In the Eastern Counties, plague revived to a considerable extent in 1666 at Norwich, Ipswich, Harwich and Woodbridge, the Yarmouth outbreak, which had been the great one in that quarter the year before, having come to an end in the spring. But it was at Colchester that the epidemic engrossed attention in 1666. Colchester had, indeed, two successive seasons of plague, or rather a continuous prevalence of it from the summer of 1665 to December, 1666. The plague at Colchester in 1665-66 was the greatest of all provincial plagues since the Black Death, unless, indeed, we credit the numbers (11,000 or 12,000) given for a plague at York in 1390. It reproduced the mortality of the Great Plague of London on a scale more than proportionate to its size, and it doubtless called forth the same class of incidents—flight of the wealthier classes, and almost total extermination of the poor. No documents remain, however, of this plague except the oaths administered to searchers and bearers of the dead (printed below) and the weekly totals of deaths from plague and from other causes[1230]. The weekly bills are, indeed, as eloquent a testimony as any detailed description could have been; and as they are the most complete of the kind for a provincial town, I have transcribed them from the manuscript record in full. The small number of deaths from ordinary causes points to the emptiness of the better quarters of the town; the total deaths in seventeen months, 5345, including 4817 plague-deaths and 528 from other causes, must have meant an enormous clearance of the poorer classes. Colchester was then a place of considerable wealth, with a thriving Dutch trade and a considerable Dutch colony. Perhaps the connexion with Holland, where plague had been rife in the years just before, may explain the origin of the outbreak; but local conditions of soil, overcrowding, and the like must be looked to for the cause of its extraordinary persistence and fatality.

Weekly mortalities in Colchester, August 14, 1665, to December 14, 1666, from plague and other diseases.

1665

Week ending Plague Other
Aug.21 26 2
28 62 2
Sept.8 122 4
15 153 22
22 159 25
29 100 25
Oct.6 161 27
13 122 23
20 106 15
27 60 41
Nov.3 104 13
10 88 22
17 88 18
24 62 8
Dec.1 38 10
8 39 6
15 67 4
22 53 7
29 21 3
1666
Jan.5 23 6
12 46 8
19 36 13
26 26 10
Feb.2 34 9
9 25 3
16 23 7
23 33 6
Mar.2 53 2
9 26 11
16 37 5
23 48 4
30 66 1
Apr.6 73 2
13 90 2
20 68 4
27 90 4
May4 169 8
11 167 7
18 150 11
25 98 12
June1 89 10
8 110 10
15 139 3
22 195 6
29 176 4
July6 167 8
13 160 9
20 175 3
27 109 4
Aug.3 109 2
10 85 4
17 70 1
24 51 1
31 53 4
Sept.7 31 6
14 22 2
21 16 2
28 10 2
Oct.5 7 2
12 7 0
19 7 2
26 4 2
Nov.2 4 2
9 4 2
16 2 6
23 1 4
30 1 8
Dec.7 1 7
14 0 0
4817 528

To relieve the poverty caused by this great disaster a tax was levied on various other parts of the county of Essex, and contributions were made by private individuals, the London churches collecting £1311. 10s. in the breathing-time between the plague and the fire. Colchester had so far recovered in the end of 1666 as to be able to contribute in turn about a hundred pounds for the relief of London after the fire[1231].

The Last of Plague in England.

The history of plague in England must be made to end with a solitary epidemic at Nottingham in 1667, but not without some misgivings as to the correctness of the date. Dr Deering, the historian of the town in 1751, paid little heed to epidemics, although medicine was his business; but he mentions one of smallpox in 1736, which had probably come within his own experience, and proceeds:

“I question much whether there has been the like since the plague which visited the town in 1667, and made a cruel desolation in the higher part of Nottingham, for very few died in the lower; especially in a street called Narrow Marsh, it was observed that the infection had no power, and that during the whole time the plague raged, not one who lived in that street died of it, which induced many of the richer sort of people to crowd thither and hire lodgings at any price; the preservation of the people was attributed to the effluvia of the tanners’ ouze (for there were then 47 tanners’ yards in that place), besides which they caused a smoak to be made by burning moist tanners’ knobs[1232].”

If there had been any reference to the parish registers or to the corporation minutes, we should have had no reason to doubt that this epidemic had been correctly assigned to 1667. The last Winchester epidemic had been given under the year 1668, first by one local historian, and then by another who copied him; but when a third went to the manuscript records, he found that the year was 1666, as indeed an incidental reference to the re-opening of Winchester School on 1st December, 1666, “the sickness being in all appearance extinguished,” might have warranted one in concluding. It is a singular experience to have brought the history of plague down through several centuries, not without particulars of times and numbers, and to be obliged to end it in the latter half of the 17th century with an unauthenticated date. The Nottingham epidemic may have been an exception to the generality that all England was finally delivered from the plague in 1666; it is due, at least, to the local historian, in the absence of evidence against, to record his date of 1667. The difficulty of confirming so simple a fact at so late a period may dispose the readers of this work to be tolerant of any lack of certainty and precision that they may discover in its history of more remote times.