In that month two men
had died of this most foul disease; and in the first week of May
its victims numbered nine; and yet another fortnight and it had
hurried seventeen citizens to the grave.
Now the memory of their wickedness rising before them, dread took
up its abode in all men's hearts; for none knew but his day of
reckoning was at hand. And their consternation was greater when
it was remembered that in the third year of this century thirty-
six thousand citizens of London had died of the plague, while
twenty-five years later it had swept away thirty-five thousand;
and eleven years after full ten thousand persons perished of this
same pestilence. Moreover, but two years previous, a like
scourge had been rife in Holland; and in Amsterdam alone twenty-
four thousand citizens had died from its effects.
And the terror of the citizens of London was yet more forcibly
increased by the appearance in April of a blazing star or comet,
bearing a tail apparently six yards in length, which rose betimes
in a lurid sky, and passed with ominous movement from west to
east. [It is worthy of notice that Lilly in his "Astrological
Predictions," published in 1648, declared the year 1656 would be
"ominous to London, unto her merchants at sea, to her traffique
at land, to her poor, to her rich, to all sorts of people
inhabiting in her or her Liberties, by reason of sundry fires and
a consuming plague."] The king with his queen and court,
prompted by curiosity, stayed up one night to watch this blazing
star pass above the silent city; the Royal Society in behalf of
science embodied many learned comments regarding it in their
"Philosophical Transactions;" but the great body of the people
regarded it as a visible signal of God's certain wrath.
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