they were obliged to come back again to London.
I have, since my knowing this story of John and his brother, inquired
and found that there were a great many of the poor disconsolate
people, as above, fled into the country every way; and some of them
got little sheds and barns and outhouses to live in, where they could
obtain so much kindness of the country, and especially where they had
any the least satisfactory account to give of themselves, and
particularly that they did not come out of London too late. But others,
and that in great numbers, built themselves little huts and retreats in
the fields and woods, and lived like hermits in holes and caves, or any
place they could find, and where, we may be sure, they suffered great
extremities, such that many of them were obliged to come back again
whatever the danger was; and so those little huts were often found
empty, and the country people supposed the inhabitants lay dead in
them of the plague, and would not go near them for fear – no, not in a
great while; nor is it unlikely but that some of the unhappy wanderers
might die so all alone, even sometimes for want of help, as
particularly in one tent or hut was found a man dead, and on the gate
of a field just by was cut with his knife in uneven letters the following
words, by which it may be supposed the other man escaped, or that,
one dying first, the other buried him as well as he could: –
O mIsErY!
We BoTH ShaLL DyE,
WoE, WoE.
I have given an account already of what I found to have been the
case down the river among the seafaring men; how the ships lay in the
offing, as it’s called, in rows or lines astern of one another, quite down
from the Pool as far as I could see. I have been told that they lay in
the same manner quite down the river as low as Gravesend, and some
far beyond: even everywhere or in every place where they could ride
with safety as to wind and weather; nor did I ever hear that the plague
reached to any of the people on board those ships – except such as lay
up in the Pool, or as high as Deptford Reach, although the people
went frequently on shore to the country towns and villages and
farmers’ houses, to buy fresh provisions, fowls, pigs, calves, and the
like for their supply.
Likewise I found that the watermen on the river above the bridge
found means to convey themselves away up the river as far as they
could go, and that they had, many of them, their whole families in
their boats, covered with tilts and bales, as they call them, and
furnished with straw within for their lodging, and that they lay thus all
along by the shore in the marshes, some of them setting up little tents
with their sails, and so lying under them on shore in the day, and
going into their boats at night; and in this manner, as I have heard, the
river-sides were lined with boats and people as long as they had
anything to subsist on, or could get anything of the country; and
indeed the country people, as well Gentlemen as others, on these and
all other occasions, were very forward to relieve them – but they were
by no means willing to receive them into their towns and houses, and
for that we cannot blame them.
There was one unhappy citizen within my knowledge who had been
visited in a dreadful manner, so that his wife and all his children were
dead, and himself and two servants only left, with an elderly woman,
a near relation, who had nursed those that were dead as well as she
could. This disconsolate man goes to a village near the town, though
not within the bills of mortality, and finding an empty house there,
inquires out the owner, and took the house. After a few days he got a
cart and loaded it with goods, and carries them down to the house; the