_Beggars._
Forasmuch as nothing is more complained of than the multitude of
rogues and wandering beggars that swarm about in every place about
the city, being a great cause of the spreading of the infection,
and will not be avoided[87] 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 law to be duly and severely executed upon them.
_Plays._
That all plays, bear baitings,[88] games, singing of ballads,
buckler play,[89] 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[90] of
this city, and dinners in taverns, alehouses, and other places of
public entertainment, be forborne till further order and allowance,
and that the money thereby spared be preserved, and employed for
the benefit and relief of the poor visited with the infection.
_Tippling-Houses._
That disorderly tippling in taverns, alehouses, coffeehouses, and
cellars, be severely looked unto as the common sin of the time, and
greatest occasion of dispersing the plague. And that no company or
person be suffered to remain or come into any tavern, alehouse, or
coffeehouse, to drink, after nine of the clock in the evening,
according to the ancient law and custom of this city, upon the
penalties ordained by law.
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 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, deputies, and common councilmen,
in their several wards, may put in execution any other orders that
by them, at their said meetings, shall be conceived and devised for
the 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 "outparts" 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 this eastern part
of the town at least, nor begin to be violent till the beginning of
August. For example, the whole bill from the 11th to the 18th of July
was 1,761, yet there died but 71 of the plague in all those parishes we
call the Tower Hamlets; and they were as follows:--
Aldgate, 14 { 34 { 65
Stepney, 33 The next { 58 To { 76
Whitechapel, 21 week was { 48 Aug. 1 { 79
St. Kath. Tower.[91] 2 thus: { 4 thus: { 4
Trin. Minories,[92] 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:--
St. L.[93] Shoreditch 64 The next week { 84 To { 110
St. Bot.[94] Bishopsg. 65 prodigiously { 105 Aug. 1 { 116
St. Giles's Crippl.[95] 213 increased, as { 431 thus: { 554
--- --- ---
342 620 780
This shutting up of houses was at first counted a very cruel and
unchristian method, and the poor people so confined made bitter
lamentations. Complaints of the severity of it were also daily brought
to my lord mayor, of houses causelessly, and some maliciously, shut up.
I cannot say but upon inquiry many that complained so loudly were found
in a condition to be continued; and others again, inspection being made
upon the sick person, and the sickness not appearing infectious, or, if
uncertain, yet, on his being content to be carried to the pesthouse,
was[96] released.
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 the
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, who 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 Monday afternoon, when he heard a
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,
wrapped 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 you 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 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.[97] 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 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 this 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.
At another house, as I was informed, in the street next within Aldgate,
a whole family was shut up and locked in because the maidservant was
taken sick. The master of the house had complained by his friends to the
next alderman, and to the lord mayor, and had consented to have the maid
carried to the pesthouse, but was refused: so the door was marked with a
red cross, a padlock on the outside, as above, and a watchman set to
keep the door, according to public order.
After the master of the house found there was no remedy, but that he,
his wife, and his children, were 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 would perish either[98] 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 story
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[99] 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 plaster 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.
Not far from the same place they blowed 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 story 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.
In other cases, some had gardens and walls, or pales,[100] between them
and their neighbors, or yards and backhouses; and these, by friendship
and entreaties, would get leave to get over those walls or pales, and
so go out at their neighbors' 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 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[101] 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 one body of the family had gone out, and unwarily or
otherwise catched[102] 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.
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 who 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.[103] 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 Throckmorton Street, whose house
looked into Drapers' 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 frightened 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 screeched 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.
I have by me a story of two brothers and their kinsman, who, being
single men, but that had staid[104] 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,[105] and before that in
the Low Countries;[106] 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[107] 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,[108] 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 staid 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[109] to our parish, yet, when it did
come, there was no parish in or about London where it raged with such
violence as in the two parishes of Aldgate and Whitechapel.
I say they had dug several pits in another ground when the distemper
began to spread in our parish, and especially when the dead carts began
to go about, which was not in our parish till the beginning of August.
Into these pits they had put perhaps fifty or sixty bodies each; then
they made larger holes, wherein they buried all that the cart brought in
a week, which, by the middle to the end of August, came to from two
hundred to four hundred 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[110] 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 eleven hundred and fourteen bodies, when they were obliged to fill it
up, the bodies being then come to lie within six feet of the surface. I
doubt not but there may be some ancient persons alive in the parish who
can justify the fact of this, and are able to show even in what place of
the churchyard the pit lay, better than I can: the mark of it also was
many years to be seen in the churchyard on the surface, lying in length,
parallel with the passage which goes by the west wall of the churchyard
out of Houndsditch, and turns east again into Whitechapel, coming out
near the Three Nuns Inn.
It was about the 10th of September that my curiosity led, or rather
drove, me to go and see this pit again, when there had been near four
hundred people buried in it. And I was not content to see it in the
daytime, as I had done before,--for then there would have been nothing
to have been seen but the loose earth, for all the bodies that were
thrown in were immediately covered with earth by those they called the
"buriers," which at other times were called "bearers,"--but I resolved
to go in the night, and see some of them thrown in.
There was a strict order to prevent people coming to those pits, and
that was only to prevent infection. But after some time that order was
more necessary; for people that were infected and near their end, and
delirious also, would run to those pits wrapped 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,[111] go in; for, depend upon it, it will be a
sermon to you, it may be, the best that ever you heard in your life. It
is 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[112] 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,[113] muffled up in a brown cloak, and making motions with
his hands, under his cloak, as if he was[114] 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[115] 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
desiring 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 Pye[116] 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,[117] and candles in them, placed all night round the sides of
the pit upon the 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 wrapped up in linen sheets, some
in rugs, 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,[118]
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 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 behavior and practice
of nurses who attended the sick, and of their hastening on the fate of
those they attended 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 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,
towards the church. I stood a while, but I had no stomach[119] 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 Pye 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, behaving with all the reveling 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 neighbor, 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, taunting 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[120] 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 judgment 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
neighbor, 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 mind 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 at my calling the plague the hand of God, mocking, and even
laughing at the word "judgment," 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
Judgment 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
judgment 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 club, 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 seems they had been checked, for their open insulting religion in
this manner, by several good people of every persuasion; and that[121]
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 clamor
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.[122]
These things 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 so 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 imminent danger I had been in, I set my mind
seriously and with the utmost earnestness to pray for those desperate
wretches, that God would pardon them, open their eyes, and effectually
humble them.
By this I not only did my duty, namely, to pray for those who
despitefully used me, but I fully tried my own heart, to my full
satisfaction that it was not filled with any spirit of resentment as
they had offended me in particular; and I humbly recommend the method to
all those that would know, or be certain, how to distinguish between
their zeal for the honor of God and the effects of their private
passions and resentment.
I remember a citizen, who, having broken out of his house in Aldersgate
Street or thereabout, went along the road to Islington. He attempted to
have gone[123] in at the Angel Inn, and after that at the White Horse,
two inns known still by the same signs, but was refused, after which he
came to the Pyed[124] 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 but 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
assured him again that they had no better. "Well," says he, "I must make
shift.[125] 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
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!" 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 it is probable, had she gone up with the ale, she had
found him dead in a few minutes after he had sat down upon the bed. The
alarm was great in the house, as any one may suppose, they having been
free from the distemper till that disaster, which, bringing the
infection to the house, spread it immediately to other houses round
about it. I do not remember how many died in the house itself; but I
think the maidservant who went up first with him fell presently ill by
the fright, and several others; for, whereas there died but two in
Islington of the plague the week before, there died nineteen 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[126] 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 neighbors or relations to commit the charge of those
houses to, for the safety of the goods and the like. Some houses were
indeed entirely locked up, the doors padlocked, the windows and doors
having deal boards nailed over them, and only the inspection of them
committed to the ordinary watchmen and parish officers; but these were
but few.
It was thought that there were not less than a thousand houses forsaken
of the inhabitants in the city and suburbs, including what was in the
outparishes 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 two hundred thousand people were fled and gone in
all.[127] 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 not in charge, and then, giving notice of the sick person
to the examiner, have a nurse or nurses appointed, and having 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.
I had in my family only an ancient woman that managed the house, a
maidservant, two apprentices, and myself; and, the plague beginning to
increase about us, I had many sad thoughts about what course I should
take and how I should act. The many dismal objects[128] which happened
everywhere as I went about the streets had filled my mind with a great
deal of horror, for fear of the distemper itself, which was indeed very
horrible in itself, and in some more than 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[129] 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, and 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 and 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
rosin[130] and pitch, brimstone and 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,[131] and the plague raged so violently among the butchers and
slaughterhouses on the other side of our street, where they are known to
dwell in great numbers, that it was not advisable so much as to go over
the street among them.
And here I must observe again, that this necessity of going out of our
houses to buy provisions was in a great measure the ruin of the whole
city; for the people catched the distemper, on these occasions, one of
another; and even the provisions themselves were often tainted (at least
I have great reason to believe so), and therefore I cannot say with
satisfaction, what I know is repeated with great assurance, that the
market people, and such as brought provisions to town, were never
infected. I am certain the butchers of Whitechapel, where the greatest
part of the flesh meat was killed, were dreadfully visited, and that at
last 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[132] would not take it out of the
butcher's hand, but took it off the hooks themselves.[132] 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 for scents and perfumes in their hands, and
all the means that could be used were employed; 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 street suddenly,
without any warning: others, perhaps, had time to go to the next
bulk[133] or stall, or to any door or 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 neighbors to
come out on such an occasion, yet afterward no notice was taken of them;
but that, if at any time we found a corpse lying, go across the way and
not come near it; or, if in a narrow lane or passage, go back again, and
seek some other way to go on the business we were upon. And in those
cases the corpse was always left till the officers had notice to come
and take them away, or till night, when the bearers attending the dead
cart would take them up and carry them away. Nor did those undaunted
creatures who performed these offices fail to search their pockets, and
sometimes strip off their clothes, if they were well dressed, as
sometimes they were, and carry off what they could get.
But to return to the markets. The butchers took that care, that, if any
person died in the market, they had the officers always at hand to take
them up upon handbarrows, and carry them to the next churchyard; and
this was so frequent that such were not entered in the weekly bill,
found dead in the streets or fields, as is the case now, but they went
into the general articles of the great distemper.
But now the fury of the distemper increased to such a degree, that even
the markets were but very thinly furnished with provisions, or
frequented with buyers, compared to what they were before; and the lord
mayor caused the country people who brought provisions to be stopped in
the streets leading into the town, and to sit down there with their
goods, where they sold what they brought, and went immediately away. And
this encouraged the country people greatly to do so; for they sold their
provisions at the very entrances into the town, and even in the fields,
as particularly in the fields beyond Whitechapel, in Spittlefields.
Note, those streets now called Spittlefields were then indeed open
fields; 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.[134]
As for my little family, having thus, as I have said, laid in a store of
bread, butter, cheese, and beer, I took my friend and physician's
advice, and locked myself up, and my family, and resolved to suffer the
hardship of living a few months without flesh meat rather than to
purchase it at the hazard of our lives.
But, though I confined my family, I could not prevail upon my
unsatisfied curiosity to stay within entirely myself, and, though I
generally came frighted and terrified home, yet I could not restrain,
only that, indeed, I did not do it so frequently as at first.
I had some little obligations, indeed, upon me to go to my brother's
house, which was in Coleman Street Parish, and which he had left to my
care; and I went at first every day, but afterwards only once or twice a
week.
In these walks I had many dismal scenes before my eyes, as,
particularly, of persons falling dead in the streets, terrible shrieks
and screechings of women, who in their agonies would throw open their
chamber windows, and cry out in a dismal surprising manner. It is
impossible to describe the variety of postures in which the passions of
the poor people would express themselves.
Passing through Token-House Yard in Lothbury, of a sudden a casement
violently opened just over my head, and a woman gave three frightful
screeches, and then cried, "O death, death, death!" in a most inimitable
tone, and which[135] struck me with horror, and[136] 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, "O 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 his name, though I
knew his name too; but that would be a hardship to the family, which is
now flourishing again.[137]
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,[138] raving and distracted, and
oftentimes laying violent hands upon themselves, throwing themselves out
at their windows, shooting themselves, etc.; mothers murdering their own
children in their lunacy; some dying of mere grief as a passion, some of
mere fright and surprise without any infection at all; others frighted
into idiotism[139] 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 plasters, 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 burned 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 watchmen 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 indifferently 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,[140] 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[141] 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 executed 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 not equal to the fact, where
they were sure persons would die in so short a time, and could not live.
That there were a great many robberies and wicked practices committed
even in this dreadful time, I do not deny. The power of avarice was so
strong in some, that they would run any hazard to steal and to plunder;
and, particularly in houses where all the families or inhabitants have
been dead and carried out, they would break in at all hazards, and,
without regard to the danger of infection, take even the clothes off the
dead bodies, and the bedclothes from others where they lay dead.
This, I suppose, must be the case of a family in Houndsditch, where a
man and his daughter (the rest of the family being, as I suppose,
carried away before by the dead cart) were found stark naked, one in one
chamber and one in another, lying dead on the floor, and the clothes of
the beds (from whence it is 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,[142] 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 who 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 proofs of the fact 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: (1) That
wherever it was that we heard it, they always placed the scene at the
farther end of the town, opposite or most remote from where you were to
hear it. If you heard it in Whitechapel, it had happened at St.
Giles's, or at Westminster, or Holborn, or that end of the town; if you
heard it at that end of the town, then it was done in Whitechapel, or
the Minories, or about Cripplegate Parish; if you heard of it in the
city, why, then, it happened in Southwark; and, if you heard of it in
Southwark, then it was done in the city; and the like.
In the next place, of whatsoever part you heard the story, the
particulars were always the same, especially that of laying a wet double
clout[143] on a dying man's face, and that of smothering a young
gentlewoman: so that it was apparent, at least to my judgment, that
there was more of tale than of truth in those things.
A neighbor 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 endeavor 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 slip
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 have been 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 five
hundred and fifty and upwards in a week, and then they could no more
bury in form[144] rich or poor.
I have mentioned above, that, notwithstanding this dreadful calamity,
yet that[145] 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 begone, 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 I 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 neighbors; that they had heard any one 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 four thousand 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 neighborhood, 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 footing 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 judgments,
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
neighborhood, 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, neighbors, 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 under-sexton of the parish of St.
Stephen, Coleman Street (by under-sexton 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 Keys
Court, Swan Alley, Bell Alley, White Horse Alley, and many more. Here
they went with a kind of handbarrow, and laid the dead bodies on, 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.[146]
He never used any preservative against the infection other than holding
garlic and rue[147] 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 or prudence. Scarce did they use
any caution, but ran into any business which they could get any
employment in, though it was the most hazardous; such was that of
tending the sick, watching houses shut up, carrying infected persons to
the pesthouse, and, which was still worse, carrying the dead away to
their graves.
It was under this John Hayward's care, and within his bounds, that the
story of the piper, with which people have made themselves so merry,
happened; and he assured me that it was true. It is said that it was a
blind piper; but, as John told me, the fellow was not blind, but an
ignorant, weak, poor man, and usually went 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, or 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 rung 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 neighbors.
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 Mountmill; 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 ain't dead, though, am I?" says the piper; which made them
laugh a little, though, as John said, they were heartily frightened at
first. So they helped the poor fellow down, and he went about his
business.
I know the story goes, he set up[148] 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[149] 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 outparts for
want of room.
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 ribbon-weavers and other weavers, gold
and silver lacemakers, and gold and silver wire-drawers, seamstresses,
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[150]), so all the
extraordinary officers of the customs, likewise the watermen, carmen,
porters, and all the poor whose labor 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[151] turned out all the ordinary
workmen of that kind of business, such as bricklayers, masons,
carpenters, joiners, plasterers, painters, glaziers, smiths, plumbers,
and all the laborers 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, calkers,
ropemakers, dry coopers, sailmakers, anchor-smiths, 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, lighter-men, 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 staid; so that an innumerable multitude of
footmen, serving men, shopkeepers, journeymen, merchants' bookkeepers,
and such sort of people, and especially poor maidservants, were turned
off, and left friendless and helpless, without employment and without
habitation; and this was really a dismal article.
I might be more particular as to this part; but it may suffice to
mention, in general, all trades being stopped, employment ceased, the
labor, 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 gently[152]
abated. Many, indeed, fled into the country; but, thousands of them
having staid 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.
The women and servants that were turned off from their places were
employed as nurses to tend the sick in all places, and this took off a
very great number of them.
And which,[153] though a melancholy article in itself, yet was a
deliverance in its kind, namely, the plague, which raged in a dreadful
manner from the middle of August to the middle of October, carried off
in that time thirty or forty thousand of these very people, which, had
they been left, would certainly have been an insufferable burden by
their poverty; that is to say, the whole city could not have supported
the expense of them, or have provided food for them, and they would in
time have been even driven to the necessity of plundering either the
city itself, or the country adjacent, to have subsisted themselves,
which would, first or last, have put the whole nation, as well as the
city, into the utmost terror and confusion.
It was observable, then, that this calamity of the people made them very
humble; for now, for about nine weeks together, there died near a
thousand a day, one day with another, even by the account of the weekly
bills, which yet, I have reason to be assured, never gave a full account
by many thousands; the confusion being such, and the carts working in
the dark when they carried the dead, that in some places no account at
all was kept, but they worked on; the clerks and sextons not attending
for weeks together, and not knowing what number they carried. This
account is verified by the following bills of mortality:--
Of All Diseases. Of the Plague.
Aug. 8 to Aug. 15 5,319 3,880
Aug. 15 to Aug. 22 5,668 4,237
Aug. 22 to Aug. 29 7,496 6,102
Aug. 29 to Sept. 5 8,252 6,988
Sept. 5 to Sept. 12 7,690 6,544
Sept. 12 to Sept. 19 8,297 7,165
Sept. 19 to Sept. 30 6,400 5,533
Sept. 27 to Oct. 3 5,728 4,929
Oct. 3 to Oct. 10 5,068 4,227
------ ------
59,918 49,605
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[154] 50,000 of them, within a trifle, in two
months: I say 50,000, because as there wants 395 in the number above, so
there wants two days of two months in the account of time.[155]
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 one hundred and sixteen 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 such a nature as to allow them leisure to
take an exact tale[156] 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 have observed often that in the parishes
of Aldgate, Cripplegate, Whitechapel, and Stepney, there were five, six,
seven, and eight hundred in a week in the bills; whereas, if we may
believe the opinion of those that lived in the city all the time, as
well as I, there died sometimes two thousand a week in those parishes.
And I saw it under the hand of one that made as strict an examination as
he could, that there really died a hundred thousand people of the plague
in it that one year; whereas, in the bills, the article of the plague
was but 68,590.
If I may be allowed to give my opinion, by what I saw with my eyes, and
heard from other people that were eyewitnesses, I do verily believe the
same; viz., that there died at least a hundred thousand of the plague
only, besides other distempers, and besides those which died in the
fields and highways and secret places, out of the compass[157] 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[158] 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 would
find the poor wretches lie[159] dead, and the food untouched. The number
of these miserable objects were[160] 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;[161] 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 form, as far as they could cast it, to cover
them, taking notice how the wind blew, and so come 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,[162] 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[163]), was more like a green field than a paved street; and the
people generally went in the middle with the horses and carts. It is
true that the farthest end, towards Whitechapel Church, was not all
paved, but even the part that was paved was full of grass also. But this
need not seem strange, since the great streets within the city, such as
Leadenhall Street, Bishopsgate Street, Cornhill, and even the Exchange
itself, had grass growing in them in several places. Neither cart nor
coach was seen in the streets from morning to evening, except some
country carts to bring roots and beans, or pease, hay, and straw, to the
market, and those but very few compared to what was usual. As for
coaches, they were scarce used, but to carry sick people to the
pesthouse and to other hospitals, and some few to carry physicians to
such places as they thought fit to venture to visit; for really coaches
were dangerous things, and people did not care to venture into them,
because they did not know who might have been carried in them last; and
sick infected people were, as I have said, ordinarily carried in them to
the pesthouses; and sometimes people expired in them as they went along.
It is true, when the infection came to such a height as I have now
mentioned, there were very few physicians who cared to stir abroad to
sick houses, and very many of the most eminent of the faculty[164] 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 fifteen or seventeen
hundred 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 were beginning 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 one thousand a week for two weeks, though the
bills did not say so many; but it[165] surrounded me at so dismal a
rate, that there was not a house in twenty uninfected. In the Minories,
in Houndsditch, and in those parts of Aldgate Parish about the Butcher
Row, and the alleys over against me,--I say, in those places death
reigned in every corner. Whitechapel Parish was in the same condition,
and though much less than the parish I lived in, yet buried near six
hundred 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 neighbors to call to the
bellman to go to such and such houses and fetch out the people, for that
they were all dead.
And indeed the work of removing the dead bodies by carts was now grown
so very odious and dangerous, that it was complained of that the bearers
did not take care to clear such houses where all the inhabitants were
dead, but that some of the bodies lay unburied till the neighboring
families were offended by 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[166] 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 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
those 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 judgment
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 out of pure zeal for the poor people, who went every evening
through the streets of Whitechapel, and, with his hands lifted up,
repeated that part of the liturgy of the church continually, "Spare us,
good Lord; spare thy people whom thou hast 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 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 of the clergy 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 they would hear them.
And dissenters[167] 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 any difference at such a time as this was.