The Other London • 53the Royal Society’s experiments to the meaning of planetary movements. He
consulted astrologers about dealing with his parliaments. He asked them the
odds on his Dutch war and inquired about the prospects for his health. He
undoubtedly had been talking with his favorite astrologer about the latest
comet in the heavens.^30
The weekly Bills of Mortality reached the king and lord mayor a day be-
fore they were made public. On the morning of April 27 , as Londoners
awoke to the first public word of the fatalities out in squalid Saint Giles in
the Fields, Charles II’s council chamber was poised to act. The stakes were
high, the mood tense. The king and his closest advisors knew that more than
one parish was infected; Whitehall itself was in danger. The council register
revealed the panicky truth: “Plague has broken out and Vehemently sus-
pected to be in some houses within the parish of Saint Giles in the Fields
and other out parishes.”^31
Action came swiftly. The chief justice of the Court of King’s Bench or-
dered all suspected houses in the nearby suburbs inspected. If infected, a res-
idence was to be shut up, and everyone inside, whether well or sick, sealed off
from the outside world. For forty days, counting from the time of the last
plague death inside, a “watcher” would guard the house and a live-in nurse
would care for the family’s needs, with medical supplies and food passed
through a window by a courier. If the inmates could afford it, they would
bear the costs; if not, the parish would pay from its poor-tax fund.
Table 2.Parishes Infected and Number Buried of Plague,
April 18–May 16, 1665No. of Infected No. Buried
Week Parishes of PlagueApril 18–25 1 2
April 25–May 2 0 0
May 2–9 4 9
May 9–16 2 3note:The weekly Bill of Mortality in London and elsewhere, including
Colchester, was listed as being from Tuesday to Tuesday, but it covered the
seven days from Tuesday to Monday, with the second Tuesday being a day
of tallying the counts for the previous seven days.