Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year Benjamin Pauley

H.F. tells of the plague's end, but notes the disappointing fact that the people's thankfulness didn't last, nor their sense of common purpose and identity across social and sectarian lines.

H.F. notes that, in about the middle of October, the plague's virulence seemed to abate—though many continued to be infected and many continued to die, yet more of the infected recovered than had previously been the case. Seeing this, many Londoners made premature returns to their normal patterns of life, causing many to succumb in the Autumn who had survived the worst of the Summer.

H.F. surveys the plague's effects on foreign and domestic trade, as well as on English manufacturing. 

H.F. offers an hypothesis for some seeming incongruities in the numbers of of plague deaths reported in the Bills of Mortality before turning to the effects of the epidemic on the poor, and the tremendous scale of charitable giving that sustained them through the worst of it.

H.F. argues that, while the Plague may be a general judgment of God upon a nation or city, yet it operates by natural, rather than supernatural causes. He observes that its spread was impossible to contain, given that people could infect others before they, themselves, knew that they were infected.

H.F. details the movement of infections from West to East, culminating in the City's bearing the brunt of the Plague in September. He reiterates the good governance of London and Westminster during the emergency.