THE PLAGUE YEAR IN LONDON.
Terrific pestilence had often visited London, and swept into the
eternal world multitudes of victims; but no calamity of this kind that
ever befel the inhabitants can be compared with the awful visitation of
the great plague year. It broke out in Drury-lane, in the month of
December, 1664. For some time it had been raging in Holland, and
apprehensions of its approach to the shores of England had for months
agitated the minds of the people. Remarkable appearances in the
heavens were construed into Divine warnings of some impending
catastrophe; and the common belief in astrology led many, in the
excited state of feeling, to listen to the prognostications that issued
from the press, in almanacs and other publications of the day. Defoe,
in his remarkable history of the plague, which, though in its form
fictitious, is doubtless in substance a credible narrative, describes a
man who, like Jonah, went through the streets, crying, "Yet forty days,
and London shall be destroyed." Another ran about, having only some
slight clothing round his waist, exclaiming, with a voice and
countenance full of horror, "O, the great and dreadful God!" Yet the
forebodings which were excited by reports from the continent, the
traditions of former visitations of pestilences, the actual breaking
out of the disease in a few instances, together with the superstitious
aggravations just noticed, only shadowed forth, in light pale hues, the
dark and intensely gloomy colors of the desolating providence which the
sovereign Ruler of all events brought over the city of London.
Head-ache, fever, a burning in the stomach, dimness of sight, and livid
spots on the chest, were symptoms of the fatal disorder. These signs
became more numerous as the months of the year 1665 advanced; yet the
cases of plague were comparatively few till the month of June. "June
the 7th," says an observant writer of that period in his diary, "the
hottest day that ever I felt in my life. This day, much against my
will, I did see in Drury-lane 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." Again, on the 17th of June: "It struck me
very deep this afternoon, going with a hackney coach down Holborn from
the lord treasurer's, the coachman I found to drive easily, and easily,
at last stood still, and came down hardly able to stand, and told me he
was suddenly struck very sick, and almost blind he could not see; so I
light, and went into another coach, with a sad heart for the poor man,
and myself also, lest he should have been struck with the plague."
This description of the first sight of the marked door, and the coach
going more and more easily till it stood still, with its plague-struck
driver, places the reader in the midst of the scene of disease and
sorrow, awakening sympathetic emotions with those sufferers in a now
distant age.
The alarm increased as the deaths multiplied, and people began to pack
up and leave London with all possible haste. The court and the
nobility removed to a distance, and so also did vast numbers beside who
had the means of doing so, and were not confined by business; yet the
general terror was so great throughout the kingdom that friends were
sometimes far from being welcomed by those whom they visited. "It is
scarcely possible," says Baxter, "for people who live in a time of
health and security to apprehend the dreadful nature of that
pestilence. How fearful people were thirty or forty, if not a hundred
miles from London, of anything they brought from mercers' or drapers'
shops, or of goods that were brought to them, or of any persons who
came to their houses. How they would shut their doors against their
friends; and if a man passed over the fields, how one would avoid
another, how every man was a terror to another. O, how sinfully
unthankful are we for our quiet societies, habitations, and health!"
But the bulk of the people, of course, were compelled to remain in the
city, and, pent up in dirty, close, unventilated habitations, while the
weather was burning hot, were exposed to the unmitigated fury of the
contagion. The weekly bills of mortality rose from hundreds to
thousands, till, in the month of September, the disease reached its
height, and no less than ten thousand souls were hurried into eternity.
The operations of business were of course checked, and in many cases
entirely suspended by the terrific progress of the calamity. Several
shops were closed in every street; dwellings were often left empty, the
inmates having been smitten or driven away by the fatal scourge. Some
of the public thoroughfares were nearly deserted. The markets being
removed beyond the city walls, to prevent the people as much as
possible from coming together in masses; the erection of houses also
being unnecessary, and therefore discontinued for a while--carts and
wagons, laden with provision, or with building materials, no longer
frequented the highways, which, a few short months before, had been the
scene of busy activity. Coaches were seldom seen, except when parties
were hurrying away from the city, or when some one, affected by the
disorder, was being conveyed home, with the curtains of the vehicle
closely drawn. The grass growing in the streets, and the solemn
stillness which pervaded many parts of the great city, in contrast with
its previous state, are circumstances particularly mentioned in the
descriptions of London in the plague year, and they powerfully serve to
give the reader an affecting idea of the awful visitation. Few
passengers appeared, and those few hurried on, in manifest fear of each
other, as if each was carrying to his neighbor the summons of death.[1]
The daughters of music were brought low; the din of business, and the
murmur of pleasant talk, and the London cries were silenced. The
shrieks, however, of sufferers in agony, or of maniacs driven mad by
disease, broke on the awful quietude. People might be heard crying out
of the windows for some to help them in their anguish--to assuage the
burning fever, or to carry their dead away. Occasionally, some rushed
towards the Thames, with bitter cries, to seek relief from their
torments by suicide. The Rev. Thomas Vincent, who was residing in
London at the time, describes some touching examples of sorrow, which
were only specimens of what prevailed to an indescribable extent.
"Amongst other sad spectacles," he says, "two, methought, were very
affecting; one of a woman coming alone, and weeping by the door where I
lived, (which was in the midst of the infection,) with _a little coffin
under her arm_, carrying it to the new churchyard. I did judge that it
was the mother of the child, and that all the family besides were dead,
and that she was forced to coffin up and to bury with her own hands
this her last dead child!" The second case to which this writer
alludes is even more terrible than that now given, but out of regard to
our readers' feelings we refrain from quoting it. A passenger, the
same eye-witness adds, could hardly go out without meeting coffins; and
Defoe gives us a picture, as graphic as it is awful, of the mode of
sepulture adopted when the plague was at its height. He informs us
that a great pit was dug in the churchyard of Aldgate parish, from
fifteen to sixteen feet broad, and twenty feet deep; at night, the
victims carried off in the day by death were brought in carts by
torchlight to this receptacle, the bellman accompanying them, and
calling on the inhabitants as they passed along to bring out their
dead. Sixteen or seventeen bodies, naked, or wrapped in sheets or
rags, were thrown into one cart, and then huddled together into the
common grave.
The king of terrors sweeping into the eternal world so many thousands,
is a picture which must excite in the mind of the Christian solemn
emotions. It is pleasing, however, to learn from Vincent how
tranquilly God's people departed in that season of Divine judgment.
"They died with such comfort as Christians do not ordinarily arrive
unto, except when they are called forth to suffer martyrdom for the
testimony of Jesus Christ. Some who have been full of doubts, and
fears, and complaints, whilst they have lived and been well, have been
filled with assurance, and comfort, and praise, and joyful expectations
of glory, when they have been laid on their death-beds by this disease;
and not only more growing Christians, who have been more ripe for
glory, have had their comforts, but also some younger Christians, whose
acquaintance with the Lord hath been of no long standing." There were
persons, however, who had lived through a course of profligacy, who, so
far from being led to repentance by the awful dispensation they
witnessed, only plunged into deeper excesses, driving away care by riot
and intemperance, or availing themselves of the confusion of the times
to commit robbery. The immorality, daring presumption, and reckless
wickedness of a portion of the people during the London plague, as in
the plague at Florence in 1348, and the plague at Athens, described by
Thucydides, prove the depravity of the human heart, and the inefficacy
of afflictions or judgments, if unaccompanied by Divine grace, to melt
or change it. We learn, however, that by the preaching of the gospel
some were graciously renewed and saved. Baxter informs us, that
"abundance were converted from their carelessness, impenitency, and
youthful lusts and vanities, and religion took such a hold on many
hearts as could never afterwards be loosed." The parish churches were
in several instances forsaken by their occupants, but many godly men
who had been ejected by the Uniformity Act, now came forward, with
their characteristic disinterestedness and zeal, to supply their
brethren's lack of service. Vincent, already mentioned, with Clarkson,
Cradock, and Terry, distinguished themselves by holy efforts for the
conversion of sinners at that dreadful time. A broad sheet exists in
the British Museum, containing "short instructions for the sick,
especially those who, by contagion, or otherwise, are deprived of the
presence of a faithful pastor, by Richard Baxter, written in the great
plague year, 1665." Preaching was the principal method of doing good.
Large congregations assembled to hear the man of God faithfully
proclaim his message. The imagination readily restores the timeworn
Gothic structure in the narrow street--the people coming along in
groups--the crowded church doors, and the broad aisles, as well as the
oaken pews and benches, filled with one dense mass--the anxious
countenances looking up at the pulpit--the divine, in his plain black
gown and cap--the reading of the Scriptures--the solemn prayer--the
sermon, quaint indeed, but full of point and earnestness, and
possessing that prime quality, adaptation--the thrilling appeals at the
close of each division of the discourse--the breathless silence, broken
now and then by half-suppressed sobs and lamentations--the hymn,
swelling in dirge-like notes--and the benediction, which each would
regard as possibly a dismissal to eternity; for who but must have felt
his exposure to the infection while sitting amidst that promiscuous
audience? It is at times like these that the worth of the soul is
appreciated, and a saving interest in Christ perceived to be more
valuable than all the accumulated treasures of earth. So far as their
health was concerned, the prudence of the people in congregating
together in such crowds, at such a season, has been often and fairly
questioned; yet who that looks at the imminent spiritual peril in which
multitudes were placed, but must commend the religious concern which
they manifested; and who that takes into account the peculiar
circumstances of the preachers, laboring without emolument at the
hazard of their lives, but must applaud their apostolic
zeal?--_Spiritual Heroes_, p. 289.
The plague reached its height in September--during one night of that
month ten thousand persons died. After this the pestilence gradually
diminished, and by the end of the year it had ceased. The visitation
has acquired additional interest for us of late from the occurrence of
cholera to an alarming extent. The former, like the latter, was
increased by poverty and filth, and to a much greater degree; for,
badly as houses have been ventilated, of late, and defective as may be
our drainage, our fathers were incomparably worse off than we are in
these respects. Houses were crowded together, and left in a state of
impurity which would shock the least delicate and refined of the
present day. There were scarcely any under sewers. Ditches were the
channels for carrying off refuse; and as supplements to these imperfect
methods of cleansing a great city, there were public dunghills. The
effluvia from such sources was, indeed, humanly speaking, enough to
cause a pestilence, and at the time of the plague must have been
intolerable from the heat of the weather; while some means, also,
adopted by the authorities for stopping the ravages of mortality, only
promoted the evil--such as the shutting up of houses, and the kindling
fires in the streets. The state of the metropolis then, and even now,
may be assigned as an auxiliary cause of the spread of plague and
cholera; but it must be confessed, there lies at the bottom of these
visitations much of mystery, inexplicable by reference to mere human
agencies. There is a power at work in the universe deeper far than any
of those which our poor natural philosophy can detect. Not that these
extraordinary occurrences show us the presence of a Divine providence
which does not operate at other, and at all times; not as if the
mysterious agency of God were sometimes in action, and sometimes in
repose; not as if the Almighty visited the earth yesterday, and left it
to-day; not as if his kingly rule over the world were broken by
interregnums;--by no means; still these events are like the lifting up
of the veil of second causes, and the disclosure of depths of power
down which mortals ought to look with reverence. They suggest to the
devout solemn views of nature and man--of life and death--of God ruling
over all. Loudly, also, do they remind us of the malignity of sin, and
the evils which it has brought on a fallen world. Happy is he who,
amidst desolations such as we have now described, can, through a living
faith in Christ, exclaim, "The Lord is my refuge and fortress: my God;
in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver me from the snare of the
fowler, and from the noisome pestilence."
[1] Judge Whitelock came up to London from Buckingham to sit in
Westminster Hall. He reached Hyde Park Corner on the morning of the
2d, "where he and his retinue dined on the ground, with such meat and
drink as they brought in the coach with them, and afterwards he drove
fast through the streets, which were empty of people and overgrown with
grass, to Westminster Hall, where he adjourned the court, returned to
his coach, and drove away presently out of town."--_Whitelock_, p. 2.