Plague in the Provinces during the Civil Wars.
The type of sickness, after the first two years of the war, does not appear to have been typhus-fever, but always the old 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, 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 and 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 London), namely Banbury, and the valley of the Tyne. Banbury 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 the castle in October. The epidemic of plague may have begun as early as January, a soldier having “died in the street” on the 16th; 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 1647[1083].
The information as to Newcastle and Tyneside comes from the observant Scotsman, William Lithgow, who was with the Presbyterian army when Newcastle was stormed on October 20, 1644[1084]. 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, Sandgate, Sunderland, and many country villages, the plague being reported in Newcastle itself in 1645 as well as in Darlington[1085].
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[1086]. On the 16th 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 London[1087].” When it had been stormed by Fairfax and Cromwell 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[1088]. In Cromwell’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[1089].” The deaths from plague in the whole epidemic approached 3000, according to the MS. calendars[1090].
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 mortality 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 11 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 victims. 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 down dead in their flight over the town[1091]. 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 Naseby 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 Hill[1092]. 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 Æsculapius, 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 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 diaphoretics[1093].
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)[1094], 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, 1646. A letter written shortly after the surrender says[1095]:
“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 continuing 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[1096]. If the plague had been at all proportionate in Newark town itself, the deaths would have far exceeded 159; but, as the parish register does not record plague-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 stereotyped remark is added, that the town was deserted and that grass grew in the streets[1097]. 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 11, 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[1098]. 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. The army lay there until January 8, and came to Totness, for the siege of Dartmouth, on the 11th. 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 mentioned, one at Reading[1099], which affected “a great number of poor people,” and the other at Carlisle[1100]. 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, “hempseed, 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 recaptured 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[1101].