“Take a friend by the hand as the manner is”: Vulnerability and Fear during the London Plague (1665)
Résumé
This article approaches the notion of vulnerability in early modern England through
a large corpus of medical and religious publications written during the London plague
of 1665 and its immediate aftermath. After exploring the main characteristics of the
epidemic, the first part analyses a body of texts dealing with fear and abandonment
and reveals the complexity of the medical and spiritual discourses of emotions. The
second part turns to the competition between the clergy of the Church of England
and the Nonconformists who had been evicted from their parishes just a few years
earlier. This rivalry was manifest especially in the pulpits and in the pastoral and
pamphlet literature. Viewing early modern vulnerability through the lens of such
religious writings, together with medical ones, offers a nuanced picture of the spiritual,
moral and emotional predicament of sufferers, just as it reveals the enduring
ability of the clergy’s pastoral care to adjust to circumstances.
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