our
public credit, considering the vast interest which the English merchants
had in the Portuguese trade; but fortunately, it afterwards proved
inconsiderable, in comparison of what had been apprehended; the quarter
in which the English chiefly lived, and where they had their warehouses,
having suffered the least of any part of the city; and most of the
English merchants then residing there, together with their families,
being at their country houses, to avoid the insults to which they might
have been exposed from the Portuguese populace, during the celebration
of their _auto-da-fe_, which was kept that very day. The two first
shocks of this dreadful visitation continued near a quarter of an hour,
after which the water of the river Tagus rose perpendicularly above
twenty feet, and subsided to its natural bed in less than a minute.
Great numbers of houses, of which this city then contained about
thirty-six thousand, extending in length near six miles, in form of a
crescent, on the ascent of a hill upon the north shore of the mouth of
the river Tagus, within nine miles from the ocean, were thrown down by
the repeated commotions of the earth, together with several magnificent
churches, monasteries, and public buildings. But what entirely completed
the ruin of this then most opulent capital of the Portuguese dominions,
was a devouring conflagration, partly fortuitous or natural, but chiefly
occasioned by a set of impious villains, who, unawed by the tremendous
scene at that very instant passing before their eyes, with a wickedness
scarcely to be credited, set fire even to the falling edifices in
different parts of the city, to increase the general confusion, that
they might have the better opportunity to rob and plunder their already
desolated fellow-citizens. Out of three hundred and fifty thousand
inhabitants, which Lisbon was then supposed to contain, about ten
thousand perished by this calamity; and the survivors, deprived of their
habitations, and destitute even of the necessaries of life, were forced
to seek for shelter in the open fields.

RELIEF VOTED TO THE PORTUGUESE.

As soon as his majesty received an account of this deplorable event,
from his ambassador at the court of Madrid, he sent a message to both
houses of parliament, on the twenty-eighth of November, acquainting
them therewith, and desiring their concurrence and assistance towards
speedily relieving the unhappy sufferers; and the parliament there