urge had been rife in Holland; and in Amsterdam alone
twenty-four thousand citizens had died from its effects.

And the terror of the citizens of London was yet more forcibly increased
by the appearance in April of a blazing star or comet, bearing a tail
apparently six yards in length, which rose betimes in a lurid sky, and
passed with ominous movement from west to east. [It is worthy of
notice that Lilly in his "Astrological Predictions," published in 1648,
declared the year 1656 would be "ominous to London, unto her merchants
at sea, to her traffique at land, to her poor, to her rich, to all sorts
of people inhabiting in her or her Liberties, by reason of sundry fires
and a consuming plague."] The king with his queen and court, prompted by
curiosity, stayed up one night to watch this blazing star pass above
the silent city; the Royal Society in behalf of science embodied many
learned comments regarding it in their "Philosophical Transactions;" but
the great body of the people regarded it as a visible signal of God's
certain wrath. They were more confirmed in this opinion, as some amongst
them, whose judgments were distorted by fears, declared the comet had
at times before their eyes assumed the appearance of a fiery sword
threatening the sinful city. It was also noted in the spring of this
year that birds and wild fowls had left their accustomed places, and few
swallows were seen. But in the previous summer there had been "such a
multitude of flies that they lined the insides of houses; and if any
threads of strings did hang down in any place, they were presently
thick-set with flies like ropes of onions; and swarms of ants covered
the highways that you might have taken up a handful at a time, both
winged and creeping ants; and such a multitude of croaking frogs in
ditches that you might have heard them before you saw them," as is
set down by one William Boghurst, apothecary at the White Hart in St.
Giles-in-the-Fields, who wrote a learned "Treatis on the Plague"
in 1666, he being the only man who up to that time had done so from
experience and observation. [This quaint and curious production, which
has never been printed, and which furnishes the following pages
with some strange details, is preserved in the Sloane Collection of
Manuscripts in the British Museum.] And from such signs, as likewise
from knowledge that the pestilence daily increased, all felt a season of
bitter tribulation was at hand.

According to "So