1603 London plague

London plague 1603 June 2024 June 2024 P6 Coronation of King James I. at Westminster.jpg King James I's coronation ceremony was held on 25 July 1603 despite the plague. Plague Yersinia pestis London, England 1603–1604 23,045Moote A. Lloyd Great Plague : the Story of London's Most Deadly Year. 2006 The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore 9780801892301 10~35,000Kohn George Childs Burns William Encyclopedia of plague and pestilence 2021 Facts On File New York, N.Y. 9781646937691 327 Fourth The 1603 London plague epidemic was the first of the 17th century and marked the transition from the Tudor to the Stuart period. While sources vary as to the exact number of people killed, around one-fifth of London's population is estimated to have died.Cummins Neil Kelly Morgan Ó Gráda Cormac 2016 Living standards and plague in London, 1560-1665: Living Standards and Plague in London https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ehr.12098 The Economic History Review en 69 1 3–34 10.1111/ehr.12098 subscription While the plague affected all parts of the city, it disproportionately impacted London's poorer parishes. London in 1603 Migration from rural areas and London's high birth ratesTraill Henry Duff https://books.google.com/books?id=PiM8AQAAIAAJ&dq=plague+of+1603&pg=PA764 Social England: 1509-1603 Mann James Saumarez 1902 Cassell, limited 764–766 en helped the population recover from the 1592–1593 plague, with an average of 6000 christenings a year leading up to 1603.Birch Thomas https://books.google.com/books?id=SsFCAQAAMAAJ&dq=1603+London+plague&pg=PA730 A Collection of the Yearly Bills of Mortality, from 1657 to 1758 Inclusive: Together with Several Other Bills of an Earlier Date 1759 A. Millar London 90 en Patchy sanitation by city authorities and an abundance of organic litter in the impoverished neighborhoods fueled a large rat population within the city walls, where one-third of London lived. Two-thirds of London's population resided in the crowded, unsanitary, and poorly-governed parishes known as "liberties" which surrounded the walls and extended into the countryside. https://archive.org/details/historyofepidemi01crei/page/474 A History of Epidemics in Britain: From A.D. 664 to the extinction of plague. Cambridge University Press Charles Creighton 474–477 1891 15 July 2019 Like every London plague since 1563, the 1603 epidemic began in the liberties. Plague in London thumb|left|Urban black rats were common and flea bites regularly happened on city streets.|354x354px London's outer parish of Stepney was the first to record cases of bubonic plague shortly after the funeral of Queen Elizabeth.https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=TcVKAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA1-PA206 Social England, A Record of the Progress of the People in Religion, Laws, Learning, Arts, Industry, Commerce, Science, Literature and Manners, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day Cassel and Company Limited 1903 Traill D.C.L H.D. 3 London 206–207 1 July 2019 Mann M.A J.S. The first plague of Stuart England disrupted the coronation of James I, which contemporaries found foreboding for the new king's reign.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQFmWStPHPo&t=336s The Stuarts: A Bloody Reign, Part 1 2018 Video English 8:08-8:15 The disease crept west towards London, and on 1 May deaths were being recorded just outside the city's northern walls in St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate.Hollingsworth Mary F. Hollingsworth T. H. 1971 Plague Mortality Rates by Age and Sex in the Parish of St. Botolph's without Bishopsgate, London, 1603 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2172754 Population Studies 25 1 131–146 10.2307/2172754 2172754 22091721 0032-4728 subscription The plague spread quickly but stealthily through the large rat populations that lived off the filth. Local physician Thomas Lodge writes in his Treatise of the Plague that "For where the infestation most rageth, poverty reigns among the Commons..."https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=LfIyAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PR51 A Deference of Poetry, Music, and Stage Plays Lodge Thomas The Shakespear Society 1853 London Orders to shutter theatres were given and remained in place for nearly a year.Totaro Rebecca https://books.google.com/books?id=uZpdBwAAQBAJ&dq=plague+of+1603&pg=PA55 Representing the Plague in Early Modern England Gilman Ernest B. 13 September 2010 Routledge 978-1-136-96324-7 New York 55 en By summer the plague had begun to interfere more with daily life. The Trinity law sessions were suspended on 23 June, and by 10 July most people were avoiding St Paul's Cathedral. The coronation of James VI and Anne of Denmark went ahead on 25 July.Jemma Field, 'Anna of Denmark', Aidan Norrie, Carolyn Harris, J. L. Laynesmith, Danna R. Messer, Elena Woodacre, Tudor and Stuart Consorts: Power, Influence, and Dynasty (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), p. 214. 650 of 674 deaths during September in Stepney parish were from the plague. https://archive.org/details/historyofepidemi01crei/page/478 A History of Epidemics in Britain: From A.D. 664 to the extinction of plague. Cambridge University Press Charles Creighton 478–479 1891 15 July 2019 The plague was particularly lethal to younger people in St. Botolph's, with the parish recording 979 deaths of individuals between one and 24 years old. Some of the symptoms that were saw in these people, were high fever, boils, cough, and bleeding.The Plague in England https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/plague-england 2025-09-14 History Today en The royal family and court moved to Hampshire, in the belief that the area were more healthy.Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, vol. 3 (London, 1838), p. 36. When King James was at Woodstock Palace in September 1603, Spanish and Flemish diplomats lodged at Jesus College, Oxford. A servant of the Spanish ambassador Juan de Tassis, 1st Count of Villamediana died in Oxford, and the diplomats were moved to Southampton.Óscar Alfredo Ruiz Fernández, England and Spain in the Early Modern Era: Royal Love, Diplomacy, Trade and Naval Relations (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), p. 30: Horatio Brown, Calendar State Papers, Venice: 1603–1607, vol. 10 (London, 1900), p. 96 no. 136. Prince Henry moved to Winchester, where his mother welcomed him with a masque.Martin Wiggins & Catherine Richardson, British Drama, 1533–1642: 1603–1608, vol. 5 (Oxford, 2015), pp. 51–2. During the Elizabethan years, London's theatres were closed to slow the spread of the plague. Theatres were a major gathering and social hub for people during this period.2025-08-15 English literature - Elizabethan, Early Stuart, Drama Britannica https://www.britannica.com/art/English-literature/Elizabethan-and-early-Stuart-drama 2025-09-14 www.britannica.com en However, public attitudes towards theatergoing and actors soured as these venues became associated with the epidemic. The closures disrupted the careers of playwrights like William Shakespeare and Thomas Dekker, the latter of whom felt inspired by the turbulence to write The Wonderfull Yeare. In March 1604, the plague was said to be "stayed in the city and suburbs", and people now came to London "without fear or hurt". One of the last casualties was a servant of Anne of Denmark, a quarter waiter called Watson. A Royal Entry to London, deferred from the July coronation, was held on 15 April 1604.Trevelyan Papers, 3 (London: Camden Society, 1872), pp. 62–63. Aftermath London's government became more aware of the link between the city's recurring plague outbreaks and the filth that blighted the city.Fritze Ronald H. https://books.google.com/books?id=8goko0Lpr5sC&dq=1603+London+plague&pg=PA308 Historical Dictionary of Stuart England, 1603-1689 Robison William B. Robison William ROBISON WM B. 1996 Greenwood Publishing Group 978-0-313-28391-8 London 206 en While plague could and did strike any class, poor populations where dirty conditions prevailed had suffered greater losses than the cleaner areas of the city. When news of London's plague subsiding reached the countryside, opportunistic traders quickly moved from rural areas to London to fill in the void left by those who'd deceased or fled. London's status as England's economic powerhouse continued despite semi-generational plague epidemics like 1603. The 1603 epidemic even influenced the King James Bible as King James, like many of his contemporaries, interpreted the disease to be a weapon of God's anger: "Behold, with a great plague with the Lord smite... a great catastrophe that could strike a city."Porter Stephen Disease and the City 17th Century: Plague https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lecture/transcript/print/17th-century-plague/ 28 November 2019 Gresham College The plague remained endemic in London with outbreaks of varying virulence returning in the years that followed. London's Bills of Mortality for the middle of the decade show 900 plague deaths in 1604, 400 in 1605, and a spike to 2000 plague deaths in 1606.https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=NsXvJJuvOsIC&hl=en&pg=GBS.PP532 The Cyclopædia, Or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature Rees Abraham A. Strahan 1819 London 492 References Category:1603 disasters Category:1603 in health Category:17th-century disease outbreaks Category:1604 disasters Category:1604 in health Category:1603 in England Category:1604 in England Category:1600s in London Category:Death in London Category:Disease outbreaks in London Category:Elizabeth I Category:James VI and I