we call the heart of the city, that is to say, among the wealthiest of the people, and such persons as were unincumbered with trades and business.  But of the rest, the generality staid, and seemed to abide the worst; so that in the place we call the liberties, and in the suburbs, in Southwark, and in the east part, such as Wapping, Ratcliff, Stepney, Rotherhithe, and the like, the people generally staid, except here and there a few wealthy families, who, as above, did not depend upon their business.

It must not be forgot here that the city and suburbs were prodigiously full of people at the time of this visitation, I mean at the time that it began.  For though I have lived to see a further increase, and mighty throngs of people settling in London, more than ever; yet we had always a notion that numbers of people which—­the wars being over, the armies disbanded, and the royal family and the monarchy being restored—­had flocked to London to settle in business, or to depend upon and attend the court for rewards of services, preferments, and the like, was[42] such that the town was computed to have in it above a hundred thousand people more than ever it held before.  Nay, some took upon them to say it had twice as many, because all the ruined families of the royal party flocked hither, all the soldiers set up trades here, and abundance of families settled here.  Again:  the court brought with it a great flux of pride and new fashions; all people were gay and luxurious, and the joy of the restoration had brought a vast many families to London.[43]

But I must go back again to the beginning of this surprising time.  While the fears of the people were young, they were increased strangely by several odd accidents, which put altogether, it was really a wonder the whole body of the people did not rise as one man, and abandon their dwellings, leaving the place as a space of ground designed by Heaven for an Aceldama,[44] doomed to be destroyed from the face of the earth, and that all that would be found in it would perish with it.  I shall name but a few of these things; but sure they were so many, and so many wizards and cunning people propagating them, that I have often wondered there was any (women especially) left behind.

In the first place, a blazing star or comet appeared for several months before the plague, as there did, the year after, another a little before the fire.  The old women, and the phlegmatic hypochondriac[45] part of the other sex (whom I could almost call old women too), remarked, especially afterward, though not till both those judgments were over, that those two comets passed directly over the city, and that so very near the houses that it was plain they imported something peculiar to the city alone; that the comet before the pestilence was of a faint, dull, languid color, and its motion very heavy, solemn, and slow, but that the comet before the fire was bright and sparkling, or, as others said, flaming, and its motion