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

The Web of Authority • 225

returning to the city.” Between the lines the message was clear: the city’s fi-
nancial health and his personal spirits were at a very low ebb. Alderman

Turner and his colleagues must find new sources of money to shoulder the
burden of the parishes and put off paying some of the city’s outstanding
bills.^18

At the Cockpit

Spoke with my Lord [Albemarle] in the parke, where I perceive he spends much

of his time, having no wither else to go. And here I hear spoke of some presbyter-

people that he caused to be apprehended yesterday at a private meeting in Covent

Garden.

—Samuel Pepys,Diary,August 21 , 1665

In Westminster, the absent monarch had left Albemarle with a vast array of
duties beyond fighting the contagion. He was captain general of the king’s
armies, master of the horse, admiral of the fleet in charge of all the navy’s
personnel and procurement needs, and commander of the garrison camped

out at Hyde Park and a small guard at Whitehall Palace. Little wonder that
Pepys found him snatching a few hours of rest and reflection at a nearby park
whose high walls kept out intruders and presumably the infection.
With the help of his assistant, Lord Craven, and the justices of the peace

in Westminster, Middlesex, and Surrey, Albemarle did what he could to keep
order. Craven and Albemarle were powerful symbols of government at work,
and yet their responsibilities in the capital’s affairs were not clearly defined,
in contrast to the duties of Mayor Lawrence inside the wall. Perhaps it was

because these appointees of the king did not have the institutional base of
the mayor: no court of aldermen, no remembrancer, no chamberlain, and
therefore no records.

In the first weeks of flight, the earl of Craven could be found signing
plague passes for the wealthy on their way out of town. As the weeks passed
his concerns took him in a different direction. He found relief money in
places others overlooked. He structured distribution of medicines and food,

paying for much of this from his own purse. He roamed far from his Drury
Lane neighborhood to see at first hand how the epidemic was affecting the
poor. “Many good offices he did to the poor afflicted,” Rugge wrote. Craven
also came down hard on those who abused their office at the expense of pri-

vate citizens. A foul-mouthed bearer named Buckingham had terrified the