with a shower of fire-drops. This is very true; so as houses were burned by these drops and flakes of fire, three or four, nay, five or six houses, one from another. When we could endure no more upon the water, we to a little ale-house on the Bankside, over against the Three Cranes, and there stayed till it was dark almost, and saw the fire grow, and as it grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid, malicious bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire. Barbary and her husband away before us. We stayed till, it being darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long; it made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire, and flaming at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at their ruin. So home with a sad heart, and there find every_body_discoursing and lamenting the fire; and poor Tom Hater come with some few of his goods saved out of his house, which was burned upon Fish-street Hill. I invited him to lie at my house, and did receive his goods, but was deceived in his lying there, the news coming every moment of the growth of the fire, so as we were forced to begin to pack up our own goods, and prepare for their removal; and did by moonshine (it being brave dry and moonshine and warm weather) carry much of my goods into the garden, and Mr. Hater and I did remove my money and iron chests into my cellar, as thinking that the safest place. And got my bags of gold into my office, ready to carry away, and my chief papers of accounts also there, and my tallies into a box by themselves. So great was our fear, as Sir W. Batten hath carts come out of the country to fetch away his goods this night. We did put Mr. Hater, poor man, to bed a little; but he got but very little rest, so much noise being in my house, taking down of goods.-The Diary. DANIEL DEFOE 1661-1731 THE PLAGUE: PREDICTIONS AND VISIONS THE apprehensions of the people were likewise strangely increased by the error of the times, in which, I think, the people, from what principle I cannot imagine, were more addicted to prophecies and astrological conjurations, dreams and old wives' tales than ever they were before or since. Whether this unhappy temper was originally raised by the follies of some people who got money by it, that is to say by printing predictions and prognostications, I know not; but certain it is books frighted them terribly, such as Lilly's Almanack, Gadbury's Alogical Predictions, Poor Robin's Almanac and the like; also several pretended religious books, one entitled 'Come out of her my people, lest you be partaker of her plagues ;' another called 'Fair Warning,' another Britain's Remembrancer' and many such; all or most part of which foretold directly or covertly the ruin of the city. Nay, some were so enthusiastically bold as to run about the streets with their oral predictions, pretending they were sent to preach to the city; and one in particular who, like Jonah to Nineveh, cried in the streets 'Yet forty days, and London shall be destroyed.' I will not be positive whether he said yet forty days or yet a few days. Another run about naked, except a pair of drawers about his waist, crying day and night, like a man that Josephus mentions who cried woe to Jerusalem a little before the destruction of that city, so this poor naked creature cried, 'O! the Great and the Dreadful God!' and said no more but repeated those words continually, with a voice and countenance full of horror, a swift pace, and nobody could ever find K him to stop, or rest, or take any sustenance, at least that ever I could hear of. I met this poor creature several times in the streets, and would have spoken to him, but he would not enter into speech with me, or any one else, but held on his dismal cries continually. These things terrified the people to the last degree, and especially when two or three times, as I have mentioned already, they found one or two in the Bills, dead of the Plague at St. Giles. Next to these public things were the dreams of old women; or, I should say, the interpretation of old women upon other people's dreams; and these put abundance of people even out of their wits. Some heard voices warning them to be gone, for that there would be such a plague in London, so that the living would not be able to bury the dead; others saw apparitions in the air, and I must be allowed to say of both, I hope without breach of charity, that they heard voices that never spake, and saw sights that never appeared; but the imagination of the people was really turned wayward and possessed; and no wonder if they who were poring continually at the clouds, saw shapes and figures, representations and appearances, which had nothing in them but air and vapour. Here they told us they saw a flaming sword held in a hand, coming out of a cloud, with a point hanging directly over the city. There they saw hearses and coffins in the air carrying to be buried. And there again heaps of dead bodies lying unburied and the like; just as the imagination of the poor terrified people furnished them with matter to work upon. So hypochondriac fancies represent And all to its first matter, cloud, resolve.' I could fill this account with the strange relations such people give every day of what they have seen; and every one was so positive of their having seen what they pretended to see, that there was no contradicting them, without breach of friendship, or being accounted rude and unmannerly on the one hand, or profane and impenetrable on the other. One time before the plague was begun, otherwise than as I have said in St. Giles's, I think it was in March, seeing a crowd of people in the street, I joined with them to satisfy my curiosity, and found them all staring up into the air to see what a woman told them appeared plain to her, which was an angel clothed in white, with a fiery sword in his hand, waving it or brandishing it over his head. She described every part of the figure to the life, showed them the motion and the form, and the poor people came into it so eagerly and with so much readiness: Yes! I see it all plainly, says one, there's the sword as plain as can be; another saw the angel; one saw his very face, and cried out what a glorious creature he was! One saw one thing, and one another. I looked as earnestly as the rest, but, perhaps, not with so much willingness to be imposed upon; and I said indeed, that I could see nothing but a white cloud, bright on one side, by the shining of the sun upon the other part. The woman endeavoured to show it me, but could not make me confess that I saw it, which, indeed, if I had, I must have lied: but the woman turning to me looked me in the face and fancied I laughed, in which her imagination deceived her too, for really did not laugh, but was seriously reflecting how the poor people were terrified by the force of their own imagination. However, she turned to me, called me profane fellow, and a scoffer, told me that it was a time of God's anger and dreadful judgments were approaching, and that despisers, such as I should wander and perish. The people about her seemed disgusted as well as she, and I found there was no persuading them that I did not laugh at them, and that I should be rather mobbed by them than be able to undeceive them. So I left them, and this appearance passed for as real as the blazing star itself. These things serve to shew how far the people were really overcome with delusions, and as they had a notion of the approach of a visitation, all their predictions ran upon a most dreadful plague which should lay the whole city and even the kingdom waste, and should destroy almost all the nation, both man and beast.-The History of the Plague in London. A QUACK DOCTOR Passing occasionally the other day through a little village, at some distance from town, I was entertained with the view of a very handsome equipage moving towards me. The gravity of the gentleman who sat in it, and the eagerness wherewith the coachman drove along, engaged my whole attention; and I immediately concluded that it could be nothing less than some minister of state, who was posting this way upon some very important affair. They were now got about the middle of the place, when making a full stand, the footman, deserting his station behind and making up abreast of his master, gave us a very fine blast with a trumpet. I was surprised to see a skip1 transformed so speedily into a trumpeter, and began to wonder what should be the meaning of such an unusual phenomenon; when the coachman, jumping from his box, laying by his whip, and slipping off his great coat, in an instant rose up a complete merry-andrew. My surprise was now heightened, and though honest pickle with a world of grimace and gesticulation endeavoured to move my gaiety, I began to be very fearful where the metamorphosis might end. I looked very earnestly first at the horse and then at the wheels, and expected every minute to have seen them take their turn in the farce, and laying aside their present appearances assume other shapes. By this time the gentleman, who had hitherto appeared wonderfully sedate and composed, began to throw off his disguise; and having pocketed 1 Lackey. |