containing their household goods and belongings, until it
seemed as if the city mould be left without a soul. Many merchants and
shipowners together with their families betook themselves to vessels,
which they caused to be towed down the river towards Greenwich, and in
which they resided for months; whilst others sought refuge in smacks and
fishing-boats, using them as shelters by day, and lodging on the banks
by night. Some few families remaining in the capital laid in stores
of provisions, and shutting themselves up securely in their houses,
permitted none to enter or leave, by which means some of them escaped
contagion and death. The court tarried until the 29th of June, and then
left for Hampton, none too soon, for the pestilence had reached almost
to the palace gates. The queen mother likewise departed, retiring into
France; from which country she never returned.

All through the latter part of May, and the whole of the following
month, this flight from the dread enemy of mankind continued; presenting
a melancholy spectacle to those who remained, until at last the capital
seemed veritably a city of the dead. But for the credit of humanity be
it stated, that not all possessed of health and wealth abandoned the
town. Prominent amongst those who remained were the Duke of Albemarle,
Lord Craven, the lord mayor, Sir John Laurence, some of his aldermen,
and a goodly number of physicians, chirurgeons, and apothecaries, all of
whom by their skill or exertions sought to check the hungry ravages of
death. The offices which medical men voluntarily performed during
this period of dire affliction were loathsome to a terrible degree. "I
commonly dressed forty sores in a day," says Dr. Boghurst, whose
simple words convey a forcible idea of his nobility; "held the pulse of
patients sweating in their beds half a quarter of an hour together; let
blood; administered clysters to the sick; held them up in their beds to
keep them from strangling and choking, half an hour together commonly,
and suffered their breathing in my face several times when they were
dying; eat and drank with them, especially those that had sores; sat
down by their bedsides and upon their beds, discoursing with them an
hour together. If I had time I stayed by them to see them die. Then if
people had nobody to help them (for help was scarce at such time and
place) I helped to lay them forth out of the bed, and afterwards into
the coffin; and last of all, accompani