ng at hand was among them, and which may be said
to be from about Michaelmas 1664, but more particularly after the two
men died in St Giles's in the beginning of December; and again, after
another alarm in February. For when the plague evidently spread itself,
they soon began to see the folly of trusting to those unperforming
creatures who had gulled them of their money; and then their fears
worked another way, namely, to amazement and stupidity, not knowing what
course to take or what to do either to help or relieve themselves. But
they ran about from one neighbour's house to another, and even in the
streets from one door to another, with repeated cries of, 'Lord, have
mercy upon us! What shall we do?'

Indeed, the poor people were to be pitied in one particular thing in
which they had little or no relief, and which I desire to mention with a
serious awe and reflection, which perhaps every one that reads this may
not relish; namely, that whereas death now began not, as we may say,
to hover over every one's head only, but to look into their houses and
chambers and stare in their faces. Though there might be some stupidity
and dulness of the mind (and there was so, a great deal), yet there was
a great deal of just alarm sounded into the very inmost soul, if I may
so say, of others. Many consciences were awakened; many hard hearts
melted into tears; many a penitent confession was made of crimes long
concealed. It would wound the soul of any Christian to have heard the
dying groans of many a despairing creature, and none durst come near to
comfort them. Many a robbery, many a murder, was then confessed aloud,
and nobody surviving to record the accounts of it. People might be
heard, even into the streets as we passed along, calling upon God for
mercy through Jesus Christ, and saying, 'I have been a thief, 'I have
been an adulterer', 'I have been a murderer', and the like, and none
durst stop to make the least inquiry into such things or to administer
comfort to the poor creatures that in the anguish both of soul and body
thus cried out. Some of the ministers did visit the sick at first
and for a little while, but it was not to be done. It would have been
present death to have gone into some houses. The very buriers of the
dead, who were the hardenedest creatures in town, were sometimes beaten
back and so terrified that they durst not go into houses where the whole
families were swept away together, and where the circumstance