Page:A Journal of the Plague Year (1722).djvu/276

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268
Memoirs of

from King Charles II. But however he came by it, certain it is, the Ground was let out to build on, or built upon by his Order: The firſt Houſe built upon it was a large fair Houſe ſtill ſtanding, which faces the Street, or Way, now call’d Hand-Alley, which, tho’ call’d an Alley, is as wide as a Street: The Houſes in the ſame Row with that Houſe Northward, are built on the very ſame Ground where the poor People were buried, and the Bodies on opening the Ground for the Foundations, were dug up, ſome of them remaining ſo plain to be ſeen, that the Womens Sculls were diſtinguiſh’d by their long Hair, and of others, the Fleſh was not quite periſhed; ſo that the People began to exclaim loudly againſt it, and ſome ſuggeſted that it might endanger a Return of the Contagion: After which the Bones and Bodies, as faſt as they came at them, were carried to another part of the ſame Ground, and thrown all together into a deep Pit, dug on purpoſe, which now is to be known, in that it is not built on, but is a Paſſage to another Houſe, at the upper end of Roſe Alley, juſt againſt the Door of a Meeting-houſe, which has been built there many Years ſince; and the Ground is paliſadoed off from the reſt of the Paſſage, in a little ſquare, there lye the Bones and Remains of near Two thouſand Bodies, carried by the Dead-Carts to to their Grave in that one Year.

4. Beſides this, there was a piece of Ground in Moorfields, by the going into the Street which is now call’d Old Bethlem, which was enlarg’d much, tho’ not wholly taken in on the fame occaſion.

N.B. The Author of this Journal, lyes buried in that very Ground, being at his own Deſire, his Sifter having been buried there a few Years, before.

5. Stepney Pariſh, extending it ſelf from the Eaſt part of London to the North, even to the very