Note 10 — CHAPTER 1. (continued 2)
Reading edition
The sickness here alluded to was the “Plague,” which visited London in 1665. The state of the city during this dreadful visitation seems to have been most deplorable. The following striking description is from Ellis’s Original Letters in the British Museum. The letter is one addressed to Dr. Sancroft from J. Tillison, dated Sept. 14, 1665:—
“The desolation of the city is very great. That heart is either of steel or stone, that will not lament this sad visitation, and will not bleed for those unutterable woes! What eye would not weep to see so many habitations uninhabited—the poor sick not visited—the hungry not fed—the grave not satisfied! Death stares us continually in the face in every infected person that passes by us, in every coffin which is daily and hourly carried along the streets. The custom was in the beginning to bury the dead in the night only; but now both night and day will hardly be time enough to do it. The Quakers (as we are informed) have buried, in their piece of ground, a thousand for some weeks together past.”
George Whitehead relates the satisfaction and comfort many innocent Friends expressed on their deathbeds, both in Newgate and other noisome places during the plague. Death was truly gain to these: “it being through death,” says Whitehead, “that the Lord had appointed the final deliverance of many from the cruelties and rod of the oppressors, and from the miseries and evil to come.”—“Whilst the plague was raging in the city,” he adds, “our persecutors took fifty-five of our Friends (men and women) out of Newgate, where the distemper also prevailed, and forced them on board a ship for banishment, which lay for some time in the river. They were so crowded on board, and the distemper breaking out amongst them, most of them were infected, and twenty-seven of them soon died. I visited them, and had a meeting with them on board, and the Lord my God preserved me, both from the distemper and also from banishment, wherein I did humbly confess his power and special providence to his own praise and glory.”