Business Not as Usual • 167A major brewmaster like Alderman Bucknell employed many workers
while living away from the infection-prone brewing site. He negotiated a
handsome new contract with the government to collect its excise taxes, prof-
iting from the king’s desperation to make up for plunging collections of the
hearth tax because of the plague; Bucknell’s brewery workers faced misery
and death from the same disease.^18 Tavern keepers, already vulnerable from
strangers coming for a drink, increased their danger if they brewed their own
beer. Pepys’ diary mentions one tavern after another closing down, usually
due to a guest becoming infected or the death of the master and his wife.
Alehouses, catering to working people, were also highly vulnerable. By the
old palace yard in Westminster, “old Will,” who once served ale at the Hall to
Pepys and his friends, lost his wife and three children, “all dead in a day,”
Samuel heard.^19
Yet bread and beer were always available, and a fresh supply of vegetables
could be found at the many markets inside the wall and at drop-off spots for
produce in the suburbs. For people with Pepys’ taste and purse, flesh markets
continued to stock poultry and other meats. Somehow, within the pool of
victualers who constituted 16 percent of London’s population, enough per-
sons survived to feed the metropolis. The victualers were worth far more this
year than the high value of £ 138 Petty placed on the average worker’s labors.
They were keeping Londoners alive.
They needed help, and a great deal of it, from the farmlands and gardens
that surrounded Greater London. Fortunately, dire predictions that spring of
poor crops had been given the lie, allaying Dr. Hodges’ fear of famine mak-
ing citizens all the more vulnerable to plague. There was an abundance of
herbs and fruits and vegetables, from carrots and turnips to strawberries,
plums, and pears, along with grapes and apples and especially cherries, all
very cheap. A bumper crop of grains and other fodder compensated for the
poor hay crop. And there was no shortage of cattle, sheep, and pigs. The
farmers worked and ate as heartily as in any normal year. Dr. Hodges in the
city and William Boghurst in the suburbs both marveled at the change of
fortune from the terrible winter and early spring.^20
Equally heartening was the way necessity and invention combined to
bring all these perishable goods from the country to the capital in this eco-
nomic world turned upside down. Grain was needed for the brewers and
bakers; the Guildhall made sure that the grocers company and other guilds
kept their share of grain to maintain a reasonable weight for a penny loaf.
But how did the bulky sacks of grain and huge loads of vegetables and herds
of cattle and pigs, not to mention the pullets and pasties for Pepys’ table, get