A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 1 (of 2): From A.D. 664 to the Extinction of PlagueCreighton, Charles
History
A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 1 (of 2): From A.D. 664 to the Extinction of Plague
Creighton, Charles
Epidemics -- Great Britain -- History
4. The increase of buildings about the Charterhouse, Mile End Fields;
also at St Katherine’s along the water side.
5. The pestering of exempt places with strangers and foreign
artificers.
6. The number of strangers in and about London of no church.
7. The haunting of plays out of the Liberties.
8. The killing of cattle within or near the city.
The best glimpses that we get of the plague in London in 1578 are in
letters to Lord Burghley[671]. On October 22, the Recorder of London, Sir
W. Fleetwood, writes to him that he “has been in Bucks since Michaelmas,
because he was troubled every day with such as came to him having plague
sores about them; and being sent by the Lords to search for lewd persons
in sundry places, he found dead corses under the table, which surely did
greatly annoy him.” It will be seen by the statistics that the deaths from
all causes had risen to more than three hundred in a week before
Michaelmas--a small mortality compared with that of 1563, or of any other
London epidemic of the first degree. From other letters, relating to
plague at St Albans, Ware and other places near London, it may be
concluded that the citizens had escaped from London to their usual country
resorts in plague-time. On August 30 there were said to be sixty cases of
plague at St Albans, and on October 13 Ware is said to have been “of late”
infected. Plague-deaths are entered also in the Hertford parish registers
in 1577 and 1578[672]. On 14 September the infection was in the “Bull” at
Hoddesdon (Herts), but the landlord refused to close his house against
travellers on their way to the Court. On Oct. 13, 1578, two deaths are
reported from Queens’ College, Cambridge, “the infection being taken by
the company of a Londoner in Stourbridge Fair;” these two deaths had
“moved many to depart” from the University[673]. In the same month it was
at Bury St Edmunds. Earlier in the year, a letter from Truro (11 April)
says that the plague was prevalent in Cornwall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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