These are instances of activity. There were also examples of endurance. Samuel Shaw, ejected from the rectory of Long Whatton, in Leicestershire, retired to the village of Coates, near Loughborough, and there engaged in agricultural pursuits for the support of his family. His fields were ripe for the sickle, the valleys were covered with corn, and the good man shared in Nature's joy, as he looked upon his quiet homestead, "little dreaming," as he tells us, "of the Plague, which was almost a hundred miles off." Some friends from London came down to see him, and brought the infection; soon the Plague-spot appeared, and touched one after another of his household, until all were smitten, and the farm-cottage became a pest-house. The master of the dwelling shut himself up for three months, tending the sick as far as his own health permitted; for he himself suffered from the fearful malady. Two of his children died, one of his servants died, two of his friends from London died: five out of ten were thus cut off. Yet, although enfeebled by sickness, having no one besides himself to perform the rites of sepulture, he turned his garden into a grave-yard, and with his own hands buried the dead.[477] [Sidenote: THE PLAGUE.] Driven from London by the Plague, the two Houses held their sittings in the Great Hall of Christ's Church, Oxford, where Charles I. had met his mock parliament. The subject of the continued existence and of the alarming increase of Nonconformity again came upon the carpet. Instead of disinterested exertions, put forth by ejected ministers in a Plague-stricken country, being rewarded by commendation, jealousy was expressed respecting the manifestations of their zeal. It was odiously represented in parliamentary circles, that Dissenters in many places, "began to preach openly, not without reflecting on the sins of the Court, and on the ill-usage that they themselves had met with."[478] Prejudices were increased by reports to the effect, that Conventiclers in Scotland were bold and mutinous, and that they were supposed to have entered into treasonable correspondence with English Presbyterians;[479] at the same time, perhaps, circumstances pertaining to a new conflict with Holland, in which this country was then engaged, served to intensify these mischievous feelings. [Sidenote: 1665.]