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

Contagion in the Countryside• 211

sions. Now the greatest fear among the king’s advisors was that dissenters
might attempt some bold new attack on church and state. A new law plugged

the one gap in the Restoration’s suppression of activities by religious dis-
senters. The Five Mile Act prohibited ejected dissenting ministers from living
within five miles of any incorporated community. That ruled out London,
dissenter centers such as Colchester, and even remote places like Rye on the

southern coast.
Almost as an afterthought, the two houses debated changes in the nation’s
Plague Orders. The Commons insisted on closing the loopholes that had
kept pesthouses and home quarantines located away from courtiers’ doors.

The Lords insisted that there would be no shutting up of the homes of peers
nor a pesthouse or burial place near the mansion of any gentlemen.^34 They
were at an impasse. With relief, the two houses joined in a rousing vote of
thanks to the king for “his great care in preservation of his people and the

honour of the nation” against the Dutch.^35 On that happy October note, the
Oxford Parliament ended; the revamping of the Plague Orders was left to
another day, as it had been under the king’s father after the last major visit-
ation of the sickness.

Hutton Hall and Covent Garden

I am afraid you are troubled that I have not wrote this last post because I was so ill

when I wrote last. But the reason I did omit it was because there was one dead of

the sicknesse out of the pest house, and I thought it not safe to send [a messenger

to Brentwood].

—Elizabeth Gaudento Symon Patrick, October 5 , 1665

Symon had just sent a frantic letter to Hutton Hall, wondering why he had

not heard from Elizabeth. It was a relief to know from her October 5 letter
that she was still alive. Her words bore another happy prospect. “The plague
is in divers places in the towne,” Elizabeth fretted, “but now the pest house is
removed to another place in the towne more safe.” Their correspondence

could resume its normal rhythm.^36
But new interruptions in the postal deliveries from Hutton Hall followed.
Again Symon was beside himself: “What shall I think? Are you alive or do I
write to another world? Is it possible that the post should be so unfaithful as

to lose all the letters of the last week?” His questions continued to tumble