174 • The Abyssswelled to £ 1 , 900. At August’s end he estimated his grand total in cash and
money promised at £ 2 , 180 , not counting his gold and silver plate and per-
sonal possessions worth £ 250. But what an irony in this situation! As he
started to move his things down to Woolwich, he became frightened at the
prospect of having his cash stolen. Should he leave it at home or take it all
with him? A friend reassured him that nobody would suspect a Londoner of
leaving money when the entire household had left. Samuel left his cash in an
iron chest at Seething Lane.^38
In mid-September he returned to the city for the first time in several days.
He had been out to the Exchequer in the country and was bringing his latest
tallies to Lombard Street, where Sir Robert Vyner handed him a note for
more than five thousand pounds. The contrast between this personal tri-
umph and the rest of his day in the city could not have been greater. He
stopped at the Bear tavern at the south end of London Bridge for a biscuit
and cheese and some sack; the plague was all around. At the foot of Tower
Hill, he found the Angel tavern, a favorite of his, all shut up. An alehouse by
the Tower stairs was shuttered; Samuel recalled seeing a guest there a week
before, now deceased. The Royal Exchange was open and full of people, but
they were “plain men, all, not a man or merchant of any fashion.”
Yet not all key traders were out of town. Several goldsmiths had died in-
side the wall of the sickness, among them the greatest merchant financier of
Cromwell’s time. The man’s widow died shortly after, of grief it was said. The
common sickness reached Pepys’ outer circles of business connections—in-
dividuals high and low on whom he had depended from the beginning. He
reflected once more on the death of his physician and missed his surgeon,
who had fled to the country. His regular waterman’s child had succumbed to
the infection, and the father lay dying. Another waterman was dead; he had
fallen ill a week before while ferrying Pepys on the river. And a common la-
borer, whom Pepys had sent out to inquire of friends in Essex, had also been
struck down by the distemper.
The sickness had even invaded Samuel’s extended family. The fathers of
his two assistants, Will and Tom, were dead in Saint Sepulchre parish. His
wife’s parents were still holding out on Long Acre, but their home had been
shut up. Elizabeth asked him to give them some money, and he sent a mes-
senger from the navy office with twenty shillings.^39
The pestilence had burrowed deeply into the patchwork neighborhoods of
London. While plague deaths were dipping slightly overall, burials had in-
creased within the wall and close to the Pepys’ home. “I put off the thoughts