400 years ago, an outbreak of the plague, known in the Middle Ages as the Black Death, swept through the country. It is likely that at a time without the same level of science and medical care, it was a possibly a much more scary experience than anything else in recent history. The plague was an incredibly infectious and often fatal disease, which the people of the period could not fight with medicine. Initially Reading was seen as a safe refuge, but this proved not to be the case.
The Reading Borough archive contains two orders by the mayor relating to the plague, both dated 8 August 1625.
In one, the inhabitants of the borough were forbidden from receiving in their houses any persons, household stuff, goods, wares or merchandise brought by water or land from the city of London during the time of 'the greate infection there'. Any offender would be shut up with his or her family and prevented from leaving for about one month - and this would be at their own expense too!
The mayor also issued instructions to the borough constables for the collection of a tax levied on the people of Reading for the relief of those infected with plague as unable to work, they might otherwise have starved.
The Reading Borough collection also includes a letter from the Privy Council to the High Sheriff of Berkshire requiring the attendance of two 'sufficient and well experienced Clothiers' to attend the Board at Southampton on 23 August 1625 to give their opinions as to the most suitable place to house the Market and Staple of Cloth during the outbreak of plague in London.
It is endorsed with the desperate hope, ‘Please God to cease the violence of the contagious sicknes [sic] nowe be dangerously disparsed [sic] in & about the Cittie of London’.
The local men selected were William Kendrick of Reading and Thomas Newman of Newbury, and it may have been they who suggested Reading would be a good choice. But the borough burgesses knew Reading was not safe, and although they agreed to provide accommodation for the Staple in the King’s stables in Reading, they told the Privy Council that there were already four households where the illness had struck, with a further two where it was suspected, and the burgesses had ordered for these houses to be shut up.
The day after this request someone in the borough composed a letter to the judge, Sir James Whitelocke (1570-1632), who was a justice of the court of King's Bench. The writer stated that God had been merciful to the town, as although a number of houses had been infected, the infections had not spread as swiftly as in other places. The Corporation had provided a pesthouse where infected individuals were quarantined. However, they feared to be exposed to 'such danger as may tend to the utter overthrow of the whole towne'.
Despite the orders, some inhabitants of the town thinking only of their own private gain, had, contrary to the order, received wares from London, refused to and would not shut up their doors or stay indoors, instead choosing to persist in their course, revile and threaten the poor officials.
The plague was much more dangerous than Covid, but perhaps our more recent experiences give us more appreciation and empathy for those experienced by our 17th century forebears.
Source: R/Z3/9-11