n was put to death under
this pretence, that they were going to desert, but in reality that the
robbers might get what they had. The madness of the seditious did also
increase together with their famine, and both those miseries were every
day inflamed more and more, for there was no corn which anywhere
appeared publicly, but the robbers came running into and searched men's
private houses; and then, if they found any, they tormented them,
because they had denied they had any; and if they found none, they
tormented them worse, because they supposed they had more carefully
concealed it. The indication they made use of whether they had any or
not was taken from the bodies of these miserable wretches, which, if
they were in good case, they supposed they were in no want at all of
food; but if they were wasted away, they walked off without searching
any further; nor did they think it proper to kill such as these, because
they saw they would very soon die of themselves for want of food. Many
there were indeed who sold what they had for one measure. It was of
wheat, if they were of the richer sort; but of barley, if they were
poorer. When these had so done, they shut themselves up in the inmost
rooms of their houses, and ate the corn they had gotten. Some did it
without grinding it, by reason of the extremity of the want they were
in, and others baked bread of it, according as necessity and fear
dictated to them. A table was nowhere laid for a distinct meal, but they
snatched the bread out of the fire, half-baked, and ate it very hastily.

It was now a miserable case, and a sight that would justly bring tears
into our eyes, how men stood as to their food, while the more powerful
had more than enough, and the weaker were lamenting [for want of it].
But the famine was too hard for all other passions, and it is
destructive to nothing so much as to modesty, for what was otherwise
worthy of reverence was in this case despised; insomuch that children
pulled the very morsels that their fathers were eating out of their very
mouths, and what was still more to be pitied, so did the mothers do as
to their infants; and when those that were most dear were perishing
under their hands, they were not ashamed to take from them the very last
drops that might preserve their lives; and while they ate after this
manner, yet were they not concealed in so doing; but the seditious
everywhere came upon them immediately and snatched away from them what
t