London's Lamentation for Her Sins

This is London on its knees. In the grip of the 1625 plague, which would kill over 35,000 people, the city's streets fell silent while its churches filled with desperate prayer. William Crashaw, a Jacobean clergyman, composed this raw document of survival: part lamentation, part supplication, part folk remedy. It reads less like polished theology and more like a man holding back the tide with his bare hands. The text offers prayers for private families during the 'fearful infection,' guidance for fasting and humiliation, and what Crashaw genuinely believed was a 'sovereign receipt' against the plague. Whether remedy or incantation, it captures a city that had not yet discovered germ theory and so turned to the only power it knew: God's mercy. For readers of early modern history, this is a window into how our ancestors faced the unimaginable, mixing superstition with sincerity, terror with faith.