Once, on the occasion of a launch at Woolwich, Catharine played her husband a sly trick. She went down from Whitehall with her ladies in her barge; but the water was so rough that they were all dreadfully sea-sick, excepting herself. The king, the Duke of York, the French ambassador, and the attendants went down in carriages by land. After the two parties met on ship-board, a violent rain and hail-storm detained them for a long time. As soon as it abated, the queen stole ashore with her ladies, took possession of the carriages, in which they returned home; leaving all the gentlemen to make the best of a very rough trip by water. [[A.D. 1665.]] The following year one of England's greatest naval victories was won by the fleet under the Duke of York's command. {213}The rejoicings occasioned thereby were cut short by the breaking out of the most terrible visitation of the plague ever known in England. Death, sorrow, and poverty spread from house to house, until the exceptions were those that did not bear a red cross in token of the existence of disease within. The queen-mother quitted the country, and, as the epidemic increased, the court was removed to Salisbury. Many people attributed the plague to the appearance of a comet that had been observed a few months before. We of the present day laugh at such an absurd superstition; but in the seventeenth century a visit from one of those heavenly bodies was always contemplated with awe by the ignorant, who were unfortunately in the majority. King Charles was not of the number, for he had a taste for astronomy, and was delighted to have an opportunity of studying the comet in its different phases. For this purpose he spent several nights at the observatory at Greenwich, a building that he had founded, and Queen Catharine stayed with him twice until she saw the curiosity also. She was not gratified the first time, because astronomical calculations were not so accurate as they are at present. The king opened parliament in the autumn, when they voted him supplies to carry on the Dutch war, which he greatly needed; for he was at that time paying a thousand pounds weekly out of his own private purse to relieve the sufferings caused by the plague.