f for two or three days, but after that
abundance of people ran out of the town to look at them, and all the
country was alarmed about them. The people at first seemed afraid to
come near them; and, on the other hand, they desired the people to keep
off, for there was a rumour that the plague was at Waltham, and that it
had been in Epping two or three days; so John called out to them not to
come to them, 'for,' says he, 'we are all whole and sound people here,
and we would not have you bring the plague among us, nor pretend we
brought it among you.'

After this the parish officers came up to them and parleyed with them
at a distance, and desired to know who they were, and by what authority
they pretended to fix their stand at that place. John answered very
frankly, they were poor distressed people from London who, foreseeing
the misery they should be reduced to if plague spread into the city,
had fled out in time for their lives, and, having no acquaintance or
relations to fly to, had first taken up at Islington; but, the plague
being come into that town, were fled farther; and as they supposed that
the people of Epping might have refused them coming into their town,
they had pitched their tents thus in the open field and in the forest,
being willing to bear all the hardships of such a disconsolate lodging
rather than have any one think or be afraid that they should receive
injury by them.

At first the Epping people talked roughly to them, and told them they
must remove; that this was no place for them; and that they pretended to
be sound and well, but that they might be infected with the plague for
aught they knew, and might infect the whole country, and they could not
suffer them there.

John argued very calmly with them a great while, and told them that
London was the place by which they--that is, the townsmen of Epping and
all the country round them--subsisted; to whom they sold the produce of
their lands, and out of whom they made their rent of their farms; and
to be so cruel to the inhabitants of London, or to any of those by whom
they gained so much, was very hard, and they would be loth to have it
remembered hereafter, and have it told how barbarous, how inhospitable,
and how unkind they were to the people of London when they fled from the
face of the most terrible enemy in the world; that it would be enough to
make the name of an Epping man hateful through all the city, and to have
the rabble stone them in