Chapter XI: Part 11

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

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

[N.B.—The author of this journal lies buried in that very ground,
being at his own desire, his sister having been buried there a
few years before.]

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

There were no less than five other grounds made use of for the
parish of Stepney at that time: one where now stands the parish
church of St Paul, Shadwell, and the other where now stands the
parish church of St John’s at Wapping, both which had not the
names of parishes at that time, but were belonging to Stepney
parish.

I could name many more, but these coming within my particular
knowledge, the circumstance, I thought, made it of use to record
them. From the whole, it may be observed that they were obliged
in this time of distress to take in new burying-grounds in most
of the out-parishes for laying the prodigious numbers of people
which died in so short a space of time; but why care was not
taken to keep those places separate from ordinary uses, that so
the bodies might rest undisturbed, that I cannot answer for, and
must confess I think it was wrong. Who were to blame I know not.

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

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

Great was the reproach thrown on those physicians who left their
patients during the sickness, and now they came to town again
nobody cared to employ them. They were called deserters, and
frequently bills were set up upon their doors and written, ‘Here
is a doctor to be let’, so that several of those physicians were
fain for a while to sit still and look about them, or at least
remove their dwellings, and set up in new places and among new
acquaintance. The like was the case with the clergy, whom the
people were indeed very abusive to, writing verses and scandalous
reflections upon them, setting upon the church-door, ‘Here is a
pulpit to be let’, or sometimes, ‘to be sold’, which was worse.

It was not the least of our misfortunes that with our infection,
when it ceased, there did not cease the spirit of strife and
contention, slander and reproach, which was really the great
troubler of the nation’s peace before. It was said to be the
remains of the old animosities, which had so lately involved us
all in blood and disorder. But as the late Act of Indemnity had
laid asleep the quarrel itself, so the Government had recommended
family and personal peace upon all occasions to the whole nation.

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

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

On the other hand, the Dissenters reproaching those ministers of
the Church with going away and deserting their charge, abandoning
the people in their danger, and when they had most need of
comfort, and the like: this we could by no means approve, for all
men have not the same faith and the same courage, and the
Scripture commands us to judge the most favourably and according
to charity.

A plague is a formidable enemy, and is armed with terrors that
every man is not sufficiently fortified to resist or prepared to
stand the shock against. It is very certain that a great many of
the clergy who were in circumstances to do it withdrew and fled
for the safety of their lives; but ’tis true also that a great
many of them stayed, and many of them fell in the calamity and in
the discharge of their duty.

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

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

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

I was once making a list of all such, I mean of all those
professions and employments who thus died, as I call it, in the
way of their duty; but it was impossible for a private man to
come at a certainty in the particulars. I only remember that
there died sixteen clergymen, two aldermen, five physicians,
thirteen surgeons, within the city and liberties before the
beginning of September. But this being, as I said before, the
great crisis and extremity of the infection, it can be no
complete list. As to inferior people, I think there died
six-and-forty constables and head-boroughs in the two parishes of
Stepney and Whitechappel; but I could not carry my list on, for
when the violent rage of the distemper in September came upon us,
it drove us out of all measures. Men did then no more die by tale
and by number. They might put out a weekly bill, and call them
seven or eight thousand, or what they pleased; ’tis certain they
died by heaps, and were buried by heaps, that is to say, without
account. And if I might believe some people, who were more abroad
and more conversant with those things than I though I was public
enough for one that had no more business to do than I had,—I say,
if I may believe them, there was not many less buried those first
three weeks in September than 20,000 per week. However, the
others aver the truth of it; yet I rather choose to keep to the
public account; seven and eight thousand per week is enough to
make good all that I have said of the terror of those times;—and
it is much to the satisfaction of me that write, as well as those
that read, to be able to say that everything is set down with
moderation, and rather within compass than beyond it.

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

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

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

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

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

Neither did I do what I know some did: keep the spirits always
high and hot with cordials and wine and such things; and which,
as I observed, one learned physician used himself so much to as
that he could not leave them off when the infection was quite
gone, and so became a sot for all his life after.

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

As for quackery and mountebanks, of which the town was so full, I
listened to none of them, and have observed often since, with
some wonder, that for two years after the plague I scarcely saw
or heard of one of them about town. Some fancied they were all
swept away in the infection to a man, and were for calling it a
particular mark of God’s vengeance upon them for leading the poor
people into the pit of destruction, merely for the lucre of a
little money they got by them; but I cannot go that length
neither. That abundance of them died is certain—many of them came
within the reach of my own knowledge—but that all of them were
swept off I much question. I believe rather they fled into the
country and tried their practices upon the people there, who were
in apprehension of the infection before it came among them.

This, however, is certain, not a man of them appeared for a great
while in or about London. There were, indeed, several doctors who
published bills recommending their several physical preparations
for cleansing the body, as they call it, after the plague, and
needful, as they said, for such people to take who had been
visited and had been cured; whereas I must own I believe that it
was the opinion of the most eminent physicians at that time that
the plague was itself a sufficient purge, and that those who
escaped the infection needed no physic to cleanse their bodies of
any other things; the running sores, the tumours, &c., which were
broke and kept open by the directions of the physicians, having
sufficiently cleansed them; and that all other distempers, and
causes of distempers, were effectually carried off that way; and
as the physicians gave this as their opinions wherever they came,
the quacks got little business.

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

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

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

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

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

However, in general, prudent, cautious people did enter into some
measures for airing and sweetening their houses, and burned
perfumes, incense, benjamin, rozin, and sulphur in their rooms
close shut up, and then let the air carry it all out with a blast
of gunpowder; others caused large fires to be made all day and
all night for several days and nights; by the same token that two
or three were pleased to set their houses on fire, and so
effectually sweetened them by burning them down to the ground; as
particularly one at Ratcliff, one in Holbourn, and one at
Westminster; besides two or three that were set on fire, but the
fire was happily got out again before it went far enough to burn
down the houses; and one citizen’s servant, I think it was in
Thames Street, carried so much gunpowder into his master’s house,
for clearing it of the infection, and managed it so foolishly,
that he blew up part of the roof of the house. But the time was
not fully come that the city was to be purged by fire, nor was it
far off; for within nine months more I saw it all lying in ashes;
when, as some of our quacking philosophers pretend, the seeds of
the plague were entirely destroyed, and not before; a notion too
ridiculous to speak of here: since, had the seeds of the plague
remained in the houses, not to be destroyed but by fire, how has
it been that they have not since broken out, seeing all those
buildings in the suburbs and liberties, all in the great parishes
of Stepney, Whitechappel, Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Shoreditch,
Cripplegate, and St Giles, where the fire never came, and where
the plague raged with the greatest violence, remain still in the
same condition they were in before?

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

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

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

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

I would be glad if I could close the account of this melancholy
year with some particular examples historically; I mean of the
thankfulness to God, our preserver, for our being delivered from
this dreadful calamity. Certainly the circumstance of the
deliverance, as well as the terrible enemy we were delivered
from, called upon the whole nation for it. The circumstances of
the deliverance were indeed very remarkable, as I have in part
mentioned already, and particularly the dreadful condition which
we were all in when we were to the surprise of the whole town
made joyful with the hope of a stop of the infection.

Nothing but the immediate finger of God, nothing but omnipotent
power, could have done it. The contagion despised all medicine;
death raged in every corner; and had it gone on as it did then, a
few weeks more would have cleared the town of all, and everything
that had a soul. Men everywhere began to despair; every heart
failed them for fear; people were made desperate through the
anguish of their souls, and the terrors of death sat in the very
faces and countenances of the people.

In that very moment when we might very well say, ‘Vain was the
help of man’,—I say, in that very moment it pleased God, with a
most agreeable surprise, to cause the fury of it to abate, even
of itself; and the malignity declining, as I have said, though
infinite numbers were sick, yet fewer died, and the very first
weeks’ bill decreased 1843; a vast number indeed!

It is impossible to express the change that appeared in the very
countenances of the people that Thursday morning when the weekly
bill came out. It might have been perceived in their countenances
that a secret surprise and smile of joy sat on everybody’s face.
They shook one another by the hands in the streets, who would
hardly go on the same side of the way with one another before.
Where the streets were not too broad they would open their
windows and call from one house to another, and ask how they did,
and if they had heard the good news that the plague was abated.
Some would return, when they said good news, and ask, ‘What good
news?’ and when they answered that the plague was abated and the
bills decreased almost two thousand, they would cry out, ‘God be
praised!’ and would weep aloud for joy, telling them they had
heard nothing of it; and such was the joy of the people that it
was, as it were, life to them from the grave. I could almost set
down as many extravagant things done in the excess of their joy
as of their grief; but that would be to lessen the value of it.

I must confess myself to have been very much dejected just before
this happened; for the prodigious number that were taken sick the
week or two before, besides those that died, was such, and the
lamentations were so great everywhere, that a man must have
seemed to have acted even against his reason if he had so much as
expected to escape; and as there was hardly a house but mine in
all my neighbourhood but was infected, so had it gone on it would
not have been long that there would have been any more neighbours
to be infected. Indeed it is hardly credible what dreadful havoc
the last three weeks had made, for if I might believe the person
whose calculations I always found very well grounded, there were
not less than 30,000 people dead and near 100,000 fallen sick in
the three weeks I speak of; for the number that sickened was
surprising, indeed it was astonishing, and those whose courage
upheld them all the time before, sank under it now.

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

Nor was this by any new medicine found out, or new method of cure
discovered, or by any experience in the operation which the
physicians or surgeons attained to; but it was evidently from the
secret invisible hand of Him that had at first sent this disease
as a judgement upon us; and let the atheistic part of mankind
call my saying what they please, it is no enthusiasm; it was
acknowledged at that time by all mankind. The disease was
enervated and its malignity spent; and let it proceed from
whencesoever it will, let the philosophers search for reasons in
nature to account for it by, and labour as much as they will to
lessen the debt they owe to their Maker, those physicians who had
the least share of religion in them were obliged to acknowledge
that it was all supernatural, that it was extraordinary, and that
no account could be given of it.

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

Nor will I deny but there were abundance of people who, to all
appearance, were very thankful at that time; for their mouths
were stopped, even the mouths of those whose hearts were not
extraordinary long affected with it. But the impression was so
strong at that time that it could not be resisted; no, not by the
worst of the people.

It was a common thing to meet people in the street that were
strangers, and that we knew nothing at all of, expressing their
surprise. Going one day through Aldgate, and a pretty many people
being passing and repassing, there comes a man out of the end of
the Minories, and looking a little up the street and down, he
throws his hands abroad, ‘Lord, what an alteration is here! Why,
last week I came along here, and hardly anybody was to be seen.’
Another man—I heard him—adds to his words, ‘’Tis all wonderful;
’tis all a dream.’ ‘Blessed be God,’ says a third man, ‘and
let us give thanks to Him, for ’tis all His own doing, human help
and human skill was at an end.’ These were all strangers to one
another. But such salutations as these were frequent in the
street every day; and in spite of a loose behaviour, the very
common people went along the streets giving God thanks for their
deliverance.

It was now, as I said before, the people had cast off all
apprehensions, and that too fast; indeed we were no more afraid
now to pass by a man with a white cap upon his head, or with a
cloth wrapt round his neck, or with his leg limping, occasioned
by the sores in his groin, all which were frightful to the last
degree, but the week before. But now the street was full of them,
and these poor recovering creatures, give them their due,
appeared very sensible of their unexpected deliverance; and I
should wrong them very much if I should not acknowledge that I
believe many of them were really thankful. But I must own that,
for the generality of the people, it might too justly be said of
them as was said of the children of Israel after their being
delivered from the host of Pharaoh, when they passed the Red Sea,
and looked back and saw the Egyptians overwhelmed in the water:
viz., that they sang His praise, but they soon forgot His works.

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

A dreadful plague in London was In the year sixty-five, Which
swept an hundred thousand souls Away; yet I alive!

H. F.

FINIS