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. Sepulchre’s, Clerkenwell, 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 5,361 people in the first three weeks in August, when at the same time the parts about Wapping, Ratcliff, and Rotherhithe 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 mayor and justices did much to prevent the rage and desperation of the people from breaking out in rabbles and tumults, and, in short, from the poor plundering the rich,—­I say, though they did much, the dead cart did more:  for as I have said, that, in five parishes only, there died above five thousand in twenty days, so there might be probably three times that number sick all that time; for some recovered, and great numbers fell sick every day, and died afterwards.  Besides, I must still be allowed to say, that, if the bills of mortality said five thousand, I always believed it was twice as many in reality, there being no room to believe that the account they gave was right, or that indeed they[196] were, among such confusions as I saw them in, in any condition to keep an exact account.

But to return to my travelers.  Here they were only examined, and, as they seemed rather coming from the country than from the city, they found the people easier with them; that they talked to them, let them come into a public house where the constable and his warders were, and gave them drink and some victuals, which greatly refreshed and encouraged them.  And here it came into their heads to say, when they should be inquired of afterwards, not that they came from London, but that they came out of Essex.

To forward this little fraud, they obtained so much favor of the constable at Oldford as to give them a certificate of their passing from Essex through that village, and that they had not been at London; which, though false in the common acceptation of London in the country, yet was literally true, Wapping or Ratcliff being no part either of the city or liberty.

This certificate, directed to the next constable, that was at Homerton, one of the hamlets of the parish of Hackney, was so serviceable to them, that it procured them, not a free passage there only, but a full certificate of health from a justice of the peace, who, upon the constable’s application, granted it without much difficulty.  And thus they passed through the long divided town of Hackney (for it lay then in several separated hamlets), and traveled on till they came into the great north road, on the top of Stamford Hill.