n of the people
from breaking out in rabbles and tumults, and, in short, from the poor
plundering the rich,--I say, though they did much, the dead cart did
more: for as I have said, that, in five parishes only, there died above
five thousand in twenty days, so there might be probably three times
that number sick all that time; for some recovered, and great numbers
fell sick every day, and died afterwards. Besides, I must still be
allowed to say, that, if the bills of mortality said five thousand, I
always believed it was twice as many in reality, there being no room to
believe that the account they gave was right, or that indeed they[196]
were, among such confusions as I saw them in, in any condition to keep
an exact account.

But to return to my travelers. Here they were only examined, and, as
they seemed rather coming from the country than from the city, they
found the people easier with them; that they talked to them, let them
come into a public house where the constable and his warders were, and
gave them drink and some victuals, which greatly refreshed and
encouraged them. And here it came into their heads to say, when they
should be inquired of afterwards, not that they came from London, but
that they came out of Essex.

To forward this little fraud, they obtained so much favor of the
constable at Oldford as to give them a certificate of their passing from
Essex through that village, and that they had not been at London; which,
though false in the common acceptation of London in the country, yet was
literally true, Wapping or Ratcliff being no part either of the city or
liberty.

This certificate, directed to the next constable, that was at Homerton,
one of the hamlets of the parish of Hackney, was so serviceable to them,
that it procured them, not a free passage there only, but a full
certificate of health from a justice of the peace, who, upon the
constable's application, granted it without much difficulty. And thus
they passed through the long divided town of Hackney (for it lay then in
several separated hamlets), and traveled on till they came into the
great north road, on the top of Stamford Hill.

By this time they began to weary; and so, in the back road from Hackney,
a little before it opened into the said great road, they resolved to set
up their tent, and encamp for the first night; which they did
accordingly, with this addition: that, finding a barn, or a building
like a barn, and first searching a