Editing Great Plague of London (section)

===Exodus from the city===
[[File:Nine images of the plague in London, 17th century Wellcome L0016640.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.5|Scenes in London during the plague]]
By July 1665, plague was rampant in the City of London. The rich ran away, including King [[Charles II of England]], his family and his court, who left the city for [[Salisbury]], moving on to [[Oxford]] in September when some cases of plague occurred in Salisbury.<ref name=Leasor103>Leasor (1962), p. 103.</ref> The [[aldermen]] and most of the other city authorities opted to stay at their posts. The [[Lord Mayor of the City of London|Lord Mayor of London]], [[John Lawrence (Lord Mayor)|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".<ref name=Leasor62/> As the plague raged throughout the summer, only a small number of [[clergymen]], [[physician]]s and [[apothecaries]] remained to cope with an increasingly large number of victims. Ellen 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".<ref name=Leasor62/>

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 dehydration in the hot summer that was to follow.<ref name=Leasor69>Leasor (1962), pp. 66–69.</ref>