removed early, viz., in the month of June, and went to Oxford, where
it pleased God to preserve them; and the distemper did not, as I heard
of, so much as touch them, for which I cannot say that I ever saw they
showed any great token of thankfulness, and hardly anything of
reformation, though they did not want being told that their crying
vices might without breach of charity be said to have gone far in
bringing that terrible judgement upon the whole nation.
The face of London was -now indeed strangely altered: I mean the
whole mass of buildings, city, liberties, suburbs, Westminster,
Southwark, and altogether; for as to the particular part called the city,
or within the walls, that was not yet much infected. But in the whole
the face of things, I say, was much altered; sorrow and sadness sat
upon every face; and though some parts were not yet overwhelmed,
yet all looked deeply concerned; and, as we saw it apparently coming
on, so every one looked on himself and his family as in the utmost
danger. Were it possible to represent those times exactly to those that
did not see them, and give the reader due ideas of the horror ‘that
everywhere presented itself, it must make just impressions upon their
minds and fill them with surprise. London might well be said to be all
in tears; the mourners did not go about the streets indeed, for nobody
put on black or made a formal dress of mourning for their nearest
friends; but the voice of mourners was truly heard in the streets. The
shrieks of women and children at the windows and doors of their
houses, where their dearest relations were perhaps dying, or just dead,
were so frequent to be heard as we passed the streets, that it was
enough to pierce the stoutest heart in the world to hear them. Tears
and lamentations were seen almost in every house, especially in the
first part of the visitation; for towards the latter end men’s hearts were
hardened, and death was so always before their eyes, that they did not
so much concern themselves for the loss of their friends, expecting
that themselves should be summoned the next hour.
Business led me out sometimes to the other end of the town, even
when the sickness was chiefly there; and as the thing was new to me,
as well as to everybody else, it was a most surprising thing to see
those streets which were usually so thronged now grown desolate, and
so few people to be seen in them, that if I had been a stranger and at a
loss for my way, I might sometimes have gone the length of a whole
street (I mean of the by-streets), and seen nobody to direct me except
watchmen set at the doors of such houses as were shut up, of which I
shall speak presently.
One day, being at that part of the town on some special business,
curiosity led me to observe things more than usually, and indeed I
walked a great way where I had no business. I went up Holborn, and
there the street was full of people, but they walked in the middle of
the great street, neither on one side or other, because, as I suppose,
they would not mingle with anybody that came out of houses, or meet
with smells and scent from houses that might be infected.
The Inns of Court were all shut up; nor were very many of the
lawyers in the Temple, or Lincoln’s Inn, or Gray’s Inn, to be seen
there. Everybody was at peace; there was no occasion for lawyers;
besides, it being in the time of the vacation too, they were generally
gone into the country. Whole rows of houses in some places were
shut close up, the inhabitants all fled, and only a watchman or two left.
When I speak of rows of houses being shut up, I do not mean shut
up by the magistrates, but that great numbers of persons followed the
Court, by the necessity of their employments and other dependences;
and as others retired, really frighted with the distemper, it was a mere