e poor whose labor depended upon the merchants, were
at once dismissed, and put out of business.

3. All the tradesmen usually employed in building or repairing of houses
were at a full stop; for the people were far from wanting to build
houses when so many thousand houses were at once stripped of their
inhabitants; so that this one article[151] turned out all the ordinary
workmen of that kind of business, such as bricklayers, masons,
carpenters, joiners, plasterers, painters, glaziers, smiths, plumbers,
and all the laborers depending on such.

4. As navigation was at a stop, our ships neither coming in or going out
as before, so the seamen were all out of employment, and many of them in
the last and lowest degree of distress. And with the seamen were all the
several tradesmen and workmen belonging to and depending upon the
building and fitting out of ships; such as ship-carpenters, calkers,
ropemakers, dry coopers, sailmakers, anchor-smiths, and other smiths,
blockmakers, carvers, gunsmiths, ship-chandlers, ship-carvers, and the
like. The masters of those, perhaps, might live upon their substance;
but the traders were universally at a stop, and consequently all their
workmen discharged. Add to these, that the river was in a manner without
boats, and all or most part of the watermen, lighter-men, boat-builders,
and lighter-builders, in like manner idle and laid by.

5. All families retrenched their living as much as possible, as well
those that fled as those that staid; so that an innumerable multitude of
footmen, serving men, shopkeepers, journeymen, merchants' bookkeepers,
and such sort of people, and especially poor maidservants, were turned
off, and left friendless and helpless, without employment and without
habitation; and this was really a dismal article.

I might be more particular as to this part; but it may suffice to
mention, in general, all trades being stopped, employment ceased, the
labor, and by that the bread of the poor, were cut off; and at first,
indeed, the cries of the poor were most lamentable to hear, though, by
the distribution of charity, their misery that way was gently[152]
abated. Many, indeed, fled into the country; but, thousands of them
having staid in London till nothing but desperation sent them away,
death overtook them on the road, and they served for no better than the
messengers of death: indeed, others carrying the infection along with
them, spread it very unhappily into the remo