A Journal of the Plague Year: Being Observations or Memorials of the Most Remarkable Occurrences, as Well Public as Private, Which Happened in London During the Last Great Visitation in 1665. Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in LondonDefoe, Daniel
History
A Journal of the Plague Year: Being Observations or Memorials of the Most Remarkable Occurrences, as Well Public as Private, Which Happened in London During the Last Great Visitation in 1665. Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London
Defoe, Daniel
Great Fire, London, England, 1666 -- Fiction; Historical fiction; London (England) -- History -- 17th century -- Fiction; Plague -- Fiction
Likewise in the next week, from the 11th of July to the 18th,
when the week’s bill was 1761, yet there died no more of the
plague, on the whole Southwark side of the water, than sixteen.
But this face of things soon changed, and it began to thicken in
Cripplegate parish especially, and in Clarkenwell; so that by the
second week in August, Cripplegate parish alone buried 886, and
Clarkenwell 155. Of the first, 850 might well be reckoned to die
of the plague; and of the last, the bill itself said 145 were of
the plague.
During the month of July, and while, as I have observed, our part
of the town seemed to be spared in comparison of the west part, I
went ordinarily about the streets, as my business required, and
particularly went generally once in a day, or in two days, into
the city, to my brother’s house, which he had given me charge of,
and to see if it was safe; and having the key in my pocket, I
used to go into the house, and over most of the rooms, to see
that all was well; for though it be something wonderful to tell,
that any should have hearts so hardened in the midst of such a
calamity as to rob and steal, yet certain it is that all sorts of
villainies, and even levities and debaucheries, were then
practised in the town as openly as ever—I will not say quite as
frequently, because the numbers of people were many ways
lessened.
But the city itself began now to be visited too, I mean within
the walls; but the number of people there were indeed extremely
lessened by so great a multitude having been gone into the
country; and even all this month of July they continued to flee,
though not in such multitudes as formerly. In August, indeed,
they fled in such a manner that I began to think there would be
really none but magistrates and servants left in the city.
As they fled now out of the city, so I should observe that the
Court removed early, viz., in the month of June, and went to
Oxford, where it pleased God to preserve them; and the distemper
did not, as I heard of, so much as touch them, for which I cannot
say that I ever saw they showed any great token of thankfulness,
and hardly anything of reformation, though they did not want
being told that their crying vices might without breach of
charity be said to have gone far in bringing that terrible
judgement upon the whole nation.
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