Contagion in the Countryside• 199provincial port to unload some of their prized wine, brandy, oil, and raisins
before going on to London were quarantined by the local infection.^3
At the city and country ends of this new trauma, tensions mounted. Dan-
iel Defoe captured the time with a tale of three London craftsmen fleeing
through Essex. Armed with their practical sense and little else, they join
forces with a band of refugees from Cripplegate. But as they approached
Brentwood on the Roman road to Colchester, they encountered frightened
villagers and the infection they thought they had eluded.^4
Here fiction met fact. Elizabeth Gauden was staying just outside Brent-
wood during this terrible summer, awaiting the birth of another child. While
Denis moved back and forth procuring naval supplies, Elizabeth settled into
Hutton Hall, the spacious residence of her sister-in-law, widow of Bishop
John Gauden (Denis’s brother). A mile off the beaten path of the Roman
road and away from Brentwood’s dwellings, the house seemed a perfect
haven from London’s great visitation. It was. The town was eighteen and a
half miles from London Bridge. Elizabeth could relax in the company of her
sister-in-law, whose life as a bishop’s wife had made her an excellent host and
an entertaining companion. Elizabeth whiled away the hours with friendly
neighbors, but the highlight of each week was the arrival at the nearby postal
office of a letter from her faithful correspondent Symon Patrick in Covent
Garden.
Elizabeth’s pregnancy included some trying bouts of illness. Symon shared
her joy in the safe birth of another boy and relief that she had escaped the
terrible childbed mortality of the plague season. Symon passed on news he
thought would divert Elizabeth with the caution, “You must not expect par-
ticulars from me.”^5 But she did want particulars. Reluctantly he told her
about the contagion’s frightful toll on numerous clergy friends in the city and
others who had fled to the country only to be cut down by the distemper. She
related her postpartum ups and downs, the latest on her delicate baby’s
health, and her strong attachment for him.
Whatever the precise nature of this bond between a married woman and a
bachelor minister (who could have married without breaking his priestly
vows), they called it love. It was the perfect antidote for her flagging spirits
out at Hutton Hall. Elizabeth dropped hints that they might be reunited de-
spite this plague. Couldn’t he come out to see her, she asked? The priest re-
fused, at first gently and then more firmly. But the more he demurred the
more she pressed. His life, she implored, was too valuable to risk his staying
at Covent Garden. He replied as well as the theologian in him knew, “I am in
the hands of the same God that delivered you.” He was writing twice a week