Chapter VI: Plague in the Tudor Period (2)

Stow’s summary of this epidemic in his _Annales_ is as follows: “In the same whole year, i.e. from the 1st January, 1562 [old style] till the last of December, 1563, there died in the city and liberties thereof, containing 108 parishes, of all diseases 20,372, and of the plague, being part of the number aforesaid, 17,404; and in out parishes adjoining to the same city, being 11 parishes, died of all diseases in the whole year 3288, and of them of the plague 2732.” The weekly totals from June 12 to December 31 which are for the City and liberties, and exclusive of the out parishes, add up to very nearly Stow’s total for the whole year, or to 16,802 as against 17,404. Where the discrepancy arises does not appear; it is hardly likely that some 600 plague-deaths would have occurred previous to the second week in June, at which time the weekly mortality had reached only 17. We are able to check one of the weekly totals from an independent source. In an extant letter of the time the following figures for the week from 23rd to 30th July are given, having been taken evidently from the published or posted weekly bill: “Died and were buried in London and suburbs, 399, most young people and youths, of which number of the common plague 320 persons. Number of children born and christened in the same week, 52[591].” “London and suburbs” would mean the 108 parishes of the City and liberties together with the 11 out parishes, so that the difference between Stow’s 289 and the above 320 would give the number of plague-deaths in the out parishes for the particular week.

The state of matters in the City is thus referred to in Bullein’s _Dialogue_ published in 1564:--

_Civis._--“Good wife, the daily jangling and ringing of the bells, the
coming in of the minister to every house in ministering the communion,
the reading of the homily of death, the digging up of graves, the
sparring of windows, and the blazing forth of the blue crosses do make
my heart tremble and quake.” A beggar, in the same _Dialogue_, who had
arrived from the country, says:

“I met with wagones, cartes and horses full loden with yong barnes,
for fear of the blacke Pestilence, with them boxes of medicens and
sweete perfumes. O God! how fast did they run by hundredes, and were
afraied of eche other for feare of smityng.”

We get one or two glimpses of this great plague from the medical point of view in Dr John Jones’s _Dyall of Agues_[592]. The worst locality, he says, was “S. Poulkar’s parish [St Sepulchre’s] by reason of many fruiterers, poor people, and stinking lanes, as Turnagain-lane [so called because it led down the slope to Fleet Ditch and ended there], Seacoal-lane, and such other places, there died most in London, and were soonest infected, and longest continued, as twice since I have known London I have marked to be true.” Jones believed in contagion: “I myself was infected by reason that unawares I lodged with one that had it running from him.” His other observation is interesting as proving the possibility of repeated attacks of the buboes in the same person, an observation abundantly confirmed, as we shall see, in the London plagues of 1603 and 1665:

“Here now, gentel readers, I think good to admonish all such as have
had the plague, that they flie the trust of ignoraunt persons, who use
to saye that he who hath once had the plague shal not nede to feare
the havinge of it anye more: the whych by this example whyche foloweth
(that chaunced to a certayne Bakers wife without Tempel barre in
London, Anno Do. 1563) you shall find to be worthelye to be repeated:
this sayde wyfe had the plage at Midsommer and at Bartholomewtide, and
at Michaelmas, and the first time it brake, the seconde time it brake,
but ran littell, the thirde time it appeared and brake not: but she
died, notwythstanding she was twyce afore healed.”

Two London physicians of some note died of the plague in 1563. One was Dr Geynes, who had brought trouble upon himself by impugning the authority of Galen, perhaps without sufficient reason. Having been cited before the College of Physicians, to whose discipline he was subject, he preferred to recant his heresy rather than undergo imprisonment. He died of plague on 23 July, 1563. Another was Dr John Fryer who had suffered twice for religious heresy, having been imprisoned by queen Mary as a Lutheran, and by queen Elizabeth as a papist. He regained his liberty in August, 1563, but only to die of plague on 21 October, his wife and several of his children having been also victims of the epidemic[593].

Stow ascribes the infection of the city of London by plague in the summer of 1563 to the return of the English troops from Havre, which town queen Elizabeth had boldly attempted to hold, and did actually hold for ten months, from September, 1562, as an English fortress in French territory. Havre was not surrendered until the last days of July, 1563, and no returning troops could have reached London until August, by which time the plague had been raging there for two months. There was no doubt frequent communication between Havre and English ports while the siege lasted; but the sickness in each place can have been no more than coincident. Thus, while there were 17 plague-deaths in London in the week from the 5th to the 12th of June, the 7th of June is the first date on which report was made of sickness in Havre, although there had been cases of illness before. On that date the Earl of Warwick wrote to the Privy Council[594]: “For the want of money the works are hindered and the men discouraged. A strange disease has come amongst them, whereof nine died this morning (and many before) very suddenly.” On the same day (7th June, 1563), one writes from Havre to Cecil: “Many of our men have been hurt in these skirmishes, but more by drinking of their wine, which hath cast down a great number, of hot burning diseases and impostumations, not unlike the plague.” By the 9th June the deaths were from 20 to 30 a day. On the 12th June, 442 were sick out of a total force (including labourers and seamen) of 7143. On June 16, Warwick points out to the Privy Council that the sickness was aggravated by the want of fresh meat and the soldiers’ usual beverages: “therefore their continual drinking of wine, contrary to their custom, has bred these disorders and diseases.” On the 28th June the daily mortality was 77; from that date it increased somewhat, and was so serious as to hasten the surrender of the place to the French besieging force in the end of July. On July 27 there was plague in the castle of Jersey, and on August 6 it was very sore in Jersey, especially in the Castle[595].

It would have seemed the more probable to the people of London that the plague of 1563 had been imported across the Channel by reason of the unusually long immunity of the English capital in respect of that infection. A clear interval of a dozen years without an epidemic, or a severe epidemic, was enough to make men forget the long tradition of plague domesticated upon English soil; while there was no scientific doctrine of epidemics then worked out, from which they might have known that the seeds of a disease may lie dormant for years, and that their periodic effectiveness depends upon a concurrence of favouring things, most of all upon extremes of dryness or wetness of the seasons as affecting a soil full of corrupting animal matters.

The plague of 1563 in the capital was accompanied or followed by several provincial outbreaks, of which few details are known. It is mentioned at Derby[596] in 1563, at Leicester[597] in 1563 and 1564 (a shut-up house in 1563, the first plague-burial in St Martin’s parish on May 11, 1564), at Stratford-on-Avon, at Lichfield[598] and Canterbury[599] in 1564. But it is little more than mentioned at all those places. In the parish register of Hensley, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, a later incumbent, basing upon “an old writing of 1569,” says that the explanation of the year 1563 being a blank in the register was “because in that year the visitation of plague was most hot and fearful, so that many died and fled, and the town of Hensley, by reason of the sickness, was unfrequented for a long season[600].”

Preventive Practice in Plague-time under the Tudors.

Having now traced the history of plague in London and in the provinces down to the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, and having found it steady from year to year for many years in London, with an occasional terrific outburst, we are naturally led to ask whether the causes of it, or its favouring things, were understood, and whether any steps were taken to deal with it. This will be in effect a review of the earliest preventive practice.

That which was most clearly perceived by all was that the plague began to reign in certain years as the summer heats drew on, that the air of London or Westminster became “intemperate,” or unwholesome, or infectious, and that it was desirable to get out of such air. Accordingly the one great rule, admitted by all and acted upon by as many as could, was to escape from the tainted locality, or as Wolsey expressed it to the earl of Shrewsbury in 1516, to get them “into clean air.” There was no other sovereign prescription but that, and it remained the one great prescription until the last of plague in 1665-6.

Difficult points of casuistry arose out of that steady perception of an indisputable rule. Could flight from a plague-stricken place be reconciled with duty to one’s neighbour? How ought a Christian man to demean himself in the plague? The Christian conscience may or may not have been tender on that ground in the medieval period; there is little to show one way or the other, except the occasional hints that we get, as in the Danish bishop’s treatise, of an unwillingness to go near the victims of plague. But about the Reformation time those points of casuistry were debated; and one elaborate handling of them, in the form of a sermon by a German ecclesiastic, Osiander, was translated into English in 1537 by Miles Coverdale[601]. It followed, accordingly, that period of plague in London which has occupied the first part of this chapter. The translator remarks that they had been negligent of charity one to another, and he prints this discourse “to the intent that the ignorant may be taught, the weake strengthened, and everyone counselled after his callynge to serve his neighbor.”

Osiander’s perplexed Christian is in much the same case as Launcelot Gobbo in the play: “‘Budge,’ says the fiend; ‘Budge not,’ says my conscience. ‘Conscience,’ say I, ‘you counsel well;’ ‘Fiend,’ say I, ‘you counsel well.’” The situation was a naturally complex one, and this is how the good preacher comes out of it:

“It is not my meaning to forbid or inhibit any man to fly, or to use
physick, or to avoid dangerous and sick places in these fearful
airs--so far as a man doth not therein against the belief, nor God’s
commandment, nor against his calling, nor against the love of his
neighbour.” And yet, shortly after: “Out of such fond childish fear it
cometh that not only some sick folk be suffered to die away without
all keeping, help, and comfort; but the women also, great with child,
be forsaken in their need, or else cometh there utterly no man unto
them. Yet a man may hear also that the children forsake their fathers
and mothers, and one household body keepeth himself away from another,
and sheweth no love unto him. Which nevertheless he would be glad to
see shewed unto himself if he lay in like necessity.” He then exhorts
the Christian man to remain at the post of duty, by the examples of
the clergy and of “the higher powers of the world, who also abide in
jeopardy”--certainly not the English experience. “Let him not axe his
own reason, how he shall do, but believe, and follow the word of God,
which teacheth him not to fly evil air and infect places (which he may
well do: nevertheless he remaineth yet uncertain whether it helpeth or
no).” The Christian man’s perplexities can hardly have been resolved
when all was said; and the following sentence puts the case for
quitting the infected place as strongly as it can be put: “For if it
were in meat or drink, it might be eschewed; if it were an evil taste,
it might be expelled with a sweet savour; if it were an evil wind, the
chamber might with diligence be made close therefore; if it were a
cloud or mist, it might be seen and avoided; if it were a rain, a man
might cover himself for it. But now it is a secret misfortune that
creepeth in privily, so that it can neither be seen nor heard, neither
smelled nor tasted, till it have done the harm.”

In practice the rule was ‘Save who can;’ so that whenever the infection promised to become “hot,” as the phrase was, there was an adjournment of Parliament and of the Law Courts, a flight of all who could afford it to the country, and an interruption of business, diplomatic and other, which sometimes lasted for months. It was only occasionally, however, that the infection became really hot; in ordinary years a certain risk was run. Thus, in 1426, the plague had been severe enough to cut off the Scots hostages; but it was not until after their death that the king’s council left the city. Again, in 1467, Parliament did not adjourn (on 1st July) until several members of the House of Commons had died of the plague.

Although flight was the sovereign preventive in a great plague-season, it was impracticable in ordinary years when the infection was at its steadier or more endemic level. The endemic level was tolerated up to a certain point. In a long despatch to his government, the Venetian ambassador in London wrote of the plague as follows in 1554[602]:

“They have some little plague in England well nigh every year, for
which they are not accustomed to make sanitary provisions, as it does
not usually make great progress; the cases for the most part occur
amongst the lower classes, as if their dissolute mode of life impaired
their constitutions.”

Whenever the plague showed signs of overstepping these limits, strenuous efforts were made to keep it in check. It may be questioned whether all that was done in that way made any difference; the great outbursts came at intervals, rose to their height, subsided in a few months, and left the city more or less free of plague until some concurrence of things, or the lapse of time, brought about another epidemic of the first degree. None the less, certain measures were taken to restrain the infection, and these were put in force with mechanical regularity whenever the Privy Council informed the Lord Mayor that the occasion required it. A brief account of them, of their beginnings and their development, will now be given.

The first that we hear of attempts at isolation and notification is in 1518. In April of that year, the Court being in Berkshire or Oxfordshire, Sir Thomas More charged the mayor of Oxford, and the commissary, in the king’s name “that the inhabitants of those houses that be, and shall be infected, shall keep in, put out wispes, and bear white rods, as your Grace devised for Londoners[603].” By his Grace is to be understood the king himself; and these measures devised by him--the keeping in, the putting out of wisps on the houses, and the carrying of white rods,--might have been tried as early as the epidemic of 1513, which was a severe one. When two of the Venetian ambassador’s servants died of the plague in 1513, their bed, sheets and other effects were thrown into the river. On the 21st of May, 1516, the ambassador removed to Putney owing to a case of plague in his house, and he was not allowed to see cardinal Wolsey until the 30th of June, i.e. until forty days had elapsed. This is perhaps the first mention of the quarantine which the Court rigorously put in practice against those who had business with it. On the 22nd July, 1518, the same ambassador wrote to Venice from Lambeth that two of his servants had lately died of the plague; and, on the 11th August, again from Lambeth, that the king and Wolsey would not see him because of the plague; “but on the expiration of forty days, which had nearly come to an end, he would not fail to do his duty as heretofore.”

On the 25th August, 1535, Chapuys, in a letter to Charles V., gives an amusing account of an attempt made by the French ambassador to see Henry VIII. and Cromwell on diplomatic business. The Court was residing in Gloucestershire owing to plague in and near London (it was at Bristol also), and the ambassador journeyed thither to carry his business through. However he went no nearer than six miles, because a “French merchant” who followed him died upon the road of the plague, as it was feared. The king asked him to put his charge in writing, but the ambassador replied that he had orders to tell it in person, and that he could wait. At length he lay in wait for Secretary Cromwell in the fields where he went to hunt with the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, and delivered his charge despite the manifest unwillingness of Cromwell, who came away from the improvised diplomatic interview in no good humour.

The first plague-order of which the full text is extant was issued in the 35th of Henry VIII. (1543). As it contains the germs of all subsequent preventive practice, I transcribe it in full[604].

“35 Hen. VIII. A precept issued to the aldermen:--That they should
cause their beadles to set the sign of the cross on every house which
should be afflicted with the plague, and there continue for forty
days:

“That no person who was able to live by himself, and should be
afflicted with the plague, should go abroad or into any company for
one month after his sickness, and that all others who could not live
without their daily labour should as much as in them lay refrain from
going abroad, and should for forty days after [illegible] and
continually carry a white rod in their hand, two foot long:

“That every person whose house had been infected should, after a
visitation, carry all the straw and [illegible] in the night privately
into the fields and burn; they should also carry clothes of the
infected in the fields to be cured:

“That no housekeeper should put any person diseased out of his house
into the street or other place unless they provided housing for them
in some other house:

“That all persons having any dogs in their houses other than hounds,
spaniels or mastiffs, necessary for the custody or safe keeping of
their houses, should forthwith convey them out of the city, or cause
them to be killed and carried out of the city and buried at the common
laystall:

“That such as kept hounds, spaniels, or mastiffs should not suffer
them to go abroad, but closely confine them:

“That the churchwardens of every parish should employ somebody to keep
out all common beggars out of churches on holy days, and to cause them
to remain without doors:

“That all the streets, lanes, etc. within the wards should be
cleansed:

“That the aldermen should cause this precept to be read in the
churches.”

Here we see a development of the measures which had been devised for London by Henry VIII. or his minister previous to 1518, and probably in the plague of 1513. The wisps put out on the infected houses are replaced by crosses, which, in the order of 1543, are simply called “the sign of the cross.” They are next heard of during the plague of 1547, in a Guildhall record of 15 November[605]:

“Item, for as moche as my Lord Mayer reported that my Lorde Chauncelar
declared unto hym that my Lorde Protectour’s Grace’s pleasure ys, and
other of the Lordes of the Counseyll, that certain open tokens and
sygnes shulde be made and sett furth in all such places of the Cytie
as haue of late been vysyted with the plage”--be it therefore ordained
that a certain cross of St Anthony devised for that purpose be affixed
to the uttermost post of the street door, there to remain forty days
after the setting up thereof.

The cross of St Anthony was a headless cross, and the crutch is supposed to have been painted (in blue) on canvas or board and fixed to the post of the street door. The legend under or over the cross was, “Lord have mercy upon us.” Before the plague of 1603, the colour had been changed to red.

The white rods, which had been devised along with the wisps previous to 1518, are mentioned in the order of 1543 as two foot long; they were to be carried for forty days by those who must needs go abroad from plague-stricken houses. We hear of them again, both in France and in England in 1580 and 1581. On the 20th November, 1580, the Venetian ambassador to France writes from the neighbourhood of Paris: “This city, I hear, is in a very fair sanitary condition, notwithstanding that as I entered a city gate, which is close to where I reside, I met a man and a woman bearing the white plague wands in their hands and asking alms; but some believe that this was merely an artifice on their part to gain money[606].” In the regulations for plague added in 1581 by the mayor of London to the earlier code, the third is: “That no persons dwelling in a house infected be suffered to go abroad unless they carry with them a white wand of a yard long; any so offending to be committed to the Cage.” In the seventeenth-century plagues of London and provincial towns, the white wand was retained as the peculiar badge of the searchers of infected houses and of the bearers of the dead. The white rod or wand carried by inmates of infected houses, had become a red rod in the plague of 1603, just as the blue cross had been changed to red.

The other directions in the order of 1543 are heard of from time to time in the subsequent history of plague--such as the burning of straw, and the cleansing of the streets. The Guildhall record of 15 November, 1547, after directing the blue crosses to be affixed to houses, proceeds:

“And also to cause all the welles and pumpes within their seid wardes
to be drawen iii times euerye weke, that is to say, Monday, Wednesday,
and Friday. And to cast down into the canelles at euerye such drawyng
xii bucketts full of water at the least, to clense the stretes
wythall.”

Under Elizabeth, the orders as to scavenging become much more stringent, as we shall see. In the plague of 1563, on 29 September, the Common Council appointed “two poor men to burn and bury such straw, clothes, and bedding as they shall find in the fields near the city or within the city, whereon any person in the plague hath lyen or dyed[607].”

The curious order as to dogs was based upon the belief that they carried the infection in their hair, just as cats are now believed by some to carry infection in their fur. Brasbridge, in his _Poor Man’s Jewel_ (1578), gives a case of a glover at Oxford, into whose house a disastrous plague-infection was supposed to have been brought by means of a dog’s skin bought in London[608]. The plague-regulations contained the clause against dogs to the last; in the great plagues of 1603, 1625, and 1665, thousands of them were killed, many of them having been doubtless left behind in the exodus of the well-to-do classes. In the corporation records of Winchester[609], there is a minute, undated, but probably belonging to the end of the 16th century, that dogs shall be kept indoors “if any house within the city shall happen to be infected with the plague.” A proclamation during the London plague of 1563 is directed against cats as well as dogs, “for the avoidance of the plague:” officers were appointed to kill and bury all such as they found at large[610].

The great London plague of 1563 had revived the old practices and given rise to some new ones. Curates and churchwardens were directed to warn the inmates of houses where plague had occurred not to come to church for a certain space thereafter[611]. The blue crosses were again in great request, being ordered by hundreds at a time in readiness to affix to infected houses[612]. Also it was ordered by the Mayor and Council that the “filthie dunghill lying in the highway near unto Fynnesburye Courte be removed and carried away; and not to suffer any such donge or fylthe from hensforthe there to be leyde[613].” On the 9th of July, 1563, plague having been already at work for several weeks, a commission was issued by the queen in Council, that every householder in London should, at seven in the evening, lay out wood and make bonfires in the streets and lanes, to the intent that they should thereby consume the corrupt airs, the fires to be made on three days of the week[614]. On 30th September, 1563, it was ordered that all such houses as were infected should have their doors and windows shut up, and the inmates not to stir out nor suffer any to come to them for forty days. At the same time, a collection was ordered to be made in the churches for the relief of the poor afflicted with the plague, and thus shut up. Another order was that new mould should be laid on the graves of such as die of the plague. Still another, the first of a long series, was to prohibit all interludes and plays during the infection[615]. On the 2nd December, when the deaths had fallen to 178 in the week, an order was issued by the Common Council that houses in which the plague had been were not to be let. On the 20th January, 1564, there was an order for a general airing and cleansing of houses, bedding and the like. By that time the deaths had fallen to 13 in the week.

The most rigorous measures in this plague were those which queen Elizabeth took for her own safety at Windsor in September. Stow says that “a gallows was set up in the market-place of Windsor to hang all such as should come there from London. No wares to be brought to, or through, or by Windsor; nor any one on the river by Windsor to carry wood or other stuff to or from London, upon pain of hanging without any judgment; and such people as received any wares out of London into Windsor were turned out of their houses, and their houses shut up[616].”

In 1568 a more complete set of instructions to the aldermen of the several wards was drawn up by the Lord Mayor, and a corresponding order for the city of Westminster by Sir William Cecil, Secretary of State, and by the Chancellor of the Duchy. In 1581 some additional orders were issued by the Lord Mayor. The whole of these are here given from a state paper in a later handwriting, probably of the time of James I. or Charles I[617].

A collection of such papers as are found in the office of his
Majesties papers and records for business of state for the preventing
and decreasing of the plague in and about London.

A. (City of London, 1568.)

1. First a ’tre from the Mayor of London to every alderman of each
warde to charge their Deputys counstables and officers to make search
of all houses infected within each parish.

2. To cause all infected houses to bee shutt up and noe person to come
forth in twenty dayes after the infection.

3. That some honest discreete person be appoynted to attend each such
infected house to provide them of all necessaries at the cost of the
M{r} of the house if he be able.

4. For the poorer houses infected that the Alderman or his deputy doe
cause to make collection for the supply of all necessaries to be
charged upon the wealthyer sorte of the same warde or parish.

5. That such as shall refuse to pay what they are assest shall be
committed to warde untill they pay it.

6. That all bedding and cloathes and other thinges apt to take
infection which were about infected persons bee burnt or such order
taken that infection may not be increased by them.

7. Lastly that a bill with ‘Lord have mercy upon us’ in greate ’tres
bee sett over the dore of euery infected house and that the
counstables and Beadles have a care to see that the same be not taken
downe.

These orders were sett downe by the Mayior of London in the yeere
1568, whereupon queene Elizabeth writeth a letter to S{r} William
Cycill then secretary and S{r} Ambrous Cave, chauncellor of the Duchy
to take the like order or any other that they should thinke fitt in
the citie of Westminster.

B. (City of Westminster, 1568.)

Orders sett down by S{r} William Cycill, Secretary, as High Steward of
Westminster and S{r} Ambrous Cave, chauncellor of the Dutchy to the
Bayleiffes, Hedburroughs, Counstables and other officers of the sayde
Citty.

1. That they should follow the good example of the orders devised and
observed by the Mayior and Aldermen of London, and further that all
that haue any houses shops or loggings that hath had any infection in
them by the space of twenty dayes before the making of these orders
shall shutt up all their doares and windoares towards the streetes and
common passages for forty dayes next and not suffer after the tyme of
the sicknes any person to goe forth nor any uninfected to come in upon
payne that euery offender shall sitt seven dayes in the stocks and
after that be committed to the common Goale there to remayne forty
dayes from the first day of his being in the stocks.

2. That the officers aforesayde with the curate of euery parish and
churchwardens doe make such collection of the rest of the parishioners
as shall be necessary for the sustenance of such as bee poore infected
and shutt up.

3. To discharge all inmates out of all houses that there be noe more
persons in one house then be of one family except they be lodgers for
a small time.

4. To cause the streetes lanes and passages and all the shewers sinkes
(?) and gutters thereof dayly to be made sweete and cleane.

C. (London, 1581.)

There were added by the Mayior of London to the former articles these
following in the year 1581.

1. That speciall noatis be taken of such houses infected as sell
cloth, silke and other wares and make garments and aparrell for men
and women.

2. That euery counstable within his precinct haue at all tymes in
readines two honest and discreete women to attend any house infected.

3. That noe person dwelling in a house infected bee suffered to goe
abroade unless they carry with them a white wand of a yarde long. Any
soe offending to bee committed to the Cage there to remayne untill
order shallbe taken by the Mayior or his bretheren.

4. That they suffer not any deade corps dying of the plague to be
buryed in tyme of divine service or sermon.

5. To appoynt two honest and discreete matrons within euery parish who
shall bee sworne truely to search the body of euery such person as
shall happen to dye within the same parish, to the ende that they make
true reporte to the clerke of the parish church of all such as shall
dye of the plague, that the same clerke may make the like reporte and
certificate to the wardens of the parish clerkes thereof according to
the order in that behalfe heretofore provided.

If the viewers through favour or corruption shall giue wrong
certificate, or shall refuse to serue being thereto appointed, then to
punish them by imprisonment in such sorte as may serue for the terror
of others.

6. That order be taken for killing of dogs that run from house to
house dispersing the plague, and that noe swine be suffered or kept
within the citty[618].

Several of these plague-regulations had been in force, as we have seen, from near the beginning of the century. Others, not hitherto mentioned, were also of earlier date. Thus the collections for the poor are mentioned in the diary of a London citizen in 1538 and 1539, but not specially in connexion with plague. They are heard of often after the plague of 1563, along with other provisions for the poor which mark the reign of Elizabeth. If we may trust Bullein’s _Dialogue_ of 1564, a systematic provision became necessary because private charity was no longer to be depended on. In many country towns and parishes, as we shall see, the contributions or compensations to the inmates of shut-up houses in the Elizabethan plagues were paid out of the municipal funds, either those of the affected place or of some “unvisited” neighbouring town. The Act of Parliament which most directly provided for “the charitable relief of persons infected with the plague” was the 1st James I. (1603-4), cap. 31.

A most essential part of the means for controlling plague was the institution of searchers[619]. In the orders of 1543, the aldermen of the wards are directed to send their beadles to affix the sign of the cross to affected houses. But in due course these duties of inspection, notification, isolation and registration passed in London into the hands of the Company of Parish Clerks. The original business of the Parish Clerks was with church music. In the thirteenth century they received a charter of incorporation as the Clerks of St Nicholas, and became associated with that love of choral singing which has always distinguished the English people. Legacies and endowments fell to them for the performance of specific services, or for their encouragement in general. From time to time the Company would appear in a particular parish church to sing a mass. It was the singular history of a Company which gained its greatest name as the Registrars of Births and Deaths in London down to the Registration Act of 1837, to have been not only the first Choral Society but also the first company of stage players. In 1391, says Stow, a play was given by the parish clerks of London at the Skinners’ Well beside Smithfield, which continued three days together, the king, queen and nobles of the realm being present. Another play, in the year 1409, lasted eight days, “and was of matter from the creation of the world, whereat was present most of the nobility and gentry of England[620].”

In the time of Sir Thomas More, a parish clerk meant one who sang in the church choir. When More was lord chancellor, the duke of Norfolk came one day to dine with him at his house at Chelsea, and not finding him at home, went in search of him. He found him, where posterity will long delight to picture him,--in the church “singing in the choir with a surplice on his back.” As they walked home arm in arm the duke said to Sir Thomas More: “A parish clerk! a parish clerk! God body, my lord chancellor, you dishonour the king and his office;” whereon the chancellor answered as if he did not take the duke altogether seriously.

The whole strength of the Company of Parish Clerks in those times would attend the funeral of some rich person, as we may read in the sixteenth-century diary of Machyn the undertaker (sometimes the Company chosen to follow the body to the grave was that of the Tallow Chandlers, as in the case of John Stow’s mother). It was no great step from their old duties to their new. There were, as we have seen, bills of mortality compiled weekly for all the parishes in the city and liberties as early as 1532 and 1535. It is not said that the Parish Clerks were the collectors of the information, but they were as likely to have been so as any other persons whom the mayor would employ. Bills were also drawn up for a few weeks during the sweating sickness of 1551, and again for an unbroken series of some two hundred weeks from the beginning of the plague of 1563. The figures are preserved from a single weekly bill, 22-28 October, 1574, which must have been one of a series[621]. The next bills known are a series for five years, 1578-83, a plague-period of which more will have to be said in its proper place in the chronology.

The orders of 1581, already given, make mention of the two discreet matrons within every parish who shall be sworn truly to search the body of every such person as shall happen to die within the same parish, of their reporting to the clerk of the parish, and of the clerk making report and certificate to the wardens of the Parish Clerks, who would send the weekly certificate for all the parishes to the mayor, and he to the minister of State. That was said to be “according to the order in that behalf heretofore provided.” It is probable, therefore, that the searchers became an institution as early as the plague of 1563, or, at all events, at the beginning of the plague-period of 1578-83.

The clerk of the Company in 1665 describes how the discreet matrons were chosen as searchers or viewers of the dead in each parish, and how they were sworn to discharge their duties faithfully[622]. The swearing in took place before the Dean of the Arches, that is to say, in St Mary le Bow church (“St Mary of the Arch”) in Cheapside. The motive to bribe them for a wrong report on the cause of death was to avoid the shutting up and all other troubles of a household pronounced infected by the plague. In later times their diagnostic duties became, as we shall see, much more complex; but down to 1604, when they first brought to the Parish Clerks’ Hall “an account of the diseases and casualties” (which classification and nomenclature did not begin to be printed until 1629), they had merely to say whether a death had been from plague or from other cause.

Sanitation in Plantagenet and Tudor times.

Along with all those means, having the object of stopping the spread of infection, the Elizabethan policy did not neglect what we should now consider the more radical means of sanitation. It is usual to bring a sweeping charge of neglect of public hygiene against all old times; there was so much plague in those times, and so high an average death-rate, that it is commonly assumed that our ancestors must have been wanting in the rudimentary instincts of cleanliness. But, in the first place, one might expect to find that all old periods were not alike; and more generally it is worth inquiring how far nuisances injurious to the public health were tolerated. This inquiry will have to be as brief as possible; but it will take us back to the period of plague covered by a former chapter.

Nuisances certainly existed in medieval London, but it is equally certain that they were not tolerated without limit. I have collected in a note the instances reported in a visitation of 17 Edward III. (1343), and in a perambulation of the ground outside the walls in 26 Edward III. (1352). The former related only to the alleys leading down to the river, which were likely enough places for nuisance, then as now[623].

There are several orders of Edward III. relating to the removal of laystalls and to keeping the town ditch clean, which show, of course, that there was neglect, but at the same time the disposition to correct it. It is farther obvious that the connexion between nuisances and the public health was clearly apprehended. The sanitary doctrines of modern times were undreamt of; nor did the circumstances altogether call for them. The sewers of those days were banked-up water courses, or “shores” as the word was pronounced, which ran uncovered down the various declivities of the city, to the town ditch and to the Thames. They would have sufficed to carry off the refuse of a population of some forty or sixty thousand; they were, at all events, freely open to the greatest of all purifying agents, the oxygen of the air; and they poisoned neither the water of the town ditch (which abounded in excellent fish within John Stow’s memory) nor the waters of Thames. In course of time all the brooks of London were covered in, even the Fleet dyke itself, which used to float barges as far as Holborn bridge; but who shall say that they were more wholesome thereafter, although they were underground? Perhaps the poet of the _Earthly Paradise_ has as true an intuition as any when, in reference to the city in Chaucer’s time, he bids us

“Dream of London, small, and white, and clean;
The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green.”

The nuisance that gave most trouble in the medieval and Tudor periods was the blood and offal of the shambles. Several ordinances of Edward III. are directed against it, in one of which (1371) the connexion between putrefying blood soaked into the ground and infectious disease is clearly stated. It is also the principal subject of the first sanitary Act that appears in the Statutes of the Realm, made by the Parliament of Cambridge in the 17th of Richard II. (1388), of which I give the preamble and provisions:

“Item, For that so much Dung and Filth of the Garbage and Intrails as
well of Beasts killed as of other Corruptions be cast and put in
Ditches, Rivers and other Waters, and also within many other Places
within about and nigh unto divers Cities, Boroughs and Towns of the
Realm, and the Suburbs of them, that the Air there is greatly corrupt
and infect, and many Maladies and other intolerable Diseases do daily
happen,” both to the residents and to visitors:--therefore
proclamation is to be made in the City of London, as in other cities,
boroughs and towns “that all they which do cast and lay all such
Annoyances, Dung, Garbages, Intrails and other Ordure in Ditches,
Rivers, Waters and other places shall cause them to be removed,
avoided and carried away betwixt this and the feast of St Michael next
following,” under a penalty of twenty pounds, mayors and bailiffs to
compel obedience. Such offences were not to be repeated, and if any
did offend he was liable to be called by writ before the Chancellor
“at his suit that will complain[624].”

Despite this statute, the shambles in the parish of St Nicholas within Newgate (adjoining the ground now occupied by Christ’s Hospital, and formerly by the Grey Friars) became an established institution of the city. They were a subject of petition to Parliament in 1488-9, and they were still there to give occasion in 1603 to severe remarks by Thomas Lodge, poet and physician, who practised in Warwick Lane, in their immediate neighbourhood. The Act of 1388, it will be observed, was to be set in motion “at his suit that will complain;” so that there was little more in it than the immemorial remedy from a nuisance at common law.

The reign of Henry V. appears to have been marked by care for the public health, perhaps not greater than in Edward III.’s time, but exceptional, in the records at least, under the later Plantagenets and until the accession of the Tudor dynasty. Among other evidences (some of which may be gathered from Stow’s _Survey_) is the ordinance of 1415 (3 Hen. V.) against a nuisance in the Moor, beyond the wall and the ditch on the Finsbury side. The Moor was, in Fitzstephen’s words, “a great fen, which watereth the walls on the north side.” In 1415 there was a “common latrine” in it, and “sicknesses arose from the horrible, corrupt, and infected atmosphere,” issuing therefrom[625]. Its removal was ordered, and in the same year (1415) chaussées were built across the fen, one to Hoxton and another to Islington. The ditch all the way round from the Tower to Blackfriars had been cleansed the year before (1414).

Another statute, 3 Henry VII. (1488-9) cap. 3, may be quoted to show that the slaughter-houses were the chief nuisance, that their effects on health were perceived (as in Edward III.’s time), and that it was necessary to appeal to the king’s personal interest in the matter as a motive for redress.

Petition to the King from the parishioners of St Faiths and St
Gregories in London, near St Pauls.

“That it was soo that grete concourse of peple, as well of his Roial
persone as of other grete Lordes and astates wyth other hys true
subgettes often tymes was had unto the said Cathedrall Chirche, and
for the moost part through oute the parisshe aforesaide, the whiche
often tymes ben gretly ennoyed and invenemed by corrupt eires,
engendered in the said parisshes by occasion of bloode and other
fowler thynges, by occasion of the slaughter of bestes and scaldyng of
swyne had and doon in the bocherie of Seynt Nicholas Flesshamls, whos
corrupcion by violence of unclene and putrified waters is borne down
thrugh the said parishes and compasseth two partes of the Palays where
the Kynges most Roiall persone is wonte to abide when he cometh to the
Cathedrall Chirche for ony acte there to be doon, to the Jubardouse
[jeopardous] abydyng of his most noble persone and to ouer grete
ennoysaunce of the parisshens there, and of other the Kyngis subgettes
and straungers that passe by the same;

Compleynte whereof at dyverse and many seasons almost by the space of
xvi yeres contynuelly, as well by the Chanons and petty Chanons of the
said Cathedrall Chirche, londlordes there ... made to Mayor and
aldermen of the city; and noo remedie had ne founden.

... Considering that in few noble cities or towns or none within
Christendom, where as travellyng men have labored, that the comen
slaughter hous of bestys sholde be kept in ony speciall parte within
the walle of the same lest it myght engender Siknesse to the
destruccion of the peple.”

The King etc. “ordeyned and stablished that no Bocher shall sley
within the said house called the Scaldinghouse or within the walls of
London.”

And the same “in eny citte, Burghe and Towne walled within the Realm
of Englonde and in the Towne of Cambridge, the Townes of Berwyk and
Carlile only except and forprised.”

The popular knowledge of and belief in a high doctrine of contagion are curiously shown by the terms of the Act touching Upholsterers in 1495 (II Hen. VII. cap. 19).

The Act was intended to prevent beds, feather-beds, bolsters and
pillows from being sold in market outside London, “beyond control of
the Craft of Upholders.” Outside the craft an inferior article was apt
to be offered, which was at once a lowering of a good and worthy
standard and a danger to health. There were two kinds of corrupt
bed-stuffs “contagious for mannys body to lye on,” firstly, scalded
feathers and dry pulled feathers together; and secondly, flocks and
feathers together. Besides these, quilts, mattresses and cushions
stuffed with horse hair, fen down, neat’s hair, deer’s hair and goat’s
hair, “which is wrought in lyme fattes,” give out by the heat of man’s
body, a savour and taste so abominable and contagious that many of the
King’s subjects thereby have been destroyed. These corrupt and
unlawful stuffs and wares might indeed be made by any person or
persons for their own proper use in their houses, so they be not
offered for sale in fairs or markets.

The reign of Henry VIII. is not marked by any ordinances or Acts for the restraint of plague or the like sickness by other than quarantine measures. The common ditch between Aldgate and the postern of the Tower was cleansed in 1519 at the charges of the city; in 1540 the Moor ditch was cleansed: and, not long before, the ditch from the Tower to Aldgate. In 1549 the ditch was again cleansed at the charges of the City Companies[626]. In April, 1552, John Shakespeare, the poet’s father, a citizen of Stratford-on-Avon in good circumstances and afterwards mayor of the town, was fined twelve pence (eight to ten shillings present value) for not removing the heap of household dirt and refuse that had accumulated in front of his own door[627]. In the records of the borough of Ipswich[628], scavengers are mentioned in the 32nd of Henry VIII. (1540): they were elected in every parish, and the gatherings of refuse ordered to be carried and laid at four places, namely: Warwick Pitts, College Yard, behind the Ditches next John Herne, and the Dikes in the Marsh. When queen Elizabeth visited Ipswich (in 1561, 1565 and 1577), she rated not only the clergy on the laxity of their behaviour, but also the civic authorities upon the filthy condition of the streets. “A marked improvement,” says the borough historian, “certainly took place in Ipswich at this period, as is incontestably shown by the constant exhortations and promulgations of laws for the preservation of cleanliness.”

In the _Description and Account of the City of Exeter_, written by John Vowell, or Hoker, chamberlain of the city and member of Parliament for it in the reign of Elizabeth[629], we find the following about the offices and duties of scavengers “as of old.”

They are “necessary officers who cannot be wanting in any
well-governed city or town, because by them and their service all
things noisome to the health of man, and hurtful to the state of the
body of the commonwealth, are advertised unto the magistrate, and so
they be the means of the redress thereof. And therefore they be called
Scavengers, as who saith Shewers or Advertisers, for so the word
soundeth.” Among other duties they had the oversight of pavements,
that they were swept weekly, of slaughter-houses, dunghills and the
like, of dangerous buildings and of encroachments upon the streets,
of chimneys, and of precautions against fires (tubs of water to be in
readiness at the doors to quench fires and cleanse the streets); and
on Sundays they had to attend the mayor of Exeter to the church of St
Peter’s.

These officers of the municipality discharged their duties, says the Elizabethan writer, “as of old;” from which we may conclude that some such regulation had existed from quite early times. The scavengers are mentioned by Stow at the end of his account of each City ward along with other officers. We have already seen, from the court rolls of the manor of Castle Combe under the year 1427, that villagers were fined or admonished for creating nuisances. A sudden revival of zeal in that way at Castle Combe in the year 1590 may have been due to the vigorous sanitary policy of Elizabeth’s government:

“And that the inhabitants of the West Strete doe remove the donge or
fylth at John Davis house ende before the feaste of Seynct Andrew
th’apostell next, and that they lay no more there within x foote of
the wey, sub poena iii s iiii d.

“And that none shall lay any duste or any other fylth in the wey or
pitte belowe Cristopher Besas house, sub poena pro quolibet tempore
xii d.

“And that none shall soyle in the church yerde nor in any of our
stretes, for every defaulte to lose xii d.

“And that the glover shall not washe any skynes, nor cast any other
fylth or soyle in the water runnynge by his house, sub poena x
s[630].”

There is an interval of a century and a half between the two instances of sanitary vigour adduced from the Castle Combe manor court; but there is no reason to believe that the tradition of common cleanliness ever lapsed altogether, in that or in any other village or town of the country.

Some part of the rather unfair opinion as to the foulness of English life in former times may be traced to a well-known letter by Erasmus to the physician of cardinal Wolsey. There are grounds for believing that Erasmus must have judged from somewhat unfavourable instances.