Likewise I found that the watermen on the river above the bridge found means to convey themselves away up the river as far as they could go; and that they had, many of them, their whole families in their boats, covered with tilts[223] 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 riversides 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 unloaded 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[224] till they[225] came for further orders; and if they could not find them,[226] and the man would not consent to take 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.