WHEN ENGLAND FASTED

Evening Star, Issue 20410, 15 February 1930, Page 22

WHEN ENGLAND FASTED

Recent rains and gales in Great Britain recall to the ‘ Sunday Times • the fact that the Government -found it necessary to order a generah public fast following the storm of -EU3. I-h's storm began- early in the last week m November, and increased in- violence until the 26th. More than 100 people, including the' Bishop of Bath and Wells and his wife, wore killed by tailing buildings ; many perished in- the swirling waters of -/the Thames and the Severn; and multitudes of-cattle were lost. In the City of London the damage was estimated at £2*000,000, but the provinces suffered equally 1 ,- and at Bristol the damage was - placed at £200,000. Hundreds of ships, including craft on the Thames, were* wrecked. The Navy suffered severely, and RearAdmiral Beaumont perished ' with his own and several other ships on the Goodwins. The Eddystone Lighthouse, near Plymouth, was swallowed up> by the sea, together with its architect,Winstanley, who had expressed the wish to be in it when a storm should happen. . ; • Queen Anne’s proclamation ordering a general public last began:—" Whereas, by the late most terrible and dreadful storms of wind, with which it hath pleased Almighty God to afflict th® greatest part of this our kingdom ; and concluded, “calamity of this sort, so dreadful and astonishing, that the like hath not been seen dr felt in th® memory of any person living in this our kingdom, and which loudly calls tor. the deepest and ; most" solemn humiliation of us and our people, therefore out of a deep and pious sense of what we and all our people have suffered by , the said dreadful wind - and storms (which we most humbly acknowledge to be a token of the Divine displeasure, and that it was the infinite mercy of God that we and our people were not thereby wholly destroyed) we have resol md and do hereby command that a general public fast be observed.”