A Gambling Man: Charles II's Restoration Game Read Online Free PDF

illustrated the gulf between classes more than the attitude to the plague in these months. To begin with there was fear but also a horrified curiosity as gentry, courtiers and diplomats noticed doors marked with crosses, or people with white rods walking in the street. Then came irritation: after all, the wealthy relied on the class most at risk, on tradesmen and grooms, on cooks and servants going to market. If one of their servants died they too might have to shut up their house. When a man died after spending a night with the servants of the Spanish ambassador Molina their house was shut up, and the ambassador’s carriages were locked away. And when at last the eighteen-day quarantine was near its end, the woman who had washed the dead man’s clothes fell ill, and the whole term of confinement began again. Molina’s rage at the absence of those servants was incandescent.
    The death toll in London reached its peak when the Bills of Mortality recorded 7,165 deaths from plague alone in the week ending 19 September. Increasingly too, as people travelled, the disease was reaching out into the countryside. In the famous case of Eyam, in Derbyshire, where the village shut itself off completely to prevent the infection spreading, the plague arrived in a parcel of cloth which was hung by the fire to dry, releasing the infected fleas. Slowly, across the country, the toll lessened as the cold weather came, killing the fleas. Those who had survived tended to have greater immunity, but the contagion lingered until spring the following year, and isolated cases occurred until November.
    In London in the early autumn of 1665 coffins lay strewn in the streets, but they were too few for the mass of dead. Instead, the bodies were simply limed, piled onto carts and thrown in their hundreds into public burial pits. The shops were shut, the streets and alleys empty, and grass grew in the courtyards of Whitehall. The people of the great city shivered ‘all in mourneful silence, as not knowing whose turne might be the next’. 7

29 The Trick Track Men

    Draw next a pair of Tables op’ning, then
    The House of Commons clatt’ring like Men.
    Describe the Court and Country , both set right,
    On opposite points, the black against the white.
    Those having lost the Nation at Trick track ,
    These now advent’ring how to win it back.
    The Dice betwixt them must the Fate divide,
    As Chance does still in Multitudes decide.
    ANDREW MARVELL , Last Instructions to a Painter
    IN LATE 1666 Charles faced onslaughts from all quarters: hostility in parliament, disapproval of his court, unrest in Scotland and Ireland, and war with Holland and France. Although the great companies revived so quickly after the Fire they had lost trade during the war, while landowners and farmers saw their profits devoured by high taxes. The price of coal had risen steeply, as the Dutch targeted the coastal ships from Newcastle, and the poor were perishing from cold. Everywhere Charles turned, the arrows flew.
    When the Commons met on 21 September, ranging themselves according to loyalties, Marvell compared them to the ‘men’ in trick track, or tic tac, a popular version of backgammon. Their mood was distressed and wary. The division between the ‘court’ party, who supported the king, and the ‘country’ party was beginning to be clear. In particular the country MPs were ready to question the expenditure of every penny raised in taxes. And Charles was once more appealing desperately for money. The plague had stopped the collection of taxes and the Fire had halted loans from London companies and goldsmiths. Meanwhile the sailors were still unpaid and the ships again needed refitting.
    The Commons were ready to grant funds, but this time they asked to see accounts to estimate what was needed, irritating the King and throwing the Navy Board into a minor panic about the poor state of their books. However, after Sir William Coventry persuasively laid out the case for increased