It is true, there was, as I observed at first, and is well known to many yet living, a very cold winter, and a long frost, which continued three months, and this, the doctors say, might check the infection; but then the learned must allow me to say, that if, according to their notion, the disease was, as I may say, only frozen up, it would, like a frozen river, have returned to its usual force and current when it thawed, whereas the principal recess of this infection, which was from February to April, was after the frost was broken, and the weather mild and warm.

But there is another way of solving all this difficulty, which I think my own remembrance of the thing will supply; and that is, the fact is not granted, namely, that there died none in those long intervals, viz. from the 20th of December to the 9th of February, and from thence to the 22d of April. The weekly bills are the only evidence on the other side, and those bills were not of credit enough, at least with me, to support an hypothesis, or determine a question of such importance as this: for it was our received opinion at that time, and I believe upon very good grounds, that the fraud lay in the parish officers, searchers, and persons appointed to give account of the dead, and what diseases they died of and as people were very loath at first to have the neighbours believe their houses were infected, so they gave money to procure, or otherwise procured the dead persons to be returned as dying of other distempers; and this I know was practised afterwards in many places, I believe I might say in all places where the distemper came, as will be seen by the vast increase of the numbers placed in the weekly bills under other articles of diseases, during the time of the

infection; for example, in the months of July and August, when the Plague was coming on to its highest pitch, it was very ordinary to have from a thousand to twelve hundred, nay, to almost fifteen hundred a week of other distempers; not that the numbers of those distempers were really increased to such a degree;' but the great number of families and houses where really the infection was, obtained the favour to have their dead be returned of other distempers, to prevent the shutting up their houses. For example :

Dead of other diseases beside the Plague.

Now it was not doubted but the greatest part of these, or a great part of them, were dead of the Plague, but the officers were prevailed with to return them as above, and the numbers of some particular articles of distempers discovered, is as follows:

From the 1st to 8th Aug. to 15th to 22d to 29th.

From Aug.29 to Sept. 5th to 12th to 19th to 26th

There were several other articles which bore a proportion to these, and which it is easy to perceive, were increased on the same account, as aged, consumptions, vomitings, imposthumes, gripes, and the like: many of which were not doubted to be infected people; but as it was of the utmost consequence to families not to be known to be infected, if it was possible to avoid it, so they took all the measures they could to have it not believed; and if any died in their houses, to get them returned to the examiners, and by the searchers, as having died of other distempers.

This, I say, will account for the long interval which, as I have said, was between the dying of the first persoas that were returned in the bill to be dead of the Plague, and the time when the distemper spread openly, and could not be concealed.

Besides, the weekly bills themselves, at that time, evidently discovers this truth; for, while there was no mention of the Plague, and no increase after it had been mentioned, yet it was apparent, that there was an increase of those distempers which bordered nearest upon it; for example, there were eight, twelve, seventeen of the spotted fever in a week, when there were none, or but very few of the Plague; whereas before, one, three, or four, were the ordinary

weekly numbers of that distemper: likewise, as I observed before, the burials increased weekly in that particular parish, and the parishes adjacent, more than in any other parish, although there were none set down of the Plague; all which tell us, that the infection was handed on, and the succession of the distemper really preserved, though it seemed to us at that time to be ceased, and to come again in a manner surprising.

It might be also, that the infection might remain in other parts of the same parcel of goods which at first it came in, and which might not be perhaps opened, or at least not fully, or in the clothes of the first infected person, for I cannot think that any body could be seized with the contagion in a fatal and mortal degree for nine weeks together, and support his state of health so well, as even not to discover it to themselves; yet, if it were so, the argument is the stronger in favour of what I am saying, namely, that the infection is retained in bodies apparently well, and conveyed from them to those they converse with, while it is known to neither the one nor the other.

Great were the confusions at that time upon this very account; and when people began to be convinced that the infection was received in this surprising manner from persons apparently well, they began to be exceeding shy and jealous of every one that came near them. Once in a public day, whether a sabbath day or not I do not remember, in Aldgate church, in a pew full of people, on a sudden, one fancied she smelt an ill smell; immediately she fancies the Plague was in the pew, whispers her notion or suspicion to the next, then rises and goes out of the pew; it immediately took with the next, and so to them all; and every one of them, and of the two

or three adjoining pews, got up and went out of the church, nobody knowing what it was offended them, or from whom.

This immediately filled every body's mouths with one preparation or other, such as the old women directed, and some, perhaps, as physicians directed, in order to prevent infection by the breath of others; insomuch, that if we came to go into a church, when it was any thing full of people, there would be such a mixture of smells at the entrance, that it was much more strong, though perhaps not so wholesome, than if you were going into an apothecary's or druggist's shop; in a word, the whole church was like a smelling bottle; in one corner it was all perfumes, in another aromatics, balsamics, and variety of drugs and herbs; in another salts and spirits; as every one was furnished for their own preservation; yet I observed, that after people were possessed, as I have said, with the belief, or rather assurance, of the infection being thus carried on by persons apparently in health, the churches and meeting houses were much thinner of people than at other times before that they used to be; for this is to be said of the people of London, that, during the whole time of the pestilence, the churches or meetings were never wholly shut up, nor did the people decline coming out to the public worship of God, except only in some parishes when the violence of the distemper was more particularly in that parish at that time; and even then no longer than it continued to be so.

Indeed nothing was more strange than to see with what courage the people went to the public service of God, even at that time when they were afraid to stir out of their own houses upon any