This Day in History: The Easter Dover Straits earthquake happened on this day in 1580. This earthquake appears to have been one of the largest in the recorded history of England, Flanders or northern France.
Farther from the coast, furniture danced on the floors and wine casks rolled off their stands. The belfry of Notre Dame de Lorette and several buildings at Lille collapsed. Stones fell from buildings in Arras, Douai, Béthune and Rouen. Windows cracked in the cathedral of Notre Dame at Pontoise, and blocks of stone dropped ominously from the vaulting. At Beauvais, the bells rang as though sounding the tocsin. Many deaths were reported from Saint-Amand-les-Eaux.
In Flanders, chimneys fell and cracks opened in the walls of Ghent and Oudenarde, killing several people. Peasants in the fields reported a low rumble and saw the ground roll in waves.
On the English coast, sections of wall fell in Dover and a landslip opened a raw new piece of the White Cliffs. At Sandwich a loud noise emanated from the Channel, as church arches cracked and the gable end of a transept fell at St Peter's Church. Near Hythe, Kent, Saltwood Castle—made famous as the site where the plot was hatched in December 1170 to assassinate Thomas Becket — was rendered uninhabitable until it was repaired in the 19th century.
In London, half a dozen chimney stacks and a pinnacle on Westminster Abbey came down; two children were killed by stones falling from the roof of Christ's Church Hospital. Indeed, many Puritans blamed the emerging theatre scene of the time in London, which was seen as the work of the Devil, as a cause of the quake. There was damage far inland, in Cambridgeshire, where stones fell from Ely Cathedral. Part of Stratford Castle in Essex collapsed.
In Scotland, a local report of the quake disturbed the adolescent James VI, who was informed that it was the work of the Devil.
There were aftershocks. Before dawn the next morning, between 4 and 5 o'clock, further houses collapsed near Dover due to aftershocks, and a spate of further aftershocks was noticed in east Kent on 1–2 May.
The 16th century was a bad time for earthquakes. The deadliest earthquake in history, the Shaanxi earthquake, hit Shaanxi province, China in 1556. The death toll may have been as high as 830,000. This, along with the the Great Comet of 1556 has led some to believe that this was the sign of the antichrist.
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