The Great Plague of 1665 Through the Eyes of Samuel Pepys

By Maren Halvorsen

The Great Plague of 1665, which struck London during the spring and summer before fading away as winter set in, is perhaps more meaningful to us now than it has been for many years. As we move through our own time of worldwide pandemic, we look back at earlier disease outbreaks, most famously the Black Death of 1348. The Black Death drastically reduced the population of Europe, with lasting political, social and economic consequences. But there was also the Great Plague, which victimized London just as it was recovering from the period of the Civil War and Interregnum.  It is estimated that one-quarter to a third of the population of London perished. We ask ourselves: how did people feel then about the threat of the illness, since they did not know what caused it and had no cure? How did they cope, emotionally, with its impact? What role did government play in the control of the epidemic, if any? These are all questions that concern us with our own crisis, but they weren’t, necessarily, the questions that interested these earlier victims.  

Samuel Pepys

The diaries of Samuel Pepys offer an important, if slightly smudged, window on the Great Plague of 1665. They serve as perhaps the most detailed source we have about the epidemic. Pepys was an English government official, a city man who not only had a prosperous career in the Admiralty but a busy social life as well. His diaries, which cover the years 1660-1669, show a man who loved nothing better than an evening out with friends, fine food, theater and music. He was acquisitive, curious, and industrious, and had a keen sense of humor that tended toward slapstick. He loved to play practical jokes on his stuffy colleague William Penn (father of the William Penn). Married happily to his French wife Elizabeth, he nonetheless engaged in frequent dalliances and affairs, usually with women of lower status who did not have much of a choice in the matter. Once a year, he celebrated the anniversary of his successful surgery for kidney stones, a brush with death that heightened his enthusiasm for life. There is a liveliness to his writing that can make him seem very modern; he doesn’t hesitate to describe his fears and flaws, from petty to profound. Because he wrote using encryption, we can wonder who was his intended audience: his code wasn’t broken until a century later, leaving his diaries open, finally, to the public gaze. The authoritative edition of the Diaries is that of Robert Latham and William Matthews, first published in 1972, but there were several earlier versions of varying quality.

The peculiar power of the diaries comes out with Pepys’ encounter with the Great Plague. He is not writing this as a historian, gifted with 20/20 hindsight; he is in the middle of what is happening. He does not know how things will turn out and so his reactions to the events of 1665 are immediate and authentic. From the earliest rumor of disease to the daily encounters with corpses lying in the streets of London, Pepys weaves his descriptions into the more mundane events of his daily life. Inevitably, we want more; we, at this great distance, know how important the 1665 Plague is, and it can be frustrating to read Pepys’ all-too-brief references to the disease before he moves on to his dinner plans and his arguments with his wife. But this is all part of his authenticity: Pepys was simply living his life, and to him the Plague was one of many things happening to him during the summer of 1665. We can watch as his uneasiness grows, from the first warnings of disease to its spread across the city:

Great fears of the Sickenesse here in the City, it being said that two or three houses are already shut up.  God preserve us all.  (Diary, April 30, 1665)

This is Pepys’ first mention of the outbreak. It highlights two key ways of coping with the illness: the city government’s decision to close up infected houses, and the reliance, ultimately, on God’s will. People did understand that proximity to someone with the disease made it likely that they could be infected, though they had no idea about the means of transmission. Infected individuals, and their entire households, were quarantined in their homes for at least forty days, based on the number of days Jesus spent in the wilderness. Given that the source of contamination was the flea population, to sequester people in their homes pretty much guaranteed that they would all get sick and most of them would die.

Bill of Mortality

Pepys’ own reaction was complicated. On the one hand, he had trust in, and obeyed, the government’s policies (including a curfew; a rule requiring the six-day airing out of hackney coaches after use by someone who came down with plague; and fires set towards the end of the epidemic, presumably to clean the air); on the other hand, he also invoked, frequently, God’s will, and thus went fatalistically about his daily business and activities as usual. Pepys was always very social, and continued to host dinner-parties, meet up with friends, and attend to his official duties undeterred by illness. He notes the closure of the theatres (a favorite if self-described frivolous activity of his) and the occasional closure of various public houses, but seems to have been one of the few with the confidence to move about in the city:

The streets mighty empty all the way now, even in London, which is a sad sight.  … poor Will that used to sell us ale at the Halldoor—his wife and three children dead, all I think in a day.  (Diary, August 8, 1665)

Human nature being what it is, Pepys also took note of those who resisted laws put in place to prevent the spread of illness: 

Church being done, my Lord Brouncker, Sir J. Mennes, and I up to the Vestry at the desire of the Justices of the Peace … in order to the doing something for the keeping of the plague from growing; but Lord, to consider the madness of people of the town, who will (because they are forbid) come in Crowds along with the dead Corps to see them buried.  (Diary, September 3, 1665)

Besides the government’s policies, citizens took it upon themselves to find other ways to ward off the illness. This was difficult, since the cause was not known, but everyone had their theory. As much as he relied on God’s will, Pepys did make use of possible preventatives:

This day…I did in Drury-lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and “Lord have mercy upon us” writ there—which was a sad sight to me, being the first of that kind that to my remembrance I ever saw. It put me into an ill conception of myself and my smell, so that I was forced to buy some roll-tobacco to smell to and chaw—which took away the apprehension.  (Diary, June 7, 1665)  

The idea that somehow the disease moved through the air, a kind of miasma of poison, seemed like common sense to a lot of people at the time. Covering one’s face with a cloth, or holding sweet scents up to one’s nose, were seen as possible prophylactics, going back to the time of the Black Death. Tobacco was held to have medicinal qualities, and rumor had it that no tobacconist died during the Great Plague. This is the only preventative that Pepys mentions in his Diary. Because the disease was linked, somehow, to the body, even after death, social custom fell away in the face of fear:

I went away and walked to Greenwich, in my way seeing a coffin with a dead body therein, dead of the plague, lying in an open close belonging to Coome farme, which was carried out last night and the parish hath not appointed anybody to bury it—but only set a watch there day and night that nobody should go thither or come thence, which is a most cruel thing—this disease making us more cruel to one another then we are [to] dogs.  (Diary, August 22, 1665)

The social costs of the plague are laid out in this passage. It was not unusual for Pepys to run across dead bodies as he made his way across London that summer of 1665. But in this passage he considers the loneliness of that coffin, bereft of mourners, seen as a mysterious but potent agent of infection. The normal, traditional customs of grief were interrupted, out of fear and ignorance. It reminds us of our own pandemic experience, the sick kept separate from their families, with only Facetime to provide some sort of contact as they fight the novel corona-virus. The traditional gathering at the death-bed forbidden, funerals and memorials postponed.

Pepys’ diary is a curious mix of this melancholy alongside pure delight in living. In one passage, he dolefully describes the emptiness of the streets:

But Lord, how everybody’s looks and discourse in the street is of death and nothing else, and few people going up and down, that the town is like a place distressed—and forsaken.  (Diary, August 30, 1665)

Yet within a couple of paragraphs, we have this description of Pepys’ sartorial splendor (a subject he never seemed to tire of):

Up, and put on my colored silk suit, very fine, and my new periwigg, bought a good while since, but darst not wear it because the plague was in Westminster when I bought it.  And it is a wonder what will be the fashion after the plague is done as to periwigs, for nobody will dare to buy any haire for fear of the infection—that it had been cut off of the heads of people dead of the plague.  (Diary, September 3, 1665)

This is a good example not only of Pepys’ frequent pivot from fashion to fear, but of the all-too-familiar blend of rumor and anxiety. There was no real evidence that victims’ hair was being shorn for wigs, nor that anybody could catch the disease via such a route, but the very thought of it was enough to defer purchase. As it turned out, periwigs had a ways to go; it would be the French Revolution of 1789, and not the Great Plague of 1665, that helped to do them in, once and for all.

But Lord, how empty the streets are, and melancholy, so many poor sick people in the streets, full of sores, and so many sad stories overheard as I walk, everybody talking of this dead, and that man sick, and so many in this place, and so many in that.  And they tell me that in Westminster there is never a physitian, and but one apothecary left, all being dead—but that there are great hopes of a great decrease this week:  God send it.  (Diary, October 16, 1665)

This passage was one of the last that Pepys entered having to do with the Plague; it would soon fade from the scene, sent into hibernation by the winter cold. He was fortunate; although his in-laws came down with an illness, it is never clarified whether it was the plague, and his immediate household survived. Every illness in Pepys’ time was grounds for worry; that is why Pepys celebrated the survival of what would be to us a relatively minor surgical procedure. Death was ever-present, and every sickness was a mystery. Agues, fevers, infection, and the perils of childbirth made every day of survival a triumph. In some ways, as ill-prepared as the people of Pepys were in facing the Plague, they were mentally and emotionally well situated for its likely outcome. Pepys himself went on to live a long life of sociability, industry and amusement, with never a backward glance.

[Source used: Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds., The Diary of Samuel Pepys.  London:  Bell & Hyman Ltd., 1972.]

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Maren Halvorsen is a novelist whose most recent manuscript, The Bailiff’s Wife, was a Finalist in the category of historical fiction at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association annual literary competition.  Earning her Ph.D. in History at the University of Washington in 2002, she is a specialist in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.  She currently lives on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.  

The Glorious Revolution

by Judith Thomson

On the 10th of July 1688 a momentous event in the history of England took place – a baby was born! He was not just any baby, he was the son of King James ll and his wife, Mary Beatrice. Or was he?

The news was the very last thing most people in England wanted to hear. James had succeeded his charismatic brother, Charles ll, to the throne but James was nothing like him. When the monarchy had been restored after the troubled years following Civil War, Charles had vowed that he would never go upon his travels again and he had used his charm, and his intelligence, to make sure of it. James was unfortunately lacking in both these qualities. Lord Rochester, who had a cruel wit, summed up their differences by saying that “Charles could see all things if he would, whilst James would see all things if he could!”

But the worst thing about James, in most people’s eyes, was that he had declared himself to be a Catholic and had married a Catholic after the death of his first wife. To a Protestant nation, to whom the horrors of the Popish Plot were still a vivid memory, this was unforgiveable. Catholics had been accused at that time of all sorts of heinous crimes, including attempting to kill his brother, Charles, and whether or not the charges had been proved false, Papists were still viewed with suspicion, and even hatred, by most. Now, thanks to James, they were being given important positions of power.

Charles’ illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, had, three years earlier, led a rebellion against his uncle James, but it had been a disaster and resulted in a great many deaths, including that of the young Duke himself. After that, the people had, in the main, accepted James’ rule sullenly, safe in the knowledge that James could not live for ever. When he died, his eldest daughter, Mary, a good Protestant married to another of James’ nephews, the Dutch Prince, William of Orange, would inherit the throne.

Except now she wouldn’t. The new baby, being a boy, would take precedence over her, and he was baptised into the Catholic faith before he was a day old. The Papist rule would continue. Small wonder few welcomed the announcement of the Prince’s birth.

The word was even spread about that the Queen’s baby had died and that the new Prince of Wales had been a substitute, smuggled into her bedchamber in a warming pan. Some people went so far as to claim that she had never been pregnant in the first place, but had just been wearing a cushion tied around her! Those who were present at the birth disputed the tale of the ‘warming pan baby’ but, since it was only Catholics who been there whilst the Queen was in labour, their words did not carry too much weight.

Whatever people believed, or pretended to believe, there were a few who had decided that the time had come for action. Since the throne would no longer be given on James’ death to William of Orange and Princess Mary, then why not ask them to take it now, whilst James was still alive?

William of Orange

However, William had quite enough problems as it was, with the French troops of Louis XlV encroaching on his borders. He accepted the desirability of ensuring Protestant rule in England, especially since his arch-enemy, the Catholic King Louis, was James’ cousin, but, before he embarked upon so great an enterprise, he needed to be absolutely certain that it was what the nation truly wanted. He insisted upon being actually invited to take the English crown.

This was tricky, for anyone signing such an invitation would be taking a great risk. King James would show no mercy to any he suspected of working against him but, even so, a document was drawn up in secret. It bore the coded signatures of men representing the organisations whose welcome William had desired. These were Compton, the Bishop of London, for the Church, Admiral Russell for the Navy, Lord Danby for the Tories and Henry Sidney, Lord Shrewsbury, Lord Devonshire and Lord Lumley for the Whigs.

Seven brave and desperate men.

William received his invitation with more resignation than pleasure, but he knew where his duty lay and, upsetting as the prospect must have been of siding with her husband against her father, so did his wife, Mary.

Preparations for an invasion of England began at once. As well as the Dutch, there were troops assembled from all parts of Protestant Europe, and they were joined by Englishmen who had taken up residence in Holland and Huguenots who had fled France when the edict which had once protected French Protestants had been revoked.

It was a mighty army. Two hundred transport vessels were needed to take the sixteen thousand soldiers and their equipment over the North Sea. As well as food for the men and fodder and saddles for the horses they were taking, there was a mobile smithy and wagons, boats, a portable bridge and even a printing press with moulds for striking money! There were also fifty men o’ war with fire ships and lighter craft to escort them and many small boats that needed to be lashed to the side of larger vessels to enable them to make the crossing.

And what was King James doing whilst these preparations were going on? Not a lot, actually, at first. There were rumours that Prince William was planning to invade but he did not take the threat seriously. Samuel Pepys, the Secretary of the Admiralty, did take it seriously and tried to persuade him to commission the first and second rates, the grand battle fleet, but James was unwilling to spend the money. Pepys did manage to persuade him to man two third rates and three fourth rates, but James refused to be panicked and listened to his advisers, such as his chief minister, Lord Sunderland, who were convinced that if William did come he would not be foolish enough to brave the Autumn weather but would wait until the Spring.

Samuel Pepys

When they finally realised they were wrong, Pepys put to sea everything the Navy had that would stay afloat in the Autumn storms and even recalled the fleet from the straits of Gibraltar, all the way from the southern tip of Spain. Ships from every shipyard in the country were assembled at the Buoy of the Nore, in the mouth of the Thames estuary, and he worked round the clock to equip them, but he was short of guns and sailors. The press gangs were waiting for the merchant ships to come into port and soldiers were being taken on board if no others could be found.

William’s expedition did not have a very auspicious start. The first time they set sail the gales scattered the ships and they were forced to return. Only one ship was lost and no men but, sadly, thirteen hundred of the horses had suffocated by the time they managed to get them out. When the news reached James, he insisted that the wind had declared itself Popish!

Pepys was still concerned and pointed out to him that if the wind had not stopped William then their own fleet, which had been moved from the Nore to the Gunfleet, would have been trapped and powerless to prevent him from landing. James sent an order for Admiral Dartmouth to cross the sea and put a stop to the invasion whilst it was still in shambles but Dartmouth had a dilemma; most of his captains were Protestant and many of them were not loyal to James. He feared they might simply turn their ships over to William, given the chance.

And so it was without any opposition that William’s fleet finally sailed to England on the 1st of November 1688, saluting Dover and Calais with their guns as they passed through the Straits of Dover and playing drums and trumpets for the benefit of the people watching them from the Dover cliffs.

William had originally planned to land in the north but the wind was making it difficult so he decided to make for Torbay, in the west, instead and the huge fleet anchored off the little fishing village of Brixham, much to the surprise of the villagers!

Brixham - William of Orange Monument

There was little accommodation to be had there so William, the future king of England, spent his first night in his new country sleeping in a fisherman’s hut!

They marched to London, gathering recruits and supporters along the way, slowly at first, for people still remembered the terrible price paid by those who had supported the Duke of Monmouth’s ill-fated rebellion, but it soon became obvious to James that he was under a real threat and he rallied his forces to meet him in battle.

Unfortunately for James, most of the soldiers felt the same way about him as the sailors did. Many deserted and went over to join William, including his own son-in-law Prince George, who was married to his younger daughter, Anne. The real blow came for James, though, when John Churchill, later to become the Duke of Marlborough, changed sides. James had been a generous patron to Churchill, whose sister, Arabella, had once been his mistress, and could have expected that he, at least, would have remained loyal.

He returned to London and, when it became evident that he would not be able to negotiate a settlement with William, he managed to escape, on the second attempt, and followed his wife and baby son to France, where his cousin Louis welcomed him, even giving over to him the chateau of St. Germain.

So the ‘Glorious Revolution’ came about without battle or bloodshed, which had been exactly William’s intention. He and Mary were crowned as joint King and Queen on the 11th of April 1689 and became our first constitutional monarchs, not absolute as their predecessors had been, but answerable to the parliament and the people.

And James? The following year King Louis equipped him with an army and he sailed to Ireland in an attempt to raise supporters there and regain his crown.

But that is quite another story!

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Judith Thomson lives in Sussex and is passionate about the seventeenth century She has gained much inspiration from her time spent in London and her regular visits to Paris and Versailles.
She likes to paint, enjoys boating on the French canals and scuba diving.
Judith has written five historical novels to date, based around the actual events of the period, set in both England and France. They follow the life and adventures of her main character, Philip Devalle, and have been published by Troubador. They are all available from https://www.troubador.co.uk/ as well as Amazon  and most book stores.

For more information about Judith and her books, please visit:
https://www.judiththomsonsite.wordpress.com/
She also writes regular blogs on:
https://www.judiththomsonsite.wordpress.com/
Follow her on Twitter @JudithThomson14

Also by Judith Thomson:

Infertility in the 17th Century – Reasons and Remedies

By Kate Braithwaite

Take a handful of barley or any other fast growing corn. Soak half in a husband’s urine and half in his wife’s urine for twenty-four hours. Dry each pile on some earth and then water daily with more of the urine of each person. The corn that grows first belongs to the person who is more fertile. If one does not grow at all, that person is barren and will not bear children.

At a time when barrenness, or infertility, was commonly perceived to be a fault of the woman, rather than her male partner, the suggestion – from midwife Jane Sharp - that men as well as women might have fertility problems, is unusual. Her method of determining where the fault lies, however, seems less than reliable.

But then in the 17th century, people had rather different ideas about the human body. Belief in the need to maintain balance ‘humors’- blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm - a theory developed by Hippocrates in Ancient Greece – was still predominant in all medical thinking. Not surprisingly, people’s understanding about how conception was achieved was also rather different than it is today. Both men and women were believed to have ‘seeds’ which were released during orgasm and mingled in the womb before taking root and growing into a child.

The London preacher, Samuel Hieron, firmly believed that “barrenness in grace” and “fruitlessness in holy things” would result a “want of outward increase” or infertility. It was commonly held to be a woman’s duty to bear children and in doing so, make reparations for the sins of Eve. If she could not do so, she was a failure as a woman and lacked God’s grace. For a strongly religious woman like Catherine de Braganza, wife of Charles II, her failure to bear children while Charles fathered upwards of twelve children with his numerous mistresses, must have been a torment. Another famously childless 17th century woman, Elizabeth Pepys, wife of the diarist Samuel, was surely equally saddened, but it is notable that her husband, also a man who had several extra-marital relationships, had no children with any other woman either.

Portrait of Catherine de Braganza

Jane Sharp, writing in The Midwife Book, published in 1671, certainly believed that conception was determined by God’s will and permission, but she also had some other ideas about why some women conceived and others could not. She dismissed one common theory - that some couples are barren because they have “too much likeness and similitude in their complexions,” - and suggested instead that “some disproportion of Organs or some impediment not easily perceived,” may be the cause. Hatred between married people, she explained, was a legitimate problem however, particularly where children were forced into marriage by their parents. She also cautioned against blood-letting in the arms of girls before their first ‘courses’ or period, preferring such girls be bled from the foot to insure that blood was not ‘drawn down’ from their bodies before nature intended it. She talked of problems of the womb, ill health and disease as possible causes of infertility before setting out her last reason, ‘barrenness by inchantment.’ In cases where it is suspected that a charm may be making a husband unable to lie with his wife, Sharp recommended that he “piss through his wives Wedding ring and not to spill a drop and then he shall be perfectly cured.”

Given the importance of having children and growing a family, couples that struggled to conceive in the seventeenth century, could easily find advice on how to cure their difficulties.

Dining with friends on July 26th 1664, Samuel Pepys asked the ladies for their advice on he and his wife’s childless state. He recorded ten pieces of advice in his diary:

1. Do not hug my wife too hard nor too much
2. Eat no late suppers
3. Drink juyce of sage;
4. Tent and toast
5. Wear cool Holland drawers
6. Keep stomach warm and back cool
7. Upon query whether it was best to do at night or morn, they answered me neither one nor other, but when we had most mind to it
8. Wife not to go too straight laced;
9. Myself to drink mum (ale) and sugar
10. To change my place. 

Of these, he wrote, “the 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th, and 10th they all did seriously declare, and lay much stress upon them as rules fit to be observed indeed, and especially the last, to lie with our heads where our heels do, or at least to make the bed high at feet and low at head.”

Portrait of Elizabeth Pepys

Other recorded remedies – these from William Sermon, author of The Ladies Companion in 1671 – vary in degrees of outlandishness. He suggests the woman try taking white ginger in a powdered form or sitting over a bath of water used to boil yarn and mixed with ash, or even bathing in water “in which ale-hoof, oaten and pease straw have been boiled together” before drying off and letting her husband “do his best endeavour.”

Valentine Greatrakes, pictured above, an Irish healer who was famous in England in the 1660s, offered guidance more like the list given to Samuel Pepys than any of William Sermon's suggestions.

Further reading:

The Midwives Book, Jane Sharp 1671
The Weaker Vessel, Antonia Fraser, 1984
The Diary of Samuel Pepys

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Kate Braithwaite was born and grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her first novel, Charlatan, was longlisted for the Mslexia New Novel Award and the Historical Novel Society Novel Award in 2015. The Road to Newgate, a story of love, lies and the Popish Plot, was published by Crooked Cat in 2018.  In the novel, Kate's character, Anne, seeks advice on conceiving from Valentine Greatrakes and is thankful to receive advice more in line with that given to Pepys than that suggested by Sermon.
Kate lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and three children.

Links:
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/KateBraithwaiteAuthor/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/KMBraithwaite
Website/blog – http://www.kate-braithwaite.com

mybook.to/theroadtonewgate

The London Plague 1665

By Brindy Wilcox

Two major events  happened in the winter of 1664.

Firstly, there were sightings of a large comet over London, on which John Gadbury, a distinguished astrologer commented, ‘portends pestiferous and horiible windes and tempests’. An extract from the diary of Samuel Pepys on Thursday 15 December 1664 reads: ‘So to the Coffeehouse, where great talke of the Comet seen in several places’.

Public Domain image via Wikipedia

The second event was the unremarkable recording of the death of Goodwoman Phillips in the parish of Saint Giles in the Fields, outside the City walls of London, on Christmas Eve 1664, where parish searchers pronounced her to have died of the plague. (From: The Great Plague – The Story of London’s Most Deadly Year – A.Lloyd Moote & Dorothy C Moote, John Hopkins University Press 2004.)  Whilst the death would be of concern to the immediate neighbours of Goodwoman Phillips it would not raise concerns with officials, as it was not uncommon for the occasional death from plague to appear on a Bill of Mortality. Old women, known as ‘searchers’, were usually paid pennies by the Parish authorities to determine the cause of death of ordinary people and, with no training, they could be unreliable. These were often elderly female pensioners supported by the local Parish and once the cause of death had been determined they reported it to the parish clerk for inclusion on the London Weekly Bill of Mortality.

Public Domain image via Wikipedia

These events heralded a difficult year for Charles II, who came to the throne in 1660 after the execution of his father, Charles I in 1649 and the death of Oliver Cromwell in 1658, marking an end to republican rule in England. He is probably better remembered for being on the throne during the Great Plague of 1665 and the Fire of London in 1666 than his role during the Anglo-Dutch wars. He was well renowned for his love of dogs and, in particular, the King Charles spaniel, who took their breed name from him. He was rarely seen going anywhere without some of his beloved dogs and even preferred to be entertained by them during meetings when he should have been attending to state business.

Modern King Charles Spaniels - photo supplied by author

The first recorded deaths of the Great Plague appeared on the London Weekly Bill of Mortality in April 1665. There is some discrepancy as to who this is reported to have been with notations quoting both Rebecca Andrews and Margaret Porteous as being the first, the only consistency being they are both reported to have died on April 12th 1665. By early June 1665 recorded deaths from the plague had risen to 112 in a week across 12 parishes. At the time, it was believed that the plague was being spread by dogs and cats and, in an effort to control the disease, the Lord Mayor issued a decree that from July 1st 1665 all cats and dogs within the City of London were to be killed. Householders were told to kill all of their dogs, regardless of breed, or face prosecution and a special team of dog killers were put in place. In an attempt to control the plague it is rumoured that 40,000 dogs and 200,000 cats were slaughtered and that the domestic cat was almost wiped out in London.

The summer of 1665 was one of the hottest driest droughts for many years, ideal conditions for the spread of the plague. By July there were over 1,000 deaths a day from the plague and Samuel Pepys wrote the following in his diary,

“But, Lord! What a sad time it is to see no boats upon the river; and grass grows all up and down White Hall court, and nobody but poor wretches in the streets!” 

The rich had mostly left London to avoid catching the disease, the King and his dogs had gone up to Hampton Court and people needed a Certificate of Health to confirm that they were plague free before they could leave the City of London. These were issued by doctors but, as more and more doctors left London, a black-market trade grew up for people who could afford to pay for a fake certificate. Trade with London had ground to a halt and it was mainly the poor that had nowhere else to go that remained.

Samuel Pepys decided to stay at his home in London, although he did send his wife away to Woolwich during July, when he also made this entry in his diary showing that people would rather admit to murder than admit that they had the plague in their household.

July 22nd 1665
I met this noon with Dr Burnett, who told me, and I find in the news-book this week that he posted upon the Change, that whoever did spread that report that instead of the plague, his servant was by him killed, it was forgery; and showed me the acknowledgement of the maister of the Pest-house that his servant died of a Bubo on his right groine, and two Spots on his right thigh, which is the plague.

The number of deaths peaked in the week of September 19th 1665, when there were 7,185 plague deaths across 126 parishes, with only 4 parishes reportedly being plague-free. Unknown to the authorities the Lord Mayor’s decree had probably made things worse as, rather than the cats and dogs being the problem, it was the fleas that lived on rats - and by killing off the natural predators of the rats the plague had been able to spread more rapidly.

As the winter weather moved in the numbers of deaths began to reduce and winter brought an end to the Great Plague of London. Charles II eventually considered it safe to return to London in February of 1666. Over 100,000 people are estimated to have died from the plague, although in the later weeks record keeping was far from accurate due to the numbers dying.

1665 saw the last major outbreak of the bubonic plague in Great Britain with the last recorded death from the plague in 1679. It was removed from the Bills of Mortality as a specific category after 1703.

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Born in Settle, North Yorkshire, Brindy Wilcox's love of books started at an early age and she grew up loving the adventures of The Famous Five and The Secret Seven by Enid Blyton. Another fond childhood memory is of Rusty, her very lovable Red Setter dog; she would spend hours sitting with him telling him stories. So, it seems inevitable that, when she decided to write her first novel, it would be about adventurous dogs. She first had an ambition to write a book about 25 years ago but a career in Accountancy kept her busy so that she only found time to start writing a couple of years ago. She chose the self-publish route and one of her proudest moments was when she finally held her completed YA novel, Through Time To London in September 2016.
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Restoration Comedy - a Reflection of Society?

by Annie Whitehead

Perhaps I should begin by defining ‘comedy’ in the theatre. Tragedies invariably centre around the main character and his psychological struggles: Macbeth with his ambition, Coriolanus with his pride. In general, comedies take a light-hearted, sometimes cynical look at the central character and the situation in which he finds himself; in short, at the man in his society. So how far was Restoration comedy a reflection of restoration Society, and how far was it a product of that Society?*

Molière 

The Restoration of 1660 heralded a new era for the English theatre. Curtailed during the civil war and the years of the Commonwealth, entertainment of this kind was once again in demand. The general consensus of opinion is that if Restoration comedy owed anything at all, it was to France, in particular to Molière, rather than to pre-war comedies (with perhaps the exception of Shadwell.)

It is natural enough to expect the returning Cavaliers to have developed a taste for French theatre during their exile. In this respect then, Restoration comedy was a product of the age. Another distinction can be found in the composition of the theatre companies. The two which dominated London were Thomas Killigrew’s King’s Company and Sir William Davenant’s Duke’s Company. For the first time, actresses played the female roles, and a great deal of the sex and sensuality to be found in Restoration comedies resulted from the introduction of women to the stage. [1]

Nell Gwyn

So who were the playwrights, and what were their aims?  This was a period when the court had a genuine influence on literature in general, and Charles II took an intelligent interest. Most of the playwrights were as well known to their audiences as the actors were, and would be on friendly terms with the like of the Duke of Newcastle, the Earl of Rochester and Sir Charles Sedley. These men wrote themselves, and would be in a position to give advice to the dramatists. Patronage played an important part in the world of the theatres and there is little doubt that the playwrights attempted to meet the demands of their patrons and their audience. Dryden was one who did not participate in the way of life he portrayed in his plays. He constantly played down to contemporary taste, and Sutherland [2] suggested that this was the reason for the startling indecency in some of his comedies. His The Kind-Keeper had to be censored before it could be performed on the stage.

William Wycherley

Etherege did not portray anything he would have been ashamed to do himself, but Wycherley viewed Society as one based on hypocrisy, although he nevertheless wrote to satisfy his audience. Shadwell's comedies were criticised by Dryden, but he had a talent for reproducing contemporary conversation. John Crowne, according to Sutherland, would have written less indecently had the audience not been so demanding. On the whole these men were member of the very Society they were holding up for ridicule. But this should not be seen as a criticism of the world in which they lived. They were projecting an image of the morality of the day and making fun of it, much as Oscar Wilde did in the 1890s.

If these men were attempting to meet the demands of their audience, it must follow that the audience enjoyed what was being offered to it. This begs the question, who went to the theatre? The theatre audience was not just an extension of the court. Theatre-going was an habitual part of day-to-day living for those of the ‘town’. Newton, John Locke, and Mr and Mrs Pepys were frequent attenders. In 1668 Samuel Pepys went to the theatre 73 times in eight months. Davenant’s innovative use of scenery and his inclination towards farce drew in a more bourgeois and less intellectually demanding audience. When the two companies merged in the 1690s farcical comedy became more popular as intellectual standards lowered.

Samuel Pepys

Audiences often contained many people who were seeing the play for a second or third time, and in general these were the fashionable people living outside the city, while quite often the London middle classes shunned the theatres as haunts of iniquity. Many among the audience attended just to be seen in public. They loved wit, cleverness and fine language.

If we are to assume that Restoration Society itself stimulated the new comic impulse, then nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the plays themselves. The most common style was the Comedy of Intrigue, where the plot involved one or more cynical gallants who sought to seduce a number of brisk young ladies. There was also the Comedy of Humours, the purpose of which was to inculcate morality by displaying humours - caricatures of folly and vice - upon the stage.

Etherege, Wycherley, Congreve, and Farquhar built their plays on these stock formulae. Their plays were often called Social Comedies as they contained some social criticism, dealing wittily with the manner, but more often they are classed as Comedies of Manners. In The Man of Mode (Etherege) and The Way of the World (Congreve), a contrast within Society is portrayed very clearly. There are those who intelligently uphold the standards imposed, and those who are ludicrous through failing to do so. Lynch [3] defined this as the ‘unfailing identification mark’ of all Restoration comedy.

Dorset Gardens playhouse in 1673

Cowley’s Cutter of Coleman Street was too concerned with ‘low’ characters to please the Restoration audience. The returned Cavaliers perhaps expected nothing but eulogy from their playwrights. Sir Robert Howard’s The Committee (1662) was a more pleasing portrayal of middle class vulgarity, portraying two Cavaliers as person of high quality in contrast. In Etherege’s plays, his libertine attitude is expressed through the young men of fashion who are normally the heroes, and sometimes through the witty young women whom they marry. Later in the period the rake-hero gives way to the man of sense, and the influence of the female part of the audience begins to be felt, as the rake is reformed. A well-established character is the English Francophile, easily recognisable at a time when a large part of Society had spent many years in France, and when the king displayed pro-French tendencies.

A well-known and fairly typical example of Restoration comedy is Etherege’s The Man of Mode. John Dennis said of it, “Upon the first acting of this Comedy it was generally believed to be an agreeable Representation of the Person of Condition of both sexes, both in Court and Town.” [4] There is no certainty that the characters are meant to be real people. They reflect Etherege’s success in creating an image of contemporary Society which would be eagerly approved. The character Dorimant’s sexual ambition is a sustaining force in the comedy, but carries with it a threat of disorder. This is controlled in the first place by the Town which imposes its own decorum. To join a company at Lady Townley’s house, Dorimant has to resort to imposture. Character contrasts define and limit Dorimant’s role. Sir Fopling Flutter (yes, really!) provides the folly to contrast with Dorimant’s wit. Sir Fopling parodies many of Dorimant’s actions, showing their limitations and raising doubts as to their value.

Thomas Betterton played the irresistible Dorimant in 
George Etherege's Man of Mode. 

Witty conversation is the main test of social ‘fitness’. In Sir Martin Mar-All (Dryden) Millisent takes up with her husband’s servant because Sir Martin lacks wit. The finer characters inspire sympathetic laughter, but the comedies exhibit many foolish city wives, and doting and miserly city husbands who do not receive any sympathetic treatment. Supported as it was by the landed classes, Restoration drama was not at the forefront of social thinking and expressed only accepted ideas. The non-conformist mercantile community was not treated kindly.

So again, we find the dramatists meeting the demands of their patrons. The Royalist courtiers in the early years of the period remembered only too well the London Financiers’ support for the Commonwealth. Wycherley’s Alderman Gripe (Love in a Wood) was ‘seemingly precise, but a covetous, lecherous, old usurer of the City.’ Congreve, born ten years after the Restoration, continued this tradition with his Alderman Fondlewife (The Old Bachelor).

William Congreve

Naturally, Restoration comedy was not without its critics. Collier, an Anglican Stuart loyalist, believed the stage was conducive to sin. Wit came under attack; Blackmore considered it to be primarily ornamental. He saw the purpose of literature as the inculcation of religiosu and ethical principles. Both these men drew strong support from the merchant class. Most critics wanted to modify the treatment of the merchant in the theatre. [5]

These plays were not a literal copy of the life and manners of the age; the dramatists were presenting a picture of the smart set of the day not as it really was, but perhaps ridiculing how it liked to imagine itself. It is clear that this section of Society took no offence. The brilliance of the new court brought a new brilliance to the English stage. The expectations and demands of the audience were fulfilled. This audience was reacting against the Puritan days, and it saw plays which portrayed that reaction with a new carefree attitude. It saw its morality satirised, its way of life caricatured. Those who saw themselves treated unsympathetically were critical, the fashionable were enthusiastic.

Scene from Etherege's Love in a Tub

Restoration comedy was a product of its age. Playwrights were willing to satirise a Society of which they were a part. The audience was prepared to laugh at itself.

Restoration Society produced Restoration comedy, and this comedy was a reflection of that Society.


*Society with a capital S: the upper classes, essentially.
[1] Six Restoration Plays - Ed. John Harold Wilson
[2]English Literature of the Late Seventeenth Century
[3]The Social Mode of Restoration Comedy
[4] Dramatist d1734
[5] Sir Richard Blackmore - preface to Heroick (poem 1695) and Collier - ‘Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage’ 1698

Additional reading:
The Cambridge Companion to John Dryden
The Ornament of Action - Peter Holland
Comedy and Society from Congreve to Fielding - John Loftis

[All above images are in the public domain]

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Annie Whitehead is a history graduate and prize-winning author. Her first novel, To Be A Queen, is the story of Aethelflaed, daughter of Alfred the Great, who came to be known as the Lady of the Mercians. It was long-listed for the Historical Novel Society’s Indie Book of the Year 2016, and it has been awarded a B.R.A.G. Gold Medallion.

Her second novel, Alvar the Kingmaker, is a tale of intrigue, deceit, politics, love, and murder in tenth-century Mercia. It charts the career of the earl who sacrificed personal happiness to secure the throne of England for King Edgar, and, later, Aethelred the Unready. It too has just been awarded a B.R.A.G. Gold Medallion.

Most recently, she has contributed to the anthology of short stories, 1066 Turned Upside Down, in which nine authors re-imagine the events of 1066, and which has just been awarded HNS Editors’ choice and long-listed for Book of the Year 2017.

Author Page

Alvar the Kingmaker

To Be A Queen

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Blog

1066 Turned Upside Down

The Great Stuart Bake Off: What They Ate

by Margaret Porter

Typically a person of the Stuart era ate three meals per day. Early risers and those who had the leisure for it--aristocrats, gentry, the merchant and professional classes--ate breakfast. Laborers and farm workers broke their fast, at a very early hour, before beginning their daily work. Heavy with protein, it consisted mainly of cold meat, fish, cheese, washed down with ale or small beer. Dinner, the principal meal, occurred midday or early afternoon, gradually shifting to mid-afternoon, and included any number of dishes. In general, few vegetables were consumed but the table was spread with a vast array of meats, fish, cheeses, pies, and puddings. Many dishes were flavored with common herbs--sage, thyme, rosemary--or costly spices such as saffron, mace, and nutmeg. Supper was a light meal taken before bedtime.

At certain times of the year--and particularly during the Interregnum--fast days were designated. Each year Lent brought restrictions on meat-eating. During one week in Lent, 1661, Lord Bedford's household record indicates the purchase of salted fish, fresh cod, a quartern of smelts, twenty flounders, a chine of salmon, two pairs of soles, and four quarts of oysters. In summertime, fruit was purchased in quantity, for eating but also for preserving in some fashion for later use.
The seasons ordained the substance of meals. Fresh foods were eaten when fresh, and stored as feasible for later consumption. Chief methods of food preservation were pickling, potting, drying, and salting. Fruits were used as sweeting agents, as was honey. Sugar came in loaves, dark in colour, that were cut with snippers and then ground into granules or powder. A drop in price during the century resulted in an expansion of sweet puddings in addition to savoury ones.
The foreign visitor is always a valuable source of information that the resident takes for granted. Monsieur Henri Misson of France was highly enthusiastic about puddings:

The pudding is a Dish very difficult to be describ'd because of the several Sorts there are of it; Flower [flour], Milk, Eggs, Butter, Sugar, Suet, Marrow, Raisins, &c &c are the most common Ingredients of a Pudding. They bake them in an Oven, they boil them with Meat, they make them fifty several Ways. Blessed be he that invented Pudding, for it is a Manna that hits the Palates of all Sorts of People . . . the People are never weary of it. Ah, what an excellent Thing is an English Pudding!

During his stay Misson encountered people who never or seldom ate any bread. He further describes the eating habits of various classes:

They chew the Meat by whole Mouthfuls. Generally speaking the English Tables are not delicately serv'd. There are some Noblemen that have both French and English Cooks and these eat much after the French Manner: But among the middling Sort of People (which are those I spoke of before) they have ten or twelve Sorts of common Meats which infallibly take their Turns at their Tables and two Dishes are their Dinners, a Pudding for instance, and a Piece of roast Beef. Another time they will have a Piece of boil'd Beef, and then they salt it some Days beforehand and besiege it with five or six Heaps of Cabbage, Carrots, Turnips, or some other Herbs or Roots, well pepper'd and salted and swimming in Butter. A Leg of roast or boil'd Mutton dish'd up with the same Dainties, Fowls, Pigs, Ox tripes, and Tongues, Rabbits, Pidgeons, all well moisten'd with Butter without larding. Two of these Dishes always serv'd up one after the other make the usual Dinner of a substantial Gentleman, or wealthy Citizen.

Samuel Pepys by Godfrey Kneller

Anyone interested in a London gentleman's food habits should seek out Samuel Pepys's Diary, in which he recounts various feasts, fasts, 'frolicks'. Every year he threw a party to celebrate the successful removal of the 'stone' from his bladder. (He preserved said object in a leather case, and displayed it to visitors!) It has been observed that his record of dinners and such is sketchy at best, considering the vast amounts of food that the average Stuart gentleman consumed in the course of his day--he remarks only on what is, to him, noteworthy or particularly delectable.

Then, as ever, children were especially fond of sweets and treats. In May and June of 1655, Lord Bedford's account books contain these line items: For six sweet oranges and cherries for my Lady Anne, 1s. 6d. To one that brought a cake for my Lady Anne, 1s.

Those possessed of great estates, like his lordship, could rely upon the produce of his own lands, and tenant farmers fed their families from their grounds and gardens. Residents of county towns obtained their food from weekly markets, and in cities from butchers, fishmongers, poulterers, cookshops, etc.

Kitchen Scene www.metmuseum.org

During the 17th century, the surge in printing presses in England led to increased production of books on food and cookery--the nation was far behind Italy, Germany, and France in that respect. Gervase Markham produced The English Hus-wife in 1615, but it is much more a guide for housekeeping and other skills though it includes recipes.

The 1st English Cookery Book

In 1660, shortly after the Restoration, The Accomplish't Cook or the Art and Mystery of Cookery by Robert May appeared, regarded as the very first English cookery book. The author, son of a cook ('one of the ablest cooks in his time' asserts May in his preface), learned much from his parent, who worked for Lady Dormer. Her ladyship sent the youth to France to train, and during his five years there he had access to the wealth of French cookery books. Following his London apprenticeship, he returned to Lady Dormer's household. During the course of his career he was employed by a number of lords and ladies: The Countess of Kent, Lord Lovelace, Sir Kenelm Digby, Lord Montagu, and more. In addition to the recipes, May helpfully provides menu suggestions for holiday feasts and fasting-days, as well as recommended bills of fare for each month in the year.

The next important tome is Will Rabisha's The Whole Body of Cookery Dissected (1662), a title that bestows a medical and scientific imprimatur upon the subject. Sir Kenelm Digby (one of May's employers) published the first edition of his book of cookery and 'receipts' (recipes) in 1669. Here we have Digby's version of Puffs:

Take new milk Curds, strained well from the whey; then rub them very well; season them with Nutmeg, Mace, Rose water and Sugar; then take an Egg or two, a good piece of Butter, and a handful of flower; work all together, and make them into Balls; bake them in an overn, upon sheets of Paper; when they are baked, serve them up with butter melted and beaten with Rose-water and Sugar.

About 1679 John Evelyn, the diarist, began composing a treatise titled Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets (1699), in which he primarily discusses garden plans, plants, and gardens. His description of produce to be used in salads includes many which are familiar to the modern diner:

--Lettuce, Lactuca...ever was, and still continues the principal Foundation of the universal Tribe of Sallets; which is to Cool and Refresh, besides its other Properties
--Cucumber, Cucumis; tho' very cold and moist, the most approved Sallet alone, or in Composition, of all the Vinaigrets, to sharpen the Appetite, and cool the Liver,
--Endive, Endivium, Intubum Sativum; the largest, whitest, and tenderest Leaves best boil'd, and less crude.
--Cabbage, Brassica (and its several kinds)
--Beet, Beta; of which there is both Red, Black, and White
--Artichaux, Cinara, (Carduus Sativus) hot and dry. The Heads being slit in quarters first eaten raw, with Oyl, a little Vinegar, Salt, and Pepper.
--Carrots
--Basil, Ocimum (as Baulm) imparts a grateful Flavour, if not too strong, somewhat offensive to the Eyes; and therefore the tender Tops to be very sparingly us'd in our Sallet.
--Borrage, Borrago hot and kindly moist, purifying the Blood, is an exhilarating Cordial, of a pleasant Flavour.
--Cresses, Nasturtium, Garden Cresses; But above all the Indian, moderately hot, and aromatick, quicken the torpent Spirits, and purge the Brain.
--Garlick, Allium; dry towards Excess; and tho' both by Spaniards and Italians, and the more Southern People, familiarly eaten, with almost every thing, and esteem'd of such singular Vertue to help Conception, and thought a Charm against all Infection and Poyson.

Title page of Evelyn's book on Sallets

Edward Kidder (born 1665) was not only a skillful pastry cook, he's acknowledged as the proprietor of ones of the first cookery schools in England. Apparently he had several London schools, at Holborn and near Furnival's Inn and at St. Martin's Le Grand, which might have operated simultaneously. Late in his career, after the dawn of the Georgian era, he had his recipes printed and bound as a handbook for his pupils--several copies of which are extant. His students were male--females were privately instructed, as indicated by a note in some editions that 'Ladies may be taught at their own Houses.' Lady Mary Pierrepont (after her marriage Wortley Montagu), who kept house for her widower father, received thrice weekly carving lessons from a master of the art.

Kidder's book is valuable for its detailed account of table arrangement and specific dishes that could be included in each course.

Arrangement of the Table

First Dishes: Pottages of all sorts, a dish of fish, beans & bacon, ham & chickens, pullets & oysters, boiled tongues & udders, a leg of veal, a calves head, a goose or turkey, haunch of venison, leg of mutton & tunips, piece of salt beef, boiled fowls & marrow bones, a turbot & small fish

Bottom Dishes: A chine of veal or mutton, a neck of veal, pigeons in saffron, puddings, roast beef minced pies, cold ham, sliced tongue, venison pasty, potted meats or fowls, cold lobster or salmon or sturgeon, haunch of venison roast, let of mutton roast, hens with eggs, chicken & asparagus, a roast pike, calve's head roasted

Side Dishes: Bombarded veal, Scotch collops, leg of lamb, fricasees white or brown, ragout of any sort, a tart or tansy, scalloped oysters, carp in a ragout, pigeons and asparagus, lamb stones & sweet breads, stewed carp, chickens

For the middle of the table: a grand salad of pickles, a salad & butter, hot or cold pie, tarts, cheesecakes, puffs & custards, jellies, creams, blanc manges, a dish of fruit, sweetmeat tart, patty of lobsters, cold lobsters

Second Course: A dish of wild fowl, green geese or ducklings, roast chicken or pigeons, lamb joint, fried fish, turkey, leverets, partridges or cocks or snipes, pheasants or quails or larks, buttered lobsters or crabs, scalloped oysters, tart or tansy, tarts, cheesecakes, puffs, custards, dish of peas, ragout of mushrooms, lobsters ragout or roast

Plates: Oyster loaves, artichokes in cream, Portugal eggs, cutlets of veal, patties of oysters, crawfish, prawns, shrimp, apricot fritters, Polonia sausages, salmagundy, pickles of any sort, marrow or spinach toast, veal puffs, sweetbreads.

The most elaborate meals, as one would expect, were enjoyed by royalty--who regularly dined in public, so lesser persons could enter the palace to witness this spectacle. Immediately after a monarch's coronation, a massive feast took place in London's Westminster Hall, with all the nobility seated at tables heaped with delicacies. For a description of the foods served at King James II's coronation feast, see my earlier post for EHFA here.

Tables at the Coronation Feast

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Margaret Porter is the award-winning and bestselling author of twelve period novels, whose other publication credits include nonfiction and poetry. James II's coronation feast is depicted in A Pledge of Better Times, her highly acclaimed novel of 17th century courtiers Lady Diana de Vere and Charles Beauclerk, 1st Duke of St. Albans. Margaret studied British history in the UK and the US. As historian, her areas of speciality are social, theatrical, and garden history of the 17th and 18th centuries, royal courts, and portraiture. A former actress, she gave up the stage and screen to devote herself to fiction writing, travel, and her rose gardens.

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Samuel Pepys: A Man of Our Times

by MJ Lee

On the 31st May, 1669, Samuels Pepys wrote in his diary, "And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave: for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!" It was to be the last entry. For the previous nine and a half years, he had been keeping the diary religiously, writing an account of his life and the world that surrounded him.

He was fortunate (or unfortunate) to live in an amazing time, witness to the great events that shaped Stuart Britain. He lived through a period of turmoil; the death of one king, the reign of a dictator, Oliver Cromwell, the restoration of the Monarchy under Charles II, the deposition of his brother, James II and the crowning of William of Orange, an outsider and king of a country which in 1667 had devastated the Navy he loved.

Two natural disasters, The Great Plague of 1665, and the Great Fire of London in 1666, occurred in his lifetime and he described both in vivid detail. He lived in a period of great social change, when the puritan morality of the Commonwealth gave way to the more licentious and spirited society of the Restoration. He goes into delicious, and disturbingly honest, detail about his home life, his affairs, his ever-increasing wealth, some of it obtained dubiously, and the passions of the court.

He witnessed it all and wrote about it in wonderfully evocative language. Here he is in November 1660, describing a meeting with a friend who reminded him of his attendance at the beheading of Charles I when Pepys was just a 15 year-old boy.

"He did remember that I was a great roundhead when I was a boy, and I was much afeared that he would have remembered the words that I said the day the King was beheaded that, were I to preach upon him, my text should be 'The memory of the wicked shall rot'." ( November 1, 1660)

He remained in London through the plague year of 1665, writing, "I did in Drury-lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and “Lord have mercy upon us” writ there – which was a sad sight to me". (June 7, 1665)

Later, he seems more depressed as the plague has taken hold of London. Here is his entry for October 16, 1665:

I walked to the Tower. But Lord, how empty the streets are, and melancholy, so many poor sick people in the streets, full of sores, and so many sad stories overheard as I walk, everybody talking of this dead, and that man sick, and so many in this place, and so many in that. And they tell me that in Westminster there is never a physician, and but one apothecary left, all being dead — but that there are great hopes of a great decrease this week: God send it.

The following year, during the Great Fire of London, he was at the centre of the efforts to save the city from the flames, reporting on the events like Dan Rather;

Some of our mayds sitting up late last night to get things ready against our feast to-day, Jane called us up about three in the morning, to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City. So I rose and slipped on my nightgowne, and went to her window, and thought it to be on the backside of Marke-lane at the farthest; but, being unused to such fires as followed, I thought it far enough off; and so went to bed again and to sleep. About seven rose again to dress myself, and there looked out at the window, and saw the fire not so much as it was and further off. So to my closett to set things to rights after yesterday’s cleaning. By and by Jane comes and tells me that she hears that above 300 houses have been burned down to-night by the fire we saw, and that it is now burning down all Fish-street, by London Bridge. (September 2nd, 1666)

And later, he’s examining the fire from a better vantage point.

I up to the top of Barking steeple, and there saw the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw; every where great fires, oyle-cellars, and brimstone, and other things burning. I became afeard to stay there long, and therefore down again as fast as I could, the fire being spread as far as I could see it; and to Sir W. Pen’s, and there eat a piece of cold meat, having eaten nothing since Sunday, but the remains of Sunday’s dinner. (September 4th 1666)

He’s very good on the details. Pepys records burying his parmesan cheese and his wine in a pit in the garden, scorched pigeons falling from the skies, a burnt cat pulled alive from a chimney, the price of a loaf (two pence), glass melted and buckled by the heat and people burning their feet on the scorched ground.

Like the great reporter and observer Pepys is, he puts us in the middle of the action, hearing, smelling, seeing, feeling and touching the events for ourselves.

It is that ability to combine the personal with the political which makes Pepys unique. He can go from describing what he had to eat for breakfast to the latest machinations amongst the mistresses of the King in a couple of sentences. All with a trade mark wit and power of observation.

I now took them to Westminster Abbey and there did show them all the tombs very finely, having one with us alone (there being other company this day to see the tombs, it being Shrove Tuesday); and here we did see, by perticular favour, the body of Queen Katherine of Valois, and had her upper part of her body in my hands. And I did kiss her mouth, reflecting upon it that I did kiss a Queen, and that this was my birthday, 36 years old, that I did first kiss a Queen. (Feb 29th, 1669)

There is so much to love and admire in the Pepys Diaries. If you are in the UK, there is a wonderful exhibition on until March at Greenwich featuring the man and his times.

Finally, here is his entry for this day 350 years ago on February 23rd, 1666, when he seems happy with the world.

So I supped, and was merry at home all the evening, and the rather it being my birthday, 33 years, for which God be praised that I am in so good a condition of healthe and estate, and every thing else as I am, beyond expectation, in all. So she to Mrs. Turner’s to lie, and we to bed. Mightily pleased to find myself in condition to have these people come about me and to be able to entertain them, and have the pleasure of their qualities, than which no man can have more in the world.

A wonderful epitaph for the man and his life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

M J Lee

Martin Lee has spent most of his adult life writing in one form or another. As a University researcher in history, he wrote pages of notes on reams of obscure topics. As a social worker with Vietnamese refugees, he wrote memoranda. And, as the creative director of an advertising agency, he has written print and press ads, tv commercials, short films and innumerable backs of cornflake packets and hotel websites.

He has spent 25 years of his life working outside the North of England. In London, Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore, Bangkok and Shanghai, winning awards from Cannes, One Show, D&AD, New York and London Festivals, and the United Nations.

He first encountered Samuel Pepys when an auntie gave him an edited version of the diaries when he was fifteen years old. The man and his world have remained an obsession.

His latest book, Samuel Pepys and the Stolen Diary, is published by Endeavour Press.

Martin can be contacted at his web page www.writermjlee.com. Facebook at writermjlee and twitter @writermjlee. He is nothing if not original in his choice of handles.

The book can be found here:
UK: http://amzn.to/1SJSjM1
International: http://amzn.to/20rGnxh