built huts in the forest after the same manner as they had done. But it
was observed that several of these poor people that had so removed
had the sickness even in their huts
or booths; the reason of which was plain, namely, not because they
removed into the air, but, () because they did not remove time enough;
that is to say, not till, by openly conversing with the other people their
neighbours, they had the distemper upon them, or (as may be said)
among them, and so carried it about them whither they went. Or (2)
because they were not careful enough, after they were safely removed
out of the towns, not to come in again and mingle with the diseased people.
But be it which of these it will, when our travellers began to
perceive that the plague was not only in the towns, but even in the
tents and huts on the forest near them, they began then not only to be
afraid, but to think of decamping and removing; for had they stayed
they would have been in manifest danger of their lives.
It is not to be wondered that they were greatly afflicted at being
obliged to quit the place where they had been so kindly received, and
where they had been treated with so much humanity and charity; but
necessity and the hazard of life, which they came out so far to
preserve, prevailed with them, and they saw no remedy. John,
however, thought of a remedy for their present misfortune: namely,
that he would first acquaint that gentleman who was their principal
benefactor with the distress they were in, and to crave his assistance
and advice.
The good, charitable gentleman encouraged them to quit the Place
for fear they should be cut off from any retreat at all by the violence
of the distemper; but whither they should go, that he found very hard
to direct them to. At last John asked of him whether he, being a
justice of the peace, would give them certificates of health to other
justices whom they might come before; that so whatever might be
their lot, they might not be repulsed now they had been also so long
from London. This his worship immediately granted, and gave them
proper letters of health, and from thence they were at liberty to travel
whither they pleased.
Accordingly they had a full certificate of health, intimating that they
had resided in a village in the county of Essex so long that, being
examined and scrutinised sufficiently, and having been retired from
all conversation for above forty days, without any appearance of
sickness, they were therefore certainly concluded to be sound men,
and might be safely entertained anywhere, having at last removed
rather for fear of the plague which was come into such a town, rather
than for having any signal of infection upon them, or upon any
belonging to them.
With this certificate they removed, though with great reluctance;
and John inclining not to go far from home, they moved towards the
marshes on the side of Waltham. But here they found a man who, it
seems, kept a weir or stop upon the river, made to raise the water for
the barges which go up and down the river, and he terrified them with
dismal stories of the sickness having been spread into all the towns on
the river and near the river, on the side of Middlesex and Hertfordshire;
that is to say, into Waltham, Waltham Cross, Enfield, and Ware, and all
the towns on the road, that they were afraid to go that way; though it
seems the man imposed upon them, for that the thing was not really true.
However, it terrified them, and they resolved to move across the
forest towards Rumford and Brentwood; but they heard that there
were numbers of people fled out of London that way, who lay up and
down in the forest called Henalt Forest, reaching near Rumford, and
who, having no subsistence or habitation, not only lived oddly and
suffered great extremities in the woods and fields for want of relief,
but were said to be made so desperate by those extremities as that they