private praying at other places; at all which the people attended, I say,
with an uncommon devotion. Several private families also, as well of
one opinion as of another, kept family fasts, to which they admitted
their near relations only. So that, in a word, those people who were
really serious and religious applied themselves in a truly Christian
manner to the proper work of repentance and humiliation, as a
Christian people ought to do.
Again, the public showed that they would bear their share in. these
things; the very Court, which was then gay and luxurious, put on a
face of just concern for the public danger. All the plays and interludes
which, after the manner of the French Court, had been set up, and
began to increase among us, were forbid to act; the gaming-tables,
public dancing-rooms, and music-houses, which multiplied and began
to debauch the manners of the people, were shut up and suppressed;
and the jack-puddings, merry-andrews, puppet-shows, rope-dancers,
and such-like doings, which had bewitched the poor common people,
shut up their shops, finding indeed no trade; for the minds of the
people were agitated with other things, and a kind of sadness and
horror at these things sat upon the countenances even of the common
people. Death was before their eyes, and everybody began to think of
their graves, not of mirth and diversions.
But even those wholesome reflections – which, rightly managed,
would have most happily led the people to fall upon their knees, make
confession of their sins, and look up to their merciful Saviour for
pardon, imploring His compassion on them in such a time of their
distress, by which we might have been as a second Nineveh – had a
quite contrary extreme in the common people, who, ignorant and
stupid in their reflections as they were brutishly wicked and
thoughtless before, were now led by their fright to extremes of folly;
and, as I have said before, that they ran to conjurers and witches, and
all sorts of deceivers, to know what should become of them (who fed
their fears, and kept them always alarmed and awake on purpose to
delude them and pick their pockets), so they were as mad upon their
running after quacks and mountebanks, and every practising old
woman, for medicines and remedies; storing themselves with such
multitudes of pills, potions, and preservatives, as they were called,
that they not only spent their money but even poisoned themselves
beforehand for fear of the poison of the infection; and prepared their
bodies for the plague, instead of preserving them against it. On the
other hand it is incredible and scarce to be imagined, how the posts of
houses and corners of streets were plastered over with doctors’ bills
and papers of ignorant fellows, quacking and tampering in physic, and
inviting the people to come to them for remedies, which was generally
set off with such flourishes as these, viz.: ‘Infallible preventive pills
against the plague.’ ‘Neverfailing preservatives against the infection.’
‘Sovereign cordials against the corruption of the air.’ ‘Exact regulations
for the conduct of the body in case of an infection.’ ‘Anti-pestilential
pills.’ ‘Incomparable drink against the plague, never found out before.’
‘An universal remedy for the plague.’ ‘The only true plague water.’ ‘The
royal antidote against all kinds of infection’; – and such a number
more that I cannot reckon up; and if I could, would fill a book of
themselves to set them down.
Others set up bills to summon people to their lodgings for directions
and advice in the case of infection. These had specious titles also,
such as these: –
‘An eminent High Dutch physician, newly come over from Holland,
where he resided during all the time of the great plague last year in
Amsterdam, and cured multitudes of people that actually had the
plague upon them.’
‘An Italian gentlewoman just arrived from Naples, having a choice
secret to prevent infection, which she found out by her great
experience, and did wonderful cures with it in the late plague there,
wherein there died 20,000 in one day.’
‘An ancient gentlewoman, having practised with great success in the
late plague in this city, anno 1636, gives her advice only to the female