again about this good newes of our victory, and so by water home
late. Where, when I come home I spent some thoughts upon the occurrences
of this day, giving matter for as much content on one hand and
melancholy on another, as any day in all my life. For the first; the
finding of my money and plate, and all safe at London, and speeding in
my business of money this day. The hearing of this good news to such
excess, after so great a despair of my Lord's doing anything this
year; adding to that, the decrease of 500 and more, which is the first
decrease we have yet had in the sickness since it begun: and great
hopes that the next week it will be greater. Then, on the other side, my
finding that though the Bill in general is abated, yet the City within
the walls is encreased, and likely to continue so, and is close to our
house there. My meeting dead corpses of the plague, carried to be buried
close to me at noon-day through the City in Fanchurch-street. To see
a person sick of the sores, carried close by me by Gracechurch in
a hackney-coach. My finding the Angell tavern, at the lower end
of Tower-hill, shut up, and more than that, the alehouse at the
Tower-stairs, and more than that, the person was then dying of the
plague when I was last there, a little while ago, at night, to write
a short letter there, and I overheard the mistresse of the house sadly
saying to her husband somebody was very ill, but did not think it was of
the plague. To hear that poor Payne, my waiter, hath buried a child, and
is dying himself. To hear that a labourer I sent but the other day to
Dagenhams, to know how they did there, is dead of the plague; and that
one of my own watermen, that carried me daily, fell sick as soon as he
had landed me on Friday morning last, when I had been all night upon the
water (and I believe he did get his infection that day at Brainford),
and is now dead of the plague. To hear that Captain Lambert and Cuttle
are killed in the taking these ships; and that Mr. Sidney Montague is
sick of a desperate fever at my Lady Carteret's, at Scott's-hall. To
hear that Mr. Lewes hath another daughter sick. And, lastly, that both
my servants, W. Hewer and Tom Edwards, have lost their fathers, both in
St. Sepulchre's parish, of the plague this week, do put me into great
apprehensions of melancholy, and with good reason. But I put off the
thoughts of sadness as much as I can, and the rather to keep my wife in
good heart and family also.