90 • Confusionfessional classes that sustained its economy. More of them stayed on than in
Westminster, however, hoping the plague would not reach their streets.
John Allin had commented on people “high” and “low” joining the early
exodus, but the lower a person stood on the economic ladder, the less likeli-
hood there was of leaving. Common laborers could not have saved much for
a long stay in the country; the median daily wage of the working population
in England was seven pence, and one-sixth of these workers earned only two
pennies a day, according to Sir William Petty.^29
Transportation costs put travel to safety beyond the reach of most Lon-
doners. Only the peers and gentry could set out in a coach seating six persons
for a distant county at thirty to thirty-five miles of travel a day. A daughter of
Lady Lucy Hastings had recently taken the four-day trip between the Mid-
lands and London by coach at a cost of ten pounds, one-third more than
most persons earned in a year.^30 Even the five shillings Petty said it would
cost for the cheapest transportation to the immediate countryside was far be-
yond the means of London’s skilled craftspersons.^31 Beyond this initial ex-
pense, fleeing artisans risked starving under a hedge, shunned by the local in-
habitants because of their poor dress and appearance—which would be
associated with carrying the plague.
And so they stayed en masse: the skilled artisans, unskilled laborers,
porters and coachmen, and maids and servants left behind by their masters.
Even in Covent Garden, deserted as it was by almost everyone else, the “or-
dinary sort of people continued,” Patrick said. They were to be admired, Sy-
denham said with genuine awe, for carrying on “heart and soul... with
danger all around [and] the thousand shapes of death before their eyes.”^32
Pepys and his naval colleagues settled their families in the royal ports
downstream, Elizabeth taking her maids to Woolwich and Navy Treasurer
Carteret and Vice Admiral Sandwich moving to staff quarters and family
housing at Deptford. Navy Commissioner Lord Brouncker forsook the Pi-
azza for his county estate outside Greenwich. Dr. Busby, the headmaster of
King’s School in Westminster, ferried his pupils upstream to the school’s
country place at Chiswick. Dr. Busby calculated that the water route was
safer than facing down pitchfork-wielding vigilantes on the road.^33
The first few miles could be the most dangerous. West of Westminster, at
Hayes, the locals attacked Londoners with clubs. On the northern road, at
Whetstone, they were turned back with muskets. A caravan that crossed
London Bridge and headed into rural Surrey ran into a camp of “Egyptians.”
These gypsies, having their own troubles with the local inhabitants, chased
the plague-fleeing Londoners from their campground.^34