Selected quad for the lemma: land_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
land_n	fall_v	great_a	lord_n	1,398	5	3.5077	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A49676	The Late dreadful and most admired calamity of a parcel of land and many great oaks, and other trees sunk many yards under ground into so deep a water that the tops of the highest oaks are not to be seen, together with a great quantity of land and other trees that are daily falling ... neer unto the parish of Bulkley, about nine miles from Chester, it being part of the land of the Lord Cholmley : this strange accident hapned on the 8 day of Iuly 1657.		1657 (1657)	Wing L544A; ESTC R41456	5,627	15

THE Late dreadful and most admired Calamity of a Parcel of Land and many great Oaks and other Trees sunk many yards under ground into so deep a Water that the tops of the highest Oaks are not to be seen Together With a great quantity of Land and other Trees that are daily falling and the thundering noise that is made at the time of their most terrible fall ne●r unto the Parish of Bulkley about nine miles from Chester it being part of the Land of the Lord Cholmley This strange accident hapned on the 8 day of Iuly 1657. LONDON Printed for Tho. Vere and William Gilbertson without Newgate and in Giltspurr street 1657. The late dreadful and most admired calamity of a Parcel of Land and many great Oaks and other Trees sunk many yards under ground into so deep a Water that the tops of the highest Oaks are not to be seen GOd doth continue to manifest unto us some visible tokens or others of his displeasure and yet we do continue and encrease our sins It is observable what Doctor Crofts speaking of the Kings Army did preach before the King himself some few dayes after the great overthrow at Nazbey They do increase said he their sins as God doth increase his judgments and what is a true sign of their desperate and most deplorable condition they are not sensible of his judgement We should all have the Spirit of application Sometimes God speaks to us by fire sometimes by water two implacable Elements and as merciless unto themselves as unto others It is not long since we had a desolation by powder the fire was heard then to thunder as now the water God maketh use of any Creature to rebuke us and yet we have not a heart to relent though fire and water and Trees and Stones do preach unto us The other day when the powder took fire at the Hermitage the Houses were blown up into the air Now at this visitation in Cheshire the Earth opens and receives the Earth and Trees which for their height were wont to be the first witnesses of the rising Sun did sink down with it into a lowe darkness The Histories of our Nation since we have been visible in earnest and by commerce with other Nations have been refined from fable and neglect can hardly afford us any president in the like nature It was a judgement that did attend the Israelits they had for their murmuring in the wildernes been bitten with fiery Serpents the sins of their Tongues being punished with the teeth of the Serpents their murmuring Tongues being like fiery Serpents by which their sins were both chastised and expounded but the Princes among them taking no warning but proceeding in their disobedience and impiety the Earth opened and devoured them a fearful judgement for a wilfull sin Corah Dathan and Abiram were of the first rank amongst the Israelits as the Oaks amongst the Trees of the forrest but Corah Dathan and Abiram were all swallowed up there was no more to be seen of them then there was of the Oaks in this late Calamity or rather this gentle warning of the Almighty to humble our selves before him least the Earth open and devour us and there be none to relieve us A heathen Poet inveighing against the wickednes of his times Thinkst thou saith he That God is asleep or blind Cause he forbeares and sooner strikes a Tree With horried thunder then thy House and Thee Shall we think because the sicknes is at Rome it will be well enough with us because the Oaks and the Trees of the forrest fall therefore we shall stand We shall find in History that the like sinking of the Earth hath not only made families but Cities and Kingdoms desolate and thousands who have been alive in the morning have been swallowed up in the twinkling of an eye with a swift destruction Sad monument to all this way sail-by Here King and Kingdom in our grave do ly The Mountain of Vesuvius and the Mountain of Aetna in Sicily are perpetually casting forth smoak and flames of fire to the amazement of all that sail that way and there have been such strange motions of the Earth that lands and houses were in a moment carried away and the same ground with the Cattel and woods thereon have been found to stand twenty mile off and other ground to be justled into place of that which within an hour before was there In such a wonderful motion we do read that Hills have been made Valleys and Valleys Hills and the suddeness of the change hath been as wonderful as the change it self This indeed doth appear strange at the first like some violent convulsion in nature but the possibility of it will appear by a Counterfeit of it which was performed by the right honorable the Marquis of New-Castle when about four and twenty year since he entertained the late King when he was going unto Scotland The King drawing neer unto his House perceived a great wood before it through which he passed the wood dividing it self into a plain and open way for him The magnificent dinner being ended and the King taking Horse again he enquired what was become of the wood which with such a grave and so silent solemnity entertained him that morning as he came unto the House the Marquis told him that it was retreated behind the House to give way on purpose to more lively and comfortable entertainments This moving wood was looked upon by all the Court with equal wonder and delight but this was but an extravagance of expence and love This sinking of the Earth with such great Trees in Cheshire deserves our most serious consideration and the lesse that there is in it of art there is the more of ruin Alexander the Great when he travailed into Judia to add that Nation to his other conquests will tell you of the Tree of the Sun with he both saw and worshipped this Tree he was not permitted to draw neer unto without assuring the Priest in the first place that he had not touched a Woman for so many dayes If you will believe the authority of most grave Historians and of Alexander himself this Tree of the Sun could speak both in the Greek and the Indian tongue and deliver oracles before hand of events to come but not without some ceremonies to be observed as to pull off the rings from the fingers of the worshippers the shoes from their feet in reverence to the place before they make their approaches too neer unto it to lift up their eyes and silently to propound to themselves whatsoever they desire the oracle should satisfy them in this being done the Tree in soft accents like all most unto a whisper would tell them what they should trust unto so it told Alexander that it was denied him by heaven to return with triumphs into Macydon It was told him that his dayes and his victories were numbred and that now an end must be put to his

ambition and his cruelty that on the following year in the moneth of May he should dye at Babylon by the treachery of his own friends whom he least suspected I do not the least way suggest unto you that these Trees which sunk down into the Earth in Chesshire had the reputation of Prophets or that they do presage the death of any Alexander But certainly they may seem to be an advertisement to us to take heed how we stand there are some who will take no admition but think themselves secure although there be so many visible demonstrations of the anger of the Almighty although the thunder doth chide never so lowdly others there are who do flatter themselves in their own righteousnes they believe that such dreadful threatnings do not belong to them they are better then others and therefore they do conceive it shall go better with them then with others but this vain confidence is but the arme of flesh to trust to our own goodness is a most evident sign that we are ready to fall by our own weaknes and lesse commiseration attends such a fall for what neighbour wil lament or pitty the fall of such a man who makes it all his business to boast that he is higher then his fellows Others again there are who are ready to quarrel with instruction and are prone to say what tell you me of the fall of such oaks and of the thunder which they made when they fell into the deeper pit I am but a mushrom the thunder stricks the Cedars of Libanon and the Somnets of the highest rocks I am as low as can be already and he who lyes on the earth cannot fall lower What n●ed I fear who have neither a head in the clowds nor an arme in the air and hardly a foot on the Earth Thus argues the stubborn mushrome for himself not at al considering that but a limb of an oak in its fall will crush a grove of mushromes into nothing There be some again who do take delight to hear of the fall of the great Oaks and of the crack which they made in their wide and boysterous ruins but those of all are the most inhumane and the most unchristian for to raise a wicked joy out of the ruines and the losses of another is to invite if not to pluck the same calamities upon himself He that delights in mischief shall have mischief to follow him at his heels A better and a more noble consideration would become him Is the oak fallen the oak as honourable for its durance as its strength well may the other Trees in the forrest tremble well may they suspect the greatnes of their own bulks too dangerous unto them The Ash may no more boast of her height nor of the number of her keyes The Elme may praise no more her hospitable shades and her constant relations to the Houses of Greatnes The Pine on the top of the Hill may look down on her feet and acknowledge she owes her safety to the s●news of her roots and not to the strength of her Arms they may all learn such lessons of humility that with a prepared expectation they may either receive or divert the rudest buffers of the winds the shocks of all Tempests whatsoever Before we shall poceed to give you a particular account of this parcel of Land which sunk under ground in Cheshire we shal in the first place represent unto you that although God be praysed this be very rare in our own Iland yet other Nations have been oftentimes visited with the like disaster and that in a far more terrible and a devouring way then what in Cheshire happened It is not yet a year since we heard of the dreadful and dismal s●nking of the ground at L●rma in the Dominions of the King of Spain where millions of silver being with immense care and industry digged out of the bowels of the Earth and laid upon the ground to be beheld and desired by al it pleased God to send so suddain and so violent a motion and shaking of the Earth that this vast treasure sunk down again from whence it was digged out and in one minute the lives of about four thousand men who had been digging in the Mines and their three years labour was at once destroyed These mines you ought to consider were of a very large capacity and took up the space of many acres and many miles How dreadful then was the noise which they made in their fall especially seeing at the same time it pleased God to send a great deal of thunder upon the same place Surely if every parcel of ground falling in Cheshire did make a noise like to the report of a Canon great needs must be the affright and the ratling here between the chiding clowds the tumbling mines and the ringing silver We do read in Histories of many great and dreadful caves and Hollows occasioned by the falling of the Earth and most of them of a depth not to be faddomed into which some have willingly sacrificed their lives for their Countries good and safety and some again being condemned by the Law have been violenly thrown into others as the places of the greatest torment nay some of these caves have been so dark so deep and the breath arising from thence so extreamly noysome and contagious that they have been taken for the discent into Hell it self England as I have said is free of those dismal wonders only in this County of Chester there is a kind of a solemn miracle which customarily showes it self at the death of every one whither male or female of such an honorable Family for on the decease of any of them there wil arise out of a pool adjacent to the house the bodies of great Trees which for a certain time wil float upon the water and of their own accord will sink down again into the bottom The miracle is most true and it is recorded as well by grave Divines as by great Historians and it something resembles that which is the intended subject of all this discourse but that the Trees in the one did rise out of the water the trees in this wonder which I am now about to declare unto you did fall into the water roots branches all On Wednesday Iuly the eight about three of the clock in the afternoon there happened a very rare and memorable thing at Bulkley some nine miles off from Chester a percel of Land belonging to the Lord Cholmley did sink into the Earth It was a little Rise of Land higher then the rest there were goodly Oaks on it which were ten yards high in the body so the letters do expressely mention before you come unto the branch these with some other Trees did sinke downe with the earth into a water prepared to receive them under-neath the fall they made was hideous representing thunder or the roaring of a well laden Canon It is certified that although those Trees were of a great height yet the Waters they fell into are so extreamly deep that there is not so much as a branch or a top sprigge of any of them to be seen In the mean time this Earth that sunk down into the deep did by its ponderous fall gain such an advantage on the Earth round about it that it is all crackt and full of flawes and when any piece of it doth follow the temptation of the other that is already sunk and is tumbling down after it there is heard a noise like to the report of a Canon at some great solemnity There come multitudes of people of all sorts although in time of Harvest to be spectatours of it At the first they were affraid to come neer it but one taking encouragement from another some at last were perswaded to go to the brink and month of the Hollow and one or two were let down with ropes to see what they could discover they were neither of them let down far but they importunately called to be plucked up again they discovered as they said a great floud of Water and they heard a noise agreeable thereunto but not any thing of the trees either root branch or top is to be seen this argues the waters to be of an extream depth and so the hollow discent unto it is conceived to be which by the reverberation or the air is the occasion of the hideous noise that is made when any ponderous substance is falling down into it Great pieces of Earth and Trees of a great proportion do daily fall and the ruins every day are more threatning then before In this judgement the mercy of God is remarkeable for he might as well have made us as the Banks of Trees the Examples of his Indignation and displeasure to him therefore be all power and praise and glory now and for evermore Amen FINIS