came home, for I slept not that night; and giving God most humble
thanks for my preservation in the eminent danger I had been in, I set
my mind seriously and with the utmost earnestness to pray for those
desperate wretches, that God would pardon them, open their eyes, and
effectually humble them.
By this I not only did my duty, namely, to pray for those who
despitefully used me, but I fully tried my own heart, to my fun
satisfaction, that it was not filled with any spirit of resentment as they
had offended me in particular; and I humbly recommend the method
to all those that would know, or be certain, how to distinguish
between their zeal for the honour of God and the effects of their
private passions and resentment.
But I must go back here to the particular incidents which occur to
my thoughts of the time of the visitation, and particularly to the time
of their shutting up houses in the first part of their sickness; for before
the sickness was come to its height people had more room to make
their observations than they had afterward; but when it was in the
extremity there was no such thing as communication with one
another, as before.
During the shutting up of houses, as I have said, some violence was
offered to the watchmen. As to soldiers, there were none to be
found.- the few guards which the king then had, which were nothing
like the number entertained since, were dispersed, either at Oxford
with the Court, or in quarters in the remoter parts of the country, small
detachments excepted, who did duty at the Tower and at Whitehall,
and these but very few. Neither am I positive that there was any other
guard at the Tower than the warders, as they called them, who stand at
the gate with gowns and caps, the same as the yeomen of the guard,
except the ordinary gunners, who were twenty-four, and the officers
appointed to look after the magazine, who were called armourers. As
to trained bands, there was no possibility of raising any; neither, if the
Lieutenancy, either of London or Middlesex, had ordered the drums to
beat for the militia, would any of the companies, I believe, have
drawn together, whatever risk they had run.
This made the watchmen be the less regarded, and perhaps
occasioned the greater violence to be used against them. I mention it
on this score to observe that the setting watchmen thus to keep the
people in was, first of all, not effectual, but that the people broke out,
whether by force or by stratagem, even almost as often as they
pleased; and, second, that those that did thus break out were generally
people infected who, in their desperation, running about from one
place to another, valued not whom they injured: and which perhaps, as
I have said, might give birth to report that it was natural to the
infected people to desire to infect others, which report was really false.
And I know it so well, and in so many several cases, that I could
give several relations of good, pious, and religious people who, when
they have had the distemper, have been so far from being forward to
infect others that they have forbid their own family to come near
them, in hopes of their being preserved, and have even died without
seeing their nearest relations lest they should be instrumental to give
them the distemper, and infect or endanger them. If, then, there were
cases wherein the infected people were careless of the injury they did
to others, this was certainly one of them, if not the chief, namely,
when people who had the distemper had broken out from houses which were
so shut up, and having been driven to extremities for provision
or for entertainment, had endeavoured to conceal their condition,
and have been thereby instrumental involuntarily to infect others
who have been ignorant and unwary.
This is one of the reasons why I believed then, and do believe still,
that the shutting up houses thus by force, and restraining, or rather
imprisoning, people in their own houses, as I said above, was of little