wizards and cunning people propagating them, that I have often wondered
there was any (women especially) left behind.

In the first place, a blazing star or comet appeared for several months
before the plague, as there did, the year after, another a little before
the fire. The old women, and the phlegmatic hypochondriac[45] part of
the other sex (whom I could almost call old women too), remarked,
especially afterward, though not till both those judgments were over,
that those two comets passed directly over the city, and that so very
near the houses that it was plain they imported something peculiar to
the city alone; that the comet before the pestilence was of a faint,
dull, languid color, and its motion very heavy, solemn, and slow, but
that the comet before the fire was bright and sparkling, or, as others
said, flaming, and its motion swift and furious; and that, accordingly,
one foretold a heavy judgment, slow but severe, terrible, and
frightful, as was the plague, but the other foretold a stroke, sudden,
swift, and fiery, as was the conflagration. Nay, so particular some
people were, that, as they looked upon that comet preceding the fire,
they fancied that they not only saw it pass swiftly and fiercely, and
could perceive the motion with their eye, but even they heard it; that
it made a rushing, mighty noise, fierce and terrible, though at a
distance, and but just perceivable.

I saw both these stars, and, I must confess, had had so much of the
common notion of such things in my head, that I was apt to look upon
them as the forerunners and warnings of God's judgments, and, especially
when the plague had followed the first, I yet saw another of the like
kind, I could not but say, God had not yet sufficiently scourged the
city.