The narrator recounts the events of September 1664, during which rumors spread that the plague had broken out in Holland. He remarks that, without the advent of newspapers, all information was hearsay until December, when the weekly Bill of Mortality listed two deaths by the plague. However, there were more burials than usual, and people speculated that many of the deaths listed as spotted fever and other ailments were actually deaths by the plague. Through the winter, the number of deaths decreased, but by June, increasingly more deaths were listed in the bills, mostly under other maladies as people tried to conceal the plague from their neighbors, as any infected home would be shut up.

Living in Aldgate, the narrator was far from the Western edge of the city where disease had broken out, but he witnessed his family and neighbors begin to flee the city. He relays that his brother tried to persuade him to leave, but each time he resolved to depart, something came up: he failed to find a horse or a servant to travel with, etc. Therefore, the narrator decided that “it was the Will of Heaven [he] should not go” (12). His brother tried to convince him one last time, but another obstacle to his departure arose when he fell ill (although not with the plague).