1723, Defoe asked why a comet must inevitably foretell calamities. He attacked ‘whining astrologers’ and ‘Stargazers’ as men who have ‘no Commission … to predict the Plagues, or War, or Famine’ from appearances in the heavens.

Warnings of Gods Judgments: a traditional and widely prevalent view of comets as signs from heaven of impending scourges. William Turner, A Complete History of the most remarkable Providences … which have happened in this Present Age (1697), reflects the usual view: ‘For Comets, I declare, that I do not believe the Governour of the World puts out such Flambeaus, sets such Beacons on fire in the upper Regions for no purpose: Nature doth not, saith the Philosopher; and shall the Christian say, the God of Nature doth anything in vain? Two and fifty years ago … there was a Blazing Star seen, upon which followed the Irish Massacre, and the late Civil Wars. In December and March 1664, there were two Comets seen, which were followed by that sad and dreadful Plague … and that lamentable fire’ (p. 61).

Fore-tellers … Pestilence, War, Fire: Anthony Wood records the ‘blazing star’ of December 1664 and adds an account of ‘prodigious births’ at Sarum, ‘the devill let loose to possess people’, ‘great innundations and frosts—war with the Dutch—war between the emperour and the Turk—general commotions throughout Christendom and the rest of the world—sudden deaths’. This entry is followed by reference to the plague in 1665, a monster born at Oxford (‘one eye in the forehead, noe nose, and its Two eares in the nape of the neck’), a thorn which bore five different fruits (cherries, dates, apricots), earthquakes (Life and Times, ii. 53–4). But see also previous note.

Lilly’s … Gadbury’s … Poor Robin’s: three of the well-known almanacs of the period. William Lilly (1602–81) published his first almanac, Merlinus Anglicus Junior, in 1644 and continued to publish one annually until his death. He was also the author of a long series of pamphlets of prophecy, some of which involved him in difficulties. Though he remained in London during the plague of 1625, he fled in 1665. In the later years of his life he practised both medicine and astrology, having been granted a medical licence through the influence of his friend, Elias Ashmole. John Gadbury (1627–1704) served as apprentice to a tailor, after which he attended Oxford. Born of a Roman Catholic mother, he was eventually a Presbyterian, an Independent, and a member of the ‘family of love’. He wrote widely on astrological subjects from 1652, his annual Ephemerides first appearing in 1655. Like other astrologers of the day, he was involved in controversy, religious and political as well as astrological. Two of his better known works are De Cometis (1665) and London’s Deliverance from the Plague (1665). Poor Robin is thought to be the pseudonym of William Winstanley (1628?–1698), a barber turned writer and compiler. The earliest extant issue of his almanac is from 1663, most of it in a humorous and satiric vein directed at other almanacs somewhat in the manner of the Partridge papers of Swift and others. The title is revealing: An Almanack after a New Fashion, Wherein the Reader may see (if he be not blinde) many remarkable Things worthy of Observation … written by Poor Robin, Knight of the Burnt-Island, a Well-Willer to Mathematicks.

pretended religious Books: Come out of her, etc. is from Revelation 18: 4. There is a book with the first part of Defoe’s title by John Lilburne, published in 1639, but it has nothing to do with plague. Britain’s Remembrancer is by George Wither, but it was published in 1628. Its subtitle is ‘Containing a Narration of the Plague lately Past’, and possibly Defoe thought it applied to the plague of 1665. Fair Warning may be another instance of confusion: in 1665 Wither published his Memorandum to London occasioned by the Pestilence, with a Warning Piece to London. Wither’s works on plague were well known in the seventeenth century.

Jonah to Ninevah: Jonah 3: 4.

run about Naked: Pepys reports a similar incident in the Diary, 29 July 1667. The literature of Quakerism contains many instances of the practice of ‘testifying by signs’. London, as the new Babylon, was often the subject of prophetic doom. Defoe had in mind the notorious case of Solomon Eagles (or Eccles), a musician and convert to Quakerism who ‘as a sign’ ran naked through Bartholomew Fair at Smithfield with a pan of fire or brimstone on his head, crying ‘repentance’ and ‘remember Sodom’, but this incident occurred in 1662 (William Braithwaite, The Second Period of Quakerism (1961), 25). See also pp.