A Journal of the Plague Year (Oxford World's Classics)

by Defoe, Daniel

  So Hypocondriac Fancy’s represent … resolve: these lines, slightly modified, are quoted from Defoe’s poem, A New Discovery of an Old lntreague (1691). Defoe used them twice in The Review, 29 Mar. 1705 and 24 May 1712, and again in his Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions (1727), where he wrote: ‘These sham Apparitions which people put upon themselves are indeed very many; and our Hypochondriack People see more Devils at noon-day than Galilaeus did Starrs.… But this in no ways impeaches the main Proposition … that there are really and truly Apparitions of various kinds’ (p. 391).

  Despisers … wander and perish: Acts 13: 41.

  Conjunctions of Planets … malignant Manner: the malign conjunction of planets as a cause of plague; Saturn in conjunction with Mars or Jupiter was thought particularly malignant. This view was inherited by Defoe’s contemporaries from ancient and medieval times. At the time of the Black Death the Paris Faculty of Medicine gave it respectability, and in Defoe’s day it was not only astrologers who gave it credence. Medical thought which ascribed the plague to the corruption of the air held planets responsible in part. Kephale, Medela Pestilentiae, reflects this view of ‘unwholesome’ air: ‘When Mars in opposition is to Jove I The Air will be infected from above’ (p. 51). Gadbury, London’s Deliverance Predicted (1665), writes of the plague of 1625: ‘It was the consequence of a great Conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, in the Celestial Sign Leo, a sign of the fiery triplicity, and representing the heart in the Microcosme, Ergo, the most dangerous’ (p. 7).

  Conjunctions foretold Drought, Famine, and Pestilence: John Merrifield, Catastasis Mundi (London, 1684), wrote: ‘Histories, ancient Writers, and Common Experience in former Ages testifie to us, that these Signs in the Heavens, or appearances of Comets, are the assured forerunners of sterility of the Earth; Famine, Pestilence, War, Alteration of Empires … Winds, Earth-quakes, Inundations, extreme Heat and Drought, with grievous Diseases, and such like evils; also the Birth of some great Emperors, Kings, Governors, or Learned Men’ (p. 28).

  Ministers … sunk … the Hearts … Hearers: cf. a typical sermon, such as Defoe may have heard at the time he was writing the Journal: ‘Multitudes falling dead in the streets and High-ways … Crowds of noisome Carcasses lie unburied, and rotting above Ground … populous Towns and Cities quite depopulated … on every side the Cries and Groans of the Dying and the Living … This famous Mart of Nations spews out her inhabitants, and the like Desolation over-runs our Country.’ This image of the plague was presented in a sermon preached before the House of Commons by Erasmus Saunders, 8 Dec. 1721, in A Discourse of the Dangers of Abusing the Divine Blessings, 30. A similar description was delivered at St Mary’s, Oxford, 16 Dec. 1720, by Thomas Newlin, a fellow of Magdalene College: ‘The Chambers of the Grave were not large enough to receive the number of its Guests, and the Land of Darkness could not contain the daily increasing Multitude. Those that died grievous Deaths had none to lament them, none to bury them. They are as Dung upon the face of the Earth, and their Carcasses are meat for the Fowls of Heaven, and for the Beasts of the Earth. The City is made an open Sepulchre’ (God’s Gracious Design in inflicting National Judgments (1721), 14).

  ye will not come … Life: John 5: 40.

  spoke nothing but dismal Things: in 1723 Defoe attacked the newswriters and others who, merely from ‘the Pleasure of Writing Dismal Stories, Exciting Surprize and Horror’, had exaggerated the horrors of the plague in southern France in 1720, thus terrifying people and injuring trade (Applebee’s Journal, 23 Nov. 1723).

  terrifying the People: Defoe’s indictment of those who create fear in a time of plague reflects medical opinion in the period. The plague tracts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by physicians and laymen stated again and again that fear, despair, and dejection of spirits disposed the body to receive the contagion. This view was set forth by Van Helmont and Athanasius Kircher on the Continent, and was held firmly in England by doctors such as Mead, Rose, Pye, Thomson, and Blackmore. The laymen held to it as firmly. In 1665 Kemp describes a prescription which ‘is very excellent both against Fear, and a good preservative against the Plague’ (A Brief Treatise … of the Pestilence, 73). In 1721 Blackmore writes: ‘There is another Preservative against Contagion, which is a lively and cheerful Disposition of Mind; for when the Spirits are put into a pleasing Motion … a Person is better prepar’d for his Defence … timorous, diffident, and weak-hearted Persons are … half dead before the Adversary approaches’ (Discourse, 76). George Pye: ‘whoever is frighted and terrified will become more liable to the Pestilential Impressions’ (A Discourse of the Plague (1721), sect. iv, p. 17).

  unhappy Breaches … in … Religion: a reference to the Clarendon Code (the Corporation Act, 1661; the Conventicle Act, 1664; the Five-Mile Act, 1665) and the Test Act, 1673, all of which imposed penalties and made worship difficult for non-Anglicans.

  Dissenters … into the Churches: Thomas Vincent, God’s Terrible Voice in the City (1667), refers to the many Anglican clergymen who fled and ‘left the greatest part of their flock without food or physick, in the time of their greatest need’ (1722 edn., p. 37). Vincent, an ejected minister, preached in Defoe’s parish church in Aldgate during the plague. Of the many tracts written about the plague of 1665, his was one of the most frequently reprinted. In an introduction to this tract, the Revd John Evans wrote that ‘the main Body of the Clergy … left their pulpits vacant’ and Noncomformist clergymen ‘preached thro’ several parts of the city … to vast congregations’ (sig. A2). Vincent’s eulogy of the Dissenting clergy for their courage in ministering to the spiritual needs of the people in the crisis (pp. 55 ff.) is conceivably one of Defoe’s sources. Bishop Gilbert Burnet reports that many of the parish churches were shut ‘when the inhabitants were in a more than ordinary disposition to profit by good sermons [and] some of the nonconformists upon that went into the empty pulpits, and preached … with good success’ (History of his own Time (1818 edn.), i. 249).

  running about to Fortune-tellers, Cunning-men, and Astrologers: Hodges attacked the ‘Traitors who frighten the credulous Populace with the Apprehensions of an approaching Plague, by idle and groundless Reports and Predictions; for the Propagation of the late Sickness was too notoriously assisted by this Means, to want any arguments to prove it’ (Loimologia, 206). Cunning men were pretenders to magical or astrological knowledge.

  Fryar Bacons’s Brazen-Head: Roger Bacon’s fame in magic and alchemy was legendary in the seventeenth century. The story that he had constructed a brazen head with power of speech often appeared in print, notably in Robert Greene’s play, The Honourable History of Frier Bacon and Frier Bongay (1594). Ben Jonson refers to it in Every Man in his Humour (1598). Sir Thomas Browne discusses it in his History of Vulgar Errors (1646), and Samuel Butler mentions Friar Bacon’s ‘noodle’ of brass in Hudibras (II. i. 530–2; ed. J. Wilders, 1967).

  Mother Shipton: a reputed prophetess, possibly a mythical person, whose prophecies were published as early as 1641, one of which presumably foretold the Great Fire of London, 1666. Some of her meteorological predictions were quoted by the astrologer William Lilly, in his Collection of Ancient and Modern Prophecies (1645). In 1667 Richard Head published what purported to be an account of her life and death. Some of her prophecies appeared in chapbooks.

  Merlin’s Head: Merlin Ambrosius, or Myrddin Embrys, a legendary enchanter and bard, first mentioned in the Historic Britonum (attributed to Nennius, fl. 796). He came down to later ages mainly from the pages of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (1137) and the Arthurian romances.

  Band: a collar or ruff.

  publick Prayers … fasting … Humiliation: in L’Estrange’s Newes, 13 July 1665, is reported a royal proclamation ‘for a General Fast to the end that Prayers and Supplications may everywhere be offered up unto Almighty God for the removal of the heavy Judgment of Plague and Pestilence’. The fast was to be kept in the cities of London and Westminster and places adjacent on the first Wednesd
ay of each month until the plague ended. At the same time a form of common prayer and an ‘Exhortation fit for the times’ were issued, along with an injunction that collections should be made on these fast days for relief of the poor visited by the plague (Calendar of State Papers Domestic, Car. II, 1664–1665, 466).

  Jack-puddings, Merry-andrews … Rope-dancers: the first two are synonymous terms meaning a clown, buffoon, or jester to a mountebank. Rope-dancing, an ancient ‘art’, is mentioned by several classical authors, including Terence, who refers to it in the Prologue to his comedy Hecyra (165 BC). In the Supplement to his Lexicon Technicum (1744), Dr John Harris traces the history of rope-dancing. He quotes Capitolinus as saying that the Emperor Marcus Aurelius had such regard for rope dancers that he ordered quilts to be laid under them to prevent injury. In Defoe’s day funambulists (as they were sometimes called, following the Latin form of the word) often exhibited at fairs. They are satirized in The Spectator, nos. 28 and 141.

  second Nineveh: Jonah 3: 5–10.

  Plague-Water: the College of Physicians had recommended a plague-water in 1665 which, according to Hodges, had been used with some success. He printed the formula for it (Loimologia, 173–4). Lady Carteret gave Pepys a bottle of plague-water on 20 July 1665. Some of these ‘infallible’ remedies were advertised in L’Estrange’s Newes and Intelligencer. A ‘Universal Elixer’ was advertised in The Newes, 22 July 1665 (see Walter G. Bell, The Great Plague in London, 1665 (rev. edn., 1951), 96 ff., for a number of these remedies). Royal antidotes found favour. The College of Physicians recommended ‘The King’s Majesty’s excellent Receipt for the Plague’ and ‘A Drink for the Plague prepared by the Lord Bacon and approved by Queen Elizabeth’. See Necessary Directions … by the College of Physicians, reprinted in A Collection of Very Valuable and Scarce Pieces, 51.

  poisoned … with Mercury: in Several Choice Histories … of the Plague (1666) (extracts from Isbrandus Diemerbroeck’s Tractatus de Peste, in Defoe’s library in the edition of 1665), ‘The Eleventh Famous History’ relates the ‘deadly mistake’ of ‘a certain Chyrurgion’ who died within three days after treating himself with mercury (pp. 21–2). Hodges mentions an amulet used ‘by our own Country People’: ‘a Walnut filled with Mercury’ (Loimologia, 220).

  Dr. Brooks … Dr. Berwick: of the four medical men mentioned by H.F., the most interesting so far as Defoe is concerned is Dr Nathaniel Hodges (1627–88), ‘the eminent physician’, whose Latin treatise on the plague is referred to in the Journal, 190. Hodges was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and at Christ Church, Oxford. He graduated MD in 1659 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1672, a year after his Loimologia was published. It was translated in 1720 by Dr John Quincy. He was one of several physicians appointed by the Corporation to minister to the poor during the plague. Defoe’s Dr Brooks was probably Humphrey Brooke (1617–93), educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, and elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1674. He was the author of a medical work, A Conservatory of Health (1650), and The Durable Legacy (1681), some moral and religious directions addressed to his children. Peter Berwick, or Barwick (1619–1705), was physician-in-ordinary to Charles II. Well known for his skill in treating smallpox and fevers, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1655. Like Hodges, he was appointed by the Corporation to care for the ill in several parishes (London, Guildhall Repertory, 70 (1664–5), fos. 150b, 151a, 152a). Nathaniel Upton, whose medical qualifications are unknown, was master of the City pest-house in 1665.

  Amulets: widely recommended and widely disapproved in the seventeenth century, they had the authority of Ambrose Paré (‘a sachet of some poison over the heart’) and Van Helmont, whose use of a toad for the purpose was respectfully mentioned and imitated. A striking instance is found in Thomson’s Loitomia, which relates his personal experience with Van Helmont’s amulet on discovering symptoms of the plague in himself: ‘I am sufficiently persuaded, That the adjunction of this Bufo [toad] nigh my Stomach, was of wonderful force to master and tame this Venom then domineering in me’ (pp. 86–91). Dr Richard Brookes, who thought quicksilver hung about the neck in a walnut shell efficacious, also refers to toads: ‘Those that use Toads either bore a hole through their Heads, and so hang them about their Necks, or make Troches of them, as Helmont’ (see his History of the Most remarkable Pestilential Distempers (1721), 38). The use of amulets, also called plague cakes, was canvassed early in the century by Dr Peter Turner (The Opinion of P. Turner concerning Amulets or Plague Cakes, 1603). Defoe could have found support for H.F.’s scepticism in Blackmore’s Discourse (p. 70), or in Dr John Quincy’s Lexicon Physico-Medicum, under ‘Amulet’: ‘anything that is hung about the Neck, or any Part of the Body; supposed to be a Charm against Witchcraft, or Disease. These were often in esteem amongst some Enthusiastick Philosophers, and have been last supported by the Credulity of Mr. Boyle; but now have none to appear in their behalf but Empiricks and Mountebanks.’ Kemp’s A Brief Treatise … of the Pestilence, which Defoe possessed, devotes several pages (pp. 61–6) to amulets.

  Abracadabra: a cabalistic word dating from about the second century, written in various ways and used as a charm to cure agues or ward off calamity.

  IHS: an abbreviation or partial transliteration of the Greek word for Jesus, used as a symbol or monogram of the sacred name and read in Latin as Iesus Hominum Salvator.

  this Mark thus: this is a printer’s device known as a ‘flower’. It may have had some cabalistic or mysterious significance; but significantly it is used as an ornament in 1721 by James Graves, a bookseller, in a plague tract, A Discourse on Pestilence and Contagion. Graves was one of three booksellers who issued Defoe’s Journal in 1722, and later his Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–6).

  Dead-Carts: the bearers who collected bodies of the dead in carts or barrows, obviously not the most squeamish of men, were the objects of constant criticism in times of plague for their callousness; Dekker, Wither, and Defoe being three of the better-known writers among the critics. A more serious objection to this method of treating the dead may be seen in An Hypothetical Notion of the Plague … by Mr Place (1721), 39: ‘Were Men to study to help the Plague to do its business, and spread itself, they could not contrive a more effectual Way than Death-Carts; to carry Loads of Pestilence through the Streets from End to End of the Town.… Were Plague Seed cried in the Streets, and every Man that went by obliged to buy, it could not be much worse.’ Place advocated the contagionist theory.

  appointed Physicians and Surgeons for … the poor: the Lord Mayor, Sir John Lawrence, and the Court of Aldermen appointed Dr Nathaniel Hodges and Dr Thomas Witherley to serve the poor in the City and its Liberties. To these were added others, some of whom proffered their services without payment. Among these were Edward Learmen, Thomas Grey, Dr John Glover, Dr Humphrey Brooke, Dr Parker, and Dr Barbon. They were assigned to various wards and parishes (see London, Guildhall Repertory, 70 (1664–5), 144–53).

  Directions for cheap Remedies: at the request of the Privy Council, not the Lord Mayor (as Defoe states), the College of Physicians published Necessary Directions … by the College of Physicians (1665), a revised version of similar Directions issued in earlier plagues. Defoe found it reprinted in 1721 in A Collection of Very Valuable and Scarce Pieces. A copy is also listed in the sale catalogue of his library, no. 184, 51. It contained ‘diverse remedies of small charge’, but also other medicines ‘for the richer sort’. The College of Physicians was founded in the reign of Henry VIII. Its charter gave the College power to license all physicians for practice in the City and in a circuit of seven miles. Originally only those with degrees from Oxford or Cambridge could qualify as Fellows. Restrictions were eased in the seventeenth century: physicians with degrees from foreign universities became eligible and the number of Fellows was increased from thirty to eighty.

  several Physicians … and … Surgeons: the exact number of medical men who remained in Lo
ndon and met death during the plague is difficult to establish. See S. D. Clippingdale, ‘A Medical Role of Honour’, reprinted from the British Medical Journal, 6 Feb. 1909. The doctors mentioned by Defoe on p. 29 lived through the epidemic.

  An Act … Plague: I Jac. I, c. 31, confirmed an order of 1583 that those stricken by the plague be confined to their houses.

  Pest-House beyond Bunhill-Fields; H.F. says that only two pest-houses were made use of (p. 156). At least five seem to have existed, two of which were hastily built during the plague, in the parishes of St Giles-in-the-Fields and St Martin-in-the-Fields; see Bell, The Great Plague in London, 37–9. A report to the Privy Council early in 1666 remarked on the inadequacy of the existing pest-houses, the ones in Westminster and St Giles accommodating only sixty each, the one in Soho, only ninety (Calendar State Papers Domestic, Car. II, 1665–1666, xiii).