82 • ConfusionSaint Sepulchre—where Samuel Pepys’ cousin, Kate Joyce, and her husband
had their busy inn—with a median of only 1. 7 hearths.^9
Gervase Jacques was caught between the down-and-out poor of Saint
Sepulchre, who were trapped by their meager resources in a neighborhood
that buried in an average year 750 persons out of 1 , 015 documented house-
holds, and the titled and wealthy of Covent Garden’s Piazza, who could leave
their servants as guards and flee to their spacious country homes. The return
of the plague to the city, with four deaths one week and ten the next, made
Jacques restive. He took up his pen once more, unsure exactly what to say but
knowing he must alert Lady Lucy and Earl Theophilus to his plight.^10
Jacques apologized for yielding too much to the “pressing importunityes”
of the Hastings’s creditors. Alas, he had paid some of them “more than was
intended,” and still they were not satisfied! This was uncomfortable to relate,
but it prepared him for an even more difficult admission. The ravages of time
have obliterated parts of the ending, but enough remains to show the gist of
it. “I humbly entreat your perusal and speedy pleasure concerning [past and
present bills] that my stay now intended may bee short,” he began. After
suggesting that his prolonged stay was costing her a great deal of money, he
finally threw himself at the mercy of the countess: “For besides the great
charge [my stay] gives your Honour, my own health and safety doth a little
concerne mee if I may not bee otherwise serviceable to you [back] in the
country.” The complimentary closing fragment pleads his mistress’s atten-
tion to “my preservation in this sickly Cittye, Madame y’r Honours most du-
tifull most obedient servant G. Jacu.”
Jacques’ surviving correspondence does not resume for two more years.
Presumably, after his letter reached Donnington Park and the countess sent
her approval by “express” courier (a turnaround of four days by a fast rider
changing horses frequently), he followed the Langhams, Loughboroughs,
Cliftons, and Stavelys on the Great Northern Road. But what were the great
mass of London servants, apprentices, artisans, and small shopkeepers to do?
Their livelihood depended on their masters or their trade. If they left every-
thing behind but their meager savings, they would soon run out of money;
transportation and lodging alone would cost them half a pound over the
three-month duration of a minor plague epidemic.^11 And what of profes-
sional persons like Dr. Hodges and merchants like Alderman Turner and
high royal officials like Samuel Pepys, on whom poorer Londoners depended
directly or indirectly for employment and charity?