Prologue • 11figures for London’s second most deadly epidemic, in 1625. The loss of nearly
100 , 000 persons from all causes in 1665 constituted a huge jump from the
15 , 000 to 20 , 000 fatalities recorded annually during the previous five years.
The total death toll of nearly 100 , 000 was also considerable as a percentage
of the metropolitan population: 20 percent of the 500 , 000 residents and vis-
itors we estimate to have been in the capital at the beginning of 1665 .And
that figure of 20 percent masks a far deeper crisis because a huge number of
Londoners had fled to the country to avoid the infection. If calculations from
London’s previous plague epidemics made by the contemporary dem-
ographer John Graunt held true for this great plague, 40 percent of the pop-
ulation (or 200 , 000 ) in the capital fled. That left 300 , 000 still in London, so
the loss of 100 , 000 represented one-third of its actual population during the
epidemic.^24 Another 100 , 000 succumbed in the countryside, where the
Great Plague lasted into 1666. The Great Plague at Colchester, the longest
lasting of all these local epidemics, was even more deadly. Its estimated toll
of nearly 50 percent of the thriving provincial center’s total population (and
an even greater percentage of those who did not flee) allows us to see more
clearly the profundity of this Great Plague.
How could any community cope physically or emotionally with this un-
wanted visitor?^25 Sex, age, privileged status, wealth—none provided a means
of escape. Some epidemics seemed to strike the young most fiercely, others
the old, still others those in the prime of life and in vigorous health. The in-
creased danger for women during childbirth meant that large numbers of
women died, even though many well-to-do women were sent with their
children to safe havens while the master of the house stayed on. The one
constant after the earliest epidemics was that far more poor persons died
than any other group. There were more poor people than not, for one thing,
but also their workplaces and homes were more likely to carry the infection
and, of course, they lacked the resources to gamble on flight that took many
wealthier persons out of danger.^26
Still, communities did attempt to fight back. One of the most common re-
sources was religious faith. Catholics and Protestants alike turned to prayer
and repentance. The Virgin Mary was a favorite intercessor for Catholics,
along with the fourteenth-century Saint Roch and the sixteenth-century
Saint Charles Borromeo of Milan, whose fearless aid to plague victims—
bodies and souls—became legendary. Anglican London joined Calvinist
Amsterdam and Catholic Rome in celebrating the end of an epidemic with
services of thanksgiving to God, following the traditional Te Deumof Chris-