I give this story thus at large,principally to give an account what became of the great numbers of people which immediately appeared in the city as soon as the sickness abated;for,as I have said,great numbers of those that were able and had retreats in the country fled to those retreats.So,when it was increased to such a frightful extremity as I have related,the middling people who had not friends fled to all parts of the country where they could get shelter,as well those that had money to relieve themselves as those that had not.Those that had money always fled farthest,because they were able to subsist themselves;but those who were empty suffered,as I have said,great hardships,and were often driven by necessity to relieve their wants at the expense of the country.By that means the country was made very uneasy at them,and sometimes took them up;though even then they scarce knew what to do with them,and were always very backward to punish them,but often,too,they forced them from place to place till 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.