The plague in Loughborough was one of the severer kind. The first case of it appears to have been on the 24th August, 1609, in a woman who had given birth to a child on the 19th. The last plague entry in the parish register is on February 19, 1611; so that the epidemic went on for about eighteen months. During that time the whole mortality was 452, of which by far the most were plague-burials. Within a mile of Loughborough is a spot of ground, long after known as the Cabbin Lees, whereon many of the inhabitants “prudently built themselves huts and encamped to avoid the infection[974].”
In Leicester there was a slight amount of plague in 1607, and it reappeared in 1608 (payments on account of it in the former year, and an item of “30 hurdells used at the visited houses” in the accounts of 1608). A more severe outbreak occurred in 1610 and 1611, during and after the great plague at Loughborough. The streets lying towards the Castle were exempt; a pest-house was built in Belgrave Gate; the burials for 1610 were 82 in St Martin’s parish alone (more than half being from plague), and in 1611 the same parish had 128 burials[975].
In 1610 the infection was at work in one or more villages of the county of Durham; 78 deaths “of the pestilence” occur in the register of Lamesley parish, and the same year was probably one of the numerous plague seasons down to 1647 in Whickham parish, where it is said that the people, perhaps the plague-stricken, lived in huts upon Whickham Fell[976]. At Chester in 1610 “many died of the plague[977]”; and at Evesham there was a visitation which caused the wealthier inhabitants to leave the town and the authorities to effect a much-needed improvement in the cleanliness of the streets (swine found at large to be impounded, stones, timber, dunghills and carrion to be removed from the streets, and the paving in front of each house to be repaired and cleansed once a week)[978].
Between 1610 and 1625, which was an almost absolutely clear interval for London, there are few accounts of plague from the provinces. In 1611, moneys were levied for “the visited” at Sherborne[979], and there was a local rate for the same class at Canterbury in 1614-15[980]. Accounts of the same kind for Coventry probably belong to the year 1613[981]. Then, as we come near the next great plague-period, which began with the new reign in 1625, we find an entry of 26 plague-deaths at Banbury in 1623, “recorded in a part of the original register which has not been transcribed into the parchment copy[982]:” if the date be correct, Banbury was the first town to break the somewhat prolonged truce with the plague, which became broken all over the country in 1625. There appears also to have been distress in Grantham from sickness of some kind in 1623; in September of that year the corporation of Stamford made a collection “in this dangerous time of visitation,” and sent £10 of it to Grantham, the rest to go “to London or some other town as occasion offered.” But the years 1623 and 1624 were so much afflicted with fevers that the “dangerous time of visitation” may not have meant plague.
Ireland.
The accounts for Ireland are so casual that one suspects there may have been more plague in that country than the records show. Thus, on January 25, 1604, there is a municipal order at Kilkenny, for men to stand at every gate to keep out all strangers or suspected persons that might come from any infected place within the kingdom; and on October 24 there is another order, from which it appears that the plague was then in the town, that it was needful to have the sick persons removed to remote places, that no dung should be in the open streets before the doors, and that no hogs should go or lie in the streets[983]. Towards the end of 1607 and beginning of 1608 there was a “most dreadful pestilence” in the city of Cork, which “by degrees ceased of itself[984].”
Plague in Scotland, 1603-24.
The history of the plague in Scotland, which we left in a former chapter at the year 1603, begins again in that year and goes on at one place or another continuously until 1609. From June, 1603, until February, 1604, it continued in the south of Scotland. At Edinburgh, in April, 1604, the house of Mr John Hall was “clengit,” because a servant woman’s death was suspected of the plague: which infection certainly spread in May and became so severe in July that people fled the city[985]. A letter of July 18 from Codrus Cottage, relating to gold-mining, and making mention of Closeburn, says that the plague is amongst the men[986].
In 1605, towards the end of July, the infection reappeared at Edinburgh, Leith, and St Andrews[987]. On October 7, the chancellor of Scotland, Lord Dunfermline, wrote to the earl of Salisbury that the plague was rife in the small towns about Edinburgh, probably its old favourite seats along the Firth and on the Fife coast[988]. The chancellor himself, as we know from another source, had had a sad experience of it in his own house; his son and niece had died of the plague, and his daughter “had the boils” but recovered[989]. The next year, 1606, was the worst of this plague-period in Scotland: “It raged so extremely in all the corners of the kingdoms that neither burgh nor land in any part was free. The burghs of Ayr and Stirling were almost desolate, and all the judicatures of the land were deserted[990].” It is to this epidemic that a curious transaction, discovered by Chambers, seems to belong. Two houses, on the line of the great road from the south towards Aberdeen, situated on opposite sides of the Dee, the one being the house of a proprietor and the other of a minister, were suspected of having received the infection. The gentlemen of the county met and resolved to send to Dundee for two professional “clengers” or disinfectors, giving a bond to the borough of Dundee for 500 merks for the services of its “clengers[991].”
In April of the year following, 1607, we hear of the plague in Dundee itself, despite the experts, as well as in Perth and other places[992]. In July, 1608, many houses in Dundee were infected, and so many magistrates dead that new appointments were made by the Privy Council[993]. It broke out again at Perth on August 29, and continued till May, 1609, “wherein deit young and auld 500 persons[994].”