in Shoreditch
and Cripplegate parish, they did not think it safe for them to go near
those parts; so they went away east through Ratcliff Highway as far as
Ratcliff Cross, and leaving Stepney Church still on their left hand,
being afraid to come up from Ratcliff Cross to Mile End, because they
must come just by the churchyard, and because the wind, that seemed to
blow more from the west, blew directly from the side of the city where
the plague was hottest. So, I say, leaving Stepney they fetched a long
compass, and going to Poplar and Bromley, came into the great road just
at Bow.

Here the watch placed upon Bow Bridge would have questioned them, but
they, crossing the road into a narrow way that turns out of the hither
end of the town of Bow to Old Ford, avoided any inquiry there, and
travelled to Old Ford. The constables everywhere were upon their guard
not so much, It seems, to stop people passing by as to stop them from
taking up their abode in their towns, and withal because of a report
that was newly raised at that time: and that, indeed, was not very
improbable, viz., that the poor people in London, being distressed and
starved for want of work, and by that means for want of bread, were up
in arms and had raised a tumult, and that they would come out to all the
towns round to plunder for bread. This, I say, was only a rumour, and
it was very well it was no more. But it was not so far off from being a
reality as it has been thought, for in a few weeks more the poor people
became so desperate by the calamity they suffered that they were with
great difficulty kept from g out into the fields and towns, and tearing
all in pieces wherever they came; and, as I have observed before,
nothing hindered them but that the plague raged so violently and fell in
upon them so furiously that they rather went to the grave by thousands
than into the fields in mobs by thousands; for, in the parts about the
parishes of St Sepulcher, Clarkenwell, Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, and
Shoreditch, which were the places where the mob began to threaten, the
distemper came on so furiously that there died in those few parishes
even then, before the plague was come to its height, no less than 5361
people in the first three weeks in August; when at the same time
the parts about Wapping, Radcliffe, and Rotherhith were, as before
described, hardly touched, or but very lightly; so that in a word
though, as I said before, the good management of the Lord M