ed as if the very imminence of the peril and the fearful
spread of the contagion exercised upon others a hardening
influence, and they became even more lawless and dissolute than
before. "Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die," appeared to be
their motto, and they lived up to it only too well.

So whilst the churches were thronged with multitudes of pious or
terrified persons, assembled to pray to God for mercy, and to
listen to words of godly counsel or admonition; whilst the city
authorities were doing everything in their power to check the
course of the frightful contagion, and send needful relief to the
sufferers, and many devoted men and women were adventuring their
lives daily for the sake of others, the taverns were still filled
day by day and night by night with idle and dissolute young men,
tainted with all the vices of a vicious Court and an unbelieving
age--drinking, and making hideous mockery of the woes of their
townsmen, careless even when the gaps amid their own ranks showed
that the fell disease was busy amongst all classes and ranks.
Indeed, it was no unheard of thing for a man to fall stricken to
the ground in the midst of one of these revels; and although the
master of the house would hastily throw him out of the door as if
he had staggered forth drunk, yet it would ofttimes be the
distemper which had him in its fatal clutches, and the dead cart
would remove him upon its next gloomy round.

For now indeed the pestilence was spreading with a fearful
rapidity. The King, taking sudden alarm, after being careless and
callous for long, had removed with his Court to Oxford. The fiat
for the shutting up of all infected houses had gone forth, and was
being put in practice, greatly increasing the terror of the
citizens, albeit many of them recognized in it both wisdom and
foresight. Something plainly had to be done to check the spread of
the infection. And as there was no means of removing the sick from
their houses--there being but two or three pest houses in all
London--even should their friends be prompt to give notice, and
permit them to be borne away, the only alternative seemed to be to
shut them up within the doors of the house where they lay stricken;
and since they might already have infected all within it, condemn
these also to share the imprisonment. It was this that was the
hardship, and which caused so many to strive to evade the law by
every means in their power. It drove men mad with fear