A Journal of the Plague Year

many people being passing and repassing, there comes a man out of the end of the Minories, and looking a little up the street and down, he throws his hands abroad, “Lord, what an alteration is here! Why, last week I came along here, and hardly anybody was to be seen.” Another man⁠—I heard him⁠—adds to his words, “ ’Tis all wonderful; ’tis all a dream.” “Blessed be God,” says a third man, “and and let us give thanks to Him, for ’tis all His own doing, human help and human skill was at an end.” These were all strangers to one another. But such salutations as these were frequent in the street every day; and in spite of a loose behaviour, the very common people went along the streets giving God thanks for their deliverance.

It was now, as I said before, the people had cast off all apprehensions, and that too fast; indeed we were no more afraid now to pass by a man with a white cap upon his head, or with a cloth wrapt round his neck, or with his leg limping, occasioned by the sores in his groin, all which were frightful to the last degree, but the week before. But now the street was full of them, and these poor recovering creatures, give them their due, appeared very sensible of their unexpected deliverance; and I should wrong them very much if I should not acknowledge that I believe many of them were really thankful. But I must own that, for the generality of the people, it might too justly be said of them as was said of the children of Israel after their being delivered from the host of Pharaoh, when they passed the Red Sea, and looked back and saw the Egyptians overwhelmed in the water: viz., that they sang His praise, but they soon forgot His works.

I can go no farther here. I should be counted censorious, and perhaps unjust, if I should enter into the unpleasing work of reflecting, whatever cause there was for it, upon the unthankfulness and return of all manner of wickedness among us, which I was so much an eyewitness of myself. I shall conclude the account of this calamitous year therefore with a coarse but sincere stanza of my own, which I placed at the end of my ordinary memorandums the same year they were written:⁠—

A dreadful plague in London was
In the year sixty-five,
Which swept an hundred thousand souls
Away; yet I alive!

H. F.

Endnotes

1. It seems John was in the tent, but hearing them call, he steps out, and taking the gun upon his shoulder, talked to them as if he had been the sentinel placed there upon the guard by some officer that was his superior. ↩

2. This frighted the constable and the people that were with him, that they immediately changed their note. ↩

3. They had but one horse among them. ↩

4. Here he called to one of his men, and bade him order Captain Richard and his people to march the lower way on the side of the marches, and meet them in the forest; which was all a sham, for they had no Captain Richard, or any such company. ↩

5. That part of the river where the ships lie up when they come home is called the Pool, and takes in all the river on both sides of the water, from the Tower to Cuckold’s Point and Limehouse. ↩

6. N.B.⁠—The author of this journal lies buried in that very ground, being at his own desire, his sister having been buried there a few years before. ↩

Colophon

A Journal of the Plague Year
was published in 1722 by
Daniel Defoe.

This ebook was produced for
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Self-Portrait with Death,
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