“Too soon after this calamity, at a most inauspicious time for commencing, or executing, expensive public works, in 1097, King William Rufus imposed a heavy tax upon his subjects for the re-building of London Bridge,--though _that_ might very well be defended,--the erecting of the palace of West-Minster Hall, and the construction of a wall round the Tower. The ‘_Saxon Chronicle_’ speaks of these ill-advised undertakings in the blended tones of sorrow and of anger. ‘This was, in all things,’ says that faithful old history, at pages 316, 317, ‘a very heavy-timed year, and beyond measure laborious from the badness of the weather, both when men attempted to till the land, and, afterwards, to gather the fruits of their tilth; and from unjust contributions they never rested. Many counties also, that were confined to London by work, were grievously oppressed, on account of the wall that was building about the Tower, and _the Bridge that was nearly all afloat_, and the King’s Hall that they were building at West-Minster; and many men perished thereby.’ “Our brave old River of Thames itself, however, is of the same changeful nature as Luna, the mistress of his tides; for, if at one time, he overflows his banks, blows up his Bridge, or drowns an invading army, by the fury of his waves; at another season he contracts his waters into their narrowest channel, or draws them back into his urn, without leaving enough to float a wherry over his bed. Of this I shall give you several instances, as we get lower down the stream of time; and now only remark, in chronological order, that on the 6th of the Ides of October, _videlicet_ the 10th, in the 15th Year of the reign of Henry I. 1114, the River was so dried up, and there was such want of water, that between the Tower of London and the Bridge, and even under it, ‘a great number of men, women, and children,’--says Stow, in his ‘_Survey_,’ volume i. page 58,--‘did wade over both on horse and foot,’ the water coming up to their knees. “The original account of this is to be found in the ‘_Annales_’ of Roger de Hoveden, page 473; from whom we derive the additional information, that this defect of water commenced in the middle of the night preceding, and lasted until the darkest part of the next. The same historian, also, records, on the same page, that in the year 1115, the winter was so severe, that all throughout England the Bridges were broken by the ice.