The next morning, seeing no appearance of the gentleman, somebody in the house asked the servant that had showed him upstairs what was become of him.  She started.  “Alas!” says she, “I never thought more of him.  He bade me carry him some warm ale, but I forgot.”  Upon which, not the maid, but some other person, was sent up to see after him, who, coming into the room, found him stark dead, and almost cold, stretched out across the bed.  His clothes were pulled off, his jaw fallen, his eyes open in a most frightful posture, the rug of the bed being grasped hard in one of his hands, so that it was plain he died soon after the maid left him; and it is probable, had she gone up with the ale, she had found him dead in a few minutes after he had sat down upon the bed.  The alarm was great in the house, as any one may suppose, they having been free from the distemper till that disaster, which, bringing the infection to the house, spread it immediately to other houses round about it.  I do not remember how many died in the house itself; but I think the maidservant who went up first with him fell presently ill by the fright, and several others; for, whereas there died but two in Islington of the plague the week before, there died nineteen the week after, whereof fourteen were of the plague.  This was in the week from the 11th of July to the 18th.

There was one shift[126] that some families had, and that not a few, when their houses happened to be infected, and that was this:  the families who in the first breaking out of the distemper fled away into the country, and had retreats among their friends, generally found some or other of their neighbors or relations to commit the charge of those houses to, for the safety of the goods and the like.  Some houses were indeed entirely locked up, the doors padlocked, the windows and doors having deal boards nailed over them, and only the inspection of them committed to the ordinary watchmen and parish officers; but these were but few.

It was thought that there were not less than a thousand houses forsaken of the inhabitants in the city and suburbs, including what was in the outparishes and in Surrey, or the side of the water they called Southwark.  This was besides the numbers of lodgers and of particular persons who were fled out of other families; so that in all it was computed that about two hundred thousand people were fled and gone in all.[127] But of this I shall speak again.  But I mention it here on this account:  namely, that it was a rule with those who had thus two houses in their keeping or care, that, if anybody was taken sick in a family, before the master of the family let the examiners or any other officer know of it, he immediately would send all the rest of his family, whether children or servants as it fell out to be, to such other house which he had not in charge, and then, giving notice of the sick person to the examiner, have a nurse or nurses appointed, and having another person to be shut up in the house with them (which many for money would do), so to take charge of the house in case the person should die.