(51 weeks)
1583
| Week ending | Dead | Of plague | Of other diseases | Baptised | |||||
| Jan. | 3 | 137 | 50 | 87 | 69 | ||||
| 10 | 140 | 57 | 83 | 53 | |||||
| 17 | 160 | 72 | 88 | 67 | |||||
| 24 | 162 | 59 | 103 | 59 | |||||
| 31 | 144 | 40 | 104 | 73 | |||||
These tables were compiled from weekly bills furnished to the Court, and doubtless drawn up like the bills of 1532 and 1535 to show the deaths from plague and from other causes in each of the several parishes in the City, Liberties and suburbs. It is clear that the results were known from week to week, for a letter of January 29, 1578, says that the plague is increased from 7 to 37 (? 33) deaths in three weeks. But that was not the beginning of the epidemic in London; it was rather a lull in a plague-mortality which is known to have been severe in the end of 1577, and had led to the prohibition of stage-plays in November[668].
In that series of five plague-years in London, only two, 1578 and 1582, had a large total of plague-deaths. The year 1580 was almost clear (128 deaths from plague), and may be taken as showing the ordinary proportion of deaths to births in London when plague did not arise to disturb it. The baptisms, it will be observed, are considerably in excess of the burials; and as every child was christened in church under Elizabeth, we may take it that we have the births fully recorded (with the doubtful exception of still-births and “chrisoms”). But while the one favourable year shows an excess of some 24 per cent. of baptisms over burials, the whole period of five years shows a shortcoming in the baptisms of 33 per cent. Thus we may see how seriously a succession of plague-years, at the endemic level of the disease, kept down the population; and, at the same time, how the numbers in the capital would increase rapidly from within, in the absence of plague. There is reason to think that plague was almost or altogether absent from London for the next nine years (1583 to 1592); and it is not surprising to find that the population, as estimated from the births, had increased from some 120,000 to 150,000. The increase of London population under Elizabeth was proceeding so fast, plague or no plague, that measures were taken in 1580 to check it. The increase of London has never depended solely upon its own excess of births over deaths; indeed, until the present century, there were probably few periods when such excess occurred over a series of years. Influx from the country and from abroad always kept London up to its old level of inhabitants, whatever the death-rate; and from the early part of the Tudor period caused it to grow rapidly. I shall review briefly in another chapter the stages in the growth of London, as it may be reckoned from bills of mortality and of baptisms. But as the proclamation of 1580, against new buildings, the first of a long series down to the Commonwealth, has special reference to the plague in the Liberties, and to the unwholesome condition of those poor skirts of the walled city, this is the proper place for it:
“The Queen’s Majesty perceiving the state of the city of London and the suburbs and confines thereof to encrease daily by access of people to inhabit in the same, in such ample sort as thereby many inconveniences are seen already, but many greater of necessity like to follow ... and [having regard] to the preservation of her people in health, which may seem impossible to continue, though presently by God’s goodness the same is perceived to be in better estate universally than hath been in man’s memory: yet there are such great multitudes of people brought to inhabit in small rooms, whereof a great part are seen very poor; yea, such must live of begging, or of worse means; and they heaped up together, and in a sort smothered with many families of children and servants in one house or small tenement; it must needs follow, if any plague or popular sickness should by God’s permission enter among those multitudes, that the same should not only spread itself and invade the whole city and confines, as great mortality should ensue the same, where her Majesty’s personal presence is many times required; besides the great confluence of people from all places of the realm by reason of the ordinary Terms for justice there holden; but would be also dispersed through all other parts of the realm to the manifest danger of the whole body thereof, out of which neither her Majesty’s own person can be (but by God’s special ordinance) exempted, nor any other, whatsoever they be.
For remedy whereof, as time may now serve until by some further good order, to be had in Parliament or otherwise, the same may be remedied, Her Majesty by good and deliberate advice of her Council, and being thereto much moved by the considerate opinions of the Mayor, Aldermen and other the grave, wise men in and about the city, doth charge and straitly command all persons of what quality soever they be to desist and forbear from any new buildings of any new house or tenement within three miles of any of the gates of the said city, to serve for habitation or lodging for any person, where no former house hath been known to have been in memory of such as are now living. And also to forbear from letting or setting, or suffering any more families than one only to be placed or to inhabit from henceforth in any house that heretofore hath been inhabited, etc.... Given at Nonesuch, the 7th of July, 1580[669].”
Among the more special suggestions of the mayor, on the causes and prevention of plague, previous to this proclamation were[670]:
1. The avoiding of inmates in places pretending exemption.
2. The restraining of the building of small tenements and turning great houses into small habitations by foreigners.