week, when there was such a prodigious number of people
sick at that time as it was known there was; and then it was that many
shifted[337] away that had staid most of the time before.

Besides, if God gave strength to some more than to others, was it to
boast of their ability to abide the stroke, and upbraid those that had
not the same gift and support, or ought they not rather to have been
humble and thankful if they were rendered more useful than their
brethren?

I think it ought to be recorded to the honor of such men, as well clergy
as physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, magistrates, and officers of
every kind, as also all useful people, who ventured their lives in
discharge of their duty, as most certainly all such as staid did to the
last degree; and several of these kinds did not only venture, but lost
their lives on that sad occasion.

I was once making a list of all such (I mean of all those professions
and employments who thus died, as I call it, in the way of their duty),
but it was impossible for a private man to come at a certainty in the
particulars. I only remember that there died sixteen clergymen, two
aldermen, five physicians, thirteen surgeons, within the city and
liberties, before the beginning of September. But this being, as I said
before, the crisis and extremity of the infection, it can be no complete
list. As to inferior people, I think there died six and forty constables
and headboroughs[338] in the two parishes of Stepney and Whitechapel;
but I could not carry my list on, for when the violent rage of the
distemper, in September, came upon us, it drove us out of all measure.
Men did then no more die by tale[339] and by number: they might put out
a weekly bill, and call them seven or eight thousand, or what they
pleased. It is certain they died by heaps, and were buried by heaps;
that is to say, without account. And if I might believe some people who
were more abroad and more conversant with those things than I (though I
was public enough for one that had no more business to do than I
had),--I say, if we may believe them, there was not many less buried
those first three weeks in September than twenty thousand per week.
However the others aver the truth of it, yet I rather choose to keep to
the public account. Seven or eight thousand per week is enough to make
good all that I have said of the terror of those times; and it is much
to the satisfaction of me that write, as well as those that rea