In the summer of 1665, five years after Charles II had ascended the vacant throne, an epidemic of the bubonic plague swept through London. This disease, carried by fleas from infected rats, caused a swift and horrible death. It was, of course, a re-occurrence of similar epidemics which took place in medieval times for the same reasons—sanitary conditions in the City had not changed a great deal. The churchyards were soon full, and pits were dug outside the walls to receive the corpses. At night wagons went about the streets, the drivers ringing bells and crying, ‘Bring out your dead!’ Before it was over some 100,000 Londoners had perished. A graphic description of the disaster was later given by Daniel Defoe in his book Journal of the Plague Year, published in 1722. A number of London’s clergymen and doctors risked their lives to serve the suffering populace during this dreadful affliction.