Page:An English Garner Ingatherings from Our History and Literature (Volume 1 1877).pdf/100

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a frost began in England about the midst of September [1363 A.D.]; and thawed not till April [1364 A.D.] following: so that it continued almost eight months.

In the ninth year [1407-8 A.D.] of King HENRY the FOURTH; was there a frost that lasted fifteen weeks

The like happened  in  the fourth  year [1464-65 A.D.] of EDWARD the FOURTH.

In the ninth year [1517-18 A.D.] of King HENRY the EIGHTH, the Thames was frozen over, that men with horses and carts passed upon it: and in the very next succeeding year died multitudes of people by a strange disease called the "sweating sickness."

There was one great frost more in England, in our memory, and that was in the seventh year of Queen ELIZABETH: which began upon the 21st of December [1564 A.D.] and held on so extremely that upon New Year's Eve following people in multitudes went upon the Thames from London bridge to Westminster; some—as you tell me, Sir, they do now—playing at football, others shooting at pricks. This frost began to thaw upon the third day of January [1565 A.D.] at night, and on the fifth of the same month there was no ice to be seen between London bridge and Lambeth: which sudden thaw brought forth sudden harms. For houses and bridges were overturned by the land floods; among which Owes [Ouse] bridge in Yorkshire was borne away; many numbers of people perishing likewise by those waters.

Cit. You have a happy memory, father. Your head, I see, is a very storehouse of antiquity. You are of yourself, a whole volume of chronicles. TIME hath well bestowed his lessons upon you; for you are a ready scholar of his, and do repeat his stories by heart perfectly.

Coun. And thus, as I said before, you may perceive that these extraordinary fevers have always other evils attending upon them.

Cit. You have made it plain unto me: and I pray GOD—at whose command the sun sends forth his heat to comfort the earth, and the winds' bitter storms to deface the fruits of it—that in this last affliction of waters, which are hardened against us, all other miseries may be closed withal; and that