Plague in the Provinces in 1625 and following years.
It is stated by Salvetti and other gossips of the time that the infection of plague in 1625 was carried all over the country from London by the fleeing citizens, and that few places remained free from it, just as it was said afterwards for the plague of 1665. So far as records show, one would not be warranted in inferring a great provincial prevalence of plague either in 1625 or in 1665. There was plague at Plymouth, and in the south-western counties, under very special circumstances, as we shall see. There was plague also at Norwich, said to have been brought from Yarmouth, and at Colchester the year after. Newcastle, also, which hardly ever escaped the infection when it was afoot, had one of its minor visitations. But, on the whole, it is impossible to show by local evidences that the plague of 1625 was diffused universally over England, either in that or in the following year, or that it grew to a great epidemic in but a few provincial centres[1029]. Probably all the plague-deaths in the provinces together, in 1625 and 1626, would not have made a fifth part of the mortality in London.
The interest centres in the plague at Plymouth, with which the outbreaks at Ashburton, Exeter, Dartmouth, Bridport, and perhaps Portsmouth, Rye and other places, may be connected, if not causally, yet in neighbourhood. The first that we hear of sickness at Plymouth is under date July 26, 1625; some of the ships arrived there had been visited with sickness, and the sick had been landed and lodged under sails[1030]. It is not called “the sickness,” and it is not clear that it was bubo-plague. There may, indeed, have been real plague on board ships of war: Stow says that it was in the fleet in 1603, and there is evidence of its existence now and again in the Venetian galleys of an earlier day. But we are now come to the period of the beginnings of ship-fever, as we shall see in the next chapter; and, for the present, we must not assume that the sickness on board ship in 1625 was all plague, or chiefly plague.
The ships at Plymouth in July were doubtless a part of the squadron of ninety sail, which sailed thence in autumn, carrying ten thousand men to make war on Spain, in accordance with the anti-Catholic policy which had been forced upon James I. in the last years of his reign, and was now being carried out by Charles I. and Buckingham. This was not the first fruit of that policy. The immediate result of it was Mansfeld’s English troops for the recovery of the Palatinate to Protestant rule. That expedition failing to effect a landing was speedily broken with disease, and before it had been many days on shore in Holland was burying 40 or 50 men a day. The fleet eight months later had a similar experience. The ships were victualled with rotten food, and the men were supplied with worthless clothing. As the facts were never investigated, the king having interfered to shield the duke of Buckingham from the attack on him by Sir John Eliot, peculation and jobbery were never proved, although it was known to everyone that honesty was the last quality to be looked for in those about the king and the favourite. The fleet reached the Bay of Cadiz and made a futile demonstration there. It is in the month of November that we begin to hear of sickness. On the 9th Viscount Wimbledon writes from on board the ‘Anne Royal’ to Secretary Conway that there are not men enough to keep the watches owing to sickness. On December 22, the Commissioners at Plymouth write to the Council that about thirty sail had arrived there with 4,000 soldiers “in such miserable condition as for the most part to be incapable of such comforts as the country would afford them.” Captain Bolles, who died since their coming in, declared the occasion of his sickness to be scarcity and corruption of the provisions. Great numbers of the soldiers are continually thrown overboard. Yesterday seven fell down in the streets. The rest are weak, and want clothes, for the supply of which some thousands of pounds were needed. The despatch of December 29, says, “They stink as they go, and the poor rags they have are rotten and ready to fall off if they be touched”[1031].
So far there is no word of plague; on the other hand there is a strong probability that the sickness was ship-fever, or typhus. It is not until the spring of 1626 that the plague is mentioned at Plymouth. On March 18, sickness increases at Plymouth and the plague is wondrous rife. On March 28, the plague is dispersed about the town. On April 5, the sickness increases very much. On the 11th, 40 died last week and twenty houses are shut up; some of the sick died and were buried in less than twenty-four hours. On 8th June, the plague is very bad in Plymouth, and the town is destitute of its best inhabitants. The town-council records bear witness to a rate having been levied for the relief of the plague-stricken, and to attempts as late as 1628 to collect their share of it from those who had fled the town in 1626. The deaths at Plymouth are stated in a manuscript book of the municipal annals to have been 2,000[1032].
Meanwhile plague appeared in other parts of Devonshire. In Exeter it had been prevalent sooner than in Plymouth itself; a letter of November 17, 1625, speaks of the afflicted state of the city, and of the weekly contributions for the plague-stricken. Some particulars of the state of Exeter at this time are given in a memorial to the Privy Council by the mayor and bailiffs of the city, dated October 15, 1627. During the great sickness which fell on their city, and was not cleared in sixteen months, all trading was stopped and the inhabitants generally left the town. To appease a mutiny of the more disordered people, who threatened to burn the city, a rate was assessed generally on the city, but most of the inhabitants being absent, the corporation took up the amount at interest on their own credit. The persons whose names are inclosed, being inhabitants who have returned to the city, now refuse to pay the rate assessed in their absence; and the Council is petitioned to summon them before it[1033].
On May 17, 1626, the plague is reported to be rife “in Devonshire,” and specifically, on July 28, at Okehampton and Ashburton. The epidemic at Ashburton was on the same severe scale as at Plymouth. It began in the end of 1625, but was most fatal in April and May, 1626. The deaths in a twelvemonth were 365, “probably a fourth of the inhabitants[1034].” (In 1627 there were only 27 deaths, doubtless from the empty state of the town.) The same summer it is heard of in Dorsetshire. On September 2, the deputy lieutenants and justices of the county petition the Privy Council that the 1000 soldiers who were to be removed from Devon and Cornwall, should not be quartered in Dorset, but in Somerset, as the former was visited with the plague[1035]. Perhaps Bridport was the centre of plague referred to. Sometime later in the year, perhaps in November, the bailiffs and burgesses of that town explain to the Council that, although they had subscribed to the loan, yet they were unable to pay the amount subscribed as the town was destitute by reason of a twenty weeks’ visitation of plague[1036].
The last of this series of outbreaks in the south-west appears to have been at Dartmouth in the summer of 1627. On June 29, it was reported that the plague was so hot there that the inhabitants had left. The mayor wrote on July 19 to the Privy Council that it was true the inhabitants were still away, but the plague had ceased; only 15 houses had been infected, the inhabitants of which had all been removed to the pest-houses remote from the town[1037].
Farther east on the Channel coast, Portsmouth had a visitation of plague previous to September 28, 1625, perhaps in connexion with the Cadiz fleet; the mayor and bailiffs, being at the end of their year’s office, had refused to take steps to sever the infected[1038]. At Southampton, only one house was infected on August 27. The infection is reported also from Rye in 1625, and from Canterbury, where the famous composer, Orlando Gibbons, died in the beginning of June, 1625, “not without suspicion of the sickness,” says Chamberlain, but, according to Anthony Wood, of the smallpox. The king and queen lodged at Canterbury on June 14; but on July 23 the place had to be avoided “for the great infection.”
From Oxford, where the Parliament met on August 1, the vice-chancellor wrote on July 27, that Sir John Hussey came thither infected from London, and died, that Dr Chaloner, being in the same house, was since dead, that the infection was in other parts of Oxford, and that All Souls College was shut up. There was a slight revival of it in January, 1626, which caused the exercises and the sermons at St Mary’s to be put off[1039]. Anthony Wood gives much the same account as for 1603, and blames the great increase of “cottages” erected by townsmen, to which scholars were enticed.
Cambridge kept free in 1625; but on October 3, three deaths are reported at Trumpington—one Peck, his wife, and maid. On the same date three houses were shut up at Royston, and the infected “translated into the fields[1040].”
The outbreak at Norwich was one of the severer degree[1041]. It was said to have been brought in the end of June, 1625, from Yarmouth, where nothing is recorded of it. A king’s order to the mayor imposed extensive cleansings, &c., but the plague increased from 26 deaths in a week in July, to 40 in September, reaching a maximum of 73 from plague in a week, besides 18 from other causes. On August 27, Mead, the Cambridge don, writes that he had met the Norwich carrier, who told him that the number of burials there the last week was 77, whereof of the plague 67, and but 14 the week before. The infection lingered on until December of the year after (1626), the total deaths from plague having been 1431. The plague at Norwich was made the excuse, by the mayor and aldermen writing to the Privy Council on January 30, 1627, for not contributing towards shipping for the king’s service; the city was distressed from inundations and the plague, “many hundreds of houses” standing empty. There appears to have been some plague at Lynn in the end of 1625, a Privy Council order of January, 1626, authorising the fair to be held there, the disease having ceased.
In April, 1627, the bailiffs and aldermen of Colchester offer the same excuse as Norwich; they are unable to set forth any ships as directed on account of the heavy visitation of their town by the plague, the decay of their trade in the new draperies and baize, and the loss of their ships at sea.
Leicestershire, also, would appear to have had another visitation in 1626. On July 28, the muster in that county was respited on account of the shire town and nine or ten other towns being visited with the plague. Of that there is no trace in the excellent county history by Nichols. Leicester, like Bristol and other places, is known to have imposed quarantine against Londoners in the summer of 1625. It is probable that plague was also in Warwickshire in 1626[1042].
Among other outbreaks in 1625 was one at Newcastle, but it does not compare in extent with some earlier and later plagues there. On September 10, Lord Clifford writes from Appleby Castle to Secretary Conway that Newcastle is so infected with plague, so ill fortified, and ill neighboured, that 500 men would disarm it. In his own county of Cumberland there was plague in Lord William Howard’s house. Sir Francis Howard’s lady took the infection from a new gown she had from London, so as she died the same day she took it; they are all dispersed most miserably, with the greatest terror in the world. Cheshire also had the infection in 1625[1043].
After a clear interval of two or three years, the history of plague begins again in London, and in the provinces. The London plague of 1630 was a small affair (1317 deaths), the city being otherwise so healthy that the christenings exceeded the total burials (9315 to 9237). In 1630, at the same time as the small London outbreak, Cambridge had what appears to have been its most considerable plague, but a very small one at the worst. It began about February 28, caused the colleges to break up and the midsummer assizes to be transferred to Royston, and from first to last produced 214 deaths, known or suspected from plague[1044].
Along with it there were a good many cases at Wymondham (Windham), and some straggling cases at Norwich and Colchester, continuing into 1631, some 20 or 30 dying at Norwich of plague in the latter year[1045]. The other centre in 1630 was in the north-west. Shrewsbury, an old-world town which seldom escaped, had a localised epidemic in St Chad’s parish. It began on May 24 in Frankwell, but was confined to that street by cutting off the residents therein from the rest of the town, and by removing the infected to pest-houses in Kingsland[1046]. It continued at Shrewsbury into 1631, and is heard of also at Preston, Wrexham, and Manchester, collections having been made in neighbouring places for the infected[1047]. But the one great outbreak of those years fell upon the town of Louth, in Lincolnshire, of which the sole particulars are that the plague from April to the end of November, 1631, swept away 754 persons of whom nearly 500 in July and August[1048].
After four years clear in London and in all parts of England (years occupied with the growing quarrel between the king and the Parliament), plague broke out again not far from Louth, where we saw it last, namely at Hull. A century and a half had passed since Hull’s last great devastation by plague year after year from 1472 to 1478. It was then a medieval town, with a chain drawn across the mouth of its creek of the Humber, surrounded by great abbeys, and owing its importance to its trade in stock fish from Iceland and the North Sea. In the Tudor times it had experienced one small epidemic about the Blackfriars Gate in 1576, causing about a hundred deaths. The date of the outbreak in 1635 is not given exactly; but, as in the 15th century, it was the peculiarity of Hull among provincial towns that it kept the infection for several years,—down to June, 1638. Business was paralysed, schools shut up, and the town deserted by the wealthier classes. The deaths from plague from first to last are counted at 2730, besides those which occurred in flight to other places. Upwards of 2,500 persons, once in easy circumstances, are said to have been reduced to seek relief, to which the county of York contributed[1049]. In 1643 Hull stood a siege, but there is no farther mention of plague; nor did the town suffer in 1665.
The year 1635, which saw the beginning of the Hull plague, at a time when the infection was absolutely quiet in the capital, saw also the beginning of an outbreak at Sandwich, with accompanying cases at Canterbury, and a beginning at Yarmouth, Lynn and Norwich[1050], in all which places the infections lingered at a low endemic level for a year or more. The dates are important only as showing that these provincial infections were looking up some months before the sharp outburst in London in the late autumn of 1636 made any sign. In Sandwich, on the 12th of March, 1637, there were 78 houses “visited,” and 188 persons infected; on June 30, 24 houses shut up, with 103 persons, some of them lodged in tents; from July 6 to October 5, there were buried of the plague about ten every week in St Clement’s parish. Considerable expenses were incurred (more than £40 a week), to which the county of Kent and the other Cinque Ports contributed[1051].
Besides these lingering endemics in Kent and Norfolk, the great plague epidemics of 1636 were in Newcastle and London. The Newcastle epidemic was both earlier and relatively far more severe than that of the capital. For a town of some 20,000 inhabitants, the following weekly figures[1052] indicate a plague of the first degree, comparable to the London death-rates of 1625 and 1665:
Died of plague at Newcastle, within the liberties, from May 7 to December 31, 1636:
| Week ending | Plague deaths | ||
| May | 14 | 59 | |
| 21 | 55 | ||
| 28 | 99 | ||
| June | 4 | 122 | |
| 11 | 99 | ||
| 18 | 162 | ||
| 25 | 133 | ||
| July | 2 | 172 | |
| 9 | 184 | ||
| 16 | 212 | ||
| 23 | 270 | ||
| 30 | 366 | ||
| Aug. | 7 | 337 | |
| 14 | 422 | ||
| 21 | 346 | ||
| 28 | 246 | ||
| Sept. | 4 | 520 | |
| 11 | 325 | ||
| To end of Dec. | 908 | ||
| Total to 31st Dec. | 5027 | ||
Besides in Garthside, from May 30 to October 17, 515, making a total of 5542.
This tremendous visitation of Tyneside is said to have begun in October, 1635, at North Shields, where the infection rested during the winter cold, to begin again at Newcastle in spring. During the height of the epidemic in summer and autumn all trade was suspended, no one being about in the streets or in the neighbouring highways. The means tried to check the infection were fumigations with pitch, rosin, and frankincense. Newcastle had one other visit from the plague, as we shall see, in 1644 and 1645, during and after the siege by the Scots Presbyterian army; but in 1665 it is said to have escaped, although Defoe says that the infection was introduced by colliers returning from the Thames.