<P> With the arrival of warmer weather, the disease began to take a firmer hold . In the week 2--9 May, there were three recorded deaths in the parish of St Giles, four in neighbouring St Clement Danes and one each in St Andrew, Holborn and St Mary Woolchurch Haw . Only the last was actually inside the city walls . A Privy Council committee was formed to investigate methods to best prevent the spread of plague, and measures were introduced to close some of the ale houses in affected areas and limit the number of lodgers allowed in a household . In the city, the Lord Mayor issued a proclamation that all householders must diligently clean the streets outside their property, which was a householder's responsibility, not a state one (the city employed scavengers and rakers to remove the worst of the mess). Matters just became worse, and Aldermen were instructed to find and punish those failing their duty . As cases in St. Giles began to rise, an attempt was made to quarantine the area and constables were instructed to inspect everyone wishing to travel and contain inside vagrants or suspect persons . </P> <P> People began to be alarmed . Samuel Pepys, who had an important position at the Admiralty, stayed in London and provided a contemporary account of the plague through his diary . On 30 April he wrote: "Great fears of the sickness here in the City it being said that two or three houses are already shut up . God preserve us all!" Another source of information on the time is a fictional account, A Journal of the Plague Year, which was written by Daniel Defoe and published in 1722 . He had been only six when the plague struck but made use of his family's recollections (his uncle was a saddler in East London and his father a butcher in Cripplegate), interviews with survivors and sight of such official records as were available . </P> <P> By July 1665, plague was rampant in the City of London . King Charles II of England, his family and his court left the city for Salisbury, moving on to Oxford in September when some cases of plague occurred in Salisbury . The aldermen and most of the other city authorities opted to stay at their posts . The Lord Mayor of London, Sir John Lawrence, also decided to stay in the city . Businesses were closed when merchants and professionals fled . Defoe wrote "Nothing was to be seen but wagons and carts, with goods, women, servants, children, coaches filled with people of the better sort, and horsemen attending them, and all hurrying away". As the plague raged throughout the summer, only a small number of clergymen, physicians and apothecaries remained to cope with an increasingly large number of victims . Edward Cotes, author of London's Dreadful Visitation, expressed the hope that "Neither the Physicians of our Souls or Bodies may hereafter in such great numbers forsake us". </P> <P> The poorer people were also alarmed by the contagion and some left the city, but it was not easy for them to abandon their accommodation and livelihoods for an uncertain future elsewhere . Before exiting through the city gates, they were required to possess a certificate of good health signed by the Lord Mayor and these became increasingly difficult to obtain . As time went by and the numbers of plague victims rose, people living in the villages outside London began to resent this exodus and were no longer prepared to accept townsfolk from London, with or without a certificate . The refugees were turned back, were not allowed to pass through towns and had to travel across country, and were forced to live rough on what they could steal or scavenge from the fields . Many died in wretched circumstances of starvation and thirst in the hot summer that was to follow . </P>

When was the great plague and what happened