, that desperation should push the
people upon tumults, and cause them to rifle the houses of rich men and
plunder the markets of provisions; in which case the country people,
who brought provisions very freely and boldly to town, would have been
terrified from coming any more, and the town would have sunk under an
unavoidable famine.

But the prudence of my Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen within the
city, and of the justices of peace in the out-parts, was such, and they
were supported with money from all parts so well, that the poor people
were kept quiet, and their wants everywhere relieved, as far as was
possible to be done.

Two things besides this contributed to prevent the mob doing any
mischief. One was, that really the rich themselves had not laid up
stores of provisions in their houses as indeed they ought to have
done, and which if they had been wise enough to have done, and locked
themselves entirely up, as some few did, they had perhaps escaped the
disease better. But as it appeared they had not, so the mob had no
notion of finding stores of provisions there if they had broken in as
it is plain they were sometimes very near doing, and which: if they bad,
they had finished the ruin of the whole city, for there were no regular
troops to have withstood them, nor could the trained bands have been
brought together to defend the city, no men being to be found to bear
arms.

But the vigilance of the Lord Mayor and such magistrates as could be had
(for some, even of the aldermen, were dead, and some absent) prevented
this; and they did it by the most kind and gentle methods they could
think of, as particularly by relieving the most desperate with money,
and putting others into business, and particularly that employment of
watching houses that were infected and shut up. And as the number
of these were very great (for it was said there was at one time ten
thousand houses shut up, and every house had two watchmen to guard
it, viz., one by night and the other by day), this gave opportunity to
employ a very great number of poor men at a time.

The women and servants that were turned off from their places were
likewise employed as nurses to tend the sick in all places, and this
took off a very great number of them.

And, which though a melancholy article in itself, yet was a deliverance
in its kind: namely, the plague, which raged in a dreadful manner from
the middle of August to the middle of October, carried