332 



PAEISH EEGIRTEES OF PEESTEIGN. 

 [By Mr. James W. Lloyd.] 



The Registers of this parish which were inspected by some of our members 

 present many points of interest, few places possessing so complete a series and 

 from so early a date. The keeping of registers of births, deatlis, and marriages 

 was established by Cromwell the minister of Henry the Eighth in 1538, but this 

 was not carried out in country parishes until the early part of the reign of 

 Elizabeth, and the existing registers of this parish commence in 1561, the third 

 year after her accession. 



Perhaps the most important historical fact to be gathered from the entries 

 on these registers is — that at three different periods the town, which was then 

 probably more populous than it is at the present day, was visited by the plague 

 or pestilence, viz., in 1593, ICIO, and 1636-7, and the extent of its ravages may be 

 realized by the numerous entries recording the burials of its victims. In 1593 the 

 disease broke out in May, the first recorded burial being on the 10th, followed by 

 three others in that month. In June the letter "p" denoting cause of death 

 is affixed to fourteen names, while in July out of a hundred and fifteen deaths a 

 hundred and fourteen were thus distinguished. In August the deaths rose to a 

 hundred and forty-nine — all but one due to pestilence. From this time the deaths 

 decreased gradually until February, 1594, when two bear the ominous "p " for the 

 last time. To enable a judgment to be formed of the severity of this visitation, it 

 will only be necessary to state that the average number of burials per annum for 

 the twenty-one preceding years was fifty, while in 1593 the total number was 

 three hundred and eighty-three, of which three hundred and flfty-two were of the 

 pestilence. In 1610 the total number of burials was a hundred and sixty-one, the 

 deaths from plague not being distinguished, but in 1636-7 the fatal "p" again 

 appears, showing a hundred and forty-six deaths from this cause in the former, 

 and fifty-seven in the latter year. So severe was the distress caused by this 

 visitation, no one daring to enter the tovm, country people carrying provisions, 

 clothing, and other necessaries to a place near, still known as Market Lane, where 

 they deposited them to be fetched by the afflicted townspeople, that the following 

 precept and warrant, under the hands of Sir Robert Harley and John Vaughan, 

 Esq., magistrates of the county of Hereford, was directed to the constables of the 

 hundred of Wigmore for the relief of the place : — 



"Forasmuch as the Lord hath visited the neighbourhood of the town of 

 Presteigne, within the county of Radnor, with that grievous infection of the 

 Plague ; and now being certified from two of the Justices of the Peace of the 

 same county, of the poverty of the inhabitants thereof, &c. These are therefore, 

 by virtue of an Act of Parliament made on the first year of the reign of King 

 James, of famous memory, for the charitable relief and the ordering of persons 

 infected with the plague, to will and to require you to collect and gather weekly 

 within the feudal rights and townships under-written, within your hundred, the 



