248 • Survivingwas in the Hart Street parish; Pepys put off plans to move back in with his
wife. Allin, Pepys, Turner, and Patrick all sprang into action before the sun
set on December 14 , when the increase in deaths was published.
In Southwark, John Allin had just finished drawing up astrological tables
for 1666. A copy was in Samuel Jeake’s hands, accompanied by a note of Al-
lin’s forebodings of “a very sickly if not a mortal day very neere approaching
me.” Then the bill came out on December 14. In haste, Allin penned a note
heavy with apocalyptic meaning to Philip Fryth. The plague toll had risen
once again, the increase being “wholly in the city.” Allin linked it to people
returning carelessly from the country.^8
Samuel Pepys learned the bad news at the Exchange the day before. “We
hope it is only the effects of the late close warm weather,” he speculated, “and
if the frosts continue the next week, [the count] may fall again.” Yet he wor-
ried, “The town doth thicken so much with people” it would be surprising if
the plague did not “grow again.” Pepys rushed to Seething Lane to see his
wife, “who is well (though my great trouble is that our poor little parish is the
greatest number this week in all the city within the wall, having six (from one
the last week).” Distracted and distraught, he started losing track of his as-
sets again, “which doth trouble me mightily, fearing that I shall hardly ever
come to understand them thoroughly again, as I used to do my accounts
when I was at home.” Samuel swore an oath not to drink until he made an
accurate accounting, fearing that if he died, no one would be able to make
any sense out of his reckoning. “I hope God will never suffer me to come to
that disorder again.”^9
Sir William Turner’s records were in perfect order. As always, he knew ex-
actly where he stood financially. This latest increase in the death toll, how-
ever, set him aback. The Pocquelins in Paris heard from him immediately: “I
doe all I cann to procure money,” he wrote on the fourteenth, “but it is so
scarce that wee must have patience perforce. Since the £ 500 , I have only re-
ceived £ 50 of Mr. Russell.”^10
Symon Patrick also paused on the fourteenth to take in the bad news. The
Piazza remained largely deserted, with the peers and gentry holding back in
the country until the king and queen made their move from Oxford. Patrick
finished his letter to Mrs. Gauden, “God alters the weather as he pleases...
If [the plague] does not leave us this winter, God knows when I shall see
you.” He dearly missed her company. The next week Symon reported the
town filling up again, while noting the “great increase” in the sickness that
had unsettled Pepys, Turner, and Allin in their own idiosyncratic ways. Sy-
mon was now writing almost every day to Elizabeth, perhaps because of an