example of charity to these wanderers, others quickly followed, and
they received every day some benevolence or other from the people,
but chiefly from the gentlemen who dwelt in the country round them.
Some sent them chairs, stools, tables, and such household things as
they gave notice they wanted; some sent them blankets, rugs, and
coverlids, some earthenware, and some kitchen ware for ordering
their food.
Encouraged by this good usage, their carpenter in a few days built
them a large shed or house with rafters, and a roof in form, and an
upper floor, in which they lodged warm: for the weather began to be
damp and cold in the beginning of September. But this house, being
well thatched, and the sides and roof made very thick, kept out the
cold well enough. He made, also, an earthen wall at one end with a
chimney in it, and another of the company, with a vast deal of trouble
and pains, made a funnel to the chimney to carry out the smoke.
Here they lived comfortably, though coarsely, till the beginning of
September, when they had the bad news to hear, whether true or not,
that the plague, which was very hot at Waltham Abbey on one side
and at Rumford and Brentwood on the other side, was also coming to
Epping, to Woodford, and to most of the towns upon the Forest, and
which, as they said, was brought down among them chiefly by the
higlers, and such people as went to and from London with provisions.
If this was true, it was an evident contradiction to that report which
was afterwards spread all over England, but which, as I have said, I
cannot confirm of my own knowledge: namely, that the market-people
carrying provisions to the city never got the infection or carried it
back into the country; both which, I have been assured, has been false.
It might be that they were preserved even beyond expectation,
though not to a miracle, that abundance went and came and were not
touched; and that was much for the encouragement of the poor people
of London, who had been completely miserable if the people that
brought provisions to the markets had not been many times
wonderfully preserved, or at least more preserved than could be
reasonably expected.
But now these new inmates began to be disturbed more effectually,
for the towns about them were really infected, and they began to be
afraid to trust one another so much as to go abroad for such things as
they wanted, and this pinched them very hard, for now they had little
or nothing but what the charitable gentlemen of the country supplied
them with. But, for their encouragement, it happened that other
gentlemen in the country who had not sent them anything before,
began to hear of them and supply them, and one sent them a large pig
– that is to say, a porker another two sheep, and another sent them a
calf. In short, they had meat enough, and sometimes had cheese and
milk, and all such things. They were chiefly put to it for bread, for
when the gentlemen sent them corn they had nowhere to bake it or to
grind it. This made them eat the first two bushel of wheat that was
sent them in parched corn, as the Israelites of old did, without
grinding or making bread of it.
At last they found means to carry their corn to a windmill near
Woodford, where they bad it ground, and afterwards the biscuit-maker
made a hearth so hollow and dry that he could bake biscuit-cakes
tolerably well; and thus they came into a condition to live without any
assistance or supplies from the towns; and it was well they did, for the
country was soon after fully infected, and about 120 were said to have
died of the distemper in the villages near them, which was a terrible
thing to them.
On this they called a new council, and now the towns had no need to
be afraid they should settle near them; but, on the contrary, several
families of the poorer sort of the inhabitants quitted their houses and