people were young, they were increased strangely by
several odd accidents which, put altogether, it was really a wonder
the whole body of the people did not rise as one man and abandon their
dwellings, leaving the place as a space of ground designed by Heaven for
an Akeldama, doomed to be destroyed from the face of the earth, and that
all that would be found in it would perish with it. I shall name but a
few of these things; but sure they were so many, and so many wizards and
cunning people propagating them, that I have often wondered there was
any (women especially) left behind.

In the first place, a blazing star or comet appeared for several months
before the plague, as there did the year after another, a little before
the fire. The old women and the phlegmatic hypochondriac part of the
other sex, whom I could almost call old women too, remarked (especially
afterward, though not till both those judgements were over) that those
two comets passed directly over the city, and that so very near the
houses that it was plain they imported something peculiar to the city
alone; that the comet before the pestilence was of a faint, dull,
languid colour, and its motion very heavy, Solemn, and slow; but that
the comet before the fire was bright and sparkling, or, as others said,
flaming, and its motion swift and furious; and that, accordingly, one
foretold a heavy judgement, slow but severe, terrible and frightful,
as was the plague; but the other foretold a stroke, sudden, swift, and
fiery as the conflagration. Nay, so particular some people were, that as
they looked upon that comet preceding the fire, they fancied that they
not only saw it pass swiftly and fiercely, and could perceive the motion
with their eye, but even they heard it; that it made a rushing,
mighty noise, fierce and terrible, though at a distance, and but just
perceivable.

I saw both these stars, and, I must confess, had so much of the common
notion of such things in my head, that I was apt to look upon them as
the forerunners and warnings of God's judgements; and especially when,
after the plague had followed the first, I yet saw another of the like
kind, I could not but say God had not yet sufficiently scourged the
city.

But I could not at the same time carry these things to the height
that others did, knowing, too, that natural causes are assigned by
the astronomers for such things, and that their motions and even their
revolutions are calculated, or p