16 • The Great Plagueoccurrence of plague attracts attention which is out of proportion to its im-
portance.”^43 What of the fight for survival that people waged at the time?
Wasn’t that important?
Louis Landa, who spent some time studying the Great Plague of London
for his edition of Defoe’sJournal of the Plague Year,pointed the way to our
own study when he wrote: “Although large numbers fled and certain activi-
ties ceased, we know from Pepys, Evelyn, and others that many of the cus-
tomary routines of life continued.”^44 But how were these “routines” main-
tained? The historian Charles Mullett hinted at what personal testimonies
might reveal: “Devotion matched desertion; conscience stood beside crime;
and on occasion comedy relieved tragedy.”^45
Having lived for some time with the writings and evidence of our real,
flesh-and-blood characters and their unraveling world, we believe we can
provide some insight into how they coped. We hope our readers will appre-
ciate the various roles played by medicine, religion, commerce, the Crown,
court, and guildhall as our protagonists grappled with what Reverend Josse-
lin up the Roman road in rural Essex called “the greatest plague in England
since that in Edward the Third’s time [the Black Death].”^46 Reflect on the
haunting last words of Defoe’sJournal:
A dreadful plague in London was
In the year sixty-five,
Which swept an hundred thousand souls
Away—and yet I alive!