Even at
Plymouth, close to the soft south-western ocean, the average depth of
the fall was twenty inches, and there was no other way of getting
eastwards than by pack-horses. The Great North Road was completely
blocked, and there was a barricade over it near Godmanchester of from
six to ten feet high. The Oxford coach was buried. Some passengers
inside were rescued with great difficulty, and their lives were
barely saved. The Solway Firth at Workington resembled the Arctic
Sea, and the Thames was so completely frozen over between Blackfriars
and London Bridges that people were able, not only to walk across,
but to erect booths on the ice. Coals, of course, rose to famine
prices in London, as it was then dependent solely upon water-carriage
for its supply. The Father of his people, the Prince Regent, was
much moved by the general distress of "a large and meritorious class
of industrious persons," as he called them, and issued a circular to
all Lords Lieutenant ordering them to provide all practicable means
of removing obstructions from the highways.
However, on this 20th April the London mob forgot the frost, forgot
the quartern loaf and the national debt, and prepared for a holiday,
inspired thereto, not so much by Lewis the Eighteenth as by the
warmth and brilliant sky.
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