328 • Notes to Pages 157–159- Wear, “Early Modern Europe,” 352.
- “But for the shape and figure of these Atomes or small bodyes which... alter and
change the motion of these corpuscles or particles which compose the spirits and
blood, wee can say nothing to satisfaction... The seedes of the Pestilence are soe hid-
den and removed from sense that wee can see them better in their effects than we can
in themselves.” Boghurst,Loimographia, 10. - Hodges,Loimologia, 14 – 15 , 17.
- The reexamination of plague reached the households of great persons, including
the literary and scientific writer Margaret Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle. In 1665 she
was hard at work on her forthcoming Observations upon Experimental Philosophyand
The Blazing Worldand decided to incorporate her thoughts about this invasive disease.
An Italian gentleman, she knew, had used his microscope “to see Atoms through it, and
could also perceive the Plague; which he affirmed to be a swarm of living Animals, as
little as Atoms, which entered into mens bodies, through their mouths, nostrils, ears.”
Lady Margaret had her doubts because contagion, while undiscriminating, was not uni-
versal, as this learned man proposed; otherwise, these atoms would enter beasts and
birds as well as humans. Drawing on Galenic notions of individual constitutions, Para-
celsian belief that a human could catch the plague by imagining it, and Boyle’s corpus-
cular theory of motion, she offered her own explanation. “Since it is often observed that
all Bodies are not infected, even in a great plague,” she averred, “it proves that the In-
fection is made by imitation; and as one and the same Agent cannot occasion the like
effects in every Patient, as... some Wood takes fire sooner... so it is also with the
Plague.” See Margaret Cavendish,Observations upon Experimental Philosophy(London,
1668 ). We thank John T. O’Connor for bringing her work, including the quotations, to
our attention.
Chapter 8. Business Not as Usual
- There has never been a serious examination of the economic impact of the Great
Plague of 1665 , perhaps in the belief that documents on business and vital services do
not exist. Historians’ generalizations on the subject range from the consensus of a bleak
reality to a few suggestions that Londoners coped better than one would have expected.
On the former side, Walter George Bell and J. D. Shrewsbury are typical. For the latter,
revisionist view, we can cite Charles Mullett and to an extent Stephen Porter, though he
stresses the weaknesses of the public safety net and the economic and financial difficul-
ties. Richard Grassby’s work is central to an understanding of merchant capital and
credit flexibility during normal times. See his “English Merchant Capitalism in the
Late Seventeenth Century: The Composition of Business Fortunes,”Past and Present
46 ( 1970 ): 93 – 94. We made some preliminary suggestions in A. Lloyd Moote, “Did
Grass Grow in London’s Streets? Personal Wealth, Commercial Activity, and Public
Culture during the Great Plague of 1665 ,” in Trading Cultures: The Worlds of Western
Merchants,ed. Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron (Turnhout, Belgium, 2001 ), 35 – 57. - Sir William Turner, London, to Pocquelin père et fils at Paris, Aug. 8 ,Aug. 28 ,
Oct. 16 , 1665.