it began; for though I have lived to see a further increase, and mighty
throngs of people settling in London more than ever, yet we had always a
notion that the numbers of people which, the wars being over, the armies
disbanded, and the royal family and the monarchy being restored, had
flocked to London to settle in business, or to depend upon and attend
the Court for rewards of services, preferments, and the like, was such
that the town was computed to have in it above a hundred thousand people
more than ever it held before; nay, some took upon them to say it
had twice as many, because all the ruined families of the royal party
flocked hither. All the old soldiers set up trades here, and abundance
of families settled here. Again, the Court brought with them a
great flux of pride, and new fashions. All people were grown gay and
luxurious, and the joy of the Restoration had brought a vast many
families to London.

I often thought that as Jerusalem was besieged by the Romans when the
Jews were assembled together to celebrate the Passover--by which means
an incredible number of people were surprised there who would otherwise
have been in other countries--so the plague entered London when
an incredible increase of people had happened occasionally, by the
particular circumstances above-named. As this conflux of the people to
a youthful and gay Court made a great trade in the city, especially
in everything that belonged to fashion and finery, so it drew by
consequence a great number of workmen, manufacturers, and the like,
being mostly poor people who depended upon their labour. And I remember
in particular that in a representation to my Lord Mayor of the condition
of the poor, it was estimated that there were no less than an hundred
thousand riband-weavers in and about the city, the chiefest number of
whom lived then in the parishes of Shoreditch, Stepney, Whitechappel,
and Bishopsgate, that, namely, about Spitalfields; that is to say, as