1665 — A Journal of the Plague Year — Outbreaks outside London
A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe 1722
Part of a series — A Journal of the Plague Year — An Annotated Text
Eyam
Eyam is an English village and civil parish in the Derbyshire Dales. It lies within the Peak District National Park.
As Londoners fled the plague they brought it with them. Eyam had one of the worst outbreaks.
In the later 20th century, the local economy now relies on the tourist trade and it is promoted as “the plague village”, and how it chose to isolate itself after bubonic plague was discovered there, so as to prevent the infection spreading
The history of the plague in the village began in 1665 when a flea-infested bundle of cloth arrived from London for Alexander Hadfield, the local tailor.[14] Within a week his assistant George Viccars, noticing the bundle was damp, had opened it up.[15] Before long he was dead and more began dying in the household soon after.[16]
As the disease spread, the villagers turned for leadership to their rector, the Reverend William Mompesson, and the ejected Puritan minister Thomas Stanley. They introduced a number of precautions to slow the spread of the illness from May 1666. The measures included the arrangement that families were to bury their own dead and relocation of church services to the natural amphitheatre of Cucklett Delph,[17] allowing villagers to separate themselves and so reducing the risk of infection. Perhaps the best-known decision was to quarantine the entire village to prevent further spread of the disease. Merchants from surrounding villages sent supplies that they would leave on marked rocks; the villagers then made holes there which they would fill with vinegar to disinfect the money left as payment.[18]
The plague ran its course over 14 months and one account states that it killed at least 260 villagers, with only 83 surviving out of a population of 350.[16] That figure has been challenged on a number of occasions, with alternative figures of 430 survivors from a population of around 800 being given.[16] The church in Eyam has a record of 273 individuals who were victims of the plague.[19]
Survival among those affected appeared random, as many who remained alive had close contact with those who died but never caught the disease. For example, Elizabeth Hancock was uninfected despite burying six children and her husband in eight days. The graves are known as the Riley graves after the farm where they lived.[14] The unofficial village gravedigger, Marshall Howe, also survived, despite handling many infected bodies.[16]
The village’s actions prevented the disease from moving into surrounding areas.
Reverend William Mompesson
- In 1665 plague hit England, and a consignment of cloth bound for his village brought with it the infectious fleas which spread the disease. After an initial flurry of deaths in the autumn of that year it died down during the winter only to come back even more virulently in the spring of 1666. Mompesson, in conjunction with another clergyman, the ejected Puritan, Thomas Stanley, took the courageous decision to isolate the village. In all, 260 of the village’s inhabitants, including his wife Catherine, died before the plague claimed its last victim in December 1666.
- vicar of Eyam during the Plague in 1666, moved to the village of Eakring in 1670, lived there for 39 years, and was buried in the churchyard.
Hepworth
In 1665–1666 the Great Plague struck England. It wrought devastation in London, then spread across the country. Hepworth was the most northerly point that it reached. According to local legend it is supposed to have come in on cloth brought from London.
In an effort to save the village the residents split the village into two parts at Barracks Fold. Those that were infected remained, isolated from the world, in one half. Thirteen of the residents died from the disease, which was a considerable percentage of the population in such a small village and thirteen trees were planted to remember them. The trees still stand today, by the local football pitch. Two subsequently fell down and in 2004, replacements were planted at a small ceremony by Parish Councillor, Ruth Jackson. The end of the plague in Hepworth is still commemorated on the last Monday in June every year with Hepworth Feast.
Holcombe /Ring-a-ring-a-rose-e
Holcombe is a small village in Somerset, England
The original medieval village was buried at the time of the Great Plague of London, and the old parish church, which survives, is surrounded by the mounds that bear testimony to this burial. It is suggested that the rhyme ‘Ring a Ring o’ Roses’ began there as a result. An alternative explanation relates to the drowning of five children from the village in an icy pond in 1899.[4]
The village has two pubs: The Duke of Cumberland, which can be found at the bottom of the village’s hill, and the Holcombe Inn, which recently changed its name from The Ring O’ Roses to its original 1960s name.[5] It was named as a reminder of the plague that previously destroyed the village.
Ring-a-ring-a-rose-e
“Ring a Ring o’ Roses”Black Death (1348) or The Great Plague of London (1665) 1880 (Britain) No evidence that the poem has any relation to the plague. The ‘plague’ references are not present in the earliest versions
St Martin’s Church, Wareham
St Martin’s Church, Wareham, sometimes St Martin’s-on-the-walls, is an Anglo-Saxon church in the town of Wareham, Dorset in England.
On one of the walls a number of red stars have been painted, possibly representing plague deaths in the 17th century.
Little London
‘Little London’ is a common village name in England, assumed by some to have its origins in the quantity of seasonal Londoners who would camp for the harvest season. However, in common with many ‘Little Londons’ approximately 50 miles (80 km) or so from London, it has also been claimed that the name was given by settlers escaping the Great Plague of London of 1665. Alternatively, it could have been corrupted from ‘Little Loddon’, the name of a stream that marks the Southern extent of the village.
A memorial to Robert Clayton, the baby son of Sir Robert and Dame Martha Clayton, is on a windowsill within the church, in the shape of a sleeping baby. He was buried within the chapel for the manor of Swakeleys in the north aisle. The boy had died a few hours after his birth in August 1665 at Swakeleys House, where his parents were staying as guests of Lady Harrington. Sir Robert was an alderman of London but the couple were staying in Ickenham to escape the Great Plague; he later became Lord Mayor of London in 1679.
River Lea
The River Lea, also spelled Lee, is a river in South East England. It originates in the Bedfordshire part of the Chiltern Hills, and flows southeast through Hertfordshire and then Greater London, sometimes through several channels, to ultimately meet the River Thames, the last looping section being known as Bow Creek. It is one of the largest rivers in London and the easternmost major tributary of the Thames.
The River Lea flows through the old brewing and malting centre of Ware, and consequently transport by water was for many years a significant industry based there. Barley was transported into Ware, and malt out via the river, in particular to London. Bargemen born in Ware were given the “freedom of the River Thames” — avoiding the requirement of paying lock dues — as a result of their transport of fresh water and food to London during The Great Plague of 1665–66. A local legend says that dead bodies were brought out of London at that time via the river for burying in Ware, but there is no evidence for this.
Colchester
Daniel Defoe mentions in A tour through England and Wales that the town lost 5259 people[47] to the plague in 1665, “more in proportion than any of its neighbours, or than the city of London”.[47] By the time he wrote this in 1722, however, he estimated its population to be around 40,000 (including “out-villages”).