THE 
 
 HISTORICAL 
 SOURCES OF 
 DEFOE'S 
 JOURNAL 
 OF THE 
 PLAGUE 
 YEAR 
 
 Dr. Watson Nicholson 
 

 Class 
 
 Book- y?? 7 Lj 7-Zs 
 Copyright^ 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 COFmiGHT DEPOSm 
 
THE 
 HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S 
 JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
THE HISTORICAL SOURCES 
 
 OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL OF THE 
 
 PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 Illustrated 
 
 BY EXTRACTS FROM THE ORIGINAL DOCU- 
 MENTS IN THE BURNEY COLLECTION 
 AND MANUSCRIPT ROOM IN THE 
 BRITISH MUSEUM 
 
 By WATSON NICHOLSON, Ph.D. 
 li 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "The Struggle for a Free Stage in London" 
 
 1919 
 
 THE STRATFORD CO., Publishers 
 
 Boston, Massachusetts 
 
1 
 
 ^Y« 
 
 Copyright 1920 
 
 The STRATFORD CO., Publishers 
 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 The Alpine Press, Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 
 
 MAY -5 I92U 
 ©CLA566847 
 
PREFACE 
 
 At the outbreak of the Great War, and for some 
 years prior to that world catastrophe, I was working 
 in the British Museum, the Public Eecord Office, and 
 the Lord Chamberlain's Office in London, pursuing 
 certain investigations pertaining to the history of 
 the English Drama and Stage. Throughout my quest 
 among the documents of the years 1664 and 1665, I 
 was again and again impressed with numerous strik- 
 ing resemblances between contemporaneous details of 
 the Great Plague and Defoe's account in his Journal 
 of the Plague Year, With a piqued curiosity I fol- 
 lowed these clues until I had amassed overwhelming 
 evidence of the complete authenticity of Defoe's 
 "masterpiece of the imagination." These proofs 
 were then submitted to a few scholars in England and 
 America, and the unanimous and emphatic judgment 
 of these critics was, that I had established beyond 
 cavil the historical character of Defoe's famous 
 Journal, hitherto not merely accepted, but acclaimed 
 and declaimed, as fiction. However, to make assur- 
 ance doubly sure, I pursued the investigation still 
 further, and, in more than two hundred instances 
 (not to mention the scores of statistical figures), re- 
 corded in the following pages, traced to their sources 
 statements made by Defoe in the Journal of the 
 Plague Year. In most cases the word-for-word 
 originals have been quoted (or cited), and, added to 
 these, equally convincing parallels have multiplied 
 
PREFACE 
 
 the proofs that Defoe relied upon facts in compiling 
 his history of the Plague. So great is the mass of 
 contemporaneous evidence leading to the conclusion 
 arrived at in the course of this study that the bulk of 
 the valuable data collected from the printed and un- 
 printed sources has had to be omitted, both from the 
 discussion and from the appendices, although a suf- 
 ficient number of extracts have been included to es- 
 tablish fully the historical basis of every statement 
 made by Defoe in the Journal of the Plague Year. 
 The discovery and significance of the proofs herewith 
 submitted were publicly accredited to me by Profes- 
 sor "William Lyon Phelps in the Bookman (New 
 York) for November, 1915. 
 
 W. N. 
 
 "Deer Lodge" 
 South Haven, Michigan 
 July 4, 1919. 
 
 VI 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE . PAGE 
 
 I. Originals and Parallels of the Stories in 
 
 Defoe's Journal 1 
 
 II. The Historical Sources of the Journal . 48 
 
 III. Errors in the Journal . . . .82 
 
 IV. Summary 97 
 
 V. Excerpts from the Original Sources of 
 the Journal and from Hitherto Unpub- 
 lished Documents Illustrative of the 
 Plague: 
 
 A. From Hodges 's Loimologia . 101 
 
 B. From Vincent's God's Terrible 
 
 Voice in the City . . . 116 
 
 C. From Boghurst's Loimographia 124 
 
 D. From Kemp's Brief Treatise . 128 
 
 E. From J. V.'s Golgotha . . 130 
 
 F. From Shutting Up of Houses in 
 
 London 134 
 
 G. From Thucydides 's Account of 
 
 the Plague in Athens . . 137 
 
 H. From Harleian MSS. . . 139 
 
 vii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE PAGE 
 
 I. From the Unpublished Corres- 
 pondence of the Reverend 
 Symon Patrick . . . 153 
 
 J. From Flavins Josephus's Works 166 
 
 K. From the Bills of Mortality Cov- 
 ering Plague Years in London 
 from 1603-1666, inclusive . 169 
 
 L. From Reports of the Parish 
 
 Clerks in London, 1664- '5 . 172 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 177 
 
 vm 
 
When a tradition once becomes established by the 
 hallmark of acknowledged authority, it takes more 
 than cold facts to uproot it from men's minds, — -it 
 takes time. Thus, from a careless statement, at- 
 tributed to Sir Walter Scott, that Defoe's Journal of 
 the Plague Year belongs to that "peculiar class of 
 compositions which hovers between romance and his- 
 tory," others, wholly ignorant of the real facts, have 
 enlarged upon the theme of the fictional element in the 
 Journal until now it is innocently catalogued under 
 "fiction" by reputable publishers. Even Sir Henry 
 Ellis, in 1827, then Keeper of the MSS. in the British 
 Museum, in a prefatory note to some letters concern- 
 ing the Great Plague of 1665 (printed in Original 
 Letters, 2nd Ser., Vol. IV), asserted, without qualifica- 
 tion, that Defoe's Journal "was an entire fiction." 
 This bald dictum often has been embroidered upon by 
 unwitting editors, to the effect, for example, that the 
 Journal is a masterpiece in its verisimilitude, and, 
 although it presents many actual facts and figures, it 
 is to be eschewed as a reliable reference on the Plague. 
 Others have gotten so confused by their certainty, on 
 the one hand, that the work is primarily one of the 
 imagination, and, on the other, that it contains many 
 probable facts, that the result falls little short of 
 nonsense. For instance, Walter Wilson in his 
 Memoirs of Defoe (1830, III, 510-13) informs us that 
 "it would baffle the ingenuity of any but Defoe to 
 
 [1] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 frame a history, of so many attributes, upon the basis 
 of fiction. " And Sir Walter Besant (Introduction to 
 the Journal, Century Classics, p. xix) tells us that 
 "that great physician, Dr. Mead, was so much de- 
 ceived by the ' Journal' that he took it for an authentic 
 document/' and, immediately afterwards, that "no 
 more authentic document could have been produced ! ' ' 
 Again, in the last edition of the Dictionary of National 
 Biography (Art. "Defoe"), we read that Defoe's nar- 
 rative "has an air of authority which imposed upon 
 Dr. Mead . . . who quotes it as an authority." So, 
 also, one of the latest editors of the Journal (ed. 
 Everyman's Library, Introduction, p. ix) has a simi- 
 lar statement, viz., that it is "in some respects Defoe's 
 masterpiece; and its realism, which is unsurpassed, 
 caused Dr. Mead, the eminent physician of the time, 
 to refer to the book some years afterwards as an au- 
 thority;" and the latest edition (11th) of Encyclo- 
 paedia Britannica (Art. "Plague") warns the reader 
 that ' ' Defoe 's fascinating Journal of a Citizen should 
 be read and admired as a fiction, but accepted with 
 caution as history. ' ' 
 
 There have been a few writers, indeed, heretical 
 enough to break away from the ranks and assert that 
 the Journal is legitimate history; but as these have 
 merely asserted without proofs, their opinions are 
 naturally passed over. 1 The general concensus is that 
 Defoe creates a realistic atmosphere, and gives a cor- 
 
 1 Thus Mr. Thomas Wright in his "Life of Defoe" (1894) iterates 
 and reiterates (pp. 98, 230, 235, 294), "that the 'Journal' is 
 veritable history, there is not the least doubt." In 1872, Mr. 
 E. W. Brayley edited the "Journal" and supplied a great 
 number of facts from contemporaneous sources relating to the 
 Plague; but he made no attempt to establish Defoe's work as 
 history. 
 
 [2] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 rect impression of the Plague, but that he cannot 
 be relied upon as an historian, that facts with him 
 are but materials for his imagination, and that an art- 
 ful style and inventive genius fix the Journal as a 
 work of fiction rather than a narrative of historic 
 facts. The foregoing quotations are sufficient evi- 
 dence of the general belief. The simple truth is, how- 
 ever, there is not a single essential statement in the 
 Journal not based on historic fact. Even the stories 
 ascribed to Defoe 's invention have their origins in real 
 contemporaneous events. Indeed, one of Defoe's 
 crowning achievements in compiling the Journal con- 
 sisted in curbing his natural predilection for inven- 
 tion, and adhering to strict facts as he found them 
 in printed sources or got them directly from the sur- 
 vivors of 1665. Defoe himself asserts (Introduction 
 to Due Preparations) — and there is no sufficient rea- 
 son to doubt him — that he well remembered the Great 
 Plague. Defoe was about six in 1665, and, besides, 
 he had a vast fund of dismal and graphic stories from 
 the older survivors of the Plague. But here again the 
 fiction theorist bolsters up his hypothesis with, "The 
 truth itself is not believed from one who often has de- 
 ceived/' and it is explained that Defoe warped and 
 exaggerated actual conditions in order to heighten 
 the effects of history. However, for one who has 
 examined the sources of the Journal, it would be diffi- 
 cult, indeed, to conceive how the actual horrors of the 
 Plague Year could be exaggerated. It is true there 
 are slips and errors in the Journal (to be noted in an- 
 other connexion), but scarcely one of these is essential 
 to the correctness of the narrative as a whole, and they 
 
 [3] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 are almost invariably due to misinformation or haste, 
 and not to deliberate intention. This will more fully 
 appear when it is understood that contemporaneous 
 accounts of the Plague are not always in absolute 
 accord in every detail, and that sometimes there are 
 positive errors recorded. This fact explains most of 
 Defoe's errors in the Journal. In general, he was 
 scrupulously careful to avoid all appearances of mis- 
 representation. Indeed, in some instances where he 
 warns us that he is not vouching for the truthfulness 
 of a given statement, he is still quite in harmony with 
 the facts. On the whole when we consider the short 
 time Defoe must have given himself to fling his 
 materials together — for so it was really done, and not 
 as the result of a studied carelessness, as is sometimes 
 supposed — the Journal is remarkably free from errors, 
 and is, in the main, far more authentic than many 
 another work that passes for history. In short, 
 Defoe's chief purpose in the Journal was to give his- 
 toric facts, and his deviations from actual facts are 
 comparatively few and unimportant. 
 
 The failure of editors and commentators to recog- 
 nize this truth, or, possibly their want of curiosity, 
 has led them into strange absurdities. Following one 
 another in the assumption that the Journal is mainly 
 fiction, they have been compelled, like mediaeval 
 theologians, to bolster up their hypothesis by further 
 assumptions. Thus, it is argued, there must have 
 been an incentive and a motive, other than a desire to 
 write history, in composing the Journal. Naturally, 
 the incentive was a commercial one. And the motive ? 
 Well, in 1720, Marseilles was visited by a most 
 
 [4] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 devastating Plague which swept away nearly 100,000 
 of her inhabitants. London's terrible experience of 
 1665 was still fresh in the memories of many then 
 living, and, to prepare her citizens against such an- 
 other calamity, Defoe, forsooth, wrote a fiction entitled 
 a Journal of the Plague Year. A mere statement of 
 the theory proves its absurdity. Besides, the Journal 
 did not appear for over a year after the Plague had 
 ceased in Marseilles. Moreover, the public had been 
 warned repeatedly by more than a score of volumes, 
 beginning with Dr. Richard Mead's Short Discourse 
 Concerning Pestilential Contagion, prepared as the 
 result of a Royal Order, in 1720, as soon as the report 
 of the Marseilles Plague reached England. Owing to 
 Mead's contention that pestilence is a contagious dis- 
 ease, a perfect shower of controversial books and 
 pamphlets on the subject was cast upon the public. 
 That the intense interest aroused by the Marseilles 
 Plague suggested the Journal there is not the slightest 
 doubt, and it is no less certain that the motive sug- 
 gested above for writing it is not the true one, for not 
 only had that warning and preparation been given by 
 others, admittedly more capable than Defoe for such 
 a task, and that too in 1720, but also, Defoe would 
 hardly have waited to publish a half-dozen other books 
 before writing the Journal had he looked upon the lat- 
 ter as a humanitarian duty he was called upon to per- 
 form. Even his Due Preparations for the Plague 
 could have had little direct relation to the Marseilles 
 Plague, for the reason just stated, although it was 
 avowedly written for the enlightenment of people of 
 all classes, as to how to escape the distemper in case it 
 
 [5] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 should again visit England. The simplicity and 
 directness of the latter book compared with the 
 heterogeneous character of the Journal would also 
 indicate the purpose of the Due Preparations. Aside 
 from this consideration, it is very probable that the 
 last-mentioned book was an aftermath of the Journal 
 — common practice with Defoe — and also that it was 
 intended to supply practical, simple advice to the 
 people, in place of the confused, contradictory, and 
 unintelligible muddle of directions that were foisted 
 upon the public as a result of the controversy over 
 Dr. Mead's book. If the Journal had been written 
 with a similar motive, then all the statistics, relation 
 of the progress of the distemper, most of the stories, 
 descriptions of the appearance of the town, domestic 
 and foreign trade, in fact everything in the book ex- 
 cept those moralizing passages concerning the treat- 
 ment and care of the diseased, in case the Plague 
 should ever again visit England, would have been 
 omitted and practical advice substituted. In other 
 words, the materials and their treatment in the Journal 
 are historical, those of Due Preparations admonitory. 
 In fact, such advice as does appear in the Journal, 
 given as if original with Defoe (hence lending a 
 fictional tint to the narrative) , is borrowed directly 
 from his sources, Hodges, Kemp, Sydenham, Diemer- 
 broeck, Mead, etc. 
 
 The mention of Dr. Mead makes it necessary to 
 revert to the oft-quoted assertion that he was deceived 
 by Defoe whom he quoted as authority on the Plague, 
 The absurdity of this myth will appear at once when 
 it is pointed out that, in the first place, Defoe and 
 
 [6] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 Mead were contemporaries (Mead was born in 1673) 
 and the latter would scarcely be taken in regarding 
 events that happened so near his own time ; and, sec- 
 ondly, Mead was himself an eminent specialist in 
 pestilential diseases, and when he was appointed in 
 1720 (as already mentioned) to prepare a treatise to 
 assist in warding off the Marseilles distemper, he made 
 a searching study of the history of plague and of its 
 treatment. That he should have been ignorant of the 
 matters treated of by Defoe in the Journal is incon- 
 ceivable. Nay, not only did he have a much broader 
 knowledge of the subject than did Defoe, but instead 
 of the latter furnishing him with facts concerning the 
 Plague of 1665, the very reverse is true. One of the 
 amusing things about it all is, that Mead's Discourse 
 Concerning the Plague went through eight editions 
 before Defoe's Journal appeared. It is hardly neces- 
 sary to point out (except to" future editors of the 
 Journal) that Mead in none of these eight editions 
 could have borrowed from the Journal, However, in 
 1744, Dr. Mead revised his book on the Plague, when 
 he referred, on one page only (p. 106) to the Journal. 
 This was in connection with the evil effects of shutting 
 up victims of the distemper, a practice which led some 
 in their delirium to break out of their prisons to seek 
 refuge with their friends in the country, or build huts 
 and tents for themselves in the open fields, or get on 
 board ships in the river, or voluntarily shut them- 
 selves up in self-defence. 
 
 Now, assuming that all this were mere fiction (an 
 assumption impossible from the nature of the disease 
 and of humanity), it would not, in the first place, 
 
 [7] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 be such a tremendous feat of the imagination; and, 
 secondly, seeing that it is but a single instance, one 
 would hardly be justified in asserting that Dr. Mead 
 had been very greatly taken in. The whole assump- 
 tion, however, falls to the ground when it is known 
 that every word of the passage in question is true, and 
 common to the history of all plagues. Diemerbroeck 
 (de Peste, p. 120, a copy of which Defoe possessed) 
 asserts that he personally knew "that in many places 
 the sick have chose to lay themselves in fields, in the 
 open air, under the slightest coverings," rather than 
 submit to the restraint and cruelties of nurses. Mead 
 also quoted this passage in his eighth edition of the 
 Discourse (p. xviii). In the last-mentioned work 
 (p. xxxii) it is related that, during the Plague in Ger- 
 many in 1712,-13, three men shut up in Hamburgh 
 escaped, took refuge in a barn in the country, where 
 they were all found dead, when the barn and corpses 
 were burned together. Incidentally, it may be men- 
 tioned that this case may have suggested to Defoe the 
 story of the soldier, sailor, and joiner. That this was 
 the manner in which the disease was scattered broad- 
 cast over the kingdom is supported by all the sources. 
 Voluntary shutting up was also common, Dr. Burnett 
 being a case in point (Pepys, Diary 11 June, 1665). 
 
 Thus far it would appear that Defoe was more 
 indebted to Mead than the other way about, — and this 
 takes no account of the treatment of the distemper. 
 But it is not necessary even to suppose that Defoe 
 was, in this instance, a borrower from Dr. Mead 
 (although in Due Preparations we know that he did 
 use the latter 's work) : we may come nearer home for 
 
 [8] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 a genuine source. In Newes No. 83, there is a letter 
 from Durham, dated 13 October, 1665, which reads 
 as follows: "The contagion in this country, which 
 was brought hither about three months since by cer- 
 tain passengers from London and Yarmouth, is now 
 by the favour of God very much ass waged : Sunder- 
 land (to which place it was first of all brought) being 
 now perfectly well, and the other infected places in a 
 very hopeful condition. The sick persons are all of 
 them removed out of town into huts built in the fields 
 at a convenient distance for that purpose." To be 
 sure, this does not quite satisfy the case, as here there 
 is no suggestion of breaking out of shut up houses ; but 
 in the same "newsbook," No. 79, is a letter from Dor- 
 chester bearing date of 23 September, 1665, in which it 
 was reported that a man escaped from London and 
 "died within a mile of this town, after four days' sick- 
 ness, and supposed to be of the Plague ; but the hovell 
 wherein he lay being boarded over and under, a pit 
 was digged, and both hovel and corpse were buried 
 together. ' ' One of the most striking proofs of Plague 
 victims breaking out of shut-up houses and running 
 into the country, occurs in a pamphlet entitled The 
 Shutting Up of Infected Houses, etc. (1665), wherein 
 it is asserted that sometimes those who are shut up 
 break out and * l run as far in City and country as our 
 feet can carry us, . . . till at last we drop in some alley, 
 field, or neighbour village." As this whole matter 
 will be entered into fully elsewhere in this essay, it 
 need only be remarked here that the evidence is 
 abundant to establish from other sources every item in 
 
 [9] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 the passage in Mead's Discourse which is referred to 
 the Journal as authority. 
 
 It is further to be observed that Defoe himself 
 tells us in the Journal that " it is much to the satisfac- 
 tion of me that write, ... to be able to say that every- 
 thing is set down with moderation, and rather within 
 compass than beyond it" ; and of the several stories he 
 relates he asserts a very truth when he says that there 
 are " divers parallel stories to be met with of the same 
 kind." The force of this truth will more definitely 
 appear in the course of this survey. In like manner, 
 in Due Preparations (1722, Introduction, pp. x, xi) he 
 assures us that his purpose is to keep near the facts, 
 and, moreover, he informs us of his method. "To 
 make this discourse familiar and agreeable to every 
 reader," he says, "I have endeavoured to make it as 
 historical as I could, and have therefore intermingled 
 it with some accounts of fact, where I could come at 
 them, and some by report, . . . The cases I have stated 
 here, are suited with the utmost care to the circum- 
 stances past, and more especially as they are reason- 
 ably supposed to suit those to come; and as I very 
 particularly remember the last visitation of this kind, 
 which afflicted this nation in 1665, and have had occa- 
 sion to converse with many other persons who lived in 
 this city all the while, I have chosen some of their 
 cases as precedents for our present instructions. I 
 take leave so far to personate the particular persons in 
 their histories, as is needful in the case in hand, with- 
 out making use of their names, though in many cases 
 I could have descended to the very names and par- 
 ticulars of the persons themselves." In these two 
 
 [10] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 quotations, the one from the Journal, the other from 
 Due Preparations, we are presented with the true ex- 
 planation of the purposes and methods in the two 
 books respectively : both are based on authentic facts, 
 in one case "set down with moderation, and rather 
 within compass than beyond it," and in the other, 
 "suited with the utmost care to the circumstances 
 past, and more especially as they are reasonably sup- 
 posed to suit those to come." In other words, Defoe 
 took two simple historic facts, the one of a man who 
 saved himself and family by shutting themselves up 
 before the Plague got into their neighbourhood, the 
 other of a family who fled from the distemper, got 
 aboard a ship, and thus escaped. Both of these in- 
 stances appear in the Journal, intermingled with other 
 incidents and episodes of the Plague Year. In Due 
 Preparations, Defoe simply isolated these two com- 
 mon devices for escaping the Plague and, applying the 
 method employed in Robinson Crusoe, elaborated and 
 developed them into practical instructions. Due 
 Preparations is thus much closer to fiction in method 
 and style of narration than is the Journal, for only in 
 one instance in the latter is there anything that ap- 
 proaches fiction, namely, the story of the soldier, sailor 
 and joiner, and even here the several parts of the story 
 are quite true; it is only the manner of combining 
 them into a coherent narrative that suggests the fic- 
 tional element. Other tricks of style and manner em- 
 ployed in the Journal that have deceived many into 
 the belief that the materials themselves came out of 
 Defoe's imagination, I shall discuss more fully in an- 
 other section. 
 
 en] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 Turning to the second point in Defoe's Introduc- 
 tion to Due Preparations, viz., his " personation' ' of 
 the characters he mentions therein, the same is true in 
 a few cases in the Journal. Whenever the mention of 
 an historic name would redound to the credit of the 
 original, he did not scruple to use it. Thus, he 
 enumerates four famous physicians who braved the 
 perils of the Plague and remained in town to assist in 
 administering to the poor stricken victims of the in- 
 fection. These were Drs. Humphrey Brookes, Fran- 
 cis Upton, Nathaniel Hodges, and Peter Barwick, all 
 honoured members of the College of Physicians, any 
 one, or all, of whom Defoe may have known after he 
 reached manhood. 2 On the other hand, when the 
 mention of a particular historic character might cause 
 offence, 3 or in any way interfere with his narrative, 
 Defoe probably made up or borrowed a fictitious 
 name; for it should not be forgotten that, as Defoe 
 himself informs us, there were many yet alive in 1722 
 who could verify and parallel all, and many more, of 
 his stories. And is it not a significant fact that in an 
 age when every public statement was pounced upon 
 
 2 Defoe might have mentioned many other brave physicians who 
 
 offered themselves to the public service during the Plague, as 
 Drs. Dey, Starkey, Grover, O'Dowd, Burnett, Davis, Thompson, 
 D'Autry and Boghurst. The first five of these were martyrs 
 to the distemper; Dr. William Boghurst recorded his very 
 valuable observations in "Loimographia" (1666, but not printed 
 until 1894 by the Epedemiological Society, ed. Dr. J. P. Payne) ; 
 Dr. Greo. Thompson risked his life to dissect a Plague corpse, 
 and recorded the experiment in "Loimotomia, ' ' 1666; Burnett 
 was Pepys's doctor, and it was in his house in Fenchurch St. 
 that the Plague first appeared in the City about the 10th of 
 June. Ten weeks after his servant died of the Plague, Burnett 
 himself succumbed to it. This illustrates the odd freaks of the 
 disease mentioned by Defoe. Burnett was one of those who 
 voluntarily shut himself up. See Pepys, "Diary," June 10, 
 11, Aug. 25, 1665. 
 
 3 Strikingly exemplified in the case of the merchant who hanged 
 
 himself in his delirium. 
 
 [12] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 and mauled by every controversialist, no one, not even 
 the survivors of 1665, seems to have doubted the au- 
 thenticity of the Journal?* This matter of the fic- 
 titious names in Defoe's account of the Plague has 
 been one of the sure evidences to commentators, of the 
 fictitious nature of the Journal. Thus, they can find 
 no Dr. Heath on record : ergo, he is a product of De- 
 foe 's genius. As a matter of very high probability, 
 Dr. Heath was none other than Dr. Hodges, and, for 
 the reasons given above, Defoe altered the name to 
 Heath. In the hope of finding some clue to the name 
 Heath, I sent for Goodall's College of Physicians 
 (1684), a copy of which was in Defoe's library at the 
 time of his death. I opened the book at random (p. 
 393) and by the strangest coincidence the first name 
 my eye lighted upon was that of Sir Robert Heath 
 (Lord Chief Justice under Charles I) standing out in 
 capital letters to catch the eye. Much more to the 
 purpose is the fact that the characteristics, including 
 the discussions of the treatment of patients, etc., are 
 applicable to Dr. Heath and Dr. Hodges alike. Also, 
 when it is remembered that the latter is said to have 
 suffered the same fate as the man Defoe mentions, 
 who, following the doctor's instructions (identical 
 with Hodges 's prescription) to ward off the pestilence 
 by a copious use of sack, got so addicted to the habit 
 that he died a toper, we are able to appreciate the sen- 
 timent which moved Defoe to alter the name in the 
 Journal. But this is a trivial matter which in no 
 
 * The continuator of Dr. Gideon Harvey's account of the Plague 
 under the title of "City Remembrances" (1709) incorporated 
 all the leading features of the "Journal," yet no one, I be- 
 lieve, has accused him of having been taken in. 
 
 [13] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 sense detracts from the history as such. I take notice 
 of it merely to cover the details of the Journal, and to 
 indicate Defoe's probable motive in diverting his nar- 
 rative from historic facts in matters likely to wound 
 the feelings of those still alive when the Journal was 
 written. 
 
 Another story that has aroused universal admira- 
 tion of Defoe's genius is that of the Quaker, Solomon 
 Eagle, who ran about the streets naked, predicting 
 doleful things for London and crying, "Oh the great 
 and dreadful God!" The only questions to be re- 
 solved, concerning this story, are, did people go about 
 the streets naked, were Quakers particularly pessimis- 
 tic in their prophecies, and was there a genuine his- 
 torical character who might have furnished Defoe 
 with a prototype? That people did go about naked 
 we know from Thucydides, Vincent, and others; but 
 they were usually frenzied victims of the pest. As for 
 crepe-hanging prophets, they are common in all ages. 
 Josephus 's fanatic was one when he ran about wailing, 
 "Woe, woe to Jerusalem," before the destruction of 
 that city by Titus. But we do not have to resort to 
 ancient history or to generalities to account for Solo- 
 mon Eagle. There was the flesh-and-blood John Gib- 
 son who might have done very well indeed for a model. 
 <Ale was a noted Quaker prognosticator of evil things, 
 who lived during the middle of the 17th century, and, 
 like Solomon Eagle, went about interpreting his "vi- 
 sions," preaching his "antient of dayes to come," and 
 warning the people of Europe, "but more particularly 
 of England." 
 
 [14] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 More nearly parallel to the Solomon Eagle story 
 are certain events of Defoe 's own times. The history 
 of the troublesome, prophesying Quakers of the 17th 
 century and the early part of the 18th century is well 
 known to students of the period, and Defoe especially 
 had good cause to remember the dissenters of that time 
 as one of his satirical pamphlets about them got him 
 into serious trouble. 5 It may very well be that he had 
 in mind one of these street-preaching prophets when 
 he drew his Solomon Eagle. For example, on Janu- 
 ary 14, 1701, it is related that, 
 
 "This Day a Man Quaker came to the Royal- 
 Exchange, about Exchange time, and took his Post by 
 the Effigies of K. Charles 2. where the Spirit mov'd 
 him to Express these Words ; ' I am sent by the great 
 God, to Proclaim his Summons to this great City; 
 That in case the Inhabitants do not speedily Repent of 
 their "Wickedness, his Judgments will suddenly fall 
 upon them.' " fl 
 
 And again, a fortnight later, the following news item 
 appeared in the same paper: 
 
 "London, Jan. 28, 1701. This day about 3 in 
 the Afternoon, a Quaker Woman stept up upon a 
 great Stone at Fleet-bridge, and made a speech there- 
 
 5 "London, May 23, [1703]. Mr. Daniel de Foe, Author of The 
 
 Shortest Way with the Dissenters, was taken on Thursday last 
 [May 20] in a private House in Spittle-Fields." — "Daily 
 Courant." May 24, 1703. 
 ''London, July 31, [1703]. On the 29th Instant Daniel Foe, 
 alias de Foe, stood in the Pillory before the Royal Exchange 
 in Cornhill, as he did yesterday near the Conduit in Cheap- 
 side, and this day at Temple Bar, in pursuance of the Sen- 
 tence given against him at the last Session of the Old-Bailey, 
 for Writing and Publishing a Seditious Libel, Entituled, The 
 Shortest Way with the Dissenters ; By which Sentence he is 
 also fined 200 Marks, to find Sureties for his good behaviour 
 for 7 years, and to remain in Prison till all be performed." — 
 "London Gazette," August 2, 1703. 
 
 6 "London Post," January 15, 1700 (O. S.) 
 
 [15] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 at, denouncing Woe to this City, if the Inhabitants do 
 not speedily Repent." 7 
 
 I mention these few eases (which may be multiplied 
 at will) to prove the abundance of the materials which 
 Defoe might have drawn upon. That a genuine orig- 
 inal supplied him with his Solomon Eagle is certain, 
 and this is equally true of the story of the Whitechapel 
 clergyman who went about repeating the liturgy. 
 
 Of a somewhat different nature is the circum- 
 stance related in the Journal of the blind piper, who, 
 while overcome with drink, was picked up and thrown 
 into the dead cart along with the corpses to be dumped 
 into the pit. At first glance the whole thing is so 
 bizarre that we are tempted to brand it as fiction of the 
 grimmest sort. Yet a little industry rewards us with 
 a genuine parallel. In William Austin's Anatomy of 
 the Pestilence in 1665 (p. 38), which, by the way, con- 
 tains numerous other parallels to the Journal, we read 
 in connection with the burial of the dead: 
 
 Wisely they leave graves open to the dead 
 'Cause some too early there are brought to bed. 
 
 One out of trance return 'd, after much strife 
 Among a troup of dead, exclaims for life. 
 
 Nor need the story related by Defoe of the demented 
 man who thought he saw a ghost in Bishopsgate 
 Churchyard cause great wonder or admiration. Any 
 community in any age will supply many more fetching 
 ghost stories than the one reproduced by Defoe. The 
 
 7 "London Post," January 29, 1701. 
 
 [16] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 subject was one that appealed to him, and his own 
 library contained any number of examples, to say 
 nothing of the wierd stories then, as always, current. 
 Besides, hallucination is one of the leading symptoms 
 of plague. George Withers, the poet, who won great 
 distinction by remaining in London throughout the 
 Plague of 1625 and also that of 1665, recorded his ex- 
 periences and observations of the former in a large 
 tome (in verse) entitled Britain's Remembrancer. In 
 this there are literally dozens of parallel descriptions 
 and stories to those in the Journal, and in this con- 
 nection particularly a man who, in delirium, fancied 
 he saw Death prowling about, 
 
 . . . now by the bed, 
 He stands, now at the foot, now at the Head. 
 
 He acted with a look so tragical 
 
 That all bystanders might have thought his eyes 
 
 Saw real objects, and no fantasies. 
 
 Then there is the story in the Journal of the man 
 who could detect the presence of an infected person by 
 the smarting of a wound on his leg, when he would 
 rise up, if in company, and say, "Friends, here is 
 somebody in the room that has the plague," although 
 there were no outward symptoms of it. This looks 
 and sounds very much like invention on Defoe's part, 
 but it is nothing of the kind, any more than the other 
 stories in the Journal accredited to his genius. In a 
 letter dated October 12, 1670, J. Beale wrote to the 
 Hon. R. Boyle (Works, ed. 1772, VI, 429), that a per- 
 
 [17] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 son "whom for many years I have known to be credit- 
 able, [told me] that he knew a good old woman, aged 
 near eighty, now deceased, who said often in his 
 hearing, that she could know, if the plague were 
 within thirty miles of her, by a pain she had in three 
 plague sores, which sores she had in her younger days, 
 before she was married." Certainly in this instance 
 Defoe kept rather "within compass than beyond it." 
 And here it should be observed that Defoe has been 
 criticised for asserting that plague victims went about 
 with the infection upon them, yet not be aware of it 
 themselves "till they had the very tokens come out 
 upon them, . . . and would die in an hour or two after 
 they came home, but be well as long as they were 
 abroad." This criticism (and, indeed, most of the 
 criticism of the Journal, is based entirely on probabil- 
 ity. An examination of the sources again justifies 
 Defoe's claim to "moderation." On September 20, 
 1665, John Allin (preacher-chemist-astrologer), who 
 remained in London throughout the Plague, wrote to 
 his friend, Philip Fryth: "If the infection be received 
 by the halitus, or breath, it now immediately afflicts 
 the hearte, y e root of the vitall spirits, and some time 
 kills before any external and generally believed symp- ' 
 tomes of that distemper can appeare, either spotts or 
 tumors, but allways invades y e party with sudden and 
 sharpe fainting fitts." 8 Kemp gives testimony to the 
 same effect when he quotes Benedictus as authority for 
 the statement that plague victims sometimes "whilst 
 they have been employed about their business in the 
 house, their trading in the market, their devotions in 
 
 8 "Archaelogia," XXXVII, 12. 
 
 [18] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 the church, have died suddenly, and sundry other 
 physicians relate the like, and perhaps hath or might 
 have been observed at London." 9 The same author 
 also gives his testimony that ' ' as the Plague is propa- 
 gated by contagion, so likewise it is spread by fear and 
 imagination. . . . There be stories that make the rela 
 tion of some that did but see one infected with the 
 Plague, and of some that did but behold afar off a 
 corpse going to be buried ; of others, who being in the 
 house, did not hear the buriers, and presently after 
 have sought the sickness, and died of the Plague them* 
 selves." 10 Hodges, Vincent, and many others bear 
 witness to this fact which recurs a number of times 
 in the Journal, 
 
 The various stories of infected persons breaking 
 out while insane from their sufferings, and often doing 
 violence upon themselves or others, are all quite true 
 and will be considered presently. The story of the 
 waterman who was compelled to ply his vocation in 
 order to earn a livelihood for his wife and child, 
 though afraid to go near them for fear of carrying 
 the distemper to them, and so deposited his earnings 
 on a large stone where they might come out and get 
 them, has the ring of reality about it. In like man- 
 ner, Dr. Symon Patrick's clerk removed himself from 
 his family, although in his case he did it to protect 
 himself from those of his household who were 
 visited. 11 It is only in the story of the three friends 
 who escaped into the country and lived in a tent that 
 Defoe abandons himself to the methods of fiction ; but, 
 
 9 Kemp. "Brief Treatise," p. 3. 
 
 10 lb. p. 22. 
 
 11 Add. MSS., 5810. 
 
 [19] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 as already pointed out, all the details of the story es- 
 sential to the history of the Plague are in accord with 
 known facts : people did escape and live in tents and 
 huts, and the country folk were chary of them. 
 
 The feature of the history of the Plague relating 
 to the breaking out of victims from shut-up houses, 
 and in some cases the escape of people before their 
 houses were shut up, they running into the country 
 with the infection upon them, thus polluting places 
 hitherto free from the contagion, occupies a most im- 
 portant place in the Journal, involving at least one- 
 seventh of its entire contents, albeit there are many 
 useless repetitions. The arguments for and against 
 shutting up were taken by Defoe directly from 
 Hodges 's "Historical Account of the Plague of 
 1665;" and other sources are numerous. So, also, the 
 stories repeated by Defoe to illustrate the plain facts 
 have numerous origins and parallels. Some of these 
 have already been mentioned in other connections. 
 The author of Shutting Up Infected Houses as it is 
 practised in England (1665) gives us an appalling ac- 
 count of the evils arising from shutting up. "As soon 
 as we find ourselves or any member of our families in- 
 fected," he says, "so dreadful is it to us to be shut up 
 from all comfort and society, from free and wholesome 
 air, from the care of the physician and divine, from 
 the oversight of friends and relations, and sometimes 
 from the very necessities and conveniences of nature, 
 that we run as far in city and country as our feet can 
 carry us, leaving wives and children to the parishes, 
 empty walls and shops to creditors, scattering the in- 
 fection along the streets as we go, and shifting it from 
 
 [20] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 lodging to lodging with ourselves, till at last we drop 
 in some alley, field or neighbour village, calling the 
 people round about by the suddenness of our fall to 
 stand awhile astonished at our deaths, and then take 
 their own ; each fearful man of us frighted from his 
 own house, killing his own town by surprising them 
 unprepared. . . . 
 
 1 ' See, see, we infect not our next neighbours, and 
 this sickness spreads not much in any one place, but 
 we carry it from place to place, running from our 
 homes as from places of torment, and thus the roads 
 are visited, and men travel the same way to the coun- 
 try, and to their long home. Thus the contagion hath 
 reached most places round the city, which is now as it 
 were besieged with the judgment, and encompassed 
 with the visitation and desolation." And the author 
 of Golgotha (p. 12) says of the evil of shutting up that 
 "many for fear thereof do hide their sores, and, after 
 a sweat or two, their sickness also, and go daily about 
 their business as long as they can stand, mingled to 
 much more danger every way. Nor dare any do the 
 office of a nurse or friend to those shut up . . . because 
 it is so penal that they must be inclosed then them- 
 selves. ' ' 
 
 It was in the manner of the foregoing examples 
 that Islington received the infection, as related by 
 Defoe in the story of the man who died at the "Pied 
 Bull/' Leafing over the "newsbooks" of 1665, we 
 find any number of similar stories. To take one in- 
 stance, in a letter from Portsmouth, dated September 
 3, 1665, we are informed that the Plague had got 
 over to Newport — isolated as that town was— 
 
 [21] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 "brought over by a certain knight who had an estate 
 there, and sickened and died at his lodgings ; the mas- 
 ter of the house thought it quinsy, and threatened the 
 mayor for shutting up the house, but two women took 
 the infection, and died from merely changing and air- 
 ing the sheets of the bed; the poor gentleman was 
 obliged to bury the bodies himself in his own garden • 
 sheep and goats since put in the house are all dead." 
 Again, in a letter from Coventry, October 15, 1665, we 
 read: "We were very much afraid of the sickness at 
 Litchfield, and it is true that a disorderly fellow enter- 
 tained an infected person in an ale-house in the sub- 
 urbs: whereupon the master of the house died." In 
 Defoe's story it was the maid who showed the traveler 
 to his room who "fell presently ill." But the 
 resemblances between all these stories are so unmis- 
 takable that historical accuracy is assured. Well 
 might the country places be suspicious of people from 
 London ! 
 
 At the outbreak of the Plague, as related by the 
 contemporaries, and repeated by Defoe, only, or 
 mainly, those who were financially able to run away 
 from the distemper left town ; but as the enormity of 
 the disease became more and more apparent, those 
 who had at first hesitated to go, got away whenever 
 possible. By this time the Plague was approaching 
 its height, and hence travelers from London were the 
 more feared. The country magistrates were put to 
 their wits' ends to prevent strangers entering their 
 precincts. Commercial interests, however, and 
 forged certificates of health made it possible for many 
 to go from place to place ; and the mere desperation of 
 
 [22] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 shut-up victims, as related by the author of Shutting 
 up, made it impossible to guard successfully against 
 the ultimate spread of the disease. Nevertheless, the 
 whole country was so alarmed, the vigilance of the 
 authorities so alert, that a fairly rigid quarantine was 
 established in most places until after the Plague ap- 
 proached its climax in London. The experience of De- 
 foe 5 s three heroes is typical of what happened to most 
 travelers during that frightful year. By the end of 
 June, 1665, every one knew that the Plague was rap- 
 idly getting beyond control, and those who were able to 
 do so had left town or were preparing to leave. Pepys 's 
 entry for June 29 depicts the situation very tersely: 
 1 ' Up and by water to White Hall, where the Court full 
 of waggons and people ready to go out of towne. . . . 
 This end of the towne grows every day very bad of 
 the plague. The Mortality Bill has come to 267. " 
 The "great orbs," as Vincent calls the aristocracy, 
 went first of course, — many even long before the Court 
 fled, for it was not until July 2 that Charles II and 
 his retinue went to Hampton Court (the Queen 
 Mother left for France on June 26) ; but the general 
 exodus had begun before the middle of June, and a 
 few had taken the alarm and gone when the Bills end- 
 ing June 6 showed an increase from 17 to 43 of the 
 Plague; and when, the following week, 112 deaths 
 from the distemper were reported, the real panic be- 
 gan, as recorded by Defoe. This was reflected the fol- 
 lowing day (June 14) when a royal Proclamation was 
 issued forbidding the holding of the annual Fair 
 at Barnwell, near Cambridge, — the first of many simi- 
 lar prohibitions. The country towns at once began 
 
 [23] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 to erect barriers against travelers from the metropolis : 
 a clean bill of health was required of all strangers, 
 especially from London, but, as already observed, this 
 means of protection had to be abandoned soon for 
 more drastic methods. 12 Among the first towns to 
 take due precautions was (by the irony of fate, as it 
 was later most heavily visited) Ipswich. On July 11, 
 1665, its correspondent to the Newes (No. 54) re- 
 ported that the place was in good health, ' ' and there 
 is great care and industry used to keep it so, no 
 stranger being permitted to enter without examina- 
 tions and good Certificates." The officials of Ipswich 
 did not then know how easy it was to secure "good 
 Certificates. ' ' 
 
 The precautions taken by the Guildford authori- 
 ties are worth repeating as they are fairly representa- 
 tive of the action taken by most of the country towns 
 to prevent the Plague from visiting them: "As it hath 
 pleased God hitherto to preserve this place and the 
 neighbourhood in a happy condition of health ; so it is 
 the singular care of the magistrates to provide (as 
 much as may be) for the continuance thereof ; to which 
 end Justices of the Peace of County of Surrey have di- 
 rected an Order of Sessions, bearing date the 11th, 
 instant, [July, 1665] , to the lord of the Manor of Ebis- 
 ham, desiring him to cause the wells to be locked up 
 
 12 "Whereas several Certificates have been made by others as from 
 the Officers of St. Gregory's Parish by St. Paul's, London: 
 This is to notify that the Officers of the said Parish will not 
 certify any to be clear of the Plague but whom they know, and 
 that from the 8th of this instant [July 1665], they will sub- 
 scribe to no Certificates but what are printed." — "Intelli- 
 gencer," No. 53 — There are many other advertisements like 
 this one, and they all clearly indicate that forged certificates 
 were common. Unfortunately, the deceit was not discovered in 
 time, and it may easily be understood how suspicious the magis- 
 trates became, even of those bearing certificates. The story 
 of Defoe's three heroes should be read in this light. 
 
 [24] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 during these infectious times, and to secure the same 
 by a constant watch, for fear of any resort thither 
 from infectious places: which said Order was upon 
 Monday last put into execution, with a restraint upon 
 the inhabitants, neither to receive any lodgers into 
 their houses, nor to admit any coaches or waggons 
 with goods or passengers from infected places. Which 
 Order was not resolved upon without great reluctancy, 
 considering the damages of particulars which must 
 necessarily attend it." 13 Vincent, in God's Terrible 
 Voice in the City, calls attention to the quarantine 
 established in the country towns: "Now the countries 
 [i, e. country towns] keep guards, lest infectious per- 
 sons from the City bring the disease unto them ; ' ' and 
 the Sancroft Correspondence (November 2, 1665) 
 speaks of the "unkindnesse of country people to Lon- 
 doners. ' ' On July 17, Pepys comments, "Lord ! to see 
 how all these great people here [at Dagnams, near 
 Romford] are afeard of London, being doubtful of 
 anything that comes from thence, or that has lately 
 been there, that I was forced to say that I lived wholly 
 at Woolwich. ' ' On September 3, he was obliged to go 
 to Greenwich on business connected with the Ad- 
 miralty, ' ' where much ado to be suffered to come into 
 the towne, till I told them who I was. " A week earlier 
 he recorded that it was ' t an unpleasing thing to be at 
 Court [then at Hampton Court], everybody being 
 fearful one of another, and all so sad, enquiring after 
 the Plague." 
 
 In an effort to assist the country towns to make 
 their restrictions more effective, the King on August 
 
 13 "Intelligencer," No. 57. 
 
 [25] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 10, 1665, sent a command to the Middlesex Justices to 
 use diligence in preventing the removal of persons or 
 goods from London and suburbs to other towns ; and 
 likewise to suppress the practice of infected persons 
 breaking out of shut-up houses. Searchers, nurses, 
 etc., were to be appointed in the towns in the Magis- 
 trates' jurisdiction, and no lodger or tenant was to 
 be admitted without the permission of two Justices of 
 the Peace. The part played by high Church officials 
 in preventing the spread of the distemper is also 
 worthy of note. Thus, to mention only one example, 
 the Bishop of Ely temporarily nullified the patent 
 for holding the annual Fair at Ely, for fear of "a 
 great resort from London, Yarmouth, Colchester, 
 Cambridge, and other places/' 14 
 
 Despite all efforts to prevent the spread of the 
 disease (in London by means of shutting up infected 
 houses, in the country by orders regulating travel and 
 traffic), the Plague finally got to almost every part of 
 England. 15 Defoe has faithfully recorded how this 
 came about, namely, by infected persons bribing the 
 watchmen or otherwise escaping from shut-up houses, 
 and by others getting away before the infection was 
 discovered upon them, and before their houses were 
 shut up. Defoe's three travelers were free from the 
 distemper, it is true ; but the reverse was as apt to be 
 the case. Pepys (Diary, September 3, 1665) gives us 
 
 14 "Intelligencer," No. 78. 
 
 15 Scotland, which had been visited in a most frightful manner in 
 
 former plague years, forbade (July 12, 1665) all persons from 
 England to enter her borders, on penalty of the loss of life and 
 goods, unless "they bring sufficient passes and testimonials with 
 them, under the hands and seals of the Major and Aldermen." 
 "Newes," No. 58. No ,/onder Defoe remarked that he did not 
 know "how it fared with Scotland," — there was no plague news 
 from Scotland. 
 
 [26] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 a graphic picture of an evasion of the shutting up and 
 guarding order. " Among other stories," he says, 
 "one was very passionate, me thought, of a complaint 
 brought against a man in the towne [of Greenwich] 
 for taking a child from London from an infected 
 house. Alderman Hooker told me it was the child of 
 a very able citizen in Gracious Street, a saddler, who 
 had buried all the rest of his children of the plague, 
 and himself and wife now being shut up, and in 
 despair of escaping, did desire only to save the life of 
 this little child; and so prevailed to have it received 
 stark-naked into the arms of a friend, who brought it 
 (having put it into new fresh clothes) to Greenwich; 
 whereupon hearing the story, we did agree it should 
 be permitted to be received and left in the towne." 
 
 The frenzy of shut-up victims, when the fever was 
 at its height, causing them to do violence upon them- 
 selves or others, made a strong appeal to Defoe, as to 
 all students of the Plague. One thus crazed, men- 
 tioned in the Journal, broke out of his bed, ran naked 
 through the streets to the Thames, plunged in, swam 
 across and back, and was soon after a well man. 
 Thucydides likewise records that those visited with 
 the distemper could not endure clothing upon them, 
 and that nothing pleased them so much as to plunge 
 into water. Add to this statement of Thucydides the 
 debate over the cold water cure, and we have Defoe's 
 story ; and note here too, as so often in the Journal, its 
 author does not vouch for the truthfulness of the 
 story. Another instance of a similar nature is of one 
 who, "in or about Whitecross Street burned himself 
 to death in his bed. " As this was taken directly from 
 
 [27] . 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 Vincent's God's Terrible Voice in the City (which also 
 furnished numerous other facts for the Journal), it 
 was not necessary to warn the reader that it might not 
 be authentic, — Defoe got it from undoubted authority. 
 Of violence upon others, when the infected were de- 
 lirious, examples are only too numerous. The author 
 of Shutting up Infected Houses relates that in their 
 paroxysms of pain the sick ' ' are ready to commit any 
 violence, either upon themselves or others, whether 
 wife, mother, or child," and, by the method adopted 
 by Defoe, cites a specific example "last week in Fleet 
 Lane, where the man of the house being sick, and hav- 
 ing a great swelling, . . . did in a strong fit rise out of 
 his bed, in spight of all that his wife (who attended 
 him) could do to the contrary, got his knife and most 
 miserably cut his wife, and had killed her, had she not 
 wrapped up the sheet about her, and therewith saved 
 herself, till by crying out Murther, a neighbour . . . 
 came seasonably to her preservation. The man is 
 since dead." 
 
 Of the mournful stories and descriptions in the 
 Journal, one enthusiastic editor exclaims in admira- 
 tion, "Nothing could be more tragic," etc., — as if 
 Defoe's imagination were the author of the tragedy! 
 A few brief glances through the account just quoted 
 from, or at the pages of Withers, Austin, Hodges, Vin- 
 cent, and others, would reveal not only more tragical 
 scenes, but more pathetic and more graphic, than those 
 in the Journal. Take, for example, this vivid descrip- 
 tion of the horrors of the Plague : 16 
 
 16 George Withers, "Britain's Remembrancer," fol. 105. That this 
 refers to the Plague of 1625 makes nothing against it as evi- 
 dence, — the histories of all plagues are filled with identical 
 
 [28] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 Here, one man stagger 'd by with visage pale ; 
 There, lean'd another grunting on a stall; 
 A third, half dead, lay gasping for his grave ; 
 A fourth did out of window call and rave ; 
 Yon, came the bearers sweating from the Pit, 
 To fetch more bodies to replenish it. 
 A little further off, one sits and shows 
 The spots, which he death's tokens doth suppose; 
 
 Yea, the terror 
 Occasioned by their fond and common error, 
 Who tell the sick that markt for death they be, 
 (When those blue spots upon their flesh they see) 
 Even that hath murthered thousands who might here 
 Have lived, else, among us, many a year. 
 
 And there is nothing in Defoe's narrative that for an 
 instant can be compared with the following extract 
 from God's Terrible Voice : "In August . . . the people 
 fell as thick as leaves from the trees in Autumn, . . . 
 and there is a dismal solitude in London streets. . . . 
 Now shops are shut in, people rare and very few that 
 walk about, insomuch that grass begins to spring up 
 in some places, especially within the Walls ; no rattling 
 coaches, no prancing horses, no calling in customers, 
 no offering wares, no London cries sounding in the 
 ears; if any voice be heard it is the groans of dying 
 
 horrors. It will be observed that Withers speaks of people 
 dying of fright; practically all the sources agree on this point, — 
 Hodges, Vincent, Kemp, "J. V.," Boghurst, etc. On August 
 9, 1665, Pepys wrote in his "Diary": "An odd story of Al- 
 derman Bunce's stumbling over a dead corpse in the streets, 
 and going home and telling his wife, she at the fright, being 
 with child, fell sick and died of the plague." Defoe had 
 ample authority for a similar story. 
 
 [29] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 persons breathing forth their last; and the funeral 
 knells of them that are ready to be carried to their 
 graves. Now shutting up of visited houses, there be- 
 ing so many, is at an end, and most of the well are 
 mingled among the sick, which otherwise would have 
 got no help. Now in some places where the people did 
 generally stay, not one house in an hundred but is in- 
 fected, and in many houses half the family is swept 
 away, — in some the whole. . . . Now the nights are 
 too short to bury the dead, the whole day (though at so 
 great a length) is hardly sufficient to light the dead 
 that fall therein into their beds. 
 
 "Now, we could hardly go forth, but we should 
 meet many coffins, and see many with sores and limp- 
 ing in the streets; amongst other sad spectacles, me- 
 thought two were very affecting : one of a woman com- 
 ing alone and weeping by the door wliere I lived 
 (which was in the midst of the infection) with a little 
 coffin under her arm, carrying it to the new church- 
 yard. I did judge it was the mother of the child, and 
 that all the family besides was dead, and she was 
 forced to coffin up and bury with her own hands this 
 her last dead child." The other story related by 
 Vincent is that of a plague victim who was seized with 
 a fit near the Artillery Wall against which he dashed 
 his head, "and when I came by he lay hanging with 
 his bloody face over the rails, and bleeding upon the 
 ground. As I came back he was removed under a tree 
 in Moore-fields and lay upon his back; I went and 
 spake to him ; he could make me no answer, but rattled 
 in his throat, and, as I was informed, within half an 
 hour died in the place." It will be necessary to 
 
 [30] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 mention Vincent again, but from this brief 
 quotation it will at onee be apparent that not only 
 did Defoe borrow from him liberally of material 
 and style (c/. whole families and whole streets 
 swept away, grass growing in the streets, sad 
 sights of victims limping about, etc.), but also how 
 far short the later writer fell in emulating his source. 
 There is nothing in the Journal that approaches the 
 delineations of the genuine eye-witness, as to tragic 
 pathos and graphic portrayal. Even the very excla- 
 mations of compassion, intended by Defoe to arouse 
 pity, are taken directly over by him from the sources, 
 which supplied him with his materials also. Not only 
 so, but these exclamations occur invariably in the ex- 
 act connections where they appear in the originals. 
 Thus, "it would wound the soul of any Christian to 
 have heard " the penitent groans of sinners — which 
 occurs three times in the Journal — was borrowed from 
 Vincent (op. cit. p. 25). So, also, "it often pierced 
 my very soul to hear the groans and cries," "it was 
 indeed a lamentable thing to hear the lamentations of 
 poor dying creatures, ' ' or, " it would make the stoutest 
 heart bleed to hear," etc., or, "it would make the hard- 
 est heart move," etc., or, "it was enough to place hor- 
 ror on the stoutest heart in the world, ' ' are no more a 
 part of Defoe 's lauded piety than are the other mythi- 
 cal attributes with which he has been invested by 
 vapouring admirers. These are nothing but para- 
 phrases of the common pious expressions of contem- 
 poraneous writers on the Plague. Compare, for ex- 
 ample, one of Defoe's main sources, Hodges 's Loimo- 
 logia: "Who can express the calamities of such times 1 
 
 [31] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 The whole British Nation wept." Again, "Who 
 would not burst with grief/' etc., or, "even the rela- 
 tion of this calamity melts me into tears." George 
 Withers (op. cit, 70) has a like expiration in, 
 
 Ah me ! what tongue can tell the many woes, 
 What mortal pen is able to express, etc. 
 
 And Evelyn, who like Withers remained in London 
 during the Plague of 1665, exclaims, "My very heart 
 turns within me at the contemplation of our calam- 
 ity." 17 To take still another example, on September 
 14, 1665, J. Tillison wrote to Dean Sancroft, "y* 
 heart is either steel or stone y* will not lament for this 
 sad visitation, & will not bleed for these vnutterable 
 sorrowes;" and again in the same epistle, "What ey: 
 would not weep," etc. That the last two quotations 
 could not have been known to Defoe only serves to 
 emphasize his unoriginality in his expression of a 
 pious horror : such expressions were the fashion of the 
 time. And the same may be said of the religious 
 element which crops out here and there in the Journal, 
 its expression was borrowed along with the rest. To 
 take a case in point, his "divine meditations" and his 
 sermon on blasphemy may have been suggested by or 
 supplied from, any number of sources, as Withers 's 
 Britain's Remembrancer, Patrick's An Exhortation, 
 etc., or the latter 's numerous meditations and ser- 
 mons which were very popular in Defoe's time (more 
 than one hundred of them being in print in 1722, sev- 
 eral of which Defoe had in his own library), and Vin- 
 
 17 "Memoirs and Correspondence," ed. 1818, II, 212. 
 
 [32] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 cent's God's Terrible Voice and, particularly, his ser- 
 mon preached on the occasion of the funeral of Abra- 
 ham Janaway, Sept. 18, 1665. Not even the oft- 
 repeated "dismal objects/' "dismal scenes," "dismal 
 time," etc., are original with Defoe, but are copied by 
 him from Vincent's "dismal solitude," Hodges 's 
 "dismal prospect," etc. Defoe's "Scarce a day or 
 night passed over but some dismal thing or other 
 happened," appears in Vincent as, "Scarcely a day 
 passed over my head for I think a month or more to- 
 gether, but I should hear the death of some one or 
 more that I knew." In both cases, the expressions 
 follow immediately after the story of the man who 
 burnt himself to death in bed. The little mannerisms, 
 "I say," "As I said before," "If I may give my 
 opinion," etc. are likewise reflections from the 
 originals. "I say," was a particular favourite with 
 Boccaccio (cf. 1st Day of Decameron). Indeed, the 
 resemblance between Defoe's expressions and those of 
 his sources are so marked as to lead to the conclusion 
 that not only did he copy facts, but also the very 
 language, from the originals. Even his opinions re- 
 specting the care and treatment of the plague-seized, 
 the prevention of the disease spreading, questions of 
 quarantine, public fires, fumigation, etc., so gener- 
 ously made a part of Defoe's originality by com- 
 mentators, are borrowed from his sources. Thus, the 
 argument for the spread of the distemper by con- 
 tagion came from Hodges and his followers, as did the 
 pro and con discussions of shutting up, the efficacy of 
 fires in the streets, etc. The numerous medical 
 
 [33] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 treatises on the distemper from Diemerbroeck to Mead 
 and Quincy furnished Defoe materials of that nature. 
 In a few instances, Defoe parts, or partially parts, 
 company from his sources. An example of this is the 
 case of wicked nurses. Almost without an exception 
 the authorities who mention the subject agree that 
 nurses often hastened the death of their patients by 
 poisoning, smothering, or otherwise bringing about 
 their end, with the purpose of robbing the dead. De- 
 foe, true to his task, repeats their evidence, but doubts 
 there was "more of tale than truth in those things.' ' 
 While his dissent is purely gratuitous, it in no sense 
 confuses the record of fact. The stories of robberies 
 alleged to have been committed by the nurses, after the 
 members of a plague-stricken family were all dead, 
 even to the taking of the linen from the bed and the 
 clothes from the corpses, he accepts without question, 
 but, oddly enough, similar stories related of the 
 buriers he " cannot easily credit anything so vile 
 among Christians. " Nevertheless, he relates the 
 stories, — the main thing so far as history is concerned. 
 Both as regards the wicked nurses and the dishonest 
 buriers there is abundant of evidence, though, natur- 
 ally, more against the criminal nurses, as they had the 
 first opportunity to rob the dead. On this point, Dr, 
 Hodges 's testimony is beyond dispute. "These 
 wretches, out of greediness to plunder the dead," he 
 says (Loimologia, ed. 1720, p. 8) "would strangle 
 their patients, and charge it to the distemper in their 
 throats; others would secretly convey the pestilential 
 taint from sores of the infected to those who were 
 well; and nothing indeed deterred these abandoned 
 
 [34] 
 
OF THE PLAQUE YEAR 
 
 miscreants from prosecuting their avaricious purposes 
 by all the methods their wickedness could invent. . . . 
 One amongst many, as she was leaving the house of a 
 family, all dead, loaded with her robberies, fell down 
 dead under her burden in the streets. And the case 
 of a worthy citizen was very remarkable, who being 
 suspected dying by his nurse, was beforehand stripped 
 by her; but recovering again, he came a second time 
 into the world naked.' ' Austin corroborates all this 
 in his Anatomy of the Pestilence (1665) : 
 
 Hell [t. e. the patient] ne'er give out she killed him, 
 
 for 'tis said, 
 He 's to be always silent when he 's dead. 
 And while he lives, nurses hell never curse, 
 Knowing few good, most bad, and many worse. 
 
 That many searchers were dishonest, we learn from 
 the same historian, who likewise furnishes us with 
 further evidence that some were robbed before they 
 were dead, and of the winding sheet afterwards. 
 
 Those there [at the grave] we thought bid us their last 
 
 adieu, 
 Before they can repent are born anew. 
 They, walking, speak, thinking they may be bold, 
 Wanting their clothes, to say they are a-cold. 
 
 And again, with fine irony, 
 
 One too too weak to raise his aking head, 
 
 Throws off the sheet when friends have sold his bed. 
 
 And so on, in half-a-dozen similar examples. 
 
 [35] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 Vincent supports this testimony when he says 
 that, after the order for shutting up of houses had 
 been issued, and the inscription, Lord have mercy 
 upon us, set over the door, none was suffered to come 
 to the pent-up victims "but a nurse, whom they have 
 been more afraid of than the Plague itself. ' ' 
 
 But it is the vitriolic pen of the author of Shut- 
 ting up Infected Houses that depicts the nurses of 
 1665 in the blackest shade. "Little is it conceived," 
 he writes, "how careless most nurses are in attending 
 the visited, and how careful (being possessed with 
 rooking avarice) they are to watch their opportunity 
 to ransack their houses ; the assured absence of friends 
 making the sick desperate on the one hand, and them 
 on the other unfaithful: their estates are the Plague 
 most die on, if they have anything to lose, to be sure 
 those sad creatures (for the nurses in such cases are 
 the off-scouring of the City) have a dose to give them; 
 besides that it is something beyond a Plague to an in- 
 genious spirit to be in the hands of those dirty, ugly, 
 and unwholesome hags; even a hell itself, on the one 
 hand to hear nothing but screetches, cries, groans, and 
 on the other to see nothing but ugliness and deformity, 
 black as night, and dark as Melancholy : Ah ! to lie at 
 the mercy of a strange woman is sad; to leave wife, 
 children, plate, jewels, to the ingenuity of poverty is 
 worse; but who can express the misery of being ex- 
 posed to their rapine that have nothing of the woman 
 left but shape?" 18 
 
 18 One of the stories (essentials taken from Hodges) which Defoe 
 relates is of a nurse who smothered a victim by ' 'laying a wet 
 double clout" on his face. The language adopted in telling this 
 seems to have been suggested by the 2nd Book of Kings, viii, 15: 
 "And it came to pass on the morrow, that he took a thick 
 
 [36]. 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 Another minor divergence between Defoe and 
 his sources is found in the question of the alleged 
 pleasure, or at least gross carelessness, which infected 
 persons manifested in consciously infecting others. 
 But here again, all the authorities are against him. 
 Defoe repeats the assertion (with his denial) a num- 
 ber of times in the Journal, and also gives arguments 
 (taken straight from Hodges 's Loimologia, p. 10, and 
 Mead's Short Discourse, 8th ed., p. xvii) for this cruel 
 perversity of human nature. In support of the fact, 
 as related in the works mentioned, we read in Pepys's 
 Diary for February 12, 1666 : "Comes Mr. Caesar, my 
 boy's lute-master, whom I have not seen since the 
 plague before. ... He tells me in the height of it, 
 how bold people there were, to go in sport to one an- 
 other's burials; and in spite too, ill people would 
 breathe in the face ... of well people." On August 
 22, 1665, he laments that the Plague "makes us more 
 cruel to one another than if we are doggs ; ' ' and again 
 to the same effect on September 4 following. Defoe's 
 own faithful record (corroborated by Pepys, the 
 "newsbooks" and others) that people persisted in 
 crowding to burials, and so spread the infection, 
 should have corrected his "opinion" to a large degree, 
 for such gatherings were due to sheer morbidity and a 
 dogged perversity. 19 But here, once more, we are 
 
 cloth and dipped it in water, and spread it on his face, so that 
 he died." The practice of smothering was a common one, by 
 report, in 1665. 
 
 In most of the quotations which I have given to illustrate a single 
 point, other parallels to the "Journal" will at once suggest 
 themselves. 
 19 In "Newes" No. 71 (August 29, 1665), L'Estrange thus com- 
 plains: "The late encrease of the sickness in and about this 
 town (beside that the Judgement is in itself just and dreadful) 
 has been undoubtedly promoted by the incorrigible license of 
 the multitudes that resort to publick funerals, contrary both 
 
 [37] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 supplied with the historical account and are distinctly 
 told that the narrator is merely expressing an opin- 
 ion, — a legitimate license practised by all historians, 
 some of whom, indeed, unlike Defoe, often substitute 
 opinion for fact. It is Defoe's very frankness which 
 has caused him to be suspect. 
 
 Another point on which Defoe numerously ex- 
 presses an opinion is in regard to the inaccuracies of 
 the Bills of Mortality, as officially reported every 
 week. In this he is only following the unani- 
 mous judgment of contemporary authorities. Thus, 
 Hodges (op. cit., 28) gives the estimated total of 
 deaths from the Plague in 1665 as being over 100,000 
 (the Bills reported only 68,596). Defoe accepts 
 Hodges 's estimate (without naming the authority) as 
 low enough. Also, like Hodges, Boghurst, and others, 
 he points out the probability that victims of the 
 Plague were often reported as having died of other 
 diseases. Commenting on the discrepancies in the re- 
 turns by the Parish Clerks, the author of Reflections 
 cm the Weekly Bills of Mortality (1665) observes that 
 ' ' there lyeth an error in the accounts or distinctions of 
 casualities, that is, more died of the Plague than were 
 accounted for under that name, as many as one to 
 four, there being a fourth part more dead of other 
 casualities in Plague years than the years preceding 
 
 to order and reason." And Pepys "Diary," September 3, 
 1665: "Lord! to consider the madness of the people of the 
 town, who will (because they are forbid) come in crowds along 
 with the dead corpses to see them buried." Again, three days 
 later, he "saw in broad daylight two or three burials upon the 
 Bankside, one at the very heels of another; and yet forty or 
 fifty going along with every one of them." It will be remem- 
 bered, also, that Pepys, just as Defoe's sadler, could not resist 
 the temptation to prowl about to see how the Plague was pro- 
 gressing, even to going to burials. Cf. "Diary," August 30, 
 1665. 
 
 [38] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 or subsequent : whence we may collect a good rule, viz. 
 That whereas it is doubted we have not a true account 
 of the number that died ... of the Plague, the poor 
 searchers, out of ignorance, respect, love of money, 
 or malice, returning, it's suspected, more or less as 
 they are inclined; we may discern the truth, by com- 
 paring the number that died of other diseases, and the 
 casualties the weeks immediately before the Plague 
 begun, and the numbers reported to have been dead 
 every week of those diseases and casualities since, and 
 observing that the surplusage that die now above what 
 did then of those diseases, are indeed dead of the 
 Plague, though returned under the notion of those 
 other diseases." Writing on August 24, 1665, John 
 Allin (Archaelogia, xxxvii, 6) reported 4,257 dead of 
 the Plague for that week, "but rather in verity 5,000, 
 though not so many in y e bill of the Plague." This 
 estimated discrepancy is less than that of John 
 Graunt's, just quoted. On the other hand, Clarendon 
 (Continuation of the Life of), with his usual inaccu- 
 racy avers that the Bills returned ' * above one hundred 
 and three score thousand persons : and many who could 
 compute very well concluded that there were in truth 
 double that number who died; and that in one week, 
 when the Bill mentioned only six thousand, there had 
 in truth over fourteen thousand died." It may be 
 stated, not in support of these exaggerations, but as 
 a matter of contemporaneous opinion, that as many 
 as eight thousand or ten thousand died in one week in 
 September, when the Plague was at its height. 20 Of 
 far greater value in Clarendon's account are the ex^ 
 
 20 See "Loimologia," 16; Pepys, August 31, 1665; Evelyn, Sep- 
 tember 7, 1665. 
 
 [39] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 planations he gives for the misrepresentations in the 
 Bills. "The frequent deaths of the Clerks and Sex- 
 tons of Parishes," he continues, "hindered the exact 
 account of every week ; but that which left it without 
 any certainty was the vast number that was buried in 
 the fields, of which no account was kept. Then of the 
 Anabaptists and other sectaries who abounded in the 
 City, very few left their habitations; and multitude* 
 of them died, whereof no church-warden or other of- 
 ficer had notice; but they found burials according to 
 their own fancies, in their own gardens or the next 
 fields." Of this class, though not mentioned by 
 Clarendon, were the Quakers, who refused to have the 
 bell rung for their dead whom they buried without 
 making report of the fact to the Parish Clerk. 21 It is 
 also pretty evident that the authorities "doctored" 
 the Bills before they were published. As an example 
 of this, Pepys records a detail in point (Dairy, August 
 30, 1665) : "Up betimes . . . and abroad and met with 
 Hadley, our clerke, who, upon my asking how the 
 plague goes, he told me it encreases much, and much in 
 our parish [St. Olave, Hart St.] ; for, says he, there 
 died nine this week, though I have returned but six : 
 which is a very ill practice, and makes me think it is 
 so in other places, and therefore the plague much 
 greater than people take it to be." More particularly 
 in a letter dated December 5, 1665, from Dr. Symon 
 Patrick to Mrs. Elizabeth Gauden, we are told that 
 "the just number [of dead] they [i. e. the clerks] 
 
 31 On September 14, 1665, J. Tillison wrote to Dean Sancroft : "The 
 Quakers (as we are informed) have curved in their peece 1000 
 for some weekes together last past, ... & many other places 
 about ye town are not included in ye bill of Mortality." Cf. 
 Pepys, August 31, 1665. 
 
 [40] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 would not declare, because the Lord Mayor must have 
 it first : I heard lately that he imprisoned one of the 
 officers because they spread abroad the account before 
 they came to him: which indeed was unhandsome." 22 
 Once again, Defoe recorded the facts "within com- 
 pass." 
 
 The great fascination of the Journal is not in the 
 isolated stories used to illustrate a given phase or stage 
 of the Plague — such as those I have dealt with thus far 
 — but more particularly in the constant impressing 
 upon the reader the general desolation of the town, — 
 empty streets with grass growing therein, lack of 
 trade, shut-up shops, doleful appearance of the people 
 one met with, some full of sores, and all afraid of one 
 another, the rumbling of the dead cart, the bell always 
 tolling, and the ever ceasless ' ' Bring out your dead ! ' ' 
 dinging mortality into the very soul. Of such in- 
 stances, the duplicate sources are so numerous that 
 only a few may be mentioned here. Hodges, Vincent, 
 and other originals who certainly supplied Defoe with 
 the bulk of his materials which he used to illustrate 
 the pathetic side of the Plague, I shall reserve for an- 
 other place, and reproduce here only extracts from 
 parallel sources, some of which Defoe could have 
 known nothing. As people began thoroughly to 
 realize the horrors of the distemper, Austin {Anat- 
 omy, p. 8, et sq.) describes them, 
 
 So timorously they talk, look pale, and stare, 
 As'if they had been frighted by the air. 
 
 22 Add. MSS., 5,810. 
 
 [41] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 The same historian records that the Inns of Court 
 were closed, shops were shut up, and the Court left 
 town, — 
 
 The only thriving trade one can tell here 
 Lives by the dead (as hangmen), — coffin-seller; 
 • •••••••• 
 
 At ev'ry door stand marshall'd in array 
 
 Biers, as green boughs are planted there in May. 
 
 People kept to the middle of the street, the sight of an 
 infected house aroused horror, the town was so forlorn 
 that, 
 
 Did Caesar now enter our City gate, 
 His prize would make him think h'had found 
 a cheat. 
 
 Of the great pit and the numerous burials, 
 
 |f i J ; j 
 
 Many attend them to the graves are taught 
 How to come there next day ; so then are brought. 
 
 In this, the grave's great Jubilee, we choose 
 No place but church-yard for our rendezvous. 
 
 The awful carnage, the pest stalking about everywhere 
 — in the market, in the bread sent to preserve life, on 
 the breath of a friend or relative, in the very letter 
 wishing "long life and perfect health;" 
 
 And to speak our condition at the best, 
 Our City's merely but great house of pest. 
 
 [42] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 Withers depicts similar scenes and conditions, and 
 many more, too long and too numerous to quote. 
 
 Death lurk't at ev'ry angle of the street, 
 
 And, 
 
 In sundry families there was not one 
 Whom his rude hand did take compassion on : 
 Nay, many times he did not spare the last, 
 Until the burial of the first was past. 23 
 
 Turning to the Sancroft Correspondence (Har- 
 leian MSS. 5784-5), of which Defoe could have known 
 nothing, in a letter from J. Tillison to Dean Sancroft, 
 bearing date September 14, 1665, we read even a more 
 pathetic tale of sorrow and desolation: "What ey: 
 would not weep to see soe many habitacons vninhabit- 
 ed? y e poore sick not visited? y e hungry not fed? y e 
 grave not satisf yed ? Death stares vs continuously in 
 y e face of every infected Person y* passeth by vs, in 
 every coffin w ch is dayly & hourely carried along y e 
 streets : y e Bells never cease to putt vs in minde of our 
 mortality. 24 The custom was in y e beginninge to 
 bury y e Dead in y e night only, now both night and 
 day will hardly be tyme enough to do it, 25 for y e last 
 weeks mortality did too apparently evidence that, that 
 y e Dead was piled in heapes above ground for some 
 houres before either tyme could be gained or place to 
 
 23 Defoe may or may not have read Austin and Withers: in either 
 
 case they serve to authenticate the "Journal." 
 
 24 Cf. the Allin Correspondence, September 2, 1665, "The dole- 
 
 full and almost universall and continuall ringing and tolling 
 of bells," and Pepys, July 26, "the bell always tolling." 
 
 25 Cf. Pepys, August 12, 1665. 
 
 [43] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 bury them in." 26 Evelyn gives a not less gloomy 
 picture of the streets when the Plague was at its 
 height. On September 7, 1665, he wrote in his Diary : 
 ' ' I went along the city and suburbs from Kent Street 
 to St. James's, a dismal passage, and dangerous to 
 see so many coffins exposed in the streets, now thin of 
 people ; the shops shut up, and all in mournful silence, 
 not knowing whose turn might be next, ' ' By October 
 11, conditions were, if possible, even worse, when he 
 recorded that he "went through the whole city, having 
 occasion to alight out of the coach in several places, . . . 
 when I was environed with multitudes of poor pestif- 
 erous creatures begging alms; the shops universally 
 shut up, a dreadful prospect ! ' ' 
 
 It is Pepys, perhaps, of all who experienced the 
 year 1665, who wrote down the greatest number and 
 variety of notes concerning the Plague. Some of his 
 experiences rival any of the stories told by Defoe in 
 the Journal. There are nearly one hundred entries in 
 the Diary relating to the Plague, which, when pieced 
 together, furnish us with a more direct and coherent, 
 as well as more interesting, account of that calamity 
 than does Defoe's narrative. Here, of course, we are 
 concerned only with such records as corroborate De- 
 foe 7 s descriptions of the deserted and sorrowful ap- 
 pearance of the town when the Plague was the hottest. 
 A few excerpts from the Diary must suffice. On July 
 22, 1665, Pepys went from one end of London to the 
 other. This is the impression the journey made upon 
 him: "I to Fox-Hall [Vauxhall], where to the Spring 
 garden ; but I do not see one guest there, the town be- 
 
 36 Defoe denies this, but is in error. 
 
 [44] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 ing so empty of any body to come thither. Only, 
 while I was there, a poor woman came to scold with 
 the master of the house that a kinswoman, I think, of 
 hers, that was newly dead of the plague, might be 
 buried in the church-yard ; for, for her , part, she 
 should not be buried in the commons as they said she 
 should. ... I by coach home, not meeting with but 
 two coaches and two carts from White Hall to my own 
 house, that I could observe; and the streets mightily 
 thin of people. ' ' Three days later, he went to the 
 'Change, "which was very thin," and the following 
 week (July 30) he remarked that "it was a sad noise 
 to hear our bell to toll and ring to-day, either for 
 deaths or burials ; I think five or six times." On Sep- 
 tember 14, he summarizes a long list of those of his 
 friends or their families who had but recently died of 
 the Plague, which "do put me into great apprehen- 
 sions of melancholy," The absence of boats on the 
 Thames was very observable, "and grass grows all up 
 and down White Hall court, and nobody but wretches 
 in the streets ! " It is this constant dwelling on the ut- 
 ter desolation and misery in the town that hovers over 
 the reader as he goes through the pages of the Jour- 
 nal. So, also, it was the melancholy of it all that so 
 impressed Pepys. On October 16, 1665, he again went 
 to the Exchange, "which is very empty, God knows! 
 and but mean people there. . . . Thence I walked to the 
 Tower ; but Lord ! how empty the streets are and mel- 
 ancholy, so many sick people in the streets full of 
 sores; and so many sad stories overheard as I walk, 
 every body telling of this dead, and that man sick, and 
 so many in this place, and so many in that." 
 
 [45] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 Again, on October 27, he went through Kent 
 Street, "a miserable, wretched, poor place, peo- 
 ple sitting sicke and muffled up with plasters at every 
 4 or 5 doors. ' ' A few days later, however, a new face 
 began to appear on the outlook in London, and Pepys 
 voiced the new joy in, "we end the month merrily,' ' 
 owing to a decrease of over 400 in the weekly Bills. 
 Hopes fluctuated with the weather for several weeks, 
 but the whole tendency from this onward was in the 
 direction of a return to health and healthful activities, 
 and away from dismal scenes and melancholy 
 stories. 27 
 
 Thus far it is apparent that Defoe's materials 
 which he used to illustrate the plain historic facts of 
 the Plague Year were in no sense invented by him for 
 the purpose, but were taken directly from parallel 
 originals, or from stories related to him by the sur- 
 vivors of 1665, as abundantly proved by the duplicate 
 or parallel stories and descriptions, some of which he 
 could have known nothing save from oral accounts. 
 Thus, if we find stories by Pepys (such, for example, 
 the Croom Farm stories), or in the Sancroft, and Pat- 
 rick Correspondence, similar in all essentials to those 
 in the Journal, we are certainly justified in concluding 
 that there was no necessity for Defoe to exercise his 
 genius in inventing stories and conditions represent- 
 ing the facts of the Plague, and that he got all these 
 first-hand from those who, like Pepys, Sancroft and 
 Patrick, experienced them. In other words, Defoe's 
 
 27 Defoe has been criticised (albeit in compliment) to the effect that, 
 for purposes of art, he represented the Plague as ceasing more 
 suddenly and more completely than it did in reality. This is 
 only true as regards the fact, but not Defoe's purpose. Defoe 
 simply followed Hodges. 
 
 [46] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 sources were common and equivalent to these. The 
 proof of this will appear in the next Section wherein 
 the now positively known sources of the Journal are 
 quite undistinguishable in all essentials from the fore- 
 going, save in the matter of authentic facts as regards 
 statistics, etc. 
 
 [47] 
 
II 
 
 Where, then, did Defoe find the printed materials 
 for his history of the Plague ? In the first place, the 
 statistics of the deaths from the distemper, which are 
 manipulated with much skill by Defoe to awe the 
 reader with the increase, spread, and appalling mag- 
 nitude of the disease, were taken directly from the 
 Bills of Mortality, first compiled in 1665 as London's 
 Remembrancer, by John Bell, one of the Parish Clerks. 
 The same year, John Graunt included these Bills in 
 his Reflections on the Weekly Bills. This latter book 
 was reprinted in 1720, and probably furnished Defoe 
 with his figures, as the Journal shows indications that 
 its author had read the Reflections. It is more than 
 probable, also, that the files of the 1665 "newsbooks" 
 were examined, as I shall show, as these contained the 
 Bills as they appeared each week. As to this im- 
 portant feature of the Journal I need only add that, 
 with the exception of two or three slips in copying or 
 in proofreading, Defoe is absolutely faithful to the 
 original Bills. It should be noted that these plainly 
 indicated the progress of the Plague from parish to 
 parish. With a London map before him, together 
 with his accurate acquaintance of the town, Defoe 
 should have had little trouble in evolving his history. 
 But as he did not give himself the time to arrange 
 and organize his materials, the Journal is far from 
 being a satisfactory history, — not because of any seri- 
 ous misstatements of fact but rather because of the 
 
 [48] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 numerous repetitions and inartistic jumble of the 
 facts. 
 
 Next in order should be mentioned the various 
 Orders of the Mayor, the Royal Proclamations, etc., 
 for these, together with the statistics and Hodges 's 
 account of the Plague, furnished Defoe with the en- 
 tire framework of the Journal, and much of its tissue. 
 In 1721, J. Roberts, a bookseller, republished a num- 
 ber of 1665 documents which he called A Collection of 
 very Valuable and Scarce Pieces relating to the last 
 Plague in the Year 1665. Among other things, this 
 included the "Orders Conceived and Published by the 
 Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London 
 concerning the Infection of the Plague, 1665. " x These 
 Orders, which Defoe reprinted verbatim, occupy ten 
 pages in the Journal, or a little over one-thirtieth of 
 the entire book. But their importance is by no means 
 to be measured by the space they occupy; for out 
 of these Orders Defoe evolved a considerable propor- 
 tion of the remainder of his history. This he accom- 
 plished in a manner so skilful as to elude the one who 
 reads the Journal for pleasure alone; but when sub- 
 jected to the scrutiny of the historian it immediately 
 appears what Defoe has done and how he did it. In 
 the first place, he restated, either in a contracted or 
 expanded form, in his own manner, practically every 
 one of these Orders, some of them several times. How 
 confidently could he assume the role of an Examiner 
 
 i The same collection contained Dr. Hodges's brief account of the 
 Plague, "in a Letter to a Person of Quality. Def , oe , ™* de 
 
 slight use of this in comparison to Hodges's more extended Ac- 
 count" with which he introduces his "Loimologia. 
 
 [49] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 in 1665, and speak, as one having authority, of the 
 duties of that office, when he had the very printed in- 
 structions lying open before him! So, also, all the 
 records respecting the searchers and watchmen, shut- 
 ting up and marking of houses, burial of the dead, for- 
 bidding the use of hackney coaches, keeping the streets 
 clean, killing dogs and cats, regulations concerning 
 public houses, prohibiting plays, duties of Lord Mayor 
 and Aldermen, etc., etc., are but repetitions and vari- 
 ations of these Orders. I say ' ' all the records ; ' ■ but 
 this is not strictly the whole truth, for Defoe often 
 elaborates and embroiders the facts therein with 
 knowledge gleaned from other fields. Thus, for ex- 
 ample, his discussions of the work of the watchmen, 
 the nurses, the doctors, and, above all, the order 
 for shutting up, are all enriched and enlarged from 
 his other sources. On the other hand, he sometimes 
 so closely follows a given Order as to assert positively 
 that it was faithfully executed, as in the case of keep- 
 ing the streets clean, the prompt burial of the dead, 
 etc., at times a physical impossibility. In these in- 
 stances, it is very likely that Defoe wished to glorify 
 the name and fame of Sir John Lawrence whose 
 courage and untiring labour, as Lord Mayor during 
 that fateful year, will never be passed over without 
 the highest praise. 
 
 By detaching these Orders and scattering them 
 over the pages of the Journal in his own style, now 
 expanding them in the manner I have related, now il- 
 lustrating them with stories coming down from 1665 
 (inevitable in essence, otherwise the facts would be 
 
 [50] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 meaningless), 2 now combining them in quite different 
 relations, Defoe succeeded in padding up a thin volume 
 until it reached the required number of pages to meet 
 trade demands, and, in later times, in deceiving an 
 idle, ignorant, gullible public into the pleasant belief 
 that history is fiction, and that the record of fact, if 
 done by one who can translate himself into his ma- 
 terials and his materials into himself, raises the 
 recorder of those facts from the rank of a clever his- 
 torian to the exalted position of inventor of the facts. 
 The Collection of very Valuable and Scarce 
 Pieces included also "Necessary Directions for the 
 Prevention and Cure of the Plague in 1665. With 
 divers Remedies of small Charge, by the College of 
 Physicians," which Defoe may have made use of, in 
 respect of the treatment of the disease in its various 
 stages, the care to be taken to prevent the disease from 
 getting to the uninfected, airing goods, fumigating 
 houses, etc. But as all this information could have 
 been had from numerous sources, it would be idle to 
 conjecture which one or ones Defoe actually made use 
 of. That he probably used the "Necessary Direc- 
 tions ' ' is suggested by the fact that he states that they 
 were prepared by order of the Lord Mayor, an in- 
 ference growing out of the " Orders' ' just discussed, 
 which did emanate from the Lord Mayor's Office. The 
 "Necessary Directions" came as a result of a Privy 
 Council Order, in response to a Royal mandate. 
 
 2 To illustrate: we have the historic facts about shutting up, dis- 
 honest watchmen who could be bribed, people escaping out of 
 shut-up houses, thus scattering the Plague broadcast If these 
 four facts are not mere abstractions, then they appear, as a real 
 story when introduced by the simple device, ' 'I heard of a 
 man," etc. 
 
 [51] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 The other Orders and Proclamations mentioned 
 by Defoe, such as proroguing Parliament, adjourning 
 the Law Courts, removing the Exchequer, forbidding 
 the holding of Fairs, regulating trade, ordering fasts, 
 charities, fires in the streets, etc., were all easily ac- 
 cessible in print. Here also should be included the 
 prohibition by foreign powers of trade with England. 
 I have read all these in 1665 prints, and, of course, 
 Defoe also read them, as neither intuition nor genius 
 could have invented them to correspond to the orig- 
 inals in all respects. And it is here necessary to 
 glance at one of the almost certain sources of the 
 Journal, — almost certain, because it contains informa- 
 tion which would have been difficult for Defoe to find 
 elsewhere. I refer to the newspaper, or "newsbook," 
 as it was then called. Despite the fact that on the 
 very first page of the Journal it is asserted that there 
 were "no such things as newspapers in those days" — 
 a statement so gratuitous as to arouse suspicion — I 
 must believe that Defoe made use of the newspapers of 
 1665. s From the Newes, and the Intelligencer, both 
 owned and edited by Sir Roger L 'Estrange, could be 
 gleaned all the Orders and Proclamations, all foreign 
 and domestic news — the weather, the crops, move- 
 ments of the fleet, politics, trade, depredations of the 
 Dutch capers, the Bills of Mortality, bounty of the 
 
 8 Professor W. P. Trent, in his article on Defoe ("Cambridge His- 
 tory of English Literature," IX, p. 1), makes the astounding 
 statement that, aside from the "Corantos" (1622-1641) and 
 the Civil War and Commonwealth newsbooks, "there existed no 
 real newspaper, no news periodical, not a pamphlet or news- 
 letter, until the appearance of the 'Oxford Gazette' in 1665." 
 As a matter of fact, the "Gazette" was very much inferior to 
 the "Newes" and the "Intelligencer," which had been pub- 
 lished regularly since August 31, 1663. The "Gazette" super- 
 seded them in November, 1665. 
 
 [52] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 rich, progress of the Plague throughout the kingdom, 
 superstitious yarns reported from the provinces and 
 abroad (some of which I shall reproduce later), and 
 not least of all, stories of an extraordinary nature 
 concerning the Plague, as, for example, the case of the 
 man who escaped into the country with the Plague 
 upon him, and died within a mile of his destination, 
 and the one who polluted a town by being entertained 
 at a public house — comparable to stories related by De- 
 foe. In the British Museum, in the famous collection 
 of Dr. Burney, there is a complete file of newspapers 
 covering the Plague Year. On the margin of each 
 copy of the Newes (after it began to publish the Bills, 
 early in June, 1665), there is a weekly, and total, 
 summary of all burials and of all reported deaths from 
 the Plague. These figures are in ink, and a comparison 
 of them with others known to be Defoe's, shows an 
 identical resemblance in every respect. That these 
 summaries agree with those in the Journal proves 
 nothing, for both agree with the Bills. However, one 
 number of the Newes has no such summary on the 
 margin. With a sharpened curiosity, we turn to the 
 Journal for the corresponding week (ending July 11, 
 1665), and read that " there died last week 1268 of all 
 distempers, whereof it might be supposed above 900 
 died of the plague. ' ' It is, I believe, the only instance 
 where Defoe guesses at the Bill. But as he might 
 easily have supplied the correct figures by a mere 
 glance at Bell's or Graunt's tables, it would be rash 
 to assert that he actually used the very newspapers in 
 question, however pleasing the idea. On the other 
 hand, it should be remembered that the Journal was 
 
 [53] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 hastily and carelessly put together from notes which 
 Defoe took no pains to verify. The wonder is that 
 there were not more slips. That he knew of the news- 
 papers of 1665 is almost certain ; that he made use of 
 them in writing the Journal is highly probable. 
 
 For example, the newspapers teemed with the ad- 
 vertisements of quacks. Powders and pills and mix- 
 tures, which formerly had done service as sure-cures 
 for all common ailments, immediately became poman- 
 ders, electuaries, lozenges, plague waters, sovereign in- 
 ternal balsams, tabellae chymiatricae, pellulae pro- 
 phylactica, etc., etc., all as efficacious for preventing 
 and curing plague as they had been for fevers and 
 whooping-cough. Defoe presents us with four of 
 these, "by way of specimen, " and says that he could 
 give you "two or three dozen of the like and yet have 
 abundance left behind," in which statement he was 
 quite within "compass." Not only were the people 
 gulled by high-sounding names, but, as always, they 
 were awed by the authority with which some of these 
 advertisements were vaunted. Thus, in the Newes 
 No. 58 (July 27, 1665) : 
 
 "A sovereign Medicine for the prevention and 
 cure of the Plague, Fevers, and Smal Pox, invented 
 and practised with rare success by the famous Doctor 
 John Baptist von Helmont, is now exposed for sale." 
 Another remedy was named after Lady Kent who 
 had used it in a former plague ; one was recommended 
 by Lord Ruthuen; and still another bore the sign- 
 manual of Dr. Thomas Clayton, physician to Charles 
 I. If the quack took on a pompous name and claimed 
 to have practised abroad, his chances of success were 
 
 [54] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 greatly enhanced. For example (and this reminds 
 one not only of Defoe's first advertisement, but also of 
 the quack who advertised free advice), 
 
 "One Doctor Stephanies Chrisolitus a famous 
 Physitian, lately arrived in these parts, having 
 travelled in several Countries which have been af- 
 fected with the Plague, hath found by experience to be 
 very beneficial (by the blessing of God) for prevent- 
 ing the infection thereof, to eat Raisins of the sun in 
 the morning fasting, and Malaga Raisins either baked 
 or boiled; and this he hath published for the public 
 good." 4 
 
 At the other extreme from this philanthropist was 
 the rascal who advertised a concoction, the chief in- 
 gredient of which he audaciously asserted to be pure 
 gold, for which he charged the modest price of twenty 
 shillings the ounce ! Other ruses to take in the pub- 
 lic were not wanting. As soon as the College of Phy- 
 sicians published the result of their conference as to 
 medicines for the poor, many quacks pounced upon 
 this and traded upon the name, 'as recommended by 
 the College/ etc. However, aside from gulling the 
 public, it probably made little difference in the end, 
 as the College's own preparations proved utterly 
 worthless. Indeed, Kemp (Brief Treatise p. 3) 
 classed the College along with the other quacks as 
 publishing ' ' observations which they have met with in 
 the cure of diseases, . . . yet not one medicine found out 
 to preserve the Doctor." 5 Instinctively, we recall 
 
 4 "Newes, " No. 42. 
 
 5 In charity, it should be remembered that the doctors at that time 
 
 had scarcely reached the experimental stage in dealing with 
 plague. Dr. George Thompson, who opened a victim of the 
 Plague, is a rare exception. Dr. William Boghurst also ren- 
 
 [55] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 the names of Burnett, Starkey, Dey, O'Dowd, etc.; 
 and, truly, when we scan the College's "Necessary 
 Directions," we may w 7 ell appreciate Kemp's sarcas- 
 tic taunt. Take, for instance, the following (ed. 1721, 
 p. 54) for bringing carbuncles and blains to a head: 
 "Pull off the feathers from the tails of living cocks, 
 hens, pigeons, or chickens, and holding their bills, hold 
 them hard to the botch or swelling, and so keep them 
 at that part until they die; and by this means draw 
 out the poison." Dr. Hodges, himself a thoroughly 
 modern man in his views in many respects, was skepti- 
 cal as to the efficacy of the powder of the unicorn's 
 horn, but at the same time recommended dried toad's 
 powder! After Kemp's severe criticism we might 
 expect something different from him in the following 
 prescription (Brief Treatise, p. 55) : "Take crabs' 
 eyes one ounce, burnt hartshorn half an ounce, the 
 black tops of crabs ' claws an ounce and a half ; make 
 them all into a powder, and take of it one dram in a 
 glass of posset-drink when you go to bed, and drink 
 another draught of posset-drink after, to wash it 
 down. ' ' 
 
 Not only were the common, ignorant sort taken 
 in by the quacks' specious advertisements, but even 
 the more intelligent also were duped. The case of one 
 Eustace Burneby is in point. Trading upon the 
 name of Dr. Tobias Whitaker, physician in ordinary 
 to Charles II, he secured from Robert Boreman, Rec- 
 
 dered great service to science by making most careful obser- 
 vations of the distemper in all its stages and under every con- 
 dition. He visited "40, 50, or 60 patients a day." dressed 
 the sores of 40 a day, ate and drank with the patients, allowed 
 them to breathe in his face, and held them in his arms while 
 they were dying. Cf. "Loimographia, " and "Intelligencer" 
 No. 59. 
 
 [56] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 tor of St. Giles's in the Field, and from the sexton, 
 John Gerey, an affidavit to the effect that in four 
 houses where divers persons had died of the Plague, 
 after administering Burneby's powder to the sur- 
 vivors in those houses, not one thereafter died ; where- 
 as in houses not using the said powder, "divers have 
 died, and in many of them the whole family.' 76 At 
 first sight this looks somewhat suspicious, but when we 
 recall that at that very moment Lord Arlington 
 (Chief Secretary of State) and the Privy Council 
 were being completely gulled by the arch-quack him- 
 self, one James Angier, who professed to have put a 
 stop to the infection at Lyons, Paris, Toulouse and oth- 
 er cities, we may readily credit the Rev. Mr. Boreman 
 with sincerity. Official sanction was given to 
 Angier 's "remedies" and depots were designated 
 where they might be had. It was the most stupen- 
 dous swindle of the whole year. 7 
 
 Likewise the belief in the efficacy of magic phil 
 tres, charms, amulets, etc., mentioned by Defoe in this 
 connection, was not confined solely to the lower classes. 
 Faith in this superstition still survives and probably 
 will continue to live as long as man does. Within a 
 few feet of where I now sit penning these lines, there 
 is as this moment on the table of an unknown co- 
 worker no fewer than four or five bogey-frighteners 
 which are always propped and arranged in precisely 
 the same relative order and position, before the in- 
 
 6 "Intelligencer," No. 51. 
 
 7 See "Newes," No. 50. Hodges ( "Loimologia," p. 22) alludes 
 
 to this case, without mentioning names, in most disparaging 
 terms. It should be observed here that the profession of 
 physick was at that time divided into two bitterly opposing 
 camps, one following Galen, the other Hippocrates. To all 
 outward appearances their practices differed little. 
 
 [57] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 dividual whom they own begins his daily work. They 
 differ much in outward appearance, and, presumably, 
 in satanic virtues; but there they are day after day, 
 day after day, and one imagines that they are simi- 
 larly placed on a shelf at the foot of the bed, night 
 after night, night after night. And who has not car- 
 ried a rabbit's foot, pocket-piece, wish-bone, horse- 
 shoe, or the like, for good luck; or worn asafoetida, or 
 some such lovely stuff, to ward off small-pox, or some- 
 thing else ? Well, Defoe had any number of examples 
 of 1665 amulets in his own library, or otherwise easily 
 accessible. A few of these may not prove amiss here. 
 Kemp (op. cit., 64) recommends the following: "Take 
 of white and yellow arsenick of each half an ounce, 
 the powder of dried toads two ounces, mercury sub- 
 limed, wheat flowre, the roots of dittany, of each three 
 drams, saffron, the fragments of jacynth and emer- 
 ald, of each one scruple, make them all into powder, 
 and with gum dragon dissolved in rose-water, make 
 them into cakes about the breadth of a shilling, and 
 the thickness of two half crowns, and dry them in the 
 sun, or in an oven after the bread is taken out. 
 
 1 ' I need not tell you that you must not eat them, 
 but sew them in a little silk bag, fastening it to a rib- 
 bon, and hanging it about your neck, let it be about 
 the middle of your breast." Kemp does not explain 
 just what effect the tablet thus made and worn had, 
 and we must look to other authorities for enlighten- 
 ment. Fortunately these are numerous. Dr. George 
 Thompson, whom I have mentioned as having dared to 
 dissect a corpse dead of the plague, showed the unmis- 
 takeable symptoms of the disease before the operation 
 
 [58] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 was finished. He analyzes his own case with much 
 praiseworthy detail, and the treatment thereof. He 
 first had resort to the remedies then commonly used 
 to produce sweating, and then proceeds, ' ' Neither was 
 I wanting to make use of Helmont's xenexton, a toad, 
 the powder of which my dear friend Dr. Starkey gave 
 me, made up in the form of a trochisk of his own or- 
 dering: I likewise hung about my neck a large toad 
 dried, prepared not long before in as exquisite a man- 
 ner as I possibly could, with my own fingers. This 
 toad sewed up in a linnen cloth was placed about the 
 region of my stomach, where after it had remained 
 some hours, became so tumefied, distended (as it were 
 blown up) to that bignesse, that it was an object of 
 wonder to those that beheld it. Had I not felt and 
 seen this swollen dead body of the toad, I should very 
 much have doubted by relation the truth thereof." 8 
 John Allin is even more explicit as to the working of 
 the toad charm. "Here [in London]," he says, "are 
 many who wear amulets made of the poison of the 
 toad, which, if there be no infection, workes nothing, 
 but upon any infection invading from time to time, 
 raise a blister, w ch a plaister heales, and so they are 
 well." 9 The same writer is also responsible for the 
 following rare gem: 
 
 "Friend get a piece of angell gold, if you can 
 of Eliz. coine (y* is y e best), w ch is phylosophicall gold, 
 and keepe it allways in yo r mouth when you walke out 
 or any sicke persons come to you: you will find 
 strange effect of it for good in freedome of breathing, 
 
 8 "Loimotomia," p. 86. 
 
 9 "Archaelogia," xxxvii, p. 6. 
 
 [59] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 &c. as I have done; if you lye w th it in your mouth 
 w th out yo r teeth, as I doe, viz. in one side betweene 
 your cheke and gumms, and so turning it sometimes 
 on one side, sometimes on y e other." 10 
 
 The superstitions of the people at the time of the 
 1665 Plague may appear to modern minds as having 
 been exaggerated by Defoe. "The people," he says, 
 1 ' from what principle I cannot imagine, were more ad- 
 dicted to prophecies and astrological conjunctions, 
 dreams, and old wives' tales than ever they were be- 
 fore or since." This is literally true, and, although 
 making excellent use of the fact, early in the Journal, 
 to impress upon the reader the apprehensive state of 
 mind in which people found themselves at the out- 
 break of the Plague, due to the terrifying predictions 
 of astrologers, fortune-tellers, and the like, Defoe 
 barely states the conditions of the time in this respect. 
 That these conditions were, to a certain extent, the re- 
 sult of money-making quacks, as suggested by Defoe, 
 there is no doubt. But the chief explanation is a 
 psychological one: the astrologers (of which no other 
 age produced so many) were quite as much the result 
 of the mental state of the people as the other way 
 about. This view is carried out by the fact that a 
 belief in portents and prodigies was not confined to 
 the ignorant classes alone, but possessed all ranks of 
 society, save the rare few. The almost universal be- 
 lief at that time — held by the mediaeval mind of all 
 times — that the Plague was a special scourge for 
 man's sins (some gave one reason, some another, as 
 suited their political and religious prejudices), was 
 
 10 "Archselogia," xxxvii, p. 15. 
 
 [60] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 but a short step removed from a certain belief in fore- 
 warnings of that scourge. Upon this predisposition 
 to ascribe all calamities of whatever nature to super- 
 natural causes, the astrologers multiplied and bat- 
 tened. 11 The way in which they fondled and fostered 
 the superstitious state of mind, already prepossessed 
 of fantasies, may be seen from the following extract 
 from Gadbury's De Cometis (1665, p. 48) : 
 
 "Now, although I have a great faith in appari- 
 tions of this nature [i. e. comets] ; and knowing that 
 melancholy heads, by the strength of fancy and imag- 
 ination, may conceit they see such things that really 
 are not: yet, when such fancies shall really possess 
 the general opinion, it is to be presumed that some- 
 what more than common is contriving against the gen- 
 erality of mankind. As we see it in any individual 
 person that is engaged in any business of concern- 
 ment, if there be perturbario mentis, or (as we used to 
 say) if his heart misgive him, or that he be in his own 
 mind perswaded he shall be worsted or come to dam- 
 age in his undertaking, he is more than half van- 
 quished before he come to the trial. Our fears but 
 apt and prepare us for the embraces of that mischief 
 we dread. And indeed the world not of late, vainly 
 feared such mischiefs as these comets portend; but 
 as soon as they have begun to fear, they have been 
 compelled to share therein. I need not instance in the 
 
 11 Appended to "Coelestis Legatus," Gadbury gives a list of forty- 
 two astrologers "who either are (or were lately) living." This 
 included the names of "many Reverend Divines, and learned 
 Physicians." This does not include the "pseudo-Astronomers, 
 or "knap-sack Astrologers, for not only this Age but this great 
 City swarms with such Cattell." "De Cometis," p. 2. Defoe's 
 reference to signs bearing the heads of Friar Bacon, Ambrose 
 Merlin, and Mother (i. e. Ursula) Shipton is self-explanatory: 
 these names were synonyms of prophecy and magic. 
 
 [61] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 activity of the sword, or the incroaching quality of the 
 sickness, both which are playing their parts to pur- 
 pose all Europe over, and will more within a few 
 years. For the world must know and believe it as a 
 truth, THAT COMETS ARE NOT GONE AS SOON 
 AS THEY DISAPPEAR/' 
 
 Despite Hodges 's assertion (Loimologia, p. 4) 
 that people of the better (*. e. more intelligent) sort 
 gave little credence to such predictions, we read in 
 Dr. George Thompson's Loimotomia (1666, p. 66), 
 "That comets, or blazing stars do portend some evil 
 to come upon mortals, is confirmed by long observa- 
 tion and sad experience, as likewise phenomena of a 
 Parelios, Paraselene, apparitions of Dracones volantes 
 & Trahes Scintillae, new stars, battles fought, and cof- 
 fins carried through the air, howlings, screeehings, and 
 groans heard about church-yards, also raining of 
 blood, unwonted matter, &c, all of which having some- 
 thing extra Maturarn, are portentious and prodigious, 
 all ordained by that good Philanthropos to advertise 
 us to a timely resipiscence, and prevention of those 
 evils that hang over our heads. " And Hodges, not- 
 withstanding his contempt for astrologers, felt com- 
 pelled (op. cit., p. 31) to acknowledge the certain 
 "footsteps of an overruling power" in the Plague of 
 
 1665. Even Dr. William Boghurst (Loimographia, 
 
 1666, pr. 1894, p. 20), while branding the prognosti- 
 cators as "those curious observers who pretend to bee 
 most exquisite on the foresight of future contingencies 
 of good or evile, and a haire shall not wagge without 
 their observation, and therefore in their yearly pre- 
 diction fill the world with noyses of warrs, plagues, 
 
 [62] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 destruction, and overthrowes of kingdomes, mon- 
 archies, that to this [Plague of 1665] said nothing at 
 all, 12 yet they will name the Starrs to be all in the 
 fault," — nevertheless, includes in his signs fore- 
 shadowing a plague, "Cometts, gleames of Fire, and 
 fiery impressions in the Aire," "Famine; also warr," 
 "ill conditions of the Starrs, if you will believe the 
 Astrologers," etc. 
 
 Of course, the astrologers, without an exception, 
 looked upon conjunctions, comets, and, indeed, all 
 exceptional phenomena, as forerunners of evil things, 
 and comets in particular were terrible presages. 
 Thus, John Holwell (Catastrophe Mundi, p. 40), writ- 
 ing a few years after the Plague and Fire, asserted 
 that these calamities had been clearly foreshadowed 
 by the comets of 1664 and 1665 respectively. After 
 such dire examples, he continues, "what man is he 
 who dare presume to say that comets are not the pre- 
 monishers to mankind, of some more than ordinary 
 Judgment to fall upon them for their sins ; ' ' and John 
 Merrifield (Castastasis Mundi, p. 28) is in accord 
 when he says that comets "proceed not from natural 
 causes . . . but from Divine Providence, and sent by 
 Almighty God as tokens of his wrath against mankind 
 for his sins. ' ' But to quote all the 1665 " authorities ' ' 
 on comets, conjunctions of planets, and other "pro- 
 digies," would require volumes. The bookstalls of 
 that time were literally stuffed with "almanacks," the 
 
 12 As a matter of fact. Richard Edlyn did predict both the Plague 
 of 1665 and the Fire of 1666 (*"Prae-Nuncius Sydereus," 72). 
 It was such lucky (or unlucky) guessing as this that inspired 
 the ignorant to believe in portents, and thus increased the mis- 
 chievous apprehensions mentioned by Defoe and the other writers 
 on the Plague. 
 
 [63] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 result of a popular demand, and it is safe to say that 
 everyone was steeped in their contents. William 
 Lilly (1602-1681), mentioned by Defoe, held the place 
 of preeminence among the astrologers of the day, and, 
 in addition to many prophecies, published his alma- 
 nacks annually from 1644 until his death. A far 
 greater and more influential man was John Gadbury 
 (1627-1704) who completely combined the careful ob- 
 servations of the scientist with the quack predictions 
 of the astrologer. 13 As far as his instruments would 
 permit, he exactly measured and recorded the pheno- 
 mena of the heavens year after year, and then as in- 
 dustriously proceeded to prognosticate their effects. 
 Like his contemporaries, all apparent irregularities of 
 nature were interpreted by him as portents. Among 
 an infinite variety of choice prodigies seen or heard in 
 the skies, Gadbury enumerates (Natura Prodigiorum, 
 
 13 The other names and titles mentioned by Defoe on the same 
 page with Lilly and Gadbury may as well be disposed of here. 
 A book entitled "Come out of her my People" may, or may not, 
 have existed. As everybody knows, Defoe's quotation is di- 
 rectly from "Revelations," xviii, 4. He gives his source for 
 "Yet forty days and London shall be destroyed." The original 
 text ("Jonah," iii, 4) reads, "Yet forty days and Nineveh shall 
 be overthrown." "Oh the great and dreadful God I" is at once 
 recognised as from "Daniel," ix, 4. It has been mentioned 
 already that "Woe to Jerusalem" and the naming sword are 
 from Josephus ("Works," ed. 1773, Bk. vii, ch. 12). There 
 are any number of "Britain's Remembrancers." George With- 
 ers gave that title to his history of the Plague of 1625. Again, 
 in 1644, there was published "England's Remembrancer, or a 
 Warning from Heaven," etc. "Warning" was a common sub- 
 title during that age of prophecies. Thus, "Prodigies & Appa- 
 ritions, or England's Warning Pieces," 1643. This book con- 
 tains the expression, "fair warning," which may have fur- 
 nished Defoe with his title. It also narrated a sufficient number 
 of "prodigies" to supply Defoe with all his materials on that 
 topic. In one instance, viz., "Poor Robin's Almanack," Defoe 
 never saw more than the title, for this book was a broad bur- 
 lesque of the astrological trumpery of the times. For example, 
 Poor Robin records this wisdom for February, 1664: "This month 
 this year hath twenty and nine days in it; now if it had two 
 more it would have thirty and one." The following month, "the 
 fishmonger's harvest," is filled with a series of puns on plaice, 
 carp, maids, soles, pout, etc. 
 
 [64] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 1660, p. 14) "burials, processions, combats, weapons 
 of all sorts, crowns and sceptres, flaming swords and 
 crosses, castles, cities, towers, monsters, comets, 
 eclipses, etc., etc. He then arranges all these in a 
 chronological table of "prodigies with their effects,' ' 
 extending over forty-six pages and covering the years 
 from the birth of Christ down to 1660. Blazing stars, 
 swords and crosses are frequent "causes," followed 
 by plague, war, famine, etc. 
 
 In London's Deliverance Predicted (July, 1665), 
 Gadbury deals directly with the Great Plague in rela- 
 tion to certain "causes." Among these, he specifies 
 the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, October 10, 
 1663, of Saturn and Mars, November 12, 1664, 14 the 
 two comets at the close of 1664, and the comet which 
 appeared early in 1665. 15 Aside from his predictions 
 in this characteristic book, Gadbury 's testimony as to 
 the outbreak of the Plague in 1664 is of so much inter- 
 est as to justify its quotation in part. Commenting 
 on the comets and conjunctions just mentioned, he 
 says : * ' By this connexion of causes, it is somewhat ap- 
 parent that this Pest should have taken its beginning 
 at the later end of 1664 ; and truly had not the Winter 
 
 14 It will be recalled that Defoe speaks of these two conjunctions 
 
 as if they both occurred in 1664. This slip was due to the fact 
 that he followed Hodges, who did not give dates. 
 
 15 According to the usual account there was but one comet at the 
 
 close of 1664. Defoe mentions only one comet in 1664 and one 
 in 1665, and he deals with these as to appearance, colour, motion, 
 etc., as presaging symbols of the Plague and Fire respectively. 
 These descriptions of Defoe's are in direct opposition to those 
 of M. Adrien Auzout, the eminent French astronomer of the day, 
 who recorded his observations of one comet in 1664 and one in 
 1665. Defoe has been accredited with reversing the characteris- 
 tics of these two comets (cf. E. W. Brayley, ed. "Journal," 
 1872, p. 29) "for purposes of heightening the interest." Gad- 
 bury, however, ("De Cometis," 31 sq. and "Coelestis Legatus," 
 62) has definitely and accurately recorded three comets in all in 
 1664-5 Two of these exactly fit Defoe's descriptions. 
 
 [65] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 then been so extreamly sharp (it having a frost of al- 
 most ten weeks continuance together) to have kept it 
 back, as we knew it did, it had beyond all question 
 broke forth then. Nay, and break forth it did then 
 too, as my self can experimentally testify, having been 
 personally visited with it at Christmas that year. 
 And my good friend Mr. Josias Westwood the ehirur- 
 geon (whose assistance I then craved, and advice I 
 followed (I bless God) to my preservation) hath told 
 me since that many of his patients at that time were 
 afflicted with the same distemper, and yet obtained 
 cure against it, the air being then so friendly to 
 nature, and an enemy unto the Pestilence. And be- 
 sides, it was but president in people to keep it from 
 the knowledge of the world (since few or none dyed 
 thereof) as long as they could ; for we find that it came 
 to a discovery soon enough to amaze and terrifie the 
 whole Nation, and hath bid fair for the ruin of trade 
 of all kinds in this great and populous city." 
 
 That the astrologers, with their nativity dia- 
 grams, "airy triplicities, ' ' etc., had succeeded thor- 
 oughly in bamboozling the people is evidenced by vari- 
 ous newsletters from every portion of England and 
 the Continent, on the appearance of the first comet in 
 December, 1664. Many of these letters, after relating 
 the facts respecting the comet, turn to the ' ' wisemen ' ? 
 and "artists" "to enquire what it may portend." A 
 letter from York (dated December 18, 1664) to Gad- 
 bury closes with the request that, "you will not only 
 oblige me, but many of my friends hereabouts, very 
 much, if you will but vouchsafe your opinion in a 
 line or two from your own hand, what this strange 
 
 [66] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 new Star may portend." 1 * Some of these letters con- 
 cerning the comet reported other occompanying "pro- 
 digies," comparable to some of those mentioned by 
 Defoe. In a newsletter from Hamburgh, December 
 24, 1664 (published in Newes, January 5, 1665), we 
 read that ' ' The great Comet lately seen here, appears 
 no longer with us; but here is now another, much 
 less then the formar, rising South-East, and setting 
 North- West. They write from Vienna by the last 
 [mail], of a great Comet seen there also, shewing itself 
 first from the East, and pointing toward Hungary. 
 There has been likewise seen in the ayre the appear- 
 ance of a Coffin, which causes great anxiety of thought 
 among the people." From Erfurt came still more 
 alarming accounts. "We have had our part here," 
 so runs the letter, "of the Comet, as well as other 
 Places, besides which, here have been other terrible 
 Apparitions and Noises in the ayre, as Fires, and 
 sounds of Canon, and Musket-shot ; and here has like- 
 wise appear 'd several times the resemblance of a Black 
 man, which has made our Sentinels to quit their Posts ; 
 and one of them was lately thrown down by him from 
 the top of the Wall." 
 
 As intimated elsewhere in the course of this essay, 
 it is likely that Defoe may have got at least some of his 
 superstitious stories, as for instance the coffin appari- 
 tion, from the newspapers; but as all these "prod- 
 igies" were common to the superstittion of the times, 
 
 19 The strong belief in, and the fearful apprehensions occasioned by, 
 predictions of calamities, is well illustrated by the prophecy of 
 a mere child, when the Plague was at its height in 1665, that 
 the mortality would increase "till 18,317 dye in a weeke (which 
 all endeavors are used to conceale)." "Archaslogia" xxxvii, 
 15. In Seville, an astrologer was "clapt up" because some of 
 his predictions of dire events came true, and the authorities 
 wished to allay the apprehensions of the people. 
 
 [67] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 it cannot always be said with certainty that any given 
 original was Defoe's source of authority. For ex- 
 ample, Gadbury copied the Hamburgh letter just 
 quoted (De Cometis, p. 48) and as it is comparatively 
 certain that Defoe had read Gadbury he may have 
 found it there. In the case of the flaming sword in 
 the Journal, as Defoe had quoted the Josephus book a 
 few pages earlier, we may assume that authority to 
 be the source of that superstition. At any rate, even 
 the few extracts and references which I have given to 
 the superstitions of the times, and the influence of the 
 astrologers in perturbing the public mind with appre- 
 hensions of dreadful and dreaded events, will serve to 
 indicate what a storehouse of materials Defoe had to 
 draw from in writing this part of his Journal. Defoe 
 possessed, among other books of a similar character, 
 the " Prophecies' ' of Notradamus which had been re- 
 published in English by Lilly in 1651, and again by 
 Holwell in 1682. Both these editions contained the 
 numerous drawings or "hieroglyphics" of the orig- 
 inal. Moreover, besides the chronicles (of which De- 
 foe owned three or four) and the numerous alma- 
 nacks, already mentioned, there were the easily acces- 
 sible works of Wing, Wharton, Tacke, Mother Ship- 
 ton, Ashmole, Ardee, Saunders, Booker, Marsh, Wells, 
 Flood, Hopton, Vaux, etc., ad infinitum. 
 
 For the fortune-telling quacks, the astrologer 
 quacks had as much contempt as Defoe had for both. 
 Gadbury says of them {op. cit. 164) that "so common 
 and general are these catching errors become, that it 
 is now a most difficult and hard matter to distinguish 
 a plow-man from a natural philosopher from his dis- 
 
 [68] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 course. And ... as in former times it was a rare mat- 
 ter to find seven wise men in the world, it is now as dif- 
 ficult and troublesome to discover the same number 
 of fools. Every man, almost, that hath scarcely ar- 
 rived at the happiness of reading a Horn-book, ac- 
 counts all things that come within the parcimeter or 
 compass of discourse beneath him and his genius . . . 
 that treateth not of the raising of spirits of some 
 periapt, amulet, or magical charm or spell. ' ' Of these 
 fortune-tellers there were two classes, — those who 
 for "fame and money impose upon the understanding 
 of simple-minded, credulous people/ ' and, secondly, 
 "a company of poor, melancholy, crack-brain 'd shal- 
 low-soul'd creatures, born as well to spread lies and 
 impostures as to credit and believe them." (This 
 from the author of Natura Prodigiorum!) In which 
 of these classes Gadbury would catalogue the follow- 
 ing, I will leave to the reader to decide. He relates 
 (op. cit. 174) that Sir K. Digbie once trapped "that 
 Arch-pretender, Dr. Lamb" in his knavery, and 
 threatened to kick him down the stairs; upon which 
 circumstance he comments : "I am of belief the appli- 
 cation of this story will reach (if not over-reach) the 
 consciences and practices of some among us that wear 
 the golden name of Astrologers who very commonly, 
 under pretence thereof, make use of a Christal, and 
 other pretended cheats and shifts, to gull the sillier 
 sort of people. Nay, they are made use of sometimes 
 to persons at very great rates (viz. six pounds a call, 
 as they knavishly call it) even to their undoing, and to 
 the great scandal of Astrologie (which, as it is dealt 
 with, is the only over-cheat of these times) and, in- 
 
 [69] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 deed, to the shipwreck and ruin of the practitioner's 
 conscience, honesty, and good name. Nay, the vil- 
 lainy is grown so rife and common now among us, that 
 he is not worthy (almost) to be deemed an astrologer, 
 that cannot stretch both his conscience and skill, like 
 unto those persons touched, who by their practices 
 should be of Cacus's progeny, because they so emi- 
 nently pretend to make with him, 
 
 Candida de nigris, & de candentibus arra." 
 So much for that feature of the Journal dealing 
 with the superstition and gullibility of the people. 
 Of a different character from statistics, proclamations, 
 advertisements, almanacks, etc., are the sources treat- 
 ing of the history of the Plague, — its origin, its first 
 appearance in London, its progress, ravages and de- 
 cline — which supplied Defoe with that necessary ele- 
 ment of his narrative. Too much importance cannot 
 be attached to these sources, as they brought to Defoe 
 something more than mere facts, they lent him lan- 
 guage and "atmosphere." In 1722, there were no 
 fewer than two score volumes on the subject of plague, 
 some mere pamphlets, some treating only of the pre- 
 vention and cure of the disease, while others combined 
 the treatment with the history of plague. About one- 
 half of these volumes refer to the Plague of 1665, 
 while some of them ante-date it. It is needless to go 
 over the list of these, as the mass of them were of little 
 use to Defoe in the composition of the Journal. 
 Kemp 's Brief Treatise, the author of Golgotha, the au- 
 thor of Shutting up Infected Houses, and a few others 
 mentioned in Section I contributed certain aspects: 
 but, in the main, Defoe relied upon very few sources 
 
 [70] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 for the skeleton of his narrative. Foremost amongst 
 these stands Dr. Nathaniel Hodges, so frequently men- 
 tioned in the course of this discussion. That his work 
 was freely drawn upon by Defoe has long been known 
 to scholars, but, inasmuch as no one hitherto has had 
 the curiosity, or courage, to analyze the Journal with 
 reference to Loimologia, the tremendous debt which 
 the former owes to the latter has never been fully ap- 
 preciated. Hodges 's "Historical Account " fills less 
 than thirty octavo pages ; yet Defoe not only took over 
 practically every item contained in Hodges 's account, 
 but in almost every instance followed him so closely 
 as to copy his errors, and repeated his subject matter 
 so many times that the materials borrowed from 
 Loimologia gave Defoe his starting point no fewer 
 than one hundred and twenty-five times, — and this 
 does not take into account the numerous instances 
 where the narration or discussion (as e. g. of shutting 
 up) extends over a number of pages, such cases being 
 counted only once in the sum total! This statement 
 appears incredible, but any one who will take the pains 
 to analyze Hodges 's "Account," and then the Jour- 
 nal, will find it true "within compass/' — albeit some 
 idols may get broken in the process. 
 
 Before me as I write I have such an analysis, with 
 the result as stated. Even the digressionary style of 
 Hodges is followed by Defoe, and the former's account 
 of the origin of the 1665 Plague might easily be mis- 
 taken for the opening paragraph of the Journal, both 
 as to style and content. 17 A synopsis of Hodges 's ac- 
 
 17 I have traced the progress of the distemper over Europe before 
 it got to England, but space forbids going into this. Suffice 
 it to say that Defoe's account is strictly historical. 
 
 [71] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 count of the Plague will serve to illustrate the extent 
 of Defoe's reliance upon that single source, a brief 
 outline of which follows. According to Hodges, the 
 distemper came to Holland in a parcel of infected 
 goods from Smyrna, and from Holland to England 
 where it suddenly appeared in London near the close 
 of 1664, when three died of it. Some people took 
 alarm and moved into the City ; wild rumours and pre- 
 dictions terrified the common sort whose very fears 
 precipitated the distemper. Their apprehensions 
 were further augmented by the appearance of the 
 comet and the conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter, 
 and Saturn and Mars, followed by the terrifying pre- 
 dictions of astrologers. Hodges deplores this fear- 
 mongering. A hard frost, lasting three months, lulled 
 people into a belief of security; but about Christmas 
 Hodges is called to a case which he pronounced to be 
 plague. With the breaking up of the frost in the 
 Spring of 1665, the disease reappeared and soon 
 gained ground. The Magistrates issued a shutting-up 
 order, but the efficacy of the practice is questioned, 
 and, on the whole, condemned, though there is some- 
 thing to be said on the other side, especially at the first 
 appearance of the distemper. It was decreed that all 
 infected houses must be marked with a red cross and 
 the "Lord have mercy" sign over the door, a guard 
 placed outside to prevent the inmates from escaping, 
 and to pass in food and medicine to those shut up. The 
 establishment of a forty-days quarantine (according 
 to the printed "Orders," it was only four weeks), to 
 be counted from the last one infected in a shut up 
 house, caused consternation and mischief, for this or- 
 
 [72] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 der and the "tragical mark over the door" frightened 
 many neighbours away who might have been of service 
 in saving lives. The dishonest and murderous prac- 
 tices of wicked nurses cannot be too strongly con- 
 demned. A strange symptom of the disease was an 
 insane or perverse pleasure the infected manifested of 
 breathing into the faces of the well. 18 
 
 The Plague "doubtfully reigned" throughout 
 May and June, "sometimes raging in one part, and 
 then in another. ' ' The minds of the people fluctuated 
 with the Bills: "as often as the funerals decreased, 
 great hopes were conceived of its [the Plague's] dis- 
 appearance, then on a sudden again their increase 
 threw all into dejection." This caused the in- 
 habitants to leave precipitously, and they "flocked in 
 such crowds out of town, as if London had quite gone 
 out of itself. " In an effort to stem the tide of devas- 
 tation, the authorities ordered monthly fasts and pub- 
 lic prayers, and commanded the College of Physicians 
 to prepare some remedy in English for the poor peo- 
 ple, who were the chief sufferers in this calamity. 
 But their labours proved in vain. A number of emi- 
 nent physicians tendered their assistance; yet, al- 
 though the weather conditions were good and food 
 plentiful, 19 the ravages of the disease continued un- 
 abated. In July and August it changed its former 
 slow: and languid pace to a swift and terrible 
 
 18 Mead ("Short Discourse," 8th ed., p. xvii) repeats this state- 
 
 ment and offers an explanation for the cause of the symptom. 
 Defoe rehashes the same explanation, but, in a sort of mock 
 piety, does not see how the fact can be "reconciled to religion.' 
 
 19 Hodges is here misleading. He himself calls it the "poor's 
 
 Plague," and all the sources (and Defoe) agree that the poor 
 suffered greatly for the very necessities of life. The constant 
 and pathetic appeals for charity support the fact: if food was 
 plentiful it was not free. 
 
 [73] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 slaughter, so that 3,000, 4,000, or 5,000 died in a 
 week, — once 8,000. The calamity was inexpressible : 
 carcasses lay unburied, one heard dying groans and 
 ravings of delirium, relations and friends bewailing 
 their losses, and, at the same time, anticipating their 
 own sudden end; death was the sure midwife to all 
 children; the newly-wed died in their first embrace; 
 some ran about staggering like drunk and fell dead in 
 the street ; others lay comatose, half -dead, still others 
 fell dead in the market while purchasing the necessi- 
 ties of life; and who " would not burst with grief to 
 see the stock of a future generation hang upon the 
 breasts of a dead mother?" 20 
 
 The Plague spared no order, age, or sex. The 
 divine perished in the exercise of his priestly duties, 
 the physician died administering his own antidotes. 
 Of the female sex most died, 21 and few children 
 escaped. Inheritances passed to three or four heirs in 
 as many days ; there were not enough sextons to bury 
 the dead ; the bells were hoarse with continual tolling ; 
 the burial places were inadequate, and so large pits 
 were dug in waste grounds and thirty or forty bodies 
 were thrown in at one time. Those who attended 
 funerals of friends one evening were often buried the 
 next. 
 
 The Court being at Oxford, the City authorities 
 ordered fires built in the streets for three days to- 
 gether. The advice of the physicians was against this, 
 
 20 Defoe worked over this statement into the story (about the 
 
 middle of the *' Journal") beginning, "I could tell here dismal 
 stories of living infants being found sucking the breasts of 
 their [dead] mothers," etc. 
 
 21 Nearly all the authorities make this statement, but the Bills of 
 
 Mortality show only a slight excess of women over men. 
 
 [74] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 and the sequel proved them right, for more than 4,000 
 died in one night following the fires. 22 The practices 
 of chemists and quacks also aggravated the ravages of 
 the disease. "They thrust into every hand some 
 trash or other under the disguise of a pompous title. ' ' 
 Hardly any escaped who trusted their remedies, but 
 as a partial vengeance for their wicked impostures, 
 "they were caught in the common ruin." 28 Experi- 
 ments with foreign medicines also proved disasterous. 
 
 The contagion spread to the country, especially 
 to the towns along the Thames, owing to infected 
 goods being carried up it. 
 
 The height passed, "the Plague by leisurely de- 
 grees declined, ' ' and, besides, it was now less fatal, for 
 a greater proportion of the infected recovered than in 
 midsummer. People grew less fearful, one of another, 
 and after a time "a dawn of health appeared as sud- 
 den and as unexpected as the cessation of the follow- 
 ing conflagration." 24 This was due to the less malig- 
 
 22 Defoe doubts the accuracy of this, and it is not corroborated 
 
 by any other source. That at least 10,000 a week died at one 
 stage in the Plague is not questioned by the author of the 
 "Journal." 
 
 23 Defoe paraphrases Hodges thus: "Some fancied they were all 
 
 swept away in the infection to a man, and were for calling it 
 a particular work of God's vengeance." It will be remembered 
 also that Defoe points out that a number of eminent physicians 
 were carried away by the Plague. Hodges (p. 15) says eight 
 or nine physician died (some of these I have already men- 
 tioned). Defoe had a list of five physicians and eighteen sur- 
 geons. Pepys (October 16, 1665) heard that in Westminster 
 they were all dead save one apothecary. John Allin on Septem- 
 ber 14, 1665, wrote that seven score doctors, apothecaries and 
 surgeons "are all dead of this distemper in and about ye city." 
 ("Archaelogia," xxxvii, p. 10). While Dr. George Thompson was 
 suffering from plague (after dissecting a corpse), his two col- 
 leagues, Drs. Dey and Starkey, died. Of this Thompson wrote, 
 "At that very time [August, 1665] . . . two of my most esteemed 
 consorts, Dr. Joseph Dey and Dr. George Starkey, two pillars 
 of chimical physick, were both reposed in their graves before I 
 knew of their deaths." ( "Loimotomia," 96). Starkey ascribed 
 his death to the taking an over-draught of beer. 
 
 24 It is this statement, which Defoe merely takes over from Hodges, 
 
 that has been apologized for as "for purposes of art." 
 
 [75] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 nant nature of the distemper. And, just as at the be- 
 ginning, all other diseases seemed to go into the 
 Plague, so now, the Plague degenerated into other con- 
 tagious diseases. In December, people crowded back 
 to town as eagerly as they formerly ran away, and 
 that too without fear, lying in beds but recently oc- 
 cupied by the infected. Shops were again opened, 
 and business took on a normal tone. Cheerfulness 
 and courage became more manifest, and, before long, 
 the ravages of the Plague were scarcely discernible. 
 Some compute that over 100,000 died of the distemper. 
 It broke out again in the Spring of 1666, but was read- 
 ily conquered. 
 
 Aside from the few disagreements (indicated in 
 the footnotes) the foregoing summary of Hodges 's 
 "Historical Account of the Plague" might readily be 
 mistaken for a condensed outline of Defoe's history; 
 and, truly, such it is so far as it goes. If we but add 
 to this the statistical and other documentary data, and 
 the illustrative stories and descriptions of the town 
 and people during the Plague, we should then have 
 the Journal complete. It is here, of course, that the 
 stickler for the fictional element in the Journal comes 
 in with his theory ; and it must be confessed that the 
 most effective feature of Defoe's history is the use he 
 makes of the illustrative stories and dismal scenes to 
 arouse in the reader a feeling of the apalling calamity, 
 and an overwhelming pity for the sufferers. But here 
 again there was absolutely nothing original with De- 
 foe. Not for one moment can his work be compared, 
 in richness of materials, sincerity, and eloquent 
 pathos, with one of his chief sources, namely, Thomas 
 
 [76] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 Vincent's God's Terrible Voice in the City, which I 
 have had occasion to mention more than once. Vin- 
 cent was one of those Non-conforming preachers who 
 had been ousted from their livings by the Act of 
 August 24, 1662, and, by the Act of March 24, 1665, 
 banished five miles from all Corporations. He was 
 one of several such ministers mentioned by Defoe who 
 remained in London during the Plague and filled the 
 empty pulpits made vacant by Conformists running 
 away from their flocks. 25 Naturally, Vincent saw the 
 Plague in the light of a just vengeance sent from God 
 on his political and religious enemies, — especially on 
 those ministers who had run away, and Defoe may 
 well have had him in mind, among others, whose ' ' ser- 
 mons rather sank than lifted up the hearts of their 
 hearers." 28 So, too, Vincent's outcries against blas- 
 phemy may have suggested to Defoe the sermon on the 
 same text. However, all this was common to the ser- 
 
 2 5 Among those Presbyterians who took up their ministerial duties 
 again during the Plague were, Vincent, Allin, Chester, Franklin, 
 Grimes, Turner, and Janaway (who died of plague). That there 
 was a very strong feeling against the regular clergy for running 
 away is evident on every hand. The Sancroft Correspondence 
 illustrates this. On February 4, 1666, Pepys wrote in his 
 "Diary," "The Lord's day; and my wife and I the first time 
 together to church since the plague, and now only because of 
 Mr. Mills his coming home to preach his first sermon; expecting 
 a great excuse for his leaving the parish before anybody went, 
 and now staying till all are come home, but he made a very 
 poor and short excuse, and a bad sermon." It would be a great 
 mistake and gross injustice, however, to suppose that all the 
 regular clergy left their charges. 'Tis true, most did, including 
 Bishop Henchman and Dean Sancroft; but some of the rectors, 
 vicars, and canons stuck to their posts, such as Patrick, Clifford, 
 Bing, Masters, Simpson, Morris, Portington, Griffith (who died 
 of plague), Overing, Horton, Merriton, and others. 
 
 28 Defoe had a splendid choice from which to reach this conclu- 
 sion. Take for example, this reviving excerpt from Vincent's 
 funeral sermon on Abraham Janaway, Sept. 18, 1665: "Look I 
 do you not see the mouth of the pit open, and before it be shut 
 again, you may be put in ; you see the righteous perish, but 
 you are in danger of a far worse perishing; . * . . their souls 
 are taken away by angels, and conveyed to heaven, but when 
 your bodies drop into the grave, your soul will be dragged by 
 
 [77] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 mons of the time, as well as to Defoe 's own time, and 
 special sources for pious exhortations need not be 
 sought. Solomon Eagle, as already pointed out, had 
 his prototype in John Gibson, the 17th Century 
 Quaker fanatic ; but Vincent might just as well have 
 furnished Defoe with the substance of Solomon's exe- 
 crations. Likewise, the penitent sinners, so frequently 
 mentioned in the Journal, came directly from God's 
 Terrible Voice. Indeed, an analysis of this book, as 
 in the case of Loimologia, reveals the fact that Defoe 
 made use of it for all it would produce : in no fewer 
 than sixty instances in the Journal may we trace 
 the origins to Vincent, and, as in the case of the 
 materials borrowed from Hodges, there are many 
 repetitions. As much of the materials of the Journal 
 are common to God's Terrible Voice and Loimologia, 
 mention here need only be made of the particulars 
 with which Vincent, and only Vincent, supplied 
 Defoe. The arousal of sinners to repentance has 
 just been referred to. It is more particularly the 
 aspect of the people and the desolation caused by the 
 pest, so graphically portrayed by Vincent, that fur- 
 nished Defoe with one of his chief assets. In God's 
 Terrible Voice he found all that was necessary to ex- 
 press the apprehensions and fears, the altered, scared 
 looks of the poor people, especially after the rich had 
 deserted the town and the order for shutting up and 
 marking the infected houses had been issued; shops 
 shut up, grass growing in the streets, few people 
 
 devils into hell," etc. Oddly enough, however, this seems to 
 have been the sort of thing the poor frightened creatures of that 
 time hungered for and crowded to the churches to hear, re- 
 gardless of the danger of the infection. 
 
 [78] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 abroad; "not one house in an hundred but is in- 
 fected, ' ' — a fearful slaughter, whole families dead, the 
 church-yards stuffed full ; cries and groans of the sick 
 and dying, the afflicted in their frenzy rising out of 
 bed roar at the window or run forth naked into the 
 streets, — one man burnt himself to death in bed. De- 
 foe made use of all this over and over again, never 
 failing to impress the awfulness of the times by means 
 of pious ejaculations, borrowed along with the ma- 
 terials from the sources. One of the many details in 
 the Journal taken straight over from Vincent is the 
 story of the wag who advertised a "pulpit to be let," 
 after the minister had run away. Also, Defoe like 
 Vincent, moralizes on that perennial quality in human 
 nature, that during the calamity all differences of 
 opinion were silenced — in the presence of the common 
 enemy — but after the gravest dangers were passed, 
 the old religious quarrels broke out again and people 
 resumed the habit of their old sins. As in the case of 
 Hodges, Defoe let nothing he could use from Vincent 
 escape his net. 
 
 The remention of Defoe's religious piety makes it 
 necessary to dispel another myth respecting the 
 Journal, or rather respecting Defoe. It will be re- 
 called at once that Defoe, that is, Defoe's sadler who 
 relates the story, was much disturbed as to whether he 
 should remain in town, look after his business, and 
 trust in God, or, like others who were able, flee to the 
 country. 27 Like many another distracted person of 
 
 27 It will be recalled that the sadler' s brother argued with him as to 
 the folly of remaining and pointed as example to the predes- 
 tinarian view held by the Turks to their undoing. The reference 
 to the Turk in this connection was very common. Cf. Kemp, 
 "Brief Treatise," p. 15, a copy of which Defoe owned. 
 
 [79] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 that day, lie wavered now this way, now that, not 
 knowing what to do. Finally, one evening after much 
 worry about the question, he, as if by accident, or 
 divine guidance, opened the Bible at the 91st Psalm. 
 This settled all his doubts, — he would remain! One 
 editor of the Journal, in an excess of devotion to De- 
 foe's fertile genius, gives vent to his feelings in, 
 "Nothing could be more natural than the account of 
 the sadler's uncertainty whether he should leave Lon- 
 don, . . . and when he opened his Bible he lighted on 
 the words, ' ' etc. ' ' From that moment he resolved to 
 stay, knowing that whatever happened he was in God 's 
 hands. ' ' Well, now, it was rather necessary that De- 
 foe should devise some means to keep his sadler in 
 town — otherwise the narrative would have ended 
 somewhat abruptly. Of course, any schoolboy could 
 have had him remain without inventing any argu- 
 ments about the business; but such a simple process 
 would have branded the author as a novice, to say the 
 least. Now, the "lighting on the words" gives distinc- 
 tion and an air of naturalness to the narrative. As a 
 matter of fact, nearly all the writers on the subject 
 from the time of David onwards have gone over the 
 arguments about fleeing the plague. One has but to 
 open any book on the pest to learn this, — Beze, Gad- 
 bury, Kemp, Patrick, Austin, author of Golgotha, etc., 
 etc. As for the Psalms, they have always been re- 
 sorted to for consolation in times of trouble in general, 
 and in cases of the plague in particular. One author 
 makes twenty-six biblical references in one connection, 
 the list being headed by the 91st Psalm which re- 
 appears three times (Golgotha, p. 14). C. Conraden 
 
 [80] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 wrote a poem devoted entirely to that Psalm (1633), 
 and Theodore Beze, in a Shorte learned and pithie 
 Treatise (1580) treats of it in extenso in respect of 
 fleeing from the pestilence. To come nearer home, we 
 may dismiss the whole matter at once by referring to 
 Symon Patrick's Consolatory Discourse (1665, p. 30) 
 wherein he not only cites the 91st Psalm, but quotes 
 that portion, and only that portion, repeated by Defoe. 
 It would have been nothing wonderful if Defoe, with 
 his knowledge of the Bible, had turned to the passage 
 in question, but to credit him with lighting upon it is 
 sheer nonsense. As we have caught him so many 
 times red-handed in the act of appropriating materials 
 for the Journal, it is safe to suggest that he took the 
 quotation directly from Patrick, with whose writings 
 he was well acquainted. This example is fairly illus- 
 trative of the Journal as a whole, so far as it relates to 
 Defoe's originality in creating the narrative of the 
 Plague. 
 
 [81] 
 
Ill 
 
 That some slips and errors should have crept into 
 a history of the nature of the Journal was inevitable. 
 But these are comparatively few, generally of slight 
 importance, and due, in nearly every instance, to haste 
 or to misleading sources. I have already taken ac- 
 count of some of these, and they need only be men- 
 tioned here in way of summary. That there were 
 printed newspapers in those days, Defoe must have 
 been aware. Likewise, it would seem that he should 
 have known that microscopes had been in use for a 
 generation before the Plague Year. On the other 
 hand, I have found no indication that they were 
 brought into use in connection with the treatment of 
 the distemper of 1665. It was, however, sheer care- 
 lessness or haste that accounts for wrong dates and 
 inaccurate statistics. For example, almost on the first 
 page of the Journal Defoe mentions two Frenchmen 
 who died of the Plague in Long Acre, or thereabouts, 
 in December, 1664, and shortly afterwards says there 
 was only one, a statement which he repeats. On the 
 second page it appears that none died of the disease 
 from December, 1664 until ' ' about the 12th of Febru- 
 ary' ' following; near the end of the Journal the 9th 
 of February is given. The same kind of carelessness 
 if found respecting the number of pesthouses: in 
 three places Defoe says there was only one, in another 
 place he says two. The latter statement is correct. 
 The number that died of the Plague at the Westmin- 
 
 [82] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 ster pesthouse is given as 159, which should read 156 ; 
 but this is evidently the proofreader's error. 28 One 
 table in the Journal is misleading, namely, the one 
 showing the number of deaths from August 22 to Sep- 
 tember 26, 1665, which was 38,195. The impression 
 left is that this represents the deaths from the Plague, 
 whereas it represents the total number of deaths. De- 
 foe should have added, "whereof 31,331 of the 
 Plague." In one instance, his figures are entirely 
 at variance with the Bills: in demonstrating the fact 
 that many who died of the distemper were set down 
 to other diseases, he records for 1664, "child-bed, 189 ; 
 abortive and still-born, 458." This should read, 
 "child-bed, 250; abortive and still-born, 503." For the 
 week ending July 4, 1665, Defoe says that "not one 
 person died of plague in all Stepney parish." The 
 Bills returned two that week for Stepney. The fol- 
 lowing week he estimated the number from plague at 
 900; the Clerks reported 725. This is Defoe's only 
 venture at an estimate of the number of deaths from 
 the pestilence in a given week; his other figures are 
 taken directly from the Bills. 
 
 It has already been shown that the error in the 
 Journal respecting the dates of the planet conjunc- 
 tions was due to the fact that Defoe's authority 
 (Hodges) did not indicate the years in which they 
 occurred, and Defoe assumed that they both immedi- 
 ately preceded the outbreak of the Plague. As to the 
 movements of the Court, he was entirely at sea, — an- 
 other slip due to Hodges 's indefiniteness. Defoe says 
 
 28 In checking up errors in the "Journal" I have used the 1st 
 edition. 
 
 [83] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 that the Court removed to Oxford in June, and re- 
 turned to town soon after Christmas. The newsbooks 
 of the day furnish us with the exact movements of the 
 Court. On July 2, 1665, Charles II and his suite 
 went to Hampton Court (the Queen Mother went to 
 France a few days earlier). They remained at 
 Hampton Court until July 28. As a greater means 
 of precaution, on that date the King moved towards 
 Salisbury, first visiting Portsmouth and Isle-of- Wight, 
 arriving at Salisbury on August 1. On September 15, 
 Charles began a Royal Progress, in which was in- 
 cluded, in order, Poole, Lulworth, Weymouth, Port- 
 land, and Dorchester. The King returned to Salis- 
 bury on September 21. The pest appearing there 
 about this time, the Court hastily removed to Oxford 
 on the 25th of the month. There Parliament was con- 
 vened on October 9, and there the Court remained un- 
 til January 27, 1666, when it came back to Hampton 
 Court. Five days later (February 1) Charles and his 
 followers returned to Whitehall, having been away 
 exactly seven months. 
 
 As I have already mentioned, the order to the 
 College of Physicians was a royal command, and did 
 not come from the Mayor as stated by Defoe. As to 
 the good work of the Mayor and Aldermen, Defoe 
 seems to have been obsessed with the idea that they 
 must have scrupulously enforced all orders emanat- 
 ing from them, such as keeping the street clean, bury- 
 ing the dead, etc. As a matter of fact they accom- 
 plished almost superhuman results, under the circum- 
 stances and conditions of the times, but nothing so 
 complete as Defoe asserts. In this connection he men- 
 
 [84] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 tions charities (inasmuch as the Lord Mayor was 
 largely responsible for their distribution) and states 
 that £17,800 were distributed to Cripplegate in one 
 week. This is the only instance of gross exaggeration 
 I have found in the Journal. While the whole truth 
 can never be known as to the amounts distributed to 
 the poor during the Plague, as a great deal of money 
 was sent to private individuals, rectors, curates, etc., 
 of which no public account was kept, it is extremely 
 doubtful whether all of the parishes of London taken 
 together ever received as much as £17,800 in one week 
 in charities. Defoe also asserts that the King ordered 
 £1,000 distributed weekly, but I know not his author- 
 ity. The City of London, however, did vote £600, 
 and many of the parishes increased the rates heavily 
 to meet the emergency. Even so, the contributions 
 from all quarters fell far short of meeting the neces- 
 sitous conditions, and after the distemper spread to 
 the one hundred and thirty parishes of the City and 
 suburbs it was precious little that any one parish re- 
 ceived at one time. 
 
 A few more scattering details will suffice to cover 
 the remaining slips in the Journal. Defoe was not 
 aware that the plague got into the fleet, simply be- 
 cause every effort was made to conceal the fact ; hence 
 his error in stating the contrary. 29 So, also, as to the 
 army, he says, "as to soldiers, there were none to be 
 found, ' ' etc. In a manner this was true, when we con- 
 sider that the London of 1665 was not the London o£ 
 1914-1919. They were quartered in Hyde Park in 
 
 29 For proof that the distemper got aboard the ships, see "Cal. 
 State Papers" Dom., December 25, 1665 and February 2, 1666. 
 
 [85] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 tents, and returned to town on November 6, 1665. 30 
 Again, Defoe erroneously states that the Exchange 
 was kept open during the Plague. It was closed for 
 repairs during August and September, 1665. 81 As 
 for the impression we get from the Journal that all the 
 astrologers were carried away by plague, a number 
 of the leading ones, as Lilly and Gadbury, lived for a 
 number of years after 1665 and continued their pre- 
 dictions to the last. In a like manner, Defoe misleads 
 us when he states that ' ' some of the ministers did visit 
 the sick at first and for a little while, but it was not to 
 be done;" from which we infer that after the infec- 
 tion reached its height, they had to abandon their 
 work. Patrick, Allin, Bing, Vincent, Tillison, and 
 many others, stuck to their posts throughout, as I have 
 already shown. A similar wrong impression is left as 
 regards the fires that were built in the streets, in com- 
 pliance with the Lord Mayor's order of September 2, 
 1665. Defoe mentions only fifteen places where fires 
 were built: the order provided for one fire to every 
 twelve houses (i. e. six houses on either side of the 
 street). 32 All discrepancies respecting the weather, 
 winds, drought, progress of the distemper, etc., arise 
 out of corresponding confusions in Defoe's sources; 
 statements of this character were based by him on au- 
 thority, and, besides, the element of error in these re- 
 spects is so slight as to be virtually negligible. 33 
 
 80 See letter from Symon Patrick to Elizabeth Gauden, dated No- 
 vember 7, 1665. "Add. MSS." 5810. 
 
 31 "Newes," Nos. 60 and 76. 
 
 82 Cf. "Intelligencer" No. 72. 
 
 33 As illustrations of similar discrepancies, see Thompson, "Loimo- 
 tomia," 1666, p. 67; Boghurst, "Loimographia," 1666. p. 29; 
 Withers, "A Precaution relating to the Present Time," 1665, 
 p. 66. 
 
 [86] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 Of much greater importance than the trivial er- 
 rors recorded above, is the question of style and 
 method employed by Defoe in the Journal; for these 
 have borne a considerable part in getting the name of 
 fiction attached to the book. In the first place, of 
 course, stands the very apparent fact that the narra- 
 tive is in the first person. To descant upon the charm, 
 the sense of reality, the c ' atmosphere, ' ' which this 
 lends to the book would not only be trite, but alto- 
 gether superfluous. Little artful tricks of style as, "I 
 saw both these stars," "business led me out sometimes 
 to the other end of the town," "I will not be positive 
 whether he said forty days or a few days, 9 9 " I met this 
 creature several times in the streets," etc., etc., grip 
 the reader immediately, according to a psychological 
 process appreciated by every one. Had the history of 
 the Plague been written in the usual style of the 
 dry-as-dust historian, the number of readers would 
 have been comparatively small. 3 * This style had al- 
 ready been mastered by Defoe, hence, it was applied to 
 the Journal for reasons of convenience and taste as 
 well as business. All that concerns us here is that the 
 employment of the first person in the narrative in no 
 sense interferes with the authenticity of the facts re- 
 corded. I have already made mention of the story of 
 the carpenter, sailor, and soldier, and have shown that, 
 inasmuch as the integral parts of that story are true, 
 the exception is only apparent, not real. The same is 
 true of the stories growing out of documents, such as 
 
 34 The continuator of Dr. Gideon Harvey's account of the Plague 
 (as "City Remembrancer," 1769) compiled the work from 
 sources and authorities (including the "Journal"), and, hence, 
 is equally reliable as Defoe, — yet who reads Harvey's account? 
 
 [87] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 the Orders, Proclamations, etc., — either the stories 
 are authentic (I have quoted parallels) or else the 
 documents are without meaning. Any one writing a 
 history of the Plague of 1665 in the third person di- 
 rectly from the original sources would produce a re- 
 sult equivalent to, and in all essentials identical with, 
 Defoe's Journal. That a history be written in the 
 first person is not sufficient grounds for classing it 
 with fiction: so far as authenticity is concerned, the 
 style is of no importance whatever. Moreover, I have 
 more than once pointed out that many of the best ef- 
 fects in the Journal are not due to the first person, nor 
 are they of Defoe's making, but are paraphrases or di- 
 rect copies of the original sources. 
 
 The most curious thing about the use of the first 
 person in narrating the events of the Plague Year is 
 not that such a style makes the book more interesting 
 to read, but that it served to cover up the most egre- 
 gious faults known to literature, — digressions, inco- 
 herences, involved and cumbrous expressions, tire- 
 some repetitions, — all of which made it possible for the 
 author to compile a mass large enough to be called a 
 book. A striking example of this is the " as-I-said-be- 
 fore" habit, responsible for scores of needless repeti- 
 tions in the Journal, as many as three or four — some- 
 times more — of these appearing in the same para- 
 graph, and all referring to the same thing. Innumer- 
 able samples of this mannerism may be sighted by 
 casually turning over the leaves of the Journal. The 
 repetitions of discussions and comments regarding the 
 progress of the Plague, treatment of the patients 
 (shutting up, watchmen, nurses, etc.), work of the 
 
 [88] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 officers, etc., are less obvious, because they are scat- 
 tered about in paraphrase and altered expressions. 
 So hard put to it was Defoe to make a marketable book 
 that he is forced to repeat his stories. Thus Solomon 
 Eagle is made to do service three times, as follows: 
 (a) "I suppose the world has heard of the famous 
 Solomon Eagle, an enthusiast. He, though not in- 
 fected at all but in his head, went about denouncing 
 of judgment upon the city in a frightful manner, 
 sometimes quite naked, and with a pan of burning 
 charcoal on his head." (b) "The famous Solomon 
 Eagle . . . had predicted the plague as a judgment, 
 and ran naked through the streets, telling the people 
 it was come upon them to punish them for their sins. ' 9 
 (c) "The famous Solomon Eagle, the naked Quaker I 
 have mentioned, prophesied evil tidings every day," 
 etc. The repetitions of expressions calculated to make 
 the conditions of the times more realistic are too 
 numerous to mention. "Dismal scenes," with its 
 many variations, has been mentioned. The folly of 
 people rushing back to town as precipitously as they 
 ran away is condemned a half-dozen times in almost 
 precisely the same language. He speaks of this fool- 
 hardiness as "precipitous courage," "unwary con- 
 duct," "imprudent, rash conduct," "rash and fool- 
 ish conduct," "audacious boldness," etc., in each case 
 repeating the consequences. 
 
 How the pest originated in Long Acre and spread 
 from thence is retold four times in the Journal. Even 
 after he has almost concluded — or rather after the 
 book should long have been concluded — Defoe starts 
 over again "how it began at one end of the town." 
 
 [89] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 The discussion of shutting up, with the good and bad 
 effects attending the practice, occurs no less than ten 
 distinct times, some of these involving as many as fif- 
 teen or eighteen pages, not to mention the innumer- 
 able repetitions within these repetitions. An account 
 of the distractions of victims roaring at the window, 
 running about naked, etc., appears sixteen times ; the 
 alleged misrepresentations of the Bills of Mortality 
 thirteen times; the good work of the Magistrates 
 twenty-one times. The same kind of analysis could be 
 applied, with varying results, to the other features of 
 the Journal. These tiresome repetitions comprise 
 two-thirds or more of the volume, and, after taking 
 into account every addition of fact or feeling to be 
 found in them, they might be reduced to one-fourth 
 or one-fifth of the space they now occupy without ren- 
 dering the value of the history less by one iota. The 
 only purpose they serve — in addition to swelling the 
 book's size — is to impress on the imagination the hor- 
 rors of the Plague. Even so, the emphasis is so much 
 overdone that it loses its force. Viewed from the 
 point of style and art, the work is execrable. To make 
 it perfectly clear that I have not exaggerated in this 
 matter of repetitions in the Journal, I will here repro- 
 duce a number of them in relation to the unconscious 
 spreading of the disease by people going about with 
 the infection upon them but they not aware of it. 
 Other examples, as above, would show similar results. 
 
 (a) " [Often, people escaping from shut-up 
 houses], having an uninterrupted liberty to go about, 
 but being obliged still to conceal their circumstances, 
 or perhaps not knowing it themselves, gave the dis- 
 
 [90] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 temper to others, and spread the infection in a dread- 
 ful manner, as I shall explain further hereafter." p. 
 84. 35 
 
 (b) "Now it was impossible to know these people, 
 nor did they sometimes, as I have said, know them- 
 selves to be infected." p. 220. 
 
 (c) " [People apparently well often had the con- 
 tagion] really upon them, and in their blood, yet did 
 not show the consequences of it in their countenances ; 
 nay even were not sensible of it themselves." 76. 
 
 (d) "And this is the reason why it is impossible 
 in a visitation to prevent the spreading of the plague 
 by the utmost human vigilance, viz., that it is impos- 
 sible to know the infected people from the sound, or 
 that the infected people should perfectly know them- 
 selves." 76. 
 
 (e) " The plague is not to be avoided by those that 
 converse promiscuously in a town infected, and people 
 have it when they know it not, and they likewise give it 
 to others when they know not they have it them- 
 selves." p. 221. 
 
 (f) "Shutting up the well or removing the sick 
 will not [prevent the spread of the distemper] unless 
 they can go back and shut up all those that the sick 
 had conversed with, even before they knew themselves 
 to be sick . . . for none knows when, or where, or how 
 they have received the infection, or from whom." 76. 
 
 (g) "One man who may really have received the 
 infection and knows it not, but goes abroad and about 
 as a sound person, may give the plague to a thousand 
 
 35 The paging refers to "Everyman's Library," which, by the way, 
 classes the "Journal" as "fiction." 
 
 [91] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 people, . . . and neither the person giving the infection 
 or the person receiving it know anything of it, and 
 perhaps feel the effects of it for several days after 
 [when the tokens would appear] . . . and yet, as I 
 said, they knew nothing of their being infected, nor 
 found themselves as much as out of order, till those 
 mortal marks were upon them." p. 225. 
 
 (h) "Men went about apparently well many days 
 after they had the taint of the disease in their vitals, 
 and after their spirits were so seized as that they never 
 could escape it, and that all the while they did so they 
 were dangerous to others." p. 229. 
 
 (i) "Fathers and mothers have gone about as if 
 they had been well, and have believed themselves to 
 be so, till they have insensibly infected and been the 
 destruction of their whole families." p. 232. 
 
 (j) "Many people having been well to the best of 
 their own judgment, . . . for several days, . . . have 
 been found ... at the brink of death, . . . and a walking 
 destroyer perhaps for a week or a fortnight before 
 that." 76. 
 
 (k) "The schemes [for shutting up infected 
 houses] cannot take place but upon those that appear 
 to be sick, or to be infected ; whereas there are among 
 them at the same time thousands of people who seem 
 to be well, but are all the while carrying death with 
 them into all companies which they come into." p. 233. 
 
 (1) "The apothecaries and surgeons knew . . . that 
 many people had the plague in their very blood, . . . 
 and were in themselves walking putrefied carcasses, . . . 
 and yet were as well to look on as other people, and 
 even knew it not themselves." lb. 
 
 [92] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 (m) "The infection is retained in bodies appar- 
 ently well, and conveyed from them to those they 
 converse with, while it is known to neither the one nor 
 the other." p. 238. 
 
 (n) "When people began to be convinced that the 
 infection was received in this surprising manner from 
 persons apparently well, they began to be exceedingly 
 shy of every one that came near them." lb. 
 
 (o) "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 appar- 
 ently in health, the churches and meeting-houses were 
 much thinner of people than at other times before that 
 they used to be." p. 239. 
 
 (p) "When the physicians assured us that the 
 danger was as well from the sound as the sick, and 
 that those people who thought themselves entirely free 
 were oftentimes the most fatal; . . . then, I say, they 
 began to be jealous of everybody." p. 240. 
 
 The foregoing extracts do not include several 
 stories growing out of, or corollaries to, the statements 
 of fact respecting the unconscious spreading of the 
 distemper. Indeed, these are really not stories, but 
 merely further repetitions of the known facts. It is 
 this method of stating a fact as an experience of the 
 narrator that has caused deception concerning the 
 real nature of the Journal, and has served to cover 
 up many of the repetitions. Concerning these repeti- 
 tions, it is doubtful whether, without the minutest 
 analysis, any but the most careful student of Defoe 
 would ever dream of the wanton number he indulges 
 in. A very close examination of the Journal dis- 
 
 [93] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 closes how skilfully he has covered up both the pad- 
 ding and the method of its accomplishment, by dis- 
 tributing his materials, rearranging and recombining 
 them in slightly altered garbs, as the statement of 
 facts in the semblance of stories. A still closer exam- 
 ination of Defoe's methods reveals the fact that when 
 he takes his starting point for his repetitions from a 
 given source, he repeats practically all that he has 
 taken from that author. As his various sources em- 
 phasize different characteristics of the Plague, it is 
 easy for the ordinary reader to believe that Defoe, 
 though repeating to an extent, is constantly present- 
 ing new facts, new conditions, new aspects, new 
 stories. Thus, the series of repetitions within repeti- 
 tions serve to a large degree to conceal the process 
 itself. It is doubtful whether Defoe was conscious 
 of this, but, at any rate, it is his most striking accom- 
 plishment in writing the Journal. 
 
 Closely allied to, and abetting, this process of hid- 
 ing endless repetitions in the Journal, is the digres- 
 sionary method (or lack of method) which so fre- 
 quently appears. Defoe began his history in a 
 straightforward manner, copying directly from his 
 printed sources. But he had not gone far until he saw 
 that he must run dry before he had half a book. He 
 therefore began to embroider upon his facts by cir- 
 cling round and round them, digressing and repeat- 
 ing, one time picking up an item here to start from, 
 another time an item from another source, etc. Aiter 
 printing the ' ' Orders conceived by the Lord Mayor, ' p 
 this digressionary and circling process begins. It is 
 relieved by an occasional injection of figures from the 
 
 [94] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 Bills, and illustrative stories, extracts from the news- 
 papers regarding trade, etc., but, in the main, the 
 genuine additions to the history of the Plague, after 
 the first third of the Journal is past, are really very 
 few until we come to near the close of the book, and 
 even here we find much that has been recorded in 
 earlier pages. No better example of the befogging ef- 
 fect of Defoe's digressions can be found than in the 
 manner in which he introduces his story of the sailor, 
 soldier, and joiner. He first begins the story rather 
 early in the Journal, but immediately rambles off to 
 the great pit, wickedness of the buriers, cruelty of 
 nurses, blasphemous tipplers, and church-going. 
 Then he gets back to blasphemy again, thence to shut- 
 ting up of houses, violence of watchmen, spreading of 
 the Plague by the diseased victims breaking out, ob- 
 servations on the cause of spreading the distemper, 
 dismal street scenes, and private meditations ! It now 
 occurs to him to introduce Dr. Heath, but he is imme- 
 diately forced back to the cause of the spread of the 
 Plague — as if he had not already discussed it several 
 times — then more dismal street scenes, how the inhabi- 
 tants managed to get their provisions, more melan- 
 choly stories, cruel nurses and robbery stories re- 
 peated, and so on, and so on, for over seventy pages. 
 Then he bethought him of the three men who escaped 
 to the country; but at once breaks off again and dis- 
 cusses the order for killing dogs and cats. Finally, 
 however, "I come back to my three men," whom he 
 sticks pretty close to for about eight pages; then he 
 drops them for a couple of pages to follow the prog- 
 ress of the Plague about Wapping, Ratcliff, etc., at last 
 
 [95] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 "to return to my travellers," which he does rather 
 consistently, and concludes his story with only one 
 further digression. After throwing in this rather 
 long-drawn-out story in the methodless fashion I have 
 described, Defoe could return to his repetitions with 
 less chance of detection. It is altogether likely, 
 however, that deception, in this respect, formed no part 
 of Defoe 's intent, that the haphazard result was a gen- 
 uine Topsy case. 
 
 [96] 
 
IV 
 
 From the foregoing thesis and from the ap- 
 pendices to this discussion, it is abundantly evident 
 that Defoe 's Journal of the Plague Year is a faithful 
 record of historical facts, that it was so intended by 
 the author and is as nearly correct as it was humanly 
 possible to make it from the sources and time at his 
 command. Such errors — few in number and slight 
 in importance — as crept in, arose from faulty and con- 
 fused sources, or from haste, and are in no wise at- 
 tributable to bias on the one hand, or to imagination or 
 style on the other. An analysis of the sources and 
 facts available to Defoe, and a comparison of these to 
 unpublished letters and other documents inaccessible 
 to him, prove the soundness of this conclusion. There 
 is not one single statement in the Journal, pertinent to 
 the history of the Great Plague in London, that has not 
 been verified during the course of this investigation, 
 even to the stories related by Defoe, the originals of 
 which, or parallels, have been discovered. 
 
 From what I have written concerning the sources 
 of the Journal, it is clear that these are of two kinds. 
 In the first place, there are the printed accounts of the 
 Plague found in Hodges 's Loimologia, Kemp's Brief 
 Treatise, Vincent's God's Terrible Voice in the City, 
 Thomson's Loimotomia, in Golgotha, and numerous 
 other contemporaneous accounts of the Plague of 
 1665; not to mention historical accounts of earlier 
 plagues in other countries, as those of Thucydides, 
 
 [97] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 Baccaccio, Diemerbroick, etc., and those of Defoe's 
 contemporaries, Mead, Pye, Quincy, Chicoyneau, and 
 others. From these he got not only the facts concern- 
 ing the origin, symptoms, and treatment of the dis- 
 temper, but also the effects of the calamity on trade, 
 on the appearance of the town and on the spirits of the 
 people, as well as many illustrative stories. The 
 newspapers of the times furnished him with the weekly 
 Bills of Mortality, the progress of the contagion, 
 weather conditions, movements of the Court, procla- 
 mations regarding fasts, inhibitions of fairs in various 
 parts of the kingdom, the building of fires in the 
 streets in an attempt to check the spread of the disease, 
 orders and prescriptions of the College of Physicians, 
 the activities of the Mayor and Aldermen, advertise- 
 ments of the quacks, the lists of charitable contribu- 
 tions the alarms raised by the comets of 1664, together 
 with the numerous interpretations of their meaning, 
 accounts of other prodigies, stories about victims of 
 the Plague, etc., etc. The newspapers, were a perfect 
 mine of plague materials. The Bills of Mortality, 
 prepared by the Parish Clerks, were also available in 
 print as well as A Collection of Very Valuable and 
 Scarce Pieces Relating to the Plague. This last was 
 much used by Defoe. Almanacks and other printed 
 prognostications and predictions were only too numer- 
 ous. 
 
 A second fruitful source that Defoe drew upon in 
 writing his Journal of the Plague was his own mem- 
 ory of the eventful happenings of 1665, and especially 
 the many stories related to him by the survivors of 
 the Plague. By survivors, I do not mean simply 
 
 [98] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 those who were still alive in 1722 (of whom there must 
 have been many), but also those who lived ten, or even 
 five, years after 1665, when Defoe was at the greatest 
 impressionable age to retain and appreciate the awful- 
 ness of the calamity. Thus, for instance, there is no 
 anachronic reason why Defoe should not have known 
 personally — and in some cases for years — nearly every 
 one of the authors of the printed sources mentioned in 
 the course of this discussion. Of course there were 
 scores of other survivors of the Plague from whom 
 he could have heard the various stories which he re- 
 lates. Besides, it is not to be forgotten that a disaster 
 of such magnitude was no nine-days wonder ; it must 
 have furnished the topic for the evening fireside for 
 many a year after the event. All of this was revivi- 
 fied and retold when the news of the Marseilles Plague 
 reached England. Doubtless, many of Defoe's stories 
 were first-hand; and, anyhow, it was unnecessary 
 for him to invent any of them, — nothing could surpass 
 the real facts, whether they were wanted for fiction 
 or for history. 
 
 Of the two kinds of materials used in making up 
 the Journal, the printed are of chief importance. As 
 I have already shown, these form not only the frame- 
 work of the book but also the bulk of it : if it were di- 
 vested of all other features, we would still have left 
 an authentic history of the Plague, as fully demon- 
 strated in section two of this essay. Defoe transcribes 
 the facts without alteration or equivocation. Occa- 
 sionally, when some mere theory (as of the efficacy of 
 fires in the street, shutting-up, or other treatment of 
 the contagion, is under discussion, he expresses an 
 
 [99] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 opinion, a liberty granted to all historians; but even 
 in such case, Defoe offers nothing new beyond his 
 sources, the arguments which he adduces are to be 
 found there. As for the hearsay stories and tradi- 
 tions which he repeats, there is no reason to doubt 
 their authenticity; there are many substantiating 
 parallels. The fact is, Defoe was over-scrupulous in 
 regard to these, often declining to vouch for them. As 
 already pointed out, this has been a chief cause for 
 classing the Journal with fiction. In the first part of 
 this investigation appears a sufficient number of orig- 
 inals, prototypes, and parallels to the stories in the 
 Journal to justify their being classed as historical. 
 All historical students know that two perfectly au- 
 thentic histories may be written from incidents and 
 materials differing slightly in externals but bearing 
 internal resemblances that are unmistakable. More 
 fully to illustrate this fact, I have quoted not only 
 from sources with which Defoe was most certainly 
 acquainted, but also I have drawn from books and 
 manuscripts of which he could not have known. The 
 results, to all intents and purposes, are identical, and 
 for this reason we are compelled to class the Journal 
 of the Plague Year with authentic histories. 
 
 [100] 
 
Excerpts from the Original Sources of the 
 Journal of the Plague 
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 From Nathaniel Hodges's Loimologia: or, An 
 Historical Account of the Plague in London in 
 1665: with precautionary Directions against the 
 like Contagion, John Quincy, M. D., Trans. 
 1720. 
 
 The Plague which we are now to give an account of, 
 discovered the beginnings of its future cruelties about the 
 close of the year 1664; for at that season two or three 
 persons died suddenly in one family in Westminster, at- 
 tended with like symptoms, that manifestly declared their 
 origin: hereupon some timorous neighbours, under appre- 
 hension of a contagion, removed into the city of London, 
 who unfortunately carried along with them the pestilential 
 taint; whereby that disease which before was in its infancy, 
 in a family or two, suddenly got strength and spread 
 abroad its fatal poison; and merely for want of confining 
 the persons first seized with it, the whole city was in a 
 little time irrecoverably infected. Not unlike what hap- 
 pened the year following, when a small spark, from an 
 unknown cause, for want of timely care, increased to such 
 a flame that neither tears of the people nor the profusion 
 of their Thames could extinguish; and which laid waste the 
 greatest part of the City in three days time : and therefore 
 as there happens to be no great difference between these 
 two grievous calamities, this mention of them together may 
 not be improper; and the more especially, because by a 
 like irresistible fate from a fever and a conflagration, both 
 the inhabitants and their houses were reduced to ashes. 
 
 But as soon as it was rumoured amongst the common 
 people, who are always enough astonished at any thing 
 new, that the Plague was in the city, it is impossible to 
 
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HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 relate what accounts were spread of its fatality, and well 
 were it had not the presages been so ominous; every one 
 predicted its future devastation, and they terrified each 
 other with remembrances of a former pestilence; for it 
 was a received notion amongst the common people, that the 
 Plague visited England once in twenty years; as if after a 
 certain interval, by some inevitable necessity, it must re- 
 turn again. But although this conceit, how well soever 
 justified by past experience, did not so much obtain with 
 persons of more judgment, yet this may be affirmed, that it 
 greatly contributed, amongst the populace, both to propa- 
 gate and inflame the contagion, by the strong impressions 
 it made upon their minds. 
 
 And these frightful apprehensions were not a little 
 increased by the predictions of astrologers, from the con- 
 junctions of stars, and the appearances of comets; for 
 although but little regard was given to such things by 
 persons of thought, yet experience duly showed what in- 
 fluence they had with the meaner sort whose spirits being 
 manifestly sunk by such fears, rendered their constitutions 
 less able to resist the contagion. Whosoever duly con- 
 siders it, can never imagine that this pestilence had its 
 origin from any conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in 
 Sagitarius on the tenth of October, or from a conjunction 
 of Saturn and Mars in the same sign on the twelfth of 
 November, which was the common opinion; for all the good 
 that happens during the like conjunctions is assignable to 
 the same causes. 
 
 The like judgment is to be made of comets, how terrible 
 soever they may be in their aspects, and whether they are 
 produced in the higher regions from a conglomeration of 
 many stars, and returning at certain periods; or whether 
 they are lower, and the production of sulphurous exhala- 
 tions, kindled in our own atmosphere; for there is nothing 
 strange in the ascension of heterogeneous particles into a 
 flame, upon their rapid occursions and collisions against 
 each other, howsoever terrible the track of such light may 
 be circumstanced. The people therefore were frightened 
 
 [102] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 without reason at such things, and the mischief was much 
 more in the predictions of the star-gazers than in the stars 
 themselves: nothing however could conquer their sad im- 
 pressions, so powerful were they amongst the populace 
 who anticipated their unhappy fate with their fears, and 
 precipitated their own destruction. 
 
 But to pass by things of less moment, it is to be taken 
 notice that a very hard frost set in in December, which 
 continued three months, and seemed greatly to deaden the 
 contagion, and very few died during that season; although 
 even then it was not extinguished, for in the middle of 
 Christmas holidays, I was called to a young man in a fever, 
 who after two days course of alexiterial medicines, had 
 two risings about the bigness of a nutmeg broke out, one 
 on each thigh; upon examination of which, I soon dis- 
 covered the malignity, both from their black hue, and the 
 circle round them, and pronounced it to be the plague; in 
 which opinion I was afterwards confirmed by subsequent 
 symptoms, although by God's blessing the patient recovered. 
 
 This case I insert, both to show that this season did 
 not wholly destroy the distemper, although it greatly re- 
 strained it; but upon the frost breaking, the contagion got 
 ground, and gradually got out of its confinements; like a 
 flame that for some time seems smothered, and suddenly 
 breaks out with aggravated fury. 
 
 As soon as the magistracy, to whom belonged the 
 public care, saw how the contagion daily increased, and 
 had now extended itself to several parishes, an order was 
 immediately issued out to shut up all the infected houses, 
 that neither relations nor acquaintance might unwarily re- 
 ceive it from them, and to keep the infected from carrying 
 it about with them. 
 
 But whether this method proved of service or not, is to 
 this day doubtful, and much disputed; but it is my busi- 
 ness here however to adhere to facts, and relate the argu- 
 ments on both sides with all possible impartiality. 
 
 In order whereunto, it is to be observed, that a law was 
 made for marking the houses of infected persons with a 
 
 [103] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 red cross, having with it this subscription, LORD HAVE 
 MERCY UPON US : and that a guard should there continu- 
 ally attend both to hand to the sick the necessaries of food 
 and medicine, and to restrain them from coming abroad 
 until forty days after their recovery. But although the 
 Lord Mayor and all inferior officers readily and effectually 
 put these orders in execution, yet it was to no purpose, for 
 the plague more and more increased; and the consternation 
 of those who were separated from all society, unless with 
 the infected, was inexpressible; and the dismal apprehen- 
 sion it laid them under, made them but an easier prey to 
 the devouring enemy. And this seclusion was on this ac- 
 count much the more intolerable, that if a fresh person 
 was seized in the same house but the day before another 
 had finished the quarantine, it was to be performed over 
 again; which occasioned such tedious confinements of sick 
 and well together that some times caused the loss of the 
 whole. 
 
 But what greatly contributed to the loss of people 
 thus shut up, was the wicked practices of nurses (for they 
 are not to be mentioned but in the most bitter terms) : 
 these wretches, out of greediness to plunder the dead, 
 would strangle their patients, and charge it to the dis- 
 temper in their throats; others would secretly convey the 
 pestilential taint from sores of the infected to those who 
 were well; and nothing indeed deterred these abandoned 
 miscreants from prosecuting their avaricious purposes by 
 all the methods their wickedness could invent; who, al- 
 though they were without witness to accuse them, yet it is 
 not doubted but divine vengeance will overtake such wicked 
 barbarities with due punishment: nay, some were remark- 
 ably struck from heaven in the perpetration of their 
 crimes, and one particularly amongst many, as she was 
 leaving the house of a family, all dead, loaded with her 
 robberies, fell down dead under her burden in the streets: 
 and the case of a worthy citizen was very remarkable, who 
 being suspected dying by his nurse, was beforehand stripped 
 by her; but recovering again, he came a second time into 
 
 [104] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 the world naked. And so many were the artifices of these 
 barbarous wretches, that it is to be hoped posterity will 
 take warning how they trust them again in like cases; and 
 that their past impunities will not be a means of bringing 
 on us again the like judgment. 
 
 Moreover, this shutting up infected houses, made the 
 neighbours fly from theirs, who otherwise might have been 
 a help to them on many accounts; and I verily believe that 
 many who were lost might have now been alive, had not 
 the tragical mark upon their door drove proper assist- 
 ance from them. 
 
 And this is confirmed by the examples of other pesti- 
 lential contagions, which have been observed not to cease 
 until the doors of the sick were set open, and they had the 
 privilege of going abroad; of the same authority is the 
 custom of other nations who have due regard to that liberty 
 that is necessary for the comforts of both body and mind. 
 
 It now remains that we take notice of all that is of 
 any weight on the other side; as therefore it is not at all 
 deemed cruel to take off a mortified limb to save the whole, 
 by a parity of reason is the conduct of a community justi- 
 fiable, who, out of a regard to the public good, put hard- 
 ships upon particular persons; in a pestilential contagion 
 therefore, what can be of more immediate service than 
 securing those that are well from the infection? And the 
 more especially in a disease that reaches not only the body, 
 but taints the very breath; for in this case the infected 
 breathe poisons upon the healthful, and even at the point 
 of death endeavors to infuse that venom to others that 
 conquered them. From this delirious pleasure arises those 
 tricks of transplanting the corruption of a pestilential 
 tumour to another; not to say anything of that woman, 
 who with her importunities drew her unhappy husband into 
 her embraces, which ended his life with hers. 
 
 Again, to take away all doubtings in this case, I am 
 not ignorant of what moment it is to shut up the houses of 
 all those who are infected, according to custom; for by 
 this means a contagion may at first be stifled, which other- 
 
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HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 wise would go beyond any remedy; and with equal ad- 
 vantage might gunpowder be fired, if too much time is 
 not wasted in deliberation, before these things are put 
 into practice. 
 
 But if hereafter again a plague should break out 
 (which God forbid), with submission to superiors, I should 
 think it not improper to appoint proper accommodations 
 out of the city, for such as are yet untouched in infected 
 families; and who should continue there for a certain 
 time; the sick in the meantime to be removed to convenient 
 apartments provided on purpose for them. For by this 
 means, that practice so abhorrent to religion and humanity, 
 even in the opinion of a Mahometan, of shutting up the sick 
 and well together, would be avoided. 
 
 But to return: the infection had long doubtfully 
 reigned, and continued through May and June, with more 
 or less severity; sometimes raging in one part, and then in 
 another, as in a running sort of fight; as often as the num- 
 ber of funerals decreased, great hopes were conceived of its 
 disappearance; then on a sudden again their increase threw 
 all in dejection, as if the whole city was soon to be un- 
 peopled — which uncertainty gave advantage to the dis- 
 temper; because persons were more remiss in their provi- 
 sions against it, during such fluctuation. 
 
 It must not however be omitted, with what precipita- 
 tion the trembling inhabitants left the city, and how they 
 flocked in such crowds out of town, as if London had 
 quite gone out of itself, like the hurry of a sudden con- 
 flagration, all doors and passages are thronged for escape: 
 yet after the chief of the people were fled, and thereby the 
 nourishment of this cruel enemy had been in a great 
 measure taken away, yet it raged still; and although it 
 seemed once to slay as Parthians in their flight, it soon 
 returned with redoubled fury, and killed not by slow paces, 
 but almost immediately upon seizure; not unlike what is 
 often seen in battle, when after some skirmishes of wings, 
 and separate parties, the main bodies come to engage; so 
 
 [106] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 did this contagion at first only scatter about its arrows, 
 but at last covered the whole city with dead. 
 
 Thus therefore in the space of one week were eighty 
 persons cut off, and when things came to extremity, all 
 helps were called in; though it began now to be solely the 
 magistrates' business, how to put a stop to this cruel de- 
 vastation, and save some part of the city at last from the 
 grave; first then therefore were appointed a monthly fast 
 for public prayers, to deprecate the anger of heaven; nor 
 proved it in vain, or were their supplications altogether 
 fruitless; for if we have any regard to the temperature of 
 the season, the whole summer was refreshed with moderate 
 breezes, sufficient to prevent the air's stagnation and cor- 
 ruption, and to carry off the pestilential streams; the heat 
 was likewise too mild to encourage such corruption and 
 fermentation as helps to taint the animal fluids, and pre- 
 vent them from their natural state. 
 
 The Government, however, to the duty of public pray- 
 ers, neglected not to add what assistance might be had 
 from medicines; to which purpose His Majesty, with the 
 Divine helps, called in also all that was human, and by 
 his Royal authority commanded the College of Physicians 
 of London jointly to write somewhat in English that might 
 be a general directory in this calamitous exigence. Nor 
 was it satisfactory to that honoured Society to discharge 
 their regards for the public with that only, but some were 
 chose out of their number, and appointed particularly to 
 attend the infected on all occasions; two also out of the 
 court of Aldermen were required to see this hazardous 
 task executed; so that encouraged with all proper means, 
 this province was cheerfully undertaken, and all possible 
 caution was used fully to answer the intention; but thig 
 task was too much for four persons, and wanted rather the 
 concurrence of the whole Faculty; we were however 
 ashamed to give it up, and used our utmost application 
 therein; but all our care and pains were eluded, for the 
 disease, like the hydra's heads, was no sooner extinguished 
 in one family, but it broke out in many more with ag- 
 
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HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 gravations, so that in a little time we found our task too 
 great, and despaired of putting an entire stop to the in- 
 fection. 
 
 Nor was there at this time wanting the help of very 
 great and worthy persons who voluntarily contributed their 
 assistances in this dangerous work; amongst the number 
 of which the learned Dr. Glisson, Regius Professor at Cam- 
 bridge, Dr. Nath. Paget, Dr. Wharton, Dr. Berwick, Dr. 
 Brookes, and many others who are yet alive, deserve very 
 honourable mention; but eight or nine fell in this work;, 
 who were too much loaded with the spoils of the enemy; 
 and amongst these was Dr. Conyers whose goodness and 
 humanity claim an honourable remembrance with all who 
 survive him. 
 
 After then all endeavours to restrain the contagion 
 proved of no effect, we applied ourselves to the care of the 
 diseased; and in the prosecution of which, it may be af- 
 firmed without boasting, no hazards to ourselves were 
 avoided. But it is incredible to think how the plague 
 raged amongst the common people, insomuch that it came 
 by some to be called "the poor's plague." Yet, although 
 the more opulent had left the town, and that it was almost 
 left uninhabited, the commonality that were left felt little 
 of want; for their necessities were relieved with a profu- 
 sion of good things from the wealthy, and their poverty 
 was supported with plenty. A more manifest cause there- 
 fore for such a devastation amongst them I shall assign 
 in another place. 
 
 In the months of August and September, the contagion 
 changed its former slow and languid pace, and having as 
 it were got master of all, made a most terrible slaughter, 
 so that three, four, or five thousand died in a week, and 
 once eight thousand. Who can express the calamities of 
 such times ? The whole British nation wept for the miseries 
 of her metropolis. In some houses carcasses lay waiting 
 for burial, and in others persons in their last agonies; in 
 one room might be heard dying groans, in another the 
 raving of delirium, and not far off relations and friends 
 
 [108] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 bewailing both their loss and the dismal prospect of their 
 own sudden departure. Death was the sure midwife to all 
 children, and infants passed immediately from the womb 
 to the grave. Who would not burst with grief to see the 
 stock for a future generation hanging upon the breasts of 
 a dead mother? Or the marriage-bed changed the first 
 night into a sepulchre, and the unhappy pair meet with 
 death in their first embraces? Some of the infected ran 
 about staggering like drunken men, and fell and expired 
 in the streets; while others lie half -dead and comatose, but 
 never to be waked but by the last trumpet; some lie 
 vomiting as if they had drunk poison; and others fell dead 
 in the market, while they were buying necessaries for the 
 support of life. Not much unlike was it in the following 
 conflagration, where altars themselves became so many 
 victims, and the finest churches in the whole world carried 
 up to heaven supplications in flames, while their marble 
 pillars wet with tears melted like wax; nor were monu- 
 ments secure from the inexorable flames, where many of 
 their venerable remains passed a second martyrdom; the 
 most august palaces were soon laid waste, and the flames 
 seemed to be in a fatal engagement to destroy the great 
 ornament to commerce; and the burning of all the com- 
 modities of the world together seemed a proper epitome of 
 this conflagration; neither confederate crowns nor the 
 drawn swords of kings could restrain its phanatic and rebel- 
 lious rage; large halls, stately houses, and the sheds of the 
 poor were together reduced to ashes; the sun blushed to 
 see himself set, and envied those flames the government of 
 the night, which had rivalled him so many days. As the 
 city, I say, was afterwards burnt without any distinction, 
 in like manner did this plague spare no order, age, or sex. 
 The divine was taken in the very exercise of his priestly 
 office to be enrolled amongst the saints above; and some 
 physicians, as before intimated, could not find assistance 
 in their own antidotes, but died in the administration of 
 them to others; and although the soldiery retreated from 
 the field of death, and encamped out of the city, the con- 
 
 [109] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 tagion followed and vanquished them. Many in their old 
 age, others in their prime, sunk under its cruelties. Of the 
 female sex most died; and hardly any children escaped; 
 and it was not uncommon to see an inheritance pass suc- 
 cessively to three or four heirs in as many days. The 
 number of sextons was not sufficient to bury the dead; 
 the bells seemed hoarse with continual tolling, until at 
 last they quite ceased; the burying places would not hold 
 the dead, but they were thrown into large pits dug in 
 waste grounds, in heaps, thirty or forty together; and it 
 often happened that those who tended the funerals of their 
 friends one evening were carried the next to their long home. 
 . . . Quis talia fundo 
 
 Temper et a lachrymisf 
 Even the relation of this calamity melts me into tears. 
 And yet the worst was not certain, although the city was 
 near drained by her funerals, for the disease as yet had 
 no relaxation. 
 
 About the beginning of September, the disease was at 
 its height; in the course of which month more than twelve 
 thousand died in a week. But at length, that nothing might 
 go untried to divert the contagion, it was ordered by the 
 governors who were left to superintend those calamitous 
 affairs (for the Court was then removed to Oxford), to 
 burn fires in the streets for three days together; yet while 
 this was in debate, the physicians concerned were diffident 
 of the success, as the air in itself was uninfected, and there- 
 fore rendered such a showy and expensive a project super- 
 fluous and of no effect; and these conjectures we supported 
 by the authority of antiquity, and Hippocrates himself; 
 notwithstanding which, the fires were kindled in all the 
 streets. But alas! the controversy was soon decided, for 
 before the three days were quite expired the heavens both 
 mourned so many funerals, and wept for the fatal mistake, 
 so as to extinguish even the fires with their showers. I shall 
 not determine any other person's conjecture in this case, 
 whether these fires may more properly be deemed the 
 ominous forerunners of the ensuing conflagrations, or the 
 
 [110] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 ensuing funerals; but whether it was from the suffocating 
 qualities of the fuel, or the wet constitution of the air that 
 immediately followed, the most fatal night ensued wherein 
 more than four thousand perished. May posterity by this 
 mistake be warned, and not, like empirics, apply a remedy 
 where they are ignorant of the cause. 
 
 The reader is by the way to be advertised that the 
 year was luxuriant in most fruits, especially cherries and 
 grapes which were at so low a price that the common peo- 
 ple surfeited with them; for this might very much con- 
 tribute to the disposition of the body, as made this pestilen- 
 tial taint more easily take place. 
 
 Nor ought we here to pass by the beneficent assistance 
 of the rich, and the care of the magistrates ; for the markets 
 being open as usual, and a great plenty of all provisions 
 was a great help to support the sick, so that there was the 
 reverse of a famine which hath been observed to be so fatal 
 to pestilential contagions ; and in this the goodness of heaven 
 is always to be remembered, in alleviating a common misery 
 by such a provision of good things from the stores of 
 nature. 
 
 But as it were to balance this immediate help of 
 Providence, nothing was otherwise wanting to aggravate 
 the common destruction, and to which nothing more con- 
 tributed than the practice of chymists and quacks, and of 
 whose audacity and ignorance it is impossible to be alto- 
 gether silent. They were indefatigable in spreading their 
 antidotes; and although equal strangers to all learning as 
 well as physic, they thrust into every hand some trash or 
 other under the disguise of a pompous title. No country, 
 surely, ever abounded with such wicked impostors; for all 
 events contradicted their pretensions, and hardly a person 
 escaped that trusted to their delusions. Their medicines 
 were more fatal than the plague, and added to the numbers 
 of the dead. But these blowers of the pestilential flame 
 were caught in the common ruin, and by their death in 
 some measure excused the neglect of the magistrates in 
 suffering their practice. 
 
 [in] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 . . . Nee lex est justior ulla 
 
 Quam necis artifices arte perire sua. 
 
 About this time a person of distinction and great 
 humanity, going to France upon some affairs of State, 
 heard that some Frenchmen were masters of the anti- 
 pestilential remedy, and took care to send some doses of 
 it over here. By command of {he Government we were 
 ordered to try it with due caution, which we did with ex- 
 pectations of uncommon success; but the mountain brought 
 forth death, for the medicine, which was a mineral prepara- 
 tion, threw the patients into their last sleep. May it never 
 hereafter be enjoined to try experiments with unknown and 
 foreign medicines upon the lives even of the meanest 
 persons! For certainly nothing is more abhorrent to 
 reason than to impose a universal remedy in cases whose 
 curative intentions are different and sometimes opposite; 
 and the various indications of pestilence require very dif- 
 ferent methods of remedy, as shall hereafter be further 
 demonstrated [in the Section dealing with the "Cure of 
 the Pestilence"]. 
 
 To this may be added that many common medicines 
 were publicly sold, which by their extraordinary heat and 
 disposition to inflame the blood could never be fit for every 
 age, sex, and constitution indifferently, and therefore in 
 many cases must undoubtedly do harm. On this account 
 not only the sacred art, but the public health also, suffered ; 
 yet we who were particularly employed in this affair as 
 physicians, used all solicitations with the magistracy to 
 restrain such practices in order to stop the ruin they ag- 
 gravated. Hence, notwithstanding it was made a question 
 whether in a plague, where so many physicians retire (not 
 so much for their own preservation as the service of those 
 whom they attend), it is not expedient for every one, ac- 
 cording to his abilities, to do his utmost in averting a com- 
 mon ruin? In the same manner as in a fire all hands are 
 required, even of the crowd as well as workmen, to ex- 
 tinguish it. 
 
 [112] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 But in this case my own opinion is determined: in the 
 restoration of health, a person must proceed with more 
 caution and deliberation than in the supposed case of a 
 fire; for there are difficulties occur in the practice of medi- 
 cine which are insuperable but by the unlearned; and the 
 fine texture of a human body is not to be managed by as 
 clumsy hands as the materials of a house; in the former, 
 if a person makes a mistake, it is with great difficulty re- 
 paired; and, therefore, upon a serious consideration of 
 the whole affair, I cannot make any doubt, but it is much 
 better to want physicians in such calamities, than to have 
 the sick under the care and management of the unlearned; 
 for such persons, like those who fight blindfold, know not 
 in what parts to attack the enemy, nor with what weapons 
 to do it; besides which, they are also in hazard of obstruct- 
 ing these efforts of nature, which would many times without 
 help, if not thus hindered, get the better of the distemper. 
 
 Nor in this account are we to neglect, that the con- 
 tagion spread its cruelties into the neighbouring countries; 
 for the citizens, which crowded in multitudes into the adja- 
 cent towns, carried the infection along with them, where 
 it raged with equal fury; so that the plague, which at first 
 crept from one street to another, now reigned over whole 
 counties, leaving hardly any place free from its insults; 
 and the towns upon the Thames were more severely handled, 
 not perhaps from a great moisture in the air from thence, 
 but from the tainted goods rather that were carried up it. 
 Moreover, some cities and towns of the most advantageous 
 situation for a wholesome air, did notwithstanding feel the 
 common ruin. Such was the rise and such the progress of 
 this cruel destroyer which first began at London. 
 
 But the worst part of the year being now over, and the 
 height of the disease, the plague by leisurely degrees de- 
 clined, as it had gradually made its first advances; and be- 
 fore the number infected decreased, its malignity began to 
 relax, insomuch that few died, and those chiefly such as were 
 ill managed. Hereupon that dread which had been upon 
 the minds of the people wore off; and the sick cheerfully 
 
 [113] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 used all the means directed for their recovery; and even 
 the nurses grew either more cautious or more faithful; 
 insomuch that after some time a dawn of health appeared 
 as sudden and as unexpected as the cessation of the follow- 
 ing conflagration, wherein after blowing up of houses, 
 and using all means for its extinction to little purpose, the 
 flames stopped as it were of themselves, for want of fuel 
 or out of shame for having devoured so much. 
 
 The pestilence however did not stop for want of sub- 
 jects to act upon (as then commonly rumoured), but from 
 the nature of the distemper its decrease was like its be- 
 ginning, moderate; nor is it less to be wondered at that as 
 at the rise of the contagion all other distempers went into 
 that, so now at its declension that degenerated into others, 
 as inflammations, headaches, quinsies, dysenteries, smallpox, 
 measles, fevers, and hectics; wherein that also yet pre- 
 dominated, as hereafter will be further shown [in the 
 Section on "The Signs of the late Pestilence"]. 
 
 About the close of the year, that is, on the beginning 
 of November, people grew more healthful, and such a dif- 
 ferent face was put upon the public, that although the 
 funerals were yet frequent, yet many who had made most 
 haste in retiring, made the most to return, and came into 
 the city without fear; insomuch that in December they 
 crowded back as thick as they fled. The houses which be- 
 fore were so full of the dead, were inhabited now by the 
 living, and the shops which had been most part of the year 
 shut up were again opened, and the people again cheerfully 
 went about their wonted affairs of trade and employ; and 
 even, what is almost beyond belief, those citizens who be- 
 fore were afraid of their friends and relations, would with- 
 out fear enter the houses and rooms where infected persons 
 had but a little while before breathed their last. Nay, such 
 comforts did inspire the languishing people, and confi- 
 dence, that many went into the beds where persons had 
 died, before they were even cold or cleansed from the 
 stench of the diseased. They had the courage now to 
 marry again, and betake to the means of repairing the 
 
 [114] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 past mortality; and even women before deemed barren 
 were said to prove prolific, so that although the contagion 
 had carried off, as some computed, about one hundred 
 thousand, after a few months their loss was hardly dis- 
 cernible, and thus ended this fatal year. 
 
 But the next Spring, indeed, appeared some' remains 
 of the contagion, which was easily conquered by the physi- 
 cians, and, like the termination of a common intermittent, 
 ended in a healthful recovery; whereupon the whole ma- 
 lignity ceasing, the city returned to a perfect health; not 
 unlike what happened also after the last conflagration, 
 when a new city suddenly arose out of the ashes of the 
 old, much better able to stand the like flames another time. 
 
 [U5] 
 
APPENDIX B. 
 
 From Vincent's God's Terrible Voice in the City, 1667. 
 
 It was in the year of our Lord 1665, that the Plague 
 began in our City of London, after we were warned by the 
 great Plague in Holland, in the year 1664, and the begin- 
 ning of it in some remote parts of our Land in the same 
 year; not to speak any thing whether there was any signifi- 
 cation and influence in the Blazing-Star not long before, 
 that appeared in the view of London, and struck some 
 amazement upon the spirits of many: It was in the month 
 of May that the Plague was first taken notice of; our Bill 
 of Mortality did let us know of but three which died of 
 the disease in the whole year before; but in the beginning 
 of May the Bill tells us of nine, which fell by the Plague, 
 one just in the heart of the City, the other eight in the 
 Suburbs. This was the first arrow of warning that was 
 shot from Heaven amongst us, and fear begins quickly to 
 creep upon peoples hearts; great thoughts and discourse 
 there is in Town about the Plague, and they cast in their 
 minds whither they should go if the Plague should increase. 
 Yet when the next weeks Bill signifieth to them the di- 
 sease from 9 to 3, their minds are something appeased; 
 discourse of this subject cools; fears are husht; and hope 
 takes place, that the black cloud did but threaten, and 
 give a few drops; but the wind would drive it away. But 
 when in the next Bill the number of the dead by the Plague 
 is amounted from 3 to 14, and in the next to 17, and in 
 the next to 43, and the disease begins so much to increase 
 and disperse, [fears are again aroused]. 
 
 Now secure sinners begin to be startled, and those 
 that would have slept at quiet still in their nests, are un- 
 willingly awakened. Now a great consternation seizeth 
 upon most persons, and fearful bodings of a desolating 
 judgment. Now guilty sinners begin to look about them, 
 
 [116] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 and think with themselves into what corner of the Land 
 they might fly to hide them. Now the prophane and 
 sensual, if they have not remorse for their sins, yet dread 
 and terrors, the effects of guilt, they could not drive from 
 them ; and if by company, and carousing, and soft pleasures 
 they do intoxicate and smoothen their spirits in the day; 
 yet we may guess what dread doth come upon them, if 
 they give but any room for retirement, and what hideous 
 thoughts such persons have in the silent night, through 
 fears of death which they are in danger of. Now those 
 who did not believe in any unseen God, are afraid of un- 
 seen arrows; and those which slighted Gods threatnings of 
 eternal judgments, do tremble at his execution of one, and 
 not the greatest temporal judgment. Now those which had 
 as it were challenged the God of Heaven, and defied him 
 by their horrid oaths and blasphemies, when he begins to 
 appear, they retreat, yea fly away with terror and amaze- 
 ment. The great Orbs begin first to move; the Lords and 
 Gentry retire into their Countries; their remote houses are 
 prepared, goods removed, and London is quickly upon 
 their backs: few training Gallants walk the streets: few 
 spotted Ladies to be seen at windows: a great forsaking 
 there was of the recent places where the Plague did first 
 rage. 
 
 In June the number encreaseth from an 43 to 112; the 
 next week to 168, the next to 267, the next to 470, most 
 of which encrease was in the remote parts; few in this 
 month within, or near the walls of the City; and few that 
 had any note for goodness or profession, were visited at 
 first; God gave them warning to think and prepare them- 
 selves; yet some few that were choice, were visited pretty 
 soon, that the best might not promise to themselves a 
 supercedeas, or interpret any place of Scripture so liter- 
 ally, as if the Lord had promised an absolute general im- 
 munity and defence of his own people from this disease 
 of the Plague. 
 
 Now the Citizens of London are put to a stop in the 
 career of their trade; they begin to fear whom they con- 
 
 [117] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 verse withall, and deal withall, lest they should have come 
 out of infected places. Now Roses and other sweet Flowers 
 wither in the Garden, are disregarded in the Markets, and 
 people dare not offer them to their noses, lest with their 
 sweet savour, that which is infectious should be atraeted: 
 Rue and Wormwood is taken into the hand; Myrrhe and 
 Zedoary are taken into the mouth; and without some anti- 
 dote few stir abroad in the morning. Now many houses 
 are shut up where the Plague comes, and the inhabitants 
 shut in, lest coming abroad should spread infection. It 
 was very dismal to behold the Red Crosses, and read in 
 great letters LORD HAVE MERCY UPON US, on the 
 doors, and Watchmen standing before them with Halberts, 
 and such a solitude about those places, and people passing 
 by them so gingerly, and with such fearful looks, as if they 
 had been lined with enemies in ambush, and waited to 
 destroy them. 
 
 Now rich Tradesmen provide themselves to depart; if 
 they have not Countrey-houses, they seek Lodgings abroad 
 for themselves and Families, and the poorer Tradesmen, 
 that they may imitate the rich in their fear, stretch them- 
 selves to take a Countrey-journey, though they have scarce 
 . wherewithall to bring them back again. The Ministers also 
 (many of them) take occasion to go to their Countrey- 
 places for the Summer-time; or (it may be) to find out 
 some few of their Parishioners that were gone before them, 
 leaving the greatest part of their Flock without food or 
 physick, in the time of their greatest need. (I don't speak 
 of all Ministers, those which did stay out of choice and 
 duty, deserve true honour). ... I do not blame many 
 Citizens retiring, when there was so little trading, and 
 the presence of all might have help forward the encrease 
 and spreading of the Infection; but how did guilt drive 
 many away, where duty would have engaged them to stay 
 in the place? Now the highways are thronged with pas- 
 sengers and goods, and London doth empty itself into the 
 Countrey; great are the stirs and hurries in London by 
 the removal of so many families ; fear puts many thousands 
 
 [118] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 on the wing, and those think themselves most safe, that can 
 flye furtherest off from the City. 
 
 In July the Plague encreaseth and prevaileth exceed- 
 ingly, the number of 470 which dyes in one week by the 
 disease, ariseth to 725 the next week, to 1089 the next, to 
 1843 the next, to 2010 the next. Now the Plague com- 
 passeth the Walls of the City like a flood, and poureth in 
 upon it. Now most Parishes are infected both without and 
 within: yea, there are not so many houses shut up by the 
 Plague, as by the owners forsaking them for fear of it ; 
 and the Inhabitants be so exceedingly decreased by the 
 departure of so many thousands, yet the number of dying 
 persons encrease fearfully. Now the Countries keep 
 guards, lest infectious persons from the City bring the 
 Disease into them; most of the rich are now gone, and the 
 middle sort will not stay behind; But the poor are forced 
 (through poverty) to stay, and abide the storm. Now most 
 faces gather paleness, and what dismal apprehensions do 
 then fill their minds, what dreadful fears do there possess 
 their spirits. . . , and the very sinking fears they have had 
 of the Plague, hath brought the Plague and the death 
 upon many; some by the sight of a Coffin in the streets, 
 have fallen into a shivering, and immediately the death 
 hath assaulted them, and clapt too the doors of their 
 houses upon them, from whence they have come forth no 
 more, till they have been brought forth to their graves; we 
 may imagine the hideous thoughts, and horrid perplexity 
 of mind, the tremblings, confusions, and anguish of spirit, 
 which some awakened sinners have had, when the Plague 
 hath broke in upon their houses, and seized upon near 
 Relations, whose dying groans sounding in their ears have 
 warned them to prepare; when their doors have been shut 
 up, and fastned on the outside with an Inscription, 
 Lord have mercy upon us, and none suffered to come in 
 but a nurse, whom they have been more afraid of than 
 the Plague itself; when Lovers and Friends, and Com- 
 panions in sin have stood aloof, and not dared to come 
 nigh the door of the house, lest death should issfre forth 
 
 [119] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 from thence upon them, especially when the disease hath 
 invaded themselves, and first began with a pain and diziness 
 in their head, then trembling in their own members; when 
 they have felt boiles to arise under their arms, and in 
 their groins, and seen blains to come forth in other parts: 
 when the disease hath wrought in them to that height, as 
 to send forth those spots which (most think) are the 
 certain Tokens of near approaching death; and now they 
 have received the sentence of death within themselves, and 
 have certainly concluded, that within a few hours they 
 must go down into the dust, and their naked souls, without 
 the case of their body, must make its passage into eternity, 
 and appear before the Highest Majesty, to render their 
 accounts, and receive their sentence: None can utter the 
 horror which hath been upon the spirits of such, through 
 the lashes and stings of their guilty consciences, when they 
 have called to mind a life of sensuality, and profaneness, 
 their uncleanness, drunkenness, injustice, oaths, curses, 
 derision of Saints and holiness, neglect of their own salva- 
 tion, and when a thousand sins have been set in order, 
 before their eyes, with another aspect than when they 
 looked upon them in the temptation. . . . 
 
 In August . . . the people fall as thick as leaves from 
 the Trees in Autumn . . ., and there is a dismal solitude in 
 London-streets. . . . Now shops are shut in, people rare 
 and very few that walk about, insomuch that the grass 
 begins to spring up in some places, and a deep silence al- 
 most in every place, especially within the Walls; no rat- 
 tling Coaches, no prancing Horses, no calling in Customers, 
 nor offering Wares, no London Cryes sounding in the ears; 
 if any voice be heard it is the groans of dying persons, 
 breathing forth their last; and the Funeral-knells of them 
 that are ready to be carried to their Graves. Now shutting 
 up of Visited-Houses (there being so many) is at an end, 
 and most of the well are mingled among the sick, which 
 otherwise would have got no help. Now in some places 
 where the people did generally stay, not one house in an 
 hundred but is infected, and in many houses half the 
 
 [120] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 Family is swept away; in some the whole, . . . Now the 
 nights are too short to bury the dead, the whole day (though 
 at so great a length) is hardly sufficient to light the dead 
 that fall therein, into their beds. 
 
 Now we could hardly go forth, but we should meet 
 many Coffins, and see many with sores and limping in the 
 streets; amongst other sad spectacles, methought two were 
 very affecting; one of a woman coming alone, and weeping 
 by the door where I lived (which was in the midst of the 
 infection) with a little Coffin under her arm, carrying it 
 to the new Church-yard: I did judg that it was the 
 mother of the child, and that all the Family besides was 
 dead, and she was forced to Coffin up, and bury with her 
 own hands this her last dead child. Another, was of a man 
 at the corner of the Artillery-wall, that as I judg through 
 the diziness of his head with the disease, which seized upon 
 him there, had dasht his face against the wall, and when I 
 came by, he lay hanging with his bloody face over the rails, 
 and bleeding upon the ground; and as I came back he 
 was removed under a tree in More-fields and lay upon his 
 back; I went and spake to him; he could make me no 
 answer, but ratled in the throat, and as I was informed, 
 within half an hour dyed in the place. 
 
 It would be endless to speak what we have seen and 
 heard of some of their frensies, rising out of their beds 
 and leaping about their rooms; others crying and roaring 
 at their windows; some coming forth almost naked, and 
 running into the streets; strange words have others spoken 
 and done when the disease was upon them; But it was 
 very sad to hear of one who being sick alone, and it is 
 likely frantick, burnt himself in his bed. Now the Plague 
 had broken in much amongst my acquaintance; and about 
 sixteen or more whose faces I used to see every day in our 
 house, within a little while I could find but four or six 
 of them alive; scarcely a day passed over my head for I 
 think a month or more together, but I should hear of the 
 death of some one or more that I knew. . . . 
 
 [121] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 In September the Grave doth open its mouth without 
 measure. . . . The Church-yards now are stuft so full of 
 dead corpses, that they are in many places swelPd two or 
 three feet higher then they were before; and new ground 
 is broken up to bury the dead. 
 
 Now some Ministers, formerly put out of their places, 
 did abide in the City when most of Ministers in place 
 were fled and gone from the people as well as the disease, 
 into the Countreys, seeing the people crowd so fast into 
 the grave and eternity, who seemed to cry as they went, 
 for spiritual physicians; and perceiving that the Churches 
 to be open, and the Pulpits to be open, and finding Pam- 
 phlets flung about the streets, of Pulpits to be let, they 
 judged that the Law of God and Nature did now dispense 
 with, yea command their Preaching in Publick places, 
 though the Law of man . . . did forbid them to do it. . . . 
 
 Now there is such a vast concourse of people in the 
 Churches where these Ministers are to be found, that they 
 cannot many times come near the Pulpit- doors for the 
 press, but are forced to clamber over the Pews to them: 
 And such a face is now seen in the Assemblies, as seldom 
 was seen before in London, such eager looks, such open 
 ears, such greedy attention, as if every word would be 
 eaten that dropt from the mouths of the Ministers. . . . 
 
 About the beginning of these Ministers preaching, espe- 
 cially after their first Fast together, the Lord begins to 
 remit, and turn his hand, and cause some abatement of 
 the disease. 
 
 Now the Citizens who had dispersed themselves abroad 
 into the Countries, because of the Contagion, think of 
 their old Houses and Trades, and begin to return, though 
 with fearfulness and trembling, lest some of the after drops 
 of the storm should fall upon them: and that many of 
 them had not brought back their old hearts and sins, . . . 
 Some return to their Houses and follow their worldly 
 
 [122] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 business, and work as hard as they can to fetch up the 
 time they have lost, without minding and labouring to im- 
 prove by the Judgment, and God's wonderful preservation 
 of them, . . . 
 
 [123] 
 
APPENDIX C 
 
 From Boghurst's Loimographia 
 1665, pr. 1894. 
 
 Almost all that caught this Disease with feare dyed 
 with Tokens in two or three dayes. 
 
 About the beginning most men gott the disease with 
 fadling, surfetting, overheating themselves, and disorderly 
 living. 
 
 Tokens appeared not much till about the middle of 
 June, and carbuncles not till the latter end of July, but 
 were very rife in the Fall about September and October, 
 and seized most on old people, adult, cholerick, and melan- 
 choly people, and generally on dry and leane bodyes. 
 Children had none. 
 
 If very hott weather followed a shower of raine, the 
 disease increased much. 
 
 If in the heate of the disease the winds blew very 
 sharp and cold people dyed very quickly, many lying sicke 
 but one day. 
 
 Shutting up of houses, wickedness, confident, ignorant 
 mountebanks, overhasty cutting and burning sores, in- 
 dulging too much to present ease, removeing servants and 
 poore people to Pest-houses and to other houses in their 
 sicknesse, overstifling and weakening people with too much 
 sweating, overhasty going abroade into the cold, and pre- 
 posterous Physick killed many. 
 
 Though all sorts of people dyed very thicke, both 
 young and old, rich and poore, healthy and unhealthy, 
 strong and weake, men and women of all constitutions, of 
 all professions and places, of all religions, of all condi- 
 
 [124] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 tions good and bad, yet as far as I could discerne the dif- 
 ference of the two, more of the good dyed then of the bad, 
 more men then women, and more of dulle complexions 
 then of faire. 
 
 In the summer before the Plague in 1664 there was 
 such a multitude of Ayes that they lined the insides of 
 houses, and if any threads or stringes did hang downe in 
 any place, it was presently thicke sett with flyes like a rope 
 of onions, and swarms of Ants covered the highways that 
 you might have taken up a handfull at a tyme, both winged 
 and creeping Ants; and such a multitude of croaking 
 froggs in ditches that you might have heard them before 
 you saw them. Also the same summer the Small Pox was 
 so rife in our Parish [of St. Giles in the Fields] that 
 betwixt the Church and the Pound in St. Giles, which is 
 not above six score paces, about forty family es had the 
 Small Pox. 
 
 The Plague was ushered in with 7 months dry weather 
 and westerly windes. 
 
 The Plague hath put itself e forth in St. Giles's, St. 
 Clement's, St. Paul's, Covent Garden, and St. Martin's 
 this 3 or 4 yeares, as I have been certainly informed by 
 the people themselves that had it in their houses in these 
 Parishes. 
 
 The Plague first fell upon the highest ground, for our 
 Parish is the highest about London, and the best aire, yet 
 was first infected. Highgate, Hampstead, and Acton also 
 all shared in it. 
 
 The winds blowing westward soe long together from 
 before Christmas until July, about 7 months, was the 
 cause the Plague began first at the West end of the City, 
 as at St. Giles's and St. Martin's Westminster. Afterwards 
 it gradually insinuated, and crept downe Holborne and the 
 Strand, and then into the City and at last to the East end 
 of the Suburbs; soe that it was half a yeare at the West 
 end of the City before the East end and Stepney was in- 
 
 [125 1 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 feeted, which was about the middle of July. Southwark 
 being the South suburb, was infected almost as soon as the 
 West end. 
 
 The Disease spread not altogether by contagion at first, 
 nor began at only one place, and spread further and 
 further as an eating spreading soare doth all over the body, 
 but fell upon severall places of this City and Suburbs like 
 raine, even at the first at St. Giles's, St. Martin's, Chancery 
 Lane, Southwark, Houndsditch, and some places within the 
 City, as at Proctor's House. 
 
 This year in which the Plague hath raged soe much, 
 noe alteration or change appeared in any element, vegetable 
 or animall, besides the body of man, except only the season 
 of the yeare and the windes, the spring being continuall 
 dry for 6 or 7 months together, there being noe raine at all, 
 but a little sprinkling Showre or two about the latter end 
 of Aprill, which caused such a pitifull crop of Hay in the 
 spring. Only in the Autumne there was a pretty good 
 cropp, but all other things kept their common integrity, 
 as all sorts of fruits, as Apples, Peares, Cherryes, Plums, 
 Mulberryes, Raspes, Strawberryes ; all roots as Parsnipps, 
 Carrotts, Turnips; all flowers, all medicinable Simples, etc., 
 were as plentifull, large, faire, and wholesome; all graine 
 as plentifull and good; all kine, Cattle, Horses, Sheepe, 
 Swine, Doggs, wild Beasts and tame, as healthfull, strong 
 to labour, wholesome to eate as ever they were in any yeare. 
 Though many pedling writers have undertaken to find 
 fault with all these things, and made people so fearfull and 
 carefull of what they eate or dranke, or what they bought, 
 of keeping Doggs, of eating Mutton, Pork, Fish, Fruitts, 
 Rootes, Salletts, especially cherryes, were much exclaimed 
 at, and cucumbers. Yet I believe very few people eate soe 
 much fruit continually as I did this yeare, yet was not 
 once sicke of any disease all the yeare. 
 
 I commonly drest forty soares in a day, held their pulse 
 sweating in the bed half a quarter of an hour together to 
 
 [126] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 give judgement and informe myselfe in the various tricks 
 of [the disease] : I lett one blood, gave glisters, though 
 but to a few, held them up in their bedds to keep them 
 from strangling and choking half an houre together, com- 
 monly suffered their breathing in my face severall tymes 
 when they were dying, eate and dranke with them, espe- 
 cially those that had soares; sate downe by their bedd 
 sides and upon their bedds discoursing with them an houre 
 together if I had tyme, and stayd by them to see the man- 
 ner of their death, and closed up their mouth and eyes 
 (for they dyed with their mouth and eyes very much open 
 and stareing) ; then if people had no body to helpe them 
 (for helpe was scarce at such a tyme and place) I helpt 
 to lay them forth out of the bedd and afterwards into the 
 coffin, and last of all accompanying them to the grave. 
 
 [127] 
 
APPENDIX D 
 
 From Kemp's Brief Treatise 
 1665. 
 
 [The Plague'] sometimes begins with a cold shivering like 
 an Ague, sometimes continues with a mild warmth like Hec- 
 tick Fever or a Diary, and encreaseth with violent heat like 
 Burning Fever. It corrupteth the Blood and all the hu- 
 mours, it afflicteth the Head with pain, the Brain with gid- 
 diness, the Nerves with Convulsions, the Eyes with dimness, 
 making them look as if they had wept, and depriving them 
 of their lively splendor, it makes the Countenance look 
 ghastly, troubling the Ears with noise and deafness; it in- 
 fecteth the Breath with stinking, the Voice with hoarseness, 
 the Throat with soreness, the Mouth with drought, and the 
 Tongue with thirst; the Stomach with worms and want of 
 appetite, with hickhop, nauseousness, retching, and vomit- 
 ing; the Bowels with looseness and the bloody Flix, the 
 Sides with stitches, the Back with pains, the Lungs with 
 flegme, the Skin with fainty and stinking Sweats, Spots, 
 Blains, Botches, Sores, and Carbuncles, the Pulse with 
 weakness, the Heart with sounding and f aintness. It makes 
 feeble like the Palsie, it causes sleepiness like the Lethargy, 
 watchfulness and madness like a Phrensie, and sudden death 
 like the Apoplexy, And these symptomes happen not alike 
 to all. 
 
 The Turks are perswaded, that every ones fate is writ- 
 ten in his fore-head, and hath a fatal destiny appointed by 
 God . . . ; by which credulity, they slight and neglect all care 
 of avoiding the infection, conversing with one another, and 
 buying the goods out of infected houses, and wearing the 
 apparel of them that lately died. . . . Multitudes have been 
 executed by the Plague for this Heresie. . . . 
 
 [1281 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 When the Plague begins to reign in any Place . . ., the 
 Counsel of Hypocrates in advising to change and flye the 
 corrupted air, is, and hath been received as an Oracle, . . . 
 The Antidote made of three Adverbs, Cito, Longe, Tarde, 
 Flie quickly, Go far, and Return slowly, hath oft-times 
 proved effectual. 
 
 And if any of those that will strain at a Gnat, and 
 swallow a Camel, should pretend any scruple of Conscience 
 about the lawfulness of this Remedy, in flying from In- 
 fected Places, and say, out of envy, at the accommodation 
 of others, or discontent that they are not so well provided 
 themselves, or some secret design (as I have heard several 
 express it) The Lord can follow and find them out; they 
 may also understand, that it is not their desire to flie from 
 his presence, but his Plague, not from their gracious God, 
 but from his punishing and fearful rod. . . . But I shall 
 leave these people as diseased in the Pate. . . . 
 
 But now if through Poverty and lack of means to 
 maintain you, and want of friends to receive and entertain 
 you in better air, or having such Callings, from the attend- 
 ance whereon, you cannot with honesty and good conscience 
 absent yourself, but are enforced still to stay . . ., you must 
 then strengthen your Bodies against the Causes of the 
 Sicknesse. 
 
 [129] 
 
APPENDIX E 
 
 From Golgotha, or a Looking -Glass for London, 1665. 
 
 Let me suppose the case therefore to their [i. e, the Col- 
 lege of Physicians'] consciences: 
 
 Whether, if four or five, or more of the skillf ulest and 
 hardiest of themselves, who have given this advice [to shut 
 up infected houses] as Orthodox, against so many thousand 
 poor Innocents, were to be coobed up in one of the poor 
 houses, whereout but one dyed, and with them an old 
 woman, or some ignorant creature (a stranger to them as is 
 usual) for their Nurse, and a sturdy fellow without with an 
 Halberd (or some stricter Watch, as they have advised for 
 others) to have each of them no more than the Parish al- 
 lows ; and the Searchers, Chyrurgeons, &c. they have allowed 
 to visit others, to visit them: if in a month or forty dayes 
 after the last man of them dies, at such a season, so used, 
 they do not think in their own consciences, with all their 
 skill, their carcasses would all or most of them be carried 
 away in the Night- Cart; which now (for fear thereof) are, 
 many of them, got into their Country-Gardens, after their 
 Epistolary Vapour and Cruel Direction aforesaid? How 
 then may poor Women with child, Widows, helpless, friend- 
 less, Fatherless, and sucklings, exposed (without such help, 
 as many have been) and half dead before, it may be by the 
 sudden death of their first dead visited relation, escape the 
 ruin of such further violence upon them? 
 
 Again, I query; If one in the Parish-Meeting-place 
 fall suddenly sick or dye, after sitting there in the crowd 
 two or three hours amongst the multitude; were it not as 
 equal the doors should be shut upon the Assembly, or they 
 in their several Houses shut up, as that some Families (who 
 were further off from the single sick person that dyed 
 therein) should be presently so violently used and exposed? 
 surely, if we would not be so done unto, these wayes then 
 
 [130] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 are unequal, and this violent course not like to abate our 
 Plagues, but is rather a sign and earnest of further Wrath : 
 And God (by leaving the Nation to be in love with such 
 unnatural Advice) is, it's to be feared, paving a way for his 
 Anger, in that more general shutting-up as a just Judgment 
 on many accounts, prophesied of such a provoking City, 
 Isa. 24, 10, 11, 12. The City of confusion is broken down, 
 every house is shut up, &c. 
 
 3dly. It's full of evil effects, to the encrease of 
 Plagues, and that not only as it provokes God as aforesaid, 
 but naturally distracts men, filling them with horror of 
 heart, but those that are shut-up, and those that live daily 
 in the fear thereof; Most that are shut-up being surprized, 
 unprovided, unsettled in house and heart, needing then most 
 the use of a sure friend, made for the day of adversity. Pro. 
 17. 17. An Interpreter as Elihu speaks, Job 33. 23. one of 
 a thousand &c. and are under soul-sinkings, and none to 
 succour them; their hearts die within them, as Nabals, upon 
 this bad news; not a friend to come nigh them in their 
 many, many, heart and house cares and perplexities, com- 
 pelled (though well) to lie by, or upon the death-bed (per- 
 haps) of their dear relation, drag'd away before their eyes, 
 affrighted children howling by their side, fitted by fainting 
 affliction to receive the impression of a thousand fearful 
 thoughts of the long night they have to reckon before re- 
 lease, after the last of the Family, so dismally exposed, 
 shall sink by degrees, one after another, in the den of this 
 dismal likeness to Hell, contrived by the Advice of the 
 English-College of Doctors: no drop of water (perhaps) 
 but what comes at the leisure of a drunken or careless Hal- 
 berd-bearer at the door: no seasonable administration being 
 as a certainty then for their support, and innumerable evils 
 of this sort incident thereunto: whereof if the ear of any 
 concerned were opened to the cry of the Poor herein, I 
 could (upon knowledge) instance and give plentiful proof 
 of one months misery and ruine already hereby upon many, 
 
 [131] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 enough to make the ears of every one that heareth tingle; 
 and lay the blood of Innocents at the door of the Devisers 
 and Prosecutors of this Barbarism; who also hereby bring 
 no small consternation hourly upon the minds of those who 
 are at liberty thoughtful (to terror) whose turn may be next 
 to fall out of the oversight of their nearest Friends, into the 
 hands of the Halberd, Searchers, and Chyrugion, all 
 strangers to them, so as it may be plague enough to be 
 haunted with, under such distraction and affliction. Hence 
 (I say) are a thousand thoughts created, to such, swoond- 
 ings, faintings, fears, (fitting for infection naturally) as 
 have occasioned some already to lose their precious lives, 
 and many have hardly escaped the effect thereof; who other- 
 wise would not so dread the Visitation, that yet sink down 
 and shiver now through fear hereof, but upon the sudden 
 sight of a House shut-up, and clusters of little Children 
 and tender ones in their windows, who might more ration- 
 ally continue well by separation as they are able, or might 
 be advised by a more charitable care of them, than by such 
 miserable, noisome, melancholy, close imprisonment, which 
 exposeth the Well (shut-up) daily to destruction, and also 
 doth really but prepare a more unquenchable stench, and 
 fest to wreak out of the windows (whilst so shut up) and 
 disperse it self into the City by a more violent concourse 
 to them at the window (though less to their relief) and by 
 opening the doors (upon such choaking-up) for the 
 Searchers and Bearers of the Dead (so daily more prepared 
 for them) and other allowed Visitors, whose walks are far 
 more perilous than twenty times so many left open to keep 
 themselves clean and distant from the Sick and Dead, as 
 else they would, to prevent their own infection. 
 
 Yea, after the House is allowed to be open, and all that 
 are left alive are well after this usage, both they and it are 
 far more Dangerous hereby to others, than before, they 
 were crowded up so long to such a nasty and infecting sta- 
 tion, being the natural and artificial way also hermetically to 
 effect the most forceable and noisome putrifactions, when 
 the Embrio shal be unsealed; common experience having 
 
 [132] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 proved it naturally less perilous to go to twenty visited kept 
 sweet and clean, than to two so noisomly exposed. 
 
 To which I may add, that many for fear thereof do 
 hide their Sores, and, (after a Sweat or two) their Sick- 
 ness also, and go daily about their business so long as they 
 can stand, mingled to much more danger every way: Nor 
 dare any do the office of a Nurse or Friend to those shut-up 
 (nowever necessary for the present distress) till help can be 
 procured (whereby some have been neglected) because it is 
 so penal, that they must be inclosed then themselves, how in- 
 consistent soever to their charge and business, by which 
 there comes no small inconveniency to the Sick, who are 
 forced to take any ignorant Nurse (or worse) in haste, to 
 their great hazard. 
 
 But lastly, I appeal to the experience of this and 
 other parts; how apparently did the hand of the Lord rest 
 (as the antient Citizens familiarly do observe) in the 
 former great Plagues upon this City, when the people were 
 wearied out of this oppression, under cause enough to 
 mourn unto this day, over the cruelty every mercinary had 
 opportunity to commit (as now) under colour hereof. 
 
 [133] 
 
APPENDIX F 
 
 From The Shutting up Infected Houses as it is practised 
 in England Soberly Debated. By way of Address from 
 the poor souls that are Visited to their Breth- 
 ren that are Free. 1665. 
 
 We [who are shut up] are acted by a Principle of self 
 preservation, as well as you [who are fled and are free] , and 
 therefore as soon as we find ourselves or any member of our 
 Families infected, so dradful is it to us to be shut up from 
 all comfort and society, from free and wholsome air, from 
 the care of the Physician, and the Divine, from the over- 
 sight of Friends and Relations, and sometimes even from 
 the very necessities, and conveniences of Nature, that we run 
 as far in City and Country as our feet can carry us, leaving 
 Wives and Children to the Parishes, empty walls, and shops 
 to Creditors, scattering the infection along the streets as we 
 go, and shifting it from Lodging to Lodging with ourselves, 
 till at last we drop in some Alley, Field, or neighbour Vil- 
 lage, calling the people round about by the suddenness of 
 our fall to stand awhile astonished at our deaths, and then 
 take their own; each fearful man of us frighted from his 
 own house, killing his whole Town by surprising them un- 
 prepared; whereas were we permitted to enjoy the content 
 and freedom of our Habitations, we might by Antidotes, 
 cure others, and be cured ourselves. 
 
 See, see, we infect not our next Neighbours, and this 
 sickness spreads not much in any one place, but we carry it 
 from place to place, running from our home as from our 
 places of torment, and thus the Roads are visited, and men 
 travel the same way to the Country, and to their long home : 
 Thus the Contagion hath reached most places round the 
 Citty, which is now as it were beseiged with the judgment, 
 and encompassed with the Visitation and desolation: We 
 have not learned how to manage a sickness, in all likelihood 
 
 [134] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 did persons prepare themselves (upon the first breaking out 
 of the Plague) with Antidotes to visit the sick, who would 
 be very well contented to keep within doors, and converse 
 only with their nearest Friends, (their Physicians and the 
 ghostly fathers) and administer to them such preservatives, 
 and other necessaries the Plague might go no further. 
 •••••• 
 
 This shutting up would breed a Plague if there were 
 none: Infection may have killed its thousands, but shutting 
 up hath killed its ten thousands. Little is it considered how 
 careless most Nurses are in attending the Visited, and how 
 careless (being possessed with rooking avarice) they are to 
 watch their opportunity to ransack their houses; the as- 
 sured absence of friends making the sick desperate on the 
 one hand, and them on the other unfaithful: their estates 
 are the Plague most dye on, if they have anything to lose, to 
 be sure those are sad creatures (for the Nurses in such cases 
 are the off-scouring of the City) have a dose to give them; 
 besides that, it is something beyond a Plague to an ingenious 
 spirit to be in the hands of those dirty, ugly, and unwhol- 
 some Haggs; even a hell it self, on the one hand to hear 
 nothing but screetches, cryes, groans, and on the other hand 
 to see nothing but ugliness and deformity, black as night, 
 and dark as Melancholy: Ah! to lye at the mercy of a 
 strange woman is sad : to leave wife, children, plate, jewels, 
 to the ingenuity of poverty is worse; but who can express 
 the misery of being exposed to their rapine that having 
 nothing of the woman left but shape? 
 
 For another Argument [against shutting up] I alledge 
 the mischief and sad consequence that may arise from the 
 high fits of Frenzy, that usually attend this and all other the 
 like Distempers; wherein the sick (if not restrained by main 
 force of their Attendants) are ready to commit any vio- 
 lence, either upon themselve or other, whether Wife, Mother, 
 or Child. A sad instance whereof we had this last week in 
 Fleet Lane, where the Man of the House being sick, and 
 having a great Swelling, but not without hope of being al- 
 
 [135] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 most ripe for breaking, did in a strong fit rise out of his bed, 
 in spite of all that his Wife (who attended him) could do to 
 the contrary, got his Knife, and therewith most miserably 
 cut his Wife, and had killed her, had she not wrapped up 
 the sheet about her, and therewith saved her self, till by 
 crying out Murther, a Neighbour (who was himself shut 
 up) opened his own doors, and forced into the house, and 
 came seasonably to her preservation. The man is since 
 dead, when in all likelihood (had he not by arising struck in 
 the disease) he might have recovered. 
 
 Add to this a serious consideration of the sad condition 
 of Women neer the time of their Travel, (or newly de- 
 livered) having neither Midwife to help them, nor Nurse to 
 attend them, nor Necessaries provided for them, nor any 
 friends to comfort them; and in this condition have contin- 
 ually for their object their own poor innocent Babes newly 
 brought into the World, either to be starved for want of sus- 
 tenance, or poysoned by the Breasts that should preserve 
 them. 
 
 [136] 
 
APPENDIX G 
 
 From Thucydides' account of the Plague in Athens, 
 
 430 B. C. 
 
 The season was admitted to be remarkably free from 
 ordinary sickness; and if anybody was already ill of any 
 other disease, it was absorbed in this. Many who were in 
 perfect health, all in a moment, and without any apparent 
 reason, were seized with violent heats in the head and with 
 redness and inflamation of the eyes. Internally the throat 
 and the tongue were quickly suffused with blood, and the 
 breath became unnatural and fetid. There followed sneezing 
 and hoarseness; in a short time the disorder, accompanied 
 with a violent cough, reached the chest ; then fastening lower 
 down, it would move the stomach and bring on all the vomits 
 of bile to which physicians have ever given names ; and they 
 were very distressing. An ineffectual retching producing 
 violent convulsions attacked most of the sufferers; some as 
 soon as the previous symptoms had abated, others not until 
 long afterwards. The body externally was not so very hot 
 to the touch, nor yet pale; it was of a livid colour inclining 
 to red, and breaking out in pustules and ulcers. But the 
 internal fever was intense; the sufferers could not bear to 
 have on them even the finest linen garment; they insisted on 
 being naked, and there was nothing which they longed for 
 more eagerly than to throw themselves into cold water. . . . 
 They could not sleep; a restlessness which was intolerable 
 never left them. . . . Some escaped . . . [but] had no sooner 
 recovered than they were seized with a forgetfulness of all 
 things and knew neither themselves nor their friends. . . . 
 Most appalling was the despondency which seized upon any 
 one who felt himself sickening; for he instantly abandoned 
 his mind to despair and, instead of holding out, absolutely 
 
 [137] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 threw away his chance of life. Appalling too was the 
 rapidity with which they caught the infection; dying like 
 sheep if they attended on one another; and this was the 
 principal cause of mortality. 
 
 [138] 
 
APPENDIX H. 
 
 From Harleian MSS. 3,784 and 3,785 
 
 Humphrey Henchman, Bishop of London, to Dr. William 
 Bancroft, Bean of St. Paul's. 
 
 The collection is to be for reliefe of persons and places 
 visited with the sickness, the money to be gathered is to 
 be sent in to the L. Maior for that vse: let the collection 
 at S t: Pauls be as it hath vsed to be vpon such occasions. 
 J haue sent to my Register to disperse the Books, and to 
 giue notice to the Ministers to exhort the people to this 
 charity. J shall be at White Hall on Tuesday. I haue also 
 written to m r - Gifford to make such exhortation. J rest 
 Your very affectionate Brother 
 
 H. LONDON. 
 June 17 [1665] 
 To Reverend Doctor 
 Sancroft Deane of 
 St. Pauls 
 
 London. 
 
 George Davenport to Dean Sancroft. 
 
 Aukland Castle, Jul. 1, 1665. 
 J am very sorry to hear ye sad relation you make 
 about the Pestilence. Wee are in great fear, it will be 
 brought from London to Newcastle. 
 
 Francis Wilson to Dean Sancroft. 
 
 Corp. Xti Coll Camb. 
 July 5, [1665]. 
 
 S' 
 
 We are now in that Condition here in Cambridge by meaius 
 
 of this 2 d Visitation (wch is very sharp) y* we must of 
 
 [139] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 necessity begg. J haue to this purpose made bold to in- 
 close a letter to my L d of London, not knowing how to 
 direct it in case he should be at Fulham, but desiring it may 
 be speedily w th - him, which J doubt not to be effect [ed] by 
 y r meanes. J know you will be ready to promote soe 
 charitable a worke, 
 
 8* 
 
 Y r most affectionate Serv* 
 FRA: WILSON 
 To the Reverend & his hon r ed friend 
 D r Sancroft Dean of S* Pauls 
 London 
 near S* Pauls 
 In his absence to be conveyed to 
 the Right Reverend father in 
 g d the Bp of London. 
 
 Bishop Henchman to Dean Sancroft. 
 M r - Deane [Undated] 
 
 His Ma tie - hath declared his pleasure that a solemn Hu- 
 miliation shall be observed throughout the Kingdome: and 
 hath commaunded my Lord of Canterburie that a Litourgie 
 be forthwith prepared for that vse: whereupon his Grace 
 requires you and me to consider of a Forme: which may 
 soone be done for there hath been frequent occasions of 
 that kind of Service: and there is no further labour for vs 
 but to frame some Collects, all other parts may be vsed 
 with little or no alterations. Jf you haue ready at hand 
 any former Services be pleased to bring them with you here 
 you shall find that of 1625. 1636. and 1640. Jf you can 
 be here to morrow before dinner we shall finish the work 
 before you goe away. The Lord preserve you. 
 
 Your very affectionate 
 Fulham: prsh. Brother 
 
 Sti. Petri HUMFR: LONDON 
 
 For Reuerend D r - Sancroft 
 Deane of S*- Pauls in Angell 
 Court neare S*- Gregories Church. 
 
 [140] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 Stephen Bing to Dean Saneroft. 
 
 [London], 24 July, 1665. 
 Reverend S r - 
 
 M r - Iuett, Price Fisher Warner are out of Town & m r - 
 Webb allmost, for he is not so often w th us as I wish he 
 were. M r - Sub Deane, Masters Clifford & Quaterman whoe 
 only speake of going out of Towne are dilligent & all so 3 
 of the Vicars M r - Cockrey, Simpson, & Morrice th'others 
 are out of the City. I intend God willing to keep close 
 to his WorP- in the Church except great hazard should be- 
 fall mee. D r - Barwick . . . resolues his continuance here, 
 for any thing he knowes. The Lord in mercy look upon 
 us: its said there willbe a great increase this week of the 
 last bill w ch was 1089. its more in S*- Gregories then at 
 your departure. & in an Alley in Pater Noster Rowe & a 
 man & his wife fallen sick in the Petti Canons what the 
 issue of it will be Thursday next will more informe yo u - 
 . . . Wee haue the Prayer & Service performed [3 times 
 a day] as you ordered & that in time & with a reverentiall 
 decency & a comely congregacon considering the times fre- 
 quenting those solemnities. . . . 
 
 Hon ed S r - Your most Faithfull Servant. 
 
 STEPHEN BING. 
 
 Same to same. 
 
 27th j u i V) 1665 
 
 Sr 
 
 People frequent y e Church as before excepting on Sundays 
 and y e last Holyday on w ch wee had a Sermon & shall 
 haue another on the Fast Day: The increase of Gods 
 Judgm t: deads peoples hearts that trading strangely ceas- 
 eth & bills of Exchange are not accepted so y* they shutt up 
 their shopps & such a feare possesseth them as its wonder- 
 full to see how they hurry into the Country as though y« 
 same God were not there y* is in y e City so that those 
 that are living and liued in y e great sickness time saw, 
 
 [141] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 nor knew not y e like when there dyed 4000 a week. I 
 pray God to p r vent a sad Sequel. Great complaint there 
 is of necessity & needs must it be y e more when y e rich 
 hast away y* should supply y e pores want. I haue been 
 since the writing of my last lr: in sevrall places, being in- 
 formed of some y* were shut up to be in a very necessitous 
 condicon to see if it were so or no, & so finding them I haue 
 been bold to extend yo r charity to y e outrunning y e bank 
 you hon ed me with. . . . 
 
 Your WorP s most humble 
 & faithfull Servant 
 STEPHEN BING 
 
 Dr. Peter Barwick to Dean Bancroft. 
 
 Lond. Aug. 3, 1665. 
 M r - Dean 
 
 Wee haue noe neighbours left in y e court [off Ave Marie 
 Lane] besides a Goldsmith of my own trade, but M r - 
 Fleetham locks up y e Avennues every night. We haue 
 several houses infected in the Parish, and one of yo r - 
 own out of w ch - M rs - gallson and one other are dead but 
 God be thanked there is noe fresh house infected within y e - 
 Parish these 10 days that I know of . . . . 
 
 S r - yo r - humble servant 
 
 PE: BARWICK 
 
 These 
 To y e Reverend D r - William 
 Sancroft Dean of S*- Pauls 
 at y e Rose and Crown 
 
 at TUNBRIDGE 
 
 Post pd 
 
 Rev Stephen Bing to Dean Sancroft. 
 
 3 August 1665. 
 
 Reverend & right Wor 11 - 
 
 [142] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 There are now but 3 Petti Canons left viz*- my 
 selfe M r - Clifford & Masters w th 2 Vicars M r - Simpson & 
 Morrice, the rest are out of Towne: M r - Portington lies 
 at the poinct of death whose turne being to officiat this 
 week J supply for none els would doe it except they were 
 payd for it: Little mercy the Lord be mercifull to us; J 
 wish it were as formerly w ch was not so in such case of 
 necessity. . . . 
 
 Your WorP s ' most humble & affectionate Serv*- 
 
 STEPHEN BINGE 
 Its s d - that my L. Bp- of London hath sent to those Pastors 
 that haue quitted their flocks by reason of these times y 1 - 
 if they returne not speedily others will be put into their 
 places. 
 
 Dr. Barwick to Dean Sancroft. 
 
 Lond. Aug. 5, 1665. 
 M r - Dean 
 
 Give me leaue to discharge the part of a frend and to 
 tell you what J haue thought perhaps of noe great moment. 
 Jt will be noe news to tell you (for you will easily imagin 
 it) that y e mouths of a slanderous generation are wide 
 enough open against those that are with drawn both of yo r - 
 profession and ours; but one of my neighbours told me 
 (who J indeed think wishes well both to you and to y e 
 Church) that it was wondered that you would goe, and not 
 leaue any thing that they had heard of behind you for y e 
 poor neighbours. J tould him that in what Cases it was 
 lawfull to goe was not in the skill of every one to deter- 
 mine ; but as for yo r - goeing to y e Wells you had resolved it, 
 and by my advice, long before any plague was heard of, and 
 as f or yo r - charity to y e poor J knew you had given a Con- 
 siderable summe (to a Parish that a little money would 
 not releeve) before you went. . . . 
 
 Stephen Bing to Dean Sancroft. 
 
 7*k August: 1665 
 Reverend & right \Vor 11: 
 
 [143] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 God hath been pleased now to encompas us w th his 
 pestelentiall hand, in 3 places in Carter Lane, in Sermon 
 Lane w ch - is next my house, in y e Lane at y e end of 
 Knightriders street w ch - Leadeth up to yo r Co rt -» in Ave 
 Mary Lane in the Buildings where y e Bp- of London: 
 howse was & in an Alley in Paternoster row & on the back- 
 side in y e Shambles w th severall besides in Christ Church 
 parish in S*- Bennets Pauls Wharfe where its said died 3 
 y e last night & 5 was buryed then out of S*- Gregories & 
 others died; its s d - likewise to be in S t - Andrews in y e 
 Wardrop : yet nevertheles under y e shadow of y e Almighty 
 shall be my refuge until this calamity be overpast. . . . 
 Your most humble & affectionat Serv 1 - 
 
 STEPHEN BING 
 
 These 
 
 To y e Reverend & right Wor 1L 
 Will m - Sancroft Doctor of Divinity, 
 Deane of y e Cathedrall Church of 
 S^ Paul London. 
 
 Present. 
 To be left at y e 
 Rose & Crowne in 
 Tunbridge. 
 
 Same to same. 
 
 10 August 1665. 
 
 Reverend & right Wor 1L 
 
 I haue sent yo u y e Thursdays Intelligence, half of w ch 
 was in th'other sent on Munday w ch - I hope is receaued 
 . . .; likewise y e weekly Bill w ch - is very sad; and y e 
 more sad are our times y* neither calme nor storme will 
 abate y e fury of monstrous spirits whoe in y e face of a 
 Congregacon as at Pauls th'other day, will say these 
 calamities are caused by y e Government in Church & State. 
 The sicknes is break out in 2 places more since Munday in 
 S*- Gregories one dwelling opening into yo r yard & 
 th'other at y e left corner of y e Entry of our going into 
 
 [144] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 y e Church; Its in Cambridg also of w<* I forgot to tell 
 yo*- and whereas I told of 2 sick in ye Petti Canons, Its 
 s d - the Husband died of a Consumpcon but ye wife lies 
 sick of a pi: so as for other places infected in y e Parish 
 I informed in my last. ... 
 
 Your most humble & faithfull Serv*- 
 
 STE. BING 
 D r - Barwick y e constant frequenter of our Church some- 
 times 3 times in a day remembers his service to yo r - worP- 
 
 J. Tillison to Dean Sancroft. 
 
 London August y e 10 th - 1665 
 Reuend S r 
 
 J have not heard from D r Pory since he left London 
 nor do I know how to send to him though his mayd once 
 took a resolution to abide by it; yet it seemes she is fled. 
 ... I doubt yo r wood will hardly be brought to London 
 this somer for I doubt it impossible to gett a Boat to fetch 
 it; yet I haue made it my businesse 2 days together to hire 
 Lighters & can not gett any except one y* will not fetch it 
 vnder 2 s y e Load heretofore y e Church gaue but 14 d y e 
 Load. . . . 
 
 Reuend S r 
 
 Yo r faithfull humble S rt 
 
 JO: TILLISON 
 
 Same to same. 
 
 August y e 15 th : 1665 
 Reverend S r 
 
 J hope y u will not take my simple well meaning amiss 
 nor take it ill if J put y u in minde of our own Pish where 
 there is all this tyme 16 or 17 houses vissitted, a great 
 many of them poore & in want, & y fc some of y e Piahon" 
 as J am informed (j beg yo' Pdon for my good will) doe 
 alittle grumble yt yo« left nothing for y e poore when y« 
 
 [145] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 went away. I Pceive since this, that m r Bing had y e dis- 
 posing of some of yo r charity & J do not doubt but y* 
 he will give y u an account of it. nor do J think it is yo r 
 will y* any Ptiallity should be vsed in this case, it is very 
 Pobable y* some neighbouring Pishes may stand in need, 
 but J am sure y* y e miserable condicon of S* Griles'es 
 Criplegate which is one of yo r peculiars, is more to be 
 pittied then any Pish in or about London where all have 
 liberty least the sick & poore should be famished within 
 dores the Pish not being able to relieue their necessities. 
 J had, not long since such a su[me] as yo rs to distribute, 
 & where J knew not y e necessity of y e poore J pd a su[me] 
 to y e Churchwardens & they to y e overseers of y e poore 
 soe y* J had an account brought to how many Psons in 
 each Pish it was distributed, but this is no rule for yo u: 
 Yo r neighbour & Tenn* ffleetham has his health god be 
 thanked very well, & though his mayd was reported to be 
 dead with his child she is recoued & all y e family well. D r 
 Barwick is very carefull of him & his family & of keeping 
 y e gates duly lockt vp. I was lately att ffullham & my L d 
 [Bishop of London] comanded me to let y u know y* 
 himselfe & family are all in good health. ... J am not 
 certain whether J shall remoue from this place or no. . . . 
 J smoke yo r house twice a week, Tuesdayes & frydayes. . . . 
 Yo r obedient humble S rt 
 
 J. TILLISON 
 
 Same to same 
 
 London August y e 23 th 1665 
 Reverend S r 
 
 Yo r s of Satterday last from Ewell, J have reed. And as 
 far as in me lyes have observed & done yo r comands. J 
 have payd 40 11 to M r Daniell Keilway [Kelloway?], & 5 11 
 to those of y e Choire to whom yo u directed mee, who re- 
 turne theire humble service & thankes, & promise to con- 
 tinue theire constant attendance in y e service of y e Church. 
 J likewise payd 5 11 to y e Churchwardens of S* Gyles's 
 Criplegate since yo r last to me, y e rest of yo r charity J 
 hope m r Bing will give a good account of it. he had 5 11 
 
 [146] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 of yo r last mony from me. Though yo r care could not 
 have been more than it was for furnishinge me with mony 
 to discharge those paym ts - w ch yo u ordered in yo r last, 
 yet all those wayes failed every one. D r Barwick pre- 
 tended yesterday y* he had not soe much mony of his owne 
 to disburse p r sently, but att y e last (though alittle scrupled 
 at first) he was willing to let me take 40 u out of y e Comon- 
 stock & y* we intended to doe this morninge, but god al- 
 mighty has ordred it otherwise, by strikeinge D r Barwick 
 with so desperate sicknesse y* it was not fitt for me to goe 
 to him, nor he in Condicon to be reminded of any such 
 thinge. it seemes not one member but all the parts of his 
 body beares a Parte in his sufferinges, neither riseinge nor 
 botch e does yet appeare. a slow weake Pulse & faintnesse 
 possesses him, his sweating is not much. Seeing this to 
 happen it made me void of hope to effect my businesse, 
 yea & danted me very much too. But after a little Pause 
 J went to S r Robt Viners (there m r welsted's mony lyes) 
 but could not receive one penny vnlesse J brought m r wel- 
 sted's note. J am sorry m r welsted should forget his prom- 
 ise, he is some where towards Vxbridge. 
 
 Yo 1, Tenn* ffleetham dyed this afternoon. Kendrick y e 
 Bellringer has languished since last Sonday we have some 
 hopes this eveninge y* he may recover. Johnson yo r Bay- 
 liff was buried last night. . . . 
 
 Yor faithfull S* 
 
 JO: TILLISON. 
 
 Same to same. 
 
 Sept: 14th. 1665. 
 Reuend S r 
 
 D r Barwick is past all appearances of danger god be 
 praised. . . . The Sacrist is not att home & his wife is 
 dead by y e comon disease. . . . Wee are in good hopes 
 y* god in his mercy will putt a stop to this sad calamity of 
 sicknesse. But y e desolacon of y e Citty is very great, y t 
 heart is either steel or stone y t will not lament for this sad 
 
 [147] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 visitation, & will not bleed for those vnutterable sorrowes. 
 it is a tyme god knowes y* one Woe courts another, those y* 
 are sick are in extream sorrow, y e poore are in need those 
 y* are in health are in feare of infecon on y e one side, & 
 y e wicked intentions of hellish rebellious spiritts to put vs 
 in an vproar on y e other side, what ey: would not weep 
 to see soe many habitaeons vninhabited ? y e poore sick not 
 vissited? y e hungry not fed? y e grave not satisfyed? 
 Death stares vs continually in y e face in every infected 
 Person y* passeth by vs, in every coffin w ch is dayly & 
 hourely carried along y e streets: y e Bells never cease to 
 putt vs in minde of our mortallity. The custom was in y e 
 beginninge to bury y e Dead in y e night onely, now both 
 night and day will hardly be tyme enough to do it, for 
 y e last weeks mortality did too apparently evidence that, that 
 y e Dead was piled in heapes above ground for some houres 
 together before either tyme could be gained or place to 
 bury them in. The Quakers (as we are informed) have 
 buryed in theire peece of ground 1000 for some weekes to- 
 gether last past, many are dead in Ludgate, Newgate & 
 X* church hospitall & many other places about y e towne 
 w ch are not included in y e bill of Mortality. The disease 
 it self (as is acknowledged by our Praction rs in Physick) 
 was more favourable in y e begininge of y e contagion: 
 now more feirce & violent — and they themselves do like 
 wise confesse to stand amazed to meet with soe many 
 various Symptomes w ch they finde amongst theire patients, 
 one week y e gen r11 distempers are botches & Biles; y e 
 next week as cleare skind as may be, but death spares neither, 
 one week full of spotts & tokens; & Phaps y e succeeding 
 bill none at all. Now taken with a vomitting & loosnesse 
 & within 2 or 3 dayes almost a gen rlL rageing madnesse. 
 one while Patients vse to linger 4 or 5 dayes att other tymes 
 not 48 houres. & att this very tyme we finde it more quick 
 then ever it was. many are sick: and few escape, where 
 it has had its fling there it decreases where it has not been 
 long, there it increases, it raigned most heretofore in Al- 
 leys &c: now it domineers in y e open streets. Y e poorer 
 
 [148] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 sort was most afflicted, now y e richer beare a share. 
 Cap* Colchester is dead. ffleetham & all his family 
 are clearly swept away except one mayd. D r Bur- 
 nett D r Glover & one or 2 more of y e Colledge of Physi- 
 tians w th D r Dowd w ch was licensed by my L ds Grace 
 of Canterbury, some surgeons, Apothecaryes, & Johnson 
 y e Chymist dyed all very suddenly, some say (but god 
 forbid y* J should report it for truth) that these in a 
 consultacon together, if not all yet y e greatest parte of 
 them attempted to open a dead corpse w ch was full of y e 
 tokens & being in hand with y e dissected body some fell 
 down dead imediately & others did not out live y e next day att 
 Noone. All is well & in safety att yo r house god be thanked. 
 Brimstone, Vpon Tuesday last J made it my dayes work 
 hops, Peppr & ± k mc ]]e fires in everv roome of y e house 
 
 ff rftiikiriCfc?nse 
 
 Sr: j vse to where J could do it. & aired all y e bed clothes 
 roSnes 6 & bedding att y e fires & soe let them all 
 
 with — lye ly abroad vntil this morning y e feather 
 
 bed in y e back chamber was almost spoiled with y e heavy 
 weight of Carpetts & other things vpon it. — J ame afrayd 
 I have been too tedious & therefore beg yo r Pdon & take 
 my leave who am 
 
 (Reuend S r ) 
 Yo r most faithfull humble ser* 
 
 JO: TILLISON. 
 Sam^ to same. 
 Reuend S r October y e 12th: 1665 
 
 J am afrayd y u will have a very slender account of yo r 
 Tenn ts this Quarter, ffleetham, swinston & his wife, Gul- 
 stone & his wife, & halfe a dozen masters of familyes are 
 dead : w th many more in other familyes. . ' . . 
 Yo r most obedient faithfull ser* 
 
 JO: TILLISON 
 John Overing to Dean Sancroft. 
 
 London 2 d: Nov. 1665. 
 
 Right Worp 11 
 
 In right humble manner I presume to acquaint you, 
 that y e Rectory of S» Mary Maudlins Old fishstreete in 
 
 [149] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 London in your Worps guift is now void by the death of 
 the late reverend divine D r: Matthew Griffith. J know 
 that in duetie J am bound to waite on you in person, 
 to giue you an account hereof, but by reason of the dainger 
 of the times, and the unkindnesse of country people to 
 Londoners, J cannot performe it; not knowing whether 
 at this time it might be accepted by your worp. And there- 
 fore in hopes of your worps pardon, J have writ these 
 lines, humbly desiring your gracious acceptance of them. 
 ... J am incouraged to present this, my humble Supplica- 
 tion, earnestly desiring that your worp will vouch safe to 
 conferr the said Rectory upon your humble petitioner. J 
 haue (Right Worp 11 ) supplyed the cure during all these 
 times of sicknesse, and mortality; and shall yet (God assist- 
 ing) w tn: your worps leaue take the same care of it upon 
 me: hoping that your worp at your returne to London 
 will grant this request of your humble Supplicant. J shall 
 not further trouble your worp at present, but Subscribe my 
 selfe* 
 
 The meanest of yo r worps serv ts: 
 
 JOHN OUERING. 
 
 George Davenport to Dean Sancroft. 
 
 Durham Castle Dec 4 1665 
 M r Dean; 
 
 .... In the first place, God be praised, we are all 
 well. And I do not hear that any place either in the 
 County or Diocesse is infected with the pestilence. . . . 
 
 From a 
 
 Petition of the Bev. Anselm Herford for the Bectory of 
 
 St. Mary Magdalene, Old Fish St. 
 
 London, Decemb y e 9 th 1665. 
 Most Reuerend S r 
 
 Blessed be y e God of heauen it hath pleased his mercie 
 
 *This is a sample of numerous applications made toward the 
 close of 1665 for vacancies in the Church as a result of the Plague. 
 One of these was written on a half sheet of paper as less 
 preiudiciall fro an infected city." ^^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 
 
 [150] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 to preserue me Wonderfullie. When soe manie yea and 
 soe manie ministers too are swept away. I lodged Jn your 
 Worships rents [*. e. with the tenants] because I would be 
 neere the praiers of S* Pauls & of y* familie J lodged with 
 ther's not a soule aliue but it pleas'd god to giue me warn- 
 ing before he graciouslie struck the fatall blow. . . . 
 
 John Cosin, Bishop of Durham to Dean Sancroft. 
 Durham Castle Jan r y 22. 1665 [-6]. 
 M r Deane of St Pauls. 
 
 The Sicknes in these parts thankes be to God is well 
 abated though it lurketh still in some of our Quarter, for 
 y 6 maintenance of those that have been and still are in- 
 fected, wee have been put to lay a Sesse upon the Countrey 
 so small were y e Contribucons of the severall Parishes 
 throughout all my Diocess, but J have now good hope that 
 upon the Account made me both of those Contribucons and 
 Assessm ts: J shall be able to spare 50 u to be sent unto my 
 Lord [Bishop] of London towards the help of those that 
 are infected still in this City. J shall have y e Amount 
 given me on thrsday and if J find so much money remain- 
 ing J will return it to his Lordship by a Bill of Exchange 
 to S r W m Turner by y e morrowes post, so wishing you all 
 good health and hapines J rest 
 
 S* 
 
 Yo r very affectionate ffriend 
 
 JO: D 
 
 George Davenport to Dean Sancroft, 
 
 Durham Castle. Jan. 23. 1665 [-6]. 
 Sir; the business of this is to convey the enclosed, wch tells 
 of money sent for y e poor of London, though the plague 
 is again at Gatside, & this County hath been taxed about 
 250 1 for y* place & others y fc have been infected. . . . 
 
 V r humble Servant, 
 
 G. D. 
 
 [151] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 Joseph Beaumont to Dean Saneroft. 
 S r 
 
 I purpos this day to acquaint our Vicechancell r with 
 what you write touching y e D. of Xtchurch his charity to 
 poor Cambr. Last week none dyed of y e Plague in y e 
 Town; onely One at y e Pest House, but this week it has 
 fallen into a new house in S. Clements parish, & one Woman 
 dead of it. 
 
 S. Peters CoU JSPH BEAUMONT. 
 
 Febr. 1. 1665 [-6] 
 
 [152] 
 
APPENDIX I 
 
 From the Autobiography, and unpublished Letters 
 
 of the Rev. Symon Patrick, Rector of 
 
 St. Paui/s, Covent Garden. 
 
 At the end of 1664 was a very hard frost, which lasted 
 from Christmas till near the middle of April in the year 
 1665, when the plague began to break out, a little after the 
 breaking of the frost. The next month, May 13 th > I went to 
 drink Astrop waters; where I stayed a month, and there 
 met that great man Dr. Willis; who understanding that I 
 intended to return to London, and look after my parish, 
 was wonderfully kind to me, and directed me how to order 
 myself, and often in the time of the plague wrote to me 
 and sent me money to give to the poor. 
 
 After a short visit which I paid to my father and 
 mother, I returned to London in July, where I found the 
 plague already broke out in my parish, notwithstanding 
 which, I resolved to commit myself to the care of God in 
 the discharge of my duty, and accordingly preached July 
 23rd. when I had many heavenly meditations in my mind, 
 and found the pleasure wherewith they filled the soul was far 
 beyond all the pleasure of the flesh. Nor could I fancy any 
 thing would last so long, nor give me such joy and delight, 
 as those thoughts which I had of the other world, and the 
 taste which God vouchsafed me of it. . . . About the middle 
 of August I set myself to write a short exhortation to those 
 who were shut up because of the plague, and just when I 
 had finished it heard the melancholy news of my father's 
 death, on the 15th ; upon which I wrote a letter to comfort 
 my mother, wherewith I much comforted myself; . . . And 
 on the 30th. I thought of writing a little treatise of com- 
 fort in this sad time, which I finished and sent to my 
 bookseller September the first, praying the blessing of 
 
 [153] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 Heaven might attend upon these my little labours for the 
 good of souls. 
 
 On the 3rd my brother was taken very ill, and vomited 
 forty or fifty times, and my servant also had a swelled face, 
 and I myself also had a sore pain in my leg, which broke my 
 sleep, and made me suspect some touch of the plague, 
 which was now come to its height, there dying ten thou- 
 sand in one week. But blessed be God all these maladies 
 went over without danger. On the 9th I set myself to 
 consider the great goodness of God to me since this plague, 
 and how many dangers I had been in by people coming to 
 speak to me out of infected houses, and by my going to 
 those houses to give them money, which was sent to me by 
 charitable persons to distribute to them in need. Particu- 
 larly Sir William Jones sent me fifty pounds, and many 
 other things which I have noted in a little book, but shall 
 now [not?] here rehearse. One thing I cannot but remem- 
 ber, that preaching a funeral sermon at Battersea, I was 
 desired to let a gentleman come back to London in a coach 
 which I had hired to wait upon me. The gentleman proved 
 an apothecary, who entertained me all the way home with a 
 relation of all the many people he had visited, who had the 
 plague, how they were affected, with the nature of their 
 swellings and sores. But blessed be God, I was not in the 
 least affrighted, but let him go on, without any conceit that 
 he might infect me. 
 
 My poor clerk, a very honest man, found his house in- 
 fected, and acquainted me with it. I was so pitiful as to 
 bid him come out of the house himself, and attend his busi- 
 ness, and I should not be afraid of him. He did so, and 
 his wife and child died of the plague ; but he was preserved, 
 and had a thankful remembrance of my kindness to his 
 dying day, many years after. 
 
 On the 15th of October I preached a sermon, (when 
 the plague began to abate very much) of the remembrance 
 we ought to have of the time of affliction, when God restores 
 to prosperity. It was upon consideration of Psalm xxxviii, 
 whose title is 'a Psalm to bring to remembrance; 7 wherein 
 
 [154] 
 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 I wished them to set down in writing all that they found ob- 
 servable in the late time of danger; their thoughts, their 
 promises and vows, their good resolutions, &c, and to write 
 at the head of them, 'A meditation to bring to remembrance.' 
 And accordingly I noted how good God had been to myself, 
 not only in preserving my life, but giving so much health, 
 and enabling me with cheerfulness to go through my 
 labours; resolving to do my duty still more faithfully for 
 the time to come. 
 
 — From the Autobiography of Symon Patrick, pp. 51-56. 
 From the unpublished correspondence between 
 Symon Patrick and Elizabeth Gauden.* 
 Add. Mss. 5,810. 
 
 Covent Gard Wednesd Morn: 
 Aug: 8. 1665. 
 
 If you think there is any Danger from these Papers, 
 which you receive, the Fire, I suppose, will expell it, if you 
 let them see it before they come to your Hands. . . . 
 For Mrs. Gauden S. P. 
 
 at Hutton-Hall in Essex, these. 
 Same to same. 
 
 Sat: Sept: 8. 1665. 
 
 It was a lovely Season yesterday, & we hoped for some 
 sweete cleare Weather: but it please God, the Wind is 
 changed againe, & brings Abundance of Raine with it : & in- 
 deed we have no settled Weather since I saw you, which hath 
 made the Sicknesse, I believe, rage more: for South Winds 
 are alwayes observed to be bad in such Times: & the Wind 
 stays not long out of that Quarter. It decreases in some 
 Places, & grows very much in others. I hope there will not 
 so many dye here [in St. Pauls, C. G.] as did last week; & 
 yet we have 21 or 22 dead already. I suppose you think I 
 
 * I am not certain whether this Mrs. Gauden was wife of Dr. J. 
 Gauden (then minister at Booking in Essex, and afterwards 
 Archbishop of Canterbury), or Sir Denis Gauden of the Victual- 
 ling Office. There are two conflicting opinions on the first 1« af 
 of the MS. volume containing these letters. 
 
 [155] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 intend to stay here still ; though I understand by your Ques- 
 tion you would not have mee. But, my Friend, what am I 
 better than another? Somebody must stay here: and is it- 
 fit I should set such a value upon myself, as my going away, 
 & leaving another will signify? For it will, in effect be to 
 say, That I am too good to be lost, but is no matter if an- 
 other bee. Truly I do not think myself so considerable to 
 the World: & though my Friends set a great Price upon 
 mee, yet that Temptation hath not yet made me of that 
 Mind : and I know their Love makes me pass for more with 
 them then I am worth. When I mention that Word, Love, 
 I confesse, it moves me much, & I have a great Passion for 
 them, & wish I might live to embrace them once again : but 
 I must not take any undue Courses to satisfye this Passion, 
 which is but too strong in mee. I must let Reason prevaille, 
 & stay with my Charge, which I take hitherto to be my 
 Duty, whatever come. I cannot tell what Good wee do 
 their Soules, though I preach to those who are well, and 
 write to those who are ill, ( I mean print little Papers for 
 them, which yet are too big to send by the Post ; ) but I am 
 sure, while I stay here, I shall do Good to their Bodies, 
 & perhaps save some from perishing; which I look upon as 
 a considerable End of my continuing. My dear Friend, do 
 not take it ill, that I cannot comply with your Desire on this 
 Thing; you see what sways mee, & I know that you will 
 yield to it, & that it ought to be stronger then the Love of 
 you. If you can convince mee, that I may, with a good 
 Conscience, go, you may think it will be acceptable: but I 
 know not upon what Grounds you will make it good. Try, 
 if you have a mind. But if I should go, why would you 
 have me be at Clapham, when my Brother is so neare, & you 
 are not there? . . . Perhaps you meane, that I should be 
 there on Week Dayes, and preach here on Lords Dayes. 
 But that will be dangerous perhaps both to them & to mee : 
 at least to them : & I have not hitherto layne out one Night 
 since you left Clapham. . . . May I not buy a Paire of 
 Stockins, of a Friend, whom I can be confident is not in- 
 fected, & which have layne long in his Shop f I want nothing 
 
 [156] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 else at present. And how should it be more dangerous then 
 to receive Bear & Wine, the Vessells being capable of Infec- 
 tion? but especially Bread, they say, is the most attractive 
 of it, which I am forced to buy : for I know not otherwayes 
 to have it. I saw last Tuesday about 30 People in the 
 Strand, with white Sticks in their Hands, & the D r of the 
 Pest House walking in his gowne before them. The first 
 Woman rid on a Horse, & had a Paper Flag on top of her 
 Stick, with Laus Deo written on it. They were going to 
 the Iustices, being poore People sent thither, & recovered by 
 Jnm of the Plague. He seemed to take no small Content in 
 his stately March before them. But now I have told Tales 
 of myself, & confessed that I go sometimes Abroad. In- 
 deed, it cannot be well helpt, & I hope there is no great 
 Danger. I will not grow bold, & confident by being safe so 
 long, nor would I grow timorous, as such Case as you re- 
 quire, I doubt, will make mee. I saw a Letter from Salis- 
 bury of the 6 Instant, which saith, now the Plague has 
 broke out there, & his Majesty will be gone suddenly. He 
 hath not been well of late, and imagines that Aire doth not 
 agree with him. This is true : for it comes from one of my 
 Parish there, who is well acquainted att the Court. Now I 
 must make and End, & only add my hearty Love to all with 
 you, & your Friends, praying for your Preservation, & re- 
 maining y rs most affectionately 
 
 S. P. 
 
 I forgot to tell you, that instead of the Plague Drink you 
 writ of, they have sent me Plague Water, or some such 
 Thing; for it is distilled & nothing like what I had before: 
 but never trouble them to send me any. D T Michael 
 Thwayle directed to make, & drink presently of London 
 Treacle & Lady Allen's Water. I bought both presently, 
 but forgot to mix them. Only now and then I take a little 
 Treacle. 
 
 For my Honoured Friend 
 
 Mrs Gauden att Hutton-Hall. 
 
 Leave this at the White Hart in Burntwood, Essex. 
 
 [157] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 Same to same. 
 
 Sat: Night. Sept: 30. 1665. 
 My Friend. 
 
 You enquire what Ministers are dead? for you heard of 
 some & would know the Truth. There are more, to tell you 
 plainly, then the Number you name. M r - Peachall, & M T - 
 Mandrill, who were lecturers, dyed a good while ago: one 
 of them Lecturer of S i - Clement's, the other at Benet Fink. 
 Since, there dyed one M T - Austin, minister, I think, of S t - 
 Mary Stainings: the minister of Alphage, whose Name, I 
 think, was M T - Stone. One M T - Bast wick, (son to the fa- 
 mous Doctor of that Name) who was Preacher at the 
 Counter in the Poultrye; M T - Welbank, one of the ministers 
 of S*" Saviour's, Southwark: M T - Throchmorton, Curate of 
 S 1 ' George's, Southwark: & sl Gentleman who officiated for 
 M r - Hall in Bastshaw. All these I can call to mind; and the 
 mention of this last, whos Name, I think, was Phillips, 
 brings a sad story to my mind, which I will relate, because 
 something depends upon it which I ought to remember. On 
 Tuesday was Fortnight, I was at D r - Owtram , s, & M T - Bast- 
 wick, whom I spake of, came in, whom I never saw before, 
 and the Doctor not often. He came to make a Visit, but the 
 D r - has no Acquaintance with him, only had met him at a 
 Friend's. He had all the Newes of the Towne, & particu- 
 larly told us of the death of that Gentleman who supplied 
 M r - Hall's Place. He was left in Trust to pay him his Money 
 every Munday ; & he told us how timourous he was, & care- 
 full, that he would scarce come into his House to receive it : 
 & that he preached the Sunday sennight before, but was 
 dead, with his wife, & all his Children (which were 3) before 
 Thursday Night. The next Time I met D r - Out ram, he told 
 mee, that M T - Bastwick went from us Home, & fell sick that 
 very night, & dyed a few Days after, I think on Sunday. 
 The D T - added, that he did not like his looks then, & thought 
 there was a great Alteration in his Countenance; but he said 
 nothing to me when he was gone, (which was about 5 
 o'Clock) though to his Man he gave a Charge (as he tells 
 
 [158] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 me) that if he came againe, he should not let him in, but say, 
 he could not be spoken withall. You see how much wee are 
 beholden to God in keeping us from the Dangers to which 
 we are exposed. M r - Lance in Lombard Street also is dead 
 lately, but not of the Sicknesse. The minister of Kentish 
 Town hath had it, & is recovered. I think I have heard of 
 another or two, that were Curates but of no more Ministers, 
 The last Weeke gave us great Encouragement to hope for 
 the Restoration of better Health : but I am something afraid 
 this Week will raise it againe alittle : for wee have 15 or 16 
 dead already, and had but 19 last Weeke in all. It is fit 
 perhaps that it should be so, least men impute all to the 
 cold weather, & nothing to God's Goodnesse. The more in- 
 scrutable this Disease is, & beyond the Account of Men, 
 the more are they directed to acknowledge a supreme Power 
 that chastises men, & corrects their Disobedience. There 
 are People who rely upon pitifull Things, as containe 
 Tokens of its goeing away shortly. I have been told, more 
 then once, of the falling out of the Clapper of the great Bell 
 at Westminster, which they say, it did before the last Great 
 Plague ended : & this they take for a very comfortable Sign. 
 Others speake of the Dawes more frequenting the Pallace 
 & Abbey, which, if true, is a better Sign, supposing the Aire 
 to have been infected. For the Bookes I read tell mee, that 
 the goeinge away of Birds is the Forerunner of the Plague, 
 & that one shall see few in a Plague Yeare. The Death of 
 Birds in Houses when they are caged, ordinarily preceedes 
 the Death of the Inhabitants : for these aiery Creatures feale 
 the Alteration in that Element sooner then wee. Thus you 
 see how desirous all are for some Token for Good & how 
 they catch at the smallest Shadowes for it. But the best 
 Sign of all, I doubt, is much wanting: & that is, the Refor- 
 mation of mens manners, — of which I heare little; unlesse 
 that those come to Church, who did not before. ... A sad 
 Thing, that the Event of these Iudgments proves no better! 
 But so it comonly falls out, & men soon forget both their 
 Smart, & also the good Resolutions which it formed. I 
 hope, my Friend, the Hand of God will not be without its 
 
 [159] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 a great Wisdome, as well as Iustice, in this Restraint which 
 I now suffer, & therefore I thankfully accept it, & intreat 
 you to assist mee with your Prayers, that I may both un- 
 derstand the meaning of it, & likewise make the right use 
 which God intends. I must ever also acknowledge a won- 
 derf ull Kindnesse of God to mee mixed with this ; for I am 
 well & chearfull to my Admiration & Astonishment, when 
 I seriously think of it. I could not have expected to spend 
 my Time, & find it so little a Burden to mee, as it used now 
 & then to be when I was alone. The long Evenings, when I 
 see none (I give God Thanks) pass away without any Irk- 
 somenesse at all. I have quite changed my Diet. I eat 
 boiled Meats & Broth more then I used : something at Sup- 
 per also, which does not hinder my Thoughts. You see I 
 take Care of myself, & by this long Letter will perceive 
 that you are much in the Thoughts of your ever affect: 
 Friend 
 
 S. P. 
 
 Sat: Night, Oct: 7. 1665. 
 I have taken a little Cold, which hath put some Damp 
 upon my Spirits — I knew it would be so, — for I felt the 
 Wind strike into my Head as I was burying a Corpse one 
 Night. That is a Thing I have oft found prejudiciall : but 
 there is no Body else to do it now. I think too sometimes 
 I have too great a Burden of Worke upon mee : but hither- 
 to I go through it very well; only I am sometimes a little 
 weary after preaching twice; especially when the Fast Week 
 comes. It comes now & then into my Wishes, that I was 
 more free from this Kind of Buisinesse in a Parish; for I 
 suppose I could profitably employ my Time in some other 
 Way. But I check myself in this & a great many other 
 Wishes, knowing there is no Contentment but in conforming 
 our Wills to our present Conditions. . . . 1 Wee are in great 
 Hopes of a considerable Decrease this Week. Here indeed 
 wee have buried many, & so they do at Westminster, as D r - 
 Outram tells mee; but in other Places the Bells do not go so 
 
 1 After the Plague, Patrick was raised to the bishopric of Chiches- 
 ter and, later, to that of Ely. 
 
 [160] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 Instruction to us, & that wee shall be carefull, if he let us 
 live, to improve it as we ought. I cannot but acknowledge 
 oft. I must correct an Error in my last but one M T - Welbank 
 is not dead, as was reported : it is the Curate, one M r - Knight- 
 ley, who, they say, did not dye of the Sicknesse neither. 
 This was Occasion of the Report that M T - Shilling fleet was 
 dead; the Reader of St. Andrew's Holborne dying a good 
 while ago; but as for M T - Shillingfleet he has not beene here 
 along Time but gets his Place supplyed by somebody. . . . 
 
 Yours very affectionately, 
 
 8. P. 
 
 Octob: 12. [1665]. 
 My Friend, 
 
 It happens to be such a bright Night, that I cannot 
 say all that I would. I have not had so many Burialls a 
 great while, & I deferred to write till Night, being with my 
 Brother at Battersea all Day. The Sicknesse is not de- 
 creased so much as wee expected: but wee ought to be very 
 thankful for any Abatement. There are 652 less this Week 
 then the last. There dyed here [in my Parish] but 15, 
 which is 10 less then the Weeke before. How it will be this 
 Week I know not; but there are 9 dead already, 6 being 
 buried to Night. In the next Parish of St. Martin's there 
 dyed no more to Day, which gives Hope still of a Decrease 
 there. The Sicknesse is much at Wandsworth, where 24 
 dyed in one Week. It is got into Wiltshire also, & is very 
 neare Sir W. S t - Iohn's, so that they have sent their Chil- 
 dren away to M T - Bernard's neare Huntingdon. It is a very 
 sad Time I perceive every where, & I must acknowledge it a 
 very singular Favour of God, that I am so much supported. 
 I hope I shall not forget his Goodnesse if he let me live to 
 see more healthfull & pleasant Seasons. He knows how 
 long it is necessary to keep us under, & how much Time is 
 Requisite to make us thoroughly serious. If that be but 
 effected, we shall have a more sober Ioy hereafter. . . . 
 
 S.P. 
 
 [161] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 Covent Garden, Oct. 14 [1665] 
 
 People are grown bold, & because they find themselves 
 well, they think their Neighbours ought not to shun them, 
 though they have some dye of the Plague in their Houses. 
 In many Places they do not shut them up, & so they take 
 their Liberty to come abroad ; and there also when they 
 need not, & where they ought to be more civill. But wee 
 must not expect that from ordinary People: it is a Thing 
 proper to better bred Souls. If the Vulgar be not intoller- 
 ably rude, we are beholden to them. 
 
 From your affectionate Friend 
 
 flfr- Patrick. 
 
 Octob: 17. [1665]. 
 
 Wee expect a very great abatement this Week in the 
 Whole, though here [in my Parish] wee buried one more 
 then last Week. The Citty Remembrancer told a Friend of 
 mine, that there are 1500 lesse without the Walls then last 
 Week, beside the Decrease in the Citty. I heare M r - 
 Iohn Goodwin is dead somewhere in Essex. It is said that 
 D r - Bolton also is dead in the Country whether he went be- 
 cause of the Contagion. 
 
 I am your affect: Friend 
 
 8. P. 
 Oct: 21. [1665]. 
 
 M r - Cradock writes me word, he hath a great mind to 
 return, tho' there is no Term here, & I think he will have no 
 Employment. . . . 
 
 My poor Clarke . . . hath had his Family sadly visited. 
 His Wife & 7 Children (all he hath) have beene all sicke: & 
 now his Wife & one Child are dead, & she big with Child. 
 The Rest are like to do well, & I hope I have saved the poor 
 Man by timely Advice to remove himself, that he may take 
 Care of all the Rest. 
 
 Your affectionate Friend, 
 
 S.P. 
 [162] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 Nov: 7. 1665. 
 My Friend, 
 
 I have made further Enquiries about the Accesse of 
 People to London, & their State of Health since they came, 
 but can find no Ground for those sad Reports which you 
 have. This I find, that the same Storyes are spread in other 
 Countries, & People are thereby affrighted from coming 
 thither: but there is no Cause, as farre as I can learne. 
 Yesterday I met M T - Holliard, (who askt very kindly of 
 you) who told mee he heard 2 Linen Drapers in Cornwall 
 were returned, & dead : but he enquired of their Neighbours, 
 & they knew of no such Thing. Yet I think my Church- 
 Warden says well, That of all the Lyes he hath heard, he 
 thinks this will do least Harm: for it will keep People from 
 flocking too fast to London, which otherwise they might be 
 apt to do. The Soldiers (who have hitherto beene quartered 
 in Tents in Hyde Park) returned yesterday into the Citty; 
 I suppose because of the Weather, which may indanger their 
 Healths more then this Place. . . . 
 
 [8. P.] 
 
 Nov: 9. [1665]. 
 My deare Friend. 
 
 I suppose you will heare before this can reach you, 
 that the Sicknesse did not decrease so much last Week, but 
 it has increased as much in this that is nearly past — I have 
 walked to Battersea and back againe with a great Deale 
 of Ease this Day. They have had none dye there this Fort- 
 night; but at Wandsworth there is still a great Mortality: 
 there are 12 dead since Sunday, as one of the Parish tells 
 mee. You may think the Increase of the Sicknesse here 
 comes from the Accesse of more People: but I think it is 
 otherwise: for it is much increased in Lambeth, & in 
 Wandsworth ( as I told you) from whence People rather 
 run away. It is to be ascribed rather to the unseasonable 
 Weather that hath beene of late; & most of all to the wise 
 Goodnesse of God, who intends to shew, that wee are not 
 yet so safe as sucure Sinners imagin. I observe that Peo- 
 
 [163] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 pie grow remisse already, & their Fervours are already 
 cooled. Wee had nothing so good a Congregation yesterday 
 as wee used to have : & therefore God may in mercy quicken 
 us againe to mind our Duty, & rouse up dull Souls by this 
 new Alarm. At least it may have this Effect, to keepe from 
 flocking to the Towne as fast as they may be disposed to ; & 
 also continue in Men's Minds a Dread of the Sickness e, 
 whenever wee mention it, which is so unaccountable. You 
 hope, I see, that I should be able to acquaint you with its 
 Nature: but truly, after all my Inquiries & Observations, I 
 can learne little. But that it seises upon People strangely, 
 & handles them variously. Some are affected in one manner, 
 & some another, & some are smitten that stir not half so 
 much abroad as 7. But this will be too long a Discourse. I 
 do not heare neither of any of your Acquaintance dead : but 
 I said, I believe, wee shall miss many in the Conclusion; 
 because I heare now & then of some that I knewe that are 
 swept away a good many Weeks ago, before I heard of it. 
 Wee have but a few dead in the Parish this Week, (Thanks 
 be to God for it) though all our neighbouring Parishes 
 have had an Increase &c. 
 
 Your most affectionate Friend 
 
 S.P. 
 
 Dec: 5. [1665]. 
 My Friend, 
 
 Just now came Newes to mee by one that is come from 
 the Clarks Hall, that the Sicknesse is decreased above an 
 100; which is a great Mercy; for we feared an Increase. The 
 just Number they would not declare, because my L d - Mayor 
 must have it first: & I heard lately that he imprisoned one 
 of the Officers, because they spread Abroad the Account, 
 before they came to him: which indeed was unhandsome. 
 There was not one dyed at Westminster on Sunday last; 
 which is a Thing seldome happens in healthfull Times. 
 
 Farewell. 
 
 [S. P.] 
 [164] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 December 14. [1665]. 
 My Friend, 
 
 I cannot send you so good Newes as I did the last Week 
 of the Decrease of the Sicknesse. ... It is not much in- 
 deed: but it's something sad at this Time of the Yeare, not 
 to see it still fall more & more. So wee promised ourselves 
 that it would; & many are returned upon that Presumption. 
 But wee must all look up to an higher Hand, who still thinks 
 good to hold his Rod over us, & who alters the Weather as 
 he pleases; on which depends very much, I persuade my- 
 self, these Ebbs & Flows of this Disease. If it do not leave 
 us this Winter, God knows when I shall see you : for I sup- 
 pose you will scarce be persuaded to come to Clapham, 
 though you love it so well, if the Citty be not quite clear of 
 it. . . . I have enquired, I assure you, about a Man to do 
 my Buiinesse here sometimes : but the Towne is empty of all 
 such Persons; & he that was wont to do it is dead, I am 
 sure; for I buried him; it being his Desire, though he 
 lived in S l - Martin's Parish. I am apt to think sometimes, 
 that none of my Neighbours are so burthened as I : but Use 
 & Custome hath now made it easy, & I forget what it is that 
 I do continually. . . . 
 
 [S. P.] 
 
 Decemb r 21. [1665]. 
 The Towne now begins to fill againe. . . . There is a 
 great Increase of the Sicknesse this Week. . . . 
 
 [8. P.] 
 
 Decemb r 23 [1665]. 
 Wee have never a one yet dead of the Plague [in our 
 Parish, this Week], as it is judged: though 3 of other Dis- 
 
 eases. . . . 
 
 [S. P.) 
 
 [165] 
 
APPENDIX J 
 
 From Flavius Josephus, Works, 7th ed. (1773), Vol. 
 IV, Bk. VII, Ch. 12. 
 
 How easily were these superstitious wretches [i. e. the 
 Jews] seduced into a belief of false oracles, counterfeits 
 and impostors! But when they were at any time premon- 
 ished from the lips of truth itself, by prodigies, and other 
 monitory prognostics of their approaching ruin, they had 
 neither eyes, ears nor understanding to make right use or 
 application of them. As for example now, 
 
 What shall we say to the comet that hung over Jeru- 
 salem one whole year together, in the figure of a sword? 
 
 What shall we think again of that wonderful light that 
 was seen about the altar . . . and continued for the space of 
 half an hour as bright as day. This prodigy was looked 
 upon by the ignorant as a good omen ; but it was expounded 
 by those who knew better things, as the forerunner of a 
 war; and the mystery unfolded before it came to pass. 
 
 At the same festival [of the Paschal Feast], there was 
 another prodigy of a cow delivered of a lamb in the middle 
 of the temple, as they were leading her up to the altar for 
 sacrifice. 
 
 The eastern gate of the inner temple was made of solid 
 brass ; and so very heavy that it was as much as twenty men 
 could do every night to shut it : besides that it was fastened 
 with iron bolts and bars, mortissed into a huge thres- 
 hold of one entire stone. This gate, about the sixth hour 
 of the night, opened of itself: and . . . the wiser sort . . . 
 foretold desolation to the city. 
 
 Some short time after the festival was over, . . . there 
 appeared a prodigy of a vision so extraordinary, that I 
 should hardly venture to report it, if I could not produce 
 several eye-witnesses that are yet living to confirm the truth 
 
 [166] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 of it ; and if the calamities that were foretold, had not come 
 to pass. There were seen up and down in the air, before 
 sun-set, chariots and armed men all over the country, pass- 
 ing along with the clouds round about the city. 
 
 Upon the feast of Pentecost, as the priests were' a-going 
 to officiate, . . . they heard at first a kind of confused mur- 
 mur; and after that, a voice calling out earnestly in articu- 
 late words, Let us be gone, let us be gone. 
 
 But I come now to a story that passes all the rest. A 
 matter of four years before the war [with Titus], when the 
 city was in a profound peace, and flowing in plenty, there 
 was one Jesus the son of Ananus, a plain country fellow, 
 who coming to the feast of Tabernacles . . . brake out on a 
 sudden into this exclamation over and over. "A voice from 
 the east, a voice from the west; a voice from the four 
 quarters of the world; a voice to Jerusalem, and a voice to 
 the temple ; a voice to new married men and women ; and a 
 voice to the whole nation." This was his cry day and 
 night, from place to place, through every street of the city. 
 Some great men in the government took such great of- 
 fence at so ill boding a liberty, that they ordered the man to 
 be taken up and severely whipt. He took the punishment 
 without returning so much as one word, either by the by, or 
 in his own defence, or to complain of hard measure; but 
 still he went on and on with the same things over and over 
 again, calling and denouncing as before. The magistrates 
 began now to inspect (as they had reason for it) somewhat 
 of a divine impulse in what he said; and that he spake by 
 an extraordinary spirit. He was carried, upon this, to Al- 
 binus the governor of Judaea; who caused him to be lashed 
 to the very bones, which he took without either tears or sup- 
 plication; only in a mournful voice, as well as he could, he 
 followed every stroke with a Wo, wo to Jerusalem! Albinus, 
 as his judge, fell then to asking him what he was, whence 
 he came, where he was born, and what he meant by that way 
 of proceeding? But he gave him no answer. This was his 
 way all along, till Albinus was fain to discharge him at last 
 as a madman. From that time to the beginning of the war, 
 
 [167] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 he was never known to visit or speak to any of the citizens ; 
 or to make use of any other than that doleful form of 
 words, Wo, wo to Jerusalem! He never gave an ill word to 
 those that daily scourged him, or a good one even to those 
 that fed him: but his answer was to all people alike, an 
 ominous presage. He was observed to be still more clam- 
 orous upon festivals, than upon other days: at this rate he 
 went on for seven years and five months ; and neither his 
 voice nor his strength failing him, till the seige of Jerusalem 
 verified his predictions. After this he took the tour of the 
 wall once again, crying out, with a stronger voice than or- 
 dinary, Wo, wo to this city, this temple, and this people! 
 concluding at last with a Wo, wo be to myself! And in this 
 instant he was taken off with a stone from an engine in the 
 middle of all his forebodings. 
 
 [168] 
 
APPENDIX K. 
 
 From the Bills of Mortality. 
 
 General Bills of the Plague in London and Suburbs from 
 
 1603 to 1666. 2 
 
 Year Plague Year Plague 
 
 1603 33,417 1635 
 
 1604 896 1636 10,400 
 
 1605 444 1637 3,082 
 
 1606 ,.. 2,124 1638 363 
 
 1607 2,352 1639 314 
 
 1608 2,262 1640 1,450 
 
 1609 4,240 1641 ,. . 1,375 
 
 1610 1,803 1642..... 1,274 
 
 1643 996 
 
 1644 1,492 
 
 1645 1,871 
 
 1646 2,365 
 
 1647 3,597 
 
 1648 611 
 
 1649 67 
 
 1650 15 
 
 1651 23 
 
 1652 16 
 
 1653 , 6 
 
 1654 16 
 
 1655 9 
 
 1656 , 6 
 
 1657 4 
 
 1658 14 
 
 1659 36 
 
 1660 13 
 
 1661 20 
 
 1662 15 
 
 * The only Bills before 1603 are for 1592 (Men. -Dec.) wh.-n 11,503 
 died of the Plague. 
 
 [109] 
 
 1611 
 
 627 
 
 1612 
 
 64 
 
 1613. 
 
 16 
 
 1614 
 
 22 
 
 1615 
 
 37 
 
 1616 
 
 9 
 
 1617 
 
 6 
 
 1618 
 
 18 
 
 1619 
 
 9 
 
 1620 
 
 2 
 
 1621 
 
 11 
 
 1622 
 
 16 
 
 1623 
 
 17 
 
 1624 
 
 
 
 1625 
 
 35,417 
 
 1626 
 
 634 
 
 1627 
 
 4 
 
 1628 
 
 3 
 
 1629 
 
 
 
 1630 
 
 1,317 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 1631 
 
 274 
 
 1663 
 
 12 
 
 1632 
 
 8 
 
 1664 
 
 5 
 
 1633 
 
 
 
 *1665 , 
 
 68,596 
 
 1634 
 
 .... 1 
 
 tl666 
 
 1,998 
 
 * Dec. 20, 1664 to Dec. 19, 1665. 
 t Dec. 20, 1665 to Dec. 19, 1666. 
 
 The Weekly Bills of Mortality in London and Suburbs 
 from 20 Dee., 1664 to 19 Dec., 1665. 
 
 Week 
 Week 
 
 97 16 
 
 Parishes within Parishes 
 the Walls. Without, 
 ending Ttl. PI. Ttl. PI. 
 97 16 
 Parishes within Parishes 
 the Walls. Without, 
 ending Ttl. PI. Ttl. PI. 
 
 12 Out- 
 Parishes of 
 Mid. & Surrey. 
 Ttl. PI. 
 
 12 Out- 
 Parishes of 
 Mid. & Surrey. 
 Ttl. PI. 
 
 5 
 
 Westm. 
 
 Parishes. 
 
 Ttl. PI. 
 
 5 
 
 Westm. 
 
 Parishes. 
 
 Ttl. PI. 
 
 Dec. 
 
 27, 1664 
 
 60 
 
 
 
 125 
 
 
 
 67 
 
 1 
 
 39 
 
 
 
 Jan. 
 
 3, 1665 
 
 66 
 
 
 
 136 
 
 
 
 102 
 
 
 
 45 
 
 
 
 Jan. 
 
 10, 1665 
 
 95 
 
 
 
 142 
 
 
 
 100 
 
 
 
 57 
 
 
 
 Jan. 
 
 17, 1665 
 
 90 
 
 
 
 154 
 
 
 
 113 
 
 
 
 58 
 
 
 
 Jan. 
 
 24, 1665 
 
 104 
 
 
 
 184 
 
 
 
 118 
 
 
 
 68 
 
 
 
 Jan. 
 
 31, 1665 
 
 88 
 
 
 
 143 
 
 
 
 115 
 
 
 
 63 
 
 
 
 Feb. 
 
 7, 1665 
 
 80 
 
 
 
 150 
 
 
 
 99 
 
 
 
 64 
 
 
 
 Feb. 
 
 14, 1665 
 
 85 
 
 
 
 180 
 
 
 
 121 
 
 1 
 
 76 
 
 
 
 Feb. 
 
 21, 1665 
 
 82 
 
 
 
 158 
 
 
 
 89 
 
 
 
 64 
 
 
 
 Feb. 
 
 28, 1665 
 
 67 
 
 
 
 156 
 
 
 
 106 
 
 
 
 67 
 
 
 
 Mch. 
 
 7, 1665 
 
 83 
 
 
 
 176 
 
 
 
 165 
 
 
 
 77 
 
 
 
 Mch. 
 
 14, 1665 
 
 72 
 
 
 
 197 
 
 
 
 105 
 
 
 
 59 
 
 
 
 Mch. 
 
 21, 1665 
 
 69 
 
 
 
 133 
 
 
 
 98 
 
 
 
 63 
 
 
 
 Mch. 
 
 28, 1665 
 
 68 
 
 
 
 160 
 
 
 
 74 
 
 
 
 51 
 
 
 
 Apr. 
 
 4, 1665 
 
 74 
 
 
 
 138 
 
 
 
 86 
 
 
 
 46 
 
 
 
 Apr. 
 
 11, 1665 
 
 81 
 
 
 
 149 
 
 <0 
 
 107 
 
 
 
 45 
 
 
 
 Apr. 
 
 18, 1665 
 
 66 
 
 
 
 126 
 
 
 
 93 
 
 
 
 59 
 
 
 
 Apr. 
 
 25, 1665 
 
 65 
 
 
 
 145 
 
 
 
 119 
 
 
 
 69 
 
 
 
 May 
 
 2, 1665 
 
 70 
 
 
 
 125 
 
 
 
 127 
 
 
 
 66 
 
 
 
 May 
 
 9, 1665 
 
 54 
 
 1 
 
 123 
 
 1 
 
 114 
 
 1 
 
 56 
 
 4 
 
 May 
 
 16, 1665 
 
 55 
 
 
 
 126 
 
 
 
 116 
 
 1 
 
 56 
 
 2 
 
 [170] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 May 23, 1665 63 125 2 129 7 63 5 
 
 May 30, 1665 56 127 4 145 9 72 4 
 
 June 6, 1665 69 135 10 138 32 63 1 
 
 June 13, 1665 67 4 179 27 238 71 74 10 
 
 June 20, 1665 64 10 192 34 258 105 101 19 
 
 June 27, 1665 49 4 225 55 291 153 119 55 
 
 July 4, 1665 93 23 360 166 345 176 208 105 
 
 July 11, 1665 86 28 473 251 455 286 254 160 
 
 July 18, 1665 141 56 735 416 595 417 290 200 
 
 July 25, 1665 241 128 1210 755 857 628 477 332 
 
 Aug. 1, 1665 228 111 1539 990 804 587 443 322 
 
 Aug. 8, 1665 341 208 1992 1280 1105 879 592 450 
 
 Aug. 15, 1665 496 304 2747 1924 1404 1119 672 533 
 
 Aug. 22, 1665 538 366 2861 2139 1571 1244 598 488 
 
 Aug. 29, 1665 933 700 3627 2928 2045 1759 891 715 
 
 Sept. 5, 1665 1118 864 3736 3151 2549 2261 849 712 
 
 Sept. 12, 1665 1154 896 3488 2936 2250 2030 798 681 
 
 Sept. 19, 1665 1493 1189 3631 3070 2258 2091 915 815 
 
 Sept. 26, 1665 1268 1025 2688 2252 1794 1643 710 613 
 
 Oct. 3, 1665 1149 948 2258 1922 1623 1469 690 590 
 
 Oct. 10, 1665 1109 916 1850 1570 1512 1340 597 501 
 
 Oct. 17, 1665 774 646 1150 929 835 791 360 299 
 
 Oct. 24, 1665 392 295 603 456 601 498 210 172 
 
 Oct. 31, 1665 325 233 470 356 435 323 158 119 
 
 Nov. 7, 1665 418 314 546 445 609 488 214 167 
 
 Nov. 14, 1665 346 262 397 209 460 376 156 103 
 
 Nov. 21, 1665 195 127 298 217 302 235 110 73 
 
 Nov. 28, 1665 136 82 156 82 178 125 74 44 
 
 Dec. 5, 1665 71 24 139 64 160 90 58 32 
 
 Dec. 12, 1665 94 57 132 70 147 74 69 42 
 
 Dec. 19, 1665 126 66 156 75 187 106 56 34 
 
 [171] 
 
APPENDIX L. 
 
 A general Bill of Mortality by Parishes for the Year 
 
 ending Dec. 19, 1665. 
 
 From Bell's London's Remembrancer. 
 
 The 97 Parishes within the Walls. 
 
 Total 
 Burials Plague 
 
 St. Albans Woodstreet 200 121 
 
 St. Alhollowes Barking 514 330 
 
 St. Alhollowes Breadstreet 35 16 
 
 St. Alhollowes the Great 455 426 
 
 St. Alhollowes Hony-lane 10 5 
 
 St. Alhollowes the Lesse 239 175 
 
 St. Alhollowes Lumbardstr 90 62 
 
 St. Alhollowes Staining 185 112 
 
 St. Alhollowes the Wall 500 356 
 
 St. Alphage 271 115 
 
 St. Andrew Hubbard 71 25 
 
 St- Andrew Vndershaft 274 189 
 
 St. Andrew Wardrobe 476 308 
 
 St. Aldersgate 282 197 
 
 St. Anne Black-Friars 652 467 
 
 St. Antholins Parish 58 33 
 
 St. Austins Parish 43 20 
 
 St. Barthol. Exchange 73 51 
 
 St. Bennet Fynch 47 22 
 
 St. Bennet Gracechurch 57 41 
 
 St. Bennet Pauls Wharf 355 172 
 
 St. Bennet Sherehog 11 1 
 
 St. Botolph Billingsgate 83 50 
 
 Christs Church 653 467 
 
 St. Christophers 60 47 
 
 St. Clements Eastcheap 38 20 
 
 St. Dionis Back-church 78 27 
 
 [172] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 Total 
 Burials Plague 
 
 St. Dunstans East 265 150 
 
 St. Edmunds Lumbard 70 30 
 
 St. Ethelborough 195 106 
 
 St. Faiths 104 70 
 
 St. Fosters 144 105 
 
 St. Gabriel Fenchurch 69 39 
 
 St. George Botolphlane 41 27 
 
 St. Gregories by Pauls 376 232 
 
 St. Hellens 108 75 
 
 St. James Dukes place 262 190 
 
 St. James Garlickhithe 189 118 
 
 St. John Baptist 138 83 
 
 St. John Evangelist 9 
 
 St. John Zacharie 85 54 
 
 St. Katherine Coleman-streete 299 213 
 
 St. Katherine Creech 335 231 
 
 St. Lawrence Iewry 94 48 
 
 St. Lawrence Pountney 214 140 
 
 St. Leonard Eastcheap 42 27 
 
 St. Leonard Fosterlane 335 255 
 
 St. Magnus Parish 103 60 
 
 St. Margaret Lothbury 100 66 
 
 St. Margaret Moses 38 25 
 
 St. Margaret Newfishst 114 66 
 
 St. Margaret Pattons 49 24 
 
 St. Mary Abchurch 99 54 
 
 St. Mary Aldermanbury 181 109 
 
 St. Mary Aldermary 105 75 
 
 St. Mary le Bow 64 36 
 
 St. Mary Bothow 55 30 
 
 St. Mary Colechurch 17 6 
 
 St. Mary Hill 94 64 
 
 St. Mary Mounthaw 56 37 
 
 St. Mary Summerset 342 2(12 
 
 St. Mary Stayning 47 27 
 
 St. Mary Woolchurch 65 33 
 
 [173] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 Total 
 Burials Plague 
 
 St. Mary Woolnoth 75 38 
 
 St. Martins Ironmonger 21 11 
 
 St. Martins Ludgate 196 128 
 
 St. Martins Orgars 110 71 
 
 St. Martins Outwieh 60 34 
 
 St. Martins Vintrey 417 349 
 
 St. Matthew Fridaystreet 24 6 
 
 St. Maudlins Milkstreet 44 22 
 
 St. Maudlins Oldfishstreet 176 121 
 
 St. Michael Bassishaw 253 164 
 
 St. Michael Cornhill 104 52 
 
 St. Michael Crookedlane 179 133 
 
 St. Michael Queenhith 203 122 
 
 St. Michael Queene 44 18 
 
 St. Michael Royall 152 116 
 
 St. Michael Woodstreet 122 62 
 
 St. Mildred Breadstreet 59 26 
 
 St. Mildred Poultrey 68 46 
 
 St. Nicholas Aeons 46 28 
 
 St. Nicholas Coleabby 125 91 
 
 St. Nicholas Olave 90 62 
 
 St. Olaves Hartstreet 237 160 
 
 St. Olaves Iewry 54 32 
 
 St. Olaves Silverstreete 250 132 
 
 St. Pancras Soperlane 30 15 
 
 St. Peters Cheaps 61 35 
 
 St. Peters Cornhill 136 76 
 
 St. Peters Pauls Wharfe 114 86 
 
 St. Peters Poore 79 47 
 
 St. Stevens Colmanstr 560 391 
 
 St. Stevens Walbrooke 34 17 
 
 St. Swithins 93 56 
 
 St. Thomas Apostle 163 110 
 
 Trinitie Parish 115 79 
 
 Buried in the 97 Parishes within the walls. 15,207 
 
 Whereof of the Plague 9,887 
 
 [174] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 The 16 Parishes without the Walls. 
 
 Total 
 Burials Plague 
 
 St. Andrew Holborne 3958 3103 
 
 St. Bartholomew Great 493 344 
 
 St. Bartholomew Lesse 193 139 
 
 St. Bridget 2111 1407 
 
 Bridewell Precinct 230 179 
 
 St. Botolph Aldersgate 997 755 
 
 St. Botolph Aldgate 4926 4051 
 
 St. Botolph Bishopsgate 3464 2500 
 
 St. Dunstans West 958 665 
 
 St. George Southwark 1613 1260 
 
 St. Giles Cripplegate 8069 4838 
 
 St. Olaves Southwark 4793 2785 
 
 St. Saviours Southwark 4235 3446 
 
 St. Sepulchres Parish 4509 2746 
 
 St. Thomas Southwark 475 371 
 
 Trinity Minories 168 123 
 
 At the Pesthouse 159 156 
 
 Buried in the 16 Parishes without the Walls, 41,851 
 Whereof of the Plague 28,888 
 
 The 12 Out-Parishes in Middlesex and Surrey. 
 
 St. Giles in the Fields 4457 3216 
 
 Hackney Parish 232 132 
 
 St. James Clarkenwell 1863 1377 
 
 St. Katherines Tower 956 601 
 
 Lamberth Parish 798 537 
 
 St. Leonards Shoreditch 2669 1949 
 
 St. Magdalen Bermondsey 1943 1362 
 
 St. Mary Newington 1272 1004 
 
 St. Mary Islington . . 696 593 
 
 St. Mary Whitechappel 47(J(J 3855 
 
 Redriffe Parish 304 210 
 
 Stepney Parish 8598 6583 
 
 [175] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 Total 
 Burials Plague 
 
 Buried in the 12 Out-Parishes of Middlesex 
 
 and Surrey 28,554 
 
 Whereof of the Plague 21,420 
 
 The 5 Parishes in Westminster. 
 
 St. Clement Danes 1969 1319 
 
 St. Paul Covent Garden 408 261 
 
 St. Martins in the Fields 4804 2883 
 
 St. Mary Savoy 303 198 
 
 S*. Margaret Westm 4710 3742 
 
 Whereof at the Pesthouse 156 
 
 Buried in the five Parishes of Westminster, 12,194 
 Whereof of the the Plague 68,596 
 
 The total of all the Christenings for the year 9,967 
 
 The total of all the Burials 97,306 
 
 Whereof, of the Plague 68,596 
 
 [176] 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 8 
 
 BELL, JOHN 
 
 London 's Remembrancer: Or, A true Aecompt of 
 every particular Weeks Christenings and Mortality in all 
 the Years of Pestilence within the Cognizance of the Bills 
 of Mortality Being XVIII Years. Taken out of the Reg- 
 ister of the Company of Parish Clerks of London, &c. To- 
 gether with Several Observations on the said Years, and 
 some of their Precedent and Subsequent Years. Published 
 for General satisfaction, and for prevention of false 
 Papers. By John Bell Clerk to the said Company. 1665. 
 BEZE, THEODORE DE 
 
 A shorte learned and pithie Treatize of the Plague, 
 where in are handled these two questions: The one, 
 whether the Plague bee infectious or no: The other, 
 whether and howe farre it may of Christians bee shunned 
 by going aside. A discourse very necessary for this our 
 tyne, and country; to satisfie the doubtful consciences, of 
 a great number. Written in Latin by the famous & 
 worthy diuine Theodore Beza Yezelien; and newly turned 
 into English, by John Stockwood, Schoolmaister of Tun- 
 bridge. B. L., 1580. (There is also a Latin ed. of this 
 book, 1636, and another English ed. 1665.) 
 BOGHURST, WILLIAM, M. D. 
 
 Loimographia. An Account of the Great Plague of 
 London in the Year 1665. Now first printed from the 
 British Museum Sloane MS. 349 for the Epidemiological 
 Society. Edited by Joseph Frank Payne, M. D. Late 
 President of the Society. 1894. 
 BROOKES, RICHARD, M. D. 
 
 A History of the most Remarkable Pestilential Dis- 
 tempers that have appeared in Europe for Three Hundred 
 Years last past; with what proved Successful or Hurtful 
 in their Cure, etc. 1721. 
 
 3 No claim is here made of an exhaustive bibliography of Plague 
 literature, but only those titles of leading importance which 
 were accessible to Defoe are included. As already pointed out, 
 Boghurst's "Loimographia" was unknown to Defoe. 
 
 [177] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 BROWNE, JOSEPH 
 
 A practical Treatise of the Plague and all Pestilential 
 Infections that have happened in this Island for the last 
 Century, etc. 1720. 
 CADE, JAMES 
 
 Londons Disease and Remedy, or a short and plain 
 Discourse pointing at some probable causes of this present 
 Judgement that lyes upon us together with the most ef- 
 fectual way and means for the removal of it. By Ja. Cade 
 B. D. Rector of St. Andrew Wardrobe, London. 1665. 
 CHICOYNEAU, FRANCOIS 
 
 Relation de la Peste Marseille, donnee par MM. 
 Chicoyneau, Verny et Soullier. Geneve: 1721. (An Eng- 
 lish translation in London the same year. See also Mau- 
 rice de Toulon.) 
 COCK, THOMAS 
 
 Hygiene, or, a Plain and Practical Discourse upon 
 the first of the six Non-Naturals, viz, Air, etc. 1665. 
 COLBATCH, SIR JOHN 
 
 A Scheme for Proper Methods to be taken should it 
 please God to visit us with the Plague. 1721. 
 DIEMERBROICK, ISBRANDUS 
 
 Tractatus de Peste. Arnheim: 1646. 2nd ed. Am- 
 sterdam: 1665. Extracts from this highly important 
 work were translated into English and printed in Lon- 
 don in 1666 under the title of "Several Choice Histories 
 [i. e. Cases] of the Medicines Manner and Method in the 
 Cure of the Plague,' ' etc. 
 
 DIRECTIONS for the Cure of the Plague as for Pre- 
 venting the Infection, etc., set down by the College of 
 Physicians. By the Kings Majesties Special Command. 
 May, 1665. 
 
 DIRECTIONS for the Prevention and Cure of the 
 Plague Fitted for the Poorer sort. 1665. 
 
 DISTINCT NOTES of the Plague. By the Explainer. 
 1722. (This was written in answer to "Some Remarks on 
 
 [178] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 three Treatises of the Plague," etc., g. v.) 
 FEATLY, JOHN 
 
 A Divine Antidote against the Plague; or Mourning 
 Tears, in Soliliquies and Prayers : As 1. For this General 
 Visitation. 2. For those whose houses are shut up of 
 the Plague. 3. For those who have Risings and Swell- 
 ings. 4. For those marked with the Tokens. Necessary 
 for all Families as well in the Country as in the City, in 
 the time of Pestilence. By John Featly, Chaplain to His 
 late Majesty [Charles I]. 1665. 
 GADBURY, JOHN 
 
 Londons Deliverance Praedieted; in a Short Discourse 
 on Plagues in General. August 1665. 
 GARENCIERES, THEOPHILUS, DR. 
 
 A Mite cast into the Treasury of the City of London: 
 A Discourse on the Plague. 1665. 
 
 GOLGOTHA; or, a Looking-Glass for London, and the 
 Suburbs thereof. Shewing the Causes, Nature and Ef- 
 ficacy of the present Plague, and the most hopeful 
 Way for Healing. With an humble Witness against 
 the Cruel Advice and Practice of Shutting up unto Op- 
 pression. Both now and formerly experienced to in- 
 crease, rather then prevent the spreading thereof. By 
 J. V. grieved for the Poor, who perish daily hereby. 
 London, Printed for the Author, Anno, 1665. 
 GRAUNT, JOHN 
 
 Reflections on the Weekly Bills of Mortality, for the 
 Cities of London and Westminster, and the Places adjacent : 
 But more especially, so far as they relate to the Plague, and 
 other Mortal Diseases that we English-men are most subject 
 to. With an Exact Account of the greatest Plagues that 
 ever happened since the Creation; and of the Weekly Bills 
 of the four great Plagues in London, compared with those 
 of this present year. 1665. 
 HARVEY, GIDEON, M. D. 
 
 A Discourse of the Plague, etc. 1665. 
 HODGES, NATHANIEL, M. D. 
 
 Loimologia, sive Pestis nuperae apud Populum Lond- 
 
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HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 inensem grassantis narratio. 1672. (Translated into Eng- 
 lish by Dr. John Quincy, 1720.) 
 
 An Account of the Rise, Progress, Symptoms and Cure 
 of the Plague, being the substance of a Letter from Doctor 
 Hodges to a Person of Quality. May, 1666. (Whether or 
 not this letter was printed the same year it was written, I 
 am not sure. It appears, however, in "A Collection of very 
 valuable and scarce Pieces," etc., 1721. Ed.) 
 KEMP, W. 
 
 A Brief Treatise of the Nature, Causes, Signes, Preser- 
 vation from, and Cure of the Pestilence. Collected by W. 
 Kemp, Mr. of Arts, MDCLXV. 
 
 LONDON'S DREADFUL VISITATION: Or, a Collection 
 of all the Bills of Mortality for this Present Year: Be- 
 ginning the 27 th - [an error for the 20th.] of Decem- 
 ber 1664. and ending 19 th - of December following: As 
 also, The General or whole years Bill : According to the 
 Report made to the King's Most Excellent Majesty, 
 By the Company of Parish Clerks of London, &c. 1665. 
 MASSA, N. 
 
 Liber N. Massae de Peste Contractus. 1721. 
 MAURICE DE TOULON. 
 
 Traite de la Peste. Geneve: 1721. (Accounts of the 
 Plague at Naples, Marseilles, etc.) 
 MEAD, RICHARD, M. D. 
 
 A Short Discourse concerning Pestilential Contagion, 
 and the Methods to be used to prevent it. 1720. (This 
 book went through six editions before the close of 1720, a 
 7th ed. in 1721, an 8th in 1722, and a 9th in 1744.) 
 DOCTOR MEAD'S Discourse explain'd. 1722. 
 PATRICK, SIMON 
 
 A Brief Exhortation to those who are shut up from 
 our Society, and deprived at present of Public Instruction. 
 1665. 
 
 A Consolatory Discourse, perswading to a chearful 
 Trust in God in these Times of trouble and danger. By 
 Simon Patrick, Rector of St. Pauls Covent Garden. 1665. 
 
 [180] 
 
OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 
 
 POORE MANS IEWELL, The 
 
 that is to say, a Treatise of the Pestilence. Vnto the 
 which is annexed a declaration of the vertues of the hearbes 
 Carduus Benedictus, and Angelica: which are verie medi- 
 cinable, both against the Plague, and also against many 
 other diseases. Gathered out of the books of diuers learned 
 Physitions. Imprinted at London for George Byshop, 
 Anno 1579. 
 PYE, GEORGE, M. D. 
 
 A Discourse of the Plague; wherein Dr. Mead's Notions 
 are . . . refuted. 1721. 
 QUINCY, JOHN, M. D. 
 
 An Essay on the Different Causes of Pestilential Dis- 
 eases, and how they became Contagious. With Remarks 
 upon the Infection now in France. 1720. 3rd ed. 1721. 
 SHUTTING UP OF INFECTED HOUSES, The 
 
 as it is practised in England, soberly debated. 1665. 
 SOME OBSERVATION on the Plague, etc. 1721. 
 SOME REMARKS on three Treatises of the Plague, viz. 
 
 1. Dr. Meads' Short Discourse; 2. Dr. Mead's Short 
 Discourse Explained; 3. Dr. Pye's Discourse of the Plague. 
 1721,1722. 
 SYDENHAM, THOMAS, M. D. 
 
 Febris pestilentialis et pestis annorum 1665-6. 
 
 Observationes Medicae circa Morborum acutorum his- 
 toriam et curationem. 1676. 
 THOMSON, GEORGE 
 
 Loimotomia, or the Pest Anatomized. 1666. 
 THUCYDIDES 
 
 The Plague of Athens, which happened in the second 
 year of the Peloppennesian Warre, first described in Greek 
 by Thucydides, then in Latin by Lucretius. Now attempted 
 in English by Tho Sprat, (An excellent Piece) Sold by 
 Henry Brome at the Gun in Ivy Lane. 1665. 
 VINCENT, THOMAS 
 
 God's Terrible Voice in the City: wherein you have 
 
 [181] 
 
HISTORICAL SOURCES OF DEFOE'S JOURNAL 
 
 1. The sound of the Voice, in the Narration of the Two 
 late Dreadful Judgments of Plague and Fire, inflicted by 
 the Lord upon the City of London; the former in the 
 Year 1665, the latter in the Year 1666. II. The Interpre- 
 tation of the Voice, in a Discovery, 1. of the Cause of these 
 Judgments, where you have a Catalogue of Londons sins. 
 
 2. Of the Design of these Judgments, where you have an 
 enumeration of the Duties God calls for by this Terrible 
 Voice. Printed in the Year 1667. 
 
 WILLIS, THOMAS, M. D. 
 
 A plain and easie Method for preserving those that 
 are well from the infection of the Plague . . . and for 
 curing such as are infected with it. 1691. (Written in 
 1666.) 
 
 De Febribus, etc., 1659. 
 
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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