The Anatomy of a Civil War Plague in a Rural Parish: East Stoke, Nottinghamshire, 1646

Abstract

A considerable amount of research has been undertaken on investigating the impact of plague upon larger urban parishes in seventeenth-century England, but there are fewer comprehensive case studies of rural communities. Part of the reason may well be that extensive records for such parishes rarely survive for this period because of the disruption of the civil wars. Where such records do survive, the rural community is usually a much easier unit for identifying households, undertaking partial or full family reconstructions and mapping the familial and neighbourly interactions in trade and support. This enables the historian to understand both the medical and the social dynamic of epidemics. East Stoke was a community of around 340 people that lay just over four miles south-west of the market town of Newark. This second town of Nottinghamshire was a major royalist garrison until its surrender in May 1646 and after the final siege was ended the plague that was raging in the town quickly spread out to the surrounding parishes. This article uses the registers, wills, and other documents relating to the parish to explore the progression of the epidemic and the immediate and long-term impact upon the community.