( 159 ) 



fine till 27th; then frosty. Barometer higher than for 

 three years (Phil. Trans.). 



Elms, ash and walnuts cleft by the frost, but not so 

 much as oaks. The oaks, in being cleft, made a noise 

 like a gun. Yews and hollies in some places killed, and 

 in many places lost their leaves. Rosemary, laurustinus, 

 etc., generally killed, and common herbs and flowers 

 killed (Jacob Bobarf). 



Coaches on the ice on the Thames (Derham). 

 1684 Wheat, 44^. per qr. of nine bushels (Smith). 



Wheat, 39.?. \d. per qr. (Tovey). 



January i. The weather continuing intolerably severe, 

 streets of booths were set upon the Thames. The air 

 was so very cold and thick as of many years there had not 

 been the like. 6th. The river quite frozen. gth. I went 

 across the Thames on the ice, now become so thick as to 

 bear not only streets of booths, in which they roasted 

 meat, and had divers shops of wares quite across as in a 

 town, but coaches, carts and horses passed over. So I 

 went from Westminster Stairs to Lambeth. i6th. The 

 Thames was filled with people and tents, selling all sorts 

 of wares as in the city. 24th. The frost continuing more 

 and more severe, the Thames before London was still 

 planted with booths in formal streets, all sorts of trades 

 and shops furnished and full of commodities, even to a 

 printing press, where the people and ladies took a fancy 

 to have their names printed, and the day and year set 

 down when printed on the Thames. Coaches plied from 

 Westminster to the Temple, and from several other stairs 

 to and fro as in the streets, sleds, sliding with skates, a 

 bull baiting, horse and coach races, puppet plays and 

 interludes, cooks, tipling and other lewd places, so that it 

 seemed to be a bacchanalian triumph or carnival on the 

 water whilst it was a severe judgment on the land, the 

 trees not only splitting as if by lightning struck, but men 

 and cattle perishing in divers places, and the very seas 



