 |
'What To See' Table of Contents |
 |
Contents & Site Map |
THE PLAGUE Eyam, as has been said, owes its celebrity to the Plague which attacked its inhabitants with such deadly virulence during the years 1665 and 1666. The disease is stated to have been brought from London and to have been an offshoot from the Great Plague there.
The Plague of Eyam, following on the Great Plague of London, was one of the last visitations in this country, of that terrible disease, which at more or less frequent intervals, raged in various parts of Europe from the sixth until the middle of the seventeenth century.
The Plague is supposed to have originated in China and to have spread westward to the Mediterranean ports, being carried inland from there and to other parts of Europe, including Britain.
When people speak of the "Great Plague of London", they generally mean that of 1664-5, but this, although the last, was probably by no means the worst of the many Plagues by which the city was visited.
There are records of great pestilences from 1094 onwards. The "Black Death" of the fourteenth century, by which at least one quarter of the whole population of the country was carried away, is generally (although not universally) considered to be a true bubonic plague, (that is, one with inflammation of the lymphatic glands.)
London suffered ten times in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
In the following century, five visitations of the plague are recorded in the Metropolis before the Great Plague.
In 1603 there were no fewer than 38,000 deaths, whilst, in 1625, 35,417 people died of it.
As Walter Besant graphically puts it, "There never was a time when a recent plague was not in the minds of men. Always they remembered the last visitation, the suddenness and swiftness of destruction, the desolation of houses, the striking down of young and old, the loss of the tender children, the sweet maidens, the gallant youths.
Life is brief and uncertain at the best; but when the plague is added to the diseases which men expect, its uncertainty is forced upon the minds of people of every condition with a persistence and a conviction unknown in quiet times when each man hopes to live out his three score years and ten."
Not only did London suffer, but country places too. The Black Death in 1349 reached the Midlands, when Derbyshire was so severely affected that within twelve months it lost more than two thirds of its beneficed clergy.
Derbyshire suffered also from visitations of the fell [foul?] disease in 1603, again in 1632 - and even if Eyam itself was not attacked, the plague-stricken places were sufficiently near for Eyam people to know what the horrors of the visitation were.
Without doubt the plague was a disease which was harboured by dirt, and whether actually conveyed by infected clothing, or by personal contact, or in some other way, the filthy condition of the towns and villages, with the utter ignorance of sanitary precautions which prevailed and the uncleansed mud floors of the dwelling houses aided its spread.
In London, no fewer than 68,596 perished during the [outbreak?] out of a total of 460,000. (Though of this number, probably two thirds fled to escape it, thus reducing the resident population to about 160,000.)
There had been a few isolated cases in November 1664; but the disease began in grim earnest in the following May, when there were 43 deaths. In June, the number of fatal cases had increased to 590, and in July to 6,130. In August, 17,036 died and in September, when the disease was at its height, 31,159.
After this it gradually died away, the number of deaths in October being reduced to 14,373; in November to 3,449, whilst in December there were less than a thousand.
These particulars have been given in order to offer a comparison with the progress of the disease during its stay at Eyam.
After the seventeenth century the plague has been practically extinct in the British Isles, though in 1899-1900, half a dozen cases were brought from abroad to the London Docks, and in August 1900 there was an outbreak in Glasgow, when fifteen cases out of thirty four infected ones proved fatal.
From time to time too, there are reports of isolated cases in seaport towns.
Better sanitation has banished the plague, as it has banished cholera from our shores.
We now turn to the plague at Eyam. Tradition says that it was brought to the village in the month of September 1665, in a box of clothes sent from London to a tailor, named George Vicars, who was lodging with a family named Cooper, who resided in one of the cottages just to the West of the Church.
Dr. Mead, whose book ('A Discourse on the Plague' by Richard Mead (Ninth Edition 1744 First edition 1720)) was published rather more than half a century after the event writes: "The plague was at Eham in the Peak of Derbyshire; being brought thither by means of a box sent from London to a tailor in that village, containing some materials relating to his trade. A servant who opened the box, complaining that the contents were damp, was ordered to dry them by the fire; but in doing it, was seized with the plague and died.; the same misfortune extended itself to the rest of the family, except the tailor's wife, who alone survived.
From hence, the distemper spread about and destroyed in that village and the rest of the parish, though a small one, between two and three hundred persons. But not withstanding this so great violence of the disease, it was restrained from reaching beyond that parish by the care of the rector; from whose son and another worthy gentleman I have the relation.
The clergyman advised that the sick should be removed into huts or barracks, built upon the common; and procuring by the interest of the then Earl of Devonshire, that the people should be well furnished with provisions, he took effectual care that no one should go out of the parish, and by this means he protected his neighbours from infection with complete success."
In some particulars, the village bears out this account of the origin of the plague. George Vicars appears to have caught the disease from this clothing which had in all probability been in contact with someone suffering from the plague in London; and he was the first victim at Eyam. He died and was buried Sept. 7th. 1665. The next victim was a child from the same house, Edward Cooper, who was buried fifteen days later.
In September there were six burials. In October the number was twenty-three.
The Peak winters are long ones and during the next seven months, the numbers of deaths were in November,7; December, 9; January 5; February, 8; March, 6; April, 9; and in May, 4. Up till now 77 people had died out of a population of 350. *But it was during the next five months that the mortality became so terrible. 19 died in June, 56 in July, 77 in August, 24 in September and 14 during the first eleven days of October, when the pestilence suddenly ceased, the survivors being only 83 out of the original number of 350 inhabitants; no fewer that 257 having perished.
The Parish Registers give the number as 267 who died during these months. Five are described as infants, and possibly died independently of the plague; three others were brought from the parishes of Bretton and Foolow. The subtraction of these eight leaves 259, the number given by Mompesson himself as dying of the plague in the village of Eyam.
*During the five years immediately preceding the outbreak, 1660-1664, the average number of burials was 19 a year. During the two years which immediately followed the plague, 1667-68, the average was 21. During the ten years 1899-1908 the average number was 13.7 a year. Allowing for a lower death rate at that time, owing to advanced medical skill and improved sanitary conditions, we may assume, from a comparison of the above figures, that the normal population of the village in 1664 would be rather less than it is now - possibly about 1000. There would apparently be considerable exodus from Eyam when the plague first appeared. The population was thus reduced to 350. These Mompesson persuaded to remain, so that infection should not be carried to other places. After the plague ceased, those who have gone away seem to have returned.
It will be seen from the above statistics that it was in June 1666 that the plague began to be at its worst. Some few of the inhabitants had already sought elsewhere an air that was not infected. The rector's little children had been sent away, Mrs. Mompesson imploring that the whole family might depart from Eyam. But her husband showed her that his duty to his people, as well as to his God, compelled him to remain with his flock in this the hour of their need.
He wished her to depart with the children; but she would not forsake him. So the children went and the parents remained.
It might have been easy for the infection to spread from Eyam to the villages around. Although the remaining in the plague-stricken place meant a graver risk of death to themselves, yet the Rector persuaded the inhabitants to seclude themselves from the outside world and not to pass outside an imaginary circle which ran less than a mile from the centre of the village, until the plague passed away from them.
The Earl of Devonshire, who then resided at Chatsworth, some five miles distant, promised his aid; and necessary provisions were sent apparently at the Earl's expense.
Articles were brought from outside and were left at certain points on this boundary line, and when those who had brought them had gone away, the inhabitants would come and fetch them.
One of these points was Mompesson's Well, and the stone trough still exists, beside which these articles were placed. When money for any reason was paid, it was placed in the water which was in the trough for the purpose of purification, and well washed before being taken away.
It was deemed inadvisable, contrary to what was customary during the plague in London, that people should be congregated together within a building. During the hot summer days, Mompesson suggested that the services should be held out of doors, and he gathered together his people in the pretty rural dale which runs southwards from the centre of the village (called "The Cross") to Middleton Dale. This dale is called "The Delf," or "Cucklet Dell." Here is a naturally perforated rock where the rector used to stand, whilst his congregation were gathered round him on the green grass. The arched rock now goes by the name of Cucklet Church. How earnestly would the plague stricken people respond to the Collect from the Book of Common Prayer, in which their rector interceded for them and pleaded that "Almighty God.... would have pity upon them, miserable sinners, visited with great sickness and mortality; and that for Christ's sake it would please Him to withdraw from them that grievous plague and sickness." Or how they would throw their whole hearts into the petition in the Litany "From....plague, pestilence and famine...... Good Lord, deliver us."
As time passed on and the number of the dead so largely increased, they were not buried, not in the Churchyard, but in close proximity to their own dwellings.
For nearly a couple of centuries after the time of the plague, stones with the names of the departed were to be found in or near to many of the houses. The Riley Graves, in a field to the left of the old Sheffield Road, are examples of such hurried burials.
Mompesson had been meanwhile unweariedly ministering to the needs of his flock, and in this work he had been aided by his predecessor, Thomas Stanley, who had been Rector in Puritan times and who still resided in the village.
Catharine Mompesson, the rector's wife, had for some time past been threatened with consumption. About the 22nd of August, to the inexpressible grief of her husband, she caught the pestilence and on the 25th she died.
The tomb, which her husband erected to her memory, stands near the old Saxon Cross in the Churchyard, and is still an object of pilgrimage and interest, almost amounting to veneration, to many.
Mompesson left Eyam four years later, being presented to the rectory of Eakring, Notts., by Sir George Saville, the same patron who, five years before, had presented him to the rectory of Eyam. It is said that his new parishioners had so great a dread of the plague that they refused him admission to the village, and that for a time, until their fears had died away, he was obliged to live in a house in Rufford Park and to hold the services under an ash tree, in a field nearly a mile away from the village. Now a Memorial Cross stands on the spot, Pulpit Ash, where he first preached on coming to the village in 1670, and three stained glass windows have been placed in the Church to his memory.
A century after the plague, in 1766, the then rector Mr. Seward (who was also Canon Residentiary of Lichfield) preached a sermon commemorative of the event, which "was written with great power of description, and appealed so forcibly to the hearts of his auditors, many of whose ancestors had fallen by the plague, that he was frequently interrupted by their tears and overpowered by his own sensations." Rhodes says that when he wrote upwards of 40 years afterwards, the sermon and the effect if produced were still remembered in Eyam.
A century later still the Church was restored in memory of "The Brave Men of Eyam."
On August 26th., 1866, the bicentenary of the plague was observed.
Each year since 1905, a Commemorative Service has been held during Wakes Week in the Delph, at the very spot where the service used to be held during the time of the Plague.
|
Return to top of page |
 |
Next Chapter |
© Copyright Andrew McCann, GENUKI and Contributors 1999-2008, &c.
GENUKI is a registered trade mark of the charitable trust GENUKI, see
About GENUKI as an Organisation
Are you lost in the Genuki hierarchy or arrived here from a Search Engine?
If so, use the up-arrow(s) at the top of the page to go up the hierarchy.
URL of this page: http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/DBY/Eyam/Fletcher/Plague.html
[Created 9 Feb 2001. Last updated 26 Oct 2008 - 09:59 by Rosemary Lockie]