people here, and we would not have you bring the plague among us,
nor pretend we brought it among you.’
After this the parish officers came up to them and parleyed with
them at a distance, and desired to know who they were, and by what
authority they pretended to fix their stand at that place. John answered
very frankly, they were poor distressed people from London who,
foreseeing the misery they should be reduced to if plague spread into
the city, had fled out in time for their lives, and, having no
acquaintance or relations to fly to, had first taken up at Islington; but,
the plague being come into that town, were fled farther; and as they
supposed that the people of Epping might have refused them coming
into their town, they had pitched their tents thus in the open field and
in the forest, being willing to bear all the hardships of such a
disconsolate lodging rather than have any one think or be afraid that
they should receive injury by them.
At first the Epping people talked roughly to them, and told them
they must remove; that this was no place for them; and that they
pretended to be sound and well, but that they might be infected with
the plague for aught they knew, and might infect the whole country,
and they could not suffer them there.
John argued very calmly with them a great while, and told them that
London was the place by which they – that is, the townsmen of Epping
and all the country round them – subsisted; to whom they sold the
produce of their lands, and out of whom they made their rent of their
farms; and to be so cruel to the inhabitants of London, or to any of
those by whom they gained so much, was very hard, and they would
be loth to have it remembered hereafter, and have it told how
barbarous, how inhospitable, and how unkind they were to the people
of London when they fled from the face of the most terrible enemy in
the world; that it would be enough to make the name of an Epping
man hateful through all the city, and to have the rabble stone them in
the very streets whenever they came so much as to market; that they
were not yet secure from being visited themselves, and that, as he
heard, Waltham was already; that they would think it very hard that
when any of them fled for fear before they were touched, they should
be denied the liberty of lying so much as in the open fields.
The Epping men told them again, that they, indeed, said they were
sound and free from the infection, but that they had no assurance of it;
and that it was reported that there had been a great rabble of people at
Walthamstow, who made such pretences of being sound as they did,
but that they threatened to plunder the town and force their way,
whether the parish officers would or no; that there were near two
hundred of them, and had arms and tents like Low Country soldiers;
that they extorted provisions from the town, by threatening them with
living upon them at free quarter, showing their arms, and talking in
the language of soldiers; and that several of them being gone away
toward Rumford and Brentwood, the country had been infected by
them, and the plague spread into both those large towns, so that the
people durst not go to market there as usual; that it was very likely
they were some of that party; and if so, they deserved to be sent to the
county jail, and be secured till they had made satisfaction for the
damage they had done, and for the terror and fright they had put the
country into.
John answered that what other people had done was nothing to
them; that they assured them they were all of one company; that they
had never been more in number than they saw them at that time
(which, by the way, was very true); that they came out in two separate
companies, but joined by the way, their cases being the same; that