When Cromwell visited Tenby in 1649 he was so shaken by the abject poverty he witnessed that he gave the Mayor £10 for relief of the poor. A year later, the ailing town was dealt another hammer blow with the outbreak of an epidemic of plague. Examination of Mayor David Palmer's expenses for 1650-51 makes it possible to conjecture that between three to four-hundred people died out of a population of around one thousand.

The Mayor Contributed one shilling towards the burial of each needy person , the poor being buried without coffins, merely wrapped in burial shrouds and carried on elm planks to St Mary's burial ground.

Such was the fear that enveloped the town that it became almost sealed off from the outside world. Records indicate that food for the residents was left at the outskirts of the town by traders who were too frightened to enter inside the walls. Men were then paid by the Mayor to retrieve these supplies. John Hughes, a senior official working for a parliamentary committee in West Wales , concerned with establishing the level of financial compensation due from rich landowners, wrote: "The plague is so bad in County Pembroke ... we dare not venture there ... on account of sickness ... in Tenby where 500 have died and are dying still"