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.
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