'Then it was wains trundling down streets piled with corpses of rats, then cats, then dogs, then people. Red chalk crosses would appear on certain houses – armed watchmen stood before them to prevent any of the miserable residents from breaking out of those nailed-shut doors. Now, I couldn't've been more than seven. The sight of all those blokes planted in the brimstone-fog, like hero-statues, with pikes and muskets at the ready – churches' bells sounding death-knells all round – why, Bob and I had voyaged to another world without leaving London! Public entertainments were outlawed. Irish even stopped having their Popish feasts, and many absconded. The great hangings at Tyburn stopped. Theatres: shut down for the first time since Cromwell. Bob and I had lost both income and the entertainment to spend it on. We left London. We went to the forest. Everyone did. They were infested. The highwaymen had to pack up and move away. Before we – the Londoners fleeing the Plague – even came into those woods, there had been towns of lean-tos and tree-houses there: widows, orphans, cripples, idiots, madmen, journeymen who'd thought better of their contracts, fugitives, homeless reverends, victims of fire and flood, deserters, discharged soldiers, actors, girls who'd gotten pregnant out of wedlock, tinkers, pedlars, gypsies, runaway slaves, musicians, sailors between sailings, smugglers, confused Irishmen, Ranters, Diggers, Levellers, Quakers, feminists, midwives. The normal Vagabond population, in other words. To this was added, now, any Londoner fleet enough to outrun the Black Death. Now, a year later London burnt to the ground – there was yet another exodus. Same year, the Naval Pay Office went into default – thousands of unpaid sailors joined us. We moved around the South of England like Christmas Carolers from Hell. More'n half of us expected the Apocalypse within a few weeks, so we didn't trouble with planning. We broke down walls and fences, undoing Enclosure, poached game in forests of some extremely worshipful lords and bishops. They weren't happy.'