134 • Confusiontinely added to the deceased’s name the cause of death, noting frequently his
or her occupation and place of residence. In August 1665 , the parish clerk
painstakingly recorded twenty-three hundred individuals as dying ex peste.
Of this number, he identified 31 percent by profession or trade. In death
these 723 common laborers, skilled artisans, tradespeople, members of the
professions (doctors, lawyers, scriveners, etc.), and servants of merchants and
peers represented a cross-section of fallen Londoners. The sixty corpses that
a city boy witnessed as he galloped through Cripplegate to see his younger
siblings boarding out in the plague-free countryside—and many other
plague victims—momentarily become human beings in this register of the
dead.^44
The Cripplegate vestry took the usual measures: putting a wall around the
churchyard, impounding wandering pigs and other livestock, and ordering
householders to sweep their streets. Other rules applied specifically to the
parish. Residents near the churchyard were warned not to use Crowder’s
well. All taverns closed down except Castle tavern by the churchyard, which
was reserved “for the use of the parish.”^45 A curate held Sunday services with
the help of a courageous chaplain who preached and visited the sick in the
absence of the rector, who had joined his patron, the earl, in flight.^46 Three
churchwardens succumbed to the infection.^47 Mr. Pyne managed to keep
going.
June passed, and July. In August, that terrifying month when mortality at
Cripplegate climbed from 500 to 600 and then topped 800 a week, Pyne car-
ried on with his meticulous entries until the third week, when his own name
entered the register along with his wife’s. The cause of their deaths was
“dropsy,” a favorite entry during the last few weeks. An observant parishioner
recorded a different story: “August 20 Mrs Pyne, Wife of Mr Pyne our par-
ish clerke... died ex peste.”^48
Although underreporting plague fatalities seems to have been common
throughout Greater London this summer, Cripplegate’s ratio of “plague bur-
ials” to “total burials” in the printed Bills of Mortality was exceptionally low.
Because Pyne specified the cause of death in his register, we can analyze
Cripplegate’s nonplague fatalities in a way that is not possible for any other
metropolitan parish and also compare these findings with the register’s fig-
ures during previous years. This comparison reveals far greater mortality
from many diseases other than plague in 1665 than seems likely, given sea-
sonal and other patterns of mortality revealed in the parish register’s records
for the previous ten years. In June 1665 ,only 29 of Cripplegate’s fatalities
were attributed to plague, while 29 were linked to consumption—a high