IT was about the Beginning of September 1664, that I, among the Rest of my Neighbours, heard in ordinary Discourse, that the Plague was return'd again in Holland;* for it had been very violent there, and particularly at Amsterdam and Roterdam, in the Year 1663, whither they say, it was brought, some said from Italy, others from the Levant among some Goods, which were brought home by their Turkey Fleet; others said it was brought from Candia;* others from Cyprus. It matter'd not, from whence it come;* but all agreed, it was come into Holland again. We had no such thing as printed News Papers* in those Days, to spread Rumours and Reports of Things; and to improve them by the Invention of Men, as I have liv'd to see practis'd since. But such things as these were gather'd from the Letters of Merchants, and others, who corresponded abroad, and from them was handed about by Word of Mouth only; so that things did not spread instantly over the whole Nation, as they do now. But it seems that the Government had a true Account of it, and several Counsels were held about Ways to prevent its coming over; but all was kept very private. Hence it was, that this Rumour died off again, and People began to forget it, as a thing we were very little concern'd in, and that we hoped was not true; till the latter End of November, or the Beginning of December 1664, when two Men, said to be French-men, died of the Plague in Long Acre, or rather at the upper End of Drury-Lane. The Family they were in, endeavour'd to conceal it as much as possible; but as it had gotten some Vent in the Discourse of the Neighbourhood, the Secretaries of State got Knowledge of it. And concerning themselves to inquire about it, in order to be certain of the Truth, two Physicians and a Surgeon were order'd to go to the House, and make Inspection. This they did; and finding evident Tokens* of the Sickness upon both the Bodies that were dead, they gave their Opinions publickly, that they died of the Plague: Whereupon it was given in to the Parish Clerk, and he also return'd them to the Hall;* and it was printed in the weekly Bill of Mortality* in the usual manner, thus, Plague 2. Parishes infected 1 The People shew'd a great Concern at this, and began to be allarm'd all over the Town, and the more, because in the last Week in December 1664, another Man died in the same House, and of the same Distemper: And then we were easy again for about six Weeks, when none having died with any Marks of Infection, it was said, the Distemper was gone; but after that, I think it was about the 12th of February, another died in another House, but in the same Parish, and in the same manner. This turn'd the Peoples Eyes pretty much towards that End of the Town; and the weekly Bills shewing an Encrease of Burials in St. Giles's Parish more than usual, it began to be suspected, that the Plague was among the People at that End of the Town; and that many had died of it, tho' they had taken Care to keep it as much from the Knowledge of the Publick, as possible: This possess'd the Heads of the People very much, and few car'd to go thro' Drury-Lane, or the other Streets suspected, unless they had extraordinary Business, that obliged them to it. This Encrease of the Bills stood thus; the usual Number of Burials in a Week, in the Parishes of St. Giles's in the Fields, and St. Andrew's Holborn were from 12 to 17 or 19 each few more or less; but from the Time that the Plague first began in St. Giles's Parish, it was observ'd, that the ordinary Burials encreased in Number considerably. For Example, The like Encrease of the Bills was observ'd in the Parishes of St. Brides, adjoining on one Side of Holborn Parish, and in the Parish of St. James Clarkenwell, adjoining on the other Side of Holborn; in both which Parishes the usual Numbers that died weekly, were from 4 to 6 or 8, whereas at that time they were increas'd, as follows. Besides this, it was observ'd with great Uneasiness by the People, that the weekly Bills in general encreas'd very much during these Weeks, altho' it was at a Time of the Year, when usually the Bills are very moderate. The usual Number of Burials within the Bills of Mortality for a Week, was from about 240 or thereabouts, to 300. The last was esteem'd a pretty high Bill; but after this we found the Bills successively encreasing, as follows. This last Bill was really frightful, being a higher Number than had been known to have been buried in one Week, since the preceeding Visitation of 1656. However, all this went off again, and the Weather proving cold, and the Frost which began in December, still continuing very severe, even till near the End of February, attended with sharp tho' moderate Winds, the Bills decreas'd again, and the City grew healthy, and every body began to look upon the Danger as good as over; only that still the Burials in St. Giles's continu'd high: From the Beginning of April especially they stood at 25 each Week, till the Week from the 18th to the 25th, when there was buried in St. Giles's Parish 30, whereof two of the Plague, and 8 of the Spotted-Feaver,* which was look'd upon as the same thing; likewise the Number that died of the Spotted-Feaver in the whole increased, being 8 the Week before, and 12 the Week above-named. This alarm'd us all again, and terrible Apprehensions were among the People, especially the Weather being now chang'd and growing warm, and the Summer being at Hand:* However, the next Week there seem'd to be some Hopes again, the Bills were low, the Number of the Dead in all was but 388, there was none of the Plague, and but four of the Spotted-Feaver. But the following Week it return'd again, and the Distemper was spread into two or three other Parishes (viz.) St. Andrew's-Holborn, St. Clement's-Danes, and to the great Affliction of the City, one died within the Walls, in the Parish of St. Mary-Wool-Church, that is to say, in Bearbinder-lane near the Stocks market; in all there was nine of the Plague, and six of the Spotted-Feaver. It was however upon Inquiry found, that this French-man who died in Bearbinder-lane, was one who having liv'd in Long-Acre, near the infected Houses, had removed for fear of the Distemper, not knowing that he was already infected. This was the beginning of May, yet the Weather was temperate, variable and cool enough?Äîand People had still some Hopes: That which encourag'd them was, that the City was healthy, the whole 97 Parishes buried but 54, and we began to hope, that as it was chiefly among the People at that End of the Town, it might go no farther; and the rather, because the next Week which was from the 9th of May to the 16th there died but three, of which not one within the whole City or Liberties,* and St. Andrew's buried but 15, which was very low: 'Tis true, St. Giles's buried two and thirty, but still as there was but one of the Plague, People began to be easy, the whole Bill also was very low, for the Week before, the Bill was but 347, and the Week above-mentioned but 343: We continued in these Hopes for a few Days, But it was but for a few; for the People were no more to be deceived thus; they searcht the Houses, and found that the Plague was really spread every way, and that many died of it every Day: So that now all our Extenuations abated, and it was no more to be concealed, nay it quickly appeared that the Infection had spread it self beyond all Hopes of Abatement; that in the Parish of St. Giles's, it was gotten into several Streets, and several Families lay all sick together; And accordingly in the Weekly Bill for the next Week, the thing began to shew it self; there was indeed but 14 set down of the Plague, but this was all Knavery and Collusion, for in St. Giles's Parish they buried 40 in all, whereof it was certain most of them died of the Plague, though they were set down of other Distempers; and though the Number of all the Burials were not increased above 32, and the whole Bill being but 385, yet there was 14 of the Spotted-Feaver, as well as 14 of the Plague; and we took it for granted upon the whole, that there was 50 died that Week of the Plague. The next Bill was from the 23d of May to the 30th, when the Number of the Plague was 17: But the Burials in St. Giles's were 53, a frightful Number! of whom they set down but 9 of the Plague: But on an Examination more strictly by the Justices of the Peace, and at the Lord Mayor's Request, it was found there were 20 more, who were really dead of the Plague in that Parish, but had been set down of the Spotted-Feaver or other Distempers, besides others concealed. But those were trifling Things to what followed immediately after; for now the Weather set in hot,* and from the first Week in June, the Infection spread in a dreadful Manner, and the Bills rose high, the Articles of the Feaver, Spotted-Feaver, and Teeth, began to swell:* For all that could conceal their Distempers, did it to prevent their Neighbours shunning and refusing to converse with them; and also to prevent Authority shutting up their Houses, which though it was not yet practised, yet was threatned, and People were extremely terrify'd at the Thoughts of it. The Second Week in June, the Parish of St. Giles's, where still the Weight of the Infection lay, buried 120, whereof though the Bills said but 68 of the Plague; every Body said there had been 100 at least, calculating it from the usual Number of Funerals in that Parish as above. Till this Week the City continued free, there having never any died except that one Frenchman, who I mention'd before, within the whole 97 Parishes. Now there died four within the City, one in Wood street, one in Fenchurch street, and two in Crooked-lane: Southwark was entirely free, having not one yet died on that Side of the Water. I liv'd without Aldgate about mid-way between Aldgate Church and White-Chappel-Bars, on the left Hand or North-side of the Street; and as the Distemper had not reach'd to that Side of the City, our Neighbourhood continued very easy: But at the other End of the Town, their Consternation was very great; and the richer sort of People, especially the Nobility and Gentry, from the West part of the City throng'd out of Town,* with their Families and Servants in an unusual Manner; and this was more particularly seen in White-Chapel; that is to say, the Broad-street where I liv'd: Indeed nothing was to be seen but Waggons and Carts, with Goods, Women, Servants, Children, &c. Coaches fill'd with People of the better Sort, and Horsemen attending them, and all hurrying away; then empty Waggons, and Carts appear'd and Spare-horses with Servants, who it was apparent were returning or sent from the Country to fetch more People: Besides innumerable Numbers of Men on Horseback, some alone, others with Servants, and generally speaking, all loaded with Baggage and fitted out for travelling, as any one might perceive by their Appearance. This was a very terrible and melancholy Thing to see, and as it was a Sight which I cou'd not but look on from Morning to Night; for indeed there was nothing else of Moment to be seen, it filled me with very serious Thoughts of the Misery that was coming upon the City, and the unhappy Condition of those that would be left in it. This Hurry of the People was such for some Weeks, that there was no getting at the Lord-Mayor's Door without exceeding Difficulty; there was such pressing and crouding there to get passes and Certificates of Health,* for such as travelled abroad; for without these, there was no being admitted to pass thro' the Towns upon the Road, or to lodge in any Inn: Now as there had none died in the City for all this time, My Lord Mayor gave Certificates of Health without any Difficulty to all those who liv'd in the 97 Parishes, and to those within the Liberties too for a while. This Hurry, I say, continued some Weeks, that is to say, all the Month of May and June, and the more because it was rumour'd that an order of the Government was to be issued out, to place Turn-pikes* and Barriers on the Road, to prevent Peoples travelling; and that the Towns on the Road, would not suffer People from London to pass, for fear of bringing the Infection along with them, though neither of these Rumours had any Foundation, but in the Imagination; especially at first. I now began to consider seriously with my Self, concerning my own Case, and how I should dispose of my self; that is to say, whether I should resolve to stay in London, or shut up my House and flee, as many of my Neighbours did. I have set this particular down so fully, because I know not but it may be of Moment to those who come after me, if they come to be brought to the same Distress, and to the same Manner of making their Choice and therefore I desire this Account may pass with them, rather for a Direction to themselves to act by, than a History of my actings, seeing it may not be of one Farthing value to them to note what became of me. I had two important things before me; the one was the carrying on my Business and Shop; which was considerable, and in which was embark'd all my Effects in the World; and the other was the Preservation of my Life in so dismal a Calamity, as I saw apparently was coming upon the whole City; and which however great it was, my Fears perhaps as well as other Peoples, represented to be much greater than it could be. The first Consideration was of great Moment to me; my Trade was a Saddler,* and as my Dealings were chiefly not by a Shop or Chance Trade, but among the Merchants, trading to the English Colonies in America, so my Effects lay very much in the hands of such. I was a single Man 'tis true, but I had a Family of Servants, who I kept at my Business, had a House, Shop, and Ware-houses fill'd with Goods; and in short, to leave them all as things in such a Case must be left, that is to say, without any Overseer or Person fit to be trusted with them, had been to hazard the Loss not only of my Trade, but of my Goods, and indeed of all I had in the World. I had an Elder Brother at the same Time in London, and not many Years before come over from Portugal; and advising with him, his Answer was in three Words the same that was given in another Case quite different, (viz.) Master save thy self. * In a Word, he was for my retiring into the Country, as he resolv'd to do himself with his Family; telling me, what he had it seems, heard abroad, that the best Preparation for the Plague was to run away from it. As to my Argument of losing my Trade, my Goods, or Debts, he quite confuted me: He told me the same thing, which I argued for my staying, (viz.) That I would trust God with my Safety and Health, was the strongest Repulse to my Pretentions of losing my Trade and my Goods; for, says he, is it not as reasonable that you should trust God with the Chance or Risque of losing your Trade, as that you should stay in so imminent a Point of Danger, and trust him with your Life? I could not argue that I was in any Strait, as to a Place where to go, having several Friends and Relations in Northamptonshire,* whence our Family first came from; and particularly, I had an only Sister in Lincolnshire, very willing to receive and entertain me. My Brother, who had already sent his Wife and two Children into Bedfordshire, and resolv'd to follow them, press'd my going very earnestly; and I had once resolv'd to comply with his Desires, but at that time could get no Horse: For tho' it is true, all the People did not go out of the City of London; yet I may venture to say, that in a manner all the Horses did; for there was hardly a Horse to be bought or hired in the whole City for some Weeks. Once I resolv'd to travel on Foot with one Servant; and as many did, lie at no Inn, but carry a Soldiers Tent with us, and so lie in the Fields, the Weather being very warm, and no Danger from taking cold: I say, as many did, because several did so at last, especially those who had been in the Armies in the War which had not been many Years past; and I must needs say, that speaking of second Causes, had most of the People that travelled, done so, the Plague had not been carried into so many Country-Towns and Houses, as it was, to the great Damage, and indeed to the Ruin of abundance of People. But then my Servant who I had intended to take down with me, deceiv'd me; and being frighted at the Encrease of the Distemper, and not knowing when I should go, he took other Measures, and left me, so I was put off for that Time; and one way or other, I always found that to appoint to go away was always cross'd by some Accident or other, so as to disappoint and put it off again; and this brings in a Story which otherwise might be thought a needless Digression, (viz.) about these Disappointments being from Heaven. I mention this Story also as the best Method I can advise any Person to take in such a Case, especially, if he be one that makes Conscience of his Duty, and would be directed what to do in it, namely, that he should keep his Eye upon the particular Providences which occur at that Time, and look upon them complexly, as they regard one another, and as altogether regard the Question before him, and then I think, he may safely take them for Intimations from Heaven of what is his unquestion'd Duty to do in such a Case; I mean as to going away from, or staying in the Place where we dwell, when visited with an infectious Distemper. It came very warmly into my Mind, one Morning, as I was musing on this particular thing, that as nothing attended us without the Direction or Permission of Divine Power, so these Disappointments must have something in them extraordinary; and I ought to consider whether it did not evidently point out, or intimate to me, that it was the Will of Heaven I should not go. It immediately follow'd in my Thoughts, that if it really was from God, that I should stay, he was able effectually to preserve me in the midst of all the Death and Danger that would surround me; and that if I attempted to secure my self by fleeing from my Habitation, and acted contrary to these Intimations, which I believed to be Divine, it was a kind of flying from God, and that he could cause his Justice to overtake me when and where he thought fit. These thoughts quite turn'd my Resolutions again, and when I came to discourse with my Brother again I told him, that I enclin'd to stay and take my Lot in that Station in which God had plac'd me; and that it seem'd to be made more especially my Duty, on the Account of what I have said. My Brother, tho' a very Religious Man himself, laught at all I had suggested about its being an Intimation from Heaven, and told me several Stories of such fool-hardy People, as he call'd them, as I was; that I ought indeed to submit to it as a Work of Heaven, if I had been any way disabled by Distempers or Diseases, and that then not being able to go, I ought to acquiesce in the Direction of him, who having been my Maker, had an undisputed Right of Soveraignity in disposing of me; and that then there had been no Difficulty to determine which was the Call of his Providence, and which was not: But that I should take it as an Intimation from Heaven, that I should not go out of Town, only because I could not hire a Horse to go, or my Fellow was run away that was to attend me, was ridiculous, since at the same Time I had my Health and Limbs, and other Servants, and might, with Ease, travel a Day or two on foot, and having a good Certificate of being in perfect Health, might either hire a Horse, or take Post on the Road, as I thought fit. Then he proceeded to tell me of the mischievous Consequences which attended the Presumption of the Turks and Mahometans in Asia and in other Places, where he had been (for my Brother being a Merchant, was a few Years before, as I have already observ'd, returned from abroad, coming last from Lisbon) and how presuming upon their profess'd predestinating Notions,* and of every Man's End being predetermin'd and unalterably before-hand decreed, they would go unconcern'd into infected Places, and converse with infected Persons, by which Means they died at the Rate of Ten or Fifteen Thousand a Week, whereas the Europeans, or Christian Merchants, who kept themselves retired and reserv'd, generally escap'd the Contagion. Upon these Arguments my Brother chang'd my Resolutions again, and I began to resolve to go, and accordingly made all things ready; for in short, the Infection increased round me, and the Bills were risen to almost 700 a-Week, and my Brother told me, he would venture to stay no longer. I desir'd him to let me consider of it but till the next Day, and I would resolve; and as I had already prepar'd every thing as well as I could, as to my Business, and who to entrust my Affairs with, I had little to do but to resolve. I went Home that Evening greatly oppress'd in my Mind, irresolute, and not knowing what to do; I had set the Evening wholly apart to consider seriously about it, and was all alone; for already People had, as it were by a general Consent, taken up the Custom of not going out of Doors after Sun-set, the Reasons I shall have Occasion to say more of by-and-by. In the Retirement of this Evening I endeavoured to resolve first, what was my Duty to do, and I stated the Arguments with which my Brother had press'd me to go into the Country, and I set against them the strong Impressions which I had on my Mind for staying; the visible Call I seem'd to have from the particular Circumstance of my Calling, and the Care due from me for the Preservation of my Effects, which were, as I might say, my Estate; also the Intimations which I thought I had from Heaven, that to me signify'd a kind of Direction to venture, and it occurr'd to me, that if I had what I might call a Direction to stay, I ought to suppose it contain'd a Promise of being preserved, if I obey'd. This lay close to me, and my Mind seemed more and more encouraged to stay than ever, and supported with a secret Satisfaction, that I should be kept: Add to this that turning over the Bible, which lay before me, and while my Thoughts were more than ordinarily serious upon the Question, I cry'd out, WELL, I know not what to do, Lord direct me! and the like; and [at] that Juncture I happen'd to stop turning over the Book at the 91st Psalm,* and casting my Eye on the second Verse, I read on to the 7th Verse exclusive; and after that, included the 10th, as follows. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge, and my fortress, my God, in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisom pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day: Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness: nor for the destruction that wasteth at noon-day. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand: but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine Eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the Lord which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation: There shall no evil befal thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling, &c. I scarce need tell the Reader, that from that Moment I resolv'd that I would stay in the Town, and casting my self entirely upon the Goodness and Protection of the Almighty, would not seek any other Shelter whatever; and that as my Times were in his Hands, he was as able to keep me in a Time of the Infection as in a Time of Health; and if he did not think fit to deliver me, still I was in his Hands, and it was meet he should do with me as should seem good to him. With this Resolution I went to Bed; and I was farther confirm'd in it the next Day, by the Woman being taken ill with whom I had intended to entrust my House and all my Affairs: But I had a farther Obligation laid on me on the same Side; for the next Day I found my self very much out of Order also; so that if I would have gone away, I could not, and I continued ill three or four Days, and this intirely determin'd my Stay; so I took my leave of my Brother, who went away to Dorking in Surry, and afterwards fetch'd a Round farther into Buckinghamshire, or Bedfordshire, to a Retreat he had found out there for his Family. It was a very ill Time to be sick in, for if any one complain'd, it was immediately said he had the Plague; and tho' I had indeed no Symptoms of that Distemper, yet being very ill, both in my Head and in my Stomach, I was not without Apprehension, that I really was infected; but in about three Days I grew better, the third Night I rested well, sweated a little, and was much refresh'd; the Apprehensions of its being the Infection went also quite away with my Illness, and I went about my Business as usual. These Things however put off all my Thoughts of going into the Country; and my Brother also being gone, I had no more Debate either with him, or with my self, on that Subject. It was now mid-July, and the Plague which had chiefly rag'd at the other End of the Town, and as I said before, in the Parishes of St. Giles's, St. Andrews Holbourn, and towards Westminster, began now to come Eastward towards the Part where I liv'd. It was to be observ'd indeed, that it did not come strait on towards us; for the City, that is to say within the Walls, was indifferent healthy still; nor was it got then very much over the Water into Southwark; for tho' there died that Week 1268 of all Distempers, whereof it might be suppos'd above 900 died of the Plague; yet there was but 28 in the whole City, within the Walls; and but 19 in Southwark, Lambeth Parish included; whereas in the Parishes of St. Giles, and St. Martins in the Fields alone, there died 421. But we perceiv'd the Infection kept chiefly in the out-Parishes, which being very populous, and fuller also of Poor, the Distemper found more to prey upon than in the City, as I shall observe afterward; we perceiv'd I say, the Distemper to draw our Way; (viz.) by the Parishes of Clerken-Well, Cripplegate, Shoreditch, and Bishopsgate; which last two Parishes joining to Aldgate, White-Chapel, and Stepney, the Infection came at length to spread its utmost Rage and violence in those Parts, even when it abated, at the Western Parishes where it began. It was very strange to observe, that in this particular Week, from the 4th to the 11th of July, when, as I have observ'd, there died near 400 of the Plague in the two Parishes of St. Martin's, and St. Giles in the Fields only, there died in the Parish of Aldgate but four, in the Parish of White-Chapel three, in the Parish of Stepney but one. Likewise in the next Week, from the 11th of July to the 18th, when the Week's Bill was 1761, yet there died no more of the Plague, on the whole Southwark Side of the Water than sixteen. But this Face of things soon changed, and it began to thicken in Cripplegate Parish especially, and in Clerken-Well; so, that by the second Week in August, Cripplegate Parish alone, buried eight hundred eighty six, and Clerken-Well 155; of the first eight hundred and fifty, might well be reckoned to die of the Plague; and of the last, the Bill it self said, 145 were of the Plague. During the Month of July, and while, as I have observ'd, our Part of the Town seem'd to be spar'd, in Comparison of the West part, I went ordinarily about the Streets, as my Business requir'd, and particularly went generally, once in a Day, or in two Days, into the City, to my Brother's House, which he had given me charge of, and to see if it was safe: And having the Key in my Pocket, I used to go into the House, and over most of the Rooms, to see that all was well; for tho' it be something wonderful to tell, that any should have Hearts so hardned, in the midst of such a Calamity, as to rob and steal; yet certain it is, that all Sorts of Villanies, and even Levities and Debaucheries were then practis'd in the Town, as openly as ever, I will not say quite as frequently, because the Numbers of People were many ways lessen'd. But the City it self began now to be visited too, I mean within the Walls; but the Number of People there were indeed extreamly lessen'd by so great a Multitude having been gone into the Country; and even all this Month of July they continu'd to flee, tho' not in such Multitudes as formerly. In August indeed, they fled in such a manner, that I began to think, there would be really none but Magistrates and Servants* left in the City. As they fled now out of the City, so I should observe, that the Court removed early, (viz.) in the Month of June,* and went to Oxford, where it pleas'd God to preserve them; and the Distemper did not, as I heard of, so much as touch them; for which I cannot say, that I ever saw they shew'd any great Token of Thankfulness, and hardly any thing of Reformation,* tho' they did not want being told that their crying Vices might, without Breach of Charity, be said to have gone far, in bringing that terrible Judgment* upon the whole Nation. The Face of London was now indeed strangely alter'd, I mean the whole Mass* of Buildings, City, Liberties, Suburbs, Westminster, Southwark and altogether; for as to the particular Part called the City, or within the Walls, that was not yet much infected;* but in the whole, the Face of Things, I say, was much alter'd; Sorrow and Sadness sat upon every Face; and tho' some Part were not yet overwhelm'd, yet all look'd deeply concern'd; and as we saw it apparently coming on, so every one look'd on himself, and his Family, as in the utmost Danger: were it possible to represent those Times exactly to those that did not see them, and give the Reader due Ideas of the Horror that every where presented it self, it must make just Impressions upon their Minds, and fill them with Surprize. London might well be said to be all in Tears; the Mourners did not go about the Streets indeed, for no Body put on black, or made a formal Dress of Mourning for their nearest Friends; but the Voice of Mourning was truly heard in the Streets; the shriecks of Women and Children at the Windows, and Doors of their Houses, where their dearest Relations were, perhaps dying, or just dead, were so frequent to be heard, as we passed the Streets, that it was enough to pierce the stoutest Heart in the World, to hear them. Tears and Lamentations were seen almost in every House, especially in the first Part of the Visitation; for towards the latter End, Mens Hearts were hardned, and Death was so always before their Eyes, that they did not so much concern themselves for Loss of their Friends, expecting, that themselves should be summoned the next Hour. Business led me out sometimes to the other End of the Town, even when the Sickness was chiefly there; and as the thing was new to me, as well as to every Body else, it was a most surprising thing, to see those Streets, which were usually so thronged, now grown desolate, and so few People to be seen in them, that if I had been a Stranger, and at a Loss for my Way, I might sometimes have gone the Length of a whole Street, I mean of the by-Streets, and see no Body to direct me, except Watchmen, set at the Doors of such Houses as were shut up; of which I shall speak presently. One Day, being at that Part of the Town, on some special Business, Curiosity led me to observe things more than usually; and indeed I walk'd a great Way where I had no Business; I went up Holbourn, and there the Street was full of People; but they walk'd in the middle of the great Street, neither on one Side or other, because, as I suppose, they would not mingle with any Body that came out of Houses, or meet with Smells and Scents from Houses that might be infected. The Inns-of-Court were all shut up;* nor were very many of the Lawyers in the Temple, or Lincolns-Inn, or Greyes-Inn, to be seen there. Every Body was at peace, there was no Occasion for Lawyers; besides, it being in the Time of the Vacation too, they were generally gone into the Country. Whole Rows of Houses in some Places, were shut close up; the Inhabitants all fled, and only a Watchman or two left. When I speak of Rows of Houses being shut up, I do not mean shut up by the Magistrates; but that great Numbers of Persons followed the Court, by the Necessity of their Employments, and other Dependencies: and as others retir'd, really frighted with the Distemper, it was a mere desolating of some of the Streets: But the Fright was not yet near so great in the City, abstractly so called; and particularly because, tho' they were at first in a most inexpressible Consternation, yet as I have observ'd, that the Distemper intermitted often at first; so they were as it were, allarm'd, and unallarm'd again, and this several times, till it began to be familiar to them; and that even, when it appear'd violent, yet seeing it did not presently spread into the City, or the East and South Parts, the People began to take Courage, and to be, as I may say, a little hardned: It is true, a vast many People fled, as I have observ'd, yet they were chiefly from the West End of the Town; and from that we call the Heart of the City, that is to say, among the wealthiest of the People; and such People as were unincumbred with Trades and Business: But of the rest, the Generality stay'd, and seem'd to abide the worst: So that in the Place we call the Liberties, and in the Suburbs, in Southwark, and in the East Part, such as Wapping, Ratclif, Stepney, Rotherhith, and the like, the People generally stay'd, except here and there a few wealthy Families, who, as above, did not depend upon their Business. It must not be forgot here, that the City and Suburbs were prodigiously full of People,* at the time of this Visitation, I mean, at the time that it began; for tho' I have liv'd to see a farther Encrease, 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 restor'd, had flock'd to London, to settle into 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 ruin'd Families of the royal Party, flock'd 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 besieg'd* by the Romans, when the Jews were assembled together, to celebrate the Passover, by which means, an incredible Number of People were surpriz'd there, who would otherwise have been in other Countries: So the Plague entred London, when an incredible Increase of People had happened occasionally, by the particular Circumstances above-nam'd: As this Conflux of the People, to a youthful and gay Court, made a great Trade in the City, especially in every thing that belong'd 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 Ribband Weavers* in and about the City; the chiefest Number of whom, lived then in the Parishes of Shoreditch, Stepney, White-chapel, and Bishopsgate; that namely, about Spittle-fields; that is to say, as Spittle-fields 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 judg'd of; and indeed, I often wondred, that after the prodigious Numbers of People that went away at first, there was yet so great a Multitude left, as it appear'd there was. But I must go back again to the Beginning of this Surprizing Time, while the Fears of the People were young, they were encreas'd 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,* doom'd to be destroy'd 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 wonder'd there was any, (Women especially) left behind. In the first Place, a blazing Star or Comet* appear'd for several Months before the Plague, as there did the Year after another, a little before the Fire; the old Women, and the Phlegmatic Hypocondriac Part of the other Sex, who I could almost call old Women too, remark'd (especially afterward tho' not till both those Judgments were over) that those two Comets pass'd 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 Judgment, slow but severe, terrible and frightful, as was the Plague;* But the other foretold a Stroak, sudden, swift, and fiery as the Conflagration; nay, so particular some People were, that as they look'd upon that Comet preceding the Fire, they fancied that they not only saw it pass swiftly and fiercely, and cou'd perceive the Motion with their Eye, but even they heard it; that it made a rushing mighty Noise, fierce and terrible, tho' at a distance, and but just perceivable. I saw both these Stars; and I must confess, 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 Gods Judgments;* and especially when after the Plague had followed the first, I yet saw another of the like kind; I could not but say, God had not yet sufficiently scourg'd the City. But I cou'd not at the same Time carry these Things to the heighth that others did, knowing too, that natural Causes are assign'd by the Astronomers for such Things; and that their Motions, and even their Revolutions are calculated, or pretended to be calculated; so that they cannot be so perfectly call'd the Fore-runners, or Fore-tellers, much less the procurers of such Events, as Pestilence, War, Fire,* and the like. But let my Thoughts, and the Thoughts of the Philosophers be, or have been what they will, these Things had a more than ordinary Influence upon the Minds of the common People, and they had almost universal melancholly Apprehensions of some dreadful Calamity and Judgment coming upon the City; and this principally from the Sight of this Comet, and the little Allarm that was given in December, by two People dying at St. Giles's, as above. The Apprehensions of the People, were likewise strangely encreas'd by the Error of the Times; in which, I think, the People, from what Principle I cannot imagine, were more addicted to Prophesies, 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 frighted them terribly; such as Lilly's Almanack, Gadbury's Astrological Predictions; Poor Robin's* Almanack and the like; also several pretended religious Books;* one entituled, Come out of her my People, lest you be partaker of her Plagues; another call'd, Fair Warning; another, Britains 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 Ninevah,* cry'd in the Streets, yet forty Days, and LONDON shall be destroy'd. I will not be positive, whether he said yet forty Days, or yet a few Days. Another run about Naked,* except a pair of Drawers about his Waste, crying Day and Night; like a Man that Josephus mentions,* who cry'd, woe to Jerusalem! a little before the Destruction of that City: So this poor naked Creature cry'd, O! the Great, and the Dreadful God! and said no more, but repeated those Words continually, with a Voice and Countenance full of horror, a swift Pace, and no Body cou'd ever find him to stop, or rest, or take any Sustenance, at least, that ever I cou'd hear of. I met this poor Creature several Times in the Streets, and would have spoke to him, but he would not enter into Speech with me, or any one 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. Next to these publick Things, were the Dreams of old Women: Or, I should say, the Interpretation of old Women upon other Peoples Dreams; and these put abundance of People even out of their Wits: Some heard Voices warning them to be gone, for that there would be such a Plague in London, so that the Living would not be able to bury the Dead: Others saw Apparitions in the Air;* and I must be allowed to say of both, I hope without breach of Charity, that they heard Voices that never spake, and saw Sights that never appear'd; but the Imagination of the People was really turn'd wayward and possess'd: And no Wonder, if they, who were poreing continually at the Clouds, saw Shapes and Figures, Representations and Appearances, which had nothing in them, but Air and Vapour. Here they told us, they saw a Flaming-Sword held in a Hand, coming out of a Cloud, with a Point hanging directly over the City. There they saw Herses, and Coffins in the Air, carrying to be buried. And there again, Heaps of dead Bodies lying unburied, and the like; just as the Imagination of the poor terrify'd People furnish'd them with Matter to work upon. So Hypocondriac Fancy's represent Ships, Armies, Battles, in the Firmament; Till steady Eyes, the Exhalations solve, And all to its first Matter, Cloud, resolve. * I could fill this Account with the strange Relations, such People gave every Day, of what they had seen; and every one was so positive of their having seen, what they pretended to see, that there was no contradicting them, without Breach of Friendship, or being accounted rude and unmannerly on the one Hand, and prophane and impenetrable on the other. One time before the Plague was begun, (otherwise than as I have said in St. Giles's,) I think it was in March, seeing a Crowd of People in the Street, I join'd with them to satisfy my Curiosity, and found them all staring up into the Air, to see what a Woman told them appeared plain to her, which was an Angel cloth'd in white, with a fiery Sword in his Hand, waving it, or brandishing it over his Head. She described every Part of the Figure to the Life; shew'd them the Motion, and the Form; and the poor People came into it so eagerly, and with so much Readiness; YES, I see it all plainly, says one. There's the Sword as plain as can be. Another saw the Angel. One saw his very Face, and cry'd out, What a glorious Creature he was! One saw one thing, and one another. I look'd as earnestly as the rest, but, perhaps, not with so much Willingness to be impos'd upon; and I said indeed, that I could see nothing, but a white Cloud, bright on one Side, by the shining of the Sun upon the other Part. The Woman endeavour'd to shew it me, but could not make me confess, that I saw it, which, indeed, if I had, I must have lied: But the Woman turning upon me, look'd in my Face, and fancied I laugh'd; in which her Imagination deceiv'd her too; for I really did not laugh, but was very seriously reflecting how the poor People were terrify'd, by the Force of their own Imagination. However, she turned from me, call'd me prophane Fellow, and a Scoffer; told me, that it was a time of God's Anger, and dreadful Judgments were approaching; and that Despisers, such as I, should wander and perish. * The People about her seem'd disgusted as well as she; and I found there was no perswading them, that I did not laugh at them; and that I should be rather mobb'd by them, than be able to undeceive them. So I left them; and this Appearance pass'd for as real, as the Blazing Star it self. Another Encounter I had in the open Day also: And this was in going thro' a narrow Passage from Petty-France into Bishopsgate Church Yard, by a Row of Alms-Houses; there are two Church Yards to Bishopsgate Church, or Parish; one we go over to pass from the Place call'd Petty-France into Bishopsgate Street, coming out just by the Church Door, the other is on the side of the narrow Passage, where the Alms-Houses are on the left; and a Dwarf-wall with a Palisadoe on it, on the right Hand; and the City Wall on the other Side, more to the right. In this narrow Passage stands a Man looking thro' between the Palisadoe's into the Burying Place; and as many People as the Narrowness of the Passage would admit to stop, without hindring the Passage of others; and he was talking mighty eagerly to them, and pointing now to one Place, then to another, and affirming, that he saw a Ghost walking upon such a Grave Stone there; he describ'd the Shape, the Posture, and the Movement of it so exactly, that it was the greatest Matter of Amazement to him in the World, that every Body did not see it as well as he. On a sudden he would cry, There it is: Now it comes this Way: Then, 'Tis turn'd back; till at length he persuaded the People into so firm a Belief of it, that one fancied he saw it, and another fancied he saw it; and thus he came every Day making a strange Hubbub, considering it was in so narrow a Passage, till Bishopsgate Clock struck eleven; and then the Ghost would seem to start; and as if he were call'd away, disappear'd on a sudden. I look'd earnestly every way, and at the very Moment, that this Man directed, but could not see the least Appearance of any thing; but so positive was this poor man, that he gave the People the Vapours in abundance, and sent them away trembling, and frighted; till at length, few People, that knew of it, car'd to go thro' that Passage; and hardly any Body by Night, on any Account whatever. This Ghost, as the poor Man affirm'd, made Signs to the Houses, and to the Ground, and to the People, plainly intimating, or else they so understanding it, that Abundance of the People, should come to be buried in that Church-Yard; as indeed happen'd: But that he saw such Aspects, I must acknowledg, I never believ'd; nor could I see any thing of it my self, tho' I look'd most earnestly to see it, if possible. These things serve to shew, how far the People were really overcome with Delusions; and as they had a Notion of the Approach of a Visitation, all their Predictions run upon a most dreadful Plague, which should lay the whole City, and even the Kingdom waste; and should destroy almost all the Nation, both Man and Beast. To this, as I said before, the Astrologers added Stories of the Conjunctions of Planets in a malignant Manner,* and with a mischievous Influence; one of which Conjunctions was to happen, and did happen, in October; and the other in November; and they filled the Peoples Heads with Predictions on these Signs of the Heavens, intimating, that those Conjunctions foretold Drought, Famine, and Pestilence;* in the two first of them however, they were entirely mistaken, For we had no droughty Season, but in the beginning of the Year, a hard Frost, which lasted from December almost to March; and after that moderate Weather, rather warm than hot, with refreshing Winds, and in short, very seasonable Weather; and also several very great Rains. Some Endeavors were used to suppress the Printing of such Books as terrify'd the People, and to frighten the disperses of them, some of whom were taken up, but nothing was done in it, as I am inform'd; The Government being unwilling to exasperate the People, who were, as I may say, all out of their Wits already. Neither can I acquit those Ministers, that in their Sermons, rather sunk, than lifted up the Hearts of their Hearers;* many of them no doubt did it for the strengthning the Resolution of the People; and especially for quickning them to Repentance; but it certainly answer'd not their End, at least not in Proportion to the injury it did another Way; and indeed, as God himself thro' the whole Scriptures, rather draws to him by Invitations, and calls to turn to him and live, than drives us by Terror and Amazement; So I must confess, I thought the Ministers should have done also, imitating our blessed Lord and Master in this, that his whole Gospel, is full of Declarations from Heaven of Gods Mercy, and his readiness to receive Penitents, and forgive them; complaining, ye will not come unto me, that ye may have Life;* and that therefore, his Gospel is called the Gospel of Peace, and the Gospel of Grace. But we had some good Men, and that of all Persuasions and Opinions, whose Discourses were full of Terror; who spoke nothing but dismal Things;* and as they brought the People together with a kind of Horror, sent them away in Tears, prophesying nothing but evil Tidings; terrifying the People* with the Apprehensions of being utterly destroy'd, not guiding them, at least not enough, to Cry to Heaven for Mercy. It was indeed, a Time of very unhappy Breaches among us in matters of Religion:* Innumerable Sects, and Divisions, and separate Opinions prevail'd among the People; the Church of England was restor'd indeed with the Restoration of the Monarchy, about four Years before; but the Ministers and Preachers of the Presbyterians, and Independants, and of all the other Sorts of Professions, had begun to gather separate Societies, and erect Altar against Altar, and all those had their Meetings for Worship apart, as they have [now] but not so many then, the Dissenters being not thorowly form'd into a Body as they are since, and those Congregations which were thus gather'd together, were yet but few; and even those that were, the Government did not allow, but endeavour'd to suppress them, and shut up their Meetings. But the Visitation reconcil'd them again, at least for a Time, and many of the best and most valuable Ministers and Preachers of the Dissenters, were suffer'd to go into the Churches,* where the Incumbents were fled away, as many were, not being able to stand it; and the People flockt without Distinction to hear them preach, not much inquiring who or what Opinion they were of: But after the Sickness was over, that Spirit of Charity abated, and every Church being again supply'd with their own Ministers, or others presented, where the Minister was dead, Things return'd to their old Channel again. One Mischief always introduces another: These Terrors and Apprehensions of the People, led them into a Thousand weak, foolish, and wicked Things, which, they wanted not a Sort of People really wicked, to encourage them to; and this was running about to Fortune-tellers, Cunning-men, and Astrologers,* to know their Fortune, or, as 'tis vulgarly express'd, to have their Fortunes told them, their Nativities calculated, and the like; and this Folly, presently made the Town swarm with a wicked Generation of Pretenders to Magick, to the Black Art, as they call'd it, and I know not what; Nay, to a Thousand worse Dealings with the Devil, than they were really guilty of; and this Trade grew so open, and so generally practised, that it became common to have Signs and Inscriptions set up at Doors; here lives a Fortune-teller; here lives an Astrologer; here you may have your Nativity calculated, and the like; and Fryar Bacons's Brazen-Head,* which was the usual Sign of these Peoples Dwellings, was to be seen almost in every Street, or else the Sign of Mother Shipton,* or of Merlin's Head,* and the like. With what blind, absurd, and ridiculous Stuff, these Oracles of the Devil pleas'd and satisfy'd the People, I really know not; but certain it is, that innumerable Attendants crouded about their Doors every Day; and if but a grave Fellow in a Velvet Jacket, a Band,* and a black Cloak, which was the Habit those Quack Conjurers generally went in, was but seen in the Streets, the People would follow them, in Crowds and ask them Questions, as they went along. I need not mention, what a horrid Delusion this was, or what it tended to; but there was no Remedy for it, till the Plague it self put an End to it all; and I suppose, clear'd the Town of most of those Calculators themselves. One Mischief was, that if the poor People ask'd these mock Astrologers, whether there would be a Plague, or no? they all agreed in the general to answer, Yes, for that kept up their Trade; and had the People not been kept in a Fright about that, the Wizards would presently have been rendred useless, and their Craft had been at an end: But they always talked to them of such and such Influences of the Stars, of the Conjunctions of such and such Planets, which must necessarily bring Sickness and Distempers, and consequently the Plague: And some had the Assurance to tell them, the Plague was begun already, which was too true, tho' they that said so, knew nothing of the Matter. The Ministers, to do them Justice, and Preachers of most Sorts, that were serious and understanding Persons, thundred against these, and other wicked Practises, and exposed the Folly as well as the Wickedness of them together; And the most sober and judicious People despis'd and abhor'd them: But it was impossible to make any Impression upon the midling People, and the working labouring Poor; their Fears were predominant over all their Passions; and they threw away their Money in a most distracted Manner upon those Whymsies. Maid-Servants especially and Men-Servants, were the chief of their Customers; and their Question generally was, after the first demand of, Will there be a Plague? I say, the next Question was, Oh, Sir! For the Lord's Sake, what will become of me? Will my Mistress keep me, or will she turn me off? Will she stay here, or will she go into the Country? And if she goes into the Country, will she take me with her, or leave me here to be starved and undone. And the like of Men-Servants. The Truth is, the Case of poor Servants was very dismal, as I shall have occasion to mention again by and by; for it was apparent, a prodigious Number of them would be turn'd away, and it was so; and of them abundance perished; and particularly of those that these false Prophets had flattered with Hopes, that they should be continued in their Services, and carried with their Masters and Mistresses into the Country; and had not publick Charity provided for these poor Creatures, whose Number was exceeding great, and in all Cases of this Nature must be so, they would have been in the worst Condition of any People in the City. These Things agitated the minds of the common People for many Months, while the first Apprehensions, were upon them; and while the Plague, was not, as I may say, yet broken out: But I must also not forget, that the more serious Part of the Inhabitants behav'd after another Manner: The Government encouraged their Devotion, and appointed publick Prayers, and Days of fasting and Humiliation,* to make publick Confession of Sin, and implore the Mercy of God, to avert the dreadful Judgment, which hung over their Heads; and it is not to be express'd with what Alacrity the People of all persuasions embraced the Occasion; how they flock'd to the Churches and Meetings, and they were all so throng'd, that there was often no coming near, no, not to the very Doors of the largest Churches; Also there were daily Prayers appointed Morning and Evening at several Churches, and Days of private praying at other Places; at all which the People attended, I say, with an uncommon Devotion: Several private Families also, as well of one Opinion as of another, kept Family Fasts, to which they admitted their near Relations only: So that in a Word, those People, who were really serious and religious, apply'd themselves in a truly Christian Manner, to the proper Work of Repentance and Humiliation, as a Christian People ought to do. Again the publick shew'd, that they would bear their Share in these Things; the very Court, which was then Gay and Luxurious, put on a Face of just Concern, for the publick Danger: All the Plays and Interludes, which after the Manner of the French Court, had been set up, and began to encrease among us, were forbid to Act; the gaming Tables, publick dancing Rooms, and Music Houses which multiply'd, and began to debauch the Manners of the People, were shut up and suppress'd; and the Jack-puddings, Merry-andrews, Puppet-shows, Rope-dancers,* and such like doings, which had bewitch'd the poor common People, shut up their Shops, finding indeed no Trade; for the Minds of the People, were agitated with other Things; and a kind of Sadness and Horror at these Things, sat upon the Countenances, even of the common People; Death was before their Eyes, and every Body began to think of their Graves, not of Mirth and Diversions. But even those wholesome Reflections, which rightly manag'd, would have most happily led the People to fall upon their Knees, make Confession of their Sins, and look up to their merciful Saviour for Pardon, imploreing his Compassion on them, in such a Time of their Distress; by which, we might have been as a second Nineveh,* had a quite contrary Extreme in the common People; who ignorant and stupid in their Reflections, as they were brutishly wicked and thoughtless before, were now led by their Fright to extremes of Folly; and as I have said before, that they ran to Conjurers and Witches, and all Sorts of Deceivers, to know what should become of them; who fed their Fears, and kept them always alarm'd, and awake, on purpose to delude them, and pick their Pockets: So, they were as mad, upon their running after Quacks, and Mountebanks, and every practising old Woman, for Medicines and Remedies; storeing themselves with such Multitudes of Pills, Potions, and Preservatives, as they were call'd; that they not only spent their Money, but even poison'd themselves before-hand, for fear of the Poison of the Infection, and prepar'd their Bodies for the Plague, instead of preserving them against it. On the other Hand, it is incredible, and scarce to be imagin'd, how the Posts of Houses, and Corners of Streets were plaster'd over with Doctors Bills, and Papers of ignorant Fellows; quacking and tampering in Physick, and inviting the People to come to them for Remedies; which was generally set off, with such flourishes as these, (viz.) INFALLIBLE preventive Pills against the Plague. NEVER FAILING Preservatives against the Infection. SOVERAIGN Cordials against the Corruption of the Air. EXACT Regulations for the Conduct of the Body, in Case of an Infection: Antipestilential Pills. INCOMPARABLE Drink against the Plague, never found out before. An UNIVERSAL Remedy for the Plague. The ONLYTRUE Plague-Water.* The ROYAL-ANTIDOTE against all Kinds of Infection; and such a Number more that I cannot reckon up; and if I could, would fill a Book of themselves to set them down. Others set up Bills, to summons People to their Lodgings for Directions and Advice in the Case of Infection: These had spacious Titles also, such as these. An eminent High-Dutch Physician, newly come over from Holland, where he resided during all the Time of the great Plague, last year, in Amsterdam; and cured multitudes of People, that actually had the Plague upon them. An Italian Gentlewoman just arrived from Naples, having a choice Secret to prevent Infection, which she found out by her great Experience, and did wonderful Cures with it in the late Plague there; wherein there died 20000 in one Day. An antient Gentlewoman having practised, with great Success, in the late Plague in this City, Anno 1636, gives her advice only to the Female Sex. To be spoke with, &c. An experienc'd Physician, who has long studied the Doctrine of Antidotes against all Sorts of Poison and Infection, has after 40 Years Practise, arrived to such Skill, as may, with God's Blessing, direct Persons how to prevent their being touch'd by any Contagious Distemper whatsoever. He directs the Poor gratis. I take notice of these by way of Specimen: I could give you two or three Dozen of the like, and yet have abundance left behind. 'Tis sufficient from these to apprise any one, of the Humour of those Times; and how a Set of Thieves and Pick-pockets, not only robb'd and cheated the poor People of their Money, but poisoned their Bodies with odious and fatal preparations; some with Mercury,* and some with other things as bad, perfectly remote from the Thing pretended to; and rather hurtful than servicable to the Body in case an Infection followed. I cannot omit a Subtilty of one of those Quack-operators, with which he gull'd the poor People to croud about him, but did nothing for them without Money. He had it seems, added to his Bills, which he gave about the Streets, this Advertisement in Capital Letters, (viz.) He gives Advice to the Poor for nothing. Abundance of poor People came to him accordingly, to whom he made a great many fine Speeches; examin'd them of the State of their Health, and of the Constitution of their Bodies, and told them many good things for them to do, which were of no great Moment: But the Issue and Conclusion of all was, that he had a preparation, which if they took such a Quantity of, every Morning, he would pawn his Life, they should never have the Plague, no, tho' they lived in the House with People that were infected: This made the People all resolve to have it; But then the Price of that was so much, I think 'twas half a Crown: But, Sir, says one poor Woman, I am a poor Alms-Woman, and am kept by the Parish, and your Bills say, you give the Poor your help for nothing. Ay, good Woman, says the Docter, so I do, as I publish'd there. I give my Advice to the Poor for nothing; but not my Physick. Alas, Sir! says she, that is a Snare laid for the Poor then; for you give them your Advice for nothing, that is to say, you advise them gratis, to buy your Physick for their Money; so does every Shop-keeper with his Wares. Here the Woman began to give him ill Words, and stood at his Door all that Day, telling her Tale to all the People that came, till the Doctor finding she turn'd away his Customers, was oblig'd to call her up Stairs again, and give her his Box of Physick for nothing, which, perhaps too was good for nothing when she had it. But to return to the people, whose Confusions fitted them to be impos'd upon by all Sorts of Pretenders, and by every Mountebank. There is no doubt, but these quacking Sort of Fellows rais'd great gains out of the miserable People; for we daily found, the Crouds that ran after them were infinitely greater, and their Doors were more thronged than those of Dr. Brooks, Dr. Upton, Dr. Hodges, Dr. Berwick,* or any, tho' the most famous Men of the Time: And I was told, that some of them got five Pound a Day by their Physick. But there was still another Madness beyond all this, which may serve to give an Idea of the distracted humour of the poor People at that Time; and this was their following a worse Sort of Deceivers than any of these; for these petty Thieves only deluded them to pick their Pockets, and get their Money; in which their Wickedness, whatever it was, lay chiefly on the Side of the Deceiver's deceiving, not upon the Deceived: But in this Part I am going to mention, it lay chiefly in the People deceiv'd, or equally in both; and this was in wearing Charms, Philters, Exorcisms, Amulets,* and I know not what Preparations, to fortify the Body with them against the Plague; as if the Plague was not the Hand of God, but a kind of a Possession of an evil Spirit; and that it was to be kept off with Crossings, Signs of the Zodiac, Papers tied up with so many Knots; and certain Words, or Figures written on them, as particularly the Word Abracadabra,* form'd in Triangle, or Pyramid, thus. I might spend a great deal of Time in my Exclamations against the Follies, and indeed Wickedness of those things, in a Time of such Danger, in a matter of such Consequences as this, of a National Infection, But my Memorandums of these things relate rather to take notice only of the Fact, and mention that it was so: How the poor People found the Insufficiency of those things, and how many of them were afterwards carried away in the Dead-Carts,* and thrown into the common Graves of every Parish, with these hellish Charms and Trumpery hanging about their Necks, remains to be spoken of as we go along. All this was the Effect of the Hurry the People were in, after the first Notion of the Plague being at hand was among them: And which may be said to be from about Michaelmas 1664, but more particularly after the two Men died in St. Giles's, in the Beginning of December. And again, after another Alarm in February; for when the Plague evidently spread it self, they soon began to see the Folly of trusting to those unperforming Creatures, who had Gull'd them of their Money, and then their Fears work'd another way, namely, to Amazement and Stupidity, not knowing what Course to take, or what to do, either to help or relieve themselves; but they ran about from one Neighbours House to another; and even in the Streets, from one Door to another with repeated Cries, of, Lord have Mercy upon us, what shall we do? Indeed, the poor People were to be pity'd in one particular Thing, in which they had little or no Relief, and which I Desire to mention with a serious Awe and Reflection; which perhaps, every one that reads this, may not relish: Namely, that whereas Death now began not, as we may say, to hover over every ones Head only, but to look into their Houses, and Chambers, and stare in their Faces: Tho' there might be some stupidity, and dullness of the Mind, and there was so, a great deal; yet, there was a great deal of just Alarm, sounded into the very inmost Soul, if I may so say of others: Many Consciences were awakened; many hard Hearts melted into Tears; many a penitent Confession was made of Crimes long concealed: [it] would wound the Souls of any Christian, to have heard the dying Groans of many a despairing Creature, and none durst come near to comfort them: Many a Robbery, many a Murder, was then confest aloud, and no Body surviving to Record the Accounts of it. People might be heard even into the Streets as we pass'd along, calling upon God for Mercy, thro' Jesus Christ, and saying, I have been a Thief, I have been an Adulterer, I have been a Murderer, and the like; and none durst stop to make the least Inquiry into such Things, or to administer Comfort to the poor Creatures, that in the Anguish both of Soul and Body thus cry'd out. Some of the Ministers did Visit the Sick at first, and for a little while, but it was not to be done; it would have been present Death, to have gone into some Houses: The very buryers of the Dead, who were the hardnedest Creatures in Town, were sometimes beaten back, and so terrify'd, that they durst not go into Houses, where the whole Families were swept away together, and where the Circumstances were more particularly horrible as some were; but this was indeed, at the first Heat of the Distemper. Time enur'd them to it all; and they ventured every where afterwards, without Hesitation, as I Occasion to mention at large hereafter. I am supposing now, the Plague to be begun, as I have said, and that the Magistrates began to take the Condition of the People, into their serious Consideration; what they did as to the Regulation of the Inhabitants, and of infected Families, I shall speak to by it self; but as to the Affair of Health, it is proper to mention it here, that having seen the foolish Humour of the People, in running after Quacks, and Mountebanks, Wizards, and Fortune-tellers, which they did as above, even to Madness. The Lord Mayor, a very sober and religious Gentleman appointed Physicians and Surgeons for Relief of the poor;* I mean, the diseased poor; and in particular, order'd the College of Physicians to publish Directions for cheap Remedies,* for the Poor, in all the Cirumstances of the Distemper. This indeed was one of the most charitable and judicious Things that could be done at that Time; for this drove the People from haunting the Doors of every Disperser of Bills; and from taking down blindly, and without Consideration, Poison for Physick, and Death instead of Life. This Direction of the Physicians was done by a Consultation of the whole College, and as it was particularly calculated for the use of the Poor; and for cheap Medicines it was made publick, so that every Body might see it; and Copies were given gratis to all that desired it: But as it is publick, and to be seen on all Occasions, I need not give the Reader of this, the Trouble of it. I shall not be supposed to lessen the Authority or Capacity of the Physicians, when, I say, that the Violence of the Distemper, when it came to its Extremity, was like the Fire the next Year; The Fire which consumed what the Plague could not touch, defy'd all the Application of Remedies; the Fire Engines were broken, the Buckets thrown away; and the Power of Man was baffled, and brought to an End; so the Plague defied all Medicine; the very Physicians were seized with it, with their Preservatives in their Mouths; and Men went about prescribing to others and telling them what to do, till the Tokens were upon them, and they dropt down dead, destroyed by that very Enemy, they directed others to oppose. This was the Case of several Physicians, even some of them the most eminent; and of several of the most skilful Surgeons;* Abundance of Quacks too died, who had the Folly to trust to their own Medicines, which they must needs be conscious to themselves, were good for nothing; and who rather ought, like other Sorts of Thieves, to have run away, sensible of their Guilt, from the Justice that they could not but expect should punish them, as they knew they had deserved. Not that it is any Derogation from the Labour, or Application of the Physicians, to say, they fell in the common Calamity; nor is it so intended by me; it rather is to their Praise, that they ventured their Lives so far as even to lose them in the Service of Mankind; They endeavoured to do good, and to save the Lives of others; But we were not to expect, that the Physicians could stop God's Judgments, or prevent a Distemper eminently armed from Heaven, from executing the Errand it was sent about. Doubtless, the Physicians assisted many by their Skill, and by their Prudence and Applications, to the saving of their Lives, and restoring their Health: But it is no lessening their Character, or their Skill, to say, they could not cure those that had the Tokens upon them, or those who were mortally infected before the Physicians were sent for, as was frequently the Case. It remains to mention now what publick Measures were taken by the Magistrates for the general Safety, and to prevent the spreading of the Distemper, when it first broke out: I shall have frequent Occasion to speak of the Prudence of the Magistrates, their Charity, their Vigilance for the Poor, and for preserving good Order; furnishing Provisions, and the like, when the Plague was encreased, as it afterwards was. But I am now upon the Order and Regulations they published for the Government of infected Families. I mention'd above shutting of Houses up; and it is needful to say something particularly to that; for this Part of the History of the Plague is very melancholy; but the most grievous Story must be told. About June the Lord Mayor of London, and the Court of Aldermen, as I have said, began more particularly to concern themselves for the Regulation of the City. 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's in the Fields, St. Martins, St. Clement Danes, &c. and it was with good Success; for in several Streets, where the Plague broke out, upon strict guarding the Houses that were infected, and taking Care to bury those that died, immediatly after they were known to be dead, the Plague ceased in those Streets. It was also observ'd, that the Plague decreas'd sooner in those Parishes, after they had been visited to the full, than it did in the Parishes of Bishopsgate, Shoreditch, Aldgate, White-Chappel, Stepney, and others, the early Care taken in that Manner, being a great means to the putting a Cheque to it. This shutting up of Houses was a method first taken, as I understand, in the Plague, which happened in 1603, at the Coming of King James the First to the Crown, and the Power of shutting People up in their own Houses, was granted by 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, and which took Place the 1st of July 1665, when the Numbers infected within the City, were but few, the last Bill for the 97 Parishes being but four; and some Houses having been shut up in the City, and some sick People being removed to the Pest-House beyond Bunhill-Fields,* in the Way to Islington; I say, by these Means, when there died near one thousand a Week in the Whole, the Number in the City was but 28, and the City was preserv'd more healthy in Proportion, than any other Places all the Time of the Infection. These Orders of my Lord Mayor's were publish'd, as I have said, the latter End of June, and took Place from the first of July, and were as follows, (viz.) ORDERS Conceived and Published by the Lord MAYOR and Aldermen of the City of London, concerning the Infection of the Plague. 1665* ?ÄòWHEREAS in the Reign of our late Sovereign King James, of happy Memory, an Act was made for the charitable Relief and ordering of Persons infected with the Plague; whereby Authority was given to Justices of the Peace, Mayors, Bayliffs and other head Officers, to appoint within their several Limits, Examiners, Searchers, Watchmen, Keepers, and Buriers for the Persons and Places infected, and to minister unto them Oaths for the Performance of their Offices. And the same Statute did also authorize the giving of other Directions, as unto them for the present Necessity should seem good in their Discretions. It is now upon special Consideration, thought very expedient for preventing and avoiding of Infection of Sickness (if it shall so please Almighty God) that these Officers following be appointed, and these Orders hereafter duly observed. Examiners * to be appointed in every Parish ?ÄòFIRST, It is thought requisite, and so ordered, that in every Parish there be one, two, or more Persons of good Sort and Credit, chosen and appointed by the Alderman, his Deputy, and common-Council of every Ward, by the Name of Examiners, to continue in that Office the Space of two Months at least: And if any fit Person so appointed, shall refuse to undertake the same, the said parties so refusing, to be committed to Prison until they shall conform themselves accordingly. The Examiners Office* ?ÄòTHAT these Examiners be sworn by the Aldermen, to enquire and learn from time to time what Houses in every Parish be Visited, and what Persons be Sick, and of what Diseases, as near as they can inform themselves; and upon doubt in that Case, to command Restraint of Access, until it appear what the Disease shall prove: And if they find any Person sick of the Infection, to give order to the Constable that the House be shut up; and if the Constable shall be found Remiss or Negligent, to give present Notice thereof to the Alderman of the Ward. Watchmen ?ÄòTHAT to every infected House there be appointed two Watchmen, one for every Day, and the other for the Night: And that these Watchmen have a special care that no Person go in or out of such infected Houses, whereof they have the Charge, upon pain of severe Punishment. And the said Watchman to do such further Offices as the sick House shall need and require: and if the Watchmen be sent upon any Business, to lock up the House, and take the Key with him: And the Watchman by Day to attend until ten of the Clock at Night: And the Watchman by Night untill six in the Morning. Searchers* ?ÄòTHAT there be a special care to appoint Women-Searchers in every Parish, such as are of honest Reputation, and of the best Sort as can be got in this kind: And these to be sworn to make due Search, and true Report to the utmost of their Knowledge, whether the Persons whose Bodies they are appointed to Search, do die of the Infection, or of what other Diseases, as near as they can. And that the Physicians who shall be appointed for Cure and Prevention of the Infection, do call before them the said Searchers, who are, or shall be appointed for the several Parishes under their respective Cares; to the end they may consider, whether they are fitly qualified for that Employment; and charge them from time to time as they shall see Cause, if they appear defective in their Duties. ?ÄòThat no Searcher during this time of Visitation, be permitted to use any publick Work or Employment, or keep any Shop or Stall, or be employed as a Laundress, or in any other common Employment whatsoever. Chirurgeons ?ÄòFOR better assistance of the Searchers, for as much as there hath been heretofore great abuse in misreporting the Disease, to the further spreading of the Infection: It is therefore ordered, that there be chosen and appointed able and discreet Chirurgeons, besides those that do already belong to the Pest-House: Amongst whom the City and Liberties to be quartered as the places lie most apt and convenient; and every of these to have one Quarter for his Limit: and the said Chirurgeons in every of their Limits to join with the Searchers for the View of the Body, to the end there may be a true Report made of the Disease. ?ÄòAnd further, that the said Chirurgeons shall visit and search such like Persons as shall either send for them, or be named and directed unto them, by the Examiners of every Parish, and inform themselves of the Disease of the said Parties. ?ÄòAnd forasmuch as the said Chirurgeons are to be sequestred from all other Cures, and kept only to this Disease of the Infection; It is order'd, That every of the said Chirurgeons shall have Twelvepence a Body searched by them, to be paid out of the Goods of the Party searched, if he be able, or otherwise by the Parish. Nurse-keepers ?ÄòIF any Nurse-keeper shall remove her self out of any infected House before twenty eight Days after the Decease of any Person dying of the Infection, the House to which the said Nurse-keeper doth so remove her self, shall be shut up until the said twenty eight Days be expired. ORDERS concerning infected Houses, and Persons sick of the Plague Notice to be given of the Sickness ?ÄòTHE Master of every House, as soon as any one in his House complaineth, either of Botch, or Purple,* or Swelling in any part of his Body, or falleth otherwise dangerously Sick, without apparent Cause of some other Disease, shall give knowledge thereof to the Examiner of Health, within two Hours after the said Sign shall appear. Sequestration of the Sick ?ÄòAs soon as any Man shall be found by this Examiner, Chirurgeon or Searcher to be sick of the Plague, he shall the same Night be sequestred in the same House, and in case he be so sequestred, then, though he afterwards die not, the House wherein he sickned, should be shut up for a Month, after the use of the due Preservatives taken by the rest. Airing the Stuff ?ÄòFOR Sequestration of the Goods and Stuff of the Infection, their Bedding, and Apparel, and Hangings of Chambers, must be well aired with Fire, and such Perfumes* as are requisite within the infected House, before they be taken again to use: This to be done by the Appointment of the Examiner. Shutting up of the House* ?ÄòIF any Person shall have visited any Man, known to be infected of the Plague, or entred willingly into any known infected House, being not allowed: The House wherein he inhabiteth, shall be shut up for certain Days by the Examiners Direction. None to be removed out of infected Houses, but, &c. ?ÄòITEM, That none be remov'd out of the House where he falleth sick of the Infection, into any other House in the City, (except it be to the Pest-House or a Tent, or unto some such House, which the Owner of the said visited House holdeth in his own Hands, and occupieth by his own Servants) and so as Security be given to the Parish, whither such Remove is made; that the Attendance and Charge about the said visited Persons shall be observed and charged in all the Particularities before expressed, without any Cost of that Parish, to which any such Remove shall happen to be made, and this Remove to be done by Night: And it shall be lawful to any Person that hath two Houses, to remove either his sound or his infected People to his spare House at his choice, so as if he send away first his Sound, he not after send thither the Sick, nor again unto the Sick the Sound. And that the same which he sendeth, be for one Week at the least shut up, and secluded from Company, for fear of some infection, at the first not appearing. Burial of the Dead ?ÄòTHAT the Burial of the Dead by this Visitation, be at most convenient Hours, always either before Sun-rising, or after Sun-setting,* with the Privity of the Church-wardens or Constable, and not otherwise; and that no Neighbours nor Friends be suffered to accompany the Corps* to Church, or to enter the House visited, upon pain of having his House shut up, or be imprisoned. ?ÄòAnd that no Corps dying of Infection shall be buried, or remain in any Church in time of Common-Prayer, Sermon, or Lecture. And that no Children be suffered at time of burial of any Corps in any Church, Church-yard, or Burying-place to come near the Corps, Coffin, or Grave. And that all the Graves shall be at least six Foot deep.* ?ÄòAnd further, all publick Assemblies at other Burials are to be forborn during the Continuance of this Visitation. No infected Stuff to be uttered ?ÄòTHAT no Clothes, Stuff, Bedding or Garments be suffered to be carried or conveyed out of any infected Houses, and that the Criers and Carriers abroad of Bedding or old Apparel to be sold or pawned, be utterly prohibited and restrained, and no Brokers of Bedding or old Apparel be permitted to make any outward Shew, or hang forth on their Stalls, Shopboards or Windows towards any Street, Lane, Common-way or Passage, any old Bedding or Apparel to be sold, upon pain of Imprisonment. And if any Broker or other Person shall buy any Bedding, Apparel, or other Stuff out of any infected House, within two Months after the Infection hath been there, his House shall be shut up as Infected, and so shall continue shut up twenty Days at the least. No Person to be conveyed out of any infected House ?ÄòIF any Person visited do fortune by negligent looking unto, or by any other Means, to come, or be conveyed from a Place infected, to any other Place, the Parish from whence such Party hath come or been conveyed, upon notice thereof given, shall at their Charge cause the said Party so visited and escaped, to be carried and brought back again by Night, and the Parties in this case offending, to be punished at the Direction of the Alderman of the Ward; and the House of the Receiver of such visited Person, to be shut up for twenty Days. Every visited House to be marked ?ÄòTHAT every House visited, be marked with a red Cross* of a Foot long, in the middle of the Door, evident to be seen, and with these usual printed Words, that is to say, Lord have Mercy upon us, to be set close over the same Cross, there to continue until lawful opening of the same House. Every visited House to be watched ?ÄòTHAT the Constables see every House shut up, and to be attended with Watchmen, which may keep them in, and minister Necessaries unto them at their own Charges (if they be able,) or at the common Charge, if they be unable: The shutting up to be for the space of four Weeks after all be whole. ?ÄòThat precise Order be taken that the Searchers, Chirurgeons, Keepers and Buriers are not to pass the Streets without holding a red Rod or Wand* of three Foot in Length in their Hands, open and evident to be seen, and are not to go into any other House than into their own, or into that whereunto they are directed or sent for; but to forbear and abstain from Company, especially when they have been lately used in any such Business or Attendance. Inmates ?ÄòTHAT where several Inmates are in one and the same House, and any Person in that House happens to be Infected; no other Person of Family of such House shall be suffered to remove him or themselves without a Certificate from the Examiners of Health of that Parish; or in default thereof, the House whither he or they so remove, shall be shut up as in case of Visitation. Hackney-Coaches ?ÄòTHAT care be taken of Hackney-Coach-men, that they may not (as some of them have been observed to do) after carrying of infected Persons to the Pest-House, and other Places, be admitted to common use, till their Coaches be well aired, and have stood unemploy'd by the Space of five or six Days after such Service. ORDERS for cleansing and keeping of the Streets Sweet The Streets to be kept clean ?ÄòFIRST, it is thought necessary, and so ordered, that every Housholder do cause the Street to be daily prepared before his Door, and so to keep it clean swept all the Week long. That Rakers take it from out the Houses ?ÄòTHAT the Sweeping and Filth of Houses be daily carry'd away by the Rakers, and that the Raker shall give notice of his coming, by the blowing of a Horn, as hitherto hath been done. Laystalls to be made far off from the City ?ÄòTHAT the Laystalls be removed as far as may be out of the City, and common Passages, and that no Nightman or other be suffered to empty a Vault into any Garden near about the City. Care to be had of unwholsome Fish or Flesh, and of musty Corn ?ÄòTHAT special care be taken, that no stinking Fish, or unwholesome Flesh, or musty Corn, or other corrupt Fruits, of what Sort soever be suffered to be sold about the City, or any part of the same. ?ÄòThat the Brewers and Tippling-houses be looked unto, for musty and unwholsome Casks. ?ÄòThat no Hogs, Dogs, or Cats, or tame Pigeons, or Conies, be suffered to be kept within any part of the City, or any Swine to be, or stray in the Streets or Lanes, but that such Swine be impounded by the Beadle or any other Officer, and the Owner punished according to Act of Common-Council, and that the Dogs be killed by the Dog-killers appointed for that purpose. ORDERS concerning loose Persons and idle Assemblies Beggers ?ÄòFORASMUCH as nothing is more complained of, than the Multitude of Rogues and wandring Beggars, that swarm in every place about the City, being a great cause of the spreading of the Infection, and will not be avoided, notwithstanding any Order that have been given to the contrary: It is therefore now ordered, that such Constables, and others, whom this Matter may any way concern, take special care that no wandring Begger be suffered in the Streets of this City, in any fashion or manner, whatsoever, upon the Penalty provided by the Law to be duely and severely executed upon them. Plays ?ÄòTHAT all Plays, Bear-Baitings, Games, singing of Ballads, Bucklerplay, or such like Causes of Assemblies of People, be utterly prohibited, and the Parties offending severely punished by every Alderman in his Ward. Feasting Prohibited ?ÄòTHAT all publick Feasting, and particularly by the Companies of this City, and Dinners at Taverns, Alehouses, and other Places of common Entertainment be forborn till further Order and Allowance; and that the Money thereby spared, be preserved and employed for the Benefit and Relief of the Poor visited with the Infection. Tipling-Houses ?ÄòTHAT disorderly Tipling in Taverns,* Ale-houses, Coffe-houses, and Cellars be severely looked unto, as the common Sin of this Time, and greatest occasion of dispersing the Plague. And that no Company or Person be suffered to remain or come into any Tavern, Ale-house, or Coffe-house to drink after nine of the Clock in the Evening, according to the antient Law and Custom of this City, upon the Penalties ordained in that Behalf. ?ÄòAnd for the better execution of these Orders, and such other Rules and Directions as upon further consideration shall be found needful; It is ordered and enjoined that the Aldermen, Deputies, and Common-Council-men shall meet together weekly, once, twice, thrice, or oftner, (as cause shall require) at some one general Place accustomed in their respective Wards (being clear from Infection of the Plague) to consult how the said Orders may be duly put in Execution; not intending that any, dwelling in or near Places infected, shall come to the said Meeting whiles their coming may be doubtful. And the said Aldermen, and Deputies, and Common-Council-men in their several Wards may put in Execution any other good Orders that by them at their said Meetings shall be conceived and devised, for Preservation of His Majesty's Subjects from the Infection.' I need not say, that these Orders extended only to such Places as were within the Lord Mayor's Jurisdiction; so it is requisite to observe, that the Justices of Peace, within those Parishes, and Places as were called the Hamlets, and Out-parts, took the same Method: As I remember, the Orders for shutting up of Houses, did not take Place so soon on our Side, because, as I said before, the Plague did not reach to these Eastern Parts of the Town, at least, nor begin to be very violent, till the beginning of August. For Example, the whole Bill, from the 11th to the 18th of July, was 1761, yet there dy'd but 71 of the Plague, in all those Parishes we call the Tower-Hamlets; and they were as follows. It was indeed, coming on a main; for the Burials that same Week, were in the next adjoining Parishes, thus, This shutting up of houses was at first counted a very cruel and Unchristian Method, and the poor People so confin'd made bitter Lamentations: Complaints of the Severity of it, were also daily brought to my Lord Mayor, of Houses causelessly, (and some maliciously) shut up: I cannot say, but upon Enquiry, many that complained so loudly, were found in a Condition to be continued, and others again Inspection being made upon the sick Person, and the Sickness not appearing infectious, or if uncertain, yet, on his being content to be carried to the Pest-House, were released. It is true, that the locking up the Doors of Peoples Houses, and setting a Watchman there Night and Day, to prevent their stirring out, or any coming to them; when, perhaps, the sound People, in the Family, might have escaped, if they had been remov'd from the Sick, looked very hard and cruel; and many People perished in these miserable Confinements, which 'tis reasonable to believe, would not have been distemper'd if they had had Liberty, tho' the Plague was in the House; at which the People were very clamorous and uneasie at first, and several Violences were committed, and Injuries offered to the Men, who were set to watch the Houses so shut up; also several People broke out by Force, in many Places, as I shall observe by and by: But it was a publick Good that justified the private Mischief; and there was no obtaining the least Mitigation, by any Application to Magistrates, or Government, at that Time, at least, not that I heard of. This put the People upon all Manner of Stratagem, in order, if possible, to get out, and it would fill a little Volume, to set down the Arts us'd by the People of such Houses, to shut the Eyes of the Watchmen, who were employ'd, to deceive them, and to escape, or break out from them; in which frequent Scuffles, and some Mischief happened; of which by it self. As I went along Houndsditch one Morning, about eight a-Clock, there was a great Noise; it is true indeed, there was not much Croud, because People were not very free to gather together, or to stay long together, when they were there, nor did I stay long there: But the Outcry was loud enough to prompt my Curiosity, and I call'd to one that look'd out of a Window, and ask'd what was the Matter. A Watchman, it seems, had been employed to keep his Post at the Door of a House, which was infected, or said to be infected, and was shut up; he had been there all Night for two Nights together, as he told his Story, and the Day Watchman had been there one Day. and was now come to relieve him: All this while no Noise had been heard in the House, no Light had been seen; they call'd for nothing, sent him of no Errands, which us'd to be the chief Business of the Watchman; neither had they given him any Disturbance, as he said, from the Monday afternoon, when he heard great crying and screaming in the House, which, as he supposed, was occasioned by some of the Family dying just at that Time: it seems the Night before, the Dead-Cart, as it was called, had been stopt there, and a Servant-Maid had been brought down to the Door dead, and the Buriers or Bearers, as they were call'd, put her into the Cart, wrapt only in a green Rug, and carried her away. The Watchman had knock'd at the Door, it seems, when he heard that Noise and Crying, as above, and no Body answered, a great while; but at last one look'd out and said with an angry quick Tone, and yet a Kind of crying Voice, or a Voice of one that was crying, What d'ye want, that ye make such a knocking? He answer'd, I am the Watchman! how do you do? What is the Matter? The Person answered, What is that to you? Stop the Dead-Cart. This it seems, was about one a-Clock; soon after, as the Fellow said, he stopped the Dead-Cart, and then knock'd again, but no Body answer'd: He continued knocking, and the Bellman call'd out several Times, Bring out your Dead; but no Body answered, till the Man that drove the Cart being call'd to other Houses, would stay no longer, and drove away. The Watchman knew not what to make of all this, so he let them alone, till the Morning-Man, or Day Watchman, as they call'd him, came to relieve him, giving him an Account of the Particulars, they knock'd at the Door a great while, but no body answered; and they observ'd, that the Window, or Casement, at which the Person had look'd out, who had answer'd before, continued open, being up two Pair of Stairs. Upon this, the two Men to satisfy their Curiosity, got a long Ladder, and one of them went up to the Window, and look'd into the Room, where he saw a Woman lying dead upon the Floor, in a dismal Manner, having no Cloaths on her but her Shift: But tho' he call'd aloud, and putting in his long Staff, knock'd hard on the Floor, yet no Body stirr'd or answered; neither could he hear any Noise in the House. He came down again, upon this, and acquainted his Fellow, who went up also, and finding it just so, they resolv'd to acquaint either the Lord Mayor, or some other Magistrate of it, but did not offer to go in at the Window: The Magistrate it seems, upon the Information of the two Men, ordered the House to be broken open, a Constable, and other Persons being appointed to be present, that nothing might be plundred; and accordingly it was so done, when no Body was found in the House, but that young Woman, who having been infected, and past Recovery, the rest had left her to die by her self, and were every one gone, having found some Way to delude the Watchman, and get open the Door, or get out at some Back Door, or over the Tops of the Houses, so that he knew nothing of it; and as to those Crys and Shrieks, which he heard, it was suppos'd, they were the passionate Cries of the Family, at the bitter parting, which, to be sure, it was to them all; this being the Sister to the Mistress of the Family. The Man of the House, his Wife, several Children, and Servants, being all gone and fled, whether sick or sound, that I could never learn; nor, indeed, did I make much Enquiry after it. Many such escapes were made, out of infected Houses, as particularly, when the Watchman was sent of some Errand; for it was his Business to go of any Errand, that the Family sent him of, that is to say, for Necessaries, such as Food and Physick; to fetch Physicians, if they would come, or Surgeons, or Nurses, or to order the Dead-Cart, and the like; But with this Condition too, that when he went, he was to lock up the Outer-Door of the House, and take the Key away with him; to evade this, and cheat the Watchmen, People got two or three Keys made to their Locks; or they found Ways to unscrew the Locks, such as were screw'd on, and so take off the Lock, being in the Inside of the House, and while they sent away the Watchman to the Market, to the Bakehouse, or for one Trifle or another, open the Door, and go out as often as they pleas'd: But this being found out, the Officers afterwards had Orders to Padlock up the Doors on the Outside, and place Bolts on them as they thought fit. At another House, as I was inform'd, in the Street next within Aldgate, a whole Family was shut up and lock'd in, because the Maid-Servant was taken sick; the Master of the House had complain'd by his Friends to the next Alderman, and to the Lord Mayor, and had consented to have the Maid carried to the Pest-House, but was refused, so the Door was marked with a red Cross, a Padlock on the Outside, as above, and a Watchman set to keep the Door according to publick Order. After the Master of the House found there was no Remedy, but that he, his Wife and his Children were to be lockt up with this poor distempered Servant; he call'd to the Watchman, and told him, he must go then and fetch a Nurse for them, to attend this poor Girl, for that it would be certain Death to them all to oblige them to nurse her, and told him plainly, that if he would not do this, the Maid must perish either of the Distemper, or be starv'd for want of Food; for he was resolv'd none of his Family, should go near her; and she lay in the Garret four Story high, where she could not Cry out, or call to any Body for Help. The Watchman consented to that, and went and fetch'd a Nurse as he was appointed, and brought her to them the same Evening; during this interval, the Master of the House took his Opportunity to break a large Hole thro' his Shop into a Bulk or Stall, where formerly a Cobler had sat, before or under his Shop-window; but the Tenant as may be supposed, at such a dismal Time as that, was dead or remov'd, and so he had the Key in his own keeping; having made his Way into this Stall, which he cou'd not have done, if the Man had been at the Door, the Noise he was obliged to make, being such as would have alarm'd the Watchman; I say, having made his Way into this Stall, he sat still till the Watchman return'd with the Nurse, and all the next Day also; but the Night following, having contriv'd to send the Watchman of another trifling Errand, which as I take it, was to an Apothecary's for a Plaster for the Maid, which he was to stay for the making up, or some other such Errand that might secure his staying some Time; in that Time he conveyed himself, and all his Family out of the House, and left the Nurse and the Watchman to bury the poor Wench; that is, throw her into the Cart, and take care of the House. I cou'd give a great many such Stories as these, diverting enough, which in the long Course of that dismal Year, I met with, that is heard of, and which are very certain to be true, or very near the Truth; that is to say, true in the General, for no Man could at such a Time, learn all the Particulars: There was likewise Violence used with the Watchmen, as was reported in abundance of Places; and I believe, that from the Beginning of the Visitation to the End, there was not less than eighteen or twenty of them kill'd, or so wounded as to be taken up for Dead, which was suppos'd to be done by the People in the infected Houses which were shut up, and where they attempted to come out, and were oppos'd. Nor indeed cou'd less be expected, for here were just so many Prisons in the Town, as there were Houses shut up; and as the People shut up or imprison'd so, were guilty of no Crime, only shut up because miserable, it was really the more intollerable to them. It had also this Difference; that every Prison, as we may call it, had but one Jaylor; and as he had the whole House to Guard, and that many Houses were so situated, as that they had several Ways out, some more, some less, and some into several Streets; it was impossible for one Man so to Guard all the Passages, as to prevent the escape of People, made desperate by the fright of their Circumstances, by the Resentment of their usage, or by the raging of the Distemper it self; so that they would talk to the Watchman on one Side of the House, while the Family made their escape at another. For example, in Coleman-street, there are abundance of Alleys, as appears still; a House was shut up in that they call Whites-Alley, and this House had a back Window, not a Door into a Court, which had a Passage into Bell-Alley; a Watchman was set by the Constable, at the Door of this House, and there he stood, or his Comrade Night and Day, while the Family went all away in the Evening, out at that Window into the Court, and left the poor Fellows warding, and watching, for near a Fortnight. Not far from the same Place, they blow'd up a Watchman with Gun-powder, and burnt the poor Fellow dreadfully, and while he made hideous Crys, and no Body would venture to come near to help him; the whole Family that were able to stir, got out at the Windows one Story high; two that were left Sick, calling out for Help; Care was taken to give them Nurses to look after them, but the Persons fled were never found, till after the Plague was abated they return'd, but as nothing cou'd be prov'd, so nothing could be done to them. It is to be consider'd too, that as these were Prisons without Barrs and Bolts, which our common Prisons are furnish'd with, so the People let themselves down out of their Windows, even in the Face of the Watchman, bringing Swords or Pistols in their Hands, and threatening the poor Wretch to shoot him, if he stir'd, or call'd for Help. In other Cases, some had Gardens, and Walls, or Pales between them and their Neighbours; or Yards, and back-Houses; and these by Friendship and Entreaties, would get leave to get over those Walls, or Pales, and so go out at their Neighbour's Doors; or by giving Money to their Servants, get them, to let them thro' in the Night; so that in short, the shutting up of Houses, was in no wise to be depended upon; neither did it answer the End at all; serving more to make the People desperate, and drive them to such Extremities as that they would break out at all Adventures. And that which was still worse, those that did thus break out, spread the Infection farther by their wandring about with the Distemper upon them, in their desperate Circumstances, than they would otherwise have done; for whoever considers all the Particulars in such Cases must acknowledge; and we cannot doubt but the severity of those Confinements, made many People desperate; and made them run out of their Houses at all Hazards, and with the Plague visibly upon them, not knowing either whither to go, or what to do, or indeed, what they did; and many that did so, were driven to dreadful Exigences and Extremities, and Perish'd in the Streets or Fields for meer Want, or drop'd down, by the raging violence of the Fever upon them: Others wandred into the Country, and went forward any Way, as their Desperation guided them, not knowing whither they went or would go, till faint and tir'd, and not getting any Relief; the Houses and Villages on the Road, refusing to admit them to lodge, whether infected or no; they have perish'd by the Road Side, or gotten into Barns and dy'd there, none daring to come to them, or relieve them, tho' perhaps not infected, for no Body would believe them. On the other Hand, when the Plague at first seiz'd a Family, that is to say, when any one Body of the Family, had gone out, and unwarily or otherwise catch'd the Distemper and brought it Home, it was certainly known by the Family, before it was known to the Officers, who, as you will see by the Order, were appointed to examine into the Circumstances of all sick Persons, when they heard of their being sick. In this Interval, between their being taken Sick, and the Examiners coming, the Master of the House had Leisure and Liberty to remove himself, or all his Family, if he knew whither to go, and many did so: But the great disaster was, that many did thus, after they were really infected themselves, and so carry'd the Disease into the Houses of those who were so Hospitable as to receive them, which it must be confess'd was very cruel and ungrateful. And this was in Part, the Reason of the general Notion, or scandal rather, which went about of the Temper of People infected; Namely, that they did not take the least care, or make any Scruple of infecting others; tho' I cannot say, but there might be some Truth in it too, but not so general as was reported. What natural Reason could be given, for so wicked a Thing, at a Time, when they might conclude themselves just going to appear at the Barr of Divine Justice, I know not: I am very well satisfy'd, that it cannot be reconcil'd to Religion and Principle, any more than it can be to Generosity and Humanity; but I may speak of that again. I am speaking now of People made desperate, by the Apprehensions of their being shut up, and their breaking out by Stratagem or Force, either before or after they were shut up, whose Misery was not lessen'd, when they were out, but sadly encreased: On the other Hand, many that thus got away, had Retreats to go to, and other Houses, where they lock'd themselves up, and kept hid till the Plague was over; and many Families foreseeing the Approach of the Distemper, laid up Stores of Provisions, sufficient for their whole Families, and shut themselves up, and that so entirely, that they were neither seen or heard of, till the Infection was quite ceased, and then came abroad Sound and Well: I might recollect several such as these, and give you the Particular of their Management; for doubtless, it was the most effectual secure Step that cou'd be taken for such, whose Circumstance would not admit them to remove, or who had not Retreats abroad proper for the Case; for in being thus shut up, they were as if they had been a hundred Miles off: Nor do I remember, that any one of those Families miscary'd; among these, several Dutch Merchants were particularly remarkable, who kept their Houses like little Garrisons besieged, suffering none to go in or out, or come near them; particularly one in a Court in Throckmorton Street, whose House looked into Drapers Garden. But I come back to the Case of Families infected, and shut up by the Magistrates; the Misery of those Families is not to be express'd, and it was generally in such Houses that we heard the most dismal Shrieks and Out-cries of the poor People terrified, and even frighted to Death, by the Sight of the Condition of their dearest Relations, and by the Terror of being imprisoned as they were. I remember, and while I am writing this Story, I think I hear the very Sound of it, a certain Lady had an only Daughter, a young Maiden about 19 Years old, and who was possessed of a very Considerable Fortune; they were only Lodgers in the House where they were: The young Woman, her Mother, and the Maid, had been abroad on some Occasion, I do not remember what, for the House was not shut up; but about two Hours after they came home, the young Lady complain'd she was not well; in a quarter of an Hour more, she vomited, and had a violent Pain in her Head. Pray God, says her Mother in a terrible Fright, my Child has not the Distemper! The Pain in her Head increasing, her Mother ordered the Bed to be warm'd, and resolved to put her to Bed; and prepared to give her things to sweat, which was the ordinary Remedy* to be taken, when the first Apprehensions of the Distemper began. While the Bed was airing, the Mother undressed the young Woman, and just as she was laid down in the Bed, she looking upon her Body with a Candle, immediately discovered the fatal Tokens on the Inside of her Thighs. Her Mother not being able to contain herself, threw down her Candle, and shriekt out in such a frightful Manner, that it was enough to place Horror upon the stoutest Heart in the World; nor was it one Skream, or one Cry, but the Fright having seiz'd her Spirits, she fainted first, then recovered, then ran all over the House, up the Stairs and down the Stairs, like one distracted, and indeed really was distracted, and continued screeching and crying out for several Hours, void of all Sense, or at least, Government of her Senses, and as I was told, never came thoroughly to herself again: As to the young Maiden, she was a dead Corpse from that Moment; for the Gangren which occasions the Spots had spread [over] her whole Body, and she died in less than two Hours: But still the Mother continued crying out, not knowing any Thing more of her Child, several Hours after she was dead. It is so long ago, that I am not certain, but I think the Mother never recover'd, but died in two or three Weeks after. This was an extraordinary Case, and I am therefore the more particular in it, because I came so much to the Knowledge of it; but there were innumerable such like Cases; and it was seldom, that the Weekly Bill came in, but there were two or three put in frighted,* that is, that may well be call'd, frighted to Death: But besides those, who were so frighted to die upon the Spot there were great Numbers frighted to other Extreams, some frighted out of their Senses, some out of their Memory and some out of their Understanding: But I return to the shutting up of Houses. As several People, I say, got out of their Houses by Stratagem, after they were shut up, so others got out by bribing the Watchmen, and giving them Money to let them go privately out in the Night. I must confess, I thought it at that time, the most innocent Corruption, or Bribery, that any Man could be guilty of; and therefore could not but pity the poor Men, and think it was hard when three of those Watchmen, were publickly whipt thro' the Streets, for suffering People to go out of Houses shut up. But notwithstanding that Severity, Money prevail'd with the poor Men, and many Families found Means to make Salleys out, and escape that way after they had been shut up; but these were generally such as had some Places to retreat to; and tho' there was no easie passing the Roads any whither, after the first of August, yet there were many Ways of retreat, and particularly, as I hinted, some got Tents and set them up in the Fields, carrying Beds, or Straw to lie on, and Provisions to eat, and so liv'd in them as Hermits in a Cell; for no Body would venture to come near them; and several Stories were told of such; some comical, some tragical, some who liv'd like wandring Pilgrims in the Desarts, and escaped by making themselves Exiles in such a Manner as is scarce to be credited, and who yet enjoyed more Liberty than was to be expected in such Cases. I have by me a Story of two Brothers and their Kinsman, who being single Men, but that had stay'd in the City too long to get away, and indeed, not knowing where to go to have any Retreat, nor having wherewith to travel far, took a Course for their own Preservation, which, tho' in it self at first, desperate, yet was so natural, that it may be wondred, that no more did so at that Time. They were but of mean Condition, and yet not so very poor, as that they could not furnish themselves with some little Conveniencies, such as might serve to keep Life and Soul together; and finding the Distemper increasing in a terrible Manner, they resolved to shift, as well as they could, and to be gone. One of them had been a Soldier in the late Wars, and before that in the Low Countries,* and having been bred to no particular Employment but his Arms; and besides being wounded, and not able to work very hard, had for some Time been employ'd at a Bakers of Sea Bisket in Wapping. The Brother of this Man was a Seaman too, but some how or other, had been hurt of one Leg, that he could not go to Sea, but had work'd for his Living at a Sail Makers in Wapping, or there abouts; and being a good Husband, had laid up some Money, and was the richest of the Three. The third Man was a Joiner or Carpenter by Trade, a handy Fellow; and he had no Wealth, but his Box, or Basket of Tools, with the Help of which he could at any Time get his Living, such a Time as this excepted, wherever he went, and he liv'd near Shadwel. They all liv'd in Stepney Parish, which, as I have said, being the last that was infected, or at least violently, they stay'd there till they evidently saw the Plague was abating at the West Part of the Town, and coming towards the East where they liv'd. The Story of those three Men, if the Reader will be content to have me give it in their own Persons, without taking upon me to either vouch the Particulars, or answer for any Mistakes, I shall give as distinctly as I can, believing the History will be a very good Pattern for any poor Man to follow, in case the like Publick Desolation should happen here; and if there may be no such Occasion, which God of his infinite Mercy grant us, still the Story may have its Uses so many Ways as that it will, I hope, never be said, that the relating has been unprofitable. I say all this previous to the History, having yet, for the present, much more to say before I quit my own Part. I went all the first Part of the Time freely about the Streets, tho' not so freely as to run my self into apparent Danger, except when they dug the great Pit in the Church-Yard of our Parish of Aldgate; a terrible Pit it was, and I could not resist my Curiosity to go and see it; as near as I may judge, it was about 40 Foot in Length, and about 15 or 16 Foot broad; and at the Time I first looked at it, about nine Foot deep; but it was said, they dug it near 20 Foot deep afterwards, in one Part of it, till they could go no deeper for the Water: for they had it seems, dug several large Pits before this, for tho' the Plague was long a-coming to our Parish,* yet when it did come, there was no Parish in or about London, where it raged with such Violence as in the two Parishes of Aldgate and White Chapel.* I say they had dug several Pits in another Ground, when the Distemper began to spread in our Parish, and especially when the Dead-Carts began to go about, which was not in our Parish till the beginning of August. Into these Pits they had put perhaps 50 or 60 Bodies each, then they made larger Holes, wherein they buried all that the Cart brought in a Week, which by the middle, to the End of August, came to, from 200 to 400 a Week; and they could not well dig them larger, because of the Order of the Magistrates, confining them to leave no Bodies within six Foot of the Surface; and the Water coming on, at about 17 or 18 Foot, they could not well, I say, put more in one Pit; but now at the Beginning of September, the Plague raging in a dreadful Manner, and the Number of Burials in our Parish increasing to more than was ever buried in any Parish about London, of no larger Extent, they ordered this dreadful Gulph to be dug; for such it was rather than a Pit. They had supposed this Pit would have supply'd them for a Month or more, when they dug it, and some blam'd the Church-Wardens for suffering such a frightful Thing, telling them they were making Preparations to bury the whole Parish, and the like; but Time made it appear, the Church-Wardens knew the Condition of the Parish better than they did; for the Pit being finished the 4th of September, I think, they began to bury in it the 6th, and by the 20, which was just two Weeks they had thrown into it 1114 Bodies'* when they were obliged to fill it up, the Bodies being then come to lie within six Foot of the Surface: I doubt not but there may be some antient Persons alive in the Parish, who can justify the Fact of this, and are able to shew even in what Part of the Church-Yard, the Pit lay, better than I can; the Mark of it also was many Years to be seen in the Church-Yard on the Surface lying in Length, Parallel with the Passage which goes by the West Wall of the Church-Yard, out of Houndsditch, and turns East again into White-Chappel, coming out near the three Nuns Inn.* It was about the 10th of September, that my Curiosity led, or rather drove me to go and see this Pit again, when there had been near 400 People buried in it; and I was not content to see it in the Day-time, as I had done before; for then there would have been nothing to have been seen but the loose Earth; for all the Bodies that were thrown in, were immediately covered with Earth, by those they call'd the Buryers, which at other Times were call'd Bearers; but I resolv'd to go in the Night and see some of them thrown in. There was a strict Order to prevent People coming to those Pits, and that was only to prevent Infection: But after some Time, that Order was more necessary, for People that were Infected, and near their End, and delirious also, would run to those Pits wrapt in Blankets, or Rugs, and throw themselves in, and as they said, bury themselves: I cannot say, that the Officers suffered any willingly to lie there; but I have heard, that in a great Pit in Finsbury, in the Parish of Cripple-gate, it lying open then to the Fields; for it was not then wall'd about, came and threw themselves in, and expired there, before they threw any Earth upon them; and that when they came to bury others, and found them there, they were quite dead, tho' not cold. This may serve a little to describe the dreadful Condition of that Day, tho' it is impossible to say any Thing that is able to give a true Idea of it to those who did not see it, other than this; that it was indeed very, very, very dreadful, and such as no Tongue can express. I got Admittance into the Church-Yard by being acquainted with the Sexton, who attended, who tho' he did not refuse me at all, yet earnestly perswaded me not to go; telling me very seriously, for he was a good religious and sensible Man, that it was indeed, their Business and Duty to venture, and to run all Hazards; and that in it they might hope to be preserv'd; but that I had no apparent Call to it, but my own Curiosity, which he said, he believ'd I would not pretend, was sufficient to justify my running that Hazard. I told him I had been press'd in my Mind to go, and that perhaps it might be an Instructing Sight, that might not be without its Uses. Nay, says the good Man, if you will venture upon that Score, ' Name of God go in; for depend upon it, 'twill be a Sermon to you, it may be, the best that ever you heard in your Life. 'Tis a speaking Sight, says he, and has a Voice with it, and a loud one, to call us all to Repentance; and with that he opened the Door and said, Go, if you will. His Discourse had shock'd my Resolution a little, and I stood wavering for a good while; but just at that Interval I saw two Links come over from the End of the Minories, and heard the Bell-man,* and then appear'd a Dead-Cart, as they call'd it, coming over the Streets so I could no longer resist my Desire of seeing it, and went in: There was no Body, as I could perceive at first, in the Church-Yard, or going into it, but the Buryers, and the Fellow that drove the Cart, or rather led the Horse and Cart, but when they came up, to the Pit, they saw a Man go to and again, mufled up in a brown Cloak, and making Motions with his Hands, under his Cloak, as if he was in a great Agony; and the Buriers immediately gathered about him, supposing he was one of those poor delirious, or desperate Creatures, that used to pretend, as I have said, to bury themselves; he said nothing as he walk'd about, but two or three times groaned very deeply, and loud, and sighed as he would break his Heart. When the Buryers came up to him they soon found he was neither a Person infected and desperate, as I have observed above, or a Person distempered in Mind, but one oppress'd with a dreadful Weight of Grief indeed, having his Wife and several of his Children, all in the Cart, that was just come in with him, and he followed in an Agony and excess of Sorrow. He mourned heartily, as it was easy to see, but with a kind of Masculine Grief, that could not give it self Vent by Tears, and calmly desiring the Buriers to let him alone, said he would only see the Bodies thrown in, and go away, so they left importuning him; but no sooner was the Cart turned round, and the Bodies shot into the Pit promiscuously, which was a Surprize to him, for he at least expected they would have been decently laid in, tho' indeed he was afterwards convinced that was impractible; I say, no sooner did he see the Sight, but he cry'd out aloud unable to contain himself; I could not hear what he said, but he went backward two or three Steps, and fell down in a Swoon: the Buryers ran to him and took him up, and in a little While he came to himself, and they led him away to the Pye-Tavern over-against the End of Houndsditch, where, it seems, the Man was known, and where they took care of him. He look'd into the Pit again, as he went away, but the Buriers had covered the Bodies so immediately with throwing in Earth, that tho' there was Light enough, for there were Lantherns and Candles in them, plac'd all Night round the Sides of the Pit, upon the Heaps of Earth, seven or eight, or perhaps more, yet nothing could be seen. This was a mournful Scene indeed, and affected me almost as much as the rest; but the other was awful, and full of Terror, the Cart had in it sixteen or seventeen Bodies, some were wrapt up in Linen Sheets, some in Rugs, some little other than naked, or so loose, that what Covering they had, fell from them, in the shooting out of the Cart, and they fell quite naked among the rest; but the Matter was not much to them, or the Indecency much to any one else, seeing they were all dead, and were to be huddled together into the common Grave of Mankind, as we may call it, for here was no Difference made, but Poor and Rich went together; there was no other way of Burials, neither was it possible there should, for Coffins were not to be had* for the prodigious Numbers that fell in such a Calamity as this. It was reported by way of Scandal upon the Buriers, that if any Corpse was delivered to them, decently wound up as we call'd it then, in a Winding Sheet Ty'd over the Head and Feet, which some did, and which was generally of good Linen; I say, it was reported, that the Buriers were so wicked as to strip them in the Cart, and carry them quite naked to the Ground: But as I can not easily credit any thing so vile among Christians, and at a Time so fill'd with Terrors, as that was, I can only relate it and leave it undetermined. Innumerable Stories also went about of the cruel Behaviours and Practises of Nurses, who tended the Sick, and of their hastening on the Fate of those they tended in their Sickness: But I shall say more of this in its Place. I was indeed shock'd with this Sight, it almost overwhelm'd me, and I went away with my Heart most afflicted and full of the afflicting Thoughts, such as I cannot describe; just at my going out of the Church, and turning up the Street towards my own House, I saw another Cart with Links, and a Bellman going before, coming out of Harrow-Alley, in the Butcher-Row, on the other Side of the Way, and being, as I perceived, very full of dead Bodies, it went directly over the Street also toward the Church: I stood a while, but I had no Stomach to go back again to see the same dismal Scene over again, so I went directly Home, where I could not but consider with Thankfulness, the Risque I had run, believing I had gotten no Injury; as indeed I had not. Here the poor unhappy Gentleman's Grief came into my head again, and indeed I could not but shed Tears in the Reflection upon it, perhaps more than he did himself; but his Case lay so heavy upon my Mind, that I could not prevail with my self, but that I must go out again into the Street, and go to the Pye-Tavern, resolving to enquire what became of him. It was by this Time one a-Clock in the Morning, and yet the poor Gentleman was there; the Truth was, the People of the House knowing him, had entertain'd him, and kept him there all the Night, notwithstanding the Danger of being infected, by him, tho' it appear'd the Man was perfectly sound himself. It is with Regret, that I take Notice of this Tavern; the People were civil, mannerly, and an obliging Sort of Folks enough, and had till this Time kept their House open, and their Trade going on, tho' not so very publickly as formerly; but there was a dreadful Set of Fellows that used their House, and who in the middle of all this Horror met there every Night, behaved with all the Revelling and roaring extravagances, as is usual for such People to do at other Times, and indeed to such an offensive Degree, that the very Master and Mistress of the House grew first asham'd and then terrify'd at them. They sat generally in a Room next the Street, and as they always kept late Hours, so when the Dead-Cart came cross the Street End to go into Hounds-ditch, which was in View of the Tavern Windows; they would frequently open the Windows as soon as they heard the Bell, and look out at them; and as they might often hear sad Lamentations of People in the Streets, or at their Windows, as the Carts went along, they would make their impudent Mocks and Jeers at them, especially if they heard the poor People call upon God to have Mercy upon them, as many would do at those Times in their ordinary passing along the Streets. These Gentlemen being something disturb'd with the Clutter of bringing the poor Gentleman into the House, as above, were first angry, and very high with the Master of the House, for suffering such a Fellow, as they call'd him, to be brought out of the Grave into their House; but being answered, that the Man was a Neighbour, and that he was sound, but overwhelmed with the Calamity of his Family, and the like, they turned their Anger into ridiculing the Man, and his Sorrow for his Wife and Children; taunted him with want of Courage to leap into the great Pit, and go to Heaven, as they jeeringly express'd it, along with them, adding some very profane, and even blasphemous Expressions. They were at this vile Work when I came back to the House, and as far as I could see, tho' the Man sat still, mute and disconsolate, and their Affronts could not divert his Sorrow, yet he was both griev'd and offended at their Discourse: Upon this, I gently reprov'd them, being well enough acquainted with their Characters, and not unknown in Person to two of them. They immediately fell upon me with ill Language and Oaths; ask'd me what I did out of my Grave, at such a Time when so many honester Men were carried into the Church-Yard? and why I was not at Home saying my Prayers, against the Dead-Cart came for me? and the like. I was indeed astonished at the Impudence of the Men, tho' not at all discomposed at their Treatment of me; however I kept my Temper; I told them, that tho' I defy'd them, or any Man in the World to tax me with any Dishonesty, yet I acknowledg'd, that in this terrible Judgment of God, many better than I was swept away, and carried to their Grave: But to answer their Question directly, the Case was, that I was mercifully preserved by that great God, whose Name they had Blasphemed and taken in vain, by cursing and swearing in a dreadful Manner; and that I believed I was preserv'd in particular, among other Ends, of his Goodness, that I might reprove them for their audacious Boldness, in behaving in such a Manner, and in such an awful Time as this was, especially, for their Jeering and Mocking, at an honest Gentleman, and a Neighbour, for some of them knew him, who they saw was overwhelm'd with Sorrow, for the Breaches which it had pleas'd God to make upon his Family. I cannot call exactly to Mind the hellish abominable Raillery, which was the Return they made to that Talk of mine, being provoked, it seems, that I was not at all afraid to be free with them; nor if I could remember, would I fill my Account with any of the Words, the horrid Oaths, Curses, and vile Expressions, such, as at that time of the Day, even the worst and ordinariest People in the Street would not use; (for except such hardened Creatures as these, the most wicked wretches that could be found, had at that Time some Terror upon their Minds of the Hand of that Power which could thus, in a Moment destroy them.) But that which was the worst in all their devilish Language was, that they were not afraid to blaspheme God, and talk Atheistically; making a Jest at my calling the Plague the Hand of God, mocking, and even laughing at the Word Judgment, as if the Providence of God had no Concern in the inflicting such a desolating Stroke; and that the People calling upon God, as they saw the Carts carrying away the dead Bodies was all enthusiastick,* absurd, and impertinent. I made them some Reply, such as I thought proper, but which I found was so far from putting a Checque to their horrid Way of speaking, that it made them rail the more, so that I confess it fill'd me with Horror, and a kind of Rage, and I came away, as I told them, lest the Hand of that Judgment which had visited the whole City should glorify his Vengeance upon them, and all that were near them. They received all Reproof with the utmost Contempt, and made the greatest Mockery that was possible for them to do at me, giving me all the opprobrious insolent Scoffs that they could think of for preaching to them, as they call'd it, which indeed, grieved me, rather than angred me; and I went away blessing God, however, in my Mind, that I had not spar'd them, tho' they had insulted me so much. They continued this wretched Course, three or four Days after this, continually mocking and jeering at all that shew'd themselves religious, or serious, or that were any way touch'd with the Sence of the terrible Judgment of God upon us, and I was inform'd they flouted in the same Manner, at the good People, who, notwithstanding the Contagion, met at the Church, fasted, and prayed to God to remove his Hand from them. I say, they continued this dreadful Course three or four Days, I think it was no more, when one of them, particularly he who ask'd the poor Gentleman what he did out of his Grave? was struck from Heaven with the Plague, and died in a most deplorable Manner; and in a Word they were every one of them carried into the great Pit, which I have mentioned above, before it was quite fill'd up, which was not above a Fortnight or thereabout. These Men were guilty of many extravagances, such as one would think, Human Nature should have trembled at the Thoughts of, at such a Time of general Terror, as was then upon us; and particularly scoffing and mocking at every thing which they happened to see, that was religious among the People, especially at their thronging zealously to the Place of publick Worship, to implore Mercy from Heaven in such a Time of Distress; and this Tavern, where they held their Club, being within View of the Church Door, they had the more particular Occasion for their Atheistical profane Mirth. But this began to abate a little with them before the Accident, which I have related, happened; for the Infection increased so violently, at this Part of the Town now, that People began to be afraid to come to the Church, at least such Numbers did not resort thither as was usual; many of the Clergymen likewise were Dead, and others gone into the Country; for it really required a steady Courage, and a strong Faith, for a Man not only to venture being in Town at such a Time as this, but likewise to venture to come to Church and perform the Office of a Minister to a Congregation, of whom he had reason to believe many of them, were actually infected with the Plague, and to do this every Day, or twice a Day, as in some Places was done. It is true, the People shew'd an extraordinary Zeal in these religious Exercises, and as the Church Doors were always open, People would go in single at all Times, whether the Minister was officiating or no, and locking themselves into separate Pews, would be praying to God with great Fervency and Devotion. Others assembled at Meeting-Houses, every one as their different Opinions in such Things guided, but all were promiscuously the Subject of these Mens Drollery, especially at the Beginning of the Visitation. It seems they had been check'd for their open insulting Religion in this Manner, by several good People of every perswasion, and that, and the violent raging of the Infection, I suppose, was the Occasion that they had abated much of their Rudeness, for some time before, and were only rous'd by the Spirit of Ribaldry, and Atheism, at the Clamour which was made, when the Gentleman was first brought in there, and perhaps, were agitated by the same Devil, when I took upon me to reprove them; tho' I did it at first with all the Calmness, Temper, and Good-Manners that I could, which, for a while, they insulted me the more for, thinking it had been in fear of their Resentment, tho' afterwards they found the contrary. I went Home indeed, griev'd and afflicted in my Mind, at the Abominable Wickedness of those Men not doubting, however, that they would be made dreadful Examples of God's Justice; for I look'd upon this dismal Time to be a particular Season of Divine Vengeance, and that God would, on this Occasion, single out the proper Objects, of his Displeasure, in a more especial and remarkable Manner, than at another Time; and that, tho' I did believe that many good People would, and did, fall in the common Calamity, and that it was no certain Rule to judge of the eternal State of any one, by their being distinguish'd in such a Time of general Destruction, neither one Way or other; yet I say, it could not but seem reasonable to believe, that God would not think fit to spare by his Mercy such open declared Enemies, that should insult his Name and Being, defy his Vengeance, and mock at his Worship and Worshipers, at such a Time, no not tho' his Mercy had thought fit to bear with, and spare them at other Times: That this was a Day of Visitation; a Day of God's Anger; and those Words came into my Thought. Jer. v. 9. Shall I not visit for these things, saith the Lord, and shall not my Soul be avenged of such a Nation as this? These Things, I say, lay upon my Mind; and I went home very much griev'd and oppress'd with the Horror of these Mens Wickedness, and to think that any thing could be so vile, so hardened, and so notoriously wicked, as to insult God and his Servants, and his Worship, in such a Manner, and at such a Time as this was; when he had, as it were, his Sword drawn in his Hand, on purpose to take Vengeance, not on them only, but on the whole Nation. I had indeed, been in some Passion, at first, with them, tho' it was really raised, not by any Affront they had offered me personally, but by the Horror their blaspheming Tongues fill'd me with; however, I was doubtful in my Thoughts, whether the Resentment I retain'd was not all upon my own private Account, for they had given me a great deal of ill Language too, I mean Personally; but after some Pause, and having a Weight of Grief upon my Mind, I retir'd my self, as soon as I came home, for I slept not that Night, and giving God most humble Thanks for my Preservation in the eminent Danger I had been in, I set my Mind seriously, and with the utmost Earnestness, to pray for those desperate Wretches, that God would pardon them, open their Eyes, and effectually humble them. By this I not only did my Duty, namely, to pray for those who dispitefully used me, but I fully try'd my own Heart, to my full Satisfaction; that it was not fill'd with any Spirit of Resentment as they had offended me in particular; and I humbly recommend the Method to all those that would know, or be certain, how to distinguish between their real Zeal for the Honour of God, and the Effects of their private Passions and Resentment. But I must go back here to the particular Incidents which occur to my Thoughts of the Time of the Visitation, and particularly, to the Time of their shutting up Houses, in the first Part of the Sickness; for before the Sickness was come to its Height, People had more Room to make their Observations, than they had afterward: But when it was in the Extremity, there was no such Thing as Communication with one another, as before. During the shutting up of Houses, as I have said, some Violence was offered to the Watchmen; as to Soldiers, there were none to be found; the few Guards which the King then had, which were nothing like the Number entertain'd since, were disperss'd, either at Oxford with the Court, or in Quarters in the remoter Parts of the Country; small detachments excepted, who did Duty at the Tower, and at White-Hall, and these but very few; neither am I positive, that there was any other Guard at the Tower, than the Warders, as they call'd them, who stand at the Gate with Gowns and Caps, the same as the Yeomen of the Guard; except the ordinary Gunners, who were 24, and the Officers appointed to look after the Magazine, who were call'd Armourers: as to Traind-Bands, there was no Possibility of raising any, neither if the Lieutenancy, either of London or Middlesex had ordered the Drums to beat for the Militia, would any of the Companies, I believe, have drawn together, whatever Risque they had run. This made the Watchmen be the less regarded, and perhaps, occasioned the greater Violence to be used against them; I mention it on this Score, to observe that the setting Watchmen thus to keep the People in, was (1st) of all, not effectual, but that the People broke out, whether by Force or by Stratagem, even almost as often as they pleas'd: And (2d) that those that did thus break out, were generally People infected, who in their Desperation, running about from one Place to another, valued not who they injur'd, and which perhaps, as I have said, might give Birth to Report, that it was natural to the infected People to desire to infect others, which Report was really false. And I know it so well, and in so many several Cases, that I could give several Relations of good, pious, and religious People, who, when they have had the Distemper, have been so far from being forward to infect others, that they have forbid their own Family to come near them, in Hopes of their being preserved; and have even died without seeing their nearest Relations, lest they should be instrumental to give them the Distemper, and infect or endanger them: If then there were Cases wherein the infected People were careless of the Injury they did to others, this was certainly one of them, if not the chief, namely, when People, who had the Distemper, had broken out from Houses which were so shut up, and having been driven to Extremities for Provision, or for Entertainment, had endeavoured to conceal their Condition, and have been thereby Instrumental involuntarily to infect others who have been ignorant and unwary. This is one of the Reasons why I believed then, and do believe still, that the shutting up Houses thus by Force, and restraining, or rather imprisoning People in their own Houses, as is said above, was of little or no Service in the Whole; nay, I am of Opinion, it was rather hurtful, having forc'd those desperate People to wander abroad with the Plague upon them, who would otherwise have died quietly in their Beds. I remember one Citizen, who having thus broken out of his House in Aldersgate-Street, or thereabout, went along the Road to Islington, he attempted to have gone in at the Angel-Inn, and after that, at the White-Horse, two Inns known still by the same Signs, but was refused; after which he came to the Pyed Bull, an Inn also still continuing the same Sign; he asked them for Lodging for one Night only, pretending to be going into Lincolnshire, and assuring them of his being very sound, and free from the Infection, which also, at that Time, had not reached much that Way. They told him they had no Lodging that they could spare, but one Bed, up in the Garret, and that they could spare that Bed but for one Night, some Drovers being expected the next Day with Cattle; so, if he would accept of that Lodging, he might have it, which he did; so a Servant was sent up with a Candle with him, to shew him the Room; he was very well dress'd, and look'd like a Person not used to lie in a Garret, and when he came to the Room he fech'd a deep Sigh, and said to the Servant, I have seldom lain in such a Lodging as this; however the Servant assuring him again, that they had no better. Well, says he, I must make shift; this is a dreadful Time, but it is but for one Night; so he sat down upon the Bedside, and bad the maid, I think it was, fetch him up a Pint of warm Ale; accordingly the Servant went for the Ale; but some Hurry in the House, which perhaps employed her other-ways, put it out of her Head; and she went up no more to him. The next Morning seeing no Appearance of the Gentleman, some Body in the House asked the Servant that had shewed him up Stairs, what was become of him? She started; Alas says she, I never thought more of him: He bad me carry him some warm Ale, but I forgot; upon which, not the Maid, but some other Person, was sent up to see after him, who coming into the Room found him stark dead, and almost cold, stretch'd out cross the Bed; his Cloths were pulled off, his Jaw fallen, his Eyes open in a most frightful Posture, the Rug of the Bed being grasped hard in one of his Hands; so that it was plain he died soon after the Maid left him, and 'tis probable, had she gone up with the Ale, she had found him dead in a few Minutes after he sat down upon the Bed. The Alarm was great in the House, as any one may suppose, they having been free from the Distemper, till that Disaster, which bringing the Infection to the House, spread it immediately to other Houses round about it. I do not remember how many died in the House it self, but I think the Maid Servant, who went up first with him, fell presently ill by the Fright, and several others; for whereas there died but two in Islington of the Plague the Week before, there died 17 the Week after, whereof 14 were of the Plague; this was in the Week from the 11th of July to the 18th. There was one Shift that some Families had, and that not a few, when their Houses happened to be infected, and that was this; The Families, who in the first breaking out of the Distemper, fled away into the Country, and had Retreats among their Friends, generally found some or other of their Neighbours or Relations to commit the Charge of those Houses to, for the Safety of the Goods, and the like. Some Houses were indeed, entirely lock'd up, the Doors padlockt, the Windows and Doors having Deal-Boards nail'd over them, and only the Inspection of them committed to the ordinary Watchmen and Parish Officers; but these were but few. It was thought that there were not less than 10000 Houses forsaken of the Inhabitants in the City and Suburbs, including what was in the Out Parishes, and in Surrey, or the Side of the Water they call'd Southwark. This was besides the Numbers of Lodgers, and of particular Persons who were fled out of other Families; so that in all it was computed that about 200000 People were fled* and gone in all: But of this I shall speak again: But I mention it here on this Account, namely, that it was a Rule with those who had thus two Houses in their Keeping, or Care, that if any Body was taken sick in a Family, before the Master of the Family let the Examiners, or any other Officer, know of it, he immediately would send all the rest of his Family whether Children or Servants, as it fell out to be, to such other House which he had so in Charge, and then giving Notice of the sick Person to the Examiner, have a Nurse, or Nurses appointed; and have another Person to be shut up in the House with them (which many for Money would do) so to take Charge of the House, in case the Person should die. This was in many Cases the saving a whole Family, who, if they had been shut up with the sick Person, would inevitably have perished: But on the other Hand, this was another of the Inconveniencies of shutting up Houses; for the Apprehensions and Terror of being shut up, made many run away with the rest of the Family, who, tho' it was not publickly known, and they were not quite sick, had yet the Distemper upon them; and who by having an uninterrupted Liberty to go about, but being obliged still to conceal their Circumstances, or perhaps not knowing it themselves, gave the Distemper to others, and spread the Infection in a dreadful Manner, as I shall explain farther hereafter. And here I may be able to make an Observation or two of my own, which may be of use hereafter to those, into whose Hands this may come, if they should ever see the like dreadful Visitation. (1.) The Infection generally came into the Houses of the Citizens, by the Means of their Servants, who, they were obliged to send up and down the Streets for Necessaries, that is to say, for Food, or Physick, to Bake-houses, Brew-houses, Shops, &c. and who going necessarily thro' the Streets into Shops, Markets, and the like, it was impossible, but that they should one way or other, meet with distempered people, who conveyed the fatal Breath* into them, and they brought it Home to the Families, to which they belonged. (2.) It was a great Mistake, that such a great City as this had but one Pest-House; for had there been, instead of one Pest-House viz. beyond Bunhil-Fields, where, at most, they could receive, perhaps, 200 or 300 People; I say, had there instead of that one been several Pest-houses, every one able to contain a thousand People without lying two in a Bed, or two Beds in a Room; and had every Master of a Family, as soon as any Servant especially, had been taken sick in his House, been obliged to send them to the next Pest-House, if they were willing, as many were, and had the Examiners done the like among the poor People, when any had been stricken with the Infection; I say, had this been done where the People were willing, (not otherwise) and the Houses not been shut, I am perswaded, and was all the While of that Opinion, that not so many, by several Thousands, had died; for it was observed, and I could give several Instances within the Compass of my own Knowledge, where a Servant had been taken sick, and the Family had either Time to send them out, or retire from the House, and leave the sick Person, as I have said above, they had all been preserved; whereas, when upon one, or more, sickning in a Family, the House has been shut up, the whole Family have perished, and the Bearers been oblig'd to go in to fetch out the Dead Bodies, none being able to bring them to the Door; and at last none left to do it. (3.) This put it out of Question to me, that the Calamity was spread by Infection, that is to say, by some certain Steams, or Fumes, which the Physicians call Effluvia,* by the Breath, or by the Sweat, or by the Stench of the Sores of the sick Persons, or some other way, perhaps, beyond even the Reach of the Physicians themselves, which Effluvia affected the Sound, who come within certain Distances of the Sick, immediately penetrating the Vital Parts of the said sound Persons, putting their Blood into an immediate ferment, and agitating their Spirits to that Degree which it was found they were agitated; and so those newly infected Persons communicated it in the same Manner to others; and this I shall give some Instances of, that cannot but convince those who seriously consider it; and I cannot but with some Wonder, find some People, now the Contagion is over, talk of its being an immediate Stroke from Heaven,* without the Agency of Means, having Commission to strike this and that particular Person, and none other; which I look upon with Contempt, as the Effect of manifest Ignorance and Enthusiasm; likewise the Opinion of others, who talk of infection being carried on by the Air only, by carrying with it vast Numbers of Insects, and invisible Creatures,* who enter into the Body with the Breath, or even at the Pores with the Air, and there generate, or emit most acute Poisons, or poisonous Ov?¶, or Eggs, which mingle themselves with the Blood, and so infect the Body; a Discourse full of learned Simplicity, and manifested to be so by universal Experience; but I shall say more to this Case in its Order. I must here take farther Notice that Nothing was more fatal to the Inhabitants of this City, than the Supine Negligence* of the People themselves, who during the long Notice, or Warning they had of the Visitation, yet made no Provision for it, by laying in Store of Provisions, or of other Necessaries; by which they might have liv'd retir'd, and within their own Houses, as I have observed, others did, and who were in a great Measure preserv'd by that Caution; nor were they, after they were a little hardened to it so shye of conversing with one another, when actually infected, as they were at first, no tho' they knew it. I acknowledge I was one of those thoughtless Ones, that had made so little Provision, that my Servants were obliged to go out of Doors to buy every Trifle by Penny and Half-penny, just as before it begun, even till my Experience shewing me the Folly, I began to be wiser so late, that I had scarce Time to store my self sufficient for our common Subsistence for a Month. I had in Family only an antient Woman, that managed the House, a Maid-Servant, two Apprentices, and my self; and the Plague beginning to encrease about us, I had many sad Thoughts about what Course I should take, and how I should act; the many dismal Objects, which happened everywhere as I went about the Streets, had fill'd my Mind with a great deal of Horror, for fear of the Distemper it self, which was indeed, very horrible in it self, and in some more than in others, the swellings which were generally in the Neck, or Groin, when they grew hard, and would not break, grew so painful, that it was equal to the most exquisite Torture; and some not able to bear the Torment, threw themselves out at Windows, or shot themselves, or otherwise made themselves away, and I saw several dismal Objects of that Kind: Others unable to contain themselves, vented their Pain by incessant Roarings, and such loud and lamentable Cries were to be heard as we walk'd along the Streets, that would Pierce the very Heart to think of, especially when it was to be considered, that the same dreadful Scourge might be expected every Moment to seize upon our selves. I cannot say, but that now I began to faint in my Resolutions, my Heart fail'd me very much, and sorely I repented of my Rashness: When I had been out, and met with such terrible Things as these I have talked of; I say, I repented my Rashness in venturing to abide in Town: I wish'd often, that I had not taken upon me to stay, but had gone away with my Brother and his Family. Terrified by those frightful Objects, I would retire Home sometimes, and resolve to go out no more, and perhaps, I would keep those Resolutions for three or four Days, which Time I spent in the most serious Thankfulness for my Preservation, and the Preservation of my Family, and the constant Confession of my Sins, giving my self up to God every Day, and applying to him with Fasting, Humiliation, and Meditation: Such intervals as I had, I employed in reading Books, and in writing down my Memorandums of what occurred to me every Day, and out of which, afterwards, I [took] most of this Work as it relates to my Observations without Doors: What I wrote of my private Meditations I reserve for private Use, and desire it may not be made publick on any Account whatever. I also wrote other Meditations upon Divine Subjects,* such as occurred to me at that Time, and were profitable to my self, but not fit for any other View, and therefore I say no more of that. I had a very good Friend, a Physician, whose Name was Heath,* who I frequently visited during this dismal Time, and to whose Advice I was very much oblig'd for many Things which he directed me to take, by way of preventing the Infection when I went out, as he found I frequently did, and to hold in my Mouth when I was in the Streets; he also came very often to see me, and as he was a good Christian, as well as a good Physician, his agreeable Conversation was a very great Support to me in the worst of this terrible Time. It was now the Beginning of August, and the Plague grew very violent and terrible in the Place where I liv'd,* and Dr. Heath coming to visit me, and finding that I ventured so often out in the Streets, earnestly perswaded me to lock my self up and my Family, and not to suffer any of us to go out of Doors; to keep all our Windows fast, Shutters and Curtains close, and never to open them; but first to make a very strong Smoke in the Room, where the Window, or Door was to be opened, with Rozen and Pitch, Brimstone,* or Gunpowder, and the like; and we did this for some Time: But as I had not laid in a Store of Provision for such a retreat, it was impossible that we could keep within Doors entirely; however, I attempted, tho' it was so very late, to do something towards it; and first, as I had Convenience both for Brewing and Baking, I went and bought two Sacks of Meal, and for several Weeks, having an Oven, we baked all our own Bread; also I bought Malt, and brew'd as much Beer as all the Casks I had would hold, and which seem'd enough to serve my House for five or six Weeks; also I laid in a Quantity of Salt-butter and Cheshire Cheese; but I had no Flesh-meat, and the Plague raged so violently among the Butchers, and Slaughter-Houses, on the other Side of our Street, where they are known to dwell in great Numbers, that it was not advisable, so much as to go over the Street among them. And here I must observe again, that this Necessity of going out of our Houses to buy Provisions, was in a great Measure the Ruin of the whole City, for the People catch'd the Distemper, on those Occasions, one of another, and even the Provisions themselves were often tainted, at least I have great Reason to believe so; and therefore I cannot say with Satisfaction what I know is repeated with great Assurance, that the Market People, and such as brought Provisions, to Town, were never infected: I am certain, the Butchers of White-Chapel * where the greatest Part of the Flesh-meat was killed, were dreadfully visited, and that at last to such a Degree, that few of their Shops were kept open, and those that remain'd of them, kill'd their Meat at Mile-End, and that Way, and brought it to Market upon Horses. However, the poor People cou'd not lay up Provisions, and there was a necessity, that they must go to Market to buy, and others to send Servants or their Children; and as this was a Necessity which renew'd it self daily; it brought abundance of unsound People to the Markets, and a great many that went thither Sound, brought Death Home with them. It is true, People us'd all possible Precaution, when any one bought a Joint of Meat in the Market, they would not take it of the Butchers Hand, but take it off of the Hooks themselves. On the other Hand, the Butcher would not touch the Money, but have it put into a Pot full of Vinegar* which he kept for that purpose. The Buyer carry'd always small Money to make up any odd Sum, that they might take no Change. They carry'd Bottles for Scents, and Perfumes in their Hands, and all the Means that could be us'd, were us'd: But then the Poor cou'd not do even these things, and they went at all Hazards. Innumerable dismal Stories we heard every Day on this very Account: Sometimes a Man or Woman dropt down Dead in the very Markets; for many People that had the Plague upon them, knew nothing of it;* till the inward Gangreen had affected their Vitals and they dy'd in a few Moments; this caus'd, that many died frequently in that Manner in the Streets suddainly, without any warning: Others perhaps had Time to go to the next Bulk or Stall; or to any Door, Porch, and just sit down and die, as I have said before. These Objects were so frequent in the Streets, that when the Plague came to be very raging, on one Side, there was scarce any passing by the Streets, but that several dead Bodies would be lying here and there upon the Ground; on the other hand it is observable, that tho' at first, the People would stop as they went along, and call to the Neighbours to come out on such an Occasion; yet, afterward, no Notice was taken of them; but that, if at any Time we found a Corps lying, go cross the Way, and not come near it; or if in a narrow Lane or Passage, go back again, and seek some other Way to go on the Business we were upon; and in those Cases, the Corps was always left, till the Officers had notice, to come and take them away; or till Night, when the Bearers attending the Dead-Cart would take them up, and carry them away: Nor did those undaunted Creatures, who performed these Offices, fail to search their Pockets, and sometimes strip off their Cloths, if they were well drest, as sometimes they were, and carry off what they could get. But to return to the Markets; the Butchers took that Care, that if any Person dy'd in the Market, they had the Officers always at Hand, to take them up upon Hand-barrows, and carry them to the next Church-Yard; and this was so frequent that such were not entred in the weekly Bill, found Dead in the Streets or Fields, as is the Case now; but they went into the general Articles of the great Distemper. But now the Fury of the Distemper encreased to such a Degree, that even the Markets were but very thinly furnished with Provisions, or frequented with Buyers, compair'd to what they were before; and the Lord-Mayor caused the Country-People who brought Provisions, to be stop'd in the Streets leading into the Town, and to sit down there with their Goods, where they sold what they brought, and went immediately away; and this Encourag'd the Country People greatly to do so, for they sold their Provisions at the very Entrances into the Town, and even in the Fields; as particularly in the Fields beyond White-Chappel, in Spittle-fields. Note, Those Streets now called Spittle-Fields, were then indeed open Fields: Also in St. George's-fields in Southwark, in Bun-Hill Fields, and in a great Field, call'd Wood's-Close near Islington; thither the Lord-Mayor, Aldermen, and Magistrates, sent their Officers and Servants to buy for their Families, themselves keeping within Doors as much as possible; and the like did many other People; and after this Method was taken, the Country People came with great chearfulness, and brought Provisions of all Sorts, and very seldom got any harm; which I suppose, added also to that Report of their being Miraculously preserv'd. As for my little Family, having thus as I have said, laid in a Store of Bread, Butter, Cheese, and Beer, I took my Friend and Physician's Advice, and lock'd my self up, and my Family, and resolv'd to suffer the hardship of Living a few Months without Flesh-Meat, rather than to purchase it at the hazard of our Lives. But tho' I confin'd my Family, I could not prevail upon my unsatisfy'd Curiosity to stay within entirely my self; and tho' I generally came frighted and terrified Home, yet I cou'd not restrain; only that indeed, I did not do it so frequently as at first. I had some little Obligations indeed upon me, to go to my Brothers House, which was in Coleman's-street Parish, and which he had left to my Care, and I went at first every Day, but afterwards only once, or twice a Week. In these Walks I had many dismal Scenes before my Eyes, as particularly of Persons falling dead in the Streets, terrible Shrieks and Skreekings of Women, who in their Agonies would throw open their Chamber Windows, and cry out in a dismal Surprising Manner; it is impossible to describe the Variety of Postures, in which the Passions of the Poor People would Express themselves. Passing thro' Token-House Yard in Lothbury, of a sudden a Casement violently opened just over my Head, and a Woman gave three frightful Skreetches, and then cry'd, Oh! Death, Death, Death! in a most inimitable Tone, and which struck me with Horror and a Chilness, in my very Blood. There was no Body to be seen in the whole Street, neither did any other Window open; for People had no Curiosity now in any Case; nor could any Body help one another; so I went on to pass into Bell-Alley. Just in Bell-Alley, on the right Hand of the Passage, there was a more terrible Cry than that, tho' it was not so directed out at the Window, but the whole Family was in a terrible Fright, and I could hear Women and Children run skreaming about the Rooms like distracted, when a Garret Window opened, and some body from a Window on the other Side the Alley, call'd and ask'd, What is the Matter? upon which, from the first Window it was answered, O Lord, my Old Master has hang'd himself! The other ask'd again, Is he quite dead? and the first answer'd, Ay, ay, quite dead; quite dead and cold! This Person was a Merchant, and a Deputy Alderman, and very rich. I care not to mention the Name, tho' I knew his Name too, but that would be an Hardship to the Family, which is now flourishing again. But, this is but one; it is scarce credible what dreadful Cases happened in particular Families every Day; People in the Rage of the Distemper, or in the Torment of their Swellings, which was indeed intollerable, running out of their own Government, raving and distracted,* and oftentimes laying violent Hands upon themselves, throwing themselves out at their Windows, shooting themselves, & c. Mothers murthering their own Children, in their Lunacy, some dying of meer Grief, as a Passion, some of meer Fright and Surprize, without any Infection at all; others frighted into Idiotism, and foolish Distractions, some into despair and Lunacy; others into mellancholy Madness. The Pain of the Swelling was in particular very violent, and to some intollerable; the Physicians and Surgeons may be said to have tortured many poor Creatures,* even to Death. The Swellings in some grew hard, and they apply'd violent drawing Plasters, or Pultices, to break them; and if these did not do, they cut and scarified them in a terrible Manner: In some, those Swellings were made hard, partly by the Force of the Distemper, and partly by their being too violently drawn, and were so hard, that no Instrument could cut them, and then they burnt them with Causticks, so that many died raving mad with the Torment; and some in the very Operation. In these Distresses, some for want of Help to hold them down in their Beds, or to look to them, laid Hands upon themselves, as above. Some broke out into the Streets, perhaps naked, and would run directly down to the River, if they were not stopt by the Watchmen, or other Officers, and plunge themselves into the Water, wherever they found it. It often pierc'd my very Soul to hear the Groans and Crys of those who were thus tormented, but of the Two, this was counted the most promising Particular in the whole Infection; for, if these Swellings could be brought to a Head, and to break and run,* or as the Surgeons call it, to digest, the Patient generally recover'd; whereas those, who like the Gentlewoman's Daughter, were struck with Death at the Beginning, and had the Tokens come out upon them, often went about indifferent easy, till a little before they died, and some till the Moment they dropt down, as in Apoplexies and Epilepsies, is often the Case; such would be taken suddenly very sick, and would run to a Bench or Bulk, or any convenient Place that offer'd it self, or to their own Houses, if possible, as I mentioned before, and there sit down, grow faint and die. This kind of dying was much the same, as it was with those who die of common Mortifications, who die swooning, and as it were, go away in a Dream; such as died thus, had very little Notice of their being infected at all, till the Gangreen was spread thro' their whole Body; nor could Physicians themselves, know certainly how it was with them, till they opened their Breasts, or other Parts of their Body, and saw the Tokens. We had at this Time a great many frightful Stories told us of Nurses* and Watchmen, who looked after the dying People, that is to say, hir'd Nurses, who attended infected People, using them barbarously, starving them, smothering them, or by other wicked Means, hastening their End, that is to say, murthering of them: And Watchmen being set to guard Houses that were shut up, when there has been but one person left, and perhaps, that one lying sick, that they have broke in and murthered that Body, and immediately thrown them out into the Dead-Cart! and so they have gone scarce cold to the Grave. I cannot say, but that some such Murthers were committed, and I think two were sent to Prison for it, but died before they could be try'd; and I have heard that three others, at several Times, were excused for Murthers of that kind; but I must say I believe nothing of its being so common a Crime, as some have since been pleas'd to say, nor did it seem to be so rational, where the People were brought so low as not to be able to help themselves, for such seldom recovered, and there was no Temptation to commit a Murder, at least, none equal to the Fact where they were sure Persons would die in so short a Time; and could not live. That there were a great many Robberies and wicked Practises committed even in this dreadful Time I do not deny; the Power of Avarice was so strong in some, that they would run any Hazard to steal and to plunder, and particularly in Houses where all the Families, or Inhabitants have been dead, and carried out, they would break in at all Hazards, and without Regard to the Danger of Infection, take even the Cloths off, of the dead Bodies, and the Bed-cloaths from others where they lay dead. This, I suppose, must be the Case of a Family in Houndsditch, where a Man and his Daughter, the rest of the Family being, as I suppose, carried away before by the Dead-Cart, were found stark naked, one in one Chamber, and one in another, lying Dead on the Floor; and the Cloths of the Beds, from whence, 'tis supposed they were roll'd off by Thieves, stoln, and carried quite away. It is indeed to be observ'd, that the Women were in all this Calamity, the most rash, fearless, and desperate Creatures; and as there were vast Numbers that went about as Nurses, to tend those that were sick, they committed a great many petty Thieveries in the Houses where they were employed; and some of them were publickly whipt for it, when perhaps, they ought rather to have been hanged for Examples; for Numbers of Houses were robbed on these Occasions, till at length, the Parish Officers were sent to recommend Nurses to the Sick, and always took an Account who it was they sent, so as that they might call them to account, if the House had been abused where they were placed. But these Robberies extended chiefly to Wearing-Cloths, Linen, and what Rings, or Money they could come at, when the Person dyed who was under their Care, but not to a general Plunder of the Houses; and I could give an Account of one of these Nurses, who several Years after, being on her Deathbed, confest with the utmost Horror, the Robberries she had committed at the Time of her being a Nurse, and by which she had enriched her self to a great Degree: But as for murthers, I do not find that there was ever any Proof of the Facts, in the manner, as it has been reported, except as above. They did tell me indeed of a Nurse in one place, that laid a wet Cloth upon the Face of a dying Patient, who she tended, and so put an End to his Life, who was just expiring before: And another that smother'd a young Woman she was looking to, when she was in a fainting fit, and would have come to her self: Some that kill'd them by giving them one Thing, some another, and some starved them by giving them nothing at all: But these Stories had two Marks of Suspicion that always attended them, which caused me always to slight them, and to look on them as meer Stories, that People continually frighted one another with, (1.) That wherever it was that we heard it, they always placed the Scene at the farther End of the Town, opposite, or most remote from where you were to hear it: If you heard it in White-Chapel, it had happened at St. Giles's, or at Westminster, or Holborn, or that End of the Town; if you heard of it at that End of the Town, then it was done in White-Chapel, or the Minories, or about Cripplegate Parish: If you heard of it in the City, why, then it had happened in Southwark; and if you heard of it in Southwark, then it was done in the City, and the like. In the next Place, of what Part soever you heard the Story, the Particulars were always the same, especially that of laying a wet double Clout on a dying Man's Face, and that of smothering a young Gentlewoman; so that it was apparent, at least to my Judgment, that there was more of Tale than of Truth in those Things. However, I cannot say, but it had some Effect upon the People, and particularly that, as I said before, they grew more cautious who they took into their Houses, and who they trusted their Lives with; and had them always recommended, if they could; and where they could not find such, for they were not very plenty, they applied to the Parish Officers. But here again, the Misery of that Time lay upon the Poor, who being infected, had neither Food or Physick; neither Physician or Appothecary to assist them, or Nurse to attend them: Many of those died calling for help, and even for Sustenance out at their Windows, in a most miserable and deplorable manner; but it must be added, that when ever the Cases of such Persons or Families, were represented to my Lord-Mayor, they always were reliev'd. It is true, in some Houses where the People were not very poor; yet, where they had sent perhaps their Wives and Children away; and if they had any Servants, they had been dismist; I say it is true, that to save the Expences, many such as these shut themselves in, and not having Help, dy'd alone. A Neighbour and Acquaintance of mine, having some Money owing to him from a Shopkeeper in White-Cross-street, or thereabouts, sent his Apprentice, a youth about 18 Years of Age, to endeavour to get the Money: He came to the Door, and finding it shut, knockt pretty hard, and as he thought, heard some Body answer within, but was not sure, So he waited, and after some stay knockt again, and then a third Time, when he heard some Body coming down Stairs. At length the Man of the House came to the Door; he had on his Breeches or Drawers, and a yellow Flannel Wastcoat; no Stockings, a pair of Slipt-Shoes, a white Cap on his head; and as the young Man said, Death in his Face. When he open'd the Door, says he, what do you disturb me thus for? the Boy, tho' a little surpriz'd, reply'd, I come from such a one, and my Master sent me for the Money, which he says you know of: Very well Child, returns the living Ghost, call as you go by at Cripplegate Church, and bid them ring the Bell, and with those Words, shut the Door again, and went up again and Dy'd, The same Day; nay, perhaps the same Hour. This, the young Man told me himself, and I have Reason to believe it. This was while the Plague was not come to a Height: I think it was in June; Towards the latter End of the Month, it must be before the Dead Carts came about, and while they used the Ceremony of Ringing the Bell for the Dead, which was over for certain, in that Parish at least, before the Month of July; for by the 25th of July, there died 550 and upward in a Week, and then they cou'd no more bury in Form, Rich or Poor. I have mention'd above, that notwithstanding this dreadful Calamity; yet the Numbers of Thieves were abroad upon all Occasions, where they had found any Prey; and that these were generally Women. It was one Morning about 11 a Clock, I had walk'd out to my Brothers House in Coleman's-street Parish, as I often did, to see that all was Safe. My Brother's House had a little Court before it, and a Brick-Wall with a Gate in it; and within that, several Warehouses, where his Goods of several Sorts lay: It happen'd, that in one of these Warehouses, were several Packs of Womens high-Crown'd Hats, which came out of the Country; and were, as I suppose, for Exportation; whither I know not. I was surpriz'd that when I came near my Brother's Door, which was in a Place they call'd Swan-Alley, I met three or four Women with High-crown'd Hats on their Heads; and as I remembred afterwards, one, if not more, had some Hats likewise in their Hands: but as I did not see them come out at my Brother's Door, and not knowing that my Brother had any such Goods in his Ware-house, I did not offer to say any Thing to them, but went cross the Way to shun meeting them, as was usual to do at that Time, for fear of the Plague. But when I came nearer to the Gate, I met another Woman with more Hats come out of the Gate. What Business Mistress, said I, have you had there? There are more People there, said she, I have had no more Business there than they. I was hasty to get to the Gate then, and said no more to her; by which means she got away. But just as I came to the Gate, I saw two more coming cross the Yard to come out with Hats also on their Heads, and under their Arms; at which I threw the Gate too behind me, which having a Spring Lock fastened it self; and turning to the Women, forsooth said I, what are ye doing here? and seiz'd upon the Hats, and took them from them. One of them, who I confess, did not look like a Thief, indeed says she, we are wrong; but we were told, they were Goods that had no Owner; be pleas'd to take them again, and look yonder, there are more such Customers as we: She cry'd and look'd pitifully; so I took the Hats from her, and opened the Gate, and bad them be gone, for I pity'd the Women indeed; But when I look'd towards the Ware-house, as she directed, there were six or seven more, all Women, fitting themselves with Hats, as unconcerned and quiet, as if they had been at a Hatters Shop, buying for their Money. I was surpriz'd, not at the Sight of so many Thieves only, but at the Circumstances I was in; being now to thrust my self in among so many People, who for some Weeks, had been so shye of my self, that if I met any Body in the Street, I would cross the Way from them. They were equally surpriz'd, tho' on another Account: They all told me, they were Neighbours, that they had heard any one might take them, that they were no Bodies Goods, and the like. I talk't big to them at first; went back to the Gate, and took out the Key; so that they were all my Prisoners; threaten'd to Lock them all into the Warehouse, and go and fetch my Lord Mayor's Officers for them. They beg'd heartily, protested they found the Gate open, and the Ware-house Door open; and that it had no doubt been broken open by some, who expected to find Goods of greater Value; which indeed, was reasonable to believe, because the Lock was broke, and a Padlock that hung to the Door on the out-side also loose; and not abundance of the Hats carry'd away. At length I consider'd, that this was not a Time to be Cruel and Rigorous; and besides that, it would necessarily oblige me to go much about, to have several People come to me, and I go to several, whose Circumstances of Health, I knew nothing of; and that even at this Time the Plague was so high, as that there dy'd 4000 a Week; so that in showing my Resentment, or even in seeking Justice for my Brother's Goods, I might lose my own Life; so I contented my self, with taking the Names and Places where some of them lived, who were really Inhabitants in the Neighbourhood; and threatning that my Brother should call them to an Account for it, when he return'd to his Habitation. Then I talk'd a little upon another Foot with them; and ask'd them how they could do such Things as these, in a Time of such general Calamity; and as it were, in the Face of Gods most dreadful Judgments, when the Plague was at their very Doors; and it may be in their very Houses; and they did not know, but that the Dead-Cart might stop at their Doors in a few Hours, to carry them to their Graves. I cou'd not perceive that my Discourse made much Impression upon them all that while; till it happened, that there came two Men of the Neighbourhood, hearing of the Disturbance, and knowing my Brother, for they had been both dependants upon his Family, and they came to my Assistance: These being as I said Neighbours, presently knew three of the Women, and told me who they were, and where they liv'd; and it seems, they had given me a true Account of themselves before. This brings these two Men to a farther Remembrance: The Name of one was John Hayward,* who was at that Time under-Sexton, of the Parish of St. Stephen Coleman-street; by under-Sexton, was understood at that Time Grave-digger and Bearer of the Dead. This Man carry'd or assisted to carry all the Dead to their Graves, which were bury'd in that large Parish, and who were carried in Form; and after that Form of Burying was stopt, went with the Dead Cart and the Bell, to fetch the dead Bodies from the Houses where they lay, and fetch'd many of them out of the Chambers and Houses; for the Parish was, and is still remarkable, particularly above all the Parishes in London, for a great Number of Alleys, and Thorough-fares* very long, into which no Carts cou'd come, and where they were oblig'd to go and fetch the Bodies a very long Way; which Alleys now remain to Witness it; such as Whites-Alley, Cross-Key-Court, Swan-Alley, Bell-Alley, White-Horse-Alley, and many more: Here they went with a kind of Hand-Barrow, and lay'd the Dead Bodies on it, and carry'd them out to the Carts; which work he performed, and never had the Distemper at all, but liv'd above 20 Year after it, and was Sexton of the Parish to the Time of his Death. His Wife at the same time was a Nurse to infected People, and tended many that died in the Parish, being for her honesty recommended by the Parish Officers, yet she never was infected neither. He never used any Preservative against the Infection, other than holding Garlick and Rue * in his Mouth, and smoaking Tobacco;* this I also had from his own Mouth; and his Wife's Remedy was washing her Head in Vinegar, and sprinkling her Head-Cloths so with Vinegar, as to keep them always Moist; and if the smell of any of those she waitd on was more than ordinary Offensive, she snuft Vinegar up her Nose, and sprinkled Vinegar upon her Head-Cloths, and held a Handkerchief wetted with Vinegar to her Mouth. It must be confest, that tho' the Plague was chiefly among the Poor;* yet, were the Poor the most Venturous and Fearless of it, and went about their Employment, with a Sort of brutal Courage; I must call it so, for it was founded neither on Religion or Prudence; scarce did they use any Caution, but run into any Business, which they could get Employment in, tho' it was the most hazardous; such was that of tending the Sick, watching Houses shut up, carrying infected Persons to the Pest-House; and which was still worse, carrying the Dead away to their Graves. It was under this John Hayward's Care, and within his Bounds, that the Story of the Piper,* with which People have made themselves so merry, happen'd, and he assur'd me that it was true. It is said, that it was a blind Piper; but as John told me, the Fellow was not blind, but an ignorant weak poor Man, and usually walked his Rounds about 10 a-Clock at Night, and went piping along from Door to Door, and the People usually took him in at Public Houses where they knew him, and would give him Drink and Victuals, and sometimes Farthings; and he in Return, would Pipe and Sing, and talk simply, which diverted the People, and thus he liv'd: It was but a very bad Time for this Diversion, while Things were as I have told; yet the poor Fellow went about as usual, but was almost starv'd; and when any Body ask'd how he did, he would answer, the Dead Cart had not taken him yet, but that they had promised to call for him next Week. It happen'd one Night, that this poor Fellow, whether some body had given him too much Drink or no, John Hayward said, he had not Drink in his House; but that they had given him a little more Victuals than ordinary at a Public House in Coleman-street; and the poor Fellow having not usually had a Bellyfull, or perhaps not a good while, was laid all along upon the Top of a Bulk or Stall, and fast a sleep at a Door, in the Street near London-Wall, towards Cripplegate, and that upon the same Bulk or Stall, the People of some House, in the Alley of which the House was a Corner, hearing a Bell, which they always rung before the Cart came, had laid a Body really dead of the Plague just by him, thinking too, that this poor Fellow had been a dead Body as the other was, and laid there by some of the Neighbours. Accordingly when John Hayward with his Bell and the Cart came along, finding two dead Bodies lie upon the Stall they took them up with the Instrument they used, and threw them into the Cart; and all this while the Piper slept soundly. From hence they passed along, and took in other dead Bodies, till, as honest John Hayward told me, they almost burried him alive, in the Cart, yet all this While he slept soundly; at length the Cart came to the Place where the Bodies were to be thrown into the Ground, which, as I do remember, was at Mount-mill; and as the Cart usually stopt some Time before they were ready to shoot out the melancholly Load they had in it, as soon as the Cart stop'd, the Fellow awaked, and struggled a little to get his Head out from among the dead Bodies, when raising himself up in the Cart, he called out, Hey! where am I? This frighted the Fellow that attended about the Work, but after some Pause John Hayward recovering himself said, Lord bless us. There's some Body in the Cart not quite dead! So another call'd to him and said, Who are you? the Fellow answered, I am the poor Piper. Where am I? Where are you! says Hayward; why, you are in the Dead-Cart, and we are a-going to bury you. But I an't dead tho', am I? says the Piper; which made them laugh a little, tho' as John said, they were heartily frighted at first; so they help'd the poor Fellow down, and he went about his Business. I know the Story goes, he set up his Pipes in the Cart, and frighted the Bearers, and others, so that they ran away; but John Hayward did not tell the Story so, nor say any Thing of his Piping at all; but that he was a poor Piper, and that he was carried away as above I am fully satisfied of the Truth of. It is to be noted here, that the Dead Carts in the City were not confin'd to particular Parishes, but one Cart went thro' several Parishes, according as the Numbers of Dead presented; nor were they ty'd to carry the Dead to their respective Parishes, but many of the Dead, taken up in the City, were carried to the Burying Ground in the Out-parts, for want of Room. I have already mentioned the Surprize, that this Judgment was at first among the People. I must be allowed to give some of my Observations on the more serious and religious Part. Surely never City, at least, of this Bulk and Magnitude, was taken in a Condition so perfectly unprepar'd for such a dreadful Visitation, whether I am to speak of the Civil Preparations, or Religious; they were indeed, as if they had had no Warning, no Expectation, no Apprehensions, and consequently the least Provision imaginable, was made for it in a publick Way; for Example. The Lord Mayor and Sheriffs had made no Provision as Magistrates, for the Regulations which were to be observed; they had gone into no Measures for Relief of the Poor. The Citizens had no publick Magazines, or Store-Houses for Corn, or Meal, for the Subsistence of the Poor; which, if they had provided themselves, as in such Cases is done abroad, many miserable Families, who were now reduc'd to the utmost Distress, would have been reliev'd, and that in a better Manner, than now could be done. The Stock of the City's Money, I can say but little to, the Chamber of London was said to be exceeding rich;*and it may be concluded, that they were so, by the vast Sums of Money issued from thence, in the re-building the publick Edifices after the Fire of London, and in Building new Works, such as, for the first Part, the Guild-Hall, Blackwell-Hall, Part of Leaden-Hall, Half the Exchange, the Session-House, the Compter; the Prisons of Ludgate, Newgate, & c. several of the Wharfs, and Stairs, and Landing-places on the River; all which were either burnt down or damaged by the great Fire of London, the next Year after the Plague; and of the second Sort, the Monument, Fleet-ditch with its Bridges, and the Hospital of Bethlem, or Bedlam, & c. But possibly the Managers of the City's Credit, at that Time, made more Conscience of breaking in upon the Orphan's Money* to shew Charity to the distress'd Citizens than the Managers in the following Years did, to beautify the City, and re-edify the Buildings, tho' in the first Case, the Losers would have thought their Fortunes better bestow'd, and the Publick Faith of the City have been less subjected to Scandal and Reproach. It must be acknowledged that the absent Citizens, who, tho' they were fled for Safety into the Country, were yet greatly interested in the Welfare of those who they left behind,* forgot not to contribute liberally to the Relief of the Poor, and large Sums were also collected among Trading-Towns in the remotest Parts of England; and as I have heard also, the Nobility and the Gentry, in all Parts of England, took the deplorable Condition of the City into their Consideration, and sent up large Sums of Money in Charity, to the Lord Mayor and Magistrates, for the Relief of the Poor; the King also, as I was told, ordered a thousand Pounds a Week to be distributed in four Parts; one Quarter to the City and Liberties of Westminster; one Quarter, or Part, among the Inhabitants of the Southwark Side of the Water; one Quarter to the Liberty and Parts within of the City, exclusive of the City within the Walls; and, one fourth Part to the Suburbs in the County of Middlesex, and the East and North Parts of the City; But this latter I only speak of as a Report. Certain it is, the greatest Part of the Poor, or Families, who formerly liv'd by their Labour, or by Retail-Trade, liv'd now on Charity; and had there not been prodigious Sums of Money given by charitable, well-minded Christians, for the Support of such, the City could never have subsisted. There were, no Question, Accounts kept of their Charity, and of the just Distribution of it by the Magistrates: But as such Multitudes of those very Officers died, thro' whose Hands it was distributed; and also that, as I have been told, most of the Accounts of those Things were lost in the great Fire which happened in the very next Year, and which burnt even the Chamberlain's Office, and many of their Papers; so I could never come at the particular Account, which I used great Endeavours to have seen. It may, however, be a Direction in Case of the Approach of a like Visitation, which God keep the City from; I say, it may be of use to observe that by the Care of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, at that Time, in distributing Weekly, great Sums of Money, for Relief of the Poor, a Multitude of People, who would otherwise have perished, were relieved, and their Lives preservd. And here let me enter into a brief State of the Case of the Poor at that Time, and what was apprehended from them, from whence may be judg'd hereafter, what may be expected, if the like Distress should come upon the City. At the Beginning of the Plague, when there was now no more Hope, but that the whole City would be visited, when, as I have said, all that had Friends or Estates in the Country, retired with their Families, and when, indeed, one would have thought the very City it self was running out of the Gates, and that there would be no Body left behind, you may be sure, from that Hour, all Trade, except such as related to immediate Subsistence, was, as it were, at a full Stop. This is so lively a Case, and contains in it so much of the real Condition of the People; that I think, I cannot be too particular in it; and therefore I descend to the several Arrangements or Classes of People, who fell into immediate Distress upon this Occasion: For Example, 1. All Master Work-men in Manufactures; especially such as belonged to Ornament, and the less necessary Parts of the People's dress Cloths and Furniture for Houses; such as Riband Weavers, and other Weavers; Gold and Silverlace-makers, and Gold and Silverwyer-drawers, Sempstresses, Milleners, Shoe-makers, Hat-makers and Glove-makers: Also Up-holdsterers, Joyners, Cabinet-makers, Looking-glass-makers; and innumerable Trades which depend upon such as these; I say the Master Workmen in such, stopt their Work, dismist their Journeymen, and Workmen, and all their Dependants. 2. As Merchandizing was at a full stop, for very few Ships ventur'd to come up the River, and none at all went out; so all the extraordinary Officers of the Customes, likewise the Watermen, Carmen, Porters, and all the Poor, whose Labour depended upon the Merchants, were at once dismist, and put out of Business. 3. All the Tradesmen usually employ'd in building or repareing of Houses, were at a full Stop, for the People were far from wanting to build Houses, when so many thousand Houses were at once stript of their Inhabitants; so that this one Article turn'd all the ordinary Work-men of that Kind out of Business; such as Brick-layers, Masons, Carpenters, Joyners, Plasterers, Painters, Glaziers, Smiths, Plumbers; and all the Labourers depending on such. 4. As Navigation was at a Stop; our Ships neither coming in, or going out as before; so the Seamen were all out of Employment, and many of them in the last and lowest Degree of Distress, and with the Seamen, were all the several Tradesmen, and Workmen belonging to and depending upon the building, and fitting out of Ships; such as Ship Carpenters, Caulkers, Rope-makers, Dry-Coopers, Sail-makers, Anchor-Smiths, and other Smiths; Block-makers, Carvers, Gun Smiths, Ship-Chandlers, Ship-Carvers and the like; The Masters of those perhaps might live upon their Substance; but the Traders were Universally at a Stop, and consequently all their Work-men discharged: Add to these, that the River was in a manner without Boats, and all or most part of the Watermen, Lightermen, Boat-builders, and Lighter-builders in like manner idle, and laid by. 5. All Families retrench'd their living as much as possible, as well those that fled, as those that stay'd; so that an innumerable Multitude of Footmen, Serving Men, Shop-keepers, Journey-men, Merchants-Book-keepers, and such Sort of People, and especially poor Maid Servants were turn'd off, and left Friendless and Helpless without Employment, and without Habitation; and this was really a dismal Article. I might be more particular as to this Part: But it may suffice to mention in general; all Trades being stopt, Employment ceased; the Labour, and by that, the Bread of the Poor were cut off; and at first indeed, the Cries of the poor were most lamentable to hear; tho' by the Distribution of Charity, their Misery that way was greatly abated: Many indeed fled into the Countries; but thousands of them having stay'd in London, till nothing but Desperation sent them away; Death overtook them on the Road, and they serv'd for no better than the Messengers of Death, indeed, others carrying the Infection along with them; spreading it very unhappily into the remotest Parts of the Kingdom. Many of these were the miserable Objects of Despair which I have mention'd before, and were remov'd by the Destruction which followed; these might be said to perish, not by the Infection it self, but by the Consequence of it; indeed, namely, by Hunger and Distress, and the Want of all Things; being without Lodging, without Money, without Friends, without Means to get their Bread, or without any one to give it them, for many of them were without what we call legal Settlements,* and so could not claim of the Parishes, and all the Support they had, was by Application to the Magistrates for Relief, which Relief was, (to give the Magistrates their Due) carefully and chearfully administred, as they found it necessary; and those that stay'd behind never felt the Want and Distress of that Kind, which they felt, who went away in the manner above-noted. Let any one who is acquainted with what Multitudes of People get their daily Bread in this City by their Labour, whether Artificers or meer Workmen; I say, let any Man consider, what must be the miserable Condition of this Town, if on a sudden, they should be all turned out of Employment, that Labour should cease, and Wages for Work be no more. This was the Case with us at that Time, and had not the Sums of Money, contributed in Charity by well disposed People, of every Kind, as well abroad as at home, been prodigiously great, it had not been in the Power of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, to have kept the Publick Peace; nor were they without Apprehensions as it was, that Desperation should push the People upon Tumults, and cause them to rifle the Houses of rich Men, and plunder the Markets of Provisions; in which Case the Country People, who brought Provisions very freely and boldly to Town, would ha' been Terrified from coming any more, and the Town would ha' sunk under an unavoidable Famine. But the Prudence of my Lord Mayor, and the Court of Aldermen within the City, and of the Justices of Peace in the Out-parts was such, and they were supported with Money from all Parts so well, that the poor People were kept quiet, and their Wants every where reliev'd, as far as was possible to be done. Two Things, besides this, contributed to prevent the Mob doing any Mischief: One was, that really the Rich themselves had not laid up Stores of Provisions in their Houses, as indeed, they ought to have done, and which if they had been wise enough to have done, and lock'd themselves entirely up, as some few did, they had perhaps escaped the Disease better: But as it appear'd they had not, so the Mob had no Notion of finding Stores of Provisions there, if they had broken in, as it is plain they were sometimes very near doing, and which, if they had, they had finish'd the Ruin of the whole City, for there were no regular Troops to ha' withstood them, nor could the Traind-Bands have been brought together to defend the City, no Men being to be found to bear Arms. But the Vigilance of the Lord Mayor, and such Magistrates as could be had, for some, even of the Aldermen were Dead, and some absent, prevented this; and they did it by the most kind and gentle Methods they could think of, as particularly by relieving the most desperate with Money, and putting others into Business, and particularly that Employment of watching Houses that were infected and shut up; and as the Number of these were very great, for it was said, there was at one Time, ten thousand Houses shut up, and every House had two Watchmen to guard it, viz one by Night, and the other by Day; this gave Opportunity to employ a very great Number of poor Men at a Time. The Women, and Servants, that were turned off from their Places, were likewise employed as Nurses to tend the Sick in all Places; and this took off a very great Number of them. And, which tho' a melancholy Article in it self, yet was a Deliverance in its Kind, namely, the Plague which raged in a dreadful Manner from the Middle of August to the Middle of October, carried off in that Time thirty or forty Thousand* of these very People, which had they been left, would certainly have been an unsufferable Burden, by their Poverty, that is to say, the whole City could not have supported the Expence of them, or have provided Food for them; and they would in Time have been even driven to the Necessity of plundering either the City it self, or the Country adjacent, to have subsisted themselves, which would first or last, have put the whole Nation, as well as the City, into the utmost Terror and Confusion. It was observable then, that this Calamity of the People made them very humble; for now, for about nine Weeks together, there died near a thousand a-Day, one Day with another, even by the Account of the weekly Bills, which yet I have Reason to be assur'd never gave a full Account, by many thousands; the Confusion being such, and the Carts working in the Dark, when they carried the Dead, that in some Places no Account at all was kept, but they work'd on; the Clerks and Sextons not attending for Weeks together, and not knowing what Number they carried. This Account is verified by the following Bills of Mortality. So that the Gross of the People were carried off in these two Months; for as the whole Number which was brought in, to die of the Plague, was but 68590 here, is fifty thousand of them, within a Trifle, in two Months; I say 50000, because, as there wants 295 in the Number above, so there wants two Days of two Months, in the Account of Time. Now when, I say, that the Parish Officers did not give in a full Account, or were not to be depended upon for their Account, let any one but consider how Men could be exact in such a Time of dreadful Distress, and when many of them were taken sick themselves, and perhaps died in the very Time when their Accounts were to be given in, I mean the Parish-Clerks; besides inferior Officers; for tho' these poor Men ventured at all Hazards, yet they were far from being exempt from the common Calamity, especially, if it be true, that the Parish of Stepney had within the Year, one hundred and sixteen Sextons, Grave-diggers, and their Assistants, that is to say, Bearers, Bell-men, and Drivers of Carts, for carrying off the dead Bodies. Indeed the Work was not of a Nature to allow them Leisure, to take an exact Tale of the dead Bodies, which were all huddled together in the Dark into a Pit; which Pit, or Trench, no Man could come nigh, but at the utmost Peril. I observ'd often, that in the Parishes of Aldgate, and Cripplegate, White-Chappel and Stepney, there was five, six, seven, and eight hundred in a Week, in the Bills, whereas if we may believe the Opinion of those that liv'd in the City, all the Time, as well as I, there died sometimes 2000 a-Week in those Parishes; and I saw it under the Hand of one, that made as strict an examination into that Part as he could, that there really died an hundred thousand People of the Plague, in it that one Year, whereas the Bills, the Articles of the Plague, was but 68590. If I may be allowed to give my Opinion, by what I saw with my Eyes, and heard from other People that were Eye Witnesses, I do verily believe the same, viz. that there died, at least, 100000 of the Plague only, besides other Distempers, and besides those which died in the Fields, and High-ways, and secret Places, out of the Compass of the Communication, as it was called; and who were not put down in the Bills, tho' they really belonged to the Body of the Inhabitants. It was known to us all, that abundance of poor despairing Creatures, who had the Distemper upon them, and were grown stupid, or melancholly by their Misery, as many were, wandred away into the Fields, and Woods, and into secret uncouth Places, almost any where to creep into a Bush, or Hedge, and DIE. The Inhabitants of the Villages adjacent would in Pity, carry them Food, and set it at a Distance, that they might fetch it, if they were able, and sometimes they were not able; and the next Time they went, they should find the poor Wretches lie dead, and the Food untouch'd. The Number of these miserable Objects were many, and I know so many that perish'd thus, and so exactly where, that I believe I could go to the very Place and dig their Bones up still; for the Country People would go and dig a Hole at a Distance from them, and then with long Poles, and Hooks at the End of them, drag the Bodies into these Pits, and then throw the Earth in Form as far as they could cast it to cover them; taking notice how the Wind blew, and so coming on that Side which the Sea-men call to-Wind-ward, that the Scent of the Bodies might blow from them; and thus great Numbers went out of the World, who were never known or any Account of them taken, as well within the Bills of Mortality as without. This indeed I had, in the main, only from the Relation of others; for I seldom walk'd into the Fields, except towards Bednal-green and Hackney; or as hereafter: But when I did walk I always saw a great many poor Wanderers at a Distance, but I could know little of their Cases; for whether it were in the Street, or in the Fields, if we had seen any Body coming, it was a general Method to walk away; yet I believe the Account is exactly true. As this puts me upon mentioning my walking the Streets and Fields, I cannot omit taking notice what a desolate Place the City was at that Time: The great Street I liv'd in, which is known to be one of the broadest of all the Streets of London, I mean of the Suburbs as well as the Liberties; all the Side where the Butchers lived, especially without the Bars was more like a green Field than a paved Street, and the People generally went in the middle with the Horses and Carts: It is true, that the farthest End towards White-Chappel Church, was not all pav'd, but even the Part that was pav'd was full of Grass also; but this need not seem strange since the great Streets within the City, such as Leaden-hall-Street, Bishop-gate-Street, Cornhill, and even the Exchange it self, had Grass growing* in them, in several Places; neither Cart or Coach were seen in the Streets from Morning to Evening, except some Country Carts to bring Roots and Beans, or Pease, Hay and Straw, to the Market, and those but very few, compared to what was usual: As for Coaches they were scarce used, but to carry sick People to the Pest-House, and to other Hospitals; and some few to carry Physicians to such Places as they thought fit to venture to visit; for really Coaches were dangerous things,* and People did not Care to venture into them, because they did not know who might have been carried in them last; and sick infected People were, as I have said, ordinarily carried in them to the Pest-Houses, and sometimes People expired in them as they went along. It is true, when the Infection came to such a Height as I have now mentioned, there were very few Physicians, which car'd to stir abroad to sick Houses, and very many of the most eminent of the Faculty were dead as well as the Surgeons also, for now it was indeed a dismal time, and for about a Month together, not taking any Notice of the Bills of Mortality, I believe there did not die less than 1500 or 1700 a-Day, one Day with another. One of the worst Days we had in the whole Time, as I thought, was in the Beginning of September, when indeed good People began to think, that God was resolved to make a full End of the People in this miserable City. This was at that Time when the Plague was fully come into the Eastern Parishes: The Parish of Aldgate, if I may give my Opinion buried above a thousand a Week for two Weeks, tho' the Bills did not say so many; but it surrounded me at so dismal a rate, that there was not a House in twenty uninfected; in the Minories, in Houndsditch, and in those Parts of Aldgate Parish about the Butcher-Row, and the Alleys over against me, I say in those places Death reigned in every Corner. White Chapel Parish was in the same Condition, and tho' much less than the Parish I liv'd in; yet bury'd near 600 a Week by the Bills; and in my Opinion, near twice as many; whole Families, and indeed, whole Streets of Families were swept away together; insomuch, that it was frequent for Neighbours to call to the Bellman, to go to such and such Houses, and fetch out the People, for that they were all Dead. And indeed, the Work of removing the dead Bodies by Carts, was now grown so very odious and dangerous, that it was complain'd of, that the Bearers did not take Care to clear such Houses, where all the Inhabitants were dead; but that sometimes the Bodies lay several Days unburied, till the neighbouring Families were offended with the Stench, and consequently infect'd; and this neglect of the Officers was such, that the Church Wardens and Constables were summon'd to look after it; and even the Justices of the Hamlets, were oblig'd to venture their Lives among them, to quicken and encourage them; for innumerable of the Bearers dy'd of the Distemper, infected by the Bodies they were oblig'd to come so near; and had it not been, that the Number of poor People who wanted Employment, and wanted Bread, (as I have said before,) was so great, that Necessity drove them to undertake any Thing, and venture any thing, they would never have found People to be employ'd; and then the Bodies of the dead would have lain above Ground, and have perished and rotted in a dreadful Manner. But the Magistrates cannot be enough commended in this, that they kept such good Order for the burying of the Dead, that as fast as any of those they employ'd to carry off, and bury the dead, fell sick or dy'd, as was many Times the Case, they immediately supply'd the places with others; which by reason of the great Number of Poor that was left out of Business, as above, was not hard to do: This occasion'd, that notwithstanding the infinite Number of People which dy'd, and were sick almost all together, yet, they were always clear'd away, and carry'd off every Night; so that it was never to be said of London, that the living were not able to bury the Dead. As the Desolation was greater, during those terrible Times, so the Amazement of the People encreas'd; and a thousand unaccountable Things they would do in the violence of their Fright, as others did the same in the Agonies of their Distemper, and this part was very affecting; some went roaring, and crying, and wringing their Hands along the Street; some would go praying, and lifting up their Hands to Heaven, calling upon God for Mercy. I cannot say indeed, whether this was not in their Distraction; but be it so, it was still an indication of a more serious Mind, when they had the use of their Senses, and was much better, even as it was, than the frightful yellings and cryings that every Day, and especially in the Evenings, were heard in some Streets. I suppose the World has heard of the famous Soloman Eagle an Enthusiast:* He tho' not infected at all, but in his Head, went about denouncing of Judgment upon the City in a frightful manner; sometimes quite naked, and with a Pan of burning Charcoal on his Head: What he said or pretended, indeed I could not learn. I will not say, whether that Clergyman was distracted or not: Or whether he did it in pure Zeal for the poor People who went every Evening thro' the Streets of White-Chapel; and with his Hands lifted up, repeated that Part of the Liturgy of the Church continually; Spare us good Lord, spare thy People whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious Blood, I say, I cannot speak positively of these Things; because these were only the dismal Objects which represented themselves to me as I look'd thro' my Chamber Windows (for I seldom opened the Casements) while I confin'd my self within Doors, during that most violent rageing of the Pestilence; when indeed, as I have said, many began to think, and even to say, that there would none escape; and indeed, I began to think so too; and therefore kept within Doors, for about a Fortnight, and never stirr'd out: But I cou'd not hold it: Besides, there were some People, who notwithstanding the Danger, did not omit publickly to attend the Worship of God,* even in the most dangerous Times; and tho' it is true, that a great many Clergymen did shut up their Churches, and fled as other People did, for the safety of their Lives; yet, all did not do so, some ventur'd to officiate, and to keep up the Assemblies of the People by constant Prayers; and sometimes Sermons, or Brief Exhortations to Repentance and Reformation, and this as long as any would come to hear them; and Dissenters did the like also, and even in the very Churches,* where the Parish Ministers were either Dead or fled, nor was there any Room for making Difference, at such a Time as this was. It was indeed a lamentable Thing to hear the miserable Lamentations of poor dying Creatures, calling out for Ministers to Comfort them, and pray with them, to Counsel them, and to direct them, calling out to God for Pardon and Mercy, and confessing aloud their past Sins. It would make the stoutest Heart bleed to hear how many Warnings were then given by dying Penitents, to others not to put off and delay their Repentance to the Day of Distress, that such a Time of Calamity as this, was no Time for Repentance; was no Time to call upon God. I wish I could repeat the very Sound of those Groans, and of those Exclamations that I heard from some poor dying Creatures, when in the Hight of their Agonies and Distress; and that I could make him that read this hear, as I imagine I now hear them, for the Sound seems still to Ring in my Ears. If I could but tell this Part, in such moving Accents as should alarm the very Soul of the Reader, I should rejoice that I recorded those Things, however short and imperfect. It pleased God that I was still spar'd, and very hearty and sound in Health, but very impatient of being pent up within Doors without Air, as I had been for 14 Days or thereabouts; and I could not restrain my self, but I would go to carry a Letter for my Brother to the Post-House; then it was indeed, that I observ'd a profound Silence in the Streets; when I came to the Post-House, as I went to put in my Letter, I saw a Man stand in one Corner of the Yard, and talking to another at a Window; and a third had open'd a Door belonging to the Office; In the middle of the Yard lay a small Leather Purse, with two Keys hanging at it, and Money in it, but no Body would meddle with it: I ask'd how long it had lain there; the Man at the Window said, it had lain almost an Hour; but that they had not meddled with it, because they did not know, but the Person who dropt it, might come back to look for it. I had no such need of Money, nor was the Sum so big, that I had any Inclination to meddle with it, or to get the Money at the hazard it might be attended with; so I seem'd to go away, when the Man who had open'd the Door, said he would take it up; but so, that if the right Owner came for it, he should be sure to have it: So he went in, and fetched a pail of Water, and set it down hard by the Purse; then went again, and fetch'd some Gun-powder, and cast a good deal of Powder upon the Purse, and then made a Train from that which he had thrown loose upon the Purse; the train reached about two Yards; after this he goes in a third Time, and fetches out a pair of Tongs red hot, and which he had prepar'd, I suppose on purpose; and first setting Fire to the Train of Powder, that sing'd the Purse and also smoak'd the Air sufficiently: But he was not content with that; but he then takes up the Purse with the Tongs, holding it so long till the Tongs burnt thro' the Purse, and then he shook the Money out into the Pail of Water, so he carried it in. The Money, as I remember, was about thirteen Shillings, and some smooth Groats, and Brass Farthings. There might perhaps, have been several poor People, as I have observed above, that would have been hardy enough to have ventured for the sake of the Money; but you may easily see by what I have observ'd, that the few People, who were spar'd, were very careful of themselves, at that Time when the Distress was so exceeding great. Much about the same Time I walk'd out into the Fields towards Bow; for I had a great mind to see how things were managed in the River, and among the Ships; and as I had some Concern in Shipping, I had a Notion that it had been one of the best Ways of securing ones self from the Infection to have retir'd into a Ship, and musing how to satisfy my Curiosity, in that Point, I turned away over the Fields, from Bow to Bromley, and down to Blackwall, to the Stairs, which are there for landing, or taking Water. Here I saw a poor Man walking on the Bank, or Sea-wall, as they call it, by himself. I walked a while also about, seeing the Houses all shut up; at last I fell into some Talk, at a Distance, with this poor Man; first I asked him, how People did thereabouts? Alas, Sir! says he, almost all desolate; all dead or sick: Here are very few Families in this Part, or in that Village, pointing at Poplar, where half of them are not dead already, and the rest sick. Then he pointed to one House, There they are all dead, said he, and the House stands open; no Body dares go into it. A poor Thief, says he, ventured in to steal something, but he paid dear for his Theft; for he was carried to the Church Yard too, last Night. Then he pointed to several other Houses. There, says he, they are all dead; the Man and his Wife, and five Children. There, says he, they are shut up, you see a Watchman at the Door; and so of other Houses. Why, says I, What do you here all alone? Why, says he, I am a poor desolate Man; it has pleased God I am not yet visited, tho' my Family is, and one of my Children dead. How do you mean then, said I, that you are not visited. Why, says he, that's my House, pointing to a very little low boarded House, and there my poor Wife and two Children live, said he, if they may be said to live; for my Wife and one of the Children are visited, but I do not come at them. And with that Word I saw the Tears run very plentifully down his Face; and so they did down mine too, I assure you. But said I, Why do you not come at them? How can you abandon your own Flesh, and Blood? Oh, Sir! says he, the Lord forbid; I do not abandon them; I work for them as much as I am able; and blessed be the Lord, I keep them from Want; and with that I observ'd, he lifted up his Eyes to Heaven, with a Countenance that presently told me, I had happened on a Man that was no Hypocrite, but a serious, religious good Man, and his Ejaculation was an Expression of Thankfulness, that in such a Condition as he was in, he should be able to say his Family did not want. Well, says I, honest Man, that is a great Mercy as things go now with the Poor: But how do you live then, and how are you kept from the dreadful Calamity that is now upon us all? Why Sir, says he, I am a Waterman, and there's my Boat, says he, and the Boat serves me for a House; I work in it in the Day, and I sleep in it in the Night; and what I get, I lay down upon that Stone, says he, shewing me a broad Stone on the other Side of the Street, a good way from his House, and then, says he, I halloo, and call to them till I make them hear; and they come and fetch it. Well Friend, says I, but how can you get any Money as a Waterman? does any Body go by Water these Times? Yes Sir, says he, in the Way I am employ'd there does. Do you see there, says he, five Ships lie at Anchor, pointing down the River, a good way below the Town, and do you see, says he, eight or ten Ships lie at the Chain, there, and at Anchor yonder, pointing above the Town. All those Ships have Families on board, of their Merchants and Owners, and such like, who have lock'd themselves up, and live on board, close shut in, for fear of the Infection; and I tend on them to fetch Things for them, carry Letters, and do what is absolutely necessary, that they may not be obliged to come on Shore; and every Night I fasten my Boat on board one of the Ship's Boats, and there I sleep by my self, and blessed be God, I am preserv'd hitherto. Well, said I, Friend, but will they let you come on board, after you have been on Shore here, when this is such a terrible Place, and so infected as it is? Why, as to that, said he, I very seldom go up the Ship Side, but deliver what I bring to their Boat, or lie by the Side, and they hoist it on board; if I did, I think they are in no Danger from me, for I never go into any House on Shore, or touch any Body, no, not of my own Family; But I fetch Provisions for them. Nay, says I, but that may be worse, for you must have those Provisions of some Body or other; and since all this Part of the Town is so infected, it is dangerous so much as to speak with any Body; for this Village, said I, is as it were, the Beginning of London, tho' it be at some Distance from it. That is true, added he, but you do not understand me Right, I do not buy Provisions for them here; I row up to Greenwich and buy fresh Meat there, and sometimes I row down the River to Woolwich and buy there; then I go to single Farm Houses on the Kentish Side, where I am known, and buy Fowls and Eggs, and Butter, and bring to the Ships, as they direct me, sometimes one, sometimes the other; I seldom come on Shore here; and I came now only to call to my Wife, and hear how my little Family do, and give them a little Money, which I received last Night. Poor Man! said I, and how much hast thou gotten for them? I have gotten four Shillings, said he, which is a great Sum, as things go now with poor Men; but they have given me a Bag of Bread too, and a Salt Fish and some Flesh; so all helps out. Well, said I, and have you given it them yet? No, said he, but I have called, and my Wife has answered, that she cannot come out yet, but in Half an Hour she hopes to come, and I am waiting for her: Poor Woman! says he, she is brought sadly down; she has a Swelling, and it is broke, and I hope she will recover; but I fear the Child will die; but it is the Lord!?Äî?ÄîHere he stopt, and wept very much. Well, honest Friend, said I, thou hast a sure Comforter, if thou hast brought thy self to be resign'd to the will of God, he is dealing with us all in Judgment. Oh, Sir, says he, it is infinite Mercy, if any of us are spar'd; and who am I to repine! Sayest thou so, said I, and how much less is my Faith than thine? And here my Heart smote me, suggesting how much better this Poor Man's Foundation was, on which he staid in the Danger, than mine; that he had no where to fly; that he had a Family to bind him to Attendance, which I had not; and mine was meer Presumption, his a true Dependance, and a Courage resting on God: and yet, that he used all possible Caution for his Safety. I turn'd a little way from the Man, while these Thoughts engaged me, for indeed, I could no more refrain from Tears than he. At length, after some farther Talk, the poor Woman opened the Door, and call'd, Robert, Robert; he answered and bid her stay a few Moments, and he would come; so he ran down the common Stairs to his Boat, and fetch'd up a Sack in which was the Provisions he had brought from the Ships; and when he returned, he hallooed again; then he went to the great Stone which he shewed me, and emptied the Sack, and laid all out, every Thing by themselves, and then retired; and his Wife came with a little Boy to fetch them away; and he call'd, and said, such a Captain had sent such a Thing, and such a Captain such a Thing, and at the End adds, God has sent it all, give Thanks to him. When the Poor Woman had taken up all, she was so weak, she could not carry it at once in, tho' the Weight was not much neither; so she left the Biscuit which was in a little Bag, and left a little Boy to watch it till she came again. Well, but says I to him, did you leave her the four Shillings too, which you said was your Week's Pay? YES, YES, says he, you shall hear her own it. So he calls again, Rachel, Rachel, which it seems was her Name, did you take up the Money? YES, said she. How much was it, said he? Four Shillings and a Groat, said she. Well, well, says he, the Lord keep you all; and so he turned to go away. As I could not refrain contributing Tears to this Man's Story, so neither could I refrain my Charity for his Assistance; so I call'd him, Hark thee Friend, said I, come hither; for I believe thou art in Health, that I may venture thee; so I pull'd out my Hand, which was in my Pocket before, here, says I, go and call thy Rachel once more, and give her a little more Comfort from me. God will never forsake a Family that trust in him as thou dost; so I gave him four other Shillings, and bad him go lay them on the Stone and call his Wife. I have not Words to express the poor Man's thankfulness, neither could he express it himself; but by Tears running down his Face; he call'd his Wife, and told her God had mov'd the Heart of a Stranger upon hearing their Condition, to give them all that Money; and a great deal more such as that, he said to her. The Woman too, made Signs of the like Thankfulness, as well to Heaven, as to me, and joyfully pick'd it up; and I parted with no Money all that Year, that I thought better bestow'd. I then ask'd the poor Man if the Distemper had not reach'd to Greenwich: He said it had not, till about a Fortnight before; but that then he feared it had; but that it was only at that End of the Town, which lay South towards Deptford-Bridge; that he went only to a Butchers-Shop, and a Grocers, where he generally bought such Things as they sent him for; but was very careful. I ask'd him then, how it came to pass, that those People who had so shut themselves up in the Ships, had not laid in sufficient Stores of all things necessary? He said some of them had, but on the other Hand, some did not come on board till they were frighted into it, and till it was too dangerous for them to go to the proper People, to lay in Quantities of Things, and that he waited on two Ships which he shewed me, that had lay'd in little or nothing but Biscuit Bread, and Ship Beer; and that he had bought every Thing else almost for them. I ask'd him, if there was any more Ships that had separated themselves, as those had done. He told me yes, all the way up from the Point, right against Greenwich, to within the Shore of Lime-house and Redriff, all the Ships that could have Room, rid two and two in the middle of the Stream; and that some of them had several Families on Board. I ask'd him, if the Distemper had not reached them? He said he believ'd it had not, except two or three Ships, whose People had not been so watchful, to keep the Seamen from going on Shore as others had been; and he said it was a very fine Sight to see how the Ships lay up the Pool. When he said he was going over to Greenwich, as soon as the Tide began to come in, I ask'd if he would let me go with him, and bring me back, for that I had a great mind to see how the Ships were ranged as he had told me? He told me if I would assure him on the Word of a Christian, and of an honest Man, that I had not the Distemper, he would: I assur'd him, that I had not, that it had pleased God to preserve me, That I liv'd in White-Chapel, but was too Impatient of being so long within Doors, and that I had ventured out so far for the Refreshment of a little Air; but that none in my House had so much as been touch't with it. Well, Sir, says he, as your Charity has been mov'd to pity me and my poor Family; sure you cannot have so little pity left, as to put your self into my Boat if you were not Sound in Health, which would be nothing less than killing me, and ruining my whole Family. The poor Man troubled me so much, when he spoke of his Family with such a sensible Concern, and in such an affectionate Manner, that I cou'd not satisfy my self at first to go at all. I told him, I would lay aside my Curiosity, rather than make him uneasy; tho' I was sure, and very thankful for it, that I had no more Distemper upon me, than the freshest Man in the World: Well, he would not have me put it off neither, but to let me see how confident he was, that I was just to him, he now importuned me to go; so when the Tide came up to his Boat, I went in, and he carry'd me to Greenwich: While he bought the Things which he had in his Charge to buy, I walk'd up to the Top of the Hill, under which the Town stands, and on the East-Side of the Town, to get a Prospect of the River: But it was a surprising Sight to see the Number of Ships which lay in Rows, two and two, and some Places, two or three such Lines in the Breadth of the River, and this not only up quite to the Town, between the Houses which we call Ratclif and Redriff, which they name the Pool, but even down the whole River, as far as the Head of Long-Reach, which is as far as the Hills give us Leave to see it. I cannot guess at the Number of Ships, but I think there must be several Hundreds of Sail; and I could not but applaud the Contrivance, for ten thousand People, and more, who attended Ship Affairs, were certainly sheltered here* from the Violence of the Contagion, and liv'd very safe and very easy. I returned to my own Dwelling very well satisfied with my Days Journey, and particularly with the poor Man; also I rejoyced to see that such little Sanctuaries were provided for so many Families, in a Time of such Desolation. I observ'd also, that as the Violence of the Plague had encreased, so the Ships which had Families on Board, remov'd and went farther off, till, as I was told, some went quite away to Sea, and put into such Harbours, and safe Roads on the North Coast, as they could best come at. But it was also true, that all the People, who thus left the Land, and liv'd on Board the Ships, were not entirely safe from the Infection, for many died, and were thrown over board into the River, some in Coffins, and some, as I heard, without Coffins, whose Bodies were seen sometimes to drive up and down, with the Tide in the River. But I believe, I may venture to say, that in those Ships which were thus infected, it either happened where the People had recourse to them too late, and did not fly to the Ship till they had stayed too long on Shore, and had the Distemper upon them, tho' perhaps, they might not perceive it, and so the Distemper did not come to them, on Board the Ships, but they really carried it with them; OR it was in these Ships, where the poor Waterman said they had not had Time to furnish themselves with Provisions, but were obliged to send often on Shore to buy what they had Occasion for, or suffered Boats to come to them from the Shore; and so the Distemper was brought insensibly among them. And here I cannot but take notice that the strange Temper of the People of London at that Time contributed extremely to their own Destruction. The Plague began, as I have observed, at the other End of the Town, namely, in Long-Acre, Drury-Lane, &c. and came on towards the City very gradually and slowly. It was felt at first in December, then again in February, then again in April, and always but a very little at a Time; then it stopt till May, and even the last Week in May, there was but 17, and all at that End of the Town; and all this while, even so long, as till there died above 3000 a-Week; yet had the People in Redriff, and in Wapping, and Ratcliff on both Sides the River, and almost all Southwark-Side, a mighty Fancy, that they should not be visited, or at least, that it would not be so violent among them. Some People fancied, the smell of the Pitch and Tar, and such other things, as Oil and Rosin, and Brimstone, which is so much used by all Trades relating to Shipping, would preserve them. Others argued it, because it was in its extreamest Violence in Westminster, and the Parishes of St. Giles's and St. Andrew's, &c. and began to abate again, before it came among them, which was true indeed, in Part: For Example. N.B. That it was observ'd the Numbers mention'd in Stepney Parish, at that time, were generally all on that Side where Stepney Parish joined to Shoreditch, which we now call Spittle-fields, where the Parish of Stepney, comes up to the very Wall of Shoreditch Church-Yard, and the Plague at this Time was abated at St. Giles's in the Fields, and raged most violently in Cripplegate, Bishopsgate and Shoreditch Parishes, but there was not 10 People a-Week that died of it in all that Part of Stepney Parish, which takes in Lime-House, Ratcliff-high-way, and which are now the Parishes of Shadwell and Wapping, even to St. Katherines by the Tower, till after the whole Month of August was expired; but they paid for it afterwards, as I shall observe by and by. This, I say, made the People of Redriff and Wapping, Ratcliff and Lime-House so secure, and flatter themselves so much with the Plague's going off, without reaching them, that they took no Care, either to fly into the Country, or shut themselves up; nay, so far were they from stirring, that they rather receiv'd their Friends and Relations from the City into their Houses; and several from other Places really took Sanctuary in that Part of the Town, as a Place of Safety, and as a Place which they thought God would pass over and not visit as the rest was visited. And this was the Reason, that when it came upon them they were more surprized, more unprovided and more at a Loss what to do than they were in other Places, for when it came among them really, and with Violence, as it did indeed, in September and October, there was then no stirring out into the Country, no Body would suffer a Stranger to come near them, no nor near the Towns where they dwelt; and as I have been told, several that wandred into the Country on Surry Side were found starv'd to Death in the Woods and Commons, that Country being more open and more woody, than any other Part so near London; especially about Norwood, and the Parishes of Camberwell, Dullege, and Lusum, where it seems no Body durst relieve the poor distress'd People for fear of the Infection. This Notion having, as I said, prevailed with the People in that Part of the Town, was in Part the Occasion, as I said before, that they had Recourse to Ships for their Retreat; and where they did this early, and with Prudence, furnishing themselves so with Provisions, that they had no need to go on Shore for Supplies, or suffer Boats to come on Board to bring them; I say where they did so they had certainly the safest Retreat of any People whatsoever: But the Distress was such, that People ran on Board in their Fright without Bread to eat, and some into Ships, that had no Men on Board to remove them farther off, or to take the Boat and go down the River to buy Provisions where it might be done safely; and these often suffered, and were infected on board as much as on Shore. As the richer Sort got into Ships, so the lower Rank got into Hoys, Smacks, Lighters, and Fishing-boats; and many, especially Watermen, lay in their Boats; but those made sad Work of it, especially the latter, for going about for Provision, and perhaps to get their Subsistence, the Infection got in among them and made a fearful Havock; many of the Watermen died alone in their Wherries, as they rid at their Roads, as well above-Bridge as below, and were not found sometimes till they were not in Condition for any Body to touch or come near them. Indeed the Distress of the People at this Sea-faring End of the Town was very deplorable, and deserved the greatest Commiseration: But alas! this was a Time when every one's private Safety lay so near them, that they had no Room to pity the Distresses of others; for every one had Death, as it were, at his Door, and many even in their Families, and knew not what to do, or whither to fly. This, I say, took away all Compassion; self Preservation indeed appear'd here to be the first Law. For the Children ran away from their Parents, as they languished in the utmost Distress: And in some Places, tho' not so frequent as the other, Parents did the like to their Children; nay, some dreadful Examples there were, and particularly two in one Week of distressed Mothers, raveing and distracted, killing their own Children; one whereof was not far off from where I dwelt; the poor lunatick Creature not living herself long enough to be sensible of the Sin of what she had done, much less to be punish'd for it. It is not indeed to be wondred at, for the Danger of immediate Death to ourselves, took away all Bowels of Love, all Concern for one another: I speak in general, for there were many Instances of immovable Affection, Pity, and Duty in many, and some that came to my Knowledg; that is to say, by here-say. For I shall not take upon me to vouch the Truth of the Particulars. To introduce one, let me first mention, that one of the most deplorable Cases, in all the present Calamity, was, that of Women with Child; who when they came to the Hour of their Sorrows, and their Pains came upon them, cou'd neither have help of one Kind or another; neither Midwife or Neighbouring Women to come near them; most of the Midwives were dead; especially, of such as serv'd the poor; and many, if not all the Midwives of Note were fled into the Country: So that it was next to impossible for a poor Woman that cou'd not pay an immoderate Price to get any Midwife to come to her, and if they did, those they cou'd get were generally unskilful and ignorant Creatures; and the Consequence of this was, that a most unusual and incredible Number of Women were reduc'd to the utmost distress. Some were deliver'd and spoil'd by the rashness and ignorance of those who pretended to lay them. Children without Number, were, I might say murthered by the same, but a more justifiable ignorance, pretending they would save the Mother, whatever became of the Child; and many Times, both Mother and Child were lost in the same Manner; and especially, where the Mother had the Distemper, there no Body would come near them, and both sometimes perish'd: Sometimes the Mother has died of the Plague; and the Infant, it may be half born, or born but not parted from the Mother. Some died in the very Pains of their Travail, and not deliver'd at all; and so many were the Cases of this Kind, that it is hard to Judge of them. Something of it will appear in the unusual Numbers which are put into the Weekly Bills (tho' I am far from allowing them to be able to give any Thing of a full Account) under the Articles of Child-Bed. Abortive and Stilborn Chrisoms and Infants. Take the Weeks in which the Plague was most violent, and compare them with the Weeks before the Distemper began, even in the same Year: For Example: To the Disparity of these Numbers, is to be considered and allow'd for, that according to our usual Opinion, who were then upon the Spot, there were not one third of the People in the Town, during the Months of August and September, as were in the Months of January and February: In a Word, the usual Number that used to die of these three Articles; and as I hear, did die of them the Year before, was thus: This inequallity, I say, is exceedingly augmented, when the Numbers of People are considered: I pretend not to make any exact Calculation of the Numbers of People, which were at this Time in the City; but I shall make a probable Conjecture at that part by and by: What I have said now, is to explain the misery of those poor Creatures above; so that it might well be said as in the Scripture. Wo! be to those who are with Child; and to those which give suck in that Day.* For indeed, it was a Wo to them in particular. I was not conversant in many particular Families where these things happen'd; but the Out-cries of the miserable, were heard afar off. As to those who were with Child, we have seen some Calculation made, 291 Women dead in Child bed in nine Weeks; out of one third Part of the Number, of whom there usually dy'd in that Time, but 48 of the same Disaster. Let the Reader calculate the Proportion. There is no Room to doubt but the Misery of those that gave Suck was in Proportion as great. Our Bills of Mortality cou'd give but little Light in this; yet, some it did, there were several more than usual starv'd at Nurse, But this was nothing: The Misery was, where they were (1st) starved for want of a Nurse, the Mother dying, and all the Family and the Infants found dead by them, meerly for want; and if I may speak my Opinion, I do believe, that many hundreds of Poor helpless Infants perish'd in this manner, (2dly) Not starved (but poison'd) by the Nurse, Nay even where the Mother has been Nurse, and having receiv'd the Infection, has poison'd, that is, infected the Infant with her Milk, even before they knew they were infected themselves; nay, and the Infant has dy'd in such a Case before the Mother. I cannot but remember to leave this Admonition upon Record, if ever such another dreadful Visitation should happen in this City; that all Women that are with Child or that give Suck should be gone, if they have any possible Means out of the Place; because their Misery if infected, will so much exceed all other Peoples. I could tell here dismal Stories of living Infants being found sucking the Breasts of their Mothers, or Nurses, after they have been dead of the Plague. Of a Mother, in the Parish where I liv'd, who having a Child that was not well, sent for an Apothecary to View the Child, and when he came, as the Relation goes, was giving the Child suck at her Breast, and to all Appearance, was her self very well: But when the Apothecary came close to her, he saw the Tokens upon that Breast, with which she was suckling the Child. He was surpriz'd enough to be sure; but not willing to fright the poor Woman too much, he desired she would give the Child into his Hand; so he takes the Child, and going to a Cradle in the Room lays it in, and opening its Cloths, found the Tokens upon the Child too, and both dy'd before he cou'd get Home, to send a preventative Medicine to the Father of the Child, to whom he had told their Condition; whether the Child infected the Nurse-Mother, or the Mother the Child was not certain, but the last the most likely. Likewise of a Child brought Home to the Parents from a Nurse that had dy'd of the Plague; yet, the tender Mother would not refuse to take in her Child, and lay'd it in her Bosom, by which she was infected, and dy'd with the Child in her Arms dead also. It would make the hardest Heart move at the Instances that were frequently found of tender Mothers, tending and watching with their dear Children, and even dying before them, and sometimes taking the Distemper from them, and dying when the Child, for whom the affectionate Heart had been sacrificed, has got over it and escap'd. The like of a Tradesman in East-Smith-field, whose Wife was big with Child of her first Child, and fell in Labour, having the Plague upon her: He cou'd neither get Midwife to assist her, or Nurse to tend her; and two Servants which he kept fled both from her. He ran from House to House like one distracted, but cou'd get no help; the utmost he could get was, that a Watchman who attended at an infected House shut up, promis'd to send a Nurse in the Morning: The poor Man with his Heart broke, went back, assisted his Wife what he cou'd, acted the part of the Midwife; brought the Child dead into the World; and his Wife in about an Hour dy'd in his Arms, where he held her dead Body fast till the Morning, when the Watchman came and brought the Nurse as he had promised; and coming up the Stairs, for he had left the Door open, or only latched: They found the Man sitting with his dead Wife in his Arms; and so overwhelmed with Grief, that he dy'd in a few Hours after, without any Sign of the Infection upon him, but meerly sunk under the Weight of his Grief. I have heard also of some, who on the Death of their Relations, have grown stupid with the insupportable Sorrow, and of one in particular, who was so absolutely overcome with the Pressure upon his Spirits, that by Degrees, his Head sunk into his Body, so between his Shoulders, that the Crown of his Head was very little seen above the Bones of his Shoulders; and by Degrees, loseing both Voice and Sense, his Face looking forward, lay against his Collar-Bone, and cou'd not be kept up any otherwise, unless held up by the Hands of other People; and the poor Man never came to himself again, but languished near a Year in that Condition and died: Nor was he ever once seen to lift up his Eyes, or to look upon any particular Object. I cannot undertake to give any other than a Summary of such Passages as these, because it was not possible to come at the Particulars, where sometimes the whole Families, where such Things happen'd, were carry'd off by the Distemper: But there were innumerable Cases of this Kind, which presented to the Eye, and the Ear; even in passing along the Streets, as I have hinted above, nor is it easy to give any Story of this, or that Family, which there was not divers parallel Stories to [be] met with of the same Kind. But as I am now talking of the Time, when the Plague rag'd at the Easter-most Part of the Town; how for a long Time the People of those Parts had flattered themselves that they should escape; and how they were surprized, when it came upon them as it did; for indeed, it came upon them like an armed Man, when it did come. I say, this brings me back to the three poor Men, who wandered from Wapping, not knowing whither to go, or what to do, and who I mention'd before; one a Biscuit-Baker, one a Sail-Maker, and the other a Joiner; all of Wapping, or thereabouts. The Sleepiness and Security of that Part as I have observ'd, was such that they not only did not shift for themselves as others did; but they boasted of being safe, and of Safety being with them; and many People fled out of the City, and out of the infected Suburbs, to Wapping, Ratcliff, Lime-house, Poplar, and such Places, as to Places of Security; and it is not at all unlikely, that their doing this, help'd to bring the Plague that way faster, than it might otherwise have come. For tho' I am much for Peoples flying away and emptying such a Town as this, upon the first Appearance of a like Visitation, and that all People that have any possible Retreat, should make use of it in Time, and begone; yet, I must say, when all that will fly are gone, those that are left and must stand it, should stand stock still where they are, and not shift from one End of the Town, or one Part of the Town to the other; for that is the Bane and Mischief of the whole, and they carry the Plague from House to House in their very Clothes. Wherefore, were we ordered to kill all the Dogs and Cats:* But because as they were domestick Animals, and are apt to run from House to House, and from Street to Street; so they are capable of carrying the Effluvia or Infectious Steams of Bodies infected, even in their Furrs and Hair; and therefore, it was that in the beginning of the Infection, an Order was published by the Lord Mayor, and by the Magistrates, according to the Advice of the Physicians; that all the Dogs and Cats should be imediately killed, and an Officer was appointed for the Execution. It is incredible, if their Account is to be depended upon, what a prodigious Number of those Creatures were destroy'd: I think they talk'd of forty thousand Dogs, and five times as many Cats, few Houses being without a Cat, and some having several, and sometimes five or six in a House. All possible Endeavours were us'd also to destroy the Mice and Rats, especially the latter; by laying Rats-Bane, and other Poisons for them, and a prodigious multitude of them were also destroy'd. I often reflected upon the unprovided Condition, that the whole Body of the People were in at the first coming of this Calamity upon them, and how it was for Want of timely entring into Measures, and Managements, as well publick as private, that all the Confusions that followed were brought upon us; and that such a prodigious Number of People sunk in that Disaster, which if proper Steps had been taken, might, Providence concurring, have been avoided, and which, if Posterity think fit, they may take a Caution, and Warning from: But I shall come to this Part again. I come back to my three Men: Their Story has a Moral in every Part of it, and their whole Conduct, and that of some who they join'd with, is a Pattern for all poor Men to follow, or Women either, if ever such a Time comes again; and if there was no other End in recording it, I think this a very just one, whether my Account be exactly according to Fact or no. Two of them are said to be Brothers, the one an old Soldier, but now a Biscuit Baker; the other a lame Sailor, but now a Sail-Maker; the Third a Joiner. Says John the Biscuit Baker, one Day to Thomas his Brother, the Sail-maker, Brother Tom, what will become of us? The Plague grows hot in the City, and encreases this way: What shall we do? Truly, says Thomas, I am at a great Loss what to do, for I find, if it comes down into Wapping, I shall be turn'd out of my Lodging: And thus they began to talk of it beforehand. John, Turn'd out of your Lodging, Tom! if you are, I don't know who will take you in; for People are so afraid of one another now, there's no getting a Lodging any where. Tho. Why? The People where I lodge are good civil People, and have Kindness enough for me too; but they say I go abroad every Day to my Work, and it will be dangerous; and they talk of locking themselves up, and letting no Body come near them. John, Why, they are in the right to be sure, if they resolve to venture staying in Town. Tho. Nay, I might e'en resolve to stay within Doors too, for, except a Suit of Sails that my Master has in Hand, and which I am just a finishing, I am like to get no more Work a great while; there's no Trade stirs now; Workmen and Servants are turned off every where, so that I might be glad to be locked up too: But I do not see they will be willing to consent to that, any more than to the other. John, Why, what will you do then Brother? and what shall I do? for I am almost as bad as you; the People where I lodge are all gone into the Country but a Maid, and she is to go next Week, and to shut the House quite up, so that I shall be turn'd a drift to the wide World before you, and I am resolved to go away too, if I knew but where to go. Tho. We were both distracted we did not go away at first, then we might ha' travelled any where; there's no stirring now; we shall be starv'd if we pretend to go out of Town; they won't let us have Victuals, no, not for our Money, nor let us come into the Towns, much less into their Houses. John, And that which is almost as bad, I have but little Money to help my self with neither. Tho. As to that we might make shift; I have a little, tho' not much; but I tell you there's no stirring on the Road. I know a Couple of poor honest Men in our Street have attempted to travel, and at Barnet, or Whetston, or there about, the People offered to fire at them if they pretended to go forward; so they are come back again quite discourag'd. John, I would have ventured their Fire, if I had been there; If I had been denied Food for my Money they should ha' seen me take it before their Faces; and if I had tendred Money for it, they could not have taken any Course with me by Law. Tho. You talk your old Soldier's Language, as if you were in the Low-Countries now, but this is a serious thing. The People have good Reason to keep any Body off, that they are not satisfied are sound, at such a Time as this; and we must not plunder them. John, No Brother, you mistake the Case, and mistake me too, I would plunder no Body; but for any Town upon the Road to deny me Leave to pass thro' the Town in the open High-Way, and deny me Provisions for my Money, is to say the Town has a Right to starve me to Death, which cannot be true. Tho. But they do not deny you Liberty to go back again from whence you came, and therefore they do not starve you. John, But the next Town behind me will by the same Rule deny me leave to go back, and so they do starve me between them; besides there is no Law to prohibit my travelling wherever I will on the Road. Tho. But there will be so much Difficulty in disputing with them at every Town on the Road, that it is not for poor Men to do it, or to undertake it at such a Time as this is especially. John, Why Brother? Our Condition at this Rate is worse than any Bodies else; for we can neither go away nor stay here; I am of the same Mind with the Lepers of Samaria,* If we stay here we are sure to die; I mean especially, as you and I are stated, without a Dwelling-House of our own, and without Lodging in any Bodies else; there is no lying in the Street at such a Time as this; we had as good go into the Dead Cart at once: Therefore I say, if we stay here we are sure to die, and if we go away we can but die: I am resolved to be gone. Tho. You will go away: Whither will you go? and what can you do? I would as willingly go away as you, if I knew whither: But we have no Acquaintance, no Friends. Here we were born, and here we must die. John, Look you Tom, the whole Kingdom is my Native Country as well as this Town. You may as well say, I must not go out of my House if it is on Fire, as that I must not go out of the Town I was born in, when it is infected with the Plague. I was born in England, and have a Right to live in it if I can. Tho. But you know every vagrant Person may by the Laws of England, be taken up, and passed back to their last legal Settlement.* John, But how shall they make me vagrant; I desire only to travel on, upon my lawful Occasions. Tho. What lawful Occasions can we pretend to travel, or rather wander upon, they will not be put off with Words. John, Is not flying to save our Lives, a Lawful Occasion! and do they not all know that the Fact is true: We cannot be said to dissemble. Tho, But suppose they let us pass, Whither shall we go? John, Any where to save our Lives: It is Time enough to consider that when we are got out of this Town. If I am once out of this dreadful Place I care not where I go. Tho. We shall be driven to great Extremities. I know not what to think of it. John, Well Tom, consider of it a little. This was about the Beginning of July,* and tho' the Plague was come forward in the West and North Parts of the Town, yet all Wapping, as I have observed before, and Redriff, and Ratcliff, and Lime-House, and Poplar, in short, Deptford and Greenwich, all both Sides of the River from the Hermitage, and from over against it, quite down to Blackwall, was intirely free, there had not one Person died of the Plague in all Stepney Parish, and not one on the South Side of White-Chappel Road, no, not in any Parish; and yet the Weekly Bill was that very Week risen up to 1006. It was a Fortnight after this, before the two Brothers met again, and then the Case was a little altered, and the Plague was exceedingly advanced, and the Number greatly encreased, the Bill was up at 2785, and prodigiously encreasing, tho' still both Sides of the River, as below, kept pretty well: But some began to die in Redriff, and about five or six in Ratclif-High-Way, when the Sail Maker came to his Brother John, express, and in some Fright, for he was absolutely warn'd out of his Lodging, and had only a Week to provide himself. His Brother John was in as bad a Case, for he was quite out, and had only beg'd Leave of his Master the Biscuit Baker to lodge in an Out-House belonging to his Work-house, where he only lay upon Straw, with some Biscuit Sacks, or Bread Sacks, as they call'd them, laid upon it, and some of the same Sacks to cover him. Here they resolved, seeing all Employment being at an End, and no Work, or Wages to be had, they would make the best of their Way to get out of the Reach of the dreadful Infection; and being as good Husbands as they could, would endeavour to live upon what they had as long as it would last, and then work for more, if they could get Work any where, of any Kind, let it be what it would. While they were considering to put this Resolution in Practice, in the best Manner they could, the third Man, who was acquainted very well with the Sail Maker, came to know of the Design, and got Leave to be one of the Number, and thus they prepared to set out. It happened that they had not an equal share of Money, but as the Sail-maker, who had the best Stock, was besides his being Lame, the most unfit to expect to get any thing by Working in the Country, so he was content that what Money they had should all go into one publick Stock, on Condition, that whatever any one of them could gain more than another, it should, without any grudging, be all added to the same publick Stock. They resolv'd to load themselves with as little Baggage as possible, because they resolv'd at first to travel on Foot; and to go a great way, that they might, if possible, be effectually Safe; and a great many Consultations they had with themselves, before they could agree about what Way they should travel, which they were so far from adjusting, that even to the Morning they set out, they were not resolv'd on it. At last the Seaman put in a Hint that determin'd it; First, says he, the Weather is very hot, and therefore I am for travelling North, that we may not have the Sun upon our Faces and beating on our Breasts, which will heat and suffocate us; and I have been told, says he, that it is not good to overheat our Blood at a Time when, for ought we know, the Infection may be in the very Air. In the next Place, says he, I am for going the Way that may be contrary to the Wind as it may blow when we set out, that we may not have the Wind blow the Air of the City on our Backs as we go. These two Cautions were approv'd of; if it could be brought so to hit, that the Wind might not be in the South when they set out to go North. John the Baker, who had been a Soldier, then put in his Opinion; First, says he, we none of us expect to get any Lodging on the Road, and it will be a little too hard to lie just in the open Air; tho' it be warm Weather, yet it may be wet, and damp, and we have a double Reason to take care of our Healths at such a time as this; and therefore, says he, you, Brother Tom, that are a Sail-maker, might easily make us a little Tent, and I will undertake to set it up every Night, and take it down, and a Fig for all the Inns in England; if we have a good Tent over our Heads, we shall do well enough. The Joyner oppos'd this, and told them, let them leave that to him, he would undertake to build them a House every Night with his Hatchet and Mallet, tho' he had no other Tools, which should be fully to their satisfaction, and as good as a Tent. The Soldier and the Joyner disputed that Point some time, but at last the Soldier carry'd it for a Tent; the only Objection against it was, that it must be carry'd with them, and that would encrease their Baggage too much, the Weather being hot; but the Sail-maker had a piece of good Hap [befall him] which made that easie, for, his Master who he work'd for having a Rope-Walk as well as his Sail-making Trade, had a little poor Horse that he made no use of then, and being willing to assist the three honest Men, he gave them the Horse for the carrying their Baggage; also for a small Matter of three Days Work that his Man did for him before he went, he let him have an old Topgallant Sail that was worn out, but was sufficient and more than enough to make a very good Tent: The Soldier shew'd how to shape it, and they soon by his Direction made their Tent, and fitted it with Poles or Staves for the purpose, and thus they were furnish'd for their Journey; viz. three Men, one Tent, one Horse, one Gun, for the Soldier would not go without Arms, for now he said he was no more a Biscuit-Baker, but a Trooper. The Joyner had a small Bag of Tools, such as might be useful if he should get any Work abroad, as well for their Subsistence as his own: What Money they had, they brought all into one publick Stock, and thus they began their Journey. It seems that in the Morning when they set out, the Wind blew as the Saylor said by his Pocket Compass, at N. W. by W. So they directed, or rather resolv'd to direct their Course N. W. But then a Difficulty came in their Way, that as they set out from the hither end of Wapping near the Hermitage, and that the Plague was now very Violent, especially on the North side of the City, as in Shoreditch and Cripplegate Parish, they did not think it safe for them to go near those Parts; so they went away East through Radcliff Highway, as far as Radcliff-Cross, and leaving Stepney Church still on their Left-hand, being afraid to come up from Radcliff-Cross to Mile-end, because they must come just by the Church-yard, and because the Wind that seemed to blow more from the West, blow'd directly from the side of the City where the Plague was hottest. So I say, leaving Stepney, they fetched a long Compass, and going to Poplar and Bromley, came into the great Road just at Bow. Here the Watch plac'd upon Bow Bridge would have question'd them; but they crossing the Road into a narrow Way that turns out at the hither End of the Town of Bow to Old-Ford, avoided any Enquiry there, and travelled to Old-Ford. The Constables every where were upon their Guard, not so much it seems to stop People passing by, as to stop them from taking up their Abode in their Towns, and withal because of a Report that was newly rais'd at that time, and that indeed was not very improbable, viz. That the poor People in London being distress'd and starv'd for want of Work, and by that means for want of Bread, were up in Arms, and had raised a Tumult, and that they would come out to all the Towns round to plunder for Bread. This, I say, was only a Rumour, and it was very well it was no more; but it was not so far off from being a Reality, as it had been thought, for in a few Weeks more the poor People became so Desperate by the Calamity they suffer'd, that they were with great difficulty kept from running out into the Fields and Towns, and tearing all in pieces where-ever they came; and, as I have observed before, nothing hinder'd them but that the Plague rag'd so violently, and fell in upon them so furiously, that they rather went to the Grave by Thousands than into the Fields in Mobs by Thousands: For in the Parts about the Parishes of St. Sepulchres, Clerkenwell, Cripplegate, Bishopsgate and Shoreditch, which were the Places where the Mob began to threaten, the Distemper came on so furiously, that there died in those few Parishes, even then, before the Plague was come to its height, no less than 5361 People* in the first three Weeks in August, when at the same time, the Parts about Wapping, Radcliffe, and Rotherhith, were, as before describ'd, hardly touch'd, or but very lightly; so that in a Word, tho', as I said before, the good Management of the Lord Mayor and Justices did much to prevent the Rage and Desperation of the People from breaking out in Rabbles and Tumults, and in short, from the Poor plundering the Rich; I say, tho' they did much, the Dead Carts did more, for as I have said, that in five Parishes only there died above 5000 in 20 Days, so there might be probably three times that Number Sick all that time; for some recovered, and great Numbers fell sick every Day and died afterwards. Besides, I must still be allowed to say, that if the Bills of Mortality said five Thousand, I always believ'd it was near twice as many in reality; there being no room to believe that the Account they gave was right, or that indeed, they were, among such Confusions as I saw them in, in any Condition to keep an exact Account. But to return to my Travellers; Here they were only examined, and as they seemed rather coming from the Country than from the City, they found the People the easier with them; that they talk'd to them, let them come into a publick House where the Constable and his Warders were, and gave them Drink and some Victuals, which greatly refreshed and encourag'd them; and here it came into their Heads to say, when they should be enquir'd of afterwards, not that they came from London, but that they came out of Essex. To forward this little Fraud, they obtain'd so much Favour of the Constable at Old-Ford, as to give them a Certificate of their passing from Essex thro' that Village, and that they had not been at London; which tho' false in the common acceptation of London in the County, yet was literally true; Wapping or Radcliff being no part either of the City or Liberty. This Certificate directed to the next Constable that was at Hummerton, one of the Hamlets of the Parish of Hackney, was so serviceable to them, that it procured them not a free Passage there only, but a full Certificate of Health from a Justice of the Peace; who, upon the Constable's Application, granted it without much Difficulty; and thus they pass'd through the long divided Town of Hackney, (for it lay then in several separated Hamlets) and travelled on till they came into the great North Road on the top of Stamford-Hill. By this time they began to be weary, and so in the back Road from Hackney a little before it opened into the said great Road, they resolv'd to set up their Tent and encamp for the first Night; which they did accordingly, with this addition, that finding a Barn, or a Building like a Barn, and first searching as well as they could to be sure there was no Body in it, they set up their Tent, with the Head of it against the Barn; this they did also because the Wind blew that Night very high, and they were but young at such a way of Lodging, as well as the managing their Tent. Here they went to Sleep, but the Joyner, a grave and sober Man, and not pleased with their lying at this loose rate the first Night, could not sleep, and resolv'd, after trying to Sleep to no purpose, that he would get out, and taking the Gun in his Hand stand Centinel and Guard his Companions: So with the Gun in his Hand he walk'd to and again before the Barn, for that stood in the Field near the Road, but within the Hedge. He had not been long upon the Scout, but he heard a Noise of People coming on as if it had been a great Number, and they came on, as he thought, directly towards the Barn. He did not presently awake his Companions, but in a few Minutes more their Noise growing louder and louder, the Biscuit-Baker call'd to him and ask'd him what was the Matter, and quickly started out too: The other being the Lame Sail-maker and most weary, lay still in the Tent. As they expected, so the People who they had heard, came on directly to the Barn, when one of our Travellers challenged, like Soldiers upon the Guard, with Who comes there? The People did not Answer immediately, but one of them speaking to another that was behind him, Alas! Alas! we are all disappointed, says he, here are some People before us, the Barn is taken up. They all stopp'd upon that as under some Surprize, and it seems there was about Thirteen of them in all, and some Women among them: They consulted together what they should do, and by their Discourse our Travellers soon found they were poor distress'd People too like themselves, seeking Shelter and Safety; and besides, our Travellers had no need to be afraid of their coming up to disturb them; for as soon as they heard the Words, Who comes there, these could hear the Women say, as if frighted, Do not go near them, how do you know but they may have the Plague? And when one of the Men said, Let us but speak to them; the Women said, No, don't by any means, we have escaped thus far by the Goodness of God, do not let us run into Danger now, we beseech you. Our Travellers found by this that they were a good sober sort of People and flying for their Lives as they were; and, as they were encourag'd by it, so John said to the Joyner his Comrade, Let us Encourage them too as much as we can: So he called to them, Hark ye good People says the Joyner, we find by your Talk, that you are fleeing from the same dreadful Enemy as we are, do not be afraid of us, we are only three poor Men of us, if you are free from the Distemper you shall not be hurt by us; we are not in the Barn, but in a little Tent here in the outside, and we will remove for you, we can set up our Tent again immediately any where else; and upon this a Parly began between the Joyner, whose Name was Richard, and one of their Men, who said his Name was Ford. Ford. And do you assure us that you are all Sound Men. Rich. Nay, we are concern'd to tell you of it, that you may not be uneasy, or think your selves in Danger; but you see we do not desire you should put your selves into any Danger; and therefore I tell you, that as we have not made use of the Barn, so we will remove from it, that you may be Safe and we also. Ford. That is very kind and charitable; But, if we have Reason to be satisfied that you are Sound and free from the Visitation, why should we make you remove now you are settled in your Lodging, and it may be are laid down to Rest? we will go into the Barn if you please, to rest our selves a while, and we need not disturb you. Rich. Well, but you are more than we are, I hope you will assure us that you are all of you Sound too, for the Danger is as great from you to us, as from us to you. Ford. Blessed be God that some do escape tho' it is but few; what may be our Portion still we know not, but hitherto we are preserved. Rich. What part of the Town do you come from? Was the Plague come to the Places where you liv'd? Ford. Ay ay, in a most frightful and terrible manner, or else we had not fled away as we do; but we believe there will be very few left alive behind us. Rich. What Part do you come from? Ford. We are most of us of Cripplegate Parish, only two or three of Clerkenwell Parish, but on the hither side. Rich. How then was it that you came away no sooner? Ford. We have been away some time, and kept together as well as we could at the hither End of Islington, where we got leave to lie in an old uninhabited House, and had some Bedding and Conveniences of our own that we brought with us, but the Plague is come up into Islington too, and a House next Door to our poor Dwelling was Infected and shut up, and we are come away in a Fright. Rich. And what Way are you going? Ford. As our Lott shall cast us, we know not whither, but God will Guide those that look up to him. They parlied no further at that time, but came all up to the Barn, and with some Difficulty got into it: There was nothing but Hay in the Barn, but it was almost full of that, and they accommodated themselves as well as they cou'd, and went to Rest; but our Travellers observ'd, that before they went to Sleep, an antient Man, who it seems was Father of one of the Women, went to Prayer with all the Company, recommending themselves to the Blessing and Direction of Providence, before they went to Sleep. It was soon Day at that time of the Year; and as Richard the Joyner had kept Guard the first part of the Night, so John the Soldier Reliev'd him, and he had the Post in the Morning, and they began to be acquainted with one another. It seems, when they left Islington, they intended to have gone North away to Highgate, but were stop'd at Holloway, and there they would not let them pass; so they cross'd over the Fields and Hills to the Eastward, and came out at the Boarded-River,* and so avoiding the Towns, they left Hornsey on the left Hand, and Newington on the right Hand, and came into the great Road about Stamford-Hill on that side, as the three Travellers had done on the other side: And now they had Thoughts of going over the River in the Marshes, and make forwards to Epping Forest, where they hoped they should get leave to Rest. It seems they were not Poor, at least not so Poor as to be in Want; at least they had enough to subsist them moderately for two or three Months, when, as they said, they were in Hopes the cold Weather would check the Infection, or at least the Violence of it would have spent itself, and would abate, if it were only for want of People left alive to be Infected. This was much the Fate of our three Travellers; only that they seemed to be the better furnish'd for Travelling, and had it in their View to go further off; for as to the first, they did not propose to go farther than one Day's Journey, that so they might have Intelligence every two or three Days how Things were at London. But here our Travellers found themselves under an unexpected Inconvenience namely, that of their Horse, for by means of the Horse to carry their Baggage, they were obliged to keep in the Road, whereas the People of this other Band went over the Fields or Roads, Path or no Path, Way, or no Way, as they pleased; neither had they any Occasion to pass thro' any Town, or come near any Town, other than to buy such Things as they wanted for their necessary Subsistence, and in that indeed they were put to much Difficulty: Of which in its Place. But our three Travellers were oblig'd to keep the Road, or else they must commit Spoil and do the Country a great deal of Damage in breaking down Fences and Gates, to go over enclosed Fields, which they were loth to do if they could help it. Our three Travellers however had a great Mind to join themselves to this Company, and take their Lot with them; and after some Discourse, they laid aside their first Design which look'd Northward, and resolv'd to follow the other into Essex; so in the Morning they took up their Tent and loaded their Horse, and away they travelled all together. They had some Difficulty in passing the Ferry at the River side, the Ferry-Man being afraid of them; but after some Parly at a Distance, the Ferry-Man was content to bring his Boat to a Place distant from the usual Ferry, and leave it there for them to take it; so putting themselves over, he directed them to leave the Boat, and he having another Boat, said he would fetch it again, which it seems however he did not do for above Eight Days. Here giving the Ferry-Man Money before-hand, they had a supply of Victuals and Drink, which he brought and left in the Boat for them, but not without, as I said, having receiv'd the Money before-hand. But now our Travellers were at a great Loss and Difficulty how to get the Horse over, the Boat being small and not fit for it, and at last cou'd not do it without unloading the Baggage, and making him swim over. From the River they travelled towards the Forest, but when they came to Walthamstow the People of that Town denied to admit them, as was the Case every where: The Constables and their Watchmen kept them off at a Distance, and Parly'd with them; they gave the same Account of themselves as before, but these gave no Credit to what they said, giving it for a Reason that two or three Companies had already come that Way and made the like Pretences, but that they had given several People the Distemper in the Towns where they had pass'd, and had been afterwards so hardly us'd by the Country, tho' with Justice too, as they had deserv'd; that about Brent-Wood or that Way, several of them Perish'd in the Fields, whether of the Plague, or of mere Want and Distress, they could not tell. This was a good Reason indeed why the People of Walthamstow shou'd be very cautious, and why they shou'd resolve not to entertain any Body that they were not well satisfied of. But as Richard the Joyner, and one of the other Men who parly'd with them told them, it was no Reason why they should block up the Roads, and refuse to let People pass thro' the Town, and who ask'd nothing of them, but to go through the Street: That if their People were afraid of them, they might go into their Houses and shut their Doors, they would neither show them Civility nor Incivility, but go on about their Business. The Constables and Attendants, not to be perswaded by Reason, continued Obstinate, and wou'd hearken to nothing; so the two Men that talk'd with them went back to their Fellows, to consult what was to be done: It was very discouraging in the whole, and they knew not what to do for a good while: But at last John the Soldier and Biscuit-Baker considering a-while, Come, says he, leave the rest of the Parly to me; he had not appeared yet, so he sets the Joyner Richard to Work to cut some Poles out of the Trees, and shape them as like Guns as he could, and in a little time he had five or six fair Muskets, which at a Distance would not be known; and about the Part where the Lock of a Gun is he caused them to wrap Cloths and Rags, such as they had, as Soldiers do in wet Weather, to preserve the Locks of their Pieces from Rust, the rest was discolour'd with Clay or Mud, such as they could get; and all this while the rest of them sat under the Trees by his Direction, in two or three Bodies, where they made Fires at a good Distance from one another. While this was doing, he advanc'd himself and two or three with him, and set up their Tent in the Lane within sight of the Barrier which the Town's Men had made, and set a Centinel just by it with the real Gun, the only one they had, and who walked to and fro with the Gun on his Shoulder, so as that the People of the Town might see them; also he ty'd the Horse to a Gate in the Hedge just by, and got some dry Sticks together and kindled a Fire on the other side of the Tent, so that the People of the Town cou'd see the Fire and the Smoak, but cou'd not see what they were doing at it. After the Country People had look'd upon them very earnestly a great while, and by all that they could see, cou'd not but suppose that they were a great many in Company, they began to be uneasie, not for their going away, but for staying where they were; and above all perceiving they had Horses and Arms, for they had seen one Horse and one Gun at the Tent, and they had seen others of them walk about the Field on the inside of the Hedge, by the side of the Lane with their Muskets, as they took them to be, Shoulder'd: I say, upon such a Sight as this, you may be assured they were Alarm'd and terribly Frighted; and it seems they went to a Justice of the Peace to know what they should do; what the Justice advis'd them to I know not, but towards Evening they call'd from the Barrier, as above, to the Centinel at the Tent. What do ye want? says John1 Why, what do ye intend to do? says the Constable. To do, says John, What wou'd you have us to do? Const. Why don't you be gone? what do you stay there for? John. Why do you stop us on the King's Highway,* and pretend to refuse us Leave to go on our Way? Const. We are not bound to tell you our Reason, though we did let you know, it was because of the Plague. John. We told you we were all sound, and free from the Plague, which we were not bound to have satisfied you of, and yet you pretend to stop us on the Highway. Const. We have a Right to stop it up, and our own Safety obliges us to it; besides this is not the King's Highway, 'tis a Way upon Sufferance; you see here is a Gate, and if we do let People pass here, we make them pay Toll. John. We have a Right to seek our own Safety as well as you, and you may see we are flying for our Lives, and 'tis very unchristian and unjust to stop us. Const. You may go back from whence you came; we do not hinder you from that. John. No, it is a stronger Enemy than you that keeps us from doing that; or else we should not ha' come hither. Const. Well, you may go any other way then. John. No, no: I suppose you see we are able to send you going, and all the People of your Parish, and come thro' your Town, when we will; but since you have stopt us here, we are content; you see, we have encamp'd here, and here we will live: we hope you will furnish us with Victuals. Const. We furnish you! What mean you by that? John. Why you would not have us Starve, would you? If you stop us here, you must keep us. Const. You will be ill kept at our Maintenance. John. If you stint us, we shall make ourselves the better Allowance. Const. Why you will not pretend to quarter upon us by Force, will you? John. We have offer'd no Violence to you yet, why do you seem to oblige us to it? I am an old Soldier, and cannot starve, and if you think that we shall be obliged to go back for want of Provisions, you are mistaken. Const. Since you threaten us, we shall take Care to be strong enough for you: I have Orders to raise the County upon you. John. It is you that threaten, not we: And since you are for Mischief, you cannot blame us, if we do not give you time for it; we shall begin our March in a few Minutes.1 Const. What is it you demand of us? John. At first we desir'd nothing of you, but Leave to go thro' the Town; we should have offer'd no Injury to any of you, neither would you have had any Injury or Loss by us. We are not Thieves, but poor People in distress, and flying from the dreadful Plague in London, which devours thousands every Week: We wonder how you could be so unmerciful! Const. Self-preservation obliges us. John. What! to shut up your Compassion in a Case of such Distress as this? Const. Well, if you will pass over the Fields on your Left-hand, and behind that part of the Town, I will endeavour to have Gates open'd for you. John. Our Horsemen cannot2 pass with our Baggage that Way; it does not lead into the Road that we want to go; and why should you force us out of the Road? besides, you have kept us here all Day without any Provisions, but such as we brought with us; I think you ought to send us some Provisions for our Relief. Const. If you will go another Way, we will send you some Provisions. John. That is the way to have all the Towns in the County stop up the Ways against us. Const. If they all furnish you with Food, what will you be the worse, I see you have Tents, you want no Lodging. John. Well, what quantity of Provisions will you send us? Const. How many are you? John. Nay, we do not ask enough for all our Company, we are in three Companies; if you will send us Bread for twenty Men, and about six or seven Women for three Days, and shew us the Way over the Field you speak of, we desire not to put your People into any fear for us, we will go out of our Way to oblige you, tho' we are as free from Infection as you are. Const. And will you assure us that your other People shall offer us no new Disturbance. John. No, no, you may depend on it. Const. You must oblige your self too that none of your People shall come a step nearer than where the Provisions we send you shall be set down. John. I answer for it we will not.1 Accordingly they sent to the Place twenty Loaves of Bread, and three or four large pieces of good Beef, and opened some Gates thro' which they pass'd, but none of them had Courage so much as to look out to see them go, and, as it was Evening, if they had looked they cou'd not have seen them so as to know how few they were. This was John the Soldier's Management. But this gave such an Alarm to the County, that had they really been two or three Hundred, the whole County would have been rais'd upon them, and they wou'd ha' been sent to Prison, or perhaps knock'd on the Head. They were soon made sensible of this, for two Days afterwards they found several Parties of Horsemen and Footmen also about, in pursuit of three Companies of Men arm'd, as they said, with Muskets, who were broke out from London, and had the Plague upon them; and that were not only spreading the Distemper among the People, but plundering the Country. As they saw now the Consequence of their Case, they soon saw the Danger they were in, so they resolv'd by the Advice also of the old Soldier, to divide themselves again. John and his two Comrades with the Horse, went away as if towards Waltham; the other in two Companies, but all a little asunder, and went towards Epping. The first Night they Encamp'd all in the Forest, and not far off of one another, but not setting up the Tent, lest that should discover them: On the other hand Richard went to work with his Axe and his Hatchet, and cutting down Branches of Trees, he built three Tents or Hovels, in which they all Encamp'd with as much Convenience as they could expect. The Provisions they had had at Walthamstow serv'd them very plentifully this Night, and as for the next they left it to Providence; they had far'd so well with the old Soldier's Conduct, that they now willingly made him their Leader; and the first of his Conduct appear'd to be very good: He told them that they were now at a proper Distance enough from London; that as they need not be immediately beholden to the County for Relief, so they ought to be as careful the Country did not infect them, as that they did not infect the Country; that what little Money they had they must be as frugal of as they could; that as he would not have them think of offering the Country any Violence, so they must endeavour to make the Sense of their Condition go as far with the Country as it could: They all referr'd themselves to his Direction; so they left their 3 Houses standing, and the next Day went away towards Epping; the Captain also, for so they now called him, and his two Fellow Travellers laid aside their Design of going to Waltham, and all went together. When they came near Epping they halted, choosing out a proper Place in the open Forest, not very near the High-way, but not far out of it on the North-side, under a little cluster of low Pollard-Trees: Here they pitched their little Camp, which consisted of three large Tents or Hutts made of Poles, which their Carpenter, and such as were his Assistants, cut down and fix'd in the Ground in a Circle, binding all the small Ends together at the Top, and thickning the sides with Boughs of Trees and Bushes, so that they were compleatly close and warm. They had besides this, a little Tent where the Women lay by themselves, and a Hutt to put the Horse in. It happened that the next day, or next but one was Market-day at Epping; when Capt. John, and one of the other Men, went to Market, and bought some Provisions, that is to say Bread, and some Mutton and Beef; and two of the Women went separately, as if they had not belonged to the rest, and bought more. John took the Horse to bring it Home, and the Sack (which the Carpenter carry'd his Tools in) to put it in: The Carpenter went to Work and made them Benches and Stools to sit on, such as the Wood he cou'd get wou'd afford, and a kind of a Table to dine on. They were taken no Notice of for two or three Days, but after that, abundance of People ran out of the Town to look at them, and all the Country was alarmed about them. The People at first seem'd afraid to come near them, and on the other Hand they desir'd the People to keep off, for there was a Rumour that the Plague was at Waltham, and that it had been in Epping two or three Days. So John called out to them not to come to them, For, says he, we are all whole and sound People here, and we would not have you bring the Plague among us, nor pretend we brought it among you. After this the Parish Officers came up to them and parly'd with them at a Distance, and desir'd to know who they were, and by what Authority they pretended to fix their Stand at that Place? John answered very frankly, they were poor distressed People from London, who foreseeing the Misery they should be reduc'd to, if the Plague spread into the City, had fled out in time for their Lives, and having no Acquaintance or Relations to fly to, had first taken up at Islington, but the Plague being come into that Town, were fled further, and as they suppos'd that the People of Epping might have refus'd them coming into their Town, they had pitch'd their Tents thus in the open Field, and in the Forest, being willing to bear all the Hardships of such a disconsolate Lodging, rather than have any one think or be afraid that they should receive Injury by them. At first the Epping People talk'd roughly to them, and told them they must remove; that this was no Place for them; and that they pretended to be Sound and Well, but that they might be infected with the Plague for ought they knew, and might infect the whole Country, and they cou'd not suffer them there. John argu'd very calmly with them a great while, and told them, ?ÄòThat London was the Place by which they, that is, the Townsmen of Epping and all the Country round them, subsisted; to whom they sold the produce of their Lands, and out of whom they made the Rent of their Farms; and to be so cruel to the Inhabitants of London, or to any of those by whom they gain'd so much was very hard, and they would be loth to have it remembered hereafter, and have it told how barbarous, how unhospitable and how unkind they were to the People of London, when they fled from the Face of the most terrible Enemy in the World; that it would be enough to make the Name of an Epping-Man hateful thro' all the City, and to have the Rabble Stone them in the very Streets, whenever they came so much as to Market; that they were not yet secure from being Visited themselves, and that as he heard, Waltham was already; that they would think it very hard that when any of them fled for Fear before they were touch'd, they should be deny'd the Liberty of lying so much as in the open Fields.' The Epping Men told them again, That they, indeed, said they were sound and free from the Infection, but that they had no assurance of it; and that it was reported, that there had been a great Rabble of People at Walthamstow, who made such Pretences of being sound, as they did, but that they threaten'd to plunder the Town, and force their Way whether the Parish Officers would or no; That they were near 200 of them, and had Arms and Tents like Low-Country Soldiers; that they extorted Provisions from the Town by threatning them with living upon them at free Quarter, shewing their Arms, and talking in the Language of Soldiers; and that several of them being gone away towards Rumford and Brent-Wood, the Country had been infected by them, and the Plague spread into both those large Towns, so that the People durst not go to Market there as usual; that it was very likely they were some of that Party, and if so, they deserv'd to be sent to the County Jail, and be secur'd till they had made Satisfaction for the Damage they had done, and for the Terror and Fright they had put the Country into. John answered, That what other People had done was nothing to them; that he assured them they were all of one Company; that they had never been more in Number than they saw them at that time; (which by the way was very true) that they came out in two separate Companies, but joyn'd by the Way, their Cases being the same; that they were ready to give what Account of themselves any Body cou'd desire of them, and to give in their Names and Places of Abode, that so they might be call'd to an Account for any Disorder that they might be guilty of; that the Townsmen might see they were content to live hardly, and only desir'd a little Room to breathe in on the Forest where it was wholsome, for where it was not they cou'd not stay, and wou'd decamp if they found it otherwise there. But, said the Townsmen, we have a great charge of Poor upon our Hands already, and we must take care not to encrease it; we suppose you can give us no Security against your being chargeable to our Parish and to the Inhabitants, any more than you can of being dangerous to us as to the Infection. ?ÄòWhy look you, says John, as to being chargeable to you, we hope we shall not; if you will relieve us with Provisions for our present Necessity, we will be very thankful; as we all liv'd without Charity when we were at Home, so we will oblige ourselves fully to repay you, if God please to bring us back to our own Families and Houses in Safety, and to restore Health to the People of London. ?ÄòAs to our dying here, we assure you, if any of us die, we that survive, will bury them, and put you to no Expence, except it should be that we should all die, and then indeed the last Man not being able to bury himself, would put you to that single Expence, which I am perswaded, says John, he would leave enough behind him to pay you for the Expence of. ?ÄòOn the other Hand, says John, if you will shut up all Bowels of Compassion and not relieve us at all, we shall not extort any thing by Violence, or steal from any one; but when what little we have is spent, if we perish for want, God's Will be done.' John wrought so upon the Townsmen by talking thus rationally and smoothly to them, that they went away; and tho' they did not give any consent to their staying there, yet they did not molest them; and the poor People continued there three or four Days longer without any Disturbance. In this time they had got some remote Acquaintance with a Victualling-House at the out-skirts of the Town, to whom they called at a Distance to bring some little Things that they wanted, and which they caus'd to be set down at a Distance, and always paid for very honestly. During this Time, the younger People of the Town came frequently pretty near them, and wou'd stand and look at them, and sometimes talk with them at some Space between; and particularly it was observed, that the first Sabbath Day the poor People kept retir'd, worship'd God together, and were heard to sing Psalms. These Things and a quiet inoffensive Behaviour, began to get them the good Opinion of the Country, and People began to pity them and speak very well of them; the Consequence of which was, that upon the occasion of a very wet rainy Night, a certain Gentleman who liv'd in the Neighbourhood, sent them a little Cart with twelve Trusses or Bundles of Straw, as well for them to lodge upon, as to cover and thatch their Huts, and to keep them dry: The Minister of a Parish not far off, not knowing of the other, sent them also about two Bushels of Wheat, and half a Bushel of white Peas. They were very thankful to-be-sure for this Relief, and particularly the Straw was a very great Comfort to them; for tho' the ingenious Carpenter had made Frames for them to lie in like Troughs, and fill'd them with Leaves of Trees, and such Things as they could get, and had cut all their Tent-cloth out to make them Coverlids, yet they lay damp, and hard, and unwholesome till this Straw came, which was to them like Feather-beds, and, as John said, more welcome than Featherbeds wou'd ha' been at another time. This Gentleman and the Minister having thus begun and given an Example of Charity to these Wanderers, others quickly followed, and they receiv'd every Day some Benevolence or other from the People, but chiefly from the Gentlemen who dwelt in the Country round about; some sent them Chairs, Stools, Tables, and such Houshold Things as they gave Notice they wanted; some sent them Blankets, Rugs and Coverlids; some Earthen-ware; and some Kitchin-ware for ordering their Food. Encourag'd by this good Usage, their Carpenter in a few Days, built them a large Shed or House with Rafters, and a Roof in Form, and an upper Floor in which they lodged warm, for the Weather began to be damp and cold in the beginning of September; But this House being very well Thatch'd, and the Sides and Roof made very thick, kept out the Cold well enough: He made also an earthen Wall at one End, with a Chimney in it; and another of the Company, with a vast deal of Trouble and Pains, made a Funnel to the Chimney to carry out the Smoak. Here they liv'd very comfortably, tho' coarsely, till the beginning of September, when they had the bad News to hear, whether true or not, that the Plague, which was very hot at Waltham-Abby on one side, and at Rumford and Brent-Wood on the other side; was also come to Epping, to Woodford, and to most of the Towns upon the Forest, and which, as they said, was brought down among them chiefly by the Higlers* and such People as went to and from London with Provisions. If this was true, it was an evident Contradiction to that Report which was afterwards spread all over England, but which, as I have said, I cannot confirm of my own Knowledge, namely, That the Market People carrying Provisions to the City, never got the Infection or carry'd it back into the Country; both which I have been assured, has been false. It might be that they were preserv'd even beyond Expectation, though not to a Miracle, that abundance went and come, and were not touch'd, and that was much for the Encouragement of the poor People of London, who had been compleatly miserable, if the People that brought Provisions to the Markets had not been many times wonderfully preserv'd, or at least more preserv'd than cou'd be reasonably expected. But now these new Inmates began to be disturb'd more effectually, for the Towns about them were really infected, and they began to be afraid to trust one another so much as to go abroad for such things as they wanted, and this pinch'd them very hard; for now they had little or nothing but what the charitable Gentlemen of the Country supply'd them with: But for their Encouragement it happen'd, that other Gentlemen in the Country who had not sent 'em any thing before, began to hear of them and supply them, and one sent them a large Pig, that is to say a Porker; another two Sheep; and another sent them a Calf: In short, they had Meat enough, and, sometimes had Cheese and Milk, and all such things; They were chiefly put to it for Bread, for when the Gentlemen sent them Corn they had no where to bake it, or to grind it: This made them eat the first two Bushel of Wheat that was sent them in parched Corn, as the Israelites of old did without grinding or making Bread of it.* At last they found means to carry their Corn to a Windmill near Woodford, where they had it ground; and afterwards the Biscuit Baker made a Hearth so hollow and dry that he cou'd bake Biscuit Cakes tolerably well; and thus they came into a Condition to live without any assistance or supplies from the Towns; and it was well they did, for the Country was soon after fully Infected, and about 120 were said to have died of the Distemper in the Villages near them, which was a terrible thing to them. On this they call'd a new Council, and now the Towns had no need to be afraid they should settle near them, but on the contrary several Families of the poorer sort of the Inhabitants quitted their Houses, and built Hutts in the Forest after the same manner as they had done: But it was observ'd, that several of these poor People that had so remov'd, had the Sickness even in their Hutts or Booths; the Reason of which was plain, namely, not because they removed into the Air, but because they did not remove time enough, that is to say, not till by openly conversing with the other People their Neighbours, they had the Distemper upon them, or, (as may be said) among them, and so carry'd it about them whither they went: Or, (2.) Because they were not careful enough after they were safely removed out of the Towns, not to come in again and mingle with the diseased People. But be it which of these it will, when our Travellers began to perceive that the Plague was not only in the Towns, but even in the Tents and Huts on the Forest near them, they began then not only to be afraid, but to think of decamping and removing; for had they stay'd, they wou'd ha' been in manifest Danger of their Lives. It is not to be wondered that they were greatly afflicted, as being obliged to quit the Place where they had been so kindly receiv'd, and where they had been treated with so much Humanity and Charity; but Necessity, and the hazard of Life, which they came out so far to preserve, prevail'd with them, and they saw no Remedy. John however thought of a Remedy for their present Misfortune, namely, that he would first acquaint that Gentleman who was their principal Benefactor, with the Distress they were in, and to crave his Assistance and Advice. The good charitable Gentleman encourag'd them to quit the Place, for fear they should be cut off from any Retreat at all, by the Violence of the Distemper; but whither they should go, that he found very hard to direct them to. At last John ask'd of him, whether he (being a Justice of the Peace) would give them Certificates of Health to other Justices who they might come before, that so whatever might be their Lot they might not be repulsed now they had been also so long from London. This his Worship immediately granted, and gave them proper Letters of Health, and from thence they were at Liberty to travel whither they pleased. Accordingly they had a full Certificate of Health, intimating, That they had resided in a Village in the County of Essex so long, that being examined and scrutiniz'd sufficiently, and having been retir'd from all Conversation for above 40 Days, without any appearance of Sickness, they were therefore certainly concluded to be Sound Men, and might be safely entertain'd any where, having at last remov'd rather for fear of the Plague, which was come into such a Town, rather than for having any signal of Infection upon them, or upon any belonging to them. With this Certificate they remov'd, tho' with great Reluctance; and John inclining not to go far from Home, they mov'd towards the Marshes on the side of Waltham: But here they found a Man, who it seems kept a Weer or Stop upon the River, made to raise the Water for the Barges which go up and down the River, and he Terrified them with dismal Stories of the Sickness having been spread into all the Towns on the River, and near the River, on the side of Middlesex and Hertfordshire; that is to say, into Waltham, Waltham-Cross, Enfield and Ware, and all the Towns on the Road, that they were afraid to go that way; tho' it seems the Man impos'd upon them, for that the thing was not really true. However it Terrified them, and they resolved to move cross the Forest towards Rumford and Brent-Wood; but they heard that there were numbers of People fled out of London that way, who lay up and down in the Forest call'd Henalt Forest, reaching near Rumford, and who having no Subsistence of Habitation, not only liv'd oddly, and suffered great Extremities in the Woods and Fields for want of Relief, but were said to be made so desperate by those Extremities, as that they offer'd many Violences to the County, robb'd and plunder'd, and kill'd Cattle, and the like; that others building Hutts and Hovels by the Road-side Begg'd, and that with an Importunity next Door to demanding Relief; so that the County was very uneasy, and had been oblig'd to take some of them up. This, in the first Place intimated to them, that they would be sure to find the Charity and Kindness of the County, which they had found here where they were before, hardned and shut up against them; and that on the other Hand, they would be question'd where-ever they came, and would be in Danger of Violence from others in like Cases as themselves. Upon all these Considerations, John, their Captain, in all their Names, went back to their good Friend and Benefactor, who had reliev'd them before, and laying their Case truly before him, humbly ask'd his Advice; and he as kindly advised them to take up their old Quarters again, or if not, to remove but a little further out of the Road, and directed them to a proper Place for them; and as they really wanted some House rather than Huts to shelter them at that time of the Year, it growing on towards Michaelmas, they found an old decay'd House, which had been formerly some Cottage or little Habitation, but was so out of repair as scarce habitable, and by the consent of a Farmer to whose Farm it belong'd, they got leave to make what use of it they could. The ingenious Joyner and all the rest by his Directions, went to work with it, and in a very few Days made it capable to shelter them all in case of bad Weather, and in which there was an old Chimney, and an old Oven, tho' both lying in Ruins, yet they made them both fit for Use, and raising Additions, Sheds, and Leantoo's on every side, they soon made the House capable to hold them all. They chiefly wanted Boards to make Window-shutters, Floors, Doors, and several other Things; but as the Gentlemen above favour'd them, and the Country was by that Means made easy with them, and above all, that they were known to be all sound and in good health, every Body help'd them with what they could spare. Here they encamp'd for good and all, and resolv'd to remove no more; they saw plainly how terribly alarm'd that County was every where, at any Body that came from London; and that they should have no admittance any where but with the utmost Difficulty, at least no friendly Reception and Assistance as they had receiv'd here. Now altho' they receiv'd great Assistance and Encouragement from the Country Gentlemen and from the People round about them, yet they were put to great Straits, for the Weather grew cold and wet in October and November, and they had not been us'd to so much hardship; so that they got Colds in their Limbs, and Distempers, but never had the Infection: And thus about December they came home to the City again. I give this Story thus at large, principally to give an Account what became of the great Numbers of People which immediately appear'd in the City as soon as the Sickness abated: For, as I have said, great Numbers of those that were able and had Retreats in the Country, fled to those Retreats; So when it was encreased to such a frightful Extremity as I have related, the midling People who had not Friends, fled to all Parts of the Country where they cou'd get shelter, as well those that had Money to relieve themselves; as those that had not. Those that had Mony always fled farthest, because they were able to subsist themselves; but those who were empty, suffer'd, as I have said, great Hardships, and were often driven by Necessity to relieve their Wants at the Expence of the Country: By that Means the Country was made very uneasie at them, and sometimes took them up, tho' even then they scarce knew what to do with them, and were always very backward to punish them, but often too they forced them from Place to Place, till they were oblig'd to come back again to London. I have, since my knowing this Story of John and his Brother, enquir'd and found, that there were a great many of the poor disconsolate People, as above, fled into the Country every way, and some of them got little Sheds, and Barns, and Out-houses to live in, where they cou'd obtain so much Kindness of the Country, and especially where they had any the least satisfactory Account to give of themselves, and particularly that they did not come out of London too late. But others, and that in great Numbers, built themselves little Hutts and Retreats in the Fields and Woods, and liv'd like Hermits in Holes and Caves, or any Place they cou'd find; and where, we may be sure, they suffer'd great Extremities, such that many of them were oblig'd to come back again whatever the Danger was; and so those little Huts were often found empty, and the Country People suppos'd the Inhabitants lay Dead in them of the Plague, and would not go near them for fear, no not in a great while; nor is it unlikely but that some of the unhappy Wanderers might die so all alone, even sometimes for want of Help, as particularly in one Tent or Hutt, was found a Man dead, and on the Gate of a Field just by, was cut with his Knife in uneven Letters, the following Words, by which it may be suppos'd the other Man escap'd, or that one dying first, the other bury'd him as well as he could; O mIsErY! We BoTH ShaLL DyE, WoE, WoE. I have given an Account already of what I found to ha' been the Case down the River among the Sea-faring Men, how the Ships lay in the Offing, as 'tis call'd, in Rows or Lines a-stern of one another, quite down from the Pool as far as I could see. I have been told, that they lay in the same manner quite down the River as low as Gravesend, and some far beyond, even every where, or in every Place where they cou'd ride with Safety as to Wind and Weather; Nor did I ever hear that the Plague reach'd to any of the People on board those Ships, except such as lay up in the Pool, or as high as Deptford Reach, altho' the People went frequently on Shoar to the Country Towns and Villages, and Farmers Houses, to buy fresh Provisions, Fowls, Pigs, Calves, and the like for their Supply. Likewise I found that the Watermen on the River above the Bridge, found means to convey themselves away up the River as far as they cou'd go; and that they had, many of them, their whole Families in their Boats, cover'd with Tilts and Bales,* as they call them, and furnish'd with Straw within for their Lodging; and that they lay thus all along by the Shoar in the Marshes, some of them setting up little Tents with their Sails, and so lying under them on Shoar in the Day, and going into their Boats at Night; and in this manner, as I have heard, the River-sides were lin'd with Boats and People as long as they had any thing to subsist on, or cou'd get any thing of the Country; and indeed the Country People, as well Gentlemen as others, on these and all other Occasions, were very forward to relieve them, but they were by no means willing to receive them into their Towns and Houses, and for that we cannot blame them. There was one unhappy Citizen, within my Knowledge, who had been Visited in a dreadful manner, so that his Wife and all his Children were Dead, and himself and two Servants only left, with an elderly Woman a near Relation, who had nurs'd those that were dead as well as she could: This disconsolate Man goes to a Village near the Town, tho' not within the Bills of Mortality, and finding an empty House there, enquires out the Owner, and took the House: After a few Days he got a Cart and loaded it with Goods, and carries them down to the House; the People of the Village oppos'd his driving the Cart along, but with some Arguings, and some Force, the Men that drove the Cart along, got through the Street up to the Door of the House, there the Constable resisted him again, and would not let them be brought in. The Man caus'd the Goods to be unloaden and lay'd at the Door, and sent the Cart away; upon which they carry'd the Man before a Justice of Peace; that is to say, they commanded him to go, which he did. The Justice order'd him to cause the Cart to fetch away the Goods again, which he refused to do; upon which the Justice order'd the Constable to pursue the Carters and fetch them back, and make them re-load the Goods and carry them away, or to set them in the Stocks till they came for farther Orders; and if they could not find them, nor the Man would not consent to take them away, they should cause them to be drawn with Hooks from the House-Door and burnt in the Street. The poor distress'd Man upon this fetch'd the Goods again, but with grievous Cries and Lamentations at the hardship of his Case. But there was no Remedy; Self-preservation oblig'd the People to those Severities, which they wou'd not otherwise have been concern'd in: Whether this poor Man liv'd or dy'd I cannot tell, but it was reported that he had the Plague upon him at that time; and perhaps the People might report that to justify their Usage of him; but it was not unlikely, that either he or his Goods, or both, were dangerous, when his whole Family had been dead of the Distemper so little a while before. I kno' that the Inhabitants of the Towns adjacent to London, were much blamed for Cruelty to the poor People that ran from the Contagion in their Distress; and many very severe things were done, as may be seen from what has been said; but I cannot but say also that where there was room for Charity and Assistance to the People, without apparent Danger to themselves, they were willing enough to help and relieve them. But as every Town were indeed Judges in their own Case, so the poor People who ran abroad in their Extremities, were often ill-used and driven back again into the Town; and this caused infinite Exclamations and Out-cries against the Country Towns, and made the Clamour very popular. And yet more or less, maugre all their Caution, there was not a Town of any Note within ten (or I believe twenty) Miles of the City, but what was more or less Infected, and had some died among them. I have heard the Accounts of several; such as they were reckon'd up as follows. Another thing might render the Country more strict with respect to the Citizens, and especially with respect to the Poor; and this was what I hinted at before, namely, that there was a seeming propensity, or a wicked Inclination in those that were Infected to infect others. There have been great Debates among our Physicians, as to the Reason of this; some will have it to be in the Nature of the Disease, and that it impresses every one that is seized upon by it, with a kind of a Rage, and a hatred against their own Kind, as if there was a malignity, not only in the Distemper to communicate it self, but in the very Nature of Man, prompting him with evil Will, or an evil Eye, that as they say in the Case of a mad Dog, who tho' the gentlest Creature before of any of his Kind, yet then will fly upon and bite any one that comes next him and those as soon as any, who had been most observ'd by him before. Others plac'd it to the Account of the Coruption of humane Nature, which cannot bear to see itself more miserable than others of its own Species, and has a kind of involuntary Wish, that all Men were as unhappy, or in as bad a Condition as itself. Others say, it was only a kind of Desperation, not knowing or regarding what they did, and consequently unconcern'd at the Danger or Safety, not only of any Body near them, but even of themselves also: And indeed when Men are once come to a Condition to abandon themselves, and be unconcern'd for the Safety, or at the Danger of themselves, it cannot be so much wondered that they should be careless of the Safety of other People. But I choose to give this grave Debate a quite different turn, and answer it or resolve it all by saying, That I do not grant the Fact. On the contrary, I say, that the Thing is not really so, but that it was a general Complaint rais'd by the People inhabiting the out-lying Villages against the Citizens, to justify, or at least excuse those Hardships and Severities so much talk'd of, and in which Complaints, both Sides may be said to have injur'd one another; that is to say, the Citizens pressing to be received and harbour'd in time of Distress, and with the Plague upon them, complain of the Cruelty and Injustice of the Country People, in being refused Entrance, and forc'd back again with their Goods and Families; and the Inhabitants finding themselves so imposed upon, and the Citizens breaking in as it were upon them whether they would or no, complain, that when they were infected, they were not only regardless of others, but even willing to infect them; neither of which were really true, that is to say, in the Colours they were describ'd in. It is true, there is something to be said for the frequent Alarms which were given to the Country, of the resolution of the People in London to come out by Force, not only for Relief, but to Plunder and Rob, that they ran about the Streets with the Distemper upon them without any control; and that no Care was taken to shut up Houses, and confine the sick People from infecting others; whereas, to do the Londoners Justice, they never practised such things, except in such particular Cases as I have mention'd above, and such-like. On the other Hand every thing was managed with so much Care, and such excellent Order was observ'd in the whole City and Suburbs, by the Care of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen; and by the Justices of the Peace, Churchwardens, &c. in the out-Parts; that London may be a Pattern to all the Cities in the World for the good Government and the excellent Order that was every where kept, even in the time of the most violent Infection; and when the People were in the utmost Consternation and Distress. But of this I shall speak by itself. One thing, it is to be observ'd, was owing principally to the Prudence of the Magistrates, and ought to be mention'd to their Honour, (viz.) The Moderation which they used in the great and difficult Work of shutting up of Houses: It is true, as I have mentioned, that the shutting up of Houses was a great Subject of Discontent, and I may say indeed the only Subject of Discontent among the People at that time; for the confining the Sound in the same House with the Sick, was counted very terrible, and the Complaints of People so confin'd were very grievous; they were heard into the very Streets, and they were sometimes such that called for Resentment, tho' oftner for Compassion; they had no way to converse with any of their Friends but out at their Windows, where they wou'd make such piteous Lamentations, as often mov'd the Hearts of those they talk'd with, and of others who passing by heard their Story; and as those Complaints oftentimes reproach'd the Severity, and sometimes the Insolence of the Watchmen plac'd at their Doors, those Watchmen wou'd answer saucily enough; and perhaps be apt to affront the People who were in the Street talking to the said Families; for which, or for their ill Treatment of the Families, I think seven or eight of them in several Places were kill'd; I know not whether I shou'd say murthered or not, because I cannot enter into the particular Cases. It is true, the Watchmen were on their Duty, and acting in the Post where they were plac'd by a lawful Authority; and killing any publick legal Officer in the Execution of his Office, is always in the Language of the Law call'd Murther. But as they were not authoriz'd by the Magistrate's Instructions, or by the Power they acted under, to be injurious or abusive, either to the People who were under their Observation, or to any that concern'd themselves for them; so when they did so, they might be said to act themselves, not their Office; to act as private Persons, not as Persons employ'd; and consequently if they brought Mischief upon themselves by such an undue Behaviour, that Mischief was upon their own Heads; and indeed they had so much the hearty Curses of the People, whether they deserv'd it or not, that whatever befel them no body pitied them, and every Body was apt to say, they deserv'd it, whatever it was; nor do I remember that any Body was ever punish'd, at least to any considerable Degree, for whatever was done to the Watchmen that guarded their Houses. What variety of Stratagems were used to escape and get out of Houses thus shut up, by which the Watchmen were deceived or overpower'd, and that the People got away, I have taken notice of already, and shall say no more to that: But I say the Magistrates did moderate and ease Families upon many Occasions in this Case, and particularly in that of taking away, or suffering to be remov'd the sick Persons out of such Houses, when they were willing to be remov'd either to a Pest-House, or other Places, and sometimes giving the well Persons in the Family so shut up, leave to remove upon Information given that they were well, and that they would confine themselves in such Houses where they went, so long as should be requir'd of them. The Concern also of the Magistrates for the supplying such poor Families as were infected; I say, supplying them with Necessaries, as well Physick as Food, was very great, and in which they did not content themselves with giving the necessary Orders to the Officers appointed, but the Aldermen in Person, and on Horseback frequently rid to such Houses, and caus'd the People to be ask'd at their Windows, whether they were duly attended, or not? Also, whether they wanted any thing that was necessary, and if the Officers had constantly carry'd their Messages, and fetch'd them such things as they wanted, or not? And if they answered in the Affirmative, all was well; but if they complain'd, that they were ill supply'd, and that the Officer did not do his Duty, or did not treat them civilly, they (the Officers) were generally remov'd, and others plac'd in their stead. It is true, such Complaint might be unjust, and if the Officer had such Arguments to use as would convince the Magistrate, that he was right, and that the People had injur'd him, he was continued, and they reproved. But this part could not well bear a particular Inquiry, for the Parties could very ill be brought face to face, and a Complaint could not be well heard and answer'd in the Street, from the Windows, as was the Case then; the Magistrates therefore generally chose to favour the People, and remove the Man, as what seem'd to be the least Wrong, and of the least ill Consequence; seeing, if the Watchman was injur'd yet they could readily make him amends by giving him another Post of the like Nature; but if the Family was injur'd, there was no Satisfaction could be made to them, the Damage perhaps being irreparable, as it concern'd their Lives. A great variety of these Cases frequently happen'd between the Watchmen and the poor People shut up, besides those I formerly mention'd about escaping; sometimes the Watchmen were absent, sometimes drunk, sometimes asleep when the People wanted them, and such never fail'd to be punish'd severely, as indeed they deserv'd. But after all that was or could be done in these Cases, the shutting up of Houses, so as to confine those that were well with those that were sick, had very great Inconveniences in it, and some that were very tragical, and which merited to have been consider'd if there had been room for it; but it was authoriz'd by a Law, it had the publick Good in view, as the End chiefly aim'd at, and all the private Injuries that were done by the putting it in Execution, must be put to the account of the publick Benefit. It is doubtful to this day, whether in the whole it contributed any thing to the stop of the Infection, and indeed, I cannot say it did; for nothing could run with greater Fury and Rage than the Infection did when it was in its chief Violence; tho' the Houses infected were shut up as exactly, and as effectually as it was possible. Certain it is, that if all the infected Persons were effectually shut in, no sound Person could have been infected by them, because they could not have come near them. But the Case was this, and I shall only touch it here, namely, that the Infection was propagated insensibly, and by such Persons as were not visibly infected, who neither knew who they infected, or who they were infected by. A House in White-Chapel was shut up for the sake of one Infected Maid, who had only Spots, not the Tokens come out upon her, and recover'd; yet these People obtain'd no Liberty to stir, neither for Air or Exercise forty Days; want of Breath, Fear, Anger, Vexation, and all the other Griefs attending such an injurious Treatment, cast the Mistress of the Family into a Fever, and Visitors came into the House, and said it was the Plague, tho' the Physicians declar'd it was not; however the Family were oblig'd to begin their Quarantine anew, on the Report of the Visitor or Examiner, tho' their former Quarantine wanted but a few Days of being finish'd. This oppress'd them so with Anger and Grief, and, as before, straiten'd them also so much as to Room, and for want of Breathing and free Air, that most of the Family fell sick, one of one Distemper, one of another, chiefly Scorbutick Ailments; only one a violent Cholick, 'till after several prolongings of their Confinement, some or other of those that came in with the Visitors to inspect the Persons that were ill, in hopes of releasing them, brought the Distemper with them, and infected the whole House, and all or most of them died, not of the Plague, as really upon them before, but of the Plague that those People brought them, who should ha' been careful to have protected them from it; and this was a thing which frequently happen'd, and was indeed one of the worst Consequences of shutting Houses up. I had about this time a little Hardship put upon me, which I was at first greatly afflicted at, and very much disturb'd about; tho' as it prov'd, it did not expose me to any Disaster; and this was being appointed by the Alderman of Portsoken Ward, one of the Examiners of the Houses in the Precinct where I liv'd; we had a large Parish, and had no less than eighteen Examiners, as the Order call'd us, the People call'd us Visitors. I endeavour'd with all my might to be excus'd from such an Employment, and used many Arguments with the Alderman's Deputy to be excus'd; particularly I alledged, that I was against shutting up Houses at all, and that it would be very hard to oblige me, to be an Instrument in that which was against my Judgment, and which I did verily believe would not answer the End it was intended for, but all the Abatement I could get was only, that whereas the Officer was appointed by my Lord Mayor to continue two Months, I should be obliged to hold it but three Weeks, on Condition, nevertheless that I could then get some other sufficient Housekeeper to serve the rest of the Time for me, which was, in short, but a very small Favour, it being very difficult to get any Man to accept of such an Employment, that was fit to be intrusted with it. It is true that shutting up of Houses had one Effect, which I am sensible was of Moment, namely, it confin'd the distemper'd People, who would otherwise have been both very troublesome and very dangerous in their running about Streets with the Distemper upon them, which when they were delirious, they would have done in a most frightful manner; and as indeed they began to do at first very much, 'till they were thus restrain'd; nay, so very open they were, that the Poor would go about and beg at peoples Doors, and say they had the Plague upon them, and beg Rags for their Sores, or both, or any thing that delirious Nature happen'd to think of. A poor unhappy Gentlewoman, a substantial Citizen's Wife was (if the Story be true) murther'd by one of these Creatures in Aldersgate-street, or that Way: He was going along the Street, raving mad to be sure, and singing, the People only said, he was drunk; but he himself said, he had the Plague upon him, which, it seems, was true; and meeting this Gentlewoman, he would kiss her; she was terribly frighted as he was only a rude Fellow, and she run from him, but the Street being very thin of People, there was no body near enough to help her: When she saw he would overtake her, she turn'd, and gave him a Thrust so forcibly, he being but weak, and push'd him down backward: But very unhappily, she being so near, he caught hold of her, and pull'd her down also; and getting up first, master'd her, and kiss'd her; and which was worst of all, when he had done, told her he had the Plague, and why should not she have it as well as he. She was frighted enough before, being also young with Child; but when she heard him say, he had the Plague, she scream'd out and fell down in a Swoon, or in a Fit, which tho' she recover'd a little, yet kill'd her in a very few Days, and I never heard whether she had the Plague or no. Another infected Person came, and knock'd at the Door of a Citizen's House, where they knew him very well; the Servant let him in, and being told the Master of the House was above, he ran up, and came into the Room to them as the whole Family was at supper: They began to rise up a little surpriz'd, not knowing what the Matter was, but he bid them sit still, he only came to take his leave of them. They ask'd him, Why Mr.?Äî?Äîwhere are you going? Going, says he, I have got the Sickness, and shall die to morrow Night. 'Tis easie to believe, though not to describe the Consternation they were all in, the Women and the Man's Daughters which were but little Girls, were frighted almost to Death, and got up, one running out at one Door, and one at another, some down-Stairs and some up-Stairs, and getting together as well as they could, lock'd themselves into their Chambers, and screamed out at the Window for Help, as if they had been frighted out of their Wits: The Master more compos'd than they, tho' both frighted and provok'd, was going to lay Hands on him, and thro' him down Stairs, being in a Passion, but then considering a little the Condition of the Man and the Danger of touching him, Horror seiz'd his Mind, and he stood still like one astonished. The poor distemper'd Man all this while, being as well diseas'd in his Brain as in his Body, stood still like one amaz'd; at length he turns round, Ay! says he, with all the seeming calmness imaginable, Is it so with you all! Are you all disturb'd at me? why then I'll e'en go home and die there. And so he goes immediately down Stairs: The Servant that had let him in goes down after him with a Candle, but was afraid to go past him and open the Door, so he stood on the Stairs to see what he wou'd do; the Man went and open'd the Door, and went out and flung the Door after him: It was some while before the Family recover'd the Fright, but as no ill Consequence attended, they have had occasion since to speak of it (you may be sure) with great Satisfaction. Tho' the Man was gone it was some time, nay, as I heard, some Days before they recover'd themselves of the Hurry they were in, nor did they go up and down the House with any assurance, till they had burnt a great variety of Fumes and Perfumes in all the Rooms, and made a great many Smoaks of Pitch, of Gunpowder, and of Sulphur, all separately shifted; and washed their Clothes, and the like: As to the poor Man whether he liv'd or dy'd I don't remember. It is most certain, that if by the Shutting up of Houses the sick had not been confin'd, multitudes who in the height of their Fever were Delirious and Distracted, wou'd ha' been continually running up and down the Streets, and even as it was, a very great number did so, and offer'd all sorts of Violence to those they met, even just as a mad Dog runs on and bites at every one he meets; nor can I doubt but that shou'd one of those infected diseased Creatures have bitten any Man or Woman, while the Frenzy of the Distemper was upon them, they, I mean the Person so wounded, wou'd as certainly ha' been incurably infected, as one that was sick before and had the Tokens upon him. I heard of one infected Creature, who running out of his Bed in his Shirt, in the anguish and agony of his Swellings, of which he had three upon him, got his Shoes on and went to put on his Coat, but the Nurse resisting and snatching the Coat from him, he threw her down, run over her, run down Stairs and into the Street directly to the Thames in his Shirt, the Nurse running after him, and calling to the Watch to stop him; but the Watchmen frighted at the Man, and afraid to touch him, let him go on; upon which he ran down to the Stillyard Stairs, threw away his Shirt, and plung'd into the Thames, and, being a good swimmer, swam quite over the River; and the Tide being coming in, as they call it, that is running West-ward, he reached the Land not till he came about the Falcon Stairs, where landing, and finding no People there, it being in the Night, he ran about the Streets there, Naked as he was, for a good while, when it being by that time High-water, he takes the River again, and swam back to the Still-yard, landed, ran up the Streets again to his own House, knocking at the Door, went up the Stairs, and into his Bed again; and that this terrible Experiment cur'd him of the Plague, that is to say, that the violent Motion of his Arms and Legs stretch'd the Parts where the Swellings he had upon him were, that is to say under his Arms and his Groin, and caused them to ripen and break; and that the cold of the Water abated the Fever in his Blood. I have only to add, that I do not relate this any more than some of the other, as a Fact within my own Knowledge, so as that I can vouch the Truth of them, and especially that of the Man being cur'd by the extravagant Adventure, which I confess I do not think very possible, but it may serve to confirm the many desperate Things which the distress'd People falling into, Deliriums, and what we call Lightheadedness, were frequently run upon at that time, and how infinitely more such there wou'd ha' been, if such People had not been confin'd by the shutting up of Houses; and this I take to be the best, if not the only good thing which was perform'd by that severe Method. On the other Hand, the Complaints and the Murmurings were very bitter against the thing itself. It would pierce the Hearts of all that came by to hear the piteous Cries of those infected People, who being thus out of their Understandings by the Violence of their Pain, or the heat of their Blood, were either shut in, or perhaps ty'd in their Beds and Chairs, to prevent their doing themselves Hurt, and who wou'd make a dreadful outcry at their being confin'd, and at their being not permitted to die at large, as they call'd it, and as they wou'd ha' done before. This running of distemper'd People about the Streets was very dismal, and the Magistrates did their utmost to prevent it, but as it was generally in the Night and always sudden, when such attempts were made, the Officers cou'd not be at hand to prevent it, and even when any got out in the Day, the Officers appointed did not care to meddle with them, because, as they were all grievously infected to be sure when they were come to that Height, so they were more than ordinarily infectious, and it was one of the most dangerous Things that cou'd be to touch them; on the other Hand, they generally ran on, not knowing what they did, till they dropp'd down stark Dead, or till they had exhausted their Spirits so, as that they wou'd fall and then die in perhaps half an Hour or an Hour, and which was most piteous to hear, they were sure to come to themselves intirely in that half Hour or Hour, and then to make most grievous and piercing Cries and Lamentations in the deep afflicting Sense of the Condition they were in. This was much of it before the Order for shutting up of Houses was strictly put in Execution, for at first the Watchmen were not so vigorous and severe, as they were afterward in the keeping the People in; that is to say, before they were, I mean some of them, severely punish'd for their Neglect, failing in their Duty, and letting People who were under their Care slip away, or conniving at their going abroad whether sick or well. But after they saw the Officers appointed to examine into their Conduct, were resolv'd to have them do their Duty, or be punish'd for the omission, they were more exact, and the People were strictly restrain'd; which was a thing they took so ill, and bore so impatiently, that their Discontents can hardly be describ'd: But there was an absolute Necessity for it, that must be confess'd, unless some other Measures had been timely enter'd upon, and it was too late for that. Had not this particular of the Sick's been restrain'd as above, been our Case at that time, London wou'd ha' been the most dreadful Place that ever was in the World; there wou'd for ought I know have as many People dy'd in the Streets as dy'd in their Houses; for when the Distemper was at its height, it generally made them Raving and Delirious, and when they were so, they wou'd never be perswaded to keep in their Beds but by Force; and many who were not ty'd, threw themselves out of Windows, when they found they cou'd not get leave to go out of their Doors. It was for want of People conversing one with another, in this time of Calamity, that it was impossible any particular Person cou'd come at the Knowledge of all the extraordinary Cases that occurr'd in different Families; and particularly I believe it was never known to this Day how many People in their Deliriums drowned themselves in the Thames, and in the River which runs from the Marshes by Hackney, which we generally call'd Ware River, or Hackney River; as to those which were set down in the Weekly Bill, they were indeed few; nor cou'd it be known of any of those, whether they drowned themselves by Accident or not: But I believe, I might reckon up more, who, within the compass of my Knowledge or Observation, really drowned themselves in that Year, than are put down in the Bill of all put together, for many of the Bodies were never found, who yet were known to be so lost; and the like in other Methods of Self-Destruction. There was also One Man in or about Whitecross-street, burnt himself to Death in his Bed; some said it was done by himself, others that it was by the Treachery of the Nurse that attended him; but that he had the Plague upon him was agreed by all. It was a merciful Disposition of Providence also, and which I have many times thought of at that time, that no Fires, or no considerable ones at least, happen'd in the City, during that Year, which, if it had been otherwise, would have been very dreadful; and either the People must have let them alone unquenched, or have come together in great Crowds and Throngs, unconcern'd at the Danger of the Infection, not concerned at the Houses they went into, at the Goods they handled, or at the Persons or the People they came among: But so it was that excepting that in Cripplegate Parish, and two or three little Eruptions of Fires, which were presently extinguish'd, there was no Disaster of that kind happen'd in the whole Year. They told us a Story of a House in a Place call'd Swan-Alley, passing from Goswell-street near the End of Oldstreet into St. John-street, that a Family was infected there, in so terrible a Manner that every one of the House died; the last Person lay dead on the Floor, and as it is supposed, had laid her self all along to die just before the Fire; the Fire, it seems had fallen from its Place, being of Wood, and had taken hold of the Boards and the Joists they lay on, and burnt as far as just to the Body, but had not taken hold of the dead Body, tho' she had little more than her Shift on, and had gone out of itself, not hurting the Rest of the House, tho' it was a slight Timber House. How true this might be, I do not determine, but the City being to suffer severely the next Year by Fire, this Year it felt very little of that Calamity. Indeed considering the Deliriums, which the Agony threw People into, and how I have mention'd in their Madness, when they were alone, they did many desperate Things; it was very strange there were no more Disasters of that kind. It has been frequently ask'd me, and I cannot say, that I ever knew how to give a direct Answer to it, How it came to pass that so many infected People appear'd abroad in the Streets, at the same time that the Houses which were infected were so vigilantly searched, and all of them shut up and guarded as they were. I confess, I know not what Answer to give to this, unless it be this, that in so great and populous a City as this is, it was impossible to discover every House that was infected as soon as it was so, or to shut up all the Houses that were infected: so that People had the Liberty of going about the Streets, even where they pleased, unless they were known to belong to such and such infected Houses. It is true, that as several Physicians told my Lord Mayor, the Fury of the Contagion was such at some particular Times, and People sicken'd so fast, and died so soon, that it was impossible and indeed to no purpose to go about to enquire who was sick and who was well, or to shut them up with such Exactness, as the thing required; almost every House in a whole Street being infected, and in many Places every Person in some of the Houses; and that which was still worse, by the time that the Houses were known to be infected, most of the Persons infected would be stone dead, and the rest run away for Fear of being shut up; so that it was to very small Purpose, to call them infected Houses and shut them up; the Infection having ravaged, and taken its Leave of the House, before it was really known, that the Family was any way touch'd. This might be sufficient to convince any reasonable Person, that as it was not in the Power of the Magistrates, or of any human Methods or Policy, to prevent the spreading the Infection; so that this way of shutting up of Houses was perfectly insufficient for that End. Indeed it seemed to have no manner of publick Good in it, equal or proportionable to the grievous Burthen that it was to the particular Families, that were so shut up; and as far as I was employed by the publick in directing that Severity, I frequently found occasion to see, that it was incapable of answering the End. For Example as I was desired as a Visitor or Examiner to enquire into the Particulars of several Families which were infected, we scarce came to any House where the Plague had visibly appear'd in the Family, but that some of the Family were Fled and gone; the Magistrates would resent this, and charge the Examiners with being remiss in their Examination or Inspection: But by that means Houses were long infected before it was known. Now, as I was in this dangerous Office but half the appointed time, which was two Months, it was long enough to inform myself, that we were no way capable of coming at the Knowledge of the true state of any Family, but by enquiring at the Door, or of the Neighbours; as for going into every House to search, that was a part no Authority wou'd offer to impose on the Inhabitants, or any Citizen wou'd undertake, for it wou'd ha' been exposing us to certain Infection and Death, and to the Ruine of our own Families as well as of ourselves, nor wou'd any Citizen of Probity, and that cou'd be depended upon, have staid in the Town, if they had been made liable to such a Severity. Seeing then that we cou'd come at the certainty of Things by no Method but that of Enquiry of the Neighbours, or of the Family, and on that we cou'd not justly depend, it was not possible, but that the incertainty of this Matter wou'd remain as above. It is true, Masters of Families were bound by the Order, to give Notice to the Examiner of the Place wherein he liv'd, within two Hours after he shou'd discover it, of any Person being sick in his House, that is to say, having Signs of the Infection, but they found so many ways to evade this, and excuse their Negligence, that they seldom gave that Notice, till they had taken Measures to have every one Escape out of the House, who had a mind to Escape, whether they were Sick or Sound; and while this was so, it is easie to see, that the shutting up of Houses was no way to be depended upon, as a sufficient Method for putting a stop to the Infection, because, as I have said elsewhere, many of those that so went out of those infected Houses, had the Plague really upon them, tho' they might really think themselves Sound: And some of these were the People that walk'd the Streets till they fell down Dead, not that they were suddenly struck with the Distemper, as with a Bullet that kill'd with the Stroke, but that they really had the Infection in their Blood long before, only, that, as it prey'd secretly on the Vitals, it appear'd not till it seiz'd the Heart with a mortal Power, and the Patient died in a Moment, as with a sudden Fainting, or an Apoplectick Fit. I know that some, even of our Physicians, thought, for a time, that those People that so died in the Streets, were seiz'd but that Moment they fell, as if they had been touch'd by a Stroke from Heaven, as Men are kill'd by a flash of Lightning; but they found Reason to alter their Opinion afterward; for upon examining the Bodies of such after they were Dead, they always either had Tokens upon them, or other evident Proofs of the Distemper having been longer upon them, than they had otherwise expected. This often was the Reason that, as I have said, we, that were Examiners, were not able to come at the Knowledge of the Infection being enter'd into a House, till it was too late to shut it up; and sometimes not till the People that were left, were all Dead. In Petticoat-Lane two Houses together were infected, and several People sick; but the Distemper was so well conceal'd, the Examiner, who was my Neighbour, got no Knowledge of it, till Notice was sent him that the People were all Dead, and that the Carts should call there to fetch them away. The two Heads of the Families concerted their Measures, and so order'd their Matters, as that when the Examiner was in the Neighbourhood, they appeared generally one at a time, and answered, that is, lied for one another, or got some of the Neighbourhood to say they were all in Health, and perhaps knew no better, till Death making it impossible to keep it any longer as a Secret, the dead-Carts were call'd in the Night, the Houses to both, and so it became publick: But when the Examiner order'd the Constable to shut up the Houses, there was no Body left in them but three People, two in one House, and one in the other just dying, and a Nurse in each House, who acknowledg'd that they had buried five before, that the Houses had been infected nine or ten Days, and that for all the rest of the two Families, which were many, they were gone, some sick, some well, or whether sick or well could not be known. In like manner, at another House in the same Lane, a Man having his Family infected, but very unwilling to be shut up, when he could conceal it no longer, shut up himself; that is to say, he set the great red Cross upon his Door with the words LORD HAVE MERCY UPON US; and so deluded the Examiner, who suppos'd it had been done by the Constable, by Order of the other Examiner, for there were two Examiners to every District or Precinct; by this means he had free egress and regress into his House again, and out of it, as he pleas'd notwithstanding it was infected; till at length his Stratagem was found out, and then he, with the sound part of his Servants and Family, made off and escaped; so they were not shut up at all. These things made it very hard, if not impossible, as I have said, to prevent the spreading of an Infection by the shutting up of Houses, unless the People would think the shutting up of their Houses no Grievance, and be so willing to have it done, as that they wou'd give Notice duly and faithfully to the Magistrates of their being infected, as soon as it was known by themselves: But as that can not be expected from them, and the Examiners can not be supposed, as above, to go into their Houses to visit and search, all the good of shutting up Houses, will be defeated, and few Houses will be shut up in time, except those of the Poor, who can not conceal it, and of some People who will be discover'd by the Terror and Consternation which the Thing put them into. I got myself discharg'd of the dangerous Office I was in, as soon as I cou'd get another admitted, who I had obtain'd for a little Money to accept of it; and so, instead of serving the two Months, which was directed, I was not above three Weeks in it; and a great while too, considering it was in the Month of August, at which time the Distemper began to rage with great Violence at our end of the Town.* In the execution of this Office, I cou'd not refrain speaking my Opinion among my Neighbours, as to this shutting up the People in their Houses; in which we saw most evidently the Severities that were used tho' grievous in themselves, had also this particular Objection against them, namely, that they did not answer the End, as I have said, but that the distemper'd People went Day by Day about the Streets; and it was our united Opinion, that a Method to have removed the Sound from the Sick in Case of a particular House being visited, wou'd ha' been much more reasonable on many Accounts, leaving no Body with the sick Persons, but such as shou'd on such Occasion request to stay and declare themselves content to be shut up with them. Our Scheme for removing those that were Sound from those that were Sick, was only in such Houses as were infected, and confining the sick was no Confinement; those that cou'd not stir, wou'd not complain, while they were in their Senses, and while they had the Power of judging: Indeed, when they came to be Delirious and Light-headed, then they wou'd cry out of the Cruelty of being confin'd; but for the removal of those that were well, we thought it highly reasonable and just, for their own sakes, they shou'd be remov'd from the Sick, and that, for other People's Safety, they shou'd keep retir'd for a while, to see that they were sound, and might not infect others; and we thought twenty or thirty Days enough for this. Now certainly, if Houses had been provided on purpose for those that were sound to perform this demy Quarantine in, they wou'd have much less Reason to think themselves injur'd in such a restraint, than in being confin'd with infected People, in the Houses where they liv'd. It is here, however, to be observ'd, that after the Funerals became so many, that People could not Toll the Bell, Mourn, or Weep, or wear Black for one another, as they did before; no, nor so much as make Coffins for those that died; so after a while the fury of the Infection appeared to be so encreased, that in short, they shut up no Houses at all; it seem'd enough that all the Remedies of that Kind had been used till they were found fruitless, and that the Plague spread itself with an irresistible Fury, so that, as the Fire the succeeding Year, spread itself and burnt with such Violence, that the Citizens in Despair, gave over their Endeavours to extinguish it, so in the Plague, it came at last to such Violence that the People sat still looking at one another, and seem'd quite abandon'd to Despair; whole Streets seem'd to be desolated, and not to be shut up only, but to be emptied of their Inhabitants; Doors were left open, Windows stood shattering with the Wind in empty Houses, for want of People to shut them: In a Word, People began to give up themselves to their Fears, and to think that all regulations and Methods were in vain, and that there was nothing to be hoped for, but an universal Desolation; and it was even in the height of this general Despair, that it pleased God to stay his Hand, and to slacken the Fury of the Contagion, in such a manner as was even surprizing like its beginning, and demonstrated it to be his own particular Hand, and that above, if not without the Agency of Means, as I shall take Notice of in its proper Place. But I must still speak of the Plague as in its height, raging even to Desolation, and the People under the most dreadful Consternation, even, as I have said, to Despair. It is hardly credible to what Excesses the Passions of Men carry'd them in this Extremity of the Distemper; and this Part, I think, was as moving as the rest; What cou'd affect a Man in his full Power of Reflection; and what could make deeper Impressions on the Soul, than to see a Man almost Naked and got out of his House, or perhaps out of his Bed into the Street, come out of Harrow-Alley, a populous Conjunction or Collection of Alleys, Courts, and Passages, in the Butcher-row in White-chappel? I say, What could be more Affecting, than to see this poor Man come out into the open Street, run Dancing and Singing, and making a thousand antick Gestures, with five or six Women and Children running after him, crying, and calling upon him, for the Lord's sake to come back, and entreating the help of others to bring him back, but all in vain, no Body daring to lay a Hand upon him, or to come near him. This was a most grievous and afflicting thing to me, who saw it all from my own Windows; for all this while, the poor afflicted Man, was, as I observ'd it, even then in the utmost Agony of Pain, having, as they said, two Swellings upon him, which cou'd not be brought to break, or to suppurate; but by laying strong Causticks on them, the Surgeons had, it seems, hopes to break them, which Causticks were then upon him, burning his Flesh as with a hot Iron: I cannot say what became of this poor Man, but I think he continu'd roving about in that manner till he fell down and Died. No wonder the Aspect of the City itself was frightful, the usual concourse of People in the Streets, and which used to be supplied from our end of the Town, was abated; the Exchange was not kept shut* indeed, but it was no more frequented; the Fires were lost;* they had been almost extinguished for some Days by a very smart and hasty Rain: But that was not all, some of the Physicians insisted that they were not only no Benefit, but injurious* to the Health of People: This they made a loud Clamour about, and complained to the Lord Mayor about it: On the other Hand, others of the same Faculty, and Eminent too, oppos'd them, and gave their Reasons why the Fires were and must be useful to asswage the Violence of the Distemper. I cannot give a full Account of their Arguments on both Sides, only this I remember, that they cavil'd very much with one another; some were for Fires, but that they must be made of Wood and not Coal,* and of particular sorts of Wood too, such as Fir in particular, or Cedar, because of the strong effluvia of Turpentine; Others were for Coal and not Wood, because of the Sulphur and Bitumen; and others were for neither one or other. Upon the whole, the Lord Mayor ordered no more Fires, and especially on this Account, namely, that the Plague was so fierce that they saw evidently it defied all Means and rather seemed to encrease than decrease upon any application to check and abate it; and yet this Amazement of the Magistrates, proceeded rather from want of being able to apply any Means successfully, than from any unwillingness either to expose themselves, or undertake the Care and Weight of Business; for, to do them Justice, they neither spared their Pains or their Persons; but nothing answer'd, the Infection rag'd, and the People were now frighted and terrified to the last Degree, so that, as I may say, they gave themselves up, and, as I mention'd above, abandon'd themselves to their Despair. But let me observe here, that when I say the People abandon'd themselves to Despair, I do not mean to what Men call a religious Despair, or a Despair of their eternal State, but I mean a Despair of their being able to escape the Infection, or to out-live the Plague, which they saw was so raging and so irresistible in its Force, that indeed few People that were touch'd with it in its height about August, and September, escap'd: And, which is very particular, contrary to its ordinary Operation in June and July, and the beginning of August, when, as I have observ'd many were infected, and continued so many Days, and then went off, after having had the Poison in their Blood a long time; but now on the contrary, most of the People who were taken during the two last Weeks in August, and in the three first Weeks in September, generally died in two or three Days at farthest, and many the very same Day they were taken; Whether the Dog-days, or as our Astrologers pretended to express themselves, the Influence of the Dog-Star* had that malignant Effect; or all those who had the seeds of Infection before in them, brought it up to a maturity at that time altogether I know not; but this was the time when it was reported, that above 3000 People died in one Night; and they that wou'd have us believe they more critically observ'd it, pretend to say, that they all died within the space of two Hours, (viz.) Between the Hours of One and three in the Morning. As to the Suddenness of People's dying at this time more than before, there were innumerable Instances of it, and I could name several in my Neighbourhood; one Family without the Barrs, and not far from me, were all seemingly well on the Monday, being Ten in Family, that Evening one Maid and one Apprentice were taken ill, and dy'd the next Morning, when the other Apprentice and two Children were touch'd, whereof one dy'd the same Evening, and the other two on Wednesday: In a Word, by Saturday at Noon, the Master, Mistress, four Children and four Servants were all gone, and the House left entirely empty, except an ancient Woman, who came in to take Charge of the Goods for the Master of the Family's Brother, who liv'd not far off, and who had not been sick. Many Houses were then left desolate, all the People being carry'd away dead, and especially in an Alley farther, on the same Side beyond the Barrs, going in at the Sign of Moses and Aaron; there were several Houses together, which (they said) had not one Person left alive in them, and some that dy'd last in several of those Houses, were left a little too long before they were fetch'd out to be bury'd; the Reason of which was not as some have written very untruly, that the living were not sufficient to bury the dead; but that the Mortality was so great in the Yard or Alley, that there was no Body left to give Notice to the Buriers or Sextons, that there were any dead Bodies there to be bury'd. It was said, how true I know not, that some of those Bodies were so much corrupted, and so rotten, that it was with Difficulty they were carry'd; and as the Carts could not come any nearer than to the Alley-Gate in the high Street, it was so much the more difficult to bring them along; but I am not certain how many Bodies were then left, I am sure that ordinarily it was not so. As I have mention'd how the People were brought into a Condition to despair of Life and abandon themselves, so this very Thing had a strange Effect among us for three or four Weeks, that is, it made them bold and venturous, they were no more shy of one another, or restrained within Doors, but went any where and every where, and began to converse; one would say to another, I do not ask you how you are, or say how I am, it is certain we shall all go, so 'tis no Matter who is sick or who is sound, and so they run desperately into any Place or any Company. As it brought the People into publick Company, so it was surprizing how it brought them to crowd into the Churches, they inquir'd no more into who they sat near to, or far from, what offensive Smells they met with, or what condition the People seemed to be in, but looking upon themselves all as so many dead Corpses, they came to the Churches without the least Caution, and crowded together, as if their Lives were of no Consequence, compar'd to the Work which they came about there: Indeed, the Zeal which they shew'd in Coming, and the Earnestness and Affection they shew'd in their Attention to what they heard, made it manifest what a Value People would all put upon the Worship of God, if they thought every Day they attended at the Church that it would be their Last. Nor was it without other strange Effects, for it took away all Manner of Prejudice at, or Scruple about the Person who they found in the Pulpit when they came to the Churches. It cannot be doubted, but that many of the Ministers of the Parish-Churches were cut off among others in so common and so dreadful a Calamity; and others had not Courage enough to stand it, but removed into the Country as they found Means for Escape; as then some Parish-Churches were quite vacant and forsaken, the People made no Scruple of desiring such Dissenters as had been a few Years before depriv'd of their Livings, by Virtue of the Act of Parliament call'd The Act of Uniformity,* to preach in the Churches, nor did the Church Ministers in that Case make any Difficulty of accepting their Assistance, so that many of those who they called silenced Ministers, had their Mouths open'd on this Occasion, and preach'd publickly to the People. Here we may observe, and I hope it will not be amiss to take notice of it, that a near View of Death would soon reconcile Men of good Principles one to another, and that it is chiefly owing to our easy Scituation in Life, and our putting these Things far from us, that our Breaches are fomented, ill Blood continued, Prejudices, Breach of Charity and of Christian Union so much kept and so far carry'd on among us, as it is: Another Plague Year would reconcile all these Differences, a close conversing with Death, or with Diseases that threaten Death, would scum off the Gall from our Tempers, remove the Animosities among us, and bring us to see with differing Eyes, than those which we look'd on Things with before; as the People who had been used to join with the Church, were reconcil'd at this Time, with the admitting the Dissenters to preach to them: So the Dissenters, who with an uncommon Prejudice, had broken off from the Communion of the Church of England, were now content to come to their Parish-Churches, and to conform to the Worship which they did not approve of before; but as the Terror of the Infection abated, those Things all returned again to their less desirable Channel, and to the Course they were in before. I mention this but historically, I have no mind to enter into Arguments to move either, or both Sides to a more charitable Compliance one with another; I do not see that it is probable such a Discourse would be either suitable or successful; the Breaches seem rather to widen, and tend to a widening farther, than to closing, and who am I that I should think myself able to influence either one Side or other? But this I may repeat again, that 'tis evident Death will reconcile us all; on the other Side the Grave we shall be all Brethren again: In Heaven, whither I hope we may come from all Parties and Perswasions, we shall find neither Prejudice or Scruple; there we shall be of one Principle and of one Opinion, why we cannot be content to go Hand in Hand to the Place where we shall join Heart and Hand without the least Hesitation, and with the most compleat Harmony and Affection; I say, why we cannot do so here I can say nothing to, neither shall I say any thing more of it, but that it remains to be lamented. I could dwell a great while upon the Calamities of this dreadful time, and go on to describe the Objects that appear'd among us every Day, the dreadful Extravagancies which the Distraction of sick People drove them into; how the Streets began now to be fuller of frightful Objects, and Families to be made even a Terror to themselves: But after I have told you, as I have above, that One Man being tyed in his Bed, and finding no other Way to deliver himself, set the Bed on fire with his Candle, which unhappily stood within his reach, and Burnt himself in his Bed. And how another, by the insufferable Torment he bore, daunced and sung naked in the Streets, not knowing one Extasie from another, I say, after I have mention'd these Things, What can be added more? What can be said to represent the Misery of these Times, more lively to the Reader, or to give him a more perfect Idea of a complicated Distress? I must acknowledge that this time was Terrible, that I was sometimes at the End of all my Resolutions, and that I had not the Courage that I had at the Beginning. As the Extremity brought other People abroad, it drove me Home, and except, having made my Voyage down to Blackwall and Greenwich, as I have related, which was an Excursion, I kept afterwards very much within Doors, as I had for about a Fortnight before; I have said already, that I repented several times that I had ventur'd to stay in Town, and had not gone away with my Brother, and his Family, but it was too late for that now; and after I had retreated and stay'd within Doors a good while, before my Impatience led me Abroad, then they call'd me, as I have said, to an ugly and dangerous Office, which brought me out again; but as that was expir'd, while the hight of the Distemper lasted, I retir'd again, and continued close ten or twelve Days more. During which many dismal Spectacles represented themselves in my View, out of my own Windows, and in our own Street, as that particularly from Harrow-Alley, of the poor outrageous Creature which danced and sung in his Agony, and many others there were: Scarce a Day or Night pass'd over, but some dismal Thing or other happened at the End of that Harrow-Alley, which was a Place full of poor People, most of them belonging to the Butchers, or to Employments depending upon the Butchery. Sometimes Heaps and Throngs of People would burst out of that Alley, most of them Women, making a dreadful Clamour, mixt or Compounded of Skreetches, Cryings and Calling one another, that we could not conceive what to make of it; almost all the dead Part of the Night the dead Cart stood at the End of that Alley, for if it went in it could not well turn again, and could go in but a little Way. There, I say, it stood to receive dead Bodies, and as the Church-Yard was but a little Way off, if it went away full it would soon be back again: It is impossible to describe the most horrible Cries and Noise the poor People would make at their bringing the dead Bodies of their Children and Friends out to the Cart, and by the Number one would have thought, there had been none left behind, or that there were People enough for a small City liveing in those Places: Several times they cryed Murther, sometimes Fire; but it was easie to perceive it was all Distraction, and the Complaints of Distress'd and distemper'd People. I believe it was every where thus at that time, for the Plague rag'd for six or seven Weeks beyond all that I have express'd; and came even to such a height, that in the Extremity, they began to break into that excellent Order, of which I have spoken so much, in behalf of the Magistrates, namely, that no dead Bodies were seen in the Streets or Burials in the Day-time for there was a Necessity, in this Extremity, to bear with its being otherwise, for a little while. One thing I cannot omit here, and indeed I thought it was extraordinary, at least, it seemed a remarkable Hand of Divine Justice, (viz.) That all the Predictors, Astrologers, Fortune-tellers, and what they call'd cunning-Men, Conjurers, and the like; calculators of Nativities, and dreamers of Dreams, and such People, were gone and vanish'd, not one of them was to be found: I am, verily, perswaded that a great Number of them fell in the heat of the Calamity, having ventured to stay upon the Prospect of getting great Estates; and indeed their Gain was but too great for a time through the Madness and Folly of the People; but now they were silent, many of them went to their long Home, not able to foretel their own Fate, or to calculate their own Nativities; some have been critical enough to say, that every one of them dy'd; I dare not affirm that; but this I must own, that I never heard of one of them that ever appear'd after the Calamity was over. But to return to my particular Observations, during this dreadful part of the Visitation: I am now come, as I have said, to the Month of September, which was the most dreadful of its kind, I believe, that ever London saw; for by all the Accounts which I have seen of the preceding Visitations which have been in London, nothing has been like it; the Number in the Weekly Bill amounting to almost 40,000* from the 22d of August, to the 26th of September, being but five Weeks, the particulars of the Bills are as follows, (viz.) This was a prodigious Number of itself, but if I should add the Reasons which I have to believe that this Account was deficient, and how deficient it was, you would with me, make no Scruple to believe that there died above ten Thousand a Week for all those Weeks, one Week with another, and a proportion for several Weeks both before and after: The Confusion among the People, especially within the City at that time, was inexpressible; the Terror was so great at last, that the Courage of the People appointed to carry away the Dead, began to fail them; nay, several of them died altho' they had the Distemper before, and were recover'd; and some of them drop'd down when they have been carrying the Bodies even at the Pitside, and just ready to throw them in; and this Confusion was greater in the City, because they had flatter'd themselves with Hopes of escaping: And thought the bitterness of Death was past: One Cart they told us, going up Shoreditch, was forsaken of the Drivers, or being left to one Man to drive, he died in the Street, and the Horses going on, overthrew the Cart, and left the Bodies, some thrown out here, some there, in a dismal manner; Another Cart was it seems found in the great Pit in Finsbury Fields, the Driver being Dead, or having been gone and abandon'd it, and the Horses running too near it, the Cart fell in and drew the Horses in also: It was suggested that the Driver was thrown in with it, and that the Cart fell upon him, by Reason his Whip was seen to be in the Pit among the Bodies; but that, I suppose, cou'd not be certain. In our Parish of Aldgate, the dead-Carts were several times, as I have heard, found standing at the Church-yard Gate, full of dead Bodies, but neither Bell man or Driver, or any one else with it; neither in these, or many other Cases, did they know what Bodies they had in their Cart, for sometimes they were let down with Ropes out of Balconies and out of Windows; and sometimes the Bearers brought them to the Cart, sometimes other People; nor, as the Men themselves said, did they trouble themselves to keep any Account of the Numbers. The Vigilance of the Magistrate was now put to the utmost Trial, and it must be confess'd, can never be enough acknowledg'd on this Occasion also; whatever Expence or Trouble they were at, two Things were never neglected in the City or Suburbs either. 1. Provisions were always to be had in full Plenty, and the Price not much rais'd neither, hardly worth speaking. 2. No dead Bodies lay unburied or uncovered; and if one walk'd from one end of the City to another, no Funeral or sign of it was to be seen in the Day-time,* except a little, as I have said above, in the three first Weeks in September. This last Article perhaps will hardly be believ'd, when some Accounts which others have published since that shall be seen, wherein they say, that the Dead lay unburied, which I am assured was utterly false; at least, if it had been any where so, it must ha' been in Houses where the Living were gone from the Dead, having found means, as I have observed, to Escape, and where no Notice was given to the Officers: All which amounts to nothing at all in the Case in Hand; for this I am positive in, having myself been employ'd a little in the Direction of that part in the Parish in which I liv'd, and where as great a Desolation was made in proportion to the Number of Inhabitants as was any where. I say, I am sure that there were no dead Bodies remain'd unburied; that is to say, none that the proper Officers knew of; none for want of People to carry them off, and Buriers to put them into the Ground and cover them; and this is sufficient to the Argument; for what might lie in Houses and Holes as in Moses and Aaron Alley is nothing; for it is most certain, they were buried as soon as they were found. As to the first Article, namely, of Provisions, the scarcity or dearness, tho' I have mention'd it before, and shall speak of it again; yet I must observe here, (1.) The Price of Bread in particular was not much raised;* for in the beginning of the Year (viz.) In the first Week in March, the Penny Wheaten Loaf was ten Ounces and a half; and in the height of the Contagion, it was to be had at nine Ounces and an half, and never dearer, no not all that Season: And about the beginning of November it was sold ten Ounces and a half again; the like of which, I believe, was never heard of in any City, under so dreadful a Visitation before. (2.) Neither was there (which I wondred much at) any want of Bakers or Ovens kept open to supply the People with Bread; but this was indeed alledg'd by some Families, viz. That their Maid-Servants going to the Bake-houses with their Dough to be baked, which was then the Custom, sometimes came Home with the Sickness, that is to say, the Plague upon them. In all this dreadful Visitation, there were, as I have said before, but two Pest-houses* made use of, viz. One in the Fields beyond Old-Street, and one in Westminster; neither was there any Compulsion us'd in carrying People thither: Indeed there was no need of Compulsion in the Case, for there were Thousands of poor distressed People, who having no Help, or Conveniences, or Supplies but of Charity, would have been very glad to have been carryed thither, and been taken Care of, which indeed was the only thing that, I think, was wanting in the whole publick Management of the City; seeing no Body was here allow'd to be brought to the Pest-house, but where Money was given, or Security for Money, either at their introducing, or upon their being cur'd and sent out; for very many were sent out again whole, and very good Physicians were appointed to those Places, so that many People did very well there, of which I shall make Mention again. The principal Sort of People sent thither were, as I have said, Servants, who got the Distemper by going of Errands to fetch Necessaries to the Families where they liv'd; and who in that Case, if they came Home sick, were remov'd to preserve the rest of the House; and they were so well look'd after there in all the time of the Visitation, that there was but 156 buried in all at the London Pest-house, and 159 at that of Westminster. By having more Pest-houses, I am far from meaning a forcing all People into such Places. Had the shutting up of Houses been omitted, and the Sick hurried out of their Dwellings to Pest-houses, as some proposed it seems, at that time as well as since, it would certainly have been much worse than it was; the very removing the Sick would have been a spreading of the Infection, and the rather because that removing could not effectually clear the House, where the sick Person was, of the Distemper, and the rest of the Family being then left at Liberty would certainly spread it among others. The Methods also in private Families, which would have been universally used to have concealed the Distemper, and to have conceal'd the Persons being sick, would have been such that the Distemper would sometimes have seiz'd a whole Family before any Visitors or Examiners could have known of it: On the other hand, the prodigious Numbers which would have been sick at a time, would have exceeded all the Capacity of publick Pest-houses to receive them, or of publick Officers to discover and remove them. This was well considered in those Days, and I have heard them talk of it often: The Magistrates had enough to do to bring People to submit to having their Houses shut up, and many Ways they deceived the Watchmen, and got out, as I have observed: But that Difficulty made it apparent, that they would have found it impracticable to have gone the other way to Work; for they could never have forced the sick People out of their Beds and out of their Dwellings; it must not have been my Lord Mayor's Officers, but an Army of Officers that must have attempted it; and the People, on the other hand, would have been enrag'd and desperate, and would have kill'd those that should have offered to have meddled with them or with their Children and Relations, whatever had befallen them for it; so that they would have made the People, who, as it was, were in the most terrible Distraction imaginable; I say, they would have made them stark mad; whereas the Magistrates found it proper on several Accounts to treat them with Lenity and Compassion, and not with Violence and Terror, such as dragging the Sick out of their Houses, or obliging them to remove themselves would have been. This leads me again to mention the Time, when the Plague first began, that is to say, when it became certain that it would spread over the whole Town, when, as I have said, the better sort of People first took the Alarm, and began to hurry themselves out of Town: It was true, as I observ'd in its Place, that the Throng was so great, and the Coaches, Horses, Waggons and Carts were so many, driving and dragging the People away, that it look'd as if all the City was running away; and had any Regulations been publish'd that had been terrifying at that time, especially such as would pretend to dispose of the People, otherwise than they would dispose of themselves, it would have put both the City and Suburbs into the utmost Confusion. But the Magistrates wisely caus'd the People to be encourag'd, made very good By-Laws for the regulating the Citizens, keeping good Order in the Streets, and making every thing as eligible as possible to all Sorts of People. In the first Place, the Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs, the Court of Aldermen, and a certain Number of the Common Council-Men, or their Deputies came to a Resolution and published it, viz. ?ÄòThat they would not quit the City themselves, but that they would be always at hand for the preserving good Order in every Place, and for the doing Justice on all Occasions; as also for the distributing the publick Charity to the Poor; and in a Word, for the doing the Duty, and discharging the Trust repos'd in them by the Citizens to the utmost of their Power.' In Pursuance of these Orders, the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, &c. held Councils every Day more or less, for making such Dispositions as they found needful for preserving the Civil Peace; and tho' they used the People with all possible Gentleness and Clemency, yet all manner of presumptuous Rogues, such as Thieves, House-breakers, Plunderers of the Dead, or of the Sick, were duly punish'd, and several Declarations were continually publish'd by the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen against such. Also all Constables and Church-wardens were enjoin'd to stay in the City upon severe Penalties, or to depute such able and sufficient House-keepers, as the Deputy Aldermen, or Common Council-men of the Precinct should approve, and for whom they should give Security; and also Security in case of Mortality, that they would forthwith constitute other Constables in their stead. These things re-establish'd the Minds of the People very much, especially in the first of their Fright, when they talk'd of making so universal a Flight, that the City would have been in Danger of being entirely deserted of its Inhabitants, except the Poor; and the Country of being plunder'd and laid waste by the Multitude. Nor were the Magistrates deficient in performing their Part as boldly as they promised it; for my Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs were continually in the Streets, and at places of the greatest Danger; and tho' they did not care for having too great a Resort of People crouding about them, yet, in emergent Cases, they never denyed the People Access to them, and heard with Patience all their Grievances and Complaints; my Lord Mayor had a low Gallery built on purpose in his Hall, where he stood a little remov'd from the Croud when any Complaint came to be heard, that he might appear with as much Safety as possible. Likewise the proper Officers, call'd my Lord Mayor's Officers, constantly attended in their Turns, as they were in waiting; and if any of them were sick or infected, as some of them were, others were instantly employed to fill up and officiate in their Places, till it was known whether the other should live or die. In like manner the Sheriffs and Aldermen did in their several Stations and Wards, where they were placed by Office; and the Sheriff's Officers or Sergeants were appointed to receive Orders from the respective Aldermen in their Turn; so that Justice was executed in all Cases without Interruption. In the next Place, it was one of their particular Cares, to see the Orders for the Freedom of the Markets observ'd; and in this part either the Lord Mayor, or one or both of the Sheriffs, were every Market-day on Horseback to see their Orders executed, and to see that the Country People had all possible Encouragement and Freedom in their coming to the Markets, and going back again; and that no Nusances or frightful Objects should be seen in the Streets to terrify them, or make them unwilling to come. Also the Bakers were taken under particular Order, and the Master of the Bakers Company* was, with his Court of Assistance, directed to see the Order of my Lord Mayor for their Regulation put in Execution, and the due Assize of Bread, which was weekly appointed by my Lord Mayor, observ'd, and all the Bakers were oblig'd to keep their Ovens going constantly, on pain of losing the Privileges of a Freeman of the City of London. By this means, Bread was always to be had in Plenty, and as cheap as usual, as I said above; and Provisions were never wanting in the Markets, even to such a Degree, that I often wonder'd at it, and reproach'd my self with being so timorous and cautious in stirring abroad, when the Country People came freely and boldly to Market, as if there had been no manner of Infection in the City, or Danger of catching it. It was indeed one admirable piece of Conduct in the said Magistrates, that the Streets were kept constantly clear, and free from all manner of frightful Objects, dead Bodies, or any such things as were indecent or unpleasant, unless where any Body fell down suddenly or died in the Streets, as I have said above, and these were generally covered with some Cloth or Blanket, or remov'd into the next Church-yard, till Night: All the needful Works, that carried Terror with them, that were both dismal and dangerous, were done in the Night; if any diseas'd Bodies were remov'd, or dead Bodies buried, or infected Cloths burnt, it was done in the Night; and all the Bodies, which were thrown into the great Pits in the several Church-yards, or burying Grounds, as has been observ'd, were so remov'd in the Night; and every thing was covered and closed before Day: So that in the Day-time there was not the least Signal of the Calamity to be seen or heard of, except what was to be observ'd from the Emptiness of the Streets, and sometimes from the passionate Outcries and Lamentations of the People, out at their Windows, and from the Numbers of Houses and Shops shut up. Nor was the Silence and Emptiness of the Streets so much in the City as in the Out-parts, except just at one particular time, when, as I have mention'd, the Plague came East, and spread over all the City: It was indeed a merciful Disposition of God, that as the Plague began at one End of the Town first, as has been observ'd at large, so it proceeded progressively to other Parts, and did not come on this way or Eastward, till it had spent its Fury in the West part of the Town; and so as it came on one way, it abated another. For Example. It began at St. Giles's and the Westminster End of the Town, and it was in its Height in all that part by about the Middle of July, viz. in St. Giles in the Fields, St. Andrew's Holborn, St. Clement-Danes, St. Martins in the Fields, and in Westminster: The latter End of July it decreased in those Parishes, and coming East, it encreased prodigiously in Cripplegate, St. Sepulchers, St. Ja. Clarkenwell, and St. Brides, and Aldersgate; while it was in all these Parishes, the City and all the Parishes of the Southwark Side of the Water, and all Stepney, White-Chapel, Aldgate, Wapping, and Ratcliff were very little touch'd; so that People went about their Business unconcern'd, carryed on their Trades, kept open their Shops, and conversed freely with one another in all the City, the East and North-East Suburbs, and in Southwark, almost as if the Plague had not been among us. Even when the North and North-west Suburbs were fully infected, viz. Cripplegate, Clarkenwell, Bishopsgate, and Shoreditch, yet still all the rest were tolerably well. For Example, So that in short there died more that Week in the two Parishes of Cripplegate and St. Sepulchers by 48 than in all the City, and all the East Suburbs, and all the Southwark Parishes put together: This caused the Reputation of the City's Health to continue all over England, and especially in the Counties and Markets adjacent, from whence our Supply of Provisions chiefly came, even much longer than that Health it self continued; for when the People came into the Streets from the Country, by Shoreditch and Bishopsgate, or by Old-street and Smithfield, they would see the out Streets empty, and the Houses and Shops shut, and the few People that were stirring there walk in the Middle of the Streets; but when they came within the City, there things look'd better, and the Markets and Shops were open, and the People walking about the Streets as usual, tho' not quite so many; and this continued till the latter End of August, and the Beginning of September. But then the Case alter'd quite, the Distemper abated in the West and North-West Parishes, and the Weight of the Infection lay on the City and the Eastern Suburbs and the Southwark Side, and this in a frightful manner. Then indeed the City began to look dismal, Shops to be shut, and the Streets desolate; in the High-Street indeed Necessity made People stir abroad on many Occasions; and there would be in the middle of the Day a pretty many People, but in the Mornings and Evenings scarce any to be seen, even there, no not in Cornhill and Cheapside. These Observations of mine were abundantly confirm'd by the Weekly Bills of Mortality for those Weeks, an Abstract of which, as they respect the Parishes which I have mention'd, and as they make the Calculations I speak of very evident, take as follows. The Weekly Bill, which makes out this Decrease of the Burials in the West and North side of the City, stand thus. Here is a strange change of Things indeed, and a sad Change it was, and had it held for two Months more than it did, very few People would have been left alive: But then such, I say, was the merciful Disposition of God, that when it was thus the West and North part which had been so dreadfully visited at first, grew as you see, much better; and as the People disappear'd here, they began to look abroad again there; and the next Week or two altered it still more, that is, more to the Encouragement of the other Part of the Town. For Example: And now the Misery of the City, and of the said East and South Parts was complete indeed; for as you see the Weight of the Distemper lay upon those Parts, that is to say, the City, the eight Parishes over the River, with the Parishes of Aldgate, White Chapel, and Stepney, and this was the Time that the Bills came up to such a monstrous Height, as that I mention'd before; and that Eight or Nine, and, as I believe, Ten or Twelve Thousand a Week died; for 'tis my settled Opinion, that they never could come at any just Account of the Numbers, for the Reasons which I have given already. Nay one of the most eminent Physicians, who has since publish'd in Latin* an Account of those Times, and of his Observations, says, that in one Week there died twelve Thousand People, and that particularly there died four Thousand in one Night;* tho' I do not remember that there ever was any such particular Night, so remarkably fatal, as that such a Number died in it: However all this confirms what I have said above of the Uncertainty of the Bills of Mortality, &c., of which I shall say more hereafter. And here let me take leave to enter again, tho' it may seem a Repetition of Circumstances, into a Description of the miserable Condition of the City it self, and of those Parts where I liv'd at this particular Time: The City, and those other Parts, not withstanding the great Numbers of People that were gone into the Country, was vastly full of People, and perhaps the fuller, because People had for a long time a strong Belief, that the Plague would not come into the City, nor into Southwark, no nor into Wapping, or Ratcliff at all; nay such was the Assurance of the People on that Head, that many remov'd from the Suburbs on the West and North Sides, into those Eastern and South Sides as for Safety, and as I verily believe, carry'd, the Plague amongst them there, perhaps sooner than they would otherwise have had it. Here also I ought to leave a farther Remark for the use of Posterity, concerning the Manner of Peoples infecting one another; namely, that it was not the sick People only, from whom the Plague was immediately receiv'd by others that were sound, but THE WELL. To explain my self; by the sick People I mean those who were known to be sick, had taken their Beds, had been under Cure, or had Swellings and Tumours upon them, and the like; these every Body could beware of, they were either in their Beds, or in such Condition as cou'd not be conceal'd. By the Well, I mean such as had received the Contagion, and had it really upon them, and in their Blood, yet did not shew the Consequences of it in their Countenances, nay even were not sensible of it themselves, as many were not for several Days: These breathed Death in every Place, and upon every Body who came near them; nay their very Cloaths retained the Infection, their Hands would infect the Things they touch'd, especially if they were warm and sweaty, and they were generally apt to sweat too. Now it was impossible to know these People, nor did they sometimes, as I have said, know themselves to be infected: These were the People that so often dropt down and fainted in the Streets; for oftentimes they would go about the Streets to the last, till on a sudden they would sweat, grow faint, sit down at a Door and die: It is true, finding themselves thus, they would struggle hard to get Home to their own Doors, or at other Times would be just able to go in to their Houses and die instantly; other Times they would go about till they had the very Tokens come out upon them, and yet not know it, and would die in an Hour or two after they came Home, but be well as long as they were Abroad: These were the dangerous People, these were the People of whom the well People ought to have been afraid; but then on the other side it was impossible to know them. And this is the Reason why it is impossible in a Visitation to prevent the spreading of the Plague by the utmost human Vigilance, (viz.) that it is impossible to know the infected People from the sound; or that the infected People should perfectly know themselves: I knew a Man who conversed freely in London all the Season of the Plague in 1665, and kept about him an Antidote or Cordial, on purpose to take when he thought himself in any Danger, and he had such a Rule to know, or have warning of the Danger by, as indeed I never met with before or since, how far it may be depended on I know not: He had a Wound in his Leg, and whenever he came among any People that were not sound, and the Infection began to affect him, he said he could know it by that Signal, (viz.) That his Wound in his Leg would smart, and look pale and white; so as soon as ever he felt it smart, it was time for him to withdraw, or to take care of himself, taking his Drink, which he always carried about him for that Purpose. Now it seems he found his Wound would smart many Times when he was in Company with such, who thought themselves to be sound, and who appear'd so to one another; but he would presently rise up, and say publickly, Friends, here is some Body in the Room that has the Plague, and so would immediately break up the Company. This was indeed a faithful Monitor to all People, that the Plague is not to be avoided by those that converse promiscuously in a Town infected, and People have it when they know it not, and that they likewise give it to others when they know not that they have it themselves; and in this Case, shutting up the WELL or removing the SICK will not do it, unless they can go back and shut up all those that the Sick had Convers'd with, even before they knew themselves to be sick, and none knows how far to carry that back, or where to stop; for none knows when, or where, or how they may have received the Infection, or from whom. This I take to be the Reason, which makes so many People talk of the Air being corrupted and infected,* and that they need not be cautious of whom they converse with, for that the Contagion was in the Air. I have seen them in strange Agitations and Surprises on this Account, I have never come near any infected Body! says the disturbed Person, I have Convers'd with none, but sound healthy People, and yet I have gotten the Distemper! I am sure I am struck from Heaven, says another, and he falls to the serious Part; again the first goes on exclaiming, I have come near no Infection, or any infected Person, I am sure it is in the Air; We draw in Death when we breath[e], and therefore 'tis the Hand of God, there is no withstanding it; and this at last made many People, being hardened to the Danger, grow less concern'd at it, and less cautious towards the latter End of the Time, and when it was come to its height, than they were at first; then with a kind of a Turkish Predestinarianism,* they would say, if it pleas'd God to strike them, it was all one whether they went Abroad or staid at Home, they cou'd not escape it, and therefore they went boldly about even into infected Houses, and infected Company; visited sick People, and in short, lay in the Beds with their Wives or Relations when they were infected; and what was the Consequence? But the same that is the Consequence in Turkey, and in those Countries where they do those Things; namely, that they were infected too, and died by Hundreds and Thousands. I would be far from lessening the Awe of the Judgments of God, and the Reverence to his Providence, which ought always to be on our Minds on such Occasions as these; doubtless the Visitation it self is a Stroke from Heaven upon a City, or Country, or Nation where it falls; a Messenger of his Vengeance, and a loud Call to that Nation, or Country, or City, to Humiliation and Repentance, according to that of the Prophet Jeremiah xviii. 7, 8. At what instant I shall speak concerning a Nation, and concerning a Kingdom to pluck up, and to pull down, and destroy it: If that Nation against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. Now to prompt due Impressions of the Awe of God on the Minds of Men on such Occasions, and not to lessen them it is that I have left those Minutes upon Record. I say, therefore I reflect upon no Man for putting the Reason of those Things upon the immediate Hand of God, and the Appointment and Direction of his Providence; nay, on the contrary, there were many wonderful Deliverances of Persons from Infection, and Deliverances of Persons when Infected, which intimate singular and remarkable Providence, in the particular Instances to which they refer, and I esteem my own Deliverance to be one next to miraculous, and do record it with Thankfulness. But when I am speaking of the Plague, as a Distemper arising from natural Causes,* we must consider it as it was really propagated by natural Means, nor is it at all the less a Judgment for its being under the Conduct of human Causes and Effects; for as the divine Power has form'd the whole Scheme of Nature, and maintains Nature in its Course; so the same Power thinks fit to let his own Actings with Men, whether of Mercy or Judgment, go on in the ordinary Course of natural Causes, and he is pleased to act by those natural Causes as the ordinary Means; excepting and reserving to himself nevertheless a Power to act in a supernatural Way when he sees occasion: Now 'tis evident, that in the Case of an Infection, there is no apparent extraordinary occasion for supernatural Operation, but the ordinary Course of Things appears sufficiently arm'd, and made capable of all the Effects that Heaven usually directs by a Contagion. Among these Causes and Effects this of the secret Conveyance of Infection imperceptible, and unavoidable, is more than sufficient to execute the Fierceness of divine Vengeance, without putting it upon Supernaturals and Miracle. The acute penetrating Nature of the Disease it self was such, and the Infection was receiv'd so imperceptibly, that the most exact Caution could not secure us while in the Place: But I must be allowed to believe, and I have so many Examples fresh in my Memory, to convince me of it, that I think none can resist their Evidence; I say, I must be allowed to believe, that no one in this whole Nation ever receiv'd the Sickness or Infection, but who receiv'd it in the ordinary Way of Infection from some Body, or the Cloaths, or touch, or stench of some Body that was infected before. The Manner of its coming first to London, proves this also, (viz.) by Goods brought over from Holland, and brought thither from the Levant; the first breaking of it out in a House in Long-Acre, where those Goods were carried, and first opened; its spreading from that House to other Houses, by the visible unwary conversing with those who were sick, and the infecting the Parish Officers who were employed about the Persons dead, and the like; these are known Authorities for this great Foundation Point, that it went on, and proceeded from Person to Person, and from House to House, and no otherwise: In the first House that was infected there died four Persons, a Neighbour hearing the Mistress of the first House was sick, went to visit her, and went Home and gave the Distemper to her Family, and died, and all her Houshold. A Minister call'd to pray with the first sick Person in the second House, was said to sicken immediately, and die with several more in his House: Then the Physicians began to consider, for they did not at first dream of a general Contagion. But the Physicians being sent to inspect the Bodies, they assur'd the People that it was neither more or less than the Plague with all its terrifying Particulars, and that it threatned an universal Infection, so many People having already convers'd with the Sick or Distemper'd, and having, as might be suppos'd, received Infection from them, that it would be impossible to put a stop to it. Here the Opinion of the Physicians agreed with my Observation afterwards, namely, that the Danger was spreading insensibly; for the Sick cou'd infect none but those that came within reach of the sick Person; but that one Man, who may have really receiv'd the Infection, and knows it not, but goes Abroad, and about as a sound Person, may give the Plague to a thousand People, and they to greater Numbers in Proportion, and neither the Person giving the Infection, or the Persons receiving it, know any thing of it, and perhaps not feel the Effects of it for several Days after. For Example, Many Persons in the Time of this Visitation never perceiv'd that they were infected, till they found to their unspeakable Surprize, the Tokens come out upon them, after which they seldom liv'd six Hours; for those Spots they call'd the Tokens were really gangreen Spots, or mortified Flesh in small Knobs as broad as a little silver Peny, and hard as a piece of Callous or Horn; so that when the Disease was come up to that length, there was nothing could follow but certain Death, and yet as I said they knew nothing of their being Infected, nor found themselves so much as out of Order, till those mortal Marks were upon them: But every Body must allow, that they were infected in a high Degree before, and must have been so some time; and consequently their Breath, their Sweat, their very Cloaths were contagious for many Days before. This occasion'd a vast Variety of Cases, which Physicians would have much more opportunity to remember than I; but some came within the Compass of my Observation, or hearing, of which I shall name a few. A certain Citizen who had liv'd safe, and untouch'd, till the Month of September, when the Weight of the Distemper lay more in the City than it had done before, was mighty chearful, and something too bold, as I think it was, in his Talk of how secure he was, how cautious he had been, and how he had never come near any sick Body: Says another Citizen, a Neighbour of his to him, one Day, Do not be too confident Mr. ?Äî?Äî it is hard to say who is sick and who is well; for we see Men alive, and well to outward Appearance one Hour, and dead the next. That is true, says the first Man, for he was not a Man presumptuously secure, but had escap'd a long while, and Men, as I said above, especially in the City, began to be overeasie upon that Score. That is true, says he, I do not think my self secure, but I hope I have not been in Company with any Person that there has been any Danger in. No! Says his Neighbour, was not you at the Bull-head Tavern in Gracechurch Street with Mr. ?Äî?Äî the Night before last: YES, says the first, I was, but there was, but there was no Body there, that we had any Reason to think dangerous: Upon which his Neighbour said no more, being unwilling to surprize him; but this made him more inquisitive, and as his Neighbour appear'd backward, he was the more impatient, and in a kind of Warmth, says he aloud, why he is not dead, is he! upon which his Neighbour still was silent, but cast up his Eyes, and said something to himself; at which the first Citizen turned pale, and said no more but this, then I am a dead Man too, and went Home immediately, and sent for a neighbouring Apothecary to give him something preventive, for he had not yet found himself ill; but the Apothecary opening his Breast, fetch'd a Sigh, and said no more, but this, look up to God; and the Man died in a few Hours. Now let any Man judge from a Case like this, if it is possible for the Regulations of Magistrates, either by shutting up the Sick, or removing them, to stop an Infection, which spreads it self from Man to Man, even while they are perfectly well, and insensible of its Approach, and may be so for many Days. It may be proper to ask here, how long it may be supposed, Men might have the Seeds of the Contagion in them, before it discover'd it self in this fatal Manner; and how long they might go about seemingly whole, and yet be contagious to all those that came near them? I believe the most experienc'd Physicians cannot answer this Question directly, any more than I can; and something an ordinary Observer may take notice of, which may pass their Observation. The opinion of Physicians Abroad seems to be, that it may lye Dormant in the Spirits, or in the Blood Vessels, a very considerable Time; why else do they exact a Quarentine of those who come into their Harbours, and Ports, from suspected Places? Forty Days is, one would think, too long for Nature to struggle with such an Enemy as this, and not conquer it, or yield to it: But I could not think by my own Observation that they can be infected so, as to be contagious to others, above fifteen or sixteen Days at farthest; and on that score it was, that when a House was shut up in the City, and any one had died of the Plague, but no Body appear'd to be ill in the Family for sixteen or eighteen Days after, they were not so strict, but that they would connive at their going privately Abroad; nor would People be much afraid of them afterward, but rather think they were fortified the better, having not been vulnerable when the Enemy was in their own House; but we sometimes found it had lyen much longer conceal'd. Upon the foot of all these Observations, I must say, that tho' Providence seem'd to direct my Conduct to be otherwise; yet it is my opinion, and I must leave it as a Prescription, (viz.) that the best Physick against the Plague is to run away from it. I know People encourage themselves, by saying, God is able to keep us in the midst of Danger, and able to overtake us when we think our selves out of Danger; and this kept Thousands in the Town, whose Carcasses went into the great Pits by Cart Loads; and who, if they had fled from the Danger, had, I believe, been safe from the Disaster; at least 'tis probable they had been safe. And were this very Fundamental only duly consider'd by the People, on any future occasion of this, or the like Nature, I am persuaded it would put them upon quite different Measures for managing the People, from those that they took in 1665, or than any that have been taken Abroad that I have heard of; in a Word, they would consider of separating the People into smaller Bodies, and removing them in Time farther from one another, and not let such a Contagion as this, which is indeed chiefly dangerous to collected Bodies of People, find a Million of People in a Body together, as was very near the Case before, and would certainly be the Case, if it should ever appear again. The Plague like a great Fire, if a few Houses only are contiguous where it happens, can only burn a few Houses; or if it begins in a single, or as we call it a lone House, can only burn that lone House where it begins: But if it begins in a close built Town, or City, and gets a Head, there its Fury encreases, it rages over the whole Place, and consumes all it can reach. I could propose many Schemes, on the foot of which the Government of this City, if ever they should be under the Apprehensions of such another Enemy, (God forbid they should) might ease themselves of the greatest Part of the dangerous People that belong to them; I mean such as the begging, starving, labouring Poor, and among them chiefly those who in Case of a Siege, are call'd the useless Mouths; who being then prudently, and to their own Advantage dispos'd of, and the wealthy Inhabitants disposing of themselves, and of their Servants, and Children, the City and its adjacent Parts would be so effectually evacuated, that there would not be above a tenth Part of its People left together, for the Disease to take hold upon: But suppose them to be a fifth Part, and that two Hundred and fifty Thousand People were left, and if it did seize upon them, they would by their living so much at large, be much better prepar'd to defend themselves against the Infection, and be less liable to the Effects of it, than if the same Number of People lived close together in one smaller City, such as Dublin, or Amsterdam, or the like. It is true, Hundreds, yea Thousands of Families fled away at this last Plague, but then of them, many fled too late, and not only died in their Flight, but carried the Distemper with them into the Countries where they went, and infected those whom they went among for Safety; which confounded the Thing, and made that be a Propagation of the Distemper, which was the best means to prevent it; and this too is an Evidence of it, and brings me back to what I only hinted at before, but must speak more fully to here; namely, that Men went about apparently well, many Days after they had the taint of the Disease in their Vitals, and after their Spirits were so seiz'd, as that they could never escape it; and that all the while they did so, they were dangerous to others. I say, this proves, that so it was; for such People infected the very Towns they went thro', as well as the Families they went among, and it was by that means, that almost all the great Towns in England had the Distemper among them, more or less; and always they would tell you such a Londoner or such a Londoner brought it down. It must not be omitted, that when I speak of those People who were really thus dangerous, I suppose them to be utterly ignorant of their own Condition, for if they really knew their Circumstances to be such as indeed they were, they must have been a kind of willful Murtherers, if they would have gone Abroad among healthy People, and it would have verified indeed the Suggestion which I mention'd above, and which I thought seemed untrue, (viz.) That the infected People were utterly careless as to giving the Infection to others, and rather forward to do it than not; and I believe it was partly from this very Thing that they raised that Suggestion, which I hope was not really true in Fact. I confess no particular Case is sufficient to prove a general, but I cou'd name several People within the Knowledge of some of their Neighbours and Families yet living, who shew'd the contrary to an extream. One Man, a Master of a Family in my Neighbourhood, having had the Distemper, he thought he had it given him by a poor Workman whom he employ'd, and whom he went to his House to see, or went for some Work that he wanted to have finished, and he had some Apprehensions even while he was at the poor Workman's Door, but did not discover it fully, but the next Day it discovered it self, and he was taken very ill; upon which he immediately caused himself to be carried into an out Building which he had in his Yard, and where there was a Chamber over a Work house, the Man being a Brazier; here he lay, and here he died, and would be tended by none of his Neighbours, but by a Nurse from Abroad, and would not suffer his Wife, or Children, or Servants, to come up into the Room lest they should be infected, but sent them his Blessing and Prayers for them by the Nurse, who spoke it to them at a Distance, and all this for fear of giving them the Distemper, and without which, he knew as they were kept up, they could not have it. And here I must observe also, that the Plague, as I suppose all Distempers do, operated in a different Manner on differing Constitutions; some were immediately overwhelm'd with it, and it came to violent Fevers, Vomitings, unsufferable Head-achs, Pains in the Back, and so up to Ravings and Ragings with those Pains: Others with Swellings and Tumours in the Neck or Groyn, or Arm-pits, which till they could be broke, put them into insufferable Agonies and Torment; while others, as I have observ'd, were silently infected, the Fever preying upon their Spirits insensibly, and they seeing little of it, till they fell into swooning, and faintings, and Death without pain. I am not Physician enough to enter into the particular Reasons and Manner of these differing Effects of one and the same Distemper, and of its differing Operation in several Bodies; nor is it my Business here to record the Observations, which I really made, because the Doctors themselves, have done that part much more effectually than I can do, and because my opinion may in some things differ from theirs: I am only relating what I know, or have heard, or believe of the particular Cases, and what fell within the Compass of my View, and the different Nature of the Infection, as it appeared in the particular Cases which I have related; but this may be added too, that tho' the former Sort of those Cases, namely those openly visited, were the worst for themselves as to Pain, I mean those that had such Fevers, Vomitings, Headachs, Pains and Swellings, because they died in such a dreadful Manner, yet the latter had the worst State of the Disease; for in the former they frequently recover'd, especially if the Swellings broke,* but the latter was inevitable Death; no cure, no help cou'd be possible, nothing could follow but Death; and it was worse also to others, because as, above, it secretly, and unperceiv'd by others, or by themselves, communicated Death to those they convers'd with, the penetrating Poison insinuating it self into their Blood in a Manner, which it is impossible to describe, or indeed conceive. This infecting and being infected, without so much as its being known to either Person, is evident from two Sorts of Cases, which frequently happened at that Time; and there is hardly any Body living who was in London during the Infection, but must have known several of the Cases of both Sorts. 1. Fathers and Mothers have gone about as if they had been well, and have believ'd themselves to be so, till they have insensibly infected, and been the Destruction of their whole Families: Which they would have been far from doing, if they had the least Apprehensions of their being unsound and dangerous themselves. A Family, whose Story I have heard, was thus infected by the Father, and the Distemper began to appear upon some of them, even before he found it upon himself; but searching more narrowly, it appear'd he had been infected some Time, and as soon as he found that his Family had been poison'd by himself, he went distracted, and would have laid violent Hands upon himself, but was kept from that by those who look'd to him, and in a few Days died. 2. The other Particular is, that many People having been well to the best of their own Judgment, or by the best Observation which they could make of themselves for several Days, and only finding a Decay of Appetite, or a light Sickness upon their Stomachs; nay, some whose Appetite had been strong, and even craving, and only a light Pain in their Heads; have sent for Physicians to know what ail'd them, and have been found to their great Surprize, at the brink of Death, the Tokens upon them, or the Plague grown up to an incurable Height. It was very sad to reflect, how such a Person as this last mentioned above, had been a walking Destroyer, perhaps for a Week or Fortnight before that; how he had ruin'd those, that he would have hazarded his Life to save, and had been breathing Death upon them, even perhaps in his tender Kissing and Embracings of his own Children: Yet thus certainly it was, and often has been, and I cou'd give many particular Cases where it has been so; if then the Blow is thus insensibly striking, if the Arrow flies thus unseen, and cannot be discovered; to what purpose are all the Schemes for shutting up or removing the sick People? those Schemes cannot take place, but upon those that appear to be sick, or to be infected; whereas there are among them, at the same time, Thousands of People, who seem to be well, but are all that while carrying Death with them into all Companies which they come into. This frequently puzzled our Physicians, and especially the Apothecaries and Surgeons, who knew not how to discover the Sick from the Sound; they all allow'd that it was really so, that many People had the Plague in their very Blood, and preying upon their Spirits, and were in themselves but walking putrified Carcasses, whose Breath was infectious,* and their Sweat Poison; and yet were as well to look on as other People, and even knew it not themselves: I say, they all allowed that it was really true in Fact, but they knew not how to propose a Discovery. My Friend Doctor Heath was of Opinion, that it might be known by the smell of their Breath; but then, as he said, who durst Smell to that Breath for his Information? Since to know it, he must draw the Stench of the Plague up into his own Brain, in order to distinguish the Smell! I have heard, it was the opinion of others, that it might be distinguish'd by the Party's breathing upon a piece of Glass, where the Breath condensing, there might living Creatures be seen by a Microscope of strange monstrous and frightful Shapes, such as Dragons, Snakes, Serpents, and Devils, horrible to behold: But this I very much question the Truth of, and we had no Microscopes* at that Time, as I remember, to make the Experiment with. It was the opinion also of another learned Man, that the Breath of such a Person would poison, and instantly kill a Bird; not only a small Bird, but even a Cock or Hen, and that if it did not immediately kill the latter, it would cause them to be roupy as they call it; particularly that if they had laid any Eggs at that Time, they would be all rotten: But those are Opinions which I never found supported by any Experiments, or heard of others that had seen it; so I leave them as I find them, only with this Remark; namely, that I think the Probabilities are very strong for them. Some have proposed that such Persons should breathe hard upon warm Water, and that they would leave an unusual Scum upon it, or upon several other things, especially such as are of a glutinous Substance and are apt to receive a Scum and support it. But from the whole I found, that the Nature of this Contagion was such, that it was impossible to discover it at all, or to prevent its spreading from one to another by any human Skill. Here was indeed one Difficulty, which I could never thoroughly get over to this time, and which there is but one way of answering that I know of, and it is this, viz. The first Person that died of the Plague was in Decemb. 20th, or thereabouts 1664, and in, or about Long-acre, whence the first Person had the Infection, was generally said to be, from a Parcel of Silks imported from Holland, and first opened in that House. But after this we heard no more of any Person dying of the Plague, or of the Distemper being in that Place, till the 9th of February; which was about 7 Weeks after, and then one more was buried out of the same House: Then it was hush'd, and we were perfectly easy as to the publick, for a great while; for there were no more entred in the Weekly Bill to be dead of the Plague, till the 22d of April, when there was 2 more buried not out of the same House, but out of the same Street; and as near as I can remember, it was out of the next House to the first: this was nine Weeks asunder, and after this we had No more till a Fortnight, and then it broke out in several Streets and spread every way. Now the Question seems to lye thus, where lay the Seeds of the Infection all this while? How came it to stop so long, and not stop any longer? Either the Distemper did not come immediately by Contagion from Body to Body, or if it did, then a Body may be capable to continue infected, without the Disease discovering itself, many Days, nay Weeks together, even not a Quarantine of Days only, but Soixantine, not only 40 Days but 60 Days or longer. It's true, there was, as I observed at first, and is well known to many yet living, a very cold Winter, and a long Frost,* which continued three Months, and this, the Doctors say, might check the Infection; but then the learned must allow me to say, that if according to their Notion, the Disease was, as I may say, only frozen up, it would like a frozen River, have returned to its usual Force and Current when it thaw'd, whereas the principal Recess of this Infection, which was from February to April, was after the Frost was broken, and the Weather mild and warm. But there is another way of solving all this Difficulty, which I think my own Remembrance of the thing will supply; and that is, the Fact is not granted, namely, that there died none in those long Intervals, viz. from the 20th of December to the 9th of February, and from thence to the 22d of April. The Weekly Bills are the only Evidence on the other side, and those Bills were not of Credit enough, at least with me, to support an Hypothesis, or determine a Question of such Importance as this: For it was our receiv'd Opinion at that time, and I believe upon very good Grounds, that the Fraud lay in the Parish Officers, Searchers, and Persons appointed to give Account of the Dead, and what Diseases they died of: And as People were very loth at first to have the Neighbours believe their Houses were infected, so they gave Money to procure, or otherwise procur'd the dead Persons to be return'd as dying of other Distempers; and this I know was practis'd afterwards in many Places, I believe I might say in all Places, where the Distemper came, as will be seen by the vast Encrease of the Numbers plac'd in the Weekly Bills under other Articles of Diseases, during the time of the Infection: For Example, in the Month of July and August, when the Plague was coming on to its highest Pitch; it was very ordinary to have from a thousand to twelve hundred, nay to almost fifteen Hundred a Week of other Distempers; not that the Numbers of those Distempers were really encreased to such a Degree: But the great Number of Families and Houses where really the Infection was, obtain'd the Favour to have their dead be return'd of other Distempers to prevent the shutting up their Houses. For Example, Now it was not doubted, but the greatest part of these, or a great part of them, were dead of the Plague, but the Officers were prevail'd with to return them as above, and the Numbers of some particular Articles of Distempers discover'd is, as follows; There were several other Articles which bare a Proportion to these, and which it is easy to perceive, were increased on the same Account, as Aged, Consumptions, Vomitings, Imposthumes, Gripes, and the like, many of which were not doubted to be infected People; but as it was of the utmost Consequence to Families not to be known to be infected, if it was possible to avoid it, so they took all the measures they could to have it not believ'd; and if any died in their Houses to get them return'd to the Examiners, and by the Searchers, as having died of other Distempers. This, I say, will account for the long Interval, which, as I have said, was between the dying of the first Persons that were returned in the Bill to be dead of the Plague, and the time when the Distemper spread openly, and could not be conceal'd. Besides, the Weekly Bills themselves at that time evidently discover this Truth; for while there was no Mention of the Plague, and no Increase after it had been mentioned, yet it was apparent that there was an Encrease of those Distempers which bordered nearest upon it, for Example there were Eight, Twelve, Seventeen of the Spotted Fever in a Week, when there were none, or but very few of the Plague; whereas before One, Three, or Four, were the ordinary Weekly Numbers of that Distemper; likewise, as I observed before, the Burials increased Weekly in that particular Parish, and the Parishes adjacent, more than in any other Parish, altho' there were none set down of the Plague; all which tells us, that the Infection was handed on, and the Succession of the Distemper really preserv'd, tho' it seem'd to us at that time to be ceased, and to come again in a manner surprising. It might be also, that the Infection might remain in other parts of the same Parcel of Goods which at first it came in, and which might not be perhaps opened, or at least not fully, or in the Cloths of the first infected Person; for I cannot think, that any Body could be seiz'd with the Contagion in a fatal and mortal Degree for nine Weeks together, and support his State of Health so well, as even not to discover it to themselves; yet if it were so, the Argument is the stronger in Favour of what I am saying; namely, that the Infection is retain'd in Bodies apparently well, and convey'd from them to those they converse with, while it is known to neither the one nor the other. Great were the Confusions at that time upon this very Account; and when People began to be convinc'd that the Infection was receiv'd in this surprising manner from Persons apparently well, they began to be exceeding shie and jealous of every one that came near them. Once in a publick Day, whether a Sabbath Day or not I do not remember, in Aldgate Church in a Pew full of People, on a sudden, one fancy'd she smelt an ill Smell, immediately she fancies the Plague was in the Pew, whispers her Notion or Suspicion to the next, then rises and goes out of the Pew, it immediately took with the next, and so to them all; and every one of them, and of the two or three adjoining Pews, got up and went out of the Church, no Body knowing what it was offended them or from whom. This immediately filled every Bodies Mouths with one Preparation or other, such as the old Women directed, and some perhaps as Physicians directed, in order to prevent Infection by the Breath of others; insomuch that if we came to go into a Church, when it was any thing full of People, there would be such a Mixture of Smells at the Entrance, that it was much more strong, tho' perhaps not so wholesome, than if you were going into an Apothecary's or Druggist's Shop; in a Word, the whole Church was like a smelling Bottle, in one Corner it was all Perfumes, in another Aromaticks, Balsamicks, and Variety of Drugs, and Herbs; in another Salts and Spirits, as every one was furnish'd for their own Preservation; yet I observ'd, that after People were possess'd, as I have said, with the Belief or rather Assurance, of the Infection being thus carryed on by Persons apparently in Health, the Churches and Meeting-Houses were much thinner of People than at other times before that they us'd to be; for this is to be said of the People of London, that during the whole time of the Pestilence, the Churches or Meetings were never wholly shut up, nor did the People decline coming out to the public Worship of God, except only in some Parishes when the Violence of the Distemper was more particularly in that Parish at that time; and even then no longer, than it continued to be so. Indeed nothing was more strange, than to see with what Courage the People went to the public Service of God, even at that time when they were afraid to stir out of their own Houses upon any other Occasion; this I mean before the time of Desperation, which I have mention'd already; this was a Proof of the exceeding Populousness of the City at the time of the Infection, notwithstanding the great Numbers that were gone into the Country at the first Alarm, and that fled out into the Forests and Woods when they were farther terrifyed with the extraordinary Increase of it. For when we came to see the Crouds and Throngs of People, which appear'd on the Sabbath Days at the Churches, and especially in those parts of the Town where the Plague was abated, or where it was not yet come to its Height, it was amazing. But of this I shall speak again presently; I return in the mean time to the Article of infecting one another at first; before People came to right Notions of the Infection, and of infecting one another, People were only shye of those that were really sick, a Man with a Cap upon his Head, or with Cloths round his Neck, which was the Case of those that had Swellings there; such was indeed frightful: But when we saw a Gentleman dress'd, with his Band on and his Gloves in his Hand, his Hat upon his Head, and his Hair comb'd, of such we had not the least Apprehensions; and People conversed a great while freely, especially with their Neighbours and such as they knew. But when the Physicians assured us, that the Danger was as well from the Sound, that is the seemingly sound, as the Sick; and that those People, who thought themselves entirely free, were oftentimes the most fatal; and that it came to be generally understood, that People were sensible of it, and of the reason of it: Then I say they began to be jealous of every Body, and a vast Number of People lock'd themselves up, so as not to come abroad into any Company at all, nor suffer any, that had been abroad in promiscuous Company, to come into their Houses, or near them; at least not so near them, as to be within the Reach of their Breath, or of any Smell from them; and when they were oblig'd to converse at a Distance with Strangers, they would always have Preservatives in their Mouths, and about their Cloths to repell and keep off the Infection. It must be acknowledg'd, that when People began to use these Cautions, they were less exposed to Danger, and the Infection did not break into such Houses so furiously as it did into others before, and thousands of Families were preserved, speaking with due Reserve to the Direction of Divine Providence, by that Means. But it was impossible to beat any thing into the Heads of the Poor, they went on with the usual Impetuosity of their Tempers full of Outcries and Lamentations when taken, but madly careless of themselves, Fool-hardy and obstinate, while they were well: Where they could get Employment they push'd into any kind of Business, the most dangerous and the most liable to Infection; and if they were spoken to, their Answer would be, I must trust to God for that; if I am taken, then I am provided for, and there is an End of me, and the like: OR THUS, Why, What must I do? I can't starve, I had as good have the Plague as perish for want. I have no Work, what could I do? I must do this or beg: Suppose it was burying the dead, or attending the Sick, or watching infected Houses, which were all terrible Hazards, but their Tale was generally the same. It is true Necessity was a very justifiable warrantable Plea, and nothing could be better; but their way of Talk was much the same, where the Necessities were not the same: This adventurous Conduct of the Poor was that which brought the Plague among them in a most furious manner, and this join'd to the Distress of their Circumstances, when taken, was the reason why they died so by Heaps; for I cannot say, I could observe one jot of better Husbandry among them, I mean the labouring Poor, while they were well and getting Money, than there was before, but as lavish, as extravagant, and as thoughtless for to-morrow as ever; so that when they came to be taken sick, they were immediately in the utmost Distress as well for want, as for Sickness, as well for lack of Food, as lack of Health. This Misery of the Poor I had many Occasions to be an Eye-witness of, and sometimes also of the charitable Assistance that some pious People daily gave to such, sending them Relief and Supplies both of Food, Physick and other Help, as they found they wanted; and indeed it is a Debt of Justice due to the Temper of the People of that Day to take Notice here, that not only great Sums, very great Sums of Money were charitably sent to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen for the Assistance and Support of the poor distemper'd People; but abundance of private People daily distributed large Sums of Money for their Relief, and sent People about to enquire into the Condition of particular distressed and visited Families, and relieved them; nay some pious Ladies were so transported with Zeal in so good a Work, and so confident in the Protection of Providence in Discharge of the great Duty of Charity, that they went about in person distributing Alms to the Poor, and even visiting poor Families, tho' sick and infected in their very Houses, appointing Nurses to attend those that wanted attending, and ordering Apothecaries and Surgeons, the first to supply them with Drugs or Plaisters, and such things as they wanted; and the last to lance and dress the Swellings and Tumours, where such were wanting; giving their Blessing to the Poor in substantial Relief to them, as well as hearty Prayers for them. I will not undertake to say, as some do, that none of these charitable People were suffered to fall under the Calamity itself; but this I may say, that I never knew any one of them that miscarried, which I mention for the Encouragement of others in case of the like Distress; and doubtless, if they that give to the Poor, lend to the Lord, and he will repay them;* those that hazard their Lives to give to the Poor, and to comfort and assist the Poor in such a Misery as this, may hope to be protected in the Work. Nor was this Charity so extraordinary eminent only in a few; but, (for I cannot lightly quit this Point) the Charity of the rich as well in the City and Suburbs as from the Country, was so great, that in a Word, a prodigious Number of People, who must otherwise inevitably have perished for want as well as Sickness, were supported and subsisted by it; and tho' I could never, nor I believe any one else come to a full Knowledge of what was so contributed, yet I do believe, that as I heard one say, that was a critical Observer of that Part, there was not only many Thousand Pounds contributed, but many hundred thousand Pounds, to the Relief of the Poor of this distressed afflicted City; nay one Man affirm'd to me that he could reckon up above one hundred thousand Pounds a Week, which was distributed by the Church Wardens at the several Parish Vestries, by the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen in the several Wards and Precincts, and by the particular Direction of the Court and of the Justices respectively in the parts where they resided; over and above the private Charity distributed by pious Hands in the manner I speak of, and this continued for many Weeks together. I confess this is a very great Sum; but if it be true, that there was distributed in the Parish of Cripplegate only 17800 Pounds* in one Week to the Relief of the Poor, as I heard reported, and which I really believe was true, the other may not be improbable. It was doubtless to be reckon'd among the many signal good Providences which attended this great City, and of which there were many other worth recording; I say, this was a very remarkable one, that it pleased God thus to move the Hearts of the People in all parts of the Kingdom, so chearfully to contribute to the Relief and Support of the poor at London; the good Consequences of which were felt many ways, and particularly in preserving the Lives and recovering the Health of so many thousands, and keeping so many Thousands of Families from perishing and starving. And now I am talking of the merciful Disposition of Providence in this time of Calamity, I cannot but mention again, tho' I have spoken several times of it already on other Account, I mean that of the Progression of the Distemper; how it began at one end of the Town, and proceeded gradually and slowly from one Part to another, and like a dark Cloud that passes over our Heads, which as it thickens and overcasts the Air at one End, clears up at the other end: So while the Plague went on raging from West to East, as it went forwards East, it abated in the West, by which means those parts of the Town, which were not seiz'd, or who were left, and where it had spent its Fury, were (as it were) spar'd to help and assist the other; whereas had the Distemper spread it self over the whole City and Suburbs at once, raging in all Places alike, as it has done since in some Places abroad, the whole Body of the People must have been overwhelmed, and there would have died twenty thousand a Day, as they say there did at Naples,* nor would the People have been able to have help'd or assisted one another. For it must be observ'd that where the Plague was in its full Force, there indeed the People were very miserable, and the Consternation was inexpressible. But a little before it reach'd even to that place, or presently after it was gone, they were quite another Sort of People, and I cannot but acknowledge, that there was too much of that common Temper of Mankind to be found among us all at that time; namely to forget the Deliverance, when the Danger is past: But I shall come to speak of that part again. It must not be forgot here to take some Notice of the State of Trade, during the time of this common Calamity, and this with respect to Foreign Trade, as also to our Home-trade. As to Foreign Trade, there needs little to be said; the trading Nations of Europe were all afraid of us, no Port of France, or Holland, or Spain, or Italy would admit our Ships or correspond with us; indeed we stood on ill Terms with the Dutch, and were in a furious War with them, but tho' in a bad Condition to fight abroad, who had such dreadful Enemies to struggle with at Home. Our Merchants accordingly were at a full Stop, their Ships could go no where, that is to say to no place abroad; their Manufactures and Merchandise, that is to say, of our Growth, would not be touch'd abroad; they were as much afraid of our Goods, as they were of our People; and indeed they had reason, for our woolen Manufactures are as retentive of Infection as human Bodies,* and if pack'd up by Persons infected would receive the Infection, and be as dangerous to touch, as a Man would be that was infected; and therefore when any English Vessel arriv'd in Foreign Countries, if they did take the Goods on Shore, they always caused the Bales to be opened and air'd in Places appointed for that Purpose: But from London they would not suffer them to come into Port, much less to unlade their Goods upon any Terms whatever; and this Strictness was especially us'd with them in Spain and Italy. In Turkey and the Islands of the Arches* indeed as they are call'd, as well those belonging to the Turks as to the Venetians, they were not so very rigid; in the first there was no Obstruction at all; and four Ships, which were then in the River loading for Italy, that is for Leghorn and Naples, being denyed Product, as they call it, went on to Turkey, and were freely admitted to unlade their Cargo without any Difficulty, only that when they arriv'd there, some of their Cargo was not fit for Sale in that Country, and other Parts of it being consign'd to Merchants at Leghorn, the Captains of the Ships had no Right nor any Orders to dispose of the Goods; so that great Inconveniences followed to the Merchants. But this was nothing but what the Necessity of Affairs requir'd, and the Merchants at Leghorn and at Naples having Notice given them, sent again from thence to take Care of the Effects, which were particularly consign'd to those Ports, and to bring back in other Ships such as were improper for the Markets at Smyrna and Scanderoon.* The Inconveniences in Spain and Portugal were still greater; for they would, by no means, suffer our Ships, especially those from London, to come into any of their Ports, much less to unlade; there was a Report, that one of our Ships having by Stealth delivered her Cargo, among which was some Bales of English Cloth, Cotton, Kersyes, and such like Goods, the Spaniards caused all the Goods to be burnt, and punished the Men with Death who were concern'd in carrying them on Shore. This I believe was in Part true, tho' I do not affirm it: But it is not at all unlikely, seeing the Danger was really very great, the Infection being so violent in London. I heard likewise that the Plague was carryed into those Countries by some of our Ships, and particularly to the Port of Faro in the Kingdom of Algarve, belonging to the King of Portugal; and that several Persons died of it there, but it was not confirm'd. On the other Hand, tho' the Spaniards and Portuguese were so shie of us, it is most certain, that the Plague, as has been said, keeping at first much at that end of the Town next Westminster, the merchandising part of the Town, such as the City and the Water-side, was perfectly sound, till at least the Beginning of July; and the Ships in the River till the Beginning of August; for to the 1st of July, there had died but seven within the whole City,* and but 60 within the Liberties; but one in all the Parishes of Stepney, Aldgate, and White-Chappel; and but two in all the eight Parishes of Southwark. But it was the same thing abroad, for the bad News was gone over the whole World, that the City of London was infected with the Plague; and there was no inquiring there, how the Infection proceeded, or at which part of the Town it was begun, or was reach'd to. Besides, after it began to spread, it increased so fast, and the Bills grew so high, all on a sudden, that it was to no purpose to lessen the Report of it, or endeavour to make the People abroad think it better than it was, the Account which the Weekly Bills gave in was sufficient; and that there died two thousand to three or four thousand a Week, was sufficient to alarm the whole trading part of the World, and the following time being so dreadful also in the very City it self, put the whole World, I say, upon their Guard against it. You may be sure also, that the Report of these things lost nothing in the Carriage, the Plague was it self very terrible, and the Distress of the People very great, as you may observe by what I have said: But the Rumor was infinitely greater, and it must not be wonder'd, that our Friends abroad, as my Brother's Correspondents in particular were told there, namely in Portugal and Italy where he chiefly traded, that in London there died twenty thousand in a Week; that the dead Bodies lay unburied by Heaps; that the living were not sufficient to bury the dead, or the Sound to look after the Sick; that all the Kingdom was infected likewise, so that it was an universal Malady, such as was never heard of in those parts of the World; and they could hardly believe us, when we gave them an Account how things really were, and how there was not above one Tenth part of the People dead; that there was 500000 left that lived all the time in the Town; that now the People began to walk the Streets again, and those, who were fled, to return, there was no Miss of the usual Throng of people in the Streets, except as every Family might miss their Relations and Neighbours, and the like; I say they could not believe these things; and if Enquiry were now to be made in Naples, or in other Cities on the Coast of Italy, they would tell you that there was a dreadful Infection in London so many Years ago; in which, as above, there died Twenty Thousand in a Week, &c. Just as we have had it reported in London, that there was a Plague in the City of Naples, in the Year 1656, in which there died 20000 People in a Day, of which I have had very good Satisfaction, that it was utterly false. But these extravagant Reports were very prejudicial to our Trade as well as unjust and injurious in themselves; for it was a long Time after the Plague was quite over, before our Trade could recover it self in those parts of the World; and the Flemings and Dutch, but especially the last, made very great Advantages of it, having all the Market to themselves, and even buying our Manufactures in the several Parts of England where the Plague was not, and carrying them to Holland, and Flanders, and from thence transporting them to Spain, and to Italy, as if they had been of their own making. But they were detected sometimes and punish'd, that is to say, their Goods confiscated, and Ships also; for if it was true, that our Manufactures, as well as our People, were infected,* and that it was dangerous to touch or to open, and receive the Smell of them; then those People ran the hazard by that clandestine Trade,* not only of carrying the Contagion into their own Country, but also of infecting the Nations to whom they traded with those Goods; which, considering how many Lives might be lost in Consequence of such an Action, must be a Trade that no Men of Conscience could suffer themselves to be concern'd in. I do not take upon me to say, that any harm was done, I mean of that Kind, by those People: But I doubt I need not make any such Proviso in the Case of our own Country; for either by our People of London, or by the Commerce, which made their conversing with all Sorts of People in every County, and of every considerable Town, necessary, I say, by this means the Plague was first or last spread all over the Kingdom, as well in London as in all the Cities and great Towns, especially in the trading Manufacturing Towns, and Sea-Ports; so that first or last, all the considerable Places in England were visited more or less, and the Kingdom of Ireland in some Places, but not so universally; how it far'd with the People in Scotland, I had no opportunity to enquire. It is to be observ'd, that while the Plague continued so violent in London, the out Ports, as they are call'd, enjoy'd a very great Trade, especially to the adjacent Countries, and to our own Plantations; for Example, the Towns of Colchester, Yarmouth, and Hull, on that side of England, exported to Holland and Hamburgh the Manufactures of the adjacent Counties for several Months after the Trade with London was as it were entirely shut up; likewise the Cities of Bristol and Exeter with the Port of Plymouth, had the like Advantage to Spain, to the Canaries, to Guinea, and to the West Indies; and particularly to Ireland; but as the Plague spread it self every way after it had been in London, to such a Degree as it was in August and September; so all, or most of those Cities and Towns were infected first or last, and then Trade was as it were under a general Embargo, or at a full stop,* as I shall observe farther, when I speak of our home Trade. One thing however must be observed, that as to Ships coming in from Abroad, as many you may be sure did, some, who were out in all Parts of the World a considerable while before, and some who when they went out knew nothing of an Infection, or at least of one so terrible; these came up the River boldly, and delivered their Cargoes as they were oblig'd to do, except just in the two Months of August and September, when the Weight of the Infection lying, as I may say, all below Bridge, no Body durst appear in Business for a while: But as this continued but for a few Weeks, the Homeward bound Ships, especially such whose Cargoes were not liable to spoil, came to an Anchor for a Time, short of THE POOL1, or fresh Water part of the River, even as low as the River Medway, where several of them ran in, and others lay at the Nore, and in the Hope below Gravesend: So that by the latter end of October, there was a very great Fleet of Homeward bound Ships to come up, such as the like had not been known for many Years. Two particular Trades were carried on by Water Carriage all the while of the Infection, and that with little or no Interruption, very much to the Advantage and Comfort of the poor distressed People of the City, and those were the coasting Trade for Corn, and the Newcastle Trade for Coals.* The first of these was particularly carried on by small Vessels, from the Port of Hull, and other Places in the Humber, by which great Quantities of Corn were brought in from Yorkshire and Lincolnshire: The other part of this Corn-Trade was from Lynn in Norfolk, from Wells, and Burnham, and from Yarmouth, all in the same County; and the third Branch was from the River Medway, and from Milton, Feversham, Margate, and Sandwich, and all the other little Places and Ports round the Coast of Kent and Essex. There was also a very good Trade from the Coast of Suffolk with Corn, Butter and Cheese; these Vessels kept a constant Course of Trade, and without Interruption came up to that Market known still by the Name of Bear-Key, where they supply'd the City plentifully with Corn, when Land Carriage began to fail, and when the People began to be sick of coming from many Places in the Country. This also was much of it owing to the Prudence and Conduct of the Lord Mayor, who took such care to keep the Masters and Seamen from Danger, when they came up, causing their Corn to be bought off at any time they wanted a Market, (which however was very seldom) and causing the Corn-Factors immediately to unlade and deliver the Vessels loaden with Corn, that they had very little occasion to come out of their Ships or Vessels, the Money being always carried on Board to them, and put into a Pail of Vinegar before it was carried. The second Trade was, that of Coals from Newcastle upon Tyne; without which the City would have been greatly distressed; for not in the Streets only, but in private Houses and Families, great Quantities of Coals were then burnt, even all the Summer long, and when the Weather was hottest, which was done by the Advice of the Physicians; some indeed oppos'd it, and insisted that to keep the Houses and Rooms hot, was a means to propagate the Distemper, which was a Fermentation and Heat already in the Blood, that it was known to spread, and increase in hot Weather, and abate in cold, and therefore they alledg'd that all contagious Distempers are the worse for Heat, because the Contagion was nourished, and gain'd Strength in hot Weather, and was as it were propagated in Heat. Others said, they granted, that Heat in the Climate might propagate Infection, as sultry hot Weather fills the Air with Vermine, and nourishes innumerable Numbers, and Kinds of venomous Creatures, which breed in our Food, in the Plants, and even in our Bodies, by the very stench of which, Infection may be propagated; also, that heat in the Air, or heat of Weather, as we ordinarly call it, makes Bodies relax and faint, exhausts the Spirits, opens the Pores,* and makes us more apt to receive Infection, or any evil Influence, be it from noxious pestilential Vapors, or any other Thing in the Air: But that the heat of Fire, and especially of Coal Fires kept in our Houses, or near us, had a quite different Operation, the Heat being not of the same Kind, but quick and fierce, tending not to nourish but to consume, and dissipate all those noxious Fumes, which the other kind of Heat rather exhaled and stagnated than separated and burnt up; besides it was alledg'd, that the sulphurous and nitrous Particles, that are often found to be in the Coal, with that bituminous Substance which burns, are all assisting to clear and purge the Air, and render it wholsom and safe to breath[e] in, after the noctious Particles as above are dispersed and burnt up. The latter Opinion prevail'd at that Time, and as I must confess I think with good Reason, and the Experience of the Citizens confirm'd it, many Houses which had constant Fires kept in the Rooms, having never been infected at all; and I must join my Experience to it, for I found the keeping good Fires kept our Rooms sweet and wholsom, and I do verily believe made our whole Family so, more than would otherwise have been. But I return to the Coals as a Trade, it was with no little difficulty that this Trade was kept open, and particularly because as we were in an open War with the Dutch,* at that Time; the Dutch Capers at first took a great many of our Collier Ships, which made the rest cautious, and made them to stay to come in Fleets together: But after some time, the Capers were either afraid to take them, or their Masters, the States, were afraid they should, and forbad them, lest the Plague should be among them, which made them fare the better. For the Security of those Northern Traders, the Coal Ships were order'd by my Lord Mayor, not to come up into the Pool above a certain Number at a Time, and order'd Lighters, and other Vessels, such as the Wood-mongers, that is the Wharf Keepers, or Coal-Sellers furnished, to go down, and take out the Coals as low as Deptford and Greenwich, and some farther down. Others deliver'd great Quantities of Coals in particular Places, where the Ships cou'd come to the Shoar, as at Greenwich, Blackwal, and other Places, in vast Heaps, as if to be kept for Sale; but were then fetch'd away, after the Ships which brought them were gone; so that the Seamen had no Communication with the River-Men, nor so much as came near one another. Yet all this Caution, could not effectually prevent the Distemper getting among the Colliery, that is to say, among the Ships, by which a great many Seamen died of it; and that which was still worse, was, that they carried it down to Ipswich, and Yarmouth, to Newcastle upon Tyne, and other Places on the Coast; where, especially at Newcastle and at Sunderland, it carried off a great Number of People. The making so many Fires as above, did indeed consume an unusual Quantity of Coals; and that upon one or two stops of the Ships coming up, whether by contrary Weather, or by the Interruption of Enemies, I do not remember, but the Price of Coals was exceeding dear,* even as high as 4 1. a Chalder, but it soon abated when the Ships came in, and as afterwards they had a freer Passage, the Price was very reasonable all the rest of that Year. The publick Fires* which were made on these Occasions, as I have calculated it, must necessarily have cost the City about 200 Chalder of Coals a Week, if they had continued, which was indeed a very great Quantity; but as it was, thought necessary, nothing was spar'd; however as some of the Physicians cry'd them down, they were not kept a-light above four or five Days; the Fires were order'd thus. One at the Custom-house, one at Billingsgate, one at Queen-hith, and one at the Three Cranes, one in Black Friars, and one at the Gate of Bridewel, one at the Corner of Leadenhal Street, and Grace-church, one at the North, and one at the South Gate of the Royal Exchange, one at Guild Hall, and one at Blackwell-hall Gate, one at the Lord Mayor's Door, in St. Helens, one at the West Entrance into St. Paul's, and one at the Entrance into Bow Church: I do not remember whether there was any at the City Gates, but one at the Bridge foot there was, just by St. Magnus Church. I know, some have quarrell'd since that at the Experiment, and said, that there died the more People, because of those Fires; but I am persuaded those that say so, offer no Evidence to prove it, neither can I believe it on any Account whatever. It remains to give some Account of the State of Trade at home in England during this dreadful Time, and particularly as it relates to the Manufactures, and the Trade in the City: At the first breaking out of the Infection, there was, as it is easie to suppose, a very great fright among the People, and consequently a general stop of Trade; except in Provisions and Necessaries of Life, and even in those Things, as there was a vast Number of People fled, and a very great Number always sick, besides the Number which died, so there could not be above two Thirds, if above one Half of the Consumption of Provisions in the City as used to be. It pleas'd God, to send a very plentiful Year of Corn and Fruit, but not of Hay or Grass;* by which means, Bread was cheap, by Reason of the Plenty of Corn: Flesh was cheap, by Reason of the Scarcity of Grass; but Butter and Cheese were dear for the same Reason, and Hay in the Market just beyond White-Chapel Bars, was sold at 4 1. per Load. But that affected not the Poor; there was a most excessive Plenty of all Sorts of Fruit,* such as Apples, Pears, Plumbs, Cherries, Grapes; and they were the cheaper, because of the want of People; but this made the Poor eat them to excess, and this brought them into Fluxes, griping of the Guts, Surfeits, and the like, which often precipitated them into the Plague. But to come to Matters of Trade; first, Foreign Exportation being stopt, or at least very much interrupted, and rendred difficult; a general Stop of all those Manufactories followed of Course, which were usually bought for Exportation; and tho' sometimes Merchants Abroad were importunate for Goods, yet little was sent, the Passages being so generally stop'd, that the English Ships would not be admitted, as is said already, into their Port. This put a stop to the Manufactures, that were for Exportation in most Parts of England, except in some out Ports; and even that was soon stop'd, for they all had the Plague in their Turn: But tho' this was felt all over England, yet what was still worse, all Intercourse of Trade for Home Consumption of Manufactures, especially those which usually circulated thro' the Londoners Hands, was stop'd at once, the Trade of the City being stop'd. All Kinds of Handicrafts in the City, &c. Tradesmen and Mechanicks,* were, as I have said before, out of Employ, and this occasion'd the putting off, and dismissing an innumerable Number of Journey-men, and Work-men of all Sorts, seeing nothing was done relating to such Trades, but what might be said to be absolutely necessary. This caused the Multitude of single People in London to be unprovided for; as also of Families, whose living depended upon the Labour of the Heads of those Families; I say, this reduced them to extream Misery; and I must confess it is for the Honour of the City of London, and will be for many Ages, as long as this is to be spoken of, that they were able to supply with charitable Provision, the Wants of so many Thousands of those as afterwards fell sick, and were distressed; so that it may be safely aver'd that no Body perished for Want, at least that the Magistrates had any notice given them of. This Stagnation of our Manufacturing Trade in the Country, would have put the People there to much greater Difficulties, but that the Master-Workmen, Clothiers and others, to the uttermost of their Stocks and Strength, kept on making their Goods to keep the Poor at Work, believing that as soon as the Sickness should abate, they would have a quick Demand in Proportion to the Decay of their Trade at that Time: But as none but those Masters that were rich could do thus, and that many were poor and not able, the Manufacturing Trade in England suffer'd greatly, and the Poor were pinch'd all over England by the Calamity of the City of London only.* It is true, that the next Year made them full amends by another terrible Calamity upon the City; so that the City by one Calamity impoverished and weaken'd the Country, and by another Calamity even terrible too of its Kind, enrich'd the Country* and made them again amends: For an infinite Quantity of Houshold Stuff, wearing Apparel, and other Things, besides whole Ware-houses fill'd with Merchandize and Manufacturies, such as come from all Parts of England, were consum'd in the Fire of London, the next Year after this terrible Visitation: It is incredible what a Trade this made all over the whole Kingdom, to make good the Want, and to supply that Loss: So that, in short, all the manufacturing Hands in the Nation were set on Work, and were little enough, for several Years, to supply the Market and answer the Demands; all Foreign Markets, also were empty of our Goods, by the stop which had been occasioned by the Plague, and before an open Trade was allow'd again; and the prodigious Demand at Home falling in join'd to make a quick Vent for all Sorts of Goods; so that there never was known such a Trade all over England for the Time, as was in the first seven Years after the Plague, and after the Fire of London. It remains now, that I should say something of the merciful Part of this terrible Judgment: The last Week in September, the Plague being come to its Crisis, its Fury began to asswage. I remember my Friend Doctor Heath coming to see me the Week before, told me, he was sure that the Violence of it would asswage in a few Days; but when I saw the weekly Bill of that Week, which was the highest of the whole Year, being 8297 of all Diseases, I upbraided him with it, and ask'd him, what he had made his Judgment from? His Answer, however, was not so much to seek, as I thought it would have been; look you, says he, by the Number which are at this Time sick and infected, there should have been twenty Thousand dead the last Week, instead of eight Thousand, if the inveterate mortal Contagion had been, as it was two Weeks ago; for then it ordinarily kill'd in two or three Days, now not under Eight or Ten; and then not above One in Five recovered; whereas I have observed, that now not above Two in Five miscarry; and observe it from me, the next Bill will decrease, and you will see many more People recover than used to do; for tho' a vast Multitude are now every where infected, and as many every Day fall sick; yet there will not so many die as there did, for the Malignity of the Distemper is abated; adding, that he began now to hope, nay more than hope, that the Infection had pass'd its Crisis, and was going off; and accordingly so it was, for the next Week being, as I said, the last in September, the Bill decreased almost two Thousand. It is true, the Plague was still at a frightful Height, and the next Bill was no less than 6460, and the next to that 5720; but still my Friend's Observation was just, and it did appear the People did recover faster, and more in Number, than they used to do; and indeed if it had not been so, what had been the Condition of the City of London? for according to my Friend there were not fewer than sixty Thousand People at that Time infected, whereof, as above, 20477 died, and near 40000 recovered; whereas had it been as it was before, Fifty thousand of that Number would very probably have died, if not more, and 50000 more would have sickned; for in a Word, the whole Mass of People began to sicken, and it look'd as if none would escape. But this Remark of my Friend's appear'd more evident in a few Weeks more; for the Decrease went on, and another Week in October it decreas'd 1849. So that the Number dead of the Plague was but 2665, and the next Week it decreased 1413 more, and yet it was seen plainly, that there was abundance of People sick, nay abundance more than ordinary, and abundance fell sick every Day, but (as above) the Malignity of the Disease abated. Such is the precipitant Disposition of our People, whether it is so or not all over the World, that's none of my particular Business to enquire; but I saw it apparently here, that as upon the first Fright of the Infection, they shun'd one another, and fled from one another's Houses, and from the City with an unaccountable, and, as I thought, unnecessary Fright; so now upon this Notion spreading, (viz.) that the Distemper was not so catching as formerly, and that if it was catch'd, it was not so mortal, and seeing abundance of People who really fell sick, recover again daily; they took to such a precipitant Courage, and grew so entirely regardless of themselves, and of the Infection, that they made no more of the Plague than of an ordinary Fever, nor indeed so much; they not only went boldly into Company, with those who had Tumours and Carbuncles upon them, that were running, and consequently contagious, but eat and drank with them, nay into their Houses to visit them, and even, as I was told, into their very Chambers where they lay sick. This I cou'd not see rational; my Friend Doctor Heath allow'd, and it was plain to Experience, that the Distemper was as catching as ever, and as many fell sick, but only he alledg'd, that so many of those that fell sick did not die; but I think that while many did die, and that, at best, the Distemper it self was very terrible, the Sores and Swellings very tormenting, and the Danger of Death not left out of the Circumstance of Sickness, tho' not so frequent as before; all those things, together with the exceeding Tediousness of the Cure, the Loathsomness of the Disease, and many other Articles, were enough to deter any Man living from a dangerous Mixture with the sick People, and make them as anxious almost to avoid the Infection as before. Nay there was another Thing which made the meer catching of the Distemper frightful, and that was the terrible burning of the Causticks, which the Surgeons laid on the Swellings to bring them to break, and to run; without which the Danger of Death was very great, even to the last; also the unsufferable Torment of the Swellings, which tho' it might not make People raving and distracted, as they were before, and as I have given several Instances of already, yet they put the Patient to inexpressible Torture; and those that fell into it, tho' they did escape with Life, yet they made bitter Complaints of those, that had told them there was no Danger, and sadly repented their Rashness and Folly in venturing to run into the reach of it. Nor did this unwary Conduct of the People end here, for a great many that thus cast off their Cautions suffered more deeply still; and tho' many escap'd, yet many died; and at least it had this publick Mischief attending it, that it made the Decrease of Burials slower than it would otherwise have been; for as this Notion run like Lightning thro' the City, and People's Heads were possess'd with it, even as soon as the first great Decrease in the Bills appear'd, we found, that the two next Bills did not decrease in Proportion; the Reason I take to be the Peoples running so rashly into Danger, giving up all their former Cautions, and Care, and all the Shyness which they used to practise; depending that the Sickness would not reach them, or that if it did, they should not die. The Physicians oppos'd this thoughtless Humour of the People with all their Might, and gave out printed Directions, spreading them all over the City and Suburbs, advising the People to continue reserv'd, and to use still the utmost Caution in their ordinary Conduct, notwithstanding the Decrease of the Distemper, terrifying them with the Danger of bringing a Relapse upon the whole City, and telling them how such a Relapse might be more fatal and dangerous than the whole Visitation that had been already; with many Arguments and Reasons to explain and prove that part to them, and which are too long to repeat here. But it was all to no Purpose, the audacious Creatures were so possess'd with the first Joy, and so surpriz'd with the Satisfaction of seeing a vast Decrease in the weekly Bills, that they were impenetrable by any new Terrors, and would not be persuaded, but that the Bitterness of Death was pass'd; and it was to no more purpose to talk to them, than to an East-wind; but they open'd Shops, went about Streets, did Business, and conversed with any Body that came in their Way to converse with, whether with Business, or without, neither inquiring of their Health, or so much as being Apprehensive of any Danger from them, tho' they knew them not to be sound. This imprudent rash Conduct cost a great many their Lives, who had with great Care and Caution shut themselves up, and kept retir'd as it were from all Mankind, and had by that means, under God's Providence, been preserv'd thro' all the heat of that Infection. This rash and foolish Conduct, I say, of the People went so far, that the Ministers took notice to them of it at last, and laid before them both the Folly and Danger of it; and this check'd it a little, so that they grew more cautious, but it had another Effect, which they cou'd not check; for as the first Rumour had spread not over the City only, but into the Country, it had the like Effect, and the People were so tir'd with being so long from London, and so eager to come back, that they flock'd to Town* without Fear or Forecast, and began to shew themselves in the Streets, as if all the Danger was over: It was indeed surprising to see it, for tho' there died still from a Thousand to eighteen Hundred a Week, yet the People flock'd to Town, as if all had been well. The Consequence of this was, that the Bills encreas'd again Four Hundred the very first Week in November; and if I might believe the Physicians, there was above three Thousand fell sick that Week, most of them new Comers too. One JOHN COCK, a Barber in St. Martins le Grand, was an eminent Example of this; I mean of the hasty Return of the People, when the Plague was abated: This John Cock had left the Town with his whole Family, and lock'd up his House, and was gone in the Country, as many others did, and finding the Plague so decreas'd in November, that there died but 905 per Week of all Diseases, he ventur'd home again; he had in his Family Ten Persons, that is to say, himself and Wife, five Children, two Apprentices, and a Maid Servant; he had not been return'd to his House above a Week, and began to open his Shop, and carry on his Trade, but the Distemper broke out in his Family, and within about five Days they all died, except one, that is to say, himself, his Wife, all his five Children, and his two Apprentices, and only the Maid remain'd alive. But the Mercy of God was greater to the rest than [we] had Reason to expect; for the Malignity, as I have said, of the Distemper was spent, the Contagion was exhausted, and also the Winter Weather came on apace, and the Air was clear and cold, with some sharp Frosts; and this encreasing still, most of those that had fallen sick recover'd, and the Health of the City began to return: There were indeed some Returns of the Distemper, even in the Month of December, and the Bills encreased near a Hundred, but it went off again and so in a short while, Things began to return to their own Channel. And wonderful it was to see how populous the City was again all on a sudden; so that a Stranger could not miss the Numbers that were lost, neither was there any miss of the Inhabitants as to their Dwellings: Few or no empty Houses were to be seen, or if there were some, there was no want of Tenants for them. I wish I cou'd say, that as the City had a new Face, so the Manners of the People had a new Appearance: I doubt not but there were many that retain'd a sincere Sense of their Deliverance, and that were heartily thankful to that sovereign Hand, that had protected them in so dangerous a Time; it would be very uncharitable to judge otherwise in a City so populous, and where the People were so devout, as they were here in the Time of the Visitation it self; but except what of this was to be found in particular Families, and Faces, it must be acknowledg'd that the general Practice of the People was just as it was before, and very little Difference was to be seen. Some indeed said Things were worse, that the Morals of the People declin'd from this very time; that the People harden'd by the Danger they had been in, like Sea-men after a Storm is over, were more wicked and more stupid, more bold and hardened in their Vices and Immoralities than they were before; but I will not carry it so far neither: It would take up a History of no small Length, to give a Particular of all the Gradations, by which the Course of Things in this City came to be restor'd again, and to run in their own Channel as they did before. Some Parts of England were now infected as violently as London had been; the Cities of Norwich, Peterborough, Lincoln, Colchester,* and other Places were now visited; and the Magistrates of London began to set Rules for our Conduct, as to corresponding with those Cities: It is true, we could not pretend to forbid their People coming to London, because it was impossible to know them assunder, so after many Consultations, the Lord Mayor, and Court of Aldermen were oblig'd to drop it: All they cou'd do, was to warn and caution the People, not to entertain in their Houses, or converse with any People who they knew came from such infected Places. But they might as well have talk'd to the Air, for the People of London thought themselves so Plague-free now, that they were past all Admonitions; they seem'd to depend upon it, that the Air was restor'd, and that the Air was like a Man that had had the Small Pox, not capable of being infected again; this reviv'd that Notion, that the Infection was all in the Air, that there was no such thing as Contagion from the sick People to the Sound; and so strongly did this Whimsy prevail among People, that they run all together promiscuously, sick and well; not the Mahometans, who, prepossess'd with the Principle of Predestination value nothing of Contagion, let it be in what it will, could be more obstinate than the People of London; they that were perfectly sound, and came out of the wholesome Air, as we call it, into the City, made nothing of going into the same Houses and Chambers nay even into the same Beds, with those that had the Distemper upon them, and were not recovered. Some indeed paid for their audacious Boldness with the Price of their Lives; an infinite Number fell sick, and the Physicians had more Work than ever, only with this Difference, that more of their Patients recovered; that is to say, they generally recovered, but certainly there were more People infected, and fell sick now, when there did not die above a Thousand, or Twelve Hundred in a Week, than there was when there died Five or Six Thousand a Week; so entirely negligent were the People at that Time, in the great and dangerous Case of Health and Infection; and so ill were they able to take or accept of the Advice of those who cautioned them for their Good. The People being thus return'd, as it were in general, it was very strange to find, that in their inquiring after their Friends, some whole Families were so entirely swept away, that there was no Remembrance of them left; neither was any Body to be found to possess or shew any Title to that little they had left; for in such Cases, what was to be found was generally embezzled, and purloyn'd, some gone one way, some another. It was said such abandon'd Effects came to the King as the universal Heir, upon which we were told, and I suppose it was in part true, that the King granted all such as Deodands* to the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen of London, to be applied to the use of the Poor, of whom there were very many: For it is to be observ'd, that tho' the Occasions of Relief, and the Objects of Distress were very many more in the Time of the Violence of the Plague, than now after all was over; yet the Distress of the Poor was more now, a great deal than it was then, because all the Sluces of general Charity were now shut; People suppos'd the main Occasion to be over, and so stop'd their Hands; whereas particular Objects were still very moving, and the Distress of those that were Poor, was very great indeed. Tho' the Health of the City was now very much restor'd, yet Foreign Trade did not begin to stir, neither would Foreigners admit our Ships into their Ports for a great while; as for the Dutch, the Misunderstandings between our Court and them had broken out into a War the Year before; so that our Trade that way was wholly interrupted; but Spain and Portugal, Italy and Barbary, as also Hamburgh, and all the Ports in the Baltick, these were all shy of us a great while, and would not restore Trade with us for many Months. The Distemper sweeping away such Multitudes, as I have observ'd, many, if not all the out Parishes were oblig'd to make new burying Grounds, besides that I have mention'd in Bunhil-Fields, some of which were continued, and remain in Use to this Day; but others were left off, and which, I confess, I mention with some Reflection, being converted into other Uses, or built upon afterwards, the dead Bodies were disturb'd, abus'd, dug up again, some even before the Flesh of them was perished from the Bones, and remov'd like Dung or Rubbish to other Places; some of those which came within the Reach of my Observation, are as follow. 1. A piece of Ground beyond Goswel Street, near Mount-Mill, being some of the Remains of the old Lines or Fortifications of the City, where Abundance were buried promiscuously from the Parishes of Aldersgate, Clerkenwell, and even out of the City. This Ground, as I take it, was since made a Physick Garden,* and after that has been built upon. 2. A piece of Ground just over the Black Ditch, as it was then call'd, at the end of Holloway Lane, in Shoreditch Parish; it has been since made a Yard for keeping Hogs, and for other ordinary Uses, but is quite out of Use as a burying Ground. 3. The upper End of Hand-Alley in Bishopsgate Street, which was then a green Field, and was taken in particularly for Bishopsgate Parish, tho' many of the Carts out of the City brought their dead thither also, particularly out of the Parish of St. All-hallows on the Wall; this Place I cannot mention without much Regret, it was, as I remember, about two or three Years after the Plague was ceas'd that Sir Robert Clayton* came to be possest of the Ground; it was reported, how true I know not, that it fell to the King for want of Heirs, all those who had any Right to it being carried off by the Pestilence, and that Sir Robert Clayton obtain'd a Grant of it from King Charles II. But however he came by it, certain it is, the Ground was let out to build on, or built upon by his Order: The first House built upon it was a large fair House still standing, which faces the Street, or Way, now call'd Hand-Alley, which, tho' call'd an Alley, is as wide as a Street: The Houses in the same Row with that House Northward, are built on the very same Ground where the poor People were buried, and the Bodies on opening the Ground for the Foundations, were dug up, some of them remaining so plain to be seen, that the Womens Sculls were distinguish'd by their long Hair, and of others, the Flesh was not quite perished; so that the People began to exclaim loudly against it, and some suggested that it might endanger a Return of the Contagion: After which the Bones and Bodies, as fast as they came at them, were carried to another part of the same Ground, and thrown all together into a deep Pit, dug on purpose, which now is to be known, in that it is not built on, but is a Passage to another House, at the upper end of Rose Alley, just against the Door of a Meeting-house, which has been built there many Years since; and the Ground is palisadoed off from the rest of the Passage, in a little square, there lye the Bones and Remains of near Two thousand Bodies, carried by the Dead-Carts to their Grave in that one Year. 4. Besides this, there was a piece of Ground in Moorfields, by the going into the Street which is now call'd Old Bethlem, which was enlarg'd much, tho' not wholly taken in on the same occasion. N.B. The Author of this Journal, lyes buried in that very Ground, being at his own Desire, his Sister having been buried there a few Years before. 5. Stepney Parish, extending it self from the East part of London to the North, even to the very Edge of Shoreditch Church-yard, had a piece of Ground taken in to bury their Dead, close to the said Churchyard; and which for that very Reason was left open, and is since, I suppose, taken into the same Church-yard; and they had also two other burying Places in Spittlefields, one where since a Chapel or Tabernacle has been built for ease to this great Parish, and another in Petticoat-lane. There were no less than Five other Grounds made use of for the Parish of Stepney at that time; one where now stands the Parish Church of St. Paul's Shadwel, and the other, where now stands the Parish Church of St. John at Wapping, both which had not the Names of Parishes at that time, but were belonging to Stepney Parish. I cou'd name many more, but these coming within my particular Knowledge, the Circumstance I thought made it of Use to record them; from the whole, it may be observ'd, that they were oblig'd in this Time of Distress, to take in new burying Grounds in most of the out Parishes, for laying the prodigious Numbers of People which died in so short a Space of Time; but why Care was not taken to keep those Places separate from ordinary Uses, that so the Bodies might rest undisturb'd, that I cannot answer for, and must confess, I think it was wrong; who were to blame, I know not. I should have mention'd, that the Quakers had at that time also a burying Ground,* set a-part to their Use, and which they still make use of, and they had also a particular dead Cart to fetch their Dead from their Houses; and the famous Solomon Eagle, who, as I mentioned before, had predicted the Plague as a Judgment, and run naked thro' the Streets, telling the People, that it was come upon them, to punish them for their Sins, had his own Wife died the very next Day of the Plague, and was carried one of the first in the Quakers dead Cart, to their new burying Ground. I might have throng'd this Account with many more remarkable Things, which occur'd in the Time of the Infection, and particularly what pass'd between the Lord Mayor and the Court, which was then at Oxford, and what Directions were from time to time receiv'd from the Government for their Conduct on this critical Occasion. But really the Court concern'd themselves so little, and that little they did was of so small Import, that I do not see it of much Moment to mention any Part of it here, except that of appointing a Monthly Fast in the City, and the sending the Royal Charity to the Relief of the Poor, both which I have mention'd before. Great was the Reproach thrown on those Physicians* who left their Patients during the Sickness, and now they came to Town again, no Body car'd to employ them; they were call'd Deserters, and frequently Bills were set up upon their Doors, and written, Here is a Doctor to be let! So that several of those Physicians were fain for a while to sit still and look about them, or at least remove their Dwellings, and set up in new Places, and among new Acquaintance; the like was the Case with the Clergy, who the People were indeed very abusive to, writing Verses and scandalous Reflections upon them, setting upon the Church Door, here is a Pulpit to be let, or sometimes to be sold, which was worse. It was not the least of our Misfortunes, that with our Infection, when it ceased, there did not cease the Spirit of Strife and Contention, Slander and Reproach, which was really the great Troubler of the Nation's Peace before: It was said to be the Remains of the old Animosities, which had so lately involv'd us all in Blood and Disorder. But as the late Act of Indemnity* had laid asleep the Quarrel it self, so the Government had recommended Family and Personal Peace upon all Occasions, to the whole Nation. But it cou'd not be obtain'd, and particularly after the ceasing of the Plague in London, when any one that had seen the Condition which the People had been in, and how they caress'd one another at that time, promis'd to have more Charity for the future, and to raise no more Reproaches: I say, any one that had seen them then, would have thought they would have come together with another Spirit at last. But, I say, it cou'd not be obtain'd; the Quarrel remain'd, the Church and the Presbyterians were incompatible; as soon as the Plague was remov'd, the dissenting outed Ministers who had supplied the Pulpits, which were deserted by the Incumbents, retir'd, they cou'd expect no other; but that they should immediately fall upon them, and harrass them, with their penal Laws,* accept their preaching while they were sick, and persecute them as soon as they were recover'd again, this even we that were of the Church thought was very hard, and cou'd by no means approve of it. But it was the Government, and we cou'd say nothing to hinder it; we cou'd only say, it was not our doing, and we could not answer for it. On the other Hand, the Dissenters reproaching those Ministers of the Church with going away, and deserting their Charge, abandoning the People in their Danger, and when they had most need of Comfort and the like, this we cou'd by no means approve; for all Men have not the same Faith, and the same Courage, and the Scripture commands us to judge the most favourably, and according to Charity. A Plague is a formidable Enemy, and is arm'd with Terrors that every Man is not sufficiently fortified to resist, or prepar'd to stand the Shock against: It is very certain, that a great many of the Clergy, who were in Circumstances to do it, withdrew, and fled for the Safety of their Lives; but 'tis true also, that a great many of them staid, and many of them fell in the Calamity, and in the Discharge of their Duty. It is true, some of the Dissenting turn'd out Ministers staid, and their Courage is to be commended, and highly valued, but these were not abundant; it cannot be said that they all staid, and that none retir'd into the Country, any more than it can be said of the Church Clergy, that they all went away; neither did all those that went away, go without substituting Curates, and others in their Places, to do the Offices needful, and to visit the Sick, as far as it was practicable; so that upon the whole, an Allowance of Charity might have been made on both Sides, and we should have consider'd, that such a time as this of 1665, is not to be paralleled in History, and that it is not the stoutest Courage that will always support Men in such Cases; I had not said this, but had rather chosen to record the Courage and religious Zeal of those of both Sides, who did hazard themselves for the Service of the poor People in their Distress, without remembring that any fail'd in their Duty on either side. But the want of Temper among us, has made the contrary to this necessary; some that staid, not only boasting too much of themselves, but reviling those that fled, branding them with Cowardice, deserting their Flocks, and acting the Part of the Hireling, and the like: I recommend it to the Charity of all good People to look back, and reflect duly upon the Terrors of the Time; and whoever does so will see, that it is not an ordinary Strength that cou'd support it; it was not like appearing in the Head of an Army, or charging a Body of Horse in the Field; but it was charging Death it self on his pale Horse;* to stay was indeed to die, and it could be esteemed nothing less, especially as things appear'd at the latter End of August, and the Beginning of September, and as there was reason to expect them at that time; for no Man expected, and I dare say, believed, that the Distemper would take so sudden a Turn as it did, and fall immediately 2000 in a Week, when there was such a prodigious Number of People sick at that Time, as it was known there was; and then it was that many shifted away, that had stay'd most of the time before. Besides, if God gave Strength to some more than to others, was it to boast of their Ability to abide the Stroak, and upbraid those that had not the same Gift and Support, or ought not they rather to have been humble and thankful, if they were render'd more useful than their Brethren? I think it ought to be recorded to the Honour of such Men, as well Clergy as Physicians, Surgeons, Apothecaries, Magistrates and Officers of every kind, as also all useful People, who ventur'd their Lives in Discharge of their Duty, as most certainly all such as stay'd did to the last Degree, and several of all these Kinds did not only venture but lose their Lives on that sad Occasion. I was once making a List of all such, I mean of all those Professions and Employments, who thus died, as I call it, in the way of their Duty, but it was impossible for a private Man to come at a Certainty in the Particulars; I only remember, that there died sixteen Clergy-men, two Aldermen, five Physicians, thirteen Surgeons, within the City and Liberties before the beginning of September: But this being, as I said before, the great Crisis and Extremity of the Infection, it can be no compleat List: As to inferior People, I think there died six and forty Constables and Headboroughs* in the two Parishes of Stepney and White-Chapel; but I could not carry my List on, for when the violent Rage of the Distemper in September came upon us, it drove us out of all Measures: Men did then no more die by Tale and by Number,* they might put out a Weekly Bill, and call them seven or eight Thousand, or what they pleas'd; 'tis certain they died by Heaps, and were buried by Heaps, that is to say without Account; and if I might believe some People, who were more abroad and more conversant with those things than I, tho' I was public enough for one that had no more Business to do than I had, I say, if I may believe them, there was not many less buried those first three Weeks in September than 20000 per Week; however the others aver the Truth of it, yet I rather chuse to keep to the public Account; seven and eight thousand per Week* is enough to make good all that I have said of the Terror of those Times; and it is much to the Satisfaction of me that write, as well as those that read, to be able to say, that every thing is set down with Moderation, and rather within Compass than beyond it. Upon all these Accounts I say I could wish, when we were recover'd, our Conduct had been more distinguish'd for Charity and Kindness in Remembrance of the past Calamity, and not so much a valuing our selves upon our Boldness in staying, as if all Men were Cowards that fly from the Hand of God, or that those who stay, do not sometimes owe their Courage to their Ignorance, and despising the Hand of their Maker, which is a criminal kind of Desperation, and not a true Courage. I cannot but leave it upon Record, that the Civil Officers, such as Constables, Headboroughs, Lord Mayor's, and Sheriff's-men, as also Parish-Officers, whose Business it was to take Charge of the Poor, did their Duties in general with as much Courage as any, and perhaps with more, because their Work was attended with more Hazards, and lay more among the Poor, who were more subject to be infected and in the most pitiful Plight when they were taken with the Infection: But then it must be added too, that a great Number of them died, indeed it was scarce possible it should be otherwise. I have not said one Word here about the Physick or Preparations that we ordinarily made use of on this terrible Occasion, I mean we that went frequently abroad up and down Street, as I did; much of this was talk'd of in the Books and Bills of our Quack Doctors, of whom I have said enough already. It may however be added, that the College of Physicians were daily publishing several Preparations, which they had consider'd of in the Process of their Practice, and which being to be had in Print, I avoid repeating them for that reason. One thing I could not help observing, what befell one of the Quacks, who publish'd that he had a most excellent Preservative against the Plague, which whoever kept about them, should never be infected, or liable to Infection; this Man, who we may reasonably suppose, did not go abroad without some of this excellent Preservative in his Pocket, yet was taken by the Distemper, and carry'd off in two or three Days. I am not of the Number of the Physic-Haters, or Physic-Despisers; on the contrary, I have often mentioned the regard I had to the Dictates of my particular Friend Dr. Heath; but yet I must acknowledge, I made use of little or nothing, except as I have observ'd, to keep a Preparation of strong Scent* to have ready, in case I met with any thing of offensive Smells, or went too near any burying place, or dead Body. Neither did I do, what I know some did, keep the Spirits always high and hot with Cordials, and Wine,* and such things, and which, as I observ'd, one learned Physician used himself so much to, as that he could not leave them off when the Infection was quite gone, and so became a Sot for all his Life after. I remember, my Friend the Doctor us'd to say, that there was a certain Set of Drugs and Preparations, which were all certainly good and useful in the case of an Infection; out of which, or with which, Physicians might make an infinite Variety of Medicines, as the Ringers of Bells make several Hundred different Rounds of Musick by the changing and Order of Sound but in six Bells; and that all these Preparations shall be really very good; therefore, said he, I do not wonder that so vast a Throng of Medicines is offer'd in the present Calamity; and almost every Physician prescribes or prepares a different thing, as his Judgment or Experience guides him: but, says my Friend, let all the Prescriptions of all the Physicians in London be examined; and it will be found, that they are all compounded of the same things, with such Variations only, as the particular Fancy of the Doctor leads him to; so that, says he, every Man judging a little of his own Constitution and manner of his living, and Circumstances of his being infected, may direct his own Medicines out of the ordinary Drugs and Preparations: Only that, says he, some recommended one thing as most sovereign, and some another; some, says he, think that Pill. Ruff.* which is call'd itself the Antipestilential Pill, is the best Preparation that can be made; others think that Venice Treacle* is sufficient of it self to resist the Contagion, and I, says he, think as both these think, viz. that the last is good to take beforehand to prevent it, and the last, if touch'd, to expel it. According to this Opinion, I several times took Venice Treacle and a sound Sweat upon it, and thought my self as well fortified against the Infection as any one could be fortifyed by the Power of Physic. As for Quackery and Mountebank, of which the Town was so full, I listened to none of them, and have observ'd often since with some Wonder, that for two Years after the Plague, I scarcely saw or heard of one of them about Town. Some fancied they were all swept away in the Infection to a Man, and were for calling it a particular Mark of God's Vengeance upon them, for leading the poor People into the Pit of Destruction, merely for the Lucre of a little Money they got by them; but I cannot go that Length neither; that Abundance of them died is certain, many of them came within the Reach of my own Knowledge; but that all of them were swept off I much question; I believe rather, they fled into the Country, and tryed their Practices upon the People there, who were in Apprehension of the Infection, before it came among them. This however is certain, not a Man of them appear'd for a great while in or about London; there were indeed several Doctors, who published Bills, recommending their several physical Preparations for cleansing the Body, as they call it, after the Plague, and needful, as they said, for such People to take, who had been visited and had been cur'd; whereas I must own, I believe that it was the Opinion of the most eminent Physicians at that time, that the Plague was itself a sufficient Purge; and that those who escaped the Infection needed no Physic to cleanse their Bodies of any other things; the running Sores, the Tumors, &c. which were broke and kept open by the Directions of the Physicians, having sufficiently cleansed them; and that all other Distempers and Causes of Distempers were effectually carried off that Way; and as the Physicians gave this as their Opinions, wherever they came, the Quacks got little Business. There were indeed several little Hurries, which happen'd after the Decrease of the Plague, and which whether they were contriv'd to fright and disorder the People, as some imagin'd, I cannot say, but sometimes we were told the Plague would return by such a Time; and the famous Solomon Eagle* the naked Quaker, I have mention'd, prophesy'd evil Tidings every Day; and several others telling us that London had not been sufficiently scourg'd, and the sorer and severer Strokes were yet behind; had they stop'd there, or had they descended to Particulars, and told us that the City should the next Year be destroyed by Fire; then indeed, when we had seen it come to pass, we should not have been to blame to have paid more than a common Respect to their Prophetick Spirits, at least we should have wonder'd at them, and have been more serious in our Enquiries after the meaning of it, and whence they had the Fore-knowledge: But as they generally told us of a Relapse into the Plague, we have had no Concern since that about them; yet by these frequent Clamours, we were all kept with some kind of Apprehensions constantly upon us, and if any died suddenly, or if the spotted Fevers at any time increased, we were presently alarm'd; much more if the Number of the Plague encreased, for to the End of the Year, there were always between 2 and 300 of the Plague; on any of these Occasions, I say, we were alarm'd anew. Those who remember the City of London before the Fire, must remember that there was then no such Place as that we now call Newgate-Market. But that in the Middle of the Street, which is now call'd Blow-bladder Street, and which had its Name from the Butchers, who us'd to kill and dress their Sheep there; (and who it seems had a Custom to blow up their Meat with Pipes to make it look thicker and fatter than it was, and were punish'd there for it by the Lord Mayor) I say, from the End of the Street towards Newgate, there stood two long Rows of Shambles for the selling Meat. It was in those Shambles, that two Persons falling down dead, as they were buying Meat, gave Rise to a Rumor that the Meat was all infected, which tho' it might affright the People, and spoil'd the Market for two or three Days; yet it appear'd plainly afterwards, that there was nothing of Truth in the Suggestion: But no Body can account for the Possession of Fear when it takes hold of the Mind. However it pleas'd God by the continuing of the Winter Weather to restore the Health of the City, that by February following, we reckon'd the Distemper quite ceas'd,* and then we were not so easily frighted again. There was still a Question among the Learned, and at first it perplex'd the People a little, and that was, in what manner to purge the Houses and Goods, where the Plague had been; and how to render them habitable again, which had been left empty during the time of the Plague; Abundance of Perfumes and Preparations were prescrib'd by Physicians, some of one kind and some of another, in which the People, who listened to them, put themselves to a great, and indeed in my Opinion, to an unnecessary Expence; and the poorer People, who only set open their Windows Night and Day, burnt Brimstone, Pitch, and Gun-powder* and such things in their Rooms, did as well as the best; nay, the eager People, who as I said above, came Home in haste and at all Hazards, found little or no Inconvenience in their Houses nor in the Goods, and did little or nothing to them. However, in general, prudent cautious People did enter into some Measures for airing and sweetning their Houses,* and burnt Perfumes, Incense, Benjamin, Rozin, and Sulphur in the Rooms close shut up, and then let the Air carry it all out with a Blast of Gun-powder; others caused large Fires to be made all Day and all Night, for several Days and Nights; by the same Token, that two or three were pleas'd to set their Houses on Fire, and so effectually sweetned them by burning them down to the Ground; as particularly one at Ratcliff, one in Holbourn, and one at Westminster; besides two or three that were set on Fire, but the Fire was happily got out again, before it went far enough to burn down the Houses; and one Citizen's Servant, I think it was in Thames Street, carryed so much Gun-powder into his Master's House for clearing it of the Infection, and managed it so foolishly, that he blew up part of the Roof of the House. But the Time was not fully come, that the City was to be purg'd by Fire, nor was it far off; for within Nine Months more I saw it all lying in Ashes; when, as some of our Quacking Philosophers pretend, the Seeds of the Plague were entirely destroy'd* and not before; a Notion too ridiculous to speak of here, since, had the Seeds of the Plague remain'd in the Houses, not to be destroyed but by Fire, how has it been, that they have not since broken out? Seeing all those Buildings in the Suburbs and Liberties, and in the great Parishes of Stepney, White-Chapel, Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Shoreditch, Cripplegate and St. Giles's, where the Fire never came, and where the Plague rag'd with the greatest Violence, remain still in the same Condition they were in before. But to leave these things just as I found them, it was certain, that those People, who were more than ordinarily cautious of their Health, did take particular Directions for what they called Seasoning of their Houses, and Abundance of costly Things were consum'd on that Account, which, I cannot but say, not only seasoned those Houses, as they desir'd, but fill'd the Air with very grateful and wholesome Smells, which others had the Share of the Benefit of, as well as those who were at the Expences of them. And yet after all, tho' the Poor came to Town very precipitantly, as I have said, yet I must say, the rich made no such Haste; the Men of Business indeed came up, but many of them did not bring their Families to Town till the Spring came on, and that they saw Reason to depend upon it, that the Plague would not return. The Court indeed came up soon after Christmas, but the Nobility and Gentry, except such as depended upon, and had Employment under the Administration, did not come so soon. I should have taken Notice here, that notwithstanding the Violence of the Plague in London and in other Places, yet it was very observable, that it was never on Board the Fleet;* and yet for some time there was a strange Press in the River, and even in the Streets for Sea-Men to man the Fleet. But it was in the Beginning of the Year, when the Plague was scarce begun, and not at all come down to that part of the City, where they usually press for Seamen; and tho' a War with the Dutch was not at all grateful to the People at that time, and the Seamen went with a kind of Reluctancy into the Service, and many complain'd of being drag'd into it by Force, yet it prov'd in the Event a happy Violence to several of them, who had probably perish'd in the general Calamity, and who after the Summer Service was over, tho' they had Cause to lament the Desolation of their Families, who, when they came back, were many of them in their Graves; yet they had room to be thankful, that they were carried out of the Reach of it, tho' so much against their Wills; we indeed had a hot War with the Dutch that Year, and one very great Engagement at Sea,* in which the Dutch were worsted; but we lost a great many Men and some Ships. But, as I observ'd, the Plague was not in the Fleet, and when they came to lay up the Ships in the River, the violent part of it began to abate. I would be glad, if I could close the Account of this melancholy Year with some particular Examples historically; I mean of the Thankfulness to God our Preserver for our being delivered from this dreadful Calamity; certainly the Circumstances of the Deliverance, as well as the terrible Enemy we were delivered from, call'd upon the whole Nation for it; the Circumstances of the Deliverance were indeed very remarkable, as I have in part mention'd already, and particularly the dreadful Condition, which we were all in, when we were, to the Surprize of the whole Town, made joyful with the Hope of a Stop of the Infection. Nothing but the immediate Finger of God, nothing but omnipotent Power could have done it; the Contagion despised all Medicine, Death rag'd in every Corner; and had it gone on as it did then, a few Weeks more would have clear'd the Town of all, and every thing that had a Soul: Men every where began to despair, every Heart fail'd them for Fear, People were made desperate thro' the Anguish of their Souls, and the Terrors of Death sat in the very Faces and Countenances of the People. In that very Moment, when we might very well say, Vain was the Help of Man;* I say in that very Moment it pleased God, with a most agreeable Surprize, to cause the Fury of it to abate, even of it self, and the Malignity declining, as I have said, tho' infinite Numbers were sick, yet fewer died; and the very first Week's Bill decreased 1843, a vast Number indeed! It is impossible to express the Change that appear'd in the very Countenances of the People, that Thursday Morning, when the Weekly Bill came out; it might have been perceived in their Countenances, that a secret Surprize and Smile of Joy sat on every Bodies Face; they shook one another by the Hands in the Streets, who would hardly go on the same Side of the way with one another before; where the Streets were not too broad, they would open their Windows and call from one House to another, and ask'd how they did, and if they had heard the good News, that the Plague was abated; Some would return when they said good News, and ask, what good News? and when they answered, that the Plague was abated, and the Bills decreased almost 2000, they would cry out, God be praised; and would weep aloud for Joy, telling them they had heard nothing of it; and such was the Joy of the People that it was as it were Life to them from the Grave. I could almost set down as many extravagant things done in the Excess of their Joy, as of their Grief; but that would be to lessen the Value of it. I must confess my self to have been very much dejected just before this happen'd; for the prodigious Number that were taken sick the Week or two before, besides those that died, was such, and the Lamentations were so great every where, that a Man must have seemed to have acted even against his Reason, if he had so much as expected to escape; and as there was hardly a House, but mine, in all my Neighbourhood, but what was infected; so had it gone on, it would not have been long, that there would have been any more Neighbours to be infected; indeed it is hardly credible, what dreadful Havock the last three Weeks had made, for if I might believe the Person, whose Calculations I always found very well grounded, there were not less than 30000 People dead, and near 100 thousand fallen sick in the three Weeks I speak of; for the Number that sickened was surprising, indeed it was astonishing, and those whose Courage upheld them all the time before, sunk under it now. In the Middle of their Distress, when the Condition of the City of London was so truly calamitous, just then it pleased God, as it were, by his immediate Hand to disarm this Enemy; the Poyson was taken out of the Sting, it was wonderful, even the Physicians themselves were surprized at it; wherever they visited, they found their Patients better, either they had sweated kindly, or the Tumours were broke, or the Carbuncles went down, and the Inflammations round them chang'd Colour, or the Fever was gone, or the violent Headach was asswag'd, or some good Symptom was in the Case; so that in a few Days, every Body was recovering, whole Families that were infected and down, that had Ministers praying with them, and expected Death every Hour, were revived and healed, and none died at all out of them. Nor was this by any new Medicine found out, or new Method of Cure discovered, or by any Experience in the Operation, which the Physicians or Surgeons had attain'd to; but it was evidently from the secret invisible Hand of him, that had at first sent this Disease as a Judgment upon us; and let the Atheistic part of Mankind call my Saying this what they please, it is no Enthusiasm; it was acknowledg'd at that time by all Mankind; the Disease was enervated, and its Malignity spent, and let it proceed from whencesoever it will, let the Philosophers search for Reasons in Nature to account for it by, and labour as much as they will to lessen the Debt they owe to their Maker; those Physicians, who had the least Share of Religion in them, were oblig'd to acknowledge that it was all supernatural,* that it was extraordinary, and that no Account could be given of it. If I should say, that this is a visible Summons to us all to Thankfulness, especially we that were under the Terror of its Increase, perhaps it may be thought by some, after the Sense of the thing was over, an officious canting of religious things, preaching a Sermon instead of writing a History, making my self a Teacher instead of giving my Observations of things; and this restrains me very much from going on here, as I might otherwise do: But if ten Lepers were healed,* and but one return'd to give Thanks, I desire to be as that one, and to be thankful for my self. Nor will I deny, but there were Abundance of People who to all Appearance were very thankful at that time; for their Mouths were stop'd, even the Mouths of those whose Hearts were not extraordinary long affected with it: But the Impression was so strong at that time, that it could not be resisted, no not by the worst of the People. It was a common thing to meet People in the Street, that were Strangers, and that we knew nothing at all of, expressing their Surprize. Going one Day thro' Aldgate, and a pretty many People being passing and repassing, there comes a Man out of the End of the Minories, and looking a little up the Street and down, he throws his Hands abroad, Lord, what an Alteration is here! Why, last Week I came along here, and hardly any Body was to be seen; another Man, I heard him, adds to his Words, 'tis all wonderful, 'tis all a Dream: Blessed be God, says a third Man, and let us give Thanks to him, for 'tis all his own doing: Human Help and human Skill was at an End. These were all Strangers to one another: But such Salutations as these were frequent in the Street every Day; and in Spight of a loose Behaviour, the very common People went along the Streets, giving God Thanks for their Deliverance. It was now, as I said before, the People had cast off all Apprehensions, and that too fast; indeed we were no more afraid now to pass by a Man with a white Cap upon his Head, or with a Cloth wrapt round his Neck, or with his Leg limping, occasion'd by the Sores in his Groyn, all which were frightful to the last Degree, but the Week before; but now the Street was full of them, and these poor recovering Creatures, give them their Due, appear'd very sensible of their unexpected Deliverance; and I should wrong them very much, if I should not acknowledge, that I believe many of them were really thankful; but I must own, that for the Generality of the People it might too justly be said of them, as was said of the Children of Israel, after their being delivered from the Host of Pharaoh, when they passed the Red-Sea, and look'd back, and saw the Egyptians overwhelmed in the Water, viz. That they sang his Praise, but they soon forgot his Works.* I can go no farther here, I should be counted censorious, and perhaps unjust, if I should enter into the unpleasant Work of reflecting, whatever Cause there was for it, upon the Unthankfulness and Return of all manner of Wickedness among us, which I was so much an Eye-Witness of my self; I shall conclude the Account of this calamitous Year therefore with a coarse but sincere Stanza of my own, which I plac'd at the End of my ordinary Memorandums, the same Year they were written: A dreadful Plague in London was, In the Year Sixty Five, Which swept an Hundred Thousand Souls Away; yet I alive! H. F. FINIS. APPENDIXA MEDICAL NOTE Defining Plague Accurate knowledge of plague dates from the Hong Kong epidemic of 1894. Yersinia pestis, named after the first person to identify it correctly, Alexandre Yersin, is a clone of the bacillus Yersinia pseudotuberculosis. In 1898 Paul-Louis Simond was the first to explain the process of transmission via rats and fleas, and the genetic code of Yersinia pestis was published by Julian Parkhill and colleagues in 2001. Plague is not primarily a human disease. Yersinia pestis lives in the digestive tract of the fleas Xenopsylla cheopsis and Cortophylus or Nosopsylla fasciatus. Both live off the black rat Rattus rattus, and are prone to bite humans; other rodents carry infected fleas but of kinds that tend not to bite people. Yersinia pestis can survive in excrement, old nests, or even textile bales for up to a year in warm and humid conditions. Normally plague is contained within flea and rodent populations; this is referred to as its enzootic state. Periodically, however, Yersinia pestis multiplies and blocks the passage of blood to the flea's stomach. In order to feed, the flea has to regurgitate blood saturated with plague bacilli into its host's bloodstream, killing it. When the hosts?Äîrodents?Äîdie in large numbers, the disease is epizootic, and at that stage the fleas and their bacillus must find an alternative host. Because Rattus rattus is a climbing species that lives close to people and often inhabits roofing, human beings are the natural choice. There are three types of plague, all of which may occur simultaneously in human populations, and all of which appear to be mentioned by Defoe. Bubonic plague makes up three-quarters of all cases and historically has been fatal in comparable proportions. The first symptoms appear between thirty-six hours and ten days after infection: a black pustule at the location of the bite; then, depending on that location, enlargement of the lymph glands in the armpits, neck or groin. Headaches, vomiting, and acute pain follow in the vicinity of the swelling, or bubo. In mild cases or with prompt treatment the infection will subside and the bubo shrink. Otherwise, haemorrhaging makes it turn purple, red lumps called petechiae appear, and the bacillus enters the bloodstream, poisoning the nervous system. Pneumonic or pulmonary plague accounts for about one-fifth of cases and combines pneumonia (making it more frequent in cold weather) with the passage of infected blood into the lungs. Coughing discharges sputum containing Yersinia pestis, which may then enter the lungs of other people; this is the only form of plague that can be directly transmitted by human agency. Incubation lasts two or three days before the body temperature falls and the lungs stiffen. Sufferers have had, at best, a 5 per-cent chance of survival. The third form, septicaemic plague, is rare but lethal, transmitted by human as well as rat fleas?ÄîPulex irritans as well as Xenopsylla cheopsis and Cortophylus/Nosopsylla fasciatus. Fleas must have access to people badly infected by plague. Blood with a high concentration of plague bacilli is carried in the flea's mouth and introduced directly to the bloodstream of the next person it bites. A rash develops within hours and death follows, almost invariably, within a period of one to three days, before buboes have had time to form. Modern Epidemiology The plague of 1665 was probably caused by a combination of population movement and seasonal changes in flea and rat ecology. London had suffered epidemics on a regular cycle: in 1563, 1593, 1603, and 1625. In the intervening years a steady number of people had died of the disease. A decline after 1649 indicates the development of collective immunity that might have led to plague's demise but for the large-scale migration to London that accompanied the Restoration of 1660 and created a virgin population for the disease to attack. Why the plague abated in 1665 so far as virtually to disappear from the British Isles is harder to explain. Plague was always most virulent in London, and the South East has always shown the highest concentration of people with blood group ?ÄòA', whom some studies show are more susceptible to flea bites. Where the most vulnerable part of a population experiences prolonged exposure to a disease, the strong develop immunities while the weak simply die. It is possible that Yersinia pestis mutated back towards its milder parent form, Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, initiating a stable, non-lethal relationship with the human host and causing a disease similar to typhoid that in turn gave partial immunity to plague. Human beings need not be the answer: it may have been rats that acquired immunity. There is no substance to the theory that the Great Fire of 1666 caused plague to abate because brick and tiles replaced timber and thatch as building materials; the Great Fire caused little damage in the west of the city, where the plague had been most virulent. Nor is it true that the brown rat saved the day. Although it did have the advantage over the black rat of living underground and carrying fleas less partial to human blood, it did not arrive in large numbers until the 1730s. It is also very doubtful whether public and private hygiene improved sufficiently to eliminate the risk of infection. Defoe's Epidemiology Defoe's debt to contemporary epidemiology is charted in the Explanatory Notes to this edition but some general observations will establish the validity of his opinions, all with the caveat that his aim was to make a drama out of treatises. The three types of plague all appear to be present in the right proportions and Defoe's observations about its treatment are largely accurate. The bubonic form predominates but Defoe also cites people who, ignorant of their infection, collapsed and died suddenly, suggesting the septicaemic variety. H.F.'s references to the ?Äòfatal Breath' of victims is a legitimate construction of pneumonic plague which places him closer to modern science than many of his contemporaries, while his descriptions of sufferers' mental disorder reflect plague's tendency to attack the nervous system. Ilse Vickers has demonstrated Defoe's interest in new scientific methodologies (Defoe and the New Sciences (Cambridge, 1996)) and it is fair to say that his enthusiasm is apparent in A Journal of the Plague Year. That does not make its attempt to resolve old debates about the spread of plague accurate. Proponents of contagion argued that human contact was the key, while those who believed in miasma thought a poisonous cloud settled periodically, encouraged by hot weather, poor hygiene and?Äîfor some?Äîgaseous effusions from the Earth's core. Breathe in the cloud and you caught the disease. The miasma theory was popular because it appeared to explain how someone might catch the disease without coming into contact with anyone else, and because it sat more easily with descriptions of God's judgement in the Old Testament. It depended on an idea H.F. emphatically rejects and modern science has proved true: that there are ?Äòinvisible Creatures, who enter into the Body with the Breath' (p. 65). But if H.F. is a contagionist he stretches his case to allow for a local or personal miasma: ?Äòno one in this whole Nation ever receiv'd the Sickness or Infection, but who receiv'd it in the ordinary Way of Infection from some Body, or the Cloaths, or touch, or stench of some Body that was infected before' (p. 167). The idea may have arisen from medical observation but it also owes something to biblical descriptions of leprosy, referred to in the Journal (p. 211). In a number of particulars Defoe was correct. Plague could be carried in clothes since fleas lodge in them. Bemused by prophylactics, H.F. still has his own ?ÄòPreparation of strong Scent' and fumigates his house, both of which might keep fleas and rats at bay. Escaping to moored ships did not guarantee safety, not only because they might already contain infected people, but because rats either lived there too or could scale the mooring ropes. That made the official quarantine measures inadequate. For the same reason, shutting oneself up at home could only work in the unlikely event of the house being secured against rats and fleas, a cause which the official policy of killing cats did little to advance. Defoe's best schemes for controlling the disease were his most ambitious ones: the building of more pest houses and the isolation of infected areas would have checked the plague better than anything the miasmatists proposed. Until the very end, H.F. dismisses the idea that plague was the direct instrument of God's wrath, preferring to believe that it had arisen from ?Äònatural Causes' and been spread by ?Äònatural Means'. This was divine power operating within ?Äòthe Scheme of Nature' (p. 166). Yet the final abatement calls for no other explanation than direct intervention, even if it is proposed as hesitantly as we would expect from a burgeoning natural scientist: ?Äòjust then it pleased God, as it were, by his immediate Hand to disarm this Enemy' (p. 210). That, perhaps, is merely to be wise after the event and because H.F. is concerned not to indulge in ?Äòan officious canting of religious things' once the ?ÄòSense of the thing was over', he refrains from ?Äògoing on'. EXPLANATORY NOTES Louis Landa's 1969 Explanatory Notes have been lightly edited for consistency and economy. For place citations, readers should consult the new Topographical Index and map, which better serve readers wishing to track Defoe's frequent and necessarily repetitious references to London's streets and buildings. ABBREVIATIONS A Brief Treatise ?Ķ of the Pestilence William Kemp, A Brief Treatise of the Nature, Causes, Signs, Preservations from and Cure of the Pestilence (1665) A Collection of Very Valuable and Scarce Pieces A Collection of Very Valuable and Scarce Pieces relating to the Last Plague in the year 1665 Discourse Sir Richard Blackmore, A Discourse upon the Plague (1721) Lee William Lee, Daniel Defoe: His Life and Recently Discovered Writings, extending from 1716 to 1729, 3 vols. (1869) Loimographia William Boghurst, Loimographia, Or an Experimentall Relation of the Plague, of what hath happened Remarkable in the Last Plague in the City of London ?Ķ with a Collection of Choice and Tried Medicines for Preservation and Cure etc. 1666. Printed for the Epidemiological Society of London, ed. Joseph Frank Payne (1894) Loimologia Nathaniel Hodges, Loimologia, Or an Historical Account of the Plague in London in 1665 ?Ķ to which is added An Essay on the Different Causes of Pestilential Diseases, and how they become Contagious, by J. Quincy, MD (1720; 3rd edn., 1721) Medela Pestilentiae Richard Kephale, Medela Pestilentiae: Wherein is contained Several Theological Queries concerning the Plague, with Approved Antidotes, Signs, and Symptoms: also an Exact Method for curing that Epidemical Distemper (1665) Necessary Directions ?Ķ by the College of Physicians Necessary Directions for the Prevention and Cure of the Plague, with Divers Remedies of small Charge, by the College of Physicians (1721). Contained in A Collection of Very Valuable and Scarce Pieces Short Discourse Richard Mead, A Short Discourse Concerning Pestilential Contagion, and the Methods to be used to prevent it (1720; 6th edn., 1720) again in Holland: on 4 May 1664 Pepys made the first of several entries in his Diary concerning the reappearance of the plague in Holland. A busy port trading with plague-infected countries in Asia, Amsterdam was watched with apprehension. According to John Graunt's Natural and Political Observations ?Ķ upon the Bills of Mortality, 5th edn. (1676), in 1663 it suffered 9,752 plague deaths; in 1664, 24,148. Candia: Crete. matter'd not ?Ķ whence it come: Defoe reflects the prevalent view that plagues originated in Asia and Africa and were transmitted by commerce, as stated by Mead's government-approved Short Discourse. Mead denied Britain had any ?ÄòPestilential Disease' that had not been received ?Äòfrom other Infected Places', i.e. ?Äòthe Eastern and Southern parts of the World' (pp. 4?Äì5). It was a controversial subject: the author of Medicina Flagellata (1721) believed that troop movements, not trade, were to blame. In reality there was an outbreak in Turkey in 1661; the plague spread to Greece and then, by 1663, to Amsterdam. no ?Ķ printed News Papers: there were at least anticipations of the newspaper. In 1665 the Oxford Gazette (later the London Gazette) made its appearance and carried news of the plague, as did Sir Roger L'Estrange's The Intelligencer and The Newes. Tokens: in modern parlance, cutaneous lesions resulting from subcutaneous haemorrhaging, a common plague symptom. Defoe owned a copy of Kephale's Medela Pestilentiae, which says they were otherwise known as ?ÄòGods Tokens'; Kephale unwittingly alluded to the key to transmission when he compared the lesions to ?Äòthe bigness of a flea-bitten spot, sometimes much bigger'. He attributed their different colour to ?Äòthe predominancy of humour in the body' (red for choler, black for melancholy, etc.) and claimed that they appeared most commonly on the breast and back because ?Äòthe vital spirits strive to breathe out the venom the nearest way' (pp. 84?Äì5). the Hall: the Hall of the Company of Parish Clerks in Broad Lane, Vintry Ward. It burned down in 1666. Parish Clerks were licensed as a guild in 1233 and called the Fraternity of St Nicholas. weekly Bill of Mortality: Defoe's key statistical source for the Journal. The Bills began in ad hoc fashion in the sixteenth century and assumed the form in which Defoe consulted them around the plague outbreak of 1636. Compiled and published by the Company of Parish Clerks, they reported the cause and number of deaths in 97 city parishes, 16 outside the walls, 12 in Middlesex and Surrey, and 5 in the city and liberties of Westminster?Äîa total of 130. H.F. doubts their accuracy and in Applebee's Journal, 18 November 1721, Defoe attacks ?Äòthose ridiculous Legends, call'd Bills of Mortality', promising to demonstrate their ?Äòscandalous Deficiency' in 1665. He probably consulted the Bills in the 1665 compilations, John Graunt's London's Dreadful Visitation and John Bell's London's Remembrancer. The 1721 A Collection of Very Valuable and Scarce Pieces included John Graunt's 1665 Reflections on the Weekly Bills of Mortality, another possible source. Spotted-Feaver: ?Äòa politic word' for the plague, as Defoe called it in The Review, no. 151, 29 Jan. 1706, echoing Thomas Dekker's earlier remark in London Looke Backe (1630): ?Äòa fine Gentleman like name ?Ķ as if it had beene a Beautifull faire skind sickenesse' (Dekker, Plague Pamphlets, ed. F. P. Wilson (1925), 179). The phrase, apparently coined in Spain in the seventeenth century, was loosely applied in England to typhus or any fever involving petechial eruptions. Defoe's contemporaries thought it ?Äòcousin-germane' to and herald of the bubonic plague. The confused medical views of fever in the period are reflected in Blackmore's ?ÄòAccount of Malignant Fevers', included in his 1721 Discourse. Dr Nathaniel Hodges wrote: ?ÄòVery many were puzzled to distinguish aright between these Marks [the tokens of bubonic plague] and the Petechiae Pestilentiales, or Pestilential Appearances in Spotted Fevers' (An Account of the First Rise ?Ķ of the Plague, reprinted in A Collection of Very Valuable and Scarce Pieces, 27?Äì8). Willis, Sydenham, and Richard Morton, contemporary authorities, ranged fevers in a scale of ascending severity: putrid, malignant, pestilential. Sydenham wrote of malignant fever: ?ÄòIts true affinities are with plague ?Ķ and from the true plague it is distinguished only by its difference in degree' (Works, ed. R. G. Latham, for the Sydenham Society (1848), i. 98). John Hancocke, prebendary of Canterbury and chaplain to the Duke of Bedford, was a popular proponent of the view that the plague is a fever, curable by cold water. His book, Febrifugum Magnum: or, Common Water the best Cure for Fevers, and probably for the Plague (1722), went quickly into six editions. William Boghurst, an apothecary, denied that the plague is a putrid fever: ?Äòthough wee may fancy it is putrefaction in the highest degree of exaltation ?Ķ [feaver] is not the essence and constitution of it, but a consequent and effect' (Loimographia, 10). Apprehensions ?Ķ Summer being at Hand: from Hippocrates descended the idea of a special relationship between climate or seasons and disease. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the prevailing view was that plague originated in hot climates, flourished in the heat of summer, and abated ?Äòin the Cold of Winter' (R. Brookes, History of the Most Remarkable Distempers (1721), 36). Dr George Thomson: ?ÄòSo efficacious do we find cold Seasons ?Ķ in powerfully restraining this feral Disease, the Pest, that in this part of the World there hath seldom any great Mortality reigned amongst us in a very sharp Winter' (Loimotomia: Or the Pest Anatomized (1666), 22). However, Blackmore asserted that the feared plague then raging in the south of France consisted of ?Äòa more exalted and active Poyson' such as might with stand the cold of winter. He thought that the rigorous season could check or abate the malignity of a plague but with the return of hot weather a pestilence could recover its vigour (Discourse, 38-9). Liberties: the City (that part of London within the old walls) was almost surrounded by Liberties whose relationship to the City authorities varied: the Minories, the Liberty and precinct of the Tower, St Katherine's by the Tower, Duke's Place, the Old Artillery Ground, Norton Folgate, Glashouse Street, St Martin's le-Grand, the Temple, Blackfriars, and Whitefriars?Äîall were Liberties. John Graunt, Natural and Political Observations, estimated the population of the eleven Liberties to be 179,000 in 1661. Weather set in hot: Pepys noted the hot weather on 7 June: ?Äòthe hottest day that ever I felt in my life, and it is confessed so by all other people the hottest they ever knew in England in the beginning of June'. On this day Pepys saw for the first time two or three houses in Drury Lane ?Äòmarked with a red cross upon the doors, and ?ÄúLord have mercy upon us?Äù writ there'. H.F.'s remark that ?Äòthe Infection spread in a dreadful Manner' is supported by the Bills of Mortality, which show that deaths from the plague increased from 17 the last week of May to 43 the first week of June, a notably warm week. Articles of the Feaver, Spotted-Feaver, and Teeth ?Ķ swell: not wholly in accordance with the Bills of Mortality. The mortality figures for the last week of May for the three maladies in the order named are 30, 23, and 19, for the first week in June, 43, 16, 25. But the increase in fever was significant because the plague was considered a ?Äòpestilential fever'. Teeth: Dr John Arbuthnot, Fellow of the College of Physicians and of the Royal Society, and the friend and collaborator of Pope and Swift, wrote: ?ÄòAbove a tenth part of Infants die in Teething, by the Symptoms proceeding from the Irritation of the Tender Parts of the Jaws, occasioning Inflamations, Fevers, Convulsions, Looseness, with Green Stools ?Ķ and in some, Gangrene' (Practical Rules of Diet in the Various Constitutions and Diseases of Human Bodies (1732), 408). Joseph Hurlock, an eighteenth-century surgeon, canvassed the subject of death from ?Äòteeth' in his Practical Treatise upon Dentition (1742). throng'd out of Town: Pepys, Diary, 21 June 1665: ?Äòall the towne almost going out of towne, the coaches and waggons being all full of people going into the country'. Certificates of Health: issued by the Lord Mayor and at times by parish officers, these certifications that the bearer was free of the plague were not always honoured by the authorities of some towns and cities, where any traveller from plague-ridden London was suspect. Defoe presents the problem in Due Preparations for the Plague (1722, ed. Aitken (1895), xv. 156): ?ÄòAnd though they [the brother and sister] had gotten certificates of health from the Lord Mayor, the city began now to be so infected, that nobody would receive them, no inn would lodge them on the way.' Turn-pikes: spiked barriers. Saddler: a craftsman who made saddles, or, as in H.F.'s case, a tradesman who, in addition to selling saddles, was a dealer in other supplies needed by travellers, such as pillows, straps, stirrups, horsecloths, and leather bottles. Master save thy self: Matthew 27: 40; Mark 15: 30. Relations in Northamptonshire: Defoe's paternal grandparents lived in the villages of Peakirk and Etton, Northamptonshire. Turks and Mahometans ?Ķ predestinating Notions: whether a Christian may flee the plague was a hotly debated question in 1665, and it dated back at least to Luther and Calvin. By the time of the plague of 1665 the refusal to flee had become a ?ÄòTurkish heresy', or, as Blackmore termed it in his Discourse, ?Äòa Doctrine of fatal Necessity' (p. 85). Defoe owned a copy of Kemp's A Brief Treatise ?Ķ of the Pestilence, which states: ?ÄòThe Turks are perswaded, that every ones fate is written in his fore-head, and hath a fatal destiny appointed by God, which is impossible for any to avoid; so that they believe, those that shall die by the Plague, cannot be slain in War, nor drown'd in Water, and those that shall die in Battel, cannot be kill'd by the Plague; by which credulity, they slight and neglect all care of avoiding the infection, conversing with one another, and buying the goods out of infected houses, and wearing the apparel of them that lately died. I shall not trouble my self to confute this Opinion, since at Grand Cayre and Constantinople there have been thousands that have suffered death, and multitudes that have been executed by the Plague for this Heresie' (p. 15). happen'd to stop ?Ķ 91st Psalm: Sortes Biblicae, divination by means of the Bible, an old practice among Christians and at times condemned by councils of the Church. Defoe used the device in Robinson Crusoe, where Crusoe found comfort?Äîand eventual penitence?Äîby randomly opening the Bible at Psalm 50. none but Magistrates and Servants: Kephale, Medela Pestilentiae, answered ?Äòtheological queries concerning the Plague'. He includes among those who may not flee without offending God both magistrates and servants: magistrates because they are needed ?Äòfor keeping good orders', and servants because they ?Äòare under command' (p. 27). Court removed ?Ķ June: the Court, Pepys records in his Diary on 29 June, was ?Äòfull of waggons and ready to go out of towne'. It went first to Hampton Court and thence to Salisbury (Diary, 27 July), finally setting out for Oxford the last week of September. The King was back at Whitehall on 1 Feb. (Diary, 31 Jan. and 2 Feb. 1666, and Anthony Wood, Life and Times, ed. Andrew Clark (1892), ii. 46). hardly any thing of Reformation: observing the King and his courtiers at Oxford during the Plague, Anthony Wood noted in his diary: ?ÄòThe greater part of the courtiers were high, proud, insolent ?Ķ To give a further character of the court, they thought they were neat and gay in their apparell, yet they were nasty and beastly ?Ķ Rude, rough, whoremongers; vaine, empty, carelesse' (Life and Times, ii. 68). crying Vices ?Ķ Judgment: cf. Bishop Burnet; ?ÄòAll the King's enemies, and the enemies of monarchy, said, here [i.e. the plague] was a manifest character of God's displeasure upon the nation; as indeed the ill life the King led, and the viciousness of the whole court, gave but a melancholy prospect' (History of his own Times (1818), i. 242). In The Review, no. 4, 12 Aug. 1712, Defoe wrote: ?ÄòSome have said, it [the plague in 1665] was to punish the Nation, for the horrid Debaucheries of the King's Party, and yet the Roundheads died as fast as the Cavaliers.' London ?Ķ the whole Mass: Defoe stood in perpetual astonishment before the spectacle of ?Äòthis great and monstrous Thing, called London', as he wrote in his Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724?Äì6). He estimates that ?Äòthe Extent or Circumference of the continued Buildings of the Cities of London and Westminster, and the Borough of Southwark, all of which, in the common Acceptation, is called London, amounts to Thirty Six Miles, Two Furlongs, Thirty Nine Rods' (Tour, ed. G. D. H. Cole (1927), i. 323 ff.). City ?Ķ not yet much infected: following the week of 2 May when one death from plague was reported, the Bills of Mortality showed no deaths from plague in the City until the week of 6 June (4 reported). Then the subsequent weekly deaths were 10, 4, 23, 28, 56, rising to 128 in the week of 18 July. The greatest number for a single week in the 97 parishes of the City was 1,189, the week of 12 Sept. Inns-of-Court ?Ķ shut up: in the second week of June notices of postponed readings appeared at the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, and Lincoln's Inn, and shortly after at Gray's Inn. City and Suburbs ?Ķ prodigiously full of People: reliable figures on the population of London at the time of the Great Plague are not available. John Graunt, whose figure from his Natural and Political Observations is much quoted, estimated about 460,000 in and about London at the beginning of Charles II's reign. Encrease ?Ķ in London: two years or so after writing the Journal Defoe refers to Sir William Petty, ?Äòfamous for his Political Arithmetick, [who] supposed the City ?Ķ to contain a Million of People' (Tour, i. 324). In his Another Essay in Political Arithmetic (1687), A2, Petty ?Äòproves' that London (the parishes within the Bills of Mortality) contains ?Äòabout 696 thousand People'. In 1724 Defoe estimated 1,500,000. Jerusalem ?Ķ besieg'd: by the Roman emperor Titus in AD 70. Hundred Thousand Ribband Weavers: a greatly exaggerated figure. In The Review, 20 Mar. 1705, Defoe seems to accept half that figure: ?ÄòAs to Spittle-fields, in about 1679 and 80 ?Ķ 'twas alledg'd then ?Ķ were about 50000 Narrow Weavers, as they call'd them, or in Common English Ribbon-Weavers.' Akeldama: ?Äòthe field of blood', the name given by the Jews of Jerusalem to the field Judas purchased with the money received from the betrayal of Christ, so called because of his violent death there (Acts 1:19; Matthew 27:8 differs). a blazing Star or Comet: in mid-December 1664, and early April 1665, the appearance of comets over London was related to the plague in popular literature and scientific discussions. Pepys mentions the first comet on 15 Dec. 1664, and the second on 6 April 1665. the Comet ?Ķ of a faint, dull, languid Colour: Defoe here follows astrological theory. John Gadbury's 1665 De Cometis divides comets into seven species: ?ÄòSuch as are of a Leaden, Envious, Pale, Ashy Colour, are termed Saturnine. And such was this Comet or Blazing Star that lately appeared to us' (p. 9). foretold a heavy Judgment ?Ķ as was the Plague: Gadbury, De Cometis, writes ?ÄòSaturnine Comets always denote, there shall happen in the world many pernicious evils, as Famine, Plague ?Ķ and absolute Destruction of all things that grow upon the earth, useful for man and beast' (p. 23). See also John Merrifield, who describes himself as a student of ?ÄòHeavenly and Sublime Sciences', Catastasis Mundi (1684): ?ÄòComets of the nature of Saturn ?Ķ denote many Evils, as ?Ķ Chronick Diseases, and Melancholy Distempers ?Ķ Leprosie, Palsies, Consumption, and all Diseases which are of lung continuance' (p. 29). Cf. the sceptical medical opinion voiced by Hodges in Loimologia, 4: ?ÄòWhoever duly considers it, can never imagine that this Pestilence [of 1665] had its Origin from any Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, in Sagitarius on the Tenth of October, or from a Conjunction of Saturn and Mars in the same sign on the twelfth of November, which was the common opinion.' Not all comets were sinister. Gadbury lists among the seven kinds, ?Äòjovial comets': these ?Äòpresage a very great plenty of all things, a very fertile year, a pleasant salubrious Air' (p. 24). In Applebee's Journal, 7 Dec. 1723, Defoe asked why a comet must inevitably foretell calamities. He attacked ?Äòwhining astrologers' and ?ÄòStargazers' as men who have ?Äòno Commission ?Ķ to predict the Plagues, or War, or Famine' from appearances in the heavens. Warnings of Gods Judgments: a traditional and widely prevalent view of comets as signs from heaven of impending scourges. William Turner, A Complete History of the most remarkable Providences ?Ķ which have happened in this Present Age (1697), reflects the usual view: ?ÄòFor Comets, I declare, that I do not believe the Governour of the World puts out such Flambeaus, sets such Beacons on fire in the upper Regions for no purpose: Nature doth not, saith the Philosopher; and shall the Christian say, the God of Nature doth anything in vain? Two and fifty years ago ?Ķ there was a Blazing Star seen, upon which followed the Irish Massacre, and the late Civil Wars. In December and March 1664, there were two Comets seen, which were followed by that sad and dreadful Plague ?Ķ and that lamentable fire' (p. 61). Fore-tellers ?Ķ Pestilence, War, Fire: Anthony Wood records the ?Äòblazing star' of December 1664 and adds an account of ?Äòprodigious births' at Sarum, ?Äòthe devill let loose to possess people', ?Äògreat innundations and frosts?Äîwar with the Dutch?Äîwar between the emperour and the Turk?Äîgeneral commotions throughout Christendom and the rest of the world?Äîsudden deaths'. This entry is followed by reference to the plague in 1665, a monster born at Oxford (?Äòone eye in the forehead, noe nose, and its Two eares in the nape of the neck'), a thorn which bore five different fruits (cherries, dates, apricots), earthquakes (Life and Times, ii. 53?Äì4). But see also previous note. Lilly's ?Ķ Gadbury's ?Ķ Poor Robin's: three of the well-known almanacs of the period. William Lilly (1602?Äì81) published his first almanac, Merlinus Anglicus Junior, in 1644 and continued to publish one annually until his death. He was also the author of a long series of pamphlets of prophecy, some of which involved him in difficulties. Though he remained in London during the plague of 1625, he fled in 1665. In the later years of his life he practised both medicine and astrology, having been granted a medical licence through the influence of his friend, Elias Ashmole. John Gadbury (1627?Äì1704) served as apprentice to a tailor, after which he attended Oxford. Born of a Roman Catholic mother, he was eventually a Presbyterian, an Independent, and a member of the ?Äòfamily of love'. He wrote widely on astrological subjects from 1652, his annual Ephemerides first appearing in 1655. Like other astrologers of the day, he was involved in controversy, religious and political as well as astrological. Two of his better known works are De Cometis (1665) and London's Deliverance from the Plague (1665). Poor Robin is thought to be the pseudonym of William Winstanley (1628??Äì1698), a barber turned writer and compiler. The earliest extant issue of his almanac is from 1663, most of it in a humorous and satiric vein directed at other almanacs somewhat in the manner of the Partridge papers of Swift and others. The title is revealing: An Almanack after a New Fashion, Wherein the Reader may see (if he be not blinde) many remarkable Things worthy of Observation ?Ķ written by Poor Robin, Knight of the Burnt-Island, a Well-Willer to Mathematicks. pretended religious Books: Come out of her, etc. is from Revelation 18: 4. There is a book with the first part of Defoe's title by John Lilburne, published in 1639, but it has nothing to do with plague. Britain's Remembrancer is by George Wither, but it was published in 1628. Its subtitle is ?ÄòContaining a Narration of the Plague lately Past', and possibly Defoe thought it applied to the plague of 1665. Fair Warning may be another instance of confusion: in 1665 Wither published his Memorandum to London occasioned by the Pestilence, with a Warning Piece to London. Wither's works on plague were well known in the seventeenth century. Jonah to Ninevah: Jonah 3: 4. run about Naked: Pepys reports a similar incident in the Diary, 29 July 1667. The literature of Quakerism contains many instances of the practice of ?Äòtestifying by signs'. London, as the new Babylon, was often the subject of prophetic doom. Defoe had in mind the notorious case of Solomon Eagles (or Eccles), a musician and convert to Quakerism who ?Äòas a sign' ran naked through Bartholomew Fair at Smithfield with a pan of fire or brimstone on his head, crying ?Äòrepentance' and ?Äòremember Sodom', but this incident occurred in 1662 (William Braithwaite, The Second Period of Quakerism (1961), 25). See also pp. 89 and 200, where Defoe mentions Eagles by name. Josephus mentions: Flavius Josephus, Works (1773 edn.), IV.vii.12. Apparitions in the Air: the flaming sword (see Genesis 3: 29) was a favourite in homiletic literature. Defoe refers to ?Äòa comet before the Destruction of Jerusalem, which hung for a year ?Ķ directly over the City in the shape of a Flaming Sword' (Applebee's Journal, 2 Nov. 1723). Gadbury, De Cometis, 48, reports ?Äòa great black Coffin seen in the Air at Hamburgh, and other parts in Germany and Flanders' before and during the second comet. He also says that one of the newsbooks reported ?Äòterrible Apparitions, and noises in the Air'. The respected Dr George Thomson, whose post-mortem examination of a plague victim was well known, asserted that apparitions were prophetic: ?Äòapparitions of Dracones volantes ?Ķ Coffins carried through the Air ?Ķ raining of blood ?Ķ all of which having something extra naturam, are portentous and prodigious' (Loimotamia, 55?Äì6). In his Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions (1727), 390, Defoe wrote: ?ÄòIt is without doubt, that Fancy and Imagination form a World of Apparitions in the Minds of Men and Women ?Ķ when in short the Matter is no more than a Vapour in the Brain, a sick delirious fume of some in the Hypochondria.' So Hypocondriac Fancy's represent ?Ķ resolve: these lines, slightly modified, are quoted from Defoe's poem, A New Discovery of an Old lntreague (1691). Defoe used them twice in The Review, 29 Mar. 1705 and 24 May 1712, and again in his Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions (1727), where he wrote: ?ÄòThese sham Apparitions which people put upon themselves are indeed very many; and our Hypochondriack People see more Devils at noon-day than Galilaeus did Starrs.?Ķ But this in no ways impeaches the main Proposition ?Ķ that there are really and truly Apparitions of various kinds' (p. 391). Despisers ?Ķ wander and perish: Acts 13: 41. Conjunctions of Planets ?Ķ malignant Manner: the malign conjunction of planets as a cause of plague; Saturn in conjunction with Mars or Jupiter was thought particularly malignant. This view was inherited by Defoe's contemporaries from ancient and medieval times. At the time of the Black Death the Paris Faculty of Medicine gave it respectability, and in Defoe's day it was not only astrologers who gave it credence. Medical thought which ascribed the plague to the corruption of the air held planets responsible in part. Kephale, Medela Pestilentiae, reflects this view of ?Äòunwholesome' air: ?ÄòWhen Mars in opposition is to Jove I The Air will be infected from above' (p. 51). Gadbury, London's Deliverance Predicted (1665), writes of the plague of 1625: ?ÄòIt was the consequence of a great Conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, in the Celestial Sign Leo, a sign of the fiery triplicity, and representing the heart in the Microcosme, Ergo, the most dangerous' (p. 7). Conjunctions foretold Drought, Famine, and Pestilence: John Merrifield, Catastasis Mundi (London, 1684), wrote: ?ÄòHistories, ancient Writers, and Common Experience in former Ages testifie to us, that these Signs in the Heavens, or appearances of Comets, are the assured forerunners of sterility of the Earth; Famine, Pestilence, War, Alteration of Empires ?Ķ Winds, Earth-quakes, Inundations, extreme Heat and Drought, with grievous Diseases, and such like evils; also the Birth of some great Emperors, Kings, Governors, or Learned Men' (p. 28). Ministers ?Ķ sunk ?Ķ the Hearts ?Ķ Hearers: cf. a typical sermon, such as Defoe may have heard at the time he was writing the Journal: ?ÄòMultitudes falling dead in the streets and High-ways ?Ķ Crowds of noisome Carcasses lie unburied, and rotting above Ground ?Ķ populous Towns and Cities quite depopulated ?Ķ on every side the Cries and Groans of the Dying and the Living ?Ķ This famous Mart of Nations spews out her inhabitants, and the like Desolation over-runs our Country.' This image of the plague was presented in a sermon preached before the House of Commons by Erasmus Saunders, 8 Dec. 1721, in A Discourse of the Dangers of Abusing the Divine Blessings, 30. A similar description was delivered at St Mary's, Oxford, 16 Dec. 1720, by Thomas Newlin, a fellow of Magdalene College: ?ÄòThe Chambers of the Grave were not large enough to receive the number of its Guests, and the Land of Darkness could not contain the daily increasing Multitude. Those that died grievous Deaths had none to lament them, none to bury them. They are as Dung upon the face of the Earth, and their Carcasses are meat for the Fowls of Heaven, and for the Beasts of the Earth. The City is made an open Sepulchre' (God's Gracious Design in inflicting National Judgments (1721), 14). ye will not come ?Ķ Life: John 5: 40. spoke nothing but dismal Things: in 1723 Defoe attacked the newswriters and others who, merely from ?Äòthe Pleasure of Writing Dismal Stories, Exciting Surprize and Horror', had exaggerated the horrors of the plague in southern France in 1720, thus terrifying people and injuring trade (Applebee's Journal, 23 Nov. 1723). terrifying the People: Defoe's indictment of those who create fear in a time of plague reflects medical opinion in the period. The plague tracts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by physicians and laymen stated again and again that fear, despair, and dejection of spirits disposed the body to receive the contagion. This view was set forth by Van Helmont and Athanasius Kircher on the Continent, and was held firmly in England by doctors such as Mead, Rose, Pye, Thomson, and Blackmore. The laymen held to it as firmly. In 1665 Kemp describes a prescription which ?Äòis very excellent both against Fear, and a good preservative against the Plague' (A Brief Treatise ?Ķ of the Pestilence, 73). In 1721 Blackmore writes: ?ÄòThere is another Preservative against Contagion, which is a lively and cheerful Disposition of Mind; for when the Spirits are put into a pleasing Motion ?Ķ a Person is better prepar'd for his Defence ?Ķ timorous, diffident, and weak-hearted Persons are ?Ķ half dead before the Adversary approaches' (Discourse, 76). George Pye: ?Äòwhoever is frighted and terrified will become more liable to the Pestilential Impressions' (A Discourse of the Plague (1721), sect. iv, p. 17). unhappy Breaches ?Ķ in ?Ķ Religion: a reference to the Clarendon Code (the Corporation Act, 1661; the Conventicle Act, 1664; the Five-Mile Act, 1665) and the Test Act, 1673, all of which imposed penalties and made worship difficult for non-Anglicans. Dissenters ?Ķ into the Churches: Thomas Vincent, God's Terrible Voice in the City (1667), refers to the many Anglican clergymen who fled and ?Äòleft the greatest part of their flock without food or physick, in the time of their greatest need' (1722 edn., p. 37). Vincent, an ejected minister, preached in Defoe's parish church in Aldgate during the plague. Of the many tracts written about the plague of 1665, his was one of the most frequently reprinted. In an introduction to this tract, the Revd John Evans wrote that ?Äòthe main Body of the Clergy ?Ķ left their pulpits vacant' and Noncomformist clergymen ?Äòpreached thro' several parts of the city ?Ķ to vast congregations' (sig. A2). Vincent's eulogy of the Dissenting clergy for their courage in ministering to the spiritual needs of the people in the crisis (pp. 55 ff.) is conceivably one of Defoe's sources. Bishop Gilbert Burnet reports that many of the parish churches were shut ?Äòwhen the inhabitants were in a more than ordinary disposition to profit by good sermons [and] some of the nonconformists upon that went into the empty pulpits, and preached ?Ķ with good success' (History of his own Time (1818 edn.), i. 249). running about to Fortune-tellers, Cunning-men, and Astrologers: Hodges attacked the ?ÄòTraitors who frighten the credulous Populace with the Apprehensions of an approaching Plague, by idle and groundless Reports and Predictions; for the Propagation of the late Sickness was too notoriously assisted by this Means, to want any arguments to prove it' (Loimologia, 206). Cunning men were pretenders to magical or astrological knowledge. Fryar Bacons's Brazen-Head: Roger Bacon's fame in magic and alchemy was legendary in the seventeenth century. The story that he had constructed a brazen head with power of speech often appeared in print, notably in Robert Greene's play, The Honourable History of Frier Bacon and Frier Bongay (1594). Ben Jonson refers to it in Every Man in his Humour (1598). Sir Thomas Browne discusses it in his History of Vulgar Errors (1646), and Samuel Butler mentions Friar Bacon's ?Äònoodle' of brass in Hudibras (II. i. 530?Äì2; ed. J. Wilders, 1967). Mother Shipton: a reputed prophetess, possibly a mythical person, whose prophecies were published as early as 1641, one of which presumably foretold the Great Fire of London, 1666. Some of her meteorological predictions were quoted by the astrologer William Lilly, in his Collection of Ancient and Modern Prophecies (1645). In 1667 Richard Head published what purported to be an account of her life and death. Some of her prophecies appeared in chapbooks. Merlin's Head: Merlin Ambrosius, or Myrddin Embrys, a legendary enchanter and bard, first mentioned in the Historic Britonum (attributed to Nennius, fl. 796). He came down to later ages mainly from the pages of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (1137) and the Arthurian romances. Band: a collar or ruff. publick Prayers ?Ķ fasting ?Ķ Humiliation: in L'Estrange's Newes, 13 July 1665, is reported a royal proclamation ?Äòfor a General Fast to the end that Prayers and Supplications may everywhere be offered up unto Almighty God for the removal of the heavy Judgment of Plague and Pestilence'. The fast was to be kept in the cities of London and Westminster and places adjacent on the first Wednesday of each month until the plague ended. At the same time a form of common prayer and an ?ÄòExhortation fit for the times' were issued, along with an injunction that collections should be made on these fast days for relief of the poor visited by the plague (Calendar of State Papers Domestic, Car. II, 1664?Äì1665, 466). Jack-puddings, Merry-andrews ?Ķ Rope-dancers: the first two are synonymous terms meaning a clown, buffoon, or jester to a mountebank. Rope-dancing, an ancient ?Äòart', is mentioned by several classical authors, including Terence, who refers to it in the Prologue to his comedy Hecyra (165 BC). In the Supplement to his Lexicon Technicum (1744), Dr John Harris traces the history of rope-dancing. He quotes Capitolinus as saying that the Emperor Marcus Aurelius had such regard for rope dancers that he ordered quilts to be laid under them to prevent injury. In Defoe's day funambulists (as they were sometimes called, following the Latin form of the word) often exhibited at fairs. They are satirized in The Spectator, nos. 28 and 141. second Nineveh: Jonah 3: 5?Äì10. Plague-Water: the College of Physicians had recommended a plague-water in 1665 which, according to Hodges, had been used with some success. He printed the formula for it (Loimologia, 173?Äì4). Lady Carteret gave Pepys a bottle of plague-water on 20 July 1665. Some of these ?Äòinfallible' remedies were advertised in L'Estrange's Newes and Intelligencer. A ?ÄòUniversal Elixer' was advertised in The Newes, 22 July 1665 (see Walter G. Bell, The Great Plague in London, 1665 (rev. edn., 1951), 96 ff., for a number of these remedies). Royal antidotes found favour. The College of Physicians recommended ?ÄòThe King's Majesty's excellent Receipt for the Plague' and ?ÄòA Drink for the Plague prepared by the Lord Bacon and approved by Queen Elizabeth'. See Necessary Directions ?Ķ by the College of Physicians, reprinted in A Collection of Very Valuable and Scarce Pieces, 51. poisoned ?Ķ with Mercury: in Several Choice Histories ?Ķ of the Plague (1666) (extracts from Isbrandus Diemerbroeck's Tractatus de Peste, in Defoe's library in the edition of 1665), ?ÄòThe Eleventh Famous History' relates the ?Äòdeadly mistake' of ?Äòa certain Chyrurgion' who died within three days after treating himself with mercury (pp. 21?Äì2). Hodges mentions an amulet used ?Äòby our own Country People': ?Äòa Walnut filled with Mercury' (Loimologia, 220). Dr. Brooks ?Ķ Dr. Berwick: of the four medical men mentioned by H.F., the most interesting so far as Defoe is concerned is Dr Nathaniel Hodges (1627?Äì88), ?Äòthe eminent physician', whose Latin treatise on the plague is referred to in the Journal, 190. Hodges was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and at Christ Church, Oxford. He graduated MD in 1659 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1672, a year after his Loimologia was published. It was translated in 1720 by Dr John Quincy. He was one of several physicians appointed by the Corporation to minister to the poor during the plague. Defoe's Dr Brooks was probably Humphrey Brooke (1617?Äì93), educated at St John's College, Cambridge, and elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1674. He was the author of a medical work, A Conservatory of Health (1650), and The Durable Legacy (1681), some moral and religious directions addressed to his children. Peter Berwick, or Barwick (1619?Äì1705), was physician-in-ordinary to Charles II. Well known for his skill in treating smallpox and fevers, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1655. Like Hodges, he was appointed by the Corporation to care for the ill in several parishes (London, Guildhall Repertory, 70 (1664?Äì5), fos. 150b, 151a, 152a). Nathaniel Upton, whose medical qualifications are unknown, was master of the City pest-house in 1665. Amulets: widely recommended and widely disapproved in the seventeenth century, they had the authority of Ambrose Par?(c) (?Äòa sachet of some poison over the heart') and Van Helmont, whose use of a toad for the purpose was respectfully mentioned and imitated. A striking instance is found in Thomson's Loitomia, which relates his personal experience with Van Helmont's amulet on discovering symptoms of the plague in himself: ?ÄòI am sufficiently persuaded, That the adjunction of this Bufo [toad] nigh my Stomach, was of wonderful force to master and tame this Venom then domineering in me' (pp. 86?Äì91). Dr Richard Brookes, who thought quicksilver hung about the neck in a walnut shell efficacious, also refers to toads: ?ÄòThose that use Toads either bore a hole through their Heads, and so hang them about their Necks, or make Troches of them, as Helmont' (see his History of the Most remarkable Pestilential Distempers (1721), 38). The use of amulets, also called plague cakes, was canvassed early in the century by Dr Peter Turner (The Opinion of P. Turner concerning Amulets or Plague Cakes, 1603). Defoe could have found support for H.F.'s scepticism in Blackmore's Discourse (p. 70), or in Dr John Quincy's Lexicon Physico-Medicum, under ?ÄòAmulet': ?Äòanything that is hung about the Neck, or any Part of the Body; supposed to be a Charm against Witchcraft, or Disease. These were often in esteem amongst some Enthusiastick Philosophers, and have been last supported by the Credulity of Mr. Boyle; but now have none to appear in their behalf but Empiricks and Mountebanks.' Kemp's A Brief Treatise ?Ķ of the Pestilence, which Defoe possessed, devotes several pages (pp. 61?Äì6) to amulets. Abracadabra: a cabalistic word dating from about the second century, written in various ways and used as a charm to cure agues or ward off calamity. IHS: an abbreviation or partial transliteration of the Greek word for Jesus, used as a symbol or monogram of the sacred name and read in Latin as Iesus Hominum Salvator. this Mark thus: this is a printer's device known as a ?Äòflower'. It may have had some cabalistic or mysterious significance; but significantly it is used as an ornament in 1721 by James Graves, a bookseller, in a plague tract, A Discourse on Pestilence and Contagion. Graves was one of three booksellers who issued Defoe's Journal in 1722, and later his Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724?Äì6). Dead-Carts: the bearers who collected bodies of the dead in carts or barrows, obviously not the most squeamish of men, were the objects of constant criticism in times of plague for their callousness; Dekker, Wither, and Defoe being three of the better-known writers among the critics. A more serious objection to this method of treating the dead may be seen in An Hypothetical Notion of the Plague ?Ķ by Mr Place (1721), 39: ?ÄòWere Men to study to help the Plague to do its business, and spread itself, they could not contrive a more effectual Way than Death-Carts; to carry Loads of Pestilence through the Streets from End to End of the Town.?Ķ Were Plague Seed cried in the Streets, and every Man that went by obliged to buy, it could not be much worse.' Place advocated the contagionist theory. appointed Physicians and Surgeons for ?Ķ the poor: the Lord Mayor, Sir John Lawrence, and the Court of Aldermen appointed Dr Nathaniel Hodges and Dr Thomas Witherley to serve the poor in the City and its Liberties. To these were added others, some of whom proffered their services without payment. Among these were Edward Learmen, Thomas Grey, Dr John Glover, Dr Humphrey Brooke, Dr Parker, and Dr Barbon. They were assigned to various wards and parishes (see London, Guildhall Repertory, 70 (1664?Äì5), 144?Äì53). Directions for cheap Remedies: at the request of the Privy Council, not the Lord Mayor (as Defoe states), the College of Physicians published Necessary Directions ?Ķ by the College of Physicians (1665), a revised version of similar Directions issued in earlier plagues. Defoe found it reprinted in 1721 in A Collection of Very Valuable and Scarce Pieces. A copy is also listed in the sale catalogue of his library, no. 184, 51. It contained ?Äòdiverse remedies of small charge', but also other medicines ?Äòfor the richer sort'. The College of Physicians was founded in the reign of Henry VIII. Its charter gave the College power to license all physicians for practice in the City and in a circuit of seven miles. Originally only those with degrees from Oxford or Cambridge could qualify as Fellows. Restrictions were eased in the seventeenth century: physicians with degrees from foreign universities became eligible and the number of Fellows was increased from thirty to eighty. several Physicians ?Ķ and ?Ķ Surgeons: the exact number of medical men who remained in London and met death during the plague is difficult to establish. See S. D. Clippingdale, ?ÄòA Medical Role of Honour', reprinted from the British Medical Journal, 6 Feb. 1909. The doctors mentioned by Defoe on p. 29 lived through the epidemic. An Act ?Ķ Plague: I Jac. I, c. 31, confirmed an order of 1583 that those stricken by the plague be confined to their houses. Pest-House beyond Bunhill-Fields; H.F. says that only two pest-houses were made use of (p. 156). At least five seem to have existed, two of which were hastily built during the plague, in the parishes of St Giles-in-the-Fields and St Martin-in-the-Fields; see Bell, The Great Plague in London, 37?Äì9. A report to the Privy Council early in 1666 remarked on the inadequacy of the existing pest-houses, the ones in Westminster and St Giles accommodating only sixty each, the one in Soho, only ninety (Calendar State Papers Domestic, Car. II, 1665?Äì1666, xiii). ORDERS ?Ķ 1665: the Orders of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen were reprinted in 1721 in A Collection of Very Valuable and Scarce Pieces. Defoe added the names of the Lord Mayor and the two Sheriffs. Except for slight changes, the Orders issued in 1665 were a repetition of those issued in 1646. Examiners: these officials, sometimes called surveyors in earlier plagues, were appointed by the authorities in 1603, perhaps as early as 1578, to search out and report cases of the plague and to ensure that plague orders were observed; but see also the next note. For H.F.'s reaction to being appointed an examiner, see p. 137. The Examiner's Office: Walter G. Bell found no evidence of examiners appointed in 1665 to search for the plague. A few men designated by that title took over duties of parish officers, such as affording relief and assisting in burials. He maintains that Defoe's saddler, ?Äònosing out Plague in 1665 ?Ķ is a figure of fiction, invented by [Defoe] out of the ?ÄúOrders Conceived and published?Äù' (The Great Plague in London, 105?Äì6). Searchers: in Applebee's Journal, 18 Nov. 1721, Defoe attributed the inaccuracy of the Bills of Mortality to both the parish clerks and the searchers. The custom of appointing ?Äòancient women' to be searchers, whose function in times of plague was to seek out the dead and report the cause of death to the parish clerks, was strongly criticized by Captain John Graunt and Defoe, among others. Defoe wrote: ?Äòthe Searchers are a sort of old Women, Ignorant, Negligent [and] many Times the Clerks, who are not above half a Degree better Old Women than the Searchers, often supply the Searchers Office, and put the Dead down of what Disease comes next in their Heads. And in short, 'tis not one Time in many that in some Parishes any Searchers come near a dead Body' (Lee, ii. 455). Botch, or Purple: physicians and writers on the plague attempted to distinguish the external manifestations of the malady. The various spots, swellings, tumours were called tokens, botches, carbuncles, buboes, or blains. Kemp's Brief Treatise describes the botch as ?Äòa swelling about the bignesse of a Nutmeg, Wallnut, or Hens Egge, and cometh in the Neck, or behind the Eares, if the Brain be affected; or under the Arm-pits, from the Heart; or in the Groin, from the Liver; for the cure whereof, pull off the feathers from the Rump of a Cock, Hen, or Pigeon, and rub the Tayl with Salt, and hold its Bill, and set the Tayl hard to the swelling, and it will die' (p. 92). Tokens of the red variety ?Äòhave often a purple Circle around them' (Necessary Directions ?Ķ by the College of Physicians, 39). Spotted fever, with its purple spots, might be mistaken for the plague, Boghurst warned (see Loimographia, 49). Fire, and ?Ķ Perfumes: the College of Physicians recommended fires and fumes: ?ÄòFires made in the Streets, and often with Stink-Pots, and good Fires kept in and about the Houses of such as are visited ?Ķ may correct the infectious Air; as also frequent discharging of Guns' (Necessary Directions ?Ķ by the College of Physicians, 40). Cf. Kemp, A Brief Treatise ?Ķ of the Pestilence: ?ÄòSome [physicians] direct to make great Fires in the Streets, as Hyppocrates did in the Plague at Athens, and burning among them sweet Odors, Spices and Perfumes, Fragrant Ointments and Compositions, whereby he freed the City from Infection' (p. 43). Dr Philip Rose, a member of the College of Physicians in 1721: ?Äòyou cannot imagine what a deal of Morbifick Miasmata are destroy'd or carried away by a Fire wisely managed' (A Theorico-Practical, Miscellaneous, and Succinct Treatise of the Plague (1721), 35). See also third note to p. 148. Shutting ?Ķ House: perhaps the most extensively discussed of all preventative measures. The sequestration of the sick and anyone who had contact with them, was common practice in England from 1518. Reflecting the intensity of the controversy over its value, Defoe treats the matter at length in Due Preparations as well as in the Journal. Even those writers on the plague who defended the practice agreed that it was often evaded. Two typical tracts of 1665 opposing the measure may be cited: (1) Anon., The Shutting up of Infected Houses as it is practised in England soberly debated; (2) J.V., Golgotha ?Ķ with an Humble Witness against the Cruel ?Ķ Practice of Shutting up unto Oppression. Both argue that the practice is ineffective and inhuman, an argument frequently advanced in the 1720s. Richard Bradley called it ?Äòplain Murder to shut Men up in an infected and destroying Air' (The Plague at Marseilles consider'd (1721), 58). In an extended examination of many aspects of the plague, The Free-Thinker contended that more good would accrue by permitting ?Äòthe free enjoyment of the open Air' (no. 36, 9 June 1721), a view also defended by Sir John Colbatch, a member of the College of Physicians (see A Scheme for Proper Methods to be taken should it please God to visit us with the Plague (1721), 14). The plague tracts of Hodges, Pye, Place, and others contain similar arguments. Even Mead, whose tract was sanctioned by the Government, wrote that ?Äòthe shutting up Houses in this Manner is only keeping so many Seminaries of Contagion' (Short Discourse, 35). Burial ?Ķ before Sun-rising, or after Sun-setting: in his Diary, 12 Aug. 1665, Pepys writes: ?ÄòThe people die so, that now it seems they are fain to carry the dead to be buried by day-light, the nights not sufficing to do it in.' In the course of that week, according to the Bills of Mortality, London suffered 4,030 deaths, of which 2,817 were of the plague. accompany the Corps: plague orders as early as 1569 gave attention to the burial of those who died of the plague. Subsequent orders limited the number of people who might attend a funeral: for example, in 1603 only six were permitted, excluding the minister, the clerk, and the bearers. Graves ?Ķ six Foot deep: the authority of Hippocrates and Galen, as well as numberless writers throughout the ages, supported the notion that unburied carcasses corrupt the air and cause diseases. Mead, writing in 1720, says: ?ÄòIt has ?Ķ been remarked in all Times, that ?Ķ the Corruption of dead Carcasses lying unburied [has] occasioned infectious Diseases' (Short Discourse, 3). Frequent complaints were made against shallow graves, and especially against ?Äòthose Pits or Holes (called the Poor's Holes)' in which the poor were unceremoniously dumped. The complaint in part was against the stench of putrefying bodies, but it was also thought that the ?ÄòPestilential Venom' would receive additional strength from the putrid exhalations (see Anon., Some Customs considered whether Prejudicial to the Health of this City (London, 1721), 8?Äì9; The Free-Thinker, no. 334, 2 June 1720). marked with a red Cross: the practice of marking infected houses dates from 1518 in England, earlier on the Continent. The use of a red cross for the purpose seems to have developed by 1593 and the inscription ?ÄòLord Have Mercy upon Us', a little earlier (see F. P. Wilson, The Plague in Shakespeare's London (1963), 61?Äì4). a red Rod or Wand: the earliest surviving English plague orders (1543) require that an infected person or anyone in contact with an infected person carry a white wand in his hand. In subsequent orders the wand continued to be required, sometimes white, sometimes red, the red eventually being ordered for physicians, nurses, and examiners. Tipling in Taverns: a Lord Mayor's proclamation, dated 4 July 1665, ordered ?ÄòThat no Vintner, Innholder, Cook, Ordinary-keeper, Seller of Strong-Waters, Ale-house-keeper, shall henceforward, during the Infection receive or entertain any person or persons ?Ķ to eat or drink in their houses or shops'. to sweat ?Ķ the ordinary Remedy: ?Äòmedicines that cause Sweat expel them from the heart to the outside of the body, and rarifie those humours into light and thin vapours, which turn into a watery sweat, as soon as they come out of the skin into the air, and thereby drive out those humours and vapours, which breed the pestilence' (Kemp, A Brief Treatise ?Ķ of the Pestilence, 54). Cf. Blackmore: ?Äòthose physicians that prescribe Remedies at the Beginning [of the plague] to promote copious and constant Sweats, act contrary to the Laws of Reason and Observation, and do not assist Nature, but enfeeble it' (Discourse, 92?Äì3). Weekly Bill ?Ķ frighted: the General Bill of Mortality for 1665 lists 23 deaths under ?ÄòFrighted'. late Wars ?Ķ Low Countries: the war against Spain in 1655 and against Holland in 1652. long a-coming to our Parish: the Bills of Mortality report the first death from the plague in H.F.'s parish, Aldgate, the week of 27 June to 4 July. At that time 33 of 130 parishes were reported infected, and deaths from the plague totalled 470 during the week. such Violence as in ?Ķ Aldgate and White Chapel: the Bills of Mortality do not fully support H.F.'s statement. Whitechapel and Aldgate were two of the worst sufferers in the severe months of August, September, and October, but Stepney surpassed them in total number of deaths from the plague. The figures for Stepney for the year are 6,583, for Aldgate, 4,051, for Whitechapel, 3,855. Defoe measures the violence of the epidemic in particular parishes by the total number of reported deaths from the plague without regard to the size of the parishes. The parishes varied greatly. A populous parish might have more deaths but still be proportionately less afflicted than a parish less well populated. two Weeks ?Ķ 1114 Bodies: the Bills show 1,159 deaths from the plague in the two weekly reports from 5 to 19 September. It is not credible that all but 45 would have been relegated to the plague pits. the Pit ?Ķ near the three Nuns Inn: an excavation in 1859 near the Three Nuns Court revealed what was presumably H.F.'s ?Äòdreadful Gulph' (see Notes and Queries, 2nd ser., 8 (1859), 288?Äì9). Links ?Ķ Bell-man: links were torches used to light people along the streets. The ringing of a bell announced the approach of a dead-cart. A visitor to London in July wrote: ?Äòthere dye so many that the bell would hardly ever leave ringing and so they ring not at all' (quoted by Bell, The Great Plague in London, 80). Coffins ?Ķ not to be had: an exaggeration: Vincent, Pepys, and Evelyn report seeing coffins. In his Diary on 7 September, in the worst period of the plague and just three days before H.F. visits the plague pit, John Evelyn wrote: ?ÄòI went all along the city and suburbs from Kent Street to St. James's, a dismal passage, and dangerous to see so many coffins exposed in the streets.' Doubtless coffins were scarce and expensive. Bell reports that Cripplegate purchased four and that these were used to take the dead to the grave and then returned to be used again (The Great Plague in London, 148). enthusiastick: a pejorative word connoting the irrationality and fanaticism associated with Nonconformists. about 200000 People were fled: any estimate must be the merest surmise. Sydenham, referring to the autumn, wrote that at this time ?Äòtwo thirds of the citizens had retired into the country' (Works (1848), i. 98). In Due Preparations for the Plague, Defoe asserts that ?Äòaccording to the most moderate guess' at least 300,000 had fled (Aitken edn., p. 73). In the same work he wrote that 7,000 houses were empty in the City (p. 24). In the Journal this figure became 10,000 in the City and Suburbs. conveyed the fatal Breath: Defoe's contagionist view of plague is stated here in brief. Cf. Kemp: ?ÄòOne Cause of the Sickness, is the Corruption and Infection of the Air; for when the Plague begins to raign in any Place ?Ķ the Sick continually not only breathe out of their Mouths, but send out of their Bodies steams and vapours, which being disperst and scattered in the Air, are soon after drawn in by the breath of others; and thence whole Families are extinguisht, and the Plague not only creeps, but runs from one House to another: and hence it is that the Plague destroyes more in Cities than in Countries, and more in narrow Streets and Lanes of those Cities, than in open places, because usually there are narrow and little rooms, which are soonest fill'd with infectious vapours ?Ķ for though the Air be never so corrupt, you must draw it in with your breath continually' (A Brief Treatise ?Ķ of the Pestilence, 35). Steams, or Fumes ?Ķ Effluvia: Blackmore describes the spread of ?ÄòPestilential Putrefaction': ?ÄòWhen the Effluvia or invisible malignant Reeks flow from an infected Body greatly corrupted, the poisonous Particles ?Ķ are endow'd with such Velocity, Activity, and Penetration, that they flie with Ease thro' the Air, maintain their fatal Influence in despight of all Opposition, and convey the Infection from House to House, and from Town to Town, and depopulate great Cities. This high Venom advances with resistless Fury ?Ķ and is so far from being enfeebled while it is ventilated by the Winds ?Ķ that it acquires more Strength by converting into its own Nature the Exhalations and Vapours it meets with in its Way' (Discourse, 37?Äì8). immediate Stroke from Heaven: the wrath of God theory was a venerable one. See Ovid, Metamorphoses, 7.532 ff.; references in Numbers 16; Deuteronomy 28; 2 Samuel 24; 1 Kings 8; and Psalms 89, 91, and 106; Procopius of Caesaria, History of the Wars, ii, chs. 22?Äì3; Boccaccio, introduction to Decameron. The theory was still popular in Defoe's day; see Nathaniel Hodges, Vindiciae Medicinae & Medicorum (1666), 34, and Loimologia, 30?Äì1; Blackmore, Discourse, 28?Äì9; William Hendley, Loimologia Sacra (1721), 6, 41. The view that divine anger works through natural means is set out in Isbrand de Diemerbroek's Tractatus de Pesle, translated in 1722 by Thomas Stanton as A Treatise concerning the Pestilence. Defoe seems to have possessed a copy. infection ?Ķ by ?Ķ Insects, and invisible Creatures: H.F. here reflects and rejects the theory of infection set forth by Athanasius Kircher and his disciples on the Continent. Kircher's famous work, Scrutinium Physicomedicum ?Ķ Pestis (1658), was often referred to in English plague tracts. His theory, based upon concepts of fermentation, generation, and putrefaction, held that organisms of minute size acted as the vehicle of contagion. The chief proponent of this theory of ?Äòvermicular' infection in England was Richard Bradley, whose The Plague at Marseilles consider'd (1721) was well known when Defoe was working on the Journal. Bradley wrote that ?Äòall Pestilential Distempers, whether in Animals or Plants, are occasion'd by poisonous Insects convey'd from Place to Place by the Air, and that by uncleanly Living and poor Diet, Human, and other Bodies are disposed to receive such Insects into the Stomach and most noble Parts' (p. 57). The rejection of this view, by Mead and Hodges, Defoe probably knew. Hodges refers to the famous Kircher's opinion ?Äòabout animated Worms', a view he believed to be ?Äòdisconsonant to Reason' (Loimologia, 64); and Mead calls it ?Äòa supposition grounded upon no manner of Observation' (Short Discourse, 16). Blackmore, who considered the views of Kircher and Bradley in his Discourse, maintained that ?ÄòWorms are by no means the Cause, but the Effect of Pestilential Putrefaction' (p. 36). See also for a vigorous attack on the theory of ?Äòvermicular infection', Philip Rose, A Theorico-Practical, Miscellaneous and Succinct Treatise of the Plague (1721), 43 ff. Supine Negligence: the failure of people to prepare for the plague even though long warned of its approach is extensively treated in Defoe's Due Preparations. Meditations upon Divine Subjects: Defoe himself composed some meditations upon divine subjects in his youth. See The Meditations of Daniel Defoe, ed. George Harris Healey (1946). a Physician ?Ķ Heath: Brayley and others identify him as Dr Nathaniel Hodges. See the first note to p. 29. Plague ?Ķ violent ?Ķ where I liv'd: the Bills of Mortality reported 81 deaths from the Plague in H.F.'s parish of Aldgate in the first week of August, 173 in the following week. Rozen and Pitch, Brimstone: such fumes were among the various recommendations of Necessary Directions ?Ķ by the College of Physicians. Resin and pitch were ?Äòto be put upon Coals, and consumed with the least Flame that may be', and brimstone, ?Äòthough ill to be endured for the present', should be ?Äòburned plentifully'?Äîall for the purpose of correcting the air (p. 40). Butchers of White-Chapel: Defoe came naturally to an interest in butchers: his father was a member of the Butchers' Company and Defoe himself, by virtue of this fact, was admitted to freedom of the Company on 12 January 1688. Pepys wrote to Lady Carteret, 4 Sept. 1665: ?ÄòThe butchers are everywhere visited.' Butcher's Row and the Minories, the location of many butchers, were within a stone's throw of Defoe's parish church, St Botolph, Aldgate. Vinegar: according to Thomas Phaer, A Treatise of the Plague, written about two hundred years ago. Republished with a Preface by a Physician of London (1722), ?ÄòVinegar is a noble thing in tyme of pestilence' (p. 6). It was widely recommended as a prophylactic and a fumigant as early as the fifteenth century. In 1665 the College of Physicians commended it: ?ÄòVapours from Vinegar exhaled in any Room, may [correct the infectious air], especially after it hath been impregnated, by infusing or steeping it in any one or more of these Ingredients; Wormwood, Angelica, Master-wort, Bay-Leaves, Rosemary, Rue, Sage, Scordium, or Water-Germander, Valerium, or Setwall-Root, Zedoary, Camphire' (Necessary Directions ?Ķ by the College of Physicians, 40). But see Richard Boulton's An Essay on the Plague (1721): vinegar ?Äòcan only be serviceable, as it cools the Blood and may prevent a Ferment and Agitation by Heat; but if notwithstanding this Distemper should appear, it would but increase the Evil, by rendering the Blood more liable to Stagnation and Coagulation; yet it may be a good service to sprinkle the Rooms with it' (p. 41). Defoe's tradesman in Due Preparations (p. 61) purifies his letters by smoking them with brimstone and gunpowder, then sprinkling them with vinegar. Coins, too, were purified by immersion in vinegar. Kemp sings the praises of anti-pestilential vinegar and asserts that he wrote his Brief Treatise ?Ķ of the Plague to demonstrate ?Äòthe Vertue of Vinegar' (p. 86). dropt ?Ķ Dead ?Ķ knew nothing of it: Boghurst took exception to reports of sudden deaths: ?Äònone dyed suddenly as stricken with Lightning or an Apoplexy, as Authors write in severall countryes, and Dimerbrooke seems to believe it' (Loimographia, 26). Diemerbroeck, in Several Choice Histories ?Ķ of the Plague (1666) reports the instances of a man ?Äòtaken with Feavor' but who had ?Äòno outward Figure of the Plague, so that those of his house did not think he died of the Plague, but within twelve hours after he was put in the Coffin, they saw many black spots ?Ķ in him, certain figures of the Plague'. He adds: ?ÄòSometimes the poison is so deadly, that they die before Nature can send forth any thing ?Ķ neither Carbuncles nor Blaines, but after they are dead there appeareth black spots' (p. 9). This appears to be an instance of septicaemic plague in which the blood-stream is heavily infected. People ?Ķ raving and distracted: cf. Vincent, God's Terrible Voice in the City (1667): ?Äòsome in their frenzy, rising out of their beds, and leaping about their rooms; others crying and roaring at their windows; some coming forth almost naked, and running into the streets; strange things have others spoken ?Ķ one ?Ķ burnt himself in his bed' (1722 edn., 44). tortured ?Ķ Creatures: cf. Boghurst: ?ÄòMany people by Launcing, Corrosives, actuall Cauteries, Scarifications, and many intollerable applications, put their patients to more paine than the disease did' (Loimographia, 29). Swellings ?Ķ break and run: contemporary medicine stressed the necessity of drawing out the pestilential venom concentrated in the swellings symptomatic of bubonic plague. It was contended that this would relieve the pain and perhaps save the patient. Plague tracts, medical and lay, abounded in prescriptions to be taken internally or applied externally. Necessary Directions ?Ķ by the College of Physicians declared that ?Äòthe Swelling under the Ears, Armpits, or in the Groins ?Ķ must be always drawn forth and ripened, and broke with all speed'. An expert chirurgeon was recommended, but for those not using a physician more than a dozen prescriptions were set down, including some remedies for ?Äòthose that are delighted with Chymical Medicines only' (pp. 54 ff.). frightful Stories ?Ķ of Nurses: from Dekker early in the seventeenth century to Hodges in 1665 and Mead in 1720, the brutality and wickedness of the nurse-keepers is a constant theme in plague tracts. Dekker's description of them as ?Äòshee wolves' is echoed by Hodges: ?ÄòThese Wretches, out of Greediness to plunder the Dead, would strangle their Patients ?Ķ others would secretly convey the pestilential Taint from Sores of the infected to those who were well; and nothing indeed deterred these abandoned Miscreants from prosecuting their avaritious Purposes by all the Methods their Wickedness could invent' (Loimologia, 8). John Hayward: mentioned as sexton in 1673 in the Vestry Minutes of St Stephen Coleman Street (fo. 352). His death is recorded in the Register General of the same church on 5 October 1684 (fo. 188). Note that H.F.'s brother lived in Coleman Street parish. Alleys, and Thorough-fares: in London Survey'd (1677), John Ogilby and William Morgan list Coleman Street as having eight courts and six alleys. Garlick and Rue: in addition to these, other herbs, spices, roots, barks, flowers, and seeds were recommended: aloes, amber, ambergris, angelica, balm, bay leaves, benjamin, campana roots, camphor, cinnamon, citrine sanders, cloves, emula, frankincense, gentian, hyssop, juniper, lavender, mace, marjoram, mint, musk, myrrh, nutmeg, origanum, penny royal, rosemary, saffron, sage, sassafras, storax, tansy, thyme, wormwood. All of these may be found scattered through plague tracts as well as in the London Pharmacopoeia. The use of aromatics was supported by the tradition that Hippocrates had conquered the plague of Athens by burning aromatic spices in the streets. An occasional note of scepticism was voiced: J.V., in Golgotha (1665), wrote that ?Äòsweet-scented Pomanders were exploded ?Ķ long since, as a costly mischief'. He attacks the excessive claims of the ?ÄòPomandermen'; nevertheless he commends the fumes from ?ÄòRhue, Wormwood, Hartshorn, Amber, Thime or Origany, Rosemary' and a few others. Of all fumes he affirms ?ÄòTobacco to be the best' (p. 24). smoaking Tobacco: widely recommended as a preventative and fumigant. Kemp's A Brief Treatise ?Ķ of the Pestilence (1665) describes it as ?Äòa good Fume against pestilential and infected air'. He commends it for ?ÄòAll Ages, all Sexes, all Constitutions, Young and Old, Men and Women, the Sanguine, the Cholerick, the Melancholy, the Phlegmatick ?Ķ either by chewing in the leaf, or smoaking in the Pipe' (pp. 46?Äì7). It was believed that no tobacconist had died in the plague of 1665. Richard Bradley wrote: ?Äòit is to be remarked, that in the time of the last Plague in London that Distemper did not reach those who smoak'd Tobacco every Day' (The Plague at Marseilles consider'd, 48?Äì9). Among the physicians who maintained that tobacco had kept them immune were Hodges and Diemerbroeck. Pepys records (Diary, 7 June) with apprehension his first sight of an infected house, in Drury Lane: ?ÄòIt put me into an ill conception of myself and my smell, so that I was forced to buy some roll-tobacco to smell and to chaw, which took away my apprehension.' Plague ?Ķ chiefly among the Poor: ?Äòit is incredible to think how the Plague raged amongst the common People, insomuch that it came by some to be called the Poors Plague' (Hodges, Loimologia, 15). The relationship between poverty (with its undernourishment and lack of sanitation) and disease was recognized: ?Äòthe contagious Maladies most commonly ?Ķ rage amongst a crouded and penn'd up Herd of Creatures, who by Poverty do wallow in their Dirt and Hastiness; and this being accompany'd with bad Air and Nourishment, if it has not ?Ķ the full Effect to occasion and to breed a contagious Malady of it self, yet ?Ķ such poor miserable People will be much more liable, and their Bodies more dispos'd to receive, harbour, and nourish the malign Atoms of a contagious Malady' (P. Kennedy, MD, A Discourse on Pestilence (1721), 19). Story of the Piper: the story of a drunken man interred prematurely was in circulation in one form or another as early as 1603 (in Dekker's The Wonderfull Yeare); and versions of it in the seventeenth century are found in the anonymous The Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinarie (1604) (possibly by Dekker or Thomas Middleton), in Sir John Reresby's Memoirs, 1634?Äì1689, and in William Austin's The Anatomy of Pestilence, 1666). See Wilhelm von Fuger, ?ÄòDer betrunkene Piper', Archiv f. n. Sprachen, 202. (1965), 28?Äì36. London ?Ķ exceeding rich: ?ÄòContrary to all outside appearances, the City was on the verge of bankruptcy. Its liabilities were far in excess of its immediate assets, and its expenditure was constantly in excess of its income' (T. F. Reddaway, The Rebuilding of London after the Great Fire (repr. 1951), 171; see ch. 7 of this study for the tangled financial affairs of the City and for the cost of rebuilding some of the places mentioned by Defoe). The rebuilding of public edifices to which Defoe refers was spread over eight years. breaking in upon the Orphan's Money: accumulated funds for the care of orphans of London citizens were controlled by the Mayor and the Corporation. This money, loaned to Charles II, was thought to be endangered, and moves were made in Parliament and elsewhere in the 1670s and later to protect it. Welfare of those ?Ķ left behind: Defoe's account of large sums spent on relief of the poor may be optimistic. The picture is confused by the fact that charity was dispensed by various agencies: the livery companies, parishes, the city, private persons. Parliament itself took no action, and the tradition that Charles II ?Äòordered a thousand Pounds a Week to be distributed' seems to be unsubstantiated. Note that H.F. himself says that he can speak of it only ?Äòas a Report'. Funds coming in from the poor rate and the pest rate, from fast-day collections, from private persons, and from the livery companies (required by a Lord Mayor's Proclamation, 28 July, to devote a third of the money saved from their prohibited dinners and entertainments) cannot be accurately estimated. See Bell, The Great Plague in London, 130 and 195?Äì9, who discounts Defoe's figures. He does, however, quote from a letter written by Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey who, after indicting some of the courtiers, nobility, and gentry for forgetting ?Äòtheir charity', says, ?ÄòI believe they [i.e., the poor] were never so well relieved in any Plague time whatsoever' (p. 197). legal Settlements: i.e. having a legal residence in a particular parish by virtue of residing in the parish for a certain length of time or paying taxes or serving in an annual office. A legal settlement entitled one to claim against the poor rates. See also the second note to p. 107. thirty or forty Thousand: if Defoe's estimate of the number of poor who died from the plague in the nine weeks, 8 August to 10 October, is correct, we can understand why the epidemic was called ?Äòthe poor's plague'. He repeats accurately the figures of total deaths and deaths from the plague as they were reported in the Bills of Mortality, but his estimate that roughly 60 to 80 per cent of the deaths were of the poor can only be a guess, if not his own then from an unidentified source. Such figures were not available. Grass growing: Pepys commented on the desolation in London streets in September: ?ÄòBut, Lord! what a sad time it is to see no boats upon the River; and grass grows all up and down White Hall court, and nobody but poor wretches in the streets!' (Diary, 20 Sept. 1665). Cf. Thomas Vincent: ?ÄòNow there is a dismal solitude in London streets.?Ķ Now shops are shut in, people rare, and very few that walk about, insomuch that the grass begins to spring up in some places ?Ķ no rattling coaches, no prancing Horses' (God's Terrible Voice in the City, 42). Cf. Defoe, The Review, no. 8, 26 Aug. 1712: ?ÄòGrass grew in the Streets, in the Markets, and on the Exchange; and nothing but death was to be seen in every place.' Coaches ?Ķ dangerous things: H.F.'s remark that coaches were scarce and dangerous is supported by entries in Pepys's Diary, 25 July 1665: ?ÄòThence to my office awhile, full of business, and thence by coach to the Duke of Albermarle's, not meeting one coach going nor coming from my house thither and back again, which is very strange.' On 27 November Pepys took a hackney coach: ?Äòthe first I have durst to go in many a day, and with great pain now for fear'. Solomon Eagle an Enthusiast: see the fourth note to p. 20. ?ÄòEnthusiast' in the sense of a fanatical dissenter. The fumes of the burning charcoal were intended to purify the pestilential air. People ?Ķ Danger ?Ķ Worship of God: the Bishop of London to Lord Arlington, 19 August 1665: ?ÄòMany of those who never attended divine service are now present' (Calendar State Papers Domestic, Car. II, 1664?Äì1665, 524). Dissenters ?Ķ in the very Churches: the government grew alarmed over the appearance of the ejected clergy in the parish churches. In July, Lord Arlington, Secretary of State, wrote to the Bishop of London: ?ÄòThe King is informed that many ministers and lecturers having been absent from their posts during this time of contagion, nonconformists have thrust themselves into their pulpits, to preach sedition, and doctrines contrary to the Church; His Majesty wishes to prevent such mischiefs to Church and State' (Calendar State Papers Domestic, Car. II, 1664?Äì1665, 497). On 19 August the Bishop of London replied that ?Äòthe sober clergy remain' and that he ?Äòcannot learn that any nonconformists have invaded the pulpit' (ibid. 524). ten thousand ?Ķ sheltered here: very unlikely. Pepys does not mention this massing of ships in the Thames and there are no other contemporary references to such a scene. Wo ?Ķ Child ?Ķ Day: Matthew 24: 19. Cf. Boghurst, Loimographia: ?ÄòTeeming women fared miserably in the disease ?Ķ scarce one in forty lived, for the disease and sweating forced them to miscarry, and the miscarriage drew in the disease again.?Ķ Hippocrates saith to this purpose that women with child fare ill in occult and epidemicall diseases' (p. 25). Kephale's Medela Pestilentiae maintained that women are more susceptible to the plague than men and that pregnant women are the most susceptible, ?Äòfor their bodies are full of excrementious humours, and much heat withal, which is as oyle and flame put together' (pp. 55?Äì6). But virgins fare little better according to Kephale: ?ÄòVirgins, that are ripe for marriage, are apt to receive infection; and being stricken, seldom or never escape without great means.?Ķ Their blood being hot, and their seed retain'd for want of copulation, the one will soon be inflam'd, the other corrupted; from thence infection.' Those least likely to be infected are old people, ?Äòconfident spirits', milch-nurses, those who have the gout, or issues or ulcers or haemorrhoids, or women who ?Äòhave their courses abundantly' (pp. 56 ff.). kill all the Dogs and Cats: the plague orders regularly called for the destruction of domestic animals. In 1543 all dogs, except hounds, spaniels, or mastiffs, were ordered killed or removed from London. The task of killing stray animals was entrusted to a parish official or to one appointed for the purpose. Defoe's figures?Äî40,000 dogs and five times as many cats?Äîare suspect. Lepers of Samaria: 2 Kings 7: 3?Äì4; Luke 17: 12. last legal Settlement: the brief ?Äòlegal' quibble in this passage refers to the laws of vagrancy. Elizabethan legislation concerning the poor was amplified by Acts in 1662 and 1667 (14 Car. II, cap. xii; 18?Äì19 Car. II, cap. ix). The remark by Thomas concerns the power of a justice to remove from a parish any newcomer who might become an object of parochial charity. A vagrant's last legal settlement, that is, his established residence, was that parish where he was last domiciled as servant, apprentice, householder, or sojourner for a period of forty days. In the early months of 1707 Defoe, writing in The Review, was critical of a Bill pending in Parliament designed to modify the Act of Settlement. Beginning of July: Defoe's account of the slow spread of the plague follows contemporary accounts. Cf. Boghurst: ?Äòit gradually insinuated, and crept down Holborne and the Strand [from the western parishes], and then into the City, and at last to the East end of the Suburbs; soe that it was half a yeare at the West end of the City before the East end and Stepney was infected, which was about the middle of July' (Loimographia, 28). H.F.'s statement that no one had died of the plague in Stepney parish is not borne out by the Bills of Mortality. They record three deaths by 4 July. died ?Ķ 5361 People: this is the total number of deaths in the five parishes mentioned from all causes during the first three weeks in August. The number dying of the plague alone was 3,570. the Boarded-River: the ?Äòriver' made by Sir Hugh Middleton, 1608?Äì13, to supply London with water. It was so called because of the wooden arches built to support the troughs carrying the water. King's Highway: an ancient and intricate legal concept dating perhaps from the eighth or ninth century, at which time it applied to the four great through roads. It later came to apply to all highways. The concept is related to the concept of the King's Peace and implied the King's protection for his subjects travelling on the King's Highway. ?ÄòTo the citizen of the twelfth, the fifteenth, or even the eighteenth century, the King's Highway was a more abstract conception. It was not a strip of land, or any corporeal thing, but a legal and customary right?Äîas the lawyers said, ?Äúa perpetual right of passage in the sovereign, for himself and his subjects, over another's land?Äù ?Ķ What existed, in fact, was not a road, but what we might almost term an easement?Äîa right of way, enjoyed by the public at large from village to village, along a certain customary course, which, if much frequented, became a beaten track.' See Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English Local Government: The Story of the King's Highway (1913), 5, 10, n. 2. Higlers: i.e. hucksters, mercenary people. parched Corn ?Ķ Bread of it: Joshua 5: 11. Tilts and Bales: awnings and bales of merchandise. Violence ?Ķ Town: In H.F.'s parish of St Botolph, Aldgate, 65 died of the plague in the last week of July. The figures for the four weeks in August are 81, 173, 212, 46. Deaths from all causes, which rarely rose above 20 before August, are reported in the Bills as 103, 207, 238, 374. These figures support H.F.'s contention that the Bills did not accurately reflect the number of deaths from the plague. Exchange ?Ķ not kept shut: on 18 July Pepys went ?Äòto the 'Change, where a little business and a very thin Exchange'. At the end of July the Exchange was closed for a period of approximately two months. Fires ?Ķ lost: the Lord Mayor's Proclamation of 2 September 1665 ordered fires to be kept burning continuously for three days and nights, beginning 5 September, in all streets, courts, lanes, and alleys of the City and Suburbs. Pepys, going by river to see the Duke of Albemarle, reports ?Äòall the way fires on each side of the Thames' (Diary, 6 Sept.). On the ninth he records ?Äòa most cursed rainy afternoon'; this is the rain which extinguished the plague-fires and, as Pepys says, ?Äòalmost spoiled my silke breeches'. not only no Benefit, but injurious: Defoe reflects the controversy over the value of fires. In the epidemics of 1563, 1603, and 1625 fires were lit in the streets of London, and the authorities followed suit in 1665. Hodges argued against the practice in 1665, as did Mead and Blackmore in 1721; but the Hippocratic tradition was strong and the legend that Hippocrates had freed Athens of the plague by fires appealed to many. See Philip Rose, A Theruo-Practical, Miscellaneous, and Succinct Treatise of the Plague: ?ÄòWe have an Account of him, that he did free Greece from the Plague; for which Service the Athenians decreed and paid him the same Honours as to Hercules. We are informed, that he did set several Forests on fire, to purify the Air; which in my Judgment, was [a] ready way to destroy and carry off the Pestilential Effluviums in a great Measure' (pp. 26?Äì7). To Hodges, fires were ?Äòshowy and expensive ?Ķ and of no effect' (Loimologia, 19). Fires ?Ķ Wood ?Ķ Coal: Boghurst writes that ?ÄòWood fires are accounted best', and he names twenty-eight kinds of wood suitable. He adds: ?ÄòYet I know noe reason why Sea coale fires also should be discontinued' (Loimographia, 61?Äì2). Dog-days ?Ķ Dog-Star: a period of about five weeks commonly said to begin on 3 July with the heliacal rising of Sirius in the Constellation of the Greater Dog, long noted for being a hot and unwholesome period and a time in which malignant influences prevailed. The Act of Uniformity: received royal assent 19 May 1662. Its provisions and required oaths led to the ejection of many, perhaps a fifth, of the Anglican beneficed clergy, one of whom was Dr Samuel Annesley, family pastor of the Foes, then living in St Giles, Cripplegate. The family and Defoe (aged 2) followed Annesley out of the Established Church into Nonconformity. For a brief general statement of Defoe's attitude toward this Act, the Test Act, and the practice known as occasional conformity, see The Review, 22 Nov. 1705. almost 40,000: Defoe here uses the number of deaths from all causes as reported in the Bills of Mortality. The number of deaths attributed to the plague for the five weeks was 32,332. no Funeral ?Ķ in the Day-time: Pepys reports: ?ÄòThence by water to the Duke of Albemarle's ?Ķ and strange to see in broad daylight two or three burials upon the Bankeside, one at the very heels of another: doubtless all of the plague; and yet at least forty or fifty people going along with every one of them' (Diary, 6 Sept. 1665). Price of Bread ?Ķ not much raised: the assize of bread by order of the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen was reported weekly in the Bills of Mortality. H.F.'s facts are accurate. To conserve fuel during the plague and to adjust to the demands of a decreased population, the Bakers' Company ruled in 1665 that ?Äòwives' bread, that is, bread baked from the customer's own dough, would be limited to three days. See Sylvia Thrupp, A Short History of the Worshipful Company of Bakers of London (1933), 114. two Pest-houses: see second note to p. 33. The Westminster pest-house was in Tothill Fields. Bakers Company: see second note to p. 155. The government and discipline of the Worshipful Company of Bakers of London were in the hands of the Master and Wardens and the Court of Assistants, the Court consisting of ex-wardens and others chosen from the livery. publish'd in Latin: a reference to Dr Nathaniel Hodges, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, whose Loimologia was translated by John Quincy and published in 1720. For Hodges, see first note to p. 29. four Thousand in one Night: the figure is from Hodges, Loimologia, 24?Äì5, where he laments the ill-advised action of the authorities in ordering fires in the streets for three days. Hodges suggests that the damp weather and the ?Äòsuffocative effluvia of the coals' had dire consequences the night of 9 September. H.F.'s scepticism is justified. With 6,088 deaths reported for the entire week it is not likely that 4,000 died in a single night. Air ?Ķ corrupted and infected: here and in the following pages Defoe views the plague from the vantage of a contagionist rather than a miasmatist. The miasmatic conception, to which H.F. takes exception, was well stated by Boghurst in Loimographia: ?ÄòThe Plague is the perfection of putrefaction, or if you like it better in more words, thus: The Plague or Pestilence is a most subtle, peculiar, insinuating, venomous, deleterious Exhalation of the Foeces of the Earth extracted into the Aire by the heat of the sun, and difflated from place to place by the winds, and most tymes gradually but sometymes immediately agressing apt bodyes' (p. 19). Turkish Predestinarianism: see note to p. 12. natural Causes: in his ?ÄòObservations on the Bills of Mortality', appended to London's Remembrancer (1665) (a work Defoe may have used), John Bell quotes ?Äòour famous English Oratour, Bishop Andrews': ?ÄòThe Plague (saith he) is caused by Gods wrath against Sin.?Ķ So that if there be a Plague, God is angry; and if there be a great Plague, God is very angry, & c. Ask the Physician the cause of it, and he will tell you the cause is in the air; the air is infected, the humours corrupted, the Contagion of the sick, coming to and conversing with the sound, and they be all true causes. But as we acknowledge these to be true, That in all Diseases, and even in this also there is a natural cause, so we say there is somewhat more, some what Divine and above Nature; as somewhat for the Physician, so some work for the Priest, and more too (it may be) for whosoever doth not acknowledge the ringer of God in this sickness, over and above all causes Natural, looketh not deeply enough into the cause thereof' (sig. D2). See also second note to p. 65. Swellings broke: see first note to p. 71. Breath ?Ķ infectious: H.F. reflects the confusion and uncertainty in plague literature over whether the breath of an infected person can transmit the disease. The belief of Hodges that this might be possible was rejected by Dr George Pye, in A Discourse of the Plague (1721), who asserted that the plague was not contagious in the sense that it can be communicated from one person to another: ?Äòit is not caused, nor propagated in that manner' (p. 3). Cf. Thomas Phaer's A Treatise of the Plague: ?Äòfor the venimous aire it self, is not half so vehement to infect, as is the conversation or breth of them that are already infected' (p. 12). The bubonic plague in its pneumonic stage is infectious. no Microscopes: in fact simple microscopes existed as early as the 1590s. cold Winter ?Ķ long Frost: cf. Thomas Sydenham: ?ÄòAfter an extremely cold winter, and after a dry frost that lasted without intermission until spring ?Ķ peripneumonies, pleurisies, quinsies, and all such inflammatory diseases, suddenly caused a great mortality' (Works (1848), i. 97). lend to the Lord ?Ķ repay them: Proverbs 19: 17. Cripplegate ?Ķ 17800 Pounds: an unlikely sum. See note to p. 81. twenty thousand a Day ?Ķ Naples: Defoe's source was probably An Account of the Plague at Naples, in 1656, of which there died in one Day 20,000 Persons, reprinted in A Collection of Very Valuable and Scarce Pieces. In Due Preparations for the Plague Defoe repeats this figure with a denial. woolen Manufactures ?Ķ retentive ?Ķ Bodies: it was widely believed that certain goods had an affinity with the ?Äòvenomous particles' which caused the plague. ?Äòeven Packs and Bails of Goods carry the poisonous Miasmata about with them ?Ķ nothing is more likely to preserve it than animal Substances, as Hair, Wool, Leather, Skins, &c. because the very Manner of its Production, and Nature of its Origin, seems to give it a greater Affinity with such Substances than any other, and to dispose it to rest therein until by Warmth, Ventilation, or any other Means of Dislodgement, it is put into Motion, and raised again into the ambient Air' (John Quincy, An Essay on ?Ķ Pestilential Diseases (3rd edn., 1720), 52?Äì3). Mead's list contained, in addition, cotton, hemp, flax, paper or books, silk of all kinds, linen, feathers. He recommended that all such goods should be kept in quarantine and exposed to fresh air for forty days (Short Discourse, 24?Äì5). In Applebee's Journal, 29 July 1721, Defoe refers to ?Äòthe poor unhappy city of Toulon, who had the Distemper brought among them in a Bale of Silk from Marseilles'. For a denial of this view, see J. Pringle, MD, Rational Enquiry into the Nature of the Plague (1722), 7 ff., and Joseph Browne, MD, A Practical Treatise of the Plague (1720), 24?Äì5. Islands of the Arches: the Grecian Archipelago. Scanderoon: i.e. Iskanderun, or Alexandretto, a seaport of Asiatic Turkey. 1st of July ?Ķ died ?Ķ seven ?Ķ City: the Bills of Mortality show 100 deaths from plague to 27 June in the City and Liberties of Westminster and five deaths in the three parishes mentioned. Manufactures ?Ķ infected: since certain goods were thought to retain the ?Äòpoisonous effluvia', importations were considered dangerous and the effectiveness of a quarantine was a serious matter. Therefore Defoe supported the rigorous Quarantine Act of 1722. A Bill for prohibiting commerce with infected countries received royal assent on 12 February 1722 (8 Geo. I, c. 10). Defoe wrote: ?ÄòThe Damage of obliging Ships to Quarantine, is ?Ķ very considerable to the Merchants; it spoils their Goods, and many sorts of Goods are perishable, and subject to decay in others. The Profit of the whole Voyage depends upon the Season of coming into Market.?Ķ [Delay] stagnates Trade ?Ķ encreases the Risk, and every way harasses the Merchant in his Business. Yet all this we cheerfully submit to for the Reason of it; 'tis allow'd to be just, to be necessary.?Ķ But if one Villain can pass the Barriers set,?Äîif one Man can escape out of these Ships, with a Parcel of any sort of Goods, dangerous to Health, he may lodge the Plague among us ?Ķ and we are all undone' (Applebee's Journal, 29 July 1721). clandestine Trade: in his Short Discourse Mead warned: ?ÄòBut above all it is necessary, that the Clandestine Importing of Goods be punished with the utmost Rigour' (6th edn. (1720), 30). In Due Preparations for the Plague, Defoe wrote: ?ÄòWe have a set of men among us so bent upon their gain, by that we call clandestine trade, that they would even venture to import the plague itself ?Ķ not valuing the horrid injustice that they do to other people' (Aitken edn., p. 11). He approved the bill sponsored by the government ?Äòto prevent the clandestine Running of Goods' (8 Geo. I, c. 18), which received royal assent 7 Mar. 1722, despite opposition from City Merchants. Trade ?Ķ at a full stop: the impact of quarantine on trade was much discussed in 1721. Dr George Pye argued, in opposition to Mead, that ?Äòthe Plague may possibly destroy a hundred thousand lives, but the Loss of Trade may starve and destroy ten times a hundred thousand' (A Discourse of the Plague, 51). coasting Trade for Corn ?Ķ Coals: in A Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724?Äì6) Defoe describes the two corn markets in London, Bear Key and Queenhithe, as ?ÄòMonsters for Magnitude, and not to be matched in the World'. To Bear Key ?Äòcomes all the vast Quantity of Corn that is brought into the City by Sea'. The other market was chiefly for malt. The coal market at Billingsgate was supplied mainly from New castle and the northern regions. ?ÄòThe Quantity of Coals, which it is supposed are, Communibus Annis, burnt and consumed in and about this City, is supposed to be about Five hundred thousand Chalder, every Chalder containing Thirty-six Bushels' (Tour, i. 347?Äì8). A chalder of coal: a dry measure, varying in amount from 32 to 40 bushels. heat ?Ķ opens the Pores: cf. Kemp, A Brief Treatise ?Ķ of the Pestilence: ?ÄòTo guard your self from the corrupted air, you may do well ?Ķ to be within doors at noon and the heat of the day, when the pores being more open are apter to receive Infection' (47). War with the Dutch: England declared war on the Dutch on 22 Feb. 1665. The ?ÄòCapers' were privateers. Price of Coals ?Ķ dear: an attempt to control the price of coal during the Plague is evident in an act of the Common Council, 1 June 1665. ?ÄòFor the benefit and relief of the Poor' the City Companies were required to purchase and store coal between Lady-day and Michaelmas, to be sold ?Äòin dear times, at such prices as the Lord Mayor and Aldermen should direct'. See also note to p. 187. publick Fires: see second and third notes to p. 148. but not of Hay or Grass: cf. Boghurst, Loimographia: ?Äò?Ķ the spring being continuall dry ?Ķ which caused a pitifull crop of Hay' (p. 29). excessive Plenty ?Ķ Fruit: cf. Hodges, Loimologia, 20. ?ÄòThe Year was luxuriant in most Fruits, especially Cherries and Grapes ?Ķ at so low a Price, that the common People surfeited with them.' Mechanicks: manual labourers or men of mean occupations. Poor ?Ķ pinch'd ?Ķ London only: if London manufacturing and trading activity declined, all of England suffered, a fixed idea in Defoe's economic thinking. Cf. The Review, no. 4, 18 Feb. 1706: ?ÄòLondon is the great Center of this Circulation ?Ķ hither all the Manufactures in the Nation from the several and remotest Countries are convey'd in gross, as to the vast Center of Trade; and here they pass from the Wholesaler to the Merchant, from the Ware-house to the Shop, and from thence, by a happy Counter-changing again, are transmitted to all the several Parts of the Kingdom again; and upon this Circulation ?Ķ more Families depend, and are maintain'd, than upon the first Working of the whole Manufacture of the Nation.' Calamity ?Ķ enrich'd the Country: the economic utility of natural calamities. This is the principle Defoe reflects at this point in his assertion that the Fire of London (1666), by virtue of its destructiveness, created a great demand for goods and services; an idea much discussed in both an economic and a religious context in Defoe's day and earlier. Defoe's contemporary, Bernard Mandeville, in The Fable of the Bees (2nd edn., 1723), has a passage reminiscent of Defoe: ?ÄòThe Fire of London was a great Calamity, but if the Carpenters, Bricklayers, Smiths, and all, not only that are employed in Building but likewise those that made and dealt in the same Manufactures and other Merchandizes that were burnt, and other Trades again that got by them when they were in full Employ, were to Vote against those who lost by the Fire; the rejoicings would equal if not exceed the Complaints. In recruiting what is lost and destroy'd by Fire, Storms, Sea-fights, Sieges, Battles, a considerable pan of Trade consists' (The Fable of the Bees: Or, Private Vices, Public Benefits, ed. F. B. Kaye (1924), i. 359). People ?Ķ flock'd to Town: ?ÄòAnd a delightfull thing it is to see the towne full of people again as now it is; and shops begin to open, though in many places seven or eight together, and more, all shut; but yet the towne is full, compared with what it used to be' (Pepys, Diary, 5 Jan. 1665?Äì6). H.F.'s remark that the plague increased by 400 is nearly accurate. The Bills of Mortality report 1,031 deaths from plague in the last week of October and 1,414 in the first week of November. The number of parishes infected increased from 97 to 110. now infected ?Ķ Norwich ?Ķ Colchester: of the provincial towns and cities mentioned by Defoe, Colchester and Norwich were most affected. Colchester particularly suffered from a continuous plague from the summer of 1665 to December of 1666. Creighton calls this ?Äòthe greatest of all provincial plagues since the Black Death', with one possible exception (A History of Epidemics in England (2nd edn., 1965), i. 688). Deodands: from deodandum, a thing to be given to God; in English law a personal chattel which having occasioned the death of a person was forfeited to the Crown for pious uses. Physick Garden: for herbs used in medical prescriptions. 199 Sir Robert Clayton: a wealthy merchant and Whig politician (1629?Äì1707), he served as alderman, Lord Mayor, and Member of Parliament. He was much attacked by Tory pamphleteers. Defoe attacks him violently in Reformation of Manners (1702), but presents him favourably in Roxana (1724), where he acts as a financial adviser to the heroine. This passage appears to be taken from Ogilby and Morgan's plan of the city. Quakers ?Ķ burying Ground: in Bunhill Fields. Reproach ?Ķ Physicians: at the first meeting of the Royal Society after the plague, 22 January 1666, Pepys heard Dr Jonathan Goddard defend himself and his fellow physicians who had fled from London: ?Äòtheir particular patients were most gone out of towne, and they left at liberty' (Diary, 22 Jan. 1666). Goddard was Gresham Professor of Physic, an original member of the Royal Society, and inventor of the famous Goddard's drop. Hodges defended the fleeing physicians on much the same ground: they fled ?Äònot so much for their own Preservation, as the Service of those whom they attend' (Loimologia, 23). Act of Indemnity: passed 29 August 1600, it pardoned, with some exceptions, those who had rebelled against the crown to form the Commonwealth. penal Laws: the Clarendon Code; see first note to p. 24. Death ?Ķ pale Horse: Revelation 6: 8. Headboroughs: officers with the duties of Petty Constables. by Tale and by Number: i.e. by enumeration as distinct from measure or weight. seven and eight thousand per Week: the Bills of Mortality report weekly deaths from plague 29 August to 19 September, 6,988, 6,544, 7,165; deaths from all causes, 8,252, 7,690, 8,297. Preparation of strong Scent: to ward off offensive smells and to counteract the ill effects of effluvia and infected air the College of Physicians and others recommended perfumes, pomanders, and other concoctions. Among the ingredients were rue, angelica, wormwood, snakeroot, myrrh, camphor, citron, rose leaves, sulphur, oil of amber, and countless others. These were to be held to the nose or used for anointing the nostrils. Boghurst listed among the antidotes of ?Äòlittle efficacy': ?Äòstuffing the nose with rue, wormwood, or what else' (Loimographia, 55). Wine: an antidote of hoary respectability. Cf. John Lydgate in the fifteenth century: ?ÄòWho will been holle and kepe hym from seckenesse | And resiste the strok of pestilence | Lat him ?Ķ drynk good wyne, & holsom meetis take' (?ÄòA Doctrine for Pestilence', The Miner Poems of John Lydgate, Early English Text Soc. (1934), pt. II, p. 702). Diemerbroeck similarly thought ?Äòa good Draught of Burnt Wine, with some Cinnamon and Nutmeg' useful (Several Choice Histories ?Ķ of the Plague, 34). The ?Äòlearned physician' who treated himself with wine and became an addict is presumably Hodges, who wrote that sack is ?Äòdeservedly ?Ķ ranked amongst the principal Antidotes' to the plague. He describes in detail its virtues and his use of it (Loimologia, 225). Pill. Ruff.: Pilulae Rufi, compounded of aloes and myrrh, ?Äòto open or keep soluble the Body, the Pills of Rufus, commonly called Pestilential Pills, are ?Ķ most proper to be used' (Necessary Directions ?Ķ by the College of Physicians, 49). Venice Treacle: ?ÄòThe Treacle of Andromachus (commonly called Venice-Treacle)' was an electuary compounded of many ingredients and used in plague after plague; presumably it was devised by Andromachus, physician to Nero. It was commended by the ?ÄòMedicus' in William Bullein's A Dialogue against the Fever Pestilence (1564) as ?Äòa Triacle incomperable ?Ķ againste bothe poison and Pestilence' (see Early English Texts Society edn., pt. I (1888), 42). In the Pharmacopoeia of 1682 some sixty-five ingredients are listed. It was said to be ?Äònot only the capital Alexipharmic of our shops, but of all Europe'. In John Quincy's The Complete English Dispensatory (1718) an elaborate recipe is given, with the admission that ?Äòthere are abundance of Recipe's extant in Dispensatory-Writers'. It came to be called Venice-Treacle because of the great quantities made in that city, but Quincy defended the quality of English varieties (441 ff.). Solomon Eagle: see fourth note to p. 20. February ?Ķ Distemper ?Ķ ceas'd: in fact, death from plague continued. The Bills of Mortality reported 222 from 30 January to 27 February 1606. Gun-powder: long considered of some efficacy in dissipating the concentration of poisonous effluvia in the air. The virtues of gunpowder were weighed by the anonymous author of Medicina Flagellata (1721) who pointed out that ?Äòin the late Plague at Marseilles the constant firing of Guns at Morning and Evening ?Ķ was esteemed to be of great Relief to the inhabitants' (pp. 205?Äì6). See also fourth note to p. 67. sweetning their Houses: see first note to p. 204. A Lord Mayor's Proclamation on 7 December 1665 ordered that all houses in which plague had been prevalent be thoroughly fumigated and aired before occupancy. Seeds of the Plague ?Ķ destroy'd: although H.F. scorns the view of some ?ÄòQuacking Philosophers', that the Great Fire destroyed the seeds of the plague, a respected scientist, Richard Bradley, FRS, held it to be a reasonable hypothesis. In 1721, observing that no plague had occurred in England since 1665, he wrote that this ?Äòmight happen from the Destruction of the City by Fire the following Year 1666, and besides the Destroying the Eggs, or Seeds, of those poisonous Animals, might likewise purifie that Air in such a Manner, as to make it unfit for the Nourishment of others of the same Kind, which were Swimming or Driving in the Circumambient Air' (The Plague at Marseilles consider'd, 12). never on Board the Fleet: not true, since Pepys and the Navy Office received frequent notices of plague in the fleet (see Calendar State Papers Domestic, Car. II, 1665?Äì1666, 32, 54, 87, and passim). On 11 October John Evelyn, Commissioner for Mariners, reported to the Duke of Albemarle that the plague was spreading at Chatham and requested that the Navy Commissioners be ordered to send two hospital ships ?Äòfor this emergent occasion' (ibid. 12). As early as 8 April John Allin wrote to Philip Fryth: ?ÄòOur fleete is sickly, and ye sicknesse increases at Yarmouth' (Archaeologia 37 (1857), 18. 5). great Engagement at Sea: the battle off Lowestoft, 3 June 1665. Vain ?Ķ Man: Psalm 9: 11. Physicians ?Ķ all supernatural: see second note to p. 65. ten Lepers ?Ķ healed: Luke 17: 12?Äì17. sang his Praise ?Ķ his Works: Psalm 106: 12?Äì13. The City of London in the late seventeenth century TOPOGRAPHICAL INDEX THIS index is comprehensive in respect of London but excludes towns nearby such as those listed on p. 132 and ports named on pp. 186?Äì7 and 189. Where appropriate, information from Louis Landa's 1969 select Topographical References has been incorporated but the aim is to provide only information that is directly relevant to the Journal, its manifold contexts, Defoe's ?Äòdouble' vision of London pre- and post-Fire, and to the task of helping readers follow H.F.'s meanderings through the city and its lore. Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert's The London Encyclopaedia, 3rd edn. (London, 2008), a principal source here, is recommended to those seeking more detail. Manuel Schonhorn's 1968 article?Äîdetails in the Select Bibliography?Äîis a key reference point. Information has also been drawn from Norman Brett-James, The Growth of Stuart London (1918); Defoe's A Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724?Äì6), ed. G. D. H. Cole (1927) and his Due Preparations for the Plague, ed. Aiken (1895); Henry A. Harben, A Dictionary of London (1918); Edward Hatton, A New View of London (1708); Jacob Larwood and John Camden Hotten, English Inn Signs (1951); John Stowe, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, 6th edn., ed. John Strype (1754); and Henry B. Wheatley and Peter Cunningham, London Past and Present (1891). Useful maps are those by Richard Newcourt (1658), John Oliver (1676), John Ogilby and William Morgan (1677), and Robert Morden and Philip Lea (1682, rev. 1732); a sketch of Defoe's City is reproduced in this edition. The term ?ÄòCity' is used to signify the area of London north of the Thames extending from the Tower westwards as far as Whitefriars and north to Cripplegate. Where applicable the places listed below are keyed, in brackets following the name, to the ward numbers given on the map. ALDERSGATE (Ward 1) pp. 160, 198. Roman city gate near Smithfield, used to display regicidal limbs in 1660; repaired after the Great Fire and demolished in 1761. ALDERSGATE STREET (Ward 1) pp. 62, 138. In the seventeenth century, a spacious, Italianate street leading north that was home to printers and, briefly, to John Milton's Maidenhead Court boarding school. ALDGATE (Ward 2) pp. 7, 14, 33, 42, 45, 52, 86, 88, 154, 160, 161, 162, 163, 178, 184, 208, 211. Named after one of six Roman gates, opening onto the Colchester road; rebuilt 1606?Äì9, demolished 1761. Defoe was married at St Botolph's, Aldgate, in 1684 and he imagined H.F.'s home as between there and Whitechapel Bars, the City boundary. H.F.'s ?ÄòBroad street' was Whitechapel. According to Hatton, the parish included 1,300 houses within the City and a further 1,000 outside. ANGEL INN (Ward 1) p. 62. On the east side of Aldersgate Street and a resting place for travellers from the north. BEARBINDER LANE (Ward 26) p. 6. Connecting St Swithin's Lane to the Stocks Market, in 1735 chosen as the site for the Lord Mayor's Mansion House. BEAR-KEY (Ward 24) p. 187. Bear Key Stairs were located just west of the Tower, south from Thames Street. BEDNAL GREEN p. 87. A hamlet of Stepney in 1665, home to silk weavers by 1722 and to the legendary Blind Beggar of Bednall Green cited by Pepys (Diary, 26 June 1663). BELL ALLEY (Ward 12) pp. 47, 70, 77. Leading east from Coleman Street, a strongly puritan area commemorated in Abraham Cowley's 1663 play, Cutter of Coleman Street. BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL (Ward 12) p. 80. Otherwise known as Bedlam and founded as a hospital in Bishopsgate in 1247. After re-establishment as an asylum in 1547 it was moved in 1676 to a new ¬£17,000 building in Moorfields designed by Robert Hooke; Defoe was justified in citing it here as an instance of the City's wealth. In his Tour he described it as ?Äòthe most beautiful structure for such a Use ?Ķ in the World' (i.-372). BISHOPSGATE (Ward 5) pp. 14, 18, 21, 22, 33, 80, 87, 98, 111, 160, 161, 198, 208. Named after one of the Roman gates. Home to great city merchants and ravaged by plague although virtually untouched by the Great Fire. BLACK DITCH p. 198. Defoe says ?Äòit was then call'd Black Ditch, at the end of Holloway Lane', but no contemporary map shows it; Schonhorn concludes that it was a temporary name. Strype shows Holloway Lane going west out of Shoreditch with, it appears, an extension going towards Vinegar Yard and Upper Moorfields. The burial ground Defoe mentions was probably Holywell Mount, named after the neighbouring convent, although Bunhill Fields was close by. BLACKWALL pp. 92, 108, 152, 189. In 1665, part of the parish of Stepney and a significant harbour and shipbuilding centre. BLACKWELL HALL (Ward 3) pp. 80, 189. Better known as Bakewell Hall (after an owner, Thomas Bakewell), lying on the east side of Guildhall, and a major cloth market. Demolished and rebuilt in 1588, it was destroyed in the Great Fire and rebuilt again in the 1670s. BLOWBLADDER STREET (Ward 18) p. 207. Between Cheapside and Newgate Street. Where Defoe thought its name the reflection of sharp practice, Stow recorded prosaically that bladders were sold there. BOW pp. 91, 92, 111. Bridgehead on the main Essex road, a mile east of Mile End and in 1665 a hamlet of Stepney, but independent of it in 1719. BOW CHURCH p. 189. Probably St Mary's, Bow Road, which dates from 1311. BROMLEY pp. 92, 111. In 1665, a suburban village; formerly part of the manor of Stepney and called Bromley-by-Bow. BULL-HEAD TAVERN p. 168. Probably a conflation of the Bull's Head Inn at Clare Market and the Bull Inn, just off the junction of Leadenhall and Gracechurch Streets. BUNHILL FIELDS pp. 33, 64, 69, 156, 198. An open field adjacent to the Artillery Grounds and Upper Moorfields, it housed the chief burial ground for those (including Defoe) who refused to use the Book of Common Prayer. Walled in 1665, the burial ground does not appear to have been used for plague victims. BUTCHER ROW (Ward 2) pp. 56, 88. Schonhorn finds that there was no ?Äòbutchers' district' here until 1720. Within sight of St Botolph's, the Defoe family's church, it extended along the south side of Aldgate High Street. Defoe's father, the tallow chandler James Foe, was a member of the Butcher's Company; Defoe himself nominally joined in 1688. CAMBERWELL p. 99. Well into the eighteenth century, a village to the south-east noted for its flowers and fruit trees. CHEAPSIDE p. 161. Formerly the City's most significant market and still a significant commercial centre in 1722, when it was home to haberdashers, goldsmiths, and drapers. CLERKENWELL pp. 14, 111, 114, 198. A place of considerable social change after the Restoration, when the movement of fashionable society westwards left space for merchants and craftsmen in this overspill district beyond Smithfield. Home to watch and clock-makers, jewellers, printers, brewers, and distillers, it welcomed many Huguenot refugees and saw several fine new town houses in the 1720s. COLEMAN STREET (Ward 12) pp. 47, 70, 75, 77, 78. Centre of the warren of alleyways where H.F.'s brother lives, to the north-west of his own home, and probably the home of Defoe's father for two separate periods. See also Bell Alley. COMPTER (Ward 12) p. 80. Compters existed to detain debtors, among others. In the area Defoe refers to, there was one on Wood Street and another at the Poultry in Cheapside. CORNHILL pp. 87, 161. Site of the medieval grain market and in Defoe's time the home of numerous coffee houses. Defoe had kept a hosier's shop nearby, in Freeman's Court, and after early release from prison stood in the Cornhill Stocks as a punishment for The Shortest Way with the Dissenters in 1703. CRIPPLEGATE (Ward 16) pp. 14, 53, 74, 75, 79, 86, 98, 110, 111, 114, 142, 160, 161, 182, 208. From the Roman gate; the etymology is disputed. The street was not widened until the gate was demolished in 1760. Defoe is thought to have been born and died in the parish of St Giles Cripplegate. CROOKED LANE (Ward 7) p. 7. A winding lane in Eastcheap, near London Bridge. CROSS KEY COURT (Ward 18) p. 77. Off Wood Street, going north from Cheapside. CUSTOMS HOUSE (Ward 24) p. 189. First built in 1275 east of the current site on Lower Thames Street. Fumigated by coal fires in 1665, it burned down in 1666. Rebuilt by Wren in 1669?Äì71 but damaged by a nearby explosion in 1714 and built again on Wren's foundations 1717?Äì25. Unusually, Defoe does not refer to its history here but the famous Long Room, said by contemporaries to give the truest idea of the richness and grandeur of the nation, became the site of Colonel Jack's first pick-pocketing adventure later in 1722. DEPTFORD pp. 95, 108, 130. On the Thames, south of Rotherhithe; for Defoe's readers, site of the Royal Naval Dockyard and the last staging post from Dover. DRAPERS GARDEN (Ward 8) p. 49. The garden attached to Drapers' Hall. After the Great Fire it was opened to the public; by associating it with a Dutch family fortifying their home Defoe evokes a time when to walk in it for ¬£3 a year was a privilege. DRURY LANE pp. 3, 4, 97. This ancient street was on the cusp of social change between 1665 and 1722. Formerly the preferred home of aristocrats (not to mention Oliver Cromwell), by 1731 it had become a fitting backdrop for plate 3 of Hogarth's The Harlot's Progress. DULLEGE (DULWICH) p. 99. Hunting and, in the eighteenth century, spa resort. Plague reached this rural idyll in 1665, claiming thirty-five lives including those of the miller and his family. EAST SMITHFIELD p. 103. Running east from Little Tower Hill and attracting migrants after 1660. EPPING FOREST p. 115. Formerly royal hunting territory but increasingly the haunt of highwaymen. William III escaped kidnap here in 1698. EXCHANGE (ROYAL EXCHANGE) (Ward 14) pp. 80, 87, 148. Opened in Cornhill in 1570, destroyed in 1666 and rebuilt over the next three years by Edward Jarman at a cost of nearly ¬£70,000; another instance of the ?Äòvast Sums of Money' Defoe says were available to the City. FENCHURCH STREET (Ward 2) p. 7. Ancient street connecting Aldgate and the Royal Exchange, and site of Pepys's favourite haunt, The Mitre, which perished in 1666. FINSBURY (Ward 12): pp. 53, 154. A large semi-rural area by Moorfields and described in 1607 as ?Äòthe garden of this city' but in the 1660s home to the dead and destitute. The great plague pit beyond the northern city wall served its own parish of St Giles Cripplegate but it was also an overflow facility for others in August and September 1665, following appeals that some churchyards were ?Äòsurcharged with dead Bodies' (London Guildhall Repertory, 70, fo. 153b). In Due Preparations, 59, Defoe had published a very similar description of the Finsbury pit, reporting that it held 2,200 bodies. After the Great Fire, many homeless people camped there. FLEET DITCH (Ward 19) p. 80. For centuries an open sewer and not channelled underground until 1766, the Fleet River improved after the Great Fire (when flames leapt over it) by being deepened and having four stone bridges built over it. It was navigable between Holborn Bridge and the Thames, entering the city in Faringdon Ward Without. GOSWELL STREET pp. 142, 198. Linking Aldersgate Street and the Islington Road and a chief route north. GRACECHURCH STREET (Ward 7) pp. 168, 189. Leading north from the Monument and site of the Quaker Meeting House and numerous houses of prosperous merchants. GREENWICH pp. 93, 95, 96, 108, 152, 189. A few miles east of London, on the river. In 1665 work had started on a wing of the Royal Naval College, which was complete by 1722. The ships and barges H.F. saw from the hill held approximately 10,000 people, whose survival rate was higher than average. GREY'S INN (Ward 19) p. 16. Situated in Holborn and one of twelve Inns of Court and Chancery in 1665, for the legal and social education of young men. Its famous hall, site of the premiere of The Comedy of Errors, survived the Great Fire but not the Blitz. GUILDHALL (Ward 3) pp. 80, 189. This medieval seat of civic government and state trials was badly damaged in 1666, when it was said to resemble glowing coals; by 1671 the Lord Mayor's banquet was again being held there. HACKNEY pp. 87, 112, 141. North-east of the city. In 1665, a suburban manor and leisure resort (on 11 June 1664 Pepys went there to eat cherries and cream); in Defoe's Tour it boasted twelve separate settlements including Hummerton and was ?Äòremarkable for the retreat of Wealthy Citizens' (i. 382). HAND ALLEY (Ward 5) pp. 198, 199. Leading east from Bishopsgate Street and the site of the Presbyterian Meeting House where Defoe's friend, the Nonconformist clergyman Daniel Williams, was minister from 1688 until his death in 1716. His will provided for the Williams Theological Library. For the connection with Defoe's old enemy Sir Robert Clayton, see note to p. 232. HARROW ALLEY pp. 56, 147, 152. Running south from the Aldgate end of Whitechapel and one of four alleys bearing the name, but Schonhorn finds no evidence of its existence before 1676. HERMITAGE pp. 108, 110. East of the Tower on the north bank of the Thames and including Hermitage Stairs and Dock. HIGHGATE p. 115. Famed as a health resort and from 1622 site of a Congregational chapel, banned within five miles of the City. HOLBORN pp. 4, 74. The chief western thoroughfare in and out of the City, named after a tributary of the Fleet River, the Holebourne. HOLLOWAY p. 115. North part of Islington and named after its sunken, treacherous highway. HOLLOWAY LANE p. 198. See Black Ditch. HORNSEY p. 115. Four miles north-west of London and still a small village in 1722. HOUNDSDITCH pp. 43, 53, 55, 56, 73, 88. Street running between Aldgate and Bishopsgate and a relic of the moat that ran round the eastern city wall (formerly used for kennels and disposing of dead dogs); at the corner with Whitechapel stood St Botolph's, the Defoe family church. HUMMERTON p. 112. See Hackney. ISLINGTON pp. 33, 62, 63, 70, 114, 115, 122. In 1665 a rural suburb, gateway to the north and leisure resort. Its distance from the City also made it a popular place for duels and for non-juring clergymen. See also Newington. LEADEN HALL (Ward 2) p. 80. Market for the sale of food and fabrics, burnt down in 1666 and swiftly rebuilt. LEADEN HALL STREET (Ward 2) pp. 87, 189. Roman street between Aldgate and the Royal Exchange, towards which it became Cornhill. LIME HOUSE pp. 95, 98, 104, 108, 186. The fast-growing eastern fringe of London in 1722, home to sailors, shipbuilders, and associated trades. LINCOLN'S INN p. 16. South of High Holborn and one of twelve Inns of Court and Chancery, for the legal and social education of young men, including Oliver Cromwell. Untouched by the Great Fire, it was extended in 1682?Äì93. LONDON WALL p. 79. The street called London Wall extends east from Aldersgate Street to Bishopsgate, along the northern reach of the second-century wall, with Cripplegate at the Aldersgate end. Defoe's piper, taken for dead when he was merely sleeping off a big dinner, had walked about 200 yards north-west from Coleman Street. LONG ACRE pp. 3, 6, 79, 97, 167, 175. A street of fashionable residences before the Civil War that had started to go commercial by the time plague broke out near the junction with Drury Lane. A centre for coach-making and, in the 1720s, furniture. LONG REACH p. 96. The bend of the Thames near Gravesend, just after Blackwall Reach going seaward. LOTHBURY (Ward 12) p. 70. North of Cornhill and parallel to it; in the midst of change between 1665 and 1722, from metal trades to banking. LUDGATE PRISON p. 80. Defoe may have meant the Fleet Prison, just north of the junction of Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill. It was destroyed in the Great Fire and rebuilt soon afterwards, with Wycherley and Penn its most celebrated inmates. But there was also a small prison for petty criminals above Ludgate itself, demolished after being damaged in 1666 and then, in the words of the Tour, ?Äòbeautifully re-built'. LUSUM p. 99. A colloquial spelling of Lewisham, South London, originally called Leueseham and still referred to locally as ?ÄòLoosiham' or ?ÄòLoosham'. MIDDLESEX pp. 33, 61, 81, 128. The county was both part of London, subject to aspects of City authority and appointments, and outside it. Middlesex sessions of the peace were held at Clerkenwell and Westminster and there was no separate county town. MILE END p. 68. In 1665 a hamlet of Stepney, east of the City; the western end developed so fast between then and 1722 that it acquired a separate identity as Mile End New Town, home to tradesmen and labourers. MINORIES (Ward 22) pp. 42, 54, 74, 88, 211. Running south from Whitechapel to Tower Hill and named after the abbey of St Clare Minories, dissolved in 1538. Like many of the streets in the Journal it was in transition, with aristocratic houses giving way to merchants and tradesmen. MONUMENT (Ward 7) p. 80. Column on Fish Street Hill to commemorate the Great Fire. Designed by Wren, it was completed in 1676. Defoe thought it better than ?Äòall the Obelisks and Pillars of the Ancients, at least that I have seen' (Tour, i. 333). MOORFIELDS p. 199. Low-lying marshy ground to the north outside the City Wall; ?Äònoysome and offensive' until improved from the early seventeenth century. See also Bethlehem Hospital. MOSES AND AARON ALLEY pp. 149, 155. Schonhorn finds no evidence of it before 1676. It ran north from Whitechapel Street. MOUNT MILL pp. 79, 198. Running east from Goswell Street (see above); site of a Parliamentary fort in 1642?Äì3 and a plague pit in 1665. NEWGATE (Ward 19) p. 207. Last of the gateways to the City, probably post-Roman. Destroyed by fire several times before 1666, rebuilt in 1672, and demolished in 1767. NEWGATE MARKET (Ward 19) p. 207. Defoe's assertion that there was ?Äòno such place' before the Great Fire is misleading. There was a meat market there before 1666 with some butchers' shops and it remained as a meat market until the formation of the Central Market at Smithfield in 1868. NEWGATE PRISON (Ward 19) p. 80. Restored shortly before the Great Fire, in which it burned down. The new building began to operate from 1672 and its external magnificence contrasted with the dire conditions within that led Fielding to describe it as the ?Äòprototype of hell'. NEWINGTON p. 115. From the 1660s, a semi-rural centre to the north for Nonconformist clergy unable to minister in the City after the Act of Uniformity. At Newington Green, Defoe attended Charles Morton's academy. NORWOOD p. 99. Surrounded by woodland until the nineteenth century, now part of Lambeth and Croydon. OLD BETHLEM (Ward 5) p. 199. Running west from Bishopsgate Street towards the Old Bethlem burying ground mentioned by Defoe. OLD-FORD pp. 111, 112. District of East London then in Bow parish, and for a time the lowest point at which the River Lea could be crossed; the building of Bow Bridge in the Middle Ages made Old Ford a rural community of farmers and dyers until the Industrial Revolution. OLD STREET pp. 142, 156, 161. Running north-east from Goswell Street and predating Bishopsgate as the main route north. Tindal's burying ground lay to the south, down Royal Row. PETTICOAT LANE pp. 145, 199. In Whitechapel, close to H.F., and formerly home to London's Spanish community and home to second-hand clothiers. Huguenot weavers and Jewish traders moved in after the plague. PETTY-FRANCE (Ward 5) p. 21. An alley just outside the city wall in Bishopsgate parish and not to be confused with the larger street of the same name next to St James's Park. Both were home to French merchants. POPLAR pp. 92, 104, 108. Hamlet of Stepney catering for ocean-going vessels at Blackwall. PORTSOKEN (Ward 22) p. 137. The easternmost of the City wards, straddling the wall and coinciding in part with the Defoe family parish of St Botolph, Aldgate. PYE TAVERN (Ward 15) pp. 55, 56. In Houndsditch, near the Three Nuns Inn and the Defoe family church of St Botolph. Identified here as a local for rowdy blasphemers, it had a large room where plays were occasionally performed. PYED BULL INN p. 62. Schonhorn finds various candidates in different locations. The most likely was in Church Row, near Islington; once a country villa and said to have been Sir Walter Raleigh's house. QUEENHITHE (Ward 17) p. 189. On the Thames, south-east of St Paul's; an important commercial quay for landing wool, hides, and corn. RATCLIFF pp. 17, 96, 97, 98, 104, 108, 160, 163. Largest of the hamlets of Stepney, centre for repairing and supplying ships and, after the Great Fire, temporary home to the city authorities. REDRIFF, OR ROTHERHITHE (also known as ?ÄòThe Pool') pp. 17, 95, 96, 97, 98, 108, 111. Redriff was the older name, still used by Pepys. Defoe uses both, along with the name he says the locals gave it, the Pool. 1699 saw the construction of London's first enclosed wet dock here, the Howland Dock. ROSE ALLEY (Ward 5) p. 199. One of seven London alleys by this name in Defoe's lifetime; east of Bishopsgate Street beyond the wall. ST ALL HALLOWS IN THE WALL (Ward 12) p. 198. Defoe's term for the church always known as All Hallows London Wall, abutting the outside of the Roman wall near New Broad Street. Repaired in 1627, it escaped the Great Fire and was rebuilt in 1765?Äì7. ST ANDREW'S HOLBORN (Ward 19) pp. 4, 6, 14, 98, 160. At the junction of Holborn Hill and Shoe Lane, a pre-medieval church repaired in 1632 that escaped damage in 1666 but was rebuilt by Wren 1684?Äì90. In 1703 the tower was clad in stone and heightened. ST BRIDE'S pp. 4, 5, 160. On the west side of Fleet Street, the church was destroyed by the Great Fire and Wren's lavish replacement, with its landmark spire, was complete by 1703. ST BUT BISHOPSGATE p. 42. Presumably St Botolph's, on the west side of Bishopsgate Street Without. The medieval church escaped damage in 1666 but had to be demolished and rebuilt from 1724. ST CLEMENT DANES pp. 6, 33, 160. On the north side of the Strand; the church escaped the Fire but was demolished in 1679; Wren's replacement, with heightened tower, was complete by 1719. ST GEORGE'S FIELDS p. 69. An extensive open space on the south side of the Thames, between Southwark and Lambeth. Used for large gatherings and as a resort by people from all levels of society. ST GILES CRIPPLEGATE (Ward 15) pp. 42, 160, 162. The medieval church of St Giles Without Cripplegate stood a few yards north-west of the Roman gate. It survived the Great Fire but not the Blitz. ST GILES'S IN THE FIELDS (sometimes referred to as ?ÄòSt Giles') pp. 4, 5, 6, 7, 14, 19, 21, 30, 33, 74, 98, 160, 162, 208. The parish which included Long Acre and Drury Lane, the streets where plague broke out. So many plague victims were buried around the medieval church that it suffered structural damage and a new building was planned in 1711 under the Fifty New Churches Act. Flitcroft's new building opened in 1733. ST HELEN'S (Ward 5) p. 189. East of Bishopsgate and a former Benedictine nunnery. In 1665 Sir John Lawrence, the Lord Mayor, lived in Great St Helen's Street and probably used the South Door or ?ÄòRoyal Entrance', as it is now called. A sword rest in the church dated 1665 carries Lawrence's crest of arms and that of the City of London. ST JAMES CLERKENWELL pp. 4, 5, 160. At the northernmost reach of built London, the church was rebuilt in 1625 and again in 1792. ST JOHN STREET (Ward 19) p. 142. Leading north from Smithfield into the Islington Road. ST JOHN AT WAPPING p. 200. Formerly part of Stepney parish and made distinct from it in 1694; the church was rebuilt in 1756. ST KATHARINES (BY THE) TOWER (Ward 2) pp. 42, 98. Now referred to as the Royal Foundation of St Katherine, it escaped the dissolution and became home to migrant workers. ST LEONARD'S SHOREDITCH pp. 42, 162, 163. East of the upper end of Shoreditch, and with a burying ground 100 yards north up the Hackney road, the church was rebuilt in the 1730s after the tower had collapsed during a service in 1716. ST MAGNUS (Ward 7) p. 190. The church of St Magnus the Martyr stands at the eastern corner of Thames Street and London Bridge. Destroyed in 1666, it was rebuilt by Wren in 1676 and a steeple added in 1705. ST MARY MAGDALENE, BERMONDSEY p. 98. On the south bank, city side of Rotherhithe, and the site of wharves and warehouses; the church was demolished and rebuilt in 1680. ST MARTIN IN THE FIELDS pp. 14, 33, 160. In 1665 and 1722 the church looked out over the Royal Mews; in the latter year, Gibbs started work on the present building. ST MARTIN'S LE GRAND (Ward 18) p. 195. Formerly the site of a monastery, then the street leading from the east end of Newgate Street north to Aldersgate. ST MARY WOOL-CHURCH (Ward 14) p. 6. South of Lombard Street, the church was damaged in 1666, demolished, and not rebuilt. ST PAUL'S (Ward 10) p. 189. Destroyed in 1666; Wren's new building opened in 1697. ST PAUL'S SHADWELL p. 200. Made a separate parish from Stepney in 1666 and sometimes known as the church of the Sea Captains. ST SEPULCHRE'S (Ward 19) pp. 111, 160, 161, 162, 163. St Sepulchre's church stood just west of Newgate; badly damaged in 1666 and rebuilt 1670?Äì1. ST STEPHEN COLEMAN STREET (Ward 12) p. 77. Destroyed in 1666, rebuilt by Wren 1674?Äì6 and destroyed again, for the last time, in the Blitz. For a time the parish of Defoe's father. SESSION HOUSE (Ward 19) p. 80. Otherwise known as the Hall of Justice in the Old Bailey, until 1774 located next to Newgate Prison; damaged in 1666 and restored. SHADWELL pp. 51, 98, 200. District of Stepney on the north bank of the Thames. An area of significant population growth and home to nautical industries and brewers, it became a parish in 1666. SHOREDITCH pp. 14, 18, 33, 98, 110, 111, 154, 160, 161, 162, 198, 199, 208. Northern suburb outside the city walls, undeveloped until the 1680s, when the first of fashionable squares was built. Almshouses for haberdashers and ironmongers followed. SMITHFIELD p. 161. West of Aldersgate Street, the cattle market was increasingly surrounded by urban spread but still the site of disorder among people and animals. SOUTHWARK pp. 7, 14, 15, 17, 64, 69, 74, 81, 97, 160, 161, 162, 163, 184. Although spared in 1666 thanks to its position on the south bank of the Thames, Southwark had its own great fire in 1676 which saw to the many medieval inns that had characterized this historic leisure quarter. SPITAL-FIELDS pp. 18, 69, 98, 199. Fields to the east of the city that saw rapid urban growth in Defoe's lifetime, partly due to the influx of Huguenot weavers. Site of England's first Baptist church and a centre of Nonconformity, to combat which Hawksmoor's superb church was begun in 1714. STAMFORD HILL pp. 112, 115. In Middlesex, about four miles north-east of St Paul's Cathedral, between Stoke Newington and Tottenham, and part of the Great North Road. STEPNEY pp. 14, 17, 18, 33, 42, 51, 86, 98, 108, 110, 111, 160, 161, 162, 163, 184, 199, 200, 203, 208. East of the City and subdivided into the four hamlets of Ratcliff, Limehouse, Poplar, and Mile End until rapid growth after 1660 led to new parishes being created from them, culminating with Bow in 1719. SWAN ALLEY (Ward 12) pp. 75, 77, 142. At first citation Defoe makes it sound as if this alley, running east from Coleman Street and close to James Foe's warehouse, would not be recognizable to readers of 1722, but on second citation he says it is still there; it features (with nine other alleys of the same name) in John Rocque's 1746 map. THAMES STREET p. 208. Running north of and parallel to the river from south of St Paul's to the Tower. THREE CRANES (Ward 17) p. 189. Defoe's wording, ?ÄòThe Three Cranes', suggests the tavern, the Three Cranes, in the Vintry on Upper Thames Street, which according to Pepys (Diary, 23 Jan. 1661) was ?Äòa narrow dog-hole' barely fit for his embarrassing poor relations. Three Cranes Stairs and Three Cranes Dock were nearby. THREE NUNS INN p. 53. A large and prosperous coaching inn on the east side of St Botolph's church, Whitechapel. THROCKMORTON STREET (Ward 12) p. 49. Running east from Lothbury and usually spelt ?ÄòThrogmorton'. The drapers had taken over Thomas Cromwell's house on his death in 1540 and the street was home to wealthy merchants. TOKEN HOUSE YARD (Ward 12) p. 70. Running north from Lothbury and site of a minting house for the issue of royal farthing tokens; gruesomely, Defoe compares the plague spot to ?Äòa little silver Peny' (p. 168). TOWER HAMLETS pp. 42, 89. The collection of hamlets east of the Tower recognized as an entity for military recruitment from 1605. H.F. implies that there were only five parishes in it, but Strype listed sixteen more, including a number of eastern parishes noticed separately in the Journal. TRINITY MINORIES (Ward 22) p. 42. The church of Holy Trinity Minories, just north of Tower Hill and formerly part of the convent of St Clare, survived 1666 but needed rebuilding anyway in 1706. WAPPING pp. 17, 51, 97, 98, 104, 106, 108, 110, 111, 112, 160, 163, 200. Made independent of Stepney parish in 1694, home to maritime industries and, according to Pepys, (Diary, 19 Dec. 1666), riotous seamen. WARE RIVER p. 141. Defoe's name for the Lea River, east of Hackney. WESTMINSTER pp. 14, 15, 74, 81, 98, 156, 160, 184, 207. In 1665 Westminster was a separate entity from the city, governed by a high steward and other officers chosen by the Dean and Chapter of the Abbey, who claimed civil jurisdiction. An insalubrious district in which petty crime flourished, it grew fast after 1660. WHETSTONE p. 106. Hamlet on the Great North Road and home to innkeepers, wheelwrights, smiths and farriers. WHITE-CHAPPEL pp. 7, 8, 14, 18, 33, 42, 52, 53, 68, 69, 74, 86, 87, 88, 89, 96, 108, 136, 147, 160, 161, 162, 163, 184, 190, 203, 208. Stow depicts a large street, going north-east from Aldgate, cluttered with cottages and alleys; this was H.F.'s home and familiar territory for Defoe's father, a member of the Butchers' Company based here. Between 1665 and the Journal the area saw substantial Jewish immigration. WHITE CROSS STREET (Ward 12) pp. 74, 142. Presumably the one north of the river, west of Moorfields. WHITEHALL p. 61. The environs of the royal palace suffered considerable damage in a fire of 1698, while the increase in traffic led to demolitions and road-widening the year after the Journal was published. WHITE HORSE ALLEY (Ward 12) p. 77. Not one of the five White Horse Alleys that existed in 1722, but the lane leading west from Coleman Street to the White Horse Inn. WHITE HORSE INN p. 62. From eleven candidates, probably the one on the north side of Barbican where it leads out of Aldersgate at the junction with Goswell Street. WHITES ALLEY (Ward 12) pp. 47, 77. Going east from Coleman Street, parallel to and south of the Swan Alley referred to in the same passage on p. 89. WOOD STREET (Ward 18) p. 7. Leading south from St Giles Cripplegate. WOOD'S CLOSE p. 69. Branching off the Islington Road and starting to be built on by 1722, after the hide market was established. WOOLWICH p. 93. Site of Henry VIII's Royal Dockyard, it grew rapidly between 1665 and 1722. In 1694, the Royal Laboratory opened; also the Brass Foundry (1717) and the Royal Military Academy (1719). 1 John Carey (ed.), The Faber Book of Reportage (London: Faber and Faber, 1987), p. xxxv. 2 For disparaging comments about Defoe, The Review, no. 7, 23 August 1712; for his response, no. 8, 26 August 1712. 3 See F. Bastian, ?ÄòDefoe's Journal of the Plague Year Reconsidered', Review of English Studies, 16 (1965). 4 Frank H. Ellis, Review Article: ?ÄòDefoe's Journal of the Plague Year', Review of English Studies, 30 (1994), 78. 5 Defoe, Tour, ed. Pat Rogers (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971), 286-7. 6 Edward Chamberlayne, Angliae Notitia: or, the Present State of England, 19th edn. (London, 1700), 344. 7 Eduardo E. Lozano, Community Design and the Culture of Cities (Cambridge, 1990), 251. 8 Bradley, Plague at Marseilles, 11. 9 The Review no. 7, 23 August 1712. 10 Ellis, Review Article, 78. 1 It seems John was in the Tent, but hearing them call he steps out, and taking the Gun upon his Shoulder, talk'd to them as if he had been the Centinel plac'd there upon the Guard by some Officer that was his Superior. 1 This frighted the Constable and the People that were with him, that they immediately chang'd their Note. 2 They had but one Horse among them. 1 Here he call'd to one of his Men, and bade him order Capt. Richard and his People to March the Lower Way on the side of the Marshes, and meet them in the Forest; which was all a Sham, for they had no Captain Richard, or any such Company. 1 That Part of the River where the Ships lye up when they come Home, is call'd the Pool, and takes in all the River on both Sides of the Water, from the Tower to Cuckold's Point, and Lime-house. VOLUME I The FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES OF THE FAMOUS MOLL FLANDERS My true name is so well known in the records or registers at Newgate, and in the Old Bailey,h and there are some things of such consequence still depending there, relating to my particular conduct, that it is not to be expected I should set my name or the account of my family to this work; perhaps after my death it may be better known; at present it would not be proper, no, not though a general pardon should be issued, even without exceptions of persons or crimes. It is enough to tell you, that as some of my worst comrades, who are out of the way of doing me harm (having gone out of the world by the steps and the string,i as I often expected to go), knew me by the name of Moll Flanders,4 so you may give me leave to go under that name till I dare own who I have been, as well as who I am. I have been told, that in one of our neighbour nations, whether it be in France or where else I know not, they have an order from the king, that when any criminal is condemned, either to die, or to the galleys, or to be transported, if they leave any children, as such are generally unprovided for, by the forfeiture of their parents, so they are immediately taken into the care of the government, and put into an hospitalj called the House of Orphans, where they are bred up, clothed, fed, taught, and when fit to go out, are placed to trades, or to services, so as to be well able to provide for themselves by an honest, industrious behaviour. Had this been the custom in our country, I had not been left a poor desolate girl without friends, without clothes, without help or helper, as was my fate; and by which, I was not only exposed to very great distresses, even before I was capable either of understanding my case or how to amend it, but brought into a course of life, scandalous in itself, and which in its ordinary course tended to the swift destruction both of soul and body. But the case was otherwise here. My mother was convicted of felony for a petty theft, scarce worth naming, viz., borrowing three pieces of fine hollandk of a certain draper in Cheapside.lThe circumstances are too long to repeat, and I have heard them related so many ways, that I can scarce tell which is the right account. However it was, they all agree in this, that my mother pleaded her befly,m and being found quick with child, she was respited for about seven months; after which she was called down, as they term it, to her former judgment, but obtained the favour afterward of being transported to the plantations, and left me about half a year old, and in bad hands you may be sure. This is too near the first hours of my life for me to relate anything of myself but by hearsay; 't is enough to mention, that as I was born in such an unhappy place, I had no parish5 to have recourse to for my nourishment in my infancy; nor can I give the least account how I was kept alive, other than that, as I have been told, some relation of my mother took me away, but at whose expense, or by whose direction, I know nothing at all of it. The first account that I can recollect, or could ever learn, of myself, was that I had wandered among a crew of those people they call gipsies, or Egyptians; but I believe it was but a little while that I had been among them, for I had not had my skin discoloured, as they do to all children they carry about with them; nor can I tell how I came among them, or how I got from them. It was at Colchester,n in Essex, that those people left me, and I have a notion in my head that I left them there (that is, that I hid myself and would not go any farther with them), but I am not able to be particular in that account; only this I remember, that being taken up by some of the parish officers of Colchester, I gave an account that I came into the town with the gipsies, but that I would not go any farther with them, and that so they had left me, but whither they were gone that I knew not; for though they sent round the country to inquire after them, it seems they could not be found. I was now in a way to be provided for; for though I was not a parish charge upon this or that part of the town by law, yet as my case came to be known, and that I was too young to do any work, being not above three years old, compassion moved the magistrates of the town to take care of me, and I became one of their own as much as if I had been born in the place. In the provision they made for me, it was my good hap to be put to nurse, as they call it, to a woman who was indeed poor, but had been in better circumstances, and who got a little livelihood by taking such as I was supposed to be, and keeping them with all necessaries, till they were at a certain age, in which it might be supposed they might go to service,o or get their own bread. This woman had also a little school, which she kept to teach children to read and to work; and having, I say, lived before that in good fashion, she bred up the children with a great deal of art, as well as with a great deal of care. But, which was worth all the rest, she bred them up very religiously also, being herself a very sober, pious woman; secondly, very housewifely and clean; and, thirdly, very mannerly, and with good behaviour. So that, excepting a plain diet, coarse lodging, and mean clothes, we were brought up as mannerly as if we had been at the dancing-school. I was continued here till I was eight years old, when I was terrified with news that the magistrates (as I think they called them) had ordered that I should go to service. I was able to do but very little, wherever I was to go, except it was to run of errands, and be a drudge to some cookmaid, and this they told me often, which put me into a great fright; for I had a thorough aversion to going to service, as they called it, though I was so young; and I told my nurse, that I believed I could get my living without going to service, if she pleased to let me; for she had taught me to work with my needle, and spin worsted,p which is the chief trade of that city, and I told her that if she would keep me, I would work for her, and I would work very hard. I talked to her almost every day of working hard; and, in short, I did nothing but work and cry all day, which grieved the good, kind woman so much, that at last she began to be concerned for me, for she loved me very well. One day after this, as she came into the room, where all the poor children were at work, she sat down just over against me, not in her usual place as mistress, but as if she had set herself on purpose to observe me and see me work. I was doing something she had set me to, as I remember it was marking some shirts, which she had taken to make, and after a while she began to talk to me. "Thou foolish child," says she, "thou art always crying" (for I was crying then). "Prithee, what dost cry for?" "Because they will take me away," says I, "and put me to service, and I can't work house-work." "Well, child," says she, "but though you can't work house-work, you will learn it in time, and they won't put you to hard things at first." "Yes, they will," says I; "and if I can't do it they will beat me, and the maids will beat me to make me do great work, and I am but a little girl, and I can't do it;" and then I cried again, till I could not speak any more. This moved my good motherly nurse, so that she resolved I should not go to service yet; so she bid me not cry, and she would speak to Mr. Mayor, and I should not go to service till I was bigger. Well, this did not satisfy me, for to think of going to service at all was such a frightful thing to me, that if she had assured me I should not have gone till I was twenty years old, it would have been the same to me; I should have cried all the time, with the very apprehension of its being to be so at last. When she saw that I was not pacified yet, she began to be angry with me. "And what would you have?" says she. "Don't I tell you that you shall not go to service till you are bigger?" "Ay," says I, "but then I must go at last." "Why, what," said she, "is the girl mad? What! would you be a gentlewoman?" "Yes," says I, and cried heartily till I roared out again. This set the old gentlewoman a-laughing at me, as you may be sure it would. "Well, madam, forsooth," says she, gibing at me, "you would be a gentlewoman; and how will you come to be a gentlewoman? What! will you do it by your fingers' ends?"q "Yes," says I again, very innocently. "Why, what can you earn," says she; "what can you get a day at your work?" "Threepence," said I, "when I spin, and fourpence when I work plain work." "Alas! poor gentlewoman," said she again, laughing, "what will that do for thee?" "It will keep me," says I, "if you will let me live with you;" and this I said in such a poor petitioning tone, that it made the poor woman's heart yearn to me, as she told me afterwards. "But," says she, "that will not keep you and buy you clothes too; and who must buy the little gentlewoman clothes?" says she, and smiled all the while at me. "I will work harder then," says I, "and you shall have it all." "Poor child! it won't keep you," said she; "it will hardly find you in victuals." "Then I would have no victuals," says I again, very innocently; "let me but live with you." "Why, can you live without victuals?" says she. "Yes," again says I, very much like a child, you may be sure, and still I cried heartily. I had no policyr in all this; you may easily see it was all nature; but it was joined with so much innocence and so much passion that, in short, it set the good motherly creature a-weeping too, and at last she cried as fast as I did, and then took me and led me out of the teaching-room. "Come," says she, "you shan't go to service; you shall live with me;" and this pacified me for the present. After this, she going to wait on the Mayor, my story came up, and my good nurse told Mr. Mayor the whole tale; he was so pleased with it, that he would call his lady and his two daughters to hear it, and it made mirth enough among them, you may be sure. However, not a week had passed over, but on a sudden comes Mrs. Mayoress and her two daughters to the house to see my old nurse, and to see her school and the children. When they had looked about them a little, "Well, Mrs.?Äî," says the Mayoress to my nurse, "and pray which is the little lass that is to be a gentlewoman ?" I heard her, and I was terribly frighted, though I did not know why neither; but Mrs. Mayoress comes up to me, "Well, miss," says she, "and what are you at work upon?" The word miss was a language that had hardly been heard of in our school, and I wondered what sad name it was she called me; however, I stood up, made a curtsey, and she took my work out of my hand, looked on it, and said it was very well; then she looked upon one of my hands. "Nay, she may come to be a gentlewoman," says she, "for aught I know; she has a lady's hand, I assure you." This pleased me mightily; but Mrs. Mayoress did not stop there, but put her hand in her pocket, gave me a shilling, and bid me mind my work, and learn to work well, and I might be a gentlewoman for aught she knew. All this while my good old nurse, Mrs. Mayoress, and all the rest of them, did not understand me at all, for they meant one sort of thing by the word gentlewoman, and I meant quite another; for, alas! all I understood by being a gentlewoman, was to be able to work for myself, and get enough to keep me without going to service, whereas they meant to live great and high, and I know not what. Well, after Mrs. Mayoress was gone, her two daughters came in, and they called for the gentlewoman too, and they talked a long while to me, and I answered them in my innocent way; but always, if they asked me whether I resolved to be a gentlewoman, I answered, Yes. At last they asked me what a gentlewoman was? That puzzled me much. However, I explained myself negatively, that it was one that did not go to service, to do house-work; they were mightily pleased, and liked my little prattle to them, which, it seems, was agreeable enough to them, and they gave me money too. As for my money, I gave it all to my mistress-nurse, as I called her, and told her she should have all I got when I was a gentlewoman as well as now. By this and some other of my talk, my old tutoress began to understand what I meant by being a gentlewoman, and that it was no more than to be able to get my bread by my own work; and at last she asked me whether it was not so. I told her, yes, and insisted on it, that to do so was to be a gentlewoman; "for," says I, "there is such a one," naming a woman that mended lace and washed the ladies' laced heads;s "she," says I, "is a gentlewoman, and they call her madam." "Poor child," says my good old nurse, "you may soon be such a gentlewoman as that, for she is a person of ill fame, and has had two bastards." I did not understand anything of that; but I answered, "I am sure they call her madam, and she does not go to service nor do house-work;" and therefore I insisted that she was a gentlewoman, and I would be such a gentlewoman as that. The ladies were told all this again, and they made themselves merry with it, and every now and then Mr. Mayor's daughters would come and see me, and ask where the little gentlewoman was, which made me not a little proud of myself besides. I was often visited by these young ladies, and sometimes they brought others with them; so that I was known by it almost all over the town. I was now about ten years old, and began to look a little womanish, for I was mighty grave, very mannerly, and as I had often heard the ladies say I was pretty, and would be very handsome, you may be sure it made me not a little proud. However, that pride had no ill effect upon me yet; only, as they often gave me money, and I gave it my old nurse, she, honest woman, was so just as to lay it out again for me, and gave me head-dresses, and linen, and gloves, and I went very neat, for if I had rags on, I would always be clean, or else I would dabble them in water myself; but, I say, my good nurse, when I had money given me, very honestly laid it out for me, and would always tell the ladies this or that was bought with their money; and this made them give me more, till at last I was indeed called upon by the magistrates to go out to service. But then I was become so good a workwoman myself, and the ladies were so kind to me, that I was past it; for I could earn as much for my nurse as was enough to keep me; so she told them, that if they would give her leave, she would keep the gentlewoman, as she called me, to be her assistant, and teach the children, which I was very well able to do; for I was very nimble at my work, though I was yet very young. But the kindness of the ladies did not end here, for when they understood that I was no more maintained by the town as before, they gave me money oftener; and as I grew up, they brought me work to do for them, such as linen to make, laces to mend, and heads to dress up, and not only paid me for doing them, but even taught me how to do them; so that I was a gentlewoman indeed, as I understood that word; for before I was twelve years old, I not only found myself clothes, and paid my nurse for my keeping, but got money in my pocket too. The ladies also gave me clothes frequently of their own or their children's; some stockings, some petticoats, some gowns, some one thing, some another; and these my old woman managed for me like a mother, and kept them for me, obliged me to mend them, and turn them to the best advantage, for she was a rare housewife. At last one of the ladies took such a fancy to me that she would have me home to her house, for a month, she said, to be among her daughters. Now, though this was exceeding kind in her, yet, as my good woman said to her, unless she resolved to keep me for good and all, she would do the little gentlewoman more harm than good. "Well," says the lady, "that's true; I'll only take her home for a week, then, that I may see how my daughters and she agree, and how I like her temper, and then I'll tell you more; and in the meantime, if anybody comes to see her as they used to do, you may only tell them you have sent her out to my house." This was prudently managed enough, and I went to the lady's house; but I was so pleased there with the young ladies, and they so pleased with me, that I had enough to do to come away, and they were as unwilling to part with me. However, I did come away, and lived almost a year more with my honest old woman, and began now to be very helpful to her; for I was almost fourteen years old, was tall of my age, and looked a little womanish; but I had such a taste of genteelt living at the lady's house that I was not so easy in my old quarters as I used to be, and I thought it was fine to be a gentlewoman indeed, for I had quite other notions of a gentlewoman now than I had before; and as I thought that it was fine to be a gentlewoman, so I loved to be among gentlewomen, and therefore I longed to be there again. When I was about fourteen years and a quarter old, my good old nurse, mother I ought to call her, fell sick and died. I was then in a sad condition indeed, for as there is no great bustle in putting an end to a poor body's family when once they are carried to the grave, so the poor good woman being buried, the parish children were immediately removed by the church-wardens; the school was at an end, and the day children of it had no more to do but just stay at home till they were sent somewhere else. As for what she left, a daughter, a married woman, came and swept it all away, and removing the goods, they had no more to say to me than to jest with me, and tell me that the little gentlewoman might set up for herself if she pleased. I was frighted out of my wits almost, and knew not what to do; for I was, as it were, turned out of doors to the wide world, and that which was still worse, the old honest woman had two-and-twenty shillings of mine in her hand, which was all the estate the little gentlewoman had in the world; and when I asked the daughter for it she huffedu me, and told me she had nothing to do with it. It was true the good, poor woman had told her daughter of it, and that it lay in such a place, that it was the child's money, and had called once or twice for me to give it me, but I was unhappily out of the way, and when I came back she was past being in a condition to speak of it. However, the daughter was so honest afterwards as to give it me, though at first she used me cruelly about it. Now was I a poor gentlewoman indeed, and I was just that very night to be turned into the wide world; for the daughter removed all the goods, and I had not so much as a lodging to go to, or a bit of bread to eat. But it seems some of the neighbours took so much compassion of me as to acquaint the lady in whose family I had been; and immediately she sent her maid to fetch me, and away I went with them bag and baggage, and with a glad heart, you may be sure. The fright of my condition had made such an impression upon me that I did not want now to be a gentlewoman, but was very willing to be a servant, and that any kind of servant they thought fit to have me be. But my new generous mistress had better thoughts for me. I call her generous, for she exceeded the good woman I was with before in everything, as in estate; I say, in everything except honesty; and for that, though this was a lady most exactly just, yet I must not forget to say on all occasions, that the first, though poor, was as uprightly honest as it was possible. I was no sooner carried away, as I have said, by this good gentlewoman, but the first lady, that is to say, the Mayoress that was, sent her daughters to take care of me; and another family which had taken notice of me when I was the little gentlewoman sent for me after her, so that I was mightily made of; nay, and they were not a little angry, especially the Mayoress, that her friend had taken me away from her; for, as she said, I was hers by right, she having been the first that took any notice of me. But they that had me would not part with me; and as for me, I could not be better than where I was. Here I continued till I was between seventeen and eighteen years old, and here I had all the advantages for my education that could be imagined; the lady had masters home to teach her daughters to dance, and to speak French, and to write, and others to teach them music; and as I was always with them, I learned as fast as they; and though the masters were not appointed to teach me, yet I learned by imitation and inquiry all that they learned by instruction and direction; so that, in short, I learned to dance and speak French as well as any of them, and to sing much better, for I had a better voice than any of them. I could not so readily come at playing the harpsichord or the spinet, because I had no instrument of my own to practise on, and could only come at theirs in the intervals when they left it; but yet I learned tolerably well, and the young ladies at length got two instruments, that is to say, a harpsichord and a spinet too, and then they taught me themselves. But as to dancing, they could hardly help my learning country-dances, because they always wanted me to make up even number; and, on the other hand, they were as heartily willing to learn me everything that they had been taught themselves as I could be to take the learning. By this means I had, as I have said, all the advantages of education that I could have had if I had been as much a gentlewoman as they were with whom I lived; and in some things I had the advantage of my ladies, though they were my superiors, viz., that mine were all the gifts of nature, and which all their fortunes could not furnish. First, I was apparently handsomer than any of them; secondly, I was better shaped; and, thirdly, I sang better, by which I mean, I had a better voice; in all which you will, I hope, allow me to say, I do not speak my own conceit, but the opinion of all that knew the family. I had with all these the common vanity of my sex, viz., that being really taken for very handsome, or, if you please, for a great beauty, I very well knew it, and had as good an opinion of myself as anybody else could have of me, and particularly I loved to hear anybody speak of it, which happened often, and was a great satisfaction to me. Thus far I have had a smooth story to tell of myself, and in all this part of my life I not only had the reputation of living in a very good family, and a family noted and respected everywhere for virtue and sobriety, and for every valuable thing, but I had the character too of a very sober, modest, and virtuous young woman, and such I had always been; neither had I yet any occasion to think of anything else, or to know what a temptation to wickedness meant. But that which I was too vain of was my ruin, or rather my vanity was the cause of it. The lady in the house where I was had two sons, young gentlemen of extraordinary parts and behaviour, and it was my misfortune to be very well with them both, but they managed themselves with me in a quite different manner. The eldest, a gay gentleman, that knew the town as well as the country, and though he had levity enough to do an ill-natured thing, yet had too much judgment of things to pay too dear for his pleasures; he began with that unhappy snare to all women, viz., taking notice upon all occasions how pretty I was, as he called it, how agreeable, how well-carriaged, and the like; and this he contrived so subtly, as if he had known as well how to catch a woman in his net as a partridge when he went a-setting, for he would contrive to be talking this to his sisters, when, though I was not by, yet he knew I was not so far off but that I should be sure to hear him. His sisters would return softly to him, "Hush, brother, she will hear you; she is but in the next room." Then he would put it off and talk softlier, as if he had not known it, and begin to acknowledge he was wrong; and then, as if he had forgot himself, he would speak aloud again, and I, that was so well pleased to hear it, was sure to listen for it upon all occasions. After he had thus baited his hook, and found easily enough the method how to lay it in my way, he played an open game; and one day, going by his sister's chamber when I was there, he comes in with an air of gaiety. "Oh, Mrs. Betty,"6 said he to me, "how do you do, Mrs. Betty? Don't your cheeks burn, Mrs. Betty?" I made a curtsey and blushed, but said nothing. "What makes you talk so, brother?" said the lady. "Why," says he, "we have been talking of her below-stairs this half-hour." "Well," says his sister, "you can say no harm of her, that I am sure, so 't is no matter what you have been talking about." "Nay," says he, " 't is so far from talking harm of her, that we have been talking a great deal of good, and a great many fine things have been said of Mrs. Betty, I assure you; and particularly, that she is the handsomest young woman in Colchester; and, in short, they begin to toast her health in the town." "I wonder at you, brother," says the sister. "Betty wants but one thing, but she had as good want everything, for the market is against our sex just now; and if a young woman has beauty, birth, breeding, wit, sense, manners, modesty, and all to an extreme, yet if she has not money she's nobody, she had as good want them all; nothing but money now recommends a woman; the men play the game all into their own hands." Her younger brother, who was by, cried, "Hold, sister, you run too fast: I am an exception to your rule. I assure you, if I find a woman so accomplished as you talk of, I won't trouble myself about the money." "Oh," says the sister, "but you will take care not to fancy one then without the money." "You don't know that neither," says the brother. "But why, sister," says the elder brother, "why do you exclaim so about the fortune? You are none of them that want a fortune, whatever else you want." "I understand you, brother," replies the lady very smartly; "you suppose I have the money and want the beauty; but as times go now, the first will do, so I have the better of my neighbours." "Well," says the younger brother, "but your neighbours may be even with you, for beauty will steal a husband sometimes in spite of money, and when the maid chances to be handsomer than the mistress, she oftentimes makes as good a market, and rides in a coach before her." I thought it was time for me to withdraw, and I did so, but not so far but that I heard all their discourse, in which I heard abundance of fine things said of myself, which prompted my vanity, but, as I soon found, was not the way to increase my interest in the family, for the sister and the younger brother fell grievously out about it; and as he said some very disobliging things to her, upon my account, so I could easily see that she resented them by her future conduct to me, which indeed was very unjust, for I had never had the least thought of what she suspected as to her younger brother; indeed, the elder brother, in his distant, remote way, had said a great many things as in jest, which I had the folly to believe were in earnest, or to flatter myself with the hopes of what I ought to have supposed he never intended. It happened one day that he came running upstairs, towards the room where his sisters used to sit and work, as he often used to do; and calling to them before he came in, as was his way too, I being there alone, stepped to the door, and said, "Sir, the ladies are not here; they are walked down the garden." As I stepped forward to say this, he was just got to the door, and clasping me in his arms, as if it had been by chance, "Oh, Mrs. Betty," says he, "are you here? That's better still; I want to speak with you, more than I do with them;" and then, having me in his arms, he kissed me three or four times. I struggled to get away, and yet did it but faintly neither, and he held me fast, and still kissed me, till he was out of breath, and, sitting down, says he, "Dear Betty, I am in love with you." His words, I must confess, fired my blood; all my spirits flew about my heart, and put me into disorder enough. He repeated it afterwards several times, that he was in love with me, and my heart spoke as plain as a voice that I liked it; nay, whenever he said, "I am in love with you," my blushes plainly replied, "Would you were, sir." However, nothing else passed at that time; it was but a surprise, and I soon recovered myself. He had stayed longer with me, but he happened to look out at the window and see his sisters coming up the garden, so he took his leave, kissed me again, told me he was very serious, and I should hear more of him very quickly, and away he went infinitely pleased; and had there not been one misfortune in it, I had been in the right, but the mistake lay here, that Mrs. Betty was in earnest, and the gentleman was not. From this time my head ran upon strange things, and I may truly say I was not myself, to have such a gentleman talk to me of being in love with me, and of my being such a charming creature, as he told me I was. These were things I knew not how to bear; my vanity was elevated to the last degree. It is true I had my head full of pride, but, knowing nothing of the wickedness of the times, I had not one thought of my virtue about me; and had my young master offered it at first sight, he might have taken any liberty he thought fit with me; but he did not see his advantage, which was my happiness for that time. It was not long but he found an opportunity to catch me again, and almost in the same posture; indeed, it had more of design in it on his part, though not on my part. It was thus: the young ladies were gone a-visiting with their mother; his brother was out of town; and as for his father, he had been at London for a week before. He had so well watched me that he knew where I was, though I did not so much as know that he was in the house, and he briskly comes up the stairs, and seeing me at work, comes into the room to me directly, and began just as he did before, with taking me in his arms, and kissing me for almost a quarter of an hour together. It was his younger sister's chamber that I was in, and as there was nobody in the house but the maid below-stairs, he was, it may be, the ruder; in short, he began to be in earnest with me indeed. Perhaps he found me a little too easy, for I made no resistance to him while he only held me in his arms and kissed me; indeed, I was too well pleased with it to resist him much. Well, tired with that kind of work, we sat down, and there he talked with me a great while; he said he was charmed with me, and that he could not rest till he had told me how he was in love with me, and, if I could love him again, and would make him happy, I should be the saving of his life, and many such fine things. I said little to him again, but easily discovered that I was a fool, and that I did not in the least perceive what he meant. Then he walked about the room, and taking me by the hand, I walked with him; and by-and-by, taking his advantage, he threw me down upon the bed, and kissed me there most violently; but, to give him his due, offered no manner of rudeness to me, only kissed me a great while. After this he thought he had heard somebody come upstairs, so he got off from the bed, lifted me up, professing a great deal of love for me; but told me it was all an honest affection, and that he meant no ill to me, and with that put five guineasv into my hand and went downstairs. I was more confounded with the money than I was before with the love, and began to be so elevated that I scarce knew the ground I stood on. I am the more particular in this, that if it comes to be read by any innocent young body, they may learn from it to guard themselves against the mischiefs which attend an early knowledge of their own beauty. If a young woman once thinks herself handsome, she never doubts the truth of any man that tells her he is in love with her; for if she believes herself charming enough to captivate him, 't is natural to expect the effects of it. This gentleman had now fired his inclination as much as he had my vanity, and, as if he had found that he had an opportunity, and was sorry he did not take hold of it, he comes up again in about half-an-hour, and falls to work with me again just as he did before, only with a little less introduction. At first, when he entered the room, he turned about and shut the door. "Mrs. Betty," said he, "I fancied before somebody was coming upstairs, but it was not so; however," adds he, "if they find me in the room with you, they shan't catch me a-kissing of you." I told him I did not know who should be coming upstairs, for I believed there was nobody in the house but the cook and the other maid, and they never came up those stairs. "Well, my dear," says he, "'t is good to be sure, however;" and so he sits down, and we began to talk. And now, though I was still on fire with his first visit, and said little, he did as it were put words in my mouth, telling me how passionately he loved me, and that though he could not till he came to his estate, yet he was resolved to make me happy then, and himself too; that is to say, to marry me, and abundance of such things, which I, poor fool, did not understand the drift of, but acted as if there was no kind of love but that which tended to matrimony; and if he had spoken of that, I had no room, as well as no power, to have said no; but we were not come to that length yet. We had not sat long, but he got up, and, stopping my very breath with kisses, threw me upon the bed again; but then he went further with me than decency permits me to mention, nor had it been in my power to have denied him at that moment had he offered much more than he did. However, though he took these freedoms with me, it did not go to that which they call the last favour, which, to do him justice, he did not attempt; and he made that self-denial of his a plea for all his freedoms with me upon other occasions after this. When this was over he stayed but a little while, but he put almost a handful of gold in my hand, and left me a thousand protestations of his passion for me, and of his loving me above all the women in the world. It will not be strange if I now began to think; but, alas! it was but with very little solid reflection. I had a most unbounded stock of vanity and pride, and but a very little stock of virtue. I did indeed cast sometimes with myself what my young master aimed at, but thought of nothing but the fine words and the gold; whether he intended to marry me or not, seemed a matter of no great consequence to me; nor did I so much as think of making any capitulationw for myself, till he made a kind of formal proposal to me, as you shall hear presently. Thus I gave up myself to ruin without the least concern, and am a fair memento to all young women whose vanity prevails over their virtue. Nothing was ever so stupid on both sides. Had I acted as became me, and resisted as virtue and honour required, he had either desisted his attacks, finding no room to expect the end of his design, or had made fair and honourable proposals of marriage; in which case, whoever blamed him, nobody could have blamed me. In short, if he had known me, and how easy the trifle he aimed at was to be had, he would have troubled his head no further, but have given me four or five guineas, and have lain with me the next time he had come at me. On the other hand, if I had known his thoughts, and how hard he supposed I would be to be gained, I might have made my own terms, and if I had not capitulated for an immediate marriage, I might for a maintenance till marriage, and might have had what I would; for he was rich to excess, besides what he had in expectation; but I had wholly abandoned all such thoughts, and was taken up only with the pride of my beauty, and of being beloved by such a gentleman. As for the gold, I spent whole hours in looking upon it; I toldx the guineas over a thousand times a day. Never poor vain creature was so wrapt up with every part of the story as I was, not considering what was before me, and how near my ruin was at the door; and indeed I think I rather wished for that ruin than studied to avoid it. In the meantime, however, I was cunning enough not to give the least room to any in the family to imagine that I had the least correspondence with him. I scarce ever looked towards him in public, or answered if he spoke to me; when, but for all that, we had every now and then a little encounter, where we had room for a word or two, and now and then a kiss, but no fair opportunity for the mischief intended; and especially considering that he made more circumlocution than he had occasion for; and the work appearing difficult to him, he really made it so. But as the devil is an unwearied tempter, so he never fails to find an opportunity for the wickedness he invites to. It was one evening that I was in the garden, with his two younger sisters and himself, when he found means to convey a note into my hand, by which he told me that he would tomorrow desire me publicly to go of an errand for him, and that I should see him somewhere by the way. Accordingly, after dinner, he very gravely says to me, his sisters being all by, "Mrs. Betty, I must ask a favour of you." "What's that?" says the second sister. "Nay, sister," says he very gravely, "if you can't spare Mrs. Betty to-day, any other time will do." Yes, they said, they could spare her well enough; and the sister begged pardon for asking. "Well, but," says the eldest sister, "you must tell Mrs. Betty what it is; if it be any private business that we must not hear, you may call her out. There she is." "Why, sister," says the gentleman very gravely, "what do you mean? I only desire her to go into the High Street" (and then he pulls out a turnovery), "to such a shop;" and then he tells them a long story of two fine neckcloths he had bid money for, and he wanted to have me go and make an errand to buy a neck to that turnover that he showed, and if they would not take my money for the neckcloths, to bid a shilling more, and haggle with them; and then he made more errands, and so continued to have such petty business to do, that I should be sure to stay a good while. When he had given me my errands, he told them a long story of a visit he was going to make to a family they all knew, and where was to be such-and-such gentlemen, and very formally asked his sisters to go with him, and they as formally excused themselves, because of company that they had notice was to come and visit them that afternoon; all which, by the way, he had contrived on purpose. He had scarce done speaking but his man came up to tell him that Sir W?Äî?ÄîH?Äî?Äî?Äòsz coach stopped at the door; so he runs down, and comes up again immediately. "Alas!" says he aloud, "there's all my mirth spoiled at once; Sir W?Äî?Äî?Äîhas sent his coach for me, and desires to speak with me." It seems this Sir W?Äî?Äîwas a gentleman who lived about three miles off, to whom he had spoke on purpose to lend him his chariot for a particular occasion, and had appointed it to call for him, as it did, about three o'clock. Immediately he calls for his best wig, hat, and sword, and ordering his man to go to the other place to make his excuse?Äîthat was to say, he made an excuse to send his man away?Äîhe prepares to go into the coach. As he was going, he stopped awhile, and speaks mighty earnestly to me about his business, and finds an opportunity to say very softly, "Come away, my dear, as soon as ever you can." I said nothing, but made a curtsey, as if I had done so to what he said in public. In about a quarter of an hour I went out too; I had no dress other than before, except that I had a hood, a mask,aa a fan, and a pair of gloves in my pocket; so that there was not the least suspicion in the house. He waited for me in a back-lane which he knew I must pass by, and the coachman knew whither to go, which was to a certain place, called Mile End,ab where lived a confidant of his, where we went in, and where was all the convenience in the world to be as wicked as we pleased. When we were together he began to talk very gravely to me, and to tell me he did not bring me there to betray me; that his passion for me would not suffer him to abuse me; that he resolved to marry me as soon as he came to his estate; that in the meantime, if I would grant his request, he would maintain me very honourably; and made me a thousand protestations of his sincerity and of his affection to me; and that he would never abandon me, and, as I may say, made a thousand more preambles than he need to have done. However, as he pressed me to speak, I told him I had no reason to question the sincerity of his love to me after so many protestations, but?Äî?Äî?Äî, and there I stopped, as if I left him to guess the rest. "But what, my dear?" says he. "I guess what you mean: what if you should be with child? Is not that it? Why, then," says he, "I'll take care of you, and provide for you, and the child too; and that you may see I am not in jest," says he, "here's an earnest for you," and with that he pulls out a silk purse with a hundred guineas in it, and gave it me; "and I'll give you such another," says he, "every year till I marry you." My colour came and went at the sight of the purse, and with the fire of his proposal together, so that I could not say a word, and he easily perceived it; so putting the purse into my bosom, I made no more resistance to him, but let him do just what he pleased, and as often as he pleased; and thus I finished my own destruction at once, for from this day, being forsaken of my virtue and my modesty, I had nothing of value left to recommend me, either to God's blessing or man's assistance. But things did not end here. I went back to the town, did the business he directed me to, and was at home before anybody thought me long. As for my gentleman, he stayed out till late at night, and there was not the least suspicion in the family either on his account or on mine. We had after this frequent opportunities to repeat our crime, and especially at home, when his mother and the young ladies went abroad a-visiting, which he watched so narrowly as never to miss; knowing always beforehand when they went out, and then failed not to catch me all alone, and securely enough; so that we took our fill of our wicked pleasures for near half-a-year; and yet, which was the most to my satisfaction, I was not with child. But before this half-year was expired, his younger brother, of whom I have made some mention in the beginning of the story, falls to work with me; and he finding me alone in the garden one evening, begins a story of the same kind to me, made good, honest professions of being in love with me, and, in short, proposes fairly and honourably to marry me. I was now confounded, and driven to such an extremity as the like was never known to me. I resisted the proposal with obstinacy, and began to arm myself with arguments. I laid before him the inequality of the match, the treatment I should meet with in the family, the ingratitude it would be to his good father and mother, who had taken me into their house upon such generous principles, and when I was in such a low condition; and, in short, I said everything to dissuade him that I could imagine except telling him the truth, which would indeed have put an end to it all, but that I durst not think of mentioning. But here happened a circumstance that I did not expect indeed, which put me to my shifts,ac for this young gentleman, as he was plain and honest, so he pretended to nothing but what was so too; and, knowing his own innocence, he was not so careful to make his having a kindness for Mrs. Betty a secret in the house as his brother was. And though he did not let them know that he had talked to me about it, yet he said enough to let his sisters perceive he loved me, and his mother saw it too, which, though they took no notice of to me, yet they did to him, and immediately I found their carriage to me altered more than ever before. I saw the cloud, though I did not foresee the storm. It was easy, I say, to see their carriage was altered, and that it grew worse and worse every day, till at last I got information that I should in a very little while be desired to remove. I was not alarmed at the news, having a full satisfaction that I should be provided for; and especially considering that I had reason every day to expect I should be with child, and that then I should be obliged to remove without any pretences for it. After some time the younger gentleman took an opportunity to tell me that the kindness he had for me had got vent in the family. He did not charge me with it, he said, for he knew well enough which way it came out. He told me his way of talking had been the occasion of it, for that he did not make his respect for me so much a secret as he might have done, and the reason was, that he was at a point, that if I would consent to have him, he would tell them all openly that he loved me, and that he intended to marry me; that it was true his father and mother might resent it, and be unkind, but he was now in a way to live, being bred to the law,7 and he did not fear maintaining me; and that, in short, as he believed I would not be ashamed of him, so he was resolved not to be ashamed of me, and that he scorned to be afraid to own me now, whom he resolved to own after I was his wife, and therefore I had nothing to do but to give him my hand, and he would answer for all the rest. I was now in a dreadful condition indeed, and now I repented heartily my easiness with the eldest brother; not from any reflection of conscience, for I was a stranger to those things, but I could not think of being a whore to one brother and a wife to the other. It came also into my thoughts that the first brother had promised to make me his wife when he came to his estate; but I presently remembered, what I had often thought of, that he had never spoken a word of having me for a wife after he had conquered me for a mistress; and indeed, till now, though I said I thought of it often, yet it gave no disturbance at all, for as he did not seem in the least to lessen his affection to me, so neither did he lessen his bounty, though he had the discretion himself to desire me not to lay out a penny in clothes, or to make the least show extraordinary, because it would necessarily give jealousyad in the family, since everybody knew I could come at such things no manner of ordinary way, but by some private friendship, which they would presently have suspected. I was now in a great strait, and knew not what to do; the main difficulty was this: the younger brother not only laid close siege to me, but suffered it to be seen. He would come into his sister's room, and his mother's room, and sit down, and talk a thousand kind things to me even before their faces; so that the whole house talked of it, and his mother reproved him for it, and their carriage to me appeared quite altered. In short, his mother had let fall some speeches, as if she intended to put me out of the family; that is, in English, to turn me out of doors. Now I was sure this could not be a secret to his brother, only that he might think, as indeed nobody else yet did, that the youngest brother had made any proposal to me about it; but as I could easily see that it would go further, so I saw likewise there was an absolute necessity to speak of it to him, or that he would speak of it to me, but knew not whether I should break it to him or let it alone till he should break it to me. Upon serious consideration, for indeed now I began to consider things very seriously, and never till now, I resolved to tell him of it first; and it was not long before I had an opportunity, for the very next day his brother went to London upon some business, and the family being out a-visiting, just as it happened before, and as indeed was often the case, he came according to his custom to spend an hour or two with Mrs. Betty. When he had sat down a while he easily perceived there was an alteration in my countenance, that I was not so free and pleasant with him as I used to be, and particularly, that I had been a-crying; he was not long before he took notice of it, and asked me in very kind terms what was the matter, and if anything troubled me. I would have put it off if I could, but it was not to be concealed; so after suffering many importunities to draw that out of me, which I longed as much as possible to disclose, I told him that it was true something did trouble me, and something of such a nature that I could hardly conceal from him, and yet that I could not tell how to tell him of it neither; that it was a thing that not only surprised me, but greatly perplexed me, and that I knew not what course to take, unless he would direct me. He told me with great tenderness, that let it be what it would, I should not let it trouble me, for he would protect me from all the world. I then began at a distance, and told him I was afraid the ladies had got some secret information of our correspondence;ae for that it was easy to see that their conduct was very much changed towards me, and that now it was come to pass that they frequently found fault with me, and sometimes fell quite out with me, though I never gave them the least occasion; that whereas I used always to lie with the elder sister, I was lately put to lie by myself, or with one of the maids; and that I had overheard them several times talking very unkindly about me; but that which confirmed it all was, that one of the servants had told me that she had heard I was to be turned out, and that it was not safe for the family that I should be any longer in the house. He smiled when he heard of this, and I asked him how he could make so light of it, when he must needs know that if there was any discovery I was undone, and that it would hurt him, though not ruin him, as it would me. I upbraided him, that he was like the rest of his sex, that, when they had the character of a woman at their mercy, oftentimes made it their jest, and at least looked upon it as a trifle, and counted the ruin of those they had had their will of as a thing of no value. He saw me warm and serious, and he changed his style immediately; he told me he was sorry I should have such a thought of him; that he had never given me the least occasion for it, but had been as tender of my reputation as he could be of his own; that he was sure our correspondence had been managed with so much address, that not one creature in the family had so much as a suspicion of it; that if he smiled when I told him my thoughts, it was at the assurance he lately received, that our understanding one another was not so much as guessed at, and that when he had told me how much reason he had to be easy, I should smile as he did, for he was very certain it would give me a full satisfaction. "This is a mystery I cannot understand," says I, "or how it should be to my satisfaction that I am to be turned out of doors; for if our correspondence is not discovered, I know not what else I have done to change the faces of the whole family to me, who formerly used me with so much tenderness, as if I had been one of their own children." "Why, look you, child," says he, "that they are uneasy about you, that is true; but that they have the least suspicion of the case as it is, and as it respects you and I, is so far from being true, that they suspect my brother Robin; and, in short, they are fully persuaded he makes love to you; nay, the fool has put it into their heads too himself, for he is continually bantering them about it, and making a jest of himself. I confess I think he is wrong to do so, because he cannot but see it vexes them, and makes them unkind to you; but it is a satisfaction to me, because of the assurance it gives me, that they do not suspect me in the least, and I hope this will be to your satisfaction too." "So it is," says I, "one way; but this does not reach my case at all, nor is this the chief thing that troubles me, though I have been concerned about that too." "What is it, then?" says he. With which, I fell into tears, and could say nothing to him at all. He strove to pacify me all he could, but began at last to be very pressing upon me to tell what it was. At last I answered, that I thought I ought to tell him too, and that he had some right to know it; besides, that I wanted his direction in the case, for I was in such perplexity that I knew not what course to take, and then I related the whole affair to him. I told him how imprudently his brother had managed himself, in making himself so public; for that if he had kept it a secret, I could but have denied him positively, without giving any reason for it, and he would in time have ceased his solicitations; but that he had the vanity, first, to depend upon it that I would not deny him, and then had taken the freedom to tell his design to the whole house. I told him how far I had resisted him, and how sincere and honourable his offers were; "but," says I, "my case will be doubly hard; for as they carry it ill to me now, because he desires to have me, they'll carry it worse when they shall find I have denied him; and they will presently say, there's something else in it, and that I am married already to somebody else, or that I would never refuse a match so much above me as this was." This discourse surprised him indeed very much. He told me that it was a critical point indeed for me to manage, and he did not see which way I should get out of it; but he would consider of it, and let me know next time we met, what resolution he was come to about it; and in the meantime desired I would not give my consent to his brother, nor yet give him a flat denial, but that I would hold him in suspense a while. I seemed to start at his saying, I should not give him my consent. I told him, he knew very well I had no consent to give; that he had engaged himself to marry me, and that I was thereby engaged to him; that he had all along told me I was his wife,8 and I looked upon myself as effectually so as if the ceremony had passed; and that it was from his own mouth that I did so, he having all along persuaded me to call myself his wife. "Well, my dear," says he, "don't be concerned at that now; if I am not your husband, I'll be as good as a husband to you; and do not let those things trouble you now, but let me look a little further into this affair, and I shall be able to say more next time we meet." He pacified me as well as he could with this, but I found he was very thoughtful, and that though he was very kind to me, and kissed me a thousand times, and more I believe, and gave me money too, yet he offered no more all the while we were together, which was above two hours, and which I much wondered at, considering how it used to be, and what opportunity we had. His brother did not come from London for five or six days, and it was two days more before he got an opportunity to talk with him; but then getting him by himself, he talked very close to him about it, and the same evening found means (for we had a long conference together) to repeat all their discourse to me, which, as near as I can remember, was to the purpose following. He told him he heard strange news of him since he went, viz., that he made love to Mrs. Betty. "Well," says his brother, a little angrily, "and what then? What has anybody to do with that?" "Nay," says his brother, "don't be angry, Robin; I don't pretend to have anything to do with it, but I find they do concern themselves about it, and that they have used the poor girl ill about it, which I should take as done to myself." "Whom do you mean by THEY?" says Robin. "I mean my mother and the girls," says the elder brother. "But hark ye," says his brother, "are you in earnest? Do you really love the girl?" "Why, then," says Robin, "I will be free with you; I do love her above all the women in the world, and I will have her, let them say and do what they will. I believe the girl will not deny me." It stuck me to the heart when he told me this, for though it was most rational to think I would not deny him, yet I knew in my own conscience I must, and I saw my ruin in my being obliged to do so; but I knew it was my business to talk otherwise then, so I interrupted him in his story thus: "Ay!" said I, "does he think I cannot deny him? But he shall find I can deny him for all that." "Well, my dear," says he, "but let me give you the whole story as it went on between us, and then say what you will." Then he went on and told me that he replied thus: "But, brother, you know she has nothing, and you may have several ladies with good fortunes." " 'T is no matter for that," said Robin; "I love the girl, and I will never please my pocket in marrying, and not please my fancy." "And so, my dear," adds he, "there is no opposing him." "Yes, yes," says I, "I can oppose him; I have learned to say No, now, though I had not learnt it before; if the best lord in the land offered me marriage now, I could very cheerfully say No to him." "Well, but, my dear," says he, "what can you say to him? You know, as you said before, he will ask you many questions about it, and all the house will wonder what the meaning of it should be." "Why," says I, smiling, "I can stop all their mouths at one clap by telling him, and them too, that I am married already to his elder brother." He smiled a little too at the word, but I could see it startled him, and he could not hide the disorder it put him into. However, he returned, "Why, though that may be true in some sense, yet I suppose you are but in jest when you talk of giving such an answer as that; it may not be convenient on many accounts." "No, no," says I pleasantly, "I am not so fond of letting that secret come out, without your consent." "But what, then, can you say to them," says he, "when they find you positive against a match which would be apparently so much to your advantage?" "Why," says I, "should I be at a loss? First, I am not obliged to give them any reason; on the other hand, I may tell them I am married already, and stop there, and that will be a full stop too to him, for he can have no reason to ask one question after it." "Ay," says he; "but the whole house will tease you about that, and if you deny them positively, they will be disobliged at you, and suspicious besides." "Why," says I, "what can I do? What would you have me do? I was in strait enough before, as I told you, and acquainted you with the circumstances, that I might have your advice." "My dear," says he, "I have been considering very much upon it, you may be sure, and though the advice has many mortifications in it to me, and may at first seem strange to you, yet, all things considered, I see no better way for you than to let him go on, and if you find him hearty and in earnest, marry him." I gave him a look full of horror at those words, and turning pale as death, was at the very point of sinking down out of the chair I sat in; when, giving a start, "My dear," says he aloud, "what's the matter with you? Where are you a-going?" and a great many such things; and with jogging and calling to me, fetched me a little to myself, though it was a good while before I fully recovered my senses, and was not able to speak for several minutes. When I was fully recovered he began again. "My dear," says he, "I would have you consider seriously of it. You may see plainly how the family stand in this case, and they would be stark mad if it was my case, as it is my brother's; and for aught I see, it would be my ruin and yours too." "Ay!" says I, still speaking angrily; "are all your protestations and vows to be shaken by the dislike of the family? Did I not always object that to you, and you made a light thing of it, as what you were above, and would not value; and is it come to this now? Is this your faith and honour, your love, and the solidity of your promises?" He continued perfectly calm, notwithstanding all my reproaches, and I was not sparing of them at all; but he replied at last, "My dear, I have not broken one promise with you yet; I did tell you I would marry you when I was come to my estate; but you see my father is a hale, healthy man, and may live these thirty years still, and not be older than several are round us in the town; and you never proposed my marrying you sooner, because you know it might be my ruin; and as to the rest, I have not failed you in anything." I could not deny a word of this. "But why, then," says I, "can you persuade me to such a horrid step as leaving you, since you have not left me? Will you allow no affection, no love on my side, where there has been so much on your side? Have I made you no returns? Have I given no testimony of my sincerity and of my passion? Are the sacrifices I have made of honour and modesty to you no proof of my being tied to you in bonds too strong to be broken?" "But here, my dear," says he, "you may come into a safe station, and appear with honour, and the remembrance of what we have done may be wrapped up in an eternal silence, as if it had never happened; you shall always have my sincere affection, only then it shall be honest, and perfectly just to my brother; you shall be my dear sister, as now you are my dear?Äî?Äî" and there he stopped. "Your dear whore," says I, "you would have said, and you might as well have said it; but I understand you. However, I desire you to remember the long discourses you have had with me, and the many hours' pains you have taken to persuade me to believe myself an honest woman; that I was your wife intentionally, and that it was as effectual a marriage that had passed between us as if we had been publicly wedded by the parson of the parish. You know these have been your own words to me." I found this was a little too close upon him, but I made it up in what follows. He stood stock-still for a while, and said nothing, and I went on thus: "You cannot," says I, "without the highest injustice, believe that I yielded upon all these persuasions without a love not to be questioned, not to be shaken again by anything that could happen afterward. If you have such dishonourable thoughts of me, I must ask you what foundation have I given for such a suggestion? If, then, I have yielded to the importunities of my affection, and if I have been persuaded to believe that I am really your wife, shall I now give the lie to all those arguments, and call myself your whore, or mistress, which is the same thing? And will you transfer me to your brother? Can you transfer my affection? Can you bid me cease loving you, and bid me love him? Is it in my power, think you, to make such a change at demand? No, sir," said I, "depend upon it 't is impossible, and whatever the change on your side may be, I will ever be true; and I had much rather, since it has come that unhappy length, be your whore, than your brother's wife." He appeared pleased and touched with the impression of this last discourse, and told me that he stood where he did before; that he had not been unfaithful to me in any one promise he had ever made yet, but that there were so many terrible things presented themselves to his view in the affair before me, that he had thought of the other as a remedy, only that he thought this would not be an entire parting us, but we might love as friends all our days, and perhaps with more satisfaction than we should in the station we were now in; that he durst say, I could not apprehend anything from him as to betraying a secret, which could not but be the destruction of us both, if it came out; that he had but one question to ask of me that could lie in the way of it, and if that question was answered, he could not but think still it was the only step I could take. I guessed at his question presently, viz., whether I was not with child. As to that, I told him he need not be concerned about it, for I was not with child. "Why, then, my dear," says he, "we have no time to talk further now. Consider of it; I cannot but be of the opinion still, that it will be the best course you can take." And with this he took his leave, and the more hastily too, his mother and sisters ringing at the gate just at the moment he had risen up to go. He left me in the utmost confusion of thought; and he easily perceived it the next day, and all the rest of the week, but he had no opportunity to come at me all that week, till the Sunday after, when I, being indisposed, did not go to church, and he, making some excuse, stayed at home. And now he had me an hour and half again by myself, and we fell into the same arguments all over again; at last I asked him warmly, what opinion he must have of my modesty, that he could suppose I should so much as entertain a thought of lying with two brothers, and assured him it could never be. I added, if he was to tell me that he would never see me more, than which nothing but death could be more terrible, yet I could never entertain a thought so dishonourable to myself, and so base to him; and therefore, I entreated him, if he had one grain of respect or affection left for me, that he would speak no more of it to me, or that he would pull his sword out and kill me.9 He appeared surprised at my obstinacy, as he called it; told me I was unkind to myself, and unkind to him in it; that it was a crisis unlooked for upon us both, but that he did not see any other way to save us both from ruin, and therefore he thought it the more unkind; but that if he must say no more of it to me, he added with an unusual coldness, that he did not know anything else we had to talk of; and so he rose up to take his leave. I rose up too, as if with the same indifference; but when he came to give me as it were a parting kiss, I burst out into such a passion of crying, that though I would have spoke, I could not, and only pressing his hand, seemed to give him the adieu, but cried vehemently. He was sensibly moved with this; so he sat down again, and said a great many kind things to me, but still urged the necessity of what he had proposed; all the while insisting, that if I did refuse, he would notwithstanding provide for me; but letting me plainly see that he would decline me in the main point?Äînay, even as a mistress; making it a point of honour not to lie with the woman that, for aught he knew, might one time or other come to be his brother's wife. The bare loss of him as a gallant was not so much my affliction as the loss of his person, whom indeed I loved to distraction; and the loss of all the expectations I had, and which I always built my hopes upon, of having him one day for my husband. These things oppressed my mind so much, that, in short, the agonies of my mind threw me into a high fever, and long it was, that none in the family expected my life. I was reduced very low indeed, and was often delirious; but nothing lay so near me, as the fear that when I was light-headed, I should say something or other to his prejudice. I was distressed in my mind also to see him, and so he was to see me, for he really loved me most passionately; but it could not be; there was not the least room to desire it on one side or other. It was near five weeks that I kept my bed; and though the violence of my fever abated in three weeks, yet it several times returned; and the physicians said two or three times, they could do no more for me, but that they must leave nature and the distemper to fight it out. After the end of five weeks I grew better, but was so weak, so altered, and recovered so slowly, that the physicians apprehended I should go into a consumption; and which vexed me most, they gave their opinion that my mind was oppressed, that something troubled me, and, in short, that I was in love. Upon this, the whole house set upon me to press me to tell whether I was in love or not, and with whom; but as I well might, I denied my being in love at all. They had on this occasion a squabble one day about me at table, that had like to put the whole family in an uproar. They happened to be all at table but the father; as for me, I was ill, and in my chamber. At the beginning of the talk the old gentlewoman, who had sent me somewhat to eat, bid her maid go up and ask me if I would have any more; but the maid brought down word I had not eaten half what she had sent me already. "Alas," says the old lady, "that poor girl! I am afraid she will never be well." "Well!" says the elder brother; "how should Mrs. Betty be well? They say she is in love." "I believe nothing of it," says the old gentlewoman. "I don't know," says the elder sister, "what to say to it; they have made such a rout about her being so handsome, and so charming, and I know not what, and that in her hearing too, that has turned the creature's head, I believe, and who knows what possessionsaf may follow such doings? For my part, I don't know what to make of it." "Why, sister, you must acknowledge she is very handsome," says the elder brother. "Ay, and a great deal handsomer than you, sister," says Robin, "and that's your mortification." "Well, well, that is not the question," says his sister; "the girl is well enough, and she knows it; she need not be told of it to make her vain." "We don't talk of her being vain," says the elder brother, "but of her being in love; maybe she is in love with herself; it seems my sisters think so." "I would she was in love with me," says Robin; "I'd quickly put her out of her pain." "What d'ye mean by that, son?" says the old lady; "how can you talk so?" "Why, madam," says Robin again, very honestly, "do you think I'd let the poor girl die for love, and of me, too, that is so near at hand to be had?" "Fie, brother!" says the second sister, "how can you talk so? Would you take a creature that has not a groatag in the world?" "Prithee, child," says Robin, "beauty's a portion,ah and good humour with it is a double portion; I wish thou hadst half her stock of both for thy portion." So there was her mouth stopped. "I find," says the eldest sister, "if Betty is not in love, my brother is. I wonder he has not broke his mind to Betty; I warrant she won't say No." "They that yield when they are asked," says Robin, "are one step before them that were never asked to yield, and two steps before them that yield before they are asked; and that's an answer to you, sister." This fired the sister, and she flew into a passion, and said, things were come to that pass that it was time the wench, meaning me, was out of the family; and but that she was not fit to be turned out, she hoped her father and mother would consider of it, as soon as she could be removed. Robin replied, that was for the master and mistress of the family, who were not to be taught by one that had so little judgment as his eldest sister. It ran up a great deal further; the sister scolded, Robin rallied and bantered, but poor Betty lost ground by it extremely in the family. I heard of it, and cried heartily, and the old lady came up to me, somebody having told her that I was so much concerned about it. I complained to her that it was very hard the doctors should pass such a censure upon me, for which they had no ground; and that it was still harder, considering the circumstances I was under in the family; that I hoped I had done nothing to lessen her esteem for me, or given any occasion for the bickering between her sons and daughters, and had more need to think of a coffin than of being in love, and begged she would not let me suffer in her opinion for anybody's mistakes but my own. She was sensible of the justice of what I said, but told me, since there had been such a clamour among them, and that her younger son talked after such a rattlingai way as he did, she desired I would be so faithful to her as to answer her but one question sincerely. I told her I would, and with the utmost plainness and sincerity. Why, then, the question was, whether there was anything between her son Robert and me. I told her with all the protestations of sincerity that I was able to make, and as I might well do, that there was not, nor ever had been; I told her that Mr. Robert had rattled and jested, as she knew it was his way, and that I took it always as I supposed he meant it, to be a wild airy way of discourse that had no signification in it; and assured her that there was not the least tittle of what she understood by it between us; and that those who had suggested it had done me a great deal of wrong, and Mr. Robert no service at all. The old lady was fully satisfied, and kissed me, spoke cheerfully to me, and bid me take care of my health and want for nothing, and so took her leave. But when she came down she found the brother and all his sisters together by the ears; they were angry, even to passion, at his upbraiding them with their being homely, and having never had any sweethearts, never having been asked the question, their being so forward as almost to ask first, and the like. He rallied them with Mrs. Betty; how pretty, how good-humoured, how she sung better than they did, and danced better, and how much handsomer she was; and in doing this he omitted no ill-natured thing that could vex them. The old lady came down in the height of it, and to stop it, told them the discourse she had had with me, and how I answered, that there was nothing between Mr. Robert and I. "She's wrong there," says Robin, "for if there was not a great deal between us, we should be closer together than we are. I told her I loved her hugely," says he, "but I could never make the jade believe I was in earnest." "I do not know how you should," says his mother; "nobody in their senses could believe you were in earnest, to talk so to a poor girl, whose circumstances you know so well." "But prithee, son," adds she, "since you tell us you could not make her believe you were in earnest, what must we believe about it? For you ramble so in your discourse that nobody knows whether you are in earnest or in jest; but as I find the girl, by your own confession, has answered truly, I wish you would do so too, and tell me seriously, so that I may depend upon it, is there anything in it or no? Are you in earnest or no? Are you distracted, indeed, or are you not? 'T is a weighty question; I wish you would make us easy about it." "By my faith, madam," says Robin, " 't is in vain to minceaj the matter, or tell any more lies about it; I am in earnest, as much as a man is that's going to be hanged. If Mrs. Betty would say she loved me, and that she would marry me, I'd have her tomorrow morning fasting, and say, ?ÄòTo have and to hold,' instead of eating my breakfast." "Well," says the mother, "then there's one son lost;" and she said it in a very mournful tone, as one greatly concerned at it. "I hope not, madam," says Robin; "no man is lost when a good wife has found him." "Why, but, child," says the old lady, "she is a beggar." "Why, then, madam, she has the more need of charity," says Robin; "I'll take her off the hands of the parish, and she and I'll beg together." "It's bad jesting with such things," says the mother. "I don't jest, madam," says Robin; "we'll come and beg your pardon, madam, and your blessing, madam, and my father's." "This is all out of the way, son," says the mother. "If you are in earnest you are undone." "I am afraid not," says he, "for I am really afraid she won't have me. After all my sister's huffing, I believe I shall never be able to persuade her to it." "That's a fine tale, indeed. She is not so far gone neither. Mrs. Betty is no fool," says the youngest sister. "Do you think she has learned to say No, any more than other people?" "No, Mrs. Mirth-wit," ak says Robin, "Mrs. Betty's no fool, but Mrs. Betty may be engaged some other way, and what then?" "Nay," says the eldest sister, "we can say nothing to that. Who must it be to, then? She is never out of the doors; it must be between you." "I have nothing to say to that," says Robin. "I have been examined enough; there's my brother. If it must be between us, go to work with him." This stung the elder brother to the quick, and he concluded that Robin had discovered something. However, he kept himself from appearing disturbed. "Prithee," says he, "don't go to sham your stories off upon me; I tell you I deal in no such ware; I have nothing to say to no Mrs. Bettys in the parish;" and with that he rose up and brushed off. "No," says the eldest sister, "I dare answer for my brother; he knows the world better." Thus the discourse ended; but it left the eldest brother quite confounded. al He concluded his brother had made a full discovery, and he began to doubt whether I had been concerned in it or not; but with all his management, he could not bring it about to get at me. At last, he was so perplexed that he was quite desperate, and resolved he would see me whatever came of it. In order to this, he contrived it so, that one day after dinner, watching his eldest sister, till he could see her go upstairs, he runs after her. "Hark ye, sister," says he, "where is this sick woman? May not a body see her?" "Yes," says the sister, "I believe you may; but let me go in first a little, and I'll tell you." So she ran up to the door, and gave me notice and presently called to him again. "Brother," says she, "you may come in if you please." So in he came, just in the same kind of rant. "Well," says he at the door, as he came in, "where's this sick body that's in love? How do ye do, Mrs. Betty?" I would have got up out of my chair, but was so weak I could not for a good while; and he saw it, and his sister too; and she said, "Come, do not strive to stand up; my brother desires no ceremony, especially now you are so weak." "No, no, Mrs. Betty, pray sit still," says he, and so sits himself down in a chair over against me, and appeared as if he was mighty merry. He talked a deal of rambling stuff to his sister and to me; sometimes of one thing, sometimes another, on purpose to amuseam her, and every now and then would turn it upon the old story. "Poor Mrs. Betty," says he, "it is a sad thing to be in love; why, it has reduced you sadly." At last I spoke a little. "I am glad to see you so merry, sir," says I; "but I think the doctor might have found something better to do than to make his game of his patients. If I had been ill of no other distemper, I know the proverb too well to have let him come to me." "What proverb?" says he. "What?Äî ?ÄòWhere love is the case, The doctor's an ass.'an Is not that it, Mrs. Betty?" I smiled, and said nothing. "Nay," says he, "I think the effect has proved it to be love; for it seems the doctor has done you little service; you mend very slowly, they say. I doubtao there's somewhat in it, Mrs. Betty; I doubt you are sick of the incurables." I smiled, and said, "No, indeed, sir, that's none of my distemper." We had a deal of such discourse, and sometimes others that signified as little. By-and-by he asked me to sing them a song, at which I smiled, and said my singing days were over. At last he asked me if he should play upon his flute to me; his sister said, she believed my head could not bear it. I bowed, and said, "Pray, madam, do not hinder it; I love the flute very much." Then his sister said, "Well, do, then, brother." With that he pulled out the key of his closet. "Dear sister," says he, "I am very lazy; do step and fetch my flute; it lies in such a drawer," naming a place where he was sure it was not, that she might be a little while a-looking for it. As soon as she was gone, he related the whole story to me of the discourse his brother had about me, and his concern about it, which was the reason of his contriving this visit. I assured him I had never opened my mouth either to his brother or to anybody else. I told him the dreadful exigenceap I was in; that my love to him, and his offering to have me forget that affection, and remove it to another, had thrown me down; and that I had a thousand times wished I might die rather than recover, and to have the same circumstances to struggle with as I had before. I added that I foresaw that as soon as I was well I must quit the family, and that as for marrying his brother, I abhorred the thoughts of it after what had been my case with him, and that he might depend upon it I would never see his brother again upon that subject; that if he would break all his vows, and oaths, and engagements with me, be that between his conscience and himself; but he should never be able to say that I, whom he had persuaded to call myself his wife, and who had given him the liberty to use me as a wife, was not as faithful to him as a wife ought to be, whatever he might be to me. He was going to reply, and had said that he was sorry I could not be persuaded, and was a-going to say more, but he heard his sister a-coming, and so did I; and yet I forced out these few words as a reply, that I could never be persuaded to love one brother and marry the other. He shook his head, and said, "Then I am ruined," meaning himself; and that moment his sister entered the room, and told him she could not find the flute. "Well," says he merrily, "this laziness won't do;" so he gets up, and goes himself to look for it, but comes back without it too; not but that he could have found it, but he had no mind to play; and, besides, the errand he sent his sister on was answered another way; for he only wanted to speak to me, which he had done, though not much to his satisfaction. I had, however, a great deal of satisfaction in having spoken my mind to him in freedom, and with such an honest plainness, as I have related; and though it did not at all work the way I desired, that is to say, to oblige the person to me the more, yet it took from him all possibility of quitting me but by a downright breach of honour, and giving up all the faith of a gentleman, which he had so often engaged by, never to abandon me, but to make me his wife as soon as he came to his estate. It was not many weeks after this before I was about the house again, and began to grow well; but I continued melancholy and retired, which amazed the whole family, except he that knew the reason of it; yet it was a great while before he took any notice of it, and I, as backward to speak as he, carriedaq as respectfully to him, but never offered to speak a word that was particular of any kind whatsoever; and this continued for sixteen or seventeen weeks; so that, as I expected every day to be dismissed the family, on account of what distaste they had taken another way, in which I had no guilt, I expected to hear no more of this gentleman, after all his solemn vows, but to be ruined and abandoned. At last I brokear the way myself in the family for my removing; for being talking seriously with the old lady one day, about my own circumstances, and how my distemper had left a heaviness upon my spirits, the old lady said, "I am afraid, Betty, what I have said to you about my son has had some influence upon you, and that you are melancholy on his account; pray, will you let me know how the matter stands with you both, if it may not be improper? For, as for Robin, he does nothing but rally and banter when I speak of it to him." "Why, truly, madam," said I, "that matter stands as I wish it did not, and I shall be very sincere with you in it, whatever befalls me. Mr. Robert has several times proposed marriage to me, which is what I had no reason to expect, my poor circumstances considered; but I have always resisted him, and that perhaps in terms more positive than became me, considering the regard that I ought to have for every branch of your family; but," said I, "madam, I could never so far forget my obligations to you and all your house, to offer to consent to a thing which I knew must needs be disobliging to you, and have positively told him that I would never entertain a thought of that kind unless I had your consent, and his father's also, to whom I was bound by so many invincible obligations." "And is this possible, Mrs. Betty?" says the old lady. "Then you have been much juster to us than we have been to you; for we have all looked upon you as a kind of a snareas to my son, and I had a proposal to make you for your removing, for fear of it; but I had not yet mentioned it you, because I was afraid of grieving you too much, lest it should throw you down again; for we have a respect for you still, though not so much as to have it be the ruin of my son; but if it be as you say, we have all wronged you very much." "As to the truth of what I say, madam," said I, "I refer to your son himself; if he will do me any justice, he must tell you the story just as I have told it." Away goes the old lady to her daughters and tells them the whole story, just as I had told it her; and they were surprised at it, you may be sure, as I believed they would be. One said she could never have thought it; another said Robin was a fool; a third said she would not believe a word of it, and she would warrant that Robin would tell the story another way. But the old lady, who was resolved to go to the bottom of it before I could have the least opportunity of acquainting her son with what had passed, resolved, too, that she would talk with her son immediately, and to that purpose sent for him, for he was gone but to a lawyer's house in the town, and upon her sending he returned immediately. Upon his coming up to them, for they were all together, "Sit down, Robin," says the old lady; "I must have some talk with you." "With all my heart, madam," says Robin, looking very merry. "I hope it is about a good wife, for I am at a great loss in that affair." "How can that be?" says his mother. "Did not you say you resolved to have Mrs. Betty?" "Ay, madam," says Robin; "but there is one that has forbid the banns." "Forbid the banns! Who can that be?" "Even Mrs. Betty herself," says Robin. "How so?" says his mother. "Have you asked her the question, then?" "Yes, indeed madam," says Robin; "I have attacked her in format five times since she was sick, and am beaten off; the jade is so stout she won't capitulate nor yield upon any terms, except such as I can't effectually grant." "Explain yourself," says the mother, "for I am surprised; I do not understand you. I hope you are not in earnest." "Why, madam," says he, "the case is plain enough upon me, it explains itself; she won't have me, she says; is not that plain enough? I think't is plain, and pretty rough too." "Well, but," says the mother, "you talk of conditions that you cannot grant; what does she want?Äîa settlement? Her jointureau ought to be according to her portion; what does she bring?" "Nay, as to fortune," says Robin, "she is rich enough; I am satisfied in that point; but 't is I that am not able to come up to her terms, and she is positive she will not have me without." Here the sisters put in. "Madam," says the second sister, " 't is impossible to be serious with him; he will never give a direct answer to anything; you had better let him alone, and talk no more of it; you know how to dispose of her out of his way." Robin was a little warmed with his sister's rudeness, but he was even with her presently. "There are two sorts of people, madam," says he, turning to his mother, "that there is no contending with; that is, a wise body and a fool; 't is a little hard I should engage with both of them together." The younger sister then put in. "We must be fools indeed," says she, "in my brother's opinion, that he should make us believe he has seriously asked Mrs. Betty to marry him, and she has refused him." "Answer, and answer not, says Solomon,"10 replied her brother. "When your brother had said that he had asked her no less than five times, and that she positively denied him, methinks a younger sister need not question the truth of it, when her mother did not." "My mother, you see, did not understand it," says the second sister. "There's some difference," says Robin, "between desiring me to explain it, and telling me she did not believe it." "Well, but, son," says the old lady, "if you are disposed to let us into the mystery of it, what were those hard conditions?" "Yes, madam," says Robin, "I had done it before now, if the teasers here had not worried me by way of interruption. The conditions are, that I bring my father and you to consent to it, and without that she protests she will never see me more upon that head; and the conditions, as I said, I suppose I shall never be able to grant. I hope my warm sisters will be answered now, and blush a little." This answer was surprising to them all, though less to the mother, because of what I had said to her. As to the daughters, they stood mute a great while; but the mother said, with some passion, "Well, I heard this before, but I could not believe it; but if it is so, then we have all done Betty wrong, and she has behaved better than I expected." "Nay," says the eldest sister, "if it is so, she has acted handsomely indeed." "I confess," says the mother, "it was none of her fault, if he was enough fool to take a fancy to her; but to give such an answer to him, shows more respect to us than I can tell how to express; I shall value the girl the better for it, as long as I know her." "But I shall not," says Robin, "unless you will give your consent." "I'll consider of that awhile," says the mother; "I assure you, if there were not some other objections, this conduct of hers would go a great way to bring me to consent." "I wish it would go quite through with it," says Robin; "if you had as much thought about making me easy as you have about making me rich, you would soon consent to it." "Why, Robin," says the mother again, "are you really in earnest? Would you fain have her?" "Really, madam," says Robin, "I think 't is hard you should question me again upon that head. I won't say that I will have her. How can I resolve that point, when you see I cannot have her without your consent? But this I will say, I am earnest, that I will never have anybody else, if I can help it. Betty or nobody is the word, and the question which of the two shall be in your breast to decide, madam, provided only, that my good-humoured sisters here may have no vote in it." All this was dreadful to me, for the mother began to yield, and Robin pressed her home in it. On the other hand, she advised with the eldest son, and he used all the arguments in the world to persuade her to consent; alleging his brother's passionate love for me, and my generous regard to the family, in refusing my own advantages upon such a nice point of honour, and a thousand such things. And as to the father, he was a man in a hurry of public affairs and getting money, seldom at home, thoughtful of the main chance, but left all those things to his wife. You may easily believe, that when the plot was thus, as they thought, broke out, it was not so difficult or so dangerous for the elder brother, whom nobody suspected of anything, to have a freer access than before; nay, the mother, which was just as he wished, proposed it to him to talk with Mrs. Betty. "It may be, son," said she, "you may see farther into the thing than I, and see if she has been so positive as Robin says she has been, or no." This was as well as he could wish, and he, as it were, yielding to talk with me at his mother's request, she brought me to him into her own chamber, told me her son had some business with me at her request, and then she left us together, and he shut the door after her. He came back to me and took me in his arms, and kissed me very tenderly; but told me it was now come to that crisis, that I should make myself happy or miserable as long as I lived; that if I could not comply to his desire, we should both be ruined. Then he told me the whole story between Robin, as he called him, and his mother, and his sisters, and himself, as above. "And now, dear child," says he, "consider what it will be to marry a gentleman of a good family, in good circumstances, and with the consent of the whole house, and to enjoy all that the world can give you; and what, on the other hand, to be sunk into the dark circumstances of a woman that has lost her reputation; and that though I shall be a private friend to you while I live, yet as I shall be suspected always, so you will be afraid to see me, and I shall be afraid to own you." He gave me no time to reply, but went on with me thus: "What has happened between us, child, so long as we both agree to do so, may be buried and forgotten. I shall always be your sincere friend, without any inclination to nearer intimacy when you become my sister; and we shall have all the honest part of conversation without any reproaches between us of having done amiss. I beg of you to consider it, and do not stand in the way of your own safety and prosperity; and to satisfy you that I am sincere," added he, "I here offer you five hundred pounds to make you some amends for the freedoms I have taken with you, which we shall look upon as some of the follies of our lives, which 't is hoped we may repent of." He spoke this in so much more moving terms than it is possible for me to express, that you may suppose as he held me above an hour and a half in this discourse; so he answered all my objections, and fortified his discourse with all the arguments that human wit and art could devise. I cannot say, however, that anything he said made impression enough upon me so as to give me any thought of the matter, till he told me at last very plainly, that if I refused, he was sorry to add that he could never go on with me in that station as we stood before; that though he loved me as well as ever, and that I was as agreeable to him, yet the sense of virtue had not so forsaken him as to suffer him to lie with a woman that his brother courted to make his wife; that if he took his leave of me, with a denial from me in this affair, whatever he might do for me in the point of support, grounded on his first engagement of maintaining me, yet he would not have me be surprised that he was obliged to tell me he could not allow himself to see me any more; and that, indeed, I could not expect it of him. I received this last part with some tokens of surprise and disorder, and had much ado to avoid sinking down, for indeed I loved him to an extravagance not easy to imagine; but he perceived my disorder, and entreated me to consider seriously of it; assured me that it was the only way to preserve our mutual affection; that in this station we might love as friends, with the utmost passion, and with a love of relation untainted, free from our own just reproaches, and free from other people's suspicions; that he should ever acknowledge his happiness owing to me; that he would be debtor to me as long as he lived, and would be paying that debt as long as he had breath. Thus he wrought me up, in short, to a kind of hesitationav in the matter; having the dangers on one side represented in lively figures, and, indeed, heightened by my imagination of being turned out to the wide world a mere cast-off whore, for it was no less, and perhaps exposed as such, with little to provide for myself, with no friend, no acquaintance in the whole world, out of that town, and there I could not pretend to stay. All this terrified me to the last degree, and he took care upon all occasions to lay it home to me in the worst colours. On the other hand, he failed not to set forth the easy, prosperous life which I was going to live. He answered all that I could object from affection, and from former engagements, with telling me the necessity that was before us of taking other measures now; and as to his promises of marriage, the nature of things, he said, had put an end to that, by the probability of my being his brother's wife, before the time to which his promises all referred. Thus, in a word, I may say, he reasoned me out of my reason; he conquered all my arguments, and I began to see a danger that I was in, which I had not considered of before, and that was, of being dropped by both of them, and left alone in the world to shift for myself. This, and his persuasion, at length prevailed with me to consent, though with so much reluctance, that it was easy to see I should go to church like a bear to the stake.aw I had some little apprehensions about me, too, lest my new spouse, who, by the way, I had not the least affection for, should be skilful enough to challenge me on another account, upon our first coming to bed together; but whether he did it with a design or not, I know not, but his elder brother took care to make him very much fuddled before he went to bed, so that I had the satisfaction of a drunken bedfellow the first night. How he did it I know not, but I concluded that he certainly contrived it, that his brother might be able to make no judgment of the difference between a maidax and a married woman; nor did he ever entertain any notions of it, or disturb his thoughts about it. I should go back a little here, to where I left off. The elder brother having thus managed me, his next business was to manage his mother, and he never left till he had brought her to acquiesce and be passive, even without acquainting the father, other than by post letters; so that she consented to our marrying privately, leaving her to manage the father afterwards. Then he cajoled with his brother, and persuaded him what service he had done him, and how he had brought his mother to consent, which, though true, was not indeed done to serve him, but to serve himself; but thus diligently did he cheat him, and had the thanks of a faithful friend for shifting off his whore into his brother's arms for a wife. So naturally do men give up honour and justice, and even Christianity, to secure themselves. I must now come back to brother Robin, as we always called him, who having got his mother's consent, as above, came bigay with the news to me, and told me the whole story of it, with a sincerity so visible, that I must confess it grieved me that I must be the instrument to abuse so honest a gentleman. But there was no remedy; he would have me, and I was not obliged to tell him that I was his brother's whore, though I had no other way to put him off; so I came gradually into it, and behold we were married. Modesty forbids me to reveal the secrets of the marriage-bed, but nothing could have happened more suitable to my circumstances than that, as above, my husband was so fuddledaz when he came to bed, that he could not remember in the morning whether he had had any conversationba with me or no, and I was obliged to tell him he had, though, in reality, he had not, that I might be sure he could make no inquiry about anything else. It concerns the story in hand very little to enter into the further particulars of the family, or of myself, for the five years that I lived with this husband, only to observe that I had two children by him, and that at the end of the five years he died. He had been really a very good husband to me, and we lived very agreeably together; but as he had not received much from them, and had in the little time he lived acquired no great matters, so my circumstances were not great, nor was I much mendedbb by the match. Indeed, I had preserved the elder brother's bonds to me to pay me ¬£500, which he offered me for my consent to marry his brother; and this, with what I had saved of the money he formerly gave me, and about as much more by my husband, left me a widow with about ¬£1200 in my pocket. My two children were, indeed, taken happilybc off of my hands by my husband's father and mother, and that was all they got by Mrs. Betty. I confess I was not suitably affected with the loss of my husband; nor can I say that I ever loved him as I ought to have done, or was suitable to the good usage I had from him, for he was a tender, kind, good-humoured man as any woman could desire; but his brother being so always in my sight, at least while we were in the country, was a continual snare to me; and I never was in bed with my husband, but I wished myself in the arms of his brother. And though his brother never offered me the least kindness that way after our marriage, but carried it just as a brother ought to do, yet it was impossible for me to do so to him; in short, I committed adultery and incest with him every day in my desires, which, without doubt, was as effectually criminal. Before my husband died his elder brother was married, and we being then removed to London, were written to by the old lady to come and be at the wedding. My husband went, but I pretended indisposition, so I stayed behind; for, in short, I could not bear the sight of his being given to another woman, though I knew I was never to have him myself. I was now, as above, left loose to the world, and being still young and handsome, as everybody said of me, and I assure you I thought myself so, and with a tolerable fortune in my pocket, I put no small value upon myself. I was courted by several very considerable tradesmen, and particularly very warmly by one, a linen-draper, at whose house, after my husband's death, I took a lodging, his sister being my acquaintance. Here I had all the liberty and opportunity to be gay and appear in company that I could desire, my landlord's sister being one of the maddest, gayest things alive, and not so much mistress of her virtue as I thought at first she had been. She brought me into a world of wild company, and even brought home several persons, such as she liked well enough to gratify, to see her pretty widow. Now, as fame and fools make an assembly, I was here wonderfully caressed,bd had abundance of admirers, and such as called themselves lovers; but I found not one fair proposal among them all. As for their common design, that I understood too well to be drawn into any more snares of that kind. The case was altered with me; I had money in my pocket, and had nothing to say to them. I had been tricked once by that cheat called love, but the game was over; I was resolved now to be married or nothing, and to be well married or not at all. I loved the company, indeed, of men of mirth and wit, and was often entertained with such, as I was also with others; but I found by just observation, that the brightest men came upon the dullest errand; that is to say, the dullest as to what I aimed at. On the other hand, those who came with the best proposals were the dullest and most disagreeable part of the world. I was not averse to a tradesman; but then I would have a tradesman, forsooth, that was something of a gentleman too; that when my husband had a mind to carry me to the court, or to the play, he might become a sword,be and look as like a gentleman as another man; and not like one that had the mark of his apron-strings upon his coat, or the mark of his hat upon his periwig; that should look as if he was set on to his sword, when his sword was put on to him, and that carried his trade in his countenance. Well, at last I found this amphibious creature, this land-water thing, called a gentleman-tradesman; and as a just plague upon my folly, I was catched in the very snare which, as I might say, I laid for myself. This was a draper too, for though my comrade would have bargained for me with her brother, yet when they came to the point, it was, it seems, for a mistress, and I kept true to this notion, that a woman should never be kept for a mistress that had money to make herself a wife. Thus my pride, not my principle, my money, not my virtue, kept me honest; though, as it proved, I found I had much better have been sold by my she-comrade to her brother than have sold myself as I did to a tradesman, that was a rake, gentleman, shopkeeper, and beggar, all together. But I was hurried on (by my fancy to a gentleman) to ruin myself in the grossest manner that ever woman did; for my new husband coming to a lump of money at once, fell into such a profusion of expense, that all I had, and all he had, would not have held it out above one year. He was very fond of me for about a quarter of a year, and what I got by that was, that I had the pleasure of seeing a great deal of my money spent upon myself. "Come, my dear," says he to me one day, "shall we go and take a turn into the country for a week?" "Ay, my dear," says I; "whither would you go?" "I care not whither," says he, "but I have a mind to look like quality for a week; we'll go to Oxford," says he. "How," says I, "shall we go? I am no horsewoman, and 't is too far for a coach." "Too far!" says he; "no place is too far for a coach-and-six. If I carry you out, you shall travel like a duchess." "Hum," says I, "my dear, 't is a frolic; but if you have a mind to it, I don't care." Well, the time was appointed; we had a rich coach, very good horses, a coachman, postillion,bf and two footmen in very good liveries; a gentleman on horseback, and a page with a feather in his hat upon another horse. The servants all called him my lord, and I was her honour the Countess, and thus we travelled to Oxford, and a pleasant journey we had; for, give him his due, not a beggar alive knew better how to be a lord than my husband. We saw all the rarities at Oxford;11 talked with two or three fellows of colleges about putting a nephew, that was left to his lordship's care, to the university, and of their being his tutors. We diverted ourselves with bantering several other poor scholars, with the hopes of being at least his lordship's chaplain, and putting on a scarf;bg and thus having lived like quality indeed, as to expense, we went away for Northampton,bh and, in a word, in about twelve days' ramble came home again, to the tune of about ¬£93 expense. Vanity is the perfection of a fop.bi My husband had this excellence, that he valued nothing of expense. As his history, you may be sure, has very little weight in it, 't is enough to tell you that in about two years and a quarter he broke, got into a sponging-house,12 being arrested in an action too heavybj for him to give bail to, so he sent for me to come to him. It was no surprise to me, for I had foreseen some time before that all was going to wreck, and had been taking care to reserve something, if I could, for myself; but when he sent for me, he behaved much better than I expected. He told me plainly he had played the fool, and suffered himself to be surprised, which he might have prevented; that now he foresaw he could not stand it, and therefore he would have me go home, and in the night take away everything I had in the house of any value, and secure it; and after that, he told me that if I could get away ¬£100 or ¬£200 in goods out of the shop, I should do it; "only," says he, "let me know nothing of it, neither what you take or whither you carry it; for as for me," says he, "I am resolved to get out of this house and be gone; and if you never hear of me more, my dear," says he, "I wish you well; I am only sorry for the injury I have done you." He said some very handsome things to me indeed at parting; for I told you he was a gentleman, and that was all the benefit I had of his being so; that he used me very handsomely, even to the last, only spent all I had, and left me to rob the creditors for something to subsist on. However, I did as he bade me, that you may be sure; and having thus taken my leave of him, I never saw him more, for he found means to break out of the bailiff's house that night, or the next; how, I knew not, for I could come at no knowledge of anything, more than this, that he came home about three o'clock in the morning, caused the rest of his goods to be removed into the Mint,13 and the shop to be shut up; and having raised what money he could, he got over to France, from whence I had one or two letters from him, and no more. I did not see him when he came home, for he having given me such instructions as above, and I having made the best of my time, I had no more business back again at the house, not knowing but I might have been stopped there by the creditors; for a commission of bankruptbk being soon after issued, they might have stopped me by orders from the commissioners. But my husband, having desperately got out from the bailiff's by letting himself down from almost the top of the house to the top of another building, and leaping from thence, which was almost two stories, and which was enough indeed to have broken his neck, he came home and got away his goods before the creditors could come to seize; that is to say, before they could get out the commission, and be ready to send their officers to take possession. My husband was so civil to me, for still I say he was much of a gentleman, that in the first letter he wrote me, he let me know where he had pawned twenty pieces of fine holland for ¬£30, which were worth above ¬£90, and enclosed me the token for the taking them up, paying the money, which I did, and made in time above ¬£100 of them, having leisure to cut them, and sell them to private families, as opportunity offered. However, with all this, and all that I had secured before, I found, upon casting things up, my case was very much altered, and my fortune much lessened; for, including the hollands and a parcel of fine muslins, which I carried off before, and some plate and other things, I found I could hardly muster up ¬£500; and my condition was very odd, for though I had no child (I had had one by my gentleman draper, but it was buried), yet I was a widow bewitched, I had a husband and no husband, and I could not pretend to marry again, though I knew well enough my husband would never see England any more, if he lived fifty years. Thus, I say, I was limited from marriage, what offer soever might be made me; and I had not one friend to advise with in the condition I was in, at least not one whom I could trust the secret of my circumstances to; for if the commissioners were to have been informed where I was, I should have been fetched up, and all I had saved be taken away. Upon these apprehensions, the first thing I did was to go quite out of my knowledge,bl and go by another name. This I did effectually, for I went into the Mint too, took lodgings in a very private place, dressed me up in the habit of a widow, and called myself Mrs. Flanders. Here, however, I concealed myself, and though my new acquaintance knew nothing of me, yet I soon got a great deal of company about me; and whether it be that women are scarce among the people that generally are to be found there, or that some consolations in the miseries of that place are more requisite than on other occasions, I soon found that an agreeable woman was exceedingly valuable among the sons of affliction there; and that those that could not pay half-a-crown in the pound to their creditors, and run in debt at the sign of the Bull for their dinners, would yet find money for a supper, if they liked the woman. However, I kept myself safe yet, though I began, like my Lord Rochester's mistress,14 that loved his company, but would not admit him further, to have the scandal of a whore without the joy; and upon this score, tired with the place, and with the company too, I began to think of removing. It was indeed a subject of strange reflection to me, to see men in the most perplexed circumstances, who were reduced some degrees below being ruined, whose families were objects of their own terror and other people's charity, yet while a penny lasted, nay, even beyond it, endeavouring to drown their sorrow in their wickedness; heaping up more guilt upon themselves, labouring to forget former things, which now it was the proper time to remember, making more work for repentance, and sinning on, as a remedy for sin past. But it is none of my talent to preach; these men were too wicked even for me. There was something horrid and absurd in their way of sinning, for it was all a force even upon themselves; they did not only act against conscience, but against nature, and nothing was more easy than to see how sighs would interrupt their songs, and paleness and anguish sit upon their brows, in spite of the forced smiles they put on; nay, sometimes it would break out at their very mouths, when they had parted with their money for a lewd treat or a wicked embrace. I have heard them, turning about, fetch a deep sigh, and cry, "What a dog am I! Well, Betty, my dear, I'll drink thy health, though;" meaning the honest wife, that perhaps had not a half-crown for herself and three or four children. The next morning they were at their penitentialsbm again, and perhaps the poor weeping wife comes over to him, either brings him some account of what his creditors are doing, and how she and the children are turned out of doors, or some other dreadful news; and this adds to his self-reproaches; but when he has thought and pored on it till he is almost mad, having no principles to support him, nothing within him or above him to comfort him, but finding it all darkness on every side, he flies to the same relief again, viz., to drink it away, debauch it away, and falling into company of men in just the same condition with himself, he repeats the crime, and thus he goes every day one step onward of his way to destruction. I was not wicked enough for such fellows as these. Yet, on the contrary, I began to consider here very seriously what I had to do; how things stood with me, and what course I ought to take. I knew I had no friends, no, not one friend or relation in the world; and that little I had left apparently wasted, which when it was gone, I saw nothing but misery and starving was before me. Upon these considerations, I say, and filled with horror at the place I was in, I resolved to be gone. I had made an acquaintance with a sober, good sort of a woman, who was a widow too, like me, but in better circumstances. Her husband had been a captain of a ship, and having had the misfortune to be cast away coming home from the West Indies, was so reduced by the loss, that though he had saved his life then, it broke his heart, and killed him afterwards; and his widow being pursued by the creditors, was forced to take shelter in the Mint. She soon made things up with the help of friends, and was at liberty again; and finding that I rather was there to be concealed, than by any particular prosecutions, and finding also that I agreed with her, or rather she with me, in a just abhorrence of the place and of the company, she invited me to go home with her, till I could put myself in some posture of settling in the world to my mind; withal telling me, that it was ten to one but some good captain of a ship might take a fancy to me, and court me, in that part of the town where she lived. I accepted of her offer, and was with her half a year, and should have been longer, but in that interval what she proposed to me happened to herself, and she married very much to her advantage. But whose fortune soever was upon the increase, mine seemed to be upon the wane, and I found nothing present, except two or three boatswains,bn or such fellows, but as for the commanders, they were generally of two sorts. 1. Such as, having good business, that is to say, a good ship, resolved not to marry, but with advantage. 2. Such as, being out of employ, wanted a wife to help them to a ship; I mean (1) a wife who, having some money, could enable them to hold a good part of a ship themselves, so to encourage owners to come in; or (2) a wife who, if she had not money, had friends who were concerned in shipping, and so could help to put the young man into a good ship; and neither of these was my case, so I looked like one that was to lie on hand.bo This knowledge I soon learned by experience, viz., that the state of things was altered as to matrimony, that marriages were here the consequences of politicbp schemes, for forming interests, carrying on business, and that love had no share, or but very little, in the matter. That as my sister-in-law at Colchester had said, beauty, wit, manners, sense, good humour, good behaviour, education, virtue, piety, or any other qualification, whether of body or mind, had no power to recommend; that money only made a woman agreeable; that men chose mistresses indeed by the gust of their affection, and it was requisite for a whore to be handsome, well-shaped, have a good mien, and a graceful behaviour; but that for a wife, no deformity would shock the fancy, no ill qualities the judgment; the money was the thing; the portion was neither crooked, or monstrous, but the money was always agreeable, whatever the wife was. On the other hand, as the market ran all on the men's side, I found the women had lost the privilege of saying no; that it was a favour now for a woman to have the question asked, and if any young lady had so much arrogance as to counterfeit a negative, she never had the opportunity of denying twice, much less of recovering that false step, and accepting what she had seemed to decline. The men had such choice everywhere, that the case of the women was very unhappy; for they seemed to ply at every door, and if the man was by great chance refused at one house, he was sure to be received at the next. Besides this, I observed that the men made no scruple to set themselves out and to go a-fortune-hunting, as they call it, when they had really no fortune themselves to demand it, or merit to deserve it; and they carried it so high,bq that a woman was scarce allowed to inquire after the character or estate of the person that pretended to her. This I had an example of in a young lady at the next house to me, and with whom I had contracted an intimacy; she was courted by a young captain, and though she had near ¬£2000 to her fortune, she did but inquire of some of his neighbours about his character, his morals, or substance, and he took occasion at the next visit to let her know, truly, that he took it very ill, and that he should not give her the trouble of his visits any more. I heard of it, and I had begun my acquaintance with her. I went to see her upon it; she entered into a close conversation with me about it, and unbosomed herself very freely. I perceived presently that though she thought herself very ill used, yet she had no power to resent it; that she was exceedingly piqued she had lost him, and particularly that another of less fortune had gained him. I fortified her mind against such a meanness, as I called it; I told her, that as low as I was in the world, I would have despised a man that should think I ought to take him upon his own recommendation only; also I told her, that as she had a good fortune, she had no need to stoop to the disaster of the times; that it was enough that the men could insult us that had but little money, but if she suffered such an affront to pass upon her without resenting it, she would be rendered low prized upon all occasions; that a woman can never want an opportunity to be revenged of a man that has used her ill, and that there were ways enough to humble such a fellow as that, or else certainly women were the most unhappy creatures in the world. She was very well pleased with the discourse, and told me seriously that she would be very glad to make him sensiblebr of her resentment, and either to bring him on again or have the satisfaction of her revenge being as public as possible. I told her, that if she would take my advice, I would tell her how she should obtain her wishes in both those things; and that I would engage I would bring the man to her door again, and make him beg to be let in. She smiled at that, and soon let me see, that if he came to her door, her resentment was not so great to let him stand long there. However, she listened very willingly to my offer of advice; so I told her that the first thing she ought to do was a piece of justice to herself, namely, that whereas he had reported among the ladies that he had left her, and pretended to give the advantage of the negative to himself, she should take care to have it well spread among the women, which she could not fail of an opportunity to do, that she had inquired into his circumstances, and found he was not the man he pretended to be. "Let them be told, too, madam," said I, "that he was not the man you expected, and that you thought it was not safe to meddle with him; that you heard he was of an ill temper, and that he boasted how he had used the women ill upon many occasions, and that particularly he was debauched in his morals," &c. The last of which, indeed, had some truth in it; but I did not find that she seemed to like him much the worse for that part. She came most readily into all this, and immediately she went to work to find instruments.bs She had very little difficulty in the search, for telling her story in general to a couple of her gossips, it was the chat of the tea-table all over that part of the town, and I met with it wherever I visited; also, as it was known that I was acquainted with the young lady herself, my opinion was asked very often, and I confirmed it with all the necessary aggravations, and set out his character in the blackest colours; and as a piece of secret intelligence, I added what the gossips knew nothing of, viz., that I had heard he was in very bad circumstances; that he was under a necessity of a fortune to support his interest with the owners of the ship he commanded; that his own part was not paid for, and if it was not paid quickly, his owners would put him out of the ship, and his chief mate was likely to command it, who offered to buy that part which the captain had promised to take. I added, for I was heartily piqued at the rogue, as I called him, that I had heard a rumour too, that he had a wife alive at Plymouth, and another in the West Indies, a thing which they all knew was not very uncommon for such kind of gentlemen. This worked as we both desired it, for presently the young lady at the next door, who had a father and mother that governed both her and her fortune, was shut up, and her father forbid him the house. Also in one place more the woman had the courage, however strange it was, to say no; and he could try nowhere but he was reproached with his pride, and that he pretendedbt not to give the women leave to inquire into his character, and the like. By this time he began to be sensible of his mistake; and seeing all the women on that side of the water alarmed, he went over to Ratcliff,bu and got access to some of the ladies there; but though the young women there too were, according to the fate of the day, pretty willing to be asked, yet such was his ill-luck, that his character followed him over the water; so that though he might have had wives enough, yet it did not happen among the women that had good fortunes, which was what he wanted.bv But this was not all; she very ingeniously managed another thing herself, for she got a young gentleman, who was a relation, to come and visit her two or three times a week in a very fine chariot and good liveries, and her two agents, and I also, presently spread a report all over that this gentleman came to court her; that he was a gentleman of a thousand pounds a year, and that he was fallen in love with her, and that she was going to her aunt's in the city, because it was inconvenient for the gentleman to come to her with his coach to Rotherhithe,bw the streets being so narrow and difficult. This took immediately. The captain was laughed at in all companies, and was ready to hang himself; he tried all the ways possible to come at her again, and wrote the most passionate letters to her in the world; and in short, by great application, obtained leave to wait on her again, as he said, only to clear his reputation. At this meeting she had her full revenge of him; for she told him, she wondered what he took her to be, that she should admit any man to a treaty of so much consequence as that of marriage without inquiring into his circumstances; that if he thought she was to be huffedbx into wedlock, and that she was in the same circumstances which her neighbours might be in, viz., to take up with the first good Christian that came, he was mistaken; that, in a word, his character was really bad, or he was very ill beholden to his neighbours; and that unless he could clear up some points, in which she had justly been prejudiced, she had no more to say to him, but give him the satisfaction of knowing that she was not afraid to say no, either to him, or any man else. With that she told him what she had heard, or rather raised herself by my means, of his character; his not having paid for the part he pretended to own of the ship he commanded; of the resolution of his owners to put him out of the command, and to put his mate in his stead; and of the scandal raised on his morals; his having been reproached with such-and-such women, and his having a wife at Plymouth, and another in the West Indies, and the like; and she asked him whether she had not good reason, if these things were not cleared up, to refuse him, and to insist upon having satisfaction in points so significant as they were. He was so confounded at her discourse that he could not answer a word, and she began to believe that all was true, by his disorder, though she knew that she had been the raiser of these reports herself. After some time he recovered a little, and from that time was the most humble, modest, and importunate man alive in his courtship. She asked him if he thought she was so at her last shiftby that she could or ought to bear such treatment, and if he did not see that she did not want those who thought it worth their while to come farther to her than he did; meaning the gentleman whom she had brought to visit her by way of sham. She brought him by these tricks to submit to all possible measures to satisfy her, as well of his circumstances as of his behaviour. He brought her undeniable evidence of his having paid for his part of the ship; he brought her certificates from his owners, that the report of their intending to remove him from the command of the ship was false and groundless; in short, he was quite the reverse of what he was before. Thus I convinced her, that if the men made their advantage of our sex in the affair of marriage, upon the supposition of there being such a choice to be had, and of the women being so easy, it was only owing to this, that the women wanted courage to maintain their ground, and that, according to my Lord Rochester?Äî "A woman's ne'er so ruined but she can Revenge herself on her undoer, man."15 After these things this young lady played her part so well, that though she resolved to have him, and that indeed having him was the main bent of her design, yet she made his obtaining her to be to him the most difficult thing in the world; and this she did, not by a haughty, reserved carriage, but by a just policy, playing back upon him his own game; for as he pretended, by a kind of lofty carriage to place himself above the occasion of a character,bz she broke with himca upon that subject, and at the same time that she made him submit to all possible inquiry after his affairs, she apparently shut the door against his looking into her own. It was enough to him to obtain her for a wife. As to what she had, she told him plainly, that as he knew her circumstances, it was but just she should know his; and though at the same time he had only known her circumstances by common fame, yet he had made so many protestations of his passion for her, that he could ask no more but her hand to his grand request, and the like ramble according to the custom of lovers. In short, he left himself no room to ask any more questions about her estate, and she took the advantage of it, for she placed part of her fortune so in trustees, without letting him know anything of it, that it was quite out of his reach, and made him be very well contented with the rest. It is true she was pretty well besides, that is to say, she had about ¬£1400 in money, which she gave him; and the other, after some time, she brought to light as a perquisite to herself, which he was to accept as a mighty favour, seeing, though it was not to be his, it might ease him in the article of her particular expenses; and I must add, that by this conduct, the gentleman himself became not only more humble in his applications to her to obtain her, but also was much the more an obliging husband when he had her. I cannot but remind the ladies how much they place themselves below the common station of a wife, which, if I may be allowed not to be partial, is low enough already; I say, they place themselves below their common station, and prepare their own mortifications, by their submitting so to be insulted by the men beforehand, which I confess I see no necessity of. This relation may serve, therefore, to let the ladies see, that the advantage is not so much on the other side as the men think it is; and that though it may be true, the men have but too much choice among us, and that some women may be found who will dishonour themselves, be cheap, and too easy to come at, yet if they will have women worth having, they may find them as uncomeatable as ever, and that those that are otherwise have often such deficiencies, when had, as rather recommend the ladies that are difficult, than encourage the men to go on with their easy courtship, and expect wives equally valuable that will come at first call. Nothing is more certain than that the ladies always gain of the men by keeping their ground, and letting their pretended lovers see they can resent being slighted, and that they are not afraid of saying no. They insult us mightily, with telling us of the number of women; that the wars, and the sea, and trade, and other incidents have carried the men so much away, that there is no proportion between the numbers of the sexes; but I am far from granting that the number of the women is so great, or the number of the men so small; but if they will have me tell the truth, the disadvantage of the women is a terrible scandal upon the men, and it lies here only; namely, that the age is so wicked, and the sex so debauched, that, in short, the number of such men as an honest woman ought to meddle with is small indeed, and it is but here and there that a man is to be found who is fit for an honest woman to venture upon. But the consequence even of that too amounts to no more than this, that women ought to be the more nice,cb for how do we know the just character of the man that makes the offer? To say that the woman should be the more easy on this occasion, is to say we should be the forwarder to venture because of the greatness of the danger, which is very absurd. On the contrary, the women have ten thousand times the more reason to be wary and backward, by how much the hazard of being betrayed is the greater; and would the ladies act the wary part, they would discover every cheat that offered; for, in short, the lives of very few men now-a-days will bear a character; and if the ladies do but make a little inquiry, they would soon be able to distinguish the men and deliver themselves. As for women that do not think their own safety worth their own thought, that, impatient of their present state, run into matrimony as a horse rushes into the battle, I can say nothing to them but this, that they are a sort of ladies that are to be prayed for among the rest of distempered people, and they look like people that venture their estates in a lottery where there is a hundred thousand blanks to one prize. No man of common-sense will value a woman the less for not giving up herself at the first attack, or for not accepting his proposal without inquiring into his person or character; on the contrary, he must think her the weakest of all creatures, as the rate of men now goes; in short, he must have a very contemptible opinion of her capacities, that having but one cast for her life, shall cast that life away at once, and make matrimony, like death, be a leap in the dark.cc I would fain have the conduct of my sex a little regulated in this particular, which is the same thing in which, of all the parts of life, I think at this time we suffer most in; 't is nothing but lack of courage, the fear of not being married at all, and of that frightful state of life called an old maid. This, I say, is the woman's snare; but would the ladies once but get above that fear, and manage rightly, they would more certainly avoid it by standing their ground, in a case so absolutely necessary to their felicity, than by exposing themselves as they do; and if they did not marry so soon, they would make themselves amends by marrying safer. She is always married too soon who gets a bad husband, and she is never married too late who gets a good one; in a word, there is no woman, deformity or lost reputation excepted, but if she manages well may be married safely one time or other; but if she precipitates herself, it is ten thousand to one but she is undone. But I come now to my own case, in which there was at this time no little nicety. The circumstances I was in made the offer of a good husband the most necessary thing in the world to me, but I found soon that to be made cheap and easy was not the way. It soon began to be found that the widow had no fortune, and to say this was to say all that was ill of me, being well-bred, handsome, witty, modest, and agreeable; all which I had allowed to my character, whether justly or no is not to the purpose; I say, all these would not do without the dross.cd In short, the widow, they said, had no money. I resolved, therefore, that it was necessary to change my station, and make a new appearance in some other place, and even to pass by another name if I found occasion. I communicated my thoughts to my intimate friend, the captain's lady, whom I had so faithfully served in her case with the captain, and who was as ready to serve me in the same kind as I could desire. I made no scruple to lay my circumstances open to her; my stock was but low, for I had made but about ¬£540 at the close of my last affair, and I had wasted some of that; however, I had about ¬£460 left, a great many very rich clothes, a gold watch, and some jewels, though of no extraordinary value, and about ¬£30 or ¬£40 left in linen not disposed of. My dear and faithful friend, the captain's wife, was so sensible of the service I had done her in the affair above, that she was not only a steady friend to me, but, knowing my circumstances, she frequently made me presents as money came into her hands, such as fully amounted to a maintenance, so that I spent none of my own; and at last she made this unhappy proposal to me, viz., that as we had observed, as above, how the men made no scruple to set themselves out as persons meriting a woman of fortune of their own, it was but just to deal with them in their own way, and if it was possible, to deceive the deceiver. The captain's lady, in short, put this project into my head, and told me if I would be ruled by her I should certainly get a husband of fortune, without leaving him any room to reproach me with want of my own. I told her that I would give up myself wholly to her directions, and that I would have neither tongue to speak or feet to step in that affair but as she should direct me, depending that she would extricate me out of every difficulty that she brought me into, which she said she would answer for. The first step she put me upon was to call her cousin, and go to a relation's house of hers in the country, where she directed me, and where she brought her husband to visit me; and calling me cousin, she worked matters so about, that her husband and she together invited me most passionately to come to town and live with them, for they now lived in a quite different place from where they were before. In the next place, she tells her husband that I had at least ¬£1500 fortune, and that I was like to have a great deal more. It was enough to tell her husband this; there needed nothing on my side. I was but to sit still and wait the event, for it presently went all over the neighbourhood that the young widow at Captain?Äîs was a fortune, that she had at least ¬£1500, and perhaps a great deal more, and that the captain said so; and if the captain was asked at any time about me, he made no scruple to affirm it, though he knew not one word of the matter other than that his wife had told him so; and in this he thought no harm, for he really believed it to be so. With the reputation of this fortune, I presently found myself blessed with admirers enough (and that I had my choice of men), as they said they were, which, by the way, confirms what I was saying before. This being my case, I, who had a subtle game to play, had nothing now to do but to single out from them all the properest man that might be for my purpose; that is to say, the man who was most likely to depend upon the hearsay of fortune, and not inquire too far into the particulars; and unless I did this I did nothing, for my case would not bear much inquiry. I picked out my man without much difficulty, by the judgment I made of his way of courting me. I had let him run on with his protestations that he loved me above all the world; that if I would make him happy, that was enough; all which I knew was upon supposition that I was very rich, though I never told him a word of it myself. This was my man; but I was to try him to the bottom; and indeed in that consisted my safety, for if he balked, I knew I was undone, as surely as he was undone if he took me; and if I did not make some scruple about his fortune, it was the way to lead him to raise some about mine; and first, therefore, I pretended on all occasions to doubt his sincerity, and told him perhaps he only courted me for my fortune. He stopped my mouth in that part with the thunder of his protestations as above, but still I pretended to doubt. One morning he pulls off his diamond ring, and writes upon the glass of the sash in my chamber this line:?Äî "You I love, and you alone." I read it, and asked him to lend me the ring, with which I wrote under it, thus:?Äî "And so in love says every one." He takes his ring again, and writes another line thus:?Äî "Virtue alone is an estate." I borrowed it again, and I wrote under it:?Äî "But money's virtue, gold is fate." He coloured as red as fire to see me turn so quick upon him, and in a kind of rage told me he would conquer me, and wrote again thus:?Äî "I scorn your gold, and yet I love." I ventured all upon the last cast of poetry, as you'll see, for I wrote boldly under his last:?Äî "I'm poor; let's see how kind you'll prove." This was a sad truth to me; whether he believed me or no I could not tell; I supposed then that he did not. However, he flew to me, took me in his arms, and, kissing me very eagerly, and with the greatest passion imaginable, he held me fast till he called for a pen and ink, and told me he could not wait the tedious writing on a glass, but pulling out a piece of paper, he began and wrote again:?Äî "Be mine with all your poverty." I took his pen, and followed immediately, thus:?Äî "Yet secretly you hope I lie." He told me that was unkind, because it was not just, and that I put him upon contradicting me, which did not consist with good manners, and, therefore, since I had insensibly drawn him into this poetical scribble, he begged I would not oblige him to break it off. So he writes again:?Äî "Let love alone be our debate." I wrote again:?Äî "She loves enough that does not hate." This he took for a favour, and so laid down the cudgels, that is to say, the pen; I say, he took it for a favour, and a mighty one it was, if he had known all. However, he took it as I meant it, that is, to let him think I was inclined to go on with him, as indeed I had reason to do, for he was the best-humoured merry sort of a fellow that I ever met with; and I often reflected how doubly criminal it was to deceive such a man; but that necessity, which pressed me to a settlement suitable to my condition, was my authority for it; and certainly his affection to me, and the goodness of his temper, however they might argue against using him ill, yet they strongly argued to me that he would better take the disappointment than some fiery-tempered wretch, who might have nothing to recommend him but those passions which would serve only to make a woman miserable. Besides, though I had jested with him (as he supposed it) so often about my poverty, yet when he found it to be true, he had foreclosed all manner of objection, seeing, whether he was in jest or in earnest, he had declared he took me without any regard to my portion, and, whether I was in jest or in earnest, I had declared myself to be very poor; so that, in a word, I had him fast both ways; and though he might say afterwards he was cheated, yet he could never say that I had cheated him. He pursued me close after this, and as I saw there was no need to fear losing him, I played the indifferent part with him longer than prudence might otherwise have dictated to me; but I considered how much this caution and indifference would give me the advantage over him when I should come to own my circumstances to him; and I managed it the more warily, because I found he inferred from thence that I either had the more money or the more judgment, and would not venture at all. I took the freedom one day to tell him that it was true I had received the compliment of a lover from him, namely, that he would take me without inquiring into my fortune, and I would make him a suitable return in this, viz., that I would make as little inquiry into his as consisted with reason, but I hoped he would allow me to ask some questions, which he should answer or not as he thought fit; one of these questions related to our manner of living, and the place where, because I had heard he had a great plantation in Virginia, and I told him I did not care to be transported. He began from this discourse to let me voluntarily into all his affairs, and to tell me in a frank, open way all his circumstances, by which I found he was very well to pass in the world; but that great part of his estate consisted of three plantations, which he had in Virginia, which brought him in a very good income of about ¬£300 a year, but that if he was to live upon them, would bring him in four times as much. "Very well," thought I; "you shall carry me thither, then, as soon as you please, though I won't tell you so beforehand." I jested with him about the figure he would make in Virginia; but I found he would do anything I desired, so I turned my tale. I told him I had good reason not to desire to go there to live; because if his plantations were worth so much there, I had not a fortune suitable to a gentleman of ¬£1200 a year, as he said his estate would be. He replied, he did not ask what my fortune was; he had told me from the beginning he would not, and he would be as good as his word; but whatever it was, he assured me he would never desire me to go to Virginia with him, or go thither himself without me, unless I made it my choice. All this, you may be sure, was as I wished, and indeed nothing could have happened more perfectly agreeable. I carried it on as far as this with a sort of indifferency that he often wondered at, and I mention it the rather to intimate again to the ladies that nothing but want of courage for such an indifferency makes our sex so cheap, and prepares them to be ill used as they are; would they venture the loss of a pretending fop now and then, who carries it high upon the point of his own merit, they would certainly be slighted less and courted more. Had I discoveredce really what my great fortune was, and that in all I had not full ¬£500 when he expected ¬£1500, yet I hooked him so fast, and played him so long, that I was satisfied he would have had me in my worst circumstances; and indeed it was less a surprise to him when he learnt the truth than it would have been, because having not the least blame to lay on me, who had carried it with an air of indifference to the last, he could not say one word, except that indeed he thought it had been more, but that, if it had been less, he did not repent his bargain; only that he should not be able to maintain me so well as he intended. In short, we were married, and very happily married on my side, I assure you, as to the man; for he was the best-humoured man that ever woman had, but his circumstances were not so good as I imagined, as, on the other hand, he had not bettered himself so much as he expected. When we were married, I was shrewdly put to it to bring him that little stock I had, and to let him see it was no more; but there was a necessity for it, so I took my opportunity one day when we were alone, to enter into a short dialogue with him about it. "My dear," said I, "we have been married a fortnight; is it not time to let you know whether you have got a wife with something or with nothing?" "Your own time for that, my dear," says he; "I am satisfied I have got the wife I love; I have not troubled you much," says he, "with my inquiry after it." "That's true," said I, "but I have a great difficulty about it, which I scarce know how to manage." "What's that, my dear?" says he. "Why," says I, " 't is a little hard upon me, and 't is harder upon you; I am told that Captain?Äî" (meaning my friend's husband) "has told you I had a great deal more than ever I pretended to have, and I am sure I never employed him so to do." "Well," says he, "Captain?Äîmay have told me so, but what then? If you have not so much, that may lie at his door, but you never told me what you had, so I have no reason to blame you if you have nothing at all." "That is so just," said I, "and so generous, that it makes my having but a little a double affliction to me." "The less you have, my dear," says he, "the worse for us both; but I hope your affliction is not caused for fear I should be unkind to you for want of a portion. No, no, if you have nothing, tell me plainly; I may perhaps tell the captain he has cheated me, but I can never say you have, for did not you give it under your hand that you was poor? and so I ought to expect you to be." "Well," said I, "my dear, I am glad I have not been concerned in deceiving you before marriage. If I deceive you since, 't is ne'er the worse; that I am poor, 't is too true, but not so poor as to have nothing neither;" so I pulled out some bank bills and gave him about ¬£160. "There is something, my dear," says I, "and not quite all neither." I had brought him so near to expecting nothing, by what I had said before, that the money, though the sum was small in itself, was doubly welcome; he owned it was more than he looked for, and that he did not question by my discourse to him, but that my fine clothes, gold watch, and a diamond ring or two, had been all my fortune. I let him please himself with that ¬£160 two or three days, and then having been abroad that day, and as if I had been to fetch it, I brought him ¬£100 more home in gold, and told him there was a little more portion for him; and, in short, in about a week more, I brought him ¬£180 more, and about ¬£60 in linen, which I made him believe I had been obliged to take with the ¬£100 which I gave him in gold, as a compositioncf for a debt of ¬£600, being little more than five shillings in the pound, and overvalued too. "And now, my dear," says I to him, "I am very sorry to tell you that I have given you my whole fortune," I added, that if the person who had my ¬£600 had not abused me, I had been worth ¬£1000 to him, but that as it was, I had been faithful, and reserved nothing to myself, but if it had been more he should have had it. He was so obliged by the manner, and so pleased with the sum, for he had been in a terrible fright lest it had been nothing at all, that he accepted it very thankfully. And thus I got over the fraud of passing for a fortune without money, and cheating a man into marrying me on pretence of it; which, by the way, I take to be one of the most dangerous steps a woman can take, and in which she runs the most hazards of being ill-used afterwards. My husband, to give him his due, was a man of infinite good nature, but he was no fool; and finding his income not suited to the manner of living which he had intended, if I had brought him what he expected, and being under a disappointment in his return of his plantations in Virginia, he discovered many times his inclination of going over to Virginia, to live upon his own; and often would be magnifying the way of living there, how cheap, how plentiful, how pleasant, and the like. I began presently to understand his meaning, and I took him up very plainly one morning, and told him that I did so; that I found his estate turned to no account at this distance, compared to what it would do if he lived upon the spot, and that I found he had a mind to go and live there; that I was sensible he had been disappointed in a wife, and that finding his expectations not answered that way, I could do no less, to make him amends, than tell him that I was very willing to go to Virginia with him and live there. He said a thousand kind things to me upon the subject of my making such a proposal to him. He told me that though he was disappointed in his expectations of a fortune, he was not disappointed in a wife, and that I was all to him that a wife could be, but that this offer was so kind, that it was more than he could express. To bring the story short, we agreed to go. He told me that he had a very good house there, well furnished; that his mother lived in it, and one sister, which was all the relations he had; that as soon as he came there, they would remove to another house, which was her own for life, and his after her decease; so that I should have all the house to myself; and I found it all exactly as he said. We put on board the ship which we went in a large quantity of good furniture for our house, with stores of linen and other necessaries, and a good cargo for sale, and away we went. To give an account of the manner of our voyage, which was long and full of dangers, is out of my way; I kept no journal, neither did my husband. All that I can say is, that after a terrible passage, frighted twice with dreadful storms, and once with what was still more terrible, I mean a pirate, who came on board, and took away almost all our provisions; and which would have been beyond all to me, they had once taken my husband, but by entreaties were prevailed with to leave him;?ÄîI say, after all these terrible things, we arrived in York Rivercg in Virginia, and coming to our plantation, we were received with all the tenderness and affection, by my husband's mother, that could be expressed. We lived here all together, my mother-in-law, at my entreaty, continuing in the house, for she was too kind a mother to be parted with; my husband likewise continued the same at first, and I thought myself the happiest creature alive, when an odd and surprising event put an end to all that felicity in a moment, and rendered my condition the most uncomfortable in the world. My mother was a mighty cheerful, good-humoured old woman?ÄîI may call her so, for her son was above thirty; I say she was very pleasant, good company, and used to entertain me, in particular, with abundance of stories to divert me, as well of the country we were in as of the people. Among the rest, she often told me how the greatest part of the inhabitants of that colony came thither in very indifferent circumstances from England; that, generally speaking, they were of two sorts; either, first, such as were brought over by masters of ships to be sold as servants; or, second, such as are transported after having been found guilty of crimes punishable with death. "When they come here," says she, "we make no difference; the planters buy them, and they work together in the field, till their time is out. When't is expired," said she, "they have encouragement given them to plant for themselves; for they have a certain number of acres of land allotted them by the country, and they go to work to clear and cure the land, and then to plant it with tobacco and corn for their own use; and as the merchants will trust them with tools and necessaries, upon the credit of their crop before it is grown, so they again plant every year a little more than the year before, and so buy whatever they want with the crop that is before them. Hence, child," says she, "many a Newgate bird becomes a great man, and we have," continued she, "several justices of the peace, officers of the trained bands,ch and magistrates of the towns they live in, that have been burnt in the hand."ci She was going on with that part of the story, when her own part in it interrupted her, and with a great deal of good-humoured confidence, she told me she was one of the second sort of inhabitants herself; that she came away openly, having ventured too far in a particular case, so that she was become a criminal; "And here's the mark of it, child," says she, and showed me a very fine white arm and hand, but branded in the inside of the hand, as in such cases it must be. This story was very moving to me, but my mother, smiling, said, "You need not think such a thing strange, daughter, for some of the best men in the country are burnt in the hand, and they are not ashamed to own it. There's Major?Äî," says she, "he was an eminent pickpocket; there's Justice Ba?Äîr, was a shoplifter, and both of them were burnt in the hand; and I could name you several such as they are." We had frequent discourses of this kind, and abundance of instances she gave me of the like. After some time, as she was telling some stories of one that was transported but a few weeks ago, I began in an intimate kind of way to ask her to tell me something of her own story, which she did with the utmost plainness and sincerity; how she had fallen into very ill company in London in her young days, occasioned by her mother sending her frequently to carry victuals to a kinswoman of hers who was a prisoner in Newgate, in a miserable starving condition, who was afterwards condemned to die, but having got respite by pleading her belly, perished afterwards in the prison. Here my mother-in-law ran out in a long account of the wicked practices in that dreadful place. "And, child," says my mother, "perhaps you may know little of it, or, it may be, have heard nothing about it; but depend upon it," says she, "we all know here that there are more thieves and rogues made by that one prison of Newgate16 than by all the clubs and societies of villains in the nation; 't is that cursed place," says my mother, "that half peoples this colony." Here she went on with her own story so long, and in so particular a manner, that I began to be very uneasy; but coming to one particular that required telling her name, I thought I should have sunk down in the place. She perceived I was out of order, and asked me if I was not well, and what ailed me. I told her I was so affected with the melancholy story she had told that it had overcome me, and I begged of her to talk no more of it. "Why, my dear," says she very kindly, "what need these things trouble you? These passages were long before your time, and they give me no trouble at all now; nay, I look back on them with a particular satisfaction, as they have been a means to bring me to this place." Then she went on to tell me how she fell into a good family, where behaving herself well, and her mistress dying, her master married her, by whom she had my husband and his sister, and that by her diligence and good management after her husband's death, she had improved the plantations to such a degree as they then were, so that most of the estate was of her getting, not of her husband's, for she had been a widow upwards of sixteen years. I heard this part of the story with very little attention, because I wanted much to retire and give vent to my passions; and let any one judge what must be the anguish of my mind when I came to reflect that this was certainly no more or less than my own mother, and that I had now had two children, and was big with another by my own brother, and lay with him still every night. I was now the most unhappy of all women in the world. Oh! had the story never been told me, all had been well; it had been no crime to have lain with my husband, if I had known nothing of it. I had now such a load on my mind that it kept me perpetually waking; to reveal it I could not find would be to any purpose, and yet to conceal it would be next to impossible; nay, I did not doubt but I should talk in my sleep, and tell my husband of it whether I would or no. If I discovered it, the least thing I could expect was to lose my husband, for he was too nice and too honest a man to have continued my husband after he had known I had been his sister; so that I was perplexed to the last degree. I leave it to any man to judge what difficulties presented to my view. I was away from my native country, at a distance prodigious, and the return to me unpassable. I lived very well, but in a circumstance unsufferable in itself. If I had discovered myself to my mother, it might be difficult to convince her of the particulars, and I had no way to prove them. On the other hand, if she had questioned or doubted me, I had been undone, for the bare suggestion would have immediately separated me from my husband, without gainingcj my mother or him; so that between the surprise on one hand, and the uncertainty on the other, I had been sure to be undone. In the meantime, as I was but too sure of the fact, I lived therefore in open avowed incest and whoredom, and all under the appearance of an honest wife; and though I was not much touched with the crime of it, yet the action had something in it shocking to nature, and made my husband even nauseous to me. However, upon the most sedate consideration, I resolved that it was absolutely necessary to conceal it all, and not make the least discovery of it either to mother or husband; and thus I lived with the greatest pressure imaginable for three years more. During this time my mother used to be frequently telling me old stories of her former adventures, which, however, were no ways pleasant to me; for by it, though she did not tell it me in plain terms, yet I could understand, joined with what I heard myself, of my first tutors, that in her younger days she had been whore and thief; but I verily believe she had lived to repent sincerely of both, and that she was then a very pious, sober, and religious woman. Well, let her life have been what it would then, it was certain that my life was very uneasy to me; for I lived, as I have said, but in the worst sort of whoredom, and as I could expect no good of it, so really no good issue came of it, and all my seeming prosperity wore off, and ended in misery and destruction. It was some time, indeed, before it came to this, for everything went wrong with us afterwards, and that which was worse, my husband grew strangely altered, froward, jealous, and unkind, and I was as impatient of bearing his carriage, as the carriage was unreasonable and unjust. These things proceeded so far, and we came at last to be in such ill terms with one another, that I claimed a promise of him, which he entered willingly into with me when I consented to come from England with him, viz., that if I did not like to live there, I should come away to England again when I pleased, giving him a year's warning to settle his affairs. I say, I now claimed this promise of him, and I much confess I did it not in the most obliging terms that could be neither; but I insisted that he treated me ill, that I was remote from my friends, and could do myself no justice, and that he was jealous without cause, my conversation having been unblamable, and he having no pretence for it, and that to remove to England would take away all occasion from him. I insisted so peremptorily upon it, that he could not avoid coming to a point, either to keep his word with me or to break it; and this, notwithstanding he used all the skill he was master of, and employed his mother and other agents to prevail with me to alter my resolutions; indeed, the bottom of the thing lay at my heart, and that made all his endeavours fruitless, for my heart was alienated from him. I loathed the thoughts of bedding with him, and used a thousand pretences of illness and humour to prevent his touching me, fearing nothing more than to be with child again, which to be sure would have prevented, or at least delayed, my going over to England. However, at last I put him so out of humourck that he took up a rash and fatal resolution, that, in short, I should not go to England; that though he had promised me, yet it was an unreasonable thing; that it would be ruinous to his affairs, would unhinge his whole family, and be next to an undoing him in the world; that therefore I ought not to desire it of him, and that no wife in the world that valued her family and her husband's prosperity, would insist upon such a thing. This plunged me again, for when I considered the thing calmly, and took my husband as he really was, a diligent, careful man in the main, and that he knew nothing of the dreadful circumstances that he was in, I could not but confess to myself that my proposal was very unreasonable, and what no wife that had the good of her family at heart would have desired. But my discontents were of another nature; I looked upon him no longer as a husband, but as a near relation, the son of my own mother, and I resolved somehow or other to be clear of him, but which way I did not know. It is said by the ill-natured world, of our sex, that if we are set on a thing, it is impossible to turn us from our resolutions; in short, I never ceased poring upon the means to bring to pass my voyage, and came that length with my husband at last, as to propose going without him. This provoked him to the last degree, and he called me not only an unkind wife, but an unnatural mother, and asked me how I could entertain such a thought without horror, as that of leaving my two children (for one was dead) without a mother, and never to see them more. It was true, had things been right, I should not have done it, but now, it was my real desire never to see them, or him either, any more; and as to the charge of unnatural, I could easily answer it to myself, while I knew that the whole relation was unnatural in the highest degree. However, there was no bringing my husband to anything; he would neither go with me, or let me go without him, and it was out of my power to stir without his consent, as any one that is acquainted with the constitution of that country knows very well. We had many family quarrels about it, and they began to grow up to a dangerous height; for as I was quite estranged from him in affection, so I took no heed to my words, but sometimes gave him language that was provoking; in short, I strove all I could to bring him to a parting with me, which was what above all things I desired most. He took my carriage very ill, and indeed he might well do so, for at last I refused to bed with him, and carrying on the breach upon all occasions to extremity, he told me once he thought I was mad, and if I did not alter my conduct, he would put me under cure; that is to say, into a madhouse. I told him he should find I was far enough from mad, and that it was not in his power, or any other villain's, to murder me. I confess at the same time I was heartily frighted at his thoughts of putting me into a madhouse, which would at once have destroyed all the possibility of bringing the truth out; for that then no one would have given credit to a word of it. This therefore brought me to a resolution, whatever came of it, to lay open my whole case; but which way to do it, or to whom, was an inextricable difficulty, when another quarrel with my husband happened, which came up to such an extreme as almost pushed me on to tell it him all to his face; but though I kept it in so as not to come to the particulars, I spoke so much as put him into the utmost confusion, and in the end brought out the whole story. He began with a calm expostulation upon my being so resolute to go to England; I defended it, and one hard word bringing on another, as is usual in all family strife, he told me I did not treat him as if he was my husband, or talk of my children as if I was a mother; and, in short, that I did not deserve to be used as a wife; that he had used all the fair means possible with me; that he had argued with all the kindness and calmness that a husband or a Christian ought to do, and that I made him such a vile return, that I treated him rather like a dog than a man, and rather like the most contemptible stranger than a husband; that he was very loth to use violence with me, but that, in short, he saw a necessity of it now, and that for the future he should be obliged to take such measures as should reduce me to my duty. My blood was now fired to the utmost, and nothing could appear more provoked. I told him, for his fair means and his foul, they were equally contemnedcl by me; that for my going to England, I was resolved on it, come what would; and that as to treating him not like a husband, and not showing myself a mother to my children, there might be something more in it than he understood at present; but I thought fit to tell him thus much, that he neither was my lawful husband, nor they lawful children, and that I had reason to regard neither of them more than I did. I confess I was moved to pity him when I spoke it, for he turned pale as death, and stood mute as one thunderstruck, and once or twice I thought he would have fainted; in short, it put him in a fit something like an apoplex;cm he trembled, a sweat or dew ran off his face, and yet he was cold as a clod, so that I was forced to fetch something to keep life in him. When he recovered of that, he grew sick and vomited, and in a little after was put to bed, and the next morning was in a violent fever. However, it went off again, and he recovered, though but slowly, and when he came to be a little better, he told me I had given him a mortal wound with my tongue, and he had only one thing to ask before he desired an explanation. I interrupted him, and told him I was sorry I had gone so far, since I saw what disorder it put him into, but I desired him not to talk to me of explanations, for that would but make things worse. This heightened his impatience, and, indeed, perplexed him beyond all bearing; for now he began to suspect that there was some mystery yet unfolded, but could not make the least guess at it; all that ran in his brain was, that I had another husband alive, but I assured him there was not the least of that in it; indeed, as to my other husband, he was effectually dead to me, and had told me I should look on him as such, so I had not the least uneasiness on that score. But now I found the thing too far gone to conceal it much longer, and my husband himself gave me an opportunity to ease myself of the secret, much to my satisfaction. He had laboured with me three or four weeks, but to no purpose, only to tell him whether I had spoken those words only to put him in a passion, or whether there was anything of truth in the bottom of them. But I continued inflexible, and would explain nothing, unless he would first consent to my going to England, which he would never do, he said, while he lived; on the other hand, I said it was in my power to make him willing when I pleased?Äînay, to make him entreat me to go; and this increased his curiosity, and made him importunate to the highest degree. At length he tells all this story to his mother, and sets her upon me to get it out of me, and she used her utmost skill indeed; but I put her to a full stop at once, by telling her that the mystery of the whole matter lay in herself; that it was my respect to her had made me conceal it; and that, in short, I could go no further, and therefore conjuredcn her not to insist upon it. She was struck dumb at this suggestion, and could not tell what to say or to think; but laying aside the supposition as a policyco of mine, continued her importunity on account of her son, and, if possible, to make up the breach between us two. As to that, I told her that it was indeed a good design in her, but that it was impossible to be done; and that if I should reveal to her the truth of what she desired, she would grant it to be impossible, and cease to desire it. At last I seemed to be prevailed on by her importunity, and told her I dare trust her with a secret of the greatest importance, and she would soon see that this was so, and that I would consent to lodge it in her breast, if she would engage solemnly not to acquaint her son with it without my consent. She was long in promising this part, but rather than not come at the main secret she agreed to that too, and after a great many other preliminaries, I began, and told her the whole story. First I told her how much she was concerned in all the unhappy breach which had happened between her son and me, by telling me her own story and her London name; and that the surprise she saw I was in was upon that occasion. Then I told her my own story, and my name, and assured her, by such other tokens as she could not deny, that I was no other, nor more or less, than her own child, her daughter, born of her body in Newgate; the same that had saved her from the gallows by being in her belly, and that she left in such-and-suchcp hands when she was transported. It is impossible to express the astonishment she was in; she was not inclined to believe the story, or to remember the particulars; for she immediately foresaw the confusion that must follow in the family upon it; but everything concurred so exactly with the stories she had told me of herself, and which, if she had not told me, she would perhaps have been content to have denied, that she had stopped her own mouth, and she had nothing to do but take me about the neck and kiss me, and cry most vehemently over me, without speaking one word for a long time together. At last she broke out: "Unhappy child!" says she, "what miserable chance could bring thee hither? and in the arms of my son, too! Dreadful girl!" says she, "why, we are all undone! Married to thy own brother! three children, and two alive, all of the same flesh and blood! My son and my daughter lying together as husband and wife! all confusion and distraction! Miserable family! what will become of us? what is to be said? what is to be done?" And thus she ran on a great while; nor had I any power to speak, or if I had, did I know what to say, for every word wounded me to the soul. With this kind of amazement we parted for the first time, though my mother was more surprised than I was, because it was more news to her than to me. However, she promised again that she would say nothing of it to her son till we had talked of it again. It was not long, you may be sure, before we had a second conference upon the same subject; when, as if she had been willing to forget the story she had told me of herself, or to suppose that I had forgot some of the particulars, she began to tell them with alterations and omissions; but I refreshed her memory in many things which I supposed she had forgot, and then came in so opportunely with the whole history, that it was impossible for her to go from it; and then she fell into her rhapsodiescq again, and exclamations at the severity of her misfortunes. When these things were a little over with her, we fell into a close debate about what should be first done before we gave an account of the matter to my husband. But to what purpose could be all our consultations? We could neither of us see our way through it, or how it could be safe to open such a scene to him. It was impossible to make any judgment, or give any guess at what temper he would receive it in, or what measures he would take upon it; and if he should have so little government of himself as to make it public, we easily foresaw that it would be the ruin of the whole family; and if at last he should take the advantage the law would give him, he might put me away with disdain, and leave me to sue for the little portion that I had, and perhaps waste it all in the suit, and then be a beggar; and thus I should see him, perhaps, in the arms of another wife in a few months, and be myself the most miserable creature alive. My mother was as sensible of this as I; and, upon the whole, we knew not what to do. After some time we came to more sober resolutions, but then it was with this misfortune too, that my mother's opinion and mine were quite different from one another, and indeed inconsistent with one another; for my mother's opinion was, that I should bury the whole thing entirely,17 and continue to live with him as my husband, till some other event should make the discovery of it more convenient; and that in the meantime she would endeavour to reconcile us together again, and restore our mutual comfort and family peace; that we might lie as we used to do together, and so let the whole matter remain a secret as close as death;cr "for, child," says she, "we are both undone if it comes out." To encourage me to this, she promised to make me easy in my circumstances, and to leave me what she could at her death, secured for me separately from my husband; so that if it should come out afterwards, I should be able to stand on my own feet, and procure justice too from him. This proposal did not agree with my judgment, though it was very fair and kind in my mother; but my thoughts ran quite another way. As to keeping the thing in our own breasts, and letting it all remain as it was, I told her it was impossible; and I asked her how she could think I could bear the thoughts of lying with my own brother. In the next place I told her that her being alive was the only supportcs of the discovery, and that while she owned me for her child, and saw reason to be satisfied that I was so, nobody else would doubt it; but that if she should die before the discovery, I should be taken for an impudent creature that had forged such a thing to go away from my husband, or should be counted crazed and distracted. Then I told her how he had threatened already to put me into a madhouse, and what concern I had been in about it, and how that was the thing that drove me to the necessity of discovering it to her as I had done. From all which I told her, that I had, on the most serious reflections I was able to make in the case, come to this resolution, which I hoped she would like, as a mediumct between both, viz., that she should use her endeavours with her son to give me leave to go for England, as I had desired, and to furnish me with a sufficient sum of money, either in goods along with me, or in bills for my support there, all along suggesting that he might one time or other think it proper to come over to me. That when I was gone, she should then, in cold blood, discover the case to him gradually, and as her own discretion should guide; so that he might not be surprised with it, and fly out into any passions and excesses; and that she should concern herself to prevent his slighting the children, or marrying again, unless he had a certain account of my being dead. This was my scheme, and my reasons were good; I was really alienated from him in the consequence of these things; indeed I mortally hated him as a husband, and it was impossible to remove that riveted aversion I had to him; at the same time, it being an unlawful, incestuous living, added to that aversion, and everything added to make cohabiting with him the most nauseous thing to me in the world; and I think verily it was come to such a height, that I could almost as willingly have embraced a dog, as have let him offer anything of that kind to me, for which reason I could not bear the thoughts of coming between the sheets with him. I cannot say that I was right in carrying it such a length, while at the same time I did not resolve to discover the thing to him; but I am giving an account of what was, not of what ought or ought not to be. In this directly opposite opinion to one another my mother and I continued a long time, and it was impossible to reconcile our judgments; many disputes we had about it, but we could never either of us yield our own, or bring over the other. I insisted on my aversion to lying with my own brother, and she insisted upon its being impossible to bring him to consent to my going to England; and in this uncertainty we continued, not differing so as to quarrel, or anything like it, but so as not to be able to resolve what we should do to make up that terrible breach. At last I resolved on a desperate course, and told my mother my resolution, viz., that, in short, I would tell him of it myself. My mother was frighted to the last degree at the very thoughts of it; but I bid her be easy, told her I would do it gradually and softly, and with all the art and good humour I was mistress of, and time it also as well as I could, taking him in good humour too. I told her I did not question but if I could be hypocrite enough to feign more affection to him than I really had, I should succeed in all my design, and we might part by consent, and with a good agreement, for I might love him well enough for a brother, though I could not for a husband. All this while he lay atcu my mother to find out, if possible, what was the meaning of that dreadful expression of mine, as he called it, which I mentioned before; namely, that I was not his lawful wife, nor my children his legal children. My mother put him off, told him she could bring me to no explanations, but found there was something that disturbed me very much, and she hoped she should get it out of me in time, and in the meantime recommended to him earnestly to use me more tenderly, and win me with his usual good carriage; told him of his terrifying and affrighting me with his threats of sending me to a madhouse and the like, and advised him not to make a woman desperate on any account whatever. He promised her to soften his behaviour, and bid her assure me that he loved me as well as ever, and that he had no such design as that of sending me to a madhouse, whatever he might say in his passion; also he desired my mother to use the same persuasions to me too, and we might live together as we used to do. I found the effects of this treaty presently. My husband's conduct was immediately altered, and he was quite another man to me; nothing could be kinder and more obliging than he was to me upon all occasions; and I could do no less than make some return to it, which I did as well as I could, but it was but in an awkward manner at best, for nothing was more frightful to me than his caresses, and the apprehensions of being with child again by him was ready to throw me into fits; and this made me see that there was an absolute necessity of breakingcv the case to him without any more delay, which, however, I did with all the caution and reserve imaginable. He had continued his altered carriage to me near a month, and we began to live a new kind of life with one another, and could I have satisfied myself to have gone on with it, I believe it might have continued as long as we had continued alive together. One evening, as we were sitting and talking together under a little awning, which served as an arbour at the entrance into the garden, he was in a very pleasant, agreeable humour, and said abundance of kind things to me relating to the pleasure of our present good agreement, and the disorders of our past breach, and what a satisfaction it was to him that we had room to hope we should never have any more of it. I fetched a deep sigh, and told him there was nobody in the world could be more delighted than I was in the good agreement we had always kept up, or more afflicted with the breach of it; but I was sorry to tell him that there was an unhappy circumstance in our case, which lay too close to my heart, and which I knew not how to break to him, that rendered my part of it very miserable, and took from me all the comfort of the rest. He importunedcw me to tell him what it was. I told him I could not tell how to do it; that while it was concealed from him, I alone was unhappy, but if he knew it also, we should be both so; and that, therefore, to keep him in the dark about it was the kindest thing that I could do, and it was on that account alone that I kept a secret from him, the very keeping of which, I thought, would first or last be my destruction. It is impossible to express his surprise at this relation, and the double importunity which he used with me to discover it to him. He told me I could not be called kind to him, nay, I could not be faithful to him, if I concealed it from him. I told him I thought so too, and yet I could not do it. He went back to what I had said before to him, and told me he hoped it did not relate to what I said in my passion, and that he had resolved to forget all that as the effect of a rash, provoked spirit. I told him I wished I could forget it all too, but that it was not to be done, the impression was too deep, and it was impossible. He then told me he was resolved not to differ with me in anything, and that therefore he would importune me no more about it, resolving to acquiesce in whatever I did or said; only begged I would then agree, that whatever it was, it should no more interrupt our quiet and our mutual kindness. This was the most provoking thing he could have said to me, for I really wanted his further importunities, that I might be prevailed with to bring out that which indeed was like death to me to conceal. So I answered him plainly that I could not say I was glad not to be importuned, though I could not tell how to comply. "But come, my dear," said I, "what conditions will you make with me upon the opening this affair to you?" "Any conditions in the world," said he, "that you can in reason desire of me." "Well," said I, "come, give it me under your hand,cx that if you do not find I am in any fault, or that I am willingly concerned in the causes of the misfortunes that is to follow, you will not blame me, use me the worse, do me any injury, or make me be the sufferer for that which is not my fault." "That," says he, "is the most reasonable demand in the world; not to blame you for that which is not your fault. Give me a pen and ink," says he; so I ran in and fetched pen, ink, and paper, and he wrote the condition down in the very words I had proposed it, and signed it with his name. "Well," says he, "what is next, my dear?" "Why," says I, "the next is, that you will not blame me for not discovering the secret to you before I knew it." "Very just again," says he; "with all my heart;" so he wrote down that also, and signed it. "Well, my dear," says I, "then I have but one condition more to make with you, and that is, that as there is nobody concerned in it but you and I, you shall not discover it to any person in the world, except your own mother; and that in all the measures you shall take upon the discovery, as I am equally concerned in it with you, though as innocent as yourself, you shall do nothing in a passion, nothing to my prejudice,cy or to your mother's prejudice, without my knowledge and consent." This a little amazed him, and he wrote down the words distinctly, but read them over and over before he signed them, hesitating at them several times, and repeating them: "My mother's prejudice! and your prejudice! What mysterious thing can this be?" However, at last he signed it. "Well," says I, "my dear, I'll ask you no more under your hand; but as you are to hear the most unexpected and surprising thing that perhaps ever befell any family in the world, I beg you to promise me you will receive it with composure and a presence of mind suitable to a man of sense." "I'll do my utmost," says he, "upon condition you will keep me no longer in suspense, for you terrify me with all these preliminaries." "Well, then," says I, "it is this: As I told you before in a heat, that I was not your lawful wife, and that our children were not legal children, so I must let you know now in calmness, and in kindness, but with affliction enough, that I am your own sister, and you my own brother, and that we are both the children of our mother now alive, and in the house, who is convinced of the truth of it, in a manner not to be denied or contradicted." I saw him turn pale and look wild; and I said, "Now remember your promise, and receive it with presence of mind; for who could have said more to prepare you for it than I have done?" However, I called a servant, and got him a little glass of rum (which is the usual dramcz of the country), for he was fainting away. When he was a little recovered I said to him, "This story, you may be sure, requires a long explanation, and, therefore, have patience and compose your mind to hear it out, and I'll make it as short as I can;" and with this, I told him what I thought was needful of the fact, and particularly how my mother came to discover it to me, as above. "And now, my dear," says I, "you will see reason for my capitulations, da and that I neither have been the cause of this matter, nor could be so, and that I could know nothing of it before now." "I am fully satisfied of that," says he, "but 't is a dreadful surprise to me; however, I know a remedy for it all, and a remedy that shall put an end to all your difficulties, without your going to England." "That would be strange," said I, "as all the rest." "No, no," says he, "I'll make it easy; there's nobody in the way of it all but myself." He looked a little disordered when he said this, but I did not apprehend anything from it at that time, believing, as it used to be said, that they who do those things never talk of them, or that they who talk of such things never do them. But things were not come to their height with him, and I observed he became pensive and melancholy; and in a word, as I thought, a little distempereddb in his head. I endeavoured to talk him into temper, and into a kind of scheme for our government in the affair, and sometimes he would be well, and talk with some courage about it; but the weight of it lay too heavy upon his thoughts, and went so far that he made two attempts upon himself, and in one of them had actually strangleddc himself, and had not his mother come into the room in the very moment, he had died; but with the help of a negro servant, she cut him down and recovered him. Things were now come to a lamentable height. My pity for him now began to revive that affection which at first I really had for him, and I endeavoured sincerely, by all the kind carriage I could, to make up the breach; but, in short, it had gotten too great a head, it preyed upon his spirits, and it threw him into a lingering consumption, though it happened not to be mortal. In this distress I did not know what to do, as his life was apparently declining, and I might perhaps have married again there, very much to my advantage, had it been my business to have stayed in the country; but my mind was restless too; I hankered after coming to England, and nothing would satisfy me without it. In short, by an unwearied importunity, my husband, who was apparently decaying, as I observed, was at last prevailed with; and so my fate pushing me on, the way was made clear for me, and my mother concurring, I obtained a very good cargo for my coming to England. When I parted with my brother (for such I am now to call him), we agreed that after I arrived, he should pretend to have an account that I was dead in England, and so might marry again when he would. He promised, and engaged to me to correspond with me as a sister, and to assist and support me as long as I lived; and that if he died before me, he would leave sufficient to his mother to take care of me still, in the name of a sister, and he was in some respects just to this; but it was so oddly managed that I felt the disappointments very sensibly afterwards, as you shall hear in its time. I came away in the month of August, after I had been eight years in that country; and now a new scene of misfortunes attended me, which perhaps few women have gone through the like. We had an indifferentdd good voyage till we came just upon the coast of England, and where we arrived in two-and-thirty days, but were then ruffled with two or three storms, one of which drove us away to the coast of Ireland, and we put in at Kinsale.de We remained there about thirteen days, got some refreshment on shore, and put to sea again, though we met with very bad weather again, in which the ship sprung her mainmast,df as they called it. But we got at last into Milford Haven, in Wales, where, though it was remote from our port, yet having my foot safe upon the firm ground of the isle of Britain, I resolved to venture it no more upon the waters, which had been so terrible to me; so getting my clothes and money on shore, with my bills of loading and other papers, I resolved to come for London, and leave the ship to get to her port as she could; the port whither she was bound was to Bristol,dg where my brother's chief correspondentdh lived. I got to London in about three weeks, where I heard a little while after that the ship was arrived at Bristol, but at the same time had the misfortune to know that by the violent weather she had been in, and the breaking of her mainmast, she had great damage on board, and that a great part of her cargo was spoiled. I had now a new scene of life upon my hands, and a dreadful appearance it had. I was come away with a kind of final farewell. What I brought with me was indeed considerable, had it come safe, and by the help of it I might have married again tolerably well; but as it was, I was reduced to between two or three hundred pounds in the whole, and this without any hope of recruit.di I was entirely without friends, nay, even so much as without acquaintances, for I found it was absolutely necessary not to revive former acquaintance; and as for my subtle friend that set me up formerly for a fortune, she was dead, and her husband also. The looking after my cargo of goods soon after obliged me to take a journey to Bristol, and during my attendance upon that affair I took the diversion of going to Bath,dj for as I was still far from being old, so my humour, which was always gay, continued so to an extreme; and being now, as it were, a woman of fortune, though I was a woman without a fortune, I expected something or other might happen in the way that might mend my circumstances, as had been my case before. Bath is a place of gallantry enough; expensive, and full of snares.dk I went thither, indeed, in the view of taking what might offer; but I must do myself that justice as to protest I meant nothing but in an honest way, nor had any thoughts about me at first that looked the way which afterwards I suffered them to be guided. Here I stayed the whole latter season,dl as it is called there, and contracted some unhappy acquaintance, which rather prompted the follies I fell afterwards into than fortified me against them. I lived pleasantly enough, kept good company, that is to say, gay, fine company; but had the discouragement to find this way of living sunk me exceedingly, and that as I had no settled income, so spending upon the main stock was but a certain kind of bleeding to death; and this gave me many sad reflections. However, I shook them off, and still flattered myself that something or other might offer for my advantage. But I was in the wrong place for it. I was not now at Redriff, where if I had set myself tolerably up, some honest sea captain or other might have talked with me upon the honourable terms of matrimony; but I was at Bath, where men find a mistress sometimes, but very rarely look for a wife; and consequently all the particular acquaintances a woman can expect there must have some tendency that way. I had spent the first season well enough; for though I had contracted some acquaintance with a gentleman who came to Bath for his diversion, yet I had entered into no feloniousdm treaty. I had resisted some casual offers of gallantry, and had managed that way well enough. I was not wicked enough to come into the crime for the mere vice of it, and I had no extraordinary offers that tempted me with the main thing which I wanted. However, I went this length the first season, viz., I contracted an acquaintance with a woman in whose house I lodged, who, though she did not keep an ill house,dn yet had none of the best principles in herself. I had on all occasions behaved myself so well as not to get the least slur upon my reputation, and all the men that I had conversed with were of so good reputation that I had not gotten the least reflectiondo by conversing with them; nor did any of them seem to think there was room for a wicked correspondencedp if they had offered it; yet there was one gentleman, as above, who always singled me out for the diversion of my company, as he called it, which, as he was pleased to say, was very agreeable to him, but at that time there was no more in it. I had many melancholy hours at Bath after all the company was gone; for though I went to Bristol sometimes for the disposing my effects, and for recruits of money, yet I chose to come back to Bath for my residence, because, being on good terms with the woman in whose house I lodged in the summer, I found that during the winter I lived rather cheaper there than I could do anywhere else. Here, I say, I passed the winter as heavily as I had passed the autumn cheerfully; but having contracted a nearer intimacy with the said woman, in whose house I lodged, I could not avoid communicating something of what lay hardest upon my mind, and particularly the narrowness of my circumstances. I told her also, that I had a mother and a brother in Virginia in good circumstances; and as I had really written back to my mother in particular to represent my condition, and the great loss I had received, so I did not fail to let my new friend know that I expected a supply from thence, and so indeed I did; and as the ships went from Bristol to York River, in Virginia, and back again generally in less time than from London, and that my brother corresponded chiefly at Bristol, I thought it was much better for me to wait here for my returns than to go to London. My new friend appeared sensibly affected with my condition, and indeed was so very kind as to reduce the rate of my living with her to so low a price during the winter, that she convinced me she got nothing by me; and as for lodging, during the winter I paid nothing at all. When the spring season came on, she continued to be as kind to me as she could, and I lodged with her for a time, till it was found necessary to do otherwise. She had some persons of character that frequently lodged in her house, and in particular the gentleman who, as I said, singled me out for his companion in the winter before; and he came down again with another gentleman in his company and two servants, and lodged in the same house. I suspected that my landlady had invited him thither, letting him know that I was still with her; but she denied it. In a word, this gentleman came down and continued to single me out for his peculiardq confidence. He was a complete gentleman, that must be confessed, and his company was agreeable to me, as mine, if I might believe him, was to him. He made no professions to me but of an extraordinary respect, and he had such an opinion of my virtue, that, as he often professed, he believed, if he should offer anything else, I should reject him with contempt. He soon understood from me that I was a widow; that I had arrived at Bristol from Virginia by the last ships; and that I waited at Bath till the next Virginia fleet should arrive, by which I expected considerable effects. I understood by him that he had a wife, but that the lady was distempered in her head,dr and was under the conduct of her own relations, which he consented to, to avoid any reflection that might be cast upon him for mismanaging her cure; and in the meantime he came to Bath to divert his thoughts under such a melancholy circumstance. My landlady, who of her own accord encouraged the correspondence on all occasions, gave me an advantageous character of him, as of a man of honour, and of virtue, as well as of a great estate. And indeed I had reason to say so of him too; for though we lodged both on a floor, and he had frequently come into my chamber, even when I was in bed, and I also into his, yet he never offered anything to me further than a kiss, or so much as solicited me to anything till long after, as you shall hear. I frequently took notice to my landlady of his exceeding modesty, and she again used to tell me she believed it was so from the beginning; however, she used to tell me that she thought I ought to expect some gratifications from him for my company, for indeed he did as it were to engrossds me. I told her I had not given him the least occasion to think I wanted it, or that I would accept of it from him. She told me she would take that part upon her, and she managed it so dexterously, that the first time we were together alone, after she had talked with him, he began to inquire a little into my circumstances, as how I had subsisted myself since I came on shore, and whether I did not wantdt money. I stood off very boldly. I told him that though my cargo of tobacco was damaged, yet that it was not quite lost; that the merchant that I had been consigned to had so honestly managed for me that I had not wanted, and that I hoped, with frugal management, I should make it hold out till more would come, which I expected by the next fleet; that in the meantime I had retrencheddu my expenses, and whereas I kept a maid last season, now I lived without; and whereas I had a chamber and a dining-room then on the first floor, I now had but one room two pair of stairs,dv and the like; "but I live," said I, "as well satisfied now as then;" adding, that his company had made me live much more cheerfully than otherwise I should have done, for which I was much obliged to him; and so I put off all room for any offer at the present. It was not long before he attackeddw me again, and told me he found that I was backward to trust him with the secret of my circumstances, which he was sorry for; assuring me that he inquired into it with no design to satisfy his own curiosity, but merely to assist me if there was any occasion; but since I would not own myself to stand in need of any assistance, he had but one thing more to desire of me, and that was, that I would promise him that when I was any way straitened, I would frankly tell him of it, and that I would make use of him with the same freedom that he made the offer; adding, that I should always find I had a true friend, though perhaps I was afraid to trust him. I omitted nothing that was fit to be said by one infinitely obliged, to let him know that I had a due sense of his kindness; and indeed from that time I did not appear so much reserved to him as I had done before, though still within the bounds of the strictest virtue on both sides; but how free soever our conversation was, I could not arrive to that freedom which he desired, viz., to tell him I wanted money, though I was secretly very glad of his offer. Some weeks passed after this, and still I never asked him for money; when my landlady, a cunning creature, who had often pressed me to it, but found that I could not do it, makes a story of her own inventing, and comes in bluntly to me when we were together, "Oh, widow!" says she, "I have bad news to tell you this morning." "What is that?" said I. "Are the Virginia ships taken by the French?"18 for that was my fear. "No, no," says she, "but the man you sent to Bristol yesterday for money has come back, and says he has brought none." I could by no means like her project; I thought it looked too much like prompting him, which he did not want, and I saw that I should lose nothing by being backward, so took her up short. "I can't imagine why he should say so," said I, "for I assure you he brought me all the money I sent him for, and here it is," said I (pulling out my purse with about twelve guineas in it); and added, "I intend you shall have most of it by-and-by." He seemed distasteddx a little at her talking as she did, as well as I, taking it, as I fancied he would, as something forward of her; but when he saw me give such an answer, he came immediately to himself. The next morning we talked of it again, when I found he was fully satisfied; and, smiling, said he hoped I would not want money, and not tell him of it, and that I had promised him otherwise. I told him I had been very much dissatisfied at my landlady's talking so publicly the day before of what she had nothing to do with; but I supposed she wanted what I owed her, which was about eight guineas, which I had resolved to give her, and had given it her the same night. He was in a mighty good humour when he heard me say I had paid her, and it went off into some other discourse at that time. But the next morning, he having heard me up before him, he called to me, and I answered. He asked me to come into his chamber; he was in bed when I came in, and he made me come and sit down on his bedside, for he said he had something to say to me. After some very kind expressions, he asked me if I would be very honest to him, and give a sincere answer to one thing he would desire of me. After some little cavil with him at the word "sincere," and asking him if I had ever given him any answers which were not sincere, I promised him I would. Why, then, his request was, he said, to let him see my purse. I immediately put my hand into my pocket, and laughing at him, pulled it out, and there was in it three guineas and a half. Then he asked me if there was all the money I had. I told him no, laughing again, not by a great deal. Well, then, he said, he would have me promise to go and fetch him all the money I had, every farthing. I told him I would, and I went into my chamber, and fetched him a little private drawer, where I had about six guineas more, and some silver, and threw it all down upon the bed, and told him there was all my wealth, honestly to a shilling. He looked a little at it, but did not tell it, and huddled it all into the drawer again, and then reaching his pocket, pulled out a key, and bade me open a little walnut tree box he had upon the table, and bring him such a drawer, which I did. In this drawer there was a great deal of money in gold, I believe near two hundred guineas, but I knew not how much. He took the drawer, and taking me by the hand, made me put it in and take a whole handful; I was backward at that, but he held my hand hard in his hand, and put it into the drawer, and made me take out as many guineas almost as I could well take up at once. When I had done so, he made me put them into my lap, and took my little drawer, and poured out all my own money among his, and bade me get me gone, and carry it all into my own chamber. I relate this story the more particularly, because of the good-humour of it, and to show the temper with which we conversed. It was not long after this, but he began every day to find fault with my clothes, with my laces, and head-dresses, and, in a word, pressed me to buy better, which, by the way, I was willing enough to do, though I did not seem to be so. I loved nothing in the world better than fine clothes; but I told him I must housewifedy the money he had lent me, or else I should not be able to pay him again. He then told me, in a few words, that as he had a sincere respect for me, and knew my circumstances, he had not lent me that money, but given it me, and that he thought I had merited it from him, by giving him my company so entirely as I had done. After this he made me take a maid, and keep house, and his friend being gone, he obliged me to diet him,dz which I did very willingly, believing, as it appeared, that I should lose nothing by it, nor did the woman of the house fail to find her account in it too. We had lived thus near three months, when the company beginning to wear away at Bath, he talked of going away, and fain he would have me to go to London with him. I was not very easy in that proposal, not knowing what posture I was to live in there, or how he might use me. But while this was in debate, he fell very sick; he had gone out to a place in Somersetshire, called Shepton,ea and was there taken very ill, and so ill that he could not travel; so he sent his man back to Bath, to beg me that I would hire a coach and come over to him. Before he went, he had left his money and other things of value with me, and what to do with them I did not know, but I secured them as well as I could, and locked up the lodgings and went to him, where I found him very ill indeed, so I persuaded him to be carried in a litter to Bath, where was more help and better advice to be had. He consented, and I brought him to Bath, which was about fifteen miles, as I remember. Here he continued very ill of a fever, and kept his bed five weeks, all which time I nursed him and tended him as carefully as if I had been his wife; indeed, if I had been his wife I could not have done more. I sat up with him so much and so often, that at last, indeed, he would not let me sit up any longer, and then I got a pallet-bedeb into his room, and lay in it just at his bed's feet. I was indeed sensibly affected with his condition, and with the apprehensions of losing such a friend as he was, and was like to be to me, and I used to sit and cry by him many hours together. At last he grew better, and gave hopes that he would recover, as indeed he did, though very slowly. Were it otherwise than what I am going to say, I should not be backward to disclose it, as it is apparent I have done in other cases; but I affirm, through all this conversation, abatingec the coming into the chamber when I or he was in bed, and the necessary offices of attending him night and day when he was sick, there had not passed the least immodest word or action between us. Oh that it had been so to the last! After some time he gathered strength and grew well apace, and I would have removed my pallet-bed, but he would not let me, till he was able to venture himself without anybody to sit up with him, when I removed to my own chamber. He took many occasions to express his sense of my tenderness for him; and when he grew well he made me a present of fifty guineas for my care, and, as he called it, hazarding my life to save his. And now he made deep protestations of a sincere inviolable affection for me, but with the utmost reserve for my virtue and his own. I told him I was fully satisfied of it. He carried it that length that he protested to me, that if he was naked in bed with me, he would as sacredly preserve my virtue as he would defend it, if I was assaulted by a ravisher. I believed him, and told him I did so; but this did not satisfy him; he would, he said, wait for some opportunity to give me an undoubted testimony of it. It was a great while after this that I had occasion, on my business, to go to Bristol, upon which he hired me a coach, and would go with me; and now indeed our intimacy increased. From Bristol he carried me to Gloucester,ed which was merely a journey of pleasure, to take the air; and here it was our hapee to have no lodgings in the inn, but in one large chamber with two beds in it. The master of the house going with us to show his rooms, and coming into that room, said very frankly to him, "Sir, it is none of my business to inquire whether the lady be your spouse or no, but if not, you may lie as honestly in these two beds as if you were in two chambers," and with that he pulls a great curtain which drew quite across the room, and effectually divided the beds. "Well," says my friend, very readily, "these beds will do; and as for the rest, we are too near akinef to lie together, though we may lodge near one another;" and this put an honest face on the thing too. When we came to go to bed, he decently went out of the room till I was in bed, and then went to bed in the other bed, but lay there talking to me a great while. At last, repeating his usual saying, that he could lie naked in the bed with me, and not offer me the least injury, he starts out of his bed. "And now, my dear," says he, "you shall see how just I will be to you, and that I can keep my word," and away he comes to my bed. I resisted a little, but I must confess I should not have resisted him much, if he had not made those promises at all; so after a little struggle, I lay still and let him come to bed. When he was there he took me in his arms, and so I lay all night with him, but he had no more to do with me, or offered anything to me, other than embracing me, as I say, in his arms, no, not the whole night, but rose up and dressed him in the morning, and left me as innocent for him as I was the day I was born. This was a surprising thing to me, and perhaps may be so to others, who know how the laws of nature work; for he was a vigorous, brisk person. Nor did he act thus on a principle of religion at all, but of mere affection; insisting on it, that though I was to him the most agreeable woman in the world, yet, because he loved me, he could not injure me. I own it was a noble principle, but as it was what I never saw before, so it was perfectly amazing. We travelled the rest of the journey as we did before, and came back to Bath, where, as he had opportunity to come to me when he would, he often repeated the same moderation, and I frequently lay with him, and although all the familiarities of man and wife were common to us, yet he never once offered to go any further, and he valued himself much upon it. I do not say that I was so wholly pleased with it as he thought I was, for I own I was much wickeder than he. We lived thus near two years, only with this exception, that he went three times to London in that time, and once he continued there four months; but, to do him justice, he always supplied me with money to subsist on very handsomely. Had we continued thus, I confess we had had much to boast of,eg but, as wise men say, it is ill venturing too near the brink of a command.eh So we found it; and here again I must do him the justice to own that the first breach was not on his part. It was one night that we were in bed together warm and merry, and having drunk, I think, a little more both of us than usual, though not in the least to disorder us, when, after some other follies which I cannot name, and being clasped close in his arms, I told him (I repeat it with shame and horror of soul) that I could find in my heart to discharge him of his engagement for one night and no more. He took me at my word immediately, and after that there was no resisting him; neither indeed had I any mind to resist him any more. Thus the governmentei of our virtue was broken, and I exchanged the place of friend for that unmusical, harsh-sounding title of whore. In the morning we were both at our penitentials;ej I cried very heartily, he expressed himself very sorry; but that was all either of us could do at that time, and the way being thus cleared, and the bars of virtue and conscience thus removed, we had the less to struggle with. It was but a dull kind of conversationek that we had together for all the rest of that week; I looked on him with blushes, and every now and then started that melancholy objection, "What if I should be with child now? What will become of me then?" He encouraged me by telling me, that as long as I was true to him, he would be so to me; and since it was gone such a length (which indeed he never intended), yet if I was with child, he would take care of that and me too. This hardened us both. I assured him if I was with child, I would die for want of a midwife rather than name him as the father of it; and he assured me I should never want if I should be with child. These mutual assurances hardened us in the thing, and after this we repeated the crime as often as we pleased, till at length, as I feared, so it came to pass, and I was indeed with child. After I was sure it was so, and I had satisfied him of it too, we began to think of taking measures for the managing it, and I proposed trusting the secret to my landlady, and asking her advice, which he agreed to. My landlady, a woman (as I found) used to such things, made light of it; she said she knew it would come to that at last, and made us very merry about it. As I said above, we found her an experienced old lady at such work; she undertook everything, engaged to procure a midwife and a nurse, to satisfy all inquiries, and bring us off with reputation, and she did so very dexterously indeed. When I grew near my time, she desired my gentleman to go away to London, or make as if he did so. When he was gone, she acquainted the parish officers that there was a lady ready to lie in at her house, but that she knew her husband very well, and gave them, as she pretended, an account of his name, which she called Sir Walter Cleave;el telling them he was a worthy gentleman, and that she would answer for all inquiries, and the like. This satisfied the parish officers presently, and I lay in in as much credit as I could have done if I had really been my Lady Cleave; and was assisted in my travail by three or four of the best citizens' wives of Bath, which, however, made me a little the more expensive to him. I often expressed my concern to him about that part, but he bid me not be concerned at it. As he had furnished me very sufficiently with money for the extraordinary expenses of my lying in, I had everything very handsome about me, but did not affect to be so gay or extravagant neither; besides, knowing the world, as I had done, and that such kind of things do not often last long, I took care to lay up as much money as I could for a wet day, as I called it; making him believe it was all spent upon the extraordinary appearance of things in my lying in. By this means, with what he had given me as above, I had at the end of my lying in two hundred guineas by me, including also what was left of my own. I was brought to bed of a fine boy indeed, and a charming child it was; and when he heard of it, he wrote me a very kind, obliging letter about it, and then told me he thought it would look better for me to come away for London as soon as I was up and well; that he had provided apartments for me at Hammersmith,em as if I came only from London; and that after a while I should go back to Bath, and he would go with me. I liked his offer very well, and hired a coach on purpose, and taking my child and a wet-nurse to tend and suckle it, and a maid-servant with me, away I went for London. He met me at Readingen in his own chariot, and taking me into that, left the servant and the child in the hired coach, and so he brought me to my new lodgings at Hammersmith; with which I had abundance of reason to be very well pleased, for they were very handsome rooms. And now I was indeed in the height of what I might call prosperity, and I wanted nothing but to be a wife, which, however, could not be in this case, and therefore on all occasions I studied to save what I could, as I said above, against the time of scarcity; knowing well enough that such things as these do not always continue; that men that keep mistresses often change them, grow weary of them, or jealous of them, or something or other; and sometimes the ladies that are thus well used, are not careful by a prudent conduct to preserve the esteem of their persons, or the nice article of their fidelity, and then they are justly cast off with contempt. But I was secured in this point, for as I had no inclination to change, so I had no manner of acquaintance, so no temptation to look any farther. I kept no company but in the family where I lodged, and with a clergyman's lady at next door; so that when he was absent I visited nobody, nor did he ever find me out of my chamber or parlour whenever he came down; if I went anywhere to take the air, it was always with him. The living in this manner with him, and his with me, was certainly the most undesignedeo thing in the world; he often protested to me that when he became first acquainted with me, and even to the very night when we first broke inep upon our rules, he never had the least design of lying with me; that he always had a sincere affection for me, but not the least real inclination to do what he had done. I assured him I never suspected him; that if I had I should not so easily have yielded to the freedoms which brought it on, but that it was all a surprise, and was owing to our having yielded too far to our mutual inclinations that night; and indeed I have often observed since, and leave it as a caution to the readers of this story, that we ought to be cautious of gratifying our inclinations in loose and lewd freedoms, lest we find our resolutions of virtue fail us in the juncture when their assistance should be most necessary. It is true that from the first hour I began to converse with him, I resolved to let him lie with me, if he offered it; but it was because I wanted his help, and knew of no other way of securing him. But when we were that night together, and, as I have said, had gone such a length, I found my weakness; the inclination was not to be resisted, but I was obliged to yield up all even before he asked it. However, he was so just to me that he never upbraided me with that; nor did he ever express the least dislike of my conduct on any other occasion, but always protested he was as much delighted with my company as he was the first hour we came together. It is true that he had no wife, that is to say, she was no wife to him, but the reflections of conscience oftentimes snatch a man, especially a man of sense, from the arms of a mistress, as it did him at last, though on another occasion. On the other hand, though I was not without secret reproaches of my own conscience for the life I led, and that even in the greatest height of the satisfaction I ever took, yet I had the terrible prospect of poverty and starving, which lay on me as a frightful spectre, so that there was no looking behind me; but as poverty brought me into it, so fear of poverty kept me in it, and I frequently resolved to leave it quite off, if I could but come to lay up money enough to maintain me. But these were thoughts of no weight, and whenever he came to me they vanished; for his company was so delightful, that there was no being melancholy when he was there; the reflections were all the subject of those hours when I was alone. I lived six years in this happy but unhappy condition, in which time I brought him three children, but only the first of them lived; and though I removed twice in that six years, yet I came back the sixth year to my first lodgings at Hammersmith. Here it was that I was one morning surprised with a kind but melancholy letter from my gentleman, intimating that he was very ill, and was afraid he should have another fit of sickness, but that his wife's relations being in the house with him, it would not be practicable to have me with him, which, however, he expressed his great dissatisfaction in, and that he wished I could be allowed to tend and nurse him as I did before. I was very much concerned at this account, and was very impatient to know how it was with him. I waited a fortnight or thereabouts, and heard nothing, which surprised me, and I began to be very uneasy indeed. I think, I may say, that for the next fortnight I was near to distracted. It was my particular difficulty, that I did not know directly where he was; for I understood at first he was in the lodgings of his wife's mother; but having removed myself to London, I soon found, by the help of the direction I had for writing my letters to him, how to inquire after him, and there I found that he was at a house in Bloomsbury,eq whither he had removed his whole family; and that his wife and wife's mother were in the same house, though the wife was not suffereder to know that she was in the same house with her husband. Here I also soon understood that he was at the last extremity, which made me almost at the last extremity too, to have a true account. One night I had the curiosity to disguise myself like a servant-maid, in a round cap and straw hat, and went to the door, as sent by a lady of his neighbourhood, where he lived before, and giving master and mistress's service, I said I was sent to know how Mr.?Äî?Äîdid, and how he had rested that night. In delivering this message I got the opportunity I desired; for, speaking with one of the maids, I held a long gossip's tale with her, and had all the particulars of his illness, which I found was a pleurisyes attended with a cough and fever. She told me also who was in the house, and how his wife was, who, by her relation, they were in some hopes might recover her understanding; but as to the gentleman himself, the doctors said there was very little hopes of him, that in the morning they thought he had been dying, and that he was but little better then, for they did not expect that he could live over the next night. This was heavy news for me, and I began now to see an end of my prosperity, and to see that it was well I had played the good housewife, and saved something while he was alive, for now I had no view of my own living before me. It lay very heavy upon my mind, too, that I had a son, a fine lovely boy, about five years old, and no provision made for it, at least that I knew of. With these considerations, and a sad heart, I went home that evening, and began to cast with myself how I should live, and in what manner to bestowet myself, for the residueeu of my life. You may be sure I could not rest without inquiring again very quickly what was become of him; and not venturing to go myself, I sent several sham messengers, till after a fortnight's waiting longer, I found that there was hopes of his life, though he was still very ill; then I abated my sending to the house, and in some time after, I learnt in the neighbourhood that he was about house,ev and then that he was abroadew again. I made no doubt then but that I should soon hear of him, and began to comfort myself with my circumstances being, as I thought, recovered. I waited a week, and two weeks, and with much surprise near two months, and heard nothing, but that, being recovered, he was gone into the country for the air after his distemper. After this it was yet two months more, and then I understood he was come to his city house again, but still I heard nothing from him. I had written several letters for him, and directed them as usual, and found two or three of them had been called for, but not the rest. I wrote again in a more pressing manner than ever, and in one of them let him know that I must be forced to wait on him myself, representing my circumstances, the rent of lodgings to pay, and the provision for the child wanting, and my own deplorable condition, destitute of subsistence after his most solemn engagement to take care of and provide for me. I took a copy of this letter, and finding it lay at the house near a month, and was not called for, I found means to have the copy of it put into his hands at a coffee-house where I had found he had used to go. This letter forced an answer from him, by which, though I found I was to be abandoned, yet I found he had sent a letter to me some time before, desiring me to go down to Bath again. Its contents I shall come to presently. It is true that sick-beds are the times when such correspondences as this are looked on with different countenances,ex and seen with other eyes than we saw them with before: my lover had been at the gates of death, and at the very brink of eternity; and, it seems, struck with a due remorse, and with sad reflections upon his past life of gallantry and levity; and among the rest, his criminal correspondence with me, which was indeed neither more or less than a long-continued life of adultery, had represented itself as it really was, not as it had been formerly thought by him to be, and he looked upon it now with a just abhorrence. I cannot but observe also, and leave it for the direction of my sex in such cases of pleasure, that whenever sincere repentance succeeds such a crime as this, there never fails to attend a hatred of the object ; and the more the affection might seem to be before, the hatred will be more in proportion. It will always be so; indeed it cannot be otherwise; for there cannot be a true and sincere abhorrence of the offence, and the love to the cause of it remain; there will, with an abhorrence of the sin, be found a detestation of the fellow-sinner; you can expect no other. I found it so here, though good manners, and justice in this gentleman, kept him from carrying it on to any extreme; but the short history of his part in this affair was thus; he perceived by my last letter, and by the rest, which he went for after, that I was not gone to Bath, and that his first letter had not come to my hand, upon which he writes me this following:?Äî "MADAM,?ÄîI am surprised that my letter, dated the 8th of last month, did not come to your hand; I give you my word it was delivered at your lodgings, and to the hands of your maid."I need not acquaint you with what has been my condition for some time past; and how, having been at the edge of the grave, I am, by the unexpected and undeserved mercy of Heaven, restored again. In the condition I have been in, it cannot be strange to you that our unhappy correspondence has not been the least of the burthens which lay upon my conscience. I need say no more; those things that must be repented of, must also be reformed."I wish you would think of going back to Bath. I enclose you here a bill for ¬£50 for clearing yourself at your lodgings, and carrying you down, and hope it will be no surprise to you to add, that on this account only, and not for any offence given me on your side, I can see you no more. I will take due care of the child; leave him where he is, or take him with you, as you please. I wish you the like reflections, and that they may be to your advantage.?ÄîI am, &c. " I was struck with this letter, as with a thousand wounds; the reproaches of my own conscience were such as I cannot express, for I was not blind to my own crime; and I reflected that I might with less offence have continued with my brother, since there was no crime in our marriage on that score, neither of us knowing it. But I never once reflected that I was all this while a married woman, a wife to Mr.?Äî, the linen-draper, who, though he had left me by the necessity of his circumstances, had no power to discharge me from the marriage contract which was between us, or to give me a legal liberty to marry again; so that I had been no less than a whore and an adulteress all this while. I then reproached myself with the liberties I had taken, and how I had been a snare to this gentleman, and that indeed I was principal in the crime; that now he was mercifully snatched out of the gulf by a convincing workey upon his mind, but that I was left as if I was abandoned by Heaven to a continuing in my wickedness. Under these reflections I continued very pensive and sad for near a month, and did not go down to Bath, having no inclination to be with the woman whom I was with before, lest, as I thought, she should prompt me to some wicked course of life again, as she had done; and besides, I was loth she should know I was cast off as above. And now I was greatly perplexed about my little boy. It was death to me to part with the child, and yet when I considered the danger of being one time or other left with him to keep without being able to support him, I then resolved to leave him; but then I concluded to be near him myself too, that I might have the satisfaction of seeing him, without the care of providing for him. So I sent my gentleman a short letter that I had obeyed his orders in all things but that of going back to Bath; that however parting from him was a wound to me that I could never recover, yet that I was fully satisfied his reflections were just, and would be very far from desiring to obstruct his reformation. Then I represented my own circumstances to him in the most moving terms. I told him that those unhappy distresses which first moved him to a generous friendship for me, would, I hoped, move him to a little concern for me now, though the criminal part of our correspondence, which I believe neither of us intended to fall into at that time, was broken off; that I desired to repent as sincerely as he had done, but entreated him to put me in some condition that I might not be exposed to temptations from the frightful prospect of poverty and distress; and if he had the least apprehensions of my being troublesome to him, I begged he would put me in a posture to go back to my mother in Virginia, from whence he knew I came, and that would put an end to all his fears on that account. I concluded, that if he would send me ¬£50 more to facilitate my going away, I would send him back a general release, and would promise never to disturb him more with any importunities; unless it were to hear of the well-doing of the child, who, if I found my mother living, and my circumstances able, I would send for, and take him also off his hands. This was indeed all a cheat thus far, viz., that I had no intention to go to Virginia, as the account of my former affairs there may convince anybody of; but the business was to get this last ¬£50 of him, if possible, knowing well enough it would be the last penny I was ever to expect. However, the argument I used, namely, of giving him a general release, and never troubling him any more, prevailed effectually, and he sent me a bill for the money by a person who brought with him a general release for me to sign, and which I franklyez signed; and thus, though full sore against my will, a final end was put to this affair. And here I cannot but reflect upon the unhappy consequence of too great freedoms between persons statedfa as we were, upon the pretence of innocent intentions, love of friendship, and the like; for the flesh has generally so great a share in those friendships, that it is great odds but inclination prevails at last over the most solemn resolutions; and that vice breaks in at the breaches of decency, which really innocent friendship ought to preserve with the greatest strictness. But I leave the readers of these things to their own just reflections, which they will be more able to make effectual than I, who so soon forgot myself, and am therefore but a very indifferent monitor.19 I was now a single person again, as I may call myself; I was loosed from all the obligations either of wedlock or mistress-ship in the world, except my husband the linen-draper, whom I having not now heard from in almost fifteen years, nobody could blame me for thinking myself entirely freed from; seeing also he had at his going away told me, that if I did not hear frequently from him, I should conclude he was dead, and I might freely marry again to whom I pleased. I now began to cast up my accounts. I had by many letters, and much importunity, and with the intercession of my mother too, had a second return of some goods from my brother, as I now call him, in Virginia, to make up the damage of the cargo I brought away with me, and this too was upon the condition of my sealing a general release to him, which, though I thought hard, yet I was obliged to promise. I managed so well in this case, that I got my goods away before the release was signed, and then I always found something or other to say to evade the thing, and to put off the signing it at all; till at length I pretended fb I must write to my brother before I could do it. Including this recruit,fc and before I got the last ¬£50, I found my strength to amount, put all together, to about ¬£400, so that with that I had above ¬£450. I had saved ¬£100 more, but I met with a disaster with that, which was this?Äîthat a goldsmith in whose hands I had trusted it broke,20 so I lost ¬£70 of my money, the man's composition not making above ¬£30 out of his ¬£100. I had a little plate,fd but not much, and was well enough stocked with clothes and linen. With this stock I had the world to begin again; but you are to consider that I was not now the same woman as when I lived at Rotherhithe; for, first of all, I was near twenty years older, and did not look the better for my age, nor for my rambles to Virginia and back again; and though I omitted nothing that might set me out to advantage, except painting,fe for that I never stooped to, yet there would always be some difference seen between five-and-twenty and two-and-forty. I cast about innumerable ways for my future state of life, and began to consider very seriously what I should do, but nothing offered. I took care to make the world take me for something more than I was, and had it given out that I was a fortune, and that my estate was in my own hands, the last of which was very true, the first of it was as above. I had no acquaintance, which was one of my worst misfortunes, and the consequence of that was, I had no adviser, and, above all, I had nobody to whom I could in confidence commit the secret of my circumstances; and I found by experience, that to be friendless is the worst condition, next to being in want, that a woman can be reduced to: I say a woman, because 't is evident men can be their own advisers and their own directors, and know how to work themselves out of difficulties and into business better than women; but if a woman has no friend to communicate her affairs to, and to advise and assist her, 't is ten to one but she is undone ; nay, and the more money she has, the more danger she is in of being wronged and deceived; and this was my case in the affair of the ¬£100 which I left in the hands of the goldsmith, as above, whose credit, it seems, was upon the ebb before, but I, that had nobody to consult with, knew nothing of it, and so lost my money. When a woman is thus left desolate and void of counsel, she is just like a bag of money or a jewel dropt on the highway, which is a prey to the next comer; if a man of virtue and upright principles happens to find it, he will have it cried,ff and the owner may come to hear of it again; but how many times shall such a thing fall into hands that will make no scruple of seizing it for their own, to once that it shall come into good hands? This was evidently my case, for I was now a loose, unguided creature, and had no help, no assistance, no guide for my conduct; I knew what I aimed at, and what I wanted, but knew nothing how to pursue the end by direct means. I wanted to be placed in a settled state of living, and had I happened to meet with a sober, good husband, I should have been as true a wife to him as virtue itself could have formed. If I had been otherwise, the vice came in always at the door of necessity, not at the door of inclination; and I understood too well, by the want of it, what the value of a settled life was, to do anything to forfeit the felicity of it; nay, I should have made the better wife for all the difficulties I had passed through, by a great deal; nor did I in any of the times that I had been a wife give my husbands the least uneasiness on account of my behaviour. But all this was nothing; I found no encouraging prospect. I waited; I lived regularly, and with as much frugality as became my circumstances; but nothing offered, nothing presented, and the main stock wasted apace. What to do I knew not; the terror of approaching poverty lay hard upon my spirits. I had some money, but where to place it I knew not, nor would the interest of it maintain me, at least not in London. At length a new scene opened. There was in the house where I lodged a north-country gentlewoman,fg and nothing was more frequent in her discourse than her account of the cheapness of provisions, and the easy way of living in her country; how plentiful and how cheap everything was, what good company they kept, and the like; till at last I told her she almost tempted me to go and live in her country; for I that was a widow, though I had sufficient to live on, yet had no way of increasing it; and that London was an extravagant place; that I found I could not live here under ¬£100 a year, unless I kept no company, no servant, made no appearance, and buried myself in privacy, as if I was obliged to it by necessity. I should have observed, that she was always made to believe, as everybody else was, that I was a great fortune, or at least that I had three or four thousand pounds, if not more, and all in my own hands; and she was mighty sweet upon me when she thought me inclined in the least to go into her country. She said she had a sister lived near Liverpool; that her brother was a considerable gentleman there, and had a great estate also in Ireland; that she would go down there in about two months, and if I would give her my company thither, I should be as welcome as herself for a month or more as I pleased, till I should see how I liked the country; and if I thought fit to live there, she would undertake they would take care, though they did not entertain lodgers themselves, they would recommend me to some agreeable family, where I should be placed to my content. If this woman had known my real circumstances, she would never have laid so many snares, and taken so many weary steps, to catch a poor desolate creature that was good for little when it was caught; and indeed I, whose case was almost desperate, and thought I could not be much worse, was not very anxious about what might befall me, provided they did me no personal injury; so I suffered myself, though not without a great deal of invitation, and great professions of sincere friendship and real kindness?ÄîI say, I suffered myself to be prevailed upon to go with her, and accordingly I put myself in a posture for a journey, though I did not absolutely know whither I was to go. And now I found myself in great distress; what little I had in the world was all in money, except, as before, a little plate, some linen, and my clothes; as for household stuff, I had little or none, for I had lived always in lodgings; but I had not one friend in the world with whom to trust that little I had, or to direct me how to dispose of it. I thought of the bank, and of the other companies in London, but I had no friend to commit the management of it to, and to keep and carry about me bank bills, tallies,fh orders, and such things, I looked upon as unsafe; that if they were lost, my money was lost, and then I was undone; and, on the other hand, I might be robbed, and perhaps murdered in a strange place for them; and what to do I knew not. It came into my thoughts one morning that I would go to the bank myself, where I had often been to receive the interest of some bills I had, and where I had found the clerk, to whom I applied myself, very honest to me, and particularly so fair one time, that when I had mistoldfi my money, and taken less than my due, and was coming away, he set me to rights and gave me the rest, which he might have put into his own pocket. I went to him and asked if he would trouble himself to be my adviser, who was a poor friendless widow, and knew not what to do. He told me, if I desired his opinion of anything within the reach of his business, he would do his endeavour that I should not be wronged, but that he would also help me to a good, sober person of his acquaintance, who was a clerk in such business too, though not in their house, whose judgment was good, and whose honesty I might depend upon; "for," added he, "I will answer for him, and for every step he takes; if he wrongs you, madam, of one farthing, it shall lie at my door; and he delights to assist people in such cases?Äîhe does it as an act of charity." I was a little at a stand at this discourse; but after some pause I told him I had rather have depended upon him, because I had found him honest, but if that could not be, I would take his recommendation sooner than any one's else. "I dare say, madam," says he, "that you will be as well satisfied with my friend as with me, and he is thoroughly able to assist you, which I am not." It seems he had his hands full of the business of the bank, and had engaged to meddle with no other business than that of his office: he added, that his friend should take nothing of me for his advice or assistance, and this indeed encouraged me. He appointed the same evening, after the bank was shut, for me to meet him and his friend. As soon as I saw his friend, and he began but to talk of the affair, I was fully satisfied I had a very honest man to deal with; his countenance spoke it; and his character, as I heard afterwards, was everywhere so good, that I had no room for any more doubts upon me. After the first meeting, in which I only said what I had said before, he appointed me to come the next day, telling me I might in the meantime satisfy myself of him by inquiry, which, however, I knew not how to do, having no acquaintance myself. Accordingly I met him the next day, when I entered more freely with him into my case. I told him my circumstances at large: that I was a widow come over from America, perfectly desolate and friendless ; that I had a little money, and but a little, and was almost distracted for fear of losing it, having no friend in the world to trust with the management of it; that I was going into the north of England to live cheap, that my stock might not waste; that I would willingly lodge my money in the bank, but that I durst not carry the bills about me; and how to correspond about it, or with whom, I knew not. He told me I might lodge the money in the bank as an account, and its being entered in the books would entitle me to the money at any time; and if I was in the north I might draw bills on the cashier, and receive it when I would; but that then it would be esteemed as running cash, and the bank would give no interest for it; that I might buy stock with it, and so it would lie in store for me, but that then if I wanted to dispose of it, I must come up to town to transfer it, and even it would be with some difficulty I should receive the half-yearly dividend, unless I was here in person, or had some friend I could trust with having the stock in his name to do it for me, and that would have the same difficulty in it as before; and with that he looked hard at me and smiled a little. At last says he, "Why do you not get a head-steward,fj madam, that may take you and your money together, and then you would have the trouble taken off of your hands?" "Ay, sir, and the money too, it may be," said I; "for truly I find the hazard that way is as much as 't is t' other way," but I remember I said secretly to myself, "I wish you would ask me the question fairly; I would consider very seriously on it before I said No." He went on a good way with me, and I thought once or twice he was in earnest, but, to my real affliction, I found at last he had a wife; but when he owned he had a wife he shook his head, and said with some concern, that indeed he had a wife, and no wife. I began to think he had been in the condition of my late lover, and that his wife had been lunatic, or some such thing. However, we had not much more discourse at that time, but he told me he was in too much hurry of business then, but that if I would come home to his house after their business was over, he would consider what might be done for me, to put my affairs in a posture of security. I told him I would come, and desired to know where he lived. He gave me a direction in writing, and when he gave it me he read it to me, and said, "There 't is, madam, if you dare trust yourself with me." "Yes, sir," said I, "I believe I may venture to trust you with myself, for you have a wife, you say, and I don't want a husband; besides, I dare trust you with my money, which is all I have in the world, and if that were gone, I may trust myself anywhere." He said some things in jest that were very handsome and mannerly, and would have pleased me very well if they had been in earnest; but that passed over, I took the directions, and appointed to be at his house at seven o'clock the same evening. When I came he made several proposals for my placing my money in the bank, in order to my having interest for it; but still some difficulty or other came in the way, which he objected as not safe; and I found such a sincere disinterestedfk honesty in him, that I began to think I had certainly found the honest man I wanted, and that I could never put myself into better hands; so I told him with a great deal of frankness that I had never met with a man or woman yet that I could trust, or in whom I could think myself safe, but that I saw he was so disinterestedly concerned for my safety, that I would freely trust him with the management of that little I had, if he would accept to be steward for a poor widow that could give him no salary. He smiled, and, standing up, with great respect saluted me. He told me he could not but take it very kindly that I had so good an opinion of him; that he would not deceive me; that he would do anything in his power to serve me, and expect no salary; but that he could not by any means accept of a trust that might bring him to be suspected of self-interest, and that if I should die he might have disputes with my executors, which he should be very loth to encumber himself with. I told him if those were all his objections I would soon remove them, and convince him that there was not the least room for any difficulty ; for that, first, as for suspecting him, if ever, now was the time to suspect him, and not to put the trust into his hands; and whenever I did suspect him, he could but throw it up then, and refuse to go on. Then, as to executors, I assured him I had no heirs, nor any relations in England, and I would have neither heirs or executors but himself, unless I should alter my condition, and then his trust and trouble should cease together, which, however, I had no prospect of yet; but I told him if I died as I was, it should be all his own, and he would deserve it by being so faithful to me, as I was satisfied he would be. He changed his countenance at this discourse, and asked me how I came to have so much goodwill for him; and looking very much pleased, said he might very lawfully wish he was single for my sake. I smiled, and told him, that as he was not, my offer could have no design upon him, and to wish was not to be allowed, 't was criminal to his wife. He told me I was wrong; "for," says he, "as I said before, I have a wife and no wife, and't would be no sin to wish her hanged." "I know nothing of your circumstances that way, sir," said I; "but it cannot be innocent to wish your wife dead." "I tell you," says he again, "she is a wife and no wife; you don't know what I am, or what she is." "That's true," said I, "sir, I don't know what you are; but I believe you to be an honest man, and that's the cause of all my confidence in you. ¬ª "Well, well," says he, "and so I am; but I am something else too, madam; for," says he, "to be plain with you, I am a cuckold, and she is a whore." He spoke it in a kind of jest, but it was with such an awkward smile, that I perceived it stuck very close to him, and he looked dismally when he said it. "That alters the case indeed, sir," said I, "as to that part you were speaking of; but a cuckold, you know, may be an honest man; it does not alter that case at all. Besides, I think," said I, "since your wife is so dishonest to you, you are too honest to her to own her for your wife; but that," said I, "is what I have nothing to do with." "Nay," says he, "I do think to clear my hands of her; for, to be plain with you, madam," added he, "I am no contented cuckold neither: on the other hand, I assure you it provokes me to the highest degree, but I can't help myself; she that will be a whore, will be a whore." I waived the discourse, and began to talk of my business; but I found he could not have done with it, so I let him alone, and he went on to tell me all the circumstances of his case, too long to relate here; particularly, that having been out of England some time before he came to the post he was in, she had had two children in the meantime by an officer in the army; and that when he came to England, and, upon her submission,fl took her again, and maintained her very well, yet she ran away from him with a linen-draper's apprentice, robbed him of what she could come at, and continued to live from him still; "so that, madam," says he, "she is a whore not by necessity, which is the common bait, but by inclination, and for the sake of the vice." Well, I pitied him, and wished him well rid of her, and still would have talked of my business, but it would not do. At last he looked steadily at me. "Look you, madam," says he, "you came to ask advice of me, and I will serve you as faithfully as if you were my own sister; but I must turn the tables, since you oblige me to do it, and are so friendly to me, and I think I must ask advice of you. Tell me, what must a poor abused fellow do with a whore? What can I do to do myself justice upon her?" "Alas! sir," says I, " 't is a case too nicefm for me to advise in, but it seems to me she has run away from you, so you are rid of her fairly; what can you desire more?" "Ay, she is gone indeed," said he, "but I am not clear of her for all that." "That's true," says I; "she may indeed run you into debt, but the law has furnished you with methods to prevent that also; you may cry her down,fn as they call it." "No, no," says he, "that is not the case; I have taken care of all that; 't is not that part that I speak of, but I would be rid of her that I might marry again." "Well, sir," says I, "then you must divorce her; if you can prove what you say, you may certainly get that done, and then you are free." "That's very tedious and expensive," says he. "Why," says I, "if you can get any woman you like to take your word, I suppose your wife would not dispute the liberty with you that she takes herself." "Ay," says he, "but it would be hard to bring an honest woman to do that; and for the other sort," says he, "I have had enough of her to meddle with any more whores." It occurred to me presently, "I would have taken your word with all my heart, if you had but asked me the question;" but that was to myself. To him I replied, "Why, you shut the door against any honest woman accepting you, for you condemn all that should venture upon you, and conclude that a woman that takes you now can't be honest." "Why," says he, "I wish you would satisfy me that an honest woman would take me; I'd venture it;" and then turns short upon me, "Will you take me, madam?" "That's not a fair question," says I, "after what you have said; however, lest you should think I wait only a recantation of it, I shall answer you plainly, No, not I; my business is of another kind with you; and I did not expect you would have turned my serious application to you, in my distracted case, into a comedy."fo "Why, madam," says he, "my case is as distracted as yours can be, and I stand in as much need of advice as you do, for I think if I have not relief somewhere I shall be mad myself, and I know not what course to take, I protest to you." "Why, sir," says I, " 't is easier to give advice in your case than mine." "Speak, then," says he, "I beg of you, for now you encourage me." "Why," says I, "if your case is so plain, you may be legally divorced, and then you may find honest women enough to ask the question of fairly; the sex is not so scarce that you can want a wife." "Well, then," said he, "I am in earnest; I'll take your advice; but shall I ask you one question seriously beforehand?" "Any question," said I; "but that you did before." "No, that answer will not do," said he, "for, in short, that is the question I shall ask." "You may ask what questions you please, but you have my answer to that already," said I; "besides, sir," said I, "can you think so ill of me as that I would give any answer to such a question beforehand? Can any woman alive believe you in earnest, or think you design anything but to banter her?" "Well, well," says he, "I do not banter you, I am in earnest; consider of it." "But, sir," says I, a little gravely, "I came to you about my own business; I beg of you to let me know what you will advise me to do?" "I will be prepared," says he, "againstfp you come again." "Nay," says I, "you have forbid my coming any more." "Why so?" said he, and looked a little surprised. "Because," said I, "you can't expect I should visit you on the account you talk of." "Well," says he, "you shall promise to come again, however, and I will not say any more of it till I have the divorce. But I desire you'll prepare to be better conditionedfq when that's done, for you shall be the woman, or I will not be divorced at all; I owe it to your unlooked-for kindness, if to nothing else, but I have other reasons too." He could not have said anything in the world that pleased me better; however, I knew that the way to secure him was to stand off while the thing was so remote, as it appeared to be, and that it was time enough to accept of it when he was able to perform it. So I said very respectfully to him, it was time enough to consider of these things when he was in a condition to talk of them; in the meantime, I told him, I was going a great way from him, and he would find objects enough to please him better. We broke off here for the present, and he made me promise him to come again the next day, for my own business, which after some pressing I did; though had he seen farther into me, I wanted no pressing on that account. I came the next evening accordingly, and brought my maid with me, to let him see that I kept a maid. He would have had me let the maid have stayed, but I would not, but ordered her aloud to come for me again about nine o'clock. But he forbid that, and told me he would see me safe home, which I was not very well pleased with, supposing he might do that to know where I lived, and inquire into my character and circumstances. However, I ventured that, for all the people there knew of me was to my advantage; and all the character he had of me was, that I was a woman of fortune, and that I was a very modest, sober body; which, whether true or not in the main, yet you may see how necessary it is for all women who expect anything in the world, to preserve the character of their virtue, even when perhaps they may have sacrificed the thing itself I found, and was not a little pleased with it, that he had provided a supper for me. I found also he lived very handsomely, and had a house very handsomely furnished, and which I was rejoiced at indeed, for I looked upon it as all my own. We had now a second conference upon the subject-matter of the last. He laid his business very homefr indeed; he protested his affection to me, and indeed I had no room to doubt it; he declared that it began from the first moment I talked with him, and long before I had mentioned leaving my effects with him. " 'T is no matter when it began," thought I; "if it will but hold, 't will be well enough." He then told me how much the offer I had made of trusting him with my effects had engaged him. "So I intended it should," thought I, "but then I thought you had been a single man too." After we had supped, I observed he pressed me very hard to drink two or three glasses of wine, which, however, I declined, but drank one glass or two. He then told me he had a proposal to make to me, which I should promise him I would not take ill if I should not grant it. I told him I hoped he would make no dishonourable proposal to me, especially in his own house, and that if it was such, I desired he would not mention it, that I might not be obliged to offer any resentment to him that did not become the respect I professed for him, and the trust I had placed in him, in coming to his house; and begged of him he would give me leave to go away, and accordingly began to put on my gloves and prepare to be gone, though at the same time I no more intended it than he intended to let me. Well, he importuned me not to talk of going; he assured me he was very far from offering any such thing to me that was dishonourable, and if I thought so, he would choose to say no more of it. That part I did not relish at all. I told him I was ready to hear anything that he had to say, depending that he would say nothing unworthy of himself, or unfit for me to hear. Upon this, he told me his proposal was this: that I would marry him, though he had not yet obtained the divorce from the whore his wife; and to satisfy me that he meant honourably, he would promise not to desire me to live with him, or go to bed to him till the divorce was obtained. My heart said yes to this offer at first word, but it was necessary to play the hypocrite a little more with him; so I seemed to decline the motion with some warmth as unfair, told him that such a proposal could be of no signification, but to entangle us both in great difficulties; for if he should not at last obtain the divorce, yet we could not dissolve the marriage, neither could we proceed in it; so that if he was disappointed in the divorce, I left him to consider what a condition we should both be in. In short, I carried on the argument against this so far, that I convinced him it was not a proposal that had any sense in it; then he went from it to another, viz., that I would sign and seal a contract with him, conditioning to marry him as soon as the divorce was obtained, and to be void if he could not get it. I told him that was more rational than the other; but as this was the first time that ever I could imagine him weak enough to be in earnest, I did not use to say yes at first asking; I would consider of it. I played with this lover as an angler does with a trout: I found I had him fast on the hook; so I jested with his new proposal, and put him off. I told him he knew little of me, and bade him inquire about me; I let him also go home with me to my lodging, though I would not ask him to go in, for I told him it was not decent. In short, I ventured to avoid signing a contract, and the reason why I did it was because the lady that had invited me to go with her into Lancashirefs insisted so positively upon it, and promised me such great fortunes, and fine things there, that I was tempted to go and try. "Perhaps," said I, "I may mendft myself very much;" and then I made no scruple of quitting my honest citizen, whom I was not so much in love with as not to leave him for a richer. In a word, I avoided a contract; but told him I would go into the north, that he would know where to write to me by the business I had intrusted him with; that I would give him a sufficient pledge of my respect for him, for I would leave almost all I had in the world in his hands; and I would thus far give him my word, that as soon as he had sued out the divorce, if he would send me an account of it, I would come up to London, and that then we would talk seriously of the matter. It was a base design I went with, that I must confess, though I was invited thither with a design much worse, as the sequelfu will discover. Well, I went with my friend, as I called her, into Lancashire. All the way we went she caressed me with the utmost appearance of a sincere, undissembled affection; treatedfv me, except my coach-hire, all the way; and her brother brought a gentleman's coach to Warringtonfw to receive us, and we were carried from thence to Liverpool with as much ceremony as I could desire. We were also entertained at a merchant's house in Liverpool three or four days very handsomely; I forbear to tell his name, because of what followed. Then she told me she would carry me to an uncle's house of hers where we should be nobly entertained; and her uncle, as she called him, sent a coach and four horses for us, and we were carried near forty miles I know not whither. We came, however, to a gentleman's seat,fx where was a numerous family, a large park, extraordinary company indeed, and where she was called cousin. I told her, if she had resolved to bring me into such company as this, she should have let me have furnished myself with better clothes. The ladies took notice of that, and told me very genteelly they did not value people in their own country so much by their clothes as they did in London; that their cousin had fully informed them of my quality, and that I did not want clothes to set me off; in short, they entertained me not like what I was, but like what they thought I had been, namely, a widow lady of a great fortune. The first discovery I made here was, that the family were all Roman Catholics,21 and the cousin too; however, nobody in the world could behave better to me, and I had all the civility shown that I could have had if I had been of their opinion. The truth is, I had not so much principle of any kind as to be nice in point of religion; and I presently learned to speak favourably of the Romish Church; particularly, I told them I saw little but the prejudice of education in all the differences that were among Christians about religion, and if it had so happened that my father had been a Roman Catholic, I doubted not but I should have been as well pleased with their religion as my own. This obliged them in the highest degree, and as I was besieged day and night with good company and pleasant discourse, so I had two or three old ladies that lay at me upon the subject of religion too. I was so complaisant that I made no scruple to be present at their mass, and to conform to all their gestures as they showed me the pattern, but I would not come too cheap; so that I only in the main encouraged them to expect that I would turn Roman Catholic if I was instructed in the Catholic doctrine, as they called it; and so the matter rested. I stayed here about six weeks; and then my conductor led me back to a country village, about six miles from Liverpool, where her brother, as she called him, came to visit me in his own chariot,fy with two footmen in a good livery; and the next thing was to make love to me. As it happened to me, one would think I could not have been cheated, and indeed I thought so myself, having a safe card at home, which I resolved not to quit unless I could mend myself very much. However, in all appearance this brother was a match worth my listening to, and the least his estate was valued at was ¬£1000 a year, but the sister said it was worth ¬£1500 a year, and lay most of it in Ireland. I that was a great fortune,fz and passed for such, was above being asked how much my estate was; and my false friend, taking it upon a foolish hearsay, had raised it from ¬£500 to ¬£5000, and by the time she came into the country she called it ¬£15,000. The Irishman, for such I understood him to be, was stark mad at this bait; in short, he courted me, made me presents, and ran in debt like a madman for the expenses of his courtship. He had, to give him his due, the appearance of an extraordinary fine gentleman; he was tall, well-shaped, and had an extraordinary address; talked as naturally of his park and his stables, of his horses, his gamekeepers, his woods, his tenants, and his servants, as if he had been in a mansion-house, and I had seen them all about me. He never so much as asked me about my fortune or estate, but assured me that when we came to Dublin he would jointurega me in ¬£600 a year in good land, and that he would enter into a deed of settlement, or contract, here for the performance of it. This was such language indeed as I had not been used to, and I was here beaten out of all my measures;gb I had a she-devil in my bosom, every hour telling me how great her brother lived. One time she would come for my orders, how I would have my coach painted, and how lined; and another time, what clothes my page should wear: in short, my eyes were dazzled, I had now lost my power of saying no, and, to cut the story short, I consented to be married; but to be more private, we were carried farther into the country, and married by a priest,22 which I was assured would marry us as effectually us a Church of England parson. I cannot say but I had some reflections in this affair upon the dishonourable forsaking my faithful citizen, who loved me sincerely, and who was endeavouring to quit himself of a scandalous whore by whom he had been barbarously used, and promised himself infinite happiness in his new choice; which choice was now giving up herself to another in a manner almost as scandalous as hers could be. But the glittering show of a great estate and of fine things which the deceived creature that was now my deceiver represented every hour to my imagination hurried me away, and gave me no time to think of London, or of anything there, much less of the obligation I had to a person of infinitely more real merit than what was now before me. But the thing was done; I was now in the arms of my new spouse, who appeared still the same as before; great even to magnificence, and nothing less than a thousand pounds a year could support the ordinary equipage he appeared in. After we had been married about a month, he began to talk of my going to West Chestergc in order to embark for Ireland. However, he did not hurry me, for we stayed near three weeks longer, and then he sent to Chester for a coach to meet us at the Black Rock,gd as they call it, over against Liverpool. Thither we went in a fine boat they call a pinnace, with six oars; his servants, and horses, and baggage going in a ferry-boat. He made his excuse to me, that he had no acquaintance at Chester, but he would go before and get some handsome apartments for me at a private house. I asked him how long we should stay at Chester. He said, not at all, any longer than one night or two, but he would immediately hire a coach to go to Holyhead.ge Then I told him he should by no means give himself the trouble to get private lodgings for one night or two, for that Chester being a great place, I made no doubt that there would be very good inns and accommodation enough; so we lodged at an inn not far from the cathedral; I forget what sign it was at. Here my spouse, talking of my going to Ireland, asked me if I had no affairs to settle at London before we went off. I told him no, not of any great consequence, but what might be done as well by letter from Dublin. "Madam," says he very respectfully, "I suppose the greatest part of your estate, which my sister tells me is most of it in money in the Bank of England,gf lies secure enough; but in case it required transferring, or any way altering its property, it might be necessary to go up to London and settle those things before we went over." I seemed to look strange at it, and told him I knew not what he meant; that I had no effects in the Bank of England that I knew of, and I hoped he could not say that I had ever told him I had. No, he said, I had not told him so, but his sister had said the greatest part of my estate lay there; "and I only mentioned it, my dear," said he, "that if there was any occasion to settle it, or order anything about it, we might not be obliged to the hazard and trouble of another voyage back again;" for he added, that he did not care to venture me too much upon the sea. I was surprised at this talk, and began to consider what the meaning of it must be; and it presently occurred to me, that my friend, who called him brother, had represented me in colours which were not my due; and I thought that I would know the bottom of it before I went out of England, and before I should put myself into I know not whose hands in a strange country. Upon this I called his sister into my chamber the next morning, and letting her know the discourse her brother and I had been upon, I conjuredgg her to tell me what she had said to him, and upon what footgh it was that she had made this marriage. She owned that she had told him that I was a great fortune, and said that she was told so at London. "Told so?" says I warmly; "did I ever tell you so?" No, she said, it was true I never did tell her so, but I had said several times that what I had was in my own disposal. "I did so," returned I very quick, "but I never told you I had anything called a fortune; no, that I had ¬£100, or the value of ¬£100, in the world. And how did it consist with my being a fortune," said I, "that I should come here into the north of England with you, only upon the account of living cheap?" At these words, which I spoke warm and high, my husband came into the room, and I desired him to come in and sit down, for I had something of moment to say before them both, which it was absolutely necessary he should hear. He looked a little disturbed at the assurance with which I seemed to speak it, and came and sat down by me, having first shut the door; upon which I began, for I was very much provoked, and turning myself to him, "I am afraid," says I, "my dear" (for I spoke with kindness on his side), "that you have a very great abuse put upon you, and an injury done you never to be repaired in your marrying me, which, however, as I have had no hand in it, I desire I may be fairly acquitted of it, and that the blame may lie where it ought and nowhere else, for I wash my hands of every part of it." "What injury can be done me, my dear," says he, "in marrying you? I hope it is to my honour and advantage every way." "I will soon explain it to you," says I, "and I fear there will be no reason to think yourself well used; but I will convince you, my dear," says I again, "that I have had no hand in it." He looked now scared and wild, and began, I believed, to suspect what followed; however, looking towards me, and saying only, "Go on," he sat silent, as if to hear what I had more to say; so I went on. "I asked you last night," said I, speaking to him, "if ever I made any boast to you of my estate, or ever told you I had any estate in the Bank of England or anywhere else, and you owned I had not, as is most true; and I desire you will tell me here, before your sister, if ever I gave you any reason from me to think so, or that ever we had any discourse about it;" and he owned again I had not, but said I had appeared always as a woman of fortune, and he depended on it that I was so, and hoped he was not deceived. "I am not inquiring whether you have been deceived," said I; "I fear you have, and I too; but I am clearing myself from being concerned in deceiving you. "I have been now asking your sister if ever I told her of any fortune or estate I had, or gave her any particulars of it; and she owns I never did. And pray, madam," said I, "be so just to me, to charge me if you can, if ever I pretended to you that I had an estate; and why, if I had, should I ever come down into this country with you on purpose to spare that little I had, and live cheap?" She could not deny one word, but said she had been told in London that I had a very great fortune, and that it lay in the Bank of England. "And now, dear sir," said I, turning myself to my new spouse again, "be so just to me as to tell me who has abused both you and me so much as to make you believe I was a fortune, and prompt you to court me to this marriage?" He could not speak a word, but pointed to her; and, after some more pause, flew out in the most furious passion that ever I saw a man in [in] my life, cursing her, and calling her all the whores and hard names he could think of; and that she had ruined him, declaring that she had told him I had ¬£15,000, and that she was to have ¬£500 of him for procuring this match for him. He then added, directing his speech to me, that she was none of his sister, but had been his whore for two years before; that she had had ¬£100 of him in part of this bargain, and that he was utterly undone if things were as I said; and in his raving he swore he would let her heart's blood out immediately, which frightened her and me too. She cried, said she had been told so in the house where I lodged. But this aggravated him more than before, that she should put so far upon him, and run things such a length upon no other authority than a hearsay; and then turning to me again, said very honestly, he was afraid we were both undone; "for, to be plain, my dear, I have no estate," says he; "what little I had, this devil has made me run out in putting me into this equipage."gi She took the opportunity of his being earnest in talking with me, and got out of the room, and I never saw her more. I was confounded now as much as he, and knew not what to say. I thought many ways that I had the worst of it; but his saying he was undone, and that he had no estate neither, put me into a mere distraction. "Why," says I to him, "this has been a hellish juggle, for we are married here upon the foot of a double fraud: you are undone by the disappointment, it seems; and if I had had a fortune I had been cheated too, for you say you have nothing." "You would indeed have been cheated, my dear," says he, "but you would not have been undone, for ¬£15,000 would have maintained us both very handsomely in this country; and I had resolved to have dedicated every groat of it to you; I would not have wronged you of a shilling, and the rest I would have made up in my affection to you, and tenderness of you, as long as I lived." This was very honest indeed, and I really believe he spoke as he intended, and that he was a man that was as well qualified to make me happy, as to his temper and behaviour, as any man ever was; but his having no estate, and being run into debt on this ridiculous account in the country, made all the prospect dismal and dreadful, and I knew not what to say or what to think. I told him it was very unhappy that so much love and so much good nature as I discovered in him should be thus precipitated into misery; that I saw nothing before us but ruin; for, as to me, it was my unhappiness, that what little I had was not able to relieve us a week, and with that I pulled out a bankbill of ¬£20 and eleven guineas, which I told him I had saved out of my little income, and that by the account that creature had given me of the way of living in that country, I expected it would maintain me three or four years; that if it was taken from me, I was left destitute, and he knew what the condition of a woman must be if she had no money in her pocket; however, I told him, if he would take it, there it was. He told me with great concern, and I thought I saw tears in his eyes, that he would not touch it; that he abhorred the thoughts of stripping me and making me miserable; that he had fifty guineas left, which was all he had in the world, and he pulled it out and threw it down on the table, bidding me take it, though he were to starve for want of it. I returned, with the same concern for him, that I could not bear to hear him talk so; that on the contrary, if he could propose any probable method of living, I would do anything that became me, and that I would live as narrow as he could desire. He begged of me to talk no more at that rate, for it would make him distracted; he said he was bred a gentleman, though he was reduced to a low fortune, and that there was but one way left which he could think of, and that would not do, unless I could answer him one question, which, however, he said he would not press me to. I told him I would answer it honestly; whether it would be to his satisfaction or no, that I could not tell. "Why, then, my dear, tell me plainly," says he, "will the little you have keep us together in any figure, or in any station or place, or will it not?" It was my happiness that I had not discovered myself or my circumstances at all?Äîno, not so much as my name; and seeing there was nothing to be expected from him, however good-humoured and however honest he seemed to be, but to live on what I knew would soon be wasted, I resolved to conceal everything but the bank bill and eleven guineas; and I would have been very glad to have lost that and have been set down where he took me up. I had indeed another bank bill about me of ¬£30, which was the whole of what I brought with me, as well to subsist on in the country, as not knowing what might offer; because this creature, the go-between that had thus betrayed us both, had made me believe strange things of marrying to my advantage, and I was not willing to be without money, whatever might happen. This bill I concealed, and that made me the freer of the rest, in consideration of his circumstances, for I really pitied him heartily. But to return to this question, I told him I never willingly deceived him, and I never would. I was very sorry to tell him that the little I had would not subsist us; that it was not sufficient to subsist me alone in the south country, and that this was the reason that made me put myself into the hands of that woman who called him brother, she having assured me that I might board very handsomely at a town called Manchester,gj where I had not yet been, for about ¬£6 a year; and my whole income not being above ¬£15 a year, I thought I might live easy upon it, and wait for better things. He shook his head and remained silent, and a very melancholy evening we had; however, we supped together and lay together that night, and when we had almost supped he looked a little better and more cheerful, and called for a bottle of wine. "Come, my dear," says he, "though the case is bad, it is to no purpose to be dejected. Come, be as easy as you can; I will endeavour to find out some way or other to live; if you can but subsist yourself, that is better than nothing. I must try the world again; a man ought to think like a man; to be discouraged is to yield to the misfortune." With this he filled a glass, and drank to me, holding my hand all the while the wine went down, and protesting his main concern was for me. It was really a true, gallant spirit he was of, and it was the more grievous to me. 'T is something of relief even to be undone by a man of honour, rather than by a scoundrel; but here the greatest disappointment was on his side, for he had really spent a great deal of money, and it was very remarkable on what poor terms she proceeded. First, the baseness of the creature herself is to be observed, who, for the getting ¬£100 herself, could be content to let him spend three or four more, though perhaps it was all he had in the world, and more than all; when she had not the least ground more than a little tea-table chat, to say that I had any estate, or was a fortune, or the like. It is true the design of deluding a woman of fortune, if I had been so, was base enough; the putting the face of great things upon poor circumstances was a fraud, and bad enough; but the case a little differed too, and that in his favour, for he was not a rake that made a trade to delude women, and, as some have done, get six or seven fortunes after one another, and then riflegk and run away from them; but he was already a gentleman, unfortunate and low, but had lived well; and though, if I had had a fortune, I should have been enraged at the slut for betraying me, yet really for the man, a fortune would not have been ill bestowed on him, for he was a lovely person indeed, of generous principles, good sense, and of abundance of good humour. We had a great deal of closegl conversation that night, for we neither of us slept much; he was as penitent, for having put all those cheats upon me, as if it had been felony, and that he was going to execution; he offered me again every shilling of the money he had about him, and said he would go into the army and seek for more. I asked him why he would be so unkind to carry me into Ireland, when I might suppose he could not have subsisted me there. He took me in his arms. "My dear," said he, "I never designed to go to Ireland at all, much less to have carried you thither, but came hither to be out of the observation of the people, who had heard what I pretended to, and that nobody might ask me for money before I was furnished to supply them." "But, where then," said I, "were we to have gone next?" "Why, my dear," said he, "I'll confess the whole scheme to you as I had laid it: I purposed here to ask you something about your estate, as you see I did, and when you, as I expected you would, had entered into some account of the particulars, I would have made an excuse to have put off our voyage to Ireland for some time, and so have gone for London. Then, my dear," says he, "I resolved to have confessed all the circumstances of my own affairs to you, and let you know I had indeed made use of these artifices to obtain your consent to marry me, but had now nothing to do but to ask your pardon, and to tell you how abundantly I would endeavour to make you forget what was past, by the felicity of the days to come." "Truly," said I to him, "I find you would soon have conquered me; and it is my affliction now, that I am not in a condition to let you see how easily I should have been reconciled to you, and have passed by all the tricks you had put upon me, in recompense of so much good humour. But, my dear," said I, "what can we do now? We are both undone; and what better are we for our being reconciled, seeing we have nothing to live on?" We proposed a great many things, but nothing could offer where there was nothing to begin with. He begged me at last to talk no more of it, for, he said, I would break his heart; so we talked of other things a little, till at last he took a husband's leavegm of me, and so went to sleep. He rose before me in the morning; and indeed having lain awake almost all night, I was very sleepy, and lay till near eleven o'clock. In this time he took his horses, and three servants, and all his linen and baggage, and away he went, leaving a short but moving letter for me on the table, as follows:?Äî "MY DEAR,?ÄîI am a dog; I have abused you; but I have been drawn in to do it by a base creature, contrary to my principle and the general practice of my life. Forgive me, my dear! I ask your pardon with the greatest sincerity; I am the most miserable of men, in having deluded you. I have been so happy to possess you, and am now so wretched as to be forced to fly from you. Forgive me, my dear; once more I say, forgive me! I am not able to see you ruined by me, and myself unable to support you. Our marriage is nothing; I shall never be able to see you again; I here discharge you from it; if you can marry to your advantage, do not decline it on my account. I here swear to you on my faith, and on the word of a man of honour, I will never disturb your repose if I should know of it, which, however, is not likely. On the other hand, if you should not marry, and if good fortune should befall me, it shall be all yours, wherever you are."I have put some of the stock of money I have left into your pocket; take places for yourself and your maid in the stage-coach, and go for London. I hope it will bear your charges thither, without breaking into your own. Again I sincerely ask your pardon, and will do so as often as I shall ever think of you. Adieu, my dear, for ever!?ÄîI am, yours most affectionately,"J. E." Nothing that ever befell me in my life sank so deep into my heart as this farewell. I reproached him a thousand times in my thoughts for leaving me, for I would have gone with him through the world, if I had begged my bread. I felt in my pocket, and there I found ten guineas, his gold watch, and two little rings, one a small diamond ring, worth only about ¬£6, and the other a plain gold ring. I sat down and looked upon these things two hours together, and scarce spoke a word, till my maid interrupted me by telling me my dinner was ready. I ate but little, and after dinner I fell into a violent fit of crying, every now and then calling him by his name, which was James. "O Jemmy!" said I, "come back, come back. I'll give you all I have; I'll beg, I'll starve with you." And thus I ran raving about the room several times, and then sat down between whiles, and then walked about again, called upon him to come back, and then cried again; and thus I passed the afternoon, till about seven o'clock, when it was near dusk in the evening, being August, when, to my unspeakable surprise, he comes back into the inn, and comes directly up into my chamber. I was in the greatest confusion imaginable, and so was he too. I could not imagine what should be the occasion of it, and began to be at odds with myself whether to be glad or sorry; but my affection biassed all the rest, and it was impossible to conceal my joy, which was too great for smiles, for it burst out into tears. He was no sooner entered the room, but he ran to me and took me in his arms, holding me fast, and almost stopping my breath with his kisses, but spoke not a word. At length I began. "My dear," said I, "how could you go away from me?" to which he gave no answer, for it was impossible for him to speak. When our ecstasies were a little over, he told me he was gone above fifteen miles, but it was not in his power to go any farther without coming back to see me again and to take his leave of me once more. I told him how I had passed my time, and how loud I had called him to come back again. He told me he heard me very plain upon Delamere Forest, at a place about twelve miles off. I smiled. "Nay," says he, "do not think I am in jest, for if ever I heard your voice in my life, I heard you call me aloud, and sometimes I thought I saw you running after me." "Why," said I, "what did I say?" for I had not named the words to him. "You called aloud," says he, "and said, 0 Jemmy! 0 Jemmy! come back, come back." I laughed at him. "My dear," says he, "do not laugh, for, depend upon it, I heard your voice as plain as you hear mine now; if you please, I'll go before a magistrate and make oath of it." I then began to be amazed and surprised, and indeed frighted, and told him what I had really done, and how I had called after him, as above. When we had amused ourselves a while about this, I said to him, "Well, you shall go away from me no more; I'll go all over the world with you rather." He told me it would be a very difficult thing for him to leave me, but since it must be, he hoped I would make it as easy to me as I could; but as for him, it would be his destruction, that he foresaw. However, he told me that he had considered he had left me to travel to London alone, which was a long journey; and that as he might as well go that way as any way else, he was resolved to see me hither, or near it; and if he did go away then without taking his leave, I should not take it ill of him; and this he made me promise. He told me how he had dismissed his three servants, sold their horses, and sent the fellows away to seek their fortunes, and all in a little time, at a town on the road, I know not where; "and," says he, "it cost me some tears all alone by myself, to think how much happier they were than their master, for they could go to the next gentleman's house to see for a service, whereas," said he, "I knew not whither to go, or what to do with myself." I told him I was so completely miserable in parting with him, that I could not be worse; and that now he was come again, I would not go from him, if he would take me with him, let him go whither he would. And in the meantime I agreed that we would go together to London; but I could not be brought to consent he should go away at last and not take his leave of me, but told him, jesting, that if he did, I would call him back again as loud as I did before. Then I pulled out his watch, and gave it him back, and his two rings, and his ten guineas; but he would not take them, which made me very much suspect that he resolved to go off upon the road,gn and leave me. The truth is, the circumstances he was in, the passionate expressions of his letter, the kind, gentlemanly treatment I had from him in all the affair, with the concern he showed for me in it, his manner of parting with that large share which he gave me of his little stock left?Äîall these had joined to make such impressions on me, that I could not bear the thoughts of parting with him. Two days after this we quitted Chester, I in the stage-coach, and he on horseback. I dismissed my maid at Chester. He was very much against my being without a maid, but she being hired in the country (keeping no servant at London), I told him it would have been barbarous to have taken the poor wench, and have turned her away as soon as I came to town; and it would also have been a needless charge on the road; so I satisfied him, and he was easy on that score. He came with me as far as Dunstable,go within thirty miles of London, and then he told me fate and his own misfortunes obliged him to leave me, and that it was not convenient for him to go to London, for reasons which it was of no value to me to know, and I saw him preparing to go. The stage-coach we were in did not usually stop at Dunstable, but I desiring it for a quarter of an hour, they were content to stand at an inn-door a while, and we went into the house. Being in the inn, I told him I had but one favour more to ask him, and that was, that since he could not go any farther, he would give me leave to stay a week or two in the town with him, that we might in that time think of something to prevent such a ruinous thing to us both as a final separation would be; and that I had something of moment to offer to him, which perhaps he might find practicable to our advantage. This was too reasonable a proposal to be denied, so he called the landlady of the house, and told her his wife was taken ill, and so ill that she could not think of going any farther in a stage-coach, which had tired her almost to death, and asked if she could not get us a lodging for two or three days in a private house, where I might rest me a little, for the journey had been too much for me. The landlady, a good sort of a woman, well-bred, and very obliging, came immediately to see me; told me she had two or three very good rooms in a part of the house quite out of the noise, and if I saw them she did not doubt but I would like them, and I should have one of her maids, that should do nothing else but wait on me. This was so very kind, that I could not but accept of it; so I went to look on the rooms, and liked them very well, and indeed they were extraordinarily furnished, and very pleasant lodgings; so we paid the stage-coach, took out our baggage, and resolved to stay here a while. Here I told him I would live with him now till all my money was spent, but would not let him spend a shilling of his own. We had some kind squabble about that, but I told him it was the last time I was like to enjoy his company, and I desired that he would let me be master in that thing only, and he should govern in everything else; so he acquiesced. Here one evening, taking a walk into the fields, I told him I would now make the proposal to him I had told him of; accordingly I related to him how I had lived in Virginia, that I had a mother I believed was alive there still, though my husband was dead some years. I told him that had not my effects miscarried, which, by the way, I magnified pretty much, I might have been fortune good enough to him to have kept us from being parted in this manner. Then I entered into the manner of people settling in those countries, how they had a quantity of land given them by the constitution of the place; and if not, that it might be purchased at so easy a rate that it was not worth naming. I then gave him a full and distinct account of the nature of planting; how with carrying over but two or three hundred pounds' value in English goods, with some servants and tools, a man of application would presently lay a foundation for a family, and in a few years would raise an estate. I let him into the nature of the product of the earth, how the ground was cured and prepared, and what the usual increase of it was; and demonstrated to him, that in a very few years, with such a beginning, we should be as certain of being rich as we were now certain of being poor. He was surprised at my discourse; for we made it the whole subject of our conversation for near a week together, in which time I laid it down in black and white, as we say, that it was morally impossible, with a supposition of any reasonable good conduct,gp but that we must thrive there and do very well. Then I told him what measures I would take to raise such a sum as ¬£300, or thereabouts; and I argued with him how good a method it would be to put an end to our misfortunes, and restore our circumstances in the world, to what we had both expected; and I added, that after seven years we might be in a posture to leave our plantation in good hands, and come over again and receive the income of it, and live here and enjoy it; and I gave him examples of some that had done so, and lived now in very good figure in London. In short, I pressed him so to it, that he almost agreed to it, but still something or other broke it off; till at last he turned the tables, and began to talk almost to the same purpose of Ireland. He told me that a man that could confine himself to a country life, and that could but find stock to enter upon any land, should have farms there for ¬£50 a year, as good as were let here for ¬£200 a year; that the produce was such, and so rich the land, that if much was not laid up, we were sure to live as handsomely upon it as a gentleman of ¬£3000 a year could do in England; and that he had laid a scheme to leave me in London, and go over and try; and if he found he could lay a handsome foundation of living, suitable to the respect he had for me, as he doubted not he should do, he would come over and fetch me. I was dreadfully afraid that upon such a proposal he would have taken me at my word, viz., to turn my little income into money, and let him carry it over into Ireland and try his experiment with it; but he was too just to desire it, or to have accepted it if I had offered it; and he anticipated me in that, for he added, that he would go and try his fortune that way, and if he found he could do anything at it to live, then by adding mine to it when I went over, we should live like ourselves; but that he would not hazard a shilling of mine till he had made the experiment with a little, and he assured me that if he found nothing to be done in Ireland, he would then come to me and join in my project for Virginia. He was so earnest upon his project being to be tried first, that I could not withstand him; however, he promised to let me hear from him in a very little time after his arriving there, to let me know whether his prospect answered his design, that if there was not a probability of success, I might take the occasion to prepare for our other voyage, and then, he assured me, he would go with me to America with all his heart. I could bring him to nothing further than this, and which entertained us near a month, during which I enjoyed his company, which was the most entertaining that ever I met with in my life before. In this time he let me into part of the story of his own life, which was indeed surprising, and full of an infinite variety, sufficient to fill up a much brighter history, for its adventures and incidents, than any I ever saw in print,23 but I shall have occasion to say more of him hereafter. We parted at last, though with the utmost reluctance on my side; and indeed he took his leave very unwillingly too, but necessity obliged him, for his reasons were very good why he would not come to London, as I understood more fully afterwards. I gave him a direction how to write to me, though still I reserved the grand secret, which was not to let him ever know my true name, who I was, or where to be found; he likewise let me know how to write a letter to him, so that he said he would be sure to receive it. I came to London the next day after we parted, but did not go directly to my old lodgings, but for another nameless reason took a private lodging in St. John's Street, or, as it is vulgarly called, St. Jones's, near Clerkenwell,gq and here being perfectly alone, I had leisure to sit down and reflect seriously upon the last seven months' ramble I had made, for I had been abroad no less. The pleasant hours I had with my last husband I looked back on with an infinite deal of pleasure; but that pleasure was very much lessened when I found some time after that I was really with child. This was a perplexing thing, because of the difficulty which was before me where I should get leave to lie in, it being one of the nicestgr things in the world at that time of day for a woman that was a stranger, and had no friends, to be entertained in that circumstance without security,gs which I had not, neither could I procure any. I had taken care all this while to preserve a correspondence with my friend at the bank, or rather he took care to correspond with me, for he wrote to me once a week; and though I had not spent my money so fast as to want any from him, yet I often wrote also to let him know I was alive. I had left directions in Lancashire, so that I had these letters conveyed to me; and during my recess at St. Jones's I received a very obliging letter from him, assuring me that his process for a divorce went on with success, though he met with some difficulties in it that he did not expect. I was not displeased with the news that his process was more tedious than he expected; for though I was in no condition to have had him yet, not being so foolish to marry him when I knew myself to be with child by another man, as some I know have ventured to do, yet I was not willing to lose him, and, in a word, resolved to have him, if he continued in the same mind, as soon as I was up again; for I saw apparently I should hear no more from my other husband; and as he had all along pressed me to marry, and had assured me he would not be at all disgusted at it, or ever offer to claim me again, so I made no scruple to resolve to do it if I could, and if my other friend stood to his bargain; and I had a great deal of reason to be assured that he would, by the letters he wrote to me, which were the kindest and most obliging that could be. I now grew big, and the people where I lodged perceived it, and began to take notice of it to me, and as far as civility would allow, intimated that I must think of removing. This put me to extreme perplexity, and I grew very melancholy, for indeed I knew not what course to take; I had money, but no friends, and was like now to have a child upon my hands to keep, which was a difficulty I had never had upon me yet, as my story hitherto makes appear. In the course of this affair I fell very ill, and my melancholy really increased my distemper. My illness proved at length to be only an ague,gt but my apprehensions were really that I should miscarry. I should not say apprehensions, for indeed I would have been glad to miscarry, but I could never entertain so much as a thought of taking anything to make me miscarry; I abhorred, I say, so much as the thought of it. However, speaking of it, the gentlewoman who kept the house proposed to me to send for a midwife. I scrupledgu it at first, but after some time consented, but told her I had no acquaintance with any midwife, and so left it to her. It seems the mistress of the house was not so great a stranger to such cases as mine was as I thought at first she had been, as will appear presently; and she sent for a midwife of the right sort?Äîthat is to say, the right sort for me. The woman appeared to be an experienced woman in her business, I mean as a midwife; but she had another calling too, in which she was as expert as most women, if not more. My landlady had told her I was very melancholy, and that she believed that had done me harm; and once, before me, said to her, "Mrs. B?Äî?Äî?Äî, I believe this lady's trouble is of a kind that is pretty much in your way, and therefore if you can do anything for her, pray do, for she is a very civil gentlewoman;" and so she went out of the room. I really did not understand her, but my Mother Midnightgv began very seriously to explain what she meant, as soon as she was gone. "Madam," says she, "you seem not to understand what your landlady means; and when you do, you need not let her know at all that you do so. "She means that you are under some circumstances that may render your lying in difficult to you, and that you are not willing to be exposed. I need say no more, but to tell you, that if you think fit to communicate so much of your case to me as is necessary, for I do not desire to pry into those things, I perhaps may be in a condition to assist you, and to make you easy, and remove all your dull thoughtsgw upon that subject." Every word this creature said was a cordial to me, and put new life and new spirit into my very heart; my blood began to circulate immediately, and I was quite another body; I ate my victuals again, and grew better presently after it. She said a great deal more to the same purpose, and then having pressed me to be free with her, and promised in the solemnest manner to be secret, she stopped a little, as if waiting to see what impression it made on me, and what I would say. I was too sensible of the want I was in of such a woman not to accept her offer; I told her my case was partly as she guessed, and partly not, for I was really married, and had a husband, though he was so remote at that time as that he could not appear publicly. She took me short, and told me that was none of her business; all the ladies that came under her care were married women to her. "Every woman," says she, "that is with child has a father for it," and whether that father was a husband or no husband was no business of hers; her business was to assist me in my present circumstances, whether I had a husband or no; "for, madam," says she, "to have a husband that cannot appear is to have no husband, and therefore whether you are a wife or a mistress is all one to me." I found presently, that whether I was a whore or a wife, I was to pass for a whore here, so I let that go. I told her it was true, as she said, but that, however, if I must tell her my case, I must tell it her as it was; so I related it as short as I could, and I concluded it to her. "I trouble you with this, madam," said I, "not that, as you said before, it is much to the purpose in your affair; but this is to the purpose, namely, that I am not in any pain about being seen, or being concealed, for 't is perfectly indifferent to me; but my difficulty is, that I have no acquaintance in this part of the nation." "I understand you, madam," says she; "you have no security to bring to prevent the parish impertinences24 usual in such cases, and perhaps," says she, "do not know very well how to dispose of the child when it comes." "The last," says I, "is not so much my concern as the first." "Well, madam," answers the midwife, "dare you put yourself into my hands? I live in such a place; though I do not inquire after you, you may inquire after me. My name is B?Äî?Äî; I live in such a street"?Äînaming the street?Äî"at the sign of the cradle.gx My profession is a midwife, and I have many ladies that come to my house to lie in. I have given security to the parish in general to secure them from any charge from what shall come into the world under my roof.25 I have but one question to ask in the whole affair, madam," says she, "and if that be answered, you shall be entirely easy of the rest." I presently understood what she meant, and told her, "Madam, I believe I understand you. I thank God, though I want friends in this part of the world, I do not want money, so far as may be necessary, though I do not abound in that neither:" this I added, because I would not make her expect great things. "Well, madam," says she, "that is the thing, indeed, without which nothing can be done in these cases; and yet," says she, "you shall see that I will not impose upon you, or offer anything that is unkind to you, and you shall know everything beforehand, that you may suit yourself to the occasion, and be either costly or sparing as you see fit." I told her she seemed to be so perfectly sensiblegy of my condition, that I had nothing to ask of her but this, that as I had money sufficient, but not a great quantity, she would order it so that I might be at as little superfluous charge as possible. She replied, that she should bring in an account of the expenses of it in two or three shapes; I should choose as I pleased; and I desired her to do so. The next day she brought it, and the copy of her three bills was as follows:?Äî This was the first bill; the second was in the same terms:?Äî This was the second-rate bill; the third, she said, was for a degree higher, and when the father or friends appeared:?Äî I looked upon all the three bills, and smiled, and told her I did not see but that she was very reasonable in her demands, all things considered, and I did not doubt but her accommodations were good. She told me I should be a judge of that when I saw them. I told her I was sorry to tell her that I feared I must be her lowest-rated customer; "and perhaps, madam," said I, "you will make me the less welcome upon that account." "No, not at all," said she; "for where I have one of the third sort, I have two of the second and four of the first, and I get as much by them in proportion as by any; but if you doubt my care of you, I will allow any friend you have to see if you are well waited on or no." Then she explained the particulars of her bill. "In the first place, madam," said she, "I would have you observe that here is three months keeping you at but 10s. a week; I undertake to say you will not complain of my table. I suppose," says she, "you do not live cheaper where you are now?" "No, indeed," said I, "nor so cheap, for I give 6s. per week for my chamber, and find my own diet, which costs me a great deal more." "Then, madam," says she, "if the child should not live, as it sometimes happens, there is the minister's article saved; and if you have no friends to come, you may save the expense of a supper; so that take those articles out, madam," says she, "your lying in will not cost you above ¬£5, 3s. more than your ordinary charge of living." This was the most reasonable thing that I ever heard of; so I smiled, and told her I would come and be a customer; but I told her also, that as I had two months and more to go, I might perhaps be obliged to stay longer with her than three months, and desired to know if she would not be obliged to remove me before it was proper. No, she said; her house was large, and besides, she never put anybody to remove, that had lain in, till they were willing to go; and if she had more ladies offered, she was not so ill-beloved among her neighbours but she could provide accommodation for twenty, if there was occasion. I found she was an eminent lady in her way, and, in short, I agreed to put myself into her hands. She then talked of other things, looked about into my accommodations where I was, found fault with my wanting attendance and conveniences, and that I should not be used so at her house. I told her I was shy of speaking, for the woman of the house looked stranger, or at least I thought so, since I had been ill, because I was with child; and I was afraid she would put some affront or other upon me, supposing that I had been able to give but a slight account of myself. "O dear," says she, "her ladyship is no stranger to these things; she has tried to entertain ladies in your condition, but could not secure the parish; and besides, such a nice lady, as you take her to be. However, since you are agoing, you shall not meddle with her, but I'll see you are a little better looked after while you are here, and it shall not cost you the more neither." I did not understand her; however, I thanked her, so we parted. The next morning she sent me a chicken roasted and hot, and a bottle of sherry, and ordered the maid to tell me that she was to wait on me every day as long as I stayed there. This was surprisingly good and kind, and I accepted it very willingly. At night she sent to me again, to know if I wanted anything, and to order the maid to come to her in the morning for dinner. The maid had orders to make me some chocolate in the morning before she came away, and at noon she brought me the sweet-bread of a breast of veal, whole, and a dish of soup for my dinner; and after this manner she nursed me up at a distance, so that I was mightily well pleased, and quickly well, for indeed my dejections before were the principal part of my illness. I expected, as is usually the case among such people, that the servant she sent me would have been some impudent brazen wench of Drury Lane breeding,gz and I was very uneasy upon that account; so I would not let her lie in the house the first night, but had my eyes about me as narrowly as if she had been a public thief. My gentlewoman guessed presently what was the matter, and sent her back with a short note, that I might depend upon the honesty of her maid; that she would be answerable for her upon all accounts ; and that she took no servants without very good security. I was then perfectly easy; and indeed the maid's behaviour spoke for itself, for a modester, quieter, soberer girl never came into anybody's family, and I found her so afterwards. As soon as I was well enough to go abroad, I went with the maid to see the house, and to see the apartment I was to have; and everything was so handsome and so clean, that, in short, I had nothing to say, but was wonderfully pleased with what I had met with, which, considering the melancholy circumstances I was in, was beyond what I looked for. It might be expected that I should give some account of the nature of the wicked practices of this woman, in whose hands I was now fallen; but it would be but too much encouragement to the vice, to let the world see what easy measures were here taken to rid the women's burthen of a child clandestinely gotten. This grave matron had several sorts of practice, and this was one, that if a child was born, though not in her house (for she had the occasion to be called to many private labours), she had people always ready, who for a piece of money would take the child off their hands, and off from the hands of the parish too; and those children, as she said, were honestly taken care of. What should become of them all, considering so many, as by her account she was concerned with, I cannot conceive. I had many times discourses upon that subject with her; but she was full of this argument, that she saved the life of many an innocent lamb, as she called them, which would perhaps have been murdered; and of many a woman, who, made desperate by the misfortune, would otherwise be tempted to destroy their children. I granted her that this was true, and a very commendable thing, provided the poor children fell into good hands afterwards, and were not abused and neglected by the nurses. She answered, that she always took care of that, and had no nurses in her business but what were very good people, and such as might be depended upon. I could say nothing to the contrary, and so was obliged to say, "Madam, I do not question but you do your part, but what those people do is the main question;" and she stopped my mouth again with saying she took the utmost care about it. The only thing I found in all her conversation on these subjects, that gave me any distaste, was, that one time in discoursing about my being so far gone with child, she said something that looked as if she could help me off with my burthen sooner, if I was willing; or in English, that she could give me something to make me miscarry, if I had a desire to put an end to my troubles that way; but I soon let her see that I abhorred the thoughts of it; and, to do her justice, she put it off so cleverly, that I could not say she really intended it, or whether she only mentioned the practice as a horrible thing; for she couched her words so well, and took my meaning so quickly, that she gave her negative before I could explain myself. To bring this part into as narrow a compass as possible, I quitted my lodging at St. Jones's, and went to my new governess, for so they called her in the house, and there I was indeed treated with so much courtesy, so carefully looked to, and everything so well, that I was surprised at it, and could not at first see what advantage my governess made of it; but I found afterwards that she professed to make no profit of the lodgers' diet, nor indeed could she get much by it, but that her profit lay in the other articles of her management, and she made enough that way, I assure you; for't is scarce credible what practice she had, as well abroad as at home, and yet all upon the private account, or, in plain English, the whoring account. While I was in her house, which was near four months, she had no less than twelve ladies of pleasure brought to bed within doors, and I think she had two-and-thirty, or thereabouts, under her conduct without doors; whereof one, as nice as she was with me, was lodged with my old landlady at St. Jones's. This was a strange testimony of the growing vice of the age, and as bad as I had been myself, it shocked my very sense; I began to nauseateha the place I was in, and, above all, the practice; and yet I must say that I never saw, or do I believe there was to be seen, the least indecency in the house the whole time I was there. Not a man was ever seen to come upstairs, except to visit the lying-in-ladies within their month, nor then without the old lady with them, who made it a piece of the honour of her management that no man should touch a woman, no, not his own wife, within the month; nor would she permit any man to lie in the house upon any pretence whatever, no, not though it was with his own wife; and her saying for it was, that she cared not how many children were born in her house, but she would have none got there if she could help it. It might perhaps be carried farther than was needful, but it was an error of the right handhb if it was an error, for by this she kept up the reputation, such as it was, of her business, and obtained this character, that though she did take care of the women when they were debauched, yet she was not instrumental to their being debauched at all; and yet it was a wicked trade she drove too. While I was here, and before I was brought to bed, I received a letter from my trustee at the bank, full of kind, obliging things, and earnestly pressing me to return to London; it was near a fortnight old when it came to me, because it had first been sent into Lancashire, and then returned to me. He concludes with telling me that he had obtained a decreehc against his wife, and that he would be ready to make good his engagement to me, if I would accept of him, adding a great many protestations of kindness and affection, such as he would have been far from offering if he had known the circumstances I had been in, and which, as it was, I had been very far from deserving. I returned an answer to this letter, and dated it at Liverpool, but sent it by a messenger, alleging that it came in cover to a friend in town. I gave him joy of his deliverance, but raised some scruples at the lawfulness of his marrying again, and told him I supposed he would consider very seriously upon that point before he resolved on it, the consequence being too great for a man of his judgment to venture rashly upon; so concluded wishing him very well in whatever he resolved, without letting him into anything of my own mind, or giving any answer to his proposal of my coming to London to him, but mentioned at a distance my intention to return the latter end of the year, this being dated in April. I was brought to bed about the middle of May, and had another brave boy, and myself in as good condition as usual on such occasions. My governess did her part as a midwife with the greatest art and dexterity imaginable, and far beyond all that ever I had had any experience of before. Her care of me in my travail, and after in my lying in, was such, that if she had been my own mother it could not have been better. Let none be encouraged in their loose practices from this dexterous lady's management, for she has gone to her place, and I dare say has left nothing behind her that can or will come up to it. I think I had been brought to bed about twenty days when I received another letter from my friend at the bank, with the surprising news that he had obtained a final sentence of divorce against his wife, and had served her with it on such a day, and that he had such an answer to give to all my scruples about his marrying again as I could not expect, and as he had no desire of; for that his wife, who had been under some remorse before for her usage of him, as soon as she heard that he had gained his point, had very unhappily destroyed herself that same evening. He expressed himself very handsomely as to his being concerned at her disaster, but cleared himself of having any hand in it, and that he had only done himself justice in a case in which he was notoriously injured and abused. However, he said that he was extremely afflicted at it, and had no view of any satisfaction left in this world, but only in the hope that I would come and relieve him by my company ; and then he pressed me violently indeed to give him some hopes, that I would at least come up to town and let him see me, when he would further enter into discourse about it. I was exceedingly surprised at the news, and began now seriously to reflect on my circumstances, and the inexpressible misfortune it was to have a child upon my hands; and what to do in it I knew not. At last I opened my case at a distance to my governess; I appeared melancholy for several days, and she lay at me continually to know what troubled me. I could not for my life tell her that I had an offer of marriage, after I had so often told her that I had a husband, so that I really knew not what to say to her. I owned I had something which very much troubled me, but at the same time told her I could not speak of it to any one alive. She continued importuning me several days, but it was impossible, I told her, for me to commit the secret to anybody. This, instead of being an answer to her, increased her importunities; she urged her having been trusted with the greatest secrets of this nature, that it was her business to conceal everything, and that to discover things of that nature would be her ruin. She asked me if ever I had found her tattling of other people's affairs, and how could I suspect her? She told me, to unfoldhd myself to her was telling it to nobody; that she was silent as death; that it must be a very strange case indeed, that she could not help me out of; but to conceal it was to deprive myself of all possible help, or means of help, and to deprive her of the opportunity of serving me. In short, she had such a bewitching eloquence, and so great a power of persuasion, that there was no concealing anything from her. So I resolved to unbosom myself to her. I told her the history of my Lancashire marriage, and how both of us had been disappointed ; how we came together, and how we parted; how he discharged me, as far as lay in him, and gave me free liberty to marry again, protesting that if he knew it he would never claim me, or disturb or expose me; that I thought I was free, but was dreadfully afraid to venture, for fear of the consequences that might follow in case of a discovery. Then I told her what a good offer I had; showed her my friend's letters, inviting me to London, and with what affection they were written, but blotted out the name, and also the story about the disaster of his wife, only that she was dead. She fell a-laughing at my scruples about marrying, and told me the other was no marriage, but a cheat on both sides; and that, as we were parted by mutual consent, the nature of the contract was destroyed, and the obligation was mutually discharged. She had arguments for this at the tip of her tongue; and, in short, reasoned me out of my reason; not but that it was too by the help of my own inclination. But then came the great and main difficulty, and that was the child; this, she told me, must be removed, and that so as that it should never be possible for any one to discover it. I knew there was no marrying without concealing that I had had a child, for he would soon have discovered by the age of it that it was born, nay, and gotten too, since my parley with him, and that would have destroyed all the affair. But it touched my heart so forcibly to think of parting entirely with the child, and, for aught I knew, of having it murdered, or starved by neglect and ill-usage, which was much the same, that I could not think of it without horror. I wish all those women who consent to the disposing their children out of the way, as it is called, for decency sake, would consider that 't is only a contrived method for murder; that is to say, killing their children with safety. It is manifest to all that understand anything of children, that we are born into the world helpless, and uncapable either to supply our own wants or so much as make them known; and that without help we must perish; and this help requires not only an assisting hand, whether of the mother or somebody else, but there are two things necessary in that assisting hand, that is, care and skill; without both which, half the children that are born would die, nay, though they were not to be denied food, and one-half more of those that remained would be cripples or fools, lose their limbs, and perhaps their sense. I question not but that these are partly the reasons why affection was placed by nature in the hearts of mothers to their children; without which they would never be able to give themselves up, as 't is necessary they should, to the care and waking pains needful to the support of children. Since this care is needful to the life of children, to neglect them is to murder them; again, to give them up to be managed by those people who have none of that needful affection placed by nature in them, is to neglect them in the highest degree; nay, in some it goes farther, and is in order to their being lost; so that 't is an intentional murder, whether the child lives or dies. All those things represented themselves to my view, and that in the blackest and most frightful form; and as I was very free with my governess, whom I had now learned to call mother, I represented to her all the dark thoughts which I had about it, and told her what distress I was in. She seemed graver by much at this part than at the other; but as she was hardened in these things beyond all possibility of being touched with the religious part, and the scruples about the murder, so she was equally impenetrable in that part which related to affection. She asked me if she had not been careful and tender of me in my lying in, as if I had been her own child. I told her I owned she had. "Well, my dear," says she, "and when you are gone, what are you to me? And what would it be to me if you were to be hanged? Do you think there are not women who, as it is their trade, and they get their bread by it, value themselves upon their being as careful of children as their own mothers? Yes, yes, child," says she, "fear it not; how were we nursed ourselves? Are you sure you were nursed up by your own mother? and yet you look fat and fair, child," says the old beldam;he and with that she stroked me over the face. "Never be concerned, child," says she, going on in her drolling way; "I have no murderess about me; I employ the best nurses that can be had, and have as few children miscarry under their hands as there would if they were all nursed by mothers; we want neither care nor skill." She touched me to the quick when she asked if I was sure that I was nursed by my own mother; on the contrary, I was sure I was not; and I trembled and looked pale at the very expression. Sure, said I to myself, this creature cannot be a witch, or have any conversation with a spirit, that can inform her what I was, before I was able to know it myself; and I looked at her as if I had been frighted; but reflecting that it could not be possible for her to know anything about me, that went off, and I began to be easy, but it was not presently. She perceived the disorder I was in, but did not know the meaning of it; so she ran on in her wild talk upon the weakness of my supposing that children were murdered because they were not all nursed by the mother, and to persuade me that the children she disposed of were as well used as if the mothers had the nursing of them themselves. "It may be true, mother," says I, "for aught I know, but my doubts are very strongly grounded." "Come, then," says she, "let's hear some of them." "Why, first," says I, "you give a piece of money to these people to take the child off the parent's hands, and to take care of it as long as it lives. Now we know, mother," said I, "that those are poor people, and their gain consists in being quit of the charge as soon as they can; how can I doubt but that, as it is best for them to have the child die, they are not over solicitous about its life?" "This is all vapourshf and fancy,"hg says she; "I tell you their credit depends upon the child's life, and they are as careful as any mother of you all." "O mother," says I, "if I was but sure my little baby would be carefully looked to, and have justice done it, I should be happy; but it is impossible I can be satisfied in that point unless I saw it, and to see it would be ruin and destruction, as my case now stands; so what to do I know not." "A fine story!" says the governess. "You would see the child, and you would not see the child; you would be concealed and discovered both together. These are things impossible, my dear, and so you must e'en do as other conscientious mothers have done before you, and be contented with things as they must be, though not as you wish them to be." I understood what she meant by conscientious mothers; she would have said conscientious whores, but she was not willing to disoblige me, for really in this case I was not a whore, because legally married, the force of my former marriage excepted. However, let me be what I would, I was not come up to that pitch of hardness common to the profession; I mean, to be unnatural, and regardless of the safety of my child; and I preserved this honest affection so long, that I was upon the point of giving up my friend at the bank, who lay so hard at me to come to him, and marry him, that there was hardly any room to deny him. At last my old governess came to me, with her usual assurance. "Come, my dear," says she, "I have found out a way how you shall be at a certainty that your child shall be used well, and yet the people that take care of it shall never know you." "O mother," says I, "if you can do so, you will engage me to you for ever." "Well," says she, "are you willing to be at some small annual expense, more than what we usually give to the people we contract with?" "Ay," says I, "with all my heart, provided I may be concealed." "As to that," says she, "you shall be secure, for the nurse shall never dare to inquire about you; and you shall once or twice a year go with me and see your child, and see how 't is used, and be satisfied that it is in good hands, nobody knowing who you are." "Why," said I, "do you think that when I come to see my child, I shall be able to conceal my being the mother of it? Do you think that possible?" "Well," says she, "if you discover it, the nurse shall be never the wiser; she shall be forbid to take any notice. If she offers it, she shall lose the money which you are to be supposed to give her, and the child be taken from her too." I was very well pleased with this. So the next week a country-woman was brought from Hertford,hh or thereabouts, who was to take the child off our hands entirely for ¬£10 in money. But if I would allow ¬£5 a year more to her, she would be obliged to bring the child to my governess's house as often as we desired, or we should come down and look at it, and see how well she used it. The woman was a very wholesome-looked, likely woman, a cottager's wife, but she had very good clothes and linen, and everything well about her; and with a heavy heart and many a tear, I let her have my child. I had been down at Hertford, and looked at her and at her dwelling, which I liked well enough; and I promised her great things if she would be kind to the child, so she knew at first word that I was the child's mother. But she seemed to be so much out of the way, and to have no room to inquire after me, that I thought I was safe enough. So, in short, I consented to let her have the child, and I gave her ¬£10; that is to say, I gave it to my governess, who gave it the poor woman before my face, she agreeing never to return the child to me, or to claim anything more for its keeping, or bringing up; only that I promised, if she took a great deal of care of it, I would give her something more as often as I came to see it; so that I was not bound to pay the ¬£5, only that I promised my governess I would do it. And thus my great care was over, after a manner, which, though it did not at all satisfy my mind, yet was the most convenient for me, as my affairs then stood, of any that could be thought of at that time. I then began to write to my friend at the bank in a more kindly style, and particularly about the beginning of July I sent him a letter, that I purposed to be in town some time in August. He returned me an answer in the most passionate terms imaginable, and desired me to let him have timely notice, and he would come and meet me two days' journey. This puzzled me scurvily,hi and I did not know what answer to make to it. Once I was resolved to take the stage-coach to West Chester, on purpose only to have the satisfaction of coming back, that he might see me really come in the same coach; for I had a jealoushj thought, though I had no ground for it at all, lest he should think I was not really in the country. I endeavoured to reason myself out of it, but it was in vain; the impression lay so strong on my mind, that it was not to be resisted. At last it came as an addition to my new design of going into the country, that it would be an excellent blind to my old governess, and would cover entirely all my other affairs, for she did not know in the least whether my new lover lived in London or in Lancashire; and when I told her my resolution, she was fully persuaded it was in Lancashire. Having taken my measures for this journey, I let her know it, and sent the maid that tended me from the beginning to take a place for me in the coach. She would have had me let the maid have waited on me down to the last stage, and come up again in the waggon,hk but I convinced her it would not be convenient. When I went away, she told me she would enter into no measures for correspondence, for she saw evidently that my affection to my child would cause me to write to her, and to visit her too, when I came to town again. I assured her it would, and so took my leave, well satisfied to have been freed from such a house, however good my accommodations there had been. I took the place in the coach not to its full extent, but to a place called Stone,hl in Cheshire, where I not only had no manner of business, but not the least acquaintance with any person in the town. But I knew that with money in the pocket one is at home anywhere; so I lodged there two or three days, till, watching my opportunity, I found room in another stage-coach, and took passage back again for London, sending a letter to my gentleman that I should be such a certain day at Stony-Stratford,hm where the coachman told me he was to lodge. It happened to be a chance coach that I had taken up, which, having been hired on purpose to carry some gentlemen to West Chester, who were going for Ireland, was now returning, and did not tie itself up to exact times or places, as the stages did; so that, having been obliged to lie still on Sunday, he had time to get himself ready to come out, which otherwise he could not have done. His warning was so short, that he could not reach Stony-Stratford time enough to be with me at night, but he met me at a place called Brickhillhn the next morning, just as we were coming into the town. I confess I was very glad to see him, for I thought myself a little disappointed over-night. He pleased me doubly too by the figure he came in, for he brought a very handsome gentleman's coach and four horses, with a servant to attend him. He took me out of the stage-coach immediately, which stopped at an inn in Brickhill; and putting into the same inn, he set up his own coach, and bespokeho his dinner. I asked him what he meant by that, for I was for going forward with the journey. He said, No, I had need of a little rest upon the road, and that was a very good sort of a house, though it was but a little town; so we would go no farther that night, whatever came of it. I did not press him much, for since he had come so far to meet me, and put himself to so much expense, it was but reasonable I should oblige him a little too; so I was easy as to that point. After dinner we walked to see the town, to see the church, and to view the fields and the country, as is usual for strangers to do; and our landlord was our guide in going to see the church. I observed my gentleman inquired pretty much about the parson, and I took the hint immediately, that he certainly would propose to be married; and it followed presently, that, in short, I would not refuse him; for, to be plain, with my circumstances I was in no condition now to say no; I had no reason now to run any more such hazards. But while these thoughts ran round in my head, which was the work but of a few moments, I observed my landlord took him aside and whispered to him, though not very softly neither, for so much I overheard: "Sir, if you shall have occasion?Äî" the rest I could not hear, but it seems it was to this purpose: "Sir, if you shall have occasion for a minister, I have a friend a little way off that will serve you, and be as private as you please." My gentleman answered loud enough for me to hear, "Very well, I believe I shall." I was no sooner come back to the inn, but he fell upon me with irresistible words, that since he had had the good fortune to meet me, and everything concurred, it would be hastening his felicity if I would put an end to the matter just there. "What do you mean?" says I, colouring a little. "What, in an inn, and on the road! Bless us all," said I, "how can you talk so?" "Oh, I can talk so very well," says he; "I came on purpose to talk so, and I'll show you that I did;" and with that he pulls out a great bundle of papers. "You fright me," said I; "what are all these?" "Don't be frighted, my dear," said he, and kissed me. This was the first time that he had been so free to call me my dear; then he repeated it, "Don't be frighted; you shall see what it is all;" then he laid them all abroad.hp There was first the deed or sentence of divorce from his wife, and the full evidence of her playing the whore; then there was the certificates of the minister and churchwardens of the parish where she lived, proving that she was buried, and intimating the manner of her death; the copy of the coroner's warrant for a jury to sit upon her, and the verdict of the jury, who brought it in Non compos mentis.hq All this was to give me satisfaction, though, by the way, I was not so scrupulous, had he known all, but that I might have taken him without it; however, I looked them all over as well as I could, and told him that this was all very clear indeed, but that he need not have brought them out with him, for it was time enough. Well, he said, it might be time enough for me, but no time but the present time was time enough for him. There were other papers rolled up, and I asked him what they were. "Why, ay," says he, "that's the question I wanted to have you ask me;" so he takes out a little shagreen?Ä° case, and gives me out of it a very fine diamond ring. I could not refuse it, if I had a mind to do so, for he put it upon my finger; so I only made him a curtsey. Then he takes out another ring: "And this," says he, "is for another occasion," and puts that into his pocket. "Well, but let me see it, though," says I, and smiled; "I guess what it is; I think you are mad." "I should have been mad if I had done less," says he; and still he did not show it me, and I had a great mind to see it; so says I, "Well, but let me see it." "Hold," says he; "first look here;" then he took up the roll again, and read it, and, behold! it was a licence for us to be married. "Why," says I, "are you distracted? You were fully satisfied, sure, that I would yield at first word, or resolved to take no denial." "The last is certainly the case," said he. "But you may be mistaken," said I. "No, no," says he, "I must not be denied, I can't be denied;" and with that he fell to kissing me so violently, I could not get rid of him. There was a bed in the room, and we were walking to and again, eager in the discourse; at last, he takes me by surprise in his arms, and threw me on the bed, and himself with me, and holding me still fast in his arms, but without the least offer of any indecency, courted me to consent with such repeated entreaties and arguments, protesting his affection, and vowing he would not let me go till I had promised him, that at last I said, "Why, you resolve not to be denied indeed, I think." "No, no," says he, "I must not be denied, I won't be denied, I can't be denied." "Well, well," said I, and giving him a slight kiss, "then you shan't be denied; let me get up." He was so transported with my consent, and the kind manner of it, that I began to think once he took it for a marriage, and would not stay for the form; but I wronged him, for he took me by the hand, pulled me up again, and then giving me two or three kisses, thanked me for my kind yielding to him; and was so overcome with the satisfaction of it, that I saw tears stand in his eyes. I turned from him, for it filled my eyes with tears too, and asked him leave to retire a little to my chamber. If I had a grain of true repentance for an abominable life of twenty-four years past, it was then. Oh, what a felicity is it to mankind, said I to myself, that they cannot see into the hearts of one another! How happy had it been if I had been wife to a man of so much honesty and so much affection from the beginning! Then it occurred to me, "What an abominable creature am I! and how is this innocent gentleman going to be abused by me! How little does he think, that having divorced a whore, he is throwing himself into the arms of another! that he is going to marry one that has lain with two brothers, and has had three children by her own brother! one that was born in Newgate, whose mother was a whore, and is now a transported thief! one that has lain with thirteen men,hr and has had a child since he saw me! Poor gentleman!" said I, "what is he going to do?" After this reproaching myself was over, it followed thus: "Well, if I must be his wife, if it please God to give me grace, I'll be a true wife to him, and love him suitably to the strange excess of his passion for me; I will make him amends, by what he shall see, for the abuses I put upon him, which he does not see." He was impatient for my coming out of my chamber, but finding me long, he went downstairs and talked with my landlord about the parson. My landlord, an officious though well-meaning fellow, had sent away for the clergyman; and when my gentleman began to speak to him of sending for him, "Sir," says he to him, "my friend is in the house;" so without any more words he brought them together. When he came to the minister, he asked him if he would venture to marry a couple of strangers that were both willing. The parson said that Mr.?Äîhad said something to him of it; that he hoped it was no clandestine business; that he seemed to be a grave gentleman, and he supposed madam was not a girl, so that the consent of friends should be wanted.26 "To put you out of doubt of that," says my gentleman, "read this paper;" and out he pulls the licence. "I am satisfied," says the minister; "where is the lady?" "You shall see her presently," says my gentleman. When he had said thus he comes upstairs, and I was by that time come out of my room; so he tells me the minister was below, and that upon showing him the licence, he was free to marry us with all his heart, "but he asks to see you;" so he asked if I would let him come up. " 'T is time enough," said I, "in the morning, is it not?" "Why," said he, "my dear, he seemed to scruplehs whether it was not some young girl stolen from her parents, and I assured him we were both of age to command our own consent; and that made him ask to see you." "Well," said I, "do as you please;" so up they brings the parson, and a merry, good sort of gentleman he was. He had been told, it seems, that we had met there by accident; that I came in a Chester coach, and my gentleman in his own coach to meet me; that we were to have met last night at Stony-Stratford, but that he could not reach so far. "Well, sir," says the parson, "every ill turn has some good in it. The disappointment, sir," says he to my gentleman, "was yours, and the good turn is mine, for if you had met at Stony-Stratford I had not had the honour to marry you. Landlord, have you a Common Prayer Book?"ht I started as if I had been frighted. "Sir," says I, "what do you mean? What, to marry in an inn, and at night too!" "Madam," says the minister, "if you will have it be in the church, you shall; but I assure you your marriage will be as firm here as in the church; we are not tied by the canons to marry nowhere but in the church;27 and as for the time of day, it does not at all weigh in this case; our princes are married in their chambers, and at eight or ten o'clock at night." I was a great while before I could be persuaded, and pretended not to be willing at all to be married but in the church. But it was all grimace; hu so I seemed at last to be prevailed on, and my landlord, and his wife and daughter, were called up. My landlord was father and clerk and all together, and we were married, and very merry we were; though I confess the self-reproaches which I had upon me before lay close to me, and extorted every now and then a deep sigh from me, which my bridegroom took notice of, and endeavoured to encourage me, thinking, poor man, that I had some little hesitations at the step I had taken so hastily. We enjoyed ourselves that evening completely, and yet all was kept so private in the inn that not a servant in the house knew of it, for my landlady and her daughter waited on me, and would not let any of the maids come upstairs. My landlady's daughter I called my bridemaid: and sending for a shopkeeper the next morning, I gave the young woman a good suit of knots,hv as good as the town would afford, and finding it was a lacemaking town, I gave her mother a piece of bone-lacehw for a head. One reason that my landlord was so closehx was, that he was unwilling that the minister of the parish should hear of it; but for all that somebody heard of it, so as that we had the bells set a-ringing the next morning early, and the music, such as the town would afford, under our window. But my landlord brazened it out, that we were married before we came thither, only that, being his former guests, we would have our wedding-supper at his house. We could not find in our hearts to stir the next day; for, in short, having been disturbed by the bells in the morning, and having perhaps not slept overmuch before, we were so sleepy afterwards that we lay in bed till almost twelve o'clock. I begged my landlady that we might have no more music in the town, nor ringings of bells, and she managed it so well that we were very quiet; but an odd passage interrupted all my mirth for a good while. The great room of the house looked into the street, and I had walked to the end of the room, and it being a pleasant, warm day, I had opened the window, and was standing at it for some air, when I saw three gentlemen ride by, and go into an inn just againsthy us. It was not to be concealed, nor did it leave me any room to question it, but the second of the three was my Lancashire husband. I was frighted to death; I never was in such a consternation in my life; I thought I should have sunk into the ground; my blood ran chill in my veins, and I trembled as if I had been in a cold fit of an ague. I say, there was no room to question the truth of it; I knew his clothes, I knew his horse, and I knew his face. The first reflection I made was, that my husband was not by to see my disorder, and that I was very glad of. The gentlemen had not been long in the house but they came to the window of their room, as is usual; but my window was shut, you may be sure. However, I could not keep from peeping at them, and there I saw him again, heard him call to one of the servants for something he wanted, and received all the terrifying confirmations of its being the same person that were possible to be had. My next concern was, to know what was his business there; but that was impossible. Sometimes my imagination formed an idea of one frightful thing, sometimes of another; sometimes I thought he had discovered me, and was come to upbraid me with ingratitude and breach of honour; then I fancied he was coming upstairs to insult me; and innumerable thoughts came into my head, of what was never in his head, nor ever could be, unless the devil had revealed it to him. I remained in the fright near two hours, and scarce ever kept my eye from the window or door of the inn where they were. At last, hearing a great clutter in the passage of their inn, I ran to the window, and, to my great satisfaction, I saw them all three go out again and travel on westward. Had they gone towards London, I should have been still in a fright, lest I should meet him again, and that he should know me; but he went the contrary way, and so I was eased of that disorder. We resolved to be going the next day, but about six o'clock at night we were alarmed with a great uproar in the street, and people riding as if they had been out of their wits; and what was it but a hue-and-cryhz after three highwaymen, that had robbed two coaches and some travellers near Dunstable Hill, and notice had, it seems, been given that they had been seen at Brickhill, at such a house, meaning the house where those gentlemen had been. The house was immediately beset and searched, but there were witnesses enough that the gentlemen had been gone above three hours. The crowd having gathered about, we had the news presently; and I was heartily concerned now another way. I presently told the people of the house, that I durst say those were honest persons, for that I knew one of the gentlemen to be a very honest person, and of a good estate in Lancashire. The constable who came with the hue-and-cry was immediately informed of this, and came over to me to be satisfied from my own mouth; and I assured him that I saw the three gentlemen as I was at the window; that I saw them afterwards at the windows of the room they dined in; that I saw them take horse, and I would assure him I knew one of them to be such a man that he was a gentleman of a very good estate, and an undoubted character in Lancashire, from whence I was just now upon my journey. The assurance with which I delivered this gave the mob gentryia a check, and gave the constable such satisfaction, that he immediately sounded a retreat, told his people these were not the men, but that he had an account they were very honest gentlemen; and so they went all back again. What the truth of the matter was I knew not, but certain it was that the coaches were robbed at Dunstable Hill, and ¬£560 in money taken; besides, some of the lace merchants that always travel that way had been visited too. As to the three gentlemen, that remains to be explained hereafter. Well, this alarm stopped us another day, though my spouse told me it was always safest travelling after a robbery, for that the thieves were sure to be gone far enough off when they had alarmed the country; but I was uneasy, and indeed principally lest my old acquaintance should be upon the road still, and should chance to see me. I never lived four pleasanter days together in my life. I was a mere bride all this while, and my new spouse strove to make me easy in everything. O could this state of life have continued! how had all my past troubles been forgot, and my future sorrows been avoided! But I had a past life of a most wretched kind to account for, some of it in this world as well as in another. We came away the fifth day; and my landlord, because he saw me uneasy, mounted himself, his son, and three honest country fellows with good fire-arms, and, without telling us of it, followed the coach, and would see us safe into Dunstable. We could do no less than treat them very handsomely at Dunstable, which cost my spouse about ten or twelve shillings, and something he gave the men for their time too, but my landlord would take nothing for himself. This was the most happy contrivance for me that could have fallen out; for had I come to London unmarried, I must either have come to him for the first night's entertainment, or have discovered to him that I had not one acquaintance in the whole city of London, that could receive a poor bride for the first night's lodging with her spouse. But now I made no scruple of going directly home with him, and there I took possession at once of a house well furnished, and a husband in very good circumstances, so that I had a prospect of a very happy life, if I knew how to manage it; and I had leisure to consider of the real value of the life I was likely to live. How different it was to be from the loose part I had acted before, and how much happier a life of virtue and sobriety is, than that which we call a life of pleasure! O had this particular scene of life lasted, or had I learnt from that time I enjoyed it, to have tasted the true sweetness of it, and had I not fallen into that poverty which is the sure bane of virtue, how happy had I been, not only here, but perhaps for ever! for while I lived thus, I was really a penitent for all my life past. I looked back on it with abhorrence, and might truly be said to hate myself for it. I often reflected how my lover at Bath, struck by the hand of God, repented and abandoned me, and refused to see me any more, though he loved me to an extreme; but I, prompted by that worst of devils, poverty, returned to the vile practice, and made the advantage of what they call a handsome face be the relief to my necessities, and beauty be a pimp to vice. Now I seemed landed in a safe harbour, after the stormy voyage of life past was at an end, and I began to be thankful for my deliverance. I sat many an hour by myself, and wept over the remembrance of past follies, and the dreadful extravagances of a wicked life, and sometimes I flattered myself that I had sincerely repented. But there are temptations which it is not in the power of human nature to resist, and few know what would be their case, if driven to the same exigencies. As covetousness is the root of all evil, so poverty is the worst of all snares. But I waive that discourse till I come to the experiment.ib I lived with this husband in the utmost tranquillity; he was a quiet, sensible, sober man; virtuous, modest, sincere, and in his business diligent and just. His business was in a narrow compass,ic and his income sufficient to a plentiful way of living in the ordinary way. I do not say to keep an equipage,id and make a figure, as the world calls it, nor did I expect it, or desire it; for as I abhorred the levity and extravagance of my former life, so I chose now to live retired, frugal, and within ourselves. I kept no company, made no visits; minded my family, and obliged my husband; and this kind of life became a pleasure to me. We lived in an uninterrupted course of ease and content for five years, when a sudden blow from an almost invisible hand blasted all my happiness, and turned me out into the world in a condition the reverse of all that had been before it. My husband having trusted one of his fellow-clerks with a sum of money, too much for our fortunes to bear the loss of, the clerk failed, and the loss fell very heavy on my husband; yet it was not so great but that, if he had had courage to have looked his misfortunes in the face, his credit was so good that, as I told him, he would easily recover it; for to sink under trouble is to double the weight, and he that will die in it, shall die in it. It was in vain to speak comfortably to him; the wound had sunk too deep; it was a stab that touched the vitals;ie he grew melancholy and disconsolate, and from thence lethargic and died. I foresaw the blow, and was extremely oppressed in my mind, for I saw evidently that if he died I was undone. I had had two children by him, and no more, for it began to be time for me to leave bearing children, for I was now eight-and-forty, and I suppose if he had lived I should have had no more. I was now left in a dismal and disconsolate case indeed, and in several things worse than ever. First, it was past the flourishing time with me, when I might expect to be courted for a mistress; that agreeable part had declined some time, and the ruins only appeared of what had been; and that which was worse than all was this, that I was the most dejected, disconsolate creature alive. I that had encouraged my husband, and endeavoured to support his spirits under his trouble, could not support my own; I wanted that spirit in trouble which I told him was so necessary for bearing the burthen. But my case was indeed deplorable, for I was left perfectly friendless and helpless, and the loss my husband had sustained had reduced his circumstances so low, that though indeed I was not in debt, yet I could easily foresee that what was left would not support me long; that it wasted daily for subsistence, so that it would be soon all spent, and then I saw nothing before me but the utmost distress ; and this represented itself so lively to my thoughts, that it seemed as if it was come, before it was really very near; also my very apprehensions doubled the misery, for I fancied every sixpence that I paid for a loaf of bread was the last I had in the world, and that to-morrow I was to fast, and be starved to death. In this distress I had no assistant, no friend to comfort or advise me; I sat and cried and tormented myself night and day, wringing my hands, and sometimes raving like a distracted woman; and indeed I have often wondered it had not affected my reason, for I had the vapours to such a degree, that my understanding was sometimes quite lost in fancies and imaginations. I lived two years in this dismal condition, wasting that little I had, weeping continually over my dismal circumstances, and, as it were, only bleeding to death, without the least hope or prospect of help; and now I had cried so long, and so often, that tears were exhausted, and I began to be desperate, for I grew poor apace. For a little relief, I had put offif my house and took lodgings; and as I was reducing my living, so I sold off most of my goods, which put a little money in my pocket, and I lived near a year upon that, spending very sparingly, and ekeing things out to the utmost; but still when I looked before me, my heart would sink within me at the inevitable approach of misery and want. O let none read this part without seriously reflecting on the circumstances of a desolate state, and how they would grapple with want of friends and want of bread; it will certainly make them think not of sparing what they have only, but of looking up to heaven for support, and of the wise man's prayer, "Give me not poverty, lest I steal."ig Let them remember that a time of distress is a time of dreadful temptation, and all the strength to resist is taken away; poverty presses, the soul is made desperate by distress, and what can be done? It was one evening, when being brought, as I may say, to the last gasp, I think I may truly say I was distracted and raving, when prompted by I know not what spirit, and, as it were, doing I did not know what, or why, I dressed me (for I had still pretty good clothes), and went out. I am very sure I had no manner of design in my head when I went out; I neither knew or considered where to go, or on what business; but as the devil carried me out, and laid his bait for me, so he brought me, to be sure, to the place, for I knew not whither I was going, or what I did. Wandering thus about, I knew not whither, I passed by an apothecary's shop in Leadenhall Street,ih where I saw lie on a stool just before the counter a little bundle wrapped in a white cloth; beyond it stood a maid-servant with her back to it, looking up towards the top of the shop, where the apothecary's apprentice, as I suppose, was standing upon the counter, with his back also to the door, and a candle in his hand, looking and reaching up to the upper shelf, for something he wanted, so that both were engaged, and nobody else in the shop. This was the bait; and the devil who laid the snare prompted me, as if he had spoke, for I remember, and shall never forget it, 't was like a voice spoken over my shoulder, "Take the bundle; be quick; do it this moment." It was no sooner said but I stepped into the shop, and with my back to the wench, as if I had stood up for a cart that was going by, I put my hand behind me and took the bundle, and went off with it, the maid or fellow not perceiving me, or any one else. It is impossible to express the horror of my soul all the while I did it. When I went away I had no heart to run, or scarce to mendii my pace. I crossed the street indeed, and went down the first turning I came to, and I think it was a street that went through into Fenchurch Street; from thence I crossed and turned through so many ways and turnings, that I could never tell which way it was, nor where I went; I felt not the ground I stepped on, and the farther I was out of danger, the faster I went, till, tired and out of breath, I was forced to sit down on a little bench at a door, and then found I was got into Thames Street, near Billingsgate.ij I rested me a little and went on; my blood was all in a fire; my heart beat as if I was in a sudden fright. In short, I was under such a surprise that I knew not whither I was agoing, or what to do. After I had tired myself thus with walking a long way about, and so eagerly, I began to consider, and make home to my lodging, where I came about nine o'clock at night. What the bundle was made up for, or on what occasion laid where I found it, I knew not, but when I came to open it, I found there was a suit of childbed-linen in it, very good, and almost new, the lace very fine; there was a silver porringerik of a pint, a small silver mug, and six spoons, with some other linen, a good smock, and three silk handkerchiefs, and in the mug a paper, 18s. 6d. in money. All the while I was opening these things I was under such dreadful impressions of fear, and in such terror of mind, though I was perfectly safe, that I cannot express the manner of it. I sat me down, and cried most vehemently. "Lord," said I, "what am I now? a thief! Why, I shall be taken next time, and be carried to Newgate, and be tried for my life!" And with that I cried again a long time, and I am sure, as poor as I was, if I had durst for fear, I would certainly have carried the things back again; but that went off after a while. Well, I went to bed for that night, but slept little; the horror of the fact was upon my mind, and I knew not what I said or did all night, and all the next day. Then I was impatient to hear some news of the loss; and would fain know how it was, whether they were a poor body's goods, or a rich. "Perhaps," said I, "it may be some poor widow like me, that had packed up these goods to go and sell them for a little bread for herself and a poor child, and are now starving and breaking their hearts for want of that little they would have fetched." And this thought tormented me worse than all the rest, for three or four days. But my own distresses silenced all these reflections, and the prospect of my own starving, which grew every day more frightful to me, hardened my heart by degrees. It was then particularly heavy upon my mind, that I had been reformed, and had, as I hoped, repented of all my past wickedness; that I had lived a sober, grave, retired life for several years, but now I should be driven by the dreadful necessity of my circumstances to the gates of destruction, soul and body; and two or three times I fell upon my knees, praying to God, as well as I could, for deliverance; but I cannot but say, my prayers had no hope in them. I knew not what to do; it was all fear without, and dark within; and I reflected on my past life as not repented of, that Heaven was now beginning to punish me, and would make me as miserable as I had been wicked. Had I gone on here I had perhaps been a true penitent; but I had an evil counsellor within, and he was continually prompting me to relieve myself by the worst means; so one evening he tempted me again by the same wicked impulse that had said, "Take that bundle," to go out again and seek for what might happen. I went out now by daylight, and wandered about I knew not whither, and in search of I knew not what, when the devil put a snare in my way of a dreadful nature indeed, and such a one as I have never had before or since. Going through Aldersgate Street,il there was a pretty little child had been at a dancing-school, and was agoing home all alone; and my prompter, like a true devil, set me upon this innocent creature. I talked to it, and it prattled to me again, and I took it by the hand and led it along till I came to a paved alley that goes into Bartholomew Close,im and I led it in there. The child said, that was not its way home. I said, "Yes, my dear, it is; I'll show you the way home." The child had a little necklace on of gold beads, and I had my eye upon that, and in the dark of the alley I stooped, pretending to mend the child's clog that was loose, and took off her necklace, and the child never felt it, and so led the child on again. Here, I say, the devil put me upon killing the child in the dark alley, that it might not cry, but the very thought frighted me so that I was ready to drop down; but I turned the child about and bade it go back again, for that was not its way home; the child said, so she would; and I went through into Bartholomew Close, and then turned round to another passage that goes into Long Lane, so away into Charterhouse Yard, and out into St. John's Street; then crossing into Smithfield, went down Chick Lane, and into Field Lane, to Holborn Bridge, when, mixing with the crowd of people usually passing there, it was not possible to have been found out; and thus I made my second sally into the world. The thoughts of this booty put out all the thoughts of the first, and the reflections I had made wore quickly off; poverty hardened my heart, and my own necessities made me regardless of anything. The last affair left no great concern upon me, for as I did the poor child no harm, I only thought I had given the parents a just reproof for their negligence, in leaving the poor lamb to come home by itself, and it would teach them to take more care another time. This string of beads was worth about ¬£12 or ¬£14. I suppose it might have been formerly the mother's, for it was too big for the child's wear, but that, perhaps, the vanity of the mother to have her child look fine at the dancing-school, had made her let the child wear it; and no doubt the child had a maid sent to take care of it, but she, like a careless jade, was taken up perhaps with some fellow that had met her, and so the poor baby wandered till it fell into my hands. However, I did the child no harm; I did not so much as fright it, for I had a great many tender thoughts about me yet, and did nothing but what, as I may say, mere necessity drove me to. VOLUME II The FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES OF THE FAMOUS MOLL FLANDERS I had a great many adventures after this, but I was young in the business, and did not know how to manage, otherwise than as the devil put things into my head; and, indeed, he was seldom backward toin me. One adventure I had which was very lucky to me. I was going through Lombard Streetio in the dusk of the evening, just by the end of Three King Court, when on a sudden comes a fellow running by me as swift as lightning, and throws a bundle that was in his hand just behind me, as I stood up against the corner of the house at the turning into the alley. Just as he threw it in, he said, "God bless you, mistress, let it lie there a little," and away he runs. After him comes two more, and immediately a young fellow without his hat, crying, "Stop thief!" They pursued the two last fellows so close, that they were forced to drop what they had got, and one of them was taken into the bargain; the other got off free. I stood stock-still all this while, till they came back, dragging the poor fellow they had taken, and lugging the things they had found, extremely well satisfied that they had recovered the booty and taken the thief; and thus they passed by me, for I looked only like one who stood up while the crowd was gone. Once or twice I asked what was the matter, but the people neglected answering me, and I was not very importunate; but after the crowd was wholly passed, I took my opportunity to turn about and take up what was behind me and walk away. This, indeed, I did with less disturbance than I had done formerly, for these things I did not steal, but they were stolen to my hand. I got safe to my lodgings with this cargo, which was a piece of fine black lustring silk,ip and a piece of velvet; the latter was but part of a piece of about eleven yards; the former was a whole piece of near fifty yards. It seems it was a mercer's shop that they had rifled. I say rifled, because the goods were so considerable that they had lost; for the goods that they recovered were pretty many, and I believe came to about six or seven severaliq pieces of silk. How they came to get so many I could not tell; but as I had only robbed the thief, I made no scruple at taking these goods, and being very glad of them too. I had pretty good luck thus far, and I made several adventures more, though with but small purchaser,ir yet with good success, but I went in daily dread that some mischief would befall me, and that I should certainly come to be hanged at last. The impression this made on me was too strong to be slighted, and it kept me from making attempts that, for aught I knew, might have been very safely performed; but one thing I cannot omit, which was a bait to me many a day. I walked frequently out into the villages round the town to see if nothing would fall in my way there; and going by a house near Stepney,is I saw on the window-board two rings, one a small diamond ring, and the other a plain gold ring, to be sure laid there by some thoughtless lady, that had more money than forecast,?à· perhaps only till she washed her hands. I walked several times by the window to observe if I could see whether there was anybody in the room or no, and I could see nobody, but still I was not sure. It came presently into my thoughts to rap at the glass, as if I wanted to speak with somebody, and if anybody was there they would be sure to come to the window, and then I would tell them to remove those rings, for that I had seen two suspicious fellows take notice of them. This was a ready thought. I rapped once or twice, and nobody came, when I thrust hard against the square of glass, and broke it with little noise, and took out the two rings, and walked away; the diamond ring was worth about ¬£3, and the other about 9s. I was now at a loss for a market for my goods, and especially for my two pieces of silk. I was very loth to dispose of them for a trifle, as the poor unhappy thieves in general do, who, after they have ventured their lives for perhaps a thing of value, are forced to sell it for a song when they have done; but I was resolved I would not do thus, whatever shiftit I made; however, I did not well know what course to take. At last I resolved to go to my old governess, and acquaint myself with her again. I had punctually supplied the ¬£5 a year to her for my little boy as long as I was able, but at last was obliged to put a stop to it. However, I had written a letter to her, wherein I had told her that my circumstances were reduced; that I had lost my husband, and that I was not able to do it any longer, and begged the poor child might not suffer too much for its mother's misfortunes. I now made her a visit, and I found that she drove something of the old trade still, but that she was not in such flourishing circumstances as before; for she had been sued by a certain gentleman who had had his daughter stolen from him, and who, it seems, she had helped to convey away; and it was very narrowly that she escaped the gallows. The expense also had ravaged her, so that her house was but meanly furnished, and she was not in such repute for her practice as before; however, she stood upon her legs, as they say, and as she was a bustling woman, and had some stock left, she was turned pawnbroker, and lived pretty well. She received me very civilly, and with her usual obliging manner told me she would not have the less respect for me for my being reduced ; that she had taken care my boy was very well looked after, though I could not pay for him, and that the woman that had him was easy,iu so that I needed not to trouble myself about him till I might be better able to do it effectually. I told her I had not much money left, but that I had some things that were money's worth, if she could tell me how I might turn them into money. She asked what it was I had. I pulled out the string of gold beads, and told her it was one of my husband's presents to me; then I showed her the two parcels of silk, which I told her I had from Ireland, and brought up to town with me, and the little diamond ring. As to the small parcel of plate and spoons, I had found means to dispose of them myself before; and as for the childbed-linen I had, she offered me to take it herself, believing it to have been my own. She told me that she was turned pawnbroker, and that she would sell those things for me as pawned to her; and so she sent presently for proper agents that bought them, being in her hands, without any scruple, and gave good prices too. I now began to think this necessary woman might help me a little in my low condition to some business, for I would gladly have turned my hand to any honest employment if I could have got it; but honest business did not come within her reach. If I had been younger perhaps she might have helped me,iv but my thoughts were off of that kind of livelihood, as being quite out of the way after fifty, which was my case, and so I told her. She invited me at last to come, and be at her house till I could find something to do, and it should cost me very little, and this I gladly accepted of; and now living a little easier, I entered into some measures to have my little son by my last husband taken off; and this she made easy too, reserving a payment only of ¬£5 a year, if I could pay it. This was such a help to me, that for a good while I left off the wicked trade that I had so newly taken up; and gladly I would have got work, but that was very hard to do for one that had no acquaintance. However, at last I got some quilting work for ladies' beds, petticoats, and the like; and this I liked very well, and worked very hard, and with this I began to live; but the diligent devil, who resolved I should continue in his service, continually prompted me to go out and take a walk, that is to say, to see if anything would offer in the old way. One evening I blindly obeyed his summons, and fetched a long circuit through the streets, but met with no purchase; but not content with that, I went out the next evening too, when going by an alehouse I saw the door of a little room open, next the very street, and on the table a silver tankard, things much in use in public-houses at that time. It seems some company had been drinking there, and the careless boys had forgot to take it away. I went into the box frankly,iw and setting the silver tankard on the corner of the bench, I sat down before it, and knocked with my foot; a boy came presently, and I bade him fetch me a pint of warm ale, for it was cold weather; the boy ran, and I heard him go down the cellar to draw the ale. While the boy was gone, another boy came, and cried, "D'ye call?" I spoke with a melancholy air, and said, "No; the boy is gone for a pint of ale for me." While I sat here, I heard the woman in the bar say, "Are they all gone in the five?" which was the box I sat in, and the boy said, "Yes." "Who fetched the tankard away?" says the woman. "I did," says another boy; "that's it," pointing, it seems, to another tankard, which he had fetched from another box by mistake; or else it must be, that the rogue forgot that he had not brought it in, which certainly he had not. I heard all this much to my satisfaction, for I found plainly that the tankard was not missed, and yet they concluded it was fetched away; so I drank my ale, called to pay, and as I went away I said, "Take care of your plate, child," meaning a silver pint mug which he brought me to drink in. The boy said, "Yes, madam, very welcome," and away I came. I came home to my governess, and now I thought it was a time to try her, that if I might be put to the necessity of being exposed she might offer me some assistance. When I had been at home some time, and had an opportunity of talking to her I told her I had a secret of the greatest consequence in the world to commit to her, if she had respect enough for me to keep it a secret. She told me she had kept one of my secrets faithfully; why should I doubt her keeping another? I told her the strangest thing in the world had befallen me, even without any design, and so told her the whole story of the tankard. "And have you brought it away with you, my dear?" says she. "To be sure I have," says I, and showed it her. "But what shall I do now?" says I; "must not I carry it again?" "Carry it again!" says she. "Ay, if you want to go to Newgate." "Why," says I, "they can't be so base to stop me, when I carry it to them again?" "You don't know those sort of people, child," says she; "they'll not only carry you to Newgate, but hang you too, without any regard to the honesty of returning it; or bring in an account of all the other tankards as they have lost, for you to pay for." "What must I do, then?" says I. "Nay," says she, "as you have played the cunning part and stole it, you must e'en keep it; there's no going back now. Besides, child," says she, "don't you wantix it more than they do. I wish you could light of such a bargain once a week." This gave me a new notion of my governess, and that since she was turned pawnbroker, she had a sort of people about her that were none of the honest ones that I had met with there before. I had not been long there but I discovered it more plainly than before, for every now and then I saw hilts of swords, spoons, forks, tankards, and all such kind of ware brought in, not to be pawned, but to be sold downright; and she bought them all without asking any questions, but had good bargains, as I found by her discourse. I found also that in following this trade she always melted down the plate she bought, that it might not be challenged; and she came to me and told me one morning that she was going to melt, and if I would, she would put my tankard in, that it might not be seen by anybody. I told her, with all my heart; so she weighed it, and allowed me the full value in silver again; but I found she did not do so to the rest of her customers. Some time after this, as I was at work, and very melancholy, she begins to ask me what the matter was. I told her my heart was very heavy; I had little work and nothing to live on, and knew not what course to take. She laughed, and told me I must go out again and try my fortune; it might be that I might meet with another piece of plate. "O mother!" says I, "that is a trade that I have no skill in, and if I should be taken I am undone at once." Says she, "I could help you to a schoolmistress that shall make you as dexterous as herself." I trembled at that proposal, for hitherto I had had no confederates nor any acquaintance among that tribe. But she conquered all my modesty, and all my fears; and in a little time, by the help of this confederate, I grew as impudent a thief, and as dexterous, as ever Moll Cutpurse28 was, though, if fame does not belie her, not half so handsome. The comrade she helped me to dealt in three sorts of craft, viz., shoplifting, stealing of shop-books and pocket-books, and taking off gold watches from the ladies' sides; and this last she did so dexterously that no woman ever arrived to the perfection of that art, like her. I liked the first and the last of these things very well, and I attended her some time in the practice, just as a deputy attends a midwife, without any pay. At length she put me to practice. She had shown me her art, and I had several times unhooked a watch from her own side with great dexterity. At last she showed me a prize, and this was a young lady with child, who had a charming watch. The thing was to be done as she came out of the church. She goes on one side of the lady, and pretends, just as she came to the steps, to fall, and fell against the lady with so much violence as put her into a great fright, and both cried out terribly. In the very moment that she jostled the lady, I had hold of the watch, and holding it the right way, the start she gave drew the hook out, and she never felt it. I made off immediately, and left my schoolmistress to come out of her fright gradually, and the lady too; and presently the watch was missed. "Ay," says my comrade, "then it was those rogues that thrust me down, I warrant ye; I wonder the gentlewoman did not miss her watch before, then we might have taken them." She humourediy the thing so well that nobody suspected her, and I was got home a full hour before her. This was my first adventure in company. The watch was indeed a very fine one, and had many trinkets about it, and my governess allowed us ¬£20 for it, of which I had half. And thus I was entered a complete thief, hardened to a pitch above all the reflections of conscience or modesty, and to a degree which I never thought possible in me. Thus the devil, who began, by the help of an irresistible poverty, to push me into this wickedness, brought me to a height beyond the common rate, even when my necessities were not so terrifying; for I had now got into a little vein of work, and as I was not at a loss to handle my needle, it was very probable I might have got my bread honestly enough. I must say, that if such a prospect of work had presented itself at first, when I began to feel the approach of my miserable circumstances?ÄîI say, had such a prospect of getting bread by working presented itself then, I had never fallen into this wicked trade, or into such a wicked gang as I was now embarked with; but practice had hardened me, and I grew audacious to the last degree; and the more so, because I had carried it on so long, and had never been taken; for, in a word, my new partner in wickedness and I went on together so long, without being ever detected, that we not only grew bold, but we grew rich, and we had at one time one-and-twenty gold watches in our hands. I remember that one day being a little more serious than ordinary, and finding I had so good a stock beforehand as I had, for I had near ¬£200 in money for my share, it came strongly into my mind, no doubt from some kind spirit, if such there be, that as at first poverty excited me, and my distresses drove me to these dreadful shifts, so seeing those distresses were now relieved, and I could also get something towards a maintenance by working, and had so good a bank to support me, why should I not now leave off, while I was well? that I could not expect to go always free; and if I was once surprised, I was undone. This was doubtless the happy minute, when, if I had hearkened to the blessed hint, from whatsoever hand it came, I had still a cast for an easy life. But my fate was otherwise determined; the busy devil that drew me in had too fast hold of me to let me go back; but as poverty brought me in, so avarice kept me in, till there was no going back. As to the arguments which my reason dictated for persuading me to lay down, avarice stepped in and said, "Go on; you have had very good luck; go on till you have gotten four or five hundred pounds, and then you shall leave off, and then you may live easy without working at all." Thus I, that was once in the devil's clutches, was held fast there as with a charm, and had no power to go without the circle, till I was engulfed in labyrinths of trouble too great to get out at all. However, these thoughts left some impression upon me, and made me act with some more caution than before, and more than my directors used for themselves. My comrade, as I called her (she should have been called my teacher), with another of her scholars, was the first in the misfortune; for, happening to be upon the hunt for purchase, they made an attempt upon a linen-draper in Cheapside,iz but were snapped by a hawk's-eyed journeyman,ja and seized with two pieces of cambric,jb which were taken also upon them. This was enough to lodge them both in Newgate, where they had the misfortune to have some of their former sins brought to remembrance. Two other indictments being brought against them, and the facts being proved upon them, they were both condemned to die. They both pleaded their bellies, and were both voted quick with child;29 though my tutoress was no more with child than I was. I went frequently to see them, and condole with them, expecting that it would be my turn next; but the place gave me so much horror, reflecting that it was the place of my unhappy birth, and of my mother's misfortunes, that I could not bear it, so I left off going to see them. And oh! could I have but taken warning by their disasters, I had been happy still, for I was yet free, and had nothing brought against me; but it could not be, my measure was not yet filled up. My comrade, having the brand of an old offender, was executed; the young offender was spared, having obtained a reprieve, but lay starving a long while in prison, till at last she got her name into what they call a circuit pardon,jc and so came off. This terrible example of my comrade frighted me heartily, and for a good while I made no excursions; but one night, in the neighbourhood of my governess's house, they cried "Fire." My governess looked out, for we were all up, and cried immediately that such a gentlewoman's house was all of a light fire atop, and so indeed it was. Here she gives me a jog. "Now, child," says she, "there is a rare opportunity, the fire being so near that you may go to it before the street is blocked up with the crowd." She presently gave me my cue. "Go, child," says she, "to the house, and run in and tell the lady, or anybody you see, that you come to help them, and that you came from such a gentlewoman; that is, one of her acquaintance farther up the street." Away I went, and, coming to the house, I found them all in confusion, you may be sure. I ran in, and finding one of the maids, "Alas! sweetheart," said I, "how came this dismal accident? Where is your mistress? Is she safe? And where are the children? I come from Madam?Äîto help you." Away runs the maid. "Madam, madam," says she, screaming as loud as she could yell, "here is a gentlewoman come from Madam?Äîto help us." The poor woman, half out of her wits, with a bundle under her arm, and two little children, comes towards me. "Madam," says I, "let me carry the poor children to Madam?Äî; she desires you to send them; she'll take care of the poor lambs;" and so I takes one of them out of her hand, and she lifts the other up into my arms. "Ay, do, for God's sake," says she, "carry them. Oh! thank her for her kindness." "Have you anything else to secure, madam?" says I; "she will take care of it." "Oh dear!" says she, "God bless her; take this bundle of plate and carry it to her too. Oh, she is a good woman! Oh, we are utterly ruined, undone!" And away she runs from me out of her wits, and the maids after her, and away comes I with the two children and the bundle. I was no sooner got into the street but I saw another woman come to me. "Oh!" says she, "mistress," in a piteous tone, "you will let fall the child. Come, come, this is a sad time; let me help you;" and immediately lays hold of my bundle to carry it for me. "No," says I; "if you will help me, take the child by the hand, and lead it for me but to the upper end of the street; I'll go with you and satisfy you for your pains." She could not avoid going, after what I said; but the creature, in short, was one of the same business with me, and wanted nothing but the bundle; however, she went with me to the door, for she could not help it. When we were come there I whispered her, "Go, child," said I, "I understand your trade; you may meet with purchase enough." She understood me and walked off. I thundered at the door with the children, and as the people were raised before by the noise of the fire, I was soon let in, and I said, "Is madam awake? Pray tell her Mrs.?Äîdesires the favour of her to take the two children in; poor lady, she will be undone, their house is all of a flame." They took the children in very civilly, pitied the family in distress, and away came I with my bundle. One of the maids asked me if I was not to leave the bundle too. I said, "No, sweetheart, 't is to go to another place; it does not belong to them." I was a great way out of the hurry now, and so I went on and brought the bundle of plate, which was very considerable, straight home to my old governess. She told me she would not look into it, but bade me go again and look for more. She gave me the like cue to the gentlewoman of the next house to that which was on fire, and I did my endeavour to go, but by this time the alarm of fire was so great, and so many engines playing,jd and the street so thronged with people, that I could not get near the house whatever I could do; so I came back again to my governess's, and taking the bundle up into my chamber, I began to examine it. It is with horror that I tell what a treasure I found there; 't is enough to say, that besides most of the family plate, which was considerable, I found a gold chain, an old-fashioned thing, the locket of which was broken, so that I suppose it had not been used some years, but the gold was not the worse for that; also a little box of burying rings, the lady's wedding-ring, and some broken bits of old lockets of gold, a gold watch, and a purse with about ¬£24 value in old pieces of gold coin, and several other things of value. This was the greatest and the worst prize that ever I was concerned in; for indeed, though, as I have said above, I was hardened now beyond the power of all reflection in other cases, yet it really touched me to the very soul when I looked into this treasure, to think of the poor disconsolate gentlewoman who had lost so much besides, and who would think, to be sure, that she had saved her plate and best things; how she would be surprised when she should find that she had been deceived, and that the person that took her children and her goods had come, as was pretended, from the gentlewoman in the next street, but that the children had been put upon her without her own knowledge. I say, I confess the inhumanity of this action moved me very much, and made me relent exceedingly, and tears stood in my eyes upon that subject; but with all my sense of its being cruel and inhuman, I could never find in my heart to make any restitution. The reflection wore off, and I quickly forgot the circumstances that attended it. Nor was this all; for though by this job I was become considerably richer than before, yet the resolution I had formerly taken of leaving off this horrid trade when I had gotten a little more, did not return, but I must still get more; and the avarice had such success, that I had no more thoughts of coming to a timely alteration of life, though without it I could expect no safety, no tranquillity in the possession of what I had gained; a little more, and a little more, was the case still. At length, yielding to the importunities of my crime, I cast off all remorse, and all the reflections on that head turned to no more than this, that I might perhaps come to have one booty more that might complete all; but though I certainly had that one booty, yet every hit looked towards another, and was so encouraging to me to go on with the trade, that I had no gust to the laying it down. In this condition, hardened by success, and resolving to go on, I fell into the snare in which I was appointed to meet with my last reward for this kind of life. But even this was not yet, for I met with several successful adventures more in this way. My governess was for a while really concerned for the misfortune of my comrade that had been hanged, for she knew enough of my governess to have sent her the same way, and which made her very uneasy; indeed she was in a very great fright. It is true that when she was gone, and had not told what she knew, my governess was easy as to that point, and perhaps glad she was hanged, for it was in her power to have obtained a pardon at the expense of her friends; but the loss of her, and the sense of her kindness in not making her marketje of what she knew, moved my governess to mourn very sincerely for her. I comforted her as well as I could, and she in return hardened me to merit more completely the same fate. However, as I have said, it made me the more wary, and particularly I was very shy of shoplifting, especially among the mercers and drapers, who are a set of fellows that have their eyes very much about them. I made a venture or two among the lace folks and the milliners, and particularly at one shop where two young women were newly set up, and had not been bred to the trade. There I carried off a piece of bone-lace, worth six or seven pounds, and a paper of thread.jf But this was but once; it was a trick that would not serve again. It was always reckoned a safe job when we heard of a new shop, and especially when the people were such as were not bred to shops. Such may depend upon it that they will be visited once or twice at their beginning, and they must be very sharp indeed if they can prevent it. I made another adventure or two after this, but they were but trifles. Nothing considerable offering for a good while, I began to think that I must give over trade in earnest; but my governess, who was not willing to lose me, and expected great things of me, brought me one day into company with a young woman and a fellow that went for her husband, though, as it appeared afterwards, she was not his wife, but they were partners in the trade they carried on, and in something else too. In short, they robbed together, lay together, were taken together, and at last were hanged together. I came into a kind of league with these two by the help of my governess, and they carried me out into three or four adventures, where I rather saw them commit some coarse and unhandy robberies, in which nothing but a great stock of impudence on their side, and gross negligence on the people's side who were robbed, could have made them successful. So I resolved from that time forward to be very cautious how I adventured with them; and, indeed, when two or three unlucky projects were proposed by them, I declined the offer, and persuaded them against it. One time they particularly proposed robbing a watchmaker of three gold watches, which they had eyed in the daytime, and found the place where he laid them. One of them had so many keys of all kinds, that he made no question to open the place where the watchmaker had laid them; and so we made a kind of an appointment; but when I came to look narrowly into the thing, I found they proposed breaking open the house, and this I would not embark in, so they went without me. They did get into the house by main force, and broke up the locked place where the watches were, but found but one of the gold watches, and a silver one, which they took, and got out of the house again very clear. But the family being alarmed, cried out, "Thieves," and the man was pursued and taken; the young woman had got off too, but unhappily was stopped at a distance, and the watches found upon her. And thus I had a second escape, for they were convicted, and both hanged, being old offenders, though but young people; and as I said before that they robbed together, so now they hanged together, and there ended my new partnership. I began now to be very wary, having so narrowly escaped a scouring, jg and having such an example before me; but I had a new tempter, who prompted me every day?ÄîI mean my governess; and now a prize presented, which as it came by her management, so she expected a good share of the booty. There was a good quantity of Flanders lace lodged in a private house, where she had heard of it, and Flanders lace being prohibited,jh it was a good booty to any custom-house officerji that could come at it. I had a full account from my governess, as well of the quantity as of the very place where it was concealed; so I went to a custom-house officer, and told him I had a discovery to make to him, if he would assure me that I should have my due share of the reward. This was so just an offer, that nothing could be fairer; so he agreed, and taking a constablejj and me with him, we beset the house. As I told him I could go directly to the place, he left it to me; and the hole being very dark, I squeezed myself into it, with a candle in my hand, and so reached the pieces out to him, taking care as I gave him some so to secure as much about myself as I could conveniently dispose of. There was near ¬£300 worth of lace in the whole, and I secured about ¬£50 worth of it myself The people of the house were not owners of the lace, but a merchant who had entrusted them with it; so that they were not so surprised as I thought they would be. I left the officer overjoyed with his prize, and fully satisfied with what he had got, and appointed to meet him at a house of his own directing, where I came after I had disposed of the cargo I had about me, of which he had not the least suspicion. When I came he began to capitulate,jk believing I did not understand the right I had in the prize, and would fain have put me off with ¬£20; but I let him know that I was not so ignorant as he supposed I was; and yet I was glad, too, that he offered to bring me to a certainty. I asked ¬£100, and he rose up to ¬£30; I fell to ¬£80, and he rose again to ¬£40; in a word, he offered ¬£50, and I consented, only demanding a piece of lace, which I thought came to about ¬£8 or ¬£9, as if it had been for my own wear, and he agreed to it. So I got ¬£50 in money paid me that same night, and made an end of the bargain; nor did he ever know who I was, or where to inquire for me, so that if it had been discovered that part of the goods were embezzled, he could have made no challenge upon me for it. I very punctuallyjl divided this spoil with my governess, and I passed with her from this time for a very dexterous manager in the nicest cases. I found that this last was the best and easiest sort of work that was in my way, and I made it my business to inquire out prohibited goods, and after buying some, usually betrayed them,jm but none of these discoveries amounted to anything considerable, not like that I related just now; but I was cautious of running the great risks which I found others did, and in which they miscarried every day. The next thing of moment was an attempt at a gentlewoman's gold watch. It happened in a crowd, at a meeting-house,jn where I was in very great danger of being taken. I had full hold of her watch, but giving a great jostle as if somebody had thrust me against her, and in the juncture giving the watch a fair pull, I found it would not come, so I let it go that moment, and cried as if I had been killed, that somebody had trod upon my foot, and that there was certainly pickpockets there, for somebody or other had given a pull at my watch; for you are to observe that on these adventures we always went very well dressed, and I had very good clothes on, and a gold watch by my side, as like a lady as other folks. I had no sooner said so but the other gentlewoman cried out, "A pickpocket," too, for somebody, she said, had tried to pull her watch away. When I touched her watch I was close to her, but when I cried out I stopped as it were short, and the crowd bearing her forward a little, she made a noise too, but it was at some distance from me, so that she did not in the least suspect me; but when she cried out, "A pickpocket," somebody cried out, "Ay, and here has been another; this gentlewoman has been attempted too." At that very instant, a little farther in the crowd, and very luckily too, they cried out, "A pickpocket," again, and really seized a young fellow in the very fact. This, though unhappy for the wretch, was very opportunely for my case, though I had carried it handsomely enough before; but now it was out of doubt, and all the loose part of the crowd ran that way, and the poor boy was delivered up to the rage of the street, which is a cruelty I need not describe, and which, however, they are always glad of, rather than be sent to Newgate, where they lie often a long time, and sometimes they are hanged, and the best they can look for, if they are convicted, is to be transported. This was a narrow escape to me, and I was so frighted that I ventured no more at gold watches a great while. There were indeed many circumstances in this adventure which assisted to my escape; but the chief was, that the woman whose watch I had pulled at was a fool; that is to say, she was ignorant of the nature of the attempt, which one would have thought she should not have been, seeing she was wise enough to fasten her watch so that it could not be slipped up; but she was in such a fright that she had no thought about her; for she, when she felt the pull, screamed out, and pushed herself forward, and put all the people about her into disorder, but said not a word of her watch, or of a pickpocket, for at least two minutes, which was time enough for me, and to spare; for as I had cried out behind her, as I have said, and bore myself back in the crowd as she bore forward, there were several people, at least seven or eight, the throng being still moving on, that were got between me and her in that time, and then I crying out "A pickpocket" rather sooner than she, she might as well be the person suspected as I, and the people were confused in their inquiry; whereas, had she, with a presence of mind needful on such an occasion, as soon as she felt the pull, not screamed out as she did, but turned immediately round and seized the next body that was behind her, she had infallibly taken me. This is a direction not of the kindest sort to the fraternity, but 't is certainly a key to the cluejo of a pickpocket's motions; and whoever can follow it, will as certainly catch the thief as he will be sure to miss if he does not. I had another adventure, which puts this matter out of doubt,jp and which may be an instruction for posterity in the case of a pickpocket. My good old governess, to give a short touchjq at her history, though she had left off the trade, was, as I may say, born a pickpocket, and, as I understood afterward, had run through all the several degrees of that art, and yet had been taken but once, when she was so grossly detectedjr that she was convicted, and ordered to be transported; but being a woman of a rare tongue, and withal having money in her pocket, she found means, the ship putting into Ireland for provisions, to get on shore there, where she practised her old trade some years; when falling into another sort of company, she turned midwife and procuress, and played a hundred pranks, which she gave me a little history of, in confidence between us as we grew more intimate; and it was to this wicked creature that I owed all the dexterity I arrived to, in which there were few that ever went beyond me, or that practised so long without any misfortune. It was after those adventures in Ireland, and when she was pretty well known in that country, that she left Dublin, and came over to England, where the time of her transportation being not expired, she left her former trade, for fear of falling into bad hands again, for then she was sure to have gone to wreck. Here she set up the same trade she had followed in Ireland, in which she soon, by her admirable management and a good tongue, arrived to the height which I have already described, and indeed began to be rich, though her trade fell again afterwards. I mention thus much of the history of this woman here, the better to account for the concern she had in the wicked life I was now leading, into all the particulars of which she led me, as it were, by the hand, and gave me such directions, and I so well followed them, that I grew the greatest artist of my time, and worked myself out of every danger with such dexterity, that when several more of my comrades ran themselves into Newgate, by that time they had been half a year at the trade, I had now practised upwards of five years, and the people at Newgate did not so much as know me; they had heard much of me indeed, and often expected me there, but I always got off, though many times in the extremest danger. One of the greatest dangers I was now in, was that I was too well known among the trade, and some of them, whose hatred was owing rather to envy than any injury I had done them, began to be angry that I should always escape when they were always catched and hurried to Newgate. These were they that gave me the name of Moll Flanders; for it was no more of affinity with my real name, or with any of the names I had ever gone by, than black is of kin to white, except that once, as before, I called myself Mrs. Flanders, when I sheltered myself in the Mint; but that these rogues never knew, nor could I ever learn how they came to give me the name, or what the occasion of it was. I was soon informed that some of these who were gotten fast into Newgate had vowed to impeach me; and as I knew that two or three of them were but too able to do it, I was under a great concern, and kept within doors for a good while. But my governess, who was partner in my success, and who now played a sure game, for she had no share in the hazard,?ÄîI say, my governess was something impatient of my leading such a useless, unprofitable life, as she called it; and she laid a new contrivance for my going abroad, and this was to dress me up in men's clothes,30 and so put me into a new kind of practice. I was tall and personable, but a little too smooth-faced for a man; however, as I seldom went abroad but in the night, it did well enough; but it was long before I could behave in my new clothes. It was impossible to be so nimble, so ready, so dexterous at these things in a dress contrary to nature; and as I did everything clumsily, so I had neither the success or easiness of escape that I had before, and I resolved to leave it off; but that resolution was confirmed soon after by the following accident. As my governess had disguised me like a man, so she joined me with a man, a young fellow that was nimble enough at his business, and for about three weeks we did very well together. Our principal trade was watching shopkeepers' counters, and slipping off any kinds of goods we could see carelessly laid anywhere, and we made several good bargains, as we called them, at this work. And as we kept always together, so we grew very intimate, yet he never knew that I was not a man, nay, though I several times went home with him to his lodgings, according as our business directed, and four or five times lay with him all night. But our design lay another way, and it was absolutely necessary to me to conceal my sex from him, as appeared afterwards. The circumstances of our living, coming in late, and having such business to do as required that nobody should be trusted with coming into our lodgings, were such as made it impossible to me to refuse lying with him, unless I would have owned my sex; and as it was, I effectually concealed myself. But his ill, and my good, fortune soon put an end to this life, which I must own I was sick of too. We had made several prizes in this new way of business, but the last would have been extraordinary. There was a shop in a certain street which had a warehouse behind it that looked into another street, the house making the corner. Through the window of the warehouse we saw lying on the counter or showboard, which was just before it, five pieces of silks, besides other stuffs, and though it was almost dark, yet the people, being busy in the fore-shop, had not had time to shut up those windows, or else had forgot it. This the young fellow was so overjoyed with, that he could not restrain himself. It lay within his reach, he said, and he swore violently to me that he would have it, if he broke down the house for it. I dissuaded him a little, but saw there was no remedy; so he ran rashly upon it, slipped out a square out of the sash window dexterously enough, and got four pieces of the silks, and came with them towards me, but was immediately pursued with a terrible clutter and noise. We were standing together indeed, but I had not taken any of the goods out of his hand, when I said to him hastily, "You are undone!" He ran like lightning, and I too, but the pursuit was hotter after him, because he had the goods. He dropped two of the pieces, which stopped them a little, but the crowd increased, and pursued us both. They took him soon after with the other two pieces, and then the rest followed me. I ran for it and got into my governess's house, whither some quick-eyed people followed me so warmlyjs as to fix me there. They did not immediately knock at the door, by which I got time to throw off my disguise and dress me in my own clothes; besides, when they came there, my governess, who had her tale ready, kept her door shut, and called out to them and told them there was no man come in there. The people affirmed there did a man come in there, and swore they would break open the door. My governess, not at all surprised, spoke calmly to them, told them they should very freely come and search her house, if they would bring a constable, and let in none but such as the constable would admit, for it was unreasonable to let in a whole crowd. This they could not refuse, though they were a crowd. So a constable was fetched immediately, and she very freely opened the door; the constable kept the door, and the men he appointed searched the house, my governess going with them from room to room. When she came to my room she called to me, and said aloud, "Cousin, pray open the door; here's some gentlemen that must come and look into your room." I had a little girl with me, which was my governess's grandchild, as she called her; and I bade her open the door, and there sat I at work with a great litter of things about me, as if I had been at work all day, being undressed, with only night-clothes on my head, and a loose morning-gown about me. My governess made a kind of excuse for their disturbing me, telling partly the occasion of it, and that she had no remedy but to open the doors to them, and let them satisfy themselves, for all she could say would not satisfy them. I sat still, and bid them search if they pleased, for if there was anybody in the house, I was sure they were not in my room; and for the rest of the house, I had nothing to say to that, I did not understand what they looked for. Everything looked so innocent and so honest about me, that they treated me civiller than I expected; but it was not till they had searched the room to a nicety, even under the bed, and in the bed, and everywhere else, where it was possible anything could be hid. When they had done, and could find nothing, they asked my pardon and went down. When they had thus searched the house from bottom to top, and then from top to bottom, and could find nothing, they appeased the mob pretty well; but they carried my governess before the justice. Two men swore that they saw the man whom they pursued go into her house. My governess rattled and made a great noise that her house should be insulted, and that she should be used thus for nothing; that if a man did come in, he might go out again presently for aught she knew, for she was ready to make oath that no man had been within her doors all that day as she knew of, which was very true; that it might be, that as she was above-stairs, any fellow in a fright might find the door open, and run in for shelter when he was pursued, but that she knew nothing of it; and if it had been so, he certainly went out again, perhaps at the other door, for she had another door into an alley, and so had made his escape. This was indeed probable enough, and the justice satisfied himself with giving her an oath that she had not received or admitted any man into her house to conceal him, or protect or hide him from justice. This oath she might justly take, and did so, and so she was dismissed. It is easy to judge what a fright I was in upon this occasion, and it was impossible for my governess ever to bring me to dress in that disguise again; for, as I told her, I should certainly betray myself. My poor partner in this mischief was now in a bad case, for he was carried away before my Lord Mayor,31 and by his worship committed to Newgate, and the people that took him were so willing, as well as able, to prosecute him, that they offered themselves to enter into recognisancesjt to appear at the sessions, and pursue the charge against him. However, he got his indictment deferred, upon promise to discover his accomplices, and particularly the man that was concerned with him in this robbery; and he failed not to do his endeavour, for he gave in my name, whom he called Gabriel Spencer, which was the name I went by to him; and here appeared the wisdom of my concealing myself from him, without which I had been undone. He did all he could to discover this Gabriel Spencer; he described me; he discovered the place where he said I lodged; and, in a word, all the particulars that he could of my dwelling; but having concealed the main circumstances of my sex from him, I had a vast advantage, and he could never hear of me. He brought two or three families into trouble by his endeavouring to find me out, but they knew nothing of me, any more than that he had a fellow with him that they had seen, but knew nothing of. And as to my governess, though she was the means of his coming to me, yet it was done at second-hand, and he knew nothing of her neither. This turned to his disadvantage; for having promised discoveries, but not being able to make it good, it was looked upon as trifling, and he was the more fiercely pursued by the shopkeeper. I was, however, terribly uneasy all this while, and that I might be quite out of the way, I went away from my governess for a while; but not knowing whither to wander, I took a maid-servant with me, and took the stage-coach to Dunstable, to my old landlord and landlady, where I lived so handsomely with my Lancashire husband. Here I told her a formalju story, that I expected my husband every day from Ireland, and that I had sent a letter to him that I would meet him at Dunstable at her house, and that he would certainly land, if the wind was fair, in a few days; so that I was come to spend a few days with them till he could come, for he would either come post,jv or in the West Chester coach, I knew not which; but whichsoever it was, he would be sure to come to that house to meet me. My landlady was mighty glad to see me, and my landlord made such a stir with me, that if I had been a princess I could not have been better used, and here I might have been welcome a month or two if I had thought fit. But my business was of another nature. I was very uneasy (though so well disguised that it was scarce possible to detect me) lest this fellow should find me out; and though he could not charge me with the robbery, having persuaded him not to venture, and having done nothing of it myself, yet he might have charged me with other things, and have bought his own life at the expense of mine. This filled me with horrible apprehensions. I had no resource, no friend, no confidant but my old governess, and I knew no remedy but to put my life into her hands; and so I did, for I let her know where to send to me, and had several letters from her while I stayed here. Some of them almost scared me out of my wits; but at last she sent me the joyful news that he was hanged, which was the best news to me that I had heard a great while. I had stayed here five weeks, and lived very comfortably indeed, the secret anxiety of my mind excepted. But when I received this letter I looked pleasantly again, and told my landlady that I had received a letter from my spouse in Ireland, that I had the good news of his being very well, but had the bad news that his business would not permit him to come away so soon as he expected, and so I was like to go back again without him. My landlady complimented me upon the good news, however, that I had heard he was well. "For I have observed, madam," says she, "you han't been so pleasant as you used to be; you have been over head and ears in care for him, I dare say," says the good woman; " 't is easy to be seen there's an alteration in you for the better," says she. "Well, I am sorry the squire can't come yet," says my landlord; "I should have been heartily glad to have seen him. When you have certain news of his coming, you'll take a step hither again, madam," says he; "you shall be very welcome whenever you please to come." With all these fine compliments we parted, and I came merry enough to London, and found my governess as well pleased as I was. And now she told me she would never recommend any partner to me again, for she always found, she said, that I had the best luck when I ventured by myself. And so indeed I had, for I was seldom in any danger when I was by myself, or if I was, I got out of it with more dexterity than when I was entangled with the dull measures of other people, who had perhaps less forecast,jw and were more impatient than I; for though I had as much courage to venture as any of them, yet I used more caution before I undertook a thing, and had more presence of mind to bring myself off. I have often wondered even at my own hardiness another way, that when all my companions were surprised, and fell so suddenly into the hand of justice, yet I could not all this while enter into one serious resolution to leave off this trade, and especially considering that I was now very far from being poor; that the temptation of necessity, which is the general introduction of all such wickedness, was now removed; that I had near ¬£500 by me in ready money, on which I might have lived very well, if I had thought fit to have retired; but, I say, I had not so much as the least inclination to leave off; no, not so much as I had before, when I had but ¬£200 beforehand, and when I had no such frightful examples before my eyes as these were. From hence 't is evident, that when once we are hardened in crime, no fear can affect us, no example give us any warning. I had indeed one comrade, whose fate went very near mejx for a good while, though I wore it off too in time. That case was indeed very unhappy. I had made a prize of a piece of very good damask in a mercer's shop, and went clear off myself, but had conveyed the piece to this companion of mine, when we went out of the shop, and she went one way, I went another. We had not been long out of the shop but the mercer missed the piece of stuff, and sent his messengers, one one way, and one another, and they presently seized her that had the piece, with the damask upon her; as for me, I had very luckily stepped into a house where there was a lace chamber,jy up one pair of stairs, and had the satisfaction, or the terror, indeed, of looking out of the window, and seeing the poor creature dragged away to the justice, who immediately committed her to Newgate. I was careful to attempt nothing in the lace chamber, but tumbled their goods pretty much to spend time; then bought a few yards of edging, and paid for it, and came away very sad-hearted indeed, for the poor woman who was in tribulation for what I only had stolen. Here again my old caution stood me in good stead; though I often robbed with these people, yet I never let them know who I was, nor could they ever find out my lodging, though they often endeavoured to watch me to it. They all knew me by the name of Moll Flanders, though even some of them rather believed I was she than knew me to be so. My name was public among them indeed, but how to find me out they knew not, nor so much as how to guess at my quarters, whether they were at the east end of the town or the west; and this wariness was my safety upon all these occasions. I kept close a great while upon the occasion of this woman's disaster. I knew that if I should do anything that should miscarry, and should be carried to prison, she would be there, and ready to witness against me, and perhaps save her life at my expense. I considered that I began to be very well known by name at the Old Bailey,jz though they did not know my face, and that if I should fall into their hands, I should be treated as an old offender; and for this reason I was resolved to see what this poor creature's fate should be before I stirred, though several times in her distress I conveyed money to her for her relief. At length she came to her trial. She pleaded she did not steal the things, but that one Mrs. Flanders, as she heard her called (for she did not know her), gave the bundle to her after they came out of the shop, and bade her carry it home. They asked her where this Mrs. Flanders was, but she could not produce her, neither could she give the least account of me; and the mercer's men swearing positively that she was in the shop when the goods were stolen, that they immediately missed them, and pursued her, and found them upon her, thereupon the jury brought her in guilty; but the court considering that she really was not the person that stole the goods, and that it was very possible she could not find out this Mrs. Flanders, meaning me, though it would save her life, which indeed was true, they allowed her to be transported; which was the utmost favour she could obtain, only that the court told her, if she could in the meantime produce the said Mrs. Flanders, they would intercede for her pardon; that is to say, if she could find me out, and hang me, she should not be transported. This I took care to make impossible to her, and so she was shipped off in pursuance of her sentence a little while after. I must repeat it again, that the fate of this poor woman troubled me exceedingly, and I began to be very pensive, knowing that I was really the instrument of her disaster; but my own life, which was so evidently in danger, took off my tenderness; and seeing she was not put to death, I was easy at her transportation, because she was then out of the way of doing me any mischief, whatever should happen. The disaster of this woman was some months before that of the last-recited story, and was indeed partly the occasion of my governess proposing to dress me up in men's clothes, that I might go about unobserved; but I was soon tired of that disguise, as I have said, for it exposed me to too many difficulties. I was now easy as to all fear of witnesses against me, for all those that had either been concerned with me, or that knew me by the name of Moll Flanders, were either hanged or transported; and if I should have had the misfortune to be taken, I might call myself anything else, as well as Moll Flanders, and no old sins could be placed to my account; so I began to run a-tickka again, with the more freedom, and several successful adventures I made, though not such as I had made before. We had at that time another fire happened not a great way off from the place where my governess lived, and I made an attempt there as before; but as I was not soon enough before the crowd of people came in, and could not get to the house I aimed at, instead of a prize, I got a mischief,kb which had almost put a period to my life and all my wicked doings together; for the fire being very furious, and the people in a great fright in removing their goods, and throwing them out of window, a wench from out of a window threw a feather-bed just upon me. It is true, the bed being soft, it broke no bones; but as the weight was great, and made greater by the fall, it beat me down, and laid me dead for awhile: nor did the people concern themselves much to deliver me from it, or to recover me at all; but I lay like one dead and neglected a good while, till somebody going to remove the bed out of the way, helped me up. It was indeed a wonder the people in the house had not thrown other goods out after it, and which might have fallen upon it, and then I had been inevitably killed; but I was reserved for further afflictions. This accident, however, spoiled my marketkc for that time, and I came home to my governess very much hurt and frighted, and it was a good while before she could set me upon my feet again. It was now a merry time of the year, and Bartholomew Fair was begun.32 I had never made any walks that way, nor was the fair of much advantage to me; but I took a turn this year into the cloisters,kd and there I fell into one of the raffling shops.ke It was a thing of no great consequence to me, but there came a gentleman extremely well dressed and very rich, and as 't is frequent to talk to everybody in those shops, he singled me out, and was very particular with me. First he told me he would put in for me to raffle, and did so; and some small matter coming to his lot, he presented it to me?ÄîI think it was a feather muff; then he continued to keep talking to me with a more than common appearance of respect, but still very civil, and much like a gentleman. He held me in talk so long, till at last he drew me out of the raffling place to the shop-door, and then to take a walk in the cloister, still talking of a thousand things cursorily without anything to the purpose. At last he told me that he was charmed with my company, and asked me if I durst trust myself in a coach with him; he told me he was a man of honour, and would not offer anything to me unbecoming him. I seemed to decline it a while, but suffered myself to be importuned a little, and then yielded. I was at a loss in my thoughts to conclude at first what this gentleman designed; but I found afterward he had had some drink in his head, and that he was not very unwilling to have some more. He carried me to the Spring Garden, at Knightsbridge,kf where we walked in the gardens, and he treated me very handsomely; but I found he drank freely. He pressed me also to drink, but I declined it. Hitherto he kept his word with me, and offered me nothing amiss. We came away in the coach again, and he brought me into the streets, and by this time it was near ten o'clock at night, when he stopped the coach at a house where, it seems, he was acquainted, and where they made no scruple to show us upstairs into a room with a bed in it. At first I seemed to be unwilling to go up, but after a few words I yielded to that too, being indeed willing to see the end of it, and in hopes to make something of it at last. As for the bed, &c., I was not much concerned about that part. Here he began to be a little freer with me than he had promised ; and I by little and little yielded to everything, so that, in a word, he did what he pleased with me; I need say no more. All this while he drank freely too, and about one in the morning we went into the coach again. The air and the shaking of the coach made the drink get more up in his head, and he grew uneasy, and was for acting over again what he had been doing before; but as I thought my game now secure, I resisted, and brought him to be a little still, which had not lasted five minutes but he fell fast asleep. I took this opportunity to search him to a nicety.kg I took a gold watch, with a silk purse of gold, his fine full-bottom periwigkh and silver-fringed gloves, his sword and fine snuff-box, and gently opening the coach-door, stood ready to jump out while the coach was going on; but the coach stopping in the narrow street beyond Temple Barki to let another coach pass, I got softly out, fastened the door again, and gave my gentleman and the coach the slip together. This was an adventure indeed unlooked for, and perfectly undesigned by me; though I was not so past the merry part of life as to forget how to behave, when a fop so blinded by his appetite should not know an old woman from a young. I did not indeed look so old as I was by ten or twelve years; yet I was not a young wench of seventeen, and it was easy enough to be distinguished. There is nothing so absurd, so surfeiting,kj so ridiculous, as a man heated by wine in his head, and a wicked gust in his inclination together; he is in the possession of two devils at once, and can no more govern himself by his reason than a mill can grind without water; vice tramples upon all that was in him that had any good in it; nay, his very sense is blinded by its own rage, and he acts absurdities even in his view; such as drinking more, when he is drunk already; picking up a common woman, without any regard to what she is or who she is; whether sound or rotten, clean or unclean; whether ugly or handsome, old or young; and so blinded as not really to distinguish. Such a man is worse than lunatic; prompted by his vicious head, he no more knows what he is doing than this wretch of mine knew when I picked his pocket of his watch and his purse of gold. These are the men of whom Solomon says, "They go like an ox to the slaughter, till a dart strikes through their liver;"kk an admirable description, by the way, of the foul disease, which is a poisonous deadly contagion mingling with the blood, whose centre or fountain is in the liver; from whence, by the swift circulation of the whole mass, that dreadful nauseous plague strikes immediately through his liver, and his spirits are infected, his vitals stabbed through as with a dart. It is true this poor unguarded wretch was in no danger from me, though I was greatly apprehensive at first what danger I might be in from him; but he was really to be pitied in one respect, that he seemed to be a good sort of a man in himself: a gentleman that had no harm in his design; a man of sense, and of a fine behaviour, a comely handsome person, a sober and solid countenance,kl a charming beautiful face, and everything that could be agreeable; only had unhappily had some drink the night before; had not been in bed, as he told me when we were together; was hot, and his blood fired with wine, and in that condition his reason, as it were asleep, had given him up. As for me, my business was his money, and what I could make of him; and after that, if I could have found out anyway to have done it, I would have sent him safe home to his house and to his family, for 't was ten to one but he had an honest, virtuous wife and innocent children, that were anxious for his safety, and would have been glad to have gotten him home, and taken care of him, till he was restored to himself: and then with what shame and regret would he look back upon himself! how would he reproach himself with associating himself with a whore! picked up in the worst of all holes, the cloister, among the dirt and filth of the town! how would he be trembling for fear he had got the pox,km for fear a dart had struck through his liver, and hate himself every time he looked back upon the madness and brutality of his debauch! how would he, if he had any principles of honour, abhor the thought of giving any ill distemper, if he had it, as for aught he knew he might, to his modest and virtuous wife, and thereby sowing the contagion in the life-blood of his posterity! Would such gentlemen but consider the contemptible thoughts which the very women they are concerned with, in such cases as these, have of them, it would be a surfeitkn to them. As I said above, they value not the pleasure, they are raised by no inclination to the man, the passive jade thinks of no pleasure but the money; and when he is, as it were, drunk in the ecstasies of his wicked pleasure, her hands are in his pockets for what she can find there, and of which he can no more be sensible in the moment of his folly than he can fore-think of it when he goes about it. I knew a woman that was so dexterous with a fellow, who indeed deserved no better usage, that while he was busy with her another way, conveyed his purse with twenty guineas in it out of his fob-pocket,ko where he had put it for fear of her, and put another purse with gilded counters in it into the room of it. After he had done he says to her, "Now han't you picked my pocket?" She jested with him, and told him she supposed he had not much to lose; he put his hand to his fob, and with his fingers felt that his purse was there, which fully satisfied him, and so she brought off his money. And this was a trade with her; she kept a sham gold watch and a purse of counters in her pocket to be ready on all such occasions, and I doubt not practised it with success. I came home with this last booty to my governess, and really when I told her the story, it so affected her that she was hardly able to forbear tears, to think how such a gentleman ran a daily risk of being undone, every time a glass of wine got into his head. But as to the purchase I got, and how entirely I stripped him, she told me it pleased her wonderfully. "Nay, child," says she, "the usage may, for aught I know, do more to reform him than all the sermons that ever he will hear in his life." And if the remainder of the story be true, so it did. I found the next day she was wonderful inquisitive about this gentleman; the description I gave her of him, his dress, his person, his face, all concurred to make her think of a gentleman whose character she knew. She mused a while, and I going on in the particulars, says she, "I lay ¬£100 I know the man." "I am sorry if you do," says I, "for I would not have him exposed on any account in the world; he has had injury enough already, and I would not be instrumental to do him any more." "No, no," says she, "I will do him no injury, but you may let me satisfy my curiosity a little, for if it is he, I warrant you I find it out." I was a little startled at that, and I told her, with an apparent concern in my face, that by the same rule he might find me out, and then I was undone. She returned warmly, "Why, do you think I will betray you, child? No, no," says she, "not for all he is worth in the world. I have kept your counsel in worse things than these; sure you may trust me in this." So I said no more. She laid her scheme another way, and without acquainting me with it, but she was resolved to find it out. So she goes to a certain friend of hers, who was acquainted in the family that she guessed at, and told her she had some extraordinary business with such a gentleman (who, by the way, was no less than a baronetkp and of a very good family), and that she knew not how to come at him without somebody to introduce her. Her friend promised her readily to do it, and accordingly goes to the house to see if the gentleman was in town. The next day she comes to my governess and tells her that Sir?Äîwas at home, but that he had met with a disaster and was very ill, and there was no speaking to him. "What disaster?" says my governess hastily, as if she was surprised at it. "Why," says her friend, "he had been at Hampsteadkq to visit a gentleman of his acquaintance, and as he came back again, he was set upon and robbed; and having got a little drink too, as they suppose, the rogues abused him, and he is very ill." "Robbed!" says my governess, "and what did they take from him?" "Why," says her friend, "they took his gold watch and his gold snuff-box, his fine periwig, and what money he had in his pocket, which was considerable, to be sure, for Sir?Äînever goes without a purse of guineas about him." "Pshaw!" says my old governess, jeering, "I warrant you he has got drunk now, and got a whore, and she has picked his pocket, and so he comes home to his wife and tells her he has been robbed; that's an old sham; a thousand such tricks are put upon the poor women every day." "Fie!" says her friend, "I find you don't know Sir?Äî; why, he is as civil a gentleman, there is not a finer man, nor a soberer, modester person in the whole city; he abhors such things; there's nobody that knows him will think such a thing of him." "Well, well," says my governess, "that's none of my business; if it was, I warrant I should find there was something of that in it; your modest men in common opinion are sometimes no better than other people, only they keep a better character, or, if you please, are the better hypocrites." "No, no," says her friend, "I can assure you Sir?Äîis no hypocrite ; he is really an honest, sober gentleman, and he has certainly been robbed." "Nay," says my governess, "it may be he has; it is no business of mine, I tell you; I only want to speak with him; my business is of another nature." "But," says her friend, "let your business be of what nature it will, you cannot see him yet, for he is not fit to be seen, for he is very ill, and bruised very much." "Ay," says my governess, "nay, then he has fallen into bad hands, to be sure." And then she asked gravely, "Pray, where is he bruised?" "Why, in his head," says her friend, "and one of his hands, and his face, for they used him barbarously." "Poor gentleman," says my governess. "I must wait, then, till he recovers;" and adds, "I hope it will not be long." Away she comes to me, and tells me this story. "I have found out your fine gentleman, and a fine gentleman he was," says she; "but, mercy on him, he is in a sad pickle now. I wonder what the d?Äîyou have done to him; why, you have almost killed him." I looked at her with disorder enough. "I killed him!" says I; "you must mistake the person; I am sure I did nothing to him; he was very well when I left him," said I, "only drunk and fast asleep." "I know nothing of that," says she, "but he is in a sad pickle now;" and so she told me all that her friend had said. "Well, then," says I, "he fell into bad hands after I left him, for I left him safe enough." About ten days after, my governess goes again to her friend, to introduce her to this gentleman; she had inquired other ways in the meantime, and found that he was about again, so she got leave to speak with him. She was a woman of an admirable address,kr and wanted nobody to introduce her; she told her tale much better than I shall be able to tell it for her, for she was mistress of her tongue, as I said already. She told him that she came, though a stranger, with a single design of doing him a service, and he should find she had no other end in it; that as she came purely on so friendly an account, she begged a promise from him, that if he did not accept what she should officiously ks propose, he would not take it ill that she meddled with what was not her business; she assured him that as what she had to say was a secret that belonged to him only, so whether he accepted her offer or not, it should remain a secret to all the world, unless he exposed it himself; nor should his refusing her service in it make her so little show her respect as to do him the least injury, so that he should be entirely at liberty to act as he thought fit. He looked very shy at first, and said he knew nothing that related to him that required much secrecy; that he had never done any man any wrong, and cared not what anybody might say of him; that it was no part of his character to be unjust to anybody, nor could he imagine in what any man could render him any service; but that if it was as she said, he could not take it ill from any one that should endeavour to serve him; and so, as it were, left her at liberty either to tell him or not to tell him, as she thought fit. She found him so perfectly indifferent, that she was almost afraid to enter into the point with him; but, however, after some other circumlocutions, she told him, that by a strange and unaccountable accident she came to have a particular knowledge of the late unhappy adventure he had fallen into, and that in such a manner that there was nobody in the world but herself and him that were acquainted with it, no, not the very person that was with him. He looked a little angrily at first. "What adventure?" said he. "Why, sir," said she, "of your being robbed coming from Knightsbr?Äî; Hampstead, sir, I should say," says she. "Be not surprised, sir," says she, "that I am able to tell you every step you took that day from the cloister in Smithfield to the Spring Garden at Knightsbridge, and thence to the?Äîin the Strand, and how you were left asleep in the coach afterwards. I say, let not this surprise you, for, sir, I do not come to make a booty of you,kt I ask nothing of you, and I assure you the woman that was with you knows nothing who you are, and never shall; and yet perhaps I may serve you further still, for I did not come barely to let you know that I was informed of these things, as if I wanted a bribe to conceal them; assure yourself, sir," said she, "that whatever you think fit to do or say to me, it shall be all a secret, as it is, as much as if I were in my grave." He was astonished at her discourse, and said gravely to her, "Madam, you are a stranger to me, but it is very unfortunate that you should be let into the secret of the worst action of my life, and a thing that I am justly ashamed of, in which the only satisfaction I had was, that I thought it was known only to God and my own conscience." "Pray, sir," says she, "do not reckon the discovery of it to me to be any part of your misfortune. It was a thing, I believe, you were surprised into, and perhaps the woman used some art to prompt you to it. However, you will never find any just cause," said she, "to repent that I came to hear of it; nor can your mouth be more silent in it than I have been, and ever shall be." "Well," says he, "but let me do some justice to the woman too; whoever she is, I do assure you she prompted me to nothing, she rather declined me. It was my own folly and madness that brought me into it all; ay, and brought her into it too; I must give her her due so far. As to what she took from me, I could expect no less from her in the condition I was in, and to this hour I know not whether she robbed me or the coachman; if she did it, I forgive her. I think all gentlemen that do so should be used in the same manner; but I am more concerned for some other things than I am for all that she took from me." My governess now began to come into the whole matter, and he opened himself freely to her. First, she said to him, in answer to what he had said about me, "I am glad, sir, you are so just to the person that you were with. I assure you she is a gentlewoman, and no woman of the town; and however you prevailed with her as you did, I am sure 't is not her practice. You ran a great ventureku indeed, sir; but if that be part of your care,kv you may be perfectly easy, for I do assure you no man has touched her before you, since her husband, and he has been dead now almost eight years." It appeared that this was his grievance, and that he was in a very great fright about it; however, when my governess said this to him, he appeared very well pleased, and said, "Well, madam, to be plain with you, if I was satisfied of that, I should not so much value what I lost; for, as to that, the temptation was great, and perhaps she was poor, and wanted it." "If she had not been poor, sir," says she, "I assure you she would never have yielded to you; and as her poverty first prevailed with you to let you do as you did, so the same poverty prevailed with her to pay herself at last, when she saw you was in such a condition, that if she had not done it, perhaps the next coachman or chairmankw might have done it more to your hurt." "Well," says he, "much good may it do her. I say again, all the gentlemen that do so ought to be used in the same manner, and then they would be cautious of themselves. I have no concern about it, but on the score which you hinted at before." Here he entered into some freedoms with her on the subject of what passed between us, which are not so proper for a woman to write, and the great terror that was upon his mind with relation to his wife, for fear she should have received any injury from me, and should communicate it farther; and asked her at last if she could not procure him an opportunity to speak with me. My governess gave him further assurances of my being a woman clear from any such thing, and that he was as entirely safe in that respect as he was with his own lady; but as for seeing me, she said it might be of dangerous consequence; but, however, that she would talk with me, and let him know, endeavouring at the same time to persuade him not to desire it, and that it could be of no service to him, seeing she hoped he had no desire to renew the correspondence, and that on my account it was a kind of putting my life in his hands. He told her he had a great desire to see me, that he would give her any assurances that were in his power not to take any advantages of me, and that in the first place he would give me a general release from all demands of any kind. She insisted how it might tend to further divulging the secret, and might be injurious to him, entreating him not to press for it; so at length he desisted. They had some discourse upon the subject of the things he had lost, and he seemed to be very desirous of his gold watch, and told her if she could procure that for him, he would willingly give as much for it as it was worth. She told him she would endeavour to procure it for him, and leave the valuing it to himself. Accordingly the next day she carried the watch, and he gave her thirty guineas for it, which was more than I should have been able to make of it, though it seems it cost much more. He spoke something of his periwig, which it seems cost him threescore guineas, and his snuff-box; and in a few days more she carried them too, which obliged him very much, and he gave her thirty more. The next day I sent him his fine sword and cane gratis,kx and demanded nothing of him, but had no mind to see him, unless he might be satisfied I knew who he was, which he was not willing to. Then he entered into a long talk with her of the manner how she came to know all this matter. She formed a long tale of that part; how she had it from one that I had told the whole story to, and that was to help me dispose of the goods; and this confidante brought things to her, she being by profession a pawnbroker; and she hearing of his worship's disaster, guessed at the thing in general; that having gotten the things into her hands, she had resolved to come and try as she had done. She then gave him repeated assurances that it should never go out of her mouth, and though she knew the woman very well, yet she had not let her know, meaning me, anything of who the person was, which, by the way, was false; but, however, it was not to his damage, for I never opened my mouth of it to anybody. I had a great many thoughts in my head about my seeing him again, and was often sorry that I had refused it. I was persuaded that if I had seen him, and let him know that I knew him, I should have made some advantage of him, and perhaps have had some maintenance from him, and though it was a life wicked enough, yet it was not so full of danger as this I was engaged in. However, those thoughts wore off, and I declined seeing him again, for that time; but my governess saw him often, and he was very kind to her, giving her something almost every time he saw her. One time in particular she found him very merry, and as she thought he had some wine in his head then, and he pressed her again to let him see the woman that, as he said, had bewitched him so that night, my governess, who was from the beginning for my seeing him, told him he was so desirous of it that she could almost yield to it, if she could prevail upon me; adding that if he would please to come to her house in the evening, she would endeavour it, upon his repeated assurances of forgetting what was past. Accordingly she came to me, and told me all the discourse; in short, she soon biassedky me to consent, in a case which I had some regret in my mind for declining before; so I prepared to see him. I dressed me to all the advantage possible, I assure you, and for the first time used a little art; I say for the first time, for I had never yielded to the baseness of paint before, having always had vanity enough to believe I had no need of it. At the hour appointed he came; and as she observed before, so it was plain still, that he had been drinking, though very far from what we call being in drink. He appeared exceeding pleased to see me, and entered into a long discourse with me upon the whole affair. I begged his pardon very often for my share of it, protested I had not any such design when first I met him, that I had not gone out with him but that I took him for a very civil gentleman, and that he made me so many promises of offering no incivility to me. He alleged the wine he drank, and that he scarce knew what he did, and that if it had not been so, he should never have taken the freedom with me he had done. He protested to me that he never touched any woman but me since he was married to his wife, and it was a surprise upon him; complimented me upon being so particularly agreeable to him, and the like; and talked so much of that kind, till I found he had talked himself almost into a temper to do the thing again. But I took him up short. I protested I had never suffered any man to touch me since my husband died, which was near eight years. He said he believed it; and added that madam had intimated as much to him, and that it was his opinion of that part which made him desire to see me again; and since he had once broken in upon his virtue with me, and found no ill consequences, he could be safe in venturing again; and so, in short, he went on to what I expected, and to what will not bear relating. My old governess had foreseen it, as well as I, and therefore led him into a room which had not a bed in it, and yet had a chamber within it which had a bed, whither we withdrew for the rest of the night; and, in short, after some time being together, he went to bed, and lay there all night. I withdrew, but came again undressed before it was day, and lay with him the rest of the time. Thus, you see, having committed a crime once is a sad handle to the committing of it again; all the reflections wear off when the temptation renews itself. Had I not yielded to see him again, the corrupt desire in him had worn off, and 't is very probable he had never fallen into it with anybody else, as I really believe he had not done before. When he went away, I told him I hoped he was satisfied he had not been robbed again. He told me he was fully satisfied in that point, and putting his hand in his pocket, gave me five guineas, which was the first money I had gained that way for many years. I had several visits of the like kind from him, but he never came into a settled way of maintenance, which was what I would have been best pleased with. Once, indeed, he asked me how I did to live. I answered him pretty quick, that I assured him I had never taken that course that I took with him, but that indeed I worked at my needle, and could just maintain myself; that sometimes it was as much as I was able to do, and I shifted hard enough. He seemed to reflect upon himself that he should be the first person to lead me into that which he assured me he never intended to do himself; and it touched him a little, he said, that he should be the cause of his own sin and mine too. He would often make just reflections also upon the crime itself, and upon the particular circumstances of it, with respect to himself; how wine introduced the inclinations, how the devil led him to the place, and found out an object to tempt him, and he made the moral always himself. When these thoughts were upon him he would go away, and perhaps not come again in a month's time or longer; but then as the serious part wore off, the lewd part would wear in, and then he came prepared for the wicked part. Thus we lived for some time; though he did not keep,kz as they call it, yet he never failed doing things that were handsome, and sufficient to maintain me without working, and, which was better, without following my old trade. But this affair had its end too; for after about a year, I found that he did not come so often as usual, and at last he left it off altogether without any dislikela or bidding adieu; and so there was an end of that short scene of life, which added no great store to me, only to make more work for repentance. During this interval I confined myself pretty much at home; at least, being thus provided for, I made no adventures, no, not for a quarter of a year after; but then finding the fund fail, and being loth to spend upon the main stock, I began to think of my old trade, and to look abroad into the street; and my first step was lucky enough. I had dressed myself up in a very mean habit, for as I had several shapes to appear in, I was now in an ordinary stuff gown,lb a blue apron, and a straw hat; and I placed myself at the door of the Three Cups Inn in St. John's Street. There were several carriers used the inn, and the stage-coaches for Barnet,lc for Totteridge, and other towns that way stood always in the street in the evening, when they prepared to set out, so that I was ready for anything that offered. The meaning was this: people come frequently with bundles and small parcels to those inns, and call for such carriers or coaches as they want, to carry them into the country; and there generally attends women, porters' wives or daughters, ready to take in such things for the people that employ them. It happened very oddly that I was standing at the inn-gate, and a woman that stood there before, and which was the porter's wife belonging to the Barnet stage-coach, having observed me, asked if I waited for any of the coaches. I told her yes, I waited for my mistress, that was coming to go to Barnet. She asked me who was my mistress, and I told her any madam's name that came next me;ld but it seemed I happened upon a name a family of which name lived at Hadley, near Barnet. I said no more to her, or she to me, a good while; but by-and-by, somebody calling her at a door a little way off, she desired me that if anybody called for the Barnet coach, I would step and call her at the house, which it seems was an alehouse. I said "Yes," very readily, and away she went. She was no sooner gone but comes a wench and a child, puffing and sweating, and asks for the Barnet coach. I answered presently, "Here." "Do you belong to the Barnet coach?" says she. "Yes, sweetheart," said I; "what do you want?" "I want room for two passengers," says she. "Where are they, sweetheart?" said I. "Here's this girl; pray let her go into the coach," says she, "and I'll go and fetch my mistress." "Make haste, then, sweetheart," says I, "for we may be full else." The maid had a great bundle under her arm; so she put the child into the coach, and I said, "You had best put your bundle into the coach too." "No," said she; "I am afraid somebody should slip it away from the child." "Give it me, then," said I. "Take it, then," says she, "and be sure you take care of it." "I'll answer for it," said I, "if it were ¬£20 value." "There, take it, then," says she, and away she goes. As soon as I got the bundle, and the maid was out of sight, I goes on towards the alehouse, where the porter's wife was, so that if I had met her, I had then only been going to give her the bundle and to call her to her business, as if I was going away, and could stay no longer; but as I did not meet her, I walked away, and turning into Charterhouse Lane, made off through Charterhouse Yard, into Long Lane, then into Bartholomew Close, so into Little Britain, and through the Bluecoat Hospital33 to Newgate Street. To prevent being known, I pulled off my blue apron, and wrapt the bundle in it, which was made up in a piece of painted calico; I also wrapt up my straw hat in it, and so put the bundle upon my head; and it was very well that I did thus, for coming through the Bluecoat Hospital, who should I meet but the wench that had given me the bundle to hold. It seems she was going with her mistress, whom she had been to fetch, to the Barnet coaches. I saw she was in haste, and I had no business to stop her; so away she went, and I brought my bundle safe to my governess. There was no money, plate, or jewels in it, but a very good suit of Indian damask, a gown and petticoat, a laced head and ruffles of very good Flanders lace, and some other things, such as I knew very well the value of This was not indeed my own invention, but was given me by one that practised it with success, and my governess liked it extremely; and indeed I tried it again several times, though never twice near the same place; for the next time I tried in Whitechapel, just by the corner of Petticoat Lane, where the coaches stand that go out to Stratford and Bow, and that side of the country; and another time at the Flying Horse without Bishopsgate, where the Cheston coaches then lay;le and I had always the good luck to come off with some booty. Another time I placed myself at a warehouse by the water-side, where the coasting vesselslf from the north come, such as Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Sunderland, and other places. Here, the warehouse being shut, comes a young fellow with a letter; and he wanted a box and a hamperlg that was come from Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I asked him if he had the markslh of it; so he shows me the letter, by virtue of which he was to ask for it, and which gave an account of the contents, the box being full of linen and the hamper full of glassware. I read the letter, and took care to see the name, and the marks, the name of the person that sent the goods, and the name of the person they were sent to; then I bade the messenger come in the morning, for that the warehouse-keeper would not be there any more that night. Away went I, and wrote a letter from Mr. John Richardson of Newcastle to his dear cousin, Jemmy Cole, in London, with an account that he had sent by such a vessel (for I remembered all the particulars to a tittle) so many pieces of huckaback linen,li and so many ellslj of Dutch Holland, and the like, in a box, and a hamper of flint glasseslk from Mr. Henzill's glass-house; and that the box was marked I. C. No. 1, and the hamper was directed by a label on the cording. About an hour after, I came to the warehouse, found the warehouse-keeper, and had the goods delivered me without any scruple; the value of the linen being about ¬£22. I could fill up this whole discourse with the variety of such adventures, which daily invention directed to, and which I managed with the utmost dexterity, and always with success. At length?Äîas when does the pitcher come safe home that goes so often to the well??ÄîI fell into some broils,ll which though they could not affect me fatally, yet made me known, which was the worst thing next to being found guilty that could befall me. I had taken up the disguise of a widow's dress; it was without any real design in view, but only waiting for anything that might offer, as I often did. It happened that while I was going along a street in Covent Garden, there was a great cry of "Stop thief, stop thief." Some artistslm had, it seems, put a trickln upon a shopkeeper, and being pursued, some of them fled one way and some another; and one of them was, they said, dressed up in widow's weeds, upon which the mob gathered about me, and some said I was the person, others said no. Immediately came the mercer's journeyman, and he swore aloud I was the person, and so seized on me. However, when I was brought back by the mob to the mercer's shop, the master of the house said freely that I was not the woman, and would have let me go immediately, but another fellow said gravely, "Pray stay till Mr.?Äî," meaning the journeyman, "comes back, for he knows her;" so they kept me near half-an-hour. They had called a constable, and he stood in the shop as my jailer. In talking with the constable I inquired where he lived, and what trade he was; the man not apprehending in the least what happened afterwards, readily told me his name, and where he lived; and told me, as a jest, that I might be sure to hear of his name when I came to the Old Bailey. The servants likewise used me saucily, and had much ado to keep their hands off me; the master indeed was civiller to me than they; but he would not let me go, though he owned I was not in his shop before. I began to be a little surly with him, and told him I hoped he would not take it ill if I made myself amends upon him another time; and desired I might send for friends to see me have right done. No, he said, he could give no such liberty; I might ask it when I came before the justice of peace; and seeing I threatened him, he would take care of me in the meantime, and would lodge me safe in Newgate. I told him it was his time now, but it would be mine by-and-by, and governed my passion as well as I was able. However, I spoke to the constable to call me a porter, which he did, and then I called for pen, ink, and paper, but they would let me have none. I asked the porter his name, and where he lived, and the poor man told it me very willingly. I bade him observe and remember how I was treated there; that he saw I was detained there by force. I told him I should want him in another place, and it should not be the worse for him to speak. The porter said he would serve me with all his heart. "But, madam," says he, "let me hear them refuse to let you go, then I may be able to speak the plainer." With that, I spoke aloud to the master of the shop, and said, "Sir, you know in your own conscience that I am not the person you look for, and that I was not in your shop before; therefore I demand that you detain me here no longer, or tell me the reason of your stopping me." The fellow grew surlier upon this than before, and said he would do neither till he thought fit. "Very well," said I to the constable and to the porter; "you will be pleased to remember this, gentlemen, another time." The porter said, "Yes, madam;" and the constable began not to like it, and would have persuaded the mercer to dismiss him, and let me go, since, as he said, he owned I was not the person. "Good sir," says the mercer to him tauntingly, "are you a justice of peace or a constable?34 I charged you with her; pray do your duty." The constable told him, a little moved, but very handsomely, "I know my duty, and what I am, sir; I doubt you hardly know what you are doing." They had some other hard words, and in the meantime the journeymen, impudent and unmanly to the last degree, used me barbarously, and one of them, the same that first seized upon me, pretended he would search me, and began to lay hands on me. I spit in his face, called out to the constable, and bade him take notice of my usage. "And pray, Mr. Constable," said I, "ask that villain's name," pointing to the man. The constable reproved him decently, told him that he did not know what he did, for he knew that his master acknowledged I was not the person; "and," says the constable, "I am afraid your master is bringing himself, and me too, into trouble, if this gentlewoman comes to prove who she is, and where she was, and it appears that she is not the woman you pretend to." "D__n her," says the fellow again, with an impudent, hardened face; "she is the lady, you may depend upon it; I'll swear she is the same body that was in the shop, and that I gave the piece of satin that is lost into her own hand. You shall hear more of it when Mr. William and Mr. Anthony (those were other journeymen) come back; they will know her again as well as I." Just as the insolent rogue was talking thus to the constable, comes back Mr. William and Mr. Anthony, as he called them, and a great rabble with them, bringing along with them the true widow that I was pretended to be; and they came sweating and blowing into the shop, and with a great deal of triumph, dragging the poor creature in a most butcherly manner up towards their master, who was in the back-shop; and they cried out aloud, "Here's the widow, sir; we have catched her at last." "What do you mean by that?" says the master. "Why, we have her already; there she sits, and Mr.?Äîsays he can swear this is she." The other man, whom they called Mr. Anthony, replied, "Mr.?Äîmay say what he will and swear what he will, but this is the woman, and there's the remnant of satin she stole; I took it out of her clothes with my own hand." I now began to take a better heart, but smiled, and said nothing; the master looked pale; the constable turned about and looked at me. "Let ?Äòem alone, Mr. Constable," said I; "let 'em go on." The case was plain and could not be denied, so the constable was charged with the right thief, and the mercer told me very civilly he was sorry for the mistake, and hoped I would not take it ill; that they had so many things of this nature put upon them every day that they could not be blamed for being very sharp in doing themselves justice. "Not take it ill, sir!" said I. "How can I take it well? If you had dismissed me when your insolent fellow seized on me in the street and brought me to you, and when you yourself acknowledged I was not the person, I would have put it by, and not have taken it ill, because of the many ill things I believe you have put upon you daily; but your treatment of me since has been insufferable, and especially that of your servant; I must and will have reparation for that." Then he began to parleylo with me, said he would make me any reasonable satisfaction, and would fain have had me told him what it was I expected. I told him I should not be my own judge; the law should decide it for me; and as I was to be carried before a magistrate, I should let him hear there what I had to say. He told me there was no occasion to go before the justice now; I was at liberty to go where I pleased; and calling to the constable, told him he might let me go, for I was discharged. The constable said calmly to him, "Sir, you asked me just now if I knew whether I was a constable or a justice, and bade me do my duty, and charged me with this gentlewoman as a prisoner. Now, sir, I find you do not understand what is my duty, for you would make me a justice indeed; but I must tell you it is not in my power; I may keep a prisoner when I am charged with him, but 't is the law and the magistrate alone that can discharge that prisoner; therefore, 't is a mistake, sir; I must carry her before a justice now, whether you think well of it or not." The mercer was very high with the constable at first; but the constable happening to be not a hired officer,lp but a good, substantial kind of man (I think he was a corn-chandler),lq and a man of good sense, stood to his business, would not discharge me without going to a justice of the peace, and I insisted upon it too. When the mercer saw that, "Well," says he to the constable, "you may carry her where you please; I have nothing to say to her." "But, sir," says the constable, "you will go with us, I hope, for 't is you that charged me with her." "No, not I," says the mercer; "I tell you I have nothing to say to her." "But pray, sir, do," says the constable; "I desire it of you for your own sake, for the justice can do nothing without you." "Prithee, fellow," says the mercer, "go about your business; I tell you I have nothing to say to the gentlewoman. I charge you in the king's namelr to dismiss her." "Sir," says the constable, "I find you don't know what it is to be a constable; I beg of you, don't oblige me to be rude to you." "I think I need not; you are rude enough already," says the mercer. "No, sir," says the constable, "I am not rude; you have broken the peace in bringing an honest woman out of the street, when she was about her lawful occasions, confining her in your shop, and ill-using her here by your servants; and now can you say I am rude to you? I think I am civil to you in not commanding you in the king's name to go with me, and charging every man I see that passes your door to aid and assist me in carrying you by force; this you know I have power to do, and yet I forbear it, and once more entreat you to go with me." Well, he would not for all this, and gave the constable ill language. However, the constable kept his temper, and would not be provoked; and then I put in and said, "Come, Mr. Constable, let him alone; I shall find ways enough to fetch him before a magistrate, I don't fear that; but there's that fellow," says I, "he was the man that seized on me as I was innocently going along the street, and you are a witness of his violence with me since; give me leave to charge you with him, and carry him before a justice." "Yes, madam," says the constable; and turning to the fellow, "Come, young gentleman," says he to the journeyman; "you must go along with us; I hope you are not above the constable's power, though your master is." The fellow looked like a condemned thief, and hung back, then looked at his master, as if he could help him; and he, like a fool, encouraged the fellow to be rude, and he truly resisted the constable, and pushed him back with a good force when he went to lay hold on him, at which the constable knocked him down, and called out for help. Immediately the shop was filled with people, and the constable seized the master and man, and all his servants. The first ill consequence of this fray was, that the woman who was really the thief made off, and got clear away in the crowd, and two others that they had stopped also; whether they were really guilty or not, that I can say nothing to. By this time some of his neighbours having come in, and seeing how things went, had endeavoured to bring the mercer to his senses, and he began to be convinced that he was in the wrong; and so at length we went all very quietly before the justice, with a mob of about five hundred people at our heels; and all the way we went I could hear the people ask what was the matter, and others reply and say, a mercer had stopped a gentlewoman instead of a thief, and had afterwards taken the thief, and now the gentlewoman had taken the mercer, and was carrying him before the justice. This pleased the people strangely,ls and made the crowd increase, and they cried out as they went, "Which is the rogue? which is the mercer?" and especially the women. Then when they saw him they cried out, "That's he, that's he;" and every now and then came a good dab of dirt at him; and thus we marched a good while, till the mercer thought fit to desire the constable to call a coach to protect himself from the rabble; so we rode the rest of the way, the constable and I, and the mercer and his man. When we came to the justice, which was an ancient gentleman in Bloomsbury, the constable giving first a summary account of the matter, the justice bade me speak, and tell what I had to say. And first he asked my name, which I was very loth to give, but there was no remedy; so I told him my name was Mary Flanders, that I was a widow, my husband being a sea-captain, died on a voyage to Virginia; and some other circumstances I told which he could never contradict, and that I lodged at present in town, with such a person, naming my governess; but that I was preparing to go over to America, where my husband's effects lay, and that I was going that day to buy some clothes to put myself into second mourning,lt but had not yet been in any shop, when that fellow, pointing to the mercer's journeyman, came rushing upon me with such fury as very much frighted me, and carried me back to his master's shop, where, though his master acknowledged I was not the person, yet he would not dismiss me, but charged a constable with me. Then I proceeded to tell how the journeymen treated me; how they would not suffer me to send for any of my friends; how afterwards they found the real thief, and took the goods they had lost upon her, and all the particulars as before. Then the constable related his case: his dialogue with the mercer about discharging me, and at last his servant's refusing to go with him, when I had charged him with him, and his master encouraging him to do so, and at last his striking the constable, and the like, all as I have told it already. The justice then heard the mercer and his man. The mercer indeed made a long harangue of the great loss they have daily by the lifters and thieves; that it was easy for them to mistake, and that when he found it, he would have dismissed me, &c., as above. As to the journeyman, he had very little to say, but that he pretendedlu other of the servants told him that I was really the person. Upon the whole, the justice first of all told me very courteously I was discharged; that he was very sorry that the mercer's man should, in his eager pursuit, have so little discretion as to take up an innocent person for a guilty; that if he had not been so unjust as to detain me afterwards, he believed I would have forgiven the first affront; that, however, it was not in his power to award me any reparation, other than by openly reproving them, which he should do; but he supposed I would apply to such methods as the law directed; in the meantime he would bind him over. But as to the breach of the peace committed by the journeyman, he told me he should give me some satisfaction for that, for he should commit him to Newgate for assaulting the constable, and for assaulting of me also. Accordingly he sent the fellow to Newgate for that assault, and his master gave bail,lv and so we came away; but I had the satisfaction of seeing the mob wait upon them both, as they came out, hallooing and throwing stones and dirt at the coaches they rode in; and so I came home. After this hustle, coming home and telling my governess the story, she falls a-laughing at me. "Why are you so merry?" says I; "the story has not so much laughing-room in it as you imagine. I am sure I have had a great deal of hurry and fright too, with a pack of ugly rogues." "Laugh!" says my governess; "I laugh, child, to see what a lucky creature you are; why, this job will be the best bargain to you that ever you made in your life, if you manage it well. I warrant you, you shall make the mercer pay ¬£500 for damages, besides what you shall get of the journeyman." I had other thoughts of the matter than she had; and especially, because I had given in my name to the justice of peace; and I knew that my name was so well known among the people at Hick's Hall,lw the Old Bailey, and such places, that if this cause came to be tried openly, and my name came to be inquired into, no court would give much damages, for the reputation of a person of such a character. However, I was obliged to begin a prosecution in form, and accordingly my governess found me out a very creditable sort of man to manage it, being an attorney of very good business, and of good reputation, and she was certainly in the right of this; for had she employed a pettifogging hedge solicitor,lx or a man not known, I should have brought it to but little. I met this attorney, and gave him all the particulars at large, as they are recited above; and he assured me it was a case, as he said, that he did not question but that a jury would give very considerable damages; so taking his full instructions, he began the prosecution, and the mercer being arrested, gave bail. A few days after his giving bail, he comes with his attorney to my attorney, to let him know that he desired to accommodate the matter; that it was all carried on in the heat of an unhappy passion; that his client, meaning me, had a sharp provoking tongue, and that I used them ill, gibing at them and jeering them, even while they believed me to be the very person, and that I had provoked them, and the like. My attorney managed as well on my side; made them believe I was a widow of fortune, that I was able to do myself justice and had great friends to stand by me too, who had all made me promise to sue to the utmost, if it cost me a thousand pounds, for that the affronts I had received were insufferable. However, they brought my attorney to this, that he promised he would not blow the coals;ly that if I inclined to an accommodation, he would not hinder me, and that he would rather persuade me to peace than to war; for which they told him he should be no loser; all which he told me very honestly, and told me that if they offered him any bribe, I should certainly know it; but, upon the whole, he told me very honestly that, if I would take his opinion, he would advise me to make it up with them, for that as they were in a great fright, and were desirous above all things to make it up, and knew that, let it be what it would, they must bear all the costs, he believed they would give me freely more than any jury would give upon a trial. I asked him what he thought they would be brought to; he told me he could not tell as to that, but he would tell me more when I saw him again. Some time after this they came again, to know if he had talked with me. He told them he had; that he found me not so averse to an accommodation as some of my friends were, who resented the disgrace offered me, and set me on; that they blowed the coals in secret, prompting me to revenge, or to do myself justice, as they called it; so that he could not tell what to say to it; he told them he would do his endeavour to persuade me, but he ought to be able to tell me what proposal they made. They pretended they could not make any proposal, because it might be made use of against them; and he told them, that by the same rule he could not make any offers, for that might be pleaded in abatement of what damages a jury might be inclined to give. However, after some discourse and mutual promises that no advantage should be taken on either side by what was transacted then, or at any other of those meetings, they came to a kind of a treaty; but so remote, and so wide from one another, that nothing could be expected from it; for my attorney demanded ¬£500 and charges, and they offered ¬£50 without charges; so they broke off, and the mercer proposed to have a meeting with me myself; and my attorney agreed to that very readily. My attorney gave me notice to come to this meeting in good clothes, and with some state, that the mercer might see I was something more than I seemed to be that time they had me. Accordingly I came in a new suit of second mourning, according to what I had said at the justice's. I set myself out,lz too, as well as a widow's dress would admit; my governess also furnished me with a good pearl necklace, that shut in behind with a locket of diamonds, which she had in pawn; and I had a very good gold watch by my side; so that I made a very good figure; and as I stayed till I was sure they were come, I came in a coach to the door, with my maid with me. When I came into the room the mercer was surprised. He stood up and made his bow, which I took a little notice of, and but a little, and went and sat down where my own attorney had appointed me to sit, for it was his house. After a while the mercer said, he did not know me again, and began to make some compliments. I told him, I believed he did not know me, at first; and that if he had, he would not have treated me as he did. He told me he was very sorry for what had happened, and that it was to testify the willingness he had to make all possible reparation that he had appointed this meeting; that he hoped I would not carry things to extremity, which might be not only too great a loss to him, but might be the ruin of his business and shop, in which case I might have the satisfaction of repaying an injury with an injury ten times greater; but that I would then get nothing, whereas he was willing to do me any justice that was in his power, without putting himself or me to the trouble or charge of a suit at law. I told him I was glad to hear him talk so much more like a man of sense than he did before; that it was true, acknowledgment in most cases of affronts was counted reparation sufficient; but this had gone too far to be made up so; that I was not revengeful, nor did I seek his ruin, or any man's else, but that all my friends were unanimous not to let me so far neglect my character as to adjust a thing of this kind without reparation; that to be taken up for a thief was such an indignity as could not be put up with; that my character was above being treated so by any that knew me, but because in my condition of a widow I had been careless of myself, I might be taken for such a creature ; but that for the particular usage I had from him afterward,?Äîand then I repeated all as before; it was so provoking, I had scarce patience to repeat it. He acknowledged all, and was mighty humble indeed; he came up to ¬£100 and to pay all the law charges, and added that he would make me a present of a very good suit of clothes. I came down to ¬£300, and demanded that I should publish an advertisement of the particulars in the common newspapers. This was a clause he never could comply with. However, at last he came up, by good management of my attorney, to ¬£150 and a suit of black silk clothes; and there, as it were, at my attorney's request, I complied, he paying my attorney's bill and charges, and gave us a good supper into the bargain. When I came to receive the money, I brought my governess with me, dressed like an old duchess, and a gentleman very well dressed, who we pretended courted me, but I called him cousin, and the lawyer was only to hint privately to them that this gentleman courted the widow. He treated us handsomely indeed, and paid the money cheerfully enough; so that it cost him ¬£200 in all, or rather more. At our last meeting, when all was agreed, the case of the journeyman came up, and the mercer begged very hard for him; told me he was a man that had kept a shop of his own, and been in good business, had a wife and several children, and was very poor; that he had nothing to make satisfaction with, but should beg my pardon on his knees. I had no spleenma at the saucy rogue, nor were his admissions anything to me, since there was nothing to be got by him, so I thought it was as good to throw that in generously as not; so I told him I did not desire the ruin of any man, and therefore at his request I would forgive the wretch, it was below me to seek any revenge. When we were at supper he brought the poor fellow in to make his acknowledgment, which he would have done with as much mean humility as his offence was with insulting pride; in which he was an instance of complete baseness of spirit, imperious, cruel, and relentless when uppermost, abject and low-spirited when down. However, I abated his cringes, told him I forgave him, and desired he might withdraw, as if I did not care for the sight of him, though I had forgiven him. I was now in good circumstances indeed, if I could have known my time for leaving off, and my governess often said I was the richest of the trade in England; and so I believe I was, for I had ¬£700 by me in money, besides clothes, rings, some plate, and two gold watches, and all of them stolen; for I had innumerable jobs, besides these I have mentioned. Oh! had I even now had the grace of repentance, I had still leisure to have looked back upon my follies, and have made some reparation; but the satisfaction I was to make for the public mischiefs I had done was yet left behind; and I could not forbear going abroad again, as I called it now, any more than I could when my extremity really drove me out for bread. It was not long after the affair with the mercer was made up, that I went out in an equipage quite different from any I had ever appeared in before. I dressed myself like a beggar-woman, in the coarsest and most despicable rags I could get, and I walked about peering and peeping into every door and window I came near; and, indeed, I was in such a plight now that I knew as ill how to behave in as ever I did in any. I naturally abhorred dirt and rags; I had been bred up tightmb and cleanly, and could be no other, whatever condition I was in, so that this was the most uneasy disguise to me that ever I put on. I said presently to myself that this would not do, for this was a dress that everybody was shy and afraid of; and I thought everybody looked at me as if they were afraid I should come near them, lest I should take something from them, or afraid to come near me, lest they should get something from me. I wandered about all the evening the first time I went out, and made nothing of it, and came home again wet, draggled, and tired. However, I went out again the next night, and then I met with a little adventure, which had like to have cost me dear. As I was standing near a tavern door, there comes a gentleman on horseback, and lights at the door, and wanting to go into the tavern, he calls one of the drawersmc to hold his horse. He stayed pretty long in the tavern, and the drawer heard his master call, and thought he would be angry with him. Seeing me stand by him, he called to me. "Here, woman," says he, "hold this horse awhile, till I go in; if the gentleman comes, he'll give you something." "Yes," says I, and takes the horse, and walks off with him soberly, and carried him to my governess. This had been a booty to those that had understood it; but never was poor thief more at a loss to know what to do with anything that was stolen; for when I came home, my governess was quite confounded, and what to do with the creature we neither of us knew. To send him to a stable was doing nothing, for it was certain that notice would be given in the Gazette,md and the horse described, so that we durst not go to fetch it again. All the remedy we had for this unlucky adventure was to go and set up the horse at an inn, and send a note by a porter to the tavern, that the gentleman's horse that was lost at such a time, was left at such an inn, and that he might be had there; that the poor woman that held him, having led him about the street, not being able to lead him back again, had left him there. We might have waited till the owner had published, and offered a reward, but we did not care to venture the receiving the reward. So this was a robbery and no robbery, for little was lost by it, and nothing was got by it, and I was quite sick of going out in a beggar's dress; it did not answer at all, and besides, I thought it ominous and threatening. While I was in this disguise, I fell in with a parcel of folks of a worse kind than any I ever sortedme with, and I saw a little into their ways too. These were coiners of money, and they made some very good offers to me, as to profit; but the part they would have had me embark in was the most dangerous. I mean that of the very working of the die,mf as they call it, which, had I been taken, had been certain death, and that at a stake; I say, to be burnt to death at a stake; so that though I was to appearance but a beggar, and they promised mountains of gold and silver to me to engage, yet it would not do. T is true, if I had been really a beggar, or had been desperate as when I began, I might, perhaps, have closed with it; for what care they to die, that cannot tell how to live? But at present that was not my condition, at least, I was for no such terrible risks as those; besides, the very thought of being burnt at a stake struck terror to my very soul, chilled my blood, and gave me the vapours to such a degree, as I could not think of it without trembling. This put an end to my disguise too, for though I did not like the proposal, yet I did not tell them so, but seemed to relish it, and promised to meet again. But I durst see them no more; for if I had seen them, and not complied, though I had declined it with the greatest assurances of secrecy in the world, they would have gone near to have murdered me, to make sure work, and make themselves easy, as they call it. What kind of easiness that is, they may best judge that understand how easy men are that can murder people to prevent danger. This and horse-stealing were things quite out of my way, and I might easily resolve I would have no more to say to them. My business seemed to lie another way, and though it had hazard enough in it too, yet it was more suitable to me, and what had more of art in it, and more chances for a coming off if a surprise should happen. I had several proposals made also to me about that time, to come into a gang of housebreakers; but that was a thing I had no mind to venture at neither, any more than I had at the coining trade. I offered to go along with two men and a woman, that made it their business to get into houses by stratagem. I was willing enough to venture, but there were three of them already, and they did not care to part,mg nor I to have too many in a gang; so I did not close with them, and they paid dear for their next attempt. But at length I met with a woman that had often told me what adventures she had made, and with success, at the waterside, and I closed with her, and we drove on our business pretty well. One day we came among some Dutch people at St. Catharine's,mh where we went on pretence to buy goods that were privately got on shore. I was two or three times in a house where we saw a good quantity of prohibited goods, and my companion once brought away three pieces of Dutch black silk that turned to good account, and I had my share of it; but in all the journeys I made by myself, I could not get an opportunity to do anything, so I laid it aside, for I had been there so often that they began to suspect something. This baulked me a little, and I resolved to push at something or other, for I was not used to come back so often without purchase; so the next day I dressed myself up fine, and took a walk to the other end of the town. I passed through the Exchangemi in the Strand, but had no notion of finding anything to do there, when on a sudden I saw a great clutter in the place, and all the people, shopkeepers as well as others, standing up and staring; and what should it be but some great duchess coming into the Exchange, and they said the queen was coming. I set myself close up to a shop-side with my back to the counter, as if to let the crowd pass by, when keeping my eye on a parcel of lace which the shopkeeper was showing to some ladies that stood by me, the shopkeeper and her maid were so taken up with looking to see who was a-coming, and what shop they would go to, that I found means to slip a papermj of lace into my pocket, and come clear off with it; so the lady-milliner paid dear enough for her gaping after the queen. I went off from the shop, as if driven along by the throng, and mingling myself with the crowd, went out at the other door of the Exchange, and so got away before they missed their lace; and because I would not be followed, I called a coach, and shut myself up in it. I had scarce shut the coach doors, but I saw the milliner's maid and five or six more come running out into the street, and crying out as if they were frighted. They did not cry "Stop, thief!" because nobody ran away, but I could hear the word "robbed" and "lace" two or three times, and saw the wench wringing her hands, and run staring to and again, like one scared. The coachman that had taken me up was getting up into the box, but was not quite up, and the horses had not begun to move, so that I was terrible uneasy, and I took the packet of lace and laid it ready to have dropped it out at the flap of the coach, which opens before, just behind the coachman; but to my great satisfaction, in less than a minute the coach began to move, that is to say, as soon as the coachman had got up and spoken to his horses; so he drove away, and I brought off my purchase, which was worth near ¬£20. The next day I dressed me up again, but in quite different clothes, and walked the same way again, but nothing offered till I came into St. James's Park.mk I saw abundance of fine ladies in the park, walking in the Mall,ml and among the rest, there was a little miss, a young lady of about twelve or thirteen years old, and she had a sister, as I supposed, with her, that might be about nine. I observed the biggest had a fine gold watch on, and a good necklace of pearl, and they had a footman in livery with them; but as it is not usual for the footmen to go behind the ladies in the Mall, so I observed the footman stopped at their going into the Mall, and the biggest of the sisters spoke to him, to bid him be just there when they came back. When I heard her dismiss the footman, I stepped up to him, and asked him what little lady that was? and held a little chat with him, about what a pretty child it was with her, and how genteel and well carriaged the eldest would be: how womanish, and how grave; and the fool of a fellow told me presently who she was; that she was Sir Thomas?Äî's eldest daughter, of Essex, and that she was a great fortune; that her mother was not come to town yet; but she was with Sir William?Äî's lady at her lodgings in Suffolk Street, and a great deal more; that they had a maid and a woman to wait on them, besides Sir Thomas's coach, the coachman, and himself; and that young lady was governess to the whole family, as well here as at home; and told me abundance of things, enough for my business. I was well dressed, and had my gold watch as well as she; so I left the footman, and I puts myself in a rankmm with this lady, having stayed till she had taken one turn in the Mall, and was going forward again; by and by I saluted her by her name, with the title of Lady Betty. I asked her when she heard from her father; when my lady her mother would be in town, and how she did. I talked so familiarly to her of her whole family that she could not suspect but that I knew them all intimately. I asked her why she would come abroad without Mrs. Chime with her (that was the name of her woman) to take care of Mrs. Judith, that was her sister. Then I entered into a long chat with her about her sister; what a fine little lady she was, and asked her if she had learned French; and a thousand such little things, when on a sudden the guards came, and the crowd ran to see the king go by to the Parliament House. The ladies ran all to the side of the Mall, and I helped my lady to stand upon the edge of the boards on the side of the Mall, that she might be high enough to see; and took the little one and lifted her quite up; during which, I took care to convey the gold watch so clean away from the Lady Betty, that she never missed it till the crowd was gone, and she was gotten into the middle of the Mall. I took my leave in the very crowd, and said, as if in haste, "Dear Lady Betty, take care of your little sister." And so the crowd did as it were thrust me away, and that I was unwilling to take my leave. The hurry in such cases is immediately over, and the place clear as soon as the king is gone by; but as there is always a great running and clutter just as the king passes, so having dropped the two little ladies, and done my business with them, without any miscarriage, I kept hurrying on among the crowd, as if I ran to see the king, and so I kept before the crowd till I came to the end of the Mall, when the king going on toward the Horse Guards,mn I went forward to the passage, which went then through against the end of the Haymarket, and there I bestowed a coach upon myself, and made off; and I confess I have not yet been so good as my word, viz., to go and visit my Lady Betty. I was once in the mind to venture staying with Lady Betty till she missed the watch, and so have made a great outcry about it with her, and have got her into her coach, and put myself in the coach with her, and have gone home with her; for she appeared so fond of me, and so perfectly deceived by my so readily talking to her of all her relations and family, that I thought it was very easy to push the thing further, and to have got at least the necklace of pearl; but when I considered that though the child would not perhaps have suspected me, other people might, and that if I was searched I should be discovered, I thought it was best to go off with what I had got. I came accidentally afterwards to hear, that when the young lady missed her watch, she made a great outcry in the park, and sent her footman up and down to see if he could find me, she having described me so perfectly that he knew it was the same person that had stood and talked so long with him, and asked him so many questions about them; but I was gone far enough out of their reach before she could come at her footman to tell him the story. I made another adventure after this, of a nature different from all I had been concerned in yet, and this was at a gaming-house near Covent Garden.mo I saw several people go in and out; and I stood in the passage a good while with another woman with me, and seeing a gentleman go up that seemed to be of more than ordinary fashion, I said to him, "Sir, pray don't they give women leave to go up?" "Yes, madam," says he, "and to play too, if they please." "I mean so, sir," said I. And with that he said he would introduce me if I had a mind; so I followed him to the door, and he looking in, "There, madam," says he, "are the gamesters, if you have a mind to venture." I looked in, and said to my comrade aloud, "Here's nothing but men; I won't venture." At which one of the gentlemen cried out, "You need not be afraid, madam, here's none but fair gamesters; you are very welcome to come and setmp what you please." So I went a little nearer and looked on, and some of them brought me a chair, and I sat down and saw the box and dicemq go round apace; then I said to my comrade, "The gentlemen play too high for us; come, let us go." The people were all very civil, and one gentleman encouraged me, and said, "Come, madam, if you please to venture, if you dare trust me, I'll answer for it you shall have nothing put upon you here." "No, sir," said I, smiling, "I hope the gentlemen would not cheat a woman." But still I declined venturing, though I pulled out a purse with money in it, that they might see I did not want money. After I had sat awhile, one gentleman said to me, jeering, "Come, madam, I see you are afraid to venture for yourself; I always had good luck with the ladies, you shall set for me, if you won't set for yourself." I told him, "Sir, I should be very loth to lose your money," though I added, "I am pretty lucky too; but the gentlemen play so high, that I dare not venture my own." "Well, well," says he, "there's ten guineas, madam; set them for me;" so I took the money and set, himself looking on. I run out the guineas by one and two at a time, and then the box coming to the next man to me, my gentleman gave me ten guineas more, and made me set five of them at once, and the gentleman who had the box threw out, so there was five guineas of his money again. He was encouraged at this, and made me take the box, which was a bold venture: however, I held the box so long that I gained him his whole money, and had a handful of guineas in my lap; and which was the better luck, when I threw out, I threw but at one or two of those that had set me, and so went off easy. When I was come this length, I offered the gentleman all the gold, for it was his own; and so would have had him play for himself, pretending that I did not understand the game well enough. He laughed, and said if I had but good luck, it was no matter whether I understood the game or no; but I should not leave off. However, he took out the fifteen guineas that he had put in first, and bade me play with the rest. I would have him to have seen how much I had got, but he said, "No, no, don't tell them, I believe you are very honest, and 't is bad luck to tell them;" so I played on. I understood the game well enough, though I pretended I did not, and played cautiously, which was to keep a good stock in my lap, out of which I every now and then conveyed some into my pocket, but in such a manner as I was sure he could not see it. I played a great while, and had very good luck for him; but the last time I held the box they set me high, and I threw boldly at all, and held the box till I had gained near fourscore guineas, but lost above half of it back at the last throw; so I got up, for I was afraid I should lose it all back again, and said to him, "Pray come, sir, now, and take it and play for yourself; I think I have done pretty well for you." He would have had me play on, but it grew late, and I desired to be excused. When I gave it up to him, I told him I hoped he would give me leave to tell it now, that I might see what he had gained, and how lucky I had been for him; when I told them, there were threescore and three guineas. "Ay," says I, "if it had not been for that unlucky throw, I had got you a hundred guineas." So I gave him all the money, but he would not take it till I had put my hand into it, and taken some for myself, and bid me please myself. I refused it, and was positive I would not take it myself; if he had a mind to do anything of that kind, it should be all his own doings. The rest of the gentlemen seeing us striving, cried, "Give it her all;" but I absolutely refused that. Then one of them said, "D?Äîn ye, Jack, halve it with her; don't you know you should be always on even terms with the ladies." So, in short, he divided it with me, and I brought away thirty guineas, besides about forty-three which I had stole privately, which I was sorry for, because he was so generous. Thus I brought home seventy-three guineas, and let my old governess see what good luck I had at play. However, it was her advice that I should not venture again, and I took her counsel, for I never went there any more; for I knew as well as she, if the itch of play came in, I might soon lose that, and all the rest of what I had got. Fortune had smiled upon me to that degree, and I had thriven so much, and my governess too, for she always had a share with me, that really the old gentlewoman began to talk of leaving off while we were well, and being satisfied with what we had got; but I know not what fate guided me, I was as backward to it now, as she was when I proposed it to her before, and so in an ill hour we gave over the thoughts of it for the present, and, in a word, I grew more hardened and audacious than ever, and the success I had made my name as famous as any thief of my sort ever had been. I had sometimes taken the liberty to play the same game over again, which is not according to practice, which however succeeded not amiss; but generally I took up new figures, and contrived to appear in new shapes every time I went abroad. It was now a rumblingmr time of the year, and the gentlemen being most of them gone out of town, Tunbridge, and Epsom,ms and such places, were full of people. But the city was thin, and I thought our trade felt it a little, as well as others; so that at the latter end of the year I joined myself with a gang, who usually go every year to Stourbridge Fair, and from thence to Bury Fair,mt in Suffolk. We promised ourselves great things here, but when I came to see how things were, I was weary of it presently; for except mere picking of pockets, there was little worth meddling with; neither if a booty had been made, was it so easy carrying it off, nor was there such a variety of occasion for business in our way, as in London; all that I made of the whole journey was a gold watch at Bury Fair, and a small parcel of linen at Cambridge, which gave me occasion to take leave of the place. It was an old bite,mu and I thought might do with a country shopkeeper, though in London it would not. I bought at a linen-draper's shop, not in the fair, but in the town of Cambridge, as much fine Holland, and other things, as came to about ¬£7; when I had done I bade them be sent to such an inn, where I had taken up my being the same morning, as if I was to lodge there that night. I ordered the draper to send them home to me, about such an hour, to the inn where I lay, and I would pay him his money. At the time appointed the draper sends the goods, and I placed one of our gang at the chamber door, and when the innkeeper's maid brought the messenger to the door, who was a young fellow, an apprentice, almost a man, she tells him her mistress was asleep, but if he would leave the things and call in about an hour, I should be awake, and he might have the money. He left the parcel very readily, and goes his way, and in about half-an-hour my maid and I walked off, and that very evening I hired a horse, and a man to ride before me, and went to Newmarket,mv and from thence got my passage in a coach that was not quite full to Bury St. Edmunds,mw where, as I told you, I could make but little of my trade, only at a little country opera-house I got a gold watch from a lady's side, who was not only intolerably merry, but a little fuddled,mx which made my work much easier. I made off with this little booty to Ipswich, and from thence to Harwich, where I went into an inn, as if I had newly arrived from Holland, not doubting but I should make some purchase among the foreigners that came on shore there; but I found them generally empty of things of value, except what was in their portmanteaus and Dutch hampers, which were always guarded by footmen; however, I fairlymy got one of their portmanteaus one evening out of the chamber where the gentleman lay, the footman being fast asleep on the bed, and I suppose very drunk. The room in which I lodged lay next to the Dutchman's, and having dragged the heavy thing with much ado out of the chamber into mine, I went out into the street to see if I could find any possibility of carrying it off. I walked about a great while, but could see no probability either of getting out the thing, or of conveying away the goods that were in it, the town being so small, and I a perfect stranger in it; so I was returning with a resolution to carry it back again, and leave it where I found it. Just at that very moment I heard a man make a noise to some people to make haste, for the boat was going to put off and the tide would be spent. I called the fellow: "What boat is it, friend," said I, "that you belong to?" "The Ipswich wherry,mz madam," says he. "When do you go off?" says I. "This moment, madam," says he; "do you want to go thither?" "Yes," said I, "if you can stay till I fetch my things." "Where are your things, madam?" says he. "At such an inn," said I. "Well, I'll go with you, madam," says he, very civilly, "and bring them for you." "Come away then," says I, and takes him with me. The people of the inn were in a great hurry, the packet-boatna from Holland being just come in, and two coaches just come also with passengers from London for another packet-boat that was going off for Holland, which coaches were to go back next day with the passengers that were just landed. In this hurry it was that I came to the bar, and paid my reckoning, telling my landlady I had gotten my passage by sea in a wherry. These wherries are large vessels, with good accommodation for carrying passengers from Harwich to London; and though they are called wherries, which is a word used in the Thames for a small boat, rowed with one or two men, yet these are vessels able to carry twenty passengers, and ten or fifteen tons of goods, and fitted to bear the sea. All this I had found out by inquiring the night before into the several ways of going to London. My landlady was very courteous, took my money for the reckoning, but was called away, all the house being in a hurry. So I left her, took the fellow up into my chamber, gave him the trunk, or portmanteau, for it was like a trunk, and wrapped it about with an old apron, and he went directly to his boat with it, and I after him, nobody asking us the least question about it. As for the drunken Dutch footman, he was still asleep, and his master with other foreign gentlemen at supper, and very merry below; so I went clean off with it to Ipswich, and going in the night, the people of the house knew nothing but that I was gone to London by the Harwich wherry, as I had told my landlady I was plagued at Ipswich with the custom-house officers, who stopped my trunk, as I called it, and would open and search it. I was willing, I told them, that they should search it, but my husband had the key, and that he was not yet come from Harwich; this I said, that if upon searching it they should find all the things be such as properly belonged to a man rather than a woman, it should not seem strange to them. However, they being positive to open the trunk, I consented to have it broken open, that is to say, to have the lock taken off, which was not difficult. They found nothing for their turn, for the trunk had been searched before; but they discovered several things much to my satisfaction, as particularly a parcel of money in French pistoles, and some Dutch ducatoons, or rix-dollars,35 and the rest was chiefly two periwigs, wearing-linen, razors, washballs,nb perfumes, and other useful things necessary for a gentleman, which all passed for my husband's, and so I was quit of them. It was now very early in the morning, and not light, and I knew not well what course to take; for I made no doubt but I should be pursued in the morning, and perhaps be taken with the things about me; so I resolved upon taking new measures. I went publicly to an inn in the town with my trunk, as I called it, and having taken the substance out, I did not think the lumber of it worth my concern; however, I gave it the landlady of the house with a charge to take care of it, and lay it up safe till I should come again, and away I walked into the street. When I was got into the town a great way from the inn, I met with an ancient woman who had just opened her door, and I fell into chat with her, and asked her a great many wild questions of things all remote to my purpose and design; but in my discourse I found by her how the town was situated, that I was in a street which went out towards Hadley, but that such a street went towards the water-side, such a street went into the heart of the town, and at last, such a street went towards Colchester, and so the London road lay there. I had soon my ends of this old woman, for I only wanted to know which was the London road, and away I walked as fast as I could; not that I intended to go on foot, either to London or to Colchester, but I wanted to get quietly away from Ipswich. I walked about two or three miles, and then I met a plain countryman, who was busy about some husbandry work, I did not know what, and I asked him a great many questions, first, not much to the purpose, but at last told him I was going for London, and the coach was full, and I could not get a passage, and asked him if he could not tell me where to hire a horse that would carry double, and an honest man to ride before me to Colchester, so that I might get a place there in the coaches. The honest clown looked earnestly at me, and said nothing for above half a minute, when, scratching his poll,nc "A horse, say you, and to Colchester, to carry double? why yes, mistress, alacka-day, you may have horses enough for money." "Well, friend," says I, "that I take for granted; I don't expect it without money." "Why, but mistress," says he, "how much are you willing to give?" "Nay," says I again, "friend, I don't know what your rates are in the country here, for I am a stranger; but if you can get one for me, get it as cheap as you can, and I'll give you somewhat for your pains." "Why, that's honestly said, too," says the countryman. "Not so honest, neither," said I to myself, "if thou knewest all." "Why, mistress," says he, "I have a horse that will carry double, and I don't much care if I go myself with you, an' you like." "Will you?" says I; "well, I believe you are an honest man; if you will, I shall be glad of it; I'll pay you innd reason." "Why, look ye, mistress," says he, "I won't be out of reason with you; then if I carry you to Colchester, it will be worth five shillings for myself and my horse, for I shall hardly come back to-night." In short, I hired the honest man and his horse; but when we came to a town upon the road (I do not remember the name of it, but it stands upon a river), I pretended myself very ill, and I could go no farther that night, but if he would stay there with me, because I was a stranger, I would pay him for himself and his horse with all my heart. This I did because I knew the Dutch gentlemen and their servants would be upon the road that day, either in the stage-coaches or riding post,ne and I did not know but the drunken fellow, or somebody else that might have seen me at Harwich, might see me again, and I thought that in one day's stop they would be all gone by. We lay all that night there, and the next morning it was not very early when I set out, so that it was near ten o'clock by the time I got to Colchester. It was no little pleasure that I saw the town where I had so many pleasant days, and I made many inquiries after the good old friends I had once had there, but could make little out; they were all dead or removed. The young ladies had been all married or gone to London; the old gentleman, and the old lady that had been my early benefactress, all dead; and which troubled me most, the young gentleman my first lover, and afterwards my brother-in-law, was dead; but two sons, men grown, were left of him, but they too were transplanted to London. I dismissed my old man here, and stayed incognito for three or four days in Colchester, and then took a passage in a waggon, because I would not venture being seen in the Harwich coaches. But I needed not have used so much caution, for there was nobody in Harwich but the woman of the house could have known me; nor was it rational to think that she, considering the hurry she was in, and that she never saw me but once, and that by candle-light, should have ever discovered me. I was now returned to London, and though by the accident of the last adventure, I got something considerable, yet I was not fond of any more country rambles; nor should I have ventured abroad again if I had carried the trade on to the end of my days. I gave my governess a history of my travels; she liked the Harwich journey well enough, and in discoursing of these things between ourselves she observed that a thief being a creature that watches the advantages of other people's mistakes, 't is impossible but that to one that is vigilant and industrious many opportunities must happen, and therefore she thought that one so exquisitely keen in the trade as I was, would scarce fail of something wherever I went. On the other hand, every branch of my story, if duly considered, may be useful to honest people, and afford a due caution to people of some sort or other to guard against the like surprises, and to have their eyes about them when they have to do with strangers of any kind, for 't is very seldom that some snare or other is not in their way. The moral, indeed, of all my history is left to be gathered by the senses and judgment of the reader; I am not qualified to preach to them. Let the experience of one creature completely wicked, and completely miserable, be a storehouse of useful warning to those that read. I am drawing now towards a new variety of life. Upon my return, being hardened by a long race of crime, and success unparalleled, I had, as I have said, no thought of laying down a trade, which, if I was to judge by the example of others, must, however, end at last in misery and sorrow. It was on the Christmas Day following, in the evening, that, to finish a long train of wickedness, I went abroad to see what might offer in my way; when going by a working silversmith's in Forster Lane, I saw a tempting bait indeed, and not to be resisted by one of my occupation, for the shop had nobody in it, and a great deal of loose plate lay in the window, and at the seat of the man, who, I suppose, worked at one side of the shop. I went boldly in, and was just going to lay my hand upon a piece of plate, and might have done it, and carried it clear off, for any care that the men who belonged to the shop had taken of it; but an officious fellow in a house on the other side of the way, seeing me go in, and that there was nobody in the shop, comes running over the street, and without asking me what I was, or who, seizes upon me, and cries out for the people of the house. I had not touched anything in the shop, and seeing a glimpse of somebody running over, I had so much presence of mind as to knock very hard with my foot on the floor of the house, and was just calling out too, when the fellow laid hands on me. However, as I had always most courage when I was in most danger, so when he laid hands on me, I stood very high upon it, that I came in to buy half-a-dozen of silver spoons; and to my good fortune, it was a silversmith's that sold plate, as well as worked plate for other shops. The fellow laughed at that part, and put such a value upon the service that he had done his neighbour, that he would have it be, that I came not to buy, but to steal; and raising a great crowd, I said to the master of the shop, who by this time was fetched home from some neighbouring place, that it was in vain to make a noise, and enter into talk there of the case; the fellow had insisted that I came to steal, and he must prove it, and I desired we might go before a magistrate without any more words; for I began to see I should be too hard for the man that had seized me. The master and mistress of the shop were really not so violent as the man from t'other side of the way; and the man said, "Mistress, you might come into the shop with a good design for aught I know, but it seemed a dangerous thing for you to come into such a shop as mine is, when you see nobody there; and I cannot do so little justice to my neighbour, who was so kind, as not to acknowledge he had reason on his side; though, upon the whole, I do not find you attempted to take anything, and I really know not what to do in it." I pressed him to go before a magistrate with me, and if anything could be proved on me, that was like a design, I should willingly submit, but if not, I expected reparation. Just while we were in this debate, and a crowd of people gathered about the door, came by Sir T. B., an alderman of the city,36 and justice of the peace, and the goldsmith hearing of it, entreated his worship to come in and decide the case. Give the goldsmith his due, he told his story with a great deal of justice and moderation, and the fellow that had come over, and seized upon me, told his with as much heat and foolish passion, which did me good still. It came then to my turn to speak, and I told his worship that I was a stranger in London, being newly come out of the north; that I lodged in such a place, that I was passing this street, and went into a goldsmith's shop to buy half-a-dozen of spoons. By great good luck I had an old silver spoon in my pocket, which I pulled out, and told him I had carried that spoon to match it with half-a-dozen of new ones, that it might match some I had in the country; that seeing nobody in the shop, I knocked with my foot very hard to make the people hear, and had also called aloud with my voice; 't is true, there was loose plate in the shop, but that nobody could say I had touched any of it; that a fellow came running into the shop out of the street, and laid hands on me in a furious manner, in the very moment while I was calling for the people of the house; that if he had really had a mind to have done his neighbour any service, he should have stood at a distance, and silently watched to see whether I had touched anything or no, and then have taken me in the fact. "That is very true," says Mr. Alderman, and turning to the fellow that stopped me, he asked him if it was true that I knocked with my foot? He said yes, I had knocked, but that might be because of his coming. "Nay," says the alderman, taking him short, "now you contradict yourself, for just now you said she was in the shop with her back to you, and did not see you till you came upon her." Now it was true that my back was partly to the street, but yet as my business was of a kind that required me to have eyes every way, so I really had a glance of him running over, as I said before, though he did not perceive it. After a full hearing, the alderman gave it as his opinion, that his neighbour was under a mistake, and that I was innocent, and the goldsmith acquiesced in it too, and his wife, and so I was dismissed; but as I was going to depart, Mr. Alderman said, "But hold, madam, if you were designing to buy spoons, I hope you will not let my friend here lose his customer by the mistake." I readily answered, "No, sir, I'll buy the spoons still, if he can match my odd spoon, which I brought for a pattern," and the goldsmith showed me some of the very same fashion. So he weighed the spoons, and they came to 35s., so I pulls out my purse to pay him, in which I had near twenty guineas, for I never went without such a sum about me, whatever might happen, and I found it of use at other times as well as now. When Mr. Alderman saw my money, he said, "Well, madam, now I am satisfied you were wronged, and it was for this reason that I moved you should buy the spoons, and stayed till you had bought them, for if you had not had money to pay for them, I should have suspected that you did not come into the shop to buy, for the sort of people who come upon those designs that you have been charged with, are seldom troubled with much gold in their pockets, as I see you are." I smiled, and told his worship, that then I owed something of his favour to my money, but I hoped he saw reason also in the justice he had done me before. He said, yes, he had, but this had confirmed his opinion, and he was fully satisfied now of my having been injured. So I came well off from an affair in which I was at the very brink of destruction. It was but three days after this, that not at all made cautious by my former danger, as I used to be, and still pursuing the art which I had so long been employed in, I ventured into a house where I saw the doors open, and furnished myself, as I thought verily without being perceived, with two pieces of flowered silks, such as they call brocaded silk, very rich. It was not a mercer's shop, nor a warehouse of a mercer, but looked like a private dwelling-house, and was, it seems, inhabited by a man that sold goods for a weaver to the mercers, like a broker or factor. That I may make short of the black part of this story, I was attacked by two wenches that came open-mouthed at me just as I was going out at the door, and one of them pulled me back into the room, while the other shut the door upon me. I would have given them good words,nf but there was no room for it, two fiery dragons could not have been more furious; they tore my clothes, bullied and roared, as if they would have murdered me; the mistress of the house came next, and then the master, and all outrageous. I gave the master very good words, told him the door was open, and things were a temptation to me, that I was poor and distressed, and poverty was what many could not resist, and begged him, with tears, to have pity on me. The mistress of the house was moved with compassion, and inclined to have let me go, and had almost persuaded her husband to it also, but the saucy wenches were run even before they were sent, and had fetched a constable, and then the master said he could not go back, I must go before a justice, and answered his wife, that he might come into trouble himself if he should let me go. The sight of a constable, indeed, struck me, and I thought I should have sunk into the ground. I fell into faintings, and indeed the people themselves thought I would have died, when the woman argued again for me, and entreated her husband, seeing they had lost nothing, to let me go. I offered him to pay for the two pieces, whatever the value was, though I had not got them, and argued that as he had his goods, and had really lost nothing, it would be cruel to pursue me to death, and have my blood for the bare attempt of taking them. I put the constable in mind, too, that I had broke no doors, nor carried anything away; and when I came to the justice, and pleaded there that I had neither broken anything to get in, nor carried anything out, the justice was inclined to have released me; but the first saucy jade that stopped me, affirming that I was going out with the goods, but that she stopped me and pulled me back, the justice upon that point committed me, and I was carried to Newgate, that horrid place! My very blood chills at the mention of its name; the place where so many of my comrades had been locked up, and from whence they went to the fatal tree;ng the place where my mother suffered so deeply, where I was brought into the world, and from whence I expected no redemption, but by an infamous death: to conclude, the place that had so long expected me, and which with so much art and success I had so long avoided. I was now fixed indeed; 't is impossible to describe the terror of my mind, when I was first brought in, and when I looked round upon all the horrors of that dismal place. I looked on myself as lost, and that I had nothing to think of but of going out of the world, and that with the utmost infamy: the hellish noise, the roaring, swearing and clamour, the stench and nastiness, and all the dreadful afflicting things that I saw there, joined to make the place seem an emblem of hell itself, and a kind of an entrance into it. Now I reproached myself with the many hints I had had, as I have mentioned above, from my own reason, from the sense of my good circumstances, and of the many dangers I had escaped, to leave off while I was well, and how I had withstood them all, and hardened my thoughts against all fear. It seemed to me that I was hurried on by an inevitable fate to this day of misery, and that now I was to expiate all my offences at the gallows; that I was now to give satisfaction to justice with my blood, and that I was to come to the last hour of my life and of my wickedness together. These things poured themselves in upon my thoughts in a confused manner, and left me overwhelmed with melancholy and despair. Then I repented heartily of all my life past, but that repentance yielded me no satisfaction, no peace, no, not in the least, because, as I said to myself, it was repenting after the power of further sinning was taken away. I seemed not to mourn that I had committed such crimes, and for the fact, as it was an offence against God and my neighbour, but that I was to be punished for it. I was a penitent, as I thought, not that I had sinned, but that I was to suffer, and this took away all the comfort of my repentance in my own thoughts. I got no sleep for several nights or days after I came into that wretched place, and glad I would have been for some time to have died there, though I did not consider dying as it ought to be considered neither; indeed, nothing could be filled with more horror to my imagination than the very place, nothing was more odious to me than the company that was there. Oh! if I had but been sent to any place in the world, and not to Newgate, I should have thought myself happy. In the next place, how did the hardened wretches that were there before me triumph over me! What! Mrs. Flanders come to Newgate at last? What! Mrs. Mary, Mrs. Molly, and after that plain Moll Flanders! They thought the devil had helped me, they said, that I had reigned so long; they expected me there many years ago, they said, and was I come at last? Then they flouted me with dejections, welcomed me to the place, wished me joy, bid me have a good heart, not be cast down, things might not be so bad as I feared, and the like; then called for brandy, and drank to me, but put it all up to my score,37 for they told me I was but just come to the college,nh as they called it, and sure I had money in my pocket, though they had none. I asked one of this crew how long she had been there. She said four months. I asked her how the place looked to her when she first came into it. "Just as it did now to me," says she, "dreadful and frightful;" that she thought she was in hell; "and I believe so still," adds she, "but it is natural to me now, I don't disturb myself about it." "I suppose," says I, "you are in no danger of what is to follow?" "Nay," says she, "you are mistaken there, I am sure, for I am under sentence,ni only I pleaded my belly, but am no more with child than the judge that tried me, and I expect to be called down next session." This "calling down" is calling down to their former judgment, when a woman has been respited for her belly, but proves not to be with child, or if she has been with child, and has been brought to bed. "Well," says I, "and are you thus easy?" "Ay," says she, "I can't help myself; what signifies being sad? if I am hanged, there's an end of me." And away she turned dancing, and sings as she goes, the following piece of Newgate wit:?Äî "If I swing by the string, I shall hear the bell ring,nj And then there's an end of poor Jenny." I mention this because it would be worth the observation of any prisoner, who shall hereafter fall into the same misfortune, and come to that dreadful place of Newgate, how time, necessity, and conversing with the wretches that are there familiarises the place to them; how at last they become reconciled to that which at first was the greatest dread upon their spirits in the world, and are as impudently cheerful and merry in their misery as they were when out of it. I cannot say, as some do, this devil is not so black as he is painted; for indeed no colours can represent that place to the life, nor any soul conceive aright of it but those who have been sufferers there. But how hell should become by degrees so natural, and not only tolerable, but even agreeable, is a thing unintelligible but by those who have experienced it, as I have. The same night that I was sent to Newgate, I sent the news of it to my old governess, who was surprised at it, you may be sure, and spent the night almost as ill out of Newgate, as I did in it. The next morning she came to see me; she did what she could to comfort me, but she saw that was to no purpose; however, as she said, to sink under the weight was but to increase the weight; she immediately applied herself to all the proper methods to prevent the effects of it, which we feared, and first she found out the two fiery jades that had surprised me. She tampered with them, persuaded them, offered them money, and, in a word, tried all imaginable ways to prevent a prosecution; she offered one of the wenches ¬£100 to go away from her mistress, and not to appear against me, but she was so resolute, that though she was but a servant-maid at ¬£3 a year wages, or thereabouts, she refused it, and would have refused, as my governess said she believed, if she had offered her ¬£500. Then she attacked the other maid; she was not so hard-hearted as the other, and sometimes seemed inclined to be merciful; but the first wench kept her up, and would not so much as let my governess talk with her, but threatened to have her up for tampering with the evidence. Then she applied to the master, that is to say, the man whose goods had been stolen, and particularly to his wife, who was inclined at first to have some compassion for me; she found the woman the same still, but the man alleged he was bound to prosecute, and that he should forfeit his recognizance.38 My governess offered to find friends that should get his recognizance off the file, as they call it, and that he should not suffer; but it was not possible to convince him that he could be safe any way in the world but by appearing against me; so I was to have three witnesses of fact against me, the master and his two maids; that is to say, I was as certain to be cast for my life as I was that I was alive, and I had nothing to do but to think of dying. I had but a sad foundation to build upon for that, as I said before, for all my repentance appeared to me to be only the effect of my fear of death; not a sincere regret for the wicked life that I had lived, and which had brought this misery upon me, or for the offending my Creator, who was now suddenly to be my judge. I lived many days here under the utmost horror; I had death, as it were, in view, and thought of nothing night or day, but of gibbets and halters, evil spirits and devils; it is not to be expressed how I was harassed, between the dreadful apprehensions of death, and the terror of my conscience reproaching me with my past horrible life. The ordinarynk of Newgate came to me, and talked a little in his way, but all his divinity ran upon confessing my crime, as he called it (though he knew not what I was in for), making a full discovery, and the like, without which he told me God would never forgive me; and he said so little to the purpose that I had no manner of consolation from him; and then to observe the poor creature preaching confession and repentance to me in the morning, and find him drunk with brandy by noon, this had something in it so shocking, that I began to nauseate the man, and his work too by degrees, for the sake of the man; so that I desired him to trouble me no more. I know not how it was, but by the indefatigable application of my diligent governess I had no bill preferred against me the first session, I mean to the grand jury, at Guildhall; so I had another month or five weeks before me, and without doubt this ought to have been accepted by me as so much time given me for reflection upon what was past, and preparation for what was to come. I ought to have esteemed it as a space given me for repentance, and have employed it as such, but it was not in me. I was sorry, as before, for being in Newgate, but had few signs of repentance about me. On the contrary, like the water in the hollows of mountains, which petrifies and turns into stone whatever they are suffered to drop upon; so the continual conversing with such a crew of hell-hounds had the same common operation upon me as upon other people. I degenerated into stone; I turned first stupidnl and senseless, and then brutish and thoughtless, and at last raving mad as any of them; in short, I became as naturally pleased and easy with the place as if indeed I had been born there.nm It is scarce possible to imagine that our natures should be capable of so much degeneracy as to make that pleasant and agreeable, that in itself is the most complete misery. Here was a circumstance that I think it is scarce possible to mention a worse: I was as exquisitelynn miserable as it was possible for any one to be that had life and health, and money to help them, as I had. I had a weight of guilt upon me, enough to sink any creature who had the least power of reflection left, and had any sense upon them of the happiness of this life, or the misery of another. I had at first some remorse indeed, but no repentance. I had now neither remorse or repentance. I had a crime charged on me, the punishment of which was death; the proof so evident, that there was no room for me so much as to plead not guilty. I had the name of an old offender, so that I had nothing to expect but death, neither had I myself any thoughts of escaping; and yet a certain strange lethargy of soul possessed me. I had no trouble, no apprehensions, no sorrow about me; the first surprise was gone; I was, I may well say, I know not how; my senses, my reason, nay, my conscience, were all asleep; my course of life for forty years had been a horrid complication of wickedness, whoredom, adultery, incest, lying, theft; and, in a word, everything but murder and treason had been my practice, from the age of eighteen, or thereabouts, to threescore; and now I was engulfed in the misery of punishment, and had an infamous death at the door; and yet I had no sense of my condition, no thought of heaven or hell, at least that went any farther than a bare flying touch, like the stitch or pain that gives a hint and goes off. I neither had a heart to ask God's mercy, or indeed to think of it. And in this, I think, I have given a brief description of the completest misery on earth. All my terrifying thoughts were past, the horrors of the place were become familiar, and I felt no more uneasiness at the noise and clamours of the prison, than they did who made that noise; in a word, I was become a mere Newgate-bird, as wicked and as outrageous as any of them; nay, I scarce retained the habit and custom of good breeding and manners, which all along till now ran through my conversation; so thorough a degeneracy had possessed me, that I was no more the something that I had been, than if I had never been otherwise than what I was now. In the middle of this hardened part of my life, I had another sudden surprise, which called me back a little to that thing called sorrow, which, indeed, I began to be past the sense of before. They told me one night that there was brought into the prison late the night before three highwaymen, who had committed a robbery somewhere on Hounslow Heath,39 I think it was, and were pursued to Uxbridge by the country,no and there taken after a gallant resistance, in which many of the country people were wounded, and some killed. It is not to be wondered that we prisoners were all desirous enough to see these brave, toppingnp gentlemen, that were talked up to be such as their fellows had not been known, and especially because it was said they would in the morning be removed into the press-yard,40 having given money to the head master of the prison, to be allowed the liberty of that better place. So we that were women placed ourselves in the way, that we would be sure to see them; but nothing could express the amazement and surprise I was in, when the first man that came out, I knew to be my Lancashire husband, the same with whom I lived so well at Dunstable, and the same who I afterwards saw at Brickhill, when I was married to my last husband, as has been related. I was struck dumb at the sight, and knew neither what to say, or what to do; he did not know me, and that was all the present relief I had: I quitted my company, and retired as much as that dreadful place suffers anybody to retire, and cried vehemently for a great while. "Dreadful creature that I am," said I, "how many poor people have I made miserable! how many desperate wretches have I sent to the devil!" This gentleman's misfortunes I placed all to my own account. He had told me at Chester he was ruined by that match, and that his fortunes were made desperate on my account; for that thinking I had been a fortune, he was run into debt more than he was able to pay; that he would go into the army, and carry a musket, or buy a horse and take a tour,nq as he called it; and though I never told him that I was a fortune, and so did not actually deceive him myself, yet I did encourage the having it thought so, and so I was the occasion originally of his mischief. The surprise of this thing only struck deeper in my thoughts, and gave me stronger reflections than all that had befallen me before. I grieved day and night, and the more for that they told me he was the captain of the gang, and that he had committed so many robberies; that Hind, or Whitney, or the Golden Farmer41 were fools to him; that he would surely be hanged, if there were no more men left in the country; and that there would be abundance of people come in against him. I was overwhelmed with grief for him; my own case gave me no disturbance compared to this, and I loaded myself with reproaches on his account. I bewailed my misfortunes, and the ruin he was now come to, at such a rate that I relished nothing now as I did before, and the first reflections I made upon the horrid life I had lived began to return upon me; and as these things returned, my abhorrence of the place, and of the way of living in it, returned also; in a word, I was perfectly changed and become another body. While I was under these influences of sorrow for him, came notice to me that the next sessions there would be a bill preferred to the grand jury against me, and that I should be tried for my life. My temper was touched before, the wretched boldness of spirit which I had acquired abated, and conscious guilt began to flow in my mind. In short, I began to think, and to think indeed is one real advance from hell to heaven. All that hardened state and temper of soul, which I said so much of before, is but a deprivation of thought; he that is restored to his thinking, is restored to himself. As soon as I began, I say, to think, the first thing that occurred to me broke out thus: "Lord! what will become of me? I shall be cast,nr to be sure, and there is nothing beyond that but death! I have no friends; what shall I do? I shall be certainly cast! Lord, have mercy upon me! What will become of me?" This was a sad thought, you will say, to be the first, after so long time, that had started in my soul of that kind, and yet even this was nothing but fright at what was to come; there was not a word of sincere repentance in it all. However, I was dreadfully dejected, and disconsolate to the last degree; and as I had no friend to communicate my distressed thoughts to, it lay so heavy upon me that it threw me into fits and swoonings several times a day. I sent for my old governess, and she, give her her due, acted the part of a true friend. She left no stone unturned to prevent the grand jury finding the bill.ns She went to several of the jurymen, talked with them, and endeavoured to possess them with favourable dispositions, on account that nothing was taken away, and no house broken, &c.; but all would not do; the two wenches swore home to the fact, and the jury found the bill for robbery and house-breaking, that is, for felony and burglary. I sank down when they brought the news of it, and after I came to myself I thought I should have died with the weight of it. My governess acted a true mother to me; she pitied me, she cried with me and for me, but she could not help me; and, to add to the terror of it, 't was the discourse all over the house that I should die for it. I could hear them talk it among themselves very often, and see them shake their heads, and say they were sorry for it, and the like, as is usual in the place. But still nobody came to tell me their thoughts, till at last one of the keepers came to me privately, and said, with a sigh, "Well, Mrs. Flanders, you will be tried a Friday" (this was but a Wednesday); "what do you intend to do?" I turned as white as a clout,nt and said, "God knows what I shall do; for my part, I know not what to do." "Why," says he, "I won't flatter you; I would have you prepare for death, for I doubt you will be cast; and as you are an old offender, I doubt you will find but little mercy. They say," added he, "your case is very plain, and that the witnesses swear so home against you, there will be no standing it." This was a stab into the very vitals of one under such a burthen, and I could not speak a word, good or bad, for a great while. At last I burst out into tears, and said to him, "Oh, sir, what must I do?" "Do!" says he; "send for a minister, and talk with him; for, indeed, Mrs. Flanders, unless you have very good friends, you are no woman for this world." This was plain dealing indeed, but it was very harsh to me; at least I thought it so. He left me in the greatest confusion imaginable, and all that night I lay awake. And now I began to say my prayers, which I had scarce done before since my last husband's death, or from a little while after. And truly I may well call it saying my prayers, for I was in such a confusion, and had such horror upon my mind, that though I cried, and repeated several times the ordinary expression of "Lord, have mercy upon me!" I never brought myself to any sense of being a miserable sinner, as indeed I was, and of confessing my sins to God, and begging pardon for the sake of Jesus Christ. I was overwhelmed with the sense of my condition, being tried for my life, and being sure to be executed, and on this account I cried out all night, "Lord! what will become of me? Lord! what shall I do? Lord, have mercy upon me!" and the like. My poor afflicted governess was now as much concerned as I, and a great deal more truly penitent, though she had no prospect of being brought to a sentence. Not but that she deserved it as much as I, and so she said herself; but she had not done anything for many years, other than receiving what I and others had stolen, and encouraging us to steal it. But she cried and took on, like a distracted body, wringing her hands, and crying out that she was undone, that she believed there was a curse from heaven upon her, that she should be damned, that she had been the destruction of all her friends, that she brought such a one, and such a one, and such a one to the gallows; and there she reckoned up ten or eleven people, some of which I have given an account of, that came to untimely ends; and that now she was the occasion of my ruin, for she had persuaded me to go on, when I would have left off. I interrupted her there. "No, mother, no," said I, "don't speak of that, for you would have had me left off when I got the mercer's money again, and when I came home from Harwich, and I would not hearken to you; therefore you have not been to blame; it is I only have ruined myself, I have brought myself to this misery;" and thus we spent many hours together. Well, there was no remedy; the prosecution went on, and on the Thursday I was carried down to the sessions-house, where I was arraigned, as they called it, and the next day I was appointed to be tried. At the arraignment I pleaded "Not guilty," and well I might, for I was indicted for felony and burglary; that is, for feloniously stealing two pieces of brocaded silk, value ¬£46, the goods of Anthony Johnson, and for breaking open the doors; whereas I knew very well they could not pretend I had broken up the doors, or so much as lifted up a latch. On the Friday I was brought to my trial. I had exhausted my spirits with crying for two or three days before, [so] that I slept better the Thursday night than I expected, and had more courage for my trial than I thought possible for me to have. When the trial began, and the indictment was read, I would have spoke, but they told me the witnesses must be heard first, and then I should have time to be heard. The witnesses were the two wenches, a couple of hard-mouthed jades indeed, for though the thing was truth in the main, yet they aggravated it to the utmost extremity, and swore I had the goods wholly in my possession, that I hid them among my clothes, that I was going off with them, that I had one foot over the threshold when they discovered themselves,nu and then I put t'other over, so that I was quite out of the house in the street with the goods before they took me, and then they seized me, and took the goods upon me. The fact in general was true, but I insisted upon it, that they stopped me before I had set my foot clear of the threshold. But that did not argue much, for I had taken the goods, and was bringing them away, if I had not been taken. I pleaded that I had stole nothing, they had lost nothing, that the door was open, and I went in with design to buy. If, seeing nobody in the house, I had taken any of them up in my hand, it could not be concluded that I intended to steal them, for that I never carried them farther than the door, to look on them with the better light. The Court would not allow that by any means, and made a kind of a jest of my intending to buy the goods, that being no shop for the selling of anything; and as to carrying them to the door to look at them, the maids made their impudent mocks upon that, and spent their wit upon it very much; told the Court I had looked at them sufficiently, and approved them very well, for I had packed them up, and was a-going with them. In short, I was found guilty of felony, but acquitted of the burglary, which was but small comfort to me, the first bringing me to a sentence of death, and the last would have done no more. The next day I was carried down to receive the dreadful sentence, and when they came to ask me what I had to say why sentence should not pass, I stood mute a while, but somebody prompted me aloud to speak to the judges, for that they could represent things favourably for me. This encouraged me, and I told them I had nothing to say to stop the sentence, but that I had much to say to bespeak the mercy of the Court; that I hoped they would allow something in such a case for the circumstances of it; that I had broken no doors, had carried nothing off; that nobody had lost anything; that the person whose goods they were was pleased to say he desired mercy might be shown (which indeed he very honestly did); that, at the worst, it was the first offence, and that I had never been before any court of justice before; and, in a word, I spoke with more courage than I thought I could have done, and in such a moving tone, and though with tears, yet not so many tears as to obstruct my speech, that I could see it moved others to tears that heard me. The judges sat grave and mute, gave me an easy hearing, and time to say all that I would, but, saying neither yes or no to it, pronounced the sentence of death upon me, a sentence to me like death itself, which confounded me. I had no more spirit left in me. I had no tongue to speak, or eyes to look up either to God or man. My poor governess was utterly disconsolate, and she that was my comforter before, wanted comfort now herself; and sometimes mourning, sometimes raging, was as much out of herself as any mad woman in Bedlam.nv Nor was she only disconsolate as to me, but she was struck with horror at the sense of her own wicked life, and began to look back upon it with a taste quite different from mine, for she was penitent to the highest degree for her sins, as well as sorrowful for the misfortune. She sent for a minister, too, a serious, pious, good man, and applied herself with such earnestness, by his assistance, to the work of sincere repentance, that I believe, and so did the minister too, that she was a true penitent; and, which is still more, she was not only so for the occasion, and at that juncture, but she continued so, as I was informed, to the day of her death. It is rather to be thought of than expressed what was now my condition. I had nothing before me but death; and as I had no friends to assist me, I expected nothing but to find my name in the dead warrant,nw which was to come for the execution, next Friday, of five more and myself. In the meantime my poor distressed governess sent me a minister, who at her request came to visit me. He exhorted me seriously to repent of all my sins, and to dally no longer with my soul; not flattering myself with hopes of life, which, he said, he was informed there was no room to expect, but unfeignedly to look up to God with my whole soul, and to cry for pardon in the name of Jesus Christ. He backed his discourses with proper quotations of Scripture, encouraging the greatest sinner to repent, and turn from their evil way; and when he had done, he kneeled down and prayed with me. It was now that, for the first time, I felt any real signs of repentance. I now began to look back upon my past life with abhorrence, and having a kind of view into the other side of time, the things of life, as I believe they do with everybody at such a time, began to look with a different aspect, and quite another shape, than they did before. The views of felicity, the joy, the griefs of life, were quite other things; and I had nothing in my thoughts but what was so infinitely superior to what I had known in life, that it appeared to be the greatest stupidity to lay a weight upon anything, though the most valuable in this world. The word eternity represented itself with all its incomprehensible additions, and I had such extended notions of it that I know not how to express them.42 Among the rest, how absurd did every pleasant thing look!?ÄîI mean, that we had counted pleasant before?Äîwhen I reflected that these sordid trifles were the things for which we forfeited eternal felicity. With these reflections came in of mere course severe reproaches for my wretched behaviour in my past life; that I had forfeited all hope of happiness in the eternity that I was just going to enter into; and, on the contrary, was entitled to all that was miserable; and all this with the frightful addition of its being also eternal. I am not capable of reading lectures of instruction to anybody, but I relate this in the very manner in which things then appeared to me, as far as I am able, but infinitely short of the lively impressions which they made on my soul at that time; indeed, those impressions are not to be explained by words, or if they are, I am not mistress of words to express them. It must be the work of every sober reader to make just reflections, as their own circumstances may direct; and this is what every one at some time or other may feel something of; I mean, a clearer sight into things to come than they had here, and a dark view of their own concern in them. But I go back to my own case. The minister pressed me to tell him, as far as I thought convenient, in what state I found myself as to the sight I had of things beyond life. He told me he did not come as ordinary of the place, whose business it is to extort confessions from prisoners,43 for the further detecting of other offenders; that his business was to move me to such freedom of discourse as might serve to disburthen my own mind, and furnish him to administer comfort to me as far as was in his power; and assured me, that whatever I said to him should remain with him, and be as much a secret as if it was known only to God and myself; and that he desired to know nothing of me, but to qualify him to give proper advice to me, and to pray to God for me. This honest, friendly way of treating me unlocked all the sluices of my passions. He broke into my very soul by it; and I unravelled all the wickedness of my life to him. In a word, I gave him an abridgment of this whole history; I gave him the picture of my conduct for fifty years in miniature. I hid nothing from him, and he in return exhorted me to a sincere repentance, explained to me what he meant by repentance, and then drew out such a scheme of infinite mercy, proclaimed from heaven to sinners of the greatest magnitude, that he left me nothing to say, that looked like despair, or doubting of being accepted; and in this condition he left me the first night. He visited me again the next morning, and went on with his method of explaining the terms of divine mercy, which according to him consisted of nothing more difficult than that of being sincerely desirous of it, and willing to accept it; only a sincere regret for, and hatred of, those things which rendered me so just an object of divine vengeance. I am not able to repeat the excellent discourses of this extraordinary man; all that I am able to do, is to say that he revived my heart, and brought me into such a condition that I never knew anything of in my life before. I was covered with shame and tears for things past, and yet had at the same time a secret surprising joy at the prospect of being a true penitent, and obtaining the comfort of a penitent?ÄîI mean the hope of being forgiven; and so swift did thoughts circulate, and so high did the impressions they had made upon me run, that I thought I could freely have gone out that minute to execution, without any uneasiness at all, casting my soul entirely into the arms of infinite mercy as a penitent. The good gentleman was so moved with a view of the influence which he saw these things had on me, that he blessed God he had come to visit me, and resolved not to leave me till the last moment. It was no less than twelve days after our receiving sentence before any were ordered for execution, and then the dead warrant, as they call it, came down, and I found my name was among them. A terrible blow this was to my new resolutions; indeed my heart sank within me, and I swooned away twice, one after another, but spoke not a word. The good minister was sorely afflicted for me, and did what he could to comfort me, with the same arguments and the same moving eloquence that he did before, and left me not that evening so long as the prison-keepers would suffer him to stay in the prison, unless he would be locked up with me all night, which he was not willing to be. I wondered much that I did not see him all the next day, it being but the day before the time appointed for execution; and I was greatly discouraged and dejected, and indeed almost sank for want of that comfort which he had so often, and with such success, yielded me in his former visits. I waited with great impatience, and under the greatest oppression of spirits imaginable, till about four o'clock, when he came to my apartment; for I had obtained the favour, by the help of money, nothing being to be done in that place without it, not to be kept in the condemned hole,nx among the rest of the prisoners who were to die, but to have a little dirty chamber to myself. My heart leaped within me for joy when I heard his voice at the door, even before I saw him; but let any one judge what kind of motion I found in my soul when, after having made a short excuse for his not coming, he showed me that his time had been employed on my account, that he had obtained a favourable report from the Recorderny in my case, and, in short, that he had brought me a reprieve.nz He used all the caution that he was able in letting me know what it would have been double cruelty to have concealed; for as grief had overset me before, so did joy overset me now, and I fell into a more dangerous swooning than at first, and it was not without difficulty that I was recovered at all. The good man having made a very Christian exhortation to me, not to let the joy of my reprieve put the remembrance of my past sorrow out of my mind, and told me that he must leave me, to go and enter the reprieve in the books, and show it to the sheriffs, he stood up just before his going away, and in a very earnest manner prayed to God for me, that my repentance might be made unfeigned and sincere; and that my coming back, as it were, into life again might not be a returning to the follies of life, which I had made such solemn resolutions to forsake. I joined heartily in that petition, and must needs say I had deeper impressions upon my mind all that night, of the mercy of God in sparing my life, and a greater detestation of my sins, from a sense of that goodness, than I had in all my sorrow before. This may be thought inconsistent in itself, and wide from the business of this book; particularly, I reflect that many of those who may be pleased and diverted with the relation of the wicked part of my story may not relish this, which is really the best part of my life, the most advantageous to myself, and the most instructive to others. Such, however, will, I hope, allow me liberty to make my story complete. It would be a severe satireoa on such to say they do not relish the repentance as much as they do the crime; and they had rather the history were a complete tragedy, as it was very likely to have been. But I go on with my relation. The next morning there was a sad scene indeed in the prison. The first thing I was saluted with in the morning was the tolling of the great bell at St. Sepulchre's, which ushered in the day. As soon as it began to toll, a dismal groaning and crying was heard from the condemned hole, where there lay six poor souls, who were to be executed that day, some for one crime, some for another, and two for murder. This was followed by a confused clamour in the house, among the several prisoners, expressing their awkward sorrows for the poor creatures that were to die, but in a manner extremely differing one from another. Some cried for them; some brutishly huzzaed,ob and wished them a good journey; some damned and cursed those that had brought them to it, many pitying them, and some few, but very few, praying for them. There was hardly room for so much composure of mind as was required for me to bless the merciful Providence that had, as it were, snatched me out of the jaws of this destruction. I remained, as it were, dumb and silent, overcome with the sense of it, and not able to express what I had in my heart; for the passions on such occasions as these are certainly so agitated as not to be able presently to regulate their own motions. All the while the poor condemned creatures were preparing for death, and the ordinary, as they call him, was busy with them, disposing them to submit to their sentence,?ÄîI say, all this while I was seized with a fit of trembling, as much as I could have been if I had been in the same condition as I was the day before; I was so violently agitated by this surprising fit that I shook as if it had been an ague, so that I could not speak or look but like one distracted. As soon as they were all put into the carts and gone, which, however, I had not courage enough to see?ÄîI say, as soon as they were gone, I fell into a fit of crying involuntarily, as a mere distemper, and yet so violent, and it held me so long, that I knew not what course to take, nor could I stop, or put a check to it, no, not with all the strength and courage I had. This fit of crying held me near two hours, and, as I believe, held me till they were all out of the world, and then a most humble, penitent, serious kind of joy succeeded; a real transport it was, or passion of thankfulness, and in this I continued most part of the day. In the evening the good minister visited me again, and fell to his usual good discourses. He congratulated my having a space yet allowed me for repentance, whereas the state of those six poor creatures was determined, and they were now past the offers of salvation; he pressed me to retain the same sentiments of the things of life that I had when I had a view of eternity; and at the end of all, told me that I should not conclude that all was over, that a reprieve was not a pardon, that he could not answer for the effects of it; however, I had this mercy, that I had more time given me, and it was my business to improve that time. This discourse left a kind of sadness on my heart, as if I might expect the affair would have a tragical issue still, which, however, he had no certainty of; yet I did not at that time question him about it, he having said he would do his utmost to bring it to a good end, and that he hoped he might, but he would not have me be secure; and the consequence showed that he had reason for what he said. It was about a fortnight after this that I had some just apprehensions that I should be included in the dead warrant at the ensuing sessions; and it was not without great difficulty, and at last an humble petition for transportation,44 that I avoided it, so ill was I beholding to fame, and so prevailing was the report of being an old offender; though in that they did not do me strict justice, for I was not in the sense of the law an old offender, whatever I was in the eye of the judge, for I had never been before them in a judicial way before; so the judges could not charge me with being an old offender, but the Recorder was pleased to represent my case as he thought fit. I had now a certainty of life indeed, but with the hard conditions of being ordered for transportation, which was, I say, a hard condition in itself, but not when comparatively considered; and therefore I shall make no comments upon the sentence, nor upon the choice I was put to. We all shall choose anything rather than death, especially when 't is attended with an uncomfortable prospect beyond it, which was my case. The good minister, whose interest, though a stranger to me, had obtained me the reprieve, mourned sincerely for his part. He was in hopes, he said, that I should have ended my days under the influence of good instruction, that I might not have forgot my former distresses, and that I should not have been turned loose again among such a wretched crew as are thus sent abroad, where, he said, I must have more than ordinary secret assistance from the grace of God, if I did not turn as wicked again as ever. I have not for a good while mentioned my governess, who had been dangerously sick, and being in as near a view of death by her disease as I was by my sentence, was a very great penitent; I say, I have not mentioned her, nor indeed did I see her in all this time; but being now recovering, and just able to come abroad, she came to see me. I told her my condition, and what a different flux and reflux of fears and hopes I had been agitated with; I told her what I had escaped, and upon what terms; and she was present when the minister expressed his fears of my relapsing again into wickedness upon my falling into the wretched company that are generally transported. Indeed I had a melancholy reflection upon it in my own mind, for I knew what a dreadful gang was always sent away together, and said to my governess that the good minister's fears were not without cause. "Well, well," says she, "but I hope you will not be tempted with such a horrid example as that." And as soon as the minister was gone, she told me she would not have me discouraged, for perhaps ways and means might be found to dispose of me in a particular way, by myself, of which she would talk further with me afterward. I looked earnestly at her, and thought she looked more cheerfully than she usually had done, and I entertained immediately a thousand notions of being delivered, but could not for my life imagine the methods, or think of one that was feasible; but I was too much concerned in it to let her go from me without explaining herself, which though she was very loth to do, yet, as I was still pressing, she answered me in a few words, thus: "Why, you have money, have you not? Did you ever know one in your life that was transported and had a hundred pounds in his pocket, I'll warrant ye, child?" says she. I understood her presently, but told her I saw no room to hope for anything but a strict execution of the order, and as it was a severity that was esteemed a mercy, there was no doubt but it would be strictly observed. She said no more but this: "We will try what can be done," and so we parted. I lay in the prison near fifteen weeks after this. What the reason of it was I know not, but at the end of this time I was put on board of a ship in the Thames, and with me a gang of thirteen as hardened vile creatures as ever Newgate produced in my time; and it would really well take up a history longer than mine to describe the degrees of impudence and audacious villainy that those thirteen were arrived to, and the manner of their behaviour in the voyage; of which I have a very diverting account by me, which the captain of the ship who carried them over gave me, and which he caused his mate to write down at large. It may, perhaps, be thought trifling to enter here into a relation of all the little incidents which attended me in this interval of my circumstances; I mean, between the final order for my transportation and the time of going on board the ship; and I am too near the end of my story to allow room for it; but something relating to me and my Lancashire husband I must not omit. He had, as I have observed already, been carried from the master's sideoc of the ordinary prison into the press-yard, with three of his comrades, for they found another to add to them after some time; here, for what reason I knew not, they were kept without being brought to a trial almost three months. It seems they found means to bribe or buy off some who were to come in against them, and they wantedod evidence to convict them. After some puzzle on this account, they made shift to get proof enough against two of them to carry them off; but the other two, of which my Lancashire husband was one, lay still in suspense. They had, I think, one positive evidence against each of them, but the law obliging them to have two witnesses,oe they could make nothing of it. Yet they were resolved not to part with the men neither, not doubting but evidence would at last come in; and in order to this, I think publication was made that such prisoners were taken, and any one might come to the prison and see them. I took this opportunity to satisfy my curiosity, pretending I had been robbed in the Dunstable coach, and that I would go to see the two highwaymen. But when I came into the press-yard, I so disguised myself, and muffled my face up so that he could see little of me, and knew nothing of who I was; but when I came back, I said publicly that I knew them very well. Immediately it was all over the prison that Moll Flanders would turn evidence against one of the highwaymen, and that I was to come off by it from the sentence of transportation. They heard of it, and immediately my husband desired to see this Mrs. Flanders that knew him so well, and was to be an evidence against him; and accordingly I had leave to go to him. I dressed myself up as well as the best clothes that I suffered myself ever to appear in there would allow me, and went to the press-yard, but had a hood over my face. He said little to me at first, but asked me if I knew him. I told him, "Yes, very well;" but as I concealed my face, so I counterfeited my voice too, that he had no guess at who I was. He asked me where I had seen him. I told him between Dunstable and Brickhill; but turning to the keeper that stood by, I asked if I might not be admitted to talk with him alone. He said, "Yes, yes," and so very civilly withdrew. As soon as he was gone, and I had shut the door, I threw off my hood, and bursting out into tears, "My dear," said I, "do you not know me?" He turned pale, and stood speechless, like one thunderstruck, and, not able to conquer the surprise, said no more but this, "Let me sit down;" and sitting down by the table, leaning his head on his hand, fixed his eyes on the ground as one stupid. I cried so vehemently, on the other hand, that it was a good while ere I could speak any more; but after I had given vent to my passion, I repeated the same words, "My dear, do you not know me?" At which he answered, "Yes," and said no more a good while. After some time continuing in the surprise, as above, he cast up his eyes towards me, and said, "How could you be so cruel?" I did not really understand what he meant; and I answered, "How can you call me cruel?" "To come to me," says he, "in such a place as this, is it not to insult me? I have not robbed you, at least not on the highway." I perceived by this, that he knew nothing of the miserable circumstances I was in, and thought that, having got intelligence of his being there, I had come to upbraid him with his leaving me. But I had too much to say to him to be affronted, and told him in a few words, that I was far from coming to insult him, but at best I came to condole mutually; that he would be easily satisfied that I had no such view, when I should tell him that my condition was worse than his, and that many ways. He looked a little concerned at the expression of my condition being worse than his, but, with a kind of a smile, said, "How can that be? When you see me fettered, and in Newgate, and two of my companions executed already, can you say your condition is worse than mine?" "Come, my dear," says I, "we have a long piece of work to do, if I should be to relate, or you to hear, my unfortunate history; but if you will hear it, you will soon conclude with me that my condition is worse than yours." "How is that possible," says he, "when I expect to be cast for my life the very next sessions?" "Yes," says I, "'t is very possible, when I shall tell you that I have been cast for my life three sessions ago, and am now under sentence of death; is not my case worse than yours?" Then, indeed, he stood silent again, like one struck dumb, and after a little while he starts up. "Unhappy couple!" says he, "how can this be possible?" I took him by the hand. "Come, my dear," said I, "sit down, and let us compare our sorrows. I am a prisoner in this very house, and in a much worse circumstance than you, and you will be satisfied I do not come to insult you when I tell you the particulars." And with this we sat down together, and I told him so much of my story as I thought convenient, bringing it at last to my being reduced to great poverty, and representing myself as fallen into some company that led me to relieve my distresses by a way that I had been already unacquainted with, and that they making an attempt on a tradesman's house, I was seized upon, for having been but just at the door, the maid-servant pulling me in; that I neither had broke any lock or taken anything away, and that notwithstanding that, I was brought in guilty and sentenced to die; but that the judges having been made sensible of the hardship of my circumstances, had obtained leave for me to be transported. I told him I fared the worse for being taken in the prison for one Moll Flanders, who was a famous successful thief, that all of them had heard of, but none of them had ever seen; but that, as he knew, was none of my name. But I placed all to the account of my ill fortune, and that under this name I was dealt with as an old offender, though this was the first thing they had ever known of me. I gave him a long account of what had befallen me since I saw him, but told him I had seen him since he might think I had; then gave him an account how I had seen him at Brickhill; how he was pursued, and how, by giving an account that I knew him, and that he was a very honest gentleman, the hue-and-cry was stopped, and the high constable went back again. He listened most attentively to all my story, and smiled at the particulars, being all of them infinitely below what he had been at the head of,of but when I came to the story of Little Brickhill he was surprised. "And was it you, my dear," said he, "that gave the check to the mob at Brickhill?" "Yes," said I, "it was I indeed." Then I told him the particulars which I had observed of him there. "Why, then," said he, "it was you that saved my life at that time, and I am glad I owe my life to you, for I will pay the debt to you now, and I'll deliver you from the present condition you are in, or I will die in the attempt." I told him by no means; it was a risk too great, not worth his running the hazard of, and for a life not worth his saving. 'T was no matter for that, he said; it was a life worth all the world to him; a life that had given him a new life; "for," says he, "I was never in real danger, but that time, till the last minute when I was taken." Indeed, his danger then lay in his believing he had not been pursued that way; for they had gone off from Hockley quite another way, and had come over the enclosed country into Brickhill, and were sure they had not been seen by anybody. Here he gave a long history of his life, which indeed would make a very strangeog history, and be infinitely diverting. He told me that he took the road about twelve years before he married me; that the woman which called him brother, was not any kin to him, but one that belonged to their gang, and who, keeping correspondence with them, lived always in town, having great acquaintance; that she gave them perfect intelligence of persons going out of town, and that they had made several good booties by her correspondence; that she thought she had fixed a fortune for him, when she brought me to him, but happened to be disappointed, which he really could not blame her for; that if I had had an estate, which she was informed I had, he had resolved to leave off the road and live a new life, but never to appear in public till some general pardon had been passed, or till he could, for money, have got his name into some particular pardon, so that he might have been perfectly easy; but that, as it had proved otherwise, he was obliged to take up the old trade again. He gave a long account of some of his adventures, and particularly one where he robbed the West Chester coaches near Lichfield, when he got a very great booty; and after that, how he robbed five graziersoh in the west, going to Burford Fair, in Wiltshire,oi to buy sheep. He told me he got so much money on those two occasions that, if he had known where to have found me, he would certainly have embraced my proposal of going with me to Virginia, or to have settled in a plantation, or some other of the English colonies in America. He told me he wrote three letters to me, directed according to my order, but heard nothing from me. This indeed I knew to be true, but the letters coming to my hand in the time of my latter husband, I could do nothing in it, and therefore gave no answer, that so he might believe they had miscarried. Being thus disappointed, he said he carried on the old trade ever since, though, when he had gotten so much money, he said, he did not run such desperate risks as he did before. Then he gave me some account of several hard and desperate encounters which he had with gentlemen on the road, who parted too hardly with their money, and showed me some wounds he had received; and he had one or two very terrible wounds indeed, particularly one by a pistol-bullet, which broke his arm, and another with a sword, which ran him quite through the body, but that missing his vitals, he was cured again; one of his comrades having kept with him so faithfully, and so friendly, as that he assisted him in riding near eighty miles before his arm was set, and then got a surgeon in a considerable city, remote from the place where it was done, pretendin they were gentlemen travelling towards Carlisle,?Ä° that they had been attacked on the road by highwaymen, and that one of them had shot him into the arm. This, he said, his friend managed so well that they were not suspected, but lay still till he was cured. He gave me also so many distinct accounts of his adventures, that it is with great reluctance that I decline the relating them; but this is my own story, not his. I then inquired into the circumstances of his present case, and what it was he expected when he came to be tried. He told me, that they had no evidence against him; for that, of the three robberies which they were all charged with, it was his good fortune that he was but in one of them, and that there was but one witness to be had to that fact, which was not sufficient; but that it was expected some others would come in, and that he thought, when he first saw me, I had been one that came of that errand; but that if nobody came in against him he hoped he should be cleared; that he had some intimation, that if he would submit to transport himself, he might be admitted to it without a trial; but that he could not think of it with any temper,oj and thought he could much easier submit to be hanged. I blamed him for that; first, because if he was transported, there might be an hundred ways for him, that was a gentleman, and a bold enterprising man, to find his way back again, and perhaps some ways and means to come back before he went. He smiled at that part, and said he should like the last the best of the two, for he had a kind of horror upon his mind at his being sent to the plantations, as the Romans sent slaves to work in the mines; that he thought the passage into another state much more tolerable at the gallows, and that this was the general notion of all the gentlemen who were driven by the exigence of their fortunes to take the road; that at the place of execution there was at least an end of all the miseries of the present state; and as for what was to follow, a man was, in his opinion, as likely to repent sincerely in the last fortnight of his life, under the agonies of a jail and the condemned hole, as he would ever be in the woods and wildernesses of America; that servitude and hard labour were things gentlemen could never stoop to; that it was but the way to force them to be their own executioners, which was much worse; and that he could not have any patience when he did but think of it. I used the utmost of my endeavour to persuade him, and joined that known woman's rhetoric to it?ÄîI mean that of tears. I told him the infamy of a public execution was certainly a greater pressure upon the spirits of a gentleman than any mortifications that he could meet with abroad; that he had at least in the other a chance for his life, whereas here he had none at all; that it was the easiest thing in the world for him to manage the captain of a ship, who were, generally speaking, men of good humour; and a small matter of conduct, ok especially if there was any money to be had, would make way for him to buy himself off when he came to Virginia. He looked wishfully at me, and I guessed he meant that he had no money; but I was mistaken, his meaning was another way. "You hinted just now, my dear," said he, "that there might be a way of coming back before I went, by which I understood you that it might be possible to buy it off here. I had rather give ¬£200 to prevent going, than ¬£100 to be set at liberty when I came there." "That is, my dear," said I, "because you do not know the place as well as I do." "That may be," said he; "and yet I believe, as well as you know it, you would do the same, unless it is because, as you told me, you have a mother there." I told him, as to my mother, she must be dead many years before; and as for any other relations that I might have there, I knew them not; that since my misfortunes had reduced me to the condition I had been in for some years, I had not kept up any correspondence with them; and that he would easily believe I should find but a cold reception from them if I should be put to make my first visit in the condition of a transported felon; that therefore, if I went thither, I resolved not to see them; but that I had many views in going there, which took off all the uneasy part of it; and if he found himself obliged to go also, I should easily instruct him how to manage himself, so as never to go a servant at all, especially since I found he was not destitute of money, which was the only friend in such a condition. He smiled, and said he did not tell me he had money. I took him up short, and told him I hoped he did not understand by my speaking that I should expect any supply from him if he had money; that, on the other hand, though I had not a great deal, yet I did not want, and while I had any I would rather add to him than weaken him, seeing, whatever he had, I knew in the case of transportation he would have occasion of it all. He expressed himself in a most tender manner upon that head. He told me what money he had was not a great deal, but that he would never hide any of it from me if I wanted it, and assured me he did not speak with any such apprehensions; that he was only intent upon what I had hinted to him; that here he knew what to do, but there he should be the most helpless wretch alive. I told him he frighted himself with that which had no terror in it; that if he had money, as I was glad to hear he had, he might not only avoid the servitude supposed to be the consequence of transportation, but begin the world upon such a new foundation as he could not fail of success in, with but the common application usual in such cases; that he could not but call to mind I had recommended it to him many years before, and proposed it for restoring our fortunes in the world; and I would tell him now, that to convince him both of the certainty of it, and of my being fully acquainted with the method, and also fully satisfied in the probability of success, he should first see me deliver myself from the necessity of going over at all, and then that I would go with him freely, and of my own choice, and perhaps carry enough with me to satisfy him; that I did not offer it for want of being able to live without assistance from him, but that I thought our mutual misfortunes had been such as were sufficient to reconcile us both to quitting this part of the world, and living where nobody could upbraid us with what was past, and without the agonies of a condemned hole to drive us to it, where we should look back on all our past disasters with infinite satisfaction, when we should consider that our enemies should entirely forget us, and that we should live as new people in a new world, nobody having anything to say to us, or we to them. I pressed this home to him with so many arguments, and answered all his own passionate objections so effectually, that he embraced me, and told me I treated him with such a sincerity as overcame him; that he would take my advice, and would strive to submit to his fate in hope of having the comfort of so faithful a counsellor and such a companion in his misery. But still he put me in mind of what I had mentioned before, namely, that there might be some way to get off before he went, and that it might be possible to avoid going at all, which he said would be much better. I told him he should see, and be fully satisfied that I would do my utmost in that part too, and if it did not succeed, yet that I would make good the rest. We parted after this long conference with such testimonies of kindness and affection as I thought were equal, if not superior, to that at our parting at Dunstable; and now I saw more plainly the reason why he then declined coming with me toward London, and why, when we parted there, he told me it was not convenient to come to London with me, as he would otherwise have done. I have observed that the account of his life would have made a much more pleasing history than this of mine; and, indeed, nothing in it was more strange than this part, viz., that he carried on that desperate trade full five-and-twenty years, and had never been taken, the success he had met with had been so very uncommon, and such that sometimes he had lived handsomely and retired in one place for a year or two at a time, keeping himself and a man-servant to wait on him, and has often sat in the coffee-houses and heard the very people whom he had robbed give account of their being robbed, and of the places and circumstances, so that he could easily remember that it was the same. In this manner it seems he lived near Liverpool at the time he unluckily married me for a fortune. Had I been the fortune he expected, I verily believe he would have taken up and lived honestly. He had with the rest of his misfortunes the good luck not to be actually upon the spot when the robbery was done which they were committed for, and so none of the persons robbed could swear to him. But it seems as he was taken with the gang, one hard-mouthed countryman swore home to him; and according to the publication they had made, they expected more evidence against him, and for that reason he was kept in hold. However, the offer which was made to him of transportation was made, as I understood, upon the intercession of some great person who pressed him hard to accept of it; and as he knew there were several that might come in against him, I thought his friend was in the right, and I lay at him night and day to delay it no longer. At last, with much difficulty, he gave his consent; and as he was not therefore admitted to transportation in court, and on his petition, as I was, so he found himself under a difficulty to avoid embarking himself, as I had said he might have done; his friend having given security for him that he should transport himself, and not return within the term.45 This hardship broke all my measures, for the steps I took afterwards for my own deliverance were hereby rendered wholly ineffectual, unless I would abandon him, and leave him to go to America by himself, than which he protested he would much rather go directly to the gallows. I must now return to my own case. The time of my being transported was near at hand; my governess, who continued my fast friend, had tried to obtain a pardon, but it could not be done unless with an expense too heavy for my purse, considering that to be left empty, unless I had resolved to return to my old trade, had been worse than transportation, because there I could live, here I could not. The good minister stood very hard on another account to prevent my being transported also; but he was answered that my life had been given me at his first solicitations, and therefore he ought to ask no more. He was sensibly grieved at my going, because, as he said, he feared I should lose the good impressions which a prospect of death had at first made on me, and which were since increased by his instructions; and the pious gentleman was exceedingly concerned on that account. On the other hand, I was not so solicitous about it now, but I concealed my reasons for it from the minister, and to the last he did not know but that I went with the utmost reluctance and affliction. It was in the month of February that I was, with thirteen other convicts, delivered to a merchant that traded to Virginia, on board a ship riding in Deptford Reach.ol The officer of the prison delivered us on board, and the master of the vessel gave a discharge for us. We were for that night clapped under hatches, and kept so close that I thought I should have been suffocated for want of air; and the next morning the ship weighed,om and fell down the river to a place called Bugby's Hole,on which was done, as they told us, by the agreement of the merchant, that all opportunity of escape should be taken from us. However, when the ship came thither and cast anchor, we were permitted to come upon the deck, but not upon the quarter-deck, that being kept particularly for the captain and for passengers. When, by the noise of the men over my head and the motion of the ship, I perceived they were under sail, I was at first greatly surprised, fearing we should go away, and that our friends would not be admitted to see us; but I was easy soon after, when I found they had come to an anchor, and that we had notice given by some of the men that the next morning we should have the liberty to come upon deck, and to have our friends come to see us. All that night I lay upon the hard deck as the other prisoners did, but we had afterwards little cabins allowed for such as had any bedding to lay in them, and room to stow any box or trunk for clothes, and linen if we had it (which might well be put in), for some of them had neither shirt or shift,oo linen or woollen, but what was on their backs, or one farthing of money to help themselves; yet I did not find but they fared well enough in the ship, especially the women, who got money of the seamen for washing their clothes, &c., sufficient to purchase anything they wanted. When the next morning we had the liberty to come upon deck, I asked one of the officers whether I might not be allowed to send a letter on shore to let my friends know where we lay, and to get some necessary things sent to me. This was the boatswain,?Ä? a very civil, courteous man, who told me I should have any liberty that I desired, that he could allow me with safety. I told him I desired no other; and he answered, the ship's boat would go up to London next tide, and he would order my letter to be carried. Accordingly, when the boat went off, the boatswain came and told me the boat was going off, that he went in it himself, and if my letter was ready, he would take care of it. I had prepared pen, ink, and paper beforehand, and had gotten a letter ready directed to my governess, and enclosed another to my fellow-prisoner, which, however, I did not let her know was my husband, not to the last. In that to my governess, I let her know where the ship lay, and pressed her to send me what things she had got ready for me for my voyage. *Petty officer on a merchant ship, in charge of maintenance and other tasks. When I gave the boatswain the letter, I gave him a shilling with it, which I told him was for the charge of a porter, which I had entreated him to send with the letter as soon as he came on shore, that if possible I might have an answer brought back by the same hand, that I might know what was become of my things; "For, sir," says I, "if the ship should go away before I have them, I am undone." I took care, when I gave him the shilling, to let him see I had a little better furnitureop about me than the ordinary prisoners; that I had a purse, and in it a pretty deal of money; and I found that the very sight of it immediately furnished me with very different treatment from what I should otherwise have met with; for though he was courteous indeed before, in a kind of natural compassion to me, as a woman in distress, yet he was more than ordinarily so afterwards, and procured me to be better treated in the ship than, I say, I might otherwise have been; as shall appear in its place. He very honestly delivered my letter to my governess's own hands, and brought me back her answer; and when he gave it me, gave me the shilling again. "There," says he, "there's your shilling again too, for I delivered the letter myself." I could not tell what to say, I was surprised at the thing; but after some pause I said, "Sir, you are too kind; it had been but reasonable that you had paid yourself coach-hire then." "No, no," says he, "I am overpaid. What is that gentlewoman? Is she your sister?" "No, sir," said I, "she is no relation to me, but she is a dear friend, and all the friends I have in the world." "Well," says he, "there are few such friends. Why, she cries after you like a child." "Ay," says I again, "she would give a hundred pounds, I believe, to deliver me from this dreadful condition." "Would she so?" says he. "For half the money I believe I could put you in a way how to deliver yourself." But this he spoke softly that nobody could hear. "Alas! sir," said I, "but then that must be such a deliverance as, if I should be taken again, would cost me my life." "Nay," said he, "if you were once out of the ship, you must look to yourself afterwards; that I can say nothing to." So we dropped the discourse for that time. In the meantime, my governess, faithful to the last moment, conveyed my letter to the prison to my husband, and got an answer to it, and the next day came down herself, bringing me, in the first place, a sea-bed, as they call it, and all its ordinary furniture. She brought me also a sea-chest?Äîthat is, a chest, such as are made for seamen, with all the conveniences in it, and filled with everything almost that I could want; and in one of the corners of the chest, where there was a private drawer, was my bank of money?Äîthat is to say, so much of it as I had resolved to carry with me; for I ordered part of my stock to be left behind, to be sent afterwards in such goods as I should want when I came to settle; for money in that country is not of much use, where all things are bought for tobacco; much more is it a great loss to carry it from hence. But my case was particular; it was by no means proper for me to go without money or goods, and for a poor convict that was to be sold as soon as I came on shore, to carry a cargo of goods would be to have notice taken of it, and perhaps to have them seized; so I took part of my stock with me thus, and left the rest with my governess. My governess brought me a great many other things, but it was not proper for me to appear too well, at least till I knew what kind of a captain we should have. When she came into the ship, I thought she would have died indeed; her heart sank at the sight of me, and at the thoughts of parting with me in that condition; and she cried so intolerably, I could not for a long time have any talk with her. I took that time to read my fellow-prisoner's letter, which greatly perplexed me. He told me it would be impossible for him to be discharged time enough for going in the same ship, and which was more than all, he began to question whether they would give him leave to go in what ship he pleased, though he did voluntarily transport himself; but that they would see him put on board such a ship as they should direct, and that he would be charged upon the captain as other convict prisoners were; so that he began to be in despair of seeing me till he came to Virginia, which made him almost desperate; seeing that, on the other hand, if I should not be there, if any accident of the sea, or of mortality, should take me away, he should be the most undone creature in the world. This was very perplexing, and I knew not what course to take. I told my governess the story of the boatswain, and she was mighty eager with me to treatoq with him; but I had no mind to it, till I heard whether my husband, or fellow-prisoner, so she called him, could be at liberty to go with me or no. At last I was forced to let her into the whole matter, except only that of his being my husband. I told her that I had made a positive agreement with him to go, if he could get the liberty of going in the same ship, and I found he had money. Then I told her what I proposed to do when we came there, how we could plant, settle, and, in short, grow rich without any more adventures; and, as a great secret, I told her we were to marry as soon as he came on board. She soon agreed cheerfully to my going when she heard this, and she made it her business from that time to get him delivered in time, so that he might go in the same ship with me, which at last was brought to pass, though with great difficulty, and not without all the forms of a transported convict, which he really was not, for he had not been tried, and which was a great mortification to him. As our fate was now determined, and we were both on board, actually bound to Virginia, in the despicable quality of transported convicts, destined to be sold for slaves, I for five years, and he under bonds and security not to return to England any more, as long as he lived, he was very much dejected and cast down; the mortification of being brought on board as he was, like a prisoner, piqued him very much, since it was first told him he should transport himself, so that he might go as a gentleman at liberty. It is true he was not ordered to be sold when he came there as we were, and for that reason he was obliged to pay for his passage to the captain, which we were not; as to the rest, he was as much at a loss as a child what to do with himself, but by directions. However, I lay in an uncertain condition full three weeks, not knowing whether I should have my husband with me or no, and therefore not resolved how or in what manner to receive the honest boatswain's proposal, which indeed he thought a little strange.46 At the end of this time, behold my husband came on board. He looked with a dejected, angry countenance; his great heart was swelled with rage and disdain, to be dragged along with three keepers of Newgate, and put on board like a convict, when he had not so much as been brought to a trial. He made loud complaints of it by his friends, for it seems he had some interest; but they got some check in their application, and were told he had had favour enough, and that they had received such an account of him, since the last grant of his transportation, that he ought to think himself very well treated that he was not prosecuted anew. This answer quieted him, for he knew too much what might have happened, and what he had room to expect; and now he saw the goodness of that advice to him, which prevailed with him to accept of the offer of transportation. And after his chagrin at these hell-hounds, as he called them, was a little over, he looked more composed, began to be cheerful, and as I was telling him how glad I was to have him once more out of their hands, he took me in his arms, and acknowledged with great tenderness that I had given him the best advice possible. "My dear," says he, "thou hast twice saved my life; from henceforward it shall be employed for you, and I'll always take your advice." Our first business was to compare our stock. He was very honest to me, and told me his stock was pretty good when he came into the prison, but that living there as he did like a gentleman, and, which was much more, the making of friends and soliciting his case, had been very expensive; and, in a word, all his stock left was ¬£108, which he had about him in gold. I gave him an account of my stock as faithfully, that is to say, what I had taken with me; for I was resolved, whatever should happen, to keep what I had left in reserve; that in case I should die, what I had was enough to give him, and what was left in my governess's hands would be her own, which she had well deserved of me indeed. My stock which I had with me was ¬£246 some odd shillings; so that we had ¬£354 between us, but a worse gotten estate was never put together to begin the world with. Our greatest misfortune as to our stock was that it was in money, an unprofitable cargoor to be carried to the plantations. I believe his was really all he had left in the world, as he told me it was; but I, who had between ¬£700 and ¬£800 in bank when this disaster befell me, and who had one of the faithfullest friends in the world to manage it for me, considering she was a woman of no principles, had still ¬£300 left in her hand, which I had reserved, as above; besides, I had some very valuable things with me, as particularly two gold watches, some small pieces of plate, and some rings?Äîall stolen goods. With this fortune, and in the sixty-first year of my age, I launched out into a new world, as I may call it, in the condition only of a poor convict, ordered to be transported in respite from the gallows. My clothes were poor and mean, but not ragged or dirty, and none knew in the whole ship that I had anything of value about me. However, as I had a great many very good clothes and linen in abundance, which I had ordered to be packed up in two great boxes, I had them shipped on board, not as my goods, but as consigned to my real name in Virginia; and had the bills of loading in my pocket; and in these boxes was my plate and watches, and everything of value, except my money, which I kept by itself in a private drawer in my chest, and which could not be found, or opened, if found, without splitting the chest to pieces. The ship began now to fill; several passengers came on board, who were embarked on no criminal account, and these had accommodations assigned them in the great cabin and other parts of the ship, whereas we, as convicts, were thrust down below, I know not where. But when my husband came on board, I spoke to the boatswain, who had so early given me hints of his friendship. I told him he had befriended me in many things, and I had not made any suitable return to him, and with that I put a guinea into his hand. I told him that my husband was now come on board; that though we were under the present misfortunes, yet we had been persons of a different character from the wretched crew that we came with, and desired to know whether the captain might not be moved to admit us to some conveniences in the ship, for which we would make him what satisfaction he pleased, and that we would gratify him for his pains in procuring this for us. He took the guinea, as I could see, with great satisfaction, and assured me of his assistance. Then he told us he did not doubt but that the captain, who was one of the best-humoured gentlemen in the world, would be easily brought to accommodate us, as well as we could desire, and, to make me easy, told me he would go up the next tide on purpose to speak to him about it. The next morning happening to sleep a little longer than ordinary, when I got up and began to look abroad, I saw the boatswain among the men in his ordinary business. I was a little melancholy at seeing him there, and going forward to speak to him, he saw me, and came towards me, but not giving him time to speak first, I said, smiling, "I doubt, sir, you have forgot us, for I see you are very busy." He returned presently, "Come along with me, and you shall see." So he took me into the great cabin, and there sat a good sort of a gentlemanly man writing, and a great many papers before him. "Here," says the boatswain to him that was a-writing, "is the gentlewoman that the captain spoke to you of." And turning to me, he said, "I have been so far from forgetting your business, that I have been up at the captain's house, and have represented faithfully what you said, of your being furnished with conveniences for yourself and your husband; and the captain has sent this gentleman, who is mate of the ship, down on purpose to show you everything, and to accommodate you to your content, and bid me assure you that you shall not be treated like what you were expected to be, but with the same respect as other passengers are treated." The mate then spoke to me, and not giving me time to thank the boatswain for his kindness, confirmed what the boatswain had said, and added that it was the captain's delight to show himself kind and charitable, especially to those that were under any misfortunes; and with that he showed me several cabins built up, some in the great cabin, and some partitioned off, out of the steerage, but opening into the great cabin, on purpose for passengers, and gave me leave to choose where I would. I chose a cabin in the steerage, in which were very good conveniences to set our chest and boxes, and a table to eat on. The mate then told me that the boatswain had given so good a character of me and of my husband, that he had orders to tell me we should eat with him, if we thought fit, during the whole voyage, on the common terms of passengers; that we might lay in some fresh provisions if we pleased; or if not, he should lay in his usual store, and that we should have share with him. This was very reviving news to me, after so many hardships and afflictions. I thanked him, and told him the captain should make his own terms with us, and asked him leave to go and tell my husband of it, who was not very well, and was not yet out of his cabin. Accordingly I went, and my husband, whose spirits were still so much sunk with the indignity (as he understood it) offered him, that he was scarce yet himself, was so revived with the account I gave him of the reception we were like to have in the ship, that he was quite another man, and new vigour and courage appeared in his very countenance. So true is it, that the greatest spirits, when overwhelmed by their afflictions, are subject to the greatest dejections. After some little pause to recover himself, my husband came up with me, and gave the mate thanks for the kindness which he had expressed to us, and sent suitable acknowledgments by him to the captain, offering to pay him by advance, whatever he demanded for our passage, and for the conveniences he had helped us to. The mate told him that the captain would be on board in the afternoon, and that he would leave all that to him. Accordingly, in the afternoon, the captain came, and we found him the same courteous, obliging man that the boatswain had represented him; and he was so well pleased with my husband's conversation, that, in short, he would not let us keep the cabin we had chosen, but gave us one that, as I said before, opened into the great cabin. Nor were his conditions exorbitant, or the man craving and eager to make a prey of us, but for fifteen guineas we had our whole passage and provisions, ate at the captain's table, and were very handsomely entertained. The captain lay himself in the other part of the great cabin, having let his roundhouse,os as they call it, to a rich planter, who went over with his wife and three children, who ate by themselves. He had some other ordinary passengers, who quartered in the steerage; and as for our old fraternity, they were kept under the hatches, and came very little on the deck. I could not refrain acquainting my governess with what had happened; it was but just that she, who was really concerned for me, should have part in my good fortune. Besides, I wanted her assistance to supply me with several necessaries, which before I was shy of letting anybody see me have; but now I had a cabin, and room to set things in, I ordered abundance of good things for our comfort in the voyage; as brandy, sugar, lemons, &c., to make punch, and treat our benefactor, the captain; and abundance of things for eating and drinking; also a larger bed, and bedding proportioned to it; so that, in a word, we resolved to want for nothing. All this while I had provided nothing for our assistance when we should come to the place, and begin to call ourselves planters; and I was far from being ignorant of what was needful on that occasion; particularly all sorts of tools for the planter's work, and for building; and all kinds of house furniture, which, if to be bought in the country, must necessarily cost double the price. I discoursed that point with my governess, and she went and waited upon the captain, and told him that she hoped ways might be found out for her two unfortunate cousins, as she called us, to obtain our freedom when we came into the country, and so entered into a discourse with him about the means and terms also, of which I shall say more in its place; and after thus sounding the captain, she let him know, though we were unhappy in the circumstance that occasioned our going, yet that we were not unfurnished to set ourselves to work in the country, and were resolved to settle and live there as planters. The captain readily offered his assistance, told her the method of entering upon such business, and how easy, nay, how certain it was for industrious people to recover their fortunes in such a manner. "Madam," says he, "'t is no reproach to any man in that country to have been sent over in worse circumstances than I perceive your cousins are in, provided they do but apply with good judgment to the business of the place when they come there." She then inquired of him what things it was necessary we should carry over with us, and he, like a knowing man, told her thus: "Madam, your cousins first must procure somebody to buy them as servants, in conformity to the conditions of their transportation, and then, in the name of that person, they may go about what they will; they may either purchase some plantations already begun, or they may purchase land of the government of the country, and begin where they please, and both will be done reasonably." She bespoke his favour in the first article, which he promised to her to take upon himself, and indeed faithfully performed it. And as to the rest, he promised to recommend us to such as should give us the best advice, and not to impose upon us, which was as much as could be desired. She then asked him if it would not be necessary to furnish us with a stock of tools and materials for the business of planting; and he said, "Yes, by all means." Then she begged his assistance in that, and told him she would furnish us with everything that was convenient, whatever it cost her. He accordingly gave her a list of things necessary for a planter, which, by his account, came to about fourscore or a hundred pounds. And, in short, she went about as dexterously to buy them as if she had been an old Virginia merchant; only that she bought, by my direction, above twice as much of everything as he had given her a list of. These she put on board in her own name, took his bills of loading for them, and endorsed those bills of loading to my husband, insuring the cargo afterwards in her own name; so that we were provided for all events and for all disasters. I should have told you that my husband gave her all his own stock of ¬£108, which, as I have said, he had about him in gold, to lay out thus, and I gave her a good sum besides; so that I did not break into the stock which I had left in her hands at all, but after all we had near ¬£200 in money, which was more than enough for our purpose. In this condition, very cheerful, and indeed joyful at being so happily accommodated, we set sail from Bugby's Hole to Gravesend,ot where the ship lay about ten days more, and where the captain came on board for good and all. Here the captain offered us a civility which, indeed, we had no reason to expect, namely, to let us go on shore and refresh ourselves, upon giving our words that we would not go from him, and that we would return peaceably on board again. This was such an evidence of his confidence in us that it overcame my husband, who, in a mere principle of gratitude, told him, as he could not in any capacity make a suitable return for such a favour, so he could not think of accepting it, nor could he be easy that the captain should run such a risk. After some mutual civilities, I gave my husband a purse, in which was eighty guineas, and he put it into the captain's hand. "There, captain," says he, "there's part of a pledge for our fidelity; if we deal dishonestly with you on any account, 't is your own." And on this we went on shore. Indeed, the captain had assurance enough of our resolutions to go, for that having made such provision to settle there, it did not seem rational that we would choose to remain here at the peril of life, for such it must have been. In a word, we went all on shore with the captain, and supped together in Gravesend, where we were very merry, stayed all night, lay at the house where we supped, and came all very honestly on board again with him in the morning. Here we bought ten dozen bottles of good beer, some wine, some fowls, and such things as we thought might be acceptable on board. My governess was with us all this while, and went round with us into the Downs,ou as did also the captain's wife, with whom she went back. I was never so sorrowful at parting with my own mother as I was at parting with her, and I never saw her more. We had a fair easterly wind the third day after we came to the Downs, and we sailed from thence the 10th of April. Nor did we touch any more at any place, till being driven on the coast of Ireland by a very hard gale of wind, the ship came to an anchor in a little bay, near a river whose name I remember not, but they said the river came down from Limerick, and that it was the largest river in Ireland.ov Here, being detained by bad weather for some time, the captain, who continued the same kind, good-humoured man as at first, took us two on shore with him again. He did it now in kindness to my husband indeed, who bore the sea very ill, especially when it blew so hard. Here we bought again store of fresh provisions, beef, pork, mutton, and fowls, and the captain stayed to pickle up five or six barrels of beef, to lengthen out the ship's store. We were here not above five days, when the weather turning mild, and a fair wind, we set sail again, and in two-and-forty days came safe to the coast of Virginia. When we drew near to the shore the captain called me to him, and told me that he found by my discourse I had some relations in the place, and that I had been there before, and so he supposed I understood the custom in their disposing the convict prisoners when they arrived. I told him I did not; and that, as to what relations I had in the place, he might be sure I would make myself known to none of them while in the circumstances of a prisoner, and that, as to the rest, we left ourselves entirely to him to assist us, as he was pleased to promise us he would do. He told me I must get somebody in the place to come and buy me as a servant, and who must answer for me to the governor of the country if he demanded me. I told him we should do as he should direct; so he brought a planter to treatow with him, as it were, for the purchase of me for a servant, my husband not being ordered to be sold, and there I was formally sold to him, and went ashore with him. The captain went with us, and carried us to a certain house, whether it was to be called a tavern or not I know not, but we had a bowl of punch there made of rum, &c., and were very merry. After some time, the planter gave us a certificate of discharge, and an acknowledgment of having served him faithfully, and I was free from him the next morning to go whither I would. For this piece of service the captain demanded of me six thousand weight of tobacco, which he said he was accountable for to his freighter, and which we immediately bought for him, and made him a present of twenty guineas besides, with which he was abundantly satisfied. It is not proper to enter here into the particulars of what part of the colony of Virginia we settled in, for divers reasons; it may suffice to mention that we went into the great river of Potomac, the ship being bound thither; and there we intended to have settled at first, though afterwards we altered our minds. The first thing I did of moment after having gotten all our goods on shore, and placed them in a storehouse, which, with a lodging, we hired at the small place or village where we landed; I say, the first thing was to inquire after my mother, and after my brother (that fatal person whom I married as a husband, as I have related at large). A little inquiry furnished me with information that Mrs.?Äî, that is, my mother, was dead; that my brother, or husband, was alive, and, which was worse, I found he was removed from the plantation where I lived, and lived with one of his sons in a plantation just by the place where we landed, and had hired a warehouse. I was a little surprised at first, but as I ventured to satisfy myself that he could not know me, I was not only perfectly easy, but had a great mind to see him if it was possible, without his seeing me. In order to that, I found out by inquiry the plantation where he lived, and with a woman of the place whom I got to help me, like what we call a charwoman, I rambled about towards the place as if I had only a mind to see the country and look about me. At last I came so near that I saw the dwelling-house. I asked the woman whose plantation that was; she said it belonged to such a man, and looking out a little to our right hands, "There," says she, "is the gentleman that owns the plantation, and his father with him." "What are their Christian names?" said I. "I know not," said she, "what the old gentleman's name is, but his son's name is Humphry; and I believe," says she, "the father's is so too." You may guess, if you can, what a confused mixture of joy and fright possessed my thoughts upon this occasion, for I immediately knew that this was nobody else but my own son, by that father she showed me, who was my own brother. I had no mask, but I ruffled my hoods so about my face that I depended upon it that after above twenty years' absence, and withal not expecting anything of me in that part of the world, he would not be able to know me. But I need not have used all that caution, for he was grown dim-sighted by some distemper which had fallen upon his eyes, and could but just see well enough to walk about, and not run against a tree or into a ditch. As they drew near to us I said, "Does he know you, Mrs. Owen?" (so they called the woman). "Yes," she said, "if he hears me speak, he will know me; but he can't see well enough47 to know me or anybody else;" and so she told me the story of his sight, as I have related. This made me secure, and so I threw open my hoods again, and let them pass by me. It was a wretched thing for a mother thus to see her own son, a handsome, comely young gentleman in flourishing circumstances, and durst not make herself known to him, and durst not take any notice of him. Let any mother of children that reads this consider it, and but think with what anguish of mind I restrained myself; what yearnings of soul I had in me to embrace him, and weep over him; and how I thought all my entrails turned within me, that my very bowels moved,48 and I knew not what to do, as I now know not how to express those agonies! When he went from me I stood gazing and trembling, and looking after him as long as I could see him; then sitting down on the grass, just at a place I had marked, I made as if I lay down to rest me, but turned from her, and lying on my face, wept, and kissed the ground that he had set his foot on. I could not conceal my disorder so much from the woman, but that she perceived it, and thought I was not well, which I was obliged to pretend was true; upon which she pressed me to rise, the ground being damp and dangerous, which I did, and walked away. As I was going back again, and still talking of this gentleman and his son, a new occasion of melancholy offered itself, thus. The woman began, as if she would tell me a story to divert me: "There goes," says she, "a very odd tale among the neighbours where this gentleman formerly lived." "What was that?" said I. "Why," says she, "that old gentleman going to England, when he was a young man, fell in love with a young lady there, one of the finest women that ever was seen here, and married her, and brought her over hither to his mother, who was then living. He lived here several years with her," continued she, "and had several children by her, of which the young gentleman that was with him now was one; but after some time, the old gentlewoman, his mother, talking to her of something relating to herself, and of her circumstances in England, which were bad enough, the daughter-in-law began to be very much surprised and uneasy; and, in short, in examining farther into things, it appeared past all contradiction, that she, the old gentlewoman, was her own mother, and that consequently that son was her own brother, which struck the family with horror, and put them into such confusion that it had almost ruined them all. The young woman would not live with him, he for a time went distracted, and at last the young woman went away for England, and has never been heard of since." It is easy to believe that I was strangely affected with this story, but 't is impossible to describe the nature of my disturbance. I seemed astonished at the story, and asked her a thousand questions about the particulars, which I found she was thoroughly acquainted with. At last I began to inquire into the circumstances of the family, how the old gentlewoman, I mean my mother, died, and how she left what she had; for my mother had promised me, very solemnly, that when she died she would do something for me, and leave it so, as that, if I was living, I should, one way or other, come at it, without its being in the power of her son, my brother and husband, to prevent it. She told me she did not know exactly how it was ordered, but she had been told that my mother had left a sum of money, and had tied her plantation for the payment of it,ox to be made good to the daughter, if ever she could be heard of, either in England or elsewhere; and that the trust was left with this son, whom we saw with his father. This was news too good for me to make light of, and you may be sure filled my heart with a thousand thoughts, what course I should take, and in what manner I should make myself known, or whether I should ever make myself known or no. Here was a perplexity that I had not indeed skill to manage myself in, neither knew I what course to take. It lay heavy upon my mind night and day. I could neither sleep nor converse, so that my husband perceived it, wondered what ailed me, and strove to divert me, but it was all to no purpose. He pressed me to tell him what it was troubled me, but I put it off, till at last importuning me continually, I was forced to form a story which yet had a plain truth to lay it upon too. I told him I was troubled because I found we must shift our quarters and alter our scheme of settling, for that I found I should be known if I stayed in that part of the country;oy for that my mother being dead, several of my relations were come into that part where we then was, and that I must either discover myself to them, which in our present circumstances was not proper on many accounts, or remove; and which to do I knew not, and that this it was that made me melancholy. He joined with me in this, that it was by no means proper for me to make myself known to anybody in the circumstances in which we then were; and therefore he told me he would be willing to remove to any part of the country, or even to any other country if I thought fit. But now I had another difficulty, which was, that if I removed to another colony, I put myself out of the way of ever making a due search after those things which my mother had left; again, I could never so much as think of breaking the secret of my former marriage to my new husband; it was not a story would bear telling, nor could I tell what might be the consequences of it: it was impossible, too, without making it public all over the country, as well who I was, as what I now was also. This perplexity continued a great while, and made my spouse very uneasy; for he thought I was not open with him, and did not let him into every part of my grievance; and he would often say he wondered what he had done, that I would not trust him, whatever it was, especially if it was grievous and afflicting. The truth is, he ought to have been trusted with everything, for no man could deserve better of a wife; but this was a thing I knew not how to open to him, and yet having nobody to disclose any part of it to, the burthen was too heavy for my mind; for, let them say what they please of our sex not being able to keep a secret, my life is a plain conviction to me of the contrary; but be it our sex, or the men's sex, a secret of moment should always have a confidant, a bosom friend to whom we may communicate the joy of it, or the grief of it, be it which it will, or it will be a double weight upon the spirits, and perhaps become even insupportable in itself; and this I appeal to human testimony for the truth of. And this is the cause why many times men as well as women, and men of the greatest and best qualities other ways, yet have found themselves weak in this part, and have not been able to bear the weight of a secret joy or of a secret sorrow, but have been obliged to disclose it, even for the mere giving vent to themselves, and to unbend the mind, oppressed with the weights which attended it. Nor was this any token of folly at all, but a natural consequence of the thing; and such people, had they struggled longer with the oppression, would certainly have told it in their sleep, and disclosed the secret, let it have been of what fatal nature soever, without regard to the person to whom it might be exposed. This necessity of nature is a thing which works sometimes with such vehemency in the minds of those who are guilty of any atrocious villainy, such as a secret murder in particular, that they have been obliged to discover it, though the consequence has been their own destruction. Now, though it may be true that the divine justice ought to have the glory of all those discoveries and confessions, yet 't is as certain that Providence, which ordinarily works by the hands of nature, makes use here of the same natural causes to produce those extraordinary effects.49 I could give several remarkable instances of this in my long conversation with crime and with criminals. I knew one fellow that, while I was a prisoner in Newgate, was one of those they called then night-fliers. I know not what word they may have understood it by since, but he was one who by connivance was admitted to go abroad every evening, when he played his pranks, and furnished those honest people they call thief-catchers50 with business to find out the next day, and restore for a reward what they had stolen the evening before.51 This fellow was as sure to tell in his sleep all that he had done, and every step he had taken, what he had stolen, and where, as sure as if he had engaged to tell it waking, and therefore he was obliged, after he had been out, to lock himself up, or be locked up by some of the keepers that had him in fee,oz that nobody should hear him; but, on the other hand, if he had told all the particulars, and given a full account of his rambles and success, to any comrade, any brother thief, or to his employers, as I may justly call them, then all was well, and he slept as quietly as other people. As the publishing this account of my life is for the sake of the just moral of every part of it, and for instruction, caution, warning, and improvement to every reader, so this will not pass, I hope, for an unnecessary digression, concerning some people being obliged to disclose the greatest secrets either of their own or other people's affairs. Under the oppression of this weight, I laboured in the case I have been naming; and the only relief I found for it was to let my husband into so much of it as I thought would convince him of the necessity there was for us to think of settling in some other part of the world; and the next consideration before us was, which part of the English settlements we should go to. My husband was a perfect stranger to the country, and had not yet so much as a geographical knowledge of the situation of the several places; and I, that, till I wrote this, did not know what the word geographical signified, had only a general knowledge from long conversation with people that came from or went to several places; but this I knew, that Maryland, Pennsylvania, East and West Jersey, New York, and New England lay all north of Virginia, and that they were consequently all colder climates, to which, for that very reason, I had an aversion. For that as I naturally loved warm weather, so now I grew into years, I had a stronger inclination to shun a cold climate. I therefore considered of going to Carolina, which is the most southern colony of the English on the continent; and hither I proposed to go, the rather because I might with ease come from thence at any time, when it might be proper to inquire after my mother's effects, and to demand them. With this resolution, I proposed to my husband our going away from where we was, and carrying our effects with us to Carolina, where we resolved to settle; for my husband readily agreed to the first part, viz., that it was not at all proper to stay where we was, since I had assured him we should be known there; and the rest I concealed from him. But now I found a new difficulty upon me. The main affair grew heavy upon my mind still, and I could not think of going out of the country without somehow or other making inquiry into the grand affair of what my mother had done for me; nor could I with any patience bear the thought of going away, and not make myself known to my old husband (brother), or to my child, his son; only I would fain have had it done without my new husband having any knowledge of it, or they having any knowledge of him. I cast about innumerable ways in my thoughts how this might be done. I would gladly have sent my husband away to Carolina, and have come after myself, but this was impracticable; he would not stir without me, being himself unacquainted with the country, and with the methods of settling anywhere. Then I thought we would both go first, and that when we were settled I should come back to Virginia; but even then I knew he would never part with me, and be left there alone. The case was plain; he was bred a gentleman, and was not only unacquainted, but indolent, and when we did settle, would much rather go into the woods with his gun, which they call there hunting,pa and which is the ordinary work of the Indians; I say, he would much rather do that than attend to the natural business of the plantation. These were, therefore, difficulties unsurmountable, and such as I knew not what to do in. I had such strong impressions on my mind about discovering myself to my old husband, that I could not withstand them; and the rather, because it ran in my thoughts, that if I did not while he lived, I might in vain endeavour to convince my son afterward that I was really the same person, and that I was his mother, and so might both lose the assistance and comfort of the relation, and lose whatever it was my mother had left me; and yet, on the other hand, I could never think it proper to discover the circumstances I was in, as well relating to the having a husband with me as to my being brought over as a criminal; on both which accounts it was absolutely necessary to me to remove from the place where I was, and come again to him, as from another place and in another figure. Upon those considerations, I went on with telling my husband the absolute necessity there was of our not settling in Potomac River, that we should presently be made public there; whereas if we went to any other place in the world, we could come in with as much reputation as any family that came to plant; that, as it was always agreeable to the inhabitants to have families come among them to plant, who brought substance with them, so we should be sure of agreeable reception, and without any possibility of a discovery of our circumstances. I told him too, that as I had several relations in the place where we was, and that I durst not now let myself be known to them, because they would soon come to know the occasion of my coming over, which would be to expose myself to the last degree; so I had reason to believe that my mother, who died here, had left me something, and perhaps considerable, which it might be very well worth my while to inquire after; but that this too could not be done without exposing us publicly, unless we went from hence; and then, wherever we settled, I might come, as it were, to visit and to see my brother and nephews, make myself known, inquire after what was my due, be received with respect, and, at the same time, have justice done me; whereas, if I did it now, I could expect nothing but with trouble, such as exacting it by force, receiving it with curses and reluctance, and with all kinds of af fronts, which he would not perhaps bear to see; that in case of being obliged to legal proofs of being really her daughter, I might be at a loss, be obliged to have recourse to England, and, it may be, to fail at last, and so lose it. With these arguments, and having thus acquainted my husband with the whole secret, so far as was needful to him, we resolved to go and seek a settlement in some other colony, and at first Carolina was the place pitched upon. In order to this we began to make inquiry for vessels going to Carolina, and in a very little while got information, that on the other side the bay, as they call it, namely, in Maryland, there was a ship which came from Carolina, loaden with rice and other goods, and was going back again thither. On this news we hired a sloop to take in our goods, and taking, as it were, a final farewell of Potomac River, we went with all our cargo over to Maryland. This was a long and unpleasant voyage, and my spouse said it was worse to him than all the voyage from England, because the weather was bad, the water rough, and the vessel small and inconvenient. In the next place, we were full a hundred miles up Potomac River, in a part they call Westmorland County; and as that river is by far the greatest in Virginia, and I have heard say it is the greatest river in the world that falls into another river, and not directly into the sea, so we had base weather in it, and were frequently in great danger; for though they call it but a river, 't is frequently so broad, that when we were in the middle we could not see land on either side for many leagues together. Then we had the great bay of Chesapeake to cross, which is, where the river Potomac falls into it, near thirty miles broad, so that our voyage was full two hundred miles, in a poor, sorry sloop, with all our treasure, and if any accident had happened to us we might at last have been very miserable; supposing we had lost our goods and saved our lives only, and had then been left naked and destitute, and in a wild, strange place, not having one friend or acquaintance in all that part of the world. The very thoughts of it gives me some horror, even since the danger is past. Well, we came to the place in five days' sailing; I think they call it Philip's Point; and behold when we came thither, the ship bound to Carolina was loaded and gone away but three days before. This was a disappointment; but, however, I, that was to be discouraged with nothing, told my husband that since we could not get passage to Carolina, and that the country we was in was very fertile and good, we would see if we could find out anything for our turn where we was, and that if he liked things we would settle here. We immediately went on shore, but found no conveniences just at that place, either for our being on shore or preserving our goods on shore, but was directed by a very honest Quaker, whom we found there, to go to a place about sixty miles east; that is to say, nearer the mouth of the bay, where he said he lived, and where we should be accommodated, either to plant or to wait for any other place to plant in that might be more convenient; and he invited us with so much kindness that we agreed to go, and the Quaker himself went with us. Here we bought us two servants, viz., an English woman-servant, just come on shore from a ship of Liverpool, and a negro man-servant, things absolutely necessary for all people that pretended to settle in that country. This honest Quaker was very helpful to us, and when we came to the place that he proposed, found us out a convenient storehouse for our goods, and lodging for ourselves and servants; and about two months, or thereabout, afterwards, by his direction, we took up a large piece of land from the government of that country, in order to form our plantation, and so we laid the thoughts of going to Carolina wholly aside, having been very well received here, and accommodated with a convenient lodging till we could prepare things, and have land enough cured, and materials provided for building us a house, all which we managed by the direction of the Quaker; so that in one year's time we had near fifty acres of land cleared, part of it enclosed, and some of it planted with tobacco, though not much; besides, we had garden-ground and corn sufficient to supply our servants with roots and herbs and bread. And now I persuaded my husband to let me go over the bay again, and inquire after my friends. He was the willinger to consent to it now, because he had business upon his hands sufficient to employ him, besides his gun to divert him, which they call hunting there, and which he greatly delighted in; and indeed we used to look at one another, sometimes with a great deal of pleasure, reflecting how much better that was, not than Newgate only, but than the most prosperous of our circumstances in the wicked trade we had been both carrying on. Our affair was now in a very good posture; we purchased of the proprietors of the colony as much land for ¬£35, paid in ready money, as would make a sufficient plantation to us as long as we could either of us live; and as for children, I was past anything of that kind. But our good fortune did not end here. I went, as I have said, over the bay, to the place where my brother, once a husband, lived; but I did not go to the same village where I was before, but went up another great river, on the east side of the river Potomac, called Rappahannoc River, and by this means came on the back of his plantation, which was large, and by the help of a navigable creek, that ran into the Rappahannoc, I came very near it. I was now fully resolved to go up point-blank to my brother (husband), and to tell him who I was; but not knowing what temper I might find him in, or how much out of temper, rather, I might make him by such a rash visit, I resolved to write a letter to him first, to let him know who I was, and that I was come not to give him any trouble upon the old relation, which I hoped was entirely forgot, but that I applied to him as a sister to a brother, desiring his assistance in the case of that provision which our mother, at her decease, had left for my support, and which I did not doubt but he would do me justice in, especially considering that I was come thus far to look after it. I said some very tender, kind things in the letter about his son, which I told him he knew to be my own child, and that as I was guilty of nothing in marrying him, any more than he was in marrying me, neither of us having then known our being at all related to one another, so I hoped he would allow me the most passionate desire of once seeing my own and only child, and of showing something of the infirmities of a mother in preserving a violent affection for him, who had never been able to retain any thought of me one way or other. I did believe that, having received this letter, he would immediately give it to his son to read, his eyes being, I knew, so dim that he could not see to read it; but it fell out better than so, for as his sight was dim so he had allowed his son to open all letters that came to his hand for him, and the old gentleman being from home, or out of the way when my messenger came, my letter came directly to my son's hand, and he opened and read it. He called the messenger in, after some little stay, and asked him where the person was who gave him that letter. The messenger told him the place, which was about seven miles off; so he bid him stay, and ordering a horse to be got ready, and two servants, away he came to me with the messenger. Let any one judge the consternation I was in when my messenger came back and told me the old gentleman was not at home, but his son was come along with him, and was just coming up to me. I was perfectly confounded, for I knew not whether it was peace or war, nor could I tell how to behave; however, I had but a very few moments to think, for my son was at the heels of the messenger, and coming up into my lodgings, asked the fellow at the door something. I suppose it was, for I did not hear it, which was the gentlewoman that sent him; for the messenger said, "There she is, sir;" at which he comes directly up to me, kisses me, took me in his arms, embraced me with so much passion that he could not speak, but I could feel his breast heave and throb like a child, that cries, but sobs, and cannot cry it out. I can neither express or describe the joy that touched my very soul when I found, for it was easy to discover that part, that he came not as a stranger, but as a son to a mother, and indeed a son who had never before known what a mother of his own was; in short, we cried over one another a considerable while, when at last he broke out first. "My dear mother," says he, "are you still alive? I never expected to have seen your face." As for me, I could say nothing a great while. After we had both recovered ourselves a little, and were able to talk, he told me how things stood. He told me he had not showed my letter to his father, or told him anything about it; that what his grandmother left me was in his hands, and that he would do me justice to my full satisfaction; that as to his father, he was old and infirm both in body and mind; that he was very fretful and passionate, almost blind, and capable of nothing; and he questioned whether he would know how to act in an affair which was of so nice a nature as this; and that therefore he had come himself, as well to satisfy himself in seeing me, which he could not restrain himself from, as also to put it into my power to make a judgment, after I had seen how things were, whether I would discover myself to his father or no. This was really so prudently and wisely managed, that I found my son was a man of sense, and needed no direction from me. I told him I did not wonder that his father was as he had described him, for that his head was a little touched before I went away; and principally his disturbance was because I could not be persuaded to live with him as my husband, after I knew that he was my brother; that as he knew better than I what his father's present condition was, I should readily join with him in such measures as he would direct; that I was indifferent as to seeing his father, since I had seen him first, and he could not have told me better news than to tell me that what his grandmother had left me was entrusted in his hands, who, I doubted not, now he knew who I was, would, as he said, do me justice. I inquired then how long my mother had been dead, and where she died, and told so many particulars of the family, that I left him no room to doubt the truth of my being really and truly his mother. My son then inquired where I was, and how I had disposed myself. I told him I was on the Maryland side of the bay, at the plantation of a particular friend, who came from England in the same ship with me; that as for that side of the bay where he was, I had no habitation. He told me I should go home with him, and live with him, if I pleased, as long as I lived; that as to his father, he knew nobody, and would never so much as guess at me. I considered of that a little, and told him, that though it was really no little concern to me to live at a distance from him, yet I could not say it would be the most comfortable thing in the world to me to live in the house with him, and to have that unhappy object always before me, which had been such a blow to my peace before; that though I should be glad to have his company (my son), or to be as near him as possible, yet I could not think of being in the house where I should be also under constant restraint for fear of betraying myself in my discourse, nor should I be able to refrain some expressions in my conversing with him as my son, that might discover the whole affair, which would by no means be convenient. He acknowledged that I was right in all this. "But then, dear mother," says he, "you shall be as near me as you can." So he took me with him on horseback to a plantation, next to his own, and where I was as well entertained as I could have been in his own. Having left me there, he went away home, telling me he would talk of the main business the next day; and having first called me his aunt, and given a charge to the people, who it seems were his tenants, to treat me with all possible respect, about two hours after he was gone, he sent me a maid-servant and a negro boy to wait on me, and provisions ready dressed for my supper; and thus I was as if I had been in a new world, and began almost to wish that I had not brought my Lancashire husband from England at all. However, that wish was not hearty neither, for I loved my Lancashire husband entirely, as I had ever done from the beginning; and he merited it as much as it was possible for a man to do; but that by the way. The next morning my son came to visit me again, almost as soon as I was up. After a little discourse, he first of all pulled out a deerskin bag, and gave it me, with five-and-fifty Spanish pistolespb in it, and told me that was to supply my expenses from England, for though it was not his business to inquire, yet he ought to think I did not bring a great deal of money out with me, it not being usual to bring much money into that country. Then he pulled out his grandmother's will, and read it over to me, whereby it appeared that she left a plantation on York River to me, with the stock of servants and cattle upon it, and had given it in trust to this son of mine for my use, whenever he should hear of me, and to my heirs, if I had any children, and in default of heirs, to whomsoever I should by will dispose of it; but gave the income of it, till I should be heard of, to my said son; and if I should not be living, then it was to him, and his heirs. This plantation, though remote from him, he said he did not let out, but managed it by a head-clerk, as he did another that was his father's, that lay hard by it, and went over himself three or four times a year to look after it. I asked him what he thought the plantation might be worth. He said, if I would let it out, he would give me about ¬£60 a year for it; but if I would live on it, then it would be worth much more, and he believed would bring me in about ¬£150 a year. But seeing I was likely either to settle on the other side the bay, or might perhaps have a mind to go back to England, if I would let him be my steward he would manage it for me, as he had done for himself, and that he believed he should be able to send me as much tobacco from it as would yield me about ¬£100 a year, sometimes more. This was all strange news to me, and things I had not been used to; and really my heart began to look up more seriously than I think it ever did before, and to look with great thankfulness to the hand of Providence, which had done such wonders for me, who had been myself the greatest wonder of wickedness perhaps that had been suffered to live in the world. And I must again observe, that not on this occasion only, but even on all other occasions of thankfulness, my past wickedness and abominable life never looked so monstrous to me, and I never so completely abhorred it, and reproached myself with it, as when I had a sense upon me of Providence doing good to me, while I had been making those vile returns on my part. But I leave the reader to improve these thoughts, as no doubt they will see cause, and I go on to the fact. My son's tender carriage and kind offers fetched tears from me, almost all the while he talked with me. Indeed, I could scarce discourse with him but in the intervals of my passion; however, at length I began, and expressing myself with wonder at my being so happy to have the trust of what I had left, put into the hands of my own child, I told him, that as to the inheritance of it, I had no child but him in the world, and was now past having any if I should marry, and therefore would desire him to get a writing drawn, which I was ready to execute, by which I would, after me, give it wholly to him and to his heirs. And in the meantime, smiling, I asked him what made him continue a bachelor so long. His answer was kind and ready, that Virginia did not yield any great plenty of wives, and that since I talked of going back to England, I should send him a wife from London. This was the substance of our first day's conversation, the pleasantest day that ever passed over my head in my life, and which gave me the truest satisfaction. He came every day after this, and spent great part of his time with me, and carried me about to several of his friends' houses, where I was entertained with great respect. Also I dined several times at his own house, when he took care always to see his half-dead father so out of the way that I never saw him, or he me. I made him one present, and it was all I had of value, and that was one of the gold watches, of which, I said, I had two in my chest, and this I happened to have with me, and gave it him at his third visit. I told him I had nothing of any value to bestow but that, and I desired he would now and then kiss it for my sake. I did not, indeed, tell him that I stole it from a gentlewoman's side, at a meeting-house in London. That's by the way. He stood a little while hesitating, as if doubtful whether to take it or no. But I pressed it on him, and made him accept it, and it was not much less worth than his leather pouch full of Spanish gold; no, though it were to be reckoned as if at London, whereas it was worth twice as much there. At length he took it, kissed it, told me the watch should be a debt upon him that he would be paying as long as I lived. A few days after, he brought the writings of gift and the scrivenerpc with him, and I signed them very freely, and delivered them to him with a hundred kisses; for sure nothing ever passed between a mother and a tender, dutiful child with more affection. The next day he brings me an obligation under his hand and seal, whereby he engaged himself to manage the plantation for my account, and to remit the produce to my order wherever I should be; and withal, obliged himself to make up the produce ¬£100 a year to me. When he had done so, he told me that as I came to demandpd before the crop was off, I had a right to the produce of the current year; and so he paid ¬£100 in Spanish pieces of eight,pe and desired me to give him a receipt for it as in full for that year, ending at Christmas following; this being about the latter end of August. I stayed here above five weeks, and indeed had much ado to get away then. Nay, he would have come over the bay with me, but I would by no means allow it. However, he would send me over in a sloop of his own, which was built like a yacht, and served him as well for pleasure as business. This I accepted of, and so, after the utmost expressions both of duty and affection, he let me come away, and I arrived safe in two days at my friend's the Quaker's. I brought over with me, for the use of our plantation, three horses, with harness and saddles, some hogs, two cows, and a thousand other things, the gift of the kindest and tenderest child that ever woman had. I related to my husband all the particulars of this voyage, except that I called my son my cousin; and first, I told him that I had lost my watch, which he seemed to take as a misfortune; but then I told him how kind my cousin had been, that my mother had left me such a plantation, and that he had preserved it for me, in hopes some time or other he should hear from me; then I told him that I had left it to his management, that he would render me a faithful account of its produce; and then I pulled him out the ¬£100 in silver, as the first year's produce; and then pulling out the deerskin purse with the pistoles, "And here, my dear," says I, "is the gold watch." Says my husband, "So is Heaven's goodness sure to work the same effects, in all sensible minds, where mercies touch the heart!" lifted up both his hands, and with an ecstasy of joy, "What is God a-doing," says he, "for such an ungrateful dog as I am!" Then I let him know what I had brought over in the sloop, besides all this; I mean the horses, hogs, and cows, and other stores for our plantation; all which added to his surprise, and filled his heart with thankfulness; and from this time forward I believe he was as sincere a penitent and as thoroughly a reformed man as ever God's goodness brought back from a profligate, a highwayman, and a robber. I could fill a larger history than this with the evidences of this truth, but that I doubt that part of the story will not be equally diverting as the wicked part. But this is to be my own story, not my husband's. I return therefore to my own part. We went on with our own plantation, and managed it with the help and direction of such friends as we got there, and especially the honest Quaker, who proved a faithful, generous, and steady friend to us; and we had very good success, for having a flourishing stock to begin with, as I have said, and this being now increased by the addition of ¬£150 sterling in money, we enlarged our number of servants, built us a very good house, and cured every year a great deal of land. The second year I wrote to my old governess, giving her part with us of the joy of our success, and ordered her how to lay out the money I had left with her, which was ¬£250 as above, and to send it to us in goods, which she performed with her usual kindness and fidelity, and all this arrived safe to us. Here we had a supply of all sorts of clothes, as well for my husband as for myself; and I took especial care to buy for him all those things that I knew he delighted to have; as two good long wigs, two silver-hilted swords, three or four fine fowling-pieces,pf a fine saddle with holsters and pistols very handsome, with a scarlet cloak; and, in a word, everything I could think of to oblige him, and to make him appear, as he really was, a very fine gentleman. I ordered a good quantity of such household stuff as we wanted, with linen for us both. As for myself, I wanted very little of clothes or linen, being very well furnished before. The rest of my cargo consisted in iron-work of all sorts, harness for horses, tools, clothes for servants, and woollen-cloth, stuffs, serges, stockings, shoes, hats, and the like, such as servants wear; and whole piecespg also, to make up for servants, all by direction of the Quaker; and all this cargo arrived safe, and in good condition, with three women-servants, lusty wenches, which my old governess had picked up for me, suitable enough to the place, and to the work we had for them to do, one of which happened to come double, having been got with child by one of the seamen in the ship, as she owned afterwards, before the ship got so far as Gravesend; so she brought us out a stout boy, about seven months after our landing. My husband, you may suppose, was a little surprised at the arriving of this cargo from England; and talking with me one day after he saw the particulars, "My dear," says he, "what is the meaning of all this? I fear you will run us too deep in debt: when shall we be able to make returns for it all?" I smiled, and told him that it was all paid for; and then I told him that, not knowing what might befall us in the voyage, and considering what our circumstances might expose us to, I had not taken my whole stock with me, that I had reserved so much in my friend's hands, which now we were come over safe, and settled in a way to live, I had sent for, as he might see. He was amazed, and stood awhile telling upon his fingers, but said nothing. At last he began thus: "Hold, let's see," says he, telling upon his fingers still, and first on his thumb; "there's ¬£246 in money at first, then two gold watches, diamond rings, and plate," says he, upon the forefinger. Then upon the next finger, "Here's a plantation on York River, ¬£100 a year, then ¬£150 in money, then a sloop-load of horses, cows, hogs, and stores;" and so on to the thumb again. "And now," says he, "a cargo cost ¬£250 in England, and worth here twice the money." "Well," says I, "what do you make of all that?" "Make of it?" says he. "Why, who says I was deceived when I marrieda wife in Lancashire? I think I have married a fortune, and a very good fortune too," says he. In a word, we were now in very considerable circumstances, and every year increasing; for our new plantation grew upon our hands insensibly,ph and in eight years which we lived upon it, we brought it to such a pitch that the produce was at least ¬£300 sterling a year: I mean, worth so much in England. After I had been a year at home again, I went over the bay to see my son, and to receive another year's income of my plantation; and I was surprised to hear, just at my landing there, that my old husband was dead, and had not been buried above a fortnight. This, I confess, was not disagreeable news, because now I could appear as I was, in a married condition; so I told my son before I came from him that I believed I should marry a gentleman who had a plantation near mine; and though I was legally free to marry, as to any obligation that was on me before, yet that I was shy of it lest the plot should some time or other be revived, and it might make a husband uneasy. My son, the same kind, dutiful, and obliging creature as ever, treated me now at his own house, paid me my hundred pounds, and sent me home again loaded with presents. Some time after this, I let my son know I was married, and invited him over to see us, and my husband wrote a very obliging letter to him also inviting him to come and see him; and he came accordingly some months after, and happened to be there just when my cargo from England came in, which I let him believe belonged all to my husband's estate, and not to me. It must be observed that when the old wretch, my brother (husband) was dead, I then freely gave my husband an account of all that affair, and of this cousin, as I called him before, being my own son by that mistaken match. He was perfectly easy in the account, and told me he should have been easy if the old man, as we called him, had been alive. "For," said he, "it was no fault of yours, nor of his; it was a mistake impossible to be prevented." He only reproached him with desiring me to conceal it, and to live with him as a wife, after I knew that he was my brother; that, he said, was a vile part. Thus all these little difficulties were made easy, and we lived together with the greatest kindness and comfort imaginable. We are now grown old; I am come back to England, being almost seventy years of age, my husband sixty-eight, having performed much more than the limited terms of my transportation; and now, notwithstanding all the fatigues and all the miseries we have both gone through, we are both in good heart and health. My husband remained there some time after me to settle our affairs, and at first I had intended to go back to him, but at his desire I altered that resolution, and he is come over to England also, where we resolve to spend the remainder of our years in sincere penitence for the wicked lives we have lived. WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1683. ENDNOTES Author's Preface 1 (p. 3) concealed: Defoe is referring to secret histories, a popular genre of writing in the eighteenth century in which well-known people and events were masked in remote and allegorical plots. Often, keys were published separately to reveal true names, places, and events. 2 (p. 3) Newgate: This London prison was notorious for the hardened criminal offenders incarcerated there and the harsh conditions in which they were held. Defoe often writes in what he calls a "warm" manner on Newgate because he spent five months there himself in 1703 for writing a seditious pamphlet. He thinks of the place as the veritable nadir of human experience, and Moll compares Newgate to "an emblem of hell itself, and a kind of an entrance into it" (p. 249). 3 (p. 6) transported: To reduce overcrowding in England's prisons, convicted felons (usually facing a sentence of execution) were sometimes offered the choice of transport abroad to the colonies, where they went into indentured servitude for a period of five to seven years. Volume I 4 (p. 11) Moll Flanders: "Moll" is often used to denote a woman who is a criminal or consorts with gangsters or, in some circumstances, is a prostitute. Flanders is a kind of fine lace from the Netherlands that, at the time of the novel, was often under restrictive tariff in England to protect local manufacturers. 5 (p. 12) parish: Under a series of comprehensive "poor laws" in England, individual parishes throughout the country bore responsibility for the care of orphans and indigents within their precincts. Newgate Prison was not under parish auspices, so no public institution was responsible for caring for the infant Moll. 6 (p. 22) Mrs. Betty: At the time of the novel "Mrs." was a generic address for a woman, whether married or unmarried, and "Betty" was a generic name for a chambermaid. 7 (p. 31) bred to law: The laws of primogeniture in England passed estates in their entirety to firstborn sons, so the younger sons of families often took to the law and other professions. In this case, the younger brother assumes that though his family would prefer that he marry a woman who would bring him a substantial sum as a dowry, there is less concern about his choice of a wife than there is for the choice his older brother will make. 8 (p. 35) all along told me I was his wife: Parties who agreed that they were married had legal marital status until the mid-eighteenth century, when new laws mandated official legal and religious sanction for marriage. 9 (p. 39) I entreated him ... pull bis sword out and kill me: In protesting her lover's approval of her marriage to his younger brother, Moll is nearly as histrionic as the character Dido, queen of Carthage, when she speaks of her implied marriage to the warrior Aeneas in the epic poem Aeneid, by first-century B.C. Roman poet Virgil. 10 (p. 50) "Answer, and answer not, says Solomon": The reference is to the Bible, Proverbs 26:4-5: "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him. / Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit" (King James Version). 11 (p. 57) We saw all the rarities at Oxford: Defoe is referring to the many antiquarian objects housed in the college collections. 12 (p. 58) sponging-house: This is a kind of holding cell for potential inhabitants of debtor's prison, usually run by the local bailiff or officer of a parish court. 13 (p. 58) caused the rest of his goods to be removed into the Mint: The reference is to a section in the London district of Southwark that was an established, legal sanctuary for debtors and bankrupts; originally it was the site in London for the minting of English coin. 14 (p. 60) Lord Rochester's mistress ... to have the scandal of a whore without the joy: Defoe had an unusual predilection for the poems of that most notorious of Restoration rakes, John Wilmot, second earl of Rochester (1647-1680), many of whose poems were of a lascivious nature. These lines are from his "Song to Phillis": "Dye with the scandal of a Whore, / and never know the joy." 15 (p. 67) "A woman ne?Äòer so ruined... her undoer, man": Moll slightly misquotes "Letter from Artemiza in the Country to Chloe in the Town," by the poet John Wilmot, second earl of Rochester: "A Woman's ne'r so wretched but she can / Be still revenged on her undoer, man." (See also endnote 14.) 16 (p. 80) There are more thieves and rogues made by... Newgate: Defoe felt, as have many after him, that miserable conditions in prisons bred more crime than the threat of prison sentences deterred. 17 (p. 88) for my mother's opinion was, bury the whole thing entirely: Moll's mother here takes a position very similar to that of Jocasta in Oedipus Tyrannos, by fifth-century B.C. Greek playwright Sophocles. When Jocasta realizes that her husband is also her son, she claims that since we actually dream of such things, we can learn to endure them. Obviously Freud had recourse to Jocasta's words for his theory of the Oedipus complex. He might well have had recourse to the words of Moll's mother as well. 18 (p. 101) "Are the Virginia ships taken by the French?": Moll is voicing a timely concern. This sequence of the novel is set during the English Civil Wars, when French privateers were a persistent threat to English merchant vessels sailing the trading lanes of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. 19 (p. 115) indifferent monitor: Moll is saying that she is not a responsible judge of her own moral values. This phrase generated a brilliant essay on the psychology of Defoe's novel by Maximillian Novak ("?ÄòUnweary'd Traveller' and ?ÄòIndifferent Monitor': Openness and Complexity in Moll Flanders," in Realism, Myth, and History in Defoe's Fiction; see "For Further Reading"). 20 (p. 116) goldsmith ... broke: Goldsmiths were moneylenders and money changers who functioned as unregulated bankers. By "broke" Moll means he went bankrupt. 21 (p. 129) the family were all Roman Catholics: After Henry VIII broke off from Rome, the English were never sympathetic to the Catholic religion and were especially antagonistic during the years of the Revolution and the Protectorate, in which Moll's story is for the most part set. The law forbade open Catholic worship in England or the holding of state offices by Catholics. On the whole, Defoe's own views were tolerant on the religious side of the question but leery when Catholicism, as it so often did, moved into open or covert political support for the reimposition of a Catholic monarchy in England. 22 (p. 130) married by a priest. Though it was illegal to practice Catholicism during this time, a marriage performed by a Roman Catholic priest would be recognized as legal. 23 (p. 144) a much brighter history ... than any I ever saw in print: Defoe planned sequels to Moll Flanders in which he would elaborate on the stories of Jemmy and Moll's governess in crime, Mother Midnight. But he produced neither; nor did he produce a promised sequel to his novel Roxana, which ends in the midst of a vicious crime. 24 (p. 147) "to prevent the parish impertinences": The parish bears responsibility for orphans and indigents, and "impertinences" in this case refers to Moll's fear that the parish will wrest the child from her because of the unseemly circumstances of her pregnancy. 25 (p. 148) "I have given security to the parish... under my roof": That is, Mother Midnight has made arrangements to satisfy the parish officers about any and all activities in her house, including the birth of newborns. 26 (p. 165) consent of friends should be wanted: If a young lady was to be married underage, she needed the consent of a family member or a guardian for the ceremony. 27 (p. 166) "we are not tied by the canons to marry nowhere but in the church": The church usually set the hours and places for marriages, though the upper classes could have the rules bent for them with the timely exercise of influence and funds. Volume II 28 (p. 184) Moll Cutpurse: Mary Frith (a.k.a. Moll Cutpurse; 1584?-1659) was one of the most infamous thieves of seventeenth-century England. Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker depict her life in their play The Roaring Girle, Or Moll Cut-Purse (1611). Pickpockets of the period worked by severing the belt or strap that held a purse near the body and were often called "cutpurses." 29 (p. 187) They both pleaded their bellies... quick with child. The women are claiming to be pregnant, because a pregnant woman's sentence was stayed up to and beyond her delivery. This was the case with Moll's mother at the beginning of the novel. 30 (p. 196) to dress me up in men's clothes: Mary Frith, the thief also known as Moll Cutpurse, often dressed as a man. Mother Midnight here suggests that Moll Flanders do the same, to avoid detection. 31 (p. 199) Lord Mayor. The Lord Mayor of London holds a largely ceremonial office with some judicial and regulatory power. 32 (p. 205) a merry time of the year, and Bartholomew Fair was begun: This boisterous London fair, which began annually on August 24, had its start in the twelfth century. 33 (p. 219) Bluecoat Hospital: Christ's Hospital, a charity school, was also known as "Bluecoat Hospital" because the students there wore long blue gowns. Moll's route here puts her in the same unsavory neighborhoods she has long wandered as a criminal. 34 (p. 222) "are you a justice of peace or a constable?": The question refers to the fact that a constable does not determine guilt or innocence but merely detains the suspect upon request of the victim. If the charges are plausible, the justice of the peace then holds the criminal or arranges bails. 35 (p. 242) French pistoles... ducatoons, orrix-dollars: French pistoles are gold coins worth nearly a pound sterling; Dutch ducatoons are silver coins worth six shillings or so; Dutch rix-dollars are silver coins worth between two and four shillings. 36 (p. 246) alderman of the city: An alderman is a legislative member of the City of London borough council, serving as peace officer for local disputes. There was, at the time of the novel, no citywide police force or court system serving the whole of London. Each borough or parish handled its own criminal and civic cases. 37 (p. 250) score: Prisoners were charged for board and for perks, and those with sufficient funds could purchase what they needed, bribe those useful to them, and live in some style while imprisoned. 38 (p. 252) forfeit his recognizance: The linen merchant is concerned that if he were to show compassion toward Moll he would be contradicting his original statements against her (his recognizance). 39 (p. 255) Hounslow Heath: Highwaymen reconnoitered at this notorious spot, which at the time of the novel was about 10 miles outside the city, and plied their trade on the road. 40 (p. 255) press-yard: This part of the Newgate complex was originally used for torture but eventually became desirable, since it contained better living quarters that prisoners could attain by paying fees to prison officials. John Gay's wonderful comic extravaganza for the stage, The Beggar's Opera (1728), set in Newgate, reveals just how the prison system of bribery and corruption worked in early-eighteenth-century London. 41 (p. 256) Hind, or Whitney, or the Golden Farmer: These men were legendarily notorious thieves. James Hind, a highwayman, was brutally executed in 1652 during the Protectorate; James Whitney, also a highwayman, was executed in 1694; and William Davis, a former farmer known for paying his debts with gold coin (hence, "the Golden Farmer"), was executed in 1689. 42 (p. 261) I know not how to express them: Defoe often has his characters claim that they do not have the power to record the deep impression that experiences, usually of a spiritual or frightful nature, make upon them. Robinson Crusoe has something of the same reaction on his island after his fever-induced nightmare of the avenging angel: He claims not to have the words to explain the impression made on him by the vision. 43 (p. 262) extort confessions from prisoners: The chaplain alludes, in part, to what were known as Newgate biographies, confessions sold for religious purposes as the last words of those about to be executed. 44 (p. 266) petition for transportation: Transportation (removal to the colonies as an indentured servant) was not an automatic option, especially for capital crimes. But given the crowding of prisons and the need for indentured service in the colonies, transportation was likely for first-time offenders. 45 (p. 277) term: The term in Jemmy's case appears to be life, and though he will not become an indentured servant, he apparently gives up any option of returning to England "as long as he lived" (p. 281). 46 (p. 281) However... a little strange: This paragraph seems to be an amended version of the text that Defoe delivered to his printer as a substitution for the two paragraphs beginning "Then I told her..." and "She soon agreed..." (p. 281). Unfortunately, the printer did not delete the two paragraphs as Defoe requested; he simply kept them and added the new material. We have included it all, and the reader is welcome to work out the logic to his or her satisfaction. 47 (p. 290) can't see well enough: Moll's brother/husband seems to be almost blind, reminiscent of the blindness that Oedipus inflicts upon himself for the unnatural crimes of killing his father and marrying his mother in Oedipus Tyrannos, by fifth-century B.C. Greek playwright Sophocles. 48 (p. 290) my very bowels moved: In the psychology of the day, still medieval in origin, the bowels were considered to be the seat of the emotions, a holdover echoed in the clich?(c) "gut feeling." 49 (p. 293) Providence... makes use here of the same natural causes to produce those extraordinary effects: Defoe is always more comfortable dealing with the manifestation of God's providence in the world if he can attribute the effects to causes that are also natural or psychological. The experiences of Robinson Crusoe on his island are instances of Defoe's thinking in this vein: There are natural causes on the island for every event Crusoe describes as providential. 50 (p. 294) thief-catchers: The reference is to informers who identify thieves to the authorities after having taken part in the crime themselves. 51 (p. 294) restore for a reward what they had stolen the evening before: The network of crime in London included so-called "fences" who would return them to the theft victim for a price. Moll's governess, Mother Midnight, does this in the episode involving the baronet (see p. 214). APPENDIX: "ON THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN" by Daniel Defoe Behind the comic aspect of Moll Flanders lies serious thought on the disenfranchisement of women in eighteenth-century England and its resultant social problems. Defoe's short essay "On the Education of Women" (1719), written three years before Moll Flanders, illustrates the author's impressively progressive views on this subject. Standing out from contemporaneous thought and public opinion on the subject, "On the Education of Women" outlines a convincing set of reasons why the education of women is not only fair and just, but beneficial to all members of society. This seminal essay, which is reprinted below, offers readers a glimpse into the fertile mind that produced so delicious and edifying a work of fiction as Moll Flanders. I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women. We reproach the sex every day with folly and impertinence; while I am confident, had they the advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves. One would wonder, indeed, how it should happen that women are conversible at all; since they are only beholden to natural parts, for all their knowledge. Their youth is spent to teach them to stitch and sew or make baubles. They are taught to read, indeed, and perhaps to write their names, or so; and that is the height of a woman's education. And I would but ask any who slight the sex for their understanding, what is a man (a gentleman, I mean) good for, that is taught no more? I need not give instances, or examine the character of a gentleman, with a good estate, or a good family, and with tolerable parts; and examine what figure he makes for want of education. The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond; and must be polished, or the lustre of it will never appear. And ?Äòtis manifest, that as the rational soul distinguishes us from brutes; so education carries on the distinction, and makes some less brutish than others. This is too evident to need any demonstration. But why then should women be denied the benefit of instruction? If knowledge and understanding had been useless additions to the sex, GOD Almighty would never have given them capacities; for he made nothing needless. Besides, I would ask such, What they can see in ignorance, that they should think it a necessary ornament to a woman? or how much worse is a wise woman than a fool? or what has the woman done to forfeit the privilege of being taught? Does she plague us with her pride and impertinence? Why did we not let her learn, that she might have had more wit? Shall we upbraid women with folly, when 'tis only the error of this inhuman custom, that hindered them from being made wiser? The capacities of women are supposed to be greater, and their senses quicker than those of the men; and what they might be capable of being bred to, is plain from some instances of female wit, which this age is not without. Which upbraids us with Injustice, and looks as if we denied women the advantages of education, for fear they should vie with the men in their improvements.... [They] should be taught all sorts of breeding suitable both to their genius and quality. And in particular, Music and Dancing; which it would be cruelty to bar the sex of, because they are their darlings. But besides this, they should be taught languages, as particularly French and Italian: and I would venture the injury of giving a woman more tongues than one. They should, as a particular study, be taught all the graces of speech, and all the necessary air of conversation; which our common education is so defective in, that I need not expose it. They should be brought to read books, and especially history; and so to read as to make them understand the world, and be able to know and judge of things when they hear of them. To such whose genius would lead them to it, I would deny no sort of learning; but the chief thing, in general, is to cultivate the understandings of the sex, that they may be capable of all sorts of conversation; that their parts and judgements being improved, they may be as profitable in their conversation as they are pleasant. Women, in my observation, have little or no difference in them, but as they are or are not distinguished by education. Tempers, indeed, may in some degree influence them, but the main distinguishing part is their Breeding. The whole sex are generally quick and sharp. I believe, I may be allowed to say, generally so: for you rarely see them lumpish and heavy, when they are children; as boys will often be. If a woman be well bred, and taught the proper management of her natural wit, she proves generally very sensible and retentive. And, without partiality, a woman of sense and manners is the finest and most delicate part of GOD's Creation, the glory of Her Maker, and the great instance of His singular regard to man, His darling creature: to whom He gave the best gift either God could bestow or man receive. And 'tis the sordidest piece of folly and ingratitude in the world, to withhold from the sex the due lustre which the advantages of education gives to the natural beauty of their minds. A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature without comparison. Her society is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments, her person is angelic, and her conversation heavenly. She is all softness and sweetness, peace, love, wit, and delight. She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish, and the man that has such a one to his portion, has nothing to do but to rejoice in her, and be thankful. On the other hand, Suppose her to be the very same woman, and rob her of the benefit of education, and it follows?Äî If her temper be good, want of education makes her soft and easy.Her wit, for want of teaching, makes her impertinent and talkative.Her knowledge, for want of judgement and experience, makes her fanciful and whimsical.If her temper be bad, want of breeding makes her worse; and she grows haughty, insolent, and loud.If she be passionate, want of manners makes her a termagant and a scold, which is much at one with Lunatic.If she be proud, want of discretion (which still is breeding) makes her conceited, fantastic, and ridiculous.And from these she degenerates to be turbulent, clamorous, noisy, nasty, the devil!... The great distinguishing difference, which is seen in the world between men and women, is in their education; and this is manifested by comparing it with the difference between one man or woman, and another. And herein it is that I take upon me to make such a bold assertion, That all the world are mistaken in their practice about women. For I cannot think that GOD Almighty ever made them so delicate, so glorious creatures; and furnished them with such charms, so agreeable and so delightful to mankind; with souls capable of the same accomplishments with men: and all, to be only Stewards of our Houses, Cooks, and Slaves. Not that I am for exalting the female government in the least: but, in short, I would have men take women for companions, and educate them to be fit for it. A woman of sense and breeding will scorn as much to encroach upon the prerogative of man, as a man of sense will scorn to oppress the weakness of the woman. But if the women's souls were refined and improved by teaching, that word would be lost. To say, the weakness of the sex, as to judgment, would be nonsense; for ignorance and folly would be no more to be found among women than men. I remember a passage, which I heard from a very fine woman. She had wit and capacity enough, an extraordinary shape and face, and a great fortune: but had been cloistered up all her time; and for fear of being stolen, had not had the liberty of being taught the common necessary knowledge of women's affairs. And when she came to converse in the world, her natural wit made her so sensible of the want of education, that she gave this short reflection on herself: "I am ashamed to talk with my very maids," says she, "for I don't know when they do right or wrong. I had more need go to school, than be married." I need not enlarge on the loss the defect of education is to the sex; nor argue the benefit of the contrary practice. 'Tis a thing will be more easily granted than remedied. This chapter is but an Essay at the thing: and I refer the Practice to those Happy Days (if ever they shall be) when men shall be wise enough to mend it. INSPIRED BY MOLL FLANDERS William Hogarth (1697-1764) was an extremely popular painter and engraver in eighteenth-century England, and Moll Flanders contributed in no small part to his success. After a modest early career, Hogarth decided to present A Harlot's Progress as woodcuts (1731-1732) that could be mass-produced and sold to individuals inexpensively. The series shows the rise and fall of a young country girl named Moll Hackabout; for this character Hogarth took inspiration from Defoe's heroine, from numerous lurid media accounts of prostitution and philandering, and from John Bunyan's religious allegory The Pilgrim's Progress (1678, 1684), the most widely read book in England at the time, except the Bible. A Harlot's Progress soon became famous, and after many unscrupulous salesmen made their own copies of Hogarth's woodcuts, the artist successfully lobbied to pass the first copyright bill in England pertaining to engravings. The first engraving shows Moll's arrival in the city and her acquaintance with the kindly-appearing Mother Elizabeth Needham, the madam of a well-known brothel. Things progress with reasonable success for Moll in the second engraving, which shows the heroine ushering her handsome lover out of the bedroom before he is noticed by the rich older man who has invited Moll to live in his apartment. Moll's downfall begins in the third panel, in which her new apartment is unkempt and inexpensively furnished, and Moll shows signs of incipient venereal disease. The fourth image finds her in prison, the fifth on her deathbed, and the sixth in a coffin, her toddler son dressed in mourning on the floor beside it. In their tone and overall message, the images bear great resemblance to Defoe's work: Slightly silly and irreverent, they nonetheless depict the treacherous states in which some women found themselves when stripped of more conventional options for survival. Hogarth followed his popular series with A Rake's Progress (1735), a less sympathetic portrayal of a young man who squanders two fortunes, his father's and his wife's. Moll has also been an appealing subject for filmmakers, though none have done Defoe justice. Director Terence Young's The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965) features the beautiful Kim Novak, who sports a daringly low neckline throughout the film. This comic, bawdy sex-romp was an unsuccessful attempt to capitalize on the success of the Academy Award-winning Tom Jones (1963), based on the 1749 novel by Henry Fielding. David Attwood's The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders (1996), which appeared on British television and was later released on DVD, is a four-hour bodice-ripper that includes no fewer than seventeen sex scenes; some critics found these to be gratuitous, and a small controversy followed the premiere of the series. The film stars Alex Kingston as Moll and Diana Rigg as a memorably funny Mrs. Golightly. The realistic sets and costumes also rate star billing. Pen Densham's Moll Flanders (1996) takes more liberties with Defoe's novel than any of its counterparts, which is saying quite a bit?Äîvirtually no details from the novel make the transition to film, except for the name of the heroine, played by Robin Wright Penn, and those of some of the other characters. Indeed, poor Moll isn't even particularly memorable in this telling?Äîit's Stockard Channing who steals the show, as Mrs. Allworthy, the bordello madam. COMMENTS & QUESTIONS In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout the work's history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders through a variety of points of view and bring about a richer understanding of this enduring work. Comments JONATHAN SWIFT [Defoe] is indeed so grave, sententious, dogmatical a rogue, that there is no enduring him. ?Äîfrom A Letter Concerning the Sacramental Test (1708) CHARLES LAMB While all ages and descriptions of people hang delighted over the Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and shall continue to do so we trust while the world lasts, how few comparatively will bear to be told, that there exist other fictitious narratives by the same writer?Äîfour of them at least of no inferior interest, except what results from a less felicitous choice of situation. Roxana?ÄîSingleton?ÄîMoll Flanders?ÄîColonel Jack?Äîare all genuine offspring of the same father. They bear the veritable impress of De Foe. An unpractised midwife that would not swear to the nose, lip, forehead, and eye, of every one of them! They are in their way as full of incident, and some of them every bit as romantic; only they want the uninhabited Island, and the charm that has bewitched the world, of the striking solitary situation.... The narrative manner of De Foe has a naturalness about it beyond that of any other novel or romance writer. His fictions have all the air of true stories. It is impossible to believe, while you are reading them, that a real person is not narrating to you every where nothing but what really happened to himself. To this, the extreme homeliness of their style mainly contributes. We use the word in its best and heartiest sense?Äîthat which comes home to the reader. ?Äîfrom Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel De Foe, by Walter Wilson (1830) WALTER WILSON The Story of Moll Flanders, although seriously told, and abounding in just reflections upon the danger of an habitual course of wickedness, is a book after all, that cannot be recommended for indiscriminate perusal. The scenes it unfolds are such as must be always unwelcome to a refined and well-cultivated mind; whilst with respect to others, it is to be feared that those who are pre-disposed to the oblique paths of vice and dishonesty, will be more alive to the facts of the story, than to the moral that is suspended to it. The life of a courtezan, however carefully told, if told faithfully, must contain much matter unfit to be presented to a virtuous mind. Moll Flanders is one of a low description; and gliding into the occupation of a shop-lifter, she became an adept in all the arts of her profession. The first part of her story renders her an object of pity, as the latter part of it does of respect; but the intermediate spaces are filled up by matters of a forbidding nature; and whatever lessons the whole may be calculated to afford to persons in a similar situation, it may be feared that they will weigh less with the obtuse and the profligate, than their dreams of present advantage. Those who take delight in exploring the annals of Newgate, without the moral, may here find the like scenes with the moral pointed. It is to the credit of De Foe, that he nowhere administers to the vicious taste of his reader, but takes every occasion of holding up vice to abhorrence. ?Äîfrom Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel De Foe (1830) WILLIAM HAZLITT We do not think a person brought up and trammelled all his life in the strictest notions of religion and morality, and looking at the world, and all that was ordinarily passing in it, as little better than a contamination, is, a priori, the properest person to write novels: it is going out of his way?Äîit is ?Äòmeddling with the unclean thing.' Extremes meet, and all extremes are bad. According to our author's overstrained Puritanical notions, there were but two choices, God or the Devil?ÄîSinners and Saints?Äîthe Methodist meeting or the Brothel?Äîthe school of the press-yard of Newgate, or attendance on the refreshing ministry of some learned and pious dissenting Divine. As the smallest falling off from faith, or grace, or the most trifling peccadillo, was to be reprobated and punished with the utmost severity, no wonder that the worst turn was given to every thing; and that the imagination having once overstepped the formidable line, gave a loose to its habitual nervous dread, by indulging in the blackest and most frightful pictures of the corruptions incident to human nature. It was as well (in the cant phrase) ?Äòto be in for a sheep as a lamb,' as it cost nothing more?Äîthe sin might at least be startling and uncommon; and hence we find, in this style of writing, nothing but an alternation of religious horrors and raptures, (though these are generally rare, as being a less tempting bait,) and the grossest scenes of vice and debauchery: we have either saintly, spotless purity, or all is rotten to the core. How else can we account for it, that all Defoe's characters (with one or two exceptions for form's sake) are of the worst and lowest description?Äîthe refuse of the prisons and the stews?Äîthieves, prostitutes, vagabonds, and pirates?Äîas if he wanted to make himself amends for the restraint under which he had laboured ?Äòall the fore-end of his time' as a moral and religious character, by acting over every excess of grossness and profligacy by proxy! How else can we comprehend that he should really think there was a salutary moral lesson couched under the history of Moll Flanders? ... We may, nevertheless, add, for the satisfaction of the inquisitive reader, that Moll Flanders is utterly vile and detestable: Mrs. Flanders was evidently born in sin. The best parts are the account of her childhood, which is pretty and affecting; the fluctuation of her feelings between remorse and hardened impenitence in Newgate; and the incident of her leading off the horse from the inn-door, though she had no place to put it in after she had stolen it. This was carrying the love of thieving to an ideal pitch, and making it perfectly disinterested and mechanical. ?Äîfrom Edinburgh Review (January 1830) LESLIE STEPHEN De Foe... may be said to have stumbled almost unconsciously into novel-writing. He was merely aiming at true stories, which happened not to be true. But accidentally, or rather unconsciously, he could not help presenting us with a type of curious interest; for he necessarily described himself and the readers whose tastes he understood and shared so thoroughly. ?Äîfrom Hours in a Library (1892) VIRGINIA WOOLF The advocates of women's rights would hardly care, perhaps, to claim Moll Flanders and Roxana among their patron saints; and yet it is clear that Defoe not only intended them to speak some very modern doctrines upon the subject, but placed them in circumstances where their peculiar hardships are displayed in such a way as to elicit our sympathy. Courage, said Moll Flanders, was what women needed, and the power to "stand their ground"; and at once gave practical demonstration of the benefits that would result. ?Äîfrom The Common Reader (1925) Questions 1. Does Defoe convince the reader that in Moll Flanders we are hearing the voice of a woman? Are there reflections, turns of phrase, emphases, judgments, and attitudes that are convincingly those of a woman? Explain the author's success or failure in capturing the voice of a woman.2. Do we ever see around Moll as we would see around a narrator in a novel by Vladimir Nabokov? That is, do we know more about her from her words than she knows herself? Does the reader see aspects of her unconscious that she is psychologically incapable of understanding herself?3. Is Moll one of those cases about which you would say, "To understand is to forgive"? Is she to be condemned or exonerated, and to what degree in either case?4. Would Defoe, do you think, be sympathetic to modern feminism? How do the pro-female sentiments in Moll Flanders and in "On the Education of Women" hold up in the context of contemporary issues for women? FOR FURTHER READING Biography and Correspondence Backscheider, Paula R. Daniel Defoe: His Life. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. An impressive compilation of all the extant archival material on Defoe's complicated and often mysterious life. Healy, George, ed. The Letters of Daniel Defoe. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955. The letters contain, among other things, firsthand accounts of Defoe's spying activities in Scotland. Novak, Maximillian E. Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. The best biography of Defoe as a thinker and writer. Novak virtually lives inside Defoe's head and understands his intellectual and aesthetic resources as does no other biographer or critic. Background Studies Alter, Robert. Rogue's Progress: Studies in the Picaresque Novel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964. Important study of the mode and means of picaresque fiction. Faller, Lincoln B. Turned to Account: The Forms and Function of Criminal Biography in Late Seventeenth- and Early-Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Expertly sets the background contexts for Moll Flanders and describes a range of criminal biography available to readers. Hunter, Paul. Before Novels: Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990. Indispensable study of the fictional landscape prior to Defoe and after him. Richetti, John. Popular Fiction Before Richardson: Narrative Patterns, 1700-1739. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. A pioneering book on the variety of fiction in the literary marketplace in the early eighteenth century. Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957. Crucial study on the evolution of the novel form in England and its relation to formal realism. Critical Studies Backscheider, Paula R. Moll Flanders: The Making of a Criminal Mind. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990. A thorough review of the major issues in the novel. Blewett, David. Defoe's Art of Fiction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979. An excellent general study of Defoe's fiction. Elliott, Robert C., ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Moll Flanders: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970. A useful and various compilation of modern critical material on the novel. Faller, Lincoln B. Crime and Defoe: A New Kind of Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Applies Faller's extensive work on criminality in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries directly to Defoe's writings. Hunter, J. Paul. The Reluctant Pilgrim. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966. A landmark study on the religious, confessional, and conversion narrative impulses in Defoe's fiction. Kay, Carol. Political Constructions: Defoe, Richardson, and Sterne in Relation to Hobbes, Hume, and Burke. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988. Contains a sophisticated chapter on Moll as a social and political woman. McKillop, Alan Dugald. The Early Masters of English Fiction. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1956. Contains a first-rate essay on Moll. Novak, Maximillian E. Realism, Myth, and History in Defoe's Fiction. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983. Novak has written a number of books on Defoe, but this one contains an expansion of a famous essay, "?ÄòUnweary'd Traveller' and ?ÄòIndifferent Monitor': Openness and Complexity in Moll Flanders," on pp. 71-98. The essay is among the most subtle explorations of the language and psychology of Defoe's fictional style. Pollak, Ellen. Incest and the English Novel, 1684-1814. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. A shrewd chapter on Moll and incest; Pollak's analysis touches brilliantly on a wealth of other topics in the novel as well. Richetti, John. Defoe's Narratives: Situations and Structures. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. One of the best critical assessments of the way Defoe embodies cultural ideas in fiction. Shinagel, Michael. Defoe and Middle-class Gentility. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968. A compelling study of a matter of primary concern to Defoe in most of his narratives and in many of his other works on class and culture. Starr, G. A. Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965. A study of one of Defoe's sub-genres, spiritual confession. Van Ghent, Dorothy. The English Novel: Form and Function. New York: Rinehart, 1953. Still one of the strongest readings of Moll in the critical literature. Woolf, Virginia. "Defoe." In The Common Reader. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1925, pp. 89-97. A rich reading of Defoe's narratives (and Moll in particular) by a critic who fully understands Defoe's talents as a novelist. Bibliography Moore, John Robert. A Checklist of the Writing of Daniel Defoe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960. Moore may be overgenerous in his attributions, but he provides a sense of the extraordinary range of subjects Defoe engaged. Novak, Maximillian E. "Daniel Defoe." In The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature: 1660-1800, edited by George Watson. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1971, pp. 882-918. Novak is more judicious than Moore in ascribing works to Defoe. a Reveals herself, though the word could also be interpreted as implying that she puts on a false show. b Editing and expurgating. c Taste. d The meaning drawn from a passage as it applies to life. e Purged. f Warning. g To come. h For centuries, London's principal court for criminal proceedings; Newgate Prison was located next door. i The gallows steps and the hanging noose. j Name for institutions that housed the orphaned, the ill, the insane, and even the criminal. k Linen fabric. l One of London's central markets. m The sentences of pregnant women were postponed until and somewhat beyond delivery. n Town about 50 miles northeast of London, in the county of Essex. o Take a position as a household servant. p Wool yarn. q By sewing. r Scheme or plan. s Headpieces of lace. t Refined. u Scorned; disdained. v In the mid-seventeenth century a guinea was worth 20 shillings, or one pound. w Agreement. x Counted. y Neckband. z Defoe pretends to conceal a prominent townsperson's name. aa Covering to protect or disguise the face. ab Village close to London on the eastern road out of the city. ac Strategies or schemes. ad Consternation. ae Meetings, with a decided sexual overtone. af Delusions. ag Small coin that had been discontinued and was worthless. ah Since beauty attracts potential husbands, Robin speaks of it in terms of property. ai Teasing. aj Trivialize. ak The name plays upon the eponymous naming of characters in so many seventeenth-century stage comedies. al Confused. am Divert. an Passage recorded in John Ray's A Collection of English Proverbs (1678). ao Suspect. ap Circumstance. aq Behaved. ar Broached. as Conniving trap. at According to prescribed methods of military attack. au The part of an estate that can pass down through the woman's line. av Consideration. aw Not willingly, as a staked bear baited by dogs. ax Virgin. ay Eager, or filled. az Drunk. ba Intercourse. bb Improved financially. bc Conveniently; beneficially. bd Well treated, with marriage as the goal. be Look good and graceful bearing a sword. bf Attendant who rides the lead horse on the left. bg Part of clerical garb worn around the neck. bh City about 60 miles northeast of London. bi Dandy. bj Serious. bk Civil writ for the seizure of goods. bl Meaning "where I was not known." bm Self-reproaches. bn Petty officers on a merchant ship, in charge of maintenance and other tasks. bo Remain unclaimed or unsold. bp Beneficial. bq With haughtiness and arrogance. br Aware. bs People to perform a function; in this case, gossips. bt Made the representation to the women that they could not proceed as they wished. bu Neighborhood just east of the Tower of London. bv Lacked. bw Also called Redriff; a London neighborhood on the south bank of the Thames. bx Scorned. by Resort. bz Above the need to account for his character. ca Contradicted. cb Particular; careful. cc The expression refers to death by hanging. cd Impure material. ce Revealed. cf Limited restitution upon forfeiture of money owed. cg Flows by the original Virginia colony at Yorktown. ch Militia. ci Branded as a transported criminal on the inside of the hand. cj Winning the sympathy of. ck Temperament. cl Condemned. cm Stroke. cn Called upon; commanded. co Tactic. cp Defoe continues to pretend to keep real names secret. cq Emotional outbursts; the name derives from the rhapsodic poets of ancient Greece. cr Until death. cs Verification. ct Compromise. cu Pestered. cv Broaching. cw Prodded. cx Signature. cy Discredit. cz Small shot. da Terms of the letter. db Distracted; manic. dc With a rope. dd Moderately. de On the southern coast of Ireland in County Cork. df Cracked the main mast. dg Seaport southwest of London. dh Associate in business matters. di Adding to her reserves. dj Spa city west of London famous for its hot springs. dk Temptations; traps. dl Autumn. dm Sexually illicit. dn House of sexual liaisons, if not actual prostitution. do Reasons for reproof dp Sexual relations. dq Particular. dr Truly mad, as compared to the moderate distemper of Moll's brother/husband. ds Enrich. dt Lack. du Restricted. dv Up two flights from the main floor. dw Brought up the subject with. dx Disgusted. dy Spend carefully. dz Supply his food. ea Small town about 15 miles southwest of Bath. eb Bed on which a mattress filled with straw is laid across wooden pallets. ec But for. ed Town about 30 miles north of Bath. ee Happenstance; fortune. ef More friends than lovers. eg Referring to her spotless moral behavior. eh Meaning too close to breaking the Seventh Commandment, which condemns adultery. ei Rule. ej Self-reproaches. ek Sexual relations. el The name is a pun, since "Cleave" is slang for a loose woman. em Neighborhood in west London on the north bank of the Thames. en Town about 40 miles west of London. eo Unintentional. ep Violated. eq London neighborhood later made famous by early-twentieth-century writer Virginia Woolf and her circle, the so-called Bloomsbury Group. er Allowed to. es Inflammation of the lung cavity; often accompanies pneumonia. et Employ eu Remainder. ev Out of bed and moving. ew Outside and about. ex Expressions; attitudes. ey Repentance. ez As is; without stipulations. fa In our situations. fb Represented; made claim. fc Stock. fd Silver serving sets and utensils. fe Applying heavy makeup, usually over a white base. ff Announced; printed up as a notice. fg From England's northern shires. fh Accountings; receipts. fi Miscounted. fj Agent who would handle the financial transactions; but the implication is "husband." fk Not exhibiting a personal stake in the matter. fl Apology. fm Complicated, troublesome. fn Put out public proclamations renouncing any debts she rings up under his name. fo A jest, but with the implication of marriage as a comic ending. fp In the event that. fq More receptive to his offer. fr Reached his central point. fs Northern shire just below Yorkshire. ft Improve. fu Subsequent narration. fv Paid for. fw Town 20 miles east of Liverpool. fx Estate. fy Carriage. fz In eighteenth-century locution, one's person is one's property. ga Part of his estate that she could pass on through her heirs. gb Protective tactics. gc Town in the west of England, close to the Welsh border. gd Rocky outcropping across the River Mersey from Liverpool. ge Main disembarkation point in Wales for sea voyages to Ireland. gf Defoe is anachronistic: The Bank of England was not founded until 1694. gg Commanded. gh Basis. gi Horses, carriage, and liveried footmen. gj Large city in central England. gk Loot. gl Intimate. gm Made love. gn Take up as a highwayman. go Town about 35 miles northwest of London. gp Handling of affairs. gq Hospital and house of correction in London. gr Requiring the most finesse; difficult to effect. gs Guarantee of support, either personal or financial. gt Fever. gu Had objections to. gv Contemporary slang for midwife and bawd. gw Heavy, dark thoughts. gx Buildings were then identified by hanging insignias rather than by numbers. gy Aware. gz The theater district of Drury Lane was known for its traffic in prostitution. ha Detest. hb For the good. hc Preliminary finding for divorce. hd Reveal. he Old lady. hf Kind of anxiety believed to be caused by bad air flow within the body's organs. hg Imagination. hh Town about 20 miles north of London. hi Deeply; worrisomely hj Troubling. hk Cheaper mode of transportation carrying freight as well as passengers. hl It is unclear whether Moll means Stone Place in Cheshire or the more likely town of Stone in Staffordshire. hm Town in Buckinghamshire about 50 miles northwest of London. hn Town very close to Stony-Stratford. ho Ordered. hp Out. hq Not in one's right mind. ?Ä°Rough leather dyed green. hr Moll seems to be omitting several of her lovers in this count. hs Worry. ht Prayer book of the Anglican Church. hu Contrived concern; all expression and no substance. hv Bows made of ribbon. hw Headpiece of linen lace originally made with bone bobbins. hx Secretive. hy Opposite. hz Warnings shouted by a pursing crowd. ia Local townsfolk assisting the constable. ib The moment in the narrative that follows when Moll tests the accuracy of her proposition. ic Limited; not speculative. id Carriage, horses, and liveried servants. ie Vital organs. if Moved out of. ig From the Bible (Proverbs 30:8-9): "Give me neither poverty nor riches ... lest I be poor, and steal" (King James Version). ih Market street in London near the Royal Exchange. ii Alter. ij Neighborhood on the River Thames, then one of the worst in central London. ik Small bowl. il In an unsafe district near the center of London; in the passage that follows Moll trolls some of the most dangerous parts of the city. im Grounds of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, in the Smithfield area of London. in Reluctant toward. io In the financial district of central London, near the Royal Exchange. ip Glossy silk. iq Separate. ir Profit. is London neighborhood north of the Thames and east of the center. ?à·Foresight. it Strategic decision. iu Not in particular need of money. iv Set her up as a prostitute. iw Moll goes into the booth without hesitation. ix Need. iy Finessed. iz Cloth and fabric district of London near St. Paul's Cathedral. ja Paid employee. jb White cotton fabric. jc Pardon, sometimes general, extended by a judge of a circuit court. jd Pumping water. je Selling information to authorities. jf Quality linen paper. jg Rough handling upon apprehension. jh Import restrictions had been imposed to protect local lace manufacturers. ji Who would sell the Flanders lace on the black market. jj Officer of the court; in this case, he is on the take. jk Set new terms. jl Fairly. jm Revealed their whereabouts for a price to other black marketers. jn Place for Dissenters, or Protestants who did not conform to the doctrines of the Church of England, to meet for worship; Defoe himself was a Dissenter. jo Pattern; literally, the thread that leads one out of a labyrinth. jp Provides the clinching case. jq A brief look. jr Caught red-handed. js Right on her heels. jt Commit themselves to appear as prosecution witnesses. ju Consistent in its terms (even if a lie). jv On horseback. jw Foresight. jx Upset her. jy Room where lace is sold. jz For centuries, London's principal court for criminal proceedings; Newgate Prison was located next door. ka Tab, or account. kb Suffered an ill turn. kc Trade. kd Covered walks, arcades. ke Gaming houses or booths. kf Notorious location for prostitutes. kg Thoroughly. kh Men of fashion wore full wigs in Restoration England. ki Gateway separating the area of the Strand from the old City of London. kj Disgustingly excessive. kk From the Bible (Proverbs 7:22-23). kl Bearing. km Syphilis. kn Benefit; a plus. ko Waistband pocket in gentlemen's trousers. kp Rank of honor, entitling a commoner to the official title "Sir." kq Once a village northwest of London, now a well-to-do section of the city. kr Presentation. ks Forwardly. kt Extort money. ku Took a great chance in terms of contracting a venereal disease. kv Concern. kw Sedan chair borne on poles by two carriers. kx No charge. ky Predisposed; persuaded. kz He did not maintain Moll as a mistress. la Dispute. lb Of common cloth. lc Once a town north of London, now a borough of the city. ld First thing to pop into her head. le Stratford, Bow, and Cheston were stops on the coach lines out of the city. lf Ships trading at English coastal ports. lg Containers for goods; a hamper is a wicker box. lh Invoices and freight numbers. li Rough linen fabric. lj Unit of measurement approximating a yard. lk High-quality glasses made with fine flint. ll Rows; misunderstandings. lm In this instance, sneak thieves. ln Lifted wares. lo Speak, with the implication of bargaining. lp Full-time agent of the courts, and often a thug. lq Grain broker. lr The general law of the land. ls Unusually. lt Mourning clothes worn after the first year of widowhood that are less stark than those worn initially. lu Represented. lv Sum paid to obtain temporary release but forfeited if the journeyman were to fail to appear for the execution of the sentence. lw Court for Middlesex County in the City of London. lx Unscrupulous lawyer who picks up clients by the wayside. ly Generate more heat for a lawsuit. lz Wore accessories. ma Anger. mb Neat; not slovenly. mc Barmen. md Biweekly London journal of public and official notices. me Consorted. mf Stamping device for imprinting images on coins. mg Diwy up their take with a fourth party. mh Riverfront district east of the Tower of London. mi The New Exchange, a popular seventeenth-century shopping venue. mj Package. mk Fashionable park in Westminster near the Houses of Parliament. ml Pall Mall, a fashionable street along the northern border of St. James's Park. mm In step. mn Barracks near Whitehall Palace. mo Market district in central London. mp Bet. mq Dice are rolled from inside a small box. mr Rambling or traveling; better road conditions existed in summer months. ms Spa towns in Kent and Surrey, respectively. mt Autumn fairs in the north and east of England, respectively. mu Trick. mv Town in Suffolk, north and east of London. mw Another town in Suffolk. mx Tipsy. my Successfully. mz Large passenger vessel heading to Ipswich, a town in East Suffolk. na Boat that makes regular freight, mail, and passenger runs between two ports of call. nb Soap balls. nc Head. nd Within. ne Stations to hire riding horses. nf Some explanation. ng The hanging gallows at Tyburn, near London's Hyde Park. nh Ironic slang for Newgate Prison. ni Sentence of death. nj Defoe noted that this was a reference to the bell at St. Sepulchre's Church, which tolls upon execution day. nk The chaplain, who, as in this instance, served both the prisoners and the authorities. nl Incapable of speech. nm Moll was born in Newgate Prison. nn In a heightened state. no By local citizens. np Of great reputation. nq Try his hand at highway robbery. nr Hanged. ns Indictment. nt Cloth. nu Revealed themselves. nv St. Mary of Bethlehem, hospital for the insane in London. nw Postings for execution. nx Death row at Newgate Prison. ny Presiding judge in Moll's case. nz Delay in execution of the sentence. oa Slander. ob Cheered. oc One of the four main wings of Newgate Prison. od Lacked. oe Moll, and Defoe, are wrong here: Two witnesses are necessary only in prosecution of treason. of He has been frying bigger criminal fish. og Unique. oh Those who supply and feed cattle or sheep herds. oi Moll, and Defoe, must mean Oxfordshire, because that is where Burford Fair was held. ?Ä°Town in the northwest of England. oj Equanimity. ok Money for passage. ol At anchor in the harbor at Deptford, near the conjunction of the Thames and the River Ravensbourne. om Raised anchor. on Cove on the River Thames near Greenwich. oo Loose dress. op Accoutrements. oq Deal. or Money was worth less than goods in the tidewater colonies of America. os Large cabin on the upper deck near the stern of the ship, often used by a ship's officers. ot On the River Thames about 20 miles southeast of London. ou Open coastal waters off Kent. ov The Shannon. ow Deal. ox Secured her plantation to cover payment of the funds entailed. oy Interchangeable with colony at this time of American history. oz In their employ. pa In England dogs pursue the quarry in recreational hunting, so the notion of a man going into the woods in search of prey is novel to Moll. pb French gold coins worth slightly less than a British pound. pc One employed to write out legal contracts and notices. pd Present her claim. pe Spanish coins marked with the figure "eight" and worth about 4¬? shillings. pf Rifles for bird shooting. pg Lengths of cloth. ph Imperceptibly. I Go to Sea I WAS BORN in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen who settled first at Hull. He got a good estate by merchandise and, leaving off his trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual corruption of words in England we are now called, nay, we call ourselves, and write our name ''Crusoe,'' and so my companions always called me. I had two elder brothers, one of which was lieutenant-colonel to an English regiment of foot in Flanders, formerly commanded by the famous Colonel Lockhart, and was killed at the battle near Dunkirk against the Spaniards; what became of my second brother I never knew, any more than my father or mother did know what was become of me. Being the third son of the family, and not bred to any trade, my head began to be filled very early with rambling thoughts. My father, who was very ancient, had given me a competent share of learning, as far as house education and a country free school generally goes, and designed me for the law; but I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea; and my inclination to this led me so strongly against the will, nay, the commands, of my father, and against all the entreaties and persuasions of my mother and other friends that there seemed to be something fatal in that propension of nature tending directly to the life of misery which was to befall me. My father, a wise and grave man, gave me serious and excellent counsel against what he foresaw was my design. He called me one morning into his chamber, where he was confined by the gout, and expostulated very warmly with me upon this subject. He asked me what reasons more than a mere wandering inclination I had for leaving my father' house and my native country, where I might be well introduced, and had a prospect of raising my fortune by application and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure. He told me it was for men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me, or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found by long experience was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind. He told me I might judge of the happiness of this state by this one thing, viz., that this was the state of life which all other people envied; that kings have frequently lamented the miserable consequences of being born to great things, and wished they had been placed in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave his testimony to this as the just standard of true felicity, when he prayed to have neither poverty nor riches. He bade me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay, they were not subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses either of body or mind, as those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and extravagances on one hand, or by hard labour, want of necessaries, and mean or insufficient diet on the other hand, bring distempers upon themselves by the natural consequences of their way of living; that the middle station of life was calculated for all kind of virtues, and all kind of enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune; that temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle station of life; that this way men went silently and smoothly through the world, and comfortably out of it, not embarrassed with the labours of the hands or of the head, not sold to the life of slavery for daily bread, or harassed with perplexed circumstances, which rob the soul of peace and the body of rest; not enraged with the passion of envy, or secret burning lust of ambition for great things; but in easy circumstances sliding gently through the world, and sensibly tasting the sweets of living, without the bitter, feeling that they are happy, and learning by every day' experience to know it more sensibly. After this, he pressed me earnestly, and in the most affectionate manner, not to play the young man, nor to precipitate myself into miseries which nature and the station of life I was born in seemed to have provided against; that I was under no necessity of seeking my bread; that he would do well for me, and endeavour to enter me fairly into the station of life which he had been just recommending to me; and that if I was not very easy and happy in the world, it must be my mere fate or fault that must hinder it, and that he should have nothing to answer for, having thus discharged his duty in warning me against measures which he knew would be to my hurt. In a word, that as he would do very kind things for me if I would stay and settle at home, as he directed, so he would not have so much hand in my misfortunes as to give me any encouragement to go away. And to close all, he told me, I had my elder brother for an example, to whom he had used the same earnest persuasions to keep him from going into the Low Country wars, but could not prevail, his young desires prompting him to run into the army, where he was killed; and though he said he would not cease to pray for me, yet he would venture to say to me that if I did take this foolish step, God would not bless me, and I would have leisure hereafter to reflect upon having neglected his counsel, when there might be none to assist in my recovery. I observed in this last part of his discourse, which was truly prophetic, though I suppose my father did not know it to be so himself; I say, I observed the tears run down his face very plentifully, especially when he spoke of my brother who was killed; and that when he spoke of my having leisure to repent, and none to assist me, he was so moved that he broke off the discourse, and told me his heart was so full he could say no more to me. I was sincerely affected with this discourse, as indeed who could be otherwise? and I resolved not to think of going abroad any more, but to settle at home according to my father' desire. But alas! a few days wore it all off; and in short, to prevent any of my father' further importunities, in a few weeks after, I resolved to run quite away from him. However, I did not act so hastily neither as my first heat of resolution prompted, but I took my mother, at a time when I thought her a little pleasanter than ordinary, and told her that my thoughts were so entirely bent upon seeing the world that I should never settle to anything with resolution enough to go through with it, and my father had better give me his consent than force me to go without it; that I was now eighteen years old, which was too late to go apprentice to a trade, or clerk to an attorney; that I was sure, if I did, I should never serve out my time, and I should certainly run away from my master before my time was out, and go to sea; and if she would speak to my father to let me go one voyage abroad, if I came home again and did not like it, I would go no more, and I would promise by a double diligence to recover that time I had lost. This put my mother into a great passion. She told me she knew it would be to no purpose to speak to my father upon any such subject; that he knew too well what was my interest, to give his consent to anything so much for my hurt, and that she wondered how I could think of any such thing, after such a discourse as I had had with my father, and such kind and tender expressions as she knew my father had used to me; and that, in short, if I would ruin myself, there was no help for me; but I might depend I should never have their consent to it; that for her part she would not have so much hand in my destruction; and I should never have it to say, that my mother was willing when my father was not. Though my mother refused to move it to my father, yet, as I have heard afterwards, she reported all the discourse to him, and that my father, after showing a great concern at it, said to her with a sigh, ''That boy might be happy if he would stay at home, but if he goes abroad, he will be the most miserable wretch that was ever born; I can give no consent to it.'' It was not till almost a year after this that I broke loose, though in the meantime I continued obstinately deaf to all proposals of settling to business, and frequently expostulating with my father and mother about their being so positively determined against what they knew my inclinations prompted me to. But being one day at Hull, where I went casually, and without any purpose of making an elopement that time; but I say, being there, and one of my companions being going by sea to London in his father' ship, and prompting me to go with them, with the common allurement of seafaring men, viz., that it should cost me nothing for my passage, I consulted neither father or mother any more, nor so much as sent them word of it; but leaving them to hear of it as they might, without asking God' blessing, or my father', without any consideration of circumstances or consequences, and in an ill hour, God knows, on the first of September, 1651, I went on board a ship bound for London. Never any young adventurer' misfortunes, I believe, began sooner or continued longer than mine. The ship was no sooner gotten out of the Humber but the wind began to blow, and the sea to rise in a most frightful manner; and as I had never been at sea before, I was most inexpressibly sick in body and terrified in mind. I began now seriously to reflect upon what I had done, and how justly I was overtaken by the judgment of Heaven for my wicked leaving my father' house and abandoning my duty; all the good counsel of my parents, my father' tears, and my mother' entreaties came now fresh into my mind, and my conscience, which was not yet come to the pitch of hardness to which it has been since, reproached me with the contempt of advice and the breach of my duty to God and my father. All this while the storm increased, and the sea, which I had never been upon before, went very high, though nothing like what I have seen many times since; no, nor like what I saw a few days after. But it was enough to affect me then, who was but a young sailor and had never known anything of the matter. I expected every wave would have swallowed us up, and that every time the ship fell down, as I thought, in the trough or hollow of the sea, we should never rise more; and in this agony of mind I made many vows and resolutions, that if it would please God here to spare my life this one voyage, if ever I got once my foot upon dry land again, I would go directly home to my father, and never set it into a ship again while I lived; that I would take his advice, and never run myself into such miseries as these any more. Now I saw plainly the goodness of his observations about the middle station of life, how easy, how comfortably he had lived all his days, and never had been exposed to tempests at sea or troubles on shore; and I resolved that I would, like a true repenting prodigal, go home to my father. These wise and sober thoughts continued all the while the storm continued, and indeed some time after; but the next day the wind was abated and the sea calmer, and I began to be a little inured to it. However, I was very grave for all that day, being also a little seasick still; but towards night the weather cleared up, the wind was quite over, and a charming fine evening followed; the sun went down perfectly clear, and rose so the next morning; and having little or no wind, and a smooth sea, the sun shining upon it, the sight was, as I thought, the most delightful that ever I saw. I had slept well in the night, and was now no more seasick, but very cheerful, looking with wonder upon the sea that was so rough and terrible the day before, and could be so calm and so pleasant in so little time after. And now lest my good resolutions should continue, my companion, who had indeed enticed me away, comes to me. ''Well, Bob,'' says he, clapping me upon the shoulder, ''how do you do after it? I warrant you were frighted, wa'n't you, last night, when it blew but a capful of wind?'' ''A capful, d'you call it?'' said I, '' 'twas a terrible storm.'' ''A storm, you fool, you,'' replies he; ''do you call that a storm? why, it was nothing at all; give us but a good ship and sea room, and we think nothing of such a squall of wind as that; but you're but a fresh-water sailor, Bob; come, let us make a bowl of punch, and we'll forget all that; d'ye see what charming weather 'tis now?'' To make short this sad part of my story, we went the old way of all sailors; the punch was made, and I was made drunk with it, and in that one night' wickedness I drowned all my repentance, all my reflections upon my past conduct, and all my resolutions for the future. In a word, as the sea was returned to its smoothness of surface and settled calmness by the abatement of that storm, so the hurry of my thoughts being over, my fears and apprehensions of being swallowed up by the sea being forgotten, and the current of my former desires returned, I entirely forgot the vows and promises that I made in my distress. I found indeed some intervals of reflection, and the serious thoughts did, as it were, endeavour to return again sometimes; but I shook them off, and roused myself from them as it were from a distemper, and applying myself to drinking and company, soon mastered the return of those fits (for so I called them), and I had in five or six days got as complete a victory over conscience as any young fellow that resolved not to be troubled with it could desire. But I was to have another trial for it still; and Providence, as in such cases generally it does, resolved to leave me entirely without excuse. For if I would not take this for a deliverance, the next was to be such a one as the worst and most hardened wretch among us would confess both the danger and the mercy. The sixth day of our being at sea we came into Yarmouth Roads; the wind having been contrary, and the weather calm, we had made but little way since the storm. Here we were obliged to come to anchor, and here we lay, the wind continuing contrary, viz., at southwest, for seven or eight days, during which time a great many ships from Newcastle came into the same roads, as the common harbour where the ships might wait for a wind for the river. We had not, however, rid here so long, but should have tided it up the river, but that the wind blew too fresh; and after we had lain four or five days, blew very hard. However, the roads being reckoned as good as a harbour, the anchorage good, and our ground tackle very strong, our men were unconcerned, and not in the least apprehensive of danger, but spent the time in rest and mirth, after the manner of the sea; but the eighth day in the morning, the wind increased, and we had all hands at work to strike our topmasts and make everything snug and close, that the ship might ride as easy as possible. By noon the sea went very high indeed, and our ship rid forecastle in, shipped several seas, and we thought once or twice our anchor had come home; upon which our master ordered out the sheet anchor; so that we rode with two anchors ahead, and the cables veered out to the bitter end. By this time it blew a terrible storm indeed, and now I began to see terror and amazement in the faces even of the seamen themselves. The master, though vigilant in the business of preserving the ship, yet as he went in and out of his cabin by me, I could hear him softly to himself say several times, ''Lord, be merciful to us, we shall be all lost, we shall be all undone''; and the like. During these first hurries, I was stupid, lying still in my cabin, which was in the steerage, and cannot describe my temper. I could ill reassume the first penitence which I had so apparently trampled upon, and hardened myself against. I thought the bitterness of death had been past, and that this would be nothing too, like the first. But when the master himself came by me, as I said just now, and said we should be all lost, I was dreadfully frighted. I got up out of my cabin and looked out; but such a dismal sight I never saw. The sea went mountains high, and broke upon us every three or four minutes. When I could look about, I could see nothing but distress round us: Two ships that rid near us, we found, had cut their masts by the board, being deep loaden; and our men cried out that a ship which rid about a mile ahead of us was foundered. Two more ships, being driven from their anchors, were run out of the roads to sea at all adventures, and that with not a mast standing. The light ships fared the best, as not so much labouring in the sea; but two or three of them drove and came close by us, running away with only their spritsail out before the wind. Towards evening the mate and boatswain begged the master of our ship to let them cut away the foremast which he was very unwilling to do. But the boatswain protesting to him that if he did not the ship would founder, he consented; and when they had cut away the foremast, the mainmast stood so loose and shook the ship so much, they were obliged to cut her away also, and make a clear deck. Anyone may judge what a condition I must be in at all this, who was but a young sailor, and who had been in such a fright before at but a little. But if I can express at this distance the thoughts I had about me at that time, I was in tenfold more horror of mind upon account of my former convictions, and the having returned from them to the resolutions I had wickedly taken at first, than I was at death itself; and these, added to the terror of the storm, put me in such a condition that I can by no words describe it. But the worst was not come yet; the storm continued with such fury that the seamen themselves acknowledged they had never known a worse. We had a good ship, but she was deep loaden, and wallowed in the sea, that the seamen every now and then cried out she would founder. It was my advantage in one respect that I did not know what they meant by ''founder'' till I inquired. However, the storm was so violent that I saw what is not often seen, the master, the boatswain, and some others more sensible than the rest, at their prayers and expecting every moment when the ship would go to the bottom. In the middle of the night, and under all the rest of our distresses, one of the men that had been down on purpose to see cried out we had sprung a leak; another said there was four foot water in the hold. Then all hands were called to the pump. At that very word my heart, as I thought, died within me, and I fell backwards upon the side of my bed where I sat, into the cabin. However, the men roused me, and told me that I, that was able to do nothing before, was as well able to pump as another; at which I stirred up and went to the pump and worked very heartily. While this was doing, the master, seeing some light colliers, who, not able to ride out the storm, were obliged to slip and run away to sea, and would come near us, ordered to fire a gun as a signal of distress. I, who knew nothing what that meant, was so surprised, that I thought the ship had broke, or some dreadful thing happened. In a word, I was so surprised that I fell down in a swoon. As this was a time when everybody had his own life to think of, nobody minded me, or what was become of me; but another man stepped up to the pump, and thrusting me aside with his foot, let me lie, thinking I had been dead; and it was a great while before I came to myself. We worked on, but the water increasing in the hold, it was apparent that the ship would founder, and though the storm began to abate a little, yet as it was not possible she could swim till we might run into a port, so the master continued firing guns for help; and a light ship who had rid it out just ahead of us ventured a boat out to help us. It was with the utmost hazard the boat came near us, but it was impossible for us to get on board, or for the boat to lie near the ship side, till at last the men rowing very heartily and venturing their lives to save ours, our men cast them a rope over the stern with a buoy to it and then veered it out a great length, which they after great labour and hazard took hold of, and we hauled them close under our stern and got all into their boat. It was to no purpose for them or us after we were in the boat to think of reaching to their own ship, so all agreed to let her drive and only to pull her in towards shore as much as we could, and our master promised them that if the boat was staved upon shore, he would make it good to their master; so, partly rowing and partly driving, our boat went away to the northward, sloping towards the shore almost as far as Winterton Ness. We were not much more than a quarter of an hour out of our ship but we saw her sink, and then I understood for the first time what was meant by a ship foundering in the sea; I must acknowledge I had hardly eyes to look up when the seamen told me she was sinking; for from that moment they rather put me into the boat than that I might be said to go in, my heart was as it were dead within me, partly with fright, partly with horror of mind and the thoughts of what was yet before me. While we were in this condition, the men yet labouring at the oar to bring the boat near the shore, we could see (when, our boat mounting the waves, we were able to see the shore) a great many people running along the strand to assist us when we should come near; but we made but slow way towards the shore, nor were we able to reach the shore, till being past the lighthouse at Winterton, the shore falls off to the westward towards Cromer, and so the land broke off a little the violence of the wind. Here we got in and, though not without much difficulty, got all safe on shore and walked afterwards on foot to Yarmouth, where, as unfortunate men, we were used with great humanity, as well by the magistrates of the town, who assigned us good quarters, as by particular merchants and owners of ships, and had money given us sufficient to carry us either to London or back to Hull, as we thought fit. Had I now had the sense to have gone back to Hull, and have gone home, I had been happy, and my father, an emblem of our blessed Saviour' parable, had even killed the fatted calf for me; for hearing the ship I went away in was cast away in Yarmouth Roads, it was a great while before he had any assurance that I was not drowned. But my ill fate pushed me on now with an obstinacy that nothing could resist; and though I had several times loud calls from my reason and my more composed judgment to go home, yet I had no power to do it. I know not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is a secret overruling decree that hurries us on to be the instruments of our own destruction, even though it be before us, and that we push upon it with our eyes open. Certainly nothing but some such decreed unavoidable misery attending, and which it was impossible for me to escape, could have pushed me forward against the calm reasonings and persuasions of my most retired thoughts and against two such visible instructions as I had met with in my first attempt. My comrade, who had helped to harden me before and who was the master' son, was now less forward than I; the first time he spoke to me after we were at Yarmouth, which was not till two or three days, for we were separated in the town to several quarters; I say, the first time he saw me, it appeared his tone was altered, and looking very melancholy and shaking his head, asking me how I did, and telling his father who I was, and how I had come this voyage only for a trial in order to go farther abroad; his father turning to me with a very grave and concerned tone, ''Young man,'' says he, ''you ought never to go to sea any more; you ought to take this for a plain and visible token that you are not to be a seafaring man.'' ''Why, sir,'' said I, ''will you go to sea no more?'' ''That is another case,'' said he, ''it is my calling and therefore my duty; but as you made this voyage for a trial, you see what a taste Heaven has given you of what you are to expect if you persist; perhaps this is all befallen us on your account, like Jonah in the ship of Tarshish. Pray,'' continues he, ''what are you? and on what account did you go to sea?'' Upon that I told him some of my story; at the end of which he burst out with a strange kind of passion, ''What had I done,'' says he, ''that such an unhappy wretch should come into my ship? I would not set my foot in the same ship with thee again for a thousand pounds.'' This indeed was, as I said, an excursion of his spirits, which were yet agitated by the sense of his loss, and was farther than he could have authority to go. However, he afterwards talked very gravely to me, exhorted me to go back to my father and not tempt Providence to my ruin; told me I might see a visible hand of Heaven against me; ''And, young man,'' said he, ''depend upon it, if you do not go back, wherever you go, you will meet with nothing but disasters and disappointments, till your father' words are fulfilled upon you.'' I Am Captured by Pirates WE PARTED soon after; for I made him little answer, and I saw him no more; which way he went I know not. As for me, having some money in my pocket, I travelled to London by land; and there, as well as on the road, had many struggles with myself what course of life I should take, and whether I should go home or go to sea. As to going home, shame opposed the best motions that offered to my thoughts; and it immediately occurred to me how I should be laughed at among the neighbours, and should be ashamed to see, not my father and mother only, but even everybody else; from whence I have since often observed how incongruous and irrational the common temper of mankind is, especially of youth, to that reason which ought to guide them in such cases, viz., that they are not ashamed to sin, and yet are ashamed to repent; nor ashamed of the action for which they ought justly to be esteemed fools, but are ashamed of the returning, which only can make them be esteemed wise men. In this state of life, however, I remained some time, uncertain what measures to take and what course of life to lead. An irresistible reluctance continued to going home; and as I stayed awhile, the remembrance of the distress I had been in wore off; and as that abated, the little motion I had in my desires to a return wore off with it, till at last I quite laid aside the thoughts of it and looked out for a voyage. That evil influence which carried me first away from my father' house, that hurried me into the wild and indigested notion of raising my fortune, and that impressed those conceits so forcibly upon me as to make me deaf to all good advice and to the entreaties and even command of my father; I say, the same influence, whatever it was, presented the most unfortunate of all enterprises to my view; and I went on board a vessel bound to the coast of Africa, or, as our sailors vulgarly call it, a voyage to Guinea. It was my great misfortune that in all these adventures I did not ship myself as a sailor; whereby, though I might indeed have worked a little harder than ordinary, yet at the same time I had learned the duty and office of a foremast man; and in time might have qualified myself for a mate or lieutenant, if not for a master. But as it was always my fate to choose for the worse, so I did here; for having money in my pocket and good clothes upon my back, I would always go on board in the habit of a gentleman; and so I neither had any business in the ship, or learned to do any. It was my lot first of all to fall into pretty good company in London, which does not always happen to such loose and unguided young fellows as I then was; the devil generally not omitting to lay some snare for them very early. But it was not so with me; I first fell acquainted with the master of a ship who had been on the coast of Guinea; and who, having had very good success there, was resolved to go again; and who, taking a fancy to my conversation, which was not at all disagreeable at that time, hearing me say I had a mind to see the world, told me, if I would go the voyage with him, I should be at no expense; I should be his messmate and his companion, and if I could carry anything with me, I should have all the advantage of it that the trade would admit; and perhaps I might meet with some encouragement. I embraced the offer, and, entering into a strict friendship with this captain, who was an honest and plain-dealing man, I went the voyage with him and carried a small adventure with me, which, by the disinterested honesty of my friend the captain, I increased very considerably; for I carried about #40 in such toys and trifles as the captain directed me to buy. This #40 I had mustered together by the assistance of some of my relations whom I corresponded with, and who, I believe, got my father, or at least my mother, to contribute so much as that to my first adventure. This was the only voyage which I may say was successful in all my adventures, and which I owe to the integrity and honesty of my friend the captain, under whom also I got a competent knowledge of the mathematics and the rules of navigation, learned how to keep an account of the ship' course, take an observation, and in short, to understand some things that were needful to be understood by a sailor. For, as he took delight to introduce me, I took delight to learn; and, in a word, this voyage made me both a sailor and a merchant; for I brought home five pounds nine ounces of gold dust for my adventure, which yielded me in London at my return almost #300, and this filled me with those aspiring thoughts which have since so completed my ruin. Yet even in this voyage I had my misfortunes too; particularly that I was continually sick, being thrown into a violent calenture1 by the excessive heat of the climate; our principal trading being upon the coast, from the latitude of 15 degrees north, even to the line itself. I was now set up for a Guinea trader; and my friend, to my great misfortune, dying soon after his arrival, I resolved to go the same voyage again, and I embarked in the same vessel with one who was his mate in the former voyage and had now got the command of the ship. This was the unhappiest voyage that ever man made; for though I did not carry quite #100 of my new-gained wealth, so that I had #200 left, and which I lodged with my friend' widow, who was very just to me, yet I fell into terrible misfortunes in this voyage; and the first was this, viz., our ship making her course towards the Canary Islands, or rather between those islands and the African shore, was surprised in the grey of the morning by a Turkish rover of Sallee, who gave chase to us with all the sail she could make. We crowded also as much canvas as our yards would spread, or our masts carry, to have got clear; but finding the pirate gained upon us, and would certainly come up with us in a few hours, weprepared to fight; our ship having twelve guns, and the rogue eighteen. About three in the afternoon he came up with us, and bringing to, by mistake, just athwart our quarter, instead of athwart our stern, as he intended, we brought eight of our guns to bear on that side and poured in a broadside upon him, which made him sheer off again, after returning our fire and pouring in also his small shot from near two hundred men which he had on board. However, we had not a man touched, all our men keeping close. He prepared to attack us again, and we to defend ourselves; but laying us on board the next time upon our other quarter, he entered sixty men upon our decks, who immediately fell to cutting and hacking the decks and rigging. We plied them with small shot, half-pikes, powder chests, and such like, and cleared our deck of them twice. However, to cut short this melancholy part of our story, our ship being disabled, and three of our men killed and eight wounded, we were obliged to yield, and were carried all prisoners into Sallee, a port belonging to the Moors. The usage I had there was not so dreadful as at first I apprehended, nor was I carried up the country to the emperor' court, as the rest of our men were, but was kept by the captain of the rover, as his proper prize, and made his slave, being young and nimble and fit for his business. At this surprising change of my circumstances, from a merchant to a miserable slave, I was perfectly overwhelmed; and now I looked back upon my father' prophetic discourse to me, that I should be miserable and have none to relieve me, which I thought was now so effectually brought to pass that I could not be worse; that now the hand of Heaven had overtaken me, and I was undone without redemption. But alas! this was but a taste of the misery I was to go through, as will appear in the sequel of this story. As my new patron, or master, had taken me home to his house, so I was in hopes that he would take me with him when he went to sea again, believing that it would some time or other be his fate to be taken by a Spanish or Portugal man-of-war; and that then I should be set at liberty. But this hope of mine was soon taken away; for when he went to sea, he left me on shore to look after his little garden and do the common drudgery of slaves about his house; and when he came home again from his cruise, he ordered me to lie in the cabin to look after the ship. Here I meditated nothing but my escape, and what method I might take to effect it; but found no way that had the least probability in it. Nothing presented to make the supposition of it rational; for I had nobody to communicate it to, that would embark with me, no fellow slave, no Englishman, Irishman, or Scotsman there but myself; so that for two years, though I often pleased myself with the imagination, yet I never had the least encouraging prospect of putting it in practice. After about two years an odd circumstance presented itself, which put the old thought of making some attempt for my liberty again in my head. My patron lying at home longer than usual without fitting out his ship, which, as I heard, was for want of money, he used constantly once or twice a week, sometimes oftener if the weather was fair, to take the ship' pinnace and go out into the road a-fishing; and as he always took me and a young Maresco with him to row the boat, we made him very merry, and I proved very dexterous in catching fish; insomuch that sometimes he would send me with a Moor, one of his kinsmen, and the youth, the Maresco, as they called him, to catch a dish of fish for him. It happened one time that, going a-fishing in a stark calm morning, a fog rose so thick that, though we were not half a league from the shore, we lost sight of it; and rowing we knew not whither or which way, we laboured all day and all the next night; and when the morning came, we found we had pulled off to sea instead of pulling in for the shore; and that we were at least two leagues from the shore. However, we got well in again, though with a great deal of labour and some danger; for the wind began to blow pretty fresh in the morning; but particularly we were all very hungry. But our patron, warned by this disaster, resolved to take more care of himself for the future; and having lying by him the longboat of our English ship which he had taken, he resolved he would not go a-fishing any more without a compass and some provision; so he ordered the carpenter of his ship, who also was an English slave, to build a little stateroom or cabin in the middle of the longboat, like that of a barge, with a place to stand behind it to steer and haul home the main-sheet; and room before for a hand or two to stand and work the sails. She sailed with that we call a shoulder-of-mutton sail; and the boom jibbed over the top of the cabin, which lay very snug and low and had in it room for him to lie, with a slave or two, and a table to eat on, with some small lockers to put in some bottles of such liquor as he thought fit to drink; particularly his bread, rice, and coffee. We went frequently out with this boat a-fishing, and as I was most dexterous to catch fish for him, he never went without me. It happened that he had appointed to go out in this boat, either for pleasure or for fish, with two or three Moors of some distinction in that place, and for whom he had provided extraordinarily; and had therefore sent on board the boat over night a larger store of provisions than ordinary; and had ordered me to get ready three fusils with powder and shot, which were on board his ship; for that they designed some sport of fowling as well as fishing. I got all things ready as he had directed, and waited the next morning with the boat washed clean, her ancient 2 and pendants out, and everything to accommodate his guests; when by and by my patron came on board alone and told me his guests had put off going, upon some business that fell out, and ordered me with the man and boy, as usual, to go out with the boat and catch them some fish, for that his friends were to sup at his house; and commanded that as soon as I had got some fish I should bring it home to his house; all which I prepared to do. I Escape from the Sallee Rover THIS moment my former notions of deliverance darted into my thoughts, for now I found I was like to have a little ship at my command; and my master being gone, I prepared to furnish myself, not for a fishing business, but for a voyage; though I knew not, neither did I so much as consider whither I should steer; for anywhere to get out of that place was my way. My first contrivance was to make a pretence to speak to this Moor, to get something for our subsistence on board; for I told him we must not presume to eat of our patron' bread; he said that was true; so he brought a large basket of rusk, or biscuit, of their kind and three jars with fresh water into the boat; I knew where my patron' case of bottles stood, which, it was evident by the make, were taken out of some English prize; and I conveyed them into the boat while the Moor was on shore, as if they had been there before, for our master. I conveyed also a great lump of beeswax into the boat, which weighed above half a hundredweight, with a parcel of twine or thread, a hatchet, a saw, and a hammer, all which were of great use to us afterwards; especially the wax to make candles. Another trick I tried upon him, which he innocently came into also. His name was Ismael, whom they call Muly, or Moley, so I called to him, ''Moley,'' said I, ''our patron' guns are on board the boat; can you not get a little powder and shot? It may be we may kill some alcamies'' (a fowl like our curlews) ''for ourselves, for I know he keeps the gunner' stores in the ship.'' ''Yes,'' says he, ''I'll bring some''; and accordingly he brought a great leather pouch, which held about a pound and a half of powder, or rather more; and another with shot, that had five or six pound, with some bullets; and put all into the boat. At the same time I had found some powder of my master' in the great cabin, with which I filled one of the large bottles in the case, which was almost empty, pouring what was in it into another; and thus furnished with everything needful, we sailed out of the port to fish. The castle, which is at the entrance of the port, knew who we were, and took no notice of us; and we were not above a mile out of the port before we hauled in our sail and set us down to fish. The wind blew from the north-northeast, which was contrary to my desire; for had it blown southerly, I had been sure to have made the coast of Spain, and at least reached to the bay of Cadiz; but my resolutions were, blow which way it would, I would be gone from that horrid place where I was, and leave the rest to Fate. After we had fished some time and caught nothing (for when I had fish on my hook I would not pull them up, that he might not see them), I said to the Moor, ''This will not do, our master will not be thus served, we must stand farther off.'' He, thinking no harm, agreed, and being in the head of the boat, set the sails; and as I had the helm, I ran the boat out near a league farther, and then brought her to as if I would fish; when giving the boy the helm, I stepped forward to where the Moor was, and making as if I stooped for something behind him, I took him by surprise with my arm under his waist and tossed him clear overboard into the sea; he rose immediately, for he swam like a cork, and called to me, begged to be taken in, told me he would go all over the world with me. He swam so strong after the boat that he would have reached me very quickly, there being but little wind; upon which I stepped into the cabin, and fetching one of the fowling pieces, I presented it at him and told him I had done him no hurt, and, if he would be quiet, I would do him none. ''But,'' said I, ''you swim well enough to reach the shore, and the sea is calm; make the best of your way to shore, and I will do you no harm; but if you come near the boat, I'll shoot you through the head; for I am resolved to have my liberty.'' So he turned himself about and swam for the shore, and I make no doubt but he reached it with ease, for he was an excellent swimmer. I could have been content to have taken this Moor with me and have drowned the boy, but there was no venturing to trust him. When he was gone I turned to the boy, whom they called Xury, and said to him, ''Xury, if you will be faithful to me, I'll make you a great man; but if you will not stroke your face to be true to me,'' that is, swear by Mahomet and his father' beard, ''I must throw you into the sea too.'' The boy smiled in my face, and spoke so innocently that I could not mistrust him; and swore to be faithful to me and go all over the world with me. While I was in view of the Moor that was swimming, I stood out directly to sea with the boat, rather stretching to windward, that they might think me gone towards the Straits' mouth (as indeed anyone that had been in their wits must have been supposed to do); for who would have supposed we were sailed on to the southward to the truly barbarian coast, where whole nations of Negroes were sure to surround us with their canoes, and destroy us; where we could ne'er once go on shore but we should be devoured by savage beasts, or more merciless savages of human kind? But as soon as it grew dusk in the evening, I changed my course, and steered directly south and by east, bending my course a little towards the east, that I might keep in with the shore; and having a fair, fresh gale of wind and a smooth, quiet sea, I made such sail that I believe by the next day at three o'clock in the afternoon, when I first made the land, I could not be less than 150 miles south of Sallee; quite beyond the Emperor of Morocco' dominions, or indeed of any other king thereabouts, for we saw no people. Yet such was the fright I had taken at the Moors and the dreadful apprehensions I had of falling into their hands, that I would not stop or go on shore or come to an anchor, the wind continuing fair, till I had sailed in that manner five days. And then the wind shifting to the southward, I concluded also that if any of our vessels were in chase of me, they also would now give over; so I ventured to make to the coast and came to an anchor in the mouth of a little river, I knew not what or where; neither what latitude, what country, what nation, or what river. I neither saw, or desired to see, any people; the principal thing I wanted was fresh water. We came into this creek in the evening, resolving to swim on shore as soon as it was dark, and discover the country; but as soon as it was quite dark, we heard such dreadful noises of the barking, roaring, and howling of wild creatures, of we knew not what kinds, that the poor boy was ready to die with fear and begged of me not to go on shore till day. ''Well, Xury,'' said I, ''then I won't; but it may be we may see men by day, who will be as bad to us as those lions.'' ''Then we give them the shoot gun,'' says Xury, laughing; ''make them run wey.'' Such English Xury spoke by conversing among us slaves. However, I was glad to see the boy so cheerful, and I gave him a dram (out of our patron' case of bottles) to cheer him up. After all, Xury' advice was good, and I took it. We dropped our little anchor and lay still all night; I say still, for we slept none; for in two or three hours we saw vast great creatures (we knew not what to call them) of many sorts come down to the seashore and run into the water, wallowing and washing themselves for the pleasure of cooling themselves; and they made such hideous howlings and yellings that I never indeed heard the like. Xury was dreadfully frighted, and indeed so was I too; but we were both more frighted when we heard one of these mighty creatures come swimming towards our boat. We could not see him, but we might hear him by his blowing to be a monstrous huge and furious beast. Xury said it was a lion, and it might be so for aught I know; but poor Xury cried to me to weigh the anchor and row away. ''No,'' says I, ''Xury, we can slip our cable with a buoy to it and go off to sea, they cannot follow us far.'' I had no sooner said so but I perceived the creature (whatever it was) within two oars' length, which something surprised me; however, I immediately stepped to the cabin door, and taking up my gun, fired at him; upon which he immediately turned about and swam towards the shore again. But it is impossible to describe the horrible noises and hideous cries and howlings that were raised, as well upon the edge of the shore as higher within the country, upon the noise or report of the gun, a thing I have some reason to believe those creatures had never heard before. This convinced me that there was no going on shore for us in the night upon that coast, and how to venture on shore in the day was another question too; for to have fallen into the hands of any of the savages had been as bad as to have fallen into the hands of lions and tigers; at least we were equally apprehensive of the danger of it. Be that as it would, we were obliged to go on shore somewhere or other for water, for we had not a pint left in the boat; when or where to get it was the point. Xury said if I would let him go on shore with one of the jars, he would find if there was any water and bring some to me. I asked him why he would go. Why I should not go and he stay in the boat? The boy answered with so much affection that made me love him ever after. Says he, ''If wild mans come, they eat me, you go wey.'' ''Well, Xury,'' said I, ''we will both go, and if the wild mans come, we will kill them; they shall eat neither of us''; so I gave Xury a piece of rusk bread to eat and a dram out of our patron' case of bottles, which I mentioned before, and we hauled the boat in as near the shore as we thought was proper, and so waded on shore, carrying nothing but our arms and two jars for water. I did not care to go out of sight of the boat, fearing the coming of canoes with savages down the river; but the boy, seeing a low place about a mile up the country, rambled to it, and by and by I saw him come running towards me; I thought he was pursued by some savage, or frighted with some wild beast, and I ran forward towards him to help him; but when I came nearer to him, I saw something hanging over his shoulders, which was a creature that he had shot, like a hare, but different in colour, and longer legs; however, we were very glad of it, and it was very good meat; but the great joy that poor Xury came with was to tell me he had found good water and seen no wild mans. But we found afterwards that we need not take such pains for water, for a little higher up the creek where we were, we found the water fresh when the tide was out, which flows but a little way up; so we filled our jars and feasted on the hare we had killed, and prepared to go on our way, having seen no footsteps of any human creature in that part of the country. As I had been one voyage to this coast before, I knew very well that the islands of the Canaries, and the Cape Verde Islands also, lay not far off from the coast. But as I had no instruments to take an observation to know what latitude we were in and did not exactly know, or at least not remember, what latitude they were in, I knew not where to look for them, or when to stand off to sea towards them; otherwise I might now easily have found some of these islands. But my hope was that if I stood along this coast till I came to that part where the English traded, I should find some of their vessels upon their usual design of trade, that would relieve and take us in. By the best of my calculation, that place where I now was must be that country, which lying between the Emperor of Morocco' dominions and the Negroes, lies waste and uninhabited, except by wild beasts; the Negroes having abandoned it and gone farther south for fear of the Moors, and the Moors not thinking it worth inhabiting by reason of its barrenness; and indeed both forsaking it because of the prodigious numbers of tigers, lions, leopards, and other furious creatures which harbour there; so that the Moors use it for their hunting only, where they go like an army, two or three thousand men at a time; and indeed for near an hundred miles together upon this coast, we saw nothing but a waste uninhabited country by day, and heard nothing but howlings and roarings of wild beasts by night. Once or twice in the daytime, I thought I saw the Pico of Teneriffe, being the high top of the mountain Teneriffe in the Canaries; and had a great mind to venture out in hopes of reaching thither; but having tried twice, I was forced in again by contrary winds, the sea also going too high for my little vessel; so I resolved to pursue my first design, and keep along the shore. Several times I was obliged to land for fresh water, after we had left this place; and once in particular, being early in the morning, we came to an anchor under a little point of land which was pretty high, and the tide beginning to flow, we lay still to go farther in; Xury, whose eyes were more about him than it seems mine were, calls softly to me and tells me that we had best go farther off the shore. ''For,'' says he, ''look, yonder lies a dreadful monster on the side of that hillock, fast asleep.'' I looked where he pointed, and saw a dreadful monster indeed, for it was a terrible great lion that lay on the side of the shore, under the shade of a piece of the hill that hung as it were a little over him. ''Xury,'' says I, ''you shall go on shore and kill him.'' Xury looked frighted, and said, ''Me kill! He eat me at one mouth''; one mouthful he meant. However, I said no more to the boy, but bade him be still, and I took our biggest gun, which was almost musket-bore, and loaded it with a good charge of powder, and with two slugs, and laid it down; then I loaded another gun with two bullets; and the third (for we had three pieces) I loaded with five smaller bullets. I took the best aim I could with the first piece to have shot him into the head; but he lay so with his leg raised a little above his nose, that the slugs hit his leg about the knee, and broke the bone. He started up growling at first, but, finding his leg broke, fell down again, and then got up upon three legs, and gave the most hideous roar that ever I heard. I was a little surprised that I had not hit him on the head; however, I took up the second piece immediately, and though he began to move off, fired again, and shot him into the head, and had the pleasure to see him drop and make but little noise, but lay struggling for life. Then Xury took heart, and would have me let him go on shore. ''Well, go,'' said I, so the boy jumped into the water, and taking a little gun in one hand, swam to shore with the other hand, and coming close to the creature, put the muzzle of the piece to his ear, and shot him into the head again, which dispatched him quite. This was game indeed to us, but this was no food; and I was very sorry to lose three charges of powder and shot upon a creature that was good for nothing to us. However, Xury said he would have some of him; so he comes on board and asked me to give him the hatchet. ''For what, Xury?'' said I. ''Me cut off his head,'' said he. However, Xury could not cut off his head, but he cut off a foot and brought it with him, and it was a monstrous great one. I bethought myself, however, that perhaps the skin of him might one way or other be of some value to us; and I resolved to take off his skin if I could. So Xury and I went to work with him; but Xury was much the better workman at it, for I knew very ill how to do it. Indeed it took us up both the whole day, but at last we got off the hide of him, and spreading it on the top of our cabin, the sun effectually dried it in two days' time, and it afterwards served me to lie upon. After this stop, we made on to the southward continually for ten or twelve days, living very sparing on our provisions, which began to abate very much, and going no oftener in to the shore than we were obliged to for fresh water; my design in this was to make the river Gambia or Senegal, that is to say, anywhere about the Cape Verde, where I was in hopes to meet with some European ship, and if I did not, I knew not what course I had to take, but to seek out for the islands, or perish there among the Negroes. I knew that all the ships from Europe which sailed either to the coast of Guinea or to Brazil or to the East Indies made this cape or those islands; and in a word, I put the whole of my fortune upon this single point, either that I must meet with some ship or must perish. When I had pursued this resolution about ten days longer, as I have said, I began to see that the land was inhabited, and in two or three places, as we sailed by, we saw people stand upon the shore to look at us; we could also perceive they were quite black and stark naked. I was once inclined to have gone on shore to them; but Xury was my better counsellor and said to me, ''No go, no go.'' However, I hauled in nearer the shore that I might talk to them, and I found they ran along the shore by me a good way. I observed they had no weapons in their hands, except one, who had a long slender stick, which Xury said was a lance, and that they would throw them a great way with good aim; so I kept at a distance, but talked with them by signs as well as I could, and particularly made signs for something to eat. They beckoned to me to stop my boat, and they would fetch me some meat; upon this I lowered the top of my sail and lay by, and two of them ran up into the country, and in less than half an hour came back and brought with them two pieces of dry flesh and some corn,3 such as is the produce of their country; but we neither knew what the one or the other was; however, we were willing to accept it. But how to come at it was our next dispute; for I was not for venturing on shore to them, and they were as much afraid of us; but they took a safe way for us all, for they brought it to the shore and laid it down, and went and stood a great way off till we fetched it on board, and then came close to us again. We made signs of thanks to them, for we had nothing to make them amends; but an opportunity offered that very instant to oblige them wonderfully; for while we were lying by the shore, came two mighty creatures, one pursuing the other (as we took it) with great fury from the mountains towards the sea; whether it was the male pursuing the female, or whether they were in sport or in rage, we could not tell, any more than we could tell whether it was usual or strange, but I believe it was the latter; because in the first place, those ravenous creatures seldom appear but in the night; and in the second place, we found the people terribly frighted, especially the women. The man that had the lance or dart did not fly from them, but the rest did; however, as the two creatures ran directly into the water, they did not seem to offer to fall upon any of the Negroes,but plunged themselves into the sea, and swam about as if they had come for their diversion; at last one of them began to come nearer our boat than at first I expected; but I lay ready for him, for I had loaded my gun with all possible expedition, and bade Xury load both the others; as soon as he came fairly within my reach, I fired and shot him directly into the head; immediately he sunk down into the water, but rose instantly and plunged up and down as if he was struggling for life, and so indeed he was; he immediately made to the shore, but between the wound, which was his mortal hurt, and the strangling of the water, he died just before he reached the shore. It is impossible to express the astonishment of these poor creatures at the noise and the fire of my gun; some of them were even ready to die for fear, and fell down as dead with the very terror. But when they saw the creature dead and sunk in the water, and that I made signs to them to come to the shore, they took heart and came to the shore, and began to search for the creature. I found him by his blood staining the water, and by the help of a rope which I flung round him and gave the Negroes to haul, they dragged him on shore, and found that it was a most curious leopard, spotted and fine to an admirable degree, and the Negroes held up their hands with admiration to think what it was I had killed him with. The other creature, frighted with the flash of fire and the noise of the gun, swam on shore, and ran up directly to the mountains from whence they came, nor could I at that distance know what it was. I found quickly the Negroes were for eating the flesh of this creature, so I was willing to have them take it as a favour from me, which, when I made signs to them that they might take him, they were very thankful for. Immediately they fell to work with him; and though they had no knife, yet with a sharpened piece of wood they took off his skin as readily and much more readily than we could have done with a knife; they offered me some of the flesh, which I declined, making as if I would give it to them, but made signs for the skin, which they gave me very freely, and brought me a great deal more of their provision, which though I did not understand, yet I accepted; then I made signs to them for some water and held out one of my jars to them, turning it bottom upward, to show that it was empty, and that I wanted to have it filled. They called immediately to some of their friends, and there came two women and brought a great vessel made of earth, and burnt, as I suppose, in the sun; this they set down for me as before, and I sent Xury on shore with my jars and filled them all three. The women were as stark naked as the men. I was now furnished with roots and corn, such as it was, and water, and leaving my friendly Negroes, I made forward for about eleven days more without offering to go near the shore, till I saw the land run out at a great length into the sea, at about the distance of four or five leagues before me, and the sea being very calm, I kept a large offing to make this point; at length, doubling the point at about two leagues from the land, I saw plainly land on the other side, to seaward; then I concluded, as it was most certain indeed, that this was the Cape Verde and those the islands, called from thence Cape Verde Islands. However, they were at a great distance, and I could not well tell what I had best to do; for if I should be taken with a fresh of wind, I might neither reach one or other. In this dilemma, as I was very pensive, I stepped into the cabin and sat me down, Xury having the helm, when on a sudden the boy cried out, ''Master, master, a ship with a sail!'' and the foolish boy was frighted out of his wits, thinking it must needs be some of his master' ships sent to pursue us, when I knew we were gotten far enough out of their reach. I jumped out of the cabin, and immediately saw, not only the ship, but what she was, viz., that it was a Portuguese ship, and, as I thought, was bound to the coast of Guinea for Negroes. But when I observed the course she steered, I was soon convinced they were bound some other way, and did not design to come any nearer to the shore; upon which I stretched out to sea as much as I could, resolving to speak with them if possible. With all the sail I could make, I found I should not be able to come in their way, but that they would be gone by before I could make any signal to them; but after I had crowded to the utmost and began to despair, they, it seems, saw me by the help of their perspective-glasses, and that it was some European boat, which as they supposed must belong to some ship that was lost; so they shortened sail to let me come up. I was encouraged with this, and as I had my patron' ancient on board, I made a waft of it to them for a signal of distress, and fired a gun, both which they saw, for they told me they saw the smoke, though they did not hear the gun; upon these signals they very kindly brought to and lay by for me, and in about three hours' time I came up with them. They asked me what I was, in Portuguese and in Spanish and in French, but I understood none of them; but at last a Scots sailor who was on board called to me, and I answered him and told him I was an Englishman, that I had made my escape out of slavery from the Moors at Sallee; then they bade me come on board and very kindly took me in, and all my goods. It was an inexpressible joy to me that anyone will believe that I was thus delivered, as I esteemed it, from such a miserable and almost hopeless condition as I was in, and I immediately offered all I had to the captain of the ship as a return for my deliverance; but he generously told me he would take nothing from me, but that all I had should be delivered safe to me when I came to Brazil. ''For,'' says he, ''I have saved your life on no other terms than I would be glad to be saved myself, and it may one time or other be my lot to be taken up in the same condition; besides,'' said he, ''when I carry you to Brazil, so great a way from your own country, if I should take from you what you have, you will be starved there, and then I only take away that life I have given. No, no, Seignior Inglese,'' says he [Mr. Englishman] , ''I will carry you thither in charity, and those things will help you to buy your subsistence there and your passage home again.'' As he was charitable in his proposal, so he was just in the performance to a tittle, for he ordered the seamen that none should offer to touch anything I had; then he took everything into his own possession and gave me back an exact inventory of them, that I might have them, even so much as my three earthen jars. As to my boat, it was a very good one, and that he saw, and told me he would buy it of me for the ship' use and asked me what I would have for it. I told him he had been so generous to me in everything that I could not offer to make any price of the boat but left it entirely to him, upon which he told me he would give me a note of his hand to pay me eighty pieces of eight for it at Brazil, and when it came there, if anyone offered to give more, he would make it up; he offered me also sixty pieces of eight more for my boy Xury, which I was loath to take, not that I was not willing to let the captain have him, but I was very loath to sell the poor boy' liberty who had assisted me so faithfully in procuring my own. However, when I let him know my reason, he owned it to be just and offered me this medium, that he would give the boy an obligation to set him free in ten years if he turned Christian; upon this, and Xury saying he was willing to go to him, I let the captain have him. I Become a Brazilian Planter WE HAD a very good voyage to Brazil and arrived in the Bay de Todos los Santos, or All Saints' Bay, in about twenty-two days after. And now I was once more delivered from the most miserable of all conditions of life, and what to do next with myself I was now to consider. The generous treatment the captain gave me I can never enough remember; he would take nothing of me for my passage, gave me twenty ducats for the leopard' skin, and forty for the lion' skin which I had in my boat, and caused everything I had in the ship to be punctually delivered to me; and what I was willing to sell he bought, such as the case of bottles, two of my guns, and a piece of the lump of beeswax, for I had made candles of the rest; in a word, I made about 220 pieces of eight of all my cargo, and with this stock I went on shore in Brazil. I had not been long here, but being recommended to the house of a good honest man like himself, who had an ingenio, as they call it, that is, a plantation and a sugarhouse, I lived with him some time and acquainted myself by that means with the manner of their planting and making of sugar; and seeing how well the planters lived and how they grew rich suddenly, I resolved, if I could get licence to settle there, I would turn planter among them, resolving in the meantime to find out some way to get my money which I had left in London remitted to me. To this purpose, getting a kind of a letter of naturalization, I purchased as much land that was uncured as my money would reach, and formed a plan for my plantation and settlement, and such a one as might be suitable to the stock which I proposed to myself to receive from England. I had a neighbour, a Portuguese of Lisbon, but born of English parents, whose name was Wells, and in much such circumstances as I was. I call him neighbour, because his plantation lay next to mine and we went on very sociably together. My stock was but low, as well as his; and we rather planted for food than anything else for about two years. However, we began to increase, and our land began to come into order; so that the third year we planted some tobacco and made each of us a large piece of ground ready for planting canes in the year to come; but we both wanted help, and now I found, more than before, I had done wrong in parting with my boy Xury. But alas! for me to do wrong that never did right was no great wonder: I had no remedy but to go on; I was gotten into an employment quite remote to my genius and directly contrary to the life I delighted in and for which I forsook my father' house and broke through all his good advice; nay, I was coming into the very middle station, or upper degree of low life, which my father advised me to before, and which, if I resolved to go on with, I might as well have stayed at home and never have fatigued myself in the world as I had done; and I used often to say to myself, I could have done this as well in England among my friends as have gone five thousand miles off to do it among strangers and savages in a wilderness, and at such a distance as never to hear from any part of the world that had the least knowledge of me. In this manner I used to look upon my condition with the utmost regret. I had nobody to converse with but now and then this neighbour; no work to be done, but by the labour of my hands; and I used to say, I lived just like a man cast away upon some desolate island that had nobody there but himself. But how just has it been, and how should all men reflect, that when they compare their present conditions with others that are worse, Heaven may oblige them to make the exchange and be convinced of their former felicity by their experience. I say, how just has it been, that the truly solitary life I reflected on in an island of mere desolation should be my lot, who had so often unjustly compared it with the life which I then led, in which had I continued, I had in all probability been exceeding prosperous and rich. I was in some degree settled in my measures for carrying on the plantation, before my kind friend, the captain of the ship that took me up at sea, went back; for the ship remained there in providing his loading, and preparing for his voyage, near three months; when, telling him what little stock I had left behind me in London, he gave me this friendly and sincere advice. ''Seignior Inglese,'' says he, for so he always called me, ''if you will give me letters, and a procuration here in form to me, with orders to the person who has your money in London, to send your effects to Lisbon, to such persons as I shall direct, and in such goods as are proper for this country, I will bring you the produce of them, God willing, at my return; but since human affairs are all subject to changes and disasters, I would have you give orders but for one hundred pounds sterling, which you say is half your stock, and let the hazard be run for the first; so that if it come safe, you may order the rest the same way; and if it miscarry, you may have the other half to have recourse to for your supply.'' This was so wholesome advice and looked so friendly that I could not but be convinced it was the best course I could take; so I accordingly prepared letters to the gentlewoman with whom I had left my money and a procuration to the Portuguese captain, as he desired. I wrote the English captain' widow a full account of all my adventures, my slavery, escape, and how I had met with the Portugal captain at sea, the humanity of his behaviour, and in what condition I was now in, with all other necessary directions for my supply; and when this honest captain came to Lisbon, he found means by some of the English merchants there to send over not the order only, but a full account of my story to a merchant at London, who represented it effectually to her; whereupon she not only delivered the money but out of her own pocket sent the Portugal captain a very handsome present for his humanity and charity to me. The merchant in London vesting this hundred pounds in English goods, such as the captain had writ for, sent them directly to him at Lisbon, and he brought them all safe to me to Brazil; among which, without my direction (for I was too young in my business to think of them), he had taken care to have all sorts of tools, ironwork, and utensils necessary for my plantation, and which were of great use to me. When this cargo arrived, I thought my fortune made, for I was surprised with the joy of it; and my good steward, the captain, had laid out the five pounds which my friend had sent him for a present for himself, to purchase and bring me over a servant under bond for six years' service, and would not accept of any consideration, except a little tobacco which I would have him accept, being of my own produce. Neither was this all; but my goods being all English manufactures, such as cloth, stuff, baize, and things particularly valuable and desirable in the country, I found means to sell them to a very great advantage; so that I may say I had more than four times the value of my first cargo, and was now infinitely beyond my poor neighbour, I mean in the advancement of my plantation; for the first thing I did, I bought me a Negro slave and an European servant also; I mean another besides that which the captain brought me from Lisbon. But as abused prosperity is oftentimes made the very means of our greatest adversity, so was it with me. I went on the next year with great success in my plantation. I raised fifty great rolls of tobacco on my own ground, more than I had disposed of for necessaries among my neighbours; and these fifty rolls, being each of above a hundredweight, were well cured and laid by against the return of the fleet from Lisbon. And now increasing in business and in wealth, my head began to be full of projects and undertakings beyond my reach; such as are indeed often the ruin of the best heads in business. Had I continued in the station I was now in, I had room for all the happy things to have yet befallen me, for which my father so earnestly recommended a quiet, retired life, and of which he had so sensibly described the middle station of life to be full of; but other things attended me, and I was still to be the wilful agent of all my own miseries; and particularly to increase my fault and double the reflections upon myself, which in my future sorrows I should have leisure to make; all these miscarriages were procured by my apparent obstinate adhering to my foolish inclination of wandering abroad, and pursuing that inclination, in contradiction to the clearest views of doing myself good in a fair and plain pursuit of those prospects and those measures of life which Nature and Providence concurred to present me with and to make my duty. As I had once done thus in my breaking away from my parents, so I could not be content now but I must go and leave the happy view I had of being a rich and thriving man in my new plantation, only to pursue a rash and immoderate desire of rising faster than the nature of the thing admitted; and thus I cast myself down again into the deepest gulf of human misery that ever man fell into, or perhaps could be consistent with life and a state of health in the world. To come then by just degrees to the particulars of this part of my story; you may suppose that, having now lived almost four years in Brazil and beginning to thrive and prosper very well upon my plantation, I had not only learned the language, but had contracted acquaintance and friendship among my fellow planters, as well as among the merchants at Sao Salvador, which was our port; and that in my discourse among them, I had frequently given them an account of my two voyages to the coast of Guinea, the manner of trading with the Negroes there, and how easy it was to purchase upon the coast, for trifles (such as beads, toys, knives, scissors, hatchets, bits of glass, and the like), not only gold dust, Guinea grains, elephants' teeth, etc., but Negroes for the service of Brazil, in great numbers. They listened always very attentively to my discourses on these heads, but especially to that part which related to the buying Negroes, which was a trade at that time not only not far entered into, but, as far as it was, had been carried on by the assientos, or permission, of the kings of Spain and Portugal, and engrossed in the public; so that few Negroes were bought, and those excessive dear. It happened, being in company with some merchants and planters of my acquaintance and talking of those things very earnestly, three of them came to me the next morning and told me they had been musing very much upon what I had discoursed with them of, the last night, and they came to make a secret proposal to me; and after enjoining me secrecy, they told me that they had a mind to fit out a ship to go to Guinea; that they had all plantations as well as I, and were straitened for nothing so much as servants; that as it was a trade that could not be carried on, because they could not publicly sell the Negroes when they came home, so they desired to make but one voyage, to bring the Negroes on shore privately, and divide them among their own plantations; and in a word, the question was whether I would go their supercargo in the ship to manage the trading part upon the coast of Guinea. And they offered me that I should have my equal share of the Negroes without providing any part of the stock. This was a fair proposal, it must be confessed, had it been made to anyone that had not had a settlement and plantation of his own to look after which was in a fair way of coming to be very considerable and with a good stock upon it. But for me that was thus entered and established and had nothing to do but go on as I had begun for three or four years more, and to have sent for the other hundred pounds from England, and who in that time, and with that little addition, could scarce have failed of being worth three or four thousand pounds sterling, and that increasing too; for me to think of such a voyage was the most preposterous thing that ever man in such circumstances could be guilty of. I Go on Board in an Evil Hour BUT I that was born to be my own destroyer could no more resist the offer than I could restrain my first rambling designs, when my father' good counsel was lost upon me. In a word, I told them I would go with all my heart, if they would undertake to look after my plantation in my absence and would dispose of it to such as I should direct, if I miscarried. This they all engaged to do, and entered into writings, or covenants, to do so; and I made a formal will, disposing of my plantation and effects, in case of my death, making the captain of the ship that had saved my life, as before, my universal heir, but obliging him to dispose of my effects as I had directed in my will, one half of the produce being to himself and the other to be shipped to England. In short, I took all possible caution to preserve my effects and to keep up my plantation; had I used half as much prudence to have looked into my own interest and have made a judgment of what I ought to have done and not to have done, I had certainly never gone away from so prosperous an undertaking, leaving all the probable views of a thriving circumstance and gone upon a voyage to sea, attended with all its common hazards; to say nothing of the reasons I had to expect particular misfortunes to myself. But I was hurried on and obeyed blindly the dictates of my fancy rather than my reason; and accordingly, the ship being fitted out and the cargo furnished, and all things done as by agreement by my partners in the voyage, I went on board in an evil hour, the 1st of September, 1659, being the same day eight years that I went from my father and mother at Hull, in order to act the rebel to their authority and the fool to my own interest. Our ship was about 120 tons burden, carried six guns and fourteen men, besides the master, his boy, and myself; we had on board no large cargo of goods, except of such toys as were fit for our trade with the Negroes, such as beads, bits of glass, shells, and odd trifles, especially little looking-glasses, knives, scissors, hatchets, and the like. The same day I went on board we set sail, standing away to the northward upon our own coast, with design to stretch over for the African coast, when they came about ten or twelve degrees of northern latitude, which it seems was the manner of their course in those days. We had very good weather, only excessive hot, all the way upon our own coast till we came the height of Cape St. Augustino, from whence keeping farther off at sea, we lost sight of land and steered as if we were bound for the Isle Fernando de Noronha, holding our course northeast by north and leaving those isles on the east. In this course we passed the line in about twelve days' time, and were by our last observation in seven degrees twenty-two minutes northern latitude, when a violent tornado, or hurricane, took us quite out of our knowledge; it began from the southeast, came about to the northwest, and then settled into the northeast, from whence it blew in such a terrible manner that for twelve days together we could do nothing but drive and, scudding away before it, let it carry us whither ever fate and the fury of the winds directed; and during these twelve days, I need not say that I expected every day to be swallowed up, nor indeed did any in the ship expect to save their lives. In this distress we had, besides the terror of the storm, one of our men died of the calenture, and one man and the boy washed overboard. About the twelfth day, the weather abating a little, the master made an observation as well as he could, and found that he was in about eleven degrees north latitude, but that he was twenty-two degrees of longitude difference west from Cape St. Augustino; so that he found he was gotten upon the coast of Guiana, or the north part of Brazil, beyond the river Amazones, toward that of the river Orinoco, commonly called the Great River, and began to consult with me what course he should take, for the ship was leaky and very much disabled and he was going directly back to the coast of Brazil. I was positively against that, and looking over the charts of the seacoast of America with him, we concluded there was no inhabited country for us to have recourse to till we came within the circle of the Caribbee Islands and therefore resolved to stand away for Barbados, which by keeping off at sea, to avoid the indraught of the Bay or Gulf of Mexico, we might easily perform, as we hoped, in about fifteen days' sail; whereas we could not possibly make our voyage to the coast of Africa without some assistance both to our ship and to ourselves. With this design we changed our course and steered away northwest by west in order to reach some of our English islands, where I hoped for relief; but our voyage was otherwise determined, for being in the latitude of twelve degrees eighteen minutes, a second storm came upon us, which carried us away with the same impetuosity westward and drove us so out of the very way of all human commerce, that had all our lives been saved as to the sea, we were rather in danger of being devoured by savages than ever returning to our own country. In this distress, the wind still blowing very hard, one of our men early in the morning cried out, ''Land!''; and we had no sooner run out of the cabin to look out in hopes of seeing whereabouts in the world we were but the ship struck upon a sand, and in a moment, her motion being so stopped, the sea broke over her in such a manner that we expected we should all have perished immediately; and we were immediately driven into our close quarters to shelter us from the very foam and spray of the sea. It is not easy for anyone who has not been in the like condition to describe or conceive the consternation of men in such circumstances; we knew nothing where we were or upon what land it was we were driven, whether an island or the main, whether inhabited or not inhabited; and as the rage of the wind was still great though rather less than at first, we could not so much as hope to have the ship hold many minutes without breaking in pieces unless the winds by a kind of miracle should turn immediately about. In a word, we sat looking one upon another and expecting death every moment, and every man acting accordingly, as preparing for another world, for there was little or nothing more for us to do in this; that which was our present comfort, and all the comfort we had, was that, contrary to our expectation, the ship did not break yet and that the master said the wind began to abate. Now though we thought that the wind did a little abate, yet the ship having thus struck upon the sand, and sticking too fast for us to expect her getting off, we were in a dreadful condition indeed, and had nothing to do but to think of saving our lives as well as we could; we had a boat at our stern just before the storm, but she was first staved by dashing against the ship' rudder, and in the next place she broke away and either sank or was driven off to sea, so there was no hope from her; we had another boat on board, but how to get her off into the sea was a doubtful thing; however, there was no room to debate, for we fancied the ship would break in pieces every minute, and some told us she was actually broken already. In this distress the mate of our vessel lays hold of the boat, and with the help of the rest of the men, they got her slung over the ship' side and, getting all into her, let go and committed ourselves, being eleven in number, to God' mercy and the wild sea; for though the storm was abated considerably, yet the sea went dreadful high upon the shore, and might well be called den wild zee, as the Dutch call the sea in a storm. And now our case was very dismal indeed; for we all saw plainly that the sea went so high that the boat could not live and that we should be inevitably drowned. As to making sail, we had none; nor, if we had, could we have done anything with it; so we worked at the oar towards the land, though with heavy hearts, like men going to execution; for we all knew that when the boat came nearer the shore, she would be dashed in a thousand pieces by the breach of the sea. However, we committed our souls to God in the most earnest manner, and the wind driving us towards the shore, we hastened our destruction with our own hands, pulling as well as we could towards land. What the shore was, whether rock or sand, whether steep or shoal, we knew not; the only hope that could rationally give us the least shadow of expectation was if we might happen into some bay or gulf, or the mouth of some river, where by great chance we might have run our boat in, or got under the lee of the land, and perhaps made smooth water. But there was nothing of this appeared; but as we made nearer and nearer the shore, the land looked more frightful than the sea. After we had rowed, or rather driven, about a league and a half, as we reckoned it, a raging wave, mountainlike, came rolling astern of us and plainly bade us expect the coup de gr?¢ce. In a word, it took us with such a fury that it overset the boat at once; and separating us as well from the boat as from one another, gave us not time hardly to say, "O God!'' for we were all swallowed up in a moment. Nothing can describe the confusion of thought which I felt when I sunk into the water; for though I swam very well, yet I could not deliver myself from the waves so as to draw breath, till that wave having driven me, or rather carried me, a vast way on towards the shore and, having spent itself, went back, and left me upon the land almost dry, but half dead with the water I took in. I had so much presence of mind as well as breath left, that seeing myself nearer the mainland than I expected, I got upon my feet, and endeavoured to make on towards the land as fast as I could, before another wave should return and take me up again. But I soon found it was impossible to avoid it; for I saw the sea come after me as high as a great hill, and as furious as an enemy, which I had no means or strength to contend with; my business was to hold my breath and raise myself upon the water, if I could, and so by swimming to preserve my breathing and pilot myself towards the shore, if possible; my greatest concern now being that the sea, as it would carry me a great way towards the shore when it came on, might not carry me back again with it when it gave back towards the sea. The wave that came upon me again, buried me at once twenty or thirty feet deep in its own body; and I could feel myself carried with a mighty force and swiftness towards the shore a very great way; but I held my breath and assisted myself to swim still forward with all my might. I was ready to burst with holding my breath, when, as I felt myself rising up, so, to my immediate relief, I found my head and hands shoot out above the surface of the water; and though it was not two seconds of time that I could keep myself so, yet it relieved me greatly, gave me breath and new courage. I was covered again with water a good while, but not so long but I held it out; and finding the water had spent itself and began to return, I struck forward against the return of the waves, and felt ground again with my feet. I stood still a few moments to recover breath, and till the water went from me, and then took to my heels, and run with what strength I had farther towards the shore. But neither would this deliver me from the fury of the sea, which came pouring in after me again, and twice more I was lifted up by the waves, and carried forwards as before, the shore being very flat. The last time of these two had well near been fatal to me; for the sea, having hurried me along as before, landed me, or rather dashed me, against a piece of a rock, and that with such force as it left me senseless, and indeed helpless, as to my own deliverance; for the blow, taking my side and breast, beat the breath as it were quite out of my body; and had it returned again immediately, I must have been strangled in the water; but I recovered a little before the return of the waves, and seeing I should be covered again with the water, I resolved to hold fast by a piece of the rock, and so to hold my breath, if possible, till the wave went back; now as the waves were not so high as at first, being near land, I held my hold till the wave abated, and then fetched another run, which brought me so near the shore that the next wave, though it went over me, yet did not so swallow me up as to carry me away, and the next run I took, I got to the mainland, where, to my great comfort, I clambered up the cliffs to the shore and sat me down upon the grass, free from danger, and quite out of the reach of the water. I was now landed and safe on shore, and began to look up and thank God that my life was saved in a case wherein there was some minutes before scarce any room to hope. I believe it is impossible to express to the life what the ecstasies and transports of the soul are when it is so saved, as I may say, out of the very grave; and I do not wonder now at that custom, viz., that when a malefactor who has the halter about his neck is tied up and just going to be turned off, and has a reprieve brought to him: I say, I do not wonder that they bring a surgeon with it, to let him blood that very moment they tell him of it, that the surprise may not drive the animal spirits from the heart, and overwhelm him: For sudden joys, like griefs, confound at first. I walked about on the shore, lifting up my hands, and my whole being, as I may say, wrapped up in the contemplation of my deliverance, making a thousand gestures and motions which I cannot describe, reflecting upon all my comrades that were drowned and that there should not be one soul saved but myself; for, as for them, I never saw them afterwards, or any sign of them, except three of their hats, one cap, and two shoes that were not fellows. I cast my eyes to the stranded vessel, when, the breach and froth of the sea being so big, I could hardly see it, it lay so far off, and considered, Lord! how was it possible I could get on shore! After I had solaced my mind with the comfortable part of my condition, I began to look round me to see what kind of place I was in, and what was next to be done, and I soon found my comforts abate, and that, in a word, I had a dreadful deliverance. For I was wet, had no clothes to shift me, nor anything either to eat or drink to comfort me, neither did I see any prospect before me but that of perishing with hunger or being devoured by wild beasts; and that which was particular afflicting to me was that I had no weapon either to hunt and kill any creature for my sustenance or to defend myself against any other creature that might desire to kill me for theirs. In a word, I had nothing about me but a knife, a tobacco-pipe, and a little tobacco in a box; this was all my provision, and this threw me into terrible agonies of mind, that for a while I ran about like a madman. Night coming upon me, I began with a heavy heart to consider what would be my lot if there were any ravenous beasts in that country, seeing at night they always come abroad for their prey. All the remedy that offered to my thoughts at that time was to get up into a thick bushy tree like a fir, but thorny, which grew near me, and where I resolved to sit all night, and consider the next day what death I should die, for as yet I saw no prospect of life; I walked about a furlong from the shore, to see if I could find any fresh water to drink, which I did, to my great joy; and having drunk, and put a little tobacco in my mouth to prevent hunger, I went to the tree, and getting up into it, endeavoured to place myself so as that if I should sleep I might not fall; and having cut me a short stick, like a truncheon, for my defence, I took up my lodging, and having been excessively fatigued, I fell fast asleep, and slept as comfortably as, I believe, few could have done in my condition, and found myself the most refreshed with it that I think I ever was on such an occasion. I Furnish Myself with Many Things WHEN I waked it was broad day, the weather clear, and the storm abated, so that the sea did not rage and swell as before. But that which surprised me most was that the ship was lifted off in the night from the sand where she lay, by the swelling of the tide, and was driven up almost as far as the rock which I first mentioned, where I had been so bruised by the dashing me against it; this being within about a mile from the shore where I was and the ship seeming to stand upright still, I wished myself on board, that, at least, I might save some necessary things for my use. When I came down from my apartment in the tree, I looked about me again, and the first thing I found was the boat, which lay as the wind and the sea had tossed her up upon the land, about two miles on my right hand. I walked as far as I could upon the shore to have got to her, but found a neck or inlet of water between me and the boat, which was about half a mile broad; so I came back for the present, being more intent upon getting at the ship, where I hoped to find something for my present subsistence. A little after noon I found the sea very calm and the tide ebbed so far out that I could come within a quarter of a mile of the ship; and here I found a fresh renewing of my grief, for I saw evidently that if we had kept on board, we had been all safe, that is to say, we had all got safe on shore, and I had not been so miserable as to be left entirely destitute of all comfort and company, as I now was: this forced tears from my eyes again, but as there was little relief in that, I resolved, if possible, to get to the ship; so I pulled off my clothes, for the weather was hot to extremity, and took the water; but when I came to the ship, my difficulty was still greater to know how to get on board, for as she lay aground, and high out of the water, there was nothing within my reach to lay hold of; I swam round her twice, and the second time I spied a small piece of a rope, which I wondered I did not see at first, hang down by the fore-chains so low as that with great difficulty I got hold of it, and by the help of that rope got up into the forecastle of the ship. Here I found that the ship was bulged, and had a great deal of water in her hold, but that she lay so on the side of a bank of hard sand, or rather earth, that her stern lay lifted up upon the bank and her head low almost to the water; by this means all her quarter was free, and all that was in that part was dry; for you may be sure my first work was to search and to see what was spoiled and what was free; and first I found that all the ship' provisions were dry and untouched by the water, and being very well disposed to eat, I went to the bread-room and filled my pockets with biscuit, and ate it as I went about other things, for I had no time to lose; I also found some rum in the great cabin, of which I took a large dram, and which I had indeed need enough of to spirit me for what was before me. Now I wanted nothing but a boat to furnish myself with many things which I foresaw would be very necessary to me. It was in vain to sit still and wish for what was not to be had, and this extremity roused my application. We had several spare yards and two or three large spars of wood and a spare topmast or two in the ship; I resolved to fall to work with these and flung as many of them overboard as I could manage for their weight, tying every one with a rope that they might not drive away; when this was done I went down the ship' side, and pulling them to me, I tied four of them fast together at both ends as well as I could, in the form of a raft, and laying two or three short pieces of plank upon them crossways, I found I could walk upon it very well, but that it was not able to bear any great weight, the pieces being too light; so I went to work, and with the carpenter' saw I cut a spare topmast into three lengths and added them to my raft, with a great deal of labour and pains; but the hope of furnishing myself with necessaries encouraged me to go beyond what I should have been able to have done upon another occasion. My raft was now strong enough to bear any reasonable weight; my next care was what to load it with and how to preserve what I laid upon it from the surf of the sea; but I was not long considering this; I first laid all the planks or boards upon it that I could get, and having considered well what I most wanted, I first got three of the seamen' chests, which I had broken open and emptied, and lowered them down upon my raft; the first of these I filled with provisions, viz., bread, rice, three Dutch cheeses, five pieces of dried goat' flesh, which we lived much upon, and a little remainder of European corn which had been laid by for some fowls which we brought to sea with us, but the fowls were killed; there had been some barley and wheat together, but, to my great disappointment, I found afterwards that the rats had eaten or spoiled it all. As for liquors, I found several cases of bottles belonging to our skipper, in which were some cordial waters, and in all about five or six gallons of sack; these I stowed by themselves, there being no need to put them into the chest, nor no room for them. While I was doing this, I found the tide began to flow, though very calm, and I had the mortification to see my coat, shirt, and waistcoat, which I had left on shore upon the sand, swim away; as for my breeches, which were only linen, and open-kneed, I swam on board in them, and my stockings. However, this put me upon rummaging for clothes, of which I found enough, but took no more than I wanted for present use, for I had other things which my eye was more upon, as first, tools to work with on shore; and it was after long searching that I found out the carpenter' chest, which was indeed a very useful prize to me, and much more valuable than a shiploading of gold would have been at that time; I got it down to my raft, even whole as it was, without losing time to look into it, for I knew in general what it contained. My next care was for some ammunition and arms; there were two very good fowling pieces in the great cabin, and two pistols; these I secured first, with some powder horns, and a small bag of shot, and two old rusty swords; I knew there were three barrels of powder in the ship, but knew not where our gunner had stowed them, but with much search I found them, two of them dry and good, the third had taken water; those two I got to my raft with the arms. And now I thought myself pretty well freighted, and began to think how I should get to shore with them, having neither sail, oar, or rudder; and the least capful of wind would have overset all my navigation. I had three encouragements: 1. A smooth, calm sea. 2. The tide rising and setting in to the shore. 3. What little wind there was blew me towards the land; and thus, having found two or three broken oars belonging to the boat, and besides the tools which were in the chest, I found two saws, an axe, and a hammer, and with this cargo I put to sea. For a mile or thereabouts my raft went very well, only that I found it drive a little distant from the place where I had landed before, by which I perceived that there was some indraught of the water, and consequently I hoped to find some creek or river there which I might make use of as a port to get to land with my cargo. As I imagined, so it was; there appeared before me a little opening of the land, and I found a strong current of the tide set into it, so I guided my raft as well as I could to keep in the middle of the stream. But here I had like to have suffered a second shipwreck, which, if I had, I think verily would have broke my heart; for knowing nothing of the coast, my raft ran aground at one end of it upon a shoal, and not being aground at the other end, it wanted but a little that all my cargo had slipped off towards that end that was afloat, and so fallen into the water. I did my utmost by setting my back against the chests to keep them in their places, but could not thrust off the raft with all my strength, neither durst I stir from the posture I was in, but holding up the chests with all my might, stood in that manner near half an hour, in which time the rising of the water brought me a little more upon a level; and a little after, the water still rising, my raft floated again, and I thrust her off with the oar I had, into the channel, and then driving up higher, I at length found myself in the mouth of a little river, with land on both sides, and a strong current or tide running up; I looked on both sides for a proper place to get to shore, for I was not willing to be driven too high up the river, hoping in time to see some ship at sea and therefore resolved to place myself as near the coast as I could. At length I spied a little cove on the right shore of the creek, to which with great pain and difficulty I guided my raft, and at last got so near as that, reaching ground with my oar, I could thrust her directly in; but here I had like to have dipped all my cargo in the sea again; for that shore lying pretty steep, that is to say, sloping, there was no place to land, but where one end of my float, if it run on shore, would lie so high and the other sink lower as before, that it would endanger my cargo again. All that I could do was to wait till the tide was at the highest, keeping the raft with my oar like an anchor to hold the side of it fast to the shore, near a flat piece of ground, which I expected the water would flow over; and so it did. As soon as I found water enough (for my raft drew about a foot of water), I thrust her on upon that flat piece of ground and there fastened or moored her by sticking my two broken oars into the ground, one on one side near one end, and one on the other side near the other end; and thus I lay till the water ebbed away and left my raft and all my cargo safe on shore. My next work was to view the country, and seek a proper place for my habitation, and where to stow my goods, to secure them from whatever might happen. Where I was I yet knew not, whether on the continent or on an island; whether inhabited or not inhabited; whether in danger of wild beasts or not. There was a hill not above a mile from me, which rose up very steep and high, and which seemed to overtop some other hills which lay as in a ridge from it northward. I took out one of the fowling pieces, and one of the pistols, and a horn of powder, and thus armed I traveled for discovery up to the top of that hill, where, after I had with great labour and difficulty got to the top, I saw my fate to my great affliction, viz., that I was in an island environed every way with the sea, no land to be seen, except some rocks which lay a great way off, and two small islands less than this, which lay about three leagues to the west. I found also that the island I was in was barren and, as I saw good reason to believe, uninhabited, except by wild beasts, of whom, however, I saw none, yet I saw abundance of fowls, but knew not their kinds, neither when I killed them could I tell what was fit for food, and what not; at my coming back, I shot at a great bird which I saw sitting upon a tree on the side of a great wood. I believe it was the first gun that had been fired there since the creation of the world; I had no sooner fired but from all the parts of the wood there arose an innumerable number of fowls of many sorts, making a confused screaming, and crying every one according to his usual note; but not one of them of any kind that I knew. As for the creature I killed, I took it to be a kind of a hawk, its colour and beak resembling it, but had no talons or claws more than common; its flesh was carrion and fit for nothing. Contented with this discovery, I came back to my raft and fell to work to bring my cargo on shore, which took me up the rest of that day, and what to do with myself at night I knew not, nor indeed where to rest; for I was afraid to lie down on the ground, not knowing but some wild beast might devour me, though, as I afterwards found, there was really no need for those fears. However, as well as I could, I barricaded myself round with the chests and boards that I had brought on shore, and made a kind of a hut for that night' lodging; as for food, I yet saw not which way to supply myself, except that I had seen two or three creatures like hares run out of the wood where I shot the fowl. I now began to consider that I might yet get a great many things out of the ship, which would be useful to me, and particularly some of the rigging and sails, and such other things as might come to land, and I resolved to make another voyage on board the vessel, if possible; and as I knew that the first storm that blew must necessarily break her all in pieces, I resolved to set all other things apart, till I got everything out of the ship that I could get; then I called a council, that is to say, in my thoughts, whether I should take back the raft, but this appeared impracticable; so I resolved to go as before, when the tide was down, and I did so, only that I stripped before I went from my hut, having nothing on but a checkered shirt and a pair of linen drawers and a pair of pumps on my feet. I got on board the ship as before, and prepared a second raft, and having had experience of the first, I neither made this so unwieldy, nor loaded it so hard, but yet I brought away several things very useful to me; as first, in the carpenter' stores I found two or three bags full of nails and spikes, a great screwjack, a dozen or two of hatchets, and above all, that most useful thing called a grindstone; all these I secured together, with several things belonging to the gunner, particularly two or three iron crows and two barrels of musket bullets, seven muskets, and another fowling piece, with some small quantity of powder more; a large bag full of small shot, and a great roll of sheet lead. But this last was so heavy, I could not hoist it up to get it over the ship' side. Besides these things, I took all the men' clothes that I could find, and a spare fore-topsail, hammock, and some bedding; and with this I loaded my second raft, and brought them all safe on shore to my very great comfort. I was under some apprehensions during my absence from the land, that at least my provisions might be devoured on shore; but when I came back I found no sign of any visitor, only there sat a creature like a wild cat upon one of the chests, which when I came towards it, ran away a little distance, and then stood still; she sat very composed and unconcerned, and looked full in my face, as if she had a mind to be acquainted with me. I presented my gun at her, but as she did not understand it, she was perfectly unconcerned at it, nor did she offer to stir away; upon which I tossed her a bit of biscuit, though, by the way, I was not very free of it, for my store was not great. However, I spared her a bit, I say, and she went to it, smelled of it, and ate it and looked (as pleased) for more, but I thanked her, and could spare no more; so she marched off. Having got my second cargo on shore (though I was fain to open the barrels of powder and bring them by parcels, for they were too heavy, being large casks), I went to work to make me a little tent with the sail and some poles which I cut for that purpose; and into this tent I brought everything that I knew would spoil, either with rain, or sun, and I piled all the empty chests and casks up in a circle round the tent, to fortify it from any sudden attempt, either from man or beast. When I had done this, I blocked up the door of the tent with some boards within, and an empty chest set up on end without, and spreading one of the beds upon the ground, laying my two pistols just at my head and my gun at length by me, I went to bed for the first time, and slept very quietly all night, for I was very weary and heavy, for the night before I had slept little, and had laboured very hard all day, as well to fetch all those things from the ship, as to get them on shore. I had the biggest magazine of all kinds now that ever was laid up, I believe, for one man; but I was not satisfied still; for while the ship sat upright in that posture, I thought I ought to get everything out of her that I could; so every day at low water I went on board, and brought away something or other. But particularly the third time I went, I brought away as much of the rigging as I could, as also all the small ropes and rope-twine I could get, with a piece of spare canvas, which was to mend the sails upon occasion, and the barrel of wet gunpowder. In a word, I brought away all the sails first and last, only that I was fain to cut them in pieces, and bring as much at a time as I could; for they were no more useful to be sails, but as mere canvas only. But that which comforted me more still was that at last of all, after I had made five or six such voyages as these, and thought I had nothing more to expect from the ship that was worth my meddling with; I say, after all this, I found a great hogshead of bread, and three large runlets of rum or spirits, and a box of sugar, and a barrel of fine flour; this was surprising to me, because I had given over expecting any more provisions, except what was spoiled by the water. I soon emptied the hogshead of that bread, and wrapped it up parcel by parcel in pieces of the sails, which I cut out; and in a word, I got all this safe on shore also. The next day I made another voyage; and now having plundered the ship of what was portable and fit to hand out, I began with the cables; and cutting the great cable into pieces such as I could move, I got two cables and a hawser on shore, with all the ironwork I could get; and having cut down the spritsail yard, and the mizzen yard, and everything I could to make a large raft, I loaded it with all those heavy goods, and came away. But my good luck began now to leave me; for this raft was so unwieldy and so overloaden, that after I was entered the little cove, where I had landed the rest of my goods, not being able to guide it so handily as I did the other, it overset, and threw me and all my cargo into the water. As for myself it was no great harm, for I was near the shore; but as to my cargo, it was great part of it lost, especially the iron, which I expected would have been of great use to me. However, when the tide was out, I got most of the pieces of cable ashore, and some of the iron, though with infinite labour; for I was fain to dip for it into the water, a work which fatigued me very much. After this I went every day on board, and brought away what I could get. I had been now thirteen days on shore, and had been eleven times on board the ship; in which time I had brought away all that one pair of hands could well be supposed capable to bring, though I believe verily, had the calm weather held, I should have brought away the whole ship, piece by piece. But preparing the twelfth time to go on board, I found the wind began to rise; however, at low water I went on board, and though I thought I had rummaged the cabin so effectually, as that nothing more could be found, yet I discovered a locker with drawers in it, in one of which I found two or three razors and one pair of large scissors, with some ten or a dozen of good knives and forks; in another I found about thirty-six pounds value in money, some European coin, some Brazil, some pieces of eight, some gold, some silver. I smiled to myself at the sight of this money. "O drug!" said I aloud, ''what art thou good for? Thou art not worth to me, no, not the taking off of the ground; one of those knives is worth all this heap; I have no manner of use for thee; e'en remain where thou art and go to the bottom as a creature whose life is not worth saving.'' However, upon second thoughts, I took it away, and wrapping all this in a piece of canvas, I began to think of making another raft; but while I was preparing this, I found the sky overcast, and the wind began to rise, and in a quarter of an hour it blew a fresh gale from the shore; it presently occurred to me that it was in vain to pretend to make a raft with the wind off shore, and that it was my business to be gone before the tide of flood began, otherwise I might not be able to reach the shore at all. Accordingly I let myself down into the water and swam across the channel, which lay between the ship and the sands, and even that with difficulty enough, partly with the weight of the things I had about me, and partly the roughness of the water, for the wind rose very hastily, and before it was quite high water, it blew a storm. But I was gotten home to my little tent, where I lay with all my wealth about me very secure. It blew very hard all that night, and in the morning, when I looked out, behold, no more ship was to be seen; I was a little surprised, but recovered myself with this satisfactory reflection, viz., that I had lost no time, nor abated no diligence to get everything out of her that could be useful to me, and that indeed there was little left in her that I was able to bring away if I had had more time. I now gave over any more thoughts of the ship, or of anything out of her, except what might drive on shore from her wreck, as indeed divers pieces of her afterwards did; but those things were of small use to me. I Build My Fortress MY THOUGHTS were now wholly employed about securing myself against either savages, if any should appear, or wild beasts, if any were in the island; and I had many thoughts of the method how to do this, and what kind of dwelling to make; whether I should make me a cave in the earth, or a tent upon the earth. And, in short, I resolved upon both; the manner and description of which it may not be improper to give an account of. I soon found the place I was in was not for my settlement, particularly because it was upon a low moorish ground near the sea, and I believed would not be wholesome, and more particularly because there was no fresh water near it; so I resolved to find a more healthy and more convenient spot of ground. I consulted several things in my situation, which I found would be proper for me: first, health and fresh water I just now mentioned; secondly, shelter from the heat of the sun; thirdly, security from ravenous creatures, whether man or beast; fourthly, a view to the sea, that if God sent any ship in sight, I might not lose any advantage for my deliverance, of which I was not willing to banish all my expectation yet. In search of a place proper for this, I found a little plain on the side of a rising hill, whose front towards this little plain was steep as a house-side, so that nothing could come down upon me from the top; on the side of this rock there was a hollow place worn a little way in like the entrance or door of a cave, but there was not really any cave or way into the rock at all. On the flat of the green, just before this hollow place, I resolved to pitch my tent. This plain was not above an hundred yards broad, and about twice as long, and lay like a green before my door, and at the end of it descended irregularly every way down into the low grounds by the seaside. It was on the north-northwest side of the hill, so that I was sheltered from the heat every day, till it came to a west and by south sun, or thereabouts, which in those countries is near the setting. Before I set up my tent, I drew a half circle before the hollow place, which took in about ten yards in its semi-diameter from the rock, and twenty yards in its diameter, from its beginning and ending. In this half circle I pitched two rows of strong stakes, driving them into the ground till they stood very firm like piles, the biggest end being out of the ground about five foot and a half, and sharpened on the top. The two rows did not stand above six inches from one another. Then I took the pieces of cable which I had cut in the ship, and laid them in rows one upon another, within the circle between these two rows of stakes, up to the top, placing other stakes in the inside, leaning against them, about two foot and a half high, like a spur to a post; and this fence was so strong that neither man nor beast could get into it or over it. This cost me a great deal of time and labour, especially to cut the piles in the woods, bring them to the place, and drive them into the earth. The entrance into this place I made to be, not by a door, but by a short ladder to go over the top, which ladder, when I was in, I lifted over after me, and so I was completely fenced in, and fortified, as I thought, from all the world, and consequently slept secure in the night, which otherwise I could not have done, though, as it appeared afterwards, there was no need of all this caution from the enemies that I apprehended danger from. Into this fence or fortress, with infinite labour, I carried all my riches, all my provisions, ammunition, and stores, of which you have the account above; and I made me a large tent, which, to preserve me from the rains that in one part of the year are very violent there, I made double, viz., one smaller tent within, and one larger tent above it, and covered the uppermost with a large tarpaulin which I had saved among the sails. And now I lay no more for a while in the bed which I had brought on shore, but in a hammock, which was indeed a very good one and belonged to the mate of the ship. Into this tent I brought all my provisions, and every thing that would spoil by the wet, and having thus enclosed all my goods, I made up the entrance, which till now I had left open, and so passed and repassed, as I said, by a short ladder. When I had done this, I began to work my way into the rock, and bringing all the earth and stones that I dug down out through my tent, I laid them up within my fence in the nature of a terrace, so that it raised the ground within about a foot and a half; and thus I made a cave just behind my tent, which served me like a cellar to my house. It cost me much labour, and many days, before all these things were brought to perfection, and therefore I must go back to some other things which took up some of my thoughts. At the same time it happened, after I had laid my scheme for the setting up my tent and making the cave, that a storm of rain falling from a thick dark cloud, a sudden flash of lightning happened, and after that, a great clap of thunder, as is naturally the effect of it. I was not so much surprised with the lightning, as I was with a thought which darted into my mind as swift as the lightning itself: O my powder! My very heart sunk within me, when I thought, that at one blast all my powder might be destroyed; on which, not my defence only, but the providing me food, as I thought, entirely depended; I was nothing near so anxious about my own danger, though had the powder took fire, I had never known who had hurt me. Such impression did this make upon me, that after the storm was over, I laid aside all my works, my building and fortifying, and applied myself to make bags and boxes to separate the powder, and keep it a little and a little in a parcel, in hope that whatever might come, it might not all take fire at once, and to keep it so apart that it should not be possible to make one part fire another. I finished this work in about a fortnight, and I think my powder, which in all was about 240 pounds' weight, was divided in not less than a hundred parcels; as to the barrel that had been wet, I did not apprehend any danger from that, so I placed it in my new cave, which in my fancy I called my kitchen, and the rest I hid up and down in holes among the rocks, so that no wet might come to it, marking very carefully where I laid it. In the interval of time while this was doing, I went out at least once every day with my gun, as well to divert myself as to see if I could kill anything fit for food, and as near as I could to acquaint myself with what the island produced. The first time I went out, I presently discovered that there were goats in the island, which was a great satisfaction to me; but then it was attended with this misfortune to me, viz., that they were so shy, so subtile, and so swift of foot that it was the difficultest thing in the world to come at them. But I was not discouraged at this, not doubting but I might now and then shoot one, as it soon happened; for after I had found their haunts a little, I laid wait in this manner for them: I observed, if they saw me in the valleys, though they were upon the rocks, they would run away as in a terrible fright; but if they were feeding in the valleys, and I was upon the rocks, they took no notice of me; from whence I concluded, that by the position of their optics, their sight was so directed downward that they did not readily see objects that were above them; so afterwards I took this method, I always climbed the rocks first, to get above them, and then had frequently a fair mark. The first shot I made among these creatures, I killed a she-goat which had a little kid by her which she gave suck to, which grieved me heartily; but when the old one fell, the kid stood stock still by her till I came and took her up, and not only so, but when I carried the old one with me upon my shoulders, the kid followed me quite to my enclosure, upon which I laid down the dam and took the kid in my arms, and carried it over my pale, in hopes to have bred it up tame, but it would not eat, so I was forced to kill it and eat it myself; these two supplied me with flesh a great while, for I ate sparingly, and saved my provisions (my bread especially) as much as possibly I could. Having now fixed my habitation, I found it absolutely necessary to provide a place to make a fire in, and fuel to burn; and what I did for that, as also how I enlarged my cave, and what conveniences I made, I shall give a full account of in its place. But I must first give some little account of myself and of my thoughts about living, which it may well be supposed were not a few. I had a dismal prospect of my condition, for as I was not cast away upon that island without being driven, as is said, by a violent storm quite out of the course of our intended voyage and a great way, viz., some hundreds of leagues out of the ordinary course of the trade of mankind, I had great reason to consider it as a determination of Heaven, that in this desolate place and in this desolate manner I should end my life; the tears would run plentifully down my face when I made these reflections, and sometimes I would expostulate with myself why Providence should thus completely ruin its creatures and render them so absolutely miserable, so without help abandoned, so entirely depressed, that it could hardly be rational to be thankful for such a life. But something always returned swift upon me to check these thoughts and to reprove me; and particularly one day, walking with my gun in my hand by the seaside, I was very pensive upon the subject of my present condition, when Reason, as it were, put in, expostulating with me t' other way, thus: ''Well, you are in a desolate condition, 'tis true, but pray remember, where are the rest of you? Did not you come eleven of you into the boat? Where are the ten? Why were not they saved, and you lost? Why were you singled out? Is it better to be here or there?'' And then I pointed to the sea. All evils are to be considered with the good that is in them, and with what worse attends them. Then it occurred to me again how well I was furnished for my subsistence, and what would have been my case if it had not happened, which was an hundred thousand to one, that the ship floated from the place where she first struck, and was driven so near to the shore that I had time to get all these things out of her. What would have been my case if I had been to have lived in the condition in which I at first came on shore, without necessaries of life, or necessaries to supply and procure them? ''Particularly,'' said I aloud (though to myself), ''what should I have done without a gun, without ammunition, without any tools to make anything or to work with, without clothes, bedding, a tent, or any manner of coverings?'' and that now I had all these to a sufficient quantity, and was in a fair way to provide myself in such a manner as to live without my gun when my ammunition was spent; so that I had a tolerable view of subsisting without any want as long as I lived; for I considered from the beginning how I would provide for the accidents that might happen, and for the time that was to come, even not only after my ammunition should be spent, but even after my health or strength should decay. I confess I had not entertained any notion of my ammunition being destroyed at one blast, I mean my powder being blown up by lightning, and this made the thoughts of it so surprising to me when it lightened and thundered, as I observed just now. And now being to enter into a melancholy relation of a scene of silent life, such perhaps as was never heard of in the world before, I shall take it from its beginning, and continue it in its order. It was, by my account, the 30th of September when, in the manner as above said, I first set foot upon this horrid island, when the sun, being, to us, in its autumnal equinox, was almost just over my head, for I reckoned myself, by observation, to be in the latitude of 9 degrees 22 minutes north of the line. After I had been there about ten or twelve days, it came into my thoughts, that I should lose my reckoning of time for want of books, and pen and ink, and should even forget the Sabbath days from the working days; but to prevent this, I cut it with my knife upon a large post, in capital letters, and making it into a great cross, I set it up on the shore where I first landed, viz., ''I came on shore here the 30th of September 1659.'' Upon the sides of this square post I cut every day a notch with my knife, and every seventh notch was as long again as the rest, and every first day of the month as long again as that long one; and thus I kept my calendar, or weekly, monthly, and yearly reckoning of time. In the next place we are to observe that among the many things which I brought off the ship in the several voyages which, as above mentioned, I made to it, I got several things of less value, but not all less useful to me, which I omitted setting down before; as in particular, pens, ink, and paper, several parcels in the captain', mate', gunner', and carpenter' keeping, three or four compasses, some mathematical instruments, dials, perspectives, charts, and books of navigation, all which I huddled together, whether I might want them or no; also I found three very good Bibles, which came to me in my cargo from England, and which I had packed up among my things; some Portuguese books also, and among them two or three Popish prayer-books, and several other books, all which I carefully secured. And I must not forget that we had in the ship a dog and two cats, of whose eminent history I may have occasion to say something in its place; for I carried both the cats with me, and as for the dog, he jumped out of the ship of himself, and swam on shore to me the day after I went on shore with my first cargo and was a trusty servant to me many years; I wanted nothing that he could fetch me, nor any company that he could make up to me; I only wanted to have him talk to me, but that would not do. As I observed before, I found pen, ink, and paper, and I husbanded them to the utmost; and I shall show that while my ink lasted, I kept things very exact; but after that was gone, I could not, for I could not make any ink by any means that I could devise. And this put me in mind that I wanted many things, notwithstanding all that I had amassed together; and of these, this of ink was one, as also spade, pickaxe, and shovel, to dig or remove the earth; needles, pins, and thread; as for linen, I soon learned to want that without much difficulty. This want of tools made every work I did go on heavily, and it was near a whole year before I had entirely finished my little pale, or surrounded habitation. The piles, or stakes, which were as heavy as I could well lift, were a long time in cutting and preparing in the woods, and more by far in bringing home, so that I spent sometimes two days in cutting and bringing home one of those posts and a third day in driving it into the ground; for which purpose I got a heavy piece of wood at first, but at last bethought myself of one of the iron crows, which, however, though I found it, yet it made driving those posts or piles very laborious and tedious work. But what need I have been concerned at the tediousness of anything I had to do, seeing I had time enough to do it in? Nor had I any other employment if that had been over, at least that I could foresee, except the ranging the island to seek for food, which I did more or less every day. I now began to consider seriously my condition, and the circumstance I was reduced to; and I drew up the state of my affairs in writing, not so much to leave them to any that were to come after me, for I was like to have but few heirs, as to deliver my thoughts from daily poring upon them, and afflicting my mind; and as my reason began now to master my despondency, I began to comfort myself as well as I could, and to set the good against the evil, that I might have something to distinguish my case from worse; and I stated it very impartially, like debtor and creditor, the comforts I enjoyed, against the miseries I suffered, thus: Upon the whole, here was an undoubted testimony that there was scarce any condition in the world so miserable but there was something negative or something positive to be thankful for in it; and let this stand as a direction from the experience of the most miserable of all conditions in this world, that we may always find in it something to comfort ourselves from, and to set in the description of good and evil, on the credit side of the account. Having now brought my mind a little to relish my condition and given over looking out to sea, to see if I could spy a ship; I say, giving over these things, I began to apply myself to accommodate my way of living and to make things as easy to me as I could. I have already described my habitation, which was a tent under the side of a rock, surrounded with a strong pale of posts and cables, but I might now rather call it a wall; for I raised a kind of wall up against it of turfs, about two foot thick on the outside; and after some time (I think it was a year and a half) I raised rafters from it, leaning to the rock, and thatched or covered it with boughs of trees and such things as I could get to keep out the rain, which I found at some times of the year very violent. I have already observed how I brought all my goods into this pale, and into the cave which I had made behind me. But I must observe, too, that at first this was a confused heap of goods, which as they lay in no order, so they took up all my place; I had no room to turn myself; so I set myself to enlarge my cave and works farther into the earth, for it was a loose sandy rock, which yielded easily to the labour I bestowed on it. And so, when I found I was pretty safe as to beasts of prey, I worked sideways to the right hand into the rock; and then turning to the right again, worked quite out, and made me a door to come out on the outside of my pale or fortification. This gave me not only egress and regress, as it were a back way to my tent and to my storehouse, but gave me room to stow my goods. And now I began to apply myself to make such necessary things as I found I most wanted, particularly a chair and a table; for without these I was not able to enjoy the few comforts I had in the world; I could not write or eat, or do several things, with so much pleasure without a table. So I went to work; and here I must needs observe that as reason is the substance and original of the mathematics, so by stating and squaring everything by reason, and by making the most rational judgment of things, every man may be in time master of every mechanic art. I had never handled a tool in my life, and yet in time, by labour, application, and contrivance, I found at last that I wanted nothing but I could have made it, especially if I had had tools; however, I made abundance of things even without tools, and some with no more tools than an adze and a hatchet, which perhaps were never made that way before, and that with infinite labour. For example, if I wanted a board, I had no other way but to cut down a tree, set it on an edge before me, and hew it flat on either side with my axe, till I had brought it to be thin as a plank, and then dub it smooth with my adze. It is true, by this method I could make but one board out of a whole tree, but this I had no remedy for but patience, any more than I had for the prodigious deal of time and labour which it took me up to make a plank or board. But my time or labour was little worth, and so it was as well employed one way as another. However, I made me a table and a chair, as I observed above, in the first place, and this I did out of the short pieces of boards that I brought on my raft from the ship. But when I had wrought out some boards, as above, I made large shelves of the breadth of a foot and a half, one over another, all along one side of my cave, to lay all my tools, nails, and ironwork, and in a word, to separate everything at large in their places, that I might easily come at them; I knocked pieces into the wall of the rock to hang my guns and all things that would hang up. So that had my cave been to be seen, it looked like a general magazine of all necessary things; and I had everything so ready at my hand, that it was a great pleasure to me to see all my goods in such order, and especially to find my stock of all necessaries so great. And now it was when I began to keep a journal of every day' employment; for, indeed, at first I was in too much hurry, and not only hurry as to labour, but in too much discomposure of mind, and my journal would have been full of many dull things. For example, I must have said thus: September the 30th. After I got to shore, and had escaped drowning, instead of being thankful to God for my deliverance, having first vomited with the great quantity of salt water which was gotten into my stomach, and recovering myself a little, I ran about the shore, wringing my hands and beating my head and face, exclaiming at my misery and crying out I was undone, undone, till, tired and faint, I was forced to lie down on the ground to repose, but durst not sleep, for fear of being devoured. Some days after this, and after I had been on board the ship and got all that I could out of her, yet I could not forbear getting up to the top of a little mountain, and looking out to sea, in hopes of seeing a ship, then fancy at a vast distance I spied a sail, please myself with the hopes of it and then, after looking steadily till I was almost blind, lose it quite, and sit down and weep like a child, and thus increase my misery by my folly. But having gotten over these things in some measure and having settled my household stuff and habitation, made me a table and a chair, and all as handsome about me as I could, I began to keep my journal, of which I shall here give you the copy (though in it will be told all these particulars over again) as long as it lasted, for, having no more ink, I was forced to leave it off. The Journal September 30, 1659. I, poor, miserable Robinson Crusoe, being shipwrecked, during a dreadful storm in the offing, came on shore on this dismal unfortunate island, which I called ''the Island of Despair,'' all the rest of the ship' company being drowned, and myself almost dead. All the rest of that day I spent in afflicting myself at the dismal circumstances I was brought to, viz., I had neither food, house, clothes, weapon, or place to fly to, and in despair of any relief, saw nothing but death before me, either that I should be devoured by wild beasts, murdered by savages, or starved to death for want of food. At the approach of night, I slept in a tree for fear of wild creatures, but slept soundly, though it rained all night. October 1. In the morning I saw to my great surprise, the ship had floated with the high tide and was driven on shore again much nearer the island, which, as it was some comfort on one hand (for seeing her sit upright and not broken to pieces, I hoped, if the wind abated, I might get on board, and get some food and necessaries out of her for my relief), so on the other hand, it renewed my grief at the loss of my comrades, who, I imagined, if we had all stayed on board, might have saved the ship, or at least that they would not have been all drowned as they were; and that had the men been saved, we might perhaps have built us a boat out of the ruins of the ship, to have carried us to some other part of the world. I spent great part of this day in perplexing myself on these things; but at length seeing the ship almost dry, I went upon the sand as near as I could, and then swam on board. This day also continued raining, though with no wind at all. From the 1st of October to the 24th. All these days entirely spent in many several voyages to get all I could out of the ship, which I brought on shore every tide of flood upon rafts. Much rain also in these days, though with some intervals of fair weather. But, it seems, this was the rainy season. October 20. I overset my raft, and all the goods I had got upon it; but being in shoal water, and the things being chiefly heavy, I recovered many of them when the tide was out. October 25. It rained all night and all day, with some gusts of wind, during which time the ship broke in pieces, the wind blowing a little harder than before, and was no more to be seen, except the wreck of her, and that only at low water. I spent this day in covering and securing the goods which I had saved, that the rain might not spoil them. October 26. I walked about the shore almost all day to find out a place to fix my habitation, greatly concerned to secure myself from an attack in the night, either from wild beasts or men. Towards night I fixed upon a proper place under a rock, and marked out a semicircle for my encampment, which I resolved to strengthen with a work, wall, or fortification, made of double piles, lined within with cable, and without with turf. From the 26th to the 30th I worked very hard in carrying all my goods to my new habitation, though some part of the time it rained exceeding hard. The 31st in the morning I went out into the island with my gun to seek for some food, and discover the country, when I killed a she-goat, and her kid followed me home, which I afterwards killed also, because it would not feed. November 1. I set up my tent under a rock, and lay there for the first night, making it as large as I could with stakes driven in to swing my hammock upon. November 2. I set up all my chests and boards, and the pieces of timber which made my rafts, and with them formed a fence round me, a little within the place I had marked out for my fortification. November 3. I went out with my gun and killed two fowls like ducks, which were very good food. In the afternoon went to work to make me a table. November 4. This morning I began to order my times of work, of going out with my gun, time of sleep, and time of diversion, viz.: Every morning I walked out with my gun for two or three hours, if it did not rain, then employed myself to work till about eleven o'clock; then ate what I had to live on, and from twelve to two I lay down to sleep, the weather being excessive hot, and then in the evening to work again. The working part of this day and of the next were wholly employed in making my table, for I was yet but a very sorry workman, though time and necessity made me a complete natural mechanic soon after, as I believe it would do anyone else. November 5. This day I went abroad with my gun and my dog, and killed a wild cat, her skin pretty soft, but her flesh good for nothing. Every creature I killed, I took off the skins and preserved them. Coming back by the seashore, I saw many sorts of seafowls which I did not understand; but was surprised, and almost frighted, with two or three seals, which, while I was gazing at, not well knowing what they were, got into the sea, and escaped me for that time. November 6. After my morning walk, I went to work with my table again, and finished it, though not to my liking; nor was it long before I learned to mend it. November 7. Now it began to be settled fair weather. The 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and part of the 12th (for the 11th was Sunday) I took wholly up to make me a chair, and with much ado brought it to a tolerable shape, but never to please me, and even in the making I pulled it to pieces several times. NOTE: I soon neglected my keeping Sundays; for, omitting my mark for them on my post, I forgot which was which. November 13. This day it rained, which refreshed me exceedingly, and cooled the earth, but it was accompanied with terrible thunder and lightning, which frighted me dreadfully, for fear of my powder. As soon as it was over, I resolved to separate my stock of powder into as many little parcels as possible, that it might not be in danger. November 14, 15, 16. These three days I spent in making little square chests or boxes, which might hold about a pound or two pounds, at most, of powder; and so, putting the powder in, I stowed it in places as secure and remote from one another as possible. On one of these three days I killed a large bird that was good to eat, but I know not what to call it. November 17. This day I began to dig behind my tent into the rock, to make room for my further convenience. NOTE: Three things I wanted exceedingly for this work, viz., a pickaxe, a shovel, and a wheelbarrow or basket, so I desisted from my work and began to consider how to supply that want, and make me some tools. As for a pickaxe, I made use of the iron crows, which were proper enough, though heavy; but the next thing was a shovel or spade. This was so absolutely necessary that indeed I could do nothing effectually without it; but what kind of one to make I knew not. November 18. The next day in searching the woods, I found a tree of that wood, or like it, which in Brazil they call the iron tree, for its exceeding hardness; of this, with great labour, and almost spoiling my axe, I cut a piece, and brought it home too with difficulty enough, for it was exceeding heavy. The excessive hardness of the wood, and having no other way, made me a long while upon this machine, for I worked it effectually, by little and little, into the form of a shovel or spade, the handle exactly shaped like ours in England, only that the broad part having no iron shod upon it at bottom, it would not last me so long; however, it served well enough for the uses which I had occasion to put it to; but never was a shovel, I believe, made after that fashion, or so long a-making. I was still deficient, for I wanted a basket or a wheelbarrow; a basket I could not make by any means, having no such things as twigs that would bend to make wickerware, at least none yet found out; and as to a wheelbarrow, I fancied I could make all but the wheel, but that I had no notion of, neither did I know how to go about it; besides, I had no possible way to make the iron gudgeons for the spindle or axis of the wheel to run in, so I gave it over; and so for carrying away the earth which I dug out of the cave, I made me a thing like a hod which the labourers carry mortar in when they serve the bricklayers. This was not so difficult to me as the making the shovel; and yet this, and the shovel, and the attempt, which I made in vain, to make a wheelbarrow, took me up no less than four days; I mean always excepting my morning walk with my gun, which I seldom failed, and very seldom failed also of bringing home something fit to eat. November 23. My other work having now stood still, because of my making these tools, when they were finished I went on, and working every day, as my strength and time allowed, I spent eighteen days entirely in widening and deepening my cave, that it might hold my goods commodiously. NOTE: During all this time, I worked to make this room or cave spacious enough to accommodate me as a warehouse or magazine, a kitchen, a dining-room, and a cellar; as for my lodging, I kept to the tent, except that sometimes in the wet season of the year it rained so hard that I could not keep myself dry, which caused me afterwards to cover all my place within my pale with long poles in the form of rafters, leaning against the rock, and load them with flags, and large leaves of trees, like a thatch. December 10. I began now to think my cave or vault finished, when on a sudden (it seems I had made it too large) a great quantity of earth fell down from the top and one side, so much, that, in short, it frighted me, and not without reason too; for if I had been under it I had never wanted a gravedigger. Upon this disaster I had a great deal of work to do over again; for I had the loose earth to carry out, and, which was of more importance, I had the ceiling to prop up, so that I might be sure no more would come down. December 11. This day I went to work with it accordingly, and got two shores or posts pitched upright to the top, with two pieces of boards across over each post. This I finished the next day; and setting more posts up with boards, in about a week more I had the roof secured; and the posts, standing in rows, served me for partitions to part of my house. December 17. From this day to the 20th, I placed shelves and knocked up nails on the posts to hang everything up that could be hung up; and now I began to be in some order within doors. December 20. Now I carried everything into the cave, and began to furnish my house, and set up some pieces of boards like a dresser, to order my victuals upon; but boards began to be very scarce with me. Also I made me another table. December 24. Much rain all night and all day; no stirring out. December 25. Rain all day. December 26. No rain, and the earth much cooler than before, and pleasanter. December 27. Killed a young goat, and lamed another, so that I catched it, and led it home in a string; when I had it home, I bound and splintered up its leg, which was broke. N.B. I took such care of it that it lived, and the leg grew well, and as strong as ever; but by nursing it so long it grew tame, and fed upon the little green at my door, and would not go away. This was the first time that I entertained a thought of breeding up some tame creatures, that I might have food when my powder and shot was all spent. December 28, 29, 30. Great heats and no breeze; so that there was no stirring abroad, except in the evening for food; this time I spent in putting all my things in order within doors. January 1. Very hot still, but I went abroad early and late with my gun, and lay still in the middle of the day; this evening going farther into the valleys, which lay towards the center of the island, I found there was plenty of goats, though exceeding shy and hard to come at; however, I resolved to try if I could not bring my dog to hunt them down. January 2. Accordingly, the next day I went out with my dog, and set him upon the goats; but I was mistaken, for they all faced about upon the dog, and he knew his danger too well, for he would not come near them. January 3. I began my fence or wall; which, being still jealous of my being attacked by somebody, I resolved to make very thick and strong. N.B. This wall being described before, I purposely omit what was said in the journal; it is sufficient to observe, that I was no less time than from the 3rd of January to the 14th of April, working, finishing, and perfecting this wall, though it was no more than about twenty-four yards in length, being a half circle from one place in the rock to another place about eight yards from it, the door of the cave being in the center behind it. All this time I worked very hard, the rains hindering me many days, nay, sometimes weeks together; but I thought I should never be perfectly secure till this wall was finished; and it is scarce credible what inexpressible labour everything was done with, especially the bringing piles out of the woods, and driving them into the ground; for I made them much bigger than I needed to have done. When this wall was finished, and the outside double-fenced with a turf wall raised up close to it, I persuaded myself that if any people were to come on shore there, they would not perceive anything like a habitation; and it was very well I did so, as may be observed hereafter, upon a very remarkable occasion. I Throw Away the Husks of Corn During this time, I made my rounds in the woods for game every day when the rain admitted me, and made frequent discoveries in these walks of something or other to my advantage; particularly I found a kind of wild pigeons, who built not as wood pigeons in a tree, but rather as house pigeons, in the holes of the rocks; and taking some young ones, I endeavoured to breed them up tame, and did so; but when they grew older, they flew all away, which perhaps was at first for want of feeding them, for I had nothing to give them; however, I frequently found their nests, and got their young ones, which were very good meat. And now in the managing my household affairs, I found myself wanting in many things, which I thought at first it was impossible for me to make, as indeed as to some of them it was; for instance, I could never make a cask to be hooped; I had a small runlet or two, as I observed before, but I could never arrive to the capacity of making one by them, though I spent many weeks about it; I could neither put in the heads, or join the staves so true to one another, as to make them hold water; so I gave that also over. In the next place, I was at a great loss for candle; so that as soon as ever it was dark, which was generally by seven o'clock, I was obliged to go to bed. I remembered the lump of beeswax with which I made candles in my African adventure; but I had none of that now. The only remedy I had was that, when I had killed a goat, I saved the tallow, and with a little dish made of clay, which I baked in the sun, to which I added a wick of some oakum, I made me a lamp; and this gave me light, though not a clear, steady light like a candle. In the middle of all my labours it happened that, rummaging my things, I found a little bag, which, as I hinted before, had been filled with corn for the feeding of poultry, not for this voyage, but before, as I suppose, when the ship came from Lisbon; what little remained of corn had been in the bag was all devoured with the rats, and I saw nothing in the bag but husks and dust; and being willing to have the bag for some other use (I think it was to put powder in, when I divided it for fear of the lightning, or some such use), I shook the husks of corn out of it on one side of my fortification under the rock. It was a little before the great rains, just now mentioned, that I threw this stuff away, taking no notice of anything, and not so much as remembering that I had thrown anything there; when about a month after or thereabouts, I saw some few stalks of something green shooting out of the ground, which I fancied might be some plant I had not seen; but I was surprised and perfectly astonished, when after a little longer time I saw about ten or twelve ears come out, which were perfect green barley of the same kind as our European, nay, as our English barley. It is impossible to express the astonishment and confusion of my thoughts on this occasion; I had hitherto acted upon no religious foundation at all; indeed I had very few notions of religion in my head, nor had entertained any sense of anything that had befallen me, otherwise than as a chance, or, as we lightly say, what pleases God; without so much as inquiring into the end of Providence in these things, or His order in governing events in the world. But after I saw barley grow there, in a climate which I know was not proper for corn, and especially that I knew not how it came there, it startled me strangely, and I began to suggest that God had miraculously caused this grain to grow without any help of seed sown, and that it was so directed purely for my sustenance on that wild miserable place. This touched my heart a little and brought tears out of my eyes, and I began to bless myself, that such a prodigy of Nature should happen upon my account; and this was the more strange to me because I saw near it still, all along by the side of the rock, some other straggling stalks, which proved to be stalks of rice, and which I knew, because I had seen it grow in Africa when I was ashore there. I not only thought these the pure productions of Providence for my support, but not doubting but that there was more in the place, I went all over that part of the island where I had been before, peering in every corner and under every rock, to see for more of it, but I could not find any; at last it occurred to my thoughts that I had shook a bag of chickens' meat4 out in that place, and then the wonder began to cease; and I must confess, my religious thankfulness to God' Providence began toabate too upon the discovering that all this was nothing but what was common; though I ought to have been as thankful for so strange and unforeseen Providence, as if it had been miraculous; for it was really the work of Providence as to me, that should order or appoint, that ten or twelve grains of corn should remain unspoiled (when the rats had destroyed all the rest), as if it had been dropped from Heaven; as also that I should throw it out in that particular place where, it being in the shade of a high rock, it sprang up immediately; whereas, if I had thrown it anywhere else at that time, it had been burnt up and destroyed. I carefully saved the ears of this corn, you may be sure, in their season, which was about the end of June; and laying up every corn, I resolved to sow them all again, hoping in time to have some quantity sufficient to supply me with bread; but it was not till the fourth year that I could allow myself the least grain of this corn to eat, and even then but sparingly, as I shall say afterwards in its order; for I lost all that I sowed the first season by not observing the proper time; for I sowed it just before the dry season, so that it never came up at all, at least not as it would have done. Of which in its place. Besides this barley, there was, as above, twenty or thirty stalks of rice, which I preserved with the same care, and whose use was of the same kind, or to the same purpose, viz., to make me bread, or rather food; for I found ways to cook it up without baking, though I did that also after some time. But to return to my journal. I worked excessive hard these three or four months, to get my wall done; and the 14th of April I closed it up, contriving to go into it, not by a door, but over the wall by a ladder, that there might be no sign on the outside of my habitation. April 16. I finished the ladder, so I went up with the ladder to the top, and then pulled it up after me, and let it down in the inside. This was a complete enclosure to me; for within I had room enough, and nothing could come at me from without, unless it could first mount my wall. The very next day after this wall was finished, I had almost had all my labour overthrown at once, and myself killed; the case was thus: As I was busy in the inside of it, behind my tent, just in the entrance into my cave, I was terribly frighted with a most dreadful surprising thing indeed; for all on a sudden I found the earth come crumbling down from the roof of my cave, and from the edge of the hill over my head, and two of the posts I had set up in the cave cracked in a frightful manner; I was heartily scared, but thought nothing of what was really the cause, only thinking that the top of my cave was falling in, as some of it had done before; and for fear I should be buried in it, I ran forward to my ladder, and not thinking myself safe there neither, I got over my wall for fear of the pieces of the hill which I expected might roll down upon me. I was no sooner stepped down upon the firm ground but I plainly saw it was a terrible earthquake, for the ground I stood on shook three times, at about eight minutes' distance, with three such shocks as would have overturned the strongest building that could be supposed to have stood on the earth; and a great piece of the top of a rock, which stood about half a mile from me next the sea, fell down with such a terrible noise, as I never heard in all my life. I perceived also the very sea was put into violent motion by it; and I believe the shocks were stronger under the water than on the island. I was so amazed with the thing itself, having never felt the like, or discoursed with anyone that had, that I was like one dead or stupefied; and the motion of the earth made my stomach sick, like one that was tossed at sea; but the noise of the falling of the rock awaked me, as it were, and rousing me from the stupefied condition I was in, filled me with horror, and I thought of nothing then but the hill falling upon my tent, and all my household goods, and burying all at once; and this sunk my very soul within me a second time. After the third shock was over, and I felt no more for some time, I began to take courage, and yet I had not heart enough to get over my wall again, for fear of being buried alive, but sat still upon the ground, greatly cast down and disconsolate, not knowing what to do. All this while I had not the least serious religious thought, nothing but the common, ''Lord have mercy upon me!'' and when it was over, that went away too. It Blows a Most Dreadful Hurricane While I sat thus, I found the air overcast, and grow cloudy, as if it would rain; soon after that the wind rose by little and little, so that in less than half an hour it blew a most dreadful hurricane. The sea was all on a sudden covered over with foam and froth, the shore was covered with the breach of the water, the trees were torn up by the roots, and a terrible storm it was; and this held about three hours, and then began to abate, and in two hours more it was stark calm, and began to rain very hard. All this while I sat upon the ground very much terrified and dejected, when on a sudden it came into my thoughts that, these winds and rain being the consequences of the earthquake, the earthquake itself was spent and over, and I might venture into my cave again. With this thought my spirits began to revive, and the rain also helping to persuade me, I went in and sat down in my tent; but the rain was so violent that my tent was ready to be beaten down with it, and I was forced to go into my cave, though very much afraid and uneasy for fear it should fall on my head. This violent rain forced me to a new work, viz., to cut a hole through my new fortification, like a sink, to let the water go out, which would else had drowned my cave. After I had been in my cave some time, and found still no more shocks of the earthquake follow, I began to be more composed; and now, to support my spirits, which indeed wanted it very much, I went to my little store and took a small sup of rum, which, however, I did then and always very sparingly, knowing I could have no more when that was gone. It continued raining all that night, and great part of the next day, so that I could not stir abroad; but my mind being more composed, I began to think of what I had best do, concluding that if the island was subject to these earthquakes, there would be no living for me in a cave, but I must consider of building me some little hut in an open place, which I might surround with a wall, as I had done here, and so make myself secure from wild beasts or men; but concluded, if I stayed where I was, I should certainly, one time or other, be buried alive. With these thoughts I resolved to remove my tent from the place where it stood, which was just under the hanging precipice of the hill, and which, if it should be shaken again, would certainly fall upon my tent. And I spent the two next days, being the 19th and 20th of April, in contriving where and how to remove my habitation. The fear of being swallowed up alive made me that I never slept in quiet, and yet the apprehension of lying abroad without any fence was almost equal to it. But still, when I looked about, and saw how everything was put in order, how pleasantly concealed I was, and how safe from danger, it made me very loath to remove. In the meantime it occurred to me that it would require a vast deal of time for me to do this, and that I must be contented to run the venture where I was, till I had formed a camp for myself, and had secured it so as to remove to it. So with this resolution I composed myself for a time, and resolved that I would go to work with all speed to build me a wall with piles and cables, etc., in a circle, as before, and set my tent up in it when it was finished, but that I would venture to stay where I was till it was finished and fit to remove to. This was the 21st. April 22. The next morning I began to consider of means to put this resolve in execution, but I was at a great loss about my tools. I had three large axes and abundance of hatchets (for we carried the hatchets for traffic with the Indians), but with much chopping and cutting knotty hard wood, they were all full of notches, and dull, and though I had a grindstone, I could not turn it and grind my tools too; this cost me as much thought as a statesman would have bestowed upon a grand point of politics, or a judge upon the life and death of a man. At length I contrived a wheel with a string, to turn it with my foot, that I might have both my hands at liberty. NOTE: I had never seen any such thing in England, or at least not to take notice how it was done, though since I have observed it is very common there; besides that, my grindstone was very large and heavy. This machine cost me a full week' work to bring it to perfection. April 28, 29. These two whole days I took up in grinding my tools, my machine for turning my grindstone performing very well. April 30. Having perceived my bread had been low a great while, now I took a survey of it, and reduced myself to one biscuit cake a day, which made my heart very heavy. May 1. In the morning, looking towards the seaside, the tide being low, I saw something lie on the shore bigger than ordinary, and it looked like a cask; when I came to it, I found a small barrel and two or three pieces of the wreck of the ship, which were driven on shore by the late hurricane, and looking towards the wreck itself, I thought it seemed to lie higher out of the water than it used to do; I examined the barrel which was driven on shore, and soon found it was a barrel of gunpowder, but it had taken water, and the powder was caked as hard as a stone; however, I rolled it farther on shore for the present, and went on upon the sands, as near as I could to the wreck of the ship, to look for more. When I came down to the ship I found it strangely removed. The forecastle, which lay before buried in sand, was heaved up at least six foot, and the stern, which was broke to pieces and parted from the rest by the force of the sea soon after I had left rummaging her, was tossed, as it were, up, and cast on one side, and the sand was thrown so high on that side next her stern that whereas there was a great place of water before, so that I could not come within a quarter of a mile of the wreck without swimming, I could now walk quite up to her when the tide was out; I was surprised with this at first, but soon concluded it must be done by the earthquake, and as by this violence the ship was more broken open than formerly, so many things came daily on shore which the sea had loosened, and which the winds and water rolled by degrees to the land. This wholly diverted my thoughts from the design of removing my habitation; and I busied myself mightily that day especially, in searching whether I could make any way into the ship, but I found nothing was to be expected of that kind, for that all the inside of the ship was choked up with sand. However, as I had learned not to despair of anything, I resolved to pull everything to pieces that I could of the ship, concluding that everything I could get from her would be of some use or other to me. May 3. I began with my saw, and cut a piece of a beam through, which I thought held some of the upper part, or quarter-deck, together, and when I had cut it through, I cleared away the sand as well as I could from the side which lay highest; but the tide coming in, I was obliged to give over for that time. May 4. I went a-fishing, but caught not one fish that I durst eat of, till I was weary of my sport, when, just going to leave off, I caught a young dolphin. I had made me a long line of some rope yarn, but I had no hooks, yet I frequently caught fish enough, as much as I cared to eat; all which I dried in the sun and ate them dry. May 5. Worked on the wreck, cut another beam asunder, and brought three great fir planks off from the decks, which I tied together and made swim on shore when the tide of flood came on. May 6. Worked on the wreck, got several iron bolts out of her, and other pieces of ironwork; worked very hard, and came home very much tired, and had thoughts of giving it over. May 7. Went to the wreck again, but with an intent not to work, but found the weight of the wreck had broke itself down, the beams being cut, that several pieces of the ship seemed to lie loose, and the inside of the hold lay so open that I could see into it, but almost full of water and sand. May 8. Went to the wreck, and carried an iron crow to wrench up the deck, which lay now quite clear of the water or sand; I wrenched open two planks and brought them on shore also with the tide. I left the iron crow in the wreck for next day. May 9. Went to the wreck, and with the crow made way into the body of the wreck, and felt several casks and loosened them with the crow, but could not break them up; I felt also the roll of English lead and could stir it, but it was too heavy to remove. May 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. Went every day to the wreck, and got a great deal of pieces of timber and boards, or plank, and two or three hundredweight of iron. May 15. I carried two hatchets to try if I could not cut a piece off of the roll of lead, by placing the edge of one hatchet and driving it with the other; but as it lay about a foot and a half in the water, I could not make any blow to drive the hatchet. May 16. It had blowed hard in the night, and the wreck appeared more broken by the force of the water; but I stayed so long in the woods to get pigeons for food that the tide prevented me going to the wreck that day. May 17. I saw some pieces of the wreck blown on shore, at a great distance, near two miles off me, but resolved to see what they were and found it was a piece of the head, but too heavy for me to bring away. May 24. Every day to this day I worked on the wreck, and with hard labour I loosened some things so much with the crow, that with the first flowing tide several casks floated out, and two of the seamen' chests; but the wind blowing from the shore, nothing came to land that day but pieces of timber and a hogshead which had some Brazil pork in it, but the salt water and the sand had spoiled it. I continued this work every day to the 15th of June, except the time necessary to get food, which I always appointed, during this part of my employment, to be when the tide was up, that I might be ready when it was ebbed out, and by this time I had gotten timber and plank and ironwork enough to have builded a good boat, if I had known how; and also, I got at several times, and in several pieces, near a hundredweight of the sheet lead. June 16. Going down to the seaside, I found a large tortoise or turtle; this was the first I had seen, which it seems was only my misfortune, not any defect of the place, or scarcity; for had I happened to be on the other side of the island, I might have had hundreds of them every day, as I found afterwards; but perhaps had paid dear enough for them. June 17. I spent in cooking the turtle; I found in her threescore eggs; and her flesh was to me at that time the most savoury and pleasant that ever I tasted in my life, having had no flesh but of goats and fowls since I landed in this horrid place. I Am Very Ill and Frighted June 18. Rained all day, and I stayed within. I thought at this time the rain felt cold, and I was something chilly, which I knew was not usual in that latitude. June 19. Very ill, and shivering, as if the weather had been cold. June 20. No rest all night; violent pains in my head, and feverish. June 21. Very ill, frighted almost to death with the apprehensions of my sad condition, to be sick and no help. Prayed to God for the first time since the storm off of Hull, but scarce knew what I said, or why; my thoughts being all confused. June 22. A little better, but under dreadful apprehensions of sickness. June 23. Very bad again, cold and shivering, and then a violent headache. June 24. Much better. June 25. An ague very violent; the fit held me seven hours, cold fit and hot, with faint sweats after it. June 26. Better; and having no victuals to eat, took my gun, but found myself very weak; however, I killed a she-goat and with much difficulty got it home and broiled some of it and ate; I would fain have stewed it and made some broth, but had no pot. June 27. The ague again so violent that I lay abed all day and neither ate nor drank. I was ready to perish for thirst, but so weak I had not strength to stand up or to get myself any water to drink. Prayed to God again, but was lightheaded; and when I was not, I was so ignorant that I knew not what to say; only I lay and cried, ''Lord look upon me! Lord, pity me! Lord have mercy upon me!'' I suppose I did nothing else for two or three hours till, the fit wearing off, I fell asleep, and did not wake till far in the night; when I waked, I found myself much refreshed, but weak, and exceeding thirsty. However, as I had no water in my whole habitation, I was forced to lie till morning and went to sleep again. In this second sleep I had this terrible dream. I thought that I was sitting on the ground, on the outside of my wall, where I sat when the storm blew after the earthquake, and that I saw a man descend from a great black cloud, in a bright flame of fire, and light upon the ground. He was all over as bright as a flame, so that I could but just bear to look towards him; his countenance was most inexpressibly dreadful, impossible for words to describe; when he stepped upon the ground with his feet, I thought the earth trembled, just as it had done before in the earthquake, and all the air looked, to my apprehension, as if it had been filled with flashes of fire. He was no sooner landed upon the earth but he moved forward towards me, with a long spear or weapon in his hand, to kill me; and when he came to a rising ground, at some distance, he spoke to me, or I heard a voice so terrible, that it is impossible to express the terror of it; all that I can say I understood was this: ''Seeing all these things have not brought thee to repentance, now thou shalt die.'' At which words, I thought he lifted up the spear that was in his hand to kill me. No one that shall ever read this account will expect that I should be able to describe the horrors of my soul at this terrible vision; I mean, that even while it was a dream, I even dreamed of those horrors; nor is it any more possible to describe the impression that remained upon my mind when I awaked and found it was but a dream. I had, alas! no divine knowledge; what I had received by the good instruction of my father was then worn out by an uninterrupted series, for eight years, of seafaring wickedness, and a constant conversation with nothing but such as were like myself, wicked and profane to the last degree. I do not remember that I had in all that time one thought that so much as tended either to looking upwards towards God or inwards towards a reflection upon my own ways. But a certain stupidity of soul, without desire of good, or conscience of evil, had entirely overwhelmed me, and I was all that the most hardened, unthinking, wicked creature among our common sailors can be supposed to be, not having the least sense, either of the fear of God in danger or of thankfulness to God in deliverances. In the relating what is already past of my story, this will be the more easily believed, when I shall add, that through all the variety of miseries that had to this day befallen me, I never had so much as one thought of it being the hand of God, or that it was a just punishment for my sin, my rebellious behaviour against my father, or my present sins, which were great; or so much as a punishment for the general course of my wicked life. When I was on the desperate expedition on the desert shores of Africa, I never had so much as one thought of what would become of me; or one wish to God to direct me whither I should go, or to keep me from the danger which apparently surrounded me, as well from voracious creatures as cruel savages. But I was merely thoughtless of a God, or a Providence, acted like a mere brute from the principles of nature, and by the dictates of common sense only, and indeed hardly that. When I was delivered and taken up at sea by the Portugal captain, well used, and dealt justly and honourably with, as well as charitably, I had not the least thankfulness in my thoughts. When again I was shipwrecked, ruined, and in danger of drowning on this island, I was as far from remorse or looking on it as a judgment; I only said to myself often that I was an unfortunate dog and born to be always miserable. It is true, when I got on shore first here, and found all my ship' crew drowned and myself spared, I was surprised with a kind of ecstasy, and some transports of soul which, had the grace of God assisted, might have come up to true thankfulness; but it ended where it began, in a mere common flight of joy, or, as I may say, being glad I was alive, without the least reflection upon the distinguishing goodness of the hand which had preserved me, and had singled me out to be preserved, when all the rest were destroyed; or an inquiry why Providence had been thus merciful to me; even just the same common sort of joy which seamen generally have after they are got safe ashore from a shipwreck, which they drown all in the next bowl of punch and forget almost as soon as it is over, and all the rest of my life was like it. Even when I was afterwards, on due consideration, made sensible of my condition, how I was cast on this dreadful place, out of the reach of human kind, out of all hope of relief, or prospect of redemption, as soon as I saw but a prospect of living and that I should not starve and perish for hunger, all the sense of my affliction wore off, and I began to be very easy, applied myself to the works proper for my preservation and supply, and was far enough from being afflicted at my condition, as a judgment from Heaven, or as the hand of God against me; these were thoughts which very seldom entered into my head. The growing up of the corn, as is hinted in my journal, had at first some little influence upon me, and began to affect me with seriousness, as long as I thought it had something miraculous in it; but as soon as ever that part of the thought was removed, all the impression which was raised from it wore off also, as I have noted already. Even the earthquake, though nothing could be more terrible in its nature, or more immediately directing to the invisible Power which alone directs such things, yet no sooner was the first fright over but the impression it had made went off also. I had no more sense of God or His judgments, much less of the present affliction, of my circumstances being from His hand, than if I had been in the most prosperous condition of life. But now, when I began to be sick, and a leisurely view of the miseries of death came to place itself before me; when my spirits began to sink under the burden of a strong distemper, and nature was exhausted with the violence of the fever; conscience, that had slept so long, began to awake, and I began to reproach myself with my past life, in which I had so evidently, by uncommon wickedness, provoked the justice of God to lay me under uncommon strokes, and to deal with me in so vindictive a manner. These reflections oppressed me for the second or third day of my distemper, and in the violence as well of the fever as of the dreadful reproaches of my conscience extorted some words from me, like praying to God, though I cannot say they were either a prayer attended with desires or with hopes; it was rather the voice of mere fright and distress; my thoughts were confused, the convictions great upon my mind, and the horror of dying in such a miserable condition raised vapours into my head with the mere apprehensions; and in these hurries of my soul, I know not what my tongue might express. But it was rather exclamation, such as, ''Lord! what a miserable creature am I! If I should be sick, I shall certainly die for want of help, and what will become of me!'' Then the tears burst out of my eyes, and I could say no more for a good while. In this interval, the good advice of my father came to my mind, and presently his prediction, which I mentioned at the beginning of this story, viz., that if I did take this foolish step, God would not bless me, and I would have leisure hereafter to reflect upon having neglected his counsel, when there might be none to assist in my recovery. ''Now,'' said I aloud, ''my dear father' words are come to pass. God' justice has overtaken me, and I have none to help or hear me. I rejected the voice of Providence, which had mercifully put me in a posture or station of life, wherein I might have been happy and easy; but I would neither see it myself, or learn to know the blessing of it from my parents; I left them to mourn over my folly, and now I am left to mourn under the consequences of it. I refused their help and assistance, who would have lifted me into the world, and would have made everything easy to me, and now I have difficulties to struggle with, too great for even nature itself to support, and no assistance, no help, no comfort, no advice.'' Then I cried out, ''Lord be my help, for I am in great distress.'' This was the first prayer, if I may call it so, that I had made for many years. But I return to my journal. June 28. Having been somewhat refreshed with the sleep I had had, and the fit being entirely off, I got up; and though the fright and terror of my dream was very great, yet I considered that the fit of the ague would return again the next day, and now was my time to get something to refresh and support myself when I should be ill; and the first thing I did, I filled a large square case bottle with water, and set it upon my table, in reach of my bed; and to take off the chill or aguish disposition of the water, I put about a quarter of a pint of rum into it and mixed them together; then I got me a piece of the goat' flesh, and broiled it on the coals, but could eat very little; I walked about, but was very weak, and withal, very sad and heavy-hearted in the sense of my miserable condition, dreading the return of my distemper the next day. At night I made my supper of three of the turtle' eggs, which I roasted in the ashes, and ate, as we call it, in the shell; and this was the first bit of meat I had ever asked God' blessing to, even as I could remember, in my whole life. After I had eaten, I tried to walk, but found myself so weak that I could hardly carry the gun (for I never went out without that); so I went but a little way, and sat down upon the ground, looking out upon the sea, which was just before me, and very calm and smooth. As I sat here, some such thoughts as these occurred to me: What is this earth and sea, of which I have seen so much? Whence is it produced, and what am I, and all the other creatures, wild and tame, human and brutal, whence are we? Sure we are all made by some secret Power who formed the earth and sea, the air and sky; and who is that? Then it followed most naturally, it is God that has made it all. Well, but then it came on strangely; if God has made all these things, He guides and governs them all, and all things that concern them; for the Power that could make all things must certainly have power to guide and direct them. If so, nothing can happen in the great circuit of His works, either without His knowledge or appointment. And if nothing happens without His knowledge, He knows that I am here and am in this dreadful condition; and if nothing happens without His appointment, He has appointed all this to befall me. Nothing occurred to my thoughts to contradict any of these conclusions; and therefore it rested upon me with the greater force that it must needs be, that God had appointed all this to befall me; that I was brought to this miserable circumstance by His direction, He having the sole power, not of me only, but of everything that happened in the world. Immediately it followed: Why has God done this to me? What have I done to be thus used? My conscience presently checked me in that inquiry, as if I had blasphemed, and methought it spoke to me like a voice: ''WRETCH! dost thou ask what thou hast done? Look back upon a dreadful misspent life and ask thyself what thou hast not done; ask, Why is it that thou wert not long ago destroyed? Why wert thou not drowned in Yarmouth Roads? Killed in the fight when the ship was taken by the Sallee man-of-war? Devoured by the wild beasts on the coast of Africa? Or drowned here, when all the crew perished but thyself? Dost thou ask, What have I done?'' I was struck dumb with these reflections, as one astonished, and had not a word to say, no, not to answer to myself, but rose up pensive and sad, walked back to my retreat, and went up over my wall, as if I had been going to bed, but my thoughts were sadly disturbed, and I had no inclination to sleep; so I sat down in my chair and lighted my lamp, for it began to be dark. Now, as the apprehension of the return of my distemper terrified me very much, it occurred to my thought that the Brazilians take no physic but their tobacco, for almost all distempers; and I had a piece of a roll of tobacco in one of the chests, which was quite cured, and some also that was green, and not quite cured. I went, directed by Heaven, no doubt, for in this chest I found a cure both for soul and body. I opened the chest, and found what I looked for, viz., the tobacco; and as the few books I had saved lay there too, I took out one of the Bibles which I mentioned before, and which to this time I had not found leisure, or so much as inclination, to look into; I say, I took it out, and brought both that and the tobacco with me to the table. What use to make of the tobacco I knew not, as to my distemper, or whether it was good for it or no; but I tried several experiments with it, as if I was resolved it should hit one way or other. I first took a piece of a leaf, and chewed it in my mouth, which indeed at first almost stupefied my brain, the tobacco being green and strong and that I had not been much used to it; then I took some and steeped it an hour or two in some rum, and resolved to take a dose of it when I lay down; and lastly, I burnt some upon a pan of coals, and held my nose close over the smoke of it as long as I could bear it, as well for the heat as almost for suffocation. In the interval of this operation, I took up the Bible and began to read, but my head was too much disturbed with the tobacco to bear reading, at least at that time; only having opened the book casually, the first words that occurred to me were these, ''Call on me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver, and thou shalt glorify me.'' The words were very apt to my case, and made some impression upon my thoughts at the time of reading them, though not so much as they did afterwards; for as for being delivered, the word had no sound, as I may say, to me; the thing was so remote, so impossible in my apprehension of things, that I began to say, as the children of Israel did, when they were promised flesh to eat, ''Can God spread a table in the wilderness?''; so I began to say, ''Can God Himself deliver me from this place?'' and as it was not for many years that any hope appeared, this prevailed very often upon my thoughts. But, however, the words made a great impression upon me, and I mused upon them very often. It grew now late, and the tobacco had, as I said, dozed my head so much, that I inclined to sleep; so I left my lamp burning in the cave, lest I should want anything in the night, and went to bed; but before I lay down, I did what I never had done in all my life: I kneeled down and prayed to God to fulfill the promise to me, that if I called upon Him in the day of trouble, He would deliver me. After my broken and imperfect prayer was over, I drank the rum in which I had steeped the tobacco, which was so strong and rank of the tobacco, that indeed I could scarce get it down; immediately upon this I went to bed; I found presently it flew up in my head violently, but I fell into a sound sleep and waked no more till by the sun it must necessarily be near three o'clock in the afternoon the next day; nay, to this hour I am partly of the opinion that I slept all the next day and night, and till almost three that day after; for otherwise I knew not how I should lose a day out of my reckoning in the days of the week, as it appeared some years after I had done; for if I had lost it by crossing and re-crossing the Line, I should have lost more than one day. But certainly I lost a day in my account, and never knew which way. Be that, however, one way or other, when I awaked I found myself exceedingly refreshed, and my spirits lively and cheerful; when I got up, I was stronger than I was the day before, and my stomach better, for I was hungry; and in short, I had no fit the next day, but continued much altered for the better; this was the 29th. The 30th was my well day, of course, and I went abroad with my gun, but did not care to travel too far. I killed a seafowl or two, something like a brand goose, and brought them home, but was not very forward to eat them; so I ate some more of the turtle' eggs, which were very good. This evening I renewed the medicine, which I had supposed did me good the day before, viz., the tobacco steeped in rum, only I did not take so much as before, nor did I chew any of the leaf or hold my head over the smoke; however, I was not so well the next day, which was the 1st of July, as I hoped I should have been; for I had a little spice of the cold fit, but it was not much. July 2. I renewed the medicine all the three ways, and dosed myself with it as at first; and doubled the quantity which I drank. July 3. I missed the fit for good and all, though I did not recover my full strength for some weeks after. While I was thus gathering strength, my thoughts ran exceedingly upon this Scripture, ''I will deliver thee''; and the impossibility of my deliverance lay much upon my mind, in bar of my ever expecting it. But as I was discouraging myself with such thoughts, it occurred to my mind that I pored so much upon my deliverance from the main affliction that I disregarded the deliverance I had received; and I was, as it were, made to ask myself such questions as these, viz.: Have I not been delivered, and wonderfully, too, from sickness? From the most distressed condition that could be, and that was so frightful to me? And what notice had I taken of it? Had I done my part? God had delivered me, but I had not glorified Him; that is to say, I had not owned and been thankful for that as a deliverance, and how could I expect greater deliverance? This touched my heart very much, and immediately I kneeled down and gave God thanks aloud for my recovery from my sickness. July 4. In the morning I took the Bible, and beginning at the New Testament, I began seriously to read it, and imposed upon myself to read a while every morning and every night, not tying myself to the number of chapters, but as long as my thoughts should engage me. It was not long after I set seriously to this work but I found my heart more deeply and sincerely affected with the wickedness of my past life. The impression of my dream revived, and the words, ''All these things have not brought thee to repentance,'' ran seriously in my thoughts. I was earnestly begging of God to give me repentance, when it happened providentially the very day that reading the Scripture, I came to these words, ''He is exalted a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance, and to give remission.'' I threw down the book, and with my heart as well as my hands lifted up to Heaven, in a kind of ecstasy of joy, I cried out aloud, ''Jesus, Thou Son of David, Jesus, Thou exalted Prince and Saviour, give me repentance!'' This was the first time that I could say, in the true sense of the words, that I prayed in all my life; for now I prayed with a sense of my condition, and with a true Scripture view of hope founded on the encouragement of the Word of God; and from this time, I may say, I began to have hope that God would hear me. Now I began to construe the words mentioned above, ''Call on Me, and I will deliver you,'' in a different sense from what I had ever done before; for then I had no notion of anything being called deliverance but my being delivered from the captivity I was in, for though I was indeed at large in the place, yet the island was certainly a prison to me, and that in the worst sense in the world; but now I learned to take it in another sense. Now I looked back upon my past life with such horror, and my sins appeared so dreadful, that my soul sought nothing of God but deliverance from the load of guilt that bore down all my comfort. As for my solitary life, it was nothing; I did not so much as pray to be delivered from it or think of it; it was all of no consideration in comparison to this; and I added this part here to hint to whoever shall read it, that whenever they come to a true sense of things, they will find deliverance from sin a much greater blessing than deliverance from affliction. I Take a Survey of the Island But, leaving this part, I return to my journal. My condition began now to be, though not less miserable as to my way of living, yet much easier to my mind; and my thoughts being directed, by a constant reading the Scripture and praying to God, to things of a higher nature, I had a great deal of comfort within which till now I knew nothing of; also, as my health and strength returned, I bestirred myself to furnish myself with everything that I wanted and make my way of living as regular as I could. From the 4th of July to the 14th I was chiefly employed in walking about with my gun in my hand, a little and a little at a time, as a man that was gathering up his strength after a fit of sickness. For it is hardly to be imagined how low I was, and to what weakness I was reduced. The application which I made use of was perfectly new and perhaps what had never cured an ague before; neither can I recommend it to anyone to practice, by this experiment; and though it did carry off the fit, yet it rather contributed to weakening me; for I had frequent convulsions in my nerves and limbs for some time. I learned from it also this in particular, that being abroad in the rainy season was the most pernicious thing to my health that could be, especially in those rains which came attended with storms and hurricanes of wind; for as the rain which came in a dry season was always most accompanied with such storms, so I found that rain was much more dangerous than the rain which fell in September and October. I had been now in this unhappy island above ten months; all possibility of deliverance from this condition seemed to be entirely taken from me; and I firmly believed that no human shape had ever set foot upon that place. Having now secured my habitation, as I thought, fully to my mind, I had a great desire to make a more perfect discovery of the island and to see what other productions I might find, which I yet knew nothing of. It was the 15th July that I began to take a more particular survey of the island itself. I went up the creek first, where, as I hinted, I brought my rafts on shore; I found, after I came about two miles up, that the tide did not flow any higher and that it was no more than a little brook of running water, and very fresh and good; but this being the dry season, there was hardly any water in some parts of it, at least not enough to run in any stream, so as it could be perceived. On the bank of this brook I found many pleasant savannas, or meadows, plain, smooth, and covered with grass; and on the rising parts of them next to the higher grounds, where the water, as it might be supposed, never overflowed, I found a great deal of tobacco, green and growing to a great and very strong stalk. There were divers other plants, which I had no notion of, or understanding about, and might perhaps have virtues of their own, which I could not find out. I searched for the cassava root, which the Indians in all that climate make their bread of, but I could find none. I saw large plants of aloes, but did not then understand them. I saw several sugar canes, but wild, and, for want of cultivation, imperfect. I contented myself with these discoveries for this time, and came back musing with myself what course I might take to know the virtue and goodness of any of the fruits or plants which I should discover; but could bring it to no conclusion; for in short, I had made so little observation while I was in the Brazils that I knew little of the plants in the field, at least very little that might serve me to any purpose now in my distress. The next day, the 16th, I went up the same way again, and after going something farther than I had gone the day before, I found the brook and the savannas began to cease, and the country became more woody than before; in this part I found different fruits, and particularly I found melons upon the ground in great abundance, and grapes upon the trees; the vines had spread indeed over the trees, and the clusters of grapes were just now in their prime, very ripe and rich. This was a surprising discovery, and I was exceeding glad of them; but I was warned by my experience to eat sparingly of them, remembering that when I was ashore in Barbary the eating of grapes killed several of our Englishmen who were slaves there, by throwing them into fluxes and fevers. But I found an excellent use for these grapes, and that was to cure or dry them in the sun and keep them as dried grapes or raisins are kept, which I thought would be, as indeed they were, as wholesome and as agreeable to eat when no grapes might be to be had. I spent all that evening there, and went not back to my habitation, which by the way was the first night, as I might say, I had lain from home. In the night I took my first contrivance, and got up into a tree, where I slept well; and the next morning proceeded upon my discovery, travelling near four miles, as I might judge by the length of the valley, keeping still due north, with a ridge of hills on the south and north side of me. At the end of this march I came to an opening, where the country seemed to descend to the west, and a little spring of fresh water, which issued out of the side of the hill by me, ran the other way, that is, due east; and the country appeared so fresh, so green, so flourishing, everything being in a constant verdure, or flourish of spring, that it looked like a planted garden. I descended a little on the side of that delicious vale, surveying it with a secret kind of pleasure (though mixed with my other afflicting thoughts), to think that this was all my own, that I was king and lord of all this country indefeasibly and had a right of possession; and if I could convey it, I might have it in inheritance, as completely as any lord of a manor in England. I saw here abundance of cocoa trees, orange and lemon and citron trees; but all wild and very few bearing any fruit, at least not then. However, the green limes that I gathered were not only pleasant to eat but very wholesome; and I mixed their juice afterwards with water, which made it very wholesome and very cool and refreshing. I found now I had business enough to gather and carry home; and I resolved to lay up a store as well of grapes as limes and lemons, to furnish myself for the wet season, which I knew was approaching. In order to do this, I gathered a great heap of grapes in one place and a lesser heap in another place, and a great parcel of limes and lemons in another place; and taking a few of each with me, I travelled homeward and resolved to come again and bring a bag or sack, or what I could make, to carry the rest home. Accordingly, having spent three days in this journey, I came home (so I must now call my tent and my cave). But before I got thither, the grapes were spoiled; the richness of the fruits and the weight of the juice having broken them and bruised them, they were good for little or nothing; as to the limes, they were good, but I could bring but a few. The next day, being the 19th, I went back, having made me two small bags to bring home my harvest. But I was surprised, when coming to my heap of grapes, which were so rich and fine when I gathered them, I found them all spread about, trod to pieces, and dragged about, some here, some there, and abundance eaten and devoured. By this I concluded there were some wild creatures thereabouts, which had done this; but what they were I knew not. However, as I found that there was no laying them up in heaps, and no carrying them away in a sack, but that one way they would be destroyed, and the other way they would be crushed with their own weight, I took another course; for I gathered a large quantity of the grapes, and hung them up upon the out-branches of the trees, that they might cure and dry in the sun; and as for the limes and lemons, I carried as many back as I could well stand under. When I came home from this journey, I contemplated with great pleasure the fruitfulness of that valley and the pleasantness of the situation, the security from storms on that side the water, and the wood, and concluded that I had pitched upon a place to fix my abode which was by far the worst part of the country. Upon the whole, I began to consider of removing my habitation, and to look out for a place equally safe as where I now was situate, if possible, in that pleasant fruitful part of the island. This thought ran long in my head, and I was exceeding fond of it for some time, the pleasantness of the place tempting me; but when I came to a nearer view of it, and to consider that I was now by the seaside, where it was at least possible that something might happen to my advantage, and by the same ill fate that brought me hither might bring some other unhappy wretches to the same place; and though it was scarce probable that any such thing should ever happen, yet to enclose myself among the hills and woods, in the centre of the island, was to anticipate my bondage and to render such an affair not only improbable but impossible; and that therefore I ought not by any means to remove. However, I was so enamoured of this place that I spent much of my time there for the whole remaining part of the month of July; and though upon second thoughts I resolved as above not to remove, yet I built me a little kind of a bower and surrounded it at a distance with a strong fence, being a double hedge as high as I could reach, well staked and filled between with brushwood; and here I lay very secure, sometimes two or three nights together, always going over it with a ladder, as before; so that I fancied now I had my country house and my seacoast house. And this work took me up to the beginning of August. I had but newly finished my fence and began to enjoy my labour, but the rains came on and made me stick close to my first habitation; for though I had made me a tent like the other, with a piece of a sail, and spread it very well; yet I had not the shelter of a hill to keep me from storms, not a cave behind me to retreat into, when the rains were extraordinary. About the beginning of August, as I said, I had finished my bower and began to enjoy myself. The 3rd of August I found the grapes I had hung up were perfectly dried, and indeed, were excellent good raisins of the sun; so I began to take them down from the trees, and it was very happy that I did so; for the rains which followed would have spoiled them, and I had lost the best part of my winter food; for I had above two hundred large bunches of them. No sooner had I taken them all down and carried most of them home to my cave but it began to rain, and from hence, which was the 14th of August, it rained more or less every day, till the middle of October; and sometimes so violently that I could not stir out of my cave for several days. In this season I was much surprised with the increase of my family. I had been concerned for the loss of one of my cats, who ran away from me, or, as I thought, had been dead, and I heard no more tale or tidings of her till, to my astonishment, she came home about the end of August, with three kittens. This was the more strange to me because though I had killed a wild cat, as I called it, with my gun, yet I thought it was a quite different kind from our European cats; yet the young cats were the same kind of house breed like the old one; and both my cats being females, I thought it very strange. But from these three cats, I afterwards came to be so pestered with cats that I was forced to kill them like vermin or wild beasts, and to drive them from my house as much as possible. From the 14th of August to the 26th, incessant rain, so that I could not stir, and was now very careful not to be much wet. In this confinement I began to be straitened for food, but venturing out twice, I one day killed a goat; and the last day, which was the 26th, found a very large tortoise, which was a treat to me, and my food was regulated thus: I ate a bunch of raisins for my breakfast, a piece of the goat' flesh, or of the turtle, for my dinner, broiled (for to my great misfortune, I had no vessel to boil or stew anything); and two or three of the turtle' eggs for my supper. During this confinement in my cover by the rain, I worked daily two or three hours at enlarging my cave, and by degrees worked it on towards one side, till I came to the outside of the hill, and made a door or way out, which came beyond my fence or wall, and so I came in and out this way; but I was not perfectly easy at lying so open; for as I had managed myself before, I was in a perfect enclosure, whereas now I thought I lay exposed, and open for anything to come in upon me; and yet I could not perceive that there was any living thing to fear, the biggest creature that I had yet seen upon the island being a goat. September 30. I was now come to the unhappy anniversary of my landing. I cast up the notches on my post, and found I had been on shore three hundred and sixty-five days. I kept this day as a solemn fast, setting it apart to religious exercise, prostrating myself on the ground with the most serious humiliation, confessing my sins to God, acknowledging His righteous judgments upon me, and praying to Him to have mercy on me, through Jesus Christ; and having not tasted the least refreshment for twelve hours, even till the going down of the sun, I then ate a biscuit cake and a bunch of grapes, and went to bed, finishing the day as I began it. I had all this time observed no Sabbath day; for as at first I had no sense of religion upon my mind, I had after some time omitted to distinguish the weeks by making a longer notch than ordinary for the Sabbath day, and so did not really know what any of the days were; but now having cast up the days, as above, I found I had been there a year; so I divided it into weeks, and set apart every seventh day for a Sabbath; though I found at the end of my account I had lost a day or two in my reckoning. A little after this my ink began to fail me, and so I contented myself to use it more sparingly, and to write down only the most remarkable events of my life, without continuing a daily memorandum of other things. I Sow My Grain THE RAINY season and the dry season began now to appear regular to me, and I learned to divide them so as to provide for them accordingly. But I bought all my experience before I had it; and this I am going to relate was one of the most discouraging experiments that I made at all. I have mentioned that I had saved the few ears of barley and rice which I had so surprisingly found spring up, as I thought, of themselves, and believe there were about thirty stalks of rice, and about twenty of barley; and now I thought it a proper time to sow it after the rains, the sun being in its southern position, going from me. Accordingly I dug up a piece of ground as well as I could with my wooden spade, and dividing it into two parts, I sowed my grain; but as I was sowing, it casually occurred to my thoughts that I would not sow it all at first, because I did not know when was the proper time for it; so I sowed about two-thirds of the seed, leaving about a handful of each. It was a great comfort to me afterwards that I did so, for not one grain of that I sowed this time came to anything; for the dry months following, the earth having had no rain after the seed was sown, it had no moisture to assist its growth, and never came up at all till the wet season had come again, and then it grew as if it had been but newly sown. Finding my first seed did not grow, which I easily imagined was by the drought, I sought for a moister piece of ground to make another trial in, and I dug up a piece of ground near my new bower and sowed the rest of my seed in February, a little before the vernal equinox; and this, having the rainy months of March and April to water it, sprung up very pleasantly and yielded a very good crop; but having part of the seed left only, and not daring to sow all that I had, I had but a small quantity at last, my whole crop not amounting to above half a peck of each kind. But by this experiment I was made master of my business, and knew exactly when the proper season was to sow; and that I might expect two seed times, and two harvests, every year. While this corn was growing, I made a little discovery which was of use to me afterwards. As soon as the rains were over and the weather began to settle, which was about the month of November, I made a visit up the country to my bower, where, though I had not been some months, yet I found all things just as I left them. The circle or double hedge that I had made was not only firm and entire, but the stakes which I had cut out of some trees that grew thereabouts were all shot out and grown with long branches, as much as a willow-tree usually shoots the first year after lopping its head. I could not tell what tree to call it, that these stakes were cut from. I was surprised, and yet very well pleased, to see the young trees grow; and I pruned them, and led them up to grow as much alike as I could; and it is scarce credible how beautiful a figure they grew into in three years; so that though the hedge made a circle of about twenty-five yards in diameter, yet the trees, for such I might now call them, soon covered it; and it was a complete shade, sufficient to lodge under all the dry season. This made me resolve to cut some more stakes, and make me a hedge like this in a semicircle round my wall (I mean that of my first dwelling), which I did; and placing the trees or stakes in a double row, at about eight yards' distance from my first fence, they grew presently, and were at first a fine cover to my habitation, and afterwards served for a defence also, as I shall observe in its order. I found now that the seasons of the year might generally be divided, not into summer and winter, as in Europe, but into the rainy seasons and the dry seasons, which were generally thus: The rainy season sometimes held longer or shorter, as the winds happened to blow; but this was the general observation I made. After I had found by experience the ill consequence of being abroad in the rain, I took care to furnish myself with provisions beforehand, that I might not be obliged to go out; and I sat within doors as much as possible during the wet months. In this time I found much employment (and very suitable also to the time), for I found great occasion of many things which I had no way to furnish myself with but by hard labour and constant application; particularly, I tried many ways to make myself a basket, but all the twigs I could get for the purpose proved so brittle that they would do nothing. It proved of excellent advantage to me now, that when I was a boy, I used to take great delight in standing at a basket maker', in the town where my father lived, to see them make their wickerware; and being, as boys usually are, very officious to help, and a great observer of the manner how they worked those things, and sometimes lending a hand, I had by this means full knowledge of the methods of it, that I wanted nothing but the materials; when it came into my mind that the twigs of that tree from whence I cut my stakes that grew might possibly be as tough as the sallows and willows and osiers in England, and I resolved to try. Accordingly, the next day I went to my country house, as I called it, and cutting some of the smaller twigs, I found them to my purpose as much as I could desire; whereupon I came the next time prepared with a hatchet to cut down a quantity, which I soon found, for there was great plenty of them; these I set up to dry within my circle or hedge, and when they were fit for use, I carried them to my cave; and here during the next season I employed myself in making, as well as I could, a great many baskets, both to carry earth or to carry or lay up anything as I had occasion; and though I did not finish them very handsomely, yet I made them sufficiently serviceable for my purpose; and thus afterwards I took care never to be without them; and as my wickerware decayed, I made more; especially I made strong deep baskets to place my corn in, instead of sacks, when I should come to have any quantity of it. Having mastered this difficulty, and employed a world of time about it, I bestirred myself to see, if possible, how to supply two wants. I had no vessels to hold anything that was liquid, except two runlets which were almost full of rum, and some glass bottles, some of the common size, and others which were case bottles, square, for the holding of waters, spirits, etc. I had not so much as a pot to boil anything, except a great kettle which I saved out of the ship, and which was too big for such use as I desired it, viz., to make broth and stew a bit of meat by itself. The second thing I would fain have had was a tobacco pipe; but it was impossible to me to make one; however, I found a contrivance for that too at last. I employed myself in planting my second rows of stakes, or piles, and in this wicker working all the summer, or dry season, when another business took me up more time than it could be imagined I could spare. I Travel Quite Across the Island I MENTIONED before that I had a great mind to see the whole island, and that I had travelled up the brook, and so on to where I built my bower, and where I had an opening quite to the sea on the other side of the island; I now resolved to travel quite across to the seashore on that side; so taking my gun, a hatchet, and my dog, and a larger quantity of powder and shot than usual, with two biscuit cakes and a great bunch of raisins in my pouch for my store, I began my journey. When I had passed the vale where my bower stood, as above, I came within view of the sea to the west, and it being a very clear day, I fairly descried land, whether an island or a continent I could not tell; but it lay very high, extending from the west to the west-southwest at a very great distance; by my guess it could not be less than fifteen or twenty leagues off. I could not tell what part of the world this might be, otherwise than that I knew it must be part of America; and, as I concluded by all my observations, must be near the Spanish dominions, and perhaps was all inhabited by savages, where if I should have landed, I had been in a worse condition than I was now; and therefore I acquiesced in the dispositions of Providence, which, I began now to own, and to believe, ordered everything for the best; I say, I quieted my mind with this, and left afflicting myself with fruitless wishes of being there. Besides, after some pause upon this affair, I considered that if this land was the Spanish coast, I should certainly, one time or other, see some vessel pass or repass one way or other; but if not, then it was the savage coast between the Spanish country and Brazil, which are indeed the worst of savages; for they are cannibals, or men-eaters, and fail not to murder and devour all the human bodies that fall into their hands. With these considerations I walked very leisurely forward. I found that side of the island, where I now was, much pleasanter than mine, the open or savanna fields sweet, adorned with flowers and grass, and full of very fine woods. I saw abundance of parrots, and fain I would have caught one, if possible, to have kept it to be tame and taught it to speak to me. I did, after some painstaking, catch a young parrot, for I knocked it down with a stick, and having recovered it, I brought it home; but it was some years before I could make him speak. However, at last I taught him to call me by my name very familiarly. But the accident that followed, though it be a trifle, will be very diverting in its place. I was exceedingly diverted with this journey. I found in the low grounds hares, as I thought them to be, and foxes, but they differed greatly from all the other kinds I had met with; nor could I satisfy myself to eat them, though I killed several. But I had no need to be venturous; for I had no want of food, and of that which was very good too; especially these three sorts, viz., goats, pigeons, and turtle or tortoise; which, added to my grapes, Leadenhall Market could not have furnished a table better than I, in proportion to the company; and though my case was deplorable enough, yet I had great cause for thankfulness, that I was not driven to any extremities for food; but rather plenty, even to dainties. I never travelled in this journey above two miles outright in a day, or thereabouts; but I took so many turns and returns, to see what discoveries I could make, that I came weary enough to the place where I resolved to sit down for all night; and then I either reposed myself in a tree, or surrounded myself with a row of stakes set upright in the ground, either from one tree to another, or so as no wild creature could come at me without waking me. As soon as I came to the seashore, I was surprised to see that I had taken up my lot on the worst side of the island; for here indeed the shore was covered with innumerable turtles, whereas on the other side I had found but three in a year and a half. Here was also an infinite number of fowls of many kinds, some which I had seen, and some of which I had not seen before, and many of them very good meat; but such as I knew not the names of, except those called penguins. I could have shot as many as I pleased, but was very sparing of my powder and shot; and therefore had more mind to kill a she-goat, if I could, which I could better feed on; and though there were many goats here more than on my side the island, yet it was with much more difficulty that I could come near them, the country being flat and even, and they saw me much sooner than when I was on the hill. I confess this side of the country was much pleasanter than mine, but yet I had not the least inclination to remove; for as I was fixed in my habitation, it became natural to me, and I seemed all the while I was here to be, as it were, upon a journey, and from home. However, I travelled along the shore of the sea, towards the east, I suppose about twelve miles; and then setting up a great pole upon the shore for a mark, I concluded I would go home again; and that the next journey I took should be on the other side of the island, east from my dwelling, and so round till I came to my post again. Of which in its place. I took another way to come back than that I went, thinking I could easily keep all the island so much in my view that I could not miss finding my first dwelling by viewing the country; but I found myself mistaken; for being come about two or three miles, I found myself descended into a very large valley, but so surrounded with hills, and those hills covered with wood, that I could not see which was my way by any direction but that of the sun, nor even then, unless I knew very well the position of the sun at that time of the day. It happened, to my further misfortune, that the weather proved hazy for three or four days while I was in this valley; and not being able to see the sun, I wandered about very uncomfortably, and at last was obliged to find out the seaside, look for my post, and come back the same way I went; and then by easy journeys I turned homeward, the weather being exceeding hot, and my gun, ammunition, hatchet, and other things very heavy. In this journey my dog surprised a young kid, and seized upon it, and I, running in to take hold of it, caught it, and saved it alive from the dog. I had a great mind to bring it home if I could; for I had often been musing, whether it might not be possible to get a kid or two and so raise a breed of tame goats, which might supply me when my powder and shot should be all spent. I made a collar to this little creature, and with a string which I made of some rope-yarn which I always carried about me, I led him along, though with some difficulty, till I came to my bower, and there I enclosed him and left him; for I was very impatient to be at home, from whence I had been absent above a month. I cannot express what a satisfaction it was to me to come into my old hutch and lie down in my hammock-bed. This little wandering journey, without settled place of abode, had been so unpleasant to me that my own house, as I called it to myself, was a perfect settlement to me compared to that; and it rendered everything about me so comfortable that I resolved I would never go a great way from it again while it should be my lot to stay on the island. I reposed myself here a week, to rest and regale myself after my long journey; during which most of the time was taken up in the weighty affair of making a cage for my Poll, who began now to be a mere domestic and to be mighty well acquainted with me. Then I began to think of the poor kid, which I had penned in within my little circle, and resolved to go and fetch it home, or give it some food; accordingly I went, and found it where I left it; for indeed it could not get out, but was almost starved for want of food. I went and cut boughs of trees, and branches of such shrubs as I could find, and threw it over, and having fed it, I tied it as I did before to lead it away; but it was so tame with being hungry that I had no need to have tied it, for it followed me like a dog; and as I continually fed it, the creature became so loving, so gentle, and so fond, that it became from that time one of my domestics also, and would never leave me afterwards. The rainy season of the autumnal equinox was now come, and I kept the 30th of September in the same solemn manner as before, being the anniversary of my landing on the island, having now been there two years, and no more prospect of being delivered than the first day I came there. I spent the whole day in humble and thankful acknowledgements of the many wonderful mercies which my solitary condition was attended with, and without which it might have been infinitely more miserable. I gave humble and hearty thanks that God had been pleased to discover to me, even that it was possible I might be more happy in this solitary condition than I should have been in a liberty of society and in all the pleasures of the world. That He could fully make up to me the deficiencies of my solitary state and the want of human society by His presence, and the communications of His grace to my soul, supporting, comforting, and encouraging me to depend upon His Providence here, and hope for His eternal presence hereafter. It was now that I began sensibly to feel how much more happy this life I now led was, with all its miserable circumstances, than the wicked, cursed, abominable life I led all the past part of my days; and now I changed both my sorrows and my joys; my very desires altered, my affections changed their gusts, and my delights were perfectly new, from what they were at my first coming, or indeed for the two years past. Before, as I walked about, either on my hunting or for viewing the country, the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out upon me on a sudden, and my very heart would die within me to think of the woods, the mountains, the deserts I was in; and how I was a prisoner locked up with the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an uninhabited wilderness, without redemption. In the midst of the greatest composures of my mind, this would break out upon me like a storm and make me wring my hands and weep like a child. Sometimes it would take me in the middle of my work, and I would immediately sit down and sigh, and look upon the ground for an hour or two together; and this was still worse to me; for if I could burst out into tears or vent myself by words, it would go off, and the grief having exhausted itself would abate. But now I began to exercise myself with new thoughts; I daily read the Word of God and applied all the comforts of it to my present state. One morning, being very sad, I opened the Bible upon these words, ''I will never, never leave thee, nor forsake thee''; immediately it occurred that these words were to me; why else should they be directed in such a manner, just at the moment when I was mourning over my condition, as one forsaken of God and man? ''Well then,'' said I, ''if God does not forsake me, of what ill consequence can it be, or what matters it, though the world should all forsake me; seeing on the other hand, if I had all the world and should lose the favour and blessing of God, there would be no comparison in the loss?'' From this moment I began to conclude in my mind that it was possible for me to be more happy in this forsaken, solitary condition than it was probable I should ever have been in any other particular state in the world; and with this thought I was going to give thanks to God for bringing me to this place. I know not what it was, but something shocked my mind at that thought, and I durst not speak the words. ''How canst thou be such a hypocrite,'' said I, even audibly, ''to pretend to be thankful for a condition which however thou may't endeavour to be contented with, thou wouldst rather pray heartily to be delivered from?'' So I stopped there. But though I could not say I thanked God for being there, yet I sincerely gave thanks to God for opening my eyes, by whatever afflicting providences, to see the former condition of my life, and to mourn for my wickedness, and repent. I never opened the Bible or shut it but my very soul within me blessed God for directing my friend in England, without any order of mine, to pack it up among my goods; and for assisting me afterwards to save it out of the wreck of the ship. I Am Very Seldom Idle THUS, and in this disposition of mind, I began my third year; and though I have not given the reader the trouble of so particular an account of my works this year as the first, yet in general it may be observed that I was very seldom idle; but having regularly divided my time, according to the several daily employments that were before me, such as, first, my duty to God, and the reading the Scriptures, which I constantly set apart some time for thrice every day; secondly, the going abroad with my gun for food, which generally took me up three hours in every morning, when it did not rain; thirdly, the ordering, curing, preserving and cooking what I had killed or caught for my supply; these took up great part of the day; also it is to be considered that the middle of the day, when the sun was in the zenith, the violence of the heat was too great to stir out; so that about four hours in the evening was all the time I could be supposed to work in; with this exception, that sometimes I changed my hours of hunting and working, and went to work in the morning and abroad with my gun in the afternoon. To this short time allowed for labour, I desire may be added the exceeding laboriousness of my work, the many hours which for want of tools, want of help, and want of skill, everything I did took up out of my time. For example, I was full two-and-forty days making me a board for a long shelf, which I wanted in my cave; whereas two sawyers with their tools and a saw-pit would have cut six of them out of the same tree in half a day. My case was this: it was to be a large tree which was to be cut down, because my board was to be a broad one. This tree I was three days a-cutting down, and two more cutting off the boughs, and reducing it to a log, or piece of timber. With inexpressible hacking and hewing, I reduced both the sides of it into chips, till it began to be light enough to move; then I turned it and made one side of it smooth and flat as a board from end to end; then turning that side downward, cut the other side, till I brought the plank to be about three inches thick, and smooth on both sides. Anyone may judge the labour of my hands in such a piece of work; but labour and patience carried me through that and many other things. I only observe this in particular, to show the reason why so much of my time went away with so little work, viz., that what might be a little to be done with help and tools was a vast labour and required a prodigious time to do alone and by hand. But notwithstanding this, with patience and labour I went through many things; and indeed everything that my circumstances made necessary to me to do, as will appear by what follows. I was now, in the months of November and December, expecting my crop of barley and rice. The ground I had manured or dug up for them was not great; for as I observed, my seed of each was not above the quantity of half a peck; for I had lost one whole crop by sowing in the dry season; but now my crop promised very well, when on a sudden I found I was in danger of losing it all again by enemies of several sorts, which it was scarce possible to keep from it; at first, the goats, and wild creatures which I called hares, who, tasting the sweetness of the blade, lay in it night and day, as soon as it came up, and eat it so close that it could get no time to shoot up into stalk. This I saw no remedy for, but by making an enclosure about it with a hedge, which I did with a great deal of toil; and the more, because it required speed. However, as my arable land was but small, suited to my crop, I got it totally well fenced in about three weeks' time; and shooting some of the creatures in the daytime, I set my dog to guard it in the night, tying him up to a stake at the gate, where he would stand and bark all night long; so in a little time the enemies forsook the place, and the corn grew very strong and well, and began to ripen apace. But as the beasts ruined me before, while my corn was in the blade, so the birds were as likely to ruin me now, when it was in the ear; for going along by the place to see how it throve, I saw my little crop surrounded with fowls of I know not how many sorts, who stood, as it were, watching till I should be gone. I immediately let fly among them (for I always had my gun with me). I had no sooner shot, but there rose up a little cloud of fowls, which I had not seen at all, from among the corn itself. This touched me sensibly, for I foresaw that in a few days they would devour all my hopes, that I should be starved, and never be able to raise a crop at all, and what to do I could not tell. However, I resolved not to lose my corn, if possible, though I should watch it night and day. In the first place, I went among it to see what damage was already done, and found they had spoiled a good deal of it, but that as it was yet too green for them, the loss was not so great, but that the remainder was like to be a good crop if it could be saved. I stayed by it to load my gun, and then coming away I could easily see the thieves sitting upon all the trees about me, as if they only waited till I was gone away, and the event proved it to be so; for as I walked off as if I was gone, I was no sooner out of their sight but they dropped down one by one into the corn again. I was so provoked that I could not have patience to stay till more came on, knowing that every grain that they ate now was, as it might be said, a peck-loaf to me in the consequence; but coming up to the hedge, I fired again, and killed three of them. This was what I wished for; so I took them up and served them as we serve notorious thieves in England, viz., hanged them in chains for a terror to others; it is impossible to imagine, almost, that this should have such an effect as it had; for the fowls would not only not come at the corn, but in short, they forsook all that part of the island, and I could never see a bird near the place as long as my scarecrows hung there. This I was very glad of, you may be sure, and about the latter end of December, which was our second harvest of the year, I reaped my crop. I was sadly put to it for a scythe or a sickle to cut it down, and all I could do was to make one as well as I could out of one of the broadswords, or cutlasses, which I saved among the arms out of the ship. However, as my first crop was but small, I had no great difficulty to cut it down; in short, I reaped it my way, for I cut nothing off but the ears, and carried it away in a great basket which I had made, and so rubbed it out with my hands; and at the end of all my harvesting, I found that out of my half peck of seed I had near two bushels of rice and above two bushels and a half of barley, that is to say, by my guess, for I had no measure at that time. However, this was a great encouragement to me, and I foresaw that in time it would please God to supply me with bread. And yet here I was perplexed again, for I neither knew how to grind or make meal of my corn, or indeed how to clean it and part it; nor if made into meal, how to make bread of it; and if how to make it, yet I knew not how to bake it. These things being added to my desire of having a good quantity for store, and to secure a constant supply, I resolved not to taste any of this crop, but to preserve it all for seed against the next season, and in the meantime to employ all my study and hours of working to accomplish this great work of providing myself with corn and bread. It might be truly said that now I worked for my bread. 'Tis a little wonderful, and what I believe few people have thought much upon, viz., the strange multitude of little things necessary in the providing, producing, curing, dressing, making, and finishing this one article of bread. I, that was reduced to a mere state of nature, found this to my daily discouragement, and was made more and more sensible of it every hour, even after I had got the first handful of seed corn, which, as I have said, came up unexpectedly and indeed to a surprise. First, I had no plough to turn up the earth, no spade or shovel to dig it. Well, this I conquered by making a wooden spade, as I observed before; but this did my work in but a wooden manner; and though it cost me a great many days to make it, yet for want of iron it not only wore out the sooner, but made my work the harder, and made it be performed much worse. However, this I bore with, and was content to work it out with patience and bear with the badness of the performance. When the corn was sowed, I had no harrow but was forced to go over it myself and drag a great heavy bough of a tree over it, to scratch it, as it may be called, rather than rake or harrow it. When it was growing and grown, I have observed already how many things I wanted, to fence it, secure it, mow or reap it, cure and carry it home, thrash, part it from the chaff, and save it. Then I wanted a mill to grind it, sieves to dress it, yeast and salt to make it into bread, and an oven to bake it; and yet all these things I did without, as shall be observed; and yet the corn was an inestimable comfort and advantage to me too. All this, as I said, made everything laborious and tedious to me, but that there was no help for; neither was my time so much loss to me, because, as I had divided it, a certain part of it was every day appointed to these works; and as I resolved to use none of the corn for bread till I had a greater quantity by me, I had the next six months to apply myself wholly by labour and invention to furnish myself with utensils proper for the performing all the operations necessary for the making the corn (when I had it) fit for my use. But first I was to prepare more land, for I had now seed enough to sow above an acre of ground. Before I did this, I had a week' work at least to make me a spade, which when it was done was but a sorry one indeed, and very heavy, and required double labour to work with it; however, I went through that, and sowed my seed in two large flat pieces of ground, as near my house as I could find them to my mind, and fenced them in with a good hedge, the stakes of which were all cut of that wood which I had set before, and knew it would grow; so that in one year' time I knew I should have a quick or living hedge that would want but little repair. This work was not so little as to take me up less than three months, because great part of that time was of the wet season, when I could not go abroad. Within doors, that is, when it rained, and I could not go out, I found employment on the following occasions; always observing, that all the while I was at work I diverted myself with talking to my parrot and teaching him to speak, and I quickly learned him to know his own name and at last to speak it out pretty loud, ''Poll,'' which was the first word I ever heard spoken in the island by any mouth but my own. This therefore was not my work, but an assistant to my work, for now, as I said, I had a great employment upon my hands, as follows, viz., I had long studied, by some means or other, to make myself some earthen vessels, which indeed I wanted sorely, but knew not where to come at them. However, considering the heat of the climate, I did not doubt but if I could find out any such clay, I might botch up some such pot, as might, being dried in the sun, be hard enough and strong enough to bear handling, and to hold anything that was dry, and required to be kept so; and as this was necessary in the preparing corn, meal, etc., which was the thing I was upon, I resolved to make some as large as I could, and fit only to stand like jars to hold what should be put into them. It would make the reader pity me, or rather laugh at me, to tell how many awkward ways I took to raise this paste; what odd, misshapen, ugly things I made; how many of them fell in, and how many fell out, the clay not being stiff enough to bear its own weight; how many cracked by the over-violent heat of the sun, being set out too hastily; and how many fell in pieces with only removing, as well before as after they were dried; and in a word, how after having laboured hard to find the clay, to dig it, to temper it, to bring it home and work it, I could not make above two large earthen ugly things, I cannot call them jars, in about two months' labour. However, as the sun baked these two very dry and hard, I lifted them very gently up, and set them down again in two great wicker baskets, which I had made on purpose for them, that they might not break; and as between the pot and the basket there was a little room to spare, I stuffed it full of the rice and barley straw, and these two pots being to stand always dry, I thought would hold my dry corn, and perhaps the meal when the corn was bruised. Though I miscarried so much in my design for large pots, yet I made several smaller things with better success; such as little round pots, flat dishes, pitchers, and pipkins, and anything my hand turned to, and the heat of the sun baked them strangely hard. But all this would not answer my end, which was to get an earthen pot to hold what was liquid, and bear the fire, which none of these could do. It happened after some time, making a pretty large fire for cooking my meat, when I went to put it out after I had done with it, I found a broken piece of one of my earthenware vessels in the fire, burnt as hard as a stone, and red as a tile. I was agreeably surprised to see it, and said to myself that certainly they might be made to burn whole, if they would burn broken. This set me to studying how to order my fire, so as to make it burn me some pots. I had no notion of a kiln such as the potters burn in, or of glazing them with lead, though I had some lead to do it with; but I placed three large pipkins and two or three pots in a pile one upon another and placed my firewood all round it with a great heap of embers under them; I plied the fire with fresh fuel round the outside and upon the top, till I saw the pots in the inside red hot quite through, and observed that they did not crack at all; when I saw them clear red, I let them stand in that heat about five or six hours, till I found one of them, though it did not crack, did melt or run, for the sand which was mixed with the clay melted by the violence of the heat, and would have run into glass if I had gone on; so I slacked my fire gradually, till the pots began to abate of the red colour, and watching them all night, that I might not let the fire abate too fast, in the morning I had three very good, I will not say handsome, pipkins, and two other earthen pots, as hard burnt as could be desired; and one of them perfectly glazed with the running of the sand. After this experiment, I need not say that I wanted no sort of earthenware for my use; but I must needs say, as to the shapes of them, they were very indifferent, as anyone may suppose, when I had no way of making them, but as the children make dirt pies, or as a woman would make pies that never learned to raise paste. No joy at a thing of so mean a nature was ever equal to mine, when I found I had made an earthen pot that would bear the fire; and I had hardly patience to stay till they were cold, before I set one upon the fire again, with some water in it, to boil me some meat, which it did admirably well; and with a piece of a kid I made some very good broth, though I wanted oatmeal, and several other ingredients requisite to make it so good as I would have had it been. My next concern was to get me a stone mortar to stamp or beat some corn in; for as to the mill, there was no thought at arriving to that perfection of art with one pair of hands. To supply this want I was at a great loss; for of all trades in the world I was as perfectly unqualified for a stone-cutter as for any whatever; neither had I any tools to go about it with. I spent many a day to find out a great stone big enough to cut hollow and make fit for a mortar, and could find none at all, except what was in the solid rock, and which I had no way to dig or cut out; nor indeed were the rocks in the island of hardness sufficient, but were all of a sandy crumbling stone, which would neither bear the weight of a heavy pestle or would break the corn without filling it with sand; so after a great deal of time lost in searching for a stone, I gave it over, and resolved to look out for a great block of hard wood, which I found indeed much easier; and getting one as big as I had strength to stir, I rounded it, and formed it in the outside with my axe and hatchet, and then with the help of fire, and infinite labour, made a hollow place in it, as the Indians in Brazil make their canoes. After this, I made a great heavy pestle or beater, of the wood called the iron-wood, and this I prepared and laid by against I had my next crop of corn, when I proposed to myself to grind, or rather pound, my corn into meal, to make my bread. My next difficulty was to make a sieve, or searce, to dress my meal and to part it from the bran and the husk, without which I did not see it possible I could have any bread. This was a most difficult thing, so much as but to think on; for to be sure I had nothing like the necessary thing to make it; I mean fine thin canvas or stuff, to searce the meal through. And here I was at a full stop for many months; nor did I really know what to do; linen I had none left, but what was mere rags; I had goats' hair, but neither knew I how to weave it or spin it; and had I known how, here was no tools to work it with; all the remedy that I found for this was, that at last I did remember I had among the seamen' clothes which were saved out of the ship, some neckcloths of calico or muslin; and with some pieces of these, I made three small sieves, but proper enough for the work; and thus I made shift for some years. How I did afterwards, I shall show in its place. The baking part was the next thing to be considered and how I should make bread when I came to have corn; for, first, I had no yeast; as to that part, as there was no supplying the want, so I did not concern myself much about it; but for an oven I was indeed in great pain. At length I found out an experiment for that also, which was this: I made some earthen vessels very broad, but not deep; that is to say, about two foot diameter, and not above nine inches deep; these I burned in the fire, as I had done the other, and laid them by; and when I wanted to bake, I made a great fire upon my hearth, which I had paved with some square tiles of my own making and burning also; but I should not call them square. When the firewood was burned pretty much into embers, or live coals, I drew them forward upon this hearth, so as to cover it all over, and there I let them lie, till the hearth was very hot; then sweeping away all the embers, I set down my loaf, or loaves, and whelming down the earthen pot upon them, drew the embers all round the outside of the pot, to keep in, and add to the heat; and thus, as well as in the best oven in the world, I baked my barley loaves, and became in little time a mere pastry-cook into the bargain; for I made myself several cakes of the rice and puddings; indeed I made no pies, neither had I anything to put into them, supposing I had, except the flesh either of fowls or goats. It need not be wondered at, if all these things took me up most part of the third year of my abode here; for it is to be observed that in the intervals of these things I had my new harvest and husbandry to manage; for I reaped my corn in its season and carried it home as well as I could, and laid it up in the ear, in my large baskets, till I had time to rub it out; for I had no floor to thrash it on, or instrument to thrash it with. And now indeed my stock of corn increasing, I really wanted to build my barns bigger. I wanted a place to lay it up in; for the increase of the corn now yielded me so much that I had of the barley about twenty bushels, and of the rice as much or more; insomuch that now I resolved to begin to use it freely, for my bread had been quite gone a great while; also I resolved to see what quantity would be sufficient for me a whole year, and to sow but once a year. Upon the whole, I found that the forty bushels of barley and rice was much more than I could consume in a year; so I resolved to sow just the same quantity every year that I sowed the last, in hopes that such a quantity would fully provide me with bread, etc. All the while these things were doing, you may be sure my thoughts ran many times upon the prospect of land which I had seen from the other side of the island, and I was not without secret wishes that I were on shore there, fancying that seeing the mainland, and an inhabited country, I might find some way or other to convey myself farther, and perhaps at last find some means of escape. But all this while I made no allowance for the dangers of such a condition, and how I might fall into the hands of savages, and perhaps such as I might have reason to think far worse than the lions and tigers of Africa. That if I once came into their power, I should run a hazard more than a thousand to one of being killed and perhaps of being eaten; for I had heard that the people of the Caribbean coasts were cannibals, or man-eaters, and I knew by the latitude that I could not be far off from that shore. That suppose they were not cannibals, yet that they might kill me, as many Europeans who had fallen into their hands had been served, even when they had been ten or twenty together; much more I, that was but one, and could make little or no defence. All these things, I say, which I ought to have considered well of, and did cast up in my thoughts afterwards, yet took up none of my apprehensions at first; but my head ran mightily upon the thought of getting over to the shore. Now I wished for my boy Xury, and the longboat with the shoulder-of-mutton sail with which I sailed above a thousand miles on the coast of Africa; but this was in vain. Then I thought I would go and look at our ship' boat, which, as I have said, was blown up upon the shore a great way in the storm, when we were first cast away. She lay almost where she did at first, but not quite; and was turned by the force of the waves and the winds, almost bottom upward against a high ridge of beachy rough sand; but no water about her as before. If I had had hands to have refitted her and to have launched her into the water, the boat would have done well enough, and I might have gone back into Brazil with her easily enough; but I might have foreseen that I could no more turn her and set her upright upon her bottom than I could remove the island. However, I went to the woods and cut levers and rollers, and brought them to the boat, resolved to try what I could do; suggesting to myself that if I could but turn her down, I might easily repair the damage she had received, and she would be a very good boat, and I might go to sea in her very easily. I spared no pains, indeed, in this piece of fruitless toil, and spent, I think, three or four weeks about it; at last finding it impossible to heave it up with my little strength, I fell to digging away the sand to undermine it, and so to make it fall down, setting pieces of wood to thrust and guide it right in the fall. But when I had done this, I was unable to stir it up again, or to get under it, much less to move it forward towards the water; so I was forced to give it over; and yet, though I gave over the hopes of the boat, my desire to venture over for the main increased, rather than decreased, as the means for it seemed impossible. I Make Myself a Canoe THIS at length put me upon thinking whether it was not possible to make myself a canoe or piragua, such as the natives of those climates make, even without tools, or, as I might say, without hands, viz., of the trunk of a great tree. This I not only thought possible, but easy, and pleased myself extremely with the thoughts of making it, and with my having much more convenience for it than any of the Negroes or Indians; but not at all considering the particular inconveniences which I lay under, more than the Indians did, viz., want of hands to move it, when it was made, into the water, a difficulty much harder for me to surmount than all the consequences of want of tools could be to them; for what was it to me, that when I had chosen a vast tree in the woods, I might with great trouble cut it down, if after I might be able with my tools to hew and dub the outside into the proper shape of a boat, and burn or cut out the inside to make it hollow, so to make a boat of it if after all this, I must leave it just there where I found it, and was not able to launch it into the water? One would have thought I could not have had the least reflection upon my mind of my circumstance, while I was making this boat; but I should have immediately thought how I should get it into the sea; but my thoughts were so intent upon my voyage over the sea in it that I never once considered how I should get it off of the land; and was really in its own nature more easy for me to guide it over forty-five miles of sea, than about forty-five fathom of land, where it lay, to set it afloat in the water. I went to work upon this boat the most like a fool that ever man did, who had any of his senses awake. I pleased myself with the design, without determining whether I was ever able to undertake it; not but that the difficulty of launching my boat came often into my head; but I put a stop to my own inquiries into it, by this foolish answer which I gave myself, ''Let' first make it; I'll warrant I'll find some way or other to get it along, when 'tis done.'' This was a most preposterous method; but the eagerness of my fancy prevailed, and to work I went. I felled a cedar tree. I question much whether Solomon ever had such a one for the building of the Temple at Jerusalem. It was five foot ten inches diameter at the lower part next the stump, and four foot eleven inches diameter at the end of twenty-two foot, after which it lessened for a while, and then parted into branches. It was not without infinite labour that I felled this tree. I was twenty days hacking and hewing at it at the bottom; I was fourteen more getting the branches and limbs, and the vast spreading head of it cut off, which I hacked and hewed through with axe and hatchet, and inexpressible labour. After this, it cost me a month to shape it and dub it to a proportion, and to something like the bottom of a boat, that it might swim upright as it ought to do. It cost me near three months more to clear the inside, and work it out so as to make an exact boat of it. This I did indeed without fire, by mere mallet and chisel, and by the dint of hard labour, till I had brought it to be a very handsome piragua and big enough to have carried six and twenty men, and consequently big enough to have carried me and all my cargo. When I had gone through this work, I was extremely delighted with it. The boat was really much bigger than I ever saw a canoe, or piragua, that was made of one tree, in my life. Many a weary stroke it had cost, you may be sure; and there remained nothing but to get it into the water; and had I gotten it into the water, I make no question but I should have begun the maddest voyage and the most unlikely to be performed that ever was undertaken. But all my devices to get it into the water failed me; though they cost me infinite labour too. It lay about one hundred yards from the water, and not more. But the first inconvenience was, it was uphill towards the creek. Well, to take away this discouragement, I resolved to dig into the surface of the earth, and so make a declivity. This I began, and it cost me a prodigious deal of pains; but who grudges pains, that have their deliverance in view? But when this was worked through, and this difficulty managed, it was still much at one; for I could no more stir the canoe than I could the other boat. Then I measured the distance of ground, and resolved to cut a dock, or canal, to bring the water up to the canoe, seeing I could not bring the canoe down to the water. Well, I began this work, and when I began to enter into it and calculate how deep it was to be dug, how broad, how the stuff to be thrown out, I found that by the number of hands I had, being none but my own, it must have been ten or twelve years before I should have gone through with it; but the shore lay high, so that at the upper end it must have been at least twenty foot deep; so at length, though with great reluctancy, I gave this attempt over also. This grieved me heartily, and now I saw, though too late, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge rightly of our own strength to go through with it. In the middle of this work I finished my fourth year in this place, and kept my anniversary with the same devotion and with as much comfort as ever before; for by a constant study, and serious application of the Word of God, and by the assistance of His grace, I gained a different knowledge from what I had before. I entertained different notions of things. I looked now upon the world as a thing remote, which I had nothing to do with, no expectation from, and, indeed, no desires about. In a word, I had nothing indeed to do with it, nor was ever like to have; so I thought it looked as we may perhaps look upon it hereafter, viz., as a place I had lived in but was come out of it; and well might I say, as Father Abraham to Dives, ''Between me and thee is a great gulf fixed.'' In the first place, I was removed from all the wickedness of the world here. I had neither the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, or the pride of life. I had nothing to covet; for I had all that I was now capable of enjoying. I was lord of the whole manor; or if I pleased, I might call myself king, or emperor over the whole country which I had possession of. There were no rivals. I had no competitor, none to dispute sovereignty or command with me. I might have raised shiploadings of corn; but I had no use for it; so I let as little grow as I thought enough for my occasion. I had tortoise or turtles enough; but now and then one was as much as I could put to any use. I had timber enough to have built a fleet of ships. I had grapes enough to have made wine, or to have cured into raisins, to have loaded that fleet, when they had been built. But all I could make use of was all that was valuable. I had enough to eat, and to supply my wants, and what was all the rest to me? If I killed more flesh than I could eat, the dog must eat it, or the vermin. If I sowed more corn than I could eat, it must be spoiled. The trees that I cut down were lying to rot on the ground. I could make no more use of them than for fuel; and that I had no occasion for but to dress my food. In a word, the nature and experience of things dictated to me upon just reflection that all the good things of this world are no farther good to us than they are for our use; and that whatever we may heap up indeed to give others, we enjoy just as much as we can use, and no more. The most covetous griping miser in the world would have been cured of the vice of covetousness, if he had been in my case; for I possessed infinitely more than I knew what to do with. I had no room for desire, except it was of things which I had not, and they were but trifles, though indeed of great use to me. I had, as I hinted before, a parcel of money, as well gold as silver, about thirty-six pounds sterling. Alas! There the nasty, sorry, useless stuff lay; I had no manner of business for it; and I often thought with myself that I would have given a handful of it for a gross of tobacco pipes or for a hand mill to grind my corn; nay, I would have given it all for sixpennyworth of turnip and carrot seed out of England, or for a handful of peas and beans and a bottle of ink. As it was, I had not the least advantage by it or benefit from it; but there it lay in a drawer and grew mouldy with the damp of the cave in the wet season; and if I had had the drawer full of diamonds, it had been the same case; and they had been of no manner of value to me because of no use. I had now brought my state of life to be much easier in itself than it was at first and much easier to my mind, as well as to my body. I frequently sat down to my meat with thankfulness, and admired the hand of God' providence, which had thus spread my table in the wilderness. I learned to look more upon the bright side of my condition and less upon the dark side; and to consider what I enjoyed rather than what I wanted; and this gave me sometimes such secret comforts that I cannot express them; and which I take notice of here, to put those discontented people in mind of it who cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them because they see and covet something that He has not given them. All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have. Another reflection was of great use to me, and doubtless would be so to anyone that should fall into such distress as mine was; and this was to compare my present condition with what I at first expected it should be; nay, with what it would certainly have been, if the good providence of God had not wonderfully ordered the ship to be cast up nearer to the shore, where I not only could come at her but could bring what I got out of her to the shore for my relief and comfort; without which, I had wanted for tools to work, weapons for defence, or gunpowder and shot for getting my food. I spent whole hours, I may say whole days, in representing to myself, in the most lively colours, how I must have acted if I had got nothing out of the ship; how I could not have so much as got any food, except fish and turtles; and that as it was long before I found any of them, I must have perished first; that I should have lived, if I had not perished, like a mere savage; that if I had killed a goat, or a fowl, by any contrivance, I had no way to flay or open them, or part the flesh from the skin and the bowels, or to cut it up, but must gnaw it with my teeth and pull it with my claws like a beast. These reflections made me very sensible of the goodness of Providence to me, and very thankful for my present condition, with all its hardships and misfortunes. And this part also I cannot but recommend to the reflection of those who are apt in their misery to say, ''Is any affliction like mine?'' Let them consider how much worse the cases of some people are, and their case might have been, if Providence had thought fit. I had another reflection which assisted me also to comfort my mind with hopes; and this was comparing my present condition with what I had deserved, and had therefore reason to expect from the hand of Providence. I had lived a dreadful life, perfectly destitute of the knowledge and fear of God. I had been well instructed by father and mother; neither had they been wanting to me in their early endeavours to infuse a religious awe of God into my mind, a sense of my duty, and of what the nature and end of my being required of me. But alas! falling early into the seafaring life, which of all the lives is the most destitute of the fear of God, though His terrors are always before them; I say, falling early into the seafaring life, and into seafaring company, all that little sense of religion which I had entertained was laughed out of me by my messmates, by a hardened despising of dangers, and the views of death, which grew habitual to me, by my long absence from all manner of opportunities to converse with anything but what was like myself or to hear anything that was good, or tended towards it. So void was I of everything that was good, or of the least sense of what I was or was to be, that in the greatest deliverances I enjoyed, such as my escape from Sallee, my being taken up by the Portuguese master of the ship, my being planted so well in Brazil, my receiving the cargo from England, and the like, I never had once the words, ''Thank God,'' so much as on my mind, or in my mouth; nor in the greatest distress had I so much as a thought to pray to Him; or so much as to say, ''Lord, have mercy upon me''; no, nor to mention the name of God, unless it was to swear by and blaspheme it. I had terrible reflections upon my mind for many months, as I have already observed, on the account of my wicked and hardened life past; and when I looked about me and considered what particular providences had attended me since my coming into this place, and how God had dealt bountifully with me; had not only punished me less than my iniquity had deserved, but had so plentifully provided for me; this gave me great hopes that my repentance was accepted, and that God had yet mercy in store for me. With these reflections I worked my mind up, not only to resignation to the will of God in the present disposition of my circumstances, but even to a sincere thankfulness for my condition; and that I, who was yet a living man, ought not to complain, seeing I had not the due punishment of my sins; that I enjoyed so many mercies which I had no reason to have expected in that place; that I ought never more to repine at my condition, but to rejoice and to give daily thanks for that daily bread which nothing but a crowd of wonders could have brought. That I ought to consider I had been fed even by a miracle, even as great as that of feeding Elijah by ravens; nay, by a long series of miracles; and that I could hardly have named a place in the unhabitable part of the world where I could have been cast more to my advantage. A place, where as I had no society, which was my affliction on one hand, so I found no ravenous beasts, no furious wolves or tigers to threaten my life; no venomous creatures or poisonous which I might feed on to my hurt, no savages to murder and devour me. In a word, as my life was a life of sorrow one way, so it was a life of mercy another; and I wanted nothing to make it a life of comfort, but to be able to make my sense of God' goodness to me, and care over me in this condition, be my daily consolation; and after I did make a just improvement of these things, I went away and was no more sad. I had now been here so long that many things which I brought on shore for my help were either quite gone, or very much wasted and near spent. My ink, as I observed, had been gone for some time, all but a very little, which I eked out with water a little and a little, till it was so pale it scarce left any appearance of black upon the paper. As long as it lasted I made use of it to minute down the days of the month on which any remarkable thing happened to me; and first by casting up times past, I remember that there was a strange concurrence of days in the various providences which befell me, and which, if I had been superstitiously inclined to observe days as fatal or fortunate, I might have had reason to have looked upon with a great deal of curiosity. First, I had observed that the same day that I broke away from my father and my friends and ran away to Hull in order to go to sea, the same day afterwards I was taken by the Sallee man-of-war and made a slave. The same day of the year that I escaped out of the wreck of that ship in Yarmouth Roads, that same day-year afterwards I made my escape from Sallee in the boat. The same day of the year I was born on, viz., the 30th of September, that same day I had my life so miraculously saved twenty-six years after, when I was cast on shore in this island; so that my wicked life and my solitary life begun both on a day. The next thing to my ink' being wasted was that of my bread, I mean the biscuit which I brought out of the ship. This I had husbanded to the last degree, allowing myself but one cake of bread a day for above a year; and yet I was quite without bread for near a year before I got any corn of my own; and great reason I had to be thankful that I had any at all, the getting it being, as has been already observed, next to miraculous. My clothes began to decay too mightily. As to linen, I had none a good while, except some checkered shirts which I found in the chests of the other seamen, and which I carefully preserved, because many times I could bear no other clothes on but a shirt; and it was a very great help to me that I had among all the men' clothes of the ship almost three dozen of shirts. There were also several thick watch coats of the seamen', which were left indeed, but they were too hot to wear; and though it is true that the weather was so violent hot that there was no need of clothes, yet I could not go quite naked; no, though I had been inclined to it, which I was not, nor could abide the thoughts of it, though I was all alone. The reason why I could not go quite naked was, I could not bear the heat of the sun so well when quite naked, as with some clothes on; nay, the very heat frequently blistered my skin; whereas with a shirt on, the air itself made some motion, and whistling under that shirt, was twofold cooler than without it. No more could I ever bring myself to go out in the heat of the sun without a cap or a hat; the heat of the sun, beating with such violence as it does in that place, would give me the headache presently, by darting so directly on my head, without a cap or hat on, so that I could not bear it; whereas if I put on my hat, it would presently go away. Upon those views I began to consider about putting the few rags I had, which I called clothes, into some order; I had worn out all the waistcoats I had, and my business was now to try if I could not make jackets out of the great watch coats which I had by me, and with such other materials as I had; so I set to work a-tailoring, or rather indeed a-botching, for I made most piteous work of it. However, I made shift to make two or three new waistcoats, which I hoped would serve me a great while; as for breeches or drawers, I made but a very sorry shift indeed, till afterwards. I have mentioned that I saved the skins of all the creatures that I killed, I mean four-footed ones, and I had hung them up stretched out with sticks in the sun, by which means some of them were so dry and hard that they were fit for little, but others it seems were very useful. The first thing I made of these was a great cap for my head, with the hair on the outside, to shoot off the rain; and this I performed so well, that after this I made me a suit of clothes wholly of these skins, that is to say, a waistcoat, and breeches open at knees, and both loose, for they were rather wanting to keep me cool than to keep me warm. I must not omit to acknowledge that they were wretchedly made; for if I was a bad carpenter, I was a worse tailor. However, they were such as I made very good shift with; and when I was abroad, if it happened to rain, the hair of my waistcoat and cap being outermost, I was kept very dry. After this I spent a great deal of time and pains to make me an umbrella; I was indeed in great want of one, and had a great mind to make one; I had seen them made in Brazil, where they are very useful in the great heats which are there. And I felt the heats every jot as great here, and greater too, being nearer the equinox; besides, as I was obliged to be much abroad, it was a most useful thing to me, as well for the rains as the heats. I took a world of pains at it, and was a great while before I could make anything likely to hold; nay, after I thought I had hit the way, I spoiled two or three before I made one to my mind; but at last I made one that answered indifferently well. The main difficulty I found was to make it to let down. I could make it to spread, but if it did not let down too and draw in, it was not portable for me any way but just over my head, which would not do. However, at last, as I said, I made one to answer, and covered it with skins, the hair upwards, so that it cast off the rains like a penthouse and kept off the sun so effectually, that I could walk out in the hottest of the weather with greater advantage than I could before in the coolest, and when I had no need of it, could close it and carry it under my arm. Thus I lived mighty comfortably, my mind being entirely composed by resigning to the will of God and throwing myself wholly upon the disposal of His Providence. This made my life better than sociable; for when I began to regret the want of conversation, I would ask myself whether thus conversing mutually with my own thoughts, and as I hope I may say, with even God Himself, by ejaculations, was not better than the utmost enjoyment of human society in the world. I cannot say that after this, for five years, any extraordinary thing happened to me, but I lived on in the same course, in the same posture and place, just as before; the chief thing I was employed in, besides my yearly labour of planting my barley and rice and curing my raisins, of both which I always kept up just enough to have sufficient stock of one year' provisions beforehand; I say, besides this yearly labour and my daily labour of going out with my gun, I had one labour, to make me a canoe, which at last I finished. So that by digging a canal to it of six foot wide, and four foot deep, I brought it into the creek, almost half a mile. As for the first, which was so vastly big, as I made it without considering beforehand, as I ought to do, how I should be able to launch it; so never being able to bring it to the water, or bring the water to it, I was obliged to let it lie where it was, as a memorandum to teach me to be wiser next time. Indeed the next time, though I could not get a tree proper for it, and in a place where I could not get the water to it at any less distance than, as I have said, near half a mile; yet as I saw it was practicable at last, I never gave it over; and though I was near two years about it, yet I never grudged my labour, in hopes of having a boat to go off to sea at last. However, though my little piragua was finished, yet the size of it was not at all answerable to the design which I had in view, when I made the first; I mean, of venturing over to the terra firma, where it was above forty miles broad; accordingly, the smallness of my boat assisted to put an end to that design, and now I thought no more of it. But as I had a boat, my next design was to make a tour round the island; for as I had been on the other side in one place, crossing, as I have already described it, over the land, so the discoveries I made in that little journey made me very eager to see other parts of the coast; and now I had a boat, I thought of nothing but sailing round the island. For this purpose, that I might do everything with discretion and consideration, I fitted up a little mast to my boat, and made a sail to it out of some of the pieces of the ship' sail, which lay in store, and of which I had a great stock by me. Having fitted my mast and sail and tried the boat, I found she would sail very well. Then I made little lockers, or boxes, at either end of my boat, to put provisions, necessaries and ammunition, etc., into, to be kept dry, either from rain or the spray of the sea; and a little long hollow place I cut in the inside of the boat, where I could lay my gun, making a flap to hang down over it to keep it dry. I fixed my umbrella also in a step at the stern, like a mast, to stand over my head, and keep the heat of the sun off of me like an awning; and thus I every now and then took a little voyage upon the sea, but never went far out, nor far from the little creek; but at last being eager to view the circumference of my little kingdom, I resolved upon my tour and accordingly I victualled my ship for the voyage, putting in two dozen of my loaves (cakes I should rather call them) of barley bread, an earthen pot full of parched rice, a food I ate a great deal of, a little bottle of rum, half a goat, and powder and shot for killing more, and two large watch coats, of those which, as I mentioned before, I had saved out of the seamen' chests; these I took, one to lie upon, and the other to cover me in the night. It was the 6th of November, in the sixth year of my reign, or my captivity, which you please, that I set out on this voyage, and I found it much longer than I expected; for though the island itself was not very large, yet when I came to the east side of it, I found a great ledge of rocks lie out about two leagues into the sea, some above water, some under it; and beyond that, a shoal of sand lying dry half a league more; so that I was obliged to go a great way out to sea to double the point. When first I discovered them, I was going to give over my enterprise, and come back again, not knowing how far it might oblige me to go out to sea; and above all, doubting how I should get back again; so I came to an anchor; for I had made me a kind of an anchor with a piece of a broken grappling, which I got out of the ship. Having secured my boat, I took my gun, and went on shore, climbing up upon a hill, which seemed to overlook that point, where I saw the full extent of it, and resolved to venture. In my viewing the sea from that hill where I stood, I perceived a strong, and indeed a most furious current, which ran to the east, and even came close to the point; and I took the more notice of it, because I saw there might be some danger that when I came into it, I might be carried out to sea by the strength of it and not be able to make the island again; and indeed, had I not gotten first up upon this hill, I believe it would have been so; for there was the same current on the other side the island, only that it set off at a farther distance; and I saw there was a strong eddy under the shore; so I had nothing to do but to get in out of the first current, and I should presently be in an eddy. I lay here, however, two days; because the wind, blowing pretty fresh at east-southeast, and that being just contrary to the said current, made a great breach of the sea upon the point; so that it was not safe for me to keep too close to the shore for the breach, nor to go too far off because of the stream. The third day in the morning, the wind having abated overnight, the sea was calm, and I ventured; but I am a warning piece again to all rash and ignorant pilots; for no sooner was I come to the point, when even I was not my boat' length from the shore, but I found myself in a great depth of water, and a current like the sluice of a mill. It carried my boat along with it with such violence that all I could do could not keep her so much as on the edge of it; but I found it hurried me farther and farther out from the eddy, which was on my left hand. There was no wind stirring to help me, and all I could do with my paddles signified nothing; and now I began to give myself over for lost; for as the current was on both sides of the island, I knew in a few leagues' distance they must join again, and then I was irrecoverably gone; nor did I see any possibility of avoiding it; so that I had no prospect before me but of perishing; not by the sea, for that was calm enough, but of starving for hunger. I had indeed found a tortoise on the shore, as big almost as I could lift, and had tossed it into the boat; and I had a great jar of fresh water, that is to say, one of my earthen pots; but what was all this to being driven into the vast ocean, where, to be sure, there was no shore, no mainland or island, for a thousand leagues at least? And now I saw how easy it was for the Providence of God to make the most miserable condition mankind could be in, worse. Now I looked back upon my desolate solitary island as the most pleasant place in the world, and all the happiness my heart could wish for was to be but there again. I stretched out my hands to it with eager wishes. "O happy desert!'' said I, ''I shall never see thee more! O miserable creature,'' said I, ''whither am I going!'' Then I reproached myself with my unthankful temper, and how I had repined at my solitary condition; and now what would I give to be on shore there again! Thus we never see the true state of our condition till it is illustrated to us by its contraries; nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it. It is scarce possible to imagine the consternation I was now in, being driven from my beloved island (for so it appeared to me now to be) into the wide ocean almost two leagues, and in the utmost despair of ever recovering it again. However, I worked hard till indeed my strength was almost exhausted, and kept my boat as much to the northward, that is, towards the side of the current which the eddy lay on, as possibly I could; when about noon, as the sun passed the meridian, I thought I felt a little breeze of wind in my face, springing up from the south-southeast. This cheered my heart a little, and especially when, in about half an hour more, it blew a pretty small gentle gale. By this time I was gotten at a frightful distance from the island, and had the least cloud or hazy weather intervened, I had been undone another way too; for I had no compass on board, and should never have known how to have steered towards the island, if I had but once lost sight of it; but the weather continuing clear, I applied myself to get up my mast again and spread my sail, standing away to the north as much as possible, to get out of the current. Just as I had set my mast and sail, and the boat began to stretch away, I saw even by the clearness of the water some alteration of the current was near; for where the current was so strong, the water was foul; but perceiving the water clear, I found the current abate, and presently I found to the east, at about half a mile, a breach of the sea upon some rocks; these rocks I found caused the current to part again, and as the main stress of it ran away more southerly, leaving the rocks to the northeast, so the other returned by the repulse of the rocks and made a strong eddy, which ran back again to the northwest with a very sharp stream. They who know what it is to have a reprieve brought to them upon the ladder or to be rescued from thieves just going to murder them, or who have been in such like extremities, may guess what my present surprise of joy was, and how gladly I put my boat into the stream of this eddy, and the wind also freshening, how gladly I spread my sail to it, running cheerfully before the wind, and with a strong tide or eddy under foot. This eddy carried me about a league in my way back again directly towards the island, but about two leagues more to the northward than the current which carried me away at first; so that when I came near the island, I found myself open to the northern shore of it, that is to say, the other end of the island, opposite to that which I went out from. When I had made something more than a league of way by the help of this current or eddy, I found it was spent and served me no further. However, I found that being between the two great currents, viz., that on the south side, which had hurried me away, and that on the north, which lay about a league on the other side: I say, between these two, in the wake of the island, I found the water at least still and running no way, and having still a breeze of wind fair for me, I kept on steering directly for the island, though not making such fresh way as I did before. About four o'clock in the evening, being then within about a league of the island, I found the point of the rocks which occasioned this disaster, stretching out, as is described before, to the southward, and casting off the current more southwardly, had of course made another eddy to the north, and this I found very strong, but not directly setting the way my course lay, which was due west, but almost full north. However, having a fresh gale, I stretched across this eddy, slanting northwest, and in about an hour came within about a mile of the shore, where, it being smooth water, I soon got to land. When I was on shore, I fell on my knees, and gave God thanks for my deliverance, resolving to lay aside all thoughts of my deliverance by my boat; and refreshing myself with such things as I had, I brought my boat close to the shore in a little cove that I had spied under some trees, and laid me down to sleep, being quite spent with the labour and fatigue of the voyage. I was now at a great loss which way to get home with my boat. I had run so much hazard, and knew too much the case, to think of attempting it by the way I went out; and what might be at the other side (I mean the west side) I knew not, nor had I any mind to run any more ventures; so I only resolved in the morning to make my way westward along the shore and to see if there was no creek where I might lay up my frigate in safety, so as to have her again if I wanted her. In about three miles, or thereabouts, coasting the shore, I came to a very good inlet, or bay, about a mile over, which narrowed till it came to a very little rivulet or brook, where I found a very convenient harbour for my boat, and where she lay as if she had been in a little dock made on purpose for her. Here I put in, and having stowed my boat very safe, I went on shore to look about me and see where I was. I soon found I had but a little passed by the place where I had been before, when I travelled on foot to that shore; so taking nothing out of my boat but my gun and my umbrella, for it was exceeding hot, I began my march. The way was comfortable enough after such a voyage as I had been upon, and I reached my old bower in the evening, where I found everything standing as I left it; for I always kept it in good order, being, as I said before, my country house. I got over the fence and laid me down in the shade to rest my limbs, for I was very weary, and fell asleep. But judge you, if you can, that read my story, what a surprise I must be in, when I was waked out of my sleep by a voice calling me by my name several times, ''Robin, Robin, Robin Crusoe, poor Robin Crusoe! Where are you, Robin Crusoe? Where are you? Where have you been?'' I was so dead asleep at first, being fatigued with rowing, or paddling, as it is called, the first part of the day and with walking the latter part, that I did not wake thoroughly; but dozing between sleeping and waking, thought I dreamed that somebody spoke to me. But as the voice continued to repeat ''Robin Crusoe, Robin Crusoe,'' at last I began to wake more perfectly, and was at first dreadfully frighted and started up in the utmost consternation. But no sooner were my eyes open, but I saw my Poll sitting on the top of the hedge; and immediately knew that it was he that spoke to me; for just in such bemoaning language I had used to talk to him, and teach him; and he had learned it so perfectly that he would sit upon my finger and lay his bill close to my face, and cry, ''Poor Robin Crusoe! Where are you? Where have you been? How come you here?'' and such things as I had taught him. However, even though I knew it was the parrot, and that indeed it could be nobody else, it was a good while before I could compose myself. First, I was amazed how the creature got thither, and then how he should just keep about the place and nowhere else. But as I was well satisfied it could be nobody but honest Poll, I got it over; and holding out my hand, and calling him by his name, ''Poll,'' the sociable creature came to me, and sat upon my thumb, as he used to do, and continued talking to me, ''Poor Robin Crusoe!'' and how did I come here? and where had I been? just as if he had been overjoyed to see me again; and so I carried him home along with me. I Improve Myself in the Mechanic Exercises I HAD now had enough of rambling to sea for some time, and had enough to do for many days to sit still and reflect upon the danger I had been in. I would have been very glad to have had my boat again on my side of the island; but I knew not how it was practicable to get it about. As to the east side of the island, which I had gone round, I knew well enough there was no venturing that way; my very heart would shrink and my very blood run chill but to think of it. And as to the other side of the island, I did not know how it might be there; but supposing the current ran with the same force against the shore at the east as it passed by it on the other, I might run the same risk of being driven down the stream, and carried by the island, as I had been before, of being carried away from it; so with these thoughts I contented myself to be without any boat, though it had been the product of so many months' labour to make it, and of so many more to get it unto the sea. In this government of my temper I remained near a year, lived a very sedate, retired life, as you may well suppose; and my thoughts being very much composed as to my condition, and fully comforted in resigning myself to the dispositions of Providence, I thought I lived really very happily in all things, except that of society. I improved myself in this time in all the mechanic exercises which my necessities put me upon applying myself to, and I believe could, upon occasion, have made a very good carpenter, especially considering how few tools I had. Besides this, I arrived at an unexpected perfection in my earthenware, and contrived well enough to make them with a wheel, which I found infinitely easier and better; because I made things round and shapeable which before were filthy things indeed to look on. But I think I was never more vain of my own performance, or more joyful for anything I found out, than for my being able to make a tobacco pipe. And though it was a very ugly, clumsy thing when it was done, and only burned red, like other earthenware, yet as it was hard and firm, and would draw the smoke, I was exceedingly comforted with it; for I had been always used to smoke and there were pipes in the ship, but I forgot them at first, not knowing that there was tobacco in the island; and afterwards, when I searched the ship again, I could not come at any pipes at all. In my wickerware also I improved much, and made abundance of necessary baskets, as well as my invention showed me; though not very handsome, yet they were such as were very handy and convenient for my laying things up in, or fetching things home in. For example, if I killed a goat abroad, I could hang it up in a tree, flay it and dress it and cut it in pieces and bring it home in a basket; and the like by a turtle, I could cut it up, take out the eggs, and a piece or two of the flesh, which was enough for me, and bring them home in a basket, and leave the rest behind me. Also large deep baskets were my receivers for my corn, which I always rubbed out as soon as it was dry, and cured, and kept it in great baskets. I began now to perceive my powder abated considerably, and this was a want which it was impossible for me to supply; and I began seriously to consider what I must do when I should have no more powder; that is to say, how I should do to kill any goats. I had, as is observed in the third year of my being here, kept a young kid, and bred her up tame, and I was in hopes of getting a he-goat; but I could not by any means bring it to pass, till my kid grew an old goat; and I could never find in my heart to kill her, till she died at last of mere age. But being now in the eleventh year of my residence, and, as I have said, my ammunition growing low, I set myself to study some art to trap and snare the goats, to see whether I could not catch some of them alive, and particularly I wanted a she-goat great with young. To this purpose I made snares to hamper them, and I do believe they were more than once taken in them; but my tackle was not good, for I had no wire, and I always found them broken and my bait devoured. At length I resolved to try a pitfall, so I dug several large pits in the earth, in places where I had observed the goats used to feed, and over these pits I placed hurdles of my own making too, with a great weight upon them; and several times I put ears of barley and dry rice, without setting the trap, and I could easily perceive that the goats had gone in and eaten up the corn, for I could see the mark of their feet. At length I set three traps in one night, and going the next morning I found them all standing, and yet the bait eaten and gone. This was very discouraging. However, I altered my traps, and, not to trouble you with particulars, going one morning to see my traps, I found in one of them a large old he-goat, and in one of the others, three kids, a male and two females. As to the old one, I knew not what to do with him, he was so fierce I durst not go into the pit to him; that is to say, to go about to bring him away alive, which was what I wanted. I could have killed him, but that was not my business, nor would it answer my end. So I e'en let him out, and he ran away, as if he had been frighted out of his wits. But I had forgot then what I learned afterwards, that hunger will tame a lion. If I had let him stay there three or four days without food and then have carried him some water to drink, and then a little corn, he would have been as tame as one of the kids, for they are mighty sagacious, tractable creatures where they are well used. However, for the present I let him go, knowing no better at that time; then I went to the three kids, and taking them one by one, I tied them with strings together and with some difficulty brought them all home. It was a good while before they would feed, but throwing them some sweet corn, it tempted them and they began to be tame; and now I found that if I expected to supply myself with goat-flesh when I had no powder or shot left, breeding some up tame was my only way, when perhaps I might have them about my house like a flock of sheep. But then it presently occurred to me that I must keep the tame from the wild, or else they would always run wild when they grew up, and the only way for this was to have some enclosed piece of ground, well fenced either with hedge or pale, to keep them in so effectually that those within might not break out, or those without break in. This was a great undertaking for one pair of hands, yet as I saw there was an absolute necessity of doing it, my first piece of work was to find out a proper piece of ground, viz., where there was likely to be herbage for them to eat, water for them to drink, and cover to keep them from the sun. Those who understand such enclosures will think I had very little contrivance, when I pitched upon a place very proper for all these, being a plain open piece of meadow land, or savanna (as our people call it in the western colonies), which had two or three little drills of fresh water in it and at one end was very woody. I say, they will smile at my forecast, when I shall tell them I began my enclosing of this piece of ground in such a manner that my hedge or pale must have been at least two mile about. Nor was the madness of it so great as to the compass, for if it was ten mile about, I was like to have time enough to do it in. But I did not consider that my goats would be as wild in so much compass as if they had had the whole island, and I should have so much room to chase them in that I should never catch them. My hedge was begun and carried on, I believe, about 50 yards, when this thought occurred to me; so I presently stopped short, and for the first beginning I resolved to enclose a piece of about 150 yards in length, and 100 yards in breadth, which, as it would maintain as many as I should have in any reasonable time, so, as my flock increased, I could add more ground to my enclosure. This was acting with some prudence, and I went to work with courage. I was about three months hedging in the first piece, and till I had done it I tethered the three kids in the best part of it, and used them to feed as near me as possible to make them familiar; and very often I would go and carry them some ears of barley, or a handful of rice, and feed them out of my hand; so that after my enclosure was finished and I let them loose, they would follow me up and down, bleating after me for a handful of corn. This answered my end, and in about a year and a half I had a flock of about twelve goats, kids and all; and in two years more I had three and forty, besides several that I took and killed for my food. And after that I enclosed five several pieces of ground to feed them in, with little pens to drive them into, to take them as I wanted, and gates out of one piece of ground into another. But this was not all; for now I not only had goat' flesh to feed on when I pleased, but milk too, a thing which indeed in my beginning I did not so much as think of, and which, when it came into my thoughts, was really an agreeable surprise. For now I set up my dairy and had sometimes a gallon or two of milk in a day. And as Nature, who gives supplies of food to every creature, dictates even naturally how to make use of it, so I that had never milked a cow, much less a goat, or seen butter or cheese made, very readily and handily, though after a great many essays and miscarriages, made me both butter and cheese at last, and never wanted it afterwards. How mercifully can our great Creator treat His creatures, even in those conditions in which they seemed to be overwhelmed in destruction! How can He sweeten the bitterest providences, and give us cause to praise Him for dungeons and prisons! What a table was here spread for me in a wilderness, where I saw nothing at first but to perish for hunger! It would have made a stoic smile to have seen me and my little family sit down to dinner; there was my majesty, the prince and lord of the whole island: I had the lives of all my subjects at my absolute command. I could hang, draw, give liberty, and take it away, and no rebels among all my subjects. Then to see how like a king I dined, too, all alone, attended by my servants; Poll, as if he had been my favourite, was the only person permitted to talk to me. My dog, who was now grown very old and crazy, and had found no species to multiply his kind upon, sat always at my right hand; and two cats, one on one side the table and one on the other, expecting now and then a bit from my hand, as a mark of special favour. But these were not the two cats which I brought on shore at first, for they were both of them dead, and had been interred near my habitation by my own hand; but one of them having multiplied by I know not what kind of creature, these were two which I had preserved tame, whereas the rest ran wild in the woods, and became indeed troublesome to me at last; for they would often come into my house, and plunder me too, till at last I was obliged to shoot them, and did kill a great many; at length they left me with this attendance; and in this plentiful manner I lived; neither could I be said to want anything but society, and of that in some time after this I was like to have too much. I was something impatient, as I have observed, to have the use of my boat, though very loath to run any more hazards; and therefore sometimes I sat contriving ways to get her about the island, and at other times I sat myself down contented enough without her. But I had a strange uneasiness in my mind to go down to the point of the island, where, as I have said, in my last ramble I went up the hill to see how the shore lay and how the current set, that I might see what I had to do. This inclination increased upon me every day, and at length I resolved to travel thither by land; following the edge of the shore I did so. But had anyone in England been to meet such a man as I was, it must either have frighted them or raised a great deal of laughter; and as I frequently stood still to look at myself, I could not but smile at the notion of my travelling through Yorkshire with such an equipage and in such a dress. Be pleased to take a sketch of my figure as follows: I had a great high shapeless cap, made of a goat' skin, with a flap hanging down behind, as well to keep the sun from me as to shoot the rain off from running into my neck; nothing being so hurtful in these climates as the rain upon the flesh under the clothes. I had a short jacket of goatskin, the skirts coming down to about the middle of my thighs; and a pair of open-kneed breeches of the same; the breeches were made of the skin of an old he-goat, whose hair hung down such a length on either side that, like pantaloons, it reached to the middle of my legs; stockings and shoes I had none, but I had made me a pair of somethings, I scarce know what to call them, like buskins, to flap over my legs, and lace on either side like spatterdashes; but of a most barbarous shape, as indeed were all the rest of my clothes. I had on a broad belt of goatskin dried, which I drew together with two thongs of the same, instead of buckles, and in a kind of a frog on either side of this, instead of a sword and a dagger, hung a little saw and a hatchet, one on one side, one on the other. I had another belt, not so broad, and fastened in the same manner, which hung over my shoulder; and at the end of it, under my left arm, hung two pouches, both made of goatskin too; in one of which hung my powder, in the other my shot. At my back I carried my basket, on my shoulder my gun, and over my head a great clumsy ugly goatskin umbrella, but which, after all, was the most necessary thing I had about me, next to my gun. As for my face, the colour of it was really not so mulatto-like as one might expect from a man not at all careful of it and living within nine or ten degrees of the equinox. My beard I had once suffered to grow till it was about a quarter of a yard long; but as I had both scissors and razors sufficient, I had cut it pretty short, except what grew on my upper lip, which I had trimmed into a large pair of Mahometan whiskers, such as I had seen worn by some Turks whom I saw at Sallee; for the Moors did not wear such, though the Turks did; of these mustachios, or whiskers, I will not say they were long enough to hang my hat upon them, but they were of a length and shape monstrous enough and such as in England would have passed for frightful. But all this is by the by; for as to my figure, I had so few to observe me that it was of no manner of consequence; so I say no more to that part. In this kind of figure I went my new journey, and was out five or six days. I travelled first along the seashore, directly to the place where I first brought my boat to an anchor, to get up upon the rocks; and having no boat now to take care of, I went over the land a nearer way to the same height that I was upon before; when, looking forward to the point of the rocks which lay out, and which I was obliged to double with my boat, as I said above, I was surprised to see the sea all smooth and quiet, no rippling, no motion, no current, any more there than in other places. I was at a strange loss to understand this, and resolved to spend some time in the observing it, to see if nothing from the sets of the tide had occasioned it; but I was presently convinced how it was, viz., that the tide of ebb setting from the west and joining with the current of waters from some great river on the shore must be the occasion of this current; and that according as the wind blew more forcibly from the west or from the north, this current came near, or went farther from the shore; for waiting thereabouts till evening, I went up to the rock again, and then the tide of the ebb being made, I plainly saw the current again as before, only that it ran further off, being near half a league from the shore; whereas in my case it set close upon the shore, and hurried me and my canoe along with it, which at another time it would not have done. This observation convinced me that I had nothing to do but to observe the ebbing and the flowing of the tide, and I might very easily bring my boat about the island again. But when I began to think of putting it in practice, I had such a terror upon my spirits at the remembrance of the danger I had been in that I could not think of it again with any patience; but on the contrary, I took up another resolution, which was more safe, though more laborious; and this was that I would build, or rather make, me another piragua, or canoe; and so have one for one side of the island and one for the other. You are to understand that now I had, as I may call it, two plantations in the island; one my little fortification or tent, with the wall about it under the rock, with the cave behind me, which by this time I had enlarged into several apartments, or caves, one within another. One of these, which was the driest and largest, and had a door out beyond my wall of fortification, that is to say, beyond where my wall joined to the rock, was all filled up with the large earthen pots, of which I have given an account, and with fourteen or fifteen great baskets, which would hold five or six bushels each, where I laid up my stores of provision, especially my corn, some in the ear cut off short from the straw, and the other rubbed out with my hand. As for my wall, made, as before, with long stakes, or piles, those piles grew all like trees, and were by this time grown so big and spread so very much that there was not the least appearance to anyone' view of any habitation behind them. Near this dwelling of mine, but a little farther within the land and upon lower ground, lay my two pieces of corn ground, which I kept duly cultivated and sowed, and which duly yielded me their harvest in its season; and whenever I had occasion for more corn, I had more land adjoining as fit as that. Besides this, I had my country seat, and I had now a tolerable plantation there also; for first, I had my little bower, as I called it, which I kept in repair; that is to say, I kept the hedge which circled it in, constantly fitted up to its usual height, the ladder standing always in the inside; I kept the trees, which at first were no more than my stakes, but were now grown very firm and tall; I kept them always so cut that they might spread and grow thick and wild, and make the more agreeable shade, which they did effectually to my mind. In the middle of this I had my tent always standing, being a piece of a sail spread over poles set up for that purpose, and which never wanted any repair or renewing; and under this I had made me a squab, or couch, with the skins of the creatures I had killed and with other soft things, and a blanket laid on them such as belonged to our seabedding, which I had saved, and a great watch coat to cover me; and here, whenever I had occasion to be absent from my chief seat, I took up my country habitation. Adjoining to this I had my enclosures for my cattle, that is to say, my goats. And as I had taken an inconceivable deal of pains to fence and enclose this ground, so I was so uneasy to see it kept entire, lest the goats should break through, that I never left off till with infinite labour I had stuck the outside of the hedge so full of small stakes, and so near to one another, that it was rather a pale than a hedge, and there was scarce room to put a hand through between them, which afterwards, when those stakes grew, as they all did in the next rainy season, made the enclosure strong, like a wall, indeed stronger than any wall. This will testify for me that I was not idle, and that I spared no pains to bring to pass whatever appeared necessary for my comfortable support; for I considered the keeping up a breed of tame creatures thus at my hand would be a living magazine of flesh, milk, butter, and cheese for me as long as I lived in the place, if it were to be forty years, and that keeping them in my reach depended entirely upon my perfecting my enclosures to such a degree that I might be sure of keeping them together; which by this method indeed I so effectually secured that when these little stakes began to grow, I had planted them so very thick, I was forced to pull some of them up again. In this place also I had my grapes growing, which I principally depended on for my winter store of raisins, and which I never failed to preserve very carefully, as the best and most agreeable dainty of my whole diet; and indeed they were not agreeable only, but physical, wholesome, nourishing, and refreshing to the last degree. As this was also about halfway between my other habitation and the place where I had laid up my boat, I generally stayed and lay here in my way thither; for I used frequently to visit my boat, and I kept all things about or belonging to her in very good order; sometimes I went out in her to divert myself, but no more hazardous voyages would I go, nor scarce ever above a stone' cast or two from the shore, I was so apprehensive of being hurried out of my knowledge again by the currents, or winds, or any other accident. But now I come to a new scene of my life. I Find the Print of a Man' Naked Foot IT HAPPENED one day about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man' naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition; I listened, I looked round me, I could hear nothing, nor see anything; I went up to a rising ground to look farther; I went up the shore and down the shore, but it was all one, I could see no other impression but that one; I went to it again to see if there were any more, and to observe if it might not be my fancy; but there was no room for that, for there was exactly the very print of a foot, toes, heel, and every part of a foot; how it came thither I knew not, nor could in the least imagine. But after innumerable fluttering thoughts, like a man perfectly confused and out of myself, I came home to my fortification, not feeling, as we say, the ground I went on, but terrified to the last degree, looking behind me at every two or three steps, mistaking every bush and tree, and fancying every stump at a distance to be a man; nor is it possible to describe how many various shapes affrighted imagination represented things to me in; how many wild ideas were found every moment in my fancy, and what strange, unaccountable whimsies came into my thoughts by the way. When I came to my castle, for so I think I called it ever after this, I fled into it like one pursued; whether I went over by the ladder, as first contrived, or went in at the hole in the rock, which I called a door, I cannot remember; no, nor could I remember the next morning; for never frighted hare fled to cover, or fox to earth, with more terror of mind than I to this retreat. I slept none that night; the farther I was from the occasion of my fright, the greater my apprehensions were; which is something contrary to the nature of such things, and especially to the usual practice of all creatures in fear. But I was so embarrassed with my own frightful ideas of the thing that I formed nothing but dismal imaginations to myself, even though I was now a great way off it. Sometimes I fancied it must be the Devil; and reason joined in with me upon this supposition. For how should any other thing in human shape come into the place? Where was the vessel that brought them? What marks were there of any other footsteps? And how was it possible a man should come there? But then to think that Satan should take human shape upon him in such a place where there could be no manner of occasion for it, but to leave the print of his foot behind him, and that even for no purpose too (for he could not be sure I should see it); this was an amusement 5 the other way. I considered that the Devil might have found out abundance of other ways to have terrified me than this of the single print of a foot. That as I lived quite on the other side of the island, he would never have been so simple to leave a mark in a place where it was ten thousand to one whether I should ever see it or not, and in the sand too, which the first surge of the sea upon a high wind would have defaced entirely. All this seemed inconsistent with the thing itself, and with all the notions we usually entertain of the subtlety of the Devil. Abundance of such things as these assisted to argue me out of all apprehensions of its being the Devil. And I presently concluded then that it must be some more dangerous creature, viz., that it must be some of the savages of the mainland over against me, who had wandered out to sea in their canoes, and either driven by the currents or by contrary winds, had made the island; and had been on shore, but were gone away again tosea, being as loath, perhaps, to have stayed in this desolate island as I would have been to have had them. While these reflections were rolling upon my mind, I was very thankful in my thoughts that I was so happy as not to be thereabouts at that time, or that they did not see my boat, by which they would have concluded that some inhabitants had been in the place, and perhaps have searched farther for me. Then terrible thoughts racked my imagination about their having found my boat, and that there were people here; and that if so, I should certainly have them come again in greater numbers, and devour me; that if it should happen so that they should not find me, yet they would find my enclosure, destroy all my corn, carry away all my flock of tame goats, and I should perish at last for mere want. Thus my fear banished all my religious hope, all that former confidence in God, which was founded upon such wonderful experience as I had had of His goodness, now vanished, as if He that had fed me by miracle hitherto could not preserve by His power the provision which He had made for me by His goodness. I reproached myself with my easiness, that would not sow any more corn one year than would just serve me till the next season, as if no accident could intervene to prevent my enjoying the crop that was upon the ground; and this I thought so just a reproof that I resolved for the future to have two or three years' corn beforehand, so that whatever might come, I might not perish for want of bread. How strange a checker-work of Providence is the life of man! and by what secret differing springs are the affections hurried about, as differing circumstances present! Today we love what tomorrow we hate; today we seek what tomorrow we shun; today we desire what tomorrow we fear; nay, even tremble at the apprehensions of. This was exemplified in me at this time in the most lively manner imaginable; for I, whose only affliction was that I seemed banished from human society, that I was alone, circumscribed by the boundless ocean, cut off from mankind, and condemned to what I call silent life; that I was as one whom Heaven thought not worthy to be numbered among the living, or to appear among the rest of His creatures; that to have seen one of my own species would have seemed to me a raising me from death to life, and the greatest blessing that Heaven itself, next to the supreme blessing of salvation, could bestow; I say, that I should now tremble at the very apprehensions of seeing a man, and was ready to sink into the ground at but the shadow or silent appearance of a man' having set his foot in the island. Such is the uneven state of human life; and it afforded me a great many curious speculations afterwards, when I had a little recovered my first surprise; I considered that this was the station of life the infinitely wise and good providence of God had determined for me; that as I could not foresee what the ends of divine wisdom might be in all this, so I was not to dispute His sovereignty, who, as I was His creature, had an undoubted right by creation to govern and dispose of me absolutely as He thought fit; and who, as I was a creature who had offended Him, had likewise a judicial right to condemn me to what punishment He thought fit; and that it was my part to submit to bear His indignation, because I had sinned against Him. I then reflected that God, who was not only righteous but omnipotent, as He had thought fit thus to punish and afflict me, so He was able to deliver me; that if He did not think fit to do it, 'twas my unquestioned duty to resign myself absolutely and entirely to His will; and on the other hand, it was my duty also to hope in Him, pray to Him, and quietly to attend the dictates and directions of His daily providence. These thoughts took me up many hours, days, nay, I may say, weeks and months; and one particular effect of my cogitations on this occasion I cannot omit, viz., one morning early, lying in my bed, and filled with thought about my danger from the appearance of savages, I found it discomposed me very much, upon which those words of the Scripture came into my thoughts, ''Call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver, and thou shalt glorify Me.'' Upon this, rising cheerfully out of my bed, my heart was not only comforted, but I was guided and encouraged to pray earnestly to God for deliverance. When I had done praying, I took up my Bible, and opening it to read, the first words that presented to me were, ''Wait on the Lord, and be of good cheer, and He shall strengthen thy heart; wait, I say, on the Lord.'' It is impossible to express the comfort this gave me. In answer, I thankfully laid down the book, and was no more sad, at least not on that occasion. In the middle of these cogitations, apprehensions, and reflections, it came into my thought one day that all this might be a mere chimera of my own; and that this foot might be the print of my own foot, when I came on shore from my boat. This cheered me up a little too, and I began to persuade myself it was all a delusion; that it was nothing else but my own foot; and why might not I come that way from the boat, as well as I was going that way to the boat? Again, I considered also that I could by no means tell for certain where I had trod, and where I had not; and that if at last this was only the print of my own foot, I had played the part of those fools who strive to make stories of spectres and apparitions, and then are frighted at them more than anybody. Now I began to take courage and to peep abroad again, for I had not stirred out of my castle for three days and nights, so that I began to starve for provision; for I had little or nothing within doors, but some barley-cakes and water. Then I knew that my goats wanted to be milked too, which usually was my evening diversion; and the poor creatures were in great pain and inconvenience for want of it; and indeed, it almost spoiled some of them, and almost dried up their milk. Heartening myself therefore with the belief that this was nothing but the print of one of my own feet (and so I might be truly said to start at my own shadow), I began to go abroad again, and went to my country house to milk my flock; but to see with what fear I went forward, how often I looked behind me, how I was ready every now and then to lay down my basket, and run for my life, it would have made anyone have thought I was haunted with an evil conscience, or that I had been lately most terribly frighted; and so indeed I had. However, as I went down thus two or three days, and having seen nothing, I began to be a little bolder, and to think there was really nothing in it but my own imagination. But I could not persuade myself fully of this, till I should go down to the shore again, and see this print of a foot, and measure it by my own, and see if there was any similitude or fitness, that I might be assured it was my own foot. But when I came to the place, first, it appeared evidently to me, that when I laid up my boat, I could not possibly be on shore anywhere thereabouts: secondly, when I came to measure the mark with my own foot, I found my foot not so large by a great deal. Both these things filled my head with new imaginations, and gave me the vapours again to the highest degree; so that I shook with cold, like one in an ague, and I went home again, filled with the belief that some man or men had been on shore there; or, in short, that the island was inhabited, and I might be surprised before I was aware; and what course to take for my security, I knew not. O what ridiculous resolution men take when possessed with fear! It deprives them of the use of those means which reason offers for their relief. The first thing I proposed to myself was to throw down my enclosures, and turn all my tame cattle wild into the woods, that the enemy might not find them and then frequent the island in prospect of the same or the like booty: then to the simple thing of digging up my two cornfields, that they might not find such a grain there and still be prompted to frequent the island; then to demolish my bower and tent, that they might not see any vestiges of habitation, and be prompted to look further, in order to find out the persons inhabiting. These were the subject of the first night' cogitation, after I was come home again, while the apprehensions which had so overrun my mind were fresh upon me, and my head was full of vapours, as above. Thus fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself, when apparent to the eyes; and we find the burden of anxiety greater, by much, than the evil which we are anxious about; and, which was worse than all this, I had not that relief in this trouble from the resignation I used to practice, that I hoped to have. I looked, I thought, like Saul, who complained not only that the Philistines were upon him but that God had forsaken him; for I did not now take due ways to compose my mind, by crying to God in my distress, and resting upon His providence, as I had done before, for my defence and deliverance; which if I had done, I had, at least, been more cheerfully supported under this new surprise, and perhaps carried through it with more resolution. This confusion of my thoughts kept me waking all night; but in the morning I fell asleep, and having, by the amusement of my mind, been, as it were, tired, and my spirits exhausted, I slept very soundly, and waked much better composed than I had ever been before. And now I began to think sedately; and upon the utmost debate with myself, I concluded that this island, which was so exceeding pleasant, fruitful, and no farther from the mainland than as I had seen, was not so entirely abandoned as I might imagine. That although there were no stated inhabitants who lived on the spot, yet that there might sometimes come boats off from the shore, who either with design, or perhaps never but when they were driven by cross winds, might come to this place. That I had lived here fifteen years now, and had not met with the least shadow or figure of any people yet; and that if at any time they should be driven here, it was probable they went away again as soon as ever they could, seeing they had never thought fit to fix there upon any occasion, to this time. That the most I could suggest any danger from was from any such casual accidental landing of straggling people from the main, who, as it was likely if they were driven hither, were here against their wills; so they made no stay here, but went off again with all possible speed, seldom staying one night on shore, lest they should not have the help of the tides and daylight back again; and that therefore I had nothing to do but to consider of some safe retreat, in case I should see any savages land upon the spot. Now I began sorely to repent that I had dug my cave so large as to bring a door through again, which door, as I said, came out beyond where my fortification joined to the rock; upon maturely considering this, therefore, I resolved to draw me a second fortification, in the same manner of a semicircle, at a distance from my wall, just where I had planted a double row of trees about twelve years before, of which I made mention. These trees having been planted so thick before, there wanted but a few piles to be driven between them, that they should be thicker and stronger, and my wall would be soon finished. So that I had now a double wall, and my outer wall was thickened with pieces of timber, old cables, and everything I could think of to make it strong; having in it seven little holes, about as big as I might put my arm out at. In the inside of this I thickened my wall to above ten foot thick, with continually bringing earth out of my cave, and laying it at the foot of the wall, and walking upon it; and through the seven holes I contrived to plant the muskets, of which I took notice that I got seven on shore out of the ship; these, I say, I planted like my cannon, and fitted them into frames that held them like a carriage, that so I could fire all the seven guns in two minutes' time. This wall I was many a weary month a-finishing, and yet never thought myself safe till it was done. When this was done, I stuck all the ground without my wall, for a great way every way, as full with stakes or sticks, or the osier-like wood, which I found so apt to grow, as they could well stand; insomuch, that I believe I might set in near twenty thousand of them, leaving a pretty large space between them and my wall, that I might have room to see an enemy, and they might have no shelter from the young trees, if they attempted to approach my outer wall. Thus in two years' time I had a thick grove, and in five or six years' time I had a wood before my dwelling, growing so monstrous thick and strong that it was indeed perfectly impassable; and no men of what kind soever would ever imagine that there was anything beyond it, much less a habitation. As for the way which I proposed to myself to go in and out, for I left no avenue, it was by setting two ladders; one to a part of the rock which was low, and then broke in, and left room to place another ladder upon that; so when the two ladders were taken down, no man living could come down to me without mischieving himself; and if they had come down, they were still on the outside of my outer wall. Thus I took all the measures human prudence could suggest for my own preservation; and it will be seen at length that they were not altogether without just reason; though I foresaw nothing at that time more than my mere fear suggested to me. While this was doing, I was not altogether careless of my other affairs; for I had a great concern upon me for my little herd of goats; they were not only a present supply to me upon every occasion, and began to be sufficient to me, without the expense of powder and shot, but also without the fatigue of hunting after the wild ones; and I was loath to lose the advantage of them, and to have them all to nurse up over again. To this purpose, after long consideration, I could think of but two ways to preserve them; one was to find another convenient place to dig a cave underground, and to drive them into it every night; and the other was to enclose two or three little bits of land, remote from one another and as much concealed as I could, where I might keep about half a dozen young goats in each place; so that if any disaster happened to the flock in general, I might be able to raise them again with little trouble and time. And this, though it would require a great deal of time and labour, I thought was the most rational design. Accordingly, I spent some time to find out the most retired parts of the island; and I pitched upon one which was as private indeed as my heart could wish for; it was a little damp piece of ground in the middle of the hollow and thick woods, where, as is observed, I almost lost myself once before, endeavouring to come back that way from the eastern part of the island. Here I found a clear piece of land, near three acres, so surrounded with woods that it was almost an enclosure by Nature; at least it did not want near so much labour to make it so as the other pieces of ground I had worked so hard at. I immediately went to work with this piece of ground, and in less than a month' time I had so fenced it round that my flock or herd, call it which you please, who were not so wild now as at first they might be supposed to be, were well enough secured in it. So without any further delay, I removed ten young she-goats and two he-goats to this place; and when they were there, I continued to perfect the fence till I had made it as secure as the other, which, however, I did at more leisure, and it took me up more time by a great deal. All this labour I was at the expense of, purely from my apprehensions on the account of the print of a man' foot which I had seen; for as yet I never saw any human creature come near the island, and I had now lived two years under these uneasinesses, which indeed made my life much less comfortable than it was before; as may well be imagined by any who know what it is to live in the constant snare of the fear of man; and this I must observe with grief too, that the discomposure of my mind had too great impressions also upon the religious part of my thoughts, for the dread and terror of falling into the hands of savages and cannibals lay so upon my spirits that I seldom found myself in a due temper for application to my Maker, at least not with the sedate calmness and resignation of soul which I was wont to do; I rather prayed to God as under great affliction and pressure of mind, surrounded with danger, and in expectation every night of being murdered and devoured before morning; and I must testify from my experience that a temper of peace, thankfulness, love, and affection is much more the proper frame for prayer than that of terror and discomposure; and that under the dread of mischief impending, a man is no more fit for a comforting performance of the duty of praying to God than he is for repentance on a sickbed. For these discomposures affect the mind, as the others do the body; and the discomposure of the mind must necessarily be as great a disability as that of the body, and much greater, praying to God being properly an act of the mind, not of the body. I See the Shore Spread with Bones BUT to go on. After I had thus secured one part of my little living stock, I went about the whole island, searching for another private place, to make such another deposit; when wandering more to the west point of the island than I had ever done yet, and looking out to sea, I thought I saw a boat upon the sea, at a great distance. I had found a perspective-glass or two, in one of the seamen' chests which I saved out of our ship; but I had it not about me, and this was so remote that I could not tell what to make of it, though I looked at it till my eyes were not able to hold to look any longer; whether it was a boat or not, I do not know; but as I descended from the hill, I could see no more of it, so I gave it over; only I resolved to go no more out without a perspective-glass in my pocket. When I was come down the hill to the end of the island, where indeed I had never been before, I was presently convinced that the seeing the print of a man' foot was not such a strange thing in the island as I imagined; and but that it was a special providence that I was cast upon the side of the island where the savages never came, I should easily have known that nothing was more frequent than for the canoes from the main, when they happened to be a little too far out at sea, to shoot over to that side of the island for harbour; likewise, as they often met and fought in their canoes, the victors, having taken any prisoners, would bring them over to this shore, where, according to their dreadful customs, being all cannibals, they would kill and eat them; of which hereafter. When I was come down the hill to the shore, as I said above, being the southwest point of the island, I was perfectly confounded and amazed; nor is it possible for me to express the horror of my mind at seeing the shore spread with skulls, hands, feet, and other bones of human bodies; and particularly, I observed a place where there had been a fire made, and a circle dug in the earth, like a cockpit, where it is supposed the savage wretches had sat down to their inhuman feastings upon the bodies of their fellow creatures. I was so astonished with the sight of these things that I entertained no notions of any danger to myself from it for a long while; all my apprehensions were buried in the thoughts of such a pitch of inhuman, hellish brutality, and the horror of the degeneracy of human nature; which though I had heard of often, yet I never had so near a view of before; in short, I turned away my face from the horrid spectacle; my stomach grew sick, and I was just at the point of fainting, when Nature discharged the disorder from my stomach; and having vomited with an uncommon violence, I was a little relieved, but could not bear to stay in the place a moment; so I got me up the hill again, with all the speed I could, and walked on towards my own habitation. When I came a little out of that part of the island, I stood still a while as amazed; and then recovering myself, I looked up with the utmost affection of my soul, and with a flood of tears in my eyes, gave God thanks that had cast my first lot in a part of the world where I was distinguished from such dreadful creatures as these; and that though I had esteemed my present condition very miserable, had yet given me so many comforts in it that I had still more to give thanks for than to complain of; and this above all, that I had, even in this miserable condition, been comforted with the knowledge of Himself and the hope of His blessing, which was a felicity more than sufficiently equivalent to all the misery which I had suffered or could suffer. In this frame of thankfulness I went home to my castle, and began to be much easier now, as to the safety of my circumstances, than ever I was before; for I observed that these wretches never came to this island in search of what they could get; perhaps not seeking, not wanting, or not expecting anything here; and having often, no doubt, been up in the covered, woody part of it, without finding anything to their purpose. I knew I had been here now almost eighteen years, and never saw the least footsteps of human creature there before; and I might be here eighteen more as entirely concealed as I was now, if I did not discover myself to them, which I had no manner of occasion to do, it being my only business to keep myself entirely concealed where I was, unless I found a better sort of creatures than cannibals to make myself known to. Yet I entertained such an abhorrence of the savage wretches that I have been speaking of, and of the wretched, inhuman custom of their devouring and eating one another up, that I continued pensive and sad, and kept close within my own circle for almost two years after this. When I say my own circle, I mean by it my three plantations, viz., my castle, my country seat, which I called my bower, and my enclosure in the woods; nor did I look after this for any other use than as an enclosure for my goats; for the aversion which Nature gave me to these hellish wretches was such that I was fearful of seeing them as of seeing the Devil himself; nor did I so much as go to look after my boat in all this time, but began rather to think of making me another; for I could not think of ever making any more attempts to bring the other boat round the island to me, lest I should meet with some of these creatures at sea, in which, if I had happened to have fallen into their hands, I knew what would have been my lot. Time, however, and the satisfaction I had that I was in no danger of being discovered by these people, began to wear off my uneasiness about them; and I began to live just in the same composed manner as before; only with this difference, that I used more caution, and kept my eyes more about me than I did before, lest I should happen to be seen by any of them; and particularly I was more cautious of firing my gun, lest any of them, being on the island, should happen to hear of it; and it was therefore a very good providence to me that I had furnished myself with a tame breed of goats, that I needed not hunt any more about the woods, or shoot at them; and if I did catch any of them after this, it was by traps and snares, as I had done before; so that for two years after this, I believe I never fired my gun off once, though I never went out without it; and which was more, as I had saved three pistols out of the ship, I always carried them out with me, or at least two of them, sticking them in my goatskin belt; also I furbished up one of the great cutlasses that I had out of the ship, and made me a belt to put it on also; so that I was now a most formidable fellow to look at when I went abroad, if you add to the former description of myself the particular of two pistols and a great broadsword, hanging at my side in a belt, but without a scabbard. Things going on thus, as I have said, for some time, I seemed, excepting these cautions, to be reduced to my former calm, sedate way of living; all these things tended to showing me more and more how far my condition was from being miserable, compared to some others; nay, to many other particulars of life which it might have pleased God to have made my lot. It put me upon reflecting how little repining there would be among mankind, at any condition of life, if people would rather compare their condition with those that are worse, in order to be thankful, than be always comparing them with those which are better, to assist their murmurings and complainings. As in my present condition there were not really many things which I wanted, so indeed I thought that the frights I had been in about these savage wretches, and the concern I had been in for my own preservation, had taken off the edge of my invention for my own conveniences; and I had dropped a good design, which I had once bent my thoughts too much upon; and that was to try if I could not make some of my barley into malt, and then try to brew myself some beer. This was really a whimsical thought, and I reproved myself often for the simplicity of it; for I presently saw there would be the want of several things necessary to the making my beer that it would be impossible for me to supply; as first, casks to preserve it in, which was a thing that, as I have observed already, I could never compass; no, though I spent not many days, but weeks, nay, months, in attempting it, but to no purpose. In the next place, I had no hops to make it keep, no yeast to make it work, no copper or kettle to make it boil; and yet all these things notwithstanding, I verily believe, had not these things intervened, I mean the frights and terrors I was in about the savages, I had undertaken it, and perhaps brought it to pass too, for I seldom gave anything over without accomplishing it, when I once had it in my head enough to begin it. But my invention now ran quite another way; for night and day I could think of nothing but how I might destroy some of these monsters in their cruel bloody entertainment, and, if possible, save the victim they should bring hither to destroy. It would take up a larger volume than this whole work is intended to be, to set down all the contrivances I hatched, or rather brooded upon in my thoughts, for the destroying these creatures, or at least frighting them so as to prevent their coming hither any more; but all was abortive, nothing could be possible to take effect, unless I was to be there to do it myself; and what could one man do among them, when perhaps there might be twenty or thirty of them together, with their darts, or their bows and arrows, with which they could shoot as true to a mark as I could with my gun? Sometimes I contrived to dig a hole under the place where they made their fire, and put in five or six pound of gunpowder, which, when they kindled their fire, would consequently take fire and blow up all that was near it; but as in the first place I should be very loath to waste so much powder upon them, my store being now within the quantity of one barrel, so neither could I be sure of its going off at any certain time, when it might surprise them; and at best, that it would do little more than just blow the fire about their ears and fright them, but not sufficient to make them forsake the place; so I laid it aside, and then proposed that I would place myself in ambush, in some convenient place, with my three guns all double-loaded; and in the middle of their bloody ceremony, let fly at them, when I should be sure to kill or wound perhaps two or three at every shoot; and then falling in upon them with my three pistols and my sword, I made no doubt but that if there was twenty I should kill them all. This fancy pleased my thoughts for some weeks, and I was so full of it that I often dreamed of it; and sometimes that I was just going to let fly at them in my sleep. I went so far with it in my imagination that I employed myself several days to find out proper places to put myself in ambuscade, as I said, to watch for them; and I went frequently to the place itself, which was now grown more familiar to me; and especially while my mind was thus filled with thoughts of revenge, and of a bloody putting twenty or thirty of them to the sword, as I may call it, the horror I had at the place and at the signals of the barbarous wretches devouring one another abated my malice. Well, at length I found a place in the side of the hill where I was satisfied I might securely wait till I saw any of their boats coming, and might then, even before they would be ready to come on shore, convey myself unseen into thickets of trees, in one of which there was a hollow large enough to conceal me entirely; and where I might sit and observe all their bloody doings, and take my full aim at their heads, when they were so close together as that it would be next to impossible that I should miss my shoot, or that I could fail wounding three or four of them at the first shoot. In this place, then, I resolved to fix my design, and accordingly I prepared two muskets and my ordinary fowling piece. The two muskets I loaded with a brace of slugs each, and four or five smaller bullets, about the size of pistol bullets; and the fowling piece I loaded with near a handful of swan shot, of the largest size; I also loaded my pistols with about four bullets each, and in this posture, well provided with ammunition for a second and third charge, I prepared myself for my expedition. After I had thus laid the scheme of my design, and in my imagination put it in practice, I continually made my tour every morning up to the top of the hill, which was from my castle, as I called it, about three miles, or more, to see if I could observe any boats upon the sea, coming near the island, or standing over towards it; but I began to tire of this hard duty, after I had for two or three months constantly kept my watch; but came always back without any discovery, there having not in all that time been the least appearance, not only on or near the shore, but not on the whole ocean, so far as my eyes or glasses could reach every way. As long as I kept up my daily tour to the hill to look out, so long also I kept up the vigour of my design, and my spirits seemed to be all the while in a suitable form for so outrageous an execution as the killing twenty or thirty naked savages for an offence which I had not at all entered into a discussion of in my thoughts, any farther than my passions were at first fired by the horror I conceived at the unnatural custom of that people of the country, who it seems had been suffered by Providence, in His wise disposition of the world, to have no other guide than that of their own abominable and vitiated passions; and consequently were left, and perhaps had been so for some ages, to act such horrid things and receive such dreadful customs, as nothing but nature entirely abandoned of Heaven, and acted by some hellish degeneracy, could have run them into. But now, when, as I have said, I began to be weary of the fruitless excursion which I had made so long, and so far every morning in vain, so my opinion of the action itself began to alter, and I began with cooler and calmer thoughts to consider what it was I was going to engage in: What authority or call I had to pretend to be judge and executioner upon these men as criminals, whom Heaven had thought fit for so many ages to suffer unpunished to go on, and to be, as it were, the executioners of His judgments one upon another. How far these people were offenders against me, and what right I had to engage in the quarrel of that blood, which they shed promiscuously one upon another. I debated this very often with myself thus: ''How do I know what God Himself judges in this particular case? It is certain these people do not commit this as a crime; it is not against their own consciences' reproving, or their light reproaching them. They do not know it to be an offence, and then commit it in defiance of Divine justice, as we do in almost all the sins we commit. They think it no more a crime to kill a captive taken in war than we do to kill an ox; nor to eat human flesh, than we do to eat mutton.'' When I had considered this a little, it followed necessarily that I was certainly in the wrong in it; that these people were not murderers in the sense that I had before condemned them in my thoughts; any more than those Christians were murderers, who often put to death the prisoners taken in battle; or more frequently, upon many occasions, put whole troops of men to the sword, without giving quarter, though they threw down their arms and submitted. In the next place it occurred to me that albeit the usage they thus gave one another was thus brutish and inhuman, yet it was really nothing to me. These people had done me no injury. That if they attempted me, or I saw it necessary for my immediate preservation to fall upon them, something might be said for it; but that I was yet out of their power and they had really no knowledge of me, and consequently no design upon me; and therefore it could not be just for me to fall upon them. That this would justify the conduct of the Spaniards in all their barbarities practiced in America, where they destroyed millions of these people, who, however they were idolaters and barbarians and had several bloody and barbarous rites in their customs, such as sacrificing human bodies to their idols, were yet, as to the Spaniards, very innocent people; and that the rooting them out of the country is spoken of with the utmost abhorrence and detestation by even the Spaniards themselves, at this time, and by all other Christian nations of Europe, as a mere butchery, a bloody and unnatural piece of cruelty, unjustifiable either to God or man; and such, as for which the very name of a Spaniard is reckoned to be frightful and terrible to all people of humanity or of Christian compassion; as if the kingdom of Spain were particularly eminent for the product of a race of men who were without principles of tenderness, or the common bowels of pity to the miserable, which is reckoned to be a mark of generous temper in the mind. These considerations really put me to a pause, and to a kind of a full stop; and I began by little and little to be off of my design, and to conclude I had taken wrong measures in my resolutions to attack the savages; that it was not my business to meddle with them unless they first attacked me; and this it was my business, if possible, to prevent; but that if I were discovered and attacked, then I knew my duty. On the other hand, I argued with myself that this really was the way not to deliver myself, but entirely to ruin and destroy myself; for unless I was sure to kill every one that not only should be on shore at that time, but that should ever come on shore afterwards, if but one of them escaped to tell their country people what had happened, they would come over again by thousands to revenge the death of their fellows, and I should only bring upon myself a certain destruction, which at present I had no manner of occasion for. Upon the whole I concluded that neither in principle or in policy I ought one way or other to concern myself in this affair. That my business was by all possible means to conceal myself from them and not to leave the least signal to them to guess by, that there were any living creatures upon the island; I mean of human shape. Religion joined in with this prudential, and I was convinced now, many ways, that I was perfectly out of my duty, when I was laying all my bloody schemes for the destruction of innocent creatures, I mean innocent as to me. As to the crimes they were guilty of towards one another, I had nothing to do with them; they were national, and I ought to leave them to the justice of God, who is the Governor of nations, and knows how by national punishments to make a just retribution for national offences; and to bring public judgments upon those who offend in a public manner, by such ways as best please Him. This appeared so clear to me now that nothing was a greater satisfaction to me than that I had not been suffered to do a thing which I now saw so much reason to believe would have been no less a sin than that of willful murder, if I had committed it; and I gave most humble thanks on my knees to God, that had thus delivered me from blood-guiltiness; beseeching Him to grant me the protection of His Providence, that I might not fall into the hands of the barbarians; or that I might not lay my hands upon them, unless I had a more clear call from Heaven to do it, in defence of my own life. I Seldom Go from My Cell IN THIS disposition I continued for near a year after this; and so far was I from desiring an occasion for falling upon these wretches, that in all that time I never once went up the hill to see whether there were any of them in sight, or to know whether any of them had been on shore there or not, that I might not be tempted to renew any of my contrivances against them, or be provoked by any advantage which might present itself to fall upon them; only this I did, I went and removed my boat, which I had on the other side the island, and carried it down to the east end of the whole island, where I ran it into a little cove which I found under some high rocks, and where I knew, by reason of the currents, the savages durst not, at least would not, come with their boats upon any account whatsoever. I SELDOM GO FROM MY CELL With my boat I carried away everything that I had left there belonging to her, though not necessary for the bare going thither, viz., a mast and sail which I had made for her, and a thing like an anchor, but indeed which could not be called either anchor or grappling; however, it was the best I could make of its kind. All these I removed, that there might not be the least shadow of any discovery, or any appearance of any boat or of any human habitation upon the island. Besides this, I kept myself, as I said, more retired than ever, and seldom went from my cell, other than upon my constant employment, viz., to milk my she-goats and manage my little flock in the wood; which, as it was quite on the other part of the island, was quite out of danger; for certain it is that these savage people who sometimes haunted this island never came with any thoughts of finding anything here; and consequently never wandered off from the coast; and I doubt not but they might have been several times on shore, after my apprehensions of them had made me cautious, as well as before; and indeed, I looked back with some horror upon the thoughts of what my condition would have been, if I had chopped6 upon them and been discovered before that, when naked and unarmed, except with one gun, and that loaden often only with small shot, I walked everywhere, peeping and peeping about the island to see what I could get; what a surprise should I have been in, if, when I discovered the print of a man' foot, I had instead of that seen fifteen or twenty savages and found them pursuing me, and by the swiftness of their running, no possibility of my escaping them! The thoughts of this sometimes sunk my very soul within me, and distressed my mind so much that I could not soon recover it, to think what I should have done, and how I not only should not have had presence of mind enough to do what I might have done; much less what now, after so much consideration and preparation, I might be able to do. Indeed, after serious thinking of these things, I would be very melancholy, and sometimes it would last a great while; but I resolved it at last all into thankfulness to that Providence which had delivered me from so many unseen dangers and had kept me from those mischiefs which I could no way have been the agent in delivering myself from, because I had not the least notion of any such thing depending, or the least supposition of it being possible. This renewed a contemplation which often had come to my thoughts in former time, when first I began to see the merciful dispositions of Heaven in the dangers we run through in this life. How wonderfully we are delivered, when we know nothing of it. How when we are in (a quandary, as we call it), a doubt or hesitation, whether to go this way, or that way, a secret hint shalldirect us this way, when we intended to go that way; nay, when sense, our own inclination, and perhaps business has called to go the other way, yet a strange impression upon the mind, from we know not what springs, and by we know not what power, shall overrule us to go this way; and it shall afterwards appear that had we gone that way which we should have gone, and even to our imagination ought to have gone, we should have been ruined and lost. Upon these, and many like reflections, I afterwards made it a certain rule with me that whenever I found those secret hints, or pressings of my mind, to doing or not doing anything that presented, or to going this way or that way, I never failed to obey the secret dictate; though I knew no other reason for it than that such a pressure, or such a hint, hung upon my mind. I could give many examples of the success of this conduct in the course of my life; but more especially in the latter part of my inhabiting this unhappy island; besides many occasions which it is very likely I might have taken notice of, if I had seen with the same eyes then that I saw with now. But 'tis never too late to be wise; and I cannot but advise all considering men, whose lives are attended with such extraordinary incidents as mine, or even though not so extraordinary, not to slight such secret intimations of Providence, let them come from what invisible intelligence they will, that I shall not discuss, and perhaps cannot account for; but certainly they are a proof of the converse of spirits and the secret communication between those embodied and those unembodied; and such a proof as can never be withstood. Of which I shall have occasion to give some very remarkable instances in the remainder of my solitary residence in this dismal place. I believe the reader of this will not think strange if I confess that these anxieties, these constant dangers I lived in, and the concern that was now upon me, put an end to all invention and to all the contrivances that I had laid for my future accommodations and conveniences. I had the care of my safety more now upon my hands than that of my food. I cared not to drive a nail or chop a stick of wood now, for fear the noise I should make should be heard; much less would I fire a gun, for the same reason; and above all, I was intolerably uneasy at making any fire, lest the smoke, which is visible at a great distance in the day, should betray me; and for this reason I removed that part of my business which required fire, such as burning of pots and pipes, etc., into my new apartment in the woods, where after I had been some time, I found, to my unspeakable consolation, a mere natural cave in the earth, which went in a vast way, and where, I dare say, no savage, had he been at the mouth of it, would be so hardy as to venture in, nor indeed would any man else, but one who, like me, wanted nothing so much as a safe retreat. The mouth of this hollow was at the bottom of a great rock, where, by mere accident (I would say, if I did not see abundant reason to ascribe all such things now to Providence), I was cutting down some thick branches of trees to make charcoal; and before I go on, I must observe the reason of my making this charcoal, which was thus: I was afraid of making a smoke about my habitation, as I said before; and yet I could not live there without baking my bread, cooking my meat, etc.; so I contrived to burn some wood here, as I had seen done in England, under turf, till it became chark, or dry coal; and then putting the fire out, I preserved the coal to carry home and perform the other services which fire was wanting for at home, without danger of smoke. But this by the by. While I was cutting down some wood here, I perceived that behind a very thick branch of low brushwood, or underwood, there was a kind of hollow place; I was curious to look into it, and getting with difficulty into the mouth of it, I found it was pretty large, that is to say, sufficient for me to stand upright in it, and perhaps another with me; but I must confess to you, I made more haste out than I did in, when looking farther into the place, and which was perfectly dark, I saw two broad shining eyes of some creature, whether devil or man I knew not, which twinkled like two stars, the dim light from the cave' mouth shining directly in and making the reflection. However, after some pause, I recovered myself, and began to call myself a thousand fools, and tell myself that he that was afraid to see the Devil was not fit to live twenty years in an island all alone; and that I durst to believe there was nothing in this cave that was more frightful than myself; upon this, plucking up my courage, I took up a great firebrand, and in I rushed again, with the stick flaming in my hand; I had not gone three steps in but I was almost as much frighted as I was before; for I heard a very loud sigh, like that of a man in some pain, and it was followed by a broken noise, as if of words half expressed, and then a deep sigh again. I stepped back, and was indeed struck with such a surprise that it put me into a cold sweat; and if I had had a hat on my head, I will not answer for it that my hair might not have lifted it off. But still plucking up my spirits as well as I could, and encouraging myself a little with considering that the power and presence of God was everywhere and was able to protect me, upon this I stepped forward again, and by the light of the firebrand, holding it up a little over my head, I saw lying on the ground a most monstrous, frightful old he-goat, just making his will, as we say, and gasping for life, and dying indeed of mere old age. I stirred him a little to see if I could get him out, and he essayed to get up, but was not able to raise himself; and I thought with myself, he might even lie there; for if he had frighted me so, he would certainly fright any of the savages, if any of them should be so hardy as to come in there while he had any life in him. I was now recovered from my surprise and began to look round me, when I found the cave was but very small, that is to say, it might be about twelve foot over, but in no manner of shape, either round or square, no hands having ever been employed in making it but those of mere nature. I observed also that there was a place at the farther side of it that went in farther but was so low that it required me to creep upon my hands and knees to go into it, and whither I went I knew not; so having no candle, I gave it over for some time; but resolved to come again the next day, provided with candles and a tinderbox, which I had made of the lock of one of the muskets, with some wildfire in the pan. Accordingly, the next day I came provided with six large candles of my own making, for I made very good candles now of goat' tallow; and going into this low place, I was obliged to creep upon all fours, as I have said, almost ten yards; which, by the way, I thought was a venture bold enough, considering that I knew not how far it might go, nor what was beyond it. When I was got through the strait, I found the roof rose higher up, I believe near twenty foot; but never was such a glorious sight seen in the island, I dare say, as it was to look round the sides and roof of this vault, or cave; the walls reflected a hundred thousand lights to me from my two candles; what it was in the rock, whether diamonds, or any other precious stones, or gold, which I rather supposed it to be, I knew not. The place I was in was a most delightful cavity or grotto of its kind, as could be expected, though perfectly dark; the floor was dry and level and had a sort of small loose gravel upon it, so that there was no nauseous or venomous creature to be seen, neither was there any damp or wet on the sides or roof. The only difficulty in it was the entrance, which, however, as it was a place of security, and such a retreat as I wanted, I thought that was a convenience; so that I was really rejoiced at the discovery and resolved, without any delay, to bring some of those things which I was most anxious about to this place; particularly, I resolved to bring hither my magazine of powder, and all my spare arms, viz., two fowling pieces (for I had three in all) and three muskets (for of them I had eight in all); so I kept at my castle only five, which stood ready mounted, like pieces of cannon, on my outmost fence; and were ready also to take out upon any expedition. Upon this occasion of removing my ammunition, I took occasion to open the barrel of powder which I took up out of the sea, and which had been wet; and I found that the water had penetrated about three or four inches into the powder on every side, which, caking and growing hard, had preserved the inside like a kernel in a shell; so that I had near sixty pound of very good powder in the centre of the cask; and this was an agreeable discovery to me at that time; so I carried all away thither, never keeping above two or three pound of powder with me in my castle, for fear of a surprise of any kind. I also carried thither all the lead I had left for bullets. I fancied myself now like one of the ancient giants, which were said to live in caves and holes in the rocks, where none could come at them; for I persuaded myself, while I was here, if five hundred savages were to hunt me, they could never find me out; or if they did, they would not venture to attack me here. The old goat which I found expiring died in the mouth of the cave the next day after I made this discovery; and I found it much easier to dig a great hole there and throw him in and cover him with earth than to drag him out; so I interred him there, to prevent offence to my nose. I was now in my twenty-third year of residence in this island and was so naturalized to the place and to the manner of living that could I have but enjoyed the certainty that no savages would come to the place to disturb me, I could have been content to have capitulated for spending the rest of my time there, even to the last moment, till I had laid me down and died, like the old goat in the cave. I had also arrived to some little diversions and amusements, which made the time pass more pleasantly with me a great deal than it did before; as, first, I had taught my Poll, as I noted before, to speak; and he did it so familiarly, and talked so articulately and plain, that it was very pleasant to me; and he lived with me no less than six and twenty years. How long he might live afterwards I know not; though I know they have a notion in Brazil that they live a hundred years; perhaps poor Poll may be alive there still, calling after poor Robin Crusoe to this day. I wish no Englishman the ill luck to come there and hear him; but if he did, he would certainly believe it was the Devil. My dog was a very pleasant and loving companion to me for no less than sixteen years of my time, and then died of mere old age; as for my cats, they multiplied, as I have observed, to that degree, that I was obliged to shoot several of them at first to keep them from devouring me and all I had; but at length, when the two old ones I brought with me were gone, and after some time continually driving them from me and letting them have no provision with me, they all ran wild into the woods, except two or three favourites, which I kept tame, and whose young, when they had any, I always drowned; and these were part of my family. Besides these, I always kept two or three household kids about me, which I taught to feed out of my hand; and I had two more parrots, which talked pretty well, and would all call ''Robin Crusoe,'' but none like my first; nor indeed did I take the pains with any of them that I had done with him. I had also several tame seafowls, whose names I know not, which I caught upon the shore, and cut their wings; and the little stakes which I had planted before my castle wall being now grown up to a good thick grove, these fowls all lived among these low trees and bred there, which was very agreeable to me; so that, as I said above, I began to be very well contented with the life I led, if it might but have been secured from the dread of the savages. But it was otherwise directed; and it may not be amiss for all people who shall meet with my story to make this just observation from it, viz., how frequently, in the course of our lives, the evil which in itself we seek most to shun, and which, when we are fallen into, is the most dreadful to us, is oftentimes the very means or door of our deliverance, by which alone we can be raised again from the affliction we are fallen into. I could give many examples of this in the course of my unaccountable life; but in nothing was it more particularly remarkable than in the circumstances of my last years of solitary residence in this island. It was now the month of December, as I said above, in my twenty-third year; and this, being the southern solstice, for winter I cannot call it, was the particular time of my harvest, and required my being pretty much abroad in the fields; when, going out pretty early in the morning, even before it was thorough daylight, I was surprised with seeing a light of some fire upon the shore, at a distance from me of about two miles, towards the end of the island, where I had observed some savages had been, as before, but not on the other side; but to my great affliction, it was on my side of the island. I was indeed terribly surprised at the sight, and stopped short within my grove, not daring to go out, lest I might be surprised; and yet I had no more peace within, from the apprehensions I had that if these savages, in rambling over the island, should find my corn standing, or cut, or any of my works and improvements, they would immediately conclude that there were people in the place, and would then never give over till they had found me out. In this extremity I went back directly to my castle, pulled up the ladder after me, and made all things without look as wild and natural as I could. Then I prepared myself within, putting myself in a posture of defence; I loaded all my cannon, as I called them; that is to say, my muskets, which were mounted upon my new fortification, and all my pistols, and resolved to defend myself to the last gasp, not forgetting seriously to commend myself to the Divine protection, and earnestly to pray to God to deliver me out of the hands of the barbarians; and in this posture I continued about two hours; but began to be mighty impatient for intelligence abroad, for I had no spies to send out. After sitting a while longer and musing what I should do in this case, I was not able to bear sitting in ignorance any longer; so setting up my ladder to the side of the hill, where there was a flat place, as I observed before, and then pulling the ladder up after me, I set it up again and mounted to the top of the hill; and pulling out my perspective-glass, which I had taken on purpose, I laid me down flat on my belly on the ground and began to look for the place. I presently found there was no less than nine naked savages sitting round a small fire they had made, not to warm them, for they had no need of that, the weather being extreme hot; but, as I suppose, to dress some of their barbarous diet of human flesh, which they had brought with them, whether alive or dead I could not know. They had two canoes with them, which they had hauled up upon the shore; and as it was then tide of ebb, they seemed to me to wait for the return of the flood to go away again; it is not easy to imagine what confusion this sight put me into, especially seeing them come on my side the island, and so near me too; but when I observed their coming must be always with the current of the ebb, I began afterwards to be more sedate in my mind, being satisfied that I might go abroad with safety all the time of the tide of flood, if they were not on shore before. And having made this observation, I went abroad about my harvest work with the more composure. As I expected, so it proved; for as soon as the tide made to the westward, I saw them all take boat, and row (or paddle, as we call it) all away. I should have observed that, for an hour and more before they went off, they went to dancing, and I could easily discern their postures and gestures by my glasses. I could not perceive, by my nicest observation, but that they were stark naked and had not the least covering upon them; but whether they were men or women, that I could not distinguish. As soon as I saw them shipped and gone, I took two guns upon my shoulders and two pistols at my girdle and my great sword by my side, without a scabbard, and with all the speed I was able to make I went away to the hill where I had discovered the first appearance of all; and as soon as I got thither, which was not less than two hours (for I could not go apace, being so loaden with arms as I was), I perceived there had been three canoes more of savages on that place; and looking out farther, I saw they were all at sea together, making over for the main. This was a dreadful sight to me, especially when, going down to the shore, I could see the marks of horror which the dismal work they had been about had left behind it, viz., the blood, the bones, and part of the flesh of human bodies, eaten and devoured by those wretches, with merriment and sport. I was so filled with indignation at the sight that I began now to premeditate the destruction of the next that I saw there, let them be who or how many soever. It seemed evident to me that the visits which they thus made to this island are not very frequent; for it was above fifteen months before any more of them came on shore there again; that is to say, I neither saw them, or any footsteps, or signals of them, in all that time; for as to the rainy seasons, then they are sure not to come abroad, at least not so far; yet all this while I lived uncomfortably, by reason of the constant apprehensions I was in of their coming upon me by surprise; from whence I observe that the expectation of evil is more bitter than the suffering; especially if there is no room to shake off that expectation, or those apprehensions. During all this time, I was in the murdering humour, and took up most of my hours, which should have been better employed, in contriving how to circumvent and fall upon them the very next time I should see them; especially if they should be divided, as they were the last time, into two parties; nor did I consider at all that if I killed one party, suppose ten or a dozen, I was still the next day, or week, or month, to kill another, and so another, even ad infinitum, till I should be at length no less a murderer than they were in being man-eaters, and perhaps much more so. I spent my days now in great perplexity and anxiety of mind, expecting that I should one day or other fall into the hands of these merciless creatures; and if I did at any time venture abroad, it was not without looking round me with the greatest care and caution imaginable; and now I found to my great comfort how happy it was that I provided for a tame flock or herd of goats; for I durst not upon any account fire my gun, especially near that side of the island where they usually came, lest I should alarm the savages; and if they had fled from me now, I was sure to have them come back again, with perhaps two or three hundred canoes with them, in a few days, and then I knew what to expect. However, I wore out a year and three months more before I ever saw any more of these savages, and then I found them again, as I shall soon observe. It is true, they might have been there once or twice; but either they made no stay, or at least I did not hear them; but in the month of May, as near as I could calculate, and in my four and twentieth year, I had a very strange encounter with them, of which in its place. I See the Wreck of a Ship THE perturbation of my mind, during this fifteen or sixteen months' interval, was very great; I slept unquiet, dreamed always frightful dreams, and often started out of my sleep in the night. In the day great troubles overwhelmed my mind, and in the night I dreamed often of killing the savages, and of the reasons why I might justify the doing of it; but to waive all this for a while; it was in the middle of May, on the sixteenth day, I think, as well as my poor wooden calendar would reckon; for I marked all upon the post still; I say, it was the sixteenth of May that it blew a very great storm of wind all day, with a great deal of lightning and thunder, and a very foul night it was after it; I know not what was the particular occasion of it; but as I was reading in the Bible, and taken up with very serious thoughts about my present condition, I was surprised with a noise of a gun, as I thought, fired at sea. This was, to be sure, a surprise of a quite different nature from any I had met with before; for the notions this put into my thoughts were quite of another kind. I started up in the greatest haste imaginable, and in a trice clapped my ladder to the middle place of the rock, and pulled it after me, and mounting it the second time, got to the top of the hill the very moment that a flash of fire bade me listen for a second gun, which accordingly, in about half a minute I heard, and by the sound knew that it was from that part of the sea where I was driven down the current in my boat. I immediately considered that this must be some ship in distress, and that they had some comrade, or some other ship in company, and fired these guns for signals of distress and to obtain help. I had this presence of mind at that minute, as to think that, though I could not help them, it may be they might help me; so I brought together all the dry wood I could get at hand, and making a good handsome pile, I set it on fire upon the hill; the wood was dry and blazed freely; and though the wind blew very hard, yet it burned fairly out, that I was certain, if there was any such thing as a ship, they must needs see it, and no doubt they did, for as soon as ever my fire blazed up, I heard another gun, and after that several others, all from the same quarter; I plied my fire all night long, till day broke; and when it was broad day, and the air cleared up, I saw something at a great distance at sea, full east of the island, whether a sail or a hull I could not distinguish, no, not with my glasses, the distance was so great, and the weather still something hazy also; at least it was so out at sea. I looked frequently at it all that day, and soon perceived that it did not move; so I presently concluded that it was a ship at an anchor; and being eager, you may be sure, to be satisfied, I took my gun in my hand, and ran towards the southeast side of the island, to the rocks where I had formerly been carried away with the current, and getting up there, the weather by this time being perfectly clear, I could plainly see, to my great sorrow, the wreck of a ship cast away in the night upon those concealed rocks which I found when I was out in my boat; and which rocks, as they checked the violence of the stream, and made a kind of counterstream or eddy, were the occasion of my recovering from the most desperate, hopeless condition that ever I had been in, in all my life. Thus what is one man' safety is another man' destruction; for it seems these men, whoever they were, being out of their knowledge, and the rocks being wholly under water, had been driven upon them in the night, the wind blowing hard at east and east-northeast. Had they seen the island, as I must necessarily suppose they did not, they must, as I thought, have endeavoured to have saved themselves on shore by the help of their boat; but their firing of guns for help, especially when they saw, as I imagined, my fire, filled me with many thoughts. First I imagined that upon seeing my light, they might have put themselves into their boat and have endeavoured to make the shore; but that the sea going very high, they might have been cast away; other times I imagined that they might have lost their boat before, as might be the case many ways; as particularly by the breaking of the sea upon their ship, which many times obliges men to stave or take in pieces their boat, and sometimes to throw it overboard with their own hands. Other times I imagined they had some other ship or ships in company, who, upon the signals of distress they had made, had taken them up and carried them off. Other whiles I fancied they were all gone off to sea in their boat, and being hurried away by the current that I had been formerly in, were carried out into the great ocean, where there was nothing but misery and perishing; and that perhaps they might by this time think of starving and of being in a condition to eat one another. condition I was in, I could do no more than look on upon the misery of the poor men, and pity them, which had still this good effect on my side, that it gave me more and more cause to give thanks to God, who had so happily and comfortably provided for me in my desolate condition; and that of two ships' companies who were now cast away upon this part of the world, not one life should be spared but mine. I learned here again to observe that it is very rare that the providence of God casts us into any condition of life so low, or any misery so great, but we may see something or other to be thankful for; and may see others in worse circumstances than our own. Such certainly was the case of these men, of whom I could not so much as see room to suppose any of them were saved; nothing could make it rational, so much as to wish or expect that they did not all perish there, except the possibility only of their being taken up by another ship in company; and this was but mere possibility indeed; for I saw not the least signal or appearance of any such thing. I cannot explain by any possible energy of words what a strange longing or hankering of desires I felt in my soul upon this sight, breaking out sometimes thus: "O that there had been but one or two, nay, or but one soul, saved out of this ship, to have escaped to me, that I might but have had one companion, one fellow creature to have spoken to me and to have conversed with!'' In all the time of my solitary life, I never felt so earnest, so strong a desire after the society of my fellow creatures, or so deep a regret at the want of it. There are some secret moving springs in the affections, which when they are set a-going by some object in view, or be it some object, though not in view, yet rendered present to the mind by the power of imagination, that motion carries out the soul by its impetuosity to such violent, eager embracings of the object, that the absence of it is insupportable. Such were these earnest wishings, that but one man had been saved! "O that it had been but one!'' I believe I repeated the words, "O that it had been but one!'' a thousand times; and the desires were so moved by it that when I spoke the words my hands would clinch together and my fingers press the palms of my hands, that if I had had any soft thing in my hand, it would have crushed it involuntarily; and my teeth in my head would strike together and set against one another so strong that for some time I could not part them again. Let the naturalists explain these things, and the reason and manner of them; all I can say to them is to describe the fact, which was even surprising to me when I found it; though I knew not from what it should proceed, it was doubtless the effect of ardent wishes and of strong ideas formed in my mind, realizing the comfort which the conversation of one of my fellow Christians would have been to me. But it was not to be; either their fate or mine, or both, forbade it; for till the last year of my being on this island, I never knew whether any were saved out of that ship or no; and had only the affliction some days after to see the corpse of a drowned boy come on shore at the end of the island which was next the shipwreck. He had on no clothes but a seaman' waistcoat, a pair of open-kneed linen drawers, and a blue linen shirt; but nothing to direct me so much as to guess what nation he was of. He had nothing in his pocket but two pieces of eight and a tobacco pipe; the last was to me of ten times more value than the first. It was now calm, and I had a great mind to venture out in my boat to this wreck, not doubting but I might find something on board that might be useful to me; but that did not altogether press me so much as the possibility that there might be yet some living creature on board, whose life I might not only save but might, by saving that life, comfort my own to the last degree; and this thought clung so to my heart that I could not be quiet night or day, but I must venture out in my boat on board this wreck; and committing the rest to God' providence, I thought the impression was so strong upon my mind that it could not be resisted, that it must come from some invisible direction, and that I should be wanting to myself if I did not go. Under the power of this impression, I hastened back to my castle, prepared everything for my voyage, took a quantity of bread, a great pot for fresh water, a compass to steer by, a bottle of rum (for I had still a great deal of that left), a basket full of raisins. And thus loading myself with everything necessary, I went down to my boat, got the water out of her, and got her afloat, loaded all my cargo in her, and then went home again for more; my second cargo was a great bag full of rice, the umbrella to set up over my head for shade, another large pot full of fresh water, and about two dozen of my small loaves, or barley cakes, more than before, with a bottle of goat' milk, and a cheese; all which, with great labour and sweat, I brought to my boat; and praying to God to direct my voyage, I put out, and rowing or paddling the canoe along the shore, I came at last to the utmost point of the island on that side, viz., northeast. And now I was to launch out into the ocean, and either to venture, or not to venture. I looked on the rapid currents which ran constantly on both sides of the island, at a distance, and which were very terrible to me, from the remembrance of the hazard I had been in before, and my heart began to fail me; for I foresaw that if I was driven into either of those currents, I should be carried a vast way out to sea, and perhaps out of my reach or sight of the island again; and that then, as my boat was but small, if any little gale or wind should rise, I should be inevitably lost. These thoughts so oppressed my mind that I began to give over my enterprise, and having hauled my boat into a little creek on the shore, I stepped out and sat me down upon a little rising bit of ground, very pensive and anxious, between fear and desire about my voyage; when, as I was musing, I could perceive that the tide was turned and the flood came on, upon which my going was for so many hours impracticable; upon this, presently it occurred to me that I should go up to the highest piece of ground I could find, and observe, if I could, how the sets of the tide or currents lay, when the flood came in, that I might judge whether, if I was driven one way out, I might not expect to be driven another way home, with the same rapidness of the currents. This thought was no sooner in my head, but I cast my eye upon a little hill, which sufficiently overlooked the sea both ways, and from whence I had a clear view of the currents, or sets of the tide, and which way I was to guide myself in my return; here I found, that as the current of the ebb set out close by the south point of the island, so the current of the flood set in close by the shore of the north side, and that I had nothing to do but to keep to the north of the island in my return, and I should do well enough. Encouraged with this observation, I resolved the next morning to set out with the first of the tide; and reposing myself for the night in the canoe, under the great watch coat I mentioned, I launched out. I made first a little out to sea full north, till I began to feel the benefit of the current, which set eastward, and which carried me at a great rate, and yet did not so hurry me as the southern side current had done before, and so as to take from me all government of the boat; but having a strong steerage with my paddle, I went at a great rate, directly for the wreck, and in less than two hours I came up to it. It was a dismal sight to look at. The ship, which by its building was Spanish, stuck fast, jammed in between two rocks; all the stern and quarter of her was beaten to pieces with the sea; and as her forecastle, which stuck in the rocks, had run on with great violence, her mainmast and foremast were brought by the board; that is to say, broken short off; but her bowsprit was sound, and the head and bow appeared firm. When I came close to her, a dog appeared upon her, who, seeing me coming, yelped and cried; and as soon as I called him, jumped into the sea to come to me, and I took him into the boat; but found him almost dead for hunger and thirst. I gave him a cake of my bread, and he ate it like a ravenous wolf that had been starving a fortnight in the snow. I then gave the poor creature some fresh water, with which, if I would have let him, he would have burst himself. After this I went on board; but the first sight I met with was two men drowned in the cook-room, or forecastle of the ship, with their arms fast about one another. I concluded, as is indeed probable, that when the ship struck, it being in a storm, the sea broke so high and so continually over her that the men were not able to bear it and were strangled with the constant rushing in of the water, as much as if they had been under water. Besides the dog, there was nothing left in the ship that had life, nor any goods that I could see, but what were spoiled by the water. There were some casks of liquor, whether wine or brandy, I knew not, which lay lower in the hold; and which, the water being ebbed out, I could see; but they were too big to meddle with. I saw several chests, which I believed belonged to some of the seamen, and I got two of them into the boat, without examining what was in them. Had the stern of the ship been fixed, and the forepart broken off, I am persuaded I might have made a good voyage; for by what I found in these two chests, I had room to suppose the ship had a great deal of wealth on board; and if I may guess by the course she steered, she must have been bound from Buenos Aires, or the Rio de la Plata, in the south part of America, beyond Brazil, to Havana, in the Gulf of Mexico, and so perhaps to Spain. She had, no doubt, a great treasure in her; but of no use at that time to anybody; and what became of the rest of her people, I then knew not. I found, besides these chests, a little cask full of liquor, of about twenty gallons, which I got into my boat with much difficulty; there were several muskets in a cabin and a great powder horn, with about four pounds of powder in it; as for the muskets, I had no occasion for them, so I left them, but took the powder horn. I took a fire shovel and tongs, which I wanted extremely; as also two little brass kettles, a copper pot to make chocolate, and a gridiron; and with this cargo and the dog I came away, the tide beginning to make home again; and the same evening, about an hour within night, I reached the island again, weary and fatigued to the last degree. I reposed that night in the boat, and in the morning I resolved to harbour what I had gotten in my new cave, not to carry it home to my castle. After refreshing myself, I got all my cargo on shore, and began to examine the particulars. The cask of liquor I found to be a kind of rum, but not such as we had at Brazil; and in a word, not at all good; but when I came to open the chests, I found several things of great use to me. For example, I found in one a fine case of bottles, of an extraordinary kind, and filled with cordial waters, fine and very good; the bottles held about three pints each, and were tipped with silver. I found two pots of very good succades, or sweetmeats, so fastened also on top that the salt water had not hurt them; and two more of the same, which the water had spoiled. I found some very good shirts, which were very welcome to me, and about a dozen and a half of linen white handkerchiefs and coloured neckcloths; the former were also very welcome, being exceeding refreshing to wipe my face in a hot day; besides this, when I came to the till in the chests, I found there were three great bags of pieces of eight, which held about eleven hundred pieces in all; and in one of them, wrapped up in a paper, six doubloons of gold and some small bars or wedges of gold; I suppose they might all weigh near a pound. The other chest I found had some clothes in it, but of little value; but by the circumstances it must have belonged to the gunner' mate, though there was no powder in it, but about two pound of fine glazed powder, in three small flasks, kept, I suppose, for charging their fowling pieces on occasion. Upon the whole, I got very little by this voyage that was of any use to me; for as to the money, I had no manner of occasion for it. 'Twas to me as the dirt under my feet; and I would have given it all for three or four pair of English shoes and stockings, which were things I greatly wanted but had not had on my feet now for many years. I had, indeed, gotten two pair of shoes now, which I took off of the feet of the two drowned men whom I saw in the wreck; and I found two pair more in one of the chests, which were very welcome to me; but they were not like our English shoes, either for ease or service, being rather what we call pumps than shoes. I found in this seaman' chest about fifty pieces of eight in royals but no gold; I suppose this belonged to a poorer man than the other, which seemed to belong to some officer. Well, however, I lugged this money home to my cave and laid it up, as I had done that before which I brought from our own ship; but it was great pity, as I said, that the other part of this ship had not come to my share, for I am satisfied I might have loaded my canoe several times over with money, which, if I had ever escaped to England, would have lain here safe enough till I might have come again and fetched it. Having now brought all my things on shore and secured them, I went back to my boat and rowed or paddled her along the shore to her old harbour, where I laid her up, and made the best of my way to my old habitation, where I found everything safe and quiet; so I began to repose myself, live after my old fashion, and take care of my family affairs; and, for a while, I lived easy enough; only that I was more vigilant than I used to be, looked out oftener, and did not go abroad so much; and if at any time I did stir with any freedom, it was always to the east part of the island, where I was pretty well satisfied the savages never came, and where I could go without so many precautions and such a load of arms and ammunition as I always carried with me if I went the other way. I Hear the First Sound of a Man' Voice I LIVED in this condition near two years more; but my unlucky head, that was always to let me know it was born to make my body miserable, was all this two years filled with projects and designs how, if it were possible, I might get away from this island; for sometimes I was for making another voyage to the wreck, though my reason told me that there was nothing left there worth the hazard of my voyage, sometimes for a ramble one way, sometimes another; and I believe verily, if I had had the boat that I went from Sallee in, I should have ventured to sea, bound anywhere, I knew not whither. I had been in all my circumstances a memento to those who are touched with the general plague of mankind, whence, for aught I know, one half of their miseries flow; I mean, that of not being satisfied with the station wherein God and Nature hath placed them; for not to look back upon my primitive condition, and the excellent advice of my father, the opposition to which was, as I may call it, my original sin, my subsequent mistakes of the same kind had been the means of my coming into this miserable condition; for had that Providence, which so happily had seated me at Brazil as a planter, blessed me with confined desires, and I could have been contented to have gone on gradually, I might have been by this time, I mean in the time of my being in this island, one of the most considerable planters in Brazil; nay, I am persuaded, that by the improvements I had made in that little time I lived there and the increase I should probably have made if I had stayed, I might have been worth a hundred thousand moidores; and what business had I to leave a settled fortune, a well-stocked plantation, improving and increasing, to turn supercargo to Guinea, to fetch Negroes, when patience and time would have so increased our stock at home that we could have bought them at our own door from those whose business it was to fetch them? And though it had cost us something more, yet the difference of that price was by no means worth saving at so great a hazard. But as this is ordinarily the fate of young heads, so reflection upon the folly of it is as ordinarily the exercise of more years, or of the dear-bought experience of time; and so it was with me now; and yet so deep had the mistake taken root in my temper that I could not satisfy myself in my station, but was continually poring upon the means and possibility of my escape from this place; and that I may with the greater pleasure to the reader bring on the remaining part of my story, it may not be improper to give some account of my first conceptions on the subject of this foolish scheme for my escape; and how, and upon what foundation, I acted. I am now to be supposed retired into my castle, after my late voyage to the wreck, my frigate laid up and secured under water as usual, and my condition restored to what it was before. I had more wealth, indeed, than I had before, but was not at all the richer; for I had no more use for it than the Indians of Peru had before the Spaniards came there. It was one of the nights in the rainy season in March, the four and twentieth year of my first setting foot in this island of solitariness. I was lying in my bed, or hammock, awake, very well in health, had no pain, no distemper, no uneasiness of body, no, nor any uneasiness of mind, more than ordinary; but could by no means close my eyes; that is, so as to sleep; no, not a wink all night long, otherwise than as follows: It is as impossible as needless to set down the innumerable crowd of thoughts that whirled through that great thoroughfare of the brain, the memory, in this night' time. I ran over the whole history of my life in miniature, or by abridgment, as I may call it, to my coming to this island; and also of the part of my life since I came to this island. In my reflections upon the state of my case since I came on shore on this island, I was comparing the happy posture of my affairs in the first years of my habitation here, compared to the life of anxiety, fear, and care, which I had lived ever since I had seen the print of a foot in the sand; not that I did not believe the savages had frequented the island even all the while, and might have been several hundreds of them at times on shore there; but I had never known it, and was incapable of any apprehensions about it; my satisfaction was perfect, though my danger was the same; and I was as happy in not knowing my danger as if I had never really been exposed to it. This furnished my thoughts with many very profitable reflections, and particularly this one, how infinitely good that Providence is which has provided in its government of mankind such narrow bounds to his sight and knowledge of things; and though he walks in the midst of so many thousand dangers, the sight of which, if discovered to him, would distract his mind and sink his spirits, he is kept serene and calm by having the events of things hid from his eyes, and knowing nothing of the dangers which surround him. After these thoughts had for some time entertained me, I came to reflect seriously upon the real danger I had been in for so many years in this very island; and how I had walked about in the greatest security and with all possible tranquillity, even when perhaps nothing but a brow of a hill, a great tree, or the casual approach of night, had been between me and the worst kind of destruction, viz., that of falling into the hands of cannibals and savages, who would have seized on me with the same view as I did of a goat or a turtle; and have thought it no more a crime to kill and devour me than I did of a pigeon or a curlew. I should injustly slander myself if I should say I was not sincerely thankful to my great Preserver, to whose singular protection I acknowledged, with great humility, that all these unknown deliverances were due; and without which I must inevitably have fallen into their merciless hands. When these thoughts were over, my head was for some time taken up in considering the nature of these wretched creatures, I mean the savages; and how it came to pass in the world that the wise Governor of all things should give up any of His creatures to such inhumanity; nay, to something so much below even brutality itself as to devour its own kind; but as this ended in some (at that time fruitless) speculations, it occurred to me to inquire what part of the world these wretches lived in; how far off the coast was from whence they came; what they ventured over so far from home for; what kind of boats they had; and why I might not order myself and my business so that I might be as able to go over thither as they were to come to me. I never so much as troubled myself to consider what I should do with myself when I came thither; what would become of me, if I fell into the hands of the savages; or how I should escape from them, if they attempted me; no, nor so much as how it was possible for me to reach the coast and not be attempted by some or other of them, without any possibility of delivering myself; and if I should not fall into their hands, what I should do for provision, or whither I should bend my course; none of these thoughts, I say, so much as came in my way; but my mind was wholly bent upon the notion of my passing over in my boat to the mainland. I looked back upon my present condition as the most miserable that could possibly be; that I was not able to throw myself into anything but death that could be called worse; that if I reached the shore of the main, I might perhaps meet with relief, or I might coast along, as I did on the shore of Africa, till I came to some inhabited country, and where I might find some relief; and after all, perhaps I might fall in with some Christian ship that might take me in; and if the worse came to the worst, I could but die, which would put an end to all these miseries at once. Pray note, all this was the fruit of a disturbed mind, an impatient temper, made, as it were, desperate by the long continuance of my troubles and the disappointments I had met in the wreck I had been on board of, and where I had been so near the obtaining what I so earnestly longed for, viz., somebody to speak to and to learn some knowledge from of the place where I was and of the probable means of my deliverance; I say, I was agitated wholly by these thoughts. All my calm of mind in my resignation to Providence, and waiting the issue of the dispositions of Heaven, seemed to be suspended; and I had, as it were, no power to turn my thoughts to anything but to the project of a voyage to the main, which came upon me with such force and such an impetuosity of desire that it was not to be resisted. When this had agitated my thoughts for two hours or more, with such violence that it set my very blood into a ferment, and my pulse beat as high as if I had been in a fever merely with the extraordinary fervour of my mind about it; nature, as if I had been fatigued and exhausted with the very thought of it, threw me into a sound sleep. One would have thought I should have dreamed of it; but I did not, nor of anything relating to it; but I dreamed that as I was going out in the morning as usual from my castle, I saw upon the shore two canoes and eleven savages coming to land, and that they brought with them another savage, whom they were going to kill, in order to eat him; when on a sudden, the savage that they were going to kill jumped away, and ran for his life; and I thought in my sleep that he came running into my little thick grove, before my fortification, to hide himself; and that I, seeing him alone and not perceiving that the other sought him that way, showed myself to him, and smiling upon him, encouraged him; that he kneeled down to me, seeming to pray me to assist him; upon which I showed my ladder, made him go up, and carried him into my cave, and he became my servant; and that as soon as I had gotten this man, I said to myself, ''Now I may certainly venture to the mainland; for this fellow will serve me as a pilot, and will tell me what to do, and whither to go for provisions; and whither not to go for fear of being devoured; what places to venture into, and what to escape.'' I waked with this thought, and was under such inexpressible impressions of joy at the prospect of my escape in my dream that the disappointments which I felt upon coming to myself and finding it was no more than a dream were equally extravagant the other way, and threw me into a very great dejection of spirit. Upon this, however, I made this conclusion, that my only way to go about an attempt for an escape was, if possible, to get a savage into my possession; and, if possible, it should be one of their prisoners, whom they had condemned to be eaten and should bring hither to kill; but these thoughts still were attended with this difficulty, that it was impossible to effect this without attacking a whole caravan of them and killing them all; and this was not only a very desperate attempt, and might miscarry, but on the other hand, I had greatly scrupled the law-fulness of it to me, and my heart trembled at the thoughts of shedding so much blood, though it was for my deliverance. I need not repeat the arguments which occurred to me against this, they being the same mentioned before. But though I had other reasons to offer now, viz., that those men were enemies to my life and would devour me if they could, that it was self-preservation in the highest degree to deliver myself from this death of a life, and was acting in my own defence as much as if they were actually assaulting me, and the like. I say, though these things argued for it, yet the thoughts of shedding human blood for my deliverance were very terrible to me, and such as I could by no means reconcile myself to a great while. However, at last, after many secret disputes with myself and after great perplexities about it (for all these arguments, one way and another, struggled in my head a long time), the eager prevailing desire of deliverance at length mastered all the rest, and I resolved, if possible, to get one of those savages into my hands, cost what it would. My next thing then was to contrive how to do it; and this indeed was very difficult to resolve on. But as I could pitch upon no probable means for it, so I resolved to put myself upon the watch, to see them when they came on shore, and leave the rest to the event, taking such measures as the opportunity should present, let be what would be. With these resolutions in my thoughts, I set myself upon the scout, as often as possible, and indeed so often till I was heartily tired of it; for it was above a year and half that I waited, and for great part of that time went out to the west end and to the southwest corner of the island almost every day, to see for canoes, but none appeared. This was very discouraging, and began to trouble me much; though I cannot say that it did in this case as it had done some time before that, viz., wear off the edge of my desire to the thing; but the longer it seemed to be delayed, the more eager I was for it; in a word, I was not at first so careful to shun the sight of these savages and avoid being seen by them as I was now eager to be upon them. Besides, I fancied myself able to manage one, nay, two or three savages, if I had them, so as to make them entirely slaves to me, to do whatever I should direct them, and to prevent their being able at any time to do me any hurt. It was a great while that I pleased myself with this affair, but nothing still presented; all my fancies and schemes came to nothing, for no savages came near me for a great while. About a year and a half after I had entertained these notions and, by long musing, had as it were resolved them all into nothing, for want of an occasion to put them in execution, I was surprised one morning early with seeing no less than five canoes all on shore together on my side of the island; and the people who belonged to them all landed, and out of my sight. The number of them broke all my measures; for seeing so many and knowing that they always came four, or six, or sometimes more, in a boat, I could not tell what to think of it, or how to take my measures, to attack twenty or thirty men singlehanded; so I lay still in my castle, perplexed and discomforted. However, I put myself into all the same postures for an attack that I had formerly provided, and was just ready for action if anything had presented; having waited a good while, listening to hear if they made any noise, at length being very impatient, I set my guns at the foot of my ladder and clambered up to the top of the hill by my two stages as usual, standing so, however, that my head did not appear above the hill, so that they could not perceive me by any means; here I observed, by the help of my perspective-glass, that they were no less than thirty in number, that they had a fire kindled, that they had had meat dressed. How they had cooked it, that I knew not, or what it was; but they were all dancing in I know not how many barbarous gestures and figures, their own way, round the fire. While I was thus looking on them, I perceived by my perspective two miserable wretches dragged from the boats, where, it seems, they were laid by, and were now brought out for the slaughter. I perceived one of them immediately fell, being knocked down, I suppose, with a club or wooden sword, for that was their way, and two or three others were at work immediately, cutting him open for their cookery, while the other victim was left standing by himself, till they should be ready for him. In that very moment, this poor wretch seeing himself a little at liberty, Nature inspired him with hopes of life, and he started away from them, and ran with incredible swiftness along the sands directly towards me, I mean towards that part of the coast where my habitation was. I was dreadfully frighted (that I must acknowledge) when I perceived him to run my way; and especially, when, as I thought, I saw him pursued by the whole body; and now I expected that part of my dream was coming to pass, and that he would certainly take shelter in my grove; but I could not depend by any means upon my dream for the rest of it, viz., that the other savages would not pursue him thither, and find him there. However, I kept my station, and my spirits began to recover when I found that there was not above three men that followed him; and still more was I encouraged when I found that he outstripped them exceedingly in running and gained ground of them; so that if he could but hold it for half an hour, I saw easily he would fairly get away from them all. There was between them and my castle the creek which I mentioned often at the first part of my story, when I landed my cargoes out of the ship; and this I saw plainly he must necessarily swim over, or the poor wretch would be taken there. But when the savage escaping came thither, he made nothing of it, though the tide was then up; but plunging in, swam through in about thirty strokes or thereabouts, landed, and ran on with exceeding strength and swiftness; when the three persons came to the creek, I found that two of them could swim, but the third could not, and that standing on the other side, he looked at the other, but went no farther; and soon after went softly back again, which, as it happened, was very well for him in the main. I observed that the two who swam were yet more than twice as long swimming over the creek as the fellow was that fled from them. It came now very warmly upon my thoughts, and indeed irresistibly, that now was my time to get me a servant, and perhaps a companion, or assistant; and that I was called plainly by Providence to save this poor creature' life; I immediately ran down the ladders with all possible expedition, fetched my two guns, for they were both but at the foot of the ladders, as I observed above; and getting up again, with the same haste, to the top of the hill, I crossed towards the sea; and having a very short cut, and all down hill, clapped myself in the way between the pursuers and the pursued, holloing aloud to him that fled, who, looking back, was at first perhaps as much frighted at me as at them; but I beckoned with my hand to him to come back, and in the meantime I slowly advanced towards the two that followed; then rushing at once upon the foremost, I knocked him down with the stock of my piece; I was loath to fire, because I would not have the rest hear; though at that distance, it would not have been easily heard; and being out of sight of the smoke too, they would not have easily known what to make of it. Having knocked this fellow down, the other who pursued him stopped, as if he had been frighted; and I advanced apace towards him; but as I came nearer, I perceived presently he had a bow and arrow, and was fitting it to shoot at me; so I was then necessitated to shoot at him first; which I did, and killed him at the first shoot. The poor savage who fled, but had stopped, though he saw both his enemies fallen and killed, as he thought, yet was so frighted with the fire and noise of my piece, that he stood stock still and neither came forward or went backward, though he seemed rather inclined to fly still than to come on; I holloed again to him, and made signs to come forward, which he easily understood, and came a little way, then stopped again, and then a little farther, and stopped again; and I could then perceive that he stood trembling, as if he had been taken prisoner, and had just been to be killed, as his two enemies were; I beckoned him again to come to me, and gave him all the signs of encouragement that I could think of; and he came nearer and nearer, kneeling down every ten or twelve steps in token of acknowledgement for my saving his life; I smiled at him and looked pleasantly and beckoned to him to come still nearer; at length he came close to me, and then he kneeled down again, kissed the ground, and laid his head upon the ground, and taking me by the foot, set my foot upon his head: this, it seems, was in token of swearing to be my slave forever. I took him up, and made much of him, and encouraged him all I could. But there was more work to do yet, for I perceived the savage whom I knocked down was not killed, but stunned with the blow, and began to come to himself; so I pointed to him, and showing him the savage, that he was not dead; upon this he spoke some words to me, and though I could not understand them, yet I thought they were pleasant to hear, for they were the first sound of a man' voice that I had heard, my own excepted, for above twenty-five years. But there was no time for such reflections now; the savage who was knocked down recovered himself so far as to sit up upon the ground, and I perceived that my savage began to be afraid; but when I saw that, I presented my other piece at the man as if I would shoot him; upon this my savage, for so I call him now, made a motion to me to lend him my sword, which hung naked in a belt by my side; so I did. He no sooner had it, but he runs to his enemy, and at one blow cut off his head as cleverly, no executioner in Germany could have done it sooner or better; which I thought very strange for one who I had reason to believe never saw a sword in his life before, except their own wooden swords; however, it seems, as I learned afterwards, they make their wooden swords so sharp, so heavy, and the wood is so hard, that they will cut off heads even with them, ay, and arms, and that at one blow too. When he had done this, he comes laughing to me in sign of triumph and brought me the sword again, and with abundance of gestures which I did not understand, laid it down, with the head of the savage that he had killed, just before me. But that which astonished him most was to know how I had killed the other Indian so far off; so pointing to him, he made signs to me to let him go to him; so I bade him go, as well as I could; when he came to him, he stood like one amazed, looking at him, turned him first on one side, then on t' other, looked at the wound the bullet had made, which, it seems, was just in his breast, where it had made a hole, and no great quantity of blood had followed, but he had bled inwardly, for he was quite dead. He took up his bow and arrows, and came back; so I turned to go away and beckoned to him to follow me, making signs to him that more might come after them. Upon this he signed to me that he should bury them with sand, that they might not be seen by the rest if they followed; and so I made signs again to him to do so; he fell to work, and in an instant he had scraped a hole in the sand with his hands big enough to bury the first in, and then dragged him into it and covered him and did so also by the other; I believe he had buried them both in a quarter of an hour; then calling him away, I carried him, not to my castle, but quite away to my cave, on the farther part of the island; so I did not let my dream come to pass in that part, viz., that he came into my grove for shelter. Here I gave him bread and a bunch of raisins to eat, and a draught of water, which I found he was indeed in great distress for, by his running; and having refreshed him, I made signs for him to go lie down and sleep, pointing to a place where I had laid a great parcel of rice straw, and a blanket upon it, which I used to sleep upon myself sometimes; so the poor creature lay down and went to sleep. I Call Him Friday HE WAS a comely, handsome fellow, perfectly well made, with straight strong limbs, not too large, tall and well-shaped, and, as I reckon, about twenty-six years of age. He had a very good countenance, not a fierce and surly aspect, but seemed to have something very manly in his face, and yet he had all the sweetness and softness of an European in his countenance too, especially when he smiled. His hair was long and black, not curled like wool; his forehead very high and large; and a great vivacity and sparkling sharpness in his eyes. The colour of his skin was not quite black, but very tawny; and yet not of an ugly yellow, nauseous tawny, as the Brazilians and Virginians, and other natives of America are; but of a bright kind of a dun olive colour that had in it something very agreeable, though not very easy to describe. His face was round and plump; his nose small, not flat like the Negroes', a very good mouth, thin lips, and his fine teeth well set, and white as ivory. After he had slumbered, rather than slept, about half an hour, he waked again, and comes out of the cave to me, for I had been milking my goats, which I had in the enclosure just by. When he espied me, he came running to me, laying himself down again upon the ground, with all the possible signs of an humble, thankful disposition, making a many antic gestures to show it. At last he lays his head flat upon the ground, close to my foot, and sets my other foot upon his head, as he had done before; and after this, made all the signs to me of subjection, servitude, and submission imaginable, to let me know how he would serve me as long as he lived; I understood him in many things and let him know I was very well pleased with him; in a little time I began to speak to him and teach him to speak to me; and first, I made him know his name should be Friday, which was the day I saved his life; I called him so for the memory of the time; I likewise taught him to say ''Master,'' and then let him know that was to be my name; I likewise taught him to say ''yes'' and ''no'' and to know the meaning of them; I gave him some milk in an earthen pot and let him see me drink it before him and sop my bread in it; and I gave him a cake of bread to do the like, which he quickly complied with, and made signs that it was very good for him. I kept there with him all that night, but as soon as it was day, I beckoned to him to come with me, and let him know I would give him some clothes, at which he seemed very glad, for he was stark naked. As we went by the place where he had buried the two men, he pointed exactly to the place, and showed me the marks that he had made to find them again, making signs to me that we should dig them up again and eat them; at this I appeared very angry, expressed my abhorrence of it, made as if I would vomit at the thoughts of it, and beckoned with my hand to him to come away, which he did immediately, with great submission. I then led him up to the top of the hill, to see if his enemies were gone; and pulling out my glass, I looked, and saw plainly the place where they had been, but no appearance of them or of their canoes; so that it was plain they were gone, and had left their two comrades behind them, without any search after them. But I was not content with this discovery, but having now more courage, and consequently more curiosity, I took my man Friday with me, giving him the sword in his hand, with the bow and arrows at his back, which I found he could use very dexterously, making him carry one gun for me, and I two for myself, and away we marched to the place where these creatures had been; for I had a mind now to get some fuller intelligence of them. When I came to the place, my very blood ran chill in my veins, and my heart sunk within me at the horror of the spectacle. Indeed, it was a dreadful sight, at least it was so to me, though Friday made nothing of it. The place was covered with human bones, the ground dyed with their blood, great pieces of flesh left here and there, half eaten, mangled and scorched; and in short, all the tokens of the triumphant feast they had been making there, after a victory over their enemies. I saw three skulls, five hands, and the bones of three or four legs and feet, and abundance of other parts of the bodies; and Friday, by his signs, made me understand that they brought over four prisoners to feast upon; that three of them were eaten up, and that he, pointing to himself, was the fourth; that there had been a great battle between them and their next king, whose subjects it seems he had been one of; and that they had taken a great number of prisoners, all which were carried to several places by those that had taken them in the fight, in order to feast upon them, as was done here by these wretches upon those they brought hither. I caused Friday to gather all the skulls, bones, flesh, and whatever remained, and lay them together on a heap, and make a great fire upon it and burn them all to ashes. I found Friday had still a hankering stomach after some of the flesh, and was still a cannibal in his nature; but I discovered7 so much abhorrence at the very thoughts of it, and at the least appearance of it, that he durst not discover it; for I had, by some means, let him know that I would kill him if he offered it. When we had done this, we came back to our castle, and there I fell to work for my man Friday; and first of all I gave him a pair of linen drawers, which I had out of the poor gunner' chest I mentioned, and which I found in the wreck; and which, with a little alteration, fitted him very well; then I made him a jerkin of goat' skin, as well as my skill would allow; and I was now grown a tolerable good tailor; and I gave him a cap, which I had made of a hare-skin, very convenient and fashionable enough; and thus he was clothed, for the present, tolerably well, and was mighty well pleased to see himself almost as well clothed as his master. It istrue, he went awkwardly in these things at first; wearing the drawers was very awkward to him, and the sleeves of the waistcoat galled his shoulders and the inside of his arms; but a little easing them, where he complained they hurt him, and using himself to them, at length he took to them very well. The next day after I came home to my hutch with him, I began to consider where I should lodge him; and that I might do well for him, and yet be perfectly easy myself, I made a little tent for him in the vacant place between my two fortifications, in the inside of the last and in the outside of the first. And as there was a door or entrance there into my cave, I made a formal framed door-case, and a door to it of boards, and set it up in the passage, a little within the entrance; and causing the door to open on the inside, I barred it up in the night, taking in my ladders too; so that Friday could no way come at me in the inside of my innermost wall without making so much noise in getting over that it must needs waken me; for my first wall had now a complete roof over it of long poles, covering all my tent and leaning up to the side of the hill, which was again laid across with smaller sticks instead of laths, and then thatched over a great thickness with the rice straw, which was strong like reeds; and at the hole or place which was left to go in or out by the ladder I had placed a kind of trapdoor, which, if it had been attempted on the outside, would not have opened at all, but would have fallen down and made a great noise; and as to weapons, I took them all into my side every night. But I needed none of all this precaution; for never man had a more faithful, loving, sincere servant than Friday was to me; without passions, sullenness, or designs, perfectly obliged and engaged; his very affections were tied to me, like those of a child to a father; and I dare say he would have sacrificed his life for the saving mine upon any occasion whatsoever; the many testimonies he gave me of this put it out of doubt and soon convinced me that I needed to use no precautions as to my safety on his account. This frequently gave me occasion to observe, and that with wonder, that however it had pleased God, in His providence, and in the government of the works of His hands, to take from so great a part of the world of His creatures the best uses to which their faculties and the powers of their souls are adapted; yet that He has bestowed upon them the same powers, the same reason, the same affections, the same sentiments of kindness and obligation, the same passions and resentments of wrongs, the same sense of gratitude, sincerity, fidelity, and all the capacities of doing good and receiving good that He has given to us; and that when He pleases to offer to them occasions of exerting these, they are as ready, nay, more ready to apply them to the right uses for which they were bestowed than we are. And this made me very melancholy sometimes, in reflecting, as the several occasions presented, how mean a use we make of all these, even though we have these powers enlightened by the great lamp of instruction, the Spirit of God, and by the knowledge of His Word, added to our understanding; and why it has pleased God to hide the like saving knowledge from so many millions of souls, who (if I might judge by this poor savage) would make a much better use of it than we did. From hence I sometimes was led too far to invade the sovereignty of Providence and, as it were, arraign the justice of so arbitrary a disposition of things that should hide that light from some and reveal it to others, and yet expect a like duty from both. But I shut it up and checked my thoughts with this conclusion, first, that we did not know by what light and law these should be condemned; but that, as God was necessarily, and by the nature of His being, infinitely holy and just, so it could not be but that if these creatures were all sentenced to absence from Himself, it was on account of sinning against that light which, as the Scripture says, was a law to themselves, and by such rules as their consciences would acknowledge to be just, though the foundation was not discovered to us. And secondly, that still, as we are all the clay in the hand of the Potter, no vessel could say to Him, ''Why hast Thou formed me thus?'' But to return to my new companion: I was greatly delighted with him, and made it my business to teach him everything that was proper to make him useful, handy, and helpful; but especially to make him speak and understand me when I spoke; and he was the aptest scholar that ever was, and particularly was so merry, so constantly diligent, and so pleased when he could but understand me or make me understand him, that it was very pleasant to me to talk to him; and now my life began to be so easy that I began to say to myself that could I but have been safe from more savages, I cared not if I was never to remove from the place while I lived. After I had been two or three days returned to my castle, I thought that, in order to bring Friday off from his horrid way of feeding and from the relish of a cannibal' stomach, I ought to let him taste other flesh; so I took him out with me one morning to the woods. I went, indeed, intending to kill a kid out of my own flock and bring it home and dress it. But as I was going, I saw a she-goat lying down in the shade, and two young kids sitting by her; I caught hold of Friday. ''Hold,'' says I, ''stand still''; and made signs to him not to stir; immediately I presented my piece, shot and killed one of the kids. The poor creature, who had at a distance, indeed, seen me kill the savage, his enemy, but did not know or could imagine how it was done, was sensibly surprised, trembled and shook, and looked so amazed that I thought he would have sunk down. He did not see the kid I had shot at, or perceive I had killed it, but ripped up his waistcoat to feel if he was not wounded, and, as I found presently, thought I was resolved to kill him; for he came and kneeled down to me and, embracing my knees, said a great many things I did not understand; but I could easily see that the meaning was to pray me not to kill him. I soon found a way to convince him that I would do him no harm and, taking him up by the hand, laughed at him and, pointing to the kid which I had killed, beckoned to him to run and fetch it, which he did; and while he was wondering and looking to see how the creature was killed, I loaded my gun again, and by and by I saw a great fowl, like a hawk, sit upon a tree within shot; so, to let Friday understand a little what I would do, I called him to me again, pointing at the fowl, which was indeed a parrot, though I thought it had been a hawk; I say, pointing to the parrot, and to my gun, and to the ground under the parrot, to let him see I would make it fall, I made him understand that I would shoot and kill that bird; accordingly I fired and bade him look, and immediately he saw the parrot fall; he stood like one frighted again, notwithstanding all I had said to him; and I found he was the more amazed because he did not see me put anything into the gun; but thought that there must be some wonderful fund of death and destruction in that thing, able to kill man, beast, bird, or anything near or far off; and the astonishment this created in him was such as could not wear off for a long time; and I believe, if I would have let him, he would have worshipped me and my gun. As for the gun itself, he would not so much as touch it for several days after; but would speak to it, and talk to it as if it had answered him, when he was by himself; which, as I afterwards learned of him, was to desire it not to kill him. Well, after his astonishment was a little over at this, I pointed to him to run and fetch the bird I had shot, which he did, but stayed some time; for the parrot, not being quite dead, was fluttered away a good way off from the place where she fell; however, he found her, took her up, and brought her to me; and as I had perceived his ignorance about the gun before, I took this advantage to charge the gun again, and not let him see me do it, that I might be ready for any other mark that might present; but nothing more offered at that time; so I brought home the kid, and the same evening I took the skin off and cut it out as well as I could; and having a pot for that purpose, I boiled, or stewed, some of the flesh, and made some very good broth; and after I had begun to eat some, I gave some to my man, who seemed very glad of it, and liked it very well; but that which was strangest to him was to see me eat salt with it; he made a sign to me that the salt was not good to eat, and putting a little into his own mouth, he seemed to nauseate it, and would spit and sputter at it, washing his mouth with fresh water after it; on the other hand, I took some meat in my mouth without salt, and I pretended to spit and sputter for want of salt, as fast as he had done at the salt; but it would not do, he would never care for salt with his meat, or in his broth; at least, not a great while, and then but a very little. Having thus fed him with boiled meat and broth, I was resolved to feast him the next day with roasting a piece of the kid; this I did by hanging it before the fire in a string, as I had seen many people do in England, setting two poles up, one on each side the fire, and one across on the top, and tying the string to the cross stick, letting the meat turn continually. This Friday admired very much; but when he came to taste the flesh, he took so many ways to tell me how well he liked it that I could not but understand him; and at last he told me he would never eat man' flesh any more, which I was very glad to hear. The next day I set him to work to beating some corn out, and sifting it in the manner I used to do, as I observed before; and he soon understood how to do it as well as I, especially after he had seen what the meaning of it was, and that it was to make bread of; for after that I let him see me make my bread, and bake it too, and in a little time Friday was able to do all the work for me, as well as I could do it myself. I began now to consider that, having two mouths to feed instead of one, I must provide more ground for my harvest and plant a larger quantity of corn than I used to do; so I marked out a larger piece of land, and began the fence in the same manner as before, in which Friday not only worked very willingly and very hard, but did it very cheerfully; and I told him what it was for, that it was for corn to make more bread, because he was now with me, and that I might have enough for him and myself too. He appeared very sensible of that part, and let me know that he thought I had much more labour upon me on his account than I had for myself; and that he would work the harder for me, if I would tell him what to do. We Make Another Canoe THIS was the pleasantest year of all the life I led in this place; Friday began to talk pretty well, and understand the names of almost everything I had occasion to call for, and of every place I had to send him to, and talk a great deal to me; so that, in short, I began now to have some use for my tongue again, which indeed I had very little occasion for before; that is to say, about speech. Besides the pleasure of talking to him, I had a singular satisfaction in the fellow himself; his simple, unfeigned honesty appeared to me more and more every day, and I began really to love the creature; and on his side, I believe he loved me more than it was possible for him ever to love anything before. I had a mind once to try if he had any hankering inclination to his own country again, and having learned him English so well that he could answer me almost any questions, I asked him whether the nation that he belonged to never conquered in battle. At which he smiled, and said, ''Yes, yes, we always fight the better''; that is, he meant, always get the better in fight; and so we began the following discourse: ''You always fight the better,'' said I; ''how came you to be taken prisoner then, Friday?'' FRIDAY: My nation beat much, for all that. MASTER: How beat? If your nation beat them, how came you to be taken? FRIDAY: They more many than my nation in the place where me was; they take one, two, three, and me; my nation overbeat them in the yonder place, where me no was; there my nation take one, two, great thousand. MASTER: But why did not your side recover you from the hands of your enemies then? FRIDAY: They run one, two, three, and me, and make go in the canoe; my nation have no canoe that time. MASTER: Well, Friday, and what does your nation do with the men they take? Do they carry them away, and eat them, as these did? FRIDAY: Yes, my nation eat mans too, eat all up. MASTER: Where do they carry them? FRIDAY: Go to other place, where they think. MASTER: Do they come hither? FRIDAY: Yes, yes, they come hither; come other else place. MASTER: Have you been here with them? FRIDAY: Yes, I been here. [Points to the northwest side of the island, which, it seems, was their side.] By this I understood that my man Friday had formerly been among the savages who used to come on shore on the farther part of the island, on the said man-eating occasions that he was now brought for; and some time after, when I took the courage to carry him to that side, being the same I formerly mentioned, he presently knew the place and told me he was there once when they ate up twenty men, two women, and one child; he could not tell twenty in English, but he numbered them by laying so many stones in a row and pointing to me to tell them over. I have told this passage because it introduces what follows; that after I had had this discourse with him, I asked him how far it was from our island to the shore, and whether the canoes were not often lost; he told me there was no danger, no canoes ever lost; but that after a little way out to the sea, there was a current, and a wind, always one way in the morning, the other in the afternoon. This I understood to be no more than the sets of the tide, as going out or coming in; but I afterwards understood it was occasioned by the great draft and reflux of the mighty river Orinoco, in the mouth, or the gulf, of which river, as I found afterwards, our island lay; and this land which I perceived to the west and northwest was the great island Trinidad, on the north point of the mouth of the river. I asked Friday a thousand questions about the country, the inhabitants, the sea, the coast, and what nations were near; he told me all he knew, with the greatest openness imaginable; I asked him the names of the several nations of his sort of people, but could get no other name than Caribs; from whence I easily understood that these were the Caribbees, which our maps place on the part of America which reaches from the mouth of the river Orinoco to Guiana, and onwards to Santa Marta. He told me that up a great way beyond the moon, that was, beyond the setting of the moon, which must be west from their country, there dwelt white bearded men, like me, and pointed to my great whiskers, which I mentioned before; and they had killed ''much mans,'' that was his word; by all which I understood he meant the Spaniards, whose cruelties in America had been spread over the whole countries and were remembered by all the nations from father to son. I inquired if he could tell me how I might come from this island and get among those white men; he told me, ''Yes, yes, I might go in two canoe''; I could not understand what he meant, or make him describe to me what he meant by ''two canoe,'' till at last, with great difficulty, I found he meant it must be in a large great boat, as big as two canoes. This part of Friday' discourse began to relish with me very well; and from this time I entertained some hopes that one time or other I might find an opportunity to make my escape from this place and that this poor savage might be a means to help me to do it. During the long time that Friday had now been with me, and that he began to speak to me and understand me, I was not wanting8 to lay a foundation of religious knowledge in his mind; particularly, I asked him one time, who made him. The poor creature did not understand me at all, but thought I had asked who was his father; but I took it by another handle, and asked him who made the sea, the ground we walked on, and thehills and woods; he told me it was one old Benamuckee, that lived beyond all. He could describe nothing of this great person but that he was very old; much older, he said, than the sea or the land, than the moon or the stars. I asked him then, if this old person had made all things, why did not all things worship him? He looked very grave, and with a perfect look of innocence, said All things said O! to him. I asked him if the people who die in his country went away anywhere; he said yes, they all went to Benamuckee; then I asked him whether these they eat up went thither too. He said yes. From these things I began to instruct him in the knowledge of the true God. I told him that the great Maker of all things lived up there, pointing up towards Heaven. That He governs the world by the same Power and Providence by which He made it. That He was omnipotent, could do everything for us, give everything to us, take everything from us; and thus by degrees I opened his eyes. He listened with great attention, and received with pleasure the notion of Jesus Christ being sent to redeem us, and of the manner of making our prayers to God, and His being able to hear us, even into Heaven; he told me one day that if our God could hear us up beyond the sun, He must needs be a greater God than their Benamuckee, who lived but a little way off, and yet could not hear till they went up to the great mountains where he dwelt, to speak to him; I asked him if he ever went thither to speak to him; he said no; they never went that were young men; none went thither but the old men, whom he called their Oowokakee, that is, as I made him explain it to me, their religious, or clergy, and that they went to say O (so he called saying prayers) , and then came back and told them what Benamuckee said. By this I observed that there is priestcraft even amongst the most blinded, ignorant pagans in the world, and the policy of making a secret religion, in order to preserve the veneration of the people to the clergy, is not only to be found in the Roman, but perhaps among all religions in the world, even among the most brutish and barbarous savages. I endeavoured to clear up this fraud to my man Friday, and told him that the pretence of their old men going up the mountains to say O to their god Benamuckee was a cheat, and their bringing word from thence what he said was much more so; that if they met with any answer, or spoke with anyone there, it must be with an evil spirit. And then I entered into a long discourse with him about the Devil, the original of him, his rebellion against God, his enmity to man, the reason of it, his setting himself up in the dark parts of the world to be worshipped instead of God, and as God; and the many stratagems he made use of to delude mankind to their ruin; how he had a secret access to our passions and to our affections, to adapt his snares so to our inclinations as to cause us even to be our own tempters and to run upon our destruction by our own choice. I found it was not easy to imprint right notions in his mind about the Devil, as it was about the being of a God. Nature assisted all my arguments to evidence to him even the necessity of a great First Cause and overruling, governing Power, a secret directing Providence, and of the equity and justice of paying homage to Him that made us, and the like. But there appeared nothing of all this in the notion of an evil spirit, of his original, his being, his nature, and above all, of his inclination to do evil, and to draw us in to do so too; and the poor creature puzzled me once in such a manner, by a question merely natural and innocent, that I scarce knew what to say to him. I had been talking a great deal to him of the power of God, His omnipotence, His dreadful aversion to sin, His being a consuming fire to the workers of iniquity; how, as He had made us all, He could destroy us and all the world in a moment; and he listened with great seriousness to me all the while. After this, I had been telling him how the Devil was God' enemy in the hearts of men, and used all his malice and skill to defeat the good designs of Providence, and to ruin the kingdom of Christ in the world, and the like. ''Well,'' says Friday, ''but you say God is so strong, so great; is He not much strong, much might as the Devil?'' ''Yes, yes,'' says I, ''Friday, God is stronger than the Devil, God is above the Devil, and therefore we pray to God to tread him down under our feet, and enable us to resist his temptations and quench his fiery darts.'' ''But,'' says he again, ''if God much strong, much might as the Devil, why God no kill the Devil, so make him no more do wicked?'' I was strangely surprised at his question, and after all, though I was now an old man, yet I was but a young doctor, and ill enough qualified for a casuist, or a solver of difficulties. And at first I could not tell what to say; so I pretended not to hear him, and asked him what he said. But he was too earnest for an answer to forget his question; so that he repeated it in the very same broken words as above. By this time I had recovered myself a little, and I said, ''God will at last punish him severely, he is reserved for the judgment, and is to be cast into the bottomless pit, to dwell with everlasting fire.'' This did not satisfy Friday, but he returns upon me, repeating my words, '' 'Reserve at last,' me no understand; but why not kill the Devil now, not kill great ago?'' ''You may as well ask me,'' said I, ''why God does not kill you and I, when we do wicked things here that offend Him. We are preserved to repent and be pardoned.'' He muses awhile at this. ''Well, well,'' says he, mighty affectionately, ''that well; so you, I, Devil, all wicked, all preserve, repent, God pardon all.'' Here I was run down again by him to the last degree, and it was a testimony to me how the mere notions of nature, though they will guide reasonable creatures to the knowledge of a God, and of a worship or homage due to the supreme being of God, as the consequence of our nature; yet nothing but Divine revelation can form the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and of a redemption purchased for us, of a Mediator of the new covenant, and of an Intercessor at the footstool of God' throne; I say, nothing but a revelation from Heaven can form these in the soul; and that therefore the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, I mean, the Word of God and the Spirit of God, promised for the guide and sanctifier of His people, are the absolutely necessary instructors of the souls of men, in the saving knowledge of God, and the means of salvation. I therefore diverted the present discourse between me and my man, rising up hastily, as upon some sudden occasion of going out; then sending him for something a good way off, I seriously prayed to God that He would enable me to instruct savingly this poor savage, assisting by His Spirit the heart of the poor ignorant creature to receive the light of the knowledge of God in Christ, reconciling him to Himself, and would guide me to speak so to him from the Word of God as his conscience might be convinced, his eyes opened, and his soul saved. When he came again to me, I entered into a long discourse with him upon the subject of the redemption of man by the Saviour of the world, and of the doctrine of the Gospel preached from Heaven, viz., of repentance towards God, and faith in our blessed Lord Jesus. I then explained to him, as well as I could, why our blessed Redeemer took not on Him the nature of angels but the seed of Abraham, and how for that reason the fallen angels had no share in the redemption; that He came only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel, and the like. I had, God knows, more sincerity than knowledge in all the methods I took for this poor creature' instruction, and must acknowledge what I believe all that act upon the same principle will find, that in laying things open to him, I really informed and instructed myself in many things that either I did not know or had not fully considered before, but which occurred naturally to my mind upon my searching into them for the information of this poor savage; and I had more affection in my inquiry after things upon this occasion than ever I felt before; so that whether this poor wild wretch was the better for me or no, I had great reason to be thankful that ever he came to me. My grief sat lighter upon me, my habitation grew comfortable to me beyond measure; and when I reflected that in this solitary life which I had been confined to, I had not only been moved myself to look up to Heaven and to seek to the Hand that had brought me there, but was now to be made an instrument under Providence to save the life and, for aught I knew, the soul of a poor savage, and bring him to the true knowledge of religion, and of the Christian doctrine, that he might know Christ Jesus, to know whom is life eternal; I say, when I reflected upon all these things, a secret joy ran through every part of my soul, and I frequently rejoiced that ever I was brought to this place, which I had so often thought the most dreadful of all afflictions that could possibly have befallen me. In this thankful frame I continued all the remainder of my time, and the conversation which employed the hours between Friday and I was such as made the three years which we lived there together perfectly and completely happy, if any such thing as complete happiness can be formed in a sublunary state. The savage was now a good Christian, a much better than I; though I have reason to hope, and bless God for it, that we were equally penitent, and comforted, restored penitents; we had here the Word of God to read and no farther off from His Spirit to instruct than if we had been in England. I always applied myself to reading the Scripture to let him know, as well as I could, the meaning of what I read; and he again, by his serious inquiries and questions, made me, as I said before, a much better scholar in the Scripture knowledge than I should ever have been by my own private mere reading. Another thing I cannot refrain from observing here also, from experience in this retired part of my life, viz., how infinite and inexpressible a blessing it is that the knowledge of God and of the doctrine of salvation by Christ Jesus is so plainly laid down in the Word of God, so easy to be received and understood, that as the bare reading the Scripture made me capable of understanding enough of my duty to carry me directly on to the great work of sincere repentance for my sins, and laying hold of a Saviour for life and salvation, to a stated reformation in practice, and obedience to all God' commands, and this without any teacher or instructor (I mean, human), so the same plain instruction sufficiently served to the enlightening this savage creature and bringing him to be such a Christian as I have known few equal to him in my life. As to all the disputes, wranglings, strife, and contention which has happened in the world about religion, whether niceties in doctrines, or schemes of church government, they were all perfectly useless to us; as, for aught I can yet see, they have been to all the rest in the world. We had the sure guide to Heaven, viz., the Word of God; and we had, blessed be God, comfortable views of the Spirit of God, teaching and instructing us by His Word, leading us into all truth, and making us both willing and obedient to the instruction of His Word; and I cannot see the least use that the greatest knowledge of the disputed points in religion, which have made such confusions in the world, would have been to us, if we could have obtained it; but I must go on with the historical part of things, and take every part in its order. After Friday and I became more intimately acquainted, and that he could understand almost all I said to him and speak fluently, though in broken English, to me, I acquainted him with my own story, or at least so much of it as related to my coming into the place, how I had lived there, and how long. I let him into the mystery, for such it was to him, of gunpowder and bullet, and taught him how to shoot. I gave him a knife, which he was wonderfully delighted with, and I made him a belt, with a frog hanging to it, such as in England we wear hangers in; and in the frog, instead of a hanger, I gave him a hatchet, which was not only as good a weapon, in some cases, but much more useful upon other occasions. I described to him the country of Europe, and particularly England, which I came from; how we lived, how we worshipped God, how we behaved to one another; and how we traded in ships to all parts of the world. I gave him an account of the wreck which I had been on board of, and showed him as near as I could the place where she lay; but she was all beaten in pieces before, and gone. I showed him the ruins of our boat, which we lost when we escaped, and which I could not stir with my whole strength then, but was now fallen almost all to pieces. Upon seeing this boat, Friday stood musing a great while, and said nothing; I asked him what it was he studied upon; at last says he, ''Me see such boat like come to place at my nation.'' I did not understand him a good while; but at last, when I had examined further into it, I understood by him that a boat, such as that had been, came on shore upon the country where he lived; that is, as he explained it, was driven thither by stress of weather. I presently imagined that some European ship must have been cast away upon their coast, and the boat might get loose and drive ashore; but was so dull that I never once thought of men making escape from a wreck thither, much less whence they might come; so I only inquired after a description of the boat. Friday described the boat to me well enough, but brought me better to understand him when he added with some warmth, ''We save the white mans from drown.'' Then I presently asked him if there were any white mans, as he called them, in the boat. ''Yes,'' he said, ''the boat full of white mans.'' I asked him how many; he told upon his fingers seventeen. I asked him then what became of them; he told me, ''They live, they dwell at my nation.'' This put new thoughts into my head; for I presently imagined that these might be the men belonging to the ship that was cast away in sight of my island, as I now call it; and who, after the ship was struck on the rock and they saw her inevitably lost, had saved themselves in their boat and were landed upon that wild shore among the savages. Upon this I inquired of him more critically what was become of them. He assured me they lived still there; that they had been there about four years; that the savages let them alone, and gave them victuals to live. I asked him how it came to pass they did not kill them and eat them. He said, ''No, they make brother with them''; that is, as I understood him, a truce. And then he added, ''They no eat mans but when make the war fight''; that is to say, they never eat any men but such as come to fight with them and are taken in battle. It was after this some considerable time that being on the top of the hill, at the east side of the island, from whence, as I have said, I had in a clear day discovered the main, or continent of America, Friday, the weather being very serene, looks very earnestly towards the mainland, and in a kind of surprise falls a-jumping and dancing, and calls out to me, for I was at some distance from him. I asked him what was the matter. "O joy!'' says he, "O glad! There see my country, there my nation!'' I observed an extraordinary sense of pleasure appeared in his face, and his eyes sparkled, and his countenance discovered a strange eagerness, as if he had a mind to be in his own country again; and this observation of mine put a great many thoughts into me, which made me at first not so easy about my new man Friday as I was before; and I made no doubt but that if Friday could get back to his own nation again, he would not only forget all his religion but all his obligation to me; and would be forward enough to give his countrymen an account of me, and come back, perhaps with a hundred or two of them, and make a feast upon me, at which he might be as merry as he used to be with those of his enemies, when they were taken in war. But I wronged the poor honest creature very much, for which I was very sorry afterwards. However, as my jealousy increased, and held me some weeks, I was a little more circumspect, and not so familiar and kind to him as before; in which I was certainly in the wrong too, the honest grateful creature having no thought about it but what consisted with the best principles, both as a religious Christian and as a grateful friend, as appeared afterwards to my full satisfaction. While my jealousy of him lasted, you may be sure I was every day pumping him to see if he would discover any of the new thoughts which I suspected were in him; but I found everything he said was so honest and so innocent that I could find nothing to nourish my suspicion; and in spite of all my uneasiness he made me at last entirely his own again; nor did he in the least perceive that I was uneasy, and therefore I could not suspect him of deceit. One day, walking up the same hill, but the weather being hazy at sea so that we could not see the continent, I called to him, and said, ''Friday, do not you wish yourself in your own country, your own nation?'' ''Yes,'' he said, ''I be much O glad to be at my nation.'' ''What would you do there?'' said I. ''Would you turn wild again, eat men' flesh again, and be a savage as you were before?'' He looked full of concern, and shaking his head, said, ''No, no, Friday tell them to live good, tell them to pray God, tell them to eat corn bread, cattle flesh, milk, no eat man again.'' ''Why then,'' said I to him, ''they will kill you.'' He looked grave at that, and then said, ''No, they no kill me, they willing love learn.'' He meant by this, they would be willing to learn. He added, they learned much of the bearded mans that come in the boat. Then I asked him if he would go back to them. He smiled at that and told me he could not swim so far. I told him I would make a canoe for him. He told me he would go, if I would go with him. ''I go!'' says I. ''Why, they will eat me if I come there.'' ''No, no,'' says he, ''me make they no eat you; me make they much love you.'' He meant he would tell them how I had killed his enemies and saved his life, and so he would make them love me; then he told me as well as he could how kind they were to seventeen white men, or bearded men, as he called them, who came on shore there in distress. From this time, I confess, I had a mind to venture over, and see if I could possibly join with these bearded men, who, I made no doubt, were Spaniards or Portuguese; not doubting but, if I could, we might find some method to escape from thence, being upon the continent, and a good company together, better than I could from an island forty miles off the shore, and alone without help. So after some days I took Friday to work again, by way of discourse, and told him I would give him a boat to go back to his own nation; and accordingly I carried him to my frigate, which lay on the other side of the island, and having cleared it of water, for I always kept it sunk in the water, I brought it out, showed it him, and we both went into it. I found he was a most dexterous fellow at managing it, would make it go almost as swift and fast again as I could; so when he was in, I said to him, ''Well, now, Friday, shall we go to your nation?'' He looked very dull at my saying so, which, it seems, was because he thought the boat too small to go so far. I told him then I had a bigger; so the next day I went to the place where the first boat lay which I had made, but which I could not get into the water. He said that was big enough; but then, as I had taken no care of it, and it had lain two or three and twenty years there, the sun had split and dried it, that it was in a manner rotten. Friday told me such a boat would do very well and would carry ''much talking. Upon the whole, I was by this time so fixed upon my design of going over with him to the continent, that I told him we would go and make one as big as that, and he should go home in it. He answered not one word, but looked very grave and sad. I asked him what was the matter with him; he asked me again thus, ''Why you angry mad with Friday, what me done?'' I asked him what he meant; I told him I was not angry with him at all. ''No angry! no angry!'' says he, repeating the words several times, ''Why send Friday home away to my nation? '' ''Why,'' says I, ''Friday, did you not say you wished you were there?'' ''Yes, yes,'' says he, ''wish be both there, no wish Friday there, no Master there.'' In a word, he would not think of going there without me. ''I go there, Friday!'' says I. ''What shall I do there?'' He turned very quick upon me at this: ''You do great deal much good,'' says he, ''you teach wild mans be good sober tame mans; you tell them know God, pray God, and live new life.'' ''Alas, Friday,'' says I, ''thou knowest not what thou sayest. I am but an ignorant man myself.'' ''Yes, yes,'' says he, ''you teachee me good, you teachee them good.'' ''No, no, Friday,'' says I, ''you shall go without me, leave me here to live by myself, as I did before.'' He looked confused again at that word, and running to one of the hatchets which he used to wear, he takes it up hastily, and gives it to me. ''What must I do with this?'' says I to him. ''You take kill Friday,'' says he. ''What must I kill you for?'' said I again. He returns very quick, ''What you send Friday away for? Take kill Friday, no send Friday away.'' This he spoke so earnestly that I saw tears stand in his eyes. In a word, I so plainly discovered the utmost affection in him to me, and a firm resolution in him, that I told him then, and often after, that I would never send him away from me, if he was willing to stay with me. Upon the whole, as I found by all his discourse a settled affection to me, and that nothing should part him from me, so I found all the foundation of his desire to go to his own country was laid in his ardent affection to the people, and his hopes of my doing them good; a thing, which as I had no notion of myself, so I had not the least thought or intention or desire of undertaking it. But still I found a strong inclination to my attempting an escape, as above, founded on the supposition gathered from the discourse, viz., that there were seventeen bearded men there; and therefore, without any more delay, I went to work with Friday to find out a great tree proper to fell, and make a large piragua or canoe to undertake the voyage. There were trees enough in the island to have built a little fleet, not of piraguas and canoes, but even of good large vessels. But the main thing I looked at was to get one so near the water that we might launch it when it was made, to avoid the mistake I committed at first. At last, Friday pitched upon a tree, for I found he knew much better than I what kind of wood was fittest for it; nor can I tell, to this day, what wood to call the tree we cut down, except that it was very like the tree we call fustic, or between that and the Nicaragua wood, for it was much of the same colour and smell. Friday was for burning the hollow or cavity of this tree out, to make it for a boat. But I showed him how rather to cut it out with tools, which after I showed him how to use, he did very handily; and in about a month' hard labour, we finished it and made it very handsome, especially when with our axes, which I showed him how to handle, we cut and hewed the outside into the true shape of a boat; after this, however, it cost us near a fortnight' time to get her along, as it were, inch by inch, upon great rollers into the water. But when she was in, she would have carried twenty men with great ease. When she was in the water, and though she was so big, it amazed me to see with what dexterity and how swift my man Friday would manage her, turn her, and paddle her along; so I asked him if he would, and if we might venture over in her. ''Yes,'' he said, ''he venture over in her very well, though great blow wind.'' However, I had a further design that he knew nothing of, and that was to make a mast and sail, and to fit her with an anchor and cable. As to a mast, that was easy enough to get; so I pitched upon a straight young cedar tree, which I found near the place, and which there was great plenty of in the island; and I set Friday to work to cut it down, and gave him directions how to shape and order it. But as to the sail, that was my particular care; I knew I had old sails, or rather pieces of old sails, enough; but as I had had them now twenty-six years by me and had not been very careful to preserve them, not imagining that I should ever have this kind of use for them, I did not doubt but they were all rotten; and indeed most of them were so; however, I found two pieces which appeared pretty good, and with these I went to work, and with a great deal of pains, and awkward tedious stitching (you may be sure) for want of needles, I at length made a three-cornered ugly thing, like what we call in England a shoulder-of-mutton sail, to go with a boom at bottom, and a little short sprit at the top, such as usually our ships' longboats sail with, and such as I best knew how to manage; because it was such a one as I had to the boat in which I made my escape from Barbary, as related in the first part of my story. I was near two months performing this last work, viz., rigging and fitting my mast and sails; for I finished them very complete, making a small stay, and a sail, or foresail to it, to assist, if we should turn to windward; and which was more than all, I fixed a rudder to the stern of her, to steer with; and though I was but a bungling ship-wright, yet as I knew the usefulness and even necessity of such a thing, I applied myself with so much pains to do it that at last I brought it to pass, though considering the many dull contrivances I had for it that failed, I think it cost me almost as much labour as making the boat. After all this was done too, I had my man Friday to teach as to what belonged to the navigation of my boat; for though he knew very well how to paddle a canoe, he knew nothing what belonged to a sail and a rudder, and was the most amazed when he saw me work the boat to and again in the sea by the rudder, and how the sail jibed, and filled this way or that way, as the course we sailed changed; I say, when he saw this, he stood like one astonished and amazed. However, with a little use I made all these things familiar to him; and he became an expert sailor, except that as to the compass, I could make him understand very little of that. On the other hand, as there was very little cloudy weather, and seldom or never any fogs in those parts, there was the less occasion for a compass, seeing the stars were always to be seen by night and the shore by day, except in the rainy seasons, and then nobody cared to stir abroad, either by land or sea. I was now entered on the seven and twentieth year of my captivity in this place; though the three last years that I had this creature with me ought rather to be left out of the account, my habitation being quite of another kind than in all the rest of the time. I kept the anniversary of my landing here with the same thankfulness to God for His mercies as at first; and if I had such cause of acknowledgement at first, I had much more so now, having such additional testimonies of the care of Providence over me, and the great hopes I had of being effectually and speedily delivered; for I had an invincible impression upon my thoughts that my deliverance was at hand, and that I should not be another year in this place. However, I went on with my husbandry, digging, planting, fencing, as usual; I gathered and cured my grapes, and did every necessary thing, as before. The rainy season was in the meantime upon me, when I kept more within doors than at other times; so I had stowed our new vessel as secure as we could, bringing her up into the creek, where, as I said in the beginning, I landed my rafts from the ship and, hauling her up to the shore, at high-water mark, I made my man Friday dig a little dock, just big enough to hold her, and just deep enough to give her water enough to float in; and then when the tide was out, we made a strong dam across the end of it, to keep the water out; and so she lay dry, as to the tide, from the sea; and to keep the rain off, we laid a great many boughs of trees so thick that she was as well thatched as a house; and thus we waited for the months of November and December, in which I designed to make my adventure. We March Out Against the Cannibals WHEN the settled season began to come in, as the thought of my design returned with the fair weather, I was preparing daily for the voyage; and the first thing I did was to lay by a certain quantity of provisions, being the stores for our voyage; and intended, in a week or a fortnight' time, to open the dock and launch out our boat. I was busy one morning upon something of this kind, when I called to Friday, and bade him go to the seashore and see if he could find a turtle, or tortoise, a thing which we generally got once a week, for the sake of the eggs as well as the flesh. Friday had not been long gone when he came running back and flew over my outer wall, or fence, like one that felt not the ground, or the steps he set his feet on; and before I had time to speak to him, he cries out to me, "O Master! O Master! O sorrow! O bad!'' ''What' the matter, Friday?'' says I. "O yonder, there,'' says he, ''one, two, three canoe! one, two, three!'' By his way of speaking, I concluded there were six; but on inquiry I found it was but three. ''Well, Friday,'' says I, ''do not be frighted''; so I heartened him up as well as I could. However, I saw the poor fellow was most terribly scared; for nothing ran in his head but that they were come to look for him, and would cut him in pieces and eat him; and the poor fellow trembled so, that I scarce knew what to do with him. I comforted him as well as I could, and told him I was in as much danger as he, and that they would eat me as well as him; ''But,'' says I, ''Friday, we must resolve to fight them; can you fight, Friday?'' ''Me shoot,'' says he, ''but there come many great number.'' ''No matter for that,'' said I again, ''our guns will fright them that we do not kill''; so I asked him, whether if I resolved to defend him, he would defend me, and stand by me, and do just as I bade him. He said, ''Me die when you bid die, Master''; so I went and fetched a good dram of rum, and gave him; for I had been so good a husband of my rum, that I had a great deal left. When he had drunk it, I made him take the two fowling pieces, which we always carried, and load them with large swan-shot, as big as small pistol bullets; then I took four muskets, and loaded them with two slugs and five small bullets each; and my two pistols I loaded with a brace of bullets each. I hung my great sword, as usual, naked by my side, and gave Friday his hatchet. When I had thus prepared myself, I took my perspective -glass and went up to the side of the hill, to see what I could discover; and I found quickly, by my glass, that there were one-and-twenty savages, three prisoners, and three canoes; and that their whole business seemed to be the triumphant banquet upon these three human bodies (a barbarous feast indeed), but nothing else more than, as I had observed, was usual with them. I observed also that they were landed, not where they had done when Friday made his escape, but nearer to my creek, where the shore was low, and where a thick wood came close almost down to the sea. This, with the abhorrence of the inhuman errand these wretches came about, filled me with such indignation that I came down again to Friday and told him I was resolved to go down to them, and kill them all; and asked him if he would stand by me. He was now gotten over his fright, and his spirits being a little raised with the dram I had given him, he was very cheerful, and told me, as before, he would die when I bade die. In this fit of fury, I took first and divided the arms which I had charged, as before, between us; I gave Friday one pistol to stick in his girdle, and three guns upon his shoulder; and I took one pistol, and the other three myself; and in this posture we marched out. I took a small bottle of rum in my pocket and gave Friday a large bag with more powder and bullet; and as to orders, I charged him to keep close behind me, and not to stir, or shoot, or do anything, till I bade him; and in the meantime not to speak a word. In this posture I fetched a compass to my right hand of near a mile, as well to get over the creek, as to get into the wood; so that I might come within shot of them before I should be discovered, which I had seen by my glass it was easy to do. While I was making this march, my former thoughts returning, I began to abate my resolution; I do not mean that I entertained any fear of their number; for as they were naked, unarmed wretches, 'tis certain I was superior to them; nay, though I had been alone; but it occurred to my thoughts what call, what occasion, much less what necessity, I was in to go and dip my hands in blood, to attack people who had neither done or intended me any wrong; who, as to me, were innocent and whose barbarous customs were their own disaster, being in them a token indeed of God' having left them, with the other nations of that part of the world, to such stupidity and to such inhuman courses; but did not call me to take upon me to be a judge of their actions, much less an executioneer of His Justice; that whenever He thought fit, He would take the cause into His own hands, and by national vengeance punish them as a people for national crimes; but that, in the meantime, it was none of my business; that it was true, Friday might justify it, because he was a declared enemy, and in a state of war with those very particular people; and it was lawful for him to attack them; but I could not say the same with respect to me. These things were so warmly pressed upon my thoughts all the way as I went that I resolved I would only go and place myself near them, that I might observe their barbarous feast and that I would act then as God should direct; but that unless something offered that was more a call to me than yet I knew of, I would not meddle with them. With this resolution I entered the wood, and, with all possible wariness and silence (Friday following close at my heels) I marched till I came to the skirt of the wood, on the side which was next to them; only that one corner of the wood lay between me and them; here I called softly to Friday, and showing him a great tree, which was just at the corner of the wood, I bade him go to the tree, and bring me word if he could see there plainly what they were doing; he did so, and came immediately back to me and told me they might be plainly viewed there; that they were all about their fire, eating the flesh of one of their prisoners; and that another lay bound upon the sand, a little from them, which he said they would kill next; and which fired all the very soul within me. He told me it was not one of their nation, but one of the bearded men, whom he had told me of, that came to their country in the boat. I was filled with horror at the very naming the white bearded man, and, going to the tree, I saw plainly by my glass a white man who lay upon the beach of the sea, with his hands and his feet tied with flags, or things like rushes, and that he was a European and had clothes on. There was another tree, and a little thicket beyond it, about fifty yards nearer to them than the place where I was, which, by going a little way about, I saw I might come at undiscovered, and that then I should be within half shot of them; so I withheld my passion, though I was indeed enraged to the highest degree, and going back about twenty paces, I got behind some bushes, which held all the way, till I came to the other tree; and then I came to the little rising ground, which gave me a full view of them, at the distance of about eighty yards. I had now not a moment to lose; for nineteen of the dreadful wretches sat upon the ground, all close huddled together, and had just sent the other two to butcher the poor Christian and bring him, perhaps limb by limb, to their fire, and they were stooped down to untie the bands at his feet. I turned to Friday. ''Now, Friday,'' said I, ''do as I bid thee.'' Friday said he would. ''Then, Friday, '' says I, ''do exactly as you see me do; fail in nothing. '' So I set down one of the muskets and the fowling piece upon the ground, and Friday did the like by his; and with the other musket I took my aim at the savages, bidding him do the like; then asking him if he was ready, he said, ''Yes.'' ''Then fire at them,'' said I; and the same moment I fired also. Friday took his aim so much better than I that on the side that he shot he killed two of them and wounded three more; and on my side, I killed one and wounded two. They were, you may be sure, in a dreadful consternation; and all of them who were not hurt jumped up upon their feet, but did not immediately know which way to run or which way to look; for they knew not from whence their destruction came. Friday kept his eyes close upon me, that, as I had bade him, he might observe what I did; so, as soon as the first shot was made, I threw down the piece, and took up the fowling piece, and Friday did the like; he sees me cock and present; he did the same again. ''Are you ready, Friday?'' said I. ''Yes,'' says he. ''Let fly, then,'' says I, ''in the name of God!'' and with that I fired again among the amazed wretches, and so did Friday; and as our pieces were now loaden with what I called swan-shot, or small pistol bullets, we found only two drop; but so many were wounded that they ran about yelling and screaming like mad creatures, all bloody, and miserably wounded most of them; whereof three more fell quickly after, though not quite dead. ''Now, Friday,'' says I, laying down the discharged pieces and taking up the musket, which was yet loaden, ''follow me,'' says I, which he did, with a great deal of courage; upon which I rushed out of the wood and showed myself, and Friday close at my foot; as soon as I perceived they saw me, I shouted as loud as I could and bade Friday do so too; and running as fast as I could, which, by the way, was not very fast, being loaden with arms as I was, I made directly towards the poor victim, who was, as I said, lying upon the beach, or shore, between the place where they sat and the sea; the two butchers, who were just going to work with him, had left him at the surprise of our first fire and fled in a terrible fright to the seaside and had jumped into a canoe, and three more of the rest made the same way; I turned to Friday and bade him step forwards and fire at them. He understood me immediately, and running about forty yards to be near them, he shot at them, and I thought he had killed them all, for I saw them all fall of a heap into the boat; though I saw two of them up again quickly. However, he killed two of them and wounded the third, so that he lay down in the bottom of the boat, as if he had been dead. While my man Friday fired at them, I pulled out my knife and cut the flags that bound the poor victim; and, loosing his hands and feet, I lifted him up and asked him in the Portuguese tongue what he was. He answered in Latin, ''Christianus''; but was so weak and faint that he could scarce stand or speak; I took my bottle out of my pocket and gave it him, making signs that he should drink, which he did; and I gave him a piece of bread, which he ate; then I asked him what countryman he was. And he said ''Espagniole''; and being a little recovered, let me know by all the signs he could possibly make how much he was in my debt for his deliverance. ''Seignior,'' said I, with as much Spanish as I could make up, ''we will talk afterwards, but we must fight now; if you have any strength left, take this pistol and sword and lay about you.'' He took them very thankfully, and no sooner had he the arms in his hands, but as if they had put new vigour into him, he flew upon his murderers like a fury, and had cut two of them in pieces in an instant; for the truth is, as the whole was a surprise to them, so the poor creatures were so much frighted with the noise of our pieces that they fell down for mere amazement and fear and had no more power to attempt their own escape than their flesh had to resist our shot; and that was the case of those five that Friday shot at in the boat; for as three of them fell with the hurt they received, so the other two fell with the fright. I kept my piece in my hand still, without firing, being willing to keep my charge ready, because I had given the Spaniard my pistol and sword; so I called to Friday and bade him run up to the tree from whence we first fired, and fetch the arms which lay there that had been discharged, which he did with great swiftness; and then giving him my musket, I sat down myself to load all the rest again, and bade them come to me when they wanted. While I was loading these pieces, there happened a fierce engagement between the Spaniard and one of the savages, who made at him with one of their great wooden swords, the same weapon that was to have killed him before, if I had not prevented it. The Spaniard, who was as bold and as brave as could be imagined, though weak, had fought this Indian a good while, and had cut him two great wounds on his head; but the savage being a stout lusty fellow, closing in with him, had thrown him down, being faint, and was wringing my sword out of his hand, when the Spaniard, though undermost, wisely quitting the sword, drew the pistol from his girdle, shot the savage through the body, and killed him upon the spot, before I, who was running to help him, could come near him. Friday, being now left to his liberty, pursued the flying wretches with no weapon in his hand but his hatchet; and with that he dispatched those three, who, as I said before, were wounded at first and fallen, and all the rest he could come up with; and the Spaniard coming to me for a gun, I gave him one of the fowling pieces, with which he pursued two of the savages, and wounded them both; but as he was not able to run, they both got from him into the wood, where Friday pursued them and killed one of them; but the other was too nimble for him and though he was wounded, yet had plunged himself into the sea, and swam with all his might off to those two who were left in the canoe, which three in the canoe, with one wounded, who we know not whether he died or no, were all that escaped our hands of one-and-twenty. The account of the rest is as follows: Those that were in the canoe worked hard to get out of gunshot; and though Friday made two or three shot at them, I did not find that he hit any of them. Friday would fain have had me take one of their canoes and pursue them; and indeed I was very anxious about their escape, lest, carrying the news home to their people, they should come back perhaps with two or three hundred of their canoes and devour us by mere multitude; so I consented to pursue them by sea, and running to one of their canoes, I jumped in and bade Friday follow me; but when I was in the canoe, I was surprised to find another poor creature lie there alive, bound hand and foot, as the Spaniard was, for the slaughter, and almost dead with fear, not knowing what the matter was; for he had not been able to look up over the side of the boat, he was tied so hard, neck and heels, and had been tied so long that he had really but little life in him. I immediately cut the twisted flags, or rushes, which they had bound him with, and would have helped him up; but he could not stand or speak, but groaned most piteously, believing, it seems, still that he was only unbound in order to be killed. When Friday came to him, I bade him speak to him and tell him of his deliverance, and pulling out my bottle, made him give the poor wretch a dram, which, with the news of his being delivered, revived him, and he sat up in the boat; but when Friday came to hear him speak, and looked in his face, it would have moved anyone to tears, to have seen how Friday kissed him, embraced him, hugged him, cried, laughed, holloed, jumped about, danced, sang, then cried again, wrung his hands, beat his own face and head, and then sang and jumped about again, like a distracted creature. It was a good while before I could make him speak to me, or tell me what was the matter; but when he came a little to himself he told me that it was his father. It is not easy for me to express how it moved me to see what ecstasy and filial affection had worked in this poor savage, at the sight of his father and of his being delivered from death; nor indeed can I describe half the extravagances of his affection after this; for he went into the boat and out of the boat a great many times. When he went in to him, he would sit down by him, open his breast, and hold his father' head close to his bosom, half an hour together, to nourish it; then he took his arms and ankles, which were numbed and stiff with the binding, and chafed and rubbed them with his hands; and I, perceiving what the case was, gave him some rum out of my bottle to rub them with, which did them a great deal of good. with the other savages, who were now gotten almost out of sight; and it was happy for us that we did not; for it blew so hard within two hours after, and before they could be gotten a quarter of their way, and continued blowing so hard all night, and that from the northwest, which was against them, that I could not suppose their boat could live, or that they ever reached to their own coast. But to return to Friday; he was so busy about his father that I could not find in my heart to take him off for some time. But after I thought he could leave him a little, I called him to me, and he came jumping and laughing, and pleased to the highest extreme; then I asked him if he had given his father any bread. He shook his head and said, ''None; ugly dog eat all up self.'' So I gave him a cake of bread out of a little pouch I carried on purpose; I also gave him a dram for himself, but he would not taste it but carried it to his father. I had in my pocket also two or three bunches of my raisins, so I gave him a handful of them for his father. He had no sooner given his father these raisins but I saw him come out of the boat and run away, as if he had been bewitched, he ran at such a rate; for he was the swiftest fellow of his foot that ever I saw; I say, he ran at such a rate that he was out of sight, as it were, in an instant; and though I called, and holloed, too, after him, it was all one, away he went, and in a quarter of an hour I saw him come back again, though not so fast as he went; and as he came nearer, I found his pace was slacker because he had something in his hand. When he came up to me, I found he had been quite home for an earthen jug or pot to bring his father some fresh water, and that he had got two more cakes or loaves of bread. The bread he gave me, but the water he carried to his father. However, as I was very thirsty too, I took a little sup of it. This water revived his father more than all the rum or spirits I had given him, for he was just fainting with thirst. When his father had drunk, I called to him to know if there was any water left; he said ''Yes''; and I bade him give it to the poor Spaniard, who was in as much want of it as his father; and I sent one of the cakes that Friday brought to the Spaniard too, who was indeed very weak, and was reposing himself upon a green place under the shade of a tree, and whose limbs were also very stiff, and very much swelled with the rude bandage he had been tied with. When I saw that, upon Friday' coming to him with the water, he sat up and drank, and took the bread and began to eat, I went to him and gave him a handful of raisins; he looked up in my face with all the tokens of gratitude and thankfulness that could appear in any countenance, but was so weak, notwithstanding he had so exerted himself in the fight that he could not stand up upon his feet; he tried to do it two or three times, but was really not able, his ankles were so swelled and so painful to him; so I bade him sit still, and caused Friday to rub his ankles and bathe them with rum, as he had done his father'. I observed the poor affectionate creature, every two minutes or perhaps less, all the while he was here, turned his head about to see if his father was in the same place and posture as he left him sitting; and at last he found he was not to be seen; at which he started up, and without speaking a word, flew with that swiftness to him, that one could scarce perceive his feet to touch the ground as he went. But when he came, he only found he had laid himself down to ease his limbs; so Friday came back to me presently, and I then spoke to the Spaniard to let Friday help him up if he could and lead him to the boat, and then he should carry him to our dwelling, where I would take care of him. But Friday, a lusty strong fellow, took the Spaniard quite up upon his back and carried him away to the boat and set him down softly upon the side, or gunnel, of the canoe, with his feet in the inside of it, and then lifted him quite in and set him close to his father, and presently stepping out again, launched the boat off, and paddled it along the shore faster than I could walk, though the wind blew pretty hard too; so he brought them both safe into our creek; and leaving them in the boat, runs away to fetch the other canoe. As he passed me, I spoke to him, and asked him whither he went; he told me, ''Go fetch more boat''; so away he went, like the wind; for sure never man or horse ran like him, and he had the other canoe in the creek almost as soon as I got to it by land; so he wafted me over, and then went to help our new guests out of the boat, which he did; but they were neither of them able to walk; so that poor Friday knew not what to do. To remedy this, I went to work in my thought, and calling to Friday to bid them sit down on the bank while he came to me, I soon made a kind of hand-barrow to lay them on, and Friday and I carried them up both together upon it between us. But when we got them to the outside of our wall, or fortification, we were at a worse loss than before; for it was impossible to get them over, and I was resolved not to break it down. So I set to work again; and Friday and I, in about two hours' time, made a very handsome tent, covered with old sails, and above that with boughs of trees, being in the space without our outward fence, and between that and the grove of young wood which I had planted. And here we made them two beds of such things as I had, viz., of good rice straw, with blankets laid upon it to lie on, and another to cover them, on each bed. My island was now peopled, and I thought myself very rich in subjects; and it was a merry reflection, which I frequently made, how like a king I looked. First of all, the whole country was my own mere property, so that I had an undoubted right of dominion. Secondly, my people were perfectly subjected. I was absolute lord and lawgiver; they all owed their lives to me, and were ready to lay down their lives, if there had been occasion of it, for me. It was remarkable, too, we had but three subjects, and they were of three different religions. My man Friday was a Protestant, his father was a pagan and a cannibal, and the Spaniard was a Papist. However, I allowed liberty of conscience throughout my dominions. But this is by the way. We Plan a Voyage to the Colonies of America AS SOON as I had secured my two weak rescued prisoners, and given them shelter and a place to rest them upon, I began to think of making some provision for them. And the first thing I did, I ordered Friday to take a yearling goat, betwixt a kid and a goat, out of my particular flock, to be killed; when I cut off the hinder quarter, and chopping it into small pieces, I set Friday to work to boiling and stewing, and made them a very good dish, I assure you, of flesh and broth, having put some barley and rice also into the broth; and as I cooked it without doors, for I made no fire within my inner wall, so I carried it all into the new tent; and having set a table there for them, I sat down and ate my own dinner also with them, and, as well as I could, cheered them and encouraged them; Friday being my interpreter, especially to his father, and indeed to the Spaniard too; for the Spaniard spoke the language of the savages pretty well. After we had dined, or rather supped, I ordered Friday to take one of the canoes, and go and fetch our muskets and other firearms, which for want of time we had left upon the place of battle; and the next day I ordered him to go and bury the dead bodies of the savages, which lay open to the sun, and would presently be offensive; and I also ordered him to bury the horrid remains of their barbarous feast, which I knew were pretty much, and which I could not think of doing myself; nay, I could not bear to see them, if I went that way. All of which he punctually performed, and defaced the very appearance of the savages being there; so that when I went again I could scarce know where it was, otherwise than by the corner of the wood pointing to the place. I then began to enter into a little conversation with my two new subjects; and first I set Friday to inquire of his father what he thought of the escape of the savages in that canoe, and whether we might expect a return of them with a power too great for us to resist. His first opinion was that the savages in the boat never could live out the storm which blew that night they went off, but must of necessity be drowned or driven south to those other shores, where they were as sure to be devoured as they were to be drowned if they were cast away; but as to what they would do if they came safe on shore, he said he knew not; but it was his opinion that they were so dreadfully frighted with the manner of their being attacked, the noise and the fire, that he believed they would tell their people they were all killed by thunder and lightning, not by the hand of man, and that the two which appeared, viz., Friday and me, were two heavenly spirits or furies come down to destroy them, and not men with weapons. This he said he knew, because he heard them all cry out so in their language to one another, for it was impossible to them to conceive that a man could dart fire and speak thunder and kill at a distance without lifting up the hand, as was done now. And this old savage was in the right; for, as I understood since by other hands, the savages never attempted to go over to the island afterwards; they were so terrified with the accounts given by those four men (for it seems they did escape the sea) that they believed whoever went to that enchanted island would be destroyed with fire from the gods. This, however, I knew not, and therefore was under continual apprehensions for a good while, and kept always upon my guard, me and all my army; for as we were now four of us, I would have ventured upon a hundred of them fairly in the open field at any time. In a little time, however, no more canoes appearing, the fear of their coming wore off, and I began to take my former thoughts of a voyage to the main into consideration; being likewise assured by Friday' father that I might depend upon good usage from their nation on his account, if I would go. But my thoughts were a little suspended when I had a serious discourse with the Spaniard, and when I understood that there were sixteen more of his countrymen and Portuguese, who, having been cast away and made their escape to that side, lived there at peace indeed with the savages, but were very sore put to it for necessaries, and indeed for life. I asked him all the particulars of their voyage, and found they were a Spanish ship bound from the Rio de la Plata to Havana, being directed to leave their loading there, which was chiefly hides and silver, and to bring back what European goods they could meet with there; that they had five Portuguese seamen on board, whom they took out of another wreck; that five of their own men were drowned when the first ship was lost, and that these escaped through infinite dangers and hazards, and arrived, almost starved, on the cannibal coast, where they expected to have been devoured every moment. He told me they had some arms with them, but they were perfectly useless, for that they had neither powder or ball, the washing of the sea having spoiled all their powder but a little, which they used at their first landing to provide themselves some food. I asked him what he thought would become of them there, and if they had formed no design of making any escape. He said they had many consultations about it, but that having neither vessel, or tools to build one, or provisions of any kind, their councils always ended in tears and despair. I asked him how he thought they would receive a proposal from me, which might tend towards an escape; and whether, if they were all here, it might not be done. I told him with freedom, I feared mostly their treachery and ill usage of me, if I put my life in their hands; for that gratitude was no inherent virtue in the nature of man; nor did men always square their dealings by the obligations they had received so much as they did by the advantages they expected. I told him it would be very hard that I should be the instrument of their deliverance and that they should afterwards make me their prisoner in New Spain, where an Englishman was certain to be made a sacrifice, what necessity or what accident soever brought him thither. And that I had rather be delivered up to the savages and be devoured alive than fall into the merciless claws of the priests and be carried into the Inquisition. I added that otherwise I was persuaded, if they were all here, we might, with so many hands, build a bark large enough to carry us all away, either to Brazil southward, or to the islands or Spanish coast northward. But that if in requital they should, when I had put weapons into their hands, carry me by force among their own people, I might be ill used for my kindness to them, and make my case worse than it was before. He answered with a great deal of candour and ingenuity that their condition was so miserable, and they were so sensible of it, that he believed they would abhor the thought of using any man unkindly that should contribute to their deliverance; and that, if I pleased, he would go to them with the old man and discourse with them about it, and return again and bring me their answer. That he would make conditions with them upon their solemn oath, that they should be absolutely under my leading, as their commander and captain; and that they should swear upon the Holy Sacraments and the Gospel to be true to me and to go to such Christian country as that I should agree to, and no other; and to be directed wholly and absolutely by my orders, till they were landed safely in such country as I intended; and that he would bring a contract from them, under their hands, for that purpose. Then he told me he would first swear to me himself that he would never stir from me as long as he lived, till I gave him orders; and that he would take my side to the last drop of his blood, if there should happen the least breach of faith among his countrymen. He told me they were all of them very civil honest men, and they were under the greatest distress imaginable, having neither weapons or clothes, nor any food, but at the mercy and discretion of the savages; out of all hopes of ever returning to their own country; and that he was sure, if I would undertake their relief, they would live and die by me. Upon these assurances, I resolved to venture to relieve them, if possible, and to send the old savage and this Spaniard over to them to treat. But when we had gotten all things in a readiness to go, the Spaniard himself started an objection, which had so much prudence in it on one hand, and so much sincerity on the other hand, that I could not but be very well satisfied in it; and, by his advice, put off the deliverance of his comrades for at least half a year. The case was thus: He had been with us now about a month, during which time I had let him see in what manner I had provided, with the assistance of Providence, for my support; and he saw evidently what stock of corn and rice I had laid up; which, as it was more than sufficient for myself, so it was not sufficient, at least without good husbandry, for my family, now it was increased to number four. But much less would it be sufficient, if his countrymen, who were, as he said, fourteen still alive, should come over. And least of all would it be sufficient to victual our vessel, if we should build one, for a voyage to any of the Christian colonies of America. So he told me he thought it would be more advisable to let him and the two others dig and cultivate some more land, as much as I could spare seed to sow; and that we should wait another harvest, that we might have a supply of corn for his countrymen when they should come; for want might be a temptation to them to disagree, or not to think themselves delivered, otherwise than out of one difficulty into another. ''You know,'' says he, ''the Children of Israel, though they rejoiced at first for their being delivered out of Egypt, yet rebelled even against God Himself that delivered them, when they came to want bread in the wilderness.'' His caution was so seasonable, and his advice so good, that I could not but be very well pleased with his proposal, as well as I was satisfied with his fidelity. So we fell to digging, all four of us, as well as the wooden tools we were furnished with permitted; and in about a month' time, by the end of which it was seed time, we had gotten as much land cured and trimmed up as we sowed twenty-two bushels of barley on, and sixteen jars of rice, which was, in short, all the seed we had to spare; nor indeed did we leave ourselves barley sufficient for our own food for the six months that we had to expect our crop, that is to say, reckoning from the time we set our seed aside for sowing; for it is not to be supposed it is six months in the ground in the country. Having now society enough, and our number being sufficient to put us out of fear of the savages, if they had come, unless their number had been very great, we went freely all over the island, wherever we found occasion; and as here we had our escape or deliverance upon our thoughts, it was impossible, at least for me, to have the means of it out of mine; to this purpose, I marked out several trees which I thought fit for our work, and I set Friday and his father to cutting them down; and then I caused the Spaniard, to whom I imparted my thought on that affair, to oversee and direct their work. I showed them with what indefatigable pains I had hewed a large tree into single planks, and I caused them to do the like, till they had made about a dozen large planks of good oak, near two foot broad, thirty-five foot long, and from two inches to four inches thick. What prodigious labour it took up, anyone may imagine. At the same time I contrived to increase my little flock of tame goats as much as I could; and to this purpose I made Friday and the Spaniard go out one day, and myself with Friday the next day, for we took our turns. And by this means we got above twenty young kids to breed up with the rest; for whenever we shot the dam, we saved the kids, and added them to our flock. But above all, the season for curing the grapes coming on, I caused such a prodigious quantity to be hung up in the sun, that I believe, had we been at Alicante, where the raisins of the sun are cured, we could have filled sixty or eighty barrels; and these, with our bread, were a great part of our food, and very good living too, I assure you; for it is an exceeding nourishing food. It was now harvest, and our crop in good order; it was not the most plentiful increase I had seen in the island, but, however, it was enough to answer our end; for from our twenty-two bushels of barley we brought in and thrashed out above 220 bushels; and the like in proportion of the rice, which was store enough for our food to the next harvest, though all the sixteen Spaniards had been on shore with me; or if we had been ready for a voyage, it would very plentifully have victualed our ship, to have carried us to any part of the world, that is to say, of America. When we had thus housed and secured our magazine of corn, we fell to work to make more wicker-work, viz., great baskets in which we kept it; and the Spaniard was very handy and dexterous at this part, and often blamed me that I did not make some things for defence, of this kind of work; but I saw no need of it. And now having a full supply of food for all the guests I expected, I gave the Spaniard leave to go over to the main, to see what he could do with those he had left behind him there. I gave him a strict charge in writing not to bring any man with him who would not first swear in the presence of himself and of the old savage that he would no way injure, fight with, or attack the person he should find in the island, who was so kind to send for them in order to their deliverance; but that they would stand by and defend him against all such attempts, and wherever they went, would be entirely under and subjected to his commands; and that this should be put in writing and signed with their hands. How we were to have this done, when I knew they had neither pen nor ink, that, indeed, was a question which we never asked. Under these instructions, the Spaniard and the old savage (the father of Friday) went away in one of the canoes which they might be said to come in, or rather were brought in, when they came as prisoners to be devoured by the savages. I gave each of them a musket with a firelock on it, and about eight charges of powder and ball, charging them to be very good husbands of both and not to use either of them but upon urgent occasion. This was a cheerful work, being the first measures used by me in view of my deliverance for now twenty-seven years and some days. I gave them provisions of bread and of dry grapes sufficient for themselves for many days, and sufficient for all their countrymen for about eight days' time; and wishing them a good voyage, I saw them go, agreeing with them about a signal they should hang out at their return, by which I should know them again when they came back, at a distance, before they came on shore. They went away with a fair gale on the day that the moon was at full; by my account, in the month of October; but as for an exact reckoning of days, after I had once lost it, I could never recover it again; nor had I kept even the number of years so punctually as to be sure that I was right, though as it proved, when I afterwards examined my account, I found I had kept a true reckoning of years. We Quell a Mutiny IT WAS no less than eight days I had waited for them, when a strange and unforeseen accident intervened, of which the like has not perhaps been heard in history. I was fast asleep in my hutch one morning, when my man Friday came running in to me and called aloud, ''Master, master, they are come, they are come!'' I jumped up, and regardless of danger I went out, as soon as I could get my clothes on, through my little grove, which, by the way, was by this time grown to be a very thick wood; I say, regardless of danger, I went without my arms, which was not my custom to do. But I was surprised when, turning my eyes to the sea, I presently saw a boat at about a league and half' distance, standing in for the shore, with a shoulder-of-mutton sail, as they call it, and the wind blowing pretty fair to bring them in; also I observed presently that they did not come from that side which the shore lay on, but from the southermost end of the island. Upon this I called Friday in, and bid him lie close, for these were not the people we looked for, and that we might not know yet whether they were friends or enemies. In the next place, I went in to fetch my perspective-glass, to see what I could make of them; and having taken the ladder out, I climbed up to the top of the hill, as I used to do when I was apprehensive of anything, and to take my view the plainer without being discovered. I had scarce set my foot on the hill, when my eye plainly discovered a ship lying at an anchor at about two leagues and a half' distance from me, south-southeast, but not above a league and a half from the shore. By my observation it appeared plainly to be an English ship, and the boat appeared to be an English longboat. I cannot express the confusion I was in, though the joy of seeing a ship, and one whom I had reason to believe was manned by my own countrymen, and consequently friends, was such as I cannot describe; but yet I had some secret doubts hung about me, I cannot tell from whence they came, bidding me keep upon my guard. In the first place, it occurred to me to consider what business an English ship could have in that part of the world, since it was not the way to or from any part of the world where the English had any traffic; and I knew there had been no storms to drive them in there, as in distress; and that if they were English really, it was most probable that they were here upon no good design; and that I had better continue as I was than fall into the hands of thieves and murderers. Let no man despise the secret hints and notices of danger, which sometimes are given him, when he may think there is no possibility of its being real. That such hints and notices are given us, I believe few that have made any observations of things can deny; that they are certain discoveries of an invisible world, and a converse of spirits, we cannot doubt; and if the tendency of them seems to be to warn us of danger, why should we not suppose they are from some friendly agent (whether supreme, or inferior and subordinate, is not the question) and that they are given for our good? The present question abundantly confirms me in the justice of this reasoning; for had I not been made cautious by this secret admonition, come it from whence it will, I had been undone inevitably, and in a far worse condition than before, as you will see presently. I had not kept myself long in this posture but I saw the boat draw near the shore, as if they looked for a creek to thrust in at for the convenience of landing; however, as they did not come quite far enough, they did not see the little inlet where I formerly landed my rafts, but ran their boat on shore upon the beach, at about half a mile from me, which was very happy for me; for otherwise they would have landed just, as I may say, at my door, and would soon have beaten me out of my castle and perhaps have plundered me of all I had. When they were on shore, I was fully satisfied that they were Englishmen, at least most of them; one or two I thought were Dutch, but it did not prove so. There were in all eleven men, whereof three of them, I found, were unarmed, and, as I thought, bound; and when the first four or five of them were jumped on shore, they took those three out of the boat as prisoners. One of the three I could perceive using the most passionate gestures of entreaty, affliction, and despair, even to a kind of extravagance; the other two, I could perceive, lifted up their hands sometimes, and appeared concerned indeed, but not to such a degree as the first. I was perfectly confounded at the sight, and knew not what the meaning of it should be. Friday called out to me in English, as well as he could, "O master! you see English mans eat prisoner as well as savage mans.'' ''Why,'' says I, ''Friday, do you think they are a-going to eat them then?'' ''Yes,'' says Friday, ''they will eat them.'' ''No, no,'' says I, ''Friday, I am afraid they will murder them, indeed, but you may be sure they will not eat them.'' All this while I had no thought of what the matter really was, but stood trembling with the horror of the sight, expecting every moment when the three prisoners should be killed; nay, once I saw one of the villains lift up his arm with a great cutlass (as the seamen call it), or sword, to strike one of the poor men; and I expected to see him fall every moment, at which all the blood in my body seemed to run chill in my veins. I wished heartily now for my Spaniard, and the savage that was gone with him; or that I had any way to have come undiscovered within shot of them, that I might have rescued the three men; for I saw no firearms they had among them; but it fell out to my mind another way. After I had observed the outrageous usage of the three men by the insolent seamen, I observed the fellows run scattering about the land, as if they wanted to see the country. I observed that the three other men had liberty to go also where they pleased; but they sat down all three upon the ground, very pensive, and looked like men in despair. This put me in mind of the first time when I came on shore, and began to look about me, how I gave myself over for lost, how wildly I looked round me, what dreadful apprehensions I had, and how I lodged in the tree all night for fear of being devoured by wild beasts. As I knew nothing that night of the supply I was to receive by the providential driving of the ship nearer the land by the storms and tide, by which I have since been so long nourished and supported; so these three poor desolate men knew nothing how certain of deliverance and supply they were, how near it was to them, and how effectually and really they were in a condition of safety at the same time that they thought themselves lost and their case desperate. So little do we see before us in the world, and so much reason have we to depend cheerfully upon the great Maker of the world, that He does not leave His creatures so absolutely destitute but that in the worst circumstances they have always something to be thankful for, and sometimes are nearer their deliverance than they imagine; nay, are even brought to their deliverance by the means by which they seem to be brought to their destruction. It was just at the top of high water when these people came on shore, and while partly they stood parleying with the prisoners they brought, and partly while they rambled about to see what kind of a place they were in, they had carelessly stayed till the tide was spent, and the water was ebbed considerably away, leaving their boat aground. They had left two men in the boat, who, as I found afterwards, having drunk a little too much brandy, fell asleep; however, one of them waking sooner than the other, and finding the boat too fast aground for him to stir it, holloed for the rest, who were straggling about, upon which they all soon came to the boat; but it was past all their strength to launch her, the boat being very heavy, and the shore on that side being a soft oozy sand, almost like a quicksand. In this condition, like true seamen, who are perhaps the least of all mankind given to forethought, they gave it over, and away they strolled about the country again; and I heard one of them say aloud to another (calling them off from the boat), ''Why, let her alone, Jack, can't ye? she'll float next tide''; by which I was fully confirmed in the main inquiry of what countrymen they were. All this while I kept myself very close, not once daring to stir out of my castle, any farther than to my place of observation near the top of the hill; and very glad I was to think how well it was fortified. I knew it was no less than ten hours before the boat could be on float again, and by that time it would be dark, and I might be at more liberty to see their motions, and to hear their discourse, if they had any. In the meantime I fitted myself up for a battle, as before; though with more caution, knowing I had to do with another kind of enemy than I had at first. I ordered Friday also, whom I had made an excellent marksman with his gun, to load himself with arms. I took myself two fowling pieces, and I gave him three muskets; my figure, indeed, was very fierce; I had my formidable goatskin coat on, with the great cap I have mentioned, a naked sword by my side, two pistols in my belt, and a gun upon each shoulder. It was my design, as I said above, not to have made any attempt till it was dark. But about two o'clock, being the heat of the day, I found that, in short, they were all gone straggling into the woods and, as I thought, were laid down to sleep. The three poor distressed men, too anxious for their condition to get any sleep, were, however, set down under the shelter of a great tree, at about a quarter of a mile from me, and, as I thought, out of sight of any of the rest. Upon this I resolved to discover myself to them and learn something of their condition. Immediately I marched in the figure as above, my man Friday at a good distance behind me, as formidable for his arms as I, but not making quite so staring a spectre-like figure as I did. I came as near them undiscovered as I could, and then before any of them saw me, I called aloud to them in Spanish, ''What are ye, gentlemen?'' They started up at the noise, but were ten times more confounded when they saw me, and the uncouth figure that I made. They made no answer at all, but I thought I perceived them just going to fly from me, when I spoke to them in English: ''Gentlemen,'' said I, ''do not be surprised at me; perhaps you may have a friend near you, when you did not expect it.'' ''He must be sent directly from Heaven then,'' said one of them very gravely to me, and pulling off his hat at the same time to me, ''for our condition is past the help of man.'' ''All help is from Heaven, sir,'' said I. ''But can you put a stranger in the way how to help you, for you seem to me to be in some great distress? I saw you when you landed, and when you seemed to make applications to the brutes that came with you, I saw one of them lift up his sword to kill you.'' The poor man, with tears running down his face, and trembling, looking like one astonished, returned, ''Am I talking to God, or man? Is it a real man, or an angel!'' ''Be in no fear about that, sir,'' said I; ''if God had sent an angel to relieve you, he would have come better clothed, and armed after another manner than you see me in; pray lay aside your fears; I am a man, an Englishman, and disposed to assist you, you see; I have one servant only; we have arms and ammunition; tell us freely, can we serve you??ÄîWhat is your case?'' ''Our case,'' said he, ''sir, is too long to tell you, while our murderers are so near; but in short, sir, I was commander of that ship; my men have mutinied against me, they have been hardly prevailed on not to murder me, and at last have set me on shore in this desolate place, with these two men with me, one my mate, the other a passenger, where we expected to perish, believing the place to be uninhabited, and know not yet what to think of it.'' ''Where are those brutes, your enemies?'' said I. ''Do you know where they are gone?'' ''There they lie, sir,'' said he, pointing to a thicket of trees; ''my heart trembles for fear they have seen us and heard you speak; if they have, they will certainly murder us all.'' ''Have they any firearms?'' said I. He answered they had only two pieces, and one which they left in the boat. ''Well then,'' said I, ''leave the rest to me; I see they are all asleep, it is an easy thing to kill them all; but shall we rather take them prisoners?'' He told me there were two desperate villains among them that it was scarce safe to show any mercy to; but if they were secured, he believed all the rest would return to their duty. I asked him which they were. He told me he could not at that distance describe them, but he would obey my orders in anything I would direct. ''Well,'' says I, ''let us retreat out of their view or hearing, lest they awake, and we will resolve further''; so they willingly went back with me, till the woods covered us from them. ''Look you, sir,'' said I, ''if I venture upon your deliverance, are you willing to make two conditions with me?'' He anticipated my proposals by telling me that both he and the ship, if recovered, should be wholly directed and commanded by me in everything; and if the ship was not recovered, he would live and die with me in what part of the world soever I would send him; and the two other men said the same. ''Well,'' says I, ''my conditions are but two. 1. That while you stay on this island with me, you will not pretend to any authority here; and if I put arms into your hands, you will upon all occasions give them up to me and do no prejudice to me or mine upon this island, and in the meantime, be governed by my orders. ''2. That if the ship is or may be recovered, you will carry me and my man to England passage-free.'' He gave me all the assurances that the invention and faith of man could devise that he would comply with these most reasonable demands, and besides would owe his life to me and acknowledge it upon all occasions as long as he lived. ''Well then,'' said I, ''here are three muskets for you, with powder and ball; tell me next what you think is proper to be done.'' He showed all the testimony of his gratitude that he was able, but offered to be wholly guided by me. I told him I thought it was hard venturing anything; but the best method I could think of was to fire upon them at once, as they lay; and if any was not killed at the first volley, and offered to submit, we might save them, and so put it wholly upon God' Providence to direct the shot. He said very modestly that he was loath to kill them, if he could help it, but that those two were incorrigible villains and had been the authors of all the mutiny in the ship, and if they escaped, we should be undone still; for they would go on board and bring the whole ship' company, and destroy us all. ''Well then,'' says I, ''necessity legitimates my advice; for it is the only way to save our lives.'' However, seeing him still cautious of shedding blood, I told him they should go themselves, and manage as they found convenient. In the middle of this discourse we heard some of them awake, and soon after, we saw two of them on their feet. I asked him if either of them were of the men who he had said were the heads of the mutiny. He said, ''No.'' ''Well then,'' said I, ''you may let them escape; and Providence seems to have wakened them on purpose to save themselves. Now,'' says I, ''if the rest escape you, it is your fault.'' Animated with this, he took the musket I had given him in his hand, and a pistol in his belt, and his two comrades with him, with each man a piece in his hand. The two men who were with him, going first, made some noise, at which one of the seamen, who was awake, turned about, and seeing them coming cried out to the rest; but it was too late then, for the moment he cried out they fired; I mean the two men, the captain wisely reserving his own piece. They had so well aimed their shot at the men they knew that one of them was killed on the spot, and the other very much wounded; but not being dead, he started up upon his feet, and called eagerly for help to the other; but the captain, stepping to him, told him 'twas too late to cry for help, he should call upon God to forgive his villainy, and with that word knocked him down with the stock of his musket, so that he never spoke more. There were three more in the company, and one of them was also slightly wounded. By this time I was come; and when they saw their danger, and that it was in vain to resist, they begged for mercy. The captain told them he would spare their lives, if they would give him any assurance of their abhorrence of the treachery they had been guilty of, and would swear to be faithful to him in recovering the ship and afterwards in carrying her back to Jamaica, from whence they came. They gave him all the protestations of their sincerity that could be desired, and he was willing to believe them, and spare their lives, which I was not against, only I obliged him to keep them bound hand and foot while they were upon the island. While this was doing, I sent Friday with the captain' mate to the boat, with orders to secure her and bring away the oars and sail, which they did; and by and by, three straggling men, that were (happily for them) parted from the rest, came back upon hearing the guns fired, and seeing their captain, who before was their prisoner, now their conqueror, they submitted to be bound also; and so our victory was complete. It now remained that the captain and I should inquire into one another' circumstances. I began first, and told him my whole history, which he heard with an attention even to amazement; and particularly at the wonderful manner of my being furnished with provisions and ammunition; and, indeed, as my story is a whole collection of wonders, it affected him deeply; but when he reflected from thence upon himself, and how I seemed to have been preserved there on purpose to save his life, the tears ran down his face, and he could not speak a word more. After this communication was at an end, I carried him and his two men into my apartment, leading them in just where I came out, viz., at the top of the house, where I refreshed them with such provisions as I had, and showed them all the contrivances I had made during my long, long inhabiting that place. All I showed them, all I said to them, was perfectly amazing; but above all, the captain admired my fortification, and how perfectly I had concealed my retreat with a grove of trees, which having been now planted near twenty years, and the trees growing much faster than in England, was become a little wood, and so thick, that it was unpassable in any part of it, but at that one side, where I had reserved my little winding passage into it. I told him this was my castle and my residence, but that I had a seat in the country, as most princes have, whither I could retreat upon occasion, and I would show him that too another time; but at present our business was to consider how to recover the ship. He agreed with me as to that; but told me he was perfectly at a loss what measures to take; for that there were still six-and-twenty hands on board, who, having entered into a cursed conspiracy, by which they had all forfeited their lives to the law, would be hardened in it now by desperation; and would carry it on, knowing that if they were reduced, they should be brought to the gallows as soon as they came to England or to any of the English colonies; and that therefore there would be no attacking them with so small a number as we were. I mused for some time upon what he said, and found it was a very rational conclusion; and that therefore something was to be resolved on very speedily, as well to draw the men on board into some snare for their surprise, as to prevent their landing upon us, and destroying us; upon this it presently occurred to me that in a little while the ship' crew, wondering what was become of their comrades and of the boat, would certainly come on shore in their other boat to see for them, and that then perhaps they might come armed and be too strong for us; this he allowed was rational. Upon this, I told him the first thing we had to do was to stave the boat, which lay upon the beach, so that they might not carry her off; and taking everything out of her, leave her so far useless as not to be fit to swim; accordingly we went on board, took the arms which were left on board out of her, and whatever else we found there, which was a bottle of brandy, and another of rum, a few biscuit cakes, a horn of powder, and a great lump of sugar in a piece of canvas; the sugar was five or six pounds; all which was very welcome to me, especially the brandy and sugar, of which I had had none left for many years. When we had carried all these things on shore (the oars, mast, sail, and rudder of the boat were carried away before, as above), we knocked a great hole in her bottom, that if they had come strong enough to master us, yet they could not carry off the boat. Indeed, it was not much in my thoughts that we could be able to recover the ship; but my view was that if they went away without the boat, I did not much question to make her fit again to carry us away to the Leeward Islands and call upon our friends, the Spaniards, in my way, for I had them still in my thoughts. While we were thus preparing our designs, and had first by main strength heaved the boat up upon the beach, so high that the tide would not fleet her off at high-water mark, and besides had broke a hole in her bottom too big to be quickly stopped, and were sat down musing what we should do, we heard the ship fire a gun and saw her make a waft with her ancient as a signal for the boat to come on board; but no boat stirred; and they fired several times, making other signals for the boat. At last, when all their signals and firings proved fruitless, and they found the boat did not stir, we saw them, by the help of my glasses, hoist another boat out, and row towards the shore; and we found, as they approached, that there was no less than ten men in her, and that they had firearms with them. As the ship lay almost two leagues from the shore, we had a full view of them as they came, and a plain sight of the men, even of their faces, because the tide having set them a little to the east of the other boat, they rowed up under shore, to come to the same place where the other had landed, and where the boat lay. By this means, I say, we had a full view of them and the captain knew the persons and characters of all the men in the boat, of whom he said that there were three very honest fellows, who, he was sure, were led into this conspiracy by the rest, being overpowered and frighted. But that as for the boatswain, who, it seems, was the chief officer among them, and all the rest, they were as outrageous as any of the ship' crew, and were, no doubt, made desperate in their new enterprise; and terribly apprehensive he was that they would be too powerful for us. I smiled at him and told him that men in our circumstances were past the operation of fear. That seeing almost every condition that could be was better than that which we were supposed to be in, we ought to expect that the consequence, whether death or life, would be sure to be a deliverance. I asked him what he thought of the circumstances of my life, and whether a deliverance were not worth venturing for. ''And where, sir,'' said I, ''is your belief of my being preserved here on purpose to save your life, which elevated you a little while ago? For my part,'' said I, ''there seems to be but one thing amiss in all the prospects of it.'' ''What' that?'' says he. ''Why,'' said I, '' 'tis that, as you say, there are three or four honest fellows among them, which should be spared; had they been all of the wicked part of the crew, I should have thought God' Providence had signaled them out to deliver them into your hands; for depend upon it, every man of them that comes ashore are our own and shall die or live, as they behave to us.'' As I spoke this with a raised voice and cheerful countenance, I found it greatly encouraged him; so we set vigorously to our business. We had, upon the first appearance of the boat' coming from the ship, considered of separating our prisoners, and had indeed secured them effectually. Two of them, of whom the captain was less assured than ordinary, I sent with Friday and one of the three (delivered men) to my cave, where they were remote enough, and out of danger of being heard or discovered, or of finding their way out of the woods, if they could have delivered themselves. Here they left them bound, but gave them provisions, and promised them, if they continue there quietly, to give them their liberty in a day or two; but that if they attempted their escape, they should be put to death without mercy. They promised faithfully to bear their confinement with patience, and were very thankful that they had such good usage as to have provisions and a light left them; for Friday gave them candles (such as we made ourselves) for their comfort; and they did not know but that he stood sentinel over them at the entrance. The other prisoners had better usage; two of them were kept pinioned indeed, because the captain was not free to trust them; but the other two were taken into my service upon their captain' recommendation and upon their solemnly engaging to live and die with us; so with them and the three honest men we were seven men, well armed; and I made no doubt we should be able to deal well enough with the ten that were a-coming, considering that the captain had said there were three or four honest men among them also. As soon as they got to the place where their other boat lay, they ran their boat into the beach, and came all on shore, hauling the boat up after them, which I was glad to see; for I was afraid they would rather have left the boat at an anchor, some distance from the shore, with some hands in her to guard her; and so we should not be able to seize the boat. Being on shore, the first thing they did, they ran all to their other boat; and it was easy to see that they were under a great surprise to find her stripped, as above, of all that was in her, and a great hole in her bottom. After they had mused a while upon this, they set up two or three great shouts, holloing with all their might, to try if they could make their companions hear; but all was to no purpose. Then they came all close in a ring, and fired a volley of their small arms, which indeed we heard, and the echoes made the woods ring; but it was all one; those in the cave we were sure could not hear, and those in our keeping, though they heard it well enough, yet durst give no answer to them. They were so astonished at the surprise of this that, as they told us afterwards, they resolved to go all on board again, to their ship, and let them know there that the men were all murdered and the longboat staved; accordingly, they immediately launched their boat again, and got all of them on board. The captain was terribly amazed and even confounded at this, believing they would go on board the ship again and set sail, giving their comrades for lost, and so he should still lose the ship, which he was in hopes we should have recovered; but he was quickly as much frighted the other way. They had not been long put off with the boat but we perceived them all coming on shore again; but with this new measure in their conduct, which it seems they consulted together upon, viz., to leave three men in the boat, and the rest to go on shore, and go up into the country to look for their fellows. This was a great disappointment to us; for now we were at a loss what to do; for our seizing those seven men on shore would be no advantage to us, if we let the boat escape; because they would then row away to the ship, and then the rest of them would be sure to weigh and set sail, and so our recovering the ship would be lost. However, we had no remedy but to wait and see what the issue of things might present; the seven men came on shore, and the three who remained in the boat put her off to a good distance from the shore, and came to an anchor to wait for them; so that it was impossible for us to come at them in the boat. Those that came on shore kept close together, marching towards the top of the little hill under which my habitation lay; and we could see them plainly, though they could not perceive us. We could have been very glad they would have come nearer to us, so that we might have fired at them, or that they would have gone farther off, that we might have come abroad. But when they were come to the brow of the hill, where they could see a great way into the valleys and woods, which lay towards the northeast part, and where the island lay lowest, they shouted and holloed till they were weary; and not caring, it seems, to venture far from the shore, nor far from one another, they sat down together under a tree, to consider of it. Had they thought fit to have gone to sleep there, as the other party of them had done, they had done the job for us; but they were too full of apprehensions of danger to venture to go to sleep, though they could not tell what the danger was they had to fear neither. The captain made a very just proposal to me, upon this consultation of theirs, viz., that perhaps they would all fire a volley again, to endeavour to make their fellows hear, and that we should all sally upon them, just at the juncture when their pieces were all discharged, and they would certainly yield, and we should have them without bloodshed. I liked the proposal, provided it was done while we were near enough to come up to them before they could load their pieces again. But this event did not happen, and we lay still a long time, very irresolute what course to take; at length I told them there would be nothing to be done in my opinion till night; and then, if they did not return to the boat, perhaps we might find a way to get between them and the shore, and so might use some stratagem with them in the boat, to get them on shore. We waited a great while, though very impatient for their removing; and were very uneasy, when, after long consultations, we saw them start all up and march down towards the sea. It seems they had such dreadful apprehensions upon them of the danger of the place that they resolved to go on board the ship again, give their companions over for lost, and so go on with their intended voyage with the ship. As soon as I perceived them go towards the shore, I imagined it to be as it really was, that they had given over their search, and were for going back again; and the captain, as soon as I told him my thoughts, was ready to sink at the apprehensions of it; but I presently thought of a stratagem to fetch them back again, and which answered my end to a tittle. I ordered Friday and the captain' mate to go over the little creek westward, towards the place where the savages came on shore when Friday was rescued; and as soon as they came to a little rising ground, at about half a mile' distance, I bade them hollo as loud as they could and wait till they found the seamen heard them; that as soon as ever they heard the seamen answer them, they should return it again, and then keeping out of sight, take a round, always answering when the other holloed, to draw them as far into the island and among the woods as possible and then wheel about again to me, by such ways as I directed them. They were just going into the boat, when Friday and the mate holloed, and they presently heard them, and answering, ran along the shore westward towards the voice they heard, when they were presently stopped by the creek, where, the water being up, they could not get over, and called for the boat to come up and set them over, as indeed I expected. When they had set themselves over, I observed that the boat being gone up a good way into the creek, and, as it were, in a harbour within the land, they took one of the three men out of her to go along with them, and left only two in the boat, having fastened her to the stump of a little tree on the shore. This was what I wished for, and immediately leaving Friday and the captain' mate to their business, I took the rest with me, and crossing the creek out of their sight, we surprised the two men before they were aware, one of them lying on shore, and the other being in the boat; the fellow on shore was between sleeping and waking, and going to start up; the captain, who was foremost, ran in upon him, and knocked him down, and then called out to him in the boat to yield, or he was a dead man. There needed very few arguments to persuade a single man to yield, when he saw five men upon him and his comrade knocked down; besides, this was, it seems, one of the three who were not so hearty in the mutiny as the rest of the crew, and therefore was easily persuaded, not only to yield, but afterwards to join very sincerely with us. In the meantime, Friday and the captain' mate so well managed their business with the rest that they drew them by holloing and answering from one hill to another, and from one wood to another, till they not only heartily tired them but left them, where they were very sure they could not reach back to the boat before it was dark; and indeed they were heartily tired themselves also by the time they came back to us. We had nothing now to do but to watch for them in the dark and to fall upon them, so as to make sure work with them. It was several hours after Friday came back to me before they came back to their boat; and we could hear the foremost of them long before they came quite up, calling to those behind to come along, and could also hear them answer and complain how lame and tired they were and not able to come any faster, which was very welcome news to us. At length they came up to the boat; but 'tis impossible to express their confusion, when they found the boat fast aground in the creek, the tide ebbed out, and their two men gone. We could hear them call to one another in a most lamentable manner, telling one another they were gotten into an enchanted island; that either there were inhabitants in it, and they should all be murdered, or else there were devils and spirits in it, and they should be all carried away and devoured. They holloed again, and called their two comrades by their names a great many times, but no answer. After some time, we could see them, by the little light there was, run about, wringing their hands like men in despair; and that sometimes they would go and sit down in the boat to rest themselves, then come ashore again, and walk about again, and so the same thing over again. My men would fain have me give them leave to fall upon them at once in the dark; but I was willing to take them at some advantage, so to spare them, and kill as few of them as I could; and especially I was unwilling to hazard the killing any of our own men, knowing the other were very well armed. I resolved to wait to see if they did not separate; and therefore to make sure of them, I drew my ambuscade nearer, and ordered Friday and the captain to creep upon their hands and feet, as close to the ground as they could, that they might not be discovered, and get as near them as they could possibly before they offered to fire. They had not been long in that posture but that the boatswain, who was the principal ringleader of the mutiny, and had now shown himself the most dejected and dispirited of all the rest, came walking towards them, with two more of their crew; the captain was so eager, as having this principal rogue so much in his power, that he could hardly have patience to let him come so near as to be sure of him; for they only heard his tongue before. But when they came nearer, the captain and Friday, starting up on their feet, let fly at them. The boatswain was killed upon the spot; the next man was shot into the body, and fell just by him, though he did not die till an hour or two after; and the third ran for it. At the noise of the fire, I immediately advanced with my whole army, which was now eight men, viz., myself generalissimo, Friday my lieutenant-general, the captain and his two men, and the three prisoners of war, whom we had trusted with arms. We came upon them indeed in the dark, so that they could not see our numbers; and I made the man they had left in the boat, who was now one of us, call to them by name, to try if I could bring them to a parley and so might perhaps reduce them to terms, which fell out just as we desired. For indeed it was easy to think, as their condition then was, they would be very willing to capitulate; so he calls out as loud as he could to one of them, ''Tom Smith! Tom Smith!'' Tom Smith answered immediately, ''Who' that? Robinson?'' for it seems he knew his voice. T' other answered, ''Ay, ay; for God' sake, Tom Smith, throw down your arms and yield, or you are all dead men this moment.'' ''Who must we yield to? Where are they?'' says Smith again. ''Here they are,'' says he; ''here' our captain, and fifty men with him, have been hunting you this two hours; the boatswain is killed, Will Frye is wounded, and I am a prisoner; and if you do not yield, you are all lost.'' ''Will they give us quarter then,'' says Tom Smith, ''and we will yield?'' ''I'll go and ask, if you promise to yield,'' says Robinson; so he asked the captain, and the captain then calls himself out, ''You, Smith, you know my voice. If you lay down your arms immediately and submit, you shall have your lives, all but Will Atkins.'' Upon this Will Atkins cried out, ''For God' sake, Captain, give me quarter; what have I done? They have been all as bad as I''; which, by the way, was not true neither; for it seems this Will Atkins was the first man that laid hold of the captain, when they first mutinied, and used him barbarously, in tying his hands, and giving him injurious language. However, the captain told him he must lay down his arms at discretion, and trust to the governor' mercy; by which he meant me, for they all called me governor. In a word, they all laid down their arms and begged their lives; and I sent the man that had parleyed with them and two more, who bound them all; and then my great army of fifty men, which, particularly with those three, were all but eight, came up and seized upon them all and upon their boat, only that I kept myself and one more out of sight, for reasons of state. Our next work was to repair the boat and to think of seizing the ship; and as for the captain, now he had leisure to parley with them, he expostulated with them upon the villainy of their practices with him, and at length upon the further wickedness of their design, and how certainly it must bring them to misery and distress in the end, and perhaps to the gallows. They all appeared very penitent and begged hard for their lives; as for that, he told them they were none of his prisoners, but the commander' of the island; that they thought they had set him on shore in a barren uninhabited island, but it had pleased God so to direct them that the island was inhabited, and that the governor was an Englishman; that he might hang them all there, if he pleased; but as he had given them all quarter, he supposed he would send them to England, to be dealt with there as justice required, except Atkins, who he was commanded by the governor to advise to prepare for death; for that he would be hanged in the morning. Though this was all a fiction of his own, yet it had its desired effect; Atkins fell upon his knees to beg the captain to intercede with the governor for his life; and all the rest begged of him, for God' sake, that they might not be sent to England. We Seize the Ship IT NOW occurred to me that the time of our deliverance was come, and that it would be a most easy thing to bring these fellows in to be hearty in getting possession of the ship; so I retired in the dark from them, that they might not see what kind of a governor they had, and called the captain to me; when I called, as at a good distance, one of the men was ordered to speak again and say to the captain, ''Captain, the commander calls for you''; and presently the captain replied, ''Tell his excellency, I am just a-coming.'' This more perfectly amused them, and they all believed that the commander was just by with his fifty men. Upon the captain' coming to me, I told him my project for seizing the ship, which he liked of wonderfully well, and resolved to put it in execution the next morning. But in order to execute it with more art, and security of success, I told him we must divide the prisoners, and that he should go and take Atkins and two more of the worst of them, and send them pinioned to the cave where the others lay. This was committed to Friday and the two men who came on shore with the captain. They conveyed them to the cave, as to a prison; and it was indeed a dismal place, especially to men in their condition. The other I ordered to my bower, as I called it, of which I have given a full description; and as it was fenced in, and they pinioned, the place was secure enough, considering they were upon their behaviour. To these in the morning I sent the captain, who was to enter into a parley with them, in a word, to try them, and tell me, whether he thought they might be trusted or no, to go on board and surprise the ship. He talked to them of the injury done him, of the condition they were brought to; and that though the governor had given them quarter for their lives, as to the present action, yet that if they were sent to England, they would all be hanged in chains, to be sure; but that if they would join in so just an attempt as to recover the ship, he would have the governor' engagement for their pardon. Anyone may guess how readily such a proposal would be accepted by men in their condition; they fell down on their knees to the captain and promised with the deepest imprecations that they would be faithful to him to the last drop, and that they should owe their lives to him and would go with him all over the world; that they would own him for a father to them as long as they lived. ''Well,'' says the captain, ''I must go and tell the governor what you say, and see what I can do to bring him to consent to it.'' So he brought me an account of the temper he found them in; and that he verily believed they would be faithful. However, that we might be very secure, I told him he should go back again and choose out five of them, and tell them they might see that he did not want9 men; that he would take out those five to be his assistants, and that the governor would keep the other two and the three that were sent prisoners to the castle (my cave) as hostages, for the fidelity of those five; and that if they proved unfaithful in the execution, the five hostages should be hanged in chains alive upon the shore. This looked severe, and convinced them that the governor was in earnest; however, they had no way left them but to accept it; and it was now the business of the prisoners, as much as of the captain, to persuade the other five to do their duty. Our strength was now thus ordered for the expedition. 1. The captain, his mate, and passenger. 2. Then the two prisoners of the first gang, to whom, having their characters from the captain, I had given their liberty,and trusted them with arms. 3. The other two, whom I had kept till now in my bower, pinioned; but, upon the captain' motion, had now released. 4. These five released at last. So that they were twelve in all, besides five we kept prisoners in the cave, and the two hostages. I asked the captain if he was willing to venture with these hands on board the ship; for as for me and my man Friday, I did not think it was proper for us to stir, having seven men left behind, and it was employment enough for us to keep them asunder, and supply them with victuals. As to the five in the cave, I resolved to keep them fast; but Friday went in twice a day to them, to supply them with necessaries; and I made the other two carry provisions to a certain distance, where Friday was to take it. When I showed myself to the two hostages, it was with the captain, who told them I was the person the governor had ordered to look after them, and that it was the governor' pleasure they should not stir anywhere but by my direction; that if they did, they should be fetched into the castle, and be laid in irons; so that as we never suffered them to see me as governor, so I now appeared as another person, and spoke of the governor, the garrison, the castle, and the like, upon all occasions. The captain now had no difficulty before him, but to furnish his two boats, stop the breach of one, and man them. He made his passenger captain of one, with four other men; and himself and his mate and five more went in the other. And they contrived their business very well, for they came up to the ship about midnight. As soon as they came within call of the ship, he made Robinson hail them and tell them they had brought off the men and the boat, but that it was a long time before they had found them, and the like; holding them in a chat till they came to the ship' side; when the captain and the mate, entering first with their arms, immediately knocked down the second mate and carpenter with the butt-end of their muskets. Being very faithfully seconded by their men, they secured all the rest that were upon the main and quarter decks and began to fasten the hatches to keep them down who were below, when the other boat and their men, entering at the fore chains, secured the forecastle of the ship and the scuttle which went down into the cook-room, making three men they found there prisoners. When this was done, and all safe upon deck, the captain ordered the mate with three men to break into the roundhouse, where the new rebel captain lay, and having taken the alarm, was gotten up, and with two men and a boy had gotten firearms in their hands; and when the mate with a crow split open the door, the new captain and his men fired boldly among them and wounded the mate with a musket ball, which broke his arm, and wounded two more of the men, but killed nobody. The mate, calling for help, rushed, however, into the roundhouse, wounded as he was, and with his pistol shot the new captain through the head, the bullet entering at his mouth, and came out again behind one of his ears, so that he never spoke a word; upon which the rest yielded, and the ship was taken effectually, without any more lives lost. As soon as the ship was thus secured, the captain ordered seven guns to be fired, which was the signal agreed upon with me, to give me notice of his success, which you may be sure I was very glad to hear, having sat watching upon the shore for it till near two of the clock in the morning. Having thus heard the signal plainly, I laid me down; and it having been a day of great fatigue to me, I slept very sound, till I was something surprised with the noise of a gun; and presently starting up, I heard a man call me by the name of ''Governor, Governor,'' and presently I knew the captain' voice, when, climbing up to the top of the hill, there he stood, and pointing to the ship, he embraced me in his arms. ''My dear friend and deliverer, '' says he, ''there' your ship, for she is all yours, and so are we and all that belong to her.'' I cast my eyes to the ship, and there she rode within little more than half a mile of the shore; for they had weighed her anchor as soon as they were masters of her; and the weather being fair, had brought her to an anchor just against the mouth of the little creek; and the tide being up, the captain had brought the pinnace in near the place where I first landed my rafts, and so landed just at my door. I was at first ready to sink down with the surprise. For I saw my deliverance indeed visibly put into my hands, all things easy, and a large ship just ready to carry me away whither I pleased to go. At first, for some time, I was not able to answer him one word; but as he had taken me in his arms, I held fast by him or I should have fallen to the ground. He perceived the surprise, and immediately pulls a bottle out of his pocket, and gave me a dram of cordial, which he had brought on purpose for me; after I drank it, I sat down upon the ground; and though it brought me to myself, yet it was a good while before I could speak a word to him. All this while the poor man was in as great an ecstasy as I, only not under any surprise, as I was; and he said a thousand kind tender things to me, to compose me and bring me to myself; but such was the flood of joy in my breast that it put all my spirits into confusion; at last it broke out into tears, and in a little while after I recovered my speech. Then I took my turn and embraced him as my deliverer, and we rejoiced together. I told him I looked upon him as a man sent from Heaven to deliver me, and that the whole transaction seemed to be a chain of wonders; that such things as these were the testimonies we had of a secret hand of Providence governing the world, and an evidence that the eyes of an infinite Power could search into the remotest corner of the world, and send help to the miserable whenever He pleased. I forgot not to lift up my heart in thankfulness to Heaven; and what heart could forbear to bless Him, who had not only in a miraculous manner provided for one in such a wilderness and in such a desolate condition, but from whom every deliverance must always be acknowledged to proceed! When we had talked a while, the captain told me he had brought me some little refreshment, such as the ship afforded, and such as the wretches that had been so long his masters had not plundered him of. Upon this he called aloud to the boat, and bade his men bring the things ashore that were for the governor; and indeed it was a present, as if I had been one, not that was to be carried away along with them, but as if I had been to dwell upon the island still and they were to go without me. First, he had brought me a case of bottles full of excellent cordial waters, six large bottles of Madeira wine; the bottles held two quarts apiece; two pound of excellent good tobacco, twelve good pieces of the ship' beef, and six pieces of pork, with a bag of peas, and about a hundredweight of biscuit. He brought me also a box of sugar, a box of flour, a bag full of lemons, and two bottles of lime juice, and abundance of other things. But besides these, and what was a thousand times more useful to me, he brought me six clean new shirts, six very good neckcloths, two pair of gloves, one pair of shoes, a hat, and one pair of stockings, and a very good suit of clothes of his own, which had been worn but very little. In a word, he clothed me from head to foot. It was a very kind and agreeable present, as anyone may imagine, to one in my circumstances. But never was anything in the world of that kind so unpleasant, awkward, and uneasy as it was to me to wear such clothes at their first putting on. After these ceremonies passed, and after all his good things were brought into my little apartment, we began to consult what was to be done with the prisoners we had; for it was worth considering whether we might venture to take them away with us or no, especially two of them, whom we knew to be incorrigible and refractory to the last degree; and the captain said he knew they were such rogues that there was no obliging them, and if he did carry them away, it must be in irons, as malefactors, to be delivered over to justice at the first English colony he could come at; and I found that the captain himself was very anxious about it. Upon this, I told him that if he desired it, I durst undertake to bring the two men he spoke of to make it their own request that he should leave them upon the island. ''I should be very glad of that,'' says the captain, ''with all my heart.'' ''Well,'' says I, ''I will send for them up, and talk with them for you''; so I caused Friday and the two hostages, for they were now discharged, their comrades having performed their promise; I say, I caused them to go to the cave and bring up the five men, pinioned as they were, to the bower, and keep them there till I came. After some time I came thither dressed in my new habit, and now I was called governor again; being all met, and the captain with me, I caused the men to be brought before me, and I told them I had had a full account of their villainous behaviour to the captain, and how they had run away with the ship and were preparing to commit further robberies, but that Providence had ensnared them in their own ways and that they were fallen into the pit which they had digged for others. I let them know that by my direction the ship had been seized, that she lay now in the road, and they might see by and by that their new captain had received the reward of his villainy; for that they might see him hanging at the yardarm. That as to them, I wanted to know what they had to say, why I should not execute them as pirates taken in the fact, as by my commission they could not doubt I had authority to do. One of them answered in the name of the rest that they had nothing to say but this, that when they were taken, the captain promised them their lives, and they humbly implored my mercy. But I told them I knew not what mercy to show them; for, as for myself, I had resolved to quit the island with all my men, and had taken passage with the captain to go for England. And as for the captain, he could not carry them to England other than as prisoners in irons, to be tried for mutiny and running away with the ship; the consequence of which, they must needs know, would be the gallows; so that I could not tell which was best for them, unless they had a mind to take their fate in the island; if they desired that, I did not care, as I had liberty to leave it; I had some inclination to give them their lives, if they thought they could shift on shore. They seemed very thankful for it, said they would much rather venture to stay there than to be carried to England to be hanged; so I left it on that issue. However, the captain seemed to make some difficulty of it, as if he durst not leave them there. Upon this I seemed a little angry with the captain, and told him that they were my prisoners, not his; and that seeing I had offered them so much favour, I would be as good as my word; and that if he did not think fit to consent to it, I would set them at liberty, as I found them; and if he did not like it, he might take them again if he could catch them. Upon this they appeared very thankful, and I accordingly set them at liberty, and bade them retire into the woods, to the place whence they came, and I would leave them some firearms, some ammunition, and some directions how they should live very well, if they thought fit. Upon this I prepared to go on board the ship, but told the captain that I would stay that night to prepare my things, and desired him to go on board in the meantime, and keep all right in the ship, and send the boat on shore the next day for me; ordering him in the meantime to cause the new captain who was killed to be hanged at the yardarm, that these men might see him. When the captain was gone, I sent for the men up to me to my apartment and entered seriously into discourse with them of their circumstances. I told them I thought they had made a right choice; that if the captain carried them away, they would certainly be hanged. I showed them the new captain hanging at the yardarm of the ship, and told them they had nothing less to expect. When they had all declared their willingness to stay, I then told them I would let them into the story of my living there, and put them into the way of making it easy to them. Accordingly I gave them the whole history of the place and of my coming to it; showed them my fortifications, the way I made my bread, planted my corn, cured my grapes; and in a word, all that was necessary to make them easy. I told them the story also of the sixteen Spaniards that were to be expected; for whom I left a letter, and made them promise to treat them in common with themselves. I left them my firearms, viz., five muskets, three fowling pieces, and three swords. I had above a barrel and half of powder left; for after the first year or two I used but little, and wasted none. I gave them a description of the way I managed the goats, and directions to milk and fatten them, and to make both butter and cheese. In a word, I gave them every part of my own story; and I told them I would prevail with the captain to leave them two barrels of gunpowder more and some garden seeds, which I told them I would have been very glad of; also I gave them the bag of peas which the captain had brought me to eat, and bade them be sure to sow and increase them. Having done all this, I left them the next day and went on board the ship. We prepared immediately to sail, but did not weigh that night. The next morning early, two of the five men came swimming to the ship' side, and making a most lamentable complaint of the other three, begged to be taken into the ship, for God' sake, for they should be murdered, and begged the captain to take them on board, though he hanged them immediately. Upon this the captain pretended to have no power without me; but after some difficulty, and after their solemn promises of amendment, they were taken on board, and were some time after soundly whipped and pickled; after which, they proved very honest and quiet fellows. Some time after this, the boat was ordered on shore, the tide being up, with the things promised to the men, to which the captain, at my intercession, caused their chests and clothes to be added, which they took and were very thankful for; I also encouraged them by telling them that if it lay in my way to send any vessel to take them in, I would not forget them. When I took leave of this island, I carried on board for relics the great goatskin cap I had made, my umbrella, and one of my parrots; also I forgot not to take the money I formerly mentioned, which had lain by me so long useless that it was grown rusty, or tarnished, and could hardly pass for silver, till it had been a little rubbed and handled; as also the money I found in the wreck of the Spanish ship. And thus I left the island, the 19th of December, as I found by the ship' account, in the year 1686, after I had been upon it eight-and-twenty years, two months, and nineteen days; being delivered from this second captivity the same day of the month that I first made my escape in the barco-longo, from among the Moors of Sallee. In this vessel, after a long voyage, I arrived in England, the 11th of June, in the year of 1687, having been thirty-and-five years absent. When I came to England, I was as perfect a stranger to all the world as if I had never been known there. My benefactor and faithful steward, whom I had left in trust with my money, was alive, but had had great misfortunes in the world; was become a widow the second time, and very low in the world. I made her easy as to what she owed me, assuring her I would give her no trouble; but on the contrary, in gratitude to her former care and faithfulness to me, I relieved her as my little stock would afford, which at that time would indeed allow me to do but little for her; but I assured her I would never forget her former kindness to me; nor did I forget her, when I had sufficient to help her, as shall be observed in its place. I went down afterwards into Yorkshire; but my father was dead, and my mother and all the family extinct, except that I found two sisters, and two of the children of one of my brothers; and as I had been long ago given over for dead, there had been no provision made for me; so that, in a word, I found nothing to relieve or assist me; and that little money I had would not do much for me as to settling in the world. I met with one piece of gratitude indeed, which I did not expect; and this was that the master of the ship, whom I had so happily delivered, and by the same means saved the ship and cargo, having given a very handsome account to the owners of the manner how I had saved the lives of the men and the ship, they invited me to meet them, and some other merchants concerned, and all together made me a very handsome compliment upon the subject, and a present of almost two hundred pounds sterling. But after making several reflections upon the circumstances of my life, and how little way this would go towards settling me in the world, I resolved to go to Lisbon and see if I might not come by some information of the state of my plantation in Brazil, and of what was become of my partner, who I had reason to suppose had some years now given me over for dead. With this view I took shipping for Lisbon, where I arrived in April following; my man Friday accompanying me very honestly in all these ramblings, and proving a most faithful servant upon all occasions. I Find My Wealth All About Me WHEN I came to Lisbon, I found out, by inquiry, and to my particular satisfaction, my old friend the captain of the ship, who first took me up at sea off of the shore of Africa. He was now grown old and had left off the sea, having put his son, who was far from a young man, into his ship; and who still used the Brazil trade. The old man did not know me, and, indeed, I hardly knew him; but I soon brought him to my remembrance, and as soon brought myself to his remembrance, when I told him who I was. After some passionate expressions of the old acquaintance, I inquired, you may be sure, after my plantation and my partner. The old man told me he had not been in Brazil for about nine years; but that he could assure me that when he came away my partner was living, but the trustees, whom I had joined with him to take cognizance of my part, were both dead; that, however, he believed that I would have a very good account of the improvement of the plantation; for that, upon the general belief of my being cast away and drowned, my trustees had given in the account of the produce of my part of the plantation to the procurator fiscal, who had appropriated it, in case I never came to claim it, one third to the king, and two thirds to the monastery of St. Augustine, to be expended for the benefit of the poor and for the conversion of the Indians to the Catholic faith; but that if I appeared, or anyone for me, to claim the inheritance, it should be restored; only that the improvement, or annual production, being distributed to charitable uses, could not be restored; but he assured me that the steward of the king' revenue (from lands) and the proviedore, or steward of the monastery, had taken great care all along that the incumbent, that is to say, my partner, gave every year a faithful account of the produce, of which they received duly my moiety. I asked him if he knew to what height of improvement he had brought the plantation, and whether he thought it might be worth looking after; or whether, on my going thither, I should meet with no obstruction to my possessing my just right in the moiety. He told me he could not tell exactly to what degree the plantation was improved; but this he knew, that my partner was growing exceeding rich upon the enjoying but one half of it; and that, to the best of his remembrance, he had heard that the king' third of my part, which was, it seems, granted away to some other monastery, or religious house, amounted to above two hundred moidores a year; that as to my being restored to a quiet possession of it, there was no question to be made of that, my partner being alive to witness my title, and my name being also enrolled in the register of the country; also he told me that the survivors of my two trustees were very fair, honest people, and very wealthy; and he believed I would not only have their assistance for putting me in possession, but would find a very considerable sum of money in their hands for my account, being the produce of the farm while their fathers held the trust, and before it was given up as above, which, as he remembered, was for about twelve years. I showed myself a little concerned and uneasy at this account and inquired of the old captain how it came to pass that the trustees should thus dispose my effects, when he knew that I had made my will and had made him, the Portuguese captain, my universal heir, etc. He told me that was true; but that as there was no proof of my being dead, he could not act as executor until some certain account should come of my death; and that besides, he was not willing to intermeddle with a thing so remote; that it was true he had registered my will and put in his claim; and could he have given any account of my being dead or alive, he would have acted by procuration, and taken possession of the ingenio (so they called the sugar-house) and had given his son, who was now at Brazil, order to do it. ''But,'' says the old man, ''I have one piece of news to tell you, which perhaps may not be so acceptable to you as the rest, and that is, that believing you were lost, and all the world believing so also, your partner and trustees did offer to account to me, in your name, for six or eight of the first years of profits, which I received; but there being at the time,'' says he, ''great disbursements for increasing the works, building an ingenio, and buying slaves, it did not amount to near so much as afterwards it produced. However,'' says the old man, ''I shall give you a true account of what I have received in all, and how I have disposed of it.'' After a few days' further conference with this ancient friend, he brought me an account of the six first years' income of my plantation, signed by my partner and the merchant trustees, being always delivered in goods, viz., tobacco in roll, and sugar in chests, besides rum, molasses, etc., which is the consequence of a sugar work; and I found by this account, that every year the income considerably increased; but as above, the disbursement being large, the sum at first was small. However, the old man let me see that he was debtor to me 470 moidores of gold, besides 60 chests of sugar, and 15 double rolls of tobacco, which were lost in his ship; he having been shipwrecked coming home to Lisbon, about eleven years after my leaving the place. The good man then began to complain of his misfortunes, and how he had been obliged to make use of my money to recover his losses, and buy him a share in a new ship. ''However, my old friend,'' says he, ''you shall not want a supply in your necessity; and as soon as my son returns, you shall be fully satisfied.'' Upon this, he pulls out an old pouch, and gives me 160 Portugal moidores in gold; and giving me the writings of his title to the ship, which his son was gone to Brazil in, of which he was a quarter part owner, and his son another, he puts them both into my hands for security of the rest. I was too much moved with the honesty and kindness of the poor man to be able to bear this; and remembering what he had done for me, how he had taken me up at sea, and how generously he had used me on all occasions, and particularly how sincere a friend he was now to me, I could hardly refrain weeping at what he said to me. Therefore, first I asked him, if his circumstances admitted him to spare so much money at that time, and if it would not straiten him. He told me he could not say but it might straiten him a little; but, however, it was my money, and I might want it more than he. and I could hardly refrain from tears while he spoke. In short, I took 100 of the moidores and called for a pen and ink to give him a receipt for them; then I returned him the rest, and told him if ever I had possession of the plantation, I would return the other to him also, as indeed I afterwards did; and that as to the bill of sale of his part in his son' ship, I would not take it by any means; but that if I wanted the money, I found he was honest enough to pay me; and if I did not, but came to receive what he gave me reason to expect, I would never have a penny more from him. When this was passed, the old man began to ask me if he should put me into a method to make my claim to my plantation. I told him I thought to go over to it myself. He said I might do so if I pleased; but that if I did not, there were ways enough to secure my right, and immediately to appropriate the profits to my use; and as there were ships in the river of Lisbon just ready to go away to Brazil, he made me enter my name in a public register, with his affidavit, affirming upon oath that I was alive, and that I was the same person who took up the land for the planting the said plantation at first. This being regularly attested by a notary, and a procuration affixed, he directed me to send it, with a letter of his writing, to a merchant of his acquaintance at the place, and then proposed my staying with him till an account came of the return. Never anything was more honourable than the proceedings upon this procuration; for in less than seven months I received a large packet from the survivors of my trustees, the merchants for whose account I went to sea, in which were the following particular letters and papers enclosed. First, there was the account current of the produce of my farm, or plantation, from the year when their fathers had balanced with my old Portugal captain, being for six years; the balance appeared to be 1174 moidores in my favour. Secondly, there was the account of four years more, while they kept the effects in their hands, before the government claimed the administration, as being the effects of a person not to be found, which they called civil death; and the balance of this, the value of the plantation increasing, amounted to [38,892] crusadoes, which made 3241 moidores. Thirdly, there was the Prior of the Augustines' account, who had received the profits for above fourteen years; but not being to account for what was disposed to the hospital, very honestly declared he had 872 moidores not distributed, which he acknowledged to my account; as to the king' part, that refunded nothing. There was a letter of my partner', congratulating me very affectionately upon my being alive, giving me an account how the estate was improved, and what it produced a year, with a particular of the number of squares or acres that it contained; how planted, how many slaves there were upon it; and making two-and-twenty crosses for blessings, told me he had said so many Ave Marias to thank the Blessed Virgin that I was alive; inviting me very passionately to come over and take possession of my own; and in the meantime to give him orders to whom he should deliver my effects, if I did not come myself; concluding with a hearty tender of his friendship, and that of his family, and sent me, as a present, seven fine leopards' skins, which he had, it seems, received from Africa, by some other ship which he had sent thither, and who, it seems, had made a better voyage than I. He sent me also five chests of excellent sweetmeats, and an hundred pieces of gold uncoined, not quite so large as moidores. By the same fleet, my two merchant trustees shipped me 1200 chests of sugar, 800 rolls of tobacco, and the rest of the whole account in gold. I might well say now, indeed, that the latter end of Job was better than the beginning. It is impossible to express here the flutterings of my very heart when I looked over these letters, and especially when I found all my wealth about me; for as the Brazil ships come all in fleets, the same ships which brought my letters brought my goods; and the effects were safe in the river before the letters came to my hand. In a word, I turned pale, and grew sick; and had not the old man run and fetched me a cordial, I believe the sudden surprise of joy had overset Nature, and I had died upon the spot. Nay, after that, I continued very ill, and was so some hours, till a physician being sent for, and something of the real cause of my illness being known, he ordered me to be let blood; after which I had relief and grew well. But I verily believe, if it had not been eased by a vent given in that manner to the spirits, I should have died. I was now master, all on a sudden, of above #5000 sterling in money, and had an estate, as I might well call it, in Brazil, of above a thousand pounds a year, as sure as an estate of lands in England. And in a word, I was in a condition which I scarce knew how to understand, or how to compose myself for the enjoyment of it. The first thing I did was to recompense my original benefactor, my good old captain, who had been first charitable to me in my distress, kind to me in the beginning, and honest to me at the end. I showed him all that was sent me; I told him that next to the Providence of Heaven, which disposes all things, it was owing to him; and that it now lay on me to reward him, which I would do a hundredfold. So I first returned to him the hundred moidores I had received of him; then I sent for a notary, and caused him to draw up a general release or discharge for the 470 moidores, which he had acknowledged he owed me, in the fullest and firmest manner possible; after which, I caused a procuration to be drawn, empowering him to be my receiver of the annual profits of my plantation, and appointing my partner to account to him and make the returns by the usual fleets to him in my name; and a clause in the end, being a grant of one hundred moidores a year to him, during his life, out of the effects, and fifty moidores a year to his son after him, for his life. And thus I requited my old man. I was now to consider which way to steer my course next, and what to do with the estate that Providence had thus put into my hands; and indeed, I had more care upon my head now than I had in my silent state of life in the island, where I wanted nothing but what I had, and had nothing but what I wanted; whereas I had now a great charge upon me, and my business was how to secure it. I had ne'er a cave now to hide my money in, or a place where it might lie without lock or key, till it grew mouldy and tarnished before anybody would meddle with it. On the contrary, I knew not where to put it, or whom to trust with it. My old patron, the captain, indeed was honest, and that was the only refuge I had. In the next place, my interest in Brazil seemed to summon me thither, but now I could not tell how to think of going thither till I had settled my affairs and left my effects in some safe hands behind me. At first I thought of my old friend the widow, who I knew was honest, and would be just to me; but then she was in years, and but poor, and for aught I knew, might be in debt; so that in a word, I had no way but to go back to England myself, and take my effects with me. It was some months, however, before I resolved upon this; and therefore, as I had rewarded the old captain fully, and to his satisfaction, who had been my former benefactor, so I began to think of my poor widow, whose husband had been my first benefactor, and she, while it was in her power, my faithful steward and instructor. So the first thing I did, I got a merchant in Lisbon to write to his correspondent in London, not only to pay a bill, but to go find her out and carry her in money a hundred pounds from me, and to talk with her and comfort her in her poverty, by telling her she should, if I lived, have a further supply. At the same time I sent my two sisters in the country each of them a hundred pounds, they being, though not in want, yet not in very good circumstances; one having been married and left a widow, and the other having a husband not so kind to her as he should be. But among all my relations, or acquaintances, I could not yet pitch upon one to whom I durst commit the gross of my stock, that I might go away to Brazil and leave things safe behind me; and this greatly perplexed me. I had once a mind to have gone to Brazil, and have settled myself there; for I was, as it were, naturalized to the place; but I had some little scruple in my mind about religion, which insensibly drew me back, of which I shall say more presently. However, it was not religion that kept me from going there for the present; and as I had made no scruple of being openly of the religion of the country, all the while I was among them, so neither did I yet; only that now and then having of late thought more of it than formerly, when I began to think of living and dying among them, I began to regret my having professed myself a Papist, and thought it might not be the best religion to die with. But, as I have said, this was not the main thing that kept me from going to Brazil, but that really I did not know with whom to leave my effects behind me; so I resolved at last to go to England with it, where, if I arrived, I concluded I should make some acquaintance, or find some relations that would be faithful to me; and accordingly I prepared to go for England with all my wealth. In order to prepare things for my going home, I first (the Brazil fleet being just going away) resolved to give answers suitable to the just and faithful account of things I had from thence; and first, to the Prior of St. Augustine I wrote a letter full of thanks for their just dealings, and the offer of the 872 moidores which was indisposed of, which I desired might be given, 500 to the monastery, and 372 to the poor, as the Prior should direct, desiring the good padre' prayers for me, and the like. I wrote next a letter of thanks to my two trustees, with all the acknowledgement that so much justice and honesty called for; as for sending them any present, they were far above having any occasion of it. Lastly, I wrote to my partner, acknowledging his industry in the improving the plantation and his integrity in increasing the stock of the works, giving him instructions for his future government of my part, according to the powers I had left with my old patron, to whom I desired him to send whatever became due to me, till he should hear from me more particularly; assuring him that it was my intention not only to come to him, but to settle myself there for the remainder of my life. To this I added a very handsome present of some Italian silks for his wife and two daughters, for such the captain' son informed me he had; with two pieces of fine English broadcloth, the best I could get in Lisbon, five pieces of black baize, and some Flanders lace of a good value. Having thus settled my affairs, sold my cargo, and turned all my effects into good bills of exchange, my next difficulty was, which way to go to England. I had been accustomed enough to the sea, and yet I had a strange aversion to going to England by sea at that time; and though I could give no reason for it, yet the difficulty increased upon me so much, that though I had once shipped my baggage in order to go, yet I altered my mind, and that not once but two or three times. It is true I had been very unfortunate by sea, and this might be one of the reasons. But let no man slight the strong impulses of his own thoughts in cases of such moment. Two of the ships which I had singled out to go in, I mean more particularly singled out than any other, that is to say, so as in one of them to put my things on board and in the other to have agreed with the captain; I say, two of these ships miscarried, viz., one was taken by the Algerines, and the other was cast away on the Start, near Torbay, and all the people drowned except three; so that in either of those vessels I had been made miserable; and in which most, it was hard to say. Having been thus harassed in my thoughts, my old pilot, to whom I communicated everything, pressed me earnestly not to go by sea, but either to go by land to the Groyne, and cross over the Bay of Biscay to Rochelle, from whence it was but an easy and safe journey by land to Paris, and so to Calais and Dover; or to go up to Madrid, and so all the way by land through France. In a word, I was so prepossessed against my going by sea at all, except from Calais to Dover, that I resolved to travel all the way by land; which, as I was not in haste, and did not value the charge, was by much the pleasanter way; and to make it more so, my old captain brought an English gentleman, the son of a merchant in Lisbon, who was willing to travel with me. After which, we picked up two more English merchants also, and two young Portuguese gentlemen, the last going to Paris only; so that we were in all six of us, and five servants; the two merchants and the two Portuguese contenting themselves with one servant between two, to save the charge; and as for me, I got an English sailor to travel with me as a servant, besides my man Friday, who was too much a stranger to be capable of supplying the place of a servant on the road. We Cross the Mountains IN THIS manner I set out from Lisbon; and our company being all very well mounted and armed, we made a little troop, whereof they did me the honour to call me captain, as well because I was the oldest man as because I had two servants, and, indeed, was the original of the whole journey. As I have troubled you with none of my sea journals, so I shall trouble you now with none of my land journal; but some adventures that happened to us in this tedious and difficult journey I must not omit. When we came to Madrid, we, being all of us strangers to Spain, were willing to stay some time to see the court of Spain, and to see what was worth observing; but it being the latter part of the summer, we hastened away, and set out from Madrid about the middle of October. But when we came to the edge of Navarre, we were alarmed at several towns on the way with an account that so much snow was fallen on the French side of the mountains that several travellers were obliged to come back to Pampeluna, after having attempted, at an extreme hazard, to pass on. When we came to Pampeluna itself, we found it so indeed; and to me that had been always used to a hot climate, and indeed to countries where we could scarce bear any clothes on, the cold was insufferable; nor, indeed, was it more painful than it was surprising to come but ten days before out of the Old Castile, where the weather was not only warm, but very hot, and immediately to feel a wind from the Pyrenean mountains so very keen, so severely cold, as to be intolerable and to endanger benumbing and perishing of our fingers and toes. Poor Friday was really frighted when he saw the mountains all covered with snow, and felt cold weather, which he had never seen or felt before in his life. To mend the matter, when we came to Pampeluna, it continued snowing with so much violence, and so long, that the people said winter was come before its time, and the roads which were difficult before were now quite impassable; for, in a word, the snow lay in some places too thick for us to travel; and being not hard frozen, as is the case in northern countries, there was no going without being in danger of being buried alive every step. We stayed no less than twenty days at Pampeluna; when (seeing the winter coming on, and no likelihood of its being better, for it was the severest winter all over Europe that had been known in the memory of man) I proposed that we should all go away to Fontarabia, and there take shipping for Bordeaux, which was a very little voyage. But while we were considering this, there came in four French gentlemen, who, having been stopped on the French side of the passes, as we were on the Spanish, had found out a guide, who, traversing the country near the head of Languedoc, had brought them over the mountains by such ways that they were not much incommoded with the snow; and where they met with snow in any quantity, they said it was frozen hard enough to bear them and their horses. We sent for this guide, who told us he would undertake to carry us the same way with no hazard from the snow, provided we were armed sufficiently to protect us from wild beasts; for, he said, upon these great snows it was frequent for some wolves to show themselves at the foot of the mountains, being made ravenous for want of food, the ground being covered with snow. We told him we were well enough prepared for such creatures as they were, if he would ensure us from a kind of two-legged wolves, which we were told we were in most danger from, especially on the French side of the mountains. He satisfied us there was no danger of that kind in the way that we were to go; so we readily agreed to follow him, as did also twelve other gentlemen, with their servants, some French, some Spanish, who, as I said, had attempted to go, and were obliged to come back again. Accordingly, we all set out from Pampeluna, with our guide, on the 15th of November; and indeed, I was surprised when, instead of going forward, he came directly back with us, on the same road that we came from Madrid, above twenty miles; when, being passed two rivers, and come into the plain country, we found ourselves in a warm climate again, where the country was pleasant, and no snow to be seen; but on a sudden, turning to the left, he approached the mountains another way; and though it is true the hills and precipices looked dreadful, yet he made so many tours, such meanders, and led us by such winding ways, that we were insensibly past the height of the mountains without being much encumbered with the snow; and all on a sudden he showed us the pleasant fruitful provinces of Languedoc and Gascoigne, all green and flourishing, though indeed it was at a great distance, and we had some rough way to pass yet. We were a little uneasy, however, when we found it snowed one whole day and a night so fast that we could not travel; but he bade us be easy, we should soon be past it all. We found, indeed, that we began to descend every day, and to come more north than before; and so, depending upon our guide, we went on. It was about two hours before night, when our guide being something before us, and not just in sight, out rushed three monstrous wolves, and after them a bear, out of a hollow way, adjoining to a thick wood; two of the wolves flew upon the guide, and had he been half a mile before us, he had been devoured indeed before we could have helped him. One of them fastened upon his horse, and the other attacked the man with that violence that he had not time, or not presence of mind enough, to draw his pistol, but holloed and cried out to us most lustily; my man Friday being next to me, I bade him ride up and see what was the matter; as soon as Friday came in sight of the man, he holloed as loud as the other, "O master! O master!'' but, like a bold fellow, rode directly up to the poor man and with his pistol shot the wolf that attacked him into the head. It was happy for the poor man that it was my man Friday; for he, having been used to that kind of creature in his country, had no fear upon him, but went close up to him and shot him, as above; whereas any of us would have fired at a farther distance, and have perhaps either missed the wolf, or endangered shooting the man. But it was enough to have terrified a bolder man than I, and indeed it alarmed all our company, when, with the noise of Friday' pistol, we heard on both sides the dismalest howling of wolves, and the noise redoubled by the echo of the mountains, that it was to us as if there had been a prodigious multitude of them; and perhaps, indeed, there was not such a few as that we had no cause of apprehensions. However, as Friday had killed this wolf, the other that had fastened upon the horse left him immediately and fled; having happily fastened upon his head, where the bosses of the bridle had stuck in his teeth, so that he had not done him much hurt. The man, indeed, was most hurt; for the raging creature had bit him twice, once on the arm, and the other time a little above his knee; and he was just as it were tumbling down by the disorder of his horse, when Friday came up and shot the wolf. It is easy to suppose that at the noise of Friday' pistol we all mended our pace and rid up as fast as the way (which was very difficult) would give us leave, to see what was the matter; as soon as we came clear of the trees, which blinded us before, we saw clearly what had been the case, and how Friday had disengaged the poor guide; though we did not presently discern what kind of creature it was he had killed. But never was a fight managed so hardily, and in such a surprising manner, as that which followed between Friday and the bear, which gave us all (though at first we were surprised and afraid for him) the greatest diversion imaginable. As the bear is a heavy, clumsy creature, and does not gallop as the wolf does, who is swift and light, so he has two particular qualities, which generally are the rule of his actions; first, as to men, who are not his proper prey; I say, not his proper prey, because though I can't say what excessive hunger might do, which was now their case, the ground being all covered with snow; but as to men, he does not usually attempt them, unless they first attack him. On the contrary, if you meet him in the woods, if you don't meddle with him, he won't meddle with you; but then you must take care to be very civil to him, and give him the road, for he is a very nice gentleman, he won't go a step out of his way for a prince; nay, if you are really afraid, your best way is to look another way and keep going on; for sometimes if you stop, and stand still, and look steadfastly at him, he takes it for an affront; but if you throw or toss anything at him, and it hits him, though it were but a bit of a stick as big as your finger, he takes it for an affront and sets all his other business aside to pursue his revenge; for he will have satisfaction in point of honour; that is his first quality. The next is, that if he be once affronted, he will never leave you, night or day, till he has his revenge; but follows at a good round rate till he overtakes you. My man Friday had delivered our guide, and when we came up to him, he was helping him off from his horse; for the man was both hurt and frighted, and indeed, the last more than the first; when on the sudden, we spied the bear come out of the wood, and a vast monstrous one it was, the biggest by far that ever I saw. We were all a little surprised when we saw him, but when Friday saw him, it was easy to see joy and courage in the fellow' countenance. "O! O! O!" says Friday, three times, pointing to him; "O master! You give me te leave, me shakee te hand with him, me make you good laugh.'' I was surprised to see the fellow so pleased. ''You fool you,'' says I, ''he will eat you up.'' ''Eatee me up! Eatee me up!'' says Friday, twice over again; ''me eatee him up. Me make you good laugh. You all stay here, me show you good laugh!'' So down he sits, and gets his boots off in a moment, and put on a pair of pumps (as we call the flat shoes they wear) and which he had in his pocket, gives my other servant his horse, and with his gun away he flew, swift like the wind. The bear was walking softly on, and offered to meddle with nobody till Friday coming pretty near, calls to him, as if the bear could understand him. ''Hark ye, hark ye,'' says Friday, ''me speakee wit you.'' We followed at a distance; for now being come down on the Gascoigne side of the mountains, we were entered a vast great forest, where the country was plain and pretty open, though many trees in it scattered here and there. Friday, who had, as we say, the heels of the bear, came up with him quickly, and takes up a great stone and throws at him, and hit him just on the head, but did him no more harm than if he had thrown it against a wall; but it answered Friday' end, for the rogue was so void of fear that he did it purely to make the bear follow him and show us some laugh, as he called it. As soon as the bear felt the stone, and saw him, he turns about, and comes after him, taking devilish long strides, and shuffling along at a strange rate, so as would have put a horse to a middling gallop; away runs Friday, and takes his course, as if he run towards us for help; so we all resolved to fire at once upon the bear, and deliver my man; though I was angry at him heartily for bringing the bear back upon us, when he was going about his own business another way; and especially I was angry that he had turned the bear upon us, and then run away; and I called out, ''You dog,'' said I, ''is this your making us laugh? Come away, and take your horse, that we may shoot the creature.'' He hears me, and cries out, ''No shoot, no shoot; stand still, you get much laugh.'' And as the nimble creature ran two foot for the beast' one, he turned on a sudden, on one side of us, and seeing a great oak tree fit for his purpose, he beckoned to us to follow; and doubling his pace, he gets nimbly up the tree, laying his gun down upon the ground, at about five or six yards from the bottom of the tree. The bear soon came to the tree, and we followed at a distance; the first thing he did, he stopped at the gun, smelled at it, but let it lie, and up he scrambles into the tree, climbing like a cat, though so monstrously heavy. I was amazed at the folly, as I thought it, of my man, and could not for my life see anything to laugh at yet, till seeing the bear get up the tree, we all rode nearer to him. When we came to the tree, there was Friday got out to the small end of a large limb of the tree, and the bear got about halfway to him; as soon as the bear got out to that part where the limb of the tree was weaker, ''Ha!'' says he to us, ''now you see me teachee the bear dance''; so he falls a-jumping and shaking the bough, at which the bear began to totter, but stood still and begun to look behind him, to see how he should get back; then, indeed, we did laugh heartily. But Friday had not done with him by a great deal; when he sees him stand still, he calls out to him again, as if he had supposed the bear could speak English, ''What, you no come farther? pray you come farther''; so he left jumping and shaking the bough; and the bear, just as if he had understood what he said, did come a little farther; then he fell a-jumping again, and the bear stopped again. We thought now was a good time to knock him on the head, and I called to Friday to stand still, and we would shoot the bear; but he cried out earnestly, "O pray! O pray! No shoot, me shoot by and then''; he would have said ''by and by.'' However, to shorten the story, Friday danced so much, and the bear stood so ticklish, that we had laughing enough indeed, but still could not imagine what the fellow would do; for first we thought he depended upon shaking the bear off; and we found the bear was too cunning for that too; for he would not go out far enough to be thrown down, but clings fast with his great broad claws and feet, so that we could not imagine what would be the end of it and where the jest would be at last. But Friday put us out of doubt quickly; for seeing the bear cling fast to the bough, and that he would not be persuaded to come any farther, ''Well, well,'' says Friday, ''you no come farther, me go, me go; you no come to me, me come to you''; and upon this, he goes out to the smallest end of the bough, where it would bend with his weight, and gently lets himself down by it, sliding down the bough, till he came near enough to jump down on his feet, and away he ran to his gun, takes it up, and stands still. ''Well,'' said I to him, ''Friday, what will you do now? Why don't you shoot him?'' ''No shoot,'' says Friday, ''no yet; me shoot now, me no kill; me stay, give you one more laugh''; and indeed so he did, as you will see presently; for when the bear saw his enemy gone, he came back from the bough where he stood, but did it mighty leisurely, looking behind him every step and coming backward till he got into the body of the tree; then with the same hinder end foremost, he came down the tree, grasping it with his claws, and moving one foot at a time, very leisurely; at this juncture, and just before he could set his hind feet upon the ground, Friday stepped up close to him, clapped the muzzle of his piece into his ear, and shot him dead as a stone. Then the rogue turned about to see if we did not laugh; and when he saw we were pleased by our looks, he falls a-laughing himself very loud. ''So we kill bear in my country,'' says Friday. ''So you kill them?'' says I; ''why, you have no guns.'' ''No,'' says he, ''no gun, but shoot, great much long arrow.'' This was, indeed, a good diversion to us; but we were still in a wild place, and our guide very much hurt, and what to do we hardly knew; the howling of wolves ran much in my head; and, indeed, except the noise I once heard on the shore of Africa, of which I have said something already, I never heard anything that filled me with so much horror. These things, and the approach of night, called us off, or else, as Friday would have had us, we should certainly have taken the skin of this monstrous creature off, which was worth saving; but we had three leagues to go, and our guide hastened us; so we left him and went forward on our journey. The ground was still covered with snow, though not so deep and dangerous as on the mountains; and the ravenous creatures, as we heard afterwards, were come down into the forest and plain country, pressed by hunger to seek for food; and had done a great deal of mischief in the villages, where they surprised the country people, killed a great many of their sheep and horses, and some people too. We had one dangerous place to pass, which our guide told us, if there were any more wolves in the country, we should find them there; and this was a small plain, surrounded with woods on every side, and a long narrow defile or lane, which we were to pass to get through the wood, and then we should come to the village where we were to lodge. It was within half an hour of sunset when we entered the first wood; and a little after sunset when we came into the plain. We met with nothing in the first wood, except that in a little plain within the wood, which was not above two furlongs over, we saw five great wolves cross the road, full speed one after another, as if they had been in chase of some prey, and had it in view; they took no notice of us, and were gone and out of our sight in a few moments. Upon this our guide, who, by the way, was a wretched faint-hearted fellow, bade us keep in a ready posture; for he believed there were more wolves a-coming. We kept our arms ready, and our eyes about us, but we saw no more wolves, till we came through the wood, which was near half a league, and entered the plain; as soon as we came into the plain, we had occasion enough to look about us. The first object we met with was a dead horse; that is to say, a poor horse which the wolves had killed, and at least a dozen of them at work; we could not say eating of him, but picking of his bones rather; for they had eaten up all the flesh before. We did not think fit to disturb them at their feast, neither did they take much notice of us. Friday would have let fly at them, but I would not suffer him by any means; for I found we were like to have more business upon our hands than we were aware of. We were not gone half over the plain but we began to hear the wolves howl in the wood on our left in a frightful manner, and presently after, we saw about a hundred coming on directly towards us, all in a body, and most of them in a line, as regularly as an army drawn up by experienced officers. I scarce knew in what manner to receive them; but found to draw ourselves in a close line was the only way. So we formed in a moment. But that we might not have too much interval, I ordered that only every other man should fire, and that the others who had not fired should stand ready to give them a second volley immediately, if they continued to advance upon us, and that then those who had fired at first should not pretend to load their fusils again, but stand ready with every one a pistol; for we were all armed with a fusil and a pair of pistols each man; so we were by this method able to fire six volleys, half of us at a time; however, at present we had no necessity; for upon firing the first volley, the enemy made a full stop, being terrified as well with the noise as with the fire; four of them being shot into the head, dropped, several others were wounded, and went bleeding off, as we could see by the snow. I found they stopped, but did not immediately retreat; whereupon, remembering that I had been told that the fiercest creatures were terrified at the voice of a man, I caused all our company to hollo as loud as we could; and I found the notion not altogether mistaken, for upon our shout they began to retire and turn about; then I ordered a second volley to be fired in their rear, which put them to the gallop, and away they went to the woods. This gave us leisure to charge our pieces again, and that we might lose no time, we kept going; but we had but little more than loaded our fusils, and put ourselves into a readiness, when we heard a terrible noise in the same wood, on our left, only that it was farther onward the same way we were to go. The night was coming on, and the light began to be dusky, which made it worse on our side; but the noise increasing, we could easily perceive that it was the howling and yelling of those hellish creatures; and on a sudden, we perceived two or three troops of wolves, one on our left, one behind us, and one on our front, so that we seemed to be surrounded with 'em; however, as they did not fall upon us, we kept our way forward, as fast as we could make our horses go, which, the way being very rough, was only a good large trot; and in this manner we came in view of the entrance of a wood, through which we were to pass, at the farther side of the plain; but we were greatly surprised when, coming nearer the lane, or pass, we saw a confused number of wolves standing just at the entrance. On a sudden, at another opening of the wood, we heard the noise of a gun; and looking that way, out rushed a horse, with a saddle and a bridle on him, flying like the wind, and sixteen or seventeen wolves after him, full speed; indeed, the horse had the heels of them; but as we supposed that he could not hold it at that rate, we doubted not but they would get up with him at last, and no question but they did. But here we had a most horrible sight; for riding up to the entrance where the horse came out, we found the carcass of another horse, and of two men, devoured by the ravenous creatures, and one of the men was no doubt the same whom we heard fire the gun; for there lay a gun just by him, fired off; but as to the man, his head and the upper part of his body was eaten up. This filled us with horror, and we knew not what course to take, but the creatures resolved us soon; for they gathered about us presently in hopes of prey; and I verily believe there were three hundred of them. It happened very much to our advantage that at the entrance into the wood, but a little way from it, there lay some large timber trees, which had been cut down the summer before, and I suppose lay there for carriage; I drew my little troop in among those trees, and placing ourselves in a line, behind one long tree, I advised them all to light, and keeping that tree before us, for a breastwork, to stand in a triangle, or three fronts, enclosing our horses in the center. We did so, and it was well we did; for never was a more furious charge than the creatures made upon us in this place; they came on us with a growling kind of a noise and mounted the piece of timber (which, as I said, was our breastwork) as if they were only rushing upon their prey; and this fury of theirs, it seems, was principally occasioned by their seeing our horses behind us, which was the prey they aimed at. I ordered our men to fire as before, every other man; and they took their aim so sure that indeed they killed several of the wolves at the first volley; but there was a necessity to keep a continual firing; for they came on like devils, those behind pushing on those before. When we had fired our second volley of our fusils, we thought they stopped a little, and I hoped they would have gone off, but it was but a moment, for others came forward again; so we fired two volleys of our pistols, and I believe in these four firings we killed seventeen or eighteen of them, and lamed twice as many; yet they came on again. I was loath to spend our last shot too hastily; so I called my servant, not my man Friday, for he was better employed; for with the greatest dexterity imaginable, he had charged my fusil and his own, while we were engaged; but as I said, I called my other man, and giving him a horn of powder, I bade him lay a train all along the piece of timber, and let it be a large train; he did so, and had but just time to get away, when the wolves came up to it, and some were got up upon it, when I, snapping an uncharged pistol close to the powder, set it on fire; those that were upon the timber were scorched with it, and six or seven of them fell, or rather jumped, in among us, with the force and fright of the fire; we dispatched these in an instant, and the rest were so frighted with the light, which the night, for it was now very near dark, made more terrible, that they drew back a little. Upon which I ordered our last pistols to be fired off in one volley, and after that we gave a shout; upon this, the wolves turned tail, and we sallied immediately upon near twenty lame ones, who we found struggling on the ground, and fell a-cutting them with our swords, which answered our expectation; for the crying and howling they made was better understood by their fellows, so that they all fled and left us. We had, first and last, killed about threescore of them; and had it been daylight, we had killed many more. The field of battle being thus cleared, we made forward again; for we had still near a league to go. We heard the ravenous creatures howl and yell in the woods as we went several times; and sometimes we fancied we saw some of them, but the snow dazzling our eyes, we were not certain; so in about an hour more, we came to the town where we were to lodge, which we found in a terrible fright, and all in arms; for it seems that the night before the wolves and some bears had broke into the village and put them in a terrible fright, and they were obliged to keep guard night and day, but especially in the night, to preserve their cattle and indeed their people. The next morning our guide was so ill, and his limbs swelled with the rankling of his two wounds, that he could go no farther; so we were obliged to take a new guide there, and go to Toulouse, where we found a warm climate, a fruitful pleasant country, and no snow, no wolves, or anything like them; but when we told our story at Toulouse, they told us it was nothing but what was ordinary in the great forest at the foot of the mountains, especially when the snow lay on the ground. But they inquired much what kind of a guide we had gotten, that would venture to bring us that way in such a severe season; and told us it was very much we were not all devoured. When we told them how we placed ourselves, and the horses in the middle, they blamed us exceedingly, and told us it was fifty to one but we had been all destroyed; for it was the sight of the horses which made the wolves so furious, seeing their prey; and that at other times they are really afraid of a gun; but they being excessive hungry, and raging on that account, the eagerness to come at the horses had made them senseless of danger; and that if we had not by the continued fire, and at last by the stratagem of the train of powder, mastered them, it had been great odds but that we had been torn to pieces; whereas, had we been content to have sat still on horseback, and fired as horsemen, they would not have taken the horses so for much their own when men were on their backs, as otherwise; and withal they told us that at last, if we had stood all together, and left our horses, they would have been so eager to have devoured them, that we might have come off safe, especially having our firearms in our hands, and being so many in number. For my part, I was never so sensible of danger in my life; for seeing above three hundred devils come roaring and open-mouthed to devour us, and having nothing to shelter us, or retreat to, I gave myself over for lost; and as it was, I believe I shall never care to cross those mountains again; I think I would much rather go a thousand leagues by sea, though I were sure to meet with a storm once a week. I Revisit My Island I HAVE nothing uncommon to take notice of in my passage through France; nothing but what other travellers have given an account of, with much more advantage than I can. I travelled from Toulouse to Paris, and without any considerable stay came to Calais and landed safe at Dover the 14th of January, after having had a severe cold season to travel in. I was now come to the center of my travels, and had in a little time all my new-discovered estate safe about me, the bills of exchange which I brought with me having been very currently paid. My principal guide and privy councillor was my good ancient widow, who, in gratitude for the money I had sent her, thought no pains too much, or care too great, to employ for me; and I trusted her so entirely with everything that I was perfectly easy as to the security of my effects; and indeed, I was very happy from my beginning, and now to the end, in the unspotted integrity of this good gentlewoman. And now I began to think of leaving my effects with this woman and setting out for Lisbon, and so to Brazil; but now another scruple came in my way, and that was religion; for as I had entertained some doubts about the Roman religion, even while I was abroad, especially in my state of solitude; so I knew there was no going to Brazil for me, much less going to settle there, unless I resolved to embrace the Roman Catholic religion without any reserve; unless, on the other hand, I resolved to be a sacrifice to my principles, be a martyr for religion, and die in the Inquisition; so I resolved to stay at home, and if I could find means for it, to dispose of my plantation. To this purpose I wrote to my old friend at Lisbon, who in return gave me notice that he could easily dispose of it there. But that if I thought fit to give him leave to offer it in my name to the two merchants, the survivors of my trustees, who lived in Brazil, who must fully understand the value of it, who lived just upon the spot, and who I knew were very rich, so that he believed they would be fond of buying it, he did not doubt but I should make 4 or 5,000 pieces of eight the more of it. Accordingly I agreed, gave him order to offer it to them, and he did so; and in about eight months more, the ship being then returned, he sent me account, that they had accepted the offer, and had remitted 33,000 pieces of eight to a correspondent of theirs at Lisbon to pay for it. In return, I signed the instrument of sale in the form which they sent from Lisbon, and sent it to my old man, who sent me bills of exchange for 32,800 pieces of eight to me, for the estate; reserving the payment of 100 moidores a year to him, the old man, during his life, and 50 moidores afterwards to his son for his life, which I had promised them, which the plantation was to make good as a rent-charge. And thus I have given the first part of a life of fortune and adventure, a life of Providence' checker-work, and of a variety which the world will seldom be able to show the like of. Beginning foolishly, but closing much more happily than any part of it ever gave me leave so much as to hope for. Anyone would think that in this state of complicated good fortune, I was past running any more hazards; and so indeed I had been, if other circumstances had concurred, but I was inured to a wandering life, had no family, not many relations, nor, however rich, had I contracted much acquaintance; and though I had sold my estate in Brazil, yet I could not keep the country out of my head, and had a great mind to be upon the wing again; especially I could not resist the strong inclination I had to see my island, and to know if the poor Spaniards were in being there, and how the rogues I left there had used them. My true friend the widow earnestly dissuaded me from it, and so far prevailed with me that for almost seven years she prevented my running abroad; during which time, I took my two nephews, the children of one of my brothers, into my care. The eldest, having something of his own, I bred up as a gentleman, and gave him a settlement of some addition to his estate, after my decease; the other I put out to a captain of a ship; and after five years, finding him a sensible, bold, enterprising young fellow, I put him into a good ship, and sent him to sea. And this young fellow afterwards drew me in, as old as I was, to further adventures myself. In the meantime, I in part settled myself here; for first of all I married, and that not either to my disadvantage or dissatisfaction, and had three children, two sons and one daughter. But my wife dying, and my nephew coming home with good success from a voyage to Spain, my inclination to go abroad and his importunity prevailed and engaged me to go in his ship, as a private trader to the East Indies. This was in the year 1694. In this voyage I visited my new colony in the island, saw my successors the Spaniards, had the whole story of their lives, and of the villains I left there: how at first they insulted the poor Spaniards, how they afterwards agreed, disagreed, united, separated, and how at last the Spaniards were obliged to use violence with them, how they were subjected to the Spaniards, how honestly the Spaniards used them; a history, if it were entered into, as full of variety and wonderful accidents as my own part, particularly also as to their battles with the Carib-beans, who landed several times upon the island, and as to the improvement they made upon the island itself, and how five of them made an attempt upon the mainland, and brought away eleven men and five women prisoners, by which, at my coming, I found about twenty young children on the island. Here I stayed about twenty days, left them supplies of all necessary things, and particularly of arms, powder, shot, clothes, tools, and two workmen, which I brought from England with me, viz., a carpenter and a smith. Besides this, I shared the island into parts with them, reserved to myself the property of the whole, but gave them such parts respectively as they agreed on; and having settled all things with them, and engaged them not to leave the place, I left them there. From thence I touched at Brazil, from whence I sent a bark, which I brought there, with more people to the island; and in it, besides other supplies, I sent seven women, being such as I found proper for service, or for wives to such as would take them. As to the Englishmen, I promised them to send them some women from England, with a good cargo of necessaries, if they would apply themselves to planting, which I afterwards performed. And the fellows proved very honest and diligent after they were mastered and had their properties set apart for them. I sent them also from Brazil five cows, three of them being big with calf, some sheep, and some hogs, which, when I came again, were considerably increased. But all these things, with an account how three hundred Caribbees came and invaded them, and ruined their plantations, and how they fought with that whole number twice, and were at first defeated, and three of them killed; but at last, a storm destroying their enemies' canoes, they famished or destroyed almost all the rest, and renewed and recovered the possession of their plantation, and still lived upon the island. All these things, with some very surprising incidents in some new adventures of my own, for ten years more, I may perhaps give a further account of hereafter.