I had about this time a little hardship put upon me, which I was at first greatly afflicted at, and very much disturbed about, though, as it proved, it did not expose me to any disaster; and this was, being appointed, by the alderman of Portsoken Ward, one of the examiners of the houses in the precinct where I lived. We had a large parish, and had no less than eighteen examiners, as the order called us: the people called us visitors. I endeavored with all my might to be excused from such an employment, and used many arguments with the alderman's deputy to be excused; particularly, I alleged that I was against shutting up houses at all, and that it would be very hard to oblige me to be an instrument in that which was against my judgment, and which I did verily believe would not answer the end it was intended for. But all the abatement I could get was only, that whereas the officer was appointed by my lord mayor to continue two months, I should be obliged to hold it but three weeks, on condition, nevertheless, that I could then get some other sufficient housekeeper to serve the rest of the time for me; which was, in short, but a very small favor, it being very difficult to get any man to accept of such an employment that was fit to be intrusted with it. It is true that shutting up of houses had one effect which I am sensible was of moment; namely, it confined the distempered people, who would otherwise have been both very troublesome and very dangerous in their running about streets with the distemper upon them, which, when they were delirious, they would have done in a most frightful manner, as, indeed, they began to do at first very much until they were restrained; nay, so very open they were, that the poor would go about and beg at people's doors, and say they had the plague upon them, and beg rags for their sores, or both, or anything that delirious nature happened to think of.