The plague lingered in London throughout the year 1666, causing 1998 deaths in all. In January 1666 it was still at as high a figure as 158 deaths in a week, and in the week ending September 18 it rose again to the exceptional height of 104 deaths. In the first three weeks of December, the deaths were 2, 4, and 3; and from that low level the plague never rose again in London. A few annual deaths continued to appear in the bills down to 1679, when they finally disappeared.
Plague near London in 1665.
Meanwhile various parts of England were affected with plague during and after the great epidemic, and in one or two instances a little before it. In the immediate neighbourhood of the capital all the towns and villages usually implicated by the exodus from the City had cases of plague, as the following table shows. It has been compiled from the parish registers, as extracted in Lysons’ Environs of London, Defoe’s widely discrepant figures being given for comparison in the third column.
| All causes | Plague | Defoe’s list. | ||||
| Barking | 230 | 200 | ||||
| Barnes | 27 | |||||
| Barnet and Hadley | 43 | |||||
| Battersea | 113 | |||||
| Beckenham | 18 | |||||
| Brentford | 103 | 432 | ||||
| Brentwood | 70 | |||||
| Bromley | 27 | 7 | ||||
| Camberwell | 133 | |||||
| Charlton | 7 | 3 | ||||
| Chertsey | 18 | |||||
| Chiselhurst | 21 | |||||
| Clapham | 28 | |||||
| Croydon | 141 | 61 | ||||
| Deptford | 548 | 374 | 623 | |||
| Ealing | 286 | 244 | ||||
| Edmonton | 19 | |||||
| Eltham | 44 | 32 | 85 | |||
| Enfield | 176 | 32 | ||||
| Epping | 26 | |||||
| Finchley | 38 | |||||
| Greenwich | 416 | 231 | ||||
| Hampstead | 214 | |||||
| Heston | 48 | 13 | ||||
| Hodsdon | 30 | |||||
| Hertford | 90 | |||||
| Hornsey | 53 | 43 | 85 | |||
| Islewort | 195 | 149 | ||||
| Kensington | 62 | 25 | ||||
| Kingston | 122 | |||||
| Lewisham | 56 | |||||
| Mortlake | 197 | 170 | ||||
| Newington, Stoke | 17 | |||||
| Norwood | 12 | 2 | ||||
| Putney | 74 | |||||
| Romford | 90 | 109 | ||||
| St Albans | 121 | |||||
| Stratford-Bow | 139 | |||||
| Staines | 82 | |||||
| Tottenham | no entries | 42 | ||||
| Twickenham | 21 | |||||
| Uxbridge | 117 | |||||
| Waltham Abbey | 23 | |||||
| Walthamstow | 68 | |||||
| Wandsworth | 245 | |||||
| Ware | 160 | |||||
| Watford | 45 | |||||
| Windsor | 103 | |||||
| Woodford | 33 |
The most striking fact that comes out is that most of the parishes around London had actually fewer deaths from plague in 1665 than in 1603. The exceptions to this rule in 1665 are the villages on or near the Thames above London-Battersea, Wandsworth, Putney, Mortlake, Brentford, Isleworth, and Ealing, which had all a very high mortality, Barnes being almost exempt. On the lower reaches of the Thames, Barking on the Essex shore, and Deptford, Greenwich and Lewisham on the other side, had the infection in them very severely; but these three places in Kent had a still more severe visitation in 1666, along with other towns in that county.
On September 9, Evelyn wrote from his Deptford house, Sayes Court, that “near thirty houses are visited in this miserable village.” The infection got also among the ships of the navy; on August 29, on board the ‘Loyal Subject’ at Deal, Captain Fortescue and six men died suddenly, it was feared of the plague.
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.