Death came a reaping to the town.

This first week were entered upon the roles

three new deaths, with all the tokens coming on

each one suffering liken mortality.

The second week,

being hot, and the air vapid,

the mortality was delivered

twenty-eight people dead.

The third week the canker was spread

all up the hither parts of the borough,

where divers of the dispossessed

have habitually aboded themselves,

it being ancient and much warraned about

with alleys and stenchfull places,

very like a rustic dunghill,

too rich with piss and doings to warrant salvage.

The distemper coming quick on them,

so that one infected in a household,

however unbeknown,

came as the reaper of death

to all within the walls of the house-

though they be father to that house

or mother

to the children of the house.

They had only to live five days together

that the distemper was rooted, like a black vine,

yielding not wine, but canker and winding sheets

till all were pocked and dead by it.

The fourth week a great fear encompassed the city.

Those persons qualified to execute their estate,

by the quality of blood or state office,

took them passports and certificates of good health,

which they obtained by bribes and the bartering of baubles.

These baubles being of great worth, from which exchange

they obtained leave to fly, out of the gate

before it was shut fast, and the town shut up.

Thus, was the town passed from the offices of civic man

to God’s care a charnel house and a pestilential place.

These baubles being later cast down and dropped

out of the very hands of those that now possessed them,

they being dead and puked out their last.

so that the baubles

lay glittering

amidst the top of dunghills and of puke

The fifth week saw most of the doctors who remained,

being laid under.

There being none left to tend to the sick but searcher

and wise women and the bone-and-scab-men.

On the sixth week the cats and dogs,

which formerly had feared of nothing

were by the end of it

dead by Sabbath to the last one.

And the fowl of the air struck down

and falling out of the sky.

When opened they were all of them black and rotted

as though a blight had consumed them.

The sixth week saw a frenzy of pillage.

A great mobile of brigandish,

piratical and disaffected persons,

all assembled in outlandish garb,

did parade about the streets at night

breaking in and robbing the dead and dying

and the empty houses of the quality.

There being only a partial mustering of those regiments

which were formerly want to stand to the order of the town,

they being so thinned out in the ranks by

distemper and death.

Some officers being still on the role

and not above four tenths

of the soldiers

that were formerly enrolled.

It was charged them to stand the public watch,

shooting any that might break houses;

commit rapine; run over the walls

or any acts unkindly to the public good.

Which they did drunkenly at night

With sundry blasphemies

And breaking of houses.

But many of the soldiers

Took it upon them

Much afeared

to fly.

The seventh week.

So afeared were the cities and country hereabouts

that the plague might break out of our walls

that they had sent each some regiments to contain us

establishing some batteries of cannon covering our gates.

One story I heard being that a girl of about twenty had been caught by them trying to escape

and so, they had hanged her despite the protestations of her poor father who afterwards fell into a grief and died of it.

Week eight.

Night and awakened

by a cannonade

and great expenditure of powder

with flashes in the night.

Seeming that our gunners on the wall had

taken a drunken disputation with the containing batteries

and, in a revelry of drink and laughing

put them to execution.

It being evident that they were replied to

as some shot came over shooting through the roof tops of houses.

As was testified to by the glowing in the thatch

Though none caught fire.

Morning saw everybody gone from the batteries.

Only two dead men remaining

taken away by the pestilence.

The countryside beyond being wonderfully empty of all persons.

Week nine.

Then came prophets;

all of fire and howling

who promised many wonders,

and revealed apocalypses.

Though many said they were mad

and were only out

as those who formerly did care for them

were now dead.

For pestilence had danced through the streets.

Whole family now lay dead and rotten in their house.

And others saw only that they alone now live

being bereft of their families,

and all friends and acquaintance died away also.

So the people who now remained took to public frenzy,

and debauch, going in a body to dance in the public square

knocking down the doors of dead houses,

and taking the cellars to liberty,

dragging out any wine, sac or beer,

cakes, cheeses and sundries;

and making great ceremony

of licentious and fornicating acts

in the said square.

Though the streets were empty

and only the cries and laminations

of the poor afflicted in their house

was heard to contend their revelry.

One or two churches only

still offered themselves to service

Week ten.

Some houses that were fat with corpse

were seen to be fast ablaze with fire.

It being supposed that either some

plunder was practised there and

the buildings put to incendiary,

else the very bloating of the dead

had flared to roaring.

As is the want if the putrefaction

is not arrested by fire or earth.

This fire spread to many streets

and burned up above one fifth share

of all the buildings.

A storm put paid to it.

Whether this was a mercy or not

I can not tell.

By winter the distemper flared out

There are not over two thousand souls surviving.

Week eleven

August and a company of our people

With some mariners

Fearing death

designed on taking a ship at the quaysisde

Thinking to break the boom and escape down river.

She being the Constance St. Agatha of six guns.

They flew the gideon of the Horse Company

At the jackstaff of the ship

And sailed on the 26^th instance.

Where upon we heard divers cannonading after they had gone and a great fire some twenty miles off

It being supposed that they had got a hot fight of it and that they had their ship all burned up.

September Mr. --- accosted me in confession that he had obtained the deeds to many of the houses which stood empty and bereft of proprietor,

That he had it that a prominent Jew

Taken away by the plague

Was found to have many plundered deeds

Taken from the houses of his Christian neighbours.

TheM being happy to prosper

On the misfortunes God has sent to deliver upon us

But this Crimes not going unnoticed by god

Was sorely punished by him.

Some saying that it was the Modinites who had

Ignited the contamination

For the express purpose of sizing the deeds of the town.

They doing this by some science known only to them

Or by some black art concocted by the devil’s aid.

I argued that I had dealt with them in matters of the law and had known them to be trustworthy in their business

Though others said that this was only that they might better be about the Devil’s designs

That any town that suffered Modinites to live unmolested as we had done

Earned the express wrathfulness’ of God

His punishment and castigation.

reasoning that should God see fit we should live

We must inevitably see some Duke, prelate or scandalous person come to obtain himself of the title of these properties

Though he were never known in the city before.

I agreeing that we should collect as many deeds as we might obtain and

Grant ourselves what office we may to grant over that such titles to the fathers and alderman of the city

Which, they being dead should be us.

Some of the mobile latterly taken

At their pillage.

They being put to several means of persuasion.

Fire and the boot and wedge

By means of which the marrow was quite squeezed out of the bone

And screaming with just justice he saw bit off his tongue after which he was silent

Whereupon they put him to fire.

Divulged a house commandeered by them,

Where the poor dead

Were tipped out of the windows,

Filled like a cornucopia with the treasure

Of their hoarding.

These --- were summarily brought before

The magistrates

Which comprised of Mr – the clerk

And my self

Being now foremost learned in the law

The others being currently in the care of Hell.

And an assortment of the Godly remaining.

The – quickly sentenced to the rage of the city

Punished accordingly.

Breaking upon the wheels

The black badge of nightmares

The two-ing and froing of tomorrow’s.