The Web of Authority• 231outside gift money almost gone. Six members of the court of aldermen
showed up on the twenty-fourth of the month to confront the grim situ-
ation. One of the six was the ever reliable Sir William Turner. These city
fathers decided to gamble by imposing a second year’s plague-tax levy on the
parishes within the metropolis under their jurisdiction. The money was col-
lected slowly, with some of the parishes meeting their quota two years after
the plague disappeared from the city. The chamberlain saw the year 1665
through by taking what he had, gathering in the sums as they came in, and
allocating them to the parishes most in need.^31
These are the bare outlines of the web of authority that helped the city
and citizens of London through the darkest weeks of the visitation. The en-
tire story is beyond telling, as only portions of the total city bill were re-
corded. Each street and parish had its own battle with the plague. The state
church reached citizens in ways that the Guildhall could not. Preachers read
proclamations from the pulpit. The bishop of London exhorted congrega-
tions to give generously and worked tirelessly to replace deceased or absent
clergy with substitutes where possible. Clergy, like Symon Patrick at Covent
Garden and Richard Pearson at Saint Bride’s, and the dean’s assistants,
Stephen Bing and John Tillison at Saint Paul’s cathedral, carried on with
parish clerks and churchwardens who were religious as well as civic officials.
Dissenters formed their own parallel networks, using their conventicles as
centers of self-help. John Allin served in Southwark. The Danvers brothers
and their fellow conventiclers in Cheapside performed good works despite
the suspicions of the authorities. Presbyterians in the heart of Covent Gar-
den took care of their own. The Quakers were everywhere. The merchant
guilds also kept coming to the rescue of the city at its request, diverting
money to plague relief from funds collected for their canceled annual ban-
quet, supplying their allotments of grain and seacoals for the poor, and add-
ing “ready cash” periodically as the mayor requested it. Their meeting halls
were closed, but someone rounded up the money and supplies.^32
These public servants and private citizens who had defied the odds by re-
maining in London, when many could have left, demonstrated a will to
persevere through the darkest days of this visitation. Part of their determina-
tion, no doubt, came from material resources and professional skills. The ill-
fated Henry Clarke, for example, was a successful merchant tailor whose un-
derstanding of the marketplace caused the parish to elect him their chief
financial officer. The actions that led to his demise, however, showed an
enormous faith in the triumph of life over death that is unlikely to have been
only secular in inspiration. Chances were that Henry Clarke’s faith tapped