“By Bridewell all descend (As morning prayer and flagellation end) To where Fleet ditch, with disembouging streams, Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames, The _king_ of dykes! than whom no sluice of mud With deeper sable blots the silver flood: ‘Here trip, my children! here at once leap in, Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin; And who the most in love of dirt excel-- Or dark dexterity of groping well; Who flings most filth, and wide pollutes around The stream, be his the weekly journals’ bound; A pig of lead to him who dives the best; A peck of coals a-piece shall glad the rest.’” A.D. 1316, a peculiar disease prevailed in England,--fever, with severe dysentery, which raged with an intensity and mortality equal to the true plague: scarcity amounting to famine was experienced at the same time, wheat selling at 45_s._ per quarter, equal in those days to £30 sterling of our money. A.D. 1327, a comet was seen; the year following, an earthquake, the greatest ever felt in England, occurred on the 14th of November. A.D. 1330, the weather was so tempestuous in England, and the rains fell so heavily, that the harvest did not begin until Michaelmas. A storm from the westward overthrew several houses and did much damage, tearing up forest trees of immense size by the roots. Five years after, 1335, there was a grievous famine in England, which was succeeded by pestilence, and attended with great mortality. CHAPTER III. FROM A.D. 1333 TO 1418. Proceeding in the annals of antecedent ages, we have now to record a series of mighty revolutions in the organism of the earth, accompanied by general and awful commotions of the elements.