excess of sorrow. He mourned heartily, as it was easy to see, but with
a kind of masculine grief that could not give itself vent by tears; and
calmly defying the buriers to let him alone, said he would only see the
bodies thrown in and go away, so they left importuning him. But no
sooner was the cart turned round and the bodies shot into the pit
promiscuously, which was a surprise to him, for he at least expected
they would have been decently laid in, though indeed he was
afterwards convinced that was impracticable; I say, no sooner did he
see the sight but he cried out aloud, unable to contain himself. I could
not hear what he said, but he went backward two or three steps and
fell down in a swoon. The buriers ran to him and took him up, and in
a little while he came to himself, and they led him away to the Pie
Tavern over against the end of Houndsditch, where, it seems, the man
was known, and where they took care of him. He looked into the pit
again as he went away, but the buriers had covered the bodies so
immediately with throwing in earth, that though there was light
enough, for there were lanterns, and candles in them, placed all night
round the sides of the pit, upon heaps of earth, seven or eight, or
perhaps more, yet nothing could be seen.
This was a mournful scene indeed, and affected me almost as much
as the rest; but the other was awful and full of terror. The cart had in
it sixteen or seventeen bodies; some were wrapt up in linen sheets,
some in rags, some little other than naked, or so loose that what
covering they had fell from them in the shooting out of the cart, and
they fell quite naked among the rest; but the matter was not much to
them, or the indecency much to any one else, seeing they were all
dead, and were to be huddled together into the common grave of
mankind, as we may call it, for here was no difference made, but poor
and rich went together; there was no other way of burials, neither was
it possible there should, for coffins were not to be had for the
prodigious numbers that fell in such a calamity as this.
It was reported by way of scandal upon the buriers, that if any
corpse was delivered to them decently wound up, as we called it then,
in a winding-sheet tied over the head and feet, which some did, and
which was generally of good linen; I say, it was reported that the
buriers were so wicked as to strip them in the cart and carry them
quite naked to the ground. But as I cannot easily credit anything so
vile among Christians, and at a time so filled with terrors as that was,
I can only relate it and leave it undetermined.
Innumerable stories also went about of the cruel behaviours and
practices of nurses who tended the sick, and of their hastening on the
fate of those they tended in their sickness. But I shall say more of this
in its place.
I was indeed shocked with this sight; it almost overwhelmed me,
and I went away with my heart most afflicted, and full of the afflicting
thoughts, such as I cannot describe. just at my going out of the church,
and turning up the street towards my own house, I saw another cart
with links, and a bellman going before, coming out of Harrow Alley in
the Butcher Row, on the other side of the way, and being, as I
perceived, very full of dead bodies, it went directly over the street also
toward the church. I stood a while, but I had no stomach to go back
again to see the same dismal scene over again, so I went directly home,
where I could not but consider with thankfulness the risk I had run,
believing I had gotten no injury, as indeed I had not.
Here the poor unhappy gentleman’s grief came into my head again,
and indeed I could not but shed tears in the reflection upon it, perhaps