soning, people in their own houses, as I said above, was of little
or no service in the whole. Nay, I am of opinion it was rather hurtful,
having forced those desperate people to wander abroad with the plague
upon them, who would otherwise have died quietly in their beds.

I remember one citizen who, having thus broken out of his house in
Aldersgate Street or thereabout, went along the road to Islington; he
attempted to have gone in at the Angel Inn, and after that the White
Horse, two inns known still by the same signs, but was refused; after
which he came to the Pied Bull, an inn also still continuing the same
sign. He asked them for lodging for one night only, pretending to be
going into Lincolnshire, and assuring them of his being very sound and
free from the infection, which also at that time had not reached much
that way.

They told him they had no lodging that they could spare but one bed up
in the garret, and that they could spare that bed for one night, some
drovers being expected the next day with cattle; so, if he would accept
of that lodging, he might have it, which he did. So a servant was
sent up with a candle with him to show him the room. He was very well
dressed, and looked like a person not used to lie in a garret; and when
he came to the room he fetched a deep sigh, and said to the servant,
'I have seldom lain in such a lodging as this. 'However, the servant
assuring him again that they had no better, 'Well,' says he, 'I must
make shift; this is a dreadful time; but it is but for one night.' So he
sat down upon the bedside, and bade the maid, I think it was, fetch him
up a pint of warm ale. Accordingly the servant went for the ale, but
some hurry in the house, which perhaps employed her other ways, put it
out of her head, and she went up no more to him.

The next morning, seeing no appearance of the gentleman, somebody in the
house asked the servant that had showed him upstairs what was become of
him. She started. 'Alas I,' says she, 'I never thought more of him. He
bade me carry him some warm ale, but I forgot.' Upon which, not the
maid, but some other person was sent up to see after him, who, coming
into the room, found him stark dead and almost cold, stretched out
across the bed. His clothes were pulled off, his jaw fallen, his eyes
open in a most frightful posture, the rug of the bed being grasped hard
in one of his hands, so that it was plain he died soon after the maid
left him; and 'tis proba