Plague in Chester &c. and in Ireland, 1647-1650

The two remaining English plagues of those years were both in cities that had suffered much from plague before, and were in a constant state of turmoil during the war, namely Chester and Shrewsbury. Chester was held for the king, and surrendered to the Parliament on February 3, 1646, after a siege of twenty weeks, during the latter part of which there was famine within the walls. It was not until 1647 that plague broke out. From June 22 until April 20, 1648, the numbers that died of plague are stated in the MS. of Dr Cowper to have been 2099; all business was suspended, and cabins for the plague-stricken were built outside the town[1105].

The Shrewsbury plague of 1650, like that of Chester, is described as having been dreadful in its effects upon the town. It broke out during the occupation by the Parliament’s troops, on June 12, 1650, in a house in Frankwell, and continued until January, 1651. Only one parish, St Chad’s, appears to have kept account of the plague-deaths: in that register from June 12 to January 16, there are entered 277 burials, whereof of the plague 250, the highest monthly mortality (76) being in August, 1650. Of these 250 deaths, 123 took place in the pest-houses. A letter of August 21 says that 153 died in two months, and that there were near 3000 people in the town dependent upon common charity[1106]. On November 21, there were still 200 cases in the pest-houses, most of them being in the way to recover, as usually happened towards the end of an epidemic through the greater readiness of the buboes to suppurate.

From the small number of burials due to ordinary causes in the St Chad’s register, it would appear that many citizens had fled. The severity of incidence upon certain houses appears from the fact that five servants in Mr Rowley’s house died of it; and that 15 out of 21 burials in St Julian’s parish came from four families[1107]. These are incidents like those of the great plague of London in 1665, which is the next in time in the English annals after Shrewsbury’s visitation in 1650.

The plague in Ireland in 1649-50 was connected, directly and indirectly, with the military operations under Ireton and Cromwell. The previous year, 1648, had been one of famine: at the attack on Kildare by the rebels in the spring, both the English garrison in the town and the attacking Irish were half-starved, and there was a great mortality on both sides, as well as a murrain of cattle. On May 4, corn in all the rebel quarters is said to be at the incredible price of £8 the quarter, both men and cattle dying in large numbers[1108]. In 1649 the plague broke out in Kilkenny, obliging the supreme council of Confederate Catholics to remove to Ennis. Ireton, “thinking he ought not to meddle with what the Lord had so visibly taken into his hands, has declined taking Kilkenny into his own.” But Cromwell besieged it on March 23, 1650, by which time the garrison of 200 horse and 1,000 foot had been reduced to 300 men through the ravages of the plague, the inhabitants having also suffered heavily[1109].

The Royalist letters from the Hague speak of the plague in the summer of 1650 as disastrous in Ireland, particularly in Dublin[1110]. On August ⁄15: “Lady Inchiquin came hither last night; those with her report that the plague will devour what the sword has not in Ireland.” On September ⁄12: “All I hear out of Ireland is that the plague has made a horrid devastation there; 1100 in a week died in Dublin”—an improbable estimate[1111]. The ranks of the rebels were so thinned by the sword and pestilence that “not above 200 suffered by the hands of the executioner,” after trial at the high court of justice held in County Cork in 1651[1112]. The epidemic appears to have ceased in the autumn of 1650, when the Council of State, in a despatch to the Lord Deputy, take notice of the goodness of God in stopping the plague[1113].