do, and because my opinion may in some things differ from theirs; I am only relating what I know, or have heard, or believe, of the particular cases, and what fell within the compass of my view, and the different nature of the infection as it appeared in the particular cases which I have related; but this may be added too, that though the former sort of those cases, namely, those openly visited, were the worst for themselves as to pain, I mean those that had such fevers, vomitings, headaches, pains, and swellings, because they died in such a dreadful manner, yet the latter had the worst state of the disease, for in the former they frequently recovered, especially if the swellings broke, but the latter was inevitable death; no cure, no help, could be possible, nothing could follow but death; and it was worse also to others, because, as above, it secretly, and unperceived by others, or by themselves, communicated death to those they conversed with, the penetrating poison insinuating itself into their blood in a manner which it is impossible to describe, or indeed conceive. This infecting and being infected, without so much as it being known to either person, is evident from two sorts of cases, which frequently happened at that time; and there is hardly anybody living who was in London during the infection, but must have known several of the cases of both sorts. First. Fathers and mothers have gone about as if they had been well, and have believed themselves to be so, till they have insensibly infected, and been the destruction of their whole families: which they would have been far from doing, if they had the least apprehensions of their being unsound and dangerous themselves. A family, whose story I have heard, was thus infected by the father, and the distemper began to appear upon some of them, even before he found it upon himself; but upon searching more narrowly, it appeared he had been infected some time, and as soon as he found that his family had been poisoned by himself, he went distracted, and would have laid violent hands upon himself, but was kept from that by those who looked to him, and in a few days he died. Second. The other particular is, that many people having been well to the best of their own judgment, or by the best observation which they could make of themselves for several days, and only finding a decay of appetite, or a light sickness upon their stomachs; nay, some whose appetite has been strong, and even craving, and only a light pain in their heads, have sent for physicians to know what ailed them, and have been found, to their great surprise, at the brink of death, the tokens upon them, or the plague grown up to an incurable height. It was very sad to reflect how such a person as this last mentioned above, had been a walking destroyer, perhaps for a week or fortnight before that; how he had ruined those that he would have hazarded his life to save, and had been breathing death upon them, even perhaps in his tender kissing and embracings of his own children: yet thus certainly it was, and often has been, and I could give many particular cases where it has been so; if then, the blow is thus insensibly striking; if the arrow flies thus unseen, and cannot be discovered; to what purpose are all the schemes for shutting up or removing the sick people? those schemes cannot take place but upon those that appear to be sick, or to be infected; whereas there are among them, at the same time, thousands of people who seem to be well, but are all that while carrying death with them into all companies which they come into. This frequently puzzled our physicians, and especially the apothecaries and surgeons, who knew not how to discover the sick from the sound; they all allowed that it was really so, that many people had the plague in their very blood, and preying upon their spirits, and were in themselves but walking putrefied carcases, whose breath was infectious, and their sweat poison; and yet were as well to look on as other people, and even knew it not themselves: I say, they all allowed that it was really true in fact, but they knew not how to propose a discovery. My friend, Dr Heath, was of opinion, that it might be known by the smell of their breath, but then, as he said, who durst smell to that breath for his information? since to know it, he must draw the stench of the plague up into his own brain, in order to distinguish the smell! I have heard, it was the opinion of others, that it might be distinguished by the party's breathing upon a piece of glass, where the breath condensing, there might living creatures be seen by a microscope, of strange, monstrous, and frightful shapes, such as dragons, snakes, serpents, and devils, horrible to behold: but this I very much question the truth of, and we had no microscopes at that time, as I remember, to make the experiment with. It was the opinion also of another learned man that the breath of such a person would poison and instantly kill a bird; not only a small bird, but even a cock or hen, and that if it did not immediately kill the latter, it would cause them to be roupy, as they call it; particularly that if they had laid any eggs at that time they would be all rotten; but those are opinions which I never found supported by any experiments, or heard of others that had seen it; so I leave them as I find them, only with this remark, namely, that I think the probabilities are very strong for them. Some have proposed that such persons should breathe hard upon warm water, and they would leave an unusual scum upon it, or upon several other things, especially such as are of a glutinous substance, and are apt to receive a scum and support it But from the whole I found that the nature of this contagion was such, that it was impossible to discover it at all, or to prevent its spreading from one to another, by any human skill. Here was indeed one difficulty, which I could never thoroughly get over to this time, and which there is but one way of answering that I know of, and it is this, viz. the first person that died of the plague was on December 20th, or thereabouts, 1664, and in or about Long acre: whence the first person had the infection was generally said to be from a parcel of silks imported from Holland, and first opened in that house. But after this we heard no more of any person dying of the plague, or of the distemper being in that place, till the 9th of February, which : was about seven weeks after, and then one more was buried out of the same house: then it was hushed, and we were perfectly easy as to the public for a great while; for there were no more entered in the weekly bill to be dead of the plague till the 22nd of April when there were two more buried, not out of the same house, but out of the same street; and, as near as I can remember, it was out of the next house to the first this was nine weeks asunder, and after this we had no more till a fortnight, and then it broke out in several streets, and spread every way. Now the question seems to lie thus:-Where lay the seeds of the infection all this while? how came it to stop so long, and not stop any longer? Either the distemper did not come immediately by contagion from body to body, or if it did, then a body may be capable to continue infected, without the disease discovering itself, many days, nay, weeks together, even not a quarantine of days only, but a soixantine, not only forty days, but sixty days, or longer. It is true, there was, as I observed at first, and is well known to many yet living, a very cold winter, and a long frost, which continued three months, and this, the doctors say, might check the infection; but then the learned must allow me to say, that if, according to their notion, the disease was, as I may say, only frozen up, it would, like a frozen river, have returned to its usual force and current when it thawed, whereas the principal recess of this infection, which was from February to April, was after the frost was broken, and the weather mild and warm. it, so they took all the measures they could to have it not believed; and if any died in their houses to get them returned to the examiners, and by the searchers, as having died of other distempers. This, I say, will account for the long interval which, as I have said, was between the dying of the first persons that were returned in the bill to be dead of the plague, and the time when the distemper spread openly, and could not be concealed. But there is another way of solving all this difficulty, which I think my own remembrance of There were several other articles which bore the thing will supply; and that is, the fact is not a proportion to these, and which it is easy to pergranted, namely, that there died none in those ceive were increased on the same account, as long intervals, viz. from the 20th of December aged, consumptions, vomitings, imposthumes, to the 9th of February, and from thence to the gripes, and the like, many of which were not 22nd of April. The weekly bills are the only doubted to be infected people; but as it was of evidence on the other side, and those bills were the utmost consequence to families not to be not of credit enough, at least with me, to sup-known to be infected, if it was possible to avoid port an hypothesis, or determine a question of such importance as this: for it was our received opinion at that time, and I believe upon very good grounds, that the fraud lay in the parish officers, searchers, and persons appointed to give account of the dead, and what diseases they died of: and as people were very loath at first to have the neighbours believe their houses were infected, so they gave money to procure, or otherwise procured the dead persons to be returned as dying of other distempers; and this I know was practised afterwards in many places, I believe I might say in all places where the distemper came, as will be seen by the vast increase of the numbers placed in the weekly bills under other articles of diseases during the time of the infection; for example, in the months of July and August, when the plague was coming on to its highest pitch, it was very ordinary to have from a thou-spotted fever in a week when there were none or sand to twelve hundred, nay, to almost fifteen hundred a week, of other distempers; not that the numbers of those distempers were really increased to such a degree; but the great number of families and houses where really the infection was, obtained the favour to have their dead be returned of other distempers, to prevent the shutting up their houses. For example : :- Besides, the weekly bills themselves, at that time, evidently discovers this truth; for, while there was no mention of the plague, and no increase after it had been mentioned, yet it was apparent that there was an increase of those distempers which bordered nearest upon it; for example, there were eight, twelve, seventeen of the but very few of the plague; whereas before one, three, or four, were the ordinary weekly numbers of that distemper. Likewise, as I observed before, the burials increased weekly in that particular parish, and the parishes adjacent, more than in any other parish, although there were none set down of the plague; all which tell us that the infection was handed on, and the succession of the distemper really preserved, though it seemed to us at that time to be ceased, and to come again in a manner surprising. It might be also that the infection might remain in other parts of the same parcel of goods which at first it came in, and which might not be perhaps opened, or at least not fully, or in the clothes of the first infected person, for I cannot think that anybody could be seized with the contagion in a fatal and mortal degree for nine weeks together, and support his state of health so well as even not to discover it to themselves; yet, if it were so, the argument is the stronger in favour of what I am saying, namely, that the infection is retained in bodies apparently well, and conveyed from them to those they converse with, while it is known to neither the one nor the other. Great were the confusions at that time upon this very account; and when people began to be convinced that the infection was received in this surprising manner from persons apparently well, they began to be exceeding shy and jealous of every one that came near them. Once in a public day, whether a Sabbath day or not I do not remember, in Aldgate church, in a pew full of people, on a sudden, one fancied she smelt an ill smell; immediately she fancies the plague was in the pew, whispers her notion or suspicion to the next, then rises and goes out of the pew; it immediately took with the next, and so to them all; and every one of them, and of the two or three adjoining pews, got up and went out of the church, nobody knowing what it was offended them, or from whom. This immediately filled everybody's mouths with one preparation or another, such as the old women directed, and some, perhaps, as physicians directed, in order to prevent infection by the breath of others; insomuch, that if we came to go into a church when it was anything full of people, there would be such a mixture of smells at the entrance, that it was much more strong, though perhaps not so wholesome, than if you were going into an apothecary's or druggist's shop; in a word, the whole church was like a smelling-bottle. In one corner it was all perfumes, in another aromatics, balsamics, and variety of drugs and herbs; in another salts and spirits, as every one was furnished for their own preservation; yet I observed that after people were posssesed, as I have said, with the belief, or rather assurance, of the infection being thus carried on by persons apparently in health, the churches and meeting-houses were much thinner of people than at other times before that they used to be; for this is to be said of the people of London, that during the whole time of the pestilence, the churches or meetings were never wholly shut up, nor did the people decline coming out to the public worship of God, except only in some parishes when the violence of the distemper was more particularly in that parish at that time, and even then no longer than it continued to be so. Indeed nothing was more strange than to see with what courage the people went to the public service of God, even at that time when they were afraid to stir out of their own houses upon any other occasion; this I mean before the time of desperation, which I have mentioned already; this was a proof of the exceeding populousness of the city at the time of the infection, notwithstanding the great numbers that were gone into the country at the first alarm, and that fled out into the forests and woods when they were farther terrified with the extraordinary increase of it. For when we came to see the crowds and throngs of people which appeared on the Sabbathdays at the churches, and especially in those parts of the town where the plague was abated, or where it was not yet come to its height, it was amazing. But of this I shall speak again presently. I return, in the meantime, to the article of infecting one another at first. Before people came to right notions of the infection, and of in fecting one another, people were only shy of those that were really sick: a man with a cap upon his head, or with clothes round his neck, which was the case of those that had swellings there, such was indeed frightful; but when we saw a gentleman dressed, with his band on, and his gloves in his hand, his hat upon his head, and his hair combed, of such we had not the least apprehensions, and people conversed a great while freely, especially with their neighbours and such as they knew. But when the physicians assured us that the danger was as well from the sound, that is, the seemingly sound, as the sick, and that those people who thought themselves entirely free, were oftentimes the most fatal; and that it came to be generally understood that people were sensible of it, and of the reason of it; then, I say, they began to be jealous of everybody, and a vast number of people locked themselves up, so as not to come abroad into any company at all, nor suffer any that had been abroad in promiscuous company to come into their houses, or near them; at least, not so near them as to be within the reach of their breath, or of any smell from them; and when they were obliged to converse at a distance with strangers, they would always have preservatives in their mouths, and about their clothes, to repel and keep off the infection. It must be acknowledged that when people began to use these cautions, they were less exposed to danger, and the infection did not break into such houses so furiously as it did into others before, and thousands of families were preserved (speaking with due reserve to the direction of divine Providence) by that means. But it was impossible to beat anything into the heads of the poor; they went on with the usual impetuosity of their tempers, full of outcries and lamentations when taken, but madly careless of themselves, fool-hardy and obstinate, while they were well. Where they could get employment they pushed into any kind of business, the most dangerous and the most liable to infection; and if they were spoken to, their answer would be,"I must trust to God for that: if I am taken, then I am provided for, and there is an end of me;" and the like; or thus,-" Why, what must I do? I cannot starve; I had as good have the plague as perish for want. I have no work; what could I do? I must do this or beg." Suppose it was burying the dead, or attending the sick, or watching infected houses, which were all terrible hazards; but their tale was generally the same. It is true, necessity was a justifiable, warrantable plea, and nothing could be better; but their way of talk was much the same where the necessities || were not the same. This adventurous conduct of the poor was that which brought the plague among them in a most furious manner, and this, joined to the distress of their circumstances, when taken, was the reason why they died so by heaps; for I cannot say I could observe one jot of better husbandry among them, I mean the labouring poor, while they were all well and getting money, than there was before, but as lavish, as extravagant, and as thoughtless for to-morrow as ever; so that when they came to be taken sick, they were immediately in the utmost distress, as well for want as for sickness, as well for lack of food as lack of health. The misery of the poor I had many occasions to be an eye-witness of, and sometimes also of the charitable assistance that some pious people daily gave to such, sending them relief and supplies both of food, physic, and other help, as they found they wanted; and indeed it is a debt of justice due to the temper of the people of that day, to take notice here, that not only great sums, very great sums of money, were charitably sent to the lord mayor and aldermen for the assistance and support of the poor distempered people, but abundance of private people daily distributed large sums of money for their relief, and sent people about to inquire into the condition of particular distressed and visited families, and relieved them; nay, some pious ladies were so transported with zeal in so good a work, and so confident in the protection of Providence in discharge of the great duty of charity, that they went about in person distributing alms to the poor, and even visiting poor families, though sick and infected, in their very houses, appointing nurses to attend those that wanted attending, and ordering apothecaries and surgeons, the first to supply them with drugs or plasters, and such things as they wanted, and the last to lance and dress the swellings and tumours, where such were wanting; giving their blessing to the poor in substantial relief to them, as well as hearty prayers for them. I will not undertake to say, as some do, that none of those charitable people were suffered to fall under the calamity itself; but this I may say, that I never knew any one of them that miscarried, which I mention for the encouragement of others in case of the like distress; and doubtless, if they that give to the poor, lend to the Lord, and he will repay them, those that hazard their lives to give to the poor, and to comfort and assist the poor in such misery as this, may hope to be protected in the work. Nor was this charity so extraordinary eminent only in a few; but (for I cannot lightly quit this point) the charity of the rich, as well in the city and suburbs as from the country, was so great, that, in a word, a prodigious number of people, who must otherwise have perished for want as well as sickness, were supported and subsisted by it; and though I could never, nor I believe any one else, come to a full knowledge of what was so contributed, yet I do believe that as I heard one say that was a critical observer of that part, there was not only many thousand pounds contributed, but many hundred thousand pounds, to the relief of the poor of this distressed afflicted city; nay, one man affirmed to me that he could reckon up above one hundred thousand pounds a week, which was distributed by the churchwardens at the several parish vestries, by the lord mayor and the aldermen in the several wards and precincts, and by the particular direction of the court and of the justices respectively in the parts where they resided; over and above the private charity distributed by pious hands in the manner I speak of; and this continued for many weeks together. I confess this is a very great sum; but if it be true that there was distributed in the parish of Cripplegate only seventeen thousand eight hundred pounds in one week to the relief of the poor, as I heard reported, and which I really believe was true, the other may not be improbable. It was doubtless to be reckoned among the many signal good providences which attended this great city, and of which there were many other worth recording; I say this was a very remarkable one, that it pleased God thus to move the hearts of the people in all parts of the kingdom so cheerfully to contribute to the relief and support of the poor at London; the good consequences of which were felt many ways, and particularly in preserving the lives and recovering the health of so many thousands, and keeping so many thousands of families from perishing and starving. And now I am talking of the merciful disposition of Providence in this time of calamity, I cannot but mention again, though I have spoken several times of it already on other accounts, I mean that of the progression of the distemper; how it began at one end of the town, and proceeded gradually and slowly from one part to another, and like a dark cloud that passes over our heads, which, as it thickens and overcasts the air at one end, clears up at the other end: so, while the plague went on raging from west to east, as it went forwards east it abated in the west, by which means those parts of the town which were not seized, or who were left, and where it had spent its fury, were (as it were) spared to help and assist the other; whereas, had the distemper spread itself over the whole city and suburbs at once, raging in all places alike, as it has done since in some places abroad, the whole body of the people must have been overwhelmed, and there would have died twenty thousand a day, as they say there did at Naples, nor would the people have been able to have helped or assisted one another. For it must be observed, that where the plague was in its full force, there indeed the people were very miserable, and the consternation was inexpressible. But a little before it reached even to that place, or presently after it was gone, they were quite another sort of people, and I cannot but acknowledge that there was too much of that common temper of mankind to be found among us all at that time, namely, to forget the deliverance when the danger is past; but I shall come to speak of that part again. It must not be forgot here to take some notice of the state of trade during the time of this common calamity, and this with respect to foreign trade, as also to our home trade. As to foreign trade, there needs little to be Portuguese were so shy of us, it is most certain that the plague, as has been said, keeping at first much at that end of the town next Westminster, the merchandising part of the town, such as the city and the waterside, was perfectly sound, till at least the beginning of July; and the ships in the river till the beginning of August; for, to the 1st of July, there had died but seven within the whole city, and but 60 within the liberties, but one in all the parishes of Stepney, Aldgate, and Whitechapel, and but two in all the eight parishes of Southwark; but it was the same thing abroad, for the bad news was gone over the whole world, that the city of London was infected with the plague; and there was no inquiring there how the infection proceeded, or at which part of the town it was begun or was reached to. Our merchants were accordingly at a full stop, their ships could go nowhere, that is to say, to no place abroad; their manufactures and merchandise, that is to say, of our growth, would not be touched abroad: they were as much afraid of our goods as they were of our people; and indeed they had reason, for our woollen manufactures are as retentive of infection as human bodies, and, if packed up by persons infected, would receive the infection and be as dangerous Besides, after it began to spread, it increased to the touch as a man would be that was in- so fast, and the bills grew so high all on a sudfected; and, therefore, when any English vessel den, that it was to no purpose to lessen the rearrived in foreign countries, if they did take the port of it, or endeavour to make the people goods on shore, they always caused the bales to abroad think it better than it was, the account be opened and aired in places appointed for that which the weekly bills gave in was sufficient; purpose; but from London they would not suffer and that there died two thousand to three or four them to come into port, much less to unload their thousand a week, was sufficient to alarm the goods upon any terms whatever; and this strict-whole trading part of the world, and the followness was especially used with them in Spain and ing time being so dreadful also in the very city Italy; in Turkey, and the islands of the Arches itself, put the whole world, I say, upon their indeed, as they are called, as well those belong-guard against it. ing to the Turks as to the Venetians, they were not so very rigid; in the first there was no obstruction at all, and four ships which were then in the river loading for Italy, that is, for Leghorn and Naples, being denied product, as they call it, went on to Turkey, and were freely admitted to unlade their cargo without any difficulty, only that when they arrived there some of their cargo was not fit for sale in that country, and other parts of it being consigned to merchants at Leghorn, the captains of the ships had no right nor any orders to dispose of the goods, so that great inconveniences followed to the merchants. But this was nothing but what the necessity of affairs required, and the merchants at Leghorn and Naples having notice given them, sent again from thence to take care of the effects, which were particularly consigned to those ports, and to bring back in other ships such as were improper for the markets at Smyrna and Scanderoon. The inconveniences in Spain and Portugal were still greater; for they would by no means suffer our ships, especially those from London, to come into any of their ports, much less to unlade. There was a report that one of our ships having by stealth delivered her cargo, among which were some bales of English cloth, cotton, kerseys, and such like goods, the Spaniards caused all the goods to be burnt, and punished the men with death who were concerned in carrying them on shore. This I believe was in part true, though I do not affirm it, but it is not at all unlikely, seeing the danger was really very great, the infection being so violent in London. I heard likewise that the plague was carried into those countries by some of our ships, and particularly to the port of Faro, in the kingdom of Algarve, belonging to the King of Portugal; and that several persons died of it there, but it was not confirmed. On the other hand, though the Spaniards and You may be sure also that the report of these things lost nothing in the carriage; the plague was itself very terrible, and the distress of the people very great, as you may observe of what I have said; but the rumour was infinitely greater, and it must not be wondered that our friends abroad, as my brother's correspondents in particular were told there, namely, in Portugal and Italy, where he chiefly traded, that in London there died twenty thousand in a week; that the dead bodies lay unburied by heaps; that the living were not sufficient to bury the dead, or the sound to look after the sick; that all the kingdom was infected likewise, so that it was an universal malady, such as was never heard of in those parts of the world; and they could hardly believe us when we gave them an account how things really were, and how there was not above one-tenth part of the people dead; that there were five hundred thousand left that lived all the time in the town; that now the people began to walk the streets again, and those who were fled to return; there was no miss of the usual throng of people in the streets, except as every family might miss their relations and neighbours, and the like; I say, they could not believe these things; and if inquiry were now to be made in Naples, or in other cities on the coast of Italy, they would tell you there was a dreadful infection in London so many years ago, in which, as above, there died twenty thousand in a week, &c., just as we have had it reported in London that there was a plague in the city of Naples in the year 1656, in which there died twenty thousand people in a day, of which I have had very good satisfaction that it was utterly false. But these extravagant reports were very prejudicial to our trade, as well as unjust and injurious in themselves, for it was a long time after the plague was quite over before our trade could recover itself in those parts of the world; and the |