In the year 1250 the summer was rainy and tempestuous, and a hard winter followed. The old town of Winchelsea was swallowed up by the sea, and an earthquake was felt at St. Albans, that did much damage. The summer of 1251 was intolerably hot; there was a famine in Italy, and epidemic pestilence traversed all England, and was attended with great mortality; a thunder-storm occurred, during which the chimney of the chamber where the queen and her children lay at Windsor was struck down, and the whole apartment violently shaken; large oaks in the park were torn up by the roots: the lightning was so terrible as to surpass any that had occurred in the memory of man. A.D. 1252, the late frost in spring, succeeding drought, destroyed the vegetation; there were heavy rains in July; at Michaelmas the plague began to rage in London, and pervaded all England, continuing until August in the following year, thus affording an instance of this disease beginning in autumn, running through the winter, and terminating in the summer. The winter of 1254 was severely cold; a murrain appeared among sheep, and a mortal disease among horses called ‘the evil of the tongue.’ A.D. 1255–56 and 1258, the tides rose uncommonly high; a comet was observed in 1256; the rivers swelled with excessive rains, tempests levelled buildings, the summers were wet, the crops failed by the destroying power of the elements, and dearth, famine, and pestilence caused great havoc amongst the inhabitants of England; 15,000 persons perished in London alone from hunger. “The inundations in autumn,” says M’Culloch, “destroyed the crops; fatal fevers prevailed, principal in the summer, during the dog-days, when to one cemetery alone, that of St. Edward’s, 2000 bodies were carried.” Long droughts succeeded, and the mortality continued until 1257. _A.D._ 1264, a murrain destroyed much cattle in England, especially horses; and in A.D. 1266, swarms of the palmer-worms destroyed all vegetation in Scotland. In 1269, excessive seasons existed; pestilence destroyed the Crusaders on their march to the Holy Land, and the French king and his son perished by it. A.D. 1274, a grievous rot broke out amongst the sheep, which persisted for twenty-five or twenty-eight years, destroying almost all the sheep in England. From the year 1277 to that of 1340 similar seasons, inundations, famines, and pestilence reigned at different times and in different places, among the inhabitants of Britain, Italy, Poland, Denmark, Prussia, Zealand, Egypt, Germany, Bohemia, Spain, &c. A.D. 1278. In the month of June, this year, the dancing mania again occurred on the Mosel Bridge at Utrecht, when 200 fanatics began to dance, and would not desist until a priest passed who was carrying the host to a person who was sick, upon which, as if in punishment of their crime, the bridge gave way, and they were all drowned.