he streets, except as every
family might miss their relations and neighbors; and the like. I say,
they could not believe these things; and if inquiry were now to be made
in Naples, or in other cities on the coast of Italy, they would tell you
there was a dreadful infection in London so many years ago, in which, as
above, there died twenty thousand in a week, etc., just as we have had
it reported in London that there was a plague in the city of Naples in
the year 1656, in which there died twenty thousand people in a day, of
which I have had very good satisfaction that it was utterly false.

But these extravagant reports were very prejudicial to our trade, as
well as unjust and injurious in themselves; for it was a long time after
the plague was quite over before our trade could recover itself in those
parts of the world; and the Flemings[295] and Dutch, but especially the
last, made very great advantages of it, having all the market to
themselves, and even buying our manufactures in the several parts of
England where the plague was not, and carrying them to Holland and
Flanders, and from thence transporting them to Spain and to Italy, as if
they had been of their own making.

But they were detected sometimes, and punished, that is to say, their
goods confiscated, and ships also; for if it was true that our
manufactures as well as our people were infected, and that it was
dangerous to touch or to open and receive the smell of them, then those
people ran the hazard, by that clandestine trade, not only of carrying
the contagion into their own country, but also of infecting the nations
to whom they traded with those goods; which, considering how many lives
might be lost in consequence of such an action, must be a trade that no
men of conscience could suffer themselves to be concerned in.

I do not take upon me to say that any harm was done, I mean of that
kind, by those people; but I doubt I need not make any such proviso in
the case of our own country; for either by our people of London, or by
the commerce, which made their conversing with all sorts of people in
every county, and of every considerable town, necessary,--I say, by this
means the plague was first or last spread all over the kingdom, as well
in London as in all the cities and great towns, especially in the
trading manufacturing towns and seaports: so that first or last all the
considerable places in England were visited more or less, and the
kingdom of Irelan