Chapter III: Part 3

He came down again upon this, and acquainted his fellow, who went
up also; and finding it just so, they resolved to acquaint either
the Lord Mayor or some other magistrate of it, but did not offer
to go in at the window. The magistrate, it seems, upon the
information of the two men, ordered the house to be broke open, a
constable and other persons being appointed to be present, that
nothing might be plundered; and accordingly it was so done, when
nobody was found in the house but that young woman, who having
been infected and past recovery, the rest had left her to die by
herself, and were every one gone, having found some way to delude
the watchman, and to get open the door, or get out at some
back-door, or over the tops of the houses, so that he knew
nothing of it; and as to those cries and shrieks which he heard,
it was supposed they were the passionate cries of the family at
the bitter parting, which, to be sure, it was to them all, this
being the sister to the mistress of the family. The man of the
house, his wife, several children, and servants, being all gone
and fled, whether sick or sound, that I could never learn; nor,
indeed, did I make much inquiry after it.

Many such escapes were made out of infected houses, as
particularly when the watchman was sent of some errand; for it
was his business to go of any errand that the family sent him of;
that is to say, for necessaries, such as food and physic; to
fetch physicians, if they would come, or surgeons, or nurses, or
to order the dead-cart, and the like; but with this condition,
too, that when he went he was to lock up the outer door of the
house and take the key away with him, To evade this, and cheat
the watchmen, people got two or three keys made to their locks,
or they found ways to unscrew the locks such as were screwed on,
and so take off the lock, being in the inside of the house, and
while they sent away the watchman to the market, to the
bakehouse, or for one trifle or another, open the door and go out
as often as they pleased. But this being found out, the officers
afterwards had orders to padlock up the doors on the outside, and
place bolts on them as they thought fit.

At another house, as I was informed, in the street next within
Aldgate, a whole family was shut up and locked in because the
maid-servant was taken sick. The master of the house had
complained by his friends to the next alderman and to the Lord
Mayor, and had consented to have the maid carried to the
pest-house, but was refused; so the door was marked with a red
cross, a padlock on the outside, as above, and a watchman set to
keep the door, according to public order.

After the master of the house found there was no remedy, but that
he, his wife, and his children were to be locked up with this
poor distempered servant, he called to the watchman, and told him
he must go then and fetch a nurse for them to attend this poor
girl, for that it would be certain death to them all to oblige
them to nurse her; and told him plainly that if he would not do
this, the maid must perish either of the distemper or be starved
for want of food, for he was resolved none of his family should
go near her; and she lay in the garret four storey high, where
she could not cry out, or call to anybody for help.

The watchman consented to that, and went and fetched a nurse, as
he was appointed, and brought her to them the same evening.
During this interval the master of the house took his opportunity
to break a large hole through his shop into a bulk or stall,
where formerly a cobbler had sat, before or under his
shop-window; but the tenant, as may be supposed at such a dismal
time as that, was dead or removed, and so he had the key in his
own keeping. Having made his way into this stall, which he could
not have done if the man had been at the door, the noise he was
obliged to make being such as would have alarmed the watchman; I
say, having made his way into this stall, he sat still till the
watchman returned with the nurse, and all the next day also. But
the night following, having contrived to send the watchman of
another trifling errand, which, as I take it, was to an
apothecary’s for a plaister for the maid, which he was to stay
for the making up, or some other such errand that might secure
his staying some time; in that time he conveyed himself and all
his family out of the house, and left the nurse and the watchman
to bury the poor wench—that is, throw her into the cart—and take
care of the house.

I could give a great many such stories as these, diverting
enough, which in the long course of that dismal year I met
with—that is, heard of—and which are very certain to be true, or
very near the truth; that is to say, true in the general: for no
man could at such a time learn all the particulars. There was
likewise violence used with the watchmen, as was reported, in
abundance of places; and I believe that from the beginning of the
visitation to the end, there was not less than eighteen or twenty
of them killed, or so wounded as to be taken up for dead, which
was supposed to be done by the people in the infected houses
which were shut up, and where they attempted to come out and were
opposed.

Nor, indeed, could less be expected, for here were so many
prisons in the town as there were houses shut up; and as the
people shut up or imprisoned so were guilty of no crime, only
shut up because miserable, it was really the more intolerable to
them.

It had also this difference, that every prison, as we may call
it, had but one jailer, and as he had the whole house to guard,
and that many houses were so situated as that they had several
ways out, some more, some less, and some into several streets, it
was impossible for one man so to guard all the passages as to
prevent the escape of people made desperate by the fright of
their circumstances, by the resentment of their usage, or by the
raging of the distemper itself; so that they would talk to the
watchman on one side of the house, while the family made their
escape at another.

For example, in Coleman Street there are abundance of alleys, as
appears still. A house was shut up in that they call White’s
Alley; and this house had a back-window, not a door, into a court
which had a passage into Bell Alley. A watchman was set by the
constable at the door of this house, and there he stood, or his
comrade, night and day, while the family went all away in the
evening out at that window into the court, and left the poor
fellows warding and watching for near a fortnight.

Not far from the same place they blew up a watchman with
gunpowder, and burned the poor fellow dreadfully; and while he
made hideous cries, and nobody would venture to come near to help
him, the whole family that were able to stir got out at the
windows one storey high, two that were left sick calling out for
help. Care was taken to give them nurses to look after them, but
the persons fled were never found, till after the plague was
abated they returned; but as nothing could be proved, so nothing
could be done to them.

It is to be considered, too, that as these were prisons without
bars and bolts, which our common prisons are furnished with, so
the people let themselves down out of their windows, even in the
face of the watchman, bringing swords or pistols in their hands,
and threatening the poor wretch to shoot him if he stirred or
called for help.

In other cases, some had gardens, and walls or pales, between
them and their neighbours, or yards and back-houses; and these,
by friendship and entreaties, would get leave to get over those
walls or pales, and so go out at their neighbours’ doors; or, by
giving money to their servants, get them to let them through in
the night; so that in short, the shutting up of houses was in no
wise to be depended upon. Neither did it answer the end at all,
serving more to make the people desperate, and drive them to such
extremities as that they would break out at all adventures.

And that which was still worse, those that did thus break out
spread the infection farther by their wandering about with the
distemper upon them, in their desperate circumstances, than they
would otherwise have done; for whoever considers all the
particulars in such cases must acknowledge, and we cannot doubt
but the severity of those confinements made many people
desperate, and made them run out of their houses at all hazards,
and with the plague visibly upon them, not knowing either whither
to go or what to do, or, indeed, what they did; and many that did
so were driven to dreadful exigencies and extremities, and
perished in the streets or fields for mere want, or dropped down
by the raging violence of the fever upon them. Others wandered
into the country, and went forward any way, as their desperation
guided them, not knowing whither they went or would go: till,
faint and tired, and not getting any relief, the houses and
villages on the road refusing to admit them to lodge whether
infected or no, they have perished by the roadside or gotten into
barns and died there, none daring to come to them or relieve
them, though perhaps not infected, for nobody would believe them.

On the other hand, when the plague at first seized a family that
is to say, when any body of the family had gone out and unwarily
or otherwise catched the distemper and brought it home—it was
certainly known by the family before it was known to the
officers, who, as you will see by the order, were appointed to
examine into the circumstances of all sick persons when they
heard of their being sick.

In this interval, between their being taken sick and the
examiners coming, the master of the house had leisure and liberty
to remove himself or all his family, if he knew whither to go,
and many did so. But the great disaster was that many did thus
after they were really infected themselves, and so carried the
disease into the houses of those who were so hospitable as to
receive them; which, it must be confessed, was very cruel and
ungrateful.

And this was in part the reason of the general notion, or scandal
rather, which went about of the temper of people infected:
namely, that they did not take the least care or make any scruple
of infecting others, though I cannot say but there might be some
truth in it too, but not so general as was reported. What natural
reason could be given for so wicked a thing at a time when they
might conclude themselves just going to appear at the bar of
Divine justice I know not. I am very well satisfied that it
cannot be reconciled to religion and principle any more than it
can be to generosity and Humanity, but I may speak of that again.

I am speaking now of people made desperate by the apprehensions
of their being shut up, and their breaking out by stratagem or
force, either before or after they were shut up, whose misery was
not lessened when they were out, but sadly increased. On the
other hand, many that thus got away had retreats to go to and
other houses, where they locked themselves up and kept hid till
the plague was over; and many families, foreseeing the approach
of the distemper, laid up stores of provisions sufficient for
their whole families, and shut themselves up, and that so
entirely that they were neither seen or heard of till the
infection was quite ceased, and then came abroad sound and well.
I might recollect several such as these, and give you the
particulars of their management; for doubtless it was the most
effectual secure step that could be taken for such whose
circumstances would not admit them to remove, or who had not
retreats abroad proper for the case; for in being thus shut up
they were as if they had been a hundred miles off. Nor do I
remember that any one of those families miscarried. Among these,
several Dutch merchants were particularly remarkable, who kept
their houses like little garrisons besieged suffering none to go
in or out or come near them, particularly one in a court in
Throgmorton Street whose house looked into Draper’s Garden.

But I come back to the case of families infected and shut up by
the magistrates. The misery of those families is not to be
expressed; and it was generally in such houses that we heard the
most dismal shrieks and outcries of the poor people, terrified
and even frighted to death by the sight of the condition of their
dearest relations, and by the terror of being imprisoned as they
were.

I remember, and while I am writing this story I think I hear the
very sound of it, a certain lady had an only daughter, a young
maiden about nineteen years old, and who was possessed of a very
considerable fortune. They were only lodgers in the house where
they were. The young woman, her mother, and the maid had been
abroad on some occasion, I do not remember what, for the house
was not shut up; but about two hours after they came home the
young lady complained she was not well; in a quarter of an hour
more she vomited and had a violent pain in her head. ‘Pray God’,
says her mother, in a terrible fright, ‘my child has not the
distemper!’ The pain in her head increasing, her mother ordered
the bed to be warmed, and resolved to put her to bed, and
prepared to give her things to sweat, which was the ordinary
remedy to be taken when the first apprehensions of the distemper
began.

While the bed was airing the mother undressed the young woman,
and just as she was laid down in the bed, she, looking upon her
body with a candle, immediately discovered the fatal tokens on
the inside of her thighs. Her mother, not being able to contain
herself, threw down her candle and shrieked out in such a
frightful manner that it was enough to place horror upon the
stoutest heart in the world; nor was it one scream or one cry,
but the fright having seized her spirits, she—fainted first, then
recovered, then ran all over the house, up the stairs and down
the stairs, like one distracted, and indeed really was
distracted, and continued screeching and crying out for several
hours void of all sense, or at least government of her senses,
and, as I was told, never came thoroughly to herself again. As to
the young maiden, she was a dead corpse from that moment, for the
gangrene which occasions the spots had spread [over] her whole
body, and she died in less than two hours. But still the mother
continued crying out, not knowing anything more of her child,
several hours after she was dead. It is so long ago that I am not
certain, but I think the mother never recovered, but died in two
or three weeks after.

This was an extraordinary case, and I am therefore the more
particular in it, because I came so much to the knowledge of it;
but there were innumerable such-like cases, and it was seldom
that the weekly bill came in but there were two or three put in,
‘frighted’; that is, that may well be called frighted to death.
But besides those who were so frighted as to die upon the spot,
there were great numbers frighted to other extremes, some
frighted out of their senses, some out of their memory, and some
out of their understanding. But I return to the shutting up of
houses.

As several people, I say, got out of their houses by stratagem
after they were shut up, so others got out by bribing the
watchmen, and giving them money to let them go privately out in
the night. I must confess I thought it at that time the most
innocent corruption or bribery that any man could be guilty of,
and therefore could not but pity the poor men, and think it was
hard when three of those watchmen were publicly whipped through
the streets for suffering people to go out of houses shut up.

But notwithstanding that severity, money prevailed with the poor
men, and many families found means to make sallies out, and
escape that way after they had been shut up; but these were
generally such as had some places to retire to; and though there
was no easy passing the roads any whither after the 1st of
August, yet there were many ways of retreat, and particularly, as
I hinted, some got tents and set them up in the fields, carrying
beds or straw to lie on, and provisions to eat, and so lived in
them as hermits in a cell, for nobody would venture to come near
them; and several stories were told of such, some comical, some
tragical, some who lived like wandering pilgrims in the deserts,
and escaped by making themselves exiles in such a manner as is
scarce to be credited, and who yet enjoyed more liberty than was
to be expected in such cases.

I have by me a story of two brothers and their kinsman, who being
single men, but that had stayed in the city too long to get away,
and indeed not knowing where to go to have any retreat, nor
having wherewith to travel far, took a course for their own
preservation, which though in itself at first desperate, yet was
so natural that it may be wondered that no more did so at that
time. They were but of mean condition, and yet not so very poor
as that they could not furnish themselves with some little
conveniences such as might serve to keep life and soul together;
and finding the distemper increasing in a terrible manner, they
resolved to shift as well as they could, and to be gone.

One of them had been a soldier in the late wars, and before that
in the Low Countries, and having been bred to no particular
employment but his arms, and besides being wounded, and not able
to work very hard, had for some time been employed at a baker’s
of sea-biscuit in Wapping.

The brother of this man was a seaman too, but somehow or other
had been hurt of one leg, that he could not go to sea, but had
worked for his living at a sailmaker’s in Wapping, or
thereabouts; and being a good husband, had laid up some money,
and was the richest of the three.

The third man was a joiner or carpenter by trade, a handy fellow,
and he had no wealth but his box or basket of tools, with the
help of which he could at any time get his living, such a time as
this excepted, wherever he went—and he lived near Shadwell.

They all lived in Stepney parish, which, as I have said, being
the last that was infected, or at least violently, they stayed
there till they evidently saw the plague was abating at the west
part of the town, and coming towards the east, where they lived.

The story of those three men, if the reader will be content to
have me give it in their own persons, without taking upon me to
either vouch the particulars or answer for any mistakes, I shall
give as distinctly as I can, believing the history will be a very
good pattern for any poor man to follow, in case the like public
desolation should happen here; and if there may be no such
occasion, which God of His infinite mercy grant us, still the
story may have its uses so many ways as that it will, I hope,
never be said that the relating has been unprofitable.

I say all this previous to the history, having yet, for the
present, much more to say before I quit my own part.

I went all the first part of the time freely about the streets,
though not so freely as to run myself into apparent danger,
except when they dug the great pit in the churchyard of our
parish of Aldgate. A terrible pit it was, and I could not resist
my curiosity to go and see it. As near as I may judge, it was
about forty feet in length, and about fifteen or sixteen feet
broad, and at the time I first looked at it, about nine feet
deep; but it was said they dug it near twenty feet deep
afterwards in one part of it, till they could go no deeper for
the water; for they had, it seems, dug several large pits before
this. For though the plague was long a-coming to our parish, yet,
when it did come, there was no parish in or about London where it
raged with such violence as in the two parishes of Aldgate and
Whitechappel.

I say they had dug several pits in another ground, when the
distemper began to spread in our parish, and especially when the
dead-carts began to go about, which was not, in our parish, till
the beginning of August. Into these pits they had put perhaps
fifty or sixty bodies each; then they made larger holes wherein
they buried all that the cart brought in a week, which, by the
middle to the end of August, came to from 200 to 400 a week; and
they could not well dig them larger, because of the order of the
magistrates confining them to leave no bodies within six feet of
the surface; and the water coming on at about seventeen or
eighteen feet, they could not well, I say, put more in one pit.
But now, at the beginning of September, the plague raging in a
dreadful manner, and the number of burials in our parish
increasing to more than was ever buried in any parish about
London of no larger extent, they ordered this dreadful gulf to be
dug—for such it was, rather than a pit.

They had supposed this pit would have supplied them for a month
or more when they dug it, and some blamed the churchwardens for
suffering such a frightful thing, telling them they were making
preparations to bury the whole parish, and the like; but time
made it appear the churchwardens knew the condition of the parish
better than they did: for, the pit being finished the 4th of
September, I think, they began to bury in it the 6th, and by the
20th, which was just two weeks, they had thrown into it 1114
bodies when they were obliged to fill it up, the bodies being
then come to lie within six feet of the surface. I doubt not but
there may be some ancient persons alive in the parish who can
justify the fact of this, and are able to show even in what place
of the churchyard the pit lay better than I can. The mark of it
also was many years to be seen in the churchyard on the surface,
lying in length parallel with the passage which goes by the west
wall of the churchyard out of Houndsditch, and turns east again
into Whitechappel, coming out near the Three Nuns’ Inn.

It was about the 10th of September that my curiosity led, or
rather drove, me to go and see this pit again, when there had
been near 400 people buried in it; and I was not content to see
it in the day-time, as I had done before, for then there would
have been nothing to have been seen but the loose earth; for all
the bodies that were thrown in were immediately covered with
earth by those they called the buriers, which at other times were
called bearers; but I resolved to go in the night and see some of
them thrown in.

There was a strict order to prevent people coming to those pits,
and that was only to prevent infection. But after some time that
order was more necessary, for people that were infected and near
their end, and delirious also, would run to those pits, wrapt in
blankets or rugs, and throw themselves in, and, as they said,
bury themselves. I cannot say that the officers suffered any
willingly to lie there; but I have heard that in a great pit in
Finsbury, in the parish of Cripplegate, it lying open then to the
fields, for it was not then walled about, [many] came and threw
themselves in, and expired there, before they threw any earth
upon them; and that when they came to bury others and found them
there, they were quite dead, though not cold.

This may serve a little to describe the dreadful condition of
that day, though it is impossible to say anything that is able to
give a true idea of it to those who did not see it, other than
this, that it was indeed very, very, very dreadful, and such as
no tongue can express.

I got admittance into the churchyard by being acquainted with the
sexton who attended; who, though he did not refuse me at all, yet
earnestly persuaded me not to go, telling me very seriously (for
he was a good, religious, and sensible man) that it was indeed
their business and duty to venture, and to run all hazards, and
that in it they might hope to be preserved; but that I had no
apparent call to it but my own curiosity, which, he said, he
believed I would not pretend was sufficient to justify my running
that hazard. I told him I had been pressed in my mind to go, and
that perhaps it might be an instructing sight, that might not be
without its uses. ‘Nay,’ says the good man, ‘if you will venture
upon that score, name of God go in; for, depend upon it, ’twill
be a sermon to you, it may be, the best that ever you heard in
your life. ’Tis a speaking sight,’ says he, ‘and has a voice with
it, and a loud one, to call us all to repentance’; and with that
he opened the door and said, ‘Go, if you will.’

His discourse had shocked my resolution a little, and I stood
wavering for a good while, but just at that interval I saw two
links come over from the end of the Minories, and heard the
bellman, and then appeared a dead-cart, as they called it, coming
over the streets; so I could no longer resist my desire of seeing
it, and went in. There was nobody, as I could perceive at first,
in the churchyard, or going into it, but the buriers and the
fellow that drove the cart, or rather led the horse and cart; but
when they came up to the pit they saw a man go to and again,
muffled up in a brown Cloak, and making motions with his hands
under his cloak, as if he was in great agony, and the buriers
immediately gathered about him, supposing he was one of those
poor delirious or desperate creatures that used to pretend, as I
have said, to bury themselves. He said nothing as he walked
about, but two or three times groaned very deeply and loud, and
sighed as he would break his heart.

When the buriers came up to him they soon found he was neither a
person infected and desperate, as I have observed above, or a
person distempered—in mind, but one oppressed with a dreadful
weight of grief indeed, having his wife and several of his
children all in the cart that was just come in with him, and he
followed in an agony and excess of sorrow. He mourned heartily,
as it was easy to see, but with a kind of masculine grief that
could not give itself vent by tears; and calmly defying the
buriers to let him alone, said he would only see the bodies
thrown in and go away, so they left importuning him. But no
sooner was the cart turned round and the bodies shot into the pit
promiscuously, which was a surprise to him, for he at least
expected they would have been decently laid in, though indeed he
was afterwards convinced that was impracticable; I say, no sooner
did he see the sight but he cried out aloud, unable to contain
himself. I could not hear what he said, but he went backward two
or three steps and fell down in a swoon. The buriers ran to him
and took him up, and in a little while he came to himself, and
they led him away to the Pie Tavern over against the end of
Houndsditch, where, it seems, the man was known, and where they
took care of him. He looked into the pit again as he went away,
but the buriers had covered the bodies so immediately with
throwing in earth, that though there was light enough, for there
were lanterns, and candles in them, placed all night round the
sides of the pit, upon heaps of earth, seven or eight, or perhaps
more, yet nothing could be seen.

This was a mournful scene indeed, and affected me almost as much
as the rest; but the other was awful and full of terror. The cart
had in it sixteen or seventeen bodies; some were wrapt up in
linen sheets, some in rags, some little other than naked, or so
loose that what covering they had fell from them in the shooting
out of the cart, and they fell quite naked among the rest; but
the matter was not much to them, or the indecency much to any one
else, seeing they were all dead, and were to be huddled together
into the common grave of mankind, as we may call it, for here was
no difference made, but poor and rich went together; there was no
other way of burials, neither was it possible there should, for
coffins were not to be had for the prodigious numbers that fell
in such a calamity as this.

It was reported by way of scandal upon the buriers, that if any
corpse was delivered to them decently wound up, as we called it
then, in a winding-sheet tied over the head and feet, which some
did, and which was generally of good linen; I say, it was
reported that the buriers were so wicked as to strip them in the
cart and carry them quite naked to the ground. But as I cannot
easily credit anything so vile among Christians, and at a time so
filled with terrors as that was, I can only relate it and leave
it undetermined.

Innumerable stories also went about of the cruel behaviours and
practices of nurses who tended the sick, and of their hastening
on the fate of those they tended in their sickness. But I shall
say more of this in its place.

I was indeed shocked with this sight; it almost overwhelmed me,
and I went away with my heart most afflicted, and full of the
afflicting thoughts, such as I cannot describe just at my going
out of the church, and turning up the street towards my own
house, I saw another cart with links, and a bellman going before,
coming out of Harrow Alley in the Butcher Row, on the other side
of the way, and being, as I perceived, very full of dead bodies,
it went directly over the street also toward the church. I stood
a while, but I had no stomach to go back again to see the same
dismal scene over again, so I went directly home, where I could
not but consider with thankfulness the risk I had run, believing
I had gotten no injury, as indeed I had not.

Here the poor unhappy gentleman’s grief came into my head again,
and indeed I could not but shed tears in the reflection upon it,
perhaps more than he did himself; but his case lay so heavy upon
my mind that I could not prevail with myself, but that I must go
out again into the street, and go to the Pie Tavern, resolving to
inquire what became of him.

It was by this time one o’clock in the morning, and yet the poor
gentleman was there. The truth was, the people of the house,
knowing him, had entertained him, and kept him there all the
night, notwithstanding the danger of being infected by him,
though it appeared the man was perfectly sound himself.

It is with regret that I take notice of this tavern. The people
were civil, mannerly, and an obliging sort of folks enough, and
had till this time kept their house open and their trade going
on, though not so very publicly as formerly: but there was a
dreadful set of fellows that used their house, and who, in the
middle of all this horror, met there every night, behaved with
all the revelling and roaring extravagances as is usual for such
people to do at other times, and, indeed, to such an offensive
degree that the very master and mistress of the house grew first
ashamed and then terrified at them.

They sat generally in a room next the street, and as they always
kept late hours, so when the dead-cart came across the street-end
to go into Houndsditch, which was in view of the tavern windows,
they would frequently open the windows as soon as they heard the
bell and look out at them; and as they might often hear sad
lamentations of people in the streets or at their windows as the
carts went along, they would make their impudent mocks and jeers
at them, especially if they heard the poor people call upon God
to have mercy upon them, as many would do at those times in their
ordinary passing along the streets.

These gentlemen, being something disturbed with the clutter of
bringing the poor gentleman into the house, as above, were first
angry and very high with the master of the house for suffering
such a fellow, as they called him, to be brought out of the grave
into their house; but being answered that the man was a
neighbour, and that he was sound, but overwhelmed with the
calamity of his family, and the like, they turned their anger
into ridiculing the man and his sorrow for his wife and children,
taunted him with want of courage to leap into the great pit and
go to heaven, as they jeeringly expressed it, along with them,
adding some very profane and even blasphemous expressions.

They were at this vile work when I came back to the house, and,
as far as I could see, though the man sat still, mute and
disconsolate, and their affronts could not divert his sorrow, yet
he was both grieved and offended at their discourse. Upon this I
gently reproved them, being well enough acquainted with their
characters, and not unknown in person to two of them.

They immediately fell upon me with ill language and oaths, asked
me what I did out of my grave at such a time when so many
honester men were carried into the churchyard, and why I was not
at home saying my prayers against the dead-cart came for me, and
the like.

I was indeed astonished at the impudence of the men, though not
at all discomposed at their treatment of me. However, I kept my
temper. I told them that though I defied them or any man in the
world to tax me with any dishonesty, yet I acknowledged that in
this terrible judgement of God many better than I were swept away
and carried to their grave. But to answer their question
directly, the case was, that I was mercifully preserved by that
great God whose name they had blasphemed and taken in vain by
cursing and swearing in a dreadful manner, and that I believed I
was preserved in particular, among other ends of His goodness,
that I might reprove them for their audacious boldness in
behaving in such a manner and in such an awful time as this was,
especially for their jeering and mocking at an honest gentleman
and a neighbour (for some of them knew him), who, they saw, was
overwhelmed with sorrow for the breaches which it had pleased God
to make upon his family.

I cannot call exactly to mind the hellish, abominable raillery
which was the return they made to that talk of mine: being
provoked, it seems, that I was not at all afraid to be free with
them; nor, if I could remember, would I fill my account with any
of the words, the horrid oaths, curses, and vile expressions,
such as, at that time of the day, even the worst and ordinariest
people in the street would not use; for, except such hardened
creatures as these, the most wicked wretches that could be found
had at that time some terror upon their minds of the hand of that
Power which could thus in a moment destroy them.

But that which was the worst in all their devilish language was,
that they were not afraid to blaspheme God and talk
atheistically, making a jest of my calling the plague the hand of
God; mocking, and even laughing, at the word judgement, as if the
providence of God had no concern in the inflicting such a
desolating stroke; and that the people calling upon God as they
saw the carts carrying away the dead bodies was all enthusiastic,
absurd, and impertinent.

I made them some reply, such as I thought proper, but which I
found was so far from putting a check to their horrid way of
speaking that it made them rail the more, so that I confess it
filled me with horror and a kind of rage, and I came away, as I
told them, lest the hand of that judgement which had visited the
whole city should glorify His vengeance upon them, and all that
were near them.

They received all reproof with the utmost contempt, and made the
greatest mockery that was possible for them to do at me, giving
me all the opprobrious, insolent scoffs that they could think of
for preaching to them, as they called it, which indeed grieved
me, rather than angered me; and I went away, blessing God,
however, in my mind that I had not spared them, though they had
insulted me so much.

They continued this wretched course three or four days after
this, continually mocking and jeering at all that showed
themselves religious or serious, or that were any way touched
with the sense of the terrible judgement of God upon us; and I
was informed they flouted in the same manner at the good people
who, notwithstanding the contagion, met at the church, fasted,
and prayed to God to remove His hand from them.

I say, they continued this dreadful course three or four days—I
think it was no more—when one of them, particularly he who asked
the poor gentleman what he did out of his grave, was struck from
Heaven with the plague, and died in a most deplorable manner;
and, in a word, they were every one of them carried into the
great pit which I have mentioned above, before it was quite
filled up, which was not above a fortnight or thereabout.

These men were guilty of many extravagances, such as one would
think human nature should have trembled at the thoughts of at
such a time of general terror as was then upon us, and
particularly scoffing and mocking at everything which they
happened to see that was religious among the people, especially
at their thronging zealously to the place of public worship to
implore mercy from Heaven in such a time of distress; and this
tavern where they held their dub being within view of the
church-door, they had the more particular occasion for their
atheistical profane mirth.

But this began to abate a little with them before the accident
which I have related happened, for the infection increased so
violently at this part of the town now, that people began to be
afraid to come to the church; at least such numbers did not
resort thither as was usual. Many of the clergymen likewise were
dead, and others gone into the country; for it really required a
steady courage and a strong faith for a man not only to venture
being in town at such a time as this, but likewise to venture to
come to church and perform the office of a minister to a
congregation, of whom he had reason to believe many of them were
actually infected with the plague, and to do this every day, or
twice a day, as in some places was done.

It is true the people showed an extraordinary zeal in these
religious exercises, and as the church-doors were always open,
people would go in single at all times, whether the minister was
officiating or no, and locking themselves into separate pews,
would be praying to God with great fervency and devotion.

Others assembled at meeting-houses, every one as their different
opinions in such things guided, but all were promiscuously the
subject of these men’s drollery, especially at the beginning of
the visitation.

It seems they had been checked for their open insulting religion
in this manner by several good people of every persuasion, and
that, and the violent raging of the infection, I suppose, was the
occasion that they had abated much of their rudeness for some
time before, and were only roused by the spirit of ribaldry and
atheism at the clamour which was made when the gentleman was
first brought in there, and perhaps were agitated by the same
devil, when I took upon me to reprove them; though I did it at
first with all the calmness, temper, and good manners that I
could, which for a while they insulted me the more for thinking
it had been in fear of their resentment, though afterwards they
found the contrary.

I went home, indeed, grieved and afflicted in my mind at the
abominable wickedness of those men, not doubting, however, that
they would be made dreadful examples of God’s justice; for I
looked upon this dismal time to be a particular season of Divine
vengeance, and that God would on this occasion single out the
proper objects of His displeasure in a more especial and
remarkable manner than at another time; and that though I did
believe that many good people would, and did, fall in the common
calamity, and that it was no certain rule to judge of the eternal
state of any one by their being distinguished in such a time of
general destruction neither one way or other; yet, I say, it
could not but seem reasonable to believe that God would not think
fit to spare by His mercy such open declared enemies, that should
insult His name and Being, defy His vengeance, and mock at His
worship and worshippers at such a time; no, not though His mercy
had thought fit to bear with and spare them at other times; that
this was a day of visitation, a day of God’s anger, and those
words came into my thought, Jer. v. 9: ‘Shall I not visit for
these things? saith the Lord: and shall not My soul be avenged of
such a nation as this?’

These things, I say, lay upon my mind, and I went home very much
grieved and oppressed with the horror of these men’s wickedness,
and to think that anything could be so vile, so hardened, and
notoriously wicked as to insult God, and His servants, and His
worship in such a manner, and at such a time as this was, when He
had, as it were, His sword drawn in His hand on purpose to take
vengeance not on them only, but on the whole nation.

I had, indeed, been in some passion at first with them—though it
was really raised, not by any affront they had offered me
personally, but by the horror their blaspheming tongues filled me
with. However, I was doubtful in my thoughts whether the
resentment I retained was not all upon my own private account,
for they had given me a great deal of ill language too—I mean
personally; but after some pause, and having a weight of grief
upon my mind, I retired myself as soon as I came home, for I
slept not that night; and giving God most humble thanks for my
preservation in the eminent danger I had been in, I set my mind
seriously and with the utmost earnestness to pray for those
desperate wretches, that God would pardon them, open their eyes,
and effectually humble them.

By this I not only did my duty, namely, to pray for those who
despitefully used me, but I fully tried my own heart, to my full
satisfaction, that it was not filled with any spirit of
resentment as they had offended me in particular; and I humbly
recommend the method to all those that would know, or be certain,
how to distinguish between their zeal for the honour of God and
the effects of their private passions and resentment.

But I must go back here to the particular incidents which occur
to my thoughts of the time of the visitation, and particularly to
the time of their shutting up houses in the first part of their
sickness; for before the sickness was come to its height people
had more room to make their observations than they had afterward;
but when it was in the extremity there was no such thing as
communication with one another, as before.

During the shutting up of houses, as I have said, some violence
was offered to the watchmen. As to soldiers, there were none to
be found. The few guards which the king then had, which were
nothing like the number entertained since, were dispersed, either
at Oxford with the Court, or in quarters in the remoter parts of
the country, small detachments excepted, who did duty at the
Tower and at Whitehall, and these but very few. Neither am I
positive that there was any other guard at the Tower than the
warders, as they called them, who stand at the gate with gowns
and caps, the same as the yeomen of the guard, except the
ordinary gunners, who were twenty-four, and the officers
appointed to look after the magazine, who were called armourers.
As to trained bands, there was no possibility of raising any;
neither, if the Lieutenancy, either of London or Middlesex, had
ordered the drums to beat for the militia, would any of the
companies, I believe, have drawn together, whatever risk they had
run.

This made the watchmen be the less regarded, and perhaps
occasioned the greater violence to be used against them. I
mention it on this score to observe that the setting watchmen
thus to keep the people in was, first of all, not effectual, but
that the people broke out, whether by force or by stratagem, even
almost as often as they pleased; and, second, that those that did
thus break out were generally people infected who, in their
desperation, running about from one place to another, valued not
whom they injured: and which perhaps, as I have said, might give
birth to report that it was natural to the infected people to
desire to infect others, which report was really false.

And I know it so well, and in so many several cases, that I could
give several relations of good, pious, and religious people who,
when they have had the distemper, have been so far from being
forward to infect others that they have forbid their own family
to come near them, in hopes of their being preserved, and have
even died without seeing their nearest relations lest they should
be instrumental to give them the distemper, and infect or
endanger them. If, then, there were cases wherein the infected
people were careless of the injury they did to others, this was
certainly one of them, if not the chief, namely, when people who
had the distemper had broken out from houses which were so shut
up, and having been driven to extremities for provision or for
entertainment, had endeavoured to conceal their condition, and
have been thereby instrumental involuntarily to infect others who
have been ignorant and unwary.

This is one of the reasons why I believed then, and do believe
still, that the shutting up houses thus by force, and
restraining, or rather imprisoning, people in their own houses,
as I said above, was of little or no service in the whole. Nay, I
am of opinion it was rather hurtful, having forced those
desperate people to wander abroad with the plague upon them, who
would otherwise have died quietly in their beds.

I remember one citizen who, having thus broken out of his house
in Aldersgate Street or thereabout, went along the road to
Islington; he attempted to have gone in at the Angel Inn, and
after that the White Horse, two inns known still by the same
signs, but was refused; after which he came to the Pied Bull, an
inn also still continuing the same sign. He asked them for
lodging for one night only, pretending to be going into
Lincolnshire, and assuring them of his being very sound and free
from the infection, which also at that time had not reached much
that way.

They told him they had no lodging that they could spare but one
bed up in the garret, and that they could spare that bed for one
night, some drovers being expected the next day with cattle; so,
if he would accept of that lodging, he might have it, which he
did. So a servant was sent up with a candle with him to show him
the room. He was very well dressed, and looked like a person not
used to lie in a garret; and when he came to the room he fetched
a deep sigh, and said to the servant, ‘I have seldom lain in such
a lodging as this. ‘However, the servant assuring him again that
they had no better, ‘Well,’ says he, ‘I must make shift; this is
a dreadful time; but it is but for one night.’ So he sat down
upon the bedside, and bade the maid, I think it was, fetch him up
a pint of warm ale. Accordingly the servant went for the ale, but
some hurry in the house, which perhaps employed her other ways,
put it out of her head, and she went up no more to him.

The next morning, seeing no appearance of the gentleman, somebody
in the house asked the servant that had showed him upstairs what
was become of him. She started. ‘Alas I,’ says she, ‘I never
thought more of him. He bade me carry him some warm ale, but I
forgot.’ Upon which, not the maid, but some other person was sent
up to see after him, who, coming into the room, found him stark
dead and almost cold, stretched out across the bed. His clothes
were pulled off, his jaw fallen, his eyes open in a most
frightful posture, the rug of the bed being grasped hard in one
of his hands, so that it was plain he died soon after the maid
left him; and ’tis probable, had she gone up with the ale, she
had found him dead in a few minutes after he sat down upon the
bed. The alarm was great in the house, as anyone may suppose,
they having been free from the distemper till that disaster,
which, bringing the infection to the house, spread it immediately
to other houses round about it. I do not remember how many died
in the house itself, but I think the maid-servant who went up
first with him fell presently ill by the fright, and several
others; for, whereas there died but two in Islington of the
plague the week before, there died seventeen the week after,
whereof fourteen were of the plague. This was in the week from
the 11th of July to the 18th.