Not by Bread Alone • 239Evelyn property—naming them one by one. “All the houses about ye doctor
swept away, and at least 50 more shut up,” Evelyn added.
As John laid out the grim scene at Deptford to Sir Richard, his fears
turned in Mary’s direction. She was facing greater trauma than he, for the
nurse she had hired was shut up with the plague. He dared not worry her
with the true extent of the mortality around Sayes Court, nor admit to fear-
ing his persistent dizzy spells might be the plague coming on. “The truth is I
much suspect the ague to be infected,” he confided to his father-in-law, ask-
ing for his prayers and imploring him not to breathe a word to Mary.
John Evelyn offered up his own prayers to God and tried to focus on the
blessings of his life, from family to financial security. Yet no matter how he
tried, his thoughts kept returning to the present perils at Sayes Court and
Wotton. It seemed an eternity since he had begun this year praising God for
his mercies, receiving the holy sacrament, and setting his affairs in order.^9
A short time after sharing his fears with his wife’s father, John sent an ex-
press letter to Mary offering to replace her nurse with someone from Dept-
ford. Then he let down his guard and revealed his full concern over “faintings
and dizziness in my head now and then.” Having made that admission, he
acknowledged another: the “infinite hazards” of arranging for his newest
group of three thousand prisoners had brought him to the point of desper-
ation.
It was mid-September. Londoners wondered whether they would live
through the next week. Evelyn braved the contagion on his visits to Albe-
marle in Westminster and risked infection at the half-dozen ports where sick
and dying sailors kept coming in. Trying to shake a premonition of his ap-
proaching end, he told his wife, “If God be so mercifull to me, I may hope
yet to see you once more before Sir Richard goes off to Oxford.” In the
meantime, Mary had two sources of strength to aid her: “You have a Gra-
cious God to trust in, and (if I live) a most indulgent and affectionate hus-
band to provide for you and ours, as far as our poore faculties will reach.”
The end of the letter resembled a last will and testament. Mary should
guard John’s unpublished manuscripts and keep to herself what was not for
other eyes. (The rest was presumably to be published or shared with virtuoso
friends.) A key to his trunk, which he thought had fifty pounds in cash, was
enclosed. “You are my selfe, and I trust you with all,” he confided. He had
drunk some of her cider last evening, and it had done more for his mel-
ancholy infirmity than all the concoctions he had taken to cure it. “I have no
more to say, but to beg of God that he will blesse you, and restore you once