hom I had intended to
entrust my house and all my affairs. But I had a further obligation laid
on me on the same side, for the next day I found myself very much out
of order also, so that if I would have gone away, I could not, and I
continued ill three or four days, and this entirely determined my stay;
so I took my leave of my brother, who went away to Dorking, in
Surrey, and afterwards fetched a round farther into Buckinghamshire or
Bedfordshire, to a retreat he had found out there for his family.

It was a very ill time to be sick in, for if any one complained, it was
immediately said he had the plague; and though I had indeed no symptom
of that distemper, yet being very ill, both in my head and in my
stomach, I was not without apprehension that I really was infected;
but in about three days I grew better; the third night I rested well,
sweated a little, and was much refreshed. The apprehensions of its being
the infection went also quite away with my illness, and I went about my
business as usual.

These things, however, put off all my thoughts of going into the
country; and my brother also being gone, I had no more debate either
with him or with myself on that subject.

It was now mid-July, and the plague, which had chiefly raged at the
other end of the town, and, as I said before, in the parishes of St
Giles, St Andrew's, Holborn, and towards Westminster, began to now come
eastward towards the part where I lived. It was to be observed, indeed,
that it did not come straight on towards us; for the city, that is to
say, within the walls, was indifferently healthy still; nor was it got
then very much over the water into Southwark; for though there died that
week 1268 of all distempers, whereof it might be supposed above 600 died
of the plague, yet there was but twenty-eight in the whole city, within
the walls, and but nineteen in Southwark, Lambeth parish included;
whereas in the parishes of St Giles and St Martin-in-the-Fields alone
there died 421.

But we perceived the infection kept chiefly in the out-parishes, which
being very populous, and fuller also of poor, the distemper found
more to prey upon than in the city, as I shall observe afterwards. We
perceived, I say, the distemper to draw our way, viz., by the parishes
of Clarkenwell, Cripplegate, Shoreditch, and Bishopsgate; which last two
parishes joining to Aldgate, Whitechappel, and Stepney, the infection
came at length to spread its utmost rage and violen