During this terrible time, when all work was suspended, the people were only kept from starving by munificent gifts. The King gave £1000 a week; the City £600 a week; the Archbishop of Canterbury many hundreds every week; there was the whole industrial population of the City to be provided for. Some got employment from the Corporation as watchmen, grave-diggers, searchers, and the like; most had no work and no wages; their insufficient nourishment no doubt assisted the disease, which raged with the greatest force among the poorer sort. Bartholomew Fair was forbidden. In September Pepys writes, “To Lambeth: but Lord! what a sad time it is, to see no boats upon the river, and grass grows all up and down Whitehall Court, and nobody but wretches in the street.” The people began to get back and to go about their usual business in December; the Court returned in February, and it was soon observed that the streets were as full of people as ever. Yet nearly 70,000 had fallen, or perhaps one in three. If with the present population of 5,000,000 one in three were to die of Plague there would be a loss of 1,700,000. It seems as if about a third part of the population of London were cut off by this scourge. Happily it was the last of the great plagues. The history of London is no longer interrupted by the death of one-third of its people. [Illustration: RESCUED FROM THE PLAGUE From the painting by F. W. W Topham, R.I., by permission of the Artist.] [Illustration: SAMUEL PEPYS (1633–1703) From the painting by John Hayles in the National Portrait Gallery, London. This picture is referred to in Pepys’ _Diary_.] The following notes are a brief diary of the Plague as it was observed by Pepys—