ing it impossible to keep it any longer as a
secret, the dead-carts were called in the night to both the houses t and
so it became public. But when the examiner ordered the constable to shut
up the houses there was nobody left in them but three people, two in one
house and one in the other, just dying, and a nurse in each house who
acknowledged that they had buried five before, that the houses had
been infected nine or ten days, and that for all the rest of the two
families, which were many, they were gone, some sick, some well, or
whether sick or well could not be known.

In like manner, at another house in the same lane, a man having his
family infected but very unwilling to be shut up, when he could conceal
it no longer, shut up himself; that is to say, he set the great red
cross upon his door with the words, 'Lord have mercy upon us', and so
deluded the examiner, who supposed it had been done by the constable
by order of the other examiner, for there were two examiners to every
district or precinct. By this means he had free egress and regress into
his house again and out of it, as he pleased, notwithstanding it was
infected, till at length his stratagem was found out; and then he, with
the sound part of his servants and family, made off and escaped, so they
were not shut up at all.

These things made it very hard, if not impossible, as I have said,
to prevent the spreading of an infection by the shutting up of
houses--unless the people would think the shutting of their houses no
grievance, and be so willing to have it done as that they would give
notice duly and faithfully to the magistrates of their being infected as
soon as it was known by themselves; but as that cannot be expected from
them, and the examiners cannot be supposed, as above, to go into their
houses to visit and search, all the good of shutting up houses will be
defeated, and few houses will be shut up in time, except those of the
poor, who cannot conceal it, and of some people who will be discovered
by the terror and consternation which the things put them into.

I got myself discharged of the dangerous office I was in as soon as I
could get another admitted, whom I had obtained for a little money
to accept of it; and so, instead of serving the two months, which was
directed, I was not above three weeks in it; and a great while too,
considering it was in the month of August, at which time the distemper
began to rage with great violence at our end