Chapter VI: Plague in the Tudor Period (4)

The epidemic of plague, which reached its height in the year 1593, began to be felt in London in the autumn of 1592[699], and is said to have caused 2000 deaths before the end of the year. On the 7th September, soldiers from the north on their way to Southampton to embark for foreign parts had to pass round London “to avoid the infection which is much spread abroad” in the city. On the 16th September, the spoil of a great Spanish carrack at Dartmouth could be brought no farther than Greenwich, on account of the contagion in London; no one to go from London to Dartmouth to buy the goods. It was an ominous sign that the infection lasted through the winter; even in mid winter people were leaving London: “the plague is so sore that none of worth stay about these places[700].” On the 6th April, 1593, one William Cecil who had been kept in the Fleet prison by the queen’s command, writes that “the place where he lies is a congregation of the unwholesome smells of the town, and the season contagious, so many have died of the plague[701].” From a memorial of 1595, it appears that the neighbourhood of Fleet Ditch had been the most infected part of the whole city and liberties in 1593; “in the last great plague more died about there than in three parishes besides[702].” The epidemic does not appear to have reached its height until summer; on 12th June, a letter states that “the plague is very hot in London and other places of the realm, so that a great mortality is expected this summer.” On 3 July the Court “is in out places, and a great part of the household cut off [? dispensed with].” The infection is mentioned in letters down to November, after which date its public interest, at least, appears to have ceased.

Of that London epidemic a weekly record was kept by the Company of Parish Clerks, and published by them, beginning with the weekly bill of 21st December, 1592. The clerk of the Company of Parish Clerks, writing in 1665, had the annual bill for 1593 before him, with the plague-deaths and other deaths in each of 109 parishes in alphabetical order, and the christenings as well[703]. For the next two years, 1594 and 1595, he appears to have had before him not only the annual bills but also a complete set of the weekly bills of burials and christenings according to parishes. The same documents were used by Graunt in 1662, and had doubtless been used by John Stow at the time when they were published. The originals are all lost, and only a few totals extracted from them remain on record. To begin with Stow’s. The mortality of 17,844 from all causes in 1593 is given as for the City and Liberties only. But there was already a considerable population in the parishes immediately beyond the Bars of the Liberties, which were known as the nine out-parishes, namely those of St Clement Danes, St Giles in the Fields, St James, Clerkenwell, St Katharine at the Tower, St Leonard, Shoreditch, St Martin in the Fields, St Mary, Whitechapel, St Magdalen, Bermondsey, and the Savoy. Besides these there were important parishes still farther out--the Westminster parishes, Lambeth, Newington, Stepney, Hackney and Islington. Of these, Whitechapel, Stepney, Shoreditch, Clerkenwell and some of the western parishes contributed largely to the plague-bills of the epidemics next following, in 1603 and 1625, and it is known from the parish registers of some of them that they contributed to the mortality of 1593. It is probably to these parishes that we should ascribe the difference between the above total of 17,844 (for City and Liberties) and the much larger total of deaths “in and about London,” given on the margin of a broadside of 1603: “And in the last visitation from the 20th of December, 1592 to the 23rd of the same month in the year 1593, died in all 25,886--of the plague in and about London 15,003.” The addition for the parishes beyond the Bars would thus be 8,042 deaths from all causes, and from plague alone 4,541--numbers which will seem not inadmissible if they be compared with the figures for the corresponding parishes ten years after, in 1603, Stepney alone having had 2,257 deaths in that plague-year[704].

For the two years next following 1593, Graunt’s book of 1662 has preserved the totals of deaths from all causes and from plague in the 97 old parishes within the walls and in 16 parishes of the Liberties and suburbs; he has omitted the christenings, although he had the figures before him. Taking these along with the figures already given for 1593, we get the following table for three consecutive years:

----------------------------------------------
| Plague | Other | Total |
Year | deaths | deaths | deaths | Christenings
-----|--------|--------|--------|-------------
1593 | 10,662 | 7,182 | 17,844 | 4,021
1594 | 421 | 3,508 | 3,929 | --
1595 | 29 | 3,478 | 3,507 | --
----------------------------------------------

The proportion of mortality in 1593 that fell to the old area within the walls is known, from Stow’s abstract of the figures, to have been about the same as in the space of the Liberties (8598 in the one, 9295 in the other), the deaths from other causes than plague having been rather more in the latter than within the walls. Probably the population in the Liberties was about equal to that in the City proper, the acreage being rather less in the former, but the crowding, doubtless, greater.

The London plague of 1592-93 called forth two known publications, an anonymous ‘Good Councell against the Plague, showing sundry preservatives ... to avoyde the infection lately begun in some places of this Cittie’ (London, 1592), and the ‘Defensative’ of Simon Kellwaye (April, 1593). The dates of these two books show that the alarm had really begun in the end of 1592 and early months of 1593. Kellwaye’s book is mostly an echo of foreign writings, the only part of it with direct interest for English practice being the 11th chapter, which “teacheth what orders magistrates and rulers of Citties and townes shoulde cause to be observed.” As that chapter sums up the various Elizabethan and other orders, and constitutes a short epitome of sanitary practice, I append it in full:

“Teacheth what orders magistrates and rulers of Citties and townes
shoulde cause to be observed.

1. First to command that no stinking doonghills be suffered neere the
Cittie.

2. Every evening and morning in the hot weather to cause colde water
to be cast in the streetes, especially where the infection is, and
every day to cause the streets to be kept cleane and sweete, and
clensed from all filthie thinges which lye in the same.

3. And whereas the infection is entred, there to cause fires to be
made in the streetes every morning and evening, and if some
frankincense, pitch or some other sweet thing be burnt therein it will
be much the better.

4. Suffer not any dogs, cattes, or pigs to run about the streets, for
they are very dangerous, and apt to carry the infection from place to
place.

5. Command that the excrements and filthy things which are voided from
the infected places be not cast into the streets, or rivers which are
daily in use to make drink or dress meat.

6. That no Chirurgions, or barbers, which use to let blood, do cast
the same into the streets or rivers.

7. That no vautes or previes be then emptied, for it is a most
dangerous thing.

8. That all Inholders do every day make clean their stables, and cause
the doong and filth therein to be carryed away out of the Cittie; for,
by suffering it in their houses, as some do use to do, a whole week or
fortnight, it doth so putrifie that when it is removed, there is such
a stinking savour and unwholesome smell, as is able to infect the
whole street where it is.

9. To command that no hemp or flax be kept in water neere the Cittie
or towne, for that will cause a very dangerous and infectious savour.

10. To have a speciall care that good and wholesome victuals and corne
be solde in the markets, and so to provide that no want thereof be in
the Cittie, and for such as have not wherewithall to buy necessary
food, that there to extend their charitable and goodly devotion; for
there is nothing that will more encrease the plague than want and
scarcity of necessary food.

11. To command that all those which do visit and attend the sick, as
also all those which have the sickness on them, and do walk abroad:
that they do carry something in their hands, thereby to be known from
other people.

Lastly, if the infection be in but few places, there to keep all the
people in their houses, all necessaries being brought to them. When
the plague is staid, then to cause all the clothes, bedding, and other
such things as were used about the sick to be burned, although at the
charge of the rest of the inhabitants you buy them all new.”

The letters of the time give us a glimpse of this plague in London. On November 3, 1593, Richard Stapes writes to Dr Cæsar, judge of the Admiralty Court, residing at St Albans (doubtless to escape the infection): “My next door neighbour and tenant on Sunday last buried his servant of the plague, and since, on the other side of me, my son-in-law has buried his servant; but I cannot say his was the sickness because the visitors reported that the tokens did not appear on him as on the other[705].”

The epidemic of 1592-93 continued in London at a low level into the year 1594, when 421 persons died of the plague in the City and Liberties. Next year the plague-deaths had fallen to 29. Watford and Hertford, two of the most usual resorts of Londoners in a sickly season, were infected by plague from 1592 to 1594, many of the deaths being of refugees from the capital. At Watford there were 124 burials in the first eight months of 1594, a number much above the average, and many of them marked in the register as plague-deaths[706]. At Hertford plague-deaths appear in the registers of All Saints and St Andrew’s parishes in 1592 and 1594. But the greatest mortality at Hertford was in 1596; in St Andrew’s parish there were 13 burials in March, the average being one or two in the month; the mortality declined until July, in which month there were buried, among others, between the 12th and 26th, five children of one of the chief burgesses (mayor in 1603)[707]. These may or may not have been plague-deaths, the year 1596 having been unhealthy, as we shall see, with other types of sickness.

Meanwhile, in several provincial towns at a greater distance from the capital than the summer resorts in Hertfordshire, there was plague in the end of 1592, at the same time as in London, and in the following years. At Derby, “the great plague and mortality” began in All Saints parish and in St Alkmund’s, at Martinmas, 1592, and ended at Martinmas, 1593, stopping suddenly, “past all expectation of man, what time it was dispersed in every corner of this whole parish, not two houses together being free from it[708].” At Lichfield in 1593 and 1594 upwards of 1100 are said to have died of the plague[709]. At Leicester, on the 21st September, 1593, a contribution was levied for the plague-stricken[710]. At Shrewsbury in 1592-3 there was either plague itself or alarms of it[711]; in the parish of Bishop’s Castle there was the enormous mortality of 135 in July and August, 1593, and 182 burials for the year, the average being 25[712]. In the same years the infection was in Canterbury, as appears from entries of payments “to Goodman Ledes watchying at Anthony Howes dore ... when his house was first infected with the plague,” and, the year after, “to those ii pore folkes which were appointed to carry such to burial as died of the plague; and also to the woman that was appointed to sock them[713].” There are also various references to houses visited and to poor persons relieved. Nottingham and Lincoln are also mentioned as having been notoriously afflicted with plague in 1593[714].

A solitary record of plague comes from Cornwall in 1595. On 3rd May a letter from the justices at Tregony to the Privy Council states that the inhabitants, having been charged by the justices at the General Sessions to restrain divers infected houses within the borough, were molested in executing these commands, and had made complaint thereof[715].

All that remains to be said of plague in England until the end of the Tudor period (1603) relates exclusively to the provinces; unless the records are defective, London was clear of plague for nine years following 1592-94, just as it was clear for nine years preceding. The year 1597 was one of great scarcity in more than one region of England. At Bristol wheat is quoted at the incredible figure of twenty shillings the bushel; a civic ordinance was made that every person of ability should keep in his house as many poor persons as his income would allow[716]. But it is from the North of England in 1597 that we have more particular accounts of famine and of plague in its train. Writing in January, 1597, the dean of Durham says[717]:

“Want and waste have crept into Northumberland, Westmoreland and
Cumberland; many have come 60 miles from Carlisle to Durham to buy
bread, and sometimes for 20 miles there will be no inhabitant. In the
bishopric of Durham, 500 ploughs have decayed in a few years, and corn
has to be fetched from Newcastle, whereby the plague is spread in the
northern counties: tenants cannot pay their rents; then whole families
are turned out, and poor boroughs are pestered with four or five
families under one roof.”

On the 16th of January, 1597, he wrote again: “In Northumberland great villages are depeopled, and there is no way to stop the enemy’s attempt; the people are driven to the poor port towns.” On the 26th of May, the dean again complains that there is great dearth in Durham; some days 500 horses are at Newcastle for foreign corn, although that town and Gateshead are dangerously infected. On the 17th September, Lord Burghley, minister of State, is informed that the plague increases at Newcastle, so that the Commissioners cannot yet come thither (the Assizes were not held at all on account of plague about Newcastle and Durham): foreign traders were selling corn at a high price, until some members of the town council produced a stock of corn for sale at a shilling a bushel less[718]. There are no figures extant of the plague-mortality at Newcastle in 1597; but at Darlington the deaths up to October 17 were 340; and in Durham, up to October 27, more than 400 in Elvet, 100 in St Nicholas, 200 in St Margaret’s, 60 in St Giles’s, 60 in St Mary’s, North Bailey, and 24 in the gaol. The whole mortality in St Nicholas parish from July 11 to November 27 was 215. Many of the burials were on the moor. The infection broke out again at Darlington and Durham in September, 1598[719].

Coincident with this severe plague on the eastern side, there was an equally disastrous plague in the North Riding of Yorkshire and in Cumberland and Westmoreland. The plague began at Richmond in the autumn of 1597. In August there were 23 deaths, and in September 42 deaths. The epidemic appears to have reached its height in the summer of 1598, the deaths in May having been 93, in June 99, in July 182 and in August 194. These figures indicate a grievous calamity in so small a place as Richmond. The outbreak which began on the 17th August, 1597, was over in December, 1598. The stress of the epidemic is shown by the fact that the churchyard was insufficient for the burials, many of the dead having been buried in the Castle Yard and in Clarke’s Green[720]. Of this severe plague in Cumberland and Westmoreland there are few exact particulars. According to an inscription at Penrith Church, “on the north outside of the vestry, in the wall, in rude characters[721],” the deaths in 1598 were:--

At Penrith 2260,
" Kendal 2500,
" Richmond 2200,
" Carlisle 1196.

We are able to measure the accuracy of these round totals by the monthly burials for Richmond given above; the months of July and August, 1598, with 182 and 194 deaths respectively, were the most deadly season; and it is hardly conceivable that there had been as many as 1800 deaths at Richmond in the months when the epidemic was rising to a height and declining therefrom according to its usual curve of intensity.

Again, the parish register of Penrith gives only 583 deaths from the infection, the inscription on the church wall making them 2260. Perhaps the discrepancy is to be explained by including the mortality in the various parishes of which Richmond, Penrith, Kendal and Carlisle were respectively the centres and market-towns. Thus at Kirkoswald there were buried, according to the parish register, 42 of the pestilence in 1597, and no fewer than 583 in 1598[722],--a number which, if correct, means a death-rate comparable to that of the Black Death itself. Again, in the small parish of Edenhall, 42 were buried of the pestilence in 1598[723]. Appleby, also, is known to have had a severe visitation[724], and so had probably many other parishes.

The Tudor period of plague closes with a severe epidemic at Stamford, which began in the end of 1602. On December 2 the corporation resolved to build a cabin for the plague-stricken, and in January following they levied a fourth part of a fifteenth for the relief and maintenance of people visited with the plague. This epidemic is said to have carried off nearly 600; the parish registers of St George’s and St Michael’s contain entries of persons “buried at the cabbin of the White Fryers[725].”

Plague in Scotland, 1495-1603.

The history of plague in Scotland subsequent to the medieval period is of interest chiefly as affording early illustrations of the practice of quarantine. We last saw the disease prevailing in or near Edinburgh in 1475, the island of Inchkeith, in the Firth of Forth, being used as a quarantine station. It was doubtless the possession of convenient islands near the capital--Inch Colm and Inch Garvie were both used for the same purpose afterwards--that led the Scots government to follow the example of Venice and other foreign cities at no long interval of time. When we next hear of plague in Scotland it is again in connexion with infected persons on the island of Inchkeith and in the town of Leith, some time between 13th August, 1495, and 4th July, 1496[726].

But these quarantine practices were not confined to the Firth of Forth. On the 17th May, 1498, the town of Aberdeen was warned by proclamation of the bell of certain measures to be taken so as to preserve the town from the pestilence “and strange sickness abefore,” the principal precaution being a guard of citizens at each of the four gates during the day, and that the gates be “lockit with lokis and keis” at night. The “strange sickness abefore” is doubtless the other invasion (of syphilis) which the aldermen tried to check by an order of April, 1497; but “the pestilence” in the order of May 1498 must have been the plague itself[727]. Nothing more is heard of it at Aberdeen or elsewhere in Scotland in that year. It appears to have been somewhat general in Scotland in 1499 and 1500. The audit of burgh accounts, mostly held in June, 1499, was postponed to January 1500 in some cases, the bailie of North Berwick explaining that he was prevented by the plague from coming to the Exchequer[728]. An extra allowance is made to the comptroller, Sir Patrick Hume, in March 1500, “for his great labour in collecting fermes in different parts of the kingdom in time of the infection of the plague.” At Peebles, hides and woolfells were destroyed during the plague of 1499. There was a renewal of it in 1500, the audit being again delayed until November. The custumar of Aberdeen brings his account of the great customs of that burgh down only to the 3rd July, 1500, “because after that date the accountant, from dread of the plague, did not enter the burgh of Aberdeen[729].”

It is from the same northern city that our information on plague in Scotland comes exclusively for the next forty-five years, not, of course, because its experience was singular, but because its borough records are known[730].

On the 24th April, 1514, various orders were made at Aberdeen against a disease that seems to have been the plague: “for keeping of the town from strange sickness, and specially this contagious pestilence ringand in all parts about this burgh;” and, again, watching the gates (as in 1498) against persons “coming forth of suspect places where this violent and contagious pestilence reigns.” Lodges were erected on the Links and Gallow-hill, where the infected or suspected were to remain for forty days. In the following year (1515), sixteen persons were banished from the town for a year and a day for disobeying the orders “anent the plague.” On the 27th July, 1530, these orders are renewed “for evading this contagious pestilence reigning in the country.” On September 15, 1539 (the year after a plague in the North of England), the plague is called in the municipal orders by a distinctive name: the orders are for avoiding the “contagius infeckand pest callit the boiche, quilk ryngis in diverse partis of the same [realm] now instantly”--the botch being a name given to plague in England also as late as the Elizabethan and Stuart periods.

The years 1545 and 1546 were also plague-years in Scotland. At a council held at Stirling on the 14th June, 1545, the session of the law courts was transferred to Linlithgow “because of the fear of the pest that is lately reigning in the town of Edinburgh[731].” On 10th September, of the same year, the town council of Aberdeen issued orders for evading the pest. On September 18 the plague was in the English army at Warkeshaugh, and it is reported from Newcastle, on 5 October, to be raging on the borders[732]. On March 21, 1546, a house in Aberdeen was shut up for the pest; and there are evidences of its continuance in August, October and December both in that town and “in certain parts of the realm:” on the 11th October the St Nicholas “braid silver” was given for the sustentation of the sick folk of the pest; on the 17th December an Aberdonian named David Spilzelaucht was ordered to be “brint on the left hand with ane het irne” for not showing the bailies “the seiknes of his barne, quilk was seik in the pest[733].” In November, 1548, the plague is at St Johnstone (Perth), and the Rhinegrave, with troops there, sick of it and like to die[734].

In 1564 the Scots Privy Council ordered quarantine for arrivals from Denmark, in the manner that was practised on merchandise for nearly three centuries after. As these early practices in the Forth are curiously like those that used to be practised in the Medway in the eighteenth century, I shall quote a part of the order of the Scots Privy Council, dated, Edinburgh, September 23, 1564[735]:

“That is to say, becaus maist danger apperis to be amangis the lynt,
that the samyn be loissit, and houssit in Sanct Colm’s Inche,
oppynout, handillet and castin forth to the wynd every uther fair day,
quhill the feist of Martimes nixt to cum, be sic visitouris and
clengearis as sal be appointit and deput thairto be the Provest,
Baillies and Counsall of the burgh of Edinburgh upoun the expensis of
the marchantis, ownaris of the saidis gudis. And as concerning the
uther gudis, pik, tar, irine, tymmer, that the samyn be clengeit be
owir flowing of the sey, at one or twa tydis, the barrellis of asse to
be singit with huddir set on fyre, and that the schippis be borit and
the sey wattir to haif interes into thame, to the owir loft, and all
the partis within to be weschin and clengeit; and siclike that the
marinaris and utheris that sall loase and handill the gudis above
written, be clengeit and kepit apart be thameselffis for ane tyme, at
the discretioun of the saidis visitouris, and licenses to be requirit
had and obtenit of the saidis Provest, Baillies and Counsall before
they presume to resort opinlie or quietlie amangis oure Soverane
Ladeis fre liegis.”

The same autumn another foul ship from the Baltic arrived and entered the port of Leith in evasion of quarantine; the master and others are to be apprehended and kept in prison until justice be done upon them for the offence[736].

A severe outbreak of plague in Scotland in the year 1568 gave occasion to the first native treatise upon the disease in the English tongue, the essay by Dr Gilbert Skene, at one time lecturer on medicine at King’s College, Aberdeen, but probably removed before 1568 to Edinburgh, where he became physician to James VI.[737] The author says that the plague has “lately entered” the country, and he is led to write upon it in the vulgar tongue for the benefit of those who could not afford to pay for skilled advice, or could not get it on any terms: “Medecineirs are mair studious of their awine helthe nor of the common weilthe.” The panic caused by the plague must have been considerable: “Specialie at this time whan ane abhorris ane other in sic maneir as gif nothing of humanitie was restand but all consumit, euery ane abydand diffaent of ane other.”

Although Skene’s treatise bears numerous traces of the influence of foreign writers on plague, the same being freely acknowledged in the section of prescriptions and regimen, yet the book is much better than a mere compilation. Thus, under the causes of plague, he gives the stock recital of blazing stars, south-winds, corrupt standing waters, and the like; but in mentioning, as others do, dead carrion unburied, he adds that the corrupting human body is most dangerous of all “by similitude of nature.”

A season favourable to plague is marked by continual wet in the last
part of Spring or beginning of Summer, without wind, and with great
heat and turbid musty air.

Anticipating a remark by Thomas Lodge in 1603, and a common experience
as regards rats in the recent plagues of various parts of India and
China, he points out that the mole (moudewart) and serpent leave the
earth, being molested by the vapour contained within the bowels of the
same. “If the domesticall fowlis become pestilential, it is ane sign
of maist dangerous pest to follow.” Among the spots that are most
pestilential are those near standing water, or where many dead are
buried, the ground being fat and vaporative. Of the duration of
infection: “na pest continuallie induris mair than three yeris,”
according to the principle of “rosten ance can not be made raw
againe.”

The diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment are given fully and in
systematic scholarly order. I give the following long extract on the
signs and symptoms of plague, as being the first native account of the
disease in this country:

_Quhairby corrupt be pest may be knawin._

Thair is mony notis quhilkis schawis ane man infectit be pest. First
gif the exteriour partis of the bodie be caulde, and the interiour
partis of the bodie vehement hait. As gif the hoill bodie be heavie
with oft scharpe punctiounis, stinkand sweiting, tyritnes of bodie,
ganting of mowthe, detestable brathe with greit difficultie, at
sumtyme vehement fever rather on nycht nor day. Greit doloure of heid
with heavynes, solicitude and sadnes of mynd: greit displesour with
sowning, quhairefter followis haistelie deth. As greit appetit and
propensnes to sleip albeit on day, raving and walking occupeis the
last. Cruell inspectioun of the ene, quhilkis apperis of sindre
colouris maist variant, dolour of the stomak, inlak of appetite,
vehement doloure of heart, with greit attractioun of Air; intolerable
thirst, frequent vomitting of divers colouris or greit appetit by
daylie accustum to vomit without effecte: Bitternes of mowth and toung
with blaiknit colour thairof and greit drouth: frequent puls small and
profund, quhais urine for the maist part is turbide thik and stinkand,
or first waterie, colourit thairefter of bilious colour, last confusit
and turbide, or at the beginning is zallow inclyning to greine (callit
citrine collour) and confusit, thairefter becummis reid without
contentis. Albeit sum of thir properteis may be sene in haile mennis
water, quhairby mony are deceavit abydand Helth of the patient, quhan
sic water is maist manifest sing of deth, because the haill venome and
cause conjunit thar with, leavand the naturall partis occupeis the
hart and nobillest interioure partis of the body. Last of all and
maiste certane, gif with constant fever, by the earis, under the
oxstaris, or by the secrete membres maist frequentlie apperis
apostumis callit Bubones, without ony other manifest cause, or gif the
charbunkil apperis hastelie in ony other part, quhilk gif it dois, in
the begining, testifies strenthe of nature helth, and the laitter sic
thingis appeir, and apperand, it is the mair deidlie. At sumtym in ane
criticall day mony accidentis apperis--principalie vomiteing, spitting
of blude, with sweit, flux of womb, bylis, scabe, with dyvers others
symptomis maist heavie and detestable.”

The signs of death in pestilential persons are as follow:

“Sowning, cold sweats, vomiting; excrements corrupt, teuch; urine
black, or colour of lead. Cramp, convulsion of limbs, imperfection of
speech and stinking breath, colic, swelling of the body as in dropsy,
visage of divers colours, red spots quickly discovering and covering
themselves.”

The great plague which was the occasion of Skene’s writing, probably the most severe that Edinburgh experienced, entered that city on the 8th September, 1568, having been brought, it was said, by “ane called James Dalgliesh, merchant[738].” A letter of 21st September, from the bishop of Orkney, then in Edinburgh, to his brother-in-law Sir Archibald Napier of Merchiston, whose house was near the plague-huts erected on the Muir, refers to the infection as then active:

“By the number of sick folk that gaes out of the town, the muir is
liable to be overspread; and it cannot be but, through the nearness of
your place and the indigence of them that are put out, they sall
continually repair about your room, and through their conversation
infect some of your servants.” He advises him to withdraw to a house
on the north side. “And close up your houses, your granges, your barns
and all, and suffer nae man come therein while it please God to put
ane stay to this great plague[739].”

The following account of Edinburgh practices in plague-times is given by Chambers[740]:

“According to custom in Edinburgh the families which proved to be
infected were compelled to remove, with all their goods and furniture,
out to the Burgh-moor, where they lodged in wretched huts hastily
erected for their accommodation. They were allowed to be visited by
their friends, in company with an officer, after eleven in the
forenoon; anyone going earlier was liable to be punished with
death--as were those who concealed the pest in their houses. Their
clothes were meanwhile purified by boiling in a large caldron erected
in the open air, and their houses were clensed by the proper officers.
All these regulations were under the care of two citizens selected for
the purpose, and called _Bailies of the Muir_; for each of whom, as
for the cleansers and bearers of the dead, a gown of gray was made,
with a white St Andrew’s Cross before and behind. Another arrangement
of the day was ‘that there be made twa close biers, with four feet,
coloured over with black, and [ane] white cross with ane bell, to be
hung upon the side of the said bere, which sall mak warning to the
people.’”

The same writer says that the plague lasted in Edinburgh until February, 1569, and that it was reported to have carried off 2500 of the inhabitants. The plague-stricken in the Canongate were sent to huts “on the hill” and money was collected for their support[741].

The plague of 1574 was again chiefly along the shores of the Firth of Forth. It came to Leith on October 14th, it was said by a passenger from England, and several died in that town before its existence was known at large. On October 24th it entered Edinburgh, “brought in by ane dochter of Malvis Curll out of Kirkcaldy[742].” On the 29th October the town council of Glasgow ordered that no one should be allowed to enter from Leith, Kirkcaldy, Dysart, Burntisland and Edinburgh (in respect of Bellis Wynd only), and that no one in Glasgow was to repair to Edinburgh without a pass[743]. Two days after (October 31st) the Scots Privy Council, at Dalkeith, issued an order to check the spreading of the plague landwards “through the departure of sick folk and foul persons:” no one to conceal the existence of plague, and the infected “to cloise thame selffis in[744].” On November 14th the sittings of the Court of Session were suspended owing to pest within some parts of Edinburgh, in Leith, and some towns and parts of the north coast of Fife[745]. In December the Kirk session of Edinburgh appointed an eight days’ fast for the plague threatening the whole realm.

In January, 1577, plague is reported to be raging on the English border, causing alarm in Kirkcudbright[746]. On the 19th October, 1579, the king and council are credibly informed that “the infectioun and plague of the pistolence” is not only in divers towns and parts of the coast of England frequented by Scots shipping but also in Berwick and sundry other bounds of the East and Middle Marches of England; the markets at Duns and Kelso are therefore forbidden, and traders not to repair to infected places or to break bulk of their wares[747]. Next year, 1580, on September 10th, a ship laden with lint and hemp from “Danske,” with forty persons on board, including seven Edinburgh merchants, arrived in the Forth, and was quarantined for many weeks at Inchcolm; the master and several others died of plague, and the survivors were transferred in November, some to Inchkeith and some to Inchgarvie, the ship being still at Inchcolm in a leaky state. On November 22 a vessel which had come down the Tay with plague-stricken inhabitants of Perth, some of whom were dead, and with their goods and gear, was ordered to the Isle of May[748].

One of the most serious epidemics of plague in Scotland was from 1584 to 1588. It was said to have been brought to Wester Wemyss, in Fife, by a certain “creare;” but it was in some other places at the same time, and was probably a revival of old seeds of the disease. On July 28th the Privy Council issued orders that beggars and tramps should be kept from wandering about[749]. On the 24th September, 27th October, 4th November, and the 11th December, the Privy Council issued order after order to stop all traffic, unless by licence, from Fife, Perth, and other places north of the Forth; sails were to be taken out of the ferry-boats at all ferries except Burntisland and Aberdour, and eventually at these also, Leith and Pettycur being left free[750]. For Perth we have some particulars of this great outbreak. From the 24th September, 1584, to August, 1585, there died 1437 persons, young and old[751]. It was also in Dysart and other parts of Fife through the winter of 1584-85[752].

The infection appeared at Edinburgh about the 1st of May, 1585, in the Flesh Mercat Close by the infection of a woman who had been in St Johnstone (Perth) where the plague was[753]. On the 18th May orders were issued to Edinburgh to remove all filth, filthy beasts and carrion forth of the highways, and the same to be cleansed and kept clean. On the 23rd June the coining-house was removed to Dundee, and the Court of Session transferred to Stirling[754]. The plague next broke out in Dundee, whence the mint was removed to Perth. At St Andrews it appeared in August, 1585, and became a severe epidemic, causing the dispersion of the students, and continuing so long that the miserable state and poverty of the town are in part ascribed, in a petition of March 24, 1593, to the plague[755]. Upwards of four hundred are said to have died of it there[756]. The state of sickness was much aggravated by wet harvest weather. In Edinburgh it continued through the winter until January, 1586, sometimes carrying off twenty-four in a single night: “the haill people, whilk was able to flee, fled out of the town; nevertheless there died of people which were not able to flee, fourteen hundred and some odd” (Birell). James Melville, riding in November from Berwick to Linlithgow, entered Edinburgh by the Water-Gate of the Abbey at eleven o’clock in the forenoon and rode up “through the Canongate, and in at the Nether Bow through the great street of Edinburgh to the West Port, in all whilk way we saw not three persons, sae that I miskenned Edinburgh, and almost forgot that I had ever seen sic a town[757].” The same year it was unusually severe at Duns[758]. In the winter of 1586-7, “the pest abated and began to be strangely and remarkably withdrawn by the merciful hand of God, so that Edinburgh was frequented again that winter, and at the entry of the spring all the towns, almost desolate before, repeopled, and St Andrews among the rest[759].”

In the harvest of 1587 “the pest brake up in Leith, by opening up of some old kists,” and in Edinburgh about the 4th November. It continued in those two towns till Candlemas, 1588[760]. On April 26, 1588, the infection is reported anew from Edinburgh, threatening the law session[761]. In October, 1588, it was at Paisley, causing alarm in Glasgow[762].

On the 8th August, 1593, a ship from an English port, with persons and goods suspected of the plague, was quarantined at Inchcolm[763]. Four years after, on the 6th August, 1597, “the pest began in Leith[764].” Twelve days after, August 18, the Privy Council declared that divers inhabitants of sundry towns near Edinburgh were infected, and that the disease was suspected to be in the capital itself[765]. Many fled from Edinburgh, but the epidemic was over by the end of harvest[766].

In the winter of 1598, the plague which was in Cumberland extended to Dumfries, and caused great decay of trade, and even scarcity of food[767]. On the 12th October, 1600, a petition from Dundee declares that the plague of the pest had “entered and broken up within the town of Findorne[768].” Findhorn had been only one of several places infected in that locality; for in December, the Kirk session of Aberdeen ordered a fast “in respect of the fearful infection of the plague spread abroad in divers parts of Moray[769].”

On the 24th November, 1601, the parishes of Eglishawe, Eastwood, and Pollok, in Renfrewshire, and the town of Crail in Fife are declared infected, and ordered to be shut up. On the 28th of the same month it was in the barony of Calderwood, and on the 21st December, in Glasgow. It increased daily in Crail in January, 1602, and suspects were put out on the muir, so that they wandered to sundry parts of Fife. It still continued in Glasgow, and had appeared at Edinburgh before the 4th of February: the town council built shielings and lodgings for the sick of the plague in the lands of Schenis (Sciennes) belonging to Napier, of Merchiston, without his leave, having ploughed up the old plague-muir, and let it for their profit: against the plague-shelters Napier protested on the 11th March. By the 1st of May it had ceased in Edinburgh, and a solemn thanksgiving was held on the 20th (Birell). A ship owned in Crail arrived in the Forth on 30th July, 1602, from “Danske,” with three or four dead of the plague, and was quarantined at Inchkeith. In April, 1603, James VI. left for England, to assume the English[770] crown, with which event we resume in another chapter the eventful history of Plague under the Stuarts.

Meanwhile, in the foregoing records of plague in Scotland, the absolute immunity of Aberdeen in the latter half of the sixteenth century is remarkable. It does not depend on any imperfection of the records; for, under the year 1603, the borough register contains this entry[771]: “It has pleasit the guidness of God of his infinite mercy to withhauld the said plague frae this burgh this fifty-five years bygane”--that is to say, since the winter of 1546-47, when David Spilzelaucht was burned on the left hand with a hot iron for concealing a case of plague in one of his children. The northern city may have owed its immunity to various causes; but there can be no question of the Draconian rigour of its decrees against the plague. Following the example of queen Elizabeth at Windsor in 1563, the magistrates in May, 1585, when Perth, Edinburgh and many other places in Scotland were suffering severely from plague, erected three gibbets, “ane at the mercat cross, ane other at the brig of Dee, and the third at the haven mouth, that in case ony infectit person arrive or repair by sea or land to this burgh, or in case ony indweller of this burgh receive, house, or harbour, or give meat or drink to the infectit person or persons, the man be hangit and the woman drownit.”

Plague in Ireland in the Tudor period.

The accounts of plague in Ireland in the Tudor period are not many, but some of them are of interest. The province of Munster is said to have had a pestilence raging in it in 1504, evidently not a famine-fever, for the dearth, and mortality therefrom, came in 1505[772]. There is no doubt as to the reality of the next plague in Ireland, in 1520.

The earl of Surrey writes from Dublin to Wolsey, on the 3rd August, 1520: “There is a marvellous death in all this country, which is so sore that all the people be fled out of their houses into the fields and woods, where they in likewise die wonderfully; so that their bodies be dead like swine unburied.” On the 23rd July he had already written that there was sickness in the English pale; and on the 6th September he wrote again that the death continued in the English pale[773]. It is perhaps the same epidemic, or an extension of it, that is referred to as the plague raging in Munster in 1522[774]. On the same authority, “a most violent plague” is said to have been in the city of Cork in 1535, and “a great plague” in the same in 1547. The earlier of those dates corresponds probably to a season of ill-health in Ireland generally: “1536. This year was a sickly, unhealthy year, in which numerous diseases, viz. a general plague, and smallpox [i.e. a disease with an Irish name supposed to be smallpox], and a flux plague, and the bed-distemper prevailed exceedingly[775].” In a State letter from Ireland September 10, 1535, the prevalence of “plague” is mentioned[776].

In the winter of 1566-7, a remarkable outbreak of plague occurred among the English troops quartered around the old monastery of the Derry, at the head of Loch Foyle, where Londonderry was afterwards built. The men were landed there in October, and by November “the flux was reigning among them wonderfully.” On December 18 and January 13, many of the soldiers are dead, the rest are discontented, and provisions are short. On February 16, the sickness continues, “in this miserable place,” and on March 26, the death at the Derry is said to be by cold and infection: the survivors to be removed to Strangford Haven[777]. Only 300 men were fit for service out of 1100, and several officers of rank were dead. The men’s quarters had been built over the graveyard of the ancient abbey, and the infection of plague was ascribed at the time to the emanations from the soil[778]. The scarcity was general in Ireland that winter, and was attended by great mortality. Sir Philip Sydney, the lord deputy, writes to the queen on April 20, 1567: “Yea the view of the bones and skulls of your dead subjects who, partly by murder, partly by famine, have died in the fields is such that hardly any Christian with dry eye could behold[779].”

In 1575 there was a severe and wide-spread outbreak of plague, the localities specially named being Wexford, Dublin, Naas, Athy, Carlow, and Leighlin. The city of Dublin was as if deserted of people, so that grass grew in the streets and at the doors of churches; no term was held after Trinity, and prayers were appointed by the archbishop throughout the whole province[780]. The extremity of the plague in Ireland was such that the English troops sent by way of Chester and Holyhead had difficulty in finding a safe place to land[781]. Whether that outbreak had been connected with the military operations (as afterwards in Cromwell’s time), the information does not enable us to judge; but Chester and other places near, in direct communication with Ireland, had been visited with plague the year before (1574).