[The following is in regards to a plague that struck during the time of the coronation of King James I of England (AKA King James VI of Scotland).]
As soon as the coronation was over people streamed out of the capital. Some were already infected with the plague and the villages around London became packed with victims carrying their flea-ridden bedding. Sir William Waad, a clerk of the Privy Council, complained to Cecil that in Hampstead they were finding corpses every week in hedgerows, yards, outhouses and barns. As the City emptied, grass began to grow on the usually busy streets of Cheapside and those left behind found that with the City alderman and other figures of authority gone, the regulations designed to halt the spread of the disease had collapsed.
Waad reported crowds appearing at funerals, strewing the streets with flowers for unmarried girls, “and for bachelors they wear rosemary, as if they were at marriages.” At least one victim actually was a bride who fell ill and died on her wedding day, aged twenty-one. Many other victims listed in the parish records were younger still: a “poor boy that died under St John’s wall”; a “poor child found at Mistress Bake’s door” – and not all are so anonymous. Ben Jonson lost his seven-year-old son on 6 September.
People tried to protect themselves by smoking tobacco or chewing orange peel and angelica root. Others used posies of medicinal herbs. One day a “fearful pitiful coach” was seen dashing through the capital, “all hung with rue from the top to the toe of the boot, to keep the leather and the nails from infection; the very nostrils of the horses were stopped with herb grace.”
Source:
Lisle, Leanda De. "An Anointed King" After Elizabeth: The Rise of James of Scotland and the Struggle for the Throne of England. New York: Ballantine, 2005. 247. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Wilson, Plague, pp. 90, 94, 95, 97, 98.
Further Reading:
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