Pringle, MD, Rational Enquiry into the Nature of the Plague (1722), 7 ff., and Joseph Browne, MD, A Practical Treatise of the Plague (1720), 24–5.

Islands of the Arches: the Grecian Archipelago.

Scanderoon: i.e. Iskanderun, or Alexandretto, a seaport of Asiatic Turkey.

1st of July … died … seven … City: the Bills of Mortality show 100 deaths from plague to 27 June in the City and Liberties of Westminster and five deaths in the three parishes mentioned.

Manufactures … infected: since certain goods were thought to retain the ‘poisonous effluvia’, importations were considered dangerous and the effectiveness of a quarantine was a serious matter. Therefore Defoe supported the rigorous Quarantine Act of 1722. A Bill for prohibiting commerce with infected countries received royal assent on 12 February 1722 (8 Geo. I, c. 10). Defoe wrote: ‘The Damage of obliging Ships to Quarantine, is … very considerable to the Merchants; it spoils their Goods, and many sorts of Goods are perishable, and subject to decay in others. The Profit of the whole Voyage depends upon the Season of coming into Market.… [Delay] stagnates Trade … encreases the Risk, and every way harasses the Merchant in his Business. Yet all this we cheerfully submit to for the Reason of it; ’tis allow’d to be just, to be necessary.… But if one Villain can pass the Barriers set,—if one Man can escape out of these Ships, with a Parcel of any sort of Goods, dangerous to Health, he may lodge the Plague among us … and we are all undone’ (Applebee’s Journal, 29 July 1721).

clandestine Trade: in his Short Discourse Mead warned: ‘But above all it is necessary, that the Clandestine Importing of Goods be punished with the utmost Rigour’ (6th edn. (1720), 30). In Due Preparations for the Plague, Defoe wrote: ‘We have a set of men among us so bent upon their gain, by that we call clandestine trade, that they would even venture to import the plague itself … not valuing the horrid injustice that they do to other people’ (Aitken edn., p. 11). He approved the bill sponsored by the government ‘to prevent the clandestine Running of Goods’ (8 Geo. I, c. 18), which received royal assent 7 Mar. 1722, despite opposition from City Merchants.

Trade … at a full stop: the impact of quarantine on trade was much discussed in 1721. Dr George Pye argued, in opposition to Mead, that ‘the Plague may possibly destroy a hundred thousand lives, but the Loss of Trade may starve and destroy ten times a hundred thousand’ (A Discourse of the Plague, 51).

coasting Trade for Corn … Coals: in A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–6) Defoe describes the two corn markets in London, Bear Key and Queenhithe, as ‘Monsters for Magnitude, and not to be matched in the World’. To Bear Key ‘comes all the vast Quantity of Corn that is brought into the City by Sea’. The other market was chiefly for malt. The coal market at Billingsgate was supplied mainly from New castle and the northern regions. ‘The Quantity of Coals, which it is supposed are, Communibus Annis, burnt and consumed in and about this City, is supposed to be about Five hundred thousand Chalder, every Chalder containing Thirty-six Bushels’ (Tour, i. 347–8). A chalder of coal: a dry measure, varying in amount from 32 to 40 bushels.

heat … opens the Pores: cf. Kemp, A Brief Treatise … of the Pestilence: ‘To guard your self from the corrupted air, you may do well … to be within doors at noon and the heat of the day, when the pores being more open are apter to receive Infection’ (47).

War with the Dutch: England declared war on the Dutch on 22 Feb. 1665. The ‘Capers’ were privateers.

Price of Coals … dear: an attempt to control the price of coal during the Plague is evident in an act of the Common Council, 1 June 1665. ‘For the benefit and relief of the Poor’ the City Companies were required to purchase and store coal between Lady-day and Michaelmas, to be sold ‘in dear times, at such prices as the Lord Mayor and Aldermen should direct’. See also note to p. 187.

publick Fires: see second and third notes to p. 148.

but not of Hay or Grass: cf.