The winter of 1683-84 was one of intense frost; an ice-carnival was held on the Thames during the whole of January. The long dry frost of winter was followed by an excessively hot and dry summer, the drought being such as Evelyn did not remember, and as “no man in England had known.” For eight or nine months there had not been above one or two considerable showers, which came in storms. The winter of 1684-85 set in early, and became “a long and cruel frost,” more interrupted, however, than that of the year before. The spring was again dry, and it was not until the end of May 1685 that “we had plentiful rain after two years’ excessive drought and severe winters[36].” The two years of excessive drought, with severe winters, had their effect upon the public health, as will appear from Short’s abstracts of parish registers in town and country[37]; the years 1683-85 being conspicuous for the excess of burials over baptisms: _Country Parishes._ Year Registers Registers with Deaths in Births in examined excess of death them them 1683 140 37 923 685 1684 140 31 900 629 1685 140 19 574 478 1686 140 16 419 301 1687 143 19 522 427 1688 143 11 327 267 _Towns._ 1683 25 8 1398 1169 1684 25 8 1243 865 1685 25 4 1191 741 1686 25 2 555 418 1687 25 1 313 269 1688 25 2 191 146 There is no clue to the forms of sickness that caused the excessive mortality in country parishes and provincial towns. But in London it appears from the Bills that the one great cause of the unusual excess of deaths in 1684 was an enormous mortality from infantile diarrhoea, from the end of July to the middle of September, during the weather which Evelyn describes as excessively hot and dry with occasional storms of rain.