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 happened on the 8 day of july 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 increase our sins. It is observable what Doctor Crofts speaking of the King's Army, did preach before the King himself some few days after the great overthrow at Nazbey; They do increase, said he, their sins, as God doth increase his judgements, 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 low 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 precedent in the like nature; It was a judgement that did attend the israelites, they had for their murmuring in the wilderness, 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 wilful sin: Corah Dathan, and Abiram, were of the first rank amongst the Israelits, as the Oaks amongst the Trees of the forest, 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 ourselves before him, lest the Earth open and devour us, and there be none to relieve us. A heathen Poet inveighing against the wickedness of his times; Thinkest thou, saith he, That God is asleep or blind:  
'Cause he forbears, and sooner strikes a Tree  
With horrid thunder, than thy House and Thee.  
Shall we think because the sickness is at Rome it will be well enough with us, because the Oaks and the Trees of the forest 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 lie.  
The Mountain of Vesuvius, and the Mountain of Aetna in Sicily, are perpetually casting forth smoke, 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  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 itself. 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 honourable the Marquis of Newcastle, when about four and twenty year since he entertained the late King when he was going unto Scotland. The King drawing near unto his House perceived a great wood before it through which he passed, the wood dividing itself 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 expense and love. This sinking of the Earth with such great Trees in Cheshire, deserves our most serious consideration, and the less 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 near unto, without assuring the Priest in the first place that he had not touched a Woman for so many days; 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 near 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 days and his victories were numbered, and that now an end must be put to his ambition and his cruelty, & that on the following year in the month of May he should die 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 admission but think themselves secure although there be so many visible demonstrations of the anger of the Almighty, although the thunder doth chide never so loudly; others there are who do flatter themselves in their own righteousness, they believe that such dreadful threaten do not belong to them, they are better than others, and therefore they do conceive it shall go better with them then with others, but this vain confidence is but the arm of flesh, to trust to our own goodness is a most evident sign that we are ready to fall by our own weakness, and less commiseration attends such a fall, for what neighbour will lament or pity the fall of such a man who makes it all his business to boast that he is higher than 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 mushroom; the thunder strikes the Cedars of Libanon, and the Somnets of the highest rocks. I am as low as can be already, and he who lies on the earth cannot fall lower; What n●ed I fear who have neither a head in the clouds, nor an arm in the air, and hardly a foot on the Earth; Thus argues the stubborn mushroom for himself, not at all considering, that but a limb of an oak in its fall will crush a grove of mushrooms 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 boisterous ruins, but those of all are the most inhuman and the most unchristian; for to raise a wicked joy out of the ruins 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 forest tremble, well may they suspect the greatness of their own bulks too dangerous unto them: The Ash may no more boast of her height nor of the number of her keys: The Elm may praise no more her hospitable shades, and her constant relations to the Houses of Greatness: The Pine on the top of the Hill may look down on her feet, and acknowledge she owes her safety to the sinews 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 shall in the first place represent unto you, that although God be praised this be very rare in our own Island, 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 sinking 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 all it pleased God to send so sudden 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 rattling here, between the chiding clouds, 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 Country's 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 extremely noisome, and contagious that they have been taken for the descent into Hell itself; 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 shows itself, at the death of every one, whither male or female, of such an honourable Family, for on the decease of any of them▪ there will arise out of a pool adjacent to the house, the bodies of great Trees which for a certain time will 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, july 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 parcel of Land belonging to the Lord Cholmley did sink into the Earth; It was a little Rise of Land higher than the rest, there were goodly Oaks on it, which were ten yards high in the body (so the letters do expressly mention) before you come unto the branch, these with some other Trees did sink down with the earth into a water prepared to receive them underneath; 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 extremely deep, that there is not so much as a branch, or a top, sprig 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 cracked and full of flaws, 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 spectators of it; At the first they were afraid to come near it, but one taking encouragement from another, some at last were persuaded 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 flood 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 extreme depth, and so the hollow descent 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 threatening then before.  
In this judgement the mercy of God is remarkable, 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.