England under Charles II. from the Restoration to the Treaty of Nimeguen, 1660-1678: English History from Contemporary Writers
Taylor, W. F.
1889
Defoe's account of the Plague, Sept. 1664-June, 1665. Defoe: Journal of the Plague Year, 1835 ed., pp. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 24.
It was about the middle of September, , that I heard that the plague was returned again in Hol land. . . The Government had a true account of it, and several councils were held about ways to prevent its coming over; but all was kept very private. Hence it was that this rumour died off again. till the latter end of November or beginning of December, , when two men, said to be Frenchmen, died of the plague in Long Acre, or rather in the upper end of Drury Lane. . . The people showed a great concern at this, and began to be alarmed all over the town, and the more because in the last week in December, , another man died in the same house and of the same distemper; and then we were easy for about six weeks . . . but after that, I think it was about the 12th of February, another died in another house, but in the same parish and in the same manner . . . and the weekly bills showing an increase of burials in St. Giles's parish more than usual, it began to be suspected that the plague was among the people. . . The usual number of burials within the bills of mortality for a week was from about 240 or thereabouts to 300. The last was esteemed a pretty high bill ; but after this we found the bills successively increasing as follows: | |||||||||||||||
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This last bill was really frightful, being a larger number than had been known to have been buried in one week since the preceding visitation of ! | |||||||||||||||
However, all this went off again, and, the weather proving cold . . . the bills decreased . . . and everybody began to look upon the danger as good as over . . . but it returned again, and the distemper spread into two or three other parishes. . | |||||||||||||||
. This was the beginning of May, yet the weather was temperate, variable, and cool enough, and people had still some hopes. . . We continued in these hopes for a few days, but it was but for a few, for | |||||||||||||||
. in the weekly bill next week the thing began to show itself. There was, indeed, but fourteen set down of the plague, but this was all knavery and collusion . . . and we took it for granted that there were fifty died that week of the plague . . The second week in June the parish of St. Giles, where . . . the weight of the infection lay, buried 120, whereof, though the bills said but sixty- eight of the plague, everybody said there had been 100 at least, calculating it from the usual number of funerals in that parish. . . The court removed early, viz., in the month of June, and went to Oxford, where it pleased God to preserve them. | |||||||||||||||