apprehensions of some dreadful calamity and judgment coming upon the city;
and this principally from the sight of this comet, and the little alarm
that was given in December by two people dying in St. Giles.

The apprehensions of the people were likewise strangely increased by the
error of the times; in which, I think the people, from what principles
I cannot imagine, were more addicted to prophecies, and astrological
conjurations, dreams, and old wives' tales, than ever they were before or
since. Whether this unhappy temper was originally raised by the follies of
some people who got money by it--that is to say, by printing predictions
and prognostications--I know not; but certain it is books frightened them
terribly; such as _Lilly's Almanack, Gadbury's Allogical Predictions,
Poor Robin's Almanack_, and the like; also several pretended religious
books--one entitled _Come out of her, my people, lest you be partaker
of her plagues_; another, called _Fair Warning_; another, _Britain's
Remembrancer_; and many such, all or most part of which foretold directly
or covertly the ruin of the city: nay, some were so enthusiastically bold
as to run about the streets with their oral predictions, pretending they
were sent to preach to the city; and one in particular, who like Jonah
to Nineveh, cried in the streets, "Yet forty days, and London shall be
destroyed." I will not be positive whether he said "yet forty days" or "yet
a few days."

Another ran about naked, except a pair of drawers about his waist, crying
day and night. As a man that Josephus mentions, who cried, "Woe to
Jerusalem!" a little before the destruction of that city, so this poor
naked creature cried, "O the great and the dreadful God!" and said no more,
but repeated these words continually, with a voice and countenance full of
horror, a swift pace; and nobody could ever find him to stop or rest or
take any sustenance, at least that ever I could hear of. I met this poor