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When the plague broke out in the latter end of the summer of 1665, there lived in a humble straw-thatched cottage, a little west of the Church, a very happy and contented family, named Sydall: consisting of husband, wife, five daughters, and one son. The father, son and four daughters took the infection, and died in the space of twenty-five days, in October 1665; leaving the hapless mother and one daughter. The mother had now nothing to render her disconsolate case bearable but her only surviving daughter Emmot, a modest and pretty village maiden. Emmot had for some time received the fervent addresses of a youth named Rowland, who resided in Middleton Dale, about a mile south-east of Eyam. He had daily visited her and sympathised with her on the death of her father, brother, and four young sisters.Often had she anxiously remonstrated with him on his visits; but nothing could deter him from nightly pacing the devoted village, until the death-breathing pest threatened total desolation to the surrounding country if intercourse were allowed. The happy scene when Rowland and Emmot were to cast their lots together had been appointed to take place at the ensuing wakes; and fervently did they pray that the pestilence would cease. The ring, the emblem of endless and unchanging love, had been presented by Rowland to his beloved Emmot; and by her it was treasured as the certain pledge of his sincerity and affection. Frequently would she retire into her chamber, and bring it forth from the sanctuary and place it on her finger; while her eyes sparkled with meaning- while through those bright portals of her mind come forth her thoughts, in language more eloquent than words. Rowland was seen each morn hasting along the dale to his occupation. Lightsome were his steps; his whistling echoed from rock to rock; and his soul glowed with all the charms of anticipated bliss. Thus this loving pair indulged in dreams of future happiness; thus they cherished the fond hope of connubial joy, on the very eve of separation!
Towards the end of April, 1666, the lovely Emmot was seized by the terrific pest, and hurried to her grave on the thirtieth of the same month. Rowland heard a brief rumour of the dreadful tidings and his hopes were scattered. The brand of general abhorrence with which he would be marked if he, at that period of the pestilence, attempted to venture into the dreadful village, debarred him from ascertaining the fate of his Emmot. Often, however, would his love and dreadful anxiety urge him to pass the circle of death. But, to bring the pestilence home to his own family, to incur the everlasting infamy of spreading a disease so terrible, with the almost certainty of death on his own part, happily deterred him on each attempt, from entering the poisonous "Upas vale."
One one occasion, indeed, Rowland ascended a hill contiguous to Eyam ; and thence he looked over the silent village for hours. It was Sabbath eve:
"But yet no Sabbath sound
Came from the village; no rejoicing bells
Were heard; no groups of strolling youths were found,
Nor lovers loitering on the distant fells,
No laugh, no shout of infancy, which tells
Where radiant health and happiness repair;
But silence, such as with the lifeless dwells,
Fell on his shuddering heart and fixed him there,
Frozen with dreams of death and bodings of despair."- WILLIAM AND MARY HOWITT
It was some time after the plague had ceased that Rowland summoned up sufficient courage to enter the village, and to learn of the fate of his Emmot. Glimmering hope and fearful apprehension alternately possessed his mind, as his faltering steps brought him to the verge of the village. He stood on a little eminence at the eastern entrance of the place, and glanced for a few moments around; but he saw no smoke ascend from the ivy-adorned chimneys- nothing but the sighing breeze broke the still expanse, and he felt chained to the spot by terror and dismay. At length he ventured into the silent village, but he suddenly stopped, looking as much aghast as if he had seen the portentous inscription which met the eye of Dante when the shade of Virgil led him to the porch of Erebus. He then passed slowly on, gazing intently on the desolate blank. A noiseless gloom pervaded the lonely street; no human form appeared, nor sound of life was heard. Filled with unspeakable amazement he looked on each lonely cottage; a hollow stillness reigned within; and
"Horror round
Waved her triumphant wings o'er the untrodden ground."- WILLIAM AND MARY HOWITT
Then towards the cot of his Emmot he bent his way. His direful forebodings increased with every step. As he approached the dwelling his heart swelled and beat with painful emotion; but ere he reached the place a solitary boy appeared, and thus the sorrowful tidings told:- "Ah! Rowland, thy Emmot's dead and buried in the Cussy Dell!" This sudden disclosure struck Rowland with unutterable grief; he clung to an adjoining wall, and there stood awhile combating with feelings keen and unspeakable. At the death of Emmot, her mother, frantic with despair, fled to the Cussy Dell, and there dwelt with some fugitive relatives. Rowland, after some time, approached the abode of his Emmot; the once happy place where he had spent so many happy hours. He reached the threshold, over which the grass grew profusely; the half-open door yielded to his hand, and he entered the silent dwelling filled with unimaginable sensations. On the hearth and floor the grass grew up from every chink; the tables and chairs stood in their usual places; the pewter plates and pans were flecked with rust; and the once sweet-warbling linnet lay dead in its cage. Rowland wept as he left the tenantless dwelling; his dreadful apprehensions were verified; and until death closed his eyes at a great age, he frequently dropped a tear to the memory of his once lovely Emmot.
Some few who had the plague, in Eyam, recovered; one was a Margaret Blackwell. Tradition says that she was about eighteen years of age when she took the distemper, and that her father and whole family, excepting one brother, were dead at the time of her sickness.Her brother was one morning obliged to go some distance for coals. He arose very early, cooked himself some bacon, and started, being certain, in his mind, that he should find his sister dead when he returned. Margaret, almost dying with excessive thirst, got out of bed for something to drink, and finding a small wooden piggin with something in it, which she thought was water, but which was the fat from the bacon which her brother had just cooked, she drank it all off, returned to bed again, and found herself soon after rather better. She, however, had not the least hope of surviving:-
"But nature rallied, and her flame still burn'd-
Sunk in the socket, glimmer'd, and return'd;
The golden bowl and silver cord were sound;
The cistern's wheel revolved its steady round:
Fire- vital fire- evolved the living steam,
And life's fine engine pump'd the purple stream."- FURNESS
On her brother's return, he found her, to his great surprise much better; she eventually recovered, and lived to a good old age. Drinking adventitiously the contents of the wooden piggin has generally been considered the cause of her unexpected resuscitation.
During the time the plague was at its maximum, a few rather audacious circumstances are traditionally recorded. One in particular was that the services of Marshall Howe were required at a house at the western extremity of the village, where it was stated a man, named Unwin was dying or just dead of the plague.Very soon the sexton of the plague was on the place,and after digging on the premises a shallow grave, he ascended the chamber where the corpse laywhich he soon had on his back, and was leisurely descending the stone-step-stairs, when lo! the supposed dead man, in a kind of half-smothered ruttle in the throat, said,"I want a posset!" Marshall howe, in high dudgeon disburthened himself and departed. Unwin got a posset and recovered.
* Posset is a beverage of boiled milk with bread, intermixed with ale, &c. It is currently believed, from the haste in burying many who took the plague, that instances may have occurred of some being buried alive.
Towards the latter end of the summer of the dreadful pest, a man of the name of Merril, of the Hollins-house, Eyam, erected a hut near the summit of Sir William, wherein he dwelt to escape the plague, having only a cock with him, which he had taken for a companion. In this solitary retreat they lived together for about a month, with nothing to cheer them but the wild bee wandering with merry song. Merril would frequently, during this solitary sojourn, descend to a point of the hill from which he could overlook the fated place; but nothing could he perceive in the distance save the direful havoc of the awful scourge, as exhibited in the increasing number of graves in the fields of the village. One morning, however, his companion, the cock, strutted from a corner of the hut into the heath, and after glancing about, sprang from the ground with flapping wings, nor stopped in its airy course until it had arrived at its former residence, Hollins-house. Merril pondered a day or two over the meaning of his companion's abrupt desertion, and at last he thus soliloquized:- "Noah knew when the dove went forth and returned not again that the waters had subsided, and that the face of the earth was dry." He, therefore, took up the other articles he had brought, and returned to his former residence, where he found his cock.The plague had abated; and Merril and his cock lived many years together at the Hollins-house after the pestilence had totally ceased.
A little west of Eyam, at a house called Shepherds' Hall or Shepherds' Flat, resided a family named Mortin, who suffered greatly during the plague. This family consisted of husband, wife, and one child: the wife being at the time the plague broke out so fiercely in 1666, in an advanced state of pregnancy. There was another house very near to Mortin's inhabited by a widow named Kempe, whose children, after playing with the children of Eyam, brought the infection to the Shepherds' Flat.When the time of Mortin's wife's pregnancy was expiredno one would come near to assist in giving birth to her child. She was very ill, and declared that without assistance she would die. Mortin, in the last extremity of despair, was compelled to assist in the act of parturition. The eldest child was, during this time, shut up in a room, where it screamed incessantly, being almost petrified with fear. Very soon after, both children and mother took the distemper and died, and Mortin buried them successively with his own hands at the end of his habitation. The other family of Kempes all died; Mortin being then the only human being left at Shepherds' Flat, where he lived in solitude for some years after the plague. A greyhound and four cows were his companions; one of the cows he milked to keep the greyhound and himself. To such an extent did this horrible pest carry on human desolation, that hares, rabbits, and other kinds of game multiplied and overran the vicinity of Eyam: Mortin's greyhound could have gone out and brought in a hare in a few minutes, at any time of the day.
AN ADVENTURE DURING THE PLAGUE
At the period of this dreadful malady, Tideswell, about five miles west of Eyam, was one of the principal market towns in the peak, and it was frequented on the market days by great numbers from the wide-scattered villages.Those who regularly attended, as well as the inhabitants of the place, were thrown into great consternation by the appalling reports of the pestilence at Eyam; and a watch was appointed at the eastern entrance of Tideswell, to question all who came that way, and to prevent any one from Eyam entering the place on any business whatever. A woman who resided in that part of Eyam called Orchard Bank, was, during the plague, compelled by some pressing exigency to go to the market at Tideswell; knowing, however, that it would be almost impossible to pass the watch if she told whence she came, she therefore had recourse to the following stratagem:- the watch, on her arrival, thus authoritatively addressed her:- "Whence comest thou?""From Orchard Bank," she replied. "And where is that?" the watch asked again. "Why verily," said the woman, "it is in the land of the living." The watch, not knowing the place, allowed her to pass; but she had scarcely reached the market when some person knew her, and whence she came."The plague! the plague! a woman from Eyam! The plague! a woman from Eyam!"immediately resounded from all sides; and the poor creature, terrified almost to death, fled as fast as she possibly could. The infuriated multitude followed her some distance out of the market-place, pelting her with stones, mud, sods, and other missiles. She returned to Orchard Bank, Eyam, bruised and otherwise worse for her daring and prevarication.
During the plague, a man who lived at Bubnell, near Chatsworth, an ancestor of Mr. W.Howard Barlow, had either to come to, or pass through, Eyam, with a load of wood, which he was in the habit of carrying from the woods at Chatsworth to the surrounding villages. His neighbours strongly remonstrated with him, before his departure, on the impropriety and danger of going near Eyam; being, however, a fine, robust man, he disregarded their admonitions, and proceeded through Eyam with the wood. The day turned out very wet and boisterous; and as no one would accompany him to assist in unloading the wood, great delay was thereby occasioned. A severe cold was the result, and shortly after his arrival at home he was attacked with a slight fever. The neighbours having ascertained his route, became alarmed at his indisposition; they naturally concluded that he had taken the infection, and they were so incensed at his daring and dangerous conduct that they threatened to shoot him if he attempted to leave his house. A man was appointed to watch and give the alarm if he crossed his own threshold. The consternation of the inhabitants of Bubnell and neighbouring places excited the notice of the Earl of Devonshire, who had either at his own request or otherwise, the particulars of the case laid before him. The noble Earl, being anxious that no unnecessary alarm should be created, reasoned with the persons who waited on him from Bubnell, on the impropriety of rashly judging because the man was ill, it was necessarily the plague. He told them to go back, and he would send his doctor at a certain hour the next day to investigate the nature of the man's illness. The interview, either at the suggestion of the Earl or from the doctor's fear, was appointed to take place across the River Derwent, which flows close by Bubnell. At the appointed time, the doctor took his station on the eastern, and the invalid on the western side of the river. The affrighted neighbours looked on from the distance, while the doctor interrogated the sick man at great length. The doctor at last pronounced him free from the disorder; prescribed him some medicine; and the man, who was much better, soon recovered.
* The doctor's prescription was in the hands of the late Dr. Nicholson, son-in-law of Mr. W. Howard, Barlow.
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