On December 2nd. 1763, a dreadful high wind and tide made great ravages here: many ships were wrecked on the coast, and an incredible number of cattle and sheep were drowned in Marshland, &c. Among other sufferers, a Mr. Barrell and a Mr. Corfe, of Snettisham, lost 800 sheep each, as we find in the _Norfolk Remembrancer_.—In the following year, during the second mayoralty of Philip Case, the town, according to one of our MS. narratives, was served a trick which could not possibly redound to the credit of our rulers. “Purfleet Fleet was then cleaned, from the bridge to the clough adjoining to Kettle Mills river; and the filth and mud carried away by boats into the haven, to the great annoyance of the harbour and the forming of a bar there.” This was certainly bad enough, but the worst is still behind. The charge of scouring or cleaning the Fleets, it seems, belonged to the corporation: but, in this instance, it was contrived to throw it on the inhabitants, who were accordingly subjected to an assessment, or tax, which amounted to a sum of no less than 2000_l._ This, to say the least of it, seems to have been a very shabby affair; but some will think it much less so than our famous _paving jobb_. In the third mayoralty of John Cary senior, which commenced in 1765, a shocking murder was committed here by one John Rudderham, (commonly and ironically called _honest John_) for which bloody and horrid deed he was soon after tried, condemned, and executed. Such, it has been said, was the deplorable depravity and ignorance of this unhappy wretch, that he appeared not to have any sense of moral evil, or any idea of the existence of a Supreme Being, and of a future state. Though born and brought up in a christian country, and even deemed a member of a christian church, yet he was utterly ignorant of every thing belonging to christianity, as appeared from the first conversation he had with a person who attended him while under sentence of death. Being asked by that person, if he had _ever heard of the Lord Jesus Christ_? He seriously answered that he could not positively say whether he had or not: “and yet (said he) I do rather think that I have really heard something of _such a gentleman_, though I cannot now remember what it was.” It is to be feared there were a great many more here at the same time in a similar predicament, or equally ignorant. Yet, if we are not misinformed, a motion made, about that period, to establish here a school for the instruction of poor children, was actually negatived, as a needless and useless measure, and what might prove inimical to social order, and destructive of all intellectual distinction between rich and poor, gentlemen and plebeians. It is pleasing to contemplate that our higher powers were actuated by better and nobler ideas latterly, when the Lancasterian school was proposed and established. May this prove the dawn of a more liberal and brighter day.