A Journal of the Plague Year

by Daniel Defoe

being Observations or Memorials

of the most remarkable occurrences,

as well public as_ private, which happened in London

during the last great visitation in 1665.

Written by a CITIZEN who continued

all the while in London_.

Never made publick before

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

rest of my neighbours, heard in ordinary discourse that the

plague was returned again in Holland; for it had been very

violent there, and particularly at Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in

the year 1663, whither, they say, it was brought, some said from

Italy, others from the Levant, among some goods which were

brought home by their Turkey fleet; others said it was brought

from Candia; others from Cyprus. It mattered not from whence it

came; but all agreed it was come into Holland again.

We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days to

spread rumours and reports of things, and to improve them by the

invention of men, as I have lived to see practised since. But

such things as these were gathered from the letters of merchants

and others who corresponded abroad, and from them was handed

about by word of mouth only; so that things did not spread

instantly over the whole nation, as they do now. But it seems

that the Government had a true account of it, and several

councils were held about ways to prevent its coming over; but all

was kept very private. Hence it was that this rumour died off

again, and people began to forget it as a thing we were very

little concerned in, and that we hoped was not true; till the

latter end of November or the beginning of December 1664 when two

men, said to be Frenchmen, died of the plague in Long Acre, or

rather at the upper end of Drury Lane. The family they were in

endeavoured to conceal it as much as possible, but as it had

gotten some vent in the discourse of the neighbourhood, the

Secretaries of State got knowledge of it; and concerning

themselves to inquire about it, in order to be certain of the

truth, two physicians and a surgeon were ordered to go to the

house and make inspection. This they did; and finding evident

tokens of the sickness upon both the bodies that were dead, they

gave their opinions publicly that they died of the plague.

Whereupon it was given in to the parish clerk, and he also

returned them to the Hall; and it was printed in the weekly bill

of mortality in the usual manner, thus—

Plague, 2. Parishes infected, 1.

The people showed a great concern at this, and began to be

alarmed all over the town, and the more, because in the last week

in December 1664 another man died in the same house, and of the

same distemper. And then we were easy again for about six weeks,

when none having died with any marks of infection, it was said

the distemper was gone; but after that, I think it was about the

12th of February, another died in another house, but in the same

parish and in the same manner.

This turned the people’s eyes pretty much towards that end of the

town, and the weekly bills showing an increase of burials in St

Giles’s parish more than usual, it began to be suspected that the

plague was among the people at that end of the town, and that

many had died of it, though they had taken care to keep it as

much from the knowledge of the public as possible. This possessed

the heads of the people very much, and few cared to go through

Drury Lane, or the other streets suspected, unless they had

extraordinary business that obliged them to it

This increase of the bills stood thus: the usual number of

burials in a week, in the parishes of St Giles-in-the-Fields and

St Andrew’s, Holborn, were from twelve to seventeen or nineteen

each, few more or less; but from the time that the plague first

began in St Giles’s parish, it was observed that the ordinary

burials increased in number considerably. For example:—

From December 27 to January 3 { St Giles’s 16

” { St Andrew’s 17

” January 3 ” ” 10 { St Giles’s 12

” { St Andrew’s 25

” January 10 ” ” 17 { St Giles’s 18

” { St Andrew’s 28

” January 17 ” ” 24 { St Giles’s 23

” { St Andrew’s 16

” January 24 ” ” 31 { St Giles’s 24

” { St Andrew’s 15

” January 30 ” February 7 { St Giles’s 21

” { St Andrew’s 23

” February 7 ” ” 14 { St Giles’s 24

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

Bride’s, adjoining on one side of Holborn parish, and in the

parish of St James, Clerkenwell, adjoining on the other side of

Holborn; in both which parishes the usual numbers that died

weekly were from four to six or eight, whereas at that time they

were increased as follows:—

From December 20 to December 27 { St Bride’s 0

” { St James’s 8

” December 27 to January 3 { St Bride’s 6

” { St James’s 9

” January 3 ” ” 10 { St Bride’s 11

” { St James’s 7

” January 10 ” ” 17 { St Bride’s 12

” { St James’s 9

” January 17 ” ” 24 { St Bride’s 9

” { St James’s 15

” January 24 ” ” 31 { St Bride’s 8

” { St James’s 12

” January 31 ” February 7 { St Bride’s 13

” { St James’s 5

” February 7 ” ” 14 { St Bride’s 12

” { St James’s 6

Besides this, it was observed with great uneasiness by the people

that the weekly bills in general increased very much during these

weeks, although it was at a time of the year when usually the

bills are very moderate.

The usual number of burials within the bills of mortality for a

week was from about 240 or thereabouts to 300. The last was

esteemed a pretty high bill; but after this we found the bills

successively increasing as follows:—

Buried. Increased.

December the 20th to the 27th 291 ...

” ” 27th ” 3rd January 349 58

January the 3rd ” 10th ” 394 45

” ” 10th ” 17th ” 415 21

” ” 17th ” 24th ” 474 59

This last bill was really frightful, being a higher number than

had been known to have been buried in one week since the

preceding visitation of 1656.

However, all this went off again, and the weather proving cold,

and the frost, which began in December, still continuing very

severe even till near the end of February, attended with sharp

though moderate winds, the bills decreased again, and the city

grew healthy, and everybody began to look upon the danger as good

as over; only that still the burials in St Giles’s continued

high. From the beginning of April especially they stood at

twenty-five each week, till the week from the 18th to the 25th,

when there was buried in St Giles’s parish thirty, whereof two of

the plague and eight of the spotted-fever, which was looked upon

as the same thing; likewise the number that died of the

spotted-fever in the whole increased, being eight the week

before, and twelve the week above-named.

This alarmed us all again, and terrible apprehensions were among

the people, especially the weather being now changed and growing

warm, and the summer being at hand. However, the next week there

seemed to be some hopes again; the bills were low, the number of

the dead in all was but 388, there was none of the plague, and

but four of the spotted-fever.

But the following week it returned again, and the distemper was

spread into two or three other parishes, viz., St Andrew’s,

Holborn; St Clement Danes; and, to the great affliction of the

city, one died within the walls, in the parish of St Mary

Woolchurch, that is to say, in Bearbinder Lane, near Stocks

Market; in all there were nine of the plague and six of the

spotted-fever. It was, however, upon inquiry found that this

Frenchman who died in Bearbinder Lane was one who, having lived

in Long Acre, near the infected houses, had removed for fear of

the distemper, not knowing that he was already infected.

This was the beginning of May, yet the weather was temperate,

variable, and cool enough, and people had still some hopes. That

which encouraged them was that the city was healthy: the whole

ninety-seven parishes buried but fifty-four, and we began to hope

that, as it was chiefly among the people at that end of the town,

it might go no farther; and the rather, because the next week,

which was from the 9th of May to the 16th, there died but three,

of which not one within the whole city or liberties; and St

Andrew’s buried but fifteen, which was very low. ’Tis true St

Giles’s buried two-and-thirty, but still, as there was but one of

the plague, people began to be easy. The whole bill also was very

low, for the week before the bill was but 347, and the week above

mentioned but 343. We continued in these hopes for a few days,

but it was but for a few, for the people were no more to be

deceived thus; they searched the houses and found that the plague

was really spread every way, and that many died of it every day.

So that now all our extenuations abated, and it was no more to be

concealed; nay, it quickly appeared that the infection had spread

itself beyond all hopes of abatement. That in the parish of St

Giles it was gotten into several streets, and several families

lay all sick together; and, accordingly, in the weekly bill for

the next week the thing began to show itself. There was indeed

but fourteen set down of the plague, but this was all knavery and

collusion, for in St Giles’s parish they buried forty in all,

whereof it was certain most of them died of the plague, though

they were set down of other distempers; and though the number of

all the burials were not increased above thirty-two, and the

whole bill being but 385, yet there was fourteen of the

spotted-fever, as well as fourteen of the plague; and we took it

for granted upon the whole that there were fifty died that week

of the plague.

The next bill was from the 23rd of May to the 30th, when the

number of the plague was seventeen. But the burials in St Giles’s

were fifty-three—a frightful number!—of whom they set down but

nine of the plague; but on an examination more strictly by the

justices of peace, and at the Lord Mayor’s request, it was found

there were twenty more who were really dead of the plague in that

parish, but had been set down of the spotted-fever or other

distempers, besides others concealed.

But those were trifling things to what followed immediately

after; for now the weather set in hot, and from the first week in

June the infection spread in a dreadful manner, and the bills

rose high; the articles of the fever, spotted-fever, and teeth

began to swell; for all that could conceal their distempers did

it, to prevent their neighbours shunning and refusing to converse

with them, and also to prevent authority shutting up their

houses; which, though it was not yet practised, yet was

threatened, and people were extremely terrified at the thoughts

of it.

The second week in June, the parish of St Giles, where still the

weight of the infection lay, buried 120, whereof though the bills

said but sixty-eight of the plague, everybody said there had been

100 at least, calculating it from the usual number of funerals in

that parish, as above.

Till this week the city continued free, there having never any

died, except that one Frenchman whom I mentioned before, within

the whole ninety-seven parishes. Now there died four within the

city, one in Wood Street, one in Fenchurch Street, and two in

Crooked Lane. Southwark was entirely free, having not one yet

died on that side of the water.

I lived without Aldgate, about midway between Aldgate Church and

Whitechappel Bars, on the left hand or north side of the street;

and as the distemper had not reached to that side of the city,

our neighbourhood continued very easy. But at the other end of

the town their consternation was very great: and the richer sort

of people, especially the nobility and gentry from the west part

of the city, thronged out of town with their families and

servants in an unusual manner; and this was more particularly

seen in Whitechappel; that is to say, the Broad Street where I

lived; indeed, nothing was to be seen but waggons and carts, with

goods, women, servants, children, &c.; coaches filled with people

of the better sort and horsemen attending them, and all hurrying

away; then empty waggons and carts appeared, and spare horses

with servants, who, it was apparent, were returning or sent from

the countries to fetch more people; besides innumerable numbers

of men on horseback, some alone, others with servants, and,

generally speaking, all loaded with baggage and fitted out for

travelling, as anyone might perceive by their appearance.

This was a very terrible and melancholy thing to see, and as it

was a sight which I could not but look on from morning to night

(for indeed there was nothing else of moment to be seen), it

filled me with very serious thoughts of the misery that was

coming upon the city, and the unhappy condition of those that

would be left in it.

This hurry of the people was such for some weeks that there was

no getting at the Lord Mayor’s door without exceeding difficulty;

there were such pressing and crowding there to get passes and

certificates of health for such as travelled abroad, for without

these there was no being admitted to pass through the towns upon

the road, or to lodge in any inn. Now, as there had none died in

the city for all this time, my Lord Mayor gave certificates of

health without any difficulty to all those who lived in the

ninety-seven parishes, and to those within the liberties too for

a while.

This hurry, I say, continued some weeks, that is to say, all the

month of May and June, and the more because it was rumoured that

an order of the Government was to be issued out to place

turnpikes and barriers on the road to prevent people travelling,

and that the towns on the road would not suffer people from

London to pass for fear of bringing the infection along with

them, though neither of these rumours had any foundation but in

the imagination, especially at-first.

I now began to consider seriously with myself concerning my own

case, and how I should dispose of myself; that is to say, whether

I should resolve to stay in London or shut up my house and flee,

as many of my neighbours did. I have set this particular down so

fully, because I know not but it may be of moment to those who

come after me, if they come to be brought to the same distress,

and to the same manner of making their choice; and therefore I

desire this account may pass with them rather for a direction to

themselves to act by than a history of my actings, seeing it may

not be of one farthing value to them to note what became of me.

I had two important things before me: the one was the carrying on

my business and shop, which was considerable, and in which was

embarked all my effects in the world; and the other was the

preservation of my life in so dismal a calamity as I saw

apparently was coming upon the whole city, and which, however

great it was, my fears perhaps, as well as other people’s,

represented to be much greater than it could be.

The first consideration was of great moment to me; my trade was a

saddler, and as my dealings were chiefly not by a shop or chance

trade, but among the merchants trading to the English colonies in

America, so my effects lay very much in the hands of such. I was

a single man, ’tis true, but I had a family of servants whom I

kept at my business; had a house, shop, and warehouses filled

with goods; and, in short, to leave them all as things in such a

case must be left (that is to say, without any overseer or person

fit to be trusted with them), had been to hazard the loss not

only of my trade, but of my goods, and indeed of all I had in the

world.

I had an elder brother at the same time in London, and not many

years before come over from Portugal: and advising with him, his

answer was in three words, the same that was given in another

case quite different, viz., ‘Master, save thyself.’ In a word, he

was for my retiring into the country, as he resolved to do

himself with his family; telling me what he had, it seems, heard

abroad, that the best preparation for the plague was to run away

from it. As to my argument of losing my trade, my goods, or

debts, he quite confuted me. He told me the same thing which I

argued for my staying, viz., that I would trust God with my

safety and health, was the strongest repulse to my pretensions of

losing my trade and my goods; ‘for’, says he, ‘is it not as

reasonable that you should trust God with the chance or risk of

losing your trade, as that you should stay in so eminent a point

of danger, and trust Him with your life?’

I could not argue that I was in any strait as to a place where to

go, having several friends and relations in Northamptonshire,

whence our family first came from; and particularly, I had an

only sister in Lincolnshire, very willing to receive and

entertain me.

My brother, who had already sent his wife and two children into

Bedfordshire, and resolved to follow them, pressed my going very

earnestly; and I had once resolved to comply with his desires,

but at that time could get no horse; for though it is true all

the people did not go out of the city of London, yet I may

venture to say that in a manner all the horses did; for there was

hardly a horse to be bought or hired in the whole city for some

weeks. Once I resolved to travel on foot with one servant, and,

as many did, lie at no inn, but carry a soldier’s tent with us,

and so lie in the fields, the weather being very warm, and no

danger from taking cold. I say, as many did, because several did

so at last, especially those who had been in the armies in the

war which had not been many years past; and I must needs say

that, speaking of second causes, had most of the people that

travelled done so, the plague had not been carried into so many

country towns and houses as it was, to the great damage, and

indeed to the ruin, of abundance of people.

But then my servant, whom I had intended to take down with me,

deceived me; and being frighted at the increase of the distemper,

and not knowing when I should go, he took other measures, and

left me, so I was put off for that time; and, one way or other, I

always found that to appoint to go away was always crossed by

some accident or other, so as to disappoint and put it off again;

and this brings in a story which otherwise might be thought a

needless digression, viz., about these disappointments being from

Heaven.

I mention this story also as the best method I can advise any

person to take in such a case, especially if he be one that makes

conscience of his duty, and would be directed what to do in it,

namely, that he should keep his eye upon the particular

providences which occur at that time, and look upon them

complexly, as they regard one another, and as all together regard

the question before him: and then, I think, he may safely take

them for intimations from Heaven of what is his unquestioned duty

to do in such a case; I mean as to going away from or staying in

the place where we dwell, when visited with an infectious

distemper.

It came very warmly into my mind one morning, as I was musing on

this particular thing, that as nothing attended us without the

direction or permission of Divine Power, so these disappointments

must have something in them extraordinary; and I ought to

consider whether it did not evidently point out, or intimate to

me, that it was the will of Heaven I should not go. It

immediately followed in my thoughts, that if it really was from

God that I should stay, He was able effectually to preserve me in

the midst of all the death and danger that would surround me; and

that if I attempted to secure myself by fleeing from my

habitation, and acted contrary to these intimations, which I

believe to be Divine, it was a kind of flying from God, and that

He could cause His justice to overtake me when and where He

thought fit.

These thoughts quite turned my resolutions again, and when I came

to discourse with my brother again I told him that I inclined to

stay and take my lot in that station in which God had placed me,

and that it seemed to be made more especially my duty, on the

account of what I have said.

My brother, though a very religious man himself, laughed at all I

had suggested about its being an intimation from Heaven, and told

me several stories of such foolhardy people, as he called them,

as I was; that I ought indeed to submit to it as a work of Heaven

if I had been any way disabled by distempers or diseases, and

that then not being able to go, I ought to acquiesce in the

direction of Him, who, having been my Maker, had an undisputed

right of sovereignty in disposing of me, and that then there had

been no difficulty to determine which was the call of His

providence and which was not; but that I should take it as an

intimation from Heaven that I should not go out of town, only

because I could not hire a horse to go, or my fellow was run away

that was to attend me, was ridiculous, since at the time I had my

health and limbs, and other servants, and might with ease travel

a day or two on foot, and having a good certificate of being in

perfect health, might either hire a horse or take post on the

road, as I thought fit.

Then he proceeded to tell me of the mischievous consequences

which attended the presumption of the Turks and Mahometans in

Asia and in other places where he had been (for my brother, being

a merchant, was a few years before, as I have already observed,

returned from abroad, coming last from Lisbon), and how,

presuming upon their professed predestinating notions, and of

every man’s end being predetermined and unalterably beforehand

decreed, they would go unconcerned into infected places and

converse with infected persons, by which means they died at the

rate of ten or fifteen thousand a week, whereas the Europeans or

Christian merchants, who kept themselves retired and reserved,

generally escaped the contagion.

Upon these arguments my brother changed my resolutions again, and

I began to resolve to go, and accordingly made all things ready;

for, in short, the infection increased round me, and the bills

were risen to almost seven hundred a week, and my brother told me

he would venture to stay no longer. I desired him to let me

consider of it but till the next day, and I would resolve: and as

I had already prepared everything as well as I could as to MY

business, and whom to entrust my affairs with, I had little to do

but to resolve.

I went home that evening greatly oppressed in my mind,

irresolute, and not knowing what to do. I had set the evening

wholly apart to consider seriously about it, and was all alone;

for already people had, as it were by a general consent, taken up

the custom of not going out of doors after sunset; the reasons I

shall have occasion to say more of by-and-by.

In the retirement of this evening I endeavoured to resolve,

first, what was my duty to do, and I stated the arguments with

which my brother had pressed me to go into the country, and I

set, against them the strong impressions which I had on my mind

for staying; the visible call I seemed to have from the

particular circumstance of my calling, and the care due from me

for the preservation of my effects, which were, as I might say,

my estate; also the intimations which I thought I had from

Heaven, that to me signified a kind of direction to venture; and

it occurred to me that if I had what I might call a direction to

stay, I ought to suppose it contained a promise of being

preserved if I obeyed.

This lay close to me, and my mind seemed more and more encouraged

to stay than ever, and supported with a secret satisfaction that

I should be kept. Add to this, that, turning over the Bible which

lay before me, and while my thoughts were more than ordinarily

serious upon the question, I cried out, ‘Well, I know not what to

do; Lord, direct me !’ and the like; and at that juncture I

happened to stop turning over the book at the ninety-first Psalm,

and casting my eye on the second verse, I read on to the seventh

verse exclusive, and after that included the tenth, as follows:

‘I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God,

in Him will I trust. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare

of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover

thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust: His

truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid

for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;

nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the

destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy

side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come

nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the

reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is

my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; there shall no

evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy

dwelling,’ &C.

I scarce need tell the reader that from that moment I resolved

that I would stay in the town, and casting myself entirely upon

the goodness and protection of the Almighty, would not seek any

other shelter whatever; and that, as my times were in His hands,

He was as able to keep me in a time of the infection as in a time

of health; and if He did not think fit to deliver me, still I was

in His hands, and it was meet He should do with me as should seem

good to Him.

With this resolution I went to bed; and I was further confirmed

in it the next day by the woman being taken ill with whom I had

intended to entrust my house and all my affairs. But I had a

further obligation laid on me on the same side, for the next day

I found myself very much out of order also, so that if I would

have gone away, I could not, and I continued ill three or four

days, and this entirely determined my stay; so I took my leave of

my brother, who went away to Dorking, in Surrey, and afterwards

fetched a round farther into Buckinghamshire or Bedfordshire, to

a retreat he had found out there for his family.

It was a very ill time to be sick in, for if any one complained,

it was immediately said he had the plague; and though I had

indeed no symptom of that distemper, yet being very ill, both in

my head and in my stomach, I was not without apprehension that I

really was infected; but in about three days I grew better; the

third night I rested well, sweated a little, and was much

refreshed. The apprehensions of its being the infection went also

quite away with my illness, and I went about my business as

usual.

These things, however, put off all my thoughts of going into the

country; and my brother also being gone, I had no more debate

either with him or with myself on that subject.

It was now mid-July, and the plague, which had chiefly raged at

the other end of the town, and, as I said before, in the parishes

of St Giles, St Andrew’s, Holborn, and towards Westminster, began

to now come eastward towards the part where I lived. It was to be

observed, indeed, that it did not come straight on towards us;

for the city, that is to say, within the walls, was indifferently

healthy still; nor was it got then very much over the water into

Southwark; for though there died that week 1268 of all

distempers, whereof it might be supposed above 600 died of the

plague, yet there was but twenty-eight in the whole city, within

the walls, and but nineteen in Southwark, Lambeth parish

included; whereas in the parishes of St Giles and St

Martin-in-the-Fields alone there died 421.

But we perceived the infection kept chiefly in the out-parishes,

which being very populous, and fuller also of poor, the distemper

found more to prey upon than in the city, as I shall observe

afterwards. We perceived, I say, the distemper to draw our way,

viz., by the parishes of Clarkenwell, Cripplegate, Shoreditch,

and Bishopsgate; which last two parishes joining to Aldgate,

Whitechappel, and Stepney, the infection came at length to spread

its utmost rage and violence in those parts, even when it abated

at the western parishes where it began.

It was very strange to observe that in this particular week, from

the 4th to the 11th of July, when, as I have observed, there died

near 400 of the plague in the two parishes of St Martin and St

Giles-in-the-Fields only, there died in the parish of Aldgate but

four, in the parish of Whitechappel three, in the parish of

Stepney but one.

Likewise in the next week, from the 11th of July to the 18th,

when the week’s bill was 1761, yet there died no more of the

plague, on the whole Southwark side of the water, than sixteen.

But this face of things soon changed, and it began to thicken in

Cripplegate parish especially, and in Clarkenwell; so that by the

second week in August, Cripplegate parish alone buried 886, and

Clarkenwell 155. Of the first, 850 might well be reckoned to die

of the plague; and of the last, the bill itself said 145 were of

the plague.

During the month of July, and while, as I have observed, our part

of the town seemed to be spared in comparison of the west part, I

went ordinarily about the streets, as my business required, and

particularly went generally once in a day, or in two days, into

the city, to my brother’s house, which he had given me charge of,

and to see if it was safe; and having the key in my pocket, I

used to go into the house, and over most of the rooms, to see

that all was well; for though it be something wonderful to tell,

that any should have hearts so hardened in the midst of such a

calamity as to rob and steal, yet certain it is that all sorts of

villainies, and even levities and debaucheries, were then

practised in the town as openly as ever—I will not say quite as

frequently, because the numbers of people were many ways

lessened.

But the city itself began now to be visited too, I mean within

the walls; but the number of people there were indeed extremely

lessened by so great a multitude having been gone into the

country; and even all this month of July they continued to flee,

though not in such multitudes as formerly. In August, indeed,

they fled in such a manner that I began to think there would be

really none but magistrates and servants left in the city.

As they fled now out of the city, so I should observe that the

Court removed early, viz., in the month of June, and went to

Oxford, where it pleased God to preserve them; and the distemper

did not, as I heard of, so much as touch them, for which I cannot

say that I ever saw they showed any great token of thankfulness,

and hardly anything of reformation, though they did not want

being told that their crying vices might without breach of

charity be said to have gone far in bringing that terrible

judgement upon the whole nation.

The face of London was—now indeed strangely altered: I mean the

whole mass of buildings, city, liberties, suburbs, Westminster,

Southwark, and altogether; for as to the particular part called

the city, or within the walls, that was not yet much infected.

But in the whole the face of things, I say, was much altered;

sorrow and sadness sat upon every face; and though some parts

were not yet overwhelmed, yet all looked deeply concerned; and,

as we saw it apparently coming on, so every one looked on himself

and his family as in the utmost danger. Were it possible to

represent those times exactly to those that did not see them, and

give the reader due ideas of the horror ‘that everywhere

presented itself, it must make just impressions upon their minds

and fill them with surprise. London might well be said to be all

in tears; the mourners did not go about the streets indeed, for

nobody put on black or made a formal dress of mourning for their

nearest friends; but the voice of mourners was truly heard in the

streets. The shrieks of women and children at the windows and

doors of their houses, where their dearest relations were perhaps

dying, or just dead, were so frequent to be heard as we passed

the streets, that it was enough to pierce the stoutest heart in

the world to hear them. Tears and lamentations were seen almost

in every house, especially in the first part of the visitation;

for towards the latter end men’s hearts were hardened, and death

was so always before their eyes, that they did not so much

concern themselves for the loss of their friends, expecting that

themselves should be summoned the next hour.

Business led me out sometimes to the other end of the town, even

when the sickness was chiefly there; and as the thing was new to

me, as well as to everybody else, it was a most surprising thing

to see those streets which were usually so thronged now grown

desolate, and so few people to be seen in them, that if I had

been a stranger and at a loss for my way, I might sometimes have

gone the length of a whole street (I mean of the by-streets), and

seen nobody to direct me except watchmen set at the doors of such

houses as were shut up, of which I shall speak presently.

One day, being at that part of the town on some special business,

curiosity led me to observe things more than usually, and indeed

I walked a great way where I had no business. I went up Holborn,

and there the street was full of people, but they walked in the

middle of the great street, neither on one side or other,

because, as I suppose, they would not mingle with anybody that

came out of houses, or meet with smells and scent from houses

that might be infected.

The Inns of Court were all shut up; nor were very many of the

lawyers in the Temple, or Lincoln’s Inn, or Gray’s Inn, to be

seen there. Everybody was at peace; there was no occasion for

lawyers; besides, it being in the time of the vacation too, they

were generally gone into the country. Whole rows of houses in

some places were shut close up, the inhabitants all fled, and

only a watchman or two left.

When I speak of rows of houses being shut up, I do not mean shut

up by the magistrates, but that great numbers of persons followed

the Court, by the necessity of their employments and other

dependences; and as others retired, really frighted with the

distemper, it was a mere desolating of some of the streets. But

the fright was not yet near so great in the city, abstractly so

called, and particularly because, though they were at first in a

most inexpressible consternation, yet as I have observed that the

distemper intermitted often at first, so they were, as it were,

alarmed and unalarmed again, and this several times, till it

began to be familiar to them; and that even when it appeared

violent, yet seeing it did not presently spread into the city, or

the east and south parts, the people began to take courage, and

to be, as I may say, a little hardened. It is true a vast many

people fled, as I have observed, yet they were chiefly from the

west end of the town, and from that we call the heart of the

city: that is to say, among the wealthiest of the people, and

such people as were unencumbered with trades and business. But of

the rest, the generality stayed, and seemed to abide the worst;

so that in the place we call the Liberties, and in the suburbs,

in Southwark, and in the east part, such as Wapping, Ratcliff,

Stepney, Rotherhithe, and the like, the people generally stayed,

except here and there a few wealthy families, who, as above, did

not depend upon their business.

It must not be forgot here that the city and suburbs were

prodigiously full of people at the time of this visitation, I

mean at the time that it began; for though I have lived to see a

further increase, and mighty throngs of people settling in London

more than ever, yet we had always a notion that the numbers of

people which, the wars being over, the armies disbanded, and the

royal family and the monarchy being restored, had flocked to

London to settle in business, or to depend upon and attend the

Court for rewards of services, preferments, and the like, was

such that the town was computed to have in it above a hundred

thousand people more than ever it held before; nay, some took

upon them to say it had twice as many, because all the ruined

families of the royal party flocked hither. All the old soldiers

set up trades here, and abundance of families settled here.

Again, the Court brought with them a great flux of pride, and new

fashions. All people were grown gay and luxurious, and the joy of

the Restoration had brought a vast many families to London.

I often thought that as Jerusalem was besieged by the Romans when

the Jews were assembled together to celebrate the Passover—by

which means an incredible number of people were surprised there

who would otherwise have been in other countries—so the plague

entered London when an incredible increase of people had happened

occasionally, by the particular circumstances above-named. As

this conflux of the people to a youthful and gay Court made a

great trade in the city, especially in everything that belonged

to fashion and finery, so it drew by consequence a great number

of workmen, manufacturers, and the like, being mostly poor people

who depended upon their labour. And I remember in particular that

in a representation to my Lord Mayor of the condition of the

poor, it was estimated that there were no less than an hundred

thousand riband-weavers in and about the city, the chiefest

number of whom lived then in the parishes of Shoreditch, Stepney,

Whitechappel, and Bishopsgate, that, namely, about Spitalfields;

that is to say, as Spitalfields was then, for it was not so large

as now by one fifth part.

By this, however, the number of people in the whole may be judged

of; and, indeed, I often wondered that, after the prodigious

numbers of people that went away at first, there was yet so great

a multitude left as it appeared there was.

But I must go back again to the beginning of this surprising

time. While the fears of the people were young, they were

increased strangely by several odd accidents which, put

altogether, it was really a wonder the whole body of the people

did not rise as one man and abandon their dwellings, leaving the

place as a space of ground designed by Heaven for an Akeldama,

doomed to be destroyed from the face of the earth, and that all

that would be found in it would perish with it. I shall name but

a few of these things; but sure they were so many, and so many

wizards and cunning people propagating them, that I have often

wondered there was any (women especially) left behind.

In the first place, a blazing star or comet appeared for several

months before the plague, as there did the year after another, a

little before the fire. The old women and the phlegmatic

hypochondriac part of the other sex, whom I could almost call old

women too, remarked (especially afterward, though not till both

those judgements were over) that those two comets passed directly

over the city, and that so very near the houses that it was plain

they imported something peculiar to the city alone; that the

comet before the pestilence was of a faint, dull, languid colour,

and its motion very heavy, Solemn, and slow; but that the comet

before the fire was bright and sparkling, or, as others said,

flaming, and its motion swift and furious; and that, accordingly,

one foretold a heavy judgement, slow but severe, terrible and

frightful, as was the plague; but the other foretold a stroke,

sudden, swift, and fiery as the conflagration. Nay, so particular

some people were, that as they looked upon that comet preceding

the fire, they fancied that they not only saw it pass swiftly and

fiercely, and could perceive the motion with their eye, but even

they heard it; that it made a rushing, mighty noise, fierce and

terrible, though at a distance, and but just perceivable.

I saw both these stars, and, I must confess, had so much of the

common notion of such things in my head, that I was apt to look

upon them as the forerunners and warnings of God’s judgements;

and especially when, after the plague had followed the first, I

yet saw another of the like kind, I could not but say God had not

yet sufficiently scourged the city.

But I could not at the same time carry these things to the height

that others did, knowing, too, that natural causes are assigned

by the astronomers for such things, and that their motions and

even their revolutions are calculated, or pretended to be

calculated, so that they cannot be so perfectly called the

forerunners or foretellers, much less the procurers, of such

events as pestilence, war, fire, and the like.

But let my thoughts and the thoughts of the philosophers be, or

have been, what they will, these things had a more than ordinary

influence upon the minds of the common people, and they had

almost universal melancholy apprehensions of some dreadful

calamity and judgement coming upon the city; and this principally

from the sight of this comet, and the little alarm that was given

in December by two people dying at St Giles’s, as above.

The apprehensions of the people were likewise strangely increased

by the error of the times; in which, I think, the people, from

what principle I cannot imagine, were more addicted to prophecies

and astrological conjurations, dreams, and old wives’ tales than

ever they were before or since. Whether this unhappy temper was

originally raised by the follies of some people who got money by

it—that is to say, by printing predictions and prognostications—I

know not; but certain it is, books frighted them terribly, such

as Lilly’s Almanack, Gadbury’s Astrological Predictions, Poor

Robin’s Almanack, and the like; also several pretended religious

books, one entitled, Come out of her, my People, lest you be

Partaker of her Plagues; another called, Fair Warning; another,

Britain’s Remembrancer; and many such, all, or most part of

which, foretold, directly or covertly, the ruin of the city. Nay,

some were so enthusiastically bold as to run about the streets

with their oral predictions, pretending they were sent to preach

to the city; and one in particular, who, like Jonah to Nineveh,

cried in the streets, ‘Yet forty days, and London shall be

destroyed.’ I will not be positive whether he said yet forty days

or yet a few days. Another ran about naked, except a pair of

drawers about his waist, crying day and night, like a man that

Josephus mentions, who cried, ‘Woe to Jerusalem!’ a little before

the destruction of that city. So this poor naked creature cried,

‘Oh, the great and the dreadful God!’ and said no more, but

repeated those words continually, with a voice and countenance

full of horror, a swift pace; and nobody could ever find him to

stop or rest, or take any sustenance, at least that ever I could

hear of. I met this poor creature several times in the streets,

and would have spoken to him, but he would not enter into speech

with me or any one else, but held on his dismal cries

continually.

These things terrified the people to the last degree, and

especially when two or three times, as I have mentioned already,

they found one or two in the bills dead of the plague at St

Giles’s.

Next to these public things were the dreams of old women, or, I

should say, the interpretation of old women upon other people’s

dreams; and these put abundance of people even out of their wits.

Some heard voices warning them to be gone, for that there would

be such a plague in London, so that the living would not be able

to bury the dead. Others saw apparitions in the air; and I must

be allowed to say of both, I hope without breach of charity, that

they heard voices that never spake, and saw sights that never

appeared; but the imagination of the people was really turned

wayward and possessed. And no wonder, if they who were poring

continually at the clouds saw shapes and figures, representations

and appearances, which had nothing in them but air, and vapour.

Here they told us they saw a flaming sword held in a hand coming

out of a cloud, with a point hanging directly over the city;

there they saw hearses and coffins in the air carrying to be

buried; and there again, heaps of dead bodies lying unburied, and

the like, just as the imagination of the poor terrified people

furnished them with matter to work upon.

So hypochondriac fancies represent

Ships, armies, battles in the firmament;

Till steady eyes the exhalations solve,

And all to its first matter, cloud, resolve.

I could fill this account with the strange relations such people

gave every day of what they had seen; and every one was so

positive of their having seen what they pretended to see, that

there was no contradicting them without breach of friendship, or

being accounted rude and unmannerly on the one hand, and profane

and impenetrable on the other. One time before the plague was

begun (otherwise than as I have said in St Giles’s), I think it

was in March, seeing a crowd of people in the street, I joined

with them to satisfy my curiosity, and found them all staring up

into the air to see what a woman told them appeared plain to her,

which was an angel clothed in white, with a fiery sword in his

hand, waving it or brandishing it over his head. She described

every part of the figure to the life, showed them the motion and

the form, and the poor people came into it so eagerly, and with

so much readiness; ‘Yes, I see it all plainly,’ says one;

‘there’s the sword as plain as can be.’ Another saw the angel.

One saw his very face, and cried out what a glorious creature he

was! One saw one thing, and one another. I looked as earnestly as

the rest, but perhaps not with so much willingness to be imposed

upon; and I said, indeed, that I could see nothing but a white

cloud, bright on one side by the shining of the sun upon the

other part. The woman endeavoured to show it me, but could not

make me confess that I saw it, which, indeed, if I had I must

have lied. But the woman, turning upon me, looked in my face, and

fancied I laughed, in which her imagination deceived her too, for

I really did not laugh, but was very seriously reflecting how the

poor people were terrified by the force of their own imagination.

However, she turned from me, called me profane fellow, and a

scoffer; told me that it was a time of God’s anger, and dreadful

judgements were approaching, and that despisers such as I should

wander and perish.

The people about her seemed disgusted as well as she; and I found

there was no persuading them that I did not laugh at them, and

that I should be rather mobbed by them than be able to undeceive

them. So I left them; and this appearance passed for as real as

the blazing star itself.

Another encounter I had in the open day also; and this was in

going through a narrow passage from Petty France into Bishopsgate

Churchyard, by a row of alms-houses. There are two churchyards to

Bishopsgate church or parish; one we go over to pass from the

place called Petty France into Bishopsgate Street, coming out

just by the church door; the other is on the side of the narrow

passage where the alms-houses are on the left; and a dwarf-wall

with a palisado on it on the right hand, and the city wall on the

other side more to the right.

In this narrow passage stands a man looking through between the

palisadoes into the burying-place, and as many people as the

narrowness of the passage would admit to stop, without hindering

the passage of others, and he was talking mightily eagerly to

them, and pointing now to one place, then to another, and

affirming that he saw a ghost walking upon such a gravestone

there. He described the shape, the posture, and the movement of

it so exactly that it was the greatest matter of amazement to him

in the world that everybody did not see it as well as he. On a

sudden he would cry, ‘There it is; now it comes this way.’ Then,

’Tis turned back’; till at length he persuaded the people into so

firm a belief of it, that one fancied he saw it, and another

fancied he saw it; and thus he came every day making a strange

hubbub, considering it was in so narrow a passage, till

Bishopsgate clock struck eleven, and then the ghost would seem to

start, and, as if he were called away, disappeared on a sudden.

I looked earnestly every way, and at the very moment that this

man directed, but could not see the least appearance of anything;

but so positive was this poor man, that he gave the people the

vapours in abundance, and sent them away trembling and frighted,

till at length few people that knew of it cared to go through

that passage, and hardly anybody by night on any account

whatever.

This ghost, as the poor man affirmed, made signs to the houses,

and to the ground, and to the people, plainly intimating, or else

they so understanding it, that abundance of the people should

come to be buried in that churchyard, as indeed happened; but

that he saw such aspects I must acknowledge I never believed, nor

could I see anything of it myself, though I looked most earnestly

to see it, if possible.

These things serve to show how far the people were really

overcome with delusions; and as they had a notion of the approach

of a visitation, all their predictions ran upon a most dreadful

plague, which should lay the whole city, and even the kingdom,

waste, and should destroy almost all the nation, both man and

beast.

To this, as I said before, the astrologers added stories of the

conjunctions of planets in a malignant manner and with a

mischievous influence, one of which conjunctions was to happen,

and did happen, in October, and the other in November; and they

filled the people’s heads with predictions on these signs of the

heavens, intimating that those conjunctions foretold drought,

famine, and pestilence. In the two first of them, however, they

were entirely mistaken, for we had no droughty season, but in the

beginning of the year a hard frost, which lasted from December

almost to March, and after that moderate weather, rather warm

than hot, with refreshing winds, and, in short, very seasonable

weather, and also several very great rains.

Some endeavours were used to suppress the printing of such books

as terrified the people, and to frighten the dispersers of them,

some of whom were taken up; but nothing was done in it, as I am

informed, the Government being unwilling to exasperate the

people, who were, as I may say, all out of their wits already.

Neither can I acquit those ministers that in their sermons rather

sank than lifted up the hearts of their hearers. Many of them no

doubt did it for the strengthening the resolution of the people,

and especially for quickening them to repentance, but it

certainly answered not their end, at least not in proportion to

the injury it did another way; and indeed, as God Himself through

the whole Scriptures rather draws to Him by invitations and calls

to turn to Him and live, than drives us by terror and amazement,

so I must confess I thought the ministers should have done also,

imitating our blessed Lord and Master in this, that His whole

Gospel is full of declarations from heaven of God’s mercy, and

His readiness to receive penitents and forgive them, complaining,

‘Ye will not come unto Me that ye may have life’, and that

therefore His Gospel is called the Gospel of Peace and the Gospel

of Grace.

But we had some good men, and that of all persuasions and

opinions, whose discourses were full of terror, who spoke nothing

but dismal things; and as they brought the people together with a

kind of horror, sent them away in tears, prophesying nothing but

evil tidings, terrifying the people with the apprehensions of

being utterly destroyed, not guiding them, at least not enough,

to cry to heaven for mercy.

It was, indeed, a time of very unhappy breaches among us in

matters of religion. Innumerable sects and divisions and separate

opinions prevailed among the people. The Church of England was

restored, indeed, with the restoration of the monarchy, about

four years before; but the ministers and preachers of the

Presbyterians and Independents, and of all the other sorts of

professions, had begun to gather separate societies and erect

altar against altar, and all those had their meetings for worship

apart, as they have now, but not so many then, the Dissenters

being not thoroughly formed into a body as they are since; and

those congregations which were thus gathered together were yet

but few. And even those that were, the Government did not allow,

but endeavoured to suppress them and shut up their meetings.

But the visitation reconciled them again, at least for a time,

and many of the best and most valuable ministers and preachers of

the Dissenters were suffered to go into the churches where the

incumbents were fled away, as many were, not being able to stand

it; and the people flocked without distinction to hear them

preach, not much inquiring who or what opinion they were of. But

after the sickness was over, that spirit of charity abated; and

every church being again supplied with their own ministers, or

others presented where the minister was dead, things returned to

their old channel again.

One mischief always introduces another. These terrors and

apprehensions of the people led them into a thousand weak,

foolish, and wicked things, which they wanted not a sort of

people really wicked to encourage them to: and this was running

about to fortune-tellers, cunning-men, and astrologers to know

their fortune, or, as it is vulgarly expressed, to have their

fortunes told them, their nativities calculated, and the like;

and this folly presently made the town swarm with a wicked

generation of pretenders to magic, to the black art, as they

called it, and I know not what; nay, to a thousand worse dealings

with the devil than they were really guilty of. And this trade

grew so open and so generally practised that it became common to

have signs and inscriptions set up at doors: ‘Here lives a

fortune-teller’, ‘Here lives an astrologer’, ‘Here you may have

your nativity calculated’, and the like; and Friar Bacon’s

brazen-head, which was the usual sign of these people’s

dwellings, was to be seen almost in every street, or else the

sign of Mother Shipton, or of Merlin’s head, and the like.

With what blind, absurd, and ridiculous stuff these oracles of

the devil pleased and satisfied the people I really know not, but

certain it is that innumerable attendants crowded about their

doors every day. And if but a grave fellow in a velvet jacket, a

band, and a black coat, which was the habit those quack-conjurers

generally went in, was but seen in the streets the people would

follow them in crowds, and ask them questions as they went along.

I need not mention what a horrid delusion this was, or what it

tended to; but there was no remedy for it till the plague itself

put an end to it all—and, I suppose, cleared the town of most of

those calculators themselves. One mischief was, that if the poor

people asked these mock astrologers whether there would be a

plague or no, they all agreed in general to answer ‘Yes’, for

that kept up their trade. And had the people not been kept in a

fright about that, the wizards would presently have been rendered

useless, and their craft had been at an end. But they always

talked to them of such-and-such influences of the stars, of the

conjunctions of such-and-such planets, which must necessarily

bring sickness and distempers, and consequently the plague. And

some had the assurance to tell them the plague was begun already,

which was too true, though they that said so knew nothing of the

matter.

The ministers, to do them justice, and preachers of most sorts

that were serious and understanding persons, thundered against

these and other wicked practices, and exposed the folly as well

as the wickedness of them together, and the most sober and

judicious people despised and abhorred them. But it was

impossible to make any impression upon the middling people and

the working labouring poor. Their fears were predominant over all

their passions, and they threw away their money in a most

distracted manner upon those whimsies. Maid-servants especially,

and men-servants, were the chief of their customers, and their

question generally was, after the first demand of ‘Will there be

a plague?’ I say, the next question was, ‘Oh, sir I for the

Lord’s sake, what will become of me? Will my mistress keep me, or

will she turn me off? Will she stay here, or will she go into the

country? And if she goes into the country, will she take me with

her, or leave me here to be starved and undone?’ And the like of

menservants.

The truth is, the case of poor servants was very dismal, as I

shall have occasion to mention again by-and-by, for it was

apparent a prodigious number of them would be turned away, and it

was so. And of them abundance perished, and particularly of those

that these false prophets had flattered with hopes that they

should be continued in their services, and carried with their

masters and mistresses into the country; and had not public

charity provided for these poor creatures, whose number was

exceeding great and in all cases of this nature must be so, they

would have been in the worst condition of any people in the city.

These things agitated the minds of the common people for many

months, while the first apprehensions were upon them, and while

the plague was not, as I may say, yet broken out. But I must also

not forget that the more serious part of the inhabitants behaved

after another manner. The Government encouraged their devotion,

and appointed public prayers and days of fasting and humiliation,

to make public confession of sin and implore the mercy of God to

avert the dreadful judgement which hung over their heads; and it

is not to be expressed with what alacrity the people of all

persuasions embraced the occasion; how they flocked to the

churches and meetings, and they were all so thronged that there

was often no coming near, no, not to the very doors of the

largest churches. Also there were daily prayers appointed morning

and evening at several churches, and days of private praying at

other places; at all which the people attended, I say, with an

uncommon devotion. Several private families also, as well of one

opinion as of another, kept family fasts, to which they admitted

their near relations only. So that, in a word, those people who

were really serious and religious applied themselves in a truly

Christian manner to the proper work of repentance and

humiliation, as a Christian people ought to do.

Again, the public showed that they would bear their share in

these things; the very Court, which was then gay and luxurious,

put on a face of just concern for the public danger. All the

plays and interludes which, after the manner of the French Court,

had been set up, and began to increase among us, were forbid to

act; the gaming-tables, public dancing-rooms, and music-houses,

which multiplied and began to debauch the manners of the people,

were shut up and suppressed; and the jack-puddings,

merry-andrews, puppet-shows, rope-dancers, and such-like doings,

which had bewitched the poor common people, shut up their shops,

finding indeed no trade; for the minds of the people were

agitated with other things, and a kind of sadness and horror at

these things sat upon the countenances even of the common people.

Death was before their eyes, and everybody began to think of

their graves, not of mirth and diversions.

But even those wholesome reflections—which, rightly managed,

would have most happily led the people to fall upon their knees,

make confession of their sins, and look up to their merciful

Saviour for pardon, imploring His compassion on them in such a

time of their distress, by which we might have been as a second

Nineveh—had a quite contrary extreme in the common people, who,

ignorant and stupid in their reflections as they were brutishly

wicked and thoughtless before, were now led by their fright to

extremes of folly; and, as I have said before, that they ran to

conjurers and witches, and all sorts of deceivers, to know what

should become of them (who fed their fears, and kept them always

alarmed and awake on purpose to delude them and pick their

pockets), so they were as mad upon their running after quacks and

mountebanks, and every practising old woman, for medicines and

remedies; storing themselves with such multitudes of pills,

potions, and preservatives, as they were called, that they not

only spent their money but even poisoned themselves beforehand

for fear of the poison of the infection; and prepared their

bodies for the plague, instead of preserving them against it. On

the other hand it is incredible and scarce to be imagined, how

the posts of houses and corners of streets were plastered over

with doctors’ bills and papers of ignorant fellows, quacking and

tampering in physic, and inviting the people to come to them for

remedies, which was generally set off with such flourishes as

these, viz.: ‘Infallible preventive pills against the plague.’

‘Neverfailing preservatives against the infection.’ ‘Sovereign

cordials against the corruption of the air.’ ‘Exact regulations

for the conduct of the body in case of an infection.’

‘Anti-pestilential pills.’ ‘Incomparable drink against the

plague, never found out before.’ ‘An universal remedy for the

plague.’ ‘The only true plague water.’ ‘The royal antidote

against all kinds of infection’;—and such a number more that I

cannot reckon up; and if I could, would fill a book of themselves

to set them down.

Others set up bills to summon people to their lodgings for

directions and advice in the case of infection. These had

specious titles also, such as these:—

‘An eminent High Dutch physician, newly come over from Holland,

where he resided during all the time of the great plague last

year in Amsterdam, and cured multitudes of people that actually

had the plague upon them.’

‘An Italian gentlewoman just arrived from Naples, having a choice

secret to prevent infection, which she found out by her great

experience, and did wonderful cures with it in the late plague

there, wherein there died 20,000 in one day.’

‘An ancient gentlewoman, having practised with great success in

the late plague in this city, anno 1636, gives her advice only to

the female sex. To be spoken with,’ &c.

‘An experienced physician, who has long studied the doctrine of

antidotes against all sorts of poison and infection, has, after

forty years’ practice, arrived to such skill as may, with God’s

blessing, direct persons how to prevent their being touched by

any contagious distemper whatsoever. He directs the poor gratis.’

I take notice of these by way of specimen. I could give you two

or three dozen of the like and yet have abundance left behind.

’Tis sufficient from these to apprise any one of the humour of

those times, and how a set of thieves and pickpockets not only

robbed and cheated the poor people of their money, but poisoned

their bodies with odious and fatal preparations; some with

mercury, and some with other things as bad, perfectly remote from

the thing pretended to, and rather hurtful than serviceable to

the body in case an infection followed.

I cannot omit a subtility of one of those quack operators, with

which he gulled the poor people to crowd about him, but did

nothing for them without money. He had, it seems, added to his

bills, which he gave about the streets, this advertisement in

capital letters, viz., ‘He gives advice to the poor for nothing.’

Abundance of poor people came to him accordingly, to whom he made

a great many fine speeches, examined them of the state of their

health and of the constitution of their bodies, and told them

many good things for them to do, which were of no great moment.

But the issue and conclusion of all was, that he had a

preparation which if they took such a quantity of every morning,

he would pawn his life they should never have the plague; no,

though they lived in the house with people that were infected.

This made the people all resolve to have it; but then the price

of that was so much, I think ’twas half-a-crown. ‘But, sir,’ says

one poor woman, ‘I am a poor almswoman and am kept by the parish,

and your bills say you give the poor your help for nothing.’ ‘Ay,

good woman,’ says the doctor, ‘so I do, as I published there. I

give my advice to the poor for nothing, but not my physic.’

‘Alas, sir!’ says she, ‘that is a snare laid for the poor, then;

for you give them advice for nothing; that is to say, you advise

them gratis, to buy your physic for their money; so does every

shop-keeper with his wares.’ Here the woman began to give him ill

words, and stood at his door all that day, telling her tale to

all the people that came, till the doctor finding she turned away

his customers, was obliged to call her upstairs again, and give

her his box of physic for nothing, which perhaps, too, was good

for nothing when she had it.

But to return to the people, whose confusions fitted them to be

imposed upon by all sorts of pretenders and by every mountebank.

There is no doubt but these quacking sort of fellows raised great

gains out of the miserable people, for we daily found the crowds

that ran after them were infinitely greater, and their doors were

more thronged than those of Dr Brooks, Dr Upton, Dr Hodges, Dr

Berwick, or any, though the most famous men of the time. And I

was told that some of them got five pounds a day by their physic.

But there was still another madness beyond all this, which may

serve to give an idea of the distracted humour of the poor people

at that time: and this was their following a worse sort of

deceivers than any of these; for these petty thieves only deluded

them to pick their pockets and get their money, in which their

wickedness, whatever it was, lay chiefly on the side of the

deceivers, not upon the deceived. But in this part I am going to

mention, it lay chiefly in the people deceived, or equally in

both; and this was in wearing charms, philtres, exorcisms,

amulets, and I know not what preparations, to fortify the body

with them against the plague; as if the plague was not the hand

of God, but a kind of possession of an evil spirit, and that it

was to be kept off with crossings, signs of the zodiac, papers

tied up with so many knots, and certain words or figures written

on them, as particularly the word Abracadabra, formed in triangle

or pyramid, thus:—

ABRACADABRA

ABRACADABR Others had the Jesuits’

ABRACADAB mark in a cross:

ABRACADA I H

ABRACAD S.

ABRACA

ABRAC Others nothing but this

ABRA mark, thus:

ABR

AB * *

A {*}

I might spend a great deal of time in my exclamations against the

follies, and indeed the wickedness, of those things, in a time of

such danger, in a matter of such consequences as this, of a

national infection. But my memorandums of these things relate

rather to take notice only of the fact, and mention only that it

was so. How the poor people found the insufficiency of those

things, and how many of them were afterwards carried away in the

dead-carts and thrown into the common graves of every parish with

these hellish charms and trumpery hanging about their necks,

remains to be spoken of as we go along.

All this was the effect of the hurry the people were in, after

the first notion of the plague being at hand was among them, and

which may be said to be from about Michaelmas 1664, but more

particularly after the two men died in St Giles’s in the

beginning of December; and again, after another alarm in

February. For when the plague evidently spread itself, they soon

began to see the folly of trusting to those unperforming

creatures who had gulled them of their money; and then their

fears worked another way, namely, to amazement and stupidity, not

knowing what course to take or what to do either to help or

relieve themselves. But they ran about from one neighbour’s house

to another, and even in the streets from one door to another,

with repeated cries of, ‘Lord, have mercy upon us! What shall we

do?’

Indeed, the poor people were to be pitied in one particular thing

in which they had little or no relief, and which I desire to

mention with a serious awe and reflection, which perhaps every

one that reads this may not relish; namely, that whereas death

now began not, as we may say, to hover over every one’s head

only, but to look into their houses and chambers and stare in

their faces. Though there might be some stupidity and dulness of

the mind (and there was so, a great deal), yet there was a great

deal of just alarm sounded into the very inmost soul, if I may so

say, of others. Many consciences were awakened; many hard hearts

melted into tears; many a penitent confession was made of crimes

long concealed. It would wound the soul of any Christian to have

heard the dying groans of many a despairing creature, and none

durst come near to comfort them. Many a robbery, many a murder,

was then confessed aloud, and nobody surviving to record the

accounts of it. People might be heard, even into the streets as

we passed along, calling upon God for mercy through Jesus Christ,

and saying, ‘I have been a thief, ‘I have been an adulterer’, ‘I

have been a murderer’, and the like, and none durst stop to make

the least inquiry into such things or to administer comfort to

the poor creatures that in the anguish both of soul and body thus

cried out. Some of the ministers did visit the sick at first and

for a little while, but it was not to be done. It would have been

present death to have gone into some houses. The very buriers of

the dead, who were the hardenedest creatures in town, were

sometimes beaten back and so terrified that they durst not go

into houses where the whole families were swept away together,

and where the circumstances were more particularly horrible, as

some were; but this was, indeed, at the first heat of the

distemper.

Time inured them to it all, and they ventured everywhere

afterwards without hesitation, as I shall have occasion to

mention at large hereafter.

I am supposing now the plague to be begun, as I have said, and

that the magistrates began to take the condition of the people

into their serious consideration. What they did as to the

regulation of the inhabitants and of infected families, I shall

speak to by itself; but as to the affair of health, it is proper

to mention it here that, having seen the foolish humour of the

people in running after quacks and mountebanks, wizards and

fortune-tellers, which they did as above, even to madness, the

Lord Mayor, a very sober and religious gentleman, appointed

physicians and surgeons for relief of the poor—I mean the

diseased poor and in particular ordered the College of Physicians

to publish directions for cheap remedies for the poor, in all the

circumstances of the distemper. This, indeed, was one of the most

charitable and judicious things that could be done at that time,

for this drove the people from haunting the doors of every

disperser of bills, and from taking down blindly and without

consideration poison for physic and death instead of life.

This direction of the physicians was done by a consultation of

the whole College; and, as it was particularly calculated for the

use of the poor and for cheap medicines, it was made public, so

that everybody might see it, and copies were given gratis to all

that desired it. But as it is public, and to be seen on all

occasions, I need not give the reader of this the trouble of it.

I shall not be supposed to lessen the authority or capacity of

the physicians when I say that the violence of the distemper,

when it came to its extremity, was like the fire the next year.

The fire, which consumed what the plague could not touch, defied

all the application of remedies; the fire-engines were broken,

the buckets thrown away, and the power of man was baffled and

brought to an end. So the Plague defied all medicines; the very

physicians were seized with it, with their preservatives in their

mouths; and men went about prescribing to others and telling them

what to do till the tokens were upon them, and they dropped down

dead, destroyed by that very enemy they directed others to

oppose. This was the case of several physicians, even some of

them the most eminent, and of several of the most skilful

surgeons. Abundance of quacks too died, who had the folly to

trust to their own medicines, which they must needs be conscious

to themselves were good for nothing, and who rather ought, like

other sorts of thieves, to have run away, sensible of their

guilt, from the justice that they could not but expect should

punish them as they knew they had deserved.

Not that it is any derogation from the labour or application of

the physicians to say they fell in the common calamity; nor is it

so intended by me; it rather is to their praise that they

ventured their lives so far as even to lose them in the service

of mankind. They endeavoured to do good, and to save the lives of

others. But we were not to expect that the physicians could stop

God’s judgements, or prevent a distemper eminently armed from

heaven from executing the errand it was sent about.

Doubtless, the physicians assisted many by their skill, and by

their prudence and applications, to the saving of their lives and

restoring their health. But it is not lessening their character

or their skill, to say they could not cure those that had the

tokens upon them, or those who were mortally infected before the

physicians were sent for, as was frequently the case.

It remains to mention now what public measures were taken by the

magistrates for the general safety, and to prevent the spreading

of the distemper, when it first broke out. I shall have frequent

occasion to speak of the prudence of the magistrates, their

charity, their vigilance for the poor, and for preserving good

order, furnishing provisions, and the like, when the plague was

increased, as it afterwards was. But I am now upon the order and

regulations they published for the government of infected

families.

I mentioned above shutting of houses up; and it is needful to say

something particularly to that, for this part of the history of

the plague is very melancholy, but the most grievous story must

be told.

About June the Lord Mayor of London and the Court of Aldermen, as

I have said, began more particularly to concern themselves for

the regulation of the city.

The justices of Peace for Middlesex, by direction of the

Secretary of State, had begun to shut up houses in the parishes

of St Giles-in-the-Fields, St Martin, St Clement Danes, &c., and

it was with good success; for in several streets where the plague

broke out, upon strict guarding the houses that were infected,

and taking care to bury those that died immediately after they

were known to be dead, the plague ceased in those streets. It was

also observed that the plague decreased sooner in those parishes

after they had been visited to the full than it did in the

parishes of Bishopsgate, Shoreditch, Aldgate, Whitechappel,

Stepney, and others; the early care taken in that manner being a

great means to the putting a check to it.

This shutting up of houses was a method first taken, as I

understand, in the plague which happened in 1603, at the coming

of King James the First to the crown; and the power of shutting

people up in their own houses was granted by Act of Parliament,

entitled, ‘An Act for the charitable Relief and Ordering of

Persons infected with the Plague’; on which Act of Parliament the

Lord Mayor and aldermen of the city of London founded the order

they made at this time, and which took place the 1st of July

1665, when the numbers infected within the city were but few, the

last bill for the ninety-two parishes being but four; and some

houses having been shut up in the city, and some people being

removed to the pest-house beyond Bunhill Fields, in the way to

Islington,—I say, by these means, when there died near one

thousand a week in the whole, the number in the city was but

twenty-eight, and the city was preserved more healthy in

proportion than any other place all the time of the infection.

These orders of my Lord Mayor’s were published, as I have said,

the latter end of June, and took place from the 1st of July, and

were as follows, viz.:—

ORDERS CONCEIVED AND PUBLISHED BY THE LORD MAYOR AND ALDERMEN OF

THE CITY OF LONDON CONCERNING THE INFECTION OF THE PLAGUE, 1665.

‘WHEREAS in the reign of our late Sovereign King James, of happy

memory, an Act was made for the charitable relief and ordering of

persons infected with the plague, whereby authority was given to

justices of the peace, mayors, bailiffs, and other head-officers

to appoint within their several limits examiners, searchers,

watchmen, keepers, and buriers for the persons and places

infected, and to minister unto them oaths for the performance of

their offices. And the same statute did also authorise the giving

of other directions, as unto them for the present necessity

should seem good in their directions. It is now, upon special

consideration, thought very expedient for preventing and avoiding

of infection of sickness (if it shall so please Almighty God)

that these officers following be appointed, and these orders

hereafter duly observed.

Examiners to be appointed in every Parish.

‘First, it is thought requisite, and so ordered, that in every

parish there be one, two, or more persons of good sort and credit

chosen and appointed by the alderman, his deputy, and common

council of every ward, by the name of examiners, to continue in

that office the space of two months at least. And if any fit

person so appointed shall refuse to undertake the same, the said

parties so refusing to be committed to prison until they shall

conform themselves accordingly.

The Examiner’s Office.

‘That these examiners be sworn by the aldermen to inquire and

learn from time to time what houses in every parish be visited,

and what persons be sick, and of what diseases, as near as they

can inform themselves; and upon doubt in that case, to command

restraint of access until it appear what the disease shall prove.

And if they find any person sick of the infection, to give order

to the constable that the house be shut up; and if the constable

shall be found remiss or negligent, to give present notice

thereof to the alderman of the ward.

Watchmen.

‘That to every infected house there be appointed two watchmen,

one for every day, and the other for the night; and that these

watchmen have a special care that no person go in or out of such

infected houses whereof they have the charge, upon pain of severe

punishment. And the said watchmen to do such further offices as

the sick house shall need and require: and if the watchman be

sent upon any business, to lock up the house and take the key

with him; and the watchman by day to attend until ten of the

clock at night, and the watchman by night until six in the

morning.

Searchers.

‘That there be a special care to appoint women searchers in every

parish, such as are of honest reputation, and of the best sort as

can be got in this kind; and these to be sworn to make due search

and true report to the utmost of their knowledge whether the

persons whose bodies they are appointed to search do die of the

infection, or of what other diseases, as near as they can. And

that the physicians who shall be appointed for cure and

prevention of the infection do call before them the said

searchers who are, or shall be, appointed for the several

parishes under their respective cares, to the end they may

consider whether they are fitly qualified for that employment,

and charge them from time to time as they shall see cause, if

they appear defective in their duties.

‘That no searcher during this time of visitation be permitted to

use any public work or employment, or keep any shop or stall, or

be employed as a laundress, or in any other common employment

whatsoever.

Chirurgeons.

‘For better assistance of the searchers, forasmuch as there hath

been heretofore great abuse in misreporting the disease, to the

further spreading of the infection, it is therefore ordered that

there be chosen and appointed able and discreet chirurgeons,

besides those that do already belong to the pest-house, amongst

whom the city and Liberties to be quartered as the places lie

most apt and convenient; and every of these to have one quarter

for his limit; and the said chirurgeons in every of their limits

to join with the searchers for the view of the body, to the end

there may be a true report made of the disease.

‘And further, that the said chirurgeons shall visit and search

such-like persons as shall either send for them or be named and

directed unto them by the examiners of every parish, and inform

themselves of the disease of the said parties.

‘And forasmuch as the said chirurgeons are to be sequestered from

all other cures, and kept only to this disease of the infection,

it is ordered that every of the said chirurgeons shall have

twelve-pence a body searched by them, to be paid out of the goods

of the party searched, if he be able, or otherwise by the parish.

Nurse-keepers.

‘If any nurse-keeper shall remove herself out of any infected

house before twenty-eight days after the decease of any person

dying of the infection, the house to which the said nurse-keeper

doth so remove herself shall be shut up until the said

twenty-eight days be expired.’