The Black Assizes is an epithet given to several outbreaks of "gaol fever" which struck various prisons and court-houses in England in the late 16th century and which caused the deaths of not only many prisoners awaiting trial but also the magistrates in the court buildings holding assizes.
The basic cause was fever spreading from insanitary jails via prisoners into dirty and overcrowded courtrooms. [1]
The most notable Black Assizes were: [1]
The Black Assizes at Exeter Castle were the Lent Assizes held from 14 March 1586 by Sir Edmund Anderson (1530–1605), Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, [2] who survived the disease. Exeter Prison was situated underneath the royal Exeter Castle and the courtrooms were within the castle buildings. The cause according to modern medical opinion was typhus transmitted by the human body-louse. [3] Among the dead victims were 8 judges, [4] 11 of the 12 jurors, several constables, [5] and the surrounding population which was ravaged by the disease for several months. Amongst the dead were the following, many being prominent members of the Devonshire gentry:
An historical account written by Alexander Jenkins (1841) stated "A noisome and pestilential smell came from the prisoners who were araigned at the crown bar which so affected the people present that many were seized with a violent sickness which proved mortal to the greatest part of them". [5]
The best contemporary account of the outbreak is by John Hooker (c.1527–1601), published in Holinshead's Chronicle (1587). He suggests three possible causes: [16]
Adam [17] Wyote (or Wyatt) was town clerk of Barnstaple in North Devon and kept a personal journal from 1586 to 1611. The first entry records the Black Assize of Exeter, and lists the names of eight of the gentry of Devon who died from "gaoll sickness" as follows: "to wit one of the Justices of Assize, Mr Flowerdewe, Sir Barnard Drak, Mr Welrond, Mr Cary of Clovelly, Mr Cary (sic, should be "Carew") of Hackome, Mr Fortescue, Mr Rysdon, Justices of the Peace, Sir John Chichester". [11]
Outbreaks of Gaol Fever were still common in the 1750s. [18] Two judges and the Lord Mayor died from the affliction in 1750, and there was another outbreak in 1772. [19]
John HookeraliasJohn Vowell of Exeter in Devon, was an English historian, writer, solicitor, antiquary, and civic administrator. From 1555 to his death he was Chamberlain of Exeter. He was twice MP for Exeter in 1570/1 and 1586, and for Athenry in Ireland in 1569 and wrote an influential treatise on parliamentary procedure. He wrote an eye-witness account of the siege of Exeter during the Prayer Book Rebellion in 1549. He spent several years in Ireland as legal adviser to Sir Peter Carew, and following Carew's death in 1575 wrote his biography. He was one of the editors of the second edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles, published in 1587. His last, unpublished and probably uncompleted work was the first topographical description of the county of Devon. He founded a guild of Merchant Adventurers under a charter from Queen Mary. He was the uncle of Richard Hooker, the influential Anglican theologian.
The Cary family is an English aristocratic family with a branch in Ireland. The earliest known ancestor of the family is Sir Adam de Kari who was living in 1198. Sir John Cary purchased the Manor of Clovelly in the 14th century and established the family's status as members of the landed gentry. Various branches of the family were ennobled in the late 16th and early 17th centuries as Baron Hunsdon and Viscount Falkland.
William Hood Walrond, 1st Baron Waleran,, known as Sir William Walrond, Bt, between 1889 and 1905, of Bradfield House, Uffculme, Devon, was a British Conservative Party politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1880 until 1906 when he was raised to the peerage. He served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury between 1895 and 1902 and as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster between 1902 and 1905.
Farringdon is a village, civil parish and former manor in the district of East Devon in the county of Devon, England. The parish is surrounded clockwise from the north by the parishes of Clyst Honiton, Aylesbeare, a small part of Colaton Raleigh, Woodbury, Clyst St Mary and a small part of Sowton.
Sir George Carey, JP, DL, of Cockington in the parish of Tor Mohun in Devon, England, was Lord Deputy of Ireland from May 1603 to February 1604.
Kentisbeare is a village and civil parish in the Mid Devon district of Devon, England. Its nearest town is Cullompton.
William Helyar of Coker Court, East Coker, in Somerset, was Archdeacon of Barnstaple and a chaplain to Queen Elizabeth I.
Bradfield House is a Grade I listed country house situated in the parish of Uffculme, Devon, England, 2 miles (3.2 km) south-west of the village of Uffculme.
Robert Carey, lord of the manor of Clovelly in North Devon, was Member of Parliament for Barnstaple, Devon, in October 1553 and served as Sheriff of Devon in 1555–56. He served as Recorder of Barnstaple after 1560. Along with several other members of the Devonshire gentry then serving as magistrates he died of gaol fever at the Black Assize of Exeter 1587. His large monument survives in Clovelly Church.
The landed gentry and nobility of Devonshire, like the rest of the English and European gentry, bore heraldic arms from the start of the age of heraldry circa 1200–1215. The fashion for the display of heraldry ceased about the end of the Victorian era (1901) by which time most of the ancient arms-bearing families of Devonshire had died out, moved away or parted with their landed estates.
John Arscott (1613-1675), of Tetcott, Devon, was Sheriff of Devon in 1675.
John Peryam, of Exeter, Devon, was elected four times as a Member of Parliament, for Barnstaple 1584, Bossiney 1586, Exeter 1589 and 1593. He served as Mayor of Exeter. He was the younger brother of Sir William Peryam (1534-1604) of Little Fulford, near Crediton in Devon, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer.
The Manor of Clovelly is a historic manor in North Devon, England. Within the manor are situated the manor house known as Clovelly Court, the parish church of All Saints, and the famous picturesque fishing village of Clovelly. The parish church is unusually well-filled with well-preserved monuments to the lords of the manor, of the families of Cary, Hamlyn, Fane, Manners and Asquith. In 2015 the Rous family, direct descendants via several female lines of Zachary Hamlyn (1677–1759) the only purchaser of Clovelly since the 14th century, still own the estate or former manor, amounting to about 2,000 acres, including Clovelly Court and the advowson of the parish church, and the village of Clovelly, run as a major tourist attraction with annual paying visitor numbers of about 200,000.
The Recorder of Barnstaple was a recorder, a form of senior judicial officer, usually an experienced barrister, within the jurisdiction of the Borough of Barnstaple in Devon. He was usually a member of the local North Devonshire gentry. The position of recorder of any borough carried a great deal of prestige and power of patronage. The recorder of a borough was often entrusted by the mayor and corporation to nominate its Members of Parliament, as was the case with Sir Hugh I Pollard, Recorder of Barnstaple, who in 1545 nominated the two MP's to represent the Borough of Barnstaple. In the 19th century a recorder was the sole judge who presided at a Quarter Sessions of a Borough, a "Court of Record", and was a barrister of at least five years' standing. He fixed the dates of the Quarter Sessions at his own discretion "as long as he holds it once every quarter of a year", or more often if he deemed fit.
The Drewe family of Broadhembury are generation owners and inhabitants of The Grange, Sharpham, Broadhembury, Wadhurst Park, Devon, in the west and east of England, from the 16th century to the current date.
Sir John Chichester lord of the manor of Raleigh in the parish of Pilton, near Barnstaple, North Devon, was Sheriff of Devon in 1576/7 and/or in 1585 and died of gaol fever contracted whilst acting as a magistrate at the Lent Black Assizes of Exeter in 1586.
John Waldron of Tiverton in Devon, England, was a wealthy merchant who founded and endowed the surviving grade II* listed "Waldron's Almshouses" and Chapel on the outskirts of Tiverton. His elaborately sculpted chest tomb survives in St Peter's Church, Tiverton, at the east end of the south aisle, still in an entirely Gothic style with a Gothic black-letter inscription on the ledger stone on top, and showing on the base Gothic pinnacled niches and within quatrefoils escutcheons displaying his merchant's mark. His name is sometimes confused with "Walrond" a prominent and ancient gentry family long seated at Bradfield House in the parish of Uffculme, Devon, about 6 miles east of Tiverton. The spelling "Waldron" is clearly shown incised in Gothic letters on the ledger stone on top of his chest tomb.
Walter Reynell of Malston in the parish of Sherford, Devon, was a Member of Parliament for Devon in 1454/55.
Sir John Walrond Walrond, 1st Baronet, of Bradfield House, Uffculme in Devon, was a British Conservative Party politician.
Bagtor is an historic estate in the parish of Ilsington in Devon, England. It was the birthplace of John Ford (1586-c.1639) the playwright and poet. The Elizabethan mansion of the Ford family survives today at Bagtor as the service wing of a later house appended in about 1700.