The ministers, to do them justice, and preachers of most sorts that were serious and understanding persons, thundered against these and other wicked practices, and exposed the folly as well as the wickedness of them together, and the most sober and judicious people despised and abhorred them.  But it was impossible to make any impression upon the middling people and the working labouring poor.  Their fears were predominant over all their passions, and they threw away their money in a most distracted manner upon those whimsies.  Maid-servants especially, and men-servants, were the chief of their customers, and their question generally was, after the first demand of ‘Will there be a plague?’ I say, the next question was, ’Oh, sir I for the Lord’s sake, what will become of me?  Will my mistress keep me, or will she turn me off?  Will she stay here, or will she go into the country?  And if she goes into the country, will she take me with her, or leave me here to be starved and undone?’ And the like of menservants.

The truth is, the case of poor servants was very dismal, as I shall have occasion to mention again by-and-by, for it was apparent a prodigious number of them would be turned away, and it was so.  And of them abundance perished, and particularly of those that these false prophets had flattered with hopes that they should be continued in their services, and carried with their masters and mistresses into the country; and had not public charity provided for these poor creatures, whose number was exceeding great and in all cases of this nature must be so, they would have been in the worst condition of any people in the city.

These things agitated the minds of the common people for many months, while the first apprehensions were upon them, and while the plague was not, as I may say, yet broken out.  But I must also not forget that the more serious part of the inhabitants behaved after another manner.  The Government encouraged their devotion, and appointed public prayers and days of fasting and humiliation, to make public confession of sin and implore the mercy of God to avert the dreadful judgement which hung over their heads; and it is not to be expressed with what alacrity the people of all persuasions embraced the occasion; how they flocked to the churches and meetings, and they were all so thronged that there was often no coming near, no, not to the very doors of the largest churches.  Also there were daily prayers appointed morning and evening at several churches, and days of private praying at other places; at all which the people attended, I say, with an uncommon devotion.  Several private families also, as well of one opinion as of another, kept family fasts, to which they admitted their near relations only.  So that, in a word, those people who were really serious and religious applied themselves in a truly Christian manner to the proper work of repentance and humiliation, as a Christian people ought to do.