A Journal of the Plague Year

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But to leave these things just as I found them, it was certain that
those people who were more than ordinarily cautious of their health,
did take particular directions for what they called seasoning of their
houses, and abundance of costly things were consumed on that account
which I cannot but say not only seasoned those houses, as they desired,
but filled the air with very grateful and wholesome smells which
others had the share of the benefit of as well as those who were at the
expenses of them.

And yet after all, though the poor came to town very precipitantly, as
I have said, yet I must say the rich made no such haste. The men of
business, indeed, came up, but many of them did not bring their families
to town till the spring came on, and that they saw reason to depend upon
it that the plague would not return.

The Court, indeed, came up soon after Christmas, but the nobility
and gentry, except such as depended upon and had employment under the
administration, did not come so soon.

I should have taken notice here that, notwithstanding the violence of
the plague in London and in other places, yet it was very observable
that it was never on board the fleet; and yet for some time there was a
strange press in the river, and even in the streets, for seamen to man
the fleet. But it was in the beginning of the year, when the plague was
scarce begun, and not at all come down to that part of the city where
they usually press for seamen; and though a war with the Dutch was not
at all grateful to the people at that time, and the seamen went with
a kind of reluctancy into the service, and many complained of being
dragged into it by force, yet it proved in the event a happy violence to
several of them, who had probably perished in the general calamity, and
who, after the summer service was over, though they had cause to lament
the desolation of their families--who, when they came back, were many
of them in their graves--yet they had room to be thankful that they were
carried out of the reach of it, though so much against their wills.
We indeed had a hot war with the Dutch that year, and one very great
engagement at sea in which the Dutch were worsted, but we lost a great
many men and some ships. But, as I observed, the plague was not in the
fleet, and when they came to lay up the ships in the river the violent
part of it began to abate.

I would be glad if I could close the account of this melancholy year
with some particular examples historically; I mean of the thankfulness
to God, our preserver, for our being delivered from this dreadful
calamity. Certainly the circumstance of the deliverance, as well as the
terrible enemy we were delivered from, called upon the whole nation for
it. The circumstances of the deliverance were indeed very remarkable,
as I have in part mentioned already, and particularly the dreadful
condition which we were all in when we were to the surprise of the whole
town made joyful with the hope of a stop of the infection.

Nothing but the immediate finger of God, nothing but omnipotent power,
could have done it. The contagion despised all medicine; death raged in
every corner; and had it gone on as it did then, a few weeks more
would have cleared the town of all, and everything that had a soul. Men
everywhere began to despair; every heart failed them for fear; people
were made desperate through the anguish of their souls, and the terrors
of death sat in the very faces and countenances of the people.

In that very moment when we might very well say, 'Vain was the help of
man',--I say, in that very moment it pleased God, with a most agreeable
surprise, to cause the fury of it to abate, even of itself; and the
malignity declining, as I have said, though infinite numbers were sick,
yet fewer died, and the very first weeks' bill decreased 1843; a vast
number indeed!

It is impossible to express the change that appeared in the very
countenances of the people that Thursday morning when the weekly bill
came out. It might have been perceived in their countenances that a
secret surprise and smile of joy sat on everybody's face. They shook
one another by the hands in the streets, who would hardly go on the same
side of the way with one another before. Where the streets were not too
broad they would open their windows and call from one house to another,
and ask how they did, and if they had heard the good news that the
plague was abated. Some would return, when they said good news, and ask,
'What good news?' and when they answered that the plague was abated and
the bills decreased almost two thousand, they would cry out, 'God be
praised I' and would weep aloud for joy, telling them they had heard
nothing of it; and such was the joy of the people that it was, as it
were, life to them from the grave. I could almost set down as many
extravagant things done in the excess of their joy as of their grief;
but that would be to lessen the value of it.

I must confess myself to have been very much dejected just before this
happened; for the prodigious number that were taken sick the week or two
before, besides those that died, was such, and the lamentations were so
great everywhere, that a man must have seemed to have acted even against
his reason if he had so much as expected to escape; and as there was
hardly a house but mine in all my neighbourhood but was infected, so had
it gone on it would not have been long that there would have been
any more neighbours to be infected. Indeed it is hardly credible what
dreadful havoc the last three weeks had made, for if I might believe the
person whose calculations I always found very well grounded, there were
not less than 30,000 people dead and near 100.000 fallen sick in the
three weeks I speak of; for the number that sickened was surprising,
indeed it was astonishing, and those whose courage upheld them all the
time before, sank under it now.

In the middle of their distress, when the condition of the city of
London was so truly calamitous, just then it pleased God--as it were by
His immediate hand to disarm this enemy; the poison was taken out of the
sting. It was wonderful; even the physicians themselves were surprised
at it. Wherever they visited they found their patients better; either
they had sweated kindly, or the tumours were broke, or the carbuncles
went down and the inflammations round them changed colour, or the fever
was gone, or the violent headache was assuaged, or some good symptom
was in the case; so that in a few days everybody was recovering, whole
families that were infected and down, that had ministers praying with
them, and expected death every hour, were revived and healed, and none
died at all out of them.

Nor was this by any new medicine found out, or new method of cure
discovered, or by any experience in the operation which the physicians
or surgeons attained to; but it was evidently from the secret invisible
hand of Him that had at first sent this disease as a judgement upon us;
and let the atheistic part of mankind call my saying what they please,
it is no enthusiasm; it was acknowledged at that time by all mankind.
The disease was enervated and its malignity spent; and let it proceed
from whencesoever it will, let the philosophers search for reasons in
nature to account for it by, and labour as much as they will to lessen
the debt they owe to their Maker, those physicians who had the least
share of religion in them were obliged to acknowledge that it was all
supernatural, that it was extraordinary, and that no account could be
given of it.

If I should say that this is a visible summons to us all to
thankfulness, especially we that were under the terror of its increase,
perhaps it may be thought by some, after the sense of the thing was
over, an officious canting of religious things, preaching a sermon
instead of writing a history, making myself a teacher instead of giving
my observations of things; and this restrains me very much from going on
here as I might otherwise do. But if ten lepers Were healed, and but one
returned to give thanks, I desire to be as that one, and to be thankful
for myself.

Nor will I deny but there were abundance of people who, to all
appearance, were very thankful at that time; for their mouths were
stopped, even the mouths of those whose hearts were not extraordinary
long affected with it. But the impression was so strong at that time
that it could not be resisted; no, not by the worst of the people.

It was a common thing to meet people in the street that were strangers,
and that we knew nothing at all of, expressing their surprise. Going
one day through Aldgate, and a pretty many people being passing and
repassing, there comes a man out of the end of the Minories, and looking
a little up the street and down, he throws his hands abroad, 'Lord, what
an alteration is here I Why, last week I came along here, and hardly
anybody was to be seen.' Another man--I heard him--adds to his words,
''Tis all wonderful; 'tis all a dream.' 'Blessed be God,' says a third
man, and and let us give thanks to Him, for 'tis all His own doing, human
help and human skill was at an end.' These were all strangers to one
another. But such salutations as these were frequent in the street every
day; and in spite of a loose behaviour, the very common people went
along the streets giving God thanks for their deliverance.

It was now, as I said before, the people had cast off all apprehensions,
and that too fast; indeed we were no more afraid now to pass by a man
with a white cap upon his head, or with a doth wrapt round his neck, or
with his leg limping, occasioned by the sores in his groin, all which
were frightful to the last degree, but the week before. But now the
street was full of them, and these poor recovering creatures, give them
their due, appeared very sensible of their unexpected deliverance; and
I should wrong them very much if I should not acknowledge that I
believe many of them were really thankful. But I must own that, for the
generality of the people, it might too justly be said of them as was
said of the children of Israel after their being delivered from the host
of Pharaoh, when they passed the Red Sea, and looked back and saw the
Egyptians overwhelmed in the water: viz., that they sang His praise, but
they soon forgot His works.

I can go no farther here. I should be counted censorious, and perhaps
unjust, if I should enter into the unpleasing work of reflecting,
whatever cause there was for it, upon the unthankfulness and return of
all manner of wickedness among us, which I was so much an eye-witness of
myself. I shall conclude the account of this calamitous year therefore
with a coarse but sincere stanza of my own, which I placed at the end of
my ordinary memorandums the same year they were written:--

A dreadful plague in London was
In the year sixty-five,
Which swept an hundred thousand souls
Away; yet I alive!

H. F.