214 • The Abyssand the king’s service once again. Weeks went by without a chance to take a
break from work and see his wife and their new baby. He waited impatiently
to bring them home. The plague would continue in Deptford until the end
of 1666.^41
At Earls Colne, the shadow of contagion was just a hamlet away. One en-
try in Josselin’s diary listed seven suspicious deaths and three plaguelike sores
at Colneford Hill. When the annual Bill of Mortality came in from London
in January 1666 , the vicar took down the particulars: males dead, 48 , 569 ;fe-
males, 48 , 737 ; christenings, 9 , 967 ; increase in burials this year, 79 , 009. This
was, he wrote, “the greatest plague in England since that in Edward the
thirds time,” the time of the Black Death. “And yet it continues very fierce in
many places of England.” By the coming spring, fever and plague would in-
fect several families in his parish. The parish register, listing five plague bur-
ials, seems to have missed several other fatalities from the infection. Josselin’s
diary jottings on the effects of this Great Plague suggested a personal emo-
tional toll that would not easily be forgotten.^42