by Daniel Defoe
orthereabout.
These men were guilty of many extravagances, such as one would thinkhuman nature should have trembled at the thoughts of, at such a time ofgeneral terror as was then upon us, and particularly scoffing andmocking at everything which they happened to see that was religiousamong the people, especially at their thronging zealously to the placeof public worship, to implore mercy from Heaven in such a time ofdistress; and this tavern where they held their club, being within viewof the church door, they had the more particular occasion for theiratheistical, profane mirth.
But this began to abate a little with them before the accident, which Ihave related, happened; for the infection increased so violently at thispart of the town now, that people began to be afraid to come to thechurch: at least such numbers did not resort thither as was usual. Manyof the clergymen, likewise, were dead, and others gone into the country;for it really required a steady courage and a strong faith, for a mannot only to venture being in town at such a time as this, but likewiseto venture to come to church, and perform the office of a minister to acongregation of whom he had reason to believe many of them were actuallyinfected with the plague, and to do this every day, or twice a day, asin some places was done.
It seems they had been checked, for their open insulting religion inthis manner, by several good people of every persuasion; and that[121]and the violent raging of the infection, I suppose, was the occasionthat they had abated much of their rudeness for some time before, andwere only roused by the spirit of ribaldry and atheism at the clamorwhich was made when the gentleman was first brought in there, andperhaps were agitated by the same devil when I took upon me to reprovethem; though I did it at first with all the calmness, temper, and goodmanners that I could, which, for a while, they insulted me the more for,thinking it had been in fear of their resentment, though afterwards theyfound the contrary.[122]
These things lay upon my mind, and I went home very much grieved andoppressed with the horror of these men's wickedness, and to think thatanything could be so vile, so hardened, and so notoriously wicked, as toinsult God, and his servants and his worship, in such a manner, and atsuch a time as this was, when he had, as it were, his sword drawn in hishand, on purpose to take vengeance, not on them only, but on the wholenation.
I had indeed been in some passion at first with them, though it wasreally raised, not by any affront they had offered me personally, but bythe horror their blaspheming tongues filled me with. However, I wasdoubtful in my thoughts whether the resentment I retained was not allupon my own private account; for they had given me a great deal of illlanguage too, I mean personally: but after some pause, and having aweight of grief upon my mind, I retired myself as soon as I came home(for I slept not that night), and, giving God most humble thanks for mypreservation in the imminent danger I had been in, I set my mindseriously and with the utmost earnestness to pray for those desperatewretches, that God would pardon them, open their eyes, and effectuallyhumble them.
By this I not only did my duty, namely, to pray for those whodespitefully used me, but I fully tried my own heart, to my fullsatisfaction that it was not filled with any spirit of resentment asthey had offended me in particular; and I humbly recommend the method toall those that would know, or be certain, how to distinguish betweentheir zeal for the honor of God and the effects of their privatepassions and resentment.
I remember a citizen, who, having broken out of his house in AldersgateStreet or thereabout, went along the road to Islington. He attempted tohave gone[123] in at the Angel Inn, and after that at the White Horse,two inns known still by the same signs, but was refused, after which hecame to the Pyed[124] Bull, an inn also still continuing the same sign.He asked them for lodging for one night only, pretending to be goinginto Lincolnshire, and assuring them of his being very sound, and freefrom the infection, which also at that time had not reached much thatway.
They told him they had no lodging that they could spare but one bed upin the garret, and that they could spare that bed but for one night,some drovers being expected the next day with cattle: so, if he wouldaccept of that lodging, he might have it, which he did. So a servant wassent up with a candle with him to show him the room. He was very welldressed, and looked like a person not used to lie in a garret; and whenhe came to the room, he fetched a deep sigh, and said to the servant, "Ihave seldom lain in such a lodging as this." However, the servantassured him again that they had no better. "Well," says he, "I must makeshift.[125] This is a dreadful time, but it is but for one night." So hesat down upon the bedside, and bade the maid, I think it was, fetch hima pint of warm ale. Accordingly the servant went for the ale; but somehurry in the house, which perhaps employed her other ways, put it out ofher head, and she went up no more to him.
The next morning, seeing no appearance of the gentleman, somebody in thehouse asked the servant that had showed him upstairs what was become ofhim. She started. "Alas!" says she, "I never thought more of him. Hebade me carry him some warm ale, but I forgot." Upon which, not themaid, but some other person, was sent up to see after him, who, cominginto the room, found him stark dead, and almost cold, stretched outacross the bed. His clothes were pulled off, his jaw fallen, his eyesopen in a most frightful posture, the rug of the bed being grasped hardin one of his hands, so that it was plain he died soon after the maidleft him; and it is probable, had she gone up with the ale, she hadfound him dead in a few minutes after he had sat down upon the bed. Thealarm was great in the house, as any one may suppose, they having beenfree from the distemper till that disaster, which, bringing theinfection to the house, spread it immediately to other houses roundabout it. I do not remember how many died in the house itself; but Ithink the maidservant who went up first with him fell presently ill bythe fright, and several others; for, whereas there died but two inIslington of the plague the week before, there died nineteen the weekafter, whereof fourteen were of the plague. This was in the week fromthe 11th of July to the 18th.
There was one shift[126] that some families had, and that not a few,when their houses happened to be infected, and that was this: thefamilies who in the first breaking out of the distemper fled away intothe country, and had retreats among their friends, generally found someor other of their neighbors or relations to commit the charge of thosehouses to, for the safety of the goods and the like. Some houses wereindeed entirely locked up, the doors padlocked, the windows and doorshaving deal boards nailed over them, and only the inspection of themcommitted to the ordinary watchmen and parish officers; but these werebut few.
It was thought that there were not less than a thousand houses forsakenof the inhabitants in the city and suburbs, including what was in theoutparishes and in Surrey, or the side of the water they calledSouthwark. This was besides the numbers of lodgers and of particularpersons who were fled out of other families; so that in all it wascomputed that about two hundred thousand people were fled and gone inall.[127] But of this I shall speak again. But I mention it here on thisaccount: namely, that it was a rule with those who had thus two housesin their keeping or care, that, if anybody was taken sick in a family,before the master of the family let the examiners or any other officerknow of it, he immediately would send all the rest of his family,whether children or servants as it fell out to be, to such other housewhich he had not in charge, and then, giving notice of the sick personto the examiner, have a nurse or nurses appointed, and having anotherperson to be shut up in the house with them (which many for money woulddo), so to take charge of the house in case the person should die.
This was in many cases the saving a whole family, who, if they had beenshut up with the sick person, would inevitably have perished. But, onthe other hand, this was another of the inconveniences of shutting uphouses; for the apprehensions and terror of being shut up made many runaway with the rest of the family, who, though it was not publicly known,and they were not quite sick, had yet the distemper upon them; and who,by having an uninterrupted liberty to go about, but being obliged stillto conceal their circumstances, or perhap
s not knowing it themselves,gave the distemper to others, and spread the infection in a dreadfulmanner, as I shall explain further hereafter.
I had in my family only an ancient woman that managed the house, amaidservant, two apprentices, and myself; and, the plague beginning toincrease about us, I had many sad thoughts about what course I shouldtake and how I should act. The many dismal objects[128] which happenedeverywhere as I went about the streets had filled my mind with a greatdeal of horror, for fear of the distemper itself, which was indeed veryhorrible in itself, and in some more than others. The swellings, whichwere generally in the neck or groin, when they grew hard, and would notbreak, grew so painful that it was equal to the most exquisite torture;and some, not able to bear the torment, threw themselves out at windows,or shot themselves, or otherwise made themselves away, and I saw severaldismal objects of that kind. Others, unable to contain themselves,vented their pain by
