The bakers

placed under

proper restraint.

places of the greatest danger, and though they did not care for having too great a resort of people crowding about them, yet in emergent cases they never denied the people access to them, and heard with patience all their grievances and complaints; my Lord Mayor had a low gallery built on purpose in his hall, where he stood a little removed from the crowd when any complaint came to be heard, that he might appear with as much safety as possible.

Likewise the proper officers, called my Lord Mayor's officers, constantly attended in their turns, as they were in waiting; and if any of them were sick or infected, as some of them were, others were instantly employed to fill up and officiate in their places, till it was known whether the other should live or die.

In like manner, the sheriffs and aldermen did in their several stations and wards, where they were placed by office, and the sheriff's officers or serjeants were appointed to receive orders from the respective aldermen in their turn, so that justice was executed in all cases without interruption. In the next place, it was one of their particular cares to see the orders for the freedom of the markets observed; and in this part either the Lord Mayor, or one or both of the sheriffs, were every marketday on horseback to see their orders executed, and to see that the country people had all possible encouragement and freedom in their coming to the markets and going back again, and that no nuisances or frightful objects should be seen in the streets to terrify them or make them unwilling to come. Also the bakers were taken under particular order, and the Master of the Bakers' Company was, with his courts of assistants, directed to see the order of my Lord Mayor for their regulation put in execution, and the due assize of bread, which was weekly appointed by my Lord Mayor, observed, and all the bakers were obliged to keep their ovens going constantly, on pain of losing the privileges of a freeman of the city of London.

By this means bread was always to be had in plenty, and as cheap as usual, as I said above; and provisions were never wanting in the markets, even to such a degree that I often wondered at it, and reproached myself with being so timorous and cautious in stirring abroad, when the country people came freely and boldly to market, as if there had been no manner of infection in the city, or danger of catching it.

It was indeed one admirable piece of conduct in the said magistrates, that the streets were kept constantly clear and free

from all manner of frightful objects, dead bodies, or any such things as were indecent or unpleasant, unless where anybody fell down suddenly or died in the streets, as I have said above, and these were generally covered with some cloth or blanket, or removed into the next churchyard till night: all the needful works that carried terror with them, that were both dismal and dangerous, were done in the night; if any diseased bodies were removed, or dead bodies buried, or infected clothes burnt, it was done in the night; and all the bodies which were thrown into the great pits in the several churchyards or burying-grounds, as has been observed, were so removed in the night, and everything was covered and closed before day, so that in the daytime there was not the least signal of the calamity to be seen or heard of, except what was to be observed from the emptiness of the streets, and sometimes from the passionate outcries and lamentations of the people out at their windows, and from the numbers of houses and shops shut up.

Nor was the silence and emptiness of the street so much in the city as in the out-parts, except just at one particular time, when, as I have mentioned, the plague came east, and spread over all the city: it was indeed a merciful disposition of God, that as the plague began at one end of the town first, as has been observed at large, so it proceeded progressively to other parts, and did not come on this way or eastward till it had spent its fury in the west part of the town; and so as it came on one way it abated another; for example:

It began at St. Giles's and the Westminster end of the town, and it was in its height in all that part by about the middle of July, viz., in St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, St. Andrew's, Holborn, St. Clement's Danes, St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, and in Westminster the latter end of July it decreased in those parishes, and, coming east, it increased prodigiously in Cripplegate, St. Sepulchre's, St. James's, Clerkenwell, and St. Bride's and Aldersgate. While it was in all these parishes, the city and all the parishes of Southwark side of the water, and all Stepney, Whitechapel, Aldgate, Wapping, and Ratcliff, were very little touched; so that people went about their business unconcerned, carried on their trades, kept open their shops, and conversed freely with one another in all the city, the east and north-east suburbs, and in Southwark, almost as if the plague had not been among us.

Even when the north and north-west suburbs were fully

infected, viz. Cripplegate, Clerkenwell, Bishopsgate, and Shoreditch, yet still all the rest were tolerably well: for example:From the 25th of July to the 1st of August the bill stood thus of all diseases :

So that, in short, there died more that week in the two parishes of Cripplegate and St. Sepulchre's by 48, than in all the city, all the east suburbs, and all the Southwark parishes put together this caused the reputation of the city's health to continue all over England, and especially in the counties and markets adjacent, from whence our supply of provisions chiefly came, even much longer than that health itself continued; for when the people came into the streets from the country by Shoreditch and Bishopsgate, or by Old-street and Smithfield, they would see the out-streets empty, and the houses and shops shut, and the few people that were stirring there walk in the middle of the streets; but when they came within the city, there things looked better, and the markets and shops were open, and the people walking about the streets as usual, though not quite so many; and this continued till the latter end of August and the beginning of September.

But then the case altered quite, the distemper abated in the west and north-west parishes, and the weight of the infection lay on the city and the eastern suburbs, and the Southwark side, and this in a frightful manner.

Then indeed the city began to look dismal, shops to be shut, and the streets desolate; in the high street indeed necessity made people stir abroad on many occasions; and there would be in the middle of the day a pretty many people, but in the mornings and evenings scarce any to be seen even there, no, not in Cornhill and Cheapside.

These observations of mine were abundantly confirmed by the weekly bills of mortality for those weeks, an abstract of which, as they respect the parishes which I have mentioned, and as they make the calculations I speak of very evident, take as follows:

The weekly bill which makes out this decrease of the burials in the west and north side of the city, stands thus :

Here is a strange change of things indeed, and a sad change it was, and had it held for two more months than it did, very few people would have been left alive: but then such, I say, was the merciful disposition of God, that when it was thus the west and north part, which had been so dreadfully visited at first, grew, as you see, much better: and as the people disappeared here, they began to look abroad again there; and the next week or two altered it still more, that is, more to the encouragement of the other part of the town; for example:

From the 19th of September to the 26th.

St. Giles's, Cripplegate .

St. Giles's-in-the-Fields

Clerkenwell.

St. Sepulchre's

St. Leonard, Shoreditch

Stepney Parish

Aldgate

Whitechapel.

In the 97 Parishes within the walls

In the 8 Parishes on Southwark side

277

119

76

193

146

616

496

346

From the 26th of September to the 3rd of October :

An eminent
physician
publishes
in Latin.

4,328

And now the misery of the city, and of the said east and south parts, was complete indeed; for as you see the weight of the distemper lay upon those parts, that is to say, the city, the eight parishes over the river, with the parishes of Aldgate, Whitechapel, and Stepney, and this was the time that the bills came up to such a monstrous height as that I mentioned before; and that eight or nine, and, as I believe, ten or twelve thousand a week, died; for it is my settled opinion, that they never could come at any just account of the numbers, for the reasons which I have given already.

Nay, one of the most eminent physicians, who has since published in Latin an account of those times, and of his observations, says, that in one week there died twelve thousand people, and that particularly there died four thousand in one night; though I do not remember that there ever was any such particular night so remarkably fatal as that such a number died in it: however, all this confirms what I have said above of the uncertainty of the bills of mortality, &c. of which I shall say more hereafter.

And here let me take leave to enter again, though it may seem a repetition of circumstances, into a description of the miserable condition of the city itself, and of those parts where I lived at this particular time: the city and those other parts, notwithstanding the great numbers of people that were gone into the country, was vastly full of people, and perhaps the fuller, because people had for a long time a strong belief that the plague would not come into the city nor into Southwark, no, nor into Wapping or Ratcliff at all; nay, such was the assurance of the people on that head, that many removed from the suburbs