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The Great Plague of 1665

The Great Plague that my grandfather talks about, in his book, "Records of Hooe", refers to the plague that hit London, in 1665 and went on for some years throughout the country. but there were many plagues before this date, the most well known being the Black death, which began in the summer of 1348 and continued through two winters until disappearing in 1350. It was said that so many people died that there were not enough left alive to care for the sick and the dying.

It has been thought for many years that the plague was a Bubonic plague, which is, and was, spread by fleas carried on black rats. Researchers, however, have recently suggested that the disease was not so much due to a bacterium (that is the Bubonic), but a virus such as Ebola and that it was more likely to have been spread by man. They also suggest that the outbreak in London, in 1665, was, most probably, either the same virus returning or a similar virus.

For those interested, the following are just a few of the points given against the plague being bubonic.

1 It′s believed that the plagues that struck Britain at different times throughout the Middle Ages, were all, basically, the same plague and that it came from Europe spread by fleas on the back of rats.
2 The only rat in Europe in the Middle Ages was the black rat and is, therefore, the only one that could have carried the fleas thought to be the cause of the Black Death. This rat, however, preferred to make its habitat in the warmer areas of high human population and tended to concentrate around the ports. The brown rat, on the other hand, didn′t arrive in Britain until the late 1720s and, strangely enough, rats were unknown in rural England until the brown rat did arrive.
3 Bubonic plague is a disease of the rats themselves and will, eventually, kill them, which means that as the rats died so would the disease and yet there is no particular mention, in contemporary records, of large numbers of rats dying.
4 Britain is too cold for the eggs of the Bubonic flea to hatch so the disease would have died out as the fleas died.
5 The contemporary records all show that the plague was transmitted person to person even though the people at that time had many ideas as to how it was spread, including dogs and cats
6 Bubonic plague spreads very slowly around 10 miles in a year yet these plagues, during the Middle Ages, didnt; they could cover 100 miles within a few days, which tends to point to human travelers as being the cause of the plagues transmission. In 1907, the British Plague Commission in India reported an outbreak that took six months to move 300 feet
7 Again, contemporary records make it clear that, shortly after the symptoms appeared, death occurred and yet cases of bubonic plague still turn up today and are not considered to be particularly infectious - with the patients even being treated in open wards.
8 The incubation period of the Black Death was in the region of 30 days, while incubation for the bubonic plague is about 5-6 days.
9 Bubonic plague is known to have a much lower death rate than the Black Death did.
10 In the 15th century, the plague spread to Iceland, which, at that time, didn′t have any indigenous rats; indeed, it would take a few more hundred years for rats to reach the island.

It′s difficult to say when the plague is considered to have died out, in England, but people, for obvious reasons, were very cautious for many years afterwards.

The following comes from my grandfathers book, Records of Hooe

In 1665 a Great Plague broke out in London and raged for several months, during which it is computed more than 100,000 persons perished.

By the importation of infected clothing into the country, the disease was carried even to remote villages.

That Hooe did not escape from the scourge may be deduced from the following facts: -

1 The Parish records for ten years are complete for the years 1663-5, 1667-8, 1670-3, but there are none for 1666 and 1669.
2 The assessments numbered 83 in 1665 and fell to 71 by 1670, being 8 fewer than in 1668, indicating that 8 estates had become unoccupied.
3 The Ratepayers numbered 64 in 1665 and fell to 45 by 1670, being 9 fewer than in 1668.
4 The number of burials a year was generally 1, but in 1667 was 7.
5 The average cost of poor relief during the years other than 1670 was 17 5s. For 1670 the cost was 41 1s 9d.

From the above it appears that 1669 was the year when the plague affected Hooe most.

Later in the book he goes not to give the following, additional data: -

"Data relative to the Great Plague and the Great Storm"

Year Assessments Ratepayers Burials Poor Relief
1663 78 - - 21 1s 11d
1664 - - - 11 8s 11d
1665 83 64 1 -
1666 No Records - - -
1667 82 59 7 9 0s 0d
1668 79 54 - -
1669 No Records - - -
1670 71 45 - 41 ls 9d
1671 - - - 26 5s 5d
1762 - - 25 12s 8d
1673 - - - 10 3s 2d

The Hooe parish registers were transcribed in 1982 and, in the front of the book, it clearly says that they were NOT collated with the Bishop′s Transcripts so all the information must have come from the original registers.

My grandfather, however, said that the burial entries were missing for the years 1666 & 1669 but the registers were normally books, so how could two years be missing? It sounds more as though these were written on individual sheets; but, if so, why? The Bishop′s Transcripts, on the other hand, were hand-written copies of all the entries for each year but these were sent, at the end of the year, to, and kept by, the Bishop, for record purposes so grandfather would not have been able to see them.

Theres another problem; if the entries were missing for 1669, how could my grandfather, possibly, say, From the above it appears that 1669 was the year when the plague affected Hooe most?

It′s possible that there were errors made in the published book but that wouldn′t explain everything. It′s. also, possible that, because the original draft was lent to someone, sometime just before the Second World War, it got mislaid, and didn′t turn up again until the early 1980s, during which time my grandfather died (in 1946), so, there was no one who could really check the pre-publication draft.

I checked the burial records for the years 1660 1670 and got a totally different set of figures from those of my grandfather (see below).

1660 1661 1662 1663 1664 1665 1666 1667 1668 1669 1670
3 6 3 6 1 1 4 10 7 7 1

Out of interest, I looked at the burial entries covering a period of eleven years, but made fifty years before the Plague and found the following.

1610 1611 1612 1613 1614 1615 1616 1617 1618 1619 1620
12 18 19 14 12 12 12 17 15 7 19

Luckily, the rate of baptisms kept pace with the burials over the same period, otherwise, the village would have been almost empty within ten years!

My grandfather was, obviously, wrong with his estimate of one burial a year being the average or was this another error made between the draft and the printing? I can′t really say but there, definitely, was a peak in the number of burials recorded, in the year 1667, round about the time of the great Plage in London - however, several things stand out as being rather strange: -

1 Statistics today apparently show that, during the time of the Plague, in 1665, more women died than men, for some reason, unfortunately, not explained, yet, here in Hooe, in 1667, accoring to the registers, 6 men died, and only 4 women.
2 It′s said that complete households died because when one member of the family caught the disease they would, so easily, pass it on to another - yet, in Hooe, in 1667, no two surnames, of those buried, are the same, and that's througout the whole of the year.
3 It′s, also, said that the disease took only 4 to 6 days to incubate yet the burials, over the year, are well spaced out and not, as I would have expected them to be, "bunched up".(see below)
4 In 1665 only 1 person, in Hooe, died, while, in 1666, the figure rose to 4. In 1667, there were 10 burials and, in 1668, the number went down to 7 – hardly a serious epidemic! Compare that to 1620, when there were 19 burials – and there was no plague!
Month Feb Mar Apr Jun Jul Aug Oct
Burials 2 1 1 1 1 2 2

Whatever happened, there was a large peak in the burials in 1667 and I have no explanation as to what caused it so I will have to continue researching! Now, theres a pity that means me having to spend yet more bright sunny days, visiting towns and villages, looking at records or headstones in a cemetery with a beautiful view, and having to have a meal in an eually beautiful country pub or restaurant, with a bottle of wine or three (my wife drives Ive stopped guess why!).

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