id waste in less
than three minutes the flourishing colony of Jamaica. Whole plantations
changed their place. Whole villages were swallowed up. Port Royal, the
fairest and wealthiest city which the English had yet built in the New
World, renowned for its quays, for its warehouses, and for its stately
streets, which were said to rival Cheapside, was turned into a mass of
ruins. Fifteen hundred of the inhabitants were buried under their own
dwellings. The effect of this disaster was severely felt by many of the
great mercantile houses of London and Bristol. [324]

A still heavier calamity was the failure of the harvest. The summer had
been wet all over Western Europe. Those heavy rains which had impeded
the exertions of the French pioneers in the trenches of Namur had been
fatal to the crops. Old men remembered no such year since 1648. No
fruit ripened. The price of the quarter of wheat doubled. The evil was
aggravated by the state of the silver coin, which had been clipped to
such an extent that the words pound and shilling had ceased to have
a fixed meaning. Compared with France indeed England might well be
esteemed prosperous. Here the public burdens were heavy; there they were
crushing. Here the labouring man was forced to husband his coarse barley
loaf; but there it not seldom happened that the wretched peasant
was found dead on the earth with halfchewed grass in his mouth. Our
ancestors found some consolation in thinking that they were gradually
wearing out the strength of their formidable enemy, and that his
resources were likely to be drained sooner than theirs. Still there was
much suffering and much repining. In some counties mobs attacked the
granaries. The necessity of retrenchment was felt by families of every
rank. An idle man of wit and pleasure, who little thought that his
buffoonery would ever be cited to illustrate the history of his times,
complained that, in this year, wine ceased to be put on many hospitable
tables where he had been accustomed to see it, and that its place was
supplied by punch. [325]

A symptom of public distress much more alarming than the substitution
of brandy and lemons for claret was the increase of crime. During
the autumn of 1692 and the following winter, the capital was kept in
constant terror by housebreakers. One gang, thirteen strong, entered
the mansion of the Duke of Ormond in Saint James's Square, and all but
succeeded in carrying off his magnificent plate and jewels.