The illustration is a roughly executed woodcut, and represents a street of booths opposite the Temple, looking towards the Middlesex shore. On one side are men skating, sliding, riding on sledges, and playing at football; whilst bull-baiting, skittle-playing, &c, go on on the other side. Coaches are driven across the ice, boats are dragged as sledges, and an ox is roasted whole in one corner.

FROST FAIR ON THE THAMES, 1683.

The other broadside has a woodcut of the same scene, but taken from a different point, and looking down the river, with London Bridge, the Tower, Monument, &c, in the distance. In addition to a description of Frost Fair, there is an account of all the great frosts from the time of William the Conqueror.

Some curious particulars of this great frost are recorded by contemporary writers. Evelyn describes the whole scene, and says that he crossed the river on the ice on foot upon the 9th, in order to dine with the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth; and again in his coach, from Lambeth to the horse-ferry at Millbank, upon Feb. 5th, when ‘it began to thaw, but froze again.’ Hackney-coaches plied between Somerset House and the Temple to Southwark. There was a printing-press set up in one of the booths, ‘where the people and ladys tooke a fancy to having their names printed, and the day and year set down, when printed on the Thames. This humour took so universally that ‘twas estimated the printer gained about £5 a day for printing a line onely at sixpence a name, besides what he got by ballads, &c.’ A specimen of this printing has been preserved. It was executed for Charles II., who visited Frost Fair accompanied by several members of his family. It contains, besides the names of the King and Queen, those of the Duke of York, Mary his Duchess, Princess Anne (afterwards Queen Anne), and Prince George of Denmark, her husband. The last name on the list is ‘Hans in Kelder,’ which literally means ‘Jack in the Cellar,’ and is supposed to have been suggested by the humour of the King in allusion to the interesting situation of the Princess Anne; and we can fancy the swarthy face of the ‘Merry Monarch’ smiling in the frosty air as this congenial joke was perpetrated.

In the Luttrell collection of broadsides there is one with a large woodcut representing the battle of Sedgemoor and other incidents of Monmouth’s rebellion. The letterpress is in wretched verse, and is entitled, ‘A Description of the late Rebellion in the West. A Heroic Poem.’ The unfortunate issue of Monmouth’s rising excited the sympathy of the common people, to whom he was endeared by his many amiable qualities and his handsome person. Though this broadside was evidently written in the interest of the Government it was likely to have a ready sale, and it was sought to increase the interest by pictorial representation. The engraving, which is on an unusually large scale, is very rough, like all the woodcuts of the period.

The slaughter at Sedgemoor and the execution of the Duke of Monmouth were partly forgotten in the greater horror excited by the unsparing severity of Judge Jefferies in condemning to death hundreds of persons who were charged with being concerned in the rebellion. I have met with one illustrated tract relating to the ‘Bloody Assize.’ It is inserted at the end of the volume of the London Gazette for 1685, and has apparently been added by Dr. Burney, the collector, as bearing upon the events of the time. It forms no part of the London Gazette, though bound up with it. There is a rough woodcut on the title-page containing eleven portraits, and the title is as follows:—

‘The Protestant Martyrs; or the Bloody Assizes, giving an account of the Lives, Tryals, and Dying Speeches, of all those eminent Protestants that suffered in the West of England by the sentence of that bloody and cruel Judge Jefferies; being in all 251 persons, besides what were hanged and destroyed in cold blood. Containing also the Life and Death of James Duke of Monmouth; His Birth and Education; His Actions both at Home and Abroad; His Unfortunate Adventure in the West; His Letter to King James; His Sentence, Execution and Dying-words upon the Scaffold; with a true Copy of the Paper he left behind him. And many other curious Remarks worth the Readers Observation. London, Printed by F. Bradford; at the Bible in Fetter Lane.’

At the end of the pamphlet is printed this curious sentence:—‘This Bloody Tragedy in the West being over our Protestant Judge returns for London; soon after which Alderman Cornish felt the Anger of Somebody behind the Curtain.’

Alderman Cornish was afterwards executed at the corner of King Street, Cheapside, for alleged participation in the Rye House Plot.

MARTYRS OF THE BLOODY ASSIZES, 1685.