Chapter I: Part 1

A Journal of the Plague Year

by Daniel Defoe

being Observations or Memorials
of the most remarkable occurrences,
as well public as_ private, which happened in London
during the last great visitation in 1665.
Written by a CITIZEN who continued
all the while in London_.
Never made publick before

It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I, among the
rest of my neighbours, heard in ordinary discourse that the
plague was returned again in Holland; for it had been very
violent there, and particularly at Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in
the year 1663, whither, they say, it was brought, some said from
Italy, others from the Levant, among some goods which were
brought home by their Turkey fleet; others said it was brought
from Candia; others from Cyprus. It mattered not from whence it
came; but all agreed it was come into Holland again.

We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days to
spread rumours and reports of things, and to improve them by the
invention of men, as I have lived to see practised since. But
such things as these were gathered from the letters of merchants
and others who corresponded abroad, and from them was handed
about by word of mouth only; so that things did not spread
instantly over the whole nation, as they do now. But it seems
that the Government had a true account of it, and several
councils were held about ways to prevent its coming over; but all
was kept very private. Hence it was that this rumour died off
again, and people began to forget it as a thing we were very
little concerned in, and that we hoped was not true; till the
latter end of November or the beginning of December 1664 when two
men, said to be Frenchmen, died of the plague in Long Acre, or
rather at the upper end of Drury Lane. The family they were in
endeavoured to conceal it as much as possible, but as it had
gotten some vent in the discourse of the neighbourhood, the
Secretaries of State got knowledge of it; and concerning
themselves to inquire about it, in order to be certain of the
truth, two physicians and a surgeon were ordered to go to the
house and make inspection. This they did; and finding evident
tokens of the sickness upon both the bodies that were dead, they
gave their opinions publicly that they died of the plague.
Whereupon it was given in to the parish clerk, and he also
returned them to the Hall; and it was printed in the weekly bill
of mortality in the usual manner, thus—

Plague, 2. Parishes infected, 1.

The people showed a great concern at this, and began to be
alarmed all over the town, and the more, because in the last week
in December 1664 another man died in the same house, and of the
same distemper. And then we were easy again for about six weeks,
when none having died with any marks of infection, it was said
the distemper was gone; but after that, I think it was about the
12th of February, another died in another house, but in the same
parish and in the same manner.

This turned the people’s eyes pretty much towards that end of the
town, and the weekly bills showing an increase of burials in St
Giles’s parish more than usual, it began to be suspected that the
plague was among the people at that end of the town, and that
many had died of it, though they had taken care to keep it as
much from the knowledge of the public as possible. This possessed
the heads of the people very much, and few cared to go through
Drury Lane, or the other streets suspected, unless they had
extraordinary business that obliged them to it

This increase of the bills stood thus: the usual number of
burials in a week, in the parishes of St Giles-in-the-Fields and
St Andrew’s, Holborn, were from twelve to seventeen or nineteen
each, few more or less; but from the time that the plague first
began in St Giles’s parish, it was observed that the ordinary
burials increased in number considerably. For example:—

From December 27 to January 3 { St Giles’s 16
” { St Andrew’s 17

” January 3 ” ” 10 { St Giles’s 12
” { St Andrew’s 25

” January 10 ” ” 17 { St Giles’s 18
” { St Andrew’s 28

” January 17 ” ” 24 { St Giles’s 23
” { St Andrew’s 16

” January 24 ” ” 31 { St Giles’s 24
” { St Andrew’s 15

” January 30 ” February 7 { St Giles’s 21
” { St Andrew’s 23

” February 7 ” ” 14 { St Giles’s 24

The like increase of the bills was observed in the parishes of St
Bride’s, adjoining on one side of Holborn parish, and in the
parish of St James, Clerkenwell, adjoining on the other side of
Holborn; in both which parishes the usual numbers that died
weekly were from four to six or eight, whereas at that time they
were increased as follows:—

From December 20 to December 27 { St Bride’s 0
” { St James’s 8

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

” January 3 ” ” 10 { St Bride’s 11
” { St James’s 7

” January 10 ” ” 17 { St Bride’s 12
” { St James’s 9

” January 17 ” ” 24 { St Bride’s 9
” { St James’s 15

” January 24 ” ” 31 { St Bride’s 8
” { St James’s 12

” January 31 ” February 7 { St Bride’s 13
” { St James’s 5

” February 7 ” ” 14 { St Bride’s 12
” { St James’s 6
Besides this, it was observed with great uneasiness by the people
that the weekly bills in general increased very much during these
weeks, although it was at a time of the year when usually the
bills are very moderate.

The usual number of burials within the bills of mortality for a
week was from about 240 or thereabouts to 300. The last was
esteemed a pretty high bill; but after this we found the bills
successively increasing as follows:—

Buried. Increased.
December the 20th to the 27th 291 ...
” ” 27th ” 3rd January 349 58
January the 3rd ” 10th ” 394 45
” ” 10th ” 17th ” 415 21
” ” 17th ” 24th ” 474 59

This last bill was really frightful, being a higher number than
had been known to have been buried in one week since the
preceding visitation of 1656.

However, all this went off again, and the weather proving cold,
and the frost, which began in December, still continuing very
severe even till near the end of February, attended with sharp
though moderate winds, the bills decreased again, and the city
grew healthy, and everybody began to look upon the danger as good
as over; only that still the burials in St Giles’s continued
high. From the beginning of April especially they stood at
twenty-five each week, till the week from the 18th to the 25th,
when there was buried in St Giles’s parish thirty, whereof two of
the plague and eight of the spotted-fever, which was looked upon
as the same thing; likewise the number that died of the
spotted-fever in the whole increased, being eight the week
before, and twelve the week above-named.

This alarmed us all again, and terrible apprehensions were among
the people, especially the weather being now changed and growing
warm, and the summer being at hand. However, the next week there
seemed to be some hopes again; the bills were low, the number of
the dead in all was but 388, there was none of the plague, and
but four of the spotted-fever.

But the following week it returned again, and the distemper was
spread into two or three other parishes, viz., St Andrew’s,
Holborn; St Clement Danes; and, to the great affliction of the
city, one died within the walls, in the parish of St Mary
Woolchurch, that is to say, in Bearbinder Lane, near Stocks
Market; in all there were nine of the plague and six of the
spotted-fever. It was, however, upon inquiry found that this
Frenchman who died in Bearbinder Lane was one who, having lived
in Long Acre, near the infected houses, had removed for fear of
the distemper, not knowing that he was already infected.

This was the beginning of May, yet the weather was temperate,
variable, and cool enough, and people had still some hopes. That
which encouraged them was that the city was healthy: the whole
ninety-seven parishes buried but fifty-four, and we began to hope
that, as it was chiefly among the people at that end of the town,
it might go no farther; and the rather, because the next week,
which was from the 9th of May to the 16th, there died but three,
of which not one within the whole city or liberties; and St
Andrew’s buried but fifteen, which was very low. ’Tis true St
Giles’s buried two-and-thirty, but still, as there was but one of
the plague, people began to be easy. The whole bill also was very
low, for the week before the bill was but 347, and the week above
mentioned but 343. We continued in these hopes for a few days,
but it was but for a few, for the people were no more to be
deceived thus; they searched the houses and found that the plague
was really spread every way, and that many died of it every day.
So that now all our extenuations abated, and it was no more to be
concealed; nay, it quickly appeared that the infection had spread
itself beyond all hopes of abatement. That in the parish of St
Giles it was gotten into several streets, and several families
lay all sick together; and, accordingly, in the weekly bill for
the next week the thing began to show itself. There was indeed
but fourteen set down of the plague, but this was all knavery and
collusion, for in St Giles’s parish they buried forty in all,
whereof it was certain most of them died of the plague, though
they were set down of other distempers; and though the number of
all the burials were not increased above thirty-two, and the
whole bill being but 385, yet there was fourteen of the
spotted-fever, as well as fourteen of the plague; and we took it
for granted upon the whole that there were fifty died that week
of the plague.

The next bill was from the 23rd of May to the 30th, when the
number of the plague was seventeen. But the burials in St Giles’s
were fifty-three—a frightful number!—of whom they set down but
nine of the plague; but on an examination more strictly by the
justices of peace, and at the Lord Mayor’s request, it was found
there were twenty more who were really dead of the plague in that
parish, but had been set down of the spotted-fever or other
distempers, besides others concealed.

But those were trifling things to what followed immediately
after; for now the weather set in hot, and from the first week in
June the infection spread in a dreadful manner, and the bills
rose high; the articles of the fever, spotted-fever, and teeth
began to swell; for all that could conceal their distempers did
it, to prevent their neighbours shunning and refusing to converse
with them, and also to prevent authority shutting up their
houses; which, though it was not yet practised, yet was
threatened, and people were extremely terrified at the thoughts
of it.

The second week in June, the parish of St Giles, where still the
weight of the infection lay, buried 120, whereof though the bills
said but sixty-eight of the plague, everybody said there had been
100 at least, calculating it from the usual number of funerals in
that parish, as above.

Till this week the city continued free, there having never any
died, except that one Frenchman whom I mentioned before, within
the whole ninety-seven parishes. Now there died four within the
city, one in Wood Street, one in Fenchurch Street, and two in
Crooked Lane. Southwark was entirely free, having not one yet
died on that side of the water.

I lived without Aldgate, about midway between Aldgate Church and
Whitechappel Bars, on the left hand or north side of the street;
and as the distemper had not reached to that side of the city,
our neighbourhood continued very easy. But at the other end of
the town their consternation was very great: and the richer sort
of people, especially the nobility and gentry from the west part
of the city, thronged out of town with their families and
servants in an unusual manner; and this was more particularly
seen in Whitechappel; that is to say, the Broad Street where I
lived; indeed, nothing was to be seen but waggons and carts, with
goods, women, servants, children, &c.; coaches filled with people
of the better sort and horsemen attending them, and all hurrying
away; then empty waggons and carts appeared, and spare horses
with servants, who, it was apparent, were returning or sent from
the countries to fetch more people; besides innumerable numbers
of men on horseback, some alone, others with servants, and,
generally speaking, all loaded with baggage and fitted out for
travelling, as anyone might perceive by their appearance.

This was a very terrible and melancholy thing to see, and as it
was a sight which I could not but look on from morning to night
(for indeed there was nothing else of moment to be seen), it
filled me with very serious thoughts of the misery that was
coming upon the city, and the unhappy condition of those that
would be left in it.

This hurry of the people was such for some weeks that there was
no getting at the Lord Mayor’s door without exceeding difficulty;
there were such pressing and crowding there to get passes and
certificates of health for such as travelled abroad, for without
these there was no being admitted to pass through the towns upon
the road, or to lodge in any inn. Now, as there had none died in
the city for all this time, my Lord Mayor gave certificates of
health without any difficulty to all those who lived in the
ninety-seven parishes, and to those within the liberties too for
a while.

This hurry, I say, continued some weeks, that is to say, all the
month of May and June, and the more because it was rumoured that
an order of the Government was to be issued out to place
turnpikes and barriers on the road to prevent people travelling,
and that the towns on the road would not suffer people from
London to pass for fear of bringing the infection along with
them, though neither of these rumours had any foundation but in
the imagination, especially at-first.

I now began to consider seriously with myself concerning my own
case, and how I should dispose of myself; that is to say, whether
I should resolve to stay in London or shut up my house and flee,
as many of my neighbours did. I have set this particular down so
fully, because I know not but it may be of moment to those who
come after me, if they come to be brought to the same distress,
and to the same manner of making their choice; and therefore I
desire this account may pass with them rather for a direction to
themselves to act by than a history of my actings, seeing it may
not be of one farthing value to them to note what became of me.

I had two important things before me: the one was the carrying on
my business and shop, which was considerable, and in which was
embarked all my effects in the world; and the other was the
preservation of my life in so dismal a calamity as I saw
apparently was coming upon the whole city, and which, however
great it was, my fears perhaps, as well as other people’s,
represented to be much greater than it could be.

The first consideration was of great moment to me; my trade was a
saddler, and as my dealings were chiefly not by a shop or chance
trade, but among the merchants trading to the English colonies in
America, so my effects lay very much in the hands of such. I was
a single man, ’tis true, but I had a family of servants whom I
kept at my business; had a house, shop, and warehouses filled
with goods; and, in short, to leave them all as things in such a
case must be left (that is to say, without any overseer or person
fit to be trusted with them), had been to hazard the loss not
only of my trade, but of my goods, and indeed of all I had in the
world.

I had an elder brother at the same time in London, and not many
years before come over from Portugal: and advising with him, his
answer was in three words, the same that was given in another
case quite different, viz., ‘Master, save thyself.’ In a word, he
was for my retiring into the country, as he resolved to do
himself with his family; telling me what he had, it seems, heard
abroad, that the best preparation for the plague was to run away
from it. As to my argument of losing my trade, my goods, or
debts, he quite confuted me. He told me the same thing which I
argued for my staying, viz., that I would trust God with my
safety and health, was the strongest repulse to my pretensions of
losing my trade and my goods; ‘for’, says he, ‘is it not as
reasonable that you should trust God with the chance or risk of
losing your trade, as that you should stay in so eminent a point
of danger, and trust Him with your life?’

I could not argue that I was in any strait as to a place where to
go, having several friends and relations in Northamptonshire,
whence our family first came from; and particularly, I had an
only sister in Lincolnshire, very willing to receive and
entertain me.

My brother, who had already sent his wife and two children into
Bedfordshire, and resolved to follow them, pressed my going very
earnestly; and I had once resolved to comply with his desires,
but at that time could get no horse; for though it is true all
the people did not go out of the city of London, yet I may
venture to say that in a manner all the horses did; for there was
hardly a horse to be bought or hired in the whole city for some
weeks. Once I resolved to travel on foot with one servant, and,
as many did, lie at no inn, but carry a soldier’s tent with us,
and so lie in the fields, the weather being very warm, and no
danger from taking cold. I say, as many did, because several did
so at last, especially those who had been in the armies in the
war which had not been many years past; and I must needs say
that, speaking of second causes, had most of the people that
travelled done so, the plague had not been carried into so many
country towns and houses as it was, to the great damage, and
indeed to the ruin, of abundance of people.

But then my servant, whom I had intended to take down with me,
deceived me; and being frighted at the increase of the distemper,
and not knowing when I should go, he took other measures, and
left me, so I was put off for that time; and, one way or other, I
always found that to appoint to go away was always crossed by
some accident or other, so as to disappoint and put it off again;
and this brings in a story which otherwise might be thought a
needless digression, viz., about these disappointments being from
Heaven.

I mention this story also as the best method I can advise any
person to take in such a case, especially if he be one that makes
conscience of his duty, and would be directed what to do in it,
namely, that he should keep his eye upon the particular
providences which occur at that time, and look upon them
complexly, as they regard one another, and as all together regard
the question before him: and then, I think, he may safely take
them for intimations from Heaven of what is his unquestioned duty
to do in such a case; I mean as to going away from or staying in
the place where we dwell, when visited with an infectious
distemper.

It came very warmly into my mind one morning, as I was musing on
this particular thing, that as nothing attended us without the
direction or permission of Divine Power, so these disappointments
must have something in them extraordinary; and I ought to
consider whether it did not evidently point out, or intimate to
me, that it was the will of Heaven I should not go. It
immediately followed in my thoughts, that if it really was from
God that I should stay, He was able effectually to preserve me in
the midst of all the death and danger that would surround me; and
that if I attempted to secure myself by fleeing from my
habitation, and acted contrary to these intimations, which I
believe to be Divine, it was a kind of flying from God, and that
He could cause His justice to overtake me when and where He
thought fit.

These thoughts quite turned my resolutions again, and when I came
to discourse with my brother again I told him that I inclined to
stay and take my lot in that station in which God had placed me,
and that it seemed to be made more especially my duty, on the
account of what I have said.

My brother, though a very religious man himself, laughed at all I
had suggested about its being an intimation from Heaven, and told
me several stories of such foolhardy people, as he called them,
as I was; that I ought indeed to submit to it as a work of Heaven
if I had been any way disabled by distempers or diseases, and
that then not being able to go, I ought to acquiesce in the
direction of Him, who, having been my Maker, had an undisputed
right of sovereignty in disposing of me, and that then there had
been no difficulty to determine which was the call of His
providence and which was not; but that I should take it as an
intimation from Heaven that I should not go out of town, only
because I could not hire a horse to go, or my fellow was run away
that was to attend me, was ridiculous, since at the time I had my
health and limbs, and other servants, and might with ease travel
a day or two on foot, and having a good certificate of being in
perfect health, might either hire a horse or take post on the
road, as I thought fit.

Then he proceeded to tell me of the mischievous consequences
which attended the presumption of the Turks and Mahometans in
Asia and in other places where he had been (for my brother, being
a merchant, was a few years before, as I have already observed,
returned from abroad, coming last from Lisbon), and how,
presuming upon their professed predestinating notions, and of
every man’s end being predetermined and unalterably beforehand
decreed, they would go unconcerned into infected places and
converse with infected persons, by which means they died at the
rate of ten or fifteen thousand a week, whereas the Europeans or
Christian merchants, who kept themselves retired and reserved,
generally escaped the contagion.

Upon these arguments my brother changed my resolutions again, and
I began to resolve to go, and accordingly made all things ready;
for, in short, the infection increased round me, and the bills
were risen to almost seven hundred a week, and my brother told me
he would venture to stay no longer. I desired him to let me
consider of it but till the next day, and I would resolve: and as
I had already prepared everything as well as I could as to MY
business, and whom to entrust my affairs with, I had little to do
but to resolve.

I went home that evening greatly oppressed in my mind,
irresolute, and not knowing what to do. I had set the evening
wholly apart to consider seriously about it, and was all alone;
for already people had, as it were by a general consent, taken up
the custom of not going out of doors after sunset; the reasons I
shall have occasion to say more of by-and-by.

In the retirement of this evening I endeavoured to resolve,
first, what was my duty to do, and I stated the arguments with
which my brother had pressed me to go into the country, and I
set, against them the strong impressions which I had on my mind
for staying; the visible call I seemed to have from the
particular circumstance of my calling, and the care due from me
for the preservation of my effects, which were, as I might say,
my estate; also the intimations which I thought I had from
Heaven, that to me signified a kind of direction to venture; and
it occurred to me that if I had what I might call a direction to
stay, I ought to suppose it contained a promise of being
preserved if I obeyed.

This lay close to me, and my mind seemed more and more encouraged
to stay than ever, and supported with a secret satisfaction that
I should be kept. Add to this, that, turning over the Bible which
lay before me, and while my thoughts were more than ordinarily
serious upon the question, I cried out, ‘Well, I know not what to
do; Lord, direct me !’ and the like; and at that juncture I
happened to stop turning over the book at the ninety-first Psalm,
and casting my eye on the second verse, I read on to the seventh
verse exclusive, and after that included the tenth, as follows:
‘I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God,
in Him will I trust. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare
of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover
thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust: His
truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid
for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the
destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy
side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come
nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the
reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is
my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; there shall no
evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy
dwelling,’ &C.

I scarce need tell the reader that from that moment I resolved
that I would stay in the town, and casting myself entirely upon
the goodness and protection of the Almighty, would not seek any
other shelter whatever; and that, as my times were in His hands,
He was as able to keep me in a time of the infection as in a time
of health; and if He did not think fit to deliver me, still I was
in His hands, and it was meet He should do with me as should seem
good to Him.

With this resolution I went to bed; and I was further confirmed
in it the next day by the woman being taken ill with whom I had
intended to entrust my house and all my affairs. But I had a
further obligation laid on me on the same side, for the next day
I found myself very much out of order also, so that if I would
have gone away, I could not, and I continued ill three or four
days, and this entirely determined my stay; so I took my leave of
my brother, who went away to Dorking, in Surrey, and afterwards
fetched a round farther into Buckinghamshire or Bedfordshire, to
a retreat he had found out there for his family.

It was a very ill time to be sick in, for if any one complained,
it was immediately said he had the plague; and though I had
indeed no symptom of that distemper, yet being very ill, both in
my head and in my stomach, I was not without apprehension that I
really was infected; but in about three days I grew better; the
third night I rested well, sweated a little, and was much
refreshed. The apprehensions of its being the infection went also
quite away with my illness, and I went about my business as
usual.

These things, however, put off all my thoughts of going into the
country; and my brother also being gone, I had no more debate
either with him or with myself on that subject.

It was now mid-July, and the plague, which had chiefly raged at
the other end of the town, and, as I said before, in the parishes
of St Giles, St Andrew’s, Holborn, and towards Westminster, began
to now come eastward towards the part where I lived. It was to be
observed, indeed, that it did not come straight on towards us;
for the city, that is to say, within the walls, was indifferently
healthy still; nor was it got then very much over the water into
Southwark; for though there died that week 1268 of all
distempers, whereof it might be supposed above 600 died of the
plague, yet there was but twenty-eight in the whole city, within
the walls, and but nineteen in Southwark, Lambeth parish
included; whereas in the parishes of St Giles and St
Martin-in-the-Fields alone there died 421.

But we perceived the infection kept chiefly in the out-parishes,
which being very populous, and fuller also of poor, the distemper
found more to prey upon than in the city, as I shall observe
afterwards. We perceived, I say, the distemper to draw our way,
viz., by the parishes of Clarkenwell, Cripplegate, Shoreditch,
and Bishopsgate; which last two parishes joining to Aldgate,
Whitechappel, and Stepney, the infection came at length to spread
its utmost rage and violence in those parts, even when it abated
at the western parishes where it began.

It was very strange to observe that in this particular week, from
the 4th to the 11th of July, when, as I have observed, there died
near 400 of the plague in the two parishes of St Martin and St
Giles-in-the-Fields only, there died in the parish of Aldgate but
four, in the parish of Whitechappel three, in the parish of
Stepney but one.

Likewise in the next week, from the 11th of July to the 18th,
when the week’s bill was 1761, yet there died no more of the
plague, on the whole Southwark side of the water, than sixteen.
But this face of things soon changed, and it began to thicken in
Cripplegate parish especially, and in Clarkenwell; so that by the
second week in August, Cripplegate parish alone buried 886, and
Clarkenwell 155. Of the first, 850 might well be reckoned to die
of the plague; and of the last, the bill itself said 145 were of
the plague.

During the month of July, and while, as I have observed, our part
of the town seemed to be spared in comparison of the west part, I
went ordinarily about the streets, as my business required, and
particularly went generally once in a day, or in two days, into
the city, to my brother’s house, which he had given me charge of,
and to see if it was safe; and having the key in my pocket, I
used to go into the house, and over most of the rooms, to see
that all was well; for though it be something wonderful to tell,
that any should have hearts so hardened in the midst of such a
calamity as to rob and steal, yet certain it is that all sorts of
villainies, and even levities and debaucheries, were then
practised in the town as openly as ever—I will not say quite as
frequently, because the numbers of people were many ways
lessened.

But the city itself began now to be visited too, I mean within
the walls; but the number of people there were indeed extremely
lessened by so great a multitude having been gone into the
country; and even all this month of July they continued to flee,
though not in such multitudes as formerly. In August, indeed,
they fled in such a manner that I began to think there would be
really none but magistrates and servants left in the city.

As they fled now out of the city, so I should observe that the
Court removed early, viz., in the month of June, and went to
Oxford, where it pleased God to preserve them; and the distemper
did not, as I heard of, so much as touch them, for which I cannot
say that I ever saw they showed any great token of thankfulness,
and hardly anything of reformation, though they did not want
being told that their crying vices might without breach of
charity be said to have gone far in bringing that terrible
judgement upon the whole nation.

The face of London was—now indeed strangely altered: I mean the
whole mass of buildings, city, liberties, suburbs, Westminster,
Southwark, and altogether; for as to the particular part called
the city, or within the walls, that was not yet much infected.
But in the whole the face of things, I say, was much altered;
sorrow and sadness sat upon every face; and though some parts
were not yet overwhelmed, yet all looked deeply concerned; and,
as we saw it apparently coming on, so every one looked on himself
and his family as in the utmost danger. Were it possible to
represent those times exactly to those that did not see them, and
give the reader due ideas of the horror ‘that everywhere
presented itself, it must make just impressions upon their minds
and fill them with surprise. London might well be said to be all
in tears; the mourners did not go about the streets indeed, for
nobody put on black or made a formal dress of mourning for their
nearest friends; but the voice of mourners was truly heard in the
streets. The shrieks of women and children at the windows and
doors of their houses, where their dearest relations were perhaps
dying, or just dead, were so frequent to be heard as we passed
the streets, that it was enough to pierce the stoutest heart in
the world to hear them. Tears and lamentations were seen almost
in every house, especially in the first part of the visitation;
for towards the latter end men’s hearts were hardened, and death
was so always before their eyes, that they did not so much
concern themselves for the loss of their friends, expecting that
themselves should be summoned the next hour.

Business led me out sometimes to the other end of the town, even
when the sickness was chiefly there; and as the thing was new to
me, as well as to everybody else, it was a most surprising thing
to see those streets which were usually so thronged now grown
desolate, and so few people to be seen in them, that if I had
been a stranger and at a loss for my way, I might sometimes have
gone the length of a whole street (I mean of the by-streets), and
seen nobody to direct me except watchmen set at the doors of such
houses as were shut up, of which I shall speak presently.

One day, being at that part of the town on some special business,
curiosity led me to observe things more than usually, and indeed
I walked a great way where I had no business. I went up Holborn,
and there the street was full of people, but they walked in the
middle of the great street, neither on one side or other,
because, as I suppose, they would not mingle with anybody that
came out of houses, or meet with smells and scent from houses
that might be infected.

The Inns of Court were all shut up; nor were very many of the
lawyers in the Temple, or Lincoln’s Inn, or Gray’s Inn, to be
seen there. Everybody was at peace; there was no occasion for
lawyers; besides, it being in the time of the vacation too, they
were generally gone into the country. Whole rows of houses in
some places were shut close up, the inhabitants all fled, and
only a watchman or two left.

When I speak of rows of houses being shut up, I do not mean shut
up by the magistrates, but that great numbers of persons followed
the Court, by the necessity of their employments and other
dependences; and as others retired, really frighted with the
distemper, it was a mere desolating of some of the streets. But
the fright was not yet near so great in the city, abstractly so
called, and particularly because, though they were at first in a
most inexpressible consternation, yet as I have observed that the
distemper intermitted often at first, so they were, as it were,
alarmed and unalarmed again, and this several times, till it
began to be familiar to them; and that even when it appeared
violent, yet seeing it did not presently spread into the city, or
the east and south parts, the people began to take courage, and
to be, as I may say, a little hardened. It is true a vast many
people fled, as I have observed, yet they were chiefly from the
west end of the town, and from that we call the heart of the
city: that is to say, among the wealthiest of the people, and
such people as were unencumbered with trades and business. But of
the rest, the generality stayed, and seemed to abide the worst;
so that in the place we call the Liberties, and in the suburbs,
in Southwark, and in the east part, such as Wapping, Ratcliff,
Stepney, Rotherhithe, and the like, the people generally stayed,
except here and there a few wealthy families, who, as above, did
not depend upon their business.

It must not be forgot here that the city and suburbs were
prodigiously full of people at the time of this visitation, I
mean at the time that it began; for though I have lived to see a
further increase, and mighty throngs of people settling in London
more than ever, yet we had always a notion that the numbers of
people which, the wars being over, the armies disbanded, and the
royal family and the monarchy being restored, had flocked to
London to settle in business, or to depend upon and attend the
Court for rewards of services, preferments, and the like, was
such that the town was computed to have in it above a hundred
thousand people more than ever it held before; nay, some took
upon them to say it had twice as many, because all the ruined
families of the royal party flocked hither. All the old soldiers
set up trades here, and abundance of families settled here.
Again, the Court brought with them a great flux of pride, and new
fashions. All people were grown gay and luxurious, and the joy of
the Restoration had brought a vast many families to London.

I often thought that as Jerusalem was besieged by the Romans when
the Jews were assembled together to celebrate the Passover—by
which means an incredible number of people were surprised there
who would otherwise have been in other countries—so the plague
entered London when an incredible increase of people had happened
occasionally, by the particular circumstances above-named. As
this conflux of the people to a youthful and gay Court made a
great trade in the city, especially in everything that belonged
to fashion and finery, so it drew by consequence a great number
of workmen, manufacturers, and the like, being mostly poor people
who depended upon their labour. And I remember in particular that
in a representation to my Lord Mayor of the condition of the
poor, it was estimated that there were no less than an hundred
thousand riband-weavers in and about the city, the chiefest
number of whom lived then in the parishes of Shoreditch, Stepney,
Whitechappel, and Bishopsgate, that, namely, about Spitalfields;
that is to say, as Spitalfields was then, for it was not so large
as now by one fifth part.

By this, however, the number of people in the whole may be judged
of; and, indeed, I often wondered that, after the prodigious
numbers of people that went away at first, there was yet so great
a multitude left as it appeared there was.

But I must go back again to the beginning of this surprising
time. While the fears of the people were young, they were
increased strangely by several odd accidents which, put
altogether, it was really a wonder the whole body of the people
did not rise as one man and abandon their dwellings, leaving the
place as a space of ground designed by Heaven for an Akeldama,
doomed to be destroyed from the face of the earth, and that all
that would be found in it would perish with it. I shall name but
a few of these things; but sure they were so many, and so many
wizards and cunning people propagating them, that I have often
wondered there was any (women especially) left behind.

In the first place, a blazing star or comet appeared for several
months before the plague, as there did the year after another, a
little before the fire. The old women and the phlegmatic
hypochondriac part of the other sex, whom I could almost call old
women too, remarked (especially afterward, though not till both
those judgements were over) that those two comets passed directly
over the city, and that so very near the houses that it was plain
they imported something peculiar to the city alone; that the
comet before the pestilence was of a faint, dull, languid colour,
and its motion very heavy, Solemn, and slow; but that the comet
before the fire was bright and sparkling, or, as others said,
flaming, and its motion swift and furious; and that, accordingly,
one foretold a heavy judgement, slow but severe, terrible and
frightful, as was the plague; but the other foretold a stroke,
sudden, swift, and fiery as the conflagration. Nay, so particular
some people were, that as they looked upon that comet preceding
the fire, they fancied that they not only saw it pass swiftly and
fiercely, and could perceive the motion with their eye, but even
they heard it; that it made a rushing, mighty noise, fierce and
terrible, though at a distance, and but just perceivable.

I saw both these stars, and, I must confess, had so much of the
common notion of such things in my head, that I was apt to look
upon them as the forerunners and warnings of God’s judgements;
and especially when, after the plague had followed the first, I
yet saw another of the like kind, I could not but say God had not
yet sufficiently scourged the city.

But I could not at the same time carry these things to the height
that others did, knowing, too, that natural causes are assigned
by the astronomers for such things, and that their motions and
even their revolutions are calculated, or pretended to be
calculated, so that they cannot be so perfectly called the
forerunners or foretellers, much less the procurers, of such
events as pestilence, war, fire, and the like.

But let my thoughts and the thoughts of the philosophers be, or
have been, what they will, these things had a more than ordinary
influence upon the minds of the common people, and they had
almost universal melancholy apprehensions of some dreadful
calamity and judgement coming upon the city; and this principally
from the sight of this comet, and the little alarm that was given
in December by two people dying at St Giles’s, as above.

The apprehensions of the people were likewise strangely increased
by the error of the times; in which, I think, the people, from
what principle I cannot imagine, were more addicted to prophecies
and astrological conjurations, dreams, and old wives’ tales than
ever they were before or since. Whether this unhappy temper was
originally raised by the follies of some people who got money by
it—that is to say, by printing predictions and prognostications—I
know not; but certain it is, books frighted them terribly, such
as Lilly’s Almanack, Gadbury’s Astrological Predictions, Poor
Robin’s Almanack, and the like; also several pretended religious
books, one entitled, Come out of her, my People, lest you be
Partaker of her Plagues; another called, Fair Warning; another,
Britain’s Remembrancer; and many such, all, or most part of
which, foretold, directly or covertly, the ruin of the city. Nay,
some were so enthusiastically bold as to run about the streets
with their oral predictions, pretending they were sent to preach
to the city; and one in particular, who, like Jonah to Nineveh,
cried in the streets, ‘Yet forty days, and London shall be
destroyed.’ I will not be positive whether he said yet forty days
or yet a few days. Another ran about naked, except a pair of
drawers about his waist, crying day and night, like a man that
Josephus mentions, who cried, ‘Woe to Jerusalem!’ a little before
the destruction of that city. So this poor naked creature cried,
‘Oh, the great and the dreadful God!’ and said no more, but
repeated those words continually, with a voice and countenance
full of horror, a swift pace; and nobody could ever find him to
stop or rest, or take any sustenance, at least that ever I could
hear of. I met this poor creature several times in the streets,
and would have spoken to him, but he would not enter into speech
with me or any one else, but held on his dismal cries
continually.

These things terrified the people to the last degree, and
especially when two or three times, as I have mentioned already,
they found one or two in the bills dead of the plague at St
Giles’s.

Next to these public things were the dreams of old women, or, I
should say, the interpretation of old women upon other people’s
dreams; and these put abundance of people even out of their wits.
Some heard voices warning them to be gone, for that there would
be such a plague in London, so that the living would not be able
to bury the dead. Others saw apparitions in the air; and I must
be allowed to say of both, I hope without breach of charity, that
they heard voices that never spake, and saw sights that never
appeared; but the imagination of the people was really turned
wayward and possessed. And no wonder, if they who were poring
continually at the clouds saw shapes and figures, representations
and appearances, which had nothing in them but air, and vapour.
Here they told us they saw a flaming sword held in a hand coming
out of a cloud, with a point hanging directly over the city;
there they saw hearses and coffins in the air carrying to be
buried; and there again, heaps of dead bodies lying unburied, and
the like, just as the imagination of the poor terrified people
furnished them with matter to work upon.

So hypochondriac fancies represent
Ships, armies, battles in the firmament;
Till steady eyes the exhalations solve,
And all to its first matter, cloud, resolve.

I could fill this account with the strange relations such people
gave every day of what they had seen; and every one was so
positive of their having seen what they pretended to see, that
there was no contradicting them without breach of friendship, or
being accounted rude and unmannerly on the one hand, and profane
and impenetrable on the other. One time before the plague was
begun (otherwise than as I have said in St Giles’s), I think it
was in March, seeing a crowd of people in the street, I joined
with them to satisfy my curiosity, and found them all staring up
into the air to see what a woman told them appeared plain to her,
which was an angel clothed in white, with a fiery sword in his
hand, waving it or brandishing it over his head. She described
every part of the figure to the life, showed them the motion and
the form, and the poor people came into it so eagerly, and with
so much readiness; ‘Yes, I see it all plainly,’ says one;
‘there’s the sword as plain as can be.’ Another saw the angel.
One saw his very face, and cried out what a glorious creature he
was! One saw one thing, and one another. I looked as earnestly as
the rest, but perhaps not with so much willingness to be imposed
upon; and I said, indeed, that I could see nothing but a white
cloud, bright on one side by the shining of the sun upon the
other part. The woman endeavoured to show it me, but could not
make me confess that I saw it, which, indeed, if I had I must
have lied. But the woman, turning upon me, looked in my face, and
fancied I laughed, in which her imagination deceived her too, for
I really did not laugh, but was very seriously reflecting how the
poor people were terrified by the force of their own imagination.
However, she turned from me, called me profane fellow, and a
scoffer; told me that it was a time of God’s anger, and dreadful
judgements were approaching, and that despisers such as I should
wander and perish.

The people about her seemed disgusted as well as she; and I found
there was no persuading them that I did not laugh at them, and
that I should be rather mobbed by them than be able to undeceive
them. So I left them; and this appearance passed for as real as
the blazing star itself.

Another encounter I had in the open day also; and this was in
going through a narrow passage from Petty France into Bishopsgate
Churchyard, by a row of alms-houses. There are two churchyards to
Bishopsgate church or parish; one we go over to pass from the
place called Petty France into Bishopsgate Street, coming out
just by the church door; the other is on the side of the narrow
passage where the alms-houses are on the left; and a dwarf-wall
with a palisado on it on the right hand, and the city wall on the
other side more to the right.

In this narrow passage stands a man looking through between the
palisadoes into the burying-place, and as many people as the
narrowness of the passage would admit to stop, without hindering
the passage of others, and he was talking mightily eagerly to
them, and pointing now to one place, then to another, and
affirming that he saw a ghost walking upon such a gravestone
there. He described the shape, the posture, and the movement of
it so exactly that it was the greatest matter of amazement to him
in the world that everybody did not see it as well as he. On a
sudden he would cry, ‘There it is; now it comes this way.’ Then,
’Tis turned back’; till at length he persuaded the people into so
firm a belief of it, that one fancied he saw it, and another
fancied he saw it; and thus he came every day making a strange
hubbub, considering it was in so narrow a passage, till
Bishopsgate clock struck eleven, and then the ghost would seem to
start, and, as if he were called away, disappeared on a sudden.

I looked earnestly every way, and at the very moment that this
man directed, but could not see the least appearance of anything;
but so positive was this poor man, that he gave the people the
vapours in abundance, and sent them away trembling and frighted,
till at length few people that knew of it cared to go through
that passage, and hardly anybody by night on any account
whatever.