The weather was warme, and without any great shewe of distemperature, only the skye waxed by degrees a little gloomy, yet not so darkened but that the Sunne still and anon, by the power of the brightnesse, brake through the thicke clouds.... 'A gentle gale of wind then blowing from betweene the _West_ and _North-west_, in an instant was heard, first a hideous rumbling in the _Ayre_, and presently after followed a strange and fearfull peale of Thunder, running vp and downe these parts of the _Countrey_, but it strake with the loudest violence, and more furious tearing of the _Ayre_, about a place called _The White Horse Hill_, than in any other. The whole order of this thunder, carried a kind of Maiesticall state with it, for it maintayned (_to the affrighted Beholders' seeming_) the fashion of a fought Battaile. 'It beganne thus: First, for an onset, went off one great _Cannon_ as it were of _thunder_ alone, like a warning peece to the rest that were to follow. Then a little while after was heard a second; and so by degrees a third, vntil the number of 20 were discharged (or thereabouts) in very good order, though in very great terror. 'In some little distance of time after this was audibly heard the sound of a Drum beating a Retreate. Amongst all these angry peales shot off from Heauen, this begat a wonderful admiration, that at the end of the report of every cracke, or _Cannon-thundering_, a hizzing noyse made way through the _Ayre_, not vnlike the flying of _Bullets_ from the mouthes of great Ordnance; and by the iudgement of all the terror-stricken witnesses they were _Thunder-bolts_. For one of them was seene by many people to fall at a place called _Bawlkin Greene_, being a mile and a half from _Hatford_: Which _Thunder-bolt_ was by one Mistris _Greene_ caused to be digged out of the ground, she being an eye-witnesse amongst many others, of the manner of the falling. 'The forme of the _Stone_ is three-square, and picked in the end: In colour outwardly blackish, some-what like Iron: Crusted ouer with that blacknesse about the thicknesse of a shilling. Within it is soft, of a grey colour, mixed with some kind of minerall, shining like small peeces of glasse. 'This _Stone_ brake in the fal: The whole peece is in weight nineteene pound and a halfe: The greater peece that fell off weigheth fiue pound, which with other small peeces being put together, make foure and twenty pound and better.... 'It is in the Countrey credibly reported that some other Thunder-stones haue bin found in other places: but for certainty there was one taken vp at _Letcombe_, and is now in the custody of the _Shriefe_.' This curious account is illustrated with a quaint woodcut, in the foreground of which the thunder-bolt seen by Mistress Green is being 'digged out of the ground.' [Illustration: FALL OF METEORS AT BAWLKIN GREEN, BERKSHIRE, APRIL 9, 1628.]