City, had fled out in time for their Lives, and having no Acquaintance or Relations to fly to, had firſt taken up at Iſlington, but the Plague being come into that Town, were fled further, and as they ſuppos’d that the People of Epping might have refus'd them coming into their Town, they had pitch’d their Tents thus in the open Field, and in the Foreſt, being willing to bear all the Hardſhips of ſuch a diſconſolate Lodging, rather than have any one think or be afraid that they ſhould receive Injury by them.
At firſt the Epping People talk’d roughly to them, and told them they muſt remove; that this was no Place for them; and that they pretended to be Sound and Well, but that they might be infected with the Plague for ought they knew, and might infect the whole Country, and they cou’d not ſuffer them there.
John argu’d very calmly with them a great while, and told them, 'That London was the Place by which they, that is, the Townſmen of Epping and all the Country round them, ſubſiſted; to whom they ſold the produce of their Lands, and out of whom they made the Rent of their Farms; and to be ſo cruel to the Inhabitants of London, or to any of thoſe by whom they gain’d ſo much was very hard, and they would be loth to have it remembered hereafter, and have it told how barbarous, how unhoſpitable and how unkind they were to the People of London, when they fled from the Face of the moſt terrible Enemy in the World; that it would be enough to make the Name of an Epping-Man hateful thro’ all the City, and to have the Rabble Stone them in the very Streets, whenever they came ſo much as to Market; that they were not yet ſecure from being Viſited themſelves, and that as he heard, Waltham was already that they would think it very hard
