infected or who
they were infected by.

A house in Whitechappel was shut up for the sake of one infected maid,
who had only spots, not the tokens come out upon her, and recovered; yet
these people obtained no liberty to stir, neither for air or exercise,
forty days. Want of breath, fear, anger, vexation, and all the other
gifts attending such an injurious treatment cast the mistress of the
family into a fever, and visitors came into the house and said it was
the plague, though the physicians declared it was not. However, the
family were obliged to begin their quarantine anew on the report of the
visitors or examiner, though their former quarantine wanted but a few
days of being finished. This oppressed them so with anger and grief,
and, as before, straitened them also so much as to room, and for want
of breathing and free air, that most of the family fell sick, one of
one distemper, one of another, chiefly scorbutic ailments; only one,
a violent colic; till, after several prolongings of their confinement,
some or other of those that came in with the visitors to inspect the
persons that were ill, in hopes of releasing them, brought the distemper
with them and infected the whole house; and all or most of them died,
not of the plague as really upon them before, but of the plague
that those people brought them, who should have been careful to have
protected them from it. And this was a thing which frequently happened,
and was indeed one of the worst consequences of shutting houses up.

I had about this time a little hardship put upon me, which I was at
first greatly afflicted at, and very much disturbed about though, as
it proved, it did not expose me to any disaster; and this was being
appointed by the alderman of Portsoken Ward one of the examiners of the
houses in the precinct where I lived. We had a large parish, and had no
less than eighteen examiners, as the order called us; the people called
us visitors. I endeavoured with all my might to be excused from such
an employment, and used many arguments with the alderman's deputy to be
excused; particularly I alleged that I was against shutting up houses at
all, and that it would be very hard to oblige me to be an instrument
in that which was against my judgement, and which I did verily believe
would not answer the end it was intended for; but all the abatement I
could get was only, that whereas the officer was appointed by my Lord
Mayor to continue two months, I should