The Great Plague. The Story of London\'s Most Deadly Year

Signs and Sources • 69

Pall Mall residence in Westminster. For Lady Ranelagh, God was a powerful

first cause and life force guiding her every move. Soon she would hold vigils

at the bedside of infected friends, praying continually through the night for

their recovery. Meanwhile her brother believed the Almighty gave humans a

“divine spark” of wisdom to probe the natural, “second causes” of disease. Yet

he was also a strong believer in God as the “first cause” of everything, includ-

ing plague.^33

Fig. 3 .Frontispiece of The Christians Refuge: or Heavenly Antidotes against the Plague
in this time of Generall Contagion( 1665 ). The figure of death as a monarch with scep-
ter and crown reveals beneath his ermine cloak a worm-eaten skeleton holding an
hourglass. The four lines “Death triumphant cloth’d in Ermine / ’Bout whose bones
do crawl the Vermine / Doth denote that each condition / To his power must yield
submission” suggest that plague comes from God and cannot be escaped even by roy-
alty.The Wellcome Library, London