Winter, 1664–1665 • 37plague, and prescribing quinine for malarial fever, which was proving ben-
eficial. The microscope was revealing a new world—a new frontier.
London’s access to the sea placed it on another frontier, as goods came
from around the world—spices from the East Indies, sugar from Barbados,
silks from the Levant, tobacco from Virginia, and that new delight, tea, from
the Far East. A less inviting import, however, loomed across nearer waters.
The homegrown variety of plague might continue to be contained in a few
remote corners of London’s suburban parishes densely populated with poor
workers, but the foreign variety had made a new march across the Continent,
from port to port and country to country. A decade before, it had infested the
Italian and Iberian peninsulas and then moved northward until it reached
the North Sea shores of Holland and Germany. Amsterdam had suffered
one of its worst epidemics in 1663 , and the infection had continued there
through 1664.
Samuel Pepys had ended his diary for 1664 with reflections of how good
God had been to him and how fortunate he was in estate, office, and health.
But with an Anglo-Dutch war about to become official on both sides of the
North Sea and English Channel, it was anyone’s guess whether the physical
health of Londoners could be sustained as their city’s economic vigor had
been. Pepys’ new associate in naval matters, John Evelyn, had just been ap-
pointed one of the king’s commissioners to care for the throngs of sick and
wounded royal sailors and Dutch prisoners who were expected to come on
shore as the warmer weather of spring followed the bitter frosts of winter. If
the city-dwelling Pepys did not think about what darkness might lie ahead,
the country gentleman Evelyn certainly did: he began his search in London’s
hospitals for vacant space that could be used for stricken sailors. Unfor-
tunately, the city and suburbs had only two hospitals with any significant ca-
pacity, Saint Bartholomew’s just beyond the western wall (with room for 200
to 300 beds) and Saint Thomas across the river in Southwark (with about 250
beds).^50 For the worst disease of the age, only two small pesthouses served
the half-million persons in the capital. Though conveniently distant from
the city and court, they were woefully inadequate if plague should be carried
in by Dutch prisoners from Amsterdam and other infected Dutch ports.