There exists a strange and whimsical account of this plague entitled The Wonderful Yeare 1603. The writer has no intention of setting down a plain unvarnished tale, as will be seen from the following extracts (Phœnix Britannicus):—
“A stiffe and freezing horror sucks up the rivers of my blood; my haire stands on ende with the panting of my braines: mine eye balls are ready to start out, being beaten with the billowes of my teares: out of my weeping pen does the ink mournfully and more bitterly than gall drop on the pale-faced paper, even when I do but thinke how the bowels of my sicke country have been torne. Apollo, therefore, and you bewitching silver-tongued Muses, get you gone: I invocate none of your names. Sorrow and truth, sit you on each side of me, whilst I am delivered of this deadly burden: prompt me that I may utter ruthfull and passionate condolement: arme my trembling hand, that I may boldly rip up and anatomize the ulcerous body of this Anthropophagized Plague: lend me art (without any counterfeit shadowing) to paint and delineate to the life the whole story of this mortall and pestiferous battaile. And you the ghosts of those more (by many) than 40,000, that with the virulent poison of infection have been driven out of your earthly dwellings: you desolate hand-wringing widowes, that beate your bosomes over your departing husbandes: you wofully distracted mothers that with dishevelled hair fall into swounds, while you lie kissing the insensible cold lips of your breathless infants: you outcast and downtrodden orphans, that shall many a yeare hence remember more freshly to mourne, when your mourning garments shall look old and be forgotten: and you the Genii of all those emptyed families, whose habitations are now among the Antipodes: joine all your hands together, and with your bodies cast a ring about me: let me behold your ghastly vizages, that my paper may receive their true pictures and eccho forth your grones through the hollow trunke of my pen, and rain down your gummy tears into mine incke, that even marble bosomes may be shaken with terrour, and hearts of adamant melt into compassion.”
He goes on to describe the many who ran away:—
“It was no boot to bid them take their heels, for away they trudge thick and threefold: some riding, some on foote, some without bootes, some in their slippers, by water, by land, swom they westward: many to Gravesend none went unless they were driven: for whosoever landed there never came back again. Hacknies, water-men, and wagons were not so terribly employed many a year: so that within a short time there was not a good horse in Smithfield, nor a coach to be set eye on: for after the world had once run upon the wheeles of the pest cart, neither coach nor caroach durst appeare in his likenesse. Let us pursue these run-awayes no longer, but leave them in the unmercifull hands of the country-hardheaded Hobbinolls (who are ordained to be their tormentors), and return back to the siege of the citie.
Every house lookte like St. Bartholomew’s Hospitall, and every street like Bucklersbury, for poor Methridatum and Dragonwater (being both of them in all the world, scarce worth threepence) were boxt into every corner, and yet were both drunke every hour at other men’s cost. Lazarus lay groaning at every man’s door: marry no Dives was within to send him a crum (for all your Gold-finches were fled to the woods) nor a dogge left to licke his sores, for they (like Curres) were knockt downe like oxen, and fell thicker than acornes. I am amazed to remember what dead marches were made of three thousand trooping together: husbands, wives, and children being led as ordinarily to one grave as if they had gone to one bed. And those that could shift for a time, and shrink their heads out of the collar (as many did) yet went they most bitterly miching and muffled up and downe with rue and worme-wood stoft into their eares and nostrils, looking like so many bores’ heads stuck with branches of rosemary, to be served in for brawne at Christmas. This was a rare world for the Church, who had wont to complaine for want of living, and now had more living thrust upon her than she knew how to bestow: to have been clarke now to a parish clarke was better than to serve some foolish justice of peace, or than the yeare before to have been a benefice.
Never let any man aske me what became of our Phisitions in this massacre; they hid their synodicall heads as well as the prowdest: and I cannot blame them: for their phlebotomes, losinges, and electuaries, with their diacatholicons, diacodions, amulets and antidotes had not so much strength to hold life and soule together; as a pot of Pindar’s Ale and a nutmeg: their drugs turned to dirt, their simples were simple things: Galen could do no more than Sir Giles Goosecap: Hipocrates, Avicen, Paracelsus, Rafis, Fernalius, with all their succeeding rabble of doctors and water-casters were at their wits end, or, I think, rather at the world’s end, for not one of them durst peepe abroad, or if any did take upon him to play the ventrous knight, the plague put him to his nonplus: in such strange and such changeable shapes did this camelion-like sicknes appeare, that they could not (with all the cunning in their budgets) make pursenets to take him napping.”
The Plague first made its appearance in the East End; it raged at Gravesend. On the alarm of its spreading all those who could took flight; those who were left behind were the working-men, craftsmen, journeymen, and servants, who lost their work and their wages. Among the fugitives were the physicians, whose place was taken by quacks; and in the City there perished many thousands, sometimes whole families dying in a single house; sometimes poor wretches lying down to die in the street or under a stall; in a word, all the horrors of such a visitation with which Defoe has made the world familiar.
Twenty-one years later, on the accession of Charles, the Plague returned, and, continuing for a year, carried off 35,417 persons in London alone. I mention it in this place because the same writer, Benjamin Spencer, who gave us The Wonderful Yeare lived to write in 1625 Vox Civitatis, the Lament of London. The City complains that her children have infected the air with their sins; we need not enumerate the sins; in this respect every city is conservative. These and not the stinks of the City, not the reeking shambles, the noisome kennel, the malarious laystall are the cause of the Plague. Nor is her trouble only caused by sickness and death of multitudes:—