on a public day, whether a Sabbath-day or not I do not remember, in
Aldgate Church, in a pew full of people, on a sudden one fancied she
smelt an ill smell. Immediately she fancies the plague was in the pew,
whispers her notion or suspicion to the next, then rises and goes out of
the pew. It immediately took with the next, and so to them all; and
every one of them, and of the two or three adjoining pews, got up and
went out of the church, nobody knowing what it was offended them,
or from whom.
This immediately filled everybody’s mouths with one preparation or
other, such as the old woman directed, and some perhaps as
physicians directed, in order to prevent infection by the breath of
others; insomuch that if we came to go into a church when it was
anything full of people, there would be such a mixture of smells at the
entrance that it was much more strong, though perhaps not so
wholesome, than if you were going into an apothecary’s or druggist’s
shop. In a word, the whole church was like a smelling-bottle; in one
corner it was all perfumes; in another, aromatics, balsamics, and
variety of drugs and herbs; in another, salts and spirits, as every one
was furnished for their own preservation. Yet I observed that after
people were possessed, as I have said, with the belief, or rather
assurance, of the infection being thus carried on by persons apparently
in health, the churches and meeting-houses were much thinner of
people than at other times before that they used to be. For this is to be
said of the people of London, that during the whole time of the
pestilence the churches or meetings were never wholly shut up, nor
did the people decline coming out to the public worship of God,
except only in some parishes when the violence of the distemper was
more particularly in that parish at that time, and even then no longer
than it continued to be so.
Indeed nothing was more strange than to see with what courage the
people went to the public service of God, even at that time when they
were afraid to stir out of their own houses upon any other occasion;
this, I mean, before the time of desperation, which I have mentioned
already. This was a proof of the exceeding populousness of the city at
the time of the infection, notwithstanding the great numbers that were
gone into the country at the first alarm, and that fled out into the
forests and woods when they were further terrified with the
extraordinary increase of it. For when we came to see the crowds and
throngs of people which appeared on the Sabbath-days at the
churches, and especially in those parts of the town where the plague
was abated, or where it was not yet come to its height, it was amazing.
But of this I shall speak again presently. I return in the meantime to
the article of infecting one another at first, before people came to right
notions of the infection, and of infecting one another. People were
only shy of those that were really sick, a man with a cap upon his
head, or with clothes round his neck, which was the case of those that
had swellings there. Such was indeed frightful; but when we saw a
gentleman dressed, with his band on and his gloves in his hand, his
hat upon his head, and his hair combed, of such we bad not the least
apprehensions, and people conversed a great while freely, especially
with their neighbours and such as they knew. But when the
physicians assured us that the danger was as well from the sound (that
is, the seemingly sound) as the sick, and that those people who
thought themselves entirely free were oftentimes the most fatal, and
that it came to be generally understood that people were sensible of it,
and of the reason of it; then, I say, they began to be jealous of
everybody, and a vast number of people locked themselves up, so as
not to come abroad into any company at all, nor suffer any that had