240 • Survivingmore to me; for I am with all faithfulness and intire affection, my dear wife,
your most inviolable loving husband and servant.”^10
With thoughts more inclined toward material than spiritual matters,
Samuel Pepys reflected on his own mortality. “Lords day; up betimes, and to
my chamber,” he wrote as he skipped Sunday service and packed his papers
and books for removal to the temporary navy office at Greenwich. He wrote
out instructions to the executors of his last will and testament, “thereby per-
fecting the whole business of my Will, to my very great joy.” The ever
worldly Samuel brought his thoughts as close to the afterlife as he could: “So
that I shall be in much better state of soul, I hope, if it should please the Lord
to call me away this sickly time.”^11
The Plight of Pastors
Buried: John, son of John and Margaret Swethland, killed by the plague. Hence it
will be seen in how greater danger I was placed, who, in the house of the infected,
baptized him with the sacred stream, held him in my arms, and signed him with
the sign of the cross.
—Rev. David Foulis,curate of Paddington village churchPersonal beliefs could carry a Christian only so far in these endless weeks
and months of death and suffering, even if one possessed the faith of Mary
and John Evelyn. Corporate worship helped to nourish flagging souls, and
here Anglicans had an advantage over even the mildest of dissenting groups.
John Allin’s private gatherings in Southwark invited arrest by Albemarle’s
forces. Even public services in city churches by ejected ministers like Thomas
Vincent were fraught with anxiety, though the large size of the congregation
probably saved the worshipers from interference by the captain general
(better to leave them alone than to incite a mass riot).
It comforted worshipers at Covent Garden and Cripplegate and Saint
Margaret Westminster to know that they were all reciting the same words at
the same hour. “For Jesus’ sake, who himself took our infirmities and bare our
sicknesses,” they prayed in unison, “have mercy upon us, and say to the De-
stroying Angel, ‘It is enough.’” When a family had to stay at home, the head
of the household could read aloud scriptural passages on prudential action in
time of trouble. Genesis 12 and 27 , Proverbs 22 , 2 Samuel 24 , and Ephesians 5
were favorites. The rest of the family might join in, reciting familiar verses on