the river till the beginning of August; for to the 1st of July there had
died but seven within the whole city, and but sixty within the liberties,
but one in all the parishes of Stepney, Aldgate, and Whitechappel, and
but two in the eight parishes of Southwark. But it was the same thing
abroad, for the bad news was gone over the whole world that the city
of London was infected with the plague, and there was no inquiring
there how the infection proceeded, or at which part of the town it was
begun or was reached to.
Besides, after it began to spread it increased so fast, and the bills
grew so high all on a sudden, that it was to no purpose to lessen the
report of it, or endeavour to make the people abroad think it better
than it was; the account which the weekly bills gave in was sufficient;
and that there died two thousand to three or-four thousand a week was
sufficient to alarm the whole trading part of the world; and the
following time, being so dreadful also in the very city itself, put the
whole world, I say, upon their guard against it.
You may be sure, also, that the report of these things lost nothing in
the carriage. The plague was itself very terrible, and the distress of
the people very great, as you may observe of what I have said. But the
rumour was infinitely greater, and it must not be wondered that our
friends abroad (as my brother’s correspondents in particular were told
there, namely, in Portugal and Italy, where he chiefly traded) [said]
that in London there died twenty thousand in a week; that the dead
bodies lay unburied by heaps; that the living were not sufficient to
bury the dead or the sound to look after the sick; that all the kingdom
was infected likewise, so that it was an universal malady such as was
never heard of in those parts of the world; and they could hardly
believe us when we gave them an account how things really were, and
how there was not above one-tenth part of the people dead; that there
was 500,000, left that lived all the time in the town; that now the
people began to walk the streets again, and those who were fled to
return, there was no miss of the usual throng of people in the streets,
except as every family might miss their relations and neighbours, and
the like. I say they could not believe these things; and if inquiry were
now to be made in Naples, or in other cities on the coast of Italy, they
would tell you that there was a dreadful infection in London so many years ago,
in which, as above, there died twenty thousand in a week, &c., just as we have
had it reported in London that there was a plague in the city of Naples
in the year 1656, in which there died 20,000 people in a day, of which
I have had very good satisfaction that it was utterly false.
But these extravagant reports were very prejudicial to our trade, as
well as unjust and injurious in themselves, for it was a long time after
the plague was quite over before our trade could recover itself in those
parts of the world; and the Flemings and Dutch (but especially the
last) made very great advantages of it, having all the market to
themselves, and even buying our manufactures in several parts of
England where the plague was not, and carrying them to Holland and
Flanders, and from thence transporting them to Spain and to Italy as if
they had been of their own making.
But they were detected sometimes and punished: that is to say, their
goods confiscated and ships also; for if it was true that our
manufactures as well as our people were infected, and that it was
dangerous to touch or to open and receive the smell of them, then
those people ran the hazard by that clandestine trade not only of
carrying the contagion into their own country, but also of infecting the
nations to whom they traded with those goods; which, considering