creature several times in the streets, and would have spoken to him, but he
would not enter into conversation with me, or anyone else, but held on his
dismal cries continually. These things terrified the people to the last
degree; and especially when two or three times, as I have mentioned
already, they found one or two in the bills dead of the plague at St.
Giles.

The justices of peace for Middlesex, by direction of the secretary
of state, had begun to shut up houses in the parishes of St.
Giles-in-the-Fields, St. Martin's, St. Clement Danes, etc., and it was with
good success; for in several streets where the plague broke out, after
strictly guarding the houses that were infected, and taking care to bury
those that died immediately after they were known to be dead, the plague
ceased in those streets. It was also observed that the plague decreased
sooner in those parishes, after they had been visited in detail, than it
did in the parishes of Bishopsgate, Shoreditch, Aldgate, Whitechapel,
Stepney, and others; the early care taken in that manner being a great
check to it.

This shutting up of houses was a method first taken, as I understand, in
the plague which happened in 1603, on the accession of King James I to the
crown; and the power of shutting people up in their own houses was granted
by an act of Parliament entitled "An act for the charitable relief and
ordering of persons infected with the plague." On which act of Parliament
the lord mayor and aldermen of the city of London founded the order they
made at this time, viz., June, 1665; when the numbers infected within the
city were but few, the last bill for the ninety-two parishes being but
four. By these means, when there died about one thousand a week in the
whole, the number in the city was but twenty-eight; and the city was more
healthy in proportion than any other place all the time of the infection.