When the winter opened, it was with the dreariest weather. The King’s friends who had escaped arrests for treason in London by stealing away to the Continent, wrote of having a fearful passage, and of having found the coldest weather in Paris that they had ever known. There was scarcely any water to be had,—so thick was the ice. There was ice everywhere. The ships in the Channel that were returning to England with crews that were counting the days till Christmas, hoping for once to spend their Christmas at home, were overtaken by storms which seemed as if they would never have an end. Bitter blasts succeeded each other like the billows of a raging sea: the sails and rigging were sheeted with ice, and the vessels became unmanageable in proportion as the hurricanes rose higher; so that there was such a scene of wreck all along the south coast as no living man remembered. Few ships arrived safe in port, and many crews were entirely lost. Such mourning was never known as among the seafaring people round our shores. On land the weather seemed to obstruct everything. The navigable rivers were frozen; the roads were blocked with snow in many places; and the excessive cold made travelling difficult and hazardous. The King had to wait for his news from York; the Scotch messengers to the Parliament could not reach their destination. In every county in England the inhabitants were in a state of suspense which threatened to spoil their Christmas. While no regular conveyance could pass to or from London, there was that dim vague sense of what was passing there which is one of the mysteries of all societies in which men have ever lived. In all times and countries there has been that unaccountable transmission of tidings on great occasions—rapid, mysterious, and generally accurate—which is described by the proverb of a little bird carrying the matter. In the remotest corners of the kingdom rumours were afloat of disturbances in London,—of danger to the King,—of the overthrow of the Church. Sometimes there were exaggerations; such as that the Papists had had a successful gunpowder plot at last, and had blown the Parliament skyhigh; and, again, that
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