ly, pretending to be going
into Lincolnshire, and assuring them of his being very sound, and free
from the infection, which also at that time had not reached much that
way.

They told him they had no lodging that they could spare but one bed up
in 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 would
accept of that lodging, he might have it, which he did. So a servant was
sent up with a candle with him to show him the room. He was very well
dressed, and looked like a person not used to lie in a garret; and when
he came to the room, he fetched a deep sigh, and said to the servant, "I
have seldom lain in such a lodging as this." However, the servant
assured him again that they had no better. "Well," says he, "I must make
shift.[125] This is a dreadful time, but it is but for one night." So he
sat down upon the bedside, and bade the maid, I think it was, fetch him
a pint of warm ale. Accordingly the servant went for the ale; but some
hurry in the house, which perhaps employed her other ways, put it out of
her head, and she went up no more to him.

The next morning, seeing no appearance of the gentleman, somebody in the
house asked the servant that had showed him upstairs what was become of
him. She started. "Alas!" says she, "I never thought more of him. He
bade me carry him some warm ale, but I forgot." Upon which, not the
maid, but some other person, was sent up to see after him, who, coming
into the room, found him stark dead, and almost cold, stretched out
across the bed. His clothes were pulled off, his jaw fallen, his eyes
open in a most frightful posture, the rug of the bed being grasped hard
in one of his hands, so that it was plain he died soon after the maid
left him; and it is probable, had she gone up with the ale, she had
found him dead in a few minutes after he had sat down upon the bed. The
alarm was great in the house, as any one may suppose, they having been
free from the distemper till that disaster, which, bringing the
infection to the house, spread it immediately to other houses round
about it. I do not remember how many died in the house itself; but I
think the maidservant who went up first with him fell presently ill by
the fright, and several others; for, whereas there died but two in
Islington of the plague the week before, there died nineteen the week
after, whereof fourteen were of the plague. This was in the week f