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. “We read of a city,” says Erasmus, “which was freed from continual pestilence by changes made in its buildings on the advice of a philosopher. Unless I am mistaken, England may be freed in like manner.” He then proceeds to go over the defects of English houses, and to suggest improvements. The houses were built with too little regard to the aspect of their doors and windows towards the sun. Again, they have a great part of their walls filled with panes of glass, admitting light in such wise as to keep out the wind, and yet letting in at chinks of the windows the air as if strained or percolated, and so much the more pestilential by being long stagnant. These defects he would remedy by having two or three sides of a house exposed to the sky, and all glazed windows so made that they should open wholly or shut wholly, and so shut that there might be no access of noxious winds through gaping seams; for if it be sometimes wholesome to admit the air, it is sometimes wholesome to keep it out. Inside the houses Erasmus professes to have seen a shocking state of things--the floors covered with rushes piled, the new upon the old, for twenty years without a clearance, befouled with all manner of filth, with spillings of beer and the remains of fish, with expectoration and vomit, with excrement and urine[631]. Here we have clearly to do with the intelligent foreigner. On the other hand, as far back as the reign of Richard I., Englishmen would appear to have contrasted their own personal habits with those of other nations, much as the summer tourist does now. English youths, it has been said, go through Europe with one phrase on their lips: “Foreigners don’t wash.” Richard of Devizes implies somewhat the same. A Frankish youth is being advised where to settle in England, Winchester being chosen by excluding the other towns one by one. Bristol, for example, was wholly given over to soap-boilers: everyone in Bristol was either a soap-boiler or a retired soap-boiler; “and the Franks love soap as much as they love scavengers[632].” We may cry quits, then, with Erasmus over the rush-strewn floors. It is clear, also, that the glazed fronts of English houses, which he took exception to, are the very feature of them that Sir Thomas More prided himself upon; in that as in other external things the London of his day seemed to him to leave little to be desired as the capital of Utopia, his chief subjects of remark being the shambles and the want of hospitals for the sick[633]. Thus, when we attempt to clear the sense of our rather mixed notions on the unwholesome life of former times, we must feel constrained to withdraw a great part of the accusation as to nuisances tolerated or scavenging neglected. Most of all was the government of Elizabeth marked by vigour in its attempts to restrain plague, not only by quarantine measures, but also by radical sanitation. Queen Elizabeth and her Council were baffled by the persistence of plague in London in 1581-82-83; the infection pursued its own course despite all efforts to “stamp it out,” so that the letters from the lords of the Council to the mayor begin to assume a somewhat querulous and impatient tone[634]. To a letter of remonstrance, 21st September, 1581, the mayor replied next day that every precaution had been taken. On the 22nd March, 1582, the mayor retorted upon the Court that an artificer in leather, dwelling near Fleet Bridge, had the plague in his house, that his house had been shut up, and he restrained from going out; nevertheless he had access to the Court in the things of his art, both for the queen and her household. On the 1st September, 1582, the plague having greatly increased as appeared by certificate of the number of the dead during the last week, the Privy Council informed the mayor that this was in part “by negligence in not keeping the streets and other places about the city clean, and partly through not shutting up of the houses where the sickness had been found, and setting marks upon the doors; but principally through not observing orders for prevention of the infection heretofore sent to them by the Council.” The mayor sent answer the same day that every care had been taken: the streets had been cleansed every other day; the parish clerks had been appointed to see to the shutting up of infected houses, and putting papers upon the doors; he had also appointed some of his own officers to go up and down the city to view and inform him whether these things had been done. So much did the Council believe, or affect to believe, that the mayor could control the plague if he carried out their orders, that they used the adjournment of the law courts as a threat to the city. On the 15th October, the Term was announced to be held at Hertford, and all persons from infected London houses were forbidden to repair thither with merchandise, victual, &c.[635]. Then follow in January, 1583, letters touching an impracticable attempt of the Privy Council to have a list printed of all inns and taverns that had been infected within the last two months. The mayor made a catalogue which was pronounced too long. On 21st April, 1583, the infection had much increased, and the lords of the Council again urged upon the mayor to have infected houses shut up, and provision made for feeding and maintaining the inmates thereof. They desired to express her majesty’s surprise that no house or hospital had been built without the city, in some remote place, to which the infected people might be removed, although other cities of less antiquity, fame, wealth, and reputation had provided themselves with such places, whereby the lives of the inhabitants had been in all times of infection chiefly preserved. The mayor, on 3rd May, wrote that the Court of Aldermen had published orders for the stay of the plague; but that they were comparatively powerless so long as crowds of the worst sort of people resorted to see plays, bear-baiting, fencers, and profane spectacles at the theatre, and Curtain, and other the like places. The plague pursued its own course, wholly unaffected, so far as one can see, by everything that was tried. One thing that was not touched by the sanitary policy, was probably more relevant than all else to the continuance of plague--the disposal of the dead. The theoretical importance attached to that as an original cause of plague has been avowed in the chapter on the Black Death. We have here to see how the theory of it as a favouring thing for the continuance of the infection squares with the facts in such a city as London under the Plantagenets and Tudors. The Disposal of the Dead. Intramural interment was one of the most cherished practices of Christendom so long as the word “intramural” had a literal meaning. Hence the correctness of the imagery used of the Spiritual City: “To work and watch, until we lie At rest within thy wall.” Probably each of the one hundred and twenty small parish churches of London in the medieval period stood in its small churchyard. In an exceptional time like the Black Death, these proved insufficient for the daily burials: three new cemeteries were enclosed and consecrated outside the walls--two of them in Smithfield and the other at Aldgate. These all soon passed into the hands of friars, and became the grounds of monasteries. The churches or churchyards of monasteries were in great request for burial, but not for common burials, or for burials in a time of epidemic. The ‘Vision of Piers the Ploughman’ is clear enough that the friars took no large view of their duties; they affected the care of the dead, but only if they were well paid: “For I said I nold | be buried at their house but at my parish church. | For I heard once how conscience it told | that where a man was christened by kynde [nature] he should be buried, | or where he were parishen, right there he should be graven. | And for I said this to friar, a fool they me held | and loved me the less for my lele speech | ... I have much marveil of you and so hath many another | why your convent coveteth to confess and to bury | rather than to baptise bairns that ben catechumens.” The reason why the friars paid so much attention to burials was that these rites were the most profitable: “And how that freris [friars] folowed folke that was riche | and folke that was pore at litel price they sette, | and no corps in their kirk-yerde ne in their kyrke was buried | but quick he bequeath them aught or should help quit their debts.” The friars in the towns would appear, then, to have been as much in request for the disposal of the dead within their precincts as the monks were in the country, both alike taking a certain part of that duty out of the hands of the regular parish clergy. Hence we may assign a good many burials, perhaps mostly of the richer class, as in Stow’s long lists of conventual burials, to the various precincts of Whitefriars, Blackfriars, Greyfriars (within Newgate) or Friars Minor (Minories), Carthusians, or other settlements of the religious orders in the city and liberties of London. It is not unlikely that the narrow spaces for burial in and around the old churches in the streets and lanes of the city were already getting crowded, and that the friars naturally acquired a large share of the business of burial because their consecrated houses and enclosed grounds were situated where there was most room, namely in the skirt of the Liberties, or in waste spaces within the walls. The parish churchyards within the walls became insufficient, not merely because of the generations of the dead, but because they were encroached upon. In 1465 the churchyard of St Mary le Bow in Cheapside was so encroached upon by building of houses that John Rotham or Rodham, citizen and tailor, by his will gave to the parson and churchwardens a certain garden in Hosier-lane to be a churchyard; which, says Stow, so continued near a hundred years, but now is built on and is a private man’s house[636]. In like manner there was a colony of Brabant weavers settled in the churchyard of St Mary Somerset, and the great house of the earl of Oxford stood in St Swithin’s churchyard, near London Stone. John Stow’s grandfather directed that his body should be buried “in the little green churchyard of the parish church of St Michael in Cornhill, between the cross and the church wall, as nigh the wall as may be.” For some years previous to 1582, as many as 23 of the city parishes were using St Paul’s churchyard for their dead, having parted with their own burial grounds. But in that year (letter of 3 April, 1582[637]) the number of parishes privileged to use St Paul’s churchyard was reduced to 13, the ten restrained parishes being provided for in the cemetery gifted to the city in 1569 by Sir Thomas Roe, outside Bishopsgate, “for the ease of such parishes in London as wanted ground convenient within the parishes.” The state of St Paul’s churchyard may be imagined from the words of a remonstrance made two years after, in 1584: “The burials are so many, and by reason of former burials so shallow, that scarcely any grave could be made without corpses being laid open[638].” Twenty years before, in 1564, or the year after the last great plague which we have dealt with, Medicus, one of the speakers in Bullein’s _Dialogue of the Fever Pestilence_ brings in “the multitude of graves in every churchyard, and great heaps of rotten bones, whom we know not of what degree they were, rich or poor, in their lives.” St Paul’s churchyard would appear to have received the dead of various parishes from an early date. There was a large charnel house for the bones of the dead on the north side, with a chapel over it, dedicated to the Virgin and endowed in 1282. Stow says that the chapel was pulled down in 1549, and that “the bones of the dead, couched up in a charnel under the chapel, were conveyed from thence into Finsbury field, by report of him who paid for the carriage, amounting to more than one thousand cart-loads, and there laid on a moorish ground, in short space after raised, by soilage of the city upon them, to bear three windmills. The chapel and charnel were converted into dwelling-houses, warehouses, and sheds before them, for stationers, in place of the tombs.” Elsewhere he names Reyne Wolfe, stationer, as the person who paid for the carriage of the bones and “who told me of some thousands of carry-loads, and more to be conveyed.” From this we may infer that the graves were systematically emptied as each new corpse came to be buried, according to the principle of a “short tenancy of the soil” which is being re-advocated at the end of the 19th century by the Church of England Burial Reform Association. The spaces reserved for burial around the newer parish churches in the liberties, such as St Sepulchre’s and St Giles’s, Cripplegate, were gradually pared down and let out for buildings by the parish. Stow, in his _Survey_ of 1598, says that St Sepulchre’s church stands “in a fair churchyard, although not so large as of old time, for the same is letten out for buildings and a garden plot.” The records of St Giles’s, Cripplegate, show that rents were received by the parish for detached portions of the churchyard in 1648[639]. To take an instance of new city graveyards still remaining: The old fifteenth-century parishes of St Ewin and St Nicholas in the Flesh Shambles became united in the parish of Christ Church within Newgate, which, under that name, buried many, as we may read in Stow’s _Survey_. At length its burial ground was full, and it acquired a not very large plot next to the churchyard of St Botolph’s outside Aldersgate. Its neighbour parish within the walls, St Leonard’s in Foster Lane, acquired the next conterminous plot for its new burial-ground. All three graveyards are now thrown into one strip of public garden by the removal of the two cross walls which originally kept the ground of each parish separate. While the graveyards were thus curtailed, and dwelling-houses built close up to them, the mode of burial was none of the safest. To take the instance of the great Cripplegate parish again: some few, like John Milton, would be buried within the church in leaden coffins; others would be laid in the ground of the churchyard in the same way, full burial dues being paid; but many more, for whom the dues were remitted, would be buried in a sheet, with no coffin at all, in the part of the churchyard reserved for the poor[640]. For the parish of St Saviour’s, Southwark, the scale of burial dues was as follows: “In any churchyard next the church, with a coffin, 2_s._ 8_d._; without a coffin, 20_d._; for a child with a coffin, 8_d._; without a coffin, 4_d._ The colledge churchyard, with a coffin, 12_d._; without a coffin, 8_d._” One of their broadsheets, dated 1580, has a picture of a body ready for burial in a cerecloth, a close fitting covering tied at the head and feet, and neatly finished[641]. It is not to be supposed that no voices were raised against the overcrowding of the old city churchyards. Intramural burial is one of the many practical topics in Latimer’s sermons: in 1552 he denounced the state of St Paul’s churchyard as an occasion of “much sickness and disease,” appealing to its notorious smells; the citizens of Nain, he said, “had a good and laudable custom to bury their corses without the city, which ensample we may follow[642].” Preaching at Paul’s Cross on the 8th of August, 1563, when the plague was already destroying at the rate of five hundred in a week, Turner, commonly called Turner of Boulogne, made two solemn petitions to my lord mayor of London: the one was that the dead of the city should be buried out of the city in the field; the other was that no bell should be tolled for them when they lay at the mercy of God departing out of this present life, “for that the tolling of the bell did the party departing no good, neither afore their death nor after[643].” In the writings on plague, putrefying animal matters, such as carrion or offal, are always mentioned among the causes; but it is only rarely that the ordinary burial of the dead is referred to. In the seventeenth century, the filling of the soil with products of cadaveric decomposition played a greater part in the theory of plague, especially in the writings of Prosper Alpinus, physician to the Venetian consulate at Cairo. Among English books, the treatise on Plague by Dr Gilbert Skene, of Edinburgh (1568), is the only one that is at all clear upon the point. In his fourth chapter, on the places which be most pestilential, he includes the localities “where many dead are buried,” the ground there becoming “fat and vaporative;” and in his first chapter, on causes in general, he instances “dead carrions unburied, in special of mankind, which, by similitude of nature, is most nocent to man, as every brutal is most infectant and pestilential to their own kind.” But even if these truths had been generally apprehended, religious prescription and usage would have been too strong to allow of radical measures being adopted. The grand provocative of plague was no obvious nuisance above ground, but the loading of the soil, generation after generation, with an immense quantity of cadaveric matters, which were diffused in the pores of the ground under the feet of the living, to rise in emanations, more deadly in one season than in another, according as the level of the ground-water and the heat of the earth determined the degree of oxidation, or the formation of the more dangerous half-way products of decomposition. So little is known of the great plagues of London in 1406-7, 1464, 1479, 1500, and 1513, that we can only conjecture how the dead, to the number perhaps of one hundred in a day at the height of the epidemic, were disposed of--probably in trenches in the fields of Whitechapel, Smithfield and Finsbury, or in such parishes as St Sepulchre’s. The skirts of the city were used also to deposit the soil upon. Thus it happened that the ground outside the walls, which came in time to be the densely populated liberties and out-parishes, and the chief seat of all later plagues, had for generations before received the refuse of the city and a large proportion of the bodies of the dead. An instance mentioned by Stow, in 1598, may be taken as standing for many more: “On the right hand, beyond Shoreditch Church toward Hackney, are some late-built houses upon the common soil; for it was a lay-stall.” What remains to be said of localities and circumstances of plague in London will come in with the history of successive epidemics, which we may now resume and carry to the end of the Tudor period. Chronology of Plague, 1564-1592. The amount of plague in London for the two or three years next following the great epidemic in the autumn of 1563 is accurately known from Stow’s abstracts of the weekly bills of mortality. It was exceedingly little, the deaths being but one or two or three in a week, and often none. The figures come to an end with July, 1566, and it is probable that the bills may not have been made for a time after that. The proposal made by Sir Roger Martyn in a letter of 20th October, 1568, to the earl of Northumberland, that all strangers arriving from over sea should be quarantined at Gravesend, would have been instigated by the known prevalence of plague and other malignant types of sickness in Scotland and at various parts of the continent of Europe. It was just in those years, before and after the founding of the Royal Exchange in 1566, that the concourse of merchants to London, especially from the war-troubled Low Countries and France, was greatest. The revival of plague in London, after the great epidemic of 1563, was probably in 1568. In the city records there are orders relating to searchers, shutting up of houses, and collections for infected households, dated 12 October, 1568 (10 Elizabeth), 27 March and 19 October, 1569. But in 1568 the regulations, like the proposal for quarantine of shipping, may have been made more against the importation of cases from outside than on account of cases actually in London. It is in 1569 that we definitely hear of plague in the capital:-- “The plague of pestilence somewhat raging in the city of London, Michaelmas Term was first adjourned unto the 3rd of November, and after unto Hillary Term next following[644].” This outbreak of the autumn and winter of 1569 must have been considerable: for we find the earl of Essex writing from York on the 30th October to Cecil to say that he would have come to London before “had not the plague stayed him[645];” and Thomas Bishop, giving account of his movements to the Council, says that he remained in London until the 10th October, “when the plague increasing, I departed[646].” The year 1570 was one of the more disastrous plague-years on the Continent, that now recur somewhat frequently down to the end of the century. “There was general disease of pestilence,” says Stow, “throughout all Europe, in such sort that many died of God’s tokens, chiefly amongst the Venetians, of whom there died of that cruel sickness about threescore thousand.” In London, on 2nd August, a death in the Tower was put down to plague; but there is no other evidence of its prevalence in the capital[647]. In the beginning of next winter, 1571, there was plague at Cambridge (letter of 18th November)[648]; and at Oxford in the same year it left such misery, says Anthony Wood, that divers scholars were forced to beg[649]. In 1573 it reappeared in London, at its usual season, the end of the year: it raged so violently “that the Queen ordered the new Lord Mayor not to keep the usual feast upon his inauguration[650].” The register of St Andrew’s parish, at Hertford, bears witness to the flight of Londoners to that favourite refuge; there were numerous burials of the plague in 1573, and in subsequent years, many of them being of London citizens[651]. It was in London again in 1574: a letter of 15 November, to the sheriff and justices of Surrey, orders that they should not allow the people to resort to plays and shows [in Southwark] “at that time of contagion[652],” while the figures from a weekly bill of mortality, which have been preserved, show that the outbreak had been one of the more considerable degree--for the week 22-28 October, in the city and liberties (108 parishes), buried of all diseases, 166, whereof of the plague, 65[653]. The known provincial centres in 1574 were Stamford, Peterborough and Chester. The Stamford visitation was one of a good many that the town suffered from first to last, and must have been a severe one; in one month, from 8 August to 7 September, 40 had been buried of the plague, “and the town is so rudely governed, they have so mixed themselves, that there is none that is in any hope of being clear. It is in seventeen houses, and the town is in great poverty; but that the good people of the country send in victuals, there would many die of famine. St Martin’s parish is clear[654].” The corporation records also bear witness to the confusion caused, the new bailiffs having been sworn in before the Recorder in a field outside, instead of in the usual place[655]. Peterborough, which was not far off, is known to have had a visitation, from an entry in the parish register, “1574, January. Here began the plague[656].” At Chester, “plague began, but was stayed with the death of some few in the crofts[657].” The year 1575 is somewhat singular for an epidemic of plague in Westminster, but none in the city of London: the deaths for one week in the former are known[658]; and, as regards the immunity of London, Cecil had removed previous to 16 September, from Westminster to Sir Thomas Gresham’s house in the City to avoid the infection[659]. It had been at Cambridge in the winter of 1574-5, and was “sore” in Oxford down to November, 1575. The same year, 1575, was a season of severe plague in Bristol and other places of the west of England. Some 2000 are said (in the Mayor’s Calendar) to have died in Bristol between St James’s tide (July 25) when the infection “began to be very hot,” and Paul’s tide (January 25)[660]. As early as the 11th July, the corporation of Wells had ordered measures against the plague in Bristol; but Wells also appears to have had a visitation, if the 200 persons buried, according to tradition, in the “plague-pit” near the north-eastern end of the Cathedral (besides many more buried in the fields) had been victims of the disease in 1575[661]. At Shrewsbury in that year the fairs were removed on account of plague[662]. From a claim of damages which came before the Court of Requests in 1592, it appears that plague had been in Cheshire in 1576; at Northwich the house of one Phil. Antrobus was infected and most of the family died; on which some linens in the house, worth not more than 13_sh._ 4_d._ were put in the river lest they should be used; the son, who was a tailor, claimed compensation, through the earl of Derby, sixteen years after[663]. At Hull, in 1576, there was an outbreak, small compared with some other visitations there, in the Blackfriars Gate, the deaths being about one hundred[664]. It is somewhat remarkable to find the borough of Kirkcudbright making regulations in the month of January, 1577, a most unlikely season, to prevent the introduction of the plague then raging on the Borders[665]. In September, 1577, there were issued orders to be put in execution throughout the realm in towns and villages infected with the plague. More definitely it is heard of on 21 October at Rye and Dover, and on 3 November, 1577, in London. We now come to a series of years, 1578 to 1583, for which we have full particulars of the burials in London, from plague and other causes, and of the christenings. These valuable statistics, the earliest known, are preserved among the papers of Lord Burghley, who procured them from the lord mayor of London[666], and are here given in full, having been copied from the MS. in the library of Hatfield House[667]. _Abstracts of Burials and Baptisms in London, 1578-1583_ 1578 Week Of Of other ending Dead plague diseases Christened Jan. 2 62 7 55 66 9 90 12 78 52 16 63 14 49 59 23 95 33 62 59 30 82 25 57 65 Feb. 6 88 24 64 51 13 102 25 77 59 20 100 26 74 77 27 84 12 72 84 Mar. 6 79 10 69 58 13 66 9 57 53 20 75 5 70 57 27 63 12 51 60 Apr. 3 96 19 77 64 10 89 25 64 67 17 102 31 71 66 24 91 37 54 62 May 1 109 25 84 44 8 116 33 83 37 15 141 43 98 48 22 109 36 73 66 29 119 34 85 43 June 5 99 38 61 51 12 91 35 56 41 19 76 34 42 54 26 75 18 57 48 July 3 92 34 58 52 10 99 35 64 48 17 98 39 59 52 24 129 63 66 49 31 100 41 59 59 Aug. 7 132 73 59 76 14 152 78 74 72 21 232 134 98 63 28 205 113 92 58 Sept. 4 257 162 95 84 11 297 183 114 64 18 308 189 119 68 25 330 189 141 72 Oct. 2 370 230 140 76 9 388 234 154 62 16 361 234 127 73 23 281 175 106 58 30 258 130 128 68 Nov. 6 278 127 151 60 13 230 116 114 64 20 172 77 95 66 27 155 84 71 68 Dec. 4 160 77 83 60 11 161 65 96 69 18 129 44 85 62 25 94 20 74 68 ---- ---- ---- ---- 7830 3568 4262 3150 1579 Week Of Of other ending Dead plague diseases Christened Jan. 1 100 27 73 54 8 67 13 54 68 15 75 16 59 74 22 63 9 54 81 29 79 19 60 75 Feb. 5 84 23 61 46 12 81 16 65 63 19 69 15 54 61 26 70 10 60 77 Mar. 5 51 6 45 71 12 61 16 45 72 19 66 10 56 65 26 75 13 62 68 Apr. 2 81 19 62 53 9 82 27 55 79 16 77 22 55 53 23 58 10 48 44 30 71 10 61 57 May 7 64 12 52 51 14 68 14 54 42 21 75 12 63 54 28 78 13 65 47 June 4 66 7 59 56 11 49 7 42 46 18 74 14 60 60 25 65 13 52 45 July 2 57 11 46 50 9 62 9 53 66 16 73 19 54 52 23 72 12 60 63 30 72 13 59 67 Aug. 6 66 12 54 61 13 70 18 52 67 20 68 12 56 61 27 63 10 53 58 Sept. 3 66 14 52 65 10 85 25 60 55 17 66 11 55 80 24 44 8 36 63 Oct. 1 60 9 51 42 8 56 8 48 75 15 68 14 54 70 22 49 6 43 71 29 52 10 42 76 Nov. 5 47 8 39 66 12 37 2 35 69 19 60 2 58 84 26 44 6 38 69 Dec. 3 43 3 40 78 10 55 4 51 80 17 49 4 45 70 24 51 3 48 78 31 42 3 39 72 ---- ---- ---- ---- 3406 629 2777 3370 1580 Week Of Of other ending Dead plague diseases Baptised Jan. 7 49 1 48 78 14 58 4 54 58 21 50 5 45 63 28 28 2 26 74 Feb. 4 54 5 49 81 11 49 2 47 91 18 47 3 44 81 25 48 3 45 68 Mar. 3 52 0 52 77 10 48 2 46 74 17 48 1 47 75 24 52 3 49 68 31 48 2 46 59 Apr. 7 48 1 47 77 14 53 1 52 78 21 40 1 39 74 28 43 1 42 75 May 5 58 1 57 72 12 54 0 54 69 19 40 2 38 75 26 44 0 44 72 June 2 36 1 35 59 9 41 0 41 54 16 46 2 44 60 23 55 2 53 59 30 47 4 43 57 July 7 77 4 73 65 14 133 4 129 66 21 146 3 143 61 28 96 5 91 64 Aug. 4 78 5 73 71 11 51 4 47 53 18 49 1 48 72 25 63 3 60 62 Sept. 1 48 0 48 71 8 35 2 33 69 13 52 1 51 69 22 52 1 51 95 29 65 2 63 55 Oct. 6 35 1 34 63 13 44 2 42 56 20 45 2 43 56 27 40 3 37 80 Nov. 3 60 7 53 75 10 59 5 54 67 17 57 3 54 75 24 45 2 43 70 Dec. 1 54 3 51 83 8 58 1 57 56 15 53 8 45 59 22 53 4 49 61 29 89 3 86 66 ---- ---- ---- ---- 2873 128 2745 3568 1581 Week Of Of other ending Dead plague diseases Baptised Jan. 5 42 5 37 63 12 53 4 49 65 19 50 1 49 65 26 46 1 45 59 Feb. 2 49 2 47 56 9 38 0 38 63 16 48 0 48 87 23 56 5 51 52 Mar. 2 56 0 56 62 9 60 2 58 74 16 52 2 50 80 23 41 1 40 89 30 44 3 41 74 Apr. 6 42 2 40 39 13 47 1 46 53 20 37 1 36 41 27 37 2 35 60 May 4 47 0 47 52 11 40 1 39 50 18 46 1 45 59 25 64 13 51 62 June 1 48 4 44 60 8 57 2 55 56 15 65 7 58 62 22 57 6 51 73 29 56 7 49 52 July 6 72 9 63 62 13 69 9 60 64 20 94 19 75 70 27 95 24 71 89 Aug. 3 87 23 64 58 10 130 30 100 75 17 148 47 101 72 24 143 43 100 55 31 169 74 95 72 Sept. 7 186 85 101 54 14 180 76 114 59 21 203 86 117 55 28 218 60 158 88 Oct. 5 205 107 98 74 12 193 74 119 83 19 128 42 86 77 26 125 35 90 88 Nov. 2 115 45 70 85 9 93 26 67 61 16 23 30 [The figures in part Dec. 7 wanting, and in part 14 defaced.] 21 28 ---- ---- ---- ---- 3931 987 2954 2949 (45 weeks) 1582 (74 Parishes clear, week ending Jan. 4.) Week Of Of other ending Dead plague diseases Baptised Jan. 4 63 11 52 57 11 75 13 62 76 18 79 13 66 73 25 58 13 45 90 Feb. 1 73 5 68 66 8 71 12 59 77 15 76 16 60 88 22 82 10 72 74 Mar. 1 69 11 58 81 8 85 13 72 81 15 77 11 66 71 22 62 11 51 65 29 73 16 57 85 Apr. 5 90 13 77 74 12 78 19 59 63 19 88 22 66 56 26 82 20 62 69 May 3 95 23 72 55 10 68 12 56 62 17 62 11 51 59 24 61 10 51 61 31 57 15 42 65 June 7 67 15 52 49 14 48 11 37 52 21 72 11 61 63 28 57 9 48 62 July 5 60 20 40 54 12 88 25 63 66 19 80 30 50 61 26 99 31 68 65 Aug. 2 101 45 56 68 9 116 42 74 77 16 142 70 72 64 23 148 85 63 67 30 205 111 94 70 Sept. 6 229 139 90 74 13 277 189 88 79 20 246 151 95 76 27 267 145 122 63 Oct. 4 318 213 105 87 11 238 139 99 63 18 289 164 125 74 25 340 216 124 54 Nov. 1 290 131 159 66 8 248 149 99 77 15 202 98 104 70 22 227 119 108 74 29 263 124 139 63 Dec. 6 144 58 86 59 13 155 68 87 -- 20 -- -- -- -- 27 142 68 74 91 ---- ---- ---- ---- 6762 2976 3786 3433 (51 weeks) 1583 Week Of Of other ending Dead plague diseases Baptised Jan. 3 137 50 87 69 10 140 57 83 53 17 160 72 88 67 24 162 59 103 59 31 144 40 104 73 These tables were compiled from weekly bills furnished to the Court, and doubtless drawn up like the bills of 1532 and 1535 to show the deaths from plague and from other causes in each of the several parishes in the City, Liberties and suburbs. It is clear that the results were known from week to week, for a letter of January 29, 1578, says that the plague is increased from 7 to 37 (? 33) deaths in three weeks. But that was not the beginning of the epidemic in London; it was rather a lull in a plague-mortality which is known to have been severe in the end of 1577, and had led to the prohibition of stage-plays in November[668]. In that series of five plague-years in London, only two, 1578 and 1582, had a large total of plague-deaths. The year 1580 was almost clear (128 deaths from plague), and may be taken as showing the ordinary proportion of deaths to births in London when plague did not arise to disturb it. The baptisms, it will be observed, are considerably in excess of the burials; and as every child was christened in church under Elizabeth, we may take it that we have the births fully recorded (with the doubtful exception of still-births and “chrisoms”). But while the one favourable year shows an excess of some 24 per cent. of baptisms over burials, the whole period of five years shows a shortcoming in the baptisms of 33 per cent. Thus we may see how seriously a succession of plague-years, at the endemic level of the disease, kept down the population; and, at the same time, how the numbers in the capital would increase rapidly from within, in the absence of plague. There is reason to think that plague was almost or altogether absent from London for the next nine years (1583 to 1592); and it is not surprising to find that the population, as estimated from the births, had increased from some 120,000 to 150,000. The increase of London population under Elizabeth was proceeding so fast, plague or no plague, that measures were taken in 1580 to check it. The increase of London has never depended solely upon its own excess of births over deaths; indeed, until the present century, there were probably few periods when such excess occurred over a series of years. Influx from the country and from abroad always kept London up to its old level of inhabitants, whatever the death-rate; and from the early part of the Tudor period caused it to grow rapidly. I shall review briefly in another chapter the stages in the growth of London, as it may be reckoned from bills of mortality and of baptisms. But as the proclamation of 1580, against new buildings, the first of a long series down to the Commonwealth, has special reference to the plague in the Liberties, and to the unwholesome condition of those poor skirts of the walled city, this is the proper place for it: “The Queen’s Majesty perceiving the state of the city of London and the suburbs and confines thereof to encrease daily by access of people to inhabit in the same, in such ample sort as thereby many inconveniences are seen already, but many greater of necessity like to follow ... and [having regard] to the preservation of her people in health, which may seem impossible to continue, though presently by God’s goodness the same is perceived to be in better estate universally than hath been in man’s memory: yet there are such great multitudes of people brought to inhabit in small rooms, whereof a great part are seen very poor; yea, such must live of begging, or of worse means; and they heaped up together, and in a sort smothered with many families of children and servants in one house or small tenement; it must needs follow, if any plague or popular sickness should by God’s permission enter among those multitudes, that the same should not only spread itself and invade the whole city and confines, as great mortality should ensue the same, where her Majesty’s personal presence is many times required; besides the great confluence of people from all places of the realm by reason of the ordinary Terms for justice there holden; but would be also dispersed through all other parts of the realm to the manifest danger of the whole body thereof, out of which neither her Majesty’s own person can be (but by God’s special ordinance) exempted, nor any other, whatsoever they be. For remedy whereof, as time may now serve until by some further good order, to be had in Parliament or otherwise, the same may be remedied, Her Majesty by good and deliberate advice of her Council, and being thereto much moved by the considerate opinions of the Mayor, Aldermen and other the grave, wise men in and about the city, doth charge and straitly command all persons of what quality soever they be to desist and forbear from any new buildings of any new house or tenement within three miles of any of the gates of the said city, to serve for habitation or lodging for any person, where no former house hath been known to have been in memory of such as are now living. And also to forbear from letting or setting, or suffering any more families than one only to be placed or to inhabit from henceforth in any house that heretofore hath been inhabited, etc.... Given at Nonesuch, the 7th of July, 1580[669].” Among the more special suggestions of the mayor, on the causes and prevention of plague, previous to this proclamation were[670]: