the year 1656, in which there died twenty thousand people in a day, of which I have had very good satisfaction that it was utterly false. But these extravagant reports were very prejudicial to our trade, as well as unjust and injurious in themselves; for it was a long time after the plague was quite over before our trade could recover itself in those parts of the world; and the Flemings[295] and Dutch, but especially the last, made very great advantages of it, having all the market to themselves, and even buying our manufactures in the several parts of England where the plague was not, and carrying them to Holland and Flanders, and from thence transporting them to Spain and to Italy, as if they had been of their own making. But they were detected sometimes, and punished, that is to say, their goods confiscated, and ships also; for if it was true that our manufactures as well as our people were infected, and that it was dangerous to touch or to open and receive the smell of them, then those people ran the hazard, by that clandestine trade, not only of carrying the contagion into their own country, but also of infecting the nations to whom they traded with those goods; which, considering how many lives might be lost in consequence of such an action, must be a trade that no men of conscience could suffer themselves to be concerned in. I do not take upon me to say that any harm was done, I mean of that kind, by those people; but I doubt I need not make any such proviso in the case of our own country; for either by our people of London, or by the commerce, which made their conversing with all sorts of people in every county, and of every considerable town, necessary,--I say, by this means the plague was first or last spread all over the kingdom, as well in London as in all the cities and great towns, especially in the trading manufacturing towns and seaports: so that first or last all the considerable places in England were visited more or less, and the kingdom of Ireland in some places, but not so universally. How it fared with the people in Scotland, I had no opportunity to inquire.