till the
spring came on, and that they saw reason to depend upon it that the
plague would not return.

The court, indeed, came up soon after Christmas; but the nobility and
gentry, except such as depended upon and had employment under the
administration, did not come so soon.

I should have taken notice here, that notwithstanding the violence of
the plague in London and other places, yet it was very observable that
it was never on board the fleet; and yet for some time there was a
strange press[348] in the river, and even in the streets, for seamen to
man the fleet. But it was in the beginning of the year, when the plague
was scarce begun, and not at all come down to that part of the city
where they usually press for seamen; and though a war with the Dutch was
not at all grateful to the people at that time, and the seamen went with
a kind of reluctancy into the service, and many complained of being
dragged into it by force, yet it proved, in the event, a happy violence
to several of them, who had probably perished in the general calamity,
and who, after the summer service was over, though they had cause to
lament the desolation of their families (who, when they came back, were
many of them in their graves), yet they had room to be thankful that
they were carried out of the reach of it, though so much against their
wills. We, indeed, had a hot war with the Dutch that year, and one very
great engagement[349] at sea, in which the Dutch were worsted; but we
lost a great many men and some ships. But, as I observed, the plague was
not in the fleet; and when they came to lay up the ships in the river,
the violent part of it began to abate.

I would be glad if I could close the account of this melancholy year
with some particular examples historically, I mean of the thankfulness
to God, our Preserver, for our being delivered from this dreadful
calamity. Certainly the circumstances of the deliverance, as well as the
terrible enemy we were delivered from, called upon the whole nation for
it. The circumstances of the deliverance were indeed very remarkable, as
I have in part mentioned already; and particularly the dreadful
condition which we were all in, when we were, to the surprise of the
whole town, made joyful with the hope of a stop to the infection.

Nothing but the immediate finger of God, nothing but omnipotent power,
could have done it. The contagion despised all medicine, death raged in
every corner; and, had it gone