The whole of Chowles's hoard, except the plate, which he managed, with Judith's aid, to carry off and conceal in certain hiding-places in the vaults of Saint Faith's, was taken from the house in Nicholas-lane, and cast into the fire.
The cathedral was one of the first places ordered to be purified.

The pallets of the sick were removed and burned, and all the stains and impurities with which its floor and columns were polluted were cleansed.
Nothing was left untried to free it from infection.

It was washed throughout with vinegar, fumigated with the strongest scents, and several large barrels of pitch were set fire to in the aisles." "It shall undergo another species of purification," said Solomon Eagle, who was present during these proceedings; "one that shall search every nook within it--shall embrace all those columns, and pierce every crack and crevice in those sculptured ornaments; and then, and not till then, will it be thoroughly cleansed." During all this time the grocer had not opened his dwelling.

The wisdom of this plan was now made fully apparent.

The plague was declining fast, and not an inmate of his house had been attacked by it.