Chapter VII: Part 7

It happened that the next day, or next but one, was market-day at
Epping, when Captain John and one of the other men went to market
and bought some provisions; that is to say, bread, and some
mutton and beef; and two of the women went separately, as if they
had not belonged to the rest, and bought more. John took the
horse to bring it home, and the sack which the carpenter carried
his tools in, to put it in. The carpenter went to work and made
them benches and stools to sit on, such as the wood he could get
would afford, and a kind of table to dine on.

They were taken no notice of for two or three days, but after
that abundance of people ran out of the town to look at them, and
all the country was alarmed about them. The people at first
seemed afraid to come near them; and, on the other hand, they
desired the people to keep off, for there was a rumour that the
plague was at Waltham, and that it had been in Epping two or
three days; so John called out to them not to come to them,
‘for,’ says he, ‘we are all whole and sound people here, and we
would not have you bring the plague among us, nor pretend we
brought it among you.’

After this the parish officers came up to them and parleyed with
them at a distance, and desired to know who they were, and by
what authority they pretended to fix their stand at that place.
John answered very frankly, they were poor distressed people from
London who, foreseeing the misery they should be reduced to if
plague spread into the city, had fled out in time for their
lives, and, having no acquaintance or relations to fly to, had
first taken up at Islington; but, the plague being come into that
town, were fled farther; and as they supposed that the people of
Epping might have refused them coming into their town, they had
pitched their tents thus in the open field and in the forest,
being willing to bear all the hardships of such a disconsolate
lodging rather than have any one think or be afraid that they
should receive injury by them.

At first the Epping people talked roughly to them, and told them
they must remove; that this was no place for them; and that they
pretended to be sound and well, but that they might be infected
with the plague for aught they knew, and might infect the whole
country, and they could not suffer them there.

John argued very calmly with them a great while, and told them
that London was the place by which they—that is, the townsmen of
Epping and all the country round them—subsisted; to whom they
sold the produce of their lands, and out of whom they made their
rent of their farms; and to be so cruel to the inhabitants of
London, or to any of those by whom they gained so much, was very
hard, and they would be loth to have it remembered hereafter, and
have it told how barbarous, how inhospitable, and how unkind they
were to the people of London when they fled from the face of the
most terrible enemy in the world; that it would be enough to make
the name of an Epping man hateful through all the city, and to
have the rabble stone them in the very streets whenever they came
so much as to market; that they were not yet secure from being
visited themselves, and that, as he heard, Waltham was already;
that they would think it very hard that when any of them fled for
fear before they were touched, they should be denied the liberty
of lying so much as in the open fields.

The Epping men told them again, that they, indeed, said they were
sound and free from the infection, but that they had no assurance
of it; and that it was reported that there had been a great
rabble of people at Walthamstow, who made such pretences of being
sound as they did, but that they threatened to plunder the town
and force their way, whether the parish officers would or no;
that there were near two hundred of them, and had arms and tents
like Low Country soldiers; that they extorted provisions from the
town, by threatening them with living upon them at free quarter,
showing their arms, and talking in the language of soldiers; and
that several of them being gone away toward Rumford and
Brentwood, the country had been infected by them, and the plague
spread into both those large towns, so that the people durst not
go to market there as usual; that it was very likely they were
some of that party; and if so, they deserved to be sent to the
county jail, and be secured till they had made satisfaction for
the damage they had done, and for the terror and fright they had
put the country into.

John answered that what other people had done was nothing to
them; that they assured them they were all of one company; that
they had never been more in number than they saw them at that
time (which, by the way, was very true); that they came out in
two separate companies, but joined by the way, their cases being
the same; that they were ready to give what account of themselves
anybody could desire of them, and to give in their names and
places of abode, that so they might be called to an account for
any disorder that they might be guilty of; that the townsmen
might see they were content to live hardly, and only desired a
little room to breathe in on the forest where it was wholesome;
for where it was not they could not stay, and would decamp if
they found it otherwise there.

‘But,’ said the townsmen, ‘we have a great charge of poor upon
our hands already, and we must take care not to increase it; we
suppose you can give us no security against your being chargeable
to our parish and to the inhabitants, any more than you can of
being dangerous to us as to the infection.’

‘Why, look you,’ says John, ‘as to being chargeable to you, we
hope we shall not. If you will relieve us with provisions for our
present necessity, we will be very thankful; as we all lived
without charity when we were at home, so we will oblige ourselves
fully to repay you, if God pleases to bring us back to our own
families and houses in safety, and to restore health to the
people of London.

‘As to our dying here: we assure you, if any of us die, we that
survive will bury them, and put you to no expense, except it
should be that we should all die; and then, indeed, the last man
not being able to bury himself, would put you to that single
expense which I am persuaded’, says John, ‘he would leave enough
behind him to pay you for the expense of.

‘On the other hand,’ says John, ‘if you shut up all bowels of
compassion, and not relieve us at all, we shall not extort
anything by violence or steal from any one; but when what little
we have is spent, if we perish for want, God’s will be done.’

John wrought so upon the townsmen, by talking thus rationally and
smoothly to them, that they went away; and though they did not
give any consent to their staying there, yet they did not molest
them; and the poor people continued there three or four days
longer without any disturbance. In this time they had got some
remote acquaintance with a victualling-house at the outskirts of
the town, to whom they called at a distance to bring some little
things that they wanted, and which they caused to be set down at
a distance, and always paid for very honestly.

During this time the younger people of the town came frequently
pretty near them, and would stand and look at them, and sometimes
talk with them at some space between; and particularly it was
observed that the first Sabbath-day the poor people kept retired,
worshipped God together, and were heard to sing psalms.

These things, and a quiet, inoffensive behaviour, began to get
them the good opinion of the country, and people began to pity
them and speak very well of them; the consequence of which was,
that upon the occasion of a very wet, rainy night, a certain
gentleman who lived in the neighbourhood sent them a little cart
with twelve trusses or bundles of straw, as well for them to
lodge upon as to cover and thatch their huts and to keep them
dry. The minister of a parish not far off, not knowing of the
other, sent them also about two bushels of wheat and half a
bushel of white peas.

They were very thankful, to be sure, for this relief, and
particularly the straw was a very great comfort to them; for
though the ingenious carpenter had made frames for them to lie in
like troughs, and filled them with leaves of trees, and such
things as they could get, and had cut all their tent-cloth out to
make them coverlids, yet they lay damp and hard and unwholesome
till this straw came, which was to them like feather-beds, and,
as John said, more welcome than feather-beds would have been at
another time.

This gentleman and the minister having thus begun, and given an
example of charity to these wanderers, others quickly followed,
and they received every day some benevolence or other from the
people, but chiefly from the gentlemen who dwelt in the country
round them. Some sent them chairs, stools, tables, and such
household things as they gave notice they wanted; some sent them
blankets, rugs, and coverlids, some earthenware, and some kitchen
ware for ordering their food.

Encouraged by this good usage, their carpenter in a few days
built them a large shed or house with rafters, and a roof in
form, and an upper floor, in which they lodged warm: for the
weather began to be damp and cold in the beginning of September.
But this house, being well thatched, and the sides and roof made
very thick, kept out the cold well enough. He made, also, an
earthen wall at one end with a chimney in it, and another of the
company, with a vast deal of trouble and pains, made a funnel to
the chimney to carry out the smoke.

Here they lived comfortably, though coarsely, till the beginning
of September, when they had the bad news to hear, whether true or
not, that the plague, which was very hot at Waltham Abbey on one
side and at Rumford and Brentwood on the other side, was also
coming to Epping, to Woodford, and to most of the towns upon the
Forest, and which, as they said, was brought down among them
chiefly by the higglers, and such people as went to and from
London with provisions.

If this was true, it was an evident contradiction to that report
which was afterwards spread all over England, but which, as I
have said, I cannot confirm of my own knowledge: namely, that the
market-people carrying provisions to the city never got the
infection or carried it back into the country; both which, I have
been assured, has been false.

It might be that they were preserved even beyond expectation,
though not to a miracle, that abundance went and came and were
not touched; and that was much for the encouragement of the poor
people of London, who had been completely miserable if the people
that brought provisions to the markets had not been many times
wonderfully preserved, or at least more preserved than could be
reasonably expected.

But now these new inmates began to be disturbed more effectually,
for the towns about them were really infected, and they began to
be afraid to trust one another so much as to go abroad for such
things as they wanted, and this pinched them very hard, for now
they had little or nothing but what the charitable gentlemen of
the country supplied them with. But, for their encouragement, it
happened that other gentlemen in the country who had not sent
them anything before, began to hear of them and supply them, and
one sent them a large pig—that is to say, a porker—another two
sheep, and another sent them a calf. In short, they had meat
enough, and sometimes had cheese and milk, and all such things.
They were chiefly put to it for bread, for when the gentlemen
sent them corn they had nowhere to bake it or to grind it. This
made them eat the first two bushel of wheat that was sent them in
parched corn, as the Israelites of old did, without grinding or
making bread of it.

At last they found means to carry their corn to a windmill near
Woodford, where they had it ground, and afterwards the
biscuit-maker made a hearth so hollow and dry that he could bake
biscuit-cakes tolerably well; and thus they came into a condition
to live without any assistance or supplies from the towns; and it
was well they did, for the country was soon after fully infected,
and about 120 were said to have died of the distemper in the
villages near them, which was a terrible thing to them.

On this they called a new council, and now the towns had no need
to be afraid they should settle near them; but, on the contrary,
several families of the poorer sort of the inhabitants quitted
their houses and built huts in the forest after the same manner
as they had done. But it was observed that several of these poor
people that had so removed had the sickness even in their huts or
booths; the reason of which was plain, namely, not because they
removed into the air, but, (1) because they did not remove time
enough; that is to say, not till, by openly conversing with the
other people their neighbours, they had the distemper upon them,
or (as may be said) among them, and so carried it about them
whither they went. Or (2) because they were not careful enough,
after they were safely removed out of the towns, not to come in
again and mingle with the diseased people.

But be it which of these it will, when our travellers began to
perceive that the plague was not only in the towns, but even in
the tents and huts on the forest near them, they began then not
only to be afraid, but to think of decamping and removing; for
had they stayed they would have been in manifest danger of their
lives.

It is not to be wondered that they were greatly afflicted at
being obliged to quit the place where they had been so kindly
received, and where they had been treated with so much humanity
and charity; but necessity and the hazard of life, which they
came out so far to preserve, prevailed with them, and they saw no
remedy. John, however, thought of a remedy for their present
misfortune: namely, that he would first acquaint that gentleman
who was their principal benefactor with the distress they were
in, and to crave his assistance and advice.

The good, charitable gentleman encouraged them to quit the Place
for fear they should be cut off from any retreat at all by the
violence of the distemper; but whither they should go, that he
found very hard to direct them to. At last John asked of him
whether he, being a justice of the peace, would give them
certificates of health to other justices whom they might come
before; that so whatever might be their lot, they might not be
repulsed now they had been also so long from London. This his
worship immediately granted, and gave them proper letters of
health, and from thence they were at liberty to travel whither
they pleased.

Accordingly they had a full certificate of health, intimating
that they had resided in a village in the county of Essex so long
that, being examined and scrutinised sufficiently, and having
been retired from all conversation for above forty days, without
any appearance of sickness, they were therefore certainly
concluded to be sound men, and might be safely entertained
anywhere, having at last removed rather for fear of the plague
which was come into such a town, rather than for having any
signal of infection upon them, or upon any belonging to them.

With this certificate they removed, though with great reluctance;
and John inclining not to go far from home, they moved towards
the marshes on the side of Waltham. But here they found a man
who, it seems, kept a weir or stop upon the river, made to raise
the water for the barges which go up and down the river, and he
terrified them with dismal stories of the sickness having been
spread into all the towns on the river and near the river, on the
side of Middlesex and Hertfordshire; that is to say, into
Waltham, Waltham Cross, Enfield, and Ware, and all the towns on
the road, that they were afraid to go that way; though it seems
the man imposed upon them, for that the thing was not really
true.

However, it terrified them, and they resolved to move across the
forest towards Rumford and Brentwood; but they heard that there
were numbers of people fled out of London that way, who lay up
and down in the forest called Henalt Forest, reaching near
Rumford, and who, having no subsistence or habitation, not only
lived oddly and suffered great extremities in the woods and
fields for want of relief, but were said to be made so desperate
by those extremities as that they offered many violences to the
county, robbed and plundered, and killed cattle, and the like;
that others, building huts and hovels by the roadside, begged,
and that with an importunity next door to demanding relief; so
that the county was very uneasy, and had been obliged to take
some of them up.

This in the first place intimated to them, that they would be
sure to find the charity and kindness of the county, which they
had found here where they were before, hardened and shut up
against them; and that, on the other hand, they would be
questioned wherever they came, and would be in danger of violence
from others in like cases as themselves.

Upon all these considerations John, their captain, in all their
names, went back to their good friend and benefactor, who had
relieved them before, and laying their case truly before him,
humbly asked his advice; and he as kindly advised them to take up
their old quarters again, or if not, to remove but a little
farther out of the road, and directed them to a proper place for
them; and as they really wanted some house rather than huts to
shelter them at that time of the year, it growing on towards
Michaelmas, they found an old decayed house which had been
formerly some cottage or little habitation but was so out of
repair as scarce habitable; and by the consent of a farmer to
whose farm it belonged, they got leave to make what use of it
they could.

The ingenious joiner, and all the rest, by his directions went to
work with it, and in a very few days made it capable to shelter
them all in case of bad weather; and in which there was an old
chimney and old oven, though both lying in ruins; yet they made
them both fit for use, and, raising additions, sheds, and leantos
on every side, they soon made the house capable to hold them all.

They chiefly wanted boards to make window-shutters, floors,
doors, and several other things; but as the gentlemen above
favoured them, and the country was by that means made easy with
them, and above all, that they were known to be all sound and in
good health, everybody helped them with what they could spare.

Here they encamped for good and all, and resolved to remove no
more. They saw plainly how terribly alarmed that county was
everywhere at anybody that came from London, and that they should
have no admittance anywhere but with the utmost difficulty; at
least no friendly reception and assistance as they had received
here.

Now, although they received great assistance and encouragement
from the country gentlemen and from the people round about them,
yet they were put to great straits: for the weather grew cold and
wet in October and November, and they had not been used to so
much hardship; so that they got colds in their limbs, and
distempers, but never had the infection; and thus about December
they came home to the city again.

I give this story thus at large, principally to give an account
what became of the great numbers of people which immediately
appeared in the city as soon as the sickness abated; for, as I
have said, great numbers of those that were able and had retreats
in the country fled to those retreats. So, when it was increased
to such a frightful extremity as I have related, the middling
people who had not friends fled to all parts of the country where
they could get shelter, as well those that had money to relieve
themselves as those that had not. Those that had money always
fled farthest, because they were able to subsist themselves; but
those who were empty suffered, as I have said, great hardships,
and were often driven by necessity to relieve their wants at the
expense of the country. By that means the country was made very
uneasy at them, and sometimes took them up; though even then they
scarce knew what to do with them, and were always very backward
to punish them, but often, too, they forced them from place to
place till they were obliged to come back again to London.

I have, since my knowing this story of John and his brother,
inquired and found that there were a great many of the poor
disconsolate people, as above, fled into the country every way;
and some of them got little sheds and barns and outhouses to live
in, where they could obtain so much kindness of the country, and
especially where they had any the least satisfactory account to
give of themselves, and particularly that they did not come out
of London too late. But others, and that in great numbers, built
themselves little huts and retreats in the fields and woods, and
lived like hermits in holes and caves, or any place they could
find, and where, we may be sure, they suffered great extremities,
such that many of them were obliged to come back again whatever
the danger was; and so those little huts were often found empty,
and the country people supposed the inhabitants lay dead in them
of the plague, and would not go near them for fear—no, not in a
great while; nor is it unlikely but that some of the unhappy
wanderers might die so all alone, even sometimes for want of
help, as particularly in one tent or hut was found a man dead,
and on the gate of a field just by was cut with his knife in
uneven letters the following words, by which it may be supposed
the other man escaped, or that, one dying first, the other buried
him as well as he could:—

O mIsErY!
We BoTH ShaLL DyE,
WoE, WoE.

I have given an account already of what I found to have been the
case down the river among the seafaring men; how the ships lay in
the offing, as it’s called, in rows or lines astern of one
another, quite down from the Pool as far as I could see. I have
been told that they lay in the same manner quite down the river
as low as Gravesend, and some far beyond: even everywhere or in
every place where they could ride with safety as to wind and
weather; nor did I ever hear that the plague reached to any of
the people on board those ships—except such as lay up in the
Pool, or as high as Deptford Reach, although the people went
frequently on shore to the country towns and villages and
farmers’ houses, to buy fresh provisions, fowls, pigs, calves,
and the like for their supply.

Likewise I found that the watermen on the river above the bridge
found means to convey themselves away up the river as far as they
could go, and that they had, many of them, their whole families
in their boats, covered with tilts and bales, as they call them,
and furnished with straw within for their lodging, and that they
lay thus all along by the shore in the marshes, some of them
setting up little tents with their sails, and so lying under them
on shore in the day, and going into their boats at night; and in
this manner, as I have heard, the river-sides were lined with
boats and people as long as they had anything to subsist on, or
could get anything of the country; and indeed the country people,
as well Gentlemen as others, on these and all other occasions,
were very forward to relieve them—but they were by no means
willing to receive them into their towns and houses, and for that
we cannot blame them.

There was one unhappy citizen within my knowledge who had been
visited in a dreadful manner, so that his wife and all his
children were dead, and himself and two servants only left, with
an elderly woman, a near relation, who had nursed those that were
dead as well as she could. This disconsolate man goes to a
village near the town, though not within the bills of mortality,
and finding an empty house there, inquires out the owner, and
took the house. After a few days he got a cart and loaded it with
goods, and carries them down to the house; the people of the
village opposed his driving the cart along; but with some
arguings and some force, the men that drove the cart along got
through the street up to the door of the house. There the
constable resisted them again, and would not let them be brought
in. The man caused the goods to be unloaden and laid at the door,
and sent the cart away; upon which they carried the man before a
justice of peace; that is to say, they commanded him to go, which
he did. The justice ordered him to cause the cart to fetch away
the goods again, which he refused to do; upon which the justice
ordered the constable to pursue the carters and fetch them back,
and make them reload the goods and carry them away, or to set
them in the stocks till they came for further orders; and if they
could not find them, nor the man would not consent to take them
away, they should cause them to be drawn with hooks from the
house-door and burned in the street. The poor distressed man upon
this fetched the goods again, but with grievous cries and
lamentations at the hardship of his case. But there was no
remedy; self-preservation obliged the people to those severities
which they would not otherwise have been concerned in. Whether
this poor man lived or died I cannot tell, but it was reported
that he had the plague upon him at that time; and perhaps the
people might report that to justify their usage of him; but it
was not unlikely that either he or his goods, or both, were
dangerous, when his whole family had been dead of the distempers
so little a while before.

I know that the inhabitants of the towns adjacent to London were
much blamed for cruelty to the poor people that ran from the
contagion in their distress, and many very severe things were
done, as may be seen from what has been said; but I cannot but
say also that, where there was room for charity and assistance to
the people, without apparent danger to themselves, they were
willing enough to help and relieve them. But as every town were
indeed judges in their own case, so the poor people who ran
abroad in their extremities were often ill-used and driven back
again into the town; and this caused infinite exclamations and
outcries against the country towns, and made the clamour very
popular.

And yet, more or less, (with) all the caution, there was not a
town of any note within ten (or, I believe, twenty) miles of the
city but what was more or less infected and had some died among
them. I have heard the accounts of several, such as they were
reckoned up, as follows:—

In Enfield 32 In Uxbridge 117
” Hornsey 58 ” Hertford 90
” Newington 17 ” Ware 160
” Tottenham 42 ” Hodsdon 30
” Edmonton 19 ” Waltham Abbey 23
” Barnet and Hadly 19 ” Epping 26
” St Albans 121 ” Deptford 623
” Watford 45 ” Greenwich 231
” Eltham and Lusum 85 ” Kingston 122
” Croydon 61 ” Stanes 82
” Brentwood 70 ” Chertsey 18
” Rumford 109 ” Windsor 103
” Barking Abbot 200
” Brentford 432 Cum aliis.

Another thing might render the country more strict with respect
to the citizens, and especially with respect to the poor, and
this was what I hinted at before: namely, that there was a
seeming propensity or a wicked inclination in those that were
infected to infect others.

There have been great debates among our physicians as to the
reason of this. Some will have it to be in the nature of the
disease, and that it impresses every one that is seized upon by
it with a kind of a rage, and a hatred against their own kind—as
if there was a malignity not only in the distemper to communicate
itself, but in the very nature of man, prompting him with evil
will or an evil eye, that, as they say in the case of a mad dog,
who though the gentlest creature before of any of his kind, yet
then will fly upon and bite any one that comes next him, and
those as soon as any who had been most observed by him before.

Others placed it to the account of the corruption of human
nature, who cannot bear to see itself more miserable than others
of its own species, and has a kind of involuntary wish that all
men were as unhappy or in as bad a condition as itself.

Others say it was only a kind of desperation, not knowing or
regarding what they did, and consequently unconcerned at the
danger or safety not only of anybody near them, but even of
themselves also. And indeed, when men are once come to a
condition to abandon themselves, and be unconcerned for the
safety or at the danger of themselves, it cannot be so much
wondered that they should be careless of the safety of other
people.

But I choose to give this grave debate a quite different turn,
and answer it or resolve it all by saying that I do not grant the
fact. On the contrary, I say that the thing is not really so, but
that it was a general complaint raised by the people inhabiting
the outlying villages against the citizens to justify, or at
least excuse, those hardships and severities so much talked of,
and in which complaints both sides may be said to have injured
one another; that is to say, the citizens pressing to be received
and harboured in time of distress, and with the plague upon them,
complain of the cruelty and injustice of the country people in
being refused entrance and forced back again with their goods and
families; and the inhabitants, finding themselves so imposed
upon, and the citizens breaking in as it were upon them whether
they would or no, complain that when they were infected they were
not only regardless of others, but even willing to infect them;
neither of which were really true—that is to say, in the colours
they were described in.

It is true there is something to be said for the frequent alarms
which were given to the country of the resolution of the people
of London to come out by force, not only for relief, but to
plunder and rob; that they ran about the streets with the
distemper upon them without any control; and that no care was
taken to shut up houses, and confine the sick people from
infecting others; whereas, to do the Londoners justice, they
never practised such things, except in such particular cases as I
have mentioned above, and such like. On the other hand,
everything was managed with so much care, and such excellent
order was observed in the whole city and suburbs by the care of
the Lord Mayor and aldermen and by the justices of the peace,
church-wardens, &c., in the outparts, that London may be a
pattern to all the cities in the world for the good government
and the excellent order that was everywhere kept, even in the
time of the most violent infection, and when the people were in
the utmost consternation and distress. But of this I shall speak
by itself.

One thing, it is to be observed, was owing principally to the
prudence of the magistrates, and ought to be mentioned to their
honour: viz., the moderation which they used in the great and
difficult work of shutting up of houses. It is true, as I have
mentioned, that the shutting up of houses was a great subject of
discontent, and I may say indeed the only subject of discontent
among the people at that time; for the confining the sound in the
same house with the sick was counted very terrible, and the
complaints of people so confined were very grievous. They were
heard into the very streets, and they were sometimes such that
called for resentment, though oftener for compassion. They had no
way to converse with any of their friends but out at their
windows, where they would make such piteous lamentations as often
moved the hearts of those they talked with, and of others who,
passing by, heard their story; and as those complaints oftentimes
reproached the severity, and sometimes the insolence, of the
watchmen placed at their doors, those watchmen would answer
saucily enough, and perhaps be apt to affront the people who were
in the street talking to the said families; for which, or for
their ill-treatment of the families, I think seven or eight of
them in several places were killed; I know not whether I should
say murdered or not, because I cannot enter into the particular
cases. It is true the watchmen were on their duty, and acting in
the post where they were placed by a lawful authority; and
killing any public legal officer in the execution of his office
is always, in the language of the law, called murder. But as they
were not authorised by the magistrates’ instructions, or by the
power they acted under, to be injurious or abusive either to the
people who were under their observation or to any that concerned
themselves for them; so when they did so, they might be said to
act themselves, not their office; to act as private persons, not
as persons employed; and consequently, if they brought mischief
upon themselves by such an undue behaviour, that mischief was
upon their own heads; and indeed they had so much the hearty
curses of the people, whether they deserved it or not, that
whatever befell them nobody pitied them, and everybody was apt to
say they deserved it, whatever it was. Nor do I remember that
anybody was ever punished, at least to any considerable degree,
for whatever was done to the watchmen that guarded their houses.

What variety of stratagems were used to escape and get out of
houses thus shut up, by which the watchmen were deceived or
overpowered, and that the people got away, I have taken notice of
already, and shall say no more to that. But I say the magistrates
did moderate and ease families upon many occasions in this case,
and particularly in that of taking away, or suffering to be
removed, the sick persons out of such houses when they were
willing to be removed either to a pest-house or other Places; and
sometimes giving the well persons in the family so shut up, leave
to remove upon information given that they were well, and that
they would confine themselves in such houses where they went so
long as should be required of them. The concern, also, of the
magistrates for the supplying such poor families as were
infected—I say, supplying them with necessaries, as well physic
as food—was very great, and in which they did not content
themselves with giving the necessary orders to the officers
appointed, but the aldermen in person, and on horseback,
frequently rode to such houses and caused the people to be asked
at their windows whether they were duly attended or not; also,
whether they wanted anything that was necessary, and if the
officers had constantly carried their messages and fetched them
such things as they wanted or not. And if they answered in the
affirmative, all was well; but if they complained that they were
ill supplied, and that the officer did not do his duty, or did
not treat them civilly, they (the officers) were generally
removed, and others placed in their stead.

It is true such complaint might be unjust, and if the officer had
such arguments to use as would convince the magistrate that he
was right, and that the people had injured him, he was continued
and they reproved. But this part could not well bear a particular
inquiry, for the parties could very ill be well heard and
answered in the street from the windows, as was the case then.
The magistrates, therefore, generally chose to favour the people
and remove the man, as what seemed to be the least wrong and of
the least ill consequence; seeing if the watchman was injured,
yet they could easily make him amends by giving him another post
of the like nature; but if the family was injured, there was no
satisfaction could be made to them, the damage perhaps being
irreparable, as it concerned their lives.

A great variety of these cases frequently happened between the
watchmen and the poor people shut up, besides those I formerly
mentioned about escaping. Sometimes the watchmen were absent,
sometimes drunk, sometimes asleep when the people wanted them,
and such never failed to be punished severely, as indeed they
deserved.

But after all that was or could be done in these cases, the
shutting up of houses, so as to confine those that were well with
those that were sick, had very great inconveniences in it, and
some that were very tragical, and which merited to have been
considered if there had been room for it. But it was authorised
by a law, it had the public good in view as the end chiefly aimed
at, and all the private injuries that were done by the putting it
in execution must be put to the account of the public benefit.

It is doubtful to this day whether, in the whole, it contributed
anything to the stop of the infection; and indeed I cannot say it
did, for nothing could run with greater fury and rage than the
infection did when it was in its chief violence, though the
houses infected were shut up as exactly and as effectually as it
was possible. Certain it is that if all the infected persons were
effectually shut in, no sound person could have been infected by
them, because they could not have come near them. But the case
was this (and I shall only touch it here): namely, that the
infection was propagated insensibly, and by such persons as were
not visibly infected, who neither knew whom they infected or who
they were infected by.

A house in Whitechappel was shut up for the sake of one infected
maid, who had only spots, not the tokens come out upon her, and
recovered; yet these people obtained no liberty to stir, neither
for air or exercise, forty days. Want of breath, fear, anger,
vexation, and all the other gifts attending such an injurious
treatment cast the mistress of the family into a fever, and
visitors came into the house and said it was the plague, though
the physicians declared it was not. However, the family were
obliged to begin their quarantine anew on the report of the
visitors or examiner, though their former quarantine wanted but a
few days of being finished. This oppressed them so with anger and
grief, and, as before, straitened them also so much as to room,
and for want of breathing and free air, that most of the family
fell sick, one of one distemper, one of another, chiefly
scorbutic ailments; only one, a violent colic; till, after
several prolongings of their confinement, some or other of those
that came in with the visitors to inspect the persons that were
ill, in hopes of releasing them, brought the distemper with them
and infected the whole house; and all or most of them died, not
of the plague as really upon them before, but of the plague that
those people brought them, who should have been careful to have
protected them from it. And this was a thing which frequently
happened, and was indeed one of the worst consequences of
shutting houses up.

I had about this time a little hardship put upon me, which I was
at first greatly afflicted at, and very much disturbed about
though, as it proved, it did not expose me to any disaster; and
this was being appointed by the alderman of Portsoken Ward one of
the examiners of the houses in the precinct where I lived. We had
a large parish, and had no less than eighteen examiners, as the
order called us; the people called us visitors. I endeavoured
with all my might to be excused from such an employment, and used
many arguments with the alderman’s deputy to be excused;
particularly I alleged that I was against shutting up houses at
all, and that it would be very hard to oblige me to be an
instrument in that which was against my judgement, and which I
did verily believe would not answer the end it was intended for;
but all the abatement I could get was only, that whereas the
officer was appointed by my Lord Mayor to continue two months, I
should be obliged to hold it but three weeks, on condition
nevertheless that I could then get some other sufficient
housekeeper to serve the rest of the time for me—which was, in
short, but a very small favour, it being very difficult to get
any man to accept of such an employment, that was fit to be
entrusted with it.

It is true that shutting up of houses had one effect, which I am
sensible was of moment, namely, it confined the distempered
people, who would otherwise have been both very troublesome and
very dangerous in their running about streets with the distemper
upon them—which, when they were delirious, they would have done
in a most frightful manner, and as indeed they began to do at
first very much, till they were thus restrained; nay, so very
open they were that the poor would go about and beg at people’s
doors, and say they had the plague upon them, and beg rags for
their sores, or both, or anything that delirious nature happened
to think of.

A poor, unhappy gentlewoman, a substantial citizen’s wife, was
(if the story be true) murdered by one of these creatures in
Aldersgate Street, or that way. He was going along the street,
raving mad to be sure, and singing; the people only said he was
drunk, but he himself said he had the plague upon him, which it
seems was true; and meeting this gentlewoman, he would kiss her.
She was terribly frighted, as he was only a rude fellow, and she
ran from him, but the street being very thin of people, there was
nobody near enough to help her. When she saw he would overtake
her, she turned and gave him a thrust so forcibly, he being but
weak, and pushed him down backward. But very unhappily, she being
so near, he caught hold of her and pulled her down also, and
getting up first, mastered her and kissed her; and which was
worst of all, when he had done, told her he had the plague, and
why should not she have it as well as he? She was frighted enough
before, being also young with child; but when she heard him say
he had the plague, she screamed out and fell down into a swoon,
or in a fit, which, though she recovered a little, yet killed her
in a very few days; and I never heard whether she had the plague
or no.

Another infected person came and knocked at the door of a
citizen’s house where they knew him very well; the servant let
him in, and being told the master of the house was above, he ran
up and came into the room to them as the whole family was at
supper. They began to rise up, a little surprised, not knowing
what the matter was; but he bid them sit still, he only came to
take his leave of them. They asked him, ‘Why, Mr—, where are you
going?’ ‘Going,’ says he; ‘I have got the sickness, and shall die
tomorrow night.’ ’Tis easy to believe, though not to describe,
the consternation they were all in. The women and the man’s
daughters, which were but little girls, were frighted almost to
death and got up, one running out at one door and one at another,
some downstairs and some upstairs, and getting together as well
as they could, locked themselves into their chambers and screamed
out at the window for help, as if they had been frighted out of
their wits. The master, more composed than they, though both
frighted and provoked, was going to lay hands on him and throw
him downstairs, being in a passion; but then, considering a
little the condition of the man and the danger of touching him,
horror seized his mind, and he stood still like one astonished.
The poor distempered man all this while, being as well diseased
in his brain as in his body, stood still like one amazed. At
length he turns round: ‘Ay!’ says he, with all the seeming
calmness imaginable, ‘is it so with you all? Are you all
disturbed at me? Why, then I’ll e’en go home and die there.’ And
so he goes immediately downstairs. The servant that had let him
in goes down after him with a candle, but was afraid to go past
him and open the door, so he stood on the stairs to see what he
would do. The man went and opened the door, and went out and
flung the door after him. It was some while before the family
recovered the fright, but as no ill consequence attended, they
have had occasion since to speak of it (You may be sure) with
great satisfaction. Though the man was gone, it was some
time—nay, as I heard, some days before they recovered themselves
of the hurry they were in; nor did they go up and down the house
with any assurance till they had burnt a great variety of fumes
and perfumes in all the rooms, and made a great many smokes of
pitch, of gunpowder, and of sulphur, all separately shifted, and
washed their clothes, and the like. As to the poor man, whether
he lived or died I don’t remember.

It is most certain that, if by the shutting up of houses the sick
had not been confined, multitudes who in the height of their
fever were delirious and distracted would have been continually
running up and down the streets; and even as it was a very great
number did so, and offered all sorts of violence to those they
met, even just as a mad dog runs on and bites at every one he
meets; nor can I doubt but that, should one of those infected,
diseased creatures have bitten any man or woman while the frenzy
of the distemper was upon them, they, I mean the person so
wounded, would as certainly have been incurably infected as one
that was sick before, and had the tokens upon him.

I heard of one infected creature who, running out of his bed in
his shirt in the anguish and agony of his swellings, of which he
had three upon him, got his shoes on and went to put on his coat;
but the nurse resisting, and snatching the coat from him, he
threw her down, ran over her, ran downstairs and into the street,
directly to the Thames in his shirt; the nurse running after him,
and calling to the watch to stop him; but the watchman, frighted
at the man, and afraid to touch him, let him go on; upon which he
ran down to the Stillyard stairs, threw away his shirt, and
plunged into the Thames, and, being a good swimmer, swam quite
over the river; and the tide being coming in, as they call it
(that is, running westward) he reached the land not till he came
about the Falcon stairs, where landing, and finding no people
there, it being in the night, he ran about the streets there,
naked as he was, for a good while, when, it being by that time
high water, he takes the river again, and swam back to the
Stillyard, landed, ran up the streets again to his own house,
knocking at the door, went up the stairs and into his bed again;
and that this terrible experiment cured him of the plague, that
is to say, that the violent motion of his arms and legs stretched
the parts where the swellings he had upon him were, that is to
say, under his arms and his groin, and caused them to ripen and
break; and that the cold of the water abated the fever in his
blood.

I have only to add that I do not relate this any more than some
of the other, as a fact within my own knowledge, so as that I can
vouch the truth of them, and especially that of the man being
cured by the extravagant adventure, which I confess I do not
think very possible; but it may serve to confirm the many
desperate things which the distressed people falling into
deliriums, and what we call light-headedness, were frequently run
upon at that time, and how infinitely more such there would have
been if such people had not been confined by the shutting up of
houses; and this I take to be the best, if not the only good
thing which was performed by that severe method.

On the other hand, the complaints and the murmurings were very
bitter against the thing itself. It would pierce the hearts of
all that came by to hear the piteous cries of those infected
people, who, being thus out of their understandings by the
violence of their pain or the heat of their blood, were either
shut in or perhaps tied in their beds and chairs, to prevent
their doing themselves hurt—and who would make a dreadful outcry
at their being confined, and at their being not permitted to die
at large, as they called it, and as they would have done before.