breadful pestilence, and fire, of LONDON. 507 
event was scarcely less fatal to the Spaniards, The armada was 
attacked by a violent storm in passings the Orkneys; and the ships, 
having already lost their anchors, were obliged to keep at sea, while 
the mariners, unaccustomed to hardships, and unable to manage such 
- unwieldy vessels, allowed them to drive on the Western Isles of Scot- 
land, or on the coast of Ireland, where they were miserably wrecked. 
— Not one half of the fleet returned to Spain, and a still smaller 
proportion of the soldiers and seamen. Queen Elizabeth ordered 
medals to be struck on the occasion with this motto. — “ Afflavit Deus, 
et dissipantur.” 
Dreadful Pestilence, and Fire, of London. 
In the reign of Charles II., in 1665, London was ravaged by the 
most violent Plague ever known in Britain. The whole summer had 
been remarkably still and warm, so that the weather was sometimes 
suffocating even to persons in perfect health, and by this unusual 
heat and sultry atmosphere, people were undoubtedly prepared for 
receiving the infection, which appeared with virulence ia July, August, 
and September. A violent plague had raged in Holland in 1663 ; on 
which account the importation of merchandise from that country was 
prohibited by the British legislature in 1664. The infection, however, 
had actually been imported, for in the close of 1664, two or three 
persons died suddenly in Westminster, with marks of the plague on their 
bodies. Some of their neighbours, terrified at the danger, removed 
into the city, and communicated the infection to so many others, that 
it became impossible to extinguish it by separating those that were 
infected from those that were not. It was confined, however, through 
a hard frosty winter, till February, when it appeared in St. Giles's 
parish, to which it had been originally brought, and, after another 
interval, shewed its malignant force afresh in April. At first it took 
off one here and there, without any certain proof of their having 
infected each other, and houses were shut up to prevent its spreading. 
But it was now too late ; the infection gained ground every day, and 
the shutting up of houses only made the disease spread wider. Peo- 
ple, afraid of being shut up, concealed their illness, while numbers 
either escaped from their places of confinement, or expired in the 
greatest torments, destitute of every assistance ; and many died, both 
of the plague and other diseases, who would in all probability have 
recovered, had they been allowed their liberty, with proper exercise 
and air. 
A house was shut up on account of a maid servant, who had only 
spots, and not the gangrenous blotches upon her, so that her distem- 
per was probably a petechial fever. She recovered ; but the people 
of the house obtained no liberty to stir, for forty days. The bad air, 
fear, anger, and vexation, attending this injurious treatment, cast the 
mistress of the family into a fever. The visitors, appointed to search 
the houses, said it was the plague, though the physicians were of a 
different opinion : the family, however, were obliged to begin their 
quarantine anew, though it had now almost expired; and this 
second confinement affected them so much, that most of them fell 
