The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 — John Shaqi
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12
History
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12
World history
His words had shocked my resolution a little and I stood wavering for a
good while; but just at that interval I saw two links come over from the
end of the Minories, and heard the bellman, and then appeared a dead-cart,
so I could no longer resist my desire, and went in. There was nobody that I
could perceive at first in the church-yard or going into it but the buriers
and the fellow that drove the cart or rather led the horse and cart; but
when they came up to the pit they saw a man going to and fro muffled up in
a brown cloak and making motions with his hands under his cloak, as if
he was in a great agony, and the buriers immediately gathered about him,
supposing he was one of those poor delirious or desperate creatures that
used to bury themselves. He said nothing as he walked about, but two or
three times groaned very deeply and loud, and sighed as he would break his
heart.
When the buriers came up to him they soon found he was neither a person
infected and desperate, as I have observed above, nor a person distempered
in mind, but one oppressed with a dreadful weight of grief, indeed, having
his wife and several of his children in the cart that had just come in, and
he followed it in an agony and excess of sorrow. He mourned heartily, as
it was easy to see, but with a kind of masculine grief that could not give
itself vent in tears, and, calmly desiring the buriers to let him alone,
said he would only see the bodies thrown in and go away; so they left
importuning him. But no sooner was the cart turned round and the bodies
shot into the pit promiscuously, which was a surprise to him, for he at
least expected they would have been decently laid in, though indeed he was
afterward convinced that was impracticable--I say, no sooner did he see the
sight but he cried out aloud, unable to contain himself.
I could not hear what he said, but he went backward and forward two or
three times and fell down in a swoon. The buriers ran to him and took him
up, and in a little while he came to himself, and they led him away to the
Pye tavern, over against the end of Houndsditch, where it seems the man was
known and where they took care of him. He looked into the pit again as
he went away, but the buriers had covered the bodies so immediately with
throwing in the earth that, though there was light enough, for there were
lanterns and candles placed all night round the sides of the pit, yet
nothing could be seen.
This was a mournful scene, indeed, and affected me almost as much as the
rest, but the other was awful and full of terror. The cart had in it
sixteen or seventeen bodies; some were wrapped up in linen sheets, some in
rugs, some all but naked or so loose that what covering they had fell from
them in being shot out of the cart, for coffins were not to be had for the
prodigious numbers that fell in such a calamity as his.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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