able to give a true idea of it to those who did not see it, other than this, that it was indeed very, very, very dreadful, and such as no tongue can express!

I got admittance into the church-yard by being acquainted with the sexton who attended, who, though he did not refuse me at all, yet earnestly persuaded me not to go; telling me very seriously, for he was a good, religious, and sensible man, that it was, indeed, their business and duty to venture and to run all hazards, and that in it they might hope to be preserved; but that I had no apparent call to it but my own curiosity, which he said he believed I would not pretend was sufficient to justify my running that hazard. I told him I had been pressed in my mind to go, and that perhaps it might be an instructing sight that might not be without its uses. "Nay," says the good man, "if you will venture upon that score, name of God go in; for, depend upon it, 'twill be a sermon to you, it may be the best that ever you heard in your life. It is a speaking sight," says he, "and has a voice with it, loud one, to call us to repentance;" and with that he opened the door, and said, "Go, if you will."

and a

His discourse had shocked my resolution a little, and I stood wavering for a good while, but just at that interval I saw two links come over from the end of the Minories, and heard the bellman, and then appeared a dead-cart, as they called it, coming over the streets, so I could no longer resist my desire of seeing it, and went in. There was nobody, as I could perceive at first, in the churchyard, or going into it, but the buryers and the fellow that drove the cart, or rather led the horse and cart; but when they came up to the pit, they saw a man go to and again, muffled up in a brown cloak, and making motions with his hands under his cloak, as if he was in a great agony,

and the buryers immediately gathered about him, supposing he was one of those poor delirious or desperate creatures that used to pretend, as I have said, to bury themselves! He said nothing as he walked about, but two or three times groaned very deeply and loud, and sighed as he would break his heart.

When the buryers came up to him, they soon found he was neither a person infected and desperate, as I have observed above, nor a person distempered in mind, but one oppressed with a dreadful weight of grief indeed, having his wife and several of his children, all in the cart that was just come in with him, and he followed in an agony and excess of sorrow. He mourned heartily, as it was easy to see; but with a kind of masculine grief that could not give itself vent by tears, and calmly desiring the buryers to let him alone, said he would only see the bodies thrown in and go away, so they left importuning him; but no sooner was the cart turned round, and the bodies shot into the pit promiscuously, which was a surprise to him, for he at least expected they would have been decently laid in, though, indeed, he was afterwards convinced that was impracticable; I say, no sooner did he see the sight, but he cried out aloud, unable to contain himself. I could not hear what he said, but he went backward two or three steps, and fell down in a swoon; the buryers ran to him, and took him up, and in a little while he came to himself, and they led him away to the Pyetavern, over-against the end of Houndsditch,* where, it seems, the man was known, and where they took care of him. He looked into the pit again as he went away, but

The Pye Tavern, or, as it is now called, the Crown and Magpie, still exists in Aldgate High-street;-the Three Nuns Inn (mentioned in p. 81) is likewise yet remaining, has a great business, and is much frequented by travellers from the eastern counties.

the buryers had covered the bodies so immediately with throwing in the earth, that though there was light enough, for there were lanterns with candles in them, placed all night round the sides of the pit upon the heaps of earth, seven or eight, or perhaps more, yet nothing could be

seen.

This was a mournful scene, indeed, and affected me almost as much as the rest, but the other was awful and full of terror. The cart had in it sixteen or seventeen bodies; some were wrapped up in linen sheets, some in rugs, some little other than naked, or so loose, that what covering they had fell from them, in the shooting out of the cart, and they fell quite naked among the rest; but the matter was not much to them, or the indecency much to any one else, seeing they were all dead, and were to be huddled together into the common Grave of Mankind, as we may call it, for here was no difference made, but poor and rich went together. There was no other way of burials, neither was it possible there should, for coffins were not to be had for the prodigious numbers that fell in such a calamity as this.

It was reported, by way of scandal upon the buryers, that if any corpse was delivered to them decently wound up, as we called it then, in a winding sheet, tied over the head and feet, which some did, and which was generally of good linen; I say, it was reported, that the buryers were so wicked as to strip them in the cart, and carry them quite naked to the ground; but as I cannot easily credit anything so vile among Christians, and at a time so filled with terrors as that was, I can only relate it, and leave it undetermined.

Innumerable stories also went about of the cruel behaviours and practices of nurses, who tended the sick, and

of their hastening on the fate of those they tended in their sickness, but I shall say more of this in its place.

I was indeed shocked with this sight; it almost overwhelmed me, and I went away with my heart most afflicted and full of afflicting thoughts, such as I cannot describe. Just at my going out of the church-yard, and turning up the street towards my own house, I saw another cart with links and a bellman going before, coming out of Harrow-alley, in the Butcher-row, on the other side of the way, and being, as I perceived, very full of dead bodies, it went directly over the street also towards the church. I stood awhile, but I had no stomach to go back again to see the same dismal scene over again, so I went directly home, where I could not but consider, with thankfulness, the risk I had run, believing I had gotten no injury, as, indeed, I had not.

Here the poor unhappy gentleman's grief came into my head again, and, indeed, I could not but shed tears in the reflection upon it, perhaps more than he did himself; but his case lay so heavy upon my mind, that I could not prevail with myself, but that I must go out again into the street, and go to the Pye-tavern, resolving to inquire what became of him.

It was by this time one o'clock in the morning, and yet the poor gentleman was there; the truth was, the people of the house knowing him, had entertaiued him, and kept him there all the night, notwithstanding the danger of being infected by him, though it appeared the man was perfectly sound himself.

It is with regret, that I take notice of this tavern: the people were civil, mannerly, and an obliging sort of folks enough, and had till this time kept their house open, and their trade going on, though not so very publicly as

formerly; but there was a dreadful set of fellows that used their house, and who, in the middle of all this horror, met there every night, and behaved with all the revelling and roaring extravagancies, as is usual for such people to do at other times, and, indeed, to such an offensive degree, that the very master and mistress of the house grew first ashamed, and then terrified at them.

They sat generally in a room next the street; and as they always kept late hours, so when the dead-cart came across the street end to go into Houndsditch, which was in view of the Tavern windows, they would frequently open the windows as soon as they heard the bell, and look out at them; and as they might often hear sad lamentations of people in the streets, or at their windows, as the carts went along, they would make their impudent mocks and jeers at them, especially if they heard the poor people call upon God to have mercy upon them, as many would do at those times in their ordinary passing along the streets.

These gentlemen being something disturbed with the clutter of bringing the poor gentleman into the house, as above, were first angry, and very high with the master of the house, for suffering such a fellow, as they called him, to be brought out of the grave into their house; but being answered, that the man was a neighbour, and that he was sound, but overwhelmed with the calamity of his family, and the like, they turned their anger into ridiculing the man, and his sorrow for his wife and children; taunting him with want of courage to leap into the great pit, and go to heaven, as they jeeringly expressed it, along with them; adding some very profane, and even blasphemous expressions.

They were at this vile work when I came back to the