Nay, we hear of a sad loss
of life, and many poor people were drowned, and many lost their all;
flocks, and herds, and corn and hay being whelmed in the deluge. In
November there was a frightful tempest, the lightning doing extensive
damage; and just at Christmas-time the frost set in with such
severity as no man had known before. The river Thames was frozen over
above London Bridge, so that men crossed it with horses and carts,
and when the frost broke up on the 2nd of February there was such an
enormous accumulation of ice and snow that five of the arches of
London Bridge blew up, and all over the country the same destruction
of bridges was heard of.
Next year and the year after that, things went very badly with your
forefathers, and one of the saddest stories that we get from a
Norfolk chronicler who was alive at the time is one in which he tells
us that, owing to the continuous rain during these three years, there
was an utter failure in garden produce, as well as of the people's
hope of harvest. The bad seasons seem to have gone on for six or
seven years; but by far the worst calamity which Norfolk ever knew
was the awful flood of 1287, when by an incursion of the sea a large
district was laid under water, and hundreds of unfortunate creatures
were drowned in the dead of the night, without warning.
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