(Vol. iii., p. 207.)
B. B. may see, in the British Museum library, a tract of four leaves
only, the title of which I will transcribe:
"London's Wonder. Being a most true and positive relation of the
taking and killing of a great Whale neer to Greenwich; the said
Whale being fifty-eight foot in length, twelve foot high, fourteen
foot broad, and two foot between the eyes. At whose death was used
Harping-irons, Spits, Swords, Guns, Bills, Axes, and Hatchets, and
all kind of sharp Instruments to kill her: and at last two Anchors
being struck fast into her body, she could not remoove them, but
the blood gush'd out of her body, as the water does out of a pump.
The report of which Whale hath caused many hundred of people both
by land and water to go and see her: the said Whale being slaine
hard by _Greenwich_ upon the third day of June this present yere
1658, which is largely exprest in this following discourse.
_London, printed for Francis Grove, neere the Sarazen's head on
Snowhill, 1658._"
Surely after reading the above, your sceptical correspondent can no
longer hesitate to accept as a matter of veritable fact this story so
_very_ like a whale.
Evelyn, who lived near Greenwich, and was most probably one of the
wonder-struck spectators of the huge monster of the deep which had been
so rash as to visit our shores, notes in his _Diary_ under the
above-mentioned date--
"A large whale was taken betwixt my land butting on the Thames and
Greenwich, which drew an infinite concourse to see it by water,
horse, coach, and on foote, from London and all parts. It appear'd
first below Greenwich at low water, for at high water it would
have destroyed all ye boates; but lying now in shallow water
encompass'd with boates, after a long conflict it was kill'd with
a harping yron, struck in ye head, out of which spouted blood and
water by two tunnells, and after an horrid grone it ran quite on
shore and died. Its length was 58 foote, height 16; black skin'd
like coach leather, very small eyes, greate tail, onely 2 small
finns, a picked snout, and a mouth so wide that divers men might
have stood upright in it: no teeth, but suck'd the slime onely as
thro' a grate of that bone which we call whale-bone; the throate
yet so narrow as would not have admitted the least of fishes. The
extreames of the cetaceous bones hang downewards from the upper
jaw, and was hairy towards the ends and bottom within side: all of
it prodigious, but in nothing more wonderfull then that an animal
of so greate a bulk should be nourished onely by slime thro' those
grates."
Having disposed of this matter, I shall now turn my attention to the
great storm that immediately preceded the death of that "arch rebell
Oliver Cromwell, cal'd Protector," which, be it remembered, took place
on Friday the 3rd of September, 1658.
"Toss'd in a furious hurricane,
Did Oliver give up his reign."
So saith the witty author of _Hudibras_; and to these lines his editor,
Grey, adds the note--
"At Oliver's death was a most furious tempest, such as had not
been known in the memory of man, or hardly ever recorded to have
been in this nation. (See Echard's _History of England_, vol. ii.)
Though most of our historians mention the hurricane at his death,
yet few take notice of the storm in the northern counties on that
day the House of Peers ordered the digging up his carcase with
other regicides. (See _Mercurius Publicus_, No. 51. p. 816.)"
Cotemporaneous proof of the occurrence is afforded by S. Carrington in
prose, and by Edmund Waller in verse.
"Nature itself," says Carrington, "did witness her grief some two
or three days before by an extraordinary tempest and violent gust
of weather, insomuch that it might have been supposed that herself
had been ready to dissolve ... all which is so lively set forth by
the quaintest wit of these times (E. Waller), who expresseth it
more elegantly and copiously than my rough prose can possibly
reach to."
"_Upon the late Storm, and his Highness' Death ensuing
the same._[6]
"We must resign; Heaven his great soul doth claim
In storms as loud as his immortal fame.
His dying groans, his last breath shakes our isle,
And trees uncut fall for his funeral pile;
About his palace their broad roots were tost
Into the air--so Romulus was lost.
New Rome in such a tempest mist their King,
And from obeying fell to worshipping.
* * * * *
"Nature herself took notice of his death,
And sighing swell'd the sea with such a breath,
That to remotest shores her billows rould,
The approaching fate of their great Ruler told."
[Footnote 6: Vide _Three Poems upon the Death of his late
Highnesse Oliver, Lord Protector_, written by Waller, Dryden, and
Sprat. 4to. London, 1659.]
The ensuing night, Carrington adds, was serene and peaceful. (See his
_Life of Cromwell_, 1659, p. 223.) Ludlow, in his Memoirs, also notices
the storm. On the afternoon of Monday, August 30, he set out for London.
He says:
"On the Monday afternoon I set forward on my journey (from Essex);
the morning proving so tempestuous that the horses were not able
to draw against it; so that I could reach no further than Epping
that night. By this means I arrived not at Westminster till
Tuesday about noon."