merciful disposition of Providence, also, and which I have many
times thought of at that time, that no fires, or no considerable ones at
least, happened in the city during that year, which, if it had been
otherwise, would have been very dreadful; and either the people must
have let them alone unquenched, or have come together in great crowds
and throngs, unconcerned at the danger of the infection, not concerned
at the houses they went into, at the goods they handled, or at the
persons or the people they came among. But so it was, that excepting
that in Cripplegate Parish, and two or three little eruptions of fires,
which were presently extinguished, there was no disaster of that kind
happened in the whole year. They told us a story of a house in a place
called Swan Alley, passing from Goswell Street near the end of Old
Street into St. John Street, that a family was infected there in so
terrible a manner that every one of the house died. The last person lay
dead on the floor, and, as it is supposed, had laid herself all along
to die just before the fire. The fire, it seems, had fallen from its
place, being of wood, and had taken hold of the boards and the joists
they lay on, and burned as far as just to the body, but had not taken
hold of the dead body, though she had little more than her shift on, and
had gone out of itself, not hurting the rest of the house, though it was
a slight timber house. How true this might be, I do not determine; but
the city being to suffer severely the next year by fire, this year it
felt very little of that calamity.

Indeed, considering the deliriums which the agony threw people into, and
how I have mentioned in their madness, when they were alone, they did
many desperate things, it was very strange there were no more disasters
of that kind.

It has been frequently asked me, and I cannot say that I ever knew how
to give a direct answer to it, how it came to pass that so many infected
people appeared abroad in the streets at the same time that the houses
which were infected were so vigilantly searched, and all of them shut up
and guarded as they were.

I confess I know not what answer to give to this, unless it be this:
that, in so great and populous a city as this is, it was impossible to
discover every house that was infected as soon as it was so, or to shut
up all the houses that were infected; so that people had the liberty of
going about the streets, even where they pleased, unless t