The Plague first made its appearance in the East End; it raged at Gravesend. On the alarm of its spreading all those who could took flight; those who were left behind were the working-men, craftsmen, journeymen, and servants, who lost their work and their wages. Among the fugitives were the physicians, whose place was taken by quacks; and in the City there perished many thousands, sometimes whole families dying in a single house; sometimes poor wretches lying down to die in the street or under a stall; in a word, all the horrors of such a visitation with which Defoe has made the world familiar. Twenty-one years later, on the accession of Charles, the Plague returned, and, continuing for a year, carried off 35,417 persons in London alone. I mention it in this place because the same writer, Benjamin Spencer, who gave us _The Wonderful Yeare_ lived to write in 1625 _Vox Civitatis_, the Lament of London. The City complains that her children have infected the air with their sins; we need not enumerate the sins; in this respect every city is conservative. These and not the stinks of the City, not the reeking shambles, the noisome kennel, the malarious laystall are the cause of the Plague. Nor is her trouble only caused by sickness and death of multitudes:— “This is not all my trouble, for my sorrows are increased like my sins: sickness hath consumed my substance: and with David, I justly say, I am weak and poor. My poverty lieth in being void of Trade, Money and victual. All which I am well nigh destitute of at this time. This I confess to be justly inflicted on me for my Pride, with which I have sought to outface Heaven. My tinckling feet, and my tip-toe Pace, my horned Tyaras, and crisp-curled locks, Shin-pride, and shoe-pride. Fulness of Bread hath made me lift my heel against my Maker, I said in my prosperity I should never be moved: but Thou, O Lord, hast turned Thy face, and I am troubled. My children have been so full-fed, that they have fallen out among themselves, the meanest thinking himself as good as the Magistrate, and the mighty refusing to look upon the cause of the mean. My Merchants have been the companions of Princes, but now are gone; their place is scarce to be found. How hath my back groaned with heavy burdens: and now Issacher stands still for want of work. One Waine may carry all I sell in a day. I have had such trading, that I could scarce find time to serve God, but now every day is a holiday, because I have prophaned His holy day (even His blessed Sabbath) which hath been dedicated to Him, as a remembrance of His glorious resurrection. But I have laid dead in sins and trespasses. I have given liberty to my servants to execute their wills in Sabbath breaking and deceiving: now God hath proclaimed liberty for them to the pestilence, to wandering, and to idleness. My apprentices have been the children of knights, and justices of