About June, the lord mayor and aldermen began more particularly to concern themselves for the regulation of the city, by the shutting up of houses. Examiners were appointed in every parish to order the house to be shut up wherever any person sick of the infection was found. A night watchman and a day watchman were appointed to each infected house to prevent any person from coming out or going into the same. Women searchers were appointed in each parish to examine the bodies of such as were dead, to see if they had died of the infection, and over these were appointed physicians and chirurgeons. Other orders were made with regard to giving notice of sickness, sequestration of the sick, airing the goods and bedding of the infected, burial of the dead, cleansing of the streets, forbidding wandering beggars, loose persons, and idle assemblages, and the like. One of these orders was--"That every house visited be marked with a red cross of a foot long, in the middle of the door, with these words, 'LORD HAVE MERCY UPON US,' to be set close over the same cross." Many got out of their houses by stratagem after they were shut up, and thus spread the plague; in one place they blowed up their watchman with gunpowder and burnt the poor fellow dreadfully, and while he made hideous cries, the whole family got out at the windows; others got out by bribing the watchman, and I have seen three watchmen publicly whipped through the streets for suffering people to go out. _II.--How the Dead Were Buried_ I went all the first part of the time freely about the streets, and when they dug the great pit in the churchyard of Aldgate I could not resist going to see it. A terrible pit it was, forty feet long, about sixteen wide, and in one part they dug it to near twenty feet deep, until they could go no deeper for the water. It was filled in just two weeks, when they had thrown into it 1,114 bodies from our own parish. I got admittance into the churchyard by the sexton, who at first refused me, but at last said: "Name of God, go in; depend upon it, 'twill be a sermon to you, it may be the best that ever you heard. It is a speaking sight," says he; and with that he opened the door and said, "Go, if you will." 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 coming over the streets, so I went in.