em, their whole families in their boats,
covered with tilts and bales, as they call them, and furnished with
straw within for their lodging, and that they lay thus all along by the
shore in the marshes, some of them setting up little tents with their
sails, and so lying under them on shore in the day, and going into their
boats at night; and in this manner, as I have heard, the river-sides
were lined with boats and people as long as they had anything to subsist
on, or could get anything of the country; and indeed the country people,
as well Gentlemen as others, on these and all other occasions, were very
forward to relieve them--but they were by no means willing to receive
them into their towns and houses, and for that we cannot blame them.

There was one unhappy citizen within my knowledge who had been visited
in a dreadful manner, so that his wife and all his children were dead,
and himself and two servants only left, with an elderly woman, a near
relation, who had nursed those that were dead as well as she could. This
disconsolate man goes to a village near the town, though not within the
bills of mortality, and finding an empty house there, inquires out the
owner, and took the house. After a few days he got a cart and loaded
it with goods, and carries them down to the house; the people of the
village opposed his driving the cart along; but with some arguings and
some force, the men that drove the cart along got through the street up
to the door of the house. There the constable resisted them again,
and would not let them be brought in. The man caused the goods to be
unloaden and laid at the door, and sent the cart away; upon which
they carried the man before a justice of peace; that is to say, they
commanded him to go, which he did. The justice ordered him to cause the
cart to fetch away the goods again, which he refused to do; upon which
the justice ordered the constable to pursue the carters and fetch them
back, and make them reload the goods and carry them away, or to set them
in the stocks till they came for further orders; and if they could not
find them, nor the man would not consent to take them away, they should
cause them 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