The noble Art and mystery of Printing, was first invented by J. Faust, 1441, and publicly practised by John Gottenburgh, a soldier of Mentz, in High Germany, anno. 1450. King Henry VI. (anno. 1457) sent two private messengers with fifteen hundred marks, to procure one of the workmen. These prevailed on Frederick Corsellis to leave the Printing-house in disguise; who immediately came over with them, and first instructed the English in this most famous Art, at Oxford, in the year 1459.
WILLIAM NOBLE, M.A.
Amidst the Arts which on the Thames appear
To tell the wonders of this icy year,
Printing claims prior place, which at one view
Erects a monument of That and You.
Printed upon the river Thames, Jan. 29th, in the thirteenth year of the reign of King George the IId. Anno Dom. 1740.
“Some venturers in the Strand,” says Timbs, “bought a large ox in Smithfield, to be roasted whole on the ice; and one, Hodgeson, claimed the privilege of felling or knocking down the beast as a right inherent in his family, his father having knocked down the one roasted on the river in the Great Frost, 1684, near Hungerford Stairs: Hodgeson to wear a laced cambric apron, a silver-handled steel, and a hat and feathers.”
At the thaw a number of persons fell victims to their rashness, amongst those who lost their lives may be mentioned Doll, the noted pippin woman. Gay, in his “Trivia,” book ii, thus alludes to her death:—
“Doll every day had walk’d these treacherous roads;