in London. In 1625, the visitation encreasing,
and my master having a great charge of money and plate,
some of his own, some other men’s, left me and
a fellow-servant to keep the house, and himself in
June went into Leicestershire. He was in that
year feoffee collector for twelve poor alms-people
living in Clement-Dane’s Church-Yard; whose
pensions I in his absence paid weekly, to his and the
parish’s great satisfaction. My master
was no sooner gone down, but I bought a bass-viol,
and got a master to instruct me; the intervals of time
I spent in bowling in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields,
with Wat the cobler, Dick the blacksmith, and such
like companions: We have sometimes been at our
work at six in the morning, and so continued till
three or four in the afternoon, many times without
bread or drink all that while. Sometimes I went
to church and heard funeral sermons, of which there
was then great plenty. At other times I went
early to St. Antholine’s in London, where there
was every morning a sermon. The most able people
of the whole city and suburbs were out of town; if
any remained, it were such as were engaged by parish-officers
to remain; no habit of a gentleman or woman continued;
the woeful calamity of that year was grievous, people
dying in the open fields and in open streets.
At last, in August, the bills of mortality so encreased,
that very few people had thoughts of surviving the
contagion: the Sunday before the great bill came
forth, which was of five thousand and odd hundreds,
there was appointed a sacrament at Clement Dane’s;
during the destributing whereof I do very well remember
we sang thirteen parts of the one hundred and nineteenth
Psalm. One Jacob, our minister (for we had three
that day, the communion was so great) fell sick as
he was giving the sacrament, went home, and was buried
of the plague the Thursday following, Mr. James, another
of the ministers, fell sick ere he had quite finished,
had the plague, and was thirteen weeks ere he recovered.
Mr. Whitacre, the last of the three, escaped not only
then, but all the contagion following, without any
sickness at all; though he officiated at every funeral,
and buried all manner of people, whether they died
of the plague or not. He was given to drink,
seldom could preach more than one quarter of an hour
at a time, &c. In November my master came home.
My fellow-servant’s and my diet came weekly
to six shillings and sixpence, sometimes to seven
shillings, so cheap was diet at that time.
In February of that year, my master married again
(one who after his death became my wife.) In the same
year he settled upon me, during my life, twenty pounds
per annum, which I have enjoyed ever since, even to
the writing hereof.
May 22, 1627, my master died at the corner house in
the Strand, where I also lived so long. He died
intestate; my mistress relinquishing the administration,
it came to his elder brother, who assigned the estate
over to me for payment of my master’s debts;
which being paid, I faithfully returned the remaining
part unto his administrator; nor had one penny of
the estate more than twenty pounds per annum, which
was allowed me by contract, to undertake the payment
of my master’s debts.