ow it comes this way.'
Then, 'Tis turned back'; till at length he persuaded the people into so
firm a belief of it, that one fancied he saw it, and another fancied he
saw it; and thus he came every day making a strange hubbub, considering
it was in so narrow a passage, till Bishopsgate clock struck eleven,
and then the ghost would seem to start, and, as if he were called away,
disappeared on a sudden.

I looked earnestly every way, and at the very moment that this man
directed, but could not see the least appearance of anything; but so
positive was this poor man, that he gave the people the vapours in
abundance, and sent them away trembling and frighted, till at length
few people that knew of it cared to go through that passage, and hardly
anybody by night on any account whatever.

This ghost, as the poor man affirmed, made signs to the houses, and
to the ground, and to the people, plainly intimating, or else they so
understanding it, that abundance of the people should come to be buried
in that churchyard, as indeed happened; but that he saw such aspects
I must acknowledge I never believed, nor could I see anything of it
myself, though I looked most earnestly to see it, if possible.

These things serve to show how far the people were really overcome with
delusions; and as they had a notion of the approach of a visitation, all
their predictions ran upon a most dreadful plague, which should lay the
whole city, and even the kingdom, waste, and should destroy almost all
the nation, both man and beast.

To this, as I said before, the astrologers added stories of the
conjunctions of planets in a malignant manner and with a mischievous
influence, one of which conjunctions was to happen, and did happen, in
October, and the other in November; and they filled the people's heads
with predictions on these signs of the heavens, intimating that those
conjunctions foretold drought, famine, and pestilence. In the two first
of them, however, they were entirely mistaken, for we had no droughty
season, but in the beginning of the year a hard frost, which lasted from
December almost to March, and after that moderate weather, rather warm
than hot, with refreshing winds, and, in short, very seasonable weather,
and also several very great rains.

Some endeavours were used to suppress the printing of such books as
terrified the people, and to frighten the dispersers of them, some of
whom were taken up; but nothing was done in it, as I am