Nor was the silence and emptiness of the streets so much in the city as in the outparts, except just at one particular time, when, as I have mentioned, the plague came east, and spread over all the city. It was indeed a merciful disposition of God, that as the plague began at one end of the town first, as has been observed at large, so it proceeded progressively to other parts, and did not come on this way, or eastward, till it had spent its fury in the west part of the town; and so as it came on one way it abated another. For example:-- It began at St. Giles's and the Westminster end of the town, and it was in its height in all that part by about the middle of July, viz., in St. Giles-in-the-Fields, St. Andrew's, Holborn, St. Clement's-Danes, St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, and in Westminster. The latter end of July it decreased in those parishes, and, coming east, it increased prodigiously in Cripplegate, St. Sepulchre's, St. James's, Clerkenwell, and St. Bride's and Aldersgate. While it was in all these parishes, the city and all the parishes of the Southwark side of the water, and all Stepney, Whitechapel, Aldgate, Wapping, and Ratcliff, were very little touched; so that people went about their business unconcerned, carried on their trades, kept open their shops, and conversed freely with one another in all the city, the east and northeast suburbs, and in Southwark, almost as if the plague had not been among us. Even when the north and northwest suburbs were fully infected, viz., Cripplegate, Clerkenwell, Bishopsgate, and Shoreditch, yet still all the rest were tolerably well. For example:-- From the 25th of July to the 1st of August the bill stood thus of all diseases:-- St. Giles's, Cripplegate 554 St. Sepulchre's 250 Clerkenwell 103 Bishopsgate 116 Shoreditch 110 Stepney Parish 127 Aldgate 92 Whitechapel 104 All the 97 parishes within the walls 228 All the parishes in Southwark 205 ----- 1,889