Accordingly they had a full certificate of health, intimating that they had resided in a village in the county of Essex so long; that, being examined and scrutinized sufficiently, and having been retired from all conversation[213] for above forty days, without any appearance of sickness, they were therefore certainly concluded to be sound men, and might be safely entertained anywhere, having at last removed rather for fear of the plague, which was come into such a town, rather[214] than for having any signal of infection upon them, or upon any belonging to them. With this certificate they removed, though with great reluctance; and, John inclining not to go far from home, they removed towards the marshes on the side of Waltham. But here they found a man who, it seems, kept a weir or stop upon the river, made to raise water for the barges which go up and down the river; and he terrified them with dismal stories of the sickness having been spread into all the towns on the river and near the river, on the side of Middlesex and Hertfordshire (that is to say, into Waltham, Waltham Cross, Enfield, and Ware, and all the towns on the road), that they were afraid to go that way; though it seems the man imposed upon them, for that[215] the thing was not really true. However, it terrified them, and they resolved to move across the forest towards Rumford and Brentwood; but they heard that there were numbers of people fled out of London that way, who lay up and down in the forest, reaching near Rumford, and who, having no subsistence or habitation, not only lived oddly,[216] and suffered great extremities in the woods and fields for want of relief, but were said to be made so desperate by those extremities, as that they offered many violences to the country, robbed and plundered, and killed cattle, and the like; and others, building huts and hovels by the roadside, begged, and that with an importunity next door to demanding relief: so that the country was very uneasy, and had been obliged to take some of them up. This, in the first place, intimated to them that they would be sure to find the charity and kindness of the county, which they had found here where they were before, hardened and shut up against them; and that, on the other hand, they would be questioned wherever they came, and would be in danger of violence from others in like cases with themselves.