A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR

By Daniel Defoe

 being observations or memorials of the most remarkable occurrences, as well public as private, which happened in London during the last great visitation in 1665. Written by a Citizen who continued all the while in London. Never made public before

It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I, among the rest ofmy neighbours, heard in ordinary discourse that the plague was returnedagain in Holland; for it had been very violent there, and particularlyat Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in the year 1663, whither, they say, it wasbrought, some said from Italy, others from the Levant, among somegoods which were brought home by their Turkey fleet; others said it wasbrought from Candia; others from Cyprus. It mattered not from whence itcame; but all agreed it was come into Holland again. 

We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days to spreadrumours and reports of things, and to improve them by the invention ofmen, as I have lived to see practised since. But such things as thesewere gathered from the letters of merchants and others who correspondedabroad, and from them was handed about by word of mouth only; so thatthings did not spread instantly over the whole nation, as they do now. But it seems that the Government had a true account of it, and severalcouncils were held about ways to prevent its coming over; but all waskept very private. Hence it was that this rumour died off again, andpeople began to forget it as a thing we were very little concerned in, and that we hoped was not true; till the latter end of November or thebeginning of December 1664 when two men, said to be Frenchmen, died ofthe plague in Long Acre, or rather at the upper end of Drury Lane. Thefamily they were in endeavoured to conceal it as much as possible, butas it had gotten some vent in the discourse of the neighbourhood, theSecretaries of State got knowledge of it; and concerning themselves toinquire about it, in order to be certain of the truth, two physiciansand a surgeon were ordered to go to the house and make inspection. This they did; and finding evident tokens of the sickness upon both thebodies that were dead, they gave their opinions publicly that they diedof the plague. Whereupon it was given in to the parish clerk, and healso returned them to the Hall; and it was printed in the weekly bill ofmortality in the usual manner, thus--

 Plague, 2. Parishes infected, 1. 

The people showed a great concern at this, and began to be alarmed allover the town, and the more, because in the last week in December 1664another man died in the same house, and of the same distemper. And thenwe were easy again for about six weeks, when none having died with anymarks of infection, it was said the distemper was gone; but after that, I think it was about the 12th of February, another died in anotherhouse, but in the same parish and in the same manner. 

This turned the people's eyes pretty much towards that end of the town, and the weekly bills showing an increase of burials in St Giles's parishmore than usual, it began to be suspected that the plague was among thepeople at that end of the town, and that many had died of it, thoughthey had taken care to keep it as much from the knowledge of the publicas possible. This possessed the heads of the people very much, and fewcared to go through Drury Lane, or the other streets suspected, unlessthey had extraordinary business that obliged them to it

This increase of the bills stood thus: the usual number of burials ina week, in the parishes of St Giles-in-the-Fields and St Andrew's, Holborn, were from twelve to seventeen or nineteen each, few moreor less; but from the time that the plague first began in St Giles'sparish, it was observed that the ordinary burials increased in numberconsiderably. For example:--

 From December 27 to January 3 { St Giles's 16 " { St Andrew's 17

 " January 3 " " 10 { St Giles's 12 " { St Andrew's 25

 " January 10 " " 17 { St Giles's 18 " { St Andrew's 28

 " January 17 " " 24 { St Giles's 23 " { St Andrew's 16

 " January 24 " " 31 { St Giles's 24 " { St Andrew's 15

 " January 30 " February 7 { St Giles's 21 " { St Andrew's 23

 " February 7 " " 14 { St Giles's 24

Whereof one of the plague. 

The like increase of the bills was observed in the parishes of StBride's, adjoining on one side of Holborn parish, and in the parish ofSt James, Clerkenwell, adjoining on the other side of Holborn; in bothwhich parishes the usual numbers that died weekly were from four to sixor eight, whereas at that time they were increased as follows:--

 From December 20 to December 27 { St Bride's 0 " { St James's 8

 " December 27 to January 3 { St Bride's 6 " { St James's 9

 " January 3 " " 10 { St Bride's 11 " { St James's 7

 " January 10 " " 17 { St Bride's 12 " { St James's 9

 " January 17 " " 24 { St Bride's 9 " { St James's 15

 " January 24 " " 31 { St Bride's 8 " { St James's 12

 " January 31 " February 7 { St Bride's 13 " { St James's 5

 " February 7 " " 14 { St Bride's 12 " { St James's 6

Besides this, it was observed with great uneasiness by the people thatthe weekly bills in general increased very much during these weeks, although it was at a time of the year when usually the bills are verymoderate. 

The usual number of burials within the bills of mortality for a weekwas from about 240 or thereabouts to 300. The last was esteemed a prettyhigh bill; but after this we found the bills successively increasing asfollows:--

 Buried. Increased. December the 20th to the 27th 291 ... " " 27th " 3rd January 349 58 January the 3rd " 10th " 394 45 " " 10th " 17th " 415 21 " " 17th " 24th " 474 59

This last bill was really frightful, being a higher number than had beenknown to have been buried in one week since the preceding visitation of1656. 

However, all this went off again, and the weather proving cold, and thefrost, which began in December, still continuing very severe even tillnear the end of February, attended with sharp though moderate winds, thebills decreased again, and the city grew healthy, and everybody began tolook upon the danger as good as over; only that still the burials inSt Giles's continued high. From the beginning of April especially theystood at twenty-five each week, till the week from the 18th to the 25th, when there was buried in St Giles's parish thirty, whereof two of theplague and eight of the spotted-fever, which was looked upon as the samething; likewise the number that died of the spotted-fever in the wholeincreased, being eight the week before, and twelve the week above-named. 

This alarmed us all again, and terrible apprehensions were among thepeople, especially the weather being now changed and growing warm, andthe summer being at hand. However, the next week there seemed to be somehopes again; the bills were low, the number of the dead in all was but388, there was none of the plague, and but four of the spotted-fever. 

But the following week it returned again, and the distemper was spreadinto two or three other parishes, viz. , St Andrew's, Holborn; St ClementDanes; and, to the great affliction of the city, one died withinthe walls, in the parish of St Mary Woolchurch, that is to say, inBearbinder Lane, near Stocks Market; in all there were nine of theplague and six of the spotted-fever. It was, however, upon inquiryfound that this Frenchman who died in Bearbinder Lane was one who, having lived in Long Acre, near the infected houses, had removed forfear of the distemper, not knowing that he was already infected. 

This was the beginning of May, yet the weather was temperate, variable, and cool enough, and people had still some hopes. That which encouragedthem was that the city was healthy: the whole ninety-seven parishesburied but fifty-four, and we began to hope that, as it was chieflyamong the people at that end of the town, it might go no farther; andthe rather, because the next week, which was from the 9th of May to the16th, there died but three, of which not one within the whole city orliberties; and St Andrew's buried but fifteen, which was very low. 'Tistrue St Giles's buried two-and-thirty, but still, as there was but oneof the plague, people began to be easy. The whole bill also was verylow, for the week before the bill was but 347, and the week abovementioned but 343. We continued in these hopes for a few days, but itwas but for a few, for the people were no more to be deceived thus; theysearched the houses and found that the plague was really spreadevery way, and that many died of it every day. So that now all ourextenuations abated, and it was no more to be concealed; nay, it quicklyappeared that the infection had spread itself beyond all hopes ofabatement. That in the parish of St Giles it was gotten into severalstreets, and several families lay all sick together; and, accordingly, in the weekly bill for the next week the thing began to show itself. There was indeed but fourteen set down of the plague, but this was allknavery and collusion, for in St Giles's parish they buried forty inall, whereof it was certain most of them died of the plague, thoughthey were set down of other distempers; and though the number of all theburials were not increased above thirty-two, and the whole bill beingbut 385, yet there was fourteen of the spotted-fever, as well asfourteen of the plague; and we took it for granted upon the whole thatthere were fifty died that week of the plague. 

The next bill was from the 23rd of May to the 30th, when the numberof the plague was seventeen. But the burials in St Giles's werefifty-three--a frightful number!--of whom they set down but nine of theplague; but on an examination more strictly by the justices of peace, and at the Lord Mayor's request, it was found there were twenty more whowere really dead of the plague in that parish, but had been set down ofthe spotted-fever or other distempers, besides others concealed. 

But those were trifling things to what followed immediately after;for now the weather set in hot, and from the first week in June theinfection spread in a dreadful manner, and the bills rose high; thearticles of the fever, spotted-fever, and teeth began to swell; for allthat could conceal their distempers did it, to prevent their neighboursshunning and refusing to converse with them, and also to preventauthority shutting up their houses; which, though it was not yetpractised, yet was threatened, and people were extremely terrified atthe thoughts of it. 

The second week in June, the parish of St Giles, where still the weightof the infection lay, buried 120, whereof though the bills said butsixty-eight of the plague, everybody said there had been 100 at least, calculating it from the usual number of funerals in that parish, asabove. 

Till this week the city continued free, there having never any died, except that one Frenchman whom I mentioned before, within the wholeninety-seven parishes. Now there died four within the city, one in WoodStreet, one in Fenchurch Street, and two in Crooked Lane. Southwark wasentirely free, having not one yet died on that side of the water. 

I lived without Aldgate, about midway between Aldgate Church andWhitechappel Bars, on the left hand or north side of the street; andas the distemper had not reached to that side of the city, ourneighbourhood continued very easy. But at the other end of the towntheir consternation was very great: and the richer sort of people, especially the nobility and gentry from the west part of the city, thronged out of town with their families and servants in an unusualmanner; and this was more particularly seen in Whitechappel; that is tosay, the Broad Street where I lived; indeed, nothing was to be seen butwaggons and carts, with goods, women, servants, children, &c. ; coachesfilled with people of the better sort and horsemen attending them, andall hurrying away; then empty waggons and carts appeared, and sparehorses with servants, who, it was apparent, were returning or sent fromthe countries to fetch more people; besides innumerable numbers of menon horseback, some alone, others with servants, and, generally speaking, all loaded with baggage and fitted out for travelling, as anyone mightperceive by their appearance. 

This was a very terrible and melancholy thing to see, and as it was asight which I could not but look on from morning to night (for indeedthere was nothing else of moment to be seen), it filled me with veryserious thoughts of the misery that was coming upon the city, and theunhappy condition of those that would be left in it. 

This hurry of the people was such for some weeks that there was nogetting at the Lord Mayor's door without exceeding difficulty; therewere such pressing and crowding there to get passes and certificatesof health for such as travelled abroad, for without these there was nobeing admitted to pass through the towns upon the road, or to lodge inany inn. Now, as there had none died in the city for all this time, myLord Mayor gave certificates of health without any difficulty to allthose who lived in the ninety-seven parishes, and to those within theliberties too for a while. 

This hurry, I say, continued some weeks, that is to say, all the monthof May and June, and the more because it was rumoured that an order ofthe Government was to be issued out to place turnpikes and barriers onthe road to prevent people travelling, and that the towns on the roadwould not suffer people from London to pass for fear of bringing theinfection along with them, though neither of these rumours had anyfoundation but in the imagination, especially at-first. 

I now began to consider seriously with myself concerning my own case, and how I should dispose of myself; that is to say, whether I shouldresolve to stay in London or shut up my house and flee, as many of myneighbours did. I have set this particular down so fully, because I knownot but it may be of moment to those who come after me, if they come tobe brought to the same distress, and to the same manner of making theirchoice; and therefore I desire this account may pass with them ratherfor a direction to themselves to act by than a history of my actings, seeing it may not he of one farthing value to them to note what becameof me. 

I had two important things before me: the one was the carrying on mybusiness and shop, which was considerable, and in which was embarked allmy effects in the world; and the other was the preservation of my lifein so dismal a calamity as I saw apparently was coming upon the wholecity, and which, however great it was, my fears perhaps, as well asother people's, represented to be much greater than it could be. 

The first consideration was of great moment to me; my trade was asaddler, and as my dealings were chiefly not by a shop or chance trade, but among the merchants trading to the English colonies in America, somy effects lay very much in the hands of such. I was a single man, 'tistrue, but I had a family of servants whom I kept at my business; had ahouse, shop, and warehouses filled with goods; and, in short, to leavethem all as things in such a case must be left (that is to say, withoutany overseer or person fit to be trusted with them), had been to hazardthe loss not only of my trade, but of my goods, and indeed of all I hadin the world. 

I had an elder brother at the same time in London, and not many yearsbefore come over from Portugal: and advising with him, his answer wasin three words, the same that was given in another case quite different, viz. , 'Master, save thyself. ' In a word, he was for my retiring into thecountry, as he resolved to do himself with his family; telling me whathe had, it seems, heard abroad, that the best preparation for the plaguewas to run away from it. As to my argument of losing my trade, my goods, or debts, he quite confuted me. He told me the same thing which I arguedfor my staying, viz. , that I would trust God with my safety and health, was the strongest repulse to my pretensions of losing my trade and mygoods; 'for', says he, 'is it not as reasonable that you should trustGod with the chance or risk of losing your trade, as that you shouldstay in so eminent a point of danger, and trust Him with your life?'

I could not argue that I was in any strait as to a place where to go, having several friends and relations in Northamptonshire, whence ourfamily first came from; and particularly, I had an only sister inLincolnshire, very willing to receive and entertain me. 

My brother, who had already sent his wife and two children intoBedfordshire, and resolved to follow them, pressed my going veryearnestly; and I had once resolved to comply with his desires, but atthat time could get no horse; for though it is true all the people didnot go out of the city of London, yet I may venture to say that in amanner all the horses did; for there was hardly a horse to be boughtor hired in the whole city for some weeks. Once I resolved to travelon foot with one servant, and, as many did, lie at no inn, but carry asoldier's tent with us, and so lie in the fields, the weather beingvery warm, and no danger from taking cold. I say, as many did, becauseseveral did so at last, especially those who had been in the armies inthe war which had not been many years past; and I must needs say that, speaking of second causes, had most of the people that travelled doneso, the plague had not been carried into so many country towns andhouses as it was, to the great damage, and indeed to the ruin, ofabundance of people. 

But then my servant, whom I had intended to take down with me, deceivedme; and being frighted at the increase of the distemper, and not knowingwhen I should go, he took other measures, and left me, so I was put offfor that time; and, one way or other, I always found that to appointto go away was always crossed by some accident or other, so as todisappoint and put it off again; and this brings in a story whichotherwise might be thought a needless digression, viz. , about thesedisappointments being from Heaven. 

I mention this story also as the best method I can advise any person totake in such a case, especially if he be one that makes conscience ofhis duty, and would be directed what to do in it, namely, that he shouldkeep his eye upon the particular providences which occur at that time, and look upon them complexly, as they regard one another, and as alltogether regard the question before him: and then, I think, he maysafely take them for intimations from Heaven of what is his unquestionedduty to do in such a case; I mean as to going away from or staying inthe place where we dwell, when visited with an infectious distemper. 

It came very warmly into my mind one morning, as I was musing on thisparticular thing, that as nothing attended us without the direction orpermission of Divine Power, so these disappointments must have somethingin them extraordinary; and I ought to consider whether it did notevidently point out, or intimate to me, that it was the will of Heaven Ishould not go. It immediately followed in my thoughts, that if it reallywas from God that I should stay, He was able effectually to preserveme in the midst of all the death and danger that would surround me; andthat if I attempted to secure myself by fleeing from my habitation, andacted contrary to these intimations, which I believe to be Divine, itwas a kind of flying from God, and that He could cause His justice toovertake me when and where He thought fit. 

These thoughts quite turned my resolutions again, and when I came todiscourse with my brother again I told him that I inclined to stay andtake my lot in that station in which God had placed me, and that itseemed to be made more especially my duty, on the account of what I havesaid. 

My brother, though a very religious man himself, laughed at all I hadsuggested about its being an intimation from Heaven, and told me severalstories of such foolhardy people, as he called them, as I was; that Iought indeed to submit to it as a work of Heaven if I had been any waydisabled by distempers or diseases, and that then not being able to go, I ought to acquiesce in the direction of Him, who, having been my Maker, had an undisputed right of sovereignty in disposing of me, and thatthen there had been no difficulty to determine which was the call of Hisprovidence and which was not; but that I should take it as an intimationfrom Heaven that I should not go out of town, only because I could nothire a horse to go, or my fellow was run away that was to attend me, was ridiculous, since at the time I had my health and limbs, and otherservants, and might with ease travel a day or two on foot, and having agood certificate of being in perfect health, might either hire a horseor take post on the road, as I thought fit. 

Then he proceeded to tell me of the mischievous consequences whichattended the presumption of the Turks and Mahometans in Asia and inother places where he had been (for my brother, being a merchant, wasa few years before, as I have already observed, returned from abroad, coming last from Lisbon), and how, presuming upon their professedpredestinating notions, and of every man's end being predetermined andunalterably beforehand decreed, they would go unconcerned into infectedplaces and converse with infected persons, by which means they died atthe rate of ten or fifteen thousand a week, whereas the Europeans orChristian merchants, who kept themselves retired and reserved, generallyescaped the contagion. 

Upon these arguments my brother changed my resolutions again, and Ibegan to resolve to go, and accordingly made all things ready; for, inshort, the infection increased round me, and the bills were risen toalmost seven hundred a week, and my brother told me he would venture tostay no longer. I desired him to let me consider of it but till the nextday, and I would resolve: and as I had already prepared everything aswell as I could as to MY business, and whom to entrust my affairs with, I had little to do but to resolve. 

I went home that evening greatly oppressed in my mind, irresolute, andnot knowing what to do. I had set the evening wholly--apart to considerseriously about it, and was all alone; for already people had, as itwere by a general consent, taken up the custom of not going out ofdoors after sunset; the reasons I shall have occasion to say more ofby-and-by. 

In the retirement of this evening I endeavoured to resolve, first, whatwas my duty to do, and I stated the arguments with which my brother hadpressed me to go into the country, and I set, against them the strongimpressions which I had on my mind for staying; the visible call Iseemed to have from the particular circumstance of my calling, and thecare due from me for the preservation of my effects, which were, as Imight say, my estate; also the intimations which I thought I had fromHeaven, that to me signified a kind of direction to venture; and itoccurred to me that if I had what I might call a direction to stay, Iought to suppose it contained a promise of being preserved if I obeyed. 

This lay close to me, and my mind seemed more and more encouraged tostay than ever, and supported with a secret satisfaction that I shouldbe kept. Add to this, that, turning over the Bible which lay beforeme, and while my thoughts were more than ordinarily serious upon thequestion, I cried out, 'Well, I know not what to do; Lord, direct me I'and the like; and at that juncture I happened to stop turning over thebook at the gist Psalm, and casting my eye on the second verse, I readon to the seventh verse exclusive, and after that included the tenth, as follows: 'I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: myGod, in Him will I trust. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snareof the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee withHis feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust: His truth shallbe thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror bynight; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence thatwalketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. Athousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; butit shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold andsee the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the Lord, whichis my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; there shall no evilbefall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling, ' &C. 

I scarce need tell the reader that from that moment I resolved that Iwould stay in the town, and casting myself entirely upon the goodnessand protection of the Almighty, would not seek any other shelterwhatever; and that, as my times were in His hands, He was as able tokeep me in a time of the infection as in a time of health; and if He didnot think fit to deliver me, still I was in His hands, and it was meetHe should do with me as should seem good to Him. 

With this resolution I went to bed; and I was further confirmed in itthe next day by the woman being taken ill with whom I had intended toentrust my house and all my affairs. But I had a further obligation laidon me on the same side, for the next day I found myself very much outof order also, so that if I would have gone away, I could not, and Icontinued ill three or four days, and this entirely determined my stay;so I took my leave of my brother, who went away to Dorking, inSurrey, and afterwards fetched a round farther into Buckinghamshire orBedfordshire, to a retreat he had found out there for his family. 

It was a very ill time to be sick in, for if any one complained, it wasimmediately said he had the plague; and though I had indeed no symptomof that distemper, yet being very ill, both in my head and in mystomach, I was not without apprehension that I really was infected;but in about three days I grew better; the third night I rested well, sweated a little, and was much refreshed. The apprehensions of its beingthe infection went also quite away with my illness, and I went about mybusiness as usual. 

These things, however, put off all my thoughts of going into thecountry; and my brother also being gone, I had no more debate eitherwith him or with myself on that subject. 

It was now mid-July, and the plague, which had chiefly raged at theother end of the town, and, as I said before, in the parishes of StGiles, St Andrew's, Holborn, and towards Westminster, began to now comeeastward towards the part where I lived. It was to be observed, indeed, that it did not come straight on towards us; for the city, that is tosay, within the walls, was indifferently healthy still; nor was it gotthen very much over the water into Southwark; for though there died thatweek 1268 of all distempers, whereof it might be supposed above 600 diedof the plague, yet there was but twenty-eight in the whole city, withinthe walls, and but nineteen in Southwark, Lambeth parish included;whereas in the parishes of St Giles and St Martin-in-the-Fields alonethere died 421. 

But we perceived the infection kept chiefly in the out-parishes, whichbeing very populous, and fuller also of poor, the distemper foundmore to prey upon than in the city, as I shall observe afterwards. Weperceived, I say, the distemper to draw our way, viz. , by the parishesof Clarkenwell, Cripplegate, Shoreditch, and Bishopsgate; which last twoparishes joining to Aldgate, Whitechappel, and Stepney, the infectioncame at length to spread its utmost rage and violence in those parts, even when it abated at the western parishes where it began. 

It was very strange to observe that in this particular week, from the4th to the 11th of July, when, as I have observed, there died near400 of the plague in the two parishes of St Martin and StGiles-in-the-Fields only, there died in the parish of Aldgate but four, in the parish of Whitechappel three, in the parish of Stepney but one. 

Likewise in the next week, from the 11th of July to the 18th, when theweek's bill was 1761, yet there died no more of the plague, on the wholeSouthwark side of the water, than sixteen. But this face of things soonchanged, and it began to thicken in Cripplegate parish especially, andin Clarkenwell; so that by the second week in August, Cripplegate parishalone buried 886, and Clarkenwell 155. Of the first, 850 might well bereckoned to die of the plague; and of the last, the bill itself said 145were of the plague. 

During the month of July, and while, as I have observed, our part ofthe town seemed to be spared in comparison of the west part, I wentordinarily about the streets, as my business required, and particularlywent generally once in a day, or in two days, into the city, to mybrother's house, which he had given me charge of, and to see if it wassafe; and having the key in my pocket, I used to go into the house, and over most of the rooms, to see that all was well; for though it besomething wonderful to tell, that any should have hearts so hardened inthe midst of such a calamity as to rob and steal, yet certain it is thatall sorts of villainies, and even levities and debaucheries, werethen practised in the town as openly as ever--I will not say quite asfrequently, because the numbers of people were many ways lessened. 

But the city itself began now to be visited too, I mean within thewalls; but the number of people there were indeed extremely lessenedby so great a multitude having been gone into the country; and even allthis month of July they continued to flee, though not in such multitudesas formerly. In August, indeed, they fled in such a manner that I beganto think there would be really none but magistrates and servants left inthe city. 

As they fled now out of the city, so I should observe that the Courtremoved early, viz. , in the month of June, and went to Oxford, where itpleased God to preserve them; and the distemper did not, as I heardof, so much as touch them, for which I cannot say that I ever sawthey showed any great token of thankfulness, and hardly anything ofreformation, though they did not want being told that their crying vicesmight without breach of charity be said to have gone far in bringingthat terrible judgement upon the whole nation. 

The face of London was--now indeed strangely altered: I mean the wholemass of buildings, city, liberties, suburbs, Westminster, Southwark, andaltogether; for as to the particular part called the city, or withinthe walls, that was not yet much infected. But in the whole the face ofthings, I say, was much altered; sorrow and sadness sat upon every face;and though some parts were not yet overwhelmed, yet all looked deeplyconcerned; and, as we saw it apparently coming on, so every one lookedon himself and his family as in the utmost danger. Were it possible torepresent those times exactly to those that did not see them, and givethe reader due ideas of the horror 'that everywhere presented itself, itmust make just impressions upon their minds and fill them with surprise. London might well be said to be all in tears; the mourners did not goabout the streets indeed, for nobody put on black or made a formal dressof mourning for their nearest friends; but the voice of mourners wastruly heard in the streets. The shrieks of women and children at thewindows and doors of their houses, where their dearest relations wereperhaps dying, or just dead, were so frequent to be heard as we passedthe streets, that it was enough to pierce the stoutest heart in theworld to hear them. Tears and lamentations were seen almost in everyhouse, especially in the first part of the visitation; for towards thelatter end men's hearts were hardened, and death was so always beforetheir eyes, that they did not so much concern themselves for the lossof their friends, expecting that themselves should be summoned the nexthour. 

Business led me out sometimes to the other end of the town, even whenthe sickness was chiefly there; and as the thing was new to me, aswell as to everybody else, it was a most surprising thing to see thosestreets which were usually so thronged now grown desolate, and so fewpeople to be seen in them, that if I had been a stranger and at a lossfor my way, I might sometimes have gone the length of a whole street (Imean of the by-streets), and seen nobody to direct me except watchmenset at the doors of such houses as were shut up, of which I shall speakpresently. 

One day, being at that part of the town on some special business, curiosity led me to observe things more than usually, and indeed Iwalked a great way where I had no business. I went up Holborn, and therethe street was full of people, but they walked in the middle of thegreat street, neither on one side or other, because, as I suppose, theywould not mingle with anybody that came out of houses, or meet withsmells and scent from houses that might be infected. 

The Inns of Court were all shut up; nor were very many of the lawyers inthe Temple, or Lincoln's Inn, or Gray's Inn, to be seen there. Everybodywas at peace; there was no occasion for lawyers; besides, it being inthe time of the vacation too, they were generally gone into the country. Whole rows of houses in some places were shut close up, the inhabitantsall fled, and only a watchman or two left. 

When I speak of rows of houses being shut up, I do not mean shut up bythe magistrates, but that great numbers of persons followed the Court, by the necessity of their employments and other dependences; and asothers retired, really frighted with the distemper, it was a meredesolating of some of the streets. But the fright was not yet nearso great in the city, abstractly so called, and particularly because, though they were at first in a most inexpressible consternation, yet asI have observed that the distemper intermitted often at first, so theywere, as it were, alarmed and unalarmed again, and this several times, till it began to be familiar to them; and that even when it appearedviolent, yet seeing it did not presently spread into the city, or theeast and south parts, the people began to take courage, and to be, asI may say, a little hardened. It is true a vast many people fled, as Ihave observed, yet they were chiefly from the west end of the town, and from that we call the heart of the city: that is to say, among thewealthiest of the people, and such people as were unencumbered withtrades and business. But of the rest, the generality stayed, and seemedto abide the worst; so that in the place we calf the Liberties, andin the suburbs, in Southwark, and in the east part, such as Wapping, Ratcliff, Stepney, Rotherhithe, and the like, the people generallystayed, except here and there a few wealthy families, who, as above, didnot depend upon their business. 

It must not be forgot here that the city and suburbs were prodigiouslyfull of people at the time of this visitation, I mean at the time thatit began; for though I have lived to see a further increase, and mightythrongs of people settling in London more than ever, yet we had always anotion that the numbers of people which, the wars being over, the armiesdisbanded, and the royal family and the monarchy being restored, hadflocked to London to settle in business, or to depend upon and attendthe Court for rewards of services, preferments, and the like, was suchthat the town was computed to have in it above a hundred thousand peoplemore than ever it held before; nay, some took upon them to say ithad twice as many, because all the ruined families of the royal partyflocked hither. All the old soldiers set up trades here, and abundanceof families settled here. Again, the Court brought with them agreat flux of pride, and new fashions. All people were grown gay andluxurious, and the joy of the Restoration had brought a vast manyfamilies to London. 

I often thought that as Jerusalem was besieged by the Romans when theJews were assembled together to celebrate the Passover--by which meansan incredible number of people were surprised there who would otherwisehave been in other countries--so the plague entered London whenan incredible increase of people had happened occasionally, by theparticular circumstances above-named. As this conflux of the people toa youthful and gay Court made a great trade in the city, especiallyin everything that belonged to fashion and finery, so it drew byconsequence a great number of workmen, manufacturers, and the like, being mostly poor people who depended upon their labour. And I rememberin particular that in a representation to my Lord Mayor of the conditionof the poor, it was estimated that there were no less than an hundredthousand riband-weavers in and about the city, the chiefest number ofwhom lived then in the parishes of Shoreditch, Stepney, Whitechappel, and Bishopsgate, that, namely, about Spitalfields; that is to say, asSpitalfields was then, for it was not so large as now by one fifth part. 

By this, however, the number of people in the whole may be judged of;and, indeed, I often wondered that, after the prodigious numbers ofpeople that went away at first, there was yet so great a multitude leftas it appeared there was. 

But I must go back again to the beginning of this surprising time. Whilethe fears of the people were young, they were increased strangely byseveral odd accidents which, put altogether, it was really a wonderthe whole body of the people did not rise as one man and abandon theirdwellings, leaving the place as a space of ground designed by Heaven foran Akeldama, doomed to be destroyed from the face of the earth, and thatall that would be found in it would perish with it. I shall name but afew of these things; but sure they were so many, and so many wizards andcunning people propagating them, that I have often wondered there wasany (women especially) left behind. 

In the first place, a blazing star or comet appeared for several monthsbefore the plague, as there did the year after another, a little beforethe fire. The old women and the phlegmatic hypochondriac part of theother sex, whom I could almost call old women too, remarked (especiallyafterward, though not till both those judgements were over) that thosetwo comets passed directly over the city, and that so very near thehouses that it was plain they imported something peculiar to the cityalone; that the comet before the pestilence was of a faint, dull, languid colour, and its motion very heavy, Solemn, and slow; but thatthe comet before the fire was bright and sparkling, or, as others said, flaming, and its motion swift and furious; and that, accordingly, oneforetold a heavy judgement, slow but severe, terrible and frightful, as was the plague; but the other foretold a stroke, sudden, swift, andfiery as the conflagration. Nay, so particular some people were, that asthey looked upon that comet preceding the fire, they fancied that theynot only saw it pass swiftly and fiercely, and could perceive the motionwith their eye, but even they heard it; that it made a rushing, mighty noise, fierce and terrible, though at a distance, and but justperceivable. 

I saw both these stars, and, I must confess, had so much of the commonnotion of such things in my head, that I was apt to look upon them asthe forerunners and warnings of God's judgements; and especially when, after the plague had followed the first, I yet saw another of the likekind, I could not but say God had not yet sufficiently scourged thecity. 

But I could not at the same time carry these things to the heightthat others did, knowing, too, that natural causes are assigned bythe astronomers for such things, and that their motions and even theirrevolutions are calculated, or pretended to be calculated, so that theycannot be so perfectly called the forerunners or foretellers, much lessthe procurers, of such events as pestilence, war, fire, and the like. 

But let my thoughts and the thoughts of the philosophers be, or havebeen, what they will, these things had a more than ordinary influenceupon the minds of the common people, and they had almost universalmelancholy apprehensions of some dreadful calamity and judgement comingupon the city; and this principally from the sight of this comet, andthe little alarm that was given in December by two people dying at StGiles's, as above. 

The apprehensions of the people were likewise strangely increased by theerror of the times; in which, I think, the people, from what principleI cannot imagine, were more addicted to prophecies and astrologicalconjurations, dreams, and old wives' tales than ever they were before orsince. Whether this unhappy temper was originally raised by thefollies of some people who got money by it--that is to say, by printingpredictions and prognostications--I know not; but certain it is, booksfrighted them terribly, such as Lilly's Almanack, Gadbury's AstrologicalPredictions, Poor Robin's Almanack, and the like; also several pretendedreligious books, one entitled, Come out of her, my People, lest yoube Partaker of her Plagues; another called, Fair Warning; another, Britain's Remembrancer; and many such, all, or most part of which, foretold, directly or covertly, the ruin of the city. Nay, some wereso enthusiastically bold as to run about the streets with their oralpredictions, pretending they were sent to preach to the city; and one inparticular, who, like Jonah to Nineveh, cried in the streets, 'Yet fortydays, and London shall be destroyed. ' I will not be positive whether hesaid yet forty days or yet a few days. Another ran about naked, excepta pair of drawers about his waist, crying day and night, like a man thatJosephus mentions, who cried, 'Woe to Jerusalem!' a little before thedestruction of that city. So this poor naked creature cried, 'Oh, thegreat and the dreadful God!' and said no more, but repeated those wordscontinually, with a voice and countenance full of horror, a swift pace;and nobody could ever find him to stop or rest, or take any sustenance, at least that ever I could hear of. I met this poor creature severaltimes in the streets, and would have spoken to him, but he would notenter into speech with me or any one else, but held on his dismal criescontinually. 

These things terrified the people to the last degree, and especiallywhen two or three times, as I have mentioned already, they found one ortwo in the bills dead of the plague at St Giles's. 

Next to these public things were the dreams of old women, or, I shouldsay, the interpretation of old women upon other people's dreams; andthese put abundance of people even out of their wits. Some heard voiceswarning them to be gone, for that there would be such a plague inLondon, so that the living would not be able to bury the dead. Otherssaw apparitions in the air; and I must be allowed to say of both, I hopewithout breach of charity, that they heard voices that never spake, andsaw sights that never appeared; but the imagination of the people wasreally turned wayward and possessed. And no wonder, if they who wereporing continually at the clouds saw shapes and figures, representationsand appearances, which had nothing in them but air, and vapour. Herethey told us they saw a flaming sword held in a hand coming out ofa cloud, with a point hanging directly over the city; there they sawhearses and coffins in the air carrying to be buried; and thereagain, heaps of dead bodies lying unburied, and the like, just as theimagination of the poor terrified people furnished them with matter towork upon. So hypochondriac fancies represent Ships, armies, battles inthe firmament; Till steady eyes the exhalations solve, And all to itsfirst matter, cloud, resolve. 

I could fill this account with the strange relations such people gaveevery day of what they had seen; and every one was so positive of theirhaving seen what they pretended to see, that there was no contradictingthem without breach of friendship, or being accounted rude andunmannerly on the one hand, and profane and impenetrable on the other. One time before the plague was begun (otherwise than as I have said inSt Giles's), I think it was in March, seeing a crowd of people in thestreet, I joined with them to satisfy my curiosity, and found them allstaring up into the air to see what a woman told them appeared plainto her, which was an angel clothed in white, with a fiery sword in hishand, waving it or brandishing it over his head. She described everypart of the figure to the life, showed them the motion and the form, and the poor people came into it so eagerly, and with so much readiness;'Yes, I see it all plainly, ' says one; 'there's the sword as plain ascan be. ' Another saw the angel. One saw his very face, and cried outwhat a glorious creature he was! One saw one thing, and one another. I looked as earnestly as the rest, but perhaps not with so muchwillingness to be imposed upon; and I said, indeed, that I could seenothing but a white cloud, bright on one side by the shining of the sunupon the other part. The woman endeavoured to show it me, but could notmake me confess that I saw it, which, indeed, if I had I must havelied. But the woman, turning upon me, looked in my face, and fancied Ilaughed, in which her imagination deceived her too, for I really didnot laugh, but was very seriously reflecting how the poor people wereterrified by the force of their own imagination. However, she turnedfrom me, called me profane fellow, and a scoffer; told me that it was atime of God's anger, and dreadful judgements were approaching, and thatdespisers such as I should wander and perish. 

The people about her seemed disgusted as well as she; and I found therewas no persuading them that I did not laugh at them, and that I shouldbe rather mobbed by them than be able to undeceive them. So I left them;and this appearance passed for as real as the blazing star itself. 

Another encounter I had in the open day also; and this was in goingthrough a narrow passage from Petty France into Bishopsgate Churchyard, by a row of alms-houses. There are two churchyards to Bishopsgate churchor parish; one we go over to pass from the place called Petty Franceinto Bishopsgate Street, coming out just by the church door; the otheris on the side of the narrow passage where the alms-houses are on theleft; and a dwarf-wall with a palisado on it on the right hand, and thecity wall on the other side more to the right. 

In this narrow passage stands a man looking through between thepalisadoes into the burying-place, and as many people as the narrownessof the passage would admit to stop, without hindering the passage ofothers, and he was talking mightily eagerly to them, and pointing nowto one place, then to another, and affirming that he saw a ghost walkingupon such a gravestone there. He described the shape, the posture, and the movement of it so exactly that it was the greatest matter ofamazement to him in the world that everybody did not see it as wellas he. On a sudden he would cry, 'There it is; now it comes this way. 'Then, 'Tis turned back'; till at length he persuaded the people into sofirm a belief of it, that one fancied he saw it, and another fancied hesaw it; and thus he came every day making a strange hubbub, consideringit was in so narrow a passage, till Bishopsgate clock struck eleven, and then the ghost would seem to start, and, as if he were called away, disappeared on a sudden. 

I looked earnestly every way, and at the very moment that this mandirected, but could not see the least appearance of anything; but sopositive was this poor man, that he gave the people the vapours inabundance, and sent them away trembling and frighted, till at lengthfew people that knew of it cared to go through that passage, and hardlyanybody by night on any account whatever. 

This ghost, as the poor man affirmed, made signs to the houses, andto the ground, and to the people, plainly intimating, or else they sounderstanding it, that abundance of the people should come to be buriedin that churchyard, as indeed happened; but that he saw such aspectsI must acknowledge I never believed, nor could I see anything of itmyself, though I looked most earnestly to see it, if possible. 

These things serve to show how far the people were really overcome withdelusions; and as they had a notion of the approach of a visitation, alltheir predictions ran upon a most dreadful plague, which should lay thewhole city, and even the kingdom, waste, and should destroy almost allthe nation, both man and beast. 

To this, as I said before, the astrologers added stories of theconjunctions of planets in a malignant manner and with a mischievousinfluence, one of which conjunctions was to happen, and did happen, inOctober, and the other in November; and they filled the people's headswith predictions on these signs of the heavens, intimating that thoseconjunctions foretold drought, famine, and pestilence. In the two firstof them, however, they were entirely mistaken, for we had no droughtyseason, but in the beginning of the year a hard frost, which lasted fromDecember almost to March, and after that moderate weather, rather warmthan hot, with refreshing winds, and, in short, very seasonable weather, and also several very great rains. 

Some endeavours were used to suppress the printing of such books asterrified the people, and to frighten the dispersers of them, some ofwhom were taken up; but nothing was done in it, as I am informed, theGovernment being unwilling to exasperate the people, who were, as I maysay, all out of their wits already. 

Neither can I acquit those ministers that in their sermons rather sankthan lifted up the hearts of their hearers. Many of them no doubt did itfor the strengthening the resolution of the people, and especially forquickening them to repentance, but it certainly answered not their end, at least not in proportion to the injury it did another way; and indeed, as God Himself through the whole Scriptures rather draws to Him byinvitations and calls to turn to Him and live, than drives us by terrorand amazement, so I must confess I thought the ministers should havedone also, imitating our blessed Lord and Master in this, that Hiswhole Gospel is full of declarations from heaven of God's mercy, and Hisreadiness to receive penitents and forgive them, complaining, 'Ye willnot come unto Me that ye may have life', and that therefore His Gospelis called the Gospel of Peace and the Gospel of Grace. 

But we had some good men, and that of all persuasions and opinions, whose discourses were full of terror, who spoke nothing but dismalthings; and as they brought the people together with a kind ofhorror, sent them away in tears, prophesying nothing but evil tidings, terrifying the people with the apprehensions of being utterly destroyed, not guiding them, at least not enough, to cry to heaven for mercy. 

It was, indeed, a time of very unhappy breaches among us in mattersof religion. Innumerable sects and divisions and separate opinionsprevailed among the people. The Church of England was restored, indeed, with the restoration of the monarchy, about four years before; but theministers and preachers of the Presbyterians and Independents, andof all the other sorts of professions, had begun to gather separatesocieties and erect altar against altar, and all those had theirmeetings for worship apart, as they have now, but not so many then, theDissenters being not thoroughly formed into a body as they are since;and those congregations which were thus gathered together were yetbut few. And even those that were, the Government did not allow, butendeavoured to suppress them and shut up their meetings. 

But the visitation reconciled them again, at least for a time, and manyof the best and most valuable ministers and preachers of the Dissenterswere suffered to go into the churches where the incumbents were fledaway, as many were, not being able to stand it; and the people flockedwithout distinction to hear them preach, not much inquiring who or whatopinion they were of. But after the sickness was over, that spirit ofcharity abated; and every church being again supplied with their ownministers, or others presented where the minister was dead, thingsreturned to their old channel again. 

One mischief always introduces another. These terrors and apprehensionsof the people led them into a thousand weak, foolish, and wicked things, which they wanted not a sort of people really wicked to encourage themto: and this was running about to fortune-tellers, cunning-men, andastrologers to know their fortune, or, as it is vulgarly expressed, to have their fortunes told them, their nativities calculated, andthe like; and this folly presently made the town swarm with a wickedgeneration of pretenders to magic, to the black art, as they called it, and I know not what; nay, to a thousand worse dealings with the devilthan they were really guilty of. And this trade grew so open and sogenerally practised that it became common to have signs and inscriptionsset up at doors: 'Here lives a fortune-teller', 'Here lives anastrologer', 'Here you may have your nativity calculated', and thelike; and Friar Bacon's brazen-head, which was the usual sign of thesepeople's dwellings, was to be seen almost in every street, or else thesign of Mother Shipton, or of Merlin's head, and the like. 

With what blind, absurd, and ridiculous stuff these oracles of the devilpleased and satisfied the people I really know not, but certain it isthat innumerable attendants crowded about their doors every day. And ifbut a grave fellow in a velvet jacket, a band, and a black coat, whichwas the habit those quack-conjurers generally went in, was but seenin the streets the people would follow them in crowds, and ask themquestions as they went along. 

I need not mention what a horrid delusion this was, or what it tendedto; but there was no remedy for it till the plague itself put an end toit all--and, I suppose, cleared the town of most of those calculatorsthemselves. One mischief was, that if the poor people asked these mockastrologers whether there would be a plague or no, they all agreedin general to answer 'Yes', for that kept up their trade. And had thepeople not been kept in a fright about that, the wizards would presentlyhave been rendered useless, and their craft had been at an end. But theyalways talked to them of such-and-such influences of the stars, of theconjunctions of such-and-such planets, which must necessarily bringsickness and distempers, and consequently the plague. And some had theassurance to tell them the plague was begun already, which was too true, though they that said so knew nothing of the matter. 

The ministers, to do them justice, and preachers of most sorts that wereserious and understanding persons, thundered against these and otherwicked practices, and exposed the folly as well as the wickedness ofthem together, and the most sober and judicious people despised andabhorred them. But it was impossible to make any impression uponthe middling people and the working labouring poor. Their fears werepredominant over all their passions, and they threw away their money ina most distracted manner upon those whimsies. Maid-servants especially, and men-servants, were the chief of their customers, and their questiongenerally was, after the first demand of 'Will there be a plague?' Isay, the next question was, 'Oh, sir I for the Lord's sake, what willbecome of me? Will my mistress keep me, or will she turn me off? Willshe stay here, or will she go into the country? And if she goes into thecountry, will she take me with her, or leave me here to be starved andundone?' And the like of menservants. 

The truth is, the case of poor servants was very dismal, as I shall haveoccasion to mention again by-and-by, for it was apparent a prodigiousnumber of them would be turned away, and it was so. And of themabundance perished, and particularly of those that these false prophetshad flattered with hopes that they should be continued in theirservices, and carried with their masters and mistresses into thecountry; and had not public charity provided for these poor creatures, whose number was exceeding great and in all cases of this nature mustbe so, they would have been in the worst condition of any people in thecity. 

These things agitated the minds of the common people for many months, while the first apprehensions were upon them, and while the plague wasnot, as I may say, yet broken out. But I must also not forget that themore serious part of the inhabitants behaved after another manner. TheGovernment encouraged their devotion, and appointed public prayers anddays of fasting and humiliation, to make public confession of sin andimplore the mercy of God to avert the dreadful judgement which hung overtheir heads; and it is not to be expressed with what alacrity thepeople of all persuasions embraced the occasion; how they flocked tothe churches and meetings, and they were all so thronged that there wasoften no coming near, no, not to the very doors of the largest churches. Also there were daily prayers appointed morning and evening at severalchurches, and days of private praying at other places; at all whichthe people attended, I say, with an uncommon devotion. Several privatefamilies also, as well of one opinion as of another, kept family fasts, to which they admitted their near relations only. So that, in a word, those people who were really serious and religious applied themselvesin a truly Christian manner to the proper work of repentance andhumiliation, as a Christian people ought to do. 

Again, the public showed that they would bear their share in thesethings; the very Court, which was then gay and luxurious, put on a faceof just concern for the public danger. All the plays and interludeswhich, after the manner of the French Court, had been set up, and beganto increase among us, were forbid to act; the gaming-tables, publicdancing-rooms, and music-houses, which multiplied and began to debauchthe manners of the people, were shut up and suppressed; and thejack-puddings, merry-andrews, puppet-shows, rope-dancers, and such-likedoings, which had bewitched the poor common people, shut up their shops, finding indeed no trade; for the minds of the people were agitated withother things, and a kind of sadness and horror at these things sat uponthe countenances even of the common people. Death was before theireyes, and everybody began to think of their graves, not of mirth anddiversions. 

But even those wholesome reflections--which, rightly managed, would havemost happily led the people to fall upon their knees, make confession oftheir sins, and look up to their merciful Saviour for pardon, imploringHis compassion on them in such a time of their distress, by which wemight have been as a second Nineveh--had a quite contrary extreme inthe common people, who, ignorant and stupid in their reflections asthey were brutishly wicked and thoughtless before, were now led by theirfright to extremes of folly; and, as I have said before, that theyran to conjurers and witches, and all sorts of deceivers, to know whatshould become of them (who fed their fears, and kept them always alarmedand awake on purpose to delude them and pick their pockets), so theywere as mad upon their running after quacks and mountebanks, and everypractising old woman, for medicines and remedies; storing themselveswith such multitudes of pills, potions, and preservatives, as theywere called, that they not only spent their money but even poisonedthemselves beforehand for fear of the poison of the infection; andprepared their bodies for the plague, instead of preserving them againstit. On the other hand it is incredible and scarce to be imagined, howthe posts of houses and corners of streets were plastered over withdoctors' bills and papers of ignorant fellows, quacking and tampering inphysic, and inviting the people to come to them for remedies, whichwas generally set off with such flourishes as these, viz. : 'Infalliblepreventive pills against the plague. ' 'Neverfailing preservativesagainst the infection. ' 'Sovereign cordials against the corruption ofthe air. ' 'Exact regulations for the conduct of the body in case of aninfection. ' 'Anti-pestilential pills. ' 'Incomparable drink against theplague, never found out before. ' 'An universal remedy for the plague. ''The only true plague water. ' 'The royal antidote against all kinds ofinfection';--and such a number more that I cannot reckon up; and if Icould, would fill a book of themselves to set them down. 

Others set up bills to summon people to their lodgings for directionsand advice in the case of infection. These had specious titles also, such as these:--

'An eminent High Dutch physician, newly come over from Holland, where heresided during all the time of the great plague last year in Amsterdam, and cured multitudes of people that actually had the plague upon them. '

'An Italian gentlewoman just arrived from Naples, having a choice secretto prevent infection, which she found out by her great experience, anddid wonderful cures with it in the late plague there, wherein there died20, 000 in one day. '

'An ancient gentlewoman, having practised with great success in the lateplague in this city, anno 1636, gives her advice only to the female sex. To be spoken with, ' &c. 

'An experienced physician, who has long studied the doctrine ofantidotes against all sorts of poison and infection, has, after fortyyears' practice, arrived to such skill as may, with God's blessing, direct persons how to prevent their being touched by any contagiousdistemper whatsoever. He directs the poor gratis. '

I take notice of these by way of specimen. I could give you two or threedozen of the like and yet have abundance left behind. 'Tis sufficientfrom these to apprise any one of the humour of those times, and howa set of thieves and pickpockets not only robbed and cheated the poorpeople of their money, but poisoned their bodies with odious and fatalpreparations; some with mercury, and some with other things as bad, perfectly remote from the thing pretended to, and rather hurtful thanserviceable to the body in case an infection followed. 

I cannot omit a subtility of one of those quack operators, with whichhe gulled the poor people to crowd about him, but did nothing for themwithout money. He had, it seems, added to his bills, which he gave aboutthe streets, this advertisement in capital letters, viz. , 'He givesadvice to the poor for nothing. '

Abundance of poor people came to him accordingly, to whom he made agreat many fine speeches, examined them of the state of their health andof the constitution of their bodies, and told them many good things forthem to do, which were of no great moment. But the issue and conclusionof all was, that he had a preparation which if they took such a quantityof every morning, he would pawn his life they should never have theplague; no, though they lived in the house with people that wereinfected. This made the people all resolve to have it; but then theprice of that was so much, I think 'twas half-a-crown. 'But, sir, ' saysone poor woman, 'I am a poor almswoman and am kept by the parish, andyour bills say you give the poor your help for nothing. ' 'Ay, goodwoman, ' says the doctor, 'so I do, as I published there. I give myadvice to the poor for nothing, but not my physic. ' 'Alas, sir!' saysshe, 'that is a snare laid for the poor, then; for you give them advicefor nothing; that is to say, you advise them gratis, to buy your physicfor their money; so does every shop-keeper with his wares. ' Here thewoman began to give him ill words, and stood at his door all that day, telling her tale to all the people that came, till the doctor findingshe turned away his customers, was obliged to call her upstairs again, and give her his box of physic for nothing, which perhaps, too, was goodfor nothing when she had it. 

But to return to the people, whose confusions fitted them to be imposedupon by all sorts of pretenders and by every mountebank. There is nodoubt but these quacking sort of fellows raised great gains out of themiserable people, for we daily found the crowds that ran after them wereinfinitely greater, and their doors were more thronged than those of DrBrooks, Dr Upton, Dr Hodges, Dr Berwick, or any, though the most famousmen of the time. I And I was told that some of them got five pounds aday by their physic. 

But there was still another madness beyond all this, which may serve togive an idea of the distracted humour of the poor people at that time:and this was their following a worse sort of deceivers than any ofthese; for these petty thieves only deluded them to pick their pocketsand get their money, in which their wickedness, whatever it was, laychiefly on the side of the deceivers, not upon the deceived. But in thispart I am going to mention, it lay chiefly in the people deceived, orequally in both; and this was in wearing charms, philtres, exorcisms, amulets, and I know not what preparations, to fortify the body with themagainst the plague; as if the plague was not the hand of God, but a kindof possession of an evil spirit, and that it was to be kept off withcrossings, signs of the zodiac, papers tied up with so many knots, and certain words or figures written on them, as particularly the wordAbracadabra, formed in triangle or pyramid, thus:--

 ABRACADABRA ABRACADABR Others had the Jesuits' ABRACADAB mark in a cross: ABRACADA I H ABRACAD S. ABRACA ABRAC Others nothing but this ABRA mark, thus: ABR AB * * A {*}

I might spend a great deal of time in my exclamations against thefollies, and indeed the wickedness, of those things, in a time ofsuch danger, in a matter of such consequences as this, of a nationalinfection. But my memorandums of these things relate rather to takenotice only of the fact, and mention only that it was so. How the poorpeople found the insufficiency of those things, and how many of themwere afterwards carried away in the dead-carts and thrown into thecommon graves of every parish with these hellish charms and trumperyhanging about their necks, remains to be spoken of as we go along. 

All this was the effect of the hurry the people were in, after the firstnotion of the plaque being at hand was among them, and which may be saidto be from about Michaelmas 1664, but more particularly after the twomen died in St Giles's in the beginning of December; and again, afteranother alarm in February. For when the plague evidently spread itself, they soon began to see the folly of trusting to those unperformingcreatures who had gulled them of their money; and then their fearsworked another way, namely, to amazement and stupidity, not knowing whatcourse to take or what to do either to help or relieve themselves. Butthey ran about from one neighbour's house to another, and even in thestreets from one door to another, with repeated cries of, 'Lord, havemercy upon us! What shall we do?'

Indeed, the poor people were to be pitied in one particular thing inwhich they had little or no relief, and which I desire to mention with aserious awe and reflection, which perhaps every one that reads this maynot relish; namely, that whereas death now began not, as we may say, to hover over every one's head only, but to look into their houses andchambers and stare in their faces. Though there might be some stupidityand dulness of the mind (and there was so, a great deal), yet there wasa great deal of just alarm sounded into the very inmost soul, if I mayso say, of others. Many consciences were awakened; many hard heartsmelted into tears; many a penitent confession was made of crimes longconcealed. It would wound the soul of any Christian to have heard thedying groans of many a despairing creature, and none durst come near tocomfort them. Many a robbery, many a murder, was then confessed aloud, and nobody surviving to record the accounts of it. People might beheard, even into the streets as we passed along, calling upon God formercy through Jesus Christ, and saying, 'I have been a thief, 'I havebeen an adulterer', 'I have been a murderer', and the like, and nonedurst stop to make the least inquiry into such things or to administercomfort to the poor creatures that in the anguish both of soul and bodythus cried out. Some of the ministers did visit the sick at firstand for a little while, but it was not to be done. It would have beenpresent death to have gone into some houses. The very buriers of thedead, who were the hardenedest creatures in town, were sometimes beatenback and so terrified that they durst not go into houses where the wholefamilies were swept away together, and where the circumstances were moreparticularly horrible, as some were; but this was, indeed, at the firstheat of the distemper. 

Time inured them to it all, and they ventured everywhere afterwardswithout hesitation, as I shall have occasion to mention at largehereafter. 

I am supposing now the plague to be begun, as I have said, and that themagistrates began to take the condition of the people into their seriousconsideration. What they did as to the regulation of the inhabitants andof infected families, I shall speak to by itself; but as to the affairof health, it is proper to mention it here that, having seen the foolishhumour of the people in running after quacks and mountebanks, wizardsand fortune-tellers, which they did as above, even to madness, the LordMayor, a very sober and religious gentleman, appointed physiciansand surgeons for relief of the poor--I mean the diseased poor and inparticular ordered the College of Physicians to publish directions forcheap remedies for the poor, in all the circumstances of the distemper. This, indeed, was one of the most charitable and judicious things thatcould be done at that time, for this drove the people from hauntingthe doors of every disperser of bills, and from taking down blindly andwithout consideration poison for physic and death instead of life. 

This direction of the physicians was done by a consultation of the wholeCollege; and, as it was particularly calculated for the use of the poorand for cheap medicines, it was made public, so that everybody might seeit, and copies were given gratis to all that desired it. But as it ispublic, and to be seen on all occasions, I need not give the reader ofthis the trouble of it. 

I shall not be supposed to lessen the authority or capacity of thephysicians when I say that the violence of the distemper, when it cameto its extremity, was like the fire the next year. The fire, whichconsumed what the plague could not touch, defied all the application ofremedies; the fire-engines were broken, the buckets thrown away, and thepower of man was baffled and brought to an end. So the Plague defiedall medicines; the very physicians were seized with it, with theirpreservatives in their mouths; and men went about prescribing to othersand telling them what to do till the tokens were upon them, and theydropped down dead, destroyed by that very enemy they directed others tooppose. This was the case of several physicians, even some of them themost eminent, and of several of the most skilful surgeons. Abundanceof quacks too died, who had the folly to trust to their own medicines, which they must needs be conscious to themselves were good for nothing, and who rather ought, like other sorts of thieves, to have run away, sensible of their guilt, from the justice that they could not but expectshould punish them as they knew they had deserved. 

Not that it is any derogation from the labour or application of thephysicians to say they fell in the common calamity; nor is it sointended by me; it rather is to their praise that they ventured theirlives so far as even to lose them in the service of mankind. Theyendeavoured to do good, and to save the lives of others. But we were notto expect that the physicians could stop God's judgements, or prevent adistemper eminently armed from heaven from executing the errand it wassent about. 

Doubtless, the physicians assisted many by their skill, and by theirprudence and applications, to the saving of their lives and restoringtheir health. But it is not lessening their character or their skill, to say they could not cure those that had the tokens upon them, or thosewho were mortally infected before the physicians were sent for, as wasfrequently the case. 

It remains to mention now what public measures were taken by themagistrates for the general safety, and to prevent the spreading of thedistemper, when it first broke out. I shall have frequent occasion tospeak of the prudence of the magistrates, their charity, their vigilancefor the poor, and for preserving good order, furnishing provisions, andthe like, when the plague was increased, as it afterwards was. But I amnow upon the order and regulations they published for the government ofinfected families. 

I mentioned above shutting of houses up; and it is needful to saysomething particularly to that, for this part of the history of theplague is very melancholy, but the most grievous story must be told. 

About June the Lord Mayor of London and the Court of Aldermen, as I havesaid, began more particularly to concern themselves for the regulationof the city. 

The justices of Peace for Middlesex, by direction of the Secretaryof State, had begun to shut up houses in the parishes of StGiles-in-the-Fields, St Martin, St Clement Danes, &c. , and it was withgood success; for in several streets where the plague broke out, uponstrict guarding the houses that were infected, and taking care to burythose that died immediately after they were known to be dead, the plagueceased in those streets. It was also observed that the plague decreasedsooner in those parishes after they had been visited to the full than itdid in the parishes of Bishopsgate, Shoreditch, Aldgate, Whitechappel, Stepney, and others; the early care taken in that manner being a greatmeans to the putting a check to it. 

This shutting up of houses was a method first taken, as I understand, inthe plague which happened in 1603, at the coming of King James the Firstto the crown; and the power of shutting people up in their own houseswas granted by Act of Parliament, entitled, 'An Act for the charitableRelief and Ordering of Persons infected with the Plague'; on which Actof Parliament the Lord Mayor and aldermen of the city of London foundedthe order they made at this time, and which took place the 1st of July1665, when the numbers infected within the city were but few, the lastbill for the ninety-two parishes being but four; and some houseshaving been shut up in the city, and some people being removed to thepest-house beyond Bunhill Fields, in the way to Islington, --I say, bythese means, when there died near one thousand a week in the whole, thenumber in the city was but twenty-eight, and the city was preservedmore healthy in proportion than any other place all the time of theinfection. 

These orders of my Lord Mayor's were published, as I have said, thelatter end of June, and took place from the 1st of July, and were asfollows, viz. :--

ORDERS CONCEIVED AND PUBLISHED BY THE LORD MAYOR AND ALDERMEN OF THECITY OF LONDON CONCERNING THE INFECTION OF THE PLAGUE, 1665. 

'WHEREAS in the reign of our late Sovereign King James, of happy memory, an Act was made for the charitable relief and ordering of personsinfected with the plague, whereby authority was given to justices of thepeace, mayors, bailiffs, and other head-officers to appoint within theirseveral limits examiners, searchers, watchmen, keepers, and buriers forthe persons and places infected, and to minister unto them oaths for theperformance of their offices. And the same statute did also authorisethe giving of other directions, as unto them for the present necessityshould seem good in their directions. It is now, upon specialconsideration, thought very expedient for preventing and avoiding ofinfection of sickness (if it shall so please Almighty God) that theseofficers following be appointed, and these orders hereafter dulyobserved. 

Examiners to be appointed in every Parish. 

'First, it is thought requisite, and so ordered, that in every parishthere be one, two, or more persons of good sort and credit chosen andappointed by the alderman, his deputy, and common council of every ward, by the name of examiners, to continue in that office the space of twomonths at least. And if any fit person so appointed shall refuse toundertake the same, the said parties so refusing to be committed toprison until they shall conform themselves accordingly. 

The Examiner's Office. 

'That these examiners he sworn by the aldermen to inquire and learn fromtime to time what houses in every parish be visited, and what persons besick, and of what diseases, as near as they can inform themselves; andupon doubt in that case, to command restraint of access until it appearwhat the disease shall prove. And if they find any person sick of theinfection, to give order to the constable that the house be shut up;and if the constable shall be found remiss or negligent, to give presentnotice thereof to the alderman of the ward. 

Watchmen. 

'That to every infected house there be appointed two watchmen, one forevery day, and the other for the night; and that these watchmen have aspecial care that no person go in or out of such infected houses whereofthey have the charge, upon pain of severe punishment. And the saidwatchmen to do such further offices as the sick house shall need andrequire: and if the watchman be sent upon any business, to lock up thehouse and take the key with him; and the watchman by day to attend untilten of the clock at night, and the watchman by night until six in themorning. 

Searchers. 

'That there be a special care to appoint women searchers in everyparish, such as are of honest reputation, and of the best sort as canbe got in this kind; and these to be sworn to make due search and truereport to the utmost of their knowledge whether the persons whose bodiesthey are appointed to search do die of the infection, or of what otherdiseases, as near as they can. And that the physicians who shall beappointed for cure and prevention of the infection do call before themthe said searchers who are, or shall be, appointed for the severalparishes under their respective cares, to the end they may considerwhether they are fitly qualified for that employment, and charge themfrom time to time as they shall see cause, if they appear defective intheir duties. 

'That no searcher during this time of visitation be permitted to use anypublic work or employment, or keep any shop or stall, or be employed asa laundress, or in any other common employment whatsoever. 

Chirurgeons. 

'For better assistance of the searchers, forasmuch as there hath beenheretofore great abuse in misreporting the disease, to the furtherspreading of the infection, it is therefore ordered that there be chosenand appointed able and discreet chirurgeons, besides those that doalready belong to the pest-house, amongst whom the city and Libertiesto be quartered as the places lie most apt and convenient; and everyof these to have one quarter for his limit; and the said chirurgeonsin every of their limits to join with the searchers for the view of thebody, to the end there may be a true report made of the disease. 

'And further, that the said chirurgeons shall visit and search such-likepersons as shall either send for them or be named and directed unto themby the examiners of every parish, and inform themselves of the diseaseof the said parties. 

'And forasmuch as the said chirurgeons are to be sequestered from allother cures, and kept only to this disease of the infection, it isordered that every of the said chirurgeons shall have twelve-pencea body searched by them, to be paid out of the goods of the partysearched, if he be able, or otherwise by the parish. 

Nurse-keepers. 

'If any nurse-keeper shall remove herself out of any infected housebefore twenty-eight days after the decease of any person dying of theinfection, the house to which the said nurse-keeper doth so removeherself shall be shut up until the said twenty-eight days be expired. '

ORDERS CONCERNING INFECTED HOUSES AND PERSONS SICK OF THE PLAGUE. 

Notice to be given of the Sickness. 

'The master of every house, as soon as any one in his house complaineth, either of blotch or purple, or swelling in any part of his body, orfalleth otherwise dangerously sick, without apparent cause of some otherdisease, shall give knowledge thereof to the examiner of health withintwo hours after the said sign shall appear. 

Sequestration of the Sick. 

'As soon as any man shall be found by this examiner, chirurgeon, or searcher to be sick of the plague, he shall the same night besequestered in the same house; and in case he be so sequestered, thenthough he afterwards die not, the house wherein he sickened should beshut up for a month, after the use of the due preservatives taken by therest. 

Airing the Stuff. 

'For sequestration of the goods and stuff of the infection, theirbedding and apparel and hangings of chambers must be well aired withfire and such perfumes as are requisite within the infected house beforethey be taken again to use. This to be done by the appointment of anexaminer. 

Shutting up of the House. 

'If any person shall have visited any man known to be infected of theplague, or entered willingly into any known infected house, being notallowed, the house wherein he inhabiteth shall be shut up for certaindays by the examiner's direction. 

None to be removed out of infected Houses, but, &C. 

'Item, that none be removed out of the house where he falleth sick ofthe infection into any other house in the city (except it be to thepest-house or a tent, or unto some such house which the owner of thesaid visited house holdeth in his own hands and occupieth by his ownservants); and so as security be given to the parish whither such removeis made, that the attendance and charge about the said visited personsshall be observed and charged in all the particularities beforeexpressed, without any cost of that parish to which any such removeshall happen to be made, and this remove to be done by night. And itshall be lawful to any person that hath two houses to remove either hissound or his infected people to his spare house at his choice, so as, if he send away first his sound, he not after send thither his sick, noragain unto the sick the sound; and that the same which he sendeth befor one week at the least shut up and secluded from company, for fear ofsome infection at the first not appearing. 

Burial of the Dead. 

'That the burial of the dead by this visitation be at most convenienthours, always either before sun-rising or after sun-setting, with theprivity of the churchwardens or constable, and not otherwise; and thatno neighbours nor friends be suffered to accompany the corpse to church, or to enter the house visited, upon pain of having his house shut up orbe imprisoned. 

'And that no corpse dying of infection shall be buried, or remain inany church in time of common prayer, sermon, or lecture. And that nochildren be suffered at time of burial of any corpse in any church, churchyard, or burying-place to come near the corpse, coffin, or grave. And that all the graves shall be at least six feet deep. 

'And further, all public assemblies at other burials are to be foreborneduring the continuance of this visitation. 

No infected Stuff to be uttered. 

'That no clothes, stuff, bedding, or garments be suffered to be carriedor conveyed out of any infected houses, and that the criers and carriersabroad of bedding or old apparel to be sold or pawned be utterlyprohibited and restrained, and no brokers of bedding or old apparelbe permitted to make any outward show, or hang forth on their stalls, shop-boards, or windows, towards any street, lane, common way, or passage, any old bedding or apparel to be sold, upon pain ofimprisonment. And if any broker or other person shall buy any bedding, apparel, or other stuff out of any infected house within two monthsafter the infection hath been there, his house shall be shut up asinfected, and so shall continue shut up twenty days at the least. 

No Person to be conveyed out of any infected House. 

'If any person visited do fortune, by negligent looking unto, or by anyother means, to come or be conveyed from a place infected to any otherplace, the parish from whence such party hath come or been conveyed, upon notice thereof given, shall at their charge cause the said party sovisited and escaped to be carried and brought back again by night, andthe parties in this case offending to be punished at the direction ofthe alderman of the ward, and the house of the receiver of such visitedperson to be shut up for twenty days. 

Every visited House to be marked. 

'That every house visited be marked with a red cross of a foot long inthe middle of the door, evident to be seen, and with these usual printedwords, that is to say, "Lord, have mercy upon us, " to be set closeover the same cross, there to continue until lawful opening of the samehouse. 

Every visited House to be watched. 

'That the constables see every house shut up, and to be attended withwatchmen, which may keep them in, and minister necessaries unto them attheir own charges, if they be able, or at the common charge, if they areunable; the shutting up to be for the space of four weeks after all bewhole. 

'That precise order to be taken that the searchers, chirurgeons, keepers, and buriers are not to pass the streets without holding a redrod or wand of three feet in length in their hands, open and evident tobe seen, and are not to go into any other house than into their own, orinto that whereunto they are directed or sent for; but to forbear andabstain from company, especially when they have been lately used in anysuch business or attendance. 

Inmates. 

'That where several inmate, -c are in one and the same house, and anyperson in that house happens to be infected, no other person or familyof such house shall be suffered to remove him or themselves without acertificate from the examiners of health of that parish; or in defaultthereof, the house whither he or they so remove shall be shut up as incase of visitation. 

Hackney-Coaches. 

'That care be taken of hackney-coachmen, that they may not (as some ofthem have been observed to do after carrying of infected persons tothe pest-house and other places) be admitted to common use till theircoaches be well aired, and have stood unemployed by the space of five orsix days after such service. '

ORDERS FOR CLEANSING AND KEEPING OF THE STREETS SWEET. 

The Streets to be kept Clean. 

'First, it is thought necessary, and so ordered, that every householderdo cause the street to be daily prepared before his door, and so to keepit clean swept all the week long. 

That Rakers take it from out the Houses. 

'That the sweeping and filth of houses be daily carried away by therakers, and that the raker shall give notice of his coming by theblowing of a horn, as hitherto hath been done. 

Laystalls to be made far off from the City. 

'That the laystalls be removed as far as may be out of the city andcommon passages, and that no nightman or other be suffered to empty avault into any garden near about the city. 

Care to be had of unwholesome Fish or Flesh, and of musty Corn. 

'That special care be taken that no stinking fish, or unwholesome flesh, or musty corn, or other corrupt fruits of what sort soever, be sufferedto be sold about the city, or any part of the same. 

'That the brewers and tippling-houses he looked unto for musty andunwholesome casks. 

'That no hogs, dogs, or cats, or tame pigeons, or conies, be suffered tobe kept within any part of the city, or any swine to be or stray in thestreets or lanes, but that such swine be impounded by the beadle orany other officer, and the owner punished according to Act of CommonCouncil, and that the dogs be killed by the dog-killers appointed forthat purpose. '

ORDERS CONCERNING LOOSE PERSONS AND IDLE ASSEMBLIES. 

Beggars. 

'Forasmuch as nothing is more complained of than the multitude of roguesand wandering beggars that swarm in every place about the city, being agreat cause of the spreading of the infection, and will not be avoided, notwithstanding any orders that have been given to the contrary: It istherefore now ordered, that such constables, and others whom this mattermay any way concern, take special care that no wandering beggarsbe suffered in the streets of this city in any fashion or mannerwhatsoever, upon the penalty provided by the law, to be duly andseverely executed upon them. 

Plays. 

'That all plays, bear-baitings, games, singing of ballads, buckler-play, or such-like causes of assemblies of people be utterly prohibited, andthe parties offending severely punished by every alderman in his ward. 

Feasting prohibited. 

'That all public feasting, and particularly by the companies of thiscity, and dinners at taverns, ale-houses, and other places of commonentertainment, be forborne till further order and allowance; and thatthe money thereby spared be preserved and employed for the benefit andrelief of the poor visited with the infection. 

Tippling-houses. 

'That disorderly tippling in taverns, ale-houses, coffee-houses, andcellars be severely looked unto, as the common sin of this time andgreatest occasion of dispersing the plague. And that no company orperson be suffered to remain or come into any tavern, ale-house, orcoffee-house to drink after nine of the clock in the evening, accordingto the ancient law and custom of this city, upon the penalties ordainedin that behalf. 

'And for the better execution of these orders, and such other rules anddirections as, upon further consideration, shall be found needful: It isordered and enjoined that the aldermen, deputies, and common councilmenshall meet together weekly, once, twice, thrice or oftener (as causeshall require), at some one general place accustomed in their respectivewards (being clear from infection of the plague), to consult howthe said orders may be duly put in execution; not intending that anydwelling in or near places infected shall come to the said meeting whiletheir coming may be doubtful. And the said aldermen, and deputies, andcommon councilmen in their several wards may put in execution any othergood orders that by them at their said meetings shall be conceived anddevised for preservation of his Majesty's subjects from the infection. 

'SIR JOHN LAWRENCE, Lord Mayor. 

SIR GEORGE WATERMAN

SIR CHARLES DOE, Sheriffs. '

I need not say that these orders extended only to such places as werewithin the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction, so it is requisite to observe thatthe justices of Peace within those parishes and places as were calledthe Hamlets and out-parts took the same method. As I remember, theorders for shutting up of houses did not take Place so soon on our side, because, as I said before, the plague did not reach to these easternparts of the town at least, nor begin to be very violent, till thebeginning of August. For example, the whole bill from the 11th to the18th of July was 1761, yet there died but 71 of the plague in all thoseparishes we call the Tower Hamlets, and they were as follows:--

 - The next week And to the 1st - was thus: of Aug. Thus: Aldgate 14 34 65 Stepney 33 58 76 Whitechappel 21 48 79 St Katherine, Tower 2 4 4 Trinity, Minories 1 1 4 - --- --- --- - 71 145 228

It was indeed coming on amain, for the burials that same week were inthe next adjoining parishes thus:--

 - The next week - prodigiously To the 1st of - increased, as: Aug. Thus: St Leonard's, Shoreditch 64 84 110 St Botolph's, Bishopsgate 65 105 116 St Giles's, Cripplegate 213 421 554 - --- --- --- - 342 610 780

This shutting up of houses was at first counted a very cruel andunchristian method, and the poor people so confined made bitterlamentations. Complaints of the severity of it were also daily broughtto my Lord Mayor, of houses causelessly (and some maliciously) shut up. I cannot say; but upon inquiry many that complained so loudly were foundin a condition to be continued; and others again, inspection being madeupon the sick person, and the sickness not appearing infectious, or ifuncertain, yet on his being content to be carried to the pest-house, were released. 

It is true that the locking up the doors of people's houses, and settinga watchman there night and day to prevent their stirring out or anycoming to them, when perhaps the sound people in the family might haveescaped if they had been removed from the sick, looked very hard andcruel; and many people perished in these miserable confinements which, 'tis reasonable to believe, would not have been distempered if they hadhad liberty, though the plague was in the house; at which the peoplewere very clamorous and uneasy at first, and several violences werecommitted and injuries offered to the men who were set to watch thehouses so shut up; also several people broke out by force in manyplaces, as I shall observe by-and-by. But it was a public good thatjustified the private mischief, and there was no obtaining the leastmitigation by any application to magistrates or government at that time, at least not that I heard of. This put the people upon all manner ofstratagem in order, if possible, to get out; and it would fill a littlevolume to set down the arts used by the people of such houses to shutthe eyes of the watchmen who were employed, to deceive them, and toescape or break out from them, in which frequent scuffles and somemischief happened; of which by itself. 

As I went along Houndsditch one morning about eight o'clock there wasa great noise. It is true, indeed, there was not much crowd, becausepeople were not very free to gather together, or to stay long togetherwhen they were there; nor did I stay long there. But the outcry was loudenough to prompt my curiosity, and I called to one that looked out of awindow, and asked what was the matter. 

A watchman, it seems, had been employed to keep his post at the door ofa house which was infected, or said to be infected, and was shut up. Hehad been there all night for two nights together, as he told his story, and the day-watchman had been there one day, and was now come to relievehim. All this while no noise had been heard in the house, no light hadbeen seen; they called for nothing, sent him of no errands, which usedto be the chief business of the watchmen; neither had they given him anydisturbance, as he said, from the Monday afternoon, when he heard greatcrying and screaming in the house, which, as he supposed, was occasionedby some of the family dying just at that time. It seems, the nightbefore, the dead-cart, as it was called, had been stopped there, and aservant-maid had been brought down to the door dead, and the buriersor bearers, as they were called, put her into the cart, wrapt only in agreen rug, and carried her away. 

The watchman had knocked at the door, it seems, when he heard that noiseand crying, as above, and nobody answered a great while; but at last onelooked out and said with an angry, quick tone, and yet a kind of cryingvoice, or a voice of one that was crying, 'What d'ye want, that ye makesuch a knocking?' He answered, 'I am the watchman! How do you do? Whatis the matter?' The person answered, 'What is that to you? Stop thedead-cart. ' This, it seems, was about one o'clock. Soon after, as thefellow said, he stopped the dead-cart, and then knocked again, butnobody answered. He continued knocking, and the bellman called outseveral times, 'Bring out your dead'; but nobody answered, till the manthat drove the cart, being called to other houses, would stay no longer, and drove away. 

The watchman knew not what to make of all this, so he let them alonetill the morning-man or day-watchman, as they called him, came torelieve him. Giving him an account of the particulars, they knocked atthe door a great while, but nobody answered; and they observed that thewindow or casement at which the person had looked out who had answeredbefore continued open, being up two pair of stairs. 

Upon this the two men, to satisfy their curiosity, got a long ladder, and one of them went up to the window and looked into the room, wherehe saw a woman lying dead upon the floor in a dismal manner, having noclothes on her but her shift. But though he called aloud, and puttingin his long staff, knocked hard on the floor, yet nobody stirred oranswered; neither could he hear any noise in the house. 

He came down again upon this, and acquainted his fellow, who went upalso; and finding it just so, they resolved to acquaint either the LordMayor or some other magistrate of it, but did not offer to go in at thewindow. The magistrate, it seems, upon the information of the two men, ordered the house to be broke open, a constable and other personsbeing appointed to be present, that nothing might be plundered; andaccordingly it was so done, when nobody was found in the house but thatyoung woman, who having been infected and past recovery, the rest hadleft her to die by herself, and were every one gone, having found someway to delude the watchman, and to get open the door, or get out at someback-door, or over the tops of the houses, so that he knew nothing ofit; and as to those cries and shrieks which he heard, it was supposedthey were the passionate cries of the family at the bitter parting, which, to be sure, it was to them all, this being the sister tothe mistress of the family. The man of the house, his wife, severalchildren, and servants, being all gone and fled, whether sick or sound, that I could never learn; nor, indeed, did I make much inquiry after it. 

Many such escapes were made out of infected houses, as particularly whenthe watchman was sent of some errand; for it was his business to go ofany errand that the family sent him of; that is to say, for necessaries, such as food and physic; to fetch physicians, if they would come, orsurgeons, or nurses, or to order the dead-cart, and the like; but withthis condition, too, that when he went he was to lock up the outer doorof the house and take the key away with him, To evade this, and cheatthe watchmen, people got two or three keys made to their locks, or theyfound ways to unscrew the locks such as were screwed on, and so take offthe lock, being in the inside of the house, and while they sent away thewatchman to the market, to the bakehouse, or for one trifle or another, open the door and go out as often as they pleased. But this being foundout, the officers afterwards had orders to padlock up the doors on theoutside, and place bolts on them as they thought fit. 

At another house, as I was informed, in the street next within Aldgate, a whole family was shut up and locked in because the maid-servant wastaken sick. The master of the house had complained by his friends to thenext alderman and to the Lord Mayor, and had consented to have the maidcarried to the pest-house, but was refused; so the door was marked witha red cross, a padlock on the outside, as above, and a watchman set tokeep the door, according to public order. 

After the master of the house found there was no remedy, but thathe, his wife, and his children were to be locked up with this poordistempered servant, he called to the watchman, and told him he must gothen and fetch a nurse for them to attend this poor girl, for that itwould be certain death to them all to oblige them to nurse her; and toldhim plainly that if he would not do this, the maid must perish either ofthe distemper or be starved for want of food, for he was resolved noneof his family should go near her; and she lay in the garret four storeyhigh, where she could not cry out, or call to anybody for help. 

The watchman consented to that, and went and fetched a nurse, as hewas appointed, and brought her to them the same evening. During thisinterval the master of the house took his opportunity to break a largehole through his shop into a bulk or stall, where formerly a cobbler hadsat, before or under his shop-window; but the tenant, as may be supposedat such a dismal time as that, was dead or removed, and so he had thekey in his own keeping. Having made his way into this stall, which hecould not have done if the man had been at the door, the noise he wasobliged to make being such as would have alarmed the watchman; I say, having made his way into this stall, he sat still till the watchmanreturned with the nurse, and all the next day also. But the nightfollowing, having contrived to send the watchman of another triflingerrand, which, as I take it, was to an apothecary's for a plaister forthe maid, which he was to stay for the making up, or some other sucherrand that might secure his staying some time; in that time he conveyedhimself and all his family out of the house, and left the nurse and thewatchman to bury the poor wench--that is, throw her into the cart--andtake care of the house. 

I could give a great many such stories as these, diverting enough, which in the long course of that dismal year I met with--that is, heardof--and which are very certain to be true, or very near the truth; thatis to say, true in the general: for no man could at such a time learnall the particulars. There was likewise violence used with the watchmen, as was reported, in abundance of places; and I believe that from thebeginning of the visitation to the end, there was not less than eighteenor twenty of them killed, or so wounded as to be taken up for dead, which was supposed to be done by the people in the infected houses whichwere shut up, and where they attempted to come out and were opposed. 

Nor, indeed, could less be expected, for here were so many prisons inthe town as there were houses shut up; and as the people shut up orimprisoned so were guilty of no crime, only shut up because miserable, it was really the more intolerable to them. 

It had also this difference, that every prison, as we may call it, hadbut one jailer, and as he had the whole house to guard, and that manyhouses were so situated as that they had several ways out, some more, some less, and some into several streets, it was impossible for one manso to guard all the passages as to prevent the escape of people madedesperate by the fright of their circumstances, by the resentment oftheir usage, or by the raging of the distemper itself; so that theywould talk to the watchman on one side of the house, while the familymade their escape at another. 

For example, in Coleman Street there are abundance of alleys, as appearsstill. A house was shut up in that they call White's Alley; and thishouse had a back-window, not a door, into a court which had a passageinto Bell Alley. A watchman was set by the constable at the door ofthis house, and there he stood, or his comrade, night and day, while thefamily went all away in the evening out at that window into the court, and left the poor fellows warding and watching for near a fortnight. 

Not far from the same place they blew up a watchman with gunpowder, andburned the poor fellow dreadfully; and while he made hideous cries, andnobody would venture to come near to help him, the whole family thatwere able to stir got out at the windows one storey high, two that wereleft sick calling out for help. Care was taken to give them nurses tolook after them, but the persons fled were never found, till after theplague was abated they returned; but as nothing could be proved, sonothing could be done to them. 

It is to be considered, too, that as these were prisons without bars andbolts, which our common prisons are furnished with, so the people letthemselves down out of their windows, even in the face of the watchman, bringing swords or pistols in their hands, and threatening the poorwretch to shoot him if he stirred or called for help. 

In other cases, some had gardens, and walls or pales, between them andtheir neighbours, or yards and back-houses; and these, by friendship andentreaties, would get leave to get over those walls or pales, and so goout at their neighbours' doors; or, by giving money to their servants, get them to let them through in the night; so that in short, theshutting up of houses was in no wise to be depended upon. Neither didit answer the end at all, serving more to make the people desperate, and drive them to such extremities as that they would break out at alladventures. 

And that which was still worse, those that did thus break out spread theinfection farther by their wandering about with the distemper upon them, in their desperate circumstances, than they would otherwise havedone; for whoever considers all the particulars in such cases mustacknowledge, and we cannot doubt but the severity of those confinementsmade many people desperate, and made them run out of their houses atall hazards, and with the plague visibly upon them, not knowing eitherwhither to go or what to do, or, indeed, what they did; and many thatdid so were driven to dreadful exigencies and extremities, and perishedin the streets or fields for mere want, or dropped down by the ragingviolence of the fever upon them. Others wandered into the country, andwent forward any way, as their desperation guided them, not knowingwhither they went or would go: till, faint and tired, and not gettingany relief, the houses and villages on the road refusing to admit themto lodge whether infected or no, they have perished by the roadside orgotten into barns and died there, none daring to come to them or relievethem, though perhaps not infected, for nobody would believe them. 

On the other hand, when the plague at first seized a family that is tosay, when any body of the family had gone out and unwarily or otherwisecatched the distemper and brought it home--it was certainly known by thefamily before it was known to the officers, who, as you will see bythe order, were appointed to examine into the circumstances of all sickpersons when they heard of their being sick. 

In this interval, between their being taken sick and the examinerscoming, the master of the house had leisure and liberty to removehimself or all his family, if he knew whither to go, and many did so. But the great disaster was that many did thus after they were reallyinfected themselves, and so carried the disease into the houses of thosewho were so hospitable as to receive them; which, it must be confessed, was very cruel and ungrateful. 

And this was in part the reason of the general notion, or scandalrather, which went about of the temper of people infected: namely, that they did not take the least care or make any scruple of infectingothers, though I cannot say but there might be some truth in it too, butnot so general as was reported. What natural reason could be given forso wicked a thing at a time when they might conclude themselves justgoing to appear at the bar of Divine justice I know not. I am very wellsatisfied that it cannot be reconciled to religion and principle anymore than it can be to generosity and Humanity, but I may speak of thatagain. 

I am speaking now of people made desperate by the apprehensions of theirbeing shut up, and their breaking out by stratagem or force, eitherbefore or after they were shut up, whose misery was not lessened whenthey were out, but sadly increased. On the other hand, many that thusgot away had retreats to go to and other houses, where they lockedthemselves up and kept hid till the plague was over; and many families, foreseeing the approach of the distemper, laid up stores of provisionssufficient for their whole families, and shut themselves up, and that soentirely that they were neither seen or heard of till the infection wasquite ceased, and then came abroad sound and well. I might recollectseveral such as these, and give you the particulars of their management;for doubtless it was the most effectual secure step that could be takenfor such whose circumstances would not admit them to remove, or who hadnot retreats abroad proper for the case; for in being thus shut up theywere as if they had been a hundred miles off. Nor do I remember that anyone of those families miscarried. Among these, several Dutch merchantswere particularly remarkable, who kept their houses like littlegarrisons besieged suffering none to go in or out or come near them, particularly one in a court in Throgmorton Street whose house lookedinto Draper's Garden. 

But I come back to the case of families infected and shut up by themagistrates. The misery of those families is not to be expressed; and itwas generally in such houses that we heard the most dismal shrieks andoutcries of the poor people, terrified and even frighted to death by thesight of the condition of their dearest relations, and by the terror ofbeing imprisoned as they were. 

I remember, and while I am writing this story I think I hear the verysound of it, a certain lady had an only daughter, a young maidenabout nineteen years old, and who was possessed of a very considerablefortune. They were only lodgers in the house where they were. The youngwoman, her mother, and the maid had been abroad on some occasion, I donot remember what, for the house was not shut up; but about two hoursafter they came home the young lady complained she was not well; in aquarter of an hour more she vomited and had a violent pain in her head. 'Pray God', says her mother, in a terrible fright, 'my child has not thedistemper!' The pain in her head increasing, her mother ordered the bedto be warmed, and resolved to put her to bed, and prepared to give herthings to sweat, which was the ordinary remedy to be taken when thefirst apprehensions of the distemper began. 

While the bed was airing the mother undressed the young woman, andjust as she was laid down in the bed, she, looking upon her body witha candle, immediately discovered the fatal tokens on the inside of herthighs. Her mother, not being able to contain herself, threw down hercandle and shrieked out in such a frightful manner that it was enough toplace horror upon the stoutest heart in the world; nor was it one screamor one cry, but the fright having seized her spirits, she--faintedfirst, then recovered, then ran all over the house, up the stairs anddown the stairs, like one distracted, and indeed really was distracted, and continued screeching and crying out for several hours void of allsense, or at least government of her senses, and, as I was told, nevercame thoroughly to herself again. As to the young maiden, she was a deadcorpse from that moment, for the gangrene which occasions the spots hadspread [over] her whole body, and she died in less than two hours. Butstill the mother continued crying out, not knowing anything more of herchild, several hours after she was dead. It is so long ago that I amnot certain, but I think the mother never recovered, but died in two orthree weeks after. 

This was an extraordinary case, and I am therefore the more particularin it, because I came so much to the knowledge of it; but there wereinnumerable such-like cases, and it was seldom that the weekly bill camein but there were two or three put in, 'frighted'; that is, that maywell be called frighted to death. But besides those who were so frightedas to die upon the spot, there were great numbers frighted to otherextremes, some frighted out of their senses, some out of their memory, and some out of their understanding. But I return to the shutting up ofhouses. 

As several people, I say, got out of their houses by stratagem afterthey were shut UP, so others got out by bribing the watchmen, and givingthem money to let them go privately out in the night. I must confess Ithought it at that time the most innocent corruption or bribery that anyman could be guilty of, and therefore could not but pity the poor men, and think it was hard when three of those watchmen were publicly whippedthrough the streets for suffering people to go out of houses shut up. 

But notwithstanding that severity, money prevailed with the poor men, and many families found means to make sallies out, and escape that wayafter they had been shut up; but these were generally such as had someplaces to retire to; and though there was no easy passing the roads anywhither after the 1st of August, yet there were many ways of retreat, and particularly, as I hinted, some got tents and set them up in thefields, carrying beds or straw to lie on, and provisions to eat, andso lived in them as hermits in a cell, for nobody would venture to comenear them; and several stories were told of such, some comical, sometragical, some who lived like wandering pilgrims in the deserts, andescaped by making themselves exiles in such a manner as is scarce to becredited, and who yet enjoyed more liberty than was to be expected insuch cases. 

I have by me a story of two brothers and their kinsman, who being singlemen, but that had stayed in the city too long to get away, and indeednot knowing where to go to have any retreat, nor having wherewith totravel far, took a course for their own preservation, which though initself at first desperate, yet was so natural that it may be wonderedthat no more did so at that time. They were but of mean condition, andyet not so very poor as that they could not furnish themselves with somelittle conveniences such as might serve to keep life and soul together;and finding the distemper increasing in a terrible manner, they resolvedto shift as well as they could, and to be gone. 

One of them had been a soldier in the late wars, and before that in theLow Countries, and having been bred to no particular employment but hisarms, and besides being wounded, and not able to work very hard, had forsome time been employed at a baker's of sea-biscuit in Wapping. 

The brother of this man was a seaman too, but somehow or other had beenhurt of one leg, that he could not go to sea, but had worked for hisliving at a sailmaker's in Wapping, or thereabouts; and being a goodhusband, had laid up some money, and was the richest of the three. 

The third man was a joiner or carpenter by trade, a handy fellow, and hehad no wealth but his box or basket of tools, with the help of which hecould at any time get his living, such a time as this excepted, whereverhe went--and he lived near Shadwell. 

They all lived in Stepney parish, which, as I have said, being the lastthat was infected, or at least violently, they stayed there till theyevidently saw the plague was abating at the west part of the town, andcoming towards the east, where they lived. 

The story of those three men, if the reader will be content to have megive it in their own persons, without taking upon me to either vouch theparticulars or answer for any mistakes, I shall give as distinctly as Ican, believing the history will be a very good pattern for any poor manto follow, in case the like public desolation should happen here; and ifthere may be no such occasion, which God of His infinite mercy grant us, still the story may have its uses so many ways as that it will, I hope, never be said that the relating has been unprofitable. 

I say all this previous to the history, having yet, for the present, much more to say before I quit my own part. 

I went all the first part of the time freely about the streets, thoughnot so freely as to run myself into apparent danger, except when theydug the great pit in the churchyard of our parish of Aldgate. A terriblepit it was, and I could not resist my curiosity to go and see it. As near as I may judge, it was about forty feet in length, and aboutfifteen or sixteen feet broad, and at the time I first looked at it, about nine feet deep; but it was said they dug it near twenty feetdeep afterwards in one part of it, till they could go no deeper for thewater; for they had, it seems, dug several large pits before this. Forthough the plague was long a-coming to our parish, yet, when it didcome, there was no parish in or about London where it raged with suchviolence as in the two parishes of Aldgate and Whitechappel. 

I say they had dug several pits in another ground, when the distemperbegan to spread in our parish, and especially when the dead-carts beganto go about, which was not, in our parish, till the beginning of August. Into these pits they had put perhaps fifty or sixty bodies each; thenthey made larger holes wherein they buried all that the cart brought ina week, which, by the middle to the end of August, came to from 200to 400 a week; and they could not well dig them larger, because of theorder of the magistrates confining them to leave no bodies within sixfeet of the surface; and the water coming on at about seventeen oreighteen feet, they could not well, I say, put more in one pit. But now, at the beginning of September, the plague raging in a dreadful manner, and the number of burials in our parish increasing to more than was everburied in any parish about London of no larger extent, they ordered thisdreadful gulf to be dug--for such it was, rather than a pit. 

They had supposed this pit would have supplied them for a month or morewhen they dug it, and some blamed the churchwardens for suffering such afrightful thing, telling them they were making preparations to bury thewhole parish, and the like; but time made it appear the churchwardensknew the condition of the parish better than they did: for, the pitbeing finished the 4th of September, I think, they began to bury in itthe 6th, and by the 20th, which was just two weeks, they had thrown intoit 1114 bodies when they were obliged to fill it up, the bodies beingthen come to lie within six feet of the surface. I doubt not but theremay be some ancient persons alive in the parish who can justify the factof this, and are able to show even in what place of the churchyard thepit lay better than I can. The mark of it also was many years to beseen in the churchyard on the surface, lying in length parallel withthe passage which goes by the west wall of the churchyard out ofHoundsditch, and turns east again into Whitechappel, coming out near theThree Nuns' Inn. 

It was about the 10th of September that my curiosity led, or ratherdrove, me to go and see this pit again, when there had been near 400people buried in it; and I was not content to see it in the day-time, asI had done before, for then there would have been nothing to have beenseen but the loose earth; for all the bodies that were thrown in wereimmediately covered with earth by those they called the buriers, whichat other times were called bearers; but I resolved to go in the nightand see some of them thrown in. 

There was a strict order to prevent people coming to those pits, andthat was only to prevent infection. But after some time that order wasmore necessary, for people that were infected and near their end, anddelirious also, would run to those pits, wrapt in blankets or rugs, andthrow themselves in, and, as they said, bury themselves. I cannot saythat the officers suffered any willingly to lie there; but I have heardthat in a great pit in Finsbury, in the parish of Cripplegate, it lyingopen then to the fields, for it was not then walled about, [many] cameand threw themselves in, and expired there, before they threw any earthupon them; and that when they came to bury others and found them there, they were quite dead, though not cold. 

This may serve a little to describe the dreadful condition of that day, though it is impossible to say anything that is able to give a true ideaof it to those who did not see it, other than this, that it was indeedvery, very, very dreadful, and such as no tongue can express. 

I got admittance into the churchyard by being acquainted with the sextonwho attended; who, though he did not refuse me at all, yet earnestlypersuaded me not to go, telling me very seriously (for he was a good, religious, and sensible man) that it was indeed their business and dutyto venture, and to run all hazards, and that in it they might hope to bepreserved; but that I had no apparent call to it but my own curiosity, which, he said, he believed I would not pretend was sufficient tojustify my running that hazard. I told him I had been pressed in my mindto go, and that perhaps it might be an instructing sight, that might notbe without its uses. 'Nay, ' says the good man, 'if you will venture uponthat score, name of God go in; for, depend upon it, 'twill be a sermonto you, it may be, the best that ever you heard in your life. 'Tis aspeaking sight, ' says he, 'and has a voice with it, and a loud one, tocall us all to repentance'; and with that he opened the door and said, 'Go, if you will. '

His discourse had shocked my resolution a little, and I stood waveringfor a good while, but just at that interval I saw two links come overfrom the end of the Minories, and heard the bellman, and then appeareda dead-cart, as they called it, coming over the streets; so I could nolonger resist my desire of seeing it, and went in. There was nobody, asI could perceive at first, in the churchyard, or going into it, but theburiers and the fellow that drove the cart, or rather led the horse andcart; but when they came up to the pit they saw a man go to and again, muffled up in a brown Cloak, and making motions with his hands under hiscloak, as if he was in great agony, and the buriers immediately gatheredabout him, supposing he was one of those poor delirious or desperatecreatures that used to pretend, as I have said, to bury themselves. Hesaid nothing as he walked about, but two or three times groaned verydeeply and loud, and sighed as he would break his heart. 

When the buriers came up to him they soon found he was neither aperson infected and desperate, as I have observed above, or a persondistempered--in mind, but one oppressed with a dreadful weight of griefindeed, having his wife and several of his children all in the cart thatwas just come in with him, and he followed in an agony and excess ofsorrow. He mourned heartily, as it was easy to see, but with a kind ofmasculine grief that could not give itself vent by tears; and calmlydefying the buriers to let him alone, said he would only see the bodiesthrown in and go away, so they left importuning him. But no sooner wasthe cart turned round and the bodies shot into the pit promiscuously, which was a surprise to him, for he at least expected they would havebeen decently laid in, though indeed he was afterwards convinced thatwas impracticable; I say, no sooner did he see the sight but he criedout aloud, unable to contain himself. I could not hear what he said, but he went backward two or three steps and fell down in a swoon. Theburiers ran to him and took him up, and in a little while he came tohimself, and they led him away to the Pie Tavern over against the endof Houndsditch, where, it seems, the man was known, and where theytook care of him. He looked into the pit again as he went away, but theburiers had covered the bodies so immediately with throwing in earth, that though there was light enough, for there were lanterns, and candlesin them, placed all night round the sides of the pit, upon heaps ofearth, seven or eight, or perhaps more, yet nothing could be seen. 

This was a mournful scene indeed, and affected me almost as much as therest; but the other was awful and full of terror. The cart had in itsixteen or seventeen bodies; some were wrapt up in linen sheets, some inrags, some little other than naked, or so loose that what covering theyhad fell from them in the shooting out of the cart, and they fellquite naked among the rest; but the matter was not much to them, or theindecency much to any one else, seeing they were all dead, and were tobe huddled together into the common grave of mankind, as we may call it, for here was no difference made, but poor and rich went together; therewas no other way of burials, neither was it possible there should, forcoffins were not to be had for the prodigious numbers that fell in sucha calamity as this. 

It was reported by way of scandal upon the buriers, that if any corpsewas delivered to them decently wound up, as we called it then, in awinding-sheet tied over the head and feet, which some did, and which wasgenerally of good linen; I say, it was reported that the buriers wereso wicked as to strip them in the cart and carry them quite naked to theground. But as I cannot easily credit anything so vile among Christians, and at a time so filled with terrors as that was, I can only relate itand leave it undetermined. 

Innumerable stories also went about of the cruel behaviours andpractices of nurses who tended the sick, and of their hastening on thefate of those they tended in their sickness. But I shall say more ofthis in its place. 

I was indeed shocked with this sight; it almost overwhelmed me, andI went away with my heart most afflicted, and full of the afflictingthoughts, such as I cannot describe just at my going out of the church, and turning up the street towards my own house, I saw another cart withlinks, and a bellman going before, coming out of Harrow Alley in theButcher Row, on the other side of the way, and being, as I perceived, very full of dead bodies, it went directly over the street also towardthe church. I stood a while, but I had no stomach to go back again tosee the same dismal scene over again, so I went directly home, where Icould not but consider with thankfulness the risk I had run, believing Ihad gotten no injury, as indeed I had not. 

Here the poor unhappy gentleman's grief came into my head again, andindeed I could not but shed tears in the reflection upon it, perhapsmore than he did himself; but his case lay so heavy upon my mind thatI could not prevail with myself, but that I must go out again into thestreet, and go to the Pie Tavern, resolving to inquire what became ofhim. 

It was by this time one o'clock in the morning, and yet the poorgentleman was there. The truth was, the people of the house, knowing him, had entertained him, and kept him there all the night, notwithstanding the danger of being infected by him, though it appearedthe man was perfectly sound himself. 

It is with regret that I take notice of this tavern. The people werecivil, mannerly, and an obliging sort of folks enough, and had till thistime kept their house open and their trade going on, though not so verypublicly as formerly: but there was a dreadful set of fellows that usedtheir house, and who, in the middle of all this horror, met there everynight, behaved with all the revelling and roaring extravagances as isusual for such people to do at other times, and, indeed, to such anoffensive degree that the very master and mistress of the house grewfirst ashamed and then terrified at them. 

They sat generally in a room next the street, and as they always keptlate hours, so when the dead-cart came across the street-end to gointo Houndsditch, which was in view of the tavern windows, they wouldfrequently open the windows as soon as they heard the bell and look outat them; and as they might often hear sad lamentations of people in thestreets or at their windows as the carts went along, they would maketheir impudent mocks and jeers at them, especially if they heard thepoor people call upon God to have mercy upon them, as many would do atthose times in their ordinary passing along the streets. 

These gentlemen, being something disturbed with the clutter of bringingthe poor gentleman into the house, as above, were first angry and veryhigh with the master of the house for suffering such a fellow, as theycalled him, to be brought out of the grave into their house; but beinganswered that the man was a neighbour, and that he was sound, butoverwhelmed with the calamity of his family, and the like, they turnedtheir anger into ridiculing the man and his sorrow for his wife andchildren, taunted him with want of courage to leap into the great pitand go to heaven, as they jeeringly expressed it, along with them, adding some very profane and even blasphemous expressions. 

They were at this vile work when I came back to the house, and, as faras I could see, though the man sat still, mute and disconsolate, andtheir affronts could not divert his sorrow, yet he was both grieved andoffended at their discourse. Upon this I gently reproved them, beingwell enough acquainted with their characters, and not unknown in personto two of them. 

They immediately fell upon me with ill language and oaths, asked mewhat I did out of my grave at such a time when so many honester men werecarried into the churchyard, and why I was not at home saying my prayersagainst the dead-cart came for me, and the like. 

I was indeed astonished at the impudence of the men, though not at alldiscomposed at their treatment of me. However, I kept my temper. I toldthem that though I defied them or any man in the world to tax me withany dishonesty, yet I acknowledged that in this terrible judgement ofGod many better than I were swept away and carried to their grave. Butto answer their question directly, the case was, that I was mercifullypreserved by that great God whose name they had blasphemed and taken invain by cursing and swearing in a dreadful manner, and that I believedI was preserved in particular, among other ends of His goodness, thatI might reprove them for their audacious boldness in behaving in sucha manner and in such an awful time as this was, especially for theirjeering and mocking at an honest gentleman and a neighbour (for someof them knew him), who, they saw, was overwhelmed with sorrow for thebreaches which it had pleased God to make upon his family. 

I cannot call exactly to mind the hellish, abominable raillery whichwas the return they made to that talk of mine: being provoked, it seems, that I was not at all afraid to be free with them; nor, if I couldremember, would I fill my account with any of the words, the horridoaths, curses, and vile expressions, such as, at that time of the day, even the worst and ordinariest people in the street would not use; for, except such hardened creatures as these, the most wicked wretches thatcould be found had at that time some terror upon their minds of the handof that Power which could thus in a moment destroy them. 

But that which was the worst in all their devilish language was, thatthey were not afraid to blaspheme God and talk atheistically, makinga jest of my calling the plague the hand of God; mocking, and evenlaughing, at the word judgement, as if the providence of God had noconcern in the inflicting such a desolating stroke; and that the peoplecalling upon God as they saw the carts carrying away the dead bodies wasall enthusiastic, absurd, and impertinent. 

I made them some reply, such as I thought proper, but which I found wasso far from putting a check to their horrid way of speaking that it madethem rail the more, so that I confess it filled me with horror and akind of rage, and I came away, as I told them, lest the hand of thatjudgement which had visited the whole city should glorify His vengeanceupon them, and all that were near them. 

They received all reproof with the utmost contempt, and made thegreatest mockery that was possible for them to do at me, giving me allthe opprobrious, insolent scoffs that they could think of for preachingto them, as they called it, which indeed grieved me, rather than angeredme; and I went away, blessing God, however, in my mind that I had notspared them, though they had insulted me so much. 

They continued this wretched course three or four days after this, continually mocking and jeering at all that showed themselves religiousor serious, or that were any way touched with the sense of the terriblejudgement of God upon us; and I was informed they flouted in the samemanner at the good people who, notwithstanding the contagion, met at thechurch, fasted, and prayed to God to remove His hand from them. 

I say, they continued this dreadful course three or four days--I thinkit was no more--when one of them, particularly he who asked the poorgentleman what he did out of his grave, was struck from Heaven with theplague, and died in a most deplorable manner; and, in a word, they wereevery one of them carried into the great pit which I have mentionedabove, before it was quite filled up, which was not above a fortnight orthereabout. 

These men were guilty of many extravagances, such as one would thinkhuman nature should have trembled at the thoughts of at such a timeof general terror as was then upon us, and particularly scoffing andmocking at everything which they happened to see that was religiousamong the people, especially at their thronging zealously to theplace of public worship to implore mercy from Heaven in such a time ofdistress; and this tavern where they held their dub being within viewof the church-door, they had the more particular occasion for theiratheistical profane mirth. 

But this began to abate a little with them before the accident which Ihave related happened, for the infection increased so violently at thispart of the town now, that people began to be afraid to come to thechurch; at least such numbers did not resort thither as was usual. Manyof the clergymen likewise were dead, and others gone into the country;for it really required a steady courage and a strong faith for a man notonly to venture being in town at such a time as this, but likewise toventure to come to church and perform the office of a minister toa congregation, of whom he had reason to believe many of them wereactually infected with the plague, and to do this every day, or twice aday, as in some places was done. 

It is true the people showed an extraordinary zeal in these religiousexercises, and as the church-doors were always open, people would goin single at all times, whether the minister was officiating or no, and locking themselves into separate pews, would be praying to God withgreat fervency and devotion. 

Others assembled at meeting-houses, every one as their differentopinions in such things guided, but all were promiscuously the subjectof these men's drollery, especially at the beginning of the visitation. 

It seems they had been checked for their open insulting religion in thismanner by several good people of every persuasion, and that, and theviolent raging of the infection, I suppose, was the occasion that theyhad abated much of their rudeness for some time before, and were onlyroused by the spirit of ribaldry and atheism at the clamour which wasmade when the gentleman was first brought in there, and perhaps wereagitated by the same devil, when I took upon me to reprove them; thoughI did it at first with all the calmness, temper, and good manners thatI could, which for a while they insulted me the more for thinking ithad been in fear of their resentment, though afterwards they found thecontrary. 

I went home, indeed, grieved and afflicted in my mind at the abominablewickedness of those men, not doubting, however, that they would be madedreadful examples of God's justice; for I looked upon this dismal timeto be a particular season of Divine vengeance, and that God would onthis occasion single out the proper objects of His displeasure in a moreespecial and remarkable manner than at another time; and that thoughI did believe that many good people would, and did, fall in the commoncalamity, and that it was no certain rule to judge of the eternalstate of any one by their being distinguished in such a time of generaldestruction neither one way or other; yet, I say, it could not but seemreasonable to believe that God would not think fit to spare by His mercysuch open declared enemies, that should insult His name and Being, defyHis vengeance, and mock at His worship and worshippers at such a time;no, not though His mercy had thought fit to bear with and spare them atother times; that this was a day of visitation, a day of God's anger, and those words came into my thought, Jer. V. 9: 'Shall I not visit forthese things? saith the Lord: and shall not My soul be avenged of such anation as this?'

These things, I say, lay upon my mind, and I went home very much grievedand oppressed with the horror of these men's wickedness, and to thinkthat anything could be so vile, so hardened, and notoriously wicked asto insult God, and His servants, and His worship in such a manner, andat such a time as this was, when He had, as it were, His sword drawn inHis hand on purpose to take vengeance not on them only, but on the wholenation. 

I had, indeed, been in some passion at first with them--though it wasreally raised, not by any affront they had offered me personally, butby the horror their blaspheming tongues filled me with. However, I wasdoubtful in my thoughts whether the resentment I retained was not allupon my own private account, for they had given me a great deal of illlanguage too--I mean personally; but after some pause, and having aweight of grief upon my mind, I retired myself as soon as I came home, for I slept not that night; and giving God most humble thanks formy preservation in the eminent danger I had been in, I set my mindseriously and with the utmost earnestness to pray for those desperatewretches, that God would pardon them, open their eyes, and effectuallyhumble them. 

By this I not only did my duty, namely, to pray for those whodespitefully used me, but I fully tried my own heart, to my funsatisfaction, that it was not filled with any spirit of resentment asthey had offended me in particular; and I humbly recommend the methodto all those that would know, or be certain, how to distinguish betweentheir zeal for the honour of God and the effects of their privatepassions and resentment. 

But I must go back here to the particular incidents which occur to mythoughts of the time of the visitation, and particularly to the time oftheir shutting up houses in the first part of their sickness; for beforethe sickness was come to its height people had more room to make theirobservations than they had afterward; but when it was in the extremitythere was no such thing as communication with one another, as before. 

During the shutting up of houses, as I have said, some violence wasoffered to the watchmen. As to soldiers, there were none to be found. The few guards which the king then had, which were nothing like thenumber entertained since, were dispersed, either at Oxford with theCourt, or in quarters in the remoter parts of the country, smalldetachments excepted, who did duty at the Tower and at Whitehall, andthese but very few. Neither am I positive that there was any other guardat the Tower than the warders, as they called them, who stand at thegate with gowns and caps, the same as the yeomen of the guard, exceptthe ordinary gunners, who were twenty-four, and the officers appointedto look after the magazine, who were called armourers. As to trainedbands, there was no possibility of raising any; neither, if theLieutenancy, either of London or Middlesex, had ordered the drums tobeat for the militia, would any of the companies, I believe, have drawntogether, whatever risk they had run. 

This made the watchmen be the less regarded, and perhaps occasioned thegreater violence to be used against them. I mention it on this score toobserve that the setting watchmen thus to keep the people in was, firstof all, not effectual, but that the people broke out, whether by forceor by stratagem, even almost as often as they pleased; and, second, thatthose that did thus break out were generally people infected who, intheir desperation, running about from one place to another, valued notwhom they injured: and which perhaps, as I have said, might give birthto report that it was natural to the infected people to desire to infectothers, which report was really false. 

And I know it so well, and in so many several cases, that I could giveseveral relations of good, pious, and religious people who, when theyhave had the distemper, have been so far from being forward to infectothers that they have forbid their own family to come near them, inhopes of their being preserved, and have even died without seeing theirnearest relations lest they should be instrumental to give them thedistemper, and infect or endanger them. If, then, there were caseswherein the infected people were careless of the injury they did toothers, this was certainly one of them, if not the chief, namely, whenpeople who had the distemper had broken out from houses which were soshut up, and having been driven to extremities for provision or forentertainment, had endeavoured to conceal their condition, and havebeen thereby instrumental involuntarily to infect others who have beenignorant and unwary. 

This is one of the reasons why I believed then, and do believe still, that the shutting up houses thus by force, and restraining, or ratherimprisoning, people in their own houses, as I said above, was of littleor no service in the whole. Nay, I am of opinion it was rather hurtful, having forced those desperate people to wander abroad with the plagueupon them, who would otherwise have died quietly in their beds. 

I remember one citizen who, having thus broken out of his house inAldersgate Street or thereabout, went along the road to Islington; heattempted to have gone in at the Angel Inn, and after that the WhiteHorse, two inns known still by the same signs, but was refused; afterwhich he came to the Pied Bull, an inn also still continuing the samesign. He asked them for lodging for one night only, pretending to begoing into Lincolnshire, and assuring them of his being very sound andfree from the infection, which also at that time had not reached muchthat way. 

They told him they had no lodging that they could spare but one bed upin the garret, and that they could spare that bed for one night, somedrovers being expected the next day with cattle; so, if he would acceptof that lodging, he might have it, which he did. So a servant wassent up with a candle with him to show him the room. He was very welldressed, and looked like a person not used to lie in a garret; and whenhe came to the room he fetched a deep sigh, and said to the servant, 'I have seldom lain in such a lodging as this. 'However, the servantassuring him again that they had no better, 'Well, ' says he, 'I mustmake shift; this is a dreadful time; but it is but for one night. ' So hesat down upon the bedside, and bade the maid, I think it was, fetch himup a pint of warm ale. Accordingly the servant went for the ale, butsome hurry in the house, which perhaps employed her other ways, put itout of her head, and she went up no more to him. 

The next morning, seeing no appearance of the gentleman, somebody in thehouse asked the servant that had showed him upstairs what was become ofhim. She started. 'Alas I, ' says she, 'I never thought more of him. Hebade me carry him some warm ale, but I forgot. ' Upon which, not themaid, but some other person was sent up to see after him, who, cominginto the room, found him stark dead and almost cold, stretched outacross the bed. His clothes were pulled off, his jaw fallen, his eyesopen in a most frightful posture, the rug of the bed being grasped hardin one of his hands, so that it was plain he died soon after the maidleft him; and 'tis probable, had she gone up with the ale, she had foundhim dead in a few minutes after he sat down upon the bed. The alarm wasgreat in the house, as anyone may suppose, they having been free fromthe distemper till that disaster, which, bringing the infection to thehouse, spread it immediately to other houses round about it. I do notremember how many died in the house itself, but I think the maid-servantwho went up first with him fell presently ill by the fright, and severalothers; for, whereas there died but two in Islington of the plague theweek before, there died seventeen the week after, whereof fourteen wereof the plague. This was in the week from the 11th of July to the 18th. 

There was one shift that some families had, and that not a few, whentheir houses happened to be infected, and that was this: the familieswho, in the first breaking-out of the distemper, fled away into thecountry and had retreats among their friends, generally found some orother of their neighbours or relations to commit the charge of thosehouses to for the safety of the goods and the like. Some houses were, indeed, entirely locked up, the doors padlocked, the windows and doorshaving deal boards nailed over them, and only the inspection of themcommitted to the ordinary watchmen and parish officers; but these werebut few. 

It was thought that there were not less than 10, 000 houses forsakenof the inhabitants in the city and suburbs, including what was inthe out-parishes and in Surrey, or the side of the water they calledSouthwark. This was besides the numbers of lodgers, and of particularpersons who were fled out of other families; so that in all it wascomputed that about 200, 000 people were fled and gone. But of this Ishall speak again. But I mention it here on this account, namely, thatit was a rule with those who had thus two houses in their keeping orcare, that if anybody was taken sick in a family, before the masterof the family let the examiners or any other officer know of it, heimmediately would send all the rest of his family, whether children orservants, as it fell out to be, to such other house which he had so incharge, and then giving notice of the sick person to the examiner, havea nurse or nurses appointed, and have another person to be shut up inthe house with them (which many for money would do), so to take chargeof the house in case the person should die. 

This was, in many cases, the saving a whole family, who, if they hadbeen shut up with the sick person, would inevitably have perished. But, on the other hand, this was another of the inconveniences of shutting uphouses; for the apprehensions and terror of being shut up made many runaway with the rest of the family, who, though it was not publicly known, and they were not quite sick, had yet the distemper upon them; and who, by having an uninterrupted liberty to go about, but being obliged stillto conceal their circumstances, or perhaps not knowing it themselves, gave the distemper to others, and spread the infection in a dreadfulmanner, as I shall explain further hereafter. 

And here I may be able to make an observation or two of my own, whichmay be of use hereafter to those into whose bands these may come, ifthey should ever see the like dreadful visitation. (1) The infectiongenerally came into the houses of the citizens by the means of theirservants, whom they were obliged to send up and down the streetsfor necessaries; that is to say, for food or physic, to bakehouses, brew-houses, shops, &c. ; and who going necessarily through the streetsinto shops, markets, and the like, it was impossible but that theyshould, one way or other, meet with distempered people, who conveyedthe fatal breath into them, and they brought it home to the families towhich they belonged. (2) It was a great mistake that such a great cityas this had but one pest-house; for had there been, instead of onepest-house--viz. , beyond Bunhill Fields, where, at most, they couldreceive, perhaps, two hundred or three hundred people--I say, had there, instead of that one, been several pest-houses, every one able to containa thousand people, without lying two in a bed, or two beds in a room;and had every master of a family, as soon as any servant especiallyhad been taken sick in his house, been obliged to send them to the nextpest-house, if they were willing, as many were, and had the examinersdone the like among the poor people when any had been stricken with theinfection; I say, had this been done where the people were willing (nototherwise), and the houses not been shut, I am persuaded, and was allthe while of that opinion, that not so many, by several thousands, haddied; for it was observed, and I could give several instances within thecompass of my own knowledge, where a servant had been taken sick, andthe family had either time to send him out or retire from the houseand leave the sick person, as I have said above, they had all beenpreserved; whereas when, upon one or more sickening in a family, thehouse has been shut up, the whole family have perished, and the bearersbeen obliged to go in to fetch out the dead bodies, not being able tobring them to the door, and at last none left to do it. 

(3) This put it out of question to me, that the calamity was spread byinfection; that is to say, by some certain steams or fumes, which thephysicians call effluvia, by the breath, or by the sweat, or by thestench of the sores of the sick persons, or some other way, perhaps, beyond even the reach of the physicians themselves, which effluviaaffected the sound who came within certain distances of the sick, immediately penetrating the vital parts of the said sound persons, putting their blood into an immediate ferment, and agitating theirspirits to that degree which it was found they were agitated; and sothose newly infected persons communicated it in the same manner toothers. And this I shall give some instances of, that cannot butconvince those who seriously consider it; and I cannot but with somewonder find some people, now the contagion is over, talk of its beingan immediate stroke from Heaven, without the agency of means, havingcommission to strike this and that particular person, and noneother--which I look upon with contempt as the effect of manifestignorance and enthusiasm; likewise the opinion of others, who talk ofinfection being carried on by the air only, by carrying with it vastnumbers of insects and invisible creatures, who enter into the body withthe breath, or even at the pores with the air, and there generateor emit most acute poisons, or poisonous ovae or eggs, which minglethemselves with the blood, and so infect the body: a discourse full oflearned simplicity, and manifested to be so by universal experience; butI shall say more to this case in its order. 

I must here take further notice that nothing was more fatal to theinhabitants of this city than the supine negligence of the peoplethemselves, who, during the long notice or warning they had of thevisitation, made no provision for it by laying in store of provisions, or of other necessaries, by which they might have lived retired andwithin their own houses, as I have observed others did, and who werein a great measure preserved by that caution; nor were they, after theywere a little hardened to it, so shy of conversing with one another, when actually infected, as they were at first: no, though they knew it. 

I acknowledge I was one of those thoughtless ones that had made solittle provision that my servants were obliged to go out of doors to buyevery trifle by penny and halfpenny, just as before it began, even tillmy experience showing me the folly, I began to be wiser so late that Ihad scarce time to store myself sufficient for our common subsistencefor a month. 

I had in family only an ancient woman that managed the house, amaid-servant, two apprentices, and myself; and the plague beginning toincrease about us, I had many sad thoughts about what course I shouldtake, and how I should act. The many dismal objects which happenedeverywhere as I went about the streets, had filled my mind with a greatdeal of horror for fear of the distemper, which was indeed very horriblein itself, and in some more than in others. The swellings, which weregenerally in the neck or groin, when they grew hard and would not break, grew so painful that it was equal to the most exquisite torture; andsome, not able to bear the torment, threw themselves out at windows orshot themselves, or otherwise made themselves away, and I saw severaldismal objects of that kind. Others, unable to contain themselves, vented their pain by incessant roarings, and such loud and lamentablecries were to be heard as we walked along the streets that would piercethe very heart to think of, especially when it was to be considered thatthe same dreadful scourge might be expected every moment to seize uponourselves. 

I cannot say but that now I began to faint in my resolutions; my heartfailed me very much, and sorely I repented of my rashness. When I hadbeen out, and met with such terrible things as these I have talked of, Isay I repented my rashness in venturing to abide in town. I wished oftenthat I had not taken upon me to stay, but had gone away with my brotherand his family. 

Terrified by those frightful objects, I would retire home sometimes andresolve to go out no more; and perhaps I would keep those resolutionsfor three or four days, which time I spent in the most seriousthankfulness for my preservation and the preservation of my family, andthe constant confession of my sins, giving myself up to God every day, and applying to Him with fasting, humiliation, and meditation. Suchintervals as I had I employed in reading books and in writing downmy memorandums of what occurred to me every day, and out of whichafterwards I took most of this work, as it relates to my observationswithout doors. What I wrote of my private meditations I reserve forprivate use, and desire it may not be made public on any accountwhatever. 

I also wrote other meditations upon divine subjects, such as occurred tome at that time and were profitable to myself, but not fit for any otherview, and therefore I say no more of that. 

I had a very good friend, a physician, whose name was Heath, whom Ifrequently visited during this dismal time, and to whose advice I wasvery much obliged for many things which he directed me to take, by wayof preventing the infection when I went out, as he found I frequentlydid, and to hold in my mouth when I was in the streets. He also camevery often to see me, and as he was a good Christian as well as a goodphysician, his agreeable conversation was a very great support to me inthe worst of this terrible time. 

It was now the beginning of August, and the plague grew very violent andterrible in the place where I lived, and Dr Heath coming to visit me, and finding that I ventured so often out in the streets, earnestlypersuaded me to lock myself up and my family, and not to suffer anyof us to go out of doors; to keep all our windows fast, shutters andcurtains close, and never to open them; but first, to make a very strongsmoke in the room where the window or door was to be opened, with rozenand pitch, brimstone or gunpowder and the like; and we did this for sometime; but as I had not laid in a store of provision for such a retreat, it was impossible that we could keep within doors entirely. However, Iattempted, though it was so very late, to do something towards it; andfirst, as I had convenience both for brewing and baking, I went andbought two sacks of meal, and for several weeks, having an oven, webaked all our own bread; also I bought malt, and brewed as much beeras all the casks I had would hold, and which seemed enough to serve myhouse for five or six weeks; also I laid in a quantity of salt butterand Cheshire cheese; but I had no flesh-meat, and the plague raged soviolently among the butchers and slaughter-houses on the other side ofour street, where they are known to dwell in great numbers, that it wasnot advisable so much as to go over the street among them. 

And here I must observe again, that this necessity of going out of ourhouses to buy provisions was in a great measure the ruin of the wholecity, for the people catched the distemper on these occasions one ofanother, and even the provisions themselves were often tainted; atleast I have great reason to believe so; and therefore I cannot saywith satisfaction what I know is repeated with great assurance, thatthe market-people and such as brought provisions to town were neverinfected. I am certain the butchers of Whitechappel, where the greatestpart of the flesh-meat was killed, were dreadfully visited, and that atleast to such a degree that few of their shops were kept open, and thosethat remained of them killed their meat at Mile End and that way, andbrought it to market upon horses. 

However, the poor people could not lay up provisions, and there wasa necessity that they must go to market to buy, and others to sendservants or their children; and as this was a necessity which reneweditself daily, it brought abundance of unsound people to the markets, anda great many that went thither sound brought death home with them. 

It is true people used all possible precaution. When any one bought ajoint of meat in the market they would not take it off the butcher'shand, but took it off the hooks themselves. On the other hand, thebutcher would not touch the money, but have it put into a pot full ofvinegar, which he kept for that purpose. The buyer carried always smallmoney to make up any odd sum, that they might take no change. Theycarried bottles of scents and perfumes in their hands, and all the meansthat could be used were used, but then the poor could not do even thesethings, and they went at all hazards. 

Innumerable dismal stories we heard every day on this very account. Sometimes a man or woman dropped down dead in the very markets, for manypeople that had the plague upon them knew nothing of it till the inwardgangrene had affected their vitals, and they died in a few moments. Thiscaused that many died frequently in that manner in the streets suddenly, without any warning; others perhaps had time to go to the next bulk orstall, or to any door-porch, and just sit down and die, as I have saidbefore. 

These objects were so frequent in the streets that when the plaguecame to be very raging on one side, there was scarce any passing by thestreets but that several dead bodies would be lying here and there uponthe ground. On the other hand, it is observable that though at first thepeople would stop as they went along and call to the neighbours to comeout on such an occasion, yet afterward no notice was taken of them; butthat if at any time we found a corpse lying, go across the way and notcome near it; or, if in a narrow lane or passage, go back again and seeksome other way to go on the business we were upon; and in those casesthe corpse was always left till the officers had notice to come and takethem away, or till night, when the bearers attending the dead-cart wouldtake them up and carry them away. Nor did those undaunted creatureswho performed these offices fail to search their pockets, and sometimesstrip off their clothes if they were well dressed, as sometimes theywere, and carry off what they could get. 

But to return to the markets. The butchers took that care that if anyperson died in the market they had the officers always at band to takethem up upon hand-barrows and carry them to the next churchyard; andthis was so frequent that such were not entered in the weekly bill, 'Found dead in the streets or fields', as is the case now, but they wentinto the general articles of the great distemper. 

But now the fury of the distemper increased to such a degree that eventhe markets were but very thinly furnished with provisions or frequentedwith buyers compared to what they were before; and the Lord Mayor causedthe country people who brought provisions to be stopped in the streetsleading into the town, and to sit down there with their goods, wherethey sold what they brought, and went immediately away; and thisencouraged the country people greatly-to do so, for they sold theirprovisions at the very entrances into the town, and even in the fields, as particularly in the fields beyond Whitechappel, in Spittlefields;also in St George's Fields in Southwark, in Bunhill Fields, and in agreat field called Wood's Close, near Islington. Thither the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and magistrates sent their officers and servants to buy fortheir families, themselves keeping within doors as much as possible, and the like did many other people; and after this method was taken thecountry people came with great cheerfulness, and brought provisions ofall sorts, and very seldom got any harm, which, I suppose, added also tothat report of their being miraculously preserved. 

As for my little family, having thus, as I have said, laid in a storeof bread, butter, cheese, and beer, I took my friend and physician'sadvice, and locked myself up, and my family, and resolved to sufferthe hardship of living a few months without flesh-meat, rather than topurchase it at the hazard of our lives. 

But though I confined my family, I could not prevail upon my unsatisfiedcuriosity to stay within entirely myself; and though I generally camefrighted and terrified home, vet I could not restrain; only that indeedI did not do it so frequently as at first. 

I had some little obligations, indeed, upon me to go to my brother'shouse, which was in Coleman Street parish and which he had left to mycare, and I went at first every day, but afterwards only once or twice aweek. 

In these walks I had many dismal scenes before my eyes, as particularlyof persons falling dead in the streets, terrible shrieks and screechingsof women, who, in their agonies, would throw open their chamber windowsand cry out in a dismal, surprising manner. It is impossible to describethe variety of postures in which the passions of the poor people wouldexpress themselves. 

Passing through Tokenhouse Yard, in Lothbury, of a sudden a casementviolently opened just over my head, and a woman gave three frightfulscreeches, and then cried, 'Oh! death, death, death!' in a mostinimitable tone, and which struck me with horror and a chillness in myvery blood. There was nobody to be seen in the whole street, neither didany other window open, for people had no curiosity now in any case, norcould anybody help one another, so I went on to pass into Bell Alley. 

Just in Bell Alley, on the right hand of the passage, there was a moreterrible cry than that, though it was not so directed out at the window;but the whole family was in a terrible fright, and I could hear womenand children run screaming about the rooms like distracted, when agarret-window opened and somebody from a window on the other side thealley called and asked, 'What is the matter?' upon which, from the firstwindow, it was answered, 'Oh Lord, my old master has hanged himself!'The other asked again, 'Is he quite dead?' and the first answered, 'Ay, ay, quite dead; quite dead and cold!' This person was a merchant and adeputy alderman, and very rich. I care not to mention the name, though Iknew his name too, but that would be an hardship to the family, which isnow flourishing again. 

But this is but one; it is scarce credible what dreadful cases happenedin particular families every day. People in the rage of the distemper, or in the torment of their swellings, which was indeed intolerable, running out of their own government, raving and distracted, andoftentimes laying violent hands upon themselves, throwing themselves outat their windows, shooting themselves &c. ; mothers murdering theirown children in their lunacy, some dying of mere grief as a passion, some of mere fright and surprise without any infection at all, othersfrighted into idiotism and foolish distractions, some into despair andlunacy, others into melancholy madness. 

The pain of the swelling was in particular very violent, and to someintolerable; the physicians and surgeons may be said to have torturedmany poor creatures even to death. The swellings in some grew hard, andthey applied violent drawing-plaisters or poultices to break them, andif these did not do they cut and scarified them in a terrible manner. Insome those swellings were made hard partly by the force of the distemperand partly by their being too violently drawn, and were so hard that noinstrument could cut them, and then they burnt them with caustics, so that many died raving mad with the torment, and some in the veryoperation. In these distresses, some, for want of help to hold them downin their beds, or to look to them, laid hands upon themselves as above. Some broke out into the streets, perhaps naked, and would run directlydown to the river if they were not stopped by the watchman or otherofficers, and plunge themselves into the water wherever they found it. 

It often pierced my very soul to hear the groans and cries of those whowere thus tormented, but of the two this was counted the most promisingparticular in the whole infection, for if these swellings could bebrought to a head, and to break and run, or, as the surgeons call it, to digest, the patient generally recovered; whereas those who, like thegentlewoman's daughter, were struck with death at the beginning, and hadthe tokens come out upon them, often went about indifferent easy till alittle before they died, and some till the moment they dropped down, as in apoplexies and epilepsies is often the case. Such would be takensuddenly very sick, and would run to a bench or bulk, or any convenientplace that offered itself, or to their own houses if possible, as Imentioned before, and there sit down, grow faint, and die. This kindof dying was much the same as it was with those who die of commonmortifications, who die swooning, and, as it were, go away in a dream. Such as died thus had very little notice of their being infected atall till the gangrene was spread through their whole body; nor couldphysicians themselves know certainly how it was with them till theyopened their breasts or other parts of their body and saw the tokens. 

We had at this time a great many frightful stories told us of nurses andwatchmen who looked after the dying people; that is to say, hired nurseswho attended infected people, using them barbarously, starving them, smothering them, or by other wicked means hastening their end, that isto say, murdering of them; and watchmen, being set to guard houses thatwere shut up when there has been but one person left, and perhaps thatone lying sick, that they have broke in and murdered that body, andimmediately thrown them out into the dead-cart! And so they have gonescarce cold to the grave. 

I cannot say but that some such murders were committed, and I think twowere sent to prison for it, but died before they could be tried; and Ihave heard that three others, at several times, were excused for murdersof that kind; but I must say I believe nothing of its being so common acrime as some have since been pleased to say, nor did it seem to be sorational where the people were brought so low as not to be able to helpthemselves, for such seldom recovered, and there was no temptation tocommit a murder, at least none equal to the fact, where they were surepersons would die in so short a time, and could not live. 

That there were a great many robberies and wicked practices committedeven in this dreadful time I do not deny. The power of avarice was sostrong in some that they would run any hazard to steal and to plunder;and particularly in houses where all the families or inhabitants havebeen dead and carried out, they would break in at all hazards, andwithout regard to the danger of infection, take even the clothes off thedead bodies and the bed-clothes from others where they lay dead. 

This, I suppose, must be the case of a family in Houndsditch, wherea man and his daughter, the rest of the family being, as I suppose, carried away before by the dead-cart, were found stark naked, one in onechamber and one in another, lying dead on the floor, and the clothesof the beds, from whence 'tis supposed they were rolled off by thieves, stolen and carried quite away. 

It is indeed to be observed that the women were in all this calamitythe most rash, fearless, and desperate creatures, and as there were vastnumbers that went about as nurses to tend those that were sick, theycommitted a great many petty thieveries in the houses where they wereemployed; and some of them were publicly whipped for it, when perhapsthey ought rather to have been hanged for examples, for numbers ofhouses were robbed on these occasions, till at length the parishofficers were sent to recommend nurses to the sick, and always tookan account whom it was they sent, so as that they might call them toaccount if the house had been abused where they were placed. 

But these robberies extended chiefly to wearing-clothes, linen, and whatrings or money they could come at when the person died who was undertheir care, but not to a general plunder of the houses; and I could giveyou an account of one of these nurses, who, several years after, beingon her deathbed, confessed with the utmost horror the robberies shehad committed at the time of her being a nurse, and by which she hadenriched herself to a great degree. But as for murders, I do not findthat there was ever any proof of the facts in the manner as it has beenreported, except as above. 

They did tell me, indeed, of a nurse in one place that laid a wet clothupon the face of a dying patient whom she tended, and so put an end tohis life, who was just expiring before; and another that smothered ayoung woman she was looking to when she was in a fainting fit, and wouldhave come to herself; some that killed them by giving them one thing, some another, and some starved them by giving them nothing at all. Butthese stories had two marks of suspicion that always attended them, which caused me always to slight them and to look on them as merestories that people continually frighted one another with. First, thatwherever it was that we heard it, they always placed the scene at thefarther end of the town, opposite or most remote from where you were tohear it. If you heard it in Whitechappel, it had happened at St Giles's, or at Westminster, or Holborn, or that end of the town. If you heardof it at that end of the town, then it was done in Whitechappel, or theMinories, or about Cripplegate parish. If you heard of it in the city, why, then it happened in Southwark; and if you heard of it in Southwark, then it was done in the city, and the like. 

In the next place, of what part soever you heard the story, theparticulars were always the same, especially that of laying a wet doubleclout on a dying man's face, and that of smothering a young gentlewoman;so that it was apparent, at least to my judgement, that there was moreof tale than of truth in those things. 

However, I cannot say but it had some effect upon the people, andparticularly that, as I said before, they grew more cautious whom theytook into their houses, and whom they trusted their lives with, and hadthem always recommended if they could; and where they could notfind such, for they were not very plenty, they applied to the parishofficers. 

But here again the misery of that time lay upon the poor who, beinginfected, had neither food or physic, neither physician or apothecaryto assist them, or nurse to attend them. Many of those died calling forhelp, and even for sustenance, out at their windows in a most miserableand deplorable manner; but it must be added that whenever the cases ofsuch persons or families were represented to my Lord Mayor they alwayswere relieved. 

It is true, in some houses where the people were not very poor, yetwhere they had sent perhaps their wives and children away, and if theyhad any servants they had been dismissed;--I say it is true that tosave the expenses, many such as these shut themselves in, and not havinghelp, died alone. 

A neighbour and acquaintance of mine, having some money owing tohim from a shopkeeper in Whitecross Street or thereabouts, sent hisapprentice, a youth about eighteen years of age, to endeavour to get themoney. He came to the door, and finding it shut, knocked pretty hard;and, as he thought, heard somebody answer within, but was not sure, sohe waited, and after some stay knocked again, and then a third time, when he heard somebody coming downstairs. 

At length the man of the house came to the door; he had on his breechesor drawers, and a yellow flannel waistcoat, no stockings, a pair ofslipped-shoes, a white cap on his head, and, as the young man said, 'death in his face'. 

When he opened the door, says he, 'What do you disturb me thus for?' Theboy, though a little surprised, replied, 'I come from such a one, andmy master sent me for the money which he says you know of. ' 'Very well, child, ' returns the living ghost; 'call as you go by at CripplegateChurch, and bid them ring the bell'; and with these words shut the dooragain, and went up again, and died the same day; nay, perhaps the samehour. This the young man told me himself, and I have reason to believeit. This was while the plague was not come to a height. I think it wasin June, towards the latter end of the month; it must be before thedead-carts came about, and while they used the ceremony of ringing thebell for the dead, which was over for certain, in that parish at least, before the month of July, for by the 25th of July there died 550 andupwards in a week, and then they could no more bury in form, rich orpoor. 

I have mentioned above that notwithstanding this dreadful calamity, yetthe numbers of thieves were abroad upon all occasions, where they hadfound any prey, and that these were generally women. It was one morningabout eleven O'clock, I had walked out to my brother's house in ColemanStreet parish, as I often did, to see that all was safe. 

My brother's house had a little court before it, and a brick wall anda gate in it, and within that several warehouses where his goods ofseveral sorts lay. It happened that in one of these warehouses wereseveral packs of women's high-crowned hats, which came out of thecountry and were, as I suppose, for exportation: whither, I know not. 

I was surprised that when I came near my brother's door, which was ina place they called Swan Alley, I met three or four women withhigh-crowned hats on their heads; and, as I remembered afterwards, one, if not more, had some hats likewise in their hands; but as I did not seethem come out at my brother's door, and not knowing that my brotherhad any such goods in his warehouse, I did not offer to say anything tothem, but went across the way to shun meeting them, as was usual to doat that time, for fear of the plague. But when I came nearer to the gateI met another woman with more hats come out of the gate. 'What business, mistress, ' said I, 'have you had there?' 'There are more people there, 'said she; 'I have had no more business there than they. ' I was hasty toget to the gate then, and said no more to her, by which means she gotaway. But just as I came to the gate, I saw two more coming across theyard to come out with hats also on their heads and under their arms, atwhich I threw the gate to behind me, which having a spring lock fasteneditself; and turning to the women, 'Forsooth, ' said I, 'what are youdoing here?' and seized upon the hats, and took them from them. One ofthem, who, I confess, did not look like a thief--'Indeed, ' says she, 'we are wrong, but we were told they were goods that had no owner. Be pleased to take them again; and look yonder, there are more suchcustomers as we. ' She cried and looked pitifully, so I took the hatsfrom her and opened the gate, and bade them be gone, for I pitied thewomen indeed; but when I looked towards the warehouse, as she directed, there were six or seven more, all women, fitting themselves with hats asunconcerned and quiet as if they had been at a hatter's shop buying fortheir money. 

I was surprised, not at the sight of so many thieves only, but at thecircumstances I was in; being now to thrust myself in among so manypeople, who for some weeks had been so shy of myself that if I metanybody in the street I would cross the way from them. 

They were equally surprised, though on another account. They all told methey were neighbours, that they had heard anyone might take them, thatthey were nobody's goods, and the like. I talked big to them at first, went back to the gate and took out the key, so that they were all myprisoners, threatened to lock them all into the warehouse, and go andfetch my Lord Mayor's officers for them. 

They begged heartily, protested they found the gate open, and thewarehouse door open; and that it had no doubt been broken open by somewho expected to find goods of greater value: which indeed was reasonableto believe, because the lock was broke, and a padlock that hung to thedoor on the outside also loose, and not abundance of the hats carriedaway. 

At length I considered that this was not a time to be cruel andrigorous; and besides that, it would necessarily oblige me to go muchabout, to have several people come to me, and I go to several whosecircumstances of health I knew nothing of; and that even at this timethe plague was so high as that there died 4000 a week; so that inshowing my resentment, or even in seeking justice for my brother'sgoods, I might lose my own life; so I contented myself with taking thenames and places where some of them lived, who were really inhabitantsin the neighbourhood, and threatening that my brother should call themto an account for it when he returned to his habitation. 

Then I talked a little upon another foot with them, and asked them howthey could do such things as these in a time of such general calamity, and, as it were, in the face of God's most dreadful judgements, when theplague was at their very doors, and, it may be, in their very houses, and they did not know but that the dead-cart might stop at their doorsin a few hours to carry them to their graves. 

I could not perceive that my discourse made much impression uponthem all that while, till it happened that there came two men of theneighbourhood, hearing of the disturbance, and knowing my brother, for they had been both dependents upon his family, and they came to myassistance. These being, as I said, neighbours, presently knew three ofthe women and told me who they were and where they lived; and it seemsthey had given me a true account of themselves before. 

This brings these two men to a further remembrance. The name of onewas John Hayward, who was at that time undersexton of the parish ofSt Stephen, Coleman Street. By undersexton was understood at that timegravedigger and bearer of the dead. This man carried, or assisted tocarry, all the dead to their graves which were buried in that largeparish, and who were carried in form; and after that form of burying wasstopped, went with the dead-cart and the bell to fetch the dead bodiesfrom the houses where they lay, and fetched many of them out of thechambers and houses; for the parish was, and is still, remarkableparticularly, above all the parishes in London, for a great number ofalleys and thoroughfares, very long, into which no carts could come, and where they were obliged to go and fetch the bodies a very long way;which alleys now remain to witness it, such as White's Alley, Cross KeyCourt, Swan Alley, Bell Alley, White Horse Alley, and many more. Herethey went with a kind of hand-barrow and laid the dead bodies on it, andcarried them out to the carts; which work he performed and never had thedistemper at all, but lived about twenty years after it, and was sextonof the parish to the time of his death. His wife at the same time was anurse to infected people, and tended many that died in the parish, beingfor her honesty recommended by the parish officers; yet she never wasinfected neither. 

He never used any preservative against the infection, other than holdinggarlic and rue in his mouth, and smoking tobacco. This I also had fromhis own mouth. And his wife's remedy was washing her head in vinegarand sprinkling her head-clothes so with vinegar as to keep them alwaysmoist, and if the smell of any of those she waited on was more thanordinary offensive, she snuffed vinegar up her nose and sprinkledvinegar upon her head-clothes, and held a handkerchief wetted withvinegar to her mouth. 

It must be confessed that though the plague was chiefly among the poor, yet were the poor the most venturous and fearless of it, and went abouttheir employment with a sort of brutal courage; I must call it so, forit was founded neither on religion nor prudence; scarce did they use anycaution, but ran into any business which they could get employment in, though it was the most hazardous. Such was that of tending the sick, watching houses shut up, carrying infected persons to the pest-house, and, which was still worse, carrying the dead away to their graves. 

It was under this John Hayward's care, and within his bounds, that thestory of the piper, with which people have made themselves so merry, happened, and he assured me that it was true. It is said that it wasa blind piper; but, as John told me, the fellow was not blind, butan ignorant, weak, poor man, and usually walked his rounds about teno'clock at night and went piping along from door to door, and the peopleusually took him in at public-houses where they knew him, and would givehim drink and victuals, and sometimes farthings; and he in return wouldpipe and sing and talk simply, which diverted the people; and thus helived. It was but a very bad time for this diversion while things wereas I have told, yet the poor fellow went about as usual, but was almoststarved; and when anybody asked how he did he would answer, the deadcart had not taken him yet, but that they had promised to call for himnext week. 

It happened one night that this poor fellow, whether somebody had givenhim too much drink or no--John Hayward said he had not drink in hishouse, but that they had given him a little more victuals than ordinaryat a public-house in Coleman Street--and the poor fellow, having notusually had a bellyful for perhaps not a good while, was laid all alongupon the top of a bulk or stall, and fast asleep, at a door in thestreet near London Wall, towards Cripplegate-, and that upon the samebulk or stall the people of some house, in the alley of which the housewas a corner, hearing a bell which they always rang before the cartcame, had laid a body really dead of the plague just by him, thinking, too, that this poor fellow had been a dead body, as the other was, andlaid there by some of the neighbours. 

Accordingly, when John Hayward with his bell and the cart came along, finding two dead bodies lie upon the stall, they took them up with theinstrument they used and threw them into the cart, and, all this whilethe piper slept soundly. 

From hence they passed along and took in other dead bodies, till, ashonest John Hayward told me, they almost buried him alive in the cart;yet all this while he slept soundly. At length the cart came to theplace where the bodies were to be thrown into the ground, which, as I doremember, was at Mount Mill; and as the cart usually stopped some timebefore they were ready to shoot out the melancholy load they had in it, as soon as the cart stopped the fellow awaked and struggled a little toget his head out from among the dead bodies, when, raising himself upin the cart, he called out, 'Hey! where am I?' This frighted thefellow that attended about the work; but after some pause John Hayward, recovering himself, said, 'Lord, bless us! There's somebody in the cartnot quite dead!' So another called to him and said, 'Who are you?' Thefellow answered, 'I am the poor piper. Where am I?' 'Where are you?'says Hayward. 'Why, you are in the dead-cart, and we are going to buryyou. ' 'But I an't dead though, am I?' says the piper, which made themlaugh a little though, as John said, they were heartily frighted atfirst; so they helped the poor fellow down, and he went about hisbusiness. 

I know the story goes he set up his pipes in the cart and frighted thebearers and others so that they ran away; but John Hayward did not tellthe story so, nor say anything of his piping at all; but that he was apoor piper, and that he was carried away as above I am fully satisfiedof the truth of. 

It is to be noted here that the dead-carts in the city were not confinedto particular parishes, but one cart went through several parishes, according as the number of dead presented; nor were they tied to carrythe dead to their respective parishes, but many of the dead taken up inthe city were carried to the burying-ground in the out-parts for want ofroom. 

I have already mentioned the surprise that this judgement was at firstamong the people. I must be allowed to give some of my observations onthe more serious and religious part. Surely never city, at least of thisbulk and magnitude, was taken in a condition so perfectly unpreparedfor such a dreadful visitation, whether I am to speak of the civilpreparations or religious. They were, indeed, as if they had had nowarning, no expectation, no apprehensions, and consequently the leastprovision imaginable was made for it in a public way. For example, theLord Mayor and sheriffs had made no provision as magistrates for theregulations which were to be observed. They had gone into no measuresfor relief of the poor. The citizens had no public magazines orstorehouses for corn or meal for the subsistence of the poor, whichif they had provided themselves, as in such cases is done abroad, manymiserable families who were now reduced to the utmost distress wouldhave been relieved, and that in a better manner than now could be done. 

The stock of the city's money I can say but little to. The Chamber ofLondon was said to be exceedingly rich, and it may be concluded thatthey were so, by the vast of money issued from thence in the rebuildingthe public edifices after the fire of London, and in building new works, such as, for the first part, the Guildhall, Blackwell Hall, part ofLeadenhall, half the Exchange, the Session House, the Compter, theprisons of Ludgate, Newgate, &c. , several of the wharfs and stairsand landing-places on the river; all which were either burned down ordamaged by the great fire of London, the next year after the plague; andof the second sort, the Monument, Fleet Ditch with its bridges, andthe Hospital of Bethlem or Bedlam, &c. But possibly the managers of thecity's credit at that time made more conscience of breaking in uponthe orphan's money to show charity to the distressed citizens than themanagers in the following years did to beautify the city and re-edifythe buildings; though, in the first case, the losers would have thoughttheir fortunes better bestowed, and the public faith of the city havebeen less subjected to scandal and reproach. 

It must be acknowledged that the absent citizens, who, though they werefled for safety into the country, were yet greatly interested inthe welfare of those whom they left behind, forgot not to contributeliberally to the relief of the poor, and large sums were also collectedamong trading towns in the remotest parts of England; and, as I haveheard also, the nobility and the gentry in all parts of England took thedeplorable condition of the city into their consideration, and sent uplarge sums of money in charity to the Lord Mayor and magistrates forthe relief of the poor. The king also, as I was told, ordered a thousandpounds a week to be distributed in four parts: one quarter to the cityand liberty of Westminster; one quarter or part among the inhabitantsof the Southwark side of the water; one quarter to the liberty andparts within of the city, exclusive of the city within the walls; andone-fourth part to the suburbs in the county of Middlesex, and theeast and north parts of the city. But this latter I only speak of as areport. 

Certain it is, the greatest part of the poor or families who formerlylived by their labour, or by retail trade, lived now on charity; and hadthere not been prodigious sums of money given by charitable, well-mindedChristians for the support of such, the city could never have subsisted. There were, no question, accounts kept of their charity, and of the justdistribution of it by the magistrates. But as such multitudes of thosevery officers died through whose hands it was distributed, and alsothat, as I have been told, most of the accounts of those things werelost in the great fire which happened in the very next year, and whichburnt even the chamberlain's office and many of their papers, so I couldnever come at the particular account, which I used great endeavours tohave seen. 

It may, however, be a direction in case of the approach of a likevisitation, which God keep the city from;--I say, it may be of use toobserve that by the care of the Lord Mayor and aldermen at that timein distributing weekly great sums of money for relief of the poor, amultitude of people who would otherwise have perished, were relieved, and their lives preserved. And here let me enter into a brief state ofthe case of the poor at that time, and what way apprehended from them, from whence may be judged hereafter what may be expected if the likedistress should come upon the city. 

At the beginning of the plague, when there was now no more hope butthat the whole city would be visited; when, as I have said, all that hadfriends or estates in the country retired with their families; and when, indeed, one would have thought the very city itself was running out ofthe gates, and that there would be nobody left behind; you may besure from that hour all trade, except such as related to immediatesubsistence, was, as it were, at a full stop. 

This is so lively a case, and contains in it so much of the realcondition of the people, that I think I cannot be too particular in it, and therefore I descend to the several arrangements or classes of peoplewho fell into immediate distress upon this occasion. For example:

1. All master-workmen in manufactures, especially such as belonged toornament and the less necessary parts of the people's dress, clothes, and furniture for houses, such as riband-weavers and other weavers, goldand silver lace makers, and gold and silver wire drawers, sempstresses, milliners, shoemakers, hatmakers, and glovemakers; also upholsterers, joiners, cabinet-makers, looking-glass makers, and innumerable tradeswhich depend upon such as these;--I say, the master-workmen in suchstopped their work, dismissed their journeymen and workmen, and alltheir dependents. 

2. As merchandising was at a full stop, for very few ships ventured tocome up the river and none at all went out, so all the extraordinaryofficers of the customs, likewise the watermen, carmen, porters, andall the poor whose labour depended upon the merchants, were at oncedismissed and put out of business. 

3. All the tradesmen usually employed in building or repairing of houseswere at a full stop, for the people were far from wanting to buildhouses when so many thousand houses were at once stripped of theirinhabitants; so that this one article turned all the ordinary workmenof that kind out of business, such as bricklayers, masons, carpenters, joiners, plasterers, painters, glaziers, smiths, plumbers, and all thelabourers depending on such. 

4. As navigation was at a stop, our ships neither coming in or going outas before, so the seamen were all out of employment, and many of them inthe last and lowest degree of distress; and with the seamen were allthe several tradesmen and workmen belonging to and depending upon thebuilding and fitting out of ships, such as ship-carpenters, caulkers, ropemakers, dry coopers, sailmakers, anchorsmiths, and other smiths;blockmakers, carvers, gunsmiths, ship-chandlers, ship-carvers, and thelike. The masters of those perhaps might live upon their substance, but the traders were universally at a stop, and consequently all theirworkmen discharged. Add to these that the river was in a manner withoutboats, and all or most part of the watermen, lightermen, boat-builders, and lighter-builders in like manner idle and laid by. 

5. All families retrenched their living as much as possible, as wellthose that fled as those that stayed; so that an innumerablemultitude of footmen, serving-men, shopkeepers, journeymen, merchants'bookkeepers, and such sort of people, and especially poor maid-servants, were turned off, and left friendless and helpless, without employmentand without habitation, and this was really a dismal article. 

I might be more particular as to this part, but it may suffice tomention in general, all trades being stopped, employment ceased: thelabour, and by that the bread, of the poor were cut off; and at firstindeed the cries of the poor were most lamentable to hear, though by thedistribution of charity their misery that way was greatly abated. Manyindeed fled into the counties, but thousands of them having stayed inLondon till nothing but desperation sent them away, death overtook themon the road, and they served for no better than the messengers of death;indeed, others carrying the infection along with them, spread it veryunhappily into the remotest parts of the kingdom. 

Many of these were the miserable objects of despair which I havementioned before, and were removed by the destruction which followed. These might be said to perish not by the infection itself but by theconsequence of it; indeed, namely, by hunger and distress and the wantof all things: being without lodging, without money, without friends, without means to get their bread, or without anyone to give it them; formany of them were without what we call legal settlements, and socould not claim of the parishes, and all the support they had was byapplication to the magistrates for relief, which relief was (to givethe magistrates their due) carefully and cheerfully administered as theyfound it necessary, and those that stayed behind never felt the want anddistress of that kind which they felt who went away in the manner abovenoted. 

Let any one who is acquainted with what multitudes of people get theirdaily bread in this city by their labour, whether artificers ormere workmen--I say, let any man consider what must be the miserablecondition of this town if, on a sudden, they should be all turned out ofemployment, that labour should cease, and wages for work be no more. 

This was the case with us at that time; and had not the sums of moneycontributed in charity by well-disposed people of every kind, as wellabroad as at home, been prodigiously great, it had not been in the powerof the Lord Mayor and sheriffs to have kept the public peace. Nor werethey without apprehensions, as it was, that desperation should push thepeople upon tumults, and cause them to rifle the houses of rich men andplunder the markets of provisions; in which case the country people, who brought provisions very freely and boldly to town, would have beenterrified from coming any more, and the town would have sunk under anunavoidable famine. 

But the prudence of my Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen within thecity, and of the justices of peace in the out-parts, was such, and theywere supported with money from all parts so well, that the poor peoplewere kept quiet, and their wants everywhere relieved, as far as waspossible to be done. 

Two things besides this contributed to prevent the mob doing anymischief. One was, that really the rich themselves had not laid upstores of provisions in their houses as indeed they ought to havedone, and which if they had been wise enough to have done, and lockedthemselves entirely up, as some few did, they had perhaps escaped thedisease better. But as it appeared they had not, so the mob had nonotion of finding stores of provisions there if they had broken in asit is plain they were sometimes very near doing, and which: if they bad, they had finished the ruin of the whole city, for there were no regulartroops to have withstood them, nor could the trained bands have beenbrought together to defend the city, no men being to be found to beararms. 

But the vigilance of the Lord Mayor and such magistrates as could be had(for some, even of the aldermen, were dead, and some absent) preventedthis; and they did it by the most kind and gentle methods they couldthink of, as particularly by relieving the most desperate with money, and putting others into business, and particularly that employment ofwatching houses that were infected and shut up. And as the numberof these were very great (for it was said there was at one time tenthousand houses shut up, and every house had two watchmen to guardit, viz. , one by night and the other by day), this gave opportunity toemploy a very great number of poor men at a time. 

The women and servants that were turned off from their places werelikewise employed as nurses to tend the sick in all places, and thistook off a very great number of them. 

And, which though a melancholy article in itself, yet was a deliverancein its kind: namely, the plague, which raged in a dreadful manner fromthe middle of August to the middle of October, carried off in that timethirty or forty thousand of these very people which, had they been left, would certainly have been an insufferable burden by their poverty; thatis to say, the whole city could not have supported the expense of them, or have provided food for them; and they would in time have been evendriven to the necessity of plundering either the city itself or thecountry adjacent, to have subsisted themselves, which would first orlast have put the whole nation, as well as the city, into the utmostterror and confusion. 

It was observable, then, that this calamity of the people made them veryhumble; for now for about nine weeks together there died near a thousanda day, one day with another, even by the account of the weekly bills, which yet, I have reason to be assured, never gave a full account, bymany thousands; the confusion being such, and the carts working in thedark when they carried the dead, that in some places no account at allwas kept, but they worked on, the clerks and sextons not attending forweeks together, and not knowing what number they carried. This accountis verified by the following bills of mortality:--

 - Of all of the - Diseases. Plague From August 8 to August 15 5319 3880 " " 15 " 22 5568 4237 " " 22 " 29 7496 6102 " " 29 to September 5 8252 6988 " September 5 " 12 7690 6544 " " 12 " 19 8297 7165 " " 19 " 26 6460 5533 " " 26 to October 3 5720 4979 " October 3 " 10 5068 4327 - ----- ----- - 59, 870 49, 705

So that the gross of the people were carried off in these two months;for, as the whole number which was brought in to die of the plague wasbut 68, 590, here is 50, 000 of them, within a trifle, in two months; Isay 50, 000, because, as there wants 295 in the number above, so therewants two days of two months in the account of time. 

Now when I say that the parish officers did not give in a full account, or were not to be depended upon for their account, let any one butconsider how men could be exact in such a time of dreadful distress, and when many of them were taken sick themselves and perhaps died inthe very time when their accounts were to be given in; I mean the parishclerks, besides inferior officers; for though these poor men venturedat all hazards, yet they were far from being exempt from the commoncalamity, especially if it be true that the parish of Stepney had, within the year, 116 sextons, gravediggers, and their assistants; thatis to say, bearers, bellmen, and drivers of carts for carrying off thedead bodies. 

Indeed the work was not of a nature to allow them leisure to take anexact tale of the dead bodies, which were all huddled together in thedark into a pit; which pit or trench no man could come nigh but atthe utmost peril. I observed often that in the parishes of Aldgate andCripplegate, Whitechappel and Stepney, there were five, six, seven, and eight hundred in a week in the bills; whereas if we may believe theopinion of those that lived in the city all the time as well as I, theredied sometimes 2000 a week in those parishes; and I saw it under thehand of one that made as strict an examination into that part as hecould, that there really died an hundred thousand people of the plaguein that one year whereas in the bills, the articles of the plague, itwas but 68, 590. 

If I may be allowed to give my opinion, by what I saw with my eyes andheard from other people that were eye-witnesses, I do verily believe thesame, viz. , that there died at least 100, 000 of the plague only, besidesother distempers and besides those which died in the fields and highwaysand secret Places out of the compass of the communication, as it wascalled, and who were not put down in the bills though they reallybelonged to the body of the inhabitants. It was known to us all thatabundance of poor despairing creatures who had the distemper upon them, and were grown stupid or melancholy by their misery, as many were, wandered away into the fields and Woods, and into secret uncouth placesalmost anywhere, to creep into a bush or hedge and die. 

The inhabitants of the villages adjacent would, in pity, carry them foodand set it at a distance, that they might fetch it, if they were able;and sometimes they were not able, and the next time they went theyshould find the poor wretches lie dead and the food untouched. Thenumber of these miserable objects were many, and I know so many thatperished thus, and so exactly where, that I believe I could go to thevery place and dig their bones up still; for the country people wouldgo and dig a hole at a distance from them, and then with long poles, and hooks at the end of them, drag the bodies into these pits, and thenthrow the earth in from as far as they could cast it, to cover them, taking notice how the wind blew, and so coming on that side which theseamen call to windward, that the scent of the bodies might blow fromthem; and thus great numbers went out of the world who were never known, or any account of them taken, as well within the bills of mortality aswithout. 

This, indeed, I had in the main only from the relation of others, for Iseldom walked into the fields, except towards Bethnal Green and Hackney, or as hereafter. But when I did walk, I always saw a great many poorwanderers at a distance; but I could know little of their cases, forwhether it were in the street or in the fields, if we had seen anybodycoming, it was a general method to walk away; yet I believe the accountis exactly true. 

As this puts me upon mentioning my walking the streets and fields, Icannot omit taking notice what a desolate place the city was at thattime. The great street I lived in (which is known to be one of thebroadest of all the streets of London, I mean of the suburbs as well asthe liberties) all the side where the butchers lived, especially withoutthe bars, was more like a green field than a paved street, and thepeople generally went in the middle with the horses and carts. It istrue that the farthest end towards Whitechappel Church was not allpaved, but even the part that was paved was full of grass also; but thisneed not seem strange, since the great streets within the city, such asLeadenhall Street, Bishopsgate Street, Cornhill, and even the Exchangeitself, had grass growing in them in several places; neither cart orcoach were seen in the streets from morning to evening, except somecountry carts to bring roots and beans, or peas, hay, and straw, tothe market, and those but very few compared to what was usual. Asfor coaches, they were scarce used but to carry sick people to thepest-house, and to other hospitals, and some few to carry physicians tosuch places as they thought fit to venture to visit; for really coacheswere dangerous things, and people did not care to venture into them, because they did not know who might have been carried in them last, andsick, infected people were, as I have said, ordinarily carried in themto the pest-houses, and sometimes people expired in them as they wentalong. 

It is true, when the infection came to such a height as I have nowmentioned, there were very few physicians which cared to stir abroad tosick houses, and very many of the most eminent of the faculty were dead, as well as the surgeons also; for now it was indeed a dismal time, and for about a month together, not taking any notice of the bills ofmortality, I believe there did not die less than 1500 or 1700 a day, oneday with another. 

One of the worst days we had in the whole time, as I thought, was in thebeginning of September, when, indeed, good people began to think thatGod was resolved to make a full end of the people in this miserablecity. This was at that time when the plague was fully come into theeastern parishes. The parish of Aldgate, if I may give my opinion, buried above a thousand a week for two weeks, though the bills did notsay so many;--but it surrounded me at so dismal a rate that there wasnot a house in twenty uninfected in the Minories, in Houndsditch, and inthose parts of Aldgate parish about the Butcher Row and the alleysover against me. I say, in those places death reigned in every corner. Whitechappel parish was in the same condition, and though much less thanthe parish I lived in, yet buried near 600 a week by the bills, and inmy opinion near twice as many. Whole families, and indeed whole streetsof families, were swept away together; insomuch that it was frequentfor neighbours to call to the bellman to go to such-and-such houses andfetch out the people, for that they were all dead. 

And, indeed, the work of removing the dead bodies by carts was now grownso very odious and dangerous that it was complained of that the bearersdid not take care to dear such houses where all the inhabitants weredead, but that sometimes the bodies lay several days unburied, till theneighbouring families were offended with the stench, and consequentlyinfected; and this neglect of the officers was such that thechurchwardens and constables were summoned to look after it, and eventhe justices of the Hamlets were obliged to venture their lives amongthem to quicken and encourage them, for innumerable of the bearers diedof the distemper, infected by the bodies they were obliged to come sonear. And had it not been that the number of poor people who wantedemployment and wanted bread (as I have said before) was so great thatnecessity drove them to undertake anything and venture anything, theywould never have found people to be employed. And then the bodies ofthe dead would have lain above ground, and have perished and rotted in adreadful manner. 

But the magistrates cannot be enough commended in this, that they keptsuch good order for the burying of the dead, that as fast as any ofthese they employed to carry off and bury the dead fell sick or died, as was many times the case, they immediately supplied the places withothers, which, by reason of the great number of poor that was leftout of business, as above, was not hard to do. This occasioned, thatnotwithstanding the infinite number of people which died and were sick, almost all together, yet they were always cleared away and carried offevery night, so that it was never to be said of London that the livingwere not able to bury the dead. 

As the desolation was greater during those terrible times, so theamazement of the people increased, and a thousand unaccountable thingsthey would do in the violence of their fright, as others did the same inthe agonies of their distemper, and this part was very affecting. Somewent roaring and crying and wringing their hands along the street; somewould go praying and lifting up their hands to heaven, calling uponGod for mercy. I cannot say, indeed, whether this was not in theirdistraction, but, be it so, it was still an indication of a more seriousmind, when they had the use of their senses, and was much better, evenas it was, than the frightful yellings and cryings that every day, andespecially in the evenings, were heard in some streets. I suppose theworld has heard of the famous Solomon Eagle, an enthusiast. He, thoughnot infected at all but in his head, went about denouncing of judgementupon the city in a frightful manner, sometimes quite naked, and with apan of burning charcoal on his head. What he said, or pretended, indeedI could not learn. 

I will not say whether that clergyman was distracted or not, or whetherhe did it in pure zeal for the poor people, who went every eveningthrough the streets of Whitechappel, and, with his hands lifted up, repeated that part of the Liturgy of the Church continually, 'Spareus, good Lord; spare Thy people, whom Thou has redeemed with Thy mostprecious blood. ' I say, I cannot speak positively of these things, because these were only the dismal objects which represented themselvesto me as I looked through my chamber windows (for I seldom openedthe casements), while I confined myself within doors during that mostviolent raging of the pestilence; when, indeed, as I have said, manybegan to think, and even to say, that there would none escape; andindeed I began to think so too, and therefore kept within doors forabout a fortnight and never stirred out. But I could not hold it. Besides, there were some people who, notwithstanding the danger, did notomit publicly to attend the worship of God, even in the most dangeroustimes; and though it is true that a great many clergymen did shut uptheir churches, and fled, as other people did, for the safety of theirlives, yet all did not do so. Some ventured to officiate and to keep upthe assemblies of the people by constant prayers, and sometimes sermonsor brief exhortations to repentance and reformation, and this as long asany would come to hear them. And Dissenters did the like also, and evenin the very churches where the parish ministers were either dead orfled; nor was there any room for making difference at such a time asthis was. 

It was indeed a lamentable thing to hear the miserable lamentations ofpoor dying creatures calling out for ministers to comfort them and praywith them, to counsel them and to direct them, calling out to God forpardon and mercy, and confessing aloud their past sins. It would makethe stoutest heart bleed to hear how many warnings were then given bydying penitents to others not to put off and delay their repentance tothe day of distress; that such a time of calamity as this was no timefor repentance, was no time to call upon God. I wish I could repeat thevery sound of those groans and of those exclamations that I heardfrom some poor dying creatures when in the height of their agonies anddistress, and that I could make him that reads this hear, as I imagine Inow hear them, for the sound seems still to ring in my ears. 

If I could but tell this part in such moving accents as should alarm thevery soul of the reader, I should rejoice that I recorded those things, however short and imperfect. 

It pleased God that I was still spared, and very hearty and sound inhealth, but very impatient of being pent up within doors without air, as I had been for fourteen days or thereabouts; and I could notrestrain myself, but I would go to carry a letter for my brother to thepost-house. Then it was indeed that I observed a profound silence in thestreets. When I came to the post-house, as I went to put in my letterI saw a man stand in one corner of the yard and talking to another ata window, and a third had opened a door belonging to the office. In themiddle of the yard lay a small leather purse with two keys hanging atit, with money in it, but nobody would meddle with it. I asked how longit had lain there; the man at the window said it had lain almost anhour, but that they had not meddled with it, because they did not knowbut the person who dropped it might come back to look for it. I had nosuch need of money, nor was the sum so big that I had any inclination tomeddle with it, or to get the money at the hazard it might be attendedwith; so I seemed to go away, when the man who had opened the doorsaid he would take it up, but so that if the right owner came for it heshould be sure to have it. So he went in and fetched a pail of water andset it down hard by the purse, then went again and fetch some gunpowder, and cast a good deal of powder upon the purse, and then made a trainfrom that which he had thrown loose upon the purse. The train reachedabout two yards. After this he goes in a third time and fetches out apair of tongs red hot, and which he had prepared, I suppose, on purpose;and first setting fire to the train of powder, that singed the purse andalso smoked the air sufficiently. But he was not content with that, buthe then takes up the purse with the tongs, holding it so long till thetongs burnt through the purse, and then he shook the money out into thepail of water, so he carried it in. The money, as I remember, was aboutthirteen shilling and some smooth groats and brass farthings. 

There might perhaps have been several poor people, as I have observedabove, that would have been hardy enough to have ventured for the sakeof the money; but you may easily see by what I have observed that thefew people who were spared were very careful of themselves at that timewhen the distress was so exceeding great. 

Much about the same time I walked out into the fields towards Bow; forI had a great mind to see how things were managed in the river and amongthe ships; and as I had some concern in shipping, I had a notion that ithad been one of the best ways of securing one's self from the infectionto have retired into a ship; and musing how to satisfy my curiosity inthat point, I turned away over the fields from Bow to Bromley, and downto Blackwall to the stairs which are there for landing or taking water. 

Here I saw a poor man walking on the bank, or sea-wall, as they call it, by himself. I walked a while also about, seeing the houses all shut up. At last I fell into some talk, at a distance, with this poor man; firstI asked him how people did thereabouts. 'Alas, sir!' says he, 'almostdesolate; all dead or sick. Here are very few families in this part, orin that village' (pointing at Poplar), 'where half of them are not deadalready, and the rest sick. ' Then he pointing to one house, 'There theyare all dead', said he, 'and the house stands open; nobody dares go intoit. A poor thief', says he, 'ventured in to steal something, but hepaid dear for his theft, for he was carried to the churchyard too lastnight. ' Then he pointed to several other houses. 'There', says he, 'theyare all dead, the man and his wife, and five children. There', sayshe, 'they are shut up; you see a watchman at the door'; and so of otherhouses. 'Why, ' says I, 'what do you here all alone?' 'Why, ' says he, 'Iam a poor, desolate man; it has pleased God I am not yet visited, thoughmy family is, and one of my children dead. ' 'How do you mean, then, 'said I, 'that you are not visited?' 'Why, ' says he, 'that's my house'(pointing to a very little, low-boarded house), 'and there my poor wifeand two children live, ' said he, 'if they may be said to live, for mywife and one of the children are visited, but I do not come at them. 'And with that word I saw the tears run very plentifully down his face;and so they did down mine too, I assure you. 

'But, ' said I, 'why do you not come at them? How can you abandon yourown flesh and blood?' 'Oh, sir, ' says he, 'the Lord forbid! I do notabandon them; I work for them as much as I am able; and, blessed be theLord, I keep them from want'; and with that I observed he lifted up hiseyes to heaven, with a countenance that presently told me I had happenedon a man that was no hypocrite, but a serious, religious, good man, and his ejaculation was an expression of thankfulness that, in sucha condition as he was in, he should be able to say his family did notwant. 'Well, ' says I, 'honest man, that is a great mercy as things gonow with the poor. But how do you live, then, and how are you kept fromthe dreadful calamity that is now upon us all?' 'Why, sir, ' says he, 'Iam a waterman, and there's my boat, ' says he, 'and the boat serves mefor a house. I work in it in the day, and I sleep in it in the night;and what I get I lay down upon that stone, ' says he, showing me a broadstone on the other side of the street, a good way from his house; 'andthen, ' says he, 'I halloo, and call to them till I make them hear; andthey come and fetch it. '

'Well, friend, ' says I, 'but how can you get any money as a waterman?Does any body go by water these times?' 'Yes, sir, ' says he, 'in the wayI am employed there does. Do you see there, ' says he, 'five ships lie atanchor' (pointing down the river a good way below the town), 'and do yousee', says he, 'eight or ten ships lie at the chain there, and at anchoryonder?' (pointing above the town). 'All those ships have families onboard, of their merchants and owners, and such-like, who have lockedthemselves up and live on board, close shut in, for fear of theinfection; and I tend on them to fetch things for them, carry letters, and do what is absolutely necessary, that they may not be obliged tocome on shore; and every night I fasten my boat on board one of theship's boats, and there I sleep by myself, and, blessed be God, I ampreserved hitherto. '

'Well, ' said I, 'friend, but will they let you come on board after youhave been on shore here, when this is such a terrible place, and soinfected as it is?'

'Why, as to that, ' said he, 'I very seldom go up the ship-side, butdeliver what I bring to their boat, or lie by the side, and they hoistit on board. If I did, I think they are in no danger from me, for Inever go into any house on shore, or touch anybody, no, not of my ownfamily; but I fetch provisions for them. '

'Nay, ' says I, 'but that may be worse, for you must have thoseprovisions of somebody or other; and since all this part of the town isso infected, it is dangerous so much as to speak with anybody, for thevillage', said I, 'is, as it were, the beginning of London, though it beat some distance from it. '

'That is true, ' added he; 'but you do not understand me right; I do notbuy provisions for them here. I row up to Greenwich and buy fresh meatthere, and sometimes I row down the river to Woolwich and buy there;then I go to single farm-houses on the Kentish side, where I am known, and buy fowls and eggs and butter, and bring to the ships, as theydirect me, sometimes one, sometimes the other. I seldom come on shorehere, and I came now only to call on my wife and hear how my family do, and give them a little money, which I received last night. '

'Poor man!' said I; 'and how much hast thou gotten for them?'

'I have gotten four shillings, ' said he, 'which is a great sum, asthings go now with poor men; but they have given me a bag of bread too, and a salt fish and some flesh; so all helps out. ' 'Well, ' said I, 'andhave you given it them yet?'

'No, ' said he; 'but I have called, and my wife has answered that shecannot come out yet, but in half-an-hour she hopes to come, and I amwaiting for her. Poor woman!' says he, 'she is brought sadly down. Shehas a swelling, and it is broke, and I hope she will recover; but I fearthe child will die, but it is the Lord--'

Here he stopped, and wept very much. 

'Well, honest friend, ' said I, 'thou hast a sure Comforter, if thou hastbrought thyself to be resigned to the will of God; He is dealing with usall in judgement. '

'Oh, sir!' says he, 'it is infinite mercy if any of us are spared, andwho am I to repine!'

'Sayest thou so?' said I, 'and how much less is my faith than thine?'And here my heart smote me, suggesting how much better this poor man'sfoundation was on which he stayed in the danger than mine; that he hadnowhere to fly; that he had a family to bind him to attendance, whichI had not; and mine was mere presumption, his a true dependence and acourage resting on God; and yet that he used all possible caution forhis safety. 

I turned a little way from the man while these thoughts engaged me, for, indeed, I could no more refrain from tears than he. 

At length, after some further talk, the poor woman opened the door andcalled, 'Robert, Robert'. He answered, and bid her stay a few momentsand he would come; so he ran down the common stairs to his boat andfetched up a sack, in which was the provisions he had brought from theships; and when he returned he hallooed again. Then he went to thegreat stone which he showed me and emptied the sack, and laid all out, everything by themselves, and then retired; and his wife came with alittle boy to fetch them away, and called and said such a captain hadsent such a thing, and such a captain such a thing, and at the end adds, 'God has sent it all; give thanks to Him. ' When the poor woman had takenup all, she was so weak she could not carry it at once in, though theweight was not much neither; so she left the biscuit, which was in alittle bag, and left a little boy to watch it till she came again. 

'Well, but', says I to him, 'did you leave her the four shillings too, which you said was your week's pay?'

'Yes, yes, ' says he; 'you shall hear her own it. ' So he calls again, 'Rachel, Rachel, ' which it seems was her name, 'did you take up themoney?' 'Yes, ' said she. 'How much was it?' said he. 'Four shillings anda groat, ' said she. 'Well, well, ' says he, 'the Lord keep you all'; andso he turned to go away. 

As I could not refrain contributing tears to this man's story, soneither could I refrain my charity for his assistance. So I called him, 'Hark thee, friend, ' said I, 'come hither, for I believe thou art inhealth, that I may venture thee'; so I pulled out my hand, which was inmy pocket before, 'Here, ' says I, 'go and call thy Rachel once more, andgive her a little more comfort from me. God will never forsake a familythat trust in Him as thou dost. ' So I gave him four other shillings, andbid him go lay them on the stone and call his wife. 

I have not words to express the poor man's thankfulness, neither couldhe express it himself but by tears running down his face. He called hiswife, and told her God had moved the heart of a stranger, upon hearingtheir condition, to give them all that money, and a great deal moresuch as that he said to her. The woman, too, made signs of the likethankfulness, as well to Heaven as to me, and joyfully picked it up; andI parted with no money all that year that I thought better bestowed. 

I then asked the poor man if the distemper had not reached to Greenwich. He said it had not till about a fortnight before; but that then hefeared it had, but that it was only at that end of the town which laysouth towards Deptford Bridge; that he went only to a butcher's shop anda grocer's, where he generally bought such things as they sent him for, but was very careful. 

I asked him then how it came to pass that those people who had so shutthemselves up in the ships had not laid in sufficient stores of allthings necessary. He said some of them had--but, on the other hand, somedid not come on board till they were frighted into it and till it wastoo dangerous for them to go to the proper people to lay in quantitiesof things, and that he waited on two ships, which he showed me, that hadlaid in little or nothing but biscuit bread and ship beer, and that hehad bought everything else almost for them. I asked him if there was anymore ships that had separated themselves as those had done. He told meyes, all the way up from the point, right against Greenwich, to withinthe shore of Limehouse and Redriff, all the ships that could have roomrid two and two in the middle of the stream, and that some of them hadseveral families on board. I asked him if the distemper had not reachedthem. He said he believed it had not, except two or three ships whosepeople had not been so watchful to keep the seamen from going on shoreas others had been, and he said it was a very fine sight to see how theships lay up the Pool. 

When he said he was going over to Greenwich as soon as the tide began tocome in, I asked if he would let me go with him and bring me back, forthat I had a great mind to see how the ships were ranged, as he had toldme. He told me, if I would assure him on the word of a Christian and ofan honest man that I had not the distemper, he would. I assured himthat I had not; that it had pleased God to preserve me; that I lived inWhitechappel, but was too impatient of being so long within doors, andthat I had ventured out so far for the refreshment of a little air, butthat none in my house had so much as been touched with it. 

Well, sir, ' says he, 'as your charity has been moved to pity me and mypoor family, sure you cannot have so little pity left as to put yourselfinto my boat if you were not sound in health which would be nothing lessthan killing me and ruining my whole family. ' The poor man troubled meso much when he spoke of his family with such a sensible concern and insuch an affectionate manner, that I could not satisfy myself at firstto go at all. I told him I would lay aside my curiosity rather than makehim uneasy, though I was sure, and very thankful for it, that I hadno more distemper upon me than the freshest man in the world. Well, hewould not have me put it off neither, but to let me see how confidenthe was that I was just to him, now importuned me to go; so when the tidecame up to his boat I went in, and he carried me to Greenwich. While hebought the things which he had in his charge to buy, I walked up to thetop of the hill under which the town stands, and on the east side of thetown, to get a prospect of the river. But it was a surprising sight tosee the number of ships which lay in rows, two and two, and some placestwo or three such lines in the breadth of the river, and this not onlyup quite to the town, between the houses which we call Ratcliff andRedriff, which they name the Pool, but even down the whole river as faras the head of Long Reach, which is as far as the hills give us leave tosee it. 

I cannot guess at the number of ships, but I think there must be severalhundreds of sail; and I could not but applaud the contrivance: forten thousand people and more who attended ship affairs were certainlysheltered here from the violence of the contagion, and lived very safeand very easy. 

I returned to my own dwelling very well satisfied with my day's journey, and particularly with the poor man; also I rejoiced to see that suchlittle sanctuaries were provided for so many families in a time of suchdesolation. I observed also that, as the violence of the plague hadincreased, so the ships which had families on board removed and wentfarther off, till, as I was told, some went quite away to sea, and putinto such harbours and safe roads on the north coast as they could bestcome at. 

But it was also true that all the people who thus left the land andlived on board the ships were not entirely safe from the infection, formany died and were thrown overboard into the river, some in coffins, andsome, as I heard, without coffins, whose bodies were seen sometimes todrive up and down with the tide in the river. 

But I believe I may venture to say that in those ships which were thusinfected it either happened where the people had recourse to them toolate, and did not fly to the ship till they had stayed too long on shoreand had the distemper upon them (though perhaps they might not perceiveit) and so the distemper did not come to them on board the ships, butthey really carried it with them; or it was in these ships where thepoor waterman said they had not had time to furnish themselves withprovisions, but were obliged to send often on shore to buy what they hadoccasion for, or suffered boats to come to them from the shore. And sothe distemper was brought insensibly among them. 

And here I cannot but take notice that the strange temper of the peopleof London at that time contributed extremely to their own destruction. The plague began, as I have observed, at the other end of the town, namely, in Long Acre, Drury Lane, &c. , and came on towards the city verygradually and slowly. It was felt at first in December, then again inFebruary, then again in April, and always but a very little at a time;then it stopped till May, and even the last week in May there was butseventeen, and all at that end of the town; and all this while, evenso long as till there died above 3000 a week, yet had the people inRedriff, and in Wapping and Ratcliff, on both sides of the river, and almost all Southwark side, a mighty fancy that they should not bevisited, or at least that it would not be so violent among them. Somepeople fancied the smell of the pitch and tar, and such other thingsas oil and rosin and brimstone, which is so much used by all tradesrelating to shipping, would preserve them. Others argued it, because itwas in its extreamest violence in Westminster and the parish of StGiles and St Andrew, &c. , and began to abate again before it came amongthem--which was true indeed, in part. For example--

 From the 8th to the 15th August-- - St Giles-in-the-Fields 242 - Cripplegate 886 - Stepney 197 - St Margaret, Bermondsey 24 - Rotherhith 3 - Total this week 4030

 From the 15th to the 22nd August-- - St Giles-in-the-Fields 175 - Cripplegate 847 - Stepney 273 - St Margaret, Bermondsey 36 - Rotherhith 2 - Total this week 5319

N. B. --That it was observed the numbers mentioned in Stepney parish atthat time were generally all on that side where Stepney parish joined toShoreditch, which we now call Spittlefields, where the parish of Stepneycomes up to the very wall of Shoreditch Churchyard, and the plague atthis time was abated at St Giles-in-the-Fields, and raged most violentlyin Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, and Shoreditch parishes; but there was notten people a week that died of it in all that part of Stepney parishwhich takes in Limehouse, Ratdiff Highway, and which are now theparishes of Shadwell and Wapping, even to St Katherine's by the Tower, till after the whole month of August was expired. But they paid for itafterwards, as I shall observe by-and-by. 

This, I say, made the people of Redriff and Wapping, Ratcliff andLimehouse, so secure, and flatter themselves so much with the plague'sgoing off without reaching them, that they took no care either to flyinto the country or shut themselves up. Nay, so far were they fromstirring that they rather received their friends and relations fromthe city into their houses, and several from other places really tooksanctuary in that part of the town as a Place of safety, and as a placewhich they thought God would pass over, and not visit as the rest wasvisited. 

And this was the reason that when it came upon--them they were moresurprised, more unprovided, and more at a loss what to do than they werein other places; for when it came among them really and with violence, as it did indeed in September and October, there was then no stirringout into the country, nobody would suffer a stranger to come near them, no, nor near the towns where they dwelt; and, as I have been told, several that wandered into the country on Surrey side were found starvedto death in the woods and commons, that country being more open and morewoody than any other part so near London, especially about Norwood andthe parishes of Camberwell, Dullege, and Lusum, where, it seems, nobodydurst relieve the poor distressed people for fear of the infection. 

This notion having, as I said, prevailed with the people in that partof the town, was in part the occasion, as I said before, that they hadrecourse to ships for their retreat; and where they did this early andwith prudence, furnishing themselves so with provisions that they hadno need to go on shore for supplies or suffer boats to come on boardto bring them, --I say, where they did so they had certainly the safestretreat of any people whatsoever; but the distress was such that peopleran on board, in their fright, without bread to eat, and some into shipsthat had no men on board to remove them farther off, or to take the boatand go down the river to buy provisions where it might be done safely, and these often suffered and were infected on board as much as on shore. 

As the richer sort got into ships, so the lower rank got into hoys, smacks, lighters, and fishing-boats; and many, especially watermen, layin their boats; but those made sad work of it, especially the latter, for, going about for provision, and perhaps to get their subsistence, the infection got in among them and made a fearful havoc; many of thewatermen died alone in their wherries as they rid at their roads, aswell as above bridge as below, and were not found sometimes till theywere not in condition for anybody to touch or come near them. 

Indeed, the distress of the people at this seafaring end of the town wasvery deplorable, and deserved the greatest commiseration. But, alas Ithis was a time when every one's private safety lay so near them thatthey had no room to pity the distresses of others; for every one haddeath, as it were, at his door, and many even in their families, andknew not what to do or whither to fly. 

This, I say, took away all compassion; self-preservation, indeed, appeared here to be the first law. For the children ran away from theirparents as they languished in the utmost distress. And in some places, though not so frequent as the other, parents did the like to theirchildren; nay, some dreadful examples there were, and particularly twoin one week, of distressed mothers, raving and distracted, killing theirown children; one whereof was not far off from where I dwelt, the poorlunatic creature not living herself long enough to be sensible of thesin of what she had done, much less to be punished for it. 

It is not, indeed, to be wondered at: for the danger of immediate deathto ourselves took away all bowels of love, all concern for oneanother. I speak in general, for there were many instances of immovableaffection, pity, and duty in many, and some that came to my knowledge, that is to say, by hearsay; for I shall not take upon me to vouch thetruth of the particulars. 

To introduce one, let me first mention that one of the most deplorablecases in all the present calamity was that of women with child, who, when they came to the hour of their sorrows, and their pains come uponthem, could neither have help of one kind or another; neither midwifeor neighbouring women to come near them. Most of the midwives were dead, especially of such as served the poor; and many, if not all the midwivesof note, were fled into the country; so that it was next to impossiblefor a poor woman that could not pay an immoderate price to get anymidwife to come to her--and if they did, those they could get weregenerally unskilful and ignorant creatures; and the consequence of thiswas that a most unusual and incredible number of women were reduced tothe utmost distress. Some were delivered and spoiled by the rashness andignorance of those who pretended to lay them. Children withoutnumber were, I might say, murdered by the same but a more justifiableignorance: pretending they would save the mother, whatever became ofthe child; and many times both mother and child were lost in the samemanner; and especially where the mother had the distemper, there nobodywould come near them and both sometimes perished. Sometimes the motherhas died of the plague, and the infant, it may be, half born, or bornbut not parted from the mother. Some died in the very pains of theirtravail, and not delivered at all; and so many were the cases of thiskind that it is hard to judge of them. 

Something of it will appear in the unusual numbers which are put intothe weekly bills (though I am far from allowing them to be able to giveanything of a full account) under the articles of--

 Child-bed. Abortive and Still-born. Christmas and Infants. 

Take the weeks in which the plague was most violent, and compare themwith the weeks before the distemper began, even in the same year. Forexample:--

 Child-bed. Abortive. Still-born. From January 3 to January 10 7 1 13 " " 10 " 17 8 6 11 " " 17 " 24 9 5 15 " " 24 " 31 3 2 9 " " 31 to February 7 3 3 8 " February 7 " 14 6 2 11 " " 14 " 21 5 2 13 " " 21 " 28 2 2 10 " " 28 to March 7 5 1 10 - --- --- ---- - 48 24 100

 From August 1 to August 8 25 5 11 " " 8 " 15 23 6 8 " " 15 " 22 28 4 4 " " 22 " 29 40 6 10 " " 29 to September 5 38 2 11 September 5 " 12 39 23 ... " " 12 " 19 42 5 17 " " 19 " 26 42 6 10 " " 26 to October 3 14 4 9 - --- -- --- - 291 61 80

To the disparity of these numbers it is to be considered and allowedfor, that according to our usual opinion who were then upon the spot, there were not one-third of the people in the town during the months ofAugust and September as were in the months of January and February. In aword, the usual number that used to die of these three articles, and, asI hear, did die of them the year before, was thus:--

 1664. 1665. Child-bed 189 Child-bed 625 Abortive and still-born 458 Abortive and still-born 617 - ---- ---- - 647 1242

This inequality, I say, is exceedingly augmented when the numbers ofpeople are considered. I pretend not to make any exact calculation ofthe numbers of people which were at this time in the city, but I shallmake a probable conjecture at that part by-and-by. What I have said nowis to explain the misery of those poor creatures above; so that it mightwell be said, as in the Scripture, Woe be to those who are with child, and to those which give suck in that day. For, indeed, it was a woe tothem in particular. 

I was not conversant in many particular families where these thingshappened, but the outcries of the miserable were heard afar off. As tothose who were with child, we have seen some calculation made; 291 womendead in child-bed in nine weeks, out of one-third part of the numberof whom there usually died in that time but eighty-four of the samedisaster. Let the reader calculate the proportion. 

There is no room to doubt but the misery of those that gave suck was inproportion as great. Our bills of mortality could give but little lightin this, yet some it did. There were several more than usual starvedat nurse, but this was nothing. The misery was where they were, first, starved for want of a nurse, the mother dying and all the family andthe infants found dead by them, merely for want; and, if I may speakmy opinion, I do believe that many hundreds of poor helpless infantsperished in this manner. Secondly, not starved, but poisoned by thenurse. Nay, even where the mother has been nurse, and having receivedthe infection, has poisoned, that is, infected the infant with her milkeven before they knew they were infected themselves; nay, and the infanthas died in such a case before the mother. I cannot but rememberto leave this admonition upon record, if ever such another dreadfulvisitation should happen in this city, that all women that are withchild or that give suck should be gone, if they have any possible means, out of the place, because their misery, if infected, will so much exceedall other people's. 

I could tell here dismal stories of living infants being found suckingthe breasts of their mothers, or nurses, after they have been dead ofthe plague. Of a mother in the parish where I lived, who, having a childthat was not well, sent for an apothecary to view the child; and when hecame, as the relation goes, was giving the child suck at her breast, andto all appearance was herself very well; but when the apothecary cameclose to her he saw the tokens upon that breast with which she wassuckling the child. He was surprised enough, to be sure, but, notwilling to fright the poor woman too much, he desired she would give thechild into his hand; so he takes the child, and going to a cradle inthe room, lays it in, and opening its cloths, found the tokens upon thechild too, and both died before he could get home to send a preventivemedicine to the father of the child, to whom he had told theircondition. Whether the child infected the nurse-mother or the motherthe child was not certain, but the last most likely. Likewise of a childbrought home to the parents from a nurse that had died of the plague, yet the tender mother would not refuse to take in her child, and laid itin her bosom, by which she was infected; and died with the child in herarms dead also. 

It would make the hardest heart move at the instances that werefrequently found of tender mothers tending and watching with their dearchildren, and even dying before them, and sometimes taking the distemperfrom them and dying, when the child for whom the affectionate heart hadbeen sacrificed has got over it and escaped. 

The like of a tradesman in East Smithfield, whose wife was big withchild of her first child, and fell in labour, having the plague uponher. He could neither get midwife to assist her or nurse to tend her, and two servants which he kept fled both from her. He ran from house tohouse like one distracted, but could get no help; the utmost he couldget was, that a watchman, who attended at an infected house shut up, promised to send a nurse in the morning. The poor man, with his heartbroke, went back, assisted his wife what he could, acted the part of themidwife, brought the child dead into the world, and his wife in aboutan hour died in his arms, where he held her dead body fast tillthe morning, when the watchman came and brought the nurse as he hadpromised; and coming up the stairs (for he had left the door open, oronly latched), they found the man sitting with his dead wife in hisarms, and so overwhelmed with grief that he died in a few hours afterwithout any sign of the infection upon him, but merely sunk under theweight of his grief. 

I have heard also of some who, on the death of their relations, havegrown stupid with the insupportable sorrow; and of one, in particular, who was so absolutely overcome with the pressure upon his spirits thatby degrees his head sank into his body, so between his shouldersthat the crown of his head was very little seen above the bone of hisshoulders; and by degrees losing both voice and sense, his face, looking forward, lay against his collarbone and could not be kept up anyotherwise, unless held up by the hands of other people; and the poorman never came to himself again, but languished near a year in thatcondition, and died. Nor was he ever once seen to lift up his eyes or tolook upon any particular object. 

I cannot undertake to give any other than a summary of such passagesas these, because it was not possible to come at the particulars, wheresometimes the whole families where such things happened were carried offby the distemper. But there were innumerable cases of this kind whichpresented to the eye and the ear, even in passing along the streets, asI have hinted above. Nor is it easy to give any story of this or thatfamily which there was not divers parallel stories to be met with of thesame kind. 

But as I am now talking of the time when the plague raged at theeasternmost part of the town--how for a long time the people of thoseparts had flattered themselves that they should escape, and how theywere surprised when it came upon them as it did; for, indeed, it cameupon them like an armed man when it did come;--I say, this bringsme back to the three poor men who wandered from Wapping, not knowingwhither to go or what to do, and whom I mentioned before; one abiscuit-baker, one a sailmaker, and the other a joiner, all of Wapping, or there-abouts. 

The sleepiness and security of that part, as I have observed, was suchthat they not only did not shift for themselves as others did, but theyboasted of being safe, and of safety being with them; and many peoplefled out of the city, and out of the infected suburbs, to Wapping, Ratcliff, Limehouse, Poplar, and such Places, as to Places of security;and it is not at all unlikely that their doing this helped to bring theplague that way faster than it might otherwise have come. For though Iam much for people flying away and emptying such a town as this upon thefirst appearance of a like visitation, and that all people who have anypossible retreat should make use of it in time and be gone, yet I mustsay, when all that will fly are gone, those that are left and must standit should stand stock-still where they are, and not shift from one endof the town or one part of the town to the other; for that is the baneand mischief of the whole, and they carry the plague from house to housein their very clothes. 

Wherefore were we ordered to kill all the dogs and cats, but because asthey were domestic animals, and are apt to run from house to house andfrom street to street, so they are capable of carrying the effluvia orinfectious streams of bodies infected even in their furs and hair? Andtherefore it was that, in the beginning of the infection, an order waspublished by the Lord Mayor, and by the magistrates, according tothe advice of the physicians, that all the dogs and cats should beimmediately killed, and an officer was appointed for the execution. 

It is incredible, if their account is to be depended upon, what aprodigious number of those creatures were destroyed. I think they talkedof forty thousand dogs, and five times as many cats; few houses beingwithout a cat, some having several, sometimes five or six in a house. All possible endeavours were used also to destroy the mice and rats, especially the latter, by laying ratsbane and other poisons for them, and a prodigious multitude of them were also destroyed. 

I often reflected upon the unprovided condition that the whole body ofthe people were in at the first coming of this calamity upon them, andhow it was for want of timely entering into measures and managements, as well public as private, that all the confusions that followed werebrought upon us, and that such a prodigious number of people sank inthat disaster, which, if proper steps had been taken, might, Providenceconcurring, have been avoided, and which, if posterity think fit, theymay take a caution and warning from. But I shall come to this partagain. 

I come back to my three men. Their story has a moral in every part ofit, and their whole conduct, and that of some whom they joined with, isa pattern for all poor men to follow, or women either, if ever such atime comes again; and if there was no other end in recording it, I thinkthis a very just one, whether my account be exactly according to fact orno. 

Two of them are said to be brothers, the one an old soldier, but now abiscuit-maker; the other a lame sailor, but now a sailmaker; the thirda joiner. Says John the biscuit-maker one day to Thomas his brother, thesailmaker, 'Brother Tom, what will become of us? The plague grows hot inthe city, and increases this way. What shall we do?'

'Truly, ' says Thomas, 'I am at a great loss what to do, for I find if itcomes down into Wapping I shall be turned out of my lodging. ' And thusthey began to talk of it beforehand. 

John. Turned out of your lodging, Tom I If you are, I don't know whowill take you in; for people are so afraid of one another now, there'sno getting a lodging anywhere. 

Thomas. Why, the people where I lodge are good, civil people, and havekindness enough for me too; but they say I go abroad every day to mywork, and it will be dangerous; and they talk of locking themselves upand letting nobody come near them. 

John. Why, they are in the right, to be sure, if they resolve to venturestaying in town. 

Thomas. Nay, I might even resolve to stay within doors too, for, except a suit of sails that my master has in hand, and which I am justfinishing, I am like to get no more work a great while. There's no tradestirs now. Workmen and servants are turned off everywhere, so that Imight be glad to be locked up too; but I do not see they will be willingto consent to that, any more than to the other. 

John. Why, what will you do then, brother? And what shall I do? for Iam almost as bad as you. The people where I lodge are all gone into thecountry but a maid, and she is to go next week, and to shut the housequite up, so that I shall be turned adrift to the wide world before you, and I am resolved to go away too, if I knew but where to go. 

Thomas. We were both distracted we did not go away at first; then wemight have travelled anywhere. There's no stirring now; we shallbe starved if we pretend to go out of town. They won't let us havevictuals, no, not for our money, nor let us come into the towns, muchless into their houses. 

John. And that which is almost as bad, I have but little money to helpmyself with neither. 

Thomas. As to that, we might make shift, I have a little, though notmuch; but I tell you there's no stirring on the road. I know a couple ofpoor honest men in our street have attempted to travel, and at Barnet, or Whetstone, or thereabouts, the people offered to fire at them if theypretended to go forward, so they are come back again quite discouraged. 

John. I would have ventured their fire if I had been there. If I hadbeen denied food for my money they should have seen me take it beforetheir faces, and if I had tendered money for it they could not havetaken any course with me by law. 

Thomas. You talk your old soldier's language, as if you were in the LowCountries now, but this is a serious thing. The people have good reasonto keep anybody off that they are not satisfied are sound, at such atime as this, and we must not plunder them. 

John. No, brother, you mistake the case, and mistake me too. I wouldplunder nobody; but for any town upon the road to deny me leave to passthrough the town in the open highway, and deny me provisions for mymoney, is to say the town has a right to starve me to death, whichcannot be true. 

Thomas. But they do not deny you liberty to go back again from whenceyou came, and therefore they do not starve you. 

John. But the next town behind me will, by the same rule, deny me leaveto go back, and so they do starve me between them. Besides, there is nolaw to prohibit my travelling wherever I will on the road. 

Thomas. But there will be so much difficulty in disputing with them atevery town on the road that it is not for poor men to do it or undertakeit, at such a time as this is especially. 

John. Why, brother, our condition at this rate is worse than anybodyelse's, for we can neither go away nor stay here. I am of the same mindwith the lepers of Samaria: 'If we stay here we are sure to die', I meanespecially as you and I are stated, without a dwelling-house of our own, and without lodging in anybody else's. There is no lying in the streetat such a time as this; we had as good go into the dead-cart at once. Therefore I say, if we stay here we are sure to die, and if we go awaywe can but die; I am resolved to be gone. 

Thomas. You will go away. Whither will you go, and what can you do? Iwould as willingly go away as you, if I knew whither. But we have noacquaintance, no friends. Here we were born, and here we must die. 

John. Look you, Tom, the whole kingdom is my native country as well asthis town. You may as well say I must not go out of my house if it ison fire as that I must not go out of the town I was born in when it isinfected with the plague. I was born in England, and have a right tolive in it if I can. 

Thomas. But you know every vagrant person may by the laws of England betaken up, and passed back to their last legal settlement. 

John. But how shall they make me vagrant? I desire only to travel on, upon my lawful occasions. 

Thomas. What lawful occasions can we pretend to travel, or rather wanderupon? They will not be put off with words. 

John. Is not flying to save our lives a lawful occasion? And do they notall know that the fact is true? We cannot be said to dissemble. 

Thomas. But suppose they let us pass, whither shall we go?

John. Anywhere, to save our lives; it is time enough to consider thatwhen we are got out of this town. If I am once out of this dreadfulplace, I care not where I go. 

Thomas. We shall be driven to great extremities. I know not what tothink of it. 

John. Well, Tom, consider of it a little. 

This was about the beginning of July; and though the plague was comeforward in the west and north parts of the town, yet all Wapping, asI have observed before, and Redriff, and Ratdiff, and Limehouse, andPoplar, in short, Deptford and Greenwich, all both sides of the riverfrom the Hermitage, and from over against it, quite down to Blackwall, was entirely free; there had not one person died of the plague in allStepney parish, and not one on the south side of Whitechappel Road, no, not in any parish; and yet the weekly bill was that very week risen upto 1006. 

It was a fortnight after this before the two brothers met again, andthen the case was a little altered, and the' plague was exceedinglyadvanced and the number greatly increased; the bill was up at 2785, andprodigiously increasing, though still both sides of the river, as below, kept pretty well. But some began to die in Redriff, and about five orsix in Ratdiff Highway, when the sailmaker came to his brother Johnexpress, and in some fright; for he was absolutely warned out of hislodging, and had only a week to provide himself. His brother John wasin as bad a case, for he was quite out, and had only begged leave ofhis master, the biscuit-maker, to lodge in an outhouse belonging to hisworkhouse, where he only lay upon straw, with some biscuit-sacks, orbread-sacks, as they called them, laid upon it, and some of the samesacks to cover him. 

Here they resolved (seeing all employment being at an end, and no workor wages to be had), they would make the best of their way to get out ofthe reach of the dreadful infection, and, being as good husbands as theycould, would endeavour to live upon what they had as long as it wouldlast, and then work for more if they could get work anywhere, of anykind, let it be what it would. 

While they were considering to put this resolution in practice in thebest manner they could, the third man, who was acquainted very well withthe sailmaker, came to know of the design, and got leave to be one ofthe number; and thus they prepared to set out. 

It happened that they had not an equal share of money; but as thesailmaker, who had the best stock, was, besides his being lame, the mostunfit to expect to get anything by working in the country, so he wascontent that what money they had should all go into one public stock, oncondition that whatever any one of them could gain more than another, itshould without any grudging be all added to the public stock. 

They resolved to load themselves with as little baggage as possiblebecause they resolved at first to travel on foot, and to go a greatway that they might, if possible, be effectually safe; and a great manyconsultations they had with themselves before they could agree aboutwhat way they should travel, which they were so far from adjusting thateven to the morning they set out they were not resolved on it. 

At last the seaman put in a hint that determined it. 'First, ' says he, 'the weather is very hot, and therefore I am for travelling north, thatwe may not have the sun upon our faces and beating on our breasts, whichwill heat and suffocate us; and I have been told', says he, 'that it isnot good to overheat our blood at a time when, for aught we know, theinfection may be in the very air. In the next place, ' says he, 'I am forgoing the way that may be contrary to the wind, as it may blow when weset out, that we may not have the wind blow the air of the city on ourbacks as we go. ' These two cautions were approved of, if it could bebrought so to hit that the wind might not be in the south when they setout to go north. 

John the baker, who bad been a soldier, then put in his opinion. 'First, ' says he, 'we none of us expect to get any lodging on the road, and it will be a little too hard to lie just in the open air. Though itbe warm weather, yet it may be wet and damp, and we have a double reasonto take care of our healths at such a time as this; and therefore, 'says he, 'you, brother Tom, that are a sailmaker, might easily make us alittle tent, and I will undertake to set it up every night, and take itdown, and a fig for all the inns in England; if we have a good tent overour heads we shall do well enough. '

The joiner opposed this, and told them, let them leave that to him; hewould undertake to build them a house every night with his hatchet andmallet, though he had no other tools, which should be fully to theirsatisfaction, and as good as a tent. 

The soldier and the joiner disputed that point some time, but at lastthe soldier carried it for a tent. The only objection against it was, that it must be carried with them, and that would increase their baggagetoo much, the weather being hot; but the sailmaker had a piece of goodhap fell in which made that easy, for his master whom he worked for, having a rope-walk as well as sailmaking trade, had a little, poorhorse that he made no use of then; and being willing to assist the threehonest men, he gave them the horse for the carrying their baggage; alsofor a small matter of three days' work that his man did for him beforehe went, he let him have an old top-gallant sail that was worn out, but was sufficient and more than enough to make a very good tent. Thesoldier showed how to shape it, and they soon by his direction madetheir tent, and fitted it with poles or staves for the purpose; and thusthey were furnished for their journey, viz. , three men, one tent, onehorse, one gun--for the soldier would not go without arms, for now hesaid he was no more a biscuit-baker, but a trooper. 

The joiner had a small bag of tools such as might be useful if he shouldget any work abroad, as well for their subsistence as his own. Whatmoney they had they brought all into one public stock, and thus theybegan their journey. It seems that in the morning when they set out thewind blew, as the sailor said, by his pocket-compass, at N. W. By W. Sothey directed, or rather resolved to direct, their course N. W. 

But then a difficulty came in their way, that, as they set out from thehither end of Wapping, near the Hermitage, and that the plague was nowvery violent, especially on the north side of the city, as in Shoreditchand Cripplegate parish, they did not think it safe for them to go nearthose parts; so they went away east through Ratcliff Highway as far asRatcliff Cross, and leaving Stepney Church still on their left hand, being afraid to come up from Ratcliff Cross to Mile End, because theymust come just by the churchyard, and because the wind, that seemed toblow more from the west, blew directly from the side of the city wherethe plague was hottest. So, I say, leaving Stepney they fetched a longcompass, and going to Poplar and Bromley, came into the great road justat Bow. 

Here the watch placed upon Bow Bridge would have questioned them, butthey, crossing the road into a narrow way that turns out of the hitherend of the town of Bow to Old Ford, avoided any inquiry there, andtravelled to Old Ford. The constables everywhere were upon their guardnot so much, It seems, to stop people passing by as to stop them fromtaking up their abode in their towns, and withal because of a reportthat was newly raised at that time: and that, indeed, was not veryimprobable, viz. , that the poor people in London, being distressed andstarved for want of work, and by that means for want of bread, were upin arms and had raised a tumult, and that they would come out to all thetowns round to plunder for bread. This, I say, was only a rumour, andit was very well it was no more. But it was not so far off from being areality as it has been thought, for in a few weeks more the poor peoplebecame so desperate by the calamity they suffered that they were withgreat difficulty kept from g out into the fields and towns, and tearingall in pieces wherever they came; and, as I have observed before, nothing hindered them but that the plague raged so violently and fell inupon them so furiously that they rather went to the grave by thousandsthan into the fields in mobs by thousands; for, in the parts about theparishes of St Sepulcher, Clarkenwell, Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, andShoreditch, which were the places where the mob began to threaten, thedistemper came on so furiously that there died in those few parisheseven then, before the plague was come to its height, no less than 5361people in the first three weeks in August; when at the same timethe parts about Wapping, Radcliffe, and Rotherhith were, as beforedescribed, hardly touched, or but very lightly; so that in a wordthough, as I said before, the good management of the Lord Mayor andjustices did much to prevent the rage and desperation of the peoplefrom breaking out in rabbles and tumults, and in short from the poorplundering the rich, --I say, though they did much, the dead-carts didmore: for as I have said that in five parishes only there died above5000 in twenty days, so there might be probably three times that numbersick all that time; for some recovered, and great numbers fell sickevery day and died afterwards. Besides, I must still be allowed to saythat if the bills of mortality said five thousand, I always believed itwas near twice as many in reality, there being no room to believe thatthe account they gave was right, or that indeed they were among suchconfusions as I saw them in, in any condition to keep an exact account. 

But to return to my travellers. Here they were only examined, and asthey seemed rather coming from the country than from the city, theyfound the people the easier with them; that they talked to them, letthem come into a public-house where the constable and his warderswere, and gave them drink and some victuals which greatly refreshed andencouraged them; and here it came into their heads to say, when theyshould be inquired of afterwards, not that they came from London, butthat they came out of Essex. 

To forward this little fraud, they obtained so much favour of theconstable at Old Ford as to give them a certificate of their passingfrom Essex through that village, and that they had not been at London;which, though false in the common acceptance of London in the county, yet was literally true, Wapping or Ratcliff being no part either of thecity or liberty. 

This certificate directed to the next constable that was at Homerton, one of the hamlets of the parish of Hackney, was so serviceable tothem that it procured them, not a free passage there only, but afull certificate of health from a justice of the peace, who upon theconstable's application granted it without much difficulty; and thusthey passed through the long divided town of Hackney (for it lay thenin several separated hamlets), and travelled on till they came into thegreat north road on the top of Stamford Hill. 

By this time they began to be weary, and so in the back-road fromHackney, a little before it opened into the said great road, theyresolved to set up their tent and encamp for the first night, which theydid accordingly, with this addition, that finding a barn, or a buildinglike a barn, and first searching as well as they could to be sure therewas nobody in it, they set up their tent, with the head of it againstthe barn. This they did also because the wind blew that night very high, and they were but young at such a way of lodging, as well as at themanaging their tent. 

Here they went to sleep; but the joiner, a grave and sober man, and notpleased with their lying at this loose rate the first night, could notsleep, and resolved, after trying to sleep to no purpose, that he wouldget out, and, taking the gun in his hand, stand sentinel and guard hiscompanions. So with the gun in his hand, he walked to and again beforethe barn, for that stood in the field near the road, but within thehedge. He had not been long upon the scout but he heard a noise ofpeople coming on, as if it had been a great number, and they came on, as he thought, directly towards the barn. He did not presently awake hiscompanions; but in a few minutes more, their noise growing louder andlouder, the biscuit-baker called to him and asked him what was thematter, and quickly started out too. The other, being the lame sailmakerand most weary, lay still in the tent. 

As they expected, so the people whom they had heard came on directly tothe barn, when one of our travellers challenged, like soldiers upon theguard, with 'Who comes there?' The people did not answer immediately, but one of them speaking to another that was behind him, 'Alas I alas Iwe are all disappointed, ' says he. 'Here are some people before us; thebarn is taken up. '

They all stopped upon that, as under some surprise, and it seems therewas about thirteen of them in all, and some women among them. Theyconsulted together what they should do, and by their discourse ourtravellers soon found they were poor, distressed people too, likethemselves, seeking shelter and safety; and besides, our travellers hadno need to be afraid of their coming up to disturb them, for as soon asthey heard the words, 'Who comes there?' these could hear the women say, as if frighted, 'Do not go near them. How do you know but they may havethe plague?' And when one of the men said, 'Let us but speak to them', the women said, 'No, don't by any means. We have escaped thus far by thegoodness of God; do not let us run into danger now, we beseech you. '

Our travellers found by this that they were a good, sober sort ofpeople, and flying for their lives, as they were; and, as they wereencouraged by it, so John said to the joiner, his comrade, 'Let usencourage them too as much as we can'; so he called to them, 'Hark ye, good people, ' says the joiner, 'we find by your talk that you are flyingfrom the same dreadful enemy as we are. Do not be afraid of us; we areonly three poor men of us. If you are free from the distemper you shallnot be hurt by us. We are not in the barn, but in a little tent here inthe outside, and we will remove for you; we can set up our tent againimmediately anywhere else'; and upon this a parley began between thejoiner, whose name was Richard, and one of their men, who said his namewas Ford. 

Ford. And do you assure us that you are all sound men?

Richard. Nay, we are concerned to tell you of it, that you may not beuneasy or think yourselves in danger; but you see we do not desire youshould put yourselves into any danger, and therefore I tell you that wehave not made use of the barn, so we will remove from it, that you maybe safe and we also. 

Ford. That is very kind and charitable; but if we have reason to besatisfied that you are sound and free from the visitation, why should wemake you remove now you are settled in your lodging, and, it may be, are laid down to rest? We will go into the barn, if you please, to restourselves a while, and we need not disturb you. 

Richard. Well, but you are more than we are. I hope you will assure usthat you are all of you sound too, for the danger is as great from youto us as from us to you. 

Ford. Blessed be God that some do escape, though it is but few; what maybe our portion still we know not, but hitherto we are preserved. 

Richard. What part of the town do you come from? Was the plague come tothe places where you lived?

Ford. Ay, ay, in a most frightful and terrible manner, or else we hadnot fled away as we do; but we believe there will be very few left alivebehind us. 

Richard. What part do you come from?

Ford. We are most of us of Cripplegate parish, only two or three ofClerkenwell parish, but on the hither side. 

Richard. How then was it that you came away no sooner?

Ford. We have been away some time, and kept together as well as we couldat the hither end of Islington, where we got leave to lie in an olduninhabited house, and had some bedding and conveniences of our own thatwe brought with us; but the plague is come up into Islington too, anda house next door to our poor dwelling was infected and shut up; and weare come away in a fright. 

Richard. And what way are you going?

Ford. As our lot shall cast us; we know not whither, but God will guidethose that look up to Him. 

They parleyed no further at that time, but came all up to the barn, andwith some difficulty got into it. There was nothing but hay in the barn, but it was almost full of that, and they accommodated themselves as wellas they could, and went to rest; but our travellers observed that beforethey went to sleep an ancient man who it seems was father of one of thewomen, went to prayer with all the company, recommending themselves tothe blessing and direction of Providence, before they went to sleep. 

It was soon day at that time of the year, and as Richard the joiner hadkept guard the first part of the night, so John the soldier relievedhim, and he had the post in the morning, and they began to be acquaintedwith one another. It seems when they left Islington they intended tohave gone north, away to Highgate, but were stopped at Holloway, andthere they would not let them pass; so they crossed over the fieldsand hills to the eastward, and came out at the Boarded River, and soavoiding the towns, they left Hornsey on the left hand and Newington onthe right hand, and came into the great road about Stamford Hill on thatside, as the three travellers had done on the other side. And now theyhad thoughts of going over the river in the marshes, and make forwardsto Epping Forest, where they hoped they should get leave to rest. Itseems they were not poor, at least not so poor as to be in want; atleast they had enough to subsist them moderately for two or threemonths, when, as they said, they were in hopes the cold weather wouldcheck the infection, or at least the violence of it would have spentitself, and would abate, if it were only for want of people left aliveto be infected. 

This was much the fate of our three travellers, only that they seemed tobe the better furnished for travelling, and had it in their view to gofarther off; for as to the first, they did not propose to go fartherthan one day's journey, that so they might have intelligence every twoor three days how things were at London. 

But here our travellers found themselves under an unexpectedinconvenience: namely that of their horse, for by means of the horse tocarry their baggage they were obliged to keep in the road, whereas thepeople of this other band went over the fields or roads, path or nopath, way or no way, as they pleased; neither had they any occasion topass through any town, or come near any town, other than to buy suchthings as they wanted for their necessary subsistence, and in thatindeed they were put to much difficulty; of which in its place. 

But our three travellers were obliged to keep the road, or else theymust commit spoil, and do the country a great deal of damage in breakingdown fences and gates to go over enclosed fields, which they were lothto do if they could help it. 

Our three travellers, however, had a great mind to join themselves tothis company and take their lot with them; and after some discourse theylaid aside their first design which looked northward, and resolved tofollow the other into Essex; so in the morning they took up their tentand loaded their horse, and away they travelled all together. 

They had some difficulty in passing the ferry at the river-side, theferryman being afraid of them; but after some parley at a distance, theferryman was content to bring his boat to a place distant from the usualferry, and leave it there for them to take it; so putting themselvesover, he directed them to leave the boat, and he, having another boat, said he would fetch it again, which it seems, however, he did not do forabove eight days. 

Here, giving the ferryman money beforehand, they had a supply ofvictuals and drink, which he brought and left in the boat for them; butnot without, as I said, having received the money beforehand. But nowour travellers were at a great loss and difficulty how to get the horseover, the boat being small and not fit for it: and at last could not doit without unloading the baggage and making him swim over. 

From the river they travelled towards the forest, but when they cameto Walthamstow the people of that town denied to admit them, as was thecase everywhere. The constables and their watchmen kept them off ata distance and parleyed with them. They gave the same account ofthemselves as before, but these gave no credit to what they said, givingit for a reason that two or three companies had already come that wayand made the like pretences, but that they had given several people thedistemper in the towns where they had passed; and had been afterwardsso hardly used by the country (though with justice, too, as they haddeserved) that about Brentwood, or that way, several of them perishedin the fields--whether of the plague or of mere want and distress theycould not tell. 

This was a good reason indeed why the people of Walthamstow should bevery cautious, and why they should resolve not to entertain anybody thatthey were not well satisfied of. But, as Richard the joiner and one ofthe other men who parleyed with them told them, it was no reason whythey should block up the roads and refuse to let people pass through thetown, and who asked nothing of them but to go through the street; thatif their people were afraid of them, they might go into their houses andshut their doors; they would neither show them civility nor incivility, but go on about their business. 

The constables and attendants, not to be persuaded by reason, continuedobstinate, and would hearken to nothing; so the two men that talked withthem went back to their fellows to consult what was to be done. It wasvery discouraging in the whole, and they knew not what to do for a goodwhile; but at last John the soldier and biscuit-maker, considering awhile, 'Come, ' says he, 'leave the rest of the parley to me. ' He had notappeared yet, so he sets the joiner, Richard, to work to cut some polesout of the trees and shape them as like guns as he could, and in alittle time he had five or six fair muskets, which at a distance wouldnot be known; and about the part where the lock of a gun is he causedthem to wrap cloth and rags such as they had, as soldiers do in wetweather to preserve the locks of their pieces from rust; the rest wasdiscoloured with clay or mud, such as they could get; and all this whilethe rest of them sat under the trees by his direction, in two or threebodies, where they made fires at a good distance from one another. 

While this was doing he advanced himself and two or three with him, and set up their tent in the lane within sight of the barrier which thetown's men had made, and set a sentinel just by it with the real gun, the only one they had, and who walked to and fro with the gun on hisshoulder, so as that the people of the town might see them. Also, hetied the horse to a gate in the hedge just by, and got some dry stickstogether and kindled a fire on the other side of the tent, so that thepeople of the town could see the fire and the smoke, but could not seewhat they were doing at it. 

After the country people had looked upon them very earnestly a greatwhile, and, by all that they could see, could not but suppose that theywere a great many in company, they began to be uneasy, not for theirgoing away, but for staying where they were; and above all, perceivingthey had horses and arms, for they had seen one horse and one gun atthe tent, and they had seen others of them walk about the field on theinside of the hedge by the side of the lane with their muskets, as theytook them to be, shouldered; I say, upon such a sight as this, you maybe assured they were alarmed and terribly frighted, and it seems theywent to a justice of the peace to know what they should do. What thejustice advised them to I know not, but towards the evening they calledfrom the barrier, as above, to the sentinel at the tent. 

'What do you want?' says John. *

'Why, what do you intend to do?' says the constable. 'To do, ' says John;'what would you have us to do?' Constable. Why don't you be gone? Whatdo you stay there for?

John. Why do you stop us on the king's highway, and pretend to refuse usleave to go on our way?

Constable. We are not bound to tell you our reason, though we did letyou know it was because of the plague. 

John. We told you we were all sound and free from the plague, which wewere not bound to have satisfied you of, and yet you pretend to stop uson the highway. 

Constable. We have a right to stop it up, and our own safety obligesus to it. Besides, this is not the king's highway; 'tis a way uponsufferance. You see here is a gate, and if we do let people pass here, we make them pay toll. 

John. We have a right to seek our own safety as well as you, and you maysee we are flying for our lives: and 'tis very unchristian and unjust tostop us. 

Constable. You may go back from whence you came; we do not hinder youfrom that. 

John. No; it is a stronger enemy than you that keeps us from doing that, or else we should not have come hither. 

Constable. Well, you may go any other way, then. 

John. No, no; I suppose you see we are able to send you going, and allthe people of your parish, and come through your town when we will; butsince you have stopped us here, we are content. You see we have encampedhere, and here we will live. We hope you will furnish us with victuals. 

 *It seems John was in the tent, but hearing them call, he steps out, and taking the gun upon his shoulder, talked to them as if he had been the sentinel placed there upon the guard by some officer that was his superior. [Footnote in the original. ]

Constable. We furnish you I What mean you by that?

John. Why, you would not have us starve, would you? If you stop us here, you must keep us. 

Constable. You will be ill kept at our maintenance. 

John. If you stint us, we shall make ourselves the better allowance. 

Constable. Why, you will not pretend to quarter upon us by force, willyou?

John. We have offered no violence to you yet. Why do you seem to obligeus to it? I am an old soldier, and cannot starve, and if you think thatwe shall be obliged to go back for want of provisions, you are mistaken. 

Constable. Since you threaten us, we shall take care to be strong enoughfor you. I have orders to raise the county upon you. 

John. It is you that threaten, not we. And since you are for mischief, you cannot blame us if we do not give you time for it; we shall beginour march in a few minutes. *

Constable. What is it you demand of us?

John. At first we desired nothing of you but leave to go through thetown; we should have offered no injury to any of you, neither would youhave had any injury or loss by us. We are not thieves, but poor peoplein distress, and flying from the dreadful plague in London, whichdevours thousands every week. We wonder how you could be so unmerciful!

Constable. Self-preservation obliges us. 

John. What! To shut up your compassion in a case of such distress asthis?

Constable. Well, if you will pass over the fields on your left hand, andbehind that part of the town, I will endeavour to have gates opened foryou. 

John. Our horsemen ** cannot pass with our baggage that way; it does notlead into the road that we want to go, and why should you force us outof the road? Besides, you have kept us here all day without anyprovisions but such as we brought with us. I think you ought to send ussome provisions for our relief. 

 * This frighted the constable and the people that were with him, that they immediately changed their note. 

 ** They had but one horse among them. [Footnotes in the original. ]

Constable. If you will go another way we will send you some provisions. 

John. That is the way to have all the towns in the county stop up theways against us. 

Constable. If they all furnish you with food, what will you be theworse? I see you have tents; you want no lodging. 

John. Well, what quantity of provisions will you send us?

Constable. How many are you?

John. Nay, we do not ask enough for all our company; we are in threecompanies. If you will send us bread for twenty men and about six orseven women for three days, and show us the way over the field you speakof, we desire not to put your people into any fear for us; we will goout of our way to oblige you, though we are as free from infection asyou are. *

Constable. And will you assure us that your other people shall offer usno new disturbance?

John. No, no you may depend on it. 

Constable. You must oblige yourself, too, that none of your people shallcome a step nearer than where the provisions we send you shall be setdown. 

John. I answer for it we will not. 

Accordingly they sent to the place twenty loaves of bread and three orfour large pieces of good beef, and opened some gates, through whichthey passed; but none of them had courage so much as to look out to seethem go, and, as it was evening, if they had looked they could not haveseen them as to know how few they were. 

This was John the soldier's management. But this gave such an alarm tothe county, that had they really been two or three hundred the wholecounty would have been raised upon them, and they would have been sentto prison, or perhaps knocked on the head. 

 * Here he called to one of his men, and bade him order Captain Richard and his people to march the lower way on the side of the marches, and meet them in the forest; which was all a sham, for they had no Captain Richard, or any such company. [Footnote in the original. ]

They were soon made sensible of this, for two days afterwards they foundseveral parties of horsemen and footmen also about, in pursuit of threecompanies of men, armed, as they said, with muskets, who were brokeout from London and had the plague upon them, and that were not onlyspreading the distemper among the people, but plundering the country. 

As they saw now the consequence of their case, they soon saw the dangerthey were in; so they resolved by the advice also of the old soldier todivide themselves again. John and his two comrades, with the horse, went away, as if towards Waltham; the other in two companies, but all alittle asunder, and went towards Epping. 

The first night they encamped all in the forest, and not far off of oneanother, but not setting up the tent, lest that should discover them. Onthe other hand, Richard went to work with his axe and his hatchet, andcutting down branches of trees, he built three tents or hovels, in whichthey all encamped with as much convenience as they could expect. 

The provisions they had at Walthamstow served them very plentifully thisnight; and as for the next, they left it to Providence. They had faredso well with the old soldier's conduct that they now willingly made himtheir leader, and the first of his conduct appeared to be very good. Hetold them that they were now at a proper distance enough from London;that as they need not be immediately beholden to the country for relief, so they ought to be as careful the country did not infect them as thatthey did not infect the country; that what little money they had, theymust be as frugal of as they could; that as he would not have them thinkof offering the country any violence, so they must endeavour to make thesense of their condition go as far with the country as it could. Theyall referred themselves to his direction, so they left their threehouses standing, and the next day went away towards Epping. The captainalso (for so they now called him), and his two fellow-travellers, laidaside their design of going to Waltham, and all went together. 

When they came near Epping they halted, choosing out a proper place inthe open forest, not very near the highway, but not far out of it onthe north side, under a little cluster of low pollard-trees. Here theypitched their little camp--which consisted of three large tents or hutsmade of poles which their carpenter, and such as were his assistants, cut down and fixed in the ground in a circle, binding all the small endstogether at the top and thickening the sides with boughs of trees andbushes, so that they were completely close and warm. They had, besidesthis, a little tent where the women lay by themselves, and a hut to putthe horse in. 

It happened that the next day, or next but one, was market-day atEpping, when Captain John and one of the other men went to market andbought some provisions; that is to say, bread, and some mutton and beef;and two of the women went separately, as if they had not belonged tothe rest, and bought more. John took the horse to bring it home, andthe sack which the carpenter carried his tools in, to put it in. Thecarpenter went to work and made them benches and stools to sit on, suchas the wood he could get would afford, and a kind of table to dine on. 

They were taken no notice of for two or three days, but after thatabundance of people ran out of the town to look at them, and all thecountry was alarmed about them. The people at first seemed afraid tocome near them; and, on the other hand, they desired the people to keepoff, for there was a rumour that the plague was at Waltham, and that ithad been in Epping two or three days; so John called out to them not tocome to them, 'for, ' says he, 'we are all whole and sound people here, and we would not have you bring the plague among us, nor pretend webrought it among you. '

After this the parish officers came up to them and parleyed with themat a distance, and desired to know who they were, and by what authoritythey pretended to fix their stand at that place. John answered veryfrankly, they were poor distressed people from London who, foreseeingthe misery they should be reduced to if plague spread into the city, had fled out in time for their lives, and, having no acquaintance orrelations to fly to, had first taken up at Islington; but, the plaguebeing come into that town, were fled farther; and as they supposed thatthe people of Epping might have refused them coming into their town, they had pitched their tents thus in the open field and in the forest, being willing to bear all the hardships of such a disconsolate lodgingrather than have any one think or be afraid that they should receiveinjury by them. 

At first the Epping people talked roughly to them, and told them theymust remove; that this was no place for them; and that they pretended tobe sound and well, but that they might be infected with the plague foraught they knew, and might infect the whole country, and they could notsuffer them there. 

John argued very calmly with them a great while, and told them thatLondon was the place by which they--that is, the townsmen of Epping andall the country round them--subsisted; to whom they sold the produce oftheir lands, and out of whom they made their rent of their farms; andto be so cruel to the inhabitants of London, or to any of those by whomthey gained so much, was very hard, and they would be loth to have itremembered hereafter, and have it told how barbarous, how inhospitable, and how unkind they were to the people of London when they fled from theface of the most terrible enemy in the world; that it would be enough tomake the name of an Epping man hateful through all the city, and to havethe rabble stone them in the very streets whenever they came so much asto market; that they were not yet secure from being visited themselves, and that, as he heard, Waltham was already; that they would think itvery hard that when any of them fled for fear before they were touched, they should be denied the liberty of lying so much as in the openfields. 

The Epping men told them again, that they, indeed, said they were soundand free from the infection, but that they had no assurance of it; andthat it was reported that there had been a great rabble of people atWalthamstow, who made such pretences of being sound as they did, butthat they threatened to plunder the town and force their way, whetherthe parish officers would or no; that there were near two hundredof them, and had arms and tents like Low Country soldiers; that theyextorted provisions from the town, by threatening them with living uponthem at free quarter, showing their arms, and talking in the languageof soldiers; and that several of them being gone away toward Rumford andBrentwood, the country had been infected by them, and the plague spreadinto both those large towns, so that the people durst not go to marketthere as usual; that it was very likely they were some of that party;and if so, they deserved to be sent to the county jail, and be securedtill they had made satisfaction for the damage they had done, and forthe terror and fright they had put the country into. 

John answered that what other people had done was nothing to them; thatthey assured them they were all of one company; that they had never beenmore in number than they saw them at that time (which, by the way, wasvery true); that they came out in two separate companies, but joined bythe way, their cases being the same; that they were ready to give whataccount of themselves anybody could desire of them, and to give in theirnames and places of abode, that so they might be called to an accountfor any disorder that they might be guilty of; that the townsmen mightsee they were content to live hardly, and only desired a little room tobreathe in on the forest where it was wholesome; for where it was notthey could not stay, and would decamp if they found it otherwise there. 

'But, ' said the townsmen, 'we have a great charge of poor upon our handsalready, and we must take care not to increase it; we suppose you cangive us no security against your being chargeable to our parish and tothe inhabitants, any more than you can of being dangerous to us as tothe infection. '

'Why, look you, ' says John, 'as to being chargeable to you, we hopewe shall not. If you will relieve us with provisions for our presentnecessity, we will be very thankful; as we all lived without charitywhen we were at home, so we will oblige ourselves fully to repay you, ifGod pleases to bring us back to our own families and houses in safety, and to restore health to the people of London. 

'As to our dying here: we assure you, if any of us die, we that survivewill bury them, and put you to no expense, except it should be that weshould all die; and then, indeed, the last man not being able to buryhimself, would put you to that single expense which I am persuaded', says John, 'he would leave enough behind him to pay you for the expenseof. 

'On the other hand, ' says John, 'if you shut up all bowels ofcompassion, and not relieve us at all, we shall not extort anything byviolence or steal from any one; but when what little we have is spent, if we perish for want, God's will be done. '

John wrought so upon the townsmen, by talking thus rationally andsmoothly to them, that they went away; and though they did not give anyconsent to their staying there, yet they did not molest them; andthe poor people continued there three or four days longer without anydisturbance. In this time they had got some remote acquaintance with avictualling-house at the outskirts of the town, to whom they called ata distance to bring some little things that they wanted, and which theycaused to be set down at a distance, and always paid for very honestly. 

During this time the younger people of the town came frequently prettynear them, and would stand and look at them, and sometimes talk withthem at some space between; and particularly it was observed that thefirst Sabbath-day the poor people kept retired, worshipped God together, and were heard to sing psalms. 

These things, and a quiet, inoffensive behaviour, began to get them thegood opinion of the country, and people began to pity them and speakvery well of them; the consequence of which was, that upon the occasionof a very wet, rainy night, a certain gentleman who lived in theneighbourhood sent them a little cart with twelve trusses or bundles ofstraw, as well for them to lodge upon as to cover and thatch their hutsand to keep them dry. The minister of a parish not far off, not knowingof the other, sent them also about two bushels of wheat and half abushel of white peas. 

They were very thankful, to be sure, for this relief, and particularlythe straw was a--very great comfort to them; for though the ingeniouscarpenter had made frames for them to lie in like troughs, and filledthem with leaves of trees, and such things as they could get, and hadcut all their tent-cloth out to make them coverlids, yet they lay dampand hard and unwholesome till this straw came, which was to them likefeather-beds, and, as John said, more welcome than feather-beds wouldhave been at another time. 

This gentleman and the minister having thus begun, and given an exampleof charity to these wanderers, others quickly followed, and theyreceived every day some benevolence or other from the people, butchiefly from the gentlemen who dwelt in the country round them. Somesent them chairs, stools, tables, and such household things as they gavenotice they wanted; some sent them blankets, rugs, and coverlids, someearthenware, and some kitchen ware for ordering their food. 

Encouraged by this good usage, their carpenter in a few days built thema large shed or house with rafters, and a roof in form, and an upperfloor, in which they lodged warm: for the weather began to be damp andcold in the beginning of September. But this house, being well thatched, and the sides and roof made very thick, kept out the cold well enough. He made, also, an earthen wall at one end with a chimney in it, andanother of the company, with a vast deal of trouble and pains, made afunnel to the chimney to carry out the smoke. 

Here they lived comfortably, though coarsely, till the beginning ofSeptember, when they had the bad news to hear, whether true or not, that the plague, which was very hot at Waltham Abbey on one side and atRumford and Brentwood on the other side, was also coming to Epping, toWoodford, and to most of the towns upon the Forest, and which, as theysaid, was brought down among them chiefly by the higlers, and suchpeople as went to and from London with provisions. 

If this was true, it was an evident contradiction to that report whichwas afterwards spread all over England, but which, as I have said, I cannot confirm of my own knowledge: namely, that the market-peoplecarrying provisions to the city never got the infection or carried itback into the country; both which, I have been assured, has been false. 

It might be that they were preserved even beyond expectation, thoughnot to a miracle, that abundance went and came and were not touched; andthat was much for the encouragement of the poor people of London, whohad been completely miserable if the people that brought provisions tothe markets had not been many times wonderfully preserved, or at leastmore preserved than could be reasonably expected. 

But now these new inmates began to be disturbed more effectually, forthe towns about them were really infected, and they began to be afraidto trust one another so much as to go abroad for such things as theywanted, and this pinched them very hard, for now they had little ornothing but what the charitable gentlemen of the country supplied themwith. But, for their encouragement, it happened that other gentlemen inthe country who had not sent them anything before, began to hear of themand supply them, and one sent them a large pig--that is to say, a porkeranother two sheep, and another sent them a calf. In short, they had meatenough, and sometimes had cheese and milk, and all such things. Theywere chiefly put to it for bread, for when the gentlemen sent them cornthey had nowhere to bake it or to grind it. This made them eat thefirst two bushel of wheat that was sent them in parched corn, as theIsraelites of old did, without grinding or making bread of it. 

At last they found means to carry their corn to a windmill nearWoodford, where they had it ground, and afterwards the biscuit-makermade a hearth so hollow and dry that he could bake biscuit-cakestolerably well; and thus they came into a condition to live without anyassistance or supplies from the towns; and it was well they did, for thecountry was soon after fully infected, and about 120 were said to havedied of the distemper in the villages near them, which was a terriblething to them. 

On this they called a new council, and now the towns had no need tobe afraid they should settle near them; but, on the contrary, severalfamilies of the poorer sort of the inhabitants quitted their houses andbuilt huts in the forest after the same manner as they had done. But itwas observed that several of these poor people that had so removedhad the sickness even in their huts or booths; the reason of which wasplain, namely, not because they removed into the air, but, () becausethey did not remove time enough; that is to say, not till, by openlyconversing with the other people their neighbours, they had thedistemper upon them, or (as may be said) among them, and so carriedit about them whither they went. Or (2) because they were not carefulenough, after they were safely removed out of the towns, not to come inagain and mingle with the diseased people. 

But be it which of these it will, when our travellers began to perceivethat the plague was not only in the towns, but even in the tents andhuts on the forest near them, they began then not only to be afraid, butto think of decamping and removing; for had they stayed they would havebeen in manifest danger of their lives. 

It is not to be wondered that they were greatly afflicted at beingobliged to quit the place where they had been so kindly received, andwhere they had been treated with so much humanity and charity; butnecessity and the hazard of life, which they came out so far topreserve, prevailed with them, and they saw no remedy. John, however, thought of a remedy for their present misfortune: namely, that he wouldfirst acquaint that gentleman who was their principal benefactor withthe distress they were in, and to crave his assistance and advice. 

The good, charitable gentleman encouraged them to quit the Place forfear they should be cut off from any retreat at all by the violence ofthe distemper; but whither they should go, that he found very hard todirect them to. At last John asked of him whether he, being a justice ofthe peace, would give them certificates of health to other justices whomthey might come before; that so whatever might be their lot, they mightnot be repulsed now they had been also so long from London. This hisworship immediately granted, and gave them proper letters of health, andfrom thence they were at liberty to travel whither they pleased. 

Accordingly they had a full certificate of health, intimating that theyhad resided in a village in the county of Essex so long that, beingexamined and scrutinised sufficiently, and having been retired from allconversation for above forty days, without any appearance of sickness, they were therefore certainly concluded to be sound men, and might besafely entertained anywhere, having at last removed rather for fear ofthe plague which was come into such a town, rather than for having anysignal of infection upon them, or upon any belonging to them. 

With this certificate they removed, though with great reluctance; andJohn inclining not to go far from home, they moved towards the marsheson the side of Waltham. But here they found a man who, it seems, kepta weir or stop upon the river, made to raise the water for the bargeswhich go up and down the river, and he terrified them with dismalstories of the sickness having been spread into all the towns on theriver and near the river, on the side of Middlesex and Hertfordshire;that is to say, into Waltham, Waltham Cross, Enfield, and Ware, and allthe towns on the road, that they were afraid to go that way; though itseems the man imposed upon them, for that the thing was not really true. 

However, it terrified them, and they resolved to move across the foresttowards Rumford and Brentwood; but they heard that there were numbersof people fled out of London that way, who lay up and down in theforest called Henalt Forest, reaching near Rumford, and who, havingno subsistence or habitation, not only lived oddly and suffered greatextremities in the woods and fields for want of relief, but were saidto be made so desperate by those extremities as that they offered manyviolences to the county robbed and plundered, and killed cattle, and thelike; that others, building huts and hovels by the roadside, begged, and that with an importunity next door to demanding relief; so that thecounty was very uneasy, and had been obliged to take some of them up. 

This in the first place intimated to them, that they would be sure tofind the charity and kindness of the county, which they had found herewhere they were before, hardened and shut up against them; and that, onthe other hand, they would be questioned wherever they came, and wouldbe in danger of violence from others in like cases as themselves. 

Upon all these considerations John, their captain, in all their names, went back to their good friend and benefactor, who had relieved thembefore, and laying their case truly before him, humbly asked his advice;and he as kindly advised them to take up their old quarters again, or ifnot, to remove but a little farther out of the road, and directed themto a proper place for them; and as they really wanted some house ratherthan huts to shelter them at that time of the year, it growing ontowards Michaelmas, they found an old decayed house which had beenformerly some cottage or little habitation but was so out of repairas scarce habitable; and by the consent of a farmer to whose farm itbelonged, they got leave to make what use of it they could. 

The ingenious joiner, and all the rest, by his directions went to workwith it, and in a very few days made it capable to shelter them all incase of bad weather; and in which there was an old chimney and old oven, though both lying in ruins; yet they made them both fit for use, and, raising additions, sheds, and leantos on every side, they soon made thehouse capable to hold them all. 

They chiefly wanted boards to make window-shutters, floors, doors, andseveral other things; but as the gentlemen above favoured them, and thecountry was by that means made easy with them, and above all, that theywere known to be all sound and in good health, everybody helped themwith what they could spare. 

Here they encamped for good and all, and resolved to remove no more. They saw plainly how terribly alarmed that county was everywhere atanybody that came from London, and that they should have no admittanceanywhere but with the utmost difficulty; at least no friendly receptionand assistance as they had received here. 

Now, although they received great assistance and encouragement from thecountry gentlemen and from the people round about them, yet they wereput to great straits: for the weather grew cold and wet in October andNovember, and they had not been used to so much hardship; so that theygot colds in their limbs, and distempers, but never had the infection;and thus about December they came home to the city again. 

I give this story thus at large, principally to give an account whatbecame of the great numbers of people which immediately appeared in thecity as soon as the sickness abated; for, as I have said, great numbersof those that were able and had retreats in the country fled to thoseretreats. So, when it was increased to such a frightful extremity as Ihave related, the middling people who had not friends fled to all partsof the country where they could get shelter, as well those that hadmoney to relieve themselves as those that had not. Those that had moneyalways fled farthest, because they were able to subsist themselves; butthose who were empty suffered, as I have said, great hardships, and wereoften driven by necessity to relieve their wants at the expense of thecountry. By that means the country was made very uneasy at them, andsometimes took them up; though even then they scarce knew what to dowith them, and were always very backward to punish them, but often, too, they forced them from place to place till they were obliged to come backagain to London. 

I have, since my knowing this story of John and his brother, inquiredand found that there were a great many of the poor disconsolate people, as above, fled into the country every way; and some of them got littlesheds and barns and outhouses to live in, where they could obtain somuch kindness of the country, and especially where they had any theleast satisfactory account to give of themselves, and particularly thatthey did not come out of London too late. But others, and that in greatnumbers, built themselves little huts and retreats in the fields andwoods, and lived like hermits in holes and caves, or any place theycould find, and where, we may be sure, they suffered great extremities, such that many of them were obliged to come back again whatever thedanger was; and so those little huts were often found empty, and thecountry people supposed the inhabitants lay dead in them of the plague, and would not go near them for fear--no, not in a great while; nor is itunlikely but that some of the unhappy wanderers might die so all alone, even sometimes for want of help, as particularly in one tent or hut wasfound a man dead, and on the gate of a field just by was cut with hisknife in uneven letters the following words, by which it may be supposedthe other man escaped, or that, one dying first, the other buried him aswell as he could:--

 O mIsErY! We BoTH ShaLL DyE, WoE, WoE. 

I have given an account already of what I found to have been the casedown the river among the seafaring men; how the ships lay in the offing, as it's called, in rows or lines astern of one another, quite down fromthe Pool as far as I could see. I have been told that they lay in thesame manner quite down the river as low as Gravesend, and some farbeyond: even everywhere or in every place where they could ride withsafety as to wind and weather; nor did I ever hear that the plaguereached to any of the people on board those ships--except such as layup in the Pool, or as high as Deptford Reach, although the people wentfrequently on shore to the country towns and villages and farmers'houses, to buy fresh provisions, fowls, pigs, calves, and the like fortheir supply. 

Likewise I found that the watermen on the river above the bridge foundmeans to convey themselves away up the river as far as they could go, and that they had, many of them, their whole families in their boats, covered with tilts and bales, as they call them, and furnished withstraw within for their lodging, and that they lay thus all along by theshore in the marshes, some of them setting up little tents with theirsails, and so lying under them on shore in the day, and going into theirboats at night; and in this manner, as I have heard, the river-sideswere lined with boats and people as long as they had anything to subsiston, or could get anything of the country; and indeed the country people, as well Gentlemen as others, on these and all other occasions, were veryforward to relieve them--but they were by no means willing to receivethem into their towns and houses, and for that we cannot blame them. 

There was one unhappy citizen within my knowledge who had been visitedin a dreadful manner, so that his wife and all his children were dead, and himself and two servants only left, with an elderly woman, a nearrelation, who had nursed those that were dead as well as she could. Thisdisconsolate man goes to a village near the town, though not within thebills of mortality, and finding an empty house there, inquires out theowner, and took the house. After a few days he got a cart and loadedit with goods, and carries them down to the house; the people of thevillage opposed his driving the cart along; but with some arguings andsome force, the men that drove the cart along got through the street upto the door of the house. There the constable resisted them again, and would not let them be brought in. The man caused the goods to beunloaden and laid at the door, and sent the cart away; upon whichthey carried the man before a justice of peace; that is to say, theycommanded him to go, which he did. The justice ordered him to cause thecart to fetch away the goods again, which he refused to do; upon whichthe justice ordered the constable to pursue the carters and fetch themback, and make them reload the goods and carry them away, or to set themin the stocks till they came for further orders; and if they could notfind them, nor the man would not consent to take them away, they shouldcause them to be drawn with hooks from the house-door and burned in thestreet. The poor distressed man upon this fetched the goods again, butwith grievous cries and lamentations at the hardship of his case. Butthere was no remedy; self-preservation obliged the people to thoseseverities which they would not otherwise have been concerned in. Whether this poor man lived or died I cannot tell, but it was reportedthat he had the plague upon him at that time; and perhaps the peoplemight report that to justify their usage of him; but it was not unlikelythat either he or his goods, or both, were dangerous, when his wholefamily had been dead of the distempers so little a while before. 

I know that the inhabitants of the towns adjacent to London were muchblamed for cruelty to the poor people that ran from the contagion intheir distress, and many very severe things were done, as may be seenfrom what has been said; but I cannot but say also that, where there wasroom for charity and assistance to the people, without apparent dangerto themselves, they were willing enough to help and relieve them. But asevery town were indeed judges in their own case, so the poor peoplewho ran abroad in their extremities were often ill-used and driven backagain into the town; and this caused infinite exclamations and outcriesagainst the country towns, and made the clamour very popular. 

And yet, more or less, maugre all the caution, there was not a town ofany note within ten (or, I believe, twenty) miles of the city but whatwas more or less infected and had some died among them. I have heard theaccounts of several, such as they were reckoned up, as follows:--

 In Enfield 32 In Uxbridge 117 " Hornsey 58 " Hertford 90 " Newington 17 " Ware 160 " Tottenham 42 " Hodsdon 30 " Edmonton 19 " Waltham Abbey 23 " Barnet and Hadly 19 " Epping 26 " St Albans 121 " Deptford 623 " Watford 45 " Greenwich 231 " Eltham and Lusum 85 " Kingston 122 " Croydon 61 " Stanes 82 " Brentwood 70 " Chertsey 18 " Rumford 109 " Windsor 103 " Barking Abbot 200 " Brentford 432 Cum aliis. 

Another thing might render the country more strict with respect to thecitizens, and especially with respect to the poor, and this was whatI hinted at before: namely, that there was a seeming propensity or awicked inclination in those that were infected to infect others. 

There have been great debates among our physicians as to the reason ofthis. Some will have it to be in the nature of the disease, and that itimpresses every one that is seized upon by it with a kind of a rage, anda hatred against their own kind--as if there was a malignity not onlyin the distemper to communicate itself, but in the very nature of man, prompting him with evil will or an evil eye, that, as they say in thecase of a mad dog, who though the gentlest creature before of any of hiskind, yet then will fly upon and bite any one that comes next him, andthose as soon as any who had been most observed by him before. 

Others placed it to the account of the corruption of human nature, whocannot bear to see itself more miserable than others of its own species, and has a kind of involuntary wish that all men were as unhappy or in asbad a condition as itself. 

Others say it was only a kind of desperation, not knowing or regardingwhat they did, and consequently unconcerned at the danger or safety notonly of anybody near them, but even of themselves also. And indeed, when men are once come to a condition to abandon themselves, and beunconcerned for the safety or at the danger of themselves, it cannotbe so much wondered that they should be careless of the safety of otherpeople. 

But I choose to give this grave debate a quite different turn, andanswer it or resolve it all by saying that I do not grant the fact. Onthe contrary, I say that the thing is not really so, but that it was ageneral complaint raised by the people inhabiting the outlying villagesagainst the citizens to justify, or at least excuse, those hardships andseverities so much talked of, and in which complaints both sides may besaid to have injured one another; that is to say, the citizens pressingto be received and harboured in time of distress, and with the plagueupon them, complain of the cruelty and injustice of the country peoplein being refused entrance and forced back again with their goods andfamilies; and the inhabitants, finding themselves so imposed upon, andthe citizens breaking in as it were upon them whether they would or no, complain that when they were infected they were not only regardless ofothers, but even willing to infect them; neither of which were reallytrue--that is to say, in the colours they were described in. 

It is true there is something to be said for the frequent alarms whichwere given to the country of the resolution of the people of London tocome out by force, not only for relief, but to plunder and rob; thatthey ran about the streets with the distemper upon them without anycontrol; and that no care was taken to shut up houses, and confine thesick people from infecting others; whereas, to do the Londoners justice, they never practised such things, except in such particular cases as Ihave mentioned above, and such like. On the other hand, everything wasmanaged with so much care, and such excellent order was observed in thewhole city and suburbs by the care of the Lord Mayor and aldermen andby the justices of the peace, church-wardens, &c. , in the outparts, that London may be a pattern to all the cities in the world for the goodgovernment and the excellent order that was everywhere kept, even inthe time of the most violent infection, and when the people were in theutmost consternation and distress. But of this I shall speak by itself. 

One thing, it is to be observed, was owing principally to the prudenceof the magistrates, and ought to be mentioned to their honour: viz. , themoderation which they used in the great and difficult work of shuttingup of houses. It is true, as I have mentioned, that the shutting up ofhouses was a great subject of discontent, and I may say indeed the onlysubject of discontent among the people at that time; for the confiningthe sound in the same house with the sick was counted very terrible, andthe complaints of people so confined were very grievous. They were heardinto the very streets, and they were sometimes such that called forresentment, though oftener for compassion. They had no way to conversewith any of their friends but out at their windows, where they wouldmake such piteous lamentations as often moved the hearts of those theytalked with, and of others who, passing by, heard their story; and asthose complaints oftentimes reproached the severity, and sometimes theinsolence, of the watchmen placed at their doors, those watchmen wouldanswer saucily enough, and perhaps be apt to affront the people whowere in the street talking to the said families; for which, or for theirill-treatment of the families, I think seven or eight of them in severalplaces were killed; I know not whether I should say murdered or not, because I cannot enter into the particular cases. It is true thewatchmen were on their duty, and acting in the post where they wereplaced by a lawful authority; and killing any public legal officerin the execution of his office is always, in the language of the law, called murder. But as they were not authorised by the magistrates'instructions, or by the power they acted under, to be injurious orabusive either to the people who were under their observation or to anythat concerned themselves for them; so when they did so, they might besaid to act themselves, not their office; to act as private persons, not as persons employed; and consequently, if they brought mischief uponthemselves by such an undue behaviour, that mischief was upon theirown heads; and indeed they had so much the hearty curses of the people, whether they deserved it or not, that whatever befell them nobody pitiedthem, and everybody was apt to say they deserved it, whatever it was. Nor do I remember that anybody was ever punished, at least to anyconsiderable degree, for whatever was done to the watchmen that guardedtheir houses. 

What variety of stratagems were used to escape and get out of housesthus shut up, by which the watchmen were deceived or overpowered, andthat the people got away, I have taken notice of already, and shallsay no more to that. But I say the magistrates did moderate and easefamilies upon many occasions in this case, and particularly in that oftaking away, or suffering to be removed, the sick persons out of suchhouses when they were willing to be removed either to a pest-house orother Places; and sometimes giving the well persons in the family soshut up, leave to remove upon information given that they were well, and that they would confine themselves in such houses where they wentso long as should be required of them. The concern, also, of themagistrates for the supplying such poor families as were infected--Isay, supplying them with necessaries, as well physic as food--was verygreat, and in which they did not content themselves with giving thenecessary orders to the officers appointed, but the aldermen in person, and on horseback, frequently rode to such houses and caused the peopleto be asked at their windows whether they were duly attended or not;also, whether they wanted anything that was necessary, and if theofficers had constantly carried their messages and fetched them suchthings as they wanted or not. And if they answered in the affirmative, all was well; but if they complained that they were ill supplied, andthat the officer did not do his duty, or did not treat them civilly, they (the officers) were generally removed, and others placed in theirstead. 

It is true such complaint might be unjust, and if the officer had sucharguments to use as would convince the magistrate that he was right, andthat the people had injured him, he was continued and they reproved. But this part could not well bear a particular inquiry, for the partiescould very ill be well heard and answered in the street from thewindows, as was the case then. The magistrates, therefore, generallychose to favour the people and remove the man, as what seemed to be theleast wrong and of the least ill consequence; seeing if the watchmanwas injured, yet they could easily make him amends by giving him anotherpost of the like nature; but if the family was injured, there wasno satisfaction could be made to them, the damage perhaps beingirreparable, as it concerned their lives. 

A great variety of these cases frequently happened between the watchmenand the poor people shut up, besides those I formerly mentioned aboutescaping. Sometimes the watchmen were absent, sometimes drunk, sometimesasleep when the people wanted them, and such never failed to be punishedseverely, as indeed they deserved. 

But after all that was or could be done in these cases, the shutting upof houses, so as to confine those that were well with those that weresick, had very great inconveniences in it, and some that were verytragical, and which merited to have been considered if there had beenroom for it. But it was authorised by a law, it had the public good inview as the end chiefly aimed at, and all the private injuries that weredone by the putting it in execution must be put to the account of thepublic benefit. 

It is doubtful to this day whether, in the whole, it contributedanything to the stop of the infection; and indeed I cannot say it did, for nothing could run with greater fury and rage than the infection didwhen it was in its chief violence, though the houses infected were shutup as exactly and as effectually as it was possible. Certain it is thatif all the infected persons were effectually shut in, no sound personcould have been infected by them, because they could not have come nearthem. But the case was this (and I shall only touch it here): namely, that the infection was propagated insensibly, and by such persons aswere not visibly infected, who neither knew whom they infected or whothey were infected by. 

A house in Whitechappel was shut up for the sake of one infected maid, who had only spots, not the tokens come out upon her, and recovered; yetthese people obtained no liberty to stir, neither for air or exercise, forty days. Want of breath, fear, anger, vexation, and all the othergifts attending such an injurious treatment cast the mistress of thefamily into a fever, and visitors came into the house and said it wasthe plague, though the physicians declared it was not. However, thefamily were obliged to begin their quarantine anew on the report of thevisitors or examiner, though their former quarantine wanted but a fewdays of being finished. This oppressed them so with anger and grief, and, as before, straitened them also so much as to room, and for wantof breathing and free air, that most of the family fell sick, one ofone distemper, one of another, chiefly scorbutic ailments; only one, a violent colic; till, after several prolongings of their confinement, some or other of those that came in with the visitors to inspect thepersons that were ill, in hopes of releasing them, brought the distemperwith them and infected the whole house; and all or most of them died, not of the plague as really upon them before, but of the plaguethat those people brought them, who should have been careful to haveprotected them from it. And this was a thing which frequently happened, and was indeed one of the worst consequences of shutting houses up. 

I had about this time a little hardship put upon me, which I was atfirst greatly afflicted at, and very much disturbed about though, asit proved, it did not expose me to any disaster; and this was beingappointed by the alderman of Portsoken Ward one of the examiners of thehouses in the precinct where I lived. We had a large parish, and had noless than eighteen examiners, as the order called us; the people calledus visitors. I endeavoured with all my might to be excused from suchan employment, and used many arguments with the alderman's deputy to beexcused; particularly I alleged that I was against shutting up houses atall, and that it would be very hard to oblige me to be an instrumentin that which was against my judgement, and which I did verily believewould not answer the end it was intended for; but all the abatement Icould get was only, that whereas the officer was appointed by my LordMayor to continue two months, I should be obliged to hold it but threeweeks, on condition nevertheless that I could then get some othersufficient housekeeper to serve the rest of the time for me--which was, in short, but a very small favour, it being very difficult to get anyman to accept of such an employment, that was fit to be entrusted withit. 

It is true that shutting up of houses had one effect, which I amsensible was of moment, namely, it confined the distempered people, whowould otherwise have been both very troublesome and very dangerous intheir running about streets with the distemper upon them--which, whenthey were delirious, they would have done in a most frightful manner, and as indeed they began to do at first very much, till they were thusrestrained; nay, so very open they were that the poor would go about andbeg at people's doors, and say they had the plague upon them, andbeg rags for their sores, or both, or anything that delirious naturehappened to think of. 

A poor, unhappy gentlewoman, a substantial citizen's wife, was (if thestory be true) murdered by one of these creatures in Aldersgate Street, or that way. He was going along the street, raving mad to be sure, andsinging; the people only said he was drunk, but he himself said hehad the plague upon him, which it seems was true; and meeting thisgentlewoman, he would kiss her. She was terribly frighted, as he wasonly a rude fellow, and she ran from him, but the street being very thinof people, there was nobody near enough to help her. When she saw hewould overtake her, she turned and gave him a thrust so forcibly, hebeing but weak, and pushed him down backward. But very unhappily, shebeing so near, he caught hold of her and pulled her down also, andgetting up first, mastered her and kissed her; and which was worst ofall, when he had done, told her he had the plague, and why should notshe have it as well as he? She was frighted enough before, being alsoyoung with child; but when she heard him say he had the plague, shescreamed out and fell down into a swoon, or in a fit, which, though sherecovered a little, yet killed her in a very few days; and I never heardwhether she had the plague or no. 

Another infected person came and knocked at the door of a citizen'shouse where they knew him very well; the servant let him in, and beingtold the master of the house was above, he ran up and came into theroom to them as the whole family was at supper. They began to rise up, a little surprised, not knowing what the matter was; but he bid themsit still, he only came to take his leave of them. They asked him, 'Why, Mr--, where are you going?' 'Going, ' says he; 'I have got the sickness, and shall die tomorrow night. ' 'Tis easy to believe, though not todescribe, the consternation they were all in. The women and the man'sdaughters, which were but little girls, were frighted almost to deathand got up, one running out at one door and one at another, somedownstairs and some upstairs, and getting together as well as theycould, locked themselves into their chambers and screamed out at thewindow for help, as if they had been frighted out of their wits. Themaster, more composed than they, though both frighted and provoked, wasgoing to lay hands on him and throw him downstairs, being in a passion;but then, considering a little the condition of the man and the dangerof touching him, horror seized his mind, and he stood still like oneastonished. The poor distempered man all this while, being as welldiseased in his brain as in his body, stood still like one amazed. Atlength he turns round: 'Ay!' says he, with all the seeming calmnessimaginable, 'is it so with you all? Are you all disturbed at me? Why, then I'll e'en go home and die there. ' And so he goes immediatelydownstairs. The servant that had let him in goes down after him with acandle, but was afraid to go past him and open the door, so he stood onthe stairs to see what he would do. The man went and opened the door, and went out and flung the door after him. It was some while before thefamily recovered the fright, but as no ill consequence attended, theyhave had occasion since to speak of it (You may be sure) with greatsatisfaction. Though the man was gone, it was some time--nay, as Iheard, some days before they recovered themselves of the hurry they werein; nor did they go up and down the house with any assurance till theyhad burnt a great variety of fumes and perfumes in all the rooms, andmade a great many smokes of pitch, of gunpowder, and of sulphur, allseparately shifted, and washed their clothes, and the like. As to thepoor man, whether he lived or died I don't remember. 

It is most certain that, if by the shutting up of houses the sick badnot been confined, multitudes who in the height of their fever weredelirious and distracted would have been continually running up and downthe streets; and even as it was a very great number did so, and offeredall sorts of violence to those they met, even just as a mad dog runs onand bites at every one he meets; nor can I doubt but that, should oneof those infected, diseased creatures have bitten any man or woman whilethe frenzy of the distemper was upon them, they, I mean the person sowounded, would as certainly have been incurably infected as one that wassick before, and had the tokens upon him. 

I heard of one infected creature who, running out of his bed in hisshirt in the anguish and agony of his swellings, of which he had threeupon him, got his shoes on and went to put on his coat; but the nurseresisting, and snatching the coat from him, he threw her down, ran overher, ran downstairs and into the street, directly to the Thames in hisshirt; the nurse running after him, and calling to the watch to stophim; but the watchman, frighted at the man, and afraid to touch him, lethim go on; upon which he ran down to the Stillyard stairs, threw awayhis shirt, and plunged into the Thames, and, being a good swimmer, swamquite over the river; and the tide being coming in, as they call it(that is, running westward) he reached the land not till he came aboutthe Falcon stairs, where landing, and finding no people there, it beingin the night, he ran about the streets there, naked as he was, for agood while, when, it being by that time high water, he takes the riveragain, and swam back to the Stillyard, landed, ran up the streets againto his own house, knocking at the door, went up the stairs and into hisbed again; and that this terrible experiment cured him of the plague, that is to say, that the violent motion of his arms and legs stretchedthe parts where the swellings he had upon him were, that is to say, under his arms and his groin, and caused them to ripen and break; andthat the cold of the water abated the fever in his blood. 

I have only to add that I do not relate this any more than some of theother, as a fact within my own knowledge, so as that I can vouchthe truth of them, and especially that of the man being cured by theextravagant adventure, which I confess I do not think very possible; butit may serve to confirm the many desperate things which the distressedpeople falling into deliriums, and what we call light-headedness, werefrequently run upon at that time, and how infinitely more such therewould have been if such people had not been confined by the shutting upof houses; and this I take to be the best, if not the only good thingwhich was performed by that severe method. 

On the other hand, the complaints and the murmurings were very bitteragainst the thing itself. It would pierce the hearts of all that came byto hear the piteous cries of those infected people, who, being thus outof their understandings by the violence of their pain or the heat oftheir blood, were either shut in or perhaps tied in their beds andchairs, to prevent their doing themselves hurt--and who would makea dreadful outcry at their being confined, and at their being notpermitted to die at large, as they called it, and as they would havedone before. 

This running of distempered people about the streets was very dismal, and the magistrates did their utmost to prevent it; but as it wasgenerally in the night and always sudden when such attempts were made, the officers could not be at band to prevent it; and even when any gotout in the day, the officers appointed did not care to meddle with them, because, as they were all grievously infected, to be sure, when theywere come to that height, so they were more than ordinarily infectious, and it was one of the most dangerous things that could be to touch them. On the other hand, they generally ran on, not knowing what they did, till they dropped down stark dead, or till they had exhausted theirspirits so as that they would fall and then die in perhaps half-an-houror an hour; and, which was most piteous to hear, they were sure to cometo themselves entirely in that half-hour or hour, and then to make mostgrievous and piercing cries and lamentations in the deep, afflictingsense of the condition they were in. This was much of it before theorder for shutting up of houses was strictly put in execution, forat first the watchmen were not so vigorous and severe as they wereafterward in the keeping the people in; that is to say, before they were(I mean some of them) severely punished for their neglect, failing intheir duty, and letting people who were under their care slip away, orconniving at their going abroad, whether sick or well. But after theysaw the officers appointed to examine into their conduct were resolvedto have them do their duty or be punished for the omission, they weremore exact, and the people were strictly restrained; which was a thingthey took so ill and bore so impatiently that their discontents canhardly be described. But there was an absolute necessity for it, thatmust be confessed, unless some other measures had been timely enteredupon, and it was too late for that. 

Had not this particular (of the sick being restrained as above) been ourcase at that time, London would have been the most dreadful place thatever was in the world; there would, for aught I know, have as manypeople died in the streets as died in their houses; for when thedistemper was at its height it generally made them raving and delirious, and when they were so they would never be persuaded to keep in theirbeds but by force; and many who were not tied threw themselves out ofwindows when they found they could not get leave to go out of theirdoors. 

It was for want of people conversing one with another, in this time ofcalamity, that it was impossible any particular person could come atthe knowledge of all the extraordinary cases that occurred in differentfamilies; and particularly I believe it was never known to this day howmany people in their deliriums drowned themselves in the Thames, andin the river which runs from the marshes by Hackney, which we generallycalled Ware River, or Hackney River. As to those which were set down inthe weekly bill, they were indeed few; nor could it be known of any ofthose whether they drowned themselves by accident or not. But I believeI might reckon up more who within the compass of my knowledge orobservation really drowned themselves in that year, than are put downin the bill of all put together: for many of the bodies were neverfound who yet were known to be lost; and the like in other methods ofself-destruction. There was also one man in or about Whitecross Streetburned himself to death in his bed; some said it was done by himself, others that it was by the treachery of the nurse that attended him; butthat he had the plague upon him was agreed by all. 

It was a merciful disposition of Providence also, and which I have manytimes thought of at that time, that no fires, or no considerable onesat least, happened in the city during that year, which, if it had beenotherwise, would have been very dreadful; and either the people musthave let them alone unquenched, or have come together in great crowdsand throngs, unconcerned at the danger of the infection, not concernedat the houses they went into, at the goods they handled, or at thepersons or the people they came among. But so it was, that exceptingthat in Cripplegate parish, and two or three little eruptions of fires, which were presently extinguished, there was no disaster of that kindhappened in the whole year. They told us a story of a house in a placecalled Swan Alley, passing from Goswell Street, near the end of OldStreet, into St John Street, that a family was infected there in soterrible a manner that every one of the house died. The last person laydead on the floor, and, as it is supposed, had lain herself all along todie just before the fire; the fire, it seems, had fallen from its place, being of wood, and had taken hold of the boards and the joists they layon, and burnt as far as just to the body, but had not taken hold of thedead body (though she had little more than her shift on) and had goneout of itself, not burning the rest of the house, though it was a slighttimber house. How true this might be I do not determine, but the citybeing to suffer severely the next year by fire, this year it felt verylittle of that calamity. 

Indeed, considering the deliriums which the agony threw people into, andhow I have mentioned in their madness, when they were alone, they didmany desperate things, it was very strange there were no more disastersof that kind. 

It has been frequently asked me, and I cannot say that I ever knew howto give a direct answer to it, how it came to pass that so many infectedpeople appeared abroad in the streets at the same time that the houseswhich were infected were so vigilantly searched, and all of them shut upand guarded as they were. 

I confess I know not what answer to give to this, unless it be this:that in so great and populous a city as this is it was impossible todiscover every house that was infected as soon as it was so, or to shutup all the houses that were infected; so that people had the liberty ofgoing about the streets, even where they Pleased, unless they were knownto belong to such-and-such infected houses. 

It is true that, as several physicians told my Lord Mayor, the fury ofthe contagion was such at some particular times, and people sickened sofast and died so soon, that it was impossible, and indeed to no purpose, to go about to inquire who was sick and who was well, or to shut them upwith such exactness as the thing required, almost every house in a wholestreet being infected, and in many places every person in some of thehouses; and that which was still worse, by the time that the houses wereknown to be infected, most of the persons infected would be stone dead, and the rest run away for fear of being shut up; so that it was tovery small purpose to call them infected houses and shut them up, theinfection having ravaged and taken its leave of the house before it wasreally known that the family was any way touched. 

This might be sufficient to convince any reasonable person that asit was not in the power of the magistrates or of any human methods ofpolicy, to prevent the spreading the infection, so that this way ofshutting up of houses was perfectly insufficient for that end. Indeed itseemed to have no manner of public good in it, equal or proportionableto the grievous burden that it was to the particular families that wereso shut up; and, as far as I was employed by the public in directingthat severity, I frequently found occasion to see that it was incapableof answering the end. For example, as I was desired, as a visitor orexaminer, to inquire into the particulars of several families whichwere infected, we scarce came to any house where the plague had visiblyappeared in the family but that some of the family were fled and gone. The magistrates would resent this, and charge the examiners with beingremiss in their examination or inspection. But by that means houseswere long infected before it was known. Now, as I was in this dangerousoffice but half the appointed time, which was two months, it was longenough to inform myself that we were no way capable of coming at theknowledge of the true state of any family but by inquiring at the dooror of the neighbours. As for going into every house to search, that wasa part no authority would offer to impose on the inhabitants, or anycitizen would undertake: for it would have been exposing us to certaininfection and death, and to the ruin of our own families as well as ofourselves; nor would any citizen of probity, and that could be dependedupon, have stayed in the town if they had been made liable to such aseverity. 

Seeing then that we could come at the certainty of things by no methodbut that of inquiry of the neighbours or of the family, and on that wecould not justly depend, it was not possible but that the uncertainty ofthis matter would remain as above. 

It is true masters of families were bound by the order to give noticeto the examiner of the place wherein he lived, within two hours afterhe should discover it, of any person being sick in his house (that isto say, having signs of the infection)--but they found so many ways toevade this and excuse their negligence that they seldom gave that noticetill they had taken measures to have every one escape out of the housewho had a mind to escape, whether they were sick or sound; and whilethis was so, it is easy to see that the shutting up of houses was noway to be depended upon as a sufficient method for putting a stop to theinfection because, as I have said elsewhere, many of those that so wentout of those infected houses had the plague really upon them, thoughthey might really think themselves sound. And some of these were thepeople that walked the streets till they fell down dead, not that theywere suddenly struck with the distemper as with a bullet that killedwith the stroke, but that they really had the infection in their bloodlong before; only, that as it preyed secretly on the vitals, it appearednot till it seized the heart with a mortal power, and the patient diedin a moment, as with a sudden fainting or an apoplectic fit. 

I know that some even of our physicians thought for a time that thosepeople that so died in the streets were seized but that moment theyfell, as if they had been touched by a stroke from heaven as men arekilled by a flash of lightning--but they found reason to alter theiropinion afterward; for upon examining the bodies of such after they weredead, they always either had tokens upon them or other evident proofsof the distemper having been longer upon them than they had otherwiseexpected. 

This often was the reason that, as I have said, we that were examinerswere not able to come at the knowledge of the infection being enteredinto a house till it was too late to shut it up, and sometimes not tillthe people that were left were all dead. In Petticoat Lane two housestogether were infected, and several people sick; but the distemper wasso well concealed, the examiner, who was my neighbour, got no knowledgeof it till notice was sent him that the people were all dead, and thatthe carts should call there to fetch them away. The two heads of thefamilies concerted their measures, and so ordered their matters as thatwhen the examiner was in the neighbourhood they appeared generally at atime, and answered, that is, lied, for one another, or got some ofthe neighbourhood to say they were all in health--and perhaps knew nobetter--till, death making it impossible to keep it any longer as asecret, the dead-carts were called in the night to both the houses t andso it became public. But when the examiner ordered the constable to shutup the houses there was nobody left in them but three people, two in onehouse and one in the other, just dying, and a nurse in each house whoacknowledged that they had buried five before, that the houses hadbeen infected nine or ten days, and that for all the rest of the twofamilies, which were many, they were gone, some sick, some well, orwhether sick or well could not be known. 

In like manner, at another house in the same lane, a man having hisfamily infected but very unwilling to be shut up, when he could concealit no longer, shut up himself; that is to say, he set the great redcross upon his door with the words, 'Lord have mercy upon us', and sodeluded the examiner, who supposed it had been done by the constableby order of the other examiner, for there were two examiners to everydistrict or precinct. By this means he had free egress and regress intohis house again and out of it, as he pleased, notwithstanding it wasinfected, till at length his stratagem was found out; and then he, withthe sound part of his servants and family, made off and escaped, so theywere not shut up at all. 

These things made it very hard, if not impossible, as I have said, to prevent the spreading of an infection by the shutting up ofhouses--unless the people would think the shutting of their houses nogrievance, and be so willing to have it done as that they would givenotice duly and faithfully to the magistrates of their being infected assoon as it was known by themselves; but as that cannot be expected fromthem, and the examiners cannot be supposed, as above, to go into theirhouses to visit and search, all the good of shutting up houses will bedefeated, and few houses will be shut up in time, except those of thepoor, who cannot conceal it, and of some people who will be discoveredby the terror and consternation which the things put them into. 

I got myself discharged of the dangerous office I was in as soon as Icould get another admitted, whom I had obtained for a little moneyto accept of it; and so, instead of serving the two months, which wasdirected, I was not above three weeks in it; and a great while too, considering it was in the month of August, at which time the distemperbegan to rage with great violence at our end of the town. 

In the execution of this office I could not refrain speaking my opinionamong my neighbours as to this shutting up the people in their houses;in which we saw most evidently the severities that were used, thoughgrievous in themselves, had also this particular objection against them:namely, that they did not answer the end, as I have said, but that thedistempered people went day by day about the streets; and it was ourunited opinion that a method to have removed the sound from the sick, in case of a particular house being visited, would have been much morereasonable on many accounts, leaving nobody with the sick persons butsuch as should on such occasion request to stay and declare themselvescontent to be shut up with them. 

Our scheme for removing those that were sound from those that were sickwas only in such houses as were infected, and confining the sick wasno confinement; those that could not stir would not complain while theywere in their senses and while they had the power of judging. Indeed, when they came to be delirious and light-headed, then they would cry outof the cruelty of being confined; but for the removal of those that werewell, we thought it highly reasonable and just, for their own sakes, they should be removed from the sick, and that for other people's safetythey should keep retired for a while, to see that they were sound, andmight not infect others; and we thought twenty or thirty days enough forthis. 

Now, certainly, if houses had been provided on purpose for those thatwere sound to perform this demi-quarantine in, they would have much lessreason to think themselves injured in such a restraint than in beingconfined with infected people in the houses where they lived. 

It is here, however, to be observed that after the funerals became somany that people could not toll the bell, mourn or weep, or wear blackfor one another, as they did before; no, nor so much as make coffins forthose that died; so after a while the fury of the infection appeared tobe so increased that, in short, they shut up no houses at all. It seemedenough that all the remedies of that kind had been used till they werefound fruitless, and that the plague spread itself with an irresistiblefury; so that as the fire the succeeding year spread itself, and burnedwith such violence that the citizens, in despair, gave over theirendeavours to extinguish it, so in the plague it came at last to suchviolence that the people sat still looking at one another, and seemedquite abandoned to despair; whole streets seemed to be desolated, andnot to be shut up only, but to be emptied of their inhabitants; doorswere left open, windows stood shattering with the wind in empty housesfor want of people to shut them. In a word, people began to give upthemselves to their fears and to think that all regulations andmethods were in vain, and that there was nothing to be hoped for butan universal desolation; and it was even in the height of this generaldespair that it Pleased God to stay His hand, and to slacken the furyof the contagion in such a manner as was even surprising, like itsbeginning, and demonstrated it to be His own particular hand, and thatabove, if not without the agency of means, as I shall take notice of inits proper place. 

But I must still speak of the plague as in its height, raging even todesolation, and the people under the most dreadful consternation, even, as I have said, to despair. It is hardly credible to what excess thepassions of men carried them in this extremity of the distemper, andthis part, I think, was as moving as the rest. What could affect a manin his full power of reflection, and what could make deeper impressionson the soul, than to see a man almost naked, and got out of his house, or perhaps out of his bed, into the street, come out of Harrow Alley, a populous conjunction or collection of alleys, courts, and passages inthe Butcher Row in Whitechappel, --I say, what could be more affectingthan to see this poor man come out into the open street, run dancing andsinging and making a thousand antic gestures, with five or six women andchildren running after him, crying and calling upon him for the Lord'ssake to come back, and entreating the help of others to bring him back, but all in vain, nobody daring to lay a hand upon him or to come nearhim?

This was a most grievous and afflicting thing to me, who saw it allfrom my own windows; for all this while the poor afflicted man was, asI observed it, even then in the utmost agony of pain, having (as theysaid) two swellings upon him which could not be brought to break or tosuppurate; but, by laying strong caustics on them, the surgeons had, itseems, hopes to break them--which caustics were then upon him, burninghis flesh as with a hot iron. I cannot say what became of this poor man, but I think he continued roving about in that manner till he fell downand died. 

No wonder the aspect of the city itself was frightful. The usualconcourse of people in the streets, and which used to be supplied fromour end of the town, was abated. The Exchange was not kept shut, indeed, but it was no more frequented. The fires were lost; they had been almostextinguished for some days by a very smart and hasty rain. But thatwas not all; some of the physicians insisted that they were not only nobenefit, but injurious to the health of people. This they made a loudclamour about, and complained to the Lord Mayor about it. On the otherhand, others of the same faculty, and eminent too, opposed them, andgave their reasons why the fires were, and must be, useful to assuagethe violence of the distemper. I cannot give a full account of theirarguments on both sides; only this I remember, that they cavilled verymuch with one another. Some were for fires, but that they must be madeof wood and not coal, and of particular sorts of wood too, such as firin particular, or cedar, because of the strong effluvia of turpentine;others were for coal and not wood, because of the sulphur and bitumen;and others were for neither one or other. Upon the whole, the Lord Mayorordered no more fires, and especially on this account, namely, that theplague was so fierce that they saw evidently it defied all means, andrather seemed to increase than decrease upon any application to checkand abate it; and yet this amazement of the magistrates proceeded ratherfrom want of being able to apply any means successfully than from anyunwillingness either to expose themselves or undertake the care andweight of business; for, to do them justice, they neither spared theirpains nor their persons. But nothing answered; the infection raged, andthe people were now frighted and terrified to the last degree: sothat, as I may say, they gave themselves up, and, as I mentioned above, abandoned themselves to their despair. 

But let me observe here that, when I say the people abandoned themselvesto despair, I do not mean to what men call a religious despair, or adespair of their eternal state, but I mean a despair of their being ableto escape the infection or to outlive the plague which they saw was soraging and so irresistible in its force that indeed few people that weretouched with it in its height, about August and September, escaped; and, which is very particular, contrary to its ordinary operation in June andJuly, and the beginning of August, when, as I have observed, many wereinfected, and continued so many days, and then went off after having hadthe poison in their blood a long time; but now, on the contrary, most ofthe people who were taken during the two last weeks in August and in thethree first weeks in September, generally died in two or three daysat furthest, and many the very same day they were taken; whether thedog-days, or, as our astrologers pretended to express themselves, theinfluence of the dog-star, had that malignant effect, or all those whohad the seeds of infection before in them brought it up to a maturityat that time altogether, I know not; but this was the time when it wasreported that above 3000 people died in one night; and they that wouldhave us believe they more critically observed it pretend to say thatthey all died within the space of two hours, viz. , between the hours ofone and three in the morning. 

As to the suddenness of people's dying at this time, more than before, there were innumerable instances of it, and I could name several in myneighbourhood. One family without the Bars, and not far from me, wereall seemingly well on the Monday, being ten in family. That evening onemaid and one apprentice were taken ill and died the next morning--whenthe other apprentice and two children were touched, whereof one died thesame evening, and the other two on Wednesday. In a word, by Saturdayat noon the master, mistress, four children, and four servants were allgone, and the house left entirely empty, except an ancient woman whocame in to take charge of the goods for the master of the family'sbrother, who lived not far off, and who had not been sick. 

Many houses were then left desolate, all the people being carried awaydead, and especially in an alley farther on the same side beyond theBars, going in at the sign of Moses and Aaron, there were several housestogether which, they said, had not one person left alive in them; andsome that died last in several of those houses were left a little toolong before they were fetched out to be buried; the reason of whichwas not, as some have written very untruly, that the living were notsufficient to bury the dead, but that the mortality was so great in theyard or alley that there was nobody left to give notice to the buriersor sextons that there were any dead bodies there to be buried. Itwas said, how true I know not, that some of those bodies were so muchcorrupted and so rotten that it was with difficulty they were carried;and as the carts could not come any nearer than to the Alley Gate in theHigh Street, it was so much the more difficult to bring them along;but I am not certain how many bodies were then left. I am sure thatordinarily it was not so. 

As I have mentioned how the people were brought into a condition todespair of life and abandon themselves, so this very thing had a strangeeffect among us for three or four weeks; that is, it made them bold andventurous: they were no more shy of one another, or restrained withindoors, but went anywhere and everywhere, and began to converse. Onewould say to another, 'I do not ask you how you are, or say how I am; itis certain we shall all go; so 'tis no matter who is all sick or who issound'; and so they ran desperately into any place or any company. 

As it brought the people into public company, so it was surprising howit brought them to crowd into the churches. They inquired no more intowhom they sat near to or far from, what offensive smells they metwith, or what condition the people seemed to be in; but, looking uponthemselves all as so many dead corpses, they came to the churcheswithout the least caution, and crowded together as if their lives wereof no consequence compared to the work which they came about there. Indeed, the zeal which they showed in coming, and the earnestness andaffection they showed in their attention to what they heard, made itmanifest what a value people would all put upon the worship of God ifthey thought every day they attended at the church that it would betheir last. 

Nor was it without other strange effects, for it took away, all mannerof prejudice at or scruple about the person whom they found in thepulpit when they came to the churches. It cannot be doubted but thatmany of the ministers of the parish churches were cut off, among others, in so common and dreadful a calamity; and others had not courage enoughto stand it, but removed into the country as they found means forescape. As then some parish churches were quite vacant and forsaken, the people made no scruple of desiring such Dissenters as had been afew years before deprived of their livings by virtue of the Act ofParliament called the Act of Uniformity to preach in the churches; nordid the church ministers in that case make any difficulty of acceptingtheir assistance; so that many of those whom they called silencedministers had their mouths opened on this occasion and preached publiclyto the people. 

Here we may observe and I hope it will not be amiss to take notice ofit that a near view of death would soon reconcile men of good principlesone to another, and that it is chiefly owing to our easy situation inlife and our putting these things far from us that our breaches arefomented, ill blood continued, prejudices, breach of charity and ofChristian union, so much kept and so far carried on among us as itis. Another plague year would reconcile all these differences; a doseconversing with death, or with diseases that threaten death, would scumoff the gall from our tempers, remove the animosities among us, andbring us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked on thingswith before. As the people who had been used to join with the Churchwere reconciled at this time with the admitting the Dissenters to preachto them, so the Dissenters, who with an uncommon prejudice had brokenoff from the communion of the Church of England, were now content tocome to their parish churches and to conform to the worship which theydid not approve of before; but as the terror of the infection abated, those things all returned again to their less desirable channel and tothe course they were in before. 

I mention this but historically. I have no mind to enter into argumentsto move either or both sides to a more charitable compliance one withanother. I do not see that it is probable such a discourse would beeither suitable or successful; the breaches seem rather to widen, andtend to a widening further, than to closing, and who am I that I shouldthink myself able to influence either one side or other? But this Imay repeat again, that 'tis evident death will reconcile us all; on theother side the grave we shall be all brethren again. In heaven, whitherI hope we may come from all parties and persuasions, we shall findneither prejudice or scruple; there we shall be of one principle and ofone opinion. Why we cannot be content to go hand in hand to the Placewhere we shall join heart and hand without the least hesitation, andwith the most complete harmony and affection--I say, why we cannot do sohere I can say nothing to, neither shall I say anything more of it butthat it remains to be lamented. 

I could dwell a great while upon the calamities of this dreadful time, and go on to describe the objects that appeared among us every day, thedreadful extravagancies which the distraction of sick people drove theminto; how the streets began now to be fuller of frightful objects, andfamilies to be made even a terror to themselves. But after I have toldyou, as I have above, that one man, being tied in his bed, and findingno other way to deliver himself, set the bed on fire with his candle, which unhappily stood within his reach, and burnt himself in his bed;and how another, by the insufferable torment he bore, danced and sungnaked in the streets, not knowing one ecstasy from another; I say, afterI have mentioned these things, what can be added more? What can be saidto represent the misery of these times more lively to the reader, or togive him a more perfect idea of a complicated distress?

I must acknowledge that this time was terrible, that I was sometimes atthe end of all my resolutions, and that I had not the courage that I hadat the beginning. As the extremity brought other people abroad, itdrove me home, and except having made my voyage down to Blackwall andGreenwich, as I have related, which was an excursion, I kept afterwardsvery much within doors, as I had for about a fortnight before. I havesaid already that I repented several times that I had ventured to stayin town, and had not gone away with my brother and his family, but itwas too late for that now; and after I had retreated and stayed withindoors a good while before my impatience led me abroad, then they calledme, as I have said, to an ugly and dangerous office which brought me outagain; but as that was expired while the height of the distemper lasted, I retired again, and continued dose ten or twelve days more, duringwhich many dismal spectacles represented themselves in my view out ofmy own windows and in our own street--as that particularly from HarrowAlley, of the poor outrageous creature which danced and sung in hisagony; and many others there were. Scarce a day or night passed overbut some dismal thing or other happened at the end of that Harrow Alley, which was a place full of poor people, most of them belonging to thebutchers or to employments depending upon the butchery. 

Sometimes heaps and throngs of people would burst out of the alley, most of them women, making a dreadful clamour, mixed or compounded ofscreeches, cryings, and calling one another, that we could not conceivewhat to make of it. Almost all the dead part of the night the dead-cartstood at the end of that alley, for if it went in it could not wellturn again, and could go in but a little way. There, I say, it stood toreceive dead bodies, and as the churchyard was but a little way off, if it went away full it would soon be back again. It is impossible todescribe the most horrible cries and noise the poor people would make attheir bringing the dead bodies of their children and friends out of thecart, and by the number one would have thought there had been none leftbehind, or that there were people enough for a small city living inthose places. Several times they cried 'Murder', sometimes 'Fire'; butit was easy to perceive it was all distraction, and the complaints ofdistressed and distempered people. 

I believe it was everywhere thus as that time, for the plague raged forsix or seven weeks beyond all that I have expressed, and came even tosuch a height that, in the extremity, they began to break into thatexcellent order of which I have spoken so much in behalf of themagistrates; namely, that no dead bodies were seen in the street orburials in the daytime: for there was a necessity in this extremity tobear with its being otherwise for a little while. 

One thing I cannot omit here, and indeed I thought it was extraordinary, at least it seemed a remarkable hand of Divine justice: viz. , thatall the predictors, astrologers, fortune-tellers, and what they calledcunning-men, conjurers, and the like: calculators of nativities anddreamers of dream, and such people, were gone and vanished; not one ofthem was to be found. I am verily persuaded that a great number ofthem fell in the heat of the calamity, having ventured to stay upon theprospect of getting great estates; and indeed their gain was but toogreat for a time, through the madness and folly of the people. But nowthey were silent; many of them went to their long home, not able toforetell their own fate or to calculate their own nativities. Some havebeen critical enough to say that every one of them died. I dare notaffirm that; but this I must own, that I never heard of one of them thatever appeared after the calamity was over. 

But to return to my particular observations during this dreadful partof the visitation. I am now come, as I have said, to the month ofSeptember, which was the most dreadful of its kind, I believe, that everLondon saw; for, by all the accounts which I have seen of the precedingvisitations which have been in London, nothing has been like it, thenumber in the weekly bill amounting to almost 40, 000 from the 22nd ofAugust to the 26th of September, being but five weeks. The particularsof the bills are as follows, viz. :--

 From August the 22nd to the 29th 7496 " " 29th " 5th September 8252 " September the 5th " 12th 7690 " " 12th " 19th 8297 " " 19th " 26th 6460 - ----- - 38, 195

This was a prodigious number of itself, but if I should add the reasonswhich I have to believe that this account was deficient, and howdeficient it was, you would, with me, make no scruple to believe thatthere died above ten thousand a week for all those weeks, one week withanother, and a proportion for several weeks both before and after. Theconfusion among the people, especially within the city, at that time, was inexpressible. The terror was so great at last that the courage ofthe people appointed to carry away the dead began to fail them; nay, several of them died, although they had the distemper before and wererecovered, and some of them dropped down when they have been carryingthe bodies even at the pit side, and just ready to throw them in;and this confusion was greater in the city because they had flatteredthemselves with hopes of escaping, and thought the bitterness of deathwas past. One cart, they told us, going up Shoreditch was forsaken ofthe drivers, or being left to one man to drive, he died in the street;and the horses going on overthrew the cart, and left the bodies, somethrown out here, some there, in a dismal manner. Another cart was, itseems, found in the great pit in Finsbury Fields, the driver being dead, or having been gone and abandoned it, and the horses running too nearit, the cart fell in and drew the horses in also. It was suggested thatthe driver was thrown in with it and that the cart fell upon him, byreason his whip was seen to be in the pit among the bodies; but that, Isuppose, could not be certain. 

In our parish of Aldgate the dead-carts were several times, as I haveheard, found standing at the churchyard gate full of dead bodies, butneither bellman or driver or any one else with it; neither in these ormany other cases did they know what bodies they had in their cart, forsometimes they were let down with ropes out of balconies and out ofwindows, and sometimes the bearers brought them to the cart, sometimesother people; nor, as the men themselves said, did they troublethemselves to keep any account of the numbers. 

The vigilance of the magistrates was now put to the utmost trial--and, it must be confessed, can never be enough acknowledged on this occasionalso; whatever expense or trouble they were at, two things were neverneglected in the city or suburbs either:--

(1) Provisions were always to be had in full plenty, and the price notmuch raised neither, hardly worth speaking. 

(2) No dead bodies lay unburied or uncovered; and if one walked from oneend of the city to another, no funeral or sign of it was to be seen inthe daytime, except a little, as I have said above, in the three firstweeks in September. 

This last article perhaps will hardly be believed when some accountswhich others have published since that shall be seen, wherein they saythat the dead lay unburied, which I am assured was utterly false; atleast, if it had been anywhere so, it must have been in houses where theliving were gone from the dead (having found means, as I have observed, to escape) and where no notice was given to the officers. All whichamounts to nothing at all in the case in hand; for this I am positivein, having myself been employed a little in the direction of that partin the parish in which I lived, and where as great a desolation was madein proportion to the number of inhabitants as was anywhere; I say, I amsure that there were no dead bodies remained unburied; that is to say, none that the proper officers knew of; none for want of people to carrythem off, and buriers to put them into the ground and cover them; andthis is sufficient to the argument; for what might lie in houses andholes, as in Moses and Aaron Alley, is nothing; for it is most certainthey were buried as soon as they were found. As to the first article(namely, of provisions, the scarcity or dearness), though I havementioned it before and shall speak of it again, yet I must observehere:--

(1) The price of bread in particular was not much raised; for in thebeginning of the year, viz. , in the first week in March, the pennywheaten loaf was ten ounces and a half; and in the height of thecontagion it was to be had at nine ounces and a half, and never dearer, no, not all that season. And about the beginning of November it was soldten ounces and a half again; the like of which, I believe, was neverheard of in any city, under so dreadful a visitation, before. 

(2) Neither was there (which I wondered much at) any want of bakers orovens kept open to supply the people with the bread; but this was indeedalleged by some families, viz. , that their maidservants, going to thebakehouses with their dough to be baked, which was then the custom, sometimes came home with the sickness (that is to say the plague) uponthem. 

In all this dreadful visitation there were, as I have said before, buttwo pest-houses made use of, viz. , one in the fields beyond Old Streetand one in Westminster; neither was there any compulsion used incarrying people thither. Indeed there was no need of compulsion in thecase, for there were thousands of poor distressed people who, having nohelp or conveniences or supplies but of charity, would have been veryglad to have been carried thither and been taken care of; which, indeed, was the only thing that I think was wanting in the whole publicmanagement of the city, seeing nobody was here allowed to be brought tothe pest-house but where money was given, or security for money, eitherat their introducing or upon their being cured and sent out--for verymany were sent out again whole; and very good physicians were appointedto those places, so that many people did very well there, of which Ishall make mention again. The principal sort of people sent thitherwere, as I have said, servants who got the distemper by going of errandsto fetch necessaries to the families where they lived, and who in thatcase, if they came home sick, were removed to preserve the rest of thehouse; and they were so well looked after there in all the time ofthe visitation that there was but 156 buried in all at the Londonpest-house, and 159 at that of Westminster. 

By having more pest-houses I am far from meaning a forcing all peopleinto such places. Had the shutting up of houses been omitted and thesick hurried out of their dwellings to pest-houses, as some proposed, itseems, at that time as well as since, it would certainly have beenmuch worse than it was. The very removing the sick would have been aspreading of the infection, and the rather because that removingcould not effectually clear the house where the sick person was of thedistemper; and the rest of the family, being then left at liberty, wouldcertainly spread it among others. 

The methods also in private families, which would have been universallyused to have concealed the distemper and to have concealed the personsbeing sick, would have been such that the distemper would sometimes haveseized a whole family before any visitors or examiners could have knownof it. On the other hand, the prodigious numbers which would havebeen sick at a time would have exceeded all the capacity of publicpest-houses to receive them, or of public officers to discover andremove them. 

This was well considered in those days, and I have heard them talk ofit often. The magistrates had enough to do to bring people to submit tohaving their houses shut up, and many ways they deceived the watchmenand got out, as I have observed. But that difficulty made it apparentthat they t would have found it impracticable to have gone the other wayto work, for they could never have forced the sick people out of theirbeds and out of their dwellings. It must not have been my Lord Mayor'sofficers, but an army of officers, that must have attempted it; and thepeople, on the other hand, would have been enraged and desperate, andwould have killed those that should have offered to have meddled withthem or with their children and relations, whatever had befallen themfor it; so that they would have made the people, who, as it was, werein the most terrible distraction imaginable, I say, they would havemade them stark mad; whereas the magistrates found it proper on severalaccounts to treat them with lenity and compassion, and not with violenceand terror, such as dragging the sick out of their houses or obligingthem to remove themselves, would have been. 

This leads me again to mention the time when the plague first began;that is to say, when it became certain that it would spread over thewhole town, when, as I have said, the better sort of people first tookthe alarm and began to hurry themselves out of town. It was true, as Iobserved in its place, that the throng was so great, and the coaches, horses, waggons, and carts were so many, driving and dragging the peopleaway, that it looked as if all the city was running away; and hadany regulations been published that had been terrifying at that time, especially such as would pretend to dispose of the people otherwise thanthey would dispose of themselves, it would have put both the city andsuburbs into the utmost confusion. 

But the magistrates wisely caused the people to be encouraged, made verygood bye-laws for the regulating the citizens, keeping good order in thestreets, and making everything as eligible as possible to all sorts ofpeople. 

In the first place, the Lord Mayor and the sheriffs, the Court ofAldermen, and a certain number of the Common Council men, or theirdeputies, came to a resolution and published it, viz. , that they wouldnot quit the city themselves, but that they would be always at hand forthe preserving good order in every place and for the doing justice onall occasions; as also for the distributing the public charity to thepoor; and, in a word, for the doing the duty and discharging the trustreposed in them by the citizens to the utmost of their power. 

In pursuance of these orders, the Lord Mayor, sheriffs, &c. , heldcouncils every day, more or less, for making such dispositions as theyfound needful for preserving the civil peace; and though they used thepeople with all possible gentleness and clemency, yet all manner ofpresumptuous rogues such as thieves, housebreakers, plunderers of thedead or of the sick, were duly punished, and several declarations werecontinually published by the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen againstsuch. 

Also all constables and churchwardens were enjoined to stay in thecity upon severe penalties, or to depute such able and sufficienthousekeepers as the deputy aldermen or Common Council men of theprecinct should approve, and for whom they should give security; andalso security in case of mortality that they would forthwith constituteother constables in their stead. 

These things re-established the minds of the people very much, especially in the first of their fright, when they talked of makingso universal a flight that the city would have been in danger of beingentirely deserted of its inhabitants except the poor, and the countryof being plundered and laid waste by the multitude. Nor were themagistrates deficient in performing their part as boldly as theypromised it; for my Lord Mayor and the sheriffs were continually in thestreets and at places of the greatest danger, and though they did notcare for having too great a resort of people crowding about them, yetin emergent cases they never denied the people access to them, and heardwith patience all their grievances and complaints. My Lord Mayor hada low gallery built on purpose in his hall, where he stood a littleremoved from the crowd when any complaint came to be heard, that hemight appear with as much safety as possible. 

Likewise the proper officers, called my Lord Mayor's officers, constantly attended in their turns, as they were in waiting; and ifany of them were sick or infected, as some of them were, others wereinstantly employed to fill up and officiate in their places till it wasknown whether the other should live or die. 

In like manner the sheriffs and aldermen did in their several stationsand wards, where they were placed by office, and the sheriff's officersor sergeants were appointed to receive orders from the respectivealdermen in their turn, so that justice was executed in all caseswithout interruption. In the next place, it was one of their particularcares to see the orders for the freedom of the markets observed, andin this part either the Lord Mayor or one or both of the sheriffs wereevery market-day on horseback to see their orders executed and to seethat the country people had all possible encouragement and freedom intheir coming to the markets and going back again, and that no nuisancesor frightful objects should be seen in the streets to terrify them ormake them unwilling to come. Also the bakers were taken under particularorder, and the Master of the Bakers' Company was, with his courtof assistants, directed to see the order of my Lord Mayor for theirregulation put in execution, and the due assize of bread (which wasweekly appointed by my Lord Mayor) observed; and all the bakers wereobliged to keep their oven going constantly, on pain of losing theprivileges of a freeman of the city of London. 

By this means bread was always to be had in plenty, and as cheapas usual, as I said above; and provisions were never wanting inthe markets, even to such a degree that I often wondered at it, andreproached myself with being so timorous and cautious in stirringabroad, when the country people came freely and boldly to market, as ifthere had been no manner of infection in the city, or danger of catchingit. 

It. Was indeed one admirable piece of conduct in the said magistratesthat the streets were kept constantly dear and free from all manner offrightful objects, dead bodies, or any such things as were indecentor unpleasant--unless where anybody fell down suddenly or died in thestreets, as I have said above; and these were generally covered withsome cloth or blanket, or removed into the next churchyard till night. All the needful works that carried terror with them, that were bothdismal and dangerous, were done in the night; if any diseased bodieswere removed, or dead bodies buried, or infected clothes burnt, it wasdone in the night; and all the bodies which were thrown into thegreat pits in the several churchyards or burying-grounds, as has beenobserved, were so removed in the night, and everything was covered andclosed before day. So that in the daytime there was not the least signalof the calamity to be seen or heard of, except what was to be observedfrom the emptiness of the streets, and sometimes from the passionateoutcries and lamentations of the people, out at their windows, and fromthe numbers of houses and shops shut up. 

Nor was the silence and emptiness of the streets so much in the cityas in the out-parts, except just at one particular time when, as I havementioned, the plague came east and spread over all the city. It wasindeed a merciful disposition of God, that as the plague began at oneend of the town first (as has been observed at large) so it proceededprogressively to other parts, and did not come on this way, or eastward, till it had spent its fury in the West part of the town; and so, as itcame on one way, it abated another. For example, it began at St Giles'sand the Westminster end of the town, and it was in its height in allthat part by about the middle of July, viz. , in St Giles-in-the-Fields, St Andrew's, Holborn, St Clement Danes, St Martin-in-the-Fields, and inWestminster. The latter end of July it decreased in those parishes; andcoming east, it increased prodigiously in Cripplegate, St Sepulcher's, St James's, Clarkenwell, and St Bride's and Aldersgate. While it was inall these parishes, the city and all the parishes of the Southwarkside of the water and all Stepney, Whitechappel, Aldgate, Wapping, andRatcliff, were very little touched; so that people went about theirbusiness unconcerned, carried on their trades, kept open their shops, and conversed freely with one another in all the city, the east andnorth-east suburbs, and in Southwark, almost as if the plague had notbeen among us. 

Even when the north and north-west suburbs were fully infected, viz. , Cripplegate, Clarkenwell, Bishopsgate, and Shoreditch, yet still all therest were tolerably well. For example from 25th July to 1st August thebill stood thus of all diseases:--

 St Giles, Cripplegate 554 St Sepulchers 250 Clarkenwell 103 Bishopsgate 116 Shoreditch 110 Stepney parish 127 Aldgate 92 Whitechappel 104 All the ninety-seven parishes within the walls 228 All the parishes in Southwark 205 - ----- - Total 1889

So that, in short, there died more that week in the two parishes ofCripplegate and St Sepulcher by forty-eight than in all the city, allthe east suburbs, and all the Southwark parishes put together. Thiscaused the reputation of the city's health to continue all overEngland--and especially in the counties and markets adjacent, fromwhence our supply of provisions chiefly came even much longer than thathealth itself continued; for when the people came into the streetsfrom the country by Shoreditch and Bishopsgate, or by Old Street andSmithfield, they would see the out-streets empty and the houses andshops shut, and the few people that were stirring there walk in themiddle of the streets. But when they came within the city, there thingslooked better, and the markets and shops were open, and the peoplewalking about the streets as usual, though not quite so many; and thiscontinued till the latter end of August and the beginning of September. 

But then the case altered quite; the distemper abated in the west andnorth-west parishes, and the weight of the infection lay on the cityand the eastern suburbs, and the Southwark side, and this in a frightfulmanner. Then, indeed, the city began to look dismal, shops to be shut, and the streets desolate. In the High Street, indeed, necessity madepeople stir abroad on many occasions; and there would be in the middleof the day a pretty many people, but in the mornings and evenings scarceany to be seen, even there, no, not in Cornhill and Cheapside. 

These observations of mine were abundantly confirmed by the weekly billsof mortality for those weeks, an abstract of which, as they respect theparishes which. I have mentioned and as they make the calculations Ispeak of very evident, take as follows. 

The weekly bill, which makes out this decrease of the burials in thewest and north side of the city, stands thus--

 From the 12th of September to the 19th-- - St Giles, Cripplegate 456 - St Giles-in-the-Fields 140 - Clarkenwell 77 - St Sepulcher 214 - St Leonard, Shoreditch 183 - Stepney parish 716 - Aldgate 623 - Whitechappel 532 - In the ninety-seven parishes within the walls 1493 - In the eight parishes on Southwark side 1636 - ----- - Total 6060

Here is a strange change of things indeed, and a sad change it was; andhad it held for two months more than it did, very few people would havebeen left alive. But then such, I say, was the merciful disposition ofGod that, when it was thus, the west and north part which had been sodreadfully visited at first, grew, as you see, much better; and as thepeople disappeared here, they began to look abroad again there; andthe next week or two altered it still more; that is, more to theencouragement of the other part of the town. For example:--

 From the 19th of September to the 26th-- - St Giles, Cripplegate 277 - St Giles-in-the-Fields 119 - Clarkenwell 76 - St Sepulchers 193 - St Leonard, Shoreditch 146 - Stepney parish 616 - Aldgate 496 - Whitechappel 346 - In the ninety-seven parishes within the walls 1268 - In the eight parishes on Southwark side 1390 - ----- - Total 4927

 From the 26th of September to the 3rd of October-- - St Giles, Cripplegate 196 - St Giles-in-the-Fields 95 - Clarkenwell 48 - St Sepulchers 137 - St Leonard, Shoreditch 128 - Stepney parish 674 - Aldgate 372 - Whitechappel 328 - In the ninety-seven parishes within the walls 1149 - In the eight parishes on Southwark side 1201 - ----- - Total 4382

And now the misery of the city and of the said east and south parts wascomplete indeed; for, as you see, the weight of the distemper lay uponthose parts, that is to say, the city, the eight parishes over theriver, with the parishes of Aldgate, Whitechappel, and Stepney; and thiswas the time that the bills came up to such a monstrous height as thatI mentioned before, and that eight or nine, and, as I believe, ten ortwelve thousand a week, died; for it is my settled opinion that theynever could come at any just account of the numbers, for the reasonswhich I have given already. 

Nay, one of the most eminent physicians, who has since published inLatin an account of those times, and of his observations says that inone week there died twelve thousand people, and that particularly theredied four thousand in one night; though I do not remember that thereever was any such particular night so remarkably fatal as that such anumber died in it. However, all this confirms what I have said aboveof the uncertainty of the bills of mortality, &c. , of which I shall saymore hereafter. 

And here let me take leave to enter again, though it may seem arepetition of circumstances, into a description of the miserablecondition of the city itself, and of those parts where I lived at thisparticular time. The city and those other parts, notwithstanding thegreat numbers of people that were gone into the country, was vastly fullof people; and perhaps the fuller because people had for a long timea strong belief that the plague would not come into the city, nor intoSouthwark, no, nor into Wapping or Ratcliff at all; nay, such was theassurance of the people on that head that many removed from the suburbson the west and north sides, into those eastern and south sides as forsafety; and, as I verily believe, carried the plague amongst them thereperhaps sooner than they would otherwise have had it. 

Here also I ought to leave a further remark for the use of posterity, concerning the manner of people's infecting one another; namely, thatit was not the sick people only from whom the plague was immediatelyreceived by others that were sound, but the well. To explain myself: bythe sick people I mean those who were known to be sick, had taken theirbeds, had been under cure, or had swellings and tumours upon them, andthe like; these everybody could beware of; they were either in theirbeds or in such condition as could not be concealed. 

By the well I mean such as had received the contagion, and had it reallyupon them, and in their blood, yet did not show the consequences of itin their countenances: nay, even were not sensible of it themselves, asmany were not for several days. These breathed death in every place, andupon everybody who came near them; nay, their very clothes retained theinfection, their hands would infect the things they touched, especiallyif they were warm and sweaty, and they were generally apt to sweat too. 

Now it was impossible to know these people, nor did they sometimes, as Ihave said, know themselves to be infected. These were the people that sooften dropped down and fainted in the streets; for oftentimes they wouldgo about the streets to the last, till on a sudden they would sweat, grow faint, sit down at a door and die. It is true, finding themselvesthus, they would struggle hard to get home to their own doors, orat other times would be just able to go into their houses and dieinstantly; other times they would go about till they had the very tokenscome out upon them, and yet not know it, and would die in an hour ortwo after they came home, but be well as long as they were abroad. Thesewere the dangerous people; these were the people of whom the wellpeople ought to have been afraid; but then, on the other side, it wasimpossible to know them. 

And this is the reason why it is impossible in a visitation to preventthe spreading of the plague by the utmost human vigilance: viz. , thatit is impossible to know the infected people from the sound, or thatthe infected people should perfectly know themselves. I knew a man whoconversed freely in London all the season of the plague in 1665, andkept about him an antidote or cordial on purpose to take when he thoughthimself in any danger, and he had such a rule to know or have warning ofthe danger by as indeed I never met with before or since. How far it maybe depended on I know not. He had a wound in his leg, and whenever hecame among any people that were not sound, and the infection began toaffect him, he said he could know it by that signal, viz. , that hiswound in his leg would smart, and look pale and white; so as soon asever he felt it smart it was time for him to withdraw, or to take careof himself, taking his drink, which he always carried about him for thatpurpose. Now it seems he found his wound would smart many times whenhe was in company with such who thought themselves to be sound, andwho appeared so to one another; but he would presently rise up and saypublicly, 'Friends, here is somebody in the room that has the plague', and so would immediately break up the company. This was indeed afaithful monitor to all people that the plague is not to be avoided bythose that converse promiscuously in a town infected, and people haveit when they know it not, and that they likewise give it to others whenthey know not that they have it themselves; and in this case shuttingup the well or removing the sick will not do it, unless they can go backand shut up all those that the sick had conversed with, even before theyknew themselves to be sick, and none knows how far to carry that back, or where to stop; for none knows when or where or how they may havereceived the infection, or from whom. 

This I take to be the reason which makes so many people talk of the airbeing corrupted and infected, and that they need not be cautious of whomthey converse with, for that the contagion was in the air. I have seenthem in strange agitations and surprises on this account. 'I havenever come near any infected body', says the disturbed person; 'I haveconversed with none but sound, healthy people, and yet I have gotten thedistemper!' 'I am sure I am struck from Heaven', says another, and hefalls to the serious part. Again, the first goes on exclaiming, 'I havecome near no infection or any infected person; I am sure it is the air. We draw in death when we breathe, and therefore 'tis the hand of God;there is no withstanding it. ' And this at last made many people, beinghardened to the danger, grow less concerned at it; and less cautioustowards the latter end of the time, and when it was come to itsheight, than they were at first. Then, with a kind of a Turkishpredestinarianism, they would say, if it pleased God to strike them, itwas all one whether they went abroad or stayed at home; they could notescape it, and therefore they went boldly about, even into infectedhouses and infected company; visited sick people; and, in short, lay inthe beds with their wives or relations when they were infected. And whatwas the consequence, but the same that is the consequence in Turkey, andin those countries where they do those things--namely, that they wereinfected too, and died by hundreds and thousands?

I would be far from lessening the awe of the judgements of God and thereverence to His providence which ought always to be on our minds onsuch occasions as these. Doubtless the visitation itself is a strokefrom Heaven upon a city, or country, or nation where it falls; amessenger of His vengeance, and a loud call to that nation or countryor city to humiliation and repentance, according to that of the prophetJeremiah (xviii. 7, 8): 'At what instant I shall speak concerning anation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, andto destroy it; if that nation against whom I have pronounced turn fromtheir evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. 'Now to prompt due impressions of the awe of God on the minds of men onsuch occasions, and not to lessen them, it is that I have left thoseminutes upon record. 

I say, therefore, I reflect upon no man for putting the reason of thosethings upon the immediate hand of God, and the appointment and directionof His providence; nay, on the contrary, there were many wonderfuldeliverances of persons from infection, and deliverances of personswhen infected, which intimate singular and remarkable providence inthe particular instances to which they refer; and I esteem my owndeliverance to be one next to miraculous, and do record it withthankfulness. 

But when I am speaking of the plague as a distemper arising from naturalcauses, we must consider it as it was really propagated by naturalmeans; nor is it at all the less a judgement for its being under theconduct of human causes and effects; for, as the Divine Power has formedthe whole scheme of nature and maintains nature in its course, so thesame Power thinks fit to let His own actings with men, whether of mercyor judgement, to go on in the ordinary course of natural causes; andHe is pleased to act by those natural causes as the ordinary means, excepting and reserving to Himself nevertheless a power to act in asupernatural way when He sees occasion. Now 'tis evident that in thecase of an infection there is no apparent extraordinary occasion forsupernatural operation, but the ordinary course of things appearssufficiently armed, and made capable of all the effects that Heavenusually directs by a contagion. Among these causes and effects, this ofthe secret conveyance of infection, imperceptible and unavoidable, ismore than sufficient to execute the fierceness of Divine vengeance, without putting it upon supernaturals and miracle. 

The acute penetrating nature of the disease itself was such, and theinfection was received so imperceptibly, that the most exact cautioncould not secure us while in the place. But I must be allowed tobelieve--and I have so many examples fresh in my memory to convince meof it, that I think none can resist their evidence--I say, I must beallowed to believe that no one in this whole nation ever receivedthe sickness or infection but who received it in the ordinary way ofinfection from somebody, or the clothes or touch or stench of somebodythat was infected before. 

The manner of its coming first to London proves this also, viz. , bygoods brought over from Holland, and brought thither from the Levant;the first breaking of it out in a house in Long Acre where those goodswere carried and first opened; its spreading from that house to otherhouses by the visible unwary conversing with those who were sick; andthe infecting the parish officers who were employed about the personsdead, and the like. These are known authorities for this greatfoundation point--that it went on and proceeded from person to personand from house to house, and no otherwise. In the first house that wasinfected there died four persons. A neighbour, hearing the mistress ofthe first house was sick, went to visit her, and went home and gave thedistemper to her family, and died, and all her household. A minister, called to pray with the first sick person in the second house, was saidto sicken immediately and die with several more in his house. Thenthe physicians began to consider, for they did not at first dream of ageneral contagion. But the physicians being sent to inspect the bodies, they assured the people that it was neither more or less than theplague, with all its terrifying particulars, and that it threatened anuniversal infection, so many people having already conversed withthe sick or distempered, and having, as might be supposed, receivedinfection from them, that it would be impossible to put a stop to it. 

Here the opinion of the physicians agreed with my observationafterwards, namely, that the danger was spreading insensibly, for thesick could infect none but those that came within reach of the sickperson; but that one man who may have really received the infection andknows it not, but goes abroad and about as a sound person, may give theplague to a thousand people, and they to greater numbers in proportion, and neither the person giving the infection or the persons receiving itknow anything of it, and perhaps not feel the effects of it for severaldays after. 

For example, many persons in the time of this visitation never perceivedthat they were infected till they found to their unspeakable surprise, the tokens come out upon them; after which they seldom lived six hours;for those spots they called the tokens were really gangrene spots, ormortified flesh in small knobs as broad as a little silver penny, andhard as a piece of callus or horn; so that, when the disease was comeup to that length, there was nothing could follow but certain death;and yet, as I said, they knew nothing of their being infected, nor foundthemselves so much as out of order, till those mortal marks were uponthem. But everybody must allow that they were infected in a high degreebefore, And must have been so some time, and consequently their breath, their sweat, their very clothes, were contagious for many days before. This occasioned a vast variety of cases which physicians would have muchmore opportunity to remember than I; but some came within the compass ofmy observation or hearing, of which I shall name a few. 

A certain citizen who had lived safe and untouched till the month ofSeptember, when the weight of the distemper lay more in the city than ithad done before, was mighty cheerful, and something too bold (as I thinkit was) in his talk of how secure he was, how cautious he had been, and how he had never come near any sick body. Says another citizen, aneighbour of his, to him one day, 'Do not be too confident, Mr--; it ishard to say who is sick and who is well, for we see men alive and wellto outward appearance one hour, and dead the next. ' 'That is true', says the first man, for he was not a man presumptuously secure, but hadescaped a long while--and men, as I said above, especially in the citybegan to be over-easy upon that score. 'That is true, ' says he; 'I donot think myself secure, but I hope I have not been in company with anyperson that there has been any danger in. ' 'No?' says his neighbour. 'Was not you at the Bull Head Tavern in Gracechurch Street with Mr--thenight before last?' 'Yes, ' says the first, 'I was; but there wasnobody there that we had any reason to think dangerous. ' Upon which hisneighbour said no more, being unwilling to surprise him; but this madehim more inquisitive, and as his neighbour appeared backward, he was themore impatient, and in a kind of warmth says he aloud, 'Why, he is notdead, is he?' Upon which his neighbour still was silent, but cast up hiseyes and said something to himself; at which the first citizen turnedpale, and said no more but this, 'Then I am a dead man too', and wenthome immediately and sent for a neighbouring apothecary to give himsomething preventive, for he had not yet found himself ill; but theapothecary, opening his breast, fetched a sigh, and said no more butthis, 'Look up to God'; and the man died in a few hours. 

Now let any man judge from a case like this if it is possible for theregulations of magistrates, either by shutting up the sick or removingthem, to stop an infection which spreads itself from man to man evenwhile they are perfectly well and insensible of its approach, and may beso for many days. 

It may be proper to ask here how long it may be supposed men might havethe seeds of the contagion in them before it discovered itself in thisfatal manner, and how long they might go about seemingly whole, andyet be contagious to all those that came near them. I believe the mostexperienced physicians cannot answer this question directly any morethan I can; and something an ordinary observer may take notice of, whichmay pass their observations. The opinion of physicians abroad seems tobe that it may lie dormant in the spirits or in the blood-vessels a veryconsiderable time. Why else do they exact a quarantine of those who cameinto their harbours and ports from suspected places? Forty days is, onewould think, too long for nature to struggle with such an enemy as this, and not conquer it or yield to it. But I could not think, by my ownobservation, that they can be infected so as to be contagious to othersabove fifteen or sixteen days at furthest; and on that score it was, that when a house was shut up in the city and any one had died of theplague, but nobody appeared to be ill in the family for sixteen oreighteen days after, they were not so strict but that they would conniveat their going privately abroad; nor would people be much afraid of themafterward, but rather think they were fortified the better, having notbeen vulnerable when the enemy was in their own house; but we sometimesfound it had lain much longer concealed. 

Upon the foot of all these observations I must say that thoughProvidence seemed to direct my conduct to be otherwise, yet it is myopinion, and I must leave it as a prescription, viz. , that the bestphysic against the plague is to run away from it. I know peopleencourage themselves by saying God is able to keep us in the midst ofdanger, and able to overtake us when we think ourselves out of danger;and this kept thousands in the town whose carcases went into the greatpits by cartloads, and who, if they had fled from the danger, had, Ibelieve, been safe from the disaster; at least 'tis probable they hadbeen safe. 

And were this very fundamental only duly considered by the people on anyfuture occasion of this or the like nature, I am persuaded it would putthem upon quite different measures for managing the people from thosethat they took in 1665, or than any that have been taken abroad that Ihave heard of. In a word, they would consider of separating thepeople into smaller bodies, and removing them in time farther from oneanother--and not let such a contagion as this, which is indeed chieflydangerous to collected bodies of people, find a million of people in abody together, as was very near the case before, and would certainly bethe case if it should ever appear again. 

The plague, like a great fire, if a few houses only are contiguous whereit happens, can only burn a few houses; or if it begins in a single, or, as we call it, a lone house, can only burn that lone house where itbegins. But if it begins in a close-built town or city and gets a head, there its fury increases: it rages over the whole place, and consumesall it can reach. 

I could propose many schemes on the foot of which the government of thiscity, if ever they should be under the apprehensions of such anotherenemy (God forbid they should), might ease themselves of the greatestpart of the dangerous people that belong to them; I mean such as thebegging, starving, labouring poor, and among them chiefly those who, incase of a siege, are called the useless mouths; who being then prudentlyand to their own advantage disposed of, and the wealthy inhabitantsdisposing of themselves and of their servants and children, the city andits adjacent parts would be so effectually evacuated that there wouldnot be above a tenth part of its people left together for the diseaseto take hold upon. But suppose them to be a fifth part, and that twohundred and fifty thousand people were left: and if it did seize uponthem, they would, by their living so much at large, be much betterprepared to defend themselves against the infection, and be less liableto the effects of it than if the same number of people lived dosetogether in one smaller city such as Dublin or Amsterdam or the like. 

It is true hundreds, yea, thousands of families fled away at this lastplague, but then of them, many fled too late, and not only died in theirflight, but carried the distemper with them into the countries wherethey went and infected those whom they went among for safety; whichconfounded the thing, and made that be a propagation of the distemperwhich was the best means to prevent it; and this too is an evidence ofit, and brings me back to what I only hinted at before, but must speakmore fully to here, namely, that men went about apparently well manydays after they had the taint of the disease in their vitals, and aftertheir spirits were so seized as that they could never escape it, andthat all the while they did so they were dangerous to others; I say, this proves that so it was; for such people infected the very towns theywent through, as well as the families they went among; and it was bythat means that almost all the great towns in England had the distemperamong them, more or less, and always they would tell you such a Londoneror such a Londoner brought it down. 

It must not be omitted that when I speak of those people who were reallythus dangerous, I suppose them to be utterly ignorant of their ownconditions; for if they really knew their circumstances to be such asindeed they were, they must have been a kind of wilful murtherers ifthey would have gone abroad among healthy people--and it would haveverified indeed the suggestion which I mentioned above, and which Ithought seemed untrue: viz. , that the infected people were utterlycareless as to giving the infection to others, and rather forward to doit than not; and I believe it was partly from this very thing that theyraised that suggestion, which I hope was not really true in fact. 

I confess no particular case is sufficient to prove a general, butI could name several people within the knowledge of some of theirneighbours and families yet living who showed the contrary to anextreme. One man, a master of a family in my neighbourhood, having hadthe distemper, he thought he had it given him by a poor workman whom heemployed, and whom he went to his house to see, or went for some workthat he wanted to have finished; and he had some apprehensions evenwhile he was at the poor workman's door, but did not discover it fully;but the next day it discovered itself, and he was taken very in, uponwhich he immediately caused himself to be carried into an outbuildingwhich he had in his yard, and where there was a chamber over a workhouse(the man being a brazier). Here he lay, and here he died, and would betended by none of his neighbours, but by a nurse from abroad; and wouldnot suffer his wife, nor children, nor servants to come up into theroom, lest they should be infected--but sent them his blessing andprayers for them by the nurse, who spoke it to them at a distance, andall this for fear of giving them the distemper; and without which heknew, as they were kept up, they could not have it. 

And here I must observe also that the plague, as I supposeall distempers do, operated in a different manner on differingconstitutions; some were immediately overwhelmed with it, and it cameto violent fevers, vomitings, insufferable headaches, pains in the back, and so up to ravings and ragings with those pains; others with swellingsand tumours in the neck or groin, or armpits, which till they could bebroke put them into insufferable agonies and torment; while others, asI have observed, were silently infected, the fever preying upon theirspirits insensibly, and they seeing little of it till they fell intoswooning, and faintings, and death without pain. I am not physicianenough to enter into the particular reasons and manner of thesediffering effects of one and the same distemper, and of its differingoperation in several bodies; nor is it my business here to record theobservations which I really made, because the doctors themselves havedone that part much more effectually than I can do, and because myopinion may in some things differ from theirs. I am only relating whatI know, or have heard, or believe of the particular cases, and what fellwithin the compass of my view, and the different nature of the infectionas it appeared in the particular cases which I have related; but thismay be added too: that though the former sort of those cases, namely, those openly visited, were the worst for themselves as to pain--I meanthose that had such fevers, vomitings, headaches, pains, and swellings, because they died in such a dreadful manner--yet the latter had theworst state of the disease; for in the former they frequently recovered, especially if the swellings broke; but the latter was inevitable death;no cure, no help, could be possible, nothing could follow but death. And it was worse also to others, because, as above, it secretly andunperceived by others or by themselves, communicated death to those theyconversed with, the penetrating poison insinuating itself into theirblood in a manner which it is impossible to describe, or indeedconceive. 

This infecting and being infected without so much as its being knownto either person is evident from two sorts of cases which frequentlyhappened at that time; and there is hardly anybody living who was inLondon during the infection but must have known several of the cases ofboth sorts. 

(1) Fathers and mothers have gone about as if they had been well, andhave believed themselves to be so, till they have insensibly infectedand been the destruction of their whole families, which they would havebeen far from doing if they had the least apprehensions of their beingunsound and dangerous themselves. A family, whose story I have heard, was thus infected by the father; and the distemper began to appear uponsome of them even before he found it upon himself. But searching morenarrowly, it appeared he had been affected some time; and as soon as hefound that his family had been poisoned by himself he went distracted, and would have laid violent hands upon himself, but was kept from thatby those who looked to him, and in a few days died. 

(2) The other particular is, that many people having been well to thebest of their own judgement, or by the best observation which theycould make of themselves for several days, and only finding a decayof appetite, or a light sickness upon their stomachs; nay, some whoseappetite has been strong, and even craving, and only a light pain intheir heads, have sent for physicians to know what ailed them, and havebeen found, to their great surprise, at the brink of death: the tokensupon them, or the plague grown up to an incurable height. 

It was very sad to reflect how such a person as this last mentionedabove had been a walking destroyer perhaps for a week or a fortnightbefore that; how he had ruined those that he would have hazarded hislife to save, and had been breathing death upon them, even perhapsin his tender kissing and embracings of his own children. Yet thuscertainly it was, and often has been, and I could give many particularcases where it has been so. If then the blow is thus insensiblystriking--if the arrow flies thus unseen, and cannot be discovered--towhat purpose are all the schemes for shutting up or removing the sickpeople? Those schemes cannot take place but upon those that appear to besick, or to be infected; whereas there are among them at the same timethousands of people who seem to be well, but are all that while carryingdeath with them into all companies which they come into. 

This frequently puzzled our physicians, and especially the apothecariesand surgeons, who knew not how to discover the sick from the sound; theyall allowed that it was really so, that many people had the plague intheir very blood, and preying upon their spirits, and were in themselvesbut walking putrefied carcases whose breath was infectious and theirsweat poison, and yet were as well to look on as other people, and evenknew it not themselves; I say, they all allowed that it was really truein fact, but they knew not how to propose a discovery. 

My friend Dr Heath was of opinion that it might be known by the smell oftheir breath; but then, as he said, who durst smell to that breathfor his information? since, to know it, he must draw the stench of theplague up into his own brain, in order to distinguish the smell! I haveheard it was the opinion of others that it might be distinguished by theparty's breathing upon a piece of glass, where, the breath condensing, there might living creatures be seen by a microscope, of strange, monstrous, and frightful shapes, such as dragons, snakes, serpents, anddevils, horrible to behold. But this I very much question the truthof, and we had no microscopes at that time, as I remember, to make theexperiment with. 

It was the opinion also of another learned man, that the breath of sucha person would poison and instantly kill a bird; not only a small bird, but even a cock or hen, and that, if it did not immediately kill thelatter, it would cause them to be roupy, as they call it; particularlythat if they had laid any eggs at any time, they would be all rotten. But those are opinions which I never found supported by any experiments, or heard of others that had seen it; so I leave them as I find them;only with this remark, namely, that I think the probabilities are verystrong for them. 

Some have proposed that such persons should breathe hard upon warmwater, and that they would leave an unusual scum upon it, or uponseveral other things, especially such as are of a glutinous substanceand are apt to receive a scum and support it. 

But from the whole I found that the nature of this contagion wassuch that it was impossible to discover it at all, or to prevent itsspreading from one to another by any human skill. 

Here was indeed one difficulty which I could never thoroughly get overto this time, and which there is but one way of answering that I knowof, and it is this, viz. , the first person that died of the plague wason December 20, or thereabouts, 1664, and in or about long Acre; whencethe first person had the infection was generally said to be from aparcel of silks imported from Holland, and first opened in that house. 

But after this we heard no more of any person dying of the plague, or ofthe distemper being in that place, till the 9th of February, which wasabout seven weeks after, and then one more was buried out of the samehouse. Then it was hushed, and we were perfectly easy as to the publicfor a great while; for there were no more entered in the weekly bill tobe dead of the plague till the 22nd of April, when there was two moreburied, not out of the same house, but out of the same street; and, asnear as I can remember, it was out of the next house to the first. Thiswas nine weeks asunder, and after this we had no more till a fortnight, and then it broke out in several streets and spread every way. Now thequestion seems to lie thus: Where lay the seeds of the infection allthis while? How came it to stop so long, and not stop any longer? Eitherthe distemper did not come immediately by contagion from body to body, or, if it did, then a body may be capable to continue infected withoutthe disease discovering itself many days, nay, weeks together; evennot a quarantine of days only, but soixantine; not only forty days, butsixty days or longer. 

It is true there was, as I observed at first, and is well known to manyyet living, a very cold winter and a long frost which continued threemonths; and this, the doctors say, might check the infection; but thenthe learned must allow me to say that if, according to their notion, thedisease was (as I may say) only frozen up, it would like a frozen riverhave returned to its usual force and current when it thawed--whereas theprincipal recess of this infection, which was from February to April, was after the frost was broken and the weather mild and warm. 

But there is another way of solving all this difficulty, which I thinkmy own remembrance of the thing will supply; and that is, the fact isnot granted--namely, that there died none in those long intervals, viz. , from the 20th of December to the 9th of February, and from thence to the22nd of April. The weekly bills are the only evidence on the other side, and those bills were not of credit enough, at least with me, to supportan hypothesis or determine a question of such importance as this; forit was our received opinion at that time, and I believe upon very goodgrounds, that the fraud lay in the parish officers, searchers, andpersons appointed to give account of the dead, and what diseases theydied of; and as people were very loth at first to have the neighboursbelieve their houses were infected, so they gave money to procure, orotherwise procured, the dead persons to be returned as dying of otherdistempers; and this I know was practised afterwards in many places, Ibelieve I might say in all places where the distemper came, as willbe seen by the vast increase of the numbers placed in the weekly billsunder other articles of diseases during the time of the infection. Forexample, in the months of July and August, when the plague was comingon to its highest pitch, it was very ordinary to have from a thousandto twelve hundred, nay, to almost fifteen hundred a week of otherdistempers. Not that the numbers of those distempers were reallyincreased to such a degree, but the great number of families and houseswhere really the infection was, obtained the favour to have theirdead be returned of other distempers, to prevent the shutting up theirhouses. For example:--

 Dead of other diseases beside the plague-- - From the 18th July to the 25th 942 - " 25th July " 1st August 1004 - " 1st August " 8th 1213 - " 8th " 15th 1439 - " 15th " 22nd 1331 - " 22nd " 29th 1394 - " 29th " 5th September 1264 - " 5th September to the 12th 1056 - " 12th " 19th 1132 - " 19th " 26th 927

Now it was not doubted but the greatest part of these, or a great partof them, were dead of the plague, but the officers were prevailed withto return them as above, and the numbers of some particular articles ofdistempers discovered is as follows:--

 - Aug. Aug. Aug. Aug. Aug. Sept. Sept. Sept. - 1 8 15 22 29 5 12 19 - to 8 to 15 to 22 to 29 to Sept. 5 to 12 to 19 to 26

 Fever 314 353 348 383 364 332 309 268 Spotted 174 190 166 165 157 97 101 65 Fever Surfeit 85 87 74 99 68 45 49 36 Teeth 90 113 111 133 138 128 121 112 - --- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- - 663 743 699 780 727 602 580 481

There were several other articles which bore a proportion to these, andwhich, it is easy to perceive, were increased on the same account, asaged, consumptions, vomitings, imposthumes, gripes, and the like, manyof which were not doubted to be infected people; but as it was of theutmost consequence to families not to be known to be infected, if it waspossible to avoid it, so they took all the measures they could to haveit not believed, and if any died in their houses, to get them returnedto the examiners, and by the searchers, as having died of otherdistempers. 

This, I say, will account for the long interval which, as I have said, was between the dying of the first persons that were returned in thebill to be dead of the plague and the time when the distemper spreadopenly and could not be concealed. 

Besides, the weekly bills themselves at that time evidently discover thetruth; for, while there was no mention of the plague, and no increaseafter it had been mentioned, yet it was apparent that there was anincrease of those distempers which bordered nearest upon it; forexample, there were eight, twelve, seventeen of the spotted fever ina week, when there were none, or but very few, of the plague; whereasbefore, one, three, or four were the ordinary weekly numbers of thatdistemper. Likewise, as I observed before, the burials increased weeklyin that particular parish and the parishes adjacent more than in anyother parish, although there were none set down of the plague; all whichtells us, that the infection was handed on, and the succession of thedistemper really preserved, though it seemed to us at that time to beceased, and to come again in a manner surprising. 

It might be, also, that the infection might remain in other parts of thesame parcel of goods which at first it came in, and which might not beperhaps opened, or at least not fully, or in the clothes of the firstinfected person; for I cannot think that anybody could be seized withthe contagion in a fatal and mortal degree for nine weeks together, and support his state of health so well as even not to discover it tothemselves; yet if it were so, the argument is the stronger in favourof what I am saying: namely, that the infection is retained in bodiesapparently well, and conveyed from them to those they converse with, while it is known to neither the one nor the other. 

Great were the confusions at that time upon this very account, and whenpeople began to be convinced that the infection was received in thissurprising manner from persons apparently well, they began to beexceeding shy and jealous of every one that came near them. Once, on apublic day, whether a Sabbath-day or not I do not remember, in AldgateChurch, in a pew full of people, on a sudden one fancied she smelt anill smell. Immediately she fancies the plague was in the pew, whispersher notion or suspicion to the next, then rises and goes out of the pew. It immediately took with the next, and so to them all; and every one ofthem, and of the two or three adjoining pews, got up and went out of thechurch, nobody knowing what it was offended them, or from whom. 

This immediately filled everybody's mouths with one preparation orother, such as the old woman directed, and some perhaps as physiciansdirected, in order to prevent infection by the breath of others;insomuch that if we came to go into a church when it was anything fullof people, there would be such a mixture of smells at the entrance thatit was much more strong, though perhaps not so wholesome, than if youwere going into an apothecary's or druggist's shop. In a word, the wholechurch was like a smelling-bottle; in one corner it was all perfumes;in another, aromatics, balsamics, and variety of drugs and herbs; inanother, salts and spirits, as every one was furnished for their ownpreservation. Yet I observed that after people were possessed, as I havesaid, with the belief, or rather assurance, of the infection beingthus carried on by persons apparently in health, the churches andmeeting-houses were much thinner of people than at other times beforethat they used to be. For this is to be said of the people of London, that during the whole time of the pestilence the churches or meetingswere never wholly shut up, nor did the people decline coming out to thepublic worship of God, except only in some parishes when the violenceof the distemper was more particularly in that parish at that time, andeven then no longer than it continued to be so. 

Indeed nothing was more strange than to see with what courage the peoplewent to the public service of God, even at that time when they wereafraid to stir out of their own houses upon any other occasion; this, I mean, before the time of desperation, which I have mentioned already. This was a proof of the exceeding populousness of the city at the timeof the infection, notwithstanding the great numbers that were gone intothe country at the first alarm, and that fled out into the forests andwoods when they were further terrified with the extraordinary increaseof it. For when we came to see the crowds and throngs of people whichappeared on the Sabbath-days at the churches, and especially in thoseparts of the town where the plague was abated, or where it was not yetcome to its height, it was amazing. But of this I shall speak againpresently. I return in the meantime to the article of infecting oneanother at first, before people came to right notions of the infection, and of infecting one another. People were only shy of those that werereally sick, a man with a cap upon his head, or with clothes round hisneck, which was the case of those that had swellings there. Such wasindeed frightful; but when we saw a gentleman dressed, with his band onand his gloves in his hand, his hat upon his head, and his hair combed, of such we bad not the least apprehensions, and people conversed a greatwhile freely, especially with their neighbours and such as they knew. But when the physicians assured us that the danger was as well from thesound (that is, the seemingly sound) as the sick, and that those peoplewho thought themselves entirely free were oftentimes the most fatal, andthat it came to be generally understood that people were sensible ofit, and of the reason of it; then, I say, they began to be jealous ofeverybody, and a vast number of people locked themselves up, so as notto come abroad into any company at all, nor suffer any that had beenabroad in promiscuous company to come into their houses, or nearthem--at least not so near them as to be within the reach of theirbreath or of any smell from them; and when they were obliged to converseat a distance with strangers, they would always have preservativesin their mouths and about their clothes to repel and keep off theinfection. 

It must be acknowledged that when people began to use these cautionsthey were less exposed to danger, and the infection did not break intosuch houses so furiously as it did into others before; and thousands offamilies were preserved (speaking with due reserve to the direction ofDivine Providence) by that means. 

But it was impossible to beat anything into the heads of the poor. Theywent on with the usual impetuosity of their tempers, full of outcriesand lamentations when taken, but madly careless of themselves, foolhardyand obstinate, while they were well. Where they could get employmentthey pushed into any kind of business, the most dangerous and the mostliable to infection; and if they were spoken to, their answer would be, 'I must trust to God for that; if I am taken, then I am provided for, and there is an end of me', and the like. Or thus, 'Why, what must I do?I can't starve. I had as good have the plague as perish for want. I haveno work; what could I do? I must do this or beg. ' Suppose it was buryingthe dead, or attending the sick, or watching infected houses, which wereall terrible hazards; but their tale was generally the same. It is true, necessity was a very justifiable, warrantable plea, and nothing couldbe better; but their way of talk was much the same where the necessitieswere not the same. This adventurous conduct of the poor was that whichbrought the plague among them in a most furious manner; and this, joinedto the distress of their circumstances when taken, was the reason whythey died so by heaps; for I cannot say I could observe one jot ofbetter husbandry among them, I mean the labouring poor, while they wereall well and getting money than there was before, but as lavish, asextravagant, and as thoughtless for tomorrow as ever; so that when theycame to be taken sick they were immediately in the utmost distress, as well for want as for sickness, as well for lack of food as lack ofhealth. 

This misery of the poor I had many occasions to be an eyewitness of, andsometimes also of the charitable assistance that some pious people dailygave to such, sending them relief and supplies both of food, physic, and other help, as they found they wanted; and indeed it is a debt ofjustice due to the temper of the people of that day to take notice here, that not only great sums, very great sums of money were charitably sentto the Lord Mayor and aldermen for the assistance and support ofthe poor distempered people, but abundance of private people dailydistributed large sums of money for their relief, and sent people aboutto inquire into the condition of particular distressed and visitedfamilies, and relieved them; nay, some pious ladies were so transportedwith zeal in so good a work, and so confident in the protection ofProvidence in discharge of the great duty of charity, that they wentabout in person distributing alms to the poor, and even visiting poorfamilies, though sick and infected, in their very houses, appointingnurses to attend those that wanted attending, and ordering apothecariesand surgeons, the first to supply them with drugs or plasters, and suchthings as they wanted; and the last to lance and dress the swellings andtumours, where such were wanting; giving their blessing to the poor insubstantial relief to them, as well as hearty prayers for them. 

I will not undertake to say, as some do, that none of those charitablepeople were suffered to fall under the calamity itself; but this I maysay, that I never knew any one of them that miscarried, which I mentionfor the encouragement of others in case of the like distress; anddoubtless, if they that give to the poor lend to the Lord, and He willrepay them, those that hazard their lives to give to the poor, and tocomfort and assist the poor in such a misery as this, may hope to beprotected in the work. 

Nor was this charity so extraordinary eminent only in a few, but (for Icannot lightly quit this point) the charity of the rich, as well in thecity and suburbs as from the country, was so great that, in a word, aprodigious number of people who must otherwise inevitably have perishedfor want as well as sickness were supported and subsisted by it;and though I could never, nor I believe any one else, come to a fullknowledge of what was so contributed, yet I do believe that, as I heardone say that was a critical observer of that part, there was not onlymany thousand pounds contributed, but many hundred thousand pounds, tothe relief of the poor of this distressed, afflicted city; nay, one manaffirmed to me that he could reckon up above one hundred thousand poundsa week, which was distributed by the churchwardens at the severalparish vestries by the Lord Mayor and aldermen in the several wardsand precincts, and by the particular direction of the court and of thejustices respectively in the parts where they resided, over and abovethe private charity distributed by pious bands in the manner I speak of;and this continued for many weeks together. 

I confess this is a very great sum; but if it be true that there wasdistributed in the parish of Cripplegate only, 17, 800 in one week to therelief of the poor, as I heard reported, and which I really believe wastrue, the other may not be improbable. 

It was doubtless to be reckoned among the many signal good providenceswhich attended this great city, and of which there were many other worthrecording, --I say, this was a very remarkable one, that it pleased Godthus to move the hearts of the people in all parts of the kingdomso cheerfully to contribute to the relief and support of the poorat London, the good consequences of which were felt many ways, andparticularly in preserving the lives and recovering the health of somany thousands, and keeping so many thousands of families from perishingand starving. 

And now I am talking of the merciful disposition of Providence in thistime of calamity, I cannot but mention again, though I have spokenseveral times of it already on other accounts, I mean that of theprogression of the distemper; how it began at one end of the town, andproceeded gradually and slowly from one part to another, and like a darkcloud that passes over our heads, which, as it thickens and overcaststhe air at one end, dears up at the other end; so, while the plague wenton raging from west to east, as it went forwards east, it abated in thewest, by which means those parts of the town which were not seized, orwho were left, and where it had spent its fury, were (as it were) sparedto help and assist the other; whereas, had the distemper spread itselfover the whole city and suburbs, at once, raging in all places alike, as it has done since in some places abroad, the whole body of the peoplemust have been overwhelmed, and there would have died twenty thousanda day, as they say there did at Naples; nor would the people have beenable to have helped or assisted one another. 

For it must be observed that where the plague was in its full force, there indeed the people were very miserable, and the consternation wasinexpressible. But a little before it reached even to that place, orpresently after it was gone, they were quite another sort of people; andI cannot but acknowledge that there was too much of that common temperof mankind to be found among us all at that time, namely, to forget thedeliverance when the danger is past. But I shall come to speak of thatpart again. 

It must not be forgot here to take some notice of the state of tradeduring the time of this common calamity, and this with respect toforeign trade, as also to our home trade. 

As to foreign trade, there needs little to be said. The trading nationsof Europe were all afraid of us; no port of France, or Holland, orSpain, or Italy would admit our ships or correspond with us; indeed westood on ill terms with the Dutch, and were in a furious war with them, but though in a bad condition to fight abroad, who had such dreadfulenemies to struggle with at home. 

Our merchants were accordingly at a full stop; their ships could gonowhere--that is to say, to no place abroad; their manufactures andmerchandise--that is to say, of our growth--would not be touched abroad. They were as much afraid of our goods as they were of our people; andindeed they had reason: for our woollen manufactures are as retentive ofinfection as human bodies, and if packed up by persons infected, wouldreceive the infection and be as dangerous to touch as a man would bethat was infected; and therefore, when any English vessel arrived inforeign countries, if they did take the goods on shore, they alwayscaused the bales to be opened and aired in places appointed for thatpurpose. But from London they would not suffer them to come into port, much less to unlade their goods, upon any terms whatever, and thisstrictness was especially used with them in Spain and Italy. In Turkeyand the islands of the Arches indeed, as they are called, as well thosebelonging to the Turks as to the Venetians, they were not so very rigid. In the first there was no obstruction at all; and four ships whichwere then in the river loading for Italy--that is, for Leghorn andNaples--being denied product, as they call it, went on to Turkey, andwere freely admitted to unlade their cargo without any difficulty; onlythat when they arrived there, some of their cargo was not fit for salein that country; and other parts of it being consigned to merchantsat Leghorn, the captains of the ships had no right nor any orders todispose of the goods; so that great inconveniences followed to themerchants. But this was nothing but what the necessity of affairsrequired, and the merchants at Leghorn and Naples having notice giventhem, sent again from thence to take care of the effects which wereparticularly consigned to those ports, and to bring back in other shipssuch as were improper for the markets at Smyrna and Scanderoon. 

The inconveniences in Spain and Portugal were still greater, for theywould by no means suffer our ships, especially those from London, tocome into any of their ports, much less to unlade. There was a reportthat one of our ships having by stealth delivered her cargo, among whichwas some bales of English cloth, cotton, kerseys, and such-like goods, the Spaniards caused all the goods to be burned, and punished themen with death who were concerned in carrying them on shore. This, Ibelieve, was in part true, though I do not affirm it; but it is not atall unlikely, seeing the danger was really very great, the infectionbeing so violent in London. 

I heard likewise that the plague was carried into those countries bysome of our ships, and particularly to the port of Faro in the kingdomof Algarve, belonging to the King of Portugal, and that several personsdied of it there; but it was not confirmed. 

On the other hand, though the Spaniards and Portuguese were so shy ofus, it is most certain that the plague (as has been said) keeping atfirst much at that end of the town next Westminster, the merchandisingpart of the town (such as the city and the water-side) was perfectlysound till at least the beginning of July, and the ships in the rivertill the beginning of August; for to the 1st of July there had died butseven within the whole city, and but sixty within the liberties, but onein all the parishes of Stepney, Aldgate, and Whitechappel, and but twoin the eight parishes of Southwark. But it was the same thing abroad, for the bad news was gone over the whole world that the city of Londonwas infected with the plague, and there was no inquiring there how theinfection proceeded, or at which part of the town it was begun or wasreached to. 

Besides, after it began to spread it increased so fast, and the billsgrew so high all on a sudden, that it was to no purpose to lessen thereport of it, or endeavour to make the people abroad think it betterthan it was; the account which the weekly bills gave in was sufficient;and that there died two thousand to three or-four thousand a weekwas sufficient to alarm the whole trading part of the world; and thefollowing time, being so dreadful also in the very city itself, put thewhole world, I say, upon their guard against it. 

You may be sure, also, that the report of these things lost nothing inthe carriage. The plague was itself very terrible, and the distress ofthe people very great, as you may observe of what I have said. But therumour was infinitely greater, and it must not be wondered that ourfriends abroad (as my brother's correspondents in particular were toldthere, namely, in Portugal and Italy, where he chiefly traded) [said]that in London there died twenty thousand in a week; that the deadbodies lay unburied by heaps; that the living were not sufficient tobury the dead or the sound to look after the sick; that all the kingdomwas infected likewise, so that it was an universal malady such aswas never heard of in those parts of the world; and they could hardlybelieve us when we gave them an account how things really were, and howthere was not above one-tenth part of the people dead; that there was500, 000, left that lived all the time in the town; that now the peoplebegan to walk the streets again, and those who were fled to return, there was no miss of the usual throng of people in the streets, exceptas every family might miss their relations and neighbours, and the like. I say they could not believe these things; and if inquiry were now tobe made in Naples, or in other cities on the coast of Italy, they wouldtell you that there was a dreadful infection in London so many yearsago, in which, as above, there died twenty thousand in a week, &c. , justas we have had it reported in London that there was a plague in the cityof Naples in the year 1656, in which there died 20, 000 people in a day, of which I have had very good satisfaction that it was utterly false. 

But these extravagant reports were very prejudicial to our trade, aswell as unjust and injurious in themselves, for it was a long time afterthe plague was quite over before our trade could recover itself in thoseparts of the world; and the Flemings and Dutch (but especially the last)made very great advantages of it, having all the market to themselves, and even buying our manufactures in several parts of England where theplague was not, and carrying them to Holland and Flanders, and fromthence transporting them to Spain and to Italy as if they had been oftheir own making. 

But they were detected sometimes and punished: that is to say, their goods confiscated and ships also; for if it was true that ourmanufactures as well as our people were infected, and that it wasdangerous to touch or to open and receive the smell of them, then thosepeople ran the hazard by that clandestine trade not only of carrying thecontagion into their own country, but also of infecting the nations towhom they traded with those goods; which, considering how many livesmight be lost in consequence of such an action, must be a trade that nomen of conscience could suffer themselves to be concerned in. 

I do not take upon me to say that any harm was done, I mean of thatkind, by those people. But I doubt I need not make any such proviso inthe case of our own country; for either by our people of London, or bythe commerce which made their conversing with all sorts of people inevery country and of every considerable town necessary, I say, by thismeans the plague was first or last spread all over the kingdom, aswell in London as in all the cities and great towns, especially in thetrading manufacturing towns and seaports; so that, first or last, allthe considerable places in England were visited more or less, and thekingdom of Ireland in some places, but not so universally. How it faredwith the people in Scotland I had no opportunity to inquire. 

It is to be observed that while the plague continued so violent inLondon, the outports, as they are called, enjoyed a very great trade, especially to the adjacent countries and to our own plantations. Forexample, the towns of Colchester, Yarmouth, and Hun, on that sideof England, exported to Holland and Hamburg the manufactures of theadjacent countries for several months after the trade with London was, as it were, entirely shut up; likewise the cities of Bristol and Exeter, with the port of Plymouth, had the like advantage to Spain, to theCanaries, to Guinea, and to the West Indies, and particularly toIreland; but as the plague spread itself every way after it had beenin London to such a degree as it was in August and September, so allor most of those cities and towns were infected first or last; and thentrade was, as it were, under a general embargo or at a full stop--as Ishall observe further when I speak of our home trade. 

One thing, however, must be observed: that as to ships coming in fromabroad (as many, you may be sure, did) some who were out in all parts ofthe world a considerable while before, and some who when they went outknew nothing of an infection, or at least of one so terrible--these cameup the river boldly, and delivered their cargoes as they were obligedto do, except just in the two months of August and September, when theweight of the infection lying, as I may say, all below Bridge, nobodydurst appear in business for a while. But as this continued but for afew weeks, the homeward-bound ships, especially such whose cargoes werenot liable to spoil, came to an anchor for a time short of the Pool, *or fresh-water part of the river, even as low as the river Medway, whereseveral of them ran in; and others lay at the Nore, and in the Hopebelow Gravesend. So that by the latter end of October there was a verygreat fleet of homeward-bound ships to come up, such as the like had notbeen known for many years. 

 * That part of the river where the ships lie up when they come home is called the Pool, and takes in all the river on both sides of the water, from the Tower to Cuckold's Point and Limehouse. [Footnote in the original. ]

Two particular trades were carried on by water-carriage all the while ofthe infection, and that with little or no interruption, very much tothe advantage and comfort of the poor distressed people of the city:and those were the coasting trade for corn and the Newcastle trade forcoals. 

The first of these was particularly carried on by small vessels from theport of Hull and other places on the Humber, by which great quantitiesof corn were brought in from Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. The other partof this corn-trade was from Lynn, in Norfolk, from Wells and Burnham, and from Yarmouth, all in the same county; and the third branch was fromthe river Medway, and from Milton, Feversham, Margate, and Sandwich, andall the other little places and ports round the coast of Kent and Essex. 

There was also a very good trade from the coast of Suffolk with corn, butter, and cheese; these vessels kept a constant course of trade, andwithout interruption came up to that market known still by the nameof Bear Key, where they supplied the city plentifully with corn whenland-carriage began to fail, and when the people began to be sick ofcoming from many places in the country. 

This also was much of it owing to the prudence and conduct of the LordMayor, who took such care to keep the masters and seamen from dangerwhen they came up, causing their corn to be bought off at any timethey wanted a market (which, however, was very seldom), and causing thecorn-factors immediately to unlade and deliver the vessels loaden withcorn, that they had very little occasion to come out of their ships orvessels, the money being always carried on board to them and put into apail of vinegar before it was carried. 

The second trade was that of coals from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, withoutwhich the city would have been greatly distressed; for not in thestreets only, but in private houses and families, great quantities ofcoals were then burnt, even all the summer long and when the weatherwas hottest, which was done by the advice of the physicians. Some indeedopposed it, and insisted that to keep the houses and rooms hot was ameans to propagate the temper, which was a fermentation and heat alreadyin the blood; that it was known to spread and increase in hot weatherand abate in cold; and therefore they alleged that all contagiousdistempers are the worse for heat, because the contagion was nourishedand gained strength in hot weather, and was, as it were, propagated inheat. 

Others said they granted that heat in the climate might propagateinfection--as sultry, hot weather fills the air with vermin andnourishes innumerable numbers and kinds of venomous creatures whichbreed in our food, in the plants, and even in our bodies, by the verystench of which infection may be propagated; also that heat in the air, or heat of weather, as we ordinarily call it, makes bodies relax andfaint, exhausts the spirits, opens the pores, and makes us more aptto receive infection, or any evil influence, be it from noxiouspestilential vapours or any other thing in the air; but that the heat offire, and especially of coal fires kept in our houses, or near us, hada quite different operation; the heat being not of the same kind, butquick and fierce, tending not to nourish but to consume and dissipateall those noxious fumes which the other kind of heat rather exhaled andstagnated than separated and burnt up. Besides, it was alleged that thesulphurous and nitrous particles that are often found to be in the coal, with that bituminous substance which burns, are all assisting to clearand purge the air, and render it wholesome and safe to breathe in afterthe noxious particles, as above, are dispersed and burnt up. 

The latter opinion prevailed at that time, and, as I must confess, Ithink with good reason; and the experience of the citizens confirmed it, many houses which had constant fires kept in the rooms having never beeninfected at all; and I must join my experience to it, for I found thekeeping good fires kept our rooms sweet and wholesome, and I do verilybelieve made our whole family so, more than would otherwise have been. 

But I return to the coals as a trade. It was with no little difficultythat this trade was kept open, and particularly because, as we were inan open war with I the Dutch at that time, the Dutch capers at firsttook a great many of our collier-ships, which made the rest cautious, and made them to stay to come in fleets together. But after some timethe capers were either afraid to take them, or their masters, theStates, were afraid they should, and forbade them, lest the plagueshould be among them, which made them fare the better. 

For the security of those northern traders, the coal-ships were orderedby my Lord Mayor not to come up into the Pool above a certain number ata time, and ordered lighters and other vessels such as the woodmongers(that is, the wharf-keepers or coal-sellers) furnished, to go down andtake out the coals as low as Deptford and Greenwich, and some fartherdown. 

Others delivered great quantities of coals in particular places wherethe ships could come to the shore, as at Greenwich, Blackwall, and otherplaces, in vast heaps, as if to be kept for sale; but were then fetchedaway after the ships which brought them were gone, so that the seamenhad no communication with the river-men, nor so much as came near oneanother. 

Yet all this caution could not effectually prevent the distemper gettingamong the colliery: that is to say among the ships, by which a greatmany seamen died of it; and that which was still worse was, that theycarried it down to Ipswich and Yarmouth, to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and other places on the coast--where, especially at Newcastle and atSunderland, it carried off a great number of people. 

The making so many fires, as above, did indeed consume an unusualquantity of coals; and that upon one or two stops of the ships comingup, whether by contrary weather or by the interruption of enemies I donot remember, but the price of coals was exceeding dear, even as highas 4 a chalder; but it soon abated when the ships came in, and asafterwards they had a freer passage, the price was very reasonable allthe rest of that year. 

The public fires which were made on these occasions, as I havecalculated it, must necessarily have cost the city about 200 chaldersof coals a week, if they had continued, which was indeed a very greatquantity; but as it was thought necessary, nothing was spared. However, as some of the physicians cried them down, they were not kept alightabove four or five days. The fires were ordered thus:--

One at the Custom House, one at Billingsgate, one at Queenhith, andone at the Three Cranes; one in Blackfriars, and one at the gate ofBridewell; one at the corner of Leadenhal Street and Gracechurch; one atthe north and one at the south gate of the Royal Exchange; one at GuildHall, and one at Blackwell Hall gate; one at the Lord Mayor's door inSt Helen's, one at the west entrance into St Paul's, and one at theentrance into Bow Church. I do not remember whether there was any atthe city gates, but one at the Bridge-foot there was, just by St MagnusChurch. 

I know some have quarrelled since that at the experiment, and said thatthere died the more people because of those fires; but I am persuadedthose that say so offer no evidence to prove it, neither can I believeit on any account whatever. 

It remains to give some account of the state of trade at home inEngland during this dreadful time, and particularly as it relates to themanufactures and the trade in the city. At the first breaking out of theinfection there was, as it is easy to suppose, a very great frightamong the people, and consequently a general stop of trade, except inprovisions and necessaries of life; and even in those things, as therewas a vast number of people fled and a very great number always sick, besides the number which died, so there could not be above two-thirds, if above one-half, of the consumption of provisions in the city as usedto be. 

It pleased God to send a very plentiful year of corn and fruit, but notof hay or grass--by which means bread was cheap, by reason of the plentyof corn. Flesh was cheap, by reason of the scarcity of grass; but butterand cheese were dear for the same reason, and hay in the market justbeyond Whitechappel Bars was sold at 4 pound per load. But that affectednot the poor. There was a most excessive plenty of all sorts of fruit, such as apples, pears, plums, cherries, grapes, and they were thecheaper because of the want of people; but this made the poor eat themto excess, and this brought them into fluxes, griping of the guts, surfeits, and the like, which often precipitated them into the plague. 

But to come to matters of trade. First, foreign exportation beingstopped or at least very much interrupted and rendered difficult, ageneral stop of all those manufactures followed of course which wereusually brought for exportation; and though sometimes merchants abroadwere importunate for goods, yet little was sent, the passages being sogenerally stopped that the English ships would not be admitted, as issaid already, into their port. 

This put a stop to the manufactures that were for exportation in mostparts of England, except in some out-ports; and even that was soonstopped, for they all had the plague in their turn. But though this wasfelt all over England, yet, what was still worse, all intercourse oftrade for home consumption of manufactures, especially those whichusually circulated through the Londoner's hands, was stopped at once, the trade of the city being stopped. 

All kinds of handicrafts in the city, &c. , tradesmen and mechanics, were, as I have said before, out of employ; and this occasioned theputting-off and dismissing an innumerable number of journeymen andworkmen of all sorts, seeing nothing was done relating to such tradesbut what might be said to be absolutely necessary. 

This caused the multitude of single people in London to be unprovidedfor, as also families whose living depended upon the labour of the headsof those families; I say, this reduced them to extreme misery; and Imust confess it is for the honour of the city of London, and will be formany ages, as long as this is to be spoken of, that they were able tosupply with charitable provision the wants of so many thousands of thoseas afterwards fell sick and were distressed: so that it may be safelyaverred that nobody perished for want, at least that the magistrates hadany notice given them of. 

This stagnation of our manufacturing trade in the country would haveput the people there to much greater difficulties, but that themaster-workmen, clothiers and others, to the uttermost of their stocksand strength, kept on making their goods to keep the poor at work, believing that soon as the sickness should abate they would have a quickdemand in proportion to the decay of their trade at that time. But asnone but those masters that were rich could do thus, and that many werepoor and not able, the manufacturing trade in England suffered greatly, and the poor were pinched all over England by the calamity of the cityof London only. 

It is true that the next year made them full amends by another terriblecalamity upon the city; so that the city by one calamity impoverishedand weakened the country, and by another calamity, even terrible tooof its kind, enriched the country and made them again amends; for aninfinite quantity of household Stuff, wearing apparel, and other things, besides whole warehouses filled with merchandise and manufactures suchas come from all parts of England, were consumed in the fire of Londonthe next year after this terrible visitation. It is incredible what atrade this made all over the whole kingdom, to make good the want and tosupply that loss; so that, in short, all the manufacturing hands in thenation were set on work, and were little enough for several years tosupply the market and answer the demands. All foreign markets also wereempty of our goods by the stop which had been occasioned by the plague, and before an open trade was allowed again; and the prodigious demand athome falling in, joined to make a quick vent for all sort of goods; sothat there never was known such a trade all over England for the timeas was in the first seven years after the plague, and after the fire ofLondon. 

It remains now that I should say something of the merciful part of thisterrible judgement. The last week in September, the plague being cometo its crisis, its fury began to assuage. I remember my friend Dr Heath, coming to see me the week before, told me he was sure that the violenceof it would assuage in a few days; but when I saw the weekly bill ofthat week, which was the highest of the whole year, being 8297 of alldiseases, I upbraided him with it, and asked him what he had madehis judgement from. His answer, however, was not so much to seek as Ithought it would have been. 'Look you, ' says he, 'by the number whichare at this time sick and infected, there should have been twentythousand dead the last week instead of eight thousand, if the inveteratemortal contagion had been as it was two weeks ago; for then itordinarily killed in two or three days, now not under eight or ten; andthen not above one in five recovered, whereas I have observed that nownot above two in five miscarry. And, observe it from me, the next billwill decrease, and you will see many more people recover than used todo; for though a vast multitude are now everywhere infected, and as manyevery day fall sick, yet there will not so many die as there did, forthe malignity of the distemper is abated';--adding that he began now tohope, nay, more than hope, that the infection had passed its crisis andwas going off; and accordingly so it was, for the next week being, as Isaid, the last in September, the bill decreased almost two thousand. 

It is true the plague was still at a frightful height, and the next billwas no less than 6460, and the next to that, 5720; but still my friend'sobservation was just, and it did appear the people did recover fasterand more in number than they used to do; and indeed, if it had not beenso, what had been the condition of the city of London? For, accordingto my friend, there were not fewer than 60, 000 people at that timeinfected, whereof, as above, 20, 477 died, and near 40, 000 recovered;whereas, had it been as it was before, 50, 000 of that number would veryprobably have died, if not more, and 50, 000 more would have sickened;for, in a word, the whole mass of people began to sicken, and it lookedas if none would escape. 

But this remark of my friend's appeared more evident in a few weeksmore, for the decrease went on, and another week in October it decreased1843, so that the number dead of the plague was but 2665; and the nextweek it decreased 1413 more, and yet it was seen plainly that therewas abundance of people sick, nay, abundance more than ordinary, andabundance fell sick every day but (as above) the malignity of thedisease abated. 

Such is the precipitant disposition of our people (whether it is soor not all over the world, that's none of my particular business toinquire), but I saw it apparently here, that as upon the first frightof the infection they shunned one another, and fled from one another'shouses and from the city with an unaccountable and, as I thought, unnecessary fright, so now, upon this notion spreading, viz. , that thedistemper was not so catching as formerly, and that if it was catched itwas not so mortal, and seeing abundance of people who really fell sickrecover again daily, they took to such a precipitant courage, and grewso entirely regardless of themselves and of the infection, that theymade no more of the plague than of an ordinary fever, nor indeed somuch. They not only went boldly into company with those who had tumoursand carbuncles upon them that were running, and consequently contagious, but ate and drank with them, nay, into their houses to visit them, andeven, as I was told, into their very chambers where they lay sick. 

This I could not see rational. My friend Dr Heath allowed, and it wasplain to experience, that the distemper was as catching as ever, and asmany fell sick, but only he alleged that so many of those that fell sickdid not die; but I think that while many did die, and that at bestthe distemper itself was very terrible, the sores and swellings verytormenting, and the danger of death not left out of the circumstances ofsickness, though not so frequent as before; all those things, togetherwith the exceeding tediousness of the cure, the loathsomeness of thedisease, and many other articles, were enough to deter any man livingfrom a dangerous mixture with the sick people, and make them as anxiousalmost to avoid the infections as before. 

Nay, there was another thing which made the mere catching of thedistemper frightful, and that was the terrible burning of the causticswhich the surgeons laid on the swellings to bring them to break and torun, without which the danger of death was very great, even to the last. Also, the insufferable torment of the swellings, which, though it mightnot make people raving and distracted, as they were before, and as Ihave given several instances of already, yet they put the patient toinexpressible torment; and those that fell into it, though they didescape with life, yet they made bitter complaints of those that had toldthem there was no danger, and sadly repented their rashness and folly inventuring to run into the reach of it. 

Nor did this unwary conduct of the people end here, for a great manythat thus cast off their cautions suffered more deeply still, and thoughmany escaped, yet many died; and at least it had this public mischiefattending it, that it made the decrease of burials slower than it wouldotherwise have been. For as this notion ran like lightning through thecity, and people's heads were possessed with it, even as soon as thefirst great decrease in the bills appeared, we found that the twonext bills did not decrease in proportion; the reason I take to bethe people's running so rashly into danger, giving up all their formercautions and care, and all the shyness which they used to practise, depending that the sickness would not reach them--or that if it did, they should not die. 

The physicians opposed this thoughtless humour of the people with alltheir might, and gave out printed directions, spreading them all overthe city and suburbs, advising the people to continue reserved, and touse still the utmost caution in their ordinary conduct, notwithstandingthe decrease of the distemper, terrifying them with the danger ofbringing a relapse upon the whole city, and telling them how such arelapse might be more fatal and dangerous than the whole visitation thathad been already; with many arguments and reasons to explain and provethat part to them, and which are too long to repeat here. 

But it was all to no purpose; the audacious creatures were so possessedwith the first joy and so surprised with the satisfaction of seeing avast decrease in the weekly bills, that they were impenetrable by anynew terrors, and would not be persuaded but that the bitterness of deathwas past; and it was to no more purpose to talk to them than to aneast wind; but they opened shops, went about streets, did business, andconversed with anybody that came in their way to converse with, whetherwith business or without, neither inquiring of their health or so muchas being apprehensive of any danger from them, though they knew them notto be sound. 

This imprudent, rash conduct cost a great many their lives who had withgreat care and caution shut themselves up and kept retired, as it were, from all mankind, and had by that means, under God's providence, beenpreserved through all the heat of that infection. 

This rash and foolish conduct, I say, of the people went so far that theministers took notice to them of it at last, and laid before them boththe folly and danger of it; and this checked it a little, so that theygrew more cautious. But it had another effect, which they could notcheck; for as the first rumour had spread not over the city only, butinto the country, it had the like effect: and the people were so tiredwith being so long from London, and so eager to come back, that theyflocked to town without fear or forecast, and began to show themselvesin the streets as if all the danger was over. It was indeed surprisingto see it, for though there died still from 1000 to 1800 a week, yet thepeople flocked to town as if all had been well. 

The consequence of this was, that the bills increased again 400 the veryfirst week in November; and if I might believe the physicians, there wasabove 3000 fell sick that week, most of them new-comers, too. 

One John Cock, a barber in St Martin's-le-Grand, was an eminent exampleof this; I mean of the hasty return of the people when the plague wasabated. This John Cock had left the town with his whole family, andlocked up his house, and was gone in the country, as many others did;and finding the plague so decreased in November that there died but 905per week of all diseases, he ventured home again. He had in his familyten persons; that is to say, himself and wife, five children, twoapprentices, and a maid-servant. He had not returned to his house abovea week, and began to open his shop and carry on his trade, but thedistemper broke out in his family, and within about five days theyall died, except one; that is to say, himself, his wife, all his fivechildren, and his two apprentices; and only the maid remained alive. 

But the mercy of God was greater to the rest than we had reason toexpect; for the malignity (as I have said) of the distemper was spent, the contagion was exhausted, and also the winter weather came on apace, and the air was clear and cold, with sharp frosts; and this increasingstill, most of those that had fallen sick recovered, and the healthof the city began to return. There were indeed some returns of thedistemper even in the month of December, and the bills increased near ahundred; but it went off again, and so in a short while things began toreturn to their own channel. And wonderful it was to see how populousthe city was again all on a sudden, so that a stranger could notmiss the numbers that were lost. Neither was there any miss of theinhabitants as to their dwellings--few or no empty houses were to beseen, or if there were some, there was no want of tenants for them. 

I wish I could say that as the city had a new face, so the manners ofthe people had a new appearance. I doubt not but there were many thatretained a sincere sense of their deliverance, and were that heartilythankful to that Sovereign Hand that had protected them in so dangerousa time; it would be very uncharitable to judge otherwise in a city sopopulous, and where the people were so devout as they were here in thetime of the visitation itself; but except what of this was to be foundin particular families and faces, it must be acknowledged that thegeneral practice of the people was just as it was before, and verylittle difference was to be seen. 

Some, indeed, said things were worse; that the morals of the peopledeclined from this very time; that the people, hardened by the dangerthey had been in, like seamen after a storm is over, were more wickedand more stupid, more bold and hardened, in their vices and immoralitiesthan they were before; but I will not carry it so far neither. It wouldtake up a history of no small length to give a particular of allthe gradations by which the course of things in this city came to berestored again, and to run in their own channel as they did before. 

Some parts of England were now infected as violently as London had been;the cities of Norwich, Peterborough, Lincoln, Colchester, and otherplaces were now visited; and the magistrates of London began to setrules for our conduct as to corresponding with those cities. It is truewe could not pretend to forbid their people coming to London, because itwas impossible to know them asunder; so, after many consultations, theLord Mayor and Court of Aldermen were obliged to drop it. All they coulddo was to warn and caution the people not to entertain in their housesor converse with any people who they knew came from such infectedplaces. 

But they might as well have talked to the air, for the people ofLondon thought themselves so plague-free now that they were past alladmonitions; they seemed to depend upon it that the air was restored, and that the air was like a man that had had the smallpox, not capableof being infected again. This revived that notion that the infection wasall in the air, that there was no such thing as contagion from thesick people to the sound; and so strongly did this whimsy prevail amongpeople that they ran all together promiscuously, sick and well. Notthe Mahometans, who, prepossessed with the principle of predestination, value nothing of contagion, let it be in what it will, could be moreobstinate than the people of London; they that were perfectly sound, and came out of the wholesome air, as we call it, into the city, madenothing of going into the same houses and chambers, nay, even into thesame beds, with those that had the distemper upon them, and were notrecovered. 

Some, indeed, paid for their audacious boldness with the price of theirlives; an infinite number fell sick, and the physicians had more workthan ever, only with this difference, that more of their patientsrecovered; that is to say, they generally recovered, but certainly therewere more people infected and fell sick now, when there did not dieabove a thousand or twelve hundred in a week, than there was when theredied five or six thousand a week, so entirely negligent were the peopleat that time in the great and dangerous case of health and infection, and so ill were they able to take or accept of the advice of those whocautioned them for their good. 

The people being thus returned, as it were, in general, it was verystrange to find that in their inquiring after their friends, some wholefamilies were so entirely swept away that there was no remembrance ofthem left, neither was anybody to be found to possess or show any titleto that little they had left; for in such cases what was to be found wasgenerally embezzled and purloined, some gone one way, some another. 

It was said such abandoned effects came to the king, as the universalheir; upon which we are told, and I suppose it was in part true, thatthe king granted all such, as deodands, to the Lord Mayor and Court ofAldermen of London, to be applied to the use of the poor, of whom therewere very many. For it is to be observed, that though the occasions ofrelief and the objects of distress were very many more in the time ofthe violence of the plague than now after all was over, yet the distressof the poor was more now a great deal than it was then, because allthe sluices of general charity were now shut. People supposed the mainoccasion to be over, and so stopped their hands; whereas particularobjects were still very moving, and the distress of those that were poorwas very great indeed. 

Though the health of the city was now very much restored, yet foreigntrade did not begin to stir, neither would foreigners admit ourships into their ports for a great while. As for the Dutch, themisunderstandings between our court and them had broken out into a warthe year before, so that our trade that way was wholly interrupted; butSpain and Portugal, Italy and Barbary, as also Hamburg and all the portsin the Baltic, these were all shy of us a great while, and would notrestore trade with us for many months. 

The distemper sweeping away such multitudes, as I have observed, manyif not all the out-parishes were obliged to make new burying-grounds, besides that I have mentioned in Bunhill Fields, some of which werecontinued, and remain in use to this day. But others were left off, and(which I confess I mention with some reflection) being converted intoother uses or built upon afterwards, the dead bodies were disturbed, abused, dug up again, some even before the flesh of them was perishedfrom the bones, and removed like dung or rubbish to other places. Someof those which came within the reach of my observation are as follow:

(1) A piece of ground beyond Goswell Street, near Mount Mill, being someof the remains of the old lines or fortifications of the city, whereabundance were buried promiscuously from the parishes of Aldersgate, Clerkenwell, and even out of the city. This ground, as I take it, wassince made a physic garden, and after that has been built upon. 

(2) A piece of ground just over the Black Ditch, as it was then called, at the end of Holloway Lane, in Shoreditch parish. It has been sincemade a yard for keeping hogs, and for other ordinary uses, but is quiteout of use as a burying-ground. 

(3) The upper end of Hand Alley, in Bishopsgate Street, which was thena green field, and was taken in particularly for Bishopsgate parish, though many of the carts out of the city brought their dead thitheralso, particularly out of the parish of St All-hallows on the Wall. Thisplace I cannot mention without much regret. It was, as I remember, abouttwo or three years after the plague was ceased that Sir Robert Claytoncame to be possessed of the ground. It was reported, how true I knownot, that it fell to the king for want of heirs, all those who had anyright to it being carried off by the pestilence, and that Sir RobertClayton obtained a grant of it from King Charles II. But however he cameby it, certain it is the ground was let out to build on, or built upon, by his order. The first house built upon it was a large fair house, still standing, which faces the street or way now called Hand Alleywhich, though called an alley, is as wide as a street. The houses inthe same row with that house northward are built on the very same groundwhere the poor people were buried, and the bodies, on opening the groundfor the foundations, were dug up, some of them remaining so plain to beseen that the women's skulls were distinguished by their long hair, andof others the flesh was not quite perished; so that the people began toexclaim loudly against it, and some suggested that it might endanger areturn of the contagion; after which the bones and bodies, as fast asthey came at them, were carried to another part of the same ground andthrown all together into a deep pit, dug on purpose, which now is to beknown in that it is not built on, but is a passage to another house atthe upper end of Rose Alley, just against the door of a meeting-housewhich has been built there many years since; and the ground ispalisadoed off from the rest of the passage, in a little square; therelie the bones and remains of near two thousand bodies, carried by thedead carts to their grave in that one year. 

(4) Besides this, there was a piece of ground in Moorfields; by thegoing into the street which is now called Old Bethlem, which wasenlarged much, though not wholly taken in on the same occasion. 

[N. B. --The author of this journal lies buried in that very ground, being at his own desire, his sister having been buried there a few yearsbefore. ]

(5) Stepney parish, extending itself from the east part of London to thenorth, even to the very edge of Shoreditch Churchyard, had a piece ofground taken in to bury their dead close to the said churchyard, andwhich for that very reason was left open, and is since, I suppose, takeninto the same churchyard. And they had also two other burying-places inSpittlefields, one where since a chapel or tabernacle has been built forease to this great parish, and another in Petticoat Lane. 

There were no less than five other grounds made use of for the parish ofStepney at that time: one where now stands the parish church of St Paul, Shadwell, and the other where now stands the parish church of St John'sat Wapping, both which had not the names of parishes at that time, butwere belonging to Stepney parish. 

I could name many more, but these coming within my particular knowledge, the circumstance, I thought, made it of use to record them. Fromthe whole, it may be observed that they were obliged in this time ofdistress to take in new burying-grounds in most of the out-parishes forlaying the prodigious numbers of people which died in so short a spaceof time; but why care was not taken to keep those places separate fromordinary uses, that so the bodies might rest undisturbed, that I cannotanswer for, and must confess I think it was wrong. Who were to blame Iknow not. 

I should have mentioned that the Quakers had at that time also aburying-ground set apart to their use, and which they still make use of;and they had also a particular dead-cart to fetch their dead from theirhouses; and the famous Solomon Eagle, who, as I mentioned before, hadpredicted the plague as a judgement, and ran naked through the streets, telling the people that it was come upon them to punish them for theirsins, had his own wife died the very next day of the plague, and wascarried, one of the first in the Quakers' dead-cart, to their newburying-ground. 

I might have thronged this account with many more remarkable thingswhich occurred in the time of the infection, and particularly whatpassed between the Lord Mayor and the Court, which was then at Oxford, and what directions were from time to time received from the Governmentfor their conduct on this critical occasion. But really the Courtconcerned themselves so little, and that little they did was of so smallimport, that I do not see it of much moment to mention any part ofit here: except that of appointing a monthly fast in the city and thesending the royal charity to the relief of the poor, both which I havementioned before. 

Great was the reproach thrown on those physicians who left theirpatients during the sickness, and now they came to town again nobodycared to employ them. They were called deserters, and frequently billswere set up upon their doors and written, 'Here is a doctor to be let', so that several of those physicians were fain for a while to sit stilland look about them, or at least remove their dwellings, and set up innew places and among new acquaintance. The like was the case with theclergy, whom the people were indeed very abusive to, writing verses andscandalous reflections upon them, setting upon the church-door, 'Here isa pulpit to be let', or sometimes, 'to be sold', which was worse. 

It was not the least of our misfortunes that with our infection, when itceased, there did not cease the spirit of strife and contention, slanderand reproach, which was really the great troubler of the nation's peacebefore. It was said to be the remains of the old animosities, which hadso lately involved us all in blood and disorder. But as the late Actof Indemnity had laid asleep the quarrel itself, so the Government hadrecommended family and personal peace upon all occasions to the wholenation. 

But it could not be obtained; and particularly after the ceasing of theplague in London, when any one that had seen the condition which thepeople had been in, and how they caressed one another at that time, promised to have more charity for the future, and to raise no morereproaches; I say, any one that had seen them then would have thoughtthey would have come together with another spirit at last. But, I say, it could not be obtained. The quarrel remained; the Church and thePresbyterians were incompatible. As soon as the plague was removed, the Dissenting ousted ministers who had supplied the pulpits which weredeserted by the incumbents retired; they could expect no other but thatthey should immediately fall upon them and harass them with their penallaws, accept their preaching while they were sick, and persecute them assoon as they were recovered again; this even we that were of the Churchthought was very hard, and could by no means approve of it. 

But it was the Government, and we could say nothing to hinder it; wecould only say it was not our doing, and we could not answer for it. 

On the other hand, the Dissenters reproaching those ministers of theChurch with going away and deserting their charge, abandoning the peoplein their danger, and when they had most need of comfort, and the like:this we could by no means approve, for all men have not the same faithand the same courage, and the Scripture commands us to judge the mostfavourably and according to charity. 

A plague is a formidable enemy, and is armed with terrors that every manis not sufficiently fortified to resist or prepared to stand the shockagainst. It is very certain that a great many of the clergy who were incircumstances to do it withdrew and fled for the safety of their lives;but 'tis true also that a great many of them stayed, and many of themfell in the calamity and in the discharge of their duty. 

It is true some of the Dissenting turned-out ministers stayed, andtheir courage is to be commended and highly valued--but these were notabundance; it cannot be said that they all stayed, and that none retiredinto the country, any more than it can be said of the Church clergythat they all went away. Neither did all those that went away go withoutsubstituting curates and others in their places, to do the officesneedful and to visit the sick, as far as it was practicable; so that, upon the whole, an allowance of charity might have been made on bothsides, and we should have considered that such a time as this of 1665 isnot to be paralleled in history, and that it is not the stoutest couragethat will always support men in such cases. I had not said this, but hadrather chosen to record the courage and religious zeal of those of bothsides, who did hazard themselves for the service of the poor people intheir distress, without remembering that any failed in their duty oneither side. But the want of temper among us has made the contraryto this necessary: some that stayed not only boasting too much ofthemselves, but reviling those that fled, branding them with cowardice, deserting their flocks, and acting the part of the hireling, and thelike. I recommend it to the charity of all good people to look back andreflect duly upon the terrors of the time, and whoever does so well seethat it is not an ordinary strength that could support it. It was notlike appearing in the head of an army or charging a body of horse in thefield, but it was charging Death itself on his pale horse; to stay wasindeed to die, and it could be esteemed nothing less, especiallyas things appeared at the latter end of August and the beginning ofSeptember, and as there was reason to expect them at that time; for noman expected, and I dare say believed, that the distemper would take sosudden a turn as it did, and fall immediately two thousand in a week, when there was such a prodigious number of people sick at that time asit was known there was; and then it was that many shifted away that hadstayed most of the time before. 

Besides, if God gave strength to some more than to others, was it toboast of their ability to abide the stroke, and upbraid those that hadnot the same gift and support, or ought not they rather to have beenhumble and thankful if they were rendered more useful than theirbrethren?

I think it ought to be recorded to the honour of such men, as wellclergy as physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, magistrates, and officersof every kind, as also all useful people who ventured their lives indischarge of their duty, as most certainly all such as stayed did tothe last degree; and several of all these kinds did not only venture butlose their lives on that sad occasion. 

I was once making a list of all such, I mean of all those professionsand employments who thus died, as I call it, in the way of their duty;but it was impossible for a private man to come at a certainty in theparticulars. I only remember that there died sixteen clergymen, twoaldermen, five physicians, thirteen surgeons, within the city andliberties before the beginning of September. But this being, as I saidbefore, the great crisis and extremity of the infection, it can be nocomplete list. As to inferior people, I think there died six-and-fortyconstables and head-boroughs in the two parishes of Stepney andWhitechappel; but I could not carry my list oil, for when the violentrage of the distemper in September came upon us, it drove us out of allmeasures. Men did then no more die by tale and by number. They mightput out a weekly bill, and call them seven or eight thousand, or whatthey pleased; 'tis certain they died by heaps, and were buried by heaps, that is to say, without account. And if I might believe some people, whowere more abroad and more conversant with those things than I though Iwas public enough for one that had no more business to do than I had, --Isay, if I may believe them, there was not many less buried those firstthree weeks in September than 20, 000 per week. However, the others averthe truth of it; yet I rather choose to keep to the public account;seven and eight thousand per week is enough to make good all that I havesaid of the terror of those times;--and it is much to the satisfactionof me that write, as well as those that read, to be able to say thateverything is set down with moderation, and rather within compass thanbeyond it. 

Upon all these accounts, I say, I could wish, when we were recovered, our conduct had been more distinguished for charity and kindness inremembrance of the past calamity, and not so much a valuing ourselvesupon our boldness in staying, as if all men were cowards that fly fromthe hand of God, or that those who stay do not sometimes owe theircourage to their ignorance, and despising the hand of their Maker--whichis a criminal kind of desperation, and not a true courage. 

I cannot but leave it upon record that the civil officers, such asconstables, head-boroughs, Lord Mayor's and sheriffs'-men, as alsoparish officers, whose business it was to take charge of the poor, didtheir duties in general with as much courage as any, and perhaps withmore, because their work was attended with more hazards, and lay moreamong the poor, who were more subject to be infected, and in the mostpitiful plight when they were taken with the infection. But then it mustbe added, too, that a great number of them died; indeed it was scarcepossible it should be otherwise. 

I have not said one word here about the physic or preparations that weordinarily made use of on this terrible occasion--I mean we that wentfrequently abroad and up down street, as I did; much of this was talkedof in the books and bills of our quack doctors, of whom I havesaid enough already. It may, however, be added, that the College ofPhysicians were daily publishing several preparations, which they hadconsidered of in the process of their practice, and which, being to behad in print, I avoid repeating them for that reason. 

One thing I could not help observing: what befell one of the quacks, whopublished that he had a most excellent preservative against the plague, which whoever kept about them should never be infected or liable toinfection. This man, who, we may reasonably suppose, did not go abroadwithout some of this excellent preservative in his pocket, yet was takenby the distemper, and carried off in two or three days. 

I am not of the number of the physic-haters or physic-despisers; on thecontrary, I have often mentioned the regard I had to the dictates ofmy particular friend Dr Heath; but yet I must acknowledge I made use oflittle or nothing--except, as I have observed, to keep a preparationof strong scent to have ready, in case I met with anything of offensivesmells or went too near any burying-place or dead body. 

Neither did I do what I know some did: keep the spirits always high andhot with cordials and wine and such things; and which, as I observed, one learned physician used himself so much to as that he could not leavethem off when the infection was quite gone, and so became a sot for allhis life after. 

I remember my friend the doctor used to say that there was a certain setof drugs and preparations which were all certainly good and useful inthe case of an infection; out of which, or with which, physicians mightmake an infinite variety of medicines, as the ringers of bells makeseveral hundred different rounds of music by the changing and order orsound but in six bells, and that all these preparations shall be reallyvery good: 'Therefore, ' said he, 'I do not wonder that so vast a throngof medicines is offered in the present calamity, and almost everyphysician prescribes or prepares a different thing, as his judgement orexperience guides him; but', says my friend, 'let all the prescriptionsof all the physicians in London be examined, and it will be found thatthey are all compounded of the same things, with such variations onlyas the particular fancy of the doctor leads him to; so that', says he, 'every man, judging a little of his own constitution and manner of hisliving, and circumstances of his being infected, may direct his ownmedicines out of the ordinary drugs and preparations. Only that', sayshe, 'some recommend one thing as most sovereign, and some another. Some', says he, 'think that pill. Ruff. , which is called itself theanti-pestilential pill is the best preparation that can be made;others think that Venice treacle is sufficient of itself to resist thecontagion; and I', says he, 'think as both these think, viz. , thatthe last is good to take beforehand to prevent it, and the first, iftouched, to expel it. ' According to this opinion, I several times tookVenice treacle, and a sound sweat upon it, and thought myself as wellfortified against the infection as any one could be fortified by thepower of physic. 

As for quackery and mountebanks, of which the town was so full, Ilistened to none of them, and have observed often since, with somewonder, that for two years after the plague I scarcely saw or heard ofone of them about town. Some fancied they were all swept away in theinfection to a man, and were for calling it a particular mark ofGod's vengeance upon them for leading the poor people into the pit ofdestruction, merely for the lucre of a little money they got by them;but I cannot go that length neither. That abundance of them died iscertain--many of them came within the reach of my own knowledge--butthat all of them were swept off I much question. I believe rather theyfled into the country and tried their practices upon the people there, who were in apprehension of the infection before it came among them. 

This, however, is certain, not a man of them appeared for a great whilein or about London. There were, indeed, several doctors who publishedbills recommending their several physical preparations for cleansing thebody, as they call it, after the plague, and needful, as they said, forsuch people to take who had been visited and had been cured; whereasI must own I believe that it was the opinion of the most eminentphysicians at that time that the plague was itself a sufficient purge, and that those who escaped the infection needed no physic to cleansetheir bodies of any other things; the running sores, the tumours, &c. , which were broke and kept open by the directions of the physicians, having sufficiently cleansed them; and that all other distempers, andcauses of distempers, were effectually carried off that way; and as thephysicians gave this as their opinions wherever they came, the quacksgot little business. 

There were, indeed, several little hurries which happened after thedecrease of the plague, and which, whether they were contrived to frightand disorder the people, as some imagined, I cannot say, but sometimeswe were told the plague would return by such a time; and the famousSolomon Eagle, the naked Quaker I have mentioned, prophesied eviltidings every day; and several others telling us that London had notbeen sufficiently scourged, and that sorer and severer strokes were yetbehind. Had they stopped there, or had they descended to particulars, and told us that the city should the next year be destroyed by fire, then, indeed, when we had seen it come to pass, we should not have beento blame to have paid more than a common respect to their propheticspirits; at least we should have wondered at them, and have been moreserious in our inquiries after the meaning of it, and whence they hadthe foreknowledge. But as they generally told us of a relapse intothe plague, we have had no concern since that about them; yet by thosefrequent clamours, we were all kept with some kind of apprehensionsconstantly upon us; and if any died suddenly, or if the spotted feversat any time increased, we were presently alarmed; much more if thenumber of the plague increased, for to the end of the year there werealways between 200 and 300 of the plague. On any of these occasions, Isay, we were alarmed anew. 

Those who remember the city of London before the fire must remember thatthere was then no such place as we now call Newgate Market, but thatin the middle of the street which is now called Blowbladder Street, andwhich had its name from the butchers, who used to kill and dress theirsheep there (and who, it seems, had a custom to blow up their meat withpipes to make it look thicker and fatter than it was, and were punishedthere for it by the Lord Mayor); I say, from the end of the streettowards Newgate there stood two long rows of shambles for the sellingmeat. 

It was in those shambles that two persons falling down dead, as theywere buying meat, gave rise to a rumour that the meat was all infected;which, though it might affright the people, and spoiled the market fortwo or three days, yet it appeared plainly afterwards that there wasnothing of truth in the suggestion. But nobody can account for thepossession of fear when it takes hold of the mind. 

However, it Pleased God, by the continuing of the winter weather, so torestore the health of the city that by February following we reckonedthe distemper quite ceased, and then we were not so easily frightedagain. 

There was still a question among the learned, and at first perplexedthe people a little: and that was in what manner to purge the house andgoods where the plague had been, and how to render them habitable again, which had been left empty during the time of the plague. Abundance ofperfumes and preparations were prescribed by physicians, some of onekind and some of another, in which the people who listened to them putthemselves to a great, and indeed, in my opinion, to an unnecessaryexpense; and the poorer people, who only set open their windows nightand day, burned brimstone, pitch, and gunpowder, and such things intheir rooms, did as well as the best; nay, the eager people who, as Isaid above, came home in haste and at all hazards, found little orno inconvenience in their houses, nor in the goods, and did little ornothing to them. 

However, in general, prudent, cautious people did enter into somemeasures for airing and sweetening their houses, and burned perfumes, incense, benjamin, rozin, and sulphur in their rooms close shut up, and then let the air carry it all out with a blast of gunpowder; otherscaused large fires to be made all day and all night for several days andnights; by the same token that two or three were pleased to set theirhouses on fire, and so effectually sweetened them by burning them downto the ground; as particularly one at Ratcliff, one in Holbourn, and oneat Westminster; besides two or three that were set on fire, but thefire was happily got out again before it went far enough to burn downthe houses; and one citizen's servant, I think it was in Thames Street, carried so much gunpowder into his master's house, for clearing it ofthe infection, and managed it so foolishly, that he blew up part of theroof of the house. But the time was not fully come that the city was tobe purged by fire, nor was it far off; for within nine months more Isaw it all lying in ashes; when, as some of our quacking philosopherspretend, the seeds of the plague were entirely destroyed, and notbefore; a notion too ridiculous to speak of here: since, had the seedsof the plague remained in the houses, not to be destroyed but by fire, how has it been that they have not since broken out, seeing all thosebuildings in the suburbs and liberties, all in the great parishes ofStepney, Whitechappel, Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Shoreditch, Cripplegate, and St Giles, where the fire never came, and where the plague raged withthe greatest violence, remain still in the same condition they were inbefore?

But to leave these things just as I found them, it was certain thatthose people who were more than ordinarily cautious of their health, did take particular directions for what they called seasoning of theirhouses, and abundance of costly things were consumed on that accountwhich I cannot but say not only seasoned those houses, as they desired, but filled the air with very grateful and wholesome smells whichothers had the share of the benefit of as well as those who were at theexpenses of them. 

And yet after all, though the poor came to town very precipitantly, asI have said, yet I must say the rich made no such haste. The men ofbusiness, indeed, came up, but many of them did not bring their familiesto town till the spring came on, and that they saw reason to depend uponit that the plague would not return. 

The Court, indeed, came up soon after Christmas, but the nobilityand gentry, except such as depended upon and had employment under theadministration, did not come so soon. 

I should have taken notice here that, notwithstanding the violence ofthe plague in London and in other places, yet it was very observablethat it was never on board the fleet; and yet for some time there was astrange press in the river, and even in the streets, for seamen to manthe fleet. But it was in the beginning of the year, when the plague wasscarce begun, and not at all come down to that part of the city wherethey usually press for seamen; and though a war with the Dutch was notat all grateful to the people at that time, and the seamen went witha kind of reluctancy into the service, and many complained of beingdragged into it by force, yet it proved in the event a happy violence toseveral of them, who had probably perished in the general calamity, andwho, after the summer service was over, though they had cause to lamentthe desolation of their families--who, when they came back, were manyof them in their graves--yet they had room to be thankful that they werecarried out of the reach of it, though so much against their wills. We indeed had a hot war with the Dutch that year, and one very greatengagement at sea in which the Dutch were worsted, but we lost a greatmany men and some ships. But, as I observed, the plague was not in thefleet, and when they came to lay up the ships in the river the violentpart of it began to abate. 

I would be glad if I could close the account of this melancholy yearwith some particular examples historically; I mean of the thankfulnessto God, our preserver, for our being delivered from this dreadfulcalamity. Certainly the circumstance of the deliverance, as well as theterrible enemy we were delivered from, called upon the whole nation forit. The circumstances of the deliverance were indeed very remarkable, as I have in part mentioned already, and particularly the dreadfulcondition which we were all in when we were to the surprise of the wholetown made joyful with the hope of a stop of the infection. 

Nothing but the immediate finger of God, nothing but omnipotent power, could have done it. The contagion despised all medicine; death raged inevery corner; and had it gone on as it did then, a few weeks morewould have cleared the town of all, and everything that had a soul. Meneverywhere began to despair; every heart failed them for fear; peoplewere made desperate through the anguish of their souls, and the terrorsof death sat in the very faces and countenances of the people. 

In that very moment when we might very well say, 'Vain was the help ofman', --I say, in that very moment it pleased God, with a most agreeablesurprise, to cause the fury of it to abate, even of itself; and themalignity declining, as I have said, though infinite numbers were sick, yet fewer died, and the very first weeks' bill decreased 1843; a vastnumber indeed!

It is impossible to express the change that appeared in the verycountenances of the people that Thursday morning when the weekly billcame out. It might have been perceived in their countenances that asecret surprise and smile of joy sat on everybody's face. They shookone another by the hands in the streets, who would hardly go on the sameside of the way with one another before. Where the streets were not toobroad they would open their windows and call from one house to another, and ask how they did, and if they had heard the good news that theplague was abated. Some would return, when they said good news, and ask, 'What good news?' and when they answered that the plague was abated andthe bills decreased almost two thousand, they would cry out, 'God bepraised I' and would weep aloud for joy, telling them they had heardnothing of it; and such was the joy of the people that it was, as itwere, life to them from the grave. I could almost set down as manyextravagant things done in the excess of their joy as of their grief;but that would be to lessen the value of it. 

I must confess myself to have been very much dejected just before thishappened; for the prodigious number that were taken sick the week or twobefore, besides those that died, was such, and the lamentations were sogreat everywhere, that a man must have seemed to have acted even againsthis reason if he had so much as expected to escape; and as there washardly a house but mine in all my neighbourhood but was infected, so hadit gone on it would not have been long that there would have beenany more neighbours to be infected. Indeed it is hardly credible whatdreadful havoc the last three weeks had made, for if I might believe theperson whose calculations I always found very well grounded, there werenot less than 30, 000 people dead and near 100. 000 fallen sick in thethree weeks I speak of; for the number that sickened was surprising, indeed it was astonishing, and those whose courage upheld them all thetime before, sank under it now. 

In the middle of their distress, when the condition of the city ofLondon was so truly calamitous, just then it pleased God--as it were byHis immediate hand to disarm this enemy; the poison was taken out of thesting. It was wonderful; even the physicians themselves were surprisedat it. Wherever they visited they found their patients better; eitherthey had sweated kindly, or the tumours were broke, or the carbuncleswent down and the inflammations round them changed colour, or the feverwas gone, or the violent headache was assuaged, or some good symptomwas in the case; so that in a few days everybody was recovering, wholefamilies that were infected and down, that had ministers praying withthem, and expected death every hour, were revived and healed, and nonedied at all out of them. 

Nor was this by any new medicine found out, or new method of curediscovered, or by any experience in the operation which the physiciansor surgeons attained to; but it was evidently from the secret invisiblehand of Him that had at first sent this disease as a judgement upon us;and let the atheistic part of mankind call my saying what they please, it is no enthusiasm; it was acknowledged at that time by all mankind. The disease was enervated and its malignity spent; and let it proceedfrom whencesoever it will, let the philosophers search for reasons innature to account for it by, and labour as much as they will to lessenthe debt they owe to their Maker, those physicians who had the leastshare of religion in them were obliged to acknowledge that it was allsupernatural, that it was extraordinary, and that no account could begiven of it. 

If I should say that this is a visible summons to us all tothankfulness, especially we that were under the terror of its increase, perhaps it may be thought by some, after the sense of the thing wasover, an officious canting of religious things, preaching a sermoninstead of writing a history, making myself a teacher instead of givingmy observations of things; and this restrains me very much from going onhere as I might otherwise do. But if ten lepers Were healed, and but onereturned to give thanks, I desire to be as that one, and to be thankfulfor myself. 

Nor will I deny but there were abundance of people who, to allappearance, were very thankful at that time; for their mouths werestopped, even the mouths of those whose hearts were not extraordinarylong affected with it. But the impression was so strong at that timethat it could not be resisted; no, not by the worst of the people. 

It was a common thing to meet people in the street that were strangers, and that we knew nothing at all of, expressing their surprise. Goingone day through Aldgate, and a pretty many people being passing andrepassing, there comes a man out of the end of the Minories, and lookinga little up the street and down, he throws his hands abroad, 'Lord, whatan alteration is here I Why, last week I came along here, and hardlyanybody was to be seen. ' Another man--I heard him--adds to his words, ''Tis all wonderful; 'tis all a dream. ' 'Blessed be God, ' says a thirdman, and and let us give thanks to Him, for 'tis all His own doing, humanhelp and human skill was at an end. ' These were all strangers to oneanother. But such salutations as these were frequent in the street everyday; and in spite of a loose behaviour, the very common people wentalong the streets giving God thanks for their deliverance. 

It was now, as I said before, the people had cast off all apprehensions, and that too fast; indeed we were no more afraid now to pass by a manwith a white cap upon his head, or with a doth wrapt round his neck, orwith his leg limping, occasioned by the sores in his groin, all whichwere frightful to the last degree, but the week before. But now thestreet was full of them, and these poor recovering creatures, give themtheir due, appeared very sensible of their unexpected deliverance; andI should wrong them very much if I should not acknowledge that Ibelieve many of them were really thankful. But I must own that, for thegenerality of the people, it might too justly be said of them as wassaid of the children of Israel after their being delivered from the hostof Pharaoh, when they passed the Red Sea, and looked back and saw theEgyptians overwhelmed in the water: viz. , that they sang His praise, butthey soon forgot His works. 

I can go no farther here. I should be counted censorious, and perhapsunjust, if I should enter into the unpleasing work of reflecting, whatever cause there was for it, upon the unthankfulness and return ofall manner of wickedness among us, which I was so much an eye-witness ofmyself. I shall conclude the account of this calamitous year thereforewith a coarse but sincere stanza of my own, which I placed at the end ofmy ordinary memorandums the same year they were written:--

 A dreadful plague in London was In the year sixty-five, Which swept an hundred thousand souls Away; yet I alive!

 H. F.