The majority of these taverns patronised by Pepys were, however, in the city. There were several "Mitres" in London, but perhaps the most interesting one was that kept in Fenchurch Street by Daniel Rawlinson, a staunch royalist, who, when Charles I. was executed, hung his sign in mourning. Thomas Hearne says that naturally made him suspected by the Roundheads, but "endeared him so much to the Churchmen that he throve amain and got a good estate." His son, Sir Thomas Rawlinson, was Lord Mayor in 1700, and President of Bridewell Hospital. His two grandsons, Thomas and Richard Rawlinson, hold an honourable place in the roll of eminent book collectors. The "Samson" in St. Paul's Churchyard was another famous house, as also the "Dolphin" in Tower Street, a rendezvous of the Navy officers, which provided very good and expensive dinners.
The "Cock" in Threadneedle Street was an old-established house when Pepys visited it on March 7th, 1659-60, and it lasted till 1840, when it was cleared away. In the eighteenth century it was a constant practice for the frequenters of the "Cock" to buy a chop or steak at the butcher's and bring it to be cooked, the charge for which was one penny. Fox's friend, the notorious Duke of Norfolk, known as "Jockey of Norfolk," often bought his chop and brought it here to be cooked, until his rank was discovered.
The meetings of the Royal Society were held at Gresham College in Bishopsgate Street, and then at Arundel House in the Strand, which was lent to the Society by Henry Howard of Norfolk, afterwards Duke of Norfolk. Cosmo of Tuscany visited the latter place for a meeting of the Royal Society, and he gives in his Travels an interesting account of the manner in which the proceedings were carried out.
There are many references in Pepys's Diary to the Lord Mayor and the Rulers of the City, and of the customs carried out there.
The Lord Mayor, aldermen, and common councilmen visited Cosmo, who was staying at Lord St. Alban's mansion in St. James's Square. His Highness, having dined with the King at the Duke of Buckingham's, kept the city magnates waiting for a time, but Colonel Gascoyne, "to make the delay less tedious, had accommodated himself to the national taste by ordering liquor and amusing them with drinking toasts, till it was announced that His Highness was ready to give them audience." The description of the audience is very interesting.
Pepys lived in the city at the Navy Office in Seething Lane (opposite St. Olave's, Hart Street, the church he attended) during the whole of the time he was writing his Diary, but when he was Secretary of the Admiralty he went, in 1684, to live at the end of Buckingham Street, Strand, in a house on the east side which looks on to the river.
Mr. John Eliot Hodgkin possesses the original lease (dated September 30th, 1687) from the governor and company of the New River for a supply of water through a half-inch pipe, and four small cocks of brass led from the main pipe in Villiers Street to Samuel Pepys's house in York Buildings, also a receipt for two quarters' rent for the same.[8]
Two of the greatest calamities that could overtake any city occurred in London during the writing of the Diary, and were fully described by Pepys—viz., the Plague of 1665 and the Fire of 1666. Defoe's most interesting history of the plague year was written in 1722 at second hand, for the writer was only two years old when this scourge overran London. Pepys wrote of what he saw, and as he stuck to his duty during the whole time that the pestilence continued, he saw much that occurred.
England was first visited with the plague in 1348-49, which, since 1833 (when Hecker's work on the Epidemics of the Middle Ages was first published in English), has been styled the Black Death—a translation of the German term "Der Schwarze Tod." This plague had the most momentous effect upon the history of England on account of the fearful mortality it caused. It paralysed industry, and permanently altered the position of the labourer. The statistics of the writers of the Middle Ages are of little value, and the estimates of those who died are various, but the statement that half the population of England died from the plague is probably not far from the truth. From 1348 to 1665 plague was continually occurring in London, but it has not appeared since the last date, except on a small scale. Dr. Creighton gives particulars of the visitations in London in 1603, 1625, and 1665, from which it appears that the mortality in 1665 was more than double that in 1603, and about a third more than that in 1625.
On the 7th of June, 1665, Pepys for the first time saw two or three houses marked with the red cross, and the words "Lord, have mercy upon us" upon the doors, and the sight made him feel so ill-at-ease that he was forced to buy some roll tobacco to smell and chew.[9] On the 27th of this month he writes: "The plague encreases mightily."