Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/309

 12 S. III. MAY, 1917.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

303

I have before me a rare and possibly unique broadside :

" A true relation of a great number of people Frozen to Death . . . . in several parts of the West of England, on Tuesday, the Twenty-third of December, 1684 [1683],"" &c.

I quote a few paragraphs which will show the condition of the West of England at the time :

"The Wells carrier. .. .had two of his com- pany frozen to death, viz., his own son, a youth about thirteen or fourteen years of age, and a young man, a passenger, aged about twenty years ; which persons were not parted from the rest, or smoothered in the snow, but absolutely frozen to death as they rode or walked along in company. This distressed carrier's bowels earning when he saw his son grow stiff and faint, got him up, and carried him till he dyed in his arms, and, after he was dead, carried him on Horse Back ; until extremity of cold forced him to let him drop upon the Down and leave him.

" Neither had Mr. Collins who carries to Taunton and Tiverton less misfortune ; a man and his wife, two hearty antient people, being of his passengers, and riding on single horses, altho' very healthful and well in the morning, and chearful in the afternoon, yet by the continued cold and stragling of the poor horses, or by their own growing feeble to manage them, lost sight of the gang, and wandred by themselves, till at length they lay down and dyed one at the feet of the other."

The broadside contains many other narra- tives of great suffering endured, and a number of deaths which happened on the same occasion, which was the beginning of this the great frost of 1683-4.

In the Parish Registers of Ubley, Somerset, there is a long entry relating to this part of the country during the remarkable frost. It begins :

" In the yeare 1683 was a mighty great frost, the like was not seen in England for many ages. ....Some that was travelling on Mindipe [Mendips] did travell till they could travell no longer, and then lye down and dye.... the people did dye so fast that it was the greatest part of their work (which was appointed to doe that worke) to burie the dead ; it being a day's work for two men, or two days' work for one man, to make a grave. It was almost as hard a work to hew a grave out in the earth, as in the rock, the frost was a foot and a halfe and two foote deepe in the dry earth, and where there was moisture and waiter did runn, the ice was a yard or fower foot thick, in so much that y e people did keepe market on the River at London : ' God doth scatter his ice k'ke morsels, man cannot abide his cold ' (Psalme 147, 17)."

To show how far the sea was frozen over there is in the Parish Register of Holyrood, Southampton, the entry following :

" This yeare was a great frost which began before Christmasse, soe that y 3rd and 4th dayes of this month February y river of Southampton was frossen all over and covered with ice from Calshott Castle to Eedbridge, and Tho. Martaine

ma r of a vessell went upon y e ice from Beray near Marshwood to Millbrook Point. And ye river at Ichen Ferry was so frossen over that severall persons went from Beauvais Hill to Bitterne Farme forwards and backwards.''

It is eleven miles from Calshot Castle to Redbridge.

In the ' Memoirs of Lord Ailesbury ' (published by the Roxburghe Club) it is stated that

" the winter of 1683-4 lasted thirteen weeks, and the sea was frozen for two miles from the shore, and we had no correspondence from, abroad. However, the snow lying continuously, the harvest after was most plentiful and the spring and the fruits more forward than usual by three weeks, by reason that in March we had no 'frost nor cold winds. There were fairs and taverns on the Thames, and the lawyers came to and from Westminster in coach on the Thames."

Most of all to the point is a letter written from Lydd in Kent by Richard Freebody. The letter is dated Feb. 9, 1683 [/4]:

"Lyd

" Loving Cossin,

" Mr. Shoesmith told me that the tide for some dayes had not been seen to flow nier folstone [Folkestone] towne by 3 leagues by reason of the ice which lay there.... and 'tis verily believed was the same from dover to the lands end .... Tis said that ice between dover and callis joyned together within about a league."

The writer says he could walk a mile out to sea on solid ice and much farther with the aid of a pole, because when wind and tide favoured the ice all moved as one piece. The above letter was contributed at 2 S. xi. 219.

Besides Evelyn's and Luttrell's ' Diaries ' theie is a very considerable literature associated with the great frost of 1683-4. Edward F. Rimbault edited for the Percy Society in 1844 ' Old Ballads illustrating the Great Frost of 1683-4.' The late Joseph W. Ebsworth was not satisfied with Rimbault' s version of some of these ballads, so he re- edited them, and printed them in the Ballad Society's ' Roxburghe Ballads,' part xiv., vol. v. Hazlitt's ' Handbook ' under ' Frosts ' gives references to some of the scarcer publications, and John Eliot Hodgkin's ' Rariora,' vol. i. pp. 52-4, has notes upon a great mass of rare items on the same subject. William Andrews' s ' Famous Frosts and Frost Fairs ' contains allusions to this frost and many others.

A. L. HTTMPHBEYS.

187 Piccadilly ,^W.

Hone's ' The E very-day Book,' vol. ii. p. 106,' Great Frost, 1814, Bristol, Jan. 18' :

" The frost continued in this city with the like severity. The Floating Harbour from