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 mentioned, 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 observed 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 Martin-in-the-Fields, and in Westminster.  The latter end of July it decreased in those parishes; and coming east, it increased prodigiously in Cripplegate, St Sepulcher’s, St James’s, Clarkenwell, and St Bride’s 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, Whitechappel, Aldgate, Wapping, and Ratcliff, were very little touched; so that people went about their business unconcerned, carried 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 from 25th July to 1st August the bill stood thus of all diseases:—­

St Giles, Cripplegate 554 St Sepulchers 250 Clarkenwell 103 Bishopsgate 116 Shoreditch 110 Stepney parish 127 Aldgate 92 Whitechappel 104 All the ninety-seven parishes within the walls 228 All the parishes in Southwark 205 - ----- — Total 1889

So that, in short, there died more that week in the two parishes of Cripplegate and St Sepulcher by forty-eight than in all the city, 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 itself 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 looked better, and the markets and shops were open, and the people walking about the streets as usual, though not quite so many; and this continued till the latter end of August and the beginning of September.