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

238 • Surviving

The Shadow of Death

I am environ’d with danger, and have nothing to trust to but your prayers to Al-

mighty God, that (if it be his will) I may escape. If not, that my service [to the

king] may be acceptable; for noe money should hire me to this hazard which I see

everyman to flee from that has asylum.

—John Evelynto Sir Richard Browne, September 22 , 1665

With the exception of physicians or nurses, no one felt the presence of pesti-
lence more consistently than did John Evelyn. Whether at home or tending
his Dutch prisoners and sick and wounded English sailors, Evelyn lived con-

stantly in the shadow of death. The first scare had come when a household
servant became ill, forcing John’s pregnant wife and their children to flee to
his brother’s home. From her refuge in Wotton, Mary wrote to him, “I pray
God preserve our poor [friends at Greenwich and Deptford]. I can doe noe

more but my prayers for your health where these [are] daily made.” Back at
Deptford, the expectant father set his mind on tending to the king’s business,
“trusting in the providence and goodness of God.”^8
John received a second scare after visiting Mary a fortnight before her due

date. It had been a harrowing trip back to Sayes Court. His nag lost a shoe,
slowing him down to a bare walk. Stopping off for dinner, he sensed an
“aguish disposition” coming on and took a posset drink for colds and a little
theriac to ease his pain. The theriac (with its key ingredients of sleep-induc-

ing opium and viper’s poison to draw out any pestilential poison from the
body) may also have calmed his spirits. He went on from Deptford to
Greenwich, where three thousand new prisoners from captured Dutch war-
ships had just arrived.

A week later, overburdened with work and still not fully recovered, Evelyn
had to do battle with Albemarle in “very serious debates” over dinner. Dover
castle held only sixty prisoners, and the nearby jails were all infected. All but
one of Evelyn’s officers at Chelsea were dead from plague, and this assistant

had accompanied Evelyn “with it upon him, ready to sinke downe before my
door.” Still Evelyn forged on, uncertain about the fate of his sick companion.
Arriving at his Sayes Court home, the navy commissioner found the plague
spread all around Deptford and carrying off his closest neighbors. Parents,

children, maids, and boarders, as well as nearby brewers, all dead or dying, he
informed his father-in-law Sir Richard Browne, the original owner of the