Requiem for London• 193For Whom the Bells Didn’t Toll
I had not the freedom, satisfaction or peace to leave the city or Friends in and
about London, in that time of such great calamity.
—George Whitehead,The Christian ProgressWhen George Whitehead left his home in Watling Street to attend a
Friends meeting, he carried his nightcap in case soldiers burst in and took
the worshipers to Newgate jail or the Gatehouse. The Quakers were a brave
and nervy lot. They confronted Anglican priests on the street and in services
about Christian orthodoxy. They met in secret, raising suspicions of planned
insurrection in the minds of Captain General Albemarle at the Cockpit and
the lieutenant of the Tower of London, Sir John Robinson. The diaries and
newsletters of the plaguetime mention several roundups of dissenters; the
Quakers were the most frequent targets, landing in infected jails.
The Friends’ dedication to their sick and dying members was truly ex-
traordinary. They were strong on fellowship and leery of ostentatious rituals.
Their own burial grounds lacked even the simplest markers over the graves,
yet nothing stopped them from visiting their sick or imprisoned.
Quakers lived throughout the metropolitan area, from Cripplegate to
Southwark and from Stepney and other east-end suburbs to Westminster.
Their beliefs forbade them to be interred in a consecrated Anglican church-
yard. At the beginning of the visitation, they had a single large burying ground
north of the wall by Checkers Alley in Bunhill Fields, which they made avail-
able to other dissenting groups. Able-bodied Friends went in teams with a
barrow or other conveyance to the deceased’s residence and took the body past
the authorities to a quiet interment without ceremony in a single grave. When
the numbers threatened the capacity of the Bunhill Fields ground in Sep-
tember, a second burial ground was opened in Southwark—convenient to the
many Friends who lived south of the river and also to the local jail, where
plague vied with jail fever among the diverse prison population.
Before the epidemic the Friends had about ten burials each month. Ac-
cording to legend their initial plague fatality was the wife of a charismatic
Quaker preacher, Solomon Eccles.^32 The ensuing march of death left few
tracks in any parish register, but the Friends’ private register recorded every-
thing from the complete name and parish of the fallen Friends to the cause
of their deaths and sometimes the prison or deportation ship where they had
breathed their last. In July 1665 the total number of fatalities rose to 35 .Dur-