ods, and did
little or nothing to them.

However, in general, prudent, cautious people did enter into some
measures for airing and sweetening their houses, and burnt perfumes,
incense, benjamin,[346] resin, and sulphur in their rooms, close shut
up, and then let the air carry it all out with a blast of gunpowder;
others caused large fires to be made all day and all night for several
days and nights. By the same token that[347] two or three were pleased
to set their houses on fire, and so effectually sweetened them by
burning them down to the ground (as particularly one at Ratcliff, one in
Holborn, and one at Westminster, besides two or three that were set on
fire; but the fire was happily got out again before it went far enough
to burn down the houses); and one citizen's servant, I think it was in
Thames Street, carried so much gunpowder into his master's house, for
clearing it of the infection, and managed it so foolishly, that he blew
up part of the roof of the house. But the time was not fully come that
the city was to be purged with fire, nor was it far off; for within nine
months more I saw it all lying in ashes, when, as some of our quaking
philosophers pretend, the seeds of the plague were entirely destroyed,
and not before,--a notion too ridiculous to speak of here, since, had
the seeds of the plague remained in the houses, not to be destroyed but
by fire, how has it been that they have not since broken out, seeing all
those buildings in the suburbs and liberties, all in the great parishes
of Stepney, Whitechapel, Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Shoreditch, Cripplegate,
and St. Giles's, where the fire never came, and where the plague raced
with the greatest violence, remain still in the same condition they were
in before?

But to leave these things just as I found them, it was certain that
those people who were more than ordinarily cautious of their health did
take particular directions for what they called seasoning of their
houses; and abundance of costly things were consumed on that account,
which I cannot but say not only seasoned those houses as they desired,
but filled the air with very grateful and wholesome smells, which others
had the share of the benefit of, as well as those who were at the
expenses of them.

Though the poor came to town very precipitantly, as I have said, yet, I
must say, the rich made no such haste. The men of business, indeed, came
up, but many of them did not bring their families to town