Encouraged by this good usage, their carpenter in a few days

built them a large shed or house with rafters, and a roof in

form, and an upper floor, in which they lodged warm: for the

weather began to be damp and cold in the beginning of September.

But this house, being well thatched, and the sides and roof made

very thick, kept out the cold well enough. He made, also, an

earthen wall at one end with a chimney in it, and another of the

company, with a vast deal of trouble and pains, made a funnel to

the chimney to carry out the smoke.

Here they lived comfortably, though coarsely, till the beginning

of September, when they had the bad news to hear, whether true or

not, that the plague, which was very hot at Waltham Abbey on one

side and at Rumford and Brentwood on the other side, was also

coming to Epping, to Woodford, and to most of the towns upon the

Forest, and which, as they said, was brought down among them

chiefly by the higglers, and such people as went to and from

London with provisions.

If this was true, it was an evident contradiction to that report

which was afterwards spread all over England, but which, as I

have said, I cannot confirm of my own knowledge: namely, that the

market-people carrying provisions to the city never got the

infection or carried it back into the country; both which, I have

been assured, has been false.

It might be that they were preserved even beyond expectation,

though not to a miracle, that abundance went and came and were

not touched; and that was much for the encouragement of the poor

people of London, who had been completely miserable if the people

that brought provisions to the markets had not been many times

wonderfully preserved, or at least more preserved than could be

reasonably expected.

But now these new inmates began to be disturbed more effectually,

for the towns about them were really infected, and they began to

be afraid to trust one another so much as to go abroad for such

things as they wanted, and this pinched them very hard, for now

they had little or nothing but what the charitable gentlemen of

the country supplied them with. But, for their encouragement, it

happened that other gentlemen in the country who had not sent

them anything before, began to hear of them and supply them, and

one sent them a large pig—that is to say, a porker—another two

sheep, and another sent them a calf. In short, they had meat

enough, and sometimes had cheese and milk, and all such things.

They were chiefly put to it for bread, for when the gentlemen

sent them corn they had nowhere to bake it or to grind it. This

made them eat the first two bushel of wheat that was sent them in

parched corn, as the Israelites of old did, without grinding or

making bread of it.

At last they found means to carry their corn to a windmill near

Woodford, where they had it ground, and afterwards the

biscuit-maker made a hearth so hollow and dry that he could bake

biscuit-cakes tolerably well; and thus they came into a condition

to live without any assistance or supplies from the towns; and it

was well they did, for the country was soon after fully infected,

and about 120 were said to have died of the distemper in the

villages near them, which was a terrible thing to them.

On this they called a new council, and now the towns had no need

to be afraid they should settle near them; but, on the contrary,

several families of the poorer sort of the inhabitants quitted

their houses and built huts in the forest after the same manner

as they had done. But it was observed that several of these poor

people that had so removed had the sickness even in their huts or

booths; the reason of which was plain, namely, not because they

removed into the air, but, (1) because they did not remove time

enough; that is to say, not till, by openly conversing with the

other people their neighbours, they had the distemper upon them,

or (as may be said) among them, and so carried it about them

whither they went. Or (2) because they were not careful enough,

after they were safely removed out of the towns, not to come in

again and mingle with the diseased people.

But be it which of these it will, when our travellers began to

perceive that the plague was not only in the towns, but even in

the tents and huts on the forest near them, they began then not

only to be afraid, but to think of decamping and removing; for

had they stayed they would have been in manifest danger of their

lives.

It is not to be wondered that they were greatly afflicted at

being obliged to quit the place where they had been so kindly

received, and where they had been treated with so much humanity

and charity; but necessity and the hazard of life, which they

came out so far to preserve, prevailed with them, and they saw no

remedy. John, however, thought of a remedy for their present

misfortune: namely, that he would first acquaint that gentleman

who was their principal benefactor with the distress they were

in, and to crave his assistance and advice.

The good, charitable gentleman encouraged them to quit the Place

for fear they should be cut off from any retreat at all by the

violence of the distemper; but whither they should go, that he

found very hard to direct them to. At last John asked of him

whether he, being a justice of the peace, would give them

certificates of health to other justices whom they might come

before; that so whatever might be their lot, they might not be

repulsed now they had been also so long from London. This his

worship immediately granted, and gave them proper letters of

health, and from thence they were at liberty to travel whither

they pleased.

Accordingly they had a full certificate of health, intimating

that they had resided in a village in the county of Essex so long

that, being examined and scrutinised sufficiently, and having

been retired from all conversation for above forty days, without

any appearance of sickness, they were therefore certainly

concluded to be sound men, and might be safely entertained

anywhere, having at last removed rather for fear of the plague

which was come into such a town, rather than for having any

signal of infection upon them, or upon any belonging to them.

With this certificate they removed, though with great reluctance;

and John inclining not to go far from home, they moved towards

the marshes on the side of Waltham. But here they found a man

who, it seems, kept a weir or stop upon the river, made to raise

the water for the barges which go up and down the river, and he

terrified them with dismal stories of the sickness having been

spread into all the towns on the river and near the river, on the

side of Middlesex and Hertfordshire; that is to say, into

Waltham, Waltham Cross, Enfield, and Ware, and all the towns on

the road, that they were afraid to go that way; though it seems

the man imposed upon them, for that the thing was not really

true.

However, it terrified them, and they resolved to move across the

forest towards Rumford and Brentwood; but they heard that there

were numbers of people fled out of London that way, who lay up

and down in the forest called Henalt Forest, reaching near

Rumford, and who, having no subsistence or habitation, not only

lived oddly and suffered great extremities in the woods and

fields for want of relief, but were said to be made so desperate

by those extremities as that they offered many violences to the

county, robbed and plundered, and killed cattle, and the like;

that others, building huts and hovels by the roadside, begged,

and that with an importunity next door to demanding relief; so

that the county was very uneasy, and had been obliged to take

some of them up.

This in the first place intimated to them, that they would be

sure to find the charity and kindness of the county, which they

had found here where they were before, hardened and shut up

against them; and that, on the other hand, they would be

questioned wherever they came, and would be in danger of violence

from others in like cases as themselves.

Upon all these considerations John, their captain, in all their

names, went back to their good friend and benefactor, who had

relieved them before, and laying their case truly before him,

humbly asked his advice; and he as kindly advised them to take up

their old quarters again, or if not, to remove but a little

farther out of the road, and directed them to a proper place for

them; and as they really wanted some house rather than huts to

shelter them at that time of the year, it growing on towards

Michaelmas, they found an old decayed house which had been

formerly some cottage or little habitation but was so out of

repair as scarce habitable; and by the consent of a farmer to

whose farm it belonged, they got leave to make what use of it

they could.

The ingenious joiner, and all the rest, by his directions went to

work with it, and in a very few days made it capable to shelter

them all in case of bad weather; and in which there was an old

chimney and old oven, though both lying in ruins; yet they made

them both fit for use, and, raising additions, sheds, and leantos

on every side, they soon made the house capable to hold them all.

They chiefly wanted boards to make window-shutters, floors,

doors, and several other things; but as the gentlemen above

favoured them, and the country was by that means made easy with

them, and above all, that they were known to be all sound and in

good health, everybody helped them with what they could spare.

Here they encamped for good and all, and resolved to remove no

more. They saw plainly how terribly alarmed that county was

everywhere at anybody that came from London, and that they should

have no admittance anywhere but with the utmost difficulty; at

least no friendly reception and assistance as they had received

here.

Now, although they received great assistance and encouragement

from the country gentlemen and from the people round about them,

yet they were put to great straits: for the weather grew cold and

wet in October and November, and they had not been used to so

much hardship; so that they got colds in their limbs, and

distempers, but never had the infection; and thus about December

they came home to the city again.

I give this story thus at large, principally to give an account

what became of the great numbers of people which immediately

appeared in the city as soon as the sickness abated; for, as I

have said, great numbers of those that were able and had retreats

in the country fled to those retreats. So, when it was increased

to such a frightful extremity as I have related, the middling

people who had not friends fled to all parts of the country where

they could get shelter, as well those that had money to relieve

themselves as those that had not. Those that had money always

fled farthest, because they were able to subsist themselves; but

those who were empty suffered, as I have said, great hardships,

and were often driven by necessity to relieve their wants at the

expense of the country. By that means the country was made very

uneasy at them, and sometimes took them up; though even then they

scarce knew what to do with them, and were always very backward

to punish them, but often, too, they forced them from place to

place till they were obliged to come back again to London.

I have, since my knowing this story of John and his brother,

inquired and found that there were a great many of the poor

disconsolate people, as above, fled into the country every way;

and some of them got little sheds and barns and outhouses to live

in, where they could obtain so much kindness of the country, and

especially where they had any the least satisfactory account to

give of themselves, and particularly that they did not come out

of London too late. But others, and that in great numbers, built

themselves little huts and retreats in the fields and woods, and

lived like hermits in holes and caves, or any place they could

find, and where, we may be sure, they suffered great extremities,

such that many of them were obliged to come back again whatever

the danger was; and so those little huts were often found empty,

and the country people supposed the inhabitants lay dead in them

of the plague, and would not go near them for fear—no, not in a

great while; nor is it unlikely but that some of the unhappy

wanderers might die so all alone, even sometimes for want of

help, as particularly in one tent or hut was found a man dead,

and on the gate of a field just by was cut with his knife in

uneven letters the following words, by which it may be supposed

the other man escaped, or that, one dying first, the other buried

him as well as he could:—

O mIsErY!

We BoTH ShaLL DyE,

WoE, WoE.

I have given an account already of what I found to have been the

case down the river among the seafaring men; how the ships lay in

the offing, as it’s called, in rows or lines astern of one

another, quite down from the Pool as far as I could see. I have

been told that they lay in the same manner quite down the river

as low as Gravesend, and some far beyond: even everywhere or in

every place where they could ride with safety as to wind and

weather; nor did I ever hear that the plague reached to any of

the people on board those ships—except such as lay up in the

Pool, or as high as Deptford Reach, although the people went

frequently on shore to the country towns and villages and

farmers’ houses, to buy fresh provisions, fowls, pigs, calves,

and the like for their supply.

Likewise I found that the watermen on the river above the bridge

found means to convey themselves away up the river as far as they

could go, and that they had, many of them, their whole families

in their boats, covered with tilts and bales, as they call them,

and furnished with straw within for their lodging, and that they

lay thus all along by the shore in the marshes, some of them

setting up little tents with their sails, and so lying under them

on shore in the day, and going into their boats at night; and in

this manner, as I have heard, the river-sides were lined with

boats and people as long as they had anything to subsist on, or

could get anything of the country; and indeed the country people,

as well Gentlemen as others, on these and all other occasions,

were very forward to relieve them—but they were by no means

willing to receive them into their towns and houses, and for that

we cannot blame them.

There was one unhappy citizen within my knowledge who had been

visited in a dreadful manner, so that his wife and all his

children were dead, and himself and two servants only left, with

an elderly woman, a near relation, who had nursed those that were

dead as well as she could. This disconsolate man goes to a

village near the town, though not within the bills of mortality,

and finding an empty house there, inquires out the owner, and

took the house. After a few days he got a cart and loaded it with

goods, and carries them down to the house; the people of the

village opposed his driving the cart along; but with some

arguings and some force, the men that drove the cart along got

through the street up to the door of the house. There the

constable resisted them again, and would not let them be brought

in. The man caused the goods to be unloaden and laid at the door,

and sent the cart away; upon which they carried the man before a

justice of peace; that is to say, they commanded him to go, which

he did. The justice ordered him to cause the cart to fetch away

the goods again, which he refused to do; upon which the justice

ordered the constable to pursue the carters and fetch them back,

and make them reload the goods and carry them away, or to set

them in the stocks till they came for further orders; and if they

could not find them, nor the man would not consent to take them

away, they should cause them to be drawn with hooks from the

house-door and burned in the street. The poor distressed man upon

this fetched the goods again, but with grievous cries and

lamentations at the hardship of his case. But there was no

remedy; self-preservation obliged the people to those severities

which they would not otherwise have been concerned in. Whether

this poor man lived or died I cannot tell, but it was reported

that he had the plague upon him at that time; and perhaps the

people might report that to justify their usage of him; but it

was not unlikely that either he or his goods, or both, were

dangerous, when his whole family had been dead of the distempers

so little a while before.

I know that the inhabitants of the towns adjacent to London were

much blamed for cruelty to the poor people that ran from the

contagion in their distress, and many very severe things were

done, as may be seen from what has been said; but I cannot but

say also that, where there was room for charity and assistance to

the people, without apparent danger to themselves, they were

willing enough to help and relieve them. But as every town were

indeed judges in their own case, so the poor people who ran

abroad in their extremities were often ill-used and driven back

again into the town; and this caused infinite exclamations and

outcries against the country towns, and made the clamour very

popular.

And yet, more or less, (with) all the caution, there was not a

town of any note within ten (or, I believe, twenty) miles of the

city but what was more or less infected and had some died among

them. I have heard the accounts of several, such as they were

reckoned up, as follows:—

In Enfield 32 In Uxbridge 117

” Hornsey 58 ” Hertford 90

” Newington 17 ” Ware 160

” Tottenham 42 ” Hodsdon 30

” Edmonton 19 ” Waltham Abbey 23

” Barnet and Hadly 19 ” Epping 26

” St Albans 121 ” Deptford 623

” Watford 45 ” Greenwich 231

” Eltham and Lusum 85 ” Kingston 122

” Croydon 61 ” Stanes 82

” Brentwood 70 ” Chertsey 18

” Rumford 109 ” Windsor 103

” Barking Abbot 200

” Brentford 432 Cum aliis.

Another thing might render the country more strict with respect

to the citizens, and especially with respect to the poor, and

this was what I hinted at before: namely, that there was a

seeming propensity or a wicked inclination in those that were

infected to infect others.

There have been great debates among our physicians as to the

reason of this. Some will have it to be in the nature of the

disease, and that it impresses every one that is seized upon by

it with a kind of a rage, and a hatred against their own kind—as

if there was a malignity not only in the distemper to communicate

itself, but in the very nature of man, prompting him with evil

will or an evil eye, that, as they say in the case of a mad dog,

who though the gentlest creature before of any of his kind, yet

then will fly upon and bite any one that comes next him, and

those as soon as any who had been most observed by him before.

Others placed it to the account of the corruption of human

nature, who cannot bear to see itself more miserable than others

of its own species, and has a kind of involuntary wish that all

men were as unhappy or in as bad a condition as itself.

Others say it was only a kind of desperation, not knowing or

regarding what they did, and consequently unconcerned at the

danger or safety not only of anybody near them, but even of

themselves also. And indeed, when men are once come to a

condition to abandon themselves, and be unconcerned for the

safety or at the danger of themselves, it cannot be so much

wondered that they should be careless of the safety of other

people.

But I choose to give this grave debate a quite different turn,

and answer it or resolve it all by saying that I do not grant the

fact. On the contrary, I say that the thing is not really so, but

that it was a general complaint raised by the people inhabiting

the outlying villages against the citizens to justify, or at

least excuse, those hardships and severities so much talked of,

and in which complaints both sides may be said to have injured

one another; that is to say, the citizens pressing to be received

and harboured in time of distress, and with the plague upon them,

complain of the cruelty and injustice of the country people in

being refused entrance and forced back again with their goods and

families; and the inhabitants, finding themselves so imposed

upon, and the citizens breaking in as it were upon them whether

they would or no, complain that when they were infected they were

not only regardless of others, but even willing to infect them;

neither of which were really true—that is to say, in the colours

they were described in.

It is true there is something to be said for the frequent alarms

which were given to the country of the resolution of the people

of London to come out by force, not only for relief, but to

plunder and rob; that they ran about the streets with the

distemper upon them without any control; and that no care was

taken to shut up houses, and confine the sick people from

infecting others; whereas, to do the Londoners justice, they

never practised such things, except in such particular cases as I

have mentioned above, and such like. On the other hand,

everything was managed with so much care, and such excellent

order was observed in the whole city and suburbs by the care of

the Lord Mayor and aldermen and by the justices of the peace,

church-wardens, &c., in the outparts, that London may be a

pattern to all the cities in the world for the good government

and the excellent order that was everywhere kept, even in the

time of the most violent infection, and when the people were in

the utmost consternation and distress. But of this I shall speak

by itself.

One thing, it is to be observed, was owing principally to the

prudence of the magistrates, and ought to be mentioned to their

honour: viz., the moderation which they used in the great and

difficult work of shutting up of houses. It is true, as I have

mentioned, that the shutting up of houses was a great subject of

discontent, and I may say indeed the only subject of discontent

among the people at that time; for the confining the sound in the

same house with the sick was counted very terrible, and the

complaints of people so confined were very grievous. They were

heard into the very streets, and they were sometimes such that

called for resentment, though oftener for compassion. They had no

way to converse with any of their friends but out at their

windows, where they would make such piteous lamentations as often

moved the hearts of those they talked with, and of others who,

passing by, heard their story; and as those complaints oftentimes

reproached the severity, and sometimes the insolence, of the

watchmen placed at their doors, those watchmen would answer

saucily enough, and perhaps be apt to affront the people who were

in the street talking to the said families; for which, or for

their ill-treatment of the families, I think seven or eight of

them in several places were killed; I know not whether I should

say murdered or not, because I cannot enter into the particular

cases. It is true the watchmen were on their duty, and acting in

the post where they were placed by a lawful authority; and

killing any public legal officer in the execution of his office

is always, in the language of the law, called murder. But as they

were not authorised by the magistrates’ instructions, or by the

power they acted under, to be injurious or abusive either to the

people who were under their observation or to any that concerned

themselves for them; so when they did so, they might be said to

act themselves, not their office; to act as private persons, not

as persons employed; and consequently, if they brought mischief

upon themselves by such an undue behaviour, that mischief was

upon their own heads; and indeed they had so much the hearty

curses of the people, whether they deserved it or not, that

whatever befell them nobody pitied them, and everybody was apt to

say they deserved it, whatever it was. Nor do I remember that

anybody was ever punished, at least to any considerable degree,

for whatever was done to the watchmen that guarded their houses.

What variety of stratagems were used to escape and get out of

houses thus shut up, by which the watchmen were deceived or

overpowered, and that the people got away, I have taken notice of

already, and shall say no more to that. But I say the magistrates

did moderate and ease families upon many occasions in this case,

and particularly in that of taking away, or suffering to be

removed, the sick persons out of such houses when they were

willing to be removed either to a pest-house or other Places; and

sometimes giving the well persons in the family so shut up, leave

to remove upon information given that they were well, and that

they would confine themselves in such houses where they went so

long as should be required of them. The concern, also, of the

magistrates for the supplying such poor families as were

infected—I say, supplying them with necessaries, as well physic

as food—was very great, and in which they did not content

themselves with giving the necessary orders to the officers

appointed, but the aldermen in person, and on horseback,

frequently rode to such houses and caused the people to be asked

at their windows whether they were duly attended or not; also,

whether they wanted anything that was necessary, and if the

officers had constantly carried their messages and fetched them

such things as they wanted or not. And if they answered in the

affirmative, all was well; but if they complained that they were

ill supplied, and that the officer did not do his duty, or did

not treat them civilly, they (the officers) were generally

removed, and others placed in their stead.

It is true such complaint might be unjust, and if the officer had

such arguments to use as would convince the magistrate that he

was right, and that the people had injured him, he was continued

and they reproved. But this part could not well bear a particular

inquiry, for the parties could very ill be well heard and

answered in the street from the windows, as was the case then.

The magistrates, therefore, generally chose to favour the people

and remove the man, as what seemed to be the least wrong and of

the least ill consequence; seeing if the watchman was injured,

yet they could easily make him amends by giving him another post

of the like nature; but if the family was injured, there was no

satisfaction could be made to them, the damage perhaps being

irreparable, as it concerned their lives.

A great variety of these cases frequently happened between the

watchmen and the poor people shut up, besides those I formerly

mentioned about escaping. Sometimes the watchmen were absent,

sometimes drunk, sometimes asleep when the people wanted them,

and such never failed to be punished severely, as indeed they

deserved.

But after all that was or could be done in these cases, the

shutting up of houses, so as to confine those that were well with

those that were sick, had very great inconveniences in it, and

some that were very tragical, and which merited to have been

considered if there had been room for it. But it was authorised

by a law, it had the public good in view as the end chiefly aimed

at, and all the private injuries that were done by the putting it

in execution must be put to the account of the public benefit.

It is doubtful to this day whether, in the whole, it contributed

anything to the stop of the infection; and indeed I cannot say it

did, for nothing could run with greater fury and rage than the

infection did when it was in its chief violence, though the

houses infected were shut up as exactly and as effectually as it

was possible. Certain it is that if all the infected persons were

effectually shut in, no sound person could have been infected by

them, because they could not have come near them. But the case

was this (and I shall only touch it here): namely, that the

infection was propagated insensibly, and by such persons as were

not visibly infected, who neither knew whom they infected or who

they were infected by.

A house in Whitechappel was shut up for the sake of one infected

maid, who had only spots, not the tokens come out upon her, and

recovered; yet these people obtained no liberty to stir, neither

for air or exercise, forty days. Want of breath, fear, anger,

vexation, and all the other gifts attending such an injurious

treatment cast the mistress of the family into a fever, and

visitors came into the house and said it was the plague, though

the physicians declared it was not. However, the family were

obliged to begin their quarantine anew on the report of the

visitors or examiner, though their former quarantine wanted but a

few days of being finished. This oppressed them so with anger and

grief, and, as before, straitened them also so much as to room,

and for want of breathing and free air, that most of the family

fell sick, one of one distemper, one of another, chiefly

scorbutic ailments; only one, a violent colic; till, after

several prolongings of their confinement, some or other of those

that came in with the visitors to inspect the persons that were

ill, in hopes of releasing them, brought the distemper with them

and infected the whole house; and all or most of them died, not

of the plague as really upon them before, but of the plague that

those people brought them, who should have been careful to have

protected them from it. And this was a thing which frequently

happened, and was indeed one of the worst consequences of

shutting houses up.

I had about this time a little hardship put upon me, which I was

at first greatly afflicted at, and very much disturbed about

though, as it proved, it did not expose me to any disaster; and

this was being appointed by the alderman of Portsoken Ward one of

the examiners of the houses in the precinct where I lived. We had

a large parish, and had no less than eighteen examiners, as the

order called us; the people called us visitors. I endeavoured

with all my might to be excused from such an employment, and used

many arguments with the alderman’s deputy to be excused;

particularly I alleged that I was against shutting up houses at

all, and that it would be very hard to oblige me to be an

instrument in that which was against my judgement, and which I

did verily believe would not answer the end it was intended for;

but all the abatement I could get was only, that whereas the

officer was appointed by my Lord Mayor to continue two months, I

should be obliged to hold it but three weeks, on condition

nevertheless that I could then get some other sufficient

housekeeper to serve the rest of the time for me—which was, in

short, but a very small favour, it being very difficult to get

any man to accept of such an employment, that was fit to be

entrusted with it.

It is true that shutting up of houses had one effect, which I am

sensible was of moment, namely, it confined the distempered

people, who would otherwise have been both very troublesome and

very dangerous in their running about streets with the distemper

upon them—which, when they were delirious, they would have done

in a most frightful manner, and as indeed they began to do at

first very much, till they were thus restrained; nay, so very

open they were that the poor would go about and beg at people’s

doors, and say they had the plague upon them, and beg rags for

their sores, or both, or anything that delirious nature happened

to think of.

A poor, unhappy gentlewoman, a substantial citizen’s wife, was

(if the story be true) murdered by one of these creatures in

Aldersgate Street, or that way. He was going along the street,

raving mad to be sure, and singing; the people only said he was

drunk, but he himself said he had the plague upon him, which it

seems was true; and meeting this gentlewoman, he would kiss her.

She was terribly frighted, as he was only a rude fellow, and she

ran from him, but the street being very thin of people, there was

nobody near enough to help her. When she saw he would overtake

her, she turned and gave him a thrust so forcibly, he being but

weak, and pushed him down backward. But very unhappily, she being

so near, he caught hold of her and pulled her down also, and

getting up first, mastered her and kissed her; and which was

worst of all, when he had done, told her he had the plague, and

why should not she have it as well as he? She was frighted enough

before, being also young with child; but when she heard him say

he had the plague, she screamed out and fell down into a swoon,

or in a fit, which, though she recovered a little, yet killed her

in a very few days; and I never heard whether she had the plague

or no.

Another infected person came and knocked at the door of a

citizen’s house where they knew him very well; the servant let

him in, and being told the master of the house was above, he ran

up and came into the room to them as the whole family was at

supper. They began to rise up, a little surprised, not knowing

what the matter was; but he bid them sit still, he only came to

take his leave of them. They asked him, ‘Why, Mr—, where are you

going?’ ‘Going,’ says he; ‘I have got the sickness, and shall die

tomorrow night.’ ’Tis easy to believe, though not to describe,

the consternation they were all in. The women and the man’s

daughters, which were but little girls, were frighted almost to

death and got up, one running out at one door and one at another,

some downstairs and some upstairs, and getting together as well

as they could, locked themselves into their chambers and screamed

out at the window for help, as if they had been frighted out of

their wits. The master, more composed than they, though both

frighted and provoked, was going to lay hands on him and throw

him downstairs, being in a passion; but then, considering a

little the condition of the man and the danger of touching him,

horror seized his mind, and he stood still like one astonished.

The poor distempered man all this while, being as well diseased

in his brain as in his body, stood still like one amazed. At

length he turns round: ‘Ay!’ says he, with all the seeming

calmness imaginable, ‘is it so with you all? Are you all

disturbed at me? Why, then I’ll e’en go home and die there.’ And

so he goes immediately downstairs. The servant that had let him

in goes down after him with a candle, but was afraid to go past

him and open the door, so he stood on the stairs to see what he

would do. The man went and opened the door, and went out and

flung the door after him. It was some while before the family

recovered the fright, but as no ill consequence attended, they

have had occasion since to speak of it (You may be sure) with

great satisfaction. Though the man was gone, it was some

time—nay, as I heard, some days before they recovered themselves

of the hurry they were in; nor did they go up and down the house

with any assurance till they had burnt a great variety of fumes

and perfumes in all the rooms, and made a great many smokes of

pitch, of gunpowder, and of sulphur, all separately shifted, and

washed their clothes, and the like. As to the poor man, whether

he lived or died I don’t remember.

It is most certain that, if by the shutting up of houses the sick

had not been confined, multitudes who in the height of their

fever were delirious and distracted would have been continually

running up and down the streets; and even as it was a very great

number did so, and offered all sorts of violence to those they

met, even just as a mad dog runs on and bites at every one he

meets; nor can I doubt but that, should one of those infected,

diseased creatures have bitten any man or woman while the frenzy

of the distemper was upon them, they, I mean the person so

wounded, would as certainly have been incurably infected as one

that was sick before, and had the tokens upon him.

I heard of one infected creature who, running out of his bed in

his shirt in the anguish and agony of his swellings, of which he

had three upon him, got his shoes on and went to put on his coat;

but the nurse resisting, and snatching the coat from him, he

threw her down, ran over her, ran downstairs and into the street,

directly to the Thames in his shirt; the nurse running after him,

and calling to the watch to stop him; but the watchman, frighted

at the man, and afraid to touch him, let him go on; upon which he

ran down to the Stillyard stairs, threw away his shirt, and

plunged into the Thames, and, being a good swimmer, swam quite

over the river; and the tide being coming in, as they call it

(that is, running westward) he reached the land not till he came

about the Falcon stairs, where landing, and finding no people

there, it being in the night, he ran about the streets there,

naked as he was, for a good while, when, it being by that time

high water, he takes the river again, and swam back to the

Stillyard, landed, ran up the streets again to his own house,

knocking at the door, went up the stairs and into his bed again;

and that this terrible experiment cured him of the plague, that

is to say, that the violent motion of his arms and legs stretched

the parts where the swellings he had upon him were, that is to

say, under his arms and his groin, and caused them to ripen and

break; and that the cold of the water abated the fever in his

blood.

I have only to add that I do not relate this any more than some

of the other, as a fact within my own knowledge, so as that I can

vouch the truth of them, and especially that of the man being

cured by the extravagant adventure, which I confess I do not

think very possible; but it may serve to confirm the many

desperate things which the distressed people falling into

deliriums, and what we call light-headedness, were frequently run

upon at that time, and how infinitely more such there would have

been if such people had not been confined by the shutting up of

houses; and this I take to be the best, if not the only good

thing which was performed by that severe method.

On the other hand, the complaints and the murmurings were very

bitter against the thing itself. It would pierce the hearts of

all that came by to hear the piteous cries of those infected

people, who, being thus out of their understandings by the

violence of their pain or the heat of their blood, were either

shut in or perhaps tied in their beds and chairs, to prevent

their doing themselves hurt—and who would make a dreadful outcry

at their being confined, and at their being not permitted to die

at large, as they called it, and as they would have done before.

This running of distempered people about the streets was very

dismal, and the magistrates did their utmost to prevent it; but

as it was generally in the night and always sudden when such

attempts were made, the officers could not be at hand to prevent

it; and even when any got out in the day, the officers appointed

did not care to meddle with them, because, as they were all

grievously infected, to be sure, when they were come to that

height, so they were more than ordinarily infectious, and it was

one of the most dangerous things that could be to touch them. On

the other hand, they generally ran on, not knowing what they did,

till they dropped down stark dead, or till they had exhausted

their spirits so as that they would fall and then die in perhaps

half-an-hour or an hour; and, which was most piteous to hear,

they were sure to come to themselves entirely in that half-hour

or hour, and then to make most grievous and piercing cries and

lamentations in the deep, afflicting sense of the condition they

were in. This was much of it before the order for shutting up of

houses was strictly put in execution, for at first the watchmen

were not so vigorous and severe as they were afterward in the

keeping the people in; that is to say, before they were (I mean

some of them) severely punished for their neglect, failing in

their duty, and letting people who were under their care slip

away, or conniving at their going abroad, whether sick or well.

But after they saw the officers appointed to examine into their

conduct were resolved to have them do their duty or be punished

for the omission, they were more exact, and the people were

strictly restrained; which was a thing they took so ill and bore

so impatiently that their discontents can hardly be described.

But there was an absolute necessity for it, that must be

confessed, unless some other measures had been timely entered

upon, and it was too late for that.

Had not this particular (of the sick being restrained as above)

been our case at that time, London would have been the most

dreadful place that ever was in the world; there would, for aught

I know, have as many people died in the streets as died in their

houses; for when the distemper was at its height it generally

made them raving and delirious, and when they were so they would

never be persuaded to keep in their beds but by force; and many

who were not tied threw themselves out of windows when they found

they could not get leave to go out of their doors.

It was for want of people conversing one with another, in this

time of calamity, that it was impossible any particular person

could come at the knowledge of all the extraordinary cases that

occurred in different families; and particularly I believe it was

never known to this day how many people in their deliriums

drowned themselves in the Thames, and in the river which runs

from the marshes by Hackney, which we generally called Ware

River, or Hackney River. As to those which were set down in the

weekly bill, they were indeed few; nor could it be known of any

of those whether they drowned themselves by accident or not. But

I believe I might reckon up more who within the compass of my

knowledge or observation really drowned themselves in that year,

than are put down in the bill of all put together: for many of

the bodies were never found who yet were known to be lost; and

the like in other methods of self-destruction. There was also one

man in or about Whitecross Street burned himself to death in his

bed; some said it was done by himself, others that it was by the

treachery of the nurse that attended him; but that he had the

plague upon him was agreed by all.

It was a merciful disposition of Providence also, and which I

have many times thought of at that time, that no fires, or no

considerable ones at least, happened in the city during that

year, which, if it had been otherwise, would have been very

dreadful; and either the people must have let them alone

unquenched, or have come together in great crowds and throngs,

unconcerned at the danger of the infection, not concerned at the

houses they went into, at the goods they handled, or at the

persons or the people they came among. But so it was, that

excepting that in Cripplegate parish, and two or three little

eruptions of fires, which were presently extinguished, there was

no disaster of that kind happened in the whole year. They told us

a story of a house in a place called Swan Alley, passing from

Goswell Street, near the end of Old Street, into St John Street,

that a family was infected there in so terrible a manner that

every one of the house died. The last person lay dead on the

floor, and, as it is supposed, had lain herself all along to die

just before the fire; the fire, it seems, had fallen from its

place, being of wood, and had taken hold of the boards and the

joists they lay on, and burnt as far as just to the body, but had

not taken hold of the dead body (though she had little more than

her shift on) and had gone out of itself, not burning the rest of

the house, though it was a slight timber house. How true this

might be I do not determine, but the city being to suffer

severely the next year by fire, this year it felt very little of

that calamity.

Indeed, considering the deliriums which the agony threw people

into, and how I have mentioned in their madness, when they were

alone, they did many desperate things, it was very strange there

were no more disasters of that kind.

It has been frequently asked me, and I cannot say that I ever

knew how to give a direct answer to it, how it came to pass that

so many infected people appeared abroad in the streets at the

same time that the houses which were infected were so vigilantly

searched, and all of them shut up and guarded as they were.

I confess I know not what answer to give to this, unless it be

this: that in so great and populous a city as this is it was

impossible to discover every house that was infected as soon as

it was so, or to shut up all the houses that were infected; so

that people had the liberty of going about the streets, even

where they pleased, unless they were known to belong to

such-and-such infected houses.

It is true that, as several physicians told my Lord Mayor, the

fury of the contagion was such at some particular times, and

people sickened so fast and died so soon, that it was impossible,

and indeed to no purpose, to go about to inquire who was sick and

who was well, or to shut them up with such exactness as the thing

required, almost every house in a whole street being infected,

and in many places every person in some of the houses; and that

which was still worse, by the time that the houses were known to

be infected, most of the persons infected would be stone dead,

and the rest run away for fear of being shut up; so that it was

to very small purpose to call them infected houses and shut them

up, the infection having ravaged and taken its leave of the house

before it was really known that the family was any way touched.

This might be sufficient to convince any reasonable person that

as it was not in the power of the magistrates or of any human

methods of policy, to prevent the spreading the infection, so

that this way of shutting up of houses was perfectly insufficient

for that end. Indeed it seemed to have no manner of public good

in it, equal or proportionable to the grievous burden that it was

to the particular families that were so shut up; and, as far as I

was employed by the public in directing that severity, I

frequently found occasion to see that it was incapable of

answering the end. For example, as I was desired, as a visitor or

examiner, to inquire into the particulars of several families

which were infected, we scarce came to any house where the plague

had visibly appeared in the family but that some of the family

were fled and gone. The magistrates would resent this, and charge

the examiners with being remiss in their examination or

inspection. But by that means houses were long infected before it

was known. Now, as I was in this dangerous office but half the

appointed time, which was two months, it was long enough to

inform myself that we were no way capable of coming at the

knowledge of the true state of any family but by inquiring at the

door or of the neighbours. As for going into every house to

search, that was a part no authority would offer to impose on the

inhabitants, or any citizen would undertake: for it would have

been exposing us to certain infection and death, and to the ruin

of our own families as well as of ourselves; nor would any

citizen of probity, and that could be depended upon, have stayed

in the town if they had been made liable to such a severity.

Seeing then that we could come at the certainty of things by no

method but that of inquiry of the neighbours or of the family,

and on that we could not justly depend, it was not possible but

that the uncertainty of this matter would remain as above.

It is true masters of families were bound by the order to give

notice to the examiner of the place wherein he lived, within two

hours after he should discover it, of any person being sick in

his house (that is to say, having signs of the infection)—but

they found so many ways to evade this and excuse their negligence

that they seldom gave that notice till they had taken measures to

have every one escape out of the house who had a mind to escape,

whether they were sick or sound; and while this was so, it is

easy to see that the shutting up of houses was no way to be

depended upon as a sufficient method for putting a stop to the

infection because, as I have said elsewhere, many of those that

so went out of those infected houses had the plague really upon

them, though they might really think themselves sound. And some

of these were the people that walked the streets till they fell

down dead, not that they were suddenly struck with the distemper

as with a bullet that killed with the stroke, but that they

really had the infection in their blood long before; only, that

as it preyed secretly on the vitals, it appeared not till it

seized the heart with a mortal power, and the patient died in a

moment, as with a sudden fainting or an apoplectic fit.

I know that some even of our physicians thought for a time that

those people that so died in the streets were seized but that

moment they fell, as if they had been touched by a stroke from

heaven as men are killed by a flash of lightning—but they found

reason to alter their opinion afterward; for upon examining the

bodies of such after they were dead, they always either had

tokens upon them or other evident proofs of the distemper having

been longer upon them than they had otherwise expected.

This often was the reason that, as I have said, we that were

examiners were not able to come at the knowledge of the infection

being entered into a house till it was too late to shut it up,

and sometimes not till the people that were left were all dead.

In Petticoat Lane two houses together were infected, and several

people sick; but the distemper was so well concealed, the

examiner, who was my neighbour, got no knowledge of it till

notice was sent him that the people were all dead, and that the

carts should call there to fetch them away. The two heads of the

families concerted their measures, and so ordered their matters

as that when the examiner was in the neighbourhood they appeared

generally at a time, and answered, that is, lied, for one

another, or got some of the neighbourhood to say they were all in

health—and perhaps knew no better—till, death making it

impossible to keep it any longer as a secret, the dead-carts were

called in the night to both the houses, and so it became public.

But when the examiner ordered the constable to shut up the houses

there was nobody left in them but three people, two in one house

and one in the other, just dying, and a nurse in each house who

acknowledged that they had buried five before, that the houses

had been infected nine or ten days, and that for all the rest of

the two families, which were many, they were gone, some sick,

some well, or whether sick or well could not be known.

In like manner, at another house in the same lane, a man having

his family infected but very unwilling to be shut up, when he

could conceal it no longer, shut up himself; that is to say, he

set the great red cross upon his door with the words, ‘Lord have

mercy upon us’, and so deluded the examiner, who supposed it had

been done by the constable by order of the other examiner, for

there were two examiners to every district or precinct. By this

means he had free egress and regress into his house again and out

of it, as he pleased, notwithstanding it was infected, till at

length his stratagem was found out; and then he, with the sound

part of his servants and family, made off and escaped, so they

were not shut up at all.

These things made it very hard, if not impossible, as I have

said, to prevent the spreading of an infection by the shutting up

of houses—unless the people would think the shutting of their

houses no grievance, and be so willing to have it done as that

they would give notice duly and faithfully to the magistrates of

their being infected as soon as it was known by themselves; but

as that cannot be expected from them, and the examiners cannot be

supposed, as above, to go into their houses to visit and search,

all the good of shutting up houses will be defeated, and few

houses will be shut up in time, except those of the poor, who

cannot conceal it, and of some people who will be discovered by

the terror and consternation which the things put them into.

I got myself discharged of the dangerous office I was in as soon

as I could get another admitted, whom I had obtained for a little

money to accept of it; and so, instead of serving the two months,

which was directed, I was not above three weeks in it; and a

great while too, considering it was in the month of August, at

which time the distemper began to rage with great violence at our

end of the town.

In the execution of this office I could not refrain speaking my

opinion among my neighbours as to this shutting up the people in

their houses; in which we saw most evidently the severities that

were used, though grievous in themselves, had also this

particular objection against them: namely, that they did not

answer the end, as I have said, but that the distempered people

went day by day about the streets; and it was our united opinion

that a method to have removed the sound from the sick, in case of

a particular house being visited, would have been much more

reasonable on many accounts, leaving nobody with the sick persons

but such as should on such occasion request to stay and declare

themselves content to be shut up with them.

Our scheme for removing those that were sound from those that

were sick was only in such houses as were infected, and confining

the sick was no confinement; those that could not stir would not

complain while they were in their senses and while they had the

power of judging. Indeed, when they came to be delirious and

light-headed, then they would cry out of the cruelty of being

confined; but for the removal of those that were well, we thought

it highly reasonable and just, for their own sakes, they should

be removed from the sick, and that for other people’s safety they

should keep retired for a while, to see that they were sound, and

might not infect others; and we thought twenty or thirty days

enough for this.

Now, certainly, if houses had been provided on purpose for those

that were sound to perform this demi-quarantine in, they would

have much less reason to think themselves injured in such a

restraint than in being confined with infected people in the

houses where they lived.

It is here, however, to be observed that after the funerals

became so many that people could not toll the bell, mourn or

weep, or wear black for one another, as they did before; no, nor

so much as make coffins for those that died; so after a while the

fury of the infection appeared to be so increased that, in short,

they shut up no houses at all. It seemed enough that all the

remedies of that kind had been used till they were found

fruitless, and that the plague spread itself with an irresistible

fury; so that as the fire the succeeding year spread itself, and

burned with such violence that the citizens, in despair, gave

over their endeavours to extinguish it, so in the plague it came

at last to such violence that the people sat still looking at one

another, and seemed quite abandoned to despair; whole streets

seemed to be desolated, and not to be shut up only, but to be

emptied of their inhabitants; doors were left open, windows stood

shattering with the wind in empty houses for want of people to

shut them. In a word, people began to give up themselves to their

fears and to think that all regulations and methods were in vain,

and that there was nothing to be hoped for but an universal

desolation; and it was even in the height of this general despair

that it Pleased God to stay His hand, and to slacken the fury of

the contagion in such a manner as was even surprising, like its

beginning, and demonstrated it to be His own particular hand, and

that above, if not without the agency of means, as I shall take

notice of in its proper place.

But I must still speak of the plague as in its height, raging

even to desolation, and the people under the most dreadful

consternation, even, as I have said, to despair. It is hardly

credible to what excess the passions of men carried them in this

extremity of the distemper, and this part, I think, was as moving

as the rest. What could affect a man in his full power of

reflection, and what could make deeper impressions on the soul,

than to see a man almost naked, and got out of his house, or

perhaps out of his bed, into the street, come out of Harrow

Alley, a populous conjunction or collection of alleys, courts,

and passages in the Butcher Row in Whitechappel,—I say, what

could be more affecting than to see this poor man come out into

the open street, run dancing and singing and making a thousand

antic gestures, with five or six women and children running after

him, crying and calling upon him for the Lord’s sake to come

back, and entreating the help of others to bring him back, but

all in vain, nobody daring to lay a hand upon him or to come near

him?

This was a most grievous and afflicting thing to me, who saw it

all from my own windows; for all this while the poor afflicted

man was, as I observed it, even then in the utmost agony of pain,

having (as they said) two swellings upon him which could not be

brought to break or to suppurate; but, by laying strong caustics

on them, the surgeons had, it seems, hopes to break them—which

caustics were then upon him, burning his flesh as with a hot

iron. I cannot say what became of this poor man, but I think he

continued roving about in that manner till he fell down and died.

No wonder the aspect of the city itself was frightful. The usual

concourse of people in the streets, and which used to be supplied

from our end of the town, was abated. The Exchange was not kept

shut, indeed, but it was no more frequented. The fires were lost;

they had been almost extinguished for some days by a very smart

and hasty rain. But that was not all; some of the physicians

insisted that they were not only no benefit, but injurious to the

health of people. This they made a loud clamour about, and

complained to the Lord Mayor about it. On the other hand, others

of the same faculty, and eminent too, opposed them, and gave

their reasons why the fires were, and must be, useful to assuage

the violence of the distemper. I cannot give a full account of

their arguments on both sides; only this I remember, that they

cavilled very much with one another. Some were for fires, but

that they must be made of wood and not coal, and of particular

sorts of wood too, such as fir in particular, or cedar, because

of the strong effluvia of turpentine; others were for coal and

not wood, because of the sulphur and bitumen; and others were for

neither one or other. Upon the whole, the Lord Mayor ordered no

more fires, and especially on this account, namely, that the

plague was so fierce that they saw evidently it defied all means,

and rather seemed to increase than decrease upon any application

to check and abate it; and yet this amazement of the magistrates

proceeded rather from want of being able to apply any means

successfully than from any unwillingness either to expose

themselves or undertake the care and weight of business; for, to

do them justice, they neither spared their pains nor their

persons. But nothing answered; the infection raged, and the

people were now frighted and terrified to the last degree: so

that, as I may say, they gave themselves up, and, as I mentioned

above, abandoned themselves to their despair.

But let me observe here that, when I say the people abandoned

themselves to despair, I do not mean to what men call a religious

despair, or a despair of their eternal state, but I mean a

despair of their being able to escape the infection or to outlive

the plague which they saw was so raging and so irresistible in

its force that indeed few people that were touched with it in its

height, about August and September, escaped; and, which is very

particular, contrary to its ordinary operation in June and July,

and the beginning of August, when, as I have observed, many were

infected, and continued so many days, and then went off after

having had the poison in their blood a long time; but now, on the

contrary, most of the people who were taken during the two last

weeks in August and in the three first weeks in September,

generally died in two or three days at furthest, and many the

very same day they were taken; whether the dog-days, or, as our

astrologers pretended to express themselves, the influence of the

dog-star, had that malignant effect, or all those who had the

seeds of infection before in them brought it up to a maturity at

that time altogether, I know not; but this was the time when it

was reported that above 3000 people died in one night; and they

that would have us believe they more critically observed it

pretend to say that they all died within the space of two hours,

viz., between the hours of one and three in the morning.

As to the suddenness of people’s dying at this time, more than

before, there were innumerable instances of it, and I could name

several in my neighbourhood. One family without the Bars, and not

far from me, were all seemingly well on the Monday, being ten in

family. That evening one maid and one apprentice were taken ill

and died the next morning—when the other apprentice and two

children were touched, whereof one died the same evening, and the

other two on Wednesday. In a word, by Saturday at noon the

master, mistress, four children, and four servants were all gone,

and the house left entirely empty, except an ancient woman who

came in to take charge of the goods for the master of the

family’s brother, who lived not far off, and who had not been

sick.

Many houses were then left desolate, all the people being carried

away dead, and especially in an alley farther on the same side

beyond the Bars, going in at the sign of Moses and Aaron, there

were several houses together which, they said, had not one person

left alive in them; and some that died last in several of those

houses were left a little too long before they were fetched out

to be buried; the reason of which was not, as some have written

very untruly, that the living were not sufficient to bury the

dead, but that the mortality was so great in the yard or alley

that there was nobody left to give notice to the buriers or

sextons that there were any dead bodies there to be buried. It

was said, how true I know not, that some of those bodies were so

much corrupted and so rotten that it was with difficulty they

were carried; and as the carts could not come any nearer than to

the Alley Gate in the High Street, it was so much the more

difficult to bring them along; but I am not certain how many

bodies were then left. I am sure that ordinarily it was not so.

As I have mentioned how the people were brought into a condition

to despair of life and abandon themselves, so this very thing had

a strange effect among us for three or four weeks; that is, it

made them bold and venturous: they were no more shy of one

another, or restrained within doors, but went anywhere and

everywhere, and began to converse. One would say to another, ‘I

do not ask you how you are, or say how I am; it is certain we

shall all go; so ’tis no matter who is all sick or who is sound’;

and so they ran desperately into any place or any company.

As it brought the people into public company, so it was

surprising how it brought them to crowd into the churches. They

inquired no more into whom they sat near to or far from, what

offensive smells they met with, or what condition the people

seemed to be in; but, looking upon themselves all as so many dead

corpses, they came to the churches without the least caution, and

crowded together as if their lives were of no consequence

compared to the work which they came about there. Indeed, the

zeal which they showed in coming, and the earnestness and

affection they showed in their attention to what they heard, made

it manifest what a value people would all put upon the worship of

God if they thought every day they attended at the church that it

would be their last.

Nor was it without other strange effects, for it took away, all

manner of prejudice at or scruple about the person whom they

found in the pulpit when they came to the churches. It cannot be

doubted but that many of the ministers of the parish churches

were cut off, among others, in so common and dreadful a calamity;

and others had not courage enough to stand it, but removed into

the country as they found means for escape. As then some parish

churches were quite vacant and forsaken, the people made no

scruple of desiring such Dissenters as had been a few years

before deprived of their livings by virtue of the Act of

Parliament called the Act of Uniformity to preach in the

churches; nor did the church ministers in that case make any

difficulty of accepting their assistance; so that many of those

whom they called silenced ministers had their mouths opened on

this occasion and preached publicly to the people.

Here we may observe and I hope it will not be amiss to take

notice of it that a near view of death would soon reconcile men

of good principles one to another, and that it is chiefly owing

to our easy situation in life and our putting these things far

from us that our breaches are fomented, ill blood continued,

prejudices, breach of charity and of Christian union, so much

kept and so far carried on among us as it is. Another plague year

would reconcile all these differences; a close conversing with

death, or with diseases that threaten death, would scum off the

gall from our tempers, remove the animosities among us, and bring

us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked on

things with before. As the people who had been used to join with

the Church were reconciled at this time with the admitting the

Dissenters to preach to them, so the Dissenters, who with an

uncommon prejudice had broken off from the communion of the

Church of England, were now content to come to their parish

churches and to conform to the worship which they did not approve

of before; but as the terror of the infection abated, those

things all returned again to their less desirable channel and to

the course they were in before.

I mention this but historically. I have no mind to enter into

arguments to move either or both sides to a more charitable

compliance one with another. I do not see that it is probable

such a discourse would be either suitable or successful; the

breaches seem rather to widen, and tend to a widening further,

than to closing, and who am I that I should think myself able to

influence either one side or other? But this I may repeat again,

that ’tis evident death will reconcile us all; on the other side

the grave we shall be all brethren again. In heaven, whither I

hope we may come from all parties and persuasions, we shall find

neither prejudice or scruple; there we shall be of one principle

and of one opinion. Why we cannot be content to go hand in hand

to the Place where we shall join heart and hand without the least

hesitation, and with the most complete harmony and affection—I

say, why we cannot do so here I can say nothing to, neither shall

I say anything more of it but that it remains to be lamented.

I could dwell a great while upon the calamities of this dreadful

time, and go on to describe the objects that appeared among us

every day, the dreadful extravagancies which the distraction of

sick people drove them into; how the streets began now to be

fuller of frightful objects, and families to be made even a

terror to themselves. But after I have told you, as I have above,

that one man, being tied in his bed, and finding no other way to

deliver himself, set the bed on fire with his candle, which

unhappily stood within his reach, and burnt himself in his bed;

and how another, by the insufferable torment he bore, danced and

sung naked in the streets, not knowing one ecstasy from another;

I say, after I have mentioned these things, what can be added

more? What can be said to represent the misery of these times

more lively to the reader, or to give him a more perfect idea of

a complicated distress?

I must acknowledge that this time was terrible, that I was

sometimes at the end of all my resolutions, and that I had not

the courage that I had at the beginning. As the extremity brought

other people abroad, it drove me home, and except having made my

voyage down to Blackwall and Greenwich, as I have related, which

was an excursion, I kept afterwards very much within doors, as I

had for about a fortnight before. I have said already that I

repented several times that I had ventured to stay in town, and

had not gone away with my brother and his family, but it was too

late for that now; and after I had retreated and stayed within

doors a good while before my impatience led me abroad, then they

called me, as I have said, to an ugly and dangerous office which

brought me out again; but as that was expired while the height of

the distemper lasted, I retired again, and continued close ten or

twelve days more, during which many dismal spectacles represented

themselves in my view out of my own windows and in our own

street—as that particularly from Harrow Alley, of the poor

outrageous creature which danced and sung in his agony; and many

others there were. Scarce a day or night passed over but some

dismal thing or other happened at the end of that Harrow Alley,

which was a place full of poor people, most of them belonging to

the butchers or to employments depending upon the butchery.

Sometimes heaps and throngs of people would burst out of the

alley, most of them women, making a dreadful clamour, mixed or

compounded of screeches, cryings, and calling one another, that

we could not conceive what to make of it. Almost all the dead

part of the night the dead-cart stood at the end of that alley,

for if it went in it could not well turn again, and could go in

but a little way. There, I say, it stood to receive dead bodies,

and as the churchyard was but a little way off, if it went away

full it would soon be back again. It is impossible to describe

the most horrible cries and noise the poor people would make at

their bringing the dead bodies of their children and friends out

of the cart, and by the number one would have thought there had

been none left behind, or that there were people enough for a

small city living in those places. Several times they cried

‘Murder’, sometimes ‘Fire’; but it was easy to perceive it was

all distraction, and the complaints of distressed and distempered

people.

I believe it was everywhere thus as that time, for the plague

raged for six or seven weeks beyond all that I have expressed,

and came even to such a height that, in the extremity, they began

to break into that excellent order of which I have spoken so much

in behalf of the magistrates; namely, that no dead bodies were

seen in the street or burials in the daytime: for there was a

necessity in this extremity to bear with its being otherwise for

a little while.

One thing I cannot omit here, and indeed I thought it was

extraordinary, at least it seemed a remarkable hand of Divine

justice: viz., that all the predictors, astrologers,

fortune-tellers, and what they called cunning-men, conjurers, and

the like: calculators of nativities and dreamers of dream, and

such people, were gone and vanished; not one of them was to be

found. I am verily persuaded that a great number of them fell in

the heat of the calamity, having ventured to stay upon the

prospect of getting great estates; and indeed their gain was but

too great for a time, through the madness and folly of the

people. But now they were silent; many of them went to their long

home, not able to foretell their own fate or to calculate their

own nativities. Some have been critical enough to say that every

one of them died. I dare not affirm that; but this I must own,

that I never heard of one of them that ever appeared after the

calamity was over.

But to return to my particular observations during this dreadful

part of the visitation. I am now come, as I have said, to the

month of September, which was the most dreadful of its kind, I

believe, that ever London saw; for, by all the accounts which I

have seen of the preceding visitations which have been in London,

nothing has been like it, the number in the weekly bill amounting

to almost 40,000 from the 22nd of August to the 26th of

September, being but five weeks. The particulars of the bills are

as follows, viz.:—

From August the 22nd to the 29th 7496

” ” 29th ” 5th September 8252

” September the 5th ” 12th 7690

” ” 12th ” 19th 8297

” ” 19th ” 26th 6460

————

38,195

This was a prodigious number of itself, but if I should add the

reasons which I have to believe that this account was deficient,

and how deficient it was, you would, with me, make no scruple to

believe that there died above ten thousand a week for all those

weeks, one week with another, and a proportion for several weeks

both before and after. The confusion among the people, especially

within the city, at that time, was inexpressible. The terror was

so great at last that the courage of the people appointed to

carry away the dead began to fail them; nay, several of them

died, although they had the distemper before and were recovered,

and some of them dropped down when they have been carrying the

bodies even at the pit side, and just ready to throw them in; and

this confusion was greater in the city because they had flattered

themselves with hopes of escaping, and thought the bitterness of

death was past. One cart, they told us, going up Shoreditch was

forsaken of the drivers, or being left to one man to drive, he

died in the street; and the horses going on overthrew the cart,

and left the bodies, some thrown out here, some there, in a

dismal manner. Another cart was, it seems, found in the great pit

in Finsbury Fields, the driver being dead, or having been gone

and abandoned it, and the horses running too near it, the cart

fell in and drew the horses in also. It was suggested that the

driver was thrown in with it and that the cart fell upon him, by

reason his whip was seen to be in the pit among the bodies; but

that, I suppose, could not be certain.

In our parish of Aldgate the dead-carts were several times, as I

have heard, found standing at the churchyard gate full of dead

bodies, but neither bellman or driver or any one else with it;

neither in these or many other cases did they know what bodies

they had in their cart, for sometimes they were let down with

ropes out of balconies and out of windows, and sometimes the

bearers brought them to the cart, sometimes other people; nor, as

the men themselves said, did they trouble themselves to keep any

account of the numbers.

The vigilance of the magistrates was now put to the utmost

trial—and, it must be confessed, can never be enough acknowledged

on this occasion also; whatever expense or trouble they were at,

two things were never neglected in the city or suburbs either:—

(1) Provisions were always to be had in full plenty, and the

price not much raised neither, hardly worth speaking.

(2) No dead bodies lay unburied or uncovered; and if one walked

from one end of the city to another, no funeral or sign of it was

to be seen in the daytime, except a little, as I have said above,

in the three first weeks in September.

This last article perhaps will hardly be believed when some

accounts which others have published since that shall be seen,

wherein they say that the dead lay unburied, which I am assured

was utterly false; at least, if it had been anywhere so, it must

have been in houses where the living were gone from the dead

(having found means, as I have observed, to escape) and where no

notice was given to the officers. All which amounts to nothing at

all in the case in hand; for this I am positive in, having myself

been employed a little in the direction of that part in the

parish in which I lived, and where as great a desolation was made

in proportion to the number of inhabitants as was anywhere; I

say, I am sure that there were no dead bodies remained unburied;

that is to say, none that the proper officers knew of; none for

want of people to carry them off, and buriers to put them into

the ground and cover them; and this is sufficient to the

argument; for what might lie in houses and holes, as in Moses and

Aaron Alley, is nothing; for it is most certain they were buried

as soon as they were found. As to the first article (namely, of

provisions, the scarcity or dearness), though I have mentioned it

before and shall speak of it again, yet I must observe here:—

(1) The price of bread in particular was not much raised; for in

the beginning of the year, viz., in the first week in March, the

penny wheaten loaf was ten ounces and a half; and in the height

of the contagion it was to be had at nine ounces and a half, and

never dearer, no, not all that season. And about the beginning of

November it was sold ten ounces and a half again; the like of

which, I believe, was never heard of in any city, under so

dreadful a visitation, before.

(2) Neither was there (which I wondered much at) any want of

bakers or ovens kept open to supply the people with the bread;

but this was indeed alleged by some families, viz., that their

maidservants, going to the bakehouses with their dough to be

baked, which was then the custom, sometimes came home with the

sickness (that is to say the plague) upon them.

In all this dreadful visitation there were, as I have said

before, but two pest-houses made use of, viz., one in the fields

beyond Old Street and one in Westminster; neither was there any

compulsion used in carrying people thither. Indeed there was no

need of compulsion in the case, for there were thousands of poor

distressed people who, having no help or conveniences or supplies

but of charity, would have been very glad to have been carried

thither and been taken care of; which, indeed, was the only thing

that I think was wanting in the whole public management of the

city, seeing nobody was here allowed to be brought to the

pest-house but where money was given, or security for money,

either at their introducing or upon their being cured and sent

out—for very many were sent out again whole; and very good

physicians were appointed to those places, so that many people

did very well there, of which I shall make mention again. The

principal sort of people sent thither were, as I have said,

servants who got the distemper by going on errands to fetch

necessaries to the families where they lived, and who in that

case, if they came home sick, were removed to preserve the rest

of the house; and they were so well looked after there in all the

time of the visitation that there was but 156 buried in all at

the London pest-house, and 159 at that of Westminster.

By having more pest-houses I am far from meaning a forcing all

people into such places. Had the shutting up of houses been

omitted and the sick hurried out of their dwellings to

pest-houses, as some proposed, it seems, at that time as well as

since, it would certainly have been much worse than it was. The

very removing the sick would have been a spreading of the

infection, and rather because that removing could not effectually

clear the house where the sick person was of the distemper; and

the rest of the family, being then left at liberty, would

certainly spread it among others.

The methods also in private families, which would have been

universally used to have concealed the distemper and to have

concealed the persons being sick, would have been such that the

distemper would sometimes have seized a whole family before any

visitors or examiners could have known of it. On the other hand,

the prodigious numbers which would have been sick at a time would

have exceeded all the capacity of public pest-houses to receive

them, or of public officers to discover and remove them.

This was well considered in those days, and I have heard them

talk of it often. The magistrates had enough to do to bring

people to submit to having their houses shut up, and many ways

they deceived the watchmen and got out, as I have observed. But

that difficulty made it apparent that they would have found it

impracticable to have gone the other way to work, for they could

never have forced the sick people out of their beds and out of

their dwellings. It must not have been my Lord Mayor’s officers,

but an army of officers, that must have attempted it; and the

people, on the other hand, would have been enraged and desperate,

and would have killed those that should have offered to have

meddled with them or with their children and relations, whatever

had befallen them for it; so that they would have made the

people, who, as it was, were in the most terrible distraction

imaginable, I say, they would have made them stark mad; whereas

the magistrates found it proper on several accounts to treat them

with lenity and compassion, and not with violence and terror,

such as dragging the sick out of their houses or obliging them to

remove themselves, would have been.

This leads me again to mention the time when the plague first

began; that is to say, when it became certain that it would

spread over the whole town, when, as I have said, the better sort

of people first took the alarm and began to hurry themselves out

of town. It was true, as I observed in its place, that the throng

was so great, and the coaches, horses, waggons, and carts were so

many, driving and dragging the people away, that it looked as if

all the city was running away; and had any regulations been

published that had been terrifying at that time, especially such

as would pretend to dispose of the people otherwise than they

would dispose of themselves, it would have put both the city and

suburbs into the utmost confusion.

But the magistrates wisely caused the people to be encouraged,

made very good bye-laws for the regulating the citizens, keeping

good order in the streets, and making everything as eligible as

possible to all sorts of people.

In the first place, the Lord Mayor and the sheriffs, the Court of

Aldermen, and a certain number of the Common Council men, or

their deputies, came to a resolution and published it, viz., that

they would not quit the city themselves, but that they would be

always at hand for the preserving good order in every place and

for the doing justice on all occasions; as also for the

distributing the public charity to the poor; and, in a word, for

the doing the duty and discharging the trust reposed in them by

the citizens to the utmost of their power.

In pursuance of these orders, the Lord Mayor, sheriffs, &c., held

councils every day, more or less, for making such dispositions as

they found needful for preserving the civil peace; and though

they used the people with all possible gentleness and clemency,

yet all manner of presumptuous rogues such as thieves,

housebreakers, plunderers of the dead or of the sick, were duly

punished, and several declarations were continually published by

the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen against such.

Also all constables and churchwardens were enjoined to stay in

the city upon severe penalties, or to depute such able and

sufficient housekeepers as the deputy aldermen or Common Council

men of the precinct should approve, and for whom they should give

security; and also security in case of mortality that they would

forthwith constitute other constables in their stead.

These things re-established the minds of the people very much,

especially in the first of their fright, when they talked of

making so universal a flight that the city would have been in

danger of being entirely deserted of its inhabitants except the

poor, and the country of being plundered and laid waste by the

multitude. Nor were the magistrates deficient in performing their

part as boldly as they promised it; for my Lord Mayor and the

sheriffs were continually in the streets and at places of the

greatest danger, and though they did not care for having too

great a resort of people crowding about them, yet in emergent

cases they never denied the people access to them, and heard with

patience all their grievances and complaints. My Lord Mayor had a

low gallery built on purpose in his hall, where he stood a little

removed from the crowd when any complaint came to be heard, that

he might appear with as much safety as possible.

Likewise the proper officers, called my Lord Mayor’s officers,

constantly attended in their turns, as they were in waiting; and

if any of them were sick or infected, as some of them were,

others were instantly employed to fill up and officiate in their

places till it was known whether the other should live or die.

In like manner the sheriffs and aldermen did in their several

stations and wards, where they were placed by office, and the

sheriff’s officers or sergeants were appointed to receive orders

from the respective aldermen in their turn, so that justice was

executed in all cases without interruption. In the next place, it

was one of their particular cares to see the orders for the

freedom of the markets observed, and in this part either the Lord

Mayor or one or both of the sheriffs were every market-day on

horseback to see their orders executed and to see that the

country people had all possible encouragement and freedom in

their coming to the markets and going back again, and that no

nuisances or frightful objects should be seen in the streets to

terrify them or make them unwilling to come. Also the bakers were

taken under particular order, and the Master of the Bakers’

Company was, with his court of assistants, directed to see the

order of my Lord Mayor for their regulation put in execution, and

the due assize of bread (which was weekly appointed by my Lord

Mayor) observed; and all the bakers were obliged to keep their

oven going constantly, on pain of losing the privileges of a

freeman of the city of London.

By this means bread was always to be had in plenty, and as cheap

as usual, as I said above; and provisions were never wanting in

the markets, even to such a degree that I often wondered at it,

and reproached myself with being so timorous and cautious in

stirring abroad, when the country people came freely and boldly

to market, as if there had been no manner of infection in the

city, or danger of catching it.

It was indeed one admirable piece of conduct in the said

magistrates that the streets were kept constantly clear and free

from all manner of frightful objects, dead bodies, or any such

things as were indecent or unpleasant—unless where anybody fell

down suddenly or died in the streets, as I have said above; and

these were generally covered with some cloth or blanket, or

removed into the next churchyard till night. All the needful

works that carried terror with them, that were both dismal and

dangerous, were done in the night; if any diseased bodies were

removed, or dead bodies buried, or infected clothes burnt, it was

done in the night; and all the bodies which were thrown into the

great pits in the several churchyards or burying-grounds, as has

been observed, were so removed in the night, and everything was

covered and closed before day. So that in the daytime there was

not the least signal of the calamity to be seen or heard of,

except what was to be observed from the emptiness of the streets,

and sometimes from the passionate outcries and lamentations of

the people, out at their windows, and from the numbers of houses

and shops shut up.

Nor was the silence and emptiness of the streets so much in the

city as in the out-parts, except just at one particular time

when, as I have mentioned, the plague came east and spread over

all the city. It was indeed a merciful disposition of God, that

as the plague began at one end of the town first (as has been

observed at large) so it proceeded progressively to other parts,

and did not come on this way, or eastward, till it had spent its

fury in the West part of the town; and so, as it came on one way,

it abated another. For example, it began at St Giles’s and the

Westminster end of the town, and it was in its height in all that

part by about the middle of July, viz., in St

Giles-in-the-Fields, St Andrew’s, Holborn, St Clement Danes, St

Martin-in-the-Fields, and in Westminster. The latter end of July

it decreased in those parishes; and coming east, it increased

prodigiously in Cripplegate, St Sepulcher’s, St James’s,

Clarkenwell, and St Bride’s and Aldersgate. While it was in all

these parishes, the city and all the parishes of the Southwark

side of the water and all Stepney, Whitechappel, Aldgate,

Wapping, and Ratcliff, were very little touched; so that people

went about their business unconcerned, carried on their trades,

kept open their shops, and conversed freely with one another in

all the city, the east and north-east suburbs, and in Southwark,

almost as if the plague had not been among us.

Even when the north and north-west suburbs were fully infected,

viz., Cripplegate, Clarkenwell, Bishopsgate, and Shoreditch, yet

still all the rest were tolerably well. For example from 25th

July to 1st August the bill stood thus of all diseases:—

St Giles, Cripplegate 554

St Sepulchers 250

Clarkenwell 103

Bishopsgate 116

Shoreditch 110

Stepney parish 127

Aldgate 92

Whitechappel 104

All the ninety-seven parishes within the walls 228

All the parishes in Southwark 205

- ——-

- Total 1889

So that, in short, there died more that week in the two parishes

of Cripplegate and St Sepulcher by forty-eight than in all the

city, all the east suburbs, and all the Southwark parishes put

together. This caused the reputation of the city’s health to

continue all over England—and especially in the counties and

markets adjacent, from whence our supply of provisions chiefly

came even much longer than that health itself continued; for when

the people came into the streets from the country by Shoreditch

and Bishopsgate, or by Old Street and Smithfield, they would see

the out-streets empty and the houses and shops shut, and the few

people that were stirring there walk in the middle of the

streets. But when they came within the city, there things looked

better, and the markets and shops were open, and the people

walking about the streets as usual, though not quite so many; and

this continued till the latter end of August and the beginning of

September.

But then the case altered quite; the distemper abated in the west

and north-west parishes, and the weight of the infection lay on

the city and the eastern suburbs, and the Southwark side, and

this in a frightful manner. Then, indeed, the city began to look

dismal, shops to be shut, and the streets desolate. In the High

Street, indeed, necessity made people stir abroad on many

occasions; and there would be in the middle of the day a pretty

many people, but in the mornings and evenings scarce any to be

seen, even there, no, not in Cornhill and Cheapside.

These observations of mine were abundantly confirmed by the

weekly bills of mortality for those weeks, an abstract of which,

as they respect the parishes which I have mentioned and as they

make the calculations I speak of very evident, take as follows.

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

the west and north side of the city, stands thus—

From the 12th of September to the 19th—

- St Giles, Cripplegate 456

- St Giles-in-the-Fields 140

- Clarkenwell 77

- St Sepulcher 214

- St Leonard, Shoreditch 183

- Stepney parish 716

- Aldgate 623

- Whitechappel 532

- In the ninety-seven parishes within the walls 1493

- In the eight parishes on Southwark side 1636

- ————

- Total 6060

Here is a strange change of things indeed, and a sad change it

was; and had it held for two months more than it did, very few

people would have been left alive. But then such, I say, was the

merciful disposition of God that, when it was thus, the west and

north part which had been so dreadfully visited at first, grew,

as you see, much better; and as the people disappeared here, they

began to look abroad again there; and the next week or two

altered it still more; that is, more to the encouragement of the

other part of the town. For example:—

From the 19th of September to the 26th—

- St Giles, Cripplegate 277

- St Giles-in-the-Fields 119

- Clarkenwell 76

- St Sepulchers 193

- St Leonard, Shoreditch 146

- Stepney parish 616

- Aldgate 496

- Whitechappel 346

- In the ninety-seven parishes within the walls 1268

- In the eight parishes on Southwark side 1390

- ————

- Total 4927

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

- St Giles, Cripplegate 196

- St Giles-in-the-Fields 95

- Clarkenwell 48

- St Sepulchers 137

- St Leonard, Shoreditch 128

- Stepney parish 674

- Aldgate 372

- Whitechappel 328

- In the ninety-seven parishes within the walls 1149

- In the eight parishes on Southwark side 1201

- ————

- Total 4382

And now the misery of the city and of the said east and south

parts was complete indeed; for, as you see, the weight of the

distemper lay upon those parts, that is to say, the city, the

eight parishes over the river, with the parishes of Aldgate,

Whitechappel, and Stepney; and this was the time that the bills

came up to such a monstrous height as that I mentioned before,

and that eight or nine, and, as I believe, ten or twelve thousand

a week, died; for it is my settled opinion that they never could

come at any just account of the numbers, for the reasons which I

have given already.

Nay, one of the most eminent physicians, who has since published

in Latin an account of those times, and of his observations says

that in one week there died twelve thousand people, and that

particularly there died four thousand in one night; though I do

not remember that there ever was any such particular night so

remarkably fatal as that such a number died in it. However, all

this confirms what I have said above of the uncertainty of the

bills of mortality, &c., of which I shall say more hereafter.

And here let me take leave to enter again, though it may seem a

repetition of circumstances, into a description of the miserable

condition of the city itself, and of those parts where I lived at

this particular time. The city and those other parts,

notwithstanding the great numbers of people that were gone into

the country, was vastly full of people; and perhaps the fuller

because people had for a long time a strong belief that the

plague would not come into the city, nor into Southwark, no, nor

into Wapping or Ratcliff at all; nay, such was the assurance of

the people on that head that many removed from the suburbs on the

west and north sides, into those eastern and south sides as for

safety; and, as I verily believe, carried the plague amongst them

there perhaps sooner than they would otherwise have had it.

Here also I ought to leave a further remark for the use of

posterity, concerning the manner of people’s infecting one

another; namely, that it was not the sick people only from whom

the plague was immediately received by others that were sound,

but the well. To explain myself: by the sick people I mean those

who were known to be sick, had taken their beds, had been under

cure, or had swellings and tumours upon them, and the like; these

everybody could beware of; they were either in their beds or in

such condition as could not be concealed.

By the well I mean such as had received the contagion, and had it

really upon them, and in their blood, yet did not show the

consequences of it in their countenances: nay, even were not

sensible of it themselves, as many were not for several days.

These breathed death in every place, and upon everybody who came

near them; nay, their very clothes retained the infection, their

hands would infect the things they touched, especially if they

were warm and sweaty, and they were generally apt to sweat too.

Now it was impossible to know these people, nor did they

sometimes, as I have said, know themselves to be infected. These

were the people that so often dropped down and fainted in the

streets; for oftentimes they would go about the streets to the

last, till on a sudden they would sweat, grow faint, sit down at

a door and die. It is true, finding themselves thus, they would

struggle hard to get home to their own doors, or at other times

would be just able to go into their houses and die instantly;

other times they would go about till they had the very tokens

come out upon them, and yet not know it, and would die in an hour

or two after they came home, but be well as long as they were

abroad. These were the dangerous people; these were the people of

whom the well people ought to have been afraid; but then, on the

other side, it was impossible to know them.

And this is the reason why it is impossible in a visitation to

prevent the spreading of the plague by the utmost human

vigilance: viz., that it is impossible to know the infected

people from the sound, or that the infected people should

perfectly know themselves. I knew a man who conversed freely in

London all the season of the plague in 1665, and kept about him

an antidote or cordial on purpose to take when he thought himself

in any danger, and he had such a rule to know or have warning of

the danger by as indeed I never met with before or since. How far

it may be depended on I know not. He had a wound in his leg, and

whenever he came among any people that were not sound, and the

infection began to affect him, he said he could know it by that

signal, viz., that his wound in his leg would smart, and look

pale and white; so as soon as ever he felt it smart it was time

for him to withdraw, or to take care of himself, taking his

drink, which he always carried about him for that purpose. Now it

seems he found his wound would smart many times when he was in

company with such who thought themselves to be sound, and who

appeared so to one another; but he would presently rise up and

say publicly, ‘Friends, here is somebody in the room that has the

plague’, and so would immediately break up the company. This was

indeed a faithful monitor to all people that the plague is not to

be avoided by those that converse promiscuously in a town

infected, and people have it when they know it not, and that they

likewise give it to others when they know not that they have it

themselves; and in this case shutting up the well or removing the

sick will not do it, unless they can go back and shut up all

those that the sick had conversed with, even before they knew

themselves to be sick, and none knows how far to carry that back,

or where to stop; for none knows when or where or how they may

have received the infection, or from whom.

This I take to be the reason which makes so many people talk of

the air being corrupted and infected, and that they need not be

cautious of whom they converse with, for that the contagion was

in the air. I have seen them in strange agitations and surprises

on this account. ‘I have never come near any infected body’, says

the disturbed person; ‘I have conversed with none but sound,

healthy people, and yet I have gotten the distemper!’ ‘I am sure

I am struck from Heaven’, says another, and he falls to the

serious part. Again, the first goes on exclaiming, ‘I have come

near no infection or any infected person; I am sure it is the

air. We draw in death when we breathe, and therefore ’tis the

hand of God; there is no withstanding it.’ And this at last made

many people, being hardened to the danger, grow less concerned at

it; and less cautious towards the latter end of the time, and

when it was come to its height, than they were at first. Then,

with a kind of a Turkish predestinarianism, they would say, if it

pleased God to strike them, it was all one whether they went

abroad or stayed at home; they could not escape it, and therefore

they went boldly about, even into infected houses and infected

company; visited sick people; and, in short, lay in the beds with

their wives or relations when they were infected. And what was

the consequence, but the same that is the consequence in Turkey,

and in those countries where they do those things—namely, that

they were infected too, and died by hundreds and thousands?

I would be far from lessening the awe of the judgements of God

and the reverence to His providence which ought always to be on

our minds on such occasions as these. Doubtless the visitation

itself is a stroke from Heaven upon a city, or country, or nation

where it falls; a messenger of His vengeance, and a loud call to

that nation or country or city to humiliation and repentance,

according to that of the prophet Jeremiah (xviii. 7, 8): ‘At what

instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a

kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if

that nation against whom I have pronounced turn from their evil,

I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.’ Now to

prompt due impressions of the awe of God on the minds of men on

such occasions, and not to lessen them, it is that I have left

those minutes upon record.

I say, therefore, I reflect upon no man for putting the reason of

those things upon the immediate hand of God, and the appointment

and direction of His providence; nay, on the contrary, there were

many wonderful deliverances of persons from infection, and

deliverances of persons when infected, which intimate singular

and remarkable providence in the particular instances to which

they refer; and I esteem my own deliverance to be one next to

miraculous, and do record it with thankfulness.

But when I am speaking of the plague as a distemper arising from

natural causes, we must consider it as it was really propagated

by natural means; nor is it at all the less a judgement for its

being under the conduct of human causes and effects; for, as the

Divine Power has formed the whole scheme of nature and maintains

nature in its course, so the same Power thinks fit to let His own

actings with men, whether of mercy or judgement, to go on in the

ordinary course of natural causes; and He is pleased to act by

those natural causes as the ordinary means, excepting and

reserving to Himself nevertheless a power to act in a

supernatural way when He sees occasion. Now ’tis evident that in

the case of an infection there is no apparent extraordinary

occasion for supernatural operation, but the ordinary course of

things appears sufficiently armed, and made capable of all the

effects that Heaven usually directs by a contagion. Among these

causes and effects, this of the secret conveyance of infection,

imperceptible and unavoidable, is more than sufficient to execute

the fierceness of Divine vengeance, without putting it upon

supernaturals and miracle.

The acute penetrating nature of the disease itself was such, and

the infection was received so imperceptibly, that the most exact

caution could not secure us while in the place. But I must be

allowed to believe—and I have so many examples fresh in my memory

to convince me of it, that I think none can resist their

evidence—I say, I must be allowed to believe that no one in this

whole nation ever received the sickness or infection but who

received it in the ordinary way of infection from somebody, or

the clothes or touch or stench of somebody that was infected

before.

The manner of its coming first to London proves this also, viz.,

by goods brought over from Holland, and brought thither from the

Levant; the first breaking of it out in a house in Long Acre

where those goods were carried and first opened; its spreading

from that house to other houses by the visible unwary conversing

with those who were sick; and the infecting the parish officers

who were employed about the persons dead, and the like. These are

known authorities for this great foundation point—that it went on

and proceeded from person to person and from house to house, and

no otherwise. In the first house that was infected there died

four persons. A neighbour, hearing the mistress of the first

house was sick, went to visit her, and went home and gave the

distemper to her family, and died, and all her household. A

minister, called to pray with the first sick person in the second

house, was said to sicken immediately and die with several more

in his house. Then the physicians began to consider, for they did

not at first dream of a general contagion. But the physicians

being sent to inspect the bodies, they assured the people that it

was neither more or less than the plague, with all its terrifying

particulars, and that it threatened an universal infection, so

many people having already conversed with the sick or

distempered, and having, as might be supposed, received infection

from them, that it would be impossible to put a stop to it.

Here the opinion of the physicians agreed with my observation

afterwards, namely, that the danger was spreading insensibly, for

the sick could infect none but those that came within reach of

the sick person; but that one man who may have really received

the infection and knows it not, but goes abroad and about as a

sound person, may give the plague to a thousand people, and they

to greater numbers in proportion, and neither the person giving

the infection or the persons receiving it know anything of it,

and perhaps not feel the effects of it for several days after.

For example, many persons in the time of this visitation never

perceived that they were infected till they found to their

unspeakable surprise, the tokens come out upon them; after which

they seldom lived six hours; for those spots they called the

tokens were really gangrene spots, or mortified flesh in small

knobs as broad as a little silver penny, and hard as a piece of

callus or horn; so that, when the disease was come up to that

length, there was nothing could follow but certain death; and

yet, as I said, they knew nothing of their being infected, nor

found themselves so much as out of order, till those mortal marks

were upon them. But everybody must allow that they were infected

in a high degree before, and must have been so some time, and

consequently their breath, their sweat, their very clothes, were

contagious for many days before. This occasioned a vast variety

of cases which physicians would have much more opportunity to

remember than I; but some came within the compass of my

observation or hearing, of which I shall name a few.

A certain citizen who had lived safe and untouched till the month

of September, when the weight of the distemper lay more in the

city than it had done before, was mighty cheerful, and something

too bold (as I think it was) in his talk of how secure he was,

how cautious he had been, and how he had never come near any sick

body. Says another citizen, a neighbour of his, to him one day,

‘Do not be too confident, Mr ——; it is hard to say who is sick and

who is well, for we see men alive and well to outward appearance

one hour, and dead the next.’ ‘That is true’, says the first man,

for he was not a man presumptuously secure, but had escaped a

long while—and men, as I said above, especially in the city began

to be over-easy upon that score. ‘That is true,’ says he; ‘I do

not think myself secure, but I hope I have not been in company

with any person that there has been any danger in.’ ‘No?’ says

his neighbour. ‘Was not you at the Bull Head Tavern in

Gracechurch Street with Mr —— the night before last?’ ‘Yes,’ says

the first, ‘I was; but there was nobody there that we had any

reason to think dangerous.’ Upon which his neighbour said no

more, being unwilling to surprise him; but this made him more

inquisitive, and as his neighbour appeared backward, he was the

more impatient, and in a kind of warmth says he aloud, ‘Why, he

is not dead, is he?’ Upon which his neighbour still was silent,

but cast up his eyes and said something to himself; at which the

first citizen turned pale, and said no more but this, ‘Then I am

a dead man too’, and went home immediately and sent for a

neighbouring apothecary to give him something preventive, for he

had not yet found himself ill; but the apothecary, opening his

breast, fetched a sigh, and said no more but this, ‘Look up to

God’; and the man died in a few hours.