Historians think the plague spread to England from the Netherlands. Dutch trading ships carrying cotton from Amsterdam may have brought the plague to England. Amsterdam was badly hit by the plague in 1663–1664; the disease killed about 50,000 people.
In London, the first places hit by the plague were the dock areas outside of the city and the parish of St Giles in the Fields. In these places, poor workers lived crowded together in bad conditions. Nobody kept records about the deaths of very poor people, so nobody knows how many of these people may have died from the plague. However, records say the first person to die of the plague in London was Rebecca Andrews, on 12 April 1665.
By July 1665, plague was in the city of London itself. Many of the people who could afford to leave the city left for the countryside. King Charles II of England, his family, and his court left the city for Oxfordshire. Most wealthy merchants and professionals left the city, so most businesses were closed. As the plague got worse, more and more people left. London got so empty that grass started to grow on the streets.
However, most of the city's government officials stayed in London. So did the Lord Mayor of London, Sir John Lawrence. As the plague got worse, more and more people left, but a small number of clergymen, physicians and apothecaries chose to stay. Also, people who were too poor to move to the countryside had no choice but to stay in the city.
Some of the people who stayed in London wrote about the Great Plague. Samuel Pepys's diary about living through the plague has given historians a lot of information about what the plague was like. Henry Foe, a saddler who lived in East London, also decided not to leave the city. Years later, in 1722, Foe's nephew Daniel Defoe wrote "A Journal of the Plague Year", a story about the plague, which he may have based on Foe's journals.
People in London tried many different things to try to treat the plague and stop it from spreading. At the time, nobody understood what caused the plague, how it spread, or how to treat it. Antibiotic medications, which are the only treatment for plague, would not be discovered for another 300 years. People were so afraid of catching the plague from other people that they threw dead plague victims' bodies in overcrowded pits and buried them all together, as quickly as possible. In one parish in London, 1,114 dead plague victims were buried together in a hole that was fifty feet long and twenty feet wide.
As the plague got worse, people began to do worse things. Some people refused to help sick family members. Other people forced sick servants to leave, even though they had nowhere to go. Eventually, if one person in a home got the plague, the whole family was forced to stay in the home. A red cross and the words "Lord have mercy upon us" would be painted on the door. Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary: "the plague [is] making us cruel as dogs to one another."
Government officials tried several public health programs to prevent more people from getting the plague. For example:
"Plague doctors" walked the streets diagnosing victims, although many of them were not actual doctors. Wearing special costumes, they tried to treat plague victims with bloodletting, frogs, and leeches.
Though the plague was worst in London, it also affected other parts of England. Perhaps the most famous example was the village of Eyam in Derbyshire. Nobody knows for sure how the plague got to Eyam. However, stories say that a merchant carrying cloth from London accidentally brought the plague with him. The villagers quarantined themselves - kept themselves apart from other people and other villages - to make sure the disease would not spread any further. This kept the plague from spreading outside Eyam. However, about 80% of the people in Eyam died from the plague within a little over a year.
As time went on, more and more people died from the plague. This continued until the week of 19-26 September, 1665. This was the worst week of the Great Plague: 7,166 people died from the plague in that week. After that, the number of deaths from the plague began to slow down. By February 1666, the King and his court decided it was safe enough to return to London.
Some people - though not nearly so many - continued to get the plague until September 1666. Around that time, the plague outbreak ended. The Great Fire of London is believed to have helped the plague.
Empress Matilda
F, #102037, b. circa August 1102, d. 10 September 1167
Last Edited=7 Sep 2011
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Matilda 'the Empress' of England was born circa August 1102 at Winchester, Hampshire, EnglandG.2 She was also reported to have been born on 7 February 1102 at England. She was the daughter of Henry I 'Beauclerc', King of England and Editha of Scotland. She married, firstly, Heinrich V, Holy Roman Emperor, son of Heinrich IV, Holy Roman Emperor, on 7 January 1114 at Mainz, Rheinland-Pfalz, GermanyG.2 She married, secondly, Geoffrey V Plantagenet, Comte d'Anjou et Maine, son of Fulk V d'Anjou, 9th Comte d'Anjou and Aremburga de la Fleche, Comtesse de Maine, on 22 May 1128 at Le Mans Cathedral, Le Mans, FranceG.3 She was also reported to have been married on 20 May 1127. She died on 10 September 1167 at Abbey of the Notre Dame des Prés, Rouen, Caux, FranceG.2 She was buried at Rouen Cathedral, Rouen, Caux, FranceG.2
She was given the name of Adelaide at birth.2 After her marriage, Matilda 'the Empress' of England was styled as "Empress Matilda of Germany" on 7 January 1114.2 She gained the title of "Lady of the English" on 7 April 1141.2 She was deposed as Lady of the English on 1 November 1141.2
Daughter of Henry I and Editha of Scotland, she was nominated by her father as his successor. However, on the death of Henry I, the council considering a woman unfit to rule offered the throne to Stephen. Matilda invaded England and fought (1139 - 1148) to wrest rule from the usurping Stephen. She won much of the west, and after Stephen's capture in April 1141 a clerical council proclaimed Matilda 'Lady of the English'. She entered London but made cash demands that provoked Londoners to expel her before a coronation. On Stephen's release, she suffered defeats (fled from Oxford Castle Dec 1142), and eventually left England for Normandy, now controlled by her husband. The cause of her death is obscure. Although Matilda failed to secure the English throne, she laid a basis for successful claims by descendants of her husband Geoffrey of Anjou.
Empress Matilda (c. 7 February 1102–10 September 1167), sometimes called Empress Maud, was the second child of Henry I of England and Matilda of Scotland. Her brother, William Adelin, died in the wreck of the White Ship in 1120. This made Matilda the hereditary heir to the English throne. At her father's death in 1135, her cousin King Stephen rushed to take the throne. This led to a civil war between Stephen and Matilda, known as the Anarchy.
She was called "empress" because as a child she was married to Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor. She was Queen of England for a short time in 1141. The feud between Matilda and Stephen ended when Matilda's son, Henry, was named by Stephen as his successor. This was at the Treaty of Wallingford in 1153. Stephen's own chosen successor, his son Eustace, died in 1153.
Kaiser
Kaiser was title used for the Emperor of Germany from the creation of unified Germany in 1871 until the end of World War I. The Holy Roman Emperor was also called "Kaiser". The word "Kaiser" is the German way to say Caesar, the name the ancient Romans used for their Roman Emperor, just as "Tsar" is the Russian way to say it.
Orange, New South Wales