Chapter VI

PLAGUE IN THE TUDOR PERIOD.

When the town council of York met on the 16th of August, 1485, to take measures on account of Henry Tudor’s landing in Wales, their first resolution was to despatch the sergeant to the mace to Richard III. at Nottingham, with an offer of men (they promised 400 for his army at Bosworth), and their second resolution was to send at once for all such aldermen and others of the council as were sojourning without the city on account of “the plague that reigneth[543].” These leading citizens of York had gone into the country to avoid the infectious exhalations within the walls in the summer heats; the plague that reigned in York was the old bubo-plague, which would show itself in a house here or there in any ordinary season, and on special occasions would rise to the height of an epidemic, driving away all who could afford to remove from the pestilent air of the town to the comparatively wholesome country, and taking its victims mostly among the poorer class who could not afford a “change of air.” In the three centuries following the Black Death, change of air meant a good deal more than it means now. The infection of the air, or the “intemperies” of the air, at Westminster occasioned (along with other reasons) the prorogation or adjournment to country towns of many parliaments; the infection of the air in and around Fleet Street caused the breaking up of many law terms; and the infection of the air in Oxford colleges was so constant an interruption to the studies of the place in the 15th century that Anthony Wood traces to that cause more than to any other the total decline of learning, the rudeness of manners and the prevalence of “several sorts of vice, which in time appeared so notorious that it was consulted by great personages of annulling the University or else translating it to another place[544].” From the old college registers, chiefly that of his own college of Merton, he has counted some thirty pestilences at Oxford, great and small, during the fifteenth century. The reason why the Oxford annals of plague are so complete is that each outbreak, even if only one or two deaths had occurred[545], meant a dispersion of the scholars and tutors of one or more halls and colleges, their removal in a body to some country house, alteration of the dates of terms, and postponement of the public Acts for degrees in the schools. Experience had taught the necessity of such prompt measures. Thus the first sweat, that of 1485, came so suddenly that it killed many of the scholars before they could disperse, “albeit it lasted but a month or six weeks.” Hardly had the halls and colleges begun to fill again after the dispersion by the sweat of 1485, when “another pestilential disease,” that is to say, the bubo-plague itself, broke forth at the end of August, 1486, in Magdalen parish, and daily increased so much that the scholars were obliged to flee again. In 1491 there was another dispersion; and in 1493 so severe an outbreak of plague from April to Midsummer that many were swept away, both cleric and laic: Magdalen College removed to Brackley in Northamptonshire, Oriel to St Bartholomew’s hospital near Oxford, and Merton to Islip, “instead of Cuxham their usual place of retirement.” The disastrous fifteenth century closes with a specially severe plague in 1499-1500, in which perished “divers of this university accounted worthy in these times;” an accompanying scarcity of grain and consequent failure of scholarships or exhibitions led many students to betake themselves to mechanical occupations. In August, 1503, the plague broke out again in St Alban’s Hall; the principal with all but a few of the students went to Islip, where the pestilence overtook them (three weeks having been spent first in mirth and jollity), so that several died and were buried, some at Islip, others at Ellesfield and one at Noke; in October it broke out in Merton College and drove some of the fellows and bachelors to the lodge in Stow Wood, others to Wotton near Cumner, where they remained until the 17th December. These interruptions had been so frequent that of fifty-five halls, only thirty-three were now inhabited, and they “but slenderly, as may be seen in our registers.” The town of Oxford shared in the decline; streets and lanes formerly populous were now desolate and forsaken. An epidemic in 1508, which may have been the second sweat, caused another dispersion; then the old bubo-plague again in 1510, 1511, 1512 and 1513, filling up the interval until the summer of 1517, when a “sudor tabificus,” the third sweat, “dispersed and swept away most, if not all, of the students.” The bubo-plague followed in the winter and spring, especially in St Mary Hall and Canterbury College. Meanwhile cardinal Wolsey had founded Cardinal College (afterwards Christ Church), bringing to it an infusion of new learning from Cambridge and elsewhere; but in 1525, “while this selected society was busy in preaching, reading, disputing and performing their scholastic Acts, a vehement plague brake forth, which dispersed most of them, so that they returned not all the year following or two years after,” and Cardinal College “thus settled, was soon after left as ’twere desolate.” The same outbreak affected specially the halls or colleges of St Alban, Jesus, St Edmund and Queen’s[546].

Oxford was not altogether singular in this experience of plague from year to year or at intervals of three or four years. What Sir Thomas More says of the cities of Utopia was true of the towns of England or of any medieval country in Christendom: “As for their cities, whoso knoweth one of them, knoweth them all; they be all so like one to another, as far forth as the nature of the place permitteth.” The limitation as to the nature of the place is not without importance for the frequency and severity of plague; the quantity of standing water around Oxford would certainly appear to have made the epidemics there a more regular product of the soil[547]. But we hear of plague also on the soil of Cambridge, particularly in 1511, when Erasmus was there: on the 28th November he writes from Queens’ College to Ammonio in London: “Here is great solitude; most are away for fear of the pestilence,” adding rather unkindly, “although there is also solitude when everyone is in residence.” It is from such chance references in letters of the time that we can infer the existence of plague throughout England. These references become much more numerous as the sixteenth century runs on, not perhaps because plague was more frequent, but because all kinds of documents are better preserved. The remarkable difference between the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. in regard to the quantity of extant materials for the construction of history is as keenly felt by the student of epidemics as by the student of high politics. The local records of towns, London included, are still almost valueless for our purpose: even the skilled antiquaries employed by the Historical Manuscripts Commission have hitherto extracted nothing concerning pre-Elizabethan epidemics from the archives of civic council-chambers, and only a little from muniment-rooms such as that of Canterbury Abbey.

The few details that we possess, such as those for the plague at Hull from 1472 to 1478, had been extracted from local records by the authors of town and county histories. Before the end of the sixteenth century the evidence of plague epidemic all over England, as well in provincial towns and in the country as in London, becomes abundant. There may have been really a great increase, but it is much more probable that the increase is for the most part only apparent. It is of some consequence to determine the probability as exactly as possible; and I shall therefore examine with more minuteness than would otherwise have been necessary the evidence as to the existence and amount of plague in London and elsewhere year after year from the accession of the Tudor dynasty in 1485, using chiefly the Calendars of State Papers for my purpose. As in the case of the sweat, we happen to hear of plague in London and elsewhere because the Court was kept away by it; the king’s secretaries are informed week after week of the state of health in London, and foreign ambassadors, especially the Venetian envoys, have frequently occasion to mention the hindrance to public business caused by the plague. But for these State papers the historian of epidemics would have little beyond an occasional parish register to build upon. The medical profession in England were not concerned to write or print anything thereon; while there are numerous foreign printed books on the plague (e.g. Forrestier’s at Rouen in 1490) there is not one original English treatise until that of Skene of Edinburgh in 1568. That the physicians were well employed by those who could engage their services, and that they did sustain the credit of their profession by the liberal scale of their fees, we have every reason to believe; thus the Venetian envoy writes on 3rd June, 1535, that he had been ill, and that he had expended seven hundred ducats during his illness, “and for so many physicians,” so that he had only one ducat remaining. But these thriving practitioners did not write books like their brethren abroad. One of their number, Linacre, who was also a prebendary of Westminster, busied himself with editions of certain writings of Galen. Erasmus mentions him in a letter as one of the Oxford scholars in whose society he found pleasure; but there is in the Praise of Folly a reference to a certain grammatical pedant whom Hecker identifies with Linacre. The other physicians and surgeons of the period whose names are known, Butts, Chambre, Borde and the rest of the group in Holbein’s picture of Henry VIII. handing the surgeons their charter, have left nothing in print which illustrates the epidemic diseases of the time, and little of any kind of writing except some formulæ of medicines: Borde, who was patronised by Cromwell, is known only as a humorist or satirist. Thus the inquiry must proceed without any of those aids from the faculty which make the history of epidemics on the Continent comparatively easy.

After the disastrous prevalence of plague in England in the reign of Edward IV., culminating in the great epidemic of 1479 in London and elsewhere, we do not hear of the disease again in London until 1487, two years after the first sweat; in that year, on the 14th April, a king’s writ from Norwich postponed the business of the Common Pleas and King’s Bench until Trinity term, on account of the pestilence in London, Westminster and neighbouring places[548]. The next reference is to the great epidemic of 1499-1500, in London and apparently also in the country. Fabyan, who was then an alderman and likely to know, puts the deaths in London at twenty thousand[549]; Polydore Virgil says thirty thousand[550]; and others say thirty thousand deaths from plague and other diseases together[551]. The smaller total is the more likely to be nearest the mark. There is reason to think that the population of London a generation later was little over 60,000; and it will appear in the sequel that a fourth or a fifth part of the inhabitants was as much as the severest plagues cut off, although it is entirely credible that the Black Death itself had cut off one half.

The enormous mortality in 1499-1500 has left few traces in the records of the City or of the State. Five great prelates died during the plague-year, some of them certainly from it: Morton of Canterbury (a very old man), Langton of Winchester (before he could be transferred to Canterbury), Rotheram of York, Alcock of Ely and Jane of Norwich[552]. Like some of the later plagues in London it lasted through the winter. It was at Oxford in the same years, and casual references in two of the Plumpton letters lead one to infer that it may have been in remote parts of the country also[553].

The infection was still active as late as October, 1501, at Gravesend, and it made some difference to the reception of the young princess Catharine of Arragon, who had come over for her marriage with Prince Arthur, and became famous in history as the wife of his brother Henry VIII. The following are Henry VII.’s instructions, dated October, 1501:—

“My lord Steward shall shew or cause to be shewed to the said Princess, that the King’s Grace, tenderly considering her great and long pain and travel upon the sea, would full gladly that she landed and lodged for the night at Gravesend; but forasmuch as the plague was there of late, and that is not yet clean purged thereof, the King would not that she should be put in any such adventure or danger, and therefore his Grace hath commanded the bark to be prepared and arrayed for her lodging[554].”

In 1503 there was plague at Oxford, as we have seen, and at Exeter, where two mayors died of it in quick succession, and two bailiffs[555]. The infection was certainly in London in 1504 or 1505 (perhaps in both, and possibly at its low endemic level in the other years from 1501): for Bernard André mentions casually that he had been absent from the City on account of it[556].

In 1509, the first year of Henry VIII., there was a severe outbreak of plague in the garrison of Calais, as well as “great plague” in divers parts of England[557]. In 1511, Erasmus writes from Cambridge on 17th August, 5th October and 16th October, making reference to the plague in London; and on the 27th October, 8th November, and 28th November, Ammonio answers him that the plague has not entirely disappeared, and again that it is abated, but a famine is feared, and lastly that the plague is entirely gone. On the 26th of July the Venetian ambassador had written that the queen-widow (mother of Edward V.) had died of plague and that the king, Henry VIII., was anxious.

On the 1st November, 1512, Erasmus, on a visit to London, was so afraid of the plague that he did not enter his own lodging, and missed a meeting with Colet. The next year, 1513, was a severe plague-year according to many testimonies. In the diary of the Venetian envoy from August to 3rd September it is stated that deaths from plague are occurring constantly; two of his servants sickened on the 22nd August, but did not recognize the disease; on the 25th they rose from bed, went to a tavern to drink a certain beverage called “ale,” and died the same day: their bed, sheets and other effects were thrown into the sea (? Thames). On the 17th September he writes to Venice that it is perilous to remain in London; the deaths were said to be 200 in a day, there was no business doing, all the Venetian merchants in London had taken houses in the country; the plague is also in the English fleet. In October the deaths are reported by the envoy at 300 to 400 a day; he has gone into the country. On the 6th November and 6th December he writes that plague was still doing much damage. On the 3rd December the rumour of a great prevalence of plague in England had reached Rome. On the 28th November Erasmus writes from Cambridge that he does not intend to come to London before Christmas on account of plague and robbers; and on the 21st December he writes again: “I am shut up in the midst of pestilence and hemmed in with robbers.”

One year is very like another, but it will be desirable to continue the narrative a little longer so as to remove any suspicion of constructing history beyond the facts. In February, 1514, Erasmus writes that he had been disgusted with London, deeming it unsafe to stay there owing to plague. In going in procession to St Paul’s on the 21st May the king preferred to be on horseback, for one reason “to avoid contact with the crowd by reason of the plague;” he had lately recovered from some vaguely reported “fever” at Richmond. On the 1st July Convocation was adjourned on account of the epidemic and the heat.

Next year, 1515, Erasmus writes from London on the 20th April that he is in much trouble; the plague had broken out and it looked as if it would rage everywhere. On the 23rd April Wolsey sends advice to the earl of Shrewsbury in the country (? Wingfield) to “get him into clean air and divide his household,” owing to contagious plague among his servants; on the 28th the earl received from London one pound of manus Christi,—the same remedy that Henry VIII. sent to Wolsey for the sweat—with coral, and half-a-pound of powder preservative. On the same date “they begin to die in London in divers places suddenly of fearful sickness.” One of the incidents of the plague of 1515 which has fixed the attention of chroniclers was the death of twenty-seven of the nuns in a convent at the Minories outside Aldgate[558]. Next year, on 14th May (1516), the sickness was so extreme in Lord Shrewsbury’s house at Wingfield that he has put away all his horse-keepers and turned his horses out to grass. In London, on the 21st May, the Venetian ambassador removed to Putney owing to a case of plague in his house, and he would not be allowed to see Wolsey until the 30th June, when forty days would have passed since the plague in his house.

The next summer, 1517, was the season of the third sweat. It was hardly over when plague began in London in September. On the 21st the Venetian envoy speaks of having had to avoid “the plague and the sweating sickness;” on the 26th he writes that the plague is making some progress and he has left London to avoid it. On the 15th October the king was at Windsor “in fear of the great plague.” One writes on 25 Oct., “As far as I can hear, there is no parish in London free[559].” On the 16th November the envoy begs the seignory of Venice to send someone to replace him as he thinks it high time to escape from “sedition, sweat and plague.” On the 3rd December the king and the cardinal were still absent from London on account of the plague; on the 22nd their absence was causing general discontent, the plague being somewhat abated. It was not until March, 1518, that the court approached London; on the 15th the Venetian envoy rode out to Richmond to see the king, and found him in some trouble, as three of his pages had died “of the plague.” The court withdrew again to Berkshire, and on the 6th April it was decided by the king’s privy council at Abingdon that London was still infected and must be avoided, the queen (Catharine of Arragon) having declared the day before that she had perfect knowledge of the sickness being in London, and that she feared for the king, although she was no prophet. On the 7th April the report of four or five deaths at Nottingham (“as appears by a bill enclosed”) was made the ground of postponing a projected visit of the king to the north. The spring was unusually warm, which made the risk of sickness to be judged greater. It is clear that public business was suffering by the prolonged absence of the court from London, and that the existence of infection was being denied. On the 28th April Master More certified from Oxford to the king at Woodstock that three children were dead of the sickness, but none others; he had accordingly charged the mayor and the commissary in the king’s name “that the inhabitants of those houses that be and shall be infected, shall keep in, put out wispes and bear white rods, according as your grace devised for Londoners;” this was approved by the king’s council, and the question was discussed whether the fair in the Austin Friars of Oxford a fortnight later should not be prohibited, as the resort of people “may make Oxford as dangerous as London, next term” (the law courts sat at Oxford in Trinity term). However, the interests of traders had to be kept in view also. On 28th June, 1518, Pace writes from the court at Woodstock to Wolsey that “all are free from sickness here, but many die of it within four or five miles, as Mr Controller is informed.” On the 11th July he writes again from Woodstock that two persons are dead of the sickness, and more infected, one of them a servant to a yeoman of the king’s guard; to-morrow the king and queen lodge at Ewelme, and stop not by the way, as the place appointed for their lodging is infected. On the 14th July he writes to Wolsey from Wallingford that the king moves to-morrow to Bisham “as it is time: for they do die in these parts in every place, not only of the small pokkes and mezils, but also of the great sickness.” The uncertainty as to what these diseases may have been will appear from the next letter, on the 18th July, from Sir Thomas More: “We have daily advertisements here, other of some sweating or the great sickness from places very near unto us; and as for surfeits and drunkenness we have enough at home.” The king had also heard that one of my lady Princess’s servants was sick of “a hot ague” at Enfield. On the 22nd July, the Venetian ambassador writes from Lambeth asking to be recalled: two of his servants had died of the plague, and he himself had the sweating sickness twice in one week. The pope’s legate, Campeggio, made a state entry into London about the first of August, but the king and Wolsey were not there to receive him, ostensibly for fear of infection. The king was now at Greenwich, and we hear no more of the fear of infection for a time. In the end of March, 1519, deaths from plague occurred on board one of the Venetian galleys at Southampton. On the 4th August, 1520, the king (at Windsor) has heard that the great sickness is still prevalent at Abingdon and other villages towards Woodstock, and has changed his route (“gystes”) accordingly; on 8th August, sickness is reported at Woodstock. The same year some kind of sickness was very disastrous in Ireland.

In the winter of 1521 (2nd November), the sickness continues in London: “it is not much feared, though it is universal in every parish.” According to a vague entry in Hall’s chronicle the year 1522 was in like manner, “not without pestilence nor death,” which may refer to the gaol fever at Cambridge.

Thus from 1511 to 1521 there is not a single year without some reference to the prevalence of plague, the autumn and winter of 1513 having been probably the time of greatest mortality in London. After 1521 or 1522 there comes a break of four or five years in the plague-references, except for a vague mention of plague followed by famine at Shrewsbury in 1525[560]. They begin again in 1526 (from Guildford) and go on until 1532 every year much as in the former period, the year 1528 being mostly occupied with the fourth epidemic of the sweating sickness. On the 4th June, 1529, the legate Campeggio writes from London: “Here we are still wearing our winter clothing, and use fires as if it were January: never did I witness more inconstant weather. The plague begins to rage vigorously, and there is some fear of the sweating sickness.” On the 31st August the Venetian ambassador has a person sick of the plague in his house; on the 9th September he has gone to a village near London on account of the plague. On the 18th September the French ambassador in London (Bishop Du Bellay) has plague in his household, and in spite of repeated changes of lodging his principal servants are dead; he has been unable to refuse leave to the others to go home, and is now quite alone, but the danger from the plague is much diminished.

In 1530 the plague is heard of as early as March 23, previous to which date two of the Venetian ambassador’s servants had died of it; three more of them died afterwards, and the envoy was forbidden the Court for forty days. Parliament was prorogued on April 26 to June 22, on account of the plague in London and the suburbs, and farther, for the same reason, until October 1. The king was at Greenwich, but even there was not beyond the infection; in the Privy Purse book, there is an entry of £18. 8s. paid “to Rede, the marshall of the king’s hall for to dispose of the king’s charge to such poor folk as were expelled the town of the Greenwiche in the tyme of the plague.” Similar payments are entered on January 13, 1531, April 10, April 26 and November 8[561].

On November 23, 1531, the king was obliged to leave Greenwich on account of the plague, removing to Hampton Court (now a royal palace since Wolsey’s fall). In London it had somewhat abated, but, according to a letter of the Venetian ambassador, had been up to 300 or 400 deaths in a week. In mid-winter, the 15th of January, 1532, Parliament was prorogued on account of the insalubrity of the air in London and Westminster. The infection may be assumed to have gone on, according to the analogy of known years, all through the spring and summer, rising to a greater height in the autumn. We next hear of it on the 18th September, 1532, when the Venetian envoy writes from London that the king’s journey to Gravesend and Dover would be by water, “as there is much plague in those parts, and there is no lack of it in London. Yesterday at the king’s court the master of the kitchen died of it, having waited on his majesty the day before.” On the 24th September, “the plague increases daily in London and well nigh throughout the country.”

On the 14th October, “the plague increases daily, and makes everybody uneasy.” On the same date the Privy Council write to the king, who had crossed to Calais accompanied by Mr Secretary Cromwell, for a meeting with the French king, that there is a rumour of the plague increasing, especially at the Inns of Court. On the 18th October Hales, one of the justices, writes to Cromwell that “the plague of sickness is so sore here that I never saw so thin a Michaelmas term.” On the 20th, Audeley the Lord Chancellor writes that many die of the plague, the sergeants in Fleet Street have left in consequence, the Inner Temple has broken commons, the lawyers being in great fear. “The Council have commanded the mayor to certify how many have died of the plague.” That is the first known reference to the London bills of mortality, and was probably the very first occasion of them[562]. By that time the plague had been active in London for more than a month, and had clearly begun to alarm the residents. The result of the Privy Council’s order to the mayor of London was a bill on or before the 21st October, showing that 99 persons had died of the plague in the city, and 27 from other causes, the number of deaths from other causes suggesting that this was the bill for a week. On the 23rd the Secretary of State is informed that the sickness is fervent and many die; those who are not citizens are much afeard. On the 25th Sir John Aleyn has assurances for Cromwell (at Calais) from all parts of the country that the whole realm is quiet, but the plague has been more severe than in London. Cromwell’s French gardener was alive and well on Saturday afternoon, the 12th, and he was dead of the plague and buried on Monday morning the 14th. On the 27th the death “is quite abated” in London and Westminster, according to one; but according to the Lord Chancellor, on the 28th, the plague increases, especially about Fleet Street. On the 31st October one writes, “I have not seen London so destitute of people as it was when I came there.” On 2nd November the death is assuaged and there is good rule kept, for Sir Hugh Vaughan takes pains in his office like an honest gentleman. On the 9th November the plague is abated. There the correspondence ends, the Court having returned from France. But we may here bring in a certain weekly bill of mortality which has come down among the waifs of paper from that period[563]. It is for the week from the 16th to the 23rd of November, the year not being stated; the experts of the national collection of manuscripts were at one time inclined to assign it to “circa 1512;” but the first that we hear of the mayor being called upon to furnish a bill of plague-deaths is the order by the lords of the Council on or about the 20th October 1532, the first bill having shown 99 deaths in the city from plague and 27 deaths (in the week) from other causes. The extant bill for the week 16th to 23rd November is clearly one of a series; there are no good grounds for assigning it to an earlier date than the year 1532, while there are reasons for not placing it later. There are two other plague-bills extant, for August, 1535, written out in a more clerkly fashion, and bearing the marks of greater experience. The bill for the week in November is more primitive in appearance; and we may fairly take it as one of the series first ordered by the Council in 1532: for that was the most considerable year of the plague immediately preceding the outburst of 1535, to which the more finished bills certainly belong. The week in November, for which it gives the deaths from plague and other causes in the city parishes is later than the dates of the 2nd and 9th, when the plague was “suaged” and “abated;” the bill therefore stands for plague on the decline, or near extinction for the season, its total of plague deaths being 33, and of other deaths 32, as against 99 and 27 respectively in the corresponding week of October. As this, the earliest of a great historical series of London bills of mortality, has a peculiar interest, I transcribe it in full, retaining the original spelling.

Syns the XVIth day of November unto the XXIII day of the same moneth ys dead within the cite and freedom yong and old these many folowyng of the plage and other dyseases.

And there is this weke clere ^xxx⁄iii and iii paryshes as by this bille doth appere.

There does not appear to have been any occasion for a continuance of plague-bills beyond the date of the one just given until nearly three years after: we hear, indeed, of a severe epidemic of plague at Oxford in 1533, but nothing of it in London until 1535[564]. It so happens that a pair of London bills of mortality is extant from the month of August in that year. Thus, by a singular coincidence, the only original bills of mortality that have come down (so far as is known) from the sixteenth century, are one from the end of the series in the first year of their execution (1532), and another the very first of the series in the second year of their execution (1535), or in the series ordered on account of the epidemic of plague next following. Of that epidemic also it may be permitted to give somewhat full details, for it is only rarely that we have the chance of realizing the facts in so concrete a way.

In the summer and autumn of 1535 Henry VIII., with the queen (Anne Boleyn), was mostly at his manor of Thornbury in Gloucestershire, Cromwell the principal Secretary of State being either with the king or in his immediate neighbourhood. The absence of the Court occasions numerous letters to be sent from and to London, in which we hear of the plague among other things. Cromwell had four houses in or near London at this time,—at the Rolls in Chancery Lane, at Austin Friars in the City, at the fashionable suburb of Stepney, and at Highbury: besides these he had a fine villa building at Hackney. From his steward or other servants at one or more of these he was in receipt of letters constantly during his absence. A letter from the Rolls on the 30th July informs him that twelve heron-shaws had been sent to him from Kent, and had been received at the Rolls “as the city of London is sorely infected with the plague.” Next day another writes that the City is infected but Fleet Street is clean. On the 5th August “the common sickness waxeth very busy in London.” On the 7th Lord Chancellor Audeley writes from “my house at Christchurch” (Creechurch, near Aldgate) that he had been expecting Cromwell in London, but hears that he will not return for nine or ten days; will therefore go to his house at Colchester meanwhile, as they are dying of the plague in divers parishes in London. Cromwell was naturally desirous to know accurately the state of health in the city, so as to regulate his own movements and perhaps the king’s also; he accordingly makes inquiries of his various correspondents. Another letter from London on the 7th August informs him that there is no death at Court, but only in certain places in the city: “I fear these great humidities will engender pestilence at the end of the year, rather after Bartholomew tide than before. If you be near London you must avoid conference of people.” On receipt of this Cromwell would appear to have written to the mayor of London, for on the 13th August his clerk at the Rolls replies to him that he had delivered the letter to the lord mayor. On the 16th another of the household at the Rolls writes that the plague rages in every parish in London, but not so bad as in many places abroad: “I will send the number of the dead. The mayor keeps his chamber. Some say he is sick of an ague; others that he was cut about the brows for the megrims, which vexeth him sore. Few men come at him, but women.” The bill of mortality which Cromwell had asked for previous to 13th August is extant[565]. It is in two parts: one showing 31 deaths from plague and 31 deaths from other causes in thirty-seven out of one hundred parishes from the 5th to the 12th August, with a list of parishes clear; and the other, headed “14th August” and probably meant to include the former, showing a much heavier mortality and a much shorter list of parishes clear, the whole being endorsed by the mayor, Sir John Champneys, as follows: “So appeareth there be dead within the city of London of the plague and otherwise from the 6th day of this month of August to the 14th day, which be eight days complete, the full number of 152 persons [105 of them from plague]. And this day se’night your mastership [Mr Secretary Cromwell] shall be certified of the number that shall chance to depart in the meantime. Yours as I am bound, John Champeneys.” This double bill for certain days in August, 1535, is rather more elaborate than, but otherwise not unlike, the above bill, for a week in November, most likely of the year 1532. It will be noticed that the deaths in all the city parishes from other causes than plague are 47 in the bill for eight (or nine) days; 31 in the bill, partly the same, for seven days, and 32 in the earlier bill for seven days, while they are known to have been 27 in another bill of October, 1532, probably also for seven days. These figures, the best to be had, are important for calculating the population of London at the time; they represent quite an ordinary weekly mortality, the deaths from plague being found to be always extra deaths, where we can compare the mortality year after year, as in the London bills of later times.

The weekly bills of mortality called for in the plague of 1535 were sent regularly to the Secretary of State until the end of September—on the 22nd and 30th August, and on the 4th, (and 5th), 11th and 27th September. The one sent on Monday the 30th August showed 157 deaths during the preceding week, of which 140 were put down to plague, leaving only 17 deaths in the week from ordinary causes,—a small number owing perhaps to so many residents having gone to the country. No figures remain from the other bills, but we know from letters that the plague increased considerably in September (e.g. 11th Sept. “By the Lord Mayor’s certificate which I send you will see that the plague increases”) both in London and in the country, justifying the prediction that it would be worse after Bartholomew-tide; it is not until the 28th October that we hear of the deaths being “well stopped” in London. Some few particulars of this epidemic, and of its revival in 1536, remain to be added before we come to speak of the London bills of mortality in general, of the extent of the City and liberties at this period, of its sanitary condition, and of the public health from year to year.

On the 18th August, 1535, one writes to Cromwell from the Temple that the plague “has visited my house near Stepney where my wife lives.” On the 20th August a resident in Lincoln’s Inn was seized with plague and conveyed thence by night to a poor man’s house right against the chamber of one of Cromwell’s household at the Rolls, where he died. “Such as lodge in your gate seldom go out, and will have less occasion if, before great time pass, you will appoint from Endevill, or elsewhere within your rule, some venison for the household, that men may be the better contented with their fare.” On the same date Cromwell is informed by his steward at Austin Friars that “the Frenchman next your house that was in St Peter’s parish [Cornhill] has buried two, but no more.” The plague looked threatening enough to raise the question whether Bartholomew fair should be held at Smithfield this year. Meanwhile the king and court were at Thornbury in Gloucestershire, having arrived there on the 18th August. The town of Bristol was avoided “because the plague of pestilence then reigned within the said town;” but a deputation of three persons was sent to the king to present him with ten fat oxen and forty sheep, and to present the queen, Anne Boleyn, with a gold cup full of gold pieces, an offering known as “queen gold[566].” On the 25th of August the French ambassador proceeded to Gloucestershire to inform Henry VIII. “of the interview of the two queens,” but he stopped six miles short of the court, owing to a “French merchant” who followed him having died of plague on the road. On the 4th September the plague in London is aggravated by a scarcity of bread; “what was sold for ½d. when you were here is now 1d.,” and it is so musty that it is rather poisonous than nourishing. On the 6th the season has been unfavourable and there is great probability of famine. On the 13th the Lord Chancellor will stay at his house at Old Ford beside Stratford, on account of the plague in London increasing; he will have to go to Westminster on the 3rd November, with the Speaker and others, to prorogue Parliament, and advises the prorogation to be until the 4th of February, and of the law courts until the eve of All Souls, by which time, by coldness of the weather, the plague should cease. Wheat and rye were at a mark and 16/- the quarter. A letter from Exeter on the 17th September shows the danger of famine to have been great there also[567]. On the 23rd September one of the masons working at Cromwell’s house in Austen Friars is sick of the plague: three corses were buried at Hackney [of men employed at the new house?] last St Matthew’s day. In October the king is on his way back from Gloucestershire, but changes his route owing to a death at Shalford and four deaths at Farnham. On the 24th October the bishop of Winchester, on his way to Paris, lost his servant at Calais by the great sickness “wherewith he was infected at his late being in London longer than I would he should:” travelling is cumbrous in the “strange watery weather” in France. In November the pope has heard that England is troubled with famine and pestilence. The curate of Much Malvern writes in November (but perhaps of 1536): “I have buried four persons of pestilence since Saturday, and I have one more to bury to-day. Yesterday I was in a house where the plague is very sore.”

The sickness appears to have shown itself again in London as early as April, 1536. On the 2nd of May two gentlemen of the Inner Temple had died of the sickness; on the 15th the abbot of York writes to be excused from attending Parliament “because of the plague which has visited my house near Powles [St Paul’s].” In the same summer the election of knights to serve in Parliament for Shropshire could not be held at Shrewsbury because the plague was in the town. In September one of the king’s visitors of the abbeys, previous to their suppression, found hardly any place clear of the plague in Somerset, and was much impeded in his work. On the 27th September one of the numerous coronations of new queens in Henry VIII.’s reign (this time Jane Seymour in succession to Anne Boleyn, beheaded in May) was like to be postponed “seeing how the plague reigned in Westminster, even in the Abbey.” On the 9th October plague was at Dieppe, thought to have been brought over from Rye. In Yorkshire also, the duke of Norfolk, sent to put down the rebellion in November, 1536, came into close contact with plague; many were dying of it at Doncaster: “Where I and my son lay, at a friar’s, ten or twelve houses were infected within a butt’s length. On Friday night the mayor’s wife and two daughters and a servant all died in one house.” Nine soldiers also were dead. At Oxford the plague was active, and the scholars had gone into the country. In London on the 27th November it was dangerous to tarry at Lincoln’s Inn “for they die daily in the City.” In September, 1536, the small essay on plague by the 14th century bishop of Aarhus, which had circulated in manuscript in the medieval period and was first printed in 1480, was reprinted at London, the regimen, as the title declares, having been “of late practised and proved in mani places within the City of London, and by the same many folke have been recovered and cured[568].” In 1537 there appear to have been a few cases of plague at Shrewsbury, on account of which the town council paid certain moneys[569].

Beyond the year 1538 the domestic records of State are not as yet calendared in such fulness as to bring to light any references to plague in them. It may be, therefore, that the clear interval from 1537 to 1542 is in appearance only. From such sources as are available we can continue the history of plague down to the great London plague of 1563; but it is a history meagre and disappointing after the numerous concrete glimpses and details of the earlier period.

The summer of 1540 was a sickly one throughout England[570]; it introduces us to a different and perhaps new type of disease, “hot agues,” with “laskes” or dysenteries, of which a good deal remains to be said in another chapter.

It was in 1539 that Parish Registers of the births, marriages and deaths began to be kept—very irregularly for the most part but in some few parishes continuously from that year. By their means we can henceforth trace the existence of epidemic disease in the country, which might not have been suspected or thought probable. Thus, at Watford from July to September, 1540, there were 47 burials, of which 40 were from “plague.” Next year, in the month of October, the burials were 14, a number greatly in excess of the average[571]. In 1543 there was “a great death” in London, which lasted so far into the winter that the Michaelmas law term had to be kept at St Albans[572]. Another civic chronicle adds that there had been a great death the summer before; and from an ordinance of the Privy Council it appears that the plague was in London as early as May 21, 1543[573]. The next definite proof of plague in the capital is under 1547 and 1548. On the 15th November in the former year blue crosses were ordered to be affixed to the door-posts of houses visited by the plague. In 1548, says Stow, there was “great pestilence” in London, and a commission was issued to curates that there should be no burials between the hours of six in the evening and six in the morning, and that the bell should be tolled for three-quarters of an hour[574]. A letter of July 19 says that they had been visited by plague in the Temple, and that it still continued[575]. On August 28, the Common Council adjourned for a fortnight by reason of the violence of the plague[576].

These are the London informations for 1547 and 1548, but it would be unsafe to conclude that the other years from 1543 were free from plague. In 1544 it was raging at Newcastle[577], at Canterbury[578] and at Oxford[579], at which last it continued most of the next year, and was considered to be “the dregs of that which happened anno 1542.” It had been prevalent in Edinburgh previous to June 24, 1545[580]. In April, 1546, there was a severe mortality on board a Venetian ship at Portsmouth, which may have been the plague, as in a similar case at Southampton[581]. In the autumn or early winter of the same year the plague was raging so fervently in Devonshire that the Commissioners for the Musters were obliged to put off their work till it ceased[582]. Within the town of Haddington, which was held by an English garrison against a large besieging force of French and others, plague broke out in 1547[583]. In 1549 the disease is reported from Lincoln[584]. A letter of November 23, 1550, states that the Princess Mary was driven from Wanstead by one dying of the plague there[585].

The reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, full of trouble as they were in other ways, furnish hardly a single record of plague. The sweating sickness of 1551 we hear of sufficiently; and the pestilent fevers, or influenzas, in 1557-58 are not altogether without record; but of plague down to the 5th year of Elizabeth (1563) there is very little said, and that little not free from ambiguity. Sometime in that interval, or still earlier, must have fallen the pestilence at Northampton, severe enough to require the new cemetery which cardinal Pole, in a deed of March 9, 1557, ordered to be henceforth kept enclosed[586]. Only two of the many centres of sickness in England in 1558 are said to have had the infection of the type, not of fever, but of plague,—Loughborough and Chester. In the Leicestershire town the burials were numerous enough for true plague, and the cause of mortality is so named[587]. In Chester also the sickness is called the plague, and it is added that many fled the town, although the deaths were few[588]. A State paper of February 25, 1559, speaks of the county of Cheshire as “weakened by the prevalence of plague[589].”

The London Plague of 1563.

The activity of the plague in London in 1563 made up for its dormancy in the years preceding. The epidemic of that summer and autumn was one of the most severe in the history of the city, the mortality in proportion to the population having been tremendous. This is the first London plague for which we have the authentic weekly deaths. How they were obtained is not stated, but it was probably by the same means that furnished the plague-bills of 1532 and 1535. John Stow must have had before him a complete set of weekly bills from the beginning of June, 1563, to the 26th of July, 1566, of which series not one is known to be extant; but the totals of the weekly deaths from plague for the whole of that period are among Stow’s manuscript memoranda in the Lambeth Library[590]. After the week ending the 31st December, 1563, the weekly deaths are few, many of the weeks of 1564, 1565 and 1566 having only one death from plague, and some of them none. The following are the weekly mortalities during the severe period of the epidemic:

Week ending Plague-deaths

1563. 12 June 17

19 " 25

26 " 23

3 July 44

10 " 64

17 " 131

23 " 174

30 " 289

6 August 299

13 " 542

20 " 608

27 " 976

3 September 963

10 " 1454

17 " 1626

24 " 1372

1 October 1828

8 " 1262

15 " 829

22 " 1000

29 " 905

5 November 380

12 " 283

19 " 506

26 " 281

3 December 178

10 " 249

17 " 239

24 " 134

31 " 121

1564. 7 January 45

14 " 26

21 " 13

Stow’s summary of this epidemic in his Annales is as follows: “In the same whole year, i.e. from the 1st January, 1562 [old style] till the last of December, 1563, there died in the city and liberties thereof, containing 108 parishes, of all diseases 20,372, and of the plague, being part of the number aforesaid, 17,404; and in out parishes adjoining to the same city, being 11 parishes, died of all diseases in the whole year 3288, and of them of the plague 2732.” The weekly totals from June 12 to December 31 which are for the City and liberties, and exclusive of the out parishes, add up to very nearly Stow’s total for the whole year, or to 16,802 as against 17,404. Where the discrepancy arises does not appear; it is hardly likely that some 600 plague-deaths would have occurred previous to the second week in June, at which time the weekly mortality had reached only 17. We are able to check one of the weekly totals from an independent source. In an extant letter of the time the following figures for the week from 23rd to 30th July are given, having been taken evidently from the published or posted weekly bill: “Died and were buried in London and suburbs, 399, most young people and youths, of which number of the common plague 320 persons. Number of children born and christened in the same week, 52[591].” “London and suburbs” would mean the 108 parishes of the City and liberties together with the 11 out parishes, so that the difference between Stow’s 289 and the above 320 would give the number of plague-deaths in the out parishes for the particular week.

The state of matters in the City is thus referred to in Bullein’s Dialogue published in 1564:—

Civis.—“Good wife, the daily jangling and ringing of the bells, the coming in of the minister to every house in ministering the communion, the reading of the homily of death, the digging up of graves, the sparring of windows, and the blazing forth of the blue crosses do make my heart tremble and quake.” A beggar, in the same Dialogue, who had arrived from the country, says:

“I met with wagones, cartes and horses full loden with yong barnes, for fear of the blacke Pestilence, with them boxes of medicens and sweete perfumes. O God! how fast did they run by hundredes, and were afraied of eche other for feare of smityng.”

We get one or two glimpses of this great plague from the medical point of view in Dr John Jones’s Dyall of Agues[592]. The worst locality, he says, was “S. Poulkar’s parish [St Sepulchre’s] by reason of many fruiterers, poor people, and stinking lanes, as Turnagain-lane [so called because it led down the slope to Fleet Ditch and ended there], Seacoal-lane, and such other places, there died most in London, and were soonest infected, and longest continued, as twice since I have known London I have marked to be true.” Jones believed in contagion: “I myself was infected by reason that unawares I lodged with one that had it running from him.” His other observation is interesting as proving the possibility of repeated attacks of the buboes in the same person, an observation abundantly confirmed, as we shall see, in the London plagues of 1603 and 1665:

“Here now, gentel readers, I think good to admonish all such as have had the plague, that they flie the trust of ignoraunt persons, who use to saye that he who hath once had the plague shal not nede to feare the havinge of it anye more: the whych by this example whyche foloweth (that chaunced to a certayne Bakers wife without Tempel barre in London, Anno Do. 1563) you shall find to be worthelye to be repeated: this sayde wyfe had the plage at Midsommer and at Bartholomewtide, and at Michaelmas, and the first time it brake, the seconde time it brake, but ran littell, the thirde time it appeared and brake not: but she died, notwythstanding she was twyce afore healed.”

Two London physicians of some note died of the plague in 1563. One was Dr Geynes, who had brought trouble upon himself by impugning the authority of Galen, perhaps without sufficient reason. Having been cited before the College of Physicians, to whose discipline he was subject, he preferred to recant his heresy rather than undergo imprisonment. He died of plague on 23 July, 1563. Another was Dr John Fryer who had suffered twice for religious heresy, having been imprisoned by queen Mary as a Lutheran, and by queen Elizabeth as a papist. He regained his liberty in August, 1563, but only to die of plague on 21 October, his wife and several of his children having been also victims of the epidemic[593].

Stow ascribes the infection of the city of London by plague in the summer of 1563 to the return of the English troops from Havre, which town queen Elizabeth had boldly attempted to hold, and did actually hold for ten months, from September, 1562, as an English fortress in French territory. Havre was not surrendered until the last days of July, 1563, and no returning troops could have reached London until August, by which time the plague had been raging there for two months. There was no doubt frequent communication between Havre and English ports while the siege lasted; but the sickness in each place can have been no more than coincident. Thus, while there were 17 plague-deaths in London in the week from the 5th to the 12th of June, the 7th of June is the first date on which report was made of sickness in Havre, although there had been cases of illness before. On that date the Earl of Warwick wrote to the Privy Council[594]: “For the want of money the works are hindered and the men discouraged. A strange disease has come amongst them, whereof nine died this morning (and many before) very suddenly.” On the same day (7th June, 1563), one writes from Havre to Cecil: “Many of our men have been hurt in these skirmishes, but more by drinking of their wine, which hath cast down a great number, of hot burning diseases and impostumations, not unlike the plague.” By the 9th June the deaths were from 20 to 30 a day. On the 12th June, 442 were sick out of a total force (including labourers and seamen) of 7143. On June 16, Warwick points out to the Privy Council that the sickness was aggravated by the want of fresh meat and the soldiers’ usual beverages: “therefore their continual drinking of wine, contrary to their custom, has bred these disorders and diseases.” On the 28th June the daily mortality was 77; from that date it increased somewhat, and was so serious as to hasten the surrender of the place to the French besieging force in the end of July. On July 27 there was plague in the castle of Jersey, and on August 6 it was very sore in Jersey, especially in the Castle[595].

It would have seemed the more probable to the people of London that the plague of 1563 had been imported across the Channel by reason of the unusually long immunity of the English capital in respect of that infection. A clear interval of a dozen years without an epidemic, or a severe epidemic, was enough to make men forget the long tradition of plague domesticated upon English soil; while there was no scientific doctrine of epidemics then worked out, from which they might have known that the seeds of a disease may lie dormant for years, and that their periodic effectiveness depends upon a concurrence of favouring things, most of all upon extremes of dryness or wetness of the seasons as affecting a soil full of corrupting animal matters.

The plague of 1563 in the capital was accompanied or followed by several provincial outbreaks, of which few details are known. It is mentioned at Derby[596] in 1563, at Leicester[597] in 1563 and 1564 (a shut-up house in 1563, the first plague-burial in St Martin’s parish on May 11, 1564), at Stratford-on-Avon, at Lichfield[598] and Canterbury[599] in 1564. But it is little more than mentioned at all those places. In the parish register of Hensley, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, a later incumbent, basing upon “an old writing of 1569,” says that the explanation of the year 1563 being a blank in the register was “because in that year the visitation of plague was most hot and fearful, so that many died and fled, and the town of Hensley, by reason of the sickness, was unfrequented for a long season[600].”

Preventive Practice in Plague-time under the Tudors.

Having now traced the history of plague in London and in the provinces down to the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, and having found it steady from year to year for many years in London, with an occasional terrific outburst, we are naturally led to ask whether the causes of it, or its favouring things, were understood, and whether any steps were taken to deal with it. This will be in effect a review of the earliest preventive practice.

That which was most clearly perceived by all was that the plague began to reign in certain years as the summer heats drew on, that the air of London or Westminster became “intemperate,” or unwholesome, or infectious, and that it was desirable to get out of such air. Accordingly the one great rule, admitted by all and acted upon by as many as could, was to escape from the tainted locality, or as Wolsey expressed it to the earl of Shrewsbury in 1516, to get them “into clean air.” There was no other sovereign prescription but that, and it remained the one great prescription until the last of plague in 1665-6.

Difficult points of casuistry arose out of that steady perception of an indisputable rule. Could flight from a plague-stricken place be reconciled with duty to one’s neighbour? How ought a Christian man to demean himself in the plague? The Christian conscience may or may not have been tender on that ground in the medieval period; there is little to show one way or the other, except the occasional hints that we get, as in the Danish bishop’s treatise, of an unwillingness to go near the victims of plague. But about the Reformation time those points of casuistry were debated; and one elaborate handling of them, in the form of a sermon by a German ecclesiastic, Osiander, was translated into English in 1537 by Miles Coverdale[601]. It followed, accordingly, that period of plague in London which has occupied the first part of this chapter. The translator remarks that they had been negligent of charity one to another, and he prints this discourse “to the intent that the ignorant may be taught, the weake strengthened, and everyone counselled after his callynge to serve his neighbor.”

Osiander’s perplexed Christian is in much the same case as Launcelot Gobbo in the play: “‘Budge,’ says the fiend; ‘Budge not,’ says my conscience. ‘Conscience,’ say I, ‘you counsel well;’ ‘Fiend,’ say I, ‘you counsel well.’” The situation was a naturally complex one, and this is how the good preacher comes out of it:

“It is not my meaning to forbid or inhibit any man to fly, or to use physick, or to avoid dangerous and sick places in these fearful airs—so far as a man doth not therein against the belief, nor God’s commandment, nor against his calling, nor against the love of his neighbour.” And yet, shortly after: “Out of such fond childish fear it cometh that not only some sick folk be suffered to die away without all keeping, help, and comfort; but the women also, great with child, be forsaken in their need, or else cometh there utterly no man unto them. Yet a man may hear also that the children forsake their fathers and mothers, and one household body keepeth himself away from another, and sheweth no love unto him. Which nevertheless he would be glad to see shewed unto himself if he lay in like necessity.” He then exhorts the Christian man to remain at the post of duty, by the examples of the clergy and of “the higher powers of the world, who also abide in jeopardy”—certainly not the English experience. “Let him not axe his own reason, how he shall do, but believe, and follow the word of God, which teacheth him not to fly evil air and infect places (which he may well do: nevertheless he remaineth yet uncertain whether it helpeth or no).” The Christian man’s perplexities can hardly have been resolved when all was said; and the following sentence puts the case for quitting the infected place as strongly as it can be put: “For if it were in meat or drink, it might be eschewed; if it were an evil taste, it might be expelled with a sweet savour; if it were an evil wind, the chamber might with diligence be made close therefore; if it were a cloud or mist, it might be seen and avoided; if it were a rain, a man might cover himself for it. But now it is a secret misfortune that creepeth in privily, so that it can neither be seen nor heard, neither smelled nor tasted, till it have done the harm.”

In practice the rule was ‘Save who can;’ so that whenever the infection promised to become “hot,” as the phrase was, there was an adjournment of Parliament and of the Law Courts, a flight of all who could afford it to the country, and an interruption of business, diplomatic and other, which sometimes lasted for months. It was only occasionally, however, that the infection became really hot; in ordinary years a certain risk was run. Thus, in 1426, the plague had been severe enough to cut off the Scots hostages; but it was not until after their death that the king’s council left the city. Again, in 1467, Parliament did not adjourn (on 1st July) until several members of the House of Commons had died of the plague.

Although flight was the sovereign preventive in a great plague-season, it was impracticable in ordinary years when the infection was at its steadier or more endemic level. The endemic level was tolerated up to a certain point. In a long despatch to his government, the Venetian ambassador in London wrote of the plague as follows in 1554[602]:

“They have some little plague in England well nigh every year, for which they are not accustomed to make sanitary provisions, as it does not usually make great progress; the cases for the most part occur amongst the lower classes, as if their dissolute mode of life impaired their constitutions.”

Whenever the plague showed signs of overstepping these limits, strenuous efforts were made to keep it in check. It may be questioned whether all that was done in that way made any difference; the great outbursts came at intervals, rose to their height, subsided in a few months, and left the city more or less free of plague until some concurrence of things, or the lapse of time, brought about another epidemic of the first degree. None the less, certain measures were taken to restrain the infection, and these were put in force with mechanical regularity whenever the Privy Council informed the Lord Mayor that the occasion required it. A brief account of them, of their beginnings and their development, will now be given.

The first that we hear of attempts at isolation and notification is in 1518. In April of that year, the Court being in Berkshire or Oxfordshire, Sir Thomas More charged the mayor of Oxford, and the commissary, in the king’s name “that the inhabitants of those houses that be, and shall be infected, shall keep in, put out wispes, and bear white rods, as your Grace devised for Londoners[603].” By his Grace is to be understood the king himself; and these measures devised by him—the keeping in, the putting out of wisps on the houses, and the carrying of white rods,—might have been tried as early as the epidemic of 1513, which was a severe one. When two of the Venetian ambassador’s servants died of the plague in 1513, their bed, sheets and other effects were thrown into the river. On the 21st of May, 1516, the ambassador removed to Putney owing to a case of plague in his house, and he was not allowed to see cardinal Wolsey until the 30th of June, i.e. until forty days had elapsed. This is perhaps the first mention of the quarantine which the Court rigorously put in practice against those who had business with it. On the 22nd July, 1518, the same ambassador wrote to Venice from Lambeth that two of his servants had lately died of the plague; and, on the 11th August, again from Lambeth, that the king and Wolsey would not see him because of the plague; “but on the expiration of forty days, which had nearly come to an end, he would not fail to do his duty as heretofore.”

On the 25th August, 1535, Chapuys, in a letter to Charles V., gives an amusing account of an attempt made by the French ambassador to see Henry VIII. and Cromwell on diplomatic business. The Court was residing in Gloucestershire owing to plague in and near London (it was at Bristol also), and the ambassador journeyed thither to carry his business through. However he went no nearer than six miles, because a “French merchant” who followed him died upon the road of the plague, as it was feared. The king asked him to put his charge in writing, but the ambassador replied that he had orders to tell it in person, and that he could wait. At length he lay in wait for Secretary Cromwell in the fields where he went to hunt with the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, and delivered his charge despite the manifest unwillingness of Cromwell, who came away from the improvised diplomatic interview in no good humour.

The first plague-order of which the full text is extant was issued in the 35th of Henry VIII. (1543). As it contains the germs of all subsequent preventive practice, I transcribe it in full[604].

“35 Hen. VIII. A precept issued to the aldermen:—That they should cause their beadles to set the sign of the cross on every house which should be afflicted with the plague, and there continue for forty days:

“That no person who was able to live by himself, and should be afflicted with the plague, should go abroad or into any company for one month after his sickness, and that all others who could not live without their daily labour should as much as in them lay refrain from going abroad, and should for forty days after [illegible] and continually carry a white rod in their hand, two foot long:

“That every person whose house had been infected should, after a visitation, carry all the straw and [illegible] in the night privately into the fields and burn; they should also carry clothes of the infected in the fields to be cured:

“That no housekeeper should put any person diseased out of his house into the street or other place unless they provided housing for them in some other house:

“That all persons having any dogs in their houses other than hounds, spaniels or mastiffs, necessary for the custody or safe keeping of their houses, should forthwith convey them out of the city, or cause them to be killed and carried out of the city and buried at the common laystall:

“That such as kept hounds, spaniels, or mastiffs should not suffer them to go abroad, but closely confine them:

“That the churchwardens of every parish should employ somebody to keep out all common beggars out of churches on holy days, and to cause them to remain without doors:

“That all the streets, lanes, etc. within the wards should be cleansed:

“That the aldermen should cause this precept to be read in the churches.”

Here we see a development of the measures which had been devised for London by Henry VIII. or his minister previous to 1518, and probably in the plague of 1513. The wisps put out on the infected houses are replaced by crosses, which, in the order of 1543, are simply called “the sign of the cross.” They are next heard of during the plague of 1547, in a Guildhall record of 15 November[605]:

“Item, for as moche as my Lord Mayer reported that my Lorde Chauncelar declared unto hym that my Lorde Protectour’s Grace’s pleasure ys, and other of the Lordes of the Counseyll, that certain open tokens and sygnes shulde be made and sett furth in all such places of the Cytie as haue of late been vysyted with the plage”—be it therefore ordained that a certain cross of St Anthony devised for that purpose be affixed to the uttermost post of the street door, there to remain forty days after the setting up thereof.

The cross of St Anthony was a headless cross, and the crutch is supposed to have been painted (in blue) on canvas or board and fixed to the post of the street door. The legend under or over the cross was, “Lord have mercy upon us.” Before the plague of 1603, the colour had been changed to red.

The white rods, which had been devised along with the wisps previous to 1518, are mentioned in the order of 1543 as two foot long; they were to be carried for forty days by those who must needs go abroad from plague-stricken houses. We hear of them again, both in France and in England in 1580 and 1581. On the 20th November, 1580, the Venetian ambassador to France writes from the neighbourhood of Paris: “This city, I hear, is in a very fair sanitary condition, notwithstanding that as I entered a city gate, which is close to where I reside, I met a man and a woman bearing the white plague wands in their hands and asking alms; but some believe that this was merely an artifice on their part to gain money[606].” In the regulations for plague added in 1581 by the mayor of London to the earlier code, the third is: “That no persons dwelling in a house infected be suffered to go abroad unless they carry with them a white wand of a yard long; any so offending to be committed to the Cage.” In the seventeenth-century plagues of London and provincial towns, the white wand was retained as the peculiar badge of the searchers of infected houses and of the bearers of the dead. The white rod or wand carried by inmates of infected houses, had become a red rod in the plague of 1603, just as the blue cross had been changed to red.

The other directions in the order of 1543 are heard of from time to time in the subsequent history of plague—such as the burning of straw, and the cleansing of the streets. The Guildhall record of 15 November, 1547, after directing the blue crosses to be affixed to houses, proceeds:

“And also to cause all the welles and pumpes within their seid wardes to be drawen iii times euerye weke, that is to say, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And to cast down into the canelles at euerye such drawyng xii bucketts full of water at the least, to clense the stretes wythall.”

Under Elizabeth, the orders as to scavenging become much more stringent, as we shall see. In the plague of 1563, on 29 September, the Common Council appointed “two poor men to burn and bury such straw, clothes, and bedding as they shall find in the fields near the city or within the city, whereon any person in the plague hath lyen or dyed[607].”

The curious order as to dogs was based upon the belief that they carried the infection in their hair, just as cats are now believed by some to carry infection in their fur. Brasbridge, in his Poor Man’s Jewel (1578), gives a case of a glover at Oxford, into whose house a disastrous plague-infection was supposed to have been brought by means of a dog’s skin bought in London[608]. The plague-regulations contained the clause against dogs to the last; in the great plagues of 1603, 1625, and 1665, thousands of them were killed, many of them having been doubtless left behind in the exodus of the well-to-do classes. In the corporation records of Winchester[609], there is a minute, undated, but probably belonging to the end of the 16th century, that dogs shall be kept indoors “if any house within the city shall happen to be infected with the plague.” A proclamation during the London plague of 1563 is directed against cats as well as dogs, “for the avoidance of the plague:” officers were appointed to kill and bury all such as they found at large[610].

The great London plague of 1563 had revived the old practices and given rise to some new ones. Curates and churchwardens were directed to warn the inmates of houses where plague had occurred not to come to church for a certain space thereafter[611]. The blue crosses were again in great request, being ordered by hundreds at a time in readiness to affix to infected houses[612]. Also it was ordered by the Mayor and Council that the “filthie dunghill lying in the highway near unto Fynnesburye Courte be removed and carried away; and not to suffer any such donge or fylthe from hensforthe there to be leyde[613].” On the 9th of July, 1563, plague having been already at work for several weeks, a commission was issued by the queen in Council, that every householder in London should, at seven in the evening, lay out wood and make bonfires in the streets and lanes, to the intent that they should thereby consume the corrupt airs, the fires to be made on three days of the week[614]. On 30th September, 1563, it was ordered that all such houses as were infected should have their doors and windows shut up, and the inmates not to stir out nor suffer any to come to them for forty days. At the same time, a collection was ordered to be made in the churches for the relief of the poor afflicted with the plague, and thus shut up. Another order was that new mould should be laid on the graves of such as die of the plague. Still another, the first of a long series, was to prohibit all interludes and plays during the infection[615]. On the 2nd December, when the deaths had fallen to 178 in the week, an order was issued by the Common Council that houses in which the plague had been were not to be let. On the 20th January, 1564, there was an order for a general airing and cleansing of houses, bedding and the like. By that time the deaths had fallen to 13 in the week.

The most rigorous measures in this plague were those which queen Elizabeth took for her own safety at Windsor in September. Stow says that “a gallows was set up in the market-place of Windsor to hang all such as should come there from London. No wares to be brought to, or through, or by Windsor; nor any one on the river by Windsor to carry wood or other stuff to or from London, upon pain of hanging without any judgment; and such people as received any wares out of London into Windsor were turned out of their houses, and their houses shut up[616].”

In 1568 a more complete set of instructions to the aldermen of the several wards was drawn up by the Lord Mayor, and a corresponding order for the city of Westminster by Sir William Cecil, Secretary of State, and by the Chancellor of the Duchy. In 1581 some additional orders were issued by the Lord Mayor. The whole of these are here given from a state paper in a later handwriting, probably of the time of James I. or Charles I[617].

A collection of such papers as are found in the office of his Majesties papers and records for business of state for the preventing and decreasing of the plague in and about London.

A. (City of London, 1568.)

1. First a ’tre from the Mayor of London to every alderman of each warde to charge their Deputys counstables and officers to make search of all houses infected within each parish.

2. To cause all infected houses to bee shutt up and noe person to come forth in twenty dayes after the infection.

3. That some honest discreete person be appoynted to attend each such infected house to provide them of all necessaries at the cost of the M^r of the house if he be able.

4. For the poorer houses infected that the Alderman or his deputy doe cause to make collection for the supply of all necessaries to be charged upon the wealthyer sorte of the same warde or parish.

5. That such as shall refuse to pay what they are assest shall be committed to warde untill they pay it.

6. That all bedding and cloathes and other thinges apt to take infection which were about infected persons bee burnt or such order taken that infection may not be increased by them.

7. Lastly that a bill with ‘Lord have mercy upon us’ in greate ’tres bee sett over the dore of euery infected house and that the counstables and Beadles have a care to see that the same be not taken downe.

These orders were sett downe by the Mayior of London in the yeere 1568, whereupon queene Elizabeth writeth a letter to S^r William Cycill then secretary and S^r Ambrous Cave, chauncellor of the Duchy to take the like order or any other that they should thinke fitt in the citie of Westminster.

B. (City of Westminster, 1568.)

Orders sett down by S^r William Cycill, Secretary, as High Steward of Westminster and S^r Ambrous Cave, chauncellor of the Dutchy to the Bayleiffes, Hedburroughs, Counstables and other officers of the sayde Citty.

1. That they should follow the good example of the orders devised and observed by the Mayior and Aldermen of London, and further that all that haue any houses shops or loggings that hath had any infection in them by the space of twenty dayes before the making of these orders shall shutt up all their doares and windoares towards the streetes and common passages for forty dayes next and not suffer after the tyme of the sicknes any person to goe forth nor any uninfected to come in upon payne that euery offender shall sitt seven dayes in the stocks and after that be committed to the common Goale there to remayne forty dayes from the first day of his being in the stocks.

2. That the officers aforesayde with the curate of euery parish and churchwardens doe make such collection of the rest of the parishioners as shall be necessary for the sustenance of such as bee poore infected and shutt up.

3. To discharge all inmates out of all houses that there be noe more persons in one house then be of one family except they be lodgers for a small time.

4. To cause the streetes lanes and passages and all the shewers sinkes (?) and gutters thereof dayly to be made sweete and cleane.

C. (London, 1581.)

There were added by the Mayior of London to the former articles these following in the year 1581.

1. That speciall noatis be taken of such houses infected as sell cloth, silke and other wares and make garments and aparrell for men and women.

2. That euery counstable within his precinct haue at all tymes in readines two honest and discreete women to attend any house infected.

3. That noe person dwelling in a house infected bee suffered to goe abroade unless they carry with them a white wand of a yarde long. Any soe offending to bee committed to the Cage there to remayne untill order shallbe taken by the Mayior or his bretheren.

4. That they suffer not any deade corps dying of the plague to be buryed in tyme of divine service or sermon.

5. To appoynt two honest and discreete matrons within euery parish who shall bee sworne truely to search the body of euery such person as shall happen to dye within the same parish, to the ende that they make true reporte to the clerke of the parish church of all such as shall dye of the plague, that the same clerke may make the like reporte and certificate to the wardens of the parish clerkes thereof according to the order in that behalfe heretofore provided.

If the viewers through favour or corruption shall giue wrong certificate, or shall refuse to serue being thereto appointed, then to punish them by imprisonment in such sorte as may serue for the terror of others.

6. That order be taken for killing of dogs that run from house to house dispersing the plague, and that noe swine be suffered or kept within the citty[618].

Several of these plague-regulations had been in force, as we have seen, from near the beginning of the century. Others, not hitherto mentioned, were also of earlier date. Thus the collections for the poor are mentioned in the diary of a London citizen in 1538 and 1539, but not specially in connexion with plague. They are heard of often after the plague of 1563, along with other provisions for the poor which mark the reign of Elizabeth. If we may trust Bullein’s Dialogue of 1564, a systematic provision became necessary because private charity was no longer to be depended on. In many country towns and parishes, as we shall see, the contributions or compensations to the inmates of shut-up houses in the Elizabethan plagues were paid out of the municipal funds, either those of the affected place or of some “unvisited” neighbouring town. The Act of Parliament which most directly provided for “the charitable relief of persons infected with the plague” was the 1st James I. (1603-4), cap. 31.

A most essential part of the means for controlling plague was the institution of searchers[619]. In the orders of 1543, the aldermen of the wards are directed to send their beadles to affix the sign of the cross to affected houses. But in due course these duties of inspection, notification, isolation and registration passed in London into the hands of the Company of Parish Clerks. The original business of the Parish Clerks was with church music. In the thirteenth century they received a charter of incorporation as the Clerks of St Nicholas, and became associated with that love of choral singing which has always distinguished the English people. Legacies and endowments fell to them for the performance of specific services, or for their encouragement in general. From time to time the Company would appear in a particular parish church to sing a mass. It was the singular history of a Company which gained its greatest name as the Registrars of Births and Deaths in London down to the Registration Act of 1837, to have been not only the first Choral Society but also the first company of stage players. In 1391, says Stow, a play was given by the parish clerks of London at the Skinners’ Well beside Smithfield, which continued three days together, the king, queen and nobles of the realm being present. Another play, in the year 1409, lasted eight days, “and was of matter from the creation of the world, whereat was present most of the nobility and gentry of England[620].”

In the time of Sir Thomas More, a parish clerk meant one who sang in the church choir. When More was lord chancellor, the duke of Norfolk came one day to dine with him at his house at Chelsea, and not finding him at home, went in search of him. He found him, where posterity will long delight to picture him,—in the church “singing in the choir with a surplice on his back.” As they walked home arm in arm the duke said to Sir Thomas More: “A parish clerk! a parish clerk! God body, my lord chancellor, you dishonour the king and his office;” whereon the chancellor answered as if he did not take the duke altogether seriously.

The whole strength of the Company of Parish Clerks in those times would attend the funeral of some rich person, as we may read in the sixteenth-century diary of Machyn the undertaker (sometimes the Company chosen to follow the body to the grave was that of the Tallow Chandlers, as in the case of John Stow’s mother). It was no great step from their old duties to their new. There were, as we have seen, bills of mortality compiled weekly for all the parishes in the city and liberties as early as 1532 and 1535. It is not said that the Parish Clerks were the collectors of the information, but they were as likely to have been so as any other persons whom the mayor would employ. Bills were also drawn up for a few weeks during the sweating sickness of 1551, and again for an unbroken series of some two hundred weeks from the beginning of the plague of 1563. The figures are preserved from a single weekly bill, 22-28 October, 1574, which must have been one of a series[621]. The next bills known are a series for five years, 1578-83, a plague-period of which more will have to be said in its proper place in the chronology.

The orders of 1581, already given, make mention of the two discreet matrons within every parish who shall be sworn truly to search the body of every such person as shall happen to die within the same parish, of their reporting to the clerk of the parish, and of the clerk making report and certificate to the wardens of the Parish Clerks, who would send the weekly certificate for all the parishes to the mayor, and he to the minister of State. That was said to be “according to the order in that behalf heretofore provided.” It is probable, therefore, that the searchers became an institution as early as the plague of 1563, or, at all events, at the beginning of the plague-period of 1578-83.

The clerk of the Company in 1665 describes how the discreet matrons were chosen as searchers or viewers of the dead in each parish, and how they were sworn to discharge their duties faithfully[622]. The swearing in took place before the Dean of the Arches, that is to say, in St Mary le Bow church (“St Mary of the Arch”) in Cheapside. The motive to bribe them for a wrong report on the cause of death was to avoid the shutting up and all other troubles of a household pronounced infected by the plague. In later times their diagnostic duties became, as we shall see, much more complex; but down to 1604, when they first brought to the Parish Clerks’ Hall “an account of the diseases and casualties” (which classification and nomenclature did not begin to be printed until 1629), they had merely to say whether a death had been from plague or from other cause.

Sanitation in Plantagenet and Tudor times.

Along with all those means, having the object of stopping the spread of infection, the Elizabethan policy did not neglect what we should now consider the more radical means of sanitation. It is usual to bring a sweeping charge of neglect of public hygiene against all old times; there was so much plague in those times, and so high an average death-rate, that it is commonly assumed that our ancestors must have been wanting in the rudimentary instincts of cleanliness. But, in the first place, one might expect to find that all old periods were not alike; and more generally it is worth inquiring how far nuisances injurious to the public health were tolerated. This inquiry will have to be as brief as possible; but it will take us back to the period of plague covered by a former chapter.

Nuisances certainly existed in medieval London, but it is equally certain that they were not tolerated without limit. I have collected in a note the instances reported in a visitation of 17 Edward III. (1343), and in a perambulation of the ground outside the walls in 26 Edward III. (1352). The former related only to the alleys leading down to the river, which were likely enough places for nuisance, then as now[623].

There are several orders of Edward III. relating to the removal of laystalls and to keeping the town ditch clean, which show, of course, that there was neglect, but at the same time the disposition to correct it. It is farther obvious that the connexion between nuisances and the public health was clearly apprehended. The sanitary doctrines of modern times were undreamt of; nor did the circumstances altogether call for them. The sewers of those days were banked-up water courses, or “shores” as the word was pronounced, which ran uncovered down the various declivities of the city, to the town ditch and to the Thames. They would have sufficed to carry off the refuse of a population of some forty or sixty thousand; they were, at all events, freely open to the greatest of all purifying agents, the oxygen of the air; and they poisoned neither the water of the town ditch (which abounded in excellent fish within John Stow’s memory) nor the waters of Thames. In course of time all the brooks of London were covered in, even the Fleet dyke itself, which used to float barges as far as Holborn bridge; but who shall say that they were more wholesome thereafter, although they were underground? Perhaps the poet of the Earthly Paradise has as true an intuition as any when, in reference to the city in Chaucer’s time, he bids us

The nuisance that gave most trouble in the medieval and Tudor periods was the blood and offal of the shambles. Several ordinances of Edward III. are directed against it, in one of which (1371) the connexion between putrefying blood soaked into the ground and infectious disease is clearly stated. It is also the principal subject of the first sanitary Act that appears in the Statutes of the Realm, made by the Parliament of Cambridge in the 17th of Richard II. (1388), of which I give the preamble and provisions:

“Item, For that so much Dung and Filth of the Garbage and Intrails as well of Beasts killed as of other Corruptions be cast and put in Ditches, Rivers and other Waters, and also within many other Places within about and nigh unto divers Cities, Boroughs and Towns of the Realm, and the Suburbs of them, that the Air there is greatly corrupt and infect, and many Maladies and other intolerable Diseases do daily happen,” both to the residents and to visitors:—therefore proclamation is to be made in the City of London, as in other cities, boroughs and towns “that all they which do cast and lay all such Annoyances, Dung, Garbages, Intrails and other Ordure in Ditches, Rivers, Waters and other places shall cause them to be removed, avoided and carried away betwixt this and the feast of St Michael next following,” under a penalty of twenty pounds, mayors and bailiffs to compel obedience. Such offences were not to be repeated, and if any did offend he was liable to be called by writ before the Chancellor “at his suit that will complain[624].”