been denied food for my money they should have seen me take it
before their faces, and if I had tendered money for it they could not
have taken any course with me by law.
Thomas. You talk your old soldier’s language, as if you were in the
Low Countries now, but this is a serious thing. The people have good
reason to keep anybody off that they are not satisfied are sound, at
such a time as this, and we must not plunder them.
John. No, brother, you mistake the case, and mistake me too. I
would plunder nobody; but for any town upon the road to deny me
leave to pass through the town in the open highway, and deny me
provisions for my money, is to say the town has a right to starve me to
death, which cannot be true.
Thomas. But they do not deny you liberty to go back again from
whence you came, and therefore they do not starve you.
John. But the next town behind me will, by the same rule, deny me
leave to go back, and so they do starve me between them. Besides,
there is no law to prohibit my travelling wherever I will on the road.
Thomas. But there will be so much difficulty in disputing with
them at every town on the road that it is not for poor men to do it or
undertake it, at such a time as this is especially.
John. Why, brother, our condition at this rate is worse than anybody
else’s, for we can neither go away nor stay here. I am of the same
mind with the lepers of Samaria: ‘If we stay here we are sure to die’, I
mean especially as you and I are stated, without a dwelling-house of
our own, and without lodging in anybody else’s. There is no lying in
the street at such a time as this; we had as good go into the dead-cart
at once. Therefore I say, if we stay here we are sure to die, and if we
go away we can but die; I am resolved to be gone.
Thomas. You will go away. Whither will you go, and what can you
do? I would as willingly go away as you, if I knew whither. But we
have no acquaintance, no friends. Here we were born, and here we
must die.
John. Look you, Tom, the whole kingdom is my native country as
well as this town. You may as well say I must not go out of my house
if it is on fire as that I must not go out of the town I was born in when
it is infected with the plague. I was born in England, and have a right
to live in it if I can.
Thomas. But you know every vagrant person may by the laws of
England be taken up, and passed back to their last legal settlement.
John. But how shall they make me vagrant? I desire only to travel
on, upon my lawful occasions.
Thomas. What lawful occasions can we pretend to travel, or rather
wander upon? They will not be put off with words.
John. Is not flying to save our lives a lawful occasion?
And do they not all know that the fact is true?
We cannot be said to dissemble.
Thomas. But suppose they let us pass, whither shall we go?
John. Anywhere, to save our lives; it is time enough to consider that
when we are got out of this town. If I am once out of this dreadful
place, I care not where I go.
Thomas. We shall be driven to great extremities. I know not what
to think of it.
John. Well, Tom, consider of it a little.
This was about the beginning of July; and though the plague was
come forward in the west and north parts of the town, yet all
Wapping, as I have observed before, and Redriff, and Ratdiff, and
Limehouse, and Poplar, in short, Deptford and Greenwich, all both
sides of the river from the Hermitage, and from over against it, quite
down to Blackwall, was entirely free; there had not one person died of