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184 Throwing at cocks, foot-ball, bowls, nine-pins, cups and balls, and pigeon-holes were the principal sports. Bowls and nine-pins were played by both sexes in the seventeenth century; but while bowls was a common amusement among ladies of quality, nine-pins was confined chiefly to the wives of citizens.

A few professors of the yet exclusive art of skating mingled with the crowd; but the bulk of the people had not advanced beyond the primæval pastime of sliding, which was, here and there, somewhat improved upon by being practised in a hutch, propelled by a stick. Open boats and tilt-boats, dragged by men or horses, and chariots moved by screws, or teams of horses, afforded accommodation to thousands of spectators, who were by these means enabled to traverse the crowded surface in comparative safety. Tumblers, and boys walking on stilts, collected crowds of gazers, and contended for popularity with Dutch whimsies, and whirling sledges swept rapidly round in a circle by men drawing a rope fastened to a stake fixed in the centre.

The most successful of all the speculations seems to have been a printing-press which was set up in a booth about the middle of Temple-street, on the west side. Multitudes flocked to this booth either to buy ballads about the frost, which the pressmen were constantly occupied in throwing off, or to get their names printed on a little card, as a memorial of the scene. The printer made a rich harvest by his industry: he charged sixpence for printing a single name, and it was estimated that he made a clear gain of 5l. a-day. Lord Braybrooke saw one of the cards, and describes it as containing the following words within a treble border:

Mons. et Madm. Justel. Printed on the river Thames, being frozen. In the 36th year of King Charles II. February the 5th, 1683.

Many of the nobility carried away similar memorials. The following most curious specimen of the Frost press is mentioned by Dr. Rimbault as being in the possession of Mr. Upcott. It consists of a quarter-sheet of coarse Dutch paper, in which, within a type border, measuring 3½ inches by 4, are printed the name of the king and the family party with whom, on one occasion, he visited Blanket Fair. It may be observed that he was not always there in equally good company, or at such reputable hours as to obtain access to the printing press.

The dramatis personæ in this little royal comedy speak for themselves: the poor, ill-favoured Queen Katherine; Mary D’Este, second Duchess of York; Ann, afterwards Queen of England; and her husband, the Prince of Denmark. The closing name, which, translated into English, means “Jack in the Kitchen,” is, says Dr. Rimbault, supposed to be a touch of the king’s humour. The supposition is, no doubt, correct, the touch of humour consisting in a gross allusion to the situation of the Princess Ann, which nobody but his majesty would be likely to have made.

The cold was so bitter throughout the continuance of the frost, that men and cattle died in the fields, trees split, plants, birds, and fish perished, and whole parks of deer were destroyed. Small-pox raged in London, as it appears to have done on other similar visitations; the streets were filled with the smoke of the sea-coal, blinding the eyes, and choking the lungs; the supply of water was paralysed; and the brewers, in common with many other contributors to the public comfort, were compelled to suspend their works.

It was in the midst of this rigorous season that the weak and impetuous Duke of Monmouth suddenly disappeared from his house in Holborn, and was seen a few days afterwards in Holland, on his way to the Court of the Prince of Orange. He had the true Stuart blood in him, a little diluted on the mother’s side. He was vain, irresolute, and obstinate, suspected everybody, could do nothing in an open, straightforward way, and was eternally mixed up in plots and schemes. His father and his uncle at this very time, with all their show of pleasantry at Blanket Fair, were engaged in secret manœuvres to counteract each other; Charles plotting with Monmouth against the Duke of York, but doing it in such a way as to fill Monmouth with alarm for his own safety; Monmouth distrusting his father, and plotting against his uncle; and the Duke of York plotting against both. There is an historical completeness in the coil that exactly fits the family. It was in this winter, towards the beginning of February, when the frost was at the depth of its severity on the flat exposed surface of Holland, that Monmouth presented himself at the Hague. He was not alone. He was accompanied by the beautiful Lady Henrietta Wentworth, who had forsaken all to cling to him in the hour of adversity; and who, only a twelvemonth later, sold her last jewels to help out that miserable expedition which doomed him to the scaffold. The situation was embarrassing enough. Here was the Prince of Orange receiving at his Court a young pretender, who at that moment was acknowledged to be the hope and head of the party that was organised to keep his own father-in-law out of the succession, and who, to mend matters, presented himself with