01/06/2026
Our Historical Figure of the Month is...
William Bagshaw 1628–1702 ✒️📖
Bagshaw, also know as the 'Apostle of the Peak', provides the earliest surviving account of the plague in Eyam in his biographical work 'De Spiritualibus Pecci' published in 1702.
It relates an account of the plague and Thomas Stanley's involvement in helping the people there. Bagshaw's figures show what was understood of the death toll during that time, though we now know the total to be 260.
"Some (yet alive) will testify, how helpful [Stanley] was to 'em in private, especially when the sickness... prevailed in that town."
The Act of Uniformity in 1662 forced many Puritan clergy to leave their parish. This happened to Bagshaw, but he continued to preach privately to people of the Peak which leads to his Apostle title.