“Here swells a botch as high as hide can hold.”
Perhaps his particulars of the plague in the provinces, in 1603 and following years, are from his own knowledge. Both the Universities, he says, were forsaken.
“Each village free now stands upon her guard ...
The haycocks in the meads were oft opprest
With plaguy bodies, both alive and dead,
Which being used confounded man and beast.”
One incident he vouches for (in a marginal note) as having occurred at Leominster: A person with the plague was drowned to prevent infection, by the order of Sir Herbert Croft, one of the Council of the Marches of Wales.
The Plague of 1603 in the country near London.
Most of the country parishes nearest to London had plague-burials in 1603, doubtless from the escape of infected Londoners to them and from the spreading of the infection. In several of these parish registers[935] the plague-deaths in 1603 are more than in the time of the Great Plague of 1665: there is a note in the Croydon register that “many died in the highways near the city.” The following table shows the mortalities, great and small.
| Burials from all causes. | Burials from plague. | |||
| Barking | 381 | — | ||
| Battersea | 23 | — | ||
| Beckenham | 24 | — | ||
| Bromley | 26 | — | ||
| Cheam | 13 | 9 | ||
| Chigwell | 28 | — | ||
| Chiselhurst | 62 | — | ||
| Clapham | 20 | mostly plague | ||
| Croydon | — | 158 | ||
| Deptford | 235 | — | ||
| Ealing | 136 | — | ||
| Edmonton | 145 | 85 | ||
| Eltham | 52 | 17 | ||
| Enfield | 253 | 129 | ||
| Finchley | 51 | 38 | ||
| Hackney | 321 | 269 | ||
| Hampstead | 7 | — | ||
| Isleworth | 75 | — | ||
| Islington | 322 | — | ||
| Kensington | 32 | — | ||
| Lambeth | 566 | — | ||
| Lewisham | 117 | — | ||
| Romford | 122 | — | ||
| Stratford | 130 | 89 | ||
| Streatham | 36 | — | ||
| Tottenham | 79 | 44 | ||
| Twickenham | — | 67 | ||
| Wandsworth | — | 100 | ||
| Wimbledon | 21 | — |
A comparison of these figures with those of 1665 will show that the northern parishes, Islington and Hackney, as well as parishes farther out in the country, such as Enfield, had more plague-deaths in 1603 than in the time of the Great Plague. Also Barking, Stratford and Romford on the one side, and Lewisham, Eltham and Croydon on the other, had heavier mortalities in the earlier year. It would appear, indeed, that the infection in the country near London had been attracting notice before the plague in the capital caused any alarm. On April 18, 1603, the lord mayor wrote to the Privy Council concerning the steps that had been taken “to prevent the spread of the plague in the counties of Middlesex and Surrey.” On July 20, 1603, the king issued a warrant to the constables and others of the hundred of Twyford in Kent, to levy a special rate on certain parishes to relieve the sufferers by a grievous plague in the villages of West Malling, East Malling, Offham, and seven others[936]. Such rates were usually levied when an epidemic was nearly over; so that the outbreak in Kent must have been at least as early as that in London.
The towns and villages of Hertfordshire, which were favourite resorts of Londoners in plague-time, had their share of the visitation in 1603. At Great Amwell, there were 41 burials in the year, of which 19 were of the plague between August 19 and November 28, 6 of them in one day. Doubtless the registers of other parishes in the home counties would show a similar history if they were searched[937].