In 1665 the yeare of the Great Plague my two brothers were sent to Board within
a little way of Eppin and my two sisters to Sudbury neare Harrow on the Hill...
Once in every weeke I went to see my brothers as also my sisters.
—George Boddington’sFamily Commonplace BookGeorge Boddington Jr. was no ordinary eighteen-year-old. A quick learner
with Latin and Greek at school and accounting at home, this oldest child of
George and Hannah Boddington had been writing letters and keeping the
books of their packing trade since his thirteenth birthday. Like Sir William
Turner, George senior had prospered with hard work through the ups and
downs of the marketplace, passing on his business ethic to his son by exam-
ple. Hannah, a more religious person, “instilled good principles of religion
and morals” in her five surviving children, George junior later recalled, and
bore the loss of the other six with the same trust in God’s unfathomable
goodness that the countess of Huntingdon and many others of their genera-
tion shared.^1 Between the two parents, George Boddington Jr. imbibed a
typical Puritan work ethic: people of faith used their talents to the full and
trusted God to bless their journey through life, whatever its end might be.
Hannah and George Boddington had taught young George more than
they had bargained for. When the plague came into London, they decided to
send George and his four younger siblings out of harm’s way, while they
watched over the family business and George senior served as overseer of the
poor at Saint Margaret Lothbury, a well-to-do parish of a hundred house-
holds. George junior balked.
Not by Bread Alone
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