Nothing is known of sickness in the army of Essex, which lay at Tiverton from 5th to 18th July, 1644. It suffered much in the fighting in Cornwall, and the Parliament on 7 September sent to Portsmouth arms for 6000 foot and 6000 suits of clothes and shirts for the infantry who had surrendered and been convoyed back along the coast. The king’s troops which occupied Tiverton on 21 September on their way back, had doubtless suffered also, from the campaigning in wet fields and miry ways, and are known to have been discontented for want of pay. Probably the epidemic at Tiverton was due to aggravation of the usual circumstances of war. It must be classed as a form of typhus; while its distinctive character of sweating might find an explanation, on the analogy of the sweat of 1485 in London after the arrival of Henry VII. from Bosworth Field, if we had sufficient reason to suppose that the soldiers who successively occupied Tiverton were not themselves suffering from fever. Contact alone, especially the contact en masse of men reduced by hardships and disorderly in their habits, will sometimes serve to breed contagion among a population unlike them in these respects. The converse of that principle, namely that contagion need not follow from the introduction of developed sickness en masse, finds an illustration in the case of Tiverton itself within little more than a year after the epidemic of 1644. In November, 1645, Fairfax lay at Ottery St Mary with his army, pending the investment of Exeter. On account of much sickness and heavy mortality among his infantry (not medically described) he removed them on December 2, to Crediton and ultimately to Tiverton, which was supposed to be a healthier situation and became his head-quarters until January 8, 1646[1082]. But no outbreak in the town is mentioned, and almost certainly none occurred; the health of the place continued to be good every year of the time that it was under the rule of the Parliament, as the parish register proves. On the other hand Totness, which was occupied by the same convalescent force after it left Tiverton, had a severe epidemic of plague in the end of the year, 1646.
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.