Plague’s Progress• 117when a proprietor died or finally gave up and headed to the clear country air.
To his delight, Pepys found some of his favorite coffee houses off Cheapside
still open.
By order of the privy council only one type of public gathering was per-
mitted, even encouraged: special plague services at the cathedral, abbey, and
parish churches. These rituals had begun in June, with an official day of cel-
ebration after the Royal Navy’s victory over the Dutch off Lowestoft. Sun-
day and midweek services continued with a litany against the plague and
prayers of contrition, supplemented with special Fast Day services on the
first Wednesday of each month. These services, held in all London churches
and throughout the realm, doubtless gave solace to worshipers and brought
in money for infected households and citizens out of work. Though many
rectors had fled to the country, their assistants or temporary replacements
courageously filled many of the gaps. No one seemed to mind that popular
dissenting preachers ejected at the Restoration were slipping back into their
pulpits and exhorting their old congregations to repent their sins and wait on
the Lord’s mercy.
The popular fairs around London and in the countryside were cancelled
one after another until God’s avenging hand was lifted. There would be no
Bartholomew’s fair outside Aldersgate this year. Its carnival-seeking habit-
ués, from noble dandies and masked ladies to cutpurses and painted women
of fortune, were scattered to the four winds.^8
Alderman Turner looked at his unsold bolts of fine cloth and pondered the
controls he and his colleagues were placing on the city and its liberties. “I have
little to say at present,” he told his Paris partners, “there being nothing to doe
by reason of the sicknesse.” Perhaps with divine assistance, the Guildhall’s
regulations might check the progress of the plague, he wrote unconvincingly.
“But in ye interim every one hastes out of towne which causes that there is no
sale for goods and merchants pay ill.”^9 Of course, the “every one” he referred
to were the “better sort” with country places or family to depend on.
Sir William’s luxury trade was uncertain, and the other merchant guilds
were in trouble. He could scarcely fathom the plight of the working-class
people on whose health the well-being of the city and suburbs ultimately de-
pended. Though the poor had no way of voicing their needs directly to
Mayor Lawrence at the Guildhall or Captain General Albemarle at the
Cockpit in deserted Whitehall, one door was open to them. In the weeks to
come, the neighborhood parish would be their primary source of spiritual
comfort and material support.