CHAPTER XII.
1814.
The Fog — Condition of Ireland — State of the Navy — The Regent at Belvoir — Coming of age of Princess Charlotte — Day of Thanksgiving — Great Snowstorm — Thames frozen over — Sports thereon — Frost fair — The Country and the Snow.
The year 1814 was an annus mirabilis for England, as will be seen as it is unfolded. It began with a fog, not an ordinary fog, but one which, from its exceptional character, was enshrined as part of the history of the Country. It prevailed in London, and many miles round, during the whole of the last week of 1813 until the 4th of January, when it cleared off—the mails and other conveyances were delayed, and many accidents happened. It was no respecter of persons, for the Regent, who was going to visit the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir, in order to stand personally as Godfather to the baby Marquis of Granby, was delayed a day by this fog, so that the Christening had to be postponed, and the young Marquis had to be a day longer in an unregenerate state.
A dragoon, who left London for Windsor at 6 p.m. with particulars of the passage of the Nive by the Allied Armies, did not arrive until 4 a.m. in consequence of the fog, although he got a lanthorn and candle at Hounslow. A sergeant of the West Kent Militia, which corps was then garrisoning the Tower, stepped off the wharf into the river, and was drowned—and there were other fatalities.
Ireland was in its chronic state of bloodthirsty rebellion, as the two following paragraphs in The Morning Chronicle of January 1st show. "The Barony of Lower Ormond, in the County of Tipperary, has lately manifested a spirit of wickedness unknown in that part of the country. A few nights since, the Haggards of the Rev. Edward Farmer, of Springmount, near Cloughjordan, of Mr. Thompson, and the Rev. Mr. Conolly, near Ballingarry, were maliciously set on fire, and totally consumed. The ruffians also posted notices that if a reward was offered, they would burn the haggards of the subscribers."
"On the evening of the 8th instant half-past 5 o'clock, as George Wayland, Esqre, was going out of his house at Toureen near Dundrum, in the County of Tipperary, accompanied by his herdsman, one of a party, who were perceived lying in wait at a short distance from the hall door, discharged a blunderbuss at him, loaded with balls and slugs, the contents of which grazed his legs and passed through his clothes. Immediately after, a servant boy of Mr. Wayland, going towards the house, was fired at by the same party, and so dreadfully wounded, that he has since died."
The number of troops required then, as now, in Ireland, together with the fact that we had two wars on our hands, at the same time, caused stock to be taken of the available "food for powder" remaining, and we find, according to a statistical account taken this year, that the number of men in Great Britain, capable of bearing arms, from 15 to 60 years of age, amounted to 2,744,847; or about four in every seventeen males.
Our Navy was a large one, on paper, for the total number of ships at the commencement of this year was 1032 (including those in ordinary, &c.): of which there were, in commission, 116 sail of the line, 20 from 50 to 44 guns, 157 frigates, 110 sloops of war, 7 fire-ships, 199 brigs, 40 cutters, and 50 schooners, the total of ships in commission being 768.