'God bless us,' quoth I, 'from
a plague this year;' but then there succeeded one, and the greatest that
ever was 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.
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