retended to be calculated, so that they
cannot be so perfectly called the forerunners or foretellers, much less
the procurers, of such events as pestilence, war, fire, and the like.

But let my thoughts and the thoughts of the philosophers be, or have
been, what they will, these things had a more than ordinary influence
upon the minds of the common people, and they had almost universal
melancholy apprehensions of some dreadful calamity and judgement coming
upon the city; and this principally from the sight of this comet, and
the little alarm that was given in December by two people dying at St
Giles's, as above.

The apprehensions of the people were likewise strangely increased by the
error of the times; in which, I think, the people, from what principle
I cannot imagine, were more addicted to prophecies and astrological
conjurations, dreams, and old wives' tales than ever they were before or
since. Whether this unhappy temper was originally raised by the
follies of some people who got money by it--that is to say, by printing
predictions and prognostications--I know not; but certain it is, books
frighted them terribly, such as Lilly's Almanack, Gadbury's Astrological
Predictions, Poor Robin's Almanack, and the like; also several pretended
religious books, one entitled, Come out of her, my People, lest you
be Partaker of her Plagues; another called, Fair Warning; another,
Britain's Remembrancer; and many such, all, or most part of which,
foretold, directly or covertly, the ruin of the city. Nay, some were
so enthusiastically bold as to run about the streets with their oral
predictions, pretending they were sent to preach to the city; and one in
particular, who, like Jonah to Nineveh, cried in the streets, 'Yet forty
days, and London shall be destroyed.' I will not be positive whether he
said yet forty days or yet a few days. Another ran about naked, except
a pair of drawers about his waist, crying day and night, like a man that
Josephus mentions, who cried, 'Woe to Jerusalem!' a little before the
destruction of that city. So this poor naked creature cried, 'Oh, the
great and the dreadful God!' and said no more, but repeated those words
continually, with a voice and countenance full of horror, a swift pace;
and nobody could ever find him to stop or rest, or take any sustenance,
at least that ever I could hear of. I met this poor creature several
times in the streets, and would have spoken to him, but he would not
enter i