From London to Land's End

Published：2026-08-03 05:49:27 Source: open ended magnetic building sticks Author: Grandparent Gifts

Transcribed from the 1888 Cassell & Company edition byDavid Price,indoor winter toys for 5 year olds under 50 dollars email [email protected]

from
London to Land’s End.

by
DANIEL DEFOE.

and

Two Letters from the“Journey through England by a Gentleman.”

CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
london, paris, new york& melbourne.
1888.

INTRODUCTION.

At the end of this book there are a couple of letters from avolume of the “Travels in England” which were not byDefoe, although resembling Defoe’s work so much in form andtitle, and so near to it in date of publication, that a volume ofone book is often found taking the place of a volume of theother.  A purchaser of Defoe’s “Travels inEngland” has therefore to take care that he is not buyingone of the mixed sets.  Each of the two works describesEngland at the end of the first quarter of the eighteenthcentury.  Our added descriptions of Bath, and of the journeyby Chester to Holyhead, were published in 1722; Defoe’s“Journey from London to the Land’s End” waspublished in 1724, and both writers help us to compare the pastwith the present by their accounts of England as it was in thedays of George the First, more than a hundred and sixty yearsago.  The days certainly are gone when, after a good haul ofpilchards, seventeen can be bought for a halfpenny, and twogentlemen and their servant can have them broiled at a tavern anddine on them for three farthings, dressing and all.  Inanother of his journeys Defoe gives a seaside tavern bill, inwhich the charges were ridiculously small for everything exceptfor bread.  It was war time, and the bread was the mostcostly item in the bill.

In the earlier part of this account of the “Journey fromLondon to the Land’s End,” there is interest in thefresh memories of the rebuilding and planting at Hampton Court byWilliam III. and Queen Mary.  The passing away, and inopinion of that day the surpassing, of Wolsey’s palacethere were none then to regret.

A more characteristic feature in this letter will be found inthe details of a project which Defoe says he had himselfadvocated before the Lord-Treasurer Godolphin, for the settlementof poor refugees from the Palatinate upon land in the NewForest.  Our friendly relations with the Palatinate hadbegun with the marriage of James the First’s eldestdaughter to the Elector Palatine, who brought on himself muchtrouble by accepting the crown of Bohemia from the subjects ofthe Emperor Ferdinand the Second.  As a Protestant Princeallied by marriage to England, he drew from England sympathiesand ineffectual assistance.  Many years afterwards, duringthe war with France in Queen Anne’s time, the allies wereunprosperous in 1707, and Marshal Villars was victorious upon theRhine.  The pressure of public feeling on behalf of refugeesfrom the Palatinate did not last long enough for any action to betaken.  But if it had seemed well to the Government toaccept the project advocated by Defoe, we should have had aclearance of what is now the most beautiful part of the NewForest, near Lyndhurst; and in place of the little area thatstill preserves all the best features of forest land, we shouldhave had a town of Englishmen descended from the latest of theGerman settlements upon our soil.  Upon the politicaleconomy of Defoe’s project, and the accuracy of hiscalculations, and the more or less resemblance of his scheme tothe system of free grants of land in unsettled regions beyond thesea, each reader will speculate in his own way.

There are interesting notes on the extent of the sheep farmingupon the Downs crossed in this journey.  There is highpraise of the ladies of Dorsetshire.  There are somepleasant notes upon dialect, including the story, often quoted,of the schoolboy whom Defoe saw and heard reading his Bible inclass, and while following every word and line with his eye,translating it as he went into his own way of speech.  Thushe turned the third verse of the fifth chapter of Solomon’sSong, “I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?” into“Chav a doffed my cooat; how shall I don’t? Chav a washed my veet; how shall I moil ’em?” This is a good example of intelligent reading; for the boy tookin the sense of the printed lines, and then made it his own bygiving homely utterance to what he understood.

Defoe tells in this letter several tales of the shorefolkabout the Great Storm of November, 1703, recollection of whichAddison used effectively in the following year in his poem on theBattle of Blenheim.  There was the sweeping away of thefirst Eddystone Lighthouse, with the builder, confident in itsstrength, who had desired to be in it some night when the windblew with unusual fury.  There was the story also of the manand two boys, in a ship laden with tin, blown out of HelfordHaven, and of their hairbreadth escape by counsel of one of theboys who ran the ship through rocks into a narrow creek that heknew in the Isle of Wight.  The form of the coast has beenchanged so much since 1703 by the beat of many storms, that itmay be now impossible to know that little cove as the boy knewit.  It must have been at the back of the island.  Werethe storm waves tossing then in Steephill Cove or LuccombeChine?  Does there survive anywhere a tradition of thatperilous landing?  Probably not.  Wreck follows uponwreck, and memory of many tales of death and peril on therock-bound coast lie between us and the boy who took the helmwhen he spied the well-known creek as the great storm wassweeping the ship on to destruction.  From the next yearafter that famous storm, Defoe gives a memory of disaster seen byhimself at Plymouth in the wreck of a little fleet fromBarbadoes.  In another part of this letter he tells what hehad seen of a fight at sea between three French men-of-war andtwo English with a convoy of two or three trading vessels.

There will be found also in this letter a good story of aCornish dog taken from Carew’s “Survey ofCornwall,” which may pair with that of the London dog wholately took a wounded fellow dog to hospital.

The writer of this letter speaks of the civil war times as afriend of monarchy, but when he tells of the landing of WilliamIII. at Torbay, he suggests that the people had good reason forrejoicing, and throughout the journey he takes note of a greatinequality he finds in distribution of the right of returningmembers to Parliament.  It is evident that he could propounda project for a Reform Bill, though he is careful so to describeEngland as to avoid giving offence to Englishmen of anyparty.  The possibility of some change for the better hereand there presents itself; Defoe glances and passes on.  Histheme is England and the English; he shows us, clearly and verysimply, what he has seen of the social life and manners of thepeople, of the features of the land itself, and their relation toits industries; traces of the past, and prospects of the future;shepherds, fishermen, merchants; catching of salmon peel inmill-weirs, and catching of husbands at provincial assemblies;with whatever else he found worth friendly observation.

H. M.

FROM LONDON TO LAND’S END

Sir,

I find so much left to speak of, and so many things to say inevery part of England, that my journey cannot be barren ofintelligence which way soever I turn; no, though I were to obligemyself to say nothing of anything that had been spoken ofbefore.

I intended once to have gone due west this journey; but then Ishould have been obliged to crowd my observations so close (tobring Hampton Court, Windsor, Blenheim, Oxford, the Bath andBristol all into one letter; all those remarkable places lying ina line, as it were, in one point of the compass) as to have mademy letter too long, or my observations too light and superficial,as others have done before me.

This letter will divide the weighty task, and consequentlymake it sit lighter on the memory, be pleasanter to the reader,and make my progress the more regular: I shall therefore take inHampton Court and Windsor in this journey; the first at mysetting out, and the last at my return, and the rest as theirsituation demands.

As I came down from Kingston, in my last circuit, by the southbank of the Thames, on the Surrey side of the river; so I go upto Hampton Court now on the north bank, and on the Middlesexside, which I mention, because, as the sides of the countrybordering on the river lie parallel, so the beauty of thecountry, the pleasant situations, the glory of innumerable finebuildings (noblemen’s and gentlemen’s houses, andcitizens’ retreats), are so equal a match to what I haddescribed on the other side that one knows not which to give thepreference to: but as I must speak of them again, when I come towrite of the county of Middlesex, which I have now purposelyomitted; so I pass them over here, except the palace of Hamptononly, which I mentioned in “Middlesex,” for thereasons above.

Hampton Court lies on the north bank of the River Thames,about two small miles from Kingston, and on the road from Stainesto Kingston Bridge; so that the road straightening the parks alittle, they were obliged to part the parks, and leave thePaddock and the great park part on the other side theroad—a testimony of that just regard that the kings ofEngland always had, and still have, to the common good, and tothe service of the country, that they would not interrupt thecourse of the road, or cause the poor people to go out of the wayof their business to or from the markets and fairs, for anypleasure of their own whatsoever.

The palace of Hampton Court was first founded and built fromthe ground by that great statesman and favourite of King HenryVIII, Cardinal Wolsey; and if it be a just observation anywhere,as is made from the situation of the old abbeys and monasteries,the clergy were excellent judges of the beauty and pleasantnessof the country, and chose always to plant in the best; I say, ifit was a just observation in any case, it was in this; for ifthere be a situation on the whole river between Staines Bridgeand Windsor Bridge pleasanter than another, it is this ofHampton; close to the river, yet not offended by the rising ofits waters in floods or storms; near to the reflux of the tides,but not quite so near as to be affected with any foulness of thewater which the flowing of the tides generally is the occasionof.  The gardens extend almost to the bank of the river, yetare never overflowed; nor are there any marshes on either sidethe river to make the waters stagnate, or the air unwholesome onthat account.  The river is high enough to be navigable, andlow enough to be a little pleasantly rapid; so that the streamlooks always cheerful, not slow and sleeping, like a pond. This keeps the waters always clear and clean, the bottom in view,the fish playing and in sight; and, in a word, it has everythingthat can make an inland (or, as I may call it, a country) riverpleasant and agreeable.

I shall sing you no songs here of the river in the firstperson of a water-nymph, a goddess, and I know not what,according to the humour of the ancient poets; I shall talknothing of the marriage of old Isis, the male river, with thebeautiful Thame, the female river (a whimsey as simple as thesubject was empty); but I shall speak of the river as occasionpresents, as it really is made glorious by the splendour of itsshores, gilded with noble palaces, strong fortifications, largehospitals, and public buildings; with the greatest bridge, andthe greatest city in the world, made famous by the opulence ofits merchants, the increase and extensiveness of its commerce; byits invincible navies, and by the innumerable fleets of shipssailing upon it to and from all parts of the world.

As I meet with the river upwards in my travels through theinland country I shall speak of it, as it is the channel forconveying an infinite quantity of provisions from remote countiesto London, and enriching all the counties again that lie near itby the return of wealth and trade from the city; and indescribing these things I expect both to inform and divert myreaders, and speak in a more masculine manner, more to thedignity of the subject, and also more to their satisfaction, thanI could do any other way.

There is little more to be said of the Thames relating toHampton Court, than that it adds by its neighbourhood to thepleasure of the situation; for as to passing by water to and fromLondon, though in summer it is exceeding pleasant, yet thepassage is a little too long to make it easy to the ladies,especially to be crowded up in the small boats which usually goupon the Thames for pleasure.

The prince and princess, indeed, I remember came once down bywater upon the occasion of her Royal Highness’s being greatwith child, and near her time—so near that she wasdelivered within two or three days after.  But this passagebeing in the royal barges, with strength of oars, and the dayexceeding fine, the passage, I say, was made very pleasant, andstill the more so for being short.  Again, this passage isall the way with the stream, whereas in the common passageupwards great part of the way is against the stream, which isslow and heavy.

But be the going and coming how it will by water, it is anexceeding pleasant passage by land, whether we go by the Surreyside or the Middlesex side of the water, of which I shall saymore in its place.

The situation of Hampton Court being thus mentioned, and itsfounder, it is to be mentioned next that it fell to the Crown inthe forfeiture of his Eminence the Cardinal, when the king seizedhis effects and estate, by which this and Whitehall (anotherhouse of his own building also) came to King Henry VIII. Two palaces fit for the kings of England, erected by onecardinal, are standing monuments of the excessive pride as wellas the immense wealth of that prelate, who knew no bounds of hisinsolence and ambition till he was overthrown at once by thedispleasure of his master.

Whoever knew Hampton Court before it was begun to be rebuilt,or altered, by the late King William, must acknowledge it was avery complete palace before, and fit for a king; and though itmight not, according to the modern method of building or ofgardening, pass for a thing exquisitely fine, yet it had thisremaining to itself, and perhaps peculiar—namely, that itshowed a situation exceedingly capable of improvement, and ofbeing made one of the most delightful palaces in Europe.

This her Majesty Queen Mary was so sensible of, that, whilethe king had ordered the pulling down the old apartments, andbuilding it up in that most beautiful form which we see them nowappear in, her Majesty, impatient of enjoying so agreeable aretreat, fixed upon a building formerly made use of chiefly forlanding from the river, and therefore called the Water Galley,and here, as if she had been conscious that she had but a fewyears to enjoy it, she ordered all the little neat curious thingsto be done which suited her own conveniences, and made it thepleasantest little thing within doors that could possibly bemade, though its situation being such as it could not be allowedto stand after the great building was finished, we now see noremains of it.

The queen had here her gallery of beauties, being the picturesat full-length of the principal ladies attending upon herMajesty, or who were frequently in her retinue; and this was themore beautiful sight because the originals were all in being, andoften to be compared with their pictures.  Her Majesty hadhere a fine apartment, with a set of lodgings for her privateretreat only, but most exquisitely furnished, particularly a finechintz bed, then a great curiosity; another of her own work whilein Holland, very magnificent, and several others; and here wasalso her Majesty’s fine collection of Delft ware, whichindeed was very large and fine; and here was also a vast stock offine china ware, the like whereof was not then to be seen inEngland; the long gallery, as above, was filled with this china,and every other place where it could be placed withadvantage.

The queen had here also a small bathing-room, made very fine,suited either to hot or cold bathing, as the season shouldinvite; also a dairy, with all its conveniences, in which herMajesty took great delight.  All these things were finishedwith expedition, that here their Majesties might repose whilethey saw the main building go forward.  While this wasdoing, the gardens were laid out, the plan of them devised by theking himself, and especially the amendments and alterations weremade by the king or the queen’s particular special command,or by both, for their Majesties agreed so well in their fancy,and had both so good judgment in the just proportions of things,which are the principal beauties of a garden, that it may be saidthey both ordered everything that was done.

Here the fine parcel of limes which form the semicircle on thesouth front of the house by the iron gates, looking into thepark, were by the dexterous hand of the head gardener removed,after some of them had been almost thirty years planted in otherplaces, though not far off.  I know the King of France inthe decoration of the gardens of Versailles had oaks removed,which by their dimensions must have been above an hundred yearsold, and yet were taken up with so much art, and by the strengthof such engines, by which such a monstrous quantity of earth wasraised with them, that the trees could not feel theirremove—that is to say, their growth was not at allhindered.  This, I confess, makes the wonder much the lessin those trees at Hampton Court gardens; but the performance wasnot the less difficult or nice, however, in these, and theythrive perfectly well.

While the gardens were thus laid out, the king also directedthe laying the pipes for the fountains andjet-d’eaux, and particularly the dimensions of them,and what quantity of water they should cast up, and increased thenumber of them after the first design.

The ground on the side of the other front has received somealterations since the taking down the Water Galley; but not thatpart immediately next the lodgings.  The orange-trees andfine Dutch bays are placed within the arches of the buildingunder the first floor; so that the lower part of the house wasall one as a greenhouse for sometime.  Here stand advanced,on two pedestals of stone, two marble vases or flower-pots ofmost exquisite workmanship—the one done by an Englishman,and the other by a German.  It is hard to say which is thebest performance, though the doing of it was a kind of trial ofskill between them; but it gives us room, without any partiality,to say they were both masters of their art.

The parterreon that side descends from theterrace-walk by steps, and on the left a terrace goes down to thewater-side, from which the garden on the eastward front isoverlooked, and gives a most pleasant prospect.

The fine scrolls and bordureof these gardens were atfirst edged with box, but on the queen’s disliking thesmell those edgings were taken up, but have since been plantedagain—at least, in many places—nothing making so fairand regular an edging as box, or is so soon brought to itsperfection.

On the north side of the house, where the gardens seemed towant screening from the weather or the view of the chapel, andsome part of the old building required to be covered from theeye, the vacant ground, which was large, is very happily castinto a wilderness, with a labyrinth and espaliersso highthat they effectually take off all that part of the old buildingwhich would have been offensive to the sight.  Thislabyrinth and wilderness is not only well designed, andcompletely finished, but is perfectly well kept, and theespaliersfilled exactly at bottom, to the very ground,and are led up to proportioned heights on the top, so thatnothing of that kind can be more beautiful.

The house itself is every way answerable on the outside to thebeautiful prospect, and the two fronts are the largest and,beyond comparison, the finest of the kind in England.  Thegreat stairs go up from the second court of the palace on theright hand, and lead you to the south prospect.

I hinted in my last that King William brought into England thelove of fine paintings as well as that of fine gardens; and youhave an example of it in the cartoons, as they are called, beingfive pieces of such paintings as, if you will believe men of nicejudgment and great travelling, are not to be matched inEurope.  The stories are known, but especially two ofthem—viz., that of St. Paul preaching on Mars Hill to theself-wise Athenians, and that of St. Peter passing sentence ofdeath on Ananias—I say, these two strike the mind with theutmost surprise, the passions are so drawn to the life;astonishment, terror, and death in the face of Ananias, zeal anda sacred fire in the eyes of the blessed Apostle, fright andsurprise upon the countenances of the beholders in the piece ofAnanias; all these describe themselves so naturally that youcannot but seem to discover something of the like passions, evenin seeing them.

In the other there is the boldness and courage with which St.Paul undertook to talk to a set of men who, he knew, despised allthe world, as thinking themselves able to teach themanything.  In the audience there is anticipating pride andconceit in some, a smile or fleer of contempt in others, but akind of sensible conviction, though crushed in its beginning, onthe faces of the rest; and all together appear confounded, buthave little to say, and know nothing at all of it; they gravelyput him off to hear him another time; all these are seen here inthe very dress of the face—that is, the very countenanceswhich they hold while they listen to the new doctrine which theApostle preached to a people at that time ignorant of it.

The other of the cartoons are exceeding fine but I mentionthese as the particular two which are most lively, which strikethe fancy the soonest at first view.  It is reported, butwith what truth I know not, that the late French king offered anhundred thousand louis d’orsfor these pictures; butthis, I say, is but a report.  The king brought a great manyother fine pieces to England, and with them the love of finepaintings so universally spread itself among the nobility andpersons of figure all over the kingdom that it is incredible whatcollections have been made by English gentlemen since that time,and how all Europe has been rummaged, as we may say, for picturesto bring over hither, where for twenty years they yielded thepurchasers, such as collected them for sale, immenseprofit.  But the rates are abated since that, and we beginto be glutted with the copies and frauds of the Dutch and Flemishpainters who have imposed grossly upon us.  But to return tothe palace of Hampton Court.  Queen Mary lived not to see itcompletely finished, and her death, with the other difficultiesof that reign, put a stop to the works for some time till theking, reviving his good liking of the place, set them to workagain, and it was finished as we see it.  But I have beenassured that had the peace continued, and the king lived to enjoythe continuance of it, his Majesty had resolved to have pulleddown all the remains of the old building (such as the chapel andthe large court within the first gate), and to have built up thewhole palace after the manner of those two fronts alreadydone.  In these would have been an entire set of rooms ofstate for the receiving and, if need had been, lodging andentertaining any foreign prince with his retinue; also officesfor all the Secretaries of State, Lords of the Treasury, and ofTrade, to have repaired to for the despatch of such business asit might be necessary to have done there upon the king’slonger residence there than ordinary; as also apartments for allthe great officers of the Household; so that had the house hadtwo great squares added, as was designed, there would have beenno room to spare, or that would not have been very wellfilled.  But the king’s death put an end to all thesethings.

Since the death of King William, Hampton Court seemedabandoned of its patron.  They have gotten a kind ofproverbial saying relating to Hampton Court, viz., that it hasbeen generally chosen by every other prince since it became ahouse of note.  King Charles was the first that delighted init since Queen Elizabeth’s time.  As for the reignsbefore, it was but newly forfeited to the Crown, and was not madea royal house till King Charles I., who was not only a princethat delighted in country retirements, but knew how to makechoice of them by the beauty of their situation, the goodness ofthe air, &c.  He took great delight here, and, had helived to enjoy it in peace, had purposed to make it another thingthan it was.  But we all know what took him off from thatfelicity, and all others; and this house was at last made one ofhis prisons by his rebellious subjects.

His son, King Charles II., may well be said to have anaversion to the place, for the reason justmentioned—namely, the treatment his royal father met withthere—and particularly that the rebel and murderer of hisfather, Cromwell, afterwards possessed this palace, and revelledhere in the blood of the royal party, as he had done in that ofhis sovereign.  King Charles II. therefore chose Windsor,and bestowed a vast sum in beautifying the castle there, andwhich brought it to the perfection we see it in at thisday—some few alterations excepted, done in the time of KingWilliam.

King William (for King James is not to be named as to hischoice of retired palaces, his delight running quite anotherway)—I say, King William fixed upon Hampton Court, and itwas in his reign that Hampton Court put on new clothes, and,being dressed gay and glorious, made the figure we now see itin.

The late queen, taken up for part of her reign in her kindregards to the prince her spouse, was obliged to reside where hercare of his health confined her, and in this case kept for themost part at Kensington, where he died; but her Majesty alwaysdiscovered her delight to be at Windsor, where she chose thelittle house, as it was called, opposite to the Castle, and tookthe air in her chaise in the parks and forest as she sawoccasion.

Now Hampton Court, by the like alternative, is come intorequest again; and we find his present Majesty, who is a goodjudge too of the pleasantness and situation of a place of thatkind, has taken Hampton Court into his favour, and has made itmuch his choice for the summer’s retreat of the Court, andwhere they may best enjoy the diversions of the season. When Hampton Court will find such another favourable juncture asin King William’s time, when the remainder of her ashesshall be swept away, and her complete fabric, as designed by KingWilliam, shall be finished, I cannot tell; but if ever that shallbe, I know no palace in Europe, Versailles excepted, which cancome up to her, either for beauty and magnificence, or for extentof building, and the ornaments attending it.

From Hampton Court I directed my course for a journey into thesouth-west part of England; and to take up my beginning where Iconcluded my last, I crossed to Chertsey on the Thames, a town Imentioned before; from whence, crossing the Black Desert, as Icalled it, of Bagshot Heath, I directed my course for Hampshireor Hantshire, and particularly for Basingstoke—that is tosay, that a little before, I passed into the great Western Roadupon the heath, somewhat west of Bagshot, at a village calledBlackwater, and entered Hampshire, near Hartleroe.

Before we reach Basingstoke, we get rid of that unpleasantcountry which I so often call a desert, and enter into a pleasantfertile country, enclosed and cultivated like the rest ofEngland; and passing a village or two we enter Basingstoke, inthe midst of woods and pastures, rich and fertile, and thecountry accordingly spread with the houses of the nobility andgentry, as in other places.  On the right hand, a littlebefore we come to the town, we pass at a small distance thefamous fortress, so it was then, of Basing, being a housebelonging then to the Marquis of Winchester, the great ancestorof the present family of the Dukes of Bolton.

This house, garrisoned by a resolute band of old soldiers, wasa great curb to the rebels of the Parliament party almost throughthat whole war; till it was, after a vigorous defence, yielded tothe conquerors by the inevitable fate of things at thattime.  The old house is, indeed, demolished but thesuccessor of the family, the first Duke of Bolton, has erected avery noble fabric in the same place, or near it, which, however,is not equal to the magnificence which fame gives to the ancienthouse, whose strength of building only, besides the outworks,withstood the battery of cannon in several attacks, and repulsedthe Roundheads three or four times when they attempted to besiegeit.  It is incredible what booty the garrison of this placepicked up, lying as they did just on the great Western Road,where they intercepted the carriers, plundered the waggons, andsuffered nothing to pass—to the great interruption of thetrade of the city of London.

Basingstoke is a large populous market-town, has a good marketfor corn, and lately within a very few years is fallen into amanufacture, viz., of making druggets and shalloons, and suchslight goods, which, however, employs a good number of the poorpeople, and enables them to get their bread, which knew not howto get it before.

From hence the great Western Road goes on to Whitchurch andAndover, two market-towns, and sending members to Parliament; atthe last of which the Downs, or open country, begins, which we ingeneral, though falsely, call Salisbury Plain.  But myresolution being to take in my view what I had passed by before,I was obliged to go off to the left hand, to Alresford andWinchester.

Alresford was a flourishing market-town, and remarkable forthis—that though it had no great trade, and particularlyvery little, if any, manufactures, yet there was no collection inthe town for the poor, nor any poor low enough to take alms ofthe parish, which is what I do not think can be said of any townin England besides.

But this happy circumstance, which so distinguished Alresfordfrom all her neighbours, was brought to an end in the year ---,when by a sudden and surprising fire the whole town, with boththe church and the market-house, was reduced to a heap ofrubbish; and, except a few poor huts at the remotest ends of thetown, not a house left standing.  The town is since thatvery handsomely rebuilt, and the neighbouring gentlemencontributed largely to the relief of the people, especially bysending in timber towards their building; also their market-houseis handsomely built, but the church not yet, though we hear thereis a fund raising likewise for that.

Here is a very large pond, or lake of water, kept up to a headby a strong batter d’eau, or dam, which the peopletell us was made by the Romans; and that it is to this day partof the great Roman highway which leads from Winchester to Alton,and, as it is supposed, went on to London, though we nowhere seeany remains of it, except between Winchester and Alton, andchiefly between this town and Alton.

Near this town, a little north-west, the Duke of Bolton hasanother seat, which, though not large, is a very handsomebeautiful palace, and the gardens not only very exact, but veryfinely situate, the prospect and vistas noble and great, and thewhole very well kept.

From hence, at the end of seven miles over the Downs, we cometo the very ancient city of Winchester; not only the great church(which is so famous all over Europe, and has been so much talkedof), but even the whole city has at a distance the face ofvenerable, and looks ancient afar off; and yet here are manymodern buildings too, and some very handsome; as the collegeschools, with the bishop’s palace, built by Bishop Morleysince the late wars—the old palace of the bishop havingbeen ruined by that known church incendiary Sir William Wallerand his crew of plunderers, who, if my information is not wrong,as I believe it is not, destroyed more monuments of the dead, anddefaced more churches, than all the Roundheads in Englandbeside.

This church, and the schools also are accurately described byseveral writers, especially by the “Monasticon,”where their antiquity and original is fully set forth.  Theoutside of the church is as plain and coarse as if the foundershad abhorred ornaments, or that William of Wickham had been aQuaker, or at least a Quietist.  There is neither statue,nor a niche for a statue, to be seen on all the outside; nocarved work, no spires, towers, pinnacles, balustrades, oranything; but mere walls, buttresses, windows, and coignsnecessary to the support and order of the building.  It hasno steeple, but a short tower covered flat, as if the top of ithad fallen down, and it had been covered in haste to keep therain out till they had time to build it up again.

But the inside of the church has many very good things in it,and worth observation; it was for some ages the burying-place ofthe English Saxon kings, whose reliques, at the repair ofthe church, were collected by Bishop Fox, and being put togetherinto large wooden chests lined with lead were again interred atthe foot of the great wall in the choir, three on one side, andthree on the other, with an account whose bones are in eachchest.  Whether the division of the reliquesmight bedepended upon, has been doubted, but is not thought material, sothat we do but believe they are all there.

The choir of the church appears very magnificent; the roof isvery high, and the Gothic work in the arched part is very fine,though very old; the painting in the windows is admirably good,and easy to be distinguished by those that understand thosethings: the steps ascending to the choir make a very fine show,having the statues of King James and his son King Charles, incopper, finely cast; the first on the right hand, and the otheron the left, as you go up to the choir.

The choir is said to be the longest in England; and as thenumber of prebendaries, canons, &c., are many, it requiredsuch a length.  The ornaments of the choir are the effectsof the bounty of several bishops.  The fine altar (thenoblest in England by much) was done by Bishop Morley; the roofand the coat-of-arms of the Saxon and Norman kings were done byBishop Fox; and the fine throne for the bishop in the choir wasgiven by Bishop Mew in his lifetime; and it was well it was forif he had ordered it by will, there is reason to believe it hadnever been done—that reverend prelate, notwithstanding heenjoyed so rich a bishopric, scarce leaving money enough behindhim to pay for his coffin.

There are a great many persons of rank buried in this church,besides the Saxon kings mentioned above, and besides several ofthe most eminent bishops of the See.  Just under the altarlies a son of William the Conqueror, without any monument; andbehind the altar, under a very fine and venerable monument, liesthe famous Lord Treasurer Weston, late Earl of Portland, LordHigh Treasurer of England under King Charles I.  His effigyis in copper armour at full-length, with his head raised on threecushions of the same, and is a very magnificent work.  Thereis also a very fine monument of Cardinal Beaufort in hiscardinal’s robes and hat.

The monument of Sir John Cloberry is extraordinary, but morebecause it puts strangers upon inquiring into his story than foranything wonderful in the figure, it being cut in a modern dress(the habit gentlemen wore in those times, which, being now somuch out of fashion, appears mean enough).  But thisgentleman’s story is particular, being the person solelyentrusted with the secret of the restoration of King Charles II.,as the messenger that passed between General Monk on one hand,and Mr. Montague and others entrusted by King Charles II. on theother hand; which he managed so faithfully as to effect thatmemorable event, to which England owes the felicity of all herhappy days since that time; by which faithful service Sir JohnCloberry, then a private musketeer only, raised himself to thehonour of a knight, with the reward of a good estate from thebounty of the king.

Everybody that goes into this church, and reads what is to beread there, will be told that the body of the church was built bythe famous William of Wickham; whose monument, intimating hisfame, lies in the middle of that part which was built at hisexpense.

He was a courtier before a bishop; and, though he had no greatshare of learning, he was a great promoter of it, and a lover oflearned men.  His natural genius was much beyond hisacquired parts, and his skill in politics beyond his ecclesiasticknowledge.  He is said to have put his master, King EdwardIII., to whom he was Secretary of State, upon the two greatprojects which made his reign so glorious, viz.:—First,upon setting up his claim to the crown of France, and pushingthat claim by force of arms, which brought on the war withFrance, in which that prince was three times victorious inbattle. (2)  Upon setting up, or instituting the Order ofthe Garter; in which he (being before that made Bishop ofWinchester) obtained the honour for the Bishops of Winchester ofbeing always prelates of the Order, as an appendix to thebishopric; and he himself was the first prelate of the Order, andthe ensigns of that honour are joined with his episcopalornaments in the robing of his effigy on the monument above.

To the honour of this bishop, there are other foundations ofhis, as much to his fame as that of this church, of which I shallspeak in their order; but particularly the college in this city,which is a noble foundation indeed.  The building consistsof two large courts, in which are the lodgings for the mastersand scholars, and in the centre a very noble chapel; beyond that,in the second court, are the schools, with a large cloisterbeyond them, and some enclosures laid open for the diversion ofthe scholars.  There also is a great hall, where thescholars dine.  The funds for the support of this collegeare very considerable; the masters live in a very good figure,and their maintenance is sufficient to support it.  Theyhave all separate dwellings in the house, and all possibleconveniences appointed them.

The scholars have exhibitions at a certain time of continuancehere, if they please to study in the new college at Oxford, builtby the same noble benefactor, of which I shall speak in itsorder.

The clergy here live at large, and very handsomely, in theClose belonging to the cathedral; where, besides thebishop’s palace mentioned above, are very good houses, andvery handsomely built, for the prebendaries, canons, and otherdignitaries of this church.  The Deanery is a very pleasantdwelling, the gardens very large, and the river running throughthem; but the floods in winter sometimes incommode the gardensvery much.

This school has fully answered the end of the founder, who,though he was no great scholar, resolved to erect a house for themaking the ages to come more learned than those that went before;and it has, I say, fully answered the end, for many learned andgreat men have been raised here, some of whom we shall haveoccasion to mention as we go on.

Among the many private inscriptions in this church, we foundone made by Dr. Over, once an eminent physician in this city, ona mother and child, who, being his patients, died together andwere buried in the same grave, and which intimate that one diedof a fever, and the other of a dropsy:

“Surrepuit natum Febris, matrem abstulitHydrops,
Igne Prior Fatis, Altera cepit Aqua.”

As the city itself stands in a vale on the bank, and at theconjunction of two small rivers, so the country rising every way,but just as the course of the water keeps the valley open, youmust necessarily, as you go out of the gates, go uphill everyway; but when once ascended, you come to the most charming plainsand most pleasant country of that kind in England; whichcontinues with very small intersections of rivers and valleys forabove fifty miles, as shall appear in the sequel of thisjourney.

At the west gate of this city was anciently a castle, known tobe so by the ruins more than by any extraordinary notice taken ofit in history.  What they say of it, that the Saxon kingskept their court here, is doubtful, and must be meant of the WestSaxons only.  And as to the tale of King Arthur’sRound Table, which they pretend was kept here for him and his twodozen of knights (which table hangs up still, as a piece ofantiquity to the tune of twelve hundred years, and has, as theypretend, the names of the said knights in Saxon characters, andyet such as no man can read), all this story I see so littleground to give the least credit to that I look upon it, and itshall please you, to be no better than a fib.

Where this castle stood, or whatever else it was (for some saythere was no castle there), the late King Charles II. marked outa very noble design, which, had he lived, would certainly havemade that part of the country the Newmarket of the ages to come;for the country hereabout far excels that of Newmarket Heath forall kinds of sport and diversion fit for a prince, nobody candispute.  And as the design included a noble palace(sufficient, like Windsor, for a summer residence of the wholecourt), it would certainly have diverted the king from hiscursory journeys to Newmarket.

The plan of this house has received several alterations, andas it is never like to be finished, it is scarce worth recordingthe variety.  The building is begun, and the front next thecity carried up to the roof and covered, but the remainder is notbegun.  There was a street of houses designed from the gateof the palace down to the town, but it was never begun to bebuilt; the park marked out was exceeding large, near ten miles incircumference, and ended west upon the open Downs, in view of thetown of Stockbridge.

This house was afterwards settled, with a royal revenue also,as an appanage (established by Parliament) upon Prince George ofDenmark for his life, in case he had out-lived the queen; but hisRoyal Highness dying before her Majesty, all hope of seeing thisdesign perfected, or the house finished, is now vanished.

I cannot omit that there are several public edifices in thiscity and in the neighbourhood, as the hospitals and the buildingadjoining near the east gate; and towards the north a piece of anold monastery undemolished, and which is still preserved to thereligion, being the residence of some private Roman Catholicgentlemen, where they have an oratory, and, as they say, livestill according to the rules of St. Benedict.  This buildingis called Hide House; and as they live very usefully, and to thehighest degree obliging among their neighbours, they meet with noobstruction or disturbance from anybody.

Winchester is a place of no trade other than is naturallyoccasioned by the inhabitants of the city and neighbouringvillages one with another.  Here is no manufacture, nonavigation; there was indeed an attempt to make the rivernavigable from Southampton, and it was once made practicable, butit never answered the expense so as to give encouragement to theundertakers.

Here is a great deal of good company, and abundance of gentrybeing in the neighbourhood, it adds to the sociableness of theplace.  The clergy also here are, generally speaking, veryrich and very numerous.

As there is such good company, so they are gotten into thatnew-fashioned way of conversing by assemblies.  I shall dono more than mention them here; they are pleasant and agreeableto the young peoples, and sometimes fatal to them, of which, inits place, Winchester has its share of the mirth.  May itescape the ill-consequences!

The hospital on the south of this city, at a mile distant onthe road to Southampton, is worth notice.  It is said to befounded by King William Rufus, but was not endowed or appointedtill later times by Cardinal Beaufort.  Every traveller thatknocks at the door of this house in his way, and asks for it,claims the relief of a piece of white bread and a cup of beer,and this donation is still continued.  A quantity of goodbeer is set apart every day to be given away, and what is left isdistributed to other poor, but none of it kept to the nextday.

How the revenues of this hospital, which should maintain themaster and thirty private gentlemen (whom they call Fellows, butought to call Brothers), is now reduced to maintain onlyfourteen, while the master lives in a figure equal to the bestgentleman in the country, would be well worth the inquiry of aproper visitor, if such can be named.  It is a thing worthyof complaint when public charities, designed for the relief ofthe poor, are embezzled and depredated by the rich, and turned tothe support of luxury and pride.

From Winchester is about twenty-five miles, and over the mostcharming plains that can anywhere be seen (far, in my opinion,excelling the plains of Mecca), we come to Salisbury.  Thevast flocks of sheep which one everywhere sees upon these Downs,and the great number of those flocks, is a sight truly worthobservation; it is ordinary for these flocks to contain fromthree thousand to five thousand in a flock, and several privatefarmers hereabouts have two or three such flocks.

But it is more remarkable still how a great part of theseDowns comes, by a new method of husbandry, to be not only madearable (which they never were in former days), but to bearexcellent wheat, and great crops, too, though otherwise poorbarren land, and never known to our ancestors to be capable ofany such thing—nay, they would perhaps have laughed at anyone that would have gone about to plough up the wild downs andhills where the sheep were wont to go.  But experience hasmade the present age wiser and more skilful in husbandry; for byonly folding the sheep upon the ploughed lands—those landswhich otherwise are barren, and where the plough goes withinthree or four inches of the solid rock of chalk, are madefruitful and bear very good wheat, as well as rye andbarley.  I shall say more of this when I come to speak ofthe same practice farther in the country.

This plain country continues in length from Winchester toSalisbury (twenty-five miles), from thence to Dorchester(twenty-two miles), thence to Weymouth (six miles); so that theylie near fifty miles in length and breadth; they reach also insome places thirty-five to forty miles.  They who would makeany practicable guess at the number of sheep usually fed on theseDowns may take it from a calculation made, as I was told, atDorchester, that there were six hundred thousand sheep fed withinsix miles of that town, measuring every way round and the town inthe centre.

As we passed this plain country, we saw a great many oldcamps, as well Roman as British, and several remains of theancient inhabitants of this kingdom, and of their wars, battles,entrenchments, encampments, buildings, and other fortifications,which are indeed very agreeable to a traveller that has readanything of the history of the country.  Old Sarum is asremarkable as any of these, where there is a double entrenchment,with a deep graff or ditch to either of them; the area about onehundred yards in diameter, taking in the whole crown of the hill,and thereby rendering the ascent very difficult.  Near thisthere is one farm-house, which is all the remains I could see ofany town in or near the place (for the encampment has noresemblance of a town), and yet this is called the borough of OldSarum, and sends two members to Parliament.  Whom thosemembers can justly say they represent would be hard for them toanswer.

Some will have it that the old city of SorbiodunumorSalisbury stood here, and was afterwards (for I know not whatreasons) removed to the low marshy grounds among the rivers,where it now stands.  But as I see no authority for it otherthan mere tradition, I believe my share of it, and take it adreferendum.

Salisbury itself is indeed a large and pleasant city, though Ido not think it at all the pleasanter for that which they boastso much of—namely, the water running through the middle ofevery street—or that it adds anything to the beauty of theplace, but just the contrary; it keeps the streets always dirty,full of wet and filth and weeds, even in the middle ofsummer.

The city is placed upon the confluence of two large rivers,the Avon and the Willy, neither of them considerable rivers, butvery large when joined together, and yet larger when they receivea third river (viz., the Naddir), which joins them near ClarendonPark, about three miles below the city; then, with a deep channeland a current less rapid, they run down to Christchurch, which istheir port.  And where they empty themselves into the sea,from that town upwards towards Salisbury they are made navigableto within two miles, and might be so quite into the city, were itnot for the strength of the stream.

As the city of Winchester is a city without trade—thatis to say, without any particular manufactures—so this cityof Salisbury and all the county of Wilts, of which it is thecapital, are full of a great variety of manufactures, and thosesome of the most considerable in England—namely, theclothing trade and the trade of flannels, druggets, and severalother sorts of manufactures, of which in their order.

The city of Salisbury has two remarkable manufactures carriedon in it, and which employ the poor of great part of the countryround—namely, fine flannels, and long-cloths for the Turkeytrade, called Salisbury whites.  The people of Salisbury aregay and rich, and have a flourishing trade; and there is a greatdeal of good manners and good company among them—I mean,among the citizens, besides what is found among the gentlemen;for there are many good families in Salisbury besides thecitizens.

This society has a great addition from the Close—that isto say, the circle of ground walled in adjacent to the cathedral;in which the families of the prebendaries and commons, and othersof the clergy belonging to the cathedral, have their houses, asis usual in all cities, where there are cathedral churches. These are so considerable here, and the place so large, that itis (as it is called in general) like another city.

The cathedral is famous for the height of its spire, which iswithout exception the highest and the handsomest in England,being from the ground 410 feet, and yet the walls so exceedingthin that at the upper part of the spire, upon a view made by thelate Sir Christopher Wren, the wall was found to be less thanfive inches thick; upon which a consultation was had whether thespire, or at least the upper part of it, should be taken down, itbeing supposed to have received some damage by the great storm inthe year 1703; but it was resolved in the negative, and SirChristopher ordered it to be so strengthened with bands of ironplates as has effectually secured it; and I have heard some ofthe best architects say it is stronger now than when it was firstbuilt.

They tell us here long stories of the great art used in layingthe first foundation of this church, the ground being marshy andwet, occasioned by the channels of the rivers; that it was laidupon piles, according to some, and upon woolpacks, according toothers.  But this is not supposed by those who know that thewhole country is one rock of chalk, even from the tops of thehighest hills to the bottom of the deepest rivers.

They tell us this church was forty years a-building, and costan immense sum of money; but it must be acknowledged that theinside of the work is not answerable in the decoration of thingsto the workmanship without.  The painting in the choir ismean, and more like the ordinary method of common drawing-room ortavern painting than that of a church; the carving is good, butvery little of it; and it is rather a fine church than finely setoff.

The ordinary boast of this building (that there were as manygates as months, as many windows as days, as many marble pillarsas hours in the year) is now no recommendation at all. However, the mention of it must be preserved:—

“As many days as in one year there be,
So many windows in one church we see;
As many marble pillars there appear
As there are hours throughout the fleeting year;
As many gates as moons one year do view:
Strange tale to tell, yet not more strange than true.”

There are, however, some very fine monuments in this church;particularly one belonging to the noble family of Seymours, sinceDukes of Somerset (and ancestors of the present flourishingfamily), which on a most melancholy occasion has been now latelyopened again to receive the body of the late Duchess of Somerset,the happy consort for almost forty years of his Grace the presentDuke, and only daughter and heiress of the ancient and noblefamily of Percy, Earls of Northumberland, whose great estate shebrought into the family of Somerset, who now enjoy it.

With her was buried at the same time her Grace’sdaughter the Marchioness of Caermarthen (being married to theMarquis of Caermarthen, son and heir-apparent to the Lord ofLeeds), who died for grief at the loss of the duchess her mother,and was buried with her; also her second son, the Duke PercySomerset, who died a few months before, and had been buried inthe Abbey church of Westminster, but was ordered to be removedand laid here with the ancestors of his house.  And I hearhis Grace designs to have a yet more magnificent monument erectedin this cathedral for them, just by the other which is therealready.

How the Dukes of Somerset came to quit this church for theirburying-place, and be laid in Westminster Abbey, that I know not;but it is certain that the present Duke has chosen to have hisfamily laid here with their ancestors, and to that end has causedthe corpse of his son, the Lord Percy, as above, and one of hisdaughters, who had been buried in the Abbey, to be removed andbrought down to this vault, which lies in that they call theVirgin Mary’s Chapel, behind the altar.  There is, asabove, a noble monument for a late Duke and Duchess of Somersetin the place already, with their portraits at full-length, theirheads lying upon cushions, the whole perfectly well wrought infine polished Italian marble, and their sons kneeling bythem.  Those I suppose to be the father of the great Duke ofSomerset, uncle to King Edward IV.; but after this the family layin Westminster Abbey, where there is also a fine monument forthat very duke who was beheaded by Edward VI., and who was thegreat patron of the Reformation.

Among other monuments of noble men in this cathedral they showyou one that is very extraordinary, and to which there hangs atale.  There was in the reign of Philip and Mary a veryunhappy murder committed by the then Lord Sturton, or Stourton, afamily since extinct, but well known till within a few years inthat country.

This Lord Stourton being guilty of the said murder, which alsowas aggravated with very bad circumstances, could not obtain theusual grace of the Crown (viz., to be beheaded), but Queen Marypositively ordered that, like a common malefactor, he should dieat the gallows.  After he was hanged, his friends desiringto have him buried at Salisbury, the bishop would not consentthat he should be buried in the cathedral unless, as a farthermark of infamy, his friends would submit to thiscondition—viz., that the silken halter in which he washanged should be hanged up over his grave in the church as amonument of his crime; which was accordingly done, and there itis to be seen to this day.

The putting this halter up here was not so wonderful to me asit was that the posterity of that lord, who remained in good ranksome time after, should never prevail to have that mark of infamytaken off from the memory of their ancestor.

There are several other monuments in this cathedral, asparticularly of two noblemen of ancient families inScotland—one of the name of Hay, and one of the name ofGordon; but they give us nothing of their history, so that wemust be content to say there they lie, and that is all.

The cloister, and the chapter-house adjoining to the church,are the finest here of any I have seen in England; the latter isoctagon, or eight-square, and is 150 feet in its circumference;the roof bearing all upon one small marble pillar in the centre,which you may shake with your hand; and it is hardly to beimagined it can be any great support to the roof, which makes itthe more curious (it is not indeed to be matched, I believe, inEurope).

From hence directing my course to the seaside in pursuit of myfirst design—viz., of viewing the whole coast ofEngland—I left the great road and went down the east sideof the river towards New Forest and Lymington; and here I saw theancient house and seat of Clarendon, the mansion of the ancientfamily of Hide, ancestors of the great Earl of Clarendon, andfrom whence his lordship was honoured with that title, or thehouse erected into an honour in favour of his family.

But this being a large county, and full of memorable branchesof antiquity and modern curiosity, I cannot quit my observationsso soon.  But being happily fixed, by the favour of aparticular friend, at so beautiful a spot of ground as this ofClarendon Park, I made several little excursions from hence toview the northern parts of this county—a county so fruitfulof wonders that, though I do not make antiquity my chief search,yet I must not pass it over entirely, where so much of it, and sowell worth observation, is to be found, which would look as if Ieither understood not the value of the study, or expected myreaders should be satisfied with a total omission of it.

I have mentioned that this county is generally a vastcontinued body of high chalky hills, whose tops spread themselvesinto fruitful and pleasant downs and plains, upon which greatflocks of sheep are fed, &c.  But the reader is desiredto observe these hills and plains are most beautifullyintersected and cut through by the course of divers pleasant andprofitable rivers; in the course and near the banks of whichthere always is a chain of fruitful meadows and rich pastures,and those interspersed with innumerable pleasant towns, villages,and houses, and among them many of considerable magnitude. So that, while you view the downs, and think the country wild anduninhabited, yet when you come to descend into these vales youare surprised with the most pleasant and fertile country inEngland.

There are no less than four of these rivers, which meet alltogether at or near the city of Salisbury; especially the watersof three of them run through the streets of the city—theNadder and the Willy and the Avon—and the course of thesethree lead us through the whole mountainous part of thecounty.  The two first join their waters at Wilton, theshiretown, though a place of no great notice now; and these arethe waters which run through the canal and the gardens of WiltonHouse, the seat of that ornament of nobility and learning, theEarl of Pembroke.

One cannot be said to have seen anything that a man ofcuriosity would think worth seeing in this county, and not havebeen at Wilton House; but not the beautiful building, not theancient trophy of a great family, not the noble situation, notall the pleasures of the gardens, parks, fountains, hare-warren,or of whatever is rare either in art or nature, are equal to thatyet more glorious sight of a noble princely palace constantlyfilled with its noble and proper inhabitants.  The lord andproprietor, who is indeed a true patriarchal monarch, reigns herewith an authority agreeable to all his subjects (family); and hisreign is made agreeable, by his first practising the mostexquisite government of himself, and then guiding all under himby the rules of honour and virtue, being also himself perfectlymaster of all the needful arts of family government—I mean,needful to make that government both easy and pleasant to thosewho are under it, and who therefore willingly, and by choice,conform to it.

Here an exalted genius is the instructor, a glorious examplethe guide, and a gentle well-directed hand the governor andlaw-giver to the whole; and the family, like a well-governedcity, appears happy, flourishing, and regular, groaning under nogrievance, pleased with what they enjoy, and enjoying everythingwhich they ought to be pleased with.

Nor is the blessing of this noble resident extended to thefamily only, but even to all the country round, who in theirdegree feel the effects of the general beneficence, and where theneighbourhood (however poor) receive all the good they canexpect, and are sure to have no injury or oppression.

The canal before the house lies parallel with the road, andreceives into it the whole river Willy, or at least is able to doso; it may, indeed, be said that the river is made into acanal.  When we come into the courtyards before the housethere are several pieces of antiquity to entertain the curious,as particularly a noble column of porphyry, with a marble statueof Venus on the top of it.  In Italy, and especially at Romeand Naples, we see a great variety of fine columns, and some ofthem of excellent workmanship and antiquity; and at some of thecourts of the princes of Italy the like is seen, as especially atthe court of Florence; but in England I do not remember to haveseen anything like this, which, as they told me, istwo-and-thirty feet high, and of excellent workmanship, and thatit came last from Candia, but formerly from Alexandria. What may belong to the history of it any further, I suppose isnot known—at least, they could tell me no more of it whoshowed it me.

On the left of the court was formerly a large grotto andcurious water-works; and in a house, or shed, or part of thebuilding, which opened with two folding-doors, like acoach-house, a large equestrian statue of one of the ancestors ofthe family in complete armour, as also another of a Roman Emperorin brass.  But the last time I had the curiosity to see thishouse, I missed that part; so that I supposed they wereremoved.

As the present Earl of Pembroke, the lord of this fine palace,is a nobleman of great personal merit many other ways, so he is aman of learning and reading beyond most men of hislordship’s high rank in this nation, if not in the world;and as his reading has made him a master of antiquity, and judgeof such pieces of antiquity as he has had opportunity to meetwith in his own travels and otherwise in the world, so it hasgiven him a love of the study, and made him a collector ofvaluable things, as well in painting as in sculpture, and otherexcellences of art, as also of nature; insomuch that Wilton Houseis now a mere museum or a chamber of rarities, and we meet withseveral things there which are to be found nowhere else in theworld.

As his lordship is a great collector of fine paintings, so Iknow no nobleman’s house in England so prepared, as ifbuilt on purpose, to receive them; the largest and the finestpieces that can be imagined extant in the world might have founda place here capable to receive them.  I say, they“might have found,” as if they could not now, whichis in part true; for at present the whole house is so completelyfilled that I see no room for any new piece to crowd in withoutdisplacing some other fine piece that hung there before.  Asfor the value of the piece that might so offer to succeed thedisplaced, that the great judge of the whole collection, the earlhimself, must determine; and as his judgment is perfectly good,the best picture would be sure to possess the place.  In aword, here is without doubt the best, if not the greatest,collection of rarities and paintings that are to be seen togetherin any one nobleman’s or gentleman’s house inEngland.  The piece of our Saviour washing Hisdisciples’ feet, which they show you in one of the firstrooms you go into, must be spoken of by everybody that has anyknowledge of painting, and is an admirable piece indeed.

You ascend the great staircase at the upper end of the hall,which is very large; at the foot of the staircase you have aBacchus as large as life, done in fine Peloponnesian marble,carrying a young Bacchus on his arm, the young one eating grapes,and letting you see by his countenance that he is pleased withthe taste of them.  Nothing can be done finer, or morelively represent the thing intended—namely, the gust of theappetite, which if it be not a passion, it is an affection whichis as much seen in the countenance, perhaps more than anyother.  One ought to stop every two steps of this staircase,as we go up, to contemplate the vast variety of pictures thatcover the walls, and of some of the best masters in Europe; andyet this is but an introduction to what is beyond them.

When you are entered the apartments, such variety seizes youevery way that you scarce know to which hand to turnyourself.  First on one side you see several rooms filledwith paintings as before, all so curious, and the variety such,that it is with reluctance that you can turn from them; whilelooking another way you are called off by a vast collection ofbusts and pieces of the greatest antiquity of the kind, bothGreek and Romans; among these there is one of the Roman emperorMarcus Aurelius in basso-relievo.  I never saw anything likewhat appears here, except in the chamber of rarities at Munich inBavaria.

Passing these, you come into several large rooms, as ifcontrived for the reception of the beautiful guests that takethem up; one of these is near seventy feet long, and the ceilingtwenty-six feet high, with another adjoining of the same heightand breadth, but not so long.  Those together might becalled the Great Gallery of Wilton, and might vie for paintingswith the Gallery of Luxembourg, in the Faubourg of Paris.

These two rooms are filled with the family pieces of the houseof Herbert, most of them by Lilly or Vandyke; and one inparticular outdoes all that I ever met with, either at home orabroad; it is done, as was the mode of painting at that time,after the manner of a family piece of King Charles I., with hisqueen and children, which before the burning of Whitehall Iremember to hang at the east end of the Long Gallery in thepalace.

This piece fills the farther end of the great room which Ijust now mentioned; it contains the Earl of Montgomery, ancestorof the house of Herbert (not then Earls of Pembroke) and hislady, sitting, and as big as life; there are about them their ownfive sons and one daughter, and their daughter-in-law, who wasdaughter of the Duke of Buckingham, married to the elder LordHerbert, their eldest son.  It is enough to say of thispiece, it is worth the labour of any lover of art to go fivehundred miles to see it; and I am informed several gentlemen ofquality have come from France almost on purpose.  It wouldbe endless to describe the whole set of the family pictures whichtake up this room, unless we would enter into the roof-tree ofthe family, and set down a genealogical line of the wholehouse.

After we have seen this fine range of beauties—for such,indeed, they are—far from being at an end of your surprise,you have three or four rooms still upon the same floor, filledwith wonders as before.  Nothing can be finer than thepictures themselves, nothing more surprising than the number ofthem.  At length you descend the back stairs, which are inthemselves large, though not like the other.  However, not ahand’s-breadth is left to crowd a picture in of thesmallest size; and even the upper rooms, which might be calledgarrets, are not naked, but have some very good pieces inthem.

Upon the whole, the genius of the noble collector may be seenin this glorious collection, than which, take them together,there is not a finer in any private hand in Europe, and in nohand at all in Britain, private or public.

The gardens are on the south of the house, and extendthemselves beyond the river, a branch of which runs through onepart of them, and still south of the gardens in the great park,which, extending beyond the vale, mounts the hill opening at thelast to the great down, which is properly called, by way ofdistinction, Salisbury Plain, and leads from the city ofSalisbury to Shaftesbury.  Here also his lordship has ahare-warren, as it is called, though improperly.  It has,indeed, been a sanctuary for the hares for many years; but thegentlemen complain that it mars their game, for that as soon asthey put up a hare for their sport, if it be anywhere within twoor three miles, away she runs for the warren, and there is an endof their pursuit; on the other hand, it makes all the countrymenturn poachers, and destroy the hares by what means theycan.  But this is a smaller matter, and of no great importone way or other.

From this pleasant and agreeable day’s work I returnedto Clarendon, and the next day took another short tour to thehills to see that celebrated piece of antiquity, the wonderfulStonehenge, being six miles from Salisbury, north, and upon theside of the River Avon, near the town of Amesbury.  It isneedless that I should enter here into any part of the disputeabout which our learned antiquaries have so puzzled themselvesthat several books (and one of them in folio) have been publishedabout it; some alleging it to be a heathen or pagan temple andaltar, or place of sacrifice, as Mr. Jones; others a monument ortrophy of victory; others a monument for the dead, as Mr. Aubrey,and the like.  Again, some will have it be British, someDanish, some Saxon, some Roman, and some, before them all,Phoenician.

I shall suppose it, as the majority of all writers do, to be amonument for the dead, and the rather because men’s boneshave been frequently dug up in the ground near them.  Thecommon opinion that no man could ever count them, that a bakercarried a basket of bread and laid a loaf upon every stone, andyet never could make out the same number twice, this I take as amere country fiction, and a ridiculous one too.  The reasonwhy they cannot easily be told is that many of them lie half orpart buried in the ground; and a piece here and a piece thereonly appearing above the grass, it cannot be known easily whichbelong to one stone and which to another, or which are separatestones, and which are joined underground to one another;otherwise, as to those which appear, they are easy to be told,and I have seen them told four times after one another, beginningevery time at a different place, and every time they amounted toseventy-two in all; but then this was counting every piece of astone of bulk which appeared above the surface of the earth, andwas not evidently part of and adjoining to another, to be adistinct and separate body or stone by itself.

The form of this monument is not only described but delineatedin most authors, and, indeed, it is hard to know the first but bythe last.  The figure was at first circular, and there wereat least four rows or circles within one another.  The mainstones were placed upright, and they were joined on the top bycross-stones, laid from one to another, and fastened with vastmortises and tenons.  Length of time has so decayed themthat not only most of the cross-stones which lay on the top arefallen down, but many of the upright also, notwithstanding theweight of them is so prodigious great.  How they camethither, or from whence (no stones of that kind being now to befound in that part of England near it) is still the mystery, forthey are of such immense bulk that no engines or carriages whichwe have in use in this age could stir them.

Doubtless they had some method in former days in foreigncountries, as well as here, to move heavier weights than we findpracticable now.  How else did Solomon’s workmen buildthe battlement or additional wall to support the precipice ofMount Moriah, on which the Temple was built, which was all builtof stones of Parian marble, each stone being forty cubits longand fourteen cubits broad, and eight cubits high or thick, which,reckoning each cubit at two feet and a half of our measure (asthe learned agree to do), was one hundred feet long, thirty-fivefeet broad, and twenty feet thick?

These stones at Stonehenge, as Mr. Camden describes them, andin which others agree, were very large, though not solarge—the upright stones twenty-four feet high, seven feetbroad, sixteen feet round, and weigh twelve tons each; and thecross-stones on the top, which he calls coronets, were six orseven tons.  But this does not seem equal; for if thecross-stones weighed six or seven tons, the others, as theyappear now, were at least five or six times as big, and mustweigh in proportion; and therefore I must think their judgmentmuch nearer the case who judge the upright stones at sixteen tonsor thereabouts (supposing them to stand a great way into theearth, as it is not doubted but they do), and the coronets orcross-stones at about two tons, which is very large too, and asmuch as their bulk can be thought to allow.

Upon the whole, we must take them as our ancestors havedone—namely, for an erection or building so ancient that nohistory has handed down to us the original.  As we find it,then, uncertain, we must leave it so.  It is indeed areverend piece of antiquity, and it is a great loss that the truehistory of it is not known.  But since it is not, I thinkthe making so many conjectures at the reality, when they knowlots can but guess at it, and, above all, the insisting so longand warmly on their private opinions, is but amusing themselvesand us with a doubt, which perhaps lies the deeper for theirsearch into it.

The downs and plains in this part of England being so open,and the surface so little subject to alteration, there are moreremains of antiquity to be seen upon them than in otherplaces.  For example, I think they tell us there arethree-and-fifty ancient encampments or fortifications to be seenin this one county—some whereof are exceeding plain to beseen; some of one form, some of another; some of one nation, someof another—British, Danish, Saxon, Roman—as at EbbDown, Burywood, Oldburgh Hill, Cummerford, Roundway Down, St.Ann’s Hill, Bratton Castle, Clay Hill, Stournton Park,Whitecole Hill, Battlebury, Scrathbury, Tanesbury, Frippsbury,Southbury Hill, Amesbury, Great Bodwin, Easterley, Merdon,Aubery, Martenscil Hill, Barbury Castle, and many more.

Also the barrows, as we all agree to call them, are very manyin number in this county, and very obvious, having suffered verylittle decay.  These are large hillocks of earth cast up, asthe ancients agree, by the soldiers over the bodies of their deadcomrades slain in battle; several hundreds of these are to beseen, especially in the north part of this county, aboutMarlborough and the downs, from thence to St. Ann’s Hill,and even every way the downs are full of them.

I have done with matters of antiquity for this county, unlessyou will admit me to mention the famous Parliament in the reignof Henry II. held at Clarendon, where I am now writing, andanother intended to be held there in Richard II.’s time,but prevented by the barons, being then up in arms against theking.

Near this place, at Farlo, was the birthplace of the late SirStephen Fox, and where the town, sharing in his good fortune,shows several marks of his bounty, as particularly the building anew church from the foundation, and getting an Act of Parliamentpassed for making it parochial, it being but a chapel-of-easebefore to an adjoining parish.  Also Sir Stephen built andendowed an almshouse here for six poor women, with a master and afree school.  The master is to be a clergyman, and toofficiate in the church—that is to say, is to have theliving, which, including the school, is very sufficient.

I am now to pursue my first design, and shall take the westpart of Wiltshire in my return, where are several things still tobe taken notice of, and some very well worth our stay.  Inthe meantime I went on to Langborough, a fine seat of my LordColerain, which is very well kept, though the family, it seems,is not much in this country, having another estate and dwellingat Tottenham High Cross, near London.

From hence in my way to the seaside I came to New Forest, ofwhich I have said something already with relation to the greatextent of ground which lies waste, and in which there is so greata quantity of large timber, as I have spoken of already.

This waste and wild part of the country was, as some record,laid open and waste for a forest and for game by that violenttyrant William the Conqueror, and for which purpose he unpeopledthe country, pulled down the houses, and, which was worse, thechurches of several parishes or towns, and of abundance ofvillages, turning the poor people out of their habitations andpossessions, and laying all open for his deer.  The samehistories likewise record that two of his own blood andposterity, and particularly his immediate successor WilliamRufus, lost their lives in this forest—one, viz., the saidWilliam Rufus, being shot with an arrow directed at a deer whichthe king and his company were hunting, and the arrow, glancing ona tree, changed his course, and struck the king full on thebreast and killed him.  This they relate as a just judgmentof God on the cruel devastation made here by theConqueror.   Be it so or not, as Heaven pleases; butthat the king was so killed is certain, and they show the tree onwhich the arrow glanced to this day.  In King CharlesII.’s time it was ordered to be surrounded with a pale; butas great part of the paling is down with age, whether the tree bereally so old or not is to me a great question, the action beingnear seven hundred years ago.

I cannot omit to mention here a proposal made a few years agoto the late Lord Treasurer Godolphin for re-peopling this forest,which for some reasons I can be more particular in than any mannow left alive, because I had the honour to draw up the schemeand argue it before that noble lord and some others who wereprincipally concerned at that time in bringing over—or,rather, providing for when they were come over—the poorinhabitants of the Palatinate, a thing in itself commendable,but, as it was managed, made scandalous to England and miserableto those poor people.

Some persons being ordered by that noble lord above mentionedto consider of measures how the said poor people should beprovided for, and whether they could be provided for or nowithout injury to the public, the answer was grounded upon thismaxim—that the number of inhabitants is the wealth andstrength of a kingdom, provided those inhabitants were such as byhonest industry applied themselves to live by their labour, towhatsoever trades or employments they were brought up.  Inthe next place, it was inquired what employments those poorpeople were brought up to.  It was answered there werehusbandmen and artificers of all sorts, upon which the proposalwas as follows.  New Forest, in Hampshire, was singled outto be the place:—

Here it was proposed to draw a great square line containingfour thousand acres of land, marking out two large highways orroads through the centre, crossing both ways, so that thereshould be a thousand acres in each division, exclusive of theland contained in the said cross-roads.

Then it was proposed to send out twenty men and theirfamilies, who should be recommended as honest industrious men,expert in, or at least capable of being instructed in husbandry,curing and cultivating of land, breeding and feeding cattle, andthe like.  To each of these should be parcelled out, inequal distributions, two hundred acres of this land, so that thewhole four thousand acres should be fully distributed to the saidtwenty families, for which they should have no rent to pay, andbe liable to no taxes but such as provided for their own sick orpoor, repairing their own roads, and the like.  Thisexemption from rent and taxes to continue for twenty years, andthen to pay each £50 a year to the queen—that is tosay, to the Crown.

To each of these families, whom I would now call farmers, itwas proposed to advance £200 in ready money as a stock toset them to work; to furnish them with cattle, horses, cows,hogs, &c.; and to hire and pay labourers to inclose, clear,and cure the land, which it would be supposed the first yearwould not be so much to their advantage as afterwards, allowingthem timber out of the forest to build themselves houses andbarns, sheds and offices, as they should have occasion; also forcarts, waggons, ploughs, harrows, and the like necessary things:care to be taken that the men and their families went to workforthwith according to the design.

Thus twenty families would be immediately supplied andprovided for, for there would be no doubt but these families,with so much land given them gratis, and so much money to workwith, would live very well; but what would this do for thesupport of the rest, who were supposed to be, to every twentyfarmers, forty or fifty families of other people (some of onetrade, some of another), with women and children?  To thisit was answered that these twenty farmers would, by theconsequence of their own settlements, provide for and employ sucha proportion of others of their own people that, by thusproviding for twenty families in a place, the whole number ofPalatinates would have been provided for, had they been twentythousand more in number than they were, and that without beingany burden upon or injury to the people of England; on thecontrary, they would have been an advantage and an addition ofwealth and strength to the nation, and to the country inparticular where they should be thus seated.  Forexample:—

As soon as the land was marked out, the farmers put inpossession of it, and the money given them, they should beobliged to go to work, in order to their settlement. Suppose it, then, to be in the spring of the year, when such workwas most proper.  First, all hands would be required tofence and part off the land, and clear it of the timber orbushes, or whatever else was upon it which required to beremoved.  The first thing, therefore, which the farmer woulddo would be to single out from the rest of their number every onethree servants—that is to say, two men and a maid; lesscould not answer the preparations they would be obliged to make,and yet work hard themselves also.  By the help of thesethey would, with good management, soon get so much of their landcured, fenced-off, ploughed, and sowed as should yield them asufficiency of corn and kitchen stuff the very first year, bothfor horse-meat, hog-meat, food for the family, and some to carryto market, too, by which to bring in money to go farther on, asabove.

At the first entrance they were to have the tents allowed themto live in, which they then had from the Tower; but as soon asleisure and conveniences admitted, every farmer was obliged tobegin to build him a farm-house, which he would do gradually,some and some, as he could spare time from his other works, andmoney from his little stock.

In order to furnish himself with carts, waggons, ploughs,harrows, wheel-barrows, hurdles, and all such necessary utensilsof husbandry, there would be an absolute necessity ofwheelwrights or cartwrights, one at least to each division.

Thus, by the way, there would be employed three servants toeach farmer, that makes sixty persons.

Four families of wheelwrights, one to eachdivision—which, suppose five in a family, makes twentypersons.  Suppose four head-carpenters, with each three men;and as at first all would be building together, they would toevery house building have at least one labourer.  Fourfamilies of carpenters, five to each family, and three servants,is thirty-two persons; one labourer to each house building istwenty persons more.

Thus here would be necessarily brought together in the veryfirst of the work one hundred and thirty-two persons, besides thehead-farmers, who at five also to each family are one hundredmore; in all, two hundred and thirty-two.

For the necessary supply of these with provisions, clothes,household stuff, &c. (for all should be done amongthemselves), first, they must have at least four butchers withtheir families (twenty persons), four shoemakers with theirfamilies and each shoemaker two journeymen (for every trade wouldincrease the number of customers to every trade).  This istwenty-eight persons more.

They would then require a hatmaker, a glover, at least tworopemakers, four tailors, three weavers of woollen and threeweavers of linen, two basket-makers, two common brewers, ten ortwelve shop-keepers to furnish chandlery and grocery wares, andas many for drapery and mercery, over and above what they couldwork.  This makes two-and-forty families more, each at fivein a family, which, is two hundred and ten persons; all thelabouring part of these must have at least two servants (thebrewers more), which I cast up at forty more.

Add to these two ministers, one clerk, one sexton orgrave-digger, with their families, two physicians, threeapothecaries, two surgeons (less there could not be, only thatfor the beginning it might be said the physicians should besurgeons, and I take them so); this is forty-five persons,besides servants; so that, in short—to omit many tradesmenmore who would be wanted among them—there would necessarilyand voluntarily follow to these twenty families of farmers atleast six hundred more of their own people.

It is no difficult thing to show that the ready money of£4,000 which the Government was to advance to those twentyfarmers would employ and pay, and consequently subsist, all thesenumerous dependants in the works which must severally be done forthem for the first year, after which the farmers would begin toreceive their own money back again; for all these tradesmen mustcome to their own market to buy corn, flesh, milk, butter,cheese, bacon, &c., which after the first year the farmers,having no rent to pay, would have to spare sufficiently, and sotake back their own money with advantage.  I need not go onto mention how, by consequence provisions increasing and moneycirculating, this town should increase in a very little time.

It was proposed also that for the encouragement of all thehandicraftsmen and labouring poor who, either as servants or aslabourers for day-work, assisted the farmers or other tradesmen,they should have every man three acres of ground given them, withleave to build cottages upon the same, the allotments to be uponthe waste at the end of the cross-roads where they entered thetown.

In the centre of the square was laid out a circle of twelveacres of ground, to be cast into streets for inhabitants to buildon as their ability would permit—all that would build tohave ground gratis for twenty years, timber out of the forest,and convenient yards, gardens, and orchards allotted to everyhouse.

In the great streets near where they cross each other was tobe built a handsome market-house, with a town-hall for parish orcorporation business, doing justice and the like; also shambles;and in a handsome part of the ground mentioned to be laid out forstreets, as near the centre as might be, was to be ground laidout for the building a church, which every man should eithercontribute to the building of in money, or give every tenth dayof his time to assist in labouring at the building.

I have omitted many tradesmen who would be wanted here, andwould find a good livelihood among their country-folks only toget accidental work as day-men or labourers (of which such a townwould constantly employ many), as also poor women for assistancein families (such as midwives, nurses, &c.).

Adjacent to the town was to be a certain quantity ofcommon-land for the benefit of the cottages, that the poor mighthave a few sheep or cows, as their circumstances required; andthis to be appointed at the several ends of the town.

There was a calculation made of what increase there would be,both of wealth and people, in twenty years in this town; what avast consumption of provisions they would cause, more than thefour thousand acres of land given them would produce, by whichconsumption and increase so much advantage would accrue to thepublic stock, and so many subjects be added to the many thousandsof Great Britain, who in the next age would be all true-bornEnglishmen, and forget both the language and nation from whencethey came.  And it was in order to this that two ministerswere appointed, one of which should officiate in English and theother in High Dutch, and withal to have them obliged by a law toteach all their children both to speak, read, and write theEnglish language.

Upon their increase they would also want barbers and glaziers,painters also, and plumbers; a windmill or two, and the millersand their families; a fulling-mill and a cloth-worker; as also amaster clothier or two for making a manufacture among them fortheir own wear, and for employing the women and children; a dyeror two for dyeing their manufactures; and, which above all is notto be omitted, four families at least of smiths, with every onetwo servants—considering that, besides all the family workwhich continually employs a smith, all the shoeing of horses, allthe ironwork of ploughs, carts, waggons, harrows, &c., mustbe wrought by them.  There was no allowance made for innsand ale-houses, seeing it would be frequent that those who keptpublic-houses of any sort would likewise have some otheremployment to carry on.

This was the scheme for settling the Palatinates, by whichmeans twenty families of farmers, handsomely set up andsupported, would lay a foundation, as I have said, for six orseven hundred of the rest of their people; and as the land in NewForest is undoubtedly good, and capable of improvement by suchcultivation, so other wastes in England are to be found asfruitful as that; and twenty such villages might have beenerected, the poor strangers maintained, and the nation evidentlybe bettered by it.  As to the money to be advanced, which inthe case of twenty such settlements, at £1,000 each, wouldbe £80,000, two things were answered to it:—

1.  That the annual rent to be received for all thoselands after twenty years would abundantly pay the public for thefirst disburses on the scheme above, that rent being then toamount to £40,000 per annum.

2.  More money than would have done this was expended, orrather thrown away, upon them here, to keep them in suspense, andafterwards starve them; sending them a-begging all over thenation, and shipping them off to perish in other countries. Where the mistake lay is none of my business to inquire.

I reserved this account for this place, because I passed inthis journey over the very spot where the design was laidout—namely, near Lyndhurst, in the road from Rumsey toLymington, whither I now directed my course.

Lymington is a little but populous seaport standing oppositeto the Isle of Wight, in the narrow part of the strait whichships sometimes pass through in fair weather, called the Needles;and right against an ancient town of that island called Yarmouth,and which, in distinction from the great town of Yarmouth inNorfolk, is called South Yarmouth.  This town of Lymingtonis chiefly noted for making fine salt, which is indeed excellentgood; and from whence all these south parts of England aresupplied, as well by water as by land carriage; and sometimes,though not often, they send salt to London, when, contrary windshaving kept the Northern fleets back, the price at London hasbeen very high; but this is very seldom and uncertain. Lymington sends two members to Parliament, and this and her salttrade is all I can say to her; for though she is very wellsituated as to the convenience of shipping I do not find theyhave any foreign commerce, except it be what we call smugglingand roguing; which, I may say, is the reigning commerce of allthis part of the English coast, from the mouth of the Thames tothe Land’s End of Cornwall.

From hence there are but few towns on the sea-coast west,though there are several considerable rivers empty themselvesinto the sea; nor are there any harbours or seaports of any noteexcept Poole.  As for Christchurch, though it stands at themouth of the Avon (which, as I have said, comes down fromSalisbury, and brings with it all the waters of the south andeast parts of Wiltshire, and receives also the Stour and Piddle,two Dorsetshire rivers which bring with them all the waters ofthe north part of Dorsetshire), yet it is a very inconsiderablepoor place, scarce worth seeing, and less worth mentioning inthis account, only that it sends two members to Parliament, whichmany poor towns in this part of England do, as well as that.

From hence I stepped up into the country north-west, to seethe ancient town of Wimborne, or Wimborneminster; there I foundnothing remarkable but the church, which is indeed a very greatone, ancient, and yet very well built, with a very firm, strong,square tower, considerably high; but was, without doubt, muchfiner, when on the top of it stood a most exquisitespire—finer and taller, if fame lies not, than that atSalisbury, and by its situation in a plainer, flatter countryvisible, no question, much farther; but this most beautifulornament was blown down by a sudden tempest of wind, as they tellus, in the year 1622.

The church remains a venerable piece of antiquity, and has init the remains of a place once much more in request than it isnow, for here are the monuments of several noble families, and inparticular of one king, viz., King Etheldred, who was slain inbattle by the Danes.  He was a prince famed for piety andreligion, and, according to the zeal of these times, was esteemedas a martyr, because, venturing his life against the Danes, whowere heathens, he died fighting for his religion and hiscountry.  The inscription upon his grave is preserved, andhas been carefully repaired, so as to be easily read, and is asfollows:—

“In hoc loco quiescit Corpus S. Etheldredi,Regis West Saxonum, Martyris, qui Anno Dom. DCCCLXXII., xxiiiAprilis, per Manos Danorum Paganorum Occubuit.”

In English thus:—

“Here rests the Body of Holy Etheldred, Kingof the West Saxons, and Martyr, who fell by the Hands of thePagan Danes in the Year of our Lord 872, the 23rd ofApril.”

Here are also the monuments of the great Marchioness ofExeter, mother of Edward Courtney, Earl of Devonshire, and lastof the family of Courtneys who enjoyed that honour; as also ofJohn de Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and his wife, grandmother ofKing Henry VII., by her daughter Margaret, Countess ofRichmond.

This last lady I mention because she was foundress of a veryfine free school, which has since been enlarged and had a newbenefactress in Queen Elizabeth, who has enlarged the stipend andannexed it to the foundation.  The famous Cardinal Pole wasDean of this church before his exaltation.

Having said this of the church, I have said all that is worthnaming of the town; except that the inhabitants, who are many andpoor, are chiefly maintained by the manufacture of knittingstockings, which employs great part indeed of the county ofDorset, of which this is the first town eastward.

South of this town, over a sandy, wild, and barren country, wecame to Poole, a considerable seaport, and indeed the mostconsiderable in all this part of England; for here I found someships, some merchants, and some trade; especially, here were agood number of ships fitted out every year to the Newfoundlandfishing, in which the Poole men were said to have beenparticularly successful for many years past.

The town sits in the bottom of a great bay or inlet of thesea, which, entering at one narrow mouth, opens to a very greatbreadth within the entrance, and comes up to the very shore ofthis town; it runs also west up almost to the town of Wareham, alittle below which it receives the rivers Frome and Piddle, thetwo principal rivers of the county.

This place is famous for the best and biggest oysters in allthis part of England, which the people of Poole pretend to befamous for pickling; and they are barrelled up here, and sent notonly to London, but to the West Indies, and to Spain and Italy,and other parts.  It is observed more pearls are found inthe Poole oysters, and larger, than in any other oysters aboutEngland.

As the entrance into this large bay is narrow, so it is madenarrower by an island, called Branksey, which, lying the verymouth of the passage, divides it into two, and where there is anold castle, called Branksey Castle, built to defend the entrance,and this strength was very great advantage to the trade of thisport in the time of the late war with France.

Wareham is a neat town and full of people, having a share oftrade with Poole itself; it shows the ruins of a large town, and,it is apparent, has had eight churches, of which they have threeremaining.

South of Wareham, and between the bay I have mentioned and thesea, lies a large tract of land which, being surrounded by thesea except on one side, is called an island, though it is reallywhat should be called a peninsula.  This tract of land isbetter inhabited than the sea-coast of this west end ofDorsetshire generally is, and the manufacture of stockings iscarried on there also; it is called the Isle of Purbeck, and hasin the middle of it a large market-town, called Corfe, and fromthe famous castle there the whole town is now called CorfeCastle; it is a corporation, sending members to Parliament.

This part of the country is eminent for vast quarries ofstone, which is cut out flat, and used in London in greatquantities for paving courtyards, alleys, avenues to houses,kitchens, footways on the sides of the High Streets, and thelike; and is very profitable to the place, as also in the numberof shipping employed in bringing it to London.  There arealso several rocks of very good marble, only that the veins inthe stone are not black and white, as the Italian, but grey, red,and other colours.

From hence to Weymouth, which is 22 miles, we rode in view ofthe sea; the country is open, and in some respects pleasant, butnot like the northern parts of the county, which are all finecarpet-ground, soft as velvet, and the herbage sweet as gardenherbs, which makes their sheep be the best in England, if not inthe world, and their wool fine to an extreme.

I cannot omit here a small adventure which was very surprisingto me on this journey; passing this plain country, we came to anopen piece of ground where a neighbouring gentleman had at agreat expense laid out a proper piece of land for a decoy, orduck-coy, as some call it.  The works were but newly done,the planting young, the ponds very large and well made; but theproper places for shelter of the fowl not covered, the trees notbeing grown, and men were still at work improving and enlargingand planting on the adjoining heath or common.  Near thedecoy-keeper’s house were some places where young decoyducks were hatched, or otherwise kept to fit them for theirwork.  To preserve them from vermin (polecats, kites, andsuch like), they had set traps, as is usual in such cases, and agibbet by it, where abundance of such creatures as were takenwere hanged up for show.

While the decoy-man was busy showing the new works, he wasalarmed with a great cry about this house for “Help!help!” and away he ran like the wind, guessing, as wesupposed, that something was catched in the trap.

It was a good big boy, about thirteen or fourteen years old,that cried out, for coming to the place he found a great fowlcaught by the leg in the trap, which yet was so strong and sooutrageous that the boy going too near him, he flew at him andfrighted him, bit him, and beat him with his wings, for he wastoo strong for the boy; as the master ran from the decoy, soanother manservant ran from the house, and finding a strangecreature fast in the trap, not knowing what it was, laid at himwith a great stick.  The creature fought him a good while,but at length he struck him an unlucky blow which quieted him;after this we all came up to see what the matter, and found amonstrous eagle caught by the leg in the trap, and killed by thefellow’s cudgel, as above.

When the master came to know what it was, and that his man hadkilled it, he was ready to kill the fellow for his pains, for itwas a noble creature indeed, and would have been worth a greatdeal to the man to have it shown about the country, or to havesold to any gentleman curious in such things; but the eagle wasdead, and there we left it.  It is probable this eagle hadflown over the sea from France, either there or at the Isle ofWight, where the channel is not so wide; for we do not find thatany eagles are known to breed in those parts of Britain.

From hence we turned up to Dorchester, the county town, thoughnot the largest town in the county.  Dorchester is indeed apleasant agreeable town to live in, and where I thought thepeople seemed less divided into factions and parties than inother places; for though here are divisions, and the people arenot all of one mind, either as to religion or politics, yet theydid not seem to separate with so much animosity as in otherplaces.  Here I saw the Church of England clergyman, and theDissenting minister or preacher drinking tea together, andconversing with civility and good neighbourhood, like CatholicChristians and men of a Catholic and extensive charity.  Thetown is populous, though not large; the streets broad, but thebuildings old and low.  However, there is good company, anda good deal of it; and a man that coveted a retreat in this worldmight as agreeably spend his time and as well in Dorchester as inany town I know in England.

The downs round this town are exceeding pleasant, and come upon, every side, even to the very streets’ end; and here itwas that they told me that there were six hundred thousand sheepfed on the downs within six miles of the town—that is, sixmiles every way, which is twelve miles in diameter, andthirty-six miles in circumference.  This, I say, I wastold—I do not affirm it to be true; but when I viewed thecountry round, I confess I could not but incline to believeit.

It is observable of these sheep that they are exceedingfruitful, the ewes generally bringing two lambs, and they are forthat reason bought by all the farmers through the east part ofEngland, who come to Burford Fair in this country to buy them,and carry them into Kent and Surrey eastward, and intoBuckinghamshire and Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire north; even ourBanstead Downs in Surrey, so famed for good mutton, is suppliedfrom this place.  The grass or herbage of these downs isfull of the sweetest and the most aromatic plants, such asnourish the sheep to a strange degree; and the sheep’sdung, again, nourishes that herbage to a strange degree; so thatthe valleys are rendered extremely fruitful by the washing of thewater in hasty showers from off these hills.

An eminent instance of this is seen at Amesbury, in Wiltshire,the next county to this; for it is the same thing in proportionover this whole county.  I was told that at this town therewas a meadow on the bank of the River Avon, which runs thence toSalisbury, which was let for £12 a year per acre for thegrass only.  This I inquired particularly after at theplace, and was assured by the inhabitants, as one man, that thefact was true, and was showed the meadows.  The grass whichgrew on them was such as grew to the length of ten or twelvefeet, rising up to a good height and then taking root again, andwas of so rich a nature as to answer very well such anextravagant rent.

The reason they gave for this was the extraordinary richnessof the soil, made so, as above, by the falling or washing of therains from the hills adjacent, by which, though no other landthereabouts had such a kind of grass, yet all other meadows andlow grounds of the valley were extremely rich in proportion.

There are abundance of good families, and of very ancientlines in the neighbourhood of this town of Dorchester, as theNapiers, the Courtneys, Strangeways, Seymours, Banks, Tregonells,Sydenhams, and many others, some of which have very great estatesin the county, and in particular Colonel Strangeways, Napier, andCourtney.  The first of these is master of the famousswannery or nursery of swans, the like of which, I believe, isnot in Europe.  I wonder any man should pretend to travelover this country, and pass by it, too, and then write hisaccount and take no notice of it.

From Dorchester it is six miles to the seaside south, and theocean in view almost all the way.  The first town you cometo is Weymouth, or Weymouth and Melcombe, two towns lying at themouth of a little rivulet which they call the Wey, but scarceclaims the name of a river.  However, the entrance makes avery good though small harbour, and they are joined by a woodenbridge; so that nothing but the harbour parts them; yet they areseparate corporations, and choose each of them two members ofParliament, just as London and Southwark.

Weymouth is a sweet, clean, agreeable town, considering itslow situation, and close to the sea; it is well built, and has agreat many good substantial merchants in it who drive aconsiderable trade, and have a good number of ships belonging tothe town.  They carry on now, in time of peace, a trade withFrance; but, besides this, they trade also to Portugal, Spain,Newfoundland, and Virginia; and they have a large correspondencealso up in the country for the consumption of their returns;especially the wine trade and the Newfoundland trade areconsiderable here.

Without the harbour is an old castle, called Sandfoot Castle;and over against them, where there is a good road for ships toput in on occasions of bad weather, is Portland Castle, and theroad is called Portland Road.  While I was here once, therecame a merchant-ship into that road called Portland Road under avery hard storm of wind; she was homeward bound from Oporto forLondon, laden with wines; and as she came in she made signals ofdistress to the town, firing guns for help, and the like, as isusual in such cases; it was in the dark of the night that theship came in, and, by the help of her own pilot, found her wayinto the road, where she came to an anchor, but, as I say, firedguns for help.

The venturous Weymouth men went off, even before it was light,with two boats to see who she was, and what condition she was in;and found she was come to an anchor, and had struck her topmasts;but that she had been in bad weather, had lost an anchor andcable before, and had but one cable to trust to, which did holdher, but was weak; and as the storm continued to blow, theyexpected every hour to go on shore and split to pieces.

Upon this the Weymouth boats came back with such diligencethat in less than three hours they were on board them again withan anchor and cable, which they immediately bent in its place,and let go to assist the other, and thereby secured theship.  It is true that they took a good price of the masterfor the help they gave him; for they made him draw a bill on hisowners at London for £12 for the use of the anchor, cable,and boat, besides some gratuities to the men.  But theysaved the ship and cargo by it, and in three or four days theweather was calm, and he proceeded on his voyage, returning theanchor and cable again; so that, upon the whole, it was not soextravagant as at first I thought it to be.

The Isle of Portland, on which the castle I mentioned stands,lies right against this Port of Weymouth.  Hence it is thatour best and whitest freestone comes, with which the Cathedral ofSt. Paul’s, the Monument, and all the public edifices inthe City of London are chiefly built; and it is wonderful, andwell worth the observation of a traveller, to see the quarries inthe rocks from whence they are cut out, what stones, and of whatprodigious a size are cut out there.

The island is indeed little more than one continued rock offreestone, and the height of the land is such that from thisisland they see in clear weather above half over the Channel toFrance, though the Channel here is very broad.  The sea offof this island, and especially to the west of it, is counted themost dangerous part of the British Channel.  Due south,there is almost a continued disturbance in the waters, by reasonof what they call two tides meeting, which I take to be no morethan the sets of the currents from the French coast and from theEnglish shore meeting: this they call Portland Race; and severalships, not aware of these currents, have been embayed to the westof Portland, and been driven on shore on the beach (of which Ishall speak presently), and there lost.

To prevent this danger, and guide the mariner in thesedistresses, they have within these few months set up twolighthouses on the two points of that island; and they had notbeen many months set up, with the directions given to the publicfor their bearings, but we found three outward-bound East Indiaships which were in distress in the night, in a hard extreme galeof wind, were so directed by those lights that they avoided goingon shore by it, which, if the lights had not been there, wouldinevitably happened to their destruction.

This island, though seemingly miserable, and thinly inhabited,yet the inhabitants being almost all stone-cutters, we foundthere were no very poor people among them, and when theycollected money for the re-building St. Paul’s, they gotmore in this island than in the great town of Dorchester, as wewere told.

Though Portland stands a league off from the mainland ofBritain, yet it is almost joined by a prodigious riff ofbeach—that is to say, of small stones cast up by thesea—which runs from the island so near the shore of Englandthat they ferry over with a boat and a rope, the water not beingabove half a stone’s-throw over; and the said riff of beachending, as it were, at that inlet of water, turns away west, andruns parallel with the shore quite to Abbotsbury, which is a townabout seven miles beyond Weymouth.

I name this for two reasons: first, to explain again what Isaid before of ships being embayed and lost here.  This iswhen ships coming from the westward omit to keep a good offing,or are taken short by contrary winds, and cannot weather the highland of Portland, but are driven between Portland and themainland.  If they can come to an anchor, and ride it out,well and good; and if not, they run on shore on that vast beachand are lost without remedy.

On the inside of this beach, and between it and the land,there is, as I have said, an inlet of water which they ferryover, as above, to pass and re-pass to and from Portland: thisinlet opens at about two miles west, and grows very broad, andmakes a kind of lake within the land of a mile and a half broad,and near three miles in length, the breadth unequal.  At thefarthest end west of this water is a large duck-coy, and theverge of the water well grown with wood, and proper groves oftrees for cover for the fowl: in the open lake, or broad part, isa continual assembly of swans: here they live, feed, and breed,and the number of them is such that, I believe, I did not see sofew as 7,000 or 8,000.  Here they are protected, and herethey breed in abundance.  We saw several of them upon thewing, very high in the air, whence we supposed that they flewover the riff of beach, which parts the lake from the sea, tofeed on the shores as they thought fit, and so came home again attheir leisure.

From this duck-coy west, the lake narrows, and at last almostcloses, till the beach joins the shore; and so Portland may besaid, not to be an island, but part of the continent.  Andnow we came to Abbotsbury, a town anciently famous for a greatmonastery, and now eminent for nothing but its ruins.

From hence we went on to Bridport, a pretty large corporationtown on the sea-shore, though without a harbour.  Here wesaw boats all the way on the shore, fishing for mackerel, whichthey take in the easiest manner imaginable; for they fix one endof the net to a pole set deep into the sand, then, the net beingin a boat, they row right out into the water some length, thenturn and row parallel with the shore, veering out the net all thewhile, till they have let go all the net, except the line at theend, and then the boat rows on shore, when the men, hauling thenet to the shore at both ends, bring to shore with it such fishas they surrounded in the little way they rowed.  This, atthat time, proved to be an incredible number, insomuch that themen could hardly draw them on shore.  As soon as the boatshad brought their fish on shore we observed a guard or watchplaced on the shore in several places, who, we found, had theireye, not on the fishermen, but on the country people who camedown to the shore to buy their fish; and very sharp we found theywere, and some that came with small carts were obliged to go backempty without any fish.  When we came to inquire into theparticulars of this, we found that these were officers placed onthe shore by the justices and magistrates of the towns about, whowere ordered to prevent the country farmers buying the mackerelto dung their land with them, which was thought to be dangerousas to infection.  In short, such was the plenty of fish thatyear that the mackerel, the finest and largest I ever saw, weresold at the seaside a hundred for a penny.

From Bridport (a town in which we see nothing remarkable) wecame to Lyme, the town particularly made famous by the landing ofthe Duke of Monmouth and his unfortunate troops in the time ofKing James II., of which I need say nothing, the history of itbeing so recent in the memory of so many living.

This is a town of good figure, and has in it several eminentmerchants who carry on a considerable trade to France, Spain,Newfoundland, and the Straits; and though they have neither creekor bay, road or river, they have a good harbour, but it is such aone as is not in all Britain besides, if there is such a one inany part of the world.

It is a massy pile of building, consisting of high and thickwalls of stone, raised at first with all the methods that skilland art could devise, but maintained now with very littledifficulty.  The walls are raised in the main sea at a gooddistance from the shore; it consists of one main and solid wallof stone, large enough for carts and carriages to pass on thetop, and to admit houses and warehouses to be built on it, sothat it is broad as a street.  Opposite to this, but fartherinto the sea, is another wall of the same workmanship, whichcrosses the end of the first wall and comes about with a tailparallel to the first wall.

Between the point of the first or main wall is the entranceinto the port, and the second or opposite wall, breaking theviolence of the sea from the entrance, the ships go into thebasin as into a pier or harbour, and ride there as secure as in amillpond or as in a wet dock.

The townspeople have the benefit of this wonderful harbour,and it is carefully kept in repair, as indeed it behoves them todo; but they could give me nothing of the history of it, nor dothey, as I could perceive, know anything of the original of it,or who built it.  It was lately almost beaten down by astorm, but is repaired again.

This work is called the Cobb.  The Custom House officershave a lodge and warehouse upon it, and there were several shipsof very good force and rich in value in the basin of it when Iwas there.  It might be strengthened with a fort, and thewalls themselves are firm enough to carry what guns they pleaseto plant upon it; but they did not seem to think it needful, andas the shore is convenient for batteries, they have some gunsplanted in proper places, both for the defence of the Cobb andthe town also.

This town is under the government of a mayor and aldermen, andmay pass for a place of wealth, considering the bigness ofit.  Here, we found, the merchants began to trade in thepilchard-fishing, though not to so considerable a degree as theydo farther west—the pilchards seldom coming up so higheastward as Portland, and not very often so high as Lyme.

It was in sight of these hills that Queen Elizabeth’sfleet, under the command of the Lord Howard of Effingham (thenAdmiral), began first to engage in a close and resolved fightwith the invincible Spanish Armada in 1588, maintaining thefight, the Spaniards making eastward till they came the length ofPortland Race, where they gave it over—the Spaniards havingreceived considerable damage, and keeping then closertogether.  Off of the same place was a desperate engagementin the year 1672 between the English and Dutch, in which theDutch were worsted and driven over to the coast of France, andthen glad to make home to refit and repair.

While we stayed here some time viewing this town and coast, wehad opportunity to observe the pleasant way of conversation as itis managed among the gentlemen of this county and their families,which are, without reflection, some of the most polite andwell-bred people in the isle of Britain.  As theirhospitality is very great, and their bounty to the poorremarkable, so their generous friendly way of living with,visiting, and associating one with another is as hard to bedescribed as it is really to be admired; they seem to have amutual confidence in and friendship with one another, as if theywere all relations; nor did I observe the sharping, trickingtemper which is too much crept in among the gaming andhorse-racing gentry in some parts of England to be so much knownamong them any otherwise than to be abhorred; and yet theysometimes play, too, and make matches and horse-races, as theysee occasion.

The ladies here do not want the help of assemblies to assistin matchmaking, or half-pay officers to run away with theirdaughters, which the meetings called assemblies in some otherparts of England are recommended for.  Here is no Bury Fair,where the women are scandalously said to carry themselves tomarket, and where every night they meet at the play or at theassembly for intrigue; and yet I observed that the women do notseem to stick on hand so much in this country as in thosecountries where those assemblies are so lately set up—thereason of which, I cannot help saying, if my opinion may bear anyweight, is that the Dorsetshire ladies are equal in beauty, andmay be superior in reputation.  In a word, their reputationseems here to be better kept, guarded by better conduct, andmanaged with more prudence; and yet the Dorsetshire ladies, Iassure you, are not nuns; they do not go veiled about streets, orhide themselves when visited; but a general freedom ofconversation—agreeable, mannerly, kind, and good—runsthrough the whole body of the gentry of both sexes, mixed withthe best of behaviour, and yet governed by prudence and modestysuch as I nowhere see better in all my observation through thewhole isle of Britain.  In this little interval also Ivisited some of the biggest towns in the north-west part of thiscounty, as Blandford—a town on the River Stour in the roadbetween Salisbury and Dorchester—a handsome well-builttown, but chiefly famous for making the finest bone-lace inEngland, and where they showed me some so exquisitely fine as Ithink I never saw better in Flanders, France, or Italy, and whichthey said they rated at above £30 sterling a yard; but Isuppose there was not much of this to be had.  But it ismost certain that they make exceeding rich lace in that county,such as no part of England can equal.

From thence I went west to Stourbridge, vulgarly calledStrabridge.  The town and the country around is employed inthe manufacture of stockings, and which was once famous formaking the finest, best, and highest-prize knit stocking inEngland; but that trade now is much decayed by the increase ofthe knitting-stocking engine or frame, which has destroyed thehand-knitting trade for fine stockings through the whole kingdom,of which I shall speak more in its place.

From hence I came to Sherborne, a large and populous town,with one collegiate or conventual church, and may properly claimto have more inhabitants in it than any town in Dorsetshire,though it is neither the county-town, nor does it send members toParliament.  The church is still a reverend pile, and showsthe face of great antiquity.  Here begins the Wiltshiremedley clothing (though this town be in Dorsetshire), of which Ishall speak at large in its place, and therefore I omit anydiscourse of it here.

Shaftesbury is also on the edge of this county, adjoining toWiltshire and Dorsetshire, being fourteen miles from Salisbury,over that fine down or carpet ground which they call particularlyor properly Salisbury Plain.  It has neither house nor townin view all the way; and the road, which often lies very broadand branches off insensibly, might easily cause a traveller tolose his way.  But there is a certain never-failingassistance upon all these downs for telling a stranger his way,and that is the number of shepherds feeding or keeping their vastflocks of sheep which are everywhere in the way, and who with avery little pains a traveller may always speak with. Nothing can be like it.  The Arcadians’ plains, ofwhich we read so much pastoral trumpery in the poets, could benothing to them.

This Shaftesbury is now a sorry town upon the top of a highhill, which closes the plain or downs, and whence Nature presentsyou a new scene or prospect—viz., of Somerset andWiltshire—where it is all enclosed, and grown with woods,forests, and planted hedge-rows; the country rich, fertile, andpopulous; the towns and houses standing thick and being large andfull of inhabitants, and those inhabitants fully employed in therichest and most valuable manufacture in the world—viz.,the English clothing, as well the medley or mixed clothing aswhites, as well for the home trade as the foreign trade, of whichI shall take leave to be very particular in my return through thewest and north part of Wiltshire in the latter part of thiswork.

In my return to my western progress, I passed some little partof Somersetshire, as through Evil or Yeovil, upon the River Ivil,in going to which we go down a long steep hill, which they callBabylon Hill, but from what original I could find none of thecountry people to inform me.

This Yeovil is a market-town of good resort; and some clothingis carried on in and near it, but not much.  Its mainmanufacture at this time is making of gloves.

It cannot pass my observation here that when we are come thislength from London the dialect of the English tongue, or thecountry way of expressing themselves, is not easilyunderstood—it is so strangely altered.  It is truethat it is so in many parts of England besides, but in none in sogross a degree as in this part.  This way of boorish countryspeech, as in Ireland it is called the “brogue” uponthe tongue, so here it is called “jouring;” and it iscertain that though the tongue be all mere natural English, yetthose that are but a little acquainted with them cannotunderstand one-half of what they say.  It is not possible toexplain this fully by writing, because the difference is not somuch in the orthography of words as in the tone anddiction—their abridging the speech, “cham” for“I am,” “chil” for “I will,”“don” for “put on,” and“doff” for “put off,” and the like. And I cannot omit a short story here on this subject. Coming to a relation’s house, who was a school-master atMartock, in Somersetshire, I went into his school to beg the boysa play-day, as is usual in such cases (I should have said, to begthe master a play-day.  But that by the way).  Cominginto the school, I observed one of the lowest scholars wasreading his lesson to the usher, which lesson, it seems, was achapter in the Bible.  So I sat down by the master till theboy had read out his chapter.  I observed the boy read alittle oddly in the tone of the country, which made me the moreattentive, because on inquiry I found that the words were thesame and the orthography the same as in all our Bibles.  Iobserved also the boy read it out with his eyes still on the bookand his head (like a mere boy) moving from side to side as thelines reached cross the columns of the book.  His lesson wasin the Canticles, v. 3 of chap. v.  The wordsthese:—“I have put off my coat.  How shall I putit on?  I have washed my feet.  How shall I defilethem?”

The boy read thus, with his eyes, as I say, full on thetext:—“Chav a doffed my cooat.  How shall Idon’t?  Chav a washed my veet.  How shall I moil’em?”

How the dexterous dunce could form his month to express soreadily the words (which stood right printed in the book) in hiscountry jargon, I could not but admire.  I shall add to thisanother piece as diverting, which also happened in my knowledgeat this very town of Yeovil, though some years ago.

There lived a good substantial family in the town not far fromthe “Angel Inn”—a well-known house, which wasthen, and, I suppose, is still, the chief inn of the town. This family had a dog which, among his other good qualities forwhich they kept him (for he was a rare house-dog), had this badone—that he was a most notorious thief, but withal socunning a dog, and managed himself so warily, that he preserved amighty good reputation among the neighbourhood.  As thefamily was well beloved in the town, so was the dog.  He wasknown to be a very useful servant to them, especially in thenight (when he was fierce as a lion; but in the day the gentlest,lovingest creature that could be), and, as they said, all theneighbours had a good word for this dog.

It happened that the good wife or mistress at the “AngelInn” had frequently missed several pieces of meat out ofthe pail, as they say—or powdering-tub, as we callit—and that some were very large pieces.  It is alsoto be observed the dog did not stay to eat what he took upon thespot, in which case some pieces or bones or fragments might beleft, and so it might be discovered to be a dog; but he madecleaner work, and when he fastened upon a piece of meat he wassure to carry it quite away to such retreats as he knew he couldbe safe in, and so feast upon it at leisure.

It happened at last, as with most thieves it does, that theinn-keeper was too cunning for him, and the poor dog was nabbed,taken in the fact, and could make no defence.

Having found the thief and got him in custody, the master ofthe house, a good-humoured fellow, and loth to disoblige thedog’s master by executing the criminal, as the dog lawdirects, mitigates his sentence, and handled him asfollows:—First, taking out his knife, he cut off both hisears; and then, bringing him to the threshold, he chopped off histail.  And having thus effectually dishonoured the poor curamong his neighbours, he tied a string about his neck, and apiece of paper to the string, directed to his master, and withthese witty West Country verses on it:—

   “To my honoured master,--- Esq.
“Hail master a cham a’ com hoam,
So cut as an ape, and tail have I noan,
For stealing of beef and pork out of the pail,
For thease they’v cut my ears, for th’ wother mytail;
Nea measter, and us tell thee more nor that
And’s come there again, my brains will be flat.”

I could give many more accounts of the different dialects ofthe people of this country, in some of which they are really notto be understood; but the particulars have little or no diversionin them.  They carry it such a length that we see their“jouring” speech even upon their monuments andgrave-stones; as, for example, even in some of the churchyards ofthe city of Bristol I saw this excellent poetry after some otherlines:—

“And when that thou doest hear of thick,
Think of the glass that runneth quick.”

But I proceed into Devonshire.  From Yeovil we came toCrookorn, thence to Chard, and from thence into the same road Iwas in before at Honiton.

This is a large and beautiful market-town, very populous andwell built, and is so very remarkably paved with small pebblesthat on either side the way a little channel is left shoulderedup on the sides of it, so that it holds a small stream of fineclear running water, with a little square dipping-place left atevery door; so that every family in the town has a clear, cleanrunning river (as it may be called) just at their own door, andthis so much finer, so much pleasanter, and agreeable to look onthan that at Salisbury (which they boast so much of), that, in myopinion, there is no comparison.

Here we see the first of the great serge manufacture ofDevonshire—a trade too great to be described in miniature,as it must be if I undertake it here, and which takes up thiswhole county, which is the largest and most populous in England,Yorkshire excepted (which ought to be esteemed three counties,and is, indeed, divided as such into the East, West, and NorthRiding).  But Devonshire, one entire county, is so full ofgreat towns, and those towns so full of people, and those peopleso universally employed in trade and manufactures, that not onlyit cannot be equalled in England, but perhaps not in Europe.

In my travel through Dorsetshire I ought to have observed thatthe biggest towns in that county sent no members to Parliament,and that the smallest did—that is to say that Sherborne,Blandford, Wimborneminster, Stourminster, and several other townschoose no members; whereas Weymouth, Melcombe, and Bridport wereall burgess towns.  But now we come to Devonshire we findalmost all the great towns, and some smaller, choosing membersalso.  It is true there are some large populous towns thatdo not choose, but then there are so many that do, that thecounty seems to have no injustice, for they send upsix-and-twenty members.

However, as I say above, there are several great towns whichdo not choose Parliament men, of which Bideford is one, Creditonor Kirton another, Ilfracombe a third; but, those excepted, theprincipal towns in the county do all choose members ofParliament.

Honiton is one of those, and may pass not only for a pleasantgood town, as before, but stands in the best and pleasantest partof the whole county, and I cannot but recommend it to anygentlemen that travel this road, that if they please to observethe prospect for half a mile till their coming down the hill andto the entrance into Honiton, the view of the country is the mostbeautiful landscape in the world—a mere picture—and Ido not remember the like in any one place in England.  It isobservable that the market of this town was kept originally onthe Sunday, till it was changed by the direction of KingJohn.

From Honiton the country is exceeding pleasant still, and onthe road they have a beautiful prospect almost all the way toExeter (which is twelve miles).  On the left-hand of thisroad lies that part of the county which they call the South Hams,and which is famous for the best cider in that part of England;also the town of St.-Mary-Ottery, commonly called St. MaryAutree.  They tell us the name is derived from the RiverOttery, and that from the multitude of otters found always inthat river, which however, to me, seems fabulous.  Nor doesthere appear to be any such great number of otters in that water,or in the county about, more than is usual in other counties orin other parts of the county about them.  They tell us theysend twenty thousand hogsheads of cider hence every year toLondon, and (which is still worse) that it is most of it boughtthere by the merchants to mix with their wines—which, iftrue, is not much to the reputation of the London vintners. But that by-the-bye.

From hence we came to Exeter, a city famous for two thingswhich we seldom find unite in the same town—viz., that itis full of gentry and good company, and yet full of trade andmanufactures also.  The serge market held here every week isvery well worth a stranger’s seeing, and next to the BriggMarket at Leeds, in Yorkshire, is the greatest in England. The people assured me that at this market is generally sold fromsixty to seventy to eighty, and sometimes a hundred, thousandpounds value in serges in a week.  I think it is kept onMondays.

They have the River Esk here, a very considerable river, andprincipal in the whole county; and within three miles, orthereabouts, it receives ships of any ordinary burthen, the portthere being called Topsham.  But now by the application, andat the expense, of the citizens the channel of the river is sowidened, deepened, and cleansed from the shoal, which wouldotherwise interrupt the navigation, that the ships come now quiteup to the city, and there with ease both deliver and take intheir lading.

This city drives a very great correspondence with Holland, asalso directly to Portugal, Spain, and Italy—shipping offvast quantities of their woollen manufactures especially toHolland, the Dutch giving very large commissions here for thebuying of serges perpetuans, and such goods; which are made notonly in and about Exeter, but at Crediton, Honiton, Culliton,St.-Mary-Ottery, Newton Bushel, Ashburton, and especially atTiverton, Cullompton, Bampton, and all the north-east part of thecounty—which part of the county is, as it may be said,fully employed, the people made rich, and the poor that areproperly so called well subsisted and employed by it.

Exeter is a large, rich, beautiful, populous, and was once avery strong city; but as to the last, as the castle, the walls,and all the old works are demolished, so, were they standing, theway of managing sieges and attacks of towns is such now, and soaltered from what it was in those days, that Exeter in the utmoststrength it could ever boast would not now hold out five daysopen trenches—nay, would hardly put an army to the troubleof opening trenches against it at all.  This city was famousin the late civil unnatural war for its loyalty to the king, andfor being a sanctuary to the queen, where her Majesty resided forsome time, and here she was delivered of a daughter, being thePrincess Henrietta Maria, of whom our histories give a particularaccount, so I need say no more of it here.

The cathedral church of this city is an ancient beauty, or, asit may be said, it is beautiful for its antiquity; but it hasbeen so fully and often described that it would look like a merecopying from others to mention it.  There is a good librarykept in it, in which are some manuscripts, and particularly anold missal or mass-book, the leaves of vellum, and famous for itsmost exquisite writing.

This county, and this part of it in particular, has beenfamous for the birth of several eminent men as well for learningas for arts and for war, as particularly:—

1.  Sir William Petre, who the learned Dr. Wake (nowArchbishop of Canterbury, and author of the Additions to Mr.Camden) says was Secretary of State and Privy Councillor to KingHenry VIII., Edward VI., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, andseven times sent ambassador into foreign countries.

2.  Sir Thomas Bodley, famous and of grateful memory toall learned men and lovers of letters for his collecting andestablishing the best library in Britain, which is now at Oxford,and is called, after his name, the Bodleian Library to thisday.

3.  Also Sir Francis Drake, born at Plymouth.

4.  Sir Walter Raleigh.  Of both those I need saynothing; fame publishes their merit upon every mention of theirnames.

5.  That great patron of learning, Richard Hooker, authorof the “Ecclesiastical Polity,” and of several othervaluable pieces.

6.  Of Dr. Arthur Duck, a famed civilian, and well knownby his works among the learned advocates of Doctors’Commons.

7.  Dr. John Moreman, of Southold, famous for being thefirst clergyman in England who ventured to teach his parishionersthe Lord’s Prayer, Creed, and Ten Commandments in theEnglish tongue, and reading them so publicly in the parish churchof Mayenhennet in this county, of which he was vicar.

8.  Dr. John de Brampton, a man of great learning whoflourished in the reign of Henry VI., was famous for being thefirst that read Aristotle publicly in the University ofCambridge, and for several learned books of his writing, whichare now lost.

9.  Peter Blundel, a clothier, who built the free schoolat Tiverton, and endowed it very handsomely; of which in itsplace.

10.  Sir John Glanvill, a noted lawyer, and one of theJudges of the Common Pleas.

11.  Sergeant Glanvill, his son; as great a lawyer as hisfather.

12.  Sir John Maynard, an eminent lawyer of later years;one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal under King WilliamIII.  All these three were born at Tavistock.

13.  Sir Peter King, the present Lord Chief Justice ofthe Common Pleas.  And many others.

I shall take the north part of this county in my return fromCornwall; so I must now lean to the south—that is to say,to the South Coast—for in going on indeed we gosouth-west.

About twenty-two miles from Exeter we go to Totnes, on theRiver Dart.  This is a very good town, of some trade; buthas more gentlemen in it than tradesmen of note.  They havea very fine stone bridge here over the river, which, being withinseven or eight miles of the sea, is very large; and the tideflows ten or twelve feet at the bridge.  Here we had thediversion of seeing them catch fish with the assistance of adog.  The case is this:—On the south side of theriver, and on a slip, or narrow cut or channel made on purposefor a mill, there stands a corn-mill; the mill-tail, or floor forthe water below the wheels, is wharfed up on either side withstone above high-water mark, and for above twenty or thirty feetin length below it on that part of the river towards the sea; atthe end of this wharfing is a grating of wood, the cross-bars ofwhich stand bearing inward, sharp at the end, and pointing inwardtowards one another, as the wires of a mouse-trap.

When the tide flows up, the fish can with ease go in betweenthe points of these cross-bars, but the mill being shut down theycan go no farther upwards; and when the water ebbs again, theyare left behind, not being able to pass the points of thegrating, as above, outwards; which, like a mouse-trap, keeps themin, so that they are left at the bottom with about a foot or afoot and a half of water.  We were carried hither at lowwater, where we saw about fifty or sixty small salmon, aboutseventeen to twenty inches long, which the country people callsalmon-peal; and to catch these the person who went with us, whowas our landlord at a great inn next the bridge, put in a net ona hoop at the end of a pole, the pole going cross the hoop (whichwe call in this country a shove-net).  The net being fixedat one end of the place, they put in a dog (who was taught histrade beforehand) at the other end of the place, and he drivesall the fish into the net; so that, only holding the net still inits place, the man took up two or three and thirty salmon-peal atthe first time.

Of these we took six for our dinner, for which they asked ashilling (viz., twopence a-piece); and for such fish, not at allbigger, and not so fresh, I have seen six-and-sixpence each givenat a London fish-market, whither they are sometimes brought fromChichester by land carriage.

This excessive plenty of so good fish (and other provisionsbeing likewise very cheap in proportion) makes the town of Totnesa very good place to live in; especially for such as have largefamilies and but small estates.  And many such are said tocome into those parts on purpose for saving money, and to live inproportion to their income.

From hence we went still south about seven miles (all in viewof this river) to Dartmouth, a town of note, seated at the mouthof the River Dart, and where it enters into the sea at a verynarrow but safe entrance.  The opening into DartmouthHarbour is not broad, but the channel deep enough for the biggestship in the Royal Navy.  The sides of the entrance arehigh-mounded with rocks, without which, just at the firstnarrowing of the passage, stands a good strong fort without aplatform of guns, which commands the port.

The narrow entrance is not much above half a mile, when itopens and makes a basin or harbour able to receive 500 sail ofships of any size, and where they may ride with the greatestsafety, even as in a mill-pond or wet dock.  I had thecuriosity here, with the assistance of a merchant of the town, togo out to the mouth of the haven in a boat to see the entrance,and castle or fort that commands it; and coming back with thetide of flood, I observed some small fish to skip and play uponthe surface of the water, upon which I asked my friend what fishthey were.  Immediately one of the rowers or seamen startsup in the boat, and, throwing his arms abroad as if he had beenbewitched, cries out as loud as he could bawl, “A school! aschool!”  The word was taken to the shore as hastilyas it would have been on land if he had cried“Fire!”  And by that time we reached the quaysthe town was all in a kind of an uproar.

The matter was that a great shoal—or, as they call it, a“school”—of pilchards came swimming with thetide of flood, directly out of the sea into the harbour.  Myfriend whose boat we were in told me this was a surprise which hewould have been very glad of if he could but have had a day ortwo’s warning, for he might have taken 200 tons ofthem.  And the like was the case of other merchants in town;for, in short, nobody was ready for them, except a smallfishing-boat or two—one of which went out into the middleof the harbour, and at two or three hauls took about fortythousand of them.  We sent our servant to the quay to buysome, who for a halfpenny brought us seventeen, and, if he wouldhave taken them, might have had as many more for the samemoney.  With these we went to dinner; the cook at the innbroiled them for us, which is their way of dressing them, withpepper and salt, which cost us about a farthing; so that two ofus and a servant dined—and at a tavern, too—for threefarthings, dressing and all.  And this is the reason oftelling the tale.  What drink—wine or beer—wehad I do not remember; but, whatever it was, that we paid for byitself.  But for our food we really dined for threefarthings, and very well, too.  Our friend treated us thenext day with a dish of large lobsters, and I being curious toknow the value of such things, and having freedom enough with himto inquire, I found that for 6d. or 8d. they bought as goodlobsters there as would have cost in London 3s. to 3s. 6d.each.

In observing the coming in of those pilchards, as above, wefound that out at sea, in the offing, beyond the mouth of theharbour, there was a whole army of porpoises, which, as they toldus, pursued the pilchards, and, it is probable, drove them intothe harbour, as above.  The school, it seems, drove up theriver a great way, even as high as Totnes Bridge, as we heardafterwards; so that the country people who had boats and netscatched as many as they knew what to do with, and perhaps livedupon pilchards for several days.  But as to the merchantsand trade, their coming was so sudden that it was no advantage tothem.

Round the west side of this basin or harbour, in a kind of asemicircle, lies the town of Dartmouth, a very large and populoustown, though but meanly built, and standing on the side of asteep hill; yet the quay is large, and the street before itspacious.  Here are some very flourishing merchants, whotrade very prosperously, and to the most considerable tradingports of Spain, Portugal, Italy, and the Plantations; butespecially they are great traders to Newfoundland, and fromthence to Spain and Italy, with fish; and they drive a good tradealso in their own fishery of pilchards, which is hereaboutscarried on with the greatest number of vessels of any port in thewest, except Falmouth.

A little to the southward of this town, and to the east of theport, is Tor Bay, of which I know nothing proper to myobservation, more than that it is a very good road for ships,though sometimes (especially with a southerly or south-east wind)ships have been obliged to quit the bay and put out to sea, orrun into Dartmouth for shelter.

I suppose I need not mention that they had from the hilly partof this town, and especially from the hills opposite to it, thenoble prospect, and at that time particularly delightful, of thePrince of Orange’s fleet when he came to that coast, and asthey entered into Tor Bay to land—the Prince and his armybeing in a fleet of about 600 sail of transport ships, besides 50sail of men-of-war of the line, all which, with a fair wind andfine weather, came to an anchor there at once.

This town, as most of the towns of Devonshire are, is full ofDissenters, and a very large meeting-house they have here. How they act here with respect to the great dispute about thedoctrine of the Trinity, which has caused such a breach amongthose people at Exeter and other parts of the county, I cannotgive any account of.  This town sends two members toParliament.

From hence we went to Plympton, a poor and thinly-inhabitedtown, though blessed with the like privilege of sending membersto the Parliament, of which I have little more to say but thatfrom thence the road lies to Plymouth, distance about sixmiles.

Plymouth is indeed a town of consideration, and of greatimportance to the public.  The situation of it between twovery large inlets of the sea, and in the bottom of a large bay,which is very remarkable for the advantage of navigation. The Sound or Bay is compassed on every side with hills, and theshore generally steep and rocky, though the anchorage is good,and it is pretty safe riding.  In the entrance to this baylies a large and most dangerous rock, which at high-water iscovered, but at low-tide lies bare, where many a good ship hasbeen lost, even in the view of safety, and many a ship’screw drowned in the night, before help could be had for them.

Upon this rock (which was called the Eddystone, from itssituation) the famous Mr. Winstanley undertook to build alighthouse for the direction of sailors, and with great art andexpedition finished it; which work—considering its height,the magnitude of its building, and the little hold there was bywhich it was possible to fasten it to the rock—stood toadmiration, and bore out many a bitter storm.

Mr. Winstanley often visited, and frequently strengthened, thebuilding by new works, and was so confident of its firmness andstability that he usually said he only desired to be in it when astorm should happen; for many people had told him it wouldcertainly fall if it came to blow a little harder thanordinary.

But he happened at last to be in it once toooften—namely, when that dreadful tempest blew, November 27,1703.  This tempest began on the Wednesday before, and blewwith such violence, and shook the lighthouse so much, that, asthey told me there, Mr. Winstanley would fain have been on shore,and made signals for help; but no boats durst go off to him; and,to finish the tragedy, on the Friday, November 26, when thetempest was so redoubled that it became a terror to the wholenation, the first sight there seaward that the people of Plymouthwere presented with in the morning after the storm was the bareEddystone, the lighthouse being gone; in which Mr. Winstanley andall that were with him perished, and were never seen or heard ofsince.  But that which was a worse loss still was that, afew days after, a merchant’s ship called theWinchelsea, homeward bound from Virginia, not knowing theEddystone lighthouse was down, for want of the light that shouldhave been seen, run foul of the rock itself, and was lost withall her lading and most of her men.  But there is nowanother light-house built on the same rock.

What other disasters happened at the same time in the Soundand in the roads about Plymouth is not my business; they are alsopublished in other books, to which I refer.

One thing which I was a witness to on a former journey to thisplace, I cannot omit.  It was the next year after that greatstorm, and but a little sooner in the year, being in August; Iwas at Plymouth, and walking on the Hoo (which is a plain on theedge of the sea, looking to the road), I observed the evening soserene, so calm, so bright, and the sea so smooth, that a finersight, I think, I never saw.  There was very little wind,but what was, seemed to be westerly; and about an hour after, itblew a little breeze at south-west, with which wind there cameinto the Sound that night and the next morning a fleet offourteen sail of ships from Barbadoes, richly laden forLondon.  Having been long at sea, most of the captains andpassengers came on shore to refresh themselves, as is usual aftersuch tedious voyages; and the ships rode all in the Sound on thatside next to Catwater.  As is customary upon safe arrivingto their native country, there was a general joy and rejoicingboth on board and on shore.

The next day the wind began to freshen, especially in theafternoon, and the sea to be disturbed, and very hard it blew atnight; but all was well for that time.  But the night after,it blew a dreadful storm (not much inferior, for the time itlasted, to the storm mentioned above which blew down thelighthouse on the Eddystone).  About mid-night the noise,indeed, was very dreadful, what with the rearing of the sea andof the wind, intermixed with the firing of guns for help from theships, the cries of the seamen and people on shore, and (whichwas worse) the cries of those which were driven on shore by thetempest and dashed in pieces.  In a word, all the fleetexcept three, or thereabouts, were dashed to pieces against therocks and sunk in the sea, most of the men being drowned. Those three who were saved, received so much damage that theirlading was almost all spoiled.  One ship in the dark of thenight, the men not knowing where they were, run into Catwater,and run on shore there; by which she was, however, saved fromshipwreck, and the lives of her crew were saved also.

This was a melancholy morning indeed.  Nothing was to beseen but wrecks of the ships and a foaming, furious sea in thatvery place where they rode all in joy and triumph but the eveningbefore.  The captains, passengers, and officers who were, asI have said, gone on shore, between the joy of saving theirlives, and the affliction of having lost their ships, theircargoes, and their friends, were objects indeed worth ourcompassion and observation.  And there was a great varietyof the passions to be observed in them—now lamenting theirlosses, their giving thanks for their deliverance.  Many ofthe passengers had lost their all, and were, as they expressedthemselves, “utterly undone.”  They were, I say,now lamenting their losses with violent excesses of grief; thengiving thanks for their lives, and that they should be brought onshore, as it were, on purpose to be saved from death; then againin tears for such as were drowned.  The various cases wereindeed very affecting, and, in many things, very instructing.

As I say, Plymouth lies in the bottom of this Sound, in thecentre between the two waters, so there lies against it, in thesame position, an island, which they call St. Nicholas, on whichthere is a castle which commands the entrance into Hamoaze, andindeed that also into Catwater in some degree.  In thisisland the famous General Lambert, one of Cromwell’s greatagents or officers in the rebellion, was imprisoned for life, andlived many years there.

On the shore over against this island is the citadel ofPlymouth, a small but regular fortification, inaccessible by sea,but not exceeding strong by land, except that they say the worksare of a stone hard as marble, and would not soon yield to thebatteries of an enemy—but that is a language our modernengineers now laugh at.

The town stands above this, upon the same rock, and liessloping on the side of it, towards the east—the inlet ofthe sea which is called Catwater, and which is a harbour capableof receiving any number of ships and of any size, washing theeastern shore of the town, where they have a kind of natural moleor haven, with a quay and all other conveniences for bringing invessels for loading and unloading; nor is the trade carried onhere inconsiderable in itself, or the number of merchantssmall.

The other inlet of the sea, as I term it, is on the other sideof the town, and is called Hamoaze, being the mouth of the RiverTamar, a considerable river which parts the two counties of Devonand Cornwall.  Here (the war with France making it necessarythat the ships of war should have a retreat nearer hand than atPortsmouth) the late King William ordered a wet dock—withyards, dry docks, launches, and conveniences of all kinds forbuilding and repairing of ships—to be built; and with thesefollowed necessarily the building of store-houses and warehousesfor the rigging, sails, naval and military stores, &c., ofsuch ships as may be appointed to be laid up there, as nowseveral are; with very handsome houses for the commissioners,clerks, and officers of all kinds usual in the king’syards, to dwell in.  It is, in short, now become as completean arsenal or yard for building and fitting men-of-war as any theGovernment are masters of, and perhaps much more convenient thansome of them, though not so large.

The building of these things, with the addition of rope-walksand mast-yards, &c., as it brought abundance of trades-peopleand workmen to the place, so they began by little and little tobuild houses on the lands adjacent, till at length there appeareda very handsome street, spacious and large, and as wellinhabited; and so many houses are since added that it is become aconsiderable town, and must of consequence in time draw abundanceof people from Plymouth itself.

However, the town of Plymouth is, and will always be, a veryconsiderable town, while that excellent harbour makes it such ageneral port for the receiving all the fleets of merchants’ships from the southward (as from Spain, Italy, the West Indies,&c.), who generally make it the first port to put in at forrefreshment, or safety from either weather or enemies.

The town is populous and wealthy, having, as above, severalconsiderable merchants and abundance of wealthy shopkeepers,whose trade depends upon supplying the sea-faring people thatupon so many occasions put into that port.  As forgentlemen—I mean, those that are such by family and birthand way of living—it cannot be expected to find many suchin a town merely depending on trade, shipping, and sea-faringbusiness; yet I found here some men of value (persons of liberaleducation, general knowledge, and excellent behaviour), whosesociety obliges me to say that a gentleman might find veryagreeable company in Plymouth.

From Plymouth we pass the Tamar over a ferry toSaltash—a little, poor, shattered town, the first we setfoot on in the county of Cornwall.  The Tamar here is verywide, and the ferry-boats bad; so that I thought myself wellescaped when I got safe on shore in Cornwall.

Saltash seems to be the ruins of a larger place; and we sawmany houses, as it were, falling down, and I doubt not but themice and rats have abandoned many more, as they say they willwhen they are likely to fall.  Yet this town is governed bya mayor and aldermen, has many privileges, sends members toParliament, takes toll of all vessels that pass the river, andhave the sole oyster-fishing in the whole river, which isconsiderable.  Mr. Carew, author of the “Survey ofCornwall,” tells us a strange story of a dog in this town,of whom it was observed that if they gave him any large bone orpiece of meat, he immediately went out of doors with it, andafter having disappeared for some time would return again; uponwhich, after some time, they watched him, when, to their greatsurprise, they found that the poor charitable creature carriedwhat he so got to an old decrepit mastiff, which lay in a nestthat he had made among the brakes a little way out of the town,and was blind, so that he could not help himself; and there thiscreature fed him.  He adds also that on Sundays or holidays,when he found they made good cheer in the house where he lived,he would go out and bring this old blind dog to the door, andfeed him there till he had enough, and then go with him back tohis habitation in the country again, and see him safe in. If this story is true, it is very remarkable indeed; and Ithought it worth telling, because the author was a person who,they say, might be credited.

This town has a kind of jurisdiction upon the River Tamar downto the mouth of the port, so that they claim anchorage of allsmall ships that enter the river; their coroner sits upon alldead bodies that are found drowned in the river and the like, butthey make not much profit of them.  There is a good markethere, and that is the best thing to be said of the town; it isalso very much increased since the number of the inhabitants areincreased at the new town, as I mentioned as near the dock at themouth of Hamoaze, for those people choose rather to go to Saltashto market by water than to walk to Plymouth by land for theirprovisions.  Because, first, as they go in the town boat,the same boat brings home what they buy, so that it is much lesstrouble; second, because provisions are bought much cheaper atSaltash than at Plymouth.  This, I say, is like to be a verygreat advantage to the town of Saltash, and may in time put a newface of wealth upon the place.

They talk of some merchants beginning to trade here, and theyhave some ships that use the Newfoundland fishery; but I couldnot hear of anything considerable they do in it.  There isno other considerable town up the Tamar till we come toLaunceston, the county town, which I shall take in my return; soI turned west, keeping the south shore of the county to theLand’s End.

From Saltash I went to Liskeard, about seven miles.  Thisis a considerable town, well built; has people of fashion in it,and a very great market; it also sends two members to Parliament,and is one of the five towns called Stannary Towns—that isto say, where the blocks of tin are brought to the coinage; ofwhich, by itself, this coinage of tin is an article very much tothe advantage of the towns where it is settled, though the moneypaid goes another way.

This town of Liskeard was once eminent, had a good castle, anda large house, where the ancient Dukes of Cornwall kept theircourt in those days; also it enjoyed several privileges,especially by the favour of the Black Prince, who as Prince ofWales and Duke of Cornwall resided here.  And in return theysay this town and the country round it raised a great body ofstout young fellows, who entered into his service and followedhis fortunes in his wars in France, as also in Spain.  Butthese buildings are so decayed that there are now scarce any ofthe ruins of the castle or of the prince’s courtremaining.

The only public edifices they have now to show are the guildor town hall, on which there is a turret with a fine clock; avery good free school, well provided; a very fine conduit in themarket-place; an ancient large church; and, which is somethingrare for the county of Cornwall, a large, new-built meeting-housefor the Dissenters, which I name because they assured me therewas but three more, and those very inconsiderable, in all thecounty of Cornwall; whereas in Devonshire, which is the nextcounty, there are reckoned about seventy, some of which areexceeding large and fine.

This town is also remarkable for a very great trade in allmanufactures of leather, such as boots, shoes, gloves, purses,breaches, &c.; and some spinning of late years is set uphere, encouraged by the woollen manufacturers of Devonshire.

Between these two towns of Saltash and Liskeard is St.Germans, now a village, decayed, and without any market, but thelargest parish in the whole county—in the bounds of whichis contained, as they report, seventeen villages, and the town ofSaltash among them; for Saltash has no parish church, it seems,of itself, but as a chapel-of-ease to St. Germans.  In theneighbourhood of these towns are many pleasant seats of theCornish gentry, who are indeed very numerous, though theirestates may not be so large as is usual in England; yet neitherare they despicable in that part; and in particular this may besaid of them—that as they generally live cheap, and aremore at home than in other counties, so they live more likegentlemen, and keep more within bounds of their estates than theEnglish generally do, take them all together.

Add to this that they are the most sociable, generous, and toone another the kindest, neighbours that are to be found; and asthey generally live, as we may say, together (for they are almostalways at one another’s houses), so they generallyintermarry among themselves, the gentlemen seldom going out ofthe county for a wife, or the ladies for a husband; from whencethey say that proverb upon them was raised, viz., “That allthe Cornish gentlemen are cousins.”

On the hills north of Liskeard, and in the way betweenLiskeard and Launceston, there are many tin-mines.  And, asthey told us, some of the richest veins of that metal are foundthere that are in the whole county—the metal, when cast atthe blowing houses into blocks, being, as above, carried toLiskeard to be coined.

From Liskeard, in our course west, we are necessarily carriedto the sea-coast, because of the River Fowey or Fowath, whichempties itself into the sea at a very large mouth.  Andhereby this river rising in the middle of the breadth of thecounty and running south, and the River Camel rising not far fromit and running north, with a like large channel, the land fromBodmin to the western part of the county is almost made an islandand in a manner cut off from the eastern part—thepeninsula, or neck of land between, being not above twelve milesover.

On this south side we came to Foy or Fowey, an ancient town,and formerly very large—nay, not large only, but powerfuland potent; for the Foyens, as they were then called, were ableto fit out large fleets, not only for merchants’ ships, buteven of men-of-war; and with these not only fought with, butseveral times vanquished and routed, the squadron of the CinquePorts men, who in those days were thought very powerful.

Mr. Camden observes that the town of Foy quarters some part ofthe arms of every one of those Cinque Ports with their own,intimating that they had at several times trampled over themall.  Certain it is they did often beat them, and took theirships, and brought them as good prizes into their haven of Foy;and carried it so high that they fitted out their fleets againstthe French, and took several of their men-of-war when they wereat war with England, and enriched their town by the spoil oftheir enemies.

Edward IV. favoured them much; and because the Frenchthreatened them to come up their river with a powerful navy toburn their town, he caused two forts to be built at the publiccharge for security of the town and river, which forts—atleast, some show of them—remain there still.  But thesame King Edward was some time after so disgusted at the townsmenfor officiously falling upon the French, after a truce was madeand proclaimed, that he effectually disarmed them, took awaytheir whole fleet, ships, tackle, apparel, and furniture; andsince that time we do not read of any of their naval exploits,nor that they ever recovered or attempted to recover theirstrength at sea.  However, Foy at this time is a very fairtown; it lies extended on the east side of the river for above amile, the buildings fair.  And there are a great manyflourishing merchants in it, who have a great share in thefishing trade, especially for pilchards, of which they take agreat quantity hereabouts.  In this town is also a coinagefor the tin, of which a great quantity is dug up in the countrynorth and west of the town.

The River Fowey, which is very broad and deep here, wasformerly navigable by ships of good burthen as high asLostwithiel—an ancient and once a flourishing but now adecayed town; and as to trade and navigation, quite destitute;which is occasioned by the river being filled up with sands,which, some say, the tides drive up in stormy weather from thesea; others say it is by sands washed from the lead-mines in thehills; the last of which, by the way, I take to be a mistake, thesand from the hills being not of quantity sufficient to fill upthe channel of a navigable river, and, if it had, might easilyhave been stopped by the townspeople from falling into theriver.  But that the sea has choked up the river with sandis not only probable, but true; and there are other rivers whichsuffer in the like manner in this same country.

This town of Lostwithiel retains, however, several advantageswhich support its figure—as, first, that it is one of theCoinage Towns, as I call them; or Stannary Towns, as others callthem; (2) the common gaol for the whole Stannary is here, as arealso the County Courts for the whole county of Cornwall.

There is a mock cavalcade kept up at this town, which is veryremarkable.  The particulars, as they are related by Mr.Carew in his “Survey of Cornwall,” take asfollows:—

“Upon Little Easter Sunday the freeholders of this townand manor, by themselves or their deputies, did there assemble;amongst whom one (as it fell to his lot by turn), bravelyapparelled, gallantly mounted, with a crown on his head, asceptre in his hand, and a sword borne before him, and dutifullyattended by all the rest (also on horseback), rode through theprincipal street to the church.  The curate in his bestbeseen solemnly received him at the churchyard stile, andconducted him to hear divine service.  After which herepaired, with the same pomp, to a house provided for thatpurpose, made a feast to his attendants, kept thetable’s-end himself, and was served with kneeling assay andall other rights due to the estate of a prince; with which dinnerthe ceremony ended, and every man returned home again.  Thepedigree of this usage is derived from so many descents of agesthat the cause and author outreach the remembrance. Howbeit, these circumstances afford a conjecture that it shouldbetoken royalties appertaining to the honour ofCornwall.”

Behind Foy and nearer to the coast, at the mouth of a smallriver which some call Lowe, though without any authority, therestand two towns opposite to one another bearing the name of theRiver Looe—that is to say, distinguished by the addition ofEast Looe and West Looe.  These are both good trading towns,and especially fishing towns; and, which is very particular, are(like Weymouth and Melcombe, in Dorsetshire) separated only bythe creek or river, and yet each of them sends members toParliament.  These towns are joined together by a verybeautiful and stately stone bridge having fifteen arches.

East Looe was the ancienter corporation of the two, and forsome ages ago the greater and more considerable town; but nowthey tell us West Looe is the richest, and has the most shipsbelonging to it.  Were they put together, they would make avery handsome seaport town.  They have a great fishing tradehere, as well for supply of the country as for merchandise, andthe towns are not despisable.  But as to sending fourmembers to the British Parliament (which is as many as the Cityof London chooses), that, I confess, seems a little scandalous;but to whom, is none of my business to inquire.

Passing from hence, and ferrying over Foy River or the RiverFoweth (call it as you please), we come into a large countrywithout many towns in it of note, but very well furnished withgentlemen’s seats, and a little higher up withtin-works.

The sea making several deep bays here, they who travel by landare obliged to go higher into the country to pass above thewater, especially at Trewardreth Bay, which lies very broad,above ten miles within the country, which passing at Trewardreth(a town of no great note, though the bay takes its name from it),the next inlet of the sea is the famous firth or inlet calledFalmouth Haven.  It is certainly, next to Milford Haven inSouth Wales, the fairest and best road for shipping that is inthe whole isle of Britain, whether be considered the depth ofwater for above twenty miles within land; the safety of riding,sheltered from all kind of winds or storms; the good anchorage;and the many creeks, all navigable, where ships may run in and besafe; so that the like is nowhere to be found.

There are six or seven very considerable places upon thishaven and the rivers from it—viz., Grampound, Tregony,Truro, Penryn, Falmouth, St. Maws, and Pendennis.  The threefirst of these send members to Parliament.  The town ofFalmouth, as big as all the three, and richer than ten of them,sends none; which imports no more than this—that Falmouthitself is not of so great antiquity as to its rising as thoseother towns are; and yet the whole haven takes its name fromFalmouth, too, unless, as some think, the town took its name fromthe haven, which, however, they give no authority to suggest.

St. Maws and Pendennis are two fortifications placed at thepoints or entrance of this haven, opposite to one another, thoughnot with a communication or view; they are very strong—thefirst principally by sea, having a good platform of guns pointingathwart the Channel, and planted on a level with the water. But Pendennis Castle is strong by land as well as by water, isregularly fortified, has good out-works, and generally a stronggarrison.  St. Maws, otherwise called St. Mary’s, hasa town annexed to the castle, and is a borough sending members tothe Parliament.  Pendennis is a mere fortress, though thereare some habitations in it, too, and some at a small distancenear the seaside, but not of any great consideration.

The town of Falmouth is by much the richest and best tradingtown in this county, though not so ancient as its neighbour townof Truro; and indeed is in some things obliged to acknowledge theseigniority—namely, that in the corporation of Truro theperson whom they choose to be their Mayor of Truro is also Mayorof Falmouth of course.  How the jurisdiction is managed isan account too long for this place.  The Truro-men alsoreceive several duties collected in Falmouth, particularlywharfage for the merchandises landed or shipped off; but letthese advantages be what they will, the town of Falmouth hasgotten the trade—at least, the best part of it—fromthe other, which is chiefly owing to the situation.  Forthat Falmouth lying upon the sea, but within the entrance, shipsof the greatest burthen come up to the very quays, and the wholeRoyal Navy might ride safely in the road; whereas the town ofTruro lying far within, and at the mouth of two fresh rivers, isnot navigable for vessels of above 150 tons or thereabouts.

Some have suggested that the original of Falmouth was thehaving so large a quay, and so good a depth of water at it. The merchants of Truro formerly used it for the place of ladingand unlading their ships, as the merchants of Exeter did atTopsham; and this is the more probable in that, as above, thewharfage of those landing-places is still the property of thecorporation of Truro.

But let this be as it will, the trade is now in a mannerwholly gone to Falmouth, the trade at Truro being now chiefly (ifnot only) for the shipping off of block tin and copper ore, thelatter being lately found in large quantities in some of themountains between Truro and St. Michael’s, and which ismuch improved since the several mills are erected at Bristol andother parts for the manufactures of battery ware, as it is called(brass), or which is made out of English copper, most of it dugin these parts—the ore itself ago being found very rich andgood.

Falmouth is well built, has abundance of shipping belonging toit, is full of rich merchants, and has a flourishing andincreasing trade.  I say “increasing,” becauseby the late setting up the English packets between this port andLisbon, there is a new commerce between Portugal and this towncarried on to a very great value.

It is true, part of this trade was founded in a clandestinecommerce carried on by the said packets at Lisbon, where, beingthe king’s ships, and claiming the privilege of not beingsearched or visited by the Custom House officers, they foundmeans to carry off great quantities of British manufactures,which they sold on board to the Portuguese merchants, and theyconveyed them on shore, as it is supposed, without payingcustom.

But the Government there getting intelligence of it, andcomplaint being made in England also, where it was found to bevery prejudicial to the fair merchant, that trade has beeneffectually stopped.  But the Falmouth merchants, having bythis means gotten a taste of the Portuguese trade, havemaintained it ever since in ships of their own.  Thesepackets bring over such vast quantities of gold in specie, eitherin moidores(which is the Portugal coin) or in bars ofgold, that I am very credibly informed the carrier from Falmouthbrought by land from thence to London at one time, in the monthof January, 1722, or near it, eighty thousand moidoresingold, which came from Lisbon in the packet-boats for account ofthe merchants at London, and that it was attended with a guard oftwelve horsemen well armed, for which the said carrier had halfper cent. for his hazard.

This is a specimen of the Portugal trade, and how considerableit is in itself, as well as how advantageous to England; but asthat is not to the present case, I proceed.  The CustomHouse for all the towns in this port, and the head collector, isestablished at this town, where the duties (including the otherports) is very considerable.  Here is also a very greatfishing for pilchards; and the merchants for Falmouth have thechief stroke in that gainful trade.

Truro is, however, a very considerable town, too.  Itstands up the water north and by east from Falmouth, in theutmost extended branch of the Avon, in the middle between theconflux of two rivers, which, though not of any long course, havea very good appearance for a port, and make it large wharfbetween them in the front of the town.  And the water heremakes a good port for small ships, though it be at the influx,but not for ships of burthen.  This is the particular townwhere the Lord-Warden of the Stannaries always holds his famousParliament of miners, and for stamping of tin.  The town iswell built, but shows that it has been much fuller, both ofhouses and inhabitants, than it is now; nor will it probably everrise while the town of Falmouth stands where it does, and whilethe trade is settled in it as it is.  There are at leastthree churches in it, but no Dissenters’ meeting-house thatI could hear of.

Tregony is upon the same water north-east fromFalmouth—distance about fifteen miles from it—but isa town of very little trade; nor, indeed, have any of the towns,so far within the shore, notwithstanding the benefit of thewater, any considerable trade but what is carried on under themerchants of Falmouth or Truro.  The chief thing that is tobe said of this town is that it sends members to Parliament, asdoes also Grampound, a market-town; and Burro’, about fourmiles farther up the water.  This place, indeed, has a claimto antiquity, and is an appendix to the Duchy of Cornwall, ofwhich it holds at a fee farm rent and pays to the Prince of Walesas duke £10 11s. 1d. per annum.  It has no parishchurch, but only a chapel-of-ease to an adjacent parish.

Penryn is up the same branch of the Avon as Falmouth, butstands four miles higher towards the west; yet ships come to itof as great a size as can come to Truro itself.  It is avery pleasant, agreeable town, and for that reason has manymerchants in it, who would perhaps otherwise live atFalmouth.  The chief commerce of these towns, as to theirsea-affairs, is the pilchards and Newfoundland fishing, which isvery profitable to them all.  It had formerly a conventualchurch, with a chantry and a religious house (a cell to Kirton);but they are all demolished, and scarce the ruins of themdistinguishable enough to know one part from another.

Quitting Falmouth Haven from Penryn West, we came to Helston,about seven miles, and stands upon the little River Cober, which,however, admits the sea so into its bosom as to make a tolerablegood harbour for ships a little below the town.  It is thefifth town allowed for the coining tin, and several of the shipscalled tin-ships are laden here.

This town is large and populous, and has four spaciousstreets, a handsome church, and a good trade.  This townalso sends members to Parliament.  Beyond this is amarket-town, though of no resort for trade, called MarketJew.  It lies, indeed, on the seaside, but has no harbour orsafe road for shipping.

At Helford is a small but good harbour between Falmouth andthis port, where many times the tin-ships go in to load forLondon; also here are a good number of fishing vessels for thepilchard trade, and abundance of skilful fishermen.  It wasfrom this town that in the great storm which happened November27, 1703, a ship laden with tin was blown out to sea and drivento the Isle of Wight in seven hours, having on board only one manand two boys.  The story is as follows:—

“The beginning of the storm there lay a ship laden withtin in Helford Haven, about two leagues and a half west ofFalmouth.  The tin was taken on board at a place calledGuague Wharf, five or six miles up the river, and the vessel wascome down to Helford in order to pursue her voyage to London.

“About eight o’clock in the evening the commander,whose name was Anthony Jenkins, went on board with his mate tosee that everything was safe, and to give orders, but went bothon shore again, leaving only a man and two boys on board, notapprehending any danger, they being in safe harbour. However, he ordered them that if it should blow hard they shouldcarry out the small bower anchor, and so to moor the ship by twoanchors, and then giving what other orders he thought to beneedful, he went ashore, as above.

“About nine o’clock, the wind beginning to blowharder, they carried out the anchor, according to themaster’s order; but the wind increasing about ten, the shipbegan to drive, so they carried out their best bower, which,having a good new cable, brought the ship up.  The stormstill increasing, they let go the kedge anchor; so that they thenrode by four anchors ahead, which were all they had.

“But between eleven and twelve o’clock the windcame about west and by south, and blew in so violent and terriblea manner that, though they rode under the lee of a high shore,yet the ship was driven from all her anchors, and about midnightdrove quite out of the harbour (the opening of the harbour lyingdue east and west) into the open sea, the men having neitheranchor or cable or boat to help themselves.

“In this dreadful condition (they driving, I say, out ofthe harbour) their first and chief care was to go clear of therocks which lie on either side the harbour’s mouth, andwhich they performed pretty well.  Then, seeing no remedy,they consulted what to do next.  They could carry no sail atfirst—no, not a knot; nor do anything but run away aforeit.  The only thing they had to think on was to keep her outat sea as far as they could, for fear of a point of land calledthe Dead Man’s Head, which lies to the eastward of FalmouthHaven; and then, if they could escape the land, thought to run infor Plymouth next morning, so, if possible, to save theirlives.

“In this frighted condition they drove away at aprodigious rate, having sometimes the bonnet of their foresail alittle out, but the yard lowered almost to thedeck—sometimes the ship almost under water, and sometimesabove, keeping still in the offing, for fear of the land, tillthey might see daylight.  But when the day broke they foundthey were to think no more of Plymouth, for they were far enoughbeyond it; and the first land they made was Peverel Point, beingthe southernmost land of the Isle of Purbeck, in Dorsetshire, anda little to the westward of the Isle of Wight; so that now theywere in a terrible consternation, and driving still at aprodigious rate.  By seven o’clock they foundthemselves broadside of the Isle of Wight.

“Here they consulted again what to do to save theirlives.  One of the boys was for running her into the Downs;but the man objected that, having no anchor or cable nor boat togo on shore with, and the storm blowing off shore in the Downs,they should be inevitably blown off and lost upon the unfortunateGoodwin—which, it seems, the man had been on once beforeand narrowly escaped.

“Now came the last consultation for their lives. The other of the boys said he had been in a certain creek in theIsle of Wight, where, between the rocks, he knew there was roomto run the ship in, and at least to save their lives, and that hesaw the place just that moment; so he desired the man to let himhave the helm, and he would do his best and venture it.  Theman gave him the helm, and he stood directly in among the rocks,the people standing on the shore thinking they were mad, and thatthey would in a few minutes be dashed in a thousand pieces.

“But when they came nearer, and the people found theysteered as if they knew the place, they made signals to them todirect them as well as they could, and the young bold fellow runher into a small cove, where she stuck fast, as it were, betweenthe rocks on both sides, there being but just room enough for thebreadth of the ship.  The ship indeed, giving two or threeknocks, staved and sunk, but the man and the two youths jumpedashore and were safe; and the lading, being tin, was afterwardssecured.

“N.B.—The merchants very well rewarded the threesailors, especially the lad that ran her into thatplace.”

Penzance is the farthest town of any note west, being 254miles from London, and within about ten miles of the promontorycalled the Land’s End; so that this promontory is fromLondon 264 miles, or thereabouts.  This town of Penzance isa place of good business, well built and populous, has a goodtrade, and a great many ships belonging to it, notwithstanding itis so remote.  Here are also a great many good families ofgentlemen, though in this utmost angle of the nation; and, whichis yet more strange, the veins of lead, tin, and copper ore aresaid to be seen even to the utmost extent of land at low-watermark, and in the very sea—so rich, so valuable, a treasureis contained in these parts of Great Britain, though they aresupposed to be so poor, because so very remote from London, whichis the centre of our wealth.

Between this town and St. Burien, a town midway between it andthe Land’s End, stands a circle of great stones, not unlikethose at Stonehenge, in Wiltshire, with one bigger than the restin the middle.  They stand about twelve feet asunder, buthave no inscription; neither does tradition offer to leave anypart of their history upon record, as whether it was a trophy ora monument of burial, or an altar for worship, or what else; sothat all that can be learned of them is that here they are. The parish where they stand is called Boscawone, from whence theancient and honourable family of Boscawen derive their names.

Near Penzance, but open to the sea, is that gulf they callMount’s Bay; named so from a high hill standing in thewater, which they call St. Michael’s Mount: the seamen callit only the Cornish Mount.  It has been fortified, thoughthe situation of it makes it so difficult of access that, likethe Bass in Scotland, there needs no fortification; like theBass, too, it was once made a prison for prisoners of State, butnow it is wholly neglected.  There is a very good road herefor shipping, which makes the town of Penzance be a place of goodresort.

A little up in the county towards the north-west is Godolchan,which though a hill, rather than a town, gives name to the nobleand ancient family of Godolphin; and nearer on the northern coastis Royalton, which since the late Sydney Godolphin, Esq., ayounger brother of the family, was created Earl of Godolphin,gave title of Lord to his eldest son, who was called LordRoyalton during the life of his father.  This place also isinfinitely rich in tin-mines.

I am now at my journey’s end.  As to the islands ofScilly, which lie beyond the Land’s End, I shall saysomething of them presently.  I must now return sur mespas, as the French call it; though not literally so, for Ishall not come back the same way I went.  But as I havecoasted the south shore to the Land’s End, I shall comeback by the north coast, and my observations in my return willfurnish very well materials for another letter.

APPENDIX TO LAND’S END.

I have ended this account at the utmost extent of the islandof Great Britain west, without visiting those excrescences of theisland, as I think I may call them—viz., the rocks ofScilly; of which what is most famous is their infamy or reproach;namely, how many good ships are almost continually dashed inpieces there, and how many brave lives lost, in spite of themariners’ best skill, or the lighthouses’ and othersea-marks’ best notice.

These islands lie so in the middle between the two vastopenings of the north and south narrow seas (or, as the sailorscall them, the Bristol Channel, and The Channel—so calledby way of eminence) that it cannot, or perhaps never will, beavoided but that several ships in the dark of the night and instress of weather, may, by being out in their reckonings, orother unavoidable accidents, mistake; and if they do, they aresure, as the sailors call it, to run “bump ashore”upon Scilly, where they find no quarter among the breakers, butare beat to pieces without any possibility of escape.

One can hardly mention the Bishop and his Clerks, as they arecalled, or the rocks of Scilly, without letting fall a tear tothe memory of Sir Cloudesley Shovel and all the gallant spiritsthat were with him, at one blow and without a moment’swarning dashed into a state of immortality—the admiral,with three men-of-war, and all their men (running upon theserocks right afore the wind, and in a dark night) being lostthere, and not a man saved.  But all our annals andhistories are full of this, so I need say no more.

They tell us of eleven sail of merchant-ships homeward bound,and richly laden from the southward, who had the like fate in thesame place a great many years ago; and that some of them comingfrom Spain, and having a great quantity of bullion or pieces ofeight on board, the money frequently drives on shore still, andthat in good quantities, especially after stormy weather.

This may be the reason why, as we observed during our shortstay here, several mornings after it had blown something hard inthe night, the sands were covered with country people running toand fro to see if the sea had cast up anything of value. This the seamen call “going a-shoring;” and it seemsthey do often find good purchase.  Sometimes also deadbodies are cast up here, the consequence of shipwrecks amongthose fatal rocks and islands; as also broken pieces of ships,casks, chests, and almost everything that will float or roll onshore by the surges of the sea.

Nor is it seldom that the voracious country people scuffle andfight about the right to what they find, and that in a desperatemanner; so that this part of Cornwall may truly be said to beinhabited by a fierce and ravenous people.  For they are sogreedy, and eager for the prey, that they are charged withstrange, bloody, and cruel dealings, even sometimes with oneanother; but especially with poor distressed seamen when theycome on shore by force of a tempest, and seek help for theirlives, and where they find the rooks themselves not moremerciless than the people who range about them for theirprey.

Here, also, as a farther testimony of the immense riches whichhave been lost at several times upon this coast, we found severalengineers and projectors—some with one sort of divingengine, and some with another; some claiming such a wreck, andsome such-and-such others; where they alleged they were assuredthere were great quantities of money; and strange unprecedentedways were used by them to come at it: some, I say, with one kindof engine, and some another; and though we thought several ofthem very strange impracticable methods, yet I was assured by thecountry people that they had done wonders with them under water,and that some of them had taken up things of great weight and ina great depth of water.  Others had split open the wrecksthey had found in a manner one would have thought not possible tobe done so far under water, and had taken out things from thevery holds of the ships.  But we could not learn that theyhad come at any pieces of eight, which was the thing they seemedmost to aim at and depend upon; at least, they had not found anygreat quantity, as they said they expected.

However, we left them as busy as we found them, and far frombeing discouraged; and if half the golden mountains, or silvermountains either, which they promise themselves should appear,they will be very well paid for their labour.

From the tops of the hills on this extremity of the land youmay see out into that they call the Chops of the Channel, which,as it is the greatest inlet of commerce, and the most frequentedby merchant-ships of any place in the world, so one seldom looksout to seaward but something new presents—that is to say,of ships passing or repassing, either on the great or lesserChannel.

Upon a former accidental journey into this part of thecountry, during the war with France, it was with a mixture ofpleasure and horror that we saw from the hills at the Lizard,which is the southern-most point of this land, an obstinate fightbetween three French men-of-war and two English, with a privateerand three merchant-ships in their company.  The English hadthe misfortune, not only to be fewer ships of war in number, butof less force; so that while the two biggest French ships engagedthe English, the third in the meantime took the twomerchant-ships and went off with them.  As to the picaroonor privateer, she was able to do little in the matter, not daringto come so near the men-of-war as to take a broadside, which herthin sides would not have been able to bear, but would have senther to the bottom at once; so that the English men-of-war had noassistance from her, nor could she prevent the taking the twomerchant-ships.  Yet we observed that the English captainsmanaged their fight so well, and their seamen behaved so briskly,that in about three hours both the Frenchmen stood off, and,being sufficiently banged, let us see that they had no morestomach to fight; after which the English—having damageenough, too, no doubt—stood away to the eastward, as wesupposed, to refit.

This point of the Lizard, which runs out to the southward, andthe other promontory mentioned above, make the twoangles—or horns, as they are called—from whence it issupposed this county received its first name of Cornwall, or, asMr. Camden says, Cornubiain the Latin, and in the British“Kernaw,” as running out in two vastly extendedhorns.  And indeed it seems as if Nature had formed thissituation for the direction of mariners, as foreknowing of whatimportance it should be, and how in future ages these seas shouldbe thus thronged with merchant-ships, the protection of whosewealth, and the safety of the people navigating them, was so muchher early care that she stretched out the land so very many ways,and extended the points and promontories so far and in so manydifferent places into the sea, that the land might be more easilydiscovered at a due distance, which way soever the ships shouldcome.

Nor is the Lizard Point less useful (though not so far west)than the other, which is more properly called the Land’sEnd; but if we may credit our mariners, it is more frequentlyfirst discovered from the sea.  For as our mariners, knowingby the soundings when they are in the mouth of the Channel, dothen most naturally stand to the southward, to avoid mistakingthe Channel, and to shun the Severn Sea or Bristol Channel, butstill more to avoid running upon Scilly and the rocks about it,as is observed before—I say, as they carefully keep to thesouthward till they think they are fair with the Channel, andthen stand to the northward again, or north-east, to make theland, this is the reason why the Lizard is, generally speaking,the first land they make, and not the Land’s End.

Then having made the Lizard, they either (first) run in forFalmouth, which is the next port, if they are taken short witheasterly winds, or are in want of provisions and refreshment, orhave anything out of order, so that they care not to keep thesea; or (secondly) stand away for the Ram Head and PlymouthSound; or (thirdly) keep an offing to run up the Channel.

So that the Lizard is the general guide, and of more use inthese cases than the other point, and is therefore the land whichthe ships choose to make first; for then also they are sure thatthey are past Scilly and all the dangers of that part of theisland.

Nature has fortified this part of the island of Britain in astrange manner, and so, as is worth a traveller’sobservation, as if she knew the force and violence of the mightyocean which beats upon it; and which, indeed, if the land was notmade firm in proportion, could not withstand, but would have beenwashed away long ago.

First, there are the islands of Scilly and the rocks aboutthem; these are placed like out-works to resist the firstassaults of this enemy, and so break the force of it, as thepiles (or starlings, as they are called) are placed before thesolid stonework of London Bridge to fence off the force either ofthe water or ice, or anything else that might be dangerous to thework.

Then there are a vast number of sunk rocks (so the seamen callthem), besides such as are visible and above water, whichgradually lessen the quantity of water that would otherwise liewith an infinite weight and force upon the land.  It isobserved that these rocks lie under water for a great way offinto the sea on every side the said two horns or points of land,so breaking the force of the water, and, as above, lessening theweight of it.

But besides this the whole terra firma, or body of theland which makes this part of the isle of Britain, seems to beone solid rock, as if it was formed by Nature to resist theotherwise irresistible power of the ocean.  And, indeed, ifone was to observe with what fury the sea comes on sometimesagainst the shore here, especially at the Lizard Point, wherethere are but few, if any, out-works, as I call them, to resistit; how high the waves come rolling forward, storming on the neckof one another (particularly when the wind blows off sea), onewould wonder that even the strongest rocks themselves should beable to resist and repel them.  But, as I said, the countryseems to be, as it were, one great body of stone, and prepared soon purpose.

And yet, as if all this was not enough, Nature has providedanother strong fence, and that is, that these vast rocks are, asit were, cemented together by the solid and weighty ore of tinand copper, especially the last, which is plentifully found uponthe very outmost edge of the land, and with which the stones maybe said to be soldered together, lest the force of the sea shouldseparate and disjoint them, and so break in upon thesefortifications of the island to destroy its chief security.

This is certain—that there is a more than ordinaryquantity of tin, copper, and lead also placed by the GreatDirector of Nature in these very remote angles (and, as I havesaid above, the ore is found upon the very surface of the rocks agood way into the sea); and that it does not only lie, as itwere, upon or between the stones among the earth (which in thatcase might be washed from it by the sea), but that it is evenblended or mixed in with the stones themselves, that the stonesmust be split into pieces to come at it.  By this mixturethe rocks are made infinitely weighty and solid, and therebystill the more qualified to repel the force of the sea.

Upon this remote part of the island we saw great numbers ofthat famous kind of crows which is known by the name of theCornish cough or chough (so the country people call them). They are the same kind which are found in Switzerland among theAlps, and which Pliny pretended were peculiar to those mountains,and calls the pyrrhocorax.  The body is black; thelegs, feet, and bill of a deep yellow, almost to a red.  Icould not find that it was affected for any good quality it had,nor is the flesh good to eat, for it feeds much on fish andcarrion; it is counted little better than a kite, for it is ofravenous quality, and is very mischievous.  It will stealand carry away anything it finds about the house that is not tooheavy, though not fit for its food—as knives, forks,spoons, and linen cloths, or whatever it can fly away with;sometimes they say it has stolen bits of firebrands, or lightedcandles, and lodged them in the stacks of corn and the thatch ofbarns and houses, and set them on fire; but this I only had byoral tradition.

I might take up many sheets in describing the valuablecuriosities of this little Chersonese or Neck Land, called theLand’s End, in which there lies an immense treasure andmany things worth notice (I mean, besides those to be found uponthe surface), but I am too near the end of this letter.  IfI have opportunity I shall take notice of some part of what Iomit here in my return by the northern shore of the county.

TWO LETTERS
FROM THE “JOURNEY THROUGH ENGLAND BY AGENTLEMAN.”

Published in1722, butnot by Defoe.

BATH IN 1722.

Bath.

Sir,

The Bath lies very low, is but a small city, but very compact,and one can hardly imagine it could accommodate near the companythat frequents it at least three parts of the year.  I havebeen told of 8,000 families there at a time—some for thebenefit of drinking its hot waters, others for bathing, andothers for diversion and pleasure (of which, I must say, itaffords more than any public place of that kind in Europe).

I told you in my former letters that Epsom and Tunbridge donot allow visiting (the companies there meet only on the walks);but here visits are received and returned, assemblies and ballsare given, and parties at play in most houses every night, towhich one Mr. Nash hath for many years contributed verymuch.  This gentleman is by custom a sort of master ofceremonies of the place; he is not of any birth nor estate, butby a good address and assurance ingratiates himself into the goodgraces of the ladies and the best company in the place, and isdirector of all their parties of pleasure.  He wears goodclothes, is always affluent of money, plays very much, andwhatever he may get in private, yet in public he always seems tolose.  The town have been for many years so sensible of theservice he does them that they ring the bells generally at hisarrival in town, and, it is thought, pay him a yearlycontribution for his support.

In the morning early the company of both sexes meet at thePump (in a great hall enrailed), to drink the waters and saunterabout till prayer-time, or divert themselves by looking on thosethat are bathing in the bath.  Most of the company go tochurch in the morning in dishabille, and then go home to dressfor the walks before dinner.  The walks are behind thechurch, spacious and well shaded, planted round with shops filledwith everything that contributes to pleasure, and at the end anoble room for gaming, from whence there are hanging-stairs to apretty garden for everybody that pays for the time they stay, towalk in.

I have often wondered that the physicians of these placesprescribe gaming to their patients, in order to keep their mindsfree from business and thought, that their waters on anundisturbed mind may have the greater effect, when indeed onecross-throw at play must sour a man’s blood more than tenglasses of water will sweeten, especially for such great sums asthey throw for every day at Bath.

The King and Queen’s Baths, which have a communicationwith one another, are the baths which people of common rank gointo promiscuously; and indeed everybody, except the firstquality.  The way of going into them is very comical: achair with a couple of chairmen come to your bedside (lie in whatstorey you will), and there strip you, and give you their dresswithout your shift, and wrapping you up in blankets carry you tothe bath.

When you enter the bath, the water seems very warm; and theheat much increases as you go into the Queen’s Bath, wherethe great spring rises.  On a column erected over the springis an inscription of the first finder-out of these springs, inthe following words: that “Bladud, the son of Lud, foundthem three hundred years before Christ.”  The smokeand slime of the waters, the promiscuous multitude of the peoplein the bath, with nothing but their heads and hands above water,with the height of the walls that environ the bath, gave me alively idea of several pictures I had seen, of Angelo’s inItaly of Purgatory, with heads and hands uplifted in the midst ofsmoke, just as they are here.  After bathing, you arecarried home in your chair, in the same manner you came.

The Cross Bath, which is used by the people of the firstquality, was beautified and inclosed for the convenience of thelate King James’s queen, who after the priests andphysicians had been at work to procure a male successor to thethrone of Great Britain, the Sacrament exposed in all the RomanCatholic countries, and for that end a sanctified smock sent fromthe Virgin Mary at Loretto, the queen was ordered to go to Bathand prepare herself, and the king to make a progress through thewestern counties and join her there.  On his arrival atBath, the next day after his conjunction with the queen, the Earlof Melfort (then Secretary of State for Scotland) erected a fineprophetic monument in the middle of the Bath, as an everlastingmonument of that conjunction.  I call it“prophetic,” because nine months after a Prince ofWales was born.  This monument is still entire and handsome,only some of the inscriptions on the pillar were erased in KingWilliam’s time.  The angels attending the Holy Ghostas He descends, the Eucharist, the Pillar, and all the ornamentsare of fine marble, and must have cost that earl a great deal ofmoney.  He was second son to Drummond, Earl of Perth, inNorth Britain; and was Deputy Governor of the Castle of Edinburghwhen the Duke and Duchess of York came to Scotland, in KingCharles the Second’s time.  He was a handsomegentleman, with a good address, and went into all the measures ofthat court, and at all their balls generally danced with theduchess; who, on their accession to the throne, sent for him upto London, made him Secretary of State for Scotland, created himEarl of Melfort, and Knight of the Order of St. Andrew.  Hiselder brother was also made Chancellor and Governor ofScotland.  And on King James’s abdication, as the twobrothers followed the king’s fortunes, the Earl of Perthwas made governor to the young prince; and Melfort was created aduke, had the Garter, and was a great man in France to his dyingday.

There is another bath for lepers.

The cathedral church is small but well lighted.  Thereare abundance of little monuments in it of people who come therefor their health, but meet with their death.

These waters have a wonderful influence on barren ladies, whooften prove with child even in their husbands’ absence; whomust not come near them till their bodies are prepared.

Everything looks gay and serene here; it is plentiful andcheap.  Only the taverns do not much improve, for it is aplace of universal sobriety.  To be drunk at Bath is asscandalous as mad.  Common women are not to be met with hereso much as at Tunbridge and Epsom.  Whether it is thedistance from London, or that the gentlemen fly at the highestgame, I cannot tell; besides, everything that passes here isknown on the walks, and the characters of persons.

In three hours one arrives from Bath at Bristol, a large,opulent, and fine city; but, notwithstanding its nearness, by thedifferent manners of the people seems to be anothercountry.  Instead of that politeness and gaiety which yousee at Bath, here is nothing but hurry—carts driving alongwith merchandises, and people running about with cloudy looks andbusy faces.  When I came to the Exchange I was surprised tosee it planted round with stone pillars, with broad boss-plateson them like sun-dials, and coats-of-arms with inscriptions onevery plate.

They told me that these pillars were erected by eminentmerchants for the benefit of writing and despatching theiraffairs on them, as on tables; and at ’Change time themerchants take each their stands by their pillars, that mastersof ships and owners may know where to find them.

Coffee-houses and taverns lie round the ’Change, just asat London; and the Bristol milk, which is Spanish sherry (nowhereso good as here), is plentifully drunk.

The city of Bristol is situated much like Verona, inItaly.  A river runs through almost the middle of it, onwhich there is a fine stone bridge.  The quay may be madethe finest, largest, and longest in the world by pulling down anold house or two.  Behind the quay is a very noble square,as large as that of Soho in London, in which is kept the CustomHouse; and most of the eminent merchants who keep their coachesreside here.  The cathedral is on the other side of theriver, on the top of the hill, and is the meanest I have seen inEngland.  But the square or green adjoining to it hasseveral fine houses, and makes by its situation, in my opinion,much the pleasantest part of the town.  There are somechurches in the city finer than the cathedral, and your merchantshave their little country-seats in the adjacent eminences; ofwhich that of Mr. Southwell hath a very commanding prospect, bothof the city, the River Severn, and the shipping that liesbelow.

There are hot springs near Bristol that are also very muchfrequented, and are reckoned to be better than the Bath for somedistempers.

A traveller when he comes to the Bath must never fail ofseeing Badminton, belonging to the Dukes of Beaufort; norLongleat, belonging to my Lord Weymouth.  They are bothwithin a few miles of the Bath.  King William, when he tookBadminton in his way from Ireland, told the duke that he was notsurprised at his not coming to court, having so sumptuous apalace to keep a court of his own in.  And indeed theapartments are inferior to few royal palaces.  The parks arelarge, and enclosed with a stone wall; and that duke, whom Idescribed to you in my letter from Windsor, lived up to thegrandeur of a sovereign prince.  His grandson, who was alsoKnight of the Garter, made a great figure in the reign of QueenAnne.  The family, which is a natural branch of the house ofLancaster, have always distinguished themselves of the Toryside.  The present duke is under age.

Longleat, though an old seat, is very beautiful and large; andthe gardens and avenue, being full-grown, are very beautiful andwell kept.  It cost the late Lord Weymouth a good revenue inhospitality to such strangers as came from Bath to see it.

The biggest and most regular house in England was built nearBristol by the late Lord Stawell; but it being judged by hisheirs to be too big for the estate, they are pulling it down andselling the materials.

As the weather grows good, I shall proceed through South Walesto Chester, from whence you shall soon hear from me, who amwithout reserve, sir, your most humble, &c.

FROM CHESTER TO HOLYHEAD.

Chester.

Sir,

I crossed the Severn at the ferry of Ash, about ten milesabove Bristol, and got to Monmouth to dinner through a rugged,indifferent country.  It is a pitiful old town, and hathnothing remarkable in it; and from thence through a fat fertilecountry I got to the city of Hereford at night.

Hereford is the dirtiest old city I have seen in England, yetpretty large; the streets are irregular and the houses old, andits cathedral a reverend old pile, but not beautiful; the nichesof the walls of the church are adorned with the figures of itsbishops as big as the life, in a cumbent posture, with the yearof their interments newly painted over.  Some of them are inthe twelve hundredth year of Christ.  Here they drinknothing but cider, which is very cheap and very good; and thevery hedges in the country are planted with apple-trees. About three miles from Hereford in my road to Ludlow I saw a fineold seat called Hampton Court, belonging to my LordConingsby.  The plantations on rising grounds round it givean august splendour to the house, which consists of an oval courtwith suitable offices, not unlike an house belonging to the Dukeof Somerset near London; and from thence in a few hours I arrivedat Ludlow, the capital of South Wales, and where the Princes ofWales formerly, and since them the Presidents of Wales, kepttheir courts.

Ludlow is one of the neatest, clean, pretty towns inEngland.  The street by which you enter the town isspacious, with handsome houses sash-windowed on each side, whichleads you by an ascent to the castle on the left of the top ofthe hill, and the church on the right, from whence there runsalso another handsome street.  The castle hath a verycommanding prospect of the adjacent country; the offices in theouter court are falling down, and a great part of the court isturned into a bowling-green; but the royal apartments in thecastle, with some old velvet furniture and a sword of state, arestill left.  There is also a neat little chapel; but thevanity of the Welsh gentry when they were made councillors hasspoiled it by adorning it with their names and arms, of which itis full.

A small expense would still make this castle a habitable andbeautiful place, lying high, and overlooking a fine country;there is also a fine prospect from the churchyard, and the churchis very neat.  I saw abundance of pretty ladies here, andwell dressed, who came from the adjacent counties, for theconvenience and cheapness of boarding.  Provisions of allsorts are extremely plentiful and cheap here, and very goodcompany.

I stayed some days here, to make an excursion into South Walesand know a little of the manners of the country, as I design todo at Chester for North Wales.  The gentry are verynumerous, exceedingly civil to strangers, if you don’t cometo purchase and make your abode amongst them.  They livemuch like Gascoynes—affecting their own language, valuingthemselves much on the antiquity of their families, and are proudof making entertainments.

The Duke of Powis, of the name of Herbert, hath a noble seatnear this town, but I was not at it; the family followed KingJames’s fortunes to France, and I suppose the seat liesneglected.  From Ludlow in a short day’s ridingthrough a champaign country I arrived at the town ofShrewsbury.

Shrewsbury stands upon an eminence, encircled by the Severnlike a horse-shoe; the streets are large, and the houses wellbuilt.  My Lord Newport, son to the Earl of Bradford, hath ahandsome palace, with hanging gardens down to the river; as alsoMr. Kinnaston, and some other gentlemen.  There is a goodtown-house, and the most coffee-houses round it that ever I sawin any town; but when you come into them, they are but ale-houses(only they think that the name of coffee-house gives a betterair).  King Charles would have made them a city, but theychose rather to remain a corporation, as they are, for which theywere called the “proud Salopians.”  There is agreat deal of good company in this town, for the convenience ofcheapness; and there are assemblies and balls for the youngladies once a week.  The Earl of Bradford and several othershave handsome seats near it; from hence I came to Wrexham, inWales, a beautiful market-town; the church is the beautifullestcountry church in England, and surpasses some cathedrals.  Icounted fifty-two statues as big as the life in the steeple ortower, which is built after the manner of your Dutch steeples,and as high as any there.  I was there on a market-day, andwas particularly pleased to see the Welsh ladies come to marketin their laced hats, their own hair hanging round theirshoulders, and blue and scarlet cloaks like ourAmazons—some of them with a greyhound in a string in theirhands.

Whitchurch, near it, hath a fine church, built by the Earl ofBridgwater; and so to Chester, an ancient and large city, with acommanding castle.  The city consists of four large streets,which make an exact cross, with the town-house and Exchange inthe middle; but you don’t walk the streets here, but ingalleries up one pair of stairs, which keeps you from the rain inwinter, and sun in summer; and the houses and shops, withgardens, go all off these galleries, which they call rows. The city is walled round, and the wall so firmly paved that itgives you an agreeable prospect of the country and river, as youwalk upon it.  The churches are very neat, and the cathedralan august old pile; there is an ancient monument of an Emperor ofGermany, with assemblies every week.  While I continued atChester, I made an excursion into North Wales, and went intoDenbigh, the capital of that country, where are the remains of avery great and old castle, as is also at Flint, the capital ofFlintshire.  These castles were the frontier garrisons ofWales before it came under the subjection of England.  Thecountry is mountainous, and full of iron and lead works; and herethey begin to differ from the English both in language anddress.

From Flint, along the seaside, in three hours I arrived at thefamous cold bath called St. Winifred’s Well; and the townfrom thence called Holywell is a pretty large well-built village,in the middle of a grove, in a bottom between, two hills. The well is in the foot of one of the hills, and spouts out aboutthe bigness of a barrel at once, with such force that it turnsthree or four mills before it falls into the sea.  The wellwhere you bathe is floored with stone surrounded with pillars, onwhich stands a neat little chapel dedicated to St. Winifred, butnow turned into a Protestant school.  However, to supply theloss of this chapel, the Roman Catholics have chapels erectedalmost in every inn for the devotion of the pilgrims that flockhither from all the Popish parts of England.  The water, youmay imagine, is very cold, coming from the bowels of an ironmountain, and never having met with the influence of the sun tillit runs from the well.

The legend of St. Winifred is too long and ridiculous for aletter; I leave you to Dr. Fleetwood (when Bishop of St. Asaph)for its description.  I will only tell you, in two words,that this St. Winifred was a beautiful damsel that lived on thetop of the hill; that a prince of the country fell deeply in lovewith her; that coming one day when her parents were abroad, andshe resisting his passion, turned into rage, and as she wasflying from him cut off her head, which rolled down the hill withher body, and at the place where it stopped gushed out this wellof water.  But there was also a good hermit that lived atthe bottom of the hill, who immediately claps her head to herbody, and by the force of the water and his prayers sherecovered, and lived to perform many miracles for many yearsafter.  They give you her printed litanies at thewell.  And I observed the Roman Catholics in their prayers,not with eyes lifted up to heaven, but intent upon the water, asif it were the real blood of St. Winifred that was to wash themclean from all their sins.

In every inn you meet with a priest, habited like countrygentlemen, and very good companions.  At the “CrossKeys,” where I lodged, there was one that had been markedout to me, to whom I was particularly civil at supper; butfinding by my conversation I was none of them, he drank and sworelike a dragoon, on purpose, as I imagine, to disguisehimself.  From Holywell in two hours I came to a handsomeseat of Sir John Conway’s at Redland, and next day toConway.

I do not know any place in Europe that would make a finerlandscape in a picture than Conway at a mile’sdistance.  It lies on the side of a hill, on the banks of anarm of the sea about the breadth of the Thames at London, andwithin two little miles of the sea, over which we ferry to go tothe town.

The town is walled round, with thirty watch-towers at properdistances on the walls; and the castle with its towers, beingvery white, makes an august show at a distance, being surroundedwith little hills on both sides of the bay or river, covered withwood.  But when you cross the ferry and come into the town,there is nothing but poverty and misery.  The castle is aheap of rubbish uncovered, and these towers on the walls onlystanding vestiges of what Wales was when they had a prince oftheir own.

They speak all Welsh here, and if a stranger should lose hisway in this county of Carnarvon, it is ten to one if he meetswith any one that has English enough to set him right.  Thepeople are also naturally very surly, and even if they understandEnglish, if you ask them a question their answer is, “DameSalsenach,” or “I cannot speak Saxon orEnglish.”  Their Bibles and prayer-books are allprinted in Welsh in our character; so that an Englishman can readtheir language, although he doth not understand a word ofit.  It hath a great resemblance of the Bas-Bretons, butthey retain the letter and character as well as language, as theScots and Highlanders do.

They retain several Popish customs in North Wales, for onSunday (after morning service) the whole parish go to footballtill the afternoon service begins, and then they go to theale-house and play at all manner of games (which ale-house isoften kept by the parson, for their livings are very small).

They have also offerings at funerals, which is one of thegreatest perquisites the parson hath.  When the body isdeposited in the church during the service for the dead, everyperson invited to the burial lays a piece of money upon the altarto defray the dead person’s charges to the other world,which, after the ceremony is over, the parson puts in hispocket.  From Conway, through the mountainous country ofCarnarvon, I passed the famous mountain of Penmaen-Mawr, sodreadfully related by passengers travelling to Ireland.  Itis a road cut out of the side of the rock, seven feet wide; thesea lies perpendicularly down, about forty fathoms on one side,and the mountain is about the same height above it on the otherside.  It looks dismal, but not at all dangerous, for thereis now a wall breast-high along the precipice.  However,there is an ale-house at the bottom of the hill on the otherside, with this inscription, “Now your fright is over, takea dram.”  From hence I proceeded to a little towncalled Bangor, where there is a cathedral such as may be expectedin Wales; and from thence to Carnarvon, the capital of thecounty.  Here are the vestiges of a large old castle, whereone of the Henrys, King of England, was born; as was another atMonmouth, in South Wales.  For the Welsh were so hard to bereconciled to their union with England at first, it was thoughtpolicy to send our queens to lie-in there, to make our princesWelshmen born, and that way ingratiate the inhabitants to theirsubjection to a prince born in their own country.  And forthat reason our kings to this day wear a leek (the badge ofWales) on St. David’s Day, the patron of this country; asthey do the Order of the Thistle on St. Andrew’s Day, thepatron of Scotland.

Carnarvon is a pretty little town, situated in the bottom of abay, and might be a place of good trade, if the country affordeda consumption.

The sea flows quite round from Bangor to Carnarvon Bay, whichseparates Anglesea from the rest of Wales, and makes it anisland.  Beaumaris, the capital of the island, hath been aflourishing town; there are still two very good streets, and theremains of a very large castle.  The Lord Bulkeley hath anoble ancient seat planted with trees on the side of the hillabove the town, from whence one hath a fine prospect of the bayand adjacent country; the church is very handsome, and there aresome fine ancient monuments of that family and some KnightsTemplars in it.  The family of Bulkeley keep in their familya large silver goblet, with which they entertain their friends,with an inscription round relating to the royal family when indistress, which is often remembered by the neighbouring gentry,whose affections run very much that way all over Wales.

I went from hence to Glengauny, the ancient residence of OwenTudor, but now belongs to the Bulkeleys, and to be sold.  Itis a good old house, and I believe never was larger.  Thereis a vulgar error in this country that Owen Tudor was married toa Queen of England, and that the house of York took that surnamefrom him; whereas the Queen of England that was married to himwas a daughter of the King of France and dowager of England, andhad no relation to the Crown; he had indeed two daughters by her,that were married into English noble families—to one ofwhich Henry VII. was related.  But Owen Tudor was neither ofthe blood of the Princes of Wales himself, nor gave descent tothat of the English.  He was a private gentleman, of about£3,000 a year, who came to seek his fortune at the Englishcourt, and the queen fell in love with him.

I was invited to a cock-match some miles from Glengauny, wherewere above forty gentlemen, most of them of the names of Owen,Parry, and Griffith; they fought near twenty battles, and everybattle a cock was killed.  Their cocks are doubtless thefinest in the world; and the gentlemen, after they were a littleheated with liquor, were as warm as their cocks.  A greatdeal of bustle and noise grew by degrees after dinner was over;but their scolding was all in Welsh, and civilities inEnglish.  We had a very great dinner; and the house (calledThe College) where we dined was built very comically; it is fourstoreys high, built on the side of a hill, and the stable is inthe garret.  There is a broad stone staircase on the outsideof the house, by which you enter into the severalapartments.  The kitchen is at the bottom of the hill, abedchamber above that, the parlour (where we dined) is the thirdstorey, and on the top of the hill is the stable.

From hence I stepped over to Holyhead, where the packet-boatsarrive from Ireland.  It is a straggling, confused heap ofthatched houses built on rocks; yet within doors there are inseveral of them very good accommodation for passengers, both inlodging and diet.

The packet-boats from Dublin arrive thrice a week, and arelarger than those to Holland and France, fitted with allconveniences for passengers; and indeed St. George’sChannel requires large ships in winter, the wind being generallyvery boisterous in these narrow seas.

On my return to Chester I passed over the mountain calledPenmaen Ross, where I saw plainly a part of Ireland, Scotland,England, and the Isle of Man all at once.

* * * *

Printed by Cassell & Company,Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C.

Related articles