“During the same storm, too, the water in the Thames rushed along with such rapidity, and increased so violently, that _London Bridge was entirely swept away_; whilst the lands on each side were overflowed for a considerable distance. I cannot help observing how slightly, and erroneously, the ‘_Annals of Waverley_’ notice this most dreadful devastation; for at page 137, of the best edition by Dr. Thomas Gale, volume ii. of his ‘_Historiæ Anglicanæ Scriptores_ xv.’ Oxford, 1691, folio, they merely state that ‘a vehement wind struck down London the 6th of the kalends of November,’--that is to say, on the 27th of October,--‘at the hour of six!’ I doubt not but the truth was, that the good Monks of Waverley Abbey in Surrey felt nothing of this _ventus vehemens_ themselves, and therefore gave a much more trivial record of it, than if it had shaken but a single bell in the turrets of their own _Cenobium_. The ‘_Annals of Waverley_,’ you know, were, down to about 1120, almost a translation from the ‘_Saxon Chronicle_,’ executed in the twelfth century. The following year, 1092, the sixth of the reign of William Rufus, was marked by a season fatal to bridges in general; although there is no mention that our’s at London participated in the destruction. This fact is related by William of Malmesbury, page 125, and by Roger de Hoveden, page 464, in these words:--‘Also, in his sixth year, there was such an excessive rain, and such high floods, the rivers overflowing the low grounds that lay near them, as the like was remembered by none. And afterward, in the winter, ensued a sudden frost; whereby the great streams were congealed in such a manner that they could draw two hundred horsemen and carriages over them; whilst at their thawing, many bridges, both of wood and stone, were borne down, and divers water mills were broken up and carried away!’ “Frequent destructions by fire seem, also, to have been a very general fate of all our ancient buildings; for, in 1093, the wooden houses and straw roofs of the London Citizens were again in flames, and a great part of the City was thus destroyed.