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.)