The Great Plague. The Story of London\'s Most Deadly Year

204 • The Abyss

from all causes. The next four weeks saw 334 burials, of which 276 were iden-
tified as due to plague. Confounding folk wisdom, the distemper continued
through the winter. In December the gravediggers, greatly augmented in

numbers, buried 200 bodies, 180 listed as plague deaths.^13 As in London,
these official figures told only part of the grim truth. John Allin learned
through his contacts with the English and Dutch dissenter communities in
Southwark and Colchester that the toll among the town’s cloth workers was

much higher than was being reported. “God accept us and spare us for his
mercy sake,” Josselin wrote on October 4 as he sent his congregation’s Fast
Day collection to Colchester.^14

The Greatest Plague

They bury’d upwards of 5 , 259 People in the Plague year, even more in Proportion

than any of its neighbours, or than the Citty of London.

—Daniel Defoe,A Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain

Five hours’ ride on horseback from London lay Colchester, atop a hill with
long streets descending to weavers’ cottages and water mills on the Colne

River. The town’s Norman castle dominated the north Essex landscape the

Table 8.Colchester Bills of Mortality,

August 14–October 6, 1665

Plague Other

Week Burials Burials

August 14–21 26 2

August 21–28 66 2

September 1–8 122 4

September 8–15 153 22

September 15–22 159 25

September 22–29 100 26

September 29–October 6 161 27