In the year 1699 occurred another scare about the wicked Papists. The Mayor and Aldermen were summoned before the Privy Council, when the King informed them that he had heard of a great increase of Papists in the City; that they openly attended Mass-houses in spite of the law; that he had commanded all Jesuits and Popish priests to leave the country; that he had recalled all those English students who were educated abroad, and that he looked to the Lord Mayor for vigilance in searching out Papists, especially those who had arms concealed, destroying Papistical books, shutting up Mass-houses and Catholic schools, and administering the oaths to suspected Papists.
Almost the last act of the City of London in this reign was to send a loyal address to the King when James the Second died and Louis XIV. acknowledged as his successor the young Prince of Wales.
On the 8th of March 1702 William III. died.
CHAPTER IX
QUEEN ANNE
There is nothing picturesque and very little that is important in the history of London during the reign of Queen Anne. An address to the new Queen, a public reception of Her Majesty by the City, several days of Thanksgiving for successes over the enemy, quarrels about elections, High Church riots, mainly exhaust the annals of this reign.
ANNE (1665–1714)
After the portrait by J. Closterman.
On Friday, November 26, 1703, the greatest hurricane of wind and rain ever known in this country “o’er pale Britannia passed.” This really belongs chronologically to the eighteenth century, and has been described in that volume, but some reference to it here is also necessary. It began about seven o’clock in the evening, and raged all night long. It overturned houses, uprooted trees, blew down stacks of chimneys, rolled up the lead on the roofs of churches, overthrew walls, and tore off tiles, which it blew about like snowflakes. The streets were covered with brickbats, broken signs, tiles, bulks, and pent-houses; the houses in the City at daybreak looked like skeletons, being stripped of their roofs, with their windows blown in or out; the people destroyed were said, and believed, to number thousands; all business was suspended while the houses were made once more weather-proof; the price of tiles rose from a guinea to six pounds a thousand; at sea twelve men-of-war were destroyed with 1800 men on board, and the whole of the shipping in the Pool except four vessels were driven from their moorings to beat against each other and to founder off Limehouse.