Page "Great Plague of London" Paragraph 6

By July 1665, plague was in the city of London itself.

King Charles II of England, his family and his court left the city for Oxfordshire.

The aldermen and most of the other city authorities opted to stay at their posts.

The Lord Mayor of the city, Sir John Lawrence, also decided to stay in the city.

Businesses were closed when most wealthy merchants and professionals fled.

As the plague raged throughout the summer, only a small number of clergymen, physicians and apothecaries chose to remain.

Among the people who chose to stay were Samuel Pepys, the diarist, and Henry Foe, a saddler who lived in East London.

While Pepys provides an account of the Plague through his diary, Henry Foe's nephew Daniel Defoe published A Journal of the Plague Year, a fictional account of the plague, in 1722, possibly based on Foe's journals.