of trade, except in
provisions and necessaries of life; and even in those things, as there
was a vast number of people fled and a very great number always sick,
besides the number which died, so there could not be above two-thirds,
if above one-half, of the consumption of provisions in the city as used
to be.

It pleased God to send a very plentiful year of corn and fruit, but not
of hay or grass--by which means bread was cheap, by reason of the plenty
of corn. Flesh was cheap, by reason of the scarcity of grass; but butter
and cheese were dear for the same reason, and hay in the market just
beyond Whitechappel Bars was sold at 4 pound per load. But that affected
not the poor. There was a most excessive plenty of all sorts of fruit,
such as apples, pears, plums, cherries, grapes, and they were the
cheaper because of the want of people; but this made the poor eat them
to excess, and this brought them into fluxes, griping of the guts,
surfeits, and the like, which often precipitated them into the plague.

But to come to matters of trade. First, foreign exportation being
stopped or at least very much interrupted and rendered difficult, a
general stop of all those manufactures followed of course which were
usually brought for exportation; and though sometimes merchants abroad
were importunate for goods, yet little was sent, the passages being so
generally stopped that the English ships would not be admitted, as is
said already, into their port.

This put a stop to the manufactures that were for exportation in most
parts of England, except in some out-ports; and even that was soon
stopped, for they all had the plague in their turn. But though this was
felt all over England, yet, what was still worse, all intercourse of
trade for home consumption of manufactures, especially those which
usually circulated through the Londoner's hands, was stopped at once,
the trade of the city being stopped.

All kinds of handicrafts in the city, &c., tradesmen and mechanics,
were, as I have said before, out of employ; and this occasioned the
putting-off and dismissing an innumerable number of journeymen and
workmen of all sorts, seeing nothing was done relating to such trades
but what might be said to be absolutely necessary.

This caused the multitude of single people in London to be unprovided
for, as also families whose living depended upon the labour of the heads
of those families; I say, this reduced them to extreme misery; and I
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