mind, and there was so, a great deal; yet there was a great deal of just alarm, sounded in the very inmost soul,

if I may so say, of others. Many consciences were

awakened; many hard hearts melted into tears; and many a penitent confession was made of crimes long concealed. It would have wounded 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 in 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 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 buryers of the dead, who were the most hardened creatures in town, were sometimes beaten back, and so terrified that they durst not go into the houses where whole families were swept away together, and where the circumstances were more particularly horrible, as some were; but this was, indeed, at the first heat of the distemper.

Time inured them to it all; and they ventured everywhere afterwards without hesitation, as I shall have occasion to mention at large hereafter.

I am supposing now the Plague to be begun, as I have said, and that the Magistrates began to take the condition of the people into their serious consideration. What they did as to the regulation of inhabitants and of infected

*

families, I shall speak to by itself; but as to the affair of health, it is proper to mention it here; that having seen the foolish humour of the people in running after quacks and mountebanks, wizards, and fortune-tellers (which they did as above, even to madness), the Lord Mayor, a very sober and religious gentleman, appointed Physicians and Surgeons for relief of the poor; I mean, the diseased poor; and, in particular, ordered the College of Physicians to public directions for cheap remedies for the poor, in all circumstances of the distemper.† This, indeed, was one of the most charitable and judicious things that could be done at that time; for this drove the people from haunting the doors of every disperser of bills; and from taking down blindly, and without consideration, Poison for Physic, and Death instead of Life.

This Direction of the Physicians was done by a consultation of the whole College; and, as it was particularly calculated for the use of the poor, and for cheap medicines, it was made public, so that everybody might see it; and copies were given gratis to all that desired it. But as it is public, and to be seen on all occasions, I need not give the reader of this the trouble of it.

I shall not be supposed to lessen the authority or capa

* The Lord Mayor here spoken of was Sir JOHN LAWRENCE, whom Pope has eulogised, and whom the impressive language of Darwin has characterised as one who,

"When Contagion, with mephitic breath,

And withered Famine urged the work of Death,

With food and faith, with medicine and with prayer,
Raised the weak head, and stayed the parting sigh,
Or with new life relumed the swimming eye."

LOVES OF THE PLANTS, Canto II.

This is erroneous. The remedies suggested by the College of Physicians were drawn up (as stated in a previous note, p. 12) under the orders of a Committee of Privy Council. A copy of the "Directions" issued by the College, will be found in a "Collection of Scarce Pieces relating to the Plague," 8vo, 1721.

city of the Physicians when I say that the violence of the Distemper, when it came to its extremity, was like the fire the next year. The fire which consumed what the Plague could not touch, defied all the application of remedies; the fire-engines were broken, the buckets thrown away, and the power of man was baffled and brought to an end: so the Plague defied all medicines; the very Physicians were seized with it, with their preservatives in their mouths; and men went about prescribing to others, and telling them what to do, till the tokens were upon them, and they dropped down dead, destroyed by that very enemy they directed others to oppose. This was the case of several Physicians, even some of them the most eminent,* and of several of the most skilful surgeons.

* Dr. Hodges states, that there wanted not the help of very great and worthy persons who voluntarily contributed their assistance in the dangerous work of restraining the progress of the infection; and he enumerates the learned Dr. Gibson, Regius Professor at Cambridge; Dr. Francis Glisson; Dr. Nathaniel Paget; Dr. Peter Berwick; Dr. Humphrey Brookes, &c. Of those persons, he remarks, eight or nine fell in the attempt, among whom was Dr. Wm. Conyers, to whose goodness and humanity he bears the most honourable testimony.

Among the other Physicians who suffered from the Plague, was Dr. Burnet, of Fenchurch Street. His dwelling was one of the first within the walls which was visited by the Infection. Pepys, under date of June 10th, thus mentions it: "In the evening home to supper, and there, to my great trouble, hear that the Plague is come into the City (though it hath these three or four weeks, since its beginning, been wholly out of the City); but where should it begin but in my good friend and neighbour's, Dr. Burnet's house, in Fenchurch Street, which in both points troubles me mightily." On the following day he wrote: "I saw poor Dr. Burnet's door shut: but he hath, I hear, gained great goodwill among his neighbours; for he discovered it himself first, and caused himself to be shut up of his own accord: which was very handsome."

The goodwill here spoken of was, unhappily, but of short continuance; for a rumour became current that the Doctor had killed his servant, and he therefore found it necessary to vindicate his character by a public notice, or placard, at the Royal Exchange; a copy of which is here given from the "Intelligencer," No. 55, together with some introductory remarks by the editor, Sir Roger L'Estrange.

"I think it but an honest and necessary office," says the knight, "to make some mention of Dr. Burnet, M.D., whose house it has pleased Almighty God to visit with the Plague; and of that disease one of his

Abundance of quacks too died, who had the folly to trust to their own medicines which, they must needs be conscious to themselves, were good for nothing; and who rather ought, like other sorts of thieves, to have ran away, sensible of their guilt, from the justice that they could not but expect should punish them, as they knew they had deserved.

Not that it is any derogation from the labour, or application of the Physicians, to say they fell in the common calamity: nor is it so intended by me; it rather is to their praise, that they ventured their lives so far as even to lose them in the service of mankind. They endeavoured to do good, and to save the lives of others; but we were not to expect that the Physicians could stop God's Judgments, or prevent a distemper, eminently armed from Heaven, from executing the errand it was sent about.

Doubtless, the Physicians assisted many by their skill, and by their prudence and applications, to the saving of

servants died: whereupon a most unchristian and scandalous report was raised, that the said Doctor had murthered his man; without any other ground in the world than the malice of the first contriver. But I find that yesterday this unhappy gentleman caused to be fixed upon the Royal Exchange, London, his own vindication, in these very words following::

"Whereas some person or persons have maliciously forged and published that abominable falsehood, viz., that I, Alex. Burnet, of St. Gabriel Fenchurch, London, Dr. in Physic, did kill my servant, William Passon, and was committed to Newgate for it,-I do, by these presents, upon the Royal Exchange, London, post him or them for forgery who have invented and vented that wicked report: It being declared under the hand and seal of Mr. Nath, Upton, Master of the Pesthouse, London, who searched the body of the said Wm Passon, that he dyed of the Plague, and had a pestilential Bubo in his right groin and two blains in his right thigh.-July 14, 1665.- Alex. Burnet, M.D.""

We may hope that this sufficed to arrest the calumny, and restore to the Doctor his good name. But alas! his days were already numbered, and neither detraction nor praise was of long avail. "This day," says Pepys, under the date of August 25th, "I am told that Dr. Burnet, my Physician, is this morning dead of the Plague; which is strange, his man dying so long ago, and his house this month open again. Now himself dead! Poor unfortunate man!"

their lives, and restoring their health; but it is not lessening their character, or their skill, to say, they could not cure those that had the tokens upon them, or those who were mortally infected before the Physicians were sent for, as was frequently the case.

It remains to mention now what public measures were taken by the Magistrates for the general safety, and to prevent the spreading of the distemper when it first broke out. I shall have frequent occasion to speak of the prudence of the Magistrates, their charity, their vigilance for the poor, and for preserving good order, furnishing provisions, and the like, when the Plague was increased, as it afterwards was. But I am now upon the Order and Regulations they published for the government of infected families.

I mentioned above, shutting of houses up; and it is needful to say something particularly to that; for this part of the history of the Plague is very melancholy; but the most grievous story must be told.

About June, the Lord Mayor of London, and the court of Aldermen, as I have said, began more particularly to concern themselves for the regulation of the City.

The Justices of Peace for Middlesex, by direction of the Secretary of State, had begun to shut up houses in the parishes of St. Giles in the Fields, St. Martin, St. Clement Danes, &c., and it was with good success; for in several streets where the Plague broke out, upon strict guarding the houses 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, than it did in the parishes of Bishopsgate, Shoreditch, Aldgate, Whitechapel, Stepney, and others;