ther, sent them also about two bushels of wheat and half a
bushel of white peas.

They were very thankful, to be sure, for this relief, and particularly
the straw was a--very great comfort to them; for though the ingenious
carpenter had made frames for them to lie in like troughs, and filled
them with leaves of trees, and such things as they could get, and had
cut all their tent-cloth out to make them coverlids, yet they lay damp
and hard and unwholesome till this straw came, which was to them like
feather-beds, and, as John said, more welcome than feather-beds would
have been at another time.

This gentleman and the minister having thus begun, and given an example
of charity to these wanderers, others quickly followed, and they
received every day some benevolence or other from the people, but
chiefly from the gentlemen who dwelt in the country round them. Some
sent them chairs, stools, tables, and such household things as they gave
notice they wanted; some sent them blankets, rugs, and coverlids, some
earthenware, and some kitchen ware for ordering their food.

Encouraged by this good usage, their carpenter in a few days built them
a large shed or house with rafters, and a roof in form, and an upper
floor, in which they lodged warm: for the weather began to be damp and
cold in the beginning of September. But this house, being well thatched,
and the sides and roof made very thick, kept out the cold well enough.
He made, also, an earthen wall at one end with a chimney in it, and
another of the company, with a vast deal of trouble and pains, made a
funnel to the chimney to carry out the smoke.

Here they lived comfortably, though coarsely, till the beginning of
September, when they had the bad news to hear, whether true or not,
that the plague, which was very hot at Waltham Abbey on one side and at
Rumford and Brentwood on the other side, was also coming to Epping, to
Woodford, and to most of the towns upon the Forest, and which, as they
said, was brought down among them chiefly by the higlers, and such
people as went to and from London with provisions.

If this was true, it was an evident contradiction to that report which
was afterwards spread all over England, but which, as I have said,
I cannot confirm of my own knowledge: namely, that the market-people
carrying provisions to the city never got the infection or carried it
back into the country; both which, I have been assured, has been false.

It might be that t