Though the poor came to town very precipitantly, as I have said, yet, I must say, the rich made no such haste.  The men of business, indeed, came up, but many of them did not bring their families to town till the spring came on, and that they saw reason to depend upon it that the plague would not return.

The court, indeed, came up soon after Christmas; but the nobility and gentry, except such as depended upon and had employment under the administration, did not come so soon.

I should have taken notice here, that notwithstanding the violence of the plague in London and other places, yet it was very observable that it was never on board the fleet; and yet for some time there was a strange press[348] in the river, and even in the streets, for seamen to man the fleet.  But it was in the beginning of the year, when the plague was scarce begun, and not at all come down to that part of the city where they usually press for seamen; and though a war with the Dutch was not at all grateful to the people at that time, and the seamen went with a kind of reluctancy into the service, and many complained of being dragged into it by force, yet it proved, in the event, a happy violence to several of them, who had probably perished in the general calamity, and who, after the summer service was over, though they had cause to lament the desolation of their families (who, when they came back, were many of them in their graves), yet they had room to be thankful that they were carried out of the reach of it, though so much against their wills.  We, indeed, had a hot war with the Dutch that year, and one very great engagement[349] at sea, in which the Dutch were worsted; but we lost a great many men and some ships.  But, as I observed, the plague was not in the fleet; and when they came to lay up the ships in the river, the violent part of it began to abate.

I would be glad if I could close the account of this melancholy year with some particular examples historically, I mean of the thankfulness to God, our Preserver, for our being delivered from this dreadful calamity.  Certainly the circumstances of the deliverance, as well as the terrible enemy we were delivered from, called upon the whole nation for it.  The circumstances of the deliverance were indeed very remarkable, as I have in part mentioned already; and particularly the dreadful condition which we were all in, when we were, to the surprise of the whole town, made joyful with the hope of a stop to the infection.

Nothing but the immediate finger of God, nothing but omnipotent power, could have done it.  The contagion despised all medicine, death raged in every corner; and, had it gone on as it did then, a few weeks more would have cleared the town of all and everything that had a soul.  Men everywhere began to despair; every heart failed them for fear; people were made desperate through the anguish of their souls; and the terrors of death sat in the very faces and countenances of the people.