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 Way 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.
