Plague in the Provinces in 1665-6.
The earliest accounts of plague in the provinces come from Yarmouth in November, 1664. On the 18th it is said to have been brought in a vessel from Rotterdam; three died in one house, of whom one had the plague. On November 30, the plague was spreading, if the searchers (drunken women, however) were to be credited. On February 8, 1665, there was another death from plague, and as the summer wore on the mortality increased rapidly. On June 16, thirty had died in the week, the inhabitants had fled, the town was like a country village, and the poor left behind were lamenting at once the lack of work and of charity. On August 21, the king wrote from Salisbury to the bailiffs of Yarmouth concerning the plague. In the weeks ending August 30 and September 6, there were 117 deaths (96 from plague) and 110 deaths (100 from plague), and as late as November 6, there had been 22 plague-deaths in the week. In March, 1666, the epidemic came to an end[1219]. Smaller outbreaks occurred in the autumn of 1665 and spring of 1666 at Lynn, Norwich, Ipswich and Harwich. The great epidemic at Colchester began in summer, 1665, but fell mostly in 1666, at a time when there was little plague elsewhere, so that it practically closes the history of plague in England, and will come naturally at the end of the chapter.
Most of the provincial outbreaks in 1665 were of small extent, and were probably due to introduction of the virus from London. The valley of the Tyne, which had often experienced severe plagues, had a slight epidemic, said to have originated from the colliers returned from the Thames. On July 18, there were seven houses shut up at Sunderland, one at Wearmouth and one at Durham[1220]. A paragraph in the ‘Newes,’ from Durham, October 13, says that the sickness in the north is now much assuaged. Newcastle remained almost free (although Defoe says different), two houses being shut up on January 30, 1666, and two at Gateshead. The whole north-west and west of England, which had suffered most during the last plague-period, in the Civil Wars, appears to have escaped altogether.
In the south, there was a good deal of the infection at Southampton in the summer and autumn of 1665; on July 6, “the poor will not suffer the rich to quit the town and leave them to starve[1221].” It is heard of, also, at Poole and Sherborne in Dorset (in November), at Salisbury, where the Court lay for some weeks, and at Battle[1222] in Sussex; but in none of these places to any great extent. Various places in Kent had cases in 1665—Rochester, Chatham, Sandwich, Eastry, Westwell, Deal, Dover and Canterbury[1223]; but it was only the naval stations that had more than a few cases in 1665; while all of them had it far worse in 1666. Other centres in 1665 were in Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire.
At Peterborough, Oundle and Newport Pagnell, there was a visitation of the severer kind, with flight of the richer inhabitants, and the usual arrest of work and trade. The parish register of Yardley, Hastings, records that 60 persons died of plague in that town from June 5, 1665, to January 3, 1666. There was also a sharp epidemic in Cambridge and in the country around, of which we get a glimpse in a letter of October 19, 1665, written from Clare Hall to one of the fellows of Clare[1224]:
“Alderman Mynell the brewer and one of his children died of the plague this last Monday; he hath had four children in all dead of it. Clayton, the barber in Petty Cury, and one of his children, died last Saturday of the sickness. It is newly broken out sadly by Christ’s (though they have all fled from the Colledge upon Mr Bunchly, their manciple, dying of the plague)—where Nicholson the smith, his wife and two children are dead within three days, his other children being deadly sick in the house. But it most rageth in St Clement’s parish, where seldom a day passeth without one dead of the sickness.... Poor Mr Brown, the old man that is one of the University musicians, and Mr Saunders that sings the deep bass, are shut up in Mr Saunders’ house in Green Street, whose child died last week suspected. Two houses at Barton are infected by two of Alderman Mynell’s children, that are dead there. Ditton is broke out just by the butcher, from whom we had our meat, which made us hastily remove to Grantchester. H. Glenton, the carrier, fled from this town to Shelford, where he died within two or three days, suspected.... Royston is sadly in two or three places, the last of which is just in the middle of the town. The infection, they say, was brought thither by a Cambridge man, whom they caught, and shut him up; but he hath since made his escape.”