SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



to close their shop windows, and to avoid intercourse with their neighbours until further order. On 

 their refusal they were sent to prison in Monkbar, and their wives, servants, and household were 

 ordered ' to kepe theym quietly in theyr houses from accompaynyng with neghburghs.' No goods 

 or wares from the South were admitted within the walls. Corpus Christi plays were forbidden, 

 strolling players were driven from the city, the keepers of the poor lodging-houses were forbidden to 

 take in beggars, vagrants, or vagabonds. Micklegate Bar and Skeldergate Postern vvere carefully 

 watched, and any stranger coming in was closely questioned as to the district from which he came, 

 and debarred entrance if he came from Ferrybridge or Kippax where the pestilence was raging. 

 But it was during the 17th century that Yorkshire suffered most from the plague. News reached 

 York in the July of 1603 that Newcastle^* was not a safe place for traders to visit on account of the 

 pestilence, and two months later the disease had worked its way southwards, and had appeared in 

 several small villages in the Tadcaster and Wetherby district, only 10 miles from York itself. The 

 York Council met the danger with commendable promptitude. Stringent preventive measures 

 were adopted, the execution of which was placed in the hands of two officials, a cleanser and a viewer, 

 who had gained experience in the terrible times at Newcastle.*' Amusements such as bride bed 

 and the feasts of the trading companies were forbidden, cats and dogs were either to be kept at home 

 or destroyed. Oswald Metcalf was appointed to kill all those which he found ' in the strats ' and to 

 have ' for his paynes ii^. apece for every one which he shall so kill and the skynnes of such which 

 he shall so kill.' ^ 



Public begging was prohibited ; the poor were to be relieved in their own homes. Suspected 

 cases were to be at once removed to Hob Moor, about a mile outside Micklegate Bar, or 

 Bootham Stray, about the same distance from Bootham Bar, where some sort of tents or temporary 

 buildings had been erected. Jubbergate, Gillygate, Trinity Churchyard, Goodramgate, Water 

 Lane, Spurriergate, Coney Street, Bishophill, and Bootham Bar were centres of infection when the 

 inayor wrote his account to his civic brethren on 5 May 1604.*' The panic spread ; sheriffs, 

 chamberlains, and constables fled from the city. The officials offered large bribes to be allowed to 

 forsake their duties, but they were sternly ordered to remain at their posts."" Sheriffs who disobeyed 

 were fined ;^ioo, chamberlains £40, and constables ;^20.°^ But the mayor realized that the 

 presence of death often acts not as a deterrent but as an incentive to crime. He writes — 



that the infection doth so greatlie increase in this cittye that unlesse we the magistrates have great 

 care and do take paines in the governinge and rulinge of this cittye and in takinge order for the 

 receivinge of them, the poorer sort would not be ruled, which would be a great discredit unto us.°' 



By the February of 1605 York was declared free from infection.'^ It has been calculated that 

 about 3,512 people died of plague in York. The registers of seventeen of the most populous 

 parishes return 2,000 deaths between i May and 31 December 1604, and the remaining parishes 

 account for about 1,500 more. When it is remembered that exceptional precautions were taken in 

 the case of York, so that probably the death rate was not so high there as in other places, and that 

 the whole of Yorkshire was visited, some idea may be formed of the immediate paralysing effect 

 of these terrible scourges on the economic and industrial life of the people and the ultimate effect 

 on the organization of labour. 



But in the year 1631 there was an outbreak of plague of still greater magnitude, and precau- 

 tionary measures were no longer entrusted solely to the civic authorities ; Wentworth was President 

 of the Council of the North, and resided in York. With characteristic energy he threw himself 

 into the subject of sanitary reform. The church played an important part in the suppression of the 

 Black Death, the mayor and aldermen in dealing with the outbreaks of plague under the Tudors 

 and James I ; but although the City Council might be the instruments appointed by Wentworth to 

 put his orders in execution, they were deprived of all initiative, obedience to a stern taskmaster was 

 substituted for the meritorious self-sacrifice, which lends to the history of the earlier outbreaks the 

 attraction which is inseparable from voluntary effort. In a letter to Viscount Dorchester, Went- 

 worth gives a succinct account of the manner in which the plague came from Lancashire into the 

 West Riding. Heptonstall was the first place attacked, no fewer than forty houses there being infected ; 

 but Halifax, only a few miles distant, escaped, and Leeds, although the disease was at Beeston and 

 Holbeck in the immediate neighbourhood, had not a single case when the letter was written. In 

 the neighbourhood of York itself the plague was brought ' by a lewde woman, who brake forth of 



^ York Munic. Rec. xxiii, fol. 106-45, 21 July 1563 — 14 June 1565. 



"^ Ibid, xxxii, fol. 279a, 8 July 1603. 



*' Ibid. fol. 323 d. 27 Apr. 1604. 



°' Ibid. fol. 329 d. 12 May 1604. 



=' Ibid. fol. 332^. »« Ibid. fol. 340^, II July 1604. »> Ibid 



" Ibid. fol. 340;?. 93 Ibid. fol. 394a, 3 Feb. 1605. 



455 



