The Great Plague. The Story of London\'s Most Deadly Year

Plague’s Progress • 123

wardens’ pen strokes, neat and precise deep into the plague year, betokened a
life-affirming respect in the midst of death.^19

Two parishes away, Symon Patrick coped in his own way with the help of
a solitary churchwarden and his faithful clerk, whose wife and children were
dying of the common sickness. At night Patrick read the rites of the dead,
his clerk and a gravedigger at his side. Even though public funerals were

banned, he still accompanied the body to a last resting place, calling it a “fu-
neral”—an unusual act for this sad season.
Inside the wall, Saint Paul’s staff carried on gamely without the dean. The
cathedral did not have the poor relief burdens of a regular parish, but the

poor of neighboring Saint Gregory’s clamored for help, and the dean’s “pe-
culiars” beyond the walls (parishes which he was legally bound to help) were
in dire straits. John Tillison and Stephen Bing and Dr. Barwick became
more and more anxious as Sancroft’s relief money dried up. Several minor

priests on the cathedral staff died; others slipped away to the countryside. “I
intend, God willing, to keep close His work in the church except great haz-
ard should befall me,” Stephen Bing informed the dean as July drew to a

close. “The Lord in mercy look upon us.”^20

Pepys’ Predicament

Thus we end this month, as I said, after the greatest glut of content that I ever

had; only under some difficulty because of the plague, which grows mightily upon

us, the last week being about 1700 or 1800 of the plague ...So God preserve us all

friends long, and continue health among us.

—Pepys,Diary,July 31 , 1665

Samuel Pepys had his own special predicament. His business took him con-

tinuously across town and up and down the river as the linchpin between the
wartime navy’s voracious appetite and its far-flung suppliers of victuals and
other necessities. To maintain his normal frenetic pace seemed sheer mad-
ness, putting a dangerous strain on his constitution and inviting the infection

wherever he went. On July 12 he attended the first monthly Fast Day service
at his church “for the plague growing upon us,” giving generously for the care
of the infected poor. Luckily, Saint Olave Hart Street was still free of the in-
fection, but that could not last. On the twenty-fourth, the parish clerk re-