Fatal Vespers
Coordinates: 51°30′42″N 0°06′11″W / 51.5116°N 0.103°W
The Fatal Vespers is the name given to a disaster in Hunsdon House, Blackfriars, London, at the time the French ambassador's house.
[edit] Event
On the afternoon Sunday, 5 November (N.S.) 1623 about three hundred persons assembled in an upper room at the French ambassador's residence, Hunsdon House, Blackfriars, for the purpose of participating in a religious service by Robert Drury and William Whittingham, two Jesuits.[1][2]
While Drury was preaching the great weight of the crowd in the old room suddenly snapped the main summer-beam of the floor, which instantly crashed in and fell into the room below. The main beams there also snapped and broke through to the ambassador's drawing-room over the gate-house, a distance of twenty-two feet. Part of the floor, being less crowded, stood firm, and the people on it cut a way through a plaster wall into a neighbouring room. The two Jesuits, were killed on the spot. About ninety-five persons lost their lives, while many others sustained serious injuries.[1]
The bigotry of the times led some people to regard this calamity as a judgment on the Catholics, "so much was God offended with their detestable idolatrie".[1][3]
Since the date of the event was in the new-style calendar 5 November, several commentators perceived the event as divine vengeance for the Gunpowder Plot.[4]
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b c Cooper 1888, p. 68.
- ^ "26th October, 1623, stilo antiquo, and the 5th November, stilo novo (Thornbury 1878)"
- ^ Cooper 1888, p. 69 notes:
Father John Floyd met the reproach by publishing A Word of Comfort to the English Catholics, St. Omer, 1623, 4to. A quaint and apparently accurate account of the accident is given in The Doleful Even-Song (1623), written by the Rev. Samuel Clarke, a Puritan; and another description will be found in The Fatall Vesper (1623), ascribed to William Crashaw, father of the poet.
- ^ Thornbury 1878.
[edit] References
- Thornbury, Walter (1878). "Blackfriars". Old and New London:. Institute of Historical Research. pp. 200–219. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45037. Retrieved November 2011.
- Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cooper, Thompson (1888). "Drury, Robert (1587-1623)". In Leslie Stephen. Dictionary of National Biography. 16. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 68, 69.
