Boghurst, Loimographia: ‘… the spring being continuall dry … which caused a pitifull crop of Hay’ (p. 29).

excessive Plenty … Fruit: cf. Hodges, Loimologia, 20. ‘The Year was luxuriant in most Fruits, especially Cherries and Grapes … at so low a Price, that the common People surfeited with them.’

Mechanicks: manual labourers or men of mean occupations.

Poor … pinch’d … London only: if London manufacturing and trading activity declined, all of England suffered, a fixed idea in Defoe’s economic thinking. Cf. The Review, no. 4, 18 Feb. 1706: ‘London is the great Center of this Circulation … hither all the Manufactures in the Nation from the several and remotest Countries are convey’d in gross, as to the vast Center of Trade; and here they pass from the Wholesaler to the Merchant, from the Ware-house to the Shop, and from thence, by a happy Counter-changing again, are transmitted to all the several Parts of the Kingdom again; and upon this Circulation … more Families depend, and are maintain’d, than upon the first Working of the whole Manufacture of the Nation.’

Calamity … enrich’d the Country: the economic utility of natural calamities. This is the principle Defoe reflects at this point in his assertion that the Fire of London (1666), by virtue of its destructiveness, created a great demand for goods and services; an idea much discussed in both an economic and a religious context in Defoe’s day and earlier. Defoe’s contemporary, Bernard Mandeville, in The Fable of the Bees (2nd edn., 1723), has a passage reminiscent of Defoe: ‘The Fire of London was a great Calamity, but if the Carpenters, Bricklayers, Smiths, and all, not only that are employed in Building but likewise those that made and dealt in the same Manufactures and other Merchandizes that were burnt, and other Trades again that got by them when they were in full Employ, were to Vote against those who lost by the Fire; the rejoicings would equal if not exceed the Complaints. In recruiting what is lost and destroy’d by Fire, Storms, Sea-fights, Sieges, Battles, a considerable pan of Trade consists’ (The Fable of the Bees: Or, Private Vices, Public Benefits, ed. F. B. Kaye (1924), i. 359).

People … flock’d to Town: ‘And a delightfull thing it is to see the towne full of people again as now it is; and shops begin to open, though in many places seven or eight together, and more, all shut; but yet the towne is full, compared with what it used to be’ (Pepys, Diary, 5 Jan. 1665–6). H.F.’s remark that the plague increased by 400 is nearly accurate. The Bills of Mortality report 1,031 deaths from plague in the last week of October and 1,414 in the first week of November. The number of parishes infected increased from 97 to 110.

now infected … Norwich … Colchester: of the provincial towns and cities mentioned by Defoe, Colchester and Norwich were most affected. Colchester particularly suffered from a continuous plague from the summer of 1665 to December of 1666. Creighton calls this ‘the greatest of all provincial plagues since the Black Death’, with one possible exception (A History of Epidemics in England (2nd edn., 1965), i. 688).

Deodands: from deodandum, a thing to be given to God; in English law a personal chattel which having occasioned the death of a person was forfeited to the Crown for pious uses.

Physick Garden: for herbs used in medical prescriptions.

199 Sir Robert Clayton: a wealthy merchant and Whig politician (1629–1707), he served as alderman, Lord Mayor, and Member of Parliament. He was much attacked by Tory pamphleteers. Defoe attacks him violently in Reformation of Manners (1702), but presents him favourably in Roxana (1724), where he acts as a financial adviser to the heroine. This passage appears to be taken from Ogilby and Morgan’s plan of the city.

Quakers … burying Ground: in Bunhill Fields.

Reproach … Physicians: at the first meeting of the Royal Society after the plague, 22 January 1666, Pepys heard Dr Jonathan Goddard defend himself and his fellow physicians who had fled from London: ‘their particular patients were most gone out of towne, and they left at liberty’ (Diary, 22 Jan. 1666). Goddard was Gresham Professor of Physic, an original member of the Royal Society, and inventor of the famous Goddard’s drop. Hodges defended the fleeing physicians on much the same ground: they fled ‘not so much for their own Preservation, as the Service of those whom they attend’ (Loimologia, 23).

Act of Indemnity: passed 29 August 1600, it pardoned, with some exceptions, those who had rebelled against the crown to form the Commonwealth.

penal Laws: the Clarendon Code; see first note to p. 24.

Death … pale Horse: Revelation 6: 8.

Headboroughs: officers with the duties of Petty Constables.

by Tale and by Number: i.e. by enumeration as distinct from measure or weight.

seven and eight thousand per Week: the Bills of Mortality report weekly deaths from plague 29 August to 19 September, 6,988, 6,544, 7,165; deaths from all causes, 8,252, 7,690, 8,297.

Preparation of strong Scent: to ward off offensive smells and to counteract the ill effects of effluvia and infected air the College of Physicians and others recommended perfumes, pomanders, and other concoctions.