According to the Bills of Mortality, the total number of deaths in London for the week ending June 27th was 684, of which number 267 were deaths from the plague. The number of deaths rose week by week until September 19th, when the total was 8,297, and the deaths from the plague 7,165. On September 26th the total had fallen to 6,460, and deaths from the plague to 5,533. The number fell gradually, week by week, till October 31st, when the total was 1,388, and the deaths from the plague 1,031. On November 7th there was a rise to 1,787 and 1,414 respectively. On November 14th the numbers had gone down to 1,359 and 1,050 respectively. On December 12th the total had fallen to 442, and deaths from plague to 243. On December 19th there was a rise to 525 and 281 respectively. The total of burials in 1665 was 97,306, of which number the plague claimed 68,596 victims. Most of the inhabitants of London who could get away took the first opportunity of escaping from the town, and in 1665 there were many places that the Londoner could visit with considerable chance of safety. The court went to Oxford, and afterwards came back to Hampton Court before venturing to return to Whitehall. The clergy and the doctors fled with very few exceptions, and several of those who stayed in town doing the duty of others, as well as their own, fell victims to the scourge.
Queen Elizabeth would have none of these removals. Stow says that in the time of the plague of 1563, "a gallows was set up in the Market-place of Windsor to hang all such as should come there from London."
Dr. Hodges, author of Loimologia, enumerates among those who assisted in the dangerous work of restraining the progress of the infection were the learned Dr. Gibson, Regius Professor at Cambridge; Dr. Francis Glisson, Dr. Nathaniel Paget, Dr. Peter Barwick, Dr. Humphrey Brookes, etc. Of those he mentions eight or nine fell in their work, among whom was Dr. William Conyers, to whose goodness and humanity he bears the most honourable testimony. Dr. Alexander Burnett, of Fenchurch Street, one of Pepys's friends, was another of the victims.
Of those to whom honour is due special mention must be made of Monk, Duke of Albemarle, Evelyn, Pepys, Edmond Berry Godfrey; and there were, of course, others.
The Duke of Albemarle stayed at the Cockpit; Evelyn sent his wife and family to Wotton, but he remained in town himself, and had very arduous duties to perform, for he was responsible for finding food and lodging for the prisoners of war, and he found it difficult to get money for these purposes. He tells in his Diary how he was received by Charles II. and the Duke of York on January 29th, 1665-6, when the pestilence had partly abated and the court had ventured from Oxford to Hampton Court. The King
"... ran towards me, and in a most gracious manner gave me his hand to kisse, with many thanks for my care and faithfulnesse in his service in a time of such greate danger, when everybody fled their employment; he told me he was much obliged to me, and said he was several times concerned for me, and the peril I underwent, and did receive my service most acceptably (though in truth I did but do my duty, and O that I had performed it as I ought!) After that his Majesty was pleased to talke with me alone, neere an houre, of severall particulars of my employment and ordered me to attend him againe on the Thursday following at Whitehall. Then the Duke came towards me, and embraced me with much kindnesse, telling me if he had thought my danger would have been so greate, he would not have suffered his Majesty to employ me in that station."
Pepys refers, on May 1st, 1667, to his visit to Sir Robert Viner's, the eminent goldsmith, where he saw "two or three great silver flagons, made with inscriptions as gifts of the King to such and such persons of quality as did stay in town [during] the late plague for keeping things in order in the town, which is a handsome thing." Godfrey was a recipient of a silver tankard, and he was knighted by the King in September, 1666, for his efforts to preserve order in the Great Fire. The remembrance of his death, which had so great an influence on the spread of the "Popish Plot" terror, is greater than that of his public spirit during the plague and the fire.
Pepys lived at Greenwich and Woolwich during the height of the plague, but he was constantly in London. How much these men must have suffered is brought very visibly before us in one of the best letters Pepys ever wrote:
"To Lady Casteret, from Woolwich, Sept. 4, 1655. The absence of the court and emptiness of the city takes away all occasion of news, save only such melancholy stories as would rather sadden than find your ladyship any divertissement in the hearing. I have stayed in the city till about 7,400 died in one week, and of them above 6,000 of the plague, and little noise heard day or night but tolling of bells; till I could walk Lumber Street and not meet twenty persons from one end to the other, and not fifty on the Exchange; till whole families have been swept away; till my very physician, Dr. Burnett, who undertook to secure me against any infection, having survived the month of his own house being shut up, died himself of the plague; till the nights, though much lengthened, are grown too short to conceal the burials of those that died the day before, people thereby constrained to borrow daylight for that service; lastly, till I could find neither meat nor drink safe, the butchers being everywhere visited, my brewer's house shut up, and my baker, with his whole family, dead of the plague."
