as I had done before, for then there would have been nothing to have been
seen but the loose earth; for all the bodies that were thrown in were
immediately covered with earth by those they called the buriers,
which at other times were called bearers; but I resolved to go in the
night and see some of them thrown in.
There was a strict order to prevent people coming to those pits, and
that was only to prevent infection. But after some time that order was
more necessary, for people that were infected and near their end, and
delirious also, would run to those pits, wrapt in blankets or rugs, and
throw themselves in, and, as they said, bury themselves. I cannot say
that the officers suffered any willingly to lie there; but I have heard
that in a great pit in Finsbury, in the parish of Cripplegate, it lying
open then to the fields, for it was not then walled about, [many] came
and threw themselves in, and expired there, before they threw any
earth upon them; and that when they came to bury others and found
them there, they were quite dead, though not cold.
This may serve a little to describe the dreadful condition of that day,
though it is impossible to say anything that is able to give a true idea
of it to those who did not see it, other than this, that it was indeed
very, very, very dreadful, and such as no tongue can express.
I got admittance into the churchyard by being acquainted with the
sexton who attended; who, though he did not refuse me at all, yet
earnestly persuaded me not to go, telling me very seriously (for he was
a good, religious, and sensible man) that it was indeed their business
and duty to venture, and to run all hazards, and that in it they might
hope to be preserved; but that I had no apparent call to it but my own
curiosity, which, he said, he believed I would not pretend was
sufficient to justify my running that hazard. I told him I had been
pressed in my mind to go, and
that perhaps it might be an instructing sight, that might not be without
its uses. ‘Nay,’ says the good man, ‘if you will venture upon that score,
name of God go in; for, depend upon it, ’twill be a sermon to you, it
may be, the best that ever you heard in your life. ‘Tis a speaking
sight,’ says he, ‘and has a voice with it, and a loud one, to call us all to
repentance’; and with that he opened the door and said, ‘Go, if you will.’
His discourse had shocked my resolution a little, and 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, as they called it, coming over the streets; so
I could no longer resist my desire of seeing it, and went in. There was
nobody, as I could perceive at first, in the churchyard, or going into it,
but the buriers and the fellow that drove the cart, or rather led the
horse and cart; but when they came up to the pit they saw a man go to
and again, muffled up in a brown Cloak, and making motions with his
hands under his cloak, as if he was in great agony, and the buriers
immediately gathered about him, supposing he was one of those poor
delirious or desperate creatures that used to pretend, as I have said,
to bury themselves. He said nothing as he walked about, but two or
three times groaned very deeply and loud, and sighed as he would
break his heart.
When the buriers came up to him they soon found he was neither a
person infected and desperate, as I have observed above, or a person
distempered -in mind, but one oppressed with a dreadful weight of
grief indeed, having his wife and several of his children all in the cart
that was just come in with him, and he followed in an agony and