ouses that were infected, and taking care to bury
those that died immediately after they were known to be dead, the plague
ceased in those streets. It was also observed that the plague decreased
sooner in those parishes after they had been visited to the full than it
did in the parishes of Bishopsgate, Shoreditch, Aldgate, Whitechappel,
Stepney, and others; the early care taken in that manner being a great
means to the putting a check to it.

This shutting up of houses was a method first taken, as I understand, in
the plague which happened in 1603, at the coming of King James the First
to the crown; and the power of shutting people up in their own houses
was granted by Act of Parliament, entitled, 'An Act for the charitable
Relief and Ordering of Persons infected with the Plague'; on which Act
of Parliament the Lord Mayor and aldermen of the city of London founded
the order they made at this time, and which took place the 1st of July
1665, when the numbers infected within the city were but few, the last
bill for the ninety-two parishes being but four; and some houses
having been shut up in the city, and some people being removed to the
pest-house beyond Bunhill Fields, in the way to Islington,--I say, by
these means, when there died near one thousand a week in the whole, the
number in the city was but twenty-eight, and the city was preserved
more healthy in proportion than any other place all the time of the
infection.

These orders of my Lord Mayor's were published, as I have said, the
latter end of June, and took place from the 1st of July, and were as
follows, viz.:--

ORDERS CONCEIVED AND PUBLISHED BY THE LORD MAYOR AND ALDERMEN OF THE
CITY OF LONDON CONCERNING THE INFECTION OF THE PLAGUE, 1665.

'WHEREAS in the reign of our late Sovereign King James, of happy memory,
an Act was made for the charitable relief and ordering of persons
infected with the plague, whereby authority was given to justices of the
peace, mayors, bailiffs, and other head-officers to appoint within their
several limits examiners, searchers, watchmen, keepers, and buriers for
the persons and places infected, and to minister unto them oaths for the
performance of their offices. And the same statute did also authorise
the giving of other directions, as unto them for the present necessity
should seem good in their directions. It is now, upon special
consideration, thought very expedient for preventing and avoiding of
infection of sickness (