‘Blessed be God,’ says a third man, d and let us give thanks to Him, for
’tis all His own doing, human help and human skill was at an end.’
These were all strangers to one another. But such salutations as these
were frequent in the street every day; and in spite of a loose
behaviour, the very common people went along the streets giving God
thanks for their deliverance.
It was now, as I said before, the people had cast off all
apprehensions, and that too fast; indeed we were no more afraid now
to pass by a man with a white cap upon his head, or with a doth wrapt
round his neck, or with his leg limping, occasioned by the sores in his
groin, all which were frightful to the last degree, but the week before.
But now the street was full of them, and these poor recovering
creatures, give them their due, appeared very sensible of their
unexpected deliverance; and I should wrong them very much if I
should not acknowledge that I believe many of them were really
thankful. But I must own that, for the generality of the people, it
might too justly be said of them as was said of the children of Israel
after their being delivered from the host of Pharaoh, when they passed
the Red Sea, and looked back and saw the Egyptians overwhelmed in
the water: viz., that they sang His praise, but they soon forgot His works.
I can go no farther here. I should be counted censorious, and
perhaps unjust, if I should enter into the unpleasing work of reflecting,
whatever cause there was for it, upon the unthankfulness and return of
all manner of wickedness among us, which I was so much an eye-
witness of myself. I shall conclude the account of this calamitous
year therefore with a coarse but sincere stanza of my own, which I
placed at the end of my ordinary memorandums the same year they
were written: –
A dreadful plague in London was
In the year sixty-five,
Which swept an hundred thousand souls
Away; yet I alive!
H. F.