 359 
 
 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\ There are no figures extant of the plague-mortality at New- 
 castle 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^ 
 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^ 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 V' 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 
 
 1 Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1597, p. 501. - Sykus, Local Reeords, p. 82. 
 •' Clarkson's [list, of Richmond. ■* Camden's Britannia, p. 175. 
 
360 Plague in Ciciubciia/ul, etc., 1598. — Stamford, 1602. 
 
 there had been as many as 1800 deaths at Richmond in the 
 months when the epidemic was rising to a height and declining 
 therefrom accorcHng 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 Rich- 
 mond, 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', — 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^ Appleby, also, is known to have had a 
 severe visitation'', 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*." 
 
 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 after- 
 wards — that led the Scots government to follow the example of 
 Venice and other foreign cities at no long interval of time. 
 
 ' Jefferson's Cumbo'land, 1. 273. But these are the same figures as fur Pciirilh. 
 '■^ Ibid. I. 391. ^ Parish register of Penrith, in Jeffer.son, I.e. 
 
 ■* Notes and Queries. 6th series, n. 524. 
 
Plague at Aberdeen, 1498- 1500. 361 
 
 When we next hear of plague in Scotland it is again in con- 
 nexion with infected persons on the island of Inchkeith and in 
 the town of Leith, some time between 13th August, 1495, and 
 4th July, I496\ 
 
 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". 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 Exchequerl 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*." 
 
 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 ^. 
 
 1 Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, X. 594. Edin. 1887. 
 
 - Burgh Records of Aberdeen (Spalding Club), I. 66. 
 
 •* Exchequer Rolls Scot., XI. p. Ixviii. 
 
 ^ Ibid. ^ Burgh Records, pp. bS, 90, 130, 165. 
 
362 Plague-orders at Aberdeen, 15 14-1546. 
 
 On the 24th April, 15 14, 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 (15 15), 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 reign- 
 ing 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\" On loth 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 Warkes- 
 haugh, and it is reported from Newcastle, on 5 October, to be 
 raging on the borders'^ On March 21, 1546, a house in Aber- 
 deen 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 nth 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 anc het irne " for not showing the bailies " the seiknes 
 of his barnc, quilk was seik in the pestV In November, 1548, 
 
 ' Rcglslcr of the Privy Council, Scotland, 1. .^. 
 
 - Cal. S. P. Scot. (Thorpe). •' Ihirsh Records, pp. 222, 2.5 1, 244, 246. 
 
Quarantine of s J tips in the Forth, 1564. 363 
 
 the plague is at St Johnstone (Perth), and the Rhinegrave, with 
 troops there, sick of it and Hkc to die\ 
 
 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^: 
 
 " That is to say, bccaus maist danger upperis to be amangis the lynt, that 
 the samyn be loissit, and houssit in Sanct Cohn's Inchc, oppynout, handillet 
 and castin forth to the wynd every uther fair day, quhill the feist of Alartimes 
 nixt to cum, be sic visitoaris and clengeans as sal be appointit and deput 
 thairto be the Provest, Baillies and Counsall of the burgh of Edinburgh 
 upoun the expensis of the maichantis, 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 barreUis 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 sail 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^. 
 
 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.'' The author says that the plague has " lately 
 
 1 Cal. S. P. Scot. 1 8 Nov. 1548. The Rhinegrave recovered, and came to Edin- 
 burgh on the 26lh. 
 
 2 Reg. P. C. Scot. I. 279-81. •* Ilnd. i. 281-2. 
 
 ^ Ane Breve Description of the Pest, Edin. 1568. Reprinted, for the Baniiatyne 
 Club, by James Skene of Rubislaw. Edin. 1S40. 
 
364 Skene's treatise on Plagnc, 1568. 
 
 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 : " Mede- 
 cineirs 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 men- 
 tioning, 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 ex- 
 perience 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. 1 give the following long extract on the signs and symp- 
 toms of plague, as being the first native account of the disease in this 
 country : 
 
 QuJum-by corrupt be pest may be knatvin. 
 
 Thair is mony notis quhilkis schawls ane man infectit be pest. First gif 
 the exteriour partis of the bodie be caulde, and the intcriour partis of the 
 bodie vehement halt. As gif the hoill bodie be hcavie with oft scharpe 
 punctiounis, stinkand swciting, tyritnes of bodie, ganting of mowthei 
 detestable brathe with grcit difficultie, at sumtyme vehement fever rather on 
 
Skene on tJie symptoms of Plague. 365 
 
 nycht nor day. Greit doloiire of held with heavynes, solicitude and sadncs 
 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 puis 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 mani- 
 fest 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 anc 
 criticall day mony accidentis apperis — principalie vomiteing, spitting of bludc, 
 with sweit, flux of womb, bylis, scabc, 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'." A letter 
 of 2 1st September, from the bishop of Orkney, then in Edin- 
 burgh, 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 gacs 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, ihey sail continually repair 
 
 ' Diiiruall of Occtirrciiccs, in Chambers. 
 
366 TJic Plague in EdinbnrgJi, i 568. 
 
 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 plagued" 
 
 The following account of Edinburgh practices in plague- 
 times is given by Chambers^: 
 
 "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 Dailies of the Miiir; 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 here, which sail 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 Canon- 
 gate were sent to huts " on the hill " and money was collected 
 for their support". 
 
 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*." 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 
 
 ' Cited liy R. Chambers {Domcslk Annals of Scotland, i.) from M. Napier's 
 notes to tlic Spotliswofxle Clul) cclilion of .Spfittiswoode's Ilislory. 
 - Op. lit. I. 53. 
 
 ^ Burgh Kironls of Can,nv^nte. Maitland Cluli, Misrellany, ii. .-ii.! (in Chambers). 
 ' Cliambci. , 1. <J4. • 
 
Scots Plagues of 1574, 1579-80, and 1584-88. 367 
 
 to Edinburgh without a pa.ss\ 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^." On 
 November 14th the sittings of the Court of Session were sus- 
 pended owning to pest within some parts of Edinburgh, in Leith, 
 and some towns and parts of the north coast of Fife^ 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*. 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'l Next year, 
 1580, on September loth, a ship laden with lint and hemp from 
 " Danske," with forty persons on board, including seven Edin- 
 burgh 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 Inch- 
 colm in a leaky state. On November 22 a vessel which had 
 come down the Tay with plague-stricken inhabitants of Perth, 
 some of whom w^ere dead, and with their goods and gear, was 
 ordered to the Isle of May^ 
 
 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^ 
 
 1 Biiri^h Kciords of Glasgo7i>, 1573-7581. M.iitlaiid Clul), p. 27. 
 
 - Reg. P. C. Scot., n. 415. -^ rhiJ. ]). 4i(> ■• Hist. MSS. Com., iv. 539. 
 
 5 Reg. Scots P. C, in. 2i<). '■ //>/</. ■ JhiJ. ni. 679. 
 
368 TJic Plague in Scotland, i 584-1 586. 
 
 On the 24th September, 27th October, 4th November, and the 
 nth 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\ 
 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^ It was also in Dysart and other parts 
 of Fife through the winter of 15 84-85 \ 
 
 The infection appeared at Edinburgh about the ist 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\ 
 On the 1 8th 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 Ses- 
 sion transferred to Stirling^. 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, 1 593, to the plague". Upwards 
 of four hundred are said to have died of it therel 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 
 
 1 Reg. Scots P. C. s. (1. 
 
 ^ Chronicle of Pei'th, Bannatyne Clul), p. 4, and Chambers, i. 154. 
 ^ Keg. Scots P. C, HI. 727. 
 
 ■* Calderwood's Ilist. of Kirk of Scotland, w . 366: " It was firsl known to be in 
 .Simon Merccrbank's house." Birell's Diary (i_:;32-i6o.s) in Chambers, i. ic,;. 
 '^ Scots P. C, ni. 746. '' Il>id. \. 56. 
 
 ^ Moysie, in Clmmbcrs, i. 157. 
 
Various Plagues in Scotland, 1587-8 ajid 1597-8. 369 
 
 " through the Canongatc, and in at the Nether Bow through the 
 great street of Edinburgh to the West Port, in all whilk Wccy we 
 saw not three persons, sae that I miskenned Edinburgh, and 
 almost forgot that I had ever seen sic a town\" The same year 
 it was unusually severe at Duns'^ 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^" 
 
 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*. On xApril 26, 1588, the infection is reported anew from 
 Edinburgh, threatening the law session^ In October, 1588, it 
 was at Paisley, causing alarm in Glasgow^ 
 
 On the 8th August, 1593, a ship from an English port, with 
 persons and goods suspected of the plague, was quarantined at 
 Inchcolm^ Four years after, on the 6th August, 1597, "the 
 pest began in Leith®." Twelve days after, August 18, the 
 Privy Council declared that divers inhabitants of sundry towns 
 near Edinburgh were infected, and that the disease was sus- 
 pected to be in the capital itself I Many fled from Edinburgh, 
 but the epidemic was over by the end of harvest^". 
 
 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". On the 12th October, 1600, a petition 
 
 1 The Diary of Mr yamcs Melville, I ilG'-iGoi. Bannatyne Club. Edin. 1829, 
 
 P- 153- 
 
 2 Marioreybank's Annals, in Chambers. 
 
 ^ Melville's Diary, p. 162. 
 
 ■* Melville, p. 173; Caldenvood, cited by Chambers; Cal. Cecil Papers, iii. 29S!, 
 310. 
 
 ■'■' Cal. Cecil Papers, iii. 321. '' Me?norabilia of Glasgo7v,\nC\\Mwhexs. 
 
 7 Scots Privy Council. ^ Birell, in Chambers. 
 
 9 Scots P. C. " Calderwood, v. 655. 
 
 " Two men sent to buy nolt in Galloway for the needs of the borough of Dumfries 
 were stopped, with 38 head of cattle, liy the provost and others of Wigton, at the 
 Water of Crie, the cattle being impounded at Wigton for eight days so that they became 
 lean. A hundred merks compensation was demanded. Scots Privy Council, V. 
 
 c. 24 
 
370 Various Plagues in Scotland, 1600- 1602. 
 
 from Dundee declares that the plague of the pest had " entered 
 and broken up within the town of Findorne\" 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 ^" 
 
 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 iith March. By the 
 1st of May it had ceased in Edinburgh, and a solemn thanks- 
 giving 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 Inch- 
 keith. In April, 1603, James VI. left for England, to assume the 
 English^ 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, ^^e borough 
 register contains this entry* : " 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 
 
 Srotx P. C.,\l. 164. 
 
 2 Aberdeen Kirk Session Records, Spalding Cliih, 1846, Calderwood (cited by 
 Chambers, I. 319) says that the year 1600 was one of famine, and that there was also 
 a great death of yoimg children, six or seven being buried in Edinburgh in a day. 
 
 •'• Seo/s Prh'v Coinici/, \\. uiiiU'r the rcsnoclive dates. ■* Piiri^h Records. 
 
Iminnnity of Aberdeen from Plague, 1 547-1603. 371 
 
 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 Scot- 
 land 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 
 drown it." 
 
 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 there- 
 from, came in 1505^ 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, 1 5 20: "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'^ It is perhaps the 
 same epidemic, or an extension of it, that is referred to as the 
 plague raging in Munster in 1522'. 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 
 
 1 Smith's Cork, il. 34. - Cal, State Piifeis. Domestic 
 
 ^ Smith's Co7-k, on the authority of MS. annals. 
 
 24 — 2 
 
372 Infection among troops at the Deny, 1 566-7. 
 
 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 
 exceedinglyV In a State letter from Ireland September 10, 
 1535, the prevalence of "plague" is mentioned". 
 
 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 w^as 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". Only 300 men were fit for service out of iioo, 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*. 
 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 ^" 
 
 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 
 
 1 Annals of LocJi Cc. Rolls ed., 11. 289. 
 
 2 Brabazon to T. Cromwell. Cat. State Papers. Irish. 
 ^ Cat. State Papers. Irish, 1566-7. 
 
 ■* State Papers (Record Office), Irish, 1567, No. 54. Letter from Lord Treasurer 
 Winchester and Ed. Baeshe, to the Lord Deputy. Mr Froude's summary of it is 
 that "the clammy vapour had stolen into their lungs and poisoned them," and again, 
 " the reeking vapour of the charnel house." I have had difficulty in deciphering the 
 letter, but I can make out "being a graveyard where all their Ijuriall," etc. 
 
 ■"' Cat. Stair Papers. Irisli. 
 
Plague in Ireland, 1575. 373 
 
 doors of churches ; no term was held after Trinity, and prayers 
 were appointed by the archbishop throughout the whole pro- 
 vince*. 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 landl 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). 
 
 1 Thady Dowling, p. 41. 
 
 ■■^ Cal. State Papers. Domestic. Sept. i, r575. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 GAOL FEVERS, INFLUENZAS, AND OTHER FEVERS IN THE 
 TUDOR PERIOD. 
 
 The Common Gaols of England date from the Council of 
 Clarendon, in 1164, by the articles of which the limits of civil 
 and ecclesiastical jurisdiction were fixed, and the quarrel between 
 archbishop Becket and Henry II. reduced to terms. In obe- 
 dience to Article VII. of the Council, gaols were built, the chief 
 among them having been at Canterbury, Rochester, Huntingdon, 
 Cambridge, Malmesbury, Sarum, Aylesbury, and Bedford \ 
 Little is heard of the unwholesomene^ of prison life until the 
 medieval period is nearly over — not indeed because the prisons 
 were better managed than they were later. "In the year 1385," 
 says Stow, " William Walworth gave somewhat to relieve the 
 prisoners in Newgate; so have many others since." One benefactor 
 brought a supply of water into Newgate ; another, the famous 
 Whittington, left money actually to rebuild the gaol, which was 
 done in 1422. For several years before that, Newgate had been 
 notorious. An ordinance of 7 Henry V. (14 19) for the re-estab- 
 lishment of the debtor's prison at Ludgate, so that debtors need 
 not have to go to Newgate gaol, was made in compliance with a 
 petition which said that, in " the hateful gaol of Newgate, by reason 
 of the fetid and corrupt atmosphere, many persons committed 
 t(j the said gaol are now dead ^" The greatest mortality must 
 
 ^ Stubbs, ill his eililion of Roger of Howileii (Rolls scries, No. 51, Ii. 2^t)), on 
 the evidence of the I'ipc Roll of 1 166. 
 
 * Memorials of L)ii Ion in the \},'h, \\th and v-^lh ccn/iirics, e.l. Riley. 
 
Gaol-fcvcr at Cambridge, 1522. 375 
 
 have been, accordinc^ to Stow, in 141 4, when the gaolers of 
 Newgate and Ludgate died, and sixty-four prisoners in Newgate'. 
 More than a century after, in 1522, there occurred the first 
 of a series of gtiol-fever tragedies, which were well calculated to 
 produce the effect ascribed by Aristotle to scenic tragedy, pro- 
 vided only the workings of cause and effect had been more 
 apparent. The first of these historical Black Assizes occurred 
 on the occasion of the gaol delivery at the Castle of Cambridge 
 in Lent, 1522. The facts, which appear to be given nowhere but 
 in Hall's Chronicle (of almost contemporary authority), are less 
 fully related than for some of the later instances of the same 
 strange visitation ; but there is no mistaking the air of reality 
 and the cjeneric likeness. 
 
 Cambridge Black Assizes. 
 
 In the 13th year of Henry VIH. at the Assize held in the 
 Castle of Cambridge in Lent, "the justices and all the gentlemen, 
 bailiffs and other, resorting thither, took such an infection, 
 whether it were of the savour of the prisoners, or of the filth 
 of the house, that many gentlemen, as Sir John Cut, Sir Giles 
 Arlington, Knights, and, many other honest yeomen, thereof died, 
 and almost all which were present were sore sick, and narrowly 
 escaped with their lives ^" 
 
 It is to be observed that nothing is said of the prisoners 
 being infected : they were brought from the dungeons to stand 
 their trial in due course, and the gentlemen and yeomen attend- 
 ing the court officially or as jurors, or otherwise, were poisoned 
 by their presence. This early chronicle indicates as the cause, 
 " the savour of the prisoners, or the filth of the house ; " and 
 Bacon, in touching upon that class of incidents nearly a century 
 later, indicates "the smell of the gaol," but says nothing of cases 
 of fever among the prisoners, having no warrant in the evidence 
 for doing so. 
 
 Before we come to consider the condition of England in the 
 
 ' Stow's Survey of London, pop. cd. (uSyo), p. 66. 
 " Hall's Chronicle', ed. of i8oy, p. 632. 
 
■^']6 Gaol-fever at Oxford, 1577. 
 
 Tudor period, with the policy of Henry VIII. for the repression 
 of beggary and crime, and the appearance of "new fevers" or 
 "strange fevers" and "laskes" in the chronicles and other 
 records of the time, it will be desirable to make out as accurately 
 as possible the clinical type of the Assizes fever, and its circum- 
 stances. For that purpose we must turn to the next recorded 
 outbreak on the occasion of the Assizes at Oxford in 1577, 
 which happens to have been somewhat fully described as a 
 memorable event in the register of Merton College. The entry 
 in the Merton register appears to have been made within a 
 few weeks of the event'. 
 
 Oxford Black Assizes. 
 
 The Assizes met on the 5th and 6th July, 1577, in the Castle 
 and Guild Hall. Those only fell ill, whether in Oxford itself or 
 after leaving, who had been present at the Assizes. The two 
 judges (Robert Bell, Chief Baron of the Exchequer and John 
 Barrham, sergeant-at-law), the sheriff of the county, two knights, 
 eight squires and justices of the peace, several gentlemen and 
 not a few of their servants, the whole of the grand jury with one 
 or two exceptions — these all had not long left Oxford when they 
 were seized with illness and died {statini post fere relietavi 
 Oxoniani mortui sunt). In Oxford itself, on the 15th, i6th and 
 17th July, some ten or twelve days after the Assizes, about three 
 hundred fell ill ; and in the next twelve days there died (" ne 
 quid crreni ") one hundred scholars, besides townsmen not a few. 
 Five died in Merton College, including one fellow, the names of 
 four being given who died on the 24th, 27th, 28th and 29th July. 
 Every college, hall, or house had its dead. Women were not 
 attacked, nor indeed the poor ; nor did the infection spread to 
 those who waited on the sick or came to prescribe for them. 
 
 ^ Tliis account of the Black Assizes at Oxford in 1577 was brought to light, like 
 so many other things from the register of Merton, first by Anthony Wood in his 
 Hist, and Antiq. of the Univ. of Oxford (ed. Gutch, 11. 189). It was copied in full, 
 from the original Latin text, in 1758, by John Ward, LL.D., and sent to the Royal 
 Society, in whose Phil. Trans, (vol. L. p. 699) it is printed, with remarks, by Tho. 
 Birch, I ).!)., Sec. K. S. 
 
Narrative by the Registrar}' of Merton College. 377 
 
 Only those who had been present at the Assizes caught the 
 fever. The symptoms arc described as follows : 
 
 The patients laboured under pain both of the head and of the stomach ; 
 they were troubled with phrensy, deprived of understanding, memory, sight, 
 hearing and their other senses. As their malady increased, they took no 
 food, could not sleep, and would not suffer attendants or watchers to be near 
 them ; their strength was remarkable, even in the approach of death ; but if 
 they recovered they fell into the extreme of weakness. No complexion or 
 constitution was spared ; but those of a choleric habit were most obnoxious 
 to the disease. The affected persons suddenly became delirious and furious, 
 overcoming those who tried to hold them ; some ran about in courts and in 
 the streets after the manner of insane persons ; others leapt headlong into 
 the water. The spirits of all the people were crushed ; the physicians fled, 
 and the wretched sufferers were deserted. Masters, doctors, and heads of 
 houses left almost to a man. The Master of Merton remained, loiigc 
 omnium vigilimtissimus, ministering sedulously to the sick. The pharmacies 
 were soon emptied of their conserves, oils, sweet waters, pixides and every 
 kind of confection. 
 
 This sudden epidemic, which began on the 15th — 17th July, 
 did not last long ; within the space of one month the city was 
 restored to its former health, so that one wonders, says the 
 registrary of Merton, to see already so many scholars and so 
 many townsmen abroad in the streets and walks. 
 
 The infection was suspected by many, says the same eye- 
 witness, to have arisen either from the fetid and pestilent air of 
 thieves brought forth from prison, of whom two or three died in 
 chains a few days before {qiiornm duo vel tres sunt ante paiicos dies 
 in vincnlis iiwrtni), or from the devilishly contrived and obviously 
 papistical spirits called forth " e Lovaniensi barathro," and let 
 loose upon the court secretly and most wickedly. 
 
 The latter explanation arose out of the heated feelings of the 
 time against papist plotters, and has no farther interest. But 
 the statement that two or three of the prisoners had died in 
 chains a few days before has a great interest, as showing the 
 kind of treatment to which they had been subjected while await- 
 ing the gaol delivery. A strange confirmation of the truth of 
 the statement came to light many years after. When John 
 Howard visited the Oxford gaol in 1779, in the course of his 
 humane labours on behalf of the prisoners, he was told by the 
 gaoler that, some years before, wanting to build a little hovel 
 
^yS Cogan^s accuiint of the Oxford epidemic. 
 
 and digging up stones for the purpose from the ruins ol the 
 court, which was formerly in the Castle, he found under them a 
 complete skeleton with light chains on the legs, the links very 
 small. " These," says Howard, "were probably the bones of a 
 malefactor who died in court of the distemper at the Black 
 Assize'." 
 
 Next to the Merton register's account, we may take that of 
 Thomas Cogan, a graduate in medicine of Oxford, sometime 
 fellow of Oriel, but probably removed to Manchester previous to 
 1577. Wherever Cogan got his information, he acknowledges 
 no source of the following in his Haven of Health, 1589: 
 
 " What kind of disease this should be which was first at Cambridge [in 
 1522] and after at Oxford, it is very hard to define, neither hath any man 
 (that I know) written of that matter. Yet my judgment is, be it spoken 
 without offence of the learned physicians, that the disease was Fcbris ardcns, 
 a burning fever, f'or as much as the sigaes of a burning ague did manifestly 
 appear in this disease, which after Hollerius be these : Extreame heate of 
 the body, vehement thirst, loathing of meate, tossing to and fro, and un- 
 quietnesse, dryness of the tongue rough and blacke, griping of the belly, 
 cholerick laske, cruell ake of the head, no sound sleepe, or no sleepe at all, 
 raving and phrensie, the end whereof, to life or death, is bleeding at the nose, 
 great vomitting, sweate or laske. And this kind of sicknesse is one of those 
 rods, and the most common rod, wherewith it pleaseth God to brake his 
 people for sin... And this disease indeed, as it is God's messenger, and 
 sometimes God's poaste, because it commeth poaste haste, and calleth us 
 quickly away, so it is commonly the Pursuivant of the pestilence and goeth 
 before it.... And certainly after that sodaine bane at Oxford, the same yeare, 
 and a yeare or two following, the same kind of ague raged in a manner over 
 all England, and tooke away very many of the strongest sort, and in their 
 lustiest age, and for the most part, men and not women nor children, culling 
 them out here and there, even as you should chuse the best sheepe out of a 
 flocke. And certaine remedy was none to be found.... And they that took a 
 moderate sweate at the beginning of their sickness and did rid their stomachs 
 well by vomit sped much better. Yet thanks be to God hitherto no great 
 plague hath ensued upon it." 
 
 Besides these medical particulars, he gives certain dates and 
 numbers. It began, he says, on the 6th of July, from which 
 date to the 12th of August next ensuing there died of the same 
 
 1 Ilowavil, TIic Slalc oj the Pr'uons in England and Wales. ,^rd cd., Wairingtun, 
 17S4, 1). 342. 
 
S^ozj's account of the Gaol-fcvcr at Oxford, ^^77- 379 
 
 sickness five hundred and ten persons, all men and no women : 
 the chiefest of which were the two judges, Sir Robert Ball, lord 
 chief baron, and maister Sergeant Baram, maister Doile the 
 high sheriff, five of the justices, four councillors at law and an 
 attorney. The rest were jurors and such as repaired thither. 
 
 An account not unlike Cogan's is given by Stow in his 
 Aiinales (p. 681) ; 
 
 "The 4, 5 and 6 dayes of July were the assizes holden at Oxford, where 
 was arraigned and condemned one Rowland Jenkes for his seditious toung, 
 at which time there arose amidst the people such a dampe, that almost all 
 were smothered, very few escaped that were not taken at that instant : the 
 Jurors died presently. Shortly after died Sir Robert Bell, lord chief 
 baron, Sir Robert de Olie, Sir William Babington, maister Weneman, 
 maister de Olie, high sheriff, maister Davers, maister Harcurt, maister 
 Kirle, maister Phereplace, maister Greenwood, maister Foster, maister Nash, 
 sergeaunt Baram, maister Stevens, and there died in Oxford 300 persons, 
 and sickned there but died in other places 200 and odde, from the 6th of 
 July to the 12th of August, after which died not one of that sicknesse, for 
 one of them infected not another, nor any one woman or child died thereof." 
 
 Stow's account differs from that of the Merton College register 
 in several important particulars. The latter is explicit that the 
 sickness appeared among the scholars and townsmen of Oxford 
 on the iSth, i6th and 17th of July, or after an interval of ten days 
 or more, and that the deaths amongst those who had come to 
 Oxford on Assize business did not occur in Oxford but on their 
 return home. On the other hand, Stow makes out the Oxford 
 people to have been smothered by the damp which arose in the 
 court itself: "very few escaped that were not taken ill at that 
 instant ;" next come the deaths of the jurors, and "shortly after" 
 those of the judges and other high officials, whose names are 
 given by Stow more fully than by anyone. His total of deaths, 
 the same as Cogan's, is 300 in Oxford and 200 and odd of 
 persons who had left Oxford, and his dates, " from the 6th of 
 July to the 12th of August," are also the same as Cogan's. 
 
 Wood's account is for the most part taken from the Morton 
 register and in part from the very different version in Stow's 
 Annals \ but he has the following new matter: " Ab3ve 6do 
 sickened in one night, as a physician that now lived in Oxford 
 attesteth, and the day after, the infectious air being carried into 
 
380 Anthony Wood on the Oxford Gaol-fever. 
 
 the next villages, sickened there an hundred more'." That, of 
 course, is very unlike the Morton College account, which is 
 explicit that no one caught the fever who had not been in the 
 court. The Oxford physician whose authority is given for the 
 six hundred cases in Oxford in one night, and the extension 
 next day to villages around, is Dr George Ethredge, or Ethryg, a 
 physician and learned Greek scholar living in Oxford at the time 
 and keeping a boarding-house, called George Hall, for the sons 
 of Catholic gentlemen. In 1588 he published a small volume 
 of comments upon some books of Paulus Aegineta, which is the 
 authority given by Wood". On discovering the passage, one 
 finds that it was not 600 in one night, but " sexaginta " or 60, 
 and that the occasion on which more than sixty were taken ill at 
 once in a single night at Oxford, and nearly a hundred next day 
 in the adjacent villages, " whither the infected air had by chance 
 been borne," was not that of the gaol-fever in 1577 but of the 
 sweating sickness in 155 1. An extension in the atmosphere to 
 the villages around is just what would have happened in the 
 sweating sickness, a disease in that as in other respects closely 
 analogous to influenza. Ethredge says that, on the particular 
 occasion, "hardly any of the Oxford people died" — a statement 
 which should of itself have prevented Wood's mistake, even if 
 the reference to the same disease having " at the same time " cut 
 off the two sons of the duke of Suffolk "at Cambridge" (there- 
 fore a less healthy place than Oxford where hardly any died) 
 had not quite clearly pointed to the sudor Britannicus, which is 
 actually named in the context ("sic enim vocant")^ 
 
 Although, in the passage quoted, it is the sweating sickness 
 
 1 Hist, and Atitiq. Univ. Oxford, ed. Gutch, II. 188-192. 
 
 ^ Georgius Edrichus, 'In Libros aliquot pauli Aeginetae Hypomnemata quaedam.' 
 Londini apud Tomam East 158S (without pagination). 
 
 ■^ The passage which Anthony Wood thought to relate to the gaol fever at Oxford 
 in 1577 is the following, under the heading "De morbis publice grassantibus : " 
 " Publice grassari morbos vidimus Oxonii, et una nocte simul plus sexaginta agrotasse 
 {sic) novimus, et in vicinis postridie pagis, eo forte acre delato, fere centum. Quod 
 etiam eodem tempore, regnante tum Edwardo sexto, Cantabrigiae evenit, cum duo 
 simul libcri ducis inclyti Suflblchiae ibi morerentur. Nee tamen Oxonicnses ulli fere 
 interierunt, quod cocli constitutio apud nos quam ibi salubrior sit. Sed iis ita 
 succurrendum morl)is putamus, ut Brittanico sudorc (sic enim vocant) opitulari 
 solemus." 
 
Dr Ethredges (1588) reference to it. 381 
 
 at Oxford in 155 1 that Ethredgc refers to, he docs also refer to 
 the gaol fever of 1577 in another passage which has hitherto 
 escaped notice. 
 
 In the section of his book next following-, entitled " De Curatione mor- 
 borum populariter grassantium, et de Peste," he says that he had used a 
 certain prescription of aloes, ammoniacum and myrrh rubbed together in 
 wine, for himself as well as for others in a serious contagion, " quae fuit in 
 martiali sede cum ibi essem," and also, with happy effect, upon many " in 
 the most cruel pest at Oxford which carried off Judge Bell and ever so many 
 more ; one gentleman, I could not persuade to try this medicine, whom 
 therefore I commended to God, and four days after he was dead. Con- 
 cerning that pestilential fever, many colloquies took place between me and 
 two most learned physicians ; and, as to the kind of this contagion, we all 
 agreed {iiiaiiibiis et pcdibiis in haiic sctitoiiiaiii ituni est) in a sentence which 
 I quoted from Valescus, who sayeth thus : Those sicknesses are dangerous 
 in such wise that the physicians may be for the most part deceived ; for we 
 see a good hypostasis in the urine, and some other good signs, yet the sick 
 person dies" — a remark which often recurs in the early writings on plague. 
 
 It has taken longer than usual to determine the matter of 
 fact as to the fever of the Oxford Black Assizes, because an 
 erroneous version passes current on respectable authority ; but 
 enough has perhaps been said to enable us to pass from the 
 matter of fact to the matter of theory \ 
 
 The theory of the gaol fever at Oxford, in 1577, was not 
 attempted by any writer at the time, nor indeed has it been so 
 
 ^ Anthony Wood, as we have seen in the text, put together his version of the 
 fever of 1577 from the Merton College register, from Stow's Annals, and from 
 Ethredge's reference to the sweat of 1551. In 1758, John Ward, LL.D., copied the 
 passage in the Merton register and sent it to the Royal Society ; whose secretary, the 
 Rev. Dr Thomas Birch, appended to it in the PJiilosopliical Transactions some anno- 
 tations — "copying," as Carlyle said of him with reference to some Cromwell matter, 
 " from Wood's Atlienae ; and has committed — as who does not.? — several errors," his 
 annotations being "sedulous but ineffectual" — to the extent of fixing on the original 
 correct narrative an accretion of mistakes (600 for 60, sweating sickness for gaol fever, 
 &c.). Trusting to the respectable Birch, Bancroft in his Essay on tlic Yellow Fever, 
 with obsei-vations concerning febi-ile contagion ^c. (Lond., 181 1) has based a theory 
 that the Oxford epidemic was not typhus at all. Murchison (Continued Fevers of 
 Great Britain, iwA ed. 1873, p. 103) has also been misled, and has found himself 
 therefore at a disadvantage in answering Bancroft's empty verbalisms about the 
 invariable reproduction of typhus from some previous case. F. C. Webb, in a paper 
 "An Historical Account of the Gaol Fever," Trans. Epidevi. Sac. for 1857, p. 63, has 
 not used the Oxford case for any argimientative purpose, but he has, like the others, 
 given the facts erroneously. He gives no particulars of the Exeter Black Assize- 
 
382 Oxford Gaol-fcvcr not among prisoners. 
 
 in later times ; but the significance of the outbreak has been 
 recognized and admitted. An Oxford scholar, Dr Plot, writing 
 just a century after (1677) mentions the statement that a 
 " poisonous steam " broke forth from the earth, having probably 
 in his mind Stow's imaginative explanation, that a damp arose 
 amongst the people and smothered them, very few escaping that 
 were not taken at that instant. Plot then proceeds : — 
 
 " But let it not be ascribed to ill fumes and exhalations ascending from 
 the earth and poysoning the Air, for such would have equally affected the 
 prisoners as judges, but we find not that they dyed otherwise than by the 
 halter, which easily perswades me to be of the mind of my lord Verulam 
 {Nat. Hist. cent. x. num. 914) who attributes it wholly to the smell of the 
 Gaol where the prisoners had been long, close, and nastily kept." 
 
 Wc know, indeed, from the register of Merton that " two or 
 three of the prisoners died in chains a few days before," which is 
 a sufficient indication of the state they were kept in, but is no 
 warrant for Anthony Wood's free rendering of the words : " of 
 whom two or three, being overcome ivitJi it [i.e. with the " nasty 
 and pestilential smell of the prisoners "] died a few days before 
 the Assizes began." Two or three prisoners died in their chains 
 with symptoms undescribed ; and although typhus among the 
 inmates of gaols has often occurred, it has also been wanting in 
 many cases where the filth and misery might have bred it in the 
 prisoners themselves\ 
 
 Bacon's judgment on the case, referred to above, was based 
 upon a strict scrutiny of the evidence, and does not transcend 
 the evidence. He attributes the infection that arose in the 
 court to "the smell of the gaol;" and so as not to assume a 
 smell which does not appear to have attracted any particular 
 notice at the time, he is careful to explain in what sense he ' 
 means the smell of the gaol : 
 
 1 Howard, On Lazaniios in Europe, !kc. Warrington, 1789, p. 231: "But as I 
 have found, in some prisons abroad, cells and dungeons as offensive and dirty as any 
 I have observed in this country, where however the distemper was unknown, I am 
 obliged to look out for some additional cause of its production. I am of opinion that 
 the sudden change of diet and lodging so affects tlie spirits of 7ie7i) convicts that the 
 general causes of putrid fever exert an immediate effect upon them. Hence it is 
 common to see them sicken and die in a short time with very little apparent illness." 
 The last words arc important. 
 
Bacon on " tJic smell of tJie gaol." 383 
 
 " The most pernicious infection," he says, " next the plague, is the smell 
 of the jail, when prisoners have been long and close and nastily kept ; 
 whereof we have had in our time experience twice or thrice ; when both the 
 judges that sat upon the jail, and numbers of those that attended the 
 business or were present, sickened upon it and died. Therefore it were 
 good wisdom, that in such cases the jail were aired before they be brought 
 forth 
 
 " Leaving out of question such foul smells as be made by art and by the 
 hand, they consist chiefly of man's flesh or sweat putrefied ; for they are not 
 those stinks which the nostrils straight abhor and expel, that are most 
 pernicious ; but such airs as have some similitude with man's body, and so 
 insinuate themselves and betray the spirits^" 
 
 Exeter Black Assizes. 
 
 The next Black Assizes occurred at Exeter in 1586, nine 
 years after the Oxford tragedy. The Exeter incident has had 
 the fortune to be chronicled by a person as competent as was 
 the writer in the Merton College register in the former case, 
 namely by John Hoker alias Vowell, chamberlain of the city, 
 and its representative in Parliament, a lawyer of good education, 
 who must have been conversant with all the circumstances, and 
 wrote his account within six months. He is known as the chief 
 contributor to the second edition of Holinshed's Chronicle, in 
 which the history is brought down to 1586, his name appearing 
 on the title-page. It is in that work that he inserted his 
 account of the Exeter Black Assizes, written in October, 1586. 
 The margin bears the words : 
 
 "The note of John Hooker alias Vowell ;" and the text of the note is as 
 follows- (ill. pp. 1547-8) : — "At the assizes kept at the citic of Excester, the 
 fourteenth daie of March, in the eight and twentieth yeare of hir majesties 
 reigne, before Sir Edmund Anderson, Knight, lord chief justice of the 
 common pleas, and sargeant Floredaie, one of the barons of the excheker, 
 justices of the assises in the Countie of Devon and Exon, there happened a 
 verie sudden and a strange sickenessc, first amongst the prisoners of. the 
 Gaole and Castell of Exon, and then dispersed (upon their triall) amongst 
 sundrie other persons ; v.'hich was not much unlike to the sickenesse that of 
 
 ' Sylva Syhannii, or A Natural Ilistory. In ten centuries. Cent. 10, §§ 914-15. 
 Spedding's ed. Ii. 646. 
 
 - Holinshed's Chronich'. New editinn hy Ilolcer, London, 15S7, p]i. 1547-S. 
 
384 Gaol-fever at Exeter, 1586. 
 
 late yeares happened at an assise holden at Oxford, before Sir Robert Bell, 
 Knight, lord chiefe baron of the excheker, and justice then of that assise... 
 
 The origin and cause thereof diverse men are of diverse judgment. Some 
 did impute it, and were of the mind that it proceeded from the contagion of 
 the gaole, which by reason of the close aire and filthie stinke, the prisoners 
 newlie come out of a fresh aire into the same are in short time for the most 
 part infected therewith ; and this is commonlie called the gaole sickenesse, 
 and manie die thereof. Some did impute it to certain Portingals, then 
 prisoners in the said gaole. For not long before, one Barnard Drake, 
 esquire (afterwards dubbed Knight) had beene at the seas, and meeting with 
 certeine Portingals, come from New-found-land and laden with fish, he tooke 
 them as a good prize, and brought them into Dartmouth haven in England, 
 and from thense they were sent, being in number about eight and thirtie 
 persons, unto the gaole of the castell of Exon, and there were cast into the 
 deepe pit and stinking dungeon^. 
 
 These men had beene before a long time at the seas, and had no change 
 of apparell, nor laine in bed, and now lieing upon the ground without succor 
 or reliefe, were soone infected ; and all for the most part were sicke, and 
 some of them died, and some one of them was distracted ; and this sicke- 
 nesse verie soone after dispersed itselfe among all the residue of the prisoners 
 in the gaole ; of which disease manie of them died, but all brought into 
 great extremities and were hardly escaped. These men, when they were to 
 be brought before the foresaid justices for their triall, manie of them were so 
 weak and sicke that they were not able to goe nor stand ; but were caried 
 from the gaole to the place of judgement, some upon handbarrowes, and 
 some betweene men leading them, and so brought to the place of justice. 
 
 The sight of these men's miserable and pitiful! cases, being thought (and 
 more like) to be hunger-starved than with sickenesse diseased, moved manie 
 a man's heart to behold and look upon them ; but none pitied them more 
 than the lords justices themselves, and especially the lord chief justice 
 himsclfe ; who upon this occasion tooke a better order for keeping all 
 prisoners thenseforth in the gaole, and for the more often trials ; which was 
 now appointed to be quarterlie kept at every quarter sessions and not to be 
 posted anie more over, as in times past, untill the assises. 
 
 These prisoners thus brought from out of the gaole to the judgment 
 
 1 These statements by Iloker, chamberlain of Exeter, are sufficiently circum- 
 stantial ; but they do not quite suit the theory of a writer in the Diet. Nat. Biog., 
 under "Drake, Sir Bernard" that the ship was "a great Portugal ship," called the 
 Lion of Viana, with an English master, taken by Bernard Drake in Brittany. No 
 doubt such a capture is stated in the Cat. State Papers, 1585, p. 295 (the reference 
 given), Sir W. Raleigh's ship the "Jol)e" being included in the same petition; but 
 nothing is said of Dartmouth as the port to which the two vessels were brought, or of 
 Exeter as the place where their captains were imprisoned. It is of importance for 
 the theory of the Exeter gaol fever to know whether Drake's prisoners were Portu- 
 guese fishermen or not, and llokcr may lie supposed to have known. 
 
The Exeter Blaek Assizes, 1586. 385 
 
 place, after that they had been staicd, and paused awhile in the open aire, 
 and somewhat refreshed therewith, they were brought into the house, in the 
 one end of the hall near to the judges seat, and which is the ordinarie and 
 accountable place where they do stand to their triales and arraignments. 
 And howsoever the matter fell out, and by what occasion it happened, an 
 infection followed upon manie and a great number of such as were there in 
 the court, and especially upon such as were nearest to them were soonest 
 infected. And albeit the infection was not then perceived, because every 
 man departed, (as he thought), in as good health as he came thither; yet 
 the same by little and little so crept into such as upon whom the infection 
 was seizoned, that after a few dales, and at their home coming to their owne 
 houses, they felt the violence of this pestilent sicknesse ; wherein more died, 
 that were infected, than escaped. And besides the prisoners, manie there 
 were of good account, and of all other degrees, which died thereof ; as by 
 name sargeant Floredaie who then was the judge of those trials upon the 
 prisoners, Sir John Chichester, Sir Arthur Basset, Sir Barnard Drake, 
 Knight^; Thomas Carew of Haccombe, Robert Carie of Clovelleigh, John 
 Fortescue of Wood, John Waldron of Bradfeeld and Thomas Risdone, 
 esquires and justices of the peace. 
 
 ...Of the plebeian and common people died verie manie, and especiallie 
 constables, reeves, and tithing men, and such as were jurors, and namelie 
 one jurie of twelve, of which there died eleven. 
 
 This sicknesse was dispersed throughout all the whole shire, and at the 
 writing hereof in the time of October, 1586, it is not altogether extinguished. 
 It resteth for the most part about fourteene dales and upwards by a secret 
 infection, before it breake out into his force and violence." 
 
 Here we have the same incubation-period as in the Oxford 
 fever, about fourteen days. But in the Exeter case, we have it 
 clearly stated that an infection arose in the prison from the poor 
 Portuguese sailors or fishermen who had been thrown into " deep 
 pit and stinking dungeon " after their capture on the high seas 
 by Sir Bernard Drake, that the infection attacked the other 
 prisoners, that many of the prisoners died and all were brought 
 to extremities, and that those who stood their trial were then 
 in a most feeble state, although they seemed to the pitying 
 spectators to be more starved than diseased. 
 
 So far as concerned the infection in the Assize Court, among 
 the lawyers, county gentry, and officials, jurors and others, it was 
 of the same tragic kind as at Oxford in 1577 and at Cambridge 
 
 1 The author of the misadventure. He succeeded in getting home to Crediton, 
 where he died on the 12th April, four weeks after the Assizes began. 
 
 c. 25 
 
386 Gaol-fever sptrads over Devojishire, 1586. 
 
 in 1522, and, as we shall see, on several occasions in the 
 eighteenth century. But the Exeter case has some features 
 special to itself. Within the gaol were both English felons and 
 thirty-eight Portugals, who had become subject to capture on 
 their way home from the banks of Newfoundland with boat- 
 loads of stock-fish, and to treatment as felons, because Spain 
 and England were at war. Within the gaol there seems to have 
 been also a gradation of misery, a deep pit and stinking dungeon, 
 " in the lowest deep a lower deep," to which were consigned the 
 men of foreign breed, the Portugals. It was among them that 
 deaths first occurred, in what special form we know not. From 
 them an infection is clearly stated by Hoker td have spread 
 through the gaol at large, and to have made many of the 
 prisoners so weak that they had to be carried into court. This 
 is quite unlike what we read of in the Cambridge and Oxford 
 cases, in neither of which was illness noted in the prisoners or 
 asserted of them, although at Oxford two or three had died in 
 chains a ^qvj days before. In the Exeter case there were three 
 circles of the damned instead of two only : nay there were four. 
 Farthest in were the Portugals, next to them were the native 
 English felons, then came those present on business or pleasure 
 at the Assizes, and lastly there were the country people all over 
 Devonshire for many months after. We must take all those 
 peculiarities of the Exeter gaol-fever together, and explain them 
 one by another. It was a somewhat elaborated poison. It had 
 passed from the foreign prisoners to the English, and in the 
 transmission had, as it were, consolidated its power ; hence, when 
 the prisoners did give it to those who breathed their atmosphere 
 in court, the infection did not limit itself to them, as it certainly 
 did at Oxford and, so far as anything is said, at Cambridge also, 
 and as it usually does in typhus-fever; but it became a volatile 
 poison, it developed wings and acquired staying power, so that 
 its effects were felt over the county of Devon for at least six 
 months loncrer. 
 
Agrarian troubles after tlie Wars of the Roses, 387 
 
 Poverty and Vagrancy in Tudor England. 
 
 The Black Assizes of Cambridc^c (1522), of Oxford (1577), 
 and of Exeter (1586) cast, in each case, a momentary and vivid 
 light upon the state of England in the Tudor period as late as 
 the middle of the reign of Elizabeth. It has been pointed out 
 in a former chapter that prices and wages were favourable to the 
 cultivators of the soil in the fifteenth century, that the English 
 yeomanry sprang up in that period, that village communities 
 and trading towns prospered although their morals were none of 
 the best, and that the civil wars of York and Lancaster were so 
 far from injuring the domestic peace of England that they even 
 secured it. It was the observation of Philip de Comines, more 
 than once quoted before, that England had the " peculiar grace " 
 of being untroubled at large by the calamities of her civil wars, 
 because kings and nobles were left to settle their quarrels 
 among themselves. " Nothing is perfect in this world," says the 
 French statesman, who did not like independence of spirit 
 among the lower orders. But he recognizes the fact as peculiar 
 to England in the fifteenth century ; and there can be little 
 doubt about it. 
 
 The civil wars were hardly over when the troubles of the 
 common people began. Here, if anywhere, is the turning-point 
 brought into Goldsmith's poem of " The Deserted Village:" 
 
 A time there was, ere England's griefs began, 
 When every rood of ground maintained its man. 
 
 Deserted villages became a reality in the last quarter of the 
 fifteenth century, and throughout the century following. We 
 hear of this depopulation first in the Isle of Wight, where it 
 affected the national defence and therefore engaged the attention 
 of the State. Two Acts were passed in 1488 — 9, cap. 16 and 
 cap. 19 of 4 Henry VII. The first declares that "it is for the 
 security of the king and realm that the Isle of Wight should 
 be well inhabited, for defence against our ancient enemies of 
 France ; the which isle is late decayed of people, by reason that 
 many towns and villages have been let down, and the fields 
 
 2 c 2 
 
388 Enclosures and pnshire-farviiug. 
 
 dyked and made pastures for beasts and cattle." The second 
 relates that 
 
 " Great inconveniences daily doth increase by desolation and pulling 
 down and wilful waste of houses and towns, and laying to pasture lands 
 which customably have been used in tilth, whereby idleness, ground and 
 beginning of all mischiefs, daily do increase ; for where in some towns two 
 hundred persons were occupied and lived by their lawful labours, now be 
 there occupied two or three herdsmen, and the residue fall into idleness." 
 The remedy enacted is that no one shall take a farm in the Isle of Wight 
 which shall exceed ten marks, and that owners shall maintain, upon their 
 estates, houses and buildings necessary for tillage. 
 
 An instance of the same depopulation is given by Dugdale 
 in Warwickshire : seven hundred acres of arable land turned to 
 pasture, and eighty persons thrown out of employment causing 
 the destruction of sixteen messuages and seven cottages. An 
 instance of the same kind has already been quoted from the 
 neighbourhood of Cambridge as early as 1414; but it is not 
 until the settlement of the dynastic quarrels and jealousies, 
 partly on the victories of Edward IV. at Barnet and Tewkesbury 
 in 147 1, and completely after the victory of Henry Tudor at 
 Bosworth in 1485, that agrarian troubles became general. Then 
 began the famous enclosures — enclosures both of the " wastes " 
 of the manors, and of the open cultivated fields of the manors 
 in which all the orders of villagers had their share of tenancy. 
 
 A few years after, in 1495, the number of vagabonds and 
 beggars had so increased, of course in consequence of the enclo- 
 sures, that a new Act was required, cap. 2 of the nth of 
 Henry VII. "Considering the great charges that should grow 
 for bringing vagabonds to the gaols according to the statute of 
 7 Richard II., cap. 5, and the long abiding of them therein, 
 whereby it is likely many of them would lose their lives :" there- 
 fore to put them in the stocks for three days and three nights 
 upon bread and water, and after that to set them at large and 
 command them to avoid the town, and if a vagabond be taken 
 again in the same town or township, then the stocks for four 
 days, with like diet. The deserving poor, however, were to be 
 dealt with otherwise, but in an equally futile manner. In 
 1503-4, by the 19th of Henry VII. cap. 12, the period in the 
 stocks was reduced to one day and one night (bread and water 
 
Sir Tliomas More on tJic Condition of Engiand. 389 
 
 as before), prob^ibly in order that all vagabonds might have 
 their turn. 
 
 The most correct picture of the state of England under 
 Plenry VII. and Henry VIII. is given by Sir Thomas More, 
 The passages in his Utopia, relating to the state of England 
 may be taken as veracious history. A discussion is supposed 
 to arise at the table of Morton, archbishop of Canterbury, who 
 was More's early patron, and who died in 1500. " I durst boldly 
 speak my mind before the Cardinal," says the foreign observer 
 of our manners and custom, Raphael Hythloday ; and then 
 follows an account of the state of England which lacks nothing 
 in plainness of speech. 
 
 " But let us consider those things that chance daily before our eyes. 
 First there is a great number of gentlemen, which cannot be content to live 
 idle themselves, like drones, of that which other have laboured for : their 
 tenants I mean, whom they poll and shave to the quick by raising their 
 rents (for this only point of frugality do they use, men else through their 
 lavish and prodigal spending able to bring themselves to very beggary) — 
 these gentlemen, I say, do not only live in idleness themselves, but also 
 carry about with them at their tails a great flock or train of idle and loitering 
 serving-men, which never learned any craft whereby to get their living. 
 These men, as soon as their master is dead, or be sick themselves, be 
 incontinent thrust out of doors... .And husbandmen dare not set them a work, 
 knowing well enough that he is nothing meet to do true and faithful service 
 to a poor man with a spade and a mattock for small wages and hard fare, 
 which being daintily and tenderly pampered up in idleness and pleasure, 
 was wont with a sword and a buckler by his side to strut through the street 
 with a bragging look, and to think himself too good to be any man's mate. 
 
 Nay, by Saint Mary, Sir, (quoth the lawyer), not so. For this kind of 
 men must we make most of. For in them, as men of stouter stomachs, 
 bolder spirits, and manlier courages than handicraftsmen and ploughmen 
 be, doth consist the whole power, strength and puissance of our army, when 
 we must fight in battle." 
 
 So much for the serving-men of the rich, apt to be discarded to swell the 
 ranks of poverty and crime. But further : — 
 
 "There is another cause, which, as I suppose, is proper and peculiar to 
 you Englishmen alone. — What is that? quoth the Cardinal. — Forsooth, my 
 lord, quoth I, your sheep that were wont to be so meek and tame, and so 
 small eaters, now, as I hear say, be become so great devourers and so wild 
 that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves. They consume, 
 destroy and devour whole fields, houses and cities. For look in what parts 
 of the realm doth grow the finest and therefore dearest wool, these noblemen 
 
390 Causes of vagrancy and crime under Henry I III. 
 
 and gentlemen, yea and certain abbots, (holy men, no doubt), not contenting 
 themselves with the yearly revenues and profits that were wont to grow to 
 their forefathers and predecessors of their lands, nor being content that they 
 live in rest and pleasure, nothing profiting yea much annoying the weal 
 public leave no ground for tillage ; they inclose all into pastures ; they 
 throw down houses; they pluck down towns and leave nothing standing, 
 but only the church to be made a sheep-house. And as though you lost no 
 small quantity of ground by forests, chases, lawns, and parks, these holy 
 men turn all dwelling-places and all glebe-land into desolation and wilder- 
 ness. Therefore the one covetous and insatiable cormorant and very plague 
 of his native country may compass about and inclose many thousand acres 
 of ground together within one pale or hedge ; the husbandmen be thrust out 
 of their own, or else either by cunning and fraud, or by violent oppression 
 they be put besides it, or by wrongs and injuries they be so wearied that 
 they be compelled to sell all. By one means, therefore, or by other, either 
 by hook or crook, they must needs depart away, poor silly wretched souls, 
 men, women, husbands, wives, fatherless children, widows, woeful mothers 
 with their young babes, and their whole household small in substance and 
 much in number as husbandry requireth many hands. Away they trudge, I 
 say, out of their known and accustomed houses, finding no place to rest in. 
 All their household stuff, which is very little worth, though it might well 
 abide the sale, yet being suddenly thrust out, they be constrained to sell it 
 for a thing of nought. And when they have wandered abroad till that be 
 spent, what can they then else do but steal, and then justly, pardy! be 
 hanged, or else go about a begging. And yet, then also they be cast in 
 prison as vagabonds, because they go about and work not ; whom no man 
 will set a work, though they never so willingly profer themselves thereto." 
 
 Thus were the gaols filled. The policy of Henry VIII. was 
 to hang for petty theft — " twenty together upo n one gallows." 
 And yet the lawyer, the defender of the king's firm rule, "could 
 not choose but greatly wonder and marvel, how and by what 
 evil luck it should come to pass that thieves nevertheless were in 
 every place so rife and rank." 
 
 These descriptions of the state of England were written 
 about 1 5 17, and the recitals in various Acts of Henry VIII. 
 bear them out. Thus, in 15 14 and 15 15 (6 Hen. VIII. cap. 5, 
 and 7 Hen. VIII. cap. i), the towns, villages and hamlets, and 
 other habitations decayed in the Isle of Wight are to be re- 
 edified and re-peopled. In 1533-4 (25 Hen. VIII. cap. 13), 
 there is a more comprehensive Act against the aggrandisements 
 of pasture-farmers, "by reason whereof a marvellous multitude 
 of the [)jjple of this re ilm be not able to provide meat, drink 
 
Rural depopulation under Edward V/. 391 
 
 and clothes necessary f(jr themselves, their wives, and children, 
 but be so discouraged with misery and poverty that they fall 
 daily to theft, robbery, and other inconvenience, or pitifully die 
 for hunger and cold." Some greedy and covetous persons have 
 as many as 24,000 sheep : no one to keep above 2,000 sheep 
 under the penalty of 3^'. 4^/. for every sheep kept by him above 
 that number. Ten years after comes the well-known Act relating 
 to the decay of towns' (35 Hen. VIII. cap. 4). 
 
 Besides these recitals in Acts of Parliament, we have other 
 glimpses of the causes of agrarian distress. Thus, in a letter of 
 June 24, 1528, from Sir Edward Guildford to Wolsey : Romney 
 Marsh is fallen into decay ; there are many great farms and 
 holdings in the hands of persons who neither reside on them, 
 nor till, nor breed cattle, but use them for grazing, trusting to 
 the Welsh store cattle"*. 
 
 In Becon's Jeivel of Joy ^ written in the reign of Edward VI. 
 the same condition of things is described : 
 
 " How do the rich men, and specially such as be sheepmongers, oppress 
 the king's liege-people by devouring their common pastures with their sheep, 
 so that the poor people are not able to keep a cow for the comfort of them 
 and of their poor family, and are like to starve and perish for hunger, if 
 there be not provision made shortly. ..Rich men were never so much 
 estranged from all pity and compassion toward the poor people as they be 
 at this present time... They not only link house to house, but when they have 
 gotten many houses and tenements into their hands, yea whole townships, 
 they suffer the houses to fall into utter ruin and decay, so that by this 
 means whole towns are become desolate and like unto a wilderness, no man 
 dwelling there except it be the shepherd and his dog." The interlocutor in 
 the dialogue answers : " Truth it is. For I myself know many towns and 
 villages sore decayed ; for whereas in times past there were in some town 
 an hundred households, there remain not now thirty; in some fifty, there are 
 not now ten ; yea (which is more to be lamented) I know towns so wholly 
 decayed that there is neither stick nor stone, as they say.. ..And the cause of 
 all this wretchedness and beggary in the common weal is the greed of 
 gentlemen which are sheepmongers and graziers •\" 
 
 1 Sir George Nicholls, in his History of the English Poor Lazu, 1854, I. 113, 
 threw out the suggestion tliiil the decay was in the old walled towns, and that it was 
 compensated by the rise of populations on less hampered sites. This theory has been 
 adopted by some later writers. 
 
 - Calciuiar of State Papers. Domestic, Hen. VIII. 
 
 ^ Becon's Works, 3 vols. U. fol. 15-16. 
 
392 The Acts against vagabonds, 153 1-1547. 
 
 Again, in 13ullein's Dialogue of the Fever Pestilenee (1664), 
 the groom Roger who accompanies the citizen and his wife to 
 the country, in the direction of Barnet, points out an estate on 
 which the rents had been raised ; the fields had been turned into 
 large pastures, and all the houses pulled down save the manor 
 house : " for the carles have forfeited their leases and are gone 
 a-begging like villaines, and many of them are dead for hunger." 
 
 Vagabonds, beggars, valiant beggars, sturdy beggars, and 
 rufifelers continue to occupy the pages of the Statute Book for 
 many years. In 1530-31 (a long and elaborate Act), and in 
 1535-6, they are to be repressed by the stocks, by whipping, and 
 ear-cropping ; " and if any rufifeler, sturdy vagabond, or valiant 
 beggar, having the upper part of the right ear cut off as aforesaid, 
 be apprehended wandering in idleness, and it be duly proved 
 that he hath not applied to such labours as have been assigned to 
 him, or be not in service with any master, that then he be 
 committed to gaol until the next quarter sessions, and be there 
 indicted and tried, and, if found guilty, he shall be adjudged to 
 suffer death as a felon." A still more distracted Act was made 
 by the Lord Protector in 1547 (i Ed. VI. cap. 3): if the 
 vagabond continue idle and refuse to labour, or run away from 
 work set him to perform, he is to be branded with the letter V, 
 and be adjudged a slave for two years to any person who shall 
 demand him, to be fed on bread and water and refuse-meat, and 
 caused to work in such labour, " how vile soever it be, as he 
 shall be put unto, by beating, chaining, or otherwise." If he run 
 away within the two years, he is to be branded in the cheek 
 with the letter S, and adjudged a slave for life; and if he run 
 away again he is to suffer death as a felon. Similar provisions 
 are made for "slave-children ;" while the usual exceptions are 
 brought in for the impotent poor. The above statute remained in 
 force for only two years, having been from the first a monstrous 
 insult to the intelligence of the nation, and never applied. It 
 was succeeded by two meek-spirited Acts, 3 and 4 Ed. VI. cap. 
 iC, and 5 and 6 Ed. VI. cap. 2, in which the impotent poor are 
 provided for: — collectors in church to "gently ask and demand 
 alms for the poor." By the 1st of Mary, cap. 13, the collections 
 for the poor were made weekly. When Elizabeth came to the 
 
Queen Elirjabctlis Poor-Lm^'s. 393 
 
 throne, greater pressure was put upon the well-to-do to support 
 the poor: by the Act of 5 Eliz. cap. 3 (1562-3) those who 
 obstinately refused voluntary alms might be assessed. A more 
 important Act of Elizabeth was that of her 14th year (1572-3) 
 cap. 5, " For the Punishment of Vagabonds and for Relief of 
 the Poor and Impotent." A vagabond, as before, is to be 
 whipped, and burnt on the ear ; for a second offence to suffer 
 death as a felon " unless some honest person will take him into 
 his service for two whole years ;" and for a third offence to suffer 
 death and loss of lands and goods, as a felon, without allowance 
 of benefit of clergy or sanctuary. Aged and infirm poor, by 
 the same Act, are to be cared for by "overseers of the poor" in 
 every parish, and to have abiding places fixed for them. In 
 1575-6 (i8th Eliz. cap. 3), the Act of 1572-3 was amended and 
 explained : " collectors and governors of the poor" are to provide 
 a stock of wool, hemp, iron etc. for the poor to work upon, and 
 " houses of correction," or Bridewells, are to be built — one, two 
 or more in every county for valiant beggars or such other poor 
 persons as refuse to work under the overseers or embezzle their 
 work. The last and greatest poor-laws of Elizabeth's reign 
 were those of her 39th year (1597-8) caps. 3 and 4 and her 
 43rd year (1601) cap. 2. These remained the basis of the English 
 poor-law down to a recent period. Overseers of the poor are 
 appointed in every parish — the churchwardens ex officio and four 
 others appointed by the justices in Easter week : the overseers to 
 meet once a month in the parish church after divine service on 
 the Sunday : contributions to be levied by the inhabitants of any 
 parish among themselves, or the parish or hundred to be taxed 
 by the justices, failing the contributions, or, if the hundred be 
 unable, then the county to be rated "in aid of" the parishes. 
 
 These being the developments of the poor-law and the law 
 against vagabonds to the end of the Tudor period, we may now 
 return to our particular illustrations, and more especially to the 
 illustrations from popular sickness. 
 
 Under the year 1 537, one of the citizen chroniclers of London 
 has an entry, " Began a collection for the poor, and a great 
 number cured of many grievous diseases through the charity 
 thereof." Under 1540, he records that "the collection for the 
 
394 State of the gaols in 1579. 
 
 poor people ceased*." Preaching before Edward VI. 011 tlic 
 fourth Sunday in Lent, 1550, Thomas Lever, Master of St John's 
 College, Cambridge, said : " O merciful Lord ! what a number 
 of poor, feeble, halt, blind, lame, sickly — yea with idle vagabonds 
 and dissembling caitiffs mixed among them, lie and creep, 
 begging in the miry streets of London and Westminster^" In 
 May, 1552, Ridley wrote to Cecil that the citizens were willing 
 to provide for the poor "both meat, drink, clothing and firing;" 
 but they lacked lodging, and he wanted the king to give up 
 Bridewell "to lodge Christ in," or in other words, the poor "then 
 lying abroad in the streets of London." 
 
 Coming to the middle of Elizabeth's reign, in the year 1 579 we 
 find, in an essay dedicated to the queen by Dr John Jones upon 
 general topics of health and morals, an account of poverty and 
 crime which reads little better than Sir Thomas More's for 15 17. 
 In his 31st chapter on "The great cost that the commonwealth 
 is at daily in relieving the poore : Of the number of them that 
 are yeerly executed," he speaks of the new poor-rate as " a greater 
 tax than some subsidies," and as a " larger collection than would 
 maintain yeerly a good army;" and, of the felons as " a mightier 
 company of miserable captives than would defend a large country, 
 as in the records of the Clerks of the Peace and of the Assize 
 may easily be seen." 
 
 Even from the outset, the poor-rate does not appear to have 
 met the difficulty : 
 
 "And yet housekeepers be but little less discharged, if ye note the 
 continual resort of the needy, especially in the country and towns that be 
 incorporate, the poor (as they say) not much the more aided, as by the moan 
 they make to travellers may be easily gathered, nor theft and wickedness 
 the less practised. For what misery it is to see condemned at one assize in 
 a Httlc shire thirty-nine, notwithstanding the clemency of the Judges, and 
 three hundred and odd in one Diocese to do penance or fine for their loose 
 living in a year. But these be the meanest sort only, for the others scape 
 as though it were in them no offence. And in one gaol of prisoners three 
 hundred and upwards at one time, whereof a great part perhaps may be 
 through negligence of justice or cruelty, that otherwise might be punished 
 answerably to the offences lawfully." 
 
 ' ( "ontinuatiiMi of l'"al)yaii'.s Chroiiiclc. 
 
 - (jrcyffiars C'/^row/VA', Camden Soc. i.iii., 1S52. Preface liy J. G. Nichols, xxiv. 
 
Prevalence of Gaol-fever in Tndor times. 395 
 
 He then refers to the I^ridcwclls " so charitably and politicly- 
 appointed by the late Act of Parliament, although not yet in 
 every shire erected." The Act of Parliament was that of 1572 
 and the Bridewells were the houses of correction for vagrants, 
 the first type of workhouses, and so named after the Bridewell 
 in Fleet Street, which was given by Edward VI. from being a 
 royal residence to be a refuge of the poor. So far as fever was 
 concerned, it mattered little whether the Bridewell were a [joors- 
 house or a prison, for in later times gaol fever and workhouse 
 fever were both synonyms for typhus. 
 
 It would not have been surprising to find this enormous 
 extent of pauperism, vagrancy and crime attended by the 
 distinctive morbus pauperuni, typhus-fever. Ikit we are here 
 concerned only with the evidence, and not with antecedent 
 probabilities. The records are, of course, very imperfect. The 
 gaol-fevers of Cambridge, Oxford and Exeter attracted much 
 notice because they touched the governing class. There may 
 have been much more gaol-fever unrecorded. Hoker, in his 
 account of the Exeter fever, does indeed say : " and this is 
 commonly called the gaol sickness, and many die thereof;" and, 
 in a petition to the Crown, March, 1579, the Queen's Bench 
 prison in Southwark is said to contain twice its complement, 
 there is in it a disease called " sickness of the house," and near a 
 hundred had died of that sickness in the prison during the 
 previous six years\ We shall not be able to give colour to our 
 epidemiological history by other such instances from the Tudor 
 period"; even for plague itself, the records of particular out- 
 
 ' Strype's ed. of Stow's Suroey of London. 
 
 ■^ 111 llie Rolls of the Middlesex Sessions (Middlesex Record Society), there occur 
 numerous entries of inquests on deaths in the gaol of Newgate from the 25th year of 
 Elizabeth : a few of these are from plague ; but by far the larger number are from 
 " the pining sickness," a malady which sometimes cut off several prisoners in the same 
 few days and after a brief illness. In one of these epidemics (Dec. 1586— -Feb. 1587), 
 a single case is called "pestilent fever," the other seven being "pining sickness." 
 Next year, June 19, there is a case of bloody flux, and, on June 24, a case of "pining 
 sickness." The other periods when the disease so named was epidemic in Newgate 
 were Feb.— May, 1595, June and July, 1597, March, 1598, and March — April, 1602. 
 The pining sickness was probably a generic term, and may have included chronic 
 disease ; there is a solitary case entered as ailing for as long a period as eight months, 
 
396 " Parish Infection!' 
 
 breaks are meagre and almost certainly only a part of the 
 whole. The epidemics which shall occupy us for the rest of 
 this chapter are those that had a general prevalence over the 
 country on two or three occasions, the same general prevalence 
 of fever that recurs at shorter intervals in the Stuart period and 
 in the eighteenth century. 
 
 Hitherto we have attempted to work out the history of 
 epidemics in Britain without reference to the epidemics in other 
 countries, except in the case of the Black Death, which had 
 remarkable antecedents in the remote East, and in the case of 
 the English Sweat of 1528, which overran a great part of the 
 Continent in 1529 and 1530. To have attempted a parallel 
 record of epidemics abroad would have served inevitably to 
 confuse the vision ; for the annals of pestilence in all Europe 
 would have been from year to year an unrelieved record of 
 sickness and death, an unnatural continuance or sequence, from 
 which the mind turns away. The several countries of Europe, 
 and the several cities, had each their turn of plague ; but they 
 had each, also, their free intervals, sometimes very long intervals, 
 as we have seen in the case of Aberdeen with no plague for 
 nearly two generations in the sixteenth century. The epidemio- 
 graphy of each country should therefore be kept apart ; and 
 
 the usual duration of the sickness being one, two, or three days up to three or four 
 weeks. 
 
 This place will serve to notice the strange teaching about "parish infection" 
 which has received currency among the writers of good repute as authorities. 
 Guy {Public Health, Lectures, 1870, i. 23) says the gaol distemper was an old offender 
 known as the sickness of the house : "I think I recognize it in the London Bills from 
 1606 to 1665 as the Parish I/i/ection." The column of figures in the London Bills 
 which has been taken to show the weekly prevalence of a disease, otherwise unheard 
 of, "parish infection," really shows the number of "parishes infected." The 
 earlier bills showed, in the corresponding column, the number of parishes clear ("parish, 
 clere" or "paroch.clere "). By adding up the number of parishes infected in each of 
 the 52 weeks of a bad plague-year, a total of some thousands is got, and that total 
 has been taken to be the annual mortality from "parish infection" — a pure myth. 
 The original author of this singular mistake appears to have been Marshall, in his 
 Jl/ortality of the Metropolis, London, 1832, p. 67. Of the "parish infection," he 
 says: "The disease below is specified by Mr Bell in his Remembrancer [1665] ; it is 
 probably the same as exhibited under the name of spotted fever." What Bell 
 "specifies" is not another disease, but the number of parishes in the City and 
 suburl)s infected with the i)lague in each week of the year. 
 
Universal epidemics of Fever. 397 
 
 within a given country care should be taken to prevent the 
 illusion of universal sickness, which is apt to be created in the 
 bringing of scattered centres of disease (such as plague) together 
 in the same page. 
 
 But there are instances of what are called pandemics, or 
 universal epidemics, of sickness. The Black Death was one 
 such, covering a period of perhaps four years in Europe, from 
 1347 to 1350, the curve of the disease in each locality lasting 
 about six months. With the beginning of the modern period 
 we come to more frequent pandemics, not of plague, but of 
 minor or milder forms of pestilential infection. On the continent 
 of Europe these were in part related to the state of war, which 
 may be taken as beginning with the invasion of Italy by 
 Charles VIII. of France in 1494. Typhus-fever, or war-fever 
 with famine-fever, now begins to be a familiar form of sickness 
 — in 1498, 1505, 1 5 10, 1528, and so on. Other forms are putrid 
 sore throat, dysentery, and varieties of fever included under 
 influenza. The various forms were apt to occur together or in 
 succession, so that epidemiography has a " Protean " character. 
 This epidemic Proteus is at once a great difficulty and a most 
 instructive fact. It opens up the very old doctrine of " epidemic 
 constitutions" of the air, which to many moderns savours of 
 unscientific vagueness ; and it brings us face to face with degrees 
 or kinds of infectiveness which are, in matter of fact, more 
 wonderful or more incomprehensible than the deadlier infection.s, 
 such as the plague or Asiatic cholera. The most familiar 
 instance of the kind is influenza. 
 
 Influenza. 
 
 Influenza enters undoubtedly into the Protean infections of 
 the sixteenth century, and is itself no small part of the Proteus. 
 But what is influenza .-' The name is comparatively modern — 
 Italian of the i8th century — and appears to mean defluxion 
 or catarrh, not in the familiar sense only, but as derived from 
 the comprehensive pathological doctrine of humours : thus the 
 Venetian envo)' in London called the sweat of 155 1 an " influsso." 
 It is open to us to include much (M- little under influenza; but 
 
398 Early instances of Influenza in Britain. 
 
 the name itself, having its root in an obsolete doctrine of 
 humours, can never be made exact or scientific. Usage has 
 appHed it to all universal colds and coughs; and it has been 
 applied capriciously to some universal fevers, but not to others. 
 There are two tolerably clear references to its prevalence in 
 England before the peculiarly nnwholesome state of Europe 
 began with the modern age. Under the year 1 173, the chronicle 
 of Melrose enters "a certain evil and unheard-of cough" {tnssis 
 gnaedam mala et inandita), which affected everyone far and near, 
 and cut off many. 
 
 One of the St Albans chroniclers, an unknown writer who 
 kept a record from 1423 to 143 1 (reign of Henry VI.), has the 
 following entry under the year 1427 : " In the beginning of 
 October, a certain rheumy infirmity {quaedam infirniitas reuvii- 
 gata) which is called ' innre ' invaded the whole people, and so 
 infected the aged along with the younger that it conducted a 
 great number to the grave\" A good deal is said in this brief 
 passage, and all that is said points to influenza — the rheumy 
 nature of the malady, the universality of incidence, presumably 
 the suddenness and brief duration, the deaths among the aged 
 and the more juvenile. It is known also that a similarly general 
 malady was prevalent the same year in Paris, where it bore the 
 name of ladcndo ; the particulars given in the French record 
 of it leave no doubt that it was influenza. 
 
 The singular name oi pestilentia volatilis given by Fordoun 
 to two epidemics in Scotland in his own lifetime, one which 
 began at Edinburgh in February, 1430 (143 1 new style), and the 
 other at Haddington in 1432, suggests that they may have been 
 influenzas, but there is nothing more than the name to indicate 
 their nature. Those years are not known to have been years of 
 
 ^ Annales Monastici, Rolls series, No. 19. Chronicle by an unknown author (St 
 Albans) temp. Hen. VI., 1422-31 : — "Quaedam infirmitas reumigata invasit totum 
 populum, quae vmre dicitur : et sic senes cum junioribus inficiebat quod magnum 
 numerum ad funus letale deducebat." 
 
 In the Report of the Irish Local Government Board, Medical Department, 1890, 
 influenza is identified under the name "slaedan," or prostration, which was epidemic 
 in Ireland in 1326 or 1328, the same epidemic being called "murre" in the Annals 
 of Cloumacnoise. The use of the word ' ' mure " in the St Albans Chronicle is just a 
 century later. Murrain (or morcna in Latin clironiclcs) is probal)]y the modern 
 survival of "mure" or "murre." 
 
TJic Iiiflnc}iza of 1510 on the Cout incut. 399 
 
 influenza in any other country of Europe : the record of the 
 malady passes direct from 1427 to 15 10. There was certainly a 
 great wave of influenza over Europe in 15 10, under the names of 
 cocquelucJie and coccolucio. It is said to have come up from 
 the Mediterranean coasts and to have extended to the shores of 
 the Baltic and North Seas; its prevalence in Britain is likely 
 enough, and is indeed asserted in one foreign account, but there 
 is no known native notice of it. Abroad, it had the usual 
 character of suddenness, simultaneity and universality, and the 
 symptoms of heaviness, prostration, headache, restlessness, sleep- 
 lessness, and for some time after a violent paroxysmal cough, 
 like whooping-cough. None died except some children ; in 
 some it went ofl" with a looseness, in others by sweating\ The 
 mention of sweating in the influenza epidemic of 15 10 is not 
 without importance. It may serve to explain a remark by 
 Erasmus, in a letter of 25th August, 15 ii, from Queens' College, 
 Cambridge, that his health was still rather doubtful "from that 
 sweat" {a sudore. illo"^); the sweat can hardly have been the 
 sweating sickness of 1508, three years before, but the still 
 unsettled health of Erasmus in 151 1 may perhaps have been the 
 dregs of the influenza of 15 10. 
 
 The next great European epidemic of influenza was in 1557, 
 for which I shall produce medical evidence of England sharing 
 in it, probably during that year and certainly in the one 
 following. But the intervening years afford some notices of 
 sickness in England, which was neither so severe as plague at 
 one end of the pestilential scale nor altogether mild at the 
 other, being forms of illness which contemporaries pronounced 
 to be " new " and " strange," and appear to have been of the 
 nature of pestilent fever and dysentery. 
 
 Neither typhus nor dysentery was really new to England in 
 the sixteenth century ; on the contrary, they were (with putrid 
 sore throat and lientery) the common types of disease in the 
 
 ^ I take this summary from Sliort {Chronolos^y, etc. i. ■204), who omits his authority, 
 probalily the foreign writers to whom he is usually indebted in the earlier period. 
 The first part of Theophilus Thompson's Anuals of fuflitcuza (Sydenham Society) is 
 little else than extracts from Short, and therefore of foreign origin. 
 
 - Cal. State Papers. Domestic, sttb dato. 
 
400 " Hot (i<^ncs " /;/ England in 1 540. 
 
 great English famines which came at long intervals, as described 
 in the first chapter. But on the continent of Europe typhus and 
 dysentery and putrid sore throat {angina maligna) began with 
 the modern age to appear as if capriciously, and independently 
 of such obvious antecedents as want, although some of the 
 epidemics of typhus and dysentery were clearly related to the 
 hardships of warfarc\ Typhus, indeed, was a disastrous malady 
 on the Continent in those years, notably in 1528 in Spain, where 
 it was known as " las bubas," and in France, where it was called 
 " Ics poches " — both names relating to the spots on the skin, and 
 both more strictly applicable to the eruptions of the lues venerea, 
 which was then also rampant. 
 
 Apart from the gaol fever at Cambridge in 1522, the first 
 mention of those new epidemics in England since the end of 
 the medieval period is under the year 1540: "This said xxx 
 and two year [of Henry VIII.] divers and many honest persons 
 died of the hot agues and of a great lask throughout the realm ^" 
 The " lask " was dysentery, (Stow, in chronicling the epidemic in 
 his much later Annalcs calls it "the bloody flux"), and the "hot 
 agues," according to later references under that name, appear to 
 have been influenza in the sense of a highly volatile typhus^ All 
 that we know of the circumstances of this epidemic is that the 
 summer was one of excessive drought, that wells and brooks 
 were dried up, and that the Thames ran so low as to make the 
 tide at London Bridge not merely brackish but salt. 
 
 1 Thus in the continuation of Fabyan's Chronicle under the year 15 12, the 
 Marquis of Dorset, sent into Spain with 10,000 men, is said to have "returned in 
 winter by reason of the flix (dysentery)." And in Hall's Chronicle (ed. of 1807, P- 
 523), we have particulars of the very serious sickness in his army in Biscay; owing to 
 their diet being largely of garlic and fruits, and their drink being hot wines in hot 
 weather, "there fell sick 3000 of the flix, and thereof died 1800 men." 
 
 " Continuator of Fabyan's Chronicle, sub anno. There is an almost identical 
 entry in A London Chronicle of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. (Camden Miscellany, 
 vol. V. 1859), but under the year 1539, ^" ^ ^^^ ^^^"^^ ^'^y summer. The most dis- 
 crepant date and designation of the epidemic of those years are those given in Hardi- 
 nian's History of Gahvay (p. 40): "This charitable institution [St Bridget's Hospital] 
 was fortunately completed in the year 1,^43, when the sweating sickness broke out, 
 and raged with great violence, destroying multitudes of the natives, and particularly 
 the tradesmen of the town." 
 
 ■' The term "hoi ague" occurs as early as 1518, in a letter of iS July [Cat. 
 Stale Papers). 
 
TJie Fevers or Injliicnzas of 1557 and 155S. 401 
 
 The spring and summer of 1551 were the seasons of the last 
 outbreak of the sweat in England, which curiously coincided 
 with another epidemic of influenza {cocqueluche) in France. The 
 years from 1555 to 1558 were a sickly period for all Europe, the 
 diseases being of the types of dysentery, typhus, and influenza. 
 The most authentic particulars are given under the years 1557 
 and 1558; and those for England, which specially concern us, 
 are now to be given. Wriothesley, a contemporary, enters under 
 the year 1557: "This summer reigned in England divers 
 strange and new sicknesses, taking men and women in their 
 heads; as strange agues and fevers, whereof many died'." 
 Under the )'car 1558, the continuator of Fabyan's chronicle 
 says : " In the beginning of this mayor's }'ear died many of the 
 wealthiest men all England through, of a strange fever^" 
 
 Some light is thrown upon the sickness, general throughout 
 England in 1557-8, also by Stow in his Annalcs. Before the 
 harvest of 1557 corn was at famine prices, but after the harvest 
 wheat fell to an eighth part of the price (5^-. the quarter), the 
 penny wheaten loaf being increased from 1 1 oz. to 56 oz. ! In the 
 harvest of 1558, he goes on, the "quartan agues continued in 
 like manner, or more vehemently than they had done the last 
 year passed, where-through died many old people and specially 
 priests, so that a great number of parishes were unserved and no 
 curates to be gotten, and much corn was lost in the fields for 
 lack of workmen and labourers I" Harrison, canon of Windsor, 
 says that a third part of the people of the land did taste the 
 general sickness, which points to influenza*. 
 
 1 Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England during the reigns of the Tndors (r457- 
 1559). Camden Society, II. 139. 
 
 Anthony Wood also enters for O.xford, under 1557, "A pestilential disease to 
 the settling of some and the driving away of many; the causes of which proceeding 
 from the eating of green fruit, the Commissary commanded that none should be sold 
 in the market or elsewhere in O.xford." 
 
 ^ Fabyan's Chronicle, p. 711. 
 
 ^ Stow's Annales, ed. Howse, p. 631. Speed also has a paragraph, unusual witli 
 him, on the state of health in the year of Queen Mary's death (i6i;8), in which the 
 mortality among the clergy is specially mentioned. 
 
 * Extracts from Harrison's MS. Chronologie by Furnivall, in Appendix to Eliza- 
 bethan England. Camelot series, 1890, p. 267. His famine prices, and the enormous 
 fall of them after harvest, are the same as given by Stow. 
 
 C. 26 
 
402 No English zvorks on tJic Influenza of 1557-8. 
 
 The year 1557 was certainly remarkable on the continent of 
 Europe as a year of widely prevalent "pestiferous and contagious 
 sickness," which was described by numerous medical writers. 
 That universal epidemic, or pandemic, is usually counted as one 
 of the great historical waves of influenza ; and in the annals of 
 that wonderful disease it stands the first which was well recorded 
 by competent foreign observers, including Ingrassias, Gesner, 
 Rondelet, Riverius, Dodonaeus, and Foreest. The correspond- 
 ing sickness in England in 1557 (still more severe in 1558), 
 which carried off many of the wealthiest men, and made so 
 great an impression that it is noticed by Stow and Speed, has 
 missed being noticed by English physicians, with a single 
 exception, and that a casual one. If the continental physicians 
 had not been copious in writing on several occasions when our 
 English physicians were silent, such as the epidemic of syphilis 
 in 1494-6, the English sweat of 1529, and the influenza of 
 1557-8, it might appear ungracious to remark upon the scanty 
 literary productiveness of the profession in the Tudor period. 
 Whoever attempts medical history for England will soon feel our 
 deficiency in materials, and become disposed to envy the easier 
 task of the foreign historian. The academical physicians of 
 the time hardly ever wrote. The men who wrote on medicine 
 were, laymen like Sir Thomas Elyot, who justified his interest 
 therein by the example of men of his own rank like Juba, king 
 of Mauritania, and Mithridates, king of Pontus ; or they were 
 irregular practitioners desirous to advertise themselves; or book- 
 sellers' hacks like Paynel; or such as Cogan, a schoolmaster and 
 a physician in one. The modern reader will be surprised at the 
 common burden of the prefaces of medical (and perhaps other) 
 books in the Tudor period, — the intolerable nuisance of " pick- 
 faults," "depravers," and cavillers, who sat in their chairs and 
 criticised ; and if the modern reader happen to be in quest of 
 authentic facts, he can hardly fail to sympathise with Phaer, 
 when he addresses the academical dog-in-the-manger with the 
 Horatian challenge : " Si quid novisti rcctius istis, candidus 
 imperti ; si non, his utere mecum." 
 
 It is possible, however, to collect a few particulars of the 
 prevalent sickness of 1558 in England from casual notices of it. 
 
References to the Fevers of 1558. 403 
 
 Thus, it comes into a letter to the queen, of September 6, by 
 Lord St John, governor of the Isle of Wight, from his house at 
 Letley, near Southampton : sickness affected more than half the 
 people in Southampton, the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth 
 (those places being filled with troops under St John's command), 
 and the captain of the fort at Sandown was dead\ Curiously 
 enough we get an intimate glimpse of this epidemic from a 
 book published some years after, the Dyall of Agues by Dr 
 John Jones. In his chapter " Of the Sweating Fevers " (chapter 
 xiv), after illustrating from Galen the proposition that a sweat 
 may not be critical and wholesome, but rvcpooSr]'? or typhus-like, 
 attending the seizure from its outset and " the same said sweat 
 little or nothing profiting," he proceeds to point his remarks by 
 his own experience : 
 
 " I had too good experience of myself in Oueen Mary's reign, living at 
 Lettl^ in my good lord's house, the right honourable Lord St John, beside 
 Southampton, the which, notwithstanding the great sweat, it was long after 
 before I recovered of my health, so that the said sweat did nothing profit." 
 
 He then proceeds to compare the sweat, almost certainly the 
 epidemic mentioned in St John's despatch of 6th September, 
 1558, with the sweating sickness of 155 1 : 
 
 " So in our days, even in King Edward VI.'s reign, it brought many to 
 their long home, as some of the most worthy, the two noble princes of 
 Suffolk, imps of honour most towardly, with others of all degrees infinite 
 many ; and the more perished no doubt for lack of physical counsel speedily-." 
 
 The next that we hear of this epidemic of the autumn of 
 1558, is in a despatch from Dover, 11 p.m. 6th October: the 
 writer has "learnt from the mayor of Dover that there is no 
 plague there, but the people that daily die are those that come 
 out of the ships, and such poor people as come out of Calais, 
 of the new sickness'." A despatch of 17th October, 1558, from 
 one of the commissioners for the surrender of Calais, Sir 
 Thomas Gresham, at Dunkirk, to the Privy Council, says that 
 he " returned hither to write his letter to the queen, and found 
 
 1 S/a(e Papers, Record Office. 
 
 - John Jones, M.D. The Dynll of Ague, London, 1564? 
 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers. Foreign, 11. 1558, p. 398. 
 
 26 — 2 
 
404 T^^i^ type of sickness in 1558. 
 
 Sir William Pickering very sore sick of this new burning ague. 
 He has had four sore fits, and is brought very low, and in danger 
 of his life if they continue as they have done\" 
 
 Here we have the same term "new sickness" and "new 
 burning ague " as in the two English chronicles under the year 
 before — the " strange and new sicknesses " which " took men 
 and women in their heads," and the " strange agues and fevers." 
 The very general prevalence in Southampton, Portsmouth and 
 the Isle of Wight suggests influenza ; the symptom of sweating 
 described by Jones for his own case during that prevalence is in 
 keeping with what we hear of the influenzas of the time from 
 foreign writers, and so is the long and slow convalescence ; the 
 fact of one person having had four sore fits of " this new 
 burning ague" is more like influenza than typhus. 
 
 The severe mortalities in the autumn of 1558 at Lough- 
 borough and Chester are put down to " plague," and they may, 
 of course, have been circumscribed outbursts of the old bubo- 
 plague. If, however, they were part of the general prevalence 
 of hot or burning agues, which we may take to have been 
 influenza or a very volatile kind of typhus, they would indicate 
 a degree of fatality in the latter somewhat greater than more 
 recent influenzas have had. A high death-rate is, indeed, 
 demonstrable for the year 1558, from parish registers, by com- 
 paring the deaths in that year with the deaths in years near it, 
 and by comparing the deaths with the births in 1558 itself. 
 
 The registers of christenings and burials, which had been 
 ordered first in 1538, were kept in a number of parishes from 
 that date ; and from 1558, when the order for keeping them was 
 renewed by queen Elizabeth, they were generally kept. Dr 
 Thomas Short, a man of great industry, about the middle of last 
 century obtained access to a large number of parish registers, 
 and worked an infinite number of arithmetical exercises upon 
 their figures^ His abstract results or conclusions are colourless 
 and unimpressive, as statistical results are apt to be for the 
 average concrete mind ; nor can they be made to illustrate the 
 
 1 Calendai- of State Papers. Foreign, II. 1558, p. 400. 
 
 - New Ohseiiiations, Natural, Moral, Civil, Political and Medical, on City, To7vn 
 and Country Bills of Mortality. By Thomas .Short, M.D., London, 1750. 
 
Sickly years in parish registers. 
 
 405 
 
 epidemic history of Britain with the help of his companion 
 vohimes, 'A General Chronological History of the Air, Weather, 
 Seasons, Meteors etc*.', for these extraordinary annals are for the 
 most part loosely compiled from foreign sources, bringing into 
 one focus the most scattered references to disease in any part of 
 Europe, and that too without criticism of authorities but often 
 with surprising credulity and inaccuracy. That so much statis- 
 tical or arithmetical zeal and exhaustiveness (in the work of 
 1750) should go with so total a deficiency of the critical and 
 historical sense, (in the work of 1749) is noteworthy, and perhaps 
 not unparalleled in modern times. Short's history is mostly 
 foreign, but his statistics, which are English, may be used to 
 illustrate and confirm what can be learned of sicknesses in 
 England in the ordinary way of historical research. 
 
 Thus, the period from 1557 to 1560 stands out in Short's 
 table as one of exceptional unhealthiness both in country parishes 
 and in market towns, the unhealthiness being estimated by the 
 excess of burials over christenings. 
 
 Coiuitry Parishes. 
 
 Year 
 
 Registers 
 examined 
 
 Unhealthy 
 Parishes 
 
 Baptised 
 in same 
 
 Buried 
 in same 
 
 1557 
 I55S 
 
 16 
 26 
 
 7 
 II 
 
 62 
 171 
 
 i8r 
 340 
 
 1559 
 1560 
 
 34 
 3S 
 
 12 
 6 
 
 145 
 100 
 
 252 
 162 
 
 1561 
 
 41 
 
 I 
 
 19 
 
 32 
 
 
 Market Towns. 
 
 
 
 Year 
 
 Registers 
 examined 
 
 Unhealthy 
 Towns 
 
 Baptised 
 in same 
 
 Buried 
 in same 
 
 1557 
 1558 
 
 4 
 4 
 
 2 
 2 
 
 262 
 104 
 
 381 
 
 159 
 
 1559 
 1560 
 I561 
 1562 
 
 5 
 8 
 8 
 8 
 
 3 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 I 
 
 102 
 
 134 
 276 
 
 5« 
 
 149 
 201 
 
 399 
 71 
 
 Short's collection of parish registers appears to have repre- 
 sented many English counties, although there is no clue to their 
 identity in the tables from which these figures arc taken. The 
 
 ^ 2 vols. London, 1749. 
 
4o6 The Fevers or IitJiuenrMs of 1580-82. 
 
 heavy mortalities in the registers correspond exactly to the 
 epidemic years as otherwise known, and may be said to bear 
 witness to the extent or generality of the epidemic infection. 
 
 The next that we hear of malignant fevers in England is the 
 outbreak at Oxford in 1577, following the Assizes. Anthony 
 Wood says of it: "Some thought that this Oxford mortality was 
 the same that Leonard Fuchsius styles sudor Anglicus." Cogan, 
 a contemporary, says : 
 
 " And certainly after that sudden bane at Oxford, the same year and a 
 year or two following, the same kind of agues raged in a manner all over 
 England, and took away very many of the strongest sort in their lustiest 
 age, and for the most part men and not women nor children, culling them 
 out here and there, even as you should choose the best sheep out of a flock. 
 And certain remedy was none to be found.... And they that took a moderate 
 sweat at the beginning of their sickness, and did rid their stomachs well by 
 vomit, sped much better." 
 
 This is partly confirmed by Short's abstracts of the parish 
 registers. Thus in 1580, of sixty registers examined, ten showed 
 unhealthiness, the births being to the deaths as 248 to 284. In 
 1582, seven country parishes were markedly unhealthy, the 
 births being to the deaths as 140 to 244. In market towns the 
 incidence is not so striking: in 1580, four towns out of sixteen 
 examined showed an unhealthy birth-rate, 237 births to 276 
 deaths. It is in 1583 that the disparity becomes greatest in 
 these towns : three out of the sixteen in the list were notably 
 unhealthy, the deaths being 1062 and the births 467. But it is 
 the obvious defect of Short's method that we have no means 
 of knowing whether that mortality may not have been largely 
 from plague, and not from fever or other form of epidemic 
 sickness. 
 
 The only year between 1558 and 1580 in Short's tables, 
 which stands out as decidedly unhealthy both in country parishes 
 and market towns is 1570, while the years from 1573 to 1575 
 are less healthy than the average. Those were years of war, 
 and of war-typhus, on the Continent, as the foreign writings 
 show, but there are no records of the kind of sickness in 
 England. 
 
 One glimpse of the prevalence of those fevers of 1580-82 is 
 
Relatioji of Iiijhtcnrj.a to other infections. 407 
 
 got from a letter of the earl of Arundell to Lord Ikir^^hle)', 
 October 19, 1582. The earl had left his house in London 
 because it was so "beset and encompassed" by plague; while, 
 as to his country house : " The air of my house in Sussex is so 
 corrupt even at this time of the year as, when I came away, 
 I left xxiv sick of hot agues." He therefore begs the loan of 
 the bishop of Chichester's house till such time as the vacancy in 
 the see should be filled up\ 
 
 The widespread volatile sicknesses of 1557-8 and 1580-2, 
 which are grouped under the generic name of influenza, were 
 related in time to great epidemics of the far more deadly bubo- 
 plague. These plague outbursts were less noticeable in England 
 than abroad. Thus in 1557 there were most disastrous epi- 
 demics of true bubo-plague in several towns of the Low Countries, 
 and in 1580 there was at Cairo one of the worst epidemics in 
 the whole history of plague from its beginning. The years 
 preceding 1580 were also plague-years in many parts of Europe 
 (Padua, Mantua, Venice, Messina, Palermo, Lisbon, Brussels). 
 Those years were also the occasion of the first great and dis- 
 astrous epidemics of diphtheria {garottillo) in Spain. Then come 
 the epidemics of typhus ; and at the far end of the pestilential 
 scale the flying waves of influenza. A relation of influenza to 
 other prevalent infections has been one of the theories of its 
 nature, especially the relation to epidemics of Asiatic cholera. 
 
 In that view influenza looks as if it were a volatile product, 
 a swifter and more superficial wave on the top of some slower 
 and more deadly earth-borne virus. As the old writers said, 
 it was a levis comiptio aeris, a diluted virus as it were, mild in 
 proportion to its volatility and swiftness, but in universality 
 equalling in its own milder way the universality of the plague of 
 Justinian's reign or of the Black Death. 
 
 Now, the same century and the same state of society which 
 witnessed the most remarkable of those flying ripples of in- 
 fection over the whole surface of Europe witnessed also some 
 waves of infection which did not travel so far, nor were mere 
 influenzas. The English sweat travelled over England in that 
 
 ^ Calciuiay of Cecil MSS., n. 525. 
 
4o8 Iiijluciirja compared to other Fevers. 
 
 way ; it was called the posting sweat, because it posted from 
 town to town: thus in 155 1 it suddenly appeared one day in 
 Oxford, and next day it was in the villages around, as if 
 carried in the air ; in like manner it posted to Devonshire, to 
 Leicestershire, to Cheshire, and doubtless all over England, 
 like the influenzas of recent memory. And while the English 
 sweat was thus flying about in England, influenza was flying 
 about the same year (155 i) in Erance, a country which never 
 suffered from any of the five sweating sicknesses of 1485-1551. 
 Again, the influenza in England in 1558 had the symptom 
 of sweating so marked that it was compared to the true sweat 
 of 1 55 1 by Dr Jones, who himself suffered from it. Also the 
 influenza of 1580 all over Europe had so much of a sweating 
 character that in some places they said the English sweat 
 had come back. Lastly, the gaol-fever of Oxford in 1577 
 was thought by some to present the symptoms described by 
 Leonard Fuchs for sudor Anglicjis ; and Cogan, an English 
 medical writer then living, specially mentions the phenomenon 
 of sweating (as well as the intestinal profluvium called a " lask)," 
 both at Oxford and in the more widely prevalent diseases of 
 that year and the years following. The gaol-fever of Exeter 
 in 1586 illustrates still another side of the question; it diffused 
 itself — probably by other means than contact with the sick — all 
 over the county of Devon, and had not ceased six months after 
 it began in the month of March at Exeter. The Devonshire 
 diffusion was like the spreading circles in a still pool. The 
 spread of influenza was like the flying ripples on a broad 
 surface of water. The spread of plague, on the occasions when 
 it was universal, was like the massive rollers of the depths, 
 the onward march of cholera from the East having, in our own 
 times, illustrated afresh the same momentum. 
 
 In using hitherto the name of influenza for the universal 
 fevers in England in 1557-58 and in 1580-82, I have done so 
 because those years are usually reckoned in the annals of 
 influenza. But the name is at best a generic one, and need not 
 commit us to any nosological definition. I shall have to deal 
 at more length with this question in the tenth chapter, when 
 speaking of the fevers of 1657-59 described by Willis and 
 
Universal Fevers and nniversal Colds. 409 
 
 Whitmore, two competent medical observers ; in those years the 
 vernal fever was a catarrhal fever, or influenza proper, while the 
 fever of the hot and dry season, autumnal or harvest-fever, was 
 a pestilential fever, a spotted fever, a burning ague, a contagious 
 malignant fever. There were also differences in their epidemo- 
 logical as well as in their clinical characters, the influenza wave 
 being soonest past. But so far as regarded universality of 
 diffusion and generality of incidence, both types were much 
 alike. 
 
 Molineux, writing in 1694, a generation after Willis, "On 
 the late general coughs and colds,'' brought into comparison 
 with them another epidemic which he had observed in Dublin 
 in the month of July, 1688: "The transient fever of 1688. ..I 
 look upon to have been the most universal fever, as this [1693] 
 the most universal cold, that has ever appeared \" 
 
 When we come to the i8th century, to great epidemics not 
 only in connexion with famine in Ireland, but also in Eng- 
 land, we shall find the same diffusiveness associated with the 
 clear type of disease which we now call typhus. Influenza 
 is the only sickness familiar to ourselves which shows the 
 volatile character, and we are apt to conclude that no other 
 type of fever ever had that character. But, without going 
 farther back than the i8th century we shall find epidemics 
 of spotted typhus resting like an atmosphere of infection over 
 whole tracts of Britain and Ireland, town and country alike ; 
 and even if we give the name of influenza to the epidemical 
 "hot agues" with which we are here immediately concerned, 
 in the years 1540, 1557-8, and 1580-82, we may also regard 
 them as in a manner corresponding to, if not as embracing, the 
 types of fever that prevailed from time to time over wide 
 districts of country in the centuries following. 
 
 The term " ague," often used at the time, is no more 
 decisive for the nosological character than the term " influenza." 
 Ague originally meant a sharp fever {febris acnta, o^wi), and 
 in Ireland, from the time of Giraldus Cambrensis down to the 
 1 8th century, it meant the acute fever of the country, which 
 
 1 Phil. Trans, xviii. lo;. 
 
410 Old use of the term Ague. 
 
 has not been malarial ague, in historical times at least, but 
 typhus. " Irish ague" was in later times a well-understood 
 term for contagious pestilential fever or typhus. In the Dyall 
 of Agnes by Dr John Jones (1564.?), just as in the writings of 
 Sydenham a century later, intermittents were mixed up with 
 continued fevers which had nothing malarial in their cause or 
 circumstances. Thus, Jones has a chapter on " Hot Rotten 
 Agues," which he identifies with the synochus or continued fever 
 of the Greeks; in another chapter on "The Continual Rotten 
 Ague," he locates the continued fevers within the vessels and the 
 " interpolate " without their walls, and proceeds : 
 
 " It happeneth where all the vessels, but most chiefly in the greatest 
 which are annexed about the flaps of the lungs and spiritual members, all 
 equally putrefying, which often happeneth, as Fuchsius witnesseth, of 
 vehement binding and retaining the filth in the cavity or hollowness of the 
 vessels, inducing a burning heat. Wherefore, this kind of fever chanceth 
 not to lean persons, nor to such as be of a thin constitution and cold tem- 
 perament, nor an old age (that ever I saw), but often in them which abound 
 with blood and of sanguine complexion, replenished with humour, fat and 
 corpulent, solemners of Bacchus' feasts, — gorge upon gorge, quaff upon 
 quaff — not altogether with meat or drink of good nourishment but of omnium 
 gatherum, as well to the destruction of themselves as uncurable to the 
 physician, as by my prediction came to pass (besides others) upon a gentle- 
 man of Suffolk, a little from Ipswich, who by the causes aforesaid got his 
 sickness, and thereof died the ninth day, according to my prediction, as his 
 wife and friend knoweth." 
 
 Again, in his eighth chapter, '' Of the Pestilential Fever, or 
 Plague, or Boche [Botch]," he remarks upon the varying types 
 of pestilential diseases, mentioning among other national types 
 the English sweat : 
 
 "As we, not out of mind past, with a sweat called stoupe galante, as that 
 worthy Doctor Caius hath written at large in his book De Ep/ieiiwrd 
 Britaniiica,'^ adding the remark that here concerns us : — " and sethence 
 [since then], with many pestilential agues, and, lastly of all, with the pesti- 
 lential boche [botch or plague rightly termed]." These continued fevers, 
 pestilential agues, or hot rotten agues, Jones distinguishes from quotidians, 
 tertians and quartans. Of the last he says: "and when quartans reign 
 everywhere, as they did of no long years past; of the which then I tasted 
 part, besides my experience had of others," — probably the fevers of 1558, 
 elsewhere called by him the sweating sickness, and by Stow called "quartan 
 agues." He mentions also quintains, which he had never seen in England, 
 
General sickness in 1596-98. 411 
 
 "but yet in Ireland, at a place called Carlow, I was informed by Mr Brian 
 Jones, then there captain, of a kerne or gentleman there that had the 
 quintain long." 
 
 Not only the term "ague," but also the terms "intermittent," 
 " tertian," and more especially "quartan," can hardly be taken in 
 their modern sense as restricted to malarial or climatic fevers. 
 An intermittent or paroxysmal character of fevers was made 
 out on various grounds, to suit the traditional Galenic or Greek 
 teaching ; but the paroxysms and intermissions were not asso- 
 ciated specially with rise and fall of the body-temperature. 
 The curious history of agues, and of the specialist ague-curers, 
 properly belongs to the time of the Restoration, when Peru- 
 vian bark came into vogue, and will be fully dealt with in the 
 first chapter of another volume. 
 
 The last years in the Tudor period that stand out con- 
 spicuously in the parish registers for a high mortality, not due 
 to plague, are 1597-8. The year 1597 was a season of influenza 
 in Italy, and perhaps elsewhere in Europe ; so that the epidemic 
 in England that year may have been the same, but more pro- 
 bably was famine-fever. In the parish register of Cranbrooke the 
 deaths for the year are 222, against 56 births; and 181 of the 
 deaths are marked with the mark which is supposed to mean 
 plague proper. The register of Tiverton has 277 deaths, against 
 66 births, but it is almost certain that the cause of the excess 
 was not plague, of which the nearest epidemic in that town was 
 in 1 591. In a country parish of Hampshire, with a population 
 of some 2700, the deaths in 1597 were 117, against 48 births, 
 the mortality being about twice as great as in any year from 
 the commencement of the register in 1569, and after until 
 i6i2\ In the north of England the type of disease in 1597-8 
 was plague proper. 
 
 The parish register of Finchley has a remarkable entry under 
 the year 1596 which introduces us to other considerations: "Hoc 
 anno moriebantur de dysenteria xix," the whole number of 
 burials for the year having been 28. Next year, 1597, there are 
 23 deaths from dysentery, the burials in all having been 48 — an 
 enormous mortality compared with the average of the parish. 
 
 ' Grauut, Reflections on Ihc BiUs of Mortality, 3rd ccl. 1665. 
 
412 Siii/ii/iaiy of cpidcuiics of Dysentery. 
 
 The year 1597, if not also 1596, was a year of j^reat scarcity, 
 apparently all over England ; in Northumberland, Durham, and 
 Cumberland, the scarcity was attended by plague proper ; but 
 in other parts of England, it would seem, by other types of 
 sickness, of which dysentery was one. 
 
 One of the i6th century English names used for flux was 
 the obsolete word lask, which occurs often enough in writings of 
 the period to suggest that the malady was common ; it is some- 
 times called a choleric lask (cholera morbus), or a vehement lask, 
 as in Elyot's Castel of Healtli and in Cogan's Haven of Health. 
 Lasks, or lienteries, or dysenteries have not been dealt with 
 in a chapter by themselves because the records of them are too 
 few and meagre, so far as we have gone in the history ; but it 
 may be convenient to bring together here the better known 
 instances. In the period of famine-sicknesses, dysentery and 
 lientery must have been common types, the latter being 
 specially mentioned by Rishanger of St Albans for the year 
 1294. Trokelowe, another St Albans chronicler, writing of the 
 famine-sickness of 13 15-16, uses the singular phrase "morbus 
 enim dysentericus ex corruptis cibis fere omnes maculavit" and 
 says it was followed by " acuta febris vel pestis gutturuosa." 
 Dysentery from corrupt food is again specially named for the 
 year 1391. The "wame-ill" was the prevalent type of sickness 
 in the great Scots famine of 1439, ^ y^^"^ of famine in England 
 and France. When we next hear of it in English history it is 
 among the troops of the marquis of Dorset in Gascony and 
 Biscay in 15 12, some 1800 of them having died of "the flix." 
 Then comes the "great lask throughout the realm" in 1540, 
 associated with "strange fevers." The sickly years 1557-58 and 
 1580-82 had probably some dysentery, or lientery, either as 
 primary maladies or as complications of the fevers : Cogan's 
 generalities imply as much for 1580-82, and we know that the 
 corresponding sickly period a century after (1657-59) was so 
 characterised in the description by Willis. The fatal infection 
 in the fleet after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, in August, 
 1588, was probably dysentery and ship-fever. Many other 
 instances of the kind remain to be given in the chapter on the 
 sicknesses of voyages and colonial settlements. 
 
Increase of Dysentery in the x'jtJi ecntujj. 413 
 
 Dysentery begins to be heard of more frequcntl}' in the 
 Stuart period, as a malady of London. It is a prominent item, 
 along with summer diarrhoea, in the London bills of mortality 
 from the year 1658, under the name "griping of the guts," and 
 is occasionally mentioned in letters from London about the 
 same years. The dysentery of London in 1669 was the subject 
 of Sydenham's observations, who says that it had been rarely 
 seen in the preceding ten years'. On the other hand he speaks 
 of " the endemic dysentery of Ireland," although he is not sure 
 as to its type or species^. Statements as to the Irish "country 
 disease," are as old as Giraldus Cambrensis^; but as the whole 
 question of dysentery is intimately bound up with that of typhus- 
 fever, I shall reserve consideration of its prevalence in Ireland on 
 the great scale, as well as of the annual mortality from it in the 
 London bills of the 17th century, until that section of the work 
 in which fevers and the maladies akin to them come into the 
 first rank as if in lieu of the plague. 
 
 1 Opera, ed. Greenhill, p. 160. - Ibid. p. 169. 
 
 ^ Giraldus Cambrensis, Rolls series, No. 21, vol. v. Topogr. Ilibcnjiac, p. 67: — 
 "Advenamm, tamen, una hie fere est passio et unica vexatio. Ob huniida namque 
 nutrimenta, immoderatum ventris fluxum vix in primis ullus evadit." Flux among 
 the English troops in Ireland in 1172 is mentioned by Radulphus de Diceto, Tmag. 
 Hist or. I. 348. 
 
 Note. A sweating character in the "hot agues" or fevers of the Eliza- 
 bethan period, in those of 1580-82 as well as in those of 1557-5S, is asserted 
 in several passages in the text. It is noteworthy that in Measure for 
 Afcasmr, one of Shakespeare's early comedies, the bawd says : "Thus, what 
 with the war, what with the sweat, what with the gallows, and what with 
 poverty, I am custom-shrunk" (Act I. Scene 2). 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE FRENCH POX. 
 
 One great epidemic disease of the first Tudor reigns, which 
 brought consternation and distress to multitudes, makes hardly 
 any appearance in the English records of the time, and no 
 appearance at all in the writings of the English profession. 
 Long after, in 1576, William Clowes, surgeon to St Bartholo- 
 mew's Hospital, first broke the professional silence about lues 
 venerea in England, and in his larger work of 1579 he gave 
 a number of startling facts and figures of its then prevalence in 
 London. But the great epidemic outburst of that disease in 
 Europe began in the last years of the 15th century ; its ravages 
 on the epidemic scale are supposed to have lasted for twenty or 
 thirty years from 1494 ; and its subsequent prevalence is 
 assumed, not without reason, to have been of a milder type 
 and within narrower limits. We hear of it, in England, from the 
 political side, at the time when popular arguments were wanted 
 against the Romish mass-priests and against the monasteries and 
 the orders of friars. In the practical reasoning of Englishmen 
 the scandalous lives of priests, monks and friars made the 
 strongest argument for the policy which the king had adopted 
 towards Rome ; and it so happened in those very years that 
 a scandalous life was betrayed, and made odious in more than 
 sentiment, by bearing an outward and visible sign. The 
 epidemic of morbus Gallicus arose at an unfortunate time for 
 the pretensions of Rome, or, perhaps, it was itself part of the 
 march of events. In Simon Fish's Siipplication of Beggars, 
 
TJie French Pox and tJic Reformation. 415 
 
 which was compiled in 1524 and was read to Henry VTTT. sliortlx' 
 after, the weightiest plea is the charge of scandalous conduct 
 resting upon the priests. In the inquisitions which preceded 
 the suppression of the monasteries, the same plea is, justly or 
 unjustly, brought to the front in the case of one abbey after 
 another. So close did the association of a scandalous vice 
 and its attendant disease become with the priesthood that 
 James I., writing long after concerning the sentiments of his 
 mother, Mary the queen of Scots, represents her as forbidding 
 the archbishop "to use the spittle" in his own baptism, for the 
 reason that she would not have " a pokie priest to spet in her 
 child's mouth \" These, says king James, were " her owne very 
 words ;" at all events, "a pocky priest" may be accepted as a 
 phrase of the time. The fact that the epidemic of syphilis in 
 England was used to discredit Romish priests is one of the few 
 indications that we have of its existence in this country. Wide 
 and deep as the commotion must have been which it caused, it 
 found hardly any more permanent expression than the private 
 talk of the men of those days. It was otherwise on the Con- 
 tinent. There, indeed, a copious literature sprang up, of which 
 some thirty works remain, from the essay of Conrad Schellig of 
 Heidelberg, printed without date or place, but ascribed to the 
 year 1494 or 1495, down to the elaborate survey of the disease 
 by Nicolas Massa of Venice in 1532. The single work extant 
 in England from that, the earliest and greatest, period of the 
 disease, is a poor piece of manuscript in the Sloane collection, 
 translated from some foreign author, and entitled, " The tretese 
 of the pokkis : and the cure by the nobull counsell of parris"." 
 One of its cases is that of a man, aged forty, with two broad 
 and deep, corroding and painful sores on his leg ; another is of 
 a bishop of Toledo, who had " pustules " and nocturnal pains 
 " as if the bones would part from the flesh." The vague 
 meaning of the term pox is shown in one phrase, " paynes, viz. 
 aches and pokkis." 
 
 1 Works ofjanies /., p. 301. 
 
 " Sloane MS. (Brit. Mus.) No. 389, folios 147-153. It benrs no date, but is 
 marked in the catalojjne "xv and xvi cent.," as if belonging either to the end of the 
 fifteenth century or the beginning of the sixteenth. 
 
4i6 Copious foreign ivri tings on FrencJi Pox. 
 
 It was nothing unusual abroad to give cases, and to authen- 
 ticate them with the names of the sufferers. Thus Peter 
 Pinctor, physician to the pope Alexander Borgia, in a notorious 
 but exceedingly scarce work published in 1 500, enters fully 
 into the truly piteous case of the cardinal bishop of Segovia, 
 major-domo of the Vatican, "qui hunc morbum patiebatur cum 
 terribilibus et fortissimis doloribus, qui die ac nocte, praecipue 
 in lecto, quiescere nee dormire poterat," as well as into the case 
 of Peter Borgia, the pope's nephew, " in quo virulentia materiae 
 pustularum capitis corrosionem in pellicaneo [pericranio] et in 
 craneo capitis sui manifeste fecit \" 
 
 Contrasted with the copious writing and recording of cases 
 abroad, the English silence is remarkable. The origin of our 
 first printed book on the subject is characteristic. A literary 
 hack of the time, one Paynel, a canon of Merton Abbey, had 
 translated, among other things, the Regimen Salernitannni, a 
 popular guide to health several hundred years old. Going one 
 day into the city to see the printer about a new edition, he was 
 asked by the latter to translate the essay on the cure of the 
 P'rench pox by means of guaiacum (or the West-Indian wood) 
 " written by that great clerke of Almayne, Ulrich Hiitten, 
 knyght." I"or, said the printer, " almost into every part of 
 this realme this most foul and peynfull disease is crept, and 
 many soore infected therewith." Ulrich von Hutten's personal 
 experience of the guaiacum cure was accordingly translated from 
 the Latin, in 1533, and proved a good venture for the printer, 
 several editions having been called for^. The translation has 
 no notes, and throws no light on English experience. It is not 
 until 1579, when Clowes published his essay on the morbus 
 
 ^ Hensler, who reproduced in 1783 {Geschichte der Liistsettcke, App. p. 53) these 
 and other particulars from one of the two remaining copies of Pinctor's work (in the 
 possession of Professor Cotunni of Naples), collated with the other copy in the 
 Garelli library at Vienna, finds in the concluding dedication of the book to Alexander 
 Borgia a sinister meaning, as if the supreme pontiff had been himself a victim of the 
 s^rnnde maladie h la mode; it is easier, he says, to extricate the sense than the syntax 
 of the passage. 
 
 ^ There was another edition in 1539, ^'^'^ several more following. Paynel also 
 added a short section, "A Remedy for the Frenche pockes," to his book entitled, A 
 Moche Profitable Treatise against the Pestilence. Translated into luiglish liy Thomas 
 Paynel, chanon of Martin [Merton] Abbey, London, 1534. 
 
French Pox at Aberdeen and Edinburgh, 1497. 417 
 
 GallicLis, that we obtain any light from the faculty upon the 
 prevalence of the malady in England. Meanwhile it remains 
 for us to collect what scraps of evidence may exist, in one 
 place or another, of this country's share in the original epidemic 
 invasion during the last years of the 1 5th century. 
 
 Earliest Notices of the French Pox in Scotland 
 and England. 
 
 The first authentic news of it comes from the Council 
 Register of the borough of Aberdeen under the date 21st April, 
 1497' :— 
 
 " The said day, it was statut and ordanit be the alderman and consale 
 for the eschevin of the infirmitey cumm out of Franche and Strang partis, 
 that all licht weman be chargit and ordaint to decist fra thar vicis and syne 
 of venerie, and all thair buthis and houssis skalit, and thai to pas and wirk 
 for thar sustentacioun, under the payne of ane key of het yrnc one thar 
 chekis, and banysene of the towne." 
 
 The next news of it is also from Scotland, from the minutes 
 of the town council of Edinburgh, wherein is entered a pro- 
 clamation of James IV., dated 22 September, 1497^ : — 
 
 " It is our Soverane ,Lords Will and the Command of the Lordis of his 
 Counsale send to the Provest and Baillies within this bur' that this Procla- 
 mation followand be put till execution for the eschewing of the greit 
 appearand danger of the Infection of his Leiges fra this contagious sickness 
 callit the Grandgor and the greit uther Skayth that may occur to his Leiges 
 and Inhabitans within this bur'; that is to say, we charge straitly and 
 commands be the Authority above writtin, that all manner of personis being 
 within the freedom of this bur' quilks are infectit, or hes been infectit, 
 uncurit, with this said contagious plage callit the Grandgor, devoyd, red and 
 pass fur' of this Town, and compeir upon the sandis of Leith at ten hours 
 before none, and their sail thai have and fynd Botis reddie in the havin 
 ordanit to them be the Officeris of this bur', reddely furneist with victuals, to 
 
 1 Extracts from the Cottncil Register of the Burgh of Aberdeen, 139S-1570. Edited 
 for the Spalding Club [by Dr John Stuart], vol. i. 1844, p. 425. 
 
 ■-' Phil. Trans., vol. 42 (1743), p. 420: "Part of a Letter from Mr Macky, 
 professor of History, to Mr Mac Laurin, professor of Mathematics in the University 
 of Edinburgh, and by him communicated to the President of the Royal Society; being 
 an Extract from the Books of the Town Council of Edinburgh, relating to a Disease 
 there, supposed to be Venereal, in the year r497.'" 
 
 c. 27 
 
41 8 The Pox in Scotland, 1497-98. 
 
 have thame to the Inche [the island of Inch Keith in the Firth of Forth], 
 and thair to remane quhill God proviyd for thair Health : And that all 
 uther personis the quilks tales upon thame to hale the said contagious 
 infirmitie and taks the cure thairof, that they devoyd and pass with thame, 
 sua that nane of thair personis quhilks taks sic cure upon thame use the 
 samyn cure within this bur' in pns nor peirt any manner of way. And wha 
 sa be is foundin infectit and not passand to the hiche^ as said is, be Monon- 
 day at the Sone ganging to, and in lykways the said personis that takis the 
 sd Cure of sanitie upon thame gif they will use the samyn, thai and ilk ane 
 of thame salle be brynt on the cheik with the marking Irne that thai may 
 be kennit in tym to cum, and thairafter gif any of tham remains, that thai 
 sail be banist but favors^" 
 
 Sir James Simpson, with his indefatigable research over 
 antiquarian points*, has brought together evidence of payments 
 from the king's purse to persons infected with the " Grantgore" 
 at Dairy, Ayrshire, in September, 1497, at Linlithgow on 2nd 
 October, 1497, at Stirling on the 21st February, 1498 ("at the 
 tounne end of Strivelin to the seke folk in the grantgore"), at 
 Glasgow (also "at the tounn end") on 22nd February, 1498, 
 and again at Linlithgow, nth April, 1498. He quotes also 
 from a poem of William Dunbar, written soon after 1500, on 
 the conduct of the Queen's men on Fastern's e'en, the terms 
 "pockis" and " Spanyie pockis." From Sir David Lyndsay's 
 poems, of much later date, and from other references, he makes 
 out that "grandgore" or "glengore" was the usual name in 
 Scotland down to the 17th century. Grandgore means a la 
 grande gorre, which is the same as a la grande mode. This 
 name was given for a time in France to the great disease of the 
 day, but it was soon superseded by verole. Scotland is the only 
 country where "grandgore" became established as the common 
 name of the pox. 
 
 Before leaving the Scots evidence, two other ordinances may 
 
 ^ Simpson (/. c.') quotes the Proclamation from the original minute-book, almost in 
 the above spelling; it is in Vol. I. of the Toivn Council Records, fol. .^3-34, and is 
 entitled in the rubric " Ane Grangore Act." 
 
 ^ "On Syphilis in Scotland in the Fifteenth Century," Tratis. EpidcDi. Soc. N. S. 
 I. (i86'2), p. r49. Two of the entries are published in the Criminal Trials of Scot- 
 land, I. 117; the others were collected for Simpson by Mr Joseph Robertson from the 
 High -Treasurer's Accounts in the Register House, Edinburgh. These accounts have 
 since been published in the Rolls scries (vol. I. 356, 361, 378 (/'«), 386). 
 
A notice of tJic Pox in London, 1502. 419 
 
 be quoted from the town council records of Aberdeen. In a 
 long list of regulations under date the 8th October, 1507, there 
 occur these two^ : — 
 
 " Item, that diligent inquisitioiin be takin of all infect personis with this 
 strange seiknes of Nappillis, for the sauetie of the town ; and the personis 
 beand infectit therwith be chargit to keip thame in ther howssis and uther 
 places, fra the haile folkis." 
 
 " Item, that nayne infectit folkis with the seiknes of Napillis be haldin at 
 the common fleschouss, or with the fleschouris, baxteris, brousteris, ladinaris, 
 for sauete of the toun, and the personis infectit sail keip thame quyat in thar 
 hoiisis, zhardis, or uther comat placis, quhill thai be haill for the infectioun 
 of the nichtbouris." 
 
 " Sickness of Naples" is a reference to the well-known 
 diffusion of the disease all over Europe by the mercenaries of 
 Charles VIII. of France, dispersing after the Italian war and 
 the occupation of Naples. 
 
 For England the first known mention of the pox is several 
 years later than the Scots references, although that proves 
 nothing as to its actual beginning in epidemic form. In the 
 book of the Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, queen 
 of Henry VII., there is an entry under the date of March 15, 
 1 503, of a sum of forty shillings paid on behalf of John Pertriche 
 " oon of the sonnes of mad Beale ;" which sum appears to have 
 been what the youth cost her majesty for board, clothes, educa- 
 tion, and incidental expenses, during the year past. The various 
 items making up the sum of forty shillings are: his diets "for a 
 year ending Christmas last past," a cloth gown, a fustian coat, 
 shirts, shoes and hose, '' item, for his learning, 2od. item for a 
 prymer and saulter 2od. And payed to a surgeon which heled 
 him of the Frenche pox 20s. Sni='- 40^-." It will be observed 
 that the surgeon's bill was as much as all his other expenses for 
 the year together'^ 
 
 The London chronicler of the time is alderman Robert 
 Fabyan ; but although Fabyan, writing in the first years of the 
 i6th century, uses the word "pockys" to designate an illness of 
 
 1 Op. cit. I. 437. 
 
 - Privy Purse Expcuscs of Elizabeth of York. Edited by Nicolas, London, 1830, 
 p. 104. 
 
 27 — 2 
 
420 Suppression of the Banksidc steivs, 1 506. 
 
 Edward IV. during a military excursion to the Scots Marches in 
 1463, or long before the epidemic invasion from the south of 
 Europe, he says nothing of that great event itself. There is a 
 record, however, of one significant measure taken in the year 
 1506, the suppression of the stews on the Bankside in South- 
 ward These resorts were of ancient date, and for long paid 
 toll to the bishop of Winchester. In 1506 there were eighteen 
 of them in a row along the Surrey side of the river, a little above 
 London Bridge ; they were wooden erections, each with a stair 
 down to the water, and each with its river front painted with a 
 sign like a tavern, such as the Boar's Head, the Cross Keys, the 
 Gun, the Castle, the Crane, the Cardinal's Hat, the Bell, the 
 Swan, etc. These houses, says Stow, were inhibited in the year 
 1506, and the doors closed up ; but it was not long ere they were 
 set open again, the number being at the same time restricted to 
 twelve \ They had been suppressed once before, at the earnest 
 demand of the citizens, in the reign of Henry IV., and it appears 
 from a sermon of Latimer's that they were again suppressed 
 about the year 1546. Thus Shakespeare had several pre- 
 cedents in London for the situation which he creates in a foreign 
 city, in Measure for Measure. 
 
 The next reference that I find to it is an oblique one, by 
 Bernard Andre in his Annals of Henry VII. On the occasion 
 of mentioning the sweating sickness of 1508, he says the latter 
 disease occurred first in England about four-and-twenty years 
 before, and that it was " followed by a far more detestable 
 malady, to be abhorred as much as leprosy, a wasting pox which 
 still vexes many eminent men " (multos adhuc vexat egregios 
 alioquin viros tabifica lues'^"). Bernard Andre's association of 
 the pox with the sweating sickness, as of one new disease follow- 
 ing another, is in the same manner as the reference to it by 
 Erasmus. In a letter from Basle, in August, 1525, to Schiedlowitz, 
 chancellor of Poland, he discourses upon the sickliness of seasons 
 
 ' Stow's Stiniey of London, "IJridge Ward Without." lie ascribes these infoi- 
 inations to "Robert Fabian," both in tlie text and in the margin. The statement is 
 certainly not made in Fabyan's Chronicle of England under the year 1506, or other 
 year of the decade, nor is it indexed as occurring in some earlier connexion. 
 
 - Bernard Andre's Works. Rolls series. No. 10. 
 
A stigma on the priests, 1 5 24. 42 1 
 
 and the mutations of diseases' : Until thirty years ago England 
 was unacquainted with the sweat, nor did that malady go beyond 
 the bounds of the island. In their own experience they had 
 seen mutations : — "nunc pestilentiac, nunc anginae, nunc tusses; 
 sed morbum morbus, velut ansam ansa trahit ; nee fiicile cedunt 
 ubi semel incubuere." He then proceeds : 
 
 " But if one were to seek among the diseases of the body for that which 
 ought to be awarded the first place, it seems to my judgment that it is due 
 to that evil, of uncertain origin, which has now been for so many years 
 raging with impunity in all countries of the world, but has not yet found a 
 definite name. Most persons call it the French pox {Fosais Gallcas), some 
 the Spanish. What sickness has ever traversed every part of Europe, 
 Africa and Asia with equal speed? What clings more tenaciously, what 
 repels more vigorously the art and care of physicians 1 What passes more 
 easily by contagion to another ? What brings more cruel tortures ? Vitiligo 
 and lichens are deformities of the skin, but they are curable. This lues, 
 however, is a foul, cruel, contagious disease, dangerous to life, apt to remain 
 in the system and to break out anew not otherwise than the gout." 
 
 Whether it was from some mistaken theory of contagiousness 
 or for other reasons, a fellow of Merton was ordered to leave in 
 15 1 1 because he had the French poxl In the English history 
 nothing appears above the surface until the beginning of the 
 movement against the papal supremacy and in favour of Refor- 
 mation. That was a time of public accusations of all kinds, and 
 among the rest of opprobrious references to the pox. In Simon 
 Fish's Supplication of Beggars^, which was written in 1524, certain 
 priests are thus hyperbolically spoken of: 
 
 "These be they that have made an hundred thousande ydel hores in 
 your realme, which wold have gotten theyr lyvinge honestly in the swete of 
 their faces had not there superfluous riches illected them to uncleane lust 
 and ydelnesse. These be they that corrupte the hole generation of mankynd 
 in your realme, that catch the pockes of one woman and beare it to another, 
 ye some one of them will boste amonge his felowes that he hath medlcd with 
 an hundreth wymen." 
 
 1 Erasmi Epistolae, folio. London, 1642, p. 17896. 
 
 ^ Anthony Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford, ed. Gutch, i. 514. Freind {Hist, of 
 Physic, Pt. n. p. 345) says that the French pox is mentioned in ihe will of Colet, 
 dean of St Paul's, 15 18. 
 
 ^ T/w Stiff lication of Beggers CQm])y\QA by Symon Fyshe. Anno MCCCCCXXnn. 
 Lund. 1546. 
 
422 Various references to the Pox in England. 
 
 In the year 1529, there is a more painful and most undigni- 
 fied charge. In the Articles of Arraignment of Wolsey in the 
 House of Peers, the sixth charge is : 
 
 " The same Lord Cardinall, knowing himself to have the foul and 
 contagious disease of the great pox, broken out upon him in divers places of 
 his body, came daily to your Grace [the King], rowning in your ear, and 
 blowing upon your most noble Grace with his perilous and infective breath, 
 to the marvellous danger of your Highness, if God of his infinite goodness 
 had not better provided for your Highness. And when he was once healed 
 of them, he made your Grace believe that his disease was an impostume in 
 his head, and of none other thing^" 
 
 Among the glimpses of contemporary manners in Bullein's 
 Dialogue of the Fever Pestilence (1564), there is one referring 
 to the pox; Roger, the groom, soliloquizes thus: "her first 
 husband was prentice with James Elles, and of him learned to 
 play at the short-knife and the horn thimble. But these dog- 
 tricks will bring one to the poxe, the gallows, or to the deviP." 
 Bullein, in his more systematic handbook to health, promises to 
 treat of the pox fully, but omits to do so. In one place he 
 refers to the wounds of a young man who fell into a deep coal- 
 pit at Newcastle as having been healed "by an auncient practisour 
 called Mighel, a Frencheman, whiche also is cunnynge to helpe 
 his owne countrey disease that now is to commonly knowen 
 here in England, the more to be lamented : But yet dayly 
 increased, whereof I entinde to speake in the place of the Poxe." 
 But the only other reference is (in the section on the " Use of 
 Sicke Men and Medicine,") to certain drugs " which have vertue 
 to cleanse scabbes, iche, pox. I saie the pox, as by experience 
 we se there is no better remedy than sweatyng and the drinkyng 
 of guaiacum, " etc^ 
 
 A good instance of the oblique mode of reference to the 
 malady occurs in another dialogue by a surgeon, Thomas Gale*. 
 
 ^ Parliamentary History, I. 494. 
 
 ^ Bullein's Dialogue of the Fever Pestilence, 1564. Early English Text Society, 
 Extra series, 1888, p. 122. 
 
 ^ Ikiliein's Piilwarke of Defence against all Sicknes, Somes, and ll^oiincles, etc., 
 1562, foil. 2, 68. 
 
 ^ Certain Works of Chinirgcric ncivly compiled and published by T. Gale. London, 
 1563- 
 
English treatise on the Pox, by Cloives, 1579. 423 
 
 The pupil who is being instructed tables the subject of " the 
 morbus," which he farther speaks of as "a great scabbe;" 
 whereupon Gale pointedly takes him to task for the affectation 
 of "the morbus;" any disease, he says, is the morbus ; what you 
 mean is the morbus Gallicus. 
 
 About the same date, 1563, a casual reference is made to 
 the wide prevalence of the pox by John Jones in his Dyall of 
 Agues. In illustration of the fact that various countries originate 
 different forms of pestilence, as the Egyptians the leprosy, the 
 Attics the joint-ache, the Arabians swellings of the throat and 
 flanks, and the English the sweating sickness, he instances 
 farther, " the Neapolitans, or rather the besiegers of Naples, with 
 the pockes, spread hence to far abroad through all the parts 
 of Europe, no kingdom that I have been in free — the more 
 
 pity'." 
 
 English Writings on the Pox in the i6th Century. 
 
 The first original English writer on the pox was William 
 Clowes. In his treatise'' of 1579, dedicated to the Society of 
 the Barbers and Chirurgions, he says that he had been bold 
 " three years since to offer unto you a very small and imperfect 
 treatise of mine touching the cure of the disease called in Latine 
 Morbus Gallicus, the which, forasmuch as it was at that time 
 rather wrested from me by the importunitye of some of my 
 frendes, upon certain occasions then moving, than willingly of 
 my selfe published, it passed out of my handes so sodeinly and 
 with so small overlooking or correction," that he now in 1579 
 reissues it in a revised and corrected form. 
 
 "The Morbus Gallicus or Morbus Neapolitanus, but more properly Lues 
 Venera, that is the pestilent infection of filthy lust, and termed for the most 
 part in English the French Pocks, a sicknes very lothsome, odious, trouble- 
 some and daungerous, which spreadeth itself throughout all England and 
 overfloweth as I thinke the whole world." He then characterises the vice 
 "that is the original cause of this infection, that breedeth it, that nurseth it, 
 
 ^ Dyall of Agues, cap. viii. "Of the Pestilential fever, or plage, or boche." 
 ^ William Clowes, A short and profitable Treatise tone king the eure of the disease 
 called {Morbus Gallicus) by unctions ., London, 1579. 
 
424 London hospitals full of the Pox, 1579. 
 
 that disperseth it." In the cure of the malady he has had some reasonable 
 experience, and no small practice for many years. According to the fol- 
 lowing passage, St Bartholomew's Hospital, to which Clowes was surgeon, 
 was three parts occupied by patients suffering from this malady : — 
 
 " It is wonderful! to consider how huge multitudes there be of such as be 
 infected with it, and that dayly increase, to the great daunger of the common 
 wealth, and the stayne of the whole nation : the cause whereof I see none so 
 great as the licentious and beastly disorder of a great number of rogues and 
 vagabondes : The filthye lyfe of many lewd and idell persons, both men and 
 women, about the citye of London, and the great number of lewd alehouses, 
 which are the very nests and harbourers of such filthy creatures ; By meanes 
 of which disordered persons some other of better disposition are many tymes 
 infected, and many more lyke to be, except there be some speedy remedy 
 provided for the same. I may speake boldely, because I speake truely : and 
 yet I speake it with very griefe of hart. In the Hospitall of Saint Bartholo- 
 mew in London, there hath bene cured of this disease by me, and three (3) 
 others, within this fyve yeares, to the number of one thousand and more. 
 I speake nothing of Saint Thomas Hospital and other howses about this 
 Citye, wherein an infinite multitude are dayly in cure.. ..For it hapneth in 
 the house of Saint Bartholomew very seldome hut that among every twentye 
 diseased persons that are taken in, fiftene of them have the pocks." Like 
 the earlier writers on the Continent he recognizes that the disease is com- 
 municated in more ways than one; he speaks of "good poor people that be 
 infected by unwary eating or drinking or keeping company with those lewd 
 beasts, and which either for shame will not bewray it, or for lack of good 
 chirurgions know not how to remedy it, or for lack of ability are not able 
 otherwise to provide for the cure of it." 
 
 In so far as Clowes follows his own experience, he is under 
 no illusion as to the nature and circumstances of the French 
 pox. But he goes on to append a pathology of the disease, 
 which is taken from foreign writers and reflects the bewilder- 
 ment of the faculty over the constitutional effects of the malady. 
 As Erasmus said, in the letter quoted, it went all through the 
 body, " not otherwise than the gout." When it was first observed, 
 it appeared to be constitutional from the outset. More particu- 
 larly it covered the skin with " pustules " or " whelks " as if it had 
 been a primary eruption like variola, to which it was compared ; 
 hence the names "great pox" and "small pox." It was not 
 until long after that our present pathology of primary, secondary 
 and tertiary effects was worked out ; in the earliest writings the 
 constitutional effects were referred to an " inward cause," as 
 Clowes says, to some idiopathic corruption of the humours 
 
Gradual mitigation of symptoms. 425 
 
 having the Hver for their phice of elaboration, or miiicra morbi. 
 Thus the learned explanation of the malady, which Clowes 
 adopts from foreign writers more skilled than himself in such 
 disquisitions, has no organic unity with his own common-sense 
 observations. In his Proved Practice he defers still farther to 
 the academical view, as given in the treatise of John Almenar, 
 a Spanish physician \ 
 
 Although Clowes, in 1579, testifies to the very wide pre- 
 valence of the disease, to so great an extent, indeed, that it 
 occupied the hospitals more than all other diseases put together, 
 yet there is reason to think that it had by that time lost the 
 terrible severity of its original epidemic type. The usual state- 
 ment is that the disease abated both in extent and in intensity 
 within twenty or thirty years of the Italian outbreak among the 
 soldiery in 1494-96. A contemporary and ally of Clowes, John 
 Read, of Gloucester, published in 1588 a volume of translations, 
 from the Latin manuscript of the English surgeon of the 14th 
 century, John Ardern, on the cure of fistulas, and from the 
 treatise on wounds, etc. by the Spanish surgeon Arcaeus 
 (Antwerp, 1574)'^ In the latter he finds the following passage, 
 which seems to describe the morbus Galliciis on its first ap- 
 pearance : — 
 
 " The French disease did bring with it a kind of universal skabbe, often- 
 times with ring wormes, with the foulness of all the body called vitiligo and 
 alopecia, running sores in the head called acores, and werts of both sortes, 
 and many times with flegmatic or melancholic swellings or ulcers corrosive, 
 filthie and cancrouse, and also running over the body, together with putri- 
 fying of the bone, and many times also accompanied with all kind of grief, 
 with fevers, consumptions, and with many other differences of diseases." 
 
 Read's own remarks draw an explicit contrast between the 
 disease on its first appearance and in his own later experience. 
 Everyone knows now, he says, how to treat the French pox, 
 
 1 ' A Prooved Practice for all young Chirurgeons, concerning burning with gun- 
 powder, and woundes made with Gunshot, Sword, Halbard, Pike, Launce or such 
 other. Hereto is adjoyned a Treatise of the French or Spanish Pocks, written by John 
 Almenar, a Spanish Phisician. Also a commodious collection of Aphorismcs, both 
 English and Latine, taken out of an old written coppy. Published for the benefit of 
 his country by William Clowes, Maister in Chirurgery.' New ed., IJ91. 
 
 ^ A most excellent and compendious Alclhod, etc. London, 1588. 
 
426 Irregular practitioners, i Gth century. 
 
 " the disease daylie dying and wearing away by the exquisite 
 cure thereof" — which may be taken to mean, at least, a notable 
 mitigation of the constitutional effects \ The treatment, however, 
 must have been much less effective then than now. Clowes 
 speaks of a class who " either for shame will not bewray it, or 
 for lack of good chirurgions know not how to remedy it, or 
 for lack of ability are not able otherwise to provide for the cure 
 of it." The expense of a cure would have been considerable, to 
 judge by the case given above from an account-book of the 
 year 1503. Unable to employ "good chirurgions," the poorer 
 class would resort to quacks, of whose practice, in that and 
 other diseases, we have some glimpses both from Clowes in 
 London and from Read in Gloucester and Bristol. Of one 
 irregular practitioner Clowes says, " He did compound for 
 fifteen pound to rid him within three fits of his ague, and to 
 make him as whole as a fish of all diseases." There was still a 
 lower order of empirics, whom Clowes disdained to contend 
 with : 
 
 "Yet I do not mean to speak of the old woman at Newington, beyond 
 St George's Fields, unto whom the people do resort as unto an oracle; 
 neither will I speak of the woman on the Bankside, who is as cunning as 
 the horse at the Cross Keys ; nor yet of the cunning woman in Seacole Lane, 
 who hath more skill in her cole-basket than judgment in urine, or knowledge 
 in physic or surgery" — nor of many others who are compared to "moths in 
 clothes," to "canker," and to "rust in iron." 
 
 Read gives an account of a travelling mountebank, which is 
 too graphic to be omitted : 
 
 "In this year, 1587, there came a Fleming into the city of Glocester 
 named Woolfgange Frolicke, and there hanging forth his pictures, his flags, 
 his instruments, and his letters of mart with long lybells, great tossells, 
 broad scales closed in boxes, with such counterfeit shows and knacks of 
 knavery, cozening the people of their money, without either learning or 
 knowledge. And yet for money got him a licence to practise at Bristow. 
 But when he came to Gloceter, and being called before some being in 
 authority by myself and others, he was not able to answer to any one point 
 
 ^ Read uses, among other terms, one that has played a great part in the 
 modern pathology of syphilis. Among the points to he noticed are, — "if recent or 
 old, if the ulcers or wlielks be many, wliclhcr pustulous matter or giinunic substance 
 appear." 
 
Surgical zvorks by Banister and Lowe. 427 
 
 in chirurgerie; which being perceived, and the man known, the mailer was 
 excused by way of charity, to be good to straungers." 
 
 One of the most systematic and detailed surgical treatises 
 of the time, John Banister's book on the " general and particular 
 curation of ulcers" (1575), is significant for the indirect way in 
 which it refers to the lues venerea. 
 
 Thus at folio 25, "the malignant ulcer called cacoethcs" is described 
 without anything said of a venereal origin, but the specific guaiacum is given 
 among the remedies. The same is the case on the 31st and 32nd leaves, 
 which treat of "filthie and putrefied ulcers," guaiacum being again prescribed. 
 At folio 5 1, on ulcers of the mouth, it is said, " If it proceed a morbo vencreo, 
 then first begin with due purgation, and prescribe the party a thin diet 
 with the decoction of guaiacum, and use ointments requisite for that disease, 
 strengthening the inner parts. Use twice a day a sublimated water, as is 
 afore written, to touch the ulcer with lint rolled therein : 
 
 Rec. Aqua Rosar.] an. two 
 & Plantag.J ounces, 
 Sublimati i dragme. 
 
 Boil them in a glass bottel till the sublimate be dissolved." 
 On fol. 57, he describes "ulcers of the privie parts," among which are 
 corroding ulcers, but without reference to the lues. It is in the section 
 headed, "To prepare the humours" (fol. 61) that the most explicit reference 
 occurs: "When the ulcers proceed through the French pockes, a thinne 
 diet must be used, with the decoction of guaiacum or use universall unctions 
 ex Hydrargyro^." 
 
 In 1596 there appeared Peter Lowe's essay on The Spanish 
 Sickness"^, which is purely a product of experience abroad, his 
 own or of others, and is mainly doctrinal or theoretical. The 
 other properly English works on the subject are all subsequent 
 to the Restoration, and do not come into the period of this 
 volume, nor, from an epidemiological point of view, into this 
 w^ork at all. 
 
 The evidence as to the wide prevalence of the pox in high 
 
 1 John Banister, 'A needefuU new and necessarie treatise of Chynirgerie, briclly 
 comprehending the generall and particular curation of ulcers... dra wen fortli of sundrie 
 worthy writers... Hereunto is annexed certaine experimentes of mine owne invention.' 
 London, 1575. 
 
 ^ Peter Lowe, An casie, certaine and perfect method to cure and prevent the Spanish 
 sicknes, Lond. 1596. For an account of the book see The Life and IVorks of Maister 
 Peter Loioc. By James Finlayson, M. D. Glasgow, 1889. 
 
428 The Pox in London in tJie lyt/i century. 
 
 and low becomes abundant in the writings and memorials of 
 the reign of James I. The effects of the disease, as they would 
 have been commonly remarked at this period, are summed up 
 in a well-known passage in Tinion of Athens. It would serve 
 no purpose to collect the numerous references from Puritan 
 sermons, moral and descriptive essays, plays, and letters of the 
 time. An anonymous work of the year 1652 actually couples 
 "the plague and the pox," and shows "how to cure those which 
 are infected with either of them'," One more piece of evidence 
 may be given for London in the year 1662, or the beginning of 
 the Restoration period, — a date which brings us down a century 
 and a half from the epidemic invasion with which we are more 
 immediately concerned ; but the information for 1662 will serve 
 to show how the existence of the disease was still viewed sub 
 rosa, and it may help one to realize what its prevalence and its 
 serious effects on the public health must have been continuously 
 in the generations before, and most of all in the generation which 
 experienced the full force of it as an epidemic^ 
 
 The London bills of mortality, setting forth the several 
 causes of death, were first printed in 1629. The entry of the 
 French pox is in them from the beginning, and the annual total 
 of deaths set down to it is considerable, approaching a hundred 
 in the year. But according to Graunt, who made the bills 
 of mortality the subject of a critical study in 1662^, they were 
 defective or incorrect in their returns of deaths due to the 
 pox : — 
 
 " By the ordinary discourse of the world, it seems a great part of men 
 have, at one time or other, had some species of this disease. ..whereof many 
 complained so fiercely, etc." He then explains, with reference to the deaths 
 entered as due to it in the bills of mortality: "All mentioned to die of the 
 French pox were returned by the clerks of St Giles' and St Martin's in the 
 
 ^ A Treatise concerning the plague and the pox, discovering as well the means how 
 to preserve from the danger of these infectious contagions, or how to cure those luhich are 
 infected luith either of them. London, 1652. 
 
 - Burnet {History of his own Time, i. 395-6, Oxford, 1823) retails a good deal of 
 unsavoury gossip concerning the disease in noljle and princely personages after the 
 Restoration. 
 
 ■' Natural and Political Observations upon the Bills of Mortality. By Captain 
 John Graunl, F.R.S. Preface dated from Birchin Lane, January, 1662. 
 
TJieories of the outburst of Pox in 1494. A~9 
 
 Fields only, in which place I understand that most of the vilest and most 
 miserable houses of uncleanness were ; from whence I concluded that only 
 hated persons, and such whose very noses were eaten off were reported by 
 the searchers to have died of this too frecjuent malady" — the rest having 
 been included under the head of consumption. 
 
 Origin of the Epidemic of 1494. 
 
 The French pox, as it was called in England (also the 
 great pox and simply the pox), or the Spanish pox, as it was 
 called in France, or the sickness of Naples, or the grandgore, is 
 one of the epidemic diseases concerning which it seems fitting 
 to say something of the antecedents, in addition to what has 
 been said of its arrival as an epidemic in this country, and of 
 its prevalence therein. But this will have to be said very briefly, 
 and without entering upon the pathology or ultimate nature 
 of the disease. 
 
 The numerous foreign writings upon it during the first 
 years of its spread over Europe are all singularly at a loss 
 to account for its origin. One of the earlier guesses was that it 
 arose out of leprosy, as if a graft or modification of that medi- 
 eval disease, replacing it among the maladies of the people. 
 The occasion of that hypothesis seems to have been the lax 
 diagnosis of leprosy itself, a laxity which goes as far back as 
 Bernard Gordonio and Gilbert, if not farther back. Many 
 things were called lepra which were not elephantiasis Grae- 
 corum, and among those things the lues venerea in the Middle 
 Ages was undoubtedly included. At a time when true leprosy 
 was disappearing or had already disappeared from Europe, a 
 new form of disease, which came suddenly into universal notice 
 although by no means then first into existence, seemed to be 
 the successor of leprosy, evoked out of it, and even caught from 
 the leprous by contagion. That is the view of Manardus, in 
 a passage quoted in the sequel, — that syphilis began in certain 
 most particular circumstances at Valencia, in Spain, the source 
 of all the subsequent contamination of Europe having been a 
 certain soldier of fortune who was clepJiantiosus or leprous. In 
 the infancy of a science it is natural to assign to some such 
 
430 TJie Aincrican theory. — TJic zvar in Italy. 
 
 single and definite source a new phenomenon which was really 
 called forth by a concurrence of causes \ 
 
 Another guess of the same kind was the famous theory, 
 which found a truly learned defender in Astruc last century 
 and has had supporters more recently, that the lues venerea 
 came from the New World with the returning ships of Columbus. 
 There never was any considerable body of facts, consistent as 
 regards times and places, in support of that theory; and, on 
 antecedent grounds, the objection to it was that it is as difficult, 
 to say the least, to conceive of the origin of such a disease 
 among the savages of Hispaniola as among the natives of 
 Europe. " Here or nowhere is America" is the proper retort to 
 all such visionary theories put upon the distant and the unknown. 
 The American theory is now hopelessly dead ; the more that the 
 New World became known, the less did syphilis appear to be 
 indigenous to it : indeed the disease followed the track of 
 Europeans, and those parts of the American continent, north 
 and south of the Isthmus, which were longest in being reached 
 by the civilisation of the Old World, were also longest in being 
 reached by the lues venerea ^ 
 
 The name "sickness of Naples," which occurs in the Aber- 
 deen records as early as 1507, indicates the common opinion of 
 the laity as to the origin and means of diffusion of the strange 
 malady. In the passage above quoted from Jones's Dyall of 
 Agues, it will be seen that he refers it to "the besiegers of 
 Naples." The besiegers of Naples were the mercenaries of 
 Charles VIII. occupying it in the beginning of the year 1495, 
 although there was no real siege. The new disease was at the 
 time, rightly or wrongly, traced to them while they occupied 
 Italy, and its diffusion over Europe was justly traced to their 
 dispersion to their several countries at the end of the campaign. 
 There is medical testimony that the malady appeared in 1495 
 among the Venetian and Milanese troops which were banded 
 against Charles VIII. at the siege of Novara. Marcellus 
 
 ^ The origin of syphilis from leprosy has been maintained in a modern work by 
 Friedr, Alex. Simon, Kritische Gcschichie des Urspriings, dcr Pathologic iind Behmid- 
 lung dcr Syphilis, Tochler imd widcriun Miilier des Ajissahcs. Hamburg, 18.^7-8. 
 
 - Ilirsch, Geograpliical and Historical Pathology (Translated), 11. 67, 68, 8r. 
 
Observations in Italy, 1495 and 14C)6. 431 
 
 Cumanus, of Venice, who was surgeon to the forces, thus speaks 
 of the event, in certain Observationes de Lne Venerea which he 
 wrote on the margin of Argelata's work on Surgery^ : 
 
 " In Italy, in the j-ear 1495, owing to celestial influences, I have myself 
 seen, and do testify that, while I was in the camp at Novara with the troops 
 of the Lords of Venice and of the Lords of Milan, many knights and foot- 
 soldiers suffered from an ebullition of the humours, producing many pustules 
 in the face and through the whole body ; which pustules commonly began 
 under the prepuce or without the prepuce, like a grain of millet-seed, or 
 upon the glans, attended by considerable itching. Sometimes a single 
 pustule began like a small vesicle without pain, but with itching. Being 
 broken by rubbing, they ulcerated like a corrosive foriiiica, and a few daj-s 
 after, troubles began from pains in the arms, legs and feet, with great 
 pustules. All the skilled physicians had difficulty in curing them.... Without 
 medicines, the pustules upon the body lasted a year or more, like a leprous 
 variola." He then gives many other details of symptoms and treatment. 
 
 For the year after, 1496, two German writers, who were not 
 surgeons but occupied with affairs of state, Sebastian Brant 
 (author of the Ship of Fools) and Joseph Grlinbeck, have described 
 the disease, apparently in connexion with the troops serving in 
 Italy under Maximilian I. against the invading army of Charles 
 VIII. Thus, there is sufficient evidence that the malady in its 
 first two or three years of epidemic prevalence, was associated 
 with a state of war on Italian soil, in the persons of French 
 troops (and mercenaries of all nations), of Venetian and 
 Milanese troops, and of the German troops of the Emperor. 
 
 But the German writers are clear that the disease did not 
 originate on Italian soil, at the siege of Naples or elsewhere. 
 Thus Brant in his poem of 1496 assigns to it an origin in France, 
 and a dispersion within a year or two over all Europe": 
 
 " Pestiferum in Lygures transvexit Francia morbum, 
 Ouem iiinla de Francos Romula lingua vocat. 
 Hie Latium atque Italos invasit, ab Alpibus extra 
 Serpens, Germanos Istricolasque premit ; 
 Grassatur mediis jam Thracibus atque Bohemis 
 Et morbi genus id Sarmata quisque timet. 
 Nee satis extremo tutantur in orbe Britanni 
 Ouos refluum cingit succiduumcjue fretum. 
 Quin etiam fama est, Aphros penetrasse Getasque 
 Vigue sua utrumque depopulare polum." 
 
 ^ In Hensler, p. 14, and Appendix, p. 11. - /l>iJ., Ajip. p. 15. 
 
432 GrJinbcck on the Pox as a camp sickness, i^g6. 
 
 Griinbeck, who wrote briefly on the disease in 1496, returned 
 to the subject at much greater length in 1503, when he was 
 secretary to the Emperor Maximilian, his later treatise, Dc 
 Mcntulagra, alias Morbo Gallico, being, indeed, among the best 
 that the epidemic called forth. Hensler doubts whether Griin- 
 beck was himself in Italy, so as to observe the ravages of the 
 disease among the troops of the Emperor (including Venetians 
 and Milanese) at the sieges of Pisa and Leghorn in the summer 
 of 1496, and among the opposing troops of Charles VIII. Be 
 that as it may, the following is from Grlinbeck's description^ : 
 
 "O! quid unquam tenibilius et abominabilius humanis sensibus occurrit! 
 Difficile est dictu, creditu fere impossibile, quanta foeditatis, putredinis et 
 sordium colluvione, quantisque dolorum anxietatibus nonnullorum militum 
 corpora involuerit. Aliqui etiam a vertice ad usque genua quodam horrido, 
 squalido, continue, foedo et nigro scabiei genere, nulla parte faciei, (solis 
 oculis exemtis), nee colli, cervicis, pectoris vel pubis immuni relicta, per- 
 cussi, ita sordidi abominabilesque effecti sunt, qui ab omnibus commilitonibus 
 derelict!, ac etiam in piano et nudo campo sub dio emarescentes, nihil 
 magis quam tiiortein expetiverunt...At his omnibus nihil vel parum profici- 
 entibus, et morbo ipso non contento hoc hominum numero, ut eos solos 
 tantis passionum cruciatibus afficeret, venenum contagiosum in multos 
 spectantes Italos, Teutones, Helveticos, Vindelicos, Rhaetos, Noricos, 
 Batavos, Morinos, Anglicos, Hispanos, et alios quos belli occasio in copias 
 conscripserat, transfudit....Interea temporis, per clandestinam Gallorum 
 abitionem, exercitus fuerunt dissoluti," — Griinbeck himself proceeding with 
 some merchants to Hungary and thence to Poland ^. 
 
 ' In Hensler, Appendix, p. 66. 
 
 - The rise of the pox in the Italian wars, with its dispersion over all Europe, 
 comes into "The Smallpox, a Poem " by "Andrew Tripe, M.D.," London, 1748: 
 "Whip! thro' both camps, halloo! it ran, 
 
 Nor uninfected left a man... 
 
 Hence soon thro' Italy it flew 
 
 Veiled for a while from mortal view. 
 
 When suddenly in various modes, 
 
 It shone display'd in shankers, nodes, 
 
 .Swell'd groins, and pricking shins, and headaches 
 
 And a long long long string of dread aches... 
 
 From thence with every sail unfurl'd 
 
 It traversed almost all the world... 
 
 Until at length this Stygian fury 
 
 Worked its foul way to our blest Drury, 
 
 Where still Lord Paramount it reigns, 
 
 Pregnant with sharp nocturnal pains," etc. 
 
Syphilis in existence before 1494. 433 
 
 How came this terrible infection to be among the troops of 
 all nations on Italian soil in the years 1494, 1495 and 1496? 
 Sebastian Brant clearly states that the French brought it with 
 them, and that it spread first over Liguria. Grlinbeck says that 
 it was seen primo super Insnbriam, or the Milanese, on which it 
 rested like a dense cloud, until it was scattered by the winds 
 over the whole of Liguria, and so found its way into the 
 armies in Italy. Beniveni, of Florence, who wrote in 1498, says 
 that it came to Italy from Spain, and from Italy was carried to 
 France. Thus we have a theory of a Spanish origin, of a 
 French origin, and perhaps also of a native Italian origin — all 
 agreeing that Italy during the state of war from 1494 to 1496 
 was the theatre of its first ravages on the great scale, and the 
 source from which the disease was brought to all the countries 
 of Europe by the returning soldiery. 
 
 The solution of the difficulty is to be looked for in the 
 inquiries after still earlier notices of the Ines venerea. It is 
 beyond the purpose of this book to enter upon that large 
 subject, farther than has already been done with the object 
 of proving the generic use of the medieval term lepra. It is 
 now accepted by competent students of medical history that 
 the same disease, with all varieties or modes of primary, secon- 
 dary or tertiary, existed in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, 
 although secondaries and tertiaries may not have been ascribed 
 to their primary source. But what specially concerns us here 
 is the question whether the malady was anywhere beginning to 
 be more noticeable in the years immediately preceding the 
 great military explosion on Italian soil. On that point there is 
 some evidence from more than one source, that the malady was 
 sufficiently prevalent in the south of France to be a subject of 
 remark previous to the French expedition to Italy, that it had 
 found its way to the ports of Spain (Barcelona and Valencia), 
 and that the troops of Charles VIII., if not also that youthful 
 monarch himself, carried it across the Alps into Liguria, and so 
 gave it that start on Italian soil which the state of war for the 
 next two years raised to the power of a virulent and diffusive 
 epidemics 
 
 ^ I do not include among the good evidence the often quoted letter of Peter 
 
 C. 28 
 
434 Syphilis in France and Spain before 1494. 
 
 The best piece of evidence of its prevalence in Languedoc 
 and its spreading thence to the adjoining coast of Spain is found 
 in a letter of the i8th April, 1494 (four months before Charles 
 VIII. entered Italy), written by Nicolas Scyllatius just after 
 arriving at Barcelona \ The province of Narbonne, he says, a 
 part of France adjoining Spain, now sent forth another vice. 
 Women felt it most ; it infected neighbours by contact ; it has 
 lately invaded Spain, hitherto untouched by it. " I was horri- 
 fied," he continues, "on first landing at Barcelona; for I met 
 with many of the inhabitants who were seized by that contagion. 
 On my inquiring of the physicians (for with these I held converse 
 during nearly all that journey), they assured me that the new 
 Ines had been derived from truculent France." In keeping with 
 this entirely credible testimony is the statement of Torella, a 
 native of Valencia, who wrote one of the earlier essays on the 
 new disease (" De Pudendagra") in November, 1497. The 
 disease first broke out, he says, in Auvergne in 1493 (incepit, 
 ut aiunt, haec maligna aegritudo anno 1493 in Alervnia), and 
 so came in the way of contagion to Spain and the Islands 
 [to Sardinia, where he was bishop, and to Corsica], and to Italy, 
 creeping in the end over all Europe, and, if one may so speak, 
 over the whole globed 
 
 Torella thus confirms the Barcelona traveller so far as 
 regards importations from the south of France to the neigh- 
 bouring ports, the former writer naming Auvergne as the 
 endemic seat of the malady, whereas the latter gives Narbonne. 
 Another piece of evidence, that the pox was in Valencia, as 
 well as in Barcelona, before the expedition of Charles VIII., is 
 found in a story told by Manardus of Ferrara (1500), a story 
 which is wholly improbable so far as concerns the origin of 
 syphilis, at a stated time and place, out of a case of leprosy, 
 
 Martyr to a professor of Greek at Salamanca, under the date of "nonis Aprilis, 
 1488," in which "morbus Gallicus" is used as well as the Spanish name "las buhas." 
 It seems to me certain that the date should be 1498, or something else than 1488, the 
 correspondence having gone on until 1525. The same kind of misdating occurs 
 among the printed letters of Erasmus. 
 
 ^ This letter is printed in his Opuscji'.a, Papiae, 1496. Attention was first called to 
 it by Thiene, in his essay confuting tlie doctrine of the West-Indian origin of syphilis. 
 
 - In llensler, App. p. 108. 
 
CJiarlcs VIII. invades Italy, Sept. 1494. 435 
 
 but is entirely credible so far as regards the grossness of its 
 circumstances : 
 
 "Coepisse hunc morbum per id tempus, dicunt, quo Carolus, Francorum 
 rex, expeditionem Italicam parabat: coepisse, aiitem, in Valentia, Hispaniae 
 Taraconensis insigni civitate, a nobili quodam scorto, cujus noctem elephan- 
 tiosus quidam, ex equestri ordine miles, quinquaginta aureis emit ; et cum 
 ad mulieris concubitum frequens juventus accurreret, intra paucos dies supra 
 quadringentos infectos ; e quorum numero nonnulli, Carolum Italiam pe- 
 tentem sequuti, praeter alia quae adhuc vigent importata mala et hoc 
 addiderunt^" 
 
 The evidence that follows is not so explicit, but it has 
 strong probability. The progress of Charles VIII. from France 
 to Italy in the autumn of 1494 has been told by Philip dc 
 Comines in his Croniqiic dn Roy Charles VIII. , first printed at 
 Paris in 1528, nineteen years after the author's death. Dc 
 Comines accompanied his master, the French king, as far as 
 Asti ; he was then sent on a mission to Venice, and rejoined the 
 king at Florence. But De Comines, who was no gossip, omits 
 one interesting fact near the beginning of the journey to Italy, 
 which has been preserved for us in a contemporary work (1503) 
 called La Croniquc Martinianc, or chronicle of all the popes 
 down to Alexander Borgia lately deceased ^ This chronicle 
 relates as follows concerning Charles VIII. 's journey: — "II se 
 arresta premierement aucuns jours a Lyon, doubteux s'il passe- 
 roit les mons, car il y estoit detenu pour les delices et plaisances 
 de la cite et pour les foUes amours de aucunes gorrieres lyon- 
 noises. Mais quant I'air devint pestilent, il s'en tyra a Vienne, 
 cite de Daulphine." His great army had already passed the 
 Alps and arrived in the country of Asti : it is said to have 
 consisted, in round numbers, of 3600 men-at-arms, 6000 bow- 
 men, 8000 pikemen, and 8000 with arquebuses, halberds, two- 
 handed swords, or other arms, together with a heavy artillery 
 train of 8000 horses, A large part of this force were Swiss ; 
 another part were Gascons ^ 
 
 1 Manardus, Epist. Alcd. lib. vii. epist, 2. Basil, 1549, p. 137 (as cited by 
 Hirsch). The first letter of Manardus "de erroribiis Sym. Pistons de Lypczk circa 
 morbum Gallicum," was printed in 1500 (Hensler, p. 47). 
 
 - I quote it from Hensler, Geschiclde der Litstsciuhe die zn ende dcs xv Jahr 
 hunderts in Eiiropa aitsbrach. Altona, i/S,^, Appendix, p. 109. 
 
 ^ Mezeray, Histoire dc France, 11. 777. 
 
 28—2 
 
43^ " Petite vcrole " and " Grosse vavle." 
 
 Charles VIII. left Vienne on the 23rd of August, and 
 crossed Mont Genevre on the 2nd September, whence he pro- 
 ceeded direct by Susa and Turin, joining his army at Asti on 
 September 9. At Asti, says De Comines, he had an illness, 
 which caused that minister to delay setting out on his mission 
 to Venice for a few days. The original printed text of De 
 Comines' Chronique (Paris, 1528), says that the author remained 
 at Asti a few days longer " because the king was ill of the small- 
 pox {de la petite verolle) and in peril of death, for that the fever 
 was mixed therewith ; but it lasted only six or seven days, and 
 I set out upon my way." The next edition has no change but 
 " in great peril of death " {en grant peril de mort), instead of 
 merely " in peril," Now, where did this diagnosis oi petite verolle 
 come from .'' Nothing is said of smallpox being prevalent at the 
 time among the troops or along their route. The name petite 
 verolle itself did not exist in 1494; it came into existence with 
 grosse verolle, having being made necessary by the latter ; and the 
 first that we hear of grosse verolle is when the Italian campaign 
 was over and the pox was raging in Paris, the Parlement 
 of Paris, on the 6th of March, 1497, having made an ordi- 
 nance against a certain contagious malady " nommee la grosse 
 verole" which had been in the kingdom and in the city of Paris 
 since two years. Probably Comines deliberately wrote ''petite 
 verolle" in his manuscript, having composed the latter subse- 
 quent to 1498, or at a time when the terms verolle, or grosse 
 verolle, and petite verolle, were passing current and were known 
 in their respective senses. The causes or circumstances of the 
 king's malady at Asti are not enlarged upon by De Comines, 
 farther than that he makes a somewhat disjointed remark, that 
 all the Italian wines of that year were sour and that the season 
 was hot, which would have had as little to do with the one kind 
 of pox as with the other. Nor is anything said of smallpox 
 spreading among those near the king\ 
 
 The whole sequence of events, from the " folles amours " of 
 
 1 The diagnosis in De Comines' text appears to have struck the editors of the 
 chief edition of his work, that of 1747; for they have appended a footnote to the 
 passage, whicli is a superfluity unless it be meant to express surprise: "Charles VIII. 
 malade de la petite vcrole k I'age de vingt-deux ans." 
 
Diagnosis of " Petite vcroW discredited. 437 
 
 Lyons to the sharp sickness at Asti, has suggested to historians, 
 who have no medical theory to advocate, that it was not really 
 petite vcrole that the king suffered from, but grosse verole. Martin 
 says that Charles VIII. recommenced at Asti his Lyons follies 
 and that he became violently sick, " of the smallpox, says one, 
 or, perhaps, of a new malady which began to show itself in 
 Europe," meaning syphilis. To show that such infection was 
 already possible, he quotes an ordinance of the provost of Paris 
 April 15, 1488, enjoining "the leprous" to leave the capital. 
 This is very like Edward II I. 's order to the London "lepers" 
 a century and a half earlier, in which the reasons given (the 
 frequenting of stews, the pollution of their breath, &c.) point 
 somewhat clearly to the nature of their "leprosy." An order for 
 the banishment of " lepers" from Paris in 1488 must have been 
 occasioned by some unusual risk of contamination, just as the 
 London order of 1346 would have been. It is in that sense that 
 the French historian regards it ; the ordinance, he says, " con- 
 cernait probablement deja les syphilitiques confondus avec les 
 lepreux\" 
 
 De Comines, who is the authority for the diagnosis of small- 
 pox, had inserted the word petite before verolle for reasons best 
 known to himself. I shall show in the next chapter, upon 
 smallpox and measles in England, that the ambiguous teaching 
 of the faculty as to the nature and affinities of the pox proper 
 within the first years of its epidemic appearance gave a 
 ready opportunity of calling the grosse verole by the name of 
 petite verole in circumstances where it was polite, or prudent, or 
 convenient so to do. The only importance of a correct diagnosis 
 of the king's malady is that the case of one would have been 
 the case of many. 
 
 The indications all point to a somewhat unusual prevalence 
 of lues venerea previous to the autumn of 1494, in the luxurious 
 provinces of southern France as well as in the capital. Beyond 
 doubt, the malady had already spread by contagion to the great 
 Spanish ports nearest the Gulf of Lyons. The expedition of 
 Charles VIII. passed through that region on its route over the 
 Alps. According to Sebastian Brant, it was the French who 
 
 ^ Martin, Histoire de France., vn. 257, 283. 
 
438 TJie severity of the Syphilis of 1494-96. 
 
 brought the disease into Liguria, and, according to Grlinbcck, it 
 issued, Gallico traettt, ah oceidentali sinu, gathered like a dense 
 cloud super Instibriam (the Milanese), and was thence dispersed, 
 as if by the winds, over the whole province of Liguria. 
 
 But for the circumstances of the military expedition of 1494, 
 and the state of war in Italy for two years after, it is conceiv- 
 able that the unusual prevalence in France of a very ancient 
 malady would have had little interest for Europe at large, 
 although the cities on the nearest coast of Spain appear to have 
 already shared the infection. That unusual prevalence in the 
 south of France has in it nothing of mystery ; the period was 
 the end of the Middle Ages, distinguished by a revival of 
 learning, of trade and commerce, — a revival of most things 
 except morals. But, assuming that there was such unusual pre- 
 valence above the ancient and medieval level, it may still seem 
 unaccountable that a great European epidemic, of a most disas- 
 trous and fatal type, should have been engendered therefrom. 
 
 There are, however, many parallel cases, on a minor scale 
 from modern times, of a peculiar severity of type, of inveteracy, 
 and of communicability by unusual ways, having been cultivated 
 from commonplace beginnings, among unsophisticated commu- 
 nities about the Baltic and Adriatic, the people being without 
 resident doctors and unfamiliar with such a disease and its risks. 
 These have been collected and analyzed by Hirsch, whose 
 conclusion is that " the mode of origin, and the character of 
 these endemics of syphilis, appear to me to furnish the key to 
 an understanding of the remarkable episode of the disease in 
 the 15th century, — an episode which entirely resembles them as 
 regards its type, and differs from them only as regards extent \" 
 
 Referring the reader for farther particulars to the work 
 quoted, I shall leave the antecedents of the epidemic of pox in 
 the end of the 15th century to be judged of according to the 
 probabilities thus far stated. 
 
 y Handbooli of Geograpliital and Historical PatJiology. Translalcd by C. Crcigh- 
 ton, 3 vols. London, 1883-86, n. 92-9S. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SMALLPOX AND MEASLES. 
 
 With our modern habit of seeking out the matter of fact, of 
 going back to the reality and of reconstructing the theory, it is 
 not easy for us to understand how completely the medieval world 
 of medicine was enslaved to authority and tradition even in 
 matters that were directly under their eyes. It was thought a 
 great thing that Linacre, of Oxford, in the first years of the 
 i6th' century, and Caius, of Cambridge, some fifty years later, 
 should have gone back to Galen for their authority, passing over 
 the Arabians who had been the interpreters of classical medicine 
 all through the Middle Ages. Their editions of forgotten medical 
 works of the Graeco-Roman school were a step forward in 
 scholarship, and they opened the way to the first-hand obser- 
 vations of disease which really began some hundred years after 
 with the writings of Willis, Sydenham and Morton. But small- 
 pox and measles were not Galenist themes, they were peculiarly 
 Arabian; and the very moderate share that England took in the 
 medical Revival of Learning made no difference to the para- 
 graphs or chapters on those diseases that were circulating in the 
 medieval compends. While the Arabian or Arabistic writers of 
 Spain, of Salerno, and of Montpellier were the depositaries and 
 interpreters of the Galenic teaching, they were also the first-hand 
 authorities upon some matters of specially Arabian experience, 
 of which smallpox and measles were the chief. Whatever was 
 said of those two epidemic maladies abroad, in the systematic 
 works of Gordonio and Gilbert, and in the later compilation of 
 Gaddesden in England, was not only of Arabian origin, but it 
 
440 Antiquity of Smallpox in Britain. 
 
 was all that was known of them. Rhazes, the original Arabic 
 writer on smallpox and measles about the beginning of the 
 nth century, supplied both the doctrine and the experience. 
 His observations and reasonings, altered or added to by his 
 later countrymen, passed bodily into the medical text-books 
 of all Europe. The interest in the treatise of Rhazes was so 
 great that it was printed in 1766 by Channing, of Oxford, in 
 Arabic with a Latin translation, and in an English translation 
 from the original by Greenhill, of Oxford, in 1847. 
 
 In the literature we took over smallpox from the Arabians ; 
 but had we no native experiences of the disease itself, and, if so, 
 when did it first appear in this country? One can hardly 
 attempt an answer to these questions even now without stirring 
 up prejudice and embittered memories. It has been the fate 
 of smallpox, as an epidemological subject, to be invested with 
 bigotry and intolerance. Whoever has maintained that it is not 
 as old as creation has been suspected in his motives ; anyone 
 who shows himself inclined to put limits to its historical duration 
 and its former extent in Britain is clearly seeking to belittle the 
 advantages that have been derived during the present century 
 from vaccination. 
 
 The wish to establish the antiquity of the smallpox in Europe 
 has been as strong as the wish to overthrow the antiquity of the 
 great pox. While undoubted traces of the latter in early times 
 have been covered over with the generic name of leprosy, the 
 vaguest reference to " pustules " or spots on the skin have been 
 turned by verbalist ingenuity to mean devastating epidemics 
 of smallpox. I am here concerned only with Britain, and must 
 pass over the much-debated reference by Gregory of Tours to 
 epidemics in the 6th century, the period of the Justinian plague. 
 But in England the epidemic which stands nearest in our annals 
 to the great plague of the 6th century, the widespread infection 
 described by Beda as having begun in 664 and as having 
 continued in monasteries and elsewhere for years after, has 
 been claimed by Willan as an epidemic of smallpox\ Willan, 
 
 1 Miscellaneous IVorks of the late Robert Willan, M.D., F.R.S., containing an 
 Inquiry into the Antiquity of the Smallpox, Measles, and Scarlet Fever, etc. Ediled 
 by Ashby Smith, M.D. , London, 1821. 
 
Alleged origin in Arabia, A.D. 569. 441 
 
 with all his erudition, was a dermatologist, and acted on the 
 maxim that there is nothing like leather. His contention in 
 favour of smallpox has been referred to in the first chapter, 
 dealing with the plague described by Beda, and need not farther 
 concern us. It is not in England that we find evidence of 
 smallpox in those remote times but in Arabia. 
 
 Smallpox in the Arabic Annals. 
 
 For our purpose the evidence on the antiquity of smallpox 
 in China and India may be accepted, and for the rest left out 
 of account. The Arabian influence is nearer to us, and is the 
 only one that practically concerns us. Coming, then, to the 
 history of smallpox in its prevalence nearest to Europe, we 
 find a definite statement of the disease appearing first among 
 the Abyssinian army of Abraha at the siege of Mecca in what 
 was known as the Elephant War of A.D. 569 or 571. The best 
 of the Arabic historians, Tabari^ writes : "It has been told to us 
 by Ibn Humaid, after Salima, after Ibn Ischag, to whom Ja'gub 
 b. Otha b. Mughira b. Achnas related that one had said to him, 
 that in that year the smallpox appeared for the first time in 
 Arabia, and also the bitter herbs, — rue, colocynth [and another]." 
 The tradition is by word of mouth through several, after the 
 Semitic manner, but it need not on that account be set aside as 
 worthless. So far as concerns the bitter herbs, it is said to be 
 against probability ; but as regards the new form of epidemic 
 sickness, there is no such objection to it. 
 
 The Arabic legend, as given by Tabari is as follows: "There- 
 upon came the birds from the sea in flocks, every one with three 
 stones, in the claws two and in the beak one, and threw the 
 stones upon them. Wherever one of these stones struck, there 
 arose an evil wound, and pustules all over. At that time the 
 smallpox first appeared, and the bitter trees. The stones undid 
 them wholly. Thereafter God sent a torrent which carried them 
 away and swept them into the sea. But Abraha and the 
 remnant of his men fled : he himself lost one member after 
 
 ^ Th. Noldeke, Gcschichte dcr A ruber uiul Pcrscr, nack Tabari. Leydcii, 1879, 
 pp. 218, 219. 
 
442 Smallpox as a skin-disease. 
 
 another." In a former passage, the calamity of Abraha is thus 
 given : " But Abraha was smitten with a heavy stroke ; as they 
 brought him along in the retreat, his limbs fell off piece by piece, 
 and as often as a piece fell off, matter and blood came forth." 
 To illustrate this account by Tabari, his recent editor, Noldekc, 
 cites the following from an anti-Mohammedan poem : " Sixty 
 thousand returned not to their homes, nor did their sick continue 
 in life after their return.'' One of the elephants which dared 
 to enter the sacred region is said to have been also wounded 
 and afflicted by the smallpox. 
 
 In this narrative of Abraha's disaster, says Noldcke, there is 
 a mixture of natural causation and of purely fabulous miracle ; 
 a real and sufficient account of the cause of the Abyssinian 
 leader's discomfiture, namely, an outbreak of smallpox, had 
 been blended with legendary tales. That the disease was 
 smallpox is made probable by the continuity of the Arabic 
 name ;. under the same name Rhazes, the earliest systematic 
 writer, describes the symptoms, pathology and treatment of 
 what was unquestionably the smallpox afterwards familiar in 
 Western Europe. Why it should have originated on Arabian 
 soil in an invading army from Africa, is a question that 
 would require much knowledge, now beyond our reach, to 
 answer conclusively. 
 
 Theory of the nature of Smallpox. 
 
 The nature of the disease should, however, be borne in mind 
 always in the front of every speculation as to the origin of its 
 contagious and epidemic properties. It involves no speculative 
 considerations to pronounce smallpox a skin-disease, of the 
 nature of lichen turned pustular. It is a skin-disease first, and 
 a contagious or epidemic malady afterwards ; its place among 
 diseases of the skin is indeed fully acknowledged by derma- 
 tologists. Apart from its contagiousness it conforms to the cha- 
 racters of other cutaneous eruptions : its outbreak is preceded by 
 disturbed health, including fever ; when the eruption comes out 
 the fever is so f;ir relieved ; and as in some other eruptions 
 which are not contatjious the constitutional disturbance is in 
 
Smallpox as a constiintional cruptioii. 443 
 
 proportion to the area of the skin involved. Even the peculiar 
 scars or pits which it leaves behind in skins of a certain texture 
 or in the more vascular regions, such as the face, arc not 
 unknown in non-contagious skin-diseases ; nor does its other 
 peculiarity, the offensive odour of many pustules, seem un- 
 accountable in a skin-disease native to tropical countries. 
 
 Eruptions on the skin are in many cases the outcome of 
 constitutional ill-health ; for examj^le, the eczema of gout. 
 Also where the whole body is infected, as in syphilis, there are 
 skin-eruptions, which may be pimples (lichenous) or scales, or 
 rashes, or, as in the first great outburst of syphilis, "pustules" 
 so general over the body that those who were casting about for 
 the nosological affinities of the new malady, saw no better place 
 for it than Avicenna's group of alJiumata, which included 
 smallpox and measles. That a skin-eruption of the nature of 
 smallpox should have come out as a constitutional manifesta- 
 tion, and that a number of persons should have exhibited it 
 together for the same internal reason, are both credible suppo- 
 sitions, although necessarily unsupported by historic evidence. 
 Let us suppose that the Abyssinian army before Mecca endured 
 some ordinary discomfort of campaigning, that, in the uni- 
 formity of their life, numbers together had fallen into the same 
 constitutional ill-health just as numbers together have often 
 fallen into scurvy, and that an eruption of the skin, proper to 
 the tropics, was part of it. What we have farther to suppose is 
 that the constitutional eruption became catching from the skin 
 outwards, so to speak, — that it could be detached from its 
 antecedents in the body, and could exist as an autonomous 
 thing, so that it would break out upon those who had none of 
 its underlying constitutional conditions, but had been merely in 
 contact with such as had developed it constitutionally or from 
 within. Such detachment of a constitutional eruption from its 
 primary conditions is little more than constantly happens when 
 a skin-disease like eczema, or acne, persists long after its provo- 
 cation, or the disordered health which called it forth, is removed. 
 The inveteracy or chronicity of some skin-diseases is itself a 
 form of autonomy, but a form of it which does not transcend 
 the individual, just as, among infections themselves, cancer does 
 
444 -^^ skin-disease becoviiiig contagious. 
 
 not transcend the individual or propagate itself by contagion ^ 
 But there exists a closer probable analogy for a secondary 
 eruption becoming a self-existent or independent infective 
 disease. The instance in view is no more than probable, and 
 may easily be disputed by those who have sufficient preposses- 
 sions the other way ; but there is no theory that suits so well 
 the negro disease of yaws as that it is a somewhat peculiar 
 secondary of syphilis, which is now able to be communicated as 
 an exanthem detached from the primary lesions on which it had 
 depended originally for its existence. 
 
 All the evidence, historical and geographical, points to the 
 several varieties of the black skin (or yellow skin) as the native 
 tissues of smallpox. It is not without significance that a disease 
 of the negroes which was observed by English doctors not long 
 ago in the mining districts of South Africa led to a sharp 
 controversy whether it was smallpox or not : according to some, 
 it was a constitutional eruption ; according to others it was a 
 contagious infection. Such phenomena are not likely to be 
 seen in our latitudes ; but the original smallpox itself was not a 
 disease of the temperate zone^ 
 
 I shall not carry farther this line of remark as to the 
 probable circumstances in which a pustular eruption, among the 
 Abyssinians before Mecca, or among other Africans or other 
 dark-skinned races in other places and at other times, had 
 
 ^ The term "autonomy" in the foregoing is used according to the exposition 
 which I originally gave of it in an address to the British Medical Association (1883) 
 on "The Autonomous Life of the Specific Infections" {Bri(. Med. yourn., Aug. 4, 
 1883). The semi-independence of constitutional states has been dealt with in my 
 book, Illustrations of Unconscious Memory in Disease. London, 1S85. 
 
 " The vSouth-African controversy, which became acute, was carried on in journals 
 of the colony (the South African Medical Jourtial about 1883 and 1884 is a likely 
 source of information), but some echoes of it were heard in letters to the British 
 Medical Journal, 1884. A few years ago a similar diagnostic difficulty arose, not in 
 an African race, but among the inmates of a Paris hospital. In the smallpox wards 
 of the Hopital St Antoine, a number of cases occurred, one of them in a nurse, 
 another in an assistant physician, of a particular skin-disease, which was either 
 discrete or confluent, lasted about ten days, and was attended by fever up to 40° C. 
 or 41° C. Yet these cases were discriminated from smallpox; they were diagnosed, 
 and have been recorded, as an epidemic of ecthyma. (Du Castel, Gazette dcs Hopi- 
 taux, 1 88 1, No. 122, (juoted in the yahresbericht.) 
 
Diffusion of Sviallpox by the Saracens. 445 
 
 become epidemically contagious in the familiar way of small- 
 pox. One has to learn by experience that there is at present no 
 hearing for such inquiries, because a certain dominant fashion 
 in medicine prefers to relegate all those origins to the remotest 
 parts of the earth and to the earliest ages (practically ab 
 aeterjio), and there to leave them with a complacent sense that 
 they have been so disposed of. That is not the way in which 
 the study of origins is carried out for all other matters of human 
 interest. Yet diseases are recent as compared with the species 
 of living things ; some of them are recent even as compared 
 with civilized societies. Epidemical and constitutional maladies 
 touch at many points, and depend upon, the circumstances of 
 time and locality, and upon racial or national characters. 
 Perhaps their origins will one day be made a branch of historical 
 or archaeological research. 
 
 European Smallpox in the Middle Ages. 
 
 •The present extensive prevalence of smallpox among the 
 Arabs may or may not date from the Elephant War of A.D. 569. 
 Its prevalence also in Abyssinia, so widely in modern times 
 that almost everyone bears the marks of it, may have no con- 
 tinuous history from the return of Abraha's expedition. But 
 the history of smallpox in the West comes to us through the 
 Saracens, and there can be no question that the disease is at the 
 present day peculiarly at home in all African countries, and 
 most of all in the upper basin of the Nile, where, as Pruner 
 says, "it appears as the one great sickness'." It is a remark of 
 Freind, whose erudition and judgment should carry weight, that 
 "the Saracens first brought in this distemper, and wherever 
 their arms prevailed, this spread itself with the same fury in 
 Africa, in Europe, and through the greatest part of Asia, the 
 eastern part especially^" Our inquiry here does not extend 
 beyond England, so that the extremely disputable question of 
 the amount and frequency of smallpox in the European 
 
 1 Krankhcitcn dcs Orients. Erlangen, 1S47, p. n?. 
 - II is lory of Physic, W. 190. 
 
44^ Medieval Sviallpox in books and in reality. 
 
 countries conquered or invaded by the Saracens in the Middle 
 Ages need not be raised^ 
 
 So far as concerns England, smallpox was first brought to 
 it, not by the Saracen arms, but by Saracen pens. The earliest 
 English treatise on medicine, the Rosa Anglica of Gaddesden, 
 has the same chapter " De Variolis [et Morbillis]" as all the 
 other medieval compends — in substance the same as in the 
 earlier work of Gilbert, and in all the other Arabistic writings 
 earlier or later. The Rosa Anglica was a success in its day, 
 partly, no doubt, by reason of its style being more boisterous 
 than that of Gilbert's or Gordonio's treatises, partly, also, on 
 account of its blunt indecency in certain passages. Guy de 
 Chauliac, of Avignon, one of the few original observers of the 
 time, had heard of the Rosa Anglica, and was curious to see it ; 
 but he found in it " only the fables of Hispanus, of Gilbert, and 
 of Theodoric," and he rather unkindly fixed upon it the epithet 
 of " fatuous." What de Chauliac had probably heard of was 
 Gaddesden's occasional claims to originality ; and these we shall 
 now examine so far as they concern smallpox. 
 
 One of Gaddesden's variations from the stock remarks on 
 smallpox is his explanation of why the disease was called 
 variola : it is called variola, says he, because it occurs in diverse 
 
 ^ Gruner, a learned professor of Jena, who made collections of works or passages 
 relating to syphilis and to the English sweat, published also in 1790 a collection of 
 medieval chapters or sentences on smallpox, " De Variolis et Morbillis fragmenta 
 medicorum Arabistarum," including the whole of Gaddesden's chapter but omitting 
 the earlier and more important chapter from Gilbert. Gruner correctly says at the 
 end of his extracts : "while the Arabists write thus, they seem to have followed their 
 Arabic guides, and to have repeated what they received from the latter." This is 
 obvious from the text of the chapters themselves : some quote more often than others 
 from Avicenna, Rhazes and Isaac; but it is clear that they all base upon the 
 Arabians. The substance is the same in them all ; it is a merely verbal handling of 
 Arabic obsei"vation and theory. There are no concrete experiences or original 
 additions, from which one might infer that they were familiar at first hand with 
 smallpox and measles. Haser, however, seems to take these chapters in the medieval 
 compends as evidence of the general prevalence of smallpox in Europe in the Middle 
 Ages. As he finds little writing about smallpox when modern medical literature 
 began, he is driven into the paradox that epidemics of smallpox had actually become 
 rarer again in the sixteenth century (ni. p. 69). But the sixteenth-century references 
 to smallpox, although they are indeed scanty, arc at the same time the earliest 
 authentic accounts of it in Western Europe. 
 
Gaddcsdcii's alleged case of Smallpox. /\.^y 
 
 parts of the skin {quia in cute diversas partes occupant). This is 
 an ingenious improvement upon Gilbert, who says that it is 
 called variola from the variety of colours {et dicitur variola a 
 varietate coloris) — sometimes red, sometimes white, or yellow, 
 or green, or violet, or black. Another remark attributed (by 
 Haser at least) to Gaddesden as original, is that a person may 
 have smallpox twice ; but Gaddesden, in a later paragraph, 
 shows where he got that from : " And thus says Avicenna 
 {quarto Canonis), that sometimes a man has smallpox twice — 
 once properly, and a second time improperly." The most 
 famous of Gaddesden's originalities is his treatment by wrapping 
 the patient in red cloth ; for that also Haser ascribes to him. 
 But Peter the Spaniard, the Hispanus of dc Chauliac's reference 
 given above, is before him with the red-cloth treatment also, 
 while he is candid enough to quote Gilbert : " Any cloth dyed 
 in purple," says Hispanus, "has the property of attracting the 
 matter to the outside." 
 
 Gilbert's reference is as follows : " Old women in the country 
 give burnt purple in the drink, for it has an occult property 
 of curing smallpox. Let a cloth be taken, dyed de grano." 
 Bernard Gordonio, also, says : " Thereafter let the whole body 
 be wrapped in red cloth." There was probably Arabic authority 
 for that widely diffused prescription, as for all the rest of the 
 teaching about smallpox. But Gaddesden does improve upon 
 his predecessors in boldly appealing to his own favourable 
 experience of red cloth : — " Then let a red cloth be taken, 
 and the variolous patient be wrapped in it completely, as I 
 did with the son of the most noble king of England when he 
 suffered those diseases {istos inorbos) ; I made everything about 
 his bed red, and it is a good cure, and I cured him in the 
 end without marks of smallpox." 
 
 With reference to this cure, it has to be said, in the first 
 place, that the object of the red cloth was to draw the matter 
 to the surface^ and that it had nothing to do with the pre- 
 
 ^ This intention is most clearly expressed by Valescus de Tharanta: "Then let 
 him be wrapped in a woollen cloth of Persian, or at least of red, so that by the sight 
 of the red cloth the blood may be led to the exterior and so be kept at no excessive 
 heat, according to the tenour of the sixth canon [of Avicenna]." Aj^2ui Qxwnev, p. 46. 
 
44^ Gaddesdcn cures Smallpox by red cloth. 
 
 vention of pitting. The means to prevent pitting was usually 
 to open the pustules with a golden needle ; that is the Arabian 
 advice, and all the Arabists copy it. Gaddesden among the 
 rest copies it, but he does not say that he practised it on the 
 king's son. If he had said so, we might have believed that 
 the disease was actually one bearing pustules which could be 
 opened by a needle. What he says, in the earliest printed 
 text (Pavia, 1492) is that, while the king's son was "suffering 
 from those diseases," he caused him to be wrapped in red cloth, 
 and the bed to be hung with the same, and that he cured 
 him without the marks of smallpox. Gaddesden was not alto- 
 gether an honest practitioner ; on the contrary he was an 
 early specimen of the quack in excelsis. According to the 
 learned and judicious Dr Freind, " his practice, I doubt, was 
 not formed upon any extraordinary knowledge of his faculty ;" 
 and again, " He was, as it appears from his own writings, 
 sagacious enough to see through the foibles of human nature ; 
 he could form a good judgment how far mankind could be 
 imposed upon ; and never failed to make his advantage of their 
 credulity\" The opportunity of diagnosing variola in the king's 
 son, and of curing it by red cloth, so as to leave no pits, was 
 one that such a person was not likely to let slip. " It is a good 
 cure," he says ; and we may go so far with him as to admit 
 that it must have been impressive to the royal household to 
 have heard some sharp sickness of the nursery called by the 
 formidable name of variola, and to have seen it cured '^ sine 
 vestigiis." 
 
 Measles in Medieval Writings. 
 
 In the writings of the Arabians and of their imitators, the 
 so-called Arabists, measles and smallpox are always taken 
 together. The usual distinction made between them is that 
 Diorbilli, or measles, come from the bile, whereas variolae, or 
 smallpox, come from the blood, that the former are small, and 
 that they are less apt to attack the eyes. The reference in 
 Gaddesden is of the usual kind, but it is complicated by the 
 
 ' History of Pliysic, Pt. li. p. 280. 
 
Gaddcsdcn on Morhilli and '' Mcsles." 449 
 
 introduction of a third term, punctilli, which Gruncr, however, 
 takes to be merely a synonym for morbilli. As Gaddesden's 
 passage is of some importance for the history of the famihar 
 name of the disease in England, I shall translate it at length, 
 so far as it can be made into sense : — 
 
 " Variolae are so called, as if variously choosing the skin itself, because 
 in the skin they occupy divers parts, by apostematising and infecting ; they 
 are caused by corruption of blood, and therein they differ from morbilli and 
 punctilli. 
 
 Morbilli are small apostemata in the skin generated of bile ; and they 
 are a diminutive of apostematous diseases because they occupy less space by 
 reason of the sharpness of choleric matter. They are in fact variolae of 
 choleric matter, and the smallest of pustules. But punctilli are infections 
 commonly sanguineous, as if they had arisen from a fleabite, only they remain 
 continually. And punctilli are of two kinds, large and small. Of the small 
 I have already spoken [under the name of morbilli ?]. But the large are 
 broad, red and opaque infections in the legs of poor and wasting persons, 
 {patiperiim ct co/isiniiptiiormn), who sit as if continually at the fire without 
 boots ; and they are called in English nicsles'^.'" 
 
 The rest of Gaddesden's chapter on smallpox and measles 
 contains nothing that is not to be found in Avicenna or in 
 any medieval compend on medicine. But the passage quoted 
 is of interest as using the old word " mesles " to mean one 
 of the two forms of viorhilli or pnnctilli. We are here enabled 
 to see a little way into the confusion of mind which attended 
 the medievalists in their verbalist dealing with disease. The 
 syntax of Gaddesden's sentence implies that the broad, red 
 and opaque infections on the legs of poor and wasted persons 
 were called in English mesles. In other writers, both before and 
 after his date, the name of mesles or mesels or mescals was given, 
 not to a form of disease, but to a class of sufferers from disease. 
 It is the name applied to the inmates of leper-houses by 
 Matthew Paris (circa 1250) — niiselli and niiscllae, being dimi- 
 nutives of miser''. It is the word used for the same class in 
 the Norman-French entries in the Rolls of Parliament in the 
 reign of Edward I. fixing the taxation of leper-houses : if the 
 head of the house was himself a meseal, the hospital was to 
 
 1 Rosa Anglica. Papiae, 1492. 
 
 - Chronica Majora. Rolls ed. v. 452. 
 
 c. 29 
 
450 Original use of " Mesles." 
 
 pay nothing, but if the head were a whole man, the hospital 
 had to pay\ The same use of mesles, as meaning the leprous, 
 in the generic sense, occurs several times in the 14th century 
 poem, ' The Vision of Piers the Ploughman^' Thus, Christ in 
 His ministrations, 
 
 " Sought out the sick and sinful both, 
 And salved sick and sinful, both blind and crooked ; 
 And comune women converted, and to good turned. 
 Both meseles and mute, and in the menysoun bloody, 
 Oft he heled such. He ne held it for no mystery, 
 Save tho he leched Lazar that had ylain into grave." 
 
 Or again : 
 
 " Ac old men and hore that helpless ben of strength, 
 And women with child that worche ne inowe. 
 Blind and bedred and broken their members, 
 That taketh their mischief mekely, as meseles and other." 
 
 It is this old English word " mesles," meaning the leprous 
 in the generic sense, that Gaddesden brings into his Latin text 
 in connexion with viorbilli (or pujictii/i). It is useless to look 
 for precision in such a writer; but if his introduction of "mesles" 
 in the particular context mean anything at all, it means that the 
 English word represented a variety of luorbilH, — the large, broad 
 and opaque variety. That it should have occurred to him to 
 bring these blotches or spots on the legs of poor people even 
 remotely into relation with the inorbilli of the Arabians, 
 probably means that Gaddesden had a merely verbal ac- 
 quaintance with the latter, or that he knew them only in 
 books. It is certainly improbable that anyone, even in the 
 Middle Ages, who had ever seen a case of measles should 
 bracket that transitory and insubstantial mottling of the skin, 
 with the large, broad and " obscure " spots (or nodules, or 
 what else) on the legs of poor and wasted persons, which 
 were called, in the vernacular, mesles. But Gaddesden, though 
 a verbalist and a plagiary, was a great name in medicine, a 
 name usually joined (as in Chaucer) with more solid reputations 
 than his own. If he identified "mesles" with a variety of 
 
 ^ Rolls of ParUnirirnl. 
 
 - Marly iMiglisli Tcxl Society's edition by Skeat. P.issus xvi. ((oS), and Passus vii. 
 
TJie derivation of '' Measles!' 451 
 
 uwrbilli (which variety no one but himself seems to have heard 
 of), it was an easy transition for the name in English usage to 
 become what it now is, measles meaning morbilli, in the correct 
 and only real sense of the latter\ 
 
 History of the name "Pocks" in English. 
 
 Gaddesden's case of variola which he cured without pitting 
 by means of red cloth stands alone in English records until the 
 1 6th century; probably he was as little able to diagnose variola 
 as morbilli, and it is more than probable that he would not have 
 scrupled to call some infantile malady by the book-name variola^ 
 on the principle of " omne ignotum pro terribili," when there was 
 
 ^ Trench, in his Select Glossary^ has adopted the derivation of measles from 
 iniselliis, without apparently knowing that John of Gaddesden had actually used 
 "mesles" for a form of morbilli. The derivation of measles from misellus has been 
 summarily rejected by Skeat, who thinks that "the spelling with the simple vowel e, 
 instead of ae or ea, makes all the difference. The confusion between the words is 
 probably quite modern." Perhaps I ought not to contradict a philologist on his own 
 ground; but there is no help for it. I know of four instances in which the simple 
 vowel e is used in spelling the name of the disease that is associated with smallpox, 
 the English equivalent of morhilli. In a letter of July 14, 15 18, from Pace, dean of 
 St Paul's to Wolsey {Cal. State Papers, Henry VIII. 11. pt. i), it is said, "They do 
 die in these parts [Wallingford] in every place, not only of the small pokkes and 
 mezils, but also of the great sickness." In the Description of the Pest by Dr Gilbert 
 .Skene, of Edinburgh (Edin. 1568, reprinted for the Bannatyne Club, 1840, p. 9), he 
 mentions certain states of weather "quhilkis also signifeis the Pokis, Mesillis and 
 siclik diseisis of bodie to follow." And if a Scotsman's usage be not admitted, an 
 Oxonian, Cogan, say.s, "when the small pockes and mesels are rife," and another 
 Oxonian, Thomas Lodge, in his Treatise of the Plague (London, 1603, Cap. iii.) says: 
 "When as Fevers are accompanied with Small Poxe, Mesels, with spots," etc. On 
 the other hand, Elyot, in the Castel of Health {1541), Phaer in the Book of Children, 
 (1553), Clowes in his Proved Practice, and Kellwaye (1593) write the word with 
 ea. There is, indeed, no uniformity, just as one might have expected in the sixteenth 
 centuiy. Again, Shakespeare [Coriolanns, Act III., scene i) spells the word with ea 
 where it is clearly the same word that is used in The Visioti of Piers the Plo2ighinan in 
 a generic sense and in the spelling of "meseles :" — "Those meazels which we disdain 
 should tetter us." Lastly, there are not two words in the Elizabethan dictionaries, 
 one with e signifying lepers, and another with ea signifying the disease of viorbilli. 
 In Levins' Manipuhts Vocabidoriun, we find "ye iMaysilles" = z'(7w/a^, but there is 
 no word " mesles " = /^/;W. There was only one word, with the usual varieties of 
 spelling; and in course of time it came to be restricted in meaning to mo7-l)illi, Gad- 
 desden's early use of "mesles" in that sense having doubtless helped to determine the 
 usage. 
 
 29 — 2 
 
452 Generic meaning of " Pocks." 
 
 anything to be gained by so doing. There is no independent 
 evidence that smallpox or measles existed in England in the 
 14th and 15th centuries. There are extant various medieval 
 prescription-books, in which remedies are given for all the usual 
 diseases. If the name of variola, or any English form of it, 
 occur therein, we should draw the same inference as from the 
 prescriptions for maladies of children such as " the kernels," and 
 "the kink" (or whooping-cough) \ In the Anglo-Saxon " leech- 
 doms," which have been collected in three volumes, the word 
 poc occurs once in the singular in the phrase " a poc of the 
 eye" (probably a hordeum or sty of the eyelid), and once in the 
 plural (f^occan) without reference to any part of the body 
 and with no indication that a general eruption was meant. 
 Willan, indeed, has found in a manuscript of uncertain date 
 a Latin incantation against disease, in which the words incs, 
 pestis, pestilentia, and variola occur; at the end of it is written 
 in Anglo-Saxon an invocation of certain saints to " shield me 
 from the latJian poccas and from all eviP." This looks as if 
 poccas had been the Anglo-Saxon translation of variola. But it 
 remains to be seen in what sense the word " pokkes " was used 
 in the earliest English writings. 
 
 In the 'Vision of Piers the Ploughman' (passus xx) the 
 retribution of Nature or " Kynde " upon the wickedness of the 
 times is thus mentioned : 
 
 " Kynde came after with many keen sores, 
 As pokkes and pestilences, and much people shent ; 
 So kynde through corruptions killed full many." 
 
 In the lines immediately preceding there occur some other 
 names, equally generic : 
 
 " Byles and bodies and brennyng agues 
 Frensyes and foul evils, foragers of kynde." 
 
 1 Harl. MS., No. 2378. So far as I have observed, there is no prescription for 
 "mesles," or for smallpox under its Latin name or under any English name that 
 might correspond thereto. Moulton's This is the Myrror or Glasse of Hclth 
 (? 1540), which reproduces these medieval prescriptions with their headings, is 
 ec|ually silent about smallpox and measles. 
 
 ■■^ Willan's Miscellaneous Works. "An Incjuiry into the Antiquity of the Small- 
 pox, Measles, and Scarlet I'ever." London, iS2r, p. 9S. The MS. is Ilarleian, 
 No. 585. 
 
" Variola" applied to Smallpox about 1060. 453 
 
 "Boche" is botch, — the name given to the plague as late as 
 the Stuart period, from its chief external sign, the bubo ; and 
 "byles" is merely the Latin bilis = ulcus. "Pokkes" may be the 
 Anglo-Saxon word; but it is known that many of Langland's 
 colloquialisms are of Norman or French origin, and in that 
 language there is a term pocJie, which is not far from the 
 English " boche." Whether " poche " be the same as " boche " 
 or not, " pokkes and pestilences" may be taken to be synonyms 
 for " byles and boches." The generic or elastic use of such 
 terms received a striking illustration in 1528, when spotted fever 
 (typhus), perhaps mixed with plague, became exceedingly 
 common among French and Spanish troops. Among the 
 French the disease was called les podics and among the 
 Spaniards las bnbas^, although both names had been assigned 
 to syphilis at the time of its epidemic outburst in the end of the 
 15th century. In those times diseases were called by their 
 external marks ; so that diseases essentially most unlike, but 
 having certain spots, or blemishes, or botches, or pustules of the 
 skin in common, were called by a common name. The plague 
 itself was known by certain spots on the breast or back called 
 tokens: hence the figure of John Stow and others that "many 
 died of God's tokens." 
 
 There was certainly laxity of naming to that extent in the 
 case of modern languages. As to Willan's inference from the 
 medieval incantation, it is by no means clear that variola in 
 medieval Latin may not have been used generically also ; 
 although, in the school of Salerno it appears to have had its 
 meaning fixed, in the Arabic sense of smallpox, from the time of 
 Constantinus Africanus, who introduced the teaching of Bagdad 
 into that school about the year 1060. 
 
 The next use of " pokkes " that I have found is in a manu- 
 script chronicle of England down to the year 1419'^ one of the 
 series known as the chronicle of the Brute (from its commencing 
 with the mythical landing of Brutus in England after the siege 
 of Troy) ; this manuscript, known as the " Fruit of Times," was 
 
 ' Sandoval, cited by Meeker, Dcr Euglischc Sc/naass. Berlin, 1834, p. 80. 
 3 MS. Harl., 1568. 
 
454 " The pokkes'' in i^tli century chronielcs. 
 
 afterwards printed at the St Albans press about 1484 \ the 
 history being carried down to Edward IV., and the passage in 
 question reproduced exactly as it stands in the handwriting. 
 Under the 40th year of Edward III. (1366) there is the following 
 entry : 
 
 " Ther fell also such a pestalence that never none such was seen in 
 no man's tyme or lyf, for many men as they were gone to bade hole and in 
 gude poynte sodanly thei diede. Also that tyme fell a seknes that men call 
 ye pokkes, slogh both men and women thorgh ther enfectyne." 
 
 It is clearly the same passage that occurs condensed in the 
 chronicle of William Gregory, mayor of London, which was 
 written probably in 1451-521 Under the 40th of Edward III., 
 after referring to a " grete batille of sparows" just as the earlier 
 chronicle does, he proceeds : " Also the same yere men and 
 bestys were grettely infectyd with pockys, wherfore they dyde, 
 bothe men and bestys." The variation of " men and beasts," 
 instead of men and women, is curious, and suggests that there 
 may have been a common source for the story. The chronicle 
 contemporary with 1366, which is of best authority, was that kept 
 at St Albans Abbey ; but it gives nothing under that year. 
 Shortly after 1361, however, and probably about 1362 or 1363 it 
 has a singular entry, which may have been the source of these 
 references to " pockys." The Latin may be translated thus : 
 " Numbers died of the disease of lethargy prophesying troubles 
 to many ; many women also died of the flux ; and there was a 
 general murrain of cattle^." Here we have men, women, and 
 cattle ; also lethargy, flux, and murrain ; and it is conceivable 
 that later compilers of English chronicles may each have used 
 this contemporary Latin entry of composite events to put their 
 own gloss upon it, or to amplify the history into what each 
 conceived to be the probable meaning. But the most singular 
 enlargement was that made by Holinshed in his chronicle of 
 
 ^ There is a fine copy of the earliest printed version in the British INIuseum, 
 with "Sanctus Albanus" for colophon. The same text was reprinted often in the 
 years following by London printers — in 1498, 1502, i.sio, 1515 (twice), and 1528. 
 
 - Camden Society, ed. Gairdner, 1876, p. 87. 
 
 ^ Walsingham, Hist. Angliae, l. 299. Also Cliroiiicon Aiigliac a qtiodain I\/o- 
 nac/io, sill) anno 1 ^.62. 
 
Smallpox erroneously chronicled in 1366. 455 
 
 1577. Having- copied word for word, sparrows and all, the 
 entry under the year 1366 in the "Fruit of Times" (as printed 
 at St Albans about 1484), he takes leave to amend the sense 
 in the part that chiefly concerns us — he changes " pockys " into 
 " smallpocks," and " men and women " into " men, women, and 
 children \" Holinshed was dealing with an event two hundred 
 years before his own time, and had no more first-hand knowledge 
 of it than we have ; but his authority has been accepted for the 
 fatal prevalence of smallpox in 1366 by modern writers on the 
 history of that disease, such as James Moore ^ who have not 
 sought for the contemporary authority nor exercised a critical 
 judgment upon the lax ways of verbalist compilers. Thus is 
 history made — but not so easily unmade. 
 
 One other reference to " pockys " has to be noticed before we 
 leave the philological part of the subject and come to the 
 unambiguous history of the realities. Fabyan, in his CJironicle 
 written not long before his death in 15 12, says that Edward IV. 
 during an expedition to the Scots Marches " was then vysyted 
 with the syknesse of pockys I" It is futile to conjecture what 
 the king's illness may really have been. The word in Fabyan's 
 time had already acquired a technical sense, which it has ever 
 since retained ; but that well-understood meaning was some 
 twenty years later than the year 1474 (although the disease itself 
 doubtless existed all through the Middle Ages) ; while, in its 
 earlier generic sense, as in the 'Vision of Piers the Ploughman,' 
 it seems to have meant botches or other tokens of pestilential 
 disease. In a Latin glossary of English words, published a 
 hundred years after-*, "a pocke " is still defined ^■s, phage dacna, 
 and "the French pocke" as morbus Gallicns, while "smallpox" is 
 not given at all. 
 
 1 "Also manie died of the smallpocks, both men, women and children." 
 
 - History of the Smallpox, 1817. Bloraefield, also, in his Histoy of Norfolk, 
 quotes the passage about "pockys" correctly from the "Fruit of Times," applies it 
 to Norwich, to which city it had no special relation, and then says that this is the 
 first mention of "small pocks." 
 
 3 Fabyan's Chronicle. Ed. Ellis, p. 653. 
 
 ■* Levins, Maiiipidiis Vocabulorum, i^-jo. Camden Society's edition, column 158. 
 
456 First English references to Smallpox. 
 
 Smallpox in England in the i6th Century. 
 
 The earliest references to smallpox in England, apart from 
 the probably incorrect one by Gaddesden early in the 14th 
 century, occur in letters of the years 15 14 and 15 18. Another 
 letter of 15 14 will serve to bring out the ambiguity of the names 
 given to diseases at the time. On June 30, 15 14, Gerard de 
 Pleine writes from London to Margaret of Savoy that he had 
 been asked by the bishop of Lincoln why the marriage between 
 the princess Mary and Louis XII. had been broken off (it took 
 place shortly after), and by another great peer whether Louis XII. 
 " avoit eu les pocques," which last sentence has a marginal note 
 in the printed collection of letters : " c'est la petite verole '." 
 But les pocques in a letter written from London in 1514 did 
 not mean the smallpox. In a letter of March 3, 15 14, Peter 
 Martyr writing in Latin from Valladolid to Ludovico Mendoza, 
 says that the King of England has had a fever, and that the 
 physicians were afraid it would turn to the pustules called 
 variolae, but he is now well again and rises from his bed ^ This 
 illness of Henry VIII. happened at Richmond previous to 
 7th February. Although in the letter quoted there was only a 
 fear that the illness might have turned to the pustules called 
 smallpox, yet in the instructions of Henry VIII. to Spinelly, 
 English ambassador in the Low Countries, sent in February, the 
 twelfth item instructs him to say that the English king has lately 
 been visited by a malady "nommee la petitte verollel" 
 
 Four years after, on July 14, 1 5 18, Pace writes to Wolsey 
 from Wallingford, where the court then was, that the king was 
 to leave next day for 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 ''." 
 
 ^ Lettres da Roy Louis XII. Brusselle, 171 2, iv. 335. 
 
 ^ Cal. Slate Papers. 
 
 •* " Item, que a son grand desplaisir il ait este naguaires mal dispose d'une maladie 
 nommee la petitte verolle, dont a present, graces a Dieu, il est reconvert et passe tout 
 dangler." Lettres dii Koy Louis XII., w. 260. 15russelle, 1712. 
 
 ^ CuL State Papers. 
 
Smallpox in England, \6tJi century. 457 
 
 These are the earliest known instances of the use of the 
 words pocques, vaj'iola, petite verolle, " small pokkes and 
 mezils," as applied to particular cases of sickness, in corre- 
 spondence from or relating to England. The remarks to be 
 made upon the early usage are : first, that the word pocques, 
 as used by one writing in French from London in 15 14, did not 
 mean smallpox, but pox ; second, that the first authentic 
 mention of smallpox happens to have been in the French form — 
 "une maladie nommee la petitte verolle ; " third, that, in the 
 political gossip of the time the opinion of the physicians 
 regarding the illness of the young king is giv^en as of a fever 
 which they feared might have turned to the pustules called 
 ^' variolae;" and fourthly, that in the very first mention of the 
 disease variola by an English name "small pokkes," the name is 
 modelled on the French, being coupled with the old English 
 name " mezils." It is impossible to infer from these references 
 anything as to the amount of smallpox in England at the time, 
 or even to be sure of the correctness of the diagnosis. The 
 lax usage as between " pox " and " smallpox " is shown in a book 
 of the year 1530 called ' Prognosticacions out of Ipocras and 
 Avicen,' in which a brief reference to variola in the Latin 
 original is translated " to prognosticate of the pockes." 
 
 In Sir Thomas Elyot's Castcl of Health, published in 1541, 
 children after their first infancy are said to suffer from a number 
 of maladies, and in " England commonly purpyls, meazcls and 
 small pockes." That is perhaps the first use of the terms in a 
 systematic tvork on medicine, not indeed by one of the faculty, 
 but by a layman. About the same time we hear of smallpocks 
 in an infant of noble family: a letter of May 26, 1537, from 
 Charles duke of Suffolk to Cromwell, written from Hoxun in 
 Suffolk, excuses his not repairing to Lincolnshire, as the king 
 had ordered, on the ground that " his son fell sick of the 
 smallpox and his wife of the ague \" " His son " was Henry 
 Brandon, born September 18, 1535, so that he was then an 
 infant of some twenty months ; he is the same that died, with 
 his younger brother, of the sweating sickness in July 155 i. 
 
 The reference to smallpocks and meazels by Elyot in his 
 
 1 Cal. state Papers. 
 
458 PJiaer on Smallpox, xC^th ecu tiny. 
 
 Castcl of Health is repeated in the almost contemporary 
 Book of Children by Thomas Phaer. Whether Phaer trans- 
 lated that also " out of the French tongue " as he did the 
 Regiment of Life, with which it is bound up in the edition of 
 1553, we have nowhere any information. In a list of forty 
 infirmities of children, the 32nd in order is " small pockes and 
 measels." A later passage in the Book of Children shows how 
 much, or how little, intelligent meaning Phaer attached to these 
 terms : " Of smallpockes and measels. This disease is common 
 and familiar, called of the Greeks by the general name of 
 exanthemata, and of Plinie papulae et pituitae eruptiones. It 
 is of two kinds : — varioli, ye measils ; morbilli, called of us ye 
 smal pocks. They be but of one nature and proceed of one 
 cause. The signs of both are so manifest to sight that they 
 need no farther declaration;" — but he does add some signs, such 
 as " itch and fretting of the skin as if it had been rubbed with 
 nettles, pain in the head and back etc. : sometimes as it were a 
 dry scab or lepry spreading over all the members, other whiles 
 in pushes, pimples and whayls running with much corruption 
 and matter, and with great pains of the face and throat, dryness 
 of the tongue, hoarseness of voice, and, in some, quiverings of 
 the heart with sownings." He then gives the four causes, three 
 of them being intrinsic states of the humours, and the fourth 
 " when the disease commenceth by the way of contagion, when 
 a sick person infecteth another, and in that case it hath great 
 affinity with the pestilence." The treatment is directed towards 
 bringing out the eruption ; all occasions of chill are to be 
 carefully avoided. More special directions are given for cases 
 in which "the wheales be outrageous and great;" also, "to take 
 away the spots and scarres of the small pockes and measils," a 
 prescription of some authors is given, to use the blood of a bull 
 or of a hare. 
 
 The whole of Phaer's section on smallpox and measles bears 
 evidence of a foreign source, namely the same stock chapter from 
 which Kellwaye drew most of his section upon the same two 
 di.seases appended to his book on the plague in 1593. Not only 
 docs Phaer speak of smallpox and measles conjointly as leaving 
 spots and scars, but he actually renders variolae by measles, and 
 
Variola translated " McaslcsT 459 
 
 morbilli by smallpox. Phaer was more of a literary compiler 
 than a physician with original knowlege of diseases and their 
 pathology. But he is not singular among the Tudor writers in 
 taking measles to be the equivalent of variolae. William 
 Clowes, of St Bartholomew's Hospital, one of the most ex- 
 perienced practitioners of his time, does the same. His Proved 
 Practice for all Yoiuig Chirurgeons has an appendix of Latin 
 aphorisms " taken out of an old written coppy," to each of which 
 aphorisms Clowes has added an English translation : in the 
 aphorism on variolae, that term is translated " measles," the 
 name of " smallpox " nowhere occurring in the book. Clowes's 
 translation is exactly in accordance with the English-Latin 
 glossary of the time by Levins (1570). Levins was an Oxford 
 fellow who had graduated in medicine and afterwards become 
 a schoolmaster, just as Cogan, of The Haven of Health, had 
 done. He wrote the Pathway of Health, and also compiled the 
 Manipnliis Vocabiilorum. His definitions in the latter may be 
 taken, therefore, to stand for the medical usage of the time. In 
 this glossary, "ye maysilles" is rendered hy variole, while the 
 name of " smallpox " is omitted altogether,, " a pocke " having its 
 Latin equivalent in pJiagcdaena, and " ye French pocke " in 
 morbus Gallicus. Li the Elizabethan dictionary by Baret, " the 
 maisils " is defined as "a disease with many reddish spottes or 
 speckles in the face and bodie, much like freckles in colour ; " and 
 that was the disease wliich the English profession then under- 
 stood to be the same as the variolae of medieval writers. 
 
 I leave readers to draw their own conclusions, whether there 
 was much or little smallpox or measles in England in the Tudor 
 period. They may be reminded that Pace, dean of St Paul's, 
 in a letter from Berkshire in 15 18, asserts the fatal prevalence 
 of "smallpox and mezils," and that the duke of Suffolk called 
 the illness of his infant son by the name of smallpox in 1538. 
 They may be farther helped to a conclusion by the following 
 curious instance which has been recorded by John Stow. 
 
 Among the miscellaneous collections of that antiquary pre- 
 served in the Lambeth Library \ there is a narrative of the 
 troubled conscience of Master Richard AUington, esquire, a 
 
 ' Edited by Gairdncr for the Camden Sociely, i8So. 
 
460 A deat]i from Smallpox in London, 1561. 
 
 gentleman who appears to have lent money at high interest. 
 Believing himself to be dying on November 22, 1561, he sum- 
 moned to his bedside at eight in the evening the Master of the 
 Rolls (" Sir John of the Rolls "), two doctors of the law and two 
 other lawyers. 
 
 He began : " Maisters, seinge that I muste nedes die, which I assure you 
 I nevar thought wolde have cum to passe by this dessease, consyderinge it is 
 but the small pockes, I woulde therefore moste hertely desyre you in the 
 reuei'ence of God and for Christes passions sake to suffer me to speake untyll 
 I be dede, that I may dyscharge my conscens" etc. He then explains that 
 "no man had so especial tokens of God's singular grace, and so litele 
 regarded them as I have done," and goes on to mention particular acts of 
 usury and to offer restitution to the amount of some hundred pounds or more. 
 It had occurred to him to do so the second night after he fell sick, being in 
 perfect memory lying in his bed broad awake, but with puppets dancing 
 around him. After entrusting the lawyers at his bed side with these 
 restitutions, he asked the Master of the Rolls to read to him certain of the 
 penitential Psalms which the sick man had selected as appropriate. "And 
 then he thought he should have died, but then broth being given unto him, 
 he revived again and fell to prayer and gave himself wholly to quietness ; " 
 and there the narrative ends. 
 
 It appears from a reference in Stow's Survey of London 
 that he did die in 1561, and that his widow was left well off: 
 for she afterwards built one of the finest of the new houses that 
 were now beginning to line the highway of Holborn almost as 
 far out as St Giles's in the Fields. 
 
 This is the first recorded case of smallpox in English. 
 According to the patient's own view, smallpox was not usually 
 a formidable disease, nor does it appear that the Master of the 
 Rolls and four other eminent lawyers (Dr Caldwell, Dr Good, 
 Mr Garth, and Mr Jones) had been apprehensive of catching it. 
 One finds no other evidence of the existence of smallpox in 
 London or elsewhere in England until it is mentioned in a 
 letter of 1591 and in the essay of Kelhvaye, 1593, which asserts 
 the occurrence of " smallpox and measles " in almost the same 
 language as Phaer's earlier Book of CJiildren and for the most 
 part under the same foreign inspiration. From Scotland we 
 have a single reference in Dr Gilbert Skene's essay on the 
 plague, published in 1568, from the terms of which one may 
 suppose that he is giving his own experience. The season, he 
 
Kclhvayc on Smallpox, 1593. 461 
 
 says, will sometimes foretell the plague, as well as other 
 diseases : 
 
 " Siclyk quhen pokis or sic pustulis are frequent, not onlic amangis barnis, 
 but also amangis those quha be of constant or declynand aige — greit frequent 
 south and south-vest vyndis." In a similar passage on the previous page he 
 couples "pokis, mesillis and siclike diseisis of bodie^." 
 
 In a letter of August 26, 1591, written to a member of queen 
 Elizabeth's court, it is said : " Hir Higness wold you should 
 remove from that place where the smallc pocks were, to take 
 the fresh and clere ayre, the better to purge ye from the 
 infectionV 
 
 In 1593 we come to the first systematic English essay on 
 the disease, appended to the treatise on the plague by Simon 
 Kellwaye^ The author is otherwise unknown as a medical 
 writer, but he is commended in a preface by George Baker, 
 a court surgeon, for his " good and zealous intent and sufficicncie 
 in his profession." In appending an essay on smallpox to a 
 treatise on the plague he follows the example of the Salernian 
 treatise of Alphanus, which also affords him most of his syste- 
 matic materials in both diseases, filtered through Ambroise Pare 
 and other writers. Kellwaye claims, however, to have in- 
 corporated native experience : " which work I have collected 
 and drawn from sundry both auncient and later writers, the 
 which being shadowed under the calm shroud of auncient consent 
 and strengthened with the abundant sap of late experience (as 
 well mine own as others) I here present the same." In the 
 treatise on the plague (fol. 2) he mentions smallpox as among 
 the forerunners or prognostics of that disease : 
 
 " When the smalle poxe doth generally abound both in young- and old 
 people." In the separate essay on the smallpox (fol. 38), its interest is again 
 that of a forerunner or sequel of the plague, according to the foreign teaching 
 of the time : 
 
 " For that oftentimes those that are infected with the plague are in 
 the end of the disease sometimes troubled with the smallpockes or measels, 
 as also by good observation it hath been seen that they are forerunners or 
 
 ^ Bannatyne Club's reprint, 1840, pp. 9-10. 
 
 2 The Lostdey Alaniiscripts. Edited by Kempe. London, 1S36, p. 315. 
 
 * A Defensative against the Plague whcrciinto is annexed a sliort treatise of the 
 
 smalt Poxe, how to govern and help those that are infected therewith. London, 1593. 
 
462 Kclhvayc on Smallpox, 1593. 
 
 warnings of the plague to come, as Salius and divers other writers do testify, 
 I have thought good and as a matter pertinent to my former treatise" etc. 
 
 He proceeds : " I need not greatly to stand upon the description of this 
 disease because it is a thing well known unto most people." It begins with 
 a fever ; then shortly after there arise small red pustules upon the skin 
 throughout all the body, which come forth more or less intermittently ; " In 
 some there arise many little pustules with elevation of the skin, which in one 
 day do increase and grow bigger, and after have a thick matter growing in 
 them, which the Greeks call exanthemata or ecthymata ; and after the 
 Latins variola, in our English tongue the smallpockes ; and here some 
 writers do make a difference betwixt variola and exanthemata : for, say they, 
 that is called variola when many of those pustules do suddenly run into a 
 clear bladder, as if it had been scalled, but the other doth not so ; yet are 
 they both one in the cure." He recognizes the contagious property of the 
 disease, calling it "hereditable :" " For we see when one is infected therewith, 
 that so many as come near him (especially those which are allied in the same 
 blood) do assuredly for the most part receive the infection also." His Practica 
 are taken almost entirely from the Arabian writers, as filtered through 
 Gaddesden, one of them being the prevention of pitting by opening the pocks 
 with a gold pin or needle. He had heard, however, "of some which, having 
 not used anything at all, but suffering them to dry up and fall of themselves 
 without picking or scratching, have done very well, and not any pits remained 
 after it." He then refers to complications, such as ulcerations of the skin, 
 soreness and ulcerations of the mouth {aphthae), soreness of the tonsils, and 
 glueing together of the eyelids, all of which are stock paragraphs in the 
 foreign writers of the time and are probably transferred from the latter. 
 Also he goes a considerable way towards the separation of measles from 
 smallpox, which was not fully effected in England until the century following : 
 "What the measels or males are : — many little pimples which are not to be 
 seen but only by feeling with the hand are to be perceived ; they do not 
 maturate as the pocks doth do, nor assault the eyes" etc. 
 
 About ten years after Kellvvaye's essay, there began, in 1604, 
 the classification of the deaths in London by the Company 
 of Parish Clerks : but it was not until 1629 that their weekly 
 and annual bills were regularly printed. In the first printed 
 bills, " Flox, smallpox and measles " appear as one entry. The 
 meaning of "flox " seems to be explained by Kellwaye's remark: 
 "And here some writers do make a difference betwixt variola 
 and exanthemata ; for, say they, that is called variola when 
 many of those pustules do suddenly run into a clear bladder 
 as if it had been scalled, but the other doth not so." That 
 is the distinction between confluent smallpo.x and discrete ; 
 
A lyric on the Smallpox, 1602. 463 
 
 and the most probable explanation of " flox " is that it stands 
 for the confluent kind, or for the pustules that run together into 
 a clear bladder. 
 
 Smallpox in the 17th Century. 
 
 The gradual rise of smallpox to prominence in England 
 about the end of the Elizabethan period and in the first years 
 of the Stuarts cannot fail to strike anyone who is occupied 
 with the English records of disease as a whole. Smallpox 
 and measles may have been, and almost certainly were, observed 
 in England in the earlier part of the i6th century; but they 
 make no such figure in the records, domestic and other, as 
 they do from the beginning of the 17th century onwards. 
 Perhaps the first mention of smallpox, in English literature 
 proper, occurs in a collection of lyrical poems published in 
 i6o2\ In some verses "Upon his Ladies sicknesse of the 
 Small Pocks," the poet, Th. Spilman, apostrophises the "cruel 
 and impartial sickness " and asks, — 
 
 Are not these thy steps I trace 
 In the pure snow of her face? 
 
 Th' heavenly honey thou dost suck 
 From her rose cheeks, might suffice ; 
 Why then didst thou mar and pkick 
 Those dear flowers of rarest price ? 
 
 In two letters of Dr Donne, dean of St Paul's, written 
 probably a few years before his death in 163 1, reference is 
 made to the smallpox in London. In the one he says : 
 
 "At my return from Kent to my gate, I found Peg had the pox : so I 
 withdrew to Prickham and spent a fortnight there. And without coming 
 home, when I could with some justice hope that it would spread no farther 
 amongst them (as I humbly thank God it hath not, nor much disfigured her 
 that had it), I went into Bedfordshire " etc. 
 
 1 Francis Davison's Poetical Rapsodie. The poem of .Spilman occurs at p. 1S9 of 
 the edition of 161 1. In the piratical edition of 162 r, after Davison's death, "small" 
 is left out before " Pocks," and Spilman's name omitted al the foot of the verses. 
 The printer's error has had the singular effect of leading Dr Farmer, the writer on 
 Shakespeare, to conclude that the word "pox" in the Elizabethan jicriod meant 
 smallpox even in imprecations such as "a pox on it." 
 
464 Smallpox in England, \yth century. 
 
 This dread of smallpox infection is quite unlike anything 
 that we meet with in the earlier 16th-century domestic me- 
 morials ; in them it is only the infection of the plague that 
 comes in. Donne's other reference is to the sickness of my 
 lord Harrington: "a few days since they were doubtful of him; 
 but he is so well recovered that now they know all his disease 
 to be the pox and measles mingled \" 
 
 Cases of smallpox among the upper classes are occasionally 
 mentioned in the letters written by Chamberlain to Carleton in 
 the reigns of James I. and Charles I.^ On December 17, 1612, 
 " The Lord Lisle hath lost his eldest son, Sir William Sidney, 
 by the smallpox, which were well come out." On December 31, 
 the same year, Carleton, writing from abroad, mentions that the 
 duke of Mantua had died of the smallpox about three weeks 
 since, of which he buried his only son not three weeks before. 
 Also on December 31, Chamberlain writes to him, that the 
 Lady Webbe was sick of the smallpox, of which, he says in 
 another letter, she died : " She was grown a very proper woman, 
 but loved the town too well, which in a short time would have 
 drawn her and her husband dry as well in purse as in reputa- 
 tion." It is the year 1614 that is given (by Horst) as the worst 
 season of smallpox all over Europe and the East ; England is 
 mentioned by the foreign writer as among the countries affected, 
 but there is no trace of an epidemic in our own records. On 
 April 20, 1616, Chamberlain mentions the case of the duke of 
 Buckingham, the favourite ; " he hath been crazy of late, not 
 without suspicion of the smallpox, which, if it had fallen out, 
 actum est dc amicitia. But it proves otherwise." Buckingham's 
 illness, for which he took much physic, produced an imposthume 
 on his head (an effect which followed in the more notorious 
 illness of Wolsey), and he is elsewhere said to be suffering from 
 the morbus comitialis. The suggestion of smallpox appears to be 
 the same euphemism which was resorted to in the cases of other 
 exalted personages. 
 
 On August 21, 1624, having written of the great mortality 
 
 1 Sir Tobie Matthews' Leticrs (1577-1655), London, 1660. (i) Donne to Mrs 
 
 Cockaine, p. 342; (2) Uonne to .Sir R. D , botli witliout date. 
 
 - Court and Times of James I. 
 
Smallpox ill the lyth century. 465 
 
 from fevers, Chamberlain adds : " Lady Winwood, hearing that 
 her only daughter was fallen sick of the smallpox at Ditton and 
 that they came not out currently," had gone to her. On 
 December 18, 1624, "the Lady Purbeck is sick of the smallpox, 
 and her husband is so kind that he stirs not from her bed's 
 feet." In the first week of June, 1625, the famous composer 
 Orlando Gibbons died at Canterbury, not without suspicion of 
 the plague*, but according to another opinion of the smallpox^. 
 
 With the year 1629, the causes of death in London began to 
 be published by Parish Clerks' Hall in a rough classification, 
 smallpox being a regular item from year to year. For the 
 first eight years the deaths from " flox, smallpox, and measles " 
 were as follows : 
 
 1629 72 1631 58 1633 72 1635 293 
 
 1630 40 1632 531 1634 1354 1636 127 
 
 The greatest epidemic, it will be seen, was in 1634 1 For 
 the years 1637-1646, the figures are lost (owing to Graunt's 
 omitting them in his Table of 1662, for want of room). But it 
 is known from letters that the autumn of 1641 was a season of 
 severe smallpox as well as plague. Thus on August 26, " both 
 Houses grow very thin by reason of the smallpox and plague 
 that is in the town, 133 dying here this week of the plague, and 
 118 of the smallpox, 610 in the whole of all diseases." On 
 September 9, a letter from Charing Cross sa)'s : " Died this 
 week of the plague 185, and of the smallpox loi." The plague 
 mortality continues to be mentioned in subsequent letters, but 
 the references to smallpox cease*. On July 16, 1642, one excuses 
 his attendance on some State business because he is sick of the 
 smallpox''. 
 
 About the Restoration the references to smallpox become 
 more numerous^ A letter of January 4, 1658 (1659), speaks of 
 
 ^ Court and Times of Charles I. (Cliambeilain to Carleton), I. 28. 
 
 - Anthony Wood. 
 
 ^ For Chester also, in the parish register of Trinity Church (Harl. MS. ii'") there 
 is a note opposite 1636 : "for this two or three years divers children died of smallpox 
 in Chester." 
 
 ^ Cal. State Papers. s Ibid. 
 
 *" Hist. MSS. Commission, v. 146, 151, 156, 168, 174, 2or. .^ee also the Diaries 
 of Pepys and Evelyn. 
 
 c. .30 
 
466 Smallpox in Loudon, \']th century- 
 
 " much sickness in the town [London], especially fevers, agues 
 and smallpox." On February 7, 1660, the earl of Anglesey is 
 dead of the smallpox. In September, i56o, Lord Oxford had a 
 severe attack and recovered ; at the same time the duke of 
 Gloucester, on the 8th September, was diagnosed by the doctors 
 to have " a disease between the smallpox and the measles ; he 
 is now past danger of death for this bout, as the doctors say." 
 However he died on 14th September, in the tenth day of the 
 disease, with remarkable evidences (post mortem) of internal 
 haemorrhage, having bled freely at the nose a few hours before 
 his death. The eruption had "come out full and kindly" at the 
 beginning, so that it was not the ordinary haemorrhagic type. 
 On the 20th December, 1660, the princess Henrietta goes to 
 St James's for fear of the smallpox. On the i6th January, 1660 
 (.'' 1661), "the princess is recovered of the measles." Letters 
 from a lady at Hambleton to her husband in London, May 26, 
 1661, speaks of smallpox raging in the place, and in the house 
 of her nearest neighbour, her own children having the whooping- 
 cough. In the bills of mortality of those years the deaths in 
 London from smallpox and measles were as follows : 
 
 1647 
 
 139 
 
 1652 
 
 1279 
 
 1657 
 
 835 
 
 1662 
 
 768 
 
 1648 
 
 401 
 
 1653 
 
 139 
 
 1658 
 
 409 
 
 1663 
 
 411 
 
 1649 
 
 1 1 90 
 
 1654 
 
 832 
 
 1659 
 
 1523 
 
 1664 
 
 1233 
 
 1650 
 
 184 
 
 1655 
 
 1294 
 
 1660 
 
 354 
 
 1665 
 
 655 
 
 1 65 1 
 
 525 
 
 1656 
 
 823 
 
 I66I 
 
 1246 
 
 1666 
 
 38 
 
 These figures bring us down to the period of Sydenham, who 
 was the first accurate observer of smallpox in London. With 
 his writings, and with those of Willis and Morton, we begin a 
 new era in the history of epidemics in England. We find, for 
 the first time in the history, an adequate discussion of the 
 epidemiological and clinical facts by the ablest men in the 
 profession. But, as the new era is at one and the same time 
 marked by the cessation of plague and by the enormous 
 increase of various fevers, as well as of smallpox, it falls without 
 the limits of this volume, making, indeed, the appropriate 
 beginning of the new kind of epidemic history which is charac- 
 teristic of England from the Restoration and the Revolution 
 down to the end of the i8th centurv. It is clear, from the 
 
Increase of Smallpox after tJie Restoration. 467 
 
 instances above given, that smallpox was already at the begin- 
 ning of the 17th century becoming a pest among the upper 
 classes. But to anyone who studies the history over continuous 
 periods it is equally clear that its prominence was then some- 
 thing new and that the horror and alarm which it caused 
 became greater as the 17th century approached its close. And 
 so as not to leave the history of smallpox at this point with a 
 wrong impression of its general virulence, it may be added that 
 Dr Plot, writing of Oxfordshire in 1677, says: "Generally here 
 they are so favorable and kind, that be the nurse but tolerably 
 good, the patient seldom miscarries*." 
 
 Smallpox in Continental "Writings of the i6th century. 
 
 It would be beside the purpose of this work to follow the 
 history of smallpox and measles on the continent of Europe. 
 But it will be necessary to say a few words on the contemporary 
 foreign writings upon these diseases, as it is chiefly teaching 
 from a foreign source that we detect in the English authors of 
 the i6th century. 
 
 It might be inferred from the classical work of Fracastori'"*, 
 published in 1546, that smallpox and measles were frequent and 
 familiar diseases in the author's experience at Verona. At the 
 same time it is clear that even he, original observer as he was, 
 is in places merely repeating the old statements of the Arabian 
 writers. Thus his statement that everyone has smallpox or 
 measles sooner or later, is the old Arabian tradition or ex- 
 perience, usually joined to the explanation that the cause of 
 that universality was the nourishment of the foetus by the 
 retained and impure menstrual blood, so that all children had 
 to free their constitutions of a congenital impurity sooner or 
 later. So far as Fracastori's originality comes in, it is clear th^t 
 he does not regard smallpox and measles as serious troubles. 
 In his second chapter he says : 
 
 " First we must treat of those contagious maladies which, although 
 contagious, are not called pestilential, because, for the most part, they are 
 
 ' Natural History of Oxfordshire. Oxford, 1677, p. 13. 
 - De cofitagione et coiitagiosis viorhis, etc. Venet. 1546. 
 
 30—2 
 
468 Smallpox on the Continent, \6th century. 
 
 salubrious. Of such are variolae and morbilli. By variolae are understood 
 those which are called also varollae by the common people, from their 
 likeness, I suppose, to the pustules called vari. By morbilli are understood 
 those which the common people style fersae, so-called perhaps from fervor. 
 But of these the Greeks do not appear to have treated under any other name 
 than exanthemata. They happen principally in children, rarely in men, 
 most rarely in old people. But they seem to befall all men once in life, or to 
 be apt to befall them unless a premature death removes the individual. In 
 boys the malady is more benign than in adults. For the more part, as 
 already said, they are salubrious, since this ebullition of the blood is 
 something of a purification of the same. It afflicts more or less according to 
 the density of the blood and as the vice is apt or not to be separated from it. If 
 the blood be more pituitous, the pustules are variform, white, round and full 
 of a kind of mucus ; but if it be more bilious the pustules break forth more 
 of a dry sort. Where the disease has happened once it is not apt to recur ; 
 but there are cases where it has happened more than once." 
 
 In the brief account by Fracastori, all the points are stated 
 for measles and smallpox together ; and the opinion is twice 
 put forward that an attack was salubrious as purifying the 
 blood or as freeing it from some vice — an opinion which is 
 still popularly held. 
 
 It is not until the latter half of the i6th century that we 
 come to real epidemiological records of smallpox on the Conti- 
 nent, — the works by Donatus on smallpox and measles at 
 Mantua in 1567, and by Betera upon epidemics at Brescia in 
 157O) 1577 ^"d 1588, in which the more malignant types of 
 smallpox were seen\ The treatise most used was that of 
 Alphanus, published at Naples in 1577^; it was on plague and 
 pestilential fever, with an appendix on smallpox. Either it or 
 Ambroise Fare's chapters seem to have furnished the greater 
 part of the English essay by Kellwaye on the plague and 
 smallpox. 
 
 In Ambroise Fare's references to smallpox there occurs one 
 singular line of remark which will serVe to bring us back to 
 etymology and to the great pox^ The petite verole, he says, 
 
 1 Titles in Iliiser, ni. 383. 
 
 ^ Optis de peste necnon de variolis, Neap. 1577. 
 
 3 Les mivres de M. Ambroise Pare. 5th ed., Paris, 1598, Books XIX. and XX. 
 The chapters on Plague, Smallpox, etc. , were originally published, according to 
 Haser, in 1568. 
 
Supposed affinity of Gnat pox to Smallpox. 469 
 
 has a resemblance to the grosse vcrole as sometimes attacking 
 the bones. He had seen that in smallpox cases not only in 
 1568 but on other occasions: and he gives the details of two 
 cases of smallpox, apparently with periostitis and necrosis, 
 which he compares to cases of the great pox. To express in 
 one word the meaning of such cases, he says, the smallpox and 
 roiigeolle, not having been well purged, give rise to various 
 troublesome accidents, as the great pox does. One cannot read 
 Fare's chapters on the grosse verole and the petite verole without 
 detecting an inclination to compare them or class them together 
 in nosological characters. The comparison or classification is by 
 no means explicit ; but it seems to be in his thoughts, and he 
 would seem, accordingly, to have held until a late period of the 
 i6th century a view of the two diseases which was not unusual 
 at the beginning of that century (as in the treatise of Pinctor 
 and in the accounts of the dreadful mortality of Indians in 
 Hispaniola and Mexico'), and was expressed in the popular 
 names given to each disease in France and in England. 
 
 ^ See Piuchas, Filgrhnes, ni. 996, where syphilis and smallpox are included 
 together as "infectious or pestilentiall pocks," Ramusio being given as the authority 
 for the smallpox and Oviedo for the great pox. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 PLAGUE, FEVER AND INFLUENZA FROM THE ACCESSION 
 OF THE STUART DYNASTY TO THE RESTORATION. 
 
 The last period of plague in England, from 1603 to its 
 extinction in 1666, was as fatal as any that the capital, and the 
 provincial towns, had known since the 14th century. The 
 mortalities in London in 1603, 1625, and 1665 are the greatest in 
 the whole history of the City's epidemics, not, perhaps, relatively 
 to the population, but in absolute numbers. The capital was 
 growing rapidly, having now become the greatest trading 
 community in Europe. The dangers which were foreseen in the 
 proclamation of 1580, of an extension of the City's borders 
 beyond civic control, had been realized. The old walled city, 
 like Vienna down to a quite recent date, remained both the 
 residential quarter and the centre of trade and commerce: the 
 original suburbs, which were in the Liberties or Freedom of the 
 City, were the slums — the fringe of poverty covered by the 
 poorest class of tenements, unpaved and without regular streets, 
 but penetrated by alleys twisting and turning in an endless 
 maze. The City was not, indeed, without a good deal of 
 building of the same class, especially in the parish of St 
 Stephen, Coleman Street, the most populous parish within the 
 walls. But what was an occasional thing in the City where 
 gardens and other open spaces had been built upon, was the 
 rule in the parishes beyond the walls. It was in the Liberties and 
 outparishes that the plague of 1603 began: its origin in 1625 is 
 
Tlie neiver parishes of London the iinhealthicst. 471 
 
 less certain ; but there can be no question as to the gradual 
 progress of the Great Plague of 1665 from the west end of the 
 town down Holborn and the Strand to the City, to the great 
 parishes on the north-east and east, and across the water to 
 Southwark. From one point of view we may represent the later 
 plagues as incidents in the transition from the medieval to the 
 modern state of the capital — a transition which proceeded 
 slowly and is still unfinished so far as concerns the forms of 
 municipal government. The history of the public health of 
 London is, for nearly two centuries, the history of irregular and 
 uncontrolled expansion, of the failure of old municipal institutions 
 to overtake new duties. Perhaps if Wren's grand conception of 
 a New London after the fire of 1666 had been taken up and 
 given effect to by Charles IL, the Liberties and suburbs might 
 have been joined more organically to the centre and have 
 benefited by the municipal traditions of the latter. The history of 
 the public health in London during the latter part of the 
 17th century and the whole of the i8th might in that case have 
 been a less melancholy record. That history falls within our 
 next volume ; but as it began with the expansion of London 
 under Elizabeth and the Stuarts, this is the place to review the 
 growth of the City from the time when it broke through its 
 medieval limits. 
 
 The Growth of London in the Tudor and Stuart Periods ^ 
 
 The accession of James I. to the English crown in 1603 
 corresponds in time with the pretensions of London to be the 
 first city in Europe. " London," says Dekker, in The Wondcrfull 
 Yeare, " was never in the highway to preferment till now. For 
 she saw herself in better state than Jerusalem, she went more 
 gallant than ever did Antwerp, was more courted by amorous 
 and lustie suitors than Venice (the minion of Italy); more lofty 
 towers stood about her temples than ever did about the beautiful 
 forehead of Rome; Tyre and Sydon to her were like two thatcht 
 
 ' For details of the increase of London population, with the sources of evidence, 
 I be<j to refer to my essay, " The Population of Old London," PlackivooJ s Magazine, 
 April, 1891. 
 
472 GrowtJi of London from Medieval times. 
 
 houses to Theobals, the grand Cairo but a hogsty." That is, of 
 course, in Dekker's manner ; but it can be shown by figures that 
 London took a great start in the end of Elizabeth's reign and 
 grew still faster under James. 
 
 From Richard I. to Henry VII., London was the medieval 
 walled city, as Drayton says, " built on a rising bank within a 
 vale to stand," with a population between 40,000 and 50,000. 
 Without the walls lay a few city parishes or parts of parishes, 
 including the three dedicated to St Botolph outside Aldgate, 
 Bishopsgate and Aldersgate, respectively, and St Giles's without 
 Cripplegate, all of these being at the gates or close to the 
 walls. On the western side, however, lay an extensive but 
 sparsely populated suburb, which was erected in 1393 into the 
 Ward of Farringdon Without ; it extended westward from the 
 city wall as far as Temple Bar, Holborn Bars and West 
 Smithfield, and was divided into the four great parishes of 
 St Sepulchre's without Newgate, St Andrew's, on the other side 
 of Holborn valley, St Dunstan's in the West (about Chancery 
 Lane and Fetter Lane), arid St Bride's, Fleet Street. 
 
 The earliest known bills of mortality, in 1532 and 1535, from 
 which a population of some 62,400 might be deduced, show 
 that the St Botolph parishes, St Giles's without Cripplegate and 
 the four great parishes in the western Liberties (or, more 
 correctly, in the ward of Farringdon Without) had one-third of 
 the whole deaths, and presumably about one-third of the whole 
 population. In the few memoranda left of the plague-bills of 
 1563, we find evidence that the population had increased to 
 some 93,276, of which about a sixth or seventh part, or some 
 12,000 to 1 5 poo was in the " out-parishes," or in the parishes not 
 only beyond the walls, but beyond the Bars of the Freedom. 
 The most valuable series of statistics for Elizabethan London are 
 those which give the christenings and burials for five years from 
 1578 to 1582; from those of the year 1580, which was almost 
 free from the disturbing element of plague, a population of some 
 123,034 may be deduced by taking the birth-rate at 29 per 1000 
 living and the death-rate at 23 per 1000, or in each case at a 
 favourable rate corresponding to the large excess of births over 
 deaths. 
 
Si:;e of London under Elizabeth. 
 
 473 
 
 There is not enough left of the introduction to these old 
 manuscript abstracts of weekly births and deaths to show how 
 many parishes they relate to, or what is the proportion for each 
 division of the capital. But, as the earlier series of bills of 
 mortality from 1563 to 1566 included the City, the Liberties 
 and the out-parishes, it is probable that the series from 1578 to 
 1582 had done the same. The crowding of the Liberties with a 
 poor class of tenements, and the extension of the out-parishes, 
 are otherwise known from the preamble to the proclamation of 
 1580, which prohibited all building on new sites within three 
 miles of the City wall. The next figures are for the years 1593, 
 1594, and 1595, which show a population increased to about 
 152,000. 
 
 From the figures of the plague-year, 1593, it appears that the 
 mortality within the walls, both from plague and from ordinary 
 causes, had now become the smaller half, or somewhat less than 
 that "without the walls and in the Liberties," — a phrase which 
 is used loosely, even in some official bills, for both Liberties and 
 suburbs. In 1604 we have the exact proportions of deaths in 
 the City, in the Liberties and in the out-parishes respectively : 
 
 96 parishes 
 within walls 
 
 All deaths 
 Plague deaths 
 Christenings 
 
 1798 
 280 
 
 16 parishes 
 in Liberties 
 
 2465 
 368 
 
 8 parishes out 
 of the Freedom 
 
 956 
 
 248 
 
 Total 
 
 5219 
 
 896 
 
 5458 
 
 I 
 
 The sixteen parishes of the Liberties are now decidedly 
 ahead of the ninety-six old City parishes, while the eight 
 out-parishes have some 18 per cent of the whole mortality. 
 The population is best reckoned from the 6504 baptisms of the 
 year after, 1605, by which time the disturbance of the enormous 
 mortality in 1603 had ceased to be felt; at a birth-rate of 29 
 per 1000, the population would be some 224,275. The propor- 
 tions in 1605, from the bills of mortality for the year, are 33-8 
 per cent, in the City, 50 per cent, in the Liberties, and i6-2 per 
 cent, in the out-parishes ; so that the City would have contained 
 in that year about 76,000, the Liberties about 114,000, and the 
 out-parishes about 37,000. To those numbers we should have to 
 
474 ^z.S'r of London at the Restoration. 
 
 add some 20,000 or 30,000 for Westminster, Stepney, Lambeth, 
 Newington, etc. 
 
 According to Graunt's contemporary estimate for 1662, the 
 population had grown to 460,000, or to rather more than double 
 that of 1605; and whereas the proportion in 1605 was two-sixths 
 in the City, three-sixths in the Liberties and one-sixth in the 
 out-parishes, he makes it in 1662 to have been one-fifth in the 
 City, three-fifths in the Liberties (including Southwark) and the 
 out-parishes nearest to the Bars, and one-fifth in the out-parishes 
 of Stepney, Redriff, Newington, Lambeth, Islington and Hack- 
 ney, with the city of Westminster. Thus, whereas in 1535 the 
 City had two-thirds of the whole estimated population, in 1662 it 
 had one-fifth ; but with its one-fifth in 1662 it was twice as 
 crowded as with its two-thirds in 1535, the comparatively open 
 appearance given to it by gardens in various localities, as on 
 Tower Hill, having entirely gone. 
 
 As early as the plague of 1563, the Liberties were observed 
 to be first infected, and to retain the infection longest ; that is 
 alleged of St Sepulchre's parish by Dr John Jones, from 
 personal knowledge. The history of the plague of 1593 is 
 imperfectly known ; but it is clear from Stow's summation of 
 the deaths during the year, that more died of plague in the 
 Liberties and suburbs than in the City. Of the next plague, 
 that of 1603, we know that it did begin in the Liberties and was 
 prevalent in those skirts of the City for some time before it 
 entered the gates. " Death," says The Wonderfull Yeare, " had 
 pitcht his tents in the sinfully polluted suburbs... the skirts of 
 London were pitifully pared off by little and little ; which they 
 within the gates perceiving," etc. Then the plague, represented 
 as an invading force, " entered within the walls and marched 
 through Cheapside," the wealthier inhabitants having escaped 
 meanwhile. 
 
 The London Plague of 1603. 
 
 The most useful document for the London plague of 1603 is 
 a printed Bill of Mortality which is in the Guildhall Library. 
 The bill, which is in the form of a broadside, is for the week 
 
Mortality in the London Plague of 1603. 475 
 
 13-20 October, and purports to be a true copy, according to the 
 report made to the king by the Company of Parish Clerks, and 
 printed by John Winder, printer to the honourable City of 
 London \ It is necessary to be thus particular, because the clerk 
 of the Company of Parish Clerks in the end of 1665 (between the 
 Plague and the Fire) published an account of all the statistics of 
 former plagues preserved in his office, and emphatically denied 
 that the Parish Clerks gave in an accompt for the year 1603 ; 
 they did not resume their series after 1595, he says, until 29th 
 December, 1603. But the clerk was mistaken, as even the most 
 prim of officials will sometimes be. The printed bill which has 
 come down to us gives the usual weekly return of deaths from all 
 causes in one column and those from plague in another, for each 
 of the 96 parishes within their walls, each of the 16 parishes in 
 the Liberties and each of 8 out-parishes. On the right hand 
 margin it gives also a summary statement of the deaths in " the 
 first great plague in our memory" that of 1563, which is the 
 same as in Stow's Annates, and of the deaths in the next great 
 plague, that of 1593, which differs considerably from Stow's. 
 It then goes on to give the sum of the figures of the year 1603 
 from 17th December, 1602, and carries the deaths per week 
 from 2 1st July down to date, the 20th of October, adding 
 some information for the parishes which kept separate bills, 
 namely, Westminster, the Savoy, Stepney, Newington Butts, 
 Islington, Lambeth and Hackney. This extant weekly bill 
 was probably one of a series; for Graunt, in his book of 1662, 
 cites various figures of weekly baptisms throughout the year 
 1603 which would appear to have been taken from the bills 
 for the respective weeks. But the returns had not been made 
 regularly from all the parishes within the Bills from the be- 
 ginning of the year 1603. The reason why the weekly figures 
 are not recapitulated farther back than the week ending July 21, 
 is that the outparishes had not sent in their returns until that 
 week. From another source, we know the figures for the City 
 and Liberties from March 10 to July 14, and from the same 
 source we obtain the totals for all parishes within the Bills from 
 
 1 Broadside in the Guildhall Library, bound up in a volume labelled Political 
 Tracts, 1680. 
 
476 
 
 Weekly deaths in London, 1603. 
 
 October 19 to the end of the year. By putting these figures 
 into one table, we may represent the mortality of 1603, not 
 indeed completely, as follows : 
 
 Weekly Mortalities in London during the plague of 1603. 
 
 
 ling 
 
 City and Liberties. 
 
 Out parishes. 
 
 Totals. 
 
 Week enc 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 All causes. 
 
 Plague. 
 
 All causes. 
 
 Plague. 
 
 All causes. 
 
 Plague. 
 
 March 
 
 17 
 
 24 
 
 31 
 
 108 
 60 
 
 78 
 
 3 
 2 
 6 
 
 
 
 
 
 April 
 
 7 
 
 14 
 21 
 28 
 
 66 
 
 79 
 
 98 
 
 109 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 8 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 
 
 May 
 
 5 
 12 
 
 19 
 
 26 
 
 90 
 112 
 122 
 112 
 
 II 
 18 
 22 
 30 
 
 
 
 
 
 June 
 
 2 
 
 9 
 15 
 23 
 30 
 
 114 
 
 134 
 144 
 182 
 267 
 
 30 
 43 
 59 
 72 
 
 158 
 
 
 
 
 
 July 
 
 7 
 14 
 
 445 
 612 
 
 263 
 
 424 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 21 
 
 867 
 
 646 
 
 319 
 
 271 
 
 I 186 
 
 917 
 
 
 28 
 
 1312 
 
 1025 
 
 398 
 
 354 
 
 1710 
 
 1379 
 
 Aug. 
 
 4 
 
 1700 
 
 1439 
 
 537 
 
 464 
 
 2237 
 
 I90I 
 
 
 II 
 
 1655 
 
 1372 
 
 410 
 
 361 
 
 2065 
 
 1733 
 
 
 18 
 
 2486 
 
 2199 
 
 568 
 
 514 
 
 3054 
 
 2713 
 
 
 25 
 
 2343 
 
 2091 
 
 510 
 
 448 
 
 2853 
 
 2539 
 
 Sept. 
 
 I 
 
 2798 
 
 2495 
 
 587 
 
 542 
 
 3385 
 
 3037 
 
 
 8 
 
 2583 
 
 2283 
 
 495 
 
 441 
 
 3078 
 
 2724 
 
 
 15 
 
 2676 
 
 241 1 
 
 433 
 
 407 
 
 3109 
 
 2818 
 
 
 22 
 
 2080 
 
 1851 
 
 376 
 
 344 
 
 2456 
 
 2195 
 
 
 29 
 
 1666 
 
 1478 
 
 295 
 
 254 
 
 1961 
 
 1732 
 
 Oct. 
 
 6 
 
 1528 
 
 1367 
 
 306 
 
 274 
 
 1834 
 
 164I 
 
 
 13 
 
 1 109 
 
 962 
 
 203 
 
 184 
 
 1312 
 
 1 146 
 
 
 20 
 
 647 
 
 546 
 
 119 
 
 96 
 
 766 
 
 642 
 
 
 27 
 
 
 
 
 
 625 
 
 508 
 
 Nov. 
 
 3 
 10 
 
 17 
 24 
 
 
 
 
 
 737 
 545 
 384 
 198 
 
 594 
 442 
 257 
 105 
 
 Dec. 
 
 I 
 
 8 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 
 
 223 
 163 
 200 
 
 102 
 
 55 
 96 
 
 
 22 
 
 
 
 
 
 168 
 
 74 
 
I 
 
 Additions for tJie Suburbs, 1603. 477 
 
 These figures may be accepted as real, so far as they go ; 
 and they give a total (37,192 from all causes, whereof of the 
 plague, 30,519) which is nearly the same as that usually taken, 
 e.g. by Graunt, for the mortality of the whole year in all London 
 (37,294 from all causes, whereof of the plague, 30,561). But 
 it is clear that important additions have to be made. In the 
 first place, no deaths are included for the weeks previous to 
 March 10. In the second place, no deaths are included from 
 the out-parishes (within the Bills), previous to July 14. In the 
 third place, no deaths at all are included from Westminster, 
 Stepney, Newington, Lambeth, etc. These omissions have to be 
 kept in mind when the plague of 1603 is compared with those 
 of 1625 and 1665, for which the figures are fully ascertained; and 
 we possess various data from which to supply them approxi- 
 mately. One great addition, with nothing conjectural in it, is 
 for the seven parishes outside the general bill of mortality. 
 Stepney being the largest : they kept their own bills, and the 
 figures from them, for the principal part of the year, are given 
 on the margin of the broadside, as quoted below*. Another 
 unconjectural addition is the mortality from all causes in the 
 City and Liberties from December 17, 1602, to March 10, 1603, 
 which was 1375, having been mostly non-plague deaths. All 
 these deaths, actually known, bring the total for the year up 
 to 42,945 whereof of the plague about 33,347. The farther 
 
 ^ "The time when it began in the City of Westminster and these places following : 
 
 "Buried in Westminster from 14 July to 20 October, in the whole number 
 832, whereof of the plague 723. Buried in the Savoy from the ist of June to the 20th 
 of October, in the whole number 182, whereof of the plague, 171. Buried in the 
 parish of Stepney from the 25th of March to the 20th of October, in all 1978, whereof 
 of the plague, 1871. Buried at Newington-buts from the 14th of June to the 20th of 
 October, in all 626, whereof of the plague, 562. Buried at Islington 201 in all, 170 
 of plague; at Lambeth 373 in all, 362 of plague; at Hackney 192 in all, 169 of 
 plague. Buried in all within the 7 several places last aforenamed 4378, whereof of 
 the plague, 3997. The whole number that hath been buried in all [to 20th October], 
 both within London and the Liberties, and the 7 other severall places last before 
 mentioned is 39,380, whereof of the number of the plague, 32,609." 
 
 From the parish registers the burials for the whole year are known : Stepney, 
 2257; Lambeth, 566; Islington, 322; Hackney, 321 (of plague 269). 
 
 In Stow's Annales, the mortality of 1603 is given as follows: — "There died in 
 London and the liberties thereof from the xxiii day of December 1602 unto the xxii 
 day of December 1603, of all diseases 38,244, whereof of the plague 30,578." 
 
47^ Deaths iii particular parishes, 1603. 
 
 additions, which can only be guessed, are the mortality from all 
 causes in the eight out-parishes (within the Bills) previous to 
 July 14, and the mortality in the seven other suburban localities 
 (Westminster, Stepney, etc.) before and after the dates stated 
 in the note for each. Only the former of these additions would 
 have been a considerable figure, the plague being already at 
 271 deaths a week when the reckoning begins. Thus the totals, 
 42,945 burials from all causes, and from plague alone, 33,347, are 
 well within the reality. 
 
 Some details are extant of the incidence of the disease in 
 particular parishes at certain dates. Thus, in the great parish 
 of Stepney, which extended from Shoreditch to Blackwall, 650 
 plague-deaths, and 24 from other causes, took place in the 
 single month of September ; so that, if the plague began in 
 Stepney about the 25th of March, it had not come to a head 
 until autumn. In St Giles's Cripplegate, the burials entered in 
 the parish register for the whole year are 2879, ^^g highest 
 mortality having been in the beginning of September, when 
 the burials on three successive days were 36, 26 and 26\ In 
 the week 13 to 20 October, for which the printed bill is extant, 
 the proportions of the City, Liberties and 8 out-parishes re- 
 spectively were, for the week, 351, 296, and 119. Of the 
 parishes without the walls, the most infected were, in their 
 order at that date, St Sepulchre's, St Saviour's, Southwark, 
 St Andrew's, Holborn, St Giles's, Cripplegate, St Clement's 
 Danes, St Giles's in the Fields, St Olave's, Southwark, St 
 Martin's in the Fields, St Mary's, Whitechapel and St Leonard's, 
 Shoreditch. For St Olave's, Southwark, we have some par- 
 ticulars of the plague from the minister of the parish. 
 
 In a dialogue conveying various instructions on the plague^, 
 to his parishioners of St Olave's, James Bamford states that 
 2640 had died in that parish from May 7 to the date of writing 
 (October 13), and that the burials had fallen from 305 in a week 
 to 51, and from 57 in a day to 4. St Olave's was a typical 
 parish of the new London. It extended eastwards along the 
 
 ^ Baddeley, /. c. 
 
 ^ A short Dialof^itt' conci'niiiiq tlic Plague fnfcctiou. Published to preserue Blond 
 through the blessing of God. London, i6o,v 
 
Startins^-point of tJic 1603 Plague. 479 
 
 Surrey bank of the riv^er from London Bridge, and had been 
 almost all built within the half-century since the purchase of the 
 Borough of Southwark by the City from the Crown in 1550. 
 In Stow's Survey of 1598 the parish is thus described: "Then 
 from the bridge along by the Thames eastward is St Olave's 
 Street, having continual building on both the sides, with lanes 
 and alleys, up to Battle Bridge, to Horsedown and towards 
 Rotherhithe some good half mile in length from London 
 Bridge" — the Bermondsey High Street running south from the 
 Horsleydown end of it. St Olave's Church, he continues, stood 
 on the bank of the river, " a fair and meet large church, but a 
 far larger parish, especially of aliens or strangers, and poor 
 people." A mansion of former times, St Leger House, was 
 now "divided into sundry tenements." Over against the church, 
 the great house that was once the residence of the prior of 
 Lewes, was now the Walnut Tree inn, a common hostelry. 
 
 London was now so extensive in area that it becomes of 
 interest to know in what part of it the plague broke out, and in 
 what course the infection proceeded. These things are known 
 for the plague of 1665 ; but for that of 1603 they cannot be 
 ascertained precisely. Dekker is emphatic that it began in the 
 suburbs. The earliest reference to it in the State papers is 
 under the date of April 18, when the Lord Mayor wrote to the 
 Lord Treasurer to inform him of the steps taken to prevent the 
 spread of the plague in the counties of Middlesex and Surrey. 
 "The parishes in Middlesex and Surrey" was an expression 
 which afterwards came to mean a group of twelve out-parishes 
 beyond the Bars of the Freedom, including St Giles's in the 
 Fields, Lambeth, Newington and Bermondsey, Stepney, White- 
 chapel, Shoreditch and Clerkenwell, Islington, Hackney and 
 two others. The phrase used by the mayor ma)' not have had 
 so definite a meaning in 1603, but he can hardly have in- 
 tended it to apply to the City and Liberties of London, 
 although those were the only divisions of the capital directly 
 under his own jurisdiction. The parish which is associated with 
 the earliest date, in the summary of the epidemic in the broad- 
 side of 1603, is Stepney, where the record of deaths from 
 plague and other causes begins from 25th March. It would 
 
480 Plague of 1603 began at Stepney in March. 
 
 perhaps be safe to conclude that the plague of 1603 began at the 
 extreme east in Stepney, as that of 1665 certainly did at the 
 extreme west in St Giles's in the Fields. 
 
 An examination of the Table shows that the eight out- 
 parishes had reached a higher plague mortality relative to their 
 population on July 21, than the parishes within the bars of the 
 Freedom : but the maximum of deaths falls in both divisions 
 about the same week. We may take it that the plague broke 
 out in one of the suburbs ; and as Dekker speaks of the flight 
 having been westwards, the evidence points on the whole to an 
 eastern suburb, perhaps Whitechapel or Stepney. March is 
 clearly indicated by various things as a time when plague-deaths 
 began to attract notice ; and that date of commencement is 
 corroborated by the following passage from the essay of Graunt, 
 based, it would seem, upon a series of weekly bills : — 
 
 " We observe as followeth, viz. First, that (when from 
 December 1602 to March following there was little or no 
 plague) then the christenings at a medium were between no 
 and 130 per week, few weeks being above the one or below the 
 other ; but when the plague increased from thence to July, that 
 
 then the christenings decreased to under 90 (3) Moreover we 
 
 t)bserve that from the 21st July to the 12th October, the plague 
 increasing reduced the christenings to 70 at a medium. Now 
 the cause of this must be flying, and death of teeming women" 
 &c. — the total christenings of the year 1603 having been only 
 4789, as against some 6000 in the year before the plague, and 
 5458 in the year after it. 
 
 This prevalence of plague in the suburbs and liberties of the 
 City in the spring of 1603 coincides with great political events. 
 Queen Elizabeth died at Richmond on the 24th of March, and 
 was buried at Westminster on the 28th of April ; according to 
 Dekker, " never did the English nation behold so much black 
 worn as there was at her funeral." The approach of king 
 James from Scotland appears to have caused an outburst of 
 gaiety, his accession to the crown, according to the same writer, 
 having led to a marked revival of trade : " Trades that lay dead 
 
 and rotten started out of their trance There was mirth in 
 
 everyone's face, the streets were filled with gallants, tabacconists 
 
TJic London Plague of 1603. 481 
 
 filled up whole taverns, vintners \\\\\\<^ out spick and span new 
 ivy-bushes (because they wanted good wine), and their old rain- 
 beaten lattices marched under other colours, having lost both 
 company and colour before." James made a slow progress from 
 Scotland, paying visits on the way. He arrived at Theobalds, 
 near Cheshunt, on the 3rd of May, and was at Greenwich before 
 the end of the month. On May 29, a proclamation was issued 
 commanding gentlemen to depart the court and city on account 
 of the plague. On June 23, the remainder of Trinity law term 
 was adjourned. On July 10, a letter (one of the series between 
 J. Chamberlain and Dudley Carleton) says: "Paul's grows very 
 thin [the church aisles where people were wont to meet to 
 exchange news], for every man shrinks away. Our pageants 
 are pretty forward, but most of them are such small-timbered 
 gentlemen that they cannot last long, and I doubt, if the 
 plague cease not sooner, they will riot and sink where they 
 stand." The Coronation was shorn of its full splendour. On 
 July 18, it was announced that, as the king could not pass 
 through the City- — the traditional route being from the Tower to 
 Westminster — all the customary services by the way are to be 
 performed between Westminster Bridge and the Abbey. The 
 ceremony, thus shortened, took place on July 25. On August 
 8, it was ordered that all fairs within fifty miles of London 
 should be suspended, the more important being Bartholomew 
 fair at Smithfield, and Stourbridge fair near Cambridge. The 
 new Spanish ambassador was unable to approach the king, who 
 moved from place to place, — Hampton Court, Woodstock and 
 Southampton. 
 
 These are the traces left by this great epidemic in the state 
 papers of the time. As in the case of the sweating sickness 
 of 1485, which was in London while the preparations were going 
 on for Henry VH.'s coronation, we should hardly have known 
 from public documents that the City was in a state of panic. 
 But in 1603 we are come to a period when other sources of in- 
 formation are available. It remains to put together what de- 
 scriptions have come down to us of the City of the Plague. 
 
 The most graphic touches are those left by Thomas Dekker, 
 the dramatist, of whom it has been said that " he knew London 
 
 c. 31 
 
482 Dekker on the Plague of 1603. 
 
 as well as Dickens \" To describe first the condition of the 
 " sinfully polluted suburbs," he takes a walk through the still and 
 melancholy streets in the dead hours of the night. He hears 
 from every house the loud groans of raving sick men, the 
 struggling pangs of souls departing, grief striking an alarum, 
 servants crying out for masters, wives for husbands, parents for 
 children, children for their mothers. Here, he meets some 
 frantically running to knock up sextons ; there, others fearfully 
 sweating with coffins, to steal forth dead bodies lest the fatal 
 handwriting of death should seal up their houses. This would 
 have been an evasion of the order, dating from 1547, that no 
 bodies were to be buried between six in the evening and six 
 in the morning — an order which was exactly reversed in the 
 plague of 1665. 
 
 When morning comes, a hundred hungry graves stand 
 gaping, and everyone of them, as at a breakfast, hath swallowed 
 down ten or eleven lifeless carcases ; before dinner, in the same 
 gulf are twice so many more devoured, and before the sun takes 
 his rest these numbers are doubled, — threescore bodies lying 
 slovenly tumbled together in a muck-pit^ ! One gruesome story 
 he tells of a poor wretch in the Southwark parish of St Mary 
 Overy, who was thrown for dead upon a heap of bodies in the 
 morning, and in the afternoon was found gasping and gaping 
 for life. Others were thrust out of doors by cruel masters, to 
 die in the fields and ditches, or in the common cages or under 
 stalls. A boy sick of the plague was put on the water in a 
 wherry to come ashore wherever he could, but landing was 
 denied him by an army of brown-bill men that kept the shore, 
 so that he had to be taken whence he came to die in a cellar. 
 The sextons made their fortunes, especially those of St Giles's, 
 Cripplegate, of St Sepulchre's, outside Newgate, of St Olave's 
 
 ^ The WoiKhrfidl Yearc 1603, 'uihcrcin is shelved the picture of London lyini; si eke of 
 the Plague. London, 1603. 
 
 - In his Seven Deadly Sins of London (1606) he returns to the mode of Inirial in 
 the plague: "All ceremonial due to them was taken away, they were launched ten 
 in one heap, twenty in another, the gallant and the beggar together, the husband saw 
 his wife and his deadly enemy whom he hated within a pair of sheets." As an after 
 effect of this mode of interment, "What rotten stenches and contagious damps would 
 strike up into thy nostrils !" 
 
Flight of citizens to the country. 483 
 
 in Southwark, of St Clement's at Temple Bar, and of Stepney. 
 Herb-wives and gardeners also prospered ; the price of flowers, 
 herbs, and garlands rose wonderfully, insomuch that rosemary, 
 which had wont to be sold for twelve pence an armful, went 
 now for six shillings a handful. 
 
 While plague was thus raging in the poor skirts of the City, 
 " paring them off by little and little," the well-to-do within the 
 walls took alarm and fled, " some riding, some on foot, some 
 without boots, some in slippers, by water, by land, swarm they 
 westwards. Hackneys, watermen and waggons were not so 
 terribly employed many a year ; so that within a short time 
 there was not a good horse in Smithfield, nor a coach to be set 
 eyes on." But they might just as well have remained as trust 
 themselves to the " unmerciful hands of the country hard- 
 hearted hobbinolls." The sight of a Londoner's flat-cap was 
 dreadful to a lob : a treble ruff threw a whole village into a 
 sweat. A crow that had been seen on a sunshiny day standing 
 on the top of Powles would have been better than a beacon on 
 fire, to have raised all the towns within ten miles of London for 
 the keeping her out. One Londoner set out for Bristol, thinking 
 not to see his honws, again this side Christmas. But forty miles 
 from town the plague came upon him, and he sought entrance 
 to an inn. When his case was known, the doors of the inn 
 " had their wooden ribs crushed to pieces by being beaten 
 together ; the casements were shut more close than an usurer's 
 greasy velvet pouch ; the drawing windows were hanged, drawn, 
 and quartered ; not a crevice but was stopt, not a mouse-hole 
 left open." The host and hostess tumbled over each other 
 in their flight, the maids ran out into the orchard, the tapster 
 into the cellar. The unhappy Londoner was helped by a fellow- 
 citizen who appeared on the scene, and was carried to die on a 
 truss of straw in the corner of a field ; but the parson and the 
 clerk refused him burial, and he was laid in a hole where he had 
 died. According to Stow, Bamford, and Davies of Hereford, 
 such experiences of fugitive Londoners were repeated every- 
 where in the country, and Dekker gives several other tales of 
 the same sort " to shorten long winter nights." 
 
 Meanwhile, Dekker goes on, the plague had entered the gates 
 
 ^i — 2 
 
484 Dekker on the Plague of 1603. 
 
 of the City and marched through Cheapside; men, women, and 
 children dropped down before him, houses were rifled, streets 
 ransacked, rich men's coffers broken open and shared amongst 
 prodigal heirs and unworthy servants. Every house looked like 
 St Bartholomew's Hospital and every street like Bucklersbury : 
 (" the whole street called Bucklersbury," says Stow, " on both 
 sides throughout is possessed of grocers, and apothecaries 
 towards the west end thereof"), for poor Mithridaticum and 
 Dragon-water were bought in every corner, and yet were both 
 drunk every hour at other men's cost. " I could make your 
 cheeks look pale and your hearts shake with telling how some 
 have had eighteen sores at one time running upon them, others 
 ten or twelve, many four and five ; and how those that have 
 been four times wounded by this year's infection have died of 
 the last wound, while others, hurt as often, are now going about 
 whole." Funerals followed so close that three thousand mourners 
 went as if trooping together, with rue and wormwood stuffed 
 into their ears and nostrils, looking like so many boars' heads 
 stuck with branches of rosemary. A dying man was visited by 
 a friendly neighbour, who promised to order the coffin ; but he 
 died himself an hour before his infected friend. A churchwarden 
 in Thames Street, on being asked for space in the churchyard, 
 answered mockingly that he wanted it for himself, and he did 
 occupy it in three days. 
 
 One more extract from Dekker will bring us back to the 
 strictly medical history : 
 
 " Never let any man ask me what became of our Phisitions in this 
 massacre. They hid their synodical heads as well as the proudest, and I 
 cannot blame them, for their phlebotomies, losinges and electuaries, with 
 their diacatholicons, diacodions, amulets and antidotes, had not so much 
 strength to hold life and soul together as a pot of Finder's ale and a nutmeg. 
 Their drugs turned to durt, their simples were simple things. Galen could 
 do no more good than Sir Giles Goosecap. Hippocrate, Avicen, Paracelsus, 
 Rasis, Fernelius, with all their succeeding rabble of doctors and water- 
 casters, were at their wits' end ; for not one of them durst peep abroad." 
 
 Only a band of desperadoes, he goes on, some {q.\v empirical 
 madcaps — for they could never be worth velvet caps — clapped 
 their bills upon every door. But besides the empirical des- 
 peradoes, who dared the infection for the sake of the golden 
 
TJie medical profession in the Plague. 485 
 
 harvest, some few physicians and surgeons remained at their 
 post, or at least put out essays with prescriptions and rules of 
 regimen. Three such books on the plague were published in 
 London in 1603, of which the most notable was one by 
 Dr Thomas Lodge', a poet like Dekker himself, but of the 
 academical school to which Dekker did not belong. The passage 
 quoted about the impotence of the faculty is perhaps aimed at 
 these books, which all abound with the sayings and maxims of 
 Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna, and the like. Lodge also quoting 
 the more obscure name of Fernelius, which Dekker has not 
 failed to seize upon. 
 
 Lodge confirms the statement about the empirical des- 
 peradoes clapping their bills upon every post. One of them, 
 " who underwrit not his bills," posted them close to Lodge's 
 house in Warwick Lane, so that the physician was taken by 
 the populace to be himself the advertiser. He was besieged 
 with applicants for his cordial waters, and wrote his book to 
 make his own position clear, being " aggrieved because of that 
 loathsome imposition which was laid upon me to make myself 
 vendible (which is unworthy a liberal and gentle mind, much 
 more ill-beseeming a physician and philosopher), who ought not 
 to prostitute so sacred a profession so abjectly." Farther 
 confirming Dekker about the greed of the quacks as well as 
 about the strictly business-like attitude of the regular profession, 
 he speaks of "my poor countrymen left without guide or counsel 
 how to succour themselves in extremity ; for where the infection 
 most rageth, there poverty reigneth among the commons, which, 
 having no supplies to satisfy the greedy desires of those that 
 should attend them, are for the most part left desolate to die 
 without relief." The reader must wonder, he says, " why, 
 amongst so many excellent and learned physicians of this city, 
 I alone have undertaken to answer the expectation of the 
 multitude, and to bear the heavy burthen of contentious 
 critiques and depravers." The explanation was that the regular 
 faculty had for the most part gone out of town, along with 
 
 1 A Treatise of the Plague. By Thomas Lodge, Doctor in I'hisicke. London, 
 1603. It has been reprinted, among Lodge's other works, by the Hunterian Chib of 
 Glasgow, 1880. 
 
486 Dr TJionias Lodge. 
 
 magistrates, ministers and rich men. Bamford, the minister of 
 St Olave's, Southwark, who remained at his post, has no excuse 
 to offer for magistrates or for his clerical brethren, but he is 
 extremely fair to the doctors : " As for physicians, I only 
 propound this question : Whether they be bound in conscience 
 to be resident, in regard of their profession and ability to do 
 good, or they may use their liberty for themselves and (as they 
 think) for their lives, in regard they are no public persons and 
 live (not by a common stipend but) by what they can get." 
 
 Dr Lodge, who dated his book from Warwick Lane on 
 August 19, or when the epidemic would have been at its height, 
 had already won laurels in the field of poetry and romance. He 
 was an Oxonian (Trinity College, 1573) and one of a set with 
 Marlowe and Greene. " At length his mind growing serious," 
 says Anthony Wood, "he studied physic," travelling abroad for 
 the purpose and graduating M.D. at Avignon. He had great 
 success in practice, especially among Catholics, to whom he was 
 suspected of belonging. He died of the plague, during the next 
 great epidemic of 1625, at Low Leyton in Essex. His book on 
 the plague would be entitled to a place in medical literature if 
 only that its style is above the average of medical compositions. 
 I cannot forbear quoting the following collect for its structure 
 and euphony : 
 
 " But before I prosecute this my intended purpose, let us invocate and 
 call upon that divine bounty, from whose fountain head of mercy every good 
 and gracious benefit is derived, that it will please him to assist this my 
 labor and charitable intent, and so to order the scope of my indevour, that 
 it may redound to his eternal glory, our neighbours' comfort, and the special 
 benefit of our whole country ; which, being now under the fatherly correction 
 of Almighty God, and punished for our misdeeds by his heavy hand, may 
 through the admirable effects and fruits of the sacred art of physic, receive 
 prevention of their danger, and comfort in this desperate time of visitation. 
 To liim therefore, King of kings, invisible and only wise, be all honor, 
 majesty and dominion, now and for ever. Amen." 
 
 It is only in dealing with the more public aspects of the 
 plague that Lodge shows any individuality. So far as concerns 
 causes, prognostications, symptoms, remedies, preventives, and 
 precautions, there is little in his essay which is not to be found 
 in the older plague-books, such as the 14th century one of the 
 
Lodge on the Plague of 1603. 487 
 
 bishop of Aarhus, his anatomical directions for blood-letting be- 
 ing word for word the same as the bishop's. Some of his points 
 are the same as in Skene's Edinburgh essay of i 568, such as the 
 indication of plague about to begin which is got from rats, moles 
 and other underground creatures forsaking their holes. To 
 keep off the infection he advises the wearing of small cakes of 
 arsenic in the armpits, where the buboes usually came. That 
 Paracelsist practice is known to have been tried at Zurich in 
 1564; it was one of the matters of dispute between the 
 Galenists and the chemical physicians. During the plague of 
 1603, Dr Peter Turner published a curious tract in defence of 
 it'. 
 
 From a Venetian gentleman Lodge obtained also the 
 formula of a preservative from infection, which contained, 
 among other things, tormentilla root, white dittany, bole 
 Armeniac and oriental pearl : " The gentleman that gave me 
 this assured me that he had given it to many in the time of the 
 great plague in Venice, who, though continually conversant in 
 the houses of those that were infected, received no infection or 
 prejudice by them." 
 
 In his chapter on " The Order and Police that ought to be 
 held in a City during the Plague-time," he advises the removal 
 of the shambles from within the walls to some remote and 
 convenient place near the river of Thames, to the end that the 
 blood and garbage of beasts that are killed may be washed 
 away with the tide. Lodge lived just on the other side of 
 Newgate Street from the shambles, and could speak feelingly 
 about them, as many more had done since Edward III.'s time. 
 The nobles of Aries, he says, had acted so on the advice of 
 
 1 The opinion of Peter Turner, Doctor in Physicke, concerning Amulets or Plague- 
 Calces, whereof per/iaps some hold too much and some too little. London, 1603, p. 10. 
 Turner held high offices at the College of Physicians, and died in 1614. There was 
 another physician of the name, also a dignitary of the College, Dr George Turner, 
 whose widow was the notorious Mrs Anne Turner, executed for having been an 
 instrument in the poisoning of Sir T. Overbury. Scott has drawn from her the 
 character of Mrs Suddlechop, in 7'he Fortunes of Nigel, a work invaluable for realizing 
 the London of King James. The reference in the Earl of Northumberland's accounts, 
 under date Feb. 6, 1607, to a Dr Turner, who was paid ten shillings for a "po- 
 mander" against the plague, would suit either Dr Peter or Dr George {Hist. A/SS. 
 Commis. VI. 2, 29). 
 
488 Couipulsory removal in 1603. 
 
 Valenolaes, having built their slaughter-houses to the westward 
 of the city upon the river of Rhone. The chief interest of the 
 book is in the sections on preventing the spread of infection. 
 He quotes an instance from Alexander Benedetti of Venice, of 
 a feather-bed, slept on by one in the plague, having been laid 
 aside for seven years, " and the first that slept upon the same at 
 the end of the same term was suddenly surprised with the 
 plague." His directions for the cleansing of houses, bedding, 
 clothes, &c. are minute and thorough (Chapter xvil.) '. Modern 
 readers will find his views on isolation and compulsory re- 
 moval to hospital worth noting. The Pest House, which had 
 been lately built in the fields towards Finsbury, was then 
 the only special hospital to which patients in the plague could 
 be removed, and its accommodation was not great ; the burials 
 at it in the nine weeks from July 21 to September 22, 1603, were 
 respectively 18, 18, 12, 21, 12, 6, 5, 10 and 10. The Bridewell 
 near Fleet Street appears also to have admitted a small number 
 of plague-cases, the burials from it in the five weeks from 
 August 18 to September 22, having been respectively 8, 5, 17, 
 7 and 19. There was also a pest-house in Tothill fields, for the 
 Westminster end of the town. Servants appear to have been 
 mostly sent to these refuges. Lodge saw that the principle of 
 compulsory removal of the sick had no chance without more 
 hospital accommodation (as Defoe also insisted in reviewing the 
 plague of 1665), and he proposes a plan for a pest-house with 
 " twenty-eight to thirty separate chambers on the upper floor, 
 and as many beneath." He is humanely alive to the hardships 
 of compulsory isolation : 
 
 " For in truth it is a great amazement, and no less horror, to separate the 
 child from the father and mother, the husband from his wife, the wife from 
 her husband, and the confederate and friend from his adherent and friend ; 
 and to speak my conscience in this matter, this course ought not to be kept 
 before that, by the judgment of a learned physician, the sickness be resolved 
 on. And when it shall be found it is infectious, yet it is very needful to use 
 humanity towards such as are seized. And if their parents or friends have 
 the means to succour them, and that freely, and with a good heart they are 
 willing to do the same, those that have the charge to carry them to the 
 
 ^ A letter from Hampstead, August 27, 1603, speaks of "the imprudent exposure 
 of infected beds in the streets." (Ca/. State Papers.) 
 
Books during the Plague of 1603. 489 
 
 pest-house ought to suffer thorn to use that office of charity towards their 
 sick, yet with this condition that they keep them apart and suffer them not 
 to frequent and converse with such as are in health. For, to speak the 
 truth, one of the chiefest occasions of the death of such sick folks (besides the 
 danger of their disease) is the fright and fear they conceive when they see 
 themselves devoid of all succour, and, as it were, ravished out of the hands 
 of their parents and friends, and committed to the trust of strangers.... And 
 therefore in this cause men ought to proceed very discreetly and modestly." 
 
 Another London essay of the same year, by " S. H. Studious 
 in Phisicke " is a much sHghter production. The author writes 
 in a superior strain and offers advice " unto such Chirurgeons as 
 shall be called or shall adventure themselves to the care of this 
 so dangerous sickness," one piece of advice being not to let 
 blood except at the beginning of the seizure, and to take then 
 five ounces of blood in the morning, and three ounces more at 
 three in the afternoon, repeating the depletion next day at 
 discretion. He states also the theory of the plague-bubo : it 
 was a way made by nature to expel the venomous and corrupt 
 matter which is noisome unto it. He advises the practice of 
 incising the bubo and of helping it to suppurate, which was the 
 treatment in the Black Death of 1348-49: if nature be "weak 
 and not able to expel the venom fast enough, by insensible 
 transpiration the venom returneth back to the heart and so 
 presently destroyeth nature \" 
 
 It is significant of the state of medical practice and literature 
 in England at the end of the Elizabethan period that the only 
 other treatise which the plague of 1603 is known to have called 
 forth was a mystification '^ under the name of one Thomas 
 Thayre, chirurgian, " for the benefite of his countrie, but chiefly 
 for the honorable city of London," elaborately dedicated to the 
 Lord Mayor of the year (by name), the Sherifis and the 
 Aldermen, to whom " Thomas Thayre wisheth all spirituall 
 and temporal blessings." It proves on examination to be a 
 very close reproduction, with some omissions at the end and a 
 
 1 A Neio Treatise of the Pestilence, etc. the like not before this time piiblislicd, and 
 therefore necessaric for all manner of persons in this time of contagion. By S. II. 
 Studious in Phisicke. London, 1603. 
 
 - This mystification was pointed out in a note to "Thayre" (the 1625 edition) in 
 the printed Catalogue of the Library of the Royal Medical and Cliirurgical Society. 
 
490 Arguments for contagion, 1603. 
 
 few additions, of the old Treatise of the Pestilence by Thomas 
 Phayre or Phaer, first published in 1547, and was probably the 
 venture of some bookseller or literary hack. The original 
 treatise of Phayre had been reprinted last in 1 596, " latelye 
 corrected and enlarged by Thomas Phayre," although that 
 writer must have been dead many years. A reprint of some of 
 " Dr Phaer's" remedies and preservatives, without date, is 
 conjecturally assigned to the year 1601. The original work of 
 Henry VIII. 's time was also a literary compilation, in some parts 
 copied verbatim from the 14th century book by the Danish 
 bishop of Arusia, and bears not a trace of first-hand observation. 
 Yet it had the fortune to be reprinted once more, in 1722, by a 
 physician W. T., who remarked that, as the writers on plague in 
 his own time " usually transcribe from others," he wished to set 
 before them a specimen " of such as have written on a disease of 
 which they were eye-witnesses." 
 
 Two printed addresses on the plague by London ministers 
 are extant : one by Henoch Clapham, " to his ordinary hearers," 
 which is merely a sermon, in the form of an epistle, to improve 
 the occasion ^ ; and the other by James Bamford, rector of 
 St Olave's, Southwark, in the form of a dialogue, and full of 
 practical and sensible advice ^. Bamford's tract is especially 
 directed against "that bloody error which denieth the pestilence 
 to be contagious ; maintained not only by the rude multitude 
 but by too many of the better sort ; " and its chief medical 
 interest lies in the reasons with which he confutes that deadly 
 heresy : — 
 
 " Do not the botches, blains and spots (called God's tokens) accompanied 
 with raving and death, argue a stranger [_sic\ infection than that of the 
 leprosy, to be judged by botches and spots.'' [the infectiousness of leprosy 
 being proved by revelation, Lev. xiii.]. Doth not the ordinary experience of 
 layings live pigeons to plague-sores and taking them presently dead away, 
 and that one after another, demonstrate mortal infection.'' In that the 
 plague rageth and reigneth especially amongst the younger sort, and such 
 as do not greatly regard clean and sweet keeping, and where many are 
 
 ' An Epistle discottrsing upon the present Pestilence, teaching what it is and haiv 
 the people of God should carric themselves totvards God and their neighbours therein. 
 Rcprinled, with some Additions, by Henoch Clapliam. London, 1603. 
 
 " ^/ Short Dialogue, etc., ut supra. 
 
Davies of Hereford on the Plague. 491 
 
 pestered together in alleys and houses — is not this an argument of infection? 
 Thousands can directly tell where, when, and of whom they took the 
 
 infection Persons of a tender constitution or corrupt humours sooner take 
 
 the plague than those of a strong constitution and sound bodies. The 
 infirmities of many women in travail, and other diseases, turn into the 
 plague. We see few auncient people die in comparison of children and the 
 younger sort. 
 
 " Lastly, of those that keep a good diet, have clean and sweet keeping, 
 live in a good air, use reasonable and seasonable preservatives, and be not 
 pestered many in one house, or have convenient house-room for their house- 
 hold — we see few infected in comparison of those that fail in all these 
 means of preservation antl yet will thrust themselves into danger." 
 
 The plague of London in 1603 called forth also a poem by 
 John Davies, a schoolmaster of Hereford. It is called "^The 
 Triumph of Death ; or the Picture of the Plague, according to 
 the Life, as it was in A.D. 1603 \" The description is by no 
 means so concrete as the title would have us believe, and might, 
 indeed, have been taken, most of it, at second-hand from 
 Dekker : — 
 
 " Cast out your dead, the carcass-carrier cries. 
 Which he by heaps in groundless graves inters.... 
 The London lanes, themselves thereby to save, 
 Did vomit out their undigested dead, 
 Who by cart-loads are carried to the grave. 
 For all those lanes with folk were overfed." 
 
 He mentions that the prisoners in the gaols were compara- 
 tively exempt from plague '\ One line suggests the great size 
 that the plague-buboes sometimes reached : 
 
 " Here swells a botch as high as hide can hold." 
 
 Perhaps his particulars of the plague in the provinces, in 
 1603 and following years, are from his own knowledge. Both 
 the Universities, he says, were forsaken. 
 
 "Each village free now stands upon her guard.... 
 The haycocks in the meads were oft opprest 
 With plaguy bodies, both alive and dead, 
 Which being used confounded man and beast." 
 
 One incident he vouches for (in a marginal note) as having 
 
 ^ In a volume with other pieces. London, 1605. 
 
 - But several warders in the Tower died of it. {Cal. Stale Papers, Sept. 16, 1603.) 
 
492 
 
 Plague around London, 1603. 
 
 occurred at Leominster : A person with the plague was drowned 
 to prevent infection, by the order of Sir Herbert Croft, one of 
 the Council of the Marches of Wales. 
 
 The Plague of 1603 in the country near London. 
 
 Most of the country parishes nearest to London had plague- 
 burials in 1603, doubtless from the escape of infected Londoners 
 to them and from the spreading of the infection. In several of 
 these parish registers^ the plague-deaths in 1603 are more than 
 in the time of the Great Plague of 1665 : there is a note in the 
 Croydon register that " many died in the highways near the 
 city." The following table shows the mortalities, great and 
 small. 
 
 
 
 Burials 
 
 
 
 Burials 
 
 
 Burials from 
 
 from 
 
 
 Burials from 
 
 from 
 
 
 all causes. 
 
 plague. 
 
 
 all causes. 
 
 plague 
 
 Barking 
 
 381 
 
 — 
 
 Hackney 
 
 321 
 
 269 
 
 Battersea 
 
 23 
 
 — 
 
 Hampstead 
 
 7 
 
 — 
 
 Beckenham 
 
 24 
 
 — 
 
 Isleworth 
 
 75 
 
 — 
 
 Bromley 
 
 26 
 
 — 
 
 Islington 
 
 322 
 
 — 
 
 Cheam 
 
 13 
 
 9 
 
 Kensington 
 
 32 
 
 — 
 
 Chigwell 
 
 28 
 
 — 
 
 Lambeth 
 
 566 
 
 — 
 
 Chiselhurst 
 
 62 
 
 — 
 
 Lewisham 
 
 117 
 
 — 
 
 Clapham 
 
 20 
 
 mostly plague 
 
 Romford 
 
 122 
 
 — 
 
 Croydon 
 
 — 
 
 158 
 
 Stratford 
 
 130 
 
 89 
 
 Deptford 
 
 235 
 
 — 
 
 Streatham 
 
 36 
 
 — 
 
 Ealnig 
 
 136 
 
 — 
 
 Tottenham 
 
 79 
 
 44 
 
 Edmonton 
 
 145 
 
 85 
 
 Twickenham 
 
 — 
 
 67 
 
 Eltham 
 
 52 
 
 17 
 
 Wandsworth 
 
 — 
 
 100 
 
 Enfield 
 
 253 
 
 129 
 
 Wimbledon 
 
 21 
 
 — 
 
 Finchley 
 
 51 
 
 38 
 
 
 
 
 A comparison of these figures with those of 1665 will show 
 that the northern parishes, Islington and Hackney, as well 
 as parishes farther out in the country, such as Enfield, 
 had more plague-deaths in 1603 than in the time of the 
 Great Plague. Also Barking, Stratford and Romford on the 
 one side, and Lewisham, PLltham and Croydon on the other, had 
 
 1 In Ly.sun.s, Environs of London. 
 
Plagjie in the home comities. 493 
 
 heavier mortalities in the earlier year. It would appear, indeed, 
 that the infection in the country near London had been attract- 
 ing notice before the plague in the capital caused any alarm. 
 On April 18, 1603, the lord mayor wrote to the Privy Council 
 concerning the steps that had been taken " to prevent the 
 spread of the plague in the counties of Middlesex and Surrey." 
 On July 20, 1603, the king issued a warrant to the constables 
 and others of the hundred of Twyford in Kent, to levy a special 
 rate on certain parishes to relieve the sufferers by a grievous 
 plague in the villages of West Mailing, East Mailing, Offham, 
 and seven others*. Such rates were usually levied when an 
 epidemic was nearly over ; so that the outbreak in Kent must 
 have been at least as early as that in London. 
 
 The towns and villages of Hertfordshire, which were favourite 
 resorts of Londoners in plague-time, had their share of the 
 visitation in 1603. At Great Amwell, there were 41 burials in 
 the year, of which 19 were of the plague between August 19 
 and November 28, 6 of them in one day. Doubtless the 
 registers of other parishes in the home counties would show a 
 similar history if they were searched ^ 
 
 Annual Plague in London after 1603. 
 
 Before following the plague of 1603 into the provinces, it 
 will be convenient to give the history of the infection in London 
 for the next few years. There was little plague in 1604 and not 
 much in 1605 ; but in 1606 the infection again became active, 
 and continued at its endemic level for some five or six years. 
 The following table, from the weekly bills of mortality, shows 
 how regularly the infection came to a height in the autumn 
 year after year, as if it had been a product of the soiP : 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. x. pt. 4, p. 5. 
 
 - E.g. plague at Datchet {Notes ami Queries, 3rd ser. vi. 217). 
 
 ^ John Bell, London^s Keniembrancer. London, 1665 [1666]. 
 
494 Plague steady in London, 1 606-1610. 
 
 Tabh\ from the Weekly Bills of Mortality {Lotidon), shoiuittc^ the increase 
 of Plai^ite ill Antin/in, for fve successive years. 
 
 1606 1607 1608 1609 1610 
 
 Total deaths from j 
 
 plague in the j 
 
 year ) 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 2124 
 
 2352 
 
 2262 
 
 4240 
 
 1803 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Weekly deaths in 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 f 25 
 33 
 
 27 
 
 16 
 
 60 
 
 38 
 
 1 
 
 33 
 
 26 
 
 57 
 
 45 
 
 July 
 
 50 
 
 46 
 
 ^ 66 
 
 37 
 
 24 
 
 58 
 
 45 
 
 1 
 
 51 
 
 50 
 
 91 
 
 40 
 
 
 43 
 
 
 
 
 
 67 
 75 
 
 77 
 
 45 
 
 100 
 
 47 
 
 
 69 
 
 70 
 
 126 
 
 50 
 
 August 1 
 
 85 
 
 76 
 
 79 
 
 lOI 
 
 73 
 
 
 85 
 
 1. 
 
 71 
 
 73 
 
 150 
 177 
 
 60 
 99 
 
 
 r 116 
 
 105 
 
 123 
 
 141 
 
 96 
 
 
 105 
 
 121 
 
 136 
 
 158 
 
 89 
 
 Sept. 
 
 92 
 
 114 
 
 107 
 
 210 
 
 86 
 
 
 87 
 
 177 
 
 143 
 
 147 
 
 144 
 
 72 
 
 
 r 141 
 
 150 
 
 103 
 
 154 
 
 63 
 
 
 106 
 
 113 
 
 131 
 
 177 
 
 79 
 
 Oct. 
 
 117 
 
 no 
 
 124 
 
 131 
 
 59 
 
 
 109 
 
 82 
 
 102 
 
 55 
 
 49 
 
 1 
 
 ^ lOI 
 
 68 
 
 
 
 
 
 r 68 
 
 66 
 
 109 
 
 84 
 
 58 
 
 
 41 
 
 55 
 
 72 
 
 69 
 
 40 
 
 Nov. 
 
 78 
 
 46 
 
 69 
 
 67 
 
 22 
 
 
 72 
 
 21 
 
 70 
 
 59 
 5' 
 
 42 
 39 
 
 In Dekker's Seven Deadly Sins of London, published in 
 1606, he returns to the subject of the plague. He says that it 
 still slays hundreds in a week, a statement which will be seen to 
 be an exaggeration by reference to the Table. But, on another 
 point, Dekker would have been correctly informed. The play- 
 houses, he says, stand empty, with the doors locked and the 
 flag taken down. The policy of forbidding plays during plague- 
 time, or when the infection threatened to be active, was advo- 
 cated by the Puritan clergy as early as 1577, and had been 
 in force in the plague of 1563. " Plaies are banished for a time 
 out of London," says Harrison in 1572, "lest the resort unto 
 them should ingender a plague, or rather disperse it being 
 
Theatres closed in plague-time. 495 
 
 already begonne'." In a sermon preached at Paul's Cross on 
 Sunday, November 3, 1577, in the time of the plague, by T. W., 
 on the text "Woe to that abominable, filthy and cruel city," 
 the preacher exclaims, " Behold the sumptuous theatre-houses, a 
 continual monument of London's prodigal folly ! But I under- 
 stand they are now forbidden because of the plague"." By 
 the year 1581 the lord mayor had become a zealous supporter 
 of the Puritan demands for the stopping of plays in the City and 
 in the Liberties^ In July (?), 1603, James I. granted a licence to 
 players for performances in the Curtain and Boar's Head 
 theatres, " as soon as the plague decreases to 30 deaths per 
 week in London*." In the beginning of winter, 1607, on the 
 subsidence of plague, the theatres were permitted to be opened, 
 so that the " poor pla)'ers," might make a living ; but as the 
 plague revived in 1608, and became still more serious in 1609, 
 it is tolerably certain that the theatres were shut during the 
 whole summer and autumii of those years. 
 
 Those years, from 1606 to 16 10, when the actor's and drama- 
 tist's profession was seriously hindered by the fear of plague, 
 correspond to a blank period in the personal history of Shake- 
 speare. It has been conjectured that he retired from London 
 for a time, before his final retirement to Stratford-on-Avon. At 
 all events his occupation, if not gone, was greatly interfered with 
 in every one of the years from 1603 to 16 10, excepting perhaps 
 the years 1604 and 1605, which would hardly have come 
 within the limit of 30 plague-deaths in a week. In 1604 his 
 name is joined in a patent with that of Laurence Fletcher for 
 the Globe theatre. Plays continued to be acted in the plague- 
 years, before the court or in the houses of the nobility ; but the 
 applause of the pit and gallery would have been wanting. 
 Macbeth, which is supposed, from its subject, to have been 
 written to celebrate the accession of the king of Scots to the 
 English crown was not put on the stage until 1610 or 161 1. 
 
 ^ Extracts from Harrisoti's MS. Chroiioloi^k by Furnivall in Appendix (p. 268) 
 to Elizabethan England. Canielot Series, 1890. 
 
 '^ A Sermon preached at PcTivlcs Crosse, etc. London, 1578. 
 
 ^ Rememhrancia (numerous extracts from the City records, under "Plays"). 
 
 ■* Cal. State Papers, Addenda, James I. p. 534. 
 
49^ Influence of plague-pe7'iods on the Drama. 
 
 King Lear was given before the court at Christmas 1606. One 
 of the quartos of Troilns and Crcssida, published in 1609, with 
 the author's name, has a note to say that "this new piece had 
 never been staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed by the 
 palms of the vulgar;" but another edition of the same year 
 (1609) omitting the preface, bears on the title that the piece had 
 been played at the Globe theatre by the king's servants, from 
 which it is inferred that it had been acted in the interval 
 between the two editions of 1609. After 16 10, and continuously 
 so until 1625, there was no plague in London to interfere with 
 the business of actors and play-writers, just as the period from 
 1594 to 1603 was a clear interval. The earlier time of freedom 
 was the great period of the drama in London. The disastrous 
 plague of 1603 and the successive unhealthy summers and 
 autumns until 1610 seriously interfered with it, and seriously 
 interfered, also, with Shakespeare's active share in the produc- 
 tion of plays on the stage. Whatever writing he did after that 
 would have been with a less certain prospect of representation, 
 or, one may say, was not done under the same direct influence 
 of playhouse atmosphere which inspired his earlier comedies 
 and historical plays. 
 
 Plague in the Provinces in 1603 and following years. 
 
 Returning now to 1603, to follow the infection into towns 
 and villages in the provinces, we find first that the plague had 
 been active in some provincial parts of England for several 
 months before it broke out severely in London in 1603. At 
 Chester the great epidemic, referred to in the sequel, began in 
 September, 1602. At Stamford, an epidemic which eventually 
 carried off nearly 600 is heard of first on December 2, 1602, 
 when the corporation resolved to build a "cabbin" for the 
 plague-stricken, and again in January, 1603, when a fourth part 
 of a fifteenth was levied for their relief and maintenance^ 
 
 At Oxford, which was one of the towns earliest and most 
 
 ' Notes and Queries, 6lh series, n. 524. The moilality is stated on tlie autliority 
 of the parish registers of St George's and St Michael's, the dead having l)een "buried 
 at the caljbin of Wiiitefryers." 
 
Plague at Oxford, 1603- 1605, 497 
 
 severely smitten, after London, the disease was first seen in 
 July, 1603, and was supposed to have been spread abroad by the 
 "lewd and dissolute behaviour of some base and unruly in- 
 habitants." In September the colleges broke up, having made 
 a collection for the relief of the plague-stricken town's people 
 before leaving. The Michaelmas term was prorogued until 
 December 5. but very few came to the congregation, the plague 
 not ceasing until February. Anthony Wood says : 
 
 " The truth is, the times were very sad, and nothing but lamentation and 
 bemoanings heard in the streets. Those that had wealth retired into the 
 country, but those that were needy were, if not taken away by death, almost 
 starved, and so consequently ready to mutiny against their superiors for 
 relief." All the gates of colleges and halls were constantly kept shut day and 
 night, a few persons being left in them to keep possession. The shops of 
 the town were closed, none but the attendants on the sick or the collectors 
 for them were to be seen stirring abroad, the churches were seldom or never 
 open for divine service. 
 
 The plague having ceased in February most of the scholars 
 came back, and in April the infection broke out again, but was 
 prevented from spreading. The court was at Oxford in 1604, 
 and plague broke out after it left, the infected being sent, as 
 before, to the house in Portmead and to the cabins. Among 
 the deaths was that of the Principal of Hart Hall, apparently in 
 August. It broke out once more in March, 1605, but did not 
 spread, whether owing to the measures that were taken or to 
 natural causes may remain doubtful \ From that date Oxford 
 had a twenty years' immunity, until 1625. The Cambridge 
 annals are less full, partly, perhaps, because none of the colleges 
 kept a register on the plan of that of Merton College ; but it 
 appears from a letter assigned to 1608 that the Visitor of King's 
 College had been unable to come to the college to exercise his 
 much-needed authority, "in regard of the infection'." 
 
 The severity of plague in 1603 among the provincial towns 
 and country parishes is known accurately for only a few of 
 them. From a considerable number more there is evidence of 
 
 1 There is An Account of the Plague at Oxford, 1603, in the .Sloane MS. No. 4376 
 (14), extracted from the register of Merton College, which had also lieen the source of 
 Anthony Wood's account, as summarised in the text. 
 
 ^ Cal. State Pafers. Addenda, 1580-1625. 
 
 c. 32 
 
498 Plague in the Provinces, 1603. — Chester, 
 
 outbreaks of one degree or another. Thus at Canterbury, the 
 accounts of the corporation contain entries of sums paid for 
 watching shut-up houses, for carrying out the dead, and the 
 like, during twenty-four weeks in 1603-4*. At Exeter, a pest- 
 house had to be provided, and the fairs were not kept^ Simi- 
 lar indications of plague come from Winchester^, Colchester", 
 Ipswich'^, Norwich", Boston', and Newcastle^ The register of a 
 parish in Derb}'s]iire (Brimington) contains plague-deaths in the 
 end of 1 602 1 
 
 For Chester there are full particulars of a great plague. It 
 began in September, 1602, in a glover's house in St John^s Lane, 
 where 7 died, and kept increasing until the weekly deaths 
 reached 60. In 1603 there died of the plague 650, and of other 
 diseases 61. In 1604 the plague-deaths were 986, of which 55 
 were in one week. From October 14, 1604, to March 20, 1605, 
 812 died, and about 100 more until the 9th January, 1606, when 
 the infection ceased for a time. Cabins outside the city were 
 erected for the plague-stricken. In some houses, especially of 
 sailors, five or six of the same family died in the course of two or 
 three weeks". 
 
 It appears to have been in Nantwich and Northwych in one 
 or more of the years 1603- 1605, a rate for relief of the poor in 
 them having been ordered on June 22, 1605. Plague-deaths 
 occur in the registers of Macclesfield and Congleton in 1603. 
 At Stockport 51 were buried of plague from October 9, 1605, to 
 August 14, 1606, most of them in the latter year". Straggling 
 epidemics are also reported from Northamptonshire — 31 burials 
 from plague at Merston Trussell in 1604, ^rid 16 at Eydon in 
 1605*1 
 
 One of the severest epidemics of the period occurred at York 
 in 1604. The markets were closed, the courts adjourned 
 
 1 Hist. A/SS. Commis. IX. 160. 
 
 - Izacke's ' Memorials of Exeter' (in N. and Q., 3rd ser. vi. 217). 
 
 ^ Bailey, Transcripts from the MS. Archives of Wituhester, 1856, p. 109. 
 
 ■* Cromwell. ■' Hist. MSS. Commis ix. '' Ibid. X. pt. t, p. 89. 
 
 " Thompson's Boston. ^ Hist. MSS. Com. ix. " Archcrologia, vi. 80. 
 
 ^" Rogers' MS. in Hemingway's Hist, of Chester. Harl. MS. -2177. 
 •" Earwaker, East Cheshire, il. 471; i- 40^). * 
 
 '- Bridges and Whalley, n. 53 ; i. 124. 
 
York, SJireivslntry, Dorset, Devon, &c. 499 
 
 to Ripon and Durham, and the Minster and Minster-yard 
 closely shut up. The infected were housed in booths on Mob- 
 moor and Horsefair. The number of those who died is put 
 down at 35i2\ Durham also had a visitation in St Giles's 
 parish, but a minor one'^ 
 
 At Shrewsbury, however, the plague of 1604 was on the 
 same disastrous scale as at Chester and York, the deaths in 
 the five parishes from June 2, 1604, to April 6, 1605, having 
 been 66y. On October 11, 1604, a proclamation was issued 
 against buying or receiving apparel, bedding, etc., as it was 
 suspected that plague spread greatly in the town by such 
 meansl A weekly tax was levied upon the inhabitants of 
 Manchester, sometime previous to 1606, for the relief of the 
 poor infected, or suspected of being infected, with the plague*. 
 It was in Nottingham in 1604, and in at least one of the 
 parishes in the county (Holme Pierrepont)^ 
 
 There arc few parts of England from which evidence of 
 plague does not come in the years immediately following the 
 great plague in London in 1603. To those already mentioned 
 we have to add Cranborne, in Dorset, where 71 died of plague 
 (in a total of 91) from June to December, 1604, six deaths 
 having occurred in the family first infected and eight in 
 another^ The parish register of Monkleigh in North Devon 
 has the words "cessat pestis" opposite the entry of a burial on 
 March 30, 1605'. In 1606 Peterborough was visited, the infec- 
 tion lasting "until the September following^" In 1606 Eton 
 also was " visited," as appears from payments made^ 
 
 In the years 1606-1610, as we have seen, the plague in 
 London occurred as a regular product of the summer and 
 autumn seasons. The outbreak in 1608 has left several traces 
 in the state letters'". On September 12, Lord Chancellor 
 Ellesmere writes from Ashridge (Berkhamstead) to the Secretary 
 
 ^ Drake's Ehoraciim. Loml. 173^, p- \t.\. 
 '^ Sykes, Local Records of Northumberland and DiirJtani. 
 ^ Phillips, Owen and Blakeway. 
 4 Cal. State Papers. Addenda, 1580-1^15. 
 
 ^ Parish Register (in a local history). " Notes and Queries, 6th ser. II. 390. 
 
 ' lb. « lb. " //'. 1" Cal. State Papers, 1608-9. 
 
 32—2 
 
500 Plague in the Provinces, 1608 — 1609. 
 
 of State that he will remain away until he is fully sure of his 
 London house being clear of the infection. On September 20 
 the City ditch was being cleaned out, and Parliament was put 
 off until February. On November 26 a letter from the court 
 at Newmarket states that the king is angry that my Lord 
 Chamberlain has not sent him the bill of sickness. In 1609 
 there were 13 plague-deaths in Enfield parish, and in 16 10 
 some suspicious cases near Theobalds. 
 
 In the provinces there is no record of plague again until 
 1608: at Chester, in that year, 14 died of it "at the Talbot*." 
 In 1609 the infection was at work in a number of provincial 
 centres. On June i a letter from Rochester reports it prevalent 
 in Kent, impeding the work of the Commissioners for the Aid. 
 On June 15 the Commissioners at Hereford request farther 
 time on account of the plague. On August 22 the king's 
 tenants of Long Bennington, near Grantham, are brought to 
 great poverty by the plaguel These accounts relate to the 
 counties of Hereford, Lincoln and Kent, and with the last 
 maybe taken the brief reference to plague at Sandwich ^ Other 
 counties . affected in 1609, perhaps only at a few spots, are 
 Derbyshire, Norfolk, Northumberland, and Leicestershire. In 
 the first, there died at Chesterfield a few persons of the plague 
 from March 18 until May; at Belpcr, 51 between May i and 
 September 30; and at Holmesfield, the curate on March 12*. 
 At Norwich the outbreak of 1609 was slight compared with 
 other experiences of that city^ Its existence at Newcastle 
 the same year is known only from the register of St Nicholas 
 parish". 
 
 The plague in Loughborough was one of the severer kind. 
 The first case of it appears to have been on the 24th August, 
 1609, in a woman who had given birth to a child on the 19th. 
 The last plague entry in the parish register is on February 19, 
 161 1 ; so that the epidemic went on for about eighteen months. 
 During that time the whole mortality was 452, of which by far 
 the most were plague-burials. Within a mile of Loughborough 
 is a spot of ground, long after known as the Cabbin Lees, 
 
 1 Hemiii^'way. ^ <-^/ <,-. P. •' Hist. A/SS. Cow. y. 570. 
 
 ^ Arclucologia, \i- So. ■"' lilonicficld. '' Sykes. 
 
I 
 
 Leicester, co. DiirJiain, Sherborne, &c. 501 
 
 whereon many of the inhabitants " prudently built themselves 
 huts and encamped to avoid the infection'." 
 
 In Leicester there was a slight amount of plague in 1607, 
 and it reappeared in 1608 (payments on account of it in the 
 former year, and an item of " 30 hurdclls used at the visited 
 houses" in the accounts of 1608). A more severe outbreak 
 occurred in 1610 and 161 1, during and after the great plague 
 at Loughborough. The streets lying towards the Castle were 
 exempt ; a pest-house was built in Belgrave Gate ; the burials 
 for 1 6 10 were 82 in St Martin's parish alone (more than half 
 being from plague), and in 161 1 the same parish had 128 
 burials^ 
 
 In 16 10 the infection was at work in one or more villages 
 of the county of Durham; j'^ deaths "of the pestilence" occur 
 in the register of Lamesley parish, and the same year was 
 probably one of the numerous plague seasons down to 1647 
 in Whickham parish, where it is said that the people, perhaps 
 the plague-stricken, lived in huts upon Whickham FelP. At 
 Chester in i6io"many died of the plague^"; and at Evesham 
 there was a visitation which caused the wealthier inhabitants 
 to leave the town and the authorities to effect a much-needed 
 improvement in the cleanliness of the streets (swine found at 
 large to be impounded, stones, timber, dunghills and carrion 
 to be removed from the streets, and the paving in front of each 
 house to be repaired and cleansed once a week)^ 
 
 Between 16 10 and 1625, which was an almost absolutely 
 clear interval for London, there are few accounts of plague 
 from the provinces. In 161 1, moneys were levied for "the 
 visited " at Sherborne^, and there was a local rate for the same 
 class at Canterbury in 16 14-15'. Accounts of the same kind 
 for Coventry probably belong to the year 161 3^ Then, as we 
 come near the next great plague-period, which began with the 
 new reign in 1625, we find an entry of 26 plague-deaths at 
 Banbury in 1623, "recorded in a part of the original register 
 
 ^ Nichols, HI. 892-3. 
 
 - Nichols (parish registers); Kelly, Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc, 1877, VI. 1^)1.. 
 * Sykes. •• Hemingway. ^ May, Hist, of Evesham, 1845J P- 37'- 
 
 6 Add. MS. 29,975. f. 25. 7 Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 162. s /^. j. jq,. 
 
502 Plague in Ireland and Scotland, 1603- 1604. 
 
 which has not been transcribed into the parchment copy':" 
 if the date be correct, Banbury was the first town to break 
 the somewhat prolonged truce with the plague, which became 
 broken all over the country in 1625. There appears also to 
 have been distress in Grantham from sickness of some kind 
 in 1623 ; in September of that year the corporation of Stamford 
 made a collection " in this dangerous time of visitation," and 
 sent ^10 of it to Grantham, the rest to go "to London or some 
 other town as occasion offered." But the years 1623 and 1624 
 were so much afflicted with fevers that the " dangerous time 
 of visitation " may not have meant plague. 
 
 Ireland. 
 
 The accounts for Ireland are so casual that one suspects 
 there may have been more plague in that country than the 
 records show. Thus, on January 25, 1604, there is a municipal 
 order at Kilkenny, for men to stand at every gate to keep 
 out all strangers or suspected persons that might come from 
 any infected place within the kingdom ; and on October 24 
 there is another order, from which it appears that the plague 
 was then in the town, that it was needful to have the sick 
 persons removed to remote places, that no dung should be 
 in the open streets before the doors, and that no hogs should 
 go or lie in the streets^ Towards the end of 1607 and beginning 
 of 1608 there was a "most dreadful pestilence" in the city of 
 Cork, which "by degrees ceased of itself ^" 
 
 Plague in Scotland, 1603-24. 
 
 The history of the plague in Scotland, which we left in a 
 former chapter at the year 1603, begins again in that year and 
 goes on at one place or another continuously until 1609. From 
 June, 1603, until February, 1604, it continued in the south of 
 Scotland. At Edinburgh, in April, 1604, the house of Mr 
 
 ' Beesley, /list, of Banlniiy. 
 
 ^ Dean Butler's notes to Clyn'.s and Bowling's Annals. 
 
 •' .Smith's Cork, from MS. Annals. 
 
Plague in Scotland, 1605-1607. 503 
 
 John Hall was " clengit," because a servant woman's death was 
 suspected of the plague : which infection certainly spread in 
 May and became so severe in July that people fled the city'. 
 A letter of July 18 from Codrus Cottage, relating to gold- 
 mining, and making mention of Closeburn, says that the plague 
 is amongst the men^ 
 
 In 1605, towards the end of July, the infection reappeared 
 at Edinburgh, Leith, and St Andrews^ On October 7, the 
 chancellor of Scotland, Lord Dunfermline, wrote to the earl 
 of Salisbury that the plague was rife in the small towns about 
 Edinburgh, probably its old favourite seats along the Firth and 
 on the Fife coasf*. The chancellor himself, as we know from 
 another source, had had a sad experience of it in his own house; 
 his son and niece had died of the plague, and his daughter " had 
 the boils" but recovered ^ The next year, 1606, was the worst 
 of this plague-period in Scotland : " It raged so extremely in 
 all the corners of the kingdoms that neither burgh nor land 
 in any part was free. The burghs of Ayr and Stirling were 
 almost desolate, and all the judicatures of the land were 
 deserted®." It is to this epidemic that a curious transaction, 
 discovered by Chambers, seems to belong. Two houses, on 
 the line of the great road from the south towards Aberdeen, 
 situated on opposite sides of the Dee, the one being the house 
 of a proprietor and the other of a minister, were suspected of 
 having received the infection. The gentlemen of the county 
 met and resolved to send to Dundee for two professional 
 " clengers " or disinfectors, giving a bond to the borough of 
 Dundee for 500 merks for the services of its "clengers'." 
 
 In April of the year following, 1607, we hear of the plague 
 in Dundee itself, despite the experts, as well as in Perth and 
 other places^ In July, 1608, many houses in Dundee were 
 infected, and so many magistrates dead that new appointments 
 were made by the Privy CounciP. It broke out again at Perth 
 
 ^ Chambers, Domestic Annals. - Cal. State Papers. 
 
 ^ Chambers. ■* Cal. State Papers. 
 
 * Balfour's Annals of Scotland (in Chambers, I. 399). 
 
 ® Ibid. '' Chambers. 
 
 ^ Aberdeen Burgh Records. " Chambers. 
 
504 spotted Fever the precursor of Plague. 
 
 on August 29, and continued till May, 1609, "wherein deit 
 young and auld 500 persons'." 
 
 Until 1624 there is no other Scottish reference to plague 
 except an entry, November 7, 1609, touching the arrival at 
 Leith of a vessel from the Thames, with some of her crew dead 
 of the plague, and the quarantining of her at Inchkeith^ 
 Edinburgh had a small outbreak the year before the next great 
 English plague that we come to. On November 23, 1624, the 
 infection was discovered to be in several houses, and the session 
 of the law courts was adjourned to January S''; but Scotland 
 appears to have had no part in the great infection of English 
 soil which immediately followed. 
 
 Malignant Fever preceding the Plague of 1625. 
 
 The period of immunity from plague both in London and in 
 the provinces, which began about 161 1, was at length broken in 
 1625. The health of London, and of country districts as well, 
 had not been good for two years before, but plague was not the 
 reigning type of disease. Thus, in London, the burials rose 
 from 8959 in 1622, to 11,102 in 1623 and to 12,210 in 1624. The 
 letters of the time enable us to see what it was that disturbed 
 the public health. On August 21, 1624, Chamberlain writes 
 fi'om London to Dudley Carleton'': 
 
 " We had 32S died this week, a greater number than hath been these 
 fifteen or sixteen years, and yet no mention of plague. God keep it from 
 among us, for we are in danger. But this spotted fever is cousin-german to 
 it at least, and makes as quick riddance almost. The Lady Hatton hath 
 two or three of her children sick of it at her brother Fanshaw's, in Essex, 
 and hath lost her younger daughter, that was buried at Westminster on 
 Wednesday night by her father ; a pretty gentlewoman, much lamented." 
 Again, on September 4 : " We have here but a sickly season, which is 
 easily seen by the weekly mounting of our bill, which is come this last week 
 to 407, and yet we will acknowledge no infection [i.e., of plague]. Indeed, by 
 
 ' Chroii. of Perth. '^ Chambers. * Ibid. 
 
 * The invaluable letters of Chamberlain, as well as those of Mead (of Cambridge) 
 and others, were collected by Dr Thomas Birch in the last ceuliiry, and printed in 
 1^48 under the titles The Court and Times of James I., and C and 'T. Charles /., 
 without an index but with some useful notes. 
 
Fever in London and count ly, 1625. 505 
 
 the particulars we find about 250 of them to be children, most of the rest 
 carried away by this spotted fever, which reigns almost everywhere, in the 
 country as ill as here... The mortality is spread far and near, and takes hold 
 of whole households in many places." On October 9 : " The town con- 
 tinues sickly still, for this week there died 347." On October 23 we hear of 
 the Lord Keeper being "troubled with the fluent disease of the time" — the 
 flux, orflix. On December 18 (as well as previously on August 21) a cure of 
 smallpox is mentioned in a person of quality. 
 
 These, then, were the prevalent types of epidemic sickness, 
 in the houses of the great as well as among the jjoor — spotted 
 fever or typhus, dysentery or flux, and smallpox. Two of 
 these continued into the plague-year, 1625, as Taylor, the 
 Water-poet, says of that occasion : 
 
 '■ Thou see'st the fearful plague, the flix and fever, 
 Which many a soul doth from the body sever." 
 
 An eminent victim of the " pestilent fever " was the marquis 
 of Hamilton, who died of it while at Moor Park, Rickmansworth, 
 on Ash- Wednesday, 1625^ His residence in London was the 
 house called Fisher's Folly (mentioned by Stow) outside Bishops- 
 gate in a parish which was now " pestered " with tenements 
 of the poor. 
 
 The fever was not always called the spotted fever. It may 
 have been the same disease that is often spoken of under the 
 name of ague — " the ague with a hundred names," as Abraham 
 Holland says (1625). Thus, Mead, of Christ's College, Cam- 
 bridge, writes on September 4, 1625 : " Agues grow wonderfully 
 rife both here and everywhere ; so that one told me )'es- 
 terday that about Royston and Barkway they wanted help 
 to gather their harvest out of the fields " — perhaps the same 
 sort of " burning fever " which we shall have to trace a few 
 pages later, both in town and country, in time of peace as well 
 as in the Civil Wars, the type of sickness which became the 
 common one in England when the plague had ceased, reaching 
 its highest point in the i8th century. But here again we meet 
 the old difficulty of " influenza." 
 
 These historical glimpses of spotted fevers, or pestilent 
 fevers, in the houses of the great, as well as among the common 
 
 ^ Chamberlain It) Carleton, C. and T. James /., 11. 504. 
 
5o6 
 
 High dcatli-ratcs in England, 1622-25. 
 
 people, are in accordance not only with the London bills of 
 mortality for the respective years, but also with the registers of 
 country parishes and market towns as abstracted by the 
 laborious Dr Short. Repeating the form of table used in a 
 former chapter, which dealt with the epidemic years 1557-8 and 
 1580-82, we find the years 1623-25 distinguished as follows: 
 
 Country Parishes. 
 
 Year. 
 
 No. of 
 registers 
 examined 
 
 No. of 
 
 unhealthy 
 
 parishes 
 
 Baptised 
 in same 
 
 Buried 
 in same 
 
 1622 
 
 85 
 
 II 
 
 177 
 
 223 
 
 1623 
 
 84 
 
 30 
 
 601 
 
 836 
 
 1624 
 
 87 
 
 '9 
 
 362 
 
 511 
 
 1625 
 
 88 
 
 13 
 Market Towns. 
 
 246 
 
 327 
 
 Year 
 
 No. of 
 registers 
 examined 
 
 No. of 
 
 unhealthy 
 
 towns 
 
 Baptised 
 in same 
 
 Buried 
 in same 
 
 1622 
 
 ^5 
 
 4 
 
 345 
 
 442 
 
 1623 
 
 25 
 
 16 
 
 439 
 
 2254 
 
 1624 
 
 25 
 
 9 
 
 714 
 
 978 
 
 1625 
 
 25 
 
 9 
 
 563 
 
 666 
 
 The incidence upon the year 1623 is the more noteworthy as 
 there appears to be no record of plague in England that year in 
 its more usual seats, except an entry in a parish register at 
 Banbury. Fever, we may take it, was the prevalent epidemic 
 types both in London and provincial places, urban and rural. 
 In his other treatise Short calls it " malignant spotted fever," 
 and refers specially to the parish registers of Keswick, Penrith, 
 and Wigton for its prevalence in 1623 \ 
 
 Chamberlain, in the letter of August 21, 1624, says the 
 spotted fever was cousin-german at least to the plague ; and 
 therein he expressed as a layman an opinion which was after- 
 wards formally expounded by Willis Sydenham anti Morton. 
 Along with the flux and the smallpox it stood for the un- 
 healthiness of London in 1623 and 1624 and the first months of 
 
 ' Chronological History of the A i)., W^Mther, Seasons, Meteors, etc. 2 vols. Lond. 
 1749, I. 306: — "This fever began, and raged terribly in England in 1623; was little, 
 if at all, short of the plague." 
 
Fever followed by Plague, 1625. 507 
 
 1625, just as the trio were the chief causes of epidemic mortality 
 in the capital in the latter part of tiie seventeenth century and 
 throughout the whole of the eighteenth. But in 1625 London 
 was not yet done with plague. As the year passed from spring 
 into summer, the spotted fever did not, indeed, cease (as wc 
 may infer from casual references and from the known facts of 
 the analogous plague-years, 1636 and 1665); but it was soon 
 overtaken, surpassed, and eclipsed by the greater infection, the 
 old " common infection " of the sixteenth century, the bubo- 
 plague itself. To explain the existence of typhus in the 
 Liberties and out-parishes of London in 1623 and 1624, we find 
 ready to hand the evidence of overcrowding while the plague 
 was quiet from 161 1 ; the births in 1624 were about half as many 
 again as immediately before the last great plague of 1603, and 
 the deaths were twice as many. The fringe of poverty had 
 grown once more, despite the epidemic checks of flux, fever and 
 smallpox : the harvest was ready for the sickle, and the reaping 
 took place in the summer and autumn of 1625. The infection 
 of plague was lurking in London, as it had been for nearly three 
 centuries ; but it depended for its activity upon the times and 
 seasons, and the season of 1625 was a favourable one. 
 
 The London Plague of 1625. 
 
 The previous summer of 1624 had been unusually hot and 
 dry. The weather in October was exceptionally fine, and the 
 fruit crop was abundant. In January the weather was warm 
 and mild. On February 25 there occurred one of those very high 
 tides that come perhaps once in a generation. Thames Street 
 was wrecked, Westminster Hall was " full three feet in water all 
 over. But the greater loss we hear of in the drowning of 
 marshes, and overthrowing the walls in Kent, Essex, Lincoln- 
 shire, Yorkshire, and other places near the sea \" For the first 
 three months of 1625 the deaths from plague were two or three 
 in a week, some weeks being clear. In the last week of March 
 they were 11, and in the week after, 10. In the last week of 
 
 ^ Chamberlain to Carleton, in Court and Times of Cliarles /., I. 28. 
 
5o8 TJic London Plague of 1625. 
 
 May they were 69, reported from twenty parishes. The spring 
 is described by the Water-poet as " wholesome ; " but the early 
 summer was unusually cold. On June 12 Chamberlain writes : 
 " We have had for a month together the extremest cold weather 
 ever I knew in this season." The whole month of June was a 
 time of "ceaseless rain in London \" In the country, the 
 hay-harvest was spoilt, and the corn-harvest was only a half 
 crop^ Another says (in verse), that the summer sun wore 
 sallow hair and a languishing complexion ; the air was full of 
 black mists and damp, with no dewdrops at night, but a 
 vaporous smoker The following table of the weekly burials 
 (with christenings) in London will show how the plague 
 increased after the rains of June. The mortality of May and 
 June had been a good deal higher for the season than in the 
 moderate endemic years of plague, such as the last series from 
 1606 to 161 1 ; but it was not until July that a plague of the 
 first degree declared itself. 
 
 A Table of the Christenings and Mortality in London 
 for the year 1625*. 
 
 
 
 
 Of 
 
 Parishes 
 
 Week ending 
 
 Christened 
 
 Buried 
 
 Plague 
 
 Infected 
 
 Dec. 23 
 
 165 
 
 183 
 
 
 
 
 
 30 
 
 176 
 
 211 
 
 
 
 
 
 Jan. 6 
 
 199 
 
 220 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 13 
 
 194 
 
 196 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 20 
 
 160 
 
 240 
 
 
 
 
 
 27 
 
 178 
 
 226 
 
 
 
 
 
 Feb. 3 
 
 178 
 
 174 
 
 3 
 
 I 
 
 10 
 
 161 
 
 204 
 
 5 
 
 2 
 
 17 
 
 181 
 
 211 
 
 3 
 
 I 
 
 24 
 
 190 
 
 2C2 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 Mar. 3 
 
 185 
 
 207 
 
 
 
 
 
 lO 
 
 196 
 
 210 
 
 
 
 
 
 17 
 
 175 
 
 262 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 24 
 
 187 
 
 226 
 
 8 
 
 2 
 
 31 
 
 133 
 
 243 
 
 II 
 
 4 
 
 Apr. 7 
 
 184 
 
 239 
 
 10 
 
 4 
 
 14 
 
 154 
 
 256 
 
 24 
 
 10 
 
 21 
 
 160 
 
 230 
 
 25 
 
 II 
 
 28 
 
 134 
 
 305 
 
 26 
 
 9 
 
 ^ Salvetti's Diary, in Hist. Jl/SS. Com. xi. pt. i, p. 26. 
 2 Cat. S. P. 15 Sept. » Holland. 
 
 * Bell, I.ondoit's Kcinciitbrancer. 
 
Weekly plague-bills in London, 1625. 
 
 509 
 
 
 
 
 Of 
 
 Parishes 
 
 Week ending 
 
 Christened 
 
 Buried 
 
 Plague 
 
 Infected 
 
 May 5 
 
 158 
 
 292 
 
 30 
 
 10 
 
 12 
 
 140 
 
 332 
 
 45 
 
 13 
 
 19 
 
 182 
 
 379 
 
 71 
 
 17 
 
 26 
 
 145 
 
 401 
 
 78 
 
 16 
 
 June 2 
 
 123 
 
 395 
 
 69 
 
 20 
 
 9 
 
 125 
 
 434 
 
 91 
 
 25 
 
 16 
 
 no 
 
 510 
 
 i6s 
 
 31 
 
 23 
 
 no 
 
 640 
 
 239 
 
 32 
 
 30 
 
 125 
 
 942 
 
 390 
 
 50 
 
 July 7 
 
 114 
 
 1 222 
 
 593 
 
 57 
 
 14 
 
 115 
 
 1741 
 
 1004 
 
 82 
 
 21 
 
 137 
 
 2850 
 
 1819 
 
 96 
 
 28 
 
 155 
 
 3583 
 
 2471 
 
 103 
 
 Aug. 4 
 
 128 
 
 4517 
 
 3659 
 
 114 
 
 II 
 
 125 
 
 4855 
 
 4115 
 
 1 12 
 
 18 
 
 134 
 
 5205 
 
 4463 
 
 114 
 
 25 
 
 135 
 
 4841 
 
 4218 
 
 114 
 
 Sept. I 
 
 117 
 
 3897 
 
 3344 
 
 117 
 
 8 
 
 112 
 
 3157 
 
 2550 
 
 116 
 
 IS 
 
 100 
 
 2148 
 
 1674 
 
 107 
 
 22 
 
 75 
 
 1994 
 
 1551 
 
 in 
 
 29 
 
 7S 
 
 1236 
 
 852 
 
 103 
 
 Oct. 6 
 
 77 
 
 838 
 
 538 
 
 99 
 
 13 
 
 85 
 
 815 
 
 511 
 
 91 
 
 20 
 
 91 
 
 651 
 
 331 
 
 76 
 
 27 
 
 77 
 
 375 
 
 134 
 
 47 
 
 Nov. 3 
 
 82 
 
 357 
 
 89 
 
 41 
 
 10 
 
 85 
 
 319 
 
 92 
 
 35 
 
 17 
 
 88 
 
 274 
 
 48 
 
 22 
 
 24 
 
 88 
 
 231 
 
 27 
 
 16 
 
 Dec. I 
 
 93 
 
 190 
 
 IS 
 
 12 
 
 8 
 
 90 
 
 181 
 
 IS 
 
 7 
 
 IS 
 
 94 
 
 168 
 
 6 
 
 S 
 
 6983 
 
 54265 
 
 35417 
 
 The deaths from all causes in May and June were so many 
 more than the reported plague-deaths could account for that 
 those who watched the bills of mortality (Mead at Cambridge, 
 Salvetti in London) suspected that plague was being concealed. 
 " It is a strange reckoning," says Mead of the bill for the week 
 ending June 30: "Are there some other disea.ses as bad and 
 spreading as the plague, or is there untrue dealing in the 
 account V Probably there were both ; at the end of the year 
 the deaths from all causes were some 20,000 more than the 
 plague accounted for ; and at least half of that excess was extra 
 to the ordinary mortality. The spotted fever and the flux 
 
 ' C. and T. Charles /., letter of i July, 1625. 
 
5IO ParisJics of London most ajfectcd, 1625. 
 
 doubtless continued side by side with the plague, having been 
 its forerunners. The parishes most affected were, as in 1603, 
 St Giles's, Cripplegate, St Olavc's, Southwark, St Sepulchre's, 
 without Newgate, and St Mary's, Whitechapel, corresponding 
 to the mazes of lanes and twisting passages, " pestered " with the 
 tenements of the poorer class, of which only a few examples 
 now remain from i8th century London. The following are the 
 parishes with greatest mortality, in their order (Bell) : 
 
 St Giles's, Cripplegate 
 
 St Olave's, Southwark 
 
 St Sepulchre's, Newgate 
 
 St Mary's, Whitechapel 
 
 St Saviour's, Southwark 
 
 St Botolph's, Aldgate 
 
 St Botolph's, Bishopsgate 
 
 St Andrew's, Holborn 
 
 St Leonard's, Shoreditch 
 
 St George's, Southwark 
 
 St Bride's, Fleet St. 
 
 St Martin's in the Fields 
 
 St Giles's in the Fields 
 
 St Clement's Danes 
 
 St James's, Clerkenwell 
 
 St Magdalen's, Bermondsey 
 
 St Katharine's, Tower 
 
 St Dunstan's in the West 
 
 97 parishes within the walls 
 
 The original printed bill of the Parish Clerks is extant for 
 the worst week but one, August 4th to nth'. Its mortalities 
 for the week in each of the 122 parishes are almost exactly in 
 the order of the final summation for the year, so that the details 
 throw no light upon the question, in what direction the infection 
 spread, or what parishes felt its incidence most as the season 
 advanced. The total mortalities for the week within the walls, 
 in the Liberties, and in the nine out-parishes (within the Bills) 
 are respectively 1144, 2717 and 994. The infection is said^ to 
 have begun in Whitechapel, as we conclude that it did also in 
 1603 ; but the City had its due share at length, the parishes of 
 St Stephen, Coleman Street (full of tortuous passages), of 
 
 1 In a volume of Topographical l\'ipers in the British Museum, i^f^S, m (iS). 
 
 2 W. Hehcrden, Junr., Increase ami Decrease of Diseases. Loutl. iSor, ji. 66. 
 He gives no authority; " 1626" is clearly a misprint. 
 
 Total 
 deaths 
 
 Plague 
 deaths 
 
 3988 
 3689 
 
 2338 
 2609 
 
 3425 
 
 2420 
 
 3305 
 2746 
 
 2573 
 
 2272 
 1671 
 1653 
 
 2334 
 2190 
 
 714 
 1636 
 
 1995 
 1608 
 
 J 407 
 912 
 
 I481 
 
 103 1 
 
 1470 
 
 973 
 
 1333 
 1284 
 
 947 
 755 
 
 II9I 
 
 I 127 
 
 998 
 860 
 
 903 
 889 
 
 744 
 642 
 
 14342 
 
 9197 
 
Mitch Plague in the newer parishes. 5 1 1 
 
 Allhallovvs the Great, and of Christ Church having the largest 
 mortalities. 
 
 In the 97 parishes of the City, the 16 parishes of the 
 Liberties, and 9 out-parishes, the deaths at the end of the year 
 were 54,265 from all causes, whereof of the plague 35,417. But 
 that was by no means the whole mortalit}'. A separate account 
 was kept for the parishes of Stepney, Newington, Lambeth, 
 Islington, and Hackney, and for the Westminster parishes, in 
 all of which the deaths from December 30, 1624, to December 
 22, 1625, were from all causes 8,736, whereof of the plague 
 5,896'. The grand total of deaths in 1625 was, accordingly, 
 63,001, whereof of the plague 41,313. 
 
 The large parish of Stepney, extending from Shoreditch to 
 Blackwall, was one of the worst pkigue-districts in London. It 
 is mentioned as such by Dekker in 1603 ; and in the plague of 
 1665 it headed the list, with 8,598 deaths, whereof of the plague 
 6,583. We have some particulars of it for 1625 : in the week 
 July 18 to 24, there died in it 184, whereof of the plague, 144; 
 and from July 25 to 31, 259, of which 241 were plague-deaths^; 
 and those figures would have been nearly doubled in the weeks 
 of August. Stepney alone would have had about half the 
 deaths in the additional bill for the year ; the parish register of 
 Lambeth gives 623 burials, of Islington 213, and of Hackney 
 170^ while Westminster with St Mary Newington (or Newington 
 Butts, between Lambeth and Southwark) and Rotherhithe 
 would account for most of the remainder. The parishes 
 farthest out, and on higher ground, such as Hackney, Islington 
 and Stoke Newington had fewer burials than in 1603. 
 . The plague of 1625 was a great national event, although 
 historians, as usual, do no more than mention it. Coinciding 
 exactly with the accession of Charles I., it stopped all trade in 
 the City for a season and left great confusion and impoverish- 
 ment behind it ; in many provincial towns and in whole counties 
 the plague of that or the following years made the people 
 unable, supposing that they had been willing, to take up the 
 
 * Cale7idar of Slate Papos, 1625 — 2^, p. 184. 
 
 - The Red Crosse (broadside). London, 1625. 
 
 •* Parish Histories, and in Lysons' Environs of London. 
 
512 Sources of ijifoniiation on Plague in 1625. 
 
 forced loan, and to furnish ships or the money for them. The 
 history might have proceeded just the same without the plague ; 
 but historians would doubtless admit that all causes, moral and 
 physical, should be taken into the account ; and it will not be 
 thought beyond the scope of this history to enter as fully 
 as possible into these events of sickness. First as to the sources, 
 other than statistical. Four or more poems were written on the 
 plague of 1625 — an interminable one by George Wither (with 
 other topics brought in) in eight cantos and about thirty 
 thousand lines', a piece by John Taylor, the water-poet and 
 Queen's bargeman, not wanting in graphic touches*, a short 
 piece by Abraham Holland ^ the son of Philemon Holland, doctor 
 of physic, and another short poem by one Brewer'*. Besides 
 the poems, there were sermons, mostly when the epidemic was 
 over, and various other moral pieces to improve the occasion. 
 A broadside called TJie Red Crosse gives a few details of 
 former plagues. The letters of Chamberlain to Carleton, those 
 of Mead, at Christ's College, Cambridge (whose relation Dr 
 Meddus, rector of St Gabriel'.s, Fenchurch Street, was in the 
 City during the epidemic), and the diary of Salvetti, the envoy 
 of the Grand Duke of Tuscany^, supply many particulars ; while 
 the Calendar of State Papers brings together other information 
 both for London and the provinces, I know of no account of 
 the plague of 1625 from the medical side^ 
 
 James I., prematurely worn out at fifty-seven, died at 
 
 ^ Britahi's Remembrancer, containing a Narrative of the Plague lately past. 
 London, 1628. 
 
 * The Fearfttll Summer, or London''s Calamitic. Printed at Oxford, 1625 (re- 
 printed with additions, Lond. 1636). 
 
 3 Holland's Postlmma. Cantab. 1626. 
 
 ■* The Weeping Lady, or London like AHnivie in Sackcloth. By T. B. London, 
 1625. 
 
 ^ LList. MSS. Commission, xi. pt. i, p. 6. 
 
 " Bradwell's book, to be mentioned in the sequel, was written for practice during 
 the plague. There is a reference to something of Sir Theodore Mayerne's on the 
 plague of 1625, which I have not succeeded in finding. His Opera Aledica contain 
 ordinary cases treated by him in London in December, 1625, but there is no mention 
 of plague-cases. Woodall's essay on plague, published in 1639, thus refers to his 
 experience in the epidemic of 1625 : " In anno 1625 we had many signes contrarie to 
 the plagues in other times ; yea, and many did dye dayly without any signes or markes 
 on their bodies at all." 
 
State affairs during tJie Plague, 1625. 513 
 
 Theobalds on March 27, (mm the effects of a tertian ague, 
 for which he preferred to be treated by the plasters and possets 
 of ail obscure ague-curer from Dunmow, setting aside his 
 physicians, who would have succeeded no better. A great 
 funeral, for which 14,000 "blacks" were given out, followed on 
 May 7. Meanwhile the marriage of Charles I. to the princess 
 Henrietta of France was being arranged. The king met his 
 bride at Dover on June 13, and entered London with her on the 
 1 8th, passing up the river in a state barge to Denmark House, 
 amidst an immense concourse of people on the houses and ship- 
 ping, and in wherries on the water, with salvoes of artillery and 
 demonstrations of welcome to the Catholic princess. On the 
 13th the Lord Keeper had written to Conway, Secretary of 
 State, that cases of plague had occurred in Westminster, and 
 that he could have wished that his majesty had determined to 
 cotfie no nearer than Greenwich. The nobility were kept in 
 town to await the coming of the new queen, and some of them 
 by the summons to Parliament. The Houses met on June 18, 
 and were advised in the king's speech to expedite their business 
 on account of the plague. However, those who were disposed 
 to refuse supplies until grievances were redressed could make 
 use of the plague as well as the king, and it was proposed by 
 Mallory and Wentworth to adjourn on that plea until Michael- 
 mas. The Houses sat for three weeks, until July ii, when they 
 were adjourned to meet at Oxford on August i. On a day in 
 JuneJFrancis, Lord Russell (afterwards carl of Bedford), "being 
 to go to Parliament, had his shoemaker to pull on his boots, who 
 fell down dead of the plague in his presence," so that his lordship 
 avoided the House. In the first week of July, the court 
 removed to Hampton Court, and thence to Woodstock and to 
 Beaulieu in the New Forest. The Coronation was put off 
 until October, for reasons connected with the queen's religion 
 as well as for the infcctipn, and eventually until February 2, 
 1626. 
 
 Before Parliament rose, it obtained the king's sanction to a 
 solemn fast. "This," says the Tuscan, Salvetti, "is a ceremony 
 which is performed in all the parishes, and consists in staying in 
 church all day singing psalms, hearing sermons, the one shortly 
 
 C. 33 
 
514 London durinc^ tJie Plagne, 1625. 
 
 after the other, and making I know not how many prayers, 
 imploring God for stoppage of the plague, and of the ceaseless 
 rain which for a month past has fallen to the detriment of all 
 kinds of crops." At that date, July i, he says that plague is 
 now spread through all the streets and has reached other parts 
 of the kingdom. A general exodus took place to the country, 
 of all who had the means to remove. As in 1603, the magis- 
 trates, the ministers, the doctors, and the rich men seem to 
 have left the city to take care of itself On August 9, 
 Salvetti, who had himself escaped to Richmond, writes : " The 
 magistrates in desperation have abandoned every care ; every- 
 one does what he pleases, and the houses of merchants who 
 have left London are broken into and robbed." On September 
 I, Dr Meddus, rector of St Gabriel's, Fenchurch Street, wrote: 
 " The want and misery is the greatest here that ever any man 
 living knew ; no trading at all ; the rich all gone ; housekeepers 
 and apprentices of manual trades begging in the streets, and 
 that in such a lamentable manner as will make the strongest 
 heart to yearn." The city an hour after noon was the same as at 
 three in the morning in the month of June, no more people 
 stirring, no more shops open\ This is re-echoed in verse by 
 Abraham Holland : 
 
 "A noon in Fleet Street now can hardly show 
 That press which midnight could, not long ago. 
 Walk through the woeful streets (whoever dare 
 Still venture on the sad infected air) 
 So many marked houses you shall meet 
 As if the city were one Red-Cross Street." 
 
 And by the Water-poet : 
 
 " In some whole street, perhaps, a shop or twain 
 Stands open for small takings and less gain. 
 And every closed window, door and stall 
 Makes every day seem a solemn festival. 
 All trades are dead, or almost out of breath. 
 But such as live by sickness and by death." 
 
 The circumstances arc so exactly the same as in 1603 that 
 it is needless to repeat much : the sextons, coffin-maker.s, 
 
 ' C. mul T. Charles /. I. 4S. 
 
Illustrations of the London PI ague, 1625. 515 
 
 bearers, searchers, apothecaries and quacks are all profitably 
 employed ; 
 
 " And last to do^tj-killcrs great gain abounds, 
 For braining brawling curs and foisting hounds." 
 
 The clocks striking the hours arc not heard for the constant 
 tolling of bells. " Strange," says Holland, 
 
 " Strange that the hours should {mX to tell the day 
 When Time to thousands ran so fast away." 
 
 Of the sick, Taylor says there were 
 
 " Some franticke raving, some with anguish crying." 
 
 — delirious ravings and cries of pain (from the buboes) which 
 we know from the accounts for 1665 to have been no rhetorical 
 exaggeration. There were the same crowded common graves as 
 in 1603, probably in the same graveyards : 
 
 " My multitude of graves that gaping wide 
 Are hourly fed with carcases of men. 
 Those hardly swallowed, they be fed again." 
 
 Or as Taylor says, 
 
 " Dead coarses carried and recarried still 
 Whilst fifty corpses scarce one grave doth fill." 
 
 The treatment seems to have been mostU' in the hands of 
 quacks. Taylor says : 
 
 " On many a post I see Quacksalvers' bills 
 Like fencers' challenges to show their skill." 
 
 The Water-poet, being Queen's bargeman, appears to have 
 had a proper feeling for all constituted authorities. After 
 denouncing the quacks, as men who " pick their living out of 
 others' dying," he proceeds to eulogise the regular practitioners, 
 forgetting to add that they were now conspicuous b}- their 
 absence : 
 
 "This sharp invective no way seems to touch 
 The learned physicians whom I honour much. 
 The Paracelsists and the Galenists, 
 The philosophical grave Herbalists, — 
 These I admire and reverence, for in those 
 God doth dame nature's secrets fast inclose, 
 Which they distribute as occasions serve." 
 
5i6 A practitioner in the Plague, 1625. 
 
 — the prevalence of plague not being one of the occasions for 
 revealing the secrets entrusted to them. 
 
 The medical faculty is hardly at all in evidence the whole 
 time. Thayre's surgical treatise of 1603 was reprinted ; while a 
 semi-empiric, one Stephen Bradwell, the grandson of Banister, 
 a well-known Elizabethan practitioner, published a poor essay on 
 plague, patched up from the usual stale sources and plagiarised 
 even from the lay dialogue of the rector of St Olave's in i6o3\ 
 Bradwell addressed the reader, on July 15 "from my study in 
 Mugwell-street, ready to my power to do thee any pleasure." 
 
 " I have two powders. I have also an excellent electuary. I have 
 likewise lozenc^es, and rich pomanders to smell of. These are all of my 
 grandfather's invention, and have been proved to be admirably effectual 
 both by his and my father's experience. I confess they are costly ; but 
 slight means and cheap medicines (however they promise) prove as dear as 
 death. The first powder is 12 pence a dram. The second is 3 pence a 
 grain (the quantity is 10 or 12 grains). The electuary is 2 shillings and 
 6 pence an ounce, the quantity is one or two drams. There is a fellow in 
 Distaff-lane that disperseth his bills abroad, bragging of a medicine that 
 was my grandfather Bannister's. My grandfather was very scrupulous of 
 giving any special receipts to others. But if any man can say he hath any 
 receipt of his, I am sure, if it were of any value, I have the copy of it. 
 Because many men know that I have a whole volume of excellent receipts 
 left me both by my grandfather and my father, and lest they should 
 conceive me as too strict and covetous in keeping all secret to myself, I 
 have thought fit for the common good to divulge this excellent antidote 
 following:" — the ingredients occupying a whole page. 
 
 This enterprising tradesman had been at Oxford, where he 
 failed to take a degree in medicine, but he was a licentiate of the 
 College of Physicians. He is the single literary representative 
 of the faculty, so far as appears, in 1625; and there is nothing 
 in his essay that concerns us, except the following corroboration 
 of a well-known character of the epidemic : 
 
 " Poor people, by reason of their great want, living skittishly, feeding 
 nastily on offals, or the worst and unwholesomest meats, and many times, 
 too, lacking food altogether, have both their bodies much corrupted, and 
 
 ^ A IVafr/uiian for iJic Pest, teaching the true Rules of Presej-iiation from the 
 l\slile)it Coiilagioii, al /his time fearfully oz'crfloiciing this famous Cittic of London. 
 Collected out of the best authors, mixed ivith auncicnt experience, and tnoulded into a 
 new and most plai)ie method. By Steven Bradwell, of London, Physition. 16-25. 
 
Flight of citizens to the country. 517 
 
 their spirits exceedingly weakened ; whereby they become (of all others) most 
 subject to this sickness. And therefore we see the plague sweeps up such 
 people in greatest heaps." 
 
 It is impossible to know whether any considerable propor- 
 tion recovered. It appears that, as in 1603, the buboes and 
 boils might come out in the same person more than once, and 
 that the best chance was from their suppuration : 
 
 " Some with their carbuncles and sores new burst 
 Are fed with hope they have escaped the worst." 
 
 But the best hope was in flight, as Bradwell was candid 
 enough to say, although he remained behind with his shilling 
 powders and half-crown electuaries. Cito cede, longe recede, 
 tarde redi — is the proverbial advice which he quotes. 
 
 However, the people in their flight, unless they were nobles 
 or squires with country houses, fared but ill in the provinces. 
 The story of their reception in country towns and villages is so 
 like that of 1603 that one might suppose in this, as in other 
 things, that the writers of 1625 were copying from Dekker. 
 One of the versifiers, Brewer, has a section specially devoted to 
 a " Relation of the many miseries that many of those that fly 
 the City do fall into in the country." They are driven back 
 by men with bills and halberds, passing through village after 
 village in disgrace until they end their journey ; they sleep in 
 stables, barns and outhouses, or even by the roadside in ditches 
 and in the open fields. And that was the lot of comparatively 
 wealthy men. Taylor says that when he was with the queen's 
 barge at Hampton Court and up the river almost to Oxford, he 
 had much grief and remorse to see and hear of the miserable 
 and cold entertainment of many Londoners : 
 
 " The name of London now both far and near 
 Strikes all the towns and villages with fear. 
 And to be thought a Londoner is worse 
 Than one that breaks a house, or takes a purse.... 
 Whilst hay-cock lodging with hard slender fare, 
 Welcome, like dogs into a church, they are. 
 For why the hob-nailed boors, inhuman blocks, 
 Uncharitable hounds, hearts hard as rocks. 
 Did suffer people in the field to sink 
 Rather than give or sell a draught of drink. 
 
5i8 Reception of Londoners in the eon n try. 
 
 Milkmaids and farmers' wives are grown so nice 
 They think a Citizen a cockatrice, 
 And country dames are waxed so coy and brisk 
 They shun him as they shun a basihsk." 
 
 Taylor gives various instances in prose : 
 
 "A man sick of an ague lying on the ground at Maidenhead in Berkshire, 
 with his fit violently on him, had stones cast at him by two men of the towne 
 (whom I could name), and when they could not cause him to rise, one of 
 them tooke a hitcher, or long boat-hook, and hitched in the sick man's 
 breeches, drawing him backward with his face grovelling on the ground, 
 drawing him so under the bridge in a dry place, where he lay till his fit was 
 gone, and having lost a new hat, went his way." 
 
 One at Richmond was drawn naked in the night by his own 
 wife and boy, and cast into the Thames, where the next day 
 the corpse was found. The village of Hendon distinguished 
 itself by relieving the sick, burying the dead, and collecting 
 eight pounds, at the least (being but a small village) for the 
 poor of St Andrew's, Holborn, besides allowing good weekly 
 wages to two men to attend and bury such as died. The 
 village of Tottenham appears to have been equally hospitable ; 
 but as it was on the road to Theobalds, and some of his 
 majesty's servants dwelt there, the Privy Council on July 19, 
 wrote to the justices of Middlesex to order the inhabitants of 
 Tottenham, who had received into their houses " multitudes of 
 inmates," to remove the new-comers and not to receive any in 
 future \ Although the king was not at Richmond, yet as there 
 was a royal residence there, the inhabitants sought to drive 
 away citizens on the ground of the warrant forbidding them to 
 approach any of his majesty's houses^ At Woodstock, where 
 the Court was in August, no one was allowed to go from thence 
 to London, nor any to come thither, and for contraveners a 
 gibbet was set up at the Court gatel It was hardly possible to 
 get a letter smuggled into London*; in the provinces "no one 
 comes into a town without a ticket, yet there are few free 
 places." At Southampton on August 27, a stranger died in the 
 fields : " He came from London. He had good store of money 
 
 ' Cat. Stale Papers. - //'. 
 
 ^ Til. Locke to Carlcluii, Cat. S. P., 14 Aug. ■" Salvetli. 
 
Lcvidon after the Plague ^/ 1625. 519 
 
 about him, which was taken before he was cold'." Dr Donne, 
 the dean of St Paul's, confirms these experiences in a letter of 
 November 25, from Chelsea" : 
 
 "The citizens fled away as out of a house on fire, and stuffed their 
 pockets with their best ware, and threw themselves into the highways, and 
 were not received so much as into barns, and perished so : some of them 
 with more money about them than would have bought the village where 
 they died. A justice of the peace told me of one that died so with ^^1400 
 about him." 
 
 Meddus, rector of St Gabriel's, heard of one sad case of a 
 citizen in Leadenhall-strcet who removed to the country with 
 his seven children, " but having buried all there is come again 
 hither," in Julyl In October, the people began to come back, 
 although the infection was by no means over ; Salvetti, who 
 was himself near Huntingdon, says that many of the returning 
 artisans caught the infection in the city, which is probable 
 enough, as it happened also in 1665. On October 15, a corre- 
 spondent of Mead's wrote that in his passing through London 
 he found the streets full of people, and the highways full of 
 passengers, horse and foot. On October 24, we hear of great 
 distress among tradesmen, artificers and farmers round London, 
 and of discontent at the forced loan^; although the Court itself 
 was in as great extremity during the plague for want of money 
 as any private house could have been. On November 22, the 
 lord mayor and aldermen wrote to the Privy Council that the 
 great mortality, although it had taken many poor people away, 
 yet had made more poverty by decay of tradesmen, the want 
 and misery being still very great". Still, the effect of this great 
 plague on London, cutting off some fifty thousand in a year, 
 or more than a fifth part of the population, must have been, like 
 that of all other great plagues in London, to cut off the fringe 
 of poverty and broken fortunes, and to raise the general average 
 of well-being of those that remained. Trade would come back ; 
 but the submerged tenth, or sixth, or fourth, or whatever 
 fraction they made, were drowned for good. 
 
 1 Locke to Carleton, 27 Aug. - Cat. S. P. 
 
 ^ j\Iead, letter in C. ami T. C/i. I. I. 43. 
 
 * Cell. S. P. •' Ibid. 
 
520 Plague near London, 1625. 
 
 London soon filled up the gaps made by the plague, 
 doubtless by fresh blood from the country. In 1627, the 
 christenings were again at 8,408, having been at a maximum 
 of 8,299 tl^^ year before the plague. In 1629 they actually 
 exceeded the burials by more than a thousand (9,901 to 8,771), 
 and continued to be slightly in excess until the next plague 
 of 1636. 
 
 The Plague of 1625 near London. 
 
 In the immediate neighbourhood of the capital the parishes 
 on the Kentish chalk below London, such as Deptford, Green- 
 wich, Lewisham, Eltham and Bromley had more plague in 1625 
 than in 1603. Kensington, for some unknown reason, has 80 
 deaths from all causes in the register, as against 32 in 1603 
 and 62 (of plague 25) in 1665. The group of parishes in 
 Middlesex, such as Enfield, Edmonton and Finchley, had each 
 a large number of deaths, but somewhat less than in 1603 and 
 1665, and the same holds for Hackney and Stoke Newington, 
 Islington and Hampstead. Places up the Thames all the way 
 from Battersea to Windsor were infected, including Wandsworth, 
 Putney, Isleworth, Richmond, Kingston and Hampton Court. 
 Eton was "visited;" even the sequestered village of Stoke 
 Pogis had houses shut up "by reason of the contagion" and a 
 collection made for their impoverished inmates. Among the 
 Hertfordshire towns to which Londoners resorted in plague- 
 times, Watford is known to have had plague-deaths in 1625. 
 In Essex, — Stratford, Tottenham, Romford and Barking had 
 each a large number of plague-deaths, and, in Surrey, Croydon 
 and Streatham. At Carshalton, oddly enough, the heavy 
 mortality was the year after (1626) "not from plague, but 
 from a disease somewhat akin to it\" 
 
 Plague in the Provinces in 1625 and following years. 
 
 It is stated by Salvetti and other gossips of the time that 
 the infection of plague in 1625 was carried all over the country 
 from London by the fleeing citizens, and that few places 
 
 ^ Mustly from parish rcgislcis in Lysons' Eitviroiis of London. 
 
Plague in the provinces, 1625. 521 
 
 remained free from it, just as it was said afterwards for the 
 plague of 1665. So far as records show, one would not be 
 warranted in inferring a great provincial prevalence of plague 
 either in 1625 or in 1665. There was plague at Plymouth, and 
 in the south-western counties, under very special circumstances, 
 as we shall see. There was plague also at Norwich, said to 
 have been brought from Yarmouth, and at Colchester the year 
 after. Newcastle, also, which hardly ever escaped the infection 
 when it was afoot, had one of its minor visitations. But, on 
 the whole, it is impossible to show by local evidences that 
 the plague of 1625 was diffused universally over England, either 
 in that or in the following year, or that it grew to a great 
 epidemic in but a few provincial centres \ Probably all the 
 plague-deaths in the provinces together, in 1625 and 1626, 
 would not have made a fifth part of the mortality in London. 
 
 The interest centres in the plague at Plymouth, with which 
 the outbreaks at Ashburton, Exeter, Dartmouth, Bridport, and 
 perhaps Portsmouth, Rye and other places, may be connected, 
 if not causally, yet in neighbourhood. The first that we hear of 
 sickness at Plymouth is under date July 26, 1625 ; some of the 
 ships arrived there had been visited with sickness, and the sick 
 had been landed and lodged under sails'^. It is not called "the 
 sickness," and it is not clear that it was bubo-plague. There 
 may, indeed, have been real plague on board ships of war : Stow 
 says that it was in the fleet in 1603, and there is evidence of its 
 existence now and again in the Venetian galleys of an earlier 
 day. But we are now come to the period of the beginnings of 
 ship-fever, as we shall see in the next chapter ; and, for the 
 present, we must not assume that the sickness on board ship 
 in 1625 was all plague, or chiefly plague. 
 
 1 Winchester was probably a fair sample. In the city archives under the year 
 1625 there is this entry: "Item, it is also agreed that the decayed cottage where 
 Lenord Andrews did dwell, he lately dying of the plague, shall be burned to the 
 grounde for fear of the daunger of infection that might ensue if it should stande. " 
 (Bailey, 7'raiiscripts, etc. Winchester, 1856, p. no.) In a petition relating to 
 Farnham, Jan. 1628, the town is described as being "impoverished through the 
 plague and many charges," which may mean that plague had been diffused in Surrey 
 and Hampshire. 
 
 - Cal. Slate Papers. 
 
522 Sii'k/icss in tlic fleet at PlymoiitJi. 
 
 The ships at Plymouth in July were doubtless a part of the 
 squadron of ninety sail, which sailed thence in autumn, carry- 
 ing ten thousand men to make war on Spain, in accordance with 
 the anti-Catholic policy which had been forced upon James I. 
 in the last years of his reign, and was now being carried out 
 by Charles I. and Buckingham. This was not the first fruit of 
 that policy. The immediate result of it was Mansfeld's English 
 troops for the recovery of the Palatinate to Protestant rule. 
 That expedition failing to effect a landing was speedily broken 
 with disease, and before it had been many days on shore in 
 Holland was burying 40 or 50 men a day. The fleet eight 
 months later had a similar experience. The ships were victualled 
 with rotten food, and the men were supplied with worthless cloth- 
 ing. As the facts were never investigated, the king having 
 interfered to shield the duke of Buckingham from the attack on 
 him by Sir John Eliot, peculation and jobbery were never proved, 
 although it was known to everyone that honesty was the last 
 quality to be looked for in those about the king and the 
 favourite. The fleet reached the Bay of Cadiz and made a 
 futile demonstration there. It is in the month of November 
 that we begin to hear of sickness. On the 9th Viscount 
 Wimbledon writes from on board the ' Anne Royal ' to Secretary 
 Conway that there are not men enough to keep the watches 
 owing to sickness. On December 22, the Commissioners at 
 Plymouth write to the Council that about thirty sail had arrived 
 there with 4,000 soldiers " in such miserable condition as for 
 the most part to be incapable of such comforts as the country 
 would afford them." Captain Bolles, who died since their 
 coming in, declared the occasion of his sickness to be scarcity 
 and corruption of the provisions. Great numbers of the soldiers 
 are continually thrown overboard. Yesterday seven fell down 
 in the streets. The rest are weak, and want clothes, for the 
 supply of which some thousands of pounds were needed. The 
 despatch of December 29, says, " They stink as they go, and 
 the poor rags they have are rotten and ready to fall off if they 
 be touched"*. 
 
 So far there is no word of plague ; on the other hand there 
 
 ' Cat. Slate Papers. 
 
Plague at PlyuLonth and Exeter, 1626. 523 
 
 is a strong probability that the sickness was ship- fever, or 
 typhus. It is not until the spring of 1626 that the plague is 
 mentioned at Plymouth. On March 18, sickness increases at 
 Plymouth and the plague is wondrous rife. On March 28, the 
 plague is dispersed about the town. On April 5, the sickness 
 increases very much. On the nth, 40 died last week and 
 twenty houses are shut up ; some of the sick died and were 
 buried in less than twenty-four hours. On 8th June, the plague 
 is very bad in Plymouth, and the town is destitute of its best 
 inhabitants. The town-council records bear witness to a rate 
 having been levied for the relief of the plague-stricken, and 
 to attempts as late as 1628 to collect their share of it from those 
 who had fled the town in 1626. The deaths at Plymouth are 
 stated in a manuscript book of the municipal annals to have 
 been 2,000 ^ 
 
 Meanwhile plague appeared in other parts of Devonshire. 
 In Exeter it had been prevalent sooner than in Plymouth 
 itself; a letter of November 17, 1625, speaks of the aftlictcd 
 state of the city, and of the weekly contributions for the plague- 
 stricken. Some particulars of the state of Exeter at this time 
 are given in a memorial to the Privy Council by the mayor and 
 bailiffs of the city, dated October 15, 1627. During the great 
 sickness which fell on their city, and was not cleared in sixteen 
 months, all trading was stopped and the inhabitants generally 
 left the town. To appease a mutiny of the more disordered 
 people, who threatened to burn the city, a rate was assessed 
 generally on the city, but most of the inhabitants being absent, 
 the corporation took up the amount at interest on their own 
 credit. The persons whose names are inclosed, being inhabitants 
 who have returned to the city, now refuse to pay the rate 
 assessed in their absence ; and the Council is petitioned to 
 summon them before it'''. 
 
 1 MSS. of the Corporation of Plymouth. Hist. MSS. Cmiimis. IX. 278. Accounts 
 are given (p. 280) of the monies collected for the relief of the poor and sick people of 
 Plymouth "in the time of the infection of the pestilence from Sept. 29, 1625, to that 
 day A.D. 1627." But that does not imply that the infection lasted all that time. The 
 civic year began with September 29, and the accounts are those that fall within two 
 complete financial years. 
 
 '■^ Cal. Stale Papers. 
 
524 As/ihnrton, Biidport, Dartiiiouth, 1626-27. 
 
 On May 17, 1626, the plague is reported to be rife "in 
 Devonshire," and specifically, on July 28, at Okehampton and 
 Ashburton. The epidemic at Ashburton was on the same 
 severe scale as at Plymouth. It began in the end of 1625, but 
 was most fatal in April and May, 1626. The deaths in a 
 twelvemonth were 365, "probably a fourth of the inhabitants'." 
 (In 1627 there were only 27 deaths, doubtless from the empty 
 state of the town.) The same summer it is heard of in Dorset- 
 shire. On September 2, the deputy lieutenants and justices 
 of the county petition the Privy Council that the lOOO soldiers 
 who were to be removed from Devon and Cornwall, should not 
 be quartered in Dorset, but in Somerset, as the former was 
 visited with the plague"''. Perhaps Bridport was the centre of 
 plague referred to. Sometime later in the year, perhaps in 
 November, the bailiffs and burgesses of that town explain to the 
 Council that, although they had subscribed to the loan, yet they 
 were unable to pay the amount subscribed as the town was 
 destitute by reason of a twenty weeks' visitation of plagued 
 
 The last of this series of outbreaks in the south-west 
 appears to have been at Dartmouth in the summer of 1627. 
 On June 29, it was reported that the plague was so hot there 
 that the inhabitants had left. The mayor wrote on July 19 to 
 the Privy Council that it was true the inhabitants were still 
 away, but the plague had ceased ; only 1 5 houses had been 
 infected, the inhabitants of which had all been removed to the 
 pest-houses remote from the town *. 
 
 Farther east on the Channel coast, Portsmouth had a 
 visitation of plague previous to September 28, 1625, perhaps in 
 connexion with the Cadiz fleet ; the mayor and bailiffs, being at 
 the end of their year's office, had refused to take steps to sever 
 the infected ^ At Southampton, only one house was infected 
 on August 27. The infection is reported also from Rye in 1625, 
 and from Canterbury, where the famous composer, Orlando 
 Gibbons, died in the beginning of June, 1625, "not without 
 suspicion of the sickness," says Chamberlain, but, according to 
 Anthony Wood, of the smallpox. The king and queen lodged 
 
 ' Aola ami Queries, 6 ser. ill. 477. - Cat. S. /'. '^ lb. 
 
 •» Cal. S. P. 5 //;. 
 
Oxford and Norwicli, 1625-26. 525 
 
 at Canterbury on June 14; but on July 23 the place had to be 
 avoided " for the great infection." 
 
 From Oxford, where the Parliament met on August i, the 
 vice-chancellor wrote on July 27, that Sir John Hussey came 
 thither infected from London, and died, that Dr Chaloner, being 
 in the same house, was since dead, that the infection was in 
 other parts of Oxford, and that All Souls College was shut up. 
 There was a slight revival of it in January, 1626, which caused 
 the exercises and the sermons at St Mary's to be put ofif\ 
 Anthon}' Wood gives much the same account as for 1603, and 
 blames the great increase of "cottages" erected by townsmen, 
 to which scholars were enticed. 
 
 Cambridge kept free in 1625 ; but on October 3, three 
 deaths are reported at Trumpington— one Peck, his wife, and 
 maid. On the same date three houses were shut up at Royston, 
 and the infected "translated into the fields I" 
 
 The outbreak at Norwich was one of the severer degree I It 
 was said to have been brought in the end of June, 1625, from 
 Yarmouth, where nothing is recorded of it. A king's order to 
 the mayor imposed extensive cleansings, &c , but the plague 
 increased from 26 deaths in a week in July, to 40 in September, 
 reaching a maximum of yT^ from plague in a week, besides 18 
 from other causes. On August 27, Mead, the Cambridge don, 
 writes that he had met the Norwich carrier, who told him that 
 the number of burials there the last week was "jj, whereof of the 
 plague Gy, and but 14 the week before. The infection lingered 
 on until December of the year after (1626), the total deaths 
 from plague having been 143 1. The plague at Norwich was 
 made the excuse, by the mayor and aldermen writing to the 
 Privy Council on January 30, 1627, for not contributing towards 
 shipping for the king's service ; the city was distressed from 
 inundations and the plague, "many hundreds of houses" stand- 
 ing empty. There appears to have been some plague at Lynn 
 in the end of 1625, a Privy Council order of January, 1626, 
 authorising the fair to be held there, the disease having ceased. 
 In April, 1627, the bailiffs and aldermen of Colchester offer 
 
 1 Cal. S. p. "' T.etter from Mead in C. avJ T. C/iarhs /. i. 51. 
 
 ■' Bloniefield. 
 
526 Various centres of Plague, 1625-26. 
 
 the same excuse as Norwich ; they are unable to set forth any 
 ships as directed on account of the heavy visitation of their 
 town by the plague, the decay of their trade in the new 
 draperies and baize, and the loss of their ships at sea. 
 
 Leicestershire, also, would appear to have had another 
 visitation in 1626. On July 28, the muster in that county was 
 respited on account of the shire town and nine or ten other 
 towns being visited with the plague. Of that there is no trace 
 in the excellent county history by Nichols. Leicester, like 
 Bristol and other places, is known to have imposed quarantine 
 against Londoners in the summer of 1625. It is probable that 
 plague was also in Warwickshire in i626\ 
 
 Among other outbreaks in 1625 was one at Newcastle, but it 
 does not compare in extent with some earlier and later plagues 
 there. On September 10, Lord Clifford writes from Appleby 
 Castle to Secretary Conway that Newcastle is so infected with 
 plague, so ill fortified, and ill neighboured, that 500 men would 
 disarm it. In his own county of Cumberland there was plague 
 in Lord William Howard's house. Sir Francis Howard's lady 
 took the infection from a new gown she had from London, so as 
 she died the same day she took it ; they are all dispersed most 
 miserably, with the greatest terror in the world. Cheshire also 
 had the infection in 1625 ^ 
 
 ^ At Coventry in 1626, ;^20 was paid to the poor in lieu of a feast at Lammas, 
 by reason of the infection. (Dugdale, IVarioickshirc.) 
 
 2 The following curious extract was sent by J- A. Picton to Azotes and Queries, 6th 
 ser. I. 314 from the parish register of Malpas, Cheshire, 1625 : 
 
 "Richard Dawson (brother of the above-named Thomas Dawson of Bradley) 
 being sick of the plague and perceiving he must die, at that time arose out of his bed 
 and made his grave, and caused his nephew John Dawson to cast straw into the grave, 
 which was not far from the house, and went and laid him down in the said grave and 
 caused clothes to be laid upon, and so departed out of this world. This he did 
 because he was a strong man and heavier than his said nephew and another wench 
 were able to bury. He died about the 24th of August. Thus much was I credibly 
 tould. He died 1625. 
 
 "John Dawson, son of the aliovc-mcntioned Thomas, came unto his father when 
 his father sent for him being sick, and having laid him down in a ditch died in it the 
 29th day of August, 1625, in the night. 
 
 " Rose Smyth, servant of the above-named Thomas Dawson, and last of that 
 household, died of the plague and was buried by Win. ("oi)l<o tln' 5th day <>f 
 September, 1625, near unlo Ihc said house." 
 
Cavibridgc, 1630. — SJircwshury, LoutJi, 163 1. 527 
 
 After a clear interval of two or three years, the history of 
 plague begins again in London, and in the provinces. The 
 London plague of 1630 was a small affair (1317 deaths), the 
 city being otherwise so healthy that the christenings exceeded 
 the total burials (9315 to 9237), In 1630, at the same time as 
 the small London outbreak, Cambridge had what appears to 
 have been its most considerable plague, but a very small one at 
 the worst. It began about February 28, caused the colleges to 
 break up and the midsummer assizes to be transferred to 
 Royston, and from first to last produced 214 deaths, known or 
 suspected from plague *. 
 
 Along with it there were a good man}- cases at Wymondiiam 
 (Windham), and some straggling cases at Norwich and Col- 
 chester, continuing into 1631, some 20 or 30 dying at Norwich 
 of plague in the latter year I The other centre in 1630 was in 
 the north-west. Shrewsbury, an old-world town which seldom 
 escaped, had a localised epidemic in St Chad's parish. It began 
 on May 24 in Frankwell, but was confined to that street by 
 cutting off the residents therein from the rest of the town, and 
 by removing the infected to pest-houses in Kingsland l It 
 continued at Shrewsbury into 1631, and is heard of also at 
 Preston, Wrexham, and Manchester, collections having been 
 made in neighbouring places for the infected ". But the 
 one great outbreak of those years fell upon the town of 
 Louth, in Lincolnshire, of which the sole particulars are that 
 the plague from April to the end of November, 1631, swept 
 away 754 persons of whom nearly 500 in July and August''. 
 
 After four years clear in London and in all parts of England 
 (years occupied with the growing quarrel between the king and 
 the Parliament), plague broke out again not far from Louth, 
 where we saw it last, namely at Hull. A century and 
 a half had passed since Hull's last great devastation by 
 plague year after year from 1472 to 1478. It was then 
 
 ' Memoranda of Rev. Thomas Archer, of Tlnucjliton Conquest. MSS. Addil. lirit. 
 Museum. 
 
 2 Blomelield. ■■ I'hillips' Hist, of Slnrioihiny. Hist. MSS. Corn. x. pt. 4. p. 498. 
 
 ■» Hist. MSS. Com. 11. 2 58. 
 
 ■'' Hist, of County of Lincolti, l\. 185-. Notitim- f^iii/uc, y. 41. 
 
528 Plague at Hull, 1635-38. — Sanikvich, 1637. 
 
 a medieval town, with a chain drawn across the mouth 
 of its creek of the Humber, surrounded by great abbeys, and 
 owing its importance to its trade in stock fish from Iceland and 
 the North Sea. In the Tudor times it had experienced one 
 small epidemic about the Blackfriars Gate in 1576, causing 
 about a hundred deaths. The date of the outbreak in 1635 is 
 not given exactly; but, as in the 15th century, it was the 
 peculiarity of Hull among provincial towns that it kept the 
 infection for several years, — down to June, 1638. Business was 
 paralysed, schools shut up, and the town deserted by the 
 wealthier classes. The deaths from plague from first to last are 
 counted at 2730, besides those which occurred in flight to other 
 places. Upwards of 2,500 persons, once in easy circumstances, 
 are said to have been reduced to seek relief, to which the county 
 of York contributed'. In 1643 Hull stood a siege, but there is 
 no farther mention of plague ; nor did the town suffer in 1665. 
 
 The year 1635, which saw the beginning of the Hull plague, 
 at a time when the infection was absolutely quiet in the capital, 
 saw also the beginning of an outbreak at Sandwich, with 
 accompanying cases at Canterbury, and a beginning at Yar- 
 mouth, Lynn and Norwich ^ in all which places the infections 
 lingered at a low endemic level for a year or more. The dates 
 are important only as showing that these provincial infections 
 were looking up some months before the sharp outburst in 
 London in the late autumn of 1636 made any sign. In 
 Sandwich, on the 12th of March, 1637, there were 78 houses 
 "visited," and 188 persons infected; on June 30, 24 houses 
 shut up, with 103 persons, some of them lodged in tents; 
 from July 6 to October 5, there were buried of the plague 
 about ten every week in St Clement's parish. Considerable 
 expenses were incurred (more than ;^40 a week), to which the 
 county of Kent and the other Cinque Ports contributed^. 
 
 Besides these lingering endemics in Kent and Norfolk, the 
 great plague epidemics of 1636 were in Newcastle and London. 
 
 ' T\c\g\W Hist, of Kini^ston-iipoit- Hull. Hull, 179S. 
 
 ■-' Gawdy MSS. {Hist. MSS. Com. X. |)t. 2), various letters from Sept. 14, 16//), to 
 Nov. id, 1638, relating chiefly to Norwich. 
 ■' Jioys, Hist, of Sntidivicli, pp. 707 — 8. 
 
Plague at Newcastle, 1636. 
 
 529 
 
 The Newcastle epidemic was both earHer and relatively far 
 morc severe than that of the capital. For a town of some 20,000 
 inhabitants, the following weekly figures^ indicate a plague of 
 the first degree, comparable to the London death-rates of 1625 
 and 1665 : 
 
 Died of plague at Newcastle, within the liberties, from May 
 7 to December 31, 1636: 
 
 Week 
 
 Plague 
 
 ending 
 
 deaths 
 
 May 14 
 
 59 
 
 21 
 
 55 
 
 28 
 
 99 
 
 June 4 
 
 12?, 
 
 II 
 
 99 
 
 18 
 
 162 
 
 25 
 
 133 
 
 July 2 
 
 172 
 
 9 
 
 184 
 
 16 
 
 212 
 
 Week 
 ending 
 
 Plague 
 deaths 
 
 July 23 
 30 
 
 270 
 366 
 
 Aug. 7 
 
 337 
 
 14 
 21 
 28 
 
 422 
 346 
 246 
 
 Sept. 4 
 
 520 
 
 II 
 To end of Dec. 
 
 325 
 908 
 
 Total to 31st Dec. 
 
 5027 
 
 Besides in Garthside, from May 30 to October 17, 515, making 
 a total of 5542. 
 
 This tremendous visitation of Tyneside is said to have begun 
 in October, 1635, at North Shields, where the infection rested 
 during the winter cold, to begin again at Newcastle in spring. 
 During the height of the epidemic in summer and autumn all 
 trade was suspended, no one being about in the streets or in the 
 neighbouring highways. The means tried to check the infection 
 were fumigations with pitch, rosin, and frankincense. Newcastle 
 had one other visit from the plague, as we shall see, in 1644 and 
 1645, during and after the siege by the Scots Presbyterian army; 
 but in 1665 it is said to have escaped, although Defoe says that 
 the infection was introduced by colliers returning from the 
 Thames. 
 
 ^/' The London Plague of 1636. 
 
 The London plague of 1636 was one of the second degree, 
 for the capital, and was otherwise peculiar as being ratlier later 
 
 1 R. Jenison, D.D., NcTi'casth-'s Call to Jwr Ntis;lihor aitd Sislcr To-ons. London, 
 
 C. 
 
 34 
 
530 
 
 Weekly figures of Plague in London, 1636. 
 
 in the autumnal season than usual. The following table of the 
 weekly mortalities shows how it increased, reached a height, and 
 declined. 
 
 
 Christ- 
 
 Buried 
 
 Buried of 
 
 
 
 Christ- 
 
 Buried 
 
 Buried of 
 
 
 ened 
 
 in all 
 
 plague 
 
 
 
 ened 
 
 in all 
 
 plague 
 
 Dec. 24 
 
 231 
 
 170 
 
 
 
 1636 
 
 
 
 
 
 31 
 
 195 
 
 174 
 
 
 
 June 
 
 23 
 
 149 
 
 257 
 
 65 
 
 1636 
 
 
 
 
 
 30 
 
 141 
 
 273 
 
 82 
 
 •J 
 
 Jan. 7 
 14 
 
 2 I 
 
 217 
 242 
 220 
 
 189 
 
 174 
 190 
 171 
 
 
 
 
 
 July 
 
 7 
 
 14 
 21 
 
 152 
 142 
 146 
 
 265 
 298 
 350 
 
 64 
 
 86 
 108 
 
 28 
 
 214 
 
 
 
 
 28 
 
 183 
 
 365 
 
 136 
 
 Feb. 4 
 
 227 
 
 183 
 
 
 
 Aug. 
 
 4 
 
 152 
 
 394 
 
 181 
 
 1 1 
 18 
 
 25 
 Mar. 3 
 
 234 
 207 
 198 
 221 
 
 160 
 203 
 238 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 II 
 
 18 
 25 
 
 166 
 167 
 161 
 
 465 
 546 
 690 
 
 244 
 284 
 380 
 
 198 
 194 
 187 
 177 
 196 
 
 199 
 205 
 205 
 
 
 
 Sept. 
 
 I 
 
 163 
 
 835 
 
 536 
 
 10 
 
 17 
 24 
 
 31 
 Apr. 7 
 
 14 
 21 
 
 231 
 
 244 
 215 
 
 193 
 202 
 22 I 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 7 
 
 Oct. 
 
 8 
 15 
 
 29 
 
 6 
 
 13 
 
 153 
 166 
 172 
 168 
 170 
 164 
 
 921 
 1 106 
 1018 
 1211 
 1 195 
 1117 
 
 567 
 728 
 645 
 796 
 790 
 682 
 
 202 
 
 
 20 
 
 174 
 
 855 
 
 476 
 
 28 
 
 May 5 
 
 12 
 
 271 
 197 
 199 
 
 210 
 206 
 254 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 41 
 
 Nov. 
 
 27 
 
 3 
 
 10 
 
 133 
 153 
 164 
 
 779 
 
 1156 
 
 966 
 
 404 
 755 
 635 
 
 19 
 
 26 
 
 171 
 160 
 
 244 
 263 
 
 22 
 38 
 
 
 17 
 24 
 
 143 
 162 
 
 827 
 747 
 
 512 
 408 
 
 June 2 
 
 189 
 
 276 
 
 51 
 
 Dec. 
 
 I 
 
 168 
 
 550 
 
 290 
 
 9 
 
 153 
 
 275 
 
 64 
 
 
 8 
 
 175 
 
 385 
 
 143 
 
 16 
 
 145 
 
 325 
 
 86 
 
 
 15 
 
 134 
 9,522 
 
 324 
 23,359 
 
 79 
 
 
 1 0,400 
 
 The parishes chiefly affected were the same as in 1625 and 
 1603. Stepney is still wanting from the general bill ; but after 
 1636 it was included therein, along with Nevvington, Lambeth, 
 Westminster, Islington and Hackney. These omitted parishes 
 doubtless contributed largely, Stepney in particular, so that 
 the total of plague-deaths would have to be increased by per- 
 haps two thousand. The following parishes had the severest 
 mortalities : 
 
 
 Total 
 
 Plague- 
 
 
 deaths 
 
 deaths 
 
 St Giles's, Cripplegate 
 
 2374 
 
 870 
 
 St Mary's, Whitechapel 
 
 1766 
 
 1060 
 
 St Olave's, Southwark 
 
 1537 
 
 847 
 
 St Botolph's, Aldgate 
 
 1506 
 
 735 
 
1327 
 
 566 
 
 1269 
 
 742 
 
 1239 
 
 515 
 
 I044 
 
 514 
 
 922 
 
 419 
 
 863 
 
 428 
 
 Particulars of tJic London Plague, 1636. 531 
 
 Total Plague- 
 
 deaths deaths 
 
 St Sepulchre's, Newgate 
 St Saviour's, Southwark 
 St Botolph's, Bishopsgate 
 St George's, Southwark 
 St Andrew's, Holborn 
 St Giles's in the Fields 
 
 Like the greater plagues of 1603 and 1625, that of 1636 
 appears to have begun in the suburbs'. Taylor, the Water-poet, 
 in reprinting his poem on the plague of 1625, with some notes 
 for 1636, says that of 1076 plague-deaths from April 7 to July 
 28 (the summation in the annual bill comes to 864), only 40 had 
 occurred within the walls, so that the general infection of the 
 City must have followed that of the Liberties and out-parishes. 
 As early in the epidemic as 31 May, according to a record of 
 the Middlesex Sessions, "the plague increases most at Stepney," 
 wherefore the Greengoose Fair at Stratford was prohibited, (the 
 parish of Stepney extending as far as Shoreditch)". From 
 Taylor we learn that Gravesend and Faversham had calamitous 
 visitations, and that the infection was in many other towns and 
 villages. 
 
 The epidemic of 1636 was like the plague of 1625 in having 
 been preceded by much typhus fever in London, and accom- 
 panied by the same, as many as 2360 deaths being put down 
 to fever in the plague-year in the classified causes of death 
 now issued regularly (since 1629) in their printed bills by the 
 Parish Clerks' Hall. The letters and state papers of the time 
 bear witness to the usual exodus from the City, the movements 
 of the Court, and personal incidents, which have no farther 
 interest after the samples given for 1625. One incident rela- 
 ting to the worst week of the plague in London in 1636 is 
 preserved : eleven persons were committed to Newgate on 
 5 October for going with one Samuel Underbill, a trumpeter, 
 who died of the plague, to his grave with trumpets and swords 
 drawn in the night time in Shoreditchl The profession still 
 
 1 Heberden says that it began in Wliitechajjel, l)iit does not say where he got the 
 information. 
 
 " Middlesex County Records, in. 62. •* Ibid. 
 
 34—2 
 
532 HigJi mortality in 1638, not from Plague. 
 
 makes no appearance in the way of epidemiological writing ; 
 but some "necessary directions" were drawn up by the College 
 of Physicians, in substance the same as certain statutes issued 
 on the alarm of plague in 1630', 
 
 Next year, 1637, the plague continued in London, causing 
 3082 deaths out of a total of 1 1,763 in the bills. In 1638 there 
 were only 363 plague-deaths, but the total mortality was 
 13,624, or nearly 2000 more than in the previous year, when 
 plague alone had claimed its 3000. What were the epidemic 
 types of disease that caused the high mortality in 1638 ? 
 
 Fever in London. 
 
 There ought to have been no difficulty in answering the ques- 
 tion. The causes of death in the metropolis had been assigned 
 in the books kept at Parish Clerks' Hall since 1604, and had 
 been printed since 1629. The printed series was in the hands 
 of Graunt, from 1629 down to the date of his writing, January 
 1662 ; and he did abstract the deaths under each head of 
 disease and casualty from 1629 to 1636 inclusive, and again 
 from 1647 to 1661 ; but the ten years from 1637 to 1646 
 inclusive, he omitted as presenting nothing of importance and 
 as being " inconsistent with the capacity " of his sheet of paper^ 
 All the original documents prior to 1658 appear to have been 
 lost in the fire of 1666, so that Graunt's omission cannot now 
 be made good. One could wish that the worthy citizen had 
 made no difficulty about the size of his paper. The omitted 
 years are not only those of great political revolution, which 
 may have had an effect upon the public health, but they are 
 of special interest for the beginning of that great period of 
 fever and smallpox in London which continued all through 
 the 1 8th century. 
 
 ' The College of Physicians reported also in May, 1637, on the causes of plague — 
 overcrowding, nuisances, &c. ; among the causes assigned the following is noteworthy: 
 Those who died of the plague were buried within the City, and some of the graveyards 
 were so full that partially decomposed bodies were taken up to make room for fresh 
 interments. (Cited by .S. R. Cardiner, Ilistojy, i^c, vin. 237-9, f'"'" '^"^ ^'^^^'^ 
 Papers. ) 
 
 - Naliinil auil Politiial Rijlectiom on the Bills of Mortality- Lcmdon, 1662. 
 
London mortality, 1629- 1666. 
 
 r -I -\ 
 
 5:)j 
 
 The following section 
 end of our present period, 
 deaths, how important the 
 logical history. 
 
 of London mortality, down to the 
 will show, by reference to the total 
 omitted years are for the epidemio- 
 
 \ 
 
 Year 
 
 Plague 
 
 Fever, 
 
 Small- 
 pox 
 
 Total 
 deaths 
 
 1629 
 
 
 
 956 
 
 72 
 
 8771 
 
 1630 
 
 I317 
 
 1 09 1 
 
 40 
 
 0554 
 
 31 
 
 274 
 
 III5 
 
 58 
 
 8562 
 
 32 
 
 8 
 
 I 108 
 
 531 
 
 9535 
 
 33 
 
 
 
 953 
 
 72 
 
 8393 
 
 34 
 
 I 
 
 1279 
 
 1354 
 
 0400 
 
 35 
 
 
 
 1622 
 
 293 
 
 0651 
 
 36 
 
 10400 
 
 2360 
 
 127 : 
 
 23359 
 
 37 
 
 3082 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 1763 
 
 38 
 
 ■363 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 3624 
 
 39 
 
 314 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 9862 
 
 1640 
 
 1450 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 2771 
 
 41 
 
 1375 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 3142 
 
 42 
 
 1274 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 3273 
 
 43 
 
 996 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 3212 
 
 44 
 
 1492 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 0933 
 
 45 
 
 187I 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 1479 
 
 46 
 
 2365 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 2780 
 
 47 
 
 3597 
 
 1260 
 
 139 
 
 14059 
 
 48 
 
 611 
 
 884 
 
 401 
 
 9894 
 
 49 
 
 67 
 
 751 
 
 1 190 
 
 0566 
 
 1650 
 
 15 
 
 970 
 
 184 
 
 8754 
 
 51 
 
 23 
 
 1038 
 
 525 
 
 0827 
 
 52 
 
 16 
 
 1212 
 
 1279 
 
 2569 
 
 53 
 
 6 
 
 282 
 
 139 
 
 0087 
 
 54 
 
 16 
 
 1 37 1 
 
 832 
 
 3247 
 
 55 
 
 9 
 
 689 
 
 1294 
 
 1357 
 
 56 
 
 6 
 
 875 
 
 823 
 
 3921 
 
 57 
 
 4 
 
 999 
 
 835 
 
 2434 
 
 58 
 
 14 
 
 1800 
 
 409 
 
 4993 
 
 59 
 
 36 
 
 2303 
 
 1523 
 
 4756 
 
 1660 
 
 13 
 
 2148 
 
 354 
 
 2681 
 
 61 
 
 20 
 
 3490 
 
 1246 
 
 16665 
 
 62 
 
 12 
 
 2601 
 
 768 
 
 13664 
 
 63 
 
 9 
 
 2107 
 
 411 
 
 12741 
 
 64 
 
 5 
 
 2258 
 
 1233 
 
 '5453 
 
 65 
 
 68596 
 
 5257 
 
 655 c 
 
 ;73o6 
 
 1666 
 
 1998 
 
 741 
 
 38 
 
 2738 
 
 I 
 
 The year 1638, and the four successive years 1640-43, have 
 exceptional mortalities, which plague alone can by no means 
 account for. In one of those years, 1641, we know that 
 smallpox was rife, along with plague, in the autumn ; in the 
 third week of August there were 118 deaths from smallpox 
 (133 from plague), and in the second week of September 10 1 
 
534 Early history of TypJins in England. 
 
 from smallpox (185 from plague), the plague continuing at 
 even higher figures all through September and October, while 
 smallpox ceases to be mentioned in the letters of the time*. 
 According to earlier and later experience, the epidemic of 
 smallpox would have been followed by a quiet interval of 
 that disease; so that the high mortality, beyond what plague 
 could account for, would have been due to some other epidemic 
 type. There is little doubt that that type was fever, less heard 
 of in letters of the society people because it was, in its steady 
 prevalence from year to year, an infection of the crowded 
 quarters of the poor. 
 
 We begin about this period to find fever, or typhus fever, 
 taking that place in the medical history of England which it 
 continued to hold down to the generation before our own. 
 What remains of the history of plague until its extinction in 
 1665-66, is so closely interwoven with the history of malignant 
 fever, that it will be more convenient to carry the latter on 
 side by side with it instead of in a separate chapter. 
 
 The first medical essay upon the malignant fever which 
 got the name of typhus at the beginning of the 19th century, 
 was that of a physician. Sir Edward Greaves, published at 
 Oxford in 1643 i" connexion with the sickness in that city 
 while the king and the Royalist army lay there, and with 
 the sickness in the Parliamentary army of the earl of Essex 
 which lay at Reading. Greaves describes the unmistakable 
 characters of spotted fever or typhus, and calls it, in his title 
 "Morbus Epideinicns Anni 1643, or the New Disease." In 
 his text he speaks of "this so frequently termed the New 
 Disease." The name of " New Disease " was used also for 
 influenza; but there can be no doubt that typhus did become 
 common in England during the Civil Wars, between the 
 Royalists and the Parliamentarians, which were the first and 
 also the only sieges and campaigns on English soil that really 
 touched the life of the nation. 
 
 The continent of Europe had been familiar with the same 
 type of fever ever since the beginning of the i6th century, 
 now in Italy, now in Spain, another time in the Low Countries, 
 
 ' Cal. Siiite Papers. 
 
Increase of Fever in the \yth century. 535 
 
 or in Hungary, or in Germany in the Thirty Years' War. 
 Greaves, our first writer on epidemic typhus, had been preceded 
 a whole century by Fracastori, whose description of the fever 
 at Verona in 1505 is perhaps the first account of epidemic 
 sickness free from subservience to ancient or medieval authority, 
 and based upon direct observations made in modern Europe. 
 At the same time typhus or spotted fever was not new to 
 England in 1643. There is always the difficulty whether some 
 epidemics of fever should be called influenza or typhus; but the 
 fever of the Black Assizes, as well as the standing " sickness of 
 the house," was certainly typhus, and so probably was the " new 
 disease" in 161 2. 
 
 The history of fever in England has been partly traced in the 
 chapter on gaol-fevers in the Tudor period and on the Protean 
 " hot agues," " new sickness," " strange fevers " or influenzas 
 of 1540, 1557-8 and 1580. At a much earlier period, fevers 
 of the same type (with dysenteries, lienteries, and pestilent sore 
 throats) have been described, with whatever details there are, 
 in connexion with the periodic famines, especially since the 
 Conquest. But we are now come to a time in the history when 
 typhus fevers appeared in the country unconnected with gaols 
 or with famines. We are come, indeed, to the new era of 
 epidemics, which is revealed more clearly after the plague was 
 extinguished for good, but was really concurrent with the last 
 half-century of plague, preparing, as it were, to succeed the long 
 reign of that infection. The Civil Wars may be admitted to have 
 given the new types of sickness an impulse, but the wars did 
 not originate them, nor did they serve in any way to establish 
 them as the predominant forms of epidemic sickness for nearly 
 two centuries. Whatever it was in the condition of England 
 that favoured the prevalence of fevers, fluxes, and smallpox, that 
 factor was beginning to make itself felt shortly after the Tudor 
 period ended : it continued in operation through all political 
 changes of Restoration, Revolution, and Georgian rule ; and if 
 the conditions at length changed, largely for the better so far as 
 the adult population is concerned, and for the better even as 
 regards infancy, there has followed the " nova coJiors febriiun " 
 of our own time, appropriate to its own state of society, as was 
 
536 The Fever of 161 2. 
 
 the old troop before it. This theme is really the subject with 
 which a new volume should open ; but as the plague-period 
 overlaps its successor the fever-period by half a century, and 
 as one must pay heed to the chronology, it remains to insert 
 some facts about fevers in this place. 
 
 Review of Fever in England to 1643. 
 
 Of the prevalence of malignant fevers in England in the 
 earlier years of the 17th century we have only occasional 
 glimpses. Thus, in London in November, 161 2, there were 
 several deaths of prominent personages. Prince Henry, eldest 
 son of James I., died of a fever in the course of that month, the 
 illness being thus referred to by Chamberlain in one of his 
 letters to Carleton, written on November 12 from London : 
 
 " It is verily thought that the disease was no other than the ordinary 
 ague that hath reigned and raged almost all over England since the latter 
 end of summer, which, by observation, is found must have its ordinary 
 course, and the less physic the better, but only sweating and an orderly 
 course of keeping and government. The extremity of the disease seemed 
 to lie in his head [a sure sign of typhus], for remedy whereof they shaved 
 him and applied warm cocks and pigeons newly killed, but with no success." 
 
 Sir Theodore Mayerne, the king's physician (who had been 
 driven from Paris by the intolerance of the Galenists towards 
 those who used antimony and other Paracelsist remedies), was 
 a good deal blamed because he had purged the patient instead 
 of bleeding him. 
 
 Writing again on the 19th November, Chamberlain says: 
 " On P'riday Sir Harry Row, our alderman died, and, same 
 morning. Sir George Carey, master of the wards, of this new 
 disease." Chamberlain's statement that an epidemic fever, which 
 he calls "the ordinary ague," had raged all over England from 
 the end of summer, 161 2, is supported by Short's abstracts of 
 the parish registers for that year, while the following year, 161 3, 
 stands out as still more unhealthy. The next unwholesome 
 year in Short's tables is 1616 ; and of that sickly time we have 
 one great personal illustration. Shakespeare died on April 23 
 at Stratford-on-Avon, after three days' illness of a fever (but 
 
TJie sickly season of \6\6. 537 
 
 possibly of a chill) having just completed his 52nd year. So far 
 as is known, he was not in failing health. It is a singular coin- 
 cidence that he made his will on March 25 preceding, the first 
 day of the year, old style; but the customary phrase, "in per- 
 fect health and memory (God be praised !)," would have been 
 perhaps varied a little if illness had been creeping upon him. 
 Now the year 16 16 is the most unhealthy in Short's tables from 
 the beginning of the century ; the parish registers do not bear 
 witness again to so much sickness until 1623, which, as we have 
 seen, was a year of typhus. The winter of 161 5-16 was alto- 
 gether exceptional : warm and tempestuous south-westerly and 
 westerly winds prevailed from November until February ; on 
 the 8th February, there were East Indiamen lying in the Downs, 
 which had been at anchor there for ten weeks waiting for a 
 change of wind to take them down the Channel. The warm 
 winds brought " perpetual weeping weather, foul ways and great 
 floods," and brought also an early spring. In the last week of 
 January the archbishop found a nest of young blackbirds in his 
 garden at Lambeth, and had " another sent to him from Croydon 
 about four days after." That was proverbially the kind of 
 Christmas to make a fat churchyard ; but it is impossible to say 
 whether one type of sickness, such as fever, predominated, as in 
 the preceding sickly years, 1612-13, and in the next following 
 1 6 16, namely 1623-24. The following figures from Short's 
 tables will prove, at least, that there was excessive mortality: 
 In the year 16 16, twenty-one parish registers out of eighty- 
 eight examined, showed excessive mortality, the burials being 
 601 and the baptisms 417, the year 16 17 showing a somewhat 
 improved state of health. In the market towns for the same 
 two years, the excessive proportion of burials to christenings is 
 equally striking: of sixteen town registers examined, ten showed 
 a bad state of health in 1616 (714 burials to 568 baptisms), and 
 in 1 61 7, nine towns had y'^G burials to 652 baptisms. But 
 neither in town nor country do the years 1616-17 stand out so 
 unhealthy as the years 1623-24. Those two biennial periods 
 are the only very conspicuous ones in Short's list for the first 
 quarter of the 17th century, the year 161 3 coming next in 
 unhcalthiness. 
 
53^ Condltiuns favoicrablc to Fever. 
 
 Let us now seek for any causes such as unwholesome con- 
 ditions of Hving upon which these epidemic fevers might have 
 depended. One of the most notorious forms of typhus in the 
 1 8th century was the ship-fever. The problem how to destroy 
 its infection in the hulls of transports and ships of war occupied 
 the attention of the men of science, Stephen Hales among the 
 rest. Parliament, eager for any cure of so disastrous a pest, voted 
 some thousands of pounds to a projector whose method, when 
 tried, resulted in nothing but the burning of three ships to the 
 water's edge. This ship-fever became notorious early in the 
 17th century, having occurred before in 1588. If the Elizabe- 
 than naval annals in Hakluyt's collection were less engrossed 
 than they are with adventures and doughty deeds, we should 
 probably have had more glimpses of an unwholesome state of 
 things in the 'tween-decks. At all events there is no doubt that 
 fever infested the shipping of England as well as of France 
 about the year 1625. The conditions on board ship are, of 
 course, special ; there might have been ship-fever, when there 
 was no gaol-fever, workhouse-fever, or domestic typhus in 
 general. But what happened on board ship was no bad index 
 of what was happening on shore. The nation, both on sea and 
 on land, was expanding far beyond its old medieval limits, with 
 very crude notions of the elbow-room that it needed. The ideas 
 of cubic space, ventilation, and the like, with which we are now 
 so familiar, had then no existence. A few facts about the 
 shipping, gaols and houses will serve to illustrate this statement. 
 
 The fleet which sailed from Plymouth to make war on Spain 
 in the autumn of 1625 consisted of 90 sail, and carried 10,000 
 men. Whether there was overcrowding would depend, of course, 
 on the size of the ships ; and it may be safely said that the largest 
 ship of the fleet was not a fourth part the size of a transport 
 that would be allowed to carry five hundred men today. The 
 expedition came back in a few weeks broken by sickness and 
 mutiny, just as the expedition of Mansfeld for the relief of the 
 Palatinate had fared. The wretched state of the thirty ships 
 which arrived at Plymouth in November, 1625, has been men- 
 tioned already. At the same date we read of P^rench ships of 
 war also throwing overboard two or three dead men every day. 
 
Overcroiudiiig in shij^s, gao/s ami fiouscs. 539 
 
 There are some more precise figures for French ships in 1627, 
 to be given in the next chapter, which will enable us to measure 
 the provocation to ship-fever afforded by the conditions of a 
 transport service in those years. 
 
 Besides ship-fever, in the great typhus period of the 18th 
 century, there used to be named gaol-fever, and workhouse- 
 fever. Of the gaol-fever one hears little in these years. It 
 was severe in the Queen's Bench prison in Southwark in March, 
 1579; a petition of that date complains that the prison held 
 double the usual number, that " the sickness of the house " was 
 rife, and that near a hundred had died of it there during the 
 previous six years, many more having been sick\ " The sickness 
 of the house " is a name suggestive of what was usual. These 
 events of prison life made little stir unless they involved the 
 health of classes far removed from the prison-class, as in the three 
 memorable instances of the Black Assizes at Cambridge, Oxford 
 and Exeter, But it is not certain that even such cases have 
 been all recorded, or that instances of gaol-fever spreading to 
 those outside may not have been more frequent than appears. 
 Whitmore in his book of 1659 on fevers in London and the 
 country, quotes Bacon's remarks upon the Black Assizes of the 
 Tudor period and adds: "and within this eight or nine years 
 there happened the like at Southwark, as I am credibly in- 
 formed." That would have been in the King's Bench prison 
 some time about 1650, which is not far from the date we have 
 brought the history down to^ 
 
 The overcrowding of the ships and of the gaols had its 
 counterpart in the dwelling-houses of London and other towns 
 such as Portsmouth. The proclamations against the erection of 
 houses on new sites within three miles of the city gates con- 
 tinued to be issued to the time of Cromwell. The effect of 
 them was merely to call into existence a class of poor tenements 
 in odd corners or to overcrowd the existing houses. Thus, on 
 
 ^ Strype's ed. of Stow's Survey of London. 
 
 - Rendle [Old Southwark, 1878, p. 96) quotes the following from a letter written 
 in 1618 by Geoffrey Mynshall from the King's Bench prison: "As to health, it hath 
 more diseases predominant in it than the pest-house in the plague time... stinks more 
 than the Lord Mayor's dog-house or Paris Garden in August... three men in one bed." 
 
540 The Fevers of 1623-25. 
 
 June 27, 1602: "The council have spied an inconvenient increase 
 of housing in and about London by building in odd corners, in 
 gardens and over stables. They have begun to pull down one 
 here and there, lighting in almost every parish on the un- 
 luckiest, which is far from removing the mischief \" Again, on 
 February 24, 1623, certain inhabitants of Chancery Lane were 
 indicted at the Middlesex Sessions for subletting, "to the great 
 danger of infectious disease with plague and other diseases"." 
 Again, in May, 1637, there were found in one house eleven 
 married couples and fifteen single persons ; in another the 
 householder had taken in eighteen lodgers ^ The monstrous 
 window-tax, which did more than anything else to breed 
 typhus and perpetuate smallpox, was not imposed until after 
 the Revolution ; but there was enough in the London of the 
 Stuarts to explain the great increase of those diseases. 
 
 We have already had evidence of the wide prevalence of 
 spotted fever in 1624, even in the houses of the rich. In the 
 harvest of 1625, Mead, of Cambridge, heard of much sickness 
 which he calls " ague," about Royston and Barkway, localities 
 by no means malarious; so many were ill that the people 
 wanted help to gather the harvest out of the fields. The 
 nature of these " agues " is a question of great difficulty. The 
 intermissions or remissions of the country fevers are clearly 
 enough asserted by Willis and others, whatever they were ; at 
 the same time the general characters of the disease, or diseases, 
 are not those of intermittent malarial fever; and "influenza" does 
 not help us. Chamberlain calls the fever of 1624 "the spotted 
 fever," and Sir Theodore Mayerne, physician to James I., in a long 
 opinion upon the king's state of health and the treatment, dated 
 Aug. 20, 1624, introduces a paragraph "Ad Febrem Purpuream," 
 which, he says, was prevalent that year, " not so much conta- 
 gious as common through a universal disposing cause," seizing 
 upon many in the same house, and destroying numbers, being 
 most full of malignity etc. These various accounts for town 
 and country point to a form of typhus; and we find that 
 
 ^ Cal. S. P. 1 601 -3, ]). 209. 
 
 - Middlesex County Records, u. 
 
 "* Cited by Gardiner, History, vni. 289. 
 
The Fevers ^/ 1638. 541 
 
 diagnosis confirmed for the country fevers which were again 
 widely prevalent a few years later, about 1638. 
 
 Among other statistics in Graunt's essay of 1662 we find the 
 figures from the register of "a parish in Hampshire" from 1569 
 to 1658. There were several years of excessive mortality in 
 that period just as in Short's tables, but the worst were 1638 
 and 1639 — the years of high mortality (not plague) in London 
 also. Of that mortality in the Hampshire parish Graunt has 
 given a brief account, which he seems to have based on first- 
 hand information. The parish contained about 2700 inhabitants, 
 and enjoyed average good health during the period of 90 years 
 covered by the figures, the births exceeding the deaths by twelve 
 on an average in the year. In the year 1638 the deaths were 
 156 and the births 66 (about the average); in 1639 ^^'^^ deaths 
 were 114 and the births 55. The cause of this great excess of 
 mortality in a country parish was, says Graunt, not plague, 
 " but a malignant fever raging so fiercely about harvest that 
 there appeared scarce hands enough to take in the corn ; which 
 argues, considering there were 2700 parishioners, that 7 might be 
 sick for one that died ; whereas of the plague more die than 
 recover. They lay longer sick than is usual in plague," and 
 there were no plague-tokens. 
 
 This considerable epidemic of fever, which must have affected 
 some hundreds of people, occurred in a Hampshire parish. In 
 the very same season (autumn and winter of 1638) we hear of 
 what is obviously the same sickness being epidemic all over the 
 county of Monmouth. On April 23, 1639, the sheriff of 
 Monmouthshire thus explained his delay in executing the king's 
 writ for an assessment : " In January last I sent forth my 
 warrants for the gathering and levying thereof, but there has 
 been such a general sickness over all this country, called ' the 
 
 new disease,' that they could not possibly be expedited 
 
 Besides, the plague was very hot in divers parts of the county, 
 as Caerleon, Abergavenny, Bedwelty, and many other places'." 
 Here the sherifif uses the same name as Greaves put on his 
 title-page five years after, and he distinguishes clearly between 
 the fever and the plague. The mayor and others of Northanip- 
 
 ' Calendar of Stale Papt')-s. 
 
542 Fever and Plague in Wales, &e., 1637-38. 
 
 ton, in a memorial to the Recorder, dated May i, 1638, touching 
 the exckision of Northampton tradesmen from fairs in the 
 vicinity owing to suspicions of the plague in their town, had 
 been informed by the physicians that some cases were of the 
 plague, and some of "the spotted fever\" The same distinc- 
 tion had been made at Norwich, in 1636 : in October there was 
 a suspicion of the plague, " but the physicians say it is some 
 other contagious disease which die with the spots^" At 
 Northampton, the coexistence of plague and some other sickness 
 is asserted also by the sheriff (Sept. 18, 1638), who had to 
 excuse himself, like so many other sheriffs, for his failure to 
 remit the ship-money : he himself and his servants had had 
 sickness, and the plague was so great and so long in Northamp- 
 ton that the county still allowed ;^I48 a week for relief of the 
 sick. The deaths in that epidemic from March to September 
 were 533^ The sheriff of Montgomery, making a like excuse 
 on October 25, 1638, speaks of the plague only: "It pleased 
 God to visit a great part of the county with the plague, and 
 three of the greatest towns, Machynlleth, Llanidloes and New- 
 ton ^" The sheriff of Radnorshire, in his excuse to the Privy 
 Council, on November 14, says he could not collect the ship- 
 money at Presteign " by reason of the plague, which continued 
 there for two years together, and did not cease until the latter 
 end of April last^" We may take it, then, that there was a 
 great deal of plague in Wales about 1637 and 163S, that there 
 was also "the new disease," or spotted fever, all over Monmouth 
 and probably other Welsh counties, that the same two forms 
 coexisted at Norwich and Northampton, just as they coexisted 
 in London, and that Graunt's parish in Hampshire in 1638 had 
 probably the fever only. 
 
 Short's statistical tables again bear out the concrete history. 
 In 1638, nineteen country parishes, out of ninety-four examined, 
 had 699 burials to 542 baptisms, and in 1639, eighteen parishes 
 
 1 Cal. S. P. - f/'i>l- 
 
 ■* Jliid. The coexistence of malignant fever with pl.ague at Northampton in rfi^.S 
 is decisively shown by particulars of cases published by Woodall, 0/. rif. if) .',9. See 
 also Freeman. I/is/, of Northaiiipto)u p. 7.S (but under the year 16.^7). 
 
 4 Jlid, '■' ll'i,l. 
 
spotted Fever in the country, lyth eentnry. 543 
 
 had 585 burials to 386 baptisms. In the market towns the 
 unhealthy period (which may have been due to plague in great 
 part) is a year earlier. In 1637, ten towns out of twenty- four 
 whose registers were added up, show 1474 burials to 1008 
 baptisms, the proportion in 1638 for the same number of un- 
 healthy towns being 1438 to 1025. 
 
 It would have been one of the country epidemics of those 
 years that Boghurst brings into his account of the plague of 
 London in 1665 : " I was told by an ancient woman that in 
 Somersetshire the spotted fever was very epidemical, so that 
 whole families died; but being told that plantan [plantain] was 
 very good, all of them almost took it, which wrought an admir- 
 able change, for very few died that took it, whereas before they 
 died very fast." He thinks plantain was as likely to have 
 effected a cure as "higher priced medicines." We shall find 
 a corresponding prevalence of fever described by a competent 
 physician, Whitmorc, for rural parts of Cheshire and Shropshire 
 in 165 I and 1658. Thus we have a remarkable epidemiological 
 phenomenon, somewhat new to England unless, indeed, we 
 bring all those spotted fevers and the like under the generic 
 name of influenza. It was in country districts in 1612-13 and 
 from 1623 to 1625, it was extensively prevalent in 1638 in places 
 as far apart as Hampshire, Monmouth and Northampton, it 
 appeared in Berkshire and Oxfordshire in 1643 in connexion 
 with the military movements of the Royalist and Parliamentary 
 armies, it caused a disastrous loss of life in Tiverton within a 
 few weeks of Essex's army passing through the town in 1644; 
 it is heard of again in Shropshire and Cumberland in 1651-52, 
 and in the same parts in 1658, as well as in Somerset, and in 
 London steadily from year to year. 
 
 It was in its steadiness from year to year in the poor quarters 
 of towns, as well as in its more frequent recurrences as a country 
 epidemic, that the spotted fever deserved the name of " new 
 disease" in the reign of Charles I. But more than one epidemic 
 fever had been called a " new disease " in England before ; and 
 no fewer than five epidemics were so called from 1643 to 1685, 
 of which only one or two can be classed among the influenzas. 
 
 If it had been possible to keep in mind the history of 
 
544 " I^pidc^tiic constitutions of tJie air'.' 
 
 sicknesses from century to century or even from generation to 
 generation, the "new disease" might have been recognised as 
 not unlike the type that overran England in 1087, that was de- 
 scribed by William of Newburgh in 1196, by Matthew Paris in 
 1258, and by Trokelowe in 131 5-16. The conditions producing 
 it or favouring it were not, indeed, the same in all particulars in 
 the medieval period, in the Tudor period, and in the Stuart 
 period. In the medieval period, the extreme want and misery 
 which brought epidemic sickness were due to occasional sharp 
 famines at long intervals, from failure of the crops. In the Tudor 
 period epidemics were still so occasional (so far as is known) 
 that something more special will have to be blamed for them 
 than the swarms of vagrants and criminals all over England, 
 which made the reign of Henry VIII. notorious, and were still a 
 source of trouble until late in the reign of Elizabeth ; the four 
 chief periods were in 1540, 1557-8, 1580-82, and 1596-97 so 
 that some special cause would have to be assumed in those 
 years to account for their peculiar " epidemic constitution." 
 Almost from the beginning of the Stuart period, the seasons 
 of fever (to say nothing of flux and smallpox), seem to come in 
 quicker succession ; they are heard of in 161 2-1 3, 1623-25, 1638, 
 1643-44, 1651, 1658-9, and 1661-65, and heard of in those years 
 over wide tracts of rural England as well as in London and other 
 towns. It was from such experiences that the doctrine arose, so 
 unintelligible to us now, of an "epidemic constitution of the 
 air," which may be traced, indeed, to much earlier writings 
 than those of the 17th century, but finds its most frequent 
 applications in the latter. The fevers were in part contagious 
 and not contagious ; contagion could not explain them all, and 
 yet there was an undoubted infective element in them. The 
 universality or generality of their incidence was accounted for by 
 assuming, on the one hand, something common in the state of 
 the air and, on the other hand, some common predisposition in 
 the bodies of men, which might itself have had seasonal causes. 
 We have now only one name for such common infection of the 
 air, namely influenza; and it is significant that the catarrhal 
 influenzas of 1658 and 1659 were regarded by some at the time 
 as only the appropriate vernal form of the fever which in the hot 
 
Plague at Gloucester, \6i'j-'^, Stamford, 1641. 545 
 
 weather of 1657 and 1658 had prevailed ahnost in the same 
 general way as influenza, but with the symptoms of typhus. 
 One thing which should not be overlooked, is that plague was 
 still in the country, not always at the same time as the fever, and 
 perhaps not usually coincident with it. Another thing, which 
 will come out in its due order at a later part of the history, is 
 that after the extinction of plague, fever became far more steady 
 in the towns from year to year, and in certain years was not less 
 prevalent in influenza-like epidemics all over the country. One 
 might offer some suggestions as to the meaning of these epide- 
 miological phenomena ; but it will perhaps be more convenient 
 that critics who have a speculative turn or a craving for genera- 
 lities should exercise the one or gratify the other at their own 
 risk. 
 
 Along with the prevalence of plague in 1637-38 in many 
 towns of Wales, we may associate the outbreak of 1638 in 
 Gloucester on the one side and in the small Salopian town of 
 Clun on the other. From a letter of the Privy Council to the 
 justices of Gloucestershire, it appears that a rate in aid of the 
 plague-stricken in the city had been imposed upon the county in 
 December, 1637, and that the infection still continued in 
 Gloucester in September, 1638. Contributions made in Bridge- 
 north for the relief of the visited in Clun appear to belong to 
 the same year. At Reading a tax for the " visited " had been 
 collected once or oftener between 1638 and 1641. In 1641 the 
 town of Leicester was put to some expense (;^46. "^s. yd.) in 
 watching to keep out the sickness which prevailed in Thur- 
 maston, Birstal, Whetstone and Oakham. The very severe 
 plague in Stamford the same year would have been the most 
 intense part of the epidemic in that corner of England; "Camden," 
 quoting from bishop Sanderson's manuscript, says that it began 
 at St James's tide, 1641, and ended in March following, whereof 
 are said to have died between 500 and 600 persons \ 
 
 Another centre of plague in 1641 was Congleton, in Cheshire, 
 if we may trust the accuracy of the date given in a manuscript 
 written some time after and seemingly based upon tradition'''. 
 
 ^ Camden's Britannia, ed. (iougli, It. 244. 
 - Notes and Queries, 6th scries, iv. iQy. 
 
 c. 35 
 
546 Plague in CJicsJiire, 1641, and in London to 1648. 
 
 The infection was traced to a box of clothes which had belonged 
 to one dead of the plague in London and were sent to the dead 
 man's relations at North Rede Hall. The family who received 
 the box " caught the infection and died." It spread " all over 
 the country," and came to Congleton, where it made dreadful 
 ravages. The traditions which the anonymous narrator has put 
 on record are, indeed, those of a plague of the greater degree — 
 stories of corpses that no one would bury, of the sick left to 
 their fate, of money dropped into water before it changed hand.s. 
 This somewhat doubtful narrative ends with the statement that 
 "the greatest part of the inhabitants died." 
 
 The period from 1643 to 1650 contains all the outbreaks of 
 plague that remain, whether in London or the provinces, until 
 we come to the final explosion of 1665. In London the plague 
 continued at a low endemic level from the outburst of 1636 
 until 1648, the deaths in 1647 reaching the considerable figure 
 o^ 3597- This series of plague-years has no other interest than 
 as showing how regularly every season the infection increased 
 from a few cases in May or June to a maximum in September 
 or October. One incident, out of many, may find a place. In 
 August, 1647, Sir Philip Stapleton, one of the Eleven Members, 
 leaders of the Presbyterian party, who were accused of treason 
 by the Army, went over to Calais with five more of the accused, 
 and died of the plague almost as soon as he landed. The 
 people of the house where he died made the rest of the 
 party pay them £'^0 before they would let them come forth, 
 for bringing the sickness into their house\ 
 
 The plagues in provincial towns were in those years much 
 more serious relatively than those in London. All of them 
 occurred in towns that were besieged, or had been besieged, or 
 had been occupied by bodies of troops or by garrisons. At the 
 same time most of them were towns which had suffered plagues 
 before. Ikit the first effects of the war in the wa)- of epidemic 
 sickness were not of the type of plague. 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Com. v. 173. 
 
English experience of War-typluis. 547 
 
 War-typhus in Oxfordshire and Berkshire. 
 
 It was in the spring and summer of 1643 that iMigland had 
 a first experience of the war-typhus which had been familiar to 
 the continent of Europe for a century and a half, having reached 
 perhaps its greatest prevalence in the Thirty Years' War. It is 
 onl)' in the sense of war-typhus that Shakespeare's boast, put 
 into the mouth of John of Gaunt, holds good : 
 
 "This fortress, built by nature for herself, 
 Ag-ainst infection and the hand of war." 
 
 The medieval civil wars in England do not seem to have 
 bred infection among the people, unless, perhaps, during the 
 anarchy of Stephen's reign : there is reason to think that the 
 faction-fights of York and Lancaster had no such result. But 
 the wars of the Parliament against the Royalists produced war- 
 sickness in its most characteristic form, and that too, at the very 
 beginning of the struggle. 
 
 The existence of sickness in 1643 among the troops of the 
 Parliament in Berkshire and Oxfordshire, under the earl of 
 Essex, is briefly stated by Rushworth. But, for the first time in 
 the history, we find a medical account of the type of sickness, 
 of its circumstances, and of the extent of its prevalence, which is 
 not without interest even for the military history. It happened 
 that the afterwards celebrated Dr Thomas Willis, chemist, 
 anatomist, physiologist and physician, was at Christ Church, 
 Oxford, in 1643, being then aged twenty-one, and intending 
 to enter the Church. In 1659 he published at the Hague his 
 first medical essays, one on Fermentation and the other on 
 Fevers^ ; and in the latter he recalls many particulars of 
 what he had .seen in his earlier years in and around Oxford. 
 The sickness of 1643 was also the subject of a tract published 
 that year in O.Kford, by his majesty's command, by Sir Edward 
 Greaves, physician to the king, which appears to have been in 
 sufficient request in the town to be reprinted within the year^ 
 
 ^ Diatrihae ditac dc Fc7'>iicut(itioni' ct dc Frhribus. Ilficjae, \(i^()- 
 - Morbus Epidc'Diifus auni 1^4.',; or tlic Nc7o Disease. Piil)lished liy command of 
 his M.ijesty. Oxford, 1643. 
 
 35—2 
 
548 The iiiilitary operations of 1643. 
 
 The preceding events may be briefly summarized'. In 
 November, 1642, the king moved from Oxford with his army 
 towards London and seized Brentford. The forces of the Parlia- 
 ment, under Essex, concentrated round the capita), where they 
 were joined by the trainbands of the City, so that the king 
 recrossed the Thames at Kingston and retired upon Reading 
 and Oxford. All through the months from January to April 
 1643, tedious negociations went on for a treaty, the details 
 largely relating to the places to be occupied by the Parliamen- 
 tary troops on the one hand (around Windsor) and by the 
 Royalist troops on the other (in Oxfordshire and Bucks). In 
 April the negociations fell through, and Essex came before 
 Reading on the 15th, with an army of 15,000 foot and 3000 
 horse. The king and prince Rupert attempted to raise the 
 siege by a march from Oxford, but were stopped at Ca- 
 versham bridge, and on the 26th April, Reading was sur- 
 rendered to the Lord General, the garrison marching out the 
 day after. 
 
 The siege had lasted only eleven days ; the Royalist com- 
 mandant was sentenced to death at Oxford for betraying the 
 town, but was pardoned. When Essex entered Reading he 
 found the place "infected," and a great mortality ensued among 
 his men, who were discontented at the want of plunder and of 
 pay. In June he moved his troops across the chalk downs to 
 Thame, on the borders of Bucks ; but the weather being wet 
 and unseasonable in the early summer, and afterwards hot, the 
 sickness so increased among them that " he judged the design 
 upon Oxford impracticable" (Rushworth), and on July 9, wrote 
 to the Parliament advising a peace. In his letter, Essex ex- 
 plained that it was impossible to keep the counties from being 
 plundered, " so that they must suffer much wrong, and the cries 
 of the people are infinite." Eventually he brought what re- 
 mained of his army to the neighbourhood of London, and 
 having received 2000 recruits from the City, he held a muster 
 on Hounslow Heath, when his whole force amounted to 10,000 
 men. With his recruited army he marched to the relief of 
 
 ^ From Rushworth. 
 
Wi/iis on Fever at Reading and Oxford. 549 
 
 Gloucester', raised the siege, and on September 20 won the 
 (first) battle of Newbury. 
 
 The realities of that inactive summer at Reading and Thame 
 may be conceived from what Willis tells us of the state of 
 things within the Royalist lines in Oxfordshire. These things, 
 he says, " fell under our own observation," he being then at 
 Christ Church and not yet entered on the physic line. 
 
 In the spring of 1643, Reading being held for the king, 
 
 " In both armies there began a disease to arise very epidemical ; however 
 they persisting in that work till the besieged were forced to a surrender, this 
 disease grew so grievous that in a short time after, either side left off and 
 from that time for many months fought not with the enemy, but with the 
 disease ; as if there had not been leisure to turn aside to another kind of 
 death. . . . 
 
 Essex's camp moving to Thame, pitched in the places adjacent, where 
 he shortly lost a great part of his men. 
 
 But the king returned to Oxford, where at first the soldiers, being 
 disposed in the open fields, then afterwards among the towns and villages, 
 suffered not much less. For his foot (which it chiefly invaded) being pact 
 together in close houses, when they had filled all things with filthiness and 
 unwholesome nastiness and stinking odours (that the very air seemed to be 
 infected) they fell sick by troops, and as it were by squadrons. At length 
 the fever, now more than a camp fever, invaded the unarmed and peaceable 
 troops, to wit, the entertainers of the soldiers, and, generally, all others : yet 
 at first (the disease being but yet lightly inflicted) though beset with a heavy 
 and long languishment, however, many escaped. About the summer solstice 
 this fever began also to increase with worse provision of symptoms, and to 
 lay hold on the husbandmen and others inhabiting the country, then 
 afterwards spread through our city and all the country round for at least 
 ten miles about. In the mean time they who dwelt far from us in other 
 counties remained free from hurt, being as it were without the sphere of 
 the contagion. But here this disease became so epidemical that a great 
 
 1 "The City, with much emotion, ranks its trained bands under Essex: making 
 up an Army for him, despatches him to relieve Gloucester. He marches on the 26th 
 [August] ; steadily along, in spite of rainy weather and Prince Rupert ; westward, 
 westward; on the night of the tenth day, September 5th, the Gloucester people see 
 liis signal-fire flame up, amid the dark rain, 'on the top of Presbury Hill;' — and 
 understand that they shall live and not die. The King 'fired his huts,' and marched 
 off without delay. He never again had any real chance of prevailing in this war... The 
 steady march to Gloucester and back again, by Essex, M'as the chief feat he did during 
 the war; a considerable feat, and very characteristic of him, the slow-going inarti- 
 culate, indignant, somewhat elephantine man." Carlyle, Letters and Speeches of 
 Cromwell. 
 
550 Syinptouis of the Fever in and near Oxford. 
 
 part of the people was killed by it ; and as soon as it had entered a house it 
 ran through the same, that there was scarce one left well to administer to 
 the sick. Strangers, or such as were sent to help the sick, were presently 
 taken with the disease ; that at length for fear of the contagion, those who 
 were sick of this fever were avoided by those who were well, almost as much 
 as if they had been sick of the plague. 
 
 Nor indeed did there a less mortality or slaughter of men accompany 
 this disease ; because cachectic and phthisical old men, or other ways 
 unhealthful, were killed by it ; also not a few children, young men, and 
 those of a more mature and robust age. I remember in some villages that 
 almost all the old men died this year, that there were scarce any left who 
 were able to defend the manners and privileges of the parish by the more 
 anciently received traditions ^" 
 
 Willis recalls how this epidemic disease changed its type as 
 the season wore on. At first it was a " putrid synochus," which 
 seemed to be helped by a sweat or a looseness ; a relapse or 
 renewal followed the crisis. Later, it became a continual fever 
 of six or seven days, with no crisis ; when the fever ceased the 
 sick kept their beds, sometimes raging, more often in a stupor, 
 great weakness continuing, and sometimes convulsions ensuing. 
 About midsummer " the disease betrayed its malignancy by the 
 eruption of whelks and spots." It would often begin with an 
 insidious languishing, the strength being totally withdrawn. At 
 length buboes appeared in many, as in the plague. At this 
 time, during the dog-days, the disease began to be handled, not 
 as a fever, but as a lesser plague — -by vomits, purges, and 
 sudorifics. The autumn coming on, the disease by degrees 
 remitted its wonted fierceness, so that fewer grew sick of it, and 
 of them many grew well. At the approach of winter the fever 
 almost wholly vanished, and health was fully restored to Oxford 
 and the country round about. Among the victims are men- 
 tioned " some belonging to the king's and queen's Court, with 
 a few scholars "^" 
 
 Of the causes, Willis says that, so far as concerned the army, 
 the evident causes were " errors in the six non-naturals." The 
 spring was very moist and " flabbery," with almost continual 
 showers, to which a hot summer succeeded. The tract upon 
 
 ^ From the translation by S. Pordagc. London, 1681. 
 - Anthony Wood, 11. pt i. p. 469. 
 
Grcai'cs on the War-fever of 1643. 551 
 
 the Oxford fever by Greaves, a short piece of some 25 pages, 
 which was written for use in the city during the epidemic, bears 
 out the account by WilHs, without developing the doctrine of 
 increasing maUgnancy. He is concerned to prove that it was not 
 the plague "as the relations and hopes of your enemies, and the 
 fears of others, have suggested." One of his proofs is the 
 insidious mode of invasion, which Willis ascribes to the sickness 
 in its later type — great weakness without any manifest cause 
 appearing, such as sweating or looseness, so that even strong 
 men were prostrated, with a quick, weak and creeping pulse, 
 sometimes intermittent, with pains in the head, vertigo &c. 
 The most distinctive thing was the spots ; " But what need we 
 any farther signs than the spots, which appear upon half the 
 number, at least, of those that fall sick ?" Greaves seems to 
 claim that Oxford had some immunity for a time: "God hath 
 been most merciful to this city in sparing us heretofore, when 
 our neighbours round about us were visited." 
 
 Among the causes, he mentions putrid exhalations from 
 stinking matters, dung, carcasses of dead horses and other 
 carrion ; " and were there care taken for the removing of these 
 noisome inconveniences, and keeping the streets sweet and 
 clean, it would doubtless tend much to the abatement of the 
 disease." The diet, also, may have had something to do with 
 it ; more particularly the brewers should dry their malt better, 
 boil their beer longer, and put in a sufficiency of hops. But the 
 great cause was the presence of the army. 
 
 "We need not look far for a cause where there is an army residing, 
 which the Athenians called to mind in their calamity, or as Homer speaks 
 of his Greeks : 
 
 ei S17 o\i.ov Tr6\(iJ,6s re Sa/xa koI Xocfios A;^aiouf. 
 
 — it being seldom or never known that an army, where there is much filth 
 and nastiness in diet, worse lodging, unshifted apparel, etc., should continue 
 long without contagious disease." Whole families were infected, " and 
 seldom in any house where sick soldiers of either side are quartered, but the 
 inhabitants likewise fall sick of the same disease." 
 
 There appears to have been the almost inevitable doubt in 
 some minds, whether the disease were contagious : " But if 
 anyone be yet obstinate, and will not believe it contagious, let 
 
552 Sick) less general in 1643 and 1644. 
 
 him go near and try." Among the remedies, he mentions a 
 favourite one of the empiric sort, " Lady Kent's powder," which 
 WilHs also refers to ; but Greaves, as became an academical 
 physician, would not admit that it had any advantage over 
 medicines of known ingredients. 
 
 This widespread epidemic of typhus, perhaps not without 
 some relapsing fever, and, according to what Willis says in one 
 of his general chapters, complicated, in its diffusive form in the 
 villages around, " with squinancy [sore throat], dysentery, or 
 deadly sweat," is the only one medically recorded of the Civil 
 Wars. But there was certainly a renewal of it, in the same 
 circumstances, next year at Tiverton ; and it seems probable, 
 from the heavy mortality which the parish registers witness to 
 in that year (1644) that some kind of epidemic sickness had 
 spread far and near. Thus, in Short's abstracts of the burials 
 and christenings in country parishes and market towns, the 
 years 1643 and 1644, and especially the latter, stand out as the 
 most unhealthy for a long time before and after, the next 
 sickly period, as we shall see, being the years 1657-1659. In 
 the year 1643, o^^^ of eighty-eight country registers examined, 
 twenty-nine showed a sickly death-rate, although the dispro- 
 portion of births to deaths does not appear great (821 to 847). 
 That was the year of the epidemic fever in Berkshire, Oxford- 
 shire and Bucks. Next year, which was the year of the Tiverton 
 epidemic, there are again twenty-nine country registers indicating 
 unusual sickness (715 baptisms to 938 burials). In nineteen out 
 of twenty-four market towns, the same two years come out still 
 more unhealthy (844 births to 1193 deaths in 1643 and 1008 
 births to 1647 deaths in 1644). The registers examined by 
 Short were mostly from Northern and Midland parishes ; but 
 they included two or three from Devonshire, and among his 
 market towns was Tiverton. We shall now see what these 
 bald figures mean in that concrete instance. 
 
 War-typhus at Tiverton in 1644. 
 
 Tiverton was then a town of some 8000 inhabitants, mostly 
 occupied in the weaving industry. On July 5, 1644, Essex 
 
Military occupation of Tiverton, 1644. 553 
 
 arrived with his army on his way to Cornwall to subdue prince 
 Maurice, and lay there till the i8th. The diary of one farmer 
 Roberts has an entry that Mr Thomas Lawrence, who came 
 from Tiverton, reported to him that the earl had 350 and odd 
 carriages, and of horse belonging thereto for draught 2000'. This 
 would have been his large artillery train, baggage and am- 
 munition waggons, etc. His infantry would be some 6000, and 
 his cavalry perhaps looo. The king's force meanwhile advanced 
 after Essex, and on July 25 lay in the great meadow at 
 Crediton. They had advanced by Yeovil and may or may not 
 have passed through Tiverton. The two armies came to blows in 
 Cornwall, a prolonged series of encounters in the country around 
 Lostwithiel in wet August weather ending in the escape of Essex 
 to the coast, the retreat of his cavalry through the Royalist 
 lines, and the surrender of the infantry on ist September. 
 The disarmed foot-soldiers were convoyed back to Poole and 
 Wareham, and did not trouble Tiverton again. The retreating 
 cavalry passed that way, but did not enter the town, which was 
 now held by the Royalists. But the king's army came back 
 by the way of Tiverton, which they reached on Saturday, the 
 2 1 St September. They had got no farther than Chard on the 
 30th, and may have halted in Tiverton some days. A Royalist 
 garrison of 200 men was left in it, and held the place until 
 October 1645, when it was taken by Fairfax after a short 
 sieged 
 
 Tiverton was thus occupied by both armies in the summer 
 and autumn of 1644, that of Essex having been quartered in 
 and around the town for a fortnight in July. A serious epidemic 
 followed, especially in the suburb on the western side of the 
 Exe. The particulars of it are in the parish register, from which 
 it would appear that the sickness began in August and lasted 
 until November. The greatest mortality was in October, when 
 105 were buried, the whole mortality of the year having been 
 443. The ordinary monthly burials would hardly have exceeded 
 a dozen or fifteen ; and as the 105 burials in October would 
 have meant some eight or ten times as many sick, it is not 
 
 ^ Dunsford's Histor. Mc/n. of Tivcr/on, p. 1S4. 
 - The military events from Rushworth. 
 
554 J^f^^ Tiverton epidemic a '' siueating sickness.'' 
 
 surprising to read that the town was desolate, and that grass 
 grew in the streets*. Of this epidemic there are no medical 
 particulars ; but it appears from the parish register that it 
 was known as " the sweating sickness." It would hardly have 
 been so called if sweating had not been a prominent symptom. 
 Besides the English sweat proper, with its five epidemics from 
 1485 to 1 55 1, we have had occasion to notice a sweating type 
 in several epidemics of fever. That symptom was so marked in 
 the epidemic of 1558 at Southampton, Portsmouth, and Isle of 
 Wight when they were full of troops, that Dr John Jones, who 
 had personal experience of it, compares it to the sweat proper; 
 It was a sufficiently prominent symptom in the Oxford gaol- 
 fever of 1577 for the sndor Anglicns to be called to mind. 
 In the English fevers and influenzas of 1580-82, a sweat or a 
 lask is mentioned by Cogan as a least occasional ; but the fevers 
 of the same years on the Continent had so often the sweating 
 character that it was sometimes said the English sweat had come 
 back. Lastly for the war-fevers of 1643 around Reading and 
 Oxford, Willis asserts in more than one place the occurrence 
 of sweats, critical or giving relief for a time in the milder form, 
 " deadly sweats " in fevers of an aggravated type. To anticipate 
 somewhat, it may be mentioned also that a sweating character 
 is recorded of some cases of the perennial London typhus at its 
 worst period in the middle of the i8th century. 
 
 Admitting all these facts, we must still hold to the opinion 
 expressed in the chapter on the Sweating Sickness, that sweat- 
 ing was never again the sigmun patJiognoniicuni of a whole 
 epidemic, as it had been of the sudor Anglicus in its five 
 outbursts. But if there be gradations of type, or approxima- 
 tions of typhus to sweating sickness (as well as to influenza), 
 then we may perhaps take the Tiverton epidemic as coming 
 nearer than any other to the sweating sickness, on the strength 
 of the name given to it in the parish register. 
 
 Nothing is known of sickness in the army of Essex, which 
 lay at Tiverton from 5th to i8th July, 1644. It suffered much 
 in the fighting in Cornwall, and the Parliament on 7 September 
 sent to Portsmouth arms for 6000 foot and 6000 suits of clothes 
 
 ^ Dimsforil, //is/or. Memoirs of Fivcrton. Harding, Hist, of y'iver/oii. 
 
Theory of the Tiverton epideuiie, 1644. 555 
 
 and shirts for the infantry who had surrendered and been convoyed 
 back along the coast. The king's troops which occupied Tiverton 
 on 21 September on their way back, had doubtless suffered also, 
 from the campaigning in wet fields and miry ways, and are 
 known to have been discontented for want of pay. Probably 
 the epidemic at Tiverton was due to aggravation of the usual 
 circumstances of war. It must be classed as a form of typhus ; 
 while its distinctive character of sweating might find an expla- 
 nation, on the analogy of the sweat of 1485 in London after the 
 arrival of Henry VII. from Bosworth Field, if we had sufficient 
 reason to suppose that the soldiers who successively occupied 
 Tiverton were not themselves suffering from fever. Contact 
 alone, especially the contact en masse of men reduced by 
 hardships and disorderly in their habits, will sometimes serve 
 to breed contagion among a population unlike them in these 
 respects. The converse of that principle, namely that contagion 
 need not follow from the introduction of developed sickness en 
 masse, finds an illustration in the case of Tiverton itself within 
 little more than a year after the epidemic of 1644. ^" Novem- 
 ber, 1645, Fairfax lay at Ottery St Mary with his army, pending 
 the investment of Exeter. On account of much sickness and 
 heavy mortality among his infantry (not medically described) 
 he removed them on December 2, to Crediton and ultimately 
 to Tiverton, which was supposed to be a healthier situation 
 and became his head-quarters until January 8, 16^6^. But no 
 outbreak in the town is mentioned, and almost certainly none 
 occurred ; the health of the place continued to be good every 
 year of the time that it was under the rule of the Parliament, 
 as the parish register proves. On the other hand Totness, which 
 was occupied by the same convalescent force after it left Tiverton, 
 had a severe epidemic of plague in the end of the year, 1646. 
 
 Plague in the Provinces during the Civil W^ars. 
 
 The type of sickness, after the first two years of the war, 
 does not appear to have been typhus-fever, but always the old 
 
 1 Rushworth. Moore, Hist, of Dcvonshin; i. 14^. 
 
556 Cunduct of the Civil Wars. — Plague at Baiibiiiy, 
 
 bubo-plague of the towns. So far as the history is known, the 
 experience of war-sicknesses upon English soil began in 1643 
 and ended in 1644, except in the instance of Fairfax's troops 
 at Ottery St Mary in November, 1645. 
 
 Perhaps the " new model " of the Parliamentary forces, after 
 the pattern of Cromwell's Ironsides, may have had something 
 to do with the immunity of England from war-typhus in all 
 the marchings and counter-marchings, battles, occupations and 
 sieges, from 1645 to the end of the Civil Wars. Cromwell 
 pointed out to Hampden that the army of Essex was composed 
 of " a set of poor tapsters and town-apprentices," and gave it 
 as his opinion that these were not the men to win with. When 
 the original commanders, Essex, Manchester, Sir W, Waller, 
 and others, had retired in 1645, i" terms of the self-denying 
 ordinance, the army of the Parliament acquired a new character 
 under Fairfax and Cromwell : it contained a large proportion 
 of " men of religion," especially among the officers ; and there is 
 sufficient evidence that the war was in future carried on so as to 
 produce as few as possible of those effects of campaigning 
 among the people at large which had marked the Thirty Years' 
 War in Germany and had attended the operations of Essex and 
 the Royalists in 1643 ^"<^ 1644. 
 
 What remains to be said of the epidemics of the Civil Wars 
 relates almost exclusively to plague, with an occasional reference 
 to the spotted fever which was widely prevalent in the autumn 
 of 1644. These epidemics of plague in the English provinces, 
 during the political troubles, more numerous than usual from 
 1644 to 1650, are the last on English soil until we come to the 
 final grand explosion of 1665-66. 
 
 In 1644 there were two principal centres of plague (besides 
 Eondon), namely Banbury, and the valley of the Tyne. Ban- 
 bury was near enough to the Royalist head-quarters to have 
 shared in the fever-epidemic of 1643 ; in that year the burials of 
 58 soldiers are entered in the parish register, besides a large 
 excess of burials among the civil population (total of 225 deaths 
 in the year as against an annual mortality in former years 
 ranging from 30 to 98). The siege by the Parliamentary forces 
 did not begin until July 19, 1644, and ended in the surrender of 
 
and in Ty tie side, 1644, Brisfo/, 1645. 557 
 
 the castle in October. The epidemic of plague may have begun 
 as early as January, a soldier having "died in the street " on the 
 i6th; but it is not until March 1644, that plague-deaths appear 
 in the register. In that month there were 10 deaths from plague, 
 in April 34, and so until November, when there were 2, the total 
 mortality from plague having been 161. After the plague 
 ceased, the town remained otherwise unhealthy until i647\ 
 
 The information as to Newcastle and Tynesidc comes from 
 the observant Scotsman, William Lithgow, who was with the 
 Presbyterian army when Newcastle was stormed on October 
 20, I644^ The town had suffered heavily from plague, as we 
 have seen, in 1636, and there had been a slighter outbreak in 
 1642. Although the state of things during the siege in 1644 
 was wretched in the extreme, there does not appear to have 
 been plague until after the surrender. The infection was 
 already at work, however, in places near. Thus Tynemouth 
 Castle was surrendered by the Royalist commander, Sir Thomas 
 Riddell on October 27 : " The pestilence having been five weeks 
 amongst them, with a great mortality, they were glad to yield, 
 and to scatter themselves abroad ; but to the great undoing and 
 infecting of the country about, as it hath contagiously begun" 
 (Lithgow). Among the places infected were Gateshead, Sand- 
 gate, Sunderland, and many country villages, the plague being 
 reported in Newcastle itself in 1645 as well as in Darlington^ 
 
 The year 1645 was one of severe plague in several towns at 
 the same time, some of them in a state of siege and all of them 
 occupied by troops. The largest mortality was at Bristol, being 
 proportionate to its size. The town was taken by prince 
 Rupert on July 22, 1643, and was held by a strong garrison 
 for two years and some weeks. It was towards the end of the 
 Royalist occupation that the plague broke out, probably in the 
 spring of 1645*, On the i6th May, Sir John Culpepper wrote 
 to Lord Digby : " The sickness increases fearfully in this city. 
 There died this week according to the proportion of 1500 in 
 
 ' Beesley's Hist, of Baiilnny, p. 387. 
 
 - In Somers's Tracts. Scott's ed. v. 294. ^ Sykes. 
 
 ^ Clarendon, referring to a proposed Royal visit to Bristol in April says: "The 
 plagiie began to break out there very much for the time of the year." 
 
558 Plague at Leeds, 1645. 
 
 London*." When it had been stormed by Fairfax and Crom- 
 well in September 1645, it was found that prince Rupert's 
 garrison consisted of 2500 foot, and about 1000 horse. The 
 auxiliaries and the trained bands of the town were reduced in 
 June to about 800, and of the 2500 families then remaining in the 
 town, 1500 were in a state of indigence and want". In Crom- 
 well's despatch of September 14 to Mr Speaker Lenthall he 
 says : " I hear but of one man that hath died of the plague in all 
 our army, although we have quartered amongst and in the 
 midst of infected persons and places^" The deaths from plague 
 in the whole epidemic approached 3000, according to the MS, 
 calendars^ 
 
 While this was going on within the walls of Bristol, an 
 epidemic of plague more severe for the size of the town was 
 progressing at Leeds. The town had been taken by Fairfax on 
 January 23, 1643, and had remained in the quiet possession of 
 the Parliament, under a military governor. In August, 1644, 
 there were buried 131 persons, "before the plague was perceived," 
 says the parish register ; which means that the excessive mor- 
 tality was not from plague, but probably from the spotted fever 
 which reigned that autumn in other places in the North. The 
 plague proper began with a death in Vicar-lane on March 11, 
 1645. The weekly bills of mortality which were ordered by the 
 military governor showed a total mortality, from March 1 1 to 
 December 25, of 1325. It raged most in Vicar-lane and the 
 close yards adjoining ; it was also very prevalent in March-lane, 
 the Calls, Call-lane, Lower Briggate, and Mill-hill. The largest 
 number of burials in a week (126) was from July 24 to 31 ; the 
 mortality kept high all through August and September (60 to 
 80 weekly), and declined gradually to 3 in the week ending 
 Christmas-day. Whitaker estimates that probably the fifth part 
 of the population died, and he cannot discover any person of 
 name among the victim.s. The air was so warm and infectious 
 that dogs, cats, mice and rats are said to have died (of rats and 
 mice it can well be believed), and that several birds dropped 
 
 ' Cal. State Papers. ~ Rushwdith. 
 
 ^ Letters ami Speeches, i. 
 
 ■^ Seyer's Memorials of Bristol., II. 466. 
 
Lichfield, Oxford, Walling ford, 1645. 559 
 
 down dead in their flight over the town'. This appears to have 
 been the only visitation of plague in Leeds, at least since the 
 medieval period. 
 
 The plague of Lichfield in 1645-46, like that of Bristol, went 
 on during a constant state of military turmoil. On April 21, 
 1643. the Close was taken by prince Rupert and was held as a 
 Royalist stronghold until July 26, 1646, the king having repaired 
 thither after his defeat at Nascby in June, 1645, and again in 
 September. The plague is said to have been active both in 
 1645 and 1646; in twelve streets there occurred 821 deaths, the 
 largest share (121) falling to Green HilP. In what way the 
 state of siege may have contributed to the plague is uncertain. 
 The fosse was drained dry at one stage, and was choked with 
 rubbish at another. Many of the inhabitants of the town 
 would appear, from the 4th article of the capitulation, to have 
 taken refuge with their effects within the fortified Cathedral 
 Close, which was almost enclosed by water. This was one of 
 several outbreaks of plague that Lichfield had suffered since 
 early Tudor times. 
 
 Minor plague outbreaks of 1645 were at Derby and Oxford. 
 Of the latter we have a glimpse from Willis of Christ Church. 
 
 " Sometime past in this city [Oxford] viz.^ 1645, the plague (tho' not 
 great) had spread. Doctor Henry Sayer, a very learned physician, and 
 happy in his practice, many others refusing this province, boldly visited all 
 the sick, poor as well as rich, daily administered to them physic, and 
 handled with his own hands their buboes and virulent ulcers, and so cured 
 very many sick by his sedulous though dangerous labour. That he might 
 fortifie himself against the contagion, before he went into the infected 
 houses, he was wont only to drink a large draught of sack, and then his 
 perambulation about the borders of death and the very jaws of the grave 
 being finished, to repeat the same antidote. 
 
 After he had in this city, as if inviolable as to the plague, a long while 
 taken care of the affairs of the sick without any hurt, he was sent for to 
 Wallingford Castle, where this disease cruelly raged, as another yEsculapius, 
 by the governor of the place. But there, being so bold as to lie in the same 
 bed with a certain captain (his intimate companion), who was taken with the 
 plague, he quickly received the contagion of the same disease ; nor were the 
 arts then profitable to the master which had been helpful to so many others, 
 but there with great sorrow of the inhabitants, nor without great loss to the 
 
 • Whitaker, History of Leeds, p. 75. - Harwodd, ffisf. of I.ithfidd, p. 306. 
 
560 Plague at Newark, 164.6. 
 
 medical science, he died of that disease." He treated the sick, in the pre- 
 bubonic stages, by a vomit of Crocus Metallorum, and then by diapho- 
 retics ^ 
 
 None of the other localized epidemics of plague in those 
 years would appear to have been of the first magnitude. Thus, 
 the 22 deaths from plague at Loughborough from 1645 to May 
 14, 1646, and the renewed prevalence, after a year's interval, 
 (83 plague-deaths from July 20, 1647 to March 25, 1648)^, are 
 samples of local mortalities from plague that other parish registers 
 might bear witness to if they had been examined by antiquaries 
 as closely as Nichols examined those of Leicestershire. 
 
 Newark was one of the towns which suffered much during 
 the Civil War. Besieged time after time, it was at length 
 surrendered to the Parliament on May 6, 164.6. A letter 
 written shortly after the surrender says^: 
 
 " Truly it is become a miserable, stinking, infected town. I pray God 
 they do not infect the counties and towns adjacent.... By reason of the 
 sickness in divers places, the officers dare not yet venture to fetch out the 
 arms. ..Tradesmen are preparing to furnish their shops. ..but the market 
 cannot be expected to be much whilst the sickness is in the town." 
 
 The parish register of Newark bears no witness to deaths 
 from plague ; but that of the adjacent parish of Stoke, in which 
 stood the Castle and the suburb of Newark surrounding it, has 
 numerous entries of plague-deaths, beginning with one some 
 three weeks after the surrender, on May 28, 1646, and con- 
 tinuing through July, August, and September. Several of the 
 same household are buried in one day, one is " buried in the 
 field," another " in his croft." The vicar sums up the mortality 
 thus : "There dyed in the towne of Stoke, 1646, eight score and 
 one, whereof of the plage seven score and nineteen." The 
 whole deaths in Stoke parish the year before had been nine, and 
 the year after they were six"*. If the plague had been at all 
 proportionate in Newark town itself, the deaths would have far 
 exceeded 159 ; but, as the parish register docs not record plague- 
 
 1 Pordage'.s translntion of Willis's Remaining; JVor/:.s, p. 131. 
 
 2 Nichols, III. 8(j.v 
 
 •* Cornelius Brown, Aivinls of jXcwark. London, 1^79, ]). \Gj^. 
 4 Ibid. 
 
Plague at Totncss, 1647. — Cavip-sickness at Ottcry. 561 
 
 deaths at all, it may be inferred that the infection lay mostly 
 around the Castle. 
 
 Whitmore speaks of having practised in the plague in 
 Staffordshire in 1647-8, and there is some other evidence, 
 without particulars, of an epidemic in the town of Stafford. 
 
 One more epidemic of plague is reported from the theatre of 
 Civil War in the south-west, the outbreak at Totness in 1646-7. 
 In the parish register there is a burial entered on July 30, 1646, 
 " suspected she died of the plague." A leaf of the register has 
 the following: "From December 6, 1646, till the 19th October, 
 1647, there died in Totness of the plague 262 persons" — a 
 number greater than the register shows in detail. The stereo- 
 typed remark is added, that the town was deserted and that 
 grass grew in the streets \ For months before the first suspected 
 case of plague in 1646, Totness had been occupied by one body of 
 troops after another. In November or December, 1645, Goring's 
 Royalist cavalry, to the number of nearly 5000, were quartered 
 at Totness and two or three other places near. On January 1 1, 
 1646, Fairfax came with his army to Totness for the siege of 
 Dartmouth, which was carried by storm on the 20th. The Lord 
 General then withdrew to resume the investment of Exeter. 
 Before doing so he issued warrants to four Hundreds to assemble 
 their men at Totness on the 24th January. The men came in to 
 the number of about 3000, and a regiment was formed from 
 them^ What connexion with the plague in the end of the year 
 all this military stir at Totness may have had, it would not be 
 easy to determine. There had been a great deal of sickness in 
 the army of Fairfax while it lay at Ottery St Mary in the latter 
 half of November, 1645. " By reason of the season," says 
 Rushworth, " and want of accommodation, abundance of his 
 army, especially the foot, were sick, and many died, seldom less 
 than seven, eight or nine in a day in the town of Autree, and 
 amongst the rest Colonel Pickering died and some other officers. 
 The Royal party had notice of this consumption of Fairfax's 
 army," and took heart to make a new effort. The type of 
 sickness is unknown ; but it was such as to cause the removal of 
 the head-quarters on December 2 to Tiverton, for better air. 
 
 ^ Notes and Queries, 6th ser., lu. 477. - Rushworth. 
 
 c. 36 
 
562 Plague at Rcadi?ig, 1646-7, Carlisle, 1646, 
 
 The army lay there until January 8, and came to Totness, for 
 the siege of Dartmouth, on the nth. Thus Totness had not 
 only been occupied by an army some months before the plague, 
 but by an army which had lately had a fatal form of sickness in 
 it. The troops march away, and the historical interest goes 
 with them ; what they may have left behind them concerns only 
 the domestic history. Fifty-six years had passed since Totness 
 had the plague before ; and on that occasion the epidemic was 
 equally disastrous. 
 
 Two other centres of plague in 1646-7 are casually men- 
 tioned, one at Reading\ which affected "a great number of poor 
 people," and the other at Carlisle^. Of the latter there are no 
 particulars ; but the circumstances of the town for several years 
 were such as to make an outbreak of plague in 1646 credible. 
 
 Carlisle suffered much from the war for a series of years. In 
 July, 1644, it was seized for the Royalists, and was besieged by 
 Lesley in October, the siege lasting many months. It had a 
 garrison of about 700, including some of the townsfolk armed. 
 About the end of February, 1645, all the corn in the town was 
 seized to be served out on short allowance; on June 5, "hemp- 
 seed, dogs and rats were eaten." The surrender was on June 25, 
 and the place was held by a Scots garrison until December, 1646. 
 It was again seized for the Royalists in April, 1648, was re- 
 captured by Cromwell in October, and held by a strong garrison 
 of 800 foot and a regiment of horse, besides dragoons to keep 
 the borders. All Cumberland was in such a state of destitution 
 that the Parliament ordered a collection for its relief; numbers 
 of the poor are said to have died in the highways, and 30,000 
 families were in want of bread ^ 
 
 Plague in Scotland during the Civil Wars. 
 
 Connecting with plagues in the north of England, there was a 
 great prevalence of the infection in Scotland. After the storming 
 of Newcastle by the Scots Covenanters in October, 1644, the 
 plague appeared in Edinburgh, Kelso, Borrowstownness, Perth 
 
 1 Ilisior. AI.SS. Co/)i. xi. 7, ji. 190. '•' Il>iii- ix. i, )). 20 r. 
 
 ^ Hisl. of Carlisle, 1838. 
 
Edinburgh, Glasgoiv, Perth, St Andrews, 1645-8. 563 
 
 and other places. On April i, 1645, Kelso was burned down, the 
 fire having originated in a house that was being "clengit" or 
 disinfected after plague in it. At Edinburgh the plague-stricken 
 were housed in huts in the King's park below Salisbury Crags. 
 Collections were made for the relief of people in Leith im- 
 poverished by the plague. The epidemic in and around Perth is 
 said to have given rise to the story of Bessie Bell and Mary 
 Gray, who fled from the plague-tainted ground and built 
 themselves a bower by a burn side\ At Glasgow the infection 
 was severe in the end of 1646, and did not cease entirely until 
 the autumn of 1648. There are numerous references to it in 
 the letters of principal Baillie of Glasgow University, of which 
 the following are the most important-. 
 
 On September 5, 1645, he writes that the pest has laid Leith 
 and Edinburgh desolate, and rages in many more places : never 
 such a pest seen in Scotland (in his time, perhaps). About 
 January, 1646, he writes of "the crushing of our nation by 
 pestilence and Montrose's victories." At the end of that year, 
 the plague was in Glasgow: on January 26, 1647, during winter 
 cold, "all that may are fled out of it." On June 2, the plague 
 had scattered the St Andrews' students, the principal of St 
 Leonard's College was dead of it, and it was killing many in the 
 north. The same summer, principal Baillie was shut up in the 
 town of Kilwinning, cut off, with all the inhabitants, from 
 communication with the outer world owing to a suspicion of 
 plague in the place. Edinburgh and Leith, which had suffered 
 earliest, were almost free in the autumn of 1647, but "Aberdeen, 
 Brechin and other parts of the north are miserably wasted ; the 
 schools and colleges now in all Scotland, but Edinburgh, are 
 scattered." Glasgow had its worst experience of plague in the 
 summer and autumn of 1648, which were wet seasons: on 
 August 23, " our condition for the time is sad ; the plague is 
 also in Edinburgh and Aberdeen.... At this time I grieved for 
 the state of Glasgow.... My brother's son's house was infected; 
 my brother's house enclosed many in danger; one night near a 
 dozen died of the sickness.... The long great rains for many 
 
 1 Chambers, Domestic Annals of Scotland. 
 
 ~ Baillie's Letters. 3 vols. Edited by D. Laing for the Baniiatyne Club. 
 
 36—2 
 
564 Plague at Aberdeen, 1647-8. — Chester, 1647-8. 
 
 weeks did prognosticate famine ; but these three days past there 
 is also a great change of weather ; the Lord continue it." The 
 infection which began at Glasgow in January, 1647, reached 
 Aberdeen in April, having been carried, it was said, by a woman 
 from Brechin. It was still raging at Aberdeen in September, 
 and there were straggling cases as late as November of the 
 following year (1648). The deaths from plague are put down 
 at 1600, besides 140 in the adjacent fishing villages of Futtie 
 and Torrie on either side of the Dee mouth. This enormous 
 mortality ensued despite the usual rigorous measures — the 
 removal of the infected to huts on the Links and Woolmanhill, 
 a cordon of soldiers to shut them in, a gibbet for the disobedient, 
 and " clengers " for the infected houscs\ This disastrous 
 epidemic of 1647- 1648 is the last that is heard of plague in 
 Scotland. 
 
 Plague in Chester &c. and in Ireland, 1647-1650. 
 
 The two remaining English plagues of those years were both 
 in cities that had suffered much from plague before, and were 
 in a constant state of turmoil during the war, namely Chester 
 and Shrewsbury. Chester was held for the king, and surrendered 
 to the Parliament on February 3, 1646, after a siege of twenty 
 weeks, during the latter part of which there was famine within 
 the walls. It was not until 1647 that plague broke out. From 
 June 22 until April 20, 1648, the numbers that died of plague 
 are stated in the MS. of Dr Cowper to have been 2099; all 
 business was suspended, and cabins for the plague-stricken were 
 built outside the townl 
 
 The Shrewsbury plague of 1650, like that of Chester, is 
 described as having been dreadful in its effects upon the town. 
 It broke out during the occupation by the Parliament's troops, 
 on June 12, 1650, in a house in Frankwell, and continued until 
 
 ^ Kennedy, Annals of Aberdeen, i. 270 (expenses of the epidemic from the 
 Council Register, vol. Liii. p. 130). 
 
 - Hemingway, Ormerod. The Report of /lie His/. AfSS. Commission (v. 339) 
 notes that Dr Cuvvper's MS. contains details of 2,099 deaths, but reproduces none of 
 them, 
 
SJircivshnry, 1650. — Ireland, 1649-50. 565 
 
 January, 165 1. Only one parish, St Chad's, appears to have 
 kept account of the plague-deaths : in that register from 
 June 12 to January 16, there are entered 277 burials, whereof 
 of the plague 250, the highest monthly mortality {j6) being in 
 August, 1650. Of these 250 deaths, 123 took place in the 
 pest-houses. A letter of August 21 says that 153 died in two 
 months, and that there were near 3000 people in the town 
 dependent upon common charity*. On November 21, there 
 were still 200 cases in the pest-houses, most of them being in 
 the way to recover, as usually happened towards the end of 
 an epidemic through the greater readiness of the buboes to 
 suppurate. 
 
 From the small number of burials due to ordinary causes in 
 the St Chad's register, it would appear that many citizens had 
 fled. The severity of incidence upon certain houses appears 
 from the fact that five servants in Mr Rowley's house died of it; 
 and that 15 out of 21 burials in St Julian's parish came from 
 four families'. These are incidents like those of the great 
 plague of London in 1665, which is the next in time in the 
 English annals after Shrewsbury's visitation in 1650. 
 
 The plague in Ireland in 1649-50 was connected, directly 
 and indirectly, with the military operations under Ireton and 
 Cromwell. The previous year, 1648, had been one of famine: 
 at the attack on Kildare by the rebels in the spring, both the 
 English garrison in the town and the attacking Irish were 
 half-starved, and there was a great mortality on both sides, 
 as well as a murrain of cattle. On May 4, corn in all the 
 rebel quarters is said to be at the incredible price of ;^8 the 
 quarter, both men and cattle dying in large numbers^ In 1649 
 the plague broke out in Kilkenny, obliging the supreme council 
 of Confederate Catholics to remove to Ennis. Ireton, "thinking 
 he ought not to meddle with what the Lord had so visibly 
 taken into his hands, has declined taking Kilkenny into his 
 own." But Cromwell besieged it on March 23, 1650, by which 
 time the garrison of 200 horse and 1,000 foot had been reduced 
 
 1 Hist. iMSS. Coin miss. \. 342. 
 
 - Owen and Blakeway. 
 
 ^ Rushworth, Pt. 4, vol. Ii., pp. iioo, 1109. 
 
566 Plague in Dublin, 1650. 
 
 to 300 men through the ravages of the plague, the inhabitants 
 having also suffered heavily^ 
 
 The Royalist letters from the Hague speak of the plague 
 in the summer of 1650 as disastrous in Ireland, particularly 
 in Dublin^. On August y\ : "Lady Inchiquin came hither last 
 night ; those with her report that the plague will devour what 
 the sword has not in Ireland." On September -^ : "All I hear 
 out of Ireland is that the plague has made a horrid devasta- 
 tion there; iioo in a week died in Dublin" — an improbable 
 estimated The ranks of the rebels were so thinned by the 
 sword and pestilence that " not above 200 suffered by the hands 
 of the executioner," after trial at the high court of justice held 
 in County Cork in 1651*. The epidemic appears to have ceased 
 in the autumn of 1650, when the Council of State, in a despatch 
 to the Lord Deputy, take notice of the goodness of God in 
 stopping the plague ^ 
 
 Fever in England, 1651-2. 
 
 Between those plagues of the years 1644- 1650 and the final 
 re-appearance of the infection on English soil from 1665 to 1666, 
 the interval is occupied with a good deal of fever both in town 
 and country. The sicknesses of those years are of interest as 
 having been described by two competent physicians, Willis and 
 Whitmore. 
 
 There were two principal periods of the epidemics, the years 
 165 1-2 and IJ557-9. In the former period the sickness appears 
 to have been mostly in the north-west. Whitmore, who had 
 seen practice in the Civil War, in Staffordshire and Shropshire, 
 appears to have been in Chester in 165 1, and was settled in 
 
 1 Annals of Ireland by Clyii and Dowling, Dean Butler's notes pp. 64, 65 (ref. 
 to Carte's Life of the Duke of Ormonde). 
 
 ^ Cal. State Papers. 
 
 * The weekly bills of mortality for Dublin, July 20 — Aug. 2, 1662, showed only 
 14 baptisms and 20 burials in ten parishes; but these can hardly ?iave been all the 
 births and deaths in the city. 
 
 ■* .Smith's Cork, vol. 11. from Cox MSS. 
 
 " Cal. S. P. Sei)t. 21, 1650. 
 
Whitnioi'c on the Fever of 165 i. 567 
 
 London in 1657. It is from him that our information mostly 
 comes ^ 
 
 " It is well known," he says, "that this disease in the year 1651 [the same 
 fever that he describes more fully for the years 1658 and 1659] first broke 
 out by the seaside in Cheshire, Lancashire, and North Wales.... In Cheshire 
 in the year 165 1 this disease seized most upon the country people who were 
 laborious, the seeds being sooner dispersed in them through the agitation of 
 the humours and spirits in their harvest labours, than on those who lead a 
 more sedentary life ; and that might be one reason why we were so free in 
 the city of Chester, when within three or four miles of us round about, whole 
 towns were infected with it, there being 80 and 100 sick at a time in small 
 villages, as at Stanney, Dunham-on-thc-hill, Norton and all there abouts by 
 the water side it extremely raged." 
 
 Whitmore refers to something that he had written, " for my 
 private use," on the subject of this fever as far back as 1642 ; 
 he remarks also that it raged every autumn in some place or 
 other of the kingdom, and mentions his own experience in 
 Staffordshire and Shropshire during the late war. But it is the 
 epidemic in Cheshire, Lancashire and North Wales, in 165 1 
 that he specially describes, side by side with those of 1658 and 
 1659 ; and it is of interest to note his suggestion as to the 
 origin of the fever on both shores of the Mersey. It was well 
 known that the fever in 165 i first broke out by the seaside in 
 Cheshire, Lancashire and North Wales : 
 
 "And if it were observed in Holland that on a misty day, that infectious 
 disease the Sudor Anglicus came into Amsterdam in an afternoon, five 
 hundred or more dying that night of it, as Lemnius reports, I know not why 
 we may not as well suppose their opposite neighbour, Dublin, then visited 
 for two years with the plague, should not have communicated the same to 
 them though in a more remiss degree." 
 
 Here the suggestion is that the prevalence of plague on 
 the opposite coast of Ireland had given rise to a minor and 
 " more remiss " contagion along the coasts of North Wales, 
 Cheshire and Lancashire. But the plague had been most 
 severe in Chester itself before it broke out in Ireland, and had 
 been severe in Shrewsbury at the same time as in Ireland. 
 
 ^ H. Whitmore, M.D. Felu-is Anomala ; or the Nezo Disease that now rageth 
 throughout England, with a brief description of the Disease zohieh this Spring viost 
 infested Lou ion. London, 1659 (4 November). 
 
568 Epidemic sickness at Booth, 1652. 
 
 Whatever the theory, it is significant that the corner of England 
 which was the worst and perhaps only seat of plague in 1648 
 and 1650, was the seat of a malignant fever in 165 1, the former 
 having been in the towns, and the latter in the country villages. 
 We get a glimpse of a heavy mortality among the country 
 people the year after at Bootle, in Cumberland, just across the 
 border from Lancashire\ On July 8, 1652, Thomas Wharton 
 writes from Kirkdale to Edward Moore : 
 
 " There was a boy at widow Robinson's died upon Saturday in Whitsun 
 week, and upon the Wednesday before he was sawying at the steward 
 Worsley's house with his wrights. The boy and the steward's man slept 
 together in Worsley's barn ; towards night the boy was not well, and could 
 work no longer. All this John Wiggan of Kirkdale did see. Next, John 
 Birch died, and four of his children — all are dead but his wife. At John 
 Robinson's, one child and his wife died last week, and upon Wednesday last 
 two children more died ; and it was thought by the constable of Bootle that 
 he would be dead before this day at night. Upon Wednesday at night last, 
 at James Pye's, there died two, his son and daughter ; and a servant of 
 Thomas Doubie's is dead ; and it is this day broken forth in Bridge's, as we 
 hear." 
 
 On what evidence this country epidemic is called " the 
 plague " by the antiquary who prints the document does not 
 appear. The fatality of the disease would suggest plague, 
 rather than fever ; but the fever itself would seem to have been 
 more malignant at one place than another, and at one time 
 than another, and there may have been at Bootle cases un- 
 mentioned which recovered. If it had been true bubo-plague, it 
 is a solitary instance, so far as records go, in the fifteen years 
 between the extinction of plague at Shrewsbury in 1650, and 
 its revival in London and elsewhere in 1665. The epidemic 
 disease that we ordinarily hear of in that interval is fever ; and 
 of the fever our best accounts, after Whitmore's reference to 
 1651, are of the epidemics in 1657, 1658 and 1659. 
 
 Fever and Influenza, 1657-9. 
 
 The account by Willis of three consecutive epidemics in 
 the autumn of 1657, the spring of 1658, and the autumn of 1658, 
 
 1 Hist. MSS. Commission, X. pi. 4, p. 106. 
 
Willis on the Fever uf \6^y. 569 
 
 is of peculiar interest for the reason that it is the first syste- 
 matic piece of epidemiology written in England, and that the 
 middle epidemic of the three was one of influenza'. On reading 
 the narrative of events by Willis, we can understand how it 
 was that the physicians of that period were so impressed by the 
 doctrine of an epidemic constitution of the season, and by its 
 counterpart doctrine of a seasonal predisposition in the human 
 constitution. That teaching was afterwards expounded in suc- 
 cessive essays by Sydenham ; but it was held generally in those 
 times, and Willis found apt illustrations of it in the three 
 epidemics one after the other in 1657-58. Let us follow his 
 narrative, and add to it some particulars from Whitmore. 
 
 The spring and summer of 1657 were extremely dry and 
 hot ; but especially after the summer solstice the heats were so 
 intense for many weeks following that, day and night, there 
 was none that did not complain of the heat of the air, and 
 were almost in a continual sweat and were not able to breathe 
 freely. About the calends of July, the fever which was at 
 first sporadic and particular, began to break forth in some places, 
 perhaps two or three cases in the same city or village. The 
 fever fits at this period occurred every other day, but there 
 was no cold fit or rigor preceding, as in an ordinary ague, 
 the heat being intense from the outset. Vomiting and bilious 
 stools occurred plentifully to most, with sweat succeeding, not 
 however an easy, uninterrupted and critical sweat. The re- 
 mission of the fever fit was rarely complete in the intermediate 
 day, weakness, languor, thirst and restlessness always remaining. 
 In some the type improved after three or four of these quasi- 
 tertian paroxysms ; the later fits were ushered in with a rigor 
 and a cold stage, so that the fever became an exact tertian 
 intermittent. But in most the type became worse, which may 
 have been due to errors of regimen and physicking. The fever 
 became, indeed, a continued one, and might end in nervous 
 symptoms — lethargy, delirium, cramps or convulsions. 
 
 In August it was spreading far and near, so that in every 
 region or village round Oxford, many were sick of it; but 
 it was much more frequent in the country cottages and in the 
 
 1 \^\\Yi<,, Dialrikic diiac. Ilagae, iG^^i). 
 
570 Fever in autumn, 1657. — Influenza in spri}ig, 1C58. 
 
 smaller villages than in cities or towns. It was called " the 
 new disease," as the war-typhus of 1643 ^'^^cl been called, and 
 other epidemics both earlier and later. 
 
 Willis continues : It crept from house to house, infecting 
 most of the same family, and especially those in familiar 
 converse with the sick. " Yea old men, and men of ripe age, 
 it ordinarily took away." It lasted many days in an individual, 
 nay even months, attended with much evacuation and almost 
 daily vomits and sweats. " Scarce one in a thousand died of it, 
 which I never knew in an epidemical synochus." This singular 
 malady, which differed from ague not only in its want of 
 clear intervals between the fits of fever, but also in being 
 propagated by contagion, raged throughout all England in the 
 autumn of 1657. Only in some few limited localities, and in 
 these only in some cases, was it accompanied by true dysentery. 
 Willis is not satisfied with the facile explanation of an infection 
 of the air, " the little bodies of which infections, being admitted 
 within, did ferment with the blood and humours." There must 
 have been something equally general in the human body, a 
 predisposition to be so acted upon ; and of that proneness to 
 fever he finds the cause in the intemperance of the year, namely 
 the great heat of the summer and autumn. 
 
 But the most remarkable illustration of these doctrines was 
 the epidemic of the following spring, which was a pure and 
 unmistakeable epidemic of influenza-cold. After the very hot 
 summer and autumn, there was a long winter of intense frost. 
 From the ides of December to the vernal equinox the earth 
 was covered with snow, the wind blowing steadily from the 
 north. The state of health through the winter was fairly good. 
 The north wind continued until June. "About the middle of 
 April, suddenly a distemper arose as if sent by some blast 
 of the stars, which laid hold of very many together; and in 
 some towns in the space of a week above a thousand fell sick 
 together." They had a troublesome cough, great spitting, and 
 catarrh "falling down on the palate, throat, and nostrils." The 
 illness approached with fever, thirst, want of appetite, weariness, 
 grievous pains in the head, back, loins and limbs, and heat 
 in the praccordia. Some were very ill in bed, with hoarseness 
 
Willis on the autuniiial Fever of 1658. 571 
 
 and almost continual coughing ; others had bleeding at the 
 nose, bloody spittle or bloody flux. Not a few old and infirm 
 died, but the more strong, and almost all the healthy constitu- 
 tions recovered. Those that died "wasted leisurely," like 
 persons sick of a hectic fever. About the third part of mankind 
 was distempered in a month. Willis's explanation of it is that 
 the constant north wind checked the natural action of the blood 
 in spring. The spring blood is more lively, like the juices 
 of vegetables. The catarrhal fever was a disorder of the spring 
 blood, like new wine close shut up in bottles. 
 
 This outbreak about the middle of April is evidently 
 described for Oxford and the country around. Willis then 
 describes his third epidemic, that of the summer and autumn 
 of 1658, which was the same type of fever as in the summer and 
 autumn of 1657. The vernal fever of 1658 did not last longer 
 than six weeks. The wind continued still north, until the 
 summer solstice ; a little before the beginning of July there 
 was a most fierce heat for a few days, and when the dog-days 
 were begun, the air grew most cruelly hot, so that one could 
 scarce endure it in the open. The new fever arose mostly about 
 the end of August, and began to spread through whole regions 
 about us (at Oxford), and chiefly, like that of 1657, in country 
 houses and villages ; but in the meantime few of the inhabitants 
 of the greater towns and cities fell sick. The symptoms were 
 much the same as in the previous autumn. The fever was 
 continual in some; in others it was of an intermitting type at 
 first ; but very many were ill " in their brain and nervous stock," 
 with cruel headache, noises in the ears, dullness of hearing, 
 stupor, vertigo, waking, and delirium. In some, on the first 
 or second day, " little broad and red spots like to the measles 
 have leisurely broken forth in the whole body, which being 
 shortly vanished, the fever and headache became worse." The 
 patients lay for a few days as if dying, without speaking or know- 
 ing their friends, after which came lethargy and delirium. The 
 young men mostly recovered, the old men died. In the fits of 
 old men, the heat was not very sharp, but there were restlessness, 
 tossing about, idle and random talking, with dryness of the 
 mouth, surfincss of the tongue, and viscous sordcs. Usually the 
 
5/2 Whit more on the autniniial Fever of 1658. 
 
 pulse was strong and equal ; a weak, unequal and intermittent 
 pulse, with contractures of the tendons and convulsive motions 
 in the wrists, was an omen of death. Those who died passed 
 away in a stupor, without consciousness to dispose of their 
 goods; the recovery of others was long and doubtful. One 
 notable thing in this fever was the exanthem, which reminds 
 one more of the rash of sweating sickness or dengue (break- 
 bone fever), than of the spots of typhus. 
 
 Willis ends his book on fevers with that account of the 
 autumnal epidemic of 1658, "taken the 13th of September," his 
 work having been published at the Hague in 1659. Whitmore, 
 whose short essay is dated from London, November, 1659, 
 begins with the autumnal epidemic of 1658, which is the last 
 of Willis's three ; and, strangely enough, he also has a vernal 
 epidemic of influenza to describe — an epidemic clearly belonging 
 to the spring of 1659. Unless there be some error in Whitmore's 
 dates, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the second 
 autumnal fever, that of 1658, was followed by a spring influenza, 
 just as the first, of 1657, had been. 
 
 Whitmore's account of the autumnal fever of 1658 agrees in 
 the main with that given by Willis. He defines it as " a putrid 
 continued and malignant fever containing in it the seeds of 
 contagion." It raged in the last autumn through all England, 
 "and now begins again," (his preface being dated November, 
 1659), seizing on all sorts of people of different nature, which 
 shows that it is epidemic. The part aff^ected is chiefly the 
 heart, and therefore some call it cordis morbus. 
 
 " In this, as in the plague at the first catching of it, some seem to be 
 very pleasant, so far are they from perceiving themselves to be amiss, when 
 indeed death itself hath set his foot within the threshold of their earthly 
 houses." There were pains in the head, inclination to vomit, sudden 
 fainting of spirits, and weakness without any manifest cause, the pulse 
 feeble and sometimes intermittent, so as very lusty and strong men in 
 Cheshire (in the year 1651 where this disease then raged) in a very short 
 space so lost their strength that they were not able to stand or turn themselves 
 in their beds. Some also are taken with bleeding, purging, and sweating, and 
 many have the spots. But for the most part it appears in the livery of some 
 other kind of ague. It begins to show its malignity after the 5th, 7th, or 
 yth day, with loss of appetite, thirst, and a dry black tongue. 
 
Return of Influenza-cold in the spring of \6^g. 573 
 
 Letters of 1658 from London bear out the prevalence of 
 autumnal sickness. On August 3, one writes that the weather is 
 hot and dry, the town extremely empty, and the flux beginning. 
 On January 4, 1659, there is much sickness, especially fevers, 
 agues and the smallpox. 
 
 A good deal of the interest of Whitmore's essay lies in his 
 arguments against blood letting in this fever ; but that is part 
 of a history which will have to be dealt with as a whole at a 
 later stage. 
 
 Whitmore then proceeds to the vernal epidemic of 1659, just 
 as Willis had done to that of 1658. His words are (4 Nov. 1659): 
 
 " Having given an account of the nature and cure of this disease which 
 now rageth throughout England, 1 shall briefly describe that which this 
 spring universally infested London ; and show how it agreed and how it 
 differed from that disease which last fall invaded the whole nation." He 
 then describes the typical influenza, just as Willis had done under a date a 
 year earlier — pains in the limbs of some, coughs, and aguish distempers in 
 others ; "so that in a week or a fortnight's time, when it had fermented and 
 caused a putrefaction of humours, it quickly tended to a height, and struck 
 many thousands in London down, scarce leaving a family where any store 
 were, without some being ill of this distemper, suddenly sweeping very many 
 away, being the same, in the judgment of no mean physician, with that in 
 autumn last, though in a new skin." Whitmore then gives a reason " why 
 this should hold them all with coughs, which it did not in the fall." 
 
 Assuming an affinity to the autumnal epidemic of 1658, 
 he proceeds to state the circumstance of a reappearance in 
 the spring of 1659: " Upon this hush it lay all the winter, until 
 the Easter week, and then in two or three warm days broke 
 loose, having had no warm weather all before, but a rainy and 
 black week, the sun not appearing for five or six days together 
 just before the holiday; when on a sudden that warm weather 
 breaking forth, the citizens in their summer pomp, being thinner 
 clothed many of them than before (like bees on a glorious day) 
 swarmed abroad, and the pores etc." 
 
 Both Willis and Whitmore incline to the view that the 
 catarrhal fever of the spring was akin to the strange fever of the 
 autumn, the differentia of each being appropriate to the season. 
 Willis, however, keeps the two types more apart than Whitmore. 
 The latter speaks of both fevers as "this Protean- like dis- 
 
574 Protean character of epidemics, 1658-9. 
 
 temper," whose various shapes "render it such a hocus pocus to 
 the amazed and perplexed people, they being held after most 
 strange and diverse ways with it." It is " so prodigious in its 
 alterations that it seems to outvie even Proteus himself." Thus 
 the strangest part of these narratives is not the catarrhal 
 influenza, which has so often reappeared as to be familiar, but 
 the prevalence of anomalous fevers, in some respects like inter- 
 mittents without the clear interval between the fits, but in 
 respect of contagion, spots, pains and other symptoms, like 
 typhus — a volatile typhus of the country and of the towns. 
 Although this epidemiological phenomenon be a strange one, 
 there is no reason to question the correctness of Willis's obser- 
 vations, corroborated as they are by those of Whitmore. But 
 there are, indeed, many more experiences of the like kind in 
 the years to follow, which fall without the limits of the present 
 volume. One only of these later observers need be mentioned 
 here. The third of the famous trio with Sydenham and Willis 
 was Morton. He had a long experience in London of fever 
 and smallpox, which he made the subject of a book in i6g2-4.^. 
 His history goes as far back as 1658 — '' Jiistoria febris avvexv'? 
 ad anno 1658 ad annum 1691." Of the year 1658 he says the 
 fever was everywhere through England and refers to Willis ; 
 the only facts of his own being that Oliver Cromwell and 
 his (Morton's) father were carried off by it in September of 
 that year, that he had it himself (aged 20) and was three months 
 in recovering, and that the whole household (in Suffolk) were 
 infected. Cromwell's attack came upon him at Hampton Court 
 on August 21 ; but it was not the first sickness of the kind 
 that he had suffered. He was only fifty-nine, but worn out 
 with many cares, and at that time distressed by the death of 
 his favourite daughter. Lady Claypole, under his roof on 
 August 6, from some painful internal female trouble. The 
 Lord Protector's fever was called a "bastard tertian," which 
 might have been a name for the fever described by Willis. 
 He was removed on the 24th August to Whitehall, where 
 the air was thought to be more wholesome; and died be- 
 tween three and four in the afternoon of September 3, the 
 
 1 Pyrctologia. 2 vols. London, 1692-4. Appendix lo ist volume, p. 415. 
 
Epidemics of Fever preceding iJie Plague. 
 
 575 
 
 anniversary at once of "Dunbar field and W^orccster's laureat 
 wreath." 
 
 This prevalence of fevers, Protean in their varying types, 
 all over England in 1657-59 corresponds to the fever period 
 of 1623-24. In each case the fever was a minor plague, and in 
 each case it was followed by a revival of the plague proper, 
 which had been dormant all over the country for a dozen or 
 fifteen years. The principal difference is that the fever-period 
 of 1623-24 was followed by the plague in 1625, whereas the 
 fever-period of 1657-59 was followed by several years not free 
 from fever and then by the plague in 1665. It is clear that 
 the fevers of 1657-59 made a great impression all over England , 
 and were afterwards popularly spoken of as a warning of the 
 Great Plague itself. In the parish register of Aldenham, 
 Hertfordshire, there is inserted a poem on the Great Plague 
 of 1665, which has the following verses^ : 
 
 " Seven years since a little plague God sent, 
 He shook his rod to move us to repent. 
 Not long before that time a dearth of corn 
 Was sent to us to see if we would turn." 
 
 In Short's abstracts of parish registers, the years preceding 
 1665 stand out as sickly in country districts, according to the 
 following figures : 
 
 
 No. of 
 registers 
 examined 
 
 No. with 
 sickness 
 
 Baptisms 
 in same 
 
 Burials 
 in same 
 
 1657 
 
 98 
 
 36 
 
 991 
 
 1305 
 
 1658 
 
 96 
 
 Zl 
 
 704 
 
 II59 
 
 1659 
 
 lOI 
 
 29 
 
 553 
 
 825 
 
 1660 
 
 107 
 
 17 
 
 342 
 
 489 
 
 I66I 
 
 182 (?) 
 
 25 
 
 448 
 
 685 
 
 1662 
 
 105 
 
 20 
 
 376 
 
 504 
 
 1663 
 
 119 
 
 15 
 
 3^5 
 
 443 
 
 1664 
 
 118 
 
 12 
 
 328 
 
 364 
 
 1665 
 
 117 
 
 14 
 
 229 
 
 446 
 
 Periods as unhealthy as 1657-59 do not occur again until 
 1667-71, and 1679-84. 
 
 Willis says, of the autumnal epidemic of 1658 : " But in the 
 meantime few of the inhabitants of the greater towns and cities 
 
 1 Sent to Notes and Queries, ist ser. xil. 281, by Mr II. Ilucks Gibbs. 
 
5/6 Fevers from 1661 to the Great Plague. 
 
 fell sick." That is confirmed for London, in a letter of October 
 26, 1658: "A world of sickness in all countries round about 
 London. London is now held the wholesomest place;" but on 
 January 4, 1659 : '• There is much sickness in the town, especially 
 feavers, agues, and smallpox'." In Short's tables, the registers 
 of market towns bear the same traces of much sickness in 1657 
 and 1658 as those of country parishes. 
 
 A high mortality from fever and spotted fever continued in 
 London every year from 1658 to the year of the great plague. 
 The largest number of deaths from fever was in the year of the 
 plague itself, when the bills of mortality returned them as 5257 
 (without much certainty, however, owing to the confusion of the 
 plague). The next highest figures had been in 1661, when the 
 fever deaths were 3490. We get a glimpse of that epidemic from 
 Pepys ; on August 16, 1661, he writes: "But it is such a sickly 
 time both in the city and country everyw^here (of a sort of fever) 
 that never was heard of almost, unless it was in plague-time. 
 Among others, the famous Tom Fuller is dead of it, and Dr 
 Nicholls [Nicholas], dean of St Paul's, and my Lord General Monk 
 is very dangerously ill." On August 31 he enters in his diary : 
 " The season very sickly everywhere of strange and fatal fevers." 
 The same diarist, on October 20, 1663, has an entry that the 
 queen is ill of a spotted fever and that " she is as full of spots 
 as a leopard ;" on the 24th the queen was in a good way to 
 recovery. 
 
 It is at this period that Sydenham's famous observations 
 of the seasons and the public health in London begin. The 
 autumnal intermittents, he says, which had been prevalent some 
 years before, came back in 1661 with new strength, about the 
 beginning of July, being mostly tertians of a bad type : they 
 increased so much in August as to sweep away families almost 
 entirely, but declined with the winter cold coming on. He then 
 draws the distinction between them and ordinary tertians. In 
 the same years, 166 1-2-3-4, a continued fever is described at 
 great length, and then he comes to the " pestilential fever " and 
 the plague itself of 1665 and i666^ Taking from Sydenham 
 
 ' Hist. AfSS. Coiiitiiiss. V. 146 (Sutherland letters). 
 
 - Greenhill's edition (.Sydenham Society, 1844), pp. 37, 93, 95-9S. 
 
TJic Fevers preceding the Great Plague. 577 
 
 the single fact, for the present, that an unusual amount of 
 pestilential fever led up to the plague of 1665 (which he did 
 not stay in London to witness), we shall proceed in the next 
 chapter but one to that crowning epidemic of the present section 
 of our history. Something more remains to be said of the fevers 
 of 1 66 1 (specially described by Willis as a fever of the brain and 
 nervous stock, but called " the new disease " in its turn) ; but as 
 it is the first of Sydenham's " epidemic constitutions," and as 
 these are recorded continuously to 1685, when there was another 
 " new fever," it will be convenient to end the detailed history of 
 fevers for the present with the remarkable epidemics of 1657-59. 
 
 c. 37 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 SICKNESSES OF VOYAGES AND COLONIES. 
 
 (Sea Scurvy, Flux, Fever, and Yellow Fever.) 
 
 The sicknesses of the first voyages and foreign settlements 
 come into the history of national maladies, both as concerning 
 Britain on the sea and beyond sea, and as showing forth the 
 disease-producing conditions of those early times. In the latter 
 respect there is more to be learned from voyages and colonial 
 experience than the records of domestic life at home are likely 
 to inform us of otherwise than vaguely. The Englishman of the 
 time carried his habits with him to sea and to foreign parts, 
 where the circumstances were more trying and the consequences 
 more obvious. 
 
 This history divides itself at once into several branches. 
 There are the disease-incidents of ocean voyages, irregular at 
 first but becoming somewhat uniform after the East India 
 Company's start in 1601, chief among them being scurvy. 
 There are next the early discouragements from sickness, both 
 on the voyage and after landing, in the planting of colonies 
 in Virginia, New England and the West Indies, among which 
 the troubles of Jamaica were on a sufficiently great scale to 
 deserve minute study. Lastly, among the larger sections of 
 this chapter, we have to notice the beginnings and circumstances 
 of the terrible and long-enduring scourge of West Indian 
 colonies — yellow fever. While we are mainly, in this record 
 of the sicknesses of voyages and of new colonies, concerned 
 
Scurvy in tJic first long voya(:^cs. 579 
 
 with British enterprise, we shall have occasion to glance at the 
 similar experiences of other nations. 
 
 The first accounts of Sea Scurvy. 
 
 The malady that figures most in the narratives of the long 
 ocean voyages which began with the modern period is scurv)'. 
 In the very first of the great voyages, that of Vasco de Gama 
 to the Indies by the Cape of Good Hope in 1498, scurvy 
 appeared when the ships were on the West African coast, 
 fifty-five deaths occurring within a short period. Of all the 
 known subsequent occurrences of the kind, there are accounts 
 more or less full in the collections of Hakluyt and Purchas, 
 from which the facts in the sequel have been taken. 
 
 In the voyage of Ferdinand Magellan to the Pacific, scurvy 
 is mentioned first at a late stage; in the year 1520 the ships 
 had passed the straits called by his name and had been three 
 months and twelve days sailing westwards from the last land ; 
 their provisions had run short, and, " by reason of this famine 
 and unclean feeding, some of their gums grew so over their 
 teeth that they died miserably for hunger." Nineteen men, 
 as well as a giant from Patagonia and an Indian from Brazil, 
 were dead, and some twenty-five or thirty others were sick, " so 
 that there was in a manner none without some disease\" 
 
 There were no voyages of the same length by English ships 
 until many years after : and then we find the same troubles in 
 them from scurvy and other sickness. While the Portuguese 
 and Spaniards were navigating in tropical waters, the English 
 and French were sending most of their expeditions to the North. 
 The French attempted to found a colony on the shores of the 
 Gulf of St Lawrence, while the English sought to establish a 
 trade with Muscovy by way of the White Sea, and to open a 
 nearer route to the far East by way of the polar regions. The 
 voyages in all these enterprises were short, the ships for the 
 most part returning after an absence of four or five months, 
 and without any notable experience of sickness : it was only 
 
 1 Purchas, His nigrimes. 4 vols., folio. London, 1625, vol. 1. Book II. p. 36. 
 
 37—2 
 
580 Scurvy in Jacques Cartiers expedition, 1535. 
 
 when the French wintered in Canada that scurvy broke out. 
 Thus the Engh'sh voyages for the Muscovy Company have little 
 or no interest for our subject; while the three voyages of 
 Frobisher in search of the North-West passage in 1576, 1577 
 and 1578, and the three of Davis in 1585, 1586, and 1587 (in 
 which last he got to 73' N.) are as nearly as possible free from 
 records of sickness. 
 
 Jacques Cartier's second expedition to the St Lawrence in 
 1535 had a disastrous experience of scurvy. In his first voyage 
 in 1534, with two ships of sixty tons each and each carrying 
 sixty-one men, he appears to have had no sickness, having left 
 St Malo on April 20, traded with the Indians on the Gulf 
 of St Lawrence, and returned on September 5 of the same year. 
 The expedition of the following year, with three ships, wintered 
 on the coast, amidst heavy ice, and about mid-winter began 
 to suffer from scurvy\ The crews appear to have had no 
 lack of stores, both meat and drink, and the outbreak of scurvy, 
 described as an unknown disease, was so surprising that it was 
 traced to infection from the Indians, who are said to have 
 admitted the deaths of some fifty of their number from 
 "pestilence." 
 
 "The said unknown sickness began to spread itself amongst us after the 
 strangest sort that ever was either heard of or seen, insomuch as some did 
 lose all their strength, and could not stand on their feet ; then did their legs 
 swell, their sinewes shrink as black as any coal. Others also had their skins 
 spotted with spots of blood of a purple colour ; then did it ascend to their 
 ankles, knees, thighs, shoulders, arms, and neck ; their mouth became 
 stinking, their gums so rotten that all the flesh did fall off even to the roots 
 of the teeth, which did also almost all fall out. With such infection did this 
 sickness spread itself in our three ships that about the middle of February, 
 of a hundred and ten persons that we were, there were not ten whole ; so 
 that one could not help the other... There were already 8 dead and more than 
 50 sick, and, as we thought, past all recovery." The body of one dead, 
 aged 22, was opened to see what the disease was ; he was found to have his 
 heart white, but rotten, and more than a quart of red water about it-; his 
 liver was indifferent fair; but his lungs black and mortified... his milt toward 
 
 ^ Ilakluyt, T/ie Principal Ncwigations, &.C. 3 vols. London, 1599,111. 225-6. 
 
 ^ Pericarditis scorbutica — a condition which has been observed mostly in Russia in 
 recent times. The whiteness of the heart would have been due to the fibrinous layer 
 of lymph on its surface, from the pericarditis. 
 
Scurvy among tJic French in Canada. 581 
 
 the back was somewhat perished, rough as if it had been rubbed against a 
 stone. 
 
 "From the midst of November to the midst of March there died 25 of our 
 best and chiefest men, and all the rest sick except three or four ; then it 
 pleased God to cast his pitiful eye upon us, and sent us the knowledge of 
 remedie of our healths, and recovery.... The Captain, walking upon the ice, 
 asken of Domagaia'[an Indian] how he had done to heal himself; he 
 answered that he had taken the juice and sap of the leaves of a certain tree, 
 and therewith had healed himself ! for it was a singular remedy against that 
 disease." The Indian's advice was "to take the bark and leaves and boil 
 them together and to drink of the said decoction every other day, and to put 
 the dregs of it upon the legs that is sick."... 
 
 "It is thought to be the sassafras tree. After this medicine was found and 
 proved to be true there was such strife about it, who should be first to take 
 of it, that they were ready to kill one another, so that a tree as big as any 
 oak in France was spoiled and lopped bare, and occupied all in five or six 
 days, and it wrought so well that if all the physicians of Montpelier and 
 Lovaine had been there with all the drugs of Alexandria, they would not 
 have done so much in one year as that tree did in six days, for it did so 
 prevail that as many as used of it, by the grace of God recovered their 
 health." 
 
 In 1542, while Cartier was still trading on his own account 
 to the St Lawrence from Brittany, a more ambitious project, 
 under a Crown patent, issued from La Rochelle\ With De 
 la Roche, count of Roberval, as governor, a number of ad- 
 venturous nobles and gentry, with men, women and children 
 to the number of two hundred in all, sailed in three ships, 
 and established themselves in Lower Canada with all the 
 formalities of occupation. Two of the three ships were sent 
 home in September, the colonists proper being left to taste 
 the rigours of a Canadian winter: "In the end many of our 
 people fell sick of a certain disease in their legges, reynes and 
 stomacke, so that they seemed to bee deprived of all their 
 lymmes : and there died about fiftie." 
 
 The first English records of scurvy at sea are in connexion 
 with the early voyages to Guinea for gold-dust^ Mr John 
 Lok sailed on the second voyage to Guinea, on October 11, 
 1554, his ships being the ' Trinitie,' 140 tons, the ' Bartholomew,' 
 90 tons, and the 'John Evangelist,' 140 tons. After trading 
 some months on the African coast the ships sailed for home : 
 
 1 Hakluyt, !ii. 241. - llakluyl, il. I'ail II., yy. 2:, ,56, 4S. 
 
582 Sickness in the EnglisJi voyages to Guinea. 
 
 " There died of our men at this last voyage about twenty and 
 four, whereof many died at their return into the chme of the cold 
 regions, as between the islands of Azores and England." The 
 disease is not named ; but it is probable from what follows that 
 it was scurvy. 
 
 The next voyage to Guinea was Towrson's first, in October 
 1555, from Newport, Isle of Wight, in the 'Hart' and the 
 'Hind;' the death of only one man is mentioned; he died "in 
 his sleep " on March 29 ; by the 7th May, the provisions were 
 so reduced that the ships put in on the coast of Ireland to 
 purchase milk and two sheep from the wild kernes, paying 
 in gold-dust. 
 
 In Towrson's second voyage there is no word of sickness ; 
 but in his third voyage in 1577, it is a prominent topic of the 
 narrative. The vessels 'Minion,' 'Christopher' and 'Tiger' left 
 Plymouth on January 30, 1577. On the 8th of May, "all our 
 cloth in the ' Minion ' being sold, I called the company together 
 to know whether they would tarry the sale of the cloth taken in 
 the prize at this place or no : they answered that in respect of 
 the death of some of their men, and the present sickness of 20 
 more, they would not tarry, but repair to the other ships, of 
 whom they had heard nothing since April 27." Having at 
 length bartered for gold until the natives would barter no 
 longer, the three ships bore up for home. On July 24 the 
 master of the 'Tiger' came aboard the 'Minion' and reported 
 that " his men were so weak and the ship so leak that he was 
 not able to keep her above the water." A muster held of all 
 the three crews the same day showed that there were not above 
 30 sound men in them. On September 3, there being only six 
 men in the 'Tiger' who could work, the gold and stores were 
 taken out of her, and she was abandoned. On October 6, when 
 off the coast of Portugal, the ' Christopher ' reported herself so 
 weak that she was not able to keep the sea. The ' Minion ' 
 promised to attend her into Vigo ; but a fair wind springing up, 
 she signalled that she was off for home, whereupon the ' Christo- 
 pher' followed. On October 16, a great south-westerly storm 
 arose ; the men in the ' Minion ' were not able, from weakness, 
 to handle the sails, which were blown away : however, they made 
 
Hawkins in the slave- trade, 1562-67. 583 
 
 shift to reach the Isle of Wight on October 20, nothing more 
 being said of the ' Christopher.' 
 
 The English voyages to Guinea for gold-dust were shortly 
 followed by the three expeditions of John Hawkins in 1562, 
 1564 and 1567 to the West coast of Africa for negro slaves to 
 be sold to the Spaniards in Hispaniola and Cuba and on the 
 Spanish Main '. Only a brief summary remains of the first voyage, 
 in which nothing is said of sickness; in the second, the negroes, at 
 least, appear to have suffered on the somewhat long passage 
 across the tropical belt, especially from want of water ; and the 
 third was so calamitous in various ways that Hawkins himself 
 wrote of it : " If all the miseries and troublesome affairs of this 
 sorrowful voyage should be perfectly and thoroughly written, 
 there should need a painful man with his pen, and as great a 
 time as he had that wrote the lives and deaths of the martyrs." 
 Little or nothing is said of one class of martyrs in the business 
 — the negroes, of whom the ships carried four to five hundred. 
 English lives were lost in the kidnapping raids, from poisoned 
 arrows, it was thought, the wounded dying " in strange sort 
 with their mouths shut some ten days before they died, and 
 after their wounds were whole." It was on the return from the 
 Gulf of Mexico, more than a year out from England, that the 
 sickness on board was worst. They cleared the Bahamas 
 channel on November 16, 1568, after which, "growing near to 
 the cold country, our men being oppressed with famine, died 
 continually, and they that were left grew into such weakness 
 that we were scarcely able to manage our ship " (the ' Jesus ' of 
 Lubeck, 700 tons). They put in at Ponte Vedra, near Vigo, on 
 December 31, but the fresh provisions that they got turned to 
 their hurt : " our men with excess of fresh meat grew into 
 miserable diseases and died a great part of them." Twelve 
 fresh hands shipped at Vigo enabled the vessels to reach the 
 nearest English haven at Mount's Bay in Cornwall. 
 
 Meanwhile we obtain some glimpses of seafaring among the 
 Portuguese, who had now in the middle of the i6th century a 
 regular trade to the Indies, established by Vasco de Gama's 
 route round the Cape of Good Hope. Perhaps the most famous 
 
 ^ Ilakluyl, Ul. 501. 
 
584 Sickness ill Portuguese East Indiamen. 
 
 of these records is that of the voyage of St Francis Xavier from 
 Lisbon to Goa in the spring of 1540. The expedition with 
 which he took passage carried, it is said, a regiment of a 
 thousand men to reinforce the garrison of Goa ; during the 
 voyage the Jesuit apostle " rendered to the diseased services 
 too revolting to be described, and lived among the dying and 
 the profligate, the unwearied minister of consolation and of 
 peace*." After five months the ships arrived at Mozambique, 
 by which time Xavier and many more were suffering from fever. 
 Goa was not reached until thirteen months out from the Tagus. 
 A more familiar narrative of the same voyage of the Portuguese 
 ships a generation later is given by an English youth, Thomas 
 Stevens, in a letter written home to his father, a citizen of 
 London, shortly after arriving at Goa. Both in its generalities 
 and in its particulars this excellent letter will serve to measure 
 the prevalence of scurvy, flux, and fever in the earlier period of 
 the East Indian trade by the Cape^ 
 
 The five ships left Lisbon on April 5, 1579, the solemnity being marked 
 by the firing of ordnance and the braying of trumpets. In the ships, 
 " besides shipmen and soldiers, there were a great number of children, which 
 in the seas bear out better than men ; and no marvel, when that many 
 women also pass very well." After a passage along the Guinea coast, made 
 tedious by calms and head winds, they rounded the Cape of Good Hope on 
 July 29. From that point in the voyage the Portugal ships were wont to 
 follow one or other of two routes according to the lateness of the season — 
 either the route by the Mozambique Channel, in which case they were able 
 to get fruits and fresh provisions, or the route along more southern parallels 
 for a time, and passing to the east of Madagascar^. In the latter case, "by 
 reason of the long navigation and want of food and water, they fall into 
 sundry diseases, their gums wax great and swell, and they are fain to cut 
 
 ^ Sir James Stephen's Essays hi Ecclesiastical Biography, pop. ed. p. 125. 
 
 - Hakluyt, n. pt. 2, p. 99. 
 
 ^ The famous figure in Paradise Lost (iv. 159) is taken from the route to India 
 passing within Madagascar — a poetic colouring of dreary and painful realities : — 
 
 As when to them who sail 
 Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past 
 Mozambik, off at sea north-east winds blow 
 Sabean odours from the spicy shore 
 Of Araby the blest ; with such delay 
 Well pleas'd they slack their course, and many a league 
 Cheer'd with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles : 
 
Drakes voyage round the zvorld, 1577-80. 585 
 
 them away, their legs swell, and all the body becomcth sore and so be- 
 numbed that they cannot stir hand nor foot, and so they die for weakness. 
 Others fall into fluxes and agues, and so die thereby. 
 
 "And this way it was our chance to make; and though we had more 
 than one hundred and fifty sick, there died not past seven-and-twenty, which 
 loss they esteemed not much in respect of other times." 
 
 The ships went greatly out of their course, having sighted the island of 
 Sjcotra at the entrance to the Gulf of Aden, and did not arrive at Goa until 
 October 24, 202 days from Lisbon without calling anywhere. 
 
 The first of the long English voyages beyond the Line was 
 Sir Francis Drake's famous circumnavigation from November 
 I5» 1577. to September 26, i58o\ Drake must have lost many 
 of his men in those three years, but there is nothing in the 
 narrative to show that they perished of disease. The expedi- 
 tion was by way of the Straits of Magellan, and was mainly 
 given up to plundering the Spaniards on the coasts of Chili and 
 Peru. Drake set out for home loaded with treasure by way of 
 the Philippines and the Cape of Good Hope. It is not until the 
 narrative brings us to a small island between Ternate and 
 Celebes that we hear of sickness ; they graved the ship there 
 and remained twenty-six days, during which the " sickly, weak 
 and decayed " recovered their strength, a large species of crayfish 
 found on the island being " very good and restoring meat, 
 whereof we had experience." But even Drake, with all his 
 systematic care and resource, was destined in after years to 
 have a share of the common sickly experience at sea, and to 
 find disease a more potent enemy than the Spaniard. 
 
 Remarkable Epidemic in Drake's Fleet 1585-6. 
 
 Drake's next great expedition after his circumnavigation 
 was in 1585, with six Queen's ships and some nineteen others, 
 carrying 2,300 men. A large number of private adventurers 
 had a money interest in the enterprise, which had for its object 
 to plunder Spanish towns in the West Indies and the Spanish 
 Main and to capture the treasure at the isthmus of Panama on 
 
 ^ The World Encompassed &.C., Ilakluyt Society, ed. Vaux, p. 149, and llakluyt, 
 HI. 740. 
 
586 Drake at the Cape de Verde islands, 1585. 
 
 its way to Spain. The fleet experienced one of the most 
 remarkable epidemics in the whole history of sickness'. 
 
 Having left Plymouth on September 14, 1585, they arrived at the 
 island of St Jago, in the Cape de Verde group, on November 16. More 
 than a thousand men were landed, and were marched up the steep and 
 broken ground to a hill overlooking the capital, which stood in a narrow 
 valley, with high cliffs on the east and west and the Atlantic open before it 
 at some distance on the south. The place was surrounded by a wall, and 
 defended by fifty pieces of brass ordnance ; but no resistance was offered, 
 and the English marched in to find the inhabitants fled farther inland. On 
 the 17th November, the town was quartered out for the lodging of the whole 
 army, which remained there for ten days or a fortnight (there are inconsis- 
 tent dates), taking such spoils as the place yielded (wine, oil, meal and 
 "trash" of the Portuguese trade to the Indies). After a week, when no one 
 had come to ransom the town, Drake set out with 600 men to the village or 
 town of St Domingo, twelve miles inland, with the hope of finding the 
 governor and the bishop ; but, finding no one, he marched his men back 
 again the same evening. On November 26 the whole force was re-embarked, 
 all the houses in the capital as well as in the country round were set fire to, 
 the port of Playa, a few miles to the westward, was also burned, and on the 
 same night the ships weighed anchor from the latter, and stood away to the 
 south-west. They had filled their water-casks from a pool, near the sea- 
 shore, formed by the small stream which runs through the capital and 
 descends the southern declivity. Nothing is said of sickness during the 
 occupation of St Jago ; there seems to have been some lax discipline, 
 (owing to the mixed character of the expedition), which Drake quickly 
 remedied. 
 
 The ships were only eighteen days in crossing the Atlantic 
 to Dominica, a distance of some forty meridians. In the midst 
 of that quick sailing along the edge of the tropical belt of 
 ocean, with the steady north-east trade wind behind them, the 
 season the beginning of December and the climate the most 
 delightful and most refreshing on the globe, the ships were 
 visited suddenly with the fury of a deadly pestilential fever, of 
 which the following is the account by a captain of the land- 
 forces on board : 
 
 " We were not many days at sea but there began among our people such 
 mortality as in a few days there were dead two or three hundred men. And 
 
 1 A summark and true discourse of Sir Francis Drake's West Indian voyage begun 
 in the year 1585. Published by M. Thomas Gates. Shortened in Hakluyt, in. 542. 
 The earlier pari of the narrative is by Captain Bigges, and, after his death in the West 
 Indies, by his lieutenant, Crofles. 
 
Au epidemic of Fever in mid-oceau. 587 
 
 until some seven or eight days after our coming from St Jago there had not 
 died any one man of sickness in all the fleet. The sickness showed not his 
 infection wherewith so inany were stroken until we were departed thence ; 
 and then seized our people with extreme hot burning and continual agues 
 whereof very few escaped with life, and yet those for the most part not 
 without great alteration and decay of their wits and strength for a long time 
 after. In some that died were plainly showed the small spots which are 
 often found upon those that be infected with the plague." 
 
 From Dominica the ships sailed to St Christopher, on which 
 island Drake disembarked his whole force, and cleaned and 
 aired his ships, according to an excellent practice which he had 
 followed also in his great circumnavigation. Some days of 
 Christmas having been thus spent ashore, " to refresh our sick 
 people," the voyage was resumed to Hispaniola. Deaths con- 
 tinued to occur, from the same disease as at first, both among 
 officers and men, and so continued for many weeks. However, 
 they were able to land some 1000 or 1200 men on Hispaniola, 
 and to carry the city of San Domingo by assault. The fleet 
 then sailed southwards along the coast of the mainland to 
 Cartagena, which was captured in turn, and in like manner held 
 to ransom. 
 
 It is at this part of the narrative that we next hear of the 
 infection in the fleet : 
 
 "We stayed here six weeks [from middle of January to end of P^bruary, 
 1586], and the sickness with mortality, before spoken of, still continued 
 among us, though not with the same fury as at the first. And such as were 
 touched with the said sickness, escaping death, very few or almost none 
 could recover their strength ; yea, many of them were much decayed in their 
 memory, insomuch that it was grown an ordinary judgment, when one was 
 heard to speak foolishly, to say he had been sick of the calentnra^ which 
 is the Spanish name of that burning ague ; for, as I told you before, it is 
 a very burning and pestilent ague." 
 
 Then follows the Spanish theory of the calenUira, which may 
 or may not be rightly applied to the deadly epidemic that broke 
 out suddenly in the English ships in mid ocean : 
 
 "The original cause thereof is imputed to the evening or first night air, 
 which they term la scfcna, wherein they say, and hold very firm opinion, 
 that whoso is then abroad in the open air shall certainly be infected to the 
 death, not being of the Indian or naliual race of those country people. By 
 
588 Drake s plans t Invar ted by siekness. 
 
 holding their watch our men were thus subjected to the infectious air, which 
 at St Jago was most dangerous and deadly of all other places. With the 
 inconvenience of continual mortality, we were forced to give over our 
 intended enterprize, etc." 
 
 The land-captains having been consulted by Drake, on 
 February 27, 1586, advised that the expedition should go home 
 from Cartagena, instead of attempting to capture the treasure at 
 Panama. In their memorandum they wrote : " And being fur- 
 ther advised of the slenderness of our strength, whereunto we be 
 now reduced, as well in respect of the small number of able 
 bodies, as also not a little in regard of the slack disposition of 
 the greater part of those which remain, very many of the better 
 minds and men being either consumed by death, or weakened 
 by sickness and hurts, etc." The voyage to England was ac- 
 cordingly begun ; St Augustine in Florida was captured by the 
 way, and the struggling colony in Virginia, the first sent out by 
 Raleigh, was taken up and brought back, and Portsmouth 
 reached on July 28. "We lost some 750 men in the voyage, 
 above three parts of them only by sickness." The names are 
 given of eight captains, four lieutenants, and seven masters, 
 who had died ; and there were some other officers dead unnamed. 
 When the ransoms of San Domingo and Cartagena came to be 
 divided, the venture must have been found as unprofitable to 
 the shareholders as it had been disastrous to officers and men. 
 
 The Spanish name calentiira, by which the fever in the fleet is 
 described, was probably used generically for various kinds of 
 fever in the tropics. But of this fever in particular, we have 
 some details not without diagnostic value. It was doubtless 
 contracted at St Jago in the Cape de Verde islands ; it broke 
 out. suddenly in mid ocean after some seven or eight days 
 sailing before the wind, in a delightful climate, which points to 
 the regular incubation of an infective virus, received by hundreds 
 of men when they were last ashore ; the mortality was enormous; 
 the symptoms were those of a burning fever ; and in some cases 
 there were small spots or petechiae like those often seen in the 
 plague. It was clearly a febrile form of pestilential infection, 
 and, as {q:\\! recovered, it must be considered to have had a 
 death-rate such as typhus has rarely had, and such as yellow 
 
Nature of the St J ago infection, 1585-86. 589 
 
 fever has commonly had. Nothing is said of the black vomit, 
 the haemorrhages, and the saffron colour of skin and e}'es, which 
 are distinctive of yellow fever'. On the other hand there is a 
 remarkable after-effect mentioned in both the passages quoted, 
 the loss of memory, impairment of wits, and appearance of 
 foolishness, which made " the calenture " a bye-word in the fleet. 
 I shall not venture to say what the infection was ; but it seems 
 tolerably certain that it was contracted by the English during 
 their occupation of the capital town of St J ago. More recent 
 visitors to the Cape de Verde islands have remarked upon their 
 towns and villages as fever-traps, and . have pointed to the 
 source of the fever ; it is not malaria, or the mere climatic 
 influence, but a pestilential emanation from spots of soil long 
 inhabited by mankind, both black and white, and so situated in 
 cups of the hills as to retain and multiply the filth-ferment in 
 them. According to all analogy, the emanations from such a 
 soil would be felt most by strangers not inured to them, and 
 most of all by men of another stock and from other latitudes'^ 
 
 1 Mr Froude {History, XII. 150) must be pronounced somewhat happy in his bold 
 guess of " yellow fever." At the same time the enthymeme by which he had reached 
 his conclusion is altogether wrong: first, in assuming that the infection " broke out" 
 after the capture of Cartagena, ignoring the fact of its disastrous prevalence in mid- 
 ocean two or three months before, shortly after leaving the Cape de Verde islands; 
 and secondly in assuming that the yellow fever for which Cartagena and other 
 harbours of the Spanish Main became notorious in later times had existed as an 
 infection there in the i6th century. 
 
 - Sir Richard Hawkins, who commanded the galliot ' Duck ' in Drake's expedition 
 of 1585, thus refers to the Cape de Verde islands, on the occasion of touching there in 
 his own expedition to the Pacific in 1593 (Purchas, iv. 1368): 
 
 These islands are " one of the most unhealthiest climates in the world. In two 
 times that I have been in them, either cost us the one half of our people, with fevers 
 and fluxes of sundry kinds, some shaking, some burning, some partaking of both ; 
 some possesst with frensie, others with slouth ; and in one of them it cost me six 
 months' sickness, with no small hazard of life." He then gives a reason for the great 
 risk to health : the north-east breeze about four in the afternoon seldom faileth, 
 "coming cold and fresh, and finding the pores of the body open and for the most 
 part naked, penetrateth the very bones, and so causeth sudden distemperature, and 
 sundry manners of sickness, as the subjects are divers whereupon they work. De- 
 parting out of the calmes of the Islands, and coming into the fresh breeze, it causeth 
 the like ; and I have seen within two days after that we have partaked of the fresh 
 air, of two thousand men above an hundred and fifty have been crazed in their 
 health." This seems to refer to the epidemic in Drake's fleet, as given in the text; 
 but it is clearly an imperfecl account of the facts, and in theory altogether improbable. 
 
590 TJie first voyages to Virginia, 1584-87. 
 
 Sicknesses of Voyages, continued : Management 
 of Scurvy. 
 
 The expedition to Virginia which returned in 1586 with 
 Drake's ships homeward bound from the Spanish Main, was the 
 first sent out by Raleigh with the intention of settling, an earlier 
 voyage in 1584 having been made to explore the country. Jt is 
 in connexion with Raleigh's second colony (and fourth expe- 
 dition) in 1587 that we hear of disastrous sickness\ Having 
 left 1 1 8 people to inhabit the country, the two larger ships 
 sailed for home on August 27 of the same year. On board the 
 '• fly-boat," the provisions fell short, the water turned stinking, 
 officers and men died, and the vessel was navigated with 
 difficulty to the west coast of Ireland. When they reached 
 Portsmouth, they found the admiral arrived there three weeks 
 before them, but with an equally disastrous experience : " Ferdi- 
 nando the master, with all his company were not only come 
 home without any purchase, but also in such weakness by 
 sickness of their chiefest men that they were scarce able to 
 bring their ship into harbour, but were forced to let fall anchor 
 without." 
 
 as a trade wind within the tropic cannot lie credited with such effects, even if the 
 forms of sickness were conceivably due at all to chill. 
 
 Darwin {Naturalises Voyage in the Beagle, p. 366) says : " The island of St Jago, 
 at the Cape de Verde, offers another strongly-marked instance of a country, which 
 anyone would have expected to find most healthy, being very much the contrary. I 
 have described the bare and open plains as supporting, during a few weeks after the 
 rainy season, a thin vegetation, which directly withers away and dries up ; at this 
 period the air appears to become quite poisonous ; both natives and foreigners often 
 being affected with violent fevers. On the other hand, the Galapagos Archipelago, 
 in the Pacific, with a similar soil, and periodically subject to the same process of 
 vegetation, is perfectly healthy." But the Galapagos have been uninhabited, except 
 in recent times by two or three hundred people banished from Ecuador. On the 
 other hand the Cape de Verde islands are believed to have been at one time well 
 wooded and not unfertile ; and the Portuguese settlements in them, to say nothing of 
 the native negro villages, had a fair population. It is not easy to understand the 
 pernicious character of their fevers without assuming that spots of soil had become 
 pestilential by human occupancy; but it is at the same time clear that a degree of 
 befouling of the soil which would be innocuous in ordinary, would there engender 
 deadly miasmata owing to the remarkable alternations of drought and wetness under 
 a tropical sun. 
 
 1 Ilakluyt, III. 286. 
 
Sickness ill Drakes last voyage, 1595-96. 591 
 
 The following year, 1588, was made memorable in the English 
 annals of the sea by the defeat of the Spanish Armada. There 
 was much sickness in both fleets. As regards the English ships, 
 a writer who has had special access to original documents says^ : 
 
 " We little think, when we peruse the melancholy tale of disease, starva- 
 tion and shame, so needlessly undergone by the heroic champions of 
 England's liberty against the invading might of Spain, from what obscure 
 and insignificant causes the difficulties and hardships of the Island seamen 
 may have chiefly arisen " — namely the peculation of officials, the mouldering 
 rations, empty magazines, and the like. In the ships of the Spanish fleet 
 the infection was like that of the plague itself; the main body of the expedition, 
 fifty sail, reached Corunna, Santander and St Sebastian with such infection 
 among the ten thousand men on board, that the inhabitants shut their houses 
 against them. 
 
 Two of the heroes of that fight, Drake and Hawkins, met 
 their death by sickness off the Spanish Main in 1595-6. The 
 expedition, consisting of 2500 men in six Queen's ships and 
 twenty-one others, left Plymouth on August 28, 1595^ Only 
 the deaths of officers are mentioned in the narrative, but of 
 these there seem to have been a good many, when the ships 
 were in the Caribbean Sea. Hawkins died off Porto Rico 
 on November 12. On December 7, Mr Yorke, captain of the 
 'Hope,' died of sickness, on January 15, captain Plat died of 
 sickness, and then Sir Francis Drake began to keep his cabin 
 and to complain of a scouring or flux: he died on January 28, 
 off Porto Bello. On the 27th died captain Jonas of the ' Delight,' 
 captain Egerton, and James Wood, chief surgeon of the fleet, 
 out of the 'Garland.' On the 28th died Abraham Kendall out 
 of the ' Saker.' Several of the ships were sunk so that their 
 men might go to the Queen's ships, which were short of hands. 
 A muster on February 6 showed in the whole fleet " two thousand 
 sick and whole," or five hundred fewer than had sailed. There 
 was some loss of life in encounters with the enemy, but much 
 more from disease. 
 
 Of the filibustering cruises or expeditions to the East by 
 the South American route, there remain to be mentioned two 
 
 1 Mr Hubert Hall, of the Record Office, in Society in the Elizal>cthan Ai^c. 
 London, 1886, p. 120. 
 - Hakluyt, in. 583. 
 
592 Sickness in CavendisJis voyages, 1586-92. 
 
 by Thomas Cavendish, and one at some length by Richard 
 Hawkins, before we come to the estabh'shment of regular Eng- 
 lish trade to the East Indies by the Portuguese route round the 
 Cape of Good Hope. Cavendish's first voyage' by the Straits of 
 Magellan was from Plymouth, 25 July, 1586, with three ships 
 (240 tons in all) carrying 125 men. 
 
 Touching on the west coast of Africa, they went ashore and took 
 lemons from the trees. Off the coast of Brazil in November and December 
 two men died " of the disease called scorbuto, which is an infection of the 
 blood and the liver." Arrived at the Straits of Magellan they found twenty- 
 three Spaniards living on shell-fish, "which were all that remained of 
 four hundred which were left there [to found a colony] in these Straits of 
 Magellan, three years before, all the rest being dead with famine." They 
 were only too glad to hasten from this place. Port Famine, 'for the noysome 
 stench and vile savour wherewith it was infected through the contagon 
 of the Spaniards' pined and dead carkeises." In one of Cavendish's own 
 ships, on February 21, 1588, when among the East Indian islands, Captain 
 Havers died of "a most severe and pestilent ague, which held him furiously 
 some seven or eight days. Moreover presently after his death, myself 
 [Pretty, the narrator] with divers others in the ship fell marvellously sick, 
 and so continued in very great pain for the space of three weeks or a month, 
 by reason of the extreme heat and intemperature of the climate." 
 
 One might guess that these were cases of ship-fever (or 
 calenture) ; but in Cavendish's last voyage we meet with a 
 strange sickness which will perhaps baffle all nosological con- 
 jecture. This voyage, like the first, was intended for the East 
 Indies by way of the Straits of Magellan ^ The three tall ships 
 and two barks, having sailed from Plymouth on August 26, 
 1 591, never got through the Straits ; they were still within their 
 recesses in April, 1592, many men having "died with cursed 
 famine and miserable cold," and sick men having been put 
 ashore into the woods in the snow. The narrative (by John 
 Lane), then follows the fortunes of one of the ships, the ' Desire.' 
 Landing at Port Desire, in Patagonia, they found scurvy-grass 
 growing, which they ate with oil : " This herb did so purge the 
 blood that it took away all kind of swellings, of which many 
 [had] died, and restored us to perfect health of body, so that 
 
 ' Ilakliiyt, HI. 804, 820; and other details in the ist ed. (1589) pp. 809, 810. 
 - llakluyl, III. 842-52. 
 
Strange epidemic in the 'Desire' 1593. 593 
 
 we were in as good case as when we came first out of England." 
 There also they took on board 14,000 penguins, which they had 
 dried on the rocks, mostly without salt ; and sailed northwards 
 on December 22. With only 27 men surviving out of y6, they 
 left the coast of I^razil at Cape Frio (near Rio de Janeiro), and 
 then began their more singular experience of disease. 
 
 "After we came near unto the sun, our dried penguins began to corrupt, 
 and there bred in them a most loathsome and ugly worm of an inch long. 
 This worm did mightily increase, and devour our victuals;" it devoured 
 everything except iron, — clothes, boots, shirts, even the ship's timbers ! "In 
 this woeful case, after we had passed the equinoctial toward the North, our 
 men began to fall sick of such a monstrous disease as I think the like was 
 never heard of: for in their ankles it began to swell, from thence in two 
 days it would be in their breasts, so that they could not draw their breath, 
 and then fell into their cods, and their cods and yardes did swell most 
 grievously and most dreadfully to behold, so that they could neither stand, 
 lie, nor goe. Whereupon our men grew mad with grief. Our captain [John 
 Davis] with extreme anguish of his soul was in such woeful case that he 
 desired only a speedy end, and though he were scarce able to speak for 
 
 sorrow, yet he persuaded them to patience For all this, divers grew 
 
 raging mad, and some died in most loathsome and furious pain. It v/ere 
 incredible to write our misery as it was ; there was no man in perfect health 
 but the captain, and one boy.... To be short, all our men died except 
 sixteen [i.e., eleven died of the survivors after Cape Frio] of which there 
 were but five able to move." Those five worked the ship into Berehaven 
 (Bantry Bay) on June 11, 1593, and there ran her ashore. 
 
 The remarkable epidemic on board the ' Desire,' among men 
 living upon dried penguin infested with worms, was probabh- 
 not scurvy, or at least not all scurvy : the dropsy and dyspncea 
 suggest one of the two forms of beri-beri, of a peculiarly severe 
 type. The co-existence of worms in the dried food may lead 
 one to think of a parasitic malady such as that caused b}' 
 Anchylostoma duodenale, which has also an anasarcous or ocdc- 
 matous character. But the diagnosis of beri-beri appears to be 
 far more likely. That epidemic, however we interpret it, must 
 rank among the curiosities of the history. But, in the next 
 that we come to, the sickness on board the ' Daintic,' Richartl 
 Hawkins master, on a voyage in 1593 through the Straits of 
 Magellan, the disease is t)^pical scurvy ; and the observations 
 on sea-scurvy b}- Hawkins himself are among the best that we 
 
 C. 3« 
 
594 Scurvy in Richard Haivkinss voyage, 1593. 
 
 have for the period, and, indeed, until long after the Elizabethan 
 period \ 
 
 The ' Daintie,' a nearly new ship of 300 to 400 tons, weighed 
 anchor from Blackwall on April 8, 1593. She was deeply laden 
 with merchandise for trade and accompanied by a victualler, of 
 100 tons, the ' Hawk.' It was not until June 12, that they got 
 away from Plymouth. They put in at the Cape dc Verde 
 islands, about whose climate and health Hawkins makes some 
 observations already quoted. Sailing thence they had come 
 within three or four degrees of the Line, when scurvy broke 
 out : 
 
 " My company within a few days began to fall sick of a disease which 
 seamen are wont to call the scurvie ; and seemeth to be a kind of dropsie, 
 and raigneth most in this climate of any that I have heard or read of in the 
 world, though [it is found] in all seas. It possesseth all those of which it 
 takes hold with a loathsome sloathfulnesse, that even to eate they would be 
 content to change luitJi sleepe a?id rest, which is the most pernicious enemie 
 in this sickness that is known. It bringeth with it a great desire to drink, 
 and causeth a general swelling of all parts of the body, especially of the legs, 
 and gums ; and many times the teeth fall out of the jaws without pain. The 
 signs to know this disease in the beginning are divers, — by the swelling of 
 the gums, by denting of the flesh of the legs with a man's finger, the pit 
 remaining without filling up in a good space ; others show it with their 
 laziness ; others complain of the crick of the back, etc., all which are for the 
 most part certain tokens of the infection. The cause is thought to be the 
 stomack's feebleness by change of air in intemperate chmates, of diet in salt 
 meats, boiled also in salt water, and corrupted sometimes ; the want of 
 exercise, also, either in persons or elements, as in calms." 
 
 Hawkins then recalls the experience of the Queen's fleet 
 in 1590, at the Azores, the ships being in calm weather for six 
 months : " in which voyage, towards the end thereof, many of 
 every ship (saving the ' Nonpereli ' which was under my charge 
 and had only one man sick in all the voyage) fell sick of this 
 disease and began to die apace." 
 
 Hawkins wrote out the account of his 1593 voyage some time 
 after, and did not print it until 1622 ; but it may be supposed 
 that the views about scurvy therein expressed were the same 
 
 ^ PiirchaJi, IV. Bk. 7, Chap. 5, (reprinted from Hawkins's own narrative of the 
 voyage, pulilished a few months after the author's death in 1622). 
 
Sir Richard Hazvkins on Scur^'y. 595 
 
 that he held and acted upon in his earlier life'. Thus his 
 remarks upon the prevention and cure of scurvy, about to be 
 given, may be taken to stand for the practical wisdom or 
 sagacity of the Elizabethan period. The ship should be kept 
 clean, vinegar should be sprinkled and tar burned. In hot 
 latitudes salt meats should be shunned, and especially salt fish. 
 Salt water should not be used to dress the meat, nor to wash 
 shirts in ; nor should the men sleep in their wet clothes. The 
 crews should be set to various exercises, and encouraged to 
 various pastimes. At this point he seems to feel that he is a 
 layman giving medical advice, and interpolates : 
 
 "And I wish that some learned men would write of it, for it is the plague 
 of the sea and the spoil of manners. Doubtless it would be a work worthy 
 of a worthy man, and most beneficial for our country, for in twenty years 
 (since I have used the sea) I dare take upon me to give account of ten 
 thousand men consumed with this disease." 
 
 The learned man was forthcoming in due course, in the 
 person of John Woodall, surgeon-general to the East India 
 Company ; and we shall see what he made of it. Meanwhile, 
 in default of professional guidance, we may hear Hawkins 
 himself: 
 
 " That which I have seen most fruitful for this sickness is sour oranges 
 and lemons, and a water called Dr Stevens his water, of which I carried but 
 little, and it took end quickly, but gave health to those that used it. The 
 oyle of vitry [vitriol] is beneficial — two drops in a draught of water with a 
 little sugar. But the principal of all is the air of the land ; for the sea is 
 natural for fishes, and the land for men. And the oftener a man can have 
 his people to land, not hindering his voyage, the better it is and the 
 profitablest course he can take to refresh them." 
 
 Hawkins, as well as his contemporaries, as we shall sec, 
 knew what lime-juice could do for scurvy, and knew also the 
 liinit of its powers ; it was useful, as he had himself found ; l)ut 
 
 1 l\Tr J. K. Lnughton {Diet, of National Biography. Art. "Hawkins, Sir 
 Ricliard ") points out that Hawkins's narrative of the ' Daintie's ' voyage had not 
 ahvays been authenticated by reference to notes or documents. It seems probal:)le 
 also, from his remarks on the epidemic in Drake's fleet after leaving the Cape de 
 Verde islands in 1585, that he trusted his memory too much. But that objection of 
 writing from memory has no force as against his general oliservations and reflections 
 on scurvy. 
 
 38—2 
 
596 Scurvy in Richard Hawkins's voyage, 1593. 
 
 much else was needed to ward ofif scurvy. After experience 
 showed clearly enough that some commanders with the same 
 stores as others could carry their crews through a long voyage 
 without scurvy; Hawkins himself, in the 'Nonpareil' in 1590, 
 had only one man sick of it, while it was general in the fleet. 
 In the voyage of 1593, for all his knowledge and resource, he 
 appears to have found circumstances too hard for him. His 
 crew showed their bad habits while the ship lay at Plymouth ; 
 as in Lancaster's experience two years before, the evil habits 
 of sailors told upon their constitutions, so that they became an 
 easy prey to monotonous living at sea. Scurvy broke out when 
 they were within three or four degrees of the Line : " The sick- 
 ness was fervent, every day there died more or less." The 
 ship's course was accordingly turned westward, although they 
 were too far south to benefit by the north-east trade wind ; 
 and in the end of October they came to the coast of Brazil at 
 Santos, four months and a half out from Plymouth. At Santos 
 they obtained 200 or 300 oranges and lemons, and a few hens ; 
 there were so many men sick that there were not above three or 
 four oranges or lemons to a share : " Coming aboard of our 
 ships there was great joy amongst my company, and many with 
 the sight of the oranges and lemons seemed to recover heart." 
 It is the great and unknown virtue of that fruit, he says, to be a 
 certain remedy for this infirmity. The rest of the voyage 
 possesses no special interest for us. The scurvy had " wasted 
 more than half of my people;" so that Hawkins took the crew 
 and provisions out of the * Hawk,' and burned her. He left the 
 Brazilian coast on December 18, passed the Straits of Magellan, 
 and after some filibustering on the Chilian and Peruvian coasts, 
 was captured by a Spanish ship, and sent home to Spain to be 
 ransomed. 
 
 Hawkins, it will have been remarked, was no bigoted " lime- 
 juicer ;" although he knew the virtues of anti-scorbutic acids, he 
 had a correct apprehension of the need of cleanliness, dry 
 clothing, exercise, amusements and discipline, and if he had 
 understood the need of wind-sails for the ventilation of 'tween- 
 dccks, he would have had as scientific a grasp of the whole 
 question as Blane had two centuries after. But in the end of 
 
Scurvy in an English coaster, 1600. 597 
 
 the Tudor period, and in the Stuart period, with abounding 
 enterprise and national expansion, there was httle sense of 
 the personal need of breathing space, whether in ships or in 
 houses. The number of souls on board, in proportion to a ship's 
 tonnage, was twice or thrice as great as the Board of Trade now 
 allows. It was not only in long voyages, or in the monotony 
 of tropical calms, that scurvy was apt to invade a crew. The 
 following experience, on our own shores, is credible enough: 
 In 161 1 Purchas was shown a letter from Newfoundland, giving 
 an account of a winter spent there, the writer taking credit to 
 himself for the small amount of scurvy among the men under 
 him : in a company of 39 persons, only four were wanting in 
 the spring : but, by way of contrast, he recalls what happened 
 at home in the year 1600' : 
 
 " One Richard Fletcher, that is master pilot here, and a director of the 
 fishing, reported unto me that he was one of the company, consisting of forty 
 persons, that went in a drumbler of Ipswich called the ' Amitie,' to the north 
 of Ireland about eleven years ago from London in the late Queen's service 
 under the charge of one Captain Fleming, and continued there the space of 
 two years. In which time two and thirty died of the scurvie, and that only 
 eight of them returned home, whereof the said Richard Fletcher was one.... 
 notwithstanding that there were to be had fresh victuals and many other 
 helps, which their country [Newfoundland] as yet hath not, but in good time 
 may have." 
 
 We have not yet come to any deliverance of the faculty on 
 the subject of scurvy ; Hawkins appears to be giving merely 
 his own experience and reflections. Beside these w-e may here 
 place the contemporary observations and practice of the French 
 laymen, which are expressly at variance on some points with 
 medical teaching. Some time previous to 1609, Marc Lescarbot 
 wrote an account of ' the voyage of M. de Monts into New 
 France;' the expedition sailed from Havre in March, 1604. 
 Their first winter in Canada is thus related^: 
 
 In the meanwhile the cold and snows came upon them.. ..Many idle, 
 sluggish companions drank snow-water, not willing to take the pains to 
 cross the river. " Briefly, the unknown sicknesses like to those described 
 unto us by James Ouartier in his relation, assailed us. For remedies there 
 was none to be found. In the meanwhile the poor sick creatures did 
 
 ' Purchas, pari iv. p. 1S77. - Ibid. p. 1623. 
 
598 Lcscarbot on the dietetics of Scurvy. 
 
 languish, pining away by little and little for want of sweet meats, as milk or 
 spoon meat for to sustain their stomachs, which could not receive the hard 
 meats, by reason of let, proceeding from a rotten flesh which grew and over- 
 abounded within their mouths ; and when one thought to root it out, it did 
 grow again in one night's space more abundantly than before.... There died 
 of this sickness thirty-six ; and thirty-six or forty more that were stricken 
 with it recovered themselves by the help of the Spring, as soon as the 
 comfortable season appeared. But the deadly season for that sickness is 
 the end of January, the months of February and March, wherein most 
 commonly the sick do die, every one at his turn, according to the time when 
 they have begun to be sick ; in such sort that he which began to be ill in 
 February and March may escape, but he that shall overhaste himself, and 
 betake him to his bed in December and January, he is in danger to die in 
 February and March, or the beginning of April.. ..M. de Poutrincourt made 
 a negro to be opened that died of that sickness in our voyage, who was found 
 to have the inward parts very sound except the stomacke, that had wrinkles 
 as though they were ulcerated." 
 
 Then follow Lescarbot's views of the treatment and pre- 
 vention of scurvy. After advising to avoid "cold" meats without 
 juices, gross and corrupted, salted, "smoaky," musty, raw and of 
 an evil scent, including dried fishes, he proceeds : 
 
 " I would not, for all that, be so scrupulous as the physicians, which do 
 put in the number of gross and melancholy meats, beeve's flesh, bear's, wild 
 boar's and hog's flesh (they might as well add unto them beaver's flesh, 
 which notwithstanding we have found very good), as they do amongst fishes 
 the tons [tunnies], dolphins, and all those that carry lard ; among the birds 
 the hemes, ducks and all other water-birds ; for, in being an over-curious 
 observator of these things, one might fall into the danger of starving. They 
 place yet among the meats that are to be shunned, bisket^, beans and pulse, 
 the often using of milk, cheese, the gross and harsh wine and that which is 
 too small, white wine, and the use of vinegar " 
 
 — ^just like our own great masters in prohibitory dietetics. 
 
 Lescarbot's advice agrees on the whole with that of Sir 
 R. Hawkins : the men should be well shod and clothed, merri- 
 ment should be encouraged, and again : 
 
 " Good wine taken according to the necessity of nature, it is a soveraigne 
 preservative for all sickness, and particularly for this. The young buds of 
 herbs in the Spring time be also very soveraigne.... We have had some sick 
 that have been (as it were) raised up from death to life, for having eaten 
 twice or thrice of a coolice made of a cock." 
 
 i Woodall defends the use of biscuit in his Surgeons Mate, pubHshed in 1617. 
 
Medicinal treatment of Scurvy. 599 
 
 In the voyage of Sir Thomas Smith to Baffin's Bay in 16 16, 
 the treatment of scurvy by vegetable juices is mentioned : 
 " Next day, going ashore on a little island we found great 
 abundance of scurvie grass, which we boiled in beer, and so 
 drank thereof, using it also in sallet, with sorrel and orpen, 
 which here groweth in abundance ; by means whereof, and the 
 blessing of God, all our men within eight or nine days shall gain 
 perfect health, and so continue till our arrival in England \" 
 
 On the other hand, those who appear to have had the most 
 correct intuition of the teaching of the schools were the Red 
 Indians. Lescarbot says that, in the treatment of scurvy, "they 
 use sweating often." Perhaps they had some dim notion of 
 the doctrine of peccant humours : at all events they clung to 
 the alterative practice until long after that date, with a tenacity 
 second only to that of the European faculty itself. 
 
 Scurvy in the East India Company's Ships: 
 Professional Treatment. 
 
 Until the end of the Tudor period, scurvy had been only an 
 occasional incident of English voyages. But as soon as the 
 regular trade to the East begins, we find it a common expe- 
 rience. 
 
 The English voyages to the East Indies by the Cape route 
 really began in 1591, when Captain James Lancaster sailed 
 first in command of ships belonging to the Company of Mer- 
 chant Adventurers; but it was not until 1601 that he sailed 
 again to the East Indies in command of the first ships of the 
 East India Company, which had been formed the year before. 
 
 The three ships in 1591, the 'Penelope,' 'Marchant Royal,' and 'Edward 
 Bonaventure,' cleared from Plymouth on April 10'-. They crossed the Line 
 on June 6, by which time two men were dead and divers sick. In the tropics 
 so much rain fell that " we could not keep our men dry three hours together, 
 which was an occasion of the infection among them, and their eating of salt 
 victuals, with the lack of clothes to shift them." On this first voyage, 
 
 ^ Purchas, III. 847. 
 
 - The Voyages of Sir yaines Lancaster, Knight, to the East Indies. Ilakliiyt 
 Society, ed. Clements INIarkham, 1878; and in Hakluyt's Principal Navigations, 11. 
 pt. 2, p. 102. 
 
6oo Scurvy in Lancaster's voyage to India, 1591. 
 
 Lancaster began the practice which was generally followed when the East 
 India trade in English ships became established ; before attempting to 
 double the Cape of Good Hope, he refreshed his crews, who were weak and 
 sick in all three ships, by a sojourn ashore at the Bay of Saldanha, a few 
 leagues to the north of Table Bay. The voyage had already lasted more 
 than three months from Plymouth, and about six weeks from the Line^ 
 
 At a muster on August i, in the Bay of Saldanha, Lancaster found that 
 he had 198 men sound and whole, of whom he assigned loi to the ' Penelope,' 
 and 97 to the ' Edward Bonaventure,' sending home 50 more or less unfit 
 men in the ' Royal Merchant.' Scurvy, he says, was the disease : 
 
 " Our soldiers, which have not been used to the sea, have 
 best held out, but our mariners dropt away, which in my judg- 
 ment, proceedeth of their evil diet at home." The voyage was 
 continued to the East Indies, the next that we hear of the state 
 of health being at Penang in the beginning of June 1592, or 
 some fourteen months out. The men were then very sick and 
 many fallen ; the sick were landed, and twenty-six died there, 
 but not of scurvy, we may surmise. They had now left but 
 thirty-three men and one boy, " of which not past twenty-two 
 were found for labour and help." 
 
 The two ships sailed for home from Point de Galle on December 8, 
 1592, and reached St Helena on April 3, 1593; one man was sick of the 
 scurvy, and another had been suffering from the flux for nine months, but on 
 the island both shortly recovered their perfect health. Instead of reaching 
 England, the ships were carried to the West Indies, where, after an attempt 
 to navigate them northwards, they were wrecked, and the small remnants of 
 their crews dispersed. 
 
 Lancaster's first voyage for the East India Company in 1601^ 
 was "with foure tall shippes, to wit, the Dragon, the Hector, 
 the Ascension, and Susan, and a victualler called the Guest." 
 The Company, founded in 1600, began with a capital of ^^72,000, 
 
 ' The slowness of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope in old times was due 
 less to the build or rig of the ships than to the course shaped : instead of steering 
 southwest from Madeira across the Atlantic almost to the coast of Brazil at Cape San 
 Roque, so as to get the north-east trade wind, and thence on another tack in a wide 
 sweep round to the Cape with the south-east trade wind, the earlier navigators sailed 
 past the Cape de Verde islands and along the Guinea coast, keeping witliin meridians 
 20 degrees to the eastward of the modern track, and so falling into the tropical calms at 
 (jne jiart, and at anotlier part of the voyage into the baflling south-east trades, varying 
 ill force according to the season. 
 
 - Purchas, I. 147. 
 
First voyage for the East India Company, i6oi. 60 1 
 
 which was laid out in the purchase and outfit of the ships, and 
 in loading them with merchandise. The crews were as follow : 
 
 Dragon, 600 tons, 202 men. 
 
 Hector, 300 „ 108 „ 
 
 Ascension, 260 „ 82 „ 
 
 Susan, „ 88 „ 
 
 480 
 
 Guest, 130 tons. 
 
 Further, "in every of the said ships, three merchants to succeed 
 one the other, if any of them should be taken away by death " — 
 a sufficient indication of the risks of foreign trade. 
 
 The ships, having loaded in the Thames, sailed from Dartmouth on 
 April 18, 1601, and got clear of Tor Bay on the 22nd. On July 24, two 
 months from the Channel, they crossed the southern tropic. But they had 
 been so long under the Line that " many of our men fell sick." On August i, 
 in 30^ S., they met the south-west whid, " to the great comfort of all our 
 people. For, by this time very many of our men were fallen sick of the 
 scurvy in all our ships, and, unless it were in the general's ship only, the 
 others were so weak of men that they could hardly handle the sails." Head- 
 winds again hindered their course, and " now the few whole men we had 
 began also to fall sick, so that our weakness of men was so great that in 
 some of the ships the merchants took their turn at the helm and went into 
 the top to take in the top sails, as the common mariners did." Lancaster at 
 length made Saldanha Bay, where he had landed to refresh his crews on his 
 tirst voyage round the Cape ten years before. The state of three of the 
 ships " was such that they was hardly able to let fall an anchor to save 
 themselves withall ;" but "the general went aboard of them and carried 
 good store of men, and hoysed out their boats for them..., And the reason 
 why the general's men stood better in health than the men of other ships 
 was this : he brought to sea with him certain bottles of the juice of lemons, 
 which he gave to each one as long as it would last, three spoonfuls every 
 morning fasting, not suffering them to eat anything after it till noon. This 
 juice worketh much the better if the partie keepe short diet, and wholly 
 refrain salt meat, which salt meat, and long being at the sea, is the only 
 cause of the breeding of this .disease. By this means the general cured 
 many of his men and preserved the rest, so that in this ship (having the 
 double of men that was in the rest of the ships) he had not so many sick, nor 
 lost so many men as they did, which was the mercie of God to us all." 
 
 At Saldanha Bay they bartered with the natives for an 
 abundant supply of fresh meat and other provisions, and in due 
 time doubled the Cape of Good Hope. On Christmas day, 
 
6o2 Scurvy usual in East Indiaiiicn. 
 
 eight months out from England, they put in to Antongil Bay, 
 on the east side of Madagascar. On landing they found a 
 writing on the rocks that five Dutch ships had sailed thence two 
 months before, having "lost between 150 and 200 men while 
 they roade in that place." The English had a similar experience 
 in store for them : on board Lancaster's ship, the master's mate, 
 the preacher, the surgeon and some ten others, died ; and, in the 
 vice-admiral's ship, the master with other two. It was mostly 
 the flux that they died of, brought on by the drinking-water, 
 or by the excessive wetness of the season, or by " going open 
 and cold in the stomacke, which our men would often do when 
 they were hot" (Hawkins gives the latter reason for flux at the 
 Cape de Verde islands). 
 
 The references to scurvy before reaching the Cape, and to 
 dysentery in Madagascar, are all that is said of sickness in this 
 first venture of the East India Company. But in the accounts 
 of the voyages which regularly followed we hear a great deal of 
 the loss of men at the factories, or in the country trade, or on 
 the voyage home, as well as on the outward voyaged The 
 Directors in London were naturally well aware how greatly their 
 ventures were imperilled and their profits reduced by the enor- 
 mous loss of men. Under their own eyes ships would arrive in 
 the mouth of the Channel with crews so weakened that they 
 had to be met at Scilly with help to navigate them through the 
 narrow seas to the Thames. By their correspondence from 
 abroad, they were frequently hearing of artificers dying in their 
 factories, of ships arriving out with so many men dead, and of 
 other ships cast away, partly by stress of weather no doubt, but 
 sometimes from inability of the crews to man them. Accord- 
 ingly we find that they were alive to the best means of preventing 
 " flux, scurvy, and fever." Lancaster, as we have seen, carried 
 lime-juice on his first voyage for the Company in 1601. In the 
 Court minutes of August 13, 1607, the following were ordered 
 to be provided with expedition : " Lemon water, ' alligant' from 
 Alicante, a wine very fit for beverage and good against the flux, 
 and old corn, etc." At the Court of Directors on December 10, 
 
 ^ Calendar oj Slate Papers. East Indies (under the respective dates). 
 
Preventives and remedies of Seiirvy, 1607- 1624. 603 
 
 1614, there was considered an "offer of Dr Burgis to present the 
 Company with an antidote against poison, scurvy, and other 
 diseases to which people are subject these long voyages : Sir 
 Thomas Roe and Captain Keeling to confer with him and 
 report their opinions." Trial was also to be made of baking 
 fresh bread at sea, with the grinding of corn, "an exercise fit to 
 preserve men in health," The offer of Dr Burgis was accepted ; 
 and on January 26, 161 5, the minutes of the Court mention 
 " instructions in writing, and boxes of such things as are to be 
 used, for prevention of the flux, scurvy, and fever, prepared by 
 Dr Burgis, to be delivered to each ship ; the cost, about £2"^, to 
 be paid." In the minutes of the Court, November 22, 1619, 
 there is reference to another preventive of scurvy : " The fleet to 
 be supplied with 15 tons of white wine, to be drunk at the Line, 
 and the Cape, which is used by the Dutch to preserve men from 
 scurvy, and will refresh the men and scour their maws, and open 
 and cool as well as lemon water" — the latter having been in all 
 probability disliked or refused by the men. In 1624, "the 
 death of mariners" is a topic at the Court of Directors ; again, 
 on October 15, 1626, the Court considers of the great mortality 
 from scurvy in the 'Charles' and ' Hart,' homeward bound, and 
 how to prevent it. Some were of opinion that lemon water was 
 very good, but Mr Styles related that tamarind was the ex- 
 cellentest thing. However, there had been plenty of tamarinds 
 aboard the ships ; and on Lieutenant Hill being called in, he 
 testified that the crews had all got tamarind, but they were all 
 debauched people. 
 
 John Woodall, surgeon to St Bartholomew's Hospital, was 
 at this time surgeon-general to the East India Company, having 
 medical charge of their dockyard at Blackwall; his name appears 
 in the Court minutes as early as 1614. In 161 7 he published his 
 ' Surgion's Mate,' "chiefly for the benefit of young sea-surgions 
 imployed in the East India companies affairs," and dedicated it to 
 Sir Thomas Smith, himself a navigator, and then chairman of the 
 Court of Directors. This practical manual is largely occupied 
 with the management of fractures, dislocations, amputations, and 
 the like, a part of his subject wherein Woodall was thoroughly 
 competent ; but there appears also in the title, " the cure of the 
 
6o4 JoJuL Wood a II on Scurvy, i6iy. 
 
 scurvie, the fluxes of the belly, of the collica and iliaca passio, 
 tenasmus and exitus ani, the callenture." The section on scurvy, 
 twenty-six pages long, is the one that here concerns us. This 
 was what Sir Richard Hawkins had desired: "And I wish that 
 some learned men would write of it, for it is the plague of 
 the sea and the spoil of mariners." Woodall begins by dis- 
 claiming learning : " A learned treatise befits not my pen." 
 But, at all events, his was the voice of the faculty, and he 
 plunges boldly into pathology in the very first lines : " Scurvy is 
 a disease of the spleen, whereby it is sometimes wholly stopped" 
 etc. Being a man of much good sense, Woodall quickly leaves 
 that line of remark, for a time at least. He repeats all the 
 familiar experience of Hawkins, Lancaster, and the numerous 
 captains of East Indiamen, with whom he must have conversed 
 many times (it does not appear that he had himself sailed). He 
 mentions the great benefit to the crews from landing at the 
 Cape, with the fresh air and food, scurvy being thereby cured 
 " without much other help." He enforces the need of changes 
 of clothing, and other things in the regimen on board, just as 
 Plawkins and others were wont to do in practice. He is as 
 clear on the virtues of lime-juice as Lancaster, and copies 
 somewhat closely the practice of the latter in 1601 : "each 
 morning two or three spoonfuls, and fast after it two hours"; 
 his originality appearing in the rider, grateful to seamen : " and 
 if you add one spoonful of aqua vitae thereto, to a cold stomach 
 it is the better." He mentions that a "good quantity of juice of 
 lemons is sent in each ship out of England, by the great care of 
 the merchants, and intended only for the relief of every poor 
 man in his need." The ship's surgeon is advised to lay in a 
 store of fresh lemons and oranges where they were to be had on 
 the voyage, and of tamarinds at Bantam. 
 
 So far, Woodall merely sets down what every shipmaster 
 knew as to the things that bring on scurvy, the best regimen 
 to keep it off, and the extraordinarily rapid curative effect of 
 lime-juice and of change to land air and fresh food. But there 
 was a certain professional doctrine of scurvy, and a treatment of 
 it secuiuiuvi artcin, namely the wisdom of learned men which 
 Hawkins had called for; and we have now to see what that 
 
His pathology mid indications of cnrc. 605 
 
 was, according to Woodall. His pathology is that of " obstruc- 
 tions," a curious fancy of the learned'. 
 
 The spleen, said Woodall in his opening lines, is the chief 
 seat of obstruction ; but on resuming the pathology, he proceeds 
 to obstructions also of the liver and brain : 
 
 " But it is plain that this grief is a lazy foul disease with obstructions of 
 the liver, or spleen, or both ; as also it appeareth that the head is much 
 diseased, and that there is great obstructions in the brain, for that the eyes 
 not only look evil coloured, but also the gums putrefy, and the teeth grow 
 loose, and all the sinewy parts of the body bear their part in the disease, for 
 the shrinking and withering of the sinews, with the great pains the party 
 hath, declareth no less" (p. 180). 
 
 This theoretical pathology Woodall supports by an appeal 
 to morbid anatomy : 
 
 "Also it is manifest that divers of those which have been opened after 
 death have had their livers utterly rotted " — others having their livers much 
 swollen, and the spleen swollen, others full of water, others their lungs 
 putrefied and stunk while they have lived, (which last may have been an 
 incorrect inference from the foul state of the inouth). 
 
 Such being the pathology of the disease, he comes next to 
 the indications of cure ; and these he takes from " a famous 
 writer, Johannes Echthius." They are: 
 
 1. The opening of obstructions. 
 
 2. The evacuating of offending humours. 
 
 3. The altering the property of the humours. 
 
 4. The comforting and corroborating the parts late dis- 
 
 eased. 
 
 The order of treatment, lege artis, is accordingly as follows : 
 the administration of a clyster or clysters ; the opening of a vein, 
 if .strong ("but beware of taking too much blood away at once"); 
 
 ' It seems to have passed into common usage, as " to lie in cold obstraction and to 
 rot" {Meas.for Meas. in. i), and to have been kept up therein after the faculty had 
 dropped it— if indeed Byron's line, " Where cold Obstruction's apathy" be a survival 
 of medical terminology. There is an instance of the same kind of survival in the use 
 of "scorbutic ; " at one time land-scurvy was detected (under the influence of theory) 
 in many forms, and we find in the Pic/rwicJi Papers a late reminiscence of that 
 singular dogma in the "young gentleman witli tlic scorbutic countenance," 
 
6o6 Instances of Scurvy in East Indiauicn. 
 
 next day after the bleeding, " if he can bear it," give him pills of 
 euphorbium or gamboge ; and lastly, "if you see cause," certain 
 days after you have given of any of your former laxatives, you 
 may give a sweat to the patient in his bed. Thus the indications 
 from the pathology would be fulfilled — opening of obstructions, 
 evacuating of ill humours, and altering the property of the 
 humours. It should be said for Woodall that his practice was 
 better than his theory. Thus, he cautions the young dogmatists 
 who sailed as surgeons in East Indiamen, not to carry their 
 principles too far ; he has heard that they are somewhat fond of 
 the lancet, and he cautions them not to take too much blood 
 at sea, as excessive depletion " makes the disease worse ;" he 
 cautions them also as to the use of gamboge. 
 
 We may now proceed with a few more illustrations of 
 what the Company's ships were actually experiencing during 
 the period that those questions were before the Court of 
 Di rectors \ 
 
 In the sixth voyage for the Company, under the command of .Sir 
 H. Middleton, the captain of the 'Darling' and three of his merchants died 
 at Tecoa, and most of the men were ill. In the eighth voyage, when home- 
 ward bound between the Cape and St Helena in the month of June, many of 
 the men fell ill with scurvy, and the ship had to come in to Waterford instead 
 of the Thames. A similar experience befell Captain Thomas Best in the 
 'Dragon' and 'Hosiander,' carrying together 380 persons. Having left Graves- 
 end on February i, 1612, he completed his trading in the Indies, and arrived 
 in the Thames on June 15, 1614, six months from Bantam. The scurvy in 
 this voyage comes in towards the end. On March 4, 1614, " I did set sail in 
 the roade of Saldanha ; yet notwithstanding our short passage, having been 
 from Santa Helena but two monethes and nine days, the one half or more 
 of our company are laid up [on June 4] of the scurvie and two dead of it. 
 Yet we had plentie of victuals, as beef, bread, wine, rice, oil, vinegar, sugar ; 
 and all these without allowance. Note that all our men that are sick have 
 taken their sickness since we fell with Flores and Corvo. For since that 
 time we have had it very cold, especially in two great storms.... From the 
 Cape of Good Hope to the islands of Flores and Corvo I had not one man 
 sick." While in the Malay Archipelago they had buried twenty-five men at 
 one place. 
 
 On November 3, 161 8, the Directors have letters from two of their 
 
 ^ The three earlier instances from Purclins, i. 24S, 4(^6, tlic later from the Cat. 
 Slate Papers, East Indies. 
 
Mortality in tJte East India Company s service. 607 
 
 captains at the Cape, of July 6 and 7, with news of their arrival there on 
 June 26, and the loss or sickness of many men, partly through the stinking 
 beer, the tainted beef, the lack of fresh provisions at the Cape, and the want 
 of warm clothes. A letter of February 25, 1619, announces the arrival of 
 the ' Peppercorn ' in Bantam roads : A great many men had died in the 
 ten-months' voyage between England and Bantam ; putrefied beef and pork, 
 " not man's meat," the chief cause of sickness. When they arrived at 
 Bantam, not six men able to work; the whole fleet in the like distress. 
 Twenty-five men in all dead or drowned. A letter from Batavia, January 1 1, 
 1622, says the master of the 'Anne' and 14 men of the fleet were dead ; 
 " so many men are deceased that they have not enough to man all the ships 
 now in the roads." The 'Diamond' sailed from England on October 8, 162 1, 
 and after a "long and tedious voyage" arrived at Jacatra previous to 
 November 24, 1622 : enclosed are the accounts of those men who have died, 
 and nine wills. Another letter from Batavia, sometime in 1623, covers an 
 "abstract of the men deceased in the ships." 
 
 On March 28, 1624, the 'Royal James,' with five others, sailed from the 
 Downs ; she called at Saldanha Bay, and arrived on or before November 15, 
 at Swally bar, Batavia ; the bread had been very bad, the water too little, 
 the beef not fit for men ; have enclosed the names of those deceased. The 
 'Jonas,' also arrived out at Batavia on November 15, appears to have been 
 one of the five others ; she called at Saldanha Bay on July 19 ; " the whole- 
 someness of the air and the herb baths caused the most part of their sick 
 men to recover in ten days from the scurbeck." In June, 1625, the 'Anne' 
 had been at Mocha for eight months in great distress, with most part of her 
 men dead and the ship ready to founder. 
 
 Writing on October 13, 1625, from Batavia to the East India Company 
 in London, Governor Hawley says that the 'London' had arrived out on 
 August 23, with loss of 36 men, and 80 sick. She reported the ' Discovery' 
 to have left the Cape for St Helena, having lost 21 men ; two other ships, 
 the 'Moon' and 'Ruby' had their crews "in remarkable health." On 
 September 14, the 'Swallow' arrived out, having lost only 3 men. Of 46 
 men shipped in the ' Abigail ' out of England, all were dead but 5, in her 
 coasting voyages upon Sumatra. Most of the workmen and soldiers sent in 
 the ' London ' had arrived ; " but since, by disorders, are dead, as are those 
 in the ' Swallow.' The smiths are all dead ; of the armourers, only John 
 Speed and a boy alive. Most other workmen dead or incapable. This is 
 not remissness of government, but the newcomers, dreaming of nothing but 
 sack and sugar-plums in India, are with much difficulty brought to obedi- 
 ence." A Dutch ship, the ' Leyden ' arrived out in 1626, with loss of 22 
 men, having been twelve months on the passage. 
 
 In the end of October, 1628, the 'Morris' reached the mouth of the 
 Channel from Bantam, " which was most happily met with near Scilly by 
 Captain Bickly, who was sent out to relieve any ship from the Indies, she 
 being in a very weak state by reason of an infectious disease." She reached 
 
6o8 Aji epidemic at Batavia, 1625. 
 
 the Downs safely with two other East Indiamcn ; but having been driven 
 from her anchors in a great storm, was wrecked on the coast of Holland 
 previous to November 19. Next year, about October 28, 1629, the 'Mary' 
 of the East India Company was reported to have put into Scilly having lost 
 most of her men by sickness. Therefore, Sir H. Mervyn, of H.M.vS. ' Lyon,' 
 in the Downs, having got early word of the 'Mary's' distress, writes to 
 E. Nicholas, to say that if the Company desire a convoy for the 'Mary' 
 from their lordships of the Admiralty, " she being rich," he (Mervyn) hopes 
 that Nicholas will remember him. 
 
 But, although it was not unusual for ships to come home 
 with crews weakened by scurvy, it was not invariable. The 
 'William' returned to England in 1628, as rich a ship as the 
 Company ever had from the East Indies, with not a sick man in 
 her, nor any dead on the way ; her lading was computed to be 
 worth ;^i70,ooo\ 
 
 In a despatch of February 6, 1626, Hawley gives an account 
 of a truly disastrous sickness in the factory and among the 
 Company's ships at Batavia during the previous year, which 
 illustrates another risk than that of scurvy or flux, and an 
 experience in the East Indies not altogether exceptional ^ 
 
 "On March 12, I dispeeded the 'Diamond' for Japan to fetch boards, 
 planks, etc. [to repair the ' Bull ' with] ; but hardly had fourteen days passed 
 when the ' Bull's ' men fell sick and died daily ; then the ' Reformation's ' 
 men died by five, six or more in a day ; in a short time the ' Bull's ' men all 
 died but the master and one more, who were dangerously sick, and in the 
 ' Reformation ' the master and all the men lay at God's mercy. We were 
 forced to relieve them by blacks, and hale the ships to the open bay [they 
 would seem to have been careened] where they rode like wrecks without 
 other help than some few to comfort their sick, for more from the other 
 ships might not be spared. The contagion was so pestilent that their blood, 
 being licked by dog or cat, caused them to swell, burst and die. It was 
 more moderate on shore, and was least on the ships in the open bay, though 
 they also were daily visited.. ..The 'Diamond' returned on April 11, with 
 planks etc. ; also slaves and 44 Chinamen, which were with no small charge 
 procured, and who all fell sick, and 10 or 12 died.... Thinking the mortality 
 was occasioned, not by pestiferous air or soil, nor by any noxious tree, but 
 by surfeit and the wet monsoon, I enacted orders for government building, 
 and cleansing the trees to get more air. Wanted no provisions of fresh 
 victual ; could at pleasure command neighbours to fish and fetch anything 
 
 ' Cal. S. /'. Colonial. East Indies. Dec. ■24, 1628. 
 - Jl>i</. I'd). 6, i62r., ]). 146. 
 
English 
 ill health 
 
 English 
 sick 
 
 Portuguese 
 sick 
 
 40 
 
 58 
 
 5 
 
 32 
 
 10 
 
 
 16 
 
 '7 
 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 
 23 
 
 14 
 
 12 
 
 Coitiiinancc of Scurvy in East Indiaincn. 609 
 
 needed, and the island itself furnished deer. On Api'il 12, took general view 
 of all people, as follows : 
 
 On shore 
 In the 'Charles' 
 ,, 'Roebuck' 
 „ 'Bull' 
 „ ' Reformation ' 
 
 „ 'Abigail' 8 3 
 
 „ ' Rose ' 725 
 
 128 97 22 
 
 — leaving, of course, an immense proportion dead. 
 
 These are instances from the records of the East India 
 Company during the first thirty years of its existence. It would 
 be tedious, even if it were practicable, to follow the history 
 continuously. But meanwhile to show that its experiences, good 
 and bad, remained much the same until long after, let us take 
 two voyages in the year 1682. Governor William Hedges, 
 passenger on board one of the Company's ships, enters in his 
 diary the 25th of May, 1682, being then off the Cape of Good 
 Hope : " Not lost a man (except Mr Richards) either by sickness 
 or any other accident, since we left England, which wants but 
 three days of four months, and is just two months since we 
 passed the Equinoctial Line," nothing being said of sickness in 
 the rest of the voyage. But another of the Company's ships 
 the same year fared worse : " December 9, 1682, ship ' Society' 
 arrived at Balasore. She left the Downs on May 30, and, not 
 touching at any place by the way, lost seventeen men of the 
 scurvy \" 
 
 Sickness in the Colonizing of Virginia and New England. 
 
 Leaving now the long voyages of the English beyond the 
 Line, and their factories in the East, let us see how they fared 
 as regards health when they merely crossed the Atlantic in their 
 own latitudes. The earliest series of voyages to Virginia, at 
 Raleigh's instigation, from 1585 to 1590, have been already 
 referred to. The continuous history of Atlantic voyages, and of 
 
 ' Waiiaiu Hedges Diary. Ilakluyl Society, 1S87, I. 24, 54. 
 
 c. 39 
 
6io Sick J I ess in the Virginia ships, 1609. 
 
 the North American colonies, begins with the expedition of 
 1609 under Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers\ 
 
 Seven of the ships fitted out in the Thames, and sailed from 
 Woolwich on May 15, 1609. Having been joined at Plymouth 
 by two more, the fleet sailed thence on June 2, and from 
 Falmouth on June 8. The expedition included "many unruly 
 gallants, packed thither by their friends to escape ill destinies," 
 with the proportion of women and children usual among emi- 
 grants, as well as horses, and probably other live stock. The 
 navigation, to reach Western land in 37' N., appears to have 
 been somewhat erratic : 
 
 " We ran a southerly course from the tropic of Cancer, where, having the 
 sun within six or seven degrees right over our head in July, we bore away 
 West ; so that by the fervent heat and loomes breezes, many of our men fell 
 sick of the calenture " — Noah Webster takes that to mean a spotted 
 pestilential fever — " and out of two ships was thrown overboard thirty-two 
 persons. The vice-admiral [the ' Diamond'] was said to have the plague in 
 her ; but in the 'Blessing' we had not any sick, albeit we had twenty women 
 and children." 
 
 A storm came on, in which the ships were scattered, the 
 admiral's ship being driven to the Bermudas and there wrecked I 
 In the storm "some lost their masts, some had their sails blown 
 from their yards ; the seas over-raking our ships, much of our 
 provision was spoiled, our fleet separated, and our men sick, 
 and many died ; and in this miserable state we arrived at 
 Virginia." The ■' Blessing,' on board which was Gabriel Archer, 
 the principal narrator of events, seems to have fared better than 
 the rest: "The 'Unity' was sore distressed when she came up 
 with us; for, of seventy landmen [emigrants], she had not ten 
 found, and all her seamen were down, but only the master and 
 his boy, with one poor sailor ; but we relieved them, and we 
 four consorting, fell into the King's River [James River] haply 
 the I ith of August." They found the colony " all in health (for 
 the most part)." There were fourscore living 20 miles from the 
 
 ' A Ldler of AI. Gabriel Archar, in Purchas, pt. iv. ]i. 1733; Smith's Virginia. 
 in rinkcrton, xni. 99; W. Strachcy, in Purchas, pi. i\'. p. 1753. 
 
 - Thc<)l)alcl makes tliis the storm and sliipwreck wliicli .Sliakesjieare hrincjs into 
 llie '/'ciiipcsl. 
 
Sickness among tJic Virginia settlers. 6ll 
 
 Fort, who fed upon nothing but oysters eight weeks' space. 
 " After our four ships had been in harbour a few days, came in 
 the vice-admiral, having cut her mainmast overboard, and had 
 many of her men very sick and weak." This was the ship that 
 was said to have the plague in her. The admiral and his ship's 
 company, wrecked on the Bermudas, fared in health best of all ; 
 the whole number of 150 persons reached Jamestown in due 
 course, to find only 60 remaining alive of the 350 who had 
 formed the complement of the other ships. Part of the mortality 
 had happened on board ship, but probably the most of it after 
 landing; Jamestown "is in a marish ground, low, flat to the 
 river, and hath no fresh water springs serving the town, but 
 what we drew from a well six or seven fathom deep, fed by the 
 brackish river oozing into it, from whence I verily believe the 
 chief causes have proceeded of many diseases and sicknesses 
 which have happened to our people, who are indeed strangely 
 afflicted with fluxes and agues." Lord De La Warre, one of 
 the early governors, had a succession of illnesses — hot and violent 
 ague, followed by a relapse still more violent and lasting a 
 month, " then the flux surprised me and kept me many days," 
 then the cramp, with strong pains, afterwards the gout, and 
 finally the scurvy — which last, however, might have been the 
 eczema of gout, although it was said to have been cured by the 
 oranges and lemons of the Western Islands, and by the voyage 
 thither'. 
 
 Much in these early ventures was put down to climate, 
 which was really due to other causes. There are, of course, 
 unhealthy climates ; but a great deal of the talk in the 17th and 
 1 8th centuries about the "tainted air" of " foreign climes" was 
 mere confusion of ideas. A more correct view of events was 
 that of the Governor and Council of Virginia, in a letter of 
 January 30, 1624, to the Virginia Company in London: 
 
 " The mortality, which is imputed to the country alone, is chiefly caused 
 by the pestilent ships, which reach Virginia victualled with musty bread and 
 stinking beer, heretofore so earnestly complained of.. ..Robert Benet in his 
 lifetime boasted that the sale of four butts of wine would clear a voyage. 
 Rotten wines destroy their bodies and empty their purses-." 
 
 * Turchas, iv. p. 1762. - Cut. S. P. America and West Indies. 
 
 39—2 
 
6i2 The emigration to New England. 
 
 The letter then goes on to relate how sickness had brought 
 down great numbers "since their last." According to Purchas, 
 the emigration to Virginia in three years immediately preceding 
 this, the years 1619, 1620 and 162 1, had amounted to 3570 
 persons in 42 ships. Overcrowding, we may be sure, was the 
 rule. We shall find particular evidence of it in speaking of 
 West Indian colonization in the sequel ; and for the present, 
 it may suffice to quote a document of April 24, 1638, a list of 
 1 10 passengers for New England per ' Confidence' of 200 tons. 
 
 If Virginia was settled by a crew of broken gallants and 
 their humbler followers, the New England colony was officered 
 by strict Puritans, who were accompanied by men and women 
 sharing, as nearly as might be, the same beliefs and prin- 
 ciples of conduct. The records of the Massachusetts Bay 
 settlements might be expected, therefore, to show less of sick- 
 ness and failure than the Virginian ; and so, indeed, they do, 
 although they are by no means clear of it. The first voyage of 
 the 'Mayflower' in 1620, carrying the small sect of Brownists 
 who had tried Holland for a time as a place of refuge, presents 
 nothing for our purpose. Like the settlers along the shores 
 of Chesapeake Bay before them, these first New Englanders 
 had to encounter famine and sickness. Famine appears to have 
 been the cause also of the disastrous epidemics among the 
 Indians along the whole coast from Cape Cod to Cape Charles, 
 on two occasions, the one previous to 16 14 and the other in 
 1619'. The emigration to New England really began in 1630, 
 and of one of the expeditions of that year we have authentic 
 particulars by the leader of it, John Winthrop'. On board the 
 ' Arbella,' under date April 17, 1630, he enters in his journal: 
 
 " This day our captain told me that our landmen were very nasty and 
 slovenly, and that the gun-deck, where they lodged, was so beastly and 
 noisome with their victuals and beastliness as would much endanger the 
 health of the ship. Hereupon, after prayer, we took order, and appointed 
 four men to see to it, and to keep that room clean for three days, and then 
 four others should succeed them, and so forth on." 
 
 ' Dermcr, in Purchas, iv. p. 1778: Belknap's American Biography ("Life of 
 Gorges"), I. 355. 
 
 - John Winthrop's yoiiriial, p. i i. 
 
Epidemics in Neio England^ 163 3- 1662. 613 
 
 Nothing more is said of the health on board the ' Arbella.' 
 The 'Mayflower' and 'Whale' had their passengers all in health, 
 but most of their cattle and horses dead. The ' Success ' lost 
 — goats, and many of her passengers were near starved. The 
 ' Talbot ' lost fourteen passengers. The colony had various 
 experiences of sickness in due course. In 1633, smallpox 
 proved fatal to whole settlements of Indians : " the English 
 came daily and ministered to them ; and yet few, only two 
 families, took any infection by it\" In 1646 an epidemic of 
 influenza went among the Indians, English, French and Dutch, 
 "not a family, nor but few persons, escaping it;" few died, not 
 above 40 or 50 in Massachusetts, and near as many at Con- 
 necticutl In the spring of 1654, a general fast was appointed 
 by the government of Connecticut, one reason among others 
 being "the mortality which had been among the people of 
 Massachusetts." In 1655 there was another influenza, in 1658 
 " great sickness and mortality throughout New England," in 
 1659 "cynanche trachealis," croup perhaps, and in 1662 again 
 general sickness, which, along with drought, called for a day 
 of thanksgiving on their cessation in October I It is beside 
 the purpose to follow the epidemics in America minutely ; but 
 before quitting the subject, the following, from a Philadelphia 
 letter of August 24, 1699, ^^'^^ suffice to keep in mind the 
 conditions of emigration which prevailed long after the first 
 voyages : " Arrived the ' Britannia ' from Liverpool, which had 
 been 1 3 weeks on her passage ; she had 200 passengers on 
 board, — had lost 50 by death, and others were sickly ^" 
 
 ^A^est Indian Colonization : Yellow Fever and the 
 Slave Trade. 
 
 The other field of English colonial enterprise that concerns 
 us is the West Indies. The West Indian colonies of Britain 
 play a great part in the commercial history, in the naval history, 
 
 1 Winthrop, I. pp. 119, 123. " Ibid. II. 310. 
 
 ^ Refs. in Noah Webster's Hist, of Epid. mid Pestil. Diseases. Hartford, 1799, 
 I. 189, 191, 193. 
 
 * Letter of Norris, in Hist, of S. Carolina, 1. 142. 
 
6 14 Early history of the African slave-trade. 
 
 and in the legislative history in connexion with the negro slave- 
 trade and the institution of negro slavery. From the very first 
 they play a great part, also, in the history of epidemic sickness ; 
 they and the Spanish, French and other colonies there were the 
 peculiar home of yellow fever for two centuries, having shared 
 that unenviable distinction, after a generation or two, with 
 certain ports of the North American continent. The larger 
 part of the history of yellow-fever epidemics falls outside the 
 period to which I here limit myself But the beginnings fall 
 within it ; and as the beginnings raise the whole question of 
 causation, this part of the subject resolves itself into a somewhat 
 comprehensive discussion of the circumstances of yellow fever 
 as illustrated by the first English colonizations in the Caribbean 
 Sea, and the tradings connected therewith. 
 
 By far the most important disease-producing conditions in 
 the West Indies arose out of the Guinea slave-trade. But, so 
 that we may set down to that no more than it deserves, we shall 
 have to review also the earlier experiences of English and 
 French emigrants, both on the voyage and in their settlements 
 in Barbados and St Christopher, and, at greatest length, the 
 disastrous first occupation of Jamaica in 1655 by the army of 
 the Commonwealth. It will be convenient to begin the history, 
 in which there is so much to disentangle, with a few facts about 
 the negro labour-traffic to the New World previous to the time 
 when the demands of the sugar-plantations caused it to be 
 established on a great scale. 
 
 African negroes were brought first to the West Indies by the 
 Spaniards to work in the mines of Hispaniola. They are heard 
 of as early as 1501, and are much in evidence after that date. 
 The Christian conscience appears to have been at first tender. 
 It was the high purpose of Isabella of Spain to convert the 
 Indies to the Christian faith ; and the cruelties of the negro 
 importation and of the forced labour in the mines were obviously 
 inconsistent with the humanitarian teaching of the Gospels. 
 The remonstrances of missionaries were listened to at the 
 Spanish Court, and licences to trade in negroes were either 
 granted under strict conditions or withheld altogether. How- 
 ever, there were rapacious pro-consuls to deal with as well as 
 
Early history of the African slave-trade. 615 
 
 monarchs at home, and cargoes of slaves found their way to 
 Cuba, to Hispaniola (St Domingo), and at length to the Spanish 
 Main. Each importation as late as 15 18 was still regulated by 
 special licence ; but soon after that date a powerful minister 
 sold the privilege to the Genoese, so that it passed somewhat 
 beyond control of the Spanish Court \ Connected with these 
 importations in the first quarter of the i6th century, were the 
 disastrous epidemics of two diseases with somewhat similar 
 names and inextricably confused in the records — the great pox 
 and the small pox ; it is not easy to say which did the most 
 harm among the native population of the islands and mainland 
 occupied by Spain ; but it is said that by disease of one kind or 
 another Mexicans and Caribs on the main, in Hispaniola, and in 
 Cuba, came near to being exterminated". 
 
 The first English share in the negro traffic over sea fell to 
 John Hawkins and partners, who had not even the excuse of an 
 open market for their wares in the Spanish colonies, and had 
 sometimes to dispose of their negroes by stealth. It would 
 appear that it was still in part for the mines that African negroes 
 were in request. In Richard Hawkins' account of his voyage to 
 the Pacific in 1593, he mentions that he captured a Portuguese 
 ship of 100 tons shortly after leaving the coast of Brazil ; she 
 
 1 Saco, History of African Slavery in the N'ew World (Spanish). Barcelona, 1879. 
 
 " Oviedo, in Purchas, in. 996 : — -"Extract of Gonzalo Ferdinando de Oviedo : — 
 ' I had acquaintance with divers which went in the first and second voyages of 
 Cohimbus ; of which was Peter Margarite, comniendator in the second voyage, of 
 most respect with the king and queen, who complained of those paines. [Syphilis 
 was prevalent in Barcelona and Valencia previous to 1494. See Chapter VIII.] 
 Soon after, in the year 1496, began the disease to arrest some courtiers ; but in those 
 beginnings it was only amongst baser persons of small authority ; and it was thought 
 that they got it by having to do with common women. But afterwards it extended to 
 principal persons, and the physicians could not tell what to think of it, so that many 
 died. '...But indeed it came from Hispaniola, where it is ordinary, and the remedy also 
 [guaiacum]. Our author (I.e. civ.), and Ramusio in his preface to his third Tome, 
 say that the souldiers of Pamfilo de Nuney, having the small pocks, infected the 
 Indians which never before heard of that disease ; in so much that of 1,600,000 soules 
 in that island there are so few left, as by and by you shall hear... The covetousnesse of 
 the mine-workers, neglect of diet, change of gouvernours growing worse and worse, 
 caused them to poison, kill and hang themselves, besides those which were consumed 
 by infectious or pestilentiall pocks (those before mentioned out of Ramusio) and other 
 diseases." 
 
6i6 The first negroes in English colonies. 
 
 was bound for Angola to load negroes to be carried to and sold 
 in the River Plate : " It is a trade of great profit and much used. 
 The negroes are carried to work in the mines of Potosi." 
 
 It is not until a generation after that we hear of the English 
 as slave-owners. On February i6, 1624, there were 22 negroes 
 on the English settlements in Virginia, the whites numbering 
 I253\ In somewhat greater numbers, negroes are next heard 
 of in English possession in the Bahamas ; but, from the cor- 
 respondence between the Company of Providence Island in 
 London and their agents in the colonies, it would appear that 
 the policy of using forced labour was by no means admitted by 
 all, or free from difficulties. Thus in 1635 the Company con- 
 demned as indiscreet and injurious Mr Rushworth's behaviour 
 concerning the negroes who ran away, " arising, as it seems, from 
 a groundless opinion [of Rushworth] that Christians may not 
 lawfully keep such persons in a state of servitude during their 
 strangeness from Christianity^." 
 
 Whatever negroes the English colonists possessed at this 
 time they got either by capture or purchase from Dutch and 
 other foreign traders. Thus, in the instructions to a ship-master 
 sailing from London, dated March 19, 1636, captured negroes 
 were to be conveyed to the Somers Islands, those who can dive 
 for pearls to be employed at Providence. Again, the instruc- 
 tions to the captain of the ' Mary Hope,' bound for the West 
 Indies, January 20, 1637, refer to the distribution of negroes 
 "if a prize be taken." And, on June 7, 1643, the earl of 
 Warwick instructs the captain of the ' Elias,' 400 tons, that 
 captured negroes are "to be left at my island of Trinidad^" The 
 negro carrying-trade was in those years mostly in the hands of 
 the Dutch, who not only stocked their own colony of Surinam 
 on the mainland but used their small island of Curagoa as 
 a slave-depot for the supply of colonies belonging to other 
 nations. Thus the governor of Antigua, which had then no 
 negroes, says in a despatch of about the year 1670 : "At 
 Cura^oa they [the Dutch] send a vast quantity of negroes to 
 the Spaniard, and of late four ships from Jamaica for ready 
 
 ^ Calendar of state Papers. Amer. & W. I., i. 57. '^ Ibid. 
 
 '^ Cal. S. P. Amer. & W. I., under the respective dates. 
 
TJie French in the West Indies, 1625. 617 
 
 pieces-of-eiglit carried thence great store. They intend to 
 settle a mart for negroes at Tortola to engross the trade of 
 Porto Rico." 
 
 The direct share of England in the negro carrying-trade arose 
 out of the monopoly of the Guinea Company. The history 
 of English interests in Guinea and "Binney" need not detain 
 us. When the first patent for sole trade was granted in 1624, 
 it was felt to be a grievance, as " many had been there almost 
 for fifty years since." The charter was renewed on November 22, 
 163 1 ; but in course of time, some who had been ousted from their 
 original share in the monopoly traded on their own account, the 
 rivalries at home being aggravated by conflicts with Swedes 
 (in 1653) and Dutch at the factories on the coast. The trade 
 was ostensibly for gold dust and ivory, but live freight soon 
 found a place in English bottoms as well as in Dutch, Swedish, 
 Danish, French, Portuguese, Spanish and others. We may now 
 return to our proper subject — the state of health in the first 
 English and French plantations in the West Indies. 
 
 The English and French arrived in the West Indies almost 
 at the same moment. Their experiences were probably not 
 very diff"erent, but it happens that it is of the French emigrants 
 that we have particulars, which it is important to introduce here. 
 
 In the year 1625, a Norman adventurer of good family, 
 D'Enambuc, sailed from Dieppe in a brigantine armed with 
 four pieces and manned with 35 or 40 men, on a roving cruise 
 to the West Indies \ Having been battered by a Spanish 
 galleon at the Kaymans, D'Enambuc made the island of St 
 Christopher. He found it occupied by the native Caribs and 
 a few stranded Frenchmen, who were on good terms with the 
 natives. Shortly after, an English captain (" Waernard ") ap- 
 pears upon the scene, who joined D'Enambuc in the alleged 
 murdering and poisoning of the natives and the plundering 
 of the island. Loaded with his Carib spoils and a quantity of 
 tobacco, D'Enambuc set sail for France, and having sold his 
 tobacco and other things in Normandy, entered Paris with a 
 
 1 The account that follows is taken from Father Dutertre's Histoire gencrale des 
 Antilles hahitccs par Ics Francois, 4 vols., Paris, 1667-167 1, which superseded his 
 earlier work of 1654. 
 
6i8 Mortality among French emigrants, 1627. 
 
 fine equipage, thus giving evidence to all men of the fortunes 
 that awaited them in the Indies. In a short time he had an 
 audience of Richelieu, and on the 31st October 1626 the charter 
 was signed of the Compagnie des Isles, granting a monopoly 
 of trade with " les isles situees a I'entree du Perou " — namely 
 St Christopher and Barbados. The Company raised 45,000 
 livres, of which capital Richelieu held 10,000 livres in his own 
 name. The money was spent in fitting out and furnishing with 
 stores three ships — the ' Catholique ' at Havre, a craft of 250 
 tons, and the 'Cardinal' and 'Victoire' at St Malo, two much 
 smaller vessels. Numerous poor peasants and artisans from 
 Brittany and Normandy were induced to go out as colonists, 
 the 'Catholique' (250 tons) carrying 322 souls, the 'Cardinal' 
 70, and the 'Victoire' 140. The two last sailed from St Malo 
 on February 24, 1627 under the command of Du Rossey. The 
 passage was long, the provisions both bad and insufficient, and 
 the mortality terrible. When the ' Cardinal ' arrived at the 
 Pointe de Sable of St Christopher on May 8, only 16 of her 70 
 souls remained alive, and these were sick. In the other ships, 
 also, " most of the people died on the passage out." 
 
 The English experience can hardly have been so bad as 
 that. When the French colonists landed, they found four 
 hundred Englishmen settled near the chief anchorage, hale and 
 strong and well stocked with provisions, having lately come out 
 under Lord Carlisle's patent. Cordial to each other at first, the 
 two nationalities soon fell out. The French had rather the 
 worst of it, having lost many of their number by sickness, while 
 the English kept their health. Help came to the former from 
 home, and a victory over the English is claimed for them. But 
 they had also a Spanish fleet to reckon with, and eventually the 
 French colony fell into disorder and escaped to Antigua, while 
 its leader, Du Rossey, went home to France and was thrown 
 into the Bastille by Richelieu, one of the largest shareholders. 
 The refugees to Antigua soon returned to St Christopher, again 
 suffered from famine, and had the mortification of seeing all 
 the profits of their monopoly swallowed up by unlicensed 
 Dutch traders. In 1635 they obtained a new charter; at the 
 same time a fortunate capture of a ship-load of negroes from 
 
Si Christopher and Barbados. 619 
 
 the Spaniards gave them a supply of labour so that " the island 
 began to change its face." English usurpation was kept within 
 limits, and the French colony grew daily, by addition of Euro- 
 pean settlers and of " Moorish slaves whom the French and 
 Dutch ships go to buy in Guinea, or capture from the Spaniards 
 along the coasts of Brazil." The French on St Christopher were 
 now strong enough to send branch colonies to Guadeloupe and 
 Martinique (1635). It was then the turn of the English to have 
 disastrous sickness among their immigrants. Sir Thomas 
 Warner, who had planted the English colonies in Barbados 
 and St Christopher, and was now governor of the latter, went 
 to England in 1636 to bring over new settlers. On his arrival 
 out on 10 September, he wrote home that one of his two ships, 
 the ' Plough,' was given up for lost, and that in his own ship 
 there had been "great sickness and mortality, not 20 out of 200 
 having escaped and 40 having died, some near to him in blood 
 and many of especial quality and use." 
 
 Meanwhile Barbados had been the chief scene of English 
 enterprise, from a date (1624-26) almost the same as that of the 
 joint occupation of St Christopher by French and English. Its 
 earliest annals contain little else than the accounts of rivalries 
 under Lord Carlisle's patent and other patents. So far as 
 regards sickness, the annals were probably uneventful. In 1643 
 the island had plantations stocked with no fewer than 6400 
 negro slaves, and its prosperity advanced so steadily, that by 
 the year 1666, the slaves in the island numbered some 50,000: 
 "The buildings in 1643 were mean; but in 1666 [when Bridgetown 
 was burned], plate, jewels and household stuff were estimated at 
 P^; 500,000'." It is a date intermediate between those two that 
 directly concerns us — the year 1647. In that year, Ligon, the 
 historian of the colony, arrived out from England about the 
 beginning of September'"^. The ship in which he came to 
 Barbados was consigned thence to Cutchew, on the African 
 coast, to trade for negroes. On their arrival they found twenty- 
 two good ships at anchor in Carlisle Bay (Bridgetown), a brisk 
 trade going on, and plantations visible all along the shore. A 
 
 1 Cal. S. P. Amer. & W. I., 11. 529. 
 
 - Ligon, Hist, of Barhadocs. London, 1657. 
 
620 Ytilozv Fever at Bridgetoivn, 1647. 
 
 plantation of 500 acres had 96 negroes and 28 Christians ; some 
 plantations contained 10,000 acres. The population was difficult 
 to estimate, so many ships were arriving with passengers daily ; 
 and Ligon's estimate of 50,000, " besides negroes," is doubtless 
 too much. About one hundred sail visit the island every year ; 
 they bring " servants " and negro slaves, both men and women. 
 The servants are bound for five years, and are worse treated 
 than the negroes. The negroes are more than double the 
 number of the Christians ; they come from different parts of 
 Africa — Bonny, Cutchew, Angola and Gambia — and do not 
 understand each other's language. They are bought out of the 
 ship naked, being chosen as horses are in a market, the strongest, 
 youthfullest and most beautiful yielding the highest price (man 
 ^^30, woman £2^ to £2^, children at easier rates). 
 
 We have to note, also, Ligon's account of the colony's chief 
 harbour — Bridgetown. The whole of Carlisle Bay is environed 
 by high ground. Bridgetown is so-called " for that a long 
 bridge was made at first over a little nook of the sea, which v.^as 
 rather a bog than sea." The stream which discharges there 
 into the bay is like a lake for want of outfall. The spring tides 
 fill it, but during the neap tides the salt water is kept stagnant 
 behind the sea-banks, making a small lagoon. The spring tides 
 seldom rise above four or five feet, but high enough to flow over 
 the low ground in front of the houses, making the flat a kind of 
 bog, which vents out a loathsome savour. 
 
 Ligon landed at Bridgetown about the beginning of Sep- 
 tember, 1647, in time to witness the ravages of a deadly 
 epidemic: 
 
 "Yet, notwithstanding all this appearance of trade, the inhabitants of the 
 island, and shipping too, were so grievously visited with the plague (or as 
 killing a disease) that before a month was expired after our arrival, the 
 living were hardly able to bury the dead. Whether it was brought thither 
 by shipping, (for in long voyages diseases grow at sea and take away many 
 passengers, and these diseases prove contagious), or by the distemper of the 
 people of the island " — he leaves uncertain. For one woman that died, there 
 were ten men. The ships at anchor in Carlisle Bay were, for the most part, 
 infected with this disease. 
 
 What was the disease } How came it there } What sort 
 of origin did its characters, symptoms, or type suggest? On 
 
TJie first of Yellozu Fever in 1 647. 62 1 
 
 these questions we have some light thrown by other writings 
 besides Ligon's, relating to the same epidemic. 
 
 John Winthrop, the Governor of Massachusetts, writes in his 
 journal, under the year 1647^: 
 
 " It pleased the Lord to open to us a trade with Barbados and other 
 islands in the West Indies, which as it proved gainful, so the commodities 
 we had in exchange there for our cattle and provisions, as sugar, cotton, 
 tobacco and indigo, were a good help to discharge our engagements in 
 England. And this summer there was so great a drouth as their potatoes 
 and corn, etc. were burnt up ; and divers London ships which rode there 
 were so short of provisions as, if our vessels had not supplied them, they 
 could not have returned home.. ..After the great dearth of victuals in these 
 islands followed presently a great mortality (whether it were the plague, or 
 pestilent fever, it killed in three days), that in Barbados there died six 
 thousand, and in Christophers, of English and French, near as many, and in 
 other islands proportionable." 
 
 The mention of the French on St Christopher brings us to 
 the third source of information, the Jesuit father Dutertre, who 
 was an eye-witness^ : 
 
 " During this same year, 1648, the plague {la peste), hitherto unknown in 
 the islands since they were inhabited by the French, was brought thither by 
 certain ships. It began in St Christopher, and in the eighteen months that 
 it lasted, it carried off nearly one-third of the inhabitants." This plague, or 
 pesti\ was marked by violent pain in the head, general debility of all the 
 muscles, and continual vomiting. It was contagious. A ship, the ' Boeuf ' of 
 Rochelle, carried it to Guadeloupe, the sailors and passengers dying on 
 board of her. A priest went on board to administer the sacraments, and 
 caught the infection ; he recovered, but [had a relapse and] died on 
 August 4. It was contagious at Guadeloupe also, and lasted twenty months. 
 
 This testimony of Dutertre is important for several things. 
 He had arrived at Guadeloupe in 1640 in a small vessel of 100 
 to 120 tons, crowded with stores and carrying besides, 200 souls 
 of both sexes and all ages. Much distress and sickness followed 
 their arrival ; he mentions nearly 100 sick in the quarters of 
 M. de la Vernade, with only the ground to sleep on ; more than 
 three-fourths of the help for the struggling colony that arrived 
 from St Christopher died, perhaps by infectious disease bred by 
 
 ^ Winthrop's y^z/rz/rt-/, ii. 312. 
 
 ^ DnKcxixQ, I/isf. i^c'ii. di's Anftllcs /lalu'tt'es par /rs Francois. 4 vols. Paris, \CtG-j- 
 1671. 
 
622 Sickness in Gjiadclonpc in 1640. 
 
 the others. Now, with that personal experience in his mind, 
 and with personal experience also of the epidemic of 1647-8, he 
 describes the latter as a pestilence " hitherto unknown in the 
 islands since they were inhabited by the French." Like Ligon 
 and Winthrop, he is led to think of plague itself by the rapidity 
 and fatality of the infection ; but he mentions no signs of plague 
 proper, and at the same time mentions continual vomiting. 
 The disease was, in short, the Yellow Fever; and the epidemic 
 in the end of 1647 ^^ Bridgetown, and shortly after at St 
 Christopher and Guadeloupe, was the first of it, so far as is 
 known, in the West Indies. 
 
 But what then were the earlier epidemics spoken of by Du- 
 tertre .'' The branch colony to Guadeloupe from St Christopher 
 in 1635 had been only two months in their new home, when, 
 in September, their experiences of famine began. The famine 
 or scarcity, says Dutertre, continued for five years, and was 
 followed by " a mortality almost general." It was part of that 
 mortality which Dutertre himself saw on his arrival at Guade- 
 loupe in 1640. He calls the fever conp de barre — a name which 
 in the sequel was sometimes given to yellow fever ; and he 
 mentions symptoms which agree, in part at least, with those 
 of yellow fever — violent pains in the head, throbbing of the 
 temporal arteries, great distress of breathing, lassitude, pains in 
 the calf of the legs, as if they had been struck by a coup dc barre. 
 But in speaking of the sickness which he found prevalent on 
 landing in 1640, he does not mention the irrepressible vomiting, 
 which he puts in the first place when he describes the other 
 fever of 1647-8; and, to repeat, he says that the latter was a 
 pestilence hitherto unknown since the occupation of the French 
 Antilles, and as fatal as the plague. It is tolerably certain, 
 therefore, that the sickness on Guadeloupe sometime between 
 1635 and 1640, was of the usual kind incidental to the settle- 
 ment of a new colony. We have had to notice it in Virginia 
 (" from pestilent ships," the governor thought), in St Christopher, 
 and in other new settlements. In a petition of the Governor and 
 Company of the Somers Islands, July 28, 1639, it is said that 
 about one hundred and thirty of their colonists had transplanted 
 themselves last year to St Lucia, where they suffered so much 
 
A case of Yclloiv Fever described. 623 
 
 from sickness that not one was in health \ Any one of those 
 epidemics among new settlers might be diagnosed yellow fever 
 with as much warrant as another ; but the deadly infection 
 of 1647-8 was something special, different from all that had 
 preceded, and to be accounted the first appearance of yellow 
 fever whether in the West Indies or anywhere else^ 
 
 Yellow fever received much elucidation in after years, both 
 as regards its symptoms and pathology, and as regards its 
 circumstances and causation. To get a familiar view of what 
 the disease was like, let us take the following graphic case 
 recorded by Moseley at Jamaica more than a century after the 
 date with which we are still engaged^: 
 
 " The last patient I saw, in the last stage of the yellow fever, was Captain 
 Mawhood of the 85th regt. at Port Royal, in Jamaica on the 24th Sept., 
 1780. It was on the fourth day of his illness. He had been in the island 
 seven weeks. 
 
 I arrived at the lodgings of this much esteemed young man about four 
 hours before his death. When I entered the room, he was vomiting a 
 black, muddy cruor ; and was bleeding at the nose. A bloody ichor was 
 oozing from the corners of his eyes, and from his mouth and gums. His 
 face was besmeared with blood ; and with the dulness of his eyes, it 
 presented a most distressing contrast to his natural visage. His abdomen 
 was swelled, and inflated prodigiously. His body was all over of a deep 
 yellow, interspersed with livid spots. His hands and feet were of a livid 
 hue. Every part of him was cold excepting about his heart. He had a 
 deep, strong hiccup, but neither delirium nor coma ; and was at my first 
 seeing him, as I thought, in his perfect senses. He looked at the changed 
 appearance of his skin, and expressed, though he could not speak, by his 
 sad countenance, that he knew life was soon to yield up her citadel, now 
 abandoning the rest of his body. Exhausted with vomiting, he at last was 
 suffocated with the blood he was endeavouring to bring up, and expired." 
 
 One of the best summaries of its symptoms is that given by 
 the Rev. Griffith Hughes, rector of one of the Barbados 
 parishes* : 
 
 ' Cal. State Papers, Amer. and W. I., I. 301. 
 
 - The chronology of yellow-fever epidemics in Ilirscli (i. 318) is inadc to liegin 
 with Guadeloupe, 1635 and 1640, on the authority of Dutcitre (as above), the 
 epidemic of 1647 at Bridgetown being the third in order. 
 
 ^ Benjamin Moseley, M.D., Treatise on Tropical Diseases, and on t/ie Climate of 
 the West Indies, 3rd ed. (1803), p. 476. 
 
 ■* Hughes, The Natural History of Barbados. London, 1750, p. 37. 
 
624 Characters of Yellow Fever. 
 
 " The attack begins with a feeling of chill lasting an hour or two. Then 
 violent fever comes on, with excessive pain in the head, back, and limbs, 
 loss of strength, great dejection of spirits, insatiable thirst, restlessness, 
 sometimes vomiting, redness of the eyes, and that redness in a few days 
 turning to yellow. If the patient turn yellow soon, he has scarce a chance 
 for life, and, the sooner he does, the worse. After some days the pain in 
 the head abates, as well as the fever. A sweat breaks out, and the patient 
 appears to be better ; but on a narrow view a yellowness appears in his eyes 
 and skin, and he becomes visibly worse. About this time he sometimes 
 spits blood, and that by mouthfuls ; as this continues, he grows cold and 
 his pulse abates till at last it is quite gone, and the patient becomes almost as 
 cold as a stone, and continues in that state with a composed sedate mind. In 
 this condition he may perhaps live twelve hours, without any sensible pulse 
 or heat, and then expire. Such were the symptoms and progress of this 
 fever in the year 17 15." He adds that the h;Temorrhage was sometimes from 
 the nose or rectum. "A loose tooth being drawn from a person who had 
 the fever very severely, there issued out from the hole a great quantity of 
 black stinking blood, which still kept oozing till the third day, on which the 
 patient died in great agonies and convulsions." The symptoms were not 
 uniform in all, nor in every visitation. It was most commonly rife and fatal 
 in May, June, July and August, and then mostly among strangers, though a 
 great many of the inhabitants died of it in 1696 and a great many at different 
 periods since. (The next Barbados epidemic after 1647 was in 1671.) 
 
 Now, of that remarkable disease, a pestilent fever with 
 haemorrhages, having a final stage of collapse not unlike the algid 
 termination of cholera, and a mortality equalled only by that of 
 plague itself, or, in after times, by that of cholera, it will be 
 difficult to find instances in any part of the world previous to 
 the Barbados, St Christopher, and Guadeloupe epidemics of 
 1647 — 48. Not only so, but these and other West Indian 
 harbours were the distinctive seats of it for long after. From 
 first to last yellow fever has been an infection of certain 
 harbours — of the shipping anchored, moored, or careened in 
 them, and of the houses nearest to the shore. In the Barbados 
 epidemic of 1647, Ligon says, the ships at anchor in Carlisle 
 Bay were for the most part infected ; Dutertre says that the 
 crew and passengers died of it on board the ship which brought 
 it to Guadeloupe ; he says, also, that it had come to St Christo- 
 pher with certain ships ; and Ligon clearly suspects that it may 
 have had an origin on board ship : "for in long voyages diseases 
 grow at sea and take away many passengers, and these diseases 
 
Mortality of the Guinea slave-trade. 625 
 
 prove contagious." We have had many instances of the sick- 
 nesses of voyages, not only scurvy but also fevers. But these 
 ship-fevers were not yellow fever ; we know more of them in 
 later periods of the history, when they were recognized as ship- 
 typhus. For yellow fever we must seek something more distinc- 
 tive, and that distinctive thing we shall probably find in a kind 
 of voyage which we have not hitherto considered from the 
 point of view of its sicknesses — the Middle Passage, or the 
 voyage with negroes from the African coast across the tropical 
 belt to one part or another of the New World. Let us then 
 take that particular kind of voyage, as we have already taken 
 the voyages of the East India Company's ships, the voyages of 
 emigrant ships from England to the North-American Colonies, 
 and those from France and England to the West Indies. 
 
 Dutertre, our authority for the first yellow fever in St Christo- 
 pher, is also a witness to the sicknesses and mortality of the 
 Middle Passage. Of the negroes, he says, more die on the 
 passage than land. He has known captains who have taken on 
 board up to 700 in one ship and landed only 200 ; they died of 
 misery and hunger, and the stifling monotony of tropical calms. 
 Some of the slaves are of high degree ; there was one negress, in 
 particular, whom all the rest looked up to as a princess. 
 
 The African slave-trade was not altogether so reputable as 
 to have had the incidents of the voyages recorded with anything 
 approaching to scientific fulness. But within the period that 
 now occupies us, there are four notices of arrivals of slavers in 
 the West Indies from Guinea, in which the health of the voyage 
 had called for remark \ In a letter from Barbados, March 20, 
 1664., it is said that the 'Speedwell' has arrived with 282 negroes, 
 who have greatly lost in value owing to smallpox breaking out 
 amongst them; the 'Success' brought 193 blacks; the 'Susan' 
 230, which were not allowed to be landed until the officers of 
 the ship had proved that they had not collected them within the 
 Royal African Company's limits. Another Barbados letter of 
 March 31, 1664, says that "there has been a great mortality 
 amongst the negroes [.-' on St Christopher and Nevis] which the 
 African Company's physician at Barbados, De La Rouse, assures 
 
 ' Ca/. S. P. Amer. and W. I., under the dates. 
 
 c. 40 
 
626 Sickness and mortality among negro slaves. 
 
 them is through a malignant distemper contracted, they think, 
 through so many sick and decaying negroes being thronged 
 together, and perhaps furthered by the smallpox in Captain 
 Carteret's ships. Most men refused to receive any of them, 
 and Philip Fusseires, a surgeon, to whom they sold twenty at a 
 low rate, lost every one." This is a confused letter, but the 
 reference to " sick and decaying negroes thronged together," 
 appears to mean, not a sharp sickness soon over, but a general 
 sickly state and loss of condition, which had come upon them 
 during the voyage\ The third letter is from Barbados, June 25, 
 1667 : from Guinea are arrived four ships, two of the African 
 Company's, and two private ; in which had happened a great 
 mortality of negroes and of the ships' companies. Once more, 
 to bring out the long imprisonment of negroes under decks 
 while the slaver was filling up on the coast, T. Barrett writing 
 from Port Royal on October 17, 1672, to James Littleton, "has 
 heard that Capt. James Tallers bought the negroes for Littleton 
 from another ship in Guinea which had them three months 
 aboard, and that they were almost all starved and surfeycatted 
 [surfeit had come to mean dysentery], he having fed them with 
 little else but musty corn. There must have been something 
 extraordinary that so many of them died." 
 
 In one of the letters we hear of sickness and mortality not 
 only of slaves on the passage but also of the ships' companies. 
 Long after, Clarkson showed from the muster-rolls of Liverpool 
 slave-ships that the slave-trade, instead of being a " nursery " of 
 British sailors, was their graved There are, however, few medical 
 
 ^ In Sir John Hawkins' second voyage as a slaver (1565), he was allowed to 
 trade on the Spanish Main only for his "lean negroes," which were within the 
 purchasing means of the poorer Spaniards. The voyage had been tedious, and the 
 
 supply of water short "for so great a company of negroes Many never thought to 
 
 have reached to the Indies without great death of negroes and of themselves ; but the 
 Almighty God, who never suffereth His Elect to perish," etc. Hakluyt, in. 501. 
 
 2 Clarkson, History of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade. New ed. , Lond. 
 i839> PP* 3°7> 35^* ^^ showed his prepared document to Pitt : — 
 
 "Mr Pitt turned over leaf after leaf, in which the copies of the muster-rolls were 
 contained, with great patience ; and when he had looked over about a hundred pages 
 accurately, and found the name of every seaman inserted, his former abode or service, 
 the time of his entry, and what had become of him, either by death, discharge, or 
 
Smallpox and Flux in slave-ships. 627 
 
 particulars ; doubtless many of the deaths among the crews 
 occurred on the coast, from fever, dysentery and the Hke brought 
 on by debauchery and during trading excursions up the rivers 
 in the long-boat ; but from the third of the letters quoted it 
 appears that there had been also deaths on the voyage. Of 
 the sicknesses among the negroes, more is said of smallpox than 
 of any other malady in the foregoing records. But smallpox 
 was not in ordinary circumstances a very fatal or very severe 
 disease among negroes, although it was very common. An 
 early medical writer on the diseases of the Guinea Coast, both 
 of white men and negroes, Dr Aubrey, "who resided many years 
 on the coast of Guinea," may pass as a credible witness in the 
 matter, the more so as his book shows him to have been com- 
 petent in his profession ^ 
 
 " Measles and smallpox," he says, " are no ways dangerous, 
 nor so troublesome as in cold climates, neither are they so very 
 sick e'er they come out, nor remains there any great sign of 
 them after they recover. Abundance of these poor creatures 
 are lost on board ships, to the great prejudice of the owners and 
 scandal of the surgeon, merely through the surgeon's ignorance ; 
 because he knows not what they are afflicted with, but supposing 
 it to be a fever, bleeds and purges or vomits them into an 
 incurable diarrhoea, and in a very few days they become a feast 
 for some hungry shark. When they are in the woods sick of 
 these diseases, they take nothing but cold water, and suck 
 oranges, and yet recover, as I myself have been an eye-witness 
 many a time; and the grandy-men's children are treated no 
 otherwise in their sickness, and are very well of the smallpox in 
 less than half a moon," etc. It is conceivable, however, that 
 smallpox left to itself would not have run so favourable a 
 course in the hold of a slaver as in the native huts of the 
 negroes. On board ship the subjects of smallpox died from a 
 complication of diarrhoea ; and, according to the same writer, 
 
 desertion, he expressed his surprise at the great pains which had been taken in this 
 branch of the inquiry ; and confessed, with some emotion, that his doubts were 
 wholly removed with respect to the destructive nature of this employ." (p, 273.) 
 
 ^ T. Aubrey, M.D., The Sea-Siirgeon.or the Guhtca Man's Vade Mecum. London, 
 1729, p. 107. 
 
 40 — 2 
 
628 Diet and regimen on hoard slave-ships. 
 
 diarrhoea or dysentery was the grand cause of mortality on the 
 voyage, the most inveterate form of it, (according to his fixed 
 belief), occurring in those who had been constitutionally affected 
 by yaws: "This (the yawey flux) is the mortal disease that cuts 
 off three parts in four of the negroes that are commonly lost on 
 board ships." But the same writer reveals enough to let us 
 understand the prevalence of flux as a primary malady. The 
 food of the slaves on board ship, to say nothing of the regimen, 
 was distasteful to them. They missed their palm oil and other 
 accustomed articles of diet. They were fed, morning and even- 
 ing, on pease, beans, and the like, mixed with " rotten salt 
 herrings," with an occasional meal of salt beef or salt pork, and 
 a stinted allowance of water. 
 
 "These are foods that very few of them will eat. Very often they are 
 abused by sailors, who beat and kick them to that degree that sometimes 
 they never recover ; and then the surgeon is blamed for letting the slaves 
 die, when they are murthered, partly by strokes and partly famished ; for if 
 they do not eat such salt things as are enough to destroy them, they must 
 fast till supper ; and then they lose their appetites, and perhaps fall sick, 
 partly through fasting and partly with grief to see themselves so treated ; 
 and if once they take anything to heart, all the surgeon's art will never keep 
 them alive ; for they never eat anything by fair means or foul, because they 
 choose rather to die than be ill-treated... When they are costive and griped 
 [by the salt food], they stay betwixt decks and will eat nothing ; but cry 
 yarry, yarry, and perhaps creep under one of the platforms and hide 
 themselves, and die there, and the surgeon can't think what is the meaning 
 on't...I am very sensible that it is impossible to maintain the slaves on 
 board, after one quits the Coast, without salt provisions ; but then care 
 might be taken to water the beef and pork ere it be boiled, and also to bring 
 a cruce of palm-oil round the deck from mess to mess, and also pepper, and 
 let everyone take as he pleaseth.... Another principal cause of their destruc- 
 tion is forcing them into a tub of cold water every day, and pouring the 
 water on their heads by buckets-full " — doubtless for the sake of cleanliness, 
 although they were too ill to stand such washings. 
 
 Whatever else the negroes died of on the voyage from 
 Guinea, they did not die of yellow fever : there is hardly another 
 generality of pathology so well based as that Africans of pure 
 blood have been found immune from that infection in all circum- 
 stances ashore or afloat — protected not by acclimatisation but 
 by some strange privilege of their race. And yet we have to 
 think of yellow fever as somehow related to the over-sea traffic 
 
Dysentery in negroes, Yellozu Fever in zchite men. 629 
 
 in negroes. Two instances from the later history will serve to 
 bring the problem concretely before us. In 18 15, a British 
 transport, the ' Regalia,' vv^as employed in carrying recruits from 
 the West Coast of Africa to the black regiments in the West 
 Indies. The health of the ship when on the African coast had 
 been good ; but on the voyage across with the newly-enlisted 
 negroes, much sickness, chiefly dysenteric, occurred among the 
 latter, whereupon yellow fever broke out with great malignancy, 
 attacking all on board except the black soldiers, who were from 
 first to last untouched by it. From such experiences as that, 
 Sir Gilbert Blane formulated a somewhat vague doctrine that 
 the causes which produced dysentery in the negro produced 
 yellow fever in the white race. But it is more probable that the 
 dysenteric matters of the negroes had themselves in turn bred 
 an infection of yellow fever for the whites. To take another 
 case: In 1795, after the capture of Martinique from the French, 
 one of the frigates ' La Pique,' was manned by a British crew 
 and sent to Barbados. On the voyage they rescued two hundred 
 negroes from a ship which was about foundering. The negroes 
 were confined in the hold of 'La Pique;' and in a short time 
 yellow fever broke out among her English crew, killing one 
 hundred and fifty of them, although it was not prevalent among 
 the blacks at all. " Such a mixture of men," says Gillespie, 
 " strangers to each other, has been often found to occasion 
 sickness in ships ; and, together with other causes, fatally 
 operated here before the arrival of the ship at Barbados.,.. This 
 is a melancholy instance of the generation of a fatal epidemic 
 on board ship at a time when the inhabitants of Barbados and 
 the crews of the other ships in company remained free from any 
 such disease \" 
 
 But such instances are comparatively rare, while epidemics 
 of yellow fever on shore, or among the shipping in an anchorage, 
 have been common. It is possible that the yellow fever expe- 
 riences of the ' Regalia ' and ' La Pique ' had happened often to 
 the white crews of slavers ; we shall never know. What we do 
 know is that the ports of debarkation of the slave-trade became 
 
 ' Gillespie, Obs. on the Diseases in H. M.'s Squadron on the Lee'u>ard Island 
 Station in 1794-6. Lond. 1800. 
 
630 Source of the Yellow Fever at Bridgetoivn, 1647. 
 
 the endemic seats of yellow fever. The theory is that the 
 matters productive of yellow fever were brought to the West 
 Indian harbours, deposited there, left to ferment and accumulate, 
 and so to taint the soil, the mud and the water as to become an 
 enduring source of poisonous miasmata. The facts in support 
 of that view are not far to seek. 
 
 Let us come back to the circumstances of Bridgetown, 
 Barbados, when the yellow fever broke out first in 1647. A 
 good many slavers had landed their cargoes at Bridgetown in 
 the years preceding (in 1643 the island had at least 6400 
 negroes), and each of them had left behind a material quantity 
 of the filth of the voyage, having probably been careened for 
 the purpose of cleaning out and overhauling. There are tradi- 
 tions still extant that the cleaning of a slave-ship after a voyage 
 from Africa was an exceptional task, to which Kroomen used to 
 be set. Be that as it may, it needs only a little reflection to see 
 that a crowd of some hundreds of negroes under gratings in the 
 hold or 'tween decks of a brig or schooner, suffering at first fiom 
 sickness of the sea and, as the voyage across the tropic belt 
 progressed, from the more distressing flux, must have set all 
 rules of cleanliness at defiance. The ship's bilges and ballast 
 would be foul beyond measure : and it was just the contents of 
 her bilges, with or without the ballast itself, that would be 
 pumped out or thrown out when the ship was moored in the 
 harbour or careened on the mud. At Bridgetown there were 
 no plunging tides, such as we watch on our own shores, to carry 
 the filth out to sea. The spring tides, says Ligon, rose only 
 four or five feet ; the flood tide carried the water over the banks 
 into the lagoon, and the ebb carried it off"; but at neap tides a 
 quantity of water remained stagnant behind the sea-banks, 
 according to the familiar experience in such circumstances. 
 The flat shore, says Ligon, became " a kind of bog, which vents 
 out so loathsome a savour as cannot but breed ill blood, and is 
 (no doubt) the occasion of much sickness to those that live 
 there." A brackish estuary, with an impeded outfall, will often 
 smell badly, from rotting sea-wrack or other decomposing mat- 
 ters; but we have yet to learn that any so commonplace condi- 
 tions can breed a deadly pestilence such as arose at Bridgetown 
 
Yelloio Fever due to the ordure of slave-ships. G^, i 
 
 for the first time in the autumn of 1647. CarHslc Bay was 
 doubtless a leeward harbour, with high land all round it and 
 a sluggish ebb and flow of the tide, subject to calms and a 
 scorching sun ; but besides all that, the careenage at the head of 
 the bay was the regular receptacle of the ordure of slave-ships 
 year after year. Travellers and imaginative writers have some- 
 times pictured the bays and creeks of the islands and main of 
 the Caribbean Sea as if the mere decay of tropical vegetation 
 had made them pestilentiaP. Risk, of course, there is in such 
 situations, but chiefly when men are exposed by turns to the 
 noonday heat and the nocturnal chill. The ill repute of West 
 Indian harbours, with their sweltering mud, mangrove swamps, 
 and lazy tides, is a composite and confused idea. It is not so 
 much Nature that has made them unwholesome, as man. 
 Yellow fever, in particular, is not a miasm of remote and pri- 
 meval bays or lagoons into which a boat's crew may come once 
 and again ; it is not a fever of any and every part of the coast 
 of a tropical island ; it is a fever of only a few inhabited spots 
 on the wide shores of the globe ; and those seats of it, so far as 
 it has been steady or periodic in its prevalence, are all of them 
 harbours distinguished at one time or another as the resort of 
 slave-ships, and distinguished from many other ports of either 
 Hemisphere in no other way. Everything in the subsequent 
 history of yellow fever pointed to its being a poison lurking in 
 the mud or even in the water of slave-ports, and in the soil of 
 their fore-shores, wharves and houses along the beach. Miasmata 
 rose from the ground in the latter situations, to taint the air of 
 the town at certain seasons ; the poison also entered the bilges 
 of ships moored or careened in the harbour, and rose from the 
 holds as a noxious vapour to infect the crews. The miasmata 
 were deadly for the most part to new comers, especially to 
 those from the colder latitudes, although acclimatised residents 
 were not exempt in a time of epidemic; but there is very 
 general agreement that they carried no risk for negroes of pure 
 blood. 
 
 What was there special in the circumstances of 1647 to give 
 rise to the first epidemic explosion of yellow fever? There was, 
 
 1 For example, Mr R. L. Stevenson in a striking passage of Treastire Island. 
 
632 Dry season at Bridgetoivn, 1647. 
 
 in the first place, the accretion of the pecuHar fermenting fihh 
 in the mud and soil, which had been going on for several years. 
 Secondly, there was the brisk trade, as indicated by the large 
 number of ships in the harbour, a great concourse of new 
 arrivals having been often remarked in the later history as one 
 of the conditions of an outbreak. But more particularly there 
 were the peculiarities of the season : it was one of those seasons 
 in which the regular rains of June and following months had 
 failed. What we know on that head comes exclusively from 
 Winthrop's 'Journal,' already quoted. There was so great a 
 drouth, he says, that their potatoes, corn, &c., were burnt up ; 
 and after the "great dearth of victuals in these islands followed 
 presently a great mortality." But the mortality was certainly 
 not from famine, nor from the effects of famine. It was the 
 parching drought that the epidemic really followed, and not 
 merely the scarcity, which was, indeed, relieved by the ships 
 from New England, and was so little felt that Ligon does not 
 mention it. The rainy season missed, or all but missed, in a 
 tropical country means a great fall of the ground water ; it 
 means the pores of the ground filled with air to an unusual 
 extent ; and that is a state of any soil, if it be already full of 
 fermenting organic matters, which breeds the most dangerous 
 half-products of decomposition, or, in other words, the most 
 poisonous miasmata. There needs always some such special 
 determining thing to explain the epidemic outbursts of yellow 
 fever ; in the later history we shall see that the first great 
 epidemic of it at Jamaica followed immediately upon the earth- 
 quake that destroyed Port Royal. 
 
 Illustrations of the ordinary principle that seasonal and 
 periodic infection is dependent on the state of the ground 
 water, are given at greater length in the chapters upon the later 
 epidemics of plague in London. What applies in that respect 
 to one soil-poison applies to another; and it will be shown in 
 the proper place to apply with least ambiguity of all to Asiatic 
 cholera, as well as to typhoid fever. Yellow fever is, in clinical 
 characters, allied more to typhus than to typhoid ; but it is a 
 typhus of the soil, whereas the common and much less fatal 
 typhus of ordinary domestic life in colder latitudes is an infec- 
 
Mortality from Yellow Fever in 1647-48. 633 
 
 tion above ground — of the air, walls, floors and furnishings of 
 rooms. There is the same relation between yellow fever and 
 ordinary typhus in that respect, as between plague and ordinary 
 typhus. When ordinary typhus has passed into a soil-poison, 
 by aggravation of conditions, as in the experience of Arab 
 encampments in North Africa, it has become at the same time 
 bubonic fever, or, approximately plague proper. Yellow fever 
 had its habitat essentially in the soil, from the peculiar circum- 
 stances (importation of the crude materials of it by ships 
 engaged in the slave-trade); and plague in ordinary, or in 
 European experience, had also its habitat in the soil, from 
 circumstances which have been elsewhere given as its probable 
 conditions. 
 
 It is perhaps because they are soil-poisons that those two 
 diseases rank so high in their fatality and quickness of execu- 
 tion, in which respects they resemble Asiatic cholera, and differ 
 from most other infections. Winthrop says that the first 
 yellow fever killed in three days, and was therefore comparable 
 to the plague. Ligon says that it was as killing a disease as the 
 plague (of which both he and Winthrop would have had old 
 experience at home), and he uses the stock phrase, that the 
 living were hardly able to bury the dead. Winthrop says that 
 6000 died in Barbados : and one of his correspondents in the 
 island, Vines, writes that " in our parish there were buried 
 twenty in a week, and many weeks together fifteen or sixteen." 
 Dutertre says that nearly a third of the colonists of St Christo- 
 pher died of it, and that it lingered there for eighteen months, 
 and for twenty months in Guadeloupe, whither it was believed 
 to have been brought in the ship ' Le Boeuf.' 
 
 Barbados, St Christopher and Guadeloupe (with minor settle- 
 ments on Martinique, Nevis, &c.) were the earliest English and 
 French colonies in the Caribbean Sea. The Spaniards had 
 occupied the Greater Antilles (Hispaniola or San Domingo, 
 Cuba, Porto Rico and Jamaica) long before. Nothing particular 
 is known of the health of these colonies except for the earlier 
 years of the 16th century, when the native populations were 
 ravaged by the great pox and the smallpox. But when 
 Jamaica was seized from the Spaniards by the army of the 
 
634 Expedition against St Domingo, 1654-55. 
 
 Commonwealth in 1655 we begin to have authentic information, 
 the state of health being perhaps the most prominent thing 
 (although little noticed by historians) in the despatches. That 
 incident in the expansion of England, relating as it does to the 
 planting of what was for long our greatest island colony, and 
 illustrating the risks of those early enterprises more fully than 
 any other of the kind, may fitly come into this chapter and 
 conclude it. 
 
 The Great Mortality in the occupying of Jamaica. 
 
 The Lord Protector's design in the year 1654, to acquire one 
 or more of the Spanish Antilles for an English colony, was more 
 methodically conceived and more strenuously supported by the 
 resources of the State than any previous attempt at colonization. 
 It was attended with disasters on a proportionate scale, and at 
 first with ignominy and failure which must have added seriously 
 to the burden of Cromwell's later years. The original design, 
 in the admiral's sealed orders, was to seize upon the old Spanish 
 colony of Hispaniola or San Domingo ^ A fleet had been fitted 
 out at Portsmouth, which sailed on 19th — 21st December, 1654, 
 carrying a land force of three thousand men. After a favourable 
 voyage, the fleet of thirty sail, half of them victuallers, arrived at 
 Barbados on February i, where they lay until March 31, engaging 
 settlers for the proposed new colony as well as campaigners, 
 including a troop of cavalry, from the not very choice class of 
 English subjects in that island. Some twenty Dutch ships were 
 seized and made victuallers or transports. The expedition re- 
 ceived a draft also from Nevis, and calling at St Christopher 
 they took up 1300 more, making in all an addition of over 5000 
 colonial men, besides women and children, to their original force. 
 On April 13 the fleet arrived off the harbour of St Domingo. 
 It came out afterwards that the sight of so many English frigates 
 and other ships had driven the townspeople to instantaneous 
 flight, so that the capital would have fallen to the English 
 
 ' Thurloe'.s State Papers, in. IV. and v.; Ha7-l. Miscell. in. 513 ; Long's History 
 of Jamaica, 3 vols. London, 1774; Cat. S. P., Amer. and W. 1. 
 
The English in St Domingo, April, 1655. 635 
 
 without a blow. But no landing was attempted in the harbour, 
 owing to difficulties about piloting, ignorance of the depth of 
 water, and the like. It was decided to disembark the force in a 
 bay at the mouth of a river some six or ten miles (two leagues) 
 to the eastward, where Drake had landed in 1586. Most of the 
 ships, however, were carried past the appointed place, and came 
 to anchor in another bay thirty miles (ten leagues) eastwards 
 from St Domingo ; there a multitude of some 7000 soldiers and 
 colonials, with their women and children, were landed on the 
 beach with three days' rations. Several of the ships landed 
 their men at the original rendezvous two leagues from St 
 Domingo, to the number of about 2000 in three regiments. The 
 larger and farther-off force began to advance on St Domingo 
 through dense woods ; their presence in the country was soon 
 known in all the plantations, whence the people fled to the 
 capital for safety, so that the San Domingans were able to 
 extemporise a considerable force for defence. The advance 
 of the English was hindered by the stifling heat ; distressed by 
 thirst, they ate immoderately of oranges and other fruits, and in 
 one way or another brought on dysentery. General Venables, 
 in a despatch to Cromwell, says that by these causes they " were 
 troubled with violent fluxes, hundreds of our men having dropped 
 down by the way, some sick, others dead." Meanwhile the 
 nearer and smaller force of some 2000 had advanced on St 
 Domingo ; they got over one of the two leagues between them 
 and the capital, but an old fort, manned for the occasion, barred 
 the way, and the regiments fell back upon the river whence they 
 had started, and rested there five days, the main body having 
 meanwhile come up with them. One attempt after another was 
 made to pass the half-way fort, but the Spaniards held their 
 ground, and actually inflicted defeat in the open and a dis- 
 graceful rout upon the English, some of whose gallant officers 
 threw their lives away in a vain attempt to lead their men. All 
 the while this broken and demoralised mob was without proper 
 supplies from the fleet, the officers of which were either unable 
 to communicate with the land force or indifferent as to their duty. 
 The state of health on the 25th of April, some ten or twelve days 
 after landing, is thus described in a letter : " And the rains nightly 
 
6^6 Seizure of Jamaica, May, 1655. 
 
 pouring, with fogs and dews along the river, so soaked our bodies 
 with flux, and none escaping that violence, that our freshment 
 [by retreat to the river] proved a weakening instead of support," 
 Another letter of two days' later date (April 27) says : " The 
 rains increasing, our men weakening, all even to death fluxing, 
 the seamen aboard neglecting, — that forced us to eat all our troop 
 horses." An attempt was made to restore discipline ; an officer 
 of high rank was cashiered for a coward, his sword having been 
 broken over his head ; a soldier was shot for desertion ; some 
 loose women in men's clothes from Barbados were chastised, 
 and a sharp look-out kept for other camp-followers of the kind. 
 At length it was decided by Venables and his council that the 
 attempt on San Domingo must be abandoned ; probably it was 
 seen that the Barbadian and St Christopher following was a 
 fatal encumbrance at that stage, the more so as the rainy season 
 was in progress. By the third of May the whole expedition was 
 re-embarked, the Spaniards making no attempt to harass the 
 operation. The number reshipped is said to have been seven- 
 teen hundred short of that which landed three weeks before : a 
 good many had fallen fighting, others were slain by the Spaniards 
 or negroes in the woods, and some appear to have died of the 
 flux. The attempt on St Domingo having failed it was decided 
 to make a descent on Jamaica, the least important of the Spanish 
 Antilles. On the passage thither, Winslow, one of the three lay 
 commissioners or " politicals " with the expedition, died " very 
 suddenly of a fever." 
 
 On May 10 the ships entered the bay of Caguya. Admiral 
 Penn, being resolved not to repeat the mistake they had made 
 at St Domingo, kept sail on the ' Martin ' galley until she was 
 beached under the small fort of the Passage, at the head of the 
 bay, so as to cover the debarkation with his guns. However, 
 the io.^ Spaniards living at the shore fled, and the whole force, 
 to the number of some 7000, was landed by midnight. Venables 
 then returned to his ship for his usual repose, leaving the men 
 under arms all night. Not until nine next day, by which hour 
 the cool of the morning was lost, did the march begin to the 
 capital, St Jago de la Vega (" St James of the Plain "), situated 
 on an elevation by the river Cobre, in the midst of an alluvial 
 
The Spaniards driven from Spanish Town. 6},"/ 
 
 plain with an amphitheatre of hills behind it, some six miles from 
 the place of landing. About two in the afternoon they came 
 before the town, and marched in that night : they found it 
 empty, " nothing but bare walls, bedsteads, chairs and cow- 
 hides." The town is said to have had some 1700 houses (too 
 many for its population), two churches, two chapels, and an 
 abbey; there all the Spaniards dwelt in ease and indolence, 
 " having their slaves at their several small plantations, who 
 constantly brought them store of provisions and fruits," In 
 this great island there were but about 3000 inhabitants, half of 
 them, if not more, being slaves. There were no manufactures or 
 native commodities, except a very little sugar and cocoa. The 
 four ships that came thither in a year traded generally for hides 
 and tallow only. 
 
 The Spanish colony had removed as much of their property 
 as they could in their first flight, and shortly sent their head 
 men with their governor, " an old decrepid seignior full of the 
 French disease " carried by two bearers in a hammock, to treat 
 for their re-entry into the town. Venables was afterwards much 
 blamed for returning the politeness of the Spaniards ; he received 
 their presents of fresh provisions and fruit, accepted their pro- 
 mises of a steady supply for his men, and gave them the free run 
 of their own houses for a week or so, by which time they are said 
 to have carried off all their personal belongings of value. They 
 objected to leave the island, saying that Jamaica was their home, 
 and that they had no friends either in New Spain or in Old Spain. 
 At length they left their old settlement, with the avowed purpose 
 of embarking for Cuba from a bay ou the same side to the west. 
 There were divided counsels among the English as to the treat- 
 ment of the Spaniards, and Colonel Bullard was sent towards the 
 bay with a large force to intercept them in their flight. They 
 had, however, given a false direction, and had in reality crossed 
 the mountains northwards to the other side of the island, clearing 
 the country as they went of cattle and produce of every kind. 
 Some of them, including eight families of the upper class, at 
 length found their way to Cuba, but the larger number remained 
 on the north of the island, where they were overtaken by famine 
 and pestilence before a few months, and nearly exterminated. 
 
638 Famine and Flux at Spanish Town, 1655. 
 
 Their negroes took to the mountains, and became the maroons, 
 famous in the later history of Jamaica. 
 
 In pursuing the Spaniards, the English troops went roaming 
 over the country, destroying the hogs and cattle in mere wanton- 
 ness, and leaving their carcases to putrefy. In a short time the 
 multitude of English at St Jago de la Vega (Spanish Town) were 
 on short rations, and before long " dogs and cats the best part of 
 their diet." The stores from the ships had been left on the beach 
 exposed to the weather, and soon turned mouldy, the men re- 
 fusing to carry them, in the absence of waggons, over the six 
 miles between the shore and the head-quarters. Two or three 
 victuallers besides had arrived from England within a week or 
 two of the first landing, but, for all that, the expedition was 
 starving. Many of the men were suffering from the flux which 
 they had contracted in St Domingo. Venables, in a private 
 letter of May 25, or a fortnight after landing, gives the number 
 of the sick at near 3000 ; in a despatch to Cromwell, of June 4, 
 he says : 
 
 " The want we have been in hitherto of bread (we not being able to be 
 suddenly supplied therewith out of the fleet, or our stores, through want of 
 waggons and other conveniences for the transportation thereof), joined with 
 the drinking of water, hath already cast both officers and soldiers into such 
 violent fluxes that they look more like dead men crept out of their graves 
 than persons living ; and this so generally that we have not above two 
 colonels in health, three majors, some seven field officers in all ; besides 
 many have been already swept away with this disease. We lost Mr Winslow 
 very suddenly, in our sailing towards this island, of a fever." 
 
 On June 9 there was a general muster of the land forces, 
 " whose number was found to be much diminished of late, not so 
 much by any pestilential or violent disease, as for mere want of 
 natural sustenance ; which, in common reason, may seem strange 
 that of all men soldiers should starve in a cook's shop, as the 
 saying is\" 
 
 In a despatch of June 13, Venables says that " about 2000 are 
 sick. Our men die daily, eating roots and fresh fish (when any 
 food is got), without bread or very little," He was himself ill, 
 having had the flux for five weeks. Admiral Penn (father of 
 
 ' llarl. Miscel. I.e. 
 
Infection spreads to the fresh troops. 639 
 
 the founder of Pennsylvania) had resolved to go home with 
 two-thirds of the ships, thinking that his services were no longer 
 needed, and having been advised that he could be of more service 
 to Cromwell in England. He sailed on June 21, leaving the 
 frigates and the Dutch prizes, under Goodson ; and Venables 
 followed in four days, with the surviving " political," leaving the 
 settlement in charge of Fortescue, who wrote home, " I am left 
 to act without book." 
 
 Meanwhile Cromwell had got ready reinforcements, sparing 
 no trouble or expense at home. The expedition in aid left 
 Plymouth on July ii, 1655, under the command of Sedgwick, 
 and arrived at Barbados on August 26-31, after a fine passage; 
 they left again on September 7, having trimmed their casks and 
 taken in water with other refreshments. This force was in the 
 best of health until after leaving Barbados. Sedgwick writes : 
 
 " I think never so many ships sailed together with less trouble, grief or 
 danger than we did ; only God did in a little visit us between this [Jamaica] 
 and Barbados with some sickness, I apprehend caused by some distemper 
 taken there [ ? yellow fever] ; in which visitation, I think, in the whole fleet 
 we lost between 20 and 30 seamen and soldiers." 
 
 Finding the Spanish flag flying at San Domingo, they came 
 on to Jamaica on October i, and there found a calamitous state 
 of things. 
 
 " For the army, I found them in as sad and deplorable and distracted 
 condition as can be thought of: commanders, some left them, some dead, 
 some sick, and some in indifferent health ; the soldiery many dead, their 
 carcases lying unburied in the highways and among bushes, to and again ; 
 many of them that were alive walked like ghosts or dead men, who, as I 
 went through the town, lay groaning and crying out, Bread, for God's 
 sake!" 
 
 Sedgwick brought with him in four victuallers a thousand 
 tons of provisions, which he secured in a store built for the 
 occasion on the beach. Among his troops was Colonel 
 Humphry's regiment of 831 "lusty, healthful, gallant men, who 
 encouraged the whole army." But now we begin to sec that 
 the sickness at St Jago de la Vega had become infective or 
 pestilential. The new-comers, healthy and well found as they 
 
640 Fever and Flux at Spanish Town, 1655-56. 
 
 were, began at once to sicken and to die. Of Humphry's 
 regiment, on November 5 : 
 
 " There are at this day 50 of them dead, whereof two captains, a 
 lieutenant, and two ensigns, the colonel himself very weak, the lieutenant- 
 colonel at death's door. Soldiers die daily, I believe 140 every week, and so 
 have done ever since I came hither. It is strange to see lusty men, in 
 appearance well, and in three or four days in the grave, snatched away in 
 a moment with fevers, agues, fluxes and dropsies, a confluence of many 
 diseases. We furnished the army now with 60 butts of Madeira wine, and 
 to every regiment a butt of brandy, and a hogshead or two of sweet oil. 
 Our soldiers have destroyed all sorts of fruits, and provisions and cattle. 
 Nothing but ruin attends them wherever they go." On January 24, 1656, 
 Sedgwick again writes to Thurloe : " Did you but see the faces of this 
 poor small army with us, how like skeletons they look, it would move pity ; 
 and when I consider the thousands laid in the dust in such a way as God 
 hath visited, my heart mourns. Here hath come down to us from many of 
 the Windward Islands divers people with intentions of sitting down with us, 
 but at their coming hither, either fall sick and die, or are so affrighted and 
 dismayed as that, although to their much impoverishing, yet will not be 
 persuaded to stay with us." 
 
 The men in the fleet were in better health ; but among them 
 also " some die and some are sick, in so much that we need a 
 good recruit fully to man our ships as men-of-war." On the 
 same date (January 24, 1656) Admiral Goodson, writing to 
 Thurloe, estimates the surviving officers and men at 2600, besides 
 women and children ; and in another despatch of that date 
 from Sedgwick and Goodson jointly to Cromwell it is stated : 
 
 "The numbers of the army are much lessened since our last letters 
 [November 5]; the whole not extending to 3000, many of them sick and 
 weak, the best and soundest much abated of their strength and vigor, and 
 God goes on every day to shorten our number. We die daily, not less than 
 fifty every week, which is much considering our small numbers." 
 
 As the season advanced the health of the troops on shore 
 improved. A letter of March 12 says that the condition of the 
 army is much mended ; the soldiers are far more healthful, but 
 much dejected and averse to the place. The fleet was in good 
 spirits, and impatient for action ; however, there was sickness 
 also on board the ships ; they had lost some fourscore men 
 since the last despatch ; and on April 30 the report is : " our 
 seamen arc indifl'erently well in health ; yet some few arc sick, 
 
UnJicaltJiincss of Jamaica at lengtJi ceases. 641 
 
 and God is daily shortening them, so that our fleet will want a 
 recruit of men." Several of the frigates were wormeaten, and 
 careened for repairs. Sickness is reported in the ships as late as 
 October 10, 1656. 
 
 The sickness among all ranks had been so general and 
 severe that it was hardly possible to find senior officers to 
 undertake the government. Fortescue died in October, 1655, 
 and was succeeded temporarily by D'Oyley and others, the sole 
 government being at length given by Cromwell to Sedgwick, 
 who died a few days after receiving his unwelcome commission. 
 Brayne, transferred from Lochaber to Jamaica, also died, and 
 it fell at length to D'Oyley, an effective person in whom all 
 on the spot had confidence, to carry the colony through its 
 troubles. Cromwell spared no effort at home. Immense quan- 
 tities of provisions were shipped ; planters, with their families, 
 'servants' and slaves, to the number of some 1700, were removed 
 to Jamaica from Nevis, under Stokes, the governor of that 
 island ; the New Englanders were also encouraged to resort to 
 the new colony ; and a thousand or so of young men and 
 marriageable young women were furnished from Ireland, together 
 with pioneers, described as of a rougher kind, from Scotland. 
 " And so at length," says Carlyle, " a West-Indian interest did 
 take root ; and bears spices and poisons, and other produce, to 
 this day." 
 
 The sickness and mortality among the first English colonists 
 of Jamaica gave the island a bad name, and must have added 
 not a little to the confusion of ideas already existing as to the 
 pestilent character of tropical climates \ The older sugar- 
 colonies, such as Barbados, which saw in Jamaica a formidable 
 competitor, would appear to have encouraged the notion that 
 
 ^ Sir Anthony Shirley touched at Jamaica in i-;96, and reported, "we have not 
 found in the Indies a more pleasant and wholesome place." Hakluyt, in. 6oi. 
 Long {History of Jamaica, 1774, II. 221) states the case very fairly with reference to 
 the unfortunate expedition of Venables in 1655: "The climate of the island has 
 unjustly been accused by many writers on the subject, the one copying from the other, 
 and represented as almost pestilential, without an examination into the real sources of 
 this mortality, which being fairly stated, it will appear that the same men carrying the 
 like thoughtless conduct and vices into any other uninhabited quarter of the glolie, 
 must infallibly have involved themselves in the like calamitous situation." 
 
 c. 41 
 
642 TJic natural climate of Jamaica. 
 
 climates varied much, that of Jamaica being bad. Soon after 
 the Restoration, Charles II. was urged to give back Jamaica to 
 Spain, and is said to have seriously entertained that purpose. 
 Among the state papers is a document, supposed to have been 
 written in November, 1660, which sets forth the natural ad- 
 vantages of Jamaica, together with two sets of reasons why 
 England should retain it^: , 
 
 "The air here is more temperate than in any of the Caribee Islands, 
 being more northerly and as sufferable hot as in many places. ..The winds 
 here constantly all day blow easterly, so coolly that it renders any labour 
 sufferable at midday.. .We find here is not such antipathy between the 
 constitution of the English and the climate that sickness is not inevitable and 
 contingent ; for we have experimentally found that persons observing a good 
 diet and using moderate exercise, enjoy a somewhat (?) measure of health. 
 The said causes of the mortality of the Army at their first arrival were want 
 of provisions, unwillingness to labour or exercise, and inexcusable discontent 
 to be constrained to stay here. The diseases that strangers are most inci- 
 dent to are dropsies (occasioned often by evil diet and slothfulness), calen- 
 tures (so frequently produced of surfeit), and fevers and agues, which, 
 although very troublesome, are never mortal.... Cagway [Port Royal] is the 
 place where all the merchants reside, being the most healthy place in the 
 island ; whither resort all the men that frequent the Indies, which makes 
 houses so dear that an ordinary house in this town is worth ^40 or ^60 per 
 annum. There are about 200 houses there, all built by the English. About 
 50 houses have been built by the English at the fort of the Passage [at the 
 head of the harbour and the nearest point to Spanish Town] ; of the houses in 
 the old capital, St Jago de la Vega, about 800 are ruinous. As to the number 
 of English in the island, the relics of the six regiments do muster 2200, and 
 it is probable that the planters, merchants, sailors and others may be as 
 many." 
 
 The above statements about the healthiness of Jamaica in 
 1660 were repeated by Dr Trapham, in his work on the climate 
 and diseases of the colony in 1678^ This earliest medical 
 writer is, indeed, more optimist than those who followed him, as 
 to contagious or infective sickness ; there was no smallpox, or 
 very rarely, saving sometimes brought from Guinea by negroes ; 
 and " no depopulating plague that ere I have heard of," saving a 
 
 1 MS. State Papers, Co/otiiat (Record Office), Vol. xiv. No. 57 (1660). 
 ^ Thomas Trapham, M.D., Discourse of the State of Health in yaiiiaica. Lend. 
 1679. 
 
Character of the infection in 1655-56. 643 
 
 pestilential fever brought in by the victorious fleet returned 
 from the signal Panama expedition in 1670. The experiences 
 of yellow fever at Port Royal and Kingston were mostly, if not 
 entirely, subsequent to these dates. But, as there had been 
 yellow fever at Barbados, St Christopher, and Guadeloupe as 
 early as 1647-48, it has been thought probable that the enormous 
 mortality in Jamaica in 1655-56 was from the same endemic 
 cause\ Undoubtedly the epidemic at Spanish Town became at 
 length more than the dysentery which had been brought by 
 some of the troops from San Domingo, or had been induced 
 among others of them by bad food and water ; it became a 
 virulent specific infection, attacking the healthy and well-found 
 reinforcements from England and the new arrivals from the 
 Windward Islands, and destroying them quickly, " in three or 
 four days." Fevers are specially named, as well as fluxes and 
 dropsies ; and the question arises whether the pestilential fever 
 was not yellow fever. 
 
 There is certainly nothing said of the striking and ghastly 
 symptoms of the vomito negro. Moreover the sickness was 
 nearly all at the town of St Jago de la Vega, six miles from 
 the bay, situated on a rising of the plain with a declivity to the 
 Cobre river, a place which was only exceptionally the seat of 
 yellow fever in after-experience. Thus Judge Long, the able 
 historian of Jamaica, says^ : 
 
 " After a series of hot, dry, and calm weather, eight days of continued 
 rain succeeded in May, 1761. Spanish Town grew more sickly than ever I 
 knew it, either before or since. From that period to August there were 
 buried 29 white inhabitants, of whom 15 were soldiers. Their disorder had 
 all the appearance of being the true yellow fever, and was supposed to have 
 been communicated from some ship in Kingston harbour:" 
 
 — Kingston and Port Royal, or the ships moored near to them, 
 being the common habitat of the disease, as in the corresponding 
 circumstances at other West Indian islands. 
 
 But if the infective fever at Spanish Town in 1655 — 56 was 
 almost certainly not yellow fever, it was probably allied to it in 
 
 ^ Moseley, op. cit. p. 421, without reasons given; followed by Hirsch. Geog. 
 and Hist. Pathol. (English transl.), i. .^srS. 
 - Hist, of Jamaica, ni. 61=;. 
 
 41 — 2 
 
644 Not Yellozv Fever at Spanish Tozvn, 1655. 
 
 type. Dysentery had been almost universal ; there was no care 
 of the sick, and, so far as one hears, no medical attendance, no 
 hospitals, no scavenging, no security taken to keep the water- 
 supply pure — nothing, in short, of what is now called sanitation. 
 Sedgwick, arriving on October i, 1655, found even the dead un- 
 buried by the highways and among the bushes. The correlation 
 between dysentery and pestilential fever is no new hypothesis : 
 flux first and fever afterwards has been an experience both 
 in sieges and in ordinary domestic famines on many occasions. 
 The origin of the yellow fever at Barbados and elsewhere in 
 1647 — 8, which has been outlined in this chapter, is but a special 
 application of the same principle, the dysenteric matters which 
 represent the crude source of the infection having been brought 
 in the bilges and ballast of slave-ships, thrown into the mud 
 of almost tideless harbours, left to ferment amidst the heat and 
 moisture of the shore, and so made into a soil-poison which, in 
 due season, would give off emanations, fatal especially to new- 
 comers. Port Royal and Kingston had full experience of that 
 endemic influence in after-years, for the first time in 1692, after 
 the earthquake and disturbance of soil which destroyed the 
 former town and occasioned the building of the latter on the 
 other side of the bay. By that time there had been slavers 
 enough in the bay to bring all the ordure that the hypothesis 
 requires. But, down to 1655, the Spaniards had traded only with 
 hides and tallow in some four ships every year, and had the 
 headquarters of their cultivation and stock-raising at the town in 
 the plain some six miles from the shore. Four or five years after 
 their expulsion we find the whole aspect of the port changed, ac- 
 cording to the description already given. It does not appear 
 that Cromwell looked forward to negro labour in his colony, 
 although the Nevis planters brought their blacks with them. 
 Charles II. had not been many months on the throne when 
 James, earl of Marlborough, petitioned him to offer inducements 
 to the Royal African Company to make Jamaica the staple for 
 the sale of blacks, and to contract with that company for one 
 hundred negroes to be delivered at the island \ Negroes did 
 begin from that time to arrive in Jamaica, although Port Royal 
 
 1 Cal. S. P. Amer. and W. I. 
 
Yellow Fever later at Port Royal and Kingston. 645 
 
 was at first rather a general centre of commerce and piracy than 
 a slave-port like Bridgetown, perhaps because the Windward 
 Islands were strong enough to keep their privileges undivided. 
 As late as 1670 the negro slaves in Jamaica were reckoned at no 
 more than 2500, not counting the old Spanish maroons \ On 
 September 20 of that year, Sir Thomas Modyford, governor of 
 Jamaica, sent to Secretary Arlington certain proposals for the 
 improvement of the colony, of which the following bears 
 upon our subject^ : 
 
 " That they may have licence gratis or at moderate rates to trade for 
 negroes in Africa. Did those honourable persons, which make that Royal 
 [African] Company so glorious, but fall into considerations how much more 
 it is his Majesty's interest to increase the number of his subjects than 
 bullion of gold or silver (which by law all nations may import), they would 
 not only freely consent to this proposal for us but for the whole nation and 
 foreigners also. Mankind is the principal, gold the accessory : increase the 
 first considerably, and the other must follow. Barbados had never risen to 
 its late perfection had it not been lawful for Dutch, Hamburghers, and our 
 whole nation, and any other, to bring and sell their blacks or any other 
 servants in the colony's infancy." 
 
 The harbours of Port Royal and Kingston did, in the event, 
 become the chief resort of slave-ships in the British West Indies, 
 slaves having been landed there up to ten thousand in a year 
 throughout the i8th century. They came also to be among the 
 chief seats of yellow fever, and continued so until a recent date. 
 The subsequent progress of yellow fever there, and in other West 
 Indian harbours as well as in the ports of some of the North 
 American colonies, is not the least important of the subjects 
 that fall to the second period of this history. 
 
 1 Cal. S. P. Amer. and W. I. 1669-74, § 144. ~ Ibid. % 264, iii. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE GREAT PLAGUE OF LONDON, AND THE LAST OF 
 PLAGUE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Literature of the Great Plague. 
 
 The writings called forth directly by the London Plague 
 of 1665 were hardly more numerous or of better quality than 
 those of 1603 and 1625. At its beginning in June, or in August, 
 there appeared a number of tracts by enterprising practitioners, 
 containing a few commonplace remarks on causes and the 
 like, and advertisements of nostrums — by G. Harvey, Kemp, 
 Garrencieres ("Plague is one of the easiest diseases in the world 
 to cure, if" etc.), and Gadbury, an astrologer. The directions 
 drawn up by the College of Physicians in 1636, for the preser- 
 vation of the sound and recovery of the sick were re-issued, 
 and an excellent set of " cautionary rules " by H. Brooke was 
 published by order of the mayor. The writings which contain 
 accounts of the Great Plague fall under two periods — the years 
 immediately following 1665, and the years 1720 to 1723 when 
 there was a sudden revival of interest in the subject in London 
 owing to the great plague of Marseilles in 1720. To the latter 
 period belongs the most famous work on the plague of 1665, 
 Defoe's Jo7iriial of the Plague Year, which embodied in a 
 picturesque form the substance of various writings that preceded 
 it, together with traditions known to Defoe. A brief account 
 of those writings that preceded Defoe's in both periods will 
 serve at the same time to show the sources of a great part of 
 his information. 
 
Boghursfs MS. on the Great Plague. 647 
 
 The weekly bills of mortality issued by Parish Clerks' Hall, 
 which showed the number of deaths week by week in each 
 of the one hundred and forty parishes of London, with a rough 
 classification of the causes of death, were reprinted at the end 
 of the year 1665 in a volume with the title Londoiis Dreadful 
 Visitation^. The bills thus collected in convenient form were 
 made great use of by Defoe, and became, indeed, the backbone 
 of his work. Next to them in importance, although it is not 
 certain that Defoe used it, is a treatise on the medical aspects 
 of the Great Plague, which has never had the fortune to be 
 published. The author of it was William Boghurst, a young 
 apothecary practising at the White Hart in St Giles's-in-the- 
 P'ields, who advertised in the Intelligencer on July 31, 1665, 
 at the height of the plague in his parish, that he had treated 
 forty, fifty or sixty patients in a day, that he was prepared to 
 undertake the treatment of cases in the City, the suburbs, or 
 the country, and that he had a water, a lozenge, and an electuary, 
 as well as an antidote at eightpence an ounce^ 
 
 After the epidemic was over he employed his spare half- 
 hours in writing a book upon his experiences, " considering that 
 none hath printed anything either since this plague, or that 
 forty years since — which I something wonder at." He professes 
 to have taken nothing from hearsay, or from books, or from 
 the testimonies of others ; he writes in English " for general 
 readers and sale," and he had omitted many things " so as not 
 to make the book too tedious and too dear to bie." The 
 manuscript was completed for the press, with a title-page, at 
 the foot of which is what appears to be a publisher's name 
 (the surname now torn off); but it was never published, although 
 the author lived until 1685. It is conceivable that the printed 
 sheets, or the composed type, may have been destroyed in the 
 fire of September, 1666, and the enterprise abandoned. The 
 manuscript came into the possession of Sir Hans Sloane, and is 
 
 ^ With a preface by the Printer to the Reader, beginning "The reprinting of 
 these sad sheets." Printed and are to be sold by E. Cotes, Hving in Aldersgate 
 Street, printer to the said Company. 
 
 ' The advertisement is cited in Brayley's edition of Defoe's yournal of the Plague 
 Year. 
 
648 Contemporary zvritings on the Great Plague. 
 
 now in the British Museum \ It gives much fuller clinical 
 details of the plague than any other English work, although 
 in somewhat aphoristic form ; and it may be allowed the 
 character of originality which the author claims for it, except 
 in some of the more systematic chapters showing the influence 
 of Diemerbroek. 
 
 Another medical essay following the plague was that of 
 Dr Hodges, of Watling Street, first written in English in 1666 
 (May 8) under the title A Letter to a Person of Quality'^, and 
 expanded in 1671 into a Latin treatise^ Besides a few pages 
 at the beginning, giving some general facts of the London out- 
 break (which Defoe used), it is mostly a systematic disquisition, 
 although a few cases are interspersed. One other medical piece 
 of 1666 (June 16) is known, by Dr George Thomson, of Duke's 
 Place near Aldgate, a Paracelsist or chemical physician ; it 
 contains the account of a dissection of a plague-body, but is 
 mostly occupied with a polemic against the Galenists, which 
 the author carried on for a number of years in numerous other 
 writings*. 
 
 Descriptive pieces, in prose or verse, such as the plagues 
 of 1603 and 1625 elicited, are entirely wanting for that of 1665. 
 But there was the usual crop of religious and moral exercises 
 to improve the occasion. These appear to have come mostly, 
 if not exclusively, from Dissenters. " Many useful and pious 
 treatises," says a Dissenter in 172 1, "were published upon the 
 occasion of the last visitation, as by Mr Zach. Crofton, Mr Shaw, 
 Mr Doolittle, and others." But the only one that attained 
 popularity, having gone through five editions at once, and been 
 often reprinted, even as late as 185 1, was God's Terrible Voice 
 in the City^, by the Rev. Thomas Vincent, of Christ Church, 
 
 ^ Sloane M.S. no. 349. \oifxoypa<pLa, or, An cxperiniental Relation of the Plague, of 
 what happened retnarkable in the last Plague in the City of London, etc. By William 
 Boghurst, Apothecary in St Giles' in the Fields. London, 1666. 
 
 - Reprinted in A Collection of very Valuable and Scarce Pieces relating to the last 
 Plague in the year 1665. London, 1721. 
 
 ^ AoLfjioXoyia. London, 167 1. Translation by Quincy, 1720. 
 
 ■* AoLfioTOfxia, or, the Pest Anatomized. By George Thomson, M.D. London, 
 J 666. 
 
 '' London, 1667. 
 
Revived interest after the Marseilles Plague, 1720. 649 
 
 Oxford, who had been ejected from his livnig of St Mary- 
 Magdalen, Milk Street, and was then a leader of Dissent. 
 Vincent preached in several parish churches (deserted by their 
 parsons) all through the plague, and ministered constantly among 
 the sick. His book, which moralizes also upon the great fire of 
 1666, will be drawn upon in the sequel. 
 
 We come next to the revival of interest in the Great Plague 
 of London, which was occasioned by the Marseilles epidemic in 
 the summer of 1720, an event that alarmed Western Europe as 
 if the old recurrences of plague were about to begin afresh after 
 a long interval. In London, in 1721, several books were published 
 upon the Marseilles plague itself; and the years from 1720 to 
 1722 saw a whole crop of writings, — new essays and reprints of 
 old ones, — upon the last London plague of 1665. Among the 
 books reprinted were Hodges' Loimologia, in an English trans- 
 lation by Ouincy, his Letter to a Person of Quality, the Necessary 
 Directions of the College of Physicians, the Orders draivn up by 
 the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City {these three in 1721 in 
 a Collection of very Valuable atid Scarce Pieces relating to the last 
 Plague in 1665), and Vincent's God's Terrible Voice in the City. 
 The new medical books on the Great Plague were by Scarborough, 
 Hancock and Browne. 
 
 When Defoe in 1722 wrote his Journal of t lie Plague Year, 
 he had these recent reprints and original books convenient to 
 his hand. He had to go back to 1665 for the collection of the 
 weekly bills of mortality in the plague-year (in a volume called 
 L^ondon's Dreadful Visitation), and he may have consulted Bog- 
 hurst's manuscript, which was probably then in the possession of 
 Sir Hans Sloane. But it is impossible to trace all his copious 
 narrative of the Great Plague to these sources, even if we make 
 due allowance for his legitimate construction of incidents out of 
 the generalities of contemporary writers. It is possible that he 
 may hav^e had some unknown manuscript, less technical than 
 Boghurst's, to draw from. At all events, he was a likely person 
 to have had many stories of the plague in his memory. He was 
 a child of four when the plague was in London, the son of a 
 butcher named Foe in St Giles's, Cripplegate, which was one of 
 the most severely visited parishes. The most graphic parts of 
 
650 Sources of Defoe s ' JournaV of 1722. 
 
 his Jo2irnal are those which contain such tales as he might have 
 been told in boyhood concerning the plague in Cripplegate, the 
 scene of them being carried round to Aldgate, opposite to the 
 Butchers' Row (still there) in Whitechapel High Street. He 
 must have had some testimony from which to construct the visit 
 to Blackwall, the view of the shipping moored all up and down 
 the Thames, and the other particulars of the river-side popula- 
 tion in the plague-time. The rough experiences of the three 
 Stepney men in the country near London are in the manner 
 of Robinson Ci'iisoe, and needed only a few hints from Dekker's 
 stories, or from the writers of 1625. His account of the burials 
 by the cart-load in plague-pits is also suggestive of Dekker. The 
 somewhat meagre references by Hodges might have sufficed him 
 for his frequent theme of the hardships and horrors of shut-up 
 houses, even if he had not seen two other tracts, of 1665, on the 
 same. The accounts of the Marseilles plague, one of the worst in 
 history, would have kept him right in picturing that of London. 
 
 Whatever materials Defoe took from Hodges, Vincent, or the 
 writers on other plagues, he enlarged them by his power of 
 circumstantial construction into a narrative which must be 
 accounted on the whole veracious. He based upon figures, 
 whenever he could get them ; he seems even to have sought 
 among the archives of the City for accounts of monies distributed 
 to the poor. He prints in full the orders of the Mayor and 
 Aldermen, and professes to give the text of a formal resolution 
 which they passed to remain at their posts throughout the 
 crisis. His table of the number of plague-deaths in each of 
 twenty-six towns or villages near London does not, indeed, 
 agree with the figures in the parish registers, as the table on a 
 later page will show ; but it can hardly have been drawn up at 
 a guess. 
 
 The best instance of Defoe's skilful use of authentic docu- 
 ments is his description of how the infection invaded one part of 
 London after another from the western suburbs to the eastern, 
 so that its intensity was nearly over in one place before it had 
 begun in another. That is the most interesting epidemiological 
 fact in the whole outbreak ; and Defoe has done ample justice to 
 it. Boghurst had stated it with equal clearness and emphasis in 
 
Alleged importation of Plague in 1664.. 651 
 
 .his manuscript of 1666, which Defoe may or may not have seen' ; 
 however the latter deduced it afresh, and illustrated it by numerous 
 tables from the bills of mortality, which showed the incidence of 
 plague upon each of the one hundred and forty parishes from 
 week to week. 
 
 Antecedents, Beginnings and Progress of the 
 Plague of 1665. 
 
 When the London plague of 1665 had given indications that 
 it would grow to be one of the great outbreaks of that infection, 
 much was made, in the retrospect, of a single death from plague 
 which had occurred towards the end of December, 1664, in a 
 house in or near Long Acre. Connected with that case was one 
 of those trivial chains of evidence which are so often produced as 
 the easy solution of a difficult problem. A bale of silks had 
 come to the house from Holland, and that bale of silks could be 
 traced to the Levant ; therefore the seeds of the great plague of 
 London were imported Levantine seeds. This was pretty well 
 for a city which had a continuous record of plague-infection in 
 its soil ever since the Black Death of 1348. But credulity could 
 ignore facts more recent than the history for three centuries. 
 The death in Long Acre in December was a solitary one, and 
 
 ' Among the crop of books brought up by the Plague of Marseilles, in i-jio (the 
 immediate cause of Defoe's book also) was one by Richard Bradley, F.R.S., a writer 
 upon botany, on T/ia Plague of Marseilles. Also Observations taken from an original 
 Manuscript of a graditate physician, zuho resided in London during the tvhole time of 
 the late plague, anno 1665. London 1721 (and two more editions the same year). 
 The title-page of this astute gentleman is of the catch-penny order. All that is said 
 of the original manuscript occupies about the same number of lines in the text as in 
 the title, and might have been extracted in the course of five minutes' research ; it 
 consists merely of a list of a few things supposed to be distinctive signs of plague — 
 extraordinary inward heat, difficulty of breathing, pain and heaviness in the head, 
 inclination to sleep, frequent vomiting, immoderate thirst, dryness of the tongue and 
 palate, and then the risings, swellings, or buboes. Boghurst's third chapter is occupied 
 with twenty-one such signs, and his fourth chapter with a hundred more signs and 
 circumstances, in numbered paragraphs. It is possible that his was the manuscript 
 out of which the botanist made capital in his title-page ; but his meagre list of signs 
 might have been got from almost any work on almost any febrile disorder, and is not 
 sufficient to identify Boghurst by, although a word or phrase here and there is the 
 same. However, Defoe would have seen Bradley's title-page, and might have inquired 
 after the Sloane MS. 
 
652 Seeds of Plague in London for three eenturies. 
 
 was of no more import for what followed than any of the five 
 other sporadic plague-deaths in 1664^. Only one more death 
 from plague occurred in the bills (in the middle of February), 
 until the last week of April, 1665 ; even then the progress of the 
 infection was slower for the next two months than it had been in 
 many former seasons of moderate plague, such as the five years 
 1606 — 1610 and the eight years 1640 — 1647, o^ than it had been 
 in the great plague-years of 1603, 1625 and 1636. An importa- 
 tion from abroad had been alleged as early as the great plague 
 of 1563, namely from Havre, which was then held by an English 
 garrison. But on that occasion the epidemic in London was 
 gaining ground before the sickness at Havre had declared itself 
 plague, and was of the bubonic type while the latter was still a 
 malignant fever. The return of the whole English garrison from 
 Havre, with the seeds of sickness among them, might well have 
 introduced infection ; but that return was not until the end of 
 July, by which time the mortality in London had been progress- 
 ing for two months. There is equally little reason for Stow's 
 statement that the plague of 1603 was brought to London from 
 Ostend, or for the corresponding theory of origin for the plague 
 of 1625. A foreign source was not thought of unless the plague 
 became one of the greater degree. Year after year in London 
 there were a few cases of plague, and sometimes for a succession 
 of years the plague-deaths kept steadily at a level of from one 
 thousand to three thousand. There are, indeed, few years from 
 1348 to 1666 in which the infection did not declare its presence 
 in London. Whether the few threatening cases in the spring 
 were to rise to a plague of the greater degree depended upon a 
 concurrence of circumstances — upon the interval since the last 
 great plague, upon the number of strangers crowding to the 
 capital, and upon the kind of weather preceding. In 1665 the 
 various determining things did chance to come together, and a 
 plague of the first degree ensued. The one singular thing in 
 the history is that such a concurrence never happened again, or 
 that the conditions had so far changed (certainly not for the 
 
 ' Of the six plague-deaths in 1664, three were in Whitechapel parish, and one 
 each ill Aldgate, Cripplegate and St CHles's-in-the-Fields. 
 
TJie %v eat her preceding tJie Great Plague. 653 
 
 better), that the type of epidemic disease was no longer the 
 bubo-plague. 
 
 According to precedent, a great plague was somewhat over- 
 due in the year 1665. Its two great predecessors (not reckoning 
 the smaller plague of 1636) had happened each at the beginning 
 of a new reign — in 1603 on the accession of James I., and in 
 1625 on the accession of Charles I. The Restoration of 1660 
 was the time for the next great outburst; but that was delayed 
 for five years. Those five years were occupied with a good deal of 
 fever and other infective disease in London, and the fever in the 
 beginning of 1665 was, according to Sydenham, of a marked pes- 
 tilential type. It may be said to have led up to the plague ; but 
 the bubonic disease itself needed something in addition to the 
 determining causes of spotted fever. It is generally admitted 
 that London was unusually crowded with the poorer classes 
 whose work is required by the luxury of the rich (Defoe says 
 that an enumeration for the Lord Mayor had made out 100,000 
 ribbon-weavers in the eastern suburbs, although the number is 
 incredible). There was also a general relaxation of morals, which 
 may have predisposed many constitutions to receive the seeds of 
 infection. Another element in the case was the weather. 
 
 The summer before had been remarkable for the immense 
 number of house-flies, and of other insects and frogs. From 
 November to the end of March the earth was held in almost 
 continual black frost. Boghurst says the wind was westerly 
 for seven months. No rain fell all the time except a slight 
 sprinkling in the end of April. The dry cold continued 
 after the frost broke, and produced, says Sydenham, an unusual 
 number of cases of pleurisy, pneumonia and angina. Richard 
 Baxter says of the seasons preceding the great plague, that they 
 were " the driest winter, spring and summer that ever man alive 
 knew, or our forefathers ever heard of; so that the grounds were 
 burnt like the highways, the meadow ground where I lived 
 [Acton] having but four loads of hay which before bare forty \" 
 The hay crop was " pitiful," says Boghurst, in consequence of 
 the long cold and drought. But the summer was made pleasant 
 
 1 Reliquiae Baxterianae. London, 1696, I. 448. This entry in his journal is dated 
 September 28, 1665, at Hampden, Bucks. 
 
654 MiicJi Fever in London before the Plague. 
 
 by refreshing breezes, and there was abundance of all kinds of 
 grain, vegetables and fruit. 
 
 It was not until the beginning of June that the deaths from 
 plague in all London, according to the bills of mortality, reached 
 the sum of 43 in the week. But the mortality had been excessive 
 from the beginning of the year, and it was suspected, as in the 
 like circumstances in 1625, that the searchers had been concealing 
 the existence of plague, or calling cases of it by other names, so 
 as to save the infected houses from being shut up. The motive 
 for bribery and concealment doubtless existed ; it had been kept 
 in view by the authorities from the first institution of searchers, 
 who were solemnly sworn before the Dean of the Arches to 
 make a true return of the cause of death. In all the great 
 plagues, less so in 1563 and 1603 than in other years, there was 
 reason to suppose that a large proportion of deaths put down to 
 other causes than plague were really cases of plague. However 
 there is no doubt that, in the early months of 1665, just as in the 
 beginning of 1625, there was a great deal of spotted fever in 
 London, not to mention smallpox and dysentery. The season 
 was a sickly one, such a sickly season as often occurred in the 
 latter part of the seventeenth century and throughout the whole 
 of the eighteenth, when there could be no longer any question of 
 plague. The weekly bills contain numerous deaths in the several 
 parishes from " fever " and from " spotted fever " for months 
 before they contain more than an occasional plague-death. 
 There was no reason why these and other maladies should 
 not have swelled the bills to three or four hundred in a week ; 
 in the year 1739, when London was probably not a third larger 
 than in 1665, Strother says that fever brought the weekly bill up 
 to near a thousand. It is remarkable, however, that Boghurst 
 claims to have been treating cases of plague from the month of 
 November, 1664; Hodges also says that he was called in the 
 middle of the Christmas holidays to a young man in a fever who 
 acquired, two days after, a plague-botch in each groin as large as 
 a nutmeg, and recovered. Boghurst admits that " tokens," by 
 which he means the marks of plague other than the botch or 
 bubo, "appeared not much till about the middle of June, and 
 carbuncles not till the latter end of July." He suspects that the 
 
Relation of Pestilential Fever to Plague. 655 
 
 bills of mortality did not tell the whole truth ; and, as an instance 
 of evasion, he says that there had been plague in St Giles's, St 
 Martin's, St Clement's, and St Paul's, Covent Garden, for three 
 or four years before (the bills of mortality give only 12, 9, and 5 
 deaths respectively for all London in the years 1662, 1663 and 
 1664), "as I have been certainly informed by the people them- 
 selves that had it in their houses in those parishes." 
 
 But, in claiming an earlier beginning for the plague than 
 the bills recognize, and in setting aside the diagnosis of fever 
 as insufficient, Boghurst takes what is known, in the controversies 
 upon the nature and affinities of plague, as the " ontological " 
 view : that is to say, he sees in plague a fixed and uniform 
 entity, and he sees the same in fever. The other view is the 
 developmental, which recognizes transitions from the one type 
 of pestilential disease into the other. The great writers of the 
 time, Willis, Sydenham, and Morton, were none of them " onto- 
 logists." They all taught the scale of malignity, which had 
 simple continued fever at one end, then a severer fever with 
 spots and " parotids," then a fever with buboes, and at the 
 farthest end of the scale the true plague, with its buboes, 
 carbuncles, and tokens. Nor is it denied by competent ob- 
 servers, such as Boghurst himself, that an epidemic of plague 
 declined as a whole in malignity towards the end, so that 
 the buboes suppurated, and three out of four, or three out of 
 five, patients recovered. If that were the case in the descent 
 of the curve, why should there not have been something cor- 
 responding in the ascent .'' If certain cases of the prevailing 
 fever in the beginning of the year developed buboes which 
 suppurated (as in the case treated by Hodges at Christmas, 
 1664), should they be called plague or fever .-* Willis would 
 have answered in favour of fever, until such time, at least, as 
 the " epidemic constitution " of the season changed definitely 
 to plague^ ; he does in effect answer so in the particular 
 
 1 Ed. cit. Chap. xiv. p. 131 : — "Diseases which seem to be nearest like its 
 (plague's) nature ; which chiefly are fevers, called pestilent and malignant ; for 'tis 
 commonly noted that fevers sometimes reign popularly, which for the vehemency of 
 symptoms, the great slaughter of the sick, and the great force of contagion, scarce 
 give place to the pestilence ; wliich, however, because they imitate the type of 
 
656 Tlic Plague begins in St Giles s-in-tJie-Fields. 
 
 instance of the Oxford fever of 1643, which in some cases was 
 bubonic, whereas, in 1645, he makes no doubt that the disease 
 prevaiHng in Oxford and WalHngford was true plague. 
 
 The more general discussion of this theme will be found 
 in the concluding section of the chapter on the Black Death, 
 where illustrations are given of typhus fever turning to bubonic 
 fever and to plague, from recent and anomalous outbreaks of 
 plague in Arab villages or encampments, in some Indian 
 villages, and elsewhere. The conclusion there come to was 
 that the type of plague, or the bubonic type, prevailed when 
 the infection of the filthy habitations began with change of 
 season to rise from the soil, whereas the form of sickness 
 was typhus fever so long as the infection was primarily in 
 the atmosphere of the dwellings. 
 
 We may admit, then, that there was some ambiguity in 
 the naming and classifying of pestilential cases in the early 
 months of 1665. If we follow the bills — and there is nothing 
 else to follow — the plague-deaths in all the parishes of London 
 for the seven weeks from April 18 to June 6 were respectively 
 no more than 2, o, 9, 3, 14, 17 and 43, the deaths from "fever" 
 and "spotted fever" being much more numerous. 
 
 Having thus far determined the date of beginning, we come 
 next to the line of advance of the plague of 1665. It was from 
 the western and northern suburbs towards the City, the eastern 
 suburbs, and Southwark. Boghurst, who practised in St Giles's- 
 in -the- Fields, says : 
 
 "The plague fell first upon the highest ground, for our parish is the 
 highest ground about London, and the best air, and was first infected. 
 Highgate, Hampstead and Acton also all shared in it.'' From the west end 
 of the town, Boghurst continues, "it gradually insinuated and crept down 
 Holborn and the Strand, and then into the City, and at last to the east end 
 of the suburbs, so that it was half a year at the west end of the city [in his 
 experience] before the east end and Stepney was infected, which was about 
 the middle of July. Southwark, being the south suburb, was infected almost 
 as soon as the west end." But the same writer farther explains that " it fell 
 upon several places of the city and suburbs like rain — at the first at St Giles', 
 
 putrid fevers, and do not so certainly kill the sick as the plague, or so certainly infect 
 others, they deserve the name, not of the plague, but by a more minute appellation of 
 a pestilential fever." 
 
t 
 
 Defoe s aceount of its progress easiwards. 657 
 
 St Martin's, Chancery-lane, Southwark, Houndsditch, and some places 
 within the City, as at Proctor's-houses." 
 
 The slow progress from west to east has been made much of 
 by Defoe, who used the bills of mortality to ascertain the rise 
 of the infection in the several districts. His conclusion is the 
 same in the main as Boghurst's contemporary observation ; only 
 that he makes the infection of Southwark later, and with reason 
 so far as the bills show : — 
 
 " It was now mid-July, and the plague which had chiefly raged at the 
 other end of the town, and as I said before, in the parishes of St Giles's, 
 St Andrew's, Holbourn, and towards Westminster, began now to come 
 eastward towards the part where I lived. It was to be observed, indeed, 
 that it did not come straight on toward us ; for the City, that is to say 
 within the walls, was indifferent healthy still ; nor was it got then very much 
 over the water into Southwark; for though there died that week 1268 of all 
 distempers, whereof it might be supposed above 900 died of the plague [only 
 725 in the bill], yet there was but 28 in the whole City within the walls, and 
 but 19 in Southwark, Lambeth included; whereas in the parishes of St Giles' 
 and St Martin's in the Fields alone, there died 421... We perceived, I say. 
 the distemper to draw our way ; viz. by the parishes of Clerkenwell, 
 Cripplegate, Shoreditch, and Bishopsgate ; which last two parishes joining 
 to Aldgate, Whitechapel and Stepney, the infection came at length to spread 
 its utmost rage and violence in those parts, even when it abated at the 
 western parishes where it began. It was very strange to observe that in this 
 particular week, from the 4th to the 13th July, when, as I have observed, 
 there died near 400 of the plague in the two parishes of St Martin's and 
 St Giles' in the Fields only, there died in the parish of Aldgate but four, in 
 the parish of Whitechapel three, and in the parish of Stepney but one." 
 In the following week of July, with a total of 1761 deaths, whereof of the 
 plague 1089, only 16 occurred on the Southwark side. Soon, however, 
 Cripplegate had the infection at its hottest, and at the same time Clerken- 
 well, St Sepulchre's parish, St Bride's and Aldersgate. "While it was in all 
 these parishes, the City and the parishes of the Southwark side of the water, 
 and all Stepney, Whitechapel, Aldgate, Wapping and Ratcliff were very 
 little touched ; so that people went about their business unconcerned, 
 carried on their trades, kept open their shops, and conversed freely with one 
 another in all the City, the east and north-east suburbs, and in Southwark, 
 almost as if the plague had not been among us." 
 
 In another passage Defoe brings out the moral of its gradual 
 
 advance. He had shown 
 
 " how it began at one end of the town, and proceeded gradually and 
 slowly from one part to another ; and like a dark cloud that passes over our 
 
 c. 42 
 
658 TJie infection of Plague as a soil-poison. 
 
 heads, which as it thickens and overcasts the air at one end, clears up at 
 the other end : so while the plague went on raging from west to east, as it 
 went forwards east it abated in the west, by which means those parts of the 
 town which were not seized, or who were left, and where it had spent its 
 fury were, as it were, spared to help and assist the other ; whereas had the 
 distemper spread itself all over the City and suburbs at once, raging in all 
 places alike, as it has done since in some places abroad, the whole body 
 of the people must have been overwhelmed" etc. 
 
 That is how Defoe constructs a concrete picture from the dry 
 statistics of the weekly bills. He has defined the stages, and 
 pointed the moral, with a firmer hand than the reality would 
 most likely have warranted. But no scientific writer could have 
 apprehended more correctly the general fact of a gradual 
 invasion from the west end of the town. 
 
 These striking facts of the gradual advance of the Great 
 Plague of London from west to east will be found to suit that 
 theory of the plague-virus which has been illustrated in various 
 parts of this volume. The virus of plague is a soil-poison, or the 
 ground is its habitat ; its quiescence or activity depends upon 
 whether or not the state of the soil favours the fermentation 
 of the special organic matters therein, which special organic 
 matters we here take to be the products of cadaveric decom- 
 position. The conclusion that the poison of plague lay in the 
 soil, and that it rose into the air in emanations or effluvia, 
 was forced upon all those who thought much about the matter 
 from the medieval period onwards. Thus, the apothecary 
 Boghurst, says in his first chapter : " And therefore my opinion 
 falls in wholly with those who make the earth the seminary 
 and seed-plot of these venomous vapours and pestiferous 
 effluvia, which vitiate and corrupt the air, and consequently 
 induce the pestilence." And again : " The plague is a most 
 subtle, insinuating, venomous, deleterious exhalation, arising 
 from the maturation of the ferment of the forces (.-') of the earth, 
 extracted into the air by the heat of the sun," It is true that 
 Boghurst, like the sixteenth-century writers abroad, such as 
 Ambroise Pare, locates the venom in mysterious cavities and 
 bowels of the earth, and dwells upon the agency of earthquakes 
 in setting it free. But he comes to more ordinary causes in 
 his enumeration of favouring things — "dunghills, excrements, 
 
Plague of 1665 began in the higher parts of London. 659 
 
 dead bodies lying unburicd, putrefying churchyards too full," 
 and again " breaking up tombs and graves where dead bodies 
 have been long buried." As telling against the last, however, 
 he adds : "When the charnel-house at St Paul's was demolished, 
 there was a thousand cart-loads of dead men's bones carried 
 away to Finsbury, yet no plague followed it" 
 
 The activity of this soil-poison depends upon processes 
 in the soil which go on so slowly that the link of cause and 
 effect is easily overlooked. In the last resort, they are de- 
 pendent on the rise and fall of the ground-water. It was 
 observed beyond all doubt as the law in Lower Egypt, that 
 the plague came forth annually after the Nile had begun to fall, 
 and that it reached its height in the months of March, April 
 and May, when the soil was driest, or the pores of the ground 
 occupied solely by air after having been full of water. It was 
 observed, also, that the plague-area and the inundation-area 
 were co-extensive. Lower Egypt is, of course, somewhat peculiar 
 (Lower Bengal coming near to it) in these regular alternations 
 of air alone and water alone in the pores of the ground. But 
 other countries have the same sharp contrast occasionally, and 
 London had the contrast very decidedly in the years 1664 and 
 1665. The months from November 1664 to June 1665, some 
 of which ought to have brought snow or rain to raise the wells 
 and springs to their highest periodic water-mark early in the 
 year, were quite remarkable for drought : Richard Baxter says 
 that no one remembered the like. The ground-water, instead 
 of rising all through the winter, must have fallen lower and 
 lower as the spring and summer advanced. The pores of the 
 ground had been occupied with air to an unusual depth of the 
 subsoil, and the presence of air in these circumstances had given 
 occasion to that ferment-activity in the special organic matters 
 of an old-inhabited soil which produced the virus of plague. 
 The stratum of subsoil would become dry first in the more 
 elevated parts ; and as the ground-water continued to fall, the 
 air would reach in due course an unwonted stratum in the lower 
 situations. Defoe says that they came to water at eighteen 
 feet in digging the Whitechapel plague-pits. The same seasonal 
 march of a soil-infection from the higher ground to the lower 
 
 42 — 2 
 
66o Plague of \66^ compared zvitJi those of 1603 and 1625. 
 
 has been observed in modern times in other cities, and in other 
 diseases than plague. The drought for seven months from 
 November to June would not, of itself, have caused a great 
 plague. But it was an essential member of the co-operating 
 group of things ; and it probably determined of itself the season 
 when the great plague was once more to come and take away 
 the enormous increase of poor people. 
 
 Mortality and Incidents of the Great Plague. 
 
 The plague of 1665 was justly called the Great Plague, and 
 is sometimes spoken of as " the plague of London," as if it were 
 unique. But it was not much more severe than those of 1603 and 
 1625 had been for the London of their generation ; and there had 
 been many plagues when London was a small capital, such as 
 those of 1407, 1479, 1500, 1 5 13 and 1563, which had cut off as 
 large a proportion (one-fifth to one-sixth) of the population. 
 The inhabitants in 1665 were not far short of half a million, 
 nearly twice as many as in 1603, and about a third more than 
 in 1625. The increased mortality in 1665 was somewhat more 
 than proportionate to the increase of inhabitants, as the fol- 
 lowing table shows : — 
 
 Year 
 
 Estimated 
 population 
 
 Total 
 deaths 
 
 Plague 
 deaths 
 
 Highest 
 mortality 
 in a week 
 
 Worst 
 week 
 
 1603 
 1625 
 1665 
 
 250,000 
 320,000 
 460,000 
 
 42,940 
 63,001 
 97,306 
 
 33,347 
 41,313 
 68,596 
 
 3385 
 5205 
 
 8297 
 
 25 Aug. — I Sept 
 II — 18 Aug. 
 12 — 19 Sept. 
 
 Reckoned from the christenings and burials in the bills of 
 Parish Clerks' Hall, the population in 1605 would have been 
 224,275, and in 1622, 272,207. But in those years (and until 
 after 1636) certain of the newer parishes (known as the Seven 
 Parishes), including Stepney and Westminster, kept separate 
 bills, of which some figures for 1603 and 1625 are given at p. 
 477 and p. 511, The population of the Seven Parishes appears 
 to have been about one-ninth of the whole metropolis in 1603, 
 and about one-seventh in 1625, while Graunt, a contemporary, 
 makes it one-fifth in 1662. These fractions have been added in 
 
Increase of the London suburbs previous to 1665. ^^i 
 
 the table, so as to make 1603 and 1625 comparable with 1665. 
 In 1603 and 1625, the highest mortality in a week does not 
 show the deaths in those parishes (Westminster, Stepney &c.) 
 which did not send their returns to the general bill until 1636, 
 but their figures have been included in the totals for those years. 
 It will be seen that the plague of 1665 fully kept pace with the 
 increase of population. The old City within the walls had 15,207 
 deaths in the year from all causes. It had become crowded since 
 the beginning of Elizabeth's reign by its gardens and church-yards 
 being built upon, and its mansions turned into tenement-houses 
 for a poorer class; and yet in 1563 the mortality from plague 
 and other causes in the City and its Liberties, with a population 
 hardly exceeding that of the City alone in 1665, was 20,372. 
 The enormous total of 1665 was largely made up from the 
 populous suburbs of Cripplegate, Whitechapel, Stepney, St 
 Martin's in the Fields, St Giles's in the Fields, Southwark 
 and Westminster, which would have contributed but little to 
 the total down to the middle third of the sixteenth century. 
 
 The following tables will show the progress of the epidemic 
 from week to week, the weekly deaths from all causes and from 
 plague, and the incidence upon the several parts of London. 
 The so-called ordinary deaths are much in excess of the 
 average, and must have included many that were really cases 
 of plague. Part of the excess, however, was due to the great 
 prevalence of fever and spotted fever, which made a heavy 
 mortality in the early months before the plague began. Bowel 
 complaint also is credited with a good many deaths. The other 
 more important items in the bills are consumption and infantile 
 troubles. Boghurst, however, says : " Almost all other diseases 
 turned into the plague. For five or six months together there was 
 hardly any other disease seen but the plague and a few casualties, 
 whatever the Bills say; and Thucydides says the same of the 
 plague at Athens." As to the total of deaths in the year from 
 all causes (97,306), Hodges thinks that it does not show the whole 
 mortality. The largest number of burials in one week is 8297 ; 
 but he thinks that 12,000 were buried in that week, and that 
 4000 were buried in one day and night. But there seems to be no 
 reason to set aside the tally of the sextons to that extent ; the 
 
662 
 
 The London plagnc-bill of 1665. 
 
 returns were made weekly from one hundred and forty parishes, 
 and might easily have been exact to within a few in each. 
 
 Bill of Mortality of the Plague-year 1665 in London. 
 
 Week 
 ending 
 
 Christ- 
 ened 
 
 Buried 
 
 Plague 
 
 Week 
 ending 
 
 Christ- 
 ened 
 
 Buried 
 
 Plague 
 
 Dec. 27 
 
 229 
 
 291 
 
 I 
 
 June 27 
 
 199 
 
 684 
 
 267 
 
 Jan. 3 
 
 239 
 
 349 
 
 
 
 July 4 
 
 207 
 
 1006 
 
 470 
 
 10 
 
 235 
 
 394 
 
 
 
 II 
 
 197 
 
 1268 
 
 725 
 
 17 
 
 223 
 
 415 
 
 
 
 18 
 
 194 
 
 I761 
 
 1089 
 
 24 
 
 237 
 
 474 
 
 
 
 25 
 
 193 
 
 2785 
 
 1843 
 
 31 
 
 216 
 
 409 
 
 
 
 Aug. I 
 
 215 
 
 3014 
 
 2010 
 
 Feb. 7 
 
 221 
 
 393 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 178 
 
 4030 
 
 2817 
 
 14 
 
 224 
 
 462 
 
 I 
 
 15 
 
 166 
 
 5319 
 
 3880 
 
 21 
 
 232 
 
 393 
 
 
 
 T> 
 
 171 
 
 5568 
 
 4237 
 
 28 
 
 233 
 
 396 
 
 
 
 29 
 
 169 
 
 7496 
 
 6102 
 
 Mar. 7 
 
 236 
 
 441 
 
 
 
 Sept. 5 
 
 167 
 
 8252 
 
 6988 
 
 14 
 
 236 
 
 433 
 
 
 
 12 
 
 168 
 
 7690 
 
 6544 
 
 21 
 
 221 
 
 3^^?, 
 
 
 
 19 
 
 176 
 
 8297 
 
 7165 
 
 28 
 
 238 
 
 353 
 
 
 
 26 
 
 146 
 
 6460 
 
 5533 
 
 Apr. 4 
 
 242 
 
 344 
 
 
 
 Oct. 3 
 
 142 
 
 5720 
 
 4929 
 
 II 
 
 245 
 
 382 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 141 
 
 5068 
 
 4327 
 
 18 
 
 287 
 
 344 
 
 
 
 17 
 
 147 
 
 3219 
 
 2665 
 
 25 
 
 229 
 
 398 
 
 2 
 
 24 
 
 104 
 
 1806 
 
 142 1 
 
 May 2 
 
 237 
 
 388 
 
 
 
 31 
 
 104 
 
 1388 
 
 1031 
 
 9 
 
 211 
 
 347 
 
 9 
 
 Nov. 7 
 
 95 
 
 1787 
 
 1414 
 
 16 
 
 227 
 
 353 
 
 3 
 
 14 
 
 113 
 
 1359 
 
 1050 
 
 23 
 
 231 
 
 385 
 
 14 
 
 21 
 
 108 
 
 905 
 
 652 
 
 30 
 
 229 
 
 400 
 
 17 
 
 28 
 
 112 
 
 544 
 
 333 
 
 June 6 
 
 234 
 
 405 
 
 43 
 
 Dec. 5 
 
 123 
 
 428 
 
 210 
 
 13 
 
 206 
 
 558 
 
 112 
 
 12 
 
 133 
 
 442 
 
 243 
 
 20 
 
 204 
 
 615 
 
 168 
 
 19 
 
 147 
 
 525 
 
 281 
 
 9,967 97,306 68,596 
 Lncidence on Parishes of the PlagiLe in 1665. 
 Ninety-seven Parishes within the Walls. 
 
 All deaths Plague deaths 
 
 97 City parishes 15,207 9,877 
 
 (The parishes with heaviest mortahties were St Anne's, Blackfriars ; 
 Christ Church, Newgate ; St Stephen's, Coleman St ; St Martin's, Vintry ; 
 AUhaliows Barking, the Great, and in-the-Wall ; St Andrew's, Wardrobe). 
 
 Sixteen Parishes without tlie Walls and in the Liberties. 
 4838 
 
 St Giles's, Cripplegate 8069 
 
 St Botolph's, Aldgate 4926 4051 
 
 St Olave's, Southwark 4793 2785 
 
 St Sepulchre's 45^9 2746 
 
 St Saviour's, Southwark 4235 3446 
 
 St Andrew's, Holborn 3958 3103 
 
 St Botolph's, Bishopsgate 3464 2500 
 
 St Bride's, Fleet Street 21 11 1427 
 
 Pesthouse 
 
 St George's, Southwark 1613 1260 
 
 St Botolph's, Aldersgate 997 755 
 
 St Dunstan's in the West 958 665 
 
 St Bartholomew the Great 493 344 
 
 St Thomas's, Southwark 475 371 
 
 Bridewell Precinct 230 179 
 
 St Bartholomew the Less 193 139 
 
 Trinity, Minories 168 123 
 
 159 
 
Victims of the Great Plague mostly the poor. 663 
 
 Twelve Oiit-parishes in Middlesex and Surrey. 
 
 Stepney 8598 
 
 Whitechapcl 4766 
 
 St Giles's in the Fields 4457 
 
 St Leonard's, Shoreditch 2669 
 St Magdalen's, Bermond- 
 
 sey 1943 
 
 St James's, Clerkenwell 1863 
 
 Five Parishes in the City and Liberties of Westminster. 
 
 6583 
 
 St Mary's, Newington 
 
 1272 
 
 1004 
 
 3S55 
 
 St Katharine's, 
 
 Tower 
 
 956 
 
 601 
 
 3216 
 
 Lambeth 
 
 
 798 
 
 537 
 
 949 
 
 Islington 
 
 
 696 
 
 593 
 
 
 Rotherhithe 
 
 
 304 
 
 210 
 
 1362 
 
 Hackney 
 
 
 232 
 
 132 
 
 1377 
 
 
 
 
 
 St Martin's in the Fields 4804 2883 
 St Margaret's 4710 3742 
 
 St Clement's Danes 1969 1319 
 
 Pesthouse 156 
 
 St Paul's, Covent Garden 408 281 
 St Mary's, Savoy 303 198 
 
 The Great Plague brought back all the familiar incidents of 
 1603 and 1625, and revealed no new feature. As before, all that 
 could afford to do so made their escape at the outset. Syden- 
 ham, who fled with the rest, says that two-thirds of the population 
 left ; which may be true of the City proper, but certainly not of 
 the populous Liberties and suburbs on both sides of the water, 
 as Defoe points out. The poorer classes were left stranded, and 
 bore the brunt of the calamity, as they had always done. Flight 
 was, doubtless, the best step to take, the motive being to get 
 "into clean air," as cardinal Wolsey expressed it in 15 15. Those 
 that were left behind knew that they were in bad air, and knew 
 that it mattered little whether they came into contact with the 
 sick or not\ Their employments and wages mostly ceased as 
 the plague extended from suburb to suburb and to the City, so 
 that with starvation on the one side and plague on the other, they 
 held their lives cheaply and bore themselves with an unconcern 
 which was strange to the rich. Their desperate case explains, as 
 Defoe correctly saw, the ease with which the mayor could always 
 get men to undertake for pay the disagreeable and risky work of 
 day and night watchmen to the multitude of shut-up houses, of 
 bearers of the dead, of buriers, of nurses, and distributors of the 
 public charity. As soon as any fell in these humble ranks, others 
 were willing to take their place ; so that at no period of the 
 
 ^ In a letter from London, 9 May, 1637 (Gawdy MSS. at Norwich, Hist. J/SS. 
 Coi/imis. X. pt. 2. p. 163) it is said: "There is a strange opinion here amongst the 
 poorer sort of people, who hold it a matter of conscience to visit their neighbours in 
 any sickness, yea though they know it to be the infection." 
 
664 The London clergy in plague-time. 
 
 epidemic was there any break-down in the work of expeditious 
 burial or any failure in good order and decency. To carry the 
 poor through the great crisis much money was needed ; Defoe 
 says that it was forthcoming from all parts of England and he 
 estimates the distribution of relief at thousands of pounds weekly, 
 although he failed to find the exact accounts, which, he thinks, 
 had been destroyed in the fire of 1666. A thousand pounds a 
 week, he says, was given from the king's purse. The whole 
 of this great system of relief was under the direction of the Lord 
 Mayor, Sir John Lawrence, who proved himself worthy of the 
 best traditions of his office. In the out-parishes there were 
 Justices of the Peace who discharged the like duties. 
 
 The regular clergy for the most part left the town, but two 
 are honourably mentioned as having stayed with the plague- 
 stricken people, Dr Anthony Walker, of St Mary Aldermanbury, 
 and Mr Meriton\ 
 
 Sometime in August Lord Arlington wrote to the bishop of 
 London that the king was informed of many ministers and lec- 
 turers being absent from their posts during this time of contagion, 
 and that nonconformists had thrust themselves into their pulpits 
 to preach seditions and doctrines contrary to the Church. His 
 majesty wishes the bishop to prevent such mischiefs to Church 
 and Stated The bishop replied, from Fulham, 19 August, that 
 the sober clergy remain, that he had refused some that offered to 
 supply vacancies, suspecting them to be of the factious party, 
 though they promised to conform, that most of his officers had 
 deserted him and gone into the country, but he could not learn 
 that any nonconformists had invaded the pulpit I The bishop, 
 however, was not likely to hear much within his garden walls at 
 Fulham of what was passing at Aldgate. There can be no 
 question that Church pulpits were occupied during the plague 
 by ministers who had been ejected in 1662. Chief among them 
 was Thomas Vincent, formerly minister of St Magdalen's, Milk 
 Street, who preached in St Botolph's, Aldgate, Great St Helen's, 
 and Allhallows Staining'*. Vincent says that it was the opportu- 
 nity of irregular practitioners both in the Church and in medicine, 
 
 ' Evans, in preface to 1721 edition of Vincent's hook. 
 
 2 Cal. Stale Papers. ■' Ibid. ^ Evans, /. c. 
 
The No)iconforinisl clergy in Loudoji, 1665. 665 
 
 and he is disposed to say a good word for the latter from a fellow 
 feeling with them. Besides Vincent, says Richard Baxter*, there 
 were " some strangers that came thither since they were silenced, 
 as Mr Chester, Mr Janeway, Mr Turner, Mr Grimes, Mr Franklin, 
 and some others." These all became prominent in London Non- 
 conformity ; and Baxter clearly traces their subsequent power to 
 the opportunity that the plague gave them : 
 
 " But one great benefit the plague brought to the city, that is, it 
 occasioned the silenced ministers more openly and laboriously to preach 
 the Gospel to the exceeding comfort and profit of the people ; in so much 
 that to this day [1670] the freedom of preaching which this occasioned, 
 cannot, by the daily guards of soldiers, nor by the imprisonments of multitudes 
 be restrained. The ministers that were silenced for Nonconformity had ever 
 since 1662 done their work privately." 
 
 Baxter knew of none among the Nonconformist ministers 
 remaining in London who fell victims to the plague, except 
 " Mr Grunman, a German, a very humble, holy, able minister, 
 but being a silenced Nonconformist, was so poor that he was not 
 able to remove his family." Two others of the sect, who fled, 
 lost their lives — " Mr Cross, flying from the plague into the 
 country died with his wife and some children as soon as he came 
 thither, in the house of that learned worthy man, Mr Shaw, 
 another silenced minister," and Mr Roberts, "a godly Welsh 
 minister, who also flying from the plague, fell sick as far ofl" as 
 between Shrewsbury and Oswestry and died in a little straw, but 
 none durst entertain him," Baxter himself found refuge in the 
 house of the Hampdens, in Bucks ^ leaving his family, as he says, 
 
 ' Reliquiae Baxtcrianae. London, 1696, n. 1. 2. 
 
 - Milton, with his wife and daughters, spent the summer and autumn in the same 
 quiet neighbourhood, at Chalfont St Giles, in a cottage which Ellwood had secured 
 for him, still remaining with its low ceilings and diamond window-panes. He there 
 showed Ellwood the manuscript of Paradise Lost, which was published in 1667. The 
 poem contains no reference to the plague, unless, indeed, the flight to the country had 
 given point to the lines in the gth book : 
 
 " As one who long in populous city pent, 
 Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air, 
 Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breathe 
 Among the pleasant villages and farms," — 
 
 An opportunity arises in the 12th book, where the Plagues of Egypt come into the 
 
666 Medical practice in the London Plague, 1665. 
 
 in the midst of plague at Acton. Defoe draws from the incident 
 of the Nonconformists in Church pulpits a somewhat sentimental 
 moral ; he sees nothing aggressive in it, but merely the levelling 
 of differences by affliction, and a short-lived prospect of recon- 
 ciliation. 
 
 The irregular practitioners of physic would appear to have 
 been in great force, just as in former plagues, when their bills 
 were on every post. Defoe professes to give specimens of their 
 advertisements, which he might have adapted from actual adver- 
 tisements in the news-sheets, the ' Intelligencer' and the ' Newes.' 
 The empirics were of both sexes, and of foreign extraction as 
 well as native. 
 
 Among the regular physicians who practised for a time, at 
 least, in the plague were the famous Professor Glisson, Dr Nathan 
 Paget (an intimate friend of Milton and cousin of Elizabeth 
 Minshull whom the poet, in 1664, had married for his third wife), 
 Dr Wharton, of St Thomas's Hospital, a distinguished anatomist, 
 Dr Berwick or Barwick, Dr Brooke, Dr Hodges, and Dr 
 Conyers. The last was one of two of his order who died of 
 the plague. Two Paracelsist or chemical physicians, Dr Dey 
 and Dr Starkey, died of it : and Dr George Thomson says that 
 he survived three several attacks of the buboes, the first sore 
 lasting for four months. A considerable number of chirurgeons 
 and apothecaries are said (by Defoe) to have fallen victims. 
 Pepys says that at the first meeting of Gresham College (the 
 
 prophetic vision of events after the Fall ; but the movement is too rapid to allow of 
 delay, and we have no more than — 
 
 " Botches and blains must all his flesh emboss, 
 And all his people." 
 
 Gibbon tliought that the comet of 1664 (which was generally remarked u]ion as 
 a portent of the plague that followed) might have suggested the lines, 11. 70S — 1 1 
 
 " and like a comet burn'd, 
 That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge 
 In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair 
 Shakes pestilence and war." 
 Gibbon seems to make a slip in taking these as "the famous lines which startled 
 the licenser ; " those are usually taken to have been i. 598-9, the figure of the sun's 
 uclipsc, which 
 
 "with fear of change 
 Perplexes monarchs." 
 
Dr Goddard, F.R.S. 667 
 
 Royal Society) since the plague, held on January 22, 1666, Dr 
 Goddard " did fill us with talk in defence of his and his fellow 
 physicians' going out of town in the plague-time," his plea being 
 that their particular patients were out of town, and they left at 
 liberty. But that excuse ignores the fact that the time was a 
 great emergency, and puts the defence upon the wrong ground. 
 
 Goddard had attended Cromwell in the Irish and Scottish 
 campaigns as physician to the army. For a short time he had 
 been a member of the Council of State, and for several years 
 was master of a College at Oxford. He was Gresham professor 
 of physic, and one of the original council of the Royal Society. 
 This eminent man of science was the inventor and proprietor of 
 " Goddard's drop," the secret of which he sold to Charles II. for 
 a large sum, said to have been ^6000. Dr Martin Lister says 
 that the king showed him the receipt, and that the drops were 
 nothing more than the volatile spirit of raw silk rectified with 
 oil of cinnamon, and no better than ordinary spirit of hartshorn. 
 Another writer says that the drops contained also skull of a 
 person hanged and dried viper. According to Sydenham, 
 Goddard's drops were preferable to other volatile spirits for the 
 particular purpose, namely, the recovery of people from faintings 
 of various kinds. Even if Dr Goddard had remained in town, 
 he would have been a trafficker in nostrums as much as the 
 empirics ; nor is it probable, from all that we know, that he 
 could have brought epidemiological principles to bear upon the 
 management of the epidemic among the poor. The best teach- 
 ing of the time counselled that which he himself practised, 
 namely, flight. 
 
 Defoe says that the Lord Mayor (Sir John Lawrence), the 
 Sheriffs (Sir George Waterman and Sir Charles Doe), the Court 
 of Aldermen and certain of the Common Council, or their 
 deputies, came to a resolution and published it, viz. : 
 
 " That they would not quit the City themselves, but that they would be 
 always at hand for the preserving of good order in every place, and for the 
 doing justice on all occasions ; as also for the distributing the public charity 
 to the poor ; and, in a word, for the doing the duty and discharging the 
 trust reposed in them by the citizens to the utmost of their power." 
 
 The minutes are extant of numerous meetings of the Mayor 
 
668 TJlc modes of burial in Loudon, 1665. 
 
 and Council, with the orders made (on May u, June 17, 19, 
 and 27, July 12, and at short intervals thereafter)\ Two of the 
 Aldermen died of plague. 
 
 It appears to be admitted by all, that good order was kept, 
 the dead buried expeditiously, day and night watchmen provided 
 for an immense number of infected houses (until, as Vincent 
 says, the infected houses became so many that there was no use 
 shutting them up), bearers of the dead and grave-diggers engaged 
 to fill the places of those who died, and applications heard for 
 relief. One of the things that justly excited the admiration of 
 Defoe was the abundant supply of all the markets, and the 
 almost unvarying weight of the penny wheaten loaf, which is 
 given every week at the foot of the bill of mortality. The 
 Parish Clerks brought out their bill regularly, although Hodges 
 says that the sextons failed at length to keep an accurate 
 account of the number of corpses. All the dead were buried at 
 first in coffins and with full ceremony; but when the infection 
 became hottest in August and September, especially in the 
 crowded East-end and in Southwark, the bodies are said to have 
 been brought to the pits in cartloads and thrown in, sometimes 
 without even a covering'^ That is alleged by the writers on 
 the plagues of 1603 and 1625, and the same must have happened 
 to some extent in 1665, but whether to the extent that Defoe's 
 graphic account implies may be doubted. 
 
 The burials took place over night until, as Vincent says, 
 " now the nights are too short to bury the dead." This was a 
 reversal of the order, first issued in 1547 and probably carried 
 out in the plague of 1603, that no burial was to take place 
 between six in the evening and six in the morning. Even at 
 
 ' Ih-it. Mhs. Addit. MS. 4376 (8). " Abstract of several orders relating to the 
 Plague," from 35 Hen. VIII. to 1665. 
 
 - In excavating the foundations of the Broad Street terminus of the North London 
 Railway, the w^orkmen came upon a stratum four feet below the surface and 
 descending eight or ten feet lower, which was full of uncoffmed skeletons. Some 
 hundreds of them were collected and re-interred. {Notes and Queries, 3rd Ser. iv. 
 85.) The ground was part of the old enclosure of Bethlem Hospital (St Mary's Spital 
 outside Bishopsgate), and was acquired for a cemetery, to the extent of an acre, by 
 Sir Thomas Roe, in 1569. Probably there were plague-pits dug in it during more than 
 one of the great epidemics, from 1593 to 1665. 
 
Pepys and Evelyn on tJic state of the City. 669 
 
 the worst time, coffins would seem to have been got for most. 
 Vincent says, " Now we could hardly go forth but we should 
 meet many coffins," and he mentions one woman whom he met 
 with a little coffin under her arm. Evelyn enters in his diary 
 on September 7, the worst week of the epidemic : " I went all 
 along the City and suburbs from Kent Street to St James's, a 
 dismal passage and dangerous, to see so many coffins exposed 
 in the streets now thin of people." Defoe's weird description of 
 the Aldgate plague-pit at midnight, with seven or eight lanterns 
 set on the heaps of earth round the edge, and of the constant 
 journeys to and fro of the dead-carts, has probably made the 
 most of the realities of the case. 
 
 A letter of Pepys to Lady Carteret, written from Woolwich 
 on September 4, gives us a glimpse of the state of the City : 
 
 " I having stayed in the city till about 7400 died in one week, and of 
 them above 6000 of the plague, and little noise heard day nor night but 
 tolling of bells ; till I could walk Lumber-Street and not meet twenty 
 persons from one end to the other, and not fifty upon the Exchange; till 
 whole families, 10 and 12 together, have been swept away ; till my very 
 physician, Dr Burnet, who undertook to secure me against any infection, 
 having survived the month of his own being shut up, died himself of the 
 plague ; till the nights, though much lengthened, are grown too short to 
 conceal the burials of those that died the day before, people being thereby 
 constrained to borrow daylight for that service." The butcheries are every- 
 where visited, his brewer is shut up, and his baker dead with his whole 
 family. 
 
 On September 20, he writes in his diary : 
 
 " But Lord ! what a sad time it is to all : no boats upon the river, and 
 grass grows all up and down Whitehall Court, and nobody but poor wretches 
 in the streets." 
 
 Some three weeks later (October 11) Evelyn writes in his 
 diary : " Went through the whole city, having occasion to alight 
 out of the coach in several places about business of money, when 
 I was environed with multitudes of poor pestiferous creatures 
 begging alms. The shops universally shut up." Vincent says 
 that he would meet " many with sores and limping in the 
 streets," (from the suppurating buboes in the groins). Again : 
 
 " It would be endless to speak what we have seen and heard of: — some 
 in their frenzy rising out of their beds and leaping about their rooms ; others 
 
670 Vincent on Plague in a household. 
 
 crying and roaring at their windows ; some coming forth almost naked into 
 the streets" 
 
 — the delirium being sometimes of the gentle or foolish kind, 
 and sometimes violent. These incidents are much enlarged 
 upon by Defoe, who makes out the cries and groans (mentioned 
 by Dekker and others for the earlier plagues) to have been from 
 the pain of the hard and tense buboes. Boghurst says that 
 the treatment by actual cautery and other escharotics caused 
 more pain than the buboes. 
 
 As a set-off to the more horrible picture given by Defoe of 
 the inmates of a house all dying together, their bodies being 
 found by the watchmen and taken away in the dead-cart, we 
 may turn to Vincent's plain account of what happened in the 
 house where he lodged, probably in the neighbourhood of 
 Aldgate or Bishopsgate, when he came up from Islington to 
 minister to the sick. 
 
 " We were eight in the family — three men, three youths, an old woman 
 and a maid ; all which came to me, hearing of my stay in town, some to 
 accompany me, others to help me [he was a celebrity in the religious world 
 with a large following]. It was the latter end of September before any of us 
 were touched... But at last we were visited... At first our maid was smitten; it 
 began with a shivering and trembling in her flesh, and quickly seized on her 
 spirits...! came home and the maid was on her death-bed; and another 
 crying out for help, being left alone in a sweating fainting-fit. It was on 
 Monday when the maid was smitten ; on Thursday she died full of tokens. 
 On Friday one of the youths had a swelling in his groin, and on the Lord's 
 day died with the marks of the distemper upon him. On the same day 
 another youth did sicken, and on the Wednesday following he died. On the 
 Thursday night his master fell sick of the disease, and within a day or two 
 was full of spots, but strangely recovered. ..The rest were preserved." 
 
 The two boys appear to have been conscious to the end, and 
 to have died in the placid mood that often came on in the last * 
 hours of plague, as in other prostrating infections such as yellow 
 fever and cholera. In those two weeks at the end of September 
 and beginning of October the burials in all London were 6460 
 ^(of plague 5533) and 5720 (of plague 4929). 
 
 The chief preventive measure which the mayor had to give 
 effect to was the shutting-up of infected houses. Defoe says 
 that he carried out that odious policy considerately. The policy 
 
TJie doctrine of contagion in Plagjie. 671 
 
 was a traditional one, and may or may not have had its origin 
 in medical prescription. It was practised, as we have seen in a 
 former chapter, early in the reign of Henry VIII., if not even 
 before that. The doctrine underlying it was the contagiousness 
 of plague, which was much more a doctrine of the faculty than 
 of the people, and was most of all a doctrine of the Court. 
 Originally the dogma of contagiousness, in all its rigour, had 
 been made for the persons of the Tudor monarchs, and as late 
 as 1665 it was in the atmosphere of the Court that the contagion 
 of plague was invested with the most powerful properties. The 
 common people of London gave no heed to it, because they saw 
 every hour that it was a matter of indifference; the middle 
 classes held it in a qualified way, knowing that there was less 
 to fear from plague-bodies than from plague-infected ground ; 
 but kings took the comprehensive view of it, allowing no 
 exceptions or scientific reservations, and the Court doctors, such 
 as Mead in the i8th century, at length succeeded in making 
 the high doctrine of plague-contagion to pass current. Two 
 instances are known from extant petitions, of its rigorous appli- 
 cation upon Court servants in 1665: one in the case of a 
 trumpeter of the king, and the other in the case of the barber to 
 the household. In the latter case, apparently when the Court was 
 at Salisbury in the autumn, a stranger supposed to be visited 
 with the sickness ran into the barber's tent in his absence ; 
 whereon the tent and all his goods and instruments of livelihood 
 were burnt, he himself confined, and his servants sent away, 
 according to the orders for the preservation of the Court, " so 
 that he lost his trade and was utterly ruined \" 
 
 The more discriminating of the profession knew and taught 
 that the seeds of plague could lurk in a bundle of clothes, or 
 of bedding, or in other effects, or in bales of goods, and that 
 they became the more virulent through the fermentation that 
 goes on in these circumstances. The contagion was understood 
 to ho. per fomitem and per distans; on the other hand, experience 
 was rather against a contagion from the exhalations of the sick : 
 the immunity of nurses was as striking as it has been in many 
 other contagions. The people were instinctively right in their 
 
 ' C(7/. Stale Papers, Domestic, 1665, p. 579. 
 
6/2 TJie shutting-up of houses in 1665. 
 
 belief that they mostly caught the plague because the infection 
 was in the air of the place; so long as they were living on a 
 plague-stricken spot, they were exposed to the risk ; and if 
 there were any difference in safety between dwelling-houses, 
 and the streets, markets or shops, the preference seemed to He 
 with the former. The traditional or official doctrine, however, 
 was that the plague-stricken were the sources of contagion, that 
 all who had come near them were suspect, and that the safety 
 of the well depended upon the rigorous shutting-up of the sick 
 and the suspected together. The experience of epidemic after 
 epidemic might have shown that this theoretical reasoning, so 
 attractive to the "thorough" order of mind, was worthless in 
 practice. A great plague pursued its course until the infected 
 houses became too many for shutting up ; if many plague-years 
 did not develop epidemics of the first degree, that was in ac- 
 cordance with some epidemiological law, and not because the 
 preventive measures were one year effective and another year 
 ineffective. However, a traditional doctrine will always survive 
 a good deal of adverse experience ; and the shutting-up of 
 houses, which had signally failed in 1563, 1593, 1603, 1625 and 
 1636, was resorted to once more in 1665, and perhaps with more 
 rigour than ever so as to give it a fair chance. Defoe has stated 
 with great fairness the hardships of it, and he follows Hodges 
 and Boghurst in pronouncing it a mistake and a failure. Most 
 of the horrible incidents of the plague came from the shutting-up 
 of houses ; those which Defoe introduces in that connexion do 
 not exceed probability. It is hard to say whether the condem- 
 nation of shutting-up, which found wide currency during and 
 immediately after the plague of 1665, would have at length 
 made any difference to the traditional doctrine and practice. 
 The occasion did not arise again in London except for a few 
 months in 1666, when the old practice seems to have been 
 enforced. The corresponding doctrine and practice that arose in 
 its place, was quarantine against foreign importation ; that rested 
 firstly upon the sophistical assertion of the all-powerful Mead, 
 that plague had been an exotic to England, and secondly upon 
 the doctrine of plague-contagion in its most comprehensive and 
 least discriminating form, l^ut the quarantine law dates really 
 
Fires in the streets. — Medical directions. 673 
 
 from the Queen Anne period, and the curious history of its rise, 
 progress, and overthrow belongs to another part of this work. 
 / The other general preventive measure besides the shutting-up 
 of "visited" houses was the burning of fires in the streets, which 
 was also a tradition from Tudor times. The mayor loyally 
 carried out that also; until in the beginning of autumn a 
 concurrence of things made an end of the practice. These 
 adverse influences were first, the heavy showers of rain, which 
 put the fires out ; secondly, the differences in medical opinion 
 whether coal-fires or wood-fires were the better, and whether 
 fires were to be recommended at all ; and thirdly the popular 
 perception that the fires made no difference to the progress 
 of the epidemic. 
 
 In the way of individual protection and treatment, the 
 College of Physicians issued a tract full of directions and 
 prescriptions, which Boghurst says were all old, being taken 
 from De Vigo (i* 1520). It is not necessarily against methods 
 of practice that they are old ; but one cannot fail to observe 
 how closely the medieval teaching about plague, cause and cure 
 together, was followed to the last in England : for two centuries 
 the writers on plague reproduced the chapters and paragraphs 
 almost without change that we find in the treatise of the 
 bishop of Aarhus, which circulated in manuscript in England 
 in the 15th century and was first printed about 1480. The most 
 popular preventive was something " to smell to," not sweet but 
 aigre. Hence the use of civet-boxes, pouncet-boxes, and 
 pomanders, which were made to suit all purses. There were 
 also plague-waters, one of which, "the plague-water of Matthias," 
 figures among the prescriptions of the College of Physicians 
 both in a cheap and in an expensive form. The College's 
 prescription " to break the tumour " is as follows : 
 
 "Take a great onion, hollow it, put into it a fig, rue cut small, and a 
 dram of Venice treacle ; put it close stopt in a wet paper, and roast it in the 
 embers ; apply it hot unto the tumour ; lay three or four, one after another ; 
 let one lie three hours." 
 
 The Paracelsist or chemical physician, Thomson, gives a 
 
 prescription which brings out the mystical tendencies of that 
 
 c. 43 
 
674 Tobacco in tJic Plague. — BogJuirsfs medical details. 
 
 otherwise meritorious sect. It relates to a method of curing 
 plague by means of a toad. 
 
 " The great difficulty to bring this animal to a true Zenexton lies in an 
 exquisite preparation of it, the manner whereof that great investigator of 
 verity, Van Helmont, hath thus delivered, as he received instructions from 
 Butler, an Irishman who (to Helmont's knowledge) had cured some thousands 
 of the pest in London. He gave directions that a large Bufo, taken in the 
 afternoon in the month of June, should be hung up by the legs, nigh the fire, 
 over a vessel of yellow wax " etc. 
 
 Tobacco, smoked or chewed, came into great vogue in 1665 
 as a preservative from the plague. Hearne, the antiquary, says : 
 
 " I have been told that in the last great plague at London [1665] none 
 that kept tobacconists shops had the plague. It is certain that smoaking it 
 was looked upon as a most excellent preservative ; in so much that even 
 children were obliged to smoak. And I remember that I heard formerly 
 Tom Rogers, who was yeoman beadle, say that when he was that year, when 
 the plague raged, a schoolboy at Eaton, all the boys of that school were 
 obliged to smoak in the school every morning, and that he was never 
 whipped so much in his life as he was one morning for not smoaking ^" 
 
 The best medical details of the Great Plague come from 
 Boghurst, who claims that the observations were all his own. 
 
 With regard to its incidence he says : "About the beginning most men 
 got it with fuddling, surfeiting, over heating themselves, and disorderly 
 living." Again : " Those that married in the heat of the disease (if they had 
 not had the disease before) almost all fell into it in a week or a fortnight after 
 it, both in the city and in the country, of which most died, especially the 
 men." One of Dekker's stories of the year 1603 is an illustration of the 
 same thing. " It usually went through a whole kindred, though living in 
 several places ; which was the cause it swept away many whole families... 
 In some houses ten out of twelve died, and sixteen out of twenty." Melan- 
 choly for the loss of friends predisposed to it, while cheerfulness and courage 
 fortified some against it. Old people that had many sores upon them, 
 especially carbuncles, almost all died. The natural constitution, disposition, 
 or complexion "did much to make or mar the disease." People with hollow 
 eyes commonly died. Those who drank brandy and strong waters grew 
 mad, looked about them wildly, and died quickly in two days. " All that I 
 saw that were let blood, if they had been sick two, three, four or five days or 
 more, died the same day." Teeming women fared miserably ; they were 
 not more subject than others ; but scarce one in forty lived (this is enlarged 
 
 ' Kdiqtnae Ilearnianae. Ed. Bliss, 1869, 11. 117 (under the date of Jan. 21, 
 1721). 
 
Alleged vnmnnity of the " ro?(ge route" 6y^ 
 
 upon by Defoe). Many people had the spotted fever and the plague both 
 together, and many the French pox and the plague both together, and yet 
 both sorts commonly lived (someone says that men caught the French pox 
 of purpose^). All sorts died, but more of the good than the bad, more men 
 than women, more of dull complexion than fair. " Of all the common 
 hackney prostitutes of Luteners-lanc, Dog-yard, Cross-lane, Baldwin-gardens, 
 Hatton-garden and other places, the common criers of oranges, oysters, 
 fruits etc., all the impudent drunken drabbing bayles and fellows, and many 
 others of the rouge route, there is but few missing — verifying the testimony 
 of Diemerbroeck that the plague left the rotten bodies and took the sound'-." 
 It fell not very thick upon old people till about the middle or slake of the 
 disease, and most in the decrease and declining of the disease. Cats, dogs, 
 cattle, poultry, etc., were free from infection. 
 
 Some died in twelve or twenty days, but most in five or six. In summer 
 about one-half that were sick, died ; but towards winter, three of four lived. 
 None died suddenly as stricken by lightning : " I saw none die under twenty 
 or twenty-four hours." After one rising, or bubo, was broke and run, 
 commonly another and another would rise in several parts of the body, so 
 that many had the disease upon them half a year ; some risings would not 
 break under half a year, being so deep in the flesh. 
 
 This explains Dekker's statement in 1603 that some had 
 buboes repeatedly, and that one person had eighteen sores. Dr 
 Thomson himself had buboes thrice. Hodges, also, knew of 
 many cases fatal at the third seizure, the later attacks being not 
 relapses but new infections ; some even fell at the fifth or sixth 
 time, being before well recovered. In one of the earlier London 
 plagues, that of 1563, Jones saw a case of a woman near Temple 
 Bar that ended fatally at the third attack, the buboes having sup- 
 purated twice, but not at the third time. Boghurst goes on : 
 
 Of evil omen was "a white, soft, sudden, puffed up tumour on the neck 
 behind the ears, in the armpit, or in the flank ;" also a " large extended hard 
 tumour under the chin, swelling downwards upon the throat and fetching a 
 
 1 The City Remembrancer. London, 1 769 (professing to be Gideon Harvey's notes). 
 
 " Procopius [De Bella Fersico, 11. cap. 23, Latin Translation) says the same of the 
 great Justinian plague in A.D. 543 at Byzantium: "ut vere quis possit dicere, pestem 
 illam, seu casu aliquo seu providentia, quasi delectu diligenter habito, sceleratissimos 
 quosque reliquisse. Sed haec postea clarius patuerunt." On this Gibbon remarks: 
 " Philosophy must disdain the obsei-v-ation of Procopius, that the lives of such men 
 were guarded by the peculiar favour of fortune or Providence ; " and most men will 
 agree with Gibbon. But, if we could be sure of the fact of immunity (and Boghurst's 
 testimony is a little weakened by his deference to Diemerljroek, who knew the classical 
 traditions of plague), it might be possible to explain it on merely pathological grounds. 
 
 43—2 
 
6"]^ Boghursfs medical details of the Great Plague. 
 
 great compass" (the brawny swelling of the submaxillary salivary glands 
 and surrounding tissues). Tokens came out after a violent sweat, which was 
 often induced of purpose by nurses, who said, ' Cochineal is a fine thing to 
 bring out the tokens.' Nurses often killed their patients by giving them 
 cold drinks. Many also were killed by the shutting-up of houses, by 
 wickedness (of nurses?), by confident and ignorant mountebanks, by over- 
 hasty cutting and burning of buboes. Servants and poor people removed to 
 the pest-house or to other houses in their sickness, took harm therefrom. 
 People using corrosives, actual cauteries and many intolerable applications 
 put their patients to more pain than the disease did. 
 
 The botches, or buboes (swollen lymph-glands in the neck, armpits or 
 groins), were the most distinctive sign of the plague, having given to it 
 the old name of "the botch." Besides these, there were the "tokens" 
 (specially limited in meaning to livid spots on the skin), carbuncles and 
 blains. Carbuncles, says Boghurst, commonly rose upon the most substan- 
 tial, gross, firm flesh, as the thighs, legs, backside, buttock ; they never 
 occurred, that he saw, on the head among the hair, or on the belly. They 
 were not seen until the end of July, were most rife in September and 
 October, commonly in old people, never in children. 
 
 Hodges saw one carbuncle on the thigh, the size of two 
 handbreadths, with a large blister on it, ''which being opened 
 by the chirurgeon and scarification made where the mortification 
 did begin, the patient expired under the operation." But most 
 commonly carbuncles did not exceed the breadth of three or 
 four fingers. Boghurst continues : 
 
 " Blains are a kind of diminutive carbuncle, but are not so hard, black, 
 and fiery ; sometimes there is a little core in them. Generally they are no 
 bigger than a twopenny piece, or a groat at the biggest, with a bladder full 
 of liquor on the top of them, which, if you open but a little, will come out 
 whitish or of a lemon or straw colour." "Besides a blain there is a thing you 
 may call a blister, puffing up the skin, long like one's finger in figure, like a 
 blister raised with cantharides ; and such usually die." The following 
 experience is remarkable, but it is doubtful whether Boghurst has not 
 taken it from Diemerbroek : " Towards the latter end of a plague, many 
 people that stayed, and others that returned, have little angry pustules and 
 blains rising upon them, especially upon the hands, without being sick at 
 all. But such never die, nor infect others ; and I remember Diemerbroeck 
 saith, etc." Can this be the meaning of "smallpox" following the plague, as 
 in the 1 6th century books by Alphanus, Kellwaye and others? 
 
 The tokens proper, according to Hodges, were spots on the 
 skin " proceeding from extravasated blood." The body of the 
 youth dissected by Thomson was "beset with spots, black and 
 
A dissection of a plague-body. Gyy 
 
 blue," some of which when opened "contained a coagulated 
 matter." The tokens, as the name implies, were made the most 
 distinctive sign of the plague ; but they were far from being so 
 constant as the botches or buboes. Boghurst says that " tokens 
 appeared not much until about the middle of June;" and, 
 according to a letter of September 14, they must have been 
 very variable even at the height of the plague : " The practi- 
 tioners in physic stand amazed to meet with so many various 
 symptoms which they find among their patients ; one week the 
 general distempers are blotches and boils, the next week as 
 clear-skinned as may be, but death spares neither ; one week 
 full of spots and tokens, and perhaps the succeeding bill none at 
 all\" 
 
 The account of the dissection by Thomson, of a youth dead 
 of the plague, is perhaps all the morbid anatomy that has come 
 down to us. He found what appear to have been infarcts in the 
 lungs ; the surface was " stigmatised with several large ill-favoured 
 marks, much tumified and distended," from which, on section, 
 there issued " sanious, dreggy corruption and a pale ichor desti- 
 tute of any blood." The stomach contained a black, tenacious 
 matter, like ink. The spleen gave out on section an ichorish 
 matter. The liver was pallid and the kidneys exsanguine. 
 There were " obscure large marks " on the inner surface of the 
 intestines and stomach. The peritoneal cavity contained a 
 " virulent ichor or thin liquor, yellowish, or greenish." There 
 was a decoloured clot in the right ventricle, but " not one spoon- 
 ful of that ruddy liquor properly called blood could be obtained 
 in this pestilential body." In all other cadavers that he ever 
 dissected he had found that the right ventricle had blackish 
 blood condensed, but this one had a pale clot " like a lamb-stone 
 cut in twain," which puzzled him greatly ; perhaps it came, 
 he conjectures, from a sumption of mere crude milk which 
 an indiscreet nurse had given the boy not long before he 
 died. 
 
 1 John Tillison to Dr Sancroft, September 14, 1665. Ilarl. MSS. cited by 
 Heberden, Increase and Decrease of Diseases. London, 1801. Woodall, writing in 
 1659, ^'^^ basing on his experience of London plague in 1603, 1625, and 1636, is in 
 like manner emphatic that tlie symptoms varied much in individuals and in seasons. 
 
6/8 BogJiurst on synuptonis. — The season of 1665. 
 
 Among the symptoms of a fatal issue, Boghurst mentions the 
 following: Hiccough, continual vomiting, sudden looseness, or 
 two or three stools in succession, shortness of breath, stopping of 
 urine, great inward burning and outward cold, continual great 
 thirst, faltering in the voice, speaking in the throat and occa- 
 sionally sighing, with a slight puUing-in one side of the mouth 
 when they speak, sleeping with the eyes half-open, trembling of 
 the lips and hands and shaking of the head, staggering in going 
 about rooms, unwillingness to speak, hoarseness preventing speech, 
 cramp in the legs, stiffness of one side of the neck, contraction of 
 the jaws, the vomit running out from the side of the mouth, pro- 
 longed bleeding at the nose, the sores decreasing and turning 
 black on a sudden. 
 
 It is to be remarked that Boghurst says very little of the 
 gentle or the violent delirium, on which Defoe enlarges pictur- 
 esquely ; nor does he emphasize the extreme pain of the hard 
 and tense buboes, which is another of Defoe's themes. Hodges, 
 however, says that " some of the infected run about staggering 
 like drunken men, and fall and expire in the streets ; while others 
 lie half-dead and comatous...Some lie vomiting as if they had 
 drunk poison." 
 
 The progress of the epidemic would seem to have been little 
 influenced by the weather or by what was done, unless the 
 shutting-up of houses had helped to intensify the virus. Bog- 
 hurst says : " If very hot weather followed a shower of rain, the 
 disease increased much ; " and again : " If, in the heat of the 
 disease the wind blew very sharp and cold, people died very 
 quickly, many lying sick but one day." We are told, however, 
 by Hodges that " the whole summer was refreshed with moderate 
 breezes," and that " the heat was too mild to encourage corruption 
 and fermentation." The air itself, he says, " remained uninfected." 
 Rain fell from time to time in the end of summer, copious enough 
 to put out the fires in the streets. There was at least one very 
 hot day, near the beginning of the epidemic, the 5th of June, 
 which Pepys says was " the hottest day that I ever felt in my 
 life." On September 20, however, he says that the increase of 
 the plague could not have been expected " from the coldness of 
 the late season." 
 
Plague in the country around Londo/i, 1665. 
 
 679 
 
 The plague lingered in London throughout the year 1666, 
 causing 1998 deaths in all. In January 1666 it was still at as 
 high a figure as 158 deaths in a week, and in the week ending 
 September 18 it rose again to the exceptional height of 104 deaths. 
 In the first three weeks of Decen:iber, the deaths were 2, 4, and 
 3 ; and from that low level the plague never rose again in 
 London. A few annual deaths continued to appear in the 
 bills down to 1679, when they finally disappeared. 
 
 Plague near London in 1665. 
 
 Meanwhile various parts of England were affected with 
 plague during and after the great epidemic, and in one or 
 two instances a little before it. In the immediate neighbourhood 
 of the capital all the towns and villages usually implicated by 
 the exodus from the City had cases of plague, as the following 
 table shows. It has been compiled from the parish registers, as 
 extracted in Lysons' Environs of London, Defoe's widely 
 discrepant figures being given for comparison in the third 
 column. 
 
 
 AH 
 causes 
 
 Plague 
 
 Defoe's 
 list. 
 
 
 AH 
 
 causes 
 
 Plague 
 
 Defoe's 
 list. 
 
 Barking 
 
 230 
 
 
 200 
 
 Hertford 
 
 
 
 go 
 
 Barnes 
 
 27 
 
 
 
 Hornsey 
 
 S7> 
 
 43 
 
 85 
 
 Barnet and Hadley 
 
 
 
 43 
 
 Isle worth 
 
 195 
 
 149 
 
 
 Battersea 
 
 113 
 
 
 
 Kensington 
 
 62 
 
 25 
 
 
 Beckenham 
 
 18 
 
 
 
 Kingston 
 
 
 
 122 
 
 Brentford 
 
 103 
 
 
 432 
 
 Lewisham 
 
 56 
 
 
 
 Brentwood 
 
 
 
 70 
 
 Mortlake 
 
 197 
 
 170 
 
 
 Bromley 
 
 27 
 
 7 
 
 
 Newington, Stoke 
 
 
 
 17 
 
 Cambervvell 
 
 133 
 
 
 
 Norwood 
 
 12 
 
 2 
 
 
 Charlton 
 
 7 
 
 3 
 
 
 Putney 
 
 
 74 
 
 
 Chertsey 
 
 
 
 18 
 
 Romford 
 
 90 
 
 
 109 
 
 Chiselhurst 
 
 21 
 
 
 
 St Albans 
 
 
 
 121 
 
 Ciapham 
 
 28 
 
 
 
 Stratford- Bow 
 
 139 
 
 
 
 Croydon 
 
 
 141 
 
 61 
 
 Staines 
 
 
 
 82 
 
 Deptford 
 
 548 
 
 374 
 
 623 
 
 Tottenham no 
 
 entries 
 
 42 
 
 Ealing 
 
 286 
 
 244 
 
 
 Twickenham 
 
 
 21 
 
 
 Edmonton 
 
 
 
 19 
 
 Uxbridge 
 
 
 
 117 
 
 E 1th am 
 
 44 
 
 32 
 
 85 
 
 Waltham Abbey 
 
 
 
 23 
 
 Enfield 
 
 176 
 
 
 32 
 
 Walthamstow 
 
 68 
 
 
 
 Epping 
 
 
 
 26 
 
 Wandsworth 
 
 
 245 
 
 
 Finchley 
 
 38 
 
 
 
 Ware 
 
 
 
 160 
 
 Greenwich 
 
 416 
 
 
 231 
 
 Watford 
 
 
 
 45 
 
 Hampstead 
 
 214 
 
 
 
 Windsor 
 
 
 
 103 
 
 Heston 
 
 48 
 
 13 
 
 
 Woodford 
 
 IZ 
 
 
 
 Hodsdon 
 
 
 
 30 
 
 
 
 
 
68o Plague at Yarmouth, 1664-1666. 
 
 The most striking fact that comes out is that most of the 
 parishes around London had actually fewer deaths from plague 
 in 1665 than in 1603. The exceptions to this rule in 1665 are 
 the villages on or near the Thames above London — Battersea, 
 Wandsworth, Putney, Mortlake, Brentford, Isleworth, and Ealing, 
 which had all a very high mortality, Barnes being almost 
 exempt. On the lower reaches of the Thames, Barking on the 
 Essex shore, and Deptford, Greenwich and Lewisham on the 
 other side, had the infection in them very severely ; but these 
 three places in Kent had a still more severe visitation in 1666, 
 along with other towns in that county. 
 
 On September 9. Evelyn wrote from his Deptford house, 
 Sayes Court, that "near thirty houses are visited in this miserable 
 village," The infection got also among the ships of the navy ; 
 on August 29, on board the ' Loyal Subject' at Deal, Captain 
 Fortescue and six men died suddenly, it was feared of the 
 plague. 
 
 Plague in the Provinces in 1665-6. 
 
 The earliest accounts of plague in the provinces come from 
 Yarmouth in November, 1664. On the i8th it is said to have 
 been brought in a vessel from Rotterdam ; three died in one 
 house, of whom one had the plague. On November 30, the 
 plague was spreading, if the searchers (drunken women, however) 
 were to be credited. On February 8, 1665, there was another 
 death from plague, and as the summer wore on the mortality 
 increased rapidly. On June 16, thirty had died in the week, 
 the inhabitants had fled, the town was like a country village, 
 and the poor left behind were lamenting at once the lack of 
 work and of charity. On August 21, the king wrote from 
 Salisbury to the bailiffs of Yarmouth concerning the plague. 
 In the weeks ending August 30 and September 6, there were 
 117 deaths (96 from plague) and no deaths (100 from plague), 
 and as late as November 6, there had been 22 plague-deaths in 
 the week. In March, 1666, the epidemic came to an end\ 
 Smaller outbreaks occurred in the autumn of 1665 and spring of 
 
 1 CaL Stale Papers. Hist. MSS. Com. IX. 321. 
 
Not imich Plague tJu'onghout England in 1665. 681 
 
 1666 at Lynn, Norwich, Ipswich and Harwich. The great 
 epidemic at Colchester began in summer, 1665, but fell mostly 
 in 1666, at a time when there was little plague elsewhere, so 
 that it practically closes the history of plague in England, and 
 will come naturally at the end of the chapter. 
 
 Most of the provincial outbreaks in 1665 were of small 
 extent, and were probably due to introduction of the virus from 
 London. The valley of the Tyne, which had often experienced 
 severe plagues, had a slight epidemic, said to have originated 
 from the colliers returned from the Thames. On July 18, there 
 were seven houses shut up at Sunderland, one at Wearmouth 
 and one at Durham \ A paragraph in the ' Nevves,' from 
 Durham, October 13, says that the sickness in the north is now 
 much assuaged. Newcastle remained almost free (although 
 Defoe says different), two houses being shut up on January 30, 
 1666, and two at Gateshead. The whole north-west and west of 
 England, which had suffered most during the last plague-period, 
 in the Civil Wars, appears to have escaped altogether. 
 
 In the south, there was a good deal of the infection at 
 Southampton in the summer and autumn of 1665 ; on July 6, 
 " the poor will not suffer the rich to quit the town and leave 
 them to starvel" It is heard of, also, at Poole and Sherborne 
 in Dorset (in November), at Salisbury, where the Court lay for 
 some weeks, and at Battle^ in Sussex; but in none of these places 
 to any great extent. Various places in Kent had cases in 1665 
 — Rochester, Chatham, Sandwich, Eastry, Westwell, Deal, Dover 
 and Canterbury* ; but it was only the naval stations that had 
 more than a few cases in 1665 ; while all of them had it far 
 worse in 1666. Other centres in 1665 were in Northamptonshire 
 and Cambridgeshire. 
 
 At Peterborough, Oundle and Newport Pagnell, there was a 
 visitation of the severer kind, with flight of the richer inhabitants, 
 and the usual arrest of work and trade. The parish register of 
 Yardley, Hastings, records that 60 persons died of plague in that 
 
 1 Cal. State Papers. Cal. Le Fleming MSS. p. 37 (also for Cockermouth). 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
 3 Mead seems to have known that there were plague-cases at Battle in 1665. 
 
 * Cal. S. P. 
 
682 Plague at Cambridge, 1665. 
 
 town from June 5, 1665, to January 3, 1666. There was also a 
 sharp epidemic in Cambridge and in the country around, of 
 which we get a glimpse in a letter of October 19, 1665, written 
 from Clare Hall to one of the fellows of Clare* : 
 
 "Alderman Mynell the brewer and one of his children died of the plague 
 this last Monday ; he hath had four children in all dead of it. Clayton, the 
 barber in Petty Cury, and one of his children, died last Saturday of the 
 sickness. It is newly broken out sadly by Christ's (though they are all fled 
 from the Colledge upon Mr Bunchly, their manciple, dying of the plague) — 
 where Nicholson the smith, his wife and two children are dead within three 
 days, his other children being deadly sick in the house. But it most rageth 
 in St Clement's parish, where seldom a day passeth without one dead of the 
 sickness... Poor Mr Brown, the old man that is one of the University 
 musicians, and Mr Saunders that sings the deep bass, are shut up in 
 Mr Saunders' house in Green Street, whose child died last week suspected. 
 Two houses at Barton are infected by two of Alderman Mynell's children, 
 that are dead there. Ditton is broke out just by the butcher, from whom we 
 had our meat, which made us hastily remove to Grantchester. H. Glenton, 
 the carrier, fled from this town to Shelford, where he died within two or 
 three days, suspected. ..Royston is sadly in two or three places, the last of 
 which is just in the middle of the town. The infection, they say, was 
 brought thither by a Cambridge man, whom they caught, and shut him up ; 
 but he hath since made his escape." 
 
 The Epidemic of Plague at Eyam, 1665-6. 
 
 Another of the English towns visited by plague in 1665 was 
 Derby ; whether the cases were many or few, they caused great 
 alarm, the town being forsaken, the streets grass-grown, and 
 the market set up on a new stance, to which the farmers and 
 traders came primed with a plug of tobacco in their mouths as a 
 preservative. But the epidemic in Derby itself was totally 
 eclipsed in interest by an extraordinary outbreak of plague in 
 the small village of Eyam, at the opposite end of the county, 
 in the North Peak, some twelve miles to the west of Sheffield. 
 The plague of Eyam is, indeed, the most famous of all English 
 plagues ; the story of it has been told many times in prose and 
 verse, its traditional incidents being well suited to minor poets 
 and moral writers, and the whole action of the drama con- 
 
 ' Hist. MSS. Com. \\. 115. 
 
TJie Plague at Eyain, Derbyshire, 1665. 683 
 
 veniently centered within a circuit of half a mile in a cup of the 
 heathy hills \ 
 
 Eyam was a village of some three hundred and fifty inhabit- 
 ants, standing among meadows around which the hills towered. 
 It had no resident doctor, but it had two ministers. The one 
 was the rector, the Rev. William Mompcsson, a young man of 
 twenty-seven, with a wife and two children, who had been 
 settled in Eyam only a year and did not like it ; the other was 
 the former rector, the Rev. Thomas Stanley, who had been 
 ejected for nonconformity in 1662, and had remained to carry 
 on his ministrations as a Dissenter among such of his old flock 
 as adhered to him. The wealthier householders resided at the 
 western and higher end of the village, on the other side of a 
 brook which crossed under the road ; as we shall see, they 
 escaped the infection almost if not altogether. The annual 
 village wake had been held in August, 1665, with more than the 
 usual' concourse of people from villages near. On the 2nd or 3rd 
 September a box arrived from London to the village tailor, who 
 lived in a small house at the western end of the churchyard ; it 
 contained old clothes which someone in London is supposed to 
 have bought for him cheap, and some tailors' patterns of cloth. 
 This box is assumed to have been opened by one George Vicars, 
 a servant, who was certainly the first victim of plague. He 
 found the contents to be damp and hung them up at the fire to 
 dry. He was quickly seized with violent sickness, became 
 delirious, developed buboes in his neck and groin, a plague-token 
 on his breast the third day, and died in a wretched state on 
 September 6. His body, which is said to have become soon 
 putrid, was buried in the churchyard on the 7th. Nearly a 
 fortnight passed before another case occurred, that of a youth 
 supposed to have been the tailor's son, who was buried on the 
 22nd September. Before the 30th four more had died, and in 
 
 ^ The History and AnliqiUties of Eyam, 'with a full and pai-ticular account of the 
 Great Plague which desolated that village A.D. 1666. By William Wood, London, 
 1842. This small volume, which owes its interest solely to the plague-incident, has 
 gone through at least five editions. Among those who have written, in prose or 
 verse, upon the same theme, Wood mentions Dr Mead, Miss Seward, Allan 
 Cunningham, E. Rhodes, S. T. Hall, William and Mary Howitt, S. Roberts, and 
 J. Holland. Tlie story is also in the Book of Golden Deeds. 
 
684 TJie Plague at Eyain in 1666. 
 
 the course of October twenty-two more were buried of the plague. 
 The deaths in November declined to seven, and in December 
 they were nine. There was now snow on the ground, with hard 
 frost, and at the beginning of January, 1666, the plague was 
 confined to two houses. Four died in January, eight in February, 
 six in March, nine in April, and only three in May. On June 2, 
 another burial occurred, and then there was another pause. 
 But in a week or more the epidemic broke out with renewed 
 power, three having been buried on the 12th of June, three on 
 the 15th, one on the i6th, three on the 17th, and so on until the 
 total for June reached nineteen. The wealthier villagers at the 
 west end had taken the alarm before and had mostly fled in the 
 spring ; those who stayed kept within their houses or at least 
 did not cross the stream. Now that the infection was revived 
 in the hot weather of June, the rector's wife also proposed flight, 
 but on her husband's refusal, she resolved to remain with him, 
 and to send her two children to a relative in Yorkshire. At the 
 same time the villagers in general were instinctively moved to 
 escape from the tainted spot ; but Mompesson used his authority 
 to prevent them, and a boundary line was drawn round the 
 village, about half a mile in circuit and marked by various 
 familiar objects, beyond which no one was to go. Mompesson's 
 motive appears to have been to prevent the spread of the 
 infection to the country around, and his parishioners submitted 
 passively. After the end of June the villagers would have 
 found it difficult to escape, owing to the terror which the very 
 name of their village caused in all the country round. Some of 
 them quitted their cottages and took up their abode in shelters 
 built along the side of a rocky glen within the cordon. The 
 earl of Devonshire, then at Chatsworth, promised Mompesson 
 that the village should not be left without supplies ; and people 
 from the villages near brought their market produce to certain 
 stated points on the boundary, where the Eyam people came to 
 fetch it, the money paid being dropped into water. Thus shut up 
 in their narrow valley, the villagers perished helplessly like a 
 stricken flock of sheep. By the end of June ceremonial burials 
 came to an end, the church and the churchyard were closed, the 
 dead were carried out wrapped in sheets by one of the villagers 
 
TJie mortality at Eyam ends in October, 1666. 685 
 
 noted for his herculean strength, and laid in shallow graves in 
 the meadows or on the hill-sides. In July the deaths mounted 
 up to five or six on some days, and the total for the month to 
 fifty-seven. In August the dead numbered seventy-eight, among 
 them the rector's wife on the 25th, after a walk with her husband 
 through the meadows, during which she is said to have made 
 the ominous remark that the air smelled sweet*. September 
 added twenty-four to the total, and there were now only about 
 forty-five left alive in the place. Of these, fifteen died to the 
 nth October, when the mortality ceased. Some of the sur- 
 vivors had passed through an attack of the plague, among them 
 the rector's man, whose buboes suppurated. Mompesson himself, 
 who had an issue open in his leg all the time, escaped the 
 infection, as well as his maid-servant. A young woman of 
 Eyam, married in the village of Corbor, two miles off, came one 
 day to see her mother, whom she found sick of the plague ; on 
 her return home she took the sickness and died, but no one 
 else in Corbor had it, A man was also at large in the neigh- 
 bourhood suspected of plague, to whom the earl of Devonshire 
 sent a doctor. The doctor and patient met by appointment on 
 the opposite banks of a stream, and the diagnosis made across 
 the water acquitted the man of plague ; even in these uncon- 
 ventional circumstances the consultation did not end without a 
 prescription (still extant) for a bottle of " stuff." Seventy-six 
 households in Eyam were infected, and out of these two hundred 
 and fifty-nine persons were buried of the plague. During the 
 time that the infection lasted eight more died from other causes. 
 When the sickness had ceased Mompesson set about burning 
 the infected articles in the empty cottages. Three years after, 
 in 1669, he was presented to the better living of Eakring, in 
 Notts ; but on arriving to enter on his duties he was refused 
 admission by the villagers, and had to take up his residence in 
 a temporary hut in Rufford Park, until such time as the preju- 
 
 ' Bacon (Sylva Syharimi, Cent. X. § 912. Speckling 11. 643) says: " Tlie 
 plague is many times taken without a manifest sense, as hath been said. And they 
 report that, where it is found, it hath a scent of the smell of a mellow apple ; and 
 (as some say) of May-llowers ; and it is also received that smells of flowers that 
 are mellow and luscious are ill for the plague : as white lilies, cowslips and 
 hyacinths," 
 
686 Peculiar sevc7'ity of the Plague at Eyain. 
 
 dices of his new parishioners had been overcome. He married 
 another wife, and for thirty-nine years held the living of Eakring, 
 where he died on March 7, 1708. Stanley, his Dissenting 
 colleague at Eyam, died there a few years after the plague. 
 
 Several things combined to magnify the disaster at Eyam. 
 The story of the box of clothes from London is entirely credible, 
 and can be matched by many other instances in the history of 
 plague and of cholera^ Nothing intensifies the virus of such 
 diseases so much as fermentation without air in the textures of 
 clothes or linen ; a whiff from the opened box or bundle suffices 
 soon to prostrate the person who breathes it. The poison at 
 Eyam was a powerful one from the first, and it is credible that the 
 body of the earliest victim did become quickly putrid. The heavy 
 mortality, with few recoveries, which followed after a fortnight's 
 interval, and continued all through the winter, also shows a virus 
 raised to no ordinary potency. But, for the revival of the 
 infection in June, 1666, we must seek other causes. Eyam was 
 one of those basins which, on a large scale or on a small, have 
 often been observed to keep infection in their soil. The virus 
 must have passed into the pores of the ground after the first 
 sixty or more burials in the churchyard down to the lull of the 
 epidemic in winter ; with the rise of the ground-water in spring, 
 it would be comparatively inactive ; but in June, when the 
 water was again sinking in the soil and the great heat was 
 raising emanations from the dry ground, it broke forth with an 
 intensity which poisoned the whole air of the valley. The 
 burials, after the end of June, without coffins and in shallow 
 graves in the meadows or on the hill-side, were so much ferment 
 added to a soil already permeated by it. Flight from such a 
 place was the only safety, and the rector, with the best motives, 
 counselled the people to remain. Mompesson's conduct hjis 
 always been held up as a pattern of heroism, as if the circum- 
 stances had been desperate like those of the Trojans when the 
 Greeks were in their streets and houses : 
 
 Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem. 
 
 1 Sir Tliomas Elyot, in The Castle of Health (1541), says that "infected stuff lying in 
 a coffer fast shut for two years, then opened, has infected those that stood nigh it, who 
 soon after died." (Cited by Brasbridge, Poor Man's Jnvcl, 1578, Chapter vin.) 
 
Plague continues in London to the end of 1666. 687 
 
 No word of detraction should be spoken of anyone who 
 does manfully what he conceives to be his duty to his neigh- 
 bours ; but the villagers of Eyam were sacrificed, all the same, 
 to an idea, and to an idea which we may now say was not 
 scientifically sound. When the impulse came upon them to 
 flee, they might have left their tainted soil without much risk 
 to the country around so long as they did not collect in one 
 spot or carry with them bedding or the like susceptible 
 articles : those who did flee from the houses at the upper end 
 of the village are not known to have carried the infection to 
 other places, and the young woman who brought it to Corbor 
 gave it to no one else. But the wisdom of flight may be regarded 
 by some as still disputable ; while it will be admitted by all 
 that Mompesson acted for the best according to his lights. 
 
 The plague in 1666 raged severely in a number of towns, 
 while it lingered on in London. The information from 
 Winchester is vague ; it is said that the dead were carried 
 out in carts and buried on the downs to the eastward'; the 
 epidemic was over by the ist of December, so that the College 
 resumed '^. Pepys enters in his Diary (April 4, 1667): "One 
 at the table [the duke of Albemarle's] told an odd passage 
 in the late plague, that at Petersfield (I think he said), one 
 side of the street had every house almost infected through the 
 town, and the other not one shut up." There may have been 
 other such centres of plague, and equally interesting observa- 
 tions made on them ; but it appears to be the merest chance 
 whether anything is recorded of them at all, or whether one 
 has the luck to come across the record. 
 
 The great centres of plague in 1666 had some connexion 
 with the fleet, and were mostly in Kent and Essex. Deptford 
 and Greenwich had more plague that year than the year before, 
 the total deaths at the former having been 715 (of plague 522) 
 and at the latter 423. Eltham and Lewisham were also visited 
 
 1 Milner's I/isL of Winchester. 
 
 ^ The City Remevibrancer, Lond. 1769, vol. i. — an account of the plague, fire, 
 storm of 1703, etc., said to have been "collected from curious and authentic papers 
 originally compiled by the late learned l)r [Gideon] Harvey." l>ut the section on. the 
 plague is almost purely Defoe and Vincent, with a few things from Mead, 
 
688 The Great Plague at Colchester, 1665 -1666. 
 
 in proportion. The other intense centre of infection in Kent 
 was Deal. On the 26th August, seven died of the plague, and 
 twenty in the whole week. At that date there were said to be 
 only 16 houses which had not had plague in them. On 
 December 9, all the houses were clear, although the crews 
 of ships still avoided the town. Next to Deal, Sandwich, 
 Dover, Canterbury and Maidstone had considerable outbreaks 
 in the autumn. At Portsmouth also there was a sharp outbreak 
 in the summer of 1666, twenty-one having died of plague in a 
 week at the beginning of July. 
 
 In the Eastern Counties, plague revived to a considerable 
 extent in 1666 at Norwich, Ipswich, Harwich and Woodbridge, 
 the Yarmouth outbreak, which had been the great one in that 
 quarter the year before, having come to an end in the spring. 
 But it was at Colchester that the epidemic engrossed attention 
 in t666. Colchester had, indeed, two successive seasons of 
 plague, or rather a continuous prevalence of it from the summer 
 of 1665 to December, 1666. The plague at Colchester in 
 1665-66 was the greatest of all provincial plagues since the 
 Black Death, unless, indeed, we credit the numbers (11,000 or 
 12,000) given for a plague at York in 1390. It reproduced the 
 mortality of the Great Plague of London on a scale more than 
 proportionate to its size, and it doubtless called forth the same 
 class of incidents — flight of the wealthier classes, and almost 
 total extermination of the poor. No documents remain, how- 
 ever, of this plague except the oaths administered to searchers 
 and bearers of the dead (printed below) and the weekly totals 
 of deaths from plague and from other causes \ The weekly 
 
 ' These figures, with the two oaths, had been copied by the antiquary Morant for 
 his History of Essex, and are preserved in No. 87. ff. 55 and 56, of the Stowe MSS. 
 in the British Museum, where Mr J. A. Herbert, of the Manuscript Department, 
 pointed them out to me. In his printed History Morant has summarized the 
 plague-deaths in monthly periods. 
 
 Tlic Hearers' Oath, fol. 57 : — 
 
 " Ye shall swear, that ye shall bear to the ground and bury the bodys of all such 
 persons as, during these infectious times, shall dye of the pestilence within this Towne 
 or the Liberties thereof, or so many of them as ye shall have notice of, and may be 
 permitted to bury, carrying them to burials always in the night time, unless it be 
 otherwise ordered by the Mayor of this Towne ; And ye shall be always in readiness 
 for that |iurposc at your abode, where you shall be appointed, keeping apart from 
 
Records of the Colchester Plague, 1665 -1666. 689 
 
 bills are, indeed, as eloquent a testimony as any detailed 
 description could have been ; and as they are the most complete 
 of the kind for a provincial town, I have transcribed them from 
 the manuscript record in full. The small number of deaths 
 from ordinary causes points to the emptiness of the better 
 quarters of the town ; the total deaths in seventeen months, 
 5345, including 4817 plague-deaths and 528 from other causes, 
 must have meant an enormous clearance of the poorer classes. 
 Colchester was then a place of considerable wealth, with a 
 thriving Dutch trade and a considerable Dutch colony. 
 Perhaps the connexion with Holland, where plague had 
 been rife in the years just before, may explain the origin of the 
 outbreak ; but local conditions of soil, overcrowding, and the 
 
 your families together with the searchers, and not to be absent from thence more than 
 your office of Bearers requires. Ye shall always in your walk, as much as may be, 
 avoid the society of people, keeping as far distant from them as may bee, and 
 carrying openly in your hands a white wand, by which people may know you, 
 and shun and avoid you. And shall do all other things belonging to the office 
 of Bearers, and therein shall demean yourselves honestly and faithfully, discharging a 
 good conscience ; So etc. 
 
 August 1665. James Barton and 
 
 John Cooke : — sworn, who are to have for their pains ro sh. 
 a week a piece ; and 2d for every one to be buried, taking the 2d out of the estate of 
 the deceased. If there be not wherewithal, the parish to bear it. 
 
 Oath 6. p. 44. 
 
 The Oath for the Searchers of the Plague, 1665. 
 
 " Yee and either of You shall sweare, that ye shall diligently view and search the 
 corps of all such persons, as during these infectious limes, shall dye within this Towne 
 or the Liberties thereof, or so many of them as you shall or may have access unto, or 
 have notice of ; And shall according to the best of your skill, determine of what disease 
 every such dead corps came to its death. And shall immediately give your judgment 
 thereof to the Constables of the parish where such corps shall be found, and to the 
 Bearers appointed for the burial of such infected corps. You shall not make report 
 of the cause of any one's death better or worse than the nature of the disease shall 
 deserve. Yee shall live together where you shall be appointed, and not walk abroad 
 more than necessity requires, and that only in the execution of your office of Searchers. 
 Ye shall decline and absent yourselves from your families, and always avoid the 
 society of people. And in your walk shall keep as far distant from men as may be, 
 always carrying in your hands a white wand, by which the people may know you, 
 and shun and avoid you. And ye shall well and truly do all other things belonging 
 to the office of Searchers, according to the best of your skill, wisdom, knowledge, and 
 power, in all things dealing faithfully, honestly, unfeigncdly and impartially. So 
 help " etc. 
 
 c. 44 
 
6go 
 
 Weekly luortalities at Colchester, 1665- 1666. 
 
 like must be looked to for the cause of its extraordinary 
 persistence and fatality. 
 
 Weekly mortalith's in Colchester, August 14, 1665, to December 14, 1666, 
 from plague and other diseases. 
 
 1665 
 
 1666 
 
 
 
 
 1666 
 
 
 
 Week 
 ending 
 
 Plague 
 
 Other 
 
 Week 
 ending 
 
 Plagne 
 
 Other 
 
 Aug. 21 
 
 26 
 
 2 
 
 Apr. 27 
 
 90 
 
 4 
 
 28 
 
 62 
 
 2 
 
 May 4 
 
 169 
 
 8 
 
 Sept. 8 
 
 I 22 
 
 4 
 
 1 1 
 
 167 
 
 7 
 
 15 
 
 153 
 
 22 
 
 18 
 
 150 
 
 II 
 
 22 
 
 159 
 
 25 
 
 25 
 
 .98 
 
 12 
 
 29 
 
 100 
 
 25 
 
 June I 
 
 89 
 
 10 
 
 Oct. 6 
 
 161 
 
 27 
 
 8 
 
 no 
 
 10 
 
 13 
 
 122 
 
 23 
 
 15 
 
 139 
 
 3 
 
 20 
 
 106 
 
 15 
 
 22 
 
 195 
 
 6 
 
 27 
 
 60 
 
 41 
 
 29 
 
 176 
 
 4 
 
 Nov. 3 
 
 104 
 
 13 
 
 July 6 
 
 167 
 
 8 
 
 10 
 
 88 
 
 22 
 
 13 
 
 160 
 
 9 
 
 17 
 
 88 
 
 18 
 
 20 
 
 175 
 
 3 
 
 24 
 
 62 
 
 8 
 
 27 
 
 109 
 
 4 
 
 Dec. I 
 
 38 
 
 10 
 
 Aug. 3 
 
 109 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 39 
 
 6 
 
 10 
 
 85 
 
 4 
 
 15 
 
 67 
 
 4 
 
 17 
 
 70 
 
 I 
 
 22 
 
 53 
 
 7 
 
 24 
 
 51 
 
 I 
 
 29 
 
 21 
 
 3 
 
 31 
 
 53 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 Sept. 7 
 
 31 
 
 6 
 
 Jan. 5 
 
 23 
 
 6 
 
 14 
 
 22 
 
 2 
 
 12 
 
 46 
 
 8 
 
 21 
 
 16 
 
 2 
 
 19 
 
 36 
 
 13 
 
 28 
 
 10 
 
 2 
 
 26 
 
 26 
 
 10 
 
 Oct. 5 
 
 7 
 
 2 
 
 Feb. 2 
 
 34 
 
 9 
 
 12 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 25 
 
 3 
 
 19 
 
 7 
 
 2 
 
 16 
 
 23 
 
 7 
 
 26 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 23 
 
 33 
 
 6 
 
 Nov. 2 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 Mar. 2 
 
 53 
 
 2 
 
 9 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 9 
 
 26 
 
 1 1 
 
 16 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 16 
 
 37 
 
 5 
 
 23 
 
 I 
 
 4 
 
 23 
 
 48 
 
 4 
 
 30 
 
 I 
 
 8 
 
 30 
 
 66 
 
 I 
 
 Dec. 7 
 
 I 
 
 7 
 
 Apr. 6 
 
 73 
 
 2 
 
 14 
 
 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 90 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 20 
 
 68 
 
 4 
 
 
 4817 
 
 528 
 
 To relieve the poverty caused by this great disaster a tax 
 was levied on various other parts of the county of Essex, and 
 contributions were made by private individuals, the London 
 churches collecting ;^i3ii. \os. in the breathing-time between 
 
Plague at NottingJiavi, supposed in 1667. 691 
 
 the plague and the fire. Colchester had so far recovered in 
 the end of 1666 as to be able to contribute in turn about a 
 hundred pounds for the relief of London after the fire\ 
 
 The Last of Plague in England. 
 
 The history of plague in England must be made to end 
 with a solitary epidemic at Nottingham in 1667, but not without 
 some misgivings as to the correctness of the date. Dr Deering, 
 the historian of the town in 175 1, paid little heed to epidemics, 
 although medicine was his business ; but he mentions one of 
 smallpox in 1736, which had probably come within his own 
 experience, and proceeds : 
 
 " I question much whether there has been the hke since the plague 
 which visited the town in 1667, and made a cruel desolation in the higher 
 part of Nottingham, for very few died in the lower ; especially in a street 
 called Narrow Marsh, it was observed that the infection had no power, and 
 that during the whole time the plague raged, not one who lived in that street 
 died of it, which induced many of the richer sort of people to crowd thither 
 and hire lodgings at any price ; the preservation of the people was attributed 
 to the effluvia of the tanners' ouze (for there were then 47 tanners' yards in 
 that place), besides which they caused a smoak to be made by burning moist 
 tanners' knobs^." 
 
 If there had been any reference to the parish registers or 
 to the corporation minutes, we should have had no reason to 
 doubt that this epidemic had been correctly assigned to 1667. 
 The last Winchester epidemic had been given under the year 
 1668, first by one local historian, and then by another who 
 copied him ; but when a third went to the manuscript records, 
 he found that the year was 1666, as indeed an incidental 
 reference to the re-opening of Winchester School on ist De- 
 cember, 1666, "the sickness being in all appearance extinguished," 
 might have warranted one in concluding. It is a singular 
 experience to have brought the history of plague down through 
 several centuries, not without particulars of times and numbers, 
 
 1 Morant, Hist, of Essex, I. 74. 
 
 2 Deering, iV;'//'/«;'-/;(3:w, vetus et nova, 1751, pp. 82— 83. Copied in Thoreshy's 
 edition of Thoroton's History of Nottivi^ham. il. (io. 
 
 44—2 
 
692 Last of Plague in England, in 1666 or in 1667. 
 
 and to be obliged to end it in the latter half of the 17th century 
 with an unauthenticated date. The Nottingham epidemic may 
 have been an exception to the generality that all England was 
 finally delivered from the plague in 1666; it is due, at least, 
 to the local historian, in the absence of evidence against, to 
 record his date of 1667. The difficulty of confirming so simple 
 a fact at so late a period may dispose the readers of this work 
 to be tolerant of any lack of certainty and precision that they 
 may discover in its history of more remote times. 
 
INDEX, 
 
 Aarhus, bishop of, his book on plague 
 209, his identity 210 note 
 
 Abbotsley, scene in church 39 
 
 Aberdeen, leper-spital 99, plague at T^di, 
 362, long free from plague 370, plague 
 at, in 1647 564, syphilis arrives at 417, 
 419, 361 
 
 Aelred, his story of queen Matilda and 
 the lepers 82-3 
 
 Agriculture, state of in Domesday 22, 
 neglect of under heavy taxation by 
 Wm. Rufus 30, effects of Black Death 
 on 191-2, thriving in the 15th cent. 
 222, gives place to sheep-farming in 
 Tudor period 387-392 
 
 Agues, original meaning of 409 ; pesti- 
 lential ague 214, "hot ague" 291, 400, 
 401, 4O4, 406, Irish ague 410; Jones 
 on 410, specialists for 411, 426, ambi- 
 guous meaning of 505, 536, K40 
 
 Allington, Richard, case of smallpox 459 
 
 Amwellj Great, plague 493 
 
 Andre, Bernard, on sweat of 1508 244, on 
 French pox 420 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Iieecbdoms 24, 452 
 
 Annan, story of a plague at 1 1 
 
 Appleby, plague 360 
 
 Arabia, burials in 165, plague 166, origin 
 of smallpox in 441 
 
 Armada, Spanish, sickness in 350, 591 
 
 Arsenic, plague-cakes 4S7 
 
 Ash burton, plague 524 
 
 Ashwell, inscription at 139, 217 
 
 Assir, plague 166 
 
 Assizes, Black, at Cambridge 375, at 
 
 Oxford 376, at Exeter 383 
 Astruc, on origin of syphilis 430 
 Aubrey, Dr, on sickness in slave-ships 
 
 627-8 
 Avignon, Black Death at 133, pestis se- 
 
 ciinda 203 
 Axholme, the sweat at 252 
 Ayr, plague 503 
 
 Baber, Consul, plague in Yun-nan 168 
 Bacon, Francis, "remedy" of the sweat 
 
 242, gaol-fever 382, sweet odours in 
 
 plague 685 note 
 Bamford, James, plague of 1603 in St 
 
 Olave's parish 478, on contagion of 
 
 plague 490 
 Banbury, plague 303 note, 501, war-fever 
 
 and plague 556-7 
 Banister, John, on syphilis 427, his 
 
 plague-medicines 516 
 Bankside stews 420 
 Barbados, occupied by English 619, yel- 
 low fever in 620, 630-633 
 Barcelona, syphilis at 434 
 Barking, plague in monastery 6, plague 
 
 492, 520, 680 
 Bartholomew fair, in plague-time 300, 
 
 48 1 
 Bartholomew's, St, Hospital, fdled 
 
 with cases of po\ 424 
 Basingstoke, hospital at 95 
 Batavia, epidemic in 1625 608 
 Baxter, Richanl, on the weather before 
 
694 
 
 Index. 
 
 the Great Plague 653, on Dissenters in 
 the plague-time 655 
 
 Becon, on rural depopulation 391 
 
 Beda, on pestilence in 664-6S5 5-7 
 
 Beggars, pretending leprosy 103, beadle 
 of 104, after Black Death 183, statutes 
 for 392 
 
 Bellay, Du, letters on the sweat 250-252 
 
 Belper, plague 500 
 
 Benghazi, plague and typhus in Arab 
 tents 170 
 
 Beri-beri, supposed in 1593 593 
 
 Beverley, the sweat at 252 
 
 Birch, Dr T., errors of, on Oxford Black 
 Assizes 381 note, collects letters of the 
 Stuart period 504 note 
 
 Black Death, the, chroniclers of in 
 England 114, arrival and progress 
 116-118, in Ireland 119, in Scotland 
 119, 233, symptoms of 120, mortality 
 from 123-139, direct effects of 139, 
 180, antecedents of 142-156, 173-4, 
 favouring conditions for diffusion of 
 175. Its effects on Edward III.'s wars 
 178, on removal of men and treasure 
 180, on price of labour 181, on capita- 
 lists 186, on morals 186-190, on area 
 of cultivation 191, on system of farming 
 192, on trade and industry 193, on 
 town industries 197, on village manu- 
 factures 198, on governing class in 
 towns 199, on population 199. In- 
 fection of, remains in England 204, 233 
 
 Bodmin, Black Death at 116, 125 
 
 Boghurst, W., spotted fever in Somerset 
 543, his MS. on the Great Plague 647 
 et setj. 
 
 Boleyn, Anne, in the sweat of 1528 251, 
 252, 255 
 
 Borde, Andrew, 286 
 
 Borgia, Alexander, pope 416 note 
 
 Boston, plague at 349 
 
 Bosworth, l)attle of 265. 
 
 Botch, boche or boiche, early name of 
 plague 206, 208, 362 
 
 Bradwardine, archbp, dies of Black Death 
 129 
 
 Bradwell, Stephen, his plague-book 516 
 
 Brant, Sebastian, on origin of French 
 
 pox 431 
 Brasbridge, on plague in dog's skin 316 
 Brewer, T,, his poem on plague of 1625 
 
 512, 517 
 Bridewell made a hospital 394, 395 
 Bridgetown, yellow fever at in 1647 620, 
 
 630-33 
 
 Bridport, Black Death at 116, plague at 
 in 1626 524 
 
 Brimington, plague 498 
 
 Bristol, leper-house 98, Black Death 116, 
 121, 123, effects of ditto on trade at 
 182 note, plague in 1535 300, in 1575 
 340, in 1645 557 
 
 Bucklersbury, drug-shops in 484 
 
 Bugden, deaths from sweat at 261 
 
 Bullein, on plague of 1563 306, on Lon- 
 don graveyards 334, on the French pox 
 422 
 
 Burdwan, number of lepers in 107 
 
 Burial, interdict of 1 1 ; neglect of 12, 13 
 note, in Chinese famines 154, in Islam 
 163. Christian burial in Egypt 159. 
 Chinese mode of 161. In Arabia 165, 
 in Kumaon 167, neglect of in Yun-nan 
 168, at Merdje 171 ; by the friars 332, 
 in St Paul's churchyard 334, without 
 coffins 335, Latimer on intramural 336, 
 relation to plague 336, in the great 
 London plagues 126, 337, 482, 515, 
 668-9, hours of in plague-time 303, 482 
 
 Burton Lazars 89 
 
 Bury St Edmunds, burials at in 1257 44, 
 hospitals 92, 96, plague in 1578 347 
 
 Butts, Dr, in the sweat of 1528 254 
 
 Caffa, Black Death at siege of I44, 147 
 
 Caius, Dr, on the sweat of 1551 259, 261, 
 263, edits Galen 439 
 
 Calais, sweat at 248, 253, 255, plague in 
 1509, 288, "new sickness" in 1558 
 403, plague brought to 546 
 
 Calendar, the English and the Conti- 
 nental 256 note 
 
 Calenture, 387, 610 
 
 Cambridge, epidemic of "frenzy" at 62, 
 effects of Black Death 196, prophecy 
 
Index. 
 
 695 
 
 of pestilence 229, sweat of 1517 248, 
 of 1528 252, of 1 55 1 262, plague 285, 
 289, 338, 340, 347. 497. 527. 682, gaol 
 fever 375, agues 505 
 
 Canterbury, death of monks in 870 9, 
 leper-hospitals 87, 91, style of living in 
 14th cent. 50, Black Death at 132, 
 causes of death of monks 226, plague 
 in 1544 303, in 1564 309, in 1593 357, 
 in 1603-4498, in 1614-15 501, in 1625 
 524, in 1636 528, in 1665 68r, in 1666 
 688 
 
 Cape de Verde islands (St Jago), infection 
 taken from 586, 589 
 
 Carlisle, plague 359, 562 
 
 Carshalton, mortality in 1626 520 
 
 Cartier, Jacques, scurvy in his expedition 
 581 
 
 Castle Combe, records of its manor court 
 135' I3^> 139. priests poaching 189, 
 village industries 198, nuisances re- 
 moved 198 note, 328 
 
 Catharine of Arragon, arrives in England 
 in plague-time 288, anxious for Henry 
 VIII. on account of plague in 1518 
 290 
 
 Cats in plague-time 316 
 
 Cavendish, Thomas, sickness in his 
 voyages 592-3 
 
 Cemeteries, see Burial 
 
 Champneys, Sir John, mayor, procures 
 plague-bill in 1535 298 
 
 Chancery, inquisition on a leper 105, 
 business of after Black Death 1 88 
 
 Charles VIII., his invasion of Italy 430, 
 433' 43.S' his sickness at Asti 436-7 
 
 Cbamel-bouse of St Paul's 334, 659 
 
 Charterhouse, inscription of burials in 
 Black Death 127, death of monks in 
 1528 252 
 
 Chatham, leper-hospital 95, plague in 
 1665 681 
 
 Chauliac, Guy de, symptoms of peslis 
 secunda 203, on Gaddesden's Rosa 
 Aiiglica 446 
 
 Chester, the sweat 245, 249, plague 304, 
 339' 4981 500, 501, 564, smallpox 465 
 note, fever in villages near 567 
 
 Chesterfield, plague 349, 500 
 
 Chesterton depopulated 199 note 
 
 China, Black Death said to have come 
 from 143, 145-147, overland trade to 
 Europe 148-9, no record of Black 
 Death in 1 49 ; great series of floods, 
 famines, &c. 150-152, followed by a 
 period of plagues 153; unburied dead 
 after famines and floods 154, Odoric's 
 valley of corpses 155, careful mode of 
 burial in 161. Plague in modern times 
 168-9 
 
 Churchyards, see Burial 
 
 Clapham, Henoch 490 
 
 Clarendon, Council of, 374 
 
 Clot, Dr, Bey, on plague in Egypt 160 
 
 Clowes, William, on the pox in London 
 423-6) on quacks 426, his translation 
 oi variola 459 
 
 Clun, plague 545 
 
 Clyn, Friar, the Black Death in Ireland 
 115, 119, symptoms of ditto 121 
 
 Cogan, Th., on prophesied return of the 
 sweat 264, on fever at Oxford Assizes 
 378, on lasks 412 
 
 Colchester, wills proved after Black 
 Death 186, plague 348, 498, 525, 
 plague in 1665-6 688, directions to 
 bearers and watchers at 688 note 
 
 Comines, Philip de, commons of England 
 untouched by Wars of Roses 38, 224, 
 387, on Charles VIII. 's sickness 435 
 
 Congleton, plague 498, 545 
 
 Constantinus Africanus applies "variola" 
 to smallpox 453 
 
 Cork, leper-hospitals 100, alleged sweat- 
 ing sickness 252, plague 371, 502 
 
 Cornard Parva, Black Death in 137 
 
 Coventry, leper-hospital at 92, growth of 
 after the Black Death 194, 195, plague 
 501, 526 note 
 
 Crail, plague 370 
 
 Cranborne, plague 499 
 
 Cranbrooke, plague 348 
 
 Crimea, outbreak of Black Death in 142 
 144 
 
 Cromwell, O., his death from fever 574, 
 colonizes Jamaica 634, 639 
 
696 
 
 Index. 
 
 Cromwell, T., orders bill of mortality 
 
 297-8 
 Cross, the blue, orred 306, 313, 314, 514 
 Croxton, abbey, Black Death in 131, 
 
 ditto in the manor 138 
 Croydon, plague 492, 520, 679 
 Croyland abbey, sudden mortality in 9, 
 
 the sweat in 239, 266 
 Cumanus, Marcellus, the French pox at 
 
 siege of Novara 431 
 Cumberland, plague in 1420 221, state of 
 
 in the Civil Wars 562 
 
 Dairy, "grantgore" at 418 
 
 Danes, camp sickness among 1 3 
 
 Darlington, plague 359, 557 
 
 Dartmouth, plague 351, 524 
 
 Davison, F., 'Poetical Rapsodie' 463 
 
 Deal, plague in 1666 688 
 
 Defoe, sources of his Journal of the 
 Plague-Year 649, illustrations of the 
 Great Plague from 657 et seq. 
 
 Dekker, T, , on London at accession of 
 James I. 471, 480, on plague of 1603 
 481-4, theatres closed in plague-time 
 
 494 
 
 Deptford, plague in 1666 680, 687 
 
 Derby, plague at 309, 349, 357, 559, 
 plague in 1665 682 
 
 Derry, the, plague at in 1566-7 372 
 
 Dogs in plague-time 314, 316, 5:5; al- 
 leged death of in the Leeds plague 558, 
 at Batavia from licking pestilent blood 
 608 
 
 Domesday Survey, size of towns in 23, 
 state of agriculture inferred from 22 
 
 Doncaster, plague in 1536 301 
 
 Donne, Rev. Dr, his dread of smallpox 
 463, on flight of citizens in 1625 519 
 
 Doughty, C, on burials in Arabia 165 
 
 Drake, Sir Bernard, at the Exeter Black 
 Assizes 384, 385 
 
 Drake, Sir Francis, sickness in his voyage 
 round the world 585, great epidemic 
 in his fleet in 1585-6 585-589, his 
 death from flux 591 
 
 Drogheda, monastery of. Black Death in 
 119, 132 
 
 Dublin, leper-huspilals 100, Black Death 
 in 119, 131, 132, plague in 1520 371, 
 in 1575 372, in 1650 566 
 
 Dumfries, plague 235, 369 
 
 Dunbar, W., "spanyie pockis" 418 
 
 Dundee, plague 234, 368, 503 
 
 Duns, plague 369 
 
 Durham, a medieval siege of 28, leper- 
 hospital near 94, 1 13, plague 350, 359, 
 499, 501, 681, famine 358 
 
 Dysart, plague 366, 368 
 
 Dysentery, or flux, summary of epidemics 
 411-13, in 1624 505, in voyages 589, 
 591, 600, 602, 603, in Virginia 611, in 
 slave-ships 628, among black troops 629, 
 in St Domingo and Jamaica 635-640 
 
 East Indies, Portuguese voyages to 584, 
 English voyages to 599-609 
 
 East India Company, provides against 
 scurvy 602-3 
 
 Edenhall, plague 360 
 
 Edinburgh, leper-hospital 99, pestileniia 
 volatilis 234, plague 235, 303, 362, 
 365-6, 367, 368, 369, 370, 502, 503, 
 504, 563, French pox 417, mortality 
 of children in 1600 370 note 
 
 Edward the Confessor and the leper 
 81 
 
 Edward III., his activity after the Black 
 Death 178-9 
 
 Edward IV., his illness from "pockys" 
 in 1463 455 
 
 Edward VI., on the sweat of 155 1 260 
 
 Egypt, theory of plague in 156, 659, 
 sanitary wisdom of ancient 158, em- 
 balming in 159, i6o-f, compared with 
 China 161— 2 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, at Windsor in the 
 plague of 1563 317, rebukes the un- 
 cleanly state of Ipswich 327, attempts 
 to stamp out plague in London 330- 
 331, her proclamation in 1580 on 
 growth of London 346, her trains at 
 Norwich in 1578 carry plague 348, her 
 hardness to the sick seamen in the 
 Armada-year 350, her precaution 
 against smallpox in 1591 461 
 
Index. 
 
 697 
 
 Elizabclh of Voik, in 1502, pays for cure 
 of John I'ertriche 419 
 
 Elphege, St, stops pestilence in 101 1 13 
 
 Ely, bishop of, alienates Stourbridge 
 leper-hospital 93 
 
 Ely monastery. Black Death in 132 
 
 Elyot, Sir Thomas, lay writer on medi- 
 cine 402, mentions smallpox 457 
 
 Emigrants, mortality of English to 
 Virginia 6x0, to New England &c. 
 612-13, to Barbados 619, of French to 
 St Christopher 618, to Guadeloupe 621 
 
 Ensham, manor of, after Black Death 
 
 139. 141 
 
 Erasmus, still ill from "sweat" in 151 1 
 245, 399, ref. to influenza (?)in 1518 249, 
 ref. to plague in letters 288-9, on English 
 houses 328, on the French pox 420-21 
 
 Ergotism, causes and signs of 53-55, 
 two forms 55, cases of in England 57, 
 possible instances of 59-63, reasons of 
 English immunity from 64, 68 
 
 Essex, Lord General, typhus in his army 
 548-9, occupies Tiverton 552-3 
 
 Ethredge, Dr G., the sweat of 1551 at 
 Oxford 260, 380, the gaol-fever at 
 Oxford 381 
 
 Eton, plague 348, 520, boys compelled 
 to smoke in plague-time 674 
 
 Evesham, monastery, fugitives at after 
 wasting of Yorkshire 27 note, drives 
 out its leprous prior loi 
 
 Evesham, town, plague and bad sca- 
 venging 501 
 
 Exeter, the scavengers of 327, plague 
 288, famine and plague 300, plague 
 498, 523, Black Assizes 383-6 
 
 Eyam, plague at in 1665-6 682-7 
 
 Eydon, plague 498 
 
 Fever, epidemics of from famine 15-17 
 (table), in 1086-7 29, in 1196 36, in 
 1258 44-45> i" 1315 48, in 1438-9 223 
 228, 234-5, in 1596-7 358. 411 ; epide- 
 mics of in war 547, 552 ; spotted 504, 
 540, 542, 543, 551; "strange," see 
 Influenza, Yellow, see Ykllow 
 Fever, in gaols, see Gaol-fever ; in 
 ships 350, 538 
 
 Finchley, dysentery at, 1596-7 411 
 
 Findhorn, plague 370 
 
 Finsbury, laystalls at 334 
 
 Fish, Simon, 'Supplication of Beggars' 
 421 
 
 Fleet Ditch, unwholesome 352 
 
 Forrestier, Dr Thomas, his MS. on the 
 sweat of 1485 238, fixes time and place 
 of first outbreak 238, his account of 
 the symptoms and treatment 241, on 
 extent of first sweat 243, on causes of 
 ditto 266-7 
 
 Foul Death, name used by Scots for 
 plague in 1349 78, and in 1379 218 
 
 Fracastori, on smallpox 467, on typhus 
 
 585 
 Francis, St, of Assisi, and the lepers 85 
 Freind, Dr J., on a strange chorea 61, on 
 
 diffusion of smallpox 445, on Gaddes- 
 
 den 448 
 Friars, their original mission 41, their 
 
 care of lepers 85, 107, side with the 
 
 rich after the Black Death 188, bury 
 
 rather than christen 332 
 Froude, Mr, on plague at the Derry 372 
 
 note, on "yellow fever" in Drake's 
 
 fleet 589 note 
 "Fruit of Times," records "pokkes" 
 
 for 1366 453 
 Fryer, Dr John 307 
 
 Fabyan, on the first sweat 239, on plague 
 in London, I478-9 234, and .1500 287, 
 uses the name "pockys" 420 
 
 Famines, chronology of, to 1322 15, in 
 1370 215, about 1383 219, in 1391 
 220, in 1438-9 223, 228, 235, in 1528 
 251. 277, in 1535 300, in 1551 278, 
 in 1557 401, in 1596-7 358 
 
 Gaddesden, John of, fails to describe 
 fever of 1315 51, on leprosy 76, on 
 smallpox 446-8, on morbilli and "mes- 
 les" 449-51 
 
 Gale, Thomas, on "the morl)Us" 422 
 
 Galway, "sweating sickness" at 400 note 
 
 Gaols, first built 374 
 
 Gaol Fever, in Newgate 374, 395 note. 
 
698 
 
 Index. 
 
 at Cambridge 375, at Oxford 376-38-2, 
 at Exeter 383-386, referred to in Act 
 388, in the Queen's Bench, Southwark 
 395. 539. Bacon on 332 
 Carter, Order of the 178 
 GascoigneT., cases of syphilis 74, Henry 
 IV's "leprosy" 77 note, "legists" after 
 Black Death 189 
 Gaubil, abbe, on the Chinese annals 154 
 Geynes, Dr 307 
 Gibbon, on the Justinian plague 1, on a 
 
 remark by Procopius 675 note 
 Gibbons, Orlando 465, 524 
 Gilbertus Anglicus, on leprosy 70-72, 
 morphaea 76, diet to keep off leprosy 
 113, on smallpox 446, 447 
 Glasgow, leper-house 99, keeps out plague 
 366, 369, plague 370, 563, syphilis 418 
 Gloucester, Black Death 116, 117, plague 
 in 1580 348, in 1638 545, a quack at 
 426, relief of siege 549 
 Goddard, Dr, his excuse for leaving 
 
 London in the plague 667 
 Gordonio, Bernard, on lepropsy 70, case 
 at Montpellier 72, on morphaea 76, on 
 smallpox 447 
 Grandgore, in Scotland 417-18, deriva- 
 tion of 418 
 Grantham, plague near 500, sickness at 
 
 502 
 Graunt, John, syphilis in London 428, 
 
 London mortality 532 
 Gravesend, plague 287, 293, 531 
 Greaves, Sir E., fever at Oxford 547, 551 
 Greenwich, sweat at 244, 251, plague at 
 
 293, plague in 1666 687 
 Gregory, W. ref. to "pokkes" 454 
 Gruner, on the sweat 258, collections on 
 
 medieval smallpox 446 note 
 Griinbeck, Jos. on syphilis 432 
 Guignes, Des, on origin of Black Death 
 
 143. 152 
 Guinea, voyages to in 16th cent. 581-3, 
 
 slave trade from 583, 625-9 
 Guy, Dr W., on "parish infection" 396 
 
 note 
 
 Hackney, leper-hospital 97, 98 note, 
 
 plague in 1535 301, in 1603 492, in 
 
 1625 511 
 Haddington, pestilent ia volatilis 234, 
 
 plague during siege 303 
 Hall, his Chronicle on the sweat of 1517 
 
 250, on the mercenaries of Henry VH. 
 
 274, on the Cambridge Black Assizes 
 
 375 
 Hampshire, parish in, statistics of 41 1, 
 
 541 
 Harrison, W. English houses 330 note., fever 
 
 of 1557-8 401 
 Hartlepool, plague 349 
 Harwich, plague at in 1665-6 
 Havre de Grace (or "Newhaven"), 
 
 plague during siege 307 
 Hawkins, Sir John, in the slave trade 
 
 583 _ 
 
 Hawkins, Sir Richard, on health of Cape 
 de Verde islands 589 note, scurvy in 
 his voyage of 1593 594-6 
 
 Hecker, antecedents of Black Death 
 143-4, on fecundity after Black Death 
 200, sweating sickness 240, 244 note, 
 258, 263, 265, 271 note, ii"] note 
 
 Hendon, sends help in 1625 plague 518 
 
 Henry I., taxation under 31 
 
 Henry II., charities of 33-34 
 
 Henry III., famine under 43 
 
 Henry IV., "leprosy" of 77 
 
 Henry V., vigorous sanitation under 325 
 
 Henry VII., his expedition of 1485 237, 
 240, 265, 270, 275, in the sweat of 
 1508 244, reception of Catharine of 
 Arragon 288, sanitation under 325-6 
 
 Henry VIII., in the sweat of 1517 247-8, 
 in plague of 15 17-18 290, in sweat of 
 1528 250-53, in plague of 1535 297, 
 300, measures to check plague 291, 
 312, 313-14, repression of vagrancy 
 &c. 390, his illness in 15 14 456 
 
 Henry of Huntingdon, poem by 18 
 
 Ilensler, his history of syphilis 416 note 
 
 Hcnsley, plague 309 
 
 Hereford, plague 348 
 
 Hereford, bishop of, case of morphaea 
 76 
 
 Herefordshire, plague 500 
 
Index. 
 
 699 
 
 Hertford, sweat at 254, law courts at 331, 
 
 plague 339, 347, 356 
 Hertfordshire, after the Black Death 191, 
 
 plague in 493 
 Hirsch, Dr August, on endemics of 
 
 syphilis 438 
 Ilispaniola, great pox and smallpox 430, 
 
 469, flux among English troops 635-6 
 Hoddesdon, plague 347 
 Hodges, Dr, his Loiinologia 684, 654, 675 
 Holinshed, erroneous entry of "small 
 
 pocks " 454 
 Holland, Abraham, poem on plague of 
 
 1625 512 
 Holme Pierrepont, plague 499 
 Honiger, effects of Black Death 141 note 
 Howard, John, Oxford gaol 377, gaol- 
 fever 382 note 
 Hugh, St, bp. of Lincoln, his care for 
 
 burials 13 7iote, for lepers 84 
 Hull, plague at, in 1472-8 231, in 1576 
 
 340, in 1635-38 527 
 Hunstanton, Black Death 137 
 Hiitten, Ulrich von, cure of syphilis 416 
 
 Ibn Batuta, his report that Black Death 
 came from China 146 
 
 Ibn-ul-Khatib, origin of Black Death 146 
 
 Ilchester, decayed 195, 221 
 
 Ilford, leper-hospital 95 
 
 Inchcolm, quarantine island 363, 369 
 
 Inchkeith, quarantine for plague 235, 
 360, for syphilis 417 
 
 Influenza, meaning of 397, early epide- 
 mics 398, in 1 5 10 399, in 1540 400, in 
 1557-8 401-5, in 1580 406, in 1657-9 
 568-574, many other epidemics might 
 be so called 408-9, 411, 536, 541, 543 
 
 -4. 567, 577 
 Interdict of burial &c. 1 1 
 
 Ipswich, scavengers of 327, plague at, in 
 1603 498, in 1665-6 688 
 
 Ireland, plague in A.D. 664 4-5, condi- 
 tion in 1 2th cent. 21, flux among troops 
 33, leper-houses 100, Black Death 115, 
 1 18-19, 132, succeeding plagues 236, 
 alleged sweating sickness 252 note, 400 
 note, influenza 398 note, plague in 
 
 Tudor period 371-3, in Cromwcllian 
 war 365 
 Isle of Wight, depopulation of 387, in- 
 fluenza or sweat in 1558 403 
 
 Jamaica, English occupation of 636-642 
 
 James I., authority for "a pockie priest" 
 415, his accession followed by a great 
 plague 480, his fatal illness 512 
 
 Jarrow, plague in monastery of 7 
 
 Jersey, plague in 308 
 
 Jessopp, Augustus, on mortalities in the 
 Black Death 132, 134, 137, on lawless- 
 ness after do. 140, on panic from 
 do. 181 note 
 
 John of Bridlington, 14111 cent, pestilences 
 204, 207 
 
 John of Burgoyne, 14th cent, writer on 
 plague 208 
 
 Jones, Dr John, on plague in London in 
 1563 306, on effects of the poor-rale 
 394, on influenza of 1558 403, his use 
 of "ague" 410 
 
 Justinian, plague in reign of 2, theory 
 of it 156, 159, 161 
 
 Kattiwar, plague in 165, 169 
 
 Kellwaye, Simon, on the plague of 1593 
 
 355, on small-pox and measles 461 
 Kendal, plague in 1598 359 
 Kensington, plague in 1603 492, in 1625 
 
 520 
 Kheybar, burials in 165 
 Kilkenny, Black Death 115, 119, 121, 
 
 132, plague in 1649 565 
 Kirkcaldy, plague in 1574 366 
 Kirkoswald, plague in 1598 360 
 Kremer, A. von, Mohammedan plagues 
 
 Kumaon, plague in 166 
 Kutch, plague in 169 
 
 Labourers, Statute of 66, 181-2 
 Lamesley, plague in 16 10 501 
 Lancashire, ergotism? in 1702 59, wills 
 
 after Black Death 138, fever in 1651 567 
 Lancaster, Sir James, scurvy in his ships 
 
 599, treats scurvy by lime juice 601 
 
700 
 
 Index. 
 
 Langland, see ' Piers the Plougliman ' 
 Iiask, old name of flux 400, 412 
 Latimer, on intramural burial 336, on 
 
 stews closed 420 
 Ziaw, business of increased after Black 
 
 Death 188-9 
 Xiazar, derivation of 79 note 
 Lazarus, St 79, 94 
 
 I>azarus, St, Knigbts of tbe Order of 89 
 Leake, plague in 1587-8 349 
 Leeds, fever in 1644 558, plague in 1645, 
 
 558 
 Leicester, Black Death 1 24 pestis secunda 
 
 203, plague in 1563-4 309, in 1593 
 
 357, in 1607-11 125, 501, in 1626 526 
 Leicestershire, strange epidemic in 1340 
 
 59, plague 526 
 Leith, plague 235 note, 361, 363, 366, 369, 
 
 503 
 
 Leominster, plague or fever in 1578 349, 
 
 in 1597 358 "ote 
 
 Iieper-houses, in England 86-99, their 
 mixed inmates 93, vogue soon past 
 91-95, the later non-monastic 97, in 
 Scotland 99, in Ireland 100 
 
 Zieprosy, generic meaning of in medieval 
 books 70-79, Biblical associations of 
 79-81, religious view of 81-86, prejudice 
 against 100-105, laws against 103-6, 
 estimated amount of 107, a disease akin 
 to pellagra 108, no, Gilbert White on 
 causes of no, dietetic cause of in, 
 Hutchinson on cause of n i note, con- 
 stitutional n2, diet for in Scotland n3 
 
 Lescarbot, on scurvy 597-8 
 
 Zieviticus, use of " leprosy " in, 80 
 
 Lichfield, plague 309, 357, 559 
 
 Lieu-chow, bubonic disease 169 
 
 Linacre 286, 439 
 
 Lincoln, leper-hospital at 92, decay of 
 195, plague at 357 
 
 Lindsey, statute of labourers ineffective 
 in 183 
 
 Linlithgow, lepers at 99, French pox at 
 418 
 
 Lithgow, W., on plague in Tyncside 557 
 
 Iiock, tbe, hospital 97, 98 7iote 
 
 Lodge, Dr T., on rats and moles in plague- 
 
 time 173, on plague in 1603 485, on 
 
 compulsory removal of the sick 488 
 London : 
 
 fever in 962, 26, in 1258 44-45, accord- 
 ing to the bills 504, 532, 576 
 
 Fitzstephen's account of 34 
 
 French pox in 424, 428, 432 note 
 
 lepers expelled 103, stopped at the 
 Gates 104 
 
 leper-hospitals of 88, 97-8 
 
 nuisances in 323-6 
 
 overcrowding of, in 1580 346, in 1602 
 et seq. 539-54° 
 
 Parish Clerks of 320—322 
 
 plagues in : the Black Death 1 1 7, mor- 
 tality of ditto 126-9, the plague of 
 1361 203, of 1368-9 -215-16, of 1407 
 220, of 1426 227, of 1434-4 227-8, 
 of 1437 228, of 1454 229, of 1466 
 230, of 1474 231, of 1478-9 231-2, 
 of 1487 287, of 1499-1500 287, of 
 1504 288, of 1511-12 288, of 1513 
 288-9, of 15 14-16 289-90, of 1517-18 
 290, 292, of 1521 292, of 1529-31 
 292-3, of 1532 293-6, of 1535 297- 
 300, of 1536 301-2, of 1543 302, of 
 1547-8 303- of 1563 304-7. of 1568-9 
 338, of 1573-4 339, of 1577-83 341-5. 
 347, of 1592-93 351-4, 356, of 1594 
 356, of 1603 474-92, of 1604-1610 
 493-4, of 1625 507-520, of 1630 527 
 of 1636 529-32, of 1637-48532, 546 
 (table 533), of 1665 644-679 
 
 plague-orders, 312-322, 355, 481, 488 
 
 population, end of 12th cent. 34, in 
 1258 44, in 1349 128-9, in 1377 201, 
 in 1535 299. in 1580 345, in 1593 
 354, in 1603 and before and after 
 471-4, in 1665 660 
 
 Richard of Devizes, on wickedness of 
 
 34 
 sanitary ordinances in 1369 and 1371 
 
 216, 324, in 1388 324, in 1415 325, 
 
 in 1488-9 325, in 1543 314, 315, in 
 
 1568 319, in 1582 330 
 theatres closed in plague-time 494-6 
 Loughborough, sweating sickness at 259, 
 plague at 304, 404, 500, 560 
 
Index. 
 
 701 
 
 Louth, plague in 1 5S7 349 ( Notitiac Liidae), 
 
 in 1631 527 
 Lowe, Peter, on "Spanish Sickness" 
 
 427 
 Lovvry, Dr J. H. , on Pakhoi plague 169 
 Lyndsay, Sir D., "grandgore" 418 
 Lynn, a physician of 51, leper-houses at 
 
 93, 98, plague at, in 1635-fi 5-^) '" 
 
 1665 681 
 
 Macclesfield, plague 498 
 
 Macgowan, Dr D. J., on rats poisoned by 
 
 the soil 169 
 Magellan, scurvy in his ship 579 
 Mahe, on cadaveric theory of plague 173 
 
 7iote 
 Maidenhead, scene at 578 
 Maillet, De, on preservation of corpses in 
 
 Egypt 161 
 Malpas, plague in 1625 526 note 
 Manardus, origin of syphilis 434 
 Manchester, plague in 1608 499, in 163 1 
 
 527 
 Mansfeld, his English troops, 522 
 Margate, sick sailors at after Armada 
 
 350 
 Marshal], John, on "parish infection" 
 
 396 note 
 Martin, on the illness of Charles VIIL 
 
 437 
 Matilda, Queen, and the lepers 82 ; her 
 
 hospital 88 
 Mayerne, Sir Th., on the fevers of 1624 
 
 540 
 
 Measles, Gaddesden on 448, derivation 
 of name 451, joined with smallpox 458- 
 9, 462, 465-6 
 
 Measure for Measure, reference to " the 
 sweat" 413 note, the stews suppressed 
 420, doctrine of" obstruction "in 605 Mt"/*? 
 
 Meaux, abbey of. Black Death in iiS, 
 131 
 
 Meddus, Rev. Dr, in London during 
 plague of, 1625 514 
 
 IVXedicine, profession of, little in evi- 
 dence 51, 258, 402 
 
 Melcombe, Black Death lands at 116 
 
 Merdje, modem plague at 170 
 
 Merston Trussell, plague 49S 
 
 Milton, John, at Chalfont, in 1665 665 
 
 note 
 Moles in plague-time 173, 364 
 Molineux on universal fevers and universal 
 
 colds 409 
 Monasteries, pestilence in 5-7, 9-ro, 
 
 Stubbs on 50, found hospitals 95, Black 
 
 Death in 131 
 Monkleigh, plague 499 
 Monmouthshire, fever and plague in 1638 
 
 541 
 Montgomeryshire, plague in 1638 542 
 Montpellier, case of lepra at 72, practice 
 
 in the plague at 210 
 Moorfields, common latrine in 325 
 More, Sir Thomas, on relapses 248, his 
 plague-orders at Oxford 291, as "a 
 parish clerk" 321, describes London 
 as the capital of Utopia 329, on pauper- 
 ism and vagrancy 389 
 Morphaea, a case of 76 
 Morton, Richard, on the fever of i6.;8 
 
 574 
 "Mure," old name of influenza 389. 
 
 ("Tussis et le Murra." Canterbury MS. 
 
 in Hist. MSS. Com. ix., pt. L p. 127). 
 Murrains 46 note 
 Mussis, De, on origin of P)Iack Death at 
 
 Caffa 144 
 
 Namasse, modern plague i66 
 
 Nanking, death of rats at 169 
 
 Nantwich, plague 498 
 
 Naples sickness of 419, 430 
 
 " New Acquaintance " 260 
 
 " Ntiw Disease " 401 , 403, 404, 534, 536, 
 
 541. 543-4' 570. 577 
 Newark, plague after siege 560 
 Newcastle, plague in 1420 222 )iote, in 
 1478 232, in 1544 303, in 1589 350, in 
 '597 358> in '^03 498> '" '609 ,soo, in 
 1625 526, in 1636 529, in 1642 and 
 1645 557, in 1666 681 
 New England, voyages to 612, ejiidemics 
 
 in 613 
 Niebuhr, on demoralisation after pesti- 
 lence 186 
 
702 
 
 Index. 
 
 Noldeke, Th., on legend of smallpox 442 
 
 Normandy, Henry VII. 's troops I'aised in 
 271, 275, endemic sweat 01271, 273 
 
 Northampton, old hospital at 90, plague 
 304, fever and plague in 1638 542 
 
 Northvvych, plague 340, 498 
 
 Norwich, hospitals at 93, 95, leper-houses 
 at the gates 98, the Black Death in 
 129, decline of after ditto 193-5, fever 
 in 1382 218, plague in 1465 230 note, 
 in 1479 232, in 1578 348, in 1603 498, 
 in 1609 500, in 1625 525, in 1630-31 
 527, in 1636 fever or plague 542, plague 
 in 1665-6 681, 688 
 
 Nottingham, deaths at in 15 18 291, plague 
 at in 1593 357, in 1604 499, in 1667 
 691 
 
 Nuisances, at Castle Combe 198, 328, 
 in London 216, 323-6, at Stratford-on- 
 Avon 327, at Ipswich 327, alleged by 
 Erasmus 329, in London suburbs 337, 
 at Evesham 501, at Kilkenny 502 
 
 Odoric, friar, his vision of unburied dead 
 
 in China 155 
 Okehampton, plague at, in 1626 524 
 Osiander, on Christian duty in the plague 
 
 310 
 Ottery St Mary, camp sickness at in 1645 
 
 555, 561 
 
 Oundle, plague in 1665 681 
 
 Oxford, leper-hospital 93, Black Death at 
 125, law students at after ditto 189, 
 sweat of 1485 243, sweat (?) of 1508 245, 
 sweat of 1 5 17 247, 248, sweat of 1551 
 260, plague in the 15th cent. 282-3, in 
 the 1 6th cent. 283-4, houses shut up at 
 in 1518 291, plague in 1571 338, in 
 1575 340, in 1603-5 496-7, in 1625 525, 
 in 1645 559, gaol-fever in 1577 376- 
 382, war-typhus in 1643 549-51, fi-'llow 
 expelled for French pox 421, unwhole- 
 someness of in 15th cent. 285 note, 
 proposal to remove the university from 
 283 
 
 Pakhoi, modern iilague 168 
 
 Tare, Aml)r()iso, holds cadaveric theory 
 
 of plague 156, 162, 658, on likeness of 
 smallpox to great pox 468 
 Paris, "lepers" banished from in 1488 
 
 104, 4.37 
 
 Pariset, Etienne, his theory of plague 
 156-161 
 
 Farisb Clerks, company of 320-322 
 
 "Parish infection," a myth 396 note 
 
 Pauperism 39, 41, 387-395 
 
 Pauw, De, Cornelius, on plague in Egypt 
 157, on sanitary practice in ditto 158 
 
 Paynel, translates book on French pox 
 416 
 
 Peebles, plague at in 1499 361 
 
 Pellagra, akin to leprosy 108, no, causes 
 of 109 
 
 Penrith, plague at in 1598, 359-60 
 
 Perth, plague at in 1548 363, in 1580 
 367, in 1584-5 368, in 1608-9 503-4, 
 in 1645 563 
 
 Pcstilentia volatilis in Scotland 398 
 
 Peterborough, burials at in 1 1 75 35, plague 
 in 1574 339, in 1606 449, in 1665 681 
 
 Petrarch, on effects of Black Death 177 
 
 Phaer, Th., or Phayre, or Thayre, writer 
 on plague 210, 4S9, on smallpox and 
 measles 458 
 
 Picardy Sweat 271-3 
 
 ' Piers the Ploughman,' quoted on sur- 
 feit and want 65-67, on moral effects 
 of Black Death 187-190, on continu- 
 ance of pestilence 205-207, on London 
 famine of 137 1 215, on burials by friars 
 332, use of "meseles" 450, of "pokkes" 
 
 452-3 
 
 Pinctor, Peter, relates cases of French 
 pox in the Vatican 416 
 
 Plague, symptoms or characters of, in 
 the Black Death 120-122, in medieval 
 manuscripts 208, 212-214, in Skene's 
 treatise 364-5, in the plague of 1665 
 (Boghurst) 674; cadaveric theory of 156 
 ct seq. , relation of to typhus 1 70. Gene- 
 ral epidemics of : Black Death 1 16-141, 
 />estis seamda (1361) 203, tcrtia (1368- 
 9) 215, </itarta(i^'j5) 217, t/iiinta (1^82) 
 218, of 1390-91 219, of 1407 220, of 
 143S-9 225, 228, of 1465 230, of 1471 
 
Index. 
 
 703 
 
 230. Epidemics of in tlic Northern 
 Marches, in 1379 218, in 1399 220, in 
 1421 221. See also under London and 
 other places 
 
 Planck, Dr, on causes of plague in Ku- 
 maon 167 
 
 Plot, Dr, on Oxford Black Assizes 382, 
 on mildness of smallpox 467 
 
 Plymouth, plague in 1579 348, in 1590- 
 91 351, sickness in the fleet in 1625 
 521-2, plague in 1626 523 
 
 Poll-tax of 1377, population reckoned 
 from 200 
 
 Poor-laws, origin of 362-3, Jones on 394 
 
 Poptilation of towns in Domesday 23- 
 24, kept small by death of infants 25, 
 after the Black Death 200-204. ^^^ 
 also " London," " Norwich." 
 
 Portsmouth, plagxie in Venetian galley 
 1546 303, plague 1625 524, 1666 688 
 
 Posting sweat 260, posting fever 378 
 
 Fox, the Frencli, in Scotland 417, in 
 England 419, Erasmus on 421, meagre 
 writings on 415, 422, Clowes on 423, 
 Read on 425, Banister on 427, Graunt 
 on 428, origin of epidemic 429-43S 
 
 Presteign, the sweat of 1551 259, plague 
 in 1638 542 
 
 Preston, wills proved after Black Death 
 138 note, plague at in 1631 ■;27 
 
 Procopius, on a plague-immunity 675 note 
 
 Quarantine, (forty days) for the Court 
 in 1516 290, 312, in 1518 313, of 
 persons in 1543 3' 3' of houses in 1563 
 317, in 1568 318, proposed for shipping 
 at Gravcsend in 1 568 337, at Inchkeith in 
 1475 235, 360, details of at Inchcolm 
 in 1564 363, case of at ditto 367, i8t]i 
 cent, law of 672 
 
 Radnorshire, plague in 1638 542 
 
 Rats, death of in plague-time, in Kumaon 
 167, in Yun-nan 168, in China 169, in 
 Gujerat 170', ref. toby Lodge (1603) '73 
 
 Read, John, of Gloucester, on pox grown 
 milder 425, describes mountebank 426 
 
 Renfrewshire, jilague in in 1601 370 
 
 Renny, on plague in Garhwal 167 
 
 Rhazes, "the pills of" 254, source of 
 medieval teaching on smallpox 440 
 
 Richard II., " infection and the hand of 
 war" 547 
 
 Richard of Devizes, on London in 12th 
 cent. 34, on dislike of the Franks to 
 soapboilers and scavengers 329 
 
 Richmond, Yorks, reduced by Black 
 Death 191, plague in 1597-8, 359 
 
 Ripon, corn at in famine 40, leper-hos- 
 pital at 93 
 
 Robert of Urunne, describes effects of 
 famine 48 
 
 Rocher, M., on plague in Yun-nan 168 
 
 Rochester, late leper foundation at 97, 
 plague at in 1665 681 
 
 Roger of Wendover, stories of avarice 39, 
 40, on the friars 41 
 
 Rogers, Thorold, on prices of corn 13th 
 century 37, 43, on rye in England 64, 
 on villenage 184 note, wages after the 
 Black Death 185, on new system of 
 farming after ditto 192, paralysis of 
 wool-trade after ditto 193, on good 
 diet of the English in 15th cent. 222, 
 introduction of inferior bread 224 
 note 
 
 Rome, medieval epidemics at 3, 10 
 
 Rouen, siege of, 222 
 
 Royston, fevers in 1625 505, plague in 
 1625 525, in 1665 682 
 
 Sye-com, spurred i,},, little grown in 
 England 64 
 
 St Albans, school of annalists 37, burials 
 at in 1247 42, famine in 13 15 48, leper- 
 hospitals at 90, admission to ditto 102, 
 Black Death in the abbey 131, pesti- 
 lence in 1431 225, plague in 1578 347 
 
 St Andrews, plague at in 7585 },U'i, in 
 1605 503, in 1647 563 
 
 St Christopher, the French in 618, yellow 
 fever in 164S 621, 633 
 
 St Domingo, English attempt on 634-6 
 
 St Giles's, Cripplegate, churchyard 334, 
 modes of burial 335, populous parisli 
 472, the Great Plague in 649 
 
704 
 
 Index. 
 
 St Giles's-in-the-Fields, leper-hospital 
 
 of 83, 88, Great Plague begins at 
 
 656 
 St Johnstone, see Perth 
 St Kilda, boat-cold 274 
 St Olave's parish, plague of 1603 478, 
 
 description of 479 
 St Paul's, churchyard, state of in 1582 
 
 333, the charnel-house of 334 
 St Sepulchre's parish, plague of 1563 in 
 
 306, churchyard of 334 
 Salvetti, on the plague of i6'25 512, 519, 
 
 describes a fast 513 
 Sandwich, plague in 1609 500, in 1635- 
 
 37 52S, in 1665 681, 688 
 Sanitary Act, the first 324 
 Sayer, Dr H., treats plague at Oxford in 
 
 1645 559 
 Scavengers, at Ipswich 327, duties of at 
 
 Exeter 327, in London 328 
 Scurvy, in voyages 579, 581-5, 594-6, 
 
 599-609, among the French in Canada 
 
 580, 597, in a coaster 597, lime-juice 
 
 for 595, 601, 602-3, pericarditis in 580 
 
 note 
 Scyllatius, Nicolas, on French pox at 
 
 Barcelona in 1494 434 
 Searchers, at Shrewsbury in 1539 320 
 
 note, in London 319, 321, oath taken 
 
 by in St Mary-le-Bow 322, at Colchester 
 
 689 note 
 Seebohm, F. , on mortality of Black 
 
 Death among clergy 134, ditto in 
 
 manor of Winslow 136, on remote 
 
 effects of Black Death 196 
 Shakespeare, John, fined 327 
 Shakespeare, Wm., his business interfered 
 
 with by plague 495, dies in a sickly 
 
 year 536. See also titles of plays. 
 Sbambles, a nuisance in London 216, 
 
 324. 325. 330. 487 
 Sheppey, plague 348 
 Sherborne, plague in 161 1 501, in 1665 
 
 681 
 Sherburn, leper-hospital at 94 
 y Short, Dr Thomas, his epidemiological 
 
 works 57 note, 404 
 Shrewsbury, privilege of lepers at 99, 
 
 new civic class after Black Death 199, 
 sweat of 1551 259, plague at in 1525 
 292, in 1536-7 301, 302, in 1575 340, 
 
 in 1592-3 357. in 1604 499. in 1630 
 527, in 1650 564 
 
 Simpson, Sir James, on leprosy in Scot- 
 land 106 note, on syphilis in Scotland 
 418 
 
 Skeat, Dr, on the derivation of "measles" 
 451 note 
 
 Skene, Dr Gilbert, on moles in plague- 
 time 173 note, on cadaveric cause of 
 plague 336, his book on plague (1568) 
 363-5 
 
 "Slaedan,'' Lish name supposed of in- 
 fluenza 398 7iote 
 
 Slave-sbips, ordure of, 630 
 
 Slave-trade, early history of 614-17, 
 mortality of 625-28 
 
 Smallpox, originally an Arabic subject 
 439, in the Elephant War 441, nature 
 and affinities of 442-4, in medieval 
 compends 446 and note, Gaddesden's 
 alleged case 447-8, erroneously chro- 
 nicled in 1366 455, in England i6th 
 cent. 456-62, case of in 1561 459, in 
 17th cent. 463, Fracastori on 467, 
 among American Indians (immunity of 
 English) 613, in Hispaniola 615, type 
 of in Africans 627, in slave-ships 625, 
 627, confused with great pox 436-7, 
 456, 464, 468 
 
 Somersetshire, Black Death in 117, 
 spotted fever in 543 
 
 Southampton, plague in Venetian galley 
 in 1519 292, plague in 1625 524, in 1665 
 681 
 
 Southwell Abbey, plague in i47r 230, 
 in 1478 232 
 
 Spanish Main, sickness of English ships 
 off 588, 591 
 
 Spanish Town, mortality at in 1655 638- 
 
 642 
 Sprat, Bishop, on "remedy" of the sweat 
 
 243 
 Stamford, plague in 1574 339, in 1580 
 348, in 1602-3 360, 496, in 1641 
 
 545 
 
Index. 
 
 70s 
 
 Stapleton, Sir Ph., dies of plague at 
 Calais 546 
 
 Stepney, plague begins at in 1603 477, 
 480, plague of 1625 in 511 
 
 Stews suppressed 420 
 
 Stirling, grandgore at in 1498 418, plague 
 at in 1606 503 
 
 Stockport, plague 498 
 
 Stoke (Newark), plague after siege 560 
 
 Stoke Pogis, plague at in 1625 520 
 
 ' ' Stop-gallant, " " Stop-knave, ' ' names 
 of the sweat 260, 262, 263 
 
 Stourbridge, leper-hospital 93 
 
 Stratford, bread-carts 215 note 
 
 Stratford-on-Avon, plague at 309, nuis- 
 ance at 327 
 
 Swainsthorpe, plague in 1479 232 
 
 Sweat, the English, ist epidemic 235- 
 243, 2nd epidemic 243-5, 3rd epidemic 
 245-250, 4th epidemic 250-255, 5th 
 epidemic 259-263, the epidemic of 
 1529 on the Continent 256-259, sup- 
 posed sweats in England after 1551 
 264, 2801 403, 413 note, at Tiverton 
 554, supposed sweat in Flanders in 
 155 1 264 note, supposed sweat in Ire- 
 land 252 note, 400 note, antecedents of 
 in 1485 265, 270, 273, causes of (sup- 
 posed) in London 267, a disease of the 
 well-to-do 263, 268, extinction of 279, 
 favouring conditions of the outbreaks 
 276-9, mortality from 250, 251, 260- 
 262, abroad 257, symptoms of 241, 
 246, 251, theory of 273, treatment of 
 242 
 
 Sweat of Ficardy, 2 7 1 
 
 Sweating in influenza 403, 554, in war- 
 typhus 554 
 
 Syphilis, probably included under le/>ra 
 72-75, 434, 437. See also Pox, the 
 French 
 
 Talifoo, modern plague 168 
 
 Tana, 144, 147 
 
 Taylor, John, "water-poet" 512 
 
 Texas fever 274 
 
 Thame, war- fever at 548-9 
 
 Thayre, Th., see Phaer 
 
 C. 
 
 Thomson, Dr G. , dissection of plague- 
 body 677 
 Timon of Athens, the pox described 
 
 (Act IV. sc. 3) 428 
 Tittenhanger, Henry VIII. at 254 
 Tiverton, plague at in 1591 351, sickness 
 
 in 1597 411, war-typhus ("sweating 
 
 sickness") at in 1644 552-5 
 Tobacco in plague-time 674, 682 
 Torella, on origin of French pox 434 
 Potness, plague at in 1590 351, in 1647 
 
 561 
 Tottenham, in plague of 1625 518, 520 
 Tregony, plague at in 1595 357 
 Tripe, Andrew, his poem on the pox 432 
 
 note 
 Trumpington, plague in 1625 525 
 Truro, decayed 221, plague in 1578 347 
 Tuke, Brian, on the sweat of 1528 255 
 Turner, Mrs Anne 487 note 
 Turner, Dr P., arsenic in plague 487 
 Turner, of Boulogne, preaches against 
 
 burials in the city 336 
 Twyford, plague in 1603 493 
 Tynemouth, plague during siege 557 
 
 Uffculme, sweat at in 1551 262 
 
 Valencia, cases of French pox at 434-5 
 Vasco da Gama, scur\'y in his ships 579 
 Vatican, the French pox in the 416 
 Vetlianka, modern plague at 172 
 Vincent, Rev. Thomas, his experiences 
 
 of the Great Plague 648, 664, 670 
 Virgil, Polydore, on the sweat 237, 240, 
 
 on treatment of ditto 242 
 Virginia, voyages to 590, 609-612 
 
 Wales, pestilence in the marches of in 
 1234 12, Giraldus on 21, famine in 
 11S9 35, leper-law of 106, Black Death 
 in ii8, plague and fever in 1638 541 
 
 Wallingford, after Black Death 195, small 
 pox, measles and plague 291, plague 
 at 559 
 
 " Wame-ill, " Scots famine-sickness in 
 
 VTands carried in plague time 3t4-5 
 
 45 
 
7o6 
 
 Index. 
 
 Wells, Black Death in diocese of 117, 
 
 plague at in 1575 340 
 West Indies, colonization of 617 d scq. 
 Whickham, plague 501 
 White, Gilbert, on causes of leprosy no 
 Whitmore, H., on fever in 1651 566, on 
 
 fever and influenza in 1658-9 572-4 
 VThooping-cough, or the kink 459 
 Willan, Dr. 4, 440 
 William of Nevi^burgh, story of plague at 
 
 Annan 11, famine-fever of 1196 35, 
 
 Durham leper-hospital 94 
 Willis, Dr T., on the war typhus of 1643 
 
 547, 549, on plague at Oxford &c. 559, 
 
 on the fevers and (or) influenzas of 
 
 1657-8 568-572 
 Wills, in Black Death, in London 1 1 7- 
 
 18, 186, in Lancashire 138 note, in 
 
 Colchester 186; in London in 1361 
 
 203, in 1368 216 
 Wilton, sweat at 252 
 Winchester, plague at in 1603 489, in 
 
 1625 521 note, in 1666 687, 691 
 Winslow, manor of 136 
 Wisbech, plague at in 1586 349 
 Wither, George, on plague of 1625 512 
 Woburn, sweat at 252 
 Wolsey, the sweat in his household 247, 
 
 252, 253, letter from Anne Boleyn to 
 255, charged with the great pox 422 
 
 Woodall, John, describes the plague- 
 bubo 122, on scurvy 603-6 
 
 Woodstock, sickness near 291, plague 
 292 
 
 Wool trade after Black Death 179, 193 
 
 Wyclif, on decrease of population 201 
 
 Yarmouth, Black Death in 130, decline 
 of 195, 221 ; plague in 1579 348> in 1625 
 525, in 1635-6 528, in 1664-5 680 
 
 Vellow Fever, epidemic of at Bridgetown 
 in 1647 620, in St Christopher 621, 
 case of described 623, characters of 
 624, in "Regalia" and "La Pique" 
 629, theory of in slave-ports 630-31, as 
 a soil-poison 632-3, question of, in 
 Drake's fleet 518-9 
 
 York, wasting of 27, hospital at 87, 
 Black Death at 118, 131, ditto in 
 diocese of 134, size of after ditto 201, 
 plague in 1391 220, in 1485 282, plague 
 or sweat in 1551 261, plague in 1604 
 489 
 
 Yun-nan, modern plague 168 
 
 Yusufzai, bubonic typhus in 171 
 
 cambridgk: printed by c. j. clay, m.a. and sons, at the university press. 
 
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