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A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 1 (of 2) by Charles Creighton

1878. _Med. Times and Gaz._ I. 1878, p. 597.

1232 words  |  Chapter 94

[319] Alex. Rittmann, _Chronik der Pest._ Brünn, 1879. [320] Thomas Lodge, _Treatise of the Plague_, Lond. 1603, chap. III. Skene, in his Edinburgh essay on plague in 1568, gives as a sign of impending plague the moles and “serpents” leaving their holes: “As when the moudewart and serpent leavis the eird, beand molestit be the vapore contenit within the bowells of the samin.” He adds what agrees still farther with modern experience in Yun-nan: “If the domesticall fowls become pestilential, it is ane signe of maist dangerous pest to follow.” (Bannatyne Club ed. p. 9). [321] The writer of the article “Peste” in the _Dict. Encycl. des Sc. Med._, Dr Mahé, inclines on the whole to the view that the poison of plague is somehow related to cadaveric products: “Parmi ces accusations d’insalubrité publique, il en est une qui repose sur un objectif plus positif en apparance” viz. the “miasme des cadavres.” [322] Sir Tobie Matthews’ _Letters_. Lond. 1660, p. 110. [323] _Epist. de rebus familiar._ Lib. viii. epist. 7. The citation of these contemporary illustrations of the Black Death was begun in the last century by Sprengel (_Beiträge_, &c., p. 37). [324] _Foedera_, III. 184; it was renewed on 30th June for a year longer. [325] Avesbury. [326] _Foedera_, III. 192. [327] _Ib._ 193. [328] _Ib._ 200, 201. [329] Le Baker’s _Chronicle of Osney_. Avesbury. [330] _Foedera_, III. 221. [331] Avesbury, Rolls ed. 425. [332] Blomefield (_Hist. of Norfolk_, III.) says that the writ to Norwich in 1355 was for 120 men-at-arms to be sent to Portsmouth by Sunday in mid-Lent. [333] Avesbury, pp. 427-8. [334] _Ib._ p. 425. [335] _Ib._ p. 461. [336] Avesbury, p. 431. [337] Thorold Rogers, _Hist. of Agric. and Prices_, I. 367, “according to an account quoted by Misselden in his _Circle of Commerce_.” The sack of wool contained 52 cloves of 7 lbs. each, or 364 lbs. It appears from a statute of 5 Ric. II. that 240 wool-fells were equivalent, for duty, to one sack of wool. In Rogers’ tables, the wool-fell is usually priced at about the value of 1½ lbs. of wool, which was at the same time about the average clip of a sheep. The present average clip would be at least four times as much. The colonial bale of wool is of the same weight as the medieval sack, but would represent 40 to 60 fleeces, instead of about 240. At the smallest of the estimates in the text, the wool of 7,680,000 sheep would have been exported in a year. Avesbury’s estimate would mean an annual export to foreign countries of the clip of about 24,000,000 sheep. The average price of a sack of wool just before the Black Death was about £4 in money of the time; the period immediately following the plague was one of low prices; but from 1364 to 1380, the price was uniformly high. [338] _Foedera_, III. 186. [339] _Ib._ III. 191. [340] Jessopp (_l. c._) giving a general reference to the _Foedera_, and probably having the Sandwich letter in view, says there was “mad, unreasoning, insensate panic among well-to-do classes--the trader and the moneyed man, the _bourgeoisie_ of the towns,” and “a stampede,” (presumably to foreign parts). But the mortality was all over by 1st December, 1349; and the exodus, whatever motive it may have had, was almost certainly deliberate. [341] _Foedera_, III. 198. [342] The last clause of the ordinance implies that not only the labourers but also the employers of labour were taking the natural advantage of the situation. There appears to be some particular evidence of this for Bristol (Rev. W. Hunt, _Bristol_, p. 77): the masters in various crafts and trades were so reduced in numbers that the survivors could charge what they pleased. Thus, the attempt to coerce labourers and skilled workmen was a one-sided affair; although, in practice, it related mostly to farm-labour, where the one-sidedness did not appear. [343] _Foedera_, III. 210. [344] _Rot. Parl._ II. 225. [345] This was the first parliamentary Statute of Labourers (25 Ed. III. cap 2). The king’s ordinance of 18th June, 1350 (re-issued for Suffolk and Lindsey on 18th Nov.), is usually reckoned the first Statute of Labourers, and is invariably assigned to the 23rd year of Edward III., being so entered in the _Statutes of the Realm_. It is clear, however, from the text of the ordinance in the _Foedera_ that it belongs to the 24th of Edward III., its exact date being 18th June, 1350. Longman, in his _History of the Life and Times of Edward III._, correctly states in one place (I. 309) that the ordinance of 18th June, 1350, was “the first step,” but on the very next page, after stating that the ordinance failed, he proceeds, according to the usual chronology of 23 Ed. III. and 25 Ed. III., to say that “therefore, two years afterwards,” the statute of 25 Ed. III. was made in Parliament. The interval was only some eight months. [346] _Rot. Parl._ II. 234. [347] Knighton, in Twysden’s _Decem Scriptores_, _l. c._ [348] Seebohm, _The English Village Community_. Chapter I. [349] The Statute of Labourers was re-enacted with increased stringency six years after (31 Ed. III.), and again in 1360 and 1368. All the labour statutes were confirmed in the 12th year of Richard II. (cap. 34). Legislative attempts of the same kind continued to be made as late as the 5th of Elizabeth (1562-3), with particular reference to sturdy beggars. See copious extracts from the Statutes in Sir George Nicholls’s _History of the English Poor Law_, vol. I. Lond. 1854. “An Act for regulating Journeymen Tailors” was made in 7 Geo. I. (cap. 13). [350] “There is no trace of the villenage described in Glanville and Bracton, among the tenants of a manor 500 years ago. All customary services were commutable for money payments; all villein tenants were secure in the possession of their lands; and the only distinction between socage and villein occupation lay in the liberation of the former from certain degrading incidents which affected the latter.” Thorold Rogers, “Effects of the Black Death, &c.” _Fort. Rev._ III. (1865) p. 196. [351] Seebohm, _The English Village Community_. Lond. 1882. Chapter I. [352] Seebohm, p. 31. Such attempts by landowners, to go back to personal service from their villein tenants, appear to have become more systematic in the generation following, and to have been a cause of the Peasants’ Rebellion in 1381. See v. Oschenkowski, _England’s wirthschaftliche Entwickelung_, Jena, 1879, confirming the opinion of Thorold Rogers. [353] Smith, _Lives of the Berkeleys_, p. 128: “in 24 Edward III.” (Cited by Denton, _England in the 15th Century_.) [354] Morant, _Hist. of Essex_. [355] Niebuhr, _Lectures on Ancient History_. Engl. transl. London, 1852, II., p. 53. [356] _Eulogium Historiarum._ Rolls ed. III. 230. [357] _Loci e Libro Veritatum_, ed. Rogers. Oxon. 1880, p. 202; and, from Gascoigne’s MS., in Anthony Wood, _Hist. and Antiq. Univ. Oxford_, Ed. Gutch, I. 451: “What I shall farther observe is that before it began there were but few complaints among the people, and few pleas; as also few Legists in England, and very few at Oxford.” [358] _Manor and Barony of Castle Combe_, sub anno 1361. [359] Owen and Blakeway, _op. cit._ I. 165. [360] Clarkson’s _History of Richmond_. Richmond, 1821 (authority not quoted). [361] Hailstone, _History of Bottisham and the Priory of Anglesey_. Camb.
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Chapters

1. Chapter 1 2. CHAPTER I. 3. CHAPTER II. 4. CHAPTER III. 5. CHAPTER IV. 6. CHAPTER V. 7. CHAPTER VI. 8. CHAPTER VII. 9. CHAPTER VIII. 10. CHAPTER IX. 11. CHAPTER X. 12. CHAPTER XI. 13. CHAPTER XII. 14. CHAPTER I. 15. introduction of a miracle, and is otherwise more circumstantial. While the 16. episode of the seventh century, to which he devotes thirty-eight lines of 17. CHAPTER II. 18. 1307. Future research may perhaps discover where Gilbert taught or was 19. introduction of maize into Lombardy at an interval of two or three 20. CHAPTER III. 21. 3939. The population of the same three parishes in 1558, or shortly after 22. 3639. It may be assumed to have lost more than half its people; but it 23. 1741. The Institution Book of the diocese of Norwich, he says (with a 24. CHAPTER IV. 25. 1349. The pestilence had lasted some fourteen months, from its first 26. CHAPTER V. 27. 1528. If there were any better regimen in the later epidemics than in the 28. 1551. Sweating sickness of the original sort was never again the _signum 29. CHAPTER VI. 30. 1563. 12 June 17 31. 1564. 7 January 45 32. 1518. In April of that year, the Court being in Berkshire or Oxfordshire, 33. 1. First a ’tre from the Mayor of London to every alderman of each 34. 2. To cause all infected houses to bee shutt up and noe person to come 35. 3. That some honest discreete person be appoynted to attend each such 36. 4. For the poorer houses infected that the Alderman or his deputy doe 37. 5. That such as shall refuse to pay what they are assest shall be 38. 6. That all bedding and cloathes and other thinges apt to take 39. 7. Lastly that a bill with ‘Lord have mercy upon us’ in greate ’tres 40. 1. That they should follow the good example of the orders devised and 41. 2. That the officers aforesayde with the curate of euery parish and 42. 3. To discharge all inmates out of all houses that there be noe more 43. 4. To cause the streetes lanes and passages and all the shewers sinkes 44. 1. That speciall noatis be taken of such houses infected as sell 45. 2. That euery counstable within his precinct haue at all tymes in 46. 3. That noe person dwelling in a house infected bee suffered to goe 47. 4. That they suffer not any deade corps dying of the plague to be 48. 5. To appoynt two honest and discreete matrons within euery parish who 49. 6. That order be taken for killing of dogs that run from house to 50. 2. The restraining of the building of small tenements and turning 51. 4. The increase of buildings about the Charterhouse, Mile End Fields; 52. 5. The pestering of exempt places with strangers and foreign 53. 8. The killing of cattle within or near the city. 54. 1588. In 1585 houses were shut up[685]; in 1586 a case at Southwell was 55. 1. First to command that no stinking doonghills be suffered neere the 56. 2. Every evening and morning in the hot weather to cause colde water 57. 3. And whereas the infection is entred, there to cause fires to be 58. 4. Suffer not any dogs, cattes, or pigs to run about the streets, for 59. 5. Command that the excrements and filthy things which are voided from 60. 6. That no Chirurgions, or barbers, which use to let blood, do cast 61. 7. That no vautes or previes be then emptied, for it is a most 62. 8. That all Inholders do every day make clean their stables, and cause 63. 9. To command that no hemp or flax be kept in water neere the Cittie 64. 10. To have a speciall care that good and wholesome victuals and corne 65. 11. To command that all those which do visit and attend the sick, as 66. 1597. In August there were 23 deaths, and in September 42 deaths. The 67. 1588. It was said to have been brought to Wester Wemyss, in Fife, by a 68. CHAPTER VII. 69. 1494. Typhus-fever, or war-fever with famine-fever, now begins to be a 70. CHAPTER VIII. 71. CHAPTER IX. 72. introduction of a third term, _punctilli_, which Gruner, however, takes to 73. 1538. They may be farther helped to a conclusion by the following curious 74. CHAPTER X. 75. 10. In the second place, no deaths are included from the out-parishes 76. 1624. The letters of the time enable us to see what it was that disturbed 77. CHAPTER XI. 78. 12. On December 7, Mr Yorke, captain of the ‘Hope,’ died of sickness, on 79. 1614. In 1617 he published his ‘Surgion’s Mate,’ “chiefly for the benefit 80. 4. The comforting and corroborating the parts late diseased. 81. CHAPTER XII. 82. 1625. His account of the burials by the cart-load in plague-pits is also 83. 1636. An importation from abroad had been alleged as early as the great 84. 1665. Its two great predecessors (not reckoning the smaller plague of 85. 1662. These fractions have been added in the table, so as to make 1603 86. 1666. There was also a sharp epidemic in Cambridge and in the country 87. introduction of inferior bread, 224 _note_ 88. Introduction, p. lxxvi. 89. 110. Aelred, the chief collector of the miraculous cures by Edward the 90. 220. The late Rev. S. S. Lewis, fellow and librarian of the College, who 91. 449. He says also: “The school doors were shut, colleges and halls 92. Introduction, p. 11. 93. 4585. (_Hist. MSS. Commission_, V. 444.) 94. 1878. _Med. Times and Gaz._ I. 1878, p. 597. 95. 1873. (Transact. Camb. Antiq. Soc. 8vo. series, vol. XIV.) 96. 1589. New ed. 1596, p. 272. 97. 1580. Brassavolus, writing _de morbo Gallico_, and illustrating the fact 98. 29. Stow puts the mortality under the year 1513. 99. Chapter VIII. London, 1578). 100. 198. Mr Rendle, in one place, seems to imply disapproval of this mode of 101. 1525. The same kind of misdating occurs among the printed letters of 102. 260. Brusselle, 1712. 103. 171. Buried in the parish of Stepney from the 25th of March to the 20th of 104. Book II. p. 36.

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