be dead of the plague, and the time when the distemper spread
openly, and could not be concealed.

Besides, the weekly bills themselves at that time evidently discover
this truth; for while there was no mention of the plague, and no
increase after it had been mentioned, yet it was apparent that there was
an increase of those distempers which bordered nearest upon it. For
example, there were eight, twelve, seventeen, of the spotted fever in a
week when there were none or but very few of the plague; whereas before,
one, three, or four were the ordinary weekly numbers of that distemper.
Likewise, as I observed before, the burials increased weekly in that
particular parish and the parishes adjacent, more than in any other
parish, although there were none set down of the plague; all which tell
us that the infection was handed on, and the succession of the distemper
really preserved, though it seemed to us at that time to be ceased, and
to come again in a manner surprising.

It might be, also, that the infection might remain in other parts of the
same parcel of goods which at first it came in, and which might not be,
perhaps, opened, or at least not fully, or in the clothes of the first
infected person; for I cannot think that anybody could be seized with
the contagion in a fatal and mortal degree for nine weeks together, and
support his state of health so well as even not to discover it to
themselves:[281] yet, if it were so, the argument is the stronger in
favor of what I am saying, namely, that the infection is retained in
bodies apparently well, and conveyed from them to those they converse
with, while it is known to neither the one nor the other.

Great were the confusions at that time upon this very account; and when
people began to be convinced that the infection was received in this
surprising manner from persons apparently well, they began to be
exceeding shy and jealous of every one that came near them. Once, on a
public day, whether a sabbath day or not I do not remember, in Aldgate
Church, in a pew full of people, on a sudden one fancied she smelt an
ill smell. Immediately she fancies the plague was in the pew, whispers
her notion or suspicion to the next, then rises and goes out of the pew.
It immediately took with the next, and so with them all; and every one
of them, and of the two or three adjoining pews, got up and went out of
the church, nobody knowing what it was offended them, or from whom.

This immed