In September 1665, plague arrived in the English village of Eyam in Derbyshire. As it spread, the rector William Mompesson and the former minister Thomas Stanley led the village to do something hard. They sealed themselves off from the outside world so the disease would not spread to neighbouring towns. Over about fourteen months, 257 people in Eyam died. Some historians now question how voluntary the quarantine was and whether it raised the local death toll. Still, the story has inspired people for centuries with a picture of a community that chose to carry a burden so others would not have to.
