tainted with all the vices of a vicious Court and an unbelieving
age--drinking, and making hideous mockery of the woes of their
townsmen, careless even when the gaps amid their own ranks showed
that the fell disease was busy amongst all classes and ranks.
Indeed, it was no unheard of thing for a man to fall stricken to
the ground in the midst of one of these revels; and although the
master of the house would hastily throw him out of the door as if
he had staggered forth drunk, yet it would ofttimes be the
distemper which had him in its fatal clutches, and the dead cart
would remove him upon its next gloomy round.

For now indeed the pestilence was spreading with a fearful
rapidity. The King, taking sudden alarm, after being careless and
callous for long, had removed with his Court to Oxford. The fiat
for the shutting up of all infected houses had gone forth, and was
being put in practice, greatly increasing the terror of the
citizens, albeit many of them recognized in it both wisdom and
foresight. Something plainly had to be done to check the spread of
the infection. And as there was no means of removing the sick from
their houses--there being but two or three pest houses in all
London--even should their friends be prompt to give notice, and
permit them to be borne away, the only alternative seemed to be to
shut them up within the doors of the house where they lay stricken;
and since they might already have infected all within it, condemn
these also to share the imprisonment. It was this that was the
hardship, and which caused so many to strive to evade the law by
every means in their power. It drove men mad with fear to think of
being shut up in an infected house with a person smitten with the
fell disease. Yet if the houses were not so closed, and guarded by
watchmen hired for the purpose, the sick in their delirium would