Although the evidence is mixed and subject to debate, it is suggested that they all played a role. There is evidence to support that plague was caught from baggage and bales of clothes and cloth, as in Eyam in Derbyshire in 1665. However, there also exists evidence that human transmission alone has been responsible.⁸ It appears that the spread of the plague across the country was far too rapid to be accounted for by wild rodents in the countryside, and it is human transport which explains its movement along the major trade routes, usually by ship (British port to port), or on main roads and navigable rivers. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that rodent transmission played a part in local village to village contamination. Possibly, the occasional annual outbreaks of bubonic plague may be explained by the over-wintering of fleas and black rats in major cities, and perhaps on the wild rodents of the countryside.

Elizabethan Loughborough

MAP 1 The Streets of Loughborough during the Reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603)

It has been estimated that in 1564, Loughborough had 256 houses. The shape of the town, as it was, had changed little since the reign of Edward II (1307-1327 ), for, during his reign, there is a record of a grant for land in Dede Lane: "In Loughborough there is a le Dede Lane, le Bygging, le Kirkgate, le Woodgate and le Tollbothe".⁹ (This suggests that Dead Lane is in fact far older than many historians have claimed, for it appears to have been in existence at least 280 years before the 1608-09 plague). Leyland described the town in the early sixteenth Century, recording that, " ... most of the houses were made of wood and betraying their various ages by cruck, post and pan, or the slighter timber frame, all with wattle and daub infilling, gleaming plaster and new wood showing evidence of recent extensions, alterations or new erections, for three new ones were built on Bridgeland."¹⁰

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