Page:A Journal of the Plague Year (1722).djvu/168

 Conſt. And will you aſſure us that your other People ſhall offer us no new Diſturbance.

John. No, no, you may depend on it.

Conſt. You muſt oblige your ſelf too that none of your People ſhall come a ſtep nearer than where the Proviſions we fend you ſhall be ſet down. John. I anſwer for it we will not.

Accordingly they ſent to the Place twenty Loaves of Bread, and three or four large pieces of good Beef, and opened ſome Gates thro’ which they paſs’d, but none of them had Courage ſo much as to look out to ſee them go, and, as it was Evening, if they had looked they cou’d not have ſeen them ſo as to know how few they were.

This was John the Soldier’s Management. But this gave ſuch an Alarm to the County, that had they really been two or three Hundred, the whole County would have been rais’d upon them, and they wou'd ha’ been ſent to Priſon, or perhaps knock’d on the Head.

They were ſoon made ſenſible of this, for two Days afterwards they found ſeveral Parties of Horſemen and Footmen alſo about, in purſuit of three Companies of Men arm’d, as they ſaid, with Muskets, who were broke out from London, and had the Plague upon them: and that were not only ſpreading the Diſtemper among the People, but plundering the Country. As they ſaw now the Conſequence of their Caſe, they ſoon ſee the Danger they were in, ſo they reſolv’d by the Advice alſo of the old Soldier, to divide themſelves again. John and his two