This hurry, I say, continued some weeks, that is to say, all the months of May and June; and the more because it was rumored that an order of the government was to be issued out, to place turnpikes[21] and barriers on the road to prevent people’s traveling; and that the towns on the road would not suffer people from London to pass, for fear of bringing the infection along with them, though neither of these rumors had any foundation but in the imagination, especially at first.

I now began to consider seriously with myself concerning my own case, and how I should dispose of myself; that is to say, whether I should resolve to stay in London, or shut up my house and flee, as many of my neighbors did.  I have set this particular down so fully, because I know not but it may be of moment to those who come after me, if they come to be brought to the same distress and to the same manner of making their choice; and therefore I desire this account may pass with them rather for a direction to themselves to act by than a history of my actings, seeing it may not be of one farthing value to them to note what became of me.

I had two important things before me:  the one was the carrying on my business and shop, which was considerable, and in which was embarked all my effects in the world; and the other was the preservation of my life in so dismal a calamity as I saw apparently was coming upon the whole city, and which, however great it was, my fears perhaps, as well as other people’s, represented to be much greater than it could be.

The first consideration was of great moment to me.  My trade was a saddler, and as my dealings were chiefly not by a shop or chance trade, but among the merchants trading to the English colonies in America, so my effects lay very much in the hands of such.  I was a single man, it is true; but I had a family of servants, who[22] I kept at my business; had a house, shop, and warehouses filled with goods; and in short to leave them all as things in such a case must be left, that is to say, without any overseer or person fit to be trusted with them, had been to hazard the loss, not only of my trade, but of my goods, and indeed of all I had in the world.

I had an elder brother at the same time in London, and not many years before come over from Portugal; and, advising with him, his answer was in the three words, the same that was given in another case[23] quite different, viz., “Master, save thyself.”  In a word, he was for my retiring into the country, as he resolved to do himself, with his family; telling me, what he had, it seems, heard abroad, that the best preparation for the plague was to run away from it.  As to my argument of losing my trade, my goods, or debts, he quite confuted me:  he told me the same thing which I argued for my staying, viz., that I would trust God with my safety and health was the strongest repulse[24] to my pretensions of losing my trade and my goods.  “For,” says he, “is it not as reasonable that you should trust God with the chance or risk of losing your trade, as that you should stay in so eminent a point of danger, and trust him with your life?”