A Journal of the Plague Year

by Daniel Defoe

  Apprehensions … Summer being at Hand: from Hippocrates descended the idea of a special relationship between climate or seasons and disease. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the prevailing view was that plague originated in hot climates, flourished in the heat of summer, and abated ‘in the Cold of Winter’ (R. Brookes, History of the Most Remarkable Distempers (1721), 36). Dr George Thomson: ‘So efficacious do we find cold Seasons … in powerfully restraining this feral Disease, the Pest, that in this part of the World there hath seldom any great Mortality reigned amongst us in a very sharp Winter’ (Loimotomia: Or the Pest Anatomized (1666), 22). However, Blackmore asserted that the feared plague then raging in the south of France consisted of ‘a more exalted and active Poyson’ such as might with stand the cold of winter. He thought that the rigorous season could check or abate the malignity of a plague but with the return of hot weather a pestilence could recover its vigour (Discourse, 38-9).

  Liberties: the City (that part of London within the old walls) was almost surrounded by Liberties whose relationship to the City authorities varied: the Minories, the Liberty and precinct of the Tower, St Katherine’s by the Tower, Duke’s Place, the Old Artillery Ground, Norton Folgate, Glashouse Street, St Martin’s le-Grand, the Temple, Blackfriars, and Whitefriars—all were Liberties. John Graunt, Natural and Political Observations, estimated the population of the eleven Liberties to be 179,000 in 1661.

  Weather set in hot: Pepys noted the hot weather on 7 June: ‘the hottest day that ever I felt in my life, and it is confessed so by all other people the hottest they ever knew in England in the beginning of June’. On this day Pepys saw for the first time two or three houses in Drury Lane ‘marked with a red cross upon the doors, and “Lord have mercy upon us” writ there’. H.F.’s remark that ‘the Infection spread in a dreadful Manner’ is supported by the Bills of Mortality, which show that deaths from the plague increased from 17 the last week of May to 43 the first week of June, a notably warm week.

  Articles of the Feaver, Spotted-Feaver, and Teeth … swell: not wholly in accordance with the Bills of Mortality. The mortality figures for the last week of May for the three maladies in the order named are 30, 23, and 19, for the first week in June, 43, 16, 25. But the increase in fever was significant because the plague was considered a ‘pestilential fever’. Teeth: Dr John Arbuthnot, Fellow of the College of Physicians and of the Royal Society, and the friend and collaborator of Pope and Swift, wrote: ‘Above a tenth part of Infants die in Teething, by the Symptoms proceeding from the Irritation of the Tender Parts of the Jaws, occasioning Inflamations, Fevers, Convulsions, Looseness, with Green Stools … and in some, Gangrene’ (Practical Rules of Diet in the Various Constitutions and Diseases of Human Bodies (1732), 408). Joseph Hurlock, an eighteenth-century surgeon, canvassed the subject of death from ‘teeth’ in his Practical Treatise upon Dentition (1742).

  throng’d out of Town: Pepys, Diary, 21 June 1665: ‘all the towne almost going out of towne, the coaches and waggons being all full of people going into the country’.

  Certificates of Health: issued by the Lord Mayor and at times by parish officers, these certifications that the bearer was free of the plague were not always honoured by the authorities of some towns and cities, where any traveller from plague-ridden London was suspect. Defoe presents the problem in Due Preparations for the Plague (1722, ed. Aitken (1895), xv. 156): ‘And though they [the brother and sister] had gotten certificates of health from the Lord Mayor, the city began now to be so infected, that nobody would receive them, no inn would lodge them on the way.’

  Turn-pikes: spiked barriers.

  Saddler: a craftsman who made saddles, or, as in H.F.’s case, a tradesman who, in addition to selling saddles, was a dealer in other supplies needed by travellers, such as pillows, straps, stirrups, horsecloths, and leather bottles.

  Master save thy self: Matthew 27: 40; Mark 15: 30.

  Relations in Northamptonshire: Defoe’s paternal grandparents lived in the villages of Peakirk and Etton, Northamptonshire.

  Turks and Mahometans … predestinating Notions: whether a Christian may flee the plague was a hotly debated question in 1665, and it dated back at least to Luther and Calvin. By the time of the plague of 1665 the refusal to flee had become a ‘Turkish heresy’, or, as Blackmore termed it in his Discourse, ‘a Doctrine of fatal Necessity’ (p. 85). Defoe owned a copy of Kemp’s A Brief Treatise … of the Pestilence, which states: ‘The Turks are perswaded, that every ones fate is written in his fore-head, and hath a fatal destiny appointed by God, which is impossible for any to avoid; so that they believe, those that shall die by the Plague, cannot be slain in War, nor drown’d in Water, and those that shall die in Battel, cannot be kill’d by the Plague; by which credulity, they slight and neglect all care of avoiding the infection, conversing with one another, and buying the goods out of infected houses, and wearing the apparel of them that lately died. I shall not trouble my self to confute this Opinion, since at Grand Cayre and Constantinople there have been thousands that have suffered death, and multitudes that have been executed by the Plague for this Heresie’ (p. 15).

  happen’d to stop … 91st Psalm: Sortes Biblicae, divination by means of the Bible, an old practice among Christians and at times condemned by councils of the Church. Defoe used the device in Robinson Crusoe, where Crusoe found comfort—and eventual penitence—by randomly opening the Bible at Psalm 50.

  none but Magistrates and Servants: Kephale, Medela Pestilentiae, answered ‘theological queries concerning the Plague’. He includes among those who may not flee without offending God both magistrates and servants: magistrates because they are needed ‘for keeping good orders’, and servants because they ‘are under command’ (p. 27).

  Court removed … June: the Court, Pepys records in his Diary on 29 June, was ‘full of waggons and ready to go out of towne’. It went first to Hampton Court and thence to Salisbury (Diary, 27 July), finally setting out for Oxford the last week of September. The King was back at Whitehall on 1 Feb. (Diary, 31 Jan. and 2 Feb. 1666, and Anthony Wood, Life and Times, ed. Andrew Clark (1892), ii. 46).

  hardly any thing of Reformation: observing the King and his courtiers at Oxford during the Plague, Anthony Wood noted in his diary: ‘The greater part of the courtiers were high, proud, insolent … To give a further character of the court, they thought they were neat and gay in their apparell, yet they were nasty and beastly … Rude, rough, whoremongers; vaine, empty, carelesse’ (Life and Times, ii. 68).

  crying Vices … Judgment: cf. Bishop Burnet; ‘All the King’s enemies, and the enemies of monarchy, said, here [i.e. the plague] was a manifest character of God’s displeasure upon the nation; as indeed the ill life the King led, and the viciousness of the whole court, gave but a melancholy prospect’ (History of his own Times (1818), i. 242). In The Review, no. 4, 12 Aug. 1712, Defoe wrote: ‘Some have said, it [the plague in 1665] was to punish the Nation, for the horrid Debaucheries of the King’s Party, and yet the Roundheads died as fast as the Cavaliers.’

  London … the whole Mass: Defoe stood in perpetual astonishment before the spectacle of ‘this great and monstrous Thing, called London’, as he wrote in his Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–6). He estimates that ‘the Extent or Circumference of the continued Buildings of the Cities of London and Westminster, and the Borough of Southwark, all of which, in the common Acceptation, is called London, amounts to Thirty Six Miles, Two Furlongs, Thirty Nine Rods’ (Tour, ed. G. D. H. Cole (1927), i. 323 ff.).

  City … not yet much infected: following the week of 2 May when one death from plague was reported, the Bills of Mortality showed no deaths from plague in the City until the week of 6 June (4 reported). Then the subsequent weekly deaths were 10, 4, 23, 28, 56, rising to 128 in the week of 18 July. The greatest number for a single week in the 97 parishes of the City was 1,189, the week of 12 Sept.

  Inns-of-Court … shut up: in the second week of June notices of postponed readings appeared at the
Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, and Lincoln’s Inn, and shortly after at Gray’s Inn.

  City and Suburbs … prodigiously full of People: reliable figures on the population of London at the time of the Great Plague are not available. John Graunt, whose figure from his Natural and Political Observations is much quoted, estimated about 460,000 in and about London at the beginning of Charles II’s reign.

  Encrease … in London: two years or so after writing the Journal Defoe refers to Sir William Petty, ‘famous for his Political Arithmetick, [who] supposed the City … to contain a Million of People’ (Tour, i. 324). In his Another Essay in Political Arithmetic (1687), A2, Petty ‘proves’ that London (the parishes within the Bills of Mortality) contains ‘about 696 thousand People’. In 1724 Defoe estimated 1,500,000.

  Jerusalem … besieg’d: by the Roman emperor Titus in AD 70.

  Hundred Thousand Ribband Weavers: a greatly exaggerated figure. In The Review, 20 Mar. 1705, Defoe seems to accept half that figure: ‘As to Spittle-fields, in about 1679 and 80 … ’twas alledg’d then … were about 50000 Narrow Weavers, as they call’d them, or in Common English Ribbon-Weavers.’

  Akeldama: ‘the field of blood’, the name given by the Jews of Jerusalem to the field Judas purchased with the money received from the betrayal of Christ, so called because of his violent death there (Acts 1:19; Matthew 27:8 differs).

  a blazing Star or Comet: in mid-December 1664, and early April 1665, the appearance of comets over London was related to the plague in popular literature and scientific discussions. Pepys mentions the first comet on 15 Dec. 1664, and the second on 6 April 1665.

  the Comet … of a faint, dull, languid Colour: Defoe here follows astrological theory. John Gadbury’s 1665 De Cometis divides comets into seven species: ‘Such as are of a Leaden, Envious, Pale, Ashy Colour, are termed Saturnine. And such was this Comet or Blazing Star that lately appeared to us’ (p. 9).

  foretold a heavy Judgment … as was the Plague: Gadbury, De Cometis, writes ‘Saturnine Comets always denote, there shall happen in the world many pernicious evils, as Famine, Plague … and absolute Destruction of all things that grow upon the earth, useful for man and beast’ (p. 23). See also John Merrifield, who describes himself as a student of ‘Heavenly and Sublime Sciences’, Catastasis Mundi (1684): ‘Comets of the nature of Saturn … denote many Evils, as … Chronick Diseases, and Melancholy Distempers … Leprosie, Palsies, Consumption, and all Diseases which are of lung continuance’ (p. 29). Cf. the sceptical medical opinion voiced by Hodges in Loimologia, 4: ‘Whoever duly considers it, can never imagine that this Pestilence [of 1665] had its Origin from any Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, in Sagitarius on the Tenth of October, or from a Conjunction of Saturn and Mars in the same sign on the twelfth of November, which was the common opinion.’ Not all comets were sinister. Gadbury lists among the seven kinds, ‘jovial comets’: these ‘presage a very great plenty of all things, a very fertile year, a pleasant salubrious Air’ (p. 24). In Applebee’s Journal, 7 Dec. 1723, Defoe asked why a comet must inevitably foretell calamities. He attacked ‘whining astrologers’ and ‘Stargazers’ as men who have ‘no Commission … to predict the Plagues, or War, or Famine’ from appearances in the heavens.

  Warnings of Gods Judgments: a traditional and widely prevalent view of comets as signs from heaven of impending scourges. William Turner, A Complete History of the most remarkable Providences … which have happened in this Present Age (1697), reflects the usual view: ‘For Comets, I declare, that I do not believe the Governour of the World puts out such Flambeaus, sets such Beacons on fire in the upper Regions for no purpose: Nature doth not, saith the Philosopher; and shall the Christian say, the God of Nature doth anything in vain? Two and fifty years ago … there was a Blazing Star seen, upon which followed the Irish Massacre, and the late Civil Wars. In December and March 1664, there were two Comets seen, which were followed by that sad and dreadful Plague … and that lamentable fire’ (p. 61).

  Fore-tellers … Pestilence, War, Fire: Anthony Wood records the ‘blazing star’ of December 1664 and adds an account of ‘prodigious births’ at Sarum, ‘the devill let loose to possess people’, ‘great innundations and frosts—war with the Dutch—war between the emperour and the Turk—general commotions throughout Christendom and the rest of the world—sudden deaths’. This entry is followed by reference to the plague in 1665, a monster born at Oxford (‘one eye in the forehead, noe nose, and its Two eares in the nape of the neck’), a thorn which bore five different fruits (cherries, dates, apricots), earthquakes (Life and Times, ii. 53–4). But see also previous note.

  Lilly’s … Gadbury’s … Poor Robin’s: three of the well-known almanacs of the period. William Lilly (1602–81) published his first almanac, Merlinus Anglicus Junior, in 1644 and continued to publish one annually until his death. He was also the author of a long series of pamphlets of prophecy, some of which involved him in difficulties. Though he remained in London during the plague of 1625, he fled in 1665. In the later years of his life he practised both medicine and astrology, having been granted a medical licence through the influence of his friend, Elias Ashmole. John Gadbury (1627–1704) served as apprentice to a tailor, after which he attended Oxford. Born of a Roman Catholic mother, he was eventually a Presbyterian, an Independent, and a member of the ‘family of love’. He wrote widely on astrological subjects from 1652, his annual Ephemerides first appearing in 1655. Like other astrologers of the day, he was involved in controversy, religious and political as well as astrological. Two of his better known works are De Cometis (1665) and London’s Deliverance from the Plague (1665). Poor Robin is thought to be the pseudonym of William Winstanley (1628?–1698), a barber turned writer and compiler. The earliest extant issue of his almanac is from 1663, most of it in a humorous and satiric vein directed at other almanacs somewhat in the manner of the Partridge papers of Swift and others. The title is revealing: An Almanack after a New Fashion, Wherein the Reader may see (if he be not blinde) many remarkable Things worthy of Observation … written by Poor Robin, Knight of the Burnt-Island, a Well-Willer to Mathematicks.

  pretended religious Books: Come out of her, etc. is from Revelation 18: 4. There is a book with the first part of Defoe’s title by John Lilburne, published in 1639, but it has nothing to do with plague. Britain’s Remembrancer is by George Wither, but it was published in 1628. Its subtitle is ‘Containing a Narration of the Plague lately Past’, and possibly Defoe thought it applied to the plague of 1665. Fair Warning may be another instance of confusion: in 1665 Wither published his Memorandum to London occasioned by the Pestilence, with a Warning Piece to London. Wither’s works on plague were well known in the seventeenth century.

  Jonah to Ninevah: Jonah 3: 4.

  run about Naked: Pepys reports a similar incident in the Diary, 29 July 1667. The literature of Quakerism contains many instances of the practice of ‘testifying by signs’. London, as the new Babylon, was often the subject of prophetic doom. Defoe had in mind the notorious case of Solomon Eagles (or Eccles), a musician and convert to Quakerism who ‘as a sign’ ran naked through Bartholomew Fair at Smithfield with a pan of fire or brimstone on his head, crying ‘repentance’ and ‘remember Sodom’, but this incident occurred in 1662 (William Braithwaite, The Second Period of Quakerism (1961), 25). See also pp. 89 and 200, where Defoe mentions Eagles by name.

  Josephus mentions: Flavius Josephus, Works (1773 edn.), IV.vii.12.

  Apparitions in the Air: the flaming sword (see Genesis 3: 29) was a favourite in homiletic literature. Defoe refers to ‘a comet before the Destruction of Jerusalem, which hung for a year … directly over the City in the shape of a Flaming Sword’ (Applebee’s Journal, 2 Nov. 1723). Gadbury, De Cometis, 48, reports ‘a great black Coffin seen in the Air at Hamburgh, and other parts in Germany and Flanders’ before and during the second comet. He also says that one of the newsbooks reported ‘terrible Apparitions, and noises in the Air’. The respected Dr George Thomson, whose post-mortem examination of
a plague victim was well known, asserted that apparitions were prophetic: ‘apparitions of Dracones volantes … Coffins carried through the Air … raining of blood … all of which having something extra naturam, are portentous and prodigious’ (Loimotamia, 55–6). In his Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions (1727), 390, Defoe wrote: ‘It is without doubt, that Fancy and Imagination form a World of Apparitions in the Minds of Men and Women … when in short the Matter is no more than a Vapour in the Brain, a sick delirious fume of some in the Hypochondria.’