Methods Used to Combat Plague in Norwich

Different beliefs produced different responses

Between the arrival of plague in Norwich in 1349 and the plague years of 1665–67, people tried religious responses, medical treatments and practical restrictions. These approaches often existed alongside one another: a household might pray for protection while also obeying an isolation order. Understanding Norwich’s response involves both its recorded local measures and the wider beliefs and remedies of the period.

People did not understand that plague was caused by bacteria. Many believed it was punishment from God, while others blamed miasma, or bad air, and an imbalance of the Four Humours. Their responses made sense within these beliefs, but a convincing explanation at the time did not necessarily produce an effective treatment.

Prayer, fasting and church processions

When plague first reached Norwich, prayer was a central response. People asked God for mercy and protection. Across medieval society, fasting, deliberately going without food, expressed repentance: if plague was punishment for sin, changing people’s behaviour seemed a way to end it. The Church also encouraged processions, bringing people together to walk and pray publicly for deliverance.

These religious responses could offer reassurance and a shared purpose during a frightening outbreak. However, they did not cure the infection. Processions and crowded religious services also brought people into close contact, potentially helping disease spread rather than preventing it.

The clergy, meaning priests and other ordained religious ministers, provided religious care and conducted funerals. Their duties brought them into contact with affected families. In Norwich in 1349–50, about half the parish clergy died, with a similar death rate among the cathedral’s monks. Such losses reduced the people available to provide worship, comfort and funeral services. Religious leadership therefore came with danger as well as responsibility.

Isolating infected households

Quarantine aimed to separate affected households from the rest of the population. By the later outbreaks, Norwich’s authorities organised detailed isolation arrangements. Norwich applied the seventeen Privy Council plague orders of 1579–80. These national orders provided a framework, but the city’s Mayor’s Court, made up of aldermen, decided how and when to apply restrictions.

When plague was discovered, the whole house could be boarded up and marked to warn others not to enter. The 1579 orders required infected houses to display ‘LORD HAVE MERCY UPON US’. This combined a practical warning with religious language.

Isolation continued after a victim died or recovered: the 1579 orders specified a month, while orders in the 1630s specified six weeks. A further case in the household extended the period. This could leave families confined for a long time.

Norwich paid keepers to supply food and drink, while watchers could prevent people from leaving. People unable or unwilling to remain isolated at home could be placed in pesthouses on Butter Hills, where food, water and supervision were also provided.

Isolation could reduce contact between infected and uninfected people without anyone understanding bacteria. Its limitations were serious, however: healthy household members remained confined with sick relatives, families depended on supplies, and enforcement required workers who themselves faced infection.

Checking travel into Norwich

Norwich’s walls and limited number of gates gave the authorities places where they could check travellers. In 1625, gatekeepers were ordered to refuse entry to people from London and Yarmouth, where plague had broken out.

During the 1665–66 outbreak, a chain was placed across the river at the boom towers. A boat was staffed day and night to check arrivals from Yarmouth; only those with certificates of health were admitted. These measures aimed to prevent infection entering through Norwich’s trading connections.

Certificates were not foolproof: in 1631, a butcher arriving from plague-affected Wymondham was found to have forged his certificate. Travel restrictions could reduce risk, but depended on honest information and effective checks.

Restricting markets and public gatherings

Closing markets and restricting public gatherings were ways of reducing opportunities for people to mix. Norwich also adapted trading arrangements rather than simply stopping all trade. In 1666, the market was moved outside the city to Town Close, a large open space. Country traders no longer had to enter the crowded city. The relocation also offered more space for traders and customers, although this does not prove how far apart they actually stood.

Other restrictions were targeted at particular risks. In 1631, schools in Heigham and West Wymer ward were closed during an outbreak. Orders in the 1630s required schools near infected places to close. An inn with a plague case was shut like any other infected household, and its sign was taken down to show that it was no longer open. During outbreaks, the Mayor’s Court refused licences for travelling entertainments.

Authorities also tried to prevent crowds gathering at funerals. At different times, they prohibited tolling church bells or required plague funerals to take place before sunrise or after sunset. These measures reduced the opportunities for a burial to attract a crowd; they did not mean that all religious activity ceased.

Such restrictions could help limit spread, but disrupted education, trade and daily life. Their effectiveness depended on whether people followed them and whether authorities could identify infection accurately.

Cleaning Norwich’s streets and removing waste

Norwich’s authorities also tried to improve the city’s surroundings. On 12 July 1625, as plague spread from Yarmouth, a royal commission instructed the mayor to scour the city ditches, remove nuisances in and around the city, and repair the walls and turrets. Scouring meant cleaning out the ditches; removing nuisances meant clearing troublesome filth and waste. Residents in each ward were to be taxed according to their means to pay for the work, which was intended to stop the plague.

Animals were another target. On 23 July 1625, the bellman publicly proclaimed that dogs and swine must be put outside the city walls or be killed. In April 1630, a further order required dogs, cats, tame doves, rabbits and swine to be put out of the city or killed. When plague broke out in St Austin’s parish in September 1636, precautions again included cleansing the streets, alongside stopping carriers, preparing the Black Tower for infected people and arranging watchers.

These measures reflected concern about filth, animals and the stench associated with miasma. Clearing waste could improve the urban environment, but bad smells were not the cause of plague. Street cleaning and killing animals did not provide a reliable way to tackle the infection. In 1636, plague continued despite the precautions. Practical action therefore existed alongside an incorrect explanation of how disease spread.

Coping with deaths and plague burials

Plague pits were large graves used for mass burials when deaths overwhelmed normal burial arrangements. Mass burial was a response used during the period when communities could no longer keep up with individual funerals and burials. It helped them deal with bodies quickly, rather than curing people who were still infected.

Norwich’s burial figures show the pressure such arrangements answered: 352 burials were recorded in the week ending 15 August 1579. The last great outbreak also placed a heavy burden on the city. Blomefield recorded 3,012 deaths from 3 October 1665 to 3 October 1666, of which 2,251 were deaths from plague, despite the magistrates’ precautions. These figures show how many bodies had to be buried, as well as the limits of attempts to prevent infection.

Norwich made specific arrangements for burying people who died in isolation. In 1630, those who died in the Butter Hills pesthouses were ordered to be buried in the churchyard of St Peter at Southgate. This provided a designated burial place for pesthouse victims rather than returning each body to its home parish. A designated burial ground was not necessarily a mass grave.

Parish registers also recorded plague burials. The St Stephen’s register for 1666 marked those who had died of plague. Such entries recorded burials and identified plague victims; they should not be confused with evidence of burial together in a pit.

A possible local plague pit is known from Lakenham. In 1796, labourers digging in a field found nearly a hundred human skulls and other bones, lying in no regular order, together with a Norwich trade token dated 1664. The remains have been suggested as those of victims of Norwich’s 1665 plague. The large number of remains and the token make this a plausible interpretation, but neither proves that the people died of plague or that the burial occurred in 1665.

Mass burial and restrictions on funeral crowds served different purposes: one dealt with the volume of deaths, while the other aimed to limit gatherings. Both show the practical problems that plague created for communities.

Bloodletting, herbs and pomanders

Medical treatments of the period included bloodletting, which involved removing blood to restore the supposed balance of the Four Humours. This ancient theory held that health depended on balancing blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. Bloodletting did not remove the cause of plague and could weaken an already seriously ill patient.

Herbal remedies were used to treat symptoms or ease discomfort. For example, during the Black Death, camomile was applied to painful swellings called buboes. Some remedies could ease suffering, but symptom relief should not be confused with curing plague.

Pomanders were scented substances, often carried in small containers, intended to protect people from miasma. Like burning fragrant herbs or carrying flowers, they addressed the smell of the air rather than the actual cause of infection. They were intended as protection, whereas bloodletting was a treatment for someone already ill.

A local example connects Norwich with this belief in protection against bad air. The April 1666 inventory of Norwich grocer Robert Wales listed cloves, mace, nutmeg and barberries. These aromatic substances had several uses, including medicine and perfume, and may have been used against plague because of their smell. His stock also included brimstone, or sulphur, which people were advised to burn, and tobacco, widely believed to protect against plague. The inventory shows that substances associated with these remedies were available in Norwich; their presence does not demonstrate that they worked.

How effective were Norwich’s responses?

The strongest preventive responses were those that reduced contact and movement: household isolation, travel checks and restrictions on gatherings. Norwich’s provision of food and drink helped make isolation possible, while watchers and gatekeepers supported enforcement. Nevertheless, confinement could expose relatives to infection, certificates could be forged, and restrictions caused hardship.

Religious responses could provide comfort, and some herbs could relieve symptoms, but neither these nor bloodletting supplied an effective cure. Cleaning and burial arrangements helped communities manage their surroundings and the burden of deaths, but should not be confused with curing patients. Norwich’s practical organisation was therefore more useful against the spread of plague than the medical understanding of the period was against the disease itself.

Beliefs and remedies

• Divine punishment: prayer, fasting and church processions; reassurance, not a cure. Gatherings could spread infection.
• Miasma: scented pomanders and attempts to remove filth and bad smells.