Spitalfields was then, for it was not so large as now by one fifth part.

By this, however, the number of people in the whole may be judged of;
and, indeed, I often wondered that, after the prodigious numbers of
people that went away at first, there was yet so great a multitude left
as it appeared there was.

But I must go back again to the beginning of this surprising time. While
the fears of the people were young, they were increased strangely by
several odd accidents which, put altogether, it was really a wonder
the whole body of the people did not rise as one man and abandon their
dwellings, leaving the place as a space of ground designed by Heaven for
an Akeldama, doomed to be destroyed from the face of the earth, and that
all that would be found in it would perish with it. I shall name but a
few of these things; but sure they were so many, and so many 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 part of the
other sex, whom I could almost call old women too, remarked (especially
afterward, though not till both those judgements 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 colour, 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 judgement, slow but severe, terrible and frightful,