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

by Defoe, Daniel

  Death … pale Horse: Revelation 6: 8.

  Headboroughs: officers with the duties of Petty Constables.

  by Tale and by Number: i.e. by enumeration as distinct from measure or weight.

  seven and eight thousand per Week: the Bills of Mortality report weekly deaths from plague 29 August to 19 September, 6,988, 6,544, 7,165; deaths from all causes, 8,252, 7,690, 8,297.

  Preparation of strong Scent: to ward off offensive smells and to counteract the ill effects of effluvia and infected air the College of Physicians and others recommended perfumes, pomanders, and other concoctions. Among the ingredients were rue, angelica, wormwood, snakeroot, myrrh, camphor, citron, rose leaves, sulphur, oil of amber, and countless others. These were to be held to the nose or used for anointing the nostrils. Boghurst listed among the antidotes of ‘little efficacy’: ‘stuffing the nose with rue, wormwood, or what else’ (Loimographia, 55).

  Wine: an antidote of hoary respectability. Cf. John Lydgate in the fifteenth century: ‘Who will been holle and kepe hym from seckenesse | And resiste the strok of pestilence | Lat him … drynk good wyne, & holsom meetis take’ (‘A Doctrine for Pestilence’, The Miner Poems of John Lydgate, Early English Text Soc. (1934), pt. II, p. 702). Diemerbroeck similarly thought ‘a good Draught of Burnt Wine, with some Cinnamon and Nutmeg’ useful (Several Choice Histories … of the Plague, 34). The ‘learned physician’ who treated himself with wine and became an addict is presumably Hodges, who wrote that sack is ‘deservedly … ranked amongst the principal Antidotes’ to the plague. He describes in detail its virtues and his use of it (Loimologia, 225).

  Pill. Ruff.: Pilulae Rufi, compounded of aloes and myrrh, ‘to open or keep soluble the Body, the Pills of Rufus, commonly called Pestilential Pills, are … most proper to be used’ (Necessary Directions … by the College of Physicians, 49).

  Venice Treacle: ‘The Treacle of Andromachus (commonly called Venice-Treacle)’ was an electuary compounded of many ingredients and used in plague after plague; presumably it was devised by Andromachus, physician to Nero. It was commended by the ‘Medicus’ in William Bullein’s A Dialogue against the Fever Pestilence (1564) as ‘a Triacle incomperable … againste bothe poison and Pestilence’ (see Early English Texts Society edn., pt. I (1888), 42). In the Pharmacopoeia of 1682 some sixty-five ingredients are listed. It was said to be ‘not only the capital Alexipharmic of our shops, but of all Europe’. In John Quincy’s The Complete English Dispensatory (1718) an elaborate recipe is given, with the admission that ‘there are abundance of Recipe’s extant in Dispensatory-Writers’. It came to be called Venice-Treacle because of the great quantities made in that city, but Quincy defended the quality of English varieties (441 ff.).

  Solomon Eagle: see fourth note to p. 20.

  February … Distemper … ceas’d: in fact, death from plague continued. The Bills of Mortality reported 222 from 30 January to 27 February 1606.

  Gun-powder: long considered of some efficacy in dissipating the concentration of poisonous effluvia in the air. The virtues of gunpowder were weighed by the anonymous author of Medicina Flagellata (1721) who pointed out that ‘in the late Plague at Marseilles the constant firing of Guns at Morning and Evening … was esteemed to be of great Relief to the inhabitants’ (pp. 205–6). See also fourth note to p. 67.

  sweetning their Houses: see first note to p. 204. A Lord Mayor’s Proclamation on 7 December 1665 ordered that all houses in which plague had been prevalent be thoroughly fumigated and aired before occupancy.

  Seeds of the Plague … destroy’d: although H.F. scorns the view of some ‘Quacking Philosophers’, that the Great Fire destroyed the seeds of the plague, a respected scientist, Richard Bradley, FRS, held it to be a reasonable hypothesis. In 1721, observing that no plague had occurred in England since 1665, he wrote that this ‘might happen from the Destruction of the City by Fire the following Year 1666, and besides the Destroying the Eggs, or Seeds, of those poisonous Animals, might likewise purifie that Air in such a Manner, as to make it unfit for the Nourishment of others of the same Kind, which were Swimming or Driving in the Circumambient Air’ (The Plague at Marseilles consider’d, 12).

  never on Board the Fleet: not true, since Pepys and the Navy Office received frequent notices of plague in the fleet (see Calendar State Papers Domestic, Car. II, 1665–1666, 32, 54, 87, and passim). On 11 October John Evelyn, Commissioner for Mariners, reported to the Duke of Albemarle that the plague was spreading at Chatham and requested that the Navy Commissioners be ordered to send two hospital ships ‘for this emergent occasion’ (ibid. 12). As early as 8 April John Allin wrote to Philip Fryth: ‘Our fleete is sickly, and ye sicknesse increases at Yarmouth’ (Archaeologia 37 (1857), 18. 5).

  great Engagement at Sea: the battle off Lowestoft, 3 June 1665.

  Vain … Man: Psalm 9: 11.

  Physicians … all supernatural: see second note to p. 65.

  ten Lepers … healed: Luke 17: 12–17.

  sang his Praise … his Works: Psalm 106: 12–13.

  The City of London in the late seventeenth century

  TOPOGRAPHICAL INDEX

  THIS index is comprehensive in respect of London but excludes towns nearby such as those listed on p. 132 and ports named on pp. 186–7 and 189. Where appropriate, information from Louis Landa’s 1969 select Topographical References has been incorporated but the aim is to provide only information that is directly relevant to the Journal, its manifold contexts, Defoe’s ‘double’ vision of London pre- and post-Fire, and to the task of helping readers follow H.F.’s meanderings through the city and its lore. Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert’s The London Encyclopaedia, 3rd edn. (London, 2008), a principal source here, is recommended to those seeking more detail. Manuel Schonhorn’s 1968 article—details in the Select Bibliography—is a key reference point. Information has also been drawn from Norman Brett-James, The Growth of Stuart London (1918); Defoe’s A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–6), ed. G. D. H. Cole (1927) and his Due Preparations for the Plague, ed. Aiken (1895); Henry A. Harben, A Dictionary of London (1918); Edward Hatton, A New View of London (1708); Jacob Larwood and John Camden Hotten, English Inn Signs (1951); John Stowe, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, 6th edn., ed. John Strype (1754); and Henry B. Wheatley and Peter Cunningham, London Past and Present (1891). Useful maps are those by Richard Newcourt (1658), John Oliver (1676), John Ogilby and William Morgan (1677), and Robert Morden and Philip Lea (1682, rev. 1732); a sketch of Defoe’s City is reproduced in this edition.

  The term ‘City’ is used to signify the area of London north of the Thames extending from the Tower westwards as far as Whitefriars and north to Cripplegate. Where applicable the places listed below are keyed, in brackets following the name, to the ward numbers given on the map.

  ALDERSGATE (Ward 1) pp. 160, 198. Roman city gate near Smithfield, used to display regicidal limbs in 1660; repaired after the Great Fire and demolished in 1761.

  ALDERSGATE STREET (Ward 1) pp. 62, 138. In the seventeenth century, a spacious, Italianate street leading north that was home to printers and, briefly, to John Milton’s Maidenhead Court boarding school.

  ALDGATE (Ward 2) pp. 7, 14, 33, 42, 45, 52, 86, 88, 154, 160, 161, 162, 163, 178, 184, 208, 211. Named after one of six Roman gates, opening onto the Colchester road; rebuilt 1606–9, demolished 1761. Defoe was married at St Botolph’s, Aldgate, in 1684 and he imagined H.F.’s home as between there and Whitechapel Bars, the City boundary. H.F.’s ‘Broad street’ was Whitechapel. According to Hatton, the parish included 1,300 houses within the City and a further 1,000 outside.

  ANGEL INN (Ward 1) p. 62. On the east side of Aldersgate Street and a resting place for travellers from the north.

  BEARBINDER LANE (Ward 26) p. 6. Connecting St Swithin’s Lane to the Stocks Market, in 1735 chosen as the site for the Lord Mayor’s Mansion House.

  BEAR-KEY (Ward 24) p. 187. Bear Key Stairs were located just west of the Tower, south from Thames Street.
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br />   BEDNAL GREEN p. 87. A hamlet of Stepney in 1665, home to silk weavers by 1722 and to the legendary Blind Beggar of Bednall Green cited by Pepys (Diary, 26 June 1663).

  BELL ALLEY (Ward 12) pp. 47, 70, 77. Leading east from Coleman Street, a strongly puritan area commemorated in Abraham Cowley’s 1663 play, Cutter of Coleman Street.

  BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL (Ward 12) p. 80. Otherwise known as Bedlam and founded as a hospital in Bishopsgate in 1247. After re-establishment as an asylum in 1547 it was moved in 1676 to a new £17,000 building in Moorfields designed by Robert Hooke; Defoe was justified in citing it here as an instance of the City’s wealth. In his Tour he described it as ‘the most beautiful structure for such a Use … in the World’ (i.-372).

  BISHOPSGATE (Ward 5) pp. 14, 18, 21, 22, 33, 80, 87, 98, 111, 160, 161, 198, 208. Named after one of the Roman gates. Home to great city merchants and ravaged by plague although virtually untouched by the Great Fire.

  BLACK DITCH p. 198. Defoe says ‘it was then call’d Black Ditch, at the end of Holloway Lane’, but no contemporary map shows it; Schonhorn concludes that it was a temporary name. Strype shows Holloway Lane going west out of Shoreditch with, it appears, an extension going towards Vinegar Yard and Upper Moorfields. The burial ground Defoe mentions was probably Holywell Mount, named after the neighbouring convent, although Bunhill Fields was close by.

  BLACKWALL pp. 92, 108, 152, 189. In 1665, part of the parish of Stepney and a significant harbour and shipbuilding centre.

  BLACKWELL HALL (Ward 3) pp. 80, 189. Better known as Bakewell Hall (after an owner, Thomas Bakewell), lying on the east side of Guildhall, and a major cloth market. Demolished and rebuilt in 1588, it was destroyed in the Great Fire and rebuilt again in the 1670s.

  BLOWBLADDER STREET (Ward 18) p. 207. Between Cheapside and Newgate Street. Where Defoe thought its name the reflection of sharp practice, Stow recorded prosaically that bladders were sold there.

  BOW pp. 91, 92, 111. Bridgehead on the main Essex road, a mile east of Mile End and in 1665 a hamlet of Stepney, but independent of it in 1719.

  BOW CHURCH p. 189. Probably St Mary’s, Bow Road, which dates from 1311.

  BROMLEY pp. 92, 111. In 1665, a suburban village; formerly part of the manor of Stepney and called Bromley-by-Bow.

  BULL-HEAD TAVERN p. 168. Probably a conflation of the Bull’s Head Inn at Clare Market and the Bull Inn, just off the junction of Leadenhall and Gracechurch Streets.

  BUNHILL FIELDS pp. 33, 64, 69, 156, 198. An open field adjacent to the Artillery Grounds and Upper Moorfields, it housed the chief burial ground for those (including Defoe) who refused to use the Book of Common Prayer. Walled in 1665, the burial ground does not appear to have been used for plague victims.

  BUTCHER ROW (Ward 2) pp. 56, 88. Schonhorn finds that there was no ‘butchers’ district’ here until 1720. Within sight of St Botolph’s, the Defoe family’s church, it extended along the south side of Aldgate High Street. Defoe’s father, the tallow chandler James Foe, was a member of the Butcher’s Company; Defoe himself nominally joined in 1688.

  CAMBERWELL p. 99. Well into the eighteenth century, a village to the south-east noted for its flowers and fruit trees.

  CHEAPSIDE p. 161. Formerly the City’s most significant market and still a significant commercial centre in 1722, when it was home to haberdashers, goldsmiths, and drapers.

  CLERKENWELL pp. 14, 111, 114, 198. A place of considerable social change after the Restoration, when the movement of fashionable society westwards left space for merchants and craftsmen in this overspill district beyond Smithfield. Home to watch and clock-makers, jewellers, printers, brewers, and distillers, it welcomed many Huguenot refugees and saw several fine new town houses in the 1720s.

  COLEMAN STREET (Ward 12) pp. 47, 70, 75, 77, 78. Centre of the warren of alleyways where H.F.’s brother lives, to the north-west of his own home, and probably the home of Defoe’s father for two separate periods. See also Bell Alley.

  COMPTER (Ward 12) p. 80. Compters existed to detain debtors, among others. In the area Defoe refers to, there was one on Wood Street and another at the Poultry in Cheapside.

  CORNHILL pp. 87, 161. Site of the medieval grain market and in Defoe’s time the home of numerous coffee houses. Defoe had kept a hosier’s shop nearby, in Freeman’s Court, and after early release from prison stood in the Cornhill Stocks as a punishment for The Shortest Way with the Dissenters in 1703.

  CRIPPLEGATE (Ward 16) pp. 14, 53, 74, 75, 79, 86, 98, 110, 111, 114, 142, 160, 161, 182, 208. From the Roman gate; the etymology is disputed. The street was not widened until the gate was demolished in 1760. Defoe is thought to have been born and died in the parish of St Giles Cripplegate.

  CROOKED LANE (Ward 7) p. 7. A winding lane in Eastcheap, near London Bridge.

  CROSS KEY COURT (Ward 18) p. 77. Off Wood Street, going north from Cheapside.

  CUSTOMS HOUSE (Ward 24) p. 189. First built in 1275 east of the current site on Lower Thames Street. Fumigated by coal fires in 1665, it burned down in 1666. Rebuilt by Wren in 1669–71 but damaged by a nearby explosion in 1714 and built again on Wren’s foundations 1717–25. Unusually, Defoe does not refer to its history here but the famous Long Room, said by contemporaries to give the truest idea of the richness and grandeur of the nation, became the site of Colonel Jack’s first pick-pocketing adventure later in 1722.

  DEPTFORD pp. 95, 108, 130. On the Thames, south of Rotherhithe; for Defoe’s readers, site of the Royal Naval Dockyard and the last staging post from Dover.

  DRAPERS GARDEN (Ward 8) p. 49. The garden attached to Drapers’ Hall. After the Great Fire it was opened to the public; by associating it with a Dutch family fortifying their home Defoe evokes a time when to walk in it for £3 a year was a privilege.

  DRURY LANE pp. 3, 4, 97. This ancient street was on the cusp of social change between 1665 and 1722. Formerly the preferred home of aristocrats (not to mention Oliver Cromwell), by 1731 it had become a fitting backdrop for plate 3 of Hogarth’s The Harlot’s Progress.

  DULLEGE (DULWICH) p. 99. Hunting and, in the eighteenth century, spa resort. Plague reached this rural idyll in 1665, claiming thirty-five lives including those of the miller and his family.

  EAST SMITHFIELD p. 103. Running east from Little Tower Hill and attracting migrants after 1660.

  EPPING FOREST p. 115. Formerly royal hunting territory but increasingly the haunt of highwaymen. William III escaped kidnap here in 1698.

  EXCHANGE (ROYAL EXCHANGE) (Ward 14) pp. 80, 87, 148. Opened in Cornhill in 1570, destroyed in 1666 and rebuilt over the next three years by Edward Jarman at a cost of nearly £70,000; another instance of the ‘vast Sums of Money’ Defoe says were available to the City.

  FENCHURCH STREET (Ward 2) p. 7. Ancient street connecting Aldgate and the Royal Exchange, and site of Pepys’s favourite haunt, The Mitre, which perished in 1666.

  FINSBURY (Ward 12): pp. 53, 154. A large semi-rural area by Moorfields and described in 1607 as ‘the garden of this city’ but in the 1660s home to the dead and destitute. The great plague pit beyond the northern city wall served its own parish of St Giles Cripplegate but it was also an overflow facility for others in August and September 1665, following appeals that some churchyards were ‘surcharged with dead Bodies’ (London Guildhall Repertory, 70, fo. 153b). In Due Preparations, 59, Defoe had published a very similar description of the Finsbury pit, reporting that it held 2,200 bodies. After the Great Fire, many homeless people camped there.

  FLEET DITCH (Ward 19) p. 80. For centuries an open sewer and not channelled underground until 1766, the Fleet River improved after the Great Fire (when flames leapt over it) by being deepened and having four stone bridges built over it. It was navigable between Holborn Bridge and the Thames, entering the city in Faringdon Ward Without.

  GOSWELL STREET pp. 142, 198. Linking Aldersgate Street and the Islington Road and a chief route north.

  GRACECHURCH STREET (Ward 7) pp. 168, 189. Leading north from the Monument and site of the Quaker Meeting Hou
se and numerous houses of prosperous merchants.

  GREENWICH pp. 93, 95, 96, 108, 152, 189. A few miles east of London, on the river. In 1665 work had started on a wing of the Royal Naval College, which was complete by 1722. The ships and barges H.F. saw from the hill held approximately 10,000 people, whose survival rate was higher than average.

  GREY’S INN (Ward 19) p. 16. Situated in Holborn and one of twelve Inns of Court and Chancery in 1665, for the legal and social education of young men. Its famous hall, site of the premiere of The Comedy of Errors, survived the Great Fire but not the Blitz.

  GUILDHALL (Ward 3) pp. 80, 189. This medieval seat of civic government and state trials was badly damaged in 1666, when it was said to resemble glowing coals; by 1671 the Lord Mayor’s banquet was again being held there.

  HACKNEY pp. 87, 112, 141. North-east of the city. In 1665, a suburban manor and leisure resort (on 11 June 1664 Pepys went there to eat cherries and cream); in Defoe’s Tour it boasted twelve separate settlements including Hummerton and was ‘remarkable for the retreat of Wealthy Citizens’ (i. 382).

  HAND ALLEY (Ward 5) pp. 198, 199. Leading east from Bishopsgate Street and the site of the Presbyterian Meeting House where Defoe’s friend, the Nonconformist clergyman Daniel Williams, was minister from 1688 until his death in 1716. His will provided for the Williams Theological Library. For the connection with Defoe’s old enemy Sir Robert Clayton, see note to p. 232.

  HARROW ALLEY pp. 56, 147, 152. Running south from the Aldgate end of Whitechapel and one of four alleys bearing the name, but Schonhorn finds no evidence of its existence before 1676.