Chapter XII · (continued 2)

The practices which, whether falsely or truly, were said to exist, are these. Men begged through the city, offering poisoned papers under the appearance of petitions. The earth and its productions, eatables, money given in charity, were poisoned. The fastenings of doors, as being necessarily handled, were special objects of attack; as were also the basins of holy water placed in churches. Poles were used to anoint what was out of reach, and bellows to scatter poisoned dust. “These and other things which were loudly proclaimed, I neither believe entirely,” says the cardinal, “nor yet think them reported entirely without foundation.” On the whole, without believing that these crimes were committed either at the instigation of foreign princes, or in virtue of an express compact with the devil, the cardinal seems decidedly to incline to the conclusion, that the pestilence was spread, if not originated, by artificial means; and to refer the guilt to soldiers (and the mercenaries of that day were men capable of any enormities), and other men of broken fortunes, who hoped to enrich themselves by plunder amid the general confusion, dismay, and death. Before we quit this subject, it is due to his reputation to state that he, and he alone, strongly disapproved of the procession with the body of St. Charles Borromeo, as furnishing the best opportunity to anointers, if such villains there were, and at all events of ensuring an increase of the disorder; since among such a multitude many persons were sure to bear about them the seeds of infection.

Towards the end of September the disease began to abate; and its decline was signalized by as impudent a fraud as has ever been practised, even in those earlier times when the power of the church and the blindness of the people were most remarkable. Attached to the Dominican convent there was a church of high reputation, dedicated to the Virgin, in gratitude for her signal kindness towards the city of Milan. On the night of September 22nd, the monks were collected, waiting for the matin service, when suddenly their several occupations of praying or sleeping were interrupted by the sound of the church bells. It soon appeared that they were rung miraculously, without touch of mortal fingers.[124] Some manifested wonder, others fear, according to their different tempers, but all were at a loss to explain the prodigy, until a voice too awful to be human was heard to say, “Mother, I will take pity upon my people.” The interpretation of the miracle then was evident: the Virgin had sought and obtained from her Son the remission of the plague, and the next morning the oil which fed the lamp suspended before her image was found to possess a miraculous healing virtue, and was distributed drop by drop to all classes, who crowded, high and low, to receive it; not, we may presume, without a handsome tribute of gratitude to the protectress herself, and to her servants the Dominicans. Ripamonte, cautious of expressing a doubt concerning the anointers, breathes not a syllable from which a want of faith in this miracle can even be inferred: the church was the church of the Inquisition, and it was from the Dominican monks that the officers of that institution were chosen. The number of deaths, however, began to diminish about or somewhat earlier than this time, and grew smaller and smaller as the autumn advanced; and by the close of the year Milan was delivered from this dreadful scourge.

The number who died in these few months was registered at 140,000, but this is supposed to have been below the mark, because many persons were privately buried by their friends, to avoid introducing the Monatti into their houses.

The extravagant credulity of the Milanese, and the fury and crimes which sprung from that credulity, may be partially excused on the ground that in that age even learned men believed in the possibility of exciting pestilence by means half-medical, half-magical, and that evil spirits exercised a malign influence over the air, and interfered visibly in diffusing the evil. More than thirty years later, the Jesuit Kircher, a man of various and extensive knowledge, but of a mystic temper, and a firm believer in the power of magic and occult influences, speaks of this plague as produced by the arts of evil men. Nor does he want authorities to strengthen his belief, among whom we may mention Theophrastus, who speaks of a terrible plague produced by poisoners in his own time, and gives the receipt for the pestiferous mixture, the ingredients of which are the putrid bodies of men deceased of the plague, and the bones, marrow, and poison of angry toads, approximating nearly to the receipt given by Ripamonte. To prove that demons may act as the ministers of God’s wrath to scatter the seeds of pestilence, he quotes Gregory of Nyssa, a father of the church in the fourth century, who relates in his Life of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus (the wonder-worker), that in a city of Greece, the people being collected in the theatre were much inconvenienced for want of room and made loud complaints, on which the evil spirit was to reply that there should soon be room enough in the city. And before the audience dispersed, so fierce a pestilence broke out among them, that in brief space a populous city was changed into a desert. Here the drift of the story is evident—it was a warning against theatrical amusements, which the Christians abhorred not only as profane, but as idolatrous, and a proof of the power of the devil over those who frequented them. The Pythagorean philosophers maintained similar doctrines as to the agency of spirits. Apollonius of Tyana, being at Ephesus during a pestilence, observed a demon under the habit of a fisherman busily employed in spreading the infection. He commanded that the fisherman should be stoned, and immediately the plague ceased. Similar stories are told of Pythagoras by Iamblichus. And the monkish writers helped mainly to encourage a belief of the interference of the devil in human affairs, by the many legends in which the spiritual adversary was introduced, to his own discomfiture and to the glory of some favourite saint.

It may reasonably be hoped, almost as much from the improved sanitary regulations and increased cleanliness of our cities, as from the progress of medical science, that no future pestilence will inflict upon Europe sufferings equal to those which have been described, and which are still to follow. To enable us, however, better to appreciate the value of this hope, we may refer shortly to the condition of that science about the period of which we have been speaking. The structure of the body, and the properties of minerals, were for the most part unknown even to the best Greek and Latin physicians; and though anatomy had made considerable progress at the beginning of the seventeenth century, pharmacy had made little or none. The regular physicians were educated in the schools of universities, where they imbibed that profound respect for the authority of the ancients which characterized the universities of that day, and that love of exclusive privilege which has been charged upon universities in general. Brought up in the fear of Hippocrates and Galen, they received their sayings as oracular, and would probably rather have let a patient die, secundum artem, than have employed remedies unsanctioned by their authority. Chemistry meanwhile had made some progress, and in seeking the philosopher’s stone many valuable properties of minerals had been discovered: but the discreditable character of the alchemists, and professional jealousy and prejudice, combined to render those persons, who from their knowledge and their reputation might best have availed themselves of the remedies thus presented, unwilling to profit, or to let others profit, by discoveries made in so irregular a manner. The effect of this ill-judged adherence to the wisdom of antiquity was not of course to stifle the powerful preparations employed by Paracelsus, Van Helmont, and others, but to throw them exclusively into the hands of another party. Hence arose the contending sects of Galenists and chemists, the former employing none but vegetable productions, the latter ridiculing the Galenical pharmacy as cumbrous and ineffectual, and placing their dependance on the newly-discovered properties of mercury, antimony, sulphur, and other metals and earths. It was probably very much owing to this schism that the practice of medicine was so much infested by quacks towards the close of the sixteenth and early in the seventeenth century, more so perhaps than at any other period. The real power of the remedies discarded by the most influential professors of the healing art could not be hidden, and might easily be exaggerated; and hence arose a vast multitude of empirics, each with his elixir vitæ, or some infallible medicine or other, which vended under a lofty name, and with the pretence of deep science, gained ready hold upon the credulity of the ignorant and the simple.

“He is a rare physician, do him right, An excellent Paracelsian, and has done Strange cures with mineral physic. He deals all With spirits—he. He will not hear a word Of Galen, or his tedious recipes.”[125]

Such was the state of medicine in England at this period: of its state in Italy we are not qualified to speak; but, from an instance presently to be quoted, it would seem to have been no more advanced than it was in England. And as there was no disease for which money could not purchase some infallible remedy, so the plague, as the object of most general apprehension, was best of all suited for the impostures of those whose treasury was the credulity of other people. A reference to any collection of tracts upon this subject, published before or during the year 1665, will satisfy the reader on this head: the examples which follow have occurred during a very cursory examination of one or two volumes, from which they might easily have been multiplied. We find in ‘A Ioyfull Iewell,.. first made and published in the Italian tung, by the famous and learned Knight and Doctor M. Leonardo Fioraventie,’ such receipts as this: “Of Elixir Vitæ, and how to make it, and of his great Vertues.” It consists of forty ingredients, such as ginger, juniper, sage, rose-leaves, aloes, figs, raisins, honey, &c., an equal quantity of each. This, if it did no good, could perhaps do little harm: but when it is professed that if any use it in time of pestilence, it is impossible he should be infected, the deceit becomes a source of serious evil. Another is worse, and joins blasphemy to impudence. “A great and miraculous secret to help the pestilence, with great ease and in a short time; a remedy and secret revealed of God miraculously. When a man hath a pestilent sore, let there be made a hole in the earth, and there let him be buryed all saving the neck and head, and there let him stand xii or xiiii houres and he shall be holpen, and then take him forth: and merveyl not that I write this medicine, because the earth is our mother, and that which purifieth all things, as we see by experience that the earth taketh forth all spots in cloth, it susteineth and maketh flesh tender if we bury it v or vi hours in the earth.” Or “the water of the sea hath a marveylous remedy in it against the pestilence, if they wash them therein iiii or v houres togither, or if need require let him stand x or xii houres therein.” Truly a man would be well “holpen” by such remedies: yet this Fioraventi, a Bolognese physician and alchemist of the sixteenth century, enjoyed considerable reputation among his contemporaries. The chemists of course were not sparing in their censures of their adversaries the Galenists, and the ingenious and industrious Iatrochemist, Dr. George Thomson, makes the following observations, in which the reader may be inclined partly to join: “These, especially if they can but surreptitiously get some chymical medicines from us, will, at a hazard, try what a dry fume of gums will do, a costly pomander, a composition of figs, rue, and walnuts (a rueful medicine to trust to if all were known), Mathias’ plague water, or aqua epidemica (I wonder they forgat St. Luke’s water for mere credit’s sake), an electuary of London treacle and wood-sorrel (I am persuaded a leg of veal and green-sauce is far better), bole-armeniac (no whit better than tobacco-clay, except that ‘tis dearer and farther fetched). If these avail not, if they light upon rich families (let the poor shift for themselves), they will provide for them (taking a share with them) pearls, hyacinth-stone prepared (after their gross way), bezoar-stone of the east, unicorn’s horn (equivalent to harts-horn), lignum aloes—strange they omitted gold, but that I believe they mean to put into their own purse.”[126] The ridicule is not undeserved, when we find such articles as crab’s eyes, julap of violets, oil of amber, confection of hyacinth, and other preparations of precious stones in the materia medica of the day. Dr. Thomson, however, has his own ‘Ternion of effectual Chymical Remedies,’ with which “noble chymical preparations if any desire to be accommodated in this sad time of contagion, let them repair to the place of his abode without Aldgate, nigh the Blew-Boare Inn.” Spirit of salt and oil of sulphur appear to have been favourite remedies with this class of practitioners.

The greatest and last plague which has appeared in London first showed itself in Westminster towards the end of the year 1664. In December a three months’ frost set in, which stopped its progress, but with the spring it returned, though doubtfully, and continued through May and June with more or less severity. At the beginning of August it set in with far greater violence, and was at its height about the beginning of September, when more than twelve thousand persons died weekly. Having reached this height, it began to decrease. By the beginning of November the city began to wear a more healthy aspect, and in December people were crowding back again as fast as they before had crowded out.[127] The total number of deaths is thus given:—

Within the city of London 9,887

In Westminster 8,403

Parishes without the Walls 28,888

Neighbourhood, including Hackney, Islington, Lambeth, Rotherhithe, &c., in all 12 parishes } 21,420

———

68,598

Enough has been already said of the general appearance and course of such disorders. Instead therefore of another connected narrative, we shall only extract some of the most remarkable incidents and reflections to be found in Defoe’s and Pepys’s journals.

“The face of London was now indeed strangely altered, I mean the whole mass of buildings, city, liberties, suburbs, Westminster, Southwark, and altogether; for as to the particular part called the city, or within the walls, that was not yet much infected; but in the whole, the face of things, I say, was much altered: sorrow and sadness sat upon every face, and though some part were not overwhelmed, yet all looked deeply concerned; and as we saw it apparently coming on, so every one looked on himself and his family as in the utmost danger: were it possible to represent those times exactly to those that did not see them, and give the reader due ideas of the horror that everywhere presented itself, it must make just impressions upon their minds, and fill them with surprise. London might well be said to be all in tears; the mourners did not go about the streets indeed, for nobody put on black, or made a formal dress of mourning for their nearest friends; but the voice of mourning was truly heard in the streets; the shrieks of women and children at the windows and doors of their houses, where their nearest relations were perhaps dying, or just dead, were so frequent to be heard as we passed the streets, that it was enough to pierce the stoutest heart in the world to hear them. Tears and lamentations were seen almost in every house, especially in the first part of the visitation, for towards the latter end, men’s hearts were hardened, and death was always so much before their eyes, that they did not so much concern themselves for the loss of their friends, expecting that they themselves should be summoned the next hour.”[128]

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

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

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

ill220

[Medal in commemoration of the plague and fire of London. It represents the eye of God in the centre, and the two comets, one on each side; that on the right showering down pestilence upon the city. On the other side the city is represented on fire, while a violent east wind is urging the flames. The foreground is full of images of distress: a ship tossed by the waves; a man drowning; a withered tree: Death fighting with a man on horseback. The reverse of this curious piece, the history of which, when and by whom it was struck, is, we believe, unknown, is given in p. 230. Legend: “So he punishes.”]

“The apprehensions of the people were likewise strangely increased by the error of the times, in which I think the people, from what principle I cannot imagine, were more addicted to prophecies and astrological conjurations, dreams, and old wives’ tales, than ever they were before or since. Whether this unhappy temper was originally raised by the follies of some people who got money by it, that is to say, by printing predictions and prognostications, I know not: but certain it is, books frightened them terribly, such as Lilly’s Almanac, Gadbury’s Astrological Predictions, Poor Robin’s Almanac, and the like; also several pretended religious books, one entitled, ‘Come out of her, my people, lest ye be partaker of her Plagues;’ another called, ‘Fair Warning;’ another, ‘Britain’s Remembrancer,’ and many such; all or most part of which foretold, directly or covertly, the ruin of the city. Nay, some were so enthusiastically bold as to run about the streets with their oral predictions, pretending they were sent to preach to the city; and one in particular, who, like Jonah to Nineveh, cried in the streets, ‘Yet forty days, and London shall be destroyed.’ I will not be positive whether he said ‘yet forty days,’ or ‘yet a few days.’[129] Another ran about naked, except a pair of drawers about his waist, crying day and night, like a man that Josephus mentions, who cried, ‘Woe to Jerusalem!’ a little before the destruction of that city. So this poor naked creature cried, ‘O! the great and the dreadful God!’ and said no more, but repeated those words continually, with a voice and countenance full of horror, a swift pace, and nobody could ever find him to stop, or rest, or take any sustenance, at least that I could hear of. I met this poor creature several times in the streets, and would have spoken to him, but he would not enter into speech with me, or any one else, but kept on his dismal cries continually. These things terrified the people to the last degree; and especially when two or three times, as I have mentioned already, they found one or two in the bills dead of the plague at St. Giles’s.”[130]

Pepys. June 7.—“The hottest day that ever I felt in my life. This day, much against my will, I did see in Drury-lane two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and ‘Lord have mercy upon us’ writ there, which was a sad sight to me, being the first of that kind that to my remembrance I ever saw.”

June 17.—“It struck me very deep this afternoon, going with a hackney-coach down Holborn, from the Lord Treasurer’s: the coachman I found to drive easily and easily, at last stood still, and came down hardly able to stand, and told me he was suddenly struck very sick, and almost blind, he could not see: so I light, and went into another coach with a sad heart for the poor man, and for myself also, lest he should have been struck with the plague.”

Defoe. “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 parishes of Aldgate and Whitechapel.

“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 four hundred 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 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 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, and one that would not be without its uses. ‘Nay,’ said the good man, ‘if you will venture upon that score, in name of God go in, for, depend upon it, it will be a sermon to you; it may be the best you ever heard in your life. It is a speaking sight,’ said 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.... It had in it sixteen or seventeen bodies; some were wrapt up in linen sheets, some in rugs, 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 amongst the rest; but the matter was not much to them, nor the indecency 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 credit any thing 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 behaviour and practice of nurses who attended the sick, and of their hastening on the fate of those they attended in their sickness[131].... It is to be observed, that the women were in all this calamity the most rash, fearless, and desperate creatures; and as there were vast numbers that went about as nurses to tend those that were sick, they committed a great many petty thieveries in the houses where they were employed, and some of them were publicly whipped for it, when perhaps they ought rather to have been hanged for examples, for numbers of houses were robbed on these occasions; till at length the parish officers were sent to recommend nurses to the sick, and always took an account of who it was they sent, so as that they might call them to account, if the house had been abused where they were placed. But these robberies extended chiefly to wearing clothes, linen, and what rings or money they could come at, when the person died who was under their care, but not to a general plunder of the houses; and I could give you an account of one of these nurses, who, several years after, being on her death-bed, confessed with the utmost horror the robberies she had committed at the time of her being a nurse, and by which she had enriched herself to a great degree; but as for murders, I do not find that there ever was any proof of the facts, in the manner as it has been reported, except as above. They did tell me indeed of a nurse in one place that laid a wet cloth on the face of a dying patient whom she tended, and so put an end to his life, who was just expiring before; and another that smothered a young woman she was looking to when she was in a fainting fit, and would have come to herself; some that killed them by giving them one thing, some another, and some starved them by giving them nothing at all. But these stories had two marks of suspicion that always attended them, which caused me always to slight them, and to look upon them as mere stories that people continually frighted each other with. That, wherever it was that we heard it, they always placed the scene at the further end of the town opposite or most remote from where you were to hear it. In the next place, of whatsoever part you heard the story, the particulars were always the same, especially that of laying a wet double clout on a dying man’s face, and that of smothering a young gentlewoman, so that it was apparent, at least to my judgment, that there was more of tale than of truth in those things.”[132]

“I had some little obligations upon me to go to my brother’s house, which was in Coleman-street parish, and which he had left to my care, and I went at first every day, but afterwards only once or twice a week.

“In these walks I had many dismal scenes before my eyes; as particularly of persons falling dead in the streets, terrible shrieks and screechings of women, who in their agonies would throw open their chamber windows, and cry out in a dismal surprising manner. It is impossible to describe the variety of postures in which the passions of the poor people would express themselves.

“Passing through Tokenhouse-yard, in Lothbury, of a sudden a casement violently opened just over my head, and a woman gave three frightful screeches, and then cried, ‘Oh! death, death, death!’ in a most inimitable tone, and which struck me with horror and a chillness in my very blood. There was nobody to be seen in the whole street, neither did any other window open, for people had no curiosity now in any case; nor could any body help one another; so I went on to pass into Bell-alley.

Just in Bell-alley, on the right hand of the passage, there was a more terrible cry than that, though it was not so directed out at the window, but the whole family was in a terrible fright, and I could hear women and children run screaming about the rooms like distracted, when a garret-window opened, and somebody from a window the other side the alley called and asked, ‘What is the matter.’ Upon which, from the first window it was answered, ‘O Lord! my old master has hanged himself.’ The other asked again, ‘Is he quite dead?’ and the first answered, ‘Ay, ay, dead and cold.’ This person was a merchant and a deputy-alderman, and very rich. I care not to mention his name, though I knew his name too, but that would be a hardship to the family, which is now flourishing again.

“But this is but one. It is scarce credible what dreadful cases happened in particular families every day: people in the rage of the distemper, or in the torment of their swellings, which was indeed intolerable, running out of their own government, raving and distracted, and oftentimes laying violent hands upon themselves, throwing themselves out at their windows, shooting themselves, &c.; mothers murdering their own children in their lunacy; some dying of mere grief, as a passion; some of mere fright and surprise, without any infection at all; others frighted into idiotism and foolish distractions; some into despair and lunacy; others into melancholy madness.

“The pain of the swelling was in particular very violent, and to some intolerable; the physicians and surgeons may be said to have tortured many poor creatures, even to death. The swellings in some grew hard, and they applied violent drawing plasters or poultices to break them; and if these did not do, they cut and scarified them in a terrible manner. In some those swellings were made hard, partly by the force of the distemper, and partly by their being too violently drawn, and were so hard that no instrument could cut them; and then they burnt them with caustics, so that many died raving mad with the torment, and some in the very operation. In these distresses, some for want of help to hold them down in their beds, or to look to them, laid hands upon themselves as above; some broke out into the streets, perhaps naked, and would run directly down to the river, if they were not stopped by the watchmen or other officers, and plunge themselves into the water, wherever they found it.”[133]

“One of the worst days we had in the whole time, as I thought, was in the beginning of September, when indeed good people were beginning to think that God was resolved to make a full end of the people in this miserable city. This was at that time when the plague was fully come into the eastern parishes. The parish of Aldgate, if I may give my opinion, buried above 1000 a week for two weeks, though the bills did not say so many; but it surrounded me at so dismal a rate, that there was not a house in twenty uninfected. In the Minories, in Houndsditch, and in those parts of Aldgate parish about the Butcher-row, and the alleys over against me, I say in those places death reigned in every corner. Whitechapel parish was in same condition, and though much less than the parish I lived in, yet buried near 600 a week, by the bills; and in my opinion near twice as many. Whole families, and indeed whole streets of families, were swept away together, insomuch as it was frequent for neighbours to call to the bellman to go to such and such houses and fetch out the people, for that they were all dead.

“And indeed the work of removing the dead bodies by carts was now grown so very odious and dangerous, that it was complained of that the bearers did not take care to clear such houses, where all the inhabitants were dead, but that some of the bodies lay unburied, till the neighbouring families were offended with the stench, and consequently infected. And this neglect of the officers was such, that the churchwardens and constables were summoned to look after it, and even the justices of the Hamlets were obliged to venture their lives among them to quicken and encourage them; for innumerable of the bearers died of the distemper, infected by the bodies they were obliged to come so near; and had it had not been that the number of people who wanted employment, and wanted bread, as I have said before, was so great that necessity drove them to undertake any thing, and venture any thing, they would never have found people to be employed, and then the bodies of the dead would have lain above ground, and have perished and rotted in a dreadful manner.

“But the magistrates cannot be enough commended in this, that they kept such good order for the burying of the dead, that as fast as any of those they employed to carry off or bury the dead fell sick and died, as was many times the case, they immediately supplied the places with others, which, by reason of the great number of poor that was left out of business, was not hard to do. This occasioned that notwithstanding the infinite number of people which died, and were sick, almost all together, yet they were always cleared away and carried off every night, so that it was never to be said of London that the living were not able to bury the dead.

“As the desolation was greater during those terrible times, so the amazement of the people increased, and a thousand unaccountable things they would do in the violence of their fright, as others did the same in the agonies of their distemper, and this part was very affecting: some went roaring and crying, and wringing of their hands along the streets; some would go praying, and lifting up their hands to heaven, calling upon God for mercy. I cannot say, indeed, whether this was not in their distraction; but be it so, it was still an indication of a more serious mind, when they had the use of their senses, and was much better, even as it was, than the frightful yellings and cryings that every day, and especially in the evenings, were heard in some streets. I suppose the world has heard of the famous Solomon Eagle, an enthusiast: he, though not infected at all but in his head, went about denouncing of judgment upon the city in a frightful manner, sometimes quite naked, and with a pan of burning charcoal on his head. What he said, or pretended indeed, I could not learn.

ill230

[Reverse of the medal given in p. 220. Here every thing is prosperous: a corn-field on the one side, a vineyard on the other; in front are ships riding in quiet, and the withered tree has put forth leaves. The figure in front, by the serpent about his arm, seems meant for St. Paul. Legend: ‘Mere goodness.’]

“I will not say whether that clergyman was distracted or not, or whether he did it out of pure zeal for the poor people, who went every evening through the streets of Whitechapel, and with his hands lifted up, repeated that part of the liturgy of the church continually, ‘Spare us, good Lord; spare thy people whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood.’ I say I cannot speak positively of these things, because these were only the dismal objects which represented themselves to me as I looked through my chamber windows, for I seldom opened the casements, while I confined myself within doors during that most violent raging of the pestilence; when indeed many began to think, and even to say, that there would none escape; and indeed I began to think so too, and therefore kept within doors for about a fortnight, and never stirred out. But I could not hold it. Besides there were some people who, notwithstanding the danger, did not omit publicly to attend the worship of God, even in the most dangerous times. And though it is true that a great many of the clergy did shut up their churches and fled, as other people did, for the safety of their lives, yet all did not do so; some ventured to officiate, and to keep up the assemblies of the people by constant prayers, and some times sermons, or brief exhortations to repentance and reformation, and this as long as they would hear them. And dissenters did the like also, and even in the very churches, where the parish ministers were either dead or fled; nor was there any room for making any difference at such a time as this was.[134]

Pepys, Sept. 3.—Lord’s day.—“Up and put on my silk coloured suit, very fine, and my periwig, bought a good while since, but durst not wear, because the plague was in Westminister when I bought it; and it is a wonder what will be the fashion after the plague is done as to periwigs, for nobody will dare to buy any hair for fear of the infection, that it had been cut off the heads of people dead of the plague.”

It would be a great shame to laugh at Mr. Pepys after he has done so much to amuse the world: but these, and such as these, are the most curious and important particulars concerning the pestilence recorded in his minute and extensive diary.

END OF VOL. II.

London: William Clowes and Son, Stamford-street.