lves, it would have put both the city and
suburbs into the utmost confusion.

But the magistrates wisely caused the people to be encouraged, made very
good bye-laws for the regulating the citizens, keeping good order in the
streets, and making everything as eligible as possible to all sorts of
people.

In the first place, the Lord Mayor and the sheriffs, the Court of
Aldermen, and a certain number of the Common Council men, or their
deputies, came to a resolution and published it, viz., that they would
not quit the city themselves, but that they would be always at hand for
the preserving good order in every place and for the doing justice on
all occasions; as also for the distributing the public charity to the
poor; and, in a word, for the doing the duty and discharging the trust
reposed in them by the citizens to the utmost of their power.

In pursuance of these orders, the Lord Mayor, sheriffs, &c., held
councils every day, more or less, for making such dispositions as they
found needful for preserving the civil peace; and though they used the
people with all possible gentleness and clemency, yet all manner of
presumptuous rogues such as thieves, housebreakers, plunderers of the
dead or of the sick, were duly punished, and several declarations were
continually published by the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen against
such.

Also all constables and churchwardens were enjoined to stay in the
city upon severe penalties, or to depute such able and sufficient
housekeepers as the deputy aldermen or Common Council men of the
precinct should approve, and for whom they should give security; and
also security in case of mortality that they would forthwith constitute
other constables in their stead.

These things re-established the minds of the people very much,
especially in the first of their fright, when they talked of making
so universal a flight that the city would have been in danger of being
entirely deserted of its inhabitants except the poor, and the country
of being plundered and laid waste by the multitude. Nor were the
magistrates deficient in performing their part as boldly as they
promised it; for my Lord Mayor and the sheriffs were continually in the
streets and at places of the greatest danger, and though they did not
care for having too great a resort of people crowding about them, yet
in emergent cases they never denied the people access to them, and heard
with patience all their grievances and complaints