Preface • xxiencouraged us to begin with a smaller community that had lost nearly half its
population in 1665 and 1666. As we settled in and contemplated where to be-
gin, Lloyd remarked that it felt as though we were two parachuters, coming
down in the dead of night without even a map. The local record office had
good holdings, and Jane Bedford and Paul Coverly showed us parish ac-
counts and government documents that revealed how the cloth-making
trade, small merchants, and parish poor-relief workers came to grips with
overwhelming loss of life and put together a network of relief that was aston-
ishing. Lloyd remembers the days growing into weeks as he worked his way
through the town’s massive assembly book, its notations becoming smaller
and smaller as a harried scribe crammed them onto the bottom of the page.
One day Lloyd wondered whether he was clearly transcribing payments to
the “dogg and catt killer” and another sum for the man who put red crosses
on shut-up doors of infected households. Jane Bedford came to Lloyd’s aid,
assuring him that he was deciphering the crabbed hand correctly.
Our time in Colchester was made especially meaningful by the hospitality
and warm acceptance given us by members of Saint Peter’s parish, especially
Maureen Hull, Mary Eldridge, and the vicar, Robin Wilson, who made us
feel less like foreigners and brought us into a small but important part of
English life. As Lloyd and the Christmas choir sang “In the Bleak Mid-
winter,” Dorothy sensed the presence of former parishioners who had en-
dured that incredibly cold December in 1665 , when the living must have
wondered why they had been spared and whether God would ever “stay his
hand,” releasing them from death’s grasp.
We remained in Colchester for six months, going into London several
days a week toward the end of this first research period. In London we were
welcomed into our “second home” away from home with the Wellcome In-
stitute and Library’s wonderful academic family. We returned to England on
four more research trips and always received the most generous hospitality
any researcher could imagine from Sally Bragg, Roy Porter, and others at
what is now the Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at University
College, London.
Throughout our research and subsequent writing, we have sought to be
faithful to what is known about our protagonists and to infer only what can
reasonably be elicited from the sources. While hailing Defoe for his vivid im-
agining of the Great Plague, we have offered you these real characters, fitting
their stories into the staggering events of that dreadful year of the Great
Plague.