ying provisions to the city never got the infection or carried it
back into the country; both which, I have been assured, has been[205]
false.

It might be that they were preserved even beyond expectation, though not
to a miracle;[206] that abundance went and came and were not touched;
and that was much encouragement for 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 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 of
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 such things.
They were chiefly put to it[207] 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 bushels of wheat that was sent them, in parched corn,
as the Israelites of old did, without grinding or making bread of
it.[208]

At last they found means to carry their corn to a windmill near
Woodford, where they had it ground; and afterwards the biscuit baker
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 a hundred and twenty
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
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 rea