A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe

DANIEL DEFOE

A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR

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

It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I, among the rest
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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whereof one of the plague.

The like increase of the bills was observed in the parishes of 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Besides this, it was observed with great uneasiness by the people 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       ...
      "      27th  "     3rd January        349        58
January  the  3rd  "    10th   "            394        45
      "      10th  "    17th   "            415        21
      "      17th  "    24th   "            474        59

This last bill was really frightful, being a higher number than had
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
Whitechappel 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 Whitechappel; that is to
say, the Broad Street where I lived; indeed, nothing was to be seen but
waggons and carts, with goods, women, servants, children, &c.;
coaches filled with people of the better sort and horsemen attending
them, and all hurrying away; then empty waggons 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 he 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 I' and the like; and at that juncture I happened to stop
turning over the book at the gist 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,' &C.

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 any one 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 1268 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 Clarkenwell, Cripplegate, Shoreditch, and Bishopsgate;
which last two parishes joining to Aldgate, Whitechappel, 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 Whitechappel 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 1761, 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 Clarkenwell; so that by the
second week in August, Cripplegate parish alone buried 886, and
Clarkenwell 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 every one 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 calf 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, Whitechappel, 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 any one 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 every one 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.
Maid-servants especially, and men-servants, 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 I 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 he
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, rope-dancers,
and such-like 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,' &c.

'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 any one 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 subtility 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 shop-keeper 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. I 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     Others had the Jesuits'
     ABRACADAB         mark in a cross:
     ABRACADA             I H
     ABRACAD               S.
     ABRACA
     ABRAC          Others nothing but this
     ABRA               mark, thus:
     ABR
     AB                   * *
     A                    {*}
                          * *

I might spend a great deal of time in my exclamations against 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 every one that reads this
may not relish; namely, that whereas death now began not, as we may
say, to hover over every one's head only, but to look into their houses
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, &c., 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, Whitechappel,
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 pest-house 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 he 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 pest-house, 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 such-
like 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 any one 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, &C.

'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 pest-
house 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 inmate,-c 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 pest-house 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 SWEET.

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 he looked unto for musty and
unwholesome casks.

'That no hogs, dogs, or cats, or tame pigeons, or conies, 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 such-like 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, ale-houses, 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, ale-houses, coffee-houses, 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, ale-house, or
coffee-house 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 1761, 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   And to the 1st
                              was thus:    of Aug. thus:
Aldgate               14          34               65
Stepney               33          58               76
Whitechappel          21          48               79
St Katherine, Tower    2           4                4
Trinity, Minories      1           1                4
                     ---         ---              ---
                      71         145              228

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

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

This shutting up of houses was at first counted a very cruel 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 pest-house, 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 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 every one
gone, having found some way to delude the watchman, and to get
open the door, or get out at some back-door, 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 maid-
servant 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 pest-house, 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 shop-window; 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 such-like 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 Whitechappel.

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 1114 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 Whitechappel,
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 day-time,
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 any one 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 meeting-houses, every one 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 any one 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, Jer. 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 fun
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 l' 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 maid-servant 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; bat 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 bands 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, &c.; 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 pest-house; for had there been, instead of one pest-house -
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 pest-houses, 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 pest-house, 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
maid-servant, 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 slaughter-houses 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 Whitechappel, 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 any one 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 band to take
them up upon hand-barrows 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 Whitechappel, in
Spittlefields; 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, vet 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.,;,
&c.; 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 bed-clothes 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 Whitechappel, 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 Whitechappel, 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 clout 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 not 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 4000 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 hand-
barrow 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 pest-house, and, which was still worse, carrying the dead away to
their graves.

It was under this John Hayward's care, and within his bounds, that
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, &c., 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, &c. 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, cabinet-makers, 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 maid-
servants, 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 any one 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 bad,
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 of the
                         Diseases.     Plague
From August   8    to August 15          5319          3880
"     "      15         "    22          5568          4237
"     "      22         "    29          7496          6102
"     "      29 to September  5          8252          6988
"  September  5         "    12          7690          6544
"     "      12         "    19          8297          7165
"     "      19         "    26          6460          5533
"     "      26 to October    3          5720          4979
"   October   3         "    10          5068          4327
                                        -----         -----
                                       59,870        49,705

So that the gross of the people were carried off in these two months;
for, as the whole number which was brought in to die of the plague
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 any
one 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, Whitechappel 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 2000 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 eye-witnesses, 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 Whitechappel 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
pest-house, 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 pest-houses, 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 1500 or 1700 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. Whitechappel 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 dear 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 Whitechappel, 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 sea-wall, as they call
it, by himself. I walked a while also about, seeing the houses all shut
up. At last I fell into some talk, at a distance, with this poor man; 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 an 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
such-like, 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 farm-houses 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 Whitechappel, 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, &c., 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 3000 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 extreamest violence in Westminster and the
parish of St Giles and St Andrew, &c., and began to abate again
before it came among them - which was true indeed, in part. For
example -

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

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

N.B. - That it was observed the numbers mentioned in Stepney
parish at that time were generally all on that side where Stepney
parish joined to Shoreditch, which we now call Spittlefields, 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 I this was a time when every one's private safety lay so near them
that they had no room to pity the distresses of others; for every one
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 -
  Child-bed.
  Abortive and Still-born.
  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: -

                             Child-bed. Abortive. Still-born.
From January 3 to January  10     7        1           13
"     "   10       "       17     8        6           11
"     "   17       "       24     9        5           15
"     "   24       "       31     3        2            9
"     "   31 to February    7     3        3            8
" February7        "       14     6        2           11
"     "   14       "       21     5        2           13
"     "   21       "       28     2        2           10
"       "   28 to March     7     5        1           10
                                ---      ---         ----
                                 48       24          100

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

To the disparity of these numbers it is to be considered and 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.                              1665.
Child-bed                   189     Child-bed                   625
Abortive and still-born     458     Abortive and still-born     617
                           ----                                ----
                            647                                1242

This inequality, I say, is exceedingly augmented when the numbers
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 child-bed 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 there-abouts.

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 I 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
Whitechappel Road, no, not in any parish; and yet the weekly bill was
that very week risen up to 1006.

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 2785,
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 bad been a soldier, then put in his opinion.
'First,' says he, 'we none of us expect to get any lodging on the road,
and it will be a little too hard to lie just in the open air. Though 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 top-gallant 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 g 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,
Clarkenwell, 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 5361 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 5000 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 I alas I 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 he 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 river-side, 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.*

'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.

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

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

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

Constable. You will be ill kept at our maintenance.

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

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

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 ** 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

* This frighted the constable and the people that were with him, that
they immediately changed their note.
** They had but one horse among them. [Footnotes in the original.]

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.*

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

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

they 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 any one 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 any one; but when what little we have is spent,
if we perish for want, God's will be done.'

John wrought so upon the townsmen, by talking thus rationally 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 feather-beds, and, as John said, more welcome than feather-beds
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
higlers, 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 bad 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, () 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 leantos 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
river-sides 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 Uxbridge        117
     "  Hornsey           58               "  Hertford    90
     "  Newington         17          "  Ware            160
     "  Tottenham         42          "  Hodsdon          30
     "  Edmonton          19          "  Waltham Abbey    23
     "  Barnet and Hadly  19          "  Epping           26
     "  St Albans        121          "  Deptford        623
     "  Watford           45          "  Greenwich       231
     "  Eltham and Lusum  85          "  Kingston        122
     "  Croydon           61          "  Stanes           82
     "  Brentwood         70          "  Chertsey         18
     "  Rumford          109          "  Windsor         103
     "  Barking Abbot    200
     "  Brentford        432                       Cum aliis.

Another thing might render the country more strict with respect to
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 every one 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 any one 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 such like. 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, church-wardens,
&c., 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 he 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 pest-house 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 Whitechappel 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 restraided; 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 bad
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 every one 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, ftighted 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 light-
headedness, 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 band 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 every one 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 every one 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 t 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 light-headed,
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 Whitechappel, - I say

A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries from the Encyclopedia of the Self by Mark Zimmerman

A Journal of the Plague Year
by Daniel Defoe
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman