When the Bristol Channel flooded in 1607, it was not just one of the worst natural disasters in British history, it was also a sign, for many, that they had strayed from the path of God. Erik Crnkovich examines the overlap of miraculous weather and the early modern printing industry, which cultivated a thirst for all things occult, exotic, and odd. Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing.
Title-page woodcut from _1607, A True Report of Certaine Wonderfull Ouerflowings of Waters, Now Lately in Summerset-shire, Norfolke, and Other Places of England_ (1607) — Source. When the Bristol Channel flooded on January 30, 1607, pamphlets describing it as God’s warning to a wayward people likewise flooded out of London’s booming presses. Rare weather events of all sorts are ironically commonplace in seventeenth-century news — a century otherwise tempestuous in its frequent, often literal, chopping and changing in church and state.
In fact, the two are reflections of each other. True, British weather was consistently inconsistent during the Little Ice Age, a period of prolonged cold and wet that would not end for another two centuries. But the headlines reporting “prodigious” thunderstorms, “miraculous” apparitions, and “terrible” earthquakes were often followed by interpretations of them as moral weathervanes — divine providence, a sign to repent and return to the proverbial straight and narrow.
It is perhaps little surprise, then, that the pamphleteer William Jones rushed to the presses when a storm surge inundated 518 square kilometres surrounding the Bristol Channel. Present scholarship counts 2,000 recorded deaths, making it one of Britain’s worst natural disasters and, according to Jones, a judgement from God.1 > Many are the dumb warnings of Destruction, which the Almighty God hath lately scourged this our Kingdom with; And many more are the threatening Tokens, of his heavy wrath extended toward us: All which in bleeding hearts, may enforce us to put on the true garment of Repentance.2 Like many disaster narratives, Jones starts his account with the truism that the morning of the flood was just like any other: the skies were clear and sunny, ploughmen cut their furrows, shepherds led their flocks to pasture, farmers set about their morning rounds in the yards when, suddenly, “mighty Hills of water” appeared on the horizon, “tumbling one over another”.3 The waters swept away buildings and bridges, inundated granaries and warehouses, and flooded the streets of Bristol; across the countryside, the carcasses of wild animals, drowned cattle, sheep, chickens, and (oddly) ducks dotted the flood waters. Some people managed to flee, some drowned; others sought refuge in trees and church steeples where they endured hunger and cold for days before rescue.
Title-page woodcut from _Gods Warning to His People of England_ (1607) — Source. A Protestant, Jones lays some of the blame on the “late Papistical Conspiracy of Traitors”, but the sinfulness is generally all-encompassing.4 This is less than surprising. The weight of morality in England was more immediate after the Reformation: clerical and saintly intermediaries between Creator and creation had been removed, innate sinfulness emphasised, and God positioned as a strict schoolmaster meting out punishment and reward.
While prodigious events were acknowledged as natural, therefore, they were still thought of as induced by human immorality. Pamphleteers routinely draw on cardinal transgressions, such as adultery and blasphemy, but also charge specific places with specific penchants (Cork, usury; Tiverton, miserliness; Banbury, breaking the Sabbath). This waywardness required God to intervene, to exercise “special” providence to steer humankind along the path of “general” providence, the predetermined course set in stone at creation.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
