ectually sweetened them by burning them down
to the ground; as particularly one at Ratcliff, one in Holbourn, and one
at Westminster; besides two or three that were set on fire, but the
fire was happily got out again before it went far enough to burn down
the houses; and one citizen's servant, I think it was in Thames Street,
carried so much gunpowder into his master's house, for clearing it of
the infection, and managed it so foolishly, that he blew up part of the
roof of the house. But the time was not fully come that the city was to
be purged by fire, nor was it far off; for within nine months more I
saw it all lying in ashes; when, as some of our quacking philosophers
pretend, the seeds of the plague were entirely destroyed, and not
before; a notion too ridiculous to speak of here: since, had the seeds
of the plague remained in the houses, not to be destroyed but by fire,
how has it been that they have not since broken out, seeing all those
buildings in the suburbs and liberties, all in the great parishes of
Stepney, Whitechappel, Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Shoreditch, Cripplegate,
and St Giles, where the fire never came, and where the plague raged with
the greatest violence, remain still in the same condition they were in
before?

But to leave these things just as I found them, it was certain that
those people who were more than ordinarily cautious of their health,
did take particular directions for what they called seasoning of their
houses, and abundance of costly things were consumed on that account
which I cannot but say not only seasoned those houses, as they desired,
but filled the air with very grateful and wholesome smells which
others had the share of the benefit of as well as those who were at the
expenses of them.

And yet after all, though the poor came to town very precipitantly, as
I have said, yet I must say the rich made no such haste. The men of
business, indeed, came up, but many of them did not bring their families
to town till the spring came on, and that they saw reason to depend upon
it that the plague would not return.

The Court, indeed, came up soon after Christmas, but the nobility
and gentry, except such as depended upon and had employment under the
administration, did not come so soon.

I should have taken notice here that, notwithstanding the violence of
the plague in London and in other places, yet it was very observable
that it was never on board the fleet; and yet for some time there