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.

A Journal of the Plague Year

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

We had no such thing as prin­ted news­pa­pers in those days to spread ru­mours and re­ports of things, and to im­prove them by the in­ven­tion of men, as I have lived to see prac­tised since. But such things as these were gathered from the let­ters of mer­chants and oth­ers who cor­res­pon­ded abroad, and from them was handed about by word of mouth only; so that things 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 sev­eral coun­cils were held about ways to pre­vent its com­ing over; but all was kept very private. Hence it was that this ru­mour died off again, and people 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 the be­gin­ning of Decem­ber 1664 when two men, said to be French­men, died of the plague in Long Acre, or rather at the up­per end of Drury Lane. The fam­ily they were in en­deav­oured to con­ceal it as much as pos­sible, but as it had got­ten some vent in the dis­course of the neigh­bour­hood, the Sec­ret­ar­ies of State got know­ledge of it; and con­cern­ing them­selves to in­quire about it, in or­der to be cer­tain of the truth, two phys­i­cians and a sur­geon were ordered to go to the house and make in­spec­tion. This they did; and find­ing evid­ent tokens of the sick­ness upon both the bod­ies that were dead, they gave their opin­ions pub­licly that they died of the plague. Whereupon it was given in to the par­ish clerk, and he also re­turned them to the Hall; and it was prin­ted in the weekly bill of mor­tal­ity in the usual man­ner, thus—

Plague, 2. Par­ishes in­fec­ted, 1.

The people showed a great con­cern at this, and began to be alarmed all over the town, and the more, be­cause in the last week in Decem­ber 1664 an­other man died in the same house, and of the same dis­tem­per. And then we were easy again for about six weeks, when none hav­ing died with any marks of in­fec­tion, it was said the dis­tem­per was gone; but after that, I think it was about the 12th of Febru­ary, an­other died in an­other house, 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 par­ish more than usual, it began to be sus­pec­ted that the plague was among the people at that end of the town, and that many had died of it, though they had taken care to keep it as much from the know­ledge of the pub­lic as pos­sible. This pos­sessed the heads of the people very much, and few cared to go through Drury Lane, or the other streets sus­pec­ted, un­less they had ex­traordin­ary busi­ness that ob­liged them to it

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

From Decem­ber 27 to Janu­ary 3

St. Giles’s

16

St. Andrew’s

17

From Janu­ary 3 to Janu­ary 10

St. Giles’s

12

St. Andrew’s

25

From Janu­ary 10 to Janu­ary 17

St. Giles’s

18

St. Andrew’s

18

From Janu­ary 17 to Janu­ary 24

St. Giles’s

23

St. Andrew’s

16

From Janu­ary 24 to Janu­ary 31

St. Giles’s

24

St. Andrew’s

15

From Janu­ary 30 to Febru­ary 7

St. Giles’s

21

St. Andrew’s

23

From Febru­ary 7 to Febru­ary 14

St. Giles’s

24

Whereof one of the plague.

The like in­crease of the bills was ob­served in the par­ishes of St. Bride’s, ad­join­ing on one side of Hol­born par­ish, and in the par­ish of St. James, Clerken­well, ad­join­ing on the other side of Hol­born; in both which par­ishes the usual num­bers that died weekly were from four to six or eight, whereas at that time they were in­creased as fol­lows:—

From Decem­ber 20 to Decem­ber 27

St. Bride’s

0

St. James’s

8

From Decem­ber 27 to Janu­ary 3

St. Bride’s

6

St. James’s

9

From Janu­ary 3 to Janu­ary 10

St. Bride’s

11

St. James’s

7

From Janu­ary 10 to Janu­ary 17

St. Bride’s

12

St. James’s

9

From Janu­ary 17 to Janu­ary 24

St. Bride’s

9

St. James’s

15

From Janu­ary 24 to Janu­ary 31

St. Bride’s

8

St. James’s

12

From Janu­ary 31 to Febru­ary 7

St. Bride’s

13

St. James’s

5

From Febru­ary 7 to Febru­ary 14

St. Bride’s

12

St. James’s

6

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

The usual num­ber of buri­als within the bills of mor­tal­ity for a week was from about 240 or there­abouts to 300. The last was es­teemed a pretty high bill; but after this we found the bills suc­cess­ively in­creas­ing as fol­lows:—

Bur­ied

In­creased

Decem­ber the 20th to the 27th

291

…

Decem­ber the 27th to the 3rd Janu­ary

349

58

Janu­ary the 3rd to the 10th Janu­ary

394

45

Janu­ary the 10th to the 17th Janu­ary

415

21

Janu­ary the 17th to the 24th Janu­ary

474

59

This last bill was really fright­ful, be­ing a higher num­ber than had been known to have been bur­ied in one week since the pre­ced­ing vis­it­a­tion of 1656.

However, all this went off again, and the weather prov­ing cold, and the frost, which began in Decem­ber, still con­tinu­ing very severe even till near the end of Febru­ary, at­ten­ded with sharp though mod­er­ate winds, the bills de­creased again, and the city grew healthy, and every­body began to look upon the danger as good as over; only that still the buri­als in St. Giles’s con­tin­ued high. From the be­gin­ning of April es­pe­cially they stood 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 the plague and eight of the spot­ted-fever, which was looked upon as the same thing; like­wise the num­ber that died of the spot­ted-fever in the whole in­creased, be­ing eight the week be­fore, and twelve the week above-named.

This alarmed us all again, and ter­rible ap­pre­hen­sions were among the people, es­pe­cially the weather be­ing now changed and grow­ing warm, and the sum­mer be­ing at hand. However, the next week there seemed to be some hopes again; the bills were low, the num­ber of the dead in all was but 388, there was none of the plague, and but four of the spot­ted-fever.

But the fol­low­ing week it re­turned again, and the dis­tem­per was spread into two or three other par­ishes, viz., St. Andrew’s, Hol­born; St. Cle­ment Danes; and, to the great af­flic­tion of the city, one died within the walls, in the par­ish of St. Mary Wool­church, that is to say, in Bear­binder Lane, near Stocks Mar­ket; in all there were nine of the plague and six of the spot­ted-fever. It was, how­ever, upon in­quiry found that this French­man who died in Bear­binder Lane was one who, hav­ing lived in Long Acre, near the in­fec­ted houses, had re­moved for fear 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 en­cour­aged them was that the city was healthy: the whole ninety-seven par­ishes bur­ied but fifty-four, and we began to hope that, as it was chiefly among the people at that end of the town, it might go no farther; and the rather, be­cause the next week, which was from the 9th of May to the 16th, there died but three, of which not one within the whole city or liber­ties; and St. Andrew’s bur­ied but fif­teen, which was very low. ’Tis true St. Giles’s bur­ied two-and-thirty, but still, as there was but one of the plague, people began to be easy. The whole bill also was very low, for the week be­fore the bill was but 347, and the week above men­tioned but 343. We con­tin­ued in these hopes for a few days, but it was but for a few, for the people were no more to be de­ceived thus; they searched the houses and found that the plague was really spread every way, and that many died of it every day. So that now all our ex­ten­u­ations abated, and it was no more to be con­cealed; nay, it quickly ap­peared that the in­fec­tion had spread it­self bey­ond all hopes of abate­ment. That in the par­ish of St. Giles it was got­ten into sev­eral streets, 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 all knavery and col­lu­sion, for in St. Giles’s par­ish they bur­ied forty in all, whereof it was cer­tain most of them died of the plague, though they were set down of other dis­tem­pers; and though the num­ber of all the buri­als were not in­creased above thirty-two, and the whole bill be­ing but 385, yet there was four­teen of the spot­ted-fever, as well as four­teen of the plague; and we took it for gran­ted upon the whole that there were fifty died that week of the plague.

The next bill was from the 23rd of May to the 30th, when the num­ber of the plague was sev­en­teen. But the buri­als in St. Giles’s were fifty-three—a fright­ful num­ber!—of whom they set down but nine of the plague; 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 who were really dead of the plague in that par­ish, but had been set down of the 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 the in­fec­tion spread in a dread­ful man­ner, and the bills rose high; the art­icles of the fever, spot­ted-fever, and teeth began to swell; for all that could con­ceal their dis­tem­pers did it, to pre­vent their neigh­bours shun­ning and re­fus­ing to con­verse with them, and also to pre­vent au­thor­ity shut­ting up their houses; which, though it was not yet prac­tised, yet was threatened, and people were ex­tremely ter­ri­fied at the thoughts of it.

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

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

I lived without Aldgate, about mid­way between Aldgate Church and White­chapel Bars, on the left hand or north side of the street; and as the dis­tem­per had not reached to that side of the city, our neigh­bour­hood con­tin­ued very easy. But at the other end of the town their 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 un­usual man­ner; and this was more par­tic­u­larly seen in White­chapel; that is to say, the Broad Street where I lived; in­deed, noth­ing was to be seen but wag­ons and carts, with goods, wo­men, ser­vants, chil­dren, etc.; coaches filled with people of the bet­ter sort and horse­men at­tend­ing them, and all hur­ry­ing away; then empty wag­ons and carts ap­peared, and spare horses with ser­vants, who, it was ap­par­ent, were re­turn­ing or sent from the coun­tries to fetch more people; be­sides in­nu­mer­able num­bers of men on horse­back, some alone, oth­ers with ser­vants, and, gen­er­ally speak­ing, all loaded with bag­gage and fit­ted out for trav­el­ling, as any­one might per­ceive by their ap­pear­ance.

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

This hurry of the people was such for some weeks that there was no get­ting at the Lord Mayor’s door without ex­ceed­ing dif­fi­culty; there were such press­ing and crowding there to get passes and cer­ti­fic­ates of health for such as trav­elled abroad, for without these there was no be­ing ad­mit­ted to pass through the towns upon the road, or to lodge in any inn. Now, as there had none died in the city for all this time, my Lord Mayor gave cer­ti­fic­ates of health without any dif­fi­culty to all those who lived in the ninety-seven par­ishes, and to those within the liber­ties too for a while.

This hurry, I say, con­tin­ued some weeks, that is to say, all the month of May and June, and the more be­cause it was ru­moured that an or­der of the gov­ern­ment was to be is­sued out to place turn­pikes and bar­ri­ers on the road to pre­vent people trav­el­ling, and that the towns on the road would not suf­fer people from Lon­don to pass for fear of bring­ing the in­fec­tion along with them, though neither of these ru­mours had any found­a­tion 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 should re­solve to stay in Lon­don or shut up my house and flee, as many of my neigh­bours did. I have set this par­tic­u­lar down so fully, be­cause I know not but it may be of mo­ment to those who come after me, if they come to be brought to the same dis­tress, and to the same man­ner of mak­ing their choice; and there­fore I de­sire this ac­count may pass with them rather for a dir­ec­tion to them­selves to act by than a his­tory of my act­ings, see­ing it may not be of one farth­ing value to them to note what be­came of me.

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

The first con­sid­er­a­tion was of great mo­ment to me; my trade was a sad­dler, and as my deal­ings were chiefly not by a shop or chance trade, but among the mer­chants trad­ing to the Eng­lish colon­ies in Amer­ica, so my ef­fects lay very much in the hands of such. I was a single man, ’tis true, but I had a fam­ily of ser­vants whom I kept at my busi­ness; had a house, shop, and ware­houses filled with goods; and, in short, to leave them all as things in such a case must be left (that is to say, without any over­seer or per­son fit to be trus­ted with them), had been to haz­ard the loss not only of my trade, but of my goods, and in­deed of all I had in the world.

I had an elder brother at the same time in Lon­don, and not many years be­fore come over from Por­tugal: and ad­vising with him, his an­swer was in 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 the coun­try, as he re­solved to do him­self with his fam­ily; telling me what he had, it seems, heard abroad, that the best pre­par­a­tion for the plague was 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 ar­gued for 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 my goods; “for,” says he, “is it not as reas­on­able that you should trust God with the chance or risk of los­ing your trade, as that you should stay 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 our fam­ily first came from; and par­tic­u­larly, I had an only sis­ter in Lin­colnshire, very will­ing to re­ceive and en­ter­tain me.

My brother, who had already sent his wife and two chil­dren into Bed­ford­shire, and re­solved to fol­low them, pressed my go­ing very earn­estly; and I had once re­solved to com­ply with his de­sires, but at that time could get no horse; for though it is true all the people did not go out of the city of Lon­don, yet I may ven­ture to say that in a man­ner all the horses did; for there was hardly a horse to be bought or hired in the whole city for some weeks. Once I re­solved to travel on foot with one ser­vant, and, as many did, lie at no inn, but carry a sol­dier’s tent with us, and so lie in the fields, the weather be­ing very warm, and no danger from tak­ing cold. I say, as many did, be­cause sev­eral did so at last, es­pe­cially those who had been in the armies in the 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 done so, the plague had not been car­ried into so many coun­try towns and houses as it was, to the great dam­age, and in­deed to the ruin, of abund­ance of people.

But then my ser­vant, whom I had in­ten­ded to take down with me, de­ceived me; and be­ing frighted at the in­crease of the dis­tem­per, and not know­ing when I should go, he took other meas­ures, and left me, so I was put off for that time; and, one way or other, I al­ways found that to ap­point to go away was al­ways crossed by some ac­ci­dent or other, so as to dis­ap­point and put it off again; and this brings in a story which oth­er­wise might be thought a need­less di­gres­sion, viz., about these dis­ap­point­ments be­ing from Heaven.

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

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

These thoughts quite turned my res­ol­u­tions again, and when I came to dis­course with my brother again I told him that I in­clined to stay and take my lot in that sta­tion in which God had placed me, and that it seemed to be made more es­pe­cially my duty, on the ac­count of what I have said.

My brother, though a very re­li­gious man him­self, laughed at all I had sug­ges­ted about its be­ing an in­tim­a­tion from Heaven, and told me sev­eral stor­ies of such fool­hardy people, as he called them, as I was; that I ought in­deed to sub­mit to it as a work of Heaven if I had been any way dis­abled 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 that then there had been no dif­fi­culty to de­term­ine which was the call of His provid­ence and which was not; but that I should take it as an in­tim­a­tion from Heaven that I should not go out of town, only be­cause I could not hire 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 other ser­vants, and might with ease travel a day or two on foot, and hav­ing a good cer­ti­fic­ate of be­ing in per­fect health, might either hire a horse or take post on the road, as I thought fit.

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

Upon these ar­gu­ments my brother changed my res­ol­u­tions again, and I began to re­solve to go, and ac­cord­ingly made all things ready; for, in short, the in­fec­tion in­creased round me, and the bills were risen to al­most seven hun­dred a week, and my brother told me he would ven­ture to stay no longer. I de­sired him to let me con­sider of it but till the next day, and I would re­solve: and as I had already pre­pared everything as well 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, and not know­ing what to do. I had set the even­ing wholly—apart to con­sider ser­i­ously about it, and was all alone; for already people had, as it were by a gen­eral con­sent, taken up the cus­tom of not go­ing out of doors after sun­set; the reas­ons I shall have oc­ca­sion to say more of by-and-by.

In the re­tire­ment of this even­ing I en­deav­oured to re­solve, first, what was my duty to do, and I stated the ar­gu­ments with which my brother had pressed me to go into the coun­try, and I set against them the strong im­pres­sions which I had on my mind for stay­ing; the vis­ible call I seemed to have from the par­tic­u­lar cir­cum­stance of my call­ing, and the care due from me for the pre­ser­va­tion of my ef­fects, which were, as I might say, my es­tate; also the in­tim­a­tions which I thought I had from Heaven, that to me sig­ni­fied a kind of dir­ec­tion to ven­ture; and it oc­curred to me that if I had what I might call a dir­ec­tion to stay, I ought 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 to stay than ever, and sup­por­ted with a secret sat­is­fac­tion that I should be kept. Add to this, that, turn­ing over the Bible which lay be­fore me, and while my thoughts were more than or­din­ar­ily ser­i­ous upon the ques­tion, I cried out, “Well, I know not what to do; Lord, dir­ect me!” and the like; and at that junc­ture I happened to stop turn­ing over the book at the 91st Psalm, and cast­ing my eye on the second verse, I read on 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: my God, in Him will I trust. Surely He shall de­liver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noi­some pes­ti­lence. He shall cover thee with His feath­ers, and un­der His wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy shield and buck­ler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the ter­ror by night; nor for the ar­row that fli­eth by day; nor for the pes­ti­lence that walketh in dark­ness; nor for the de­struc­tion that wasteth at noonday. A thou­sand shall fall at thy side, and ten thou­sand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou be­hold and see the re­ward of the wicked. Be­cause thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy hab­it­a­tion; there shall no evil be­fall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwell­ing,” etc.

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

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

It was a very ill time to be sick in, for if any­one com­plained, it was im­me­di­ately said he had the plague; and though I had in­deed no symp­tom of that dis­tem­per, yet be­ing very ill, both in my head and in my stom­ach, 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 be­ing the in­fec­tion went also quite away with my ill­ness, and I went about my busi­ness as usual.

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

It was now mid-July, and the plague, which had chiefly raged at the other end of the town, and, as I said be­fore, in the par­ishes of St. Giles, St. Andrew’s, Hol­born, and to­wards West­min­ster, began to now come east­ward 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 to say, within the walls, was in­dif­fer­ently healthy still; nor was it got then very much over the wa­ter into South­wark; for though there died that week 1,268 of all dis­tem­pers, whereof it might be sup­posed above 600 died of the plague, yet there was but twenty-eight in the whole city, within the walls, and but nine­teen in South­wark, Lam­beth par­ish in­cluded; whereas in the par­ishes of St. Giles and St. Martin-in-the-Fields alone there died 421.

But we per­ceived the in­fec­tion kept chiefly in the out-par­ishes, which be­ing very pop­u­lous, and fuller also of poor, the dis­tem­per found more to prey upon than in the city, as I shall ob­serve af­ter­wards. We per­ceived, I say, the dis­tem­per to draw our way, viz., by the par­ishes of Clerken­well, Crip­pleg­ate, Shored­itch, and Bish­opsgate; which last two par­ishes join­ing to Aldgate, White­chapel, and Stepney, the in­fec­tion came 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 the 4th to the 11th of July, when, as I have ob­served, there died near 400 of the plague in the two par­ishes of St. Martin and St. Giles-in-the-Fields only, there died in the par­ish of Aldgate but four, in the par­ish of White­chapel three, in the par­ish of Stepney but one.

Like­wise in the next week, from the 11th of July to the 18th, when the week’s bill was 1,761, yet there died no more of the plague, on the whole South­wark side of the wa­ter, than six­teen. But this face of things soon changed, and it began to thicken in Crip­pleg­ate par­ish es­pe­cially, and in Clerken­well; so that by the second week in August, Crip­pleg­ate par­ish alone bur­ied 886, and Clerken­well 155. Of the first, 850 might well be reckoned to die of the plague; and of the last, the bill it­self said 145 were of the plague.

Dur­ing the month of July, and while, as I have ob­served, our part of the town seemed to be spared in com­par­ison of the west part, I went or­din­ar­ily about the streets, as my busi­ness re­quired, and par­tic­u­larly went gen­er­ally once in a day, or in two days, into the city, to my brother’s house, which he had given me charge of, and to see if it was safe; 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 be some­thing won­der­ful to tell, that any should have hearts so hardened in the midst of such a calam­ity as to rob and steal, yet cer­tain it is that all sorts of vil­lain­ies, and even lev­it­ies and de­baucher­ies, were then prac­tised in the town as openly as ever—I will not say quite as fre­quently, be­cause the num­bers of people were many ways lessened.

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

As they fled now out of the city, so I should ob­serve that the Court re­moved early, viz., in the month of June, and went to Ox­ford, where it pleased God to pre­serve them; and the dis­tem­per did not, as I heard of, so much as touch them, for which I can­not say that I ever saw they showed any great token of thank­ful­ness, and hardly any­thing of re­form­a­tion, though they did not want be­ing told that their cry­ing vices might without breach of char­ity be said to have gone far in bring­ing that ter­rible judge­ment upon the whole na­tion.

The face of Lon­don was now in­deed strangely altered: I mean the whole mass of build­ings, city, liber­ties, sub­urbs, West­min­ster, South­wark, and al­to­gether; for as to the par­tic­u­lar part called the city, or within the walls, that was not yet much in­fec­ted. But in the whole the face of things, I say, was much altered; sor­row and sad­ness sat upon every face; and though some parts were not yet over­whelmed, yet all looked deeply con­cerned; and, as we saw it ap­par­ently com­ing on, so every­one looked on him­self and his fam­ily as in the ut­most danger. Were it pos­sible to rep­res­ent those times ex­actly to those that did not see them, and give the reader due ideas of the hor­ror that every­where presen­ted it­self, it must 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 go about the streets in­deed, for nobody put on black or made a formal dress of mourn­ing for their nearest friends; but the voice of mourn­ers was truly heard in the streets. The shrieks of wo­men and chil­dren at the win­dows and doors of their houses, where their dearest re­la­tions were per­haps dy­ing, or just dead, were so fre­quent to be heard as we passed the streets, that it was enough to pierce the stoutest heart in the world to hear them. Tears and lam­ent­a­tions were seen al­most in every house, es­pe­cially in the first part of the vis­it­a­tion; for to­wards the lat­ter end men’s hearts were hardened, and death was so al­ways be­fore their eyes, that they did not so much con­cern them­selves for the loss of their friends, ex­pect­ing that them­selves should be summoned the next hour.

Busi­ness led me out some­times to the other end of the town, even when the sick­ness was chiefly there; and as the thing was new to me, as well as to every­body else, it was a most sur­pris­ing thing to see those streets which were usu­ally so thronged now grown des­ol­ate, and so few people to be seen in them, that if I had been a stranger and at a loss for my way, I might some­times have gone the length of a whole street (I mean of the by-streets), and seen nobody to dir­ect me ex­cept watch­men set at the doors of such houses as were shut up, of which I shall speak presently.

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

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

When I speak of rows of houses be­ing shut up, I do not mean shut up by the ma­gis­trates, but that great num­bers of per­sons fol­lowed the Court, by the ne­ces­sity of their em­ploy­ments and other de­pend­ences; and as oth­ers re­tired, really frighted with the dis­tem­per, it was a mere des­ol­at­ing of some of the streets. But the fright was not yet near so great in the city, ab­stractly so called, and par­tic­u­larly be­cause, though they were at first in a most in­ex­press­ible con­sterna­tion, yet as I have ob­served that the dis­tem­per in­ter­mit­ted of­ten at first, so they were, as it were, alarmed and un­alarmed again, and this sev­eral times, till it began to be fa­mil­iar to them; and that even when it ap­peared vi­ol­ent, yet see­ing it did not presently spread into the city, or the east and south parts, the people began to take cour­age, and to be, as I may say, a little hardened. It is true a vast many people fled, as I have 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 the wealth­i­est of the people, and such people as were un­en­cumbered with trades and busi­ness. But of the rest, the gen­er­al­ity stayed, and seemed to abide the worst; so that in the place we call the Liber­ties, and in the sub­urbs, in South­wark, and in the east part, such as Wap­ping, Ratcliff, Stepney, Roth­er­hithe, and the like, the people gen­er­ally stayed, ex­cept here and there a few wealthy fam­il­ies, who, as above, did not de­pend upon their busi­ness.

It must not be for­got here that the city and sub­urbs were prodi­giously full of people at the time of this vis­it­a­tion, I mean at the time that it began; for though I have lived to see a fur­ther in­crease, and mighty throngs of people set­tling in Lon­don more than ever, yet we had al­ways a no­tion that the num­bers of people which, the wars be­ing over, the armies dis­ban­ded, and the royal fam­ily and the mon­archy be­ing re­stored, had flocked to Lon­don to settle in busi­ness, or to de­pend upon and at­tend the Court for re­wards of ser­vices, prefer­ments, and the like, was such that the town was com­puted to have in it above a hun­dred thou­sand people more than ever it held be­fore; nay, some took upon them to say it had twice as many, be­cause all the ruined fam­il­ies of the royal party flocked hither. All the old sol­diers set up trades here, and abund­ance of fam­il­ies settled here. Again, the Court brought with them a great flux of pride, and new fash­ions. All people were grown gay and lux­uri­ous, and the joy of the Res­tor­a­tion had brought a vast many fam­il­ies to Lon­don.

I of­ten thought that as Jer­u­s­alem was be­sieged by the Ro­mans when the Jews were as­sembled to­gether to cel­eb­rate the Pas­sover—by which means an in­cred­ible num­ber of people were sur­prised there who would oth­er­wise have been in other coun­tries—so the plague entered Lon­don when an in­cred­ible in­crease of people had happened oc­ca­sion­ally, by the par­tic­u­lar cir­cum­stances above-named. As this con­flux of the people to a youth­ful and gay Court made a great trade in the city, es­pe­cially in everything that be­longed to fash­ion and finery, so it drew by con­sequence a great num­ber of work­men, man­u­fac­tur­ers, and the like, be­ing mostly poor people who de­pended upon their la­bour. And I re­mem­ber in par­tic­u­lar that in a rep­res­ent­a­tion to my Lord Mayor of the con­di­tion of the poor, it was es­tim­ated that there were no less than an hun­dred thou­sand rib­and-weavers in and about the city, the chiefest num­ber of whom lived then in the par­ishes of Shored­itch, Stepney, White­chapel, and Bish­opsgate, that, namely, about Spit­alfields; that is to say, as Spit­alfields 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 of people that went away at first, there was yet so great a mul­ti­tude left as it ap­peared there was.

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

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

I saw both these stars, and, I must con­fess, had so much of the com­mon no­tion of such things in my head, that I was apt to look upon them as the fore­run­ners and warn­ings of God’s judge­ments; and es­pe­cially when, after the plague had fol­lowed the first, I yet saw an­other of the like kind, I could not but say God had not yet suf­fi­ciently scourged the city.

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

But let my thoughts and the thoughts of the philo­soph­ers be, or have been, what they will, these things had a more than or­din­ary in­flu­ence upon the minds of the com­mon people, and they had al­most uni­ver­sal mel­an­choly ap­pre­hen­sions of some dread­ful calam­ity and judge­ment com­ing upon the city; and this prin­cip­ally from the sight of this comet, and the little alarm that was given in Decem­ber by two people dy­ing at St. Giles’s, as above.

The ap­pre­hen­sions of the people were like­wise strangely in­creased by the er­ror of the times; in which, I think, the people, from what prin­ciple I can­not ima­gine, were more ad­dicted to proph­ecies and as­tro­lo­gical con­jur­a­tions, dreams, and old wives’ tales than ever they were be­fore or since. Whether this un­happy tem­per was ori­gin­ally raised by the fol­lies of some people who got money by it—that is to say, by print­ing pre­dic­tions and pro­gnost­ic­a­tions—I know not; but cer­tain it is, books frighted them ter­ribly, such as Lilly’s Al­man­ack, Gad­bury’s Astro­lo­gical Pre­dic­tions, Poor Robin’s Al­man­ack, and the like; also sev­eral pre­ten­ded re­li­gious books, one en­titled, Come out of her, my People, lest you be 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 were so en­thu­si­ast­ic­ally bold as to run about the streets with their oral pre­dic­tions, pre­tend­ing they were sent to preach to the city; and one in par­tic­u­lar, who, like Jo­nah to Nineveh, cried in the streets, “Yet forty days, and Lon­don shall be des­troyed.” I will not be pos­it­ive whether he said yet forty days or yet a few days. Another ran about na­ked, ex­cept a pair of draw­ers about his waist, cry­ing day and night, like a man that Josephus men­tions, who cried, “Woe to Jer­u­s­alem!” a little be­fore the de­struc­tion of that city. So this poor na­ked creature cried, “Oh, the great and the dread­ful God!” and said no more, but re­peated those words con­tinu­ally, 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 sev­eral times in the streets, and would have spoken to him, but he would not enter into speech with me or any­one else, but held on his dis­mal cries con­tinu­ally.

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

Next to these pub­lic things were the dreams of old wo­men, or, I should say, the in­ter­pret­a­tion of old wo­men upon other people’s dreams; and these put abund­ance of people even out of their wits. Some heard voices warn­ing them to be gone, for that there would be such a plague in Lon­don, so that the liv­ing would not be able to bury the dead. Oth­ers saw ap­par­i­tions in the air; and I must be al­lowed to say of both, I hope without breach of char­ity, that they heard voices that never spake, and saw sights that never ap­peared; but the ima­gin­a­tion of the people was really turned way­ward and pos­sessed. And no won­der, if they who were por­ing con­tinu­ally at the clouds saw shapes and fig­ures, rep­res­ent­a­tions and ap­pear­ances, which had noth­ing in them but air, and va­pour. Here they told us they saw a flam­ing sword held in a hand com­ing out of a cloud, with a point hanging dir­ectly over the city; there they saw hearses and coffins in the air car­ry­ing to be bur­ied; and there again, heaps of dead bod­ies ly­ing un­bur­ied, and the like, just as the ima­gin­a­tion of the poor ter­ri­fied people fur­nished them with mat­ter to work upon.

“So hy­po­chon­driac fan­cies rep­res­ent
Ships, armies, battles in the firm­a­ment;
Till steady eyes the ex­hal­a­tions solve,
And all to its first mat­ter, cloud, re­solve.”

I could fill this ac­count with the strange re­la­tions such people gave every day of what they had seen; and every­one was so pos­it­ive of their hav­ing seen what they pre­ten­ded to see, that there was no con­tra­dict­ing them without breach of friend­ship, or be­ing ac­coun­ted rude and un­man­nerly on the one hand, and pro­fane and im­pen­et­rable on the other. One time be­fore the plague was be­gun (oth­er­wise than as I have said in St. Giles’s), I think it was in March, see­ing a crowd of people in the street, I joined with them to sat­isfy my curi­os­ity, and found them all star­ing up into the air to see what a wo­man told them ap­peared plain to her, which was an an­gel clothed in white, with a fiery sword in his hand, wav­ing it or bran­dish­ing it over his head. She de­scribed every part 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 as can be.” Another saw the an­gel. One saw his very face, and cried out what a glor­i­ous creature he was! One saw one thing, and one an­other. I looked as earn­estly as the rest, but per­haps not with so much will­ing­ness to be im­posed upon; and I said, in­deed, that I could see noth­ing but a white cloud, bright on one side by the shin­ing of the sun upon the other part. The wo­man en­deav­oured to show it me, but could not make me con­fess that I saw it, which, in­deed, if I had I must have lied. But the wo­man, turn­ing upon me, looked in my face, and fan­cied I laughed, in which her ima­gin­a­tion de­ceived her too, for I really did not laugh, but was very ser­i­ously re­flect­ing how the poor people were ter­ri­fied by the force of their own ima­gin­a­tion. However, she turned from me, called me pro­fane fel­low, and a scoffer; told me that it was a time of God’s an­ger, and dread­ful judge­ments were ap­proach­ing, and that des­pisers such as I should wander and per­ish.

The people about her seemed dis­gus­ted as well as she; and I found there was no per­suad­ing them that I did not laugh at them, and that I should be 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 go­ing through a nar­row pas­sage from Petty France into Bish­opsgate Church­yard, by a row of alms-houses. There are two church­yards to Bish­opsgate church or par­ish; one we go over to pass from the place called Petty France into Bish­opsgate Street, com­ing out just by the church door; the other is on the side of the nar­row pas­sage where the alms-houses are on the left; and a dwarf-wall with a pal­is­ado on it on the right hand, and the city wall on the other side more to the right.

In this nar­row pas­sage stands a man look­ing through between the pal­is­ad­oes into the bury­ing-place, and as many people as the nar­row­ness of the pas­sage would ad­mit to stop, without hinder­ing the pas­sage of oth­ers, and he was talk­ing migh­tily eagerly to them, and point­ing now to one place, then to an­other, and af­firm­ing that he saw a ghost walk­ing upon such a grave­stone there. He de­scribed the shape, the pos­ture, and the move­ment of it so ex­actly that it was the greatest mat­ter of amazement to him in the world that every­body did not see it as well as 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 so firm a be­lief of it, that one fan­cied he saw it, and an­other fan­cied he saw it; and thus he came every day mak­ing a strange hub­bub, con­sid­er­ing it 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 man dir­ec­ted, but could not see the least ap­pear­ance of any­thing; but so pos­it­ive was this poor man, that he gave the people the va­pours in abund­ance, and sent them away trem­bling and frighted, till at length few people that knew of it cared to go through that pas­sage, and hardly any­body by night on any ac­count whatever.

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

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

To this, as I said be­fore, the as­tro­lo­gers ad­ded stor­ies of the con­junc­tions of plan­ets in a ma­lig­nant man­ner and with a mis­chiev­ous in­flu­ence, one of which con­junc­tions was to hap­pen, and did hap­pen, in Octo­ber, and the other in Novem­ber; and they filled the people’s heads with pre­dic­tions on these signs of the heav­ens, in­tim­at­ing that those con­junc­tions fore­told drought, fam­ine, and pes­ti­lence. In the two first of them, how­ever, they were en­tirely mis­taken, for we had no droughty sea­son, but in the be­gin­ning of the year a hard frost, which las­ted from Decem­ber al­most to March, and after that mod­er­ate weather, rather warm than 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 as ter­ri­fied the people, and to frighten the dis­pers­ers of them, some of whom were taken up; but noth­ing was done in it, as I am in­formed, the gov­ern­ment be­ing un­will­ing to ex­as­per­ate the people, who were, as I may say, all out of their wits already.

Neither can I ac­quit those min­is­ters that in their ser­mons rather sank than lif­ted up the hearts of their hear­ers. Many of them no doubt did it for the strength­en­ing the res­ol­u­tion of the people, and es­pe­cially for quick­en­ing 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 by in­vit­a­tions and calls to turn to Him and live, than drives us by ter­ror and amazement, so I must con­fess I thought the min­is­ters should have done also, im­it­at­ing our blessed Lord and Master in this, that His whole Gospel is full of de­clar­a­tions from heaven of God’s mercy, and His read­i­ness to re­ceive pen­it­ents and for­give them, com­plain­ing, “Ye will not come unto Me that ye may have life,” and that there­fore His Gospel is 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 dis­mal things; and as they brought the people to­gether with a kind of hor­ror, 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 mat­ters of re­li­gion. In­nu­mer­able sects and di­vi­sions and sep­ar­ate opin­ions pre­vailed among the people. The Church of Eng­land was re­stored, in­deed, with the res­tor­a­tion of the mon­archy, about four years be­fore; but the min­is­ters and preach­ers of the Pres­by­teri­ans and Independ­ents, and of all the other sorts of pro­fes­sions, had be­gun to gather sep­ar­ate so­ci­et­ies and erect al­tar against al­tar, and all those had their meet­ings for wor­ship apart, as they have now, but not so many then, the Dis­sent­ers be­ing not thor­oughly formed into a body as they are since; and those con­greg­a­tions which were thus gathered to­gether were yet but few. And even those that were, the gov­ern­ment did not al­low, but en­deav­oured to sup­press them and shut up their meet­ings.

But the vis­it­a­tion re­con­ciled them again, at least for a time, and many of the best and most valu­able min­is­ters and preach­ers of the Dis­sent­ers were suffered to go into the churches where the in­cum­bents were fled away, as many were, not be­ing able to stand it; and the people flocked without dis­tinc­tion to hear them preach, not much in­quir­ing who or what opin­ion they were of. But after the sick­ness was over, that spirit of char­ity abated; and every church be­ing again sup­plied with their own min­is­ters, or oth­ers presen­ted where the min­is­ter was dead, things re­turned to their old chan­nel again.

One mis­chief al­ways in­tro­duces an­other. These ter­rors and ap­pre­hen­sions of the people led them into a thou­sand weak, fool­ish, and wicked things, which they wanted not a sort of people really wicked to en­cour­age them to: and this was run­ning about to for­tune-tell­ers, cun­ning-men, and as­tro­lo­gers to know their for­tune, or, as it is vul­garly ex­pressed, to have their for­tunes told them, their nativ­it­ies cal­cu­lated, and the like; and this folly presently made the town swarm with a wicked gen­er­a­tion 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 devil than they were really guilty of. And this trade grew so open and so gen­er­ally prac­tised that it be­came com­mon to have signs and in­scrip­tions set up at doors: “Here lives a for­tune-teller,” “Here lives an as­tro­lo­ger,” “Here you may have your nativ­ity cal­cu­lated,” and the like; and Friar Ba­con’s brazen-head, which was the usual sign of these people’s dwell­ings, was to be seen al­most in every street, or else the sign of Mother Shipton, or of Mer­lin’s head, and the like.

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

I need not men­tion what a hor­rid de­lu­sion this was, or what it ten­ded to; but there was no rem­edy for it till the plague it­self put an end to it all—and, I sup­pose, cleared the town of most of those cal­cu­lat­ors them­selves. One mis­chief was, that if the poor people asked these mock as­tro­lo­gers whether there would be a plague or no, they all agreed in gen­eral to an­swer “Yes,” for that kept up their trade. And had the people not been kept in a fright about that, the wiz­ards would presently have been rendered use­less, and their craft had been at an end. But they al­ways talked to them of such-and-such in­flu­ences of the stars, of the con­junc­tions of such-and-such plan­ets, which must ne­ces­sar­ily bring sick­ness and dis­tem­pers, and con­sequently the plague. And some had the as­sur­ance 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 were ser­i­ous and un­der­stand­ing per­sons, thundered against these and other wicked prac­tices, and ex­posed the folly as well as the wicked­ness of them to­gether, and the most sober and ju­di­cious people des­pised and ab­horred them. But it was im­possible to make any im­pres­sion upon the mid­dling people and the work­ing la­bour­ing poor. Their fears were pre­dom­in­ant over all their pas­sions, and they threw away their money in a most dis­trac­ted man­ner upon those whim­sies. Maid­ser­vants es­pe­cially, and menser­vants, were the chief of their cus­tom­ers, and their ques­tion gen­er­ally was, after the first de­mand of “Will there be a plague?” I say, the next ques­tion was, “Oh, sir! for the Lord’s sake, what will be­come of me? Will my mis­tress keep me, or will she turn me off? Will she stay here, or will she go into the coun­try? And if she goes into the coun­try, will she take me with her, or leave me here to be starved and un­done?” And the like of menser­vants.

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

These things agit­ated the minds of the com­mon people for many months, while the first ap­pre­hen­sions were upon them, and while the plague was not, as I may say, yet broken out. But I must also not for­get that the more ser­i­ous part of the in­hab­it­ants be­haved after an­other man­ner. The gov­ern­ment en­cour­aged their de­vo­tion, and ap­poin­ted pub­lic pray­ers and days of fast­ing and hu­mi­li­ation, to make pub­lic con­fes­sion of sin and im­plore the mercy of God to avert the dread­ful judge­ment which hung over their heads; and it is not to be ex­pressed with what alac­rity the people of all per­sua­sions em­braced the oc­ca­sion; how they flocked to the churches and meet­ings, and they were all so thronged that there was of­ten no com­ing near, no, not to the very doors of the largest churches. Also there were daily pray­ers ap­poin­ted morn­ing and even­ing at sev­eral churches, and days of private pray­ing at other places; at all which the people at­ten­ded, I say, with an un­com­mon de­vo­tion. Several private fam­il­ies 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 them­selves in a truly Chris­tian man­ner to the proper work of re­pent­ance and hu­mi­li­ation, as a Chris­tian people ought to do.

Again, the pub­lic showed that they would bear their share in these things; the very Court, which was then gay and lux­uri­ous, put on a face of just con­cern for the pub­lic danger. All the plays and in­ter­ludes which, after the man­ner of the French Court, had been set up, and began to in­crease among us, were for­bid to act; the gam­ing-tables, pub­lic dan­cing-rooms, and mu­sic-houses, which mul­ti­plied and began to de­bauch the man­ners of the people, were shut up and sup­pressed; and the jack-pud­dings, merry-an­drews, pup­pet-shows, ro­ped­an­cers, and such­like do­ings, which had be­witched the poor com­mon people, shut up their shops, find­ing in­deed no trade; for the minds of the people were agit­ated with other things, and a kind of sad­ness and hor­ror at these things sat upon the coun­ten­ances even of the com­mon people. Death was be­fore their eyes, and every­body began to think of their graves, not of mirth and di­ver­sions.

But even those whole­some re­flec­tions—which, rightly man­aged, would have most hap­pily led the people to fall upon their knees, make con­fes­sion of their sins, and look up to their mer­ci­ful Sa­viour for par­don, im­plor­ing His com­pas­sion on them in such a time of their dis­tress, by which we might have been as a second Nineveh—had a quite con­trary ex­treme in the com­mon people, who, ig­nor­ant and stu­pid in their re­flec­tions as they were bru­tishly wicked and thought­less be­fore, were now led by their fright to ex­tremes of folly; and, as I have said be­fore, that they ran to con­jur­ers and witches, and all sorts of de­ceiv­ers, to know what should be­come of them (who fed their fears, and kept them al­ways alarmed and awake on pur­pose to de­lude them and pick their pock­ets), so they were as mad upon their run­ning after quacks and moun­te­banks, and every prac­tising old wo­man, for medi­cines and rem­ed­ies; stor­ing them­selves with such mul­ti­tudes of pills, po­tions, and pre­ser­vat­ives, as they were called, that they not only spent their money but even poisoned them­selves be­fore­hand for fear of the poison of the in­fec­tion; and pre­pared their bod­ies for the plague, in­stead of pre­serving them against it. On the other hand it is in­cred­ible and scarce to be ima­gined, how the posts of houses and corners of streets were plastered over with doc­tors’ bills and pa­pers of ig­nor­ant fel­lows, quack­ing and tam­per­ing in physic, and in­vit­ing the people to come to them for rem­ed­ies, which was gen­er­ally set off with such flour­ishes as these, viz.: “In­fal­lible pre­vent­ive pills against the plague.” “Never­fail­ing pre­ser­vat­ives against the in­fec­tion.” “Sover­eign cor­di­als against the cor­rup­tion of the air.” “Ex­act reg­u­la­tions for the con­duct of the body in case of an in­fec­tion.” “Anti-pes­ti­len­tial pills.” “In­com­par­able drink against the plague, never found out be­fore.” “An uni­ver­sal rem­edy for the plague.” “The only true plague wa­ter.” “The royal an­ti­dote against all kinds of in­fec­tion”;—and such a num­ber more that I can­not reckon up; and if I could, would fill a book of them­selves to set them down.

Oth­ers set up bills to sum­mon people to their lodgings for dir­ec­tions and 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 he resided 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 secret to pre­vent in­fec­tion, which she found out by her great ex­per­i­ence, and did won­der­ful cures with it in the late plague there, wherein there died 20,000 in one day.”

“An an­cient gen­tle­wo­man, hav­ing prac­tised with great suc­cess in the late plague in this city, anno 1636, gives her ad­vice only to the fe­male sex. To be spoken with,” etc.

“An ex­per­i­enced phys­i­cian, who has long stud­ied the doc­trine of an­ti­dotes against all sorts of poison and in­fec­tion, has, after forty years’ prac­tice, ar­rived to such skill as may, with God’s bless­ing, dir­ect per­sons how to pre­vent their be­ing touched by any con­ta­gious dis­tem­per what­so­ever. He dir­ects the poor gratis.”

I take no­tice of these by way of spe­ci­men. I could give you two or three dozen of the like and yet have abund­ance left be­hind. ’Tis suf­fi­cient from these to ap­prise any­one of the hu­mour of those times, and how a set of thieves and pick­pock­ets not only robbed and cheated the poor people of their money, but poisoned their bod­ies with odi­ous and fatal pre­par­a­tions; some with mer­cury, and some with other things as bad, per­fectly re­mote from the thing pre­ten­ded to, and rather hurt­ful than ser­vice­able to the body in case an in­fec­tion fol­lowed.

I can­not omit a sub­tlety of one of those quack op­er­at­ors, with which he gulled the poor people to crowd about him, but did noth­ing for them without money. He had, it seems, ad­ded to his bills, which he gave about the streets, this ad­vert­ise­ment in cap­ital let­ters, viz., “He gives ad­vice to the poor for noth­ing.”

Abund­ance of poor people came to him ac­cord­ingly, to whom he made a great many fine speeches, ex­amined them of the state of their health and of the con­sti­tu­tion of their bod­ies, and told them many good things for them to do, which were of no great mo­ment. But the is­sue and con­clu­sion of all was, that he had a pre­par­a­tion which if they took such a quant­ity of every morn­ing, he would pawn his life they should never have the plague; no, though they lived in the house with people that were in­fec­ted. This made the people all re­solve to have it; but then the price of that was so much, I think ’twas half-a-crown. “But, sir,” says one poor wo­man, “I am a poor alms­wo­man and am kept by the par­ish, and your bills say you give the poor your help for noth­ing.” “Ay, good wo­man,” says the doc­tor, “so I do, as I pub­lished there. I give my ad­vice to the poor for noth­ing, but not my physic.” “Alas, sir!” says she, “that is a snare laid for the poor, then; for you give them ad­vice for noth­ing; that is to say, you ad­vise them gratis, to buy your physic for their money; so does every shop­keeper with his wares.” Here the wo­man 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 find­ing she turned away his cus­tom­ers, was ob­liged to call her up­stairs again, and give her his box of physic for noth­ing, which per­haps, too, was good for noth­ing when she had it.

But to re­turn to the people, whose con­fu­sions fit­ted them to be im­posed upon by all sorts of pre­tend­ers and by every moun­te­bank. There is no doubt but these quack­ing sort of fel­lows raised great gains out of the miser­able people, for we daily found the crowds that ran after them were in­fin­itely greater, and their doors were more thronged than those of Dr. Brooks, Dr. Upton, Dr. Hodges, Dr. Ber­wick, or any, though the most fam­ous men of the time. And I was told that some of them got five pounds a day by their physic.

But there was still an­other mad­ness bey­ond all this, which may serve to give 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 of these; for these petty thieves only de­luded them to pick their pock­ets and get their money, in which their wicked­ness, whatever it was, lay chiefly on the side of the de­ceiv­ers, not upon the de­ceived. But in this part I am go­ing to men­tion, it lay chiefly in the people de­ceived, or equally in both; and this was in wear­ing charms, philtres, ex­or­cisms, am­u­lets, and I know not what pre­par­a­tions, to for­tify the body with them against the plague; as if the plague was not the hand of God, but a kind of pos­ses­sion of an evil spirit, and that it was to be kept off with cross­ings, signs of the zo­diac, pa­pers tied up with so many knots, and cer­tain words or fig­ures writ­ten on them, as par­tic­u­larly the word “Abracadabra,” formed in tri­angle or pyr­amid, thus:—

ABRACADABRA

ABRACADABR

ABRACADAB

ABRACADA

ABRACAD

ABRACA

ABRAC

ABRA

ABR

AB

A

Oth­ers had the Je­suits’ mark in a cross:

I H

S.

Oth­ers noth­ing but this mark, thus:

I might spend a great deal of time in my ex­clam­a­tions against the fol­lies, and in­deed the wicked­ness, of those things, in a time of such danger, in a mat­ter of such con­sequences as this, of a na­tional in­fec­tion. But my memor­andums of these things re­late rather to take no­tice only of the fact, and men­tion only that it was so. How the poor people found the in­suf­fi­ciency of those things, and how many of them were af­ter­wards car­ried away in the dead-carts and thrown into the com­mon graves of every par­ish with these hellish charms and trumpery hanging 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 first no­tion of the plaque be­ing at hand was among them, and which may be said to be from about Mi­chael­mas 1664, but more par­tic­u­larly after the two men died in St. Giles’s in the be­gin­ning of Decem­ber; and again, after an­other alarm in Febru­ary. For when the plague evid­ently spread it­self, they soon began to see the folly of trust­ing to those un­per­form­ing creatures who had gulled them of their money; and then their fears worked an­other way, namely, to amazement and stu­pid­ity, not know­ing what course to take or what to do either to help or re­lieve them­selves. But they ran about from one neigh­bour’s house to an­other, and even in the streets from one door to an­other, with re­peated cries of, “Lord, have mercy upon us! What shall we do?”

Indeed, the poor people were to be pit­ied in one par­tic­u­lar thing in which they had little or no re­lief, and which I de­sire to men­tion with a ser­i­ous awe and re­flec­tion, which per­haps every­one that reads this may not rel­ish; namely, that whereas death now began not, as we may say, to hover over every­one’s head only, but to look into their houses and cham­bers and stare in their faces. Though there might be some stu­pid­ity and dul­ness of the mind (and there was so, a great deal), yet there was a great deal of just alarm soun­ded into the very in­most soul, if I may so say, of oth­ers. Many con­sciences were awakened; many hard hearts melted into tears; many a pen­it­ent con­fes­sion was made of crimes long con­cealed. It would wound the soul of any Chris­tian to have heard the dy­ing groans of many a des­pair­ing creature, and none durst come near to com­fort them. Many a rob­bery, many a murder, was then con­fessed aloud, and nobody sur­viv­ing to re­cord the ac­counts of it. People might be heard, even into the streets as we passed along, call­ing upon God for mercy through Je­sus Christ, and say­ing, “I have been a thief,” “I have been an adulterer,” “I have been a mur­derer,” and the like, and none durst stop to make the least in­quiry into such things or to ad­min­is­ter com­fort to the poor creatures that in the an­guish both of soul and body thus cried out. Some of the min­is­ters did visit the sick at first and for a little while, but it was not to be done. It would have been present death to have gone into some houses. The very bur­i­ers of the dead, who were the hardene­d­est creatures in town, were some­times beaten back and so ter­ri­fied that they durst not go into houses where the whole fam­il­ies were swept away to­gether, and where the cir­cum­stances were more par­tic­u­larly hor­rible, as some were; but this was, in­deed, at the first heat of the dis­tem­per.

Time in­ured them to it all, and they ven­tured every­where af­ter­wards without hes­it­a­tion, as I shall have oc­ca­sion to men­tion at large here­after.

I am sup­pos­ing now the plague to be be­gun, as I have said, and that the ma­gis­trates began to take the con­di­tion of the people into their ser­i­ous con­sid­er­a­tion. What they did as to the reg­u­la­tion of the in­hab­it­ants and of in­fec­ted fam­il­ies, I shall speak to by it­self; but as to the af­fair of health, it is proper to men­tion it here that, hav­ing seen the fool­ish hu­mour of the people in run­ning after quacks and moun­te­banks, wiz­ards and for­tune-tell­ers, which they did as above, even to mad­ness, the Lord Mayor, a very sober and re­li­gious gen­tle­man, ap­poin­ted phys­i­cians and sur­geons for re­lief of the poor—I mean the dis­eased poor—and in par­tic­u­lar ordered the Col­lege of Phys­i­cians to pub­lish dir­ec­tions for cheap rem­ed­ies for the poor, in all the cir­cum­stances of the dis­tem­per. This, in­deed, was one of the most char­it­able and ju­di­cious things that could be done at that time, for this drove the people from haunt­ing the doors of every dis­perser of bills, and from tak­ing down blindly and without con­sid­er­a­tion poison for physic and death in­stead of life.

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

I shall not be sup­posed to lessen the au­thor­ity or ca­pa­city of the phys­i­cians when I say that the vi­ol­ence of the dis­tem­per, when it came to its ex­tremity, was like the fire the next year. The fire, which con­sumed what the plague could not touch, de­fied all the ap­plic­a­tion of rem­ed­ies; the fire-en­gines were broken, the buck­ets thrown away, and the power of man was baffled and brought to an end. So the plague de­fied all medi­cines; the very phys­i­cians were seized with it, with their pre­ser­vat­ives in their mouths; and men went about pre­scrib­ing to oth­ers and telling them what to do till the tokens were upon them, and they dropped down dead, des­troyed by that very en­emy they dir­ec­ted oth­ers to op­pose. This was the case of sev­eral phys­i­cians, even some of them the most em­in­ent, and of sev­eral of the most skil­ful sur­geons. Abund­ance of 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 ex­pect should pun­ish them as they knew they had de­served.

Not that it is any derog­a­tion from the la­bour or ap­plic­a­tion of the phys­i­cians to say they fell in the com­mon calam­ity; nor is it so in­ten­ded by me; it rather is to their praise that they ven­tured their lives so far as even to lose them in the ser­vice of man­kind. They en­deav­oured to do good, and to save the lives of oth­ers. But we were not to ex­pect that the phys­i­cians could stop God’s judge­ments, or pre­vent a dis­tem­per em­in­ently armed from heaven from ex­ecut­ing the er­rand it was sent about.

Doubt­less, the phys­i­cians as­sisted many by their skill, and by their prudence and ap­plic­a­tions, to the sav­ing of their lives and restor­ing their 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 those who were mor­tally in­fec­ted be­fore the phys­i­cians were sent for, as was fre­quently the case.

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

I men­tioned above shut­ting of houses up; and it is need­ful to say some­thing par­tic­u­larly to that, for this part of the his­tory of the plague 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 have said, began more par­tic­u­larly to con­cern them­selves for the reg­u­la­tion of the city.

The Justices of Peace for Middle­sex, by dir­ec­tion of the Sec­ret­ary of State, had be­gun to shut up houses in the par­ishes of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, St. Martin, St. Cle­ment Danes, etc., and it was with good suc­cess; for in sev­eral streets where the plague broke out, upon strict guard­ing the houses that were in­fec­ted, and tak­ing care to bury those that died im­me­di­ately after they were known to be dead, the plague ceased in those streets. It was also ob­served that the plague de­creased sooner in those par­ishes after they had been vis­ited to the full than it did in the par­ishes of Bish­opsgate, Shored­itch, Aldgate, White­chapel, Stepney, and oth­ers; the early care taken in that man­ner be­ing a great means to the put­ting a check to it.

This shut­ting up of houses was a method first taken, as I un­der­stand, in the plague which happened in 1603, at the com­ing of King James the First to the crown; and the power of shut­ting people up in their own houses was gran­ted by Act of Parlia­ment, en­titled, “An Act for the char­it­able Re­lief and Or­der­ing of Per­sons in­fec­ted with the Plague”; on which Act of Parlia­ment the Lord Mayor and al­der­men of the city of Lon­don foun­ded the or­der they made at this time, and which took place the 1st of July 1665, when the num­bers in­fec­ted within the city were but few, the last bill for the ninety-two par­ishes be­ing but four; and some houses hav­ing been shut up in the city, and some people be­ing re­moved to the pes­t­house bey­ond Bun­hill Fields, in the way to Is­ling­ton—I say, by these means, when there died near one thou­sand a week in the whole, the num­ber in the city was but twenty-eight, and the city was pre­served more healthy in pro­por­tion than any other place all the time of the in­fec­tion.

These or­ders of my Lord Mayor’s were pub­lished, as I have said, the lat­ter end of June, and took place from the 1st of July, and were as fol­lows, viz.:—

Orders Con­ceived and Pub­lished by the Lord Mayor and Al­der­men of the City 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 per­sons in­fec­ted with the plague, whereby au­thor­ity was given to Justices of the Peace, may­ors, bailiffs, and other head-of­ficers to ap­point within their sev­eral lim­its ex­am­iners, search­ers, watch­men, keep­ers, and bur­i­ers for the per­sons and places in­fec­ted, and to min­is­ter unto them oaths for the per­form­ance of their of­fices. And the same stat­ute did also au­thor­ise the giv­ing of other dir­ec­tions, as unto them for the present ne­ces­sity should seem good in their dir­ec­tions. It is now, upon spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion, thought very ex­pedi­ent for pre­vent­ing and avoid­ing of in­fec­tion of sick­ness (if it shall so please Almighty God) that these of­ficers fol­low­ing be ap­poin­ted, and these or­ders here­after duly ob­served.

Ex­am­iners to be ap­poin­ted in every Par­ish.

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

The Ex­am­iner’s Of­fice.

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

Watch­men.

“That to every in­fec­ted house there be ap­poin­ted two watch­men, one for every day, and the other for the night; and that these watch­men have a spe­cial care that no per­son go in or out of such in­fec­ted houses whereof they have the charge, upon pain of severe pun­ish­ment. And the said watch­men to do such fur­ther of­fices as the sick house shall need and re­quire: and if the watch­man be sent upon any busi­ness, to lock up the house and take the key with him; and the watch­man by day to at­tend un­til ten of the clock at night, and the watch­man by night un­til six in the morn­ing.

Search­ers.

“That there be a spe­cial care to ap­point wo­men search­ers in every par­ish, such as are of hon­est repu­ta­tion, and of the best sort as can be got in this kind; and these to be sworn to make due search and true re­port to the ut­most of their know­ledge whether the per­sons whose bod­ies they are ap­poin­ted to search do die of the in­fec­tion, or of what other dis­eases, as near as they can. And that the phys­i­cians who shall be ap­poin­ted for cure and pre­ven­tion of the in­fec­tion do call be­fore them the said search­ers who are, or shall be, ap­poin­ted for the sev­eral par­ishes un­der their re­spect­ive cares, to the end they may con­sider whether they are fitly qual­i­fied for that em­ploy­ment, and charge them from time to time as they shall see cause, if they ap­pear de­fect­ive in their du­ties.

“That no searcher dur­ing this time of vis­it­a­tion be per­mit­ted to use any pub­lic work or em­ploy­ment, or keep any shop or stall, or be em­ployed as a laundress, or in any other com­mon em­ploy­ment what­so­ever.

Chirur­geons.

“For bet­ter as­sist­ance of the search­ers, for­asmuch as there hath been here­to­fore great ab­use in mis­re­port­ing the dis­ease, to the fur­ther spread­ing of the in­fec­tion, it is there­fore ordered that there be chosen and ap­poin­ted able and dis­creet chirur­geons, be­sides those that do already be­long to the pes­t­house, amongst whom the city and Liber­ties to be quartered as the places lie most apt and con­veni­ent; and every of these to have one quarter for his limit; and the said chirur­geons in every of their lim­its to join with the search­ers for the view of the body, to the end there may be a true re­port made of the dis­ease.

“And fur­ther, that the said chirur­geons shall visit and search such­like per­sons as shall either send for them or be named and dir­ec­ted unto them by the ex­am­iners of every par­ish, and in­form them­selves of the dis­ease of the said parties.

“And for­asmuch as the said chirur­geons are to be se­questered from all other cures, and kept only to this dis­ease of the in­fec­tion, it is ordered that every of the said chirur­geons shall have twelve-pence a body searched by them, to be paid out of the goods of the party searched, if he be able, or oth­er­wise by the par­ish.

Nurse-keep­ers.

“If any nurse-keeper shall re­move her­self out of any in­fec­ted house be­fore twenty-eight days after the de­cease of any per­son dy­ing of the in­fec­tion, the house to which the said nurse-keeper doth so re­move her­self 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 any­one in his house com­plaineth, either of blotch or purple, or swell­ing in any part of his body, or falleth oth­er­wise dan­ger­ously sick, without ap­par­ent cause of some other dis­ease, shall give know­ledge thereof to the ex­am­iner of health within two 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 be se­questered in the same house; and in case he be so se­questered, then though he af­ter­wards die not, the house wherein he sickened should be shut up for a month, after the use of the due pre­ser­vat­ives taken by the rest.

Air­ing the Stuff.

“For se­quest­ra­tion of the goods and stuff of the in­fec­tion, their bed­ding and ap­parel and hangings of cham­bers must be well aired with fire and such per­fumes as are re­quis­ite within the in­fec­ted house be­fore they be taken again to use. This to be done by the ap­point­ment of an ex­am­iner.

Shut­ting up of the House.

“If any per­son shall have vis­ited any man known to be in­fec­ted of the plague, or entered will­ingly into any known in­fec­ted house, be­ing not al­lowed, the house wherein he in­hab­iteth shall be shut up for cer­tain days by the ex­am­iner’s dir­ec­tion.

None to be re­moved out of in­fec­ted Houses, but, etc.

“Item, that none be re­moved out of the house where he falleth sick of the in­fec­tion into any other house in the city (ex­cept it be to the pes­t­house or a tent, or unto some such house which the owner of the said vis­ited house hol­d­eth in his own hands and oc­cu­pi­eth by his own ser­vants); and so as se­cur­ity be given to the par­ish whither such re­move is made, that the at­tend­ance and charge about the said vis­ited per­sons shall be ob­served and charged in all the par­tic­u­lar­it­ies be­fore ex­pressed, without any cost of that par­ish to which any such re­move shall hap­pen to be made, and this re­move to be done by night. And it shall be law­ful to any per­son that hath two houses to re­move either his sound 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, nor again unto the sick the sound; and that the same which he sen­deth be for one week at the least shut up and se­cluded from com­pany, for fear of some in­fec­tion at the first not ap­pear­ing.

Burial of the Dead.

“That the burial of the dead by this vis­it­a­tion be at most con­veni­ent hours, al­ways either be­fore sun-rising or after sun-set­ting, with the priv­ity of the church­war­dens or con­stable, and not oth­er­wise; and that no 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 or be im­prisoned.

“And that no corpse dy­ing of in­fec­tion shall be bur­ied, or re­main in any church in time of com­mon prayer, ser­mon, or lec­ture. And that no chil­dren 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 fore­borne dur­ing the con­tinu­ance of this vis­it­a­tion.

No in­fec­ted Stuff to be uttered.

“That no clothes, stuff, bed­ding, or gar­ments be suffered to be car­ried or con­veyed out of any in­fec­ted houses, and that the cri­ers and car­ri­ers abroad of bed­ding or old ap­parel to be sold or pawned be ut­terly pro­hib­ited and re­strained, and no brokers of bed­ding or old ap­parel be 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 of im­pris­on­ment. And if any broker or other per­son shall buy any bed­ding, ap­parel, or other stuff out of any in­fec­ted house within two months after the in­fec­tion hath been there, his house shall be shut up as in­fec­ted, 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 any other means, to come or be con­veyed from a place in­fec­ted to any other place, the par­ish from whence such party hath come or been con­veyed, upon no­tice thereof given, shall at their charge cause the said party so vis­ited and es­caped to be car­ried and brought back again by night, and the parties in this case of­fend­ing to be pun­ished at the dir­ec­tion of the al­der­man of the ward, and the house of the re­ceiver of such vis­ited per­son 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 in the middle of the door, evid­ent to be seen, and with these usual prin­ted words, that is to say, ‘Lord, have mercy upon us,’ to be set close over the same cross, there to con­tinue un­til law­ful open­ing of the same house.

Every vis­ited House to be watched.

“That the con­stables see every house shut up, and to be at­ten­ded with watch­men, which may keep them in, and min­is­ter ne­ces­sar­ies unto them at their own charges, if they be able, or at the com­mon charge, if they are un­able; the shut­ting up to be for the space of four weeks after all be whole.

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

In­mates.

“That where sev­eral in­mates are in one and the same house, and any per­son in that house hap­pens to be in­fec­ted, no other per­son or fam­ily of such house shall be suffered to re­move him or them­selves without a cer­ti­fic­ate from the ex­am­iners of health of that par­ish; or in de­fault thereof, the house whither he or they so re­move shall be shut up as in case of vis­it­a­tion.

Hack­ney-Coaches.

“That care be taken of hack­ney-coach­men, that they may not (as some of them have been ob­served to do after car­ry­ing of in­fec­ted per­sons to the pes­t­house and other places) be ad­mit­ted to com­mon use till their coaches be well aired, and have stood un­em­ployed by the space of five or six days after such ser­vice.”

Orders for Cleans­ing and Keep­ing of the Streets Swept.

The Streets to be kept Clean.

“First, it is thought ne­ces­sary, and so ordered, that every house­holder do cause the street to be daily pre­pared be­fore his door, and so to keep it 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 the rakers, and that the raker shall give no­tice of his com­ing by the blow­ing 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 and com­mon pas­sages, and that no night­man or other be suffered to empty a vault 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 suffered to be sold about the city, or any part of the same.

“That the brew­ers and tip­pling-houses be looked into for musty and un­whole­some casks.

“That no hogs, dogs, or cats, or tame pi­geons, or ponies, be suffered to be kept within any part of the city, or any swine to be or stray in the streets or lanes, but that such swine be im­poun­ded by the beadle or any other of­ficer, and the owner pun­ished ac­cord­ing to Act of Com­mon Coun­cil, and that the dogs be killed by the dog-killers ap­poin­ted for that pur­pose.”

Orders Con­cern­ing Loose Per­sons and Idle Assem­blies.

Beg­gars.

“For­asmuch as noth­ing is more com­plained of than the mul­ti­tude of rogues and wan­der­ing beg­gars that swarm in every place about the city, be­ing a great cause of the spread­ing of the in­fec­tion, and will not be avoided, not­with­stand­ing any or­ders that have been given to the con­trary: It is there­fore now ordered, that such con­stables, and oth­ers whom this mat­ter may any way con­cern, take spe­cial care that no wan­der­ing beg­gars be suffered in the streets of this city in any fash­ion or man­ner what­so­ever, upon the pen­alty provided by the law, to be duly and severely ex­ecuted upon them.

Plays.

“That all plays, bear-bait­ings, games, singing of bal­lads, buck­ler-play, or such­like causes of as­sem­blies of people be ut­terly pro­hib­ited, and the parties of­fend­ing severely pun­ished by every al­der­man in his ward.

Feast­ing pro­hib­ited.

“That all pub­lic feast­ing, and par­tic­u­larly by the com­pan­ies of this city, and din­ners at tav­erns, ale­houses, and other places of com­mon en­ter­tain­ment, be for­borne till fur­ther or­der and al­low­ance; and that the money thereby spared be pre­served and em­ployed for the be­ne­fit and re­lief of the poor vis­ited with the in­fec­tion.

Tip­pling-houses.

“That dis­orderly tip­pling in tav­erns, ale­houses, cof­fee­houses, and cel­lars be severely looked unto, as the com­mon sin of this time and greatest oc­ca­sion of dis­pers­ing the plague. And that no com­pany or per­son be suffered to re­main or come into any tav­ern, ale­house, or cof­fee­house to drink after nine of the clock in the even­ing, ac­cord­ing to the an­cient law and cus­tom of this city, upon the pen­al­ties or­dained in that be­half.

“And for the bet­ter ex­e­cu­tion of these or­ders, and such other rules and dir­ec­tions as, upon fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion, shall be found need­ful: It is ordered and en­joined that the al­der­men, depu­ties, and com­mon coun­cil­men shall meet to­gether weekly, once, twice, thrice or of­tener (as cause shall re­quire), at some one gen­eral place ac­cus­tomed in their re­spect­ive wards (be­ing clear from in­fec­tion of the plague), to con­sult how the said or­ders may be duly put in ex­e­cu­tion; not in­tend­ing that any dwell­ing in or near places in­fec­ted shall come to the said meet­ing while their com­ing may be doubt­ful. And the said al­der­men, and depu­ties, and com­mon coun­cil­men in their sev­eral wards may put in ex­e­cu­tion any other good or­ders that by them at their said meet­ings shall be con­ceived and de­vised 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 were within the Lord Mayor’s jur­is­dic­tion, so it is re­quis­ite to ob­serve that the Justices of Peace within those par­ishes and places as were called the Ham­lets and out-parts took the same method. As I re­mem­ber, the or­ders 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 east­ern parts of the town at least, nor be­gin to be very vi­ol­ent, till the be­gin­ning of August. For ex­ample, the whole bill from the 11th to the 18th of July was 1,761, yet there died but 71 of the plague in all those par­ishes we call the Tower Ham­lets, and they were as fol­lows:—

The next week was thus:

And to the 1st of Aug. thus:

Aldgate

14

34

65

Stepney

33

58

76

White­chapel

21

48

79

St. Cath­er­ine, 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 in the next ad­join­ing par­ishes thus:—

The next week prodi­giously in­creased, as:

To the 1st of 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 and un­chris­tian method, and the poor people so con­fined made bit­ter lam­ent­a­tions. Com­plaints of the sever­ity of it were also daily brought to my Lord Mayor, of houses cause­lessly (and some ma­li­ciously) shut up. I can­not say; but upon in­quiry many that com­plained so loudly were found in a con­di­tion to be con­tin­ued; and oth­ers again, in­spec­tion be­ing made upon the sick per­son, and the sick­ness not ap­pear­ing in­fec­tious, or if un­cer­tain, yet on his be­ing con­tent to be car­ried to the pes­t­house, were re­leased.

It is true that the lock­ing up the doors of people’s houses, and set­ting a watch­man there night and day to pre­vent their stir­ring out or any com­ing to them, when per­haps the sound people in the fam­ily might have es­caped if they had been re­moved from the sick, looked very hard and cruel; and many people per­ished in these miser­able con­fine­ments which, ’tis reas­on­able to be­lieve, would not have been dis­tempered if they had had liberty, though the plague was in the house; at which the people were very clam­or­ous and un­easy at first, and sev­eral vi­ol­ences were com­mit­ted and in­jur­ies offered to the men who were set to watch the houses so shut up; also sev­eral people broke out by force in many places, as I shall ob­serve by-and-by. But it was a pub­lic good that jus­ti­fied the private mis­chief, and there was no ob­tain­ing the least mit­ig­a­tion by any ap­plic­a­tion to ma­gis­trates or gov­ern­ment at that time, at least not that I heard of. This put the people upon all man­ner of stratagem in or­der, if pos­sible, to get out; and it would fill a little volume to set down the arts used by the people of such houses to shut the eyes of the watch­men who were em­ployed, to de­ceive them, and to es­cape or break out from them, in which fre­quent scuffles and some mis­chief happened; of which by it­self.

As I went along Houndsditch one morn­ing about eight o’clock there was a great noise. It is true, in­deed, there was not much crowd, be­cause people were not very free to gather to­gether, or to stay long to­gether when they were there; nor did I stay long there. But the out­cry was loud enough to prompt my curi­os­ity, and I called to one that looked out of a win­dow, and asked what was the mat­ter.

A watch­man, it seems, had been em­ployed to keep his post at the door of a house which was in­fec­ted, or said to be in­fec­ted, and was shut up. He had 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 re­lieve him. All this while no noise had been heard in the house, no light had been seen; they called for noth­ing, sent him of no er­rands, which used to be the chief busi­ness of the watch­men; neither had they given him any dis­turb­ance, as he said, from the Monday af­ter­noon, when he heard great cry­ing and scream­ing in the house, which, as he sup­posed, was oc­ca­sioned by some of the fam­ily dy­ing just at that time. It seems, the night be­fore, the dead-cart, as it was called, had been stopped there, and a ser­vant-maid had been brought down to the door dead, and the bur­i­ers or bear­ers, as they were called, put her into the cart, wrapt only in a green rug, and car­ried her away.

The watch­man had knocked at the door, it seems, when he heard that noise and cry­ing, as above, and nobody answered a great while; but at last one looked out and said with an angry, quick tone, and yet a kind of cry­ing voice, or a voice of one that was cry­ing, “What d’ye want, that ye make such a knock­ing?” He answered, “I am the watch­man! How do you do? What is the mat­ter?” The per­son answered, “What is that to you? Stop the dead-cart.” This, it seems, was about one o’clock. Soon after, as the fel­low said, he stopped the dead-cart, and then knocked again, but nobody answered. He con­tin­ued knock­ing, and the bell­man called out sev­eral times, “Bring out your dead”; but nobody answered, till the man that 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 alone till the morn­ing-man,x or day-watch­man, as they called him, came to re­lieve him. Giv­ing him an ac­count of the par­tic­u­lars, they knocked at the door a great while, but nobody answered; and they ob­served that the win­dow or case­ment at which the per­son had looked out who had answered be­fore 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, where he saw a wo­man ly­ing dead upon the floor in a dis­mal man­ner, hav­ing no clothes on her but her shift. But though he called aloud, and put­ting in his long staff, knocked hard on the floor, yet nobody stirred or answered; neither could he hear any noise in the house.

He came down again upon this, and ac­quain­ted his fel­low, who went up also; and find­ing it just so, they re­solved to ac­quaint either the Lord Mayor or some other ma­gis­trate of it, but did not of­fer to go in at the win­dow. The ma­gis­trate, it seems, upon the in­form­a­tion of the two men, ordered the house to be broke open, a con­stable and other per­sons be­ing ap­poin­ted to be present, that noth­ing might be plundered; and ac­cord­ingly it was so done, when nobody was found in the house but that young wo­man, who hav­ing been in­fec­ted and past re­cov­ery, the rest had left her to die by her­self, and were every­one gone, hav­ing found some way to de­lude the watch­man, and to get open the door, or get out at some back­door, or over the tops of the houses, so that he knew noth­ing of it; and as to those cries and shrieks which he heard, it was sup­posed they were the pas­sion­ate cries of the fam­ily at the bit­ter part­ing, which, to be sure, it was to them all, this be­ing the sis­ter to the mis­tress of the fam­ily. The man of the house, his wife, sev­eral chil­dren, 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 when the watch­man was sent of some er­rand; for it was his busi­ness to go of any 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, or sur­geons, or nurses, or to or­der the dead-cart, and the like; but with this con­di­tion, too, that when he went he was to lock up the outer door of the house and take the key away with him. To evade this, and cheat the watch­men, people got two or three keys made to their locks, or they found ways to un­screw the locks such as were screwed on, and so take off the lock, be­ing in the in­side of the house, and while they sent away the watch­man 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 found out, the of­ficers af­ter­wards had or­ders to pad­lock up the doors on the out­side, 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 maid­ser­vant was taken sick. The mas­ter of the house had com­plained by his friends to the next al­der­man and to the Lord Mayor, and had con­sen­ted to have the maid car­ried to the pes­t­house, but was re­fused; so the door was marked with a red cross, a pad­lock on the out­side, as above, and a watch­man set to keep the door, ac­cord­ing to pub­lic or­der.

After the mas­ter of the house found there was no rem­edy, but that he, his wife, and his chil­dren were to be locked up with this poor dis­tempered ser­vant, he called to the watch­man, and told him he must go then and fetch a nurse for them to at­tend this poor girl, for that it would be cer­tain death to them all to ob­lige them to nurse her; and told him plainly that if he would not do this, the maid must per­ish either of the dis­tem­per or be starved for want of food, for he was re­solved none of his fam­ily should go near her; and she lay in the gar­ret four storey high, where she could not cry out, or call to any­body for help.

The watch­man con­sen­ted to that, and went and fetched a nurse, as he was ap­poin­ted, and brought her to them the same even­ing. Dur­ing this in­ter­val the mas­ter of the house took his op­por­tun­ity to break a large hole through his shop into a bulk or stall, where formerly a cob­bler had sat, be­fore or un­der his shop­win­dow; but the ten­ant, as may be sup­posed at such a dis­mal time as that, was dead or re­moved, and so he had the key in his own keep­ing. Hav­ing made his way into this stall, which he could not have done if the man had been at the door, the noise he was ob­liged to make be­ing such as would have alarmed the watch­man; I say, hav­ing made his way into this stall, he sat still till the watch­man re­turned with the nurse, and all the next day also. But the night fol­low­ing, hav­ing con­trived to send the watch­man of an­other tri­fling er­rand, which, as I take it, was to an apo­thecary’s for a plaister for the maid, which he was to stay for the mak­ing up, or some other such er­rand that might se­cure his stay­ing some time; in that time he con­veyed him­self and all his fam­ily out of the house, and left the nurse and the watch­man to bury the poor wench—that is, throw her into the cart—and take 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, heard of—and which are very cer­tain to be true, or very near the truth; that is to say, true in the gen­eral: for no man could at such a time learn all the par­tic­u­lars. There was like­wise vi­ol­ence used with the watch­men, as was re­por­ted, in abund­ance of places; and I be­lieve that from the be­gin­ning of the vis­it­a­tion to the end, there was not less than eight­een or 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 which were shut up, and where they at­temp­ted to come out and were op­posed.

Nor, in­deed, could less be ex­pec­ted, for here were so many pris­ons in the town as there were houses shut up; and as the people shut up or im­prisoned 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, had but one jailer, and as he had the whole house to guard, and that many houses were so situ­ated as that they had sev­eral ways out, some more, some less, and some into sev­eral streets, it was im­possible for one man so to guard all the pas­sages as to pre­vent the es­cape of people made des­per­ate by the fright of their cir­cum­stances, by the re­sent­ment of their us­age, or by the ra­ging of the dis­tem­per it­self; so that they would talk to the watch­man on one side of the house, while the fam­ily made their es­cape at an­other.

For ex­ample, in Cole­man Street there are abund­ance of al­leys, as ap­pears still. A house was shut up in that they call White’s Al­ley; and this house had a back-win­dow, not a door, into a court which had a pas­sage into Bell Al­ley. A watch­man was set by the con­stable at the door of this house, and there he stood, or his com­rade, night and day, while the fam­ily 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, and burned the poor fel­low dread­fully; and while he made hideous cries, and nobody would ven­ture to come near to help him, the whole fam­ily that were able to stir got out at the win­dows one storey high, two that were left sick call­ing out for help. Care was taken to give them nurses to look after them, but the per­sons fled were never found, till after the plague was abated they re­turned; but as noth­ing could be proved, so noth­ing could be done to them.

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

In other cases, some had gar­dens, and walls or pales, between them and their neigh­bours, or yards and back-houses; and these, by friend­ship and en­treat­ies, would get leave to get over those walls or pales, and so go out at their neigh­bours’ doors; or, by giv­ing money to their ser­vants, get them to let them through in the night; so that in short, the shut­ting up of houses was in no wise to be de­pended upon. Neither did it 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 all ad­ven­tures.

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

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

In this in­ter­val, between their be­ing taken sick and the ex­am­iners com­ing, the mas­ter of the house had leis­ure and liberty to re­move him­self 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 really in­fec­ted them­selves, and so car­ried the dis­ease into the houses of those who 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 scan­dal rather, which went about of the tem­per of people in­fec­ted: namely, that they did not take the least care or make any scruple of in­fect­ing oth­ers, though I can­not say but there might be some truth in it too, but not so gen­eral as was re­por­ted. What nat­ural reason could be given for so wicked a thing at a time when they might con­clude them­selves just go­ing to ap­pear at the bar of Div­ine Justice I know not. I am very well sat­is­fied that it can­not be re­con­ciled to re­li­gion and prin­ciple any more than it can be to gen­er­os­ity and hu­man­ity, but I may speak of that again.

I am speak­ing now of people made des­per­ate by the ap­pre­hen­sions of their be­ing shut up, and their break­ing out by stratagem or force, either be­fore or after they were shut up, whose misery was not lessened when they were out, but sadly in­creased. On the other hand, many that thus got away had re­treats to go to and other houses, where they locked them­selves up and kept hid till the plague was over; and many fam­il­ies, fore­see­ing the ap­proach of the dis­tem­per, laid up stores of pro­vi­sions suf­fi­cient for their whole fam­il­ies, and shut them­selves up, and that so en­tirely that they were neither seen or heard of till the in­fec­tion was quite ceased, and then came abroad sound and well. I might re­col­lect sev­eral such as these, and give you the par­tic­u­lars of their man­age­ment; for doubt­less it was the most ef­fec­tual se­cure step that could be taken for such whose cir­cum­stances would not ad­mit them to re­move, or who had not re­treats abroad proper for the case; for in be­ing thus shut up they were as if they had been a hun­dred miles off. Nor do I re­mem­ber that any one of those fam­il­ies mis­car­ried. Among these, sev­eral Dutch mer­chants were par­tic­u­larly re­mark­able, who kept their houses like little gar­ris­ons be­sieged, suf­fer­ing none to go in or out or come near them, par­tic­u­larly one in a court in Throg­mor­ton Street whose house looked into Draper’s Garden.

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

I re­mem­ber, and while I am writ­ing this story I think I hear the very sound of it, a cer­tain lady had an only daugh­ter, a young maiden about nine­teen years old, and who was pos­sessed of a very con­sid­er­able for­tune. They were only lodgers in the house where they were. The young wo­man, her mother, and the maid had been abroad on some oc­ca­sion, I do not re­mem­ber what, for the house was not shut up; but about two hours after they came home the young lady com­plained she was not well; in a quarter 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 the dis­tem­per!” The pain in her head in­creas­ing, her mother ordered the bed to be warmed, and re­solved to put her to bed, and pre­pared to give her things to sweat, which was the or­din­ary rem­edy to be taken when the first ap­pre­hen­sions of the dis­tem­per began.

While the bed was air­ing the mother un­dressed the young wo­man, and just as she was laid down in the bed, she, look­ing upon her body with a candle, im­me­di­ately dis­covered the fatal tokens on the in­side of her thighs. Her mother, not be­ing able to con­tain her­self, threw down her candle and shrieked out in such a fright­ful man­ner that it was enough to place hor­ror upon the stoutest heart in the world; nor was it one scream or one cry, but the fright hav­ing seized her spir­its, she fain­ted first, then re­covered, then ran all over the house, up the stairs and down the stairs, like one dis­trac­ted, and in­deed really was dis­trac­ted, and con­tin­ued screech­ing and cry­ing out for sev­eral hours void of all sense, or at least gov­ern­ment of her senses, and, as I was told, never came thor­oughly to her­self again. As to the young maiden, she was a dead corpse from that mo­ment, for the gan­grene which oc­ca­sions the spots had spread over her whole body, and she died in less than two hours. But still the mother con­tin­ued cry­ing out, not know­ing any­thing more of her child, sev­eral hours after she was dead. It is so long ago that I am not cer­tain, but I think the mother never re­covered, but died in two or three weeks after.

This was an ex­traordin­ary case, and I am there­fore the more par­tic­u­lar in it, be­cause I came so much to the know­ledge of it; but there were in­nu­mer­able such­like cases, and it was sel­dom that the weekly bill came in but there were two or three put in, “frighted”; that is, that may well be called frighted to death. But be­sides those who were so frighted as to die upon the spot, there were great num­bers frighted to other ex­tremes, some frighted out of their senses, some out of their memory, and some out of their un­der­stand­ing. But I re­turn to the shut­ting up of houses.

As sev­eral people, I say, got out of their houses by stratagem after they were shut up, so oth­ers got out by brib­ing the watch­men, and giv­ing them money to let them go privately out in the night. I must con­fess I thought it at that time the most in­no­cent cor­rup­tion or bribery that any man 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 whipped through 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 way after they had been shut up; but these were gen­er­ally such as had some places to re­tire to; and though there was no easy passing the roads any whither 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 the fields, car­ry­ing beds or straw to lie on, and pro­vi­sions to eat, and so lived in them as her­mits in a cell, for nobody would ven­ture to come near them; and sev­eral stor­ies were told of such, some com­ical, some tra­gical, some who lived like wan­der­ing pil­grims in the deserts, and es­caped by mak­ing them­selves ex­iles in such a man­ner as is scarce to be cred­ited, and who yet en­joyed more liberty than was to be ex­pec­ted in such cases.

I have by me a story of two broth­ers and their kins­man, who be­ing single men, but that had stayed in the city too long to get away, and in­deed not know­ing where to go to have any re­treat, nor hav­ing where­with to travel far, took a course for their own pre­ser­va­tion, which though in it­self at first des­per­ate, yet was so nat­ural that it may be wondered that no more did so at that time. They were but of mean con­di­tion, and yet not so very poor as that they could not fur­nish them­selves with some little con­veni­ences such as might serve to keep life and soul to­gether; and find­ing the dis­tem­per in­creas­ing in a ter­rible man­ner, they re­solved to 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 the Low Coun­tries, and hav­ing been bred to no par­tic­u­lar em­ploy­ment but his arms, and be­sides be­ing wounded, and not able to work very hard, had for some 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 been hurt of one leg, that he could not go to sea, but had worked for his liv­ing at a sail­maker’s in Wap­ping, or there­abouts; and be­ing a good hus­band, 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 he had no wealth but his box or bas­ket of tools, with the help of which he could at any time get his liv­ing, such a time as this ex­cep­ted, wherever he went—and he lived near Shad­well.

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

The story of those three men, if the reader will be con­tent to have me give it in their own per­sons, without tak­ing upon me to either vouch the par­tic­u­lars or an­swer for any mis­takes, I shall give as dis­tinctly as I can, be­liev­ing the his­tory will be a very good pat­tern for any poor man to fol­low, in case the like pub­lic des­ol­a­tion should hap­pen here; and if there 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, though not so freely as to run my­self into ap­par­ent danger, ex­cept when they dug the great pit in the church­yard of our par­ish of Aldgate. A ter­rible pit 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 about fif­teen 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 feet deep af­ter­wards in one part of it, till they could go no deeper for the wa­ter; for they had, it seems, dug sev­eral large pits be­fore this. For though the plague was long a-com­ing to our par­ish, yet, when it did come, there was no par­ish in or about Lon­don where it raged with such vi­ol­ence as in the two par­ishes of Aldgate and White­chapel.

I say they had dug sev­eral pits in an­other ground, when the dis­tem­per began to spread in our par­ish, and es­pe­cially when the dead-carts began to 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; then they made lar­ger holes wherein they bur­ied all that the cart brought in a week, which, by the middle to the end of August, came to from 200 to 400 a week; and they could not well dig them lar­ger, be­cause of the or­der of the ma­gis­trates con­fin­ing them to leave no bod­ies within six feet of the sur­face; and the wa­ter com­ing on at about sev­en­teen or eight­een 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 ever bur­ied in any par­ish about Lon­don of no lar­ger ex­tent, they ordered this dread­ful 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 more when they dug it, and some blamed the church­war­dens for suf­fer­ing such a fright­ful thing, telling them they were mak­ing pre­par­a­tions to bury the whole par­ish, and the like; but time made it ap­pear the church­war­dens knew the con­di­tion of the par­ish bet­ter than they did: for, the pit be­ing fin­ished the 4th of Septem­ber, I think, they began to bury in it the 6th, and by the 20th, which was just two weeks, they had thrown into it 1,114 bod­ies when they were ob­liged to fill it up, the bod­ies be­ing then come to lie within six feet of the sur­face. I doubt not but there may be some an­cient per­sons alive in the par­ish who can jus­tify the fact of this, and are able to show even in what place of the church­yard the pit lay bet­ter than I can. The mark of it also was many years to be seen in the church­yard on the sur­face, ly­ing in length par­al­lel with the pas­sage which goes by the west wall of the church­yard out of Houndsditch, and turns east again into White­chapel, com­ing out near the Three Nuns’ Inn.

It was about the 10th of Septem­ber that my curi­os­ity led, or rather drove, me to go and see this pit again, when there had been near 400 people bur­ied in it; and I was not con­tent to see it in the day­time, as I had done be­fore, for then there would have been noth­ing to have been seen but the loose earth; for all the bod­ies that were thrown in were im­me­di­ately covered with earth by those they called the bur­i­ers, which at other times were called bear­ers; but I re­solved to go in the night and see some of them thrown in.

There was a strict or­der to pre­vent people com­ing to those pits, and that was only to pre­vent in­fec­tion. But after some time that or­der was more ne­ces­sary, for people that were in­fec­ted and near their end, and de­li­ri­ous also, would run to those pits, wrapt in blankets or rugs, and throw them­selves in, and, as they said, bury them­selves. I can­not say that the of­ficers suffered any will­ingly to lie there; but I have heard that in a great pit in Fins­bury, in the par­ish of Crip­pleg­ate, it ly­ing open then to the fields, for it was not then walled about, many came and threw them­selves in, and ex­pired there, be­fore they threw any earth upon 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 idea of it to those who did not see it, other than this, that it was in­deed very, very, very dread­ful, and such as no tongue can ex­press.

I got ad­mit­tance into the church­yard by be­ing ac­quain­ted with the sex­ton who at­ten­ded; who, though he did not re­fuse me at all, yet earn­estly per­suaded me not to go, telling me very ser­i­ously (for he was a good, re­li­gious, and sens­ible man) that it was in­deed their busi­ness and duty to ven­ture, and to run all haz­ards, and that in it they might hope to be pre­served; but that I had no ap­par­ent call to it but my own curi­os­ity, which, he said, he be­lieved I would not pre­tend was suf­fi­cient to jus­tify my run­ning that haz­ard. I told him I had been pressed in my mind to go, and that per­haps it might be an in­struct­ing sight, that might not be without its uses. “Nay,” says the good man, “if you will ven­ture upon that score, name of God go in; for, de­pend upon it, ’twill be a ser­mon to you, it may be, the best that ever you heard in your life. ’Tis a speak­ing sight,” says he, “and has a voice with it, and a loud one, to call 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 waver­ing for a good while, but just at that in­ter­val I saw two links come over from the end of the Minor­ies, and heard the bell­man, and then ap­peared a dead-cart, as they called it, com­ing over the streets; so I could no longer res­ist my de­sire of see­ing it, and went in. There was nobody, as I could per­ceive at first, in the church­yard, or go­ing into it, but the bur­i­ers and the fel­low that drove the cart, or rather led the horse and cart; 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 his cloak, as if he was in great agony, and the bur­i­ers im­me­di­ately gathered about him, sup­pos­ing he was one of those poor de­li­ri­ous or des­per­ate creatures that used to pre­tend, as I have said, to bury them­selves. He said noth­ing as he walked about, but two or three times groaned very deeply and loud, and sighed as he would break his heart.

When the bur­i­ers came up to him they soon found he was neither a per­son in­fec­ted and des­per­ate, as I have ob­served above, or a per­son dis­tempered—in mind, but one op­pressed with a dread­ful weight of grief in­deed, hav­ing his wife and sev­eral of his chil­dren all in the cart that was just come in with him, and he fol­lowed in an agony and ex­cess of sor­row. He mourned heart­ily, as it was easy to see, but with a kind of mas­cu­line grief that could not give it­self vent by tears; and calmly de­fy­ing the bur­i­ers to let him alone, said he would only see the bod­ies thrown in and go away, so they left im­por­tun­ing him. But no sooner was the cart turned round and the bod­ies shot into the pit promis­cu­ously, which was a sur­prise to him, for he at least ex­pec­ted they would have been de­cently laid in, though in­deed he was af­ter­wards con­vinced that was im­prac­tic­able; I say, no sooner did he see the sight but he cried out 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. The bur­i­ers ran to him and took him up, and in a little while he came to him­self, and they led him away to the Pie Tav­ern over against the end of Houndsditch, where, it seems, the man was known, and where they took care of him. He looked into the pit again as he went away, but the bur­i­ers had covered the bod­ies so im­me­di­ately with throw­ing in earth, that though there was light enough, for there were lan­terns, and candles in them, placed all night round the sides of the pit, upon heaps of earth, seven or eight, or per­haps more, yet noth­ing could be seen.

This was a mourn­ful scene in­deed, and af­fected me al­most as much as the rest; but the other was aw­ful and full of ter­ror. The cart had in it six­teen or sev­en­teen bod­ies; some were wrapt up in linen sheets, some in rags, some little other than na­ked, or so loose that what cov­er­ing they had fell from them in the shoot­ing out of the cart, and they fell quite na­ked among the rest; but the mat­ter was not much to them, or the in­de­cency much to any­one else, see­ing they were all dead, and were to be 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; there was no other way of buri­als, neither was it pos­sible there should, for coffins were not to be had for the prodi­gious num­bers that fell in such a calam­ity as this.

It was re­por­ted by way of scan­dal upon the bur­i­ers, that if any corpse was de­livered to them de­cently wound up, as we called it then, in a wind­ing-sheet tied over the head and feet, which some did, and which was gen­er­ally of good linen; I say, it was re­por­ted that the bur­i­ers were so wicked as to strip them in the cart and carry them quite na­ked to the ground. 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 it and leave it un­deter­mined.

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

I was in­deed shocked with this sight; it al­most over­whelmed me, and I went away with my heart most af­flic­ted, and full of the af­flict­ing thoughts, 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 with links, and a bell­man go­ing be­fore, com­ing out of Har­row Al­ley in the Butcher 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 to­ward the church. I stood a while, but I had no stom­ach to go back again to see the same dis­mal scene over again, so I went dir­ectly home, where I could not but con­sider with thank­ful­ness the risk I had run, be­liev­ing I had got­ten no in­jury, as in­deed I had not.

Here the poor un­happy gen­tle­man’s grief came into my head again, and in­deed I could not but shed tears in the re­flec­tion upon it, per­haps more than he did him­self; but his case lay so heavy upon my mind that I could not pre­vail with my­self, but that I must go out again into the street, and go to the Pie Tav­ern, resolv­ing to in­quire what be­came of him.

It was by this time one o’clock in the morn­ing, and yet the poor gen­tle­man 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 ap­peared the man was per­fectly sound him­self.

It is with re­gret that I take no­tice of this tav­ern. The people were civil, man­nerly, and an ob­li­ging sort of folks enough, and had till this time kept their house open and their trade go­ing on, though not so very pub­licly as formerly; but there was a dread­ful set of fel­lows that used their house, and who, in the middle of all this hor­ror, met there every night, be­haved with all the rev­el­ling and roar­ing ex­tra­vag­ances as is usual for such people to do at other times, and, in­deed, to such an of­fens­ive de­gree that the very mas­ter and mis­tress of the house grew first ashamed and then ter­ri­fied at them.

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

These gen­tle­men, be­ing some­thing dis­turbed with the clut­ter of bring­ing the poor gen­tle­man into the house, as above, were first angry and very high with the mas­ter of the house for suf­fer­ing such a fel­low, as they called him, to be brought out of the grave into their house; but be­ing answered that the man was a neigh­bour, and that he was sound, but over­whelmed with the calam­ity of his fam­ily, and the like, they turned their an­ger into ri­dicul­ing the man and his sor­row for his wife and chil­dren, taunted him with want of cour­age to leap into the great pit and 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 far as I could see, though the man sat still, mute and dis­con­sol­ate, and their af­fronts could not di­vert his sor­row, yet he was both grieved and of­fen­ded at their dis­course. Upon this I gently re­proved them, be­ing well enough ac­quain­ted with their char­ac­ters, and not un­known in per­son to two of them.

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

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

I can­not call ex­actly to mind the hellish, ab­om­in­able raillery which was 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 could re­mem­ber, would I fill my ac­count with any of the words, the hor­rid oaths, 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 that could be found had at that time some ter­ror upon their minds of the hand of that Power which could thus in a mo­ment des­troy them.

But that which was the worst in all their dev­il­ish lan­guage was, that they were not afraid to blas­pheme God and talk athe­ist­ic­ally, mak­ing a jest of my call­ing the plague the hand of God; mock­ing, and even laugh­ing, at the word “judge­ment,” as if the provid­ence of God had no con­cern in the in­flict­ing such a des­ol­at­ing stroke; and that the people call­ing upon God as they saw the carts car­ry­ing away the dead bod­ies was all en­thu­si­astic, ab­surd, and im­per­tin­ent.

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

They re­ceived all re­proof with the ut­most con­tempt, and made the greatest mock­ery that was pos­sible for them to do at me, giv­ing me all the op­pro­bri­ous, in­solent scoffs that they could think of for preach­ing to them, as they called it, which in­deed grieved me, rather than angered me; and I went away, bless­ing God, how­ever, in my mind that I had not spared 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 re­li­gious or ser­i­ous, or that were any way touched with the sense of the ter­rible judge­ment of God upon us; and I was in­formed they flouted in the same man­ner at the good people who, not­with­stand­ing the con­ta­gion, met at the church, fas­ted, and prayed to God to re­move His hand from them.

I say, they con­tin­ued this dread­ful course three or four days—I think it was no more—when one of them, par­tic­u­larly he who asked the poor gen­tle­man what he did out of his grave, was struck from Heaven with the plague, and died in a most de­plor­able man­ner; and, in a word, they were every one of them car­ried into the great pit which I have men­tioned above, be­fore it was quite filled up, which was not above a fort­night or there­about.

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

But this began to abate a little with them be­fore the ac­ci­dent which I have re­lated happened, for the in­fec­tion in­creased so vi­ol­ently at this part of the town now, that people began to be afraid to come to the church; at least such num­bers did not re­sort thither as was usual. Many of 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 not only to ven­ture be­ing in town at such a time as this, but like­wise to ven­ture to come to church and per­form the of­fice of a min­is­ter to a con­greg­a­tion, of whom he had reason to be­lieve many of them were ac­tu­ally in­fec­ted with the plague, and to do this every day, or twice a day, as in some places was done.

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

Oth­ers as­sembled at meet­ing­houses, every­one as their dif­fer­ent opin­ions in such things guided, but all were promis­cu­ously the sub­ject of these men’s drollery, es­pe­cially at the be­gin­ning of the vis­it­a­tion.

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

I went home, in­deed, grieved and af­flic­ted in my mind at the ab­om­in­able wicked­ness of those men, not doubt­ing, how­ever, that they would be made dread­ful ex­amples of God’s justice; for I looked upon this dis­mal time to be a par­tic­u­lar sea­son of di­vine ven­geance, and that God would on this oc­ca­sion single out the proper ob­jects of His dis­pleas­ure in a more es­pe­cial and re­mark­able man­ner than at an­other time; and that though I did be­lieve that many good people would, and did, fall in the com­mon calam­ity, and that it was no cer­tain rule to judge of the eternal state of any­one by their be­ing dis­tin­guished in such a time of gen­eral de­struc­tion neither one way or other; yet, I say, it could not but seem reas­on­able to be­lieve that God would not think fit to spare by His mercy such open de­clared en­emies, that should in­sult His name and Be­ing, defy His 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 at other times; that this was a day of vis­it­a­tion, a day of God’s an­ger, and those words came into my thought, Jeremiah v 9: “Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord: and shall not My soul be avenged of such a na­tion as this?”

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

I had, in­deed, been in some pas­sion at first with them—though it was really raised, not by any af­front they had offered me per­son­ally, but by the hor­ror their blas­phem­ing tongues filled me with. However, I was doubt­ful in my thoughts whether the re­sent­ment I re­tained was not all upon my own private ac­count, for they had given me a great deal of ill lan­guage too—I mean per­son­ally; but after some pause, and hav­ing a weight 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 for my pre­ser­va­tion in the em­in­ent danger I had been in, I set my mind ser­i­ously and with the ut­most earn­est­ness to pray for those des­per­ate wretches, that God would par­don them, open their eyes, and ef­fec­tu­ally humble them.

By this I not only did my duty, namely, to pray for those who des­pite­fully used me, but I fully tried my own heart, to my full sat­is­fac­tion, that it was not filled with any spirit of re­sent­ment as they had of­fen­ded me in par­tic­u­lar; and I humbly re­com­mend the method to all those that would know, or be cer­tain, how to dis­tin­guish between their zeal for the hon­our of God and the ef­fects of their private pas­sions and re­sent­ment.

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

Dur­ing the shut­ting up of houses, as I have said, some vi­ol­ence was offered to the watch­men. As to sol­diers, there were none to be found. The few guards which the king then had, which were noth­ing like the num­ber en­ter­tained since, were dis­persed, either at Ox­ford with the Court, or in quar­ters in the re­moter parts of the coun­try, small de­tach­ments ex­cep­ted, who did duty at the Tower and at White­hall, and these but very few. Neither am I pos­it­ive that there was any other guard at the Tower than the ward­ers, as they called them, who stand at the gate with gowns and caps, the same as the yeo­men of the guard, ex­cept the or­din­ary gun­ners, who were twenty-four, and the of­ficers ap­poin­ted to look after the magazine, who were called ar­mour­ers. As to trained bands, there was no pos­sib­il­ity of rais­ing any; neither, if the Lieu­ten­ancy, either of Lon­don or Middle­sex, had ordered the drums to beat for the mi­li­tia, would any of the com­pan­ies, I be­lieve, have drawn to­gether, whatever risk they had run.

This made the watch­men be the less re­garded, and per­haps oc­ca­sioned the greater vi­ol­ence to be used against them. I men­tion it on this score to ob­serve that the set­ting watch­men thus to keep the people in was, first of all, not ef­fec­tual, but that the people broke out, whether by force or by stratagem, even al­most as of­ten as they pleased; and, second, that those that did thus break out were gen­er­ally people in­fec­ted who, in their des­per­a­tion, run­ning about from one place to an­other, val­ued not whom they in­jured: and which per­haps, as I have said, might give birth to re­port that it was nat­ural to the in­fec­ted people to de­sire to in­fect oth­ers, which re­port was really false.

And I know it so well, and in so many sev­eral cases, that I could give sev­eral re­la­tions of good, pi­ous, and re­li­gious people who, when they have had the dis­tem­per, have been so far from be­ing for­ward to in­fect oth­ers that they have for­bid their own fam­ily to come near them, in hopes of their be­ing pre­served, and have even died without see­ing their nearest re­la­tions lest they should be in­stru­mental to give them the dis­tem­per, and in­fect or en­danger them. If, then, there were cases wherein the in­fec­ted people were care­less of the in­jury they did to oth­ers, this was cer­tainly one of them, if not the chief, namely, when people who had the dis­tem­per had broken out from houses which were so shut up, and hav­ing been driven to ex­tremit­ies for pro­vi­sion or for en­ter­tain­ment, had en­deav­oured to con­ceal their con­di­tion, and have been thereby in­stru­mental in­vol­un­tar­ily to in­fect oth­ers who have been ig­nor­ant 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 rather im­pris­on­ing, people in their own houses, as I said above, was of little or no ser­vice in the whole. Nay, I am of opin­ion it was rather hurt­ful, hav­ing forced those des­per­ate people to wander abroad with the plague upon them, who would oth­er­wise have died quietly in their beds.

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

They told him they had no lodging that they could spare but one bed up in the gar­ret, and that they could spare that bed for one night, some drovers be­ing ex­pec­ted the next day with cattle; so, if he would ac­cept of that lodging, he might have it, which he did. So a ser­vant was sent up with a candle with him to show him the room. He was very well dressed, and looked like a per­son not used to lie in a gar­ret; and when he 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 ser­vant as­sur­ing him again that they had no bet­ter, “Well,” says he, “I must make shift; this is a dread­ful time; but it is but for one night.” So he sat down upon the bed­side, and bade the maid, I think it was, fetch him up a pint of warm ale. Ac­cord­ingly the ser­vant went for the ale, but some hurry in the house, which per­haps em­ployed her other ways, put it out of her head, and she went up no more to him.

The next morn­ing, see­ing no ap­pear­ance of the gen­tle­man, some­body in the house asked the ser­vant that had showed him up­stairs what was be­come of him. She star­ted. “Alas I,” says she, “I never thought more of him. He bade me carry him some warm ale, but I for­got.” Upon which, not the maid, but some other per­son was sent up to see after him, who, com­ing into the room, found him stark dead and al­most cold, stretched out across the bed. His clothes were pulled off, his jaw fallen, his eyes open in a most fright­ful pos­ture, the rug of the bed be­ing grasped hard in one of his hands, so that it was plain he died soon after the maid left him; and ’tis prob­able, had she gone up with the ale, she had found him dead in a few minutes after he sat down upon the bed. The alarm was great in the house, as any­one may sup­pose, they hav­ing been free from the dis­tem­per till that dis­aster, which, bring­ing the in­fec­tion to the house, spread it im­me­di­ately to other houses round about it. I do not re­mem­ber how many died in the house it­self, but I think the maid­ser­vant who went up first with him fell presently ill by the fright, and sev­eral oth­ers; for, whereas there died but two in Is­ling­ton of the plague the week be­fore, there died sev­en­teen the week after, whereof four­teen were of 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, when their houses happened to be in­fec­ted, and that was this: the fam­il­ies who, in the first break­ing-out of the dis­tem­per, fled away into the coun­try and had re­treats among their friends, gen­er­ally found some or other of their neigh­bours or re­la­tions to com­mit the charge of those houses to for the safety of the goods and the like. Some houses were, in­deed, en­tirely locked up, the doors pad­locked, the win­dows and doors hav­ing deal boards nailed over them, and only the in­spec­tion of them com­mit­ted to the or­din­ary watch­men and par­ish of­ficers; but these were but few.

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

This was, in many cases, the sav­ing a whole fam­ily, who, if they had been shut up with the sick per­son, would in­ev­it­ably have per­ished. But, on the other hand, this was an­other of the in­con­veni­ences of shut­ting up houses; for the ap­pre­hen­sions and ter­ror of be­ing shut up made many run away 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 still to con­ceal their cir­cum­stances, or per­haps not know­ing it them­selves, gave the dis­tem­per to oth­ers, and spread the in­fec­tion in a dread­ful man­ner, as I shall ex­plain fur­ther here­after.

And here I may be able to make an ob­ser­va­tion or two of my own, which may be of use here­after to those into whose hands these may come, if they should ever see the like dread­ful vis­it­a­tion.

1. The in­fec­tion gen­er­ally came into the houses of the cit­izens by the means of their ser­vants, whom they were ob­liged to send up and down the streets for ne­ces­sar­ies; that is to say, for food or physic, to bake­houses, brew-houses, shops, etc.; and who go­ing ne­ces­sar­ily through the streets into shops, mar­kets, and the like, it was im­possible but that they should, one way or other, meet with dis­tempered people, who con­veyed the fatal breath into them, and they brought it home to the fam­il­ies to which they be­longed.

2. It was a great mis­take that such a great city as this had but one pes­t­house; for had there been, in­stead of one pes­t­house—viz., bey­ond Bun­hill Fields, where, at most, they could re­ceive, per­haps, two hun­dred or three hun­dred people—I say, had there, in­stead of that one, been sev­eral pes­t­houses, every one able to con­tain a 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 es­pe­cially had been taken sick in his house, been ob­liged to send them to the next pes­t­house, if they were will­ing, as many were, and had the ex­am­iners done the like among the poor people when any had been stricken with the in­fec­tion; I say, had this been done where the people were will­ing (not oth­er­wise), and the houses not been shut, I am per­suaded, and was all the while of that opin­ion, that not so many, by sev­eral thou­sands, had died; for it was ob­served, and I could give sev­eral in­stances within the com­pass of my own know­ledge, where a ser­vant had been taken sick, and the fam­ily had either time to send him out or re­tire from the house and leave the sick per­son, as I have said above, they had all been pre­served; whereas when, upon one or more sick­en­ing in a fam­ily, the house has been shut up, the whole fam­ily have per­ished, and the bear­ers been ob­liged to go in to fetch out the dead bod­ies, not be­ing able to bring 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 by in­fec­tion; that is to say, by some cer­tain steams or fumes, which the phys­i­cians call ef­flu­via, by the breath, or by the sweat, or by the stench of the sores of the sick per­sons, or some other way, per­haps, bey­ond even the reach of the phys­i­cians them­selves, which ef­flu­via af­fected 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 their spir­its to that de­gree which it was found they were agit­ated; and so those newly in­fec­ted per­sons com­mu­nic­ated it in the same man­ner to oth­ers. And this I shall give some in­stances of, that can­not but con­vince those who ser­i­ously con­sider it; and I can­not but with some won­der find some people, now the con­ta­gion is over, talk of its be­ing an im­me­di­ate stroke from Heaven, without the agency of means, hav­ing com­mis­sion to strike this and that par­tic­u­lar per­son, and none other—which I look upon with con­tempt as the ef­fect of mani­fest ig­nor­ance and en­thu­si­asm; like­wise the opin­ion of oth­ers, who talk of in­fec­tion be­ing car­ried on by the air only, by car­ry­ing with it vast num­bers of in­sects and in­vis­ible creatures, who enter into the body with the breath, or even at the pores with the air, and there gen­er­ate or emit most acute pois­ons, or pois­on­ous ovae or eggs, which mingle them­selves with the blood, and so in­fect the body: a dis­course full of learned sim­pli­city, and mani­fes­ted to be so by uni­ver­sal ex­per­i­ence; but I shall say more to this case in its or­der.

I must here take fur­ther no­tice that noth­ing was more fatal to the in­hab­it­ants of this city than the su­pine neg­li­gence of the people them­selves, who, dur­ing the long no­tice or warn­ing they had of the vis­it­a­tion, made no pro­vi­sion for it by lay­ing in store of pro­vi­sions, or of other ne­ces­sar­ies, by which they might have lived re­tired and within their own houses, as I have ob­served oth­ers did, and who were in a great meas­ure pre­served by that cau­tion; nor were they, after they were 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 so little pro­vi­sion that my ser­vants were ob­liged to go out of doors to buy every trifle by penny and half­penny, just as be­fore it began, even till my ex­per­i­ence show­ing me the folly, I began to be wiser so late that I had scarce time to store my­self suf­fi­cient for our com­mon sub­sist­ence for a month.

I had in fam­ily only an an­cient wo­man that man­aged the house, a maid­ser­vant, two ap­pren­tices, and my­self; and the plague be­gin­ning to in­crease about us, I had many sad thoughts about what course I should take, and how I should act. The many dis­mal ob­jects, which happened every­where as I went about the streets, had filled my mind with a great deal of hor­ror for fear of the dis­tem­per, which was in­deed very hor­rible in it­self, and in some more than in oth­ers. The swell­ings, which were gen­er­ally 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; and some, not able to bear the tor­ment, threw them­selves out at win­dows or shot them­selves, or oth­er­wise made them­selves away, and I saw sev­eral dis­mal ob­jects of that kind. Oth­ers, un­able to con­tain them­selves, ven­ted their pain by in­cess­ant roar­ings, and such loud and lam­ent­able cries were to be heard as we walked along the streets that would pierce the very heart to think of, es­pe­cially when it was to be con­sidered that the same dread­ful scourge might be ex­pec­ted every mo­ment to seize upon ourselves.

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

Ter­ri­fied by those fright­ful ob­jects, I would re­tire home some­times and re­solve to go out no more; and per­haps I would keep those res­ol­u­tions for three or four days, which time I spent in the most ser­i­ous thank­ful­ness for my pre­ser­va­tion and the pre­ser­va­tion of my fam­ily, and the con­stant con­fes­sion of my sins, giv­ing my­self up to God every day, and ap­ply­ing to Him with fast­ing, hu­mi­li­ation, and med­it­a­tion. Such in­ter­vals as I had I em­ployed in read­ing books and in writ­ing down my memor­andums of what oc­curred to me every day, and out of which af­ter­wards I took most of this work, as it relates to my ob­ser­va­tions without doors. What I wrote of my private med­it­a­tions I re­serve for private use, and de­sire it may not be made pub­lic on any ac­count whatever.

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

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

It was now the be­gin­ning of August, and the plague grew very vi­ol­ent and ter­rible in the place where I lived, and Dr. Heath com­ing to visit me, and find­ing that I ven­tured so of­ten out in the streets, earn­estly per­suaded me to lock my­self up and my fam­ily, and not to suf­fer any of us to go out of doors; to keep all our win­dows fast, shut­ters and cur­tains close, and never to open them; but first, to make a very strong smoke in the room where the win­dow or door was to be opened, with rozen and pitch, brim­stone or gun­powder and the like; and we did this for some time; 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, I at­temp­ted, though it was so very late, to do some­thing to­wards it; and first, as I had con­veni­ence both for brew­ing and bak­ing, I went and bought two sacks of meal, and for sev­eral weeks, hav­ing an oven, we baked all our own bread; also I bought malt, and brewed as much beer as all the casks I had would hold, and which seemed enough to serve my house for five or six weeks; also I laid in a quant­ity of salt but­ter and Cheshire cheese; but I had no flesh-meat, and the plague raged so vi­ol­ently among the butchers and slaughter­houses on the other side of our street, where they are known to dwell in great num­bers, that it was not ad­vis­able so much as to go over the street among them.

And here I must ob­serve again, that this ne­ces­sity of go­ing out of our houses to buy pro­vi­sions was in a great meas­ure the ruin of the whole city, for the people catched the dis­tem­per on these oc­ca­sions one of an­other, and even the pro­vi­sions them­selves were of­ten tain­ted; at least I have great reason to be­lieve so; and there­fore I can­not say with sat­is­fac­tion what I know is re­peated with great as­sur­ance, that the mar­ket-people and such as brought pro­vi­sions to town were never in­fec­ted. I am cer­tain the butchers of White­chapel, where the greatest part of the flesh-meat was killed, were dread­fully vis­ited, and that at least to such a de­gree that few of their shops were kept open, and those that re­mained of them killed their meat at Mile End and that way, and brought it to mar­ket upon horses.

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

It is true people used all pos­sible pre­cau­tion. When any­one bought a joint of meat in the mar­ket they would not take it off the butcher’s hand, but took it off the hooks them­selves. On the other hand, the butcher would not touch the money, but have it put into a pot full of vin­egar, which he kept for that pur­pose. The buyer car­ried al­ways small money to make up any odd sum, that they might take no change. They car­ried bottles of scents and per­fumes in their hands, and all the means that could be used were used, but then the poor could not do even these things, 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 many people that had the plague upon them knew noth­ing of it till the in­ward gan­grene had af­fected their vi­tals, and they died in a few mo­ments. This caused that many died fre­quently in that man­ner in the streets sud­denly, without any warn­ing; oth­ers per­haps had time to go to the next bulk or stall, or to any door-porch, and just sit down and die, as I have said be­fore.

These ob­jects were so fre­quent in the streets that when the plague came to be very ra­ging on one side, there was scarce any passing by the streets but that sev­eral dead bod­ies would be ly­ing here and there upon the ground. On the other hand, it is ob­serv­able that though at first the people would stop as they went along and call to the neigh­bours to come out on such an oc­ca­sion, yet af­ter­ward no no­tice was taken of them; but that if at any time we found a corpse ly­ing, go across the way and not come near it; or, if in a nar­row lane or pas­sage, go back again and seek some other way to go on the busi­ness we were upon; and in those cases the corpse was al­ways left till the of­ficers had no­tice to come and take them away, or till night, when the bear­ers at­tend­ing the dead-cart would take them up and carry them away. Nor did those un­daun­ted creatures who per­formed these of­fices fail to search their pock­ets, and some­times strip off their clothes if they were well dressed, as some­times they were, and carry off what they could get.

But to re­turn to the mar­kets. The butchers took that care that if any per­son died in the mar­ket they had the of­ficers al­ways at hand to take them up upon hand­bar­rows and carry them to the next church­yard; and this 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 went into the gen­eral art­icles of the great dis­tem­per.

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

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

But though I con­fined my fam­ily, I could not pre­vail upon my un­sat­is­fied curi­os­ity to stay within en­tirely my­self; and though I gen­er­ally came frighted and ter­ri­fied home, yet I could not re­strain; only that in­deed I did not do it so fre­quently as at first.

I had some little ob­lig­a­tions, in­deed, upon me to go to my brother’s house, which was in Cole­man Street par­ish and which he had left to my care, and I went at first every day, but af­ter­wards only once or twice a week.

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

Passing through Token­house Yard, in Loth­bury, of a sud­den a case­ment vi­ol­ently opened just over my head, and a wo­man gave three fright­ful screeches, and then cried, “Oh! death, death, death!” in a most in­im­it­able tone, and which struck me with hor­ror and a chill­ness in my very blood. There was nobody to be seen in the whole street, neither did any other win­dow open, for people had no curi­os­ity now in any case, nor could 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 more ter­rible 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 wo­men and chil­dren run scream­ing about the rooms like dis­trac­ted, when a gar­ret-win­dow opened and some­body from a win­dow on the other side the al­ley called and asked, “What is the mat­ter?” upon which, from the first win­dow, 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 a deputy al­der­man, and very rich. I care not to men­tion the name, though I knew his name too, but that would be an hard­ship to the fam­ily, which is now flour­ish­ing again.

But this is but one; it is scarce cred­ible what dread­ful cases happened in 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, and of­ten­times lay­ing vi­ol­ent hands upon them­selves, throw­ing them­selves out at their win­dows, shoot­ing them­selves etc.; moth­ers mur­der­ing their own chil­dren in their lun­acy, some dy­ing of mere grief as a pas­sion, some of mere fright and sur­prise without any in­fec­tion at all, oth­ers frighted into idi­ot­ism and fool­ish dis­trac­tions, some into des­pair and lun­acy, oth­ers into mel­an­choly mad­ness.

The pain of the swell­ing was in par­tic­u­lar very vi­ol­ent, and to some in­tol­er­able; the phys­i­cians and sur­geons may be said to have tor­tured many poor creatures even to death. The swell­ings in some grew hard, and they ap­plied vi­ol­ent draw­ing-plaisters or poult­ices to break them, and if these did not do they cut and scar­i­fied them in a ter­rible man­ner. In some those swell­ings were made hard partly by the force of the dis­tem­per and partly by their be­ing too vi­ol­ently drawn, and were so hard that no in­stru­ment could cut them, and then they burnt them with caustics, so that many died rav­ing mad with the tor­ment, and some in the very op­er­a­tion. In these dis­tresses, some, for want of help to hold them down in their beds, or to look to them, laid hands upon them­selves as above. Some broke out into the streets, per­haps na­ked, and would run dir­ectly down to the river if they were not stopped by the watch­man or other of­ficers, and plunge them­selves into the wa­ter wherever they found it.

It of­ten pierced my very soul to hear the groans and cries of those who were thus tor­men­ted, but of the two this was coun­ted the most prom­ising par­tic­u­lar in the whole in­fec­tion, for if these swell­ings could be brought to a head, and to break and run, or, as the sur­geons call it, to di­gest, the pa­tient gen­er­ally re­covered; whereas those who, like the gen­tle­wo­man’s daugh­ter, were struck with death at the be­gin­ning, and had the tokens come out upon them, of­ten went about in­dif­fer­ent easy till a little be­fore they died, and some till the mo­ment they dropped down, as in apo­plex­ies and epi­lep­sies is of­ten the case. Such would be taken sud­denly very sick, and would run to a bench or bulk, or any con­veni­ent place that offered it­self, or to their own houses if pos­sible, as I men­tioned be­fore, and there sit down, grow faint, and die. This kind of dy­ing was much the same as it was with those who die of com­mon mor­ti­fic­a­tions, who die swoon­ing, and, as it were, go away in a dream. Such as died thus had very little no­tice of their be­ing in­fec­ted at all till the gan­grene was spread through their whole body; nor could phys­i­cians them­selves know cer­tainly how it was with them till they opened 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 and watch­men who looked after the dy­ing people; that is to say, hired nurses who at­ten­ded in­fec­ted people, us­ing them bar­bar­ously, starving them, smoth­er­ing them, or by other wicked means hasten­ing their end, that is to say, mur­der­ing of them; and watch­men, be­ing set to guard houses that were shut up when there has been but one per­son left, and per­haps that one ly­ing sick, that they have broke in and murdered that body, and im­me­di­ately thrown them out into the dead-cart! And so they have gone scarce cold to the grave.

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

That there were a great many rob­ber­ies and wicked prac­tices com­mit­ted even in this dread­ful time I do not deny. The power of av­arice was so strong in some that they would run any haz­ard to steal and to plun­der; and par­tic­u­larly in houses where all the fam­il­ies or in­hab­it­ants have been dead and car­ried out, they would break in at all haz­ards, and without re­gard to the danger of in­fec­tion, take even the clothes off the dead bod­ies and the bed­clothes from oth­ers where they lay dead.

This, I sup­pose, must be the case of a fam­ily in Houndsditch, where a 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 one cham­ber and one in an­other, ly­ing dead on the floor, and the clothes of 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 calam­ity the most rash, fear­less, and des­per­ate creatures, and as there were vast num­bers that went about as nurses to tend those that were sick, they com­mit­ted a great many petty thiev­er­ies in the houses where they were em­ployed; and some of them were pub­licly whipped for it, when per­haps they ought rather to have been hanged for ex­amples, for num­bers of houses were robbed on these oc­ca­sions, till at length the par­ish of­ficers were sent to re­com­mend nurses to the sick, and al­ways took an ac­count whom it was they sent, so as that they might call them to ac­count if the house had been ab­used where they were placed.

But these rob­ber­ies ex­ten­ded chiefly to wear­ing-clothes, linen, and what rings or money they could come at when the per­son died who was un­der their care, but not to a gen­eral plun­der of the houses; and I could give you an ac­count of one of these nurses, who, sev­eral years after, be­ing on her deathbed, con­fessed with the ut­most hor­ror the rob­ber­ies she had com­mit­ted at the time of her be­ing a nurse, and by which she had en­riched her­self to a great de­gree. But as for murders, I do not find that there was ever any proof of the facts in the man­ner as it has been re­por­ted, ex­cept as above.

They did tell me, in­deed, of a nurse in one place that laid a wet cloth upon the face of a dy­ing pa­tient whom she ten­ded, and so put an end to his life, who was just ex­pir­ing be­fore; and an­other that smothered a young wo­man she was look­ing to when she was in a faint­ing fit, and would have come to her­self; some that killed them by giv­ing them one thing, some an­other, and some starved them by giv­ing them noth­ing at all. But these stor­ies had two marks of sus­pi­cion that al­ways at­ten­ded them, which caused me al­ways to slight them and to look on them as mere stor­ies that people con­tinu­ally frighted one an­other with. First, that wherever it was that we heard it, they al­ways placed the scene at the farther end of the town, op­pos­ite or most re­mote from where you were to hear it. If you heard it in White­chapel, it had happened at St. Giles’s, or at West­min­ster, or Hol­born, or that end of the town. If you heard of it at that end of the town, then it was done in White­chapel, or the Minor­ies, 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, the par­tic­u­lars were al­ways the same, es­pe­cially that of lay­ing a wet double cloth 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 more of tale than of truth in those things.

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

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

It is true, in some houses where the people were not very poor, yet where they had sent per­haps their wives and chil­dren away, and if they had any ser­vants they had been dis­missed;—I say it is true that to save the ex­penses, many such as these shut them­selves in, and not hav­ing help, died alone.

A neigh­bour and ac­quaint­ance of mine, hav­ing some money ow­ing to him from a shop­keeper in White­cross Street or there­abouts, sent his ap­pren­tice, a youth about eight­een years of age, to en­deav­our to get the money. He came to the door, and find­ing it shut, knocked pretty hard; and, as he thought, heard some­body an­swer within, but was not sure, so he 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 breeches or draw­ers, and a yel­low flan­nel waist­coat, no stock­ings, a pair of slipped-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?” The boy, though a little sur­prised, replied, “I come from such a one, and my 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 Crip­pleg­ate Church, and bid them ring the bell”; and with these words shut the door again, and went up again, and died the same day; nay, per­haps the same hour. This the young man told me him­self, and I have reason to be­lieve it. This was while the plague was not come to a height. I think it was in June, to­wards the lat­ter end of the month; it must be be­fore the dead-carts came about, and while they used the ce­re­mony of ringing the bell 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 and up­wards in a week, and then they could no more bury in form, rich or poor.

I have men­tioned above that not­with­stand­ing this dread­ful calam­ity, yet the num­bers of thieves were abroad upon all oc­ca­sions, where they had found any prey, and that these were gen­er­ally wo­men. It was one morn­ing about el­even o’clock, I had walked out to my brother’s house in Cole­man Street 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 and a gate in it, and within that sev­eral ware­houses where his goods of sev­eral sorts lay. It happened that in one of these ware­houses were sev­eral packs of wo­men’s high-crowned hats, which came out of the coun­try 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 in a place they called Swan Al­ley, I met three or four wo­men with high-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 see them come out at my brother’s door, and not know­ing that my brother had any such goods in his ware­house, I did not of­fer to say any­thing to them, but went across the way to shun meet­ing them, as was usual to do at that time, for fear of the plague. But when I came nearer to the gate I 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 to get to the gate then, and said no more to her, by which means she got away. But just as I came to the gate, I saw two more com­ing across the yard to come out with hats also on their heads and un­der their arms, at which I threw the gate to be­hind me, which hav­ing a spring lock fastened it­self; and turn­ing to the wo­men, “For­sooth,” said I, “what are you do­ing here?” and seized upon the hats, and took them from them. One of them, 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 such cus­tom­ers as we.” She cried and looked pi­ti­fully, so I took the hats from her and opened the gate, and bade them be gone, for I pit­ied the wo­men in­deed; but when I looked to­wards the ware­house, as she dir­ec­ted, there were six or seven more, all wo­men, fit­ting them­selves with hats as un­con­cerned and quiet as if they had been at a hat­ter’s shop buy­ing for their money.

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

They were equally sur­prised, though on an­other ac­count. They all told me they were neigh­bours, that they had heard any­one might take them, that they 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 my pris­on­ers, threatened to lock them all into the ware­house, and go and fetch my Lord Mayor’s of­ficers for them.

They begged heart­ily, pro­tested they found the gate open, and the ware­house door open; and that it had no doubt been broken open by some who ex­pec­ted to find goods of greater value: which in­deed was reas­on­able to be­lieve, be­cause the lock was broke, and a pad­lock that hung to the door on the out­side also loose, and an abund­ance of the hats car­ried away.

At length I con­sidered that this was not a time to be cruel and rig­or­ous; and be­sides that, it would ne­ces­sar­ily ob­lige me to go much about, to have sev­eral people come to me, and I go to sev­eral whose cir­cum­stances of health I knew noth­ing of; and that even at this time the plague was so high as that there died 4,000 a week; so that in show­ing my re­sent­ment, or even in seek­ing justice for my brother’s goods, I might lose my own life; so I con­ten­ted my­self with tak­ing the names and places where some of them lived, who were really in­hab­it­ants in the neigh­bour­hood, and threat­en­ing that my brother should call them to an ac­count for it when he re­turned to his hab­it­a­tion.

Then I talked a little upon an­other foot with them, and asked them how they 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 the plague 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 doors in a few hours to carry them to their graves.

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

This brings these two men to a fur­ther re­mem­brance. The name of one was John Hay­ward, who was at that time un­der­sex­ton of the par­ish of St. Stephen, Cole­man Street. By “un­der­sex­ton” was un­der­stood at that time gravedig­ger and bearer of the dead. This man car­ried, or as­sisted to carry, all the dead to their graves which were bur­ied in that large par­ish, and who were car­ried in form; and after that form of bury­ing was stopped, went with the dead-cart and the bell to fetch the dead bod­ies from the houses where they lay, and fetched many of them out of the cham­bers and houses; for the par­ish was, and is still, re­mark­able par­tic­u­larly, above all the par­ishes in Lon­don, for a great num­ber of al­leys 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 Key Court, Swan Al­ley, Bell Al­ley, White Horse Al­ley, and many more. Here they went with a kind of hand­bar­row and laid the dead bod­ies on it, and car­ried them out to the carts; which work he per­formed and never had the dis­tem­per at all, but lived about twenty years after it, and was sex­ton of the par­ish to the time of his death. His wife at the same time was a nurse to in­fec­ted people, and ten­ded many that died in the par­ish, be­ing for her hon­esty re­com­men­ded by the par­ish of­ficers; yet she never was in­fec­ted neither.

He never used any pre­ser­vat­ive against the in­fec­tion, other than hold­ing gar­lic and rue in his mouth, and smoking to­bacco. This I also had from his own mouth. And his wife’s rem­edy was wash­ing her head in vin­egar and sprink­ling her head-clothes so with vin­egar as to keep them al­ways moist, and if the smell of any of those she waited on was more than or­din­ary of­fens­ive, she snuffed vin­egar up her nose and sprinkled vin­egar upon her head-clothes, and held a handker­chief wet­ted with vin­egar 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 about their em­ploy­ment with a sort of bru­tal cour­age; I must call it so, for it was foun­ded neither on re­li­gion nor prudence; scarce did they use any cau­tion, 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 pes­t­house, 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 the story 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 was a blind piper; but, as John told me, the fel­low was not blind, but an ig­nor­ant, weak, poor man, and usu­ally walked his rounds about ten o’clock at night and went pip­ing along from door to door, and the people usu­ally took him in at pub­lic-houses where they knew him, and would give him drink and victu­als, and some­times farthings; and he in re­turn would pipe and sing and talk simply, which di­ver­ted the people; and thus he lived. It was but a very bad time for this di­ver­sion while things were as I have told, yet the poor fel­low went about as usual, but was al­most starved; and when any­body asked how he did he would an­swer, the dead cart had not taken him yet, but that they had prom­ised to call for him next week.

It happened one night that this poor fel­low, whether some­body had given him too much drink or no—John Hay­ward said he had not drink in his house, but that they had given him a little more victu­als than or­din­ary at a pub­lic-house in Cole­man Street—and the poor fel­low, hav­ing not usu­ally had a belly­ful for per­haps not a good while, was laid all along upon the top of a bulk or stall, and fast asleep, at a door in the street near Lon­don Wall, to­wards Crip­pleg­ate, and that upon the same bulk or stall the people of some house, in the al­ley of which the house was a corner, hear­ing a bell which they al­ways rang be­fore the cart came, 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, and laid 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 the in­stru­ment they used and threw them into the cart, and, all this while the piper slept soundly.

From hence they passed along and took in other dead bod­ies, till, as hon­est 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 the place where the bod­ies were to be thrown into the ground, which, as I do re­mem­ber, was at Mount Mill; and as the cart usu­ally stopped some time be­fore 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 to get his head out from among the dead bod­ies, when, rais­ing him­self up in the cart, he called out, “Hey! where am I?” This frighted the fel­low that at­ten­ded about the work; but after some pause John Hay­ward, re­cov­er­ing him­self, said, “Lord, bless us! There’s some­body in the cart not quite dead!” So an­other called to him and said, “Who are you?” The fel­low 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 bury you.” “But I an’t dead though, am I?” says the piper, which made them laugh a little, though, as John said, they were heart­ily frighted at first; so they helped the poor fel­low down, and he went about his busi­ness.

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

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

I have already men­tioned the sur­prise that this judge­ment was at first among the people. I must be al­lowed to give some of my ob­ser­va­tions on the more ser­i­ous and re­li­gious part. Surely never city, at least of this bulk and mag­nitude, was taken in a con­di­tion so per­fectly un­pre­pared for such a dread­ful vis­it­a­tion, whether I am to speak of the civil pre­par­a­tions or re­li­gious. They were, in­deed, as if they had had no warn­ing, no ex­pect­a­tion, no ap­pre­hen­sions, and con­sequently the least pro­vi­sion ima­gin­able was made for it in a pub­lic way. For ex­ample, the Lord Mayor and sher­iffs had made no pro­vi­sion as ma­gis­trates for the reg­u­la­tions which were to be ob­served. They had gone into no meas­ures for re­lief of the poor. The cit­izens had no pub­lic magazines or store­houses for corn or meal for the sub­sist­ence of the poor, which if they had provided them­selves, as in such cases is done abroad, many miser­able fam­il­ies who were now re­duced to the ut­most dis­tress would have 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 of Lon­don was said to be ex­ceed­ingly rich, and it may be con­cluded that they were so, by the vast of money is­sued from thence in the re­build­ing the pub­lic edi­fices after the fire of Lon­don, and in build­ing new works, such as, for the first part, the Guild­hall, Black­well Hall, part of Lead­en­hall, half the Ex­change, the Ses­sion House, the Compter, the pris­ons of Ludgate, Newg­ate, etc., sev­eral of the wharfs and stairs and land­ing-places on the river; all which were either burned down or dam­aged by the great fire of Lon­don, the next year after the plague; and of the second sort, the Monu­ment, Fleet Ditch with its bridges, and the Hos­pital of Beth­lem or Bed­lam, etc. But pos­sibly the man­agers of the city’s credit at that time made more con­science of break­ing in upon the orphan’s money to show char­ity to the dis­tressed cit­izens than the man­agers in the fol­low­ing years did to beau­tify the city and re-edify the build­ings; though, in the first case, the losers would have thought their for­tunes bet­ter be­stowed, and the pub­lic faith of the city have been less sub­jec­ted to scan­dal and re­proach.

It must be ac­know­ledged that the ab­sent cit­izens, who, though they were fled for safety into the coun­try, were yet greatly in­ter­ested in the wel­fare of those whom they left be­hind, for­got not to con­trib­ute lib­er­ally to the re­lief of the poor, and large sums were also col­lec­ted among trad­ing towns in the re­motest parts of Eng­land; and, as I have heard also, the no­bil­ity and the gentry in all parts of Eng­land took the de­plor­able con­di­tion of the city into their con­sid­er­a­tion, and sent up large sums of money in char­ity to the Lord Mayor and ma­gis­trates for the re­lief of the poor. The king also, as I was told, ordered a thou­sand pounds a week to be dis­trib­uted in four parts: one quarter to the city and liberty of West­min­ster; one quarter or part among the in­hab­it­ants of the South­wark side of the wa­ter; one quarter to the liberty and parts within of the city, ex­clus­ive of the city within the walls; and one-fourth part to the sub­urbs in the county of Middle­sex, and the east and north parts of the city. But this lat­ter I only speak of as a re­port.

Cer­tain it is, the greatest part of the poor or fam­il­ies who formerly lived by their la­bour, or by re­tail trade, lived now on char­ity; and had there not been prodi­gious sums of money given by char­it­able, well-minded Chris­ti­ans for the sup­port of such, the city could never have sub­sisted. There were, no ques­tion, ac­counts kept of their char­ity, and of the just dis­tri­bu­tion of it by the ma­gis­trates. But as such mul­ti­tudes of those very of­ficers died through whose hands it was dis­trib­uted, and also that, as I have been told, most of the ac­counts of those things were lost in the great fire which happened in the very next year, and which burnt even the cham­ber­lain’s of­fice and many of their pa­pers, so I could never come at the par­tic­u­lar ac­count, which I used great en­deav­ours to have seen.

It may, how­ever, be a dir­ec­tion in case of the ap­proach of a like vis­it­a­tion, which God keep the city from;—I say, it may be of use to ob­serve that by the care of the Lord Mayor and al­der­men at that time in dis­trib­ut­ing weekly great sums of money for re­lief of the poor, a mul­ti­tude of people who would oth­er­wise have per­ished, were re­lieved, and their lives pre­served. And here let me enter into a brief state of the 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 like dis­tress should come upon the city.

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

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

1. All mas­ter-work­men in man­u­fac­tures, es­pe­cially such as be­longed to or­na­ment and the less ne­ces­sary parts of the people’s dress, clothes, and fur­niture for houses, such as rib­and-weavers and other weavers, gold and sil­ver lace makers, and gold and sil­ver wire draw­ers, semp­stresses, mil­liners, shoe­makers, hat­makers, and glove­makers; also up­holster­ers, join­ers, cab­in­et­makers, look­ing-glass makers, and in­nu­mer­able trades which de­pend upon such as these;—I say, the mas­ter-work­men in such stopped their work, dis­missed their jour­ney­men and work­men, and all their de­pend­ents.

2. As mer­chand­ising was at a full stop, for very few ships ven­tured to come up the river and none at all went out, so all the ex­traordin­ary of­ficers of the cus­toms, like­wise the wa­ter­men, car­men, port­ers, and all the poor whose la­bour de­pended upon the mer­chants, were at once dis­missed and put out of busi­ness.

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

4. As nav­ig­a­tion was at a stop, our ships neither com­ing in or go­ing out as be­fore, so the sea­men were all out of em­ploy­ment, and many of them in the last and low­est de­gree of dis­tress; and with the sea­men were all the sev­eral trades­men and work­men be­long­ing to and de­pend­ing upon the build­ing 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 the like. The mas­ters of those per­haps might live upon their sub­stance, but the traders were uni­ver­sally at a stop, and con­sequently all their work­men dis­charged. Add to these that the river was in a man­ner without boats, 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 well those that fled as those that stayed; so that an in­nu­mer­able mul­ti­tude of foot­men, serving-men, shop­keep­ers, jour­ney­men, mer­chants’ book­keep­ers, and such sort of people, and es­pe­cially poor maid­ser­vants, were turned off, and left friend­less and help­less, without em­ploy­ment and without hab­it­a­tion, and this was really a dis­mal art­icle.

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

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

Let any­one who is ac­quain­ted with what mul­ti­tudes of people get their daily bread in this city by their la­bour, whether ar­ti­ficers or mere work­men—I say, let any man con­sider what must be the miser­able con­di­tion of this town if, on a sud­den, they should be all turned out of em­ploy­ment, 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 money con­trib­uted in char­ity by well-dis­posed people of every kind, as well abroad as at home, been prodi­giously great, it had not been in the power of the Lord Mayor and sher­iffs to have kept the pub­lic peace. Nor were they without ap­pre­hen­sions, as it was, that des­per­a­tion should push the people upon tu­mults, and cause them to rifle the houses of rich men and plun­der the mar­kets of pro­vi­sions; in which case the coun­try people, who brought pro­vi­sions very freely and boldly to town, would have been ter­ri­fied from com­ing any more, and the town would have sunk un­der an un­avoid­able fam­ine.

But the prudence of my Lord Mayor and the Court of Al­der­men within the city, and of the Justices of Peace in the out-parts, was such, and they were sup­por­ted with money from all parts so well, that the poor people were kept quiet, and their wants every­where re­lieved, as far as was pos­sible to be done.

Two things be­sides this con­trib­uted to pre­vent the mob do­ing any mis­chief. One was, that really the rich them­selves had not laid up stores of pro­vi­sions in their houses as in­deed they ought to have done, and which if they had been wise enough to have done, and locked them­selves en­tirely up, as some few did, they had per­haps es­caped the dis­ease bet­ter. But as it ap­peared they had not, so the mob had no no­tion of find­ing stores of pro­vi­sions there if they had broken in as it is plain they were some­times very near do­ing, and which: if they had, they had fin­ished the ruin of the whole city, for there were no reg­u­lar troops to have with­stood them, nor could the trained bands have been brought to­gether to de­fend the city, no men be­ing to be found to bear arms.

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) pre­ven­ted this; and they did it by the most kind and gentle meth­ods they could think of, as par­tic­u­larly by re­liev­ing the most des­per­ate with money, and put­ting oth­ers into busi­ness, and par­tic­u­larly that em­ploy­ment of watch­ing houses that were in­fec­ted and shut up. And as the num­ber of these were very great (for it was said there was at one time ten thou­sand houses shut up, and every house had two watch­men to guard it, viz., one by night and the other by day), this gave op­por­tun­ity to em­ploy a very great num­ber of poor men at a time.

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

And, which though a mel­an­choly art­icle in it­self, yet was a de­liv­er­ance in its kind: namely, the plague, which raged in a dread­ful man­ner from the middle of August to the middle of Octo­ber, car­ried off in that time thirty or forty thou­sand of these very people which, had they been left, would cer­tainly have been an in­suf­fer­able bur­den by their poverty; that is 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 even driven to the ne­ces­sity of plun­der­ing either the city it­self or the coun­try ad­ja­cent, to have sub­sisted them­selves, which would first or last have put the whole na­tion, as well as the city, into the ut­most ter­ror and con­fu­sion.

It was ob­serv­able, then, that this calam­ity of the people made them very humble; for now for about nine weeks to­gether there died near a thou­sand a 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, by many thou­sands; the con­fu­sion be­ing such, and the carts work­ing in the dark when they car­ried the dead, that in some places no ac­count at all was kept, but they worked on, the clerks and sex­tons not at­tend­ing for weeks to­gether, and not know­ing what num­ber they car­ried. This ac­count is veri­fied by the fol­low­ing bills of mor­tal­ity:—

Of all dis­eases:

Of the Plague:

From August 8 to August 15

5,319

3,880

From August 15 to August 22

5,568

4,237

From August 22 to August 29

7,496

6,102

From August 29 to Septem­ber 5

8,252

6,988

From Septem­ber 5 to Septem­ber 12

7,690

6,544

From Septem­ber 12 to Septem­ber 19

8,297

7,165

From Septem­ber 19 to Septem­ber 26

6,460

5,533

From Septem­ber 26 to Octo­ber 3

5,720

4,929

From Octo­ber 3 to Octo­ber 10

5,068

4,327

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 was but 68,590, here is 50,000 of them, within a trifle, in two months; I say 50,000, be­cause, as there wants 295 in the num­ber above, so there wants 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 any­one but con­sider how men could be ex­act in such a time of dread­ful dis­tress, and when many of them were taken sick them­selves and per­haps died in the very time when their ac­counts were to be given in; I mean the par­ish clerks, be­sides in­ferior of­ficers; for though these poor men ven­tured at all haz­ards, yet they were far from be­ing ex­empt from the com­mon calam­ity, es­pe­cially if it be true that the par­ish of Stepney had, within the year, 116 sex­tons, gravedig­gers, and their as­sist­ants; that is to say, bear­ers, bell­men, and drivers of carts for car­ry­ing off the dead bod­ies.

Indeed the work was not of a nature to al­low them leis­ure to take an ex­act tale of the dead bod­ies, which were all huddled to­gether in the dark into a pit; which pit or trench no man could come nigh but at the ut­most peril. I ob­served of­ten that in the par­ishes of Aldgate and Crip­pleg­ate, White­chapel and Stepney, there were five, six, seven, and eight hun­dred in a week in the bills; whereas if we may be­lieve the opin­ion of those that lived in the city all the time as well as I, there died some­times 2,000 a week in those par­ishes; and I saw it un­der the hand of one that made as strict an ex­am­in­a­tion into that part as he could, that there really died an hun­dred thou­sand people of the plague in that one year whereas in the bills, the art­icles of the plague, it was but 68,590.

If I may be al­lowed to give my opin­ion, by what I saw with my eyes and heard from other people that were eye­wit­nesses, I do ver­ily be­lieve the same, viz., that there died at least 100,000 of the plague only, be­sides other dis­tem­pers and be­sides those which died in the fields and high­ways and secret places out of the com­pass of the com­mu­nic­a­tion, as it was called, and who were not put down in the bills though they really be­longed to the body of the in­hab­it­ants. It was known to us all that abund­ance 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 places al­most any­where, to creep into a bush or hedge and die.

The in­hab­it­ants of the vil­lages ad­ja­cent would, in pity, carry them food and 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 they should find the poor wretches lie dead and the food un­touched. The num­ber of these miser­able ob­jects were many, and I know so many that per­ished thus, and so ex­actly where, that I be­lieve I could go to the very place and dig their bones up still; for the coun­try people would go 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 then throw 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 the sea­men call to wind­ward, that the scent of the bod­ies might blow from them; 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 as without.

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

As this puts me upon men­tion­ing my walk­ing the streets and fields, I can­not omit tak­ing no­tice what a des­ol­ate place the city was at that time. The great street I lived in (which is known to be one of the broad­est of all the streets of Lon­don, I mean of the sub­urbs as well as the liber­ties) all the side where the butchers lived, es­pe­cially without the bars, was more like a green field than a paved street, and the people gen­er­ally went in the middle with the horses and carts. It is true that the farthest end to­wards White­chapel Church was not all paved, but even the part that was paved was full of grass also; but this need not seem strange, since the great streets within the city, such as Lead­en­hall Street, Bish­opsgate Street, Cornhill, and even the Ex­change it­self, had grass grow­ing in them in sev­eral places; neither cart or coach were seen in the streets from morn­ing to even­ing, ex­cept some coun­try carts to bring roots and beans, or peas, hay, and straw, to the mar­ket, and those but very few com­pared to what was usual. As for coaches, they were scarce used but to carry sick people to the pes­t­house, and to other hos­pit­als, and some few to carry phys­i­cians to such places as they thought fit to ven­ture to visit; for really coaches were dan­ger­ous things, and people did not care to ven­ture into them, be­cause they did not know who might have been car­ried in them last, and sick, in­fec­ted people were, as I have said, or­din­ar­ily car­ried in them to the pes­t­houses, and some­times people ex­pired in them as they went along.

It is true, when the in­fec­tion came to such a height as I have now men­tioned, there were very few phys­i­cians which cared to stir abroad to sick 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 of mor­tal­ity, I be­lieve there did not die less than 1,500 or 1,700 a day, one day with an­other.

One of the worst days we had in the whole time, as I thought, was in the be­gin­ning of Septem­ber, when, in­deed, good people began to think that God was re­solved to make a full end of the people in this miser­able city. This was at that time when the plague was fully come into the east­ern par­ishes. The par­ish of Aldgate, if I may give my opin­ion, bur­ied above a thou­sand a week for two weeks, though the bills did not say so many;—but it sur­roun­ded me at so dis­mal a rate that there was not a house in twenty un­in­fec­ted in the Minor­ies, in Houndsditch, and in those parts of Aldgate par­ish about the Butcher Row and the al­leys over against me. I say, in those places death reigned in every corner. White­chapel par­ish was in the same con­di­tion, and though much less than the par­ish I lived in, yet bur­ied near 600 a week by the bills, and in my opin­ion near twice as many. Whole fam­il­ies, and in­deed whole streets of fam­il­ies, were swept away to­gether; in­somuch that it was fre­quent for neigh­bours to call to the bell­man to go to such-and-such houses and fetch out the people, for that they were all dead.

And, in­deed, the work of re­mov­ing the dead bod­ies by carts was now grown so very odi­ous and dan­ger­ous that it was com­plained of that the bear­ers did not take care to clear such houses where all the in­hab­it­ants were dead, but that some­times the bod­ies lay sev­eral days un­bur­ied, till the neigh­bour­ing fam­il­ies were of­fen­ded with the stench, and con­sequently in­fec­ted; and this neg­lect of the of­ficers was such that the church­war­dens and con­stables were summoned to look after it, and even the justices of the Ham­lets were ob­liged to ven­ture their lives among them to quicken and en­cour­age them, for in­nu­mer­able of the bear­ers died of the dis­tem­per, in­fec­ted by the bod­ies they were ob­liged to come so near. And had it not been that the num­ber of poor people who wanted em­ploy­ment and wanted bread (as I have said be­fore) was so great that ne­ces­sity drove them to un­der­take any­thing and ven­ture any­thing, they would never have found people to be em­ployed. And then the bod­ies of the dead would have lain above ground, and have per­ished and rot­ted in a dread­ful man­ner.

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

As the des­ol­a­tion was greater dur­ing those ter­rible times, so the amazement of the people in­creased, and a thou­sand un­ac­count­able things they would do in the vi­ol­ence of their fright, as oth­ers did the same in the ag­on­ies of their dis­tem­per, and this part was very af­fect­ing. Some went roar­ing and cry­ing and wringing their hands along the street; some would go pray­ing and lift­ing up their hands to heaven, call­ing upon God for mercy. I can­not say, in­deed, whether this was not in their dis­trac­tion, but, be it so, it was still an in­dic­a­tion of a more ser­i­ous mind, when they had the use of their senses, and was much bet­ter, even as it was, than the fright­ful yellings and cry­ings that every day, and es­pe­cially in the even­ings, were heard in some streets. I sup­pose the world has heard of the fam­ous So­lomon Eagle, an en­thu­si­ast. He, though not in­fec­ted at all but in his head, went about de­noun­cing of judge­ment upon the city in a fright­ful man­ner, some­times quite na­ked, and with a pan of burn­ing char­coal on his head. What he said, or pre­ten­ded, in­deed I could not learn.

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

It was in­deed a lam­ent­able thing to hear the miser­able lam­ent­a­tions of poor dy­ing creatures call­ing out for min­is­ters to com­fort them and pray with them, to coun­sel them and to dir­ect them, call­ing out to God for par­don and mercy, and con­fess­ing aloud their past sins. It would make the stoutest heart bleed to hear how many warn­ings were then given by dy­ing pen­it­ents to oth­ers not to put off and delay their re­pent­ance to the day of dis­tress; that such a time of calam­ity as this was no time for re­pent­ance, was no time to call upon God. I wish I could re­peat the very sound of those groans and of those ex­clam­a­tions that I heard from some poor dy­ing creatures when in the height of their ag­on­ies and dis­tress, and that I could make him that reads this hear, as I ima­gine I now 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 the very 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 in health, but very im­pa­tient of be­ing pent up within doors without air, as I had been for four­teen days or there­abouts; and I could not re­strain my­self, but I would go to carry a let­ter for my brother to the post-house. Then it was in­deed that I ob­served a pro­found si­lence in the streets. When I came to the post-house, as I went to put in my let­ter I saw a man stand in one corner of the yard and talk­ing to an­other at a win­dow, and a third had opened a door be­long­ing to the of­fice. In the middle of the yard lay a small leather purse with two keys hanging at it, with money in it, but nobody would meddle with it. I asked how long it had lain there; the man at the win­dow said it had lain al­most an hour, but that they had not meddled with it, be­cause they did not know but the per­son who dropped it might come back to look for it. I had no such need of money, nor was the sum so big that I had any in­clin­a­tion to meddle with it, or to get the money at the haz­ard it might be at­ten­ded with; so I seemed to go away, when the man who had opened the door said he would take it up, but so that if the right owner came for it he should be sure to have it. So he went in and fetched a pail of wa­ter and set 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 train from that which he had thrown loose upon the purse. The train reached about two yards. After this he goes in a third time and fetches out a pair 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 and also smoked the air suf­fi­ciently. But he was not con­tent with that, but he then takes up the purse with the tongs, hold­ing it so long till the tongs burnt through the purse, and then he shook the money out into the pail of wa­ter, so he car­ried it in. The money, as I re­mem­ber, was about thir­teen shil­ling and some smooth groats and brass farthings.

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

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

Here I saw a poor man walk­ing on the bank, or sea­wall, 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; first I asked him how people did there­abouts. “Alas, sir!” says he, “al­most des­ol­ate; all dead or sick. Here are very few fam­il­ies in this part, or in that vil­lage” (point­ing at Po­plar), “where half of them are not dead already, and the rest sick.” Then he point­ing to one house, “There they are all dead,” said he, “and the house stands open; nobody dares go into it. A poor thief,” says he, “ven­tured in to steal some­thing, but he paid dear for his theft, for he was car­ried to the church­yard too last night.” Then he poin­ted to sev­eral other houses. “There,” says he, “they are all dead, the man and his wife, and five chil­dren. There,” says he, “they are shut up; you see a watch­man at the door”; and so of other houses. “Why,” says I, “what do you here all alone?” “Why,” says he, “I am a poor, des­ol­ate man; it has pleased God I am not yet vis­ited, though my 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 wife and two chil­dren live,” said he, “if they may be said to live, for my wife 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 your own flesh and blood?” “Oh, sir,” says he, “the Lord for­bid! I do not aban­don them; I work for them as much as I am able; and, blessed be the Lord, I keep them from want”; and with that I ob­served he lif­ted up his eyes to heaven, with a coun­ten­ance that presently told me I had happened on a man that was no hy­po­crite, but a ser­i­ous, re­li­gious, good man, and his ejac­u­la­tion was an ex­pres­sion of thank­ful­ness that, in such a con­di­tion as he was in, he should be able to say his fam­ily did not want. “Well,” says I, “hon­est man, that is a great mercy as things go now with the poor. But how do you live, then, and how are you kept from the dread­ful calam­ity that is now upon us all?” “Why, sir,” says he, “I am a wa­ter­man, and there’s my boat,” says he, “and the boat serves me for 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 broad stone on the other side of the street, a good way from his house; “and then,” says he, “I hal­loo, and call to them till I make them hear; and they 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 way I am em­ployed there does. Do you see there,” says he, “five ships lie at an­chor’ (point­ing down the river a good way be­low the town), “and do you see,” says he, “eight or ten ships lie at the chain there, and at an­chor yon­der?” (point­ing above the town). “All those ships have fam­il­ies on board, of their mer­chants and own­ers, and such­like, who have locked them­selves up and live on board, close shut in, for fear of the in­fec­tion; and I tend on them to fetch things for them, carry let­ters, and do what is ab­so­lutely ne­ces­sary, that they may not be ob­liged to come on shore; and every night I fasten my boat on board one of the ship’s boats, and there I sleep by my­self, and, blessed be God, I am pre­served hitherto.”

“Well,” said I, “friend, but will they let you come on board after you have been on shore here, when this is such a ter­rible place, and so in­fec­ted as it is?”

“Why, as to that,” said he, “I very sel­dom go up the ship-side, but de­liver what I bring to their boat, or lie by the side, and they hoist it on board. If I did, I think they are in no danger from me, for I never go into any house on shore, or touch any­body, no, not of my own fam­ily; but I fetch pro­vi­sions for them.”

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

“That is true,” ad­ded he; “but you do not un­der­stand me right; I do not buy pro­vi­sions for them here. I row up to Green­wich and buy fresh meat there, and some­times I row down the river to Wool­wich and buy there; then I go to single farm­houses on the Kentish side, where I am known, and buy fowls and eggs and but­ter, and bring to the ships, as they dir­ect me, some­times one, some­times the other. I sel­dom come on shore here, 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, as things 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, “and have you given it them yet?”

“No,” said he; “but I have called, and my wife has answered that she can­not come out yet, but in half-an-hour she hopes to come, and I am wait­ing for her. Poor wo­man!” says he, “she is brought sadly down. She has a swell­ing, and it is broke, and I hope she will re­cover; but I fear the 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 hast brought thy­self to be resigned to the will of God; He is deal­ing with us all in judge­ment.”

“Oh, sir!” says he, “it is in­fin­ite mercy if any of us are spared, and who 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’s found­a­tion was on which he stayed in the danger than mine; that he had nowhere to fly; that he had a fam­ily to bind him to at­tend­ance, which I had not; and mine was mere pre­sump­tion, his a true de­pend­ence and a cour­age rest­ing on God; and yet that he used all pos­sible cau­tion for his 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 and called, “Robert, Robert.” He answered, and bid her stay a few mo­ments and he would come; so he ran down the com­mon stairs to his boat and fetched up a sack, in which was the pro­vi­sions he had brought from the ships; and when he re­turned he hal­looed again. Then he went to the great stone which he showed me and emp­tied the sack, and laid all out, everything by them­selves, and then re­tired; and his wife came with a little boy to fetch them away, and called and said such a cap­tain had sent 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 taken up all, she was so weak she could not carry it at once in, though the weight was not much neither; so she left the bis­cuit, which was in a little 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 the money?” “Yes,” said she. “How much was it?” said he. “Four shil­lings and a groat,” said she. “Well, well,” says he, “the Lord keep you all”; and so he turned to go away.

As I could not re­frain con­trib­ut­ing tears to this man’s story, so neither could I re­frain my char­ity for his as­sist­ance. So I called him, “Hark thee, friend,” said I, “come hither, for I be­lieve thou art in health, that I may ven­ture thee”; so I pulled out my hand, which was in my pocket be­fore, “Here,” says I, “go and call thy Rachel once more, and give her a little more com­fort from me. God will never for­sake a fam­ily that trust in Him as thou dost.” So I gave him four other shil­lings, and bid him go lay them on the stone and call his wife.

I have not words to ex­press the poor man’s thank­ful­ness, neither could he ex­press it him­self but by tears run­ning down his face. He called his wife, and told her God had moved the heart of a stranger, upon hear­ing their con­di­tion, to give them all that money, and a great deal more such as that he said to her. The wo­man, too, made signs of the like thank­ful­ness, as well to Heaven as to me, and joy­fully picked it up; and I 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 he feared it had, but that it was only at that end of the town which lay south to­wards Dept­ford Bridge; that he went only to a butcher’s shop and a 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 shut them­selves up in the ships had not laid in suf­fi­cient stores of all things ne­ces­sary. He said some of them had—but, on the other hand, some did not come on board till they were frighted into it and till it was too dan­ger­ous for them to go to the proper people to lay in quant­it­ies of things, and that he waited on two ships, which he showed me, that had laid in little or noth­ing but bis­cuit bread and ship beer, and that he had bought everything else al­most for them. I asked him if there was any more ships that had sep­ar­ated them­selves as those had done. He told me yes, all the way up from the point, right against Green­wich, to within the shore of Lime­house and Redriff, all the ships that could have room rid two and two in the middle of the stream, and that some of them had sev­eral fam­il­ies on board. I asked him if the dis­tem­per had not reached them. He said he be­lieved it had not, ex­cept two or three ships whose people had not been so watch­ful to keep the sea­men from go­ing on shore as oth­ers had been, and he said it was a very fine sight to see how the ships lay up the Pool.

When he said he was go­ing over to Green­wich as soon as the tide began to come in, I asked if he would let me go with him and bring me back, for that I had a great mind to see how the ships were ranged, as he had told me. He told me, if I would as­sure him on the word of a Chris­tian and of an hon­est man that I had not the dis­tem­per, he would. I as­sured him that I had not; that it had pleased God to pre­serve me; that I lived in White­chapel, but was too im­pa­tient of be­ing so long within doors, and that I had ven­tured out so far for the re­fresh­ment of a little air, but that 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 my poor fam­ily, sure you can­not have so little pity left as to put your­self into my boat if you were not sound in health which would be noth­ing less than killing me and ru­in­ing my whole fam­ily.” The poor man troubled me so much when he spoke of his fam­ily with such a sens­ible con­cern and in such an af­fec­tion­ate man­ner, that I could not sat­isfy my­self at first to go at all. I told him I would lay aside my curi­os­ity rather than make him un­easy, though I was sure, and very thank­ful for it, that I had no more dis­tem­per upon me than the freshest man in the world. Well, he would not have me put it off neither, but to let me see how con­fid­ent he was that I was just to him, now im­por­tuned me to go; so when the tide came up to his boat I went in, and he car­ried me to Green­wich. While he bought the things which he had in his charge to buy, I walked up to the top of the hill un­der which the town stands, and on the east side of the town, to get a pro­spect of the river. But it was a sur­pris­ing sight to see the num­ber of ships which lay in rows, two and two, and some places two or three such lines in the breadth of the river, and this not only up quite to the town, between the houses which we call Ratcliff and Redriff, which they name the Pool, but even down the whole river as far as the head of Long Reach, which is as far as the hills give us leave to see it.

I can­not guess at the num­ber of ships, but I think there must be sev­eral hun­dreds of sail; and I could not but ap­plaud the con­triv­ance: for ten thou­sand people and more who at­ten­ded ship af­fairs were cer­tainly sheltered here from the vi­ol­ence of the con­ta­gion, and lived very safe and 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 such little sanc­tu­ar­ies were provided for so many fam­il­ies in a time of such des­ol­a­tion. I ob­served also that, as the vi­ol­ence of the plague had in­creased, so the ships which had fam­il­ies on board re­moved and went farther off, till, as I was told, some went quite away to sea, and put into such har­bours and safe roads on the north coast as they could best come at.

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

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

And here I can­not but take no­tice that the strange tem­per of the people of 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, etc., and came on to­wards the city very gradu­ally and slowly. It was felt at first in Decem­ber, then again in Febru­ary, 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 but sev­en­teen, and all at that end of the town; and all this while, even so long as till there died above 3,000 a week, yet had the people in Redriff, and in Wap­ping and Ratcliff, on both sides of the river, and al­most all South­wark side, a mighty fancy that they should not be vis­ited, or at least that it would not be so vi­ol­ent among them. Some people fan­cied the smell of the pitch and tar, and such other things as oil and rosin and brim­stone, which is so much used by all trades re­lat­ing to ship­ping, would pre­serve them. Oth­ers ar­gued it, be­cause it was in its ex­tremest vi­ol­ence in West­min­ster and the par­ish of St. Giles and St. Andrew, etc., and began to abate again be­fore it came among them—which was true in­deed, in part. For ex­ample—

From the 8th to the 15th of August—

St. Giles-in-the-Fields

242

Crip­pleg­ate

886

Stepney

197

St. Mar­garet, Ber­mond­sey

24

Roth­er­hithe

3

Total this week

4,030

From the 15th to the 22nd of August—

St. Giles-in-the-Fields

175

Crip­pleg­ate

847

Stepney

273

St. Mar­garet, Ber­mond­sey

36

Roth­er­hithe

2

Total this week

5,319

N.B.—That it was ob­served the num­bers men­tioned in Stepney par­ish at that time were gen­er­ally all on that side where Stepney par­ish joined to Shored­itch, which we now call Spit­alfields, where the par­ish of Stepney comes up to the very wall of Shored­itch Church­yard, and the plague at this time was abated at St. Giles-in-the-Fields, and raged most vi­ol­ently in Crip­pleg­ate, Bish­opsgate, and Shored­itch par­ishes; but there was not ten people a week that died of it in all that part of Stepney par­ish which takes in Lime­house, Rat­diff High­way, and which are now the par­ishes 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 it af­ter­wards, as I shall ob­serve by-and-by.

This, I say, made the people of Redriff and Wap­ping, Ratcliff and Lime­house, so se­cure, and flat­ter them­selves so much with the plague’s go­ing off without reach­ing them, that they took no care either to fly into the coun­try or shut them­selves up. Nay, so far were they from stir­ring that they rather re­ceived their friends and re­la­tions from the city into their houses, and sev­eral from other places really took sanc­tu­ary in that part of the town as a place of safety, and as a place which they thought God would pass over, and not visit as the rest was vis­ited.

And this was the reason that when it came upon them they were more sur­prised, more un­provided, and more at a loss what to do than they were in other places; for when it came among them really and with vi­ol­ence, as it did in­deed in Septem­ber and Octo­ber, there was then no stir­ring out 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 starved to death in the woods and com­mons, that coun­try be­ing more open and more woody than any other part so near Lon­don, es­pe­cially about Nor­wood and the par­ishes of Cam­ber­well, Dul­lege, and Lusum, where, it seems, nobody durst re­lieve the poor dis­tressed people for fear of the in­fec­tion.

This no­tion hav­ing, as I said, pre­vailed with the people in that part of the town, was in part the oc­ca­sion, as I said be­fore, that they had re­course to ships for their re­treat; and where they did this early and with prudence, fur­nish­ing them­selves so with pro­vi­sions that they had no need to go on shore for sup­plies or suf­fer boats to come on board to bring them—I say, where they did so they had cer­tainly the safest re­treat of any people what­so­ever; but the dis­tress was such that people ran on board, in their fright, without bread to eat, and some into ships that had no men on board to re­move them farther off, or to take the boat and 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, lay in 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 the wa­ter­men died alone in their wher­ries as they rid at their roads, as well as above bridge as be­low, and were not found some­times till they were not in con­di­tion for any­body to touch or come near them.

Indeed, the dis­tress of the people at this sea­far­ing end of the town was very de­plor­able, and de­served the greatest com­mis­er­a­tion. But, alas! this was a time when every­one’s private safety lay so near them that they had no room to pity the dis­tresses of oth­ers; for every­one had death, as it were, at his door, and many even in their fam­il­ies, and knew 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 their par­ents as they lan­guished in the ut­most dis­tress. And in some places, though not so fre­quent as the other, par­ents did the like to their chil­dren; nay, some dread­ful ex­amples there were, and par­tic­u­larly two in one week, of dis­tressed moth­ers, rav­ing and dis­trac­ted, killing their own chil­dren; one whereof was not far off from where I dwelt, the poor lun­atic creature not liv­ing her­self long enough to be sens­ible of the sin 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 death to ourselves took away all bowels of love, all con­cern for one an­other. I speak in gen­eral, for there were many in­stances of im­mov­able af­fec­tion, 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 the truth of the par­tic­u­lars.

To in­tro­duce one, let me first men­tion that one of the most de­plor­able cases 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 upon them, could neither have help of one kind or an­other; neither mid­wife or 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 mid­wives of note, were fled into the coun­try; so that it was next to im­possible for a poor wo­man that could not pay an im­mod­er­ate price to get any mid­wife to come to her—and if they did, those they could get were gen­er­ally un­skil­ful and ig­nor­ant creatures; and the con­sequence of this was that a most un­usual and in­cred­ible num­ber of wo­men were re­duced to the ut­most dis­tress. Some were de­livered and spoiled by the rash­ness and ig­nor­ance of those who pre­ten­ded to lay them. Chil­dren without num­ber were, I might say, murdered by the same but a more jus­ti­fi­able ig­nor­ance: pre­tend­ing they would save the mother, whatever be­came of the child; and many times both mother and child were lost in the same man­ner; and es­pe­cially where the mother had the dis­tem­per, there nobody would come near them and both some­times per­ished. So­me­times the mother has died of the plague, and the in­fant, it may be, half born, or born but not par­ted from the mother. Some died in the very pains of their trav­ail, and not de­livered at all; and so many were the cases of this kind that it is hard to judge of them.

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

• Child­bed.

• Abort­ive and Still­born.

• Christ­mas and In­fants.

Take the weeks in which the plague was most vi­ol­ent, and com­pare them with the weeks be­fore the dis­tem­per began, even in the same year. For ex­ample:—

Child­bed.

Abort­ive.

Still­born.

From Janu­ary 3 to Janu­ary 10

7

1

13

From Janu­ary 10 to Janu­ary 17

8

6

11

From Janu­ary 17 to Janu­ary 24

9

5

15

From Janu­ary 24 to Janu­ary 31

3

2

9

From Janu­ary 31 to Febru­ary 7

3

3

8

From Febru­ary 7 to Febru­ary 14

6

2

11

From Febru­ary 14 to Febru­ary 21

5

2

13

From Febru­ary 21 to Febru­ary 28

2

2

10

From Febru­ary 28 to March 7

5

1

10

48

24

100

Child­bed.

Abort­ive.

Still­born.

From August 1 to August 8

25

5

11

From August 8 to August 15

23

6

8

From August 15 to August 22

28

4

4

From August 22 to August 29

40

6

10

From August 29 to Septem­ber 5

38

2

11

From Septem­ber 5 to Septem­ber 12

39

23

…

From Septem­ber 12 to Septem­ber 19

42

5

17

From Septem­ber 19 to Septem­ber 26

42

6

10

From Septem­ber 26 to Octo­ber 3

141

4

9

To the dis­par­ity of these num­bers it is to be con­sidered and al­lowed for, 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 of August and Septem­ber as were in the months of Janu­ary and Febru­ary. In a word, the usual num­ber that used to die of these three art­icles, and, as I hear, did die of them the year be­fore, was thus:—

1664

Child­bed

189

Abort­ive and still­born

458

647

1665

Child­bed

625

Abort­ive and still­born

617

1,242

This in­equal­ity, I say, is ex­ceed­ingly aug­men­ted when the num­bers of people are con­sidered. I pre­tend not to make any ex­act cal­cu­la­tion of the num­bers of people which were at this time in the city, but I shall make a prob­able con­jec­ture at that part by-and-by. What I have said now is to ex­plain the misery of those poor creatures above; so that it might well 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 to them in par­tic­u­lar.

I was not con­vers­ant in many par­tic­u­lar fam­il­ies where these things happened, but the out­cries of the miser­able were heard afar off. As to those who were with child, we have seen some cal­cu­la­tion made; 291 wo­men dead in child­bed in nine weeks, out of one-third part of the num­ber of whom there usu­ally died in that time but eighty-four of the same dis­aster. Let the reader cal­cu­late the pro­por­tion.

There is no room to doubt but the misery of those that gave suck was in pro­por­tion as great. Our bills of mor­tal­ity could give but little light in this, yet some it did. There were sev­eral more than usual starved at 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 and the in­fants found dead by them, merely for want; and, if I may speak my opin­ion, I do be­lieve that many hun­dreds of poor help­less in­fants per­ished in this man­ner. Se­condly, not starved, but poisoned by the nurse. Nay, even where the mother has been nurse, and hav­ing re­ceived the in­fec­tion, has poisoned, that is, in­fec­ted the in­fant with her milk even be­fore they knew they were in­fec­ted them­selves; nay, and the in­fant has died in such a case be­fore the mother. I can­not but re­mem­ber to leave this ad­mon­i­tion upon re­cord, if ever such an­other dread­ful vis­it­a­tion should hap­pen in this city, that all wo­men that are with child 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 ex­ceed all other people’s.

I could tell here dis­mal stor­ies of liv­ing in­fants be­ing found suck­ing the breasts of their moth­ers, or nurses, after they have been dead of the plague. Of a mother in the par­ish where I lived, who, hav­ing a child that was not well, sent for an apo­thecary to view the child; and when he came, as the re­la­tion goes, was giv­ing the child suck at her breast, and to all ap­pear­ance was her­self very well; but when the apo­thecary came close to her he saw the tokens upon that breast with which she was suck­ling the child. He was sur­prised enough, to be sure, but, not will­ing to fright the poor wo­man too much, he de­sired she would give the child into his hand; so he takes the child, and go­ing to a cradle in the room, lays it in, and open­ing its cloths, found the tokens upon the child too, and both died be­fore he could get home to send a pre­vent­ive medi­cine to the father of the child, to whom he had told their con­di­tion. Whether the child in­fec­ted the nurse-mother or the mother the child was not cer­tain, but the last most likely. Like­wise of a child brought 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 it in her bosom, by which she was in­fec­ted; and died with the child in her arms dead also.

It would make the hard­est heart move at the in­stances that were fre­quently found of tender moth­ers tend­ing and watch­ing with their dear chil­dren, and even dy­ing be­fore them, and some­times tak­ing the dis­tem­per from them and dy­ing, when the child for whom the af­fec­tion­ate heart had been sac­ri­ficed has got over it and es­caped.

The like of a trades­man in East Smith­field, whose wife was big with child of her first child, and fell in la­bour, hav­ing the plague upon her. 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 to house like one dis­trac­ted, but could get no help; the ut­most he could get 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 heart broke, went back, as­sisted his wife what he could, ac­ted the part of the mid­wife, brought the child dead into the world, and his wife in about an hour died in his arms, where he held her dead body fast till the morn­ing, when the watch­man came and brought the nurse as he had prom­ised; and com­ing up the stairs (for he had left the door open, or only latched), they found the man sit­ting with his dead wife in his arms, and so over­whelmed with grief that he died in a few hours after without any sign of the in­fec­tion upon him, but merely sunk un­der the weight of his grief.

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

I can­not un­der­take to give any other than a sum­mary of such pas­sages as these, be­cause it was not pos­sible to come at the par­tic­u­lars, where some­times the whole fam­il­ies where such things happened were car­ried off by the dis­tem­per. But there were in­nu­mer­able cases of this kind which presen­ted to the eye and the ear, even in passing along the streets, as I have hin­ted above. Nor is it easy to give any story of this or that fam­ily which there was not divers par­al­lel stor­ies to be met with of the same kind.

But as I am now talk­ing of the time when the plague raged at the east­ern­most part of the town—how for a long time the people of those parts had flattered them­selves that they should es­cape, and how they were sur­prised when it came upon them as it did; for, in­deed, it came upon them like an armed man when it did come;—I say, this brings me back to the three poor men who wandered from Wap­ping, not know­ing whither to go or what to do, and whom I men­tioned be­fore; one a bis­cuit-baker, one a sail­maker, and the other a joiner, all of Wap­ping, or there­abouts.

The sleep­i­ness and se­cur­ity of that part, as I have ob­served, was such that they not only did not shift for them­selves as oth­ers did, but they boas­ted of be­ing safe, and of safety be­ing with them; and many people fled 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 the plague that way faster than it might oth­er­wise have come. For though I am much for people fly­ing away and empty­ing such a town as this upon the first ap­pear­ance of a like vis­it­a­tion, and that all people who have any pos­sible re­treat should make use of it in time and be gone, yet I must say, when all that will fly are gone, those that are left and must stand it should stand stock-still where they are, and not shift from one end of the town or one part of the town to the other; for that is the bane and mis­chief of the whole, and they carry the plague from house to house in their very clothes.

Where­fore were we ordered to kill all the dogs and cats, but be­cause as they were do­mestic an­im­als, and are apt to run from house to house and from street to street, so they are cap­able of car­ry­ing the ef­flu­via or in­fec­tious streams of bod­ies in­fec­ted even in their furs and hair? And there­fore it was that, in the be­gin­ning of the in­fec­tion, an or­der was pub­lished by the Lord Mayor, and by the ma­gis­trates, ac­cord­ing to the ad­vice of the phys­i­cians, that all the dogs and cats should be im­me­di­ately killed, and an of­ficer was ap­poin­ted for the ex­e­cu­tion.

It is in­cred­ible, if their ac­count is to be de­pended upon, what a prodi­gious num­ber of those creatures were des­troyed. I think they talked of forty thou­sand dogs, and five times as many cats; few houses be­ing without 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 of the people were in at the first com­ing of this calam­ity upon them, and how it was for want of timely en­ter­ing into meas­ures and man­age­ments, as well pub­lic as private, that all the con­fu­sions that fol­lowed were brought upon us, and that such a prodi­gious num­ber of people sank in that dis­aster, which, if proper steps had been taken, might, Provid­ence con­cur­ring, have been avoided, and which, if pos­ter­ity think fit, they may take a cau­tion and warn­ing from. But I shall come to this part again.

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

Two of them are said to be broth­ers, the one an old sol­dier, but now a bis­cuit-maker; the other a lame sailor, but now a sail­maker; the third a joiner. Says John the bis­cuit-maker one day to Tho­mas his brother, the sail­maker, “Brother Tom, what will be­come of us? The plague grows hot in the 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 it comes down into Wap­ping I shall be turned out of my lodging.” And thus they began to talk of it be­fore­hand.

John

Turned out of your lodging, Tom! If you are, I don’t know who will take you in; for people are so afraid of one an­other now, there’s no get­ting a lodging any­where.

Tho­mas

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

John

Why, they are in the right, to be sure, if they re­solve to ven­ture stay­ing 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 just fin­ish­ing, I am like to get no more work a great while. There’s no trade stirs now. Work­men and ser­vants are turned off every­where, so that I might be glad to be locked up too; but I do not see they will be will­ing to con­sent to that, any more than to the other.

John

Why, what will you do then, brother? And what shall I do? for I am al­most as bad as you. The people where I lodge are all gone into the coun­try but a maid, and she is to go next week, and to shut the house quite 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 we might have trav­elled any­where. There’s no stir­ring now; we shall be starved if we pre­tend to go out of town. They won’t let us have victu­als, no, not for our money, nor let us come into the towns, much less into their houses.

John

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

Tho­mas

As to that, we might make shift, I have a little, though not much; but I tell you there’s no stir­ring on the road. I know a couple of poor hon­est men in our street have at­temp­ted to travel, and at Bar­net, or Whet­stone, or there­abouts, the people offered to fire at them if they pre­ten­ded 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 had been denied food for my money they should have seen me take it be­fore their faces, and if I had tendered money for it they could not have taken any course with me by law.

Tho­mas

You talk your old sol­dier’s lan­guage, as if you were in the Low Coun­tries now, but this is a ser­i­ous thing. The people have good reason to keep any­body off that they are not sat­is­fied are sound, at such a time as this, and we must not plun­der them.

John

No, brother, you mis­take the case, and mis­take me too. I would plun­der nobody; but for any town upon the road to deny me leave to pass through the town in the open high­way, and deny me pro­vi­sions for my money, is to say the town has a right to starve me to death, which can­not be true.

Tho­mas

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

John

But the next town be­hind me will, by the same rule, deny me leave to go back, and so they do starve me between them. Besides, there is no law to pro­hibit my trav­el­ling wherever I will on the road.

Tho­mas

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

John

Why, brother, our con­di­tion at this rate is worse than any­body else’s, for we can neither go away nor stay here. I am of the same mind with the lepers of Samaria: “If we stay here we are sure to die,” I mean es­pe­cially 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 street at 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 away we can but die; I am re­solved to be gone.

Tho­mas

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

John

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

Tho­mas

But you know every vag­rant per­son may by the laws of Eng­land be taken 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 wander upon? They will not be put off with words.

John

Is not fly­ing to save our lives a law­ful oc­ca­sion? And do they not all 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 that when we are got out of this town. If I am once out of this dread­ful place, I care not where I go.

Tho­mas

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

John

Well, Tom, con­sider of it a little.

This was about the be­gin­ning of July; and though the plague was come for­ward in the west and north parts of the town, yet all Wap­ping, as I have ob­served be­fore, and Redriff, and Rat­diff, and Lime­house, and Po­plar, in short, Dept­ford and Green­wich, all both sides of the river from the Her­mit­age, and from over against it, quite down to Black­wall, was en­tirely free; there had not one per­son died of the plague in all Stepney par­ish, and not one on the south side of White­chapel Road, no, not in any par­ish; and yet the weekly bill was that very week risen up to 1,006.

It was a fort­night after this be­fore the two broth­ers met again, and then the case was a little altered, and the plague was ex­ceed­ingly ad­vanced and the num­ber greatly in­creased; the bill was up at 2,785, and prodi­giously in­creas­ing, though still both sides of the river, as be­low, kept pretty well. But some began to die in Redriff, and about five or six in Rat­diff High­way, when the sail­maker came to his brother John ex­press, and in some fright; for he was ab­so­lutely warned out of his lodging, and had only a week to provide him­self. His brother John was in as bad a case, for he was quite out, and had only begged leave of his mas­ter, the bis­cuit-maker, to lodge in an out­house be­long­ing to his work­house, where he only lay upon straw, with some bis­cuit-sacks, or bread-sacks, as they called them, laid upon it, and some of the same sacks to cover him.

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

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

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

They re­solved to load them­selves with as little bag­gage as pos­sible be­cause they re­solved at first to travel on foot, and to go a great way that they might, if pos­sible, be ef­fec­tu­ally safe; and a great many con­sulta­tions they had with them­selves be­fore they could agree about what way they should travel, which they were so far from ad­just­ing that even 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, that we may not have the sun upon our faces and beat­ing on our breasts, which will heat and suf­foc­ate us; and I have been told,” says he, “that it is not good to over­heat our blood at a time when, for aught we know, the in­fec­tion may be in the very air. In the next place,” says he, “I am for go­ing the way that may be con­trary to the wind, as it may blow when we set out, that we may not have the wind blow the air of the city on our backs as we go.” These two cau­tions were ap­proved of, if it could be brought so to hit that the wind might not be in the south when they set out to go north.

John the baker, who had 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 it be warm weather, yet it may be wet and damp, and we have a double reason to 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 a little tent, and I will un­der­take to set it up every night, and take it down, and a fig for all the inns in Eng­land; if we have a good tent over our heads we shall do well enough.”

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

The sol­dier and the joiner dis­puted that point some time, but at last the sol­dier car­ried it for a tent. The only ob­jec­tion against it was, that it must be car­ried with them, and that would in­crease their bag­gage too much, the weather be­ing hot; but the sail­maker had a piece of good hap, 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, poor horse that he made no use of then; and be­ing will­ing to as­sist the three hon­est men, he gave them the horse for the car­ry­ing their bag­gage; also for a small mat­ter of three days’ work that his man did for him be­fore he went, he let him have an old top­gal­lant sail that was worn out, but was suf­fi­cient and more than enough to make a very good tent. The sol­dier showed how to shape it, and they soon by his dir­ec­tion made their tent, and fit­ted it with poles or staves for the pur­pose; and thus they were fur­nished for their jour­ney, viz., three men, one tent, one horse, one gun—for the sol­dier would not go without arms, for now he said 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 should get any work abroad, as well for their sub­sist­ence as his own. What money they had they brought all into one pub­lic stock, and thus they began their jour­ney. It seems that in the morn­ing when they set out the wind blew, as the sailor said, by his pocket-com­pass, at N. W. by W. So they dir­ec­ted, or rather re­solved to dir­ect, their course N. W.

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

Here the watch placed upon Bow Bridge would have ques­tioned them, but they, cross­ing the road into a nar­row way that turns out of the hither end of the town of Bow to Old Ford, avoided any in­quiry there, and trav­elled to Old Ford. The con­stables every­where were upon their guard not so much, it seems, to stop people passing by as to stop them from tak­ing up their abode in their towns, and withal be­cause of a re­port that was newly raised at that time; and that, in­deed, was not very im­prob­able, viz., that the poor people in Lon­don, be­ing dis­tressed and starved for want of work, and by that means for want of bread, were up in arms and had raised a tu­mult, and that they would come out to all the towns round to plun­der for bread. This, I say, was only a ru­mour, and it was very well it was no more. But it was not so far off from be­ing a real­ity as it has been thought, for in a few weeks more the poor people be­came so des­per­ate by the calam­ity they suffered that they were with great dif­fi­culty kept from go­ing out into the fields and towns, and tear­ing all in pieces wherever they came; and, as I have ob­served be­fore, noth­ing hindered them but that the plague raged so vi­ol­ently and fell in upon them so furi­ously that they rather went to the grave by thou­sands than into the fields in mobs by thou­sands; for, in the parts about the par­ishes of St. Se­p­ulcher, Clerken­well, Crip­pleg­ate, Bish­opsgate, and Shored­itch, which were the places where the mob began to threaten, the dis­tem­per came on so furi­ously that there died in those few par­ishes even then, be­fore the plague was come to its height, no less than 5,361 people in the first three weeks in August; when at the same time the parts about Wap­ping, Rad­cliffe, and Roth­er­hith were, as be­fore de­scribed, hardly touched, or but very lightly; so that in a word though, as I said be­fore, the good man­age­ment of the Lord Mayor and justices did much to pre­vent the rage and des­per­a­tion of the people from break­ing out in rabbles and tu­mults, and in short from the poor plun­der­ing the rich—I say, though they did much, the dead-carts did more: for as I have said that in five par­ishes only there died above 5,000 in twenty days, so there might be prob­ably three times that num­ber sick all that time; for some re­covered, and great num­bers fell sick every day and died af­ter­wards. Besides, I must still be al­lowed to say that if the bills of mor­tal­ity said five thou­sand, I al­ways be­lieved it was near twice as many in real­ity, there be­ing no room to be­lieve that the ac­count they gave was right, or that in­deed they were among such con­fu­sions 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 as they seemed rather com­ing from the coun­try than from the city, they found the people the easier with them; that they talked to them, let them come into a pub­lic-house where the con­stable and his ward­ers were, and gave them drink and some victu­als which greatly re­freshed and en­cour­aged them; and here it came into their heads to say, when they should be in­quired of af­ter­wards, not that they came from Lon­don, but that they came out of Es­sex.

To for­ward this little fraud, they ob­tained so much fa­vour of the con­stable at Old Ford as to give them a cer­ti­fic­ate of their passing from 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 the city 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 to them that it pro­cured them, not a free pas­sage there only, but a full cer­ti­fic­ate of health from a justice of the peace, who upon the con­stable’s ap­plic­a­tion gran­ted it without much dif­fi­culty; and thus they passed through the long di­vided town of Hack­ney (for it lay then in sev­eral sep­ar­ated ham­lets), and trav­elled on till they came into the great north road on the top of Stam­ford Hill.

By this time they began to be weary, and so in the back-road from Hack­ney, a little be­fore it opened into the said great road, they re­solved to set up their tent and en­camp for the first night, which they did ac­cord­ingly, with this ad­di­tion, that find­ing a barn, or a build­ing like a barn, and first search­ing as well as they could to be sure there was nobody in it, they set up their tent, with the head of it against the 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 the man­aging their tent.

Here they went to sleep; but the joiner, a grave and sober man, and not pleased with their ly­ing at this loose rate the first night, could not sleep, and re­solved, after try­ing to sleep to no pur­pose, that he would get out, and, tak­ing the gun in his hand, stand sen­tinel and guard his com­pan­ions. So with the gun in his hand, he walked to and again be­fore the barn, for that stood in the field near the road, but within the hedge. He had not been long upon the scout but he heard a noise of people 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 his com­pan­ions; but in a few minutes more, their noise grow­ing louder and louder, the bis­cuit-baker called to him and asked him what was the mat­ter, and quickly star­ted out too. The other, be­ing the lame sail­maker and most weary, lay still in the tent.

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

They all stopped upon that, as un­der some sur­prise, and it seems there was about thir­teen of them in all, and some wo­men among them. They con­sul­ted to­gether what they should do, and by their dis­course our trav­el­lers soon found they were poor, dis­tressed people too, like them­selves, seek­ing shel­ter and safety; and be­sides, our trav­el­lers had no need to be afraid of their com­ing up to dis­turb them, for as soon as they 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 have the 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 the good­ness 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 of people, and fly­ing for their lives, as they were; and, as they were en­cour­aged by it, so John said to the joiner, his com­rade, “Let us en­cour­age 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 fly­ing from the same dread­ful en­emy as we are. Do not be afraid of us; we are only three poor men of us. If you are free from the dis­tem­per you shall not be hurt by us. We are not in the barn, but in a little tent here in the out­side, and we will re­move for you; we can set up our tent again im­me­di­ately any­where else”; and upon this a par­ley began between the joiner, whose name was Richard, and one of their men, who said his name was 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 be un­easy or think yourselves in danger; but you see we do not de­sire you should put yourselves into any danger, and there­fore I tell you that we have not made use of the barn, so we will re­move from it, that you may be safe and we also.

Ford

That is very kind and char­it­able; but if we have reason to be sat­is­fied that you are sound and free from the vis­it­a­tion, why should we make 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 rest ourselves a while, and we need not dis­turb you.

Richard

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

Ford

Blessed be God that some do es­cape, though it is but few; what may be 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 to the places where you lived?

Ford

Ay, ay, in a most fright­ful and ter­rible man­ner, or else we had not fled away as we do; but we be­lieve there will be very few left alive be­hind us.

Richard

What part do you come from?

Ford

We are most of us of Crip­pleg­ate par­ish, only two or three of Clerken­well 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 could at the hither end of Is­ling­ton, where we got leave to lie in an old un­in­hab­ited house, and had some bed­ding and con­veni­ences of our own that we brought with us; but the plague is come up into Is­ling­ton too, and a house next door to our poor dwell­ing was in­fec­ted and shut up; and we are 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 guide those that look up to Him.

They par­leyed no fur­ther at that time, but came all up to the barn, and with 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 well as they could, and went to rest; but our trav­el­lers ob­served that be­fore they went to sleep an an­cient man, who, it seems, was father of one of the wo­men, went to prayer with all the com­pany, re­com­mend­ing them­selves to the 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 had kept guard the first part of the night, so John the sol­dier re­lieved him, and he had the post in the morn­ing, and they began to be ac­quain­ted with one an­other. It seems when they left Is­ling­ton they in­ten­ded to have gone north, away to Highg­ate, but were stopped at Hol­lo­way, and there they would not let them pass; so they crossed over the fields and hills to the east­ward, and came out at the Boarded River, and so avoid­ing the towns, they left Horn­sey on the left hand and New­ing­ton on the right hand, and came into the great road about Stam­ford Hill on that side, as the three trav­el­lers had done on the other side. And now they had thoughts of go­ing over the river in the marshes, and make for­wards to Ep­ping Forest, where they hoped they should get leave to rest. It seems they were not poor, at least not so poor as to be in want; at least they had enough to sub­sist them mod­er­ately for two or three months, when, as they said, they were in hopes the cold weather would check the in­fec­tion, or at least the vi­ol­ence of it would have spent it­self, and would abate, if it were only for want of people left alive to be in­fec­ted.

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

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

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

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

They had some dif­fi­culty in passing the ferry at the river­side, the fer­ry­man be­ing afraid of them; but after some par­ley at a dis­tance, the fer­ry­man was con­tent to bring his boat to a place dis­tant from the usual ferry, and leave it there for them to take it; so put­ting them­selves over, 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 for above eight days.

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

From the river they trav­elled to­wards the forest, but when they came to Waltham­stow the people of that town denied to ad­mit them, as was the case every­where. The con­stables and their watch­men kept them off at a dis­tance and par­leyed with them. They gave the same ac­count of them­selves as be­fore, but these gave no credit to what they said, giv­ing it for a reason that two or three com­pan­ies had already come that way and made the like pre­tences, but that they had given sev­eral people the dis­tem­per in the towns where they had passed; and had been af­ter­wards so hardly used by the coun­try (though with justice, too, as they had de­served) that about Brent­wood, or that way, sev­eral of them per­ished in the fields—whether of the plague or of mere want and dis­tress they could not tell.

This was a good reason in­deed why the people of Waltham­stow should be very cau­tious, and why they should re­solve not to en­ter­tain any­body that they were not well sat­is­fied of. But, as Richard the joiner and one of the other men who par­leyed with them told them, it was no reason why they should block up the roads and re­fuse to let people pass through the town, and who asked noth­ing of them but to go through the street; that if their people were afraid of them, they might go into their houses and shut 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, con­tin­ued ob­stin­ate, and would hearken to noth­ing; so the two men that talked with them went back to their fel­lows to con­sult what was to be done. It was very dis­cour­aging in the whole, and they knew not what to do for a good while; but at last John the sol­dier and bis­cuit-maker, con­sid­er­ing a while, “Come,” says he, “leave the rest of the par­ley to me.” He had not ap­peared yet, so he sets the joiner, Richard, to work to cut some poles out of the trees and shape them as like guns as he could, and in a little time he had five or six fair mus­kets, which at a dis­tance would not be known; and about the part where the lock of a gun is he caused them to wrap cloth and rags such as they had, as sol­diers do in wet weather to pre­serve the locks of their pieces from rust; the rest was dis­col­oured with clay or mud, such as they could get; and all this while the rest of them sat un­der the trees by his dir­ec­tion, in two or three bod­ies, 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 the town’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 his shoulder, so as that the people of the town might see them. Also, he tied the horse to a gate in the hedge just by, and got some dry sticks to­gether and kindled a fire on the other side of the tent, so that the people of the town could see the fire and the smoke, but could not see what they were do­ing at it.

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

“What do you want?” says John.1

“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? What do you stay there for?

John

Why do you stop us on the king’s high­way, and pre­tend to re­fuse us leave to go on our way?

Con­stable

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

John

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

Con­stable

We have a right to stop it up, and our own safety ob­liges us to it. Besides, this is not the king’s high­way; ’tis a way upon suf­fer­ance. 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 may see we are fly­ing for our lives: and ’tis very un­chris­tian and un­just to stop us.

Con­stable

You may go back from whence you came; we do not hinder you from 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 all the people of your par­ish, and come through your town when we will; but since you have stopped us here, we are con­tent. You see we have en­camped here, and here we will live. We hope you will fur­nish us with victu­als.

Con­stable

We fur­nish you! 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, will you?

John

We have offered no vi­ol­ence to you yet. Why do you seem to ob­lige us to it? I am an old sol­dier, and can­not starve, and if you think that we 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 enough for 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 be­gin our march in a few minutes.

2

Con­stable

What is it you de­mand of us?

John

At first we de­sired noth­ing of you but leave to go through the town; we should have offered no in­jury to any of you, neither would you have had any in­jury or loss by us. We are not thieves, but poor people in dis­tress, and fly­ing from the dread­ful plague in Lon­don, which de­vours 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 as this?

Con­stable

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

John

Our horse­men

3

can­not pass with our bag­gage that way; it does not lead into the road that we want to go, and why should you force us out of the road? Besides, you have kept us here all day without any pro­vi­sions but such as we brought with us. I think you ought to send us some pro­vi­sions for our re­lief.

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 the ways against us.

Con­stable

If they all fur­nish you with food, what will you be the worse? 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 three com­pan­ies. If you will send us bread for twenty men and about six or seven wo­men for three days, and show us the way over the field you speak of, we de­sire not to put your people into any fear for us; we will go out of our way to ob­lige you, though we are as free from in­fec­tion as you are.

4

Con­stable

And will you as­sure us that your other people shall of­fer us no new dis­turb­ance?

John

No, no you may de­pend on it.

Con­stable

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

John

I an­swer for it we will not.

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

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

They were soon made sens­ible of this, for two days af­ter­wards they found sev­eral parties of horse­men and foot­men also about, in pur­suit of three com­pan­ies of men, armed, as they said, with mus­kets, who were broke out from Lon­don and had the plague upon them, and that were not only spread­ing the dis­tem­per among the people, but plun­der­ing the coun­try.

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

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

The pro­vi­sions they had at Waltham­stow served them very plen­ti­fully this night; and as for the next, they left it to Provid­ence. They had fared so well with the old sol­dier’s con­duct that they now will­ingly made him their leader, and the first of his con­duct ap­peared to be very good. He told 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 that they did not in­fect the coun­try; that what little money they had, they must be as frugal of as they could; that as he would not have them think of of­fer­ing the coun­try any vi­ol­ence, so they must en­deav­our to make the sense of their con­di­tion go as far with the coun­try as it could. They all re­ferred them­selves to his dir­ec­tion, so they left their three houses stand­ing, and the next day went away to­wards Ep­ping. The cap­tain also (for so they now called him), and his two fel­low-trav­el­lers, laid aside their design of go­ing to Waltham, and all went to­gether.

When they came near Ep­ping they hal­ted, choos­ing out a proper place in the open forest, not very near the high­way, but not far out of it on the north side, un­der a little cluster of low pol­lard-trees. Here they pitched their little camp—which con­sisted of three large tents or huts made 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 ends to­gether at the top and thick­en­ing the sides with boughs of trees and bushes, so that they were com­pletely close and warm. They had, be­sides this, a little tent where the wo­men lay by them­selves, and a hut to put the horse in.

It happened that the next day, or next but one, was mar­ket-day at Ep­ping, when Cap­tain John and one of the other men went to mar­ket and bought 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 to the rest, and bought more. John took the horse to bring it home, and the sack which the car­penter car­ried his tools in, to put it in. The car­penter went to work and made them benches and stools to sit on, such as 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 that abund­ance of people ran out of the town to look at them, and all the coun­try was alarmed about them. The people at first seemed afraid to come near them; and, on the other hand, they de­sired the people to keep off, for there was a ru­mour that the plague was at Waltham, and that it had been in Ep­ping two or three days; so John called out to them not to come 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 we brought it among you.”

After this the par­ish of­ficers came up to them and par­leyed with them at a dis­tance, and de­sired to know who they were, and by what au­thor­ity they pre­ten­ded to fix their stand at that place. John answered very frankly, they were poor dis­tressed people from Lon­don who, fore­see­ing the misery they should be re­duced to if plague spread into the city, had fled out in time for their lives, and, hav­ing no ac­quaint­ance or re­la­tions to fly to, had first taken up at Is­ling­ton; but, the plague be­ing come into that town, were fled farther; and as they sup­posed that the 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 lodging rather than have any­one think or be afraid that they should re­ceive in­jury by them.

At first the Ep­ping people talked roughly to them, and told them they must re­move; that this was no place for them; and that they pre­ten­ded to be sound and well, but that they might be in­fec­ted with the plague for aught they knew, and might in­fect the whole coun­try, and they could not suf­fer them there.

John ar­gued very calmly with them a great while, and told them that Lon­don was the place by which they—that is, the towns­men of Ep­ping and all the coun­try round them—sub­sisted; to whom they sold the pro­duce of their lands, and out of whom they made their rent of their farms; and to be so cruel to the in­hab­it­ants of Lon­don, or to any of those by whom they gained so much, was very hard, and they would be loth to have it re­membered here­after, and have it told how bar­bar­ous, how in­hos­pit­able, and how un­kind they were to the people of Lon­don when they fled from the face of the most ter­rible en­emy in the world; that it would be enough to make the name of an Ep­ping man hate­ful through all the city, and to have the rabble stone them in the very streets whenever they came so much as to mar­ket; that they were not yet se­cure from be­ing vis­ited them­selves, and that, as he heard, Waltham was already; that they would think it very 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 open fields.

The Ep­ping men told them again, that they, in­deed, said they were sound and free from the in­fec­tion, but that they had no as­sur­ance of it; and that it was re­por­ted that there had been a great rabble of people at Waltham­stow, who made such pre­tences of be­ing sound as they did, but that they threatened to plun­der the town and force their way, whether the par­ish of­ficers would or no; that there were near two hun­dred of them, and had arms and tents like Low Coun­try sol­diers; that they ex­tor­ted pro­vi­sions from the town, by threat­en­ing them with liv­ing upon them at free quarter, show­ing their arms, and talk­ing in the lan­guage of sol­diers; and that sev­eral of them be­ing gone away to­ward Rum­ford and Brent­wood, the coun­try had been in­fec­ted by them, and the plague spread into both those large towns, so that the people durst not go to mar­ket there 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 se­cured till they had made sat­is­fac­tion for the dam­age they had done, and for the ter­ror and fright they had put the coun­try into.

John answered that what other people had done was noth­ing to them; that they as­sured them they were all of one com­pany; that they had never been more in num­ber than they saw them at that time (which, by the way, was very true); that they came out in two sep­ar­ate com­pan­ies, but joined by the way, their cases be­ing the same; that they were ready to give what ac­count of them­selves any­body could de­sire of them, and to give in their names and places of abode, that so they might be called to an ac­count for any dis­order that they might be guilty of; that the towns­men might see they were con­tent to live hardly, and only de­sired a little room to breathe in on the forest where it was whole­some; for where it was not they 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 hands already, and we must take care not to in­crease it; we sup­pose you can give us no se­cur­ity against your be­ing chargeable to our par­ish and to the in­hab­it­ants, any more than you can of be­ing dan­ger­ous to us as to the in­fec­tion.”

“Why, look you,” says John, “as to be­ing chargeable to you, we hope we shall not. If you will re­lieve us with pro­vi­sions for our present ne­ces­sity, we will be very thank­ful; as we all lived without char­ity when we were at home, so we will ob­lige ourselves fully to re­pay you, if God 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 sur­vive will bury them, and put you to no ex­pense, ex­cept it should be that we should all die; and then, in­deed, the last man not be­ing able to bury him­self, would put you to that single ex­pense which I am per­suaded,” says John, “he would leave enough be­hind him to pay you for the ex­pense of.

“On the other hand,” says John, “if you shut up all bowels of com­pas­sion, and not re­lieve us at all, we shall not ex­tort any­thing by vi­ol­ence or steal from any­one; 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 and smoothly to them, that they went away; and though they did not give any con­sent to their stay­ing there, yet they did not mo­lest them; and the poor people con­tin­ued there three or four days longer without any dis­turb­ance. In this time they had got some re­mote ac­quaint­ance with a victual­ling-house at the out­skirts of the town, to whom they called at a dis­tance to bring some little things that they wanted, and which they caused to be set down at a dis­tance, and al­ways paid for very hon­estly.

Dur­ing this time the younger people of the town came fre­quently pretty near them, and would stand and look at them, and some­times talk with them at some space between; and par­tic­u­larly it was ob­served that the first 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 the good opin­ion of the coun­try, and people began to pity them and speak very well of them; the con­sequence of which was, that upon the oc­ca­sion of a very wet, rainy night, a cer­tain gen­tle­man who lived in the neigh­bour­hood sent them a little cart with twelve trusses or bundles of straw, as well for them to lodge upon as to cover and thatch their huts and to keep them dry. The min­is­ter of a par­ish not far off, not know­ing of the other, sent them also about two bushels of wheat and half a bushel of white peas.

They were very thank­ful, to be sure, for this re­lief, and par­tic­u­larly the straw was a very great com­fort to them; for though the in­geni­ous car­penter had made frames for them to lie in like troughs, and filled them with leaves of trees, and such things as they could get, and had cut all their tent-cloth out to make them cov­er­lids, yet they lay damp and hard and un­whole­some till this straw came, which was to them like feather­beds, and, as John said, more wel­come than feather­beds would have been at an­other time.

This gen­tle­man and the min­is­ter hav­ing thus be­gun, and given an ex­ample of char­ity to these wan­der­ers, oth­ers quickly fol­lowed, and they re­ceived every day some be­ne­vol­ence or other from the people, but chiefly from the gen­tle­men who dwelt in the coun­try round them. Some sent them chairs, stools, tables, and such house­hold things as they gave no­tice they wanted; some sent them blankets, rugs, and cov­er­lids, some earth­en­ware, and some kit­chen ware for or­der­ing their food.

En­cour­aged by this good us­age, their car­penter in a few days built them a large shed or house with rafters, and a roof in form, and an up­per floor, in which they lodged warm: for the weather began to be damp and cold 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, and an­other of the com­pany, with a vast deal of trouble and pains, made a fun­nel to the chim­ney to carry out the smoke.

Here they lived com­fort­ably, though coarsely, till the be­gin­ning of Septem­ber, 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 at Rum­ford and Brent­wood on the other side, was also com­ing to Ep­ping, to Wood­ford, and to most of the towns upon the Forest, and which, as they said, was brought down among them chiefly by the hig­glers, and such people as went to and from Lon­don with pro­vi­sions.

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

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

But now these new in­mates began to be dis­turbed more ef­fec­tu­ally, for the towns about them were really in­fec­ted, and they began to be afraid to trust one an­other so much as to go abroad for such things as they wanted, and this pinched them very hard, for now they had little or noth­ing but what the char­it­able gen­tle­men of the coun­try sup­plied them with. But, for their en­cour­age­ment, it happened that other gen­tle­men in the coun­try who had not sent them any­thing be­fore, began to hear of them and sup­ply them, and one sent them a large pig—that is to say, a porker—an­other two sheep, and an­other sent them a calf. In short, they had meat enough, and some­times had cheese and milk, and all such things. They were chiefly put to it for bread, for when the gen­tle­men sent them corn they had nowhere to bake it or to grind it. This made them eat the first two bushel of wheat that was sent them in parched corn, as the Is­rael­ites of old did, without grind­ing or mak­ing bread of it.

At last they found means to carry their corn to a wind­mill near Wood­ford, where they had it ground, and af­ter­wards the bis­cuit-maker made a hearth so hol­low and dry that he could bake bis­cuit-cakes tol­er­ably well; and thus they came into a con­di­tion to live without any as­sist­ance or sup­plies from the towns; and it was well they did, for the coun­try was soon after fully in­fec­ted, and about 120 were said to have died of the dis­tem­per in the vil­lages near them, which was a ter­rible thing to them.

On this they called a new coun­cil, and now the towns had no need to be afraid they should settle near them; but, on the con­trary, sev­eral fam­il­ies of the poorer sort of the in­hab­it­ants quit­ted their houses and built huts in the forest after the same man­ner as they had done. But it was ob­served that sev­eral of these poor people that had so re­moved had the sick­ness even in their huts or booths; the reason of which was plain, namely, not be­cause they re­moved into the air, but, (1) be­cause they did not re­move time enough; that is to say, not till, by openly con­vers­ing with the other people their neigh­bours, they had the dis­tem­per upon them, or (as may be said) among them, and so car­ried it about them whither they went. Or (2) be­cause they were not care­ful enough, after they were safely re­moved out of the towns, not to come in again and mingle with the dis­eased people.

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

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

The good, char­it­able gen­tle­man en­cour­aged them to quit the place for fear they should be cut off from any re­treat at all by the vi­ol­ence of the dis­tem­per; but whither they should go, that he found very hard to dir­ect them to. At last John asked of him whether he, be­ing a justice of the peace, would give them cer­ti­fic­ates of health to other justices whom they might come be­fore; that so whatever might be their lot, they might not be re­pulsed now they had been also so long from Lon­don. This his wor­ship im­me­di­ately gran­ted, and gave them proper let­ters of health, and from thence they were at liberty to travel whither they pleased.

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

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

However, it ter­ri­fied them, and they re­solved to move across the forest to­wards Rum­ford and Brent­wood; but they heard that there were num­bers of people fled out of Lon­don that way, who lay up and down in the forest called Hen­alt Forest, reach­ing near Rum­ford, and who, hav­ing no sub­sist­ence or hab­it­a­tion, not only lived oddly and suffered great ex­tremit­ies in the woods and fields for want of re­lief, but were said to be made so des­per­ate by those ex­tremit­ies as that they offered many vi­ol­ences to the county, robbed and plundered, and killed cattle, and the like; that oth­ers, build­ing huts and hov­els by the road­side, begged, and that with an im­por­tun­ity next door to de­mand­ing re­lief; so that the county 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 to find the char­ity and kind­ness of the county, which they had found here where they were be­fore, hardened and shut up against them; and that, on the other hand, they would be ques­tioned wherever they came, and would be 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 them be­fore, 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 if not, to re­move but a little farther out of the road, and dir­ec­ted them to a proper place for them; and as they really wanted some house rather than huts to shel­ter them at that time of the year, it grow­ing on to­wards Mi­chael­mas, they found an old de­cayed house which had been formerly some cot­tage or little hab­it­a­tion but was so out of re­pair as scarce hab­it­able; and by the con­sent of a farmer to whose farm it be­longed, they got leave to make what use of it they could.

The in­geni­ous joiner, and all the rest, by his dir­ec­tions went to work with it, and in a very few days made it cap­able to shel­ter them all in case 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 lean-tos on every side, they soon made the house cap­able to hold them all.

They chiefly wanted boards to make win­dow-shut­ters, floors, doors, and sev­eral other things; but as the gen­tle­men above fa­voured them, and the coun­try was by that means made easy with them, and above all, that they were known to be all sound and in good health, every­body helped them with 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 at any­body that came from Lon­don, and that they should have no ad­mit­tance any­where but with the ut­most dif­fi­culty; at least no friendly re­cep­tion and as­sist­ance as they had re­ceived here.

Now, al­though they re­ceived great as­sist­ance and en­cour­age­ment from the coun­try gen­tle­men and from the people round about them, yet they were put to great straits: for the weather grew cold and wet in Octo­ber and Novem­ber, and they had not been used to so much hard­ship; so that they got 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 what be­came of the great num­bers of people which im­me­di­ately ap­peared in the city as soon as the sick­ness abated; for, as I have said, great num­bers of those that were able and had re­treats in the coun­try fled to those re­treats. So, when it was in­creased to such a fright­ful ex­tremity as I have re­lated, the mid­dling people who had not friends fled to all parts of the coun­try where they could get shel­ter, as well those that had money to re­lieve them­selves as those that had not. Those that had money al­ways fled farthest, be­cause they were able to sub­sist them­selves; but those who were empty suffered, as I have said, great hard­ships, and were of­ten driven by ne­ces­sity to re­lieve their wants at the ex­pense of the coun­try. By that means the coun­try was made very un­easy at them, and some­times took them up; though even then they scarce knew what to do with 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 back again to Lon­don.

I have, since my know­ing this story of John and his brother, in­quired and 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 little sheds and barns and out­houses to live in, where they could ob­tain so much kind­ness of the coun­try, and es­pe­cially where they had any the least sat­is­fact­ory ac­count to give of them­selves, and par­tic­u­larly that they did not come out of Lon­don too late. But oth­ers, and that in great num­bers, built them­selves little huts and re­treats in the fields and woods, and lived like her­mits in holes and caves, or any place they could find, and where, we may be sure, they suffered great ex­tremit­ies, such that many of them were ob­liged to come back again whatever the danger was; and so those little huts were of­ten found empty, and the coun­try 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 it un­likely 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 was found a man dead, and on the gate of a field just by was cut with his knife in un­even let­ters the fol­low­ing words, by which it may be sup­posed the other man es­caped, or that, one dy­ing first, the other bur­ied him as well 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 case down 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 from the Pool as far as I could see. I have been told that they lay in the same man­ner quite down the river as low as Gravesend, and some far bey­ond: even every­where or in every place where they could ride with safety as to wind and weather; nor did I ever hear that the plague reached to any of the people on board those ships—ex­cept such as lay up in the Pool, or as high as Dept­ford Reach, al­though the people went fre­quently on shore to the coun­try towns and vil­lages and farm­ers’ houses, to buy fresh pro­vi­sions, fowls, pigs, calves, and the like for their sup­ply.

Like­wise I found that the wa­ter­men on the river above the bridge found means 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 with straw within for their lodging, and that they lay thus all along by the shore in the marshes, some of them set­ting up little tents with their sails, and so ly­ing un­der them on shore in the day, and go­ing into their boats at night; and in this man­ner, as I have heard, the river­sides were lined with boats and people as long as they had any­thing to sub­sist on, or could get any­thing of the coun­try; and in­deed the coun­try people, as well gen­tle­men as oth­ers, on these and all other oc­ca­sions, were very for­ward to re­lieve them—but they were by no means will­ing to re­ceive them into their towns and houses, and for that we can­not blame them.

There was one un­happy cit­izen within my know­ledge who had been vis­ited in 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 near re­la­tion, who had nursed those that were dead as well as she could. This dis­con­sol­ate man goes to a vil­lage near the town, though not within the bills of mor­tal­ity, and find­ing an empty house there, in­quires out the owner, and took the house. After a few days he got a cart and loaded it with goods, and car­ries them down to the house; the people of the vil­lage op­posed his driv­ing the cart along; but with some ar­guings and some force, the men that drove the cart along got through the street up to 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 be un­loaden and laid at the door, and sent the cart away; upon which they car­ried the man be­fore a justice of peace; that is to say, they com­manded him to go, which he did. The justice ordered him to cause the cart to fetch away the goods again, which he re­fused to do; upon which the justice ordered the con­stable to pur­sue the carters and fetch them back, and make them re­load the goods and carry them away, or to set them in the stocks till they came for fur­ther or­ders; and if they could not find them, nor the man would not con­sent to take them away, they should cause them to be drawn with hooks from the house-door and burned in the street. The poor dis­tressed man upon this fetched the goods again, but with griev­ous cries and lam­ent­a­tions at the hard­ship of his case. But there was no rem­edy; self-pre­ser­va­tion ob­liged the people to those sever­it­ies which they would not oth­er­wise have been con­cerned in. Whether this poor man lived or died I can­not tell, but it was re­por­ted that he had the plague upon him at that time; and per­haps the people might re­port that to jus­tify their us­age of him; but it was not un­likely that either he or his goods, or both, were dan­ger­ous, when his whole fam­ily had been dead of the dis­tem­pers so little a while be­fore.

I know that the in­hab­it­ants of the towns ad­ja­cent to Lon­don were much blamed for cruelty to the poor people that ran from the con­ta­gion in their dis­tress, and many very severe things were done, as may be seen from what has been said; but I can­not but say also that, where there was room for char­ity and as­sist­ance to the people, without ap­par­ent danger to them­selves, they were will­ing enough to help and re­lieve them. But as every town were in­deed judges in their own case, so the poor people who ran abroad in their ex­tremit­ies were of­ten ill-used and driven back again into the town; and this caused in­fin­ite ex­clam­a­tions and out­cries against the coun­try towns, and made the clam­our very pop­u­lar.

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

In En­field

32

In Horn­sey

58

In New­ing­ton

17

In Tot­ten­ham

42

In Ed­mon­ton

19

In Bar­net and Hadleigh

43

In St. Al­bans

121

In Wat­ford

45

In Uxbridge

117

In Hert­ford

90

In Ware

160

In Hod­des­don

30

In Waltham Ab­bey

23

In Ep­ping

26

In Dept­ford

623

In Green­wich

231

In Eltham and Lusum

85

In Croy­don

61

In Brent­wood

70

In Rom­ford

109

In Bark­ing Ab­bot

200

In Brent­ford

432

In King­ston

122

In Staines

82

In Chert­sey

18

In Wind­sor

103

Cum aliis.

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

There have been great de­bates among our phys­i­cians as to the reason of this. Some will have it to be in the nature of the dis­ease, and that it im­presses every­one that is seized upon by it with a kind of a rage, and a hatred against their own kind—as if there was a ma­lig­nity not only in 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 the case of a mad dog, who though the gentlest creature be­fore of any of his kind, yet then will fly upon and bite any­one that comes next him, and those as soon as any who had been most ob­served by him be­fore.

Oth­ers placed it to the ac­count of the cor­rup­tion of hu­man nature, who can­not 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 as bad a con­di­tion as it­self.

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

But I choose to give this grave de­bate a quite dif­fer­ent turn, and an­swer it or re­solve it all by say­ing that I do not grant the fact. On the con­trary, I say that the thing is not really so, but that it was a gen­eral com­plaint raised by the people in­hab­it­ing the outly­ing vil­lages against the cit­izens to jus­tify, or at least ex­cuse, those hard­ships and sever­it­ies so much talked of, and in which com­plaints both sides may be said to have in­jured one an­other; that is to say, the cit­izens press­ing to be re­ceived and har­boured in time of dis­tress, and with the plague upon them, com­plain of the cruelty and in­justice of the coun­try people in be­ing re­fused en­trance and forced back again with their goods and fam­il­ies; and the in­hab­it­ants, find­ing them­selves so im­posed upon, and the cit­izens break­ing in as it were upon them whether they would or no, com­plain that when they were in­fec­ted they were not only re­gard­less of oth­ers, but even will­ing to in­fect them; neither of which were really true—that is to say, in the col­ours they were de­scribed in.

It is true there is some­thing to be said for the fre­quent alarms which were given to the coun­try of the res­ol­u­tion of the people of Lon­don to come out by force, not only for re­lief, but to plun­der and rob; that they ran about the streets with the dis­tem­per upon them without any con­trol; and that no care was taken to shut up houses, and con­fine the sick people from in­fect­ing oth­ers; whereas, to do the Lon­don­ers justice, they never prac­tised such things, ex­cept in such par­tic­u­lar cases as I have men­tioned above, and such­like. On the other hand, everything was man­aged with so much care, and such ex­cel­lent or­der was ob­served in the whole city and sub­urbs by the care of the Lord Mayor and al­der­men and by the Justices of the Peace, church­war­dens, etc., in the out­parts, that Lon­don may be a pat­tern to all the cit­ies in the world for the good gov­ern­ment and the ex­cel­lent or­der that was every­where kept, even in the time of the most vi­ol­ent in­fec­tion, and when the people were in the ut­most con­sterna­tion and dis­tress. But of this I shall speak by it­self.

One thing, it is to be ob­served, was ow­ing prin­cip­ally to the prudence of the ma­gis­trates, and ought to be men­tioned to their hon­our: viz., the mod­er­a­tion which they used in the great and dif­fi­cult work of shut­ting up of houses. It is true, as I have men­tioned, that the shut­ting up of houses was a great sub­ject of dis­con­tent, and I may say in­deed the only sub­ject of dis­con­tent among the people at that time; for the con­fin­ing the sound in the same house with the sick was coun­ted very ter­rible, and the com­plaints of people so con­fined were very griev­ous. They were heard into the very streets, and they were some­times such that called for re­sent­ment, though of­tener for com­pas­sion. They had no way to con­verse with any of their friends but out at their win­dows, where they would make such piteous lam­ent­a­tions as of­ten moved the hearts of those they talked with, and of oth­ers who, passing by, heard their story; and as those com­plaints of­ten­times re­proached the sever­ity, and some­times the in­solence, of the watch­men placed at their doors, those watch­men would an­swer sau­cily enough, and per­haps be apt to af­front the people who were in the street talk­ing to the said fam­il­ies; for which, or for their ill-treat­ment of the fam­il­ies, I think seven or eight of them in sev­eral places were killed; I know not whether I should say murdered or not, be­cause I can­not enter into the par­tic­u­lar cases. It is true the watch­men were on their duty, and act­ing in the post where they were placed by a law­ful au­thor­ity; and killing any pub­lic legal of­ficer in 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 or ab­us­ive either to the people who were un­der their ob­ser­va­tion or to any that con­cerned them­selves for them; so when they did so, they might be said to act them­selves, not their of­fice; to act as private per­sons, not as per­sons em­ployed; and con­sequently, if they brought mis­chief upon them­selves by such an un­due be­ha­viour, that mis­chief was upon their own heads; and in­deed they had so much the hearty curses of the people, whether they de­served it or not, that whatever be­fell them nobody pit­ied them, and every­body was apt to say they de­served it, whatever it was. Nor do I re­mem­ber that any­body was ever pun­ished, at least to any con­sid­er­able de­gree, for whatever was done to the watch­men that guarded their houses.

What vari­ety of stratagems were used to es­cape and get out of houses thus shut up, by which the watch­men were de­ceived or over­powered, and that the people got away, I have taken no­tice of already, and shall say no more to that. But I say the ma­gis­trates did mod­er­ate and ease fam­il­ies upon many oc­ca­sions in this case, and par­tic­u­larly in that of tak­ing away, or suf­fer­ing to be re­moved, the sick per­sons out of such houses when they were will­ing to be re­moved either to a pes­t­house or other places; and some­times giv­ing the well per­sons in the fam­ily so shut up, leave to re­move upon in­form­a­tion given that they were well, and that they would con­fine them­selves in such houses where they went so long as should be re­quired of them. The con­cern, also, of the ma­gis­trates for the sup­ply­ing such poor fam­il­ies as were in­fec­ted—I say, sup­ply­ing them with ne­ces­sar­ies, as well physic as food—was very great, and in which they did not con­tent them­selves with giv­ing the ne­ces­sary or­ders to the of­ficers ap­poin­ted, but the al­der­men in per­son, and on horse­back, fre­quently rode to such houses and caused the people to be asked at their win­dows whether they were duly at­ten­ded or not; also, whether they wanted any­thing that was ne­ces­sary, and if the of­ficers had con­stantly car­ried their mes­sages and fetched them such things as they wanted or not. And if they answered in the af­firm­at­ive, all was well; but if they com­plained that they were ill sup­plied, and that the of­ficer did not do his duty, or did not treat them civilly, they (the of­ficers) were gen­er­ally re­moved, and oth­ers placed in their stead.

It is true such com­plaint might be un­just, and if the of­ficer had such ar­gu­ments to use as would con­vince the ma­gis­trate that he was right, and that the people had in­jured him, he was con­tin­ued and they re­proved. But this part could not well bear a par­tic­u­lar in­quiry, for the parties could very ill be well heard and answered in the street from the win­dows, as was the case then. The ma­gis­trates, there­fore, gen­er­ally chose to fa­vour the people and re­move the man, as what seemed to be the least wrong and of the least ill con­sequence; see­ing if the watch­man was in­jured, yet they could eas­ily make him amends by giv­ing him an­other post of the like nature; but if the fam­ily was in­jured, there was no sat­is­fac­tion could be made to them, the dam­age per­haps be­ing ir­re­par­able, as it con­cerned their lives.

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

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

It is doubt­ful to this day whether, in the whole, it con­trib­uted any­thing 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 did when it was in its chief vi­ol­ence, though the houses in­fec­ted were shut up as ex­actly and as ef­fec­tu­ally as it was pos­sible. Cer­tain it is that if all the in­fec­ted per­sons were ef­fec­tu­ally shut in, no sound per­son could have been in­fec­ted by them, be­cause they could not have come near them. But the case was this (and I shall only touch it here): namely, that the in­fec­tion was propag­ated in­sens­ibly, and by such per­sons as were not vis­ibly in­fec­ted, who neither knew whom they in­fec­ted or who they were in­fec­ted by.

A house in White­chapel was shut up for the sake of one in­fec­ted maid, who had only spots, not the tokens come out upon her, and re­covered; yet these people ob­tained no liberty to stir, neither for air or ex­er­cise, forty days. Want of breath, fear, an­ger, vex­a­tion, and all the other gifts at­tend­ing such an in­jur­i­ous treat­ment cast the mis­tress of the fam­ily into a fever, and vis­it­ors came into the house and said it was the plague, though the phys­i­cians de­clared it was not. However, the fam­ily were ob­liged to be­gin their quar­ant­ine anew on the re­port of the vis­it­ors or ex­am­iner, though their former quar­ant­ine wanted but a few days of be­ing fin­ished. This op­pressed them so with an­ger and grief, and, as be­fore, straitened them also so much as to room, and for want of breath­ing and free air, that most of the fam­ily fell sick, one of one 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 the per­sons that were ill, in hopes of re­leas­ing them, brought the dis­tem­per with 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 plague that those people brought them, who should have been care­ful to have pro­tec­ted 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 at first greatly af­flic­ted at, and very much dis­turbed about though, as it proved, it did not ex­pose me to any dis­aster; and this was be­ing ap­poin­ted by the al­der­man of Portsoken Ward one of the ex­am­iners of the houses in the pre­cinct where I lived. We had a large par­ish, and had no less than eight­een ex­am­iners, as the or­der called us; the people called us vis­it­ors. I en­deav­oured with all my might to be ex­cused from such an em­ploy­ment, and used many ar­gu­ments with the al­der­man’s deputy to be ex­cused; par­tic­u­larly I al­leged that I was against shut­ting up houses at all, and that it would be very hard to ob­lige me to be an in­stru­ment in that which was against my judge­ment, and which I did ver­ily be­lieve would not an­swer the end it was in­ten­ded for; but all the abate­ment I could get was only, that whereas the of­ficer was ap­poin­ted by my Lord Mayor to con­tinue two months, I should be ob­liged to hold it but three weeks, on con­di­tion nev­er­the­less that I could then get some other suf­fi­cient 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 any man to ac­cept of such an em­ploy­ment, that was fit to be en­trus­ted with it.

It is true that shut­ting up of houses had one ef­fect, which I am sens­ible was of mo­ment, namely, it con­fined the dis­tempered people, who would oth­er­wise have been both very trouble­some and very dan­ger­ous in their run­ning about streets with the dis­tem­per upon them—which, when they 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 thus re­strained; nay, so very open they were that the poor would go about and beg at people’s doors, and say they had the plague upon them, and beg rags for their sores, or both, or any­thing that de­li­ri­ous nature happened to think of.

A poor, un­happy gen­tle­wo­man, a sub­stan­tial cit­izen’s wife, was (if the story 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, and singing; the people only said he was drunk, but he him­self said he had the plague upon him, which it seems was true; and meet­ing this gen­tle­wo­man, he would kiss her. She was ter­ribly frighted, as he was only a rude fel­low, and she ran from him, but the street be­ing very thin of people, there was nobody near enough to help her. When she saw he would over­take her, she turned and gave him a thrust so for­cibly, he be­ing but weak, and pushed him down back­ward. But very un­hap­pily, she be­ing so near, he caught hold of her and pulled her down also, and get­ting up first, mastered her and kissed her; and which was worst of all, when he had done, told her he had the plague, and why should not she have it as well as he? She was frighted enough be­fore, be­ing also young with child; but when she heard him say he had the plague, she screamed out and fell down into a swoon, or in a fit, which, though she re­covered a little, yet killed her in a very few days; and I never heard whether she had the plague or no.

Another in­fec­ted per­son came and knocked at the door of a cit­izen’s house where they knew him very well; the ser­vant let him in, and be­ing told the mas­ter of the house was above, he ran up and came into the room 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 them sit 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 to de­scribe, the con­sterna­tion they were all in. The wo­men and the man’s daugh­ters, which were but little girls, were frighted al­most to death and got up, one run­ning out at one door and one at an­other, some down­stairs and some up­stairs, and get­ting to­gether as well as they could, locked them­selves into their cham­bers and screamed out at the win­dow for help, as if they had been frighted out of their wits. The mas­ter, more com­posed than they, though both frighted and pro­voked, was go­ing 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 danger of touch­ing him, hor­ror seized his mind, and he stood still like one as­ton­ished. The poor dis­tempered man all this while, be­ing as well dis­eased in his brain as in his body, stood still like one amazed. At length he turns round: “Ay!” says he, with all the seem­ing calmness ima­gin­able, “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 im­me­di­ately down­stairs. The ser­vant that had let him in goes down after him with a candle, but was afraid to go past him and open the door, so he stood on the 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 the fam­ily re­covered the fright, but as no ill con­sequence at­ten­ded, they have had oc­ca­sion since to speak of it (you may be sure) with great sat­is­fac­tion. Though the man was gone, it was some time—nay, as I heard, some days be­fore they re­covered them­selves of the hurry they were in; nor did they go up and down the house with any as­sur­ance till they had burnt a great vari­ety of fumes and per­fumes in all the rooms, and made a great many smokes of pitch, of gun­powder, and of sul­phur, all sep­ar­ately shif­ted, and washed their clothes, and the like. As to the poor man, whether he lived or died I don’t re­mem­ber.

It is most cer­tain that, if by the shut­ting up of houses the sick had not been con­fined, mul­ti­tudes who in the height of their fever were de­li­ri­ous and dis­trac­ted would have been con­tinu­ally run­ning up and down the streets; and even as it was a very great num­ber did so, and offered all sorts of vi­ol­ence to those they met, even just as a mad dog runs on and bites at every­one he meets; nor can I doubt but that, should one of those in­fec­ted, dis­eased creatures have bit­ten any man or wo­man while the frenzy of the dis­tem­per was upon them, they, I mean the per­son so wounded, would as cer­tainly have been in­cur­ably in­fec­ted as one that was sick be­fore, and had the tokens upon him.

I heard of one in­fec­ted creature who, run­ning out of his bed in his shirt in the an­guish and agony of his swell­ings, of which he had three upon him, got his shoes on and went to put on his coat; but the nurse res­ist­ing, and snatch­ing the coat from him, he threw her down, ran over her, ran down­stairs and into the street, dir­ectly to the Thames in his shirt; the nurse run­ning after him, and call­ing to the watch to stop him; but the watch­man, frighted at the man, and afraid to touch him, let him go on; upon which he ran down to the Stil­l­yard stairs, threw away his shirt, and plunged into the Thames, and, be­ing a good swim­mer, swam quite 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 about the Fal­con stairs, where land­ing, and find­ing no people there, it be­ing in the night, he ran about the streets there, na­ked as he was, for a good while, when, it be­ing by that time high wa­ter, he takes the river again, and swam back to the Stil­l­yard, landed, ran up the streets again to his own house, knock­ing at the door, went up the stairs and into his bed again; and that this ter­rible ex­per­i­ment cured him of the plague, that is to say, that the vi­ol­ent mo­tion of his arms and legs stretched the 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; and that 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 the other, as a fact within my own know­ledge, so as that I can vouch the truth of them, and es­pe­cially that of the man be­ing cured by the ex­tra­vag­ant ad­ven­ture, which I con­fess I do not think very pos­sible; but it may serve to con­firm the many des­per­ate things which the dis­tressed people fall­ing into de­li­ri­ums, and what we call light­headed­ness, were fre­quently run upon at that time, and how in­fin­itely more such there would have been if such people had not been con­fined by the shut­ting up of houses; and this I take to be the best, if not the only good thing which was per­formed by that severe method.

On the other hand, the com­plaints and the mur­mur­ings were very bit­ter against the thing it­self. It would pierce the hearts of all that came by to hear the piteous cries of those in­fec­ted people, who, be­ing thus out of their un­der­stand­ings by the vi­ol­ence of their pain or the heat of their blood, were either shut in or per­haps tied in their beds and chairs, to pre­vent their do­ing them­selves hurt—and who would make a dread­ful out­cry at their be­ing con­fined, and at their be­ing not per­mit­ted to die at large, as they called it, and as they would have done be­fore.

This run­ning of dis­tempered people about the streets was very dis­mal, and the ma­gis­trates did their ut­most to pre­vent it; but as it was gen­er­ally in the night and al­ways sud­den when such at­tempts were made, the of­ficers could not be at hand to pre­vent it; and even when any got out in the day, the of­ficers ap­poin­ted did not care to meddle with them, be­cause, as they were all griev­ously in­fec­ted, to be sure, when they were 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 their spir­its so as that they would fall and then die in per­haps half an hour or an hour; and, which was most piteous to hear, they were sure to come to them­selves en­tirely in that half hour or hour, and then to make most griev­ous and pier­cing cries and lam­ent­a­tions in the deep, af­flict­ing sense of the con­di­tion they were in. This was much of it be­fore the or­der for shut­ting up of houses was strictly put in ex­e­cu­tion, for at first the watch­men were not so vig­or­ous and severe as they were af­ter­ward in the keep­ing the people in; that is to say, be­fore they were (I mean some of them) severely pun­ished for their neg­lect, fail­ing in their duty, and let­ting people who were un­der their care slip away, or con­niv­ing at their go­ing abroad, whether sick or well. But after they saw the of­ficers ap­poin­ted to ex­am­ine into their con­duct were re­solved to have them do their duty or be pun­ished for the omis­sion, they were more ex­act, and the people were strictly re­strained; which was a thing they took so ill and bore so im­pa­tiently that their dis­con­tents can hardly be de­scribed. But there was an ab­so­lute ne­ces­sity for it, that must be con­fessed, un­less some other meas­ures had been timely entered upon, and it was too late for that.

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

It was for want of people con­vers­ing one with an­other, in this time of calam­ity, that it was im­possible any par­tic­u­lar per­son could come at the know­ledge of all the ex­traordin­ary cases that oc­curred in dif­fer­ent fam­il­ies; and par­tic­u­larly I be­lieve it was never known to this day how many people in their de­li­ri­ums drowned them­selves in the Thames, and in the river which runs from the marshes by Hack­ney, which we gen­er­ally called Ware River, or Hack­ney River. As to those which were set down in the weekly bill, they were in­deed few; nor could it be known of any of those whether they drowned them­selves by ac­ci­dent or not. But I be­lieve I might reckon up more who within the com­pass of my know­ledge or ob­ser­va­tion really drowned them­selves in that year, than are put down in the bill of all put to­gether: for many of the bod­ies were never found who yet were known to be lost; and the like in other meth­ods of self-de­struc­tion. There was also one man in or about White­cross Street burned 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; but that he had the plague upon him was agreed by all.

It was a mer­ci­ful dis­pos­i­tion of Provid­ence also, and which I have many times thought of at that time, that no fires, or no con­sid­er­able ones at least, happened in the city dur­ing that year, which, if it had been oth­er­wise, would have been very dread­ful; and either the people must have let them alone un­quenched, or have come to­gether in great crowds and throngs, un­con­cerned at the danger of the in­fec­tion, not con­cerned at the houses they went into, at the goods they handled, or at the per­sons or the people they came among. But so it was, that ex­cept­ing that in Crip­pleg­ate par­ish, and two or three little erup­tions of fires, which were presently ex­tin­guished, there was no dis­aster of that kind happened in the whole year. They told us a story of a house in a place called Swan Al­ley, passing from Goswell Street, near the end of Old Street, into St. John Street, that a fam­ily was in­fec­ted there in so ter­rible a man­ner that every­one of the house died. The last per­son lay dead on the floor, and, as it is sup­posed, had lain her­self all along to die 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 lay on, and burnt as far as just to the body, but had not taken hold of the dead body (though she had little more than her shift on) and had gone out of it­self, not burn­ing the rest of the house, though it was a slight tim­ber house. How true this might be I do not de­term­ine, but the city be­ing to suf­fer severely the next year by fire, this year it felt very little of that calam­ity.

Indeed, con­sid­er­ing the de­li­ri­ums which the agony threw people into, and how I have men­tioned in their mad­ness, when they were alone, they did many des­per­ate things, it was very strange there were no more dis­asters of that kind.

It has been fre­quently asked me, and I can­not say that I ever knew how to give a dir­ect an­swer to it, how it came to pass that so many in­fec­ted people ap­peared abroad in the streets at the same time that the houses which were in­fec­ted were so vi­gil­antly searched, and all of them shut up and 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 to dis­cover every house that was in­fec­ted as soon as it was so, or to shut up all the houses that were in­fec­ted; so that people had the liberty of go­ing about the streets, even where they pleased, un­less they were known to be­long to such-and-such in­fec­ted houses.

It is true that, as sev­eral phys­i­cians told my Lord Mayor, the fury of the con­ta­gion was such at some par­tic­u­lar times, and people sickened so fast 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 up with such ex­act­ness as the thing re­quired, al­most every house in a whole street be­ing in­fec­ted, and in many places every per­son in some of the houses; and that which was still worse, by the time that the houses were known 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 to very small pur­pose to call them in­fec­ted houses and shut them up, the in­fec­tion hav­ing rav­aged and taken its leave of the house be­fore it was really known that the fam­ily was any way touched.

This might be suf­fi­cient to con­vince any reas­on­able per­son that as it was not in the power of the ma­gis­trates, or of any hu­man meth­ods of policy, to pre­vent the spread­ing the in­fec­tion, so that this way of shut­ting up of houses was per­fectly in­suf­fi­cient for that end. Indeed it seemed to have no man­ner of pub­lic good in it, equal or pro­por­tion­able to the griev­ous bur­den that it was to the par­tic­u­lar fam­il­ies that were so shut up; and, as far as I was em­ployed by the pub­lic in dir­ect­ing that sever­ity, I fre­quently found oc­ca­sion to see that it was in­cap­able of an­swer­ing the end. For ex­ample, as I was de­sired, as a vis­itor or ex­am­iner, to in­quire into the par­tic­u­lars of sev­eral fam­il­ies which were in­fec­ted, we scarce came to any house where the plague had vis­ibly ap­peared in the fam­ily but that some of the fam­ily were fled and gone. The ma­gis­trates would re­sent this, and charge the ex­am­iners with be­ing re­miss in their ex­am­in­a­tion or in­spec­tion. But by that means houses were long in­fec­ted be­fore it was known. Now, as I was in this dan­ger­ous of­fice but half the ap­poin­ted time, which was two months, it was long enough to in­form my­self that we were no way cap­able of com­ing at the know­ledge of the true state of any fam­ily but by in­quir­ing at the door or of the neigh­bours. As for go­ing into every house to search, that was a part no au­thor­ity would of­fer to im­pose on the in­hab­it­ants, or any cit­izen would un­der­take: for it would have been ex­pos­ing us to cer­tain in­fec­tion and death, and to the ruin of our own fam­il­ies as well as of ourselves; nor would any cit­izen of prob­ity, and that could be de­pended upon, have stayed in the town if they had been made li­able to such a sever­ity.

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

It is true mas­ters of fam­il­ies were bound by the or­der to give no­tice to the ex­am­iner of the place wherein he lived, within two hours after he should dis­cover it, of any per­son be­ing sick in his house (that is to say, hav­ing signs of the in­fec­tion)—but they found so many ways to evade this and ex­cuse their neg­li­gence that they sel­dom gave that no­tice till they had taken meas­ures to have every­one es­cape out of the house who had a mind to es­cape, whether they were sick or sound; and while this was so, it is easy to see that the shut­ting up of houses was no way to be de­pended upon as a suf­fi­cient method for put­ting a stop to the in­fec­tion be­cause, as I have said else­where, many of those that so went out of those in­fec­ted houses had the plague really upon them, though they might really think them­selves sound. And some of these were the people that walked the streets till they fell down dead, not that they were sud­denly struck with the dis­tem­per as with a bul­let that killed with the stroke, but that they really had the in­fec­tion in their blood long be­fore; only, that as it preyed secretly on the vi­tals, it ap­peared not till it seized the heart with a mor­tal power, and the pa­tient died in a mo­ment, as with a sud­den faint­ing or an apo­plectic fit.

I know that some even of our phys­i­cians thought for a time that those people that so died in the streets were seized but that mo­ment they fell, as if they had been touched by a stroke from heaven as men are killed by a flash of light­ning—but they found reason to al­ter their opin­ion af­ter­ward; for upon ex­amin­ing the bod­ies of such after they were dead, they al­ways either had tokens upon them or other evid­ent proofs of the dis­tem­per hav­ing been longer upon them than they had oth­er­wise ex­pec­ted.

This of­ten was the reason that, as I have said, we that were ex­am­iners were not able to come at the know­ledge of the in­fec­tion be­ing entered into a house till it was too late to shut it up, and some­times not till the people that were left were all dead. In Pet­ti­coat Lane two houses to­gether were in­fec­ted, and sev­eral people sick; but the dis­tem­per was so well con­cealed, the ex­am­iner, who was my neigh­bour, got no know­ledge of it till no­tice was sent him that the people were all dead, and that the carts should call there to fetch them away. The two heads of the fam­il­ies con­cer­ted their meas­ures, and so ordered their mat­ters as that when the ex­am­iner was in the neigh­bour­hood they ap­peared gen­er­ally at a time, and answered, that is, lied, for one an­other, or got some of the neigh­bour­hood to say they were all in health—and per­haps knew no bet­ter—till, death mak­ing it im­possible to keep it any longer as a secret, the dead-carts were called in the night to both the houses, and so it be­came pub­lic. But when the ex­am­iner ordered the con­stable to shut up the houses there was nobody left in them but three people, two in one house and one in the other, just dy­ing, and a nurse in each house who ac­know­ledged that they had bur­ied five be­fore, that the houses had been in­fec­ted nine or ten days, and that for all the rest of the two fam­il­ies, which were many, they were gone, some sick, some well, or whether sick or well could not be known.

In like man­ner, at an­other house in the same lane, a man hav­ing his fam­ily in­fec­ted but very un­will­ing to be shut up, when he could con­ceal it no longer, shut up him­self; that is to say, he set the great red cross upon his door with the words, “Lord have mercy upon us,” and so de­luded the ex­am­iner, who sup­posed it had been done by the con­stable by or­der of the other ex­am­iner, for there were two ex­am­iners to every dis­trict or pre­cinct. By this means he had free egress and re­gress into his house again and out of it, as he pleased, not­with­stand­ing it was in­fec­ted, till at length his stratagem was found out; and then he, with the sound part of his ser­vants and fam­ily, made off and es­caped, so they were 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 of houses—un­less the people would think the shut­ting of their houses no griev­ance, and be so will­ing to have it done as that they would give no­tice duly and faith­fully to the ma­gis­trates of their be­ing in­fec­ted as soon as it was known by them­selves; but as that can­not be ex­pec­ted from them, and the ex­am­iners can­not be sup­posed, as above, to go into their houses to visit and search, all the good of shut­ting up houses will be de­feated, and few houses will be shut up in time, ex­cept those of the poor, who can­not con­ceal it, and of some people who will be dis­covered by the ter­ror and con­sterna­tion which the things put them into.

I got my­self dis­charged of the dan­ger­ous of­fice I was in as soon as I could get an­other ad­mit­ted, whom I had ob­tained for a little money to ac­cept of it; and so, in­stead of serving the two months, which was dir­ec­ted, 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 dis­tem­per began to rage with great vi­ol­ence at our end of the town.

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

Our scheme for re­mov­ing those that were sound from those that were sick was only in such houses as were in­fec­ted, and con­fin­ing the sick was no con­fine­ment; those that could not stir would not com­plain while they were in their senses and while they had the power of judging. Indeed, when they came to be de­li­ri­ous and light­headed, then they would cry out of the cruelty of be­ing con­fined; but for the re­moval of those that were well, we thought it highly reas­on­able and just, for their own sakes, they should be re­moved from the sick, and that for other people’s safety they should keep re­tired for a while, to see that they were sound, and might not in­fect oth­ers; and we thought twenty or thirty days enough for this.

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

It is here, how­ever, to be ob­served that after the fu­ner­als be­came so many that people could not toll the bell, mourn or weep, or wear black for one an­other, as they did be­fore; no, nor so much as make coffins for those that died; so after a while the fury of the in­fec­tion ap­peared to be so in­creased that, in short, they shut up no houses at all. It seemed enough that all the rem­ed­ies of that kind had been used till they were found fruit­less, and that the plague spread it­self with an ir­res­ist­ible fury; so that as the fire the suc­ceed­ing year spread it­self, and burned with such vi­ol­ence that the cit­izens, in des­pair, gave over their en­deav­ours to ex­tin­guish it, so in the plague it came at last to such vi­ol­ence that the people sat still look­ing at one an­other, and seemed quite aban­doned to des­pair; whole streets seemed to be des­ol­ated, and not to be shut up only, but to be emp­tied of their in­hab­it­ants; doors were left open, win­dows stood shat­ter­ing with the wind in empty houses for want of people to shut them. In a word, people began to give up them­selves to their fears and to think that all reg­u­la­tions and meth­ods were in vain, and that there was noth­ing to be hoped for but an uni­ver­sal des­ol­a­tion; and it was even in the height of this gen­eral des­pair that it pleased God to stay His hand, and to slacken the fury of the con­ta­gion in such a man­ner as was even sur­pris­ing, like its be­gin­ning, and demon­strated it to be His own par­tic­u­lar hand, and that above, if not without the agency of means, as I shall take no­tice of in its proper place.

But I must still speak of the plague as in its height, ra­ging even to des­ol­a­tion, and the people un­der the most dread­ful con­sterna­tion, even, as I have said, to des­pair. It is hardly cred­ible to what ex­cess the pas­sions of men car­ried them in this ex­tremity of the dis­tem­per, and this part, I think, was as mov­ing as the rest. What could af­fect a man in his full power of re­flec­tion, and what could make deeper im­pres­sions on 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 in the Butcher Row in White­chapel—I say, what could be more af­fect­ing than to see this poor man come out into the open street, run dan­cing and singing and mak­ing a thou­sand antic ges­tures, with five or six wo­men and chil­dren run­ning after him, cry­ing and call­ing upon him for the Lord’s sake 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 near him?

This was a most griev­ous and af­flict­ing thing to me, who saw it all from my own win­dows; for all this while the poor af­flic­ted man was, as I ob­served it, even then in the ut­most agony of pain, hav­ing (as they said) two swell­ings upon him which could not be brought to break or to sup­pur­ate; but, by lay­ing strong caustics on them, the sur­geons had, it seems, hopes to break them—which caustics were then upon him, burn­ing his 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 down and died.

No won­der the as­pect of the city it­self was fright­ful. The usual con­course of people in the streets, and which used to be sup­plied from our 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 al­most ex­tin­guished for some days by a very smart and hasty rain. But that was not all; some of the phys­i­cians in­sisted that they were not only no be­ne­fit, but in­jur­i­ous to the health of people. This they made a loud clam­our about, and com­plained to the Lord Mayor about it. On the other hand, oth­ers of the same fac­ulty, and em­in­ent too, op­posed them, and gave their reas­ons why the fires were, and must be, use­ful to as­suage the vi­ol­ence of the dis­tem­per. I can­not give a full ac­count of their ar­gu­ments on both sides; only this I re­mem­ber, that they cav­illed very much with one an­other. Some were for fires, but that they must be made of wood and not coal, and of par­tic­u­lar sorts of wood too, such as fir in 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 Mayor ordered no more fires, and es­pe­cially on this ac­count, namely, that the plague was so fierce that they saw evid­ently it de­fied all means, and rather seemed to in­crease than de­crease upon any ap­plic­a­tion to check and abate it; and yet this amazement of the ma­gis­trates pro­ceeded rather from want of be­ing able to ap­ply any means suc­cess­fully than from any un­will­ing­ness either to ex­pose them­selves or un­der­take the care and weight of busi­ness; for, to do them justice, they neither spared their pains nor their per­sons. But noth­ing answered; the in­fec­tion raged, and the people were now frighted and ter­ri­fied to the last de­gree: so that, 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 them­selves to des­pair, I do not mean to what men call a re­li­gious des­pair, or a des­pair of their eternal state, but I mean a des­pair of their be­ing able to es­cape the in­fec­tion or to out­live the plague which they saw was so ra­ging and so ir­res­ist­ible in its force that in­deed few people that were touched with it in its height, about August and Septem­ber, es­caped; and, which is very par­tic­u­lar, con­trary to its or­din­ary op­er­a­tion in June and July, and the be­gin­ning of August, when, as I have ob­served, many were in­fec­ted, and con­tin­ued so many days, and then went off after hav­ing had the poison in their blood a long time; but now, on the con­trary, most of the people who were taken dur­ing the two last weeks in August and in the three first weeks in Septem­ber, gen­er­ally died in two or three days at fur­thest, and many the very same day they were taken; whether the dog-days, or, as our as­tro­lo­gers pre­ten­ded to ex­press them­selves, the in­flu­ence of the dog-star, had that ma­lig­nant ef­fect, or all those who had the seeds of in­fec­tion be­fore in them brought it up to a ma­tur­ity at that time al­to­gether, I know not; but this was the time when it was re­por­ted that above 3,000 people died in one night; and they that would have us be­lieve they more crit­ic­ally ob­served it pre­tend to say that they all died within the space of two hours, viz., between the hours of one 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 my neigh­bour­hood. One fam­ily without the Bars, and not far from me, were all seem­ingly well on the Monday, be­ing ten in fam­ily. That even­ing one maid and one ap­pren­tice were taken ill and died the next morn­ing—when the other ap­pren­tice and two chil­dren were touched, whereof one died the same even­ing, and the other two on Wed­nes­day. In a word, by Saturday at noon the mas­ter, mis­tress, four chil­dren, and four ser­vants were all gone, and the house left en­tirely empty, ex­cept an an­cient wo­man who came in to take charge of the goods for the mas­ter of the fam­ily’s brother, who lived not far off, and who had not been sick.

Many houses were then left des­ol­ate, all the people be­ing car­ried away dead, and es­pe­cially in an al­ley farther on the same side bey­ond the Bars, go­ing in at the sign of Moses and Aaron, there were sev­eral houses to­gether which, they said, had not one per­son left alive in them; and some that died last in sev­eral of those houses were left a little too long be­fore they were fetched out to be bur­ied; the reason of which was not, as some have writ­ten very un­truly, that the liv­ing were not suf­fi­cient to bury the dead, but that the mor­tal­ity was so great in the yard or al­ley that there was nobody left to give no­tice to the bur­i­ers or sex­tons that there were any dead bod­ies there to be bur­ied. It was said, how true I know not, that some of those bod­ies were so much cor­rup­ted 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 the High 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 that or­din­ar­ily it was not so.

As I have men­tioned how the people were brought into a con­di­tion to des­pair of life and aban­don them­selves, so this very thing had a strange ef­fect among us for three or four weeks; that is, it made them bold and ven­tur­ous: they were no more shy of one an­other, or re­strained within doors, but went any­where and every­where, and began to con­verse. One would say to an­other, “I do not ask you how you are, or say how I am; it is cer­tain we shall all go; so ’tis no mat­ter who is all sick or who is sound”; and so they ran des­per­ately into any place or any com­pany.

As it brought the people into pub­lic com­pany, so it was sur­pris­ing how it brought them to crowd into the churches. They in­quired no more into whom they sat near to or far from, what of­fens­ive smells they met with, or what con­di­tion the people seemed to be in; but, look­ing upon them­selves all as so many dead corpses, they came to the churches without the least cau­tion, and crowded to­gether as if their lives were of no con­sequence com­pared to the work which they came about there. Indeed, the zeal which they showed in com­ing, and the earn­est­ness and af­fec­tion they showed in their at­ten­tion to what they heard, made it mani­fest what a value people would all put upon the wor­ship of God if they thought every day they at­ten­ded at the church that it would be their last.

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

Here we may ob­serve and I hope it will not be amiss to take no­tice of it that a near view of death would soon re­con­cile men of good prin­ciples one to an­other, and that it is chiefly ow­ing to our easy situ­ation in life and our put­ting these things far from us that our breaches are fo­mented, ill blood con­tin­ued, pre­ju­dices, breach of char­ity and of Chris­tian union, so much kept and so far car­ried on among us as it is. Another plague year would re­con­cile all these dif­fer­ences; a close con­vers­ing with death, or with dis­eases that threaten death, would scum off the gall from our tem­pers, re­move the an­im­os­it­ies among us, and bring us to see with dif­fer­ing eyes than those which we looked on things with be­fore. As the people who had been used to join with the Church were re­con­ciled at this time with the ad­mit­ting the Dis­sent­ers to preach to them, so the Dis­sent­ers, who with an un­com­mon pre­ju­dice had broken off from the com­mu­nion of the Church of Eng­land, were now con­tent to come to their par­ish churches and to con­form to the wor­ship which they did not ap­prove of be­fore; but as the ter­ror of the in­fec­tion abated, those things all re­turned again to their less de­sir­able chan­nel and to the course they were in be­fore.

I men­tion this but his­tor­ic­ally. I have no mind to enter into ar­gu­ments to move either or both sides to a more char­it­able com­pli­ance one with an­other. I do not see that it is prob­able such a dis­course would be either suit­able or suc­cess­ful; the breaches seem rather to widen, and tend to a widen­ing fur­ther, than to clos­ing, and who am I that I should think my­self able to in­flu­ence either one side or other? But this I may re­peat again, that ’tis evid­ent death will re­con­cile us all; on the other side the grave we shall be all brethren again. In heaven, whither I hope we may come from all parties and per­sua­sions, we shall find neither pre­ju­dice or scruple; there we shall be of one prin­ciple and of one opin­ion. Why we can­not be con­tent to go hand in hand to the place where we shall join heart and hand without the least hes­it­a­tion, and with the most com­plete har­mony and af­fec­tion—I say, why we can­not do so here I can say noth­ing to, neither shall I say any­thing more of it but that 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, the dread­ful ex­tra­vag­an­cies which the dis­trac­tion of sick people drove them into; how the streets began now to be fuller of fright­ful ob­jects, and fam­il­ies to be made even a ter­ror to them­selves. But after I have told you, as I have above, that one man, be­ing tied in his bed, and find­ing no 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 sung na­ked in the streets, not know­ing one ec­stasy from an­other; I say, after I have men­tioned these things, what can be ad­ded more? What can be said to rep­res­ent the misery of these times more lively to the reader, or to give him a more per­fect idea of a com­plic­ated dis­tress?

I must ac­know­ledge that this time was ter­rible, that I was some­times at the end of all my res­ol­u­tions, and that I had not the cour­age that I had at the be­gin­ning. As the ex­tremity brought other people abroad, it drove me home, and ex­cept hav­ing made my voy­age down to Black­wall and Green­wich, as I have re­lated, which was an ex­cur­sion, I kept af­ter­wards very much within doors, as I had for about a fort­night be­fore. I have said already that I re­pen­ted sev­eral times that I had ven­tured to stay in town, and had not gone away with my brother and his fam­ily, but it was too late for that now; and after I had re­treated and stayed within doors a good while be­fore my im­pa­tience led me abroad, then they called me, as I have said, to an ugly and dan­ger­ous of­fice which brought me out again; but as that was ex­pired while the height of the dis­tem­per las­ted, I re­tired again, and con­tin­ued close ten or twelve days more, dur­ing which many dis­mal spec­tacles rep­res­en­ted them­selves in my view out of my own win­dows and in our own street—as that par­tic­u­larly from Har­row Al­ley, of the poor out­rageous creature which danced and sung in his agony; and many oth­ers there were. Scarce a day or night passed over but 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 the butchers 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 of screeches, cry­ings, and call­ing one an­other, that we could not con­ceive what to make of it. Al­most all the dead part of the night the dead-cart stood at the end of that al­ley, for if it went in it could not well turn again, and could go in but a little way. There, I say, it stood to re­ceive 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 to de­scribe the most hor­rible cries and noise the poor people would make at their bring­ing the dead bod­ies of their chil­dren and friends out of the cart, and by the num­ber one would have thought there had been none left be­hind, or that there were people enough for a small city liv­ing in those places. Several times they cried “Murder,” some­times “Fire”; but it was easy to per­ceive it was all dis­trac­tion, and the com­plaints of dis­tressed and dis­tempered people.

I be­lieve it was every­where thus as that time, for the plague raged for six or seven weeks bey­ond all that I have ex­pressed, and came even to such a height that, in the ex­tremity, they began to break into that ex­cel­lent or­der of which I have spoken so much in be­half of the ma­gis­trates; namely, that no dead bod­ies were seen in the street or buri­als in the day­time: for there was a ne­ces­sity in this ex­tremity to bear 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., that all the pre­dict­ors, as­tro­lo­gers, for­tune-tell­ers, and what they called cun­ning-men, con­jur­ers, and the like: cal­cu­lat­ors of nativ­it­ies and dream­ers of dream, and such people, were gone and van­ished; not one of them was to be found. I am ver­ily per­suaded that a great num­ber of them fell in the heat of the calam­ity, hav­ing ven­tured to stay upon the pro­spect of get­ting great es­tates; and in­deed their gain was but too great for a time, through the mad­ness and folly of the people. But now they were si­lent; many of them went to their long home, not able to fore­tell their own fate or to cal­cu­late their own nativ­it­ies. Some have been crit­ical enough to say that every one of them died. I dare not af­firm that; but this I must own, that I never heard of one of them that ever ap­peared after the calam­ity was over.

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

From August the 22nd to the 29th

7,496

From August the 29th to the 5th of Septem­ber

8,252

From Septem­ber the 5th to the 12th of Septem­ber

7,690

From Septem­ber the 12th to the 19th of Septem­ber

8,297

From Septem­ber the 19th to the 26th of Septem­ber

6,460

38,195

This was a prodi­gious num­ber of it­self, but if I should add the reas­ons which I have to be­lieve that this ac­count was de­fi­cient, and how de­fi­cient it was, you would, with me, make no scruple to be­lieve that there died above ten thou­sand a week for all those weeks, one week with an­other, and a pro­por­tion for sev­eral weeks both be­fore and after. The con­fu­sion among the people, es­pe­cially within the city, at that time, was in­ex­press­ible. The ter­ror was so great at last that the cour­age of the people ap­poin­ted to carry away the dead began to fail them; nay, sev­eral of them died, al­though they had the dis­tem­per be­fore and were re­covered, and some of them dropped down when they have been car­ry­ing the bod­ies even at the pit side, and just ready to throw them in; and this con­fu­sion was greater in the city be­cause they had flattered them­selves with hopes of es­cap­ing, and thought the bit­ter­ness of death was past. One cart, they told us, go­ing up Shored­itch was for­saken of the 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, some thrown out here, some there, in a dis­mal man­ner. Another cart was, it seems, found in the great pit in Fins­bury Fields, the driver be­ing dead, or hav­ing been gone and aban­doned it, and the horses run­ning too near it, the cart fell in and drew the horses in also. It was sug­ges­ted that the driver was thrown in with it and that the cart fell upon him, by reason his whip was seen to be in the pit among the bod­ies; but that, I sup­pose, could not be cer­tain.

In our par­ish of Aldgate the dead-carts were sev­eral times, as I have heard, found stand­ing at the church­yard gate full of dead bod­ies, but neither bell­man or driver or any­one else with it; neither in these or many other cases did they know what bod­ies they had in their cart, for some­times they were let down with ropes out of bal­conies and out of win­dows, and some­times the bear­ers brought them to the cart, some­times other people; nor, as the men them­selves said, did they trouble them­selves 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 oc­ca­sion also; whatever ex­pense or trouble they were at, two things were never neg­lected in the city or sub­urbs either:—

1. Pro­vi­sions were al­ways to be had in full plenty, and the price not much raised neither, hardly worth speak­ing.

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

This last art­icle per­haps will hardly be be­lieved when some ac­counts which oth­ers have pub­lished since that shall be seen, wherein they say that the dead lay un­bur­ied, which I am as­sured was ut­terly false; at least, if it had been any­where so, it must have been in houses where the liv­ing were gone from the dead (hav­ing found means, as I have ob­served, to es­cape) and where no no­tice was given to the of­ficers. All which amounts to noth­ing at all in the case in hand; for this I am pos­it­ive in, hav­ing my­self been em­ployed a little in the dir­ec­tion of that part in the par­ish in which I lived, and where as great a des­ol­a­tion was made in pro­por­tion to the num­ber of in­hab­it­ants as was any­where; I say, I am sure 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 carry them off, and bur­i­ers to put them into the ground and cover them; and this is suf­fi­cient to the ar­gu­ment; for what might lie in houses and holes, as in Moses and Aaron Al­ley, is noth­ing; for it is most cer­tain they were bur­ied as soon as they were found. As to the first art­icle (namely, of pro­vi­sions, the scarcity or dear­ness), though I have men­tioned it be­fore and shall speak of it again, yet I must ob­serve here:—

1. The price of bread in par­tic­u­lar was not much raised; for in the be­gin­ning of the year, viz., in the first week in March, the penny wheaten loaf was ten ounces and a half; and in the height of the con­ta­gion 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 sold ten ounces and a half again; the like of which, I be­lieve, was never heard of in any city, un­der so dread­ful a vis­it­a­tion, be­fore.

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

In all this dread­ful vis­it­a­tion there were, as I have said be­fore, but two pes­t­houses made use of, viz., one in the fields bey­ond Old Street and one in West­min­ster; neither was there any com­pul­sion used in car­ry­ing people thither. Indeed there was no need of com­pul­sion in the case, for there were thou­sands of poor dis­tressed people who, hav­ing no help or con­veni­ences or sup­plies but of char­ity, would have been very glad to have been car­ried thither and been taken care of; which, in­deed, was the only thing that I think was want­ing in the whole pub­lic man­age­ment of the city, see­ing nobody was here al­lowed to be brought to the pes­t­house but where money was given, or se­cur­ity for money, either at their in­tro­du­cing or upon their be­ing cured and sent out—for very many were sent out again whole; and very good phys­i­cians were ap­poin­ted to those places, so that many people did very well there, of which I shall make men­tion again. The prin­cipal sort of people sent thither were, as I have said, ser­vants who got the dis­tem­per by go­ing on er­rands to fetch ne­ces­sar­ies to the fam­il­ies where they lived, and who in that case, if they came home sick, were re­moved to pre­serve the rest of the house; and they were so well looked after there in all the time of the vis­it­a­tion that there was but 156 bur­ied in all at the Lon­don pes­t­house, and 159 at that of West­min­ster.

By hav­ing more pes­t­houses I am far from mean­ing a for­cing all people into such places. Had the shut­ting up of houses been omit­ted and the sick hur­ried out of their dwell­ings to pes­t­houses, as some pro­posed, it seems, at that time as well as since, it would cer­tainly have been much worse than it was. The very re­mov­ing the sick would have been a spread­ing of the in­fec­tion, and rather be­cause that re­mov­ing could not ef­fec­tu­ally clear the house where the sick per­son was of the dis­tem­per; and the rest of the fam­ily, be­ing then left at liberty, would cer­tainly spread it among oth­ers.

The meth­ods also in private fam­il­ies, which would have been uni­ver­sally used to have con­cealed the dis­tem­per and to have con­cealed the per­sons be­ing sick, would have been such that the dis­tem­per would some­times have seized a whole fam­ily be­fore any vis­it­ors or ex­am­iners could have known of it. On the other hand, the prodi­gious num­bers which would have been sick at a time would have ex­ceeded all the ca­pa­city of pub­lic pes­t­houses to re­ceive them, or of pub­lic of­ficers to dis­cover and re­move them.

This was well con­sidered in those days, and I have heard them talk of it of­ten. The ma­gis­trates had enough to do to bring people to sub­mit to hav­ing their houses shut up, and many ways they de­ceived the watch­men and got out, as I have ob­served. But that dif­fi­culty made it ap­par­ent that they would have found it im­prac­tic­able to have gone the other way to work, for they could never have forced the sick people out of their beds and out of their dwell­ings. It must not have been my Lord Mayor’s of­ficers, but an army of of­ficers, that must have at­temp­ted it; and the people, on the other hand, would have been en­raged and des­per­ate, and would have killed those that should have offered to have meddled with them or with their chil­dren and re­la­tions, whatever had be­fallen them for it; so that they would have made the people, who, as it was, were in the most ter­rible dis­trac­tion ima­gin­able, I say, they would have made them stark mad; whereas the ma­gis­trates found it proper on sev­eral ac­counts to treat them with len­ity and com­pas­sion, and not with vi­ol­ence and ter­ror, such as drag­ging the sick out of their houses or ob­li­ging them 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 the whole town, when, as I have said, the bet­ter sort of people first took the alarm and began to hurry them­selves out of town. It was true, as I ob­served in its place, that the throng was so great, and the coaches, horses, wag­ons, and carts were so many, driv­ing and drag­ging the people away, that it looked as if all the city was run­ning away; and had any reg­u­la­tions been pub­lished that had been ter­ri­fy­ing at that time, es­pe­cially such as would pre­tend to dis­pose of the people oth­er­wise than they would dis­pose of them­selves, it would have put both the city and sub­urbs into the ut­most con­fu­sion.

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

In the first place, the Lord Mayor and the sher­iffs, the Court of Al­der­men, and a cer­tain num­ber of the Com­mon Coun­cil men, or their depu­ties, came to a res­ol­u­tion and pub­lished it, viz., that they would not quit the city them­selves, but that they would be al­ways at hand for the pre­serving good or­der in every place and for the do­ing justice on all oc­ca­sions; as also for the dis­trib­ut­ing the pub­lic char­ity to the poor; and, in a word, for the do­ing the duty and dis­char­ging the trust re­posed in them by the cit­izens to the ut­most of their power.

In pur­su­ance of these or­ders, the Lord Mayor, sher­iffs, etc., held coun­cils every day, more or less, for mak­ing such dis­pos­i­tions as they found need­ful for pre­serving the civil peace; and though they used the people with all pos­sible gen­tle­ness and clem­ency, yet all man­ner of pre­sump­tu­ous rogues such as thieves, house­break­ers, plun­der­ers of the dead or of the sick, were duly pun­ished, and sev­eral de­clar­a­tions were con­tinu­ally pub­lished by the Lord Mayor and Court of Al­der­men against such.

Also all con­stables and church­war­dens were en­joined to stay in the city upon severe pen­al­ties, or to depute such able and suf­fi­cient house­keep­ers as the deputy al­der­men or Com­mon Coun­cil men of the pre­cinct should ap­prove, and for whom they should give se­cur­ity; and also se­cur­ity in case of mor­tal­ity that they would forth­with con­sti­tute other con­stables in their stead.

These things rees­tab­lished the minds of the people very much, es­pe­cially in the first of their fright, when they talked of mak­ing so uni­ver­sal a flight that the city would have been in danger of be­ing en­tirely deser­ted of its in­hab­it­ants ex­cept the poor, and the coun­try of be­ing plundered and laid waste by the mul­ti­tude. Nor were the ma­gis­trates de­fi­cient in per­form­ing their part as boldly as they prom­ised it; for my Lord Mayor and the sher­iffs were con­tinu­ally in the streets and at places of the greatest danger, and though they did not care for hav­ing too great a re­sort of people crowding about them, yet in emer­gent cases they never denied the people ac­cess to them, and heard with pa­tience all their griev­ances and com­plaints. My Lord Mayor had a low gal­lery built on pur­pose in his hall, where he stood a little re­moved from the crowd when any com­plaint came to be heard, that he might 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 if any of them were sick or in­fec­ted, as some of them were, oth­ers were in­stantly em­ployed to fill up and of­fi­ci­ate in their places till it was known whether the other should live or die.

In like man­ner the sher­iffs and al­der­men did in their sev­eral sta­tions and wards, where they were placed by of­fice, and the sher­iff’s of­ficers or ser­geants were ap­poin­ted to re­ceive or­ders from the re­spect­ive al­der­men in their turn, so that justice was ex­ecuted in all cases without in­ter­rup­tion. In the next place, it was one of their par­tic­u­lar cares to see the or­ders for the free­dom of the mar­kets ob­served, and in this part either the Lord Mayor or one or both of the sher­iffs were every mar­ket-day on horse­back to see their or­ders ex­ecuted and to see that the coun­try people had all pos­sible en­cour­age­ment and free­dom in their com­ing to the mar­kets and go­ing back again, and that no nuis­ances or fright­ful ob­jects should be seen in the streets to ter­rify them or make them un­will­ing to come. Also the bakers were taken un­der par­tic­u­lar or­der, and the Master of the Bakers’ Com­pany was, with his court of as­sist­ants, dir­ec­ted to see the or­der of my Lord Mayor for their reg­u­la­tion put in ex­e­cu­tion, and the due as­size of bread (which was weekly ap­poin­ted by my Lord Mayor) ob­served; and all the bakers were ob­liged to keep their oven go­ing con­stantly, on pain of los­ing the priv­ileges of a free­man of the city of Lon­don.

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

It was in­deed one ad­mir­able piece of con­duct in the said ma­gis­trates that the streets were kept con­stantly clear and free from all man­ner of fright­ful ob­jects, dead bod­ies, or any such things as were in­de­cent or un­pleas­ant—un­less where any­body fell down sud­denly or died in the streets, as I have said above; and these were gen­er­ally covered with some cloth or blanket, or re­moved into the next church­yard till night. All the need­ful works that car­ried ter­ror with them, that were both dis­mal and dan­ger­ous, were done in the night; if any dis­eased bod­ies were re­moved, or dead bod­ies bur­ied, or in­fec­ted clothes burnt, it was done in the night; and all the bod­ies which were thrown into the great pits in the sev­eral church­yards or bury­ing-grounds, as has been ob­served, were so re­moved in the night, and everything was covered and closed be­fore day. So that in the day­time there was not the least sig­nal of the calam­ity to be seen or heard of, ex­cept what was to be ob­served from the empti­ness of the streets, and some­times from the pas­sion­ate out­cries and lam­ent­a­tions of the people, out at their win­dows, and from the num­bers of houses and shops shut up.

Nor was the si­lence and empti­ness of the streets so much in the city as in the out-parts, ex­cept just at one par­tic­u­lar time when, as I have men­tioned, the plague came east and spread over all the city. It was in­deed a mer­ci­ful dis­pos­i­tion of God, that as the plague began at one end of the town first (as has been ob­served at large) so it pro­ceeded pro­gress­ively 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 it came on one way, it abated an­other. For ex­ample, it began at St. Giles’s and the West­min­ster end of the town, and it was in its height in all that 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 in West­min­ster. The lat­ter end of July it de­creased in those par­ishes; and com­ing east, it in­creased prodi­giously in Crip­pleg­ate, St. Se­p­ulcher’s, St. James’s, Clerken­well, and St. Bride’s and Alder­sgate. While it was in all these par­ishes, the city and all the par­ishes of the South­wark side of the wa­ter and all Stepney, White­chapel, Aldgate, Wap­ping, and Ratcliff, were very little touched; so that people went about their busi­ness un­con­cerned, car­ried on their trades, kept open their shops, and con­versed freely with one an­other in all the city, the east and north­east sub­urbs, and in South­wark, al­most as if the plague had not been among us.

Even when the north and north­w­est sub­urbs were fully in­fec­ted, viz., Crip­pleg­ate, Clerken­well, Bish­opsgate, and Shored­itch, yet still all the rest were tol­er­ably well. For ex­ample from 25th July to 1st August the bill stood thus of all dis­eases:—

St. Giles, Crip­pleg­ate

554

St. Se­p­ulchers

250

Clerken­well

103

Bish­opsgate

116

Shored­itch

110

Stepney par­ish

127

Aldgate

92

White­chapel

104

All the ninety-seven par­ishes within the walls

228

All the par­ishes in South­wark

205

Total

1,889

So that, in short, there died more that week in the two par­ishes of Crip­pleg­ate and St. Se­p­ulcher by forty-eight than in all the city, all the east sub­urbs, and all the South­wark par­ishes put to­gether. This caused the repu­ta­tion of the city’s health to con­tinue all over Eng­land—and es­pe­cially in the counties and mar­kets ad­ja­cent, from whence our sup­ply of pro­vi­sions chiefly came even much longer than that health it­self con­tin­ued; for when the people came into the streets from the coun­try by Shored­itch and Bish­opsgate, or by Old Street and Smith­field, they would see the out-streets empty and the houses and shops shut, and the few people that were stir­ring there walk in the middle of the streets. But when they came within the city, there things looked bet­ter, and the mar­kets and shops were open, and the people walk­ing about the streets as usual, though not quite so many; and this con­tin­ued till the lat­ter end of August and the be­gin­ning of Septem­ber.

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

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

The weekly bill, which makes out this de­crease of the buri­als in the west 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

Clerken­well

77

St. Se­p­ulcher

214

St. Leonard, Shored­itch

183

Stepney par­ish

716

Aldgate

623

White­chapel

532

In the ninety-seven par­ishes within the walls

1,493

In the eight par­ishes on South­wark side

1,636

Total

6,060

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

From the 19th of Septem­ber to the 26th—

St. Giles, Crip­pleg­ate

227

St. Giles-in-the-Fields

119

Clerken­well

76

St. Se­p­ulcher

193

St. Leonard, Shored­itch

146

Stepney par­ish

616

Aldgate

496

White­chapel

346

In the ninety-seven par­ishes within the walls

1,268

In the eight par­ishes on South­wark side

1,390

Total

4,927

From the 26th of Septem­ber to the 3rd of Octo­ber—

St. Giles, Crip­pleg­ate

196

St. Giles-in-the-Fields

95

Clerken­well

48

St. Se­p­ulcher

137

St. Leonard, Shored­itch

128

Stepney par­ish

674

Aldgate

372

White­chapel

328

In the ninety-seven par­ishes within the walls

1,149

In the eight par­ishes on South­wark side

1,201

Total

4,328

And now the misery of the city and of the said east and south parts was com­plete in­deed; for, as you see, the weight of the dis­tem­per lay upon those parts, that is to say, the city, the eight par­ishes over the river, with the par­ishes of Aldgate, White­chapel, and Stepney; and this was the time that the bills came up to such a mon­strous height as that I men­tioned be­fore, and that eight or nine, and, as I be­lieve, ten or twelve thou­sand a week, died; for it is my settled opin­ion that they never could come at any just ac­count of the num­bers, for the reas­ons which I have given already.

Nay, one of the most em­in­ent phys­i­cians, who has since pub­lished in Latin an ac­count of those times, and of his ob­ser­va­tions says that in one week there died twelve thou­sand people, and that par­tic­u­larly there died four thou­sand in one night; though I do not re­mem­ber that there ever was any such par­tic­u­lar night so re­mark­ably fatal as that such a num­ber died in it. However, all this con­firms what I have said above of the un­cer­tainty of the bills of mor­tal­ity, etc., of which I shall say more here­after.

And here let me take leave to enter again, though it may seem a re­pe­ti­tion of cir­cum­stances, into a de­scrip­tion of the miser­able con­di­tion of the city it­self, and of those parts where I lived at this par­tic­u­lar time. The city and those other parts, not­with­stand­ing the great num­bers of people that were gone into the coun­try, was vastly full of people; and per­haps the fuller be­cause people had for a long time a strong be­lief that the plague would not come into the city, nor into South­wark, no, nor into Wap­ping or Ratcliff at all; nay, such was the as­sur­ance of the people on that head that many re­moved from the sub­urbs on the west and north sides, into those east­ern and south sides as for safety; and, as I ver­ily be­lieve, car­ried the plague amongst them there per­haps 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, that it was not the sick people only from whom the plague was im­me­di­ately re­ceived by oth­ers that were sound, but the well. To ex­plain my­self: by the sick people I mean those who were known to be sick, had taken their beds, had been un­der cure, or had swell­ings and tu­mours upon them, and the like; these every­body could be­ware of; they were either in their beds or in such con­di­tion as could not be con­cealed.

By the well I mean such as had re­ceived the con­ta­gion, and had it really upon them, and in their blood, yet did not show the con­sequences of it in their coun­ten­ances: nay, even were not sens­ible of it them­selves, as many were not for sev­eral days. These breathed death in every place, and upon every­body who came near them; nay, their very clothes re­tained the in­fec­tion, their hands would in­fect the things they touched, es­pe­cially if 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 I have said, know them­selves to be in­fec­ted. These were the people that so of­ten dropped down and fain­ted in the streets; for of­ten­times they would go 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 them­selves thus, they would struggle hard to get home to their own doors, or at other times would be just able to go into their houses and die in­stantly; other times they would go about till they had the very tokens come out upon them, and yet not know it, and would die in an hour or two after they came home, but be well as long as they were abroad. These were the dan­ger­ous people; these were the people of whom the well people ought to have been afraid; but then, on the other side, it was im­possible to know them.

And this is the reason why it is im­possible in a vis­it­a­tion to pre­vent the spread­ing of the plague by the ut­most hu­man vi­gil­ance: viz., that it is im­possible to know the in­fec­ted people from the sound, or that the in­fec­ted people should per­fectly know them­selves. I knew a man who con­versed freely in Lon­don all the sea­son of the plague in 1665, and kept about him an an­ti­dote or cor­dial on pur­pose to take when he thought him­self in any danger, and he had such a rule to know or have warn­ing of the danger by as in­deed I never met with be­fore or since. How far it may be de­pended on I know not. He had a wound in his leg, and whenever he came among any people that were not sound, and the in­fec­tion began to af­fect him, he said he could know it by that sig­nal, viz., that his wound in his leg would smart, and look pale and white; so as soon as ever he felt it smart it was time for him to with­draw, or to take care of him­self, tak­ing his drink, which he al­ways car­ried about him for that pur­pose. Now it seems he found his wound would smart many times when he was in com­pany with such who thought them­selves to be sound, and who ap­peared so to one an­other; but he would presently rise up and say pub­licly, “Friends, here is some­body in the room that has the plague,” and so would im­me­di­ately break up the com­pany. This was in­deed a faith­ful mon­itor to all people that the plague is not to be avoided by those that con­verse promis­cu­ously in a town in­fec­ted, and people have it when they know it not, and that they like­wise give it to oth­ers when they know not that they have it them­selves; and in this case shut­ting up the well or re­mov­ing the sick will not do it, un­less they can go back and shut up all those that the sick had con­versed with, even be­fore they knew 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 have re­ceived the in­fec­tion, or from whom.

This I take to be the reason which makes so many people talk of the air be­ing cor­rup­ted and in­fec­ted, and that they need not be cau­tious of whom they con­verse with, for that the con­ta­gion was in the air. I have seen them in strange agit­a­tions and sur­prises on this ac­count. “I have never come near any in­fec­ted body,” says the dis­turbed per­son; “I have con­versed with none but sound, healthy people, and yet I have got­ten the dis­tem­per!” “I am sure I am struck from Heaven,” says an­other, and he falls to the ser­i­ous part. Again, the first goes on ex­claim­ing, “I have come 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, be­ing hardened to the danger, grow less con­cerned at it; and less cau­tious to­wards the lat­ter end of the time, and when it was come to its height, than they were at first. Then, with a kind of a Turk­ish pre­des­tin­ari­an­ism, they would say, if it pleased God to strike them, it was all one whether they went abroad or stayed at home; they could not es­cape it, and there­fore they went boldly about, even into in­fec­ted houses and in­fec­ted com­pany; vis­ited sick people; and, in short, lay in the beds with their wives or re­la­tions when they were in­fec­ted. And what was the con­sequence, but the same that is the con­sequence in Tur­key, and in those coun­tries where they do those things—namely, that they were in­fec­ted too, and died by hun­dreds and thou­sands?

I would be far from lessen­ing the awe of the judge­ments of God and the rev­er­ence to His provid­ence which ought al­ways to be on our minds on such oc­ca­sions as these. Doubt­less the vis­it­a­tion it­self is a stroke from Heaven upon a city, or coun­try, or na­tion where it falls; a mes­sen­ger of His ven­geance, and a loud call to that na­tion or coun­try or city to hu­mi­li­ation and re­pent­ance, ac­cord­ing to that of the prophet Jeremiah (xviii 7, 8): “At what in­stant I shall speak con­cern­ing a na­tion, and con­cern­ing a king­dom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to des­troy it; if that na­tion against whom I have pro­nounced turn from their 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 on such oc­ca­sions, and not to lessen them, it is that I have left those minutes upon re­cord.

I say, there­fore, I re­flect upon no man for put­ting the reason of those things upon the im­me­di­ate hand of God, and the ap­point­ment and dir­ec­tion of His provid­ence; nay, on the con­trary, there were many won­der­ful de­liv­er­ances of per­sons from in­fec­tion, and de­liv­er­ances of per­sons when in­fec­ted, which in­tim­ate sin­gu­lar and re­mark­able provid­ence in the par­tic­u­lar in­stances to which they refer; and I es­teem my own de­liv­er­ance to be one next to mi­ra­cu­lous, and do re­cord it with thank­ful­ness.

But when I am speak­ing of the plague as a dis­tem­per arising from nat­ural causes, we must con­sider it as it was really propag­ated by nat­ural means; nor is it at all the less a judge­ment for its be­ing un­der the con­duct of hu­man causes and ef­fects; for, as the Div­ine Power has formed the whole scheme of nature and main­tains nature in its course, so the same Power thinks fit to let His own act­ings with men, whether of mercy or judge­ment, to go on in the or­din­ary course of nat­ural causes; and He is pleased to act by those nat­ural causes as the or­din­ary means, ex­cept­ing and re­serving to Him­self nev­er­the­less a power to act in a su­per­nat­ural way when He sees oc­ca­sion. Now ’tis evid­ent that in the case of an in­fec­tion there is no ap­par­ent ex­traordin­ary oc­ca­sion for su­per­nat­ural op­er­a­tion, but the or­din­ary course of things ap­pears suf­fi­ciently armed, and made cap­able of all the ef­fects that Heaven usu­ally dir­ects by a con­ta­gion. Among these causes and ef­fects, this of the secret con­vey­ance of in­fec­tion, im­per­cept­ible and un­avoid­able, is more 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 the in­fec­tion was re­ceived so im­per­cept­ibly, that the most ex­act cau­tion could not se­cure us while in the place. But I must be al­lowed to be­lieve—and I have so many ex­amples fresh in my memory to con­vince me of it, that I think none can res­ist their evid­ence—I say, I must be al­lowed to be­lieve that no one in this whole na­tion ever re­ceived the sick­ness or in­fec­tion but who re­ceived it in the or­din­ary way of in­fec­tion from some­body, or the clothes or touch or stench of some­body that was in­fec­ted be­fore.

The man­ner of its com­ing first to Lon­don proves this also, viz., by goods brought over from Hol­land, and brought thither from the Levant; the first break­ing of it out in a house in Long Acre where those goods were car­ried and first opened; its spread­ing from that house to other houses by the vis­ible un­wary con­vers­ing with those who were sick; and the in­fect­ing the par­ish of­ficers who were em­ployed about the per­sons dead, and the like. These are known au­thor­it­ies for this great found­a­tion point—that it went on and pro­ceeded from per­son to per­son and from house to house, and no oth­er­wise. In the first house that was in­fec­ted there died four per­sons. A neigh­bour, hear­ing the mis­tress of the first house was sick, went to visit her, and went home and gave the dis­tem­per to her fam­ily, and died, and all her house­hold. A min­is­ter, called to pray with the first sick per­son in the second house, was said to sicken im­me­di­ately and die with sev­eral more in his house. Then the phys­i­cians began to con­sider, for they did not at first dream of a gen­eral con­ta­gion. But the phys­i­cians be­ing sent to in­spect the bod­ies, they as­sured the people that it was neither more or less than the plague, with all its ter­ri­fy­ing par­tic­u­lars, and that it threatened an uni­ver­sal in­fec­tion, so many people hav­ing already con­versed with the sick or dis­tempered, and hav­ing, as might be sup­posed, re­ceived in­fec­tion from them, that it would be im­possible to put a stop to it.

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

For ex­ample, many per­sons in the time of this vis­it­a­tion never per­ceived that 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, or mor­ti­fied flesh in small knobs as broad as a little sil­ver penny, and hard as a piece of cal­lus or horn; so that, when the dis­ease was come up to that length, there was noth­ing could fol­low but cer­tain death; and yet, as I said, they knew noth­ing of their be­ing in­fec­ted, nor found them­selves so much as out of or­der, till those mor­tal marks were upon them. But every­body must al­low that they were in­fec­ted in a high de­gree be­fore, 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 much more op­por­tun­ity to re­mem­ber than I; but some came within the com­pass of my ob­ser­va­tion or hear­ing, of which I shall name a few.

A cer­tain cit­izen who had lived safe and un­touched till the month of Septem­ber, when the weight of the dis­tem­per lay more in the city than it had done be­fore, was mighty cheer­ful, and some­thing too bold (as I think it 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, a neigh­bour of his, to him one day, “Do not be too con­fid­ent, Mr. ———; it is hard to say who is sick and who is well, for we see men alive and well to out­ward ap­pear­ance one hour, and dead the next.” “That is true,” says the first man, for he was not a man pre­sump­tu­ously se­cure, but had es­caped a long while—and men, as I said above, es­pe­cially in the city began to be over-easy upon that score. “That is true,” says he; “I do not think my­self se­cure, but I hope I have not been in com­pany with any per­son that there has been any danger in.” “No?” says his neigh­bour. “Was not you at the Bull Head Tav­ern in Gracechurch Street with Mr. ——— the night be­fore last?” “Yes,” says the first, “I was; but there was nobody there that we had any reason to think dan­ger­ous.” Upon which his neigh­bour said no more, be­ing un­will­ing to sur­prise him; but this made him more in­quis­it­ive, and as his neigh­bour ap­peared back­ward, he was the more im­pa­tient, and in a kind of warmth says he aloud, “Why, he is not dead, is he?” Upon which his neigh­bour still was si­lent, but cast up his eyes and said some­thing to him­self; at which the first cit­izen turned pale, and said no more but this, “Then I am a dead man too,” and went home im­me­di­ately and sent for a neigh­bour­ing apo­thecary to give him some­thing pre­vent­ive, for he had not yet found him­self ill; but the apo­thecary, open­ing his breast, fetched a sigh, and said no more but this, “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 the reg­u­la­tions of ma­gis­trates, either by shut­ting up the sick or re­mov­ing them, to stop an in­fec­tion which spreads it­self from man to man even while they are per­fectly well and in­sens­ible of its ap­proach, and may be so for many days.

It may be proper to ask here how long it may be sup­posed men might have the seeds of the con­ta­gion in them be­fore it dis­covered it­self in this fatal man­ner, and how long they might go about seem­ingly whole, and yet be con­ta­gious to all those that came near them. I be­lieve the most ex­per­i­enced phys­i­cians can­not an­swer this ques­tion dir­ectly any more than I can; and some­thing an or­din­ary ob­server may take no­tice of, which may pass their ob­ser­va­tions. The opin­ion of phys­i­cians abroad seems to be that it may lie dormant in the spir­its or in the blood-ves­sels a very con­sid­er­able time. Why else do they ex­act a quar­ant­ine of those who came into their har­bours and ports from sus­pec­ted places? Forty days is, one would 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 own ob­ser­va­tion, that they can be in­fec­ted so as to be con­ta­gious to oth­ers above fif­teen or six­teen days at fur­thest; and on that score it was, that when a house was shut up in the city and any­one had died of the plague, but nobody ap­peared to be ill in the fam­ily for six­teen or eight­een days after, they were not so strict but that they would con­nive at their go­ing privately abroad; nor would people be much afraid of them af­ter­ward, but rather think they were for­ti­fied the bet­ter, hav­ing not been vul­ner­able when the en­emy was in their own house; but we some­times found it had lain much longer con­cealed.

Upon the foot of all these ob­ser­va­tions I must say that though Provid­ence seemed to dir­ect my con­duct to be oth­er­wise, yet it is my opin­ion, and I must leave it as a pre­scrip­tion, viz., that the best physic against the plague is to run away from it. I know people en­cour­age them­selves by say­ing God is able to keep us in the midst of danger, and able to over­take us when we think ourselves out of danger; and this kept thou­sands in the town whose car­cases went into the great pits by cart­loads, and who, if they had fled from the danger, had, I be­lieve, been safe from the dis­aster; at least ’tis prob­able they had been safe.

And were this very fun­da­mental only duly con­sidered by the people on any fu­ture oc­ca­sion of this or the like nature, I am per­suaded it would put them upon quite dif­fer­ent meas­ures for man­aging the people from those that they took in 1665, or than any that have been taken abroad that I have heard of. In a word, they would con­sider of sep­ar­at­ing the people into smal­ler bod­ies, and re­mov­ing them in time farther from one an­other—and not let such a con­ta­gion as this, which is in­deed chiefly dan­ger­ous to col­lec­ted bod­ies of people, find a mil­lion of people in a body to­gether, as was very near the case be­fore, and would cer­tainly be the case if it should ever ap­pear again.

The plague, like a great fire, if a few houses only are con­tigu­ous where it 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 it be­gins. 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 con­sumes all it can reach.

I could pro­pose many schemes on the foot of which the gov­ern­ment of this city, if ever they should be un­der the ap­pre­hen­sions of such an­other en­emy (God for­bid they should), might ease them­selves of the greatest part of the dan­ger­ous people that be­long to them; I mean such as the beg­ging, starving, la­bour­ing poor, and among them chiefly those who, in case of a siege, are called the use­less mouths; who be­ing then prudently and to their own ad­vant­age dis­posed of, and the wealthy in­hab­it­ants dis­pos­ing of them­selves and of their ser­vants and chil­dren, the city and its ad­ja­cent parts would be so ef­fec­tu­ally evac­u­ated that there would not be above a tenth part of its people left to­gether for the dis­ease to take hold upon. But sup­pose them to be a fifth part, and that two hun­dred and fifty thou­sand people were left: and if it did seize upon them, they would, by their liv­ing so much at large, be much bet­ter pre­pared to de­fend them­selves against the in­fec­tion, and be less li­able to the ef­fects of it than if the same num­ber of people lived close to­gether in one smal­ler city such as Dub­lin or Am­s­ter­dam or the like.

It is true hun­dreds, yea, thou­sands of fam­il­ies fled away at this last plague, but then of them, many fled too late, and not only died in their flight, but car­ried the dis­tem­per with them into the coun­tries where they went and in­fec­ted those whom they went among for safety; which con­foun­ded the thing, and made that be a propaga­tion of the dis­tem­per which was the best means to pre­vent it; and this too is an evid­ence of it, and brings me back to what I only hin­ted at be­fore, but must speak more fully to here, namely, that men went about ap­par­ently well many days after they had the taint of the dis­ease in their vi­tals, and after their spir­its were so seized as that they could never es­cape it, and that 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 they went through, as well as the fam­il­ies they went among; and it was by that means that al­most all the great towns in Eng­land had the dis­tem­per among them, more or less, and al­ways they would tell you such a Lon­doner or such a Lon­doner brought it down.

It must not be omit­ted that when I speak of those people who were really thus dan­ger­ous, I sup­pose them to be ut­terly ig­nor­ant of their own con­di­tions; for if they really knew their cir­cum­stances to be such as in­deed they were, they must have been a kind of wil­ful mur­ther­ers if they would have gone abroad among healthy people—and it would have veri­fied in­deed the sug­ges­tion which I men­tioned above, and which I thought seemed un­true: viz., that the in­fec­ted people were ut­terly care­less as to giv­ing the in­fec­tion to oth­ers, and rather for­ward to do it than not; and I be­lieve it was partly from this very thing that they raised that sug­ges­tion, which I hope was not really true in fact.

I con­fess no par­tic­u­lar case is suf­fi­cient to prove a gen­eral, but I could name sev­eral people within the know­ledge of some of their neigh­bours and fam­il­ies yet liv­ing who showed the con­trary to an ex­treme. One man, a mas­ter of a fam­ily in my neigh­bour­hood, hav­ing had the dis­tem­per, he thought he had it given him by a poor work­man whom he em­ployed, and whom he went to his house to see, or went for some work that he wanted to have fin­ished; and he had some ap­pre­hen­sions even while 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, upon which he im­me­di­ately caused him­self to be car­ried into an out­build­ing which 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 be ten­ded by none of his neigh­bours, but by a nurse from abroad; and would not suf­fer his wife, nor chil­dren, nor ser­vants to come up into the room, lest they should be in­fec­ted—but sent them his bless­ing and pray­ers for them by the nurse, who spoke it to them at a dis­tance, and all this for fear of giv­ing them the dis­tem­per; and without which he knew, as they were kept up, they could not have it.

And here I must ob­serve also that the plague, as I sup­pose all dis­tem­pers do, op­er­ated in a dif­fer­ent man­ner on dif­fer­ing con­sti­tu­tions; some were im­me­di­ately over­whelmed with it, and it came to vi­ol­ent fevers, vomit­ings, in­suf­fer­able head­aches, pains in the back, and so up to rav­ings and ra­gings with those pains; oth­ers with swell­ings and tu­mours in the neck or groin, or armpits, which till they could be broke put them into in­suf­fer­able ag­on­ies and tor­ment; while oth­ers, as I have ob­served, were si­lently in­fec­ted, the fever prey­ing upon their spir­its in­sens­ibly, and they see­ing little of it till they fell into swoon­ing, and faint­ings, and death without pain. I am not phys­i­cian enough to enter into the par­tic­u­lar reas­ons and man­ner of these dif­fer­ing ef­fects of one and the same dis­tem­per, and of its dif­fer­ing op­er­a­tion in sev­eral bod­ies; nor is it my busi­ness here to re­cord the ob­ser­va­tions which I really made, be­cause the doc­tors them­selves have done that part much more ef­fec­tu­ally than I can do, and be­cause my opin­ion may in some things dif­fer from theirs. I am only re­lat­ing what I know, or have heard, or be­lieve of the par­tic­u­lar cases, and what fell within the com­pass of my view, and the dif­fer­ent nature of the in­fec­tion as it ap­peared in the par­tic­u­lar cases which I have re­lated; but this may be ad­ded too: that though the former sort of those cases, namely, those openly vis­ited, were the worst for them­selves as to pain—I mean those that had such fevers, vomit­ings, head­aches, pains, and swell­ings, be­cause they died in such a dread­ful man­ner—yet the lat­ter had the worst 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 and un­per­ceived by oth­ers or by them­selves, com­mu­nic­ated death to those they con­versed with, the pen­et­rat­ing poison in­sinu­at­ing it­self into their blood in a man­ner which it is im­possible to de­scribe, or in­deed con­ceive.

This in­fect­ing and be­ing in­fec­ted without so much as its be­ing known to either per­son is evid­ent from two sorts of cases which fre­quently happened at that time; and there is hardly any­body liv­ing who was in Lon­don dur­ing the in­fec­tion but must have known sev­eral of the cases of both sorts.

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

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

It was very sad to re­flect how such a per­son as this last men­tioned above had been a walk­ing des­troyer per­haps for a week or a fort­night be­fore that; how he had ruined those that he would have haz­arded his life to save, and had been breath­ing death upon them, even per­haps in his tender kiss­ing and em­bra­cings of his own chil­dren. Yet thus cer­tainly it was, and of­ten has been, and I could give many par­tic­u­lar cases where it has been so. If then the blow is thus in­sens­ibly strik­ing—if the ar­row flies thus un­seen, and can­not be dis­covered—to what pur­pose are all the schemes for shut­ting up or re­mov­ing the sick people? Those schemes can­not take place but upon those that ap­pear to be sick, or to be in­fec­ted; whereas there are among them at the same time thou­sands of people who seem to be well, but are all that while car­ry­ing death with them into all com­pan­ies which they come into.

This fre­quently puzzled our phys­i­cians, and es­pe­cially the apo­thecar­ies and sur­geons, who knew not how to dis­cover the sick from the sound; they all al­lowed that it was really so, that many people had the plague in their very blood, and prey­ing upon their spir­its, and were in them­selves but walk­ing pu­tre­fied car­cases whose breath was in­fec­tious and their sweat poison, and yet were as well to look on as other people, and even knew it not them­selves; I say, they all al­lowed that it was really true in 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 of their breath; but then, as he said, who durst smell to that breath for his in­form­a­tion? since, to know it, he must draw the stench of the plague up into his own brain, in or­der to dis­tin­guish the smell! I have heard it was the opin­ion of oth­ers that it might be dis­tin­guished by the party’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, and dev­ils, hor­rible to be­hold. But this I very much ques­tion the truth of, and we had no mi­cro­scopes at that time, as I re­mem­ber, to make the ex­per­i­ment with.

It was the opin­ion also of an­other learned man, that the breath of such a 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 the lat­ter, it would cause them to be roupy, as they call it; par­tic­u­larly that 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 very strong for them.

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

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

Here was in­deed one dif­fi­culty which I could never thor­oughly get over to this time, and which there is but one way of an­swer­ing that I know of, and it is this, viz., the first per­son that died of the plague was on Decem­ber 20, or there­abouts, 1664, and in or about Long Acre; whence the first per­son had the in­fec­tion was gen­er­ally said to be from a par­cel 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 of the dis­tem­per be­ing in that place, till the 9th of Febru­ary, which was about seven weeks after, and then one more was bur­ied out of the same house. Then it was hushed, and we were per­fectly easy as to the pub­lic for a great while; for there were no more entered in the weekly bill to be dead of the plague till the 22nd of April, when there was two more bur­ied, not out of the same house, but out of the same street; and, as near as I can re­mem­ber, it was out of the next house to the first. This was 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 the ques­tion seems to lie thus: Where lay the seeds of the in­fec­tion all this while? How came it to stop so long, and not stop any longer? Either the dis­tem­per did not come im­me­di­ately by con­ta­gion from body to body, or, if it did, then a body may be cap­able to con­tinue in­fec­ted without the dis­ease dis­cov­er­ing it­self many days, nay, weeks to­gether; even not a quar­ant­ine of days only, but soix­antine; not only forty days, but sixty days or longer.

It is true there was, as I ob­served at first, and is well known to many yet liv­ing, a very cold winter and a long frost which con­tin­ued three months; and this, the doc­tors say, might check the in­fec­tion; but then the learned must al­low me to say that if, ac­cord­ing to their no­tion, the dis­ease was (as I may say) only frozen up, it would like a frozen river have re­turned to its usual force and cur­rent when it thawed—whereas the prin­cipal 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 think my own re­mem­brance of the thing will sup­ply; and that is, the fact is not 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 the 22nd 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 sup­port an hy­po­thesis or de­term­ine a ques­tion of such im­port­ance as this; for it was our re­ceived opin­ion at that time, and I be­lieve upon very good grounds, that the fraud lay in the par­ish of­ficers, search­ers, and per­sons ap­poin­ted to give ac­count of the dead, and what dis­eases they died of; and as people were very loth at first to have the neigh­bours be­lieve their houses were in­fec­ted, so they gave money to pro­cure, or oth­er­wise pro­cured, the dead per­sons to be re­turned as dy­ing of other dis­tem­pers; and this I know was prac­tised af­ter­wards in many places, I be­lieve I might say in all places where the dis­tem­per came, as will be seen by the vast in­crease of the num­bers placed in the weekly bills un­der other art­icles of dis­eases dur­ing the time of the in­fec­tion. For ex­ample, in the months of July and August, when the plague was com­ing on to its highest pitch, it was very or­din­ary to have from a thou­sand to twelve hun­dred, nay, to al­most fif­teen hun­dred a week of other dis­tem­pers. Not that the num­bers of those dis­tem­pers were really in­creased to such a de­gree, but the great num­ber of fam­il­ies and houses where really the in­fec­tion was, ob­tained the fa­vour to have their dead be re­turned of other dis­tem­pers, to pre­vent the shut­ting up their houses. For ex­ample:—

Dead of other dis­eases be­side the plague—

From the 18th July to the 25th

942

From the 25th July to the 1st of August

1,004

From the 1st August to the 8th of August

1,213

From the 8th August to the 15th of August

1,439

From the 15th August to the 22nd of August

1,331

From the 22nd August to the 29th of August

1,394

From the 29th August to the 5th of Septem­ber

1,264

From the 5th Septem­ber to the 12th of Septem­ber

1,056

From the 12th Septem­ber to the 19th of Septem­ber

1,132

From the 19th Septem­ber to the 26th of Septem­ber

927

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

Aug. 1 to 8

Aug. 8 to 15

Aug. 15 to 22

Aug. 22 to 29

Aug. 29 to Sept. 5

Sept. 5 to Sept. 12

Sept. 12 to Sept. 19

Sept. 19 to Sept. 26

Fever

314

353

348

383

364

332

309

268

Spot­ted Fever

174

190

166

165

157

97

101

65

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, and which, it is easy to per­ceive, were in­creased on the same ac­count, as aged, con­sump­tions, vomit­ings, im­posthumes, gripes, and the like, many of which were not doubted to be in­fec­ted people; but as it was of the ut­most con­sequence to fam­il­ies not to be known to be in­fec­ted, if it was pos­sible to avoid it, so they took all the meas­ures they could to have it not be­lieved, and if any died in their houses, to get them re­turned to the ex­am­iners, and by the search­ers, as hav­ing died of other dis­tem­pers.

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 the bill to be dead of the plague and the time when the dis­tem­per spread openly and could not be con­cealed.

Besides, the weekly bills them­selves at that time evid­ently dis­cover the truth; for, while there was no men­tion of the plague, and no in­crease after it had been men­tioned, yet it was ap­par­ent that there was an in­crease of those dis­tem­pers which bordered nearest upon it; for ex­ample, there were eight, twelve, sev­en­teen of the spot­ted fever in a week, when there were none, or but very few, of the plague; whereas be­fore, one, three, or four were the or­din­ary weekly num­bers of that dis­tem­per. Like­wise, as I ob­served be­fore, the buri­als in­creased weekly in that par­tic­u­lar par­ish and the par­ishes ad­ja­cent more than in any other par­ish, al­though there were none set down of the plague; all which tells us, that the in­fec­tion was handed on, and the suc­ces­sion of the dis­tem­per really pre­served, though it seemed to us at that time to be ceased, and to come again in a man­ner sur­pris­ing.

It might be, also, that the in­fec­tion might re­main in other parts of the same par­cel of goods which at first it came in, and which might not be per­haps opened, or at least not fully, or in the clothes of the first in­fec­ted per­son; for I can­not think that any­body could be seized with the 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 to them­selves; yet if it were so, the ar­gu­ment is the stronger in fa­vour of what I am say­ing: namely, that the in­fec­tion is re­tained in bod­ies ap­par­ently 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 when people began to be con­vinced that the in­fec­tion was re­ceived in this sur­pris­ing man­ner from per­sons ap­par­ently well, they began to be ex­ceed­ing shy and jeal­ous of every­one that came near them. Once, on a pub­lic day, whether a Sab­bath-day or not I do not re­mem­ber, in Aldgate Church, in a pew full of people, on a sud­den one fan­cied she smelt an ill smell. Im­me­di­ately she fan­cies the plague was in the pew, whis­pers her 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 of them, and of the two or three ad­join­ing pews, got up and went out of the church, nobody know­ing what it was of­fen­ded them, or from whom.

This im­me­di­ately filled every­body’s mouths with one pre­par­a­tion or other, such as the old wo­man dir­ec­ted, and some per­haps as phys­i­cians dir­ec­ted, in or­der to pre­vent in­fec­tion by the breath of oth­ers; in­somuch that if we came to go into a church when it was any­thing full of people, there would be such a mix­ture of smells at the en­trance that it was much more strong, though per­haps not so whole­some, than if you were go­ing into an apo­thecary’s or drug­gist’s shop. In a word, the whole church was like a smelling-bottle; in one corner it was all per­fumes; in an­other, aro­mat­ics, bal­sam­ics, and vari­ety of drugs and herbs; in an­other, salts and spir­its, as every­one was fur­nished for their own pre­ser­va­tion. Yet I ob­served that after people were pos­sessed, as I have said, with the be­lief, or rather as­sur­ance, of the in­fec­tion be­ing thus car­ried on by per­sons ap­par­ently in health, the churches and meet­ing­houses were much thin­ner of people than at other times be­fore that 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 meet­ings were never wholly shut up, nor did the people de­cline com­ing out to the pub­lic wor­ship of God, ex­cept only in some par­ishes when the vi­ol­ence of the dis­tem­per was more par­tic­u­larly in that par­ish at that time, and even then no longer than it con­tin­ued to be so.

Indeed noth­ing was more strange than to see with what cour­age the people went to the pub­lic ser­vice of God, even at that time when they were afraid 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 time of the in­fec­tion, not­with­stand­ing the great num­bers that were gone into the coun­try at the first alarm, and that fled out into the forests and woods when they were fur­ther ter­ri­fied with the ex­traordin­ary in­crease of it. For when we came to see the crowds and throngs of people which ap­peared on the Sab­bath-days at the churches, and es­pe­cially in those parts of the town where the plague was abated, or where it was not yet come to its height, it was amaz­ing. But of this I shall speak again presently. I re­turn in the mean­time to the art­icle of in­fect­ing one an­other at first, be­fore people came to right no­tions of the in­fec­tion, and of in­fect­ing one an­other. People were only shy of those that were really sick, a man with a cap upon his head, or with clothes round his neck, which was the case of those that had swell­ings there. Such was in­deed fright­ful; but when we saw a gen­tle­man dressed, with his band on and his gloves in his hand, his hat upon his head, and his hair combed, of such we had not the least ap­pre­hen­sions, and people con­versed a great while freely, es­pe­cially with their neigh­bours and such as they knew. But when the phys­i­cians as­sured us that the danger was as well from the sound (that is, the seem­ingly sound) as the sick, and that those people who thought them­selves en­tirely free were of­ten­times the most fatal, and that it came to be gen­er­ally un­der­stood that people were sens­ible of it, and of the reason of it; then, I say, they began to be jeal­ous of every­body, and a vast num­ber of people locked them­selves up, so as not to come abroad into any com­pany at all, nor suf­fer any that had been abroad in promis­cu­ous com­pany to come into their houses, or near them—at least not so near them as to be within the reach of their breath or of any smell from them; and when they were ob­liged to con­verse at a dis­tance with strangers, they would al­ways have pre­ser­vat­ives in their mouths and about their clothes to re­pel and keep off the in­fec­tion.

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

But it was im­possible to beat any­thing into the heads of the poor. They went on with the usual im­petu­os­ity of their tem­pers, full of out­cries and lam­ent­a­tions when taken, but madly care­less of them­selves, fool­hardy and ob­stin­ate, while they were well. Where they could get em­ploy­ment they pushed into any kind of busi­ness, the most dan­ger­ous and the most li­able 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 have no work; what could I do? I must do this or beg.” Sup­pose it was bury­ing the dead, or at­tend­ing the sick, or watch­ing in­fec­ted houses, which were all ter­rible haz­ards; but their tale was gen­er­ally the same. It is true, ne­ces­sity was a very jus­ti­fi­able, war­rant­able plea, and noth­ing could be bet­ter; but their way of talk was much the same where the ne­ces­sit­ies were not the same. This ad­ven­tur­ous con­duct of the poor was that which brought the plague among them in a most furi­ous man­ner; and this, joined to the dis­tress of their cir­cum­stances when taken, was the reason why they died so by heaps; for I can­not say I could ob­serve one jot of bet­ter hus­bandry among them, I mean the la­bour­ing poor, while they were all well and get­ting money than there was be­fore, but as lav­ish, as ex­tra­vag­ant, and as thought­less for to­mor­row as ever; so that when they came 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 of health.

This misery of the poor I had many oc­ca­sions to be an eye­wit­ness of, and some­times also of the char­it­able as­sist­ance that some pi­ous people daily gave 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 of justice 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 sent to the Lord Mayor and al­der­men for the as­sist­ance and sup­port of the poor dis­tempered people, but abund­ance of private people daily dis­trib­uted large sums of money for their re­lief, and sent people about to in­quire into the con­di­tion of par­tic­u­lar dis­tressed and vis­ited fam­il­ies, and re­lieved them; nay, some pi­ous ladies were so trans­por­ted with zeal in so good a work, and so con­fid­ent in the pro­tec­tion of Provid­ence in dis­charge of the great duty of char­ity, that they went about in per­son dis­trib­ut­ing alms to the poor, and even vis­it­ing poor fam­il­ies, though sick and in­fec­ted, in their very houses, ap­point­ing nurses to at­tend those that wanted at­tend­ing, and or­der­ing apo­thecar­ies and sur­geons, the first to sup­ply them with drugs or plasters, and such things as they wanted; and the last to lance and dress the swell­ings and tu­mours, where such were want­ing; giv­ing their bless­ing to the poor in sub­stan­tial re­lief to them, as well as hearty pray­ers for them.

I will not un­der­take to say, as some do, that none of those char­it­able people were suffered to fall un­der the calam­ity it­self; but this I may say, that I never knew any one of them that mis­car­ried, which I men­tion for the en­cour­age­ment of oth­ers in case of the like dis­tress; and doubt­less, if they that give to the poor lend to the Lord, and He will re­pay them, those that haz­ard their lives to give to the poor, and to com­fort and as­sist the poor in such a misery as this, may hope to be pro­tec­ted in the work.

Nor was this char­ity so ex­traordin­ary em­in­ent only in a few, but (for I can­not lightly quit this point) the char­ity of the rich, as well in the city and sub­urbs as from the coun­try, was so great that, in a word, a prodi­gious num­ber of people who must oth­er­wise in­ev­it­ably have per­ished for want as well as sick­ness were sup­por­ted and sub­sisted by it; and though I could never, nor I be­lieve any­one else, come to a full know­ledge of what was so con­trib­uted, yet I do be­lieve that, as I heard one say that was a crit­ical ob­server of that part, there was not only many thou­sand pounds con­trib­uted, but many hun­dred thou­sand pounds, to the re­lief of the poor of this dis­tressed, af­flic­ted city; nay, one man af­firmed to me that he could reckon up above one hun­dred thou­sand pounds a week, which was dis­trib­uted by the church­war­dens at the sev­eral par­ish vestries by the Lord Mayor and al­der­men in the sev­eral wards and pre­cincts, and by the par­tic­u­lar dir­ec­tion of the court and of the justices re­spect­ively in the parts where they resided, over and above the 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 was dis­trib­uted in the par­ish of Crip­pleg­ate only £17,800 in one week to the re­lief of the poor, as I heard re­por­ted, and which I really be­lieve was true, the other may not be im­prob­able.

It was doubt­less to be reckoned among the many sig­nal good provid­ences which at­ten­ded this great city, and of which there were many other worth re­cord­ing—I say, this was a very re­mark­able one, that it pleased God thus to move the hearts of the people in all parts of the king­dom so cheer­fully to con­trib­ute to the re­lief and sup­port of the poor at Lon­don, the good con­sequences of which were felt many ways, and par­tic­u­larly in pre­serving the lives and re­cov­er­ing the health of so many thou­sands, and keep­ing so many thou­sands of fam­il­ies from per­ish­ing and starving.

And now I am talk­ing of the mer­ci­ful dis­pos­i­tion of Provid­ence in this time of calam­ity, I can­not but men­tion again, though I have spoken sev­eral times of it already on other ac­counts, I mean that of the pro­gres­sion of the dis­tem­per; how it began at one end of the town, and pro­ceeded gradu­ally and slowly from one part to an­other, and like a dark cloud that passes over our heads, which, as it thick­ens and over­casts the air at one end, clears up at the other end; so, while the plague went on ra­ging from west to east, as it went for­wards east, it abated in the west, by which means those parts of the town which were not seized, or who were left, and where it had spent its fury, were (as it were) spared to help and as­sist the other; whereas, had the dis­tem­per spread it­self over 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 people must have been over­whelmed, and there would have died twenty thou­sand a day, as they say there did at Naples; nor would the people have been able 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 was in­ex­press­ible. But a little be­fore it reached even to that place, or presently after it was gone, they were quite an­other sort of people; and I can­not but ac­know­ledge that there was too much of that com­mon tem­per of man­kind to be found among us all at that time, namely, to for­get the de­liv­er­ance when the danger is past. But I shall come to speak of that part again.

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

As to for­eign trade, there needs little to be said. The trad­ing na­tions of Europe were all afraid of us; no port of France, or Hol­land, or Spain, or Italy would ad­mit our ships or cor­res­pond with us; in­deed we stood 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 dread­ful en­emies to struggle with at home.

Our mer­chants were ac­cord­ingly at a full stop; their ships could go nowhere—that is to say, to no place abroad; their man­u­fac­tures and mer­chand­ise—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; and in­deed they had reason: for our wool­len man­u­fac­tures are as re­tent­ive of in­fec­tion as hu­man bod­ies, and if packed up by per­sons in­fec­ted, would re­ceive the in­fec­tion and be as dan­ger­ous to touch as a man would be that was in­fec­ted; and there­fore, when any Eng­lish ves­sel ar­rived in for­eign coun­tries, if they did take the goods on shore, they al­ways caused the bales to be opened and aired in places ap­poin­ted for that pur­pose. But from Lon­don they would not suf­fer them to come into port, much less to un­lade their goods, upon any terms whatever, and this strict­ness was es­pe­cially used with them in Spain and Italy. In Tur­key and the is­lands of the Arches in­deed, as they are called, as well those be­long­ing 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 which were then in the river load­ing for Italy—that is, for Leg­horn and Naples—be­ing denied product, as they call it, went on to Tur­key, and were freely ad­mit­ted to un­lade their cargo without any dif­fi­culty; only that when they ar­rived there, some of their cargo was not fit for sale in that coun­try; and other parts of it be­ing con­signed to mer­chants at Leg­horn, the cap­tains of the ships had no right nor any or­ders to dis­pose of the goods; so that great in­con­veni­ences fol­lowed to the mer­chants. But this was noth­ing but what the ne­ces­sity of af­fairs re­quired, and the mer­chants at Leg­horn and Naples hav­ing no­tice given them, sent again from thence to take care of the ef­fects which were par­tic­u­larly con­signed to those ports, and to bring back in other ships such as were im­proper for the mar­kets at Smyrna and Scan­deroon.

The in­con­veni­ences in Spain and Por­tugal were still greater, for they would by no means suf­fer our ships, es­pe­cially those from Lon­don, to come into any of their ports, much less to un­lade. There was a re­port that one of our ships hav­ing by stealth de­livered her cargo, among which was some bales of Eng­lish cloth, cot­ton, ker­seys, and such­like goods, the Span­iards caused all the goods to be burned, and pun­ished the men with death who were con­cerned in car­ry­ing them on shore. This, I be­lieve, was in part true, though I do not af­firm it; but it is not at all un­likely, see­ing the danger was really very great, the in­fec­tion be­ing so vi­ol­ent in Lon­don.

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

On the other hand, though the Span­iards and Por­tuguese were so shy of us, it is most cer­tain that the plague (as has been said) keep­ing at first much at that end of the town next West­min­ster, the mer­chand­ising part of the town (such as the city and the wa­ter­side) was per­fectly sound till at least the be­gin­ning of July, and the ships in the river till the be­gin­ning of August; for to the 1st of July there had died but seven within the whole city, and but sixty within the liber­ties, but one in all the par­ishes of Stepney, Aldgate, and White­chapel, and but two in 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 Lon­don was in­fec­ted with the plague, and there was no in­quir­ing there how the in­fec­tion pro­ceeded, or at which part of the town it was be­gun or was reached to.

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

You may be sure, also, that the re­port of these things lost noth­ing in the car­riage. The plague was it­self very ter­rible, and the dis­tress of the people very great, as you may ob­serve of what I have said. But the ru­mour was in­fin­itely greater, and it must not be wondered that our friends abroad (as my brother’s cor­res­pond­ents in par­tic­u­lar were told there, namely, in Por­tugal and Italy, where he chiefly traded) said that in Lon­don there died twenty thou­sand in a week; that the dead bod­ies lay un­bur­ied by heaps; that the liv­ing were not suf­fi­cient to bury the dead or the sound to look after the sick; that all the king­dom was in­fec­ted like­wise, so that it was an uni­ver­sal mal­ady such as was never heard of in those parts of the world; and they could hardly be­lieve us when we gave them an ac­count how things really were, and how there was not above one-tenth part of the people dead; that there was 500,000 left that lived all the time in the town; that now the people began 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, ex­cept as every fam­ily might miss their re­la­tions and neigh­bours, and the like. I say they could not be­lieve these things; and if in­quiry were now to be made in Naples, or in other cit­ies on the coast of Italy, they would tell you that there was a dread­ful in­fec­tion in Lon­don so many years ago, in which, as above, there died twenty thou­sand in a week, etc., just as we have had it re­por­ted in Lon­don that there was a plague in the city of 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, as well as un­just and in­jur­i­ous in them­selves, for it was a long time after the plague was quite over be­fore our trade could re­cover it­self in those parts 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 the plague was not, and car­ry­ing them to Hol­land and Flanders, and from thence trans­port­ing them to Spain and to Italy as if they had been of their 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 our man­u­fac­tures as well as our people were in­fec­ted, and that it was dan­ger­ous to touch or to open and re­ceive the smell of them, then those people ran the haz­ard by that clandes­tine trade not only of car­ry­ing the con­ta­gion into their own coun­try, but also of in­fect­ing the na­tions to whom they traded with those goods; which, con­sid­er­ing how many lives might be lost in con­sequence of such an ac­tion, must be a trade that no men 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 that kind, by those people. But I doubt I need not make any such pro­viso in the case of our own coun­try; for either by our people of Lon­don, or by the com­merce which made their con­vers­ing with all sorts of people in every coun­try and of every con­sid­er­able town ne­ces­sary, I say, by this means the plague was first or last spread all over the king­dom, as well in Lon­don as in all the cit­ies and great towns, es­pe­cially in the trad­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing towns and sea­ports; so that, first or last, all the con­sid­er­able places in Eng­land were vis­ited more or less, and the king­dom of Ire­land in some places, but not so uni­ver­sally. How it fared with the people in Scot­land I had no op­por­tun­ity to in­quire.

It is to be ob­served that while the plague con­tin­ued so vi­ol­ent in Lon­don, the out­ports, as they are called, en­joyed a very great trade, es­pe­cially to the ad­ja­cent coun­tries and to our own plant­a­tions. For ex­ample, the towns of Col­chester, Yar­mouth, and Hun, on that side of Eng­land, ex­por­ted to Hol­land and Ham­burg the man­u­fac­tures of the ad­ja­cent 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 the Canar­ies, to Guinea, and to the West In­dies, and par­tic­u­larly to Ire­land; but as the plague spread it­self every way after it had been in Lon­don to such a de­gree as it was in August and Septem­ber, so all or most of those cit­ies and towns were in­fec­ted first or last; and then trade was, as it were, un­der a gen­eral em­bargo or at a full stop—as I shall ob­serve fur­ther when I speak of our home trade.

One thing, how­ever, must be ob­served: that as to ships com­ing in from abroad (as many, you may be sure, did) some who were out in all parts of the world a con­sid­er­able while be­fore, and some who when they went out knew noth­ing of an in­fec­tion, or at least of one so ter­rible—these came up the river boldly, and de­livered their car­goes as they were ob­liged to do, ex­cept just in the two months of August and Septem­ber, when the weight of the in­fec­tion ly­ing, as I may say, all be­low Bridge, nobody durst ap­pear in busi­ness for a while. But as this con­tin­ued but for a few weeks, the home­ward-bound ships, es­pe­cially such whose car­goes were not li­able to spoil, came to an an­chor for a time short of the Pool,5 or fresh­wa­ter part of the river, even as low as the river Med­way, where sev­eral of them ran in; and oth­ers lay at the Nore, and in the Hope be­low Gravesend. So that by the lat­ter end of Octo­ber there was a very great fleet of home­ward-bound ships to come up, such as the like had not been known for many years.

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

The first of these was par­tic­u­larly car­ried on by small ves­sels from the port of Hull and other places on the Hum­ber, by which great quant­it­ies of corn were brought in from York­shire and Lin­colnshire. The other part of 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 from the river Med­way, and from Milton, Fever­sham, Mar­gate, and Sand­wich, and all 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, and without in­ter­rup­tion came up to that mar­ket known still by the name of Bear Key, where they sup­plied the city plen­ti­fully with corn when land-car­riage began to fail, and when the people began to be sick of com­ing from many places in the coun­try.

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

The second trade was that of coals from New­castle-upon-Tyne, without which the city would have been greatly dis­tressed; for not in the streets only, but in private houses and fam­il­ies, great quant­it­ies of coals were then burnt, even all the sum­mer long and when the weather was hot­test, which was done by the ad­vice of the phys­i­cians. Some in­deed op­posed it, and in­sisted that to keep the houses and rooms hot was a means to propag­ate the tem­per, which was a fer­ment­a­tion and heat already in the blood; that it was known to spread and in­crease in hot weather and abate in cold; and there­fore they al­leged that all con­ta­gious dis­tem­pers are the worse for heat, be­cause the con­ta­gion was nour­ished and gained strength in hot weather, and was, as it were, propag­ated in heat.

Oth­ers said they gran­ted that heat in the cli­mate might propag­ate in­fec­tion—as sul­try, hot weather fills the air with ver­min and nour­ishes in­nu­mer­able num­bers and kinds of venom­ous creatures which breed in our food, in the plants, and even in our bod­ies, by the very stench of which in­fec­tion may be propag­ated; also that heat in the air, or heat of weather, as we or­din­ar­ily call it, makes bod­ies re­lax and faint, ex­hausts the spir­its, opens the pores, and makes us more apt to re­ceive in­fec­tion, or any evil in­flu­ence, be it from nox­ious pes­ti­len­tial va­pours or any other thing in the air; but that the heat of fire, and es­pe­cially of coal fires kept in our houses, or near us, had a quite dif­fer­ent op­er­a­tion; the heat be­ing not of the same kind, but quick and fierce, tend­ing not to nour­ish but to con­sume and dis­sip­ate all those nox­ious fumes which the other kind of heat rather ex­haled and stag­nated than sep­ar­ated and burnt up. Besides, it was al­leged that the sul­phur­ous and ni­trous particles that are of­ten found to be in the coal, with that bi­tu­min­ous sub­stance which burns, are all as­sist­ing to clear and purge the air, and render it whole­some and safe to breathe in after the nox­ious particles, as above, are dis­persed and burnt up.

The lat­ter opin­ion pre­vailed at that time, and, as I must con­fess, I think with good reason; and the ex­per­i­ence of the cit­izens con­firmed it, many houses which had con­stant fires kept in the rooms hav­ing never been in­fec­ted at all; and I must join my ex­per­i­ence to it, for I found the keep­ing good fires kept our rooms sweet and whole­some, and I do ver­ily be­lieve 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 dif­fi­culty that this trade was kept open, and par­tic­u­larly be­cause, as we were in an open war with the Dutch at that time, the Dutch capers at first took 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 time the capers were either afraid to take them, or their mas­ters, the States, were afraid they should, and for­bade them, lest the plague should be among them, which made them fare the bet­ter.

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

Oth­ers de­livered great quant­it­ies of coals in par­tic­u­lar places where the ships could come to the shore, as at Green­wich, Black­wall, and other places, in vast heaps, as if to be kept for sale; but were then fetched away after the ships which brought them were gone, so that the sea­men had no com­mu­nic­a­tion with the river-men, nor so much as came near one an­other.

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

The mak­ing so many fires, as above, did in­deed con­sume an un­usual quant­ity of coals; and that upon one or two stops of the ships com­ing up, whether by con­trary weather or by the in­ter­rup­tion of en­emies I do not re­mem­ber, but the price of coals was ex­ceed­ing dear, even as high as £4 a chalder; but it soon abated when the ships came in, and as af­ter­wards they had a freer pas­sage, the price was very reas­on­able all the rest of that year.

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

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

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

It re­mains to give some ac­count of the state of trade at home in Eng­land dur­ing this dread­ful time, and par­tic­u­larly as it relates to the man­u­fac­tures and the trade in the city. At the first break­ing out of the in­fec­tion there was, as it is easy to sup­pose, a very great fright among the people, and con­sequently a gen­eral stop of trade, ex­cept in pro­vi­sions and ne­ces­sar­ies of life; and even in those things, as there was 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 used to be.

It pleased God to send a very plen­ti­ful year of corn and fruit, but not of hay or grass—by which means bread was cheap, by reason of the plenty of corn. Flesh was cheap, by reason of the scarcity of grass; but but­ter and cheese were dear for the same reason, and hay in the mar­ket just bey­ond White­chapel Bars was sold at £4 per load. But that af­fected not the poor. There was a most ex­cess­ive plenty of all sorts of fruit, such as apples, pears, plums, cher­ries, grapes, and they were the cheaper be­cause of the want of people; but this made the poor eat them to 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 be­ing stopped or at least very much in­ter­rup­ted and rendered dif­fi­cult, a gen­eral stop of all those man­u­fac­tures fol­lowed of course which were usu­ally brought for ex­port­a­tion; and though some­times mer­chants abroad were im­por­tunate for goods, yet little was sent, the pas­sages be­ing so gen­er­ally stopped that the Eng­lish ships would not be ad­mit­ted, as is said already, into their port.

This put a stop to the man­u­fac­tures that were for ex­port­a­tion in most parts of Eng­land, ex­cept in some out­ports; and even that was soon stopped, for they all had the plague in their turn. But though this was felt all over Eng­land, yet, what was still worse, all in­ter­course of trade for home con­sump­tion of man­u­fac­tures, es­pe­cially those which usu­ally cir­cu­lated through the Lon­doner’s hands, was stopped at once, the trade of the city be­ing stopped.

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

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

This stag­na­tion of our man­u­fac­tur­ing trade in the coun­try would have put the people there to much greater dif­fi­culties, but that the mas­ter-work­men, clothiers and oth­ers, to the ut­ter­most of their stocks and strength, kept on mak­ing their goods to keep the poor at work, be­liev­ing that soon as the sick­ness should abate they would have a quick de­mand in pro­por­tion to the de­cay of their trade at that time. But as none but those mas­ters that were rich could do thus, and that many were poor and not able, the man­u­fac­tur­ing trade in Eng­land suffered greatly, and the poor were pinched all over Eng­land by the calam­ity of the city of Lon­don only.

It is true that the next year made them full amends by an­other ter­rible calam­ity upon the city; so that the city by one calam­ity im­pov­er­ished and weakened the coun­try, and by an­other calam­ity, even ter­rible too of its kind, en­riched the coun­try and made them again amends; for an in­fin­ite quant­ity of house­hold stuff, wear­ing ap­parel, and other things, be­sides whole ware­houses filled with mer­chand­ise and man­u­fac­tures such as come from all parts of Eng­land, were con­sumed in the fire of Lon­don the next year after this ter­rible vis­it­a­tion. It is in­cred­ible what a trade this made all over the whole king­dom, to make good the want and to sup­ply that loss; so that, in short, all the man­u­fac­tur­ing hands in the na­tion were set on work, and were little enough for sev­eral years to sup­ply the mar­ket and an­swer the de­mands. All for­eign mar­kets also were empty 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 at home fall­ing in, joined to make a quick vent for all sort of goods; so that there never was known such a trade all over Eng­land for the time as was in the first seven years after the plague, and after the fire of Lon­don.

It re­mains now that I should say some­thing of the mer­ci­ful part of this ter­rible judge­ment. The last week in Septem­ber, the plague be­ing come to 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 vi­ol­ence of it would as­suage in a few days; but when I saw the weekly bill of that week, which was the highest of the whole year, be­ing 8,297 of all dis­eases, I up­braided him with it, and asked him what he had made his judge­ment from. His an­swer, how­ever, was not so much to seek as I thought it would have been. “Look you,” says he, “by the num­ber which are at this time sick and in­fec­ted, there should have been twenty thou­sand dead the last week in­stead of eight thou­sand, if the in­vet­er­ate mor­tal con­ta­gion had been as it was two weeks ago; for then it or­din­ar­ily killed in two or three days, now not un­der eight or ten; and then not above one in five re­covered, whereas I have ob­served that now not above two in five mis­carry. And, ob­serve it from me, the next bill will de­crease, and you will see many more people re­cover than used to do; for though a vast mul­ti­tude are now every­where in­fec­ted, and as many every day fall sick, yet there will not so many die as there did, for the ma­lig­nity of the dis­tem­per is abated”;—adding that he began now to hope, nay, more than hope, that the in­fec­tion had passed its crisis and was go­ing off; and ac­cord­ingly so it was, for the next week be­ing, as I said, the last in Septem­ber, the bill de­creased al­most two thou­sand.

It is true the plague was still at a fright­ful height, and the next bill was no less than 6,460, and the next to that, 5,720; but still my friend’s ob­ser­va­tion was just, and it did ap­pear the people did re­cover faster and more in num­ber than they used to do; and in­deed, if it had not been so, what had been the con­di­tion of the city of Lon­don? For, ac­cord­ing to my friend, there were not fewer than 60,000 people at that time in­fec­ted, 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 very prob­ably 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 looked as if none would es­cape.

But this re­mark of my friend’s ap­peared more evid­ent in a few weeks more, for the de­crease went on, and an­other week in Octo­ber it de­creased 1,843, so that the num­ber dead of the plague was but 2,665; and the next week it de­creased 1,413 more, and yet it was seen plainly that there was abund­ance of people sick, nay, abund­ance more than or­din­ary, and abund­ance fell sick every day but (as above) the ma­lig­nity of the dis­ease abated.

Such is the pre­cip­it­ant dis­pos­i­tion of our people (whether it is so or not all over the world, that’s none of my par­tic­u­lar busi­ness to in­quire), but I saw it ap­par­ently here, that as upon the first fright of the in­fec­tion they shunned one an­other, and fled from one an­other’s houses and from the city with an un­ac­count­able and, as I thought, un­ne­ces­sary fright, so now, upon this no­tion spread­ing, viz., that the dis­tem­per was not so catch­ing as formerly, and that if it was catched it was not so mor­tal, and see­ing abund­ance of people who really fell sick re­cover again daily, they took to such a pre­cip­it­ant cour­age, and grew so en­tirely re­gard­less of them­selves and of the in­fec­tion, that they made no more of the plague than of an or­din­ary fever, nor in­deed so much. They not only went boldly into com­pany with those who had tu­mours and car­buncles upon them that were run­ning, and con­sequently con­ta­gious, but ate and drank with them, nay, into their houses to visit them, and even, 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 was plain to ex­per­i­ence, that the dis­tem­per was as catch­ing as ever, and as many fell sick, but only he al­leged that so many of those that fell sick did not die; but I think that while many did die, and that at best the dis­tem­per it­self was very ter­rible, the sores and swell­ings very tor­ment­ing, and the danger of death not left out of the cir­cum­stances of sick­ness, though not so fre­quent as be­fore; all those things, to­gether with the ex­ceed­ing te­di­ous­ness of the cure, the loath­some­ness of the dis­ease, and many other art­icles, were enough to de­ter any man liv­ing from a dan­ger­ous mix­ture with the sick people, and make them as anxious al­most to avoid the in­fec­tions as be­fore.

Nay, there was an­other thing which made the mere catch­ing of the dis­tem­per fright­ful, and that was the ter­rible burn­ing of the caustics which the sur­geons laid on the swell­ings to bring them to break and to run, without which the danger of death was very great, even to the last. Also, the in­suf­fer­able tor­ment of the swell­ings, which, though it might not make people rav­ing and dis­trac­ted, as they were be­fore, and as I have given sev­eral in­stances of already, yet they put the pa­tient to in­ex­press­ible tor­ment; and those that fell into it, though they did es­cape with life, yet they made bit­ter com­plaints of those that had told them there was no danger, and sadly re­pen­ted their rash­ness and folly in ven­tur­ing to run into the reach of it.

Nor did this un­wary con­duct of the people end here, for a great many that thus cast off their cau­tions suffered more deeply still, and though many es­caped, yet many died; and at least it had this pub­lic mis­chief at­tend­ing it, that it made the de­crease of buri­als slower than it would oth­er­wise have been. For as this no­tion ran like light­ning through the city, and people’s heads were pos­sessed with it, even as soon as the first great de­crease in the bills ap­peared, we found that the two next bills did not de­crease in pro­por­tion; the reason I take to be the people’s run­ning so rashly into danger, giv­ing up all their former cau­tions 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 all their might, and gave out prin­ted dir­ec­tions, spread­ing them all over the city and sub­urbs, ad­vising the people to con­tinue re­served, and to use still the ut­most cau­tion in their or­din­ary con­duct, not­with­stand­ing the de­crease of the dis­tem­per, ter­ri­fy­ing them with the danger of bring­ing a re­lapse upon the whole city, and telling them how such a re­lapse might be more fatal and dan­ger­ous than the whole vis­it­a­tion that had been already; with many ar­gu­ments and reas­ons to ex­plain and prove that part to them, and which are too long to re­peat here.

But it was all to no pur­pose; the au­da­cious creatures were so pos­sessed with the first joy and so sur­prised with the sat­is­fac­tion of see­ing a vast de­crease in the weekly bills, that they were im­pen­et­rable by any new ter­rors, and would not be per­suaded but that the bit­ter­ness of death was past; and it was to no more pur­pose to talk to them than to an east wind; but they opened shops, went about streets, did busi­ness, and con­versed with any­body that came in their way to con­verse with, whether with busi­ness or without, neither in­quir­ing of their health or so much as be­ing ap­pre­hens­ive of any danger from them, though they knew them not to be sound.

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

This rash and fool­ish con­duct, I say, of the people went so far that the min­is­ters took no­tice to them of it at last, and laid be­fore them both the folly and danger of it; and this checked it a little, so that they grew more cau­tious. But it had an­other ef­fect, which they could not check; for as the first ru­mour had spread not over the city only, but into the coun­try, it had the like ef­fect: and the people were so tired with be­ing so long from Lon­don, and so eager to come back, that they flocked to town without fear or fore­cast, and began to show them­selves in the streets as if all the danger was over. It was in­deed sur­pris­ing to see it, for though there died still from 1,000 to 1,800 a week, yet the people flocked to town as if all had been well.

The con­sequence of this was, that the bills in­creased again 400 the very first week in Novem­ber; and if I might be­lieve the phys­i­cians, there was above 3,000 fell sick that week, most of them new­comers, too.

One John Cock, a barber in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, was an em­in­ent ex­ample of this; I mean of the hasty re­turn of the people when the plague was abated. This John Cock had left the town with his whole fam­ily, and locked 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 905 per week of all dis­eases, he ven­tured home again. He had in his fam­ily ten per­sons; that is to say, him­self and wife, five chil­dren, two ap­pren­tices, and a maid­ser­vant. He had not re­turned to his house above a week, and began to open his shop and carry on his trade, but the dis­tem­per broke out in his fam­ily, and within about five days they all died, ex­cept one; that is to say, him­self, his wife, all his five chil­dren, and his two ap­pren­tices; and only the maid re­mained alive.

But the mercy of God was greater to the rest than we had reason to ex­pect; 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 in­creas­ing still, most of those that had fallen sick re­covered, and the health of the city began to re­turn. There were in­deed some re­turns of the dis­tem­per even in the month of Decem­ber, and the bills in­creased near a hun­dred; but it went off again, and so in a short while things began to re­turn to their own chan­nel. And won­der­ful it was to see how pop­u­lous the city was again all on a sud­den, so that a stranger could not miss the num­bers that were lost. Neither was there any miss of the in­hab­it­ants as to their dwell­ings—few or no empty houses were to be seen, 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 of the people had a new ap­pear­ance. I doubt not but there were many that re­tained a sin­cere sense of their de­liv­er­ance, and were that heart­ily thank­ful to that Sover­eign Hand that had pro­tec­ted them in so dan­ger­ous a time; it would be very un­char­it­able to judge oth­er­wise in a city so pop­u­lous, and where the people were so de­vout as they were here in the time of the vis­it­a­tion it­self; but ex­cept what of this was to be found in par­tic­u­lar fam­il­ies and faces, it must be ac­know­ledged that the gen­eral prac­tice of the people was just as it was be­fore, and very little dif­fer­ence was to be seen.

Some, in­deed, said things were worse; that the mor­als of the people de­clined from this very time; that the people, hardened by the danger they had been in, like sea­men after a storm is over, were more wicked and more stu­pid, more bold and hardened, in their vices and im­mor­al­it­ies than they were be­fore; but I will not carry it so far neither. It would take up a his­tory of no small length to give a par­tic­u­lar of all the grad­a­tions by which the course of things in this city came to be re­stored 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 other places were now vis­ited; and the ma­gis­trates of Lon­don began to set rules for our con­duct as to cor­res­pond­ing with those cit­ies. It is true we could not pre­tend to for­bid their people com­ing to Lon­don, be­cause it was im­possible to know them asun­der; so, after many con­sulta­tions, the Lord Mayor and Court of Al­der­men were ob­liged to drop it. All they could do was to warn and cau­tion the people not to en­ter­tain in their houses or con­verse with any people who they knew came from such in­fec­ted places.

But they might as well have talked to the air, for the people of Lon­don thought them­selves so plague-free now that they were past all ad­mon­i­tions; 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 cap­able of be­ing in­fec­ted again. This re­vived that no­tion that the in­fec­tion was all in the air, that there was no such thing as con­ta­gion from the sick people to the sound; and so strongly did this whimsy pre­vail among people that they ran all to­gether promis­cu­ously, sick and well. Not the Maho­metans, who, pre­pos­sessed with the prin­ciple of pre­des­tin­a­tion, value noth­ing of con­ta­gion, let it be in what it will, could be more ob­stin­ate than the people of Lon­don; they that were per­fectly sound, and came out of the whole­some air, as we call it, into the city, made noth­ing of go­ing into the same houses and cham­bers, nay, even into the same beds, with those that had the dis­tem­per upon them, and were not re­covered.

Some, in­deed, paid for their au­da­cious bold­ness with the price of their lives; an in­fin­ite num­ber fell sick, and the phys­i­cians had more work than ever, only with this dif­fer­ence, that more of their pa­tients re­covered; that is to say, they gen­er­ally re­covered, but cer­tainly there were more people in­fec­ted and fell sick now, when there did not die above a thou­sand or twelve hun­dred in a week, than there was when there died five or six thou­sand a week, so en­tirely neg­li­gent were the people at 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 who cau­tioned them for their good.

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

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

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

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

1. A piece of ground bey­ond Goswell Street, near Mount Mill, be­ing some of the re­mains of the old lines or for­ti­fic­a­tions of the city, where abund­ance were bur­ied promis­cu­ously from the par­ishes of Alder­sgate, Clerken­well, and even out of the city. This ground, as I take it, was since 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 since made a yard for keep­ing hogs, and for other or­din­ary uses, but is quite out of use as a bury­ing-ground.

3. The up­per end of Hand Al­ley, in Bish­opsgate Street, which was then a green field, and was taken in par­tic­u­larly for Bish­opsgate par­ish, though many of the carts out of the city brought their dead thither also, par­tic­u­larly out of the par­ish of St. All-hal­lows on the Wall. This place I can­not men­tion without much re­gret. It was, as I re­mem­ber, about two or three years after the plague was ceased that Sir Robert Clayton came to be pos­sessed of the ground. It was re­por­ted, how true I know not, that it fell to the king for want of heirs, all those who had any right to it be­ing car­ried off by the pes­ti­lence, and that Sir Robert Clayton ob­tained a grant of it from King Charles II. But how­ever he came by 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 Al­ley which, though called an al­ley, is as wide as a street. The houses in the same row with that house north­ward are built on the very same ground where the poor people were bur­ied, and the bod­ies, on open­ing the ground for the found­a­tions, were dug up, some of them re­main­ing so plain to be seen that the wo­men’s skulls were dis­tin­guished by their long hair, and of oth­ers the flesh was not quite per­ished; so that the people began to ex­claim loudly against it, and some sug­ges­ted that it might en­danger a re­turn of the con­ta­gion; after which the bones and bod­ies, as fast as they came at them, were car­ried to an­other part of the same ground and thrown all to­gether into a deep pit, dug on pur­pose, which now is to be known in that it is not built on, but is a pas­sage to an­other house at the up­per end of Rose Al­ley, just against the door of a meet­ing­house which has been built there many years since; and the ground is pal­is­ad­oed off from the rest of the pas­sage, in a little square; there lie the bones and re­mains of near two thou­sand bod­ies, car­ried by the dead carts to their grave in that one year.

4. Besides this, there was a piece of ground in Moor­fields; by the go­ing into the street which is now called Old Beth­lem, which was en­larged much, though not wholly taken in on the same oc­ca­sion.6

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

There were no less than five other grounds made use of for the par­ish of Stepney 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’s at Wap­ping, both which had not the names of par­ishes at that time, but were 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. From the whole, it may be ob­served that they were ob­liged in this time of dis­tress to take in new bury­ing-grounds in most of the out-par­ishes for lay­ing the prodi­gious num­bers of people which died in so short a space of time; but why care was not taken to keep those places sep­ar­ate from or­din­ary uses, that so the bod­ies might rest un­dis­turbed, that I can­not an­swer for, and must con­fess I think it was wrong. Who were to blame I know not.

I should have men­tioned that the Quakers had at that time also a bury­ing-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 their houses; and the fam­ous So­lomon Eagle, who, as I men­tioned be­fore, had pre­dicted the plague as a judge­ment, and ran na­ked through the streets, telling the people that it was come upon them to pun­ish them for their sins, had his own wife died the very next day of the plague, and was car­ried, one of the first in the Quakers’ dead-cart, to their new bury­ing-ground.

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

Great was the re­proach thrown on those phys­i­cians who left their pa­tients dur­ing the sick­ness, and now they came to town again nobody cared to em­ploy them. They were called desert­ers, and fre­quently bills were 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 still and look about them, or at least re­move their dwell­ings, and set up in new places and among new ac­quaint­ance. The like was the case with the clergy, whom the people were in­deed very ab­us­ive to, writ­ing verses and scan­dal­ous re­flec­tions upon them, set­ting upon the church-door, “Here is a 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 it ceased, there did not cease the spirit of strife and con­ten­tion, slander and re­proach, which was really the great trou­bler of the na­tion’s peace be­fore. It was said to be the re­mains of the old an­im­os­it­ies, which had so lately in­volved us all in blood and dis­order. But as the late Act of In­dem­nity had laid asleep the quar­rel it­self, so the gov­ern­ment had re­com­men­ded fam­ily and per­sonal peace upon all oc­ca­sions to the whole na­tion.

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

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

On the other hand, the Dis­sent­ers re­proach­ing those min­is­ters of the Church with go­ing away and desert­ing their charge, abandon­ing the people in 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 faith and the same cour­age, and the Scrip­ture com­mands us to judge the most fa­vour­ably and ac­cord­ing to char­ity.

A plague is a for­mid­able en­emy, and is armed with ter­rors that every man is not suf­fi­ciently for­ti­fied to res­ist or pre­pared to stand the shock against. It is very cer­tain that a great many of the clergy who were in cir­cum­stances 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 them fell in the calam­ity and in the dis­charge of their duty.

It is true some of the Dis­sent­ing turned-out min­is­ters stayed, and their cour­age is to be com­men­ded and highly val­ued—but these were not abund­ance; it can­not be said that they all stayed, and that none re­tired into the coun­try, any more than it can be said of the Church clergy that they all went away. Neither did all those that went away go without sub­sti­tut­ing cur­ates and oth­ers in their places, to do the of­fices need­ful 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 both sides, and we should have con­sidered that such a time as this of 1665 is not to be par­alleled in his­tory, and that it is not the stoutest cour­age that will al­ways sup­port men in such cases. I had not said this, but had rather chosen to re­cord the cour­age and re­li­gious zeal of those of both sides, who did haz­ard them­selves for the ser­vice of the poor people in their dis­tress, without re­mem­ber­ing that any failed in their duty on either side. But the want of tem­per among us has made the con­trary to this ne­ces­sary: some that stayed not only boast­ing too much of them­selves, but re­vil­ing those that fled, brand­ing them with cow­ardice, desert­ing their flocks, and act­ing the part of the hire­ling, and the like. I re­com­mend it to the char­ity of all good people to look back and re­flect duly upon the ter­rors of the time, and who­ever does so will see that it is not an or­din­ary strength that could sup­port it. It was not like ap­pear­ing in the head of an army or char­ging a body of horse in the field, but it was char­ging Death it­self on his pale horse; to stay was in­deed to die, and it could be es­teemed noth­ing less, es­pe­cially as things ap­peared at the lat­ter end of August and the be­gin­ning of Septem­ber, and as there was reason to ex­pect them at that time; for no man ex­pec­ted, and I dare say be­lieved, that the dis­tem­per would take so sud­den 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 as it was known there was; and then it was that many shif­ted away that had stayed most of the time be­fore.

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

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

I was once mak­ing a list of all such, I mean of all those pro­fes­sions and 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 the par­tic­u­lars. I only re­mem­ber that there died six­teen cler­gy­men, two al­der­men, five phys­i­cians, thir­teen sur­geons, within the city and liber­ties be­fore the be­gin­ning of Septem­ber. But this be­ing, as I said be­fore, the great crisis and ex­tremity of the in­fec­tion, it can be no com­plete list. As to in­ferior people, I think there died six-and-forty con­stables and head-bor­oughs in the two par­ishes of Stepney and White­chapel; but I could not carry my list on, for when the vi­ol­ent rage of the dis­tem­per in Septem­ber came upon us, it drove us out of all meas­ures. Men did then no more die by tale and by num­ber. They might put out a weekly bill, and call them seven or eight thou­sand, or what they 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, who were more abroad and more con­vers­ant with those things than I though I was pub­lic enough for one that had no more busi­ness to do than I had—I say, if I may be­lieve them, there was not many less bur­ied those first three weeks in Septem­ber than 20,000 per week. However, the oth­ers aver the 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 have said of the ter­ror of those times;—and it is much to the sat­is­fac­tion of me that write, as well as those that read, to be able to say that everything is set down with mod­er­a­tion, and rather within com­pass than bey­ond it.

Upon all these ac­counts, I say, I could wish, when we were re­covered, our con­duct had been more dis­tin­guished for char­ity and kind­ness in re­mem­brance of the past calam­ity, and not so much a valu­ing ourselves upon our bold­ness in stay­ing, as if all men were cow­ards that fly from the hand of God, or that those who stay do not some­times owe their cour­age to their ig­nor­ance, and des­pising the hand of their Maker—which is a crim­inal kind of des­per­a­tion, and not a true cour­age.

I can­not but leave it upon re­cord that the civil of­ficers, such as con­stables, head-bor­oughs, Lord Mayor’s and sher­iffs’-men, as also par­ish of­ficers, whose busi­ness it was to take charge of the poor, did their du­ties in gen­eral with as much cour­age as any, and per­haps with more, be­cause their work was at­ten­ded with more haz­ards, and lay more among the poor, who were more sub­ject to be in­fec­ted, and in the most pi­ti­ful plight when they were taken with the in­fec­tion. But then it must be ad­ded, too, that a great num­ber of them died; in­deed it was scarce pos­sible it should be oth­er­wise.

I have not said one word here about the physic or pre­par­a­tions that we or­din­ar­ily made use of on this ter­rible oc­ca­sion—I mean we that went fre­quently abroad and up down street, as I did; much of this was talked of in the books and bills of our quack doc­tors, of whom I have said enough already. It may, how­ever, be ad­ded, that the Col­lege of Phys­i­cians were daily pub­lish­ing sev­eral pre­par­a­tions, which they had con­sidered of in the pro­cess of their prac­tice, and which, be­ing to be had in print, I avoid re­peat­ing them for that reason.

One thing I could not help ob­serving: what be­fell one of the quacks, who pub­lished that he had a most ex­cel­lent pre­ser­vat­ive against the plague, which who­ever kept about them should never be in­fec­ted or li­able to in­fec­tion. This man, who, we may reas­on­ably sup­pose, did not go abroad without some of this ex­cel­lent pre­ser­vat­ive in his pocket, yet was taken by the dis­tem­per, and car­ried off in two or three days.

I am not of the num­ber of the physic-haters or physic-des­pisers; on the con­trary, I have of­ten men­tioned the re­gard I had to the dic­tates of my par­tic­u­lar friend Dr. Heath; but yet I must ac­know­ledge I made use of little or noth­ing—ex­cept, as I have ob­served, to keep a pre­par­a­tion of strong scent to have ready, in case I met with any­thing of of­fens­ive smells or went too near any bury­ing-place or dead body.

Neither did I do what I know some did: keep the spir­its al­ways high and hot 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 leave them off when the in­fec­tion was quite gone, and so be­came a sot for all his life after.

I re­mem­ber my friend the doc­tor used to say that there was a cer­tain set of drugs and pre­par­a­tions which were all cer­tainly good and use­ful in the case of an in­fec­tion; out of which, or with which, phys­i­cians might make an in­fin­ite vari­ety of medi­cines, as the ringers of bells make sev­eral hun­dred dif­fer­ent rounds of mu­sic by the chan­ging and or­der or sound but in six bells, and that all these pre­par­a­tions shall be really very good: “There­fore,” said he, “I do not won­der that so vast a throng of medi­cines is offered in the present calam­ity, and al­most every phys­i­cian pre­scribes or pre­pares a dif­fer­ent thing, as his judge­ment or ex­per­i­ence guides him; but,” says my friend, “let all the pre­scrip­tions of all the phys­i­cians in Lon­don be ex­amined, and it will be found that they are all com­poun­ded of the same things, with such vari­ations only as 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 his liv­ing, and cir­cum­stances of his be­ing in­fec­ted, may dir­ect his own medi­cines out of the or­din­ary drugs and pre­par­a­tions. Only that,” says he, “some re­com­mend one thing as most sov­er­eign, and some an­other. Some,” says he, “think that pill.ruff., which is called it­self the anti-pes­ti­len­tial pill, is the best pre­par­a­tion that can be made; oth­ers think that Venice treacle is suf­fi­cient of it­self to res­ist the con­ta­gion; and I,” says he, “think as both these think, viz., that the last is good to take be­fore­hand to pre­vent it, and the first, if touched, to ex­pel it.” Ac­cord­ing to this opin­ion, I sev­eral times took Venice treacle, and a sound sweat upon it, and thought my­self as well for­ti­fied against the in­fec­tion as any­one could be for­ti­fied by the power of physic.

As for quack­ery and moun­te­banks, of which the town was so full, I listened to none of them, and have ob­served of­ten since, with some won­der, that for two years after the plague I scarcely saw or heard of one of them about town. Some fan­cied they were all swept away in the in­fec­tion to a man, and were for call­ing it a par­tic­u­lar mark of God’s ven­geance upon them for lead­ing the poor people into the pit of de­struc­tion, merely for the lucre of a little money they got by them; but I can­not go that length neither. That abund­ance of them died is cer­tain—many of them came within the reach of my own know­ledge—but that all of them were swept off I much ques­tion. I be­lieve rather they fled 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 while in or about Lon­don. There were, in­deed, sev­eral doc­tors who pub­lished bills re­com­mend­ing their sev­eral phys­ical pre­par­a­tions for cleans­ing the body, as they call it, after the plague, and need­ful, as they said, for such people to take who had been vis­ited and had been cured; whereas I must own I be­lieve that it was the opin­ion of the most em­in­ent phys­i­cians at that time that the plague was it­self a suf­fi­cient purge, and that those who es­caped the in­fec­tion needed no physic to cleanse their bod­ies of any other things; the run­ning sores, the tu­mours, etc., which were broke and kept open by the dir­ec­tions of the phys­i­cians, hav­ing suf­fi­ciently cleansed them; and that all other dis­tem­pers, and causes of dis­tem­pers, were ef­fec­tu­ally car­ried off that way; and as the phys­i­cians gave this as their opin­ions wherever they came, the quacks got little busi­ness.

There were, in­deed, sev­eral little hur­ries which happened after the de­crease of the plague, and which, whether they were con­trived to fright and dis­order the people, as some ima­gined, I can­not say, but some­times we were told the plague would re­turn by such a time; and the fam­ous So­lomon Eagle, the na­ked Quaker I have men­tioned, proph­esied evil tid­ings every day; and sev­eral oth­ers telling us that Lon­don had not been suf­fi­ciently scourged, and that sorer and severer strokes were yet be­hind. 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 been to blame to have paid more than a com­mon re­spect to their proph­etic spir­its; at least we should have wondered at them, and have been more ser­i­ous in our in­quir­ies after the mean­ing of it, and whence they had the fore­know­ledge. But as they gen­er­ally told us of a re­lapse into the plague, we have had no con­cern since that about them; yet by those fre­quent clam­ours, we were all kept with some kind of ap­pre­hen­sions con­stantly upon us; and if any died sud­denly, or if the spot­ted fevers at any time in­creased, we were presently alarmed; much more if the num­ber of the plague in­creased, for to the end of the year there were al­ways between 200 and 300 of the plague. On any of these oc­ca­sions, I say, we were alarmed anew.

Those who re­mem­ber the city of Lon­don be­fore the fire must re­mem­ber that there was then no such place as we now call Newg­ate Mar­ket, but that in the middle of the street which is now called Blowblad­der Street, and which had its name from the butchers, who used to kill and dress their sheep there (and who, it seems, had a cus­tom to blow up their meat with pipes to make it look thicker and fat­ter than it was, and were pun­ished there for it by the Lord Mayor); I say, from the end of the street to­wards Newg­ate there stood two long rows of shambles for the selling meat.

It was in those shambles that two per­sons fall­ing down dead, as they were buy­ing meat, gave rise to a ru­mour that the meat was all in­fec­ted; which, though it might af­fright the people, and spoiled the mar­ket for two or three days, yet it ap­peared plainly af­ter­wards that there was noth­ing of truth in the sug­ges­tion. But nobody can ac­count for the pos­ses­sion of fear when it takes hold of the mind.

However, it pleased God, by the con­tinu­ing of the winter weather, so to re­store the health of the city that by Febru­ary fol­low­ing we reckoned the dis­tem­per quite ceased, and then we were not so eas­ily frighted again.

There was still a ques­tion among the learned, and at first per­plexed the people a little: and that was in what man­ner to purge the house and goods where the plague had been, and how to render them hab­it­able again, which had been left empty dur­ing the time of the plague. Abund­ance of per­fumes and pre­par­a­tions were pre­scribed by phys­i­cians, some of one kind and some of an­other, in which the people who listened to them put them­selves to a great, and in­deed, in my opin­ion, to an un­ne­ces­sary ex­pense; and the poorer people, who only set open their win­dows night and day, burned brim­stone, pitch, and gun­powder, and such things in their rooms, did as well as the best; nay, the eager people who, as I said above, came home in haste and at all haz­ards, found little or no in­con­veni­ence in their houses, nor in the goods, and did little or noth­ing to them.

However, in gen­eral, prudent, cau­tious people did enter into some meas­ures 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; oth­ers caused large fires to be made all day and all night for sev­eral days and nights; by the same token that two or three were pleased to set their houses on fire, and so ef­fec­tu­ally sweetened them by burn­ing them down to the ground; as par­tic­u­larly one at Ratcliff, one in Hol­bourn, and one at West­min­ster; be­sides two or three that were set on fire, but the fire was hap­pily got out again be­fore it went far enough to burn down the 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 of the in­fec­tion, and man­aged it so fool­ishly, that he blew up part of the roof of the house. But the time was not fully come that the city was to be purged by fire, nor was it far off; for within nine months more I saw it all ly­ing in ashes; when, as some of our quack­ing philo­soph­ers pre­tend, the seeds of the plague were en­tirely des­troyed, and not be­fore; a no­tion too ri­dicu­lous to speak of here: since, had the seeds of 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 those build­ings in the sub­urbs and liber­ties, all in the great par­ishes of Stepney, White­chapel, Aldgate, Bish­opsgate, Shored­itch, Crip­pleg­ate, and St. Giles, where the fire never came, and where the plague raged with the greatest vi­ol­ence, re­main still in the same con­di­tion they were in be­fore?

But to leave these things just as I found them, it was cer­tain that those people who were more than or­din­ar­ily cau­tious of their health, did take par­tic­u­lar dir­ec­tions for what they called season­ing of their houses, and abund­ance of costly things were con­sumed on that ac­count which I can­not but say not only seasoned those houses, as they de­sired, but filled the air with very grate­ful and whole­some smells which oth­ers had the share of the be­ne­fit of as well as those who were at the ex­penses of them.

And yet after all, though the poor came to town very pre­cip­it­antly, as I have said, yet I must say the rich made no such haste. The men of busi­ness, in­deed, came up, but many of them did not bring their fam­il­ies to town till the spring came on, and that they saw reason to de­pend upon it that the plague would not re­turn.

The Court, in­deed, came up soon after Christ­mas, but the no­bil­ity and gentry, ex­cept such as de­pended upon and had em­ploy­ment un­der the ad­min­is­tra­tion, did not come so soon.

I should have taken no­tice here that, not­with­stand­ing the vi­ol­ence of the plague in Lon­don and in other places, yet it was very ob­serv­able that it was never on board the fleet; and yet for some time there was a strange press in the river, and even in the streets, for sea­men to man the fleet. But it was in the be­gin­ning of the year, when the plague was scarce be­gun, and not at all come down to that part of the city where they usu­ally press for sea­men; and though a war with the Dutch was not at all grate­ful to the people at that time, and the sea­men went with a kind of re­luct­ancy into the ser­vice, and many com­plained of be­ing dragged into it by force, yet it proved in the event a happy vi­ol­ence to sev­eral of them, who had prob­ably per­ished in the gen­eral calam­ity, and who, after the sum­mer ser­vice was over, though they had cause to lament the des­ol­a­tion of their fam­il­ies—who, when they came back, were many of them in their graves—yet they had room to be thank­ful that they were car­ried 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 great en­gage­ment at sea in which the Dutch were worsted, but we lost a great many men and some ships. But, as I ob­served, the plague was not in the fleet, and when they came to lay up the ships in the river the vi­ol­ent part of it began to abate.

I would be glad if I could close the ac­count of this mel­an­choly year with some par­tic­u­lar ex­amples his­tor­ic­ally; I mean of the thank­ful­ness to God, our pre­server, for our be­ing de­livered from this dread­ful calam­ity. Cer­tainly the cir­cum­stance of the de­liv­er­ance, as well as the ter­rible en­emy we were de­livered from, called upon the whole na­tion for it. The cir­cum­stances of the de­liv­er­ance were in­deed very re­mark­able, as I have in part men­tioned already, and par­tic­u­larly the dread­ful con­di­tion which we were all in when we were to the sur­prise of the whole town 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 in every corner; and had it gone on as it did then, a few weeks more would have cleared the town of all, and everything that had a soul. Men every­where began to des­pair; every heart failed them for fear; people were made des­per­ate through the an­guish of their souls, and the ter­rors of 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 of man”—I say, in that very mo­ment it pleased God, with a most agree­able sur­prise, to cause the fury of it to abate, even of it­self; and the ma­lig­nity de­clin­ing, as I have said, though in­fin­ite num­bers were sick, yet fewer died, and the very first weeks’ bill de­creased 1,843; a vast num­ber in­deed!

It is im­possible to ex­press the change that ap­peared in the very coun­ten­ances of the people that Thursday morn­ing when the weekly bill came out. It might have been per­ceived in their coun­ten­ances that a secret sur­prise and smile of joy sat on every­body’s face. They shook one an­other by the hands in the streets, who would hardly go on the same side of the way with one an­other be­fore. Where the streets were not too broad 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 the plague was abated. Some would re­turn, when they said good news, and ask, “What good news?” and when they answered that the plague was abated and the bills de­creased al­most two thou­sand, they would cry out, “God be praised!” and would weep aloud for joy, telling them they had heard noth­ing of it; and such was the joy of the people that it was, as it were, life to them from the grave. I could al­most set down as many ex­tra­vag­ant 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 this happened; for the prodi­gious num­ber that were taken sick the week or two be­fore, be­sides those that died, was such, and the lam­ent­a­tions were so great every­where, that a man must have seemed to have ac­ted even against his reason if he had so much as ex­pec­ted to es­cape; and as there was hardly a house but mine in all my neigh­bour­hood but was in­fec­ted, so had it gone on it would not have been long that there would have been any more neigh­bours to be in­fec­ted. Indeed it is hardly cred­ible what dread­ful havoc the last three weeks had made, for if I might be­lieve the per­son whose cal­cu­la­tions I al­ways found very well groun­ded, there were not less than 30,000 people dead and near 100,000 fallen sick in the three weeks I speak of; for the num­ber that sickened was sur­pris­ing, in­deed it was as­ton­ish­ing, and those whose cour­age up­held them all the time be­fore, sank un­der it now.

In the middle of their dis­tress, when the con­di­tion of the city of Lon­don was so truly calam­it­ous, just then it pleased God—as it were by His im­me­di­ate hand to dis­arm this en­emy; the poison was taken out of the sting. It was won­der­ful; even the phys­i­cians them­selves were sur­prised at it. Wherever they vis­ited they found their pa­tients bet­ter; either they had sweated kindly, or the tu­mours were broke, or the car­buncles went down and the in­flam­ma­tions round them changed col­our, or the fever was gone, or the vi­ol­ent head­ache was as­suaged, or some good symp­tom was in the case; so that in a few days every­body was re­cov­er­ing, whole fam­il­ies that were in­fec­ted and down, that had min­is­ters pray­ing with them, and ex­pec­ted death every hour, were re­vived and healed, and none died at all out of them.

Nor was this by any new medi­cine found out, or new method of cure dis­covered, or by any ex­per­i­ence in the op­er­a­tion which the phys­i­cians or sur­geons at­tained to; but it was evid­ently from the secret in­vis­ible hand 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 pro­ceed from whence­so­ever it will, let the philo­soph­ers search for reas­ons in nature to ac­count for it by, and la­bour as much as they will to lessen the debt they owe to their Maker, those phys­i­cians who had the least share of re­li­gion in them were ob­liged to ac­know­ledge that it was all su­per­nat­ural, that it was ex­traordin­ary, and that no ac­count could be given of it.

If I should say that this is a vis­ible sum­mons to us all to thank­ful­ness, es­pe­cially we that were un­der the ter­ror of its in­crease, per­haps it may be thought by some, after the sense of the thing was over, an of­fi­cious cant­ing of re­li­gious things, preach­ing a ser­mon in­stead of writ­ing a his­tory, mak­ing my­self a teacher in­stead of giv­ing my ob­ser­va­tions of things; and this re­strains me very much from go­ing on here as I might oth­er­wise do. But if ten lepers were healed, and but one re­turned to give thanks, I de­sire to be as that one, and to be thank­ful for my­self.

Nor will I deny but there were abund­ance of people who, to all ap­pear­ance, were very thank­ful at that time; for their mouths were stopped, even the mouths of those whose hearts were not ex­traordin­ary long af­fected with it. But the im­pres­sion was so strong at that time that 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. Go­ing one day through Aldgate, and a pretty many people be­ing passing and re­passing, there comes a man out of the end of the Minor­ies, and look­ing a little up the street and down, he throws his hands abroad, “Lord, what an al­ter­a­tion is here! Why, last week I came along here, and hardly any­body 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 third man, and and let us give thanks to Him, for ’tis all His own do­ing, hu­man help and hu­man skill was at an end.” These were all strangers to one an­other. But such sa­luta­tions as these were fre­quent in the street every day; and in spite of a loose be­ha­viour, the very com­mon people went along 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 man with a white cap upon his head, or with a cloth wrapt round his neck, or with his leg limp­ing, oc­ca­sioned by the sores in his groin, all which were fright­ful to the last de­gree, but the week be­fore. But now the street was full of them, and these poor re­cov­er­ing creatures, give them their due, ap­peared very sens­ible of their un­ex­pec­ted de­liv­er­ance; and I should wrong them very much if I should not ac­know­ledge that I be­lieve many of them were really thank­ful. But I must own that, for the gen­er­al­ity of the people, it might too justly be said of them as was said of the chil­dren of Is­rael after their be­ing de­livered from the host of Pharaoh, when they passed the Red Sea, and looked back and saw the Egyp­tians over­whelmed in the wa­ter: viz., that they sang His praise, but they soon for­got His works.

I can go no farther here. I should be coun­ted cen­sori­ous, and per­haps un­just, if I should enter into the un­pleas­ing work of re­flect­ing, whatever cause there was for it, upon the un­thank­ful­ness and re­turn of all man­ner of wicked­ness among us, which I was so much an eye­wit­ness of my­self. I shall con­clude the ac­count of this calam­it­ous year there­fore with a coarse but sin­cere stanza of my own, which I placed at the end of my 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.

Endnotes

1. 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. ↩

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

3. They had but one horse among them. ↩

4. 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. ↩

5. 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. ↩

6. 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 years be­fore. ↩