246 IIISTOHY OF 



free. We have an account given us in the history of the French 

 Academy, of a miserable town in France, that is constantly in dan- 

 ger of being buried under a similar inundation ; with which I will 

 take leave to close this chapter. " In the neighbourhood of St 



tntion. Some in their distraction did the former, and met death in the 

 streets ; others the latter, and in tlieir own houses received their final doom." 

 One hundred and twenty. three persons were killed by the falling of dwell, 

 ings ; amongst these were the bishop of Bath and Wells (Dr Richard Kidder) 

 and his lady, by the fall of part of the episcopal palace of Wells : and lady 

 Penelope Nicholas, sister to the bishop of London, at Horsley, in Sussex. 

 Those whoperished in the waters, in the floods of the Severn and the Thames 

 on the coast of Holland, and in ships blown away and never heard of after- 

 wards, are computed to have amounted to eight thousand. 



All ranks and degrees were affected by this amazing tempest, for every 

 family that had any thing to lose lost something : laud, houses, churches, 

 corn, trees, rivers, all were disturbed or damaged by its fury j small build- 

 iugs were for the most part wholly swept away, " as chatf before the wind." 

 Above eight hundred dwelling-houses were laid in ruins. Few of those that 

 resisted escaped from being unroofed, which is clear from the prodigious 

 increase in the price of tiles, which rose from twenty-one shillings to six 

 pounds the thousand. About two thousand stacks of chimneys were blown 

 down in and about London. When the day broke, the houses were mostly 

 stripped, and appeared like so many skeletons. The consternation was so 

 great that trade ami business were suspended, for the first occupation of the 

 mind was so to repair the houses, that families might be preserved from the 

 inclemency of the weather in the rigorous season. The streets were cover- 

 ed with brickbats, broken tiles, signs, bulks, and pent-houses. 



The lead which covered one hundred churches, and many public buildings, 

 was rolled up, and hurled in prodigious quantities to distances almost incredi- 

 ble; spires, and turrets of many others were thrown down. Innumerable 

 stacks of corn and hay were blown away, or so torn and scattered as to re- 

 ceive great damage. 



Multitudes of cattle were lost In one level in Gloucestershire, on the 

 banks of the Severn, fifteen thousand sheep were drowned. Innumerable 

 trees were torn up by the roots ; one writer says, that he himself nurabeied 

 seventeen thousand in part of the county of Kent alone, and tliat, tired with 

 counting, he left off reckoning. 



The damage in the city of London alone, was computed at near two mil- 

 lions sterling. At Bristol, it was abotlt two hundred thousand pounds. In 

 the whole, it was supposed, tliat the loss was greater than that produced 

 by the great fire of London, 1666, which was estimated at four millions. 



The greater part of the navy was at sea, and if the storm had not been at 

 Its height at full flood, and in a spring-tide, the loss might have been nearly 

 fatal to the nation. It was so considerable, that fifteen or sixteen men of war 

 were cast away, and more than two thousand seamen perished. Few mar. 

 chantmen were lost : for most of those that were driven to sea were safe 

 Kear-admiral Beaumont, with a squadron then lying in the Downs, perished 

 with his own and several other ships on the Goodwin Sands 

 'the shiit lost by the storu) vvere eDtiiniited at three hundred. lu tho nysr 



