them[227] away, they[225] should cause them[227] to be drawn with hooks
from the house door, and burned in the street. The poor distressed man,
upon this, fetched the goods again, but with grievous cries and
lamentations at the hardship of his case. But there was no remedy:
self-preservation obliged the people to those severities which they
would not otherwise have been concerned in. Whether this poor man lived
or died, I cannot tell, but it was reported that he had the plague upon
him at that time, and perhaps the people might report that to justify
their usage of him; but it was not unlikely that either he or his goods,
or both, were dangerous, when his whole family had been dead of the
distemper so little a while before.

I know that the inhabitants of the towns adjacent to London were much
blamed for cruelty to the poor people that ran from the contagion in
their distress, and many very severe things were done, as may be seen
from what has been said; but I cannot but say also, that where there was
room for charity and assistance to the people, without apparent danger
to themselves, they were willing enough to help and relieve them. But as
every town were indeed judges in their own case, so the poor people who
ran abroad in their extremities were often ill used, and driven back
again into the town; and this caused infinite exclamations and outcries
against the country towns, and made the clamor very popular.

And yet more or less, maugre[228] all the caution, there was not a town
of any note within ten (or, I believe, twenty) miles of the city, but
what was more or less infected, and had some[229] died among them. I
have heard the accounts of several, such as they were reckoned up, as
follows:--

Enfield 32
Hornsey 58
Newington 17
Tottenham 42
Edmonton 19
Barnet and Hadley 43
St. Albans 121
Watford 45
Uxbridge 117
Hertford 90
Ware 160
Hodsdon 30
Waltham Abbey 23
Epping 26
Deptford 623
Greenwich 631
Eltham and Lusum 85
Croydon 61
Brentwood 70
Rumford 109
Barking about 200
Brandford