Plague’s Progress • 125ble. Taking a coach back to Seething Lane, he couldn’t help seeing the dra-
matic change, “not meeting with but two coaches and but two carts from
Whitehall to my own house” and few pedestrians.^23
There was another change about which he spoke less frequently, though it
could hardly escape his notice: working people losing their jobs as their
masters closed up shop and left the city. The early modern world of capital
and labor—each dependent on the other—was in danger of coming unglued.
Fortunately, the banker-goldsmiths who exchanged his credit from the Ex-
chequer for money to pay his suppliers (the bankers getting their money
eventually from the Treasury, with 6 % interest) were still in the city. Without
Vyner and Blackwell and Colvill, he would be lost. And suppliers for the
navy were still holding on in the city.
Pepys was performing an intricate balancing act amid the unraveling of
the economic fabric. While others were scattering or hanging on for dear
life, he was making money in large amounts because of the pressing war
needs of the navy. He was the right person in the right place, arranging con-
tracts and receiving sweeteners from both sides—his friend Denis Gauden as
head Navy Victualer at one end and eager shipbuilders, outfitters, and sup-
pliers at the other end of the contracting business.
Then there was the “Tangier business” as an extra plum, a newly acquired
royal way station in Morocco promising great profits to those who could turn
it into a premier port for warships and commercial vessels plying the Med-
iterranean. Pepys was on the Tangier board along with such notables as the
duke of Albemarle and the king’s own brother. Eager contractors were press-
ing him with douceurs,making Tangier “one of the best flowers” in his gar-
den.^24 He could not stop, or would not—it was not entirely clear what made
Pepys run these days. He risked death with every trip on Fleet Street. Even
travel on the river was dangerous, for the lightermen were dying in droves.
These men were also becoming particular about where they would take
people and what price they charged. Pepys was fortunate when he could hire
a ride at ten shillings instead of the inflated rate of twenty shillings.
Despite the increase in shut-up places and infected areas, Samuel Pepys
had definitely not eased off from his risk-taking adventures.^25 One forbid-
ding night he sought a rendezvous at the port of Deptford. The skies were
dark and the rain unrelenting—a welcome break in the weather, if not con-
ducive to trysting. “I had un design pour aller à la femme de Bagwell,” he
wrote tantalizingly in the lingua franca he reserved for erotic entries in his
diary, “mais ne savait obtenir algùn cosa de ella.” Pepys had played Mrs. Bag-